At least one professor's stance based on stats:

"We can get misled if we focus on rampage killings like Newtown," says the man we've chosen for this week's CNN Profiles.
"To concentrate all of our violence reduction efforts on the most unpredictable, the hardest to control, the craziest incidents is, I think, a misallocation of resources," our guest tells us. He adds, "if we want to keep most people from being killed, it's the wrong place to obsess."

http://cnnradio.cnn.com/2012/12/21/c...nce/?hpt=hp_t1