Where are you most likely to die in a public mass shooting?

 Since Jan. 1, 1992, there have been 134 shootings in a public space in the United States where at least four people have died. That's according to the Mass Shooter Database created and maintained by The Violence Project.  In all, 801 people have died in the incidents. 

These shootings have not been uniformly distributed around the country. In fact, 14 states have had zero of these events in this 30-year period. By comparison, Texas has had eight fatal mass shootings; California seven.

So where are you most likely to die in a public mass shooting? The numbers say: Nevada.

By dividing the number of people who have died in these shootings by the state's population, we get a rate. And Nevada's rate — 19.7 deaths per million people — is the highest among all the states, 

Nevada's rate is due almost entirely to the 2017 murder of 58 people at the Route 91 Harvest musical festival in Las Vegas. There was only one other fatal public mass shooting in Nevada since 1991 — the murder of four people in Carson City in 2011. 

Nevada is followed on this list by the District of Columbia, Connecticut, Colorado and Virginia.  Full list is at the bottom. 

That's the top of the rankings, but in many ways I'm more interested in the bottom.  I feel like some lessons could be learned by looking at the 14 states that had zeros deaths: North Carolina, Alaska, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

What are those states doing right? I don't know, but we should try to find out.

It is too simplistic to dismiss the zero-death toll in these states as being due to the fact that most of them are small. 

While it's true that some of the least-populated states, such as Wyoming, Vermont and Alaska, are in this zero-death group, so is North Carolina, which is the ninth-most populated state. While it has no deaths in this category over the last 30 years, Connecticut, with one-third as many people, has had 39.

Another way to put it would be to note that Colorado has about the same population as Iowa, Maine and Montana combined, but the former has had 39 deaths in public mass shootings since 1991 while the latter three have had zero.  Again, why? 

It should be noted that public fatal mass shooting are relatively rate. A total of 801 deaths over 30 years is 26.7 deaths per year. While each of those deaths is a tragedy, it is important to remember that 11,000 people in the U.S. are murdered by gun every year. Most of these happen in everyday places like in the home and at work. If you're going to be shot to death, it's far more likely that the killer will be someone you know rather than a random stranger. 

	State/District	Total deaths	Population (2021)	Deaths per million people
1	.Nevada	62	3,143,991	19.72
2	.District of Columbia	12	670,050	17.91
3	.Connecticut	39	3,605,597	10.82
4	.Colorado	39	5,812,069	6.71
5	.Virginia	44	8,642,274	5.09
6	.Mississippi	15	2,949,965	5.08
7	.Hawaii	7	1,441,553	4.86
8	.Nebraska	8	1,963,692	4.07
9	.Texas	114	29,527,941	3.86
10	.Florida	81	21,781,128	3.72
11	.Oregon	13	4,246,155	3.06
12	.Wisconsin	17	5,895,908	2.88
13	.New Hampshire	4	1,388,992	2.88
14	.Minnesota	15	5,707,390	2.63
15	.South Carolina	13	5,190,705	2.50
16	.Georgia	24	10,799,566	2.22
17	.Idaho	4	1,900,923	2.10
18	.Louisiana	9	4,624,047	1.95
19	.Washington	15	7,738,692	1.94
20	.New York	38	19,835,913	1.92
21	.Indiana	12	6,805,985	1.76
22	.Kansas	5	2,934,582	1.70
23	.Ohio	20	11,780,017	1.70
24	.California	65	39,237,836	1.66
25	.Arkansas	5	3,025,891	1.65
26	.Missouri	10	6,168,187	1.62
27	.Pennsylvania	20	12,964,056	1.54
28	.Utah	5	3,337,975	1.50
29	.Arizona	10	7,276,316	1.37
30	.Tennessee	9	6,975,218	1.29
31	.Illinois	15	12,671,469	1.18
32	.Kentucky	5	4,509,394	1.11
33	.Massachusetts	7	6,984,723	1.00
34	.Michigan	10	10,050,811	0.99
35	.Maryland	5	6,165,129	0.81
36	.Alabama	4	5,039,877	0.79
37	.New Jersey	4	9,267,130	0.43
38	Alaska	0	732,673	0.00
39	.Delaware	0	1,003,384	0.00
40	.Iowa	0	3,193,079	0.00
41	.Maine	0	1,372,247	0.00
42	.Montana	0	1,104,271	0.00
43	.New Mexico	0	2,115,877	0.00
44	.North Carolina	0	10,551,162	0.00
45	.North Dakota	0	774,948	0.00
46	.Oklahoma	0	3,986,639	0.00
47	.Rhode Island	0	1,095,610	0.00
48	.South Dakota	0	895,376	0.00
49	.Vermont	0	645,570	0.00
50	.West Virginia	0	1,782,959	0.00
51	.Wyoming	0	578,803	0.00

Book review: "Yes Please" by Amy Poehler

Amy Poehler is a puzzle.

At the start of her 2014 memoir, "Yes Please," Poehler complains about how hard it is to write a book about herself.

"The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not. Even I have lied about writing. I have told people that writing this book has been like brushing away dirt from a fossil. What a load of shit. It has been like hacking away at a freezer with a screwdriver."

Does she like revealing things about herself? No, she says. In fact, she stays off social media because of "the amount of self-disclosure and self-promotion involved." 

Yet despite her displeasure with writing and her reticence about talking about herself, Amy Poehler has produced a long book — 329 pages — that reveals more than a few personal details. There's her sex act preferences, her favorite type of porn, past drug use, the mean texts she accidentally sent to the wrong person, years of sleeping problems (finally diagnosed as sleep apnea), and her shame over an offensive skit mocking a disabled girl.

"Yes Please" is written in a controlled stream of consciousness fashion. It rambles along to topics as Poehler finds them. Sometimes she's humble, sometimes funny, sometimes mean and grumpy.

It is a masterpiece of non-organization. There is no rhyme or reason for the order in which subjects are presented; it certainly isn't chronological (would it better if it were?  I wonder). You can pick up the book and basically read any chapters in any order.

If you need some recommendations, there's a good chapter on entertainment awards ("gimme that pudding"), one about a performance marred by a bad microphone ("I'm so proud of you"), and another on working as restaurant server as a teen ("Don't forget to tip your waitresses").

There are other good parts but they're sprinkled haphazardly around the book, so it's hard to direct you to them.

Mostly, I would recommend the parts where Poehler actually talks about herself, which isn't all of them. Sometimes — as if embarrassed by how transparent she was in the last chapter — the next one is just a series of jokes.  Perhaps comedy relief, perhaps an attempt to deflect attention from herself.

In one chapter, Poehler details her history working with the improv group Upright Citizens Brigade. It is a surprisingly impersonal chapter, reading more like a Wikipedia recitation of dates and facts, largely devoid her feelings.

She flings out pop culture references fast. Depending on your media literacy you may have to stop often to look up names or to find old SNL skits that she references. 

Here's a short list of name-checks that I didn't get (don't write to explain them to me; I know how to Google): Cindy Sherman, Odd Future, Fugazi, "Ashlee Simpson's song," Jack McBrayer, Lourdes Ciccone, Richard Kind, Billy Bush, Ginuwine,

As a fan of "Parks and Rec," I was most interested in the parts about that show.  I was intrigued to discover that —  unlike Tina Fey's role in making "30 Rock" —  Poehler did not develop or write Parks and Rec." Credit goes to Mike Schur. And credit goes to Poehler for giving him credit. 

As for the her supposed dislike of writing, Poehler admits it's a tactic. "I am presenting a series of reasons as to why should lower your expectations, so that you can be blown away by my sneaky insights about life and work."

Ah, both a puzzle and sneaky.