[Discussion] Mass Shootings - Yeah, we need a thread just for this...

This year is the deadliest year ever in terms of mass shootings. In a political climate of polarization, it becomes harder to suss out legitimate information from the misinformation propagated by those with political agendas. Complicating this more is the continual resistance of 2nd amendment advocates to allow for political talk surrounding these massacres. This will involve political discussion to see if there are ways we can all agree might be good ways to prevent mass shootings.

This discussion should involve the details of any current, or future mass shooting, and how they compare to past mass shootings. How are they the same? How are they different? Do gun laws have an impact? Does the race of the shooter affect how we treat them? What makes one a hate crime and one an act or terrorism? Are these shootings the price of freedom?

The fact was the initial comment said (roughly) “this group is black and this other group Is statistically insignificant “. Any time one side is called out racially and the other is not it’s going to draw attention. That’s it. That’s the whole issue here.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

The fact was the initial comment said (roughly) “this group is black and this other group Is statistically insignificant “. Any time one side is called out racially and the other is not it’s going to draw attention. That’s it. That’s the whole issue here.

Granting that for the sake of argument, that wasn't the whole issue. He explained and the rest of the issue is what happened after that.

And so we're all on the same page, my understanding is that he's probably saying that if you're basing the need for gun control on the raw number of mass shootings, you're ignoring that there's another way to bring down those numbers. I think the argument is that government overreach in pursuing the War On Drugs has the racist effect of escalating violence in the black community.

Rather than *more* government intervention in the form of gun control, the proposed solution is *less* government intrusion by cancelling the War On Drugs. Treat the disease, not the symptom.

I mean, call me crazy, but I think Aetius might have been making a Libertarian argument! ; D

Aetius wrote:

In essence, there's more-or-less three major violence problems in the United States:

1) A growing but still tiny percentage of high-profile mass murders
2) A shrinking but still far too large percentage of drug-related / gang-related murders
3) People using guns to commit suicide because they are effective and convenient

As OG_slinger pointed out, the only statistical link between these three problems is that most of the shooters are male.

You're making some assumptions about #2 that aren't quite backed up by data.

The FBI breaks down homicides by type of crime and out of the 10,200ish firearm homicides just 1,046 are directly attributable to drugs and gangs: 471 firearm homicides related to "narcotic drug laws," 289 related to "gangland killings," and 286 related to "juvenile gang killings."

By far the biggest reason people shoot other people is arguments. The FBI's "Other arguments" category accounts for over 20% of all firearm homicides. And that category doesn't account for "Brawl due to influence of alcohol" (33 firearm murders), "Brawl due to influence of narcotics" (50 firearm murders), nor "Arguments over money or property" (125 firearm murders).

The FBI's data, however, is limited because they rely on local police for the information. As such, for 43% of all firearm homicides the circumstances of the murder is officially recorded as "Unknown" and there's another 12.7% where the circumstances are recorded as "Other-not specified."

I'm sure there's a portion of drug- and gang-related firearm homicides that fall into those "unknown/other" gaps, but there's also heavy incentives and pressure for local police to tie whatever they can to drugs and gangs.

So the data kinda shows that there's a big ass #4 category, which could basically be summed up as "dumbass men fighting over stupid sh*t."

As you noted, most homicides are largely ignored by the media, both local and national. That skews the public perception that most violence is gang- or drug-related because that's what gets reported. The idiot who shoots his friend or brother in a petty argument, not so much (More than 80% of people murdered are murdered by someone they know: parent, sibling, other family member, boyfriend, etc.).

And, of course, the overriding link between all of the violence issues you raised is easy access to firearms. That and there's a massive feedback loop where predominantly white suburban and rural residents oppose any gun reforms or restrictions because they're terrified of crime "from the big city." That allows criminals everywhere to easy purchase (or steal) firearms in very large quantities, some of which are used in heavily reported crimes, which makes those suburban and rural folks even more scared and unwilling to do anything that would require them to give up the one thing they think makes them safe: their guns.

Of course, those people aren't going to use their guns to ward off gang members. They're going to use them to murder their wives or girlfriends, get drunk and shoot their friend, or commit suicide.

Aetius wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

And mass shootings aren't quite statistically insignificant. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 337 mass shooting incidents in 2018. At a minimum that's 1,348 murders, or 9.5% of all homicides committed in 2018 and 13.1% of all homicides involving a firearm.

The problem using those numbers and that definition is that it conflates problem #1 and problem #2. Look at the GVA report on mass shootings, and you will see that the vast majority of the defined mass shooting incidents in 2018 (and every other year) are gang-related drive-bys or raids.

This incident from a few days ago in New Orleans is representative:

https://www.nola.com/news/crime_poli...
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/i...

If you restrict the definition of 2018 mass shootings to ones that were public, at least somewhat random, non-domestic, and non-gang-related, you'll quickly find that they represent a tiny percentage of gun-related homicides in the United States. For 2018, it's essentially Parkland, Santa Fe, the Pittsburgh synagogue, and Thousand Oaks. Those shootings resulted in 51 out of 14,789 deaths, or 0.3%.

I f*cked up. The Gun Violence Archive's definition of a mass shooting is "four or more people shot *or* killed, not including the shooter." You can ignore my extrapolated stats about mass shooting related deaths because they don't specifically track deaths and ain't nobody have time to comb through all of their source articles to generate the data.

However, I will take issue with your argument that the GVA's definition, which is used by other gun control and public health groups, conflates #1 and #2 (and, really, my #4).

It makes absolutely no sense to create a convoluted, overly restrictive definition of a mass shooting that only kicks in when certain arbitrary circumstances kick in (two or your shootings, Parkland and Santa Fe, probably shouldn't even be on your list because they weren't "semi-random": one was a current student and the other a recent graduate and, therefore, knew the people they were shooting).

The New Orleans example from the GVA you provided is a perfect example. Twelve people were shot in one incident, not including one of the shooters. You seemingly want to dismiss the entire incident because you've assumed it was gang- or drug-related even though that isn't clear from any of the media or police reports (all that's been reported is that the two idiots were feuding over something and ran into each other while they were miles away from home).

Doing so overlooks the fact that the twelve people who were shot were just as innocent of victims as your "approved" list of mass shootings. They're all victims of gun violence.

And that opens the door to the thing that rarely gets talked about outside of public health discussions: gun-related deaths are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gun violence. In the case of the New Orleans shooting, twelve people now face months of recovery and expensive medical bills because two idiots had a beef and semiautomatics.

Those twelve victims are part of the 75,000 to 100,000 people who get shot every year, but survive.

And surviving is expensive as f*ck. If a shooting victim requires hospitalization the average bill is just shy of $600K.

Collectively we pay a fortune for gun violence. Taxpayers front 87% of the direct costs of shootings: emergency services, police investigations, long-term medical and mental-health care, as well as court and prison costs that adds up to $8.6 billion a year.

To put it another way, every firearm-related homicide costs you and I about $400,000. We pay for about 32 of them each and every day.

And society collectively pays $221 billion a year for all the indirect costs of gun violence, whether it's the decrease in someone's quality of life because they were shot or because they couldn't work while they recovered (or couldn't fully work after because of their injury).

So rather than going with a very specific definition of "mass shooter," I'm going to stick with the GVA's definition because it better captures the true scope of gun violence in this country.

WaPo wrote:

Jim Bueermann, a former police chief in Redlands, Calif. — the city where the San Bernardino suspects lived — said it doesn't make much sense to distinguish for this purpose between an injury and a death.

“I would submit that sometimes the only difference between a shooting and a murder could be a centimeter, an inch, an unlikely ricochet, whatever,” Bueermann, who now is president of the Police Foundation, a kind of think tank for research into effective law enforcement practices, said in an interview. “If we're trying to capture true gun violence in our country, a broader definition [of mass shooting] is probably more useful than a narrow one.”

If we were involved in a military conflict that resulted in 40,000 KIAs and another 100,000 or so wounded we would be screaming for something to be done. And yet this is the price we've collectively paid for each year for decades because of the f*cked up politics of guns which, increasingly, can be defined as scared white people trying to hold onto something that makes them feel powerful and safe.

gewy wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Has there ever been a look into the types of medications mass shooters have been on or are on?

Just curious. What's your thinking here? That medications cause or increase likelihood of mass shooting? I think you have to be careful here because even if a higher percentage of mass shooters were on an antidepressant (for example) than the general population, that just might mean that mass shooters are more likely to be depressed (which is probably a safe bet).

Yeah, sorry, kind of hit and run there and then forgot I asked the question.

Like DSGamer, I've been on and off a couple diff types of medications and when you're getting on or off them, it can be intense. While I personally doubt mass murders who plan out their attacks can be tied to medication, I was curious if there's been any connections between gun violence, etc., and medications. Outside of the typical suicidal ideation that goes on.

I know where suicide is the issue, one of the potential dangers of starting a medication regime is that different symptoms like lack of motivation and suicidal ideation don't resolve simultaneously; which can trigger someone who kind of wanted to commit suicide but couldn't be arsed to go through with it to suddenly have the energy and motivation to follow through before the medication gets to a level that relieves the suicidal urge.

Whoa, reading the article gewy posted I had no idea that there was a concerted effort by ... someone to marry the idea of pharmaceuticals and mass murder together. I bet if we dug beneath the surface of the writers and sites claiming that mass murderers were all on Prozac are funded by, oh, the NRA.

thrawn82 wrote:

I know where suicide is the issue, one of the potential dangers of starting a medication regime is that different symptoms like lack of motivation and suicidal ideation don't resolve simultaneously; which can trigger someone who kind of wanted to commit suicide but couldn't be arsed to go through with it to suddenly have the energy and motivation to follow through before the medication gets to a level that relieves the suicidal urge.

Thank you for stating this in a more direct and productive manner than I did.

Workplace shooting here in Winston Salem this morning. Noon news says sanitation co-worker argument, 2 dead, 2 injured. Press conference at 2 for more details.

Absolutely tragic, and absolutely American. What a f*cking waste.

Rallick wrote:

Absolutely tragic, and absolutely American. What a f*cking waste.

It is tragic, but it's not an American phenomenon as Russia and the Middle East do it all the time. Weddings, holidays, etc.

Texas is having a bad week.

garion333 wrote:
Rallick wrote:

Absolutely tragic, and absolutely American. What a f*cking waste.

It is tragic, but it's not an American phenomenon as Russia and the Middle East do it all the time. Weddings, holidays, etc.

You know that doesn’t make it not an American phenomenon...

Responsible gun owner feels like an oxymoron at this point.

Stele wrote:

Responsible gun owner feels like an oxymoron at this point.

You say that, but a cold hard look at how many guns there are in America vs how many stupid asshat things are done with said guns suggests that actually, there are very very very many responsible gun owners.

Jonman wrote:
Stele wrote:

Responsible gun owner feels like an oxymoron at this point.

You say that, but a cold hard look at how many guns there are in America vs how many stupid asshat things are done with said guns suggests that actually, there are very very very many responsible gun owners.

I'm not sure about that. From what I've read, there is a small number of people who own a lot of guns, and a large number of people who own no guns. The only bigger 1% vs. 99% gap in America than the Income Gap might be the Arms Gap.

“Responsible gun owners” on New Years.

IMAGE(https://i.gifer.com/13eR.gif)

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Stele wrote:

Responsible gun owner feels like an oxymoron at this point.

You say that, but a cold hard look at how many guns there are in America vs how many stupid asshat things are done with said guns suggests that actually, there are very very very many responsible gun owners.

I'm not sure about that. From what I've read, there is a small number of people who own a lot of guns, and a large number of people who own no guns. The only bigger 1% vs. 99% gap in America than the Income Gap might be the Arms Gap.

3% of American adults--predominantly white males--own 133 million firearms, which is about half of the guns circulating around. Most of them are collectors, but they're also militia members, people like the Las Vegas shooter, and various unstable mooks who've managed to get arrested before they could murder a bunch of people.

Either way, they're also the people who fight the hardest against any serious regulation of firearms, which makes it easier for criminals to get guns and harder for the government to address this public health crisis.

At the end of the day "responsible gun owner" simply means someone who hasn't done something horrible or stupid with said gun *yet.*

The recent Texas church shooting has been touted by Fox as good guy with a gun saves lives. The issue is that this church had an armed security team already in place and the "good guy with a gun" who shot the gunman was a retired deputy who was also a firearms instructor. This is not your typical guy who bought a .38 and went to the range once opening fire in a crowded room trying to be a hero. And aside from all that, where are we, as a society, where we needed to have an armed security detail at a church anyway!? There are some bigger issues her and they can't be solved by more good guys with guns.

OG_slinger wrote:

...various unstable mooks...

Is it to late to change my custom tag to "Variously Unstable Mook?"

Kehama wrote:

The recent Texas church shooting has been touted by Fox as good guy with a gun saves lives. The issue is that this church had an armed security team already in place and the "good guy with a gun" who shot the gunman was a retired deputy who was also a firearms instructor. This is not your typical guy who bought a .38 and went to the range once opening fire in a crowded room trying to be a hero. And aside from all that, where are we, as a society, where we needed to have an armed security detail at a church anyway!? There are some bigger issues her and they can't be solved by more good guys with guns.

Yes the good guy was heavily trained and trained others. Meanwhile the other volunteer security guard is among the dead. And the half dozen other armed people there didn't do sh*t. Lucky they didn't injure others or themselves.

Kehama wrote:

The recent Texas church shooting has been touted by Fox as good guy with a gun saves lives. The issue is that this church had an armed security team already in place and the "good guy with a gun" who shot the gunman was a retired deputy who was also a firearms instructor. This is not your typical guy who bought a .38 and went to the range once opening fire in a crowded room trying to be a hero. And aside from all that, where are we, as a society, where we needed to have an armed security detail at a church anyway!? There are some bigger issues her and they can't be solved by more good guys with guns.

Not just a firearms instructor. The dude *owned* a shooting range.

And, of course, the pro-bang bang folks don't want to talk about how the shooter was able to get a gun even though he had been arrested and jailed at least four times over the past decade for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, assault and battery, arson, theft, unlawful possession of firearms, and more.

His ex-wife had a protective order against him for years because of his violent behavior, which was exacerbated by his mental illness: he had been diagnosed with forms of psychosis and depression--and was under court ordered treatment for a while--and claimed he was fighting demons.

Stele wrote:
Kehama wrote:

The recent Texas church shooting has been touted by Fox as good guy with a gun saves lives. The issue is that this church had an armed security team already in place and the "good guy with a gun" who shot the gunman was a retired deputy who was also a firearms instructor. This is not your typical guy who bought a .38 and went to the range once opening fire in a crowded room trying to be a hero. And aside from all that, where are we, as a society, where we needed to have an armed security detail at a church anyway!? There are some bigger issues her and they can't be solved by more good guys with guns.

Yes the good guy was heavily trained and trained others. Meanwhile the other volunteer security guard is among the dead. And the half dozen other armed people there didn't do sh*t. Lucky they didn't injure others or themselves.

Said another way, an identified person of interest kills two before being killed in return fire.

I have so many questions about this whole scenario.

Why didn't this vaunted security force call the police if this dude was on their radar? Why didn't they bar him from entry? Will they install metal detectors going forward? If he was known to the church, did they provide any practical assistance to this man? Did this man have any existing relationship with church members? How many people has the security head shot and/or killed?

I am just waiting for newly "found" dead sea scrolls touting "a gun for a gun"...

Reaper81 wrote:

If he was known to the church, did they provide any practical assistance to this man? Did this man have any existing relationship with church members?

It's been reported that the gunman had visited the church several times in the past and that the congregation had fed him. It was also reported that he got angry when the church refused to give him money.

More damning, though, was that security knew something was up before the shooting because the shooter showed up wearing a bulky jacket, a wig, and a fake beard, and sat at the back of the church:

NBC News wrote:

Church officials also took notice of Kinnunen's behavior. The Chronicle reports that the church's security team began watching him at the start of the service.

"When he came in, he was under observation … this was (a case of) 'maybe it's nothing, but maybe it's worth looking into,'" church elder John Robertson, who mans the church's video room, told The Chronicle. "We had put him on isolation on one of the cameras back here so we could see that he was behaving at the moment."

"When he got up between the bread and the cup, or right after the prayer, we said, 'We need to make an intervention,'" Robertson said.

But before the team could intervene, Kinnunen took out a shotgun and opened fire.

OG_slinger wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Stele wrote:

Responsible gun owner feels like an oxymoron at this point.

You say that, but a cold hard look at how many guns there are in America vs how many stupid asshat things are done with said guns suggests that actually, there are very very very many responsible gun owners.

I'm not sure about that. From what I've read, there is a small number of people who own a lot of guns, and a large number of people who own no guns. The only bigger 1% vs. 99% gap in America than the Income Gap might be the Arms Gap.

3% of American adults--predominantly white males--own 133 million firearms, which is about half of the guns circulating around. Most of them are collectors, but they're also militia members, people like the Las Vegas shooter, and various unstable mooks who've managed to get arrested before they could murder a bunch of people.

Either way, they're also the people who fight the hardest against any serious regulation of firearms, which makes it easier for criminals to get guns and harder for the government to address this public health crisis.

At the end of the day "responsible gun owner" simply means someone who hasn't done something horrible or stupid with said gun *yet.*

The article does point out that about a quarter to two/thirds of people in the US say they own a gun. I can't decide if I think that's a high number or a small number.

Still, there are a sh*t ton of responsible gun owners, or at least we assume they're responsible since they haven't hurt or killed anyone yet, as OG points out.

cheeze's comment:

The only bigger 1% vs. 99% gap in America than the Income Gap might be the Arms Gap.

Seems like a bit of a stretch to me. I have a feeling we can find worse gaps, like healthcare for rich vs. poor and those sorts of thing. I assume you were being a bit hyperbolic though, cheeze.

garion333 wrote:

Still, there are a sh*t ton of responsible gun owners, or at least we assume they're responsible since they haven't hurt or killed anyone yet, as OG points out.

When talking about responsible gun owners, let's not forget that it shouldn't include those that aren't properly storing their guns. I know a lot of gun owners who aren't anywhere near being a threat to anyone with their guns, but not all that many that store their guns in a particularly responsible way. It wouldn't be hard for someone less responsible to get access to them. The few mass shooters that didn't buy their guns legally got them by stealing them from someone they knew who did. That's to say nothing of the countless stories of kids accidentally shooting themselves or someone else with a gun they found. Gun owners who don't take storing them seriously aren't responsible, just lucky.

Yup. About 400,000 firearms are stolen from individuals every year and a lot of them make their way to other criminals.

Whose guns are stolen? The epidemiology of Gun theft victims wrote:

Our study is the first to explore the association between gun-related characteristics and gun theft victimization. We find that owning many guns, owning guns for protection, carrying guns, and storing guns unsafely are associated with having guns stolen. Storing guns in the car also appears to increase the risk; evidence suggests that many firearms are stolen from cars (Stolzenberg and D’Allessio 2000; Everytown for Gun Safety 2016; Freskos 2016). Owning many guns appears to be a risk factor for gun theft, perhaps because burglars see firearms as loot, so more household guns may make a more attractive target (Cook and Ludwig 2003). Carrying guns may increase the potential exposure to gun theft, and storing guns unlocked should make it easier for a thief to steal the gun.

We find that the majority of incidents of guns stolen in the United States come from one region-the South, a finding that is consistent with data from the NCVS (Langton 2012). Of the four main US regions, the South, accounts for 37% of households, 44% of the property crime (Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Reports 2014) but 2/3 of the gun theft incidents. The Southern region has the highest percentage of households with firearms and the least safe storage practices (Okoro et al. 2005). Not surprisingly, most Southern states are “exporters” of guns traced in crime (Mayors Against Illegal Guns 2010).