After every mass shooting, we see comments like this, many by politicians. This tweet by Senator Patty Murray is followed by my response:
There are a lot of things wrong with Patty Murray’s statement here. Nobody is “villifying” the mentally ill; we want them to be identified and helped. Gun laws won’t stop killers. The assault weapons ban didn’t work, and won’t work in the future. Rifles aren’t the most used type of weapon, even when there isn’t a ban against some kinds of rifles. Criminals don’t follow laws, and there are far too many firearms in this country already for anyone except the most gullible to believe that they can be eliminated.
Guns are inanimate objects. Guns are often used because they are pretty effective, although not the best way to kill the most people. Richard Fernandez (Wretchard T. Cat) explains in this excellent essay.
In trying to measure the effects of guns on society — not just the Americans — it pays to be careful about what we are describing. The Washington Post explains that there is no direct relation between the number of firearms in circulation and the number of ordinary gun-related murders.
Most Americans incorrectly think gun-murder rates have gotten worse, not better … To be explicit: This is wrong. Data from the FBI breaks out reported murders by type of weapon, showing a drop in the raw count of firearm murders since a peak in 1993. ….
But remember, too, that the question asked about the murder rate — that is, the number of murders as a function of the population. In that regard, the drop is even steeper. In 1994, the FBI data suggest a rate of about 6.2 firearm murders per 100,000 people. In 2017, the rate was 3.38 murders, up from the 2014 low in which the rate was less than half of that in 1994.
… What the current debate really seems to be about is whether rapid-fire guns increase the frequency of a special kind of crime called mass shootings. However, this is a somewhat artificial category. Mass shootings are a subset of the larger phenomenon of mass killings, sometimes referred to as rampage killings.
…
Because rampage killers are rare, they may be quite different from the ordinary murderer. If the mass killer decides to commit mayhem, first the weapon selection is driven by the plan. Availability is one, but only one of the factors. The rampage data reflect the choice. While bladed weapons are less deadly than firearms, the really devastating attacks are carried out using vehicles or arson. Wikipedia has a category for these called other.
Here is a list of notable rampage killings in other countries. The Americas (United States) is not in the lead worldwide for this kind of killing – Asia is – even if we are in the lead in the firearm category:
- The Shijiazhuang bombings were a series of bomb blasts that took place in the city of Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China on March 16, 2001. A total of 108 people were killed, and 38 others injured when within a short period of time several bombs exploded near four apartment buildings.
- Mohamed Salmene Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was a Tunisian living in France who carried out the 2016 Nice attack, in which he drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day, killing 86 people and injuring 458.
- Gameel Al-Batouti was a pilot for EgyptAir and a former officer for the Egyptian Air Force. On 31 October 1999, all 217 people aboard EgyptAir Flight 990 were killed when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 60 miles (100 km) southeast of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. The US (NTSB) stated that the crash was caused by a series of control inputs made by Al-Batouti, who was in the position of relief first officer in command at the time of the crash.
- The Daegu subway fire occurred on February 18, 2003, when an arsonist set fire to a train which killed 192 people and injured 151 others at the Jungangno Station of the Daegu Metropolitan Subway in Daegu, South Korea.
The reason the high end is non-gun is simple. Firearms, even assault weapons, are inherently limited by the need to change magazines, which is why buddy pairs are considered the smallest tactical unit so that one can maintain fire while the other is reloading. Fire, aerial vehicles, explosives and poison are not similarly constrained. The recent Kyoto animation studio attack killed more people than the El Paso and Dayton shootings combined.
It is sometimes argued that gun control can force rampage killers downward to knives, but there is nothing to prevent them from trading up to a deadly plan and a box of matches. Any strategy to reduce mass killings must consider psychological and network factors as much as object control (like banning knives).
FILE – In this May 5, 1995 file photo, a large group of search and rescue crew attends a memorial service in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people. (AP Photo/Bill Waugh, Flle)
Obvious examples in our own country are the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 and wounded in excess of 680, and the events of September 11, 2001 – attacks by airplane – which killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, and caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage.
The discussion on rampage killing might benefit from examining the following propositions:
- Are rampage killers different from ordinary killers?
- Was the spike from the mid-1960s driven by accelerants other than weapons availability, explaining why gun murder rates per 100,000 went down but mass killings of all sorts went up.
- To what extent does school and religious-ethnic data suggest the spike is driven by contentious politics? Unlike regular murderers who strive to conceal their identity, rampagers often leave elaborate manifestos, a video statement, social media declarations, or even live feeds to memorialize their deeds. They want the world to know who they are.
- Was TV and social media the accelerant at least in part? Is the lack of it why places like Africa appear to have slower growth in this type of event?
I suggest that you read the essay in its entirety. He will be following up with more on this topic.
Stella's Place 
Excellent. Lot of good information. Very good discussion.
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My take on it is that the mass shootings are caused by mental illness
How many times I have read after a mass shooting that people finally come forward and say… Yea that kid was crazy a weirdo a loaner etc
Family Schools Co-Workers see something is not right but remain silent
Then we have those who do speak up to the cops but it seems the cops say they can’t do anything until the kid breaks the law and that he’s old enough to own a gun
Isn’t it too late by then?
Parents have taken their adult son to court in front of a judge to plead with the judge to send their son to a mental ward for evaluation he’s dangerous and in the end the judge renders a decision against the parents and the kid walks free to a mass shooting
Perhaps…Maybe their hands are legally tied…
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I have heard that there are simply not enough beds in mentally ill hospitals, and I certainly believe that. I have picked up somewhere that, like all other societal ills, we can thank Democrats for this; back in the days of Reagan libs came up with the brilliant idea that since mental health care, particularly the process of institutionalized mental health care, had a lot of problems, the Dems decided the best thing to do was to scrap the whole thing rather than institute reforms.
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We focus on that nutjob lone wolf but as those dealing with bad guys on a larger scale will tell you – if they’re talking openly and honestly – those who plan us evil on a larger scale already have their stockpiles and are adding to them.
If we look at Mexico we can see a country with very, very strict gun control laws and still the entire country’s a shooting gallery. Sure they get some from up here but if they’re going to take our guns away because Mexico gets some than why not take them away from ATF and DoJ after Fast and Furious?
ATF and DoJ sniff the winds and they see their chances for their long-time plan of civilian confiscation growing. They know good and well that a huge portion of the illegal guns in Latin America come from merchants outside of the US, the same merchants the US frequently uses to supply guns to those we want to arm overseas. More than one international arms merchant’s been snared in US LEA nets only to be sprung by Beltway agencies who use them. One of the Army intel officers I worked with had a brother who was an arms dealer – didn’t stop him in his career, wasn’t even a speed bump in getting a Top Secret clearance with SCI access. The government will disarm us while actively doing what they tell us not to.
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Apparently the armed, armored and ammunition-laden faux-mass killer recently arrested when he entered a Walmart is claiming he was just exercising his 2nd Amendment rights. This is a great article from Legal Insurrection. Though it doesn’t look like he’s mentally ill per se, he certainly lacks empathy and discernment of appropriate behavior…narcissistic, IMO….
Springfield (MO) Walmart Rifle/Body Armor Event is NOT a Second Amendment Case
Posted by Andrew Branca Saturday, August 10, 2019 at 4:00pm
The Second Amendment is not a waiver against being held responsible for otherwise criminal conduct.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/08/springfield-mo-walmart-rifle-body-armor-event-is-not-a-second-amendment-case/
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And this is what irritates me. Actually, a lot of things here irritate me.
I can’t remember the last time I heard a story of a mass shooting that didn’t involve a claim of “mental illness.” When I hear “mental illness” I think schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or a legitimate mental imbalance that cases someone to literally be unable to think straight.
But unless someone has been seen by a shrink and diagnosed as a psychopath or narcissist, I don’t want to hear about it when it comes to mass shootings, partially because I hear that everything single time it happens. Sometimes these are legitimate mental problems, but how much of these are learned behaviors? Children who are not disciplined grow up to be narcissists. Parents who claim their children never do anything wrong teach their children that they never have to take responsibility for anything. That mass-shooter has some balls to claim that he’s exercising his 2nd Amendment rights by shooting people in a Wal-Mart. That’s an argument so stupid only a liberal could believe it. Which leads to other questions, like:
Who is holding the media responsible for their contributions to the supposed increase in mass shootings? We have studies now that SHOW that the media’s breathless, non-stop reporting of these incidents only encourages more incident like them.
Who is holding the Democrat Party responsible for this? It wasn’t my side of the aisle that was running around pepper-spraying people in the face and punching them and committing assault after they didn’t get their way in the election (And, isn’t is a little narcissisitic to think that an election with an outcome you don’t like is a valid reason to go around committing assault?) Imagine the shrieking hysterics we’d all have to endure from the media if President Trump had said, like Obama did, “They bring a knife we bring a gun.”
And then there’s other things, like maybe this teaching children they evolved from animals leads them to believe that they are not more valuable than and are allowed to behave like animals, but that’s a different thing, probably for another itme.
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* would-be mass shooter.
Sorry, I’m a little hot under the collar about all of this.
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I read this earlier today:
https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/physician-american-children-immersed-culture-disrespect
I have been a physician for 29 years. This sort of language and behavior from a 10-year-old was very rare in the 1980s and 1990s. It would have been unusual a decade ago. It is common today. America’s children are immersed in a culture of disrespect: for parents, teachers, and one another. They learn it from television, even on the Disney Channel, where parents are portrayed as clueless, out-of-touch or absent. They learn it from celebrities or the Internet. They learn it from social media. They teach it to one another. They wear T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like ‘I’m not shy. I just don’t like you.’”
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If i had, at the age of 10, told my mother to shut up in front of another adult in public like that, I would have been taken out to the car for a spanking.
A lot of what’s wrong in America is the refusal of parents to actually be parents, and draw lines and set up rules. But I was raised in a fairly strict family, so what do I know?
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I agree completely. I mouthed off one time to my mother in front of my dad (I was 16) and he slapped me across the face. I never did it again. My dad was not into corporal punishment. I think he spanked me one time before, when I was about 7.
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Here’s an idea, let’s round up a truckload of those mentally ill that Sen Murray’s heart’s bleeding for and drop them off in her garage! Considering Congress’s fingerprints are ALL OVER the streets being filled with mentally ill who seem to have some fuzzy civil right to be out on the street being a clear and present danger to themselves and others.
We had almost daily run-ins with the ‘mentally ill’. They were out on the streets, having been released with the promise they’d take their meds daily. Some just sold their meds, many just stopped taking them when they felt better. They’re mentally ill and yet they’re expected to act rationally in the treatment of their illness, their ‘rights’ beat your safety.
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Y’all remember back in the 90s when there were hearings on ‘if’ violent video games encouraged violent acts by youth? We were told that if the parent’s did their job in raising their kids ‘correctly’ the video games would have no impact. I watch my GGS’s play his games and he’ll spend hours gruesomely shooting his way through exploding opponents. He also watches the TV zombie series’ where chopping/shooting/stabbing with various items four an hour or more is OK because they’re ‘zombies’.
Let’s talk movies. I saw Hobbs & Shaw this weekend, a small army of killings there, and the upcoming attractions for even more shootings in movies upcoming. BTW,
Hobbs & Shaw was PG-13.
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Nope. I still don’t blame the TV or the video games. I blame the absent parents who are more and more absent all the time, and who won’t discipline their children, teach them the difference between right or wrong, or set up boundaries which may actually include not permitting a child to play certain games or watch certain TV shows. But that’s for the parents to determine, not Big Brother.
Parents who refuse to actually act like parents and who want to be their child’s friend rather than the adult are the problem.
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I’m not calling the entertainment media THE cause, but rather a primary contributor. My GGS plays those games endlessly BUT he does it with his mom who explains it’s a game and how the violence and damage he sees/inflicts in the game is fantasy, it’s an outlet and not a lifestyle.
As his primary male influence he’s gone hunting with me, seen animals die, seen the damage a firearm can do and is now proficient with rifle and handgun. He’s comfortable and familiar with them, they are a tool and not an offensive weapon. This year maybe, next definitely he will go deer hunting with me; it’s just out the backdoor but it’s deer hunting all the same. Unlike urban/suburban kids the kids out here grow up with firearms as tools.
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I disgree. I am calling absentee parents the primary contributor. I don’t care about the media. To many parents are disinterested, either because they legitimately don’t care or because they think that’s how they’re supposed to act as parents.
I have had to endure whining about how Barbie dolls give girls unrealistic expectations about their figures. It’s a literal piece of plastic. It can’t do anything. Where are the parents who should have been explaining the difference between fantasy and reality?
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What legislation do you propose to aid the mentally ill
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This is what I have written previously about mental illness in the United States.
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