Understood.
Careful there. Many people have made the exact argument you just made, word for word, except replace “Americans” and “USA” with “Blacks”. It’s the wrong argument in both cases, and for the same reasons.
Also, if one was to accept your argument as truth, then what would be the point of trying to address the shootings in America by using laws and social policy? After all, we’re just more violent people in general, right? No amount of lipstick is going to make that pig learn algebra.
This bears repeating. Most Canadians do not see guns as weapons; rather, they are sporting equipment, used for hunting or competition. Farmers use them for varmint control (the proverbial “fox in the henhouse,” for example). It is true that some Canadians would like to be able to use guns for home defense, but I’d guess that they are a minority of Canadian gun enthusiasts. The attitude is totally different.
Interestingly, I belonged to a shooting club for years. You could call your firearm pretty much anything you liked on the range: “gun.” “rifle,” “piece,” or even “Ol’ Betsy,” but you did not call it a “weapon.” Doing so would get you a warning from the range officer; and like the SDMB, if you accumulated enough warnings, you’d be kicked out of the club. You didn’t join our club to learn to shoot offensively or defensively; you joined to get good at punching holes in a piece of paper at a distance. Totally different attitude.
I’m guessing that it’s been mentioned on the SDMB before, but I just ran across this. Mother Jones has compiled a database of mass shootings since 1982, downloadable as a spreadsheet. For their purposes, they define mass shootings as 'indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed by the attacker. We exclude shootings stemming from more conventionally motivated crimes such as armed robbery or gang violence." Since 2013, they have expanded the definition to include incidents in which 3 or more victims have been killed.
I discovered a couple of things while perusing the data, related to this thread. The Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, ranks ‘only’ third in the number of fatalities, with 32. The most is the Vegas concert massacre, which had 58 victims, followed by Orlando with 49. In terms of total victims (fatalities plus injured), Vegas is first with 604, Orlando is second (102), Aurora theater third (82), and Virginia Tech fourth (55).
It was stated upthread that ‘One noted sociologist claims that the big rise in student caused school shootings after Columbine was due to media attention and even glorifying the shooters.’ Indeed, of the 17 school shootings in this database, five were before Columbine and 11 were after Columbine. However, Columbine happened in April of 1999; the next school shooting (the Amish school shooting) didn’t occur until March of 2005, almost six years later. Also, of the 11 post-Columbine school shootings, only 3 were committed by current high school students. While it’s certainly possible (and likely) that Columbine was part of the inspiration for subsequent school shootings, I believe that it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that the media coverage of Columbine caused the uptick in school shootings when the next one didn’t occur for almost six years.
That data also seems to partially refute the compelling argument made by Senor Beef regarding media coverage. IIRC, the media coverage of Columbine was extensive, especially by the standards of 1999. And indeed, there were four more mass killings in 1999. However, after that, the massacres took a sharp downturn. There was 1 in 2000, 1 in 2001, 0 in 2002, 1 in 2003, 1 in 2004, and 2 in 2005. Then the frequency ticks upward again, as each subsequent year shows at least 3 incidents (except 2010, with 1). There is a massive jump in 2012, and each year since has seen a relatively large number of incidents; 2018 was the worst year on record, with 12. We’ve had 4 thus far in 2019.
So why was there a jump in 2006 and then another jump in 2012? I would agree that 24-hour coverage is a big reason, but I would also offer another possible factor: social media. Facebook and Twitter both became available in 2006, and were widespread by 2012. ISTM that every mass shooting since then has rapidly spread across those platforms, just like every other news story. A perpetrator these days can gain instant fame by committing the crime and social media will ensure that the news is immediately widespread.
IMHO, the spreadsheet compiled by Mother Jones is definitely worth downloading and viewing.
That’s a good point. The Christchurch mosque shooter was quite deliberate in making Internet meme references. You can see him making an Internet meme sign here: Christchurch shootings: NZ police admit error in naming murder charge victim and if IIRC, he also made some meme references in his manifesto. He also livestreamed his shooting.
Well, the damage can be mitigated. Even if mass shootings are bound to happen, one can still try to scale them back or snuff them out sooner.
nm
I remain unconvinced, it’s just a correlation argument, at heart. But even if so, what is your suggestion to fix the problem?
I certainly understand that correlation does not equal causation. But if one accepts Senor Beef’s premise that saturated media coverage of one incident leads to another, then I think that all media outlets, including social media, share the blame.
My suggestion? I have nothing that has a chance of being implemented. Do you?
Well, there’s only a handful of major media outlets. Shame them into it, have them stop glorifying these killers- voluntarily.
Unlikely, but certainly possible. And legal.
The Werther effect is a real thing. It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to think there is a similar effect with mass shootings.
The thing about social media is that everyone becomes a major media output - the moment you post something exciting/interesting enough that people share it, you suddenly have an audience of millions.
Unless you significantly lock down (or shut down) social media, there’s no way to shame this away.
The psychology of this is similar, IMHO, to the drinking culture in the U.S. as compared to other western nations. I observed that people drank more and more often in the European countries I’ve been to, but not the dangerous binge drinking we do here.
I grew up with guns all over the house. My dad frequently showed them to us, took us shooting, etc… But we knew not to touch Dads guns without his permission. We were educated and trained that guns were tools as well as weapons and we knew to respect that.
He did the same thing with alcohol. Even as young kids we would get a slug of Dads beer or a small glass of wine. He completely disarmed the forbidden fruit aspect of it. When we were at a wedding or other event and there was a drunk person acting the fool, he would point them out to us to show what alcohol abuse can do.
Both issues have an attitude aspect to them. Alcohol and so called “assault weap:rolleyes:ns” have been around for generations. Neither has changed. Our culture has.
Facebook is cracking down on quite of bit of bad stuff, so it is possible.
I agree 100% and I can only say that this is not stressed strongly enough or often enough. All the arguments against the feasibility of gun control, particularly that nothing can be done about the gun problem because of the number of guns already in circulation, or citing the strong support of gun rights among many, are all premised on the idea that gun control must be some kind of top-down authoritarian edict. The huge number of guns in public hands is hardly a problem if the culture is such that nobody wants the damn things, as it indeed is for most people in most other countries that don’t have a gun problem.
The role of government in the American gun context has to be less about legislation and more about actively changing the mindset and the culture, which is admittedly a huge challenge, but so is the problem. And a problem it certainly is, to an extent that I suspect most Americans don’t recognize. To quote Wikipedia, “Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. Although it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, the U.S. had 82 percent of all gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns.”
Just consider that for a moment. The gun death rate is 25 times higher in the US than in comparable high-income countries – not 25% higher, but 2500% higher! Nearly 15,000 people are killed by gun homicide every year, even more by preventable suicide which guns facilitate by making it so incredibly easy, quick, and fatal. Between 1968 and 2011, around 1.4 million Americans died from firearm injuries – a figure more typically associated with a major war than with everyday life in a modern, rich, and ostensibly safe democracy. By any standard of epidemiology, it’s an epidemic, and of all the things that people die from, gun deaths are probably by far the most easily preventable.
This characterization of the news media is not true. While there’s a certain element of truth to the notion that news media in these other countries tends to be more responsible and less sensationalist than in the US – compare, say, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a fairly sedate public broadcaster, with CNN – it is not true that they shy away from full coverage of those rare mass shootings that do occur. In all cases that I can think of, the shooter was always named and the motivations openly discussed. Yet it didn’t incite a bunch of copycats to come out with guns blazing. What it did, actually, was motivate discussions about even stronger gun controls, and increased public support for them.
As noted above, the really important difference between Canada and the US with respect to guns is not so much the number of guns, or particularly how the media handles gun violence stories; rather, the vividly startling difference is in the gun culture. Guns tend to be regarded as essentially utilitarian and inherently dangerous rather than as glamorous toys. If you substitute “case of dynamite” for “gun”, you have a rough approximation of the cultural framework of guns in Canada for the majority of the population. I know that if I bought a bunch of guns and started bragging about them to my friends, they’d wonder what the hell was seriously wrong with me, whereas this seems to be an entrenched part of the American gun culture.
I forgot to include a link to the cited article:
:rolleyes::rolleyes:
I love when stats lie and are cherry picked. “comparable high-income countries” mean "nations we picked because they have a low homicide rate. Now, if you did limit it to OECD nations*, then you’d have to include (for example) Mexico which has a homicide rate four times that of the USA, and Columbia which has a rate* five* times that of the USA. Generally the Americas have a much higher homicide rate than Europe, despite strict gun laws. 16.3 vs 3.0 . So, it’s not guns, it’s being in the Western Hemisphere are opposed to Europe or Asia. Or it’s not being a small nation. (Russia has a rate twice that of the uSA)
But if you dont cherry pick, and just go for ALL nations, the USA is smack dab in the middle. Slightly lower than average, in fact.
Then you claim “Nearly 15,000 people are killed by gun homicide every year,” But from your own cite “In 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the United States…”
- OECD use to be Euro nations, but it has expanded, Columbia is the newest member.
LOL!!! “If you don’t cherry pick”. 
Check out the article again, and look at the graph. The latest two years on record were very close to 15,000.
I only point this out because of the sheer ridiculous irony of that accusation by someone who cherry-picked a year. And it doesn’t even matter, because any of the numbers that have been fluctuating between roughly 10,000 and 15,000 gun homicides are so outrageously beyond all other comparable countries that it doesn’t even matter what year you pick.
As for Mexico and what countries the US should be compared with, you sound like a broken record. We’ve heard it all before, again and again and again. Anyone seriously interested in solving the gun problem is going to seriously look at actual relevant facts, and not bring in comparisons with Mexico, or with Somalia or Yemen which might make the US gun death rates look even better. At least be forthright and just say “I like guns, and I think the deaths are worth it”. Or is that too challenging a position to defend?
This thread is specifically about mass shootings, not overall gun deaths or general gun policy, though there may be overlap.
Please stick to the topic and avoid these types of hijacks.
[/moderating]
If you can figure out how to run a Java JAR, here’s an application I made a few years back that uses regression analysis (of the full set of all countries which had data for all of these variables) to backwards engineer the effect of different variables on the homicide rate:
I realize now that I was being stupid when I set it up and probably the link between gender ratio and homicide is that a reduction in men in the population could be correlated to a higher homicide rate because men are more likely to suffer a violent end and homicide is more prevalent in places where there is a lot of violence. This value might, accidentally, be a proxy for the homicide rate itself and thus biases the output. Just set it to zero and ignore it.
Otherwise, the formula is probably a fairly good indication of how the variables play out. But, note that it’s a less good predictor of the actual homicide rate. The tool serves to give a sense of how everything plays together, not to let you determine the homicide rate.
Values for the US -
Gun Ownership: 120.5
Gender Inequality Index: 0.189
GINI Coefficient: 41.5
Ethnic Fractionalization: 0.491
Linguistic Fractionalization: 0.564700
Expected homicide rate: 7.89
Actual homicide rate: 5.35
And Germany -
Gun Ownership: 19.6
Gender Inequality Index: 0.072
GINI Coefficient: 31.7
Ethnic Fractionalization: 0.095
Linguistic Fractionalization: 0.164200
Expected homicide rate: 1.17
Actual homicide rate: 1.18
If you play around with it, I think that you’ll determine that the GINI coefficient is the big dog. In general, you would save more lives by improving the income gap than by reducing the number of guns. And, in fact, reducing the guns might not have the effect you want. Right now, it predicts an increase in the homicide rate if gun ownership went down.
If you continue playing around, you’ll find that the key to this is likely the presence of a sort of inverse relationship between gun ownership and linguistic fractionalization. If there’s zero fractionalization then, on average, increasing gun ownership reduces the homicide rate. If there’s mass fractionalization, then reducing the gun ownership increases the homicide rate.
That is to say, if everyone is white and talks like you, then guns kill people. If you live in a land of diversity, guns save lives.