How should mass shootings be classified (In reference to Charlie Kirk's final words)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Continuing the discussion from How long would Charlie Kirk have lasted here?:

(Backstory in linked thread.)

By bringing up this distinction in advance, CK would have forced his questioner to specify whether he was “throwing in domestic incidents and gang violence” or not, and potentially allowed him to dismiss the figure as misleading. Good debating technique, and, as you admit above, important context.

Also, in other threads, I have seen people accuse Kirk of dismissing the importance of gang violence with his comment, yet here you are calling domestic incidents and gang violence “noise”. Is it dismissive to make this distinction, or does it depend on who is speaking?

I was referencing a specific database, the Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shooting as follows:

AIUI, this database uses one of the loosest definitions of mass shooting, thus it has a very large number of incidents, and those incidents are of diverse types. If you read a news article saying there is more than one mass shooting per day in America, there is a good chance they are getting numbers from this database.

I do not know that the guy debating CK on the issue was going to reference a total from the GVA, but it would be a good choice if you wanted to minimise the number of trans - or far-right - spree shooters.

Far-right attacks are a subset of ideologically motivated ones. It’s true that in the US they form the majority of such, but Islamic and far-left attacks still make up about a quarter of recent ones.

No, a way to pre-emptively dismiss incorrect and simplistic arguments on a nuanced subject.

What, a somewhat-informed person (me) debating an uniformed one? I didn’t do in-depth research, but I did do some, and I knew something about the topic, which is why I could understand the significance of Kirk’s question.

Message board posters have an advantage over random audience members or debate participants, though: we can go away and do the research, and come back better informed and with more cogent arguments. We can even try to reach mutual understanding, rather than engaging in point scoring of the sort done by Charlie Kirk. If you want to, that is.

2

They should be classified based on the context involved.

Spree shootings, gang shootings, and domestic violence shootings all contribute to the death rate by gun violence, which is much higher in the US than in other countries. All of these issues are contributed to by the easy availability of firearms in the US. So in the context of a gun control discussion, talk about all of them.

If you’re talking about spree shootings, or school shootings in particular, talk about that.

3

Are you/we lumping mass shootings together or are we splitting them apart?
('Cause if we’re not counting “gang violence” that otherwise qualifies as a mass shooting then why are you/we lumping Islamic terrorism in with far left attacks?)

4

When you’re talking specifically about political and ideologically motivated shootings, introducing domestic incidents and gang shootings is noise. If you’re just talking about gun violence in America, then including them is relevant. But I appreciate that may be too nuanced a take for those who prefer more simplistic arguments.

Is that why you chose it?

Also - do you feel that use of it is likely to materially minimize the five mass shootings by a trans person, compared to the effect of doing so on the significant number of far-right spree shooters?

I am aware. Because I’ve done my research.

And on what basis should one pre-emptively declare other people’s arguments “incorrect” and simply dismiss them out of hand?

That’s certainly how Kirk thought of himself. And yet he had to resort to Gish Gallops and linguistic chicanery to “win” his debates. As noted in the other thread, his approach was always rhetoric over facts.

Better do your research fast, then, before the data gets erased.

5

How is the definition loose? A mass shooting is a where a mass of people are shot. And four is definitely “a mass”. Outside of an actual war, four people being shot at the same time, is an unspeakable number. In any other Western country other than the US, four people being shot would make headline news across the country

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Especially given that Islamic terrorist are arguably right wing, just on a different bird.

7

Welp, I found an interview of the guy debating with Charlie Kirk, in which he says he did an analysis showing trans people are more peaceful than average, and that he was planning to give a figure of “a little under 6,000” mass shootings over the last 10 years. I added up the yearly counts from the GVA and got 4,917, ie just under 5,000, so either he misremembered the number, or he found a database with an even larger count.

Either way, this confirms my theory exactly.

(In case anyone is interested, the context was that after the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting, the Trump DoJ has been suggesting revoking gun rights for transgender Americans. Needless to say, this is a ridiculous and totally unjustified overreaction.)

So what’s the problem here? The count of 5 trans shooters does not come from the GVA, and according to my research, no database recording mass shootings collects data on gender identity. The GVA lists 503 mass shooting events last year, and by no means did all these come to national attention. We don’t know the demographics of these shooters, and it’s quite plausible that some are transgender, just as it is plausible for any other demographic to be represented in the list.

The other question is what kinds of events we are interested in. The demographics of what we might think of as ‘classical mass shooters’ - public place, random victims, lack of ordinary criminal motive - are likely to differ from those of gang related killers, which will differ again from those of familicides. It’s legitimate to want to split these different kinds of killings out to look at them separately. However, it is difficult to define the ‘classical’ mass shooting which is by far the most publicised variety. There are multiple databases using various overlapping definitions. An example is the Rockefeller Institute, which uses this definition:

Their count of mass shootings over the last 10 years is far lower, showing how great a difference the definition makes. Adding up the counts from 2015 - 2024 inclusive, I make it 175 - only 3.6% of the mass shootings listed in the GVA. Obviously, it makes a dramatic difference which of these figures is used as the denominator.

Which brings me to this:

Yes, absolutely I expect it to minimise both. Far-right spree shooters are going to be the kind of ‘classical’ mass shooters included in the Rockefeller’s count of 175 over the last decade, and they likely make up a significant share of that count. But they don’t make up a significant share of all shootings with 4 or more victims. Yes, dividing by 4,917 rather than 175 is going to minimise the number of far-right mass shootings.

8

This is what i wanted to say in the other thread. If you are talking about, " is the second amendment worth it", you should include all of them, and frankly, you should also be looking at suicides and accidents. A very large fraction of suicides are “in the heat of the moment”, not carefully thought out and planned. People who recover from suicide attempts of that nature are usually glad they did. Those who had guns handy very rarely recover.

So if you were arguing with kirk about gun deaths in general, it’s dumb to let him distract you by trying to carve any out.

If you are specifically interested in the impact of trans people on gun-related murder, I’m not sure what the denominator ought to be.

(But you might want to also look at what percent of trans-related suicides are accomplished by firearms.)

9

So, what fraction of those 175, or 4917, were committed by cis men? I think we could make a very good argument that cis men shouldn’t be allowed to carry guns except in very narrow, specific instances. Police, military, and farmers who need to kill vermin are the only ones that come to mind.

10

If you’re asking whether the second amendment was worth it, then yes, you should be looking at all gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidents. It would make no sense in that context to focus on mass shootings, let alone on those committed by trans people.

But the actual context was Republicans noticing a series of mass shooters identified by the police as transgender, and drawing some unwarranted conclusions. After watching the video I linked above, I remembered seeing something about this on Twitter: the Trump admin suggested removing firearms from trans people because of the supposedly greater risk of violence. What I mostly recall was several people pointing out that their higher suicide risk would be a far better justification for such a policy.

To satisfy my own curiosity, I found the list of 5 trans mass shooters and verified that all were included in the Rockefeller Institute database. So for that particular definition of ‘mass shooting’ 5/174 = 2.87% identified as transgender. Getting a population percentage to compare to is another can of worms, but this seems like a decent source:

According to this survey, 0.8% of the US population identify as trans or non-binary. However, AFAIK all 5 killers were under 30, and numbers are much higher for younger age groups. It doesn’t give percentages for 18-30, but 18-24 is 2.7%, and 25-34 is 1.4%. This suggests that both Charlie Kirk and the student debating him were wrong, and the number of trans spree killers is in line with their percentage of the population. Nothing to see here.

In any case, I hope I have made the point that it’s quite reasonable to ask whether gang violence is included in someone’s definition of “mass shooting”, and not indicative of dismissing the importance of such crimes, or of trying to change the subject or arguing in bad faith. A lot of this reading comes down to judgement of someone’s motives, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy as the person’s words are interpreted in line with that earlier judgement, and so serve to reinforce it.

A very high fraction. 95.3% of perpetrators were male in the Rockefeller database. I was actually thinking the same thing. :laughing: Banning men from owning guns would make more of a difference than almost anything except for banning them entirely.

11

This is the sort of violence that happens almost every day in America:

https://archive.ph/tFdzx

It’s not done by killers with manifestos, who plan their act and stick around to kill as many people as possible. It’s drive-by shootings, bar shootings, gunmen stupidly firing into a crowd. Often they aren’t even caught.

It usually doesn’t make the national news. This one has, though:

12

Exactly! Mass shootings happen almost every day in America (and America alone among all the western countries)

And what’s that got to do with it? The term is mass shooting, not shootings carried out by people with manifestos.

It doesn’t make the national news in America. In any other Western country someone shooting four or more people would be the biggest headline nationwide, whether or not they had a manifesto.

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I’m fine with the definition of mass shooting that we already have, but, given the large number of them, in some contexts further classification is necessary eg politically motivated mass shooting, terrorist mass shooting etc. These will have some degree of gray area though, so they will also need a concrete definition.

In terms of Kirk’s point though, I disagree that it was important context. It was a deflection, like throwing in a “What is a woman?” question apropos of nothing. If the argument is that trans are disproportionately dangerous, it doesn’t matter if it’s domestic violence, or gang shootings or whatever else. And if the data is insufficient then the person trying to make that claim has failed to meet the burden of proof.

14

Eh, just to be difficult, i think terrorist attacks should be classified by motive, not by weapon or number dead. Do you want to exclude 9/11?

Similarly, i would look at politically motivated murders.

The concept of “mass shooting” is most useful in debating gun laws. Because guns don’t create motive, but they do create (and multiply) opportunity.

15

Agreed. I didn’t try to define all the subsets of mass shooting because I think there’s room for disagreement (just as there is with the number of casualties for a mass shooting), so might take this thread down a rabbit hole.
My main point was just that I don’t think the way forward is just having one number that we omit lots of types of mass shootings from. I think it’s better to have a main inclusive number and then specific terms for more narrow types.

(And again, this is a damning indictment of how common these events have become in the US. But yes, we are at the point of needing sub-classification)

16

Most people have an idea of a mass shooting, and it’s more like the Rockefeller Institute definition than the Gun Violence Archive definition. So when you tell them there is more than one mass shooting a day in America, they imagine 2 Sandy Hooks per day, not 2 drive-by shootings that unfortunately injure and sometimes kill bystanders. It misleads the public.

That’s not to say that gang violence isn’t a problem, because it is. But if you are interested in that, why focus on “mass shootings” at all, rather than gun homicides in general? When people want to single out mass shootings specifically, they usually mean the more limited definition.

And there’s a fairly ignoble reason why spree shootings attract more attention. I’m not American, but AIUI, most violence in America is concentrated in certain areas. If you aren’t in a gang, and you avoid being in the ‘bad part of town’ you are not at much risk of being shot. Similarly, if you are a responsible gun owner, you and your family are not at much risk of accidental death. These things are under your control. But spree shooters choose their victims randomly, so ordinary middle class (white) Americans are at risk from them. This is why they attract so much attention and publicity, and cause so much anxiety.

Yes. It’s an indictment of America that these crimes are so common as to not be newsworthy. And it contributes to the inaccurate view of causes and perpetrators of mass shootings in the wider sense.

I disagree. Firstly, the student debating him was going to make a point that is simply incorrect: we have no idea how many of the 5,000 or 6,000 mass shootings he was using as the denominator were carried out by transgender people, because that data is not being collected. Assuming that the 5 high profile cases were the only ones is foolish.

Secondly, it’s reasonable to consider different types of crimes separately when looking at who commits them and why. Gang crime is obviously very different in both of those factors than spree shooters, and lumping them together will obscure rather than reveal patterns. I doubt anyone believes trans people are overrepresented in gang crime - indeed, I would expect the opposite. Right-wing extremists might be, but not to nearly the same degree as in spree shootings.

As an illustration, I gave right-wing extremist spree shooters the same treatment, and you can see above that @Gyrate reacted in much the same way that CK did (though CK was famously better at keeping his cool). Yet it’s true that compared to the routine violence taking place in American cities every day, they are a negligible problem. What it comes down to for me, is that if it is worth worrying about spree shooters strictly defined, then it must be legitimate to ask who is doing the spree shooting.

Though please note what I calculated above, that trans people do not appear to be overrepresented in this group. I doubt Charlie Kirk or anyone in his org bothered to search for data, so you are correct that he failed to meet any kind of burden of proof.

17

Well we don’t know the full context.

I’ve searched in vain for a full transcript of the debate prior to the shooting; every website just seems to have the last sentence or two.

But I don’t think it is likely that the interlocuter apropos of nothing was trying to make the point that trans were disproportionately not responsible for mass shootings. It almost certainly was a response to what Kirk was saying, or has previously said on the issue.

So what I am saying is: if the data is incomplete then we have no reason to even be bringing up trans in this context at all.

18

This is a whole other can of worms. Most gun murders in the US are carried out with handguns, including the great majority of mass shootings in the GVA. But highly publicised spree shootings have resulted in proposals to restrict assault weapons. This is more politically palatable, perhaps, but it’s not going to put a dent in the overall number of gun deaths. Why not try to address the most common types of crime first?

Perhaps you already know this, but Republicans tend to feel very resentful of Democratic-endorsed gun control measures because of the perception that the burdens fall mostly on Republican voters, while Dems avoid more effective measures that would upset their own base. Eg, the focus on restrictions on buying and selling firearms, which mostly burden legal owners (disproportionately rural and Republican), while reducing penalties or refusing to enforce laws on illegally carrying handguns, as these disproportionately impact their own (poor, urban, POC) voters.

19

Just to interject a painfully obvious thought…

The things “the left” proposes (many of which have broad-based support) are likely to reduce every single kind of gun violence in the US, including gang violence, random shootings, mass shootings, domestic violence shootings, and suicides-by-gun.

It shouldn’t be forgotten or omitted from the conversation.

Incidentally, these are proposals with – last I checked – better than majority support in the USA:

  • Background checks for private and gun show sales
  • National “Red Flag Law”
  • Require a license for gun purchase
  • Ban sale of high-capacity magazines
  • Ban sale of semi-automatic long guns
  • Create mandatory ‘assault weapon’ buyback program
20

The context was in my second post:

So yes, the student questioning Kirk had a good reason to bring this up, and I think his point was correct, even if his data was bad.

I don’t think it’s bad per se to bring up patterns like this: people have eyes and notice things, and it’s better to address issues head on by investigating and either finding there is nothing there (as in this case) or coming up with an appropriate response (which might be things like better mental health support, certainly not taking away rights from a large group of people).

It’s definitely bad to do what Charlie Kirk was doing, and imply something is a major problem based on a literal handful of cases, without investigating at all. That’s something I condemn, and calling him out on it was totally appropriate.