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

[DemonTree]

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

(Backstory in linked thread.)

@Gyrate

And you are throwing in domestic incidents and gang violence into a discussion on spree shootings as indeed Charlie Kirk loved to do in order to “report stats like this in a misleading way”. Introducing noise into the data is a useful deflection technique to minimize data points that one wishes to avoid acknowledging. To borrow your analogy, you’re throwing as many bananas as possible into the blender to avoid discussion of the taste of beanspouts.

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?

@Gyrate

For example, in paragraphs like this..

@Gyrate

…you pretty much drop the entire fruitbowl in.

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

Mass Shootings are, for the most part an American phenomenon. While they are generally grouped together as one type of incident they are several different types including public shootings, bar/club incidents, family annihilations, drive-by, workplace and those which defy description but with the established foundation definition being that they have a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident. GVA also presents the count of Mass Murder which, like the FBI’s definition is four or more victims, killed, not including the shooter. Mass Murder by gun is a subset of the Mass Shooting count.

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.

@Gyrate

Interesting that even in the context of politically-motivated attacks you specifically reference Islamist and left-wing attacks while handwaving away right-wing attacks which over the past years and decades far outstrip the other two categories you mentioned.

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.

@Gyrate

An interesting way of pre-emptively dismissing any data that doesn’t support one’s conclusions.

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

@Gyrate

If by “guy in the audience” you mean Charlie Kirk, sure. And thank you for providing an example of what it would be like to have him here.

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.

[Babale]

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.

[crowmanyclouds]

@DemonTree

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.

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?)

[Gyrate]

@DemonTree

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?

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.

@DemonTree

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.

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?

@DemonTree

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.

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

@DemonTree

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

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

@DemonTree

What, a somewhat-informed person (me) debating an uniformed one?

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.

@DemonTree

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.

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

DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing

[griffin1977]

@DemonTree

AIUI, this database uses one of the loosest definitions of mass shooting

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

[E-DUB]

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

[DemonTree]

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.

The Last Person to Debate Charlie Kirk (Exclusive Interview)

(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:

A mass shooting is an incident of targeted violence carried out by one or more shooters at one or more public or populated locations. Multiple victims (both injuries and fatalities) are associated with the attack, and both the victims and location(s) are chosen either at random or for their symbolic value. The event occurs within a single 24-hour period, though most attacks typically last only a few minutes. The motivation of the shooting must not correlate with gang violence or targeted militant or terroristic activity.

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:

@Gyrate

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?

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.

[puzzlegal]

@Babale

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.

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.)

[puzzlegal]

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.