Why the dramatic spike in mass shootings lately?

[BrainGlutton]

@smiling_bandit

This may be true, but they also don’t need to sensationalize it, particularly given how god-awful their coverage has been. They fill vast amount of air space with wild speculation, rumor gone rampant, and pure nonsense.

That’s the problem with 24-hour news channels – there’s so much airtime they have to find some way to fill.

@smiling_bandit

Than again, if they stuck to the facts they probably wouldn’t be the media, would they?

As a former newspaper reporter I take exception. There are plenty of credible media institutions out there, still; they make mistakes but don’t lie on purpose.

[nearwildheaven]

Don’t y’all know that it’s all being set up by Obama so he can get guns banned, and our front doors broken down without a warrant and our houses searched for them?

(Yes, there are people who really do believe this.)

[Little_Nemo]

@nearwildheaven

Don’t y’all know that it’s all being set up by Obama so he can get guns banned, and our front doors broken down without a warrant and our houses searched for them?

(Yes, there are people who really do believe this.)

Or right-wing fear mongering is pushing some borderline cases over the edge.

It used to only be the voices in people’s heads that drove them nuts. Now there are actual voices on the radio, TV, and internet sites whispering in their ear.

[Andy_L]

@Chimera

Lumpy, it’s awareness and publicity.

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember, but (and I’ve told this story here before a few times) back in the 80’s or early 90’s there was a wave of high school suicides in the Twin Cities. Some of the first ones rates 4-6 dedicated pages of the StarTribune hand wringing, interviewing kids and psychiatrists, blah blah blah. And after each one, there would be another, and another.

The parents of the kids started to get really concerned that this was getting too much news coverage, too much public head space. They banded together and went to the media and said “Fucking enough already. Each time you do this there is another suicide. You need to stop NOW.”

The media listened, and stoped publicizing every incident and traumatizing the fuck out of every community and high school.

And the suicides stopped.

It’s somewhat the same here. Massive publicity, handwringing, wailing and gnashing of teeth begets still more incidents, as sick and unbalanced individuals see all the attention that can be had and decide that maybe, just maybe, this is their ticket too.

In Micronesia there was a sudden spike in suicides as well http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2003/10/suicide_and_mul.html

“As suicide has gained familiarity among youth, the act itself has become increasingly more acceptable or even expected. Suicides appear to acquire a sort of contagious power. One suicide might serve as the model for successive suicides among friends of the first victim.”

[XT]

Why the dramatic spike in mass shootings lately?

My WAG is that whoever is making this correlation is doing so by cherry picking the time frame. Sort of like AGW deniers IMHO. If you look at these things over longer periods of time I think it evens out. You are going to have spikes and lulls on any random event like this, and the spikes probably represent a bit of copy cat behavior…or, simply probability coming into play where you have clusters of events that don’t really signify anything specific. Like tossing a coin in the air a million times…at some point you are going to get clusters of a bunch of heads (or tails) in a row.

[Little_Nemo]

Could it also just be a simple issue of population growth? A constant percentage of spree killers in a growing population means you get a rising rate of spree killings.