Link to Compete Article
"Mass shootings are an increasingly common phenomenon in the United States. However, there islittle research on whether the recent growth of income inequality is associated with this rise of mass shootings. Wethus build on our prior research to explore the connection between income inequality and mass shootings acrosscounties in the United States."
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Showing posts with label mass shootings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mass shootings. Show all posts
James Alan Fox: There is no Evidence of an Epidemic of Mass Shootings
"The horrific mass killings in El Paso and Dayton have understandably inspired terror in America and calls for expanded gun control, predictive policing, and mental health interventions designed to reduce violence.
But Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, the leading researcher on the topic for the past 35 years, tells Reason, 'There is no evidence that we are in the midst of an epidemic of mass shootings.' The number of incidents and casualties are simply too small to make such claims and, he stresses, the media coverage of shootings often ends up creating a false sense that gun violence—which is at or near historic lows—is ubiquitous and growing.
In a wide-ranging interview with Nick Gillespie, Fox explains the common characteristics of mass killers, why violent crime involving guns has declined over the past several decades, and how cable TV and social media contribute to a false sense of panic."
Read on...
But Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, the leading researcher on the topic for the past 35 years, tells Reason, 'There is no evidence that we are in the midst of an epidemic of mass shootings.' The number of incidents and casualties are simply too small to make such claims and, he stresses, the media coverage of shootings often ends up creating a false sense that gun violence—which is at or near historic lows—is ubiquitous and growing.
In a wide-ranging interview with Nick Gillespie, Fox explains the common characteristics of mass killers, why violent crime involving guns has declined over the past several decades, and how cable TV and social media contribute to a false sense of panic."
Read on...
"Red Flags" and Guns
"Issuing extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs), commonly referred to
as 'red flag' orders, could reduce mass shootings, according to recent
case studies.
Almost 80 percent of perpetrators of mass shootings had made threats in advance or somehow indicated in advance their plans for violent actions, according to a study published in the latest issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.
In three of the most notorious mass shooting incidents—Parkland, Fl., Aurora, Co., and Tucson, Az.—all of the shooters were recognized by friends, relatives, law enforcement or health care professionals members to be at a 'high risk' for committing violence, the study authors said.
The case studies were prepared by researchers from the Violence Protection Research Program at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine. They evaluated California’s 2016 statute establishing Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), the first of its kind in the United States."
Read on...
Link to Full Test
Almost 80 percent of perpetrators of mass shootings had made threats in advance or somehow indicated in advance their plans for violent actions, according to a study published in the latest issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.
In three of the most notorious mass shooting incidents—Parkland, Fl., Aurora, Co., and Tucson, Az.—all of the shooters were recognized by friends, relatives, law enforcement or health care professionals members to be at a 'high risk' for committing violence, the study authors said.
The case studies were prepared by researchers from the Violence Protection Research Program at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine. They evaluated California’s 2016 statute establishing Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), the first of its kind in the United States."
Read on...
Link to Full Test
Opinion You say gun control doesn't work? Fine. Let's ban guns altogether.
In a post Tuesday,
I listed the mass shootings since January 2013 in which at least three
people were killed. It’s an agonizingly, depressingly long list, and I
cited it as the prime reason we need meaningful gun control. The post
received the usual blowback from gun owners, most of whom skipped over
the scope of gun deaths in this country to look more myopically at last
week’s tragic events at Isla Vista (which I mentioned only in passing, seeing this problem as much broader than the most recent headlines).
Read on...
Read on...
A Guide to Mass Shootings in America
Update (4/2/2014): A gunman went on a
rampage at Fort Hood, Texas—the site of a mass shooting in November
2009—killing 3 people and injuring 16 others before taking his own life,
according to the Associated Press.
It is perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened. The horrific mass murder at a movie theater in Colorado in July 2012, another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that August, another at a manufacturer in Minneapolis that September—and then the unthinkable nightmare at a Connecticut elementary school
that December—were some of the latest in an epidemic of such gun
violence over the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at
least 67 mass shootings across the country, with the killings unfolding
in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Thirty of these mass
shootings have occurred since 2006. Seven of them took place in 2012,
and another five occurred in 2013, including in Santa Monica, California, and at the Washington Navy Yard.
We've gathered detailed data on the cases and mapped them below,
including information on the shooters' profiles, the types of weapons
they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed.*
Mass Shootings Are Becoming More Frequent
After a man opened fire at Los Angeles’s airport a few months ago,
friends and coworkers undoubtedly turned to each other shaking their
heads: Could this really be happening again, so soon? Are these things
getting more frequent, or am I imagining it?
You’re not imagining it, according to a new study obtained by Yahoo! News on Thursday. The report, which is set for release in a Federal Bureau of Investigations bulletin next week, finds that mass shootings have indeed become more common. They have spiked from five a year between 2000 and 2008 to 16 a year from 2009 to 2012.
The report also sheds some light on who is committing mass shootings, and how: 94 percent of gunmen are men, though they range significantly in age. Forty percent of mass shootings happen at businesses, while 29 percent take place at schools. Fifty-nine percent of the time, the gunmen use handguns, and 26 percent of the time rifles.
They claim, on average, two lives.
Read on...
You’re not imagining it, according to a new study obtained by Yahoo! News on Thursday. The report, which is set for release in a Federal Bureau of Investigations bulletin next week, finds that mass shootings have indeed become more common. They have spiked from five a year between 2000 and 2008 to 16 a year from 2009 to 2012.
The report also sheds some light on who is committing mass shootings, and how: 94 percent of gunmen are men, though they range significantly in age. Forty percent of mass shootings happen at businesses, while 29 percent take place at schools. Fifty-nine percent of the time, the gunmen use handguns, and 26 percent of the time rifles.
They claim, on average, two lives.
Read on...
Mass Shootings Are Not the "Shock" or Aberration the U.S. Media Reports
Tom Diaz's new book shows how changes in the gun industry are killing
Americans and what it will take to stop the daily death toll.
Nobody knows what happened within Michael E. Hance’s interior life between 1978—his senior year of high school, when he was chosen Most Courteous because of his “consideration and good manners toward everyone”—and about eleven o’clock on the morning of Sunday, August 7, 2011, when he took deliberate aim with his recently-bought Hi‑Point 45 caliber semiautomatic pistol and shot eleven-year-old Scott Dieter below the terrified boy’s right eye. Scott Dieter was the last of seven people whom Hance, armed with two handguns, calmly hunted down and shot to death in the archetypical white, middle-class suburb of Copley Township, Ohio. An eighth victim, Rebecca Dieter, Hance’s longtime girlfriend and Scott’s aunt, was severely wounded; she was hospitalized but survived. A policeman shot Hance dead moments after he killed young Scott Dieter. The entire episode from first shot to last took less than ten minutes.
Nobody knows what happened within Michael E. Hance’s interior life between 1978—his senior year of high school, when he was chosen Most Courteous because of his “consideration and good manners toward everyone”—and about eleven o’clock on the morning of Sunday, August 7, 2011, when he took deliberate aim with his recently-bought Hi‑Point 45 caliber semiautomatic pistol and shot eleven-year-old Scott Dieter below the terrified boy’s right eye. Scott Dieter was the last of seven people whom Hance, armed with two handguns, calmly hunted down and shot to death in the archetypical white, middle-class suburb of Copley Township, Ohio. An eighth victim, Rebecca Dieter, Hance’s longtime girlfriend and Scott’s aunt, was severely wounded; she was hospitalized but survived. A policeman shot Hance dead moments after he killed young Scott Dieter. The entire episode from first shot to last took less than ten minutes.
“Unclear in all of this is the motive for these killings,” Summit
County Prosecuting Attorney Sherri Bevan Walsh noted in her report
clearing the police officer of wrongdoing in shooting Hance. What is not
“unclear” is that in spite of Hance’s long-term and increasingly
bizarre public behavior, his angry interactions with his neighbors, the
judgment of several members of his family that he had severe mental
illness, and a 2009 incident report by Akron police that concluded he
was a “signal 43,” or, as a police lieutenant later explained,
“basically . . . crazy,” Hance was easily and legally able to buy from a
pawn shop the two handguns with which he fired more than twenty rounds
at his fleeing family and neighbors. In addition to the Hi‑Point pistol,
which he bought five days earlier from Sydmor’s Jewelry, a pawn shop in
neighboring Barberton, Hance used a .357 Magnum revolver that he bought
in 2005 from the same store. He also bought several ammunition
“reloaders” that he carried with him.
More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence?
America now has 300 million firearms, a barrage of NRA-backed gun laws—and record casualties from mass killers.
In the fierce debate that always follows the latest mass shooting, it's an argument you hear frequently from gun rights promoters: If only more people were armed, there would be a better chance of stopping these terrible events. This has plausibility problems—what are the odds that, say, a moviegoer with a pack of Twizzlers in one pocket and a Glock in the other would be mentally prepared, properly positioned, and skilled enough to take out a body-armored assailant in a smoke- and panic-filled theater? But whether you believe that would happen is ultimately a matter of theory and speculation. Instead, let's look at some facts gathered in a two-month investigation by Mother Jones.
In the wake of the slaughters this summer at a Colorado movie theater and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 60 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun. Moreover, we found that the rate of mass shootings has increased in recent years—at a time when America has been flooded with millions of additional firearms and a barrage of new laws has made it easier than ever to carry them in public. And in recent rampages in which armed civilians attempted to intervene, they not only failed to stop the shooter but also were gravely wounded or killed.
Read on...
A Guide to Mass Shootings in America
It's perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened. The horrific mass murder at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises
in Colorado last Friday is the latest in an epidemic of such gun
violence over the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at
least 56 mass murders*
carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings
unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. We've mapped them
below, including details on the shooters' identities, the types of
weapons they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed.
Of the 132 guns possessed by the killers, more than three quarters were obtained legally. The arsenal included dozens of assault weapons and high-powered handguns. (See charts below.) Just as Jeffrey Weise used a .40-caliber Glock to massacre students in Red Lake, Minn., in 2005, so too did James Holmes when blasting away at his victims in a darkened movie theater.
Half of the cases involved school or workplace shootings (11 and 17, respectively); the other 28 cases took place in locations including shopping malls, restaurants, government buildings, and military bases. Only one of the killers was a woman. (See Goleta, Calif., in 2006.) Explore the map for further details—we do not consider the map to be all-inclusive, but based on the criteria we used to identify mass murders, we believe that we've produced one of the most comprehensive rundowns available on this particular type of traumatic violence. (Mass murders represent only a sliver of America's overall gun violence.) For a timeline listing all the cases on the map, including photos of the killers, jump to page 2.
Read on...
Of the 132 guns possessed by the killers, more than three quarters were obtained legally. The arsenal included dozens of assault weapons and high-powered handguns. (See charts below.) Just as Jeffrey Weise used a .40-caliber Glock to massacre students in Red Lake, Minn., in 2005, so too did James Holmes when blasting away at his victims in a darkened movie theater.
Half of the cases involved school or workplace shootings (11 and 17, respectively); the other 28 cases took place in locations including shopping malls, restaurants, government buildings, and military bases. Only one of the killers was a woman. (See Goleta, Calif., in 2006.) Explore the map for further details—we do not consider the map to be all-inclusive, but based on the criteria we used to identify mass murders, we believe that we've produced one of the most comprehensive rundowns available on this particular type of traumatic violence. (Mass murders represent only a sliver of America's overall gun violence.) For a timeline listing all the cases on the map, including photos of the killers, jump to page 2.
Read on...
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