Can we talk about the mass shootings in America?

[Amulek]

3 minutes ago, Chum said:

1) I'm gun agnostic. [...]

I'm not. Though I respect people who hold principled opinions differing from my own. 

 

3 minutes ago, Chum said:

2) I can't prove or disprove the above quote. The US is so gun heavy that there's no gun law we could pass today that would make tomorrow like every other country. What I do know is reactionary laws are universally bad. Better laws need time and input by diverse interests who put the public first. Passing them will require a sufficient number of elected officials who aren't captured or deluded.

Active shooter situations should not be the main focus in the gun debate, whether for gun control or gun decontrol. On average, they account for less than 1% of the U.S. homicide rate and are unusually hard to stop through gun control laws (since the killer is bent on committing a publicly visible murder and is thus unlikely to be much deterred by gun control law, or by the prospect of encountering an armed bystander).

But people talk about them a lot, so I'm willing to share my perspective whenever the subject comes up. 

 

3 minutes ago, Chum said:

3) I would solidly get behind gun laws if we first tried the one thing we've never done (at least not since Columbine). Stop siren-calling the next shooter by rewarding the last shooter with months of the loudest possible coverage and attention. The endlessly brilliant Zeynep Tufekci was right about minimizing the publication of shooter names but I believe we need to complete that effort by doing the same with the event. If we try that in a meaningful and extended way without result, I'll support carefully written gun restrictions.

I agree that we should change how we talk about these sorts of incidents, especially in the press. In fact, I believe I mentioned exactly this earlier in the thread.

 

[Chum]

1 minute ago, Amulek said:

I agree that we should change how we talk about these sorts of incidents, especially in the press.

How do you think we should talk about it in the press?

[bluebell]

15 minutes ago, Amulek said:

Depends on the department. Technically, they can get pretty much anything they want, but he most common firearms LEO's are going to be using are semi automatic handguns, rifles, and shotguns. 

SWAT teams will sometimes have access to fully automatic / select fire options, but I don't think I've ever known someone in a department where that was the norm (department wide). 

 

Exactly. The sooner assailants are met with force, the sooner the incident will end. 

 

I'm not against banning AR-15s but I struggle with people who want to ban them who don't even know what they are.  They sound scary (and can be scary) but they can also be no different than a fancy looking .22 rifle.  It just depends.

They aren't machine guns, but some people confuse the two and think that they are automatic weapons when they aren't.

[Amulek]

6 minutes ago, Chum said:

How do you think we should talk about it in the press?

Similar to how we talk about suicides. See my previous comment, here: https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/74548-can-we-talk-about-the-mass-shootings-in-america/?do=findComment&comment=1210096881

 

 

[bluebell]

18 minutes ago, Chum said:

While I'm inclined to agree I am waiting for facts and analysis to be more complete before I allow an opinion.

In an active shooter situation, the shooter doesn't stop until someone makes them stop.  If I have to choose between a 9 year old being in danger and an armed police person, then 100% of the time I'm going to choose for the armed police person to be the one getting shot at.

I don't care who the armed police person is--even if he were my husband or a grown child--I would feel the same way.  The job has inherent risks.  Don't take the paycheck if you aren't comfortable putting yourself in harms way sometimes.

[Amulek]

4 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I'm not against banning AR-15s but I struggle with people who want to ban them who don't even know what they are. 

I believe the apparent lack of information is, in fact, a significant hurdle when it comes to discussing these issues. It's kind of like if a critic were to come on the board and start talking about the "real truth" about Mormonism's founder: Joshua Smith. 

I'm going to have a hard time taking that person seriously out of the gate. Calm would probably have the patience to get to the root of what they were trying to say, but I know (at least for me) it would be a real uphill struggle. Because, from my perspective, it isn't just that they happen to have been mistaken about one particular fact - it's that they are apparently so unfamiliar with the subject matter that I know it's likely going to be both tedious and painful trying to talk about anything difficult or nuanced at all; it just isn't going to happen. 

 

4 minutes ago, bluebell said:

They sound scary (and can be scary) but they can also be no different than a fancy looking .22 rifle.  It just depends.

You can definitely get a "scary looking" .22. See, e.g., here, here, and here. 

 

4 minutes ago, bluebell said:

They aren't machine guns, but some people confuse the two and think that they are automatic weapons when they aren't.

Correct. They are semi-automatic rifles (one pull, one round) - just like most any other popular rifle or handgun on the market today. 

That's why I think banning them wouldn't be effective when it comes to stopping mass shootings. They just happen to be the current 'style' that is drawing attention from the media. Back when I was younger the push was to ban small handguns (i.e., Saturday night specials). Eventually people moved on from that and now AR-style weapons are the thing. I believe a big reason for that is the misinformation surrounding them - people not knowing the difference between an actual AR-15 (used by the military) and an AR-style rifle that you can purchase at any sporting goods store.

 

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, Amulek said:

Banning AR-style weapons won't have any more effect on mass shootings as banning whisky would have on drunken driving. 

Even if we concluded that drunk drivers were disproportionately drunk on whiskey, banning whiskey would just mean that the drunk drivers will shift to vodka, gin, tequila or other alcoholic beverages that are just as dangerous as whiskey. The same is true for the so-called “assault weapons.”

And just because the cops failed to act in this instance doesn't mean that nobody would have reacted if given the opportunity. 

In fact, the FBI recently released the data for 2021 (download PDF, here). It reports 61 "active shooter" incidents in the last year (of which 12 were treated as "mass killing" incidents), and 4 of those active shooter incidents led to "shooters [being] killed by citizen," all apparently involving gun-wielding citizens (PDF pages 4, 11-12). Two more incidents involved citizens detaining a shooter without using guns themselves. So the aggregate pattern seems to be that civilian self-defense takes place in a meaningful percentage of active shooter incidents. 

 

AR's bought by someone as young as 18 though? AR guns rapid fire and taking so many lives at once? 

[Chum]

57 minutes ago, bluebell said:

In an active shooter situation, the shooter doesn't stop until someone makes them stop.  If I have to choose between a 9 year old being in danger and an armed police person, then 100% of the time I'm going to choose for the armed police person to be the one getting shot at.

I don't care who the armed police person is--even if he were my husband or a grown child--I would feel the same way.  The job has inherent risks.  Don't take the paycheck if you aren't comfortable putting yourself in harms way sometimes.

I'm fairly certain this take is as good as it gets. It's where I'll likely land.

My hesitancy is because we had criticism within hours of the shooting, which I feel was too soon. We need to be correct about bad cop behavior and recognize nuance. Otherwise, we can hand ammo to compulsive cop apologists.

[manol]

What stands out to me is that both "sides" want the same outcome (or close enough).  And there are subject-matter experts (who are far more intelligent and informed than me) who have investigated this topic; briefly, the situation is complicated but arguably not unsolvable, if doing so become a high enough priority for our society.  Here is a short interview with two such experts:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-mass-shooters-q-a-00035762

Here is the book written by the professors of criminology and criminal justice interviewed for that article; I have no idea what their political leanings are, but my inclination is to trust their informed opinions over my own relatively uninformed ones:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-mass-shooters-q-a-00035762

Here is a quick under-two-minute YouTube clip of one of the authors, speaking just a few days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkeaBT4HkJI

And here is an hour-long clip by the other author:

https://youtu.be/UsuGnf8xY9o?t=211

Relative to this topic, I recently read an article (which unfortunately I've been unable to relocate) about a 3rd or 4th grade teacher who each week does something interesting:  She asks her students to write down on a piece of paper the names of the four students they'd most like to sit with next week, with no promise that they will get their wish.  What she is ACTUALLY looking for is, which students are the ones that NOBODY wants to sit with.  So she is clandestinely identifying the kids who are "at risk". 

Edited May 30, 2022 by manol

[Chum]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

AR's bought by someone as young as 18 though? AR guns rapid fire and taking so many lives at once? 

Presently, I can't come up with a scenario that has me defending offensive war gear. Handguns have a place in self defense and single shot long rifles are used for competitive shooting.

I ask what purpose would an AR serve me? Where can it defend me that a handgun or long rifle wouldn't? Best answer is other guys with AR class weapons - which is most likely to be a government performing law enforcement. The challenge there is governments can tap into a near endless supply of LEO - which soundly defeats my AR related survival goal.

So what if lots of people have ARs and can provide distributed resistance to LEO - to widely disperse LEO into smaller groups and in theory, defeat them? As far a theories go, it's thin. Outcomes are unlikely to turn out as expected. Even if they do, what I expect to see during that kind of fast developing, profoundly chaotic crisis is that these groups will commonly become dominated by people who are most driven by agendas and skilled at manipulation. Under that influence (+power -consequences), war-armed groups can kill the sort of civilians they've long felt were a threat to their imagined society. So, no good outcome there either.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Chum

[Chum]

41 minutes ago, manol said:

What stands out to me is that both "sides" want the same outcome (or close enough).  And there are subject-matter experts (who are far more intelligent and informed than me) who have investigated this topic; briefly, the situation is complicated but arguably not unsolvable, if doing so become a high enough priority for our society.  Here is a short interview with two such experts:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-mass-shooters-q-a-00035762

Here is the book written by the professors of criminology and criminal justice interviewed for that article; I have no idea what their political leanings are, but my inclination is to trust their informed opinions over my own relatively uninformed ones:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-mass-shooters-q-a-00035762

Here is a quick under-two-minute YouTube clip of one of the authors, speaking just a few days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkeaBT4HkJI

And here is an hour-long clip by the other author:

https://youtu.be/UsuGnf8xY9o?t=211

Relative to this topic, I recently read an article (which unfortunately I've been unable to relocate) about a 3rd or 4th grade teacher who each week does something interesting:  She asks her students to write down on a piece of paper the names of the four students they'd most like to sit with next week, with no promise that they will get their wish.  What she is ACTUALLY looking for is, which students are the ones that NOBODY wants to sit with.  So she is clandestinely identifying the kids who are "at risk". 

Even if us gun/press tweakers get our way, we'll still have these core problems that you're touching on here. I'd say what you've posted is relevant, no matter what.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Chum

[bluebell]

2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

AR's bought by someone as young as 18 though? AR guns rapid fire and taking so many lives at once? 

They don’t rapid fire any more than other kinds of guns (same as all hand guns).

But like I said, I’m not against AR restrictions outright. 

Edited May 30, 2022 by bluebell

[Amulek]

2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

AR's bought by someone as young as 18 though?

And by "someone as young as 18" you mean...an adult, right? 

 

2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

AR guns rapid fire and taking so many lives at once? 

What exactly do you mean by "rapid fire?"

As a general rule, there are three different kinds of firearms: 

• Single shot 
• Semi-automatic
• Fully automatic

Single shot is the mode of operation where a weapon has no magazine and may contain only a single cartridge, loaded directly into the chamber. The gun must be manually reloaded and manually re-cocked every time it is fired. You most commonly find this setup on simple shotguns, certain high caliber hunting rifles, and sometimes on large hunting handguns as well. 

Semi-automatic is the mode of operation of a pistol, rifle, or shotgun whereupon the trigger is pulled and a single shot is fired. Energy from firing is then used to reload the chamber and reset the firing mechanism for another trigger pull. Can also be termed “self-loading.” 

Fully automatic is the mode of operation of a firearm whereupon the trigger is pulled and multiple shots are fired and will continue to fire until the trigger is released or until the magazine is empty. This mode of operation is extremely rare, heavily federally regulated and impossible for private citizens to purchase in a regular gun shop or at a gun show.

The weapons used by the shooter in Texas were both semi-automatic rifles. They aren't capable of firing any more rapidly than pretty much any other pistol or rifle available on the market today. 

 

Edited May 30, 2022 by Amulek

[Calm]

3 minutes ago, Amulek said:

And by "someone as young as 18" you mean...an adult, right? 

In legal terms only, except in 3 states.  But just because someone is an adult legally, there are still age restrictions in many cases as it is easily recognized that legal adulthood doesn’t equal being a responsible human being.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Calm

[bluebell]

4 minutes ago, Calm said:

In legal terms only, except in 3 states.  But just because someone is an adult legally, there are still age restrictions in many cases as it is easily recognized that legal adulthood doesn’t equal being a responsible human being.

I think the issue is that 18 year olds are considered mature enough to join the armed forces or be drafted into military service, where they will be given a weapon.  If we want to suggest that an 18 year old is not capable of such responsibility due to their age alone (and maybe we do), then we have to recognize the domino effect it should have in other areas of our country. 

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

Presently, I can't come up with a scenario that has me defending offensive war gear. Handguns have a place in self defense and single shot long rifles are used for competitive shooting.

I ask what purpose would an AR serve me? Where can it defend me that a handgun or long rifle wouldn't? Best answer is other guys with AR class weapons - which is most likely to be a government performing law enforcement. The challenge there is governments can tap into a near endless supply of LEO - which soundly defeats my AR related survival goal.

So what if lots of people have ARs and can provide distributed resistance to LEO - to widely disperse LEO into smaller groups and in theory, defeat them? As far a theories go, it's thin. Outcomes are unlikely to turn out as expected. Even if they do, what I expect to see during that kind of fast developing, profoundly chaotic crisis is that these groups will commonly become dominated by people who are most driven by agendas and skilled at manipulation. Under that influence (+power -consequences), war-armed groups can kill the sort of civilians they've long felt were a threat to their imagined society. So, no good outcome there either.

All of the people who I personally know who have AR's, only use them for target practice because they think that going out and (safely) shooting guns is fun.  It's what they do for entertainment with their family at shooting ranges or just off in the back hills somewhere.  These are just regular people, not anti-government or super-preppers or anything like that.

Some people use them for hunting, but most of the time they aren't powerful enough for big game like an elk or moose so not the best option there.

[manol]

7 minutes ago, Amulek said:

As a general rule, there are three different kinds of firearms: 

• Single shot 
• Semi-automatic
• Fully automatic

Single shot is the mode of operation where a weapon has no magazine and may contain only a single cartridge, loaded directly into the chamber. The gun must be manually reloaded and manually re-cocked every time it is fired. You most commonly find this setup on simple shotguns, certain high caliber hunting rifles, and sometimes on large hunting handguns as well. 

Semi-automatic is the mode of operation of a pistol, rifle, or shotgun whereupon the trigger is pulled and a single shot is fired. Energy from firing is then used to reload the chamber and reset the firing mechanism for another trigger pull. Can also be termed “self-loading.” 

Fully automatic is the mode of operation of a firearm whereupon the trigger is pulled and multiple shots are fired and will continue to fire until the trigger is released or until the magazine is empty. This mode of operation is extremely rare, heavily federally regulated and impossible for private citizens to purchase in a regular gun shop or at a gun show.

I'm sure you know this, but...

Revolver, bolt-action, lever-action, pump-action, and double-barrel are types of repeating firearms which are not semi-automatic.  Semi-automatic is a particular type of repeating firearm mechanism, wherein as you state "Energy from firing is then used to reload the chamber and reset the firing mechanism for another trigger pull. Can also be termed 'self-loading.' "  Revolvers, bolt-actions, lever-actions, pump actions, and double-barrels are not semi-automatic ; the energy of firing is not used to reload the chamber and reset the firing mechanism. 

 

[manol]

2 hours ago, Chum said:

Presently, I can't come up with a scenario that has me defending offensive war gear. Handguns have a place in self defense and single shot long rifles are used for competitive shooting.

I ask what purpose would an AR serve me? Where can it defend me that a handgun or long rifle wouldn't?

I probably should keep my mouth shut, but obviously that's not happening...

I was once in a situation where the likelihood of a dozen or more assailants attacking a mother and her two young children seemed fairly high... high enough that local law enforcement granted her a concealed carry permit in an environment where concealed carry permits were virtually NEVER issued.  If I were inescapably in that situation as an adult (and given the disability I have, which greatly impedes my ability to reliably operate a more complicated action type), I would probably want a military-style semi-automatic rifle with a night scope.  For the record, I currently own nothing of the sort. 

That being said, I can understand the argument that such scenarios are EXTREMELY unlikely, with the odds of such a situation arising being significantly less than the odds of a mass shooting being carried out by someone armed with that type of rifle.

So I am open to the idea of some gun control legislation being PART of the answer, and I am simultaneously open to a seismic shift in mental health focus and expenditure as being another (and arguably more vital) part of the answer, the latter theoretically having the side effect of significantly benefiting MANY individuals (i.e. society), not just a statistically very small number of would-be shooters and their would-be victims. 

(Edit:  Consider that a mass shooting is a type of suicide, and that an effective "net" which "catches" and cares for those at risk of suicide would catch most such individuals, and suddenly the number of people who could directly and indirectly dramatically benefit from the aforementioned seismic shift in mental health focus and expenditure becomes very large.  The needed shift would also arguably call upon us individually to care about "the least of these" among us to a far greater extent.)

Edited May 30, 2022 by manol

[Calm]

48 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I think the issue is that 18 year olds are considered mature enough to join the armed forces or be drafted into military service, where they will be given a weapon.  If we want to suggest that an 18 year old is not capable of such responsibility due to their age alone (and maybe we do), then we have to recognize the domino effect it should have in other areas of our country. 

They are supervised with their guns in the military.  I think that makes a big difference.  They also receive extensive, structured training that is substantially different than when they go down to the local gun store.  Are they allowed to take their guns off base or when on leave?  If not, it is not the same thing.

[Chum]

30 minutes ago, manol said:

That being said, I can understand the argument that such scenarios are EXTREMELY unlikely, with the odds of such a situation arising being significantly less than the odds of a mass shooting being carried out by someone armed with that type of rifle.

If the War On Terror taught us anything it's that extremely unlikely scenarios are a terrible premise to base policy on. Very little that followed 9/11 serves to keep us safer in any meaningful way.

To be fair, nothing could budge a needle that had already been at historic lows for generations.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Chum

[bluebell]

6 minutes ago, Calm said:

They are supervised with their guns in the military.  I think that makes a big difference.  They also receive extensive, structured training that is substantially different than when they go down to the local gun store.  Are they allowed to take their guns off base or when on leave?  If not, it is not the same thing.

It might make a difference, but I don't know that that's a given, and I don't know that, if it's true, the difference would be big.

Active shooters don't happen because of a lack of weapons training.  Those people are morally bankrupt by the time they decide to go out and gun down strangers for fun.  It's not a lack of training or supervision with a gun that leads to them deciding to try to kill as many innocent people as possible; it's something else. 

If we are talking about restricting the age that legal adults can buy guns, then we need to ask ourselves, is that something else age? 

Do we have a lot of 18 year olds creating active shooter scenarios?  I honestly don't know, but that information probably isn't difficult to find. If age doesn't seem to have much to do with it, then spending time and energy to pass laws to restrict age would be useless.

On the other hand, if the stats show that age is a huge part of the equation, then arming 18 year olds and sending them off to war is a giant red flag that can't be ignored.  Because again, supervision and training don't make immoral people moral.  If age is a risk factor for gun violence against innocent people, then it's as much of a liability inside the military as it is outside of it.

As an aside, even with training and supervision, military bases have had some of the worst mass shootings in the country, though I don't believe any of the shooters in those instances were teenagers (but I could be remembering wrong).

 

[Chum]

2 minutes ago, bluebell said:

if the stats show that age is a huge part of the equation, then arming 18 year olds and sending them off to war is a giant red flag that can't be ignored. 

Young men can be quite malleable. Among the possible strong influences that could shape them are toxic websites, military stewardship or the pain carry around inside themselves.

[Calm]

6 minutes ago, bluebell said:

we are talking about restricting the age that legal adults can buy guns, then we need to ask ourselves, is that something else age? 

My memory is that school shooters tend to be young. Anyone track this at all?

[Calm]

Quote

When the Post analyzed these shootings, it found that more than two-thirds were committed by shooters under the age of 18. The analysis found that the median age for school shooters was 16.

So, using this criteria, Murphy is correct, even slightly understating the case.

Other data points

For overall mass shootings — not just school shootings — academic studies have found that about a quarter of shooters were younger than 25.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022/05/27/fact-check-most-mass-shooters-ages-18-19-texas-school-shooting-uvalde-robb-elementary/9933032002/

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

My memory is that school shooters tend to be young. Anyone track this at all?

From what I can remember, they are almost always still students at the school where they committed the crime at.  And many were not old enough to buy any gun legally because they were under 18.

Shooters at schools they don’t attend seem to be rare.