18 ms·

Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings (2015)

72 points by tysonzni 7y ago

empath75 7y ago
I think this isn’t contagion, this is a sustained, intentional campaign by right wing terrorists to radicalize young men and encourage them to commit violence against minorities.
- jphw 7y ago
  Can you cite some evidence on this? I haven’t heard about any right-wing terror cells in the US. The attackers appear to be “lone wolves”. They may have been radicalised to be right-wing online, but I haven’t seen any evidence of some organised group arranging or encouraging these attacks. Either way, the two (radicalisation and contagion) aren’t mutually exclusive. In my opinion a large part of the motivation behind these shootings is the potential for fame and for the actions to be seen by the whole world - regardless of whether they’ve been radicalised or not.
  - gonzo41 7y ago
    Just one point before i get down voted into obscurity. but an effective regulation of firearms would go a long way to resolve this issue.
    - westmeal 7y ago
      I don't think you should get downvoted for sharing your opinion, but who do you really think would benefit from regulating firearms? There is a very good reason the constitution provisioned firearms and I think people are starting to forget.
      - Juliate 7y ago
        All citizens that wouldn't be killed: * by mistake because it found one in a cupboard? * by someone who gets to discharge his feelings?
      - gonzo41 7y ago
        if you think people with automatic rifles are going to be anything other than a minor annoyance to an organized army you're in for a shock. On this very site there's been articles about the gorgon stare. Rifles don't compete against that technology.
        anigbrowl 7y ago
        All true if you think terms of taking and holding territory, not true at all if you step away from the geographic paradigm. The US military is very powerful against other states but ultimately it's a force that clings to Clausewitzian doctrine in a Boydian world.
  - jrimbault 7y ago
    You don't need an "organized group" (in the old meaning of "organized group") to consider a larger pattern. And the fact you made an account specifically for writing what appears as rational arguments but aren't at all (and are in fact dog whistles), doesn't go in your favor.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    > I haven’t heard about any right-wing terror cells in the US. Uh, have you heard about the KKK?
    - GreenToad5 7y ago
      There is no KKK. There are several dozen. They generally aren't very organized and don't really Burn buildings and flip over cars like Antifa and BLM. You of course know that they aren't classified as a terrorist organization. Some call them that, yet these same people often won't say the same about left wing groups we see doing 95% of the violence and destruction.
  - DFHippie 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochastic_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochast...
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    There isn't an organized group with a hierarchical chain of command saying 'launch an attack here' or 'units X, y, z, carry out an attack next Wednesday'. But there is absolutely crowdsourced coordination on identification of targets, weapon platforms, and methods. And as everyone on HN already knows, crowdsourcing is a highly effective tool for getting things done. It works just as well for terrorism as anything else.
- tomdeboer 7y ago
  Are you referring to students as minorities? I don't think that is accurate. Also, the study states attacks are more likely to spark other, similar attacks in the first 13 days on average. I think your statement is overgeneralizing here.
- fit2rule 7y ago
  It is possible to radicalise anyone. It is not about politics at all. You can convince even the hippiest left-wing peaceniks into terrible activity. All you have to do is fixate the subject on either side of a dialectic argument involving force, violence, duress .. injustice. Or even better, all of the above. The root of all radicalisation is individual responsibility.
  - Juliate 7y ago
    Do you have evidence of a number of "leftist" activists that have approximately the same count of murders as right-wingers/white supremacists have? I mean, something to balance and show some equivalence? You don't. Because the single biggest real threat to any US citizen today is an other US citizen that can grab a weapon at will. And it happens that in the overwhelming number of cases, the person that becomes a mass-murderer is a white, conservative, pro-right, pro-weapon, pro-republican. Not acknowledging this is either total denial - or total complicity. And. This is totally about politics (how a government deals with its people). NRA politics; that serves a very specific ideology. Look in Wikipedia this category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_by_cou... - then browse by country. All countries, but the USA have sporadic sub-articles. USA has whole sub-categories. USA are the _single_ country in the world where there are as many mass shootings, every year. When there are been more than 250 in the USA in 2019, there hasn't been even 10 in any other country in the world. (to the down voters: downvote as much as you want guys - facts are facts - you are only deluding yourselves - you should look in the mirror more and stop considering the USA as the center/perfection of all things, because it's not)
    - fit2rule 7y ago
      The USA is also the worlds worst murderer of innocent people, in terms of illegal acts of war. It has been bombing innocent people at the rate of one bomb dropped every twenty minutes for the last 20 years. So? The world knows that American's are okay with violence. We haven't been hiding ourselves from its victims, or at least .. a big portion of the world sees and knows all too well, what most American's don't or won't: a principle product of the USA is violence.
- watty 7y ago
  This is tin foil hat crazy
hjorthjort 7y ago
AFAICT the model seems fitted to historical data, and fit well. I'd be curious to see if they or anyone else kept tracing events using the model to check its predictive ability.
MobileVet 7y ago
It is very telling that supporters of the 2nd think it should be upheld without ANY limits or backstops. Freedom of speech is not absolute, why in the world should owning a device intended to kill be unlimited?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Many supporters of the right to bear all arms without limitation are at the same time also supporting the right to absolute freedom of speech, including hate speech like calls for extermination or unconstitutional expulsion of "foreigners" (or what they see as foreigners). I think there's a pattern here...
  - sslayer 7y ago
    You are correct, the pattern being evident in the numerous limiting laws that allow an officer of the law or a government official to arrest and detain you for any minor infraction, real or precieved. The erosion of personal freedoms like free speech is just the start down a slippery slope.
- xienze 7y ago
  > It is very telling that supporters of the 2nd think it should be upheld without ANY limits or backstops. Any additional limits. There are already plenty of laws on the books around gun control, it’s disingenuous to pretend as though none exist.
  - MobileVet 7y ago
    Laws yes, substantive laws... debatable. More significant measures like requiring a license or limiting magazine capacity are somehow characterized as over reach. Would be interested to hear how that is rationalized.
    - ChrisLomont 7y ago
      9 states have magazine limits. Does it make a substantive difference? If not, then what is the rationalization to make it Federal? Which other Bill of Rights freedoms require a license to practice? Certainly free speech can and does lead to violence. Should we also require a license for that? Would be interested to hear how that is rationalized.
Udik 7y ago
"Several past studies have found that media reports of suicides and homicides appear to subsequently increase the incidence of similar events in the community, apparently due to the coverage planting the seeds of ideation in at-risk individuals to commit similar acts" I've suggested before on HN that active shooter drills- which are apparently widespread now in US schools- might be themselves a source of contagion. Because they provide exactly those "seeds of ideation", both by simulating the events and by implicitly suggesting that these kind of occurrences are in the realm of possibilities and somehow expected.
- MobileVet 7y ago
  Not to mention the absolute terror you are putting into kids’ (and teachers) minds. No way will I subject my child to this. It seems far more damaging than helpful.
- mathgeek 7y ago
  This is a fine line to tread, without a doubt. It’s the same “if we don’t give them the idea, maybe some of them won’t think of it otherwise” thinking that has been a theme throughout the history of education. Similar thought process to sex education, leaving out certain anti-government parts of history, etc. (and those are just examples in the US, let alone stricter education systems).
  - ComputerGuru 7y ago
    You’re making it seem like it’s a super risky and tenuous approach, but it’s long been understood that discussing “why suicide is a bad idea” with certain populations increases the odds of suicide in the group.
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      Right, but it still needs to be discussed. Framing suicide as a bad solution to a problem reaffirms that it is still a solution, and gives room for the individual to justify away the taboo aspects (my situation is different because...). I don't know the right, ethical approach and I'd prefer to leave that discussion to psychologists, but we absolutely need to address it so people know what to look for in loved ones who may be at risk. Personally, I think some people who may consider suicide are terrified of death in other situations. For some reason, suicide is different than dying in some other manner. Maybe it's about control, maybe it's a cognitive disconnect, IDK. What I do know is that it's a problem that we need to address through eduction, I'm just not sure on the best way to do it. Ignoring the problem seems to just push it online where the information can't really be controlled, so I think parents need to learn how to broach the subject.
ourmandave 7y ago
While our analysis was initially inspired by the hypothesis that mass media attention given to sensational violent events may promote ideation in vulnerable individuals, in practice what our analysis tests is whether or not temporal patterns in the data indicate evidence for contagion, by whatever means. In truth, and especially because so many perpetrators of these acts commit suicide, we likely may never know on a case-by-case basis who was inspired by similar prior acts, particularly since the ideation may have been subconscious. But they do tend to leave behind a manifesto or social media history that can point to their thinking and influencing factors.
JordanFarmer 7y ago
This is a sad effect of national media attention (Click bait and headline bait). I watch the news sometimes and wonder if we'd all be better off if it didn't exist... Obligatory mention that There were more murders in Chicago this week and it gets no media headlines.
- mathgeek 7y ago
  News that is free to consume is the same as any other free product: the reader/viewer is the product.
  - foolrush 7y ago
    Many countries with a tremendous backbone in journalistic research have done pretty well using public funded news. The BBC and it’s ilk was a beacon for years. The trope is exhausting.
    - mathgeek 7y ago
      Funded via public revenue isn’t the same as ad-supported. The former is still paid for by the group that many consumers are a part of. It’s only “free” in the manner that a public road is “free”.
- amelius 7y ago
  Ultimately it's all because of ads. If we all had to pay for our news, then we'd be more cautious and reluctant about clickbait headlines. And media would not be in a race to the bottom, affecting news quality.
  - Ygg2 7y ago
    I doubt this. Reason clickbait works is because it's more attention grabbing. It's more attention grabbing because it appeals to human innate fears. And even if clickbait is banned and subscription mandatory, media would be in a race to the bottom. Just a slightly different one.
romaaeterna 7y ago
Things that we can do about this: 1) Firearm control - complicated political issue, with reasonable people on both sides of the issue. And even if there were federal (executive, legislative, and judicial) political unanimity on action (there is not and can't be for decades), it remains a larger practical problem than in any country that has so far banned guns. State and city-level action has not proven very effective. 2) Political control and censorship - only a fraction of these killers seem to be radicalized, and they generally seem to be lone-wolves. It seems a course ripe for abuse. 3) Drug enforcement - it has been pointed out that almost all of these killers have addiction problems of some kind. Anti-depressants may also play a role. But drug use seems too tenuous a connection, and these substances are used by such a broad swath of the population without this effect, that it would be hard to fix this with drug enforcement alone. 4) Psychological intervention - could the right sort of intervention at the right time avert these killings? It's hard to believe not, but since we can't predict the killings, we can't do much here. But if we had better knowledge, it's possible to imagine something as simple as voluntary social media guidelines (for 24-hour news, Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), that might alleviate the problem. Or something far more heavy handed and open to abuse or misuse, including high school psychological testing and reporting, mandatory social services checkups, etc. If I were an engineer tasked with solving this problem, I would try the full-court press solution on all of these, rather than fixating on any one component. Solution "4" is the most interesting to me, because it seems the least explored, and the place where increased knowledge and new techniques could possibly have the greatest effect. I think that we should be especially interested in how exactly people become killers, whether there are multiple types (there certainly are), and what are the necessary stages in the process. Studies like this are especially vital and interesting to me, and we need to spend far more effort on this type of research. The biggest danger that I can see is that political and emotional energy on the impossible solutions prevent useful action anywhere. EDIT: More on this study. The nice data fit on their contagion equation is very interesting because it begs to be expanded. The "contagion" is mediated by the media somehow. Is it as simple as reading stories about other shootings leading to more? Or is there a media climate effect? What other types of media can lead to shootings, etc. It would be tremendously helpful to learn enough to be psychologically precise about all of this.
- 7y ago
newshorts 7y ago
Is this only happening in the United States? How frequently is this happening in other countries?
- kcmastrpc 7y ago
  The US isn't even in the top 100 when it comes to homicides. I haven't been able to find statistics on "mass murders" which include firearm, arson, bombs, knife, etc attacks. All the media and sensationalist headlines have drowned out any hope I had of quickly researching this issue. Here's what I've found so far: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-27/map-here-are-countries-worlds-highest-murder-rates https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-27/map-here-are-countrie...
  - Juliate 7y ago
    Right. So, indeed, compare USA's violence score with: * those of the countries where the USA have put their own violent influence to steer benefits back to them (Central & South America). * or those where another white supremacist ideology has been prevalent and is being actively fought against (South Africa). But, surely, don't compare with countries that would be good reference to compare against (aka, friends with which you ought to have shared some common history, like, Europe).
    - tomatotomato37 7y ago
      This is a false equivalence; The foreign policy of the state has nothing to do with the levels of violence between its citizens.
      - Juliate 7y ago
        The point was not comparing foreign policy, but in-society violence. Foreign policy here is what triggered instability and in-society violence.
- Juliate 7y ago
  Mostly, yes. And it's happening more and more. Little in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting#North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting#North_America > United States "The United States has had more mass shootings than any other country in the post-WWII era. (five references)"
platz 7y ago
> on average, mass killings involving firearms occur approximately every two weeks in the US This seems significantly higher than what I'd think. Do most mass killings not make the news? How is this defined?
- Fellshard 7y ago
  It's generally an issue that a person's definition carves out instances that are not useful to their desired narrative. A consistent definition is required when discussing the topic, and unfortunately the definition practically needs to accompany its use simply because so many disparate definitions are used.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  You could check a popular reference source to become familiar with the factual background. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
  - platz 7y ago
    Right, so the majority of these incidents are gang-related activity. Not saying it's not a "mass shooting", but the thesis in the OP article needs to be understood in such a context. Gang violence/vengeance isn't going to be influenced by media or copycat effects one iota.
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      Right, so I'm not endorsing you, I'm suggesting you consult available reference material before you start asking rhetorical questions. A Socratic/tendentious style of argument where you solicit participation from your interlocutors doesn't play well here. If you have a point it's better to just make it and back it up with reference material as many participants have busy lives of their own.

72 points by tysonzni 7y ago

I think this isn’t contagion, this is a sustained, intentional campaign by right wing terrorists to radicalize young men and encourage them to commit violence against minorities.

jphw 7y ago
Can you cite some evidence on this? I haven’t heard about any right-wing terror cells in the US. The attackers appear to be “lone wolves”. They may have been radicalised to be right-wing online, but I haven’t seen any evidence of some organised group arranging or encouraging these attacks. Either way, the two (radicalisation and contagion) aren’t mutually exclusive. In my opinion a large part of the motivation behind these shootings is the potential for fame and for the actions to be seen by the whole world - regardless of whether they’ve been radicalised or not.
- gonzo41 7y ago
  Just one point before i get down voted into obscurity. but an effective regulation of firearms would go a long way to resolve this issue.
  - westmeal 7y ago
    I don't think you should get downvoted for sharing your opinion, but who do you really think would benefit from regulating firearms? There is a very good reason the constitution provisioned firearms and I think people are starting to forget.
    - Juliate 7y ago
      All citizens that wouldn't be killed: * by mistake because it found one in a cupboard? * by someone who gets to discharge his feelings?
    - gonzo41 7y ago
      if you think people with automatic rifles are going to be anything other than a minor annoyance to an organized army you're in for a shock. On this very site there's been articles about the gorgon stare. Rifles don't compete against that technology.
      - anigbrowl 7y ago
        All true if you think terms of taking and holding territory, not true at all if you step away from the geographic paradigm. The US military is very powerful against other states but ultimately it's a force that clings to Clausewitzian doctrine in a Boydian world.
- jrimbault 7y ago
  You don't need an "organized group" (in the old meaning of "organized group") to consider a larger pattern. And the fact you made an account specifically for writing what appears as rational arguments but aren't at all (and are in fact dog whistles), doesn't go in your favor.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > I haven’t heard about any right-wing terror cells in the US. Uh, have you heard about the KKK?
  - GreenToad5 7y ago
    There is no KKK. There are several dozen. They generally aren't very organized and don't really Burn buildings and flip over cars like Antifa and BLM. You of course know that they aren't classified as a terrorist organization. Some call them that, yet these same people often won't say the same about left wing groups we see doing 95% of the violence and destruction.
- DFHippie 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochastic_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochast...
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  There isn't an organized group with a hierarchical chain of command saying 'launch an attack here' or 'units X, y, z, carry out an attack next Wednesday'. But there is absolutely crowdsourced coordination on identification of targets, weapon platforms, and methods. And as everyone on HN already knows, crowdsourcing is a highly effective tool for getting things done. It works just as well for terrorism as anything else.
tomdeboer 7y ago
Are you referring to students as minorities? I don't think that is accurate. Also, the study states attacks are more likely to spark other, similar attacks in the first 13 days on average. I think your statement is overgeneralizing here.
fit2rule 7y ago
It is possible to radicalise anyone. It is not about politics at all. You can convince even the hippiest left-wing peaceniks into terrible activity. All you have to do is fixate the subject on either side of a dialectic argument involving force, violence, duress .. injustice. Or even better, all of the above. The root of all radicalisation is individual responsibility.
- Juliate 7y ago
  Do you have evidence of a number of "leftist" activists that have approximately the same count of murders as right-wingers/white supremacists have? I mean, something to balance and show some equivalence? You don't. Because the single biggest real threat to any US citizen today is an other US citizen that can grab a weapon at will. And it happens that in the overwhelming number of cases, the person that becomes a mass-murderer is a white, conservative, pro-right, pro-weapon, pro-republican. Not acknowledging this is either total denial - or total complicity. And. This is totally about politics (how a government deals with its people). NRA politics; that serves a very specific ideology. Look in Wikipedia this category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_by_cou... - then browse by country. All countries, but the USA have sporadic sub-articles. USA has whole sub-categories. USA are the _single_ country in the world where there are as many mass shootings, every year. When there are been more than 250 in the USA in 2019, there hasn't been even 10 in any other country in the world. (to the down voters: downvote as much as you want guys - facts are facts - you are only deluding yourselves - you should look in the mirror more and stop considering the USA as the center/perfection of all things, because it's not)
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    The USA is also the worlds worst murderer of innocent people, in terms of illegal acts of war. It has been bombing innocent people at the rate of one bomb dropped every twenty minutes for the last 20 years. So? The world knows that American's are okay with violence. We haven't been hiding ourselves from its victims, or at least .. a big portion of the world sees and knows all too well, what most American's don't or won't: a principle product of the USA is violence.
watty 7y ago
This is tin foil hat crazy

hjorthjort 7y ago

AFAICT the model seems fitted to historical data, and fit well. I'd be curious to see if they or anyone else kept tracing events using the model to check its predictive ability.

MobileVet 7y ago

It is very telling that supporters of the 2nd think it should be upheld without ANY limits or backstops. Freedom of speech is not absolute, why in the world should owning a device intended to kill be unlimited?

mschuster91 7y ago
Many supporters of the right to bear all arms without limitation are at the same time also supporting the right to absolute freedom of speech, including hate speech like calls for extermination or unconstitutional expulsion of "foreigners" (or what they see as foreigners). I think there's a pattern here...
- sslayer 7y ago
  You are correct, the pattern being evident in the numerous limiting laws that allow an officer of the law or a government official to arrest and detain you for any minor infraction, real or precieved. The erosion of personal freedoms like free speech is just the start down a slippery slope.
xienze 7y ago
> It is very telling that supporters of the 2nd think it should be upheld without ANY limits or backstops. Any additional limits. There are already plenty of laws on the books around gun control, it’s disingenuous to pretend as though none exist.
- MobileVet 7y ago
  Laws yes, substantive laws... debatable. More significant measures like requiring a license or limiting magazine capacity are somehow characterized as over reach. Would be interested to hear how that is rationalized.
  - ChrisLomont 7y ago
    9 states have magazine limits. Does it make a substantive difference? If not, then what is the rationalization to make it Federal? Which other Bill of Rights freedoms require a license to practice? Certainly free speech can and does lead to violence. Should we also require a license for that? Would be interested to hear how that is rationalized.

Udik 7y ago

"Several past studies have found that media reports of suicides and homicides appear to subsequently increase the incidence of similar events in the community, apparently due to the coverage planting the seeds of ideation in at-risk individuals to commit similar acts" I've suggested before on HN that active shooter drills- which are apparently widespread now in US schools- might be themselves a source of contagion. Because they provide exactly those "seeds of ideation", both by simulating the events and by implicitly suggesting that these kind of occurrences are in the realm of possibilities and somehow expected.

MobileVet 7y ago
Not to mention the absolute terror you are putting into kids’ (and teachers) minds. No way will I subject my child to this. It seems far more damaging than helpful.
mathgeek 7y ago
This is a fine line to tread, without a doubt. It’s the same “if we don’t give them the idea, maybe some of them won’t think of it otherwise” thinking that has been a theme throughout the history of education. Similar thought process to sex education, leaving out certain anti-government parts of history, etc. (and those are just examples in the US, let alone stricter education systems).
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  You’re making it seem like it’s a super risky and tenuous approach, but it’s long been understood that discussing “why suicide is a bad idea” with certain populations increases the odds of suicide in the group.
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    Right, but it still needs to be discussed. Framing suicide as a bad solution to a problem reaffirms that it is still a solution, and gives room for the individual to justify away the taboo aspects (my situation is different because...). I don't know the right, ethical approach and I'd prefer to leave that discussion to psychologists, but we absolutely need to address it so people know what to look for in loved ones who may be at risk. Personally, I think some people who may consider suicide are terrified of death in other situations. For some reason, suicide is different than dying in some other manner. Maybe it's about control, maybe it's a cognitive disconnect, IDK. What I do know is that it's a problem that we need to address through eduction, I'm just not sure on the best way to do it. Ignoring the problem seems to just push it online where the information can't really be controlled, so I think parents need to learn how to broach the subject.

ourmandave 7y ago

While our analysis was initially inspired by the hypothesis that mass media attention given to sensational violent events may promote ideation in vulnerable individuals, in practice what our analysis tests is whether or not temporal patterns in the data indicate evidence for contagion, by whatever means. In truth, and especially because so many perpetrators of these acts commit suicide, we likely may never know on a case-by-case basis who was inspired by similar prior acts, particularly since the ideation may have been subconscious. But they do tend to leave behind a manifesto or social media history that can point to their thinking and influencing factors.

JordanFarmer 7y ago

This is a sad effect of national media attention (Click bait and headline bait). I watch the news sometimes and wonder if we'd all be better off if it didn't exist... Obligatory mention that There were more murders in Chicago this week and it gets no media headlines.

mathgeek 7y ago
News that is free to consume is the same as any other free product: the reader/viewer is the product.
- foolrush 7y ago
  Many countries with a tremendous backbone in journalistic research have done pretty well using public funded news. The BBC and it’s ilk was a beacon for years. The trope is exhausting.
  - mathgeek 7y ago
    Funded via public revenue isn’t the same as ad-supported. The former is still paid for by the group that many consumers are a part of. It’s only “free” in the manner that a public road is “free”.
amelius 7y ago
Ultimately it's all because of ads. If we all had to pay for our news, then we'd be more cautious and reluctant about clickbait headlines. And media would not be in a race to the bottom, affecting news quality.
- Ygg2 7y ago
  I doubt this. Reason clickbait works is because it's more attention grabbing. It's more attention grabbing because it appeals to human innate fears. And even if clickbait is banned and subscription mandatory, media would be in a race to the bottom. Just a slightly different one.

romaaeterna 7y ago

Things that we can do about this: 1) Firearm control - complicated political issue, with reasonable people on both sides of the issue. And even if there were federal (executive, legislative, and judicial) political unanimity on action (there is not and can't be for decades), it remains a larger practical problem than in any country that has so far banned guns. State and city-level action has not proven very effective. 2) Political control and censorship - only a fraction of these killers seem to be radicalized, and they generally seem to be lone-wolves. It seems a course ripe for abuse. 3) Drug enforcement - it has been pointed out that almost all of these killers have addiction problems of some kind. Anti-depressants may also play a role. But drug use seems too tenuous a connection, and these substances are used by such a broad swath of the population without this effect, that it would be hard to fix this with drug enforcement alone. 4) Psychological intervention - could the right sort of intervention at the right time avert these killings? It's hard to believe not, but since we can't predict the killings, we can't do much here. But if we had better knowledge, it's possible to imagine something as simple as voluntary social media guidelines (for 24-hour news, Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), that might alleviate the problem. Or something far more heavy handed and open to abuse or misuse, including high school psychological testing and reporting, mandatory social services checkups, etc. If I were an engineer tasked with solving this problem, I would try the full-court press solution on all of these, rather than fixating on any one component. Solution "4" is the most interesting to me, because it seems the least explored, and the place where increased knowledge and new techniques could possibly have the greatest effect. I think that we should be especially interested in how exactly people become killers, whether there are multiple types (there certainly are), and what are the necessary stages in the process. Studies like this are especially vital and interesting to me, and we need to spend far more effort on this type of research. The biggest danger that I can see is that political and emotional energy on the impossible solutions prevent useful action anywhere. EDIT: More on this study. The nice data fit on their contagion equation is very interesting because it begs to be expanded. The "contagion" is mediated by the media somehow. Is it as simple as reading stories about other shootings leading to more? Or is there a media climate effect? What other types of media can lead to shootings, etc. It would be tremendously helpful to learn enough to be psychologically precise about all of this.

7y ago

newshorts 7y ago

Is this only happening in the United States? How frequently is this happening in other countries?

kcmastrpc 7y ago
The US isn't even in the top 100 when it comes to homicides. I haven't been able to find statistics on "mass murders" which include firearm, arson, bombs, knife, etc attacks. All the media and sensationalist headlines have drowned out any hope I had of quickly researching this issue. Here's what I've found so far: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-27/map-here-are-countries-worlds-highest-murder-rates https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-27/map-here-are-countrie...
- Juliate 7y ago
  Right. So, indeed, compare USA's violence score with: * those of the countries where the USA have put their own violent influence to steer benefits back to them (Central & South America). * or those where another white supremacist ideology has been prevalent and is being actively fought against (South Africa). But, surely, don't compare with countries that would be good reference to compare against (aka, friends with which you ought to have shared some common history, like, Europe).
  - tomatotomato37 7y ago
    This is a false equivalence; The foreign policy of the state has nothing to do with the levels of violence between its citizens.
    - Juliate 7y ago
      The point was not comparing foreign policy, but in-society violence. Foreign policy here is what triggered instability and in-society violence.
Juliate 7y ago
Mostly, yes. And it's happening more and more. Little in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting#North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting#North_America > United States "The United States has had more mass shootings than any other country in the post-WWII era. (five references)"

platz 7y ago

> on average, mass killings involving firearms occur approximately every two weeks in the US This seems significantly higher than what I'd think. Do most mass killings not make the news? How is this defined?

Fellshard 7y ago
It's generally an issue that a person's definition carves out instances that are not useful to their desired narrative. A consistent definition is required when discussing the topic, and unfortunately the definition practically needs to accompany its use simply because so many disparate definitions are used.
anigbrowl 7y ago
You could check a popular reference source to become familiar with the factual background. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
- platz 7y ago
  Right, so the majority of these incidents are gang-related activity. Not saying it's not a "mass shooting", but the thesis in the OP article needs to be understood in such a context. Gang violence/vengeance isn't going to be influenced by media or copycat effects one iota.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    Right, so I'm not endorsing you, I'm suggesting you consult available reference material before you start asking rhetorical questions. A Socratic/tendentious style of argument where you solicit participation from your interlocutors doesn't play well here. If you have a point it's better to just make it and back it up with reference material as many participants have busy lives of their own.