5 ms·

Nearly All Mass Shooters Since 1966 Have Had Things in Common

5 points by agarden 7y ago

sarcasmatwork 7y ago
No mention of psychiatric drugs... THAT is a common factor this writer leaves out and so do many others in MSM. Why? The access to firearms argument is not accurate. There are more and more guns now... More guns != more crime or death. CA has very struict gun laws, but shootings still happen. Dont blame the object. How about lack of parenting, social media and the abundance of psychiatric drugs these kids are taking. Mental illness is a problem.. No one wants to deal with it. Your mental if you want to kill children or mass amounts of people. This writer did not do their research and seems rather uneducated about guns, their history and the laws. Example, they mention the Assault rifles ban in 1994 during the Clinton Administration, but dont go into those details how IT MADE NO DIFFERENCE, then tries to push gun control points by saying: "gun manufacturers pounced on the opportunity to re-market military-style firearms to civilians." A quick google search and I found this. https://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html https://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatri... https://www.ammoland.com/2013/04/every-mass-shooting-in-the-last-20-years-shares-psychotropic-drugs/ https://www.ammoland.com/2013/04/every-mass-shooting-in-the-... Now, how many are democrats would be an interesting read. None are NRA members.
- QuantumAphid 7y ago
  California has hurdles to clear (universal background check law, a 10-day waiting period, limits on handgun purchases, a microtracking system, a personal safety test, a ban on assault weapons, a minimum age to purchase of shotguns/rifles, red-flag laws allowing police to confiscate guns). I guess it's subjective, but I think these laws are fairly lax. Given those laws, how hard is it to actually obtain a firearm? It's pretty easy! So I'm not sure what kind of effect you're expecting from these laws... Also, whenever a mass shooting occurs, by definition the currently enacted laws failed to prevent it. The same can be said anytime there's murder, theft, rape, terrorism and so on.
  - slowhand09 7y ago
    "Given those laws, how hard is it to actually obtain a firearm? It's pretty easy!" Try to buy one. I double dare you. The only people who say this are those who haven't tried. Many reporters got egg on their faces when they tried making an expose' and failed. Others got in trouble because in their zeal to succeed, they were willing to lie on the required forms. Which could make them a felon...
    - QuantumAphid 7y ago
      Shouldn't be difficult to get a long gun you have valid ID, no felonies, no history of violent use of firearms (or threatening display), no sex offenses, no misdemeanors and don't admit to marijuana use. If you want to get a (long) gun or guns quickly, yeah, I can see where that would be a hassle.
- 7952 7y ago
  I just don't see this article as putting forward an argument one way or the other. It just talks about the statistics of mass shooters from several different angles. It is focused on the individual circumstances of the shooters rather than policy or wider culture. It is left to the reader to draw conclusions if they want.
  - captainredbeard 7y ago
    Excluding what amounts to "exculpatory evidence facts" shapes the impression readers receive.
    - 7952 7y ago
      It's like a form of political correctness. Writers using weasel words so no one thinks they may be hinting at something controversial that may offend people. Perhaps they should put a disclaimer at the start reminding us that guns are not at fault. It is just an unreasonable burden to expect articles about mass killings in America to completely ignore guns. Maybe mass shootings follow the Swiss cheese model [0]. Several sets of circumstances align and you get a terrible outcome. Mental health, family, drugs, propaganda whatever. But guns are also a big hole in the cheese. It shouldn't be contraversial to point that out. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
      - beatgammit 7y ago
        Sure, but it's also not particularly useful. Obviously you need access to guns to use them, so it just serves to distract from the other issues. If guns weren't available but everything else lined up, would bombs be used instead? That would require a couple of other things to line up, but it doesn't prevent the problem. I want to know why these mental issues arise and how we might go about preventing them. I imagine there are more similarities between suicides and mass shootings than the media admits, yet the former gets mentioned with mental health while the latter focuses on access to guns. We need to figure out how these mental health issues develop and find ways to solve them before they become a public problem. Maybe that means controlled, legal access to psychedelics, idk, but we need more than a copout of "gun control will solve everything". Maybe gun control is part of the solution, but it's certainly not the only part.
sharemywin 7y ago
The problem with stereotyping. How many millions of people have those four specific traits and don't commit a mass shooting?
- bmer 7y ago
  Its not stereotyping, but coming up with Bayesian estimates of conditional probabilities. According to the data they collected, P(person is female | person is a shooter) is just very low. Similarly, P( person is a college student AND person is of color | person is a shooter) > P(person is a college student AND person is not of color | person is a shooter). Note that "white males" did not always appear. In one case race wasn't a distinguishing factor (workplace violence), in another color was a distinguishing factor (college violence), and in the rest, being white was a distinguishing factor. This is pretty balanced overall. The data needs to speak for itself. It's okay to notice that in some cases, white males are more likely to commit mass shootings. As okay as noticing that in other cases, non-white males are more likely to commit mass shootings. This means that we can be zoom in better on the issues that lead to such crimes being committed, and get people the help they need, before they irreversibly hurt themselves and others. They aren't talking about P(person is a shooter | person is a white male). That would be stereotyping, but also easily dismissed, because as you noted, P(person is a shooter | person is a white male) is also very low.
  - belorn 7y ago
    > This means that we can be zoom in better on the issues that lead to such crimes being committed The problem of stereotyping is that people take a complex problem and attempts to reduce it by measuring people based on one or a few bits of information. Crime is a bit like rain. The more one attempt to zoom closer to the atom the less we understand it and the poorer the prediction becomes. It get even worse when attempting to zoom in order to understand rare events. If we look at the specific crime of rape in Sweden we see that P(person is Muslim | person is a rapist) > P(Person is a Christian | person is a rapist), by around 300%. The political reaction to people noticing the data is a bit volatile to say the least. It is possible to still use the data, but its best to zoom out rather than in. A common one for crime is the acknowledgement that high risk groups tend share a trait of low social economic status. Thus a popular general prediction method is to measure social economic status when determining risk. What we then get is a more general P(person is socially isolated AND low income AND low education | person commit a crime) that we can compare to other prediction models. People then take each of those classifications and zooms out even further by addressing them independently and outside of crime prevention as improving them has value in itself.
bch132 7y ago
They also all had a fifth thing in common - trigger fingers!
Communitivity 7y ago
AI researcher here. Please do not read this headline and think, 'Ooh, I could create AI software to find potential mass shooters!' First, watch Minority Report and realize all the problems with 'pre-crime'. Second, current AI technology often does not do well with social behavior prediction, sometimes even performing worse than linear regression. Also, 100 different features is a small set, which is problematic in itself. Now, an idea for AI application might be to analyze the environments the mass shootings occurred in to help create environments that minimize the casualty potential while retaining as mush aesthetics as possible. I could see a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) setup applying here, it's an interesting idea. Sadly, I do not have the bandwidth to tackle it.
randyrand 7y ago
Having access to a firearm is pretty tautological for mass shootings, no? Seems not even worth mentioning.

5 points by agarden 7y ago

No mention of psychiatric drugs... THAT is a common factor this writer leaves out and so do many others in MSM. Why? The access to firearms argument is not accurate. There are more and more guns now... More guns != more crime or death. CA has very struict gun laws, but shootings still happen. Dont blame the object. How about lack of parenting, social media and the abundance of psychiatric drugs these kids are taking. Mental illness is a problem.. No one wants to deal with it. Your mental if you want to kill children or mass amounts of people. This writer did not do their research and seems rather uneducated about guns, their history and the laws. Example, they mention the Assault rifles ban in 1994 during the Clinton Administration, but dont go into those details how IT MADE NO DIFFERENCE, then tries to push gun control points by saying: "gun manufacturers pounced on the opportunity to re-market military-style firearms to civilians." A quick google search and I found this. https://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html https://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatri... https://www.ammoland.com/2013/04/every-mass-shooting-in-the-last-20-years-shares-psychotropic-drugs/ https://www.ammoland.com/2013/04/every-mass-shooting-in-the-... Now, how many are democrats would be an interesting read. None are NRA members.

QuantumAphid 7y ago
California has hurdles to clear (universal background check law, a 10-day waiting period, limits on handgun purchases, a microtracking system, a personal safety test, a ban on assault weapons, a minimum age to purchase of shotguns/rifles, red-flag laws allowing police to confiscate guns). I guess it's subjective, but I think these laws are fairly lax. Given those laws, how hard is it to actually obtain a firearm? It's pretty easy! So I'm not sure what kind of effect you're expecting from these laws... Also, whenever a mass shooting occurs, by definition the currently enacted laws failed to prevent it. The same can be said anytime there's murder, theft, rape, terrorism and so on.
- slowhand09 7y ago
  "Given those laws, how hard is it to actually obtain a firearm? It's pretty easy!" Try to buy one. I double dare you. The only people who say this are those who haven't tried. Many reporters got egg on their faces when they tried making an expose' and failed. Others got in trouble because in their zeal to succeed, they were willing to lie on the required forms. Which could make them a felon...
  - QuantumAphid 7y ago
    Shouldn't be difficult to get a long gun you have valid ID, no felonies, no history of violent use of firearms (or threatening display), no sex offenses, no misdemeanors and don't admit to marijuana use. If you want to get a (long) gun or guns quickly, yeah, I can see where that would be a hassle.
7952 7y ago
I just don't see this article as putting forward an argument one way or the other. It just talks about the statistics of mass shooters from several different angles. It is focused on the individual circumstances of the shooters rather than policy or wider culture. It is left to the reader to draw conclusions if they want.
- captainredbeard 7y ago
  Excluding what amounts to "exculpatory evidence facts" shapes the impression readers receive.
  - 7952 7y ago
    It's like a form of political correctness. Writers using weasel words so no one thinks they may be hinting at something controversial that may offend people. Perhaps they should put a disclaimer at the start reminding us that guns are not at fault. It is just an unreasonable burden to expect articles about mass killings in America to completely ignore guns. Maybe mass shootings follow the Swiss cheese model [0]. Several sets of circumstances align and you get a terrible outcome. Mental health, family, drugs, propaganda whatever. But guns are also a big hole in the cheese. It shouldn't be contraversial to point that out. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      Sure, but it's also not particularly useful. Obviously you need access to guns to use them, so it just serves to distract from the other issues. If guns weren't available but everything else lined up, would bombs be used instead? That would require a couple of other things to line up, but it doesn't prevent the problem. I want to know why these mental issues arise and how we might go about preventing them. I imagine there are more similarities between suicides and mass shootings than the media admits, yet the former gets mentioned with mental health while the latter focuses on access to guns. We need to figure out how these mental health issues develop and find ways to solve them before they become a public problem. Maybe that means controlled, legal access to psychedelics, idk, but we need more than a copout of "gun control will solve everything". Maybe gun control is part of the solution, but it's certainly not the only part.

sharemywin 7y ago

The problem with stereotyping. How many millions of people have those four specific traits and don't commit a mass shooting?

bmer 7y ago
Its not stereotyping, but coming up with Bayesian estimates of conditional probabilities. According to the data they collected, P(person is female | person is a shooter) is just very low. Similarly, P( person is a college student AND person is of color | person is a shooter) > P(person is a college student AND person is not of color | person is a shooter). Note that "white males" did not always appear. In one case race wasn't a distinguishing factor (workplace violence), in another color was a distinguishing factor (college violence), and in the rest, being white was a distinguishing factor. This is pretty balanced overall. The data needs to speak for itself. It's okay to notice that in some cases, white males are more likely to commit mass shootings. As okay as noticing that in other cases, non-white males are more likely to commit mass shootings. This means that we can be zoom in better on the issues that lead to such crimes being committed, and get people the help they need, before they irreversibly hurt themselves and others. They aren't talking about P(person is a shooter | person is a white male). That would be stereotyping, but also easily dismissed, because as you noted, P(person is a shooter | person is a white male) is also very low.
- belorn 7y ago
  > This means that we can be zoom in better on the issues that lead to such crimes being committed The problem of stereotyping is that people take a complex problem and attempts to reduce it by measuring people based on one or a few bits of information. Crime is a bit like rain. The more one attempt to zoom closer to the atom the less we understand it and the poorer the prediction becomes. It get even worse when attempting to zoom in order to understand rare events. If we look at the specific crime of rape in Sweden we see that P(person is Muslim | person is a rapist) > P(Person is a Christian | person is a rapist), by around 300%. The political reaction to people noticing the data is a bit volatile to say the least. It is possible to still use the data, but its best to zoom out rather than in. A common one for crime is the acknowledgement that high risk groups tend share a trait of low social economic status. Thus a popular general prediction method is to measure social economic status when determining risk. What we then get is a more general P(person is socially isolated AND low income AND low education | person commit a crime) that we can compare to other prediction models. People then take each of those classifications and zooms out even further by addressing them independently and outside of crime prevention as improving them has value in itself.

bch132 7y ago

They also all had a fifth thing in common - trigger fingers!

Communitivity 7y ago

AI researcher here. Please do not read this headline and think, 'Ooh, I could create AI software to find potential mass shooters!' First, watch Minority Report and realize all the problems with 'pre-crime'. Second, current AI technology often does not do well with social behavior prediction, sometimes even performing worse than linear regression. Also, 100 different features is a small set, which is problematic in itself. Now, an idea for AI application might be to analyze the environments the mass shootings occurred in to help create environments that minimize the casualty potential while retaining as mush aesthetics as possible. I could see a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) setup applying here, it's an interesting idea. Sadly, I do not have the bandwidth to tackle it.

randyrand 7y ago

Having access to a firearm is pretty tautological for mass shootings, no? Seems not even worth mentioning.