"New
research indicates that the 310 million firearms estimated to be in
private hands in the United States are disproportionately owned by
people who are prone to angry, impulsive behavior and have a
potentially dangerous habit of keeping their guns close at hand."
-- Behavioral
Sciences Journal, 2015
A 36-year-old gunman who
left seven people dead and 22 wounded in a West Texas killing rampage
had been fired from his job hours before the massacre began. The man
began spraying the roads with bullets from his “AR-type” weapon
after police pulled him over for failing to use his signal. He fled
police and stole a postal vehicle. Authorities were finally able to
ram the hijacked mail truck he was driving and gun him down.
Those who were killed in
the August 31st shooting ranged from 15 to 57 years old,
Odessa Police Chief Michael Gerke said, and included Mary Granados, a
29-year-old mail carrier who was on the phone with her twin sister as
she neared the end of her shift. A 17-month-old girl and three law
enforcement officers were among the injured.
More than 40 people have
died in the four shootings in Texas, Ohio and California since July.
It's part of a trend the FBI says is getting worse each year.
The rampage was at least
the 280th mass shooting -- defined as an incident in which four or
more people are shot -- in the country this year, according to the Gun
Violence Archive.
Despite the fact that four
of the ten worst mass shootings in American history have been
committed in Texas, the state was hours away from enacting multiple
new laws that would further reduce gun-control measures as the West
Texas shooting was playing out.
With the new legislation,
schools will not be able to ban gun owners from keeping their weapons
in their vehicles outside, and landlords and homeowners will no
longer be able to ban gun owners from keeping weapons on their
property. Another new law allows gun owners to carry handguns inside
houses of worship in the state unless those houses of worship notify
them that doing so is prohibited. (The change prompted Mormon leaders
to implement a new policy banning the possession of firearms in all
LDS churches, unless the person with a gun is a police officer.)
Let's review the facts
about this latest mass shooting:
1. A man in Texas was
fired from his job.
2. The man was pulled
over by the police for a turn signal infraction.
3. The man grabbed his
AR-type weapon – available in his car – and began shooting multiple rounds.
4. The man killed 7
people and wounds 22 others.
5. The man, after this
mass killing, was gunned down by police.
Questions
1. Is the murderer
deranged? Let's say he is “maddened,” but is it temporary in
nature or a symptom of a diagnosed mental illness. After all, being
fired does not warrant breaking the law or violent action.
2. Will gun advocates
claim one reason gun control measures should not be enacted is that
citizens need to arm themselves for protection against mentally
unstable people like the mass shooter? Undoubtedly, yes.
3. Did easy access to this
assault-type weapon help enable the angry shooter to kill and injure
a large number of innocent people? Of course.
And now for the biggest
fact:
There is an evil culture of
gun violence in the United States of America.
Assault-Type Rifles?
As the epidemic of mass
shootings committed by malcontents with assault-type weapons and
high-capacity magazines intensifies, research shows that restrictions
on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines can help prevent mass
shooting injuries and fatalities as well as reduce the devastation of
daily gun violence in America. Because of their deadly design,
assault weapons amplify the carnage of public shootings.
A study of mass shooting
incidents between 1981 and 2017 found that assault rifles accounted
for 86 percent of the 501 fatalities reported in 44 mass shooting
incidents. An Everytown original analysis of mass shootings from 2009
to 2017 revealed that, of the incidents with known magazine capacity
data, 58 percent involved firearms with high-capacity magazines.
These shootings resulted in twice as many fatalities and 14 times as
many injuries per incident on average compared to those that did not
include the use of high-capacity magazines.
(Everytown
for Gun Safety. Mass Shootings in the United States: 2009-2017.
https://every. tw/1XVAmcc. December 2018. This report defines a mass
shooting
as an incident in which four or more people, not including
the
shooter, are killed with a firearm.)
A 2018 study found that
mass shooting fatalities were 70 percent less likely to occur from
1994 to 2004, when the federal prohibition on assault weapons and
high-capacity magazines was in effect, than during the 12 years
studied before and after the prohibition. Researchers estimate a
federal Assault Weapon Ban (AWB) would have prevented 314 of 448 mass
shooting deaths that occurred during the studied periods where the
AWB was not in effect.
(DiMaggio
C, Avraham J, Berry C, et al. Changes in US mass shooting deaths
associated with the 1994-2004 Federal Assault Weapons Ban: analysis
of open-source data. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.
2019 Jan; 86 (1):11-19.)
In Virginia, the AWB was
associated with significant reductions in the share of guns used in
crimes that were equipped with high-capacity magazine, down to an
all-time low of 10 percent in 2004. When the prohibition expired, the
share of Virginia crime guns equipped with high-capacity magazines
rapidly increased, reaching 22 percent by 2010.
(DiMaggio
C, Avraham J, Berry C, et al. Changes in US mass shooting deaths
associated with the 1994-2004 Federal Assault Weapons Ban: analysis
of open-source data. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.
2019 Jan; 86(1):11-19.)
Dr. Michael Siegel, a
researcher at Boston University, “Whether a state has a large
capacity ammunition magazine ban is the single best predictor of the
mass shooting rates in that state.”
(Petulla
S. Here is 1 correlation between state gun laws and mass shootings.
CNN. October 5, 2017. https://cnn.it/2J4sWCC. Study defines mass
shootings as incidents where three or more victims, not including the
shooter, are shot and killed or shot and injured with a firearm.)
After the expiration of
the federal ban on assault weapons in 2004 and the failure to renew
it by Congress, it now falls upon the states to pass sensible laws to
prohibit these deadly weapons.
Mental Illness?
Is it just the mentally
unstable who commit these unspeakable crimes? Research says,
“Surprisingly little population-level evidence supports the notion
that individuals diagnosed with mental illness are more likely than
anyone else to commit gun crimes.”
(Metzl, J.M., and K.T.
MacLeish. “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of
American Firearms.” American Journal of Public Health 105, no.
2 (February 1, 2015): pp. 240-249.)
People with diagnosed with
mental illnesses are not more likely to commit mass shootings; less
than 5 percent of violence can be attributed to mental illness.
People who commit mass
shootings are not well; as one professor in psychiatry and behavioral
health explains: “A mass shooting is the product of a disordered
mental process.” Those who also feel hopeless, desperate and
suicidal are more likely to violate others. Still, shooters rarely
have a diagnosed (or diagnosable) mental illness.
(Beckett,
L. “Myth vs. Fact: Violence and Mental Health.”
ProPublica,
June 10, 2014.)
According to the Violence
and Mental Disorder: Developments in Risk Assessment, the
overwhelming majority of mental health patients will never commit a
violent act in their lifetimes. Approximately 96 percent of violent
crimes – including shootings – would likely still occur even if
every suspect with a mental health condition was stopped before they
carried out an attack.
(John
Monahan, Henry J. Steadman. Violence and Mental Disorder:
Developments
in Risk Assessment. 1996.)
There are many other
factors that are strongly associated with shootings, including access
to guns, a state’s gun laws, an attacker’s past history of
violence, substance abuse, misogyny and racism, to name a few.
And while most mass
shooters have a history of showing symptoms – emphasis on
“symptoms” – of a mental illness, only about a quarter
actually have a diagnosis of a mental illness. This rule also applies
to those with personality disorders, said Michelle Galietta, a
forensic psychologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in
New York City.
(Jonathan
M. Metzl, MD, PhD and Kenneth T. MacLeish, PhD. “Mental Illness,
Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms.”Am J
Public Health. 2015 February; 105(2): 240–249.)
Expansion of red flag laws
– otherwise known as “extreme risk protection orders,” have
been currently enacted in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The
laws allow law enforcement or members of a household to obtain a
temporary injunction that blocks a person’s access to firearms.
Yet, red flag laws have
obvious gaps, especially around domestic violence. Domestic violence
is one of the strongest predictors of future gun violence, but
victims can only apply for a red flag petition if they’ve completed
the process of obtaining a restraining order. Nearly half a million
nonfatal domestic violence incidents go unreported every year.
Moreover, only three states and the district allow individuals other
than family to apply for an injunction.
While most people will
never consider using a gun against another human being, violence is
not aberrant behavior — it’s ordinary. However, a homicide in the
U.S. is about three times more likely to involve a firearm than in
those other westernized countries. How can anyone deny the parallel
between the gun mentality and the gun violence in America?
Groups like the National
Rifle Association, which believes that any American citizen should
have access to any kind of small arms without any screening or
training whatsoever.
Retired Army General Stan
McChrystal, the patron saint of American special operations, and a
man who knows something about small arms, lamented in The New York
Times a year ago that “some of our politicians and the people
who back them seem to promote a culture of gun ownership that does
not conform with what I learned in the military.”
I agree with David Kyle
Johnson Ph.D. who believes that the United States must make it much
harder for angry or radicalized people to amplify the affect of their
anger by attaining the weapons they need to inflict maximum damage in
a minimum amount of time. The country must force the truly angry,
sick, and violent to try harder to kill people instead of making it
simple for them by giving them easy (legal and illegal) access to
firearms, especially those like AR-15s.
A start would be the
following:
* Universal background
checks
* Banning assault weapons
and high-capacity magazine clips
* Requiring gun licensing
for all new gun owners (after passing a safety course).
* Safe storage
requirements and required safety features (e.g., childproof locks) on
all guns.
* Effective tracing
mechanisms on all guns and a national database of all gun owners (and
holding owners responsible if their gun is used in a crime).
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