West Texas Mass Murder -- Uncontrollable Anger

"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 31^st 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.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has repeatedly worked to loosen gun-control regulations in his state, called for unity on Saturday and offered his “unwavering support” to victims of the new shooting in West Texas. He added that he wanted “to remind all Texans that we will not allow the Lone Star State to be overrun by hatred and violence.”

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).