Analysis of Mass Shootings

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I came across an Analysis of Mass Shootings by Christopher Ferguson from Stetson University. He is a psychology researcher who studies mass homicides as well as society's reaction to them. The following are the key points in the article:

Violent video games cause mass homicides?

Long-term studies of youth consistently find that violent games are not a risk factor for youth violence anywhere from one to eight years later. And no less than the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 2011 that scientific studies had failed to link violent games to serious aggression in kids.

A 2017 public policy statement by the American Psychological Association’s media psychology and technology division specifically recommended politicians should stop linking violent games to mass shootings. It’s time to lay this myth to rest.

Mass shooters are male white supremacists?

Overall, though, the ethnic composition of the group of all mass shooters in the U.S. is roughly equivalent to the American population.

Hateful people tend to be attracted to hateful ideologies. Most mass homicide perpetrators don’t proclaim any allegiance to a particular ideology at all.

As far as gender, it’s true that most mass homicide perpetrators are male. A minority of shooters are female, and they may target their own families.

Mental illness definitely is or is not to blame?

As far back as 2002, a U.S. Secret Service report based on case studies and interviews with surviving shooters identified mental illness – typically either psychosis or suicidal depression – as very common among mass homicide perpetrators. As for violence more broadly, mental illness, such as psychosis as well as a mixture of depression with antisocial traits, is a risk factor for violent behavior.

It’s also important to point out that the vast majority of people with mental illness do not commit violent crimes. For instance, in one study, about 15% of people with schizophrenia had committed violent crimes, as compared to 4% of a group of people without schizophrenia. Although this clearly identifies the increase in risk, it also highlights that the majority of people with schizophrenia had not committed violent crimes. It’s important not to stigmatize the mentally ill, which may reduce their incentive to seek treatment.

So improving access to mental health services would benefit a whole range of people and, by coincidence, occasionally bring treatment to someone at risk of committing violence. But focusing only on mental health is unlikely to put much of a dent in societal violence.

Mass homicides are becoming more frequent?

But using standard definitions, most data suggest that the prevalence of mass shootings has stayed fairly consistent over the past few decades. It does not appear that the U.S. is awash in an epidemic of such crimes, at least comparing to previous decades going back to the 1970s.

Source: 4 Myths About Mass Shootings

The incidence of mass shootings has increased over the past five years or so.

According to data in the article, the incidences of mass shooting in the U.S. was
2015 - 24 incidences
2016 - 25
2017 - 23
2018 - 21
2019 - 19

The data is current as of Aug. 5, 2019. So it is likely that the 2019 figure will be adjusted upward as the year progresses.

Do you have figures for previous years----say, from 1999 to 2015?

I'm not blaming the mass shootings, necessarily, on the influence of Trump. This kind of stuff has been going on for years. Columbine provided a considerable impetus, in my opinion. Timothy McVeigh was 1995. That was under Bill Clinton.

In the 1990s, the phrase "going postal" became well-known because there were many shootings by "problem employees" of the Postal Service.

There was a rise in mass shootings in the 1980s, too----from the 1970s.

Severe mental illness+ substance abuse is a big factor for violence. Severe mental illness on its own isn't .

I feel one of the main problems is that people isolate themselves from the greater world. They don't go out and meet actual people, actual families. They form impressions on people based on what's written on the Internet.

They sit at home, isolated on the Internet, and read all this political crap. They are usually victims of the "system" themselves.

For example: They can't find jobs. They might see immigrants "taking jobs" from them. They read something about immigrants "taking jobs" from them, so they start believing that stuff. That's what might have happened with the El Paso shooter, who thought there was an "Hispanic invasion."

It's actually very common for American citizens to fear that illegal immigrants are "taking away their jobs." Especially people who are unemployed and frustrated.

It's similar with some people in the UK when it comes to immigrants in general .

The original article provides yearly figures back to the year 2006. The link was in the original thread.

Those figures came from the following article Including El Paso and Dayton, there have been 112 people killed in mass shootings this year. by USA Today.

This article breaks apart the mass shootings by
Mass shooting number of victims by cumulative days within each year.
Number of mass shooting victims by each year.
The location of mass shooting victims by region in U.S.
Number of mass shooting incidents by each year.
Highest number of deaths by each mass shooting incident.

Is the amount of people killed and wounded in mass shootings increased?, it seems so.
Is the amount of socio political mass shootings/not the killing of family members or
acquaintances, not gang related, not personal revenge and so on increased?, it seems so.

Mass shootings of complete strangers cause more fear.

According to the data, the number of mass shooting incidences by years is pretty flat.
But the number of victims per mass shooting may have risen, but it is a little hard to tell of sure.
The two highest years were 2016 and 2017 with 162 and 181 victims respectively.
The two lowest years were 2010 and 2014 with 85 and 86 victims respectively.
The other years between 2006 to present are in-between. Last year only had 122 victims and this year is 112 but there are still five more months to go.

That is one of the areas that probably contributed to the result of the last presidential election in the USA, and may contribute to the next as well.

In general the "menial"\low paid jobs are normally filled by those with lower education\literacy\work skills. Normally, wages (and positions) for these people tend to match the number of people available, with wages generally rising with a shortage of potential employees, and remaining static/potentially dropping when there are a surplus.

When a new group ("illegals") start taking these jobs, it causes an large increase in the pool of potential employees, leading to either lower wages, or less work for those in the original group.

What really confuses me (being from outside the US) is that the party that is supposedly there for the "workers" and lower class (Democrats) seem to be currently working to increase this pool (and so causing decrease in wages/lower employment prospects), whilst the party for the "Elites"\Business (Republicans) appears to be trying to remove this pressure, thereby allowing a greater possibility of employment\wage increases for the lower class.

Some people might say that immigrants are taking their jobs but I think for a lot of people it is more about racism.

"schizophrenia"?

Some articles claim that, a disproportionate number of defendants convicted of, school shooting, are autistic


Autism and schizophrenia symptoms overlap

Is this based on actual discussion with these types of people, or just a "feeling" you have about them[1]?

I'd prefer to think the best of people, and not make negative assumptions about them...Treat someone in a certain way\as though they have a certain attribute enough, and you can cause them to eventually take on that attribute\act that was as it becomes expected of them, or they feel they have no option but to act like that. Treat people with compassion\understanding, and you can bring out the better side from them, as they'll be more receptive to you.

Again, it's the making assumptions about others that can lead to things like the last US election result, which I'm not sure the Democrats have worked out yet.

[1] The assumption that those who wish to stop the illegal immigration in order to help the legal population get jobs, etc. are racist is similar to the "All Autistic people are like Rainman" belief...Not helpful to making the targeted section of the population feel welcome\valued\understood.

I didn’t say all of them are racist. I said a lot of them are. I know people in my own family like this. Of course if you ask them if they are racist they say no, but if you talk to them about other races they will make a lot of negative generalizations.