I'd heard some suggest that mass shootings are more common now (in the post-Columbine era) in the U.S. than before; does anyone have some data as to whether this is so?
I have one seemingly reliable piece of data handy — the list in Gary Kleck's Targeting Guns, p. 144, reports on all the mass shootings Kleck knew of from 1984-1993, with mass shootings "defined here, somewhat arbitrarily, as an incident in which six or more victims were shot dead with a gun, or twelve or more total were wounded" (pp. 124-25). That list reports 15 mass killings, roughly evenly distributed from 1984 to 1993. (For those who want to check for completeness, the murderers are Ferguson, Ferri, Hennard, Doody & Garcia, Abeyta, Pugh, Wesbecker, Purdy, Farley, Simmons, Schnick, Cruse, Sherrill, Huberty, and Thomas.) My sense is that the frequency has not gone up materially since then, though I should note that this is just based on my likely quite faulty memory.
On the other hand, only one of those shootings (Purdy, in Stockton) was at a school, and it did not involve a student, unlike the Columbine murders and some of those that followed. My sense is that schoolyard shootings are indeed up since Columbine, but again I don't have handy data about how much. I'd also love to hear about data from before 1984; of course, Charles Whitman's murders in 1966, were at a university, but I do not know of any pattern of school or university mass shootings after that. (I would bracket the 1970 Kent State shootings, simply because they seem so radically different in motivation from the other killings that it's hard to see what sound policy analysis one could engage in that would group these shootings together with the other shootings I mention.)
UPDATE: A Better Where To Find has a long list, not claimed to be complete, of multiple-victim shootings, though with a somewhat different selection criterion than that given above, and limited to schools.
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Later, three men went up the Tower - two police officers with handguns and one civilian with a rifle. The civilian blocked one entry to the walkway while the officers entered it from the other entry, confronted Whitman, and killed him.
There was no SWAT in 1966 so the response was rapid.
And there was a policy response of removing pyrotol, one of the explosives used in the bombing, from the market afterwards. It doesn't seem to have successfully outlawed suicide bombing, however.
So I can kill five people and wound 11 without it counting? Arbitrary indeed.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/multiple.htm
Does anyone have data that would support or refute that impression?
From that same link:
Incredibly rare, but incredibly sensational!
waswere at least three other "serious" school shootings between Woodham/Pearl and Columbine.I ought to preview . . .
Because neither incident could be used to justify gun control, they were largely ignored.
If we are to conclude no cult is to be taken seriously, we nevertheless are reminded by the obsessive coverage medias display on these horrific episodes how easy it is for one socially maladjusted person to hit loudly the collectivity they felt aside instead of simply dying an anonymous suicide. Because that's what these events are, antisocial suicides.
I think that the argument may be not that psychotic killers seek out gun-free zones but that, if they choose randomly (with respect to gun-density) the more likely other people are to be carrying, the greater the likelihood that the killer will be prevented from killing, or at least killed before he can kill very many.
Actually I had heard of the San Juan casino/hotel fire, but only because I read about it in that creature of the moderate right, The Reader's Digest. I don't suppose Pauline Kael's successor and their buddies consider them part of the major news media, do they?
I don't think so. These people are crazy, but they aren't stupid. They, for whatever reason, want to kill people and are compos mentis enough to realize that if they get killed themselves too early, they won't get to kill many others.
Of course, arming everyone won't solve the problem. If guns become too risky, there are other solutions, as Andrew Kehoe, Timothy McVeigh, Julio González, and Mohammed Atta, among others, have realized.
This doesn't quite prove the point. Avoiding high concentrations of arms is not the same as seeking out gun-free zones. In any case, I think one would need data we don't have to decide what the actual factors are since the number of incidents is so small. It could easily be the case that the psychos who do this just aren't motivated to kill people at gun shows or police conventions. Few if any of the cases I know of are completely random - they're people with a grudge of some sort and kill randomly only in the sense that they shoot at anybody in the institution they are pissed off at. They don't just go out and kill the next people they encounter.
Suicide bombings require considerably more planning than mass shootings. In addition, high explosives are much more controlled and controllable than firearms.
I actually think that our society has become more violent, at least in terms of media images, and that could be having an impact on our society, with such tragedies. It does seem too early to draw any policy lessons. Perhaps we can wait until the dead are buried, and the killer's motives are analyzed?
HAHAHA
It is more plausible to believe that the Puerto Rico incident was ignored because it did not happen in the last. Since when does the news media report every incident that happens in foreign countries? (yes i know, peurto rico is technically a commonwealth of the US but that doesn't change things.)
And you interpretation of the night club fire is directly contradicted by the massive coverage of the more recent night club fire. that one didn't involve guns either.
It is more plausible to believe that the Puerto Rico incident was ignored because it did not happen in the united states. (change in bold)
Has the # of schools and the # of students changed greatly during these periods? Perhaps the # of shootings has increased, but not relative to the # of students/schools?
Nor was it an intentional criminal act. The recent nightclub fire was a combination of negligence and stupidity.
Are you seriously contending that the news media treats puerto rico the same as any other state? I lived there for a short period of time and I can guarantee that this isn't the case. When was the last time that matters of internal puerto rican politics was reported on by the news media? how about the economic conditions? major acts of violence? droughts/floods? American Somoa just further proves my point as it is extremely rarely mentioned in the news with respect to the 50 states.
And your point? Neither involved guns.
I wouldn't go so far. Historically, I see more reasons to believe the level of violence in US, as in most countries throughout the world, has decreased rather than increased over the past decades/centuries.
We must distinguish violence and its coverage by the medias. Violence is more noticeable because its coverage is more overwhelming today. It doesn't mean you have more chances of dying a violent death today than before. Au contraire, I trust our existence is much more peaceful than it was the case for our ancestors.
Substitute "Idaho" for "Puerto Rico." The results are the same.
There are similar comparability and completeness problems with American crime rates, but from the 17th century to the present Randy Roth's work suggests an order of magnitude reduction in murder rates in New England.
When was the last time you went to Puerto Rico? It's a US territory, but I was hard pressed to get by in English.
I think the problem isn't the gun laws. It's the sanity of mass killers and making sure that every child does not turn into one.
Rather than focus on gun control, how about focusing on bullying, teasing and how we respect one another as human beings. Mass killers aren't created overnight. A determined killer will kill, whether it's with a gun, a bomb, poison gas, etc. Just look at suicide bombers.
Get into their heads and their psychology and get them some help. Not when it's too late, but sooner than that. Everyone knows that lonely kid in 4th grade who reads alone all the time. When was the last time you reached out to someone who was lonely?
I know the killer seems to have shunned other people and human contact, but pathological disassociative disorders really do happen over time.