Arrest for suspicion of dementia?

[pax]

From http://spectator.org/articles/59521/...mass-shootings

Originally Posted by Josh Blackman in The American Spectator

The truth, simply put, is that mass shootings —as horrible and nightmarish as they are — are very rare, constitute a tiny sliver of homicides, and are not becoming more frequent.

...

Further, contrary to what the zeitgeist may suggest, mass shootings are not on the rise. Prominent criminologist James Alan Fox has found “no upward trend in mass killings” since the ’70s. Take campus statistics as an example: “Overall in this country, there is an average of 10 to 20 murders across campuses in any given year,” Fox told CNN (and roughly 99 percent of these reported homicides were not mass shootings). “Compare that to over 1,000 suicides and about 1,500 deaths from binge drinking and drug overdoses.” Mass shootings on college campuses lag far, far behind many much more prevalent social and mental health problems.

(That article goes on to discuss why people "feel" as if mass murders are becoming more common, when they're really not.)

Here's another. From CNN in 2012:

Originally Posted by CNN 2012 article

Each mass killing provokes a flurry of public shock and a frenzy of media attention -- and often soul-searching about whether they represent a broader descent into gun-fueled violence.

But are such attacks on the rise in the United States?

Not according to professor James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston who has been studying mass murder for the past three decades.

Despite the huge media coverage devoted to them, crime statistics show that there is no upward trend in mass killings -- defined as having four victims or more, not counting terrorism -- since the 1970s, he said.

...

Fox suggests that any sense that mass killings are on an upward spiral has more to do with the vagaries of human memory than actual facts.

"Since we tend to remember the ones that happened more recently, rather than the ones before, we often get the sense that three things make an epidemic," he said.

"They are rare events, and everything that is rare is difficult to predict."

pax

[pax]

And here's one from Dr. John Lott this week. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/...cross-america/

although it focuses on school shootings, really interesting and relevant part is the discussion about gang related events versus the mass, public, random events that we have been discussing.

pax

[Dreaming100Straight]

Sadly, after tragedies, the knee jerk reaction is to agree that the evil gun did something awful.
Do we think that the people that were parents of the murdered children at SandyHook will ever understand that the shooter was mentally ill & his mother bought him a gun, it wasn't the guns doing! He shot his mum first.

I believe you have been drinking too much kool aid from the 2A fountain. Even most liberals don't blame the gun, but access to guns.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I would have to disagree. One position in criminology, public health, psychology, sociology is that exposure to guns primes aggressive thoughts and ideation. That leads to shooting behavior. So in that vein - the gun is evil and did cause the event. The evidence however is mixed. It seems not to be a factor with the vast majority of the population but might occur with those with underlying mental illnesses driving them to violent behavior.

BTW, we don't do liberal vs. conservative. Plenty of folks on both sides who like or dislike the RKBA. So we are gun or antigun in our discussions.

[Dreaming100Straight]

Glenn, You are right that whether or not one is conservative or liberal isn't truly indicative of attitudes towards guns, but to many pro gunners the appear to be same from what I have noticed here and elsewhere. Also, as you say, only some social scientists believe that exposure to evil guns proximately causes a homicidal predisposition. To pigeonhole people in antigun and pro gun to me seems to simplistic, although there are those that think you either have to ban all guns or have a god given right to carry fully automatic weapons.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

The problem is trying to make a continuum into a dichotomy. Pro or antigun aren't absolute 0,1 categories. Look at the OC debate for instance.

However, the categorization is somewhat useful. I was trying to steer us away from the use of liberal and conservative as being perfectly predictive of gun attitudes. Thus when we get someone ranting about liberals or using worse terms - it isn't useful.

That's all I was attempting to do. I've seen an OC advocate of AR weapons in Starbucks denouncing very strong RKBA advocates as commie Fudds. Oh, well.

[Dreaming100Straight]

I see what you mean and point well taken.

[MTT TL]

This thread is a little baffling. The murder rate is half what it was in 1972. The OP says there were less "mass murders" in 1972 then today because he does not remember them. Offers this as a strawman argument for locking up the mentally ill.

Let's jog the memory banks:

Mark Essex 1972. He killed nine people including five police officers and shot 13 others during his killing spree, including a total of ten police officers, something of record of that day. This is stunning oversight by a police officer and I find it amazing he does not recall it. Especially considering how Essex was taken out by the combined efforts of air mounted Marines and huge numbers of NOLA police officers. He was about as looney toons as any spree shooter out there today.

But there is no shortage of them. If we just look at where five or more people were killed in one swoop I can bring in a few dozen examples from the 70s.