Many Americans think of school shootings as mass casualty events involving an adolescent with an assault-style weapon. But a new study says that most recent school shootings orchestrated by teenagers do not fit that image â and they are often related to community violence.
The study, published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, analyzed 253 school shootings carried out by 262 adolescents in the US between 1990 and 2016.
It found that these adolescents were responsible for only a handful of mass casualty shootings, defined as those involving four or more gunshot fatalities. About half of the shootings analyzed â 119 â involved at least one death. Among the events, seven killed four or more people.
A majority of the shootings analyzed also involved handguns rather than assault rifles or shotguns, and they were often the result of âinterpersonal disputes,â according to the researchers from University of South Carolina and University of Florida.
No, I want to change community circumstances so that interpersonal disputes donât lead to violence.
In most cases, people that arenât living in pretty desperate circumstances arenât turning to lethal violence as the first, best option for solving problems. People that feel like they have options donât immediately jump there.
Do you believe poor people in the US are more desperate than in the rest of the world?
Thatâs a false dichotomy, and not even the correct answer to ask.
In countries with higher rates of poverty, you do, in fact, see far, far higher rates of murder and violence (robbery, battery, forcible rape) in general. Official tallies may not reflect those levels of violence, since thereâs often indifference or incompetence from local government.
Of western countries, the US has one of, if not the highest rates of economic inequality. And yes, thatâs going to lead to violence when you have poor people that have no practical way to not only get ahead, but merely stay even.
Sounds like a lie to me. Semi-automatic handguns are absolutely the fastest, most lethal and most common way to turn interpersonal disputes and property crimes into murder.
You canât genuinely be looking to reduce these murders if youâre unwilling to change gun laws. It wouldnât just require 100 years of work to solve inequality, it would require literal mind control.
Even if you pulled it off, there is still all the other motives youâre handwaving away, like domestic abusers and âresponsible gun ownersâ answering their doorbells by opening fire.
It doesnât take mind control, because once you change external circumstances, people tend to change their minds on their own without being forced into re-education camps, or going through cult programming.
Changing social conditions also reduces domestic violence. People that arenât afraid of random crimeâmost of which is bullshit ginned up by Fox, OAN, etc.âdonât start blasting the second someone knocks on their door.
Sure, semi-automatic handguns are the fastest, easiest, most readily concealed way now to to turn arguments into murders, but you know what happens when you take the guns and donât fix all the other shit? People start stabbing each other. Then you have to start trying to take all the knives. Then the clubs. Then bottles, and bricks, and hammers, and screwdrivers. Youâre never going to be able to take all of the tools that people use to commit murder, because âbare handsâ account for something like 5% of all homicides in the US (unless youâre proposing preemptive amputation?) Fix the underlying problems, and most of that violenceâthe violence that turns into murderâends up going away on itâs own.
Even giving you a free pass on that actually being true, stabbings are both easier to flee and less lethal. It would be a genuine improvement
Isnât it just fascinating that this slippery slope always starts at âgunsâ?
Somehow, itâs impossible to stop at âlets not sell guns to idiots and psychopathsâ like sane people. Once we start down that road, we have to just keep banning more and more things forever, despite the fact none of those things are covered by the second amendment and could be banned right now if we actually wanted to.
You may as well be claiming âDriving under the influence? What next? Driving sober? Bikes? Horses? Legs?â.
Meanwhile, guns account for 81% of those homicides because theyâre more lethal, in less time, with less chance of escaping or being interrupted.
Most of the guns used in those homicides are legally purchased, but thatâs mostly academic given that 99% of guns used in crimes were originally legally purchased from dealers, pawnbrokers or manufacturers, clearly demonstrating that the background checks and storage laws are not even remotely adequate.
You keep accidentally admitting how much better things would be if Americas had gun laws in line with the rest of the world, instead of pretending every murder is inevitable like you wanted.
Sure. Let us know when youâre done building that utopia so we can look at actual crime stats that actually exist, rather than fantasy statistics that the pro-gun community insists will come true eventually.
Until then, why do you staunchly oppose measures designed to reduce the number of murderers armed with the tools you openly admit are best-in-class for murder?
First: Yes, that is the way things work. Weâve seen that happen in other countries. Moving outside of guns specifically, thatâs happened with abortion rights; first it was just some abortions, then all of them (depending on the state), then the right to travel to another state, now theyâre working on banning birth control and overturning no-fault divorce.
Second: No, 2A doesnât specify guns, it says arms. So if you wanted to ban knives and swords because theyâre arms, then thereâs a 2A argument against it.
Thatâs not the argument you think it is. Yes, people use the best tool that they have available. If that tool magically didnât existâand there are more guns than people in the USâthen people would switch to a different tool, and youâd be talking about how people used X because itâs better than Y, and so we need to ban X.
People in other countries have these same debates, trying to create ever stricter security measures to prevent crimes, even though they have far, far lower rates or murder. The argument is that there needs to be ever more invasive govât control, because thatâs the only way to make people feel safe and secure.
Much like your utopia where guns donât exist?
Why do you resist the social changes that would reduce violence across the board, and not just one specific subset using one tool? Why do you want society to stay sick while eliminating a single manifestation of that sickness?
Why didnât the pro-gun community stop it? Arenât you claiming right now that guns are required to stop rights being eroded?
Yes, I want people to have worse tools for killing innocent people. Youâre openly admitting it would would be an improvement.
Sure thing. I assume its also fine for me to extrapolate your views out forever and claim your goal is to legalise hand grenades, claymores and rocket launchers for all Americans, including felons, as the first step to eventually making WMDs cheap and freely available to everyone and the only way to prevent that is to immediately ban all private gun sales.
Of course, those might be your actual views since theyâre not uncommon in the pro-gun community, unlike the mythical gun control advocates who start with âlets not sell guns to people who have been making death threatsâ and donât stop until theyâve banned hammers.
How dare people try and prevent preventable deaths. What scumbags.
I wonder why they have âfar, far lower rates for murderâ since obviously the only way to truly be safe is the cold embrace of an AR-15.
Did you forget the rest of the world exists and has gun control? They even change their gun laws over time in response to changing circumstances, rather than just ask slavers with wooden teeth their thoughts then vow to use that forever.
Sure, you could have tried your luck with that when the pro-gun crowd was blaming dumb shit like video games, rock music and the number of doors a building had, but what are you suggesting I oppose now?
I support increased access to mental health services, universal healthcare and massively reducing wealth inequality. This has been my consistent opinion for over 25 years, before doing mass shootings with your legal guns became a fad among the far-right.
But Iâm never going to support maximizing the damage that criminals, abusers, idiots and domestic terrorists can do just because there might be less of them in 50 years, especially in return for bullshit promises about rights, democracy and personal safety that are less true in America than in countries with gun control.
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Youâre missing the point, intentionally. The erosion of rights is the point; for the right wing, itâs the erosion of reproductive rights (and eventually the rights of women in general). For the people that believe theyâre on the left, itâs gun rights, and eventually all rights to the tools of violence.
Which is also worse tools for defending themselves. So, again, not a win.
Yes. Thatâs correct. Private citizens could quite legally have artillery under the interpretation of the constitution that existed until 1934, when the National Firearms Act made it through judicial review due to prosecutorial malfeasance. And yes, I think that most felons should be allowed to be armed, because the law is structured in such a way that even non-violent felons have their rights stripped from them.
Okay, so youâre saying that there is no amount of evidence that would ever change your mind. Is that correct? So even if I could show you that other countries that have high levels of personal firearm ownership donât see violence rates like the US does, you wouldnât see that as relevant, because it doesnât involve removing guns. Do I have that about right?
Itâs a promise gun owners make, that you give them a free pass on, despite them clearly never delivering on it, which is a common theme through all your arguments.
Starting immediately withâŠ
If guns made people safer, America should be the safest country in the world by a huge margin, not shrugging off mass shootings every month
So why is the crime rate in America practically identical to countries with gun control, except that Americaâs homicide rate is 400% higher?
Why do these âdefensive gun usesâ only appear when you ask gun owners how often theyâve experienced them and never in any kind of statistics?
To put it bluntly, Americas gun laws disproportionately help assholes be assholes â something that does show up in statistics.
But âresponsible gun ownersâ rush to be their useful idiots anyway, deliberately oblivious to who theyâre actually helping but demanding to be looked upon as heroes anyway.
Imagine you wanted to donate to the Democrats, but for $1 donated, it was mandatory to donate $4 to Republicans.
Would you rush to social media as Republicans won over and over again, insisting it wasnât your fault, you were only helping the Democrats?
Would you advocate people donated every dollar they could to the Dems and then shame them when their candidate lost?
If the Dems won 3 out of every 100 elections, would you claim it was because the laws around donations were the best in the world?
Donât worry, youâre not actually shocking me with that response, I just wanted you to say that idiocy out loud.
Itâs important that people know that supporting the pro-gun community is supporting elevating the far-right from mass shooters in to a homegrown Hamas.
âWell it doesnât matter what you think, because its been ruled constituationalâ.
You donât get to make that argument for guns and then handwave it away when you donât like it.
The evidence Iâve been waiting 25 years for? Sure, you could change my mind with it, but if you actually had it, you wouldnât be desperately latching on to semantics to try and make me sound unreasonable.
Sure, you can do the âb-b-but Switzerlandâ thing if you want to, but Iâll just point out what their actual laws are, so you probably shouldnât unless you support gun control measures like:
Some of them, youâve already openly opposed, such as prohibiting grenades and artillery.
Others, the pro-gun community actively opposes, such as safe storage and denying guns to domestic abusers.
But if you want to replace Americaâs gun laws with Switzerlandâs, Iâm happy to officially congratulate you on becoming a gun-control advocate.
Nope, but it gave you the premise you needed to push misinformation, which is all you were really interested in.
Which is not what I said, but okay.
How about, ALL of my trans friends, and the overwhelming majority of my gay friends are armed, because theyâve got people that will happily murder them in the streets with their base hands, and cops will not give a fuck?
How about the women I know that have had to get restraining orders against violent and abusive ex-husbands and boyfriends, and got armed and trained because cops do not give a fuck until his hands are around her neck?
How about the people threatened like my nephew that were threatened by a gang because he was a witness to a murder, and was compelled to testify in court? (He ended up having to move, because, again, cops did not give a fuck. And no, there was no âwitness protectionâ; it was either show up and testify, or be jailed on contempt and perjury.)
America has a violence problem, period. Itâs not a gun problem, itâs a violence problem. You want to make shit safe? Fix the conditions that cause the violence.
To rephrase that, why are you concerned only with affecting murder, rather than affecting ALL violent crime? If you reduce all violent crime by correcting underlying conditions, then murder decreases along with everything else. So, why the focus on a single issue?
⊠Why do people only drown at home when they have bathtubs, and not people that just have showers? Your question is nonsensical. Defensive gun use only shows up when you ask gun owners because non-gun owners donât have guns to use defensively. (And, BTW, since you are familiar with DGU, you know that conservative estimates are around 1.5M per year in the US.)
My local gun store has a cannon for sale. It can be yours for just $5000. I think itâs 4"âbut donât quote me on thatâand itâs a smoothbore, so you can absolutely use it for grapeshot if thatâs your desire. Of course, itâs going to take you about a minute and a half to load if youâve practiced, so maybe donât miss with that first shot? Oh, and youâre going to want a spotter to help you aim, and youâll need to find a way to tow it around, since it weight a couple thousand pounds.
âŠWith a cannon that takes a crew of four people to operate effectively, and has a range less than a decent bolt action rifle? 'Kay.
Gun control laws, sure. Since those are almost always intended to and disproportionately affect minority groups. Like Reagan passing gun control laws in California because the Black Panthers were policing the police. Or Georgia denying MLK Jr. a carry permit. Or D.C.'s gun ban. (Fun reading for you: This Nonviolent Stuffâll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, by Charles E. Cobb
(You missed Finland, which is likely more heavily armed than the Swiss.)
But, again, roughly similar rates of gun ownership.
Vastly lower rates of violent crime. Not even gun crime, violent crime.
Becauseâas you notes previouslyâmany guns used in crimes in the US were legally purchased. So thereâs no good reason to believe that a Swiss person couldnât easily jump through the hoops to get an SIG 550 (or use their military-issued rifle, and the military-issued ammunition) to commit a mass murder. But you simply donât see that. You donât see that in Finland either. You donât see much violent crime in either country, with or without guns. In the UK and Australia, you see a lot of violent crime.
Safe storage laws. Dear god. If the state subsidizes the cost of storage, sure, Iâm fine with that. But gun âsafesâ are a fuckinâ joke. Thereâs a lot to unpack, but thereâs no country Iâm aware of that requires firearms to be stored in a container that would be considered a burglary-resistant safe. RSC-1 is the standard for a gun âsafeâ under storage laws in the US (it actually exceeds most requirements), and the UL RSC-1 standard only requires that a container resist attack for 5 min with hammers not more than 2#, and a pry bar not longer than 12".
No one is arguing that people convicted of a domestic violence offense should be allowed to be armed. (Okay, Iâm sure some people are. No one that I know of is making that argument.) Convicted is the key term here. As it stands, an accusation is sufficient; if you have a restraining order, you may not own a firearm. Thatâs not the same thing as a conviction; you are not provided with an attorney, there is no investigation done by outside parties. The process has far, far looser rules than any criminal proceeding.
What evidence would you accept? I have already demonstrated that countries without any realistic path to gun ownership can still have very high violent crime rates, even if the murder rates are lower. Iâve also demonstrated that countries with high rates of individual gun ownershipâincluding military armsâdo not necessarily have high rates of violent crime (including murder). So itâs clear that the firearms by themselves do not cause the crime, but are only the tools used.
What youâre trying to do is âcureâ pneumonia with a cough suppressant, and hoping that the underlying pneumonia goes away on itâs own once you stop coughing. Thatâs dumb. Even if you took all the guns in the US, youâre not going to fix the violence, the gangs, the domestic abuse, the rape, or even the suicides.
And yeah, conservatives oppose fixing all that shit too. So, good on you for agreeing with Republicans on that, I guess?
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How, exactly, do you plan to do that?
Increase marginal tax rates back to pre-Nixon levels. Raise income taxes in general for the people making 50% over median. Wealth taxes on wealth in excess of $1M. Taxes on corporate profits that arenât immediately reinvested. Investment in infrastructure (emphasizing public transit and walkable areas rather than more and bigger roads), and public education, combined with elimination of all charter/magnet schools, and any public funding of selective/private K-12 schools. Criminal justice reform with a focus on rehabilitation/reform rather than punishment, and diversion for drug-related and non-violent offenses. De-privatization of public services. National single-payer healthcare. High density public housing thatâs funded in perpetuity so that itâs not allowed to decay. Minimum wage laws that are tied to CoL and inflation. De-suburbification/de-sprawling cities. Strengthen the NLRB, and give it not only teeth, but nuclear weapons. Etc.