Comments

What leads To Mass Public Shootings? — 4 Comments

  1. Too rarely does an elder male family member come around and drag the abuser into the street for a not-so-subtle attitude adjustment.

    We see that fatherlessness has contributed to a host of societal ills, not least of which MPSs. We can lay this at the feet of LBJ and Nixon. The former kicked fathers out of the homes of their children, and the latter took them and threw them in jail.

    One more example of government creating a problem, blaming it on the people, and then demand more power to correct the error (which will irrefutably make it worse, perpetuating the cycle).

    • You make a sound point.

      In another post (http://www.gunfacts.info/blog/inner-city-guns/) we noted the rate of fatherless homes in the inner-cities is a contributory factor to young males seeking male fraternity in street gangs, and we all know what that leads to.

      I don’t have enough expertise in social psychology to make a judgement, but I suspect (and only suspect) that in the ages before the modern welfare state, a young lady who found herself in a “family way” would drag the father, or any reasonably suitable male, to the altar, because life as a single mom in the inner-cities would be too brutal to attempt.

  2. Howdy Guy,

    I see a small typo on the teaser (email) page – seems the 2nd ‘that’ should read as ‘than’: “That leaves us wonder what makes mass public shooters different that the rest?”

    Question: I understand the Sandy Hook shooter was significantly Autistic, but those table items are blank. Did that incident roll up under mental illness (avoid double counting)? What’s the basis to not break it out to the Autism line?

    Thanks,

    Trayton

    • Thanks for the typo catch. It is actually supposed to read “That leaves us to wonder …”

      The autism angle is confounding. Deep in the page http://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/ we cite a study that shows autism being the #1 predictor of mass murder, though the study (IIRC) did not break out autism in terms of its ranking for serial killers vs mass public shooters.

      So we are left with a conundrum that I cannot (yet) isolate, namely to what degree does autism figure into mass shooters. But we do know that the following mass shooters were autistic:

      * Travis Reinking, Waffle House shooting
      * Nikolas Cruz, Parkland high school shooting
      * Adam Lanza, Sandy Hook elementary

      That is a rock-bottom 3% of shooters who were confirmed autistic. So, it may be a minor contributing factors but one I would not ignore.

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