Meds and Mass Murder

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Is national consumption of brain candy contributory to mass public shootings? Looks like it might well be. Takeaways There exists covariant rise in the per capita number of adverse psychological reactions to prescription psychotropic medications and mass public shootings. The rate of adverse medication reactions may be low by an order of magnitude. Mental health and mass shootings The Gun Facts project previously reported on the association between mental health and mass public shootings. However, the review omitted one interesting issue – the contribution of pharmaceutical psychotropic medications. psychotropic: affecting mental activity, behavior, or perception We first became concerned with this topic after the Columbine Massacre. It was reported that one of the two assassins did a cold turkey withdraw from Luvox (an antidepressant) because a known side effect was rage. In other words, he wanted to be as amped-up as possible to commit mass murder. When we started looking … Continue reading →

AR-15s: Mostly Harmless

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The AR-15, allegedly the most popular consumer rifle in the United States, has become the poster child of the gun control industry. But from a homicide statistics standpoint, they are mostly harmless. Main Take-aways AR-15s constitute maybe 4% of all American firearms. AR-15s are used in 0.4% of firearm homicides, maximum. Just How Many AR-15s Are We Talking About? There is no doubt the AR-15 is a popular rifle. The firearm industry notes this. Users note this. Even the gun control industry notes this. Knowing how many are out there is crucial for understanding if they are a problem or not. The AR-15 has been around since 1959, but the last eight years has seen a significant increase in its popularity. And no wonder. The rifle is lightweight, meaning anyone can shoot it (YouTube has a bunch of videos of tiny young girls firing them). They don’t recoil much due … Continue reading →

Good Guy with a Gun?

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Much has been made in public discussion about a slogan popularized (though I doubt originally penned by) the National Rifle Association, namely: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Ignoring that no such absolute statement is true (e.g., “all politicians are criminals”), it is a good slogan to ponder. What is the efficacy of armed response to an attacker? We at the Gun Facts project have covered this question quite a bit on the Guns and Crime Prevention page, and there is no use going through all that again. But in terms of mass public shootings (MPSs), and we’ll include active shooter events (ASEs) in this tally as well, the situation has better clarity due to the fact there is an indisputable violent event happening. Many defensive gun uses (DGUs) may be against unarmed attackers or have a lower … Continue reading →

Mental Health and Homicides

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It is time to tap dance on landmines and begin the Gun Facts investigation of the intersection of mental health and gun violence. This will be an ongoing project, as it appears to be a determinant variable in mass homicides (and hence, mass shootings). Main Takeaways Three forms of mental impairment are tightly associated with spree and serial killers. 74% of mass shooters had some form of genetic or induced disorder. Deinstitutionalization has removed dangerous people from being closely monitored In-patient psychiatric care was replaced, in part, with psychotropic medications, some of which can amplify violent desires. Triggering the Investigation News reports too often detail that mass public shooters had prior histories of mental health issues. One need only look at some of the twenty-first century’s mass murderers (the rogues galley at right being a representative sample) and you can tell there is something fundamentally different and dangerous about them. … Continue reading →

Gifford’s Goof

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Just when you think people could not be more deceitful, they somehow manage. And by “deceitful” I mean Giffords Law Center and their rather ridiculous state-by-state scorecard on gun control policy, wherein they attempt to convince an unwary public that guns lead to mayhem (when in fact it is Giffords lawyers that lead intellectual mayhem). Major Takeaways “Strong” gun control is associated with higher rates of violent crime (homicides, assaults and rapes). They handily omitted Washing D.C., which has very high violent crime rates. They included suicides (which we know are not a gun issue). They don’t cite sources for their data. Their grading scheme for the “strength” of gun control laws is 100% opaque. The History of Scorecards, Branding and Giffords Law Center Gun control scorecards are nothing new. The formerly important Brady Center used to annually publish their bit of intellectual fraud in scorecard format. And, every year … Continue reading →

Pondering Parkland

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Now that details of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida have emerged, we can begin to explore causes and potential cures (unlike members of the gun control industry who didn’t hesitate a moment before proffering legislation of dubious efficacy). In this article we review: The high-level notes about the event Mental health and its recurrence in such incidents Legal intervention failures – Parkland and Virginia Tech (VT) Mass shootings as a policy priority What to watch in the political arena Legislative options and realities The high-level notes about the event The shooter was autistic, as was the Sandy Hook shooter. He had regular behavioral problems to the point that his mother would sometimes call the police to come over and talk to him. He had been treated at a local mental health center and had been on medications He was in a degrading mental state. He had a set of … Continue reading →

Crossing Trends

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While spelunking some data on the modes of gun deaths, I decided to have a look at some smaller instances, namely how often people die accidentally from gunshots, and the number of justifiable (perhaps even meritorious) homicides. Most readers already know that accidental gun deaths have been in sharp decline for several decades, despite the number of firearms in circulation skyrocketing. This is a curious situation, and one that goes directly against claims by the gun control industry. With concealed carry a fact of daily life in 42 states, one might also think justifiable homicides have gone up. They have, but only slightly. But this too also goes against the claims of gun control advocates, who maintain that concealed carry does not prevent crime (we’ll ignore the whole deterrence effect issue, which is likely contributory to the multi-decade drop in violent crime in America). Though the number of incidents for … Continue reading →

Gun Deaths: Meaningless Metric

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You can get an average citizen to cross their eyes in brain damaging confusion by telling them that “gun deaths” is a meaningless statistic. And it is, though members of the gun control industry continue to use the hollow phrase, and some members of the media never question its meaning or validity. It doesn’t stand up to domestic or international scrutiny. Since it is the job of the Gun Facts project to eradicate bad information, let’s spend a few electrons today killing off the “gun deaths” charade. What in the heck is a “gun death”? This is not a caustic question. In the realm of people dying by catching bullets, there are a number of categories concerning such deaths. And many of these categories are made up of sub categories. And for each of the categories, there are ways of achieving the same result (a dead person) without a using … Continue reading →

Trace, Stolen Guns, Ineptitude

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When 85% of your study’s data comes from 6% of the states, two of which are known as being anti-gun, you have a poor study and an even worse credibility score. Critique 85% of reporting law enforcement agencies come from just three states (6% of states). 51% of reporting law enforcement agencies come from just California. A mere 1,053 agencies participated (there are over 3,000 counties in the U.S. – multiply by the number of city agencies). Background First, let’s take NBC to task. The Trace is openly backed by Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire politician with a messianic quest to enact gun control laws. For a news organization to collaborate with an established front group calls NBC’s objectivity into question, though many people doubted their objectivity to begin with. “Every news organization has propagandist tendencies, except for MSNBC, which is a propaganda organization with news tendencies.” — Guy Smith What the Trace … Continue reading →

California-Nevada Gun Shows – Not What The Media Reported

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Page 10 in the appendix is a handy place to put a statement like: No significant relationships existed between gun shows and firearm injuries along known trafficking routes or when California’s 10-day waiting period was excluded. That is where one of many key clues about the lack of viability of a recent piece or research was filed. That tax money from the federal (NIH) and California (U.C. Berkeley) governments was used to generate this paper and the minor media frenzy that followed should give voters something to consider at election time. Key takeaways Raw data shows lower rates of California death and injury after gun shows. Even after questionable adjustments to the data, rates of change in gun misuse were small, possibly within random variations. Controls for other influences (confounding variables) were odd and incomplete. Unexplained, undocumented adjustments leave the quality of the research in grave doubt. No verification that the misused guns … Continue reading →