More on the recent mass shootings
A few things on the recent shootings:
1 – There are already gun control proposals shooting through Europe in light of the shooting in Germany. Because putting a big band-aid on after the fact is going to help. Also, the shooting that occurred in Germany illustrates that gun control is not particularly helpful at preventing mass murder from homicidal maniacs. Germany had licensing, governmental permission required, registries, membership requirements, and enough gun control pipe dreams to make Carolyn McCarthy soil her bloomers in excitement. But it still happened.
2 – The Brady Bunch wasted little time dancing in the blood of the dead. They were quick to point out that Alabama, with it’s low Brady Grade, was, naturally, a place where such a violent attack could occur. They never point these grades out when mass shooting occur in #1 ranked California, #9 Illinois, or NJ. And that their higher ranks correlate with where mass shootings occur and overall violent crime. And odd how they always left DC off the list even though it had the strictest gun controls. And it had a mass shooting yesterday too. As I said, mass shootings tend to come in sets.
3 – One of the criticisms I hear of gun blogs is that whenever there’s a mass shooting, we ignore it and don’t talk about it. Which is patently false (look up). I’ve covered them. Anyway, someone thought they’d pull a gotcha on Jeff and ask him that. He responds:
Both are terrible crimes committed by insane mutants. Both have nothing to do with the basic (Constitution, or God given,) RIGHT to self defense. They are crimes, as in the abuse of a right.
The wonderful Autoblog covers all things cars. They don’t blog about DUI arrests or auto-accidents. Misuse of motor vehicles are crimes that have nothing to do with covering the car and truck news of the day.
And I cover them as well. But mostly from a how current events can affect gun laws way.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t use a gun to kill 17 people.
This guy (allegedly) killed 13 year old girl last weekend, and is suspected of as many as 7 other murders, didn’t use a gun.
Lizzy Borden didn’t use a gun.
Wade Nassar, murdered last week two blocks from where I work, would still be alive if he had kept the gun he used two years ago to drive off a would be robber.
Of course, we who pay attention, know The Wild West was actually quite peaceful and safe.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:44 am
What are the odds these guys were on anti-depressants? I’d bet that they were. Not that correlation = causation, but it seems there were just as many guns but fewer mass shootings back in the days before everyone was heavily medicated.
March 12th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Ben, there are other reasons for the increased occurrence of mass murders, instead of thinking anti-depressants cause irrational behavior – behavior at the level of an atrocity. One is simply numbers.
For example – and I am not suggesting this is so: If only one in 100 million persons in this country is so unstable as to be able to perform such a horrific act in any given time period, then we now have 3 such people around in the US at any given time. When our population was 200,000,000 two generations ago, maybe we had only 2 such people around at any one time. So the occurrences will increase even if the rate per population stays the same.
Before you find a correlation to any other thing, look at the actual incidents to determine if a cause (motive, opportunity, means) can be detected. Correlation is not a cause.
March 13th, 2009 at 5:50 am
One problem that no one talks about is the eforrt towards deinstitutionalization promoted by the ACLU in the 50s & 60s. The idea was that we had drugs to treat mental illness. We don’t need to keep people locked up. One problem is that people with mental illness take the drugs, feel better then throw them away and relapse. There are no controls in the process.
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The second problem is the attitude that crazy people essentially have the right to be crazy. Even though they would be healthier and happier if their particular malady was treated, the state cannot force treatment on them.
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The end result is that we have people with mental illnesses roaming the streets. It is practically impossible to commit someone to a mental facility unless they commit a crime. Nor can we “force” treatment on them even if they do. I’d say the results speak for themselves.
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Now this seems an odd comment on a gun blog but the plain fact is that guns are tools, the same as autos. As a former LEO, I can’t tell you how many people I scraped up at hideous auto accidents and wondered if this was little more than a messy way of committing suicide; often taking innocent bystanders with them. In this perspective, spree killings are a lot more common than we acknowledge. They just don’t use guns as the Brady Campaign would prefer.
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The response to these “incidents” reminds me of the awful childhood game of teasing a dog with a stick. A 3 or 4 year old thinks it enormously funny when the dog bites back at the stick until they encounter a smarter dog who goes after the one holding the stick. That’s the Brady campaign; They are biting at the stick.