Mass shootings in the US since December- 4

[underpants]

A few minutes earlier a man, who according to a police officer carried identification with the name of Jiverly Voong (42) of nearby Johnson City, New York, barricaded the back door of the building with his car before walking into the centre carrying a high-powered rifle. He was wearing a bright-green nylon jacket and dark-rimmed glasses. He started shooting immediately, killing at least 13 people and wounding at least five others.

Yesterday’s rampage was the third mass shooting in the US in less than a month and came days before the second anniversary of the country’s worst ever such incident at Virginia Tech.

Last Sunday a heavily armed man burst into a North Carolina nursing home killing eight people before being shot and wounded by a policeman.

Last month, a 28-year-old unemployed man killed 10 people, including his mother, other relatives and a small child, in a shooting rampage through two counties in Alabama, the worst in that state’s history.

Last December, a man dressed as Santa Claus opened fire at a Christmas party being given by his former wife in Covina, California, killing nine people before shooting himself.

Some criminologists suggest the recent spate of shootings could be linked to the recession and the impact of job losses on personal finances and relationships.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0404/1224244010545.html

[pnorman]

1. Sooner or later,

they'll ALL be blamed on O'Bama! GUARANTEED!

pnorman

[boomerbust]

14. Fox reported today

The cop killimgs today were blamed on Obama's soon to be gun ban, certainly not to be blamed on right wing hate speech and lies.

[nashville_brook]

2. Mass shooting are modern 'slave rebellions' according to researcher Mark Ames in his book,

Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond."



I haven't read too deeply into this most recent spree killing, but I would be that Ames' book would provide an excellent framework for understanding the mechanism at work in that one, as I believe he has more than proven his case in his book -- the basic argument is that the decline of workers' rights has lead to an astronomical increase in stress in the workplace. Most people can deal with it via happy hours, endless bitching and stealing office supplies. But, the already unhinged don't have access to these adaptive strategies, and when they break, they can turn to violence as a means of "settling the score."

He compares modern spree killings to slave rebellions and makes a powerful argument that famous slave rebellions we know from history class were perpetrated by the same unhinged personalities as we see in rage/spree killings. The book is worth the read for its recasting of slave rebellion alone.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon if anyone is interested:

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Postal-Rebellion-Workplaces-Columbine/product-reviews/1932360824/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R1EU0RXOWF9XZP

[underpants]

4. Going Postal

If I remember correctly it was 1992 or 1994 when there were more deaths in post offices than in electric chairs.

The USPS shortly thereafter banned guns from the workplace. This was a understood thing for a long time in the Post Office-that you COULD bring a gun to work. Aside from making this a GUN issue the point is that I used to work with a social worker who had been employed by the USPS to regularly counsel employees, they hired a lot of Vietnam Vets after they came back-add PTSD with extremely tedious work ( I did 3 months in an Army post office-easy duty- and let me tell you it is tedious) and well you know the rest of the story.

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the link.

[nashville_brook]

5. i love this book -- Ames is a wonderful writer -- and really illuminates how the post office

became a hellhole to work in.

he hits on so many themes -- one of those 'can't put down' books.

[FailureToCommunicate]

3. "Some criminologists suggest..." The SHOOTINGs could be traced to easy availability

"Some criminologists suggest the recent spate of shootings could be linked to the recession and the impact of job losses on personal finances and relationships."

The SHOOTINGs could be traced to easy availability of many types of guns in this NRA-controlled country. Have any of you heard THIS discussed by the news media when coving these recent stories? All they talk about
is 'who was this guy?' 'Why did he go crazy and shoot all those people?'

And please don't bother us with the old response "but he could have killed with a kitchen knife" The statistics (darn facts) just don't support that NRA line...

[nashville_brook]

6. just spitballing here, but i think you're right about this -- the gun is central to the psychology

of these killings. it's the ultimate "i'll get you" revenge fantasy -- that you can shoot people down.

not so much with the kitchen knife. it doesn't have the same psychological power. not to delve too deep into this, but i imagine that people who fantasize about knife killings have a different trigger. like it's something more intimate where the killer is maybe more infatuated with blood, or the 'stuff of death.' gun killings, i think, are the tool of revenge.

[krispos42]

7. Except that guns have always been easy to aquire in America

There are, after all about as many guns as there are cars.


And yet...









Although it looks like there'll be a spike in the orange line for 2008 and 2009. :-(

[FailureToCommunicate]

10. Not sure what your graphs are showing... "...as many guns as cars"??

from recent update :
"A string of attacks in the U.S. in the last month left 44 people dead in all.

A gunman killed 10 people and himself in Samson, Ala.; shootings that began with a traffic stop in Oakland, Calif., left four police officers and the gunman dead; an apparent murder-suicide in Santa Clara, Calif., left six dead; and a gunman went on a rampage at a nursing home Sunday, killing seven elderly residents and a nurse who cared for them."

[krispos42]

13. Percentage of victims that were in a 1-victim, 2 victim, etc. murder

In the graph, which I made from DoJ data, you can see that about 95% of all homicide victims in a given year were in incidents with 1 and only 1 corpse. And this is consistant throughout the years.


The raw data is here:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/multivictab.htm

For 2005, the numbers look like this.


Percentage-wise, homicide victims per incident:

1 victim per, 95.41% of all corpses
2 victims per, 3.81% of all corpses
3 victims per, 0.60% of all corpses
4 victims per, 0.12% of all corpses
5 or more victims per, 0.05% of all corpses




In terms of total numbers,
15,079 people were murdered when there was only one murder victim
602 people were murdered when there were two murder victims
95 people were murdered when there were three murder victims
19 people were murdered when there were four murder victims
8 people were murdered when there were 5 or more murder victims.



Although I don't know how 95 people could be killed in triple-homicides... 95 is not divisible evenly by 3. :shrug:

[derby378]

9. "Easy?" In New York?

Come on...

[FailureToCommunicate]

11. The shooter used at least two "registered" handguns. He had recently

returned from working in California. He could have gotten them at a gun show. Or stolen. Does it really matter? There're everywhere.

[depakid]

8. They missed about 8-9 more

I guess it's gotten to the point where people are numb- and can't be bothered to do the research.

[FailureToCommunicate]

12. I'm guessing someplace keeps track of gun violence.

from recent update :
"A string of attacks in the U.S. in the last month left 44 people dead in all.

A gunman killed 10 people and himself in Samson, Ala.; shootings that began with a traffic stop in Oakland, Calif., left four police officers and the gunman dead; an apparent murder-suicide in Santa Clara, Calif., left six dead; and a gunman went on a rampage at a nursing home Sunday, killing seven elderly residents and a nurse who cared for them."

[Mike 03]

15. Sadly, I don't think this is a problem that can be solved with gun laws anymore than drug laws have

prevented illegal drug abuse.

This is a mental health issue, and I'm very fearful that this is going to be worse and worse.

Every few days I go to Google News and search on "Family Murder Suicide" and every damned time a whole bunch of new ones come up, along with various killing sprees of all sorts.

It's very sad. I don't have a good answer.

EDIT:

Kick and Rec. This whole phenomena needs to be explored and I always appreciate seeing discussion here on this issue.

[givemebackmycountry]

16. Reported from the Irish Times-

And not the New York Times or the Washington Times (yeah, I know) point being - I have to read this from a Irish newspaper (and a good one at that) and not an AMERICAN FUCKING NEWSPAPER where it should be reported from.

You know, after watching Bill Moyers last night I've been really agitated.
These "people" stole the country out from underneath us for no other reason other than profit.

Millions of people are suffering now.
Lost jobs, lost homes, lost hope.

We live in a country where there are more guns then people.
And they never even considered that and I would imagine they didn't give a fuck.

Soulless bastards.

Wait until people start showing up in their driveways with assault rifles, instead of signs.
It's only a matter of time.