"Never climb a tree or fence, or do anything awkward with a loaded firearm."

And other things I learned checking out this ad in the Saturday morning's Alaska Dispatch News.  It fell out as I pulled the paper out of the plastic bag.  [The quote in the title is from the safety chart below.]


The back side of the flier has stuff about Anchorage  and shows the engraving on the right (Petroleum Industry) and left (Fur Traders) cylinders and says

"Only 100 will be made in the edition."

If layaway starts at $200, what's the total price?

So I called and got a recording.  I looked on line.  There was a safety page and that got me to thinking - if this is a fancy 'heritage' revolver, wouldn't I want to display it?  How could I do that and be safe at the same time.  While I was mulling that over, the phone rang and it was a guy from American Legacy Firearms.

I asked about the price.  The full price, he said . . . it's gold plated and engraved, is $2495, but there's a special promotion, $300 off.  So it's $2195.  And only 100 will be made.

Then I asked about how one would safely display such a gun, since one is buying it because it is a special beautiful piece.  Well, they don't actually advise on that - was I thinking of a wall display, a display case?  A glass case, with a lock is possible, but it could be broken and the gun stolen.  We've had some customers who got really high quality glass that couldn't be broken and cemented it in - really elaborate.  It would be unloaded, of course.  You could put on a gun lock, but a big burly lock wouldn't look very good.  You could have a gun smith remove the firing pin, but then you wouldn't be able to use it.

I asked how long the discount would be in place.  There will be only 100, so when they are sold it's over.  25 have been ordered already and we hope to have them sold by the end of the year.


I looked further on line to see what safety storage options there might be.  The Kruger website sent me to the National Shooting Sports Foundation site where I found this from Project ChildSafe (from the National Shooting Sports Foundation):

"The decision to maintain a firearm in the home for self-protection is a serious, personal matter. Unlike passive safety devices, such as alarm systems, firearms used for home protection require significantly more involvement by the owner. Any added safety benefit that may be derived from a firearm depends in large measure on the owner’s commitment to appropriate training and a clear understanding of safe handling and storage rules. Are your security concerns realistic and consistent with local crime rates? Do other adults in your household support the decision to maintain a gun in the home? If they will have access to the firearm, will they join you in a firearms training and safety program? What precautions will be practiced to safeguard children? Do risk factors such as drug and alcohol abuse exist within your household? In addition, issues such as individual temperament, reaction to emergency situations, and specific family circumstances should also enter in the decision.

If you must have quick access to a loaded firearm in your home, you need to take special safety measures. Keeping a gun to defend your family makes no sense if that same gun puts your family members or visitors to your home at risk. Home firearms accidents can occur when unauthorized individuals – often visitors – discover loaded firearms that were carelessly left out in the open.

If you choose to keep a firearm for home security, your objective should be to create a situation in which the firearm is readily available to you, yet inaccessible or inoperative to others. Special lockable cases that can be quickly opened only by authorized individuals are options to consider.

You must exercise full control and supervision over a loaded gun at all times. This means the gun must be unloaded and placed in secure storage whenever you leave the gun in your home or elsewhere. Secure ammunition separately.

Your most important responsibility is ensuring that unsupervised children cannot encounter loaded firearms. The precautions you take must be completely effective. Anything less invites tragedy and is a serious violation of your responsibility as a gun owner."

I looked for safe storage.  Number 3 below is

"Firearms should be unloaded and securely stored when not in use."  But how exactly?

Here are basic safety rules from Ruger.

Click to enlarge and focus

These are all very reasonable and logical in the abstract, but, for example, will the person who's had a few drinks heed this kind of advice?

Click to enlarge and focus

I finally found this chart on safe storage (p.16). The commentary lists some of the problems.  There aren't any perfect solutions - especially if you want a gun for self-defense at home at night. The cable can be cut.  Electronic lock boxes won't work if their batteries die.  And all say to keep keys or combinations away from children and unauthorized people.  Easier said than done.

I also wanted to know how much this revolver would cost without the gold plating and the engraving.  I found this auction site that listed this sort of gun.  They ranged, as you can see, from $450 to $679. 

I don't know how many folks are ready to plunk down $2100 for one of these - though I'm guessing a lot more than I imagine.  But someone suggested that with the "petroleum industry" engraving, it might make a great retirement present for oil company employees in Alaska 

"I don't think anybody would've done anything differently" - Killing Moose In Denali National Park

The Anchorage Daily News story "Air Force staff sergeant felt he had to shoot charging Denali moose" Thursday tells about a family hike near the entrance to Denali National Park. They encountered a moose that charged them.  The airman, fairly new to Alaska, says he reluctantly shot the moose in the head when he felt his kids lives were in danger. 

I thought about this as I stopped on the Chester Creek bike trail on the way home Friday afternoon to watch a moose grazing about 50 feet off the trail. 


Richard Mauer wrote in the ADN story:

"Sirvid said he realizes some people think he shouldn't have shot the moose."

"I just wish that they were there with me. I know there are some points of views out there, but I don't think anybody would've done anything differently," Sirvid said.

Actually, I would have done something differently.  I wouldn't have shot the moose because I wouldn't have had a gun.

Carrying guns in Denali National Park only became legal in 2010, so all these years people managed their encounters with wildlife in the Park without killing the animals.  When we first came to Alaska - 35 years ago - I looked up the history of bear encounters in the Park.  No human had ever been killed by a bear in the Park.  I had done a check earlier when I snorkled in Hawaii and realized I knew nothing about the dangers I faced.  I learned that world wide, at that time, about ten people a year were killed by sharks.  I decided my odds were better in the water than on the road.   

A Craig Medred story in the Alaska Dispatch says that the first human killed by a bear in Denali only happened last year. Denali National Park's FAQ's about bears says there have only been 23 incidents where bears have injured humans in the Park.

No one can say what might have happened if Sirvid hadn't shot the moose.  I'm not saying I know that no one would have been killed by the moose or at least badly hurt.  I don't dispute his story - how could I?  He was there and I wasn't.   But considering the number of people killed by moose in Denali over the years (I can't find any examples), the probability is that no one would have died.

I do dispute his comment that nobody else would have done anything differently, because most of the people who have ever gone to Denali never had that choice to make.  Because they came into the wilderness unarmed.

And if he weren't carrying a gun, he would have spent what time he had thinking about non-lethal ways to avoid the moose instead of whether he should shoot or not.

And Friday, after I watched the moose for a while, I continued on home through the sun and shadows of the birch lined trail.

Which Right Is More Important? Right to Life? Right to Bear Arms?

The Declaration of Independence set forth the reasons the 13 colonies were declaring independence from England.

After a short preamble explaining that sometimes people have to cut old ties, the Declaration then says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal*, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Life.  Liberty.  Pursuit of Happiness.  These are the unalienable Rights our founders declared most important when they wrote to the King of England to explain why they needed to rule themselves.

Then after the Revolutionary War, the colonists came together to write up an agreement, which we know as the Constitution of the United States, on how to rule themselves.  It begins, again, setting out basic principles.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Justice.  Domestic tranquility.  Common defence.  General welfare.  Liberty.


After they finished the Constitution they added ten amendments which spelled out more rights.

As President Obama sets forth his gun control proposal, I just want to point out what should be totally obvious.

Different rights will inevitably conflict.    When Wayne LaPierre set forth the NRA's response to the Newtown shootings, he would brook no compromise to the Second Amendment.  Yet he had no trouble at all proposing to abridge the First Amendment rights of film  and video game makers.  That tells me that even the NRA recognizes that Constitutional Amendments are not absolute. 

Some rights are a means to more important rights.   The right to vote is a means to achieving liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The right to a free press is a means to helping the people of a democracy gain the knowledge needed to vote wisely.  The right to bear arms is a means to protecting liberty. 

Some rights are more important than others.  When one person's rights infringe on another person's rights, we have to determine which is the more important right.  Some are a question of preference.  Sometimes one person exercising his rights conflicts with others exercising their rights.  A well-known, though apparently misattributed quote goes, "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins."   The right to practice one's religion in the US, does not include the right to human sacrifice.  The right to life is more important.  The right to bear arms does trump the right to life.  Yet people bearing arms take 30,000 lives a year in the US. (Over half of which are suicides, but that still leaves another 15,000 or so that aren't.)

Which rights are the most important?  I believe that the rights enumerated at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence and of the US Constitution are the highest level rights.  They are the ends to which the other rights are merely the means.


There are a lot of things I don't know.  

I don't know why some people  - mostly men - have such a strong passion for guns.  So strong that it seems nothing else matters.  We can come up with plausible explanations - they bonded with their dads over guns;  they feel impotent in a world that is changing and and a gun gives them some sense of control;  they experienced loss through violence which they believe might have been prevented had they had a gun;  they grew up in a family where power was important and a gun is the ultimate source of power to them.  But I do know every individual comes to this feeling through their own individual path.

I don't know if any gun control legislation will actually make a difference.  Will it be watered down so it is only symbolic?  Will a black market for guns make it irrelevant?  There are lots of things that can dilute its intent.  (But symbolism is important or people wouldn't get upset when a flag is burned.) 

I Do Know

But I do know that guns make it easier for people to kill others and themselves than most other implements of death short of explosives.  Those who say "guns don't kill, people do" are half right.  People do the killing, but without guns, they would do it less.  So guns are only part of the answer.  The other part is working on helping people learn to resolve problems without anger and violence.  I know that people's experiences affect what they believe is possible, and some people who grow up surrounded by anger and violence do not know other ways to resolve conflict.

There's been a lot of talk about mental health in regards to mass violence.  I think we should be talking more about social health - people's ability to interact with other people in healthy ways.  Ways that lead to care and love and satisfaction, not to frustration and anger.  Most mentally ill people aren't prone to violence.  A larger percent of people not diagnosed with mental illness are likely to be violent than those with identified mental illness.  Social health, then, may be a better way of thinking about this.

I do know that life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness are higher level values than the ability to own an automatic weapon.  For those who believe they can only be happy with automatic weapons, I would hope they can find substitutes that can make them happy. There are so many neat things in the world, surely there must be something else that can fulfill them.   If not, I would point out that we are only guaranteed the pursuit of happiness, not necessarily its achievement.  But life and liberty are guaranteed.  Taking someone's life in pursuit of your happiness is not acceptable. 

Let's stop making this either/or.  Let's stop allowing the the extremists to define the debate.  Let's stop treating this as a win/lose battle.

Let's address the underlying causes of people's strong emotional responses.

• Why is owning a gun so important to you while most people live perfectly happy lives without one?  
• When did you first feel a need to have a gun?   
• Why are you so afraid of guns?  
• Under what situations is it ok for people to have guns?  

Let's start here, talking about people's core feelings and beliefs and where they came from.  Let's  find nurturing ways to talk to each other about guns and violence and alternative ways to resolve human conflicts. We can be better than this.




*Which shows the Constitution wasn't perfect since it allowed slavery and  considered slaves to be only 3/5 of a person when it came to calculating representatives.  Which is why I understand that any gun legislation is also likely to be imperfect.   But probably, like the Constitution, better than nothing at all. 

How The US Got Its First Japanese Zero In WW II

Synchronicity - I thought I would use that word to describe how I've been reading Brian Garfield's The Thousand Mile War:  World War II In Alaska And the Aleutians and just recently saw a photo at the Anchorage Museum of an event I had just read about.

But when I looked up synchronicity online, I realized that while it sort of has that meaning, it has a lot more meaning than I really want to imply.  I don't think I want to suggest that these two events - reading about Japanese Zeroes in the Aleutians and finding a picture of a downed Aleutian Zero at the museum - had any special meaning beyond coincidence and the fact that I was especially alert to WWII Japanese Zeroes when I happened to see this picture at the museum.  I might have passed by a similar picture a month ago, not giving it any special notice.  But now that I just read about it, I'm paying more attention.  Like when a couple is pregnant, suddenly they see a lot more pregnant women than they had before.

But, I will take this opportunity to share some Alaska WWII history with you.  The book is full of stories of incredibly far sighted thinking on the part of some - General Simon Bolivar Buckner gets lots of credit for getting Alaska as ready as possible given the inter-service rivalries, the general lack of military resources in the US in general, and the belief by many that Alaska was irrelevant - and equally incredible lack of preparedness as, for example, primitive communications systems that prevented critical information from getting delivered.

Photo of photo at Anchorage Museum

The quote below comes from a description, in The Thousand Mile War, of day two (June 4, 1942) of the Japanese attack on Dutch Harbor.  The weather is horrible.  Buckner has managed to put in a landing strip on Umnak Island and get some planes there to help protect Dutch Harbor.  The Japanese have no idea this air strip or these fighters are there.  The whole Japanese mission to go after Dutch Harbor was to divert US ships and planes to Alaska while the Japanese attack Midway.  US planes fly out into the storm to try to locate and torpedo the Japanese fleet.  (Yes, they have torpedoes, not bombs.)  They find them, but can't hit them.  The Japanese zeroes are far superior planes to the ragtag collection that Buckner's been able to cadge out of the military brass in the Lower 48.

The Japanese have bombed Dutch  for 20 minutes,  hitting a wing of the hospital and setting fire to a warehouse.  750,000 gallons of fuel exploded when they hit four storage tanks.   Garfield writes that because Dutch Harbor knew the Japanese were coming, only eighteen men died.

Heavy antiaircraft flak scored no hits on the wheeling enemy aircraft, but the Japanese did not escape untouched.  The Rube Goldberg radio had failed to get through, but Umnak had been alerted by the noise, and the Japanese choice of the west end of Unalaska Island as a rendezvous point to rally after each attack.  Now eight Japanese planes from Junyo had formed up in plain sight of the Umnak runway - and eight Flying Tiger Warhawks scrambled to meet them.

American fighters corkscrewed through the enemy formations, striated the sky with tracers, and sent one Zero into a spin, surrounded by a white vapor that turned black and erupted before the Zero touched into the water.
Lieutenant John J. Cape, a good-natured boyish twenty-three year-old pilot who loved to drive an old tractor around Umnak, watched a Japanese dive-bomber swell in his gunsight until, at point-blank range, he triggered a burst that hammered the enemy plane into a ball of flame and sent it down in fragments.  Then a snapped warning in his radio headset made him look behind:  he had a Zero on his tail.  He zoomed upward, hung desperately on his propeller, and rolled over on his back in a wild attempt to evade the Zero. 

In 1942, the United States had no fighter capable of outmaneuvering the Japanese Zero.  When Cape righted his P-40 he found the Zero still with him.  The panel instruments blew apart in Cape's face.  Ammunition exploded in his gun racks and fumes rolled through the cockpit.  Engulfed in flame, Cape fell into Umnak Pass, unable to get out of the spinning airplane.

From Navy webpage The Forgotten Theater  (Japan to lower left not on map)

As Cape when down, Lieutenant Winfied E. McIntyre tried to break away from another pursuing Zero.  The Zero's guns knocked out McIntyre's engine and set it afire.  McIntyre put the ship into a screaming dive, trying to blow out the fire;  he could not get the engine restarted, and almost went into a spin before he glided to a crash-landing on the Umnak beach.  He put the burning P-40 down so skillfully that he climbed out of it and walked unaided into camp.

Meanwhile, four of the homeward-bound Zeroes spotted an American PBY flying low on the water.  The PBY's waist-blister gunners raked the sky with tracers that seemed to have no effect on the diving fighters.  But three of the Zeroes broke off and headed away, too low on fuel to stay for the finish.  One stayed behind to finish off the PBY:  Flight Petty Officer Tadayoshi Koga, a slim young man with an abiding hatred for Americans.  Koga blew the plane apart in the air with his guns.  The Catalina splashed into the ocean, but Koga stayed to make sure.  Finally one man (Aviation Machinist's Mate W. H. Rawls) crawled out of the burning wreckage and paddled away in a life raft.  

Rawls, the blister gunner, had put a machine-gun bullet into Koga's plane, though Koga did not know he had been hit.  That one bullet, a third of an inch in diameter, was to bring the Allies a decisive prize of war.  Koga circled the bobbing rubber raft and machine-gunned Rawls to death in the water.

Koga climbed into the soup after that, but at that moment the needle of this oil-pressure gauge dropped to zero.  Convinced his engine was about to pack up, Koga turned toward the nearest land - Akutan Island.  He sent out a voice broadcast to the I-boat submarine which he had been told was standing by to pick up downed pilots.  Coming in over the island, he prepared to make a forced landing on the flats.  

He made the mistake of lowering his landing gear;  his wheels caught in the boggy tundra, snagged and flipped the Zero on its back.  The crash broke Koga's neck.

The alerted Japanese submarine searched the coast by periscope, but could not find Koga's plane.  (The Zero remained undisturbed on the lonely island until a month later, when a U. S. Navy PBY sighted it.  Navy crews were immediately dispatched to collect the prize.

(Aside from a few dents, Koga's Zero was intact.  Its only damage was a single bullet hole, from A/M Rawls' gun, severing the pressure gauge indicator line.  The gauge was broken, but the engine was unharmed.  American crews quickly dismantled the Zero and shipped it back to the States.

(Tadayoshi Kogoa's fighter was the first Zero captured intact by the Allies in World War II.  The apparently trivial loss cost Japan dearly.  American engineers, with this opportunity to fly and study the war's fastest, deadliest and most secret fighter aircraft, would design the Navy's F6F Hellcat around the principles they learned from Koga's Zero;  in less than eighteen months the Hellcat would drive the zero from Pacific skies and insure Allied supremacy of the air.) [pp. 40-42]

Such little things can make such a big difference.  One bullet in the pressure gauge indicator line, because Koga hung around to kill Rawls before flying back.  Koga trying to land, not knowing he could get back to his carrier, and getting his landing gear caught in the brush.

The book was published in 1969.  I'm not exactly what you'd call a war buff, but as you can tell from this quote, the prose moves you right along.  And for Alaskans, the book is full of back stories on familiar names and places. 

Kindergarten Killers And The NRA

Here's what the NRA's LaPierre said:

And here's another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.

Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here's one: it's called Kindergarten Killers. It's been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn't or didn't want anyone to know you had found it?

Kindergarten Killers

I decided to check up on this video game.  It's free to play online.  It's very cartoonish - not at all realistic.  Remember that the LaPierre's basic argument was that the only way to stop massacres is to arm the schools.  It's interesting to note what he didn't tell us when he used Kindergarten Killers as an example of vicious, violent video games:

• the guy with the gun is the school janitor AND 
• all the kids have guns!

Screen Shot from Kindergarten Killers

Yes, the man who said schools needed to be armed, had problems with this video in which the kids were armed.  Maybe it's because despite the kids with guns, the shooter can still carry out his vile act.

Video games are different from the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.  Not because Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood didn't have violence aimed at scaring little children.  They did.  

But in the video games, instead of being the victims, the players can become powerful and take on all the people who are making their lives difficult.  So, if someone were being bullied at school, I'm sure that Kindergarten Killer would give a kid a sense of power by getting back at his tormentors.

Screenshot from Kindergarten Killers

Do Video Games Cause People To Kill?  

I personally don't think that kids can play violent video games which include graphic acts of violence on the part of the player without it having negative effects on the players.  An LA Times article had an overview of research on the impacts of violent video games:

A number of studies have shown that watching a lot of violence on television or playing violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt produces aggressive tendencies in kids. Rowell Huesmann, a professor of communications and psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, says that the strength of the evidence is on par with data that say smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer.

Other researchers pooh-pooh such assertions and say that scientific findings have been decidedly mixed — with several studies finding no effects of violent video games on children and teens who play them.
In addition, such critics say, when effects are observed in studies, they have little or no relevance to psychological states that trigger violence in real-life situations.

It goes on to say the research has positive and negative findings, but looks to more longitudinal studies that will look at effects on the same kids over time.

Generalizing from any single study to the whole population of is always suspect.  Finding cause and effect relationships, when there are numerous other and often hard to determine  factors in the environment is tricky.  But if I had to put money down on what researchers will say in twenty years, I'd bet that they'll say something like:

• While the vast majority of kids who play violent video games may have immediate short term increases in aggressiveness, there is no danger that the games lead them to acts of illegal violence.  However, for some small number of kids with psychological issues, insufficient parent supervision, and/or a variety of other compounding factors, the games can lead to a greater likelihood of committing violent acts. [Don't quote this without the caveat above]

But then, the number of people who commit mass shootings is a tiny fraction of the people who kill people annually with firearms.  As a percentage of the whole American population, it would require so many zeroes after the decimal point that most people wouldn't even know how to say it.  (Over 30,000 people a year are killed by firearms in the United States.)

Also, most of the people who have committed mass murders in the last 30 years, didn't play violent video games as kids, because they weren't around.  

While I personally could live very happily in a world without violent video games,  I still don't think that banning them would significantly reduce the number of mass shootings. 


Antonin Scalia Gave Game Makers First Amendment Rights

Let's see now.  If I recall correctly, Scalia is considered one the most conservative members of the US Supreme Court.  Yet in 2011 he wrote the opinion that rejected the California (that home of Hollywood and many video games) law that restricted children's access to violent video games.  From the LA Times:

“Scalia dispatched all of the major arguments for the law. A technical but vital issue was whether the court must look at the law with "strict scrutiny," the practice in other free-speech cases. Scalia answered yes, meaning that the law had to serve a compelling state interest and be narrowly tailored to meet that purpose. Scalia found no such interest in the protection of children from imaginary violence. He ridiculed studies relied on by the state to show a link between playing video games and aggression in children. Referring to one expert, Scalia said that "he admits that the same effects have been found when children watch cartoons starring Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner."”

Other Issues

NRA vice president LaPierre's statement Friday is an interesting basis for doctoral dissertations in a number of fields from linguistics to criminal justice to media.  That was my realization as I started to review it Friday.  A quick analysis just wasn't in the cards.  But I hope to make a number of smaller posts, like this one, from it.

I would also add on this topic - violent video games - that LaPierre's attack on video games might have had some persuasive power had he:

1. Not convicted them ("a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people."), but simply raised the legitimate questions that should be raised.
2. Had not blamed them and a number of others (violent movies, politicians, the media, etc.) yet exonerated the one item without which these mass murders couldn't have happened as horrifically as they have - the guns that were used in them.  They are the single factor that is linked, without any question, to all the mass killings.  And, of course, had he not so emphatically exonerated the NRA. 

[I accidentally hit the publish button before this was finished and then deleted it.  On some blogs the link stayed up.  Sorry if you had trouble finding it.]

Shootings In Context Part 1 - Focus, Guns, Mental Health, and Suicide

It's a time for us all to send our good thoughts to the families of the 27 killed in Connecticut Friday.   But what about to the families of the 88* people killed by firearms in the US every day?  Or the families of the 93 people killed in traffic crashes daily in the US?  Shouldn't they get our sympathy too?  Why are these 27 particularly deserving?

Focus

A large part of the credit goes to the media. From all that happens in a day, they decide what is newsworthy. One NPR newsman today said something like, "Americans are riveted to news about the shootings today."  Well, since NPR and other media outlets were spending most of the day focused on the killings,  if people left the radio or tv on, one had little choice.  But why don't the media focus with such concentration on the shooting and traffic deaths that occur every day?  The total dead from those causes on a daily basis is eight times greater than the total in Connecticut Friday.

27 or 28 in one location at one time is easier to cover.  But such coverage distorts our perception of how many people die in the United States of different causes.  We become fearful of things that statistically aren't likely to happen to us, and become casual about things that are more likely - like getting hurt or killed in a traffic accident or by guns we keep in our homes. 

If we focus only on firearm deaths, about 32,000 a year, can we reduce the number of such deaths?  We have several options.  I heard several newscasters talking today about characteristics of mass killers.  Is there a way to identify them before they go on the rampage?

Characteristics of a Mass Murderer

Dr. Tom O'Connor's (Assoc Prof, Criminal Justice/Homeland SecurityAustin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN)  website  offers a long paragraph of characteristics from which I've made this list:  

• almost always male, 
• is probably White, and is 
• in his 20's or 30's.  [data I'll put up in another post soon doesn't quite support this]
• He loves weapons, particularly guns, 
• is a loner with no friends and few acquaintances
• no criminal record or any lengthy history of mental treatment.  
•  has festering "real or imagined grievances, frustrations, disappointments, and outrages done to him by others over a long period of time"
• most . .  are psychotic and probably qualify for a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict.
• motivation is often for no apparent reason at all, or sometimes for an apparent but perverse (often sexual) or private reason.  
• usually not under the influence of any intoxicant during the episode.  They don't need to be under the influence because in their minds, their self is already dead (society has destroyed it).  
• rarely know their victims, but their choice of victims is usually not random or coincidental (at least in their mind).  In their mind, the victims represent people they are envious of  
• triggering event may be a loss of job, being spurned by a woman, or something similar (usually an economic or academic crisis of some sort).    

 Two Different Strategies To Reduce Mass Murders

1. Watch out for potential mass murderers and prevent them from killing. 
2. Focus on factors in society in general and reduce, overall, the factors that increase the likelihood that an individual is going to go out and kill.

The first strategy seems pretty hopeless.  There are so many people who will never go out and kill, but who share many of those characteristics.  Do we try to monitor them like TSA checks all airline passengers?  But many of the characteristics in individuals aren't apparent until after the fact.

The second strategy creates public infrastructures to minimize those factors that lead to mass murders.  This more like a public health strategy.  The classic public health examples of clean public water and sanitary sewage systems did more to improve health than any other health measures world wide. 

In this strategy we'd identify those factors that need to be reduced or increased.  Going through the list above there are some factors that we can't eliminate, like gender and race.

But there are other factors that should be on the table:

• Mental health problems, particularly
• Feelings of isolation, rejection, victimhood, humiliation
• Inability to handle rejection at work, school, or from a woman
• Love of guns

And let's remember that far more people (about 30,000 more) die from other firearm situations than mass murders.  

The Republicans, and many Democrats, have said that talking about guns is totally off the table.  While some who advocate gun-control are probably overly zealous in their cause, not allowing any discussion of guns and ways to limit them seems to say that these 30,000 people who die from firearms each year don't matter.  It's a far different approach from the zero death policy taken for airline passengers.

This was the kind of position the tobacco companies had concerning any control of cigarettes.  Imagine trying to limit tobacco in today's political world.  Smokers' rights would be a major plank of the Tea Party and the Koch brothers would be funding 'research institutes' that pumped out studies proving there was no connection between smoking and lung cancer.  Oh wait, I forgot.  That's what the tobacco companies did.   But they didn't have the talk shows and Fox News to push their lies.

The National Rifle Association website does give a sense of the money and power they have in this area, but the tobacco companies were that powerful once too.  Unstoppable power has a way of outliving its welcome.  We've seen that with the Soviet Union, with Gaddafi, and Mubarak.  The NRA's time will come too.

But in the mean time are there ways to cut firearms deaths that wouldn't affect legitimate gun users (people who don't shoot at people, except as a last resort self defense), but would cut down on firearms deaths?


Firearms Deaths, Suicide, and Mental Health

If we look at the statistics, a number of studies** show (among other things) that

• about half the annual firearm deaths are suicides 
• four times as many men as women commit suicide
• a large percent of elderly men who commit suicide do so with firearms
• people in homes with guns are four times more likely to be killed by guns

Many of these studies conclude that it is necessary to find ways to limit gun ownership.  That option might well decrease the number of firearm deaths and certainly should be pursued.  But given the current political opposition to gun control, I'd offer an alternative that focuses on mental health services, including suicide centers.    Those opposing gun control should be challenged to support the kinds of mental health improvement programs that would reduce both individual firearm deaths (by far the most common) as well as mass murder firearm deaths.

Suicide centers could offer the possibility of assisted suicides to those with painful terminal diseases that would allow people to avoid huge medical costs to keep them alive and to die with some level of comfort and dignity.  They would also assist those who are not terminally ill, but are depressed or have other mental health issues that temporarily make death seem a good option.  Ideally, most people going to those centers will find options other than suicide, but the centers would be available to all those considering suicide and offer support and assistance to get them past the immediate crisis.

General attention to mental health, to constructive, non-violent conflict resolution strategies, anti-bullying programs, and programs that help people understand those who appear unusual, even strange (including for those people themselves) should be developed in schools and workplaces.  Not only would this cut down suicides and firearm deaths, it would lead to greater mental health among the population in general.  But that's only a stopgap measure.  I would argue that most mental health problems are due to people living in a system whose emphasis on efficiency over decency is fundamentally hostile to human beings.  Again, this is a societal public health problem, not an individual misfit problem.


This has gone on in a direction I hadn't anticipated when I started.  Much of the data I was going to present seems somewhat irrelevant to this line of reasoning,  so I'll stop here and offer more in a later post.

Here's the link to Part 2:  Shootings In Context Part 2: What Can We Learn From The Last 61 Shootings?


*Number comes from the Firearm and Injury Center at Penn Resource Book 2003 figure of an average of 32,470 traffic deaths per year, divided by 365. 

** 2003 Resource Book Updated
**The Epidemiology of Firearm Suicide in the United States
**American Society for Suicide Prevention
**Surveillance for Violent Deaths — National Violent Death Reporting System, 16 States, 2009
**NRA Violence Policy Center