The Department of Homeland Security conducted a study of 29 mass killings in the US since 1999. The result is a picture of the typical mass killer. He would not have been slowed down, much less stopped, by the current round of “assault” weapon banning.
The basic pattern found by the New Jersey DHS fusion center, and obtained by Public Intelligence (.PDF), is one of a killer who lashes out at his co-workers. Thirteen out of the 29 observed cases “occurred at the workplace and were conducted by either a former employee or relative of an employee,” the November report finds. His “weapon of choice” is a semiautomatic handgun, rather than the rifles that garnered so much attention after Newtown. The infamous Columbine school slaying of 1999 is the only case in which killers worked in teams: they’re almost always solo acts — and one-off affairs. In every single one of them, the killer was male, between the age of 17 and 49.
They also don’t have military training. Veterans are justifiably angered by the Hollywood-driven meme of the unhinged vet who takes out his battlefield stress on his fellow Americans. (Thanks, Rambo.) In only four of the 29 cases did the shooter have any affiliation with the U.S. military, either active or prior at the time of the slaying, and the fusion center doesn’t mention any wartime experience of the killers. Yet the Army still feels the need to email reporters after each shooting to explain that the killer never served.
The study excludes the most infamous veteran mass killer, Timothy McVeigh, because he perpetrated his act of terrorism well before 1999. And his bombing was an act of terrorism. It did not involve a gun.
To anyone who actually served in the military, the notion that we veterans tend to snap and go off shooting people is insulting and ludicrous. Most who serve in the military never see combat. They’re not even in combat roles. The frustrated and crazed veteran who turns into a killing machine is a stereotype that Hollywood and our new secretary of state helped perpetuate. Thanks for that, John F. Jenjis Khan Kerry.
Over at Ace’s place, another observation gets a worthy mention.
Typically, the immediate deployment of law enforcement is required to stop the shooting and mitigate further harm to victims. Typically, active shooter situations are over within 10 to 15 minutes.
Those 15 minutes tend to be the critical time when the shooter is hunting and killing unarmed and defenseless people. When the good guys with guns show up, the massacre tends to end. Usually with the death of the shooter, one way or another.
These mass shootings tend to be acts of rage that end in suicide. What laws will stop that? Ramp up the penalty for gun crime all you want. If the shooter does not intend to survive the massacre, a million year sentence in jail will do nothing to stop him. And why, Sen. Feinstein, do you focus on weapons that tend not to be the ones used in mass killings?
I submit the probability that Feinstein et al are trying to ban specific guns because they think they can, on the way to banning more, and then more, until all firearms are taken out of the hands of us citizens. Every act of violence will lead to calls to further restrict the rights of the law-abiding.
Furthermore, they don’t really care about the facts and will not be deterred by knowledge of what firearms killers actually use, or past history with gun bans, or the present evidence presented by Chicago’s bloody streets. They want a full ban and are approaching it incrementally.
So, they must be stopped, here and now. No farther.
Ban males 17 to 49 years old.
Simple, isn’t it ?
There you go, problem solved. At the very least ban them from anyplace that has more than two people outside that group. Works for gun free zones, right?
“They also don’t have military training.”
If they DID have military training one would expect higher body counts. In saying that I’m not at all trying to belittle or minimize the crimes we’ve suffered, just pointing out that a killer taught how to shoot by Hollywood is a lot less dangerous than one taught by the Marines.
Quite true, James. McVeigh, case in point.
Far more dangerous than a shooter trained by Marines is a bomber trained by Combat Engineers.
We need to find out what we as a society have done to turn our males into these ticking rage bombs. Guns don’t do that.
I have a theory. Just an armchair analyst’s theory, mind you, but here it goes:
It’s males, but we can get even more specific. It’s not the poor inner city males. They do most of the killing, but much less of the mass kill-random-strangers-then commit-suicide attacks.
What’s going on? Is it possible that buried in the human male psyche is a “humiliation self destruct switch” which, when it perceives an absolutely hopeless lack of social status (which in evolutionary terms, equates to mating opportunities), does something to the brain and makes the guy go berserk?
And it directs that rage towards imagined causes of the humiliation- those who are seen as “successful”.
This is the same dynamic that powers the fundamentalist muslim suicide bomber. Humiliation becomes rage. It directs outward, finds a target: “My life is a miserable hell.. so it is the fault of those happy people. Damn happy people, I’ll kill them! Kill them all! Their children!”
Thus we see it is the antisocial loner in an otherwise successful “white” environment. The loser in a comfortable suburb- no job, no girlfriend. No status.
And why not in the inner cities? Because if you are dysfunctional there, you are surrounded by lots of other people who are also dysfunctional. You are not the isolated loner. Your life may suck, but you look around… lots of other lives suck even worse.
Muslim clerics exploit this. Without them, “loser” males would be violent towards each other, yes, but like inner city youths they would not, well, explode, for want of a better world. But the cleric REMINDS them how good the Christians/Jews/Hindus/Whomever have it. REMINDS them that those people are the cause of the crappy life he has. Forcing them to relate their lives to the distant “Crusader” world, he takes a person who in America would only shoot a rival gang member, (Or maybe a bodega clerk) and makes a suicidal mass murderer out of him.
Just a re-reminder
http://blurbrain.com/reminder-sandy-hook-shooter-did-not-use-an-ar-15/