Why are mass shootings becoming more common (since the 80s)?

[HiPointDem]

The news on Friday was horrific...Yet these sorts of headlines are also becoming gut-wrenchingly familiar. Of the 12 deadliest shootings in U.S. history, six have taken place since 2007...Mass killings appear to be on the upswing — even as other types of homicides and violent crimes are becoming less frequent...

For much of the 20th century there were, on average, a handful of mass killings per decade. But that number spiked in 1980, and kept rising thereafter. In the United States, there have now been at least 62 mass shootings in the past three decades, with 24 in the last seven years alone. This has happened even as the nation’s overall violent crime and homicide rates have been dropping.

One theory is that mass murders (usually defined as murders with four or more victims over a short time period) are somehow contagious. Back in 1999, four public health researchers published a famous study titled “Media and Mass Homicides...” They...found that different incidents appeared to be influenced by each other in a number of ways, often spanning many years and across continents...

Mental illness is one likely factor — a survey by Mother Jones found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” Yet the studies above note that researchers still have a ways to go before they understand the exact connection between the two.

And what about the availability of guns as a factor? Researchers have found a connection between guns and homicide — more guns tend to lead to more murder. And guns will obviously make any mass attack far deadlier. Note that there was also an attack on 22 students in a Chinese elementary school on Friday. But there was a key difference: The man only had a knife, and there were zero fatalities.

Note: This is a bit misleading: Since 2010 in china 21 people have been killed & 90 wounded at schools by 'rampage killers' armed with knives, cleavers, or similar weapons:

http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_%282010%E2%80%932011%29

Again, though, overall gun violence in the United States has been declining in recent years while mass shootings and killings appear to have become more commonplace. It’s not entirely clear why that is. And it’s an increasingly important question.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/why-are-mass-shootings-becoming-more-frequent/


I did my own analysis of the motivation for the mass shootings since the 80s listed in an article at Mother Jones.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map

I threw out one case because it was about a family dispute and killed only family members, and apparently missed one along the way, leaving a total of 60. Of those:

- 30% were over workplace disputes.
- 30% had no known motivation, either because public information was limited or information available showed no clear motive.
- 23% could be classified as motivated by revenge, with targets loosely related to the parties the shooter deemed responsible for his problems (e.g. school personnel where the student failed to achieve an academic goal).
-8.3% were related to some kind of romantic/spousal dispute or disappointment.
- 5% were attacks on some general group the shooter deemed to be a problem (e.g. sikhs)
- 3.3% were outliers: one was a felon killing police and one labeled 'terrorism' on the military (though this isn't completely clear -- it was the case of Nidal Hasan).

In some of these cases the shooter was deemed 'crazy,' but I just looked at what the shooter himself said/wrote where that was available, and if that didn't exist or there was not enough information I classified it as unknown.

It seems that the majority of mass shootings are motivated by revenge for some perceived wrong or existential threat, most often economic or status related, or a combination of the two (e.g. as in failing to win some academic goal).

So if I were to try to answer the question of why mass shootings have become more common, that's where i'd start. It seems a reasonable hypothesis, since these cases started to increase in the 80s and have apparently increased of late.

I also think that the recent spate of knife rampages in China, despite the pooh-poohing by the columnist above, may have similar motivations.

Talking exclusively about availability of guns & mental health services seems to me to be an easy out.

[green for victory]

1. Before the introduction of Prozac in Dec. 1987, less than one percent of the population

Before the introduction of Prozac in Dec. 1987, less than one percent of the population in the U.S. was diagnosed with bipolar disorder – also known as manic depression. Now, with the widespread prescribing of antidepressants, the percent of the population in the United States that is diagnosed with bipolar disorder (swing from depression to mania or vice versa) has risen to 4.4%3 . This is almost one out of every 23 people in the U.S.

the one thing common in all of these shootings

http://ssristories.com/index.php

Why isn't this discussed in the mainstream media?

[HiPointDem]

2. Your list did weird things to my computer so i closed it, but from what i saw, that list isn't a

list of mass shootings, it's kind of a mish-mash which includes some mass shootings.

There may be something to what you say, but I'd prefer a more rigorous list. 30% of mass shootings in the US have been workplace incidents, and there's no clear anti-depressant link there that i know of.

[green for victory]

4. maybe try a different browser

it works on my firefox (loaded up with no script and cookie managers)

and it's a well researched database with links to original stories

anyone that looks at that database can see there is a serious problem with pharmaceutical drugs

it's sortable too (if you can open the page)- click the red "what" and you will see school shootings in a neat little row. The page speaks for itself.\

EVERY American needs to see the statistics. We need to do something Now!

Here are the words from the warning label on the bottle of Prozac:

WARNING

SUICIDALITY AND ANTIDEPRESSANT DRUGS

Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of PROZAC (fluoxetine hcl) or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk with the clinical need. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24; there was a reduction in risk with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults aged 65 and older. Depression and certain other psychiatric disorders are themselves associated with increases in the risk of suicide. Patients of all ages who are started on antidepressant therapy should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior. Families and caregivers should be advised of the need for close observation and communication with the prescriber.

Clue: the very manufacturer of the medicines warn of "psychiatric disorders" it's on every bottle

[HiPointDem]

5. yes, i'm not doubting the cases are real. however, it's a list of various kinds of cases of

violence (mass murder, single murder, attack without death, guns, swords etc) linked by the fact that the people who did them took anti-depressants.

that's cherry-picking. better way to do it is take a single category, include *all* cases in the category, & look at how many perps in that category were on anti-depressants.

[lbrtbell]

9. Wow, so much misinformation

I'm on antidepressants for fibromyalgia. Rest assured, I have never felt any urges to kill people en masse. Neither do other fibro patients taking SSRI's; we're too busy just trying to get out of bed in the morning.

And you're overlooking two very important facts. First, bipolar is UNDERdiagnosed. Second, you don't use SSRI's to treat bipolar disorder, as it can trigger manic episodes.

So when somebody is misdiagnosed as having depression instead of bipolar disorder, an antidepressant can really mess up that person's brain chemistry.

Another very important thing to remember is that bipolar kids and teens are often misdiagnosed as having ADD/ADHD. Meds for ADD/ADHD are stimulants like Ritalin. Guess what happens if you give a bipolar person a medication like Ritalin? That's right--instant mania! And if you keep giving that child or teen Ritalin for years on end, the bipolar disorder will reach critical mass by high school or college age.

It's the overprescribing of meds like Ritalin that's having such a devastating effect on our young people. Too many parents and teachers would rather medicate their kids than take the time to make them behave. Whether a child is bipolar or not, being given meds for ADD/ADHD that doesn't exist is a recipe for disaster.

[HiPointDem]

15. just wanted to say i did a little more research. i'd been a bit skeptical of the ssri's = suicide/

/violence before, mainly because i couldn't see a specific mechanism through which that would happen, but i stumbled across some research on akathesia, which gave me one. Widely documented in the pre-ssri era, too, and a fairly common side-effect in varying degrees not only with ssris but with other commonly administered drugs, e.g. reglan for nausea.

so i will be looking to see whether this kid was on any psych drugs.

[Deep13]

3. hmmm...

bad economy

expiration of awb

media-fueled paranoia

reduced access to abortion (sorry, but I think that freakanomics guy was right)

oh, and just general stress with no social outlets

[Sherman A1]

6. Agreed

There is never just one answer and while you may not have hit everything the applies, you are off to a good start. Another I would add is the 24 hour news cycle which desperate to fill air time with the latest horrific story (when they don't have an election horse race or shark attacks) makes every horrific story into a multi day event of repeat, repeat, repeat with no real investigative journalism. I am of the mind that these events while absolutely tragic are not necessarily all that common, but the feeding frenzy of the media is helping in itself to increase their frequency.

[lbrtbell]

7. Two words: Ronald Reagan

When you cut funding to treat the mentally ill, this is what happens. Our health care system is a disaster. I'm hoping that Obamacare will be the first step toward reversing this trend.

[HiPointDem]

8. you're saying the people who are doing the mass shootings would have been in mental hospitals

except ronnie deinstitutionalized them?

[Shankapotomus]

10. If we take as a given

that males are evolutionarily prone to use violence as a problem solver, with less and less imperialist wars on foreign populations to use as an outlet for that natural aggression, that violent nature turns inward, towards ones own people.

The European male (and I am one so I have no personal stake in attacking them) has been fighting wars and imposing his will on weaker foreign populations for thousands of years. There has to be some evolutionary effect from that. That when something is in their way, they are not evolutionarily adapted to run and hide as a member of a suppressed people would do. Since the European male (in this case American male) has traditionally been the victor and conquerer (ex. The indiginous N. American population), their coping strategies involve suppression of others, not submission or evasion. When problems arise with others the cultural lesson has been not negotiate but try to impose your will.

This is all just a hypotheses but, if it makes sense, we should start to see more of this in China as it becomes a dominant world power.

[HiPointDem]

11. us murder rate by year, 1900-2010

?h=474&w=600

[Shankapotomus]

12. Right, and I don't challenge that

But the stats for MASS slayings, which more closely mimic the kind of behaviors imperialist armies have imposed on and subjected weaker native populations to, have gone up. We see mass slayings repeatedly in the history of imperialism and manifest destiny. In others words, the coping strategy when dealing with whole cultures one doesn't understand or despises is to try to wipe them out. One of the traits these shooters typically have in common is not fitting in with or rejecting or being rejected by the larger culture.

[HiPointDem]

14. imperialist armies are the strong against the weak. the folks being rejected by the culture are

the weak taking revenge on those they perceive as the strong.

slave rebellion might be closer to the mark and actually "going postal" is a book about just that thesis.

[eridani]

16. Thom Hartmann says that income and wealth inequality is a major factor

Makes sense to me.

[magellan]

17. Hate radio, unchecked political propaganda, pro-gun lobbying

...and the fetishism of the 2nd Amendment by the right. It all started taking off in the 80s. More guns in private hands = more access by disturbed individuals. jmo.