Author Topic: Crime study: Hanguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings  (Read 940 times)

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rangerrebew

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Crime study: Handguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings

By PAUL BEDARD | JANUARY 14, 2014 AT 9:46 AM



Topics: Washington Secrets Gun Control National Rifle Association Joe Biden Newtown Media

Photo - All the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting by Adam Lanza were legally purchased. A new report said:Â "People cannot be denied their Second Amendment rights just because they look strange." AP Photo All the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting by Adam Lanza were legally...
Media hype about mass shootings in America has fostered a myth that the killings are on the rise and that an assault weapon ban, expanded background checks and greater attention to the mentally ill will curb a rampaging epidemic, according to an authoritative and exhaustive study by a noted criminologist.

Instead, according to James Alan Fox, author and criminology professor at Northeastern University, mass shootings have remained stagnant over 34 years, averaging 20 a year, and few were committed by the type of berserk psychos portrayed by the media.

“Public discourse is grounded in myth and misunderstanding about the nature of the offense and those who perpetrate it,” he writes in the journal “Homicide Studies.” He added: “Without minimizing the pain and suffering of the hundreds of those who have been victimized in recent attacks, the facts clearly say that there has been no increase in mass shootings and certainly no epidemic.”
 

The study debunks several proposals aired from President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats after the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting aimed at stopping mass killings. While he said any plan is worth trying, he concluded that short of abolishing the Second Amendment, there is little that can be done.

“Mass murder just may be a price we pay for living in a society where personal freedom is so highly valued,” he wrote in the study coauthored Northeastern criminology student Monica DeLateur.

They reviewed years of mass shootings and found that most shooters are not the crazed killers pictured on TV: Most are seeking revenge and practice their crime, like the two Columbine, Colo., killers.

“The rarest form of mass murder is the completely random attack,” said the study, “Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown.”

He addressed 10 myths fostered by the press. Key among them:

— Mass shootings are on the rise. He used FBI statistics and found they have long averaged in the 20s per year, rarely going over 25.

— Video games play a role. The study found no link between video games and expanded violence, and blamed the media and lawmakers for using the entertainment industry as a “convenient scapegoat.”

— Profiling will help catch killers before they act. The study found that most are white and about 30 years old, characteristics that “are fairly prevalent in the general society.”

— Expanded background checks will stop killers from getting guns. The study cites a study from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns that in 93 recent mass shootings, the gun buyers didn’t have a criminal or mental health record. “People cannot be denied their Second Amendment rights just because they look strange or act in an odd manner,” wrote Fox and DeLateur.

— An assault weapons ban would work. They found that the typical weapon used is a pistol, not an “assault weapon” like the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. Assault weapons were used in 24.6 percent of mass shootings, handguns in 47.9 percent. And limiting the size of magazines weapons can carry wouldn’t help, they said, because any ban would impact new sales and “there is an ample supply of large capacity magazines already in circulation.”

http://washingtonexaminer.com/crime-study-no-rise-in-mass-shootings-despite-media-hype/article/2542118
« Last Edit: January 15, 2014, 06:33:01 am by rangerrebew »

Oceander

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Re: Crime study: Hanguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2014, 06:34:59 am »
video games by themselves may not play a discernable role, but the broader culture, of which they are a part, almost certainly does.

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Crime study: Hanguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2014, 07:53:26 am »
video games by themselves may not play a discernable role, but the broader culture, of which they are a part, almost certainly does.

I was stunned to hear the stats on video games sales vs movie ticket sales....... I wish I had written it down.. the last Grand Theft Auto release was something like 100 times the top grossing movie of the year..  can't tell me this isn't having some sort of affect...... especially when so few parents pay attention to what games their kids are playing and how violent some of them are.
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Offline EC

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Re: Crime study: Hanguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2014, 09:04:46 am »
I was stunned to hear the stats on video games sales vs movie ticket sales....... I wish I had written it down.. the last Grand Theft Auto release was something like 100 times the top grossing movie of the year..  can't tell me this isn't having some sort of affect...... especially when so few parents pay attention to what games their kids are playing and how violent some of them are.

There is a counter argument to be made here. How many potential shooters turn to video games instead of the local mall or clock tower now?

Since the mass shooting numbers are absolute, not adjusted for population, you would expect to see an increase over time, purely from the population increase. Yet they have stayed steady for the entire period that video games have existed. Maybe video games are actually defusing the situation instead?

It's a thought.

Though I do agree that parents should know what their kids are doing and playing.
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rangerrebew

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Re: Crime study: Hanguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2014, 12:49:36 pm »
There is a counter argument to be made here. How many potential shooters turn to video games instead of the local mall or clock tower now?

Since the mass shooting numbers are absolute, not adjusted for population, you would expect to see an increase over time, purely from the population increase. Yet they have stayed steady for the entire period that video games have existed. Maybe video games are actually defusing the situation instead?

It's a thought.

Though I do agree that parents should know what their kids are doing and playing.

If you think about, and I know it to be true from almost 25 years of working with kids, people who heavily engage in using these games develop very, very poor social skills since they are never dealing with humans.  Human contact means little to them and while they may not turn out to be mass murderers, they tend be socially immature and uncaring of others.

Offline EC

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Re: Crime study: Hanguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2014, 02:19:15 pm »
If you think about, and I know it to be true from almost 25 years of working with kids, people who heavily engage in using these games develop very, very poor social skills since they are never dealing with humans.  Human contact means little to them and while they may not turn out to be mass murderers, they tend be socially immature and uncaring of others.

I am going to agree. But (you knew that word was coming) I think you might have cause and effect the wrong way around. Do they fail to develop social skills because they play games? Or do they play games as a way to avoid people?

We could both argue each side of the debate equally well, methinks, being reasonable and educated people.

I was a very shy child. Hated to talk to people, so much so that my two forays into public speaking at school ended up with me throwing up in front of the class. If we had had computer games then, I'd have probably hidden in them. Instead, I hid in books, but also had to deal with people. Never liked it much, but it was practice.
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rangerrebew

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Re: Crime study: Hanguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2014, 05:58:33 pm »
I am going to agree. But (you knew that word was coming) I think you might have cause and effect the wrong way around. Do they fail to develop social skills because they play games? Or do they play games as a way to avoid people?

We could both argue each side of the debate equally well, methinks, being reasonable and educated people.

I was a very shy child. Hated to talk to people, so much so that my two forays into public speaking at school ended up with me throwing up in front of the class. If we had had computer games then, I'd have probably hidden in them. Instead, I hid in books, but also had to deal with people. Never liked it much, but it was practice.

Good point!  But (you knew that word was coming :silly:) when I was young, when Moby Dick was a minnow, we didn't have games so we interacted with each other and learned how to communicate and become socially more mature.  Now that the games, and computers, are everywhere, the kids don't interact with each other but with some unseen entity on the screen which teaches them none of the social skills necessary to be successful.  Yes, many do use them as a means of avoidance but its more obsessive compulsive where they earlier got some kind of relief (emotional reward) from playing the games and then continued seeking that relief.

Offline Rodrigo

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Re: Crime study: Hanguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings
« Reply #7 on: January 17, 2014, 03:09:22 am »
Back in 1968, the most hated guns in America were the 5 shot bolt action army surplus rifle and the Saturday Night Special.

Get rid of them and America would be a paradise on earth.  How did that work out for them?

Offline Chieftain

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Re: Crime study: Hanguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings
« Reply #8 on: January 17, 2014, 03:26:57 am »
Back in 1968, the most hated guns in America were the 5 shot bolt action army surplus rifle and the Saturday Night Special.

Get rid of them and America would be a paradise on earth.  How did that work out for them?

Only because they are unfamiliar with anything chambered for a Finnish .338 Lapua......

 :beer: