The lie that mass shootings are more frequent - busted by U of IL study

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hso

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https://news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/568301

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois shows that the frequency of mass shootings has not been increasing. This in spite of the news coverage, commentary, and rhetoric creating the impression that mass shootings are more frequent. Perhaps as interesting is the finding that the often repeated idea that copy cat shooters are inevitable is not shown in the data.

Since the two memes, "more mass shootings than ever" and "mass shootings will be copied soon on the heals of a mass shooting", are common in the news and as talking points by proponents of banning firearms it is useful to us to have legitimate studies like this to point to as objective proof that both ideas are incorrect and not supported by fact.

Mass killings may have increasing news coverage, but the events themselves have happened at a steady rate for more than a decade, according to a new study by University of Illinois researchers. Furthermore, some types of mass-killing events seem to occur randomly over time, making prediction difficult and response crucial.

“One of the things we were hoping to do is give people some clarity. If they hear about an event, they can look at that event in proper context,” said Douglas M. King, a senior lecturer of industrial and enterprise systems engineering. He conducted the study with Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor of computer science.

“When you see a mass killing on the news, it captures your attention. You hear about these events more, and start to wonder, does this indicate that mass killings are escalating in frequency? The data shows that even though we’re more aware of mass-killing events, the rate that they’ve happened overall has remained steady,” King said.
 
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Something I've found to be all too true:

People are not rational processors of factual information. Judgements are easily distorted by the tendency to rely on personal anecdotes, small samples, easily available data, and faulty interpretation of statistics.
Michel E. Kabay, "Psyching Out Infosecurity," Infosecurity News, January/February issue, pg. 28.
 
Flawed study. They are only studying mass killing events and not mass shooting events. Most mass shootings do not involve mass killing. This is a critical shortcoming of their study. Why? Because they are basing all of their conclusions on social behavior based on the perspective of whether or not 4 or more people (other than the shooter) died. Whether or not they did may be due to shooter accuracy issues, weapon choice (reliability, cartridge, etc.), response times by EMS, medical care available, etc.

From the looks of their numbers from a 10 year study, it would appear that they are maybe only sampling about 1/10th of the overall mass shooting events, if that many.
 
They did not actually rule out a copycat factor. They said, “..., when we look at all the mass killings together, there’s some indication that a mass-killing event could lead to another at some point in the future, but we can’t specify the type it will be or when it will happen.”

The fact that they cannot specify does not mean there are no copycats. I don't remember specific details, but I recall that some of the mass shooters in the news in prior years were reported to have shown evidence that they were inspired by previous killers.
 
Flawed study. They are only studying mass killing events and not mass shooting events. Most mass shootings do not involve mass killing. This is a critical shortcoming of their study. Why? Because they are basing all of their conclusions on social behavior based on the perspective of whether or not 4 or more people (other than the shooter) died. Whether or not they did may be due to shooter accuracy issues, weapon choice (reliability, cartridge, etc.), response times by EMS, medical care available, etc.

From the looks of their numbers from a 10 year study, it would appear that they are maybe only sampling about 1/10th of the overall mass shooting events, if that many.

Mass killings used to be the normative metric used where 4 or more people were killed, not counting the killer. Then the Obama administration reduced that definition to 3 or more people, including the killer. Using this lower metric, of course, one could look at the same data and conclude (erroneously) that mass murder conducted using a gun had increased. Then a random blogger coined his own definition of "mass shooting" and created the "mass shooting tracker," which is the thing to which Democrats often refer when they push for more gun control laws. This is a deceitful tactic to move the goalposts and create one's own goalposts to advance an agenda.

When most people talk about "mass shootings," they are talking about events where a person randomly kills as many innocent people as possible, such as Las Vegas, Orlando, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, etc. These typically occur in "gun-free zones," where guns are banned. Democrats use events like Vegas, etc. to quote the magically-coined "mass shooting tracker" and suggest a much higher prevalence of Vegas-like events than actually exists. A man killing his wife, her lover, and himself, would count as a "mass killing" under Obama, but is not a random event like Vegas. A gang member shooting three rival gang members on a drive-by shooting of their HQ and taking a bullet in the process would count as a "mass shooting" under the magically coined definition, but is not a random event like Vegas. These are targeted events targeting specific people known to the assailant. That is a far cry from Vegas, Orlando, etc.

Admittedly, I do not have the full study and have only seen the abstract and the articles describing the study. Both the title of the link and the abstract say "mass killings," not "mass shootings," so in that respect it is not flawed. They openly stated what they were studying, and that was the normative metric for years until Democrats coined their own lower thresholds to advance their gun control agenda despite increasing public opposition to it. It is true that other factors may affect body count in either direction (e.g. people getting trampled in Vegas, proximity to a hospital, etc.), but this study did not seem to set out to study that as there would be too many variables. They seem to be merely using the widely used metric of mass killing that existed for years to determine whether the rate of mass killings had increased over the decade from 2006-2016. Using that metric, they found that it did not increase.
 
Flawed study.

All of them are.

We simply need a different metric than body count to determine whether or not something qualifies as a "mass shooting". To me, if a guy opens fire on a crowd, it's a mass shooting, even if there are no fatalities. Conversely, a person who murders their own family and then suicides is a multiple murderer, not a mass shooter, even though it would be counted as one using the current threshold. So would a gang conflict that leaves 3 dead.

I think that venue, methods and motive are the most important factors in determining what does or does not qualify.
 
Admittedly, I do not have the full study and have only seen the abstract and the articles describing the study. Both the title of the link and the abstract say "mass killings," not "mass shootings," so in that respect it is not flawed. They openly stated what they were studying, and that was the normative metric for years until Democrats coined their own lower thresholds to advance their gun control agenda despite increasing public opposition to it. It is true that other factors may affect body count in either direction (e.g. people getting trampled in Vegas, proximity to a hospital, etc.), but this study did not seem to set out to study that as there would be too many variables. They seem to be merely using the widely used metric of mass killing that existed for years to determine whether the rate of mass killings had increased over the decade from 2006-2016. Using that metric, they found that it did not increase.

You are right, the did openly state what they were studying, but the flaw is that they have failed to consider factors into why the trend hasn't changed. It isn't because there are the same number of folks attempting such feats, because there aren't. They are treating the results as if mass killing was a particular type of behavior when it is more of a result of a particular type of behavior, mass shooting. That they could not find patterns of mass killings isn't a surprise. They were looking in the wrong place.

Of course, the problem with public dissemination is when such studies are redistributed and described as being evidence of something they aren't, which is the case with this thread. The study did not look into mass shootings, only mass killings. While the two may overlap, they are not interchangeable.
 
It is true that other factors may affect body count in either direction (e.g. people getting trampled in Vegas, proximity to a hospital, etc.), but this study did not seem to set out to study that as there would be too many variables. They seem to be merely using the widely used metric of mass killing that existed for years to determine whether the rate of mass killings had increased over the decade from 2006-2016. Using that metric, they found that it did not increase.
Take a hypothetical contagious disease that is fatal 90% of the time. Now let us suppose that over a period of 50 years, treatment improves to the point that the disease is fatal much less often although it is still serious and often permanently debilitating. People survive at a higher rate, but for whatever reason, the new fatality rate isn't public knowledge, nor is the progression of improvement in survival rates readily available.

Let's suppose that an outbreak of the disease occurs that kills many, causes a large number of people to be permanently disabled and a public outcry results.

So a study is done tracking fatalities due to the disease and it is determined that fatalities from the disease have remained constant over the past 50 years. The results of that study are published to try to show that the disease is not a burgeoning problem but has really caused about the same magnitude problem for many years.

Except that without the information about how much fatalities have decreased as the result of improved treatment, the study results are likely misleading. If, for example, the treatment rate has reduced the fatality rate to 10% from the 90% level it was at the beginning of the study period, then a constant level of deaths would indicate that people were actually falling sick with the illness 9 times more frequently at the end of the study than at the beginning.

So a constant fatality rate in combination with improved treatment which reduced the fatality rate would actually indicate that MORE people are really getting sick with the illness and the problem is, in reality far worse than it used to be. With the exception of the fact that a smaller percentage of the people who get sick are actually dying.

In addition, by neglecting to look at the serious illness as well as the permanent debility often caused by the disease, a large part of the actual toll of the problem is being ignored.

In the same way, survival rates from gunshot wounds have improved due to faster medical response times and better/more effective treatment options over the past few decades. Furthermore, the number of people shot in a given incident may actually be less than they would have been in times past due to faster LE response times and more aggressive LE actions in active shooter situations. By focusing exclusively on situations where a particular number of persons actually die, the study glosses over the fact that many of the mass shootings that qualified as mass killings near the beginning of the study period would not have qualified as mass killings had they taken place near the end of the study due to the improvements in LE and medical response.

In other words, the fact that mass KILLINGS have stayed constant doesn't necessarily imply mass SHOOTINGS happen at the same rate or that the resulting number of casualties (wounded persons AND fatalities) has remained constant. In fact, as was the case with the example using the hypothetical illness, it seems likely that mass shootings and the overall number of casualties have increased over the study period--perhaps even dramatically.
 
Unfortunate bottom line: the mainstream media drives the definitions when it comes to describing any incident involving firearms. Doesn't matter a bit that we here know that the manner in which any gun-related fatalities are framed is faulty, most "academic research" is going to favor the liberal interpretation, and even when it doesn't, the results are not widely accepted nor widely disseminated.
 
All of them are.

We simply need a different metric than body count to determine whether or not something qualifies as a "mass shooting". To me, if a guy opens fire on a crowd, it's a mass shooting, even if there are no fatalities. Conversely, a person who murders their own family and then suicides is a multiple murderer, not a mass shooter, even though it would be counted as one using the current threshold. So would a gang conflict that leaves 3 dead.

I think that venue, methods and motive are the most important factors in determining what does or does not qualify.

I agree. That's one of the points I was trying to make. Democrats use actual mass shootings like Vegas to push their gun control agenda. However, in doing so, they quote "mass shootings" like you describe with respect to domestic violence, gang violence, etc. and imply that those numbers represent numbers of Vegas-like events. They are not the same animal, and any study that treats them as such is going to get misleading results, sometimes deliberately so for political reasons.
 
You are right, the did openly state what they were studying, but the flaw is that they have failed to consider factors into why the trend hasn't changed. It isn't because there are the same number of folks attempting such feats, because there aren't. They are treating the results as if mass killing was a particular type of behavior when it is more of a result of a particular type of behavior, mass shooting. That they could not find patterns of mass killings isn't a surprise. They were looking in the wrong place.

Of course, the problem with public dissemination is when such studies are redistributed and described as being evidence of something they aren't, which is the case with this thread. The study did not look into mass shootings, only mass killings. While the two may overlap, they are not interchangeable.

I generally agree with the point you're trying to make in that mass shooting is not necessarily the same as mass killing. However, I also disagree with the "mass shooting" definition coined by a random blogger who equates domestic violence, gang violence, and Vegas-like shootings in order to advance an agenda. Until you can separate actual mass shootings (events in which a person intent on mass murder randomly shoots into a crowd of innocent people) from other shootings (gang violence, domestic violence, etc.), then you will not have an accurate representation of the frequency. In doing so, however, you would likely need to define a number of injuries or fatalities in order to create a measurable metric. Intent is hard to prove, but a domestic murder suicide is not the same as Vegas.

That said, the rates of mass shootings or mass murder are not relevant to the second amendment. The second amendment does not depend on violent crime rates, and guns have been repeatedly shown to be used far more often defensively than in commission of a crime (even recently under Obama's CDC). Far more people have died throughout history under tyrannical governments in countries without a second amendment than have died in our country from firearm-related murder. No one studies the benefits of the second amendment in terms of the millions of people not killed here by our government relative to countries that don't have a second amendment.
 
Eh, the means to make a bigger splash (than historically) are more common, and the efforts to do anything useful to physically stop or prevent the attacks are diminishing. Population is also steadily increasing. Even if you discard all the possible contributing factors offered up and philosophical arguments, it's pretty much certain that however often one of these guys loses it, his attack is more likely to be 'successful' (i.e. lethal, heinous, worthy of media coverage, whatever)

The real question we need to be brave enough to ask ourselves, is does it matter how frequently they occur? I think it doesn't, since these events are both inevitable and unpredictable. The only option is improving the reaction, which means getting a lethal response on scene, faster, which one would logically conclude means guns need to be on the scene in some capacity. Intervening to stop a known threat is integral to this (just as you don't let the gunman walk away, don't let a kid bringing weapons & threatening classmates off the hook). Prevention efforts will be of rapidly diminishing returns, for the same reasons I already stated, but will *generally* be useful in improving the response to threats if nothing else.

If there's a nutbar shooter going off every six months like there has been, but he reliably gets annihilated after felling maybe one or two victims, is that really a problem anyone can convincingly claim demands special attention over the litany of other causes of death each year? Or is it simply the exponential effect of compounding casualties on the human psyche that's actually at work here rather than rational risk assessment? It isn't like the anti's solution of disarming everyone and reducing killers to knives or cars will reduce the casualty count on that same twice/year black swan event, and there will still be cases where they will still be effective enough to win a 'high score.' At least with a lethal-force response process, a serious, organized, external military threat (Beslan) could realistically be thwarted along with the barely-more-common psychopaths.
 
As a Christian Calvinist I truly believe in the Depravity of Man. In other words, we come from the womb as sinners, and are capable of all manner of evil. Ever since Cain picked up a rock and killed his brother men have been killing their fellow man due to the wickedness inherent in the fallen human heart.

So, mass murder has been with us for many, many years. The difference now is that the news media has become the conduit for 24/7 voyeurism, and mass murder has become a sport to gain ratings and viewers. Another example of the evil that lurks within.

I fully anticipate that evil will continue, and even grow worse, until the Prince of Peace returns to consummate His everlasting kingdom.

Until then I will cradle my rifle in the same hands that hold my Bible.
 
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