Mass shootings in the US have risen sharply in 2020 – why?

[beijingwalker]

Mass shootings in the US have risen sharply in 2020 – why?
November 27, 2020 8.40pm AEDT


Despite the US response to the coronavirus pandemic using sporadic stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, as at November 26 2020 there have been 578 mass shootings so far this year. According to data provided by the Gun Violence Archive, which records mass shooting deaths, this is already significantly above the 417 mass shootings recorded in the whole of 2019.

In fact, by August 2020, mass shootings in the US had already exceeded the year-end totals for each year from 2014 to 2018. Mass shootings in the US have continued the general year-on-year increase in terms of frequency, fatalities and injuries – but 2020 has been far worse than usual.

The Gun Violence Archive defines mass shootings as a minimum of four victims shot (either fatally or not) excluding any shooter killed or injured in the attack. GVA’s definition of mass shooting includes incidents related to criminal activity, family disputes or gangs.

There are more conservative measures of mass shooting with higher fatality and injury thresholds available at both the Mother Jones and the Mass Shootings in America databases. But all show an increase – part of a broader trend which has recently increased sharply.


There are a number of reasons behind this: people’s concern that law enforcement and the criminal justice system are not coping with a growing crime-wave while COVID depletes police numbers. There are also those who believe that law enforcement is not working fairly or effectively for them. A lot of these people are prompted to buy themselves guns. Mass gatherings and protests have also involved firearms being brandished and open-carry laws being used to maximum advantage and intimidation. As a Harvard study from 2015 has shown, put simply, more guns equals more homicides.

In September the FBI identified the election period up to the 2021 inauguration as a “potential flashpoint”, issuing an intelligence report warning of an imminent “violent extremist threat” from far-right militias, including white supremacists such as the Boogaloo Boys.


Research generally shows that more guns in circulation typically results in more mass shootings occurring, but this correlation alone – while important – does not explain why such attacks happen. Other countries with similar gun-ownership rates to the US have considerably fewer mass shootings – so there is clearly something cultural at play.

More guns
An increase in firearm sales in the US at the start of the coronavirus pandemic especially involving “first-time buyers” helped to partially explain the rise in mass shootings, reaching 1.3 million handguns and 700,000 rifles and shotguns sold by August 2020. This was an increase of 60% over average US sales, with August gun sales being the fifth highest month on record according to FBI data.

With demand for firearms increasing, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Checks System (NICS) struggled to keep up and provide sellers with definitive background check decisions within the required time. This legal loophole in the system allowed sellers to use their own discretion to sell (or not) when background checks of purchasers came back from NICS as “inconclusive”.

In some states, gun sales increased massively in the pandemic period: the District of Columbia and and Michigan recorded increases in sales of 449% and 200% respectively between August 2019 and August 2020, according to FBI background check data. In Michigan, gun sales actually dropped 19% between 2018 and 2019 before massively increasing.

Protesters, some openly carrying semi-automatic weapons, descended on Lansing, Michigan in April 2020 to protest against the governor’s stay-at-home order. EPA-EFE/Jeffrey Sauger


In addition to known gun sales data, sales of guns not registered or recorded – those bought at gun fairs and garage sales, for example, as well as online “ghost guns” (legal-to-purchase firearms that come in “kit form” and require assembly by the purchaser and not yet defined by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) as “firearms”) must also be considered.

More problems
There are are many types of mass shooting and they are not homogeneous. The reasons and mechanics behind school shootings are not the same as attacks in workplaces or public spaces. Some attackers seek infamy and attention – and tend to kill more victims than other mass shooters as a result of their desire to “make the news”. Others have extreme ideological beliefs or hatred of people who may be unlike themselves.

Severe mental health problems are behind less than 30% of active shooter attacks. Many others kill because of narcissistic or disordered personalities which make them feel that mass shooting is the way to resolve their distress in life. Personality disorders are not mental heath problems and are classified separately from severe mental health problems and psychosis – the vast majority of mass shooters fully comprehend what they are doing.

In the majority of mass shooting perpetrators, there were clearly identified triggering events which caused intolerable distress that pushed individuals into action – making their fantasies become a reality.

With increased gun sales and the number of mass shootings already extremely high, we can expect many more in coming months. Research has shown the “contagion phenomenon” is true – mass shootings lead to other mass shootings, through general awareness and sensationalist news reporting that creates anti-hero figures of mass shooters, appealing to others who have considered undertaking mass shootings themselves.

The febrile climate in the US will encourage some potential mass shooters to undertake attacks – and these may involve targets, victims and locations different from those typically involved, due to lockdown restrictions forcing attackers to go to where large numbers of potential victims will be.

Schools, federal buildings and places of worship only account for 25%, 10% and 4% of mass shooter incidents respectively – with commercial and retail premises accounting for almost 50% of attacks. These will remain attractive targets to mass shooters when densely populated and while access to firearms remains relatively easy.

Mass shootings in the US have risen sharply in 2020 – why?

It’s been a terrible year for gun violence in America.

theconversation.com

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

#BlackLivesMatter

Mass Shootings Are Soaring, With Black Neighborhoods Hit Hardest

2020 is on pace to have the most mass shootings shootings since the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive started tracking them. In their wake, anti-violence activists say the lack of public outpouring feels familiar: “Nobody cares about us.”

www.thetrace.org

Mass Shootings Are Soaring, With Black Neighborhoods Hit Hardest

This summer’s Rye Day celebration in Syracuse, New York, almost ended — as it had the past 14 years — without a hitch. The event, a public birthday party hosted by a local business owner and philanthropist, drew hundreds of residents to an outdoor performance space on June 20 on the city’s Near West Side, where they ate and drank, registered to vote, and escaped the various pressures of the pandemic.

But then a scuffle broke out. A Facebook Live stream shows a girl dancing, then noticing the commotion. “It’s a fight,” someone remarks, off camera. “Time to go.” The girl in the video agrees, playfully, but her concern escalates. The music stops. People scream. The crowd scatters, and the video turns into a whir of bodies and grass. Seconds later, more than a dozen gunshots ring out.

“It was chaos,” said Nitch Jones, a local youth pastor who was at the center of the crowd. “You had wounded individuals, wounded friends, family members, associates on the ground, all crying out for help. People experiencing someone who looks like they’re dead. People experiencing trauma for the first time.”

At the scene, Jones rushed to help the wounded. He spotted a body lying motionless on the asphalt. It was a boy who had been shot in the head. Jones helped calm the boy’s family until paramedics arrived, and wheeled his body to an ambulance. Photos from the aftermath show a woman standing in a haze of red light from the vehicle’s sirens. She’s barefoot, wearing a shirt with the words “Proud Mom” emblazoned on its back.

Her son, Chariel Osorio, had graduated from high school earlier that day. He was 17 years old. Less than a week later, he died of his injuries in a hospital bed.

Osario and the eight victims wounded in the Rye Day shooting are among more than 320 people killed and over 1,600 injured in mass shootings so far in 2020, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. What constitutes a “mass shooting” varies between government agencies and groups like Gun Violence Archive, which defines the incidents as any with four or more people wounded. Our analysis of Gun Violence Archive data found a total of 395 mass shootings as of August 24, an almost 45 percent increase over the same period last year. If the pace holds, this year’s total will be the highest tally since the organization began tracking shootings seven years ago.

The mass shootings have disproportionately occurred in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Nearly 50 percent of the shootings analyzed by The Trace took place in majority-Black census tracts, though less than 10 percent of census tracts nationally have majority Black populations. The pattern held in almost every city that has had more than five mass shootings in 2020. In Chicago, for example, 31 out of 36 shootings with four or more victims happened in majority-Black census tracts. In Detroit and Milwaukee, each of which saw five mass shootings, all of them occurred in majority-Black neighborhoods.

Every act of violence shocks the conscience, but the public setting of many mass shootings renders them acutely horrifying. People pursuing an activity presumed safe – going to church or school or the store, putting in a workday, enjoying a night out – suddenly confront a barrage of bullets. The ensuing media coverage stirs public mourning and donations. Activists and Democratic politicians cry for reform. But when a gunman in a dispute kills or injures multiple bystanders in a predominantly Black or Latinx community, the bloodshed is written off by some journalists, politicians, and onlookers as predictable, endemic to the neighborhood and therefore not worthy of the same sympathy.

With this year’s more frequent mass shootings part of a larger rise in homicides during the pandemic, President Donald Trump has used the violence to stoke fears among white voters and paint Democrats as soft on crime. His Justice Department is sending federal agents into cities under the aegis of Operation Legend, an initiative designed to produce quick increases in arrests and federal prosecutions, which evidence shows do not correlate to long-term reductions in violent crime and improvements in public safety. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden promises to increase restrictions on gun access but rejects proposals to reduce police funding and dramatically shift public dollars toward social services and grassroots interventions.

For Black gun violence prevention advocates, the responses to mass shootings in Black and Brown neighborhoods are dispiritingly familiar. “When these mass shootings happen in white communities, everybody has a response: they have policies, investments, thoughts and prayers,” said Amber Goodwin, the founding director of the Community Justice Action Fund. “When Black people are shot and killed, it’s a lack of response. Or if there is a response, it’s a divestment. It’s carceral.”

Fugitive of The Week: Lamar Rouse Jr. wanted for murder in Rye Day shooting - News Break

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — Syracuse Police are on the lookout for Lamar Rouse, Jr., who is wanted for murder in connection with the Rye Day shooting. The Rye Day shooting happened in late June on Syracuse’s Westside. The mass shooting killed 17-year-old Chariel Osorio and injured eight others...

www.newsbreak.com