The Secret Service just published a study saying many mass shooters from 2019 "experienced stressful situations," and there were warning signs. This is helpful, as far as it goes; but it fails to cite much more research from the academic world on numerous other studies of different contributing factors, that also contribute to these stressful situations. Some interpretations of this study seem to imply that he way to try to prevent these shootings is to look for warning signs shortly before the shootings without trying to figure out what the long term causes of all violence are, including the following article:
Report: Many suspects in mass attacks experienced stressors 08/05/2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — Many of the suspects in mass attacks in the U.S. last year had experienced stressful situations, like losing their job, or had struggled with substance abuse or mental health issues, according to a Secret Service report released Thursday.
The cases highlight the importance for law enforcement that people report suspicious or concerning behavior to head off potential attacks, officials said.
The report, compiled by the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, examined 34 attacks that killed or injured three or more people in 2019. A total of 108 people were killed and 178 were hurt.
Investigators found that nearly half of the suspects who had used guns had possessed them illegally, and about two-thirds of the people accused of committing the mass attacks had exhibited behavior that was concerning to others.
About one-third of the attacks were motivated by some type of grievance, the agency said.
“In these cases, the attackers were retaliating for perceived wrongs related to personal issues, issues in their workplaces, or domestic situations,” said Steven Driscoll, one of the report’s authors. Those included feuds with neighbors, bullying, being in debt or not being able to find gainful employment.
Seven of the 37 suspects had been motivated by some kind of extremist views, and nine showed interest in past incidents of mass violence, the Secret Service said. Some of the attacks were carried out by multiple suspects.
Connor Betts, who killed nine people and injured about 20 others at a nightclub in Dayton, Ohio, before being fatally shot by police last August, had “a history of concerning communications,” which included harassing female students in middle school and high school and had made “a hit list and a rape list in high school,” the report said. The 24-year-old also told other people he had attempted suicide and showed his girlfriend videos of a mass shooting, officials said. Complete article
WASHINGTON (AP) — Many of the suspects in mass attacks in the U.S. last year had experienced stressful situations, like losing their job, or had struggled with substance abuse or mental health issues, according to a Secret Service report released Thursday.
The cases highlight the importance for law enforcement that people report suspicious or concerning behavior to head off potential attacks, officials said.
The report, compiled by the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, examined 34 attacks that killed or injured three or more people in 2019. A total of 108 people were killed and 178 were hurt.
Investigators found that nearly half of the suspects who had used guns had possessed them illegally, and about two-thirds of the people accused of committing the mass attacks had exhibited behavior that was concerning to others.
About one-third of the attacks were motivated by some type of grievance, the agency said.
“In these cases, the attackers were retaliating for perceived wrongs related to personal issues, issues in their workplaces, or domestic situations,” said Steven Driscoll, one of the report’s authors. Those included feuds with neighbors, bullying, being in debt or not being able to find gainful employment.
Seven of the 37 suspects had been motivated by some kind of extremist views, and nine showed interest in past incidents of mass violence, the Secret Service said. Some of the attacks were carried out by multiple suspects.
Connor Betts, who killed nine people and injured about 20 others at a nightclub in Dayton, Ohio, before being fatally shot by police last August, had “a history of concerning communications,” which included harassing female students in middle school and high school and had made “a hit list and a rape list in high school,” the report said. The 24-year-old also told other people he had attempted suicide and showed his girlfriend videos of a mass shooting, officials said. Complete article
The article describing the study indicates the solution is to "that people report suspicious or concerning behavior to head off potential attacks," without explaining how they will head off the attacks. Are they going to arrest people before they commit a crime, raising Constitutional questions? The actual study, United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center Mass Attacks in Public Spaces - 2019 August 2020, might do slightly better saying:
The presence of these diverse themes shows the need for a multidisciplinary threat assessment approach to violence prevention. Community professionals, with the proper training to recognize the warning signs, can intervene and redirect troubling behavior before violence occurs. The Secret Service threat assessment approach encourages assessing each situation as it arises, and applying the appropriate interventions – which may include the involvement of family members and friends, social services, mental health professionals, faith-based organizations, or law enforcement when appropriate.
The actual study doesn't say to infringe on Constitutional rights by arresting them before they commit a crime; but they don't provide a clear solution either, instead implying the local experts should intervene as they see fit. I have no doubt that some of the experts at the local level are more familiar with the most effective ways to reduce violence, since good research on this has been available in the academic world, libraries, and alternative media for decades, even if it's virtually absent from mainstream media, political discussions to make policies and, for the most part, this study. Unfortunately other so-called experts in other areas may base their expertise more on ideological, political or religious beliefs, and are far less likely to intervene in a rational effective manner that doesn't infringe on peoples rights. And, although we always hear about the warning signs after someone goes on a mass shootings sprees, we hear very little about many more people demonstrating these warning signs without going on a shooting spree, perhaps becasue they weren't as dangerous as some people believed, or perhaps because someone intervened without overreacting in a quit way, and there's little record of it.
Regardless of how people interpret this data there may be some additional preliminary data indicating this problem is continuing in 2020, possibly impacted by the pandemic or police protests as reported in The murder spike in big US cities, explained. 08/03/2020 However this is very rough data, and some of it is almost certainly flawed as one of the experts indicated after stating the seven possibilities they considered:
Another possibility: None of these explanations is right. With limited data in strange times, it wouldn’t be surprising if it turns out we have no idea what’s going on right now. “We can bet on it being unpredictable,” Doleac said.
This article isn't much if any better than the one about the Secret Service study, and also ignores the vast majority of good research on the leading causes of all types of violence, including murders or mass shootings. They make another major mistake, by trying to draw quick conclusions based on incomplete data. In the past when they did this they often came to irrational conclusions like the belief that "super-predators" were coming about thirty years ago that they used to justify mass incarceration, along with false assumptions about non-violent drug crimes, that contributed to mass incarceration, mostly of non-violent people. Ironically, this mass incarceration led to prison overcrowding led to the release of some prisoners that were violent, including a prisoner released in Kansas City Missouri that went on to become one of the mass shooters studied by the Secret Service.
I went into many of the leading long term contributing causes of violence, including murder, and many other social problems in a series of articles about six years ago starting with Ignored evidence linking corporal punishment, poverty and crime grows and ending with Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit. A short summation of this study indicates that there are many contributing factors of violence, and some of the most important ones are early child abuse, including corporal punishment, poverty, income inequality, inadequate educational or economic opportunities, and more, often including some factors that have a major impact on corporate profits like gambling or insurance. These contributing factors get little or no attention from the mass media or political establishment, possibly because the profits of large corporations would be impacted by research that implicates their efforts to rig the economic system and they buy an enormous amount of ads, increasing media profits and donate an enormous amount to politicians.
One of the most important contributing factors, which I've focused the most attention on, is early child abuse, including use of corporal punishment, leading to escalating violence, may not seem to directly impact corporate profits; however, as I pointed out in Research On Preventing Violence Absent From National Media, research based on FBI statistics the nineteen states still allowing corporal punishment in schools, and presumably using it more at home, had between 22% and 32% higher murder rates than those not allowing it. The closest they came, in those ten years, was in 2012 when the average murder rates in the 19 states allowing corporal punishment in schools was 5.35 out of 100,000, and only 4.28 in the states not allowing it; the biggest difference was in 2018 when the murder rates were 5.90 in the 19 states allowing it, and only 4.27 in states banning it. Most of these states banned corporal punishment in the mid-eighties to early-nineties. If you go back to 1992, when the difference was only a little more than 2%, it's clear that the longer states ban it in schools the bigger the difference is, so we can expect it to grow even more until it's banned in schools everywhere.
It may seem hard to imagine why the media or political establishment would ignore this; however, as I pointed out in Eli Roth’s Milgram/Obedience experiment much more extensive than most people realize and Philip Zimbardo, Lucifer Effect, Stanford Prison Experiment corporal punishment is used to teach blind obedience to authority and makes them more susceptible to propaganda enabling the oligarchs to control the people more effectively. Also these states also provide the largest volume of recruits for the military, where they also teach blind obedience to authority. The recruitment rates are actually higher in Alaska and the northwest, but since their population is so low they don't provide as high a number of recruits.
Another method they use to control the masses is to suppress access to educational opportunities, which would enable more people to learn how to stand up for their rights, among other things. Past studies have shown that less edcuated areas have more violence on average and updated information about the Most & Least Educated States in America 01/20/2020 confirm this showing the best educated states to be in or near the bottom ten for murder rates; and the worst educated states to be in or near the top ten for murder rates.
Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Minnesota are consistently in the bottom ten for murder rates, and Connecticut is usually close, if not in the bottom ten and they're all in the top ten best educated states. Maryland is the only one from the top best educated states to make it into the top ten, or even the top half for murder rates.
Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina, are consistently in the top ten states for murder rates; Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Nevada are almost always also in the top ten for murder rates, coming close when they don't make it; these seven are in the ten least educated states. The other three are either about average for murder rates or above average, with none of them coming close to the bottom ten.
Inadequate access to good education, for the working class, is also a major contributing factor to poverty and income in equality, which is no accident. Machiavelli recommended that "it should be the object of every well-governed commonwealth to make the State rich and keep individual citizens poor," (Discourses) which enables the state to control the citizens more effectively; however, it also leaves the citizens in a state of desperation, with more of the "stressors" that the Secret Service warned us about. The Secret Service also warned that one of the stressors may be the loss of jobs, yet, instead of trying to provide access to jobs for as many people as possible, and a safety net for the rest the political establishment has been relentlessly been trying to ship jobs overseas, as part of an effort to suppress wages, and cutting mental health care services.
Numerous industries are designed to rig the economy for the wealthy, among the most obvious are the insurance and organized gambling industry, both of which contribute to higher rates of poverty and income inequality as well as leading to increased crime in violence through other ways. Both industries involve pooling of people's money and paying out some of it in the form or winnings or insurance claims, however operating expenses and profits have to be subtracted before making these pay outs, otherwise they would go bankrupt, so both industries have to be rigged against the consumer. Both industries pay out enormous salaries for CEOs, payments to investors, large lobbying expenses and campaign contributions, corrupting the political establishment, and enormous advertising budgets. The more they pay for all these expenses, and more, the less they return to the consumers, so this is rigged by large margins.
As I pointed out in Machiavelli Would Be Proud of Gambling Politics! the gambling industry is related to an enormous amount of other crimes, including an enormous number of murders, since it pushes compulsive gamblers into desperation. When Organized gambling was controlled by the mafia this was widely acknowledged; however, now that it's controlled by corporations, that are considered legitimate and reputable, there's much less reporting on the high crime problems they cause. Most incidents are reported as isolated, and the few good studies are hardly mentioned in mainstream media or discussed by politicians, presumably because the media gets a large cut of the profits, in the form of ads, and politicians get enormous campaign contributions.
Insurance also contributes to poverty, income inequality and higher crime as well, possibly as much or even more than organized gambling, although the media and political establishment often try to portray it as part of the solution; and ads even say that it provides "protection," which is false. Insurance has rarely done much to reduce catastrophes; instead it's supposed to reimburse those suffering from losses, when it works as planned, which isn't as common as many people are led to believe. When it comes to property insurance after natural disasters, if you look up lawsuits after hurricanes, earthquakes, or other natural disasters it's clear that there are always many people forced to sue their insurance companies to make them pay claims, and when they win they often have to settle for less than what they expected, but there's very little media coverage of this, while the media collects a fortune selling ads promoting insurance. Further more there are numerous studies saying that about ten percent of property insurance claims are fraud, often collecting successfully, so premium payers pick up the tab for that as well as all the other waste and corruption involved in the industry.
Furthermore, there should be no doubt that an enormous number of murders are committed for the purpose of collecting insurance, and in many cases they successfully collect, at least for a while until they eventually get caught, but these are only reported as isolated incidents. There are few if any good studies on this, that I could find, which might raise the question of just how powerful insurance companies are and if they can prevent research that implicates them. I went into this more myself in Insurance Executives Profit By Inciting Murder Occasionally Paying Killers using Murderpedia as a statistical sampling to estimate how high a percentage of murders are related to attempts to collect insurance, and how many were successful at collecting. I found at least 7 or 8 cases where people who were eventually caught, successfully got away with murder and collected over a million dollars, plus dozens more that collected between half a million and a million, including the Menendez brothers, before getting caught. Only two of these were included in the Murderpedia sampling.
It didn't take long to determine that more than 1.5 to 2% of the entries were related to insurance, but after a reasonably thorough search, it became clear that the total was almost 5% if not more than that possibly over 6%, since the search still wasn't quite complete, but finding any remaining insurance related murders would be very tedious, since they don't categorize them that way. Almost a quarter of the insurance related murders, or more than 1% of all entries where for murderers that successfully collected insurance money for a while before eventually getting caught. If this sampling is statistically representative of all murders, then it means that about 750 people may be killed each year with a potential insurance motive.
If Murderpedia over represents insurance cases, there's probably still well over a hundred people killed, if not several hundred, each year with a possible insurance motive. In all fairness, most if not all insurance related murders probably have other contributing factors, like early child abuse teaching violence later in life, or other mental health issues; however, the insurance motive is almost certainly deciding factor in many of them. Furthermore, the best research for these other factors and for insurance incitement of violence is almost completely absent from traditional media and political discussions when making policy decisions, so solutions are routinely ignored especially when it impacts the profits of well connected people and corporations.
Furthermore, two of the mass shooters cited in the Secret Service Study were active duty veterans, and at least at least two more were discharged veterans, and another one was training to be a prison guard. There could be more veterans among those in their sampling, but since they didn't mention them by name, it's not easy to check, but even these four veterans and a prison guard trainee is statistically high implying that veterans might be more inclined to go on shootings sprees. This isn't new, I went into it more in Teach a soldier to kill and he just might and found that the most common victims for veteran shooters are other veterans and their family. This doesn't mean that most veterans are damaged goods, of course, many of the best ones are the ones most likely to recognize this problem and try to solve it, and are often targeted for it. But the military routinely ignores warning signs because they need soldiers willing and able to kill people in wars based on lies.
We've had the research available to show how to greatly reduce violence for decades, and it continues to improve. Some countries in Europe and elsewhere have shown they can do much better than the United States, in some cases, with 90% lower rates of violence or murder. But this research is ignored and policies are based on ideology of the wealthy and what they believe will maximize profits, no matter how much damage it does to the rest of society.
Many of Bernie Sanders positions on the issues, which the majority of the public agrees with, would help address the root causes of violence in the long term. Unfortunately the political establishment is adamantly opposed to ending the rigging of the economy and they gave overwhelming advantages to Biden to stop him, even suppressing access to polls and outright fraud to rig the primaries. Now that Bernie is endorsing a candidate that opposes everything he stands for the only real choice that acknowledges the best research is clearly Howie Hawkins who still supports the popular policies Bernie campaigned on. Unfortunately the media refuses to provide them, or any honest candidates with a fair amount of coverage. However, when it comes to addressing the root causes of violence both Trump and Biden, with Kamala as his running mate, are almost equally bad; and they're almost equally bad on most of their other issues too, despite rhetoric that might make one of them seem like the lesser evil.
When there's strong enough pressure at the local level, there have been some improvements but as long as we continue to accept an incredibly corrupt national political establishment and media there's little or no hope for improvements from the federal government and most state governments.
Major U.S. cities, gripped with crisis, now face spike in deadly shootings, including of children 08/06/2020
5 facts about crime in the U.S. 10/17/2019
The 10 most and least educated states in 2018 (Actually 2017) 01/23/2019
Driving People to "Go Out In A Blaze Of Glory" isn't working so well!
Some of America's deadliest mass shootings have occurred this decade. Here are the details. 08/05/2019
Rockaway’s School to Prison Pipeline
Key West Police arrested an 8-year-old at school. His wrists were too small for the handcuffs 08/11/2020
Wikipedia: List of mass shootings in the United States in 2019
Police: Sunnyvale crash driver, Isaiah J. Peoples, targeted family thinking they were Muslim 04/26/2019 Peoples served more than five years in the Army in the mid-to-late 2000s, including 11 months in Iraq, and rose to the rank of sergeant.
Naval Air Station Pensacola shooting 12/06/2019
Suspect identified in shooting at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard 12/05/2019
2019 Sebring shooting 01/23/2019 Zephen Allen Xaver, age 21, was identified as a former Florida Department of Corrections correctional officer trainee.
Sumter Police: shooting incident that killed two people, wounded others gang related 09/08/2019
Two dead in Jefferson County Tenn. shooting 02/20/2019
2 killed, 2 injured in Elizabethtown shootings 02/25/2019
Poway synagogue shooting 04/27/2019
Saugus High School shooting 11/14/2019
Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting 07/28/2019
2019 Fresno shooting 11/17/2019
2019 El Paso shooting 08/03/2019
2019 Dayton shooting 08/04/2019
Midland–Odessa shooting 08/31/2019
Woman killed, deputy among three wounded in Liberty County shooting; suspect, Pavol Vido dead 05/29/2019
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