The Gun Counter

Interesting and pretty level headed essay from Randall Collins on the mind of the typical school shooter.

Some technical errors, but worth reading and an interesting insight.

Many people who own guns are gun-cultists, for whom guns are symbolic objects, connected with their identity and lifestyle (analyzed in Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains).

If that's an example of "pretty level-headed" it does much to explain why actual scientists refer to sociologists as the "joke science".

Then we get to this little nugget:

Even if we focus on the total number of yearly homicides by gun (about 12,000), the percentage of guns that kill someone is about 12,000 / 190,000,000, or 1 in 16,000. Another way to put it: of approximately 44 million gun owners in the US, 99.97% of them do not murder anyone.

Except, oops, the number of gun owners is estimated to be 47-53 million households, or some 80 million adult gun owners, which makes the actual percentage of law abiding gun owners not 99.97%, but 99.99985%, which is the difference between 12,000 murderers, and 2,400,000 murderers.(Another way to put it, the difference between last year's murders, and all the murders for the next 200 years. Another way to put it, the difference between taking a spaceship from Mercury to Venus, and instead hitting Pluto.)
And anyone with a calculator would already have figured out in about a dozen keystrokes that 1:16000 = 0.0000625, making the reciprocal number of guns owned by law-abiding owners 99.9999375%. And even that's assuming that all murderers only cap one victim each.

Look, I'm willing to be sporting, but that's multiple major factual f**k-ups in the opening three paragraphs, which would be funny if the meat and potatoes of sociology, its raison de etre, wasn't statistics, statistics, and statistics. So this "pretty level-headed" guy isn't just an @$$clown, he's an @$$clown in the very field of expertise he presumes to opine upon, being either intellectually lazy, innumerate, or both.

Evidently we have somewhat differing opinions on what makes something worth reading, versus plunking a rerun of Gilligan's Island into the DVD player, or cleaning the cat's litter box.

And if this guy does his own taxes, the IRS needs to audit him on general principles. I've met ESL kids at the register at McDonald's with a better grasp of basic math.

But then we get to this, in reference to the Aurora theatre shooting:

taking advantage of the fact that groups are always emotionally stronger than individuals, if they can keep themselves together and put up an emotionally united front: they could probably have made him stop shooting.

Well, yeah, except for all those bullets flying into them, sure. And that trick worked so well for the Japanese charging a machinegun on Guadalcanal, or for Custer's men at the Little Bighorn. If only they'd been more emotionally united.

I can't take anymore unless I get a plastic bag for my keyboard and put my soda down.
Mr. Sociology has clearly been sniffing his own farts for so long he's gone hypoxic.
The first step to admitting a problem in his case would be to open a window and give normal oxygenation a chance.

But he has a bright career as a comedy writer, or a navigator for NASA missions.

Like I said, some technical errors

I disagree. I read through it all, and found that he makes a number of assumptions that are unsupported. For instance; He states that the Shooter at the Batman movie just "gave himself up" once confronted. He is either unaware that the shooter's weapon jammed, or willfully neglects to mention it as why the shooting stopped. I think he places too much faith in the ability of a persons innate reluctance towards confrontation to control their violence. Scolding a rampage shooter is unlikely to stop them. Of course, the numbers he cites for gun ownership are off. He ends it by pointing out that these mass shooters have in common the following traits 1) socially isolated 2)Obsessed with a clandestine ritual centered on weapons.
BUt that is not helpful. The Newtown shooter was definitely socially isolated. But he had no obsession with guns, and did not bring more guns than he could realistically use.
Also, defining it by being hidden means that we cannot detect it, which makes it useless as a screening tool.
I think this article is a sociologists meager attempt at trying to justify the overpriced expense of their degree.

The Aurora shooter was apprehended at his vehicle and did not resist arrest, and I believe he was still armed at the time. Similar to Loughner, who went docile once he was pinned down.

The Author's mention of the reluctance to kill coincides pretty well with Grossman's similar thesis, and explains the large ammunition amounts, but the relatively modest fatality rates. It explains the presence of a blackpowder revolver at the recent Santa Monica shooting. Obsession with the device as opposed to its effectiveness. Columbine was done with handguns and pump action shotguns, not AKs or ARs which would be more effective.

For me the major point of this is that their resolve is broken once they're faced with determined force. It snaps them back to reality, and they resume their passive, beta roles. It's a point we should be expressing when we talk about these things; the criminals tend to submit or self terminate when they face resistance, which is why greater Concealed Carry can be very effective in these situations.

The Clackamas Mall shooting, as well as the New Life Church events followed a similar pattern, except they resulted in self elimination instead of passivity.

Dub_James wrote:

For me the major point of this is that their resolve is broken once they're faced with determined force.

While this is true, this is not what I saw as the major intent of the article. The summation of the lengthy article is what he believes are the three ideal screening criteria for who is a rampage shooter.
This is why he went on about traits exhibited by shooters and how they are exhibited by the public at large. Unfortunately, two of those traits are "clandestine" which invalidates his hypothesis, because he has no way of knowing if others are undertaking similar clandestine activities, or how many, but are not detected. So, there is no way of measuring it's prevalence and seeing if it really is more common with rampage shooters.

This also plays into survivor bias, (or in this case, revers survivorship bias) where we can only conduct forensics on the shootings which occur. That is, we cannot "see" those others who have similar traits where no shooting occured.
Here is a great article on survivor bias:
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/ ... ship-bias/

doc Russia wrote:Here is a great article on survivor bias:
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/ ... ship-bias/

Thanks, that was a good read.

Dub_James wrote:For me the major point of this is that their resolve is broken once they're faced with determined force.

That's also the point that I've taken in my studies of active shooters. At the point where they encounter serious resistance,their plan crumbles. At that point, they either surrender or go to ground (which amounts to the same thing). The only examples that I'm aware of where this is not true are the Hollywood shooters and the Miami shooters. Both of those teams continued to resist and to engage the cops until they were killed. Their motivation may have been different than the textbook active shooters because they were trying to escape when killed.

PawPaw wrote:

Dub_James wrote: The only examples that I'm aware of where this is not true are the Hollywood shooters and the Miami shooters. Both of those teams continued to resist and to engage the cops until they were killed. Their motivation may have been different than the textbook active shooters because they were trying to escape when killed.

I would place those in a different categories than mass shooters. Their goal was enrichment through criminal means, not killing as many people as possible for revenge, notoriety, or whatever reasons mass shooters do it. The violence was a means to an end, not the objective.

IIRC the Miami duo had committed several crimes before (without committing mass shootings) which is why the FBI team was stalking them. While I don't think either set cared about innocent bystanders, they also didn't go out of their way to kill them, concentrating on people (police) that were standing between them and freedom. I believe the Hollywood non-LE victims were hit as a result of spray and pray suppressive fire as opposed to being deliberately targeted.

Well, except the shots at the news helicopters, but who can blame them.