Another mass shooting

December 2, 2015 • 1:48 pm

I just got this on my CNN news feed, and it’s confirmed by CNBC:

This story is developing. Please check back for further updates.

Authorities responded to reports of a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California on Wednesday.

Reports first surfaced around 2:15 p.m. ET of an incident in the area. The official San Bernardino Country Sheriff’s Department Twitter account confirmed an active shooter in the area.

Video from the scene showed people lying on the ground, and police helping to support others who were wounded.

Inland Regional Center, located on the 1300 block of South Waterman Street, serves residents of San Bernardino and Riverside counties who have developmental disabilities.

Despite reports of a Planned Parenthood in the area, a representative for the organization told CNBC that the shooting was not at their facility. Last Friday, a gunman stormed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, killing three people.

This seems to be happening every week now, and I’m afraid we’re getting inured to it. I have no response except to say that we need to clamp down on gun ownership in this country.

162 thoughts on “Another mass shooting”

    2. Somehow the NRA doesn’t seem interested in finding solutions that would make it more difficult for mentally unbalanced people to obtain guns.

    3. Now there’s a solution. Let’s just “clamp” anyone who might shoot someone with a gun. I’m amazed nobody thought of such a simple solution before!

      1. Men. I bet anything the perps are men. So there are two obvious solutions, one that should appeal to conservatives, one that should appeal to liberals: clamp down on men or only sell guns to women.

          2. A horrid thought! I’m already losing the hair on my head and growing bushes out of my ears and nose. I shudder to think what no testosterone would result in.

          4. I’m betting if we only sold guns to women we’d see a huge spike in the transgender population. 😉

          3. I’m sure it happens. But betting is betting and you have to go with the odds, even if you’ll be wrong occasionally.

        3. We could probably get even more specific; men below the age of about 35 (technically, the correlation is to men between the ages of 15-35 or so. But since we don’t sell guns to minors anyway, the lower limit is irrelevant).

          This is always the flaw in any conservative demand for profiling based on bigotry; we already know of a very strong correlation between certain groups and criminal violent conduct. Unless you’re willing to limit the rights of that group based on the strong correlation between group membership and violence, it makes no sense whatsoever to regulate any different group based on a weaker correlation.

          1. You know what they say about ‘assume’.

            The news now shows it was a male and female couple.
            Obviously a rather unique combination of data so far. We will have to await the FBI investigation.

    4. Clamping down on gun ownership should decrease the suicide rate among middle-aged, poor white males and the homicide rate among African Americans. Restricting gun ownership is socially responsible and a doable mental health prevention action for our legislators to take.

      1. Nothing like stereotyping to clarify a problem. As for “doable” see all the other commments.

        1. “Doable?” Maybe. But we won’t. And clearly we’re too lazy to take firearms training, or secure them from small children in the family.

          1. “…clearly we’re too lazy to take firearms training, or secure them from small children in the family” – despite all the laws we already have

          3. I think so. The “no fly” lists are unjust – punishment without trial. (And there’s really no reason not to let them fly either. A thorough search should establish that they aren’t carrying implements that could destroy the plane.) These lists have been abused too, used against political and personal opponents, to punish anti-war and other peaceful protesters, etc. “No fly” lists should be abolished. (You can keep the list, but the “no fly” part should go.)

            We should not expand the scope of punishment without trial.

          4. In the USA in many states it is not required to keep your unsupervised loaded firearm locked up, even when children are around.

            In fact, only 18 states have specific laws requiring unsupervised firearms be secured around children. This might be why only the USA has toddlers (aged 1 to 5) regularly shooting other toddlers, children and adults.
            It’s become a rare event in most other Western countries because of a combination of laws and education and training required to get a firearm.

            When this happens with legal firearm owners in the USA only 25% face charges of any kind. When the firearm is illegal, they almost always face charges.

            The USA firearm laws are some of the most lax in the Western world, and many of the laws that do exist have loopholes you could drive the space shuttle through.

            I would also point out that the USA puts more people in prison than any other country, yet the US is not any safer than any other Western country. The USA is one of the few Western countries where the homicide rate has seen a sudden increase.

            Unfortunately, a significant number of firearm owners in the US have the attitude that firearms are all rights with no responsibilities. It’s easy to see the death and carnage this attitude has wrought.

          6. Feel free to prove me wrong. I will await to see what the NRA solution to our domestic terrorism. Other than that “We need more guns.”

        2. Is using facts stereotyping? Stats show that men commit suicide by gun far more often than women, and that fatal shooting is the largest cause of mortality among black teenagers/young adults.

          1. This is actually an interesting problem I have wondered about for a while. What does one conclude about an individual based on his group membership? Strictly speaking, if he’s sampled at random, one has a probability of thus and so for whatever characteristics. But thereby taking action on it is sometimes ethical, sometimes not. Sometimes it is epistemically useful, sometimes not.

            This is the generalization of the problem of “racial profiling” of terrorists, and if there are any sex-linked intellectual traits, etc. Now in the latter case the distributions are too similar (if not identical) but suppose they weren’t? Would it be worth looking for that one male in a billion vs. one female in two? (Say.)

            I have no easy answers other than to “take it case by case”, but that just postpones the question.

          2. It is indeed a moral quagmire.

            It would seem that some profiling in some circumstances is only sensible, one might even say the “scientific” approach; but it is so vulnerable to corruption.

            OTOH, we’ve probably all been victims of unwarranted assumptions at one time or another, and know how infuriating, insulting, demoralizing, and/or threatening that can be.

            I suppose our finer moments, like assuming innocence till guilt is proven, trying to believe that all people are created equal. etc., etc., are still the noblest courses of action.

            But what if doing so impairs crime-fighting/prevention efforts? Results in even more vulnerability or danger for innocent people?

            I’m not helping.

    5. Imagine you’re trying to help someone with a weight problem regain their health. Do you think the best plan of attack would be to concentrate only on the mental aspects of food addiction and ignore the fact that they have easy access to donuts and candy bars? I’m pretty sure you’d tell this person’s son to quit bringing home junk food, thereby eliminating the easy access.

      Do you see the analogy?

      2. Personal weight, or any other medical condition, is not covered in the bill of rights. You don’t have a constitutional right to be a certain weight.

        1. Based on the Second Amendment, does a U.S. private citizen have the right to possess any and every weapon possessed by the U.S. military?

          Would it be more accurate, and more reflective of the NRA’s perspective and intentions, for the NRA to rename itself the National Gun Association, or the National Weapon Association?

    6. I assume by “clamp” you mean fund and help. I think you can do both but in America that means universal health care with mental health included and clamping down on the NRA. Neither are easy but few things worth having ever is.

      1. and its not even an either/or situation either: unfortunately the constituency of the NRA is the same that would be most opposed to any ideas including the words “universal health care” or for more funds for mental health initiatives.

    7. Clamp down on mental health, not gun ownership.

      No, don’t assume the shooters have clinical mental health issues. My understanding is that they usually don’t — nor is mental illness usually connected to violence. Terrorists tend to be driven by dangerous and destructive ideologies, not voices in their heads. Same with those who are angry and vengeful for personal reasons.

      1. Even if they are mentally ill, do they have a record that would show up in a background check? Many mentally ill people can become sick gradually and never be institutionalized against their will (which would be the only thing checked for).

        Not to mention, a mentally ill person can buy a gun from a family member, neighbor or gun show salesperson. The NRA has made it very easy for the mentally ill to slip through the cracks because paranoid people are their constituents.

    8. You don’t know that the shooter(s) here had a history of mental illness. You’re just putting out a smokescreen.

        1. Sarcasm? HERE? I’m shocked at the idea.
          But it’s bed time. I shall sleep easy in the confident expectation of a fresh mass shooting for when I next take time to log in.

    9. What a ridiculous comment.

      What kind of system allows people with mental health problems to own guns. In other words, it is a gun ownership issue.

      1. Since Saint Ronald Reagan threw all the people with mental health problems out on the street and services for mental health have been greatly reduced, because after all it’s your tax money, the diagnosis of mental problems is not guaranteed. There are many out there who need help but have never been, and will never be diagnosed. Now a smart person might be able to know who they are and would deny them gun ownership but the rest of us, including federal state local police authorities and families, would have to rely on databases of people with known issues. Those like most of the mass killers in recent years wouldn’t be in those databases. Next question?

  2. If enough foreign tourists stayed home, or away from the US, due to the dangerous gun climate so that it affected business profits, airlines, hotels, restaurants etc etc you can bet that something would happen regarding gun laws.

    1. Nope. We just wouldn’t. And Congress has laws prohibiting guns near *them* and has maximum security. Until it affects them personal, they don’t care.

    2. I seriously doubt it. Sure, $200 billion (the approximate annual size of international tourism in the US… about 1/3 of the tourism total) isn’t chump change, but I think the estimated cost of gun violence already tops $300 billion annually and no one in the gun advocacy camp even considers that germane to the argument, much less decisive. Perhaps a gun caused Great Depression would make a few people pause and consider the costs, but I sort of doubt even that. It’s simply not about evaluating costs and benefits, it’s a sort of religious devotion.

    3. I’ve been doing that for 25 years. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

        1. Well, it’s bad news for the American tourist industry.
          And so?
          America has a reputation in the world.

  5. Seems like a no-brainer to restrict guns, but then the NRA and Repubs seem to have <0 brains these days.

  6. Around 12 people shot, not sure about number of shooters. Appears to be in a large building out there in San Bernardino

  7. One may note that all of these except the ecoli infections Starbucks involved guns. When yo encourage people to own guns it immediately brings up the question of what for? Protection? From what?

    the next part of the game is to identify targets that threaten you: Your leg, your dog, random floor, your child, your wife, your neighbor, any neighbor, any person, in short order the list can become infinite.

    thank oy=ur media and churches for providing us with handy lists and ideas.
    Anyone with a gun who can’t find help in deciding who to kill is just not trying.

  9. It’s all too easy to suggest that mental health is the problem, but it’s very dangerous to facilitate the current trend of thought that implicates those with mental health issues as being the reason behind mass shootings. That’s a route that will lead only to discrimination for huge swaths of people. There are about 62 million people at any given time that have some mental health issue – or 25% of the country. Even worse, mental health is a field that most people have little understanding of, unless they happen to have a diagnosis. People who have a diagnosis don’t need society as a whole placing the burden and blame of mass shootings on their shoulders.

    Yes, as a field, and in terms of accessibility, mental health needs to be treated like a real issue. But that needs to be done outside of the context of mass shootings. According to one analysis, between 2001 – 2010, only 5% of murders were perpetrated by someone with a mental health issue. Crime, and especially mass shootings, involve complex variables, and should not be reduced to “crazy people.” We, as a society, don’t make change by reducing complex problems to inaccurate stereotypes.

    3. “…We, as a society, don’t make change by reducing complex problems to inaccurate stereotypes.”

      Would that that were true. Donald Trump fer instance – a serious contender for the republican nomination. Remember G W Bush? Remember B H Obama?

      1. My guess is that your rebutting my point in context of the word “change.” Lots of “change” can and does happen by reducing complex problems. I should have changed that word to “progress,” as that’s really my main point. I reckon another conversation could happen concerning the operational definition of progress, but that’s not going to happen here.

        Change, in context of my initial post, had to do with positive change, not general change.

        This response will be moot, of course, if I have erred in my interpretation of your response.

        1. Your interpretation is correct. We certainly don’t seem to make much progress. But I was addressing the whole of your last statement particularly the “reduction of complex problems to inaccurate stereotypes” which happens so frequently.

    3. They’re in Mom’s cellar posting about how their concealed carry penis extension protects their neighbours.
      Did my autocorrect just substitute “penis extension” for “gun license”? I’ll be darned! Such perception in an Android just a few years old!

    4. Not sure they would have stood a chance. Three guys, armed with rifles, with vests.

      This represents a great opportunity for the NRA. Now they can tell us that a handgun is insufficient for personal protection. We all need to buy assault rifles, body armor, and only travel out in groups. Oh, and buy an APC to drive to work.

      1. Those people had it coming to them, throwing a party without securing a proper perimeter first. Who was on patrol duty, that’s what I want to know? People just don’t take any responsibility these days, they expect the government to do everything for them.

  12. I really find this a difficult question from a consequentialist perspective.

    I think universal background checks and mandatory waiting periods do no harm and could possibly have a positive impact on some gun-related injuries – most notably accidents and perhaps suicides.

    On the other hand, the country is positively awash in guns.

    Here in Chicago, handguns were banned, de facto from 1982 to 2010/12 and that didn’t seem to put a dent in the major problem gang-related gun violence.

    I can’t see anything but a federal law (plus probably a Constitutional amendment) that created universal restrictions across all jurisdictions doing much good.

    I’m curious what others think – I’m pessimistic about this ever happening.

    1. Since you ask…I have no hope that this will be resolved.

      We all know what is going to happen – there will be outrage and anger and shouts to do something but then one of the Kardashians will do something obnoxious and the issue will disappear in a poof of media smoke. We have become inured to this kind of obscenity and although the answer to the problem is obvious to all except the most hardcore gun nutters, nothing will be done.

      We live in a country where the wholesale slaughter of first graders results in exactly nothing. So why would anyone think this atrocity (or the next one, or the next, or the one after that, then the next….) will make a difference?

      1. We live in a country where the wholesale slaughter of first graders results in exactly nothing.

        Nothing except an imperceptible fall in the population growth rate. Maybe that’s the NRA’s strategy? They’re really population fanatics?

    2. This may be a perspective driven by inaccuracies, but my thoughts on the failures of Chicago, or even IL as a whole to curb gun related violence, is a problem in context of state based initiatives.

      An example: Illinois requires a firearms owners identification card (FOID) to purchase a firearm (or anything else related to guns, really). Kentucky, on the other hand, doesn’t require a license to buy, or carry. Kentucky, which shares a small bit of border to Illinois, makes for a good state to go guy guns, and take back home. You can also buy guns in Indiana with no permit, you just can’t be a felon, drunk, or have mental health issues.

      According to some reading I’ve done, Indiana is actually a huge contributor with respect to guns.

      And of course, this is all made worse by the lack of follow through on the part of gun dealers. But it’s also a problem that could be more easily tackles if the federal government stepped above states to implement procedures geared towards better documentation on gun purchases, and penalties for not following these laws.

  14. I have solutions that will be deeply unpopular with practically everyone. Short of actually seizing guns, this is the only way to “control” weapons in the civilian populace.

    1: Pass a law that guns must be manufactured with RFID and GPS locating tech in an untamperable way. Buildings where guns and mass murderers should not be would be alerted via location and signal, occupants/police would be alerted and doors autolocked, etc.

    2: Guns will be pre registered in a govt database along with forensic info. [ballistic fingerprinting]

    3: Gun ownership is contingent on prior training, licensing, and insurance. All that would be needed at point of sale would be the licence number. Screening for disqualifying factors of gun ownership would be an integrated part of the “training” licensing process.

    I can already hear the objections of old tech guns, what’s to be done about them etc. It’s not a foolproof idea, but it’s a start.
    🙂

    1. As I allude to in my comment #12 – I’m not hopeful that even more modest measures would be possible.

      That said, I think that the starting point is a central firearm registry. Make it free to the consumer. The original purchaser is in the DB with the serial of the gun and possibly ballistics info from a test firing at the point of manufacture. And then, any licensed gun dealer can process the transfer to another owner. People will be required to report it if their guns are lost/stolen. Otherwise, any gun used in a crime can be tracked back to its last legitimate owner and that person can be held accountable.

      I fear that even this simple system that would be almost transparent to the gun owner and cost very little is still too much for many gun people.

      Oh, to be clear, I have guns and would be happy to comply with this type of system.

      1. That’s an option that is fair in regard to cost. Probably more palatable than my suggestions to gun owners. I prefer there be additional, possibly prohibitive costs with gun ownership. At this point there’s no mechanism beyond the taxpayer for restitution, or cost recovery of these horrific events.

    2. You’re absolutely right … your solutions will be deeply unpopular with practically everyone.

          4. I don’t know that the Dems have been any better than the GOP about this. Based on results, we know that prayer is useless. It’s time for some action.

    3. “RFID and GPS locating tech in an untamperable way”

      Unfortunately, I doubt that is possible – a few seconds in a microwave oven would be enough to disable any such tech.

      1. Probably true. I do have a mental pic of some guy standing in front of his micro, anarchist cookbook in hand looking for recipes on gun cooking. [sigh]

    4. I believe your #3 is partially implemented; in some states you must receive training before getting a concealed carry permit, for instance, while in others you need a special ID card. But details will vary by state.

      For your #1, look up Jerry’s month or so old post on smart guns. Gun shops in the US have tried to sell them, and been threatened by the NRA so viciously that they stopped selling them. I imagine the exact same backlash would occur for gps tracking in guns (though, ironically, practically every good except guns sold in stores has a passive RFID tag on it nowadays, for theft prevention purposes).

      I’m less supportive of your #2. Frankly, like most forensic techniques, bullet ballistic forensics is likely to contain a lot of unconfirmed woo in addition to any serious science it may contain. There are certainly active marking techniques we could implement in the future, but right now I’m somewhat skeptical of our ability to really determine with any confidence that a standard bullet was fired from that Colt .45 rather than this Colt .45.

  15. Far too many people fall back on the mental health catch all. There is, of course, no doubt that someone who can justify in their minds shooting up a hospital that cares for autistic patients and evaluates others is missing a few buttons.

    For that justification to take place requires the kind logical dysfunction that are most often present in devote religious beliefs.

    1. Nothing will happen. They had the senate and the presidency when Sandy Hook happened. Not one damn thing came out of that.

      1. Nothing will happen. Sandy Hook really proved to me just how deluded and, frankly, kind of sick my fellow Americans are.

        I keep trying to imagine a scenario so horrific that it would cause self reflection among gun lobbyists and their grassroots supporters, but I can’t. Violence, after all, only feeds their paranoia that they need guns to protect them. I think gun fondling has achieved that perfectly sealed off from reality state that religions have perfected.

      2. You’re certainly correct that, in the near term, nothing will happen. inasmuch as the gun lobby is so firmly entrenched in our politics.

        I continue to believe, however, that in the long term — in a representative democracy with a free press and a modicum of governmental transparency — such disequilibrium as this between sanity and public policy cannot endure.

        (Whether that is a true, justified belief, or merely aspirational, remains to be seen, I suppose.)

  17. Oh dear, it’s such a pity that there are so many willing to ignore the constitution. The answer, the only answer, is a constitutional amendment to limit or abolish private or even any arms ownership. Failing that an amendment to the second amendment that would enable governments at every level to regulate keeping and bearing arms as they see fit. Good luck with that but the courts have shown they aren’t going to do it.

    Note that it’s “arms” not “guns” that are mentioned in the second amendment. Unless something drastic is done to modify the culture of violence that pervades the USA outlawing guns will only create an inconvenience as people take to the streets with swords, clubs, knives, hammers, bombs or whatever to do others in. Looks like a long-term educational project to me.

    1. I’ve always felt a bit put upon that “arms” seems, practically, to be interpreted as “guns”. Can I buy the hand grenades, land mines, and stinger missiles that I would need to fend off the government when the time comes? No, I can not. Or not easily… you can buy machine guns but with some additional scrutiny, etc., so perhaps you can technically buy these things too, I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t get them at my local sporting goods stores or Wal-Marts, which effectively means that I don’t have access to this part of my constitutional right. And that’s the key part, isn’t it? After all, thats why we can’t have any national regulations… then the government would know who has guns, and that would give them an unfair advantage in the upcoming War with the Government.

      1. You’d need aircraft carriers (with escort vessels) and Los Angeles-class submarines to do battle against the Sixth or Seventh Fleet (depending if you start your insurrection nearer the East Coast or West), A-10 Thunderbolts to challenge the Air Force, and at least tactical nuclear weapons to stave off the Army and Marine Corp.

        The militia nuts better get the NRA on top of this.

        1. If I were going to challenge the USAF or the US Navy I’d want a very large fleet of Su-30s to clear the skies to give the A-10s manoeuvring space…..

          1. The A-10s would be gone very quickly in any situation involving modern missiles, whether SAM or air to air.

            The fantasy of a well armed militia defending against a tyrannical Federal Government may be useful for the NRA and their backers, but I doubt there is even one practical scenario where it could be effective.

            Besides, what tyrannical government is going to allow any militia to arm itself to the point that it becomes a valid threat?

            Do we start with the construction of the secret underground lairs to hold all the tanks, artillery and aircraft the militia are going to need or…

          2. What is even more ludicrous is that if a tyrannical government ever did emerge in the USA (heavens forbid!) these militia are exactly the kind of people that the government would deputize to round up all the “undesirables” and put them in camps behind barbed wire.

            Some careful government propaganda to demonize those undesirables as “enemies of freeeeee-dum and the true Amurrican way of life”, and make them the scapegoats for any wrong, and then they’ll have the redneck militia wearing black armbands and kicking in doors…

            “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
            Because I was not a Socialist.

            Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
            Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

            Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
            Because I was not a Jew.

            Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

            It’s these militia nuts who are just the kind of people to do the “coming for”.

          3. Yes, with the right rightwing demagogue to lead them, these militia-types would gladly don their brown shirts and do the coming for.

          4. A while ago I saw someone allege that the reason for the 2nd was that Southern States were afraid that if the Feds ended up in charge of their militia, they would cut off funding and shut them down. This was because the Feds were opposed to slavery and the militia were being used to search slave quarters for weapons as well as to be ready to quell any possible slave revolt. In many places the slaves outnumbered the whites and paranoia was not unreasonable.

            It doesn’t seem to be common wisdom that the reason for the 2nd was to maintain slavery. I’m left wondering whether there is any truth to the allegation and if so, why gun control advocates don’t make it more widely known.

    2. It is a trivial fact, accessible for anyone that has taken the effort to read it, that regulating gun ownership is compliant with the US Constitution. It was found so by the courts for 200 years.

      “Reader Barry called my attention to a piece in Politico Magazine, “How the NRA rewrote the Second Amendment,” by Michael Waldman, that’s well worth reading. It discusses the origin of the Amendment, and then how legal opinion beginning in the late 19th century consistently argued that the Amendment didn’t guarantee Americans the right to own guns. Beginning in the 1950s, legal opinions changed—largely with funding from the NRA.”

      [ http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/nra-guns-second-amendment-106856_Page2.html#.VhAT2LSqqkq ]

      This isn’t rocket science. We know how to stop gun death, and that is by regulating guns. [World statistics.] We know US can regulate guns without changing the US Constitution, it will simply return to centuries of status quo. We even know how to get gun owners to read – take the guns away and put books into their clumsy hands.

      1. Doesn’t matter. The most recent SCOTUS decision on the issue held that there is indeed an individual right to “keep and bear arms”. So that is the current law – like it or not.

      2. In any case the second amendment is clearly stated “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. Why this is the case (the militia clause) is immaterial. Only a bunch of lawyers could claim that there was any lack of clarity in this. The answer is, as it has always been, a constitutional amendment. The writers of the constitution and bill of rights even gave america a process for doing this. Use if FFS!

        1. None of the other amendments guaranteed in the bill of right are treated in such an absolute manner. Not speech, not religion, not the press, not the right to a jury trial or protection against search and seizure. In every case various courts have identified specific instances or exceptions where the right may be limited. It would be perfectly consistent with a couple hundred years of US jurisprudence to say that the right to bear arms is just like the right to free speech or right to religious expression; the government must show a compelling and specific need to create a limitation on it, but government can limit it when those requirements are met. If you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater and yet we don’t see that limit as violating the first amendment, I see no compelling reason why the 2nd amendment guarantees your right to carry a loaded gun into that same crowded theater.

    3. “USA outlawing guns will only create an inconvenience as people take to the streets with swords, clubs, knives, hammers, bombs or whatever to do others in.”

      You are wrong. We are a lazy people. We prefer to kill at a distance and do not want to get blood on our hands. (Literally.)And we want to kill a lot a once. Knifes and such, too labor-intensives. Bombs, too hard. But gun? So easy a child can operate.

  18. So this thing is pretty bad. At least 14 dead and 14 injured. The shooters are still on the loose.

    1. Meh. There have been over 300 mass (4 or more people) shootings this year. There will be more before the year is over. And 11,000 assorted other gun homicides and a similar number of suicides. So this is not really even news, is it?

      Let’s not get worked up over it. At least we still can buy a gun at any Wal-Mart before Christmas and protect yourself and your family from such things. Or so I’m told.

      1. Yes, the number of gun massacres in the USA is astounding. And when a massacre happens gun-nuts always try to shame people commenting about the gun problem “People are dead, show some sympathy, this is no time to make things political and make it about your leftist-pinko control issues!”

        When, of course, gun massacres are EXACTLY the time we need to be talking about this.
        Following the gun-nut logic, given the fact gun massacres are occurring continually at around one every week, it would never be time to discuss the gun control issue. Like “let’s wait until the massacres stop before it’s ok to discuss the gun problem.”

          1. The ratio will perhaps increase to two/day soo. There was another shooting in Georgia today. But ‘only’ one death and three casualties so it may not count.

          2. I saw somewhere recently that a mass shooting is defined as 4 or more. Whether that counts the shooter(s) is unclear.

          3. Obviously it’s a bit arbitrary. Different people use different definitions. Some don’t include the shooter. Some don’t include people who are merely wounded. For is just a number plucked out of a hat, though it probably corresponds well enough to our gut feelings about a mass shooting vs other kinds. The one-a-day figure I quote above counts four or more people *injured* by gunfire including the shooter. If you only count shootings with four or more *deaths* the number is, I think, closer to one a week.

            I think the injured definition is perfectly reasonable. If someone came into my office and injured 20 people with gunfire, I don’t think I’d feel like, “Hey, no harm no foul”.

      2. I think Walmart may have stopped selling the assault rifle – M-15, out of embarrassment or something so as long as you are not looking for that one, I’m sure there is no limit.

        Have a feeling this particular event today is a little different. Not a crazy type or a terrorist that we know of. These bad guys went in and out quickly and got away. Kind of professional looking.

        1. I agree with that. It’s not the lone disgruntled person, it’s something pretty well organized and that makes it seem likely to be terrorism of some flavor. I guess we’ve got three main flavors of terrorists in the U.S. these days: ISIS, anti-abortion terrorists, and right wing anti-government terrorists (the left has been kind of quite on U.S. terrorism lately, but that could change!).

          1. At nearly 8pm central – don’t have this thing nailed down completely yet but it is looking more like a specific attack on this party or group of people in this building. So probably not terrorism, as far as ISIS or anything like that. I am just speculating and could be wrong but that’s my guess at this time.

        2. The AR-15. (The M-15 was a modified version of the standard-issue military M-14, and was taken out of production decades ago.)

          I’ve seen how, if you don’t know your munitions nomenclature, the gun nuts paint you as “a clueless gun-grabber.”

        3. The AR-15 (“Armalite Rifle model 15”) is not an assault rifle, just a regular rifle with a “tactical” appearance, unless you’re using “assault rifle” in the sense of “scary-looking rifle” or something. The sale of new assault rifles to the public was banned a long time ago across the country, and the only ones available for purchase is the dwindling stock of pre-ban weapons, whose transfer and ownership are fairly strictly regulated.

          1. Clearly paying attention to rifles of any type is a red herring as they account for very little of the crime. It is handguns that are involved in most of the mayhem.

            That said, the huge popularity of “scary looking” guns, and the AR-15 is the most popular, says to me that penis-enhancement might be a bigger part of the appeal than utility. That’s not a crime, of course, but it is vulgar and nothing to be proud of.

  19. I think the Dr is right, we too outside of the US are also getting a little inured to the weekly one sided shootouts, the west is hardly won you could say.
    In fact, Mr Pinker’s “The Better Angels…” may have pointers as how to rid yourself of this terror, first up, vote for more women in power positions.

  20. Easy access to guns is definitely a contributing factor, but mass shootings have genuinely become much more common over the last few decades even as overall violence has declined and access to guns has remained largely unchanged. I’m really curious what has caused this.

    1. Maybe it has to do with the ease of spreading a shooter’s message by internet very rapidly across the whole country. Shoot up lots of people and your face and pet peeve are instantly on everyone’s desktop.

    2. It could be as simple as suggestibility. People do things that occur to them. When I was a teenager the thought “get a gun and go on a shooting spree” simply hadn’t occurred to me, not even in the abstract. I had thought about serial killers, because those were in the news, but not mass murders. Is there a single teenager alive today who hasn’t thought about mass shootings? If 20 million people have an idea in their head, it just might be the cases that inevitably 1000 will end up trying out that idea even if it’s a very bad one. So it could be as simple as just enough mass shootings with just enough media coverage to reach a tipping point, to plant the thought in in enough people’s minds that we are never more than a week away from someone acting on it. Once it happens more frequently that ensures that it stays in people’s minds, making it more likely to happen again in a self-reinforcing loop.

        1. Thanks for that article.

          I’ve been thinking for some time that the things people want to blame, things that validate their pre-existing prejudices: mental health, decline in religion/rise in nihilism, decline in morals, availability of guns, violent video games, bullying and it’s reactions, oppression and it’s reactions, poverty, and so on, do not seem to fit very well. So I have long thought that the thing that has changed in the world so that we have more of this kind of violence now is possibly more structural.

          Terrorism is something else that I tend to suspect is structural, a combination of the idea being in the air and frequently reinforced coupled with the spread of technology and wealth that makes it possible for even people in very poor countries to acquire the components for bombs and high quality weapons.

          Because of this I expect to see these things continuing for a very long time and probably get quite a bit worse as technology makes it easier and easier (how long before someone manages to kill a group of people with one of those low cost drones… and how would, say, a sporting event protect from that)? We have a lot to be thankful of that people who take up these ideas are rare (just imagine if instead of one guy sniping out of the trunk of a car, as happened a while back, we had 100) and that so many who do are inept (just imagine if everyone who tried to do something like this were as competent as Timothy McVeigh or the 9/11 hijackers).

  21. So the news now on this one is that the police were in a shootout and two suspects are dead. Also there is information that this possibly all started with a dispute involving one of the suspects who left and then came back with two accomplices.

    1. I’ve seen multiple reports indicating that one of the suspects was involved in a dispute at the party, left the building, and returned with an accomplice(s). However, if they were wearing tactical gear and carrying assault rifles, handguns, and (possibly) pipe bombs or other explosive devices, it seems that the shooting was planned in advance to a significant extent. More like long-standing, simmering resentment and anger from a dedicated gun fondler, than a spur-of-the-moment “uncontrolled rage and grab a shotgun from the back of your vehicle” type of incident.

      1. Yes exactly. While the event may have triggered an attack at that time, it appears the couple had been gearing up for a shootout for some time. And that this was some sort of long-standing workplace dispute, not a jihadi wannabe.

        Its also worth noting that the male shooter was a native born US citizen with no record of mental illness or criminal conduct. Exactly the sort of person Chris Moffatt would defend as having a right to keep and bear arms. No half measures like stopping felons or the mentally ill from purchasing firearms would have prevented this, only rules preventing normal run-of-the-mill US citizens from buying the equipment he bought would have stopped him.

        1. No half measures like stopping felons or the mentally ill from purchasing firearms would have prevented this, only rules preventing normal run-of-the-mill US citizens from buying the equipment he bought would have stopped him.

          So, it’s an unavoidable natural disaster, like a hail storm.

  22. The gun nuts are completely insulated from the impact of these repeated incidents (and from common sense) by the “good guys with guns” trope. On “no true Scotsman” logic, when people do things like this, by definition they are not “good guys”. Hence the preposterous suggestion that that somehow arming MORE people, who we define as the “good guys”, would PROTECT us.

    This is so transparently moronic. There are no distinct populations of “good guys” and “bad guys”. There’s just one enormous amorphous pool of heavily armed ordinary people. Some unpredictable proportion of those people will inevitably get disillusioned, get angry, get drunk. People TURN bad.

    It’s obvious to everyone outside the U.S. that you can’t possibly predict which “good guys with guns” will TURN INTO “bad guys with guns”. Background checks or improved mental health checks are sops that are never going to predict people’s behavior. An absence of guns in the general population is simply the ONLY solution that will ever make society safe from this nonsense.

    It’s certainly true that the obscene number of guns already in circulation will make the transition long and difficult. But there is only one answer to this problem.

    It’s a simple choice for Americans. It’s not like the solution isn’t obvious. Either get rid of the guns, or embrace continuing murder of your citizens, by your citizens. Just cut out the idiotic hand wringing, candle-lighting and praying for the victims.

    Daily News cover tomorrow:
    https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/672234341800521728/photo/1

    1. There are no distinct populations of “good guys” and “bad guys”.

      While true, you have a HUGE uphill battle to convince most people of this. Most people believe exactly the opposite, and strongly.

      1. It starts young. More than once I’ve heard of a kid asking a cop that is visiting their elementary school classroom, “How many bad guys have you shot with your gun?”. Also, “When the cops catch bad guys, they shoot them”.

        You hear it everytime someone speaks of “the criminal element”. It’s as if everyone has an invisible black or white hat and once a criminal gets caught, then everyone knows that that person’s hat was, is and will always black.

  23. A bit more info has emerged overnight (08:20, UK time ; midnight-ish for American time zones).
    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/02/san-bernardino-california-shooting
    “Fourteen people killed and 17 wounded as shooters storm into center”
    “[Two suspects] die in shootout with 20 police after car chase” – doesn’t sound like your stereotypical jihadists, but people mad about something in their lives.
    “The chase came about four hours after [Suspect F] had left a gathering of fellow public health employees of San Bernardino county where he worked. Police said he was angry and left early only to return with his partner. Both were heavily armed.” Industrial relations disputes can be conducted with nothing more damaging than laryngitis and mild deafness. Even Weegies know that.
    Ceiling Cat help the NRA when they try to sack some of their staff. Not that that will make any difference to their position.

    1. Ah, this may be where Igot my “4 or more” criterion (above) from :
      “This is the 342nd mass shooting in the US so far this year, according to Shootingtracker.com, a site that records all incidents with four or more victims (including the shooter). Together, those shootings left at least 447 individuals confirmed as dead and 1,292 injured.”
      It must have been so depressing writing the code to update those front page statistics automagically. But not as depressing as starting your morning by updating them manually.

      1. And, of course, we have to crowd source such statistics because it is ILLEGAL for the government to fund such research.

        We have the country we want. It’s lovely, isn’t it?

        1. I was actually looking at the timeline the Grania supplied. The correlation is pretty clear to me. My last visit to the US was in 1991. Since then, my absence has clearly led to a massive upturn in gun violence.
          Sorry about that.

  24. I could be wrong, but it seems that the suspects left an infant behind. Not even a year old.

    1. Speaking as someone who at age four endured the death of his father, I’d like to have heard what if any discussion(s) they had about their child’s future.

      1. Why the National Rifle Association, of course. Their sponsors, the weapons and ammunition manufacturers and sales outlets need to make their profits unencumbered.

        Why would you ask?

    2. Obviously, one should take policy advice from you.

      Just congenially curious – how old do you say the Earth is? Do you believe that women should be subordinate to men? Were you a Celestial Designer, would you design the recurrent laryngeal nerve as it presently exists in humans and giraffes, among other mammals?

    3. “I wouldn’t take policy advice from an ivory tower academic, or his echo chamber fans.”

      …you write, while on the website of an ivory tower academic, talking to his fans. 🙄

  27. The Formula is simple; Guns + Deranged Fudamentalist of whatever Religion + Hate Propaganda spewed by so called “News” Agencys or cynically manipulative Politicians and would be Presidential Candidates = ongoing Tragedy.

    1. Or guns+angry person, guns+jealous person, guns+bad drug deals, guns+gang turf war, guns+suggestible person, guns+depressed person, etc.

      It is certainly true that hateful rhetoric inspires a certain fraction of violence, but there are vast wells of other sources to help us meet our quotas.

  28. The US is an outlier in Western civilization in a number of ways, among them, infatuation with guns & gun ownership, homicide rates, mass shootings, the number of people incarcerated per capita, and religiosity.

    My wife and I were considering holidaying in Georgia for a few weeks this winter. We are reconsidering. Cuba would be a lot safer. Less free? I don’t give a damn. The US now seems like a good place to stay away from.

    1. The one that bothers me is Maternal Death Rate relative to other countries.

      Shameful.

  30. Another tragedy and another massive loss of lives, will our shock, despair, anger and frustration change anything. Do we write and shout and argue, then it it falls away for a while until the next abomination happens. We need to wake up and actual get our voices heard by the people who can make the changes. My heartfelt sympathy goes out to the family and friends of those lost of injured.

  31. New facts emerge about the two suspects responsible for the San Bernardino massacre, via Telegraph:

    “Reports: Tashfeen Malik pledged allegiance to Isil leader

    US officials have told CNN that Tashfeen Malik, the female suspect in the shooting, posted on social media as the attack was taking place pledging her loyalty to Isil leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

    The posting was reportedly made to Facebook under a different name. It is unclear how investigators determined that the post was made by Malik, but it could provide the first definitive evidence that the attack was connected to Isil.

    […]

    Suspects’ explosives ‘similar to those in al-Qaeda manual’

    When Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik fled the scene of the shooting on Tuesday, they left behind an improvised explosive device that police say either did not work, or was not activated.

    The fact that one bomb was found on scene and 12 more in the suspects’ home was one of the primary factors that led the FBI to determine that a terrorist attack had likely taken place, as opposed to a workplace shooting.
    Now a law enforcement source has told the Los Angeles Times that the pipe bomb recovered from the scene resembles an explosive device described in Inspire Magazine, an al-Qaeda publication.

    That presents the possibility that the suspects were following what is essentially a how-to-guide to terror.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12030160/California-shooting-Multiple-victims-reported-in-San-Bernardino-live.html

    1. So, it looks like this WAS an ISIS/DAESH influenced attack. But, you have to wonder, what is the point? Are we expected to stop attacking ISIS now? If anything, I think the attacks in Europe and in the U.S. are only going to harden the resolve of the West to defeat the caliphate.

      1. Well, there is that famous article in The Atlantic that argues that hardening our resolve is precisely what they want. It’s an apocalyptic cult seeking Armageddon, not a political movement that just wants to rule it’s territory without interference.

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