dellet I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Here is my response it's obvious you are an educated and thoughtful person:
I will only speak in general terms, because changing a mind with facts, is generally impossible, until you can change the thinking process. In the studies you provided it paints a very clear picture of when the problem of mass shootings started. Mid 1960’s. What’s really interesting about the date of 1966 being the dividing line is that the Gun Control Act of 1968 was in its infancy. That should make it painfully obvious that gun control and gun violence are seemingly tied together with an inverse relationship. More control, more shootings.
Other factors are in play here one being age. Young shooters aren’t affected in such a way since they weren’t alive then. I think other factors are more pertinent such as parenting and social media in the 21st century.
Then look at the social changes that occurred in the same time frame. Nothing sums this up better than to have a Kennedy in the Trump Whitehouse. It’s not because the Kennedy moved his political views to the right.
Nothing here but politics and not conducive to a good discussion.
The studies you linked to do not include gang violence. Gang violence is not included because of racial overtones. Dead gang bangers don’t pull on heart strings, and most gang bangers are not white. Dead white children selll. It’s the same thing that is painfully obvious when a young white girl disappears vs a young black girl or should we choose to point out the elephant in the room, the hundreds of young girls who are trafficked through the reservation system. Pretty white girls get head lines when they disappear. Media manipulation of facts and minds.
Gang violence whether gangsters or gangbangers is a different issue altogether since both are the criminal mechanization's of business criminal but for business/control reasons.
Those that use mass shootings, more specifically school shootings, are carefully using a social subset of the population as a means to an end. People who refuse to acknowledge the social engineering going on in the media, have their head in the sand.
Well both sides have their soldiers in that war.
Another fact conveniently ignored is that the rate of mass shootings growing exponentially since 1966 also mirrors the growth of the media and access to it. The number of televisions per household since 1966 and the news cycle has gone from not quite one per household with news available at 6am, 6pm, and 11pm. To now more than one media device per person, many individually carried 24/7 with media access available the same.
I suspect the computer with its ancillary internet and movies have had a far larger impact.
In the link I posted the New York Times posted an article almost 150 years ago about the growing numbers of youths forming there own “James gang” requiring police response all over the east coast. It was freely admitted then that this was caused by stories in the press. Now in our enlightened liberal modern lifestyle, media does not influence children. Just ask anyone in the media.
I find this to be somewhat illusive in its impact since I believe social media is far more responsible and nearly all the bigger platforms are owned and run by stout conservative people whose biggest concern is money.
The Dreaded AR15 was available to anyone who wanted one by mail order prior to 1968. Now people want to ban it and rifles like it. The rifle is exactly the same now as it was then. Only the people are different.
And it was the design winner for the military as a weapon most useful for paratroopers.
So if the problem is guns, an inanimate object that existed prior to 1966 when the exponential growth of mass shootings started, an item that has no mind to change, that was freely available to all members of society and has not changed, can not be the source of the change. That leaves the animate object as the culprit, which also existed prior to 1966, and has clearly changed its thought process.
I’ve never said the problem was the gun itself but the industry that cares not a wit other than making money.
Quite simply since 1966, the style of firearms available has not significantly changed. Access to those same firearms has become more and more restrictive. So blaming the firearm is an exercise in futility, and is a good indicator gun control does not work. If you accept that simple fact, then you must concede that the problem is the human.
Again not the firearm but the culture as we have already discussed.
If the problem is the human, you need to research what changed them. Since we have a specific date in time, 1966, we quite simply have to look at what happened in the few years preceding and since. Here’s what becomes painfully obvious. I don’t like the terms liberal and conservative, they are floating definitions. Sadly we are mostly stuck with them. So here’s the question.
Is the United States generally more conservative or liberal since roughly 1950?
Followed up with, Does that change seem to correlate with the time frame of the exponential rise is mass shootings?
I’m a liberal and I do not want to eliminate firearms and neither do my liberal friends. This is a false assumption.
This has been going on for more than 100 years. It won’t change in the next 100. The big difference is that a fire arm can not alter a mind and cause someone to do something stupid with a drug. But all too often we find out that mass shooters have been using a mind altering drug, recreational or prescribed, before doing something really stupid with a gun.
Is it possible to pin an approximate date on the rise of recreational drug use?
Would that date in any way match up to the given date of 1966 for the start of the rise in mass shootings?
Like I said before your correlation leaves out the biggest factor of all I believe Vietnam!