A Geographic Guide To American Mass Shootings

My heart and prayers go out to those that suffered, families and friends!!

Nothing fails like prayer. What is needed is a serious and frank national discussion about mental illness and how the years of relentless budget cuts have eviscerated our mental healthcare system. Guns aren't going away but we can address our culture of violence and mental illness. Surely the cost of prevention is more than worth the cost in lost and ruined lives. If not now... when?

There are so many things parents/schools can do to protect kids in school that they're just not doing... I find it hard to commiserate with those who lose loved ones like this.

I do however feel sad about the children who lose their lives.

signed: childless.

Seriously? Popsci is linking articles from Mother Jones now?

I wouldn't mind if the MJ data was a little more complete and useful instead of slanted for a flawed agenda. Where is the (most important) breakdown of the locations by gun restrictions? How many occurred in places that banned carry of firearms by law-abiding citizens?

The mall shooting in Omaha was such a place that banned firearms, EVERY school shooting was in a place that banned firearms. I have even heard that military bases don't allow non-police soldiers to carry defensive concealed carry firearms.

These are all "soft" targets where a person determined to become famous or to make a statement can do so practically at will without opposition.

A simpler solution is to allow everyone -and especially teachers in these cases access to the proper tools to immediately protect themselves and our schools. Delete all of these gun free zones and allow people to defend themselves, wherever they are, from any clear and present threat as long as they are not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol.

The cities, states, and local places where people are allowed to actually defend themselves (and others) are statistically FAR safer than these gun-free zones where they are not.

You may call the bad guys mentally defective, but they certainly make very logical and specific decisions about where they go to commit these crimes and how they go about them.

(Also, prayer by kind and moral people seems to have brought about a great deal of inspiration toward the end of improving the lives of those people -just in case you haven't noticed) Just because it doesn't work like a genie with three wishes, it doesn't mean it doesn't work at all. You simply have to step back, change your frame of reference, have some patience, and free your imagination to comprehend. Maybe as that righteousness of the nation fades, so does the prosperity. Is that happening?)

I disagree totally with the agenda and priorities of spacehistorian.

Condolonces to all affected. Im a canadian, and we have strict gun laws. Also a much smaller population. Our murder rate per capita was a 1.6 compared to a 4.2 for the US. Americans are just warmer canadians in my opinion.

I have to agree with sturgeon. Prayer is not only a good focus for those affected, but there are studies that show mass consciousness directed at certain situations improves them more then the control. Physics still has unsolved mysteries, directed conscious attention is one of them.

Mental illness cant be solved with drugs space historian. Typically the best solutions are root based, where people modify their own thought structures with positive reinforcement etc. ( google studies on MRI"S and brain density scans, plus depression, the study i am referencing saw people develop clinical depression after repeating negative thoughts, with a measurable decrease in brain density, there are many studies though) Mental illness is symptomatic of other causes, with poverty being the main root of all crime/mental illness/domestic disputes etc.

Sadly there is a certain percentage of the population that tends to internalize violent media/video games/tv/movies etc. Screamo music listeners have the highest suicide rates of any music genre. I can agree with space historian on the culture of violence being addressed. Peace be with you america.

The future.....
Mother Jones isn't the way there baby.
Just saying.

we had a school shooting near where i went to school. at a school assembly we were flat out told to kill any one that dares to pull a gun at school and by any means we see fit. no one was ever disciplined for bringing knives to school but we was told to keep it under 9 inches. i personally carried a hunting knife with a 9in blade and a Buck in my pocket. not once was a knife pulled on another student but a guy did bring a gun to school. when the police arrived he needed a trip to the ER before booking. at the first sight of the gun the other students reacted and the only one hurt was the attacker. 15 years later that unofficial policy is still in place and there hasnt been any trouble since. some teachers even carry very small firearms in their purse or have them in their desks.

id vote putting an AR-15 on the wall in every class "in case of emergency break glass" before id vote for tighter gun control

The choice of data presentation is interesting.

1) It only lists "mass murders" that use guns since 1983. But guns have been available for hundreds of years. Semi-automatic handguns have been around more than 100 years. The data is too limited in scope.

2) The comparison chart showing the percentage use of "assault weapons" is interesting. If it is true, then not a single killer used a rifle that was not an assault weapon. This particular graph shows either ignorance or purposeful manipulation. Most people think that "assault weapons" are military weapons those that can be set on full automatic, while previous federal restrictions were based on styling, color, and attachments rather than functionality.

3) The data exists on the map for comparisons of killers with signs of mental illness and for timelines to be made. The study is incomplete.

4) I would also like to see the data on mass killings involving poison, arson, bombs, sabotage, and attack by motor vehicle, since those would be the weapons of choice if we somehow removed all guns from the world. (Imagine how many would have died in Aurora if the killer had a can of gasoline instead.)

Now show the millions of dots where guns saved lives. Otherwise you are just a liberal-legislate by emotions, not by facts and truth.

@beyond9
your on a slippery slope dude, whos going to determine what a radical or violent group is? The gov? the police? I can agree with people on mental illness. Do you know what Germany did in the mid to late 1930's? They defined large sections of the population as not being safe with weapons and confiscated them. The only people allowed with weapons were Aryans and Gov. officials. And then these large sections were exterminated. See how bad it can get? So yes Englands gun crime rate i'm sure went down. I can even agree to that. But what happened to other crimes, rape, burglary, robbery, etc.?

(1) Columbine occured several years into the Clinton Assault Weapon Ban. That ban expired 8 years ago, and Columbie has not been eclipsed.

(2) The only assault weapons are select fire - which means that most of those shootings were done with semi-auto rifles, whose only differences from normal hunting rifles is cosmetic.

(3) Oklahoma City (fertilizer), 9/11 (box cutters), and countless other bombings show that firearms are not the most dangerous threat from psycopaths.

(4) Every one of these shooting was stopped by someone with a gun - either LE or an armed Citizen. The only difference is that the Citizens are closer and more likely to stop the shooting before it starts.

(5) Every government attrocity, from Hitler to Stalin, began with a movement to disarm the population.

So then lets just look at California once. Is this a map of mass shootings that occurred on a single day? No? Then where are all of L.A.'s driveby's listed? This article is bs if it only lists what they want focused on. Case in point is still California. I submit that there were more mass shooting incidents in just L.A. than these people have listed for the whole of America.
Maybe this only counts if there was more than one person killed. If so, then I submit that Nike's should be banned because of all the people who have been kicked to death by those wearing Nike's, because that number is much higher than those killed in mass shootings. It's probably as high as the number for all shootings ever in America. It outstrips guns every single day.
So does heroin overdose, but even with our so-called War on Drugs, we've never destroyed an opium poppy farm anywhere in the world. Not once.
How's about we make a scenario where the populace actually has jobs before we make it so the only ones with guns are the police or the criminal? Because the only ones able to protect their own homes are the criminals or the police; who apparently aren't citizens like the rest of us, and therefore should have inherent rights that the populace doesn't have.

12/14/12 at 4:30 pm spacehistorian said:

"There are so many things parents/schools can do to protect kids in school that they're just not doing... I find it hard to commiserate with those who lose loved ones like this.

I do however feel sad about the children who lose their lives."
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You weren't asked to 'commiserate'. You were not asked to understand the parents/families loss. If you have suggestions to offer the parents of Newtown, CT , tell them - not us. Knowledge is power only if it is shared.