Have there been any studies as to commonalities among mass shooters?

[Kablooie]

I'm for stricter gun controls but it seems most of the laws people want right now would not have prevented most of the recent mass shootings.
Many of the shooters didn't have qualities that would have flagged them as a danger or prevented them from buying guns.

Data is needed and studied to see if there are as yet unidentified elements that could indicate a potential danger.

Demanding stricter gun laws that make it more difficult to buy guns but don't keep them away from dangerous people doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Particularly when there is such a push back against gun laws, the ones that we do fight for should be demonstrably effective in increasing gun safety. To battle over an ineffective law is a waste of time.

[bagelsforbreakfast]

1. okay, I'll bite Alex - "Guns for $50" n/m

[Phoenix61]

2. As far as I know they have all been white males nt

[WinkyDink]

3. Of varying shades, shall we say?

[jmg257]

5. Well most of 'em anyway..,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_police_officers

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rizwan_Farook_and_Tashfeen_Malik

[Lee-Lee]

6. No

D.C. Snipers

San Bernadino

Ft Hood

Chattanooga Navy Reserve shooting

Pulse nightclub

Virginia Tech

Those are just a few off the top of my head

[Phoenix61]

7. I stand corrected

Thanks!

[rurallib]

9. The male part of it is probably right

Hartmann was talking about this today. I only caught a smidge of it.

Another commonality seems to be some problems with women including violence against wives.

[trentwestcott]

12. D.C. snipers? Colin Ferguson? Sylvia Seegrist? Laurie Dann? James Edward Pough?

Loi Khac Nguyen? Pham Khac Nguyen? Long Khac Nguyen? Cuong Tran? Wayne Lo? Juan Luna? I went to Wikipedia and started in 1985, it wasn't too hard. I don't have time to bring it to current, but it is all there.

[Exultant Democracy]

4. Yeah google it, there are hundreds on how changing the

Gun laws inAustralia changed the dynamics of mass shootings.

[Lee-Lee]

8. Most actually did show signs of violent behavior or mental illness

This latest one was a great example. The guy was arrested for domestic violence and firearms charges but the local prosecutors let him off.

Had the prosecutors done their job he would have been convicted and barred from legally buying or owning firearms.

There is no one magic answer, but if more people acted when they saw signs of people being unstable and the judicial system did its job of prosecuting violent offenders to get them on record as being ineligible to own firearms between the two a lot would be stopped.

[trentwestcott]

13. Barred from legally buying or owning firearms? Wasn't he already legally barred from killing people?

[Lee-Lee]

18. You can put obstacles in the way of people like him

A determined person will do what they want regardless.

If he didn't have access to the gun he may have waited until he saw the group of them walking out to their cars and run them over with his van, that seems to be becoming a popular tactic in Europe. And while people always point at it and say "see how much worse it would have been if they had guns!" this case serves as a bit of a counter example for that. He was evidently a lousy shot, and had he chosen to try and run over a group of them in the parking lot we may in fact be talking about fatalities now.

[trentwestcott]

20. I'm sorry, did you just agree with me?

I've gotten used to being the lone voice on this stuff.

[LisaM]

10. Domestic violence, for one.

https://www.bustle.com/p/domestic-violence-might-be-a-common-denominator-in-mass-shootings-64478

[Egnever]

22. Yes I heard this on a podcast today

Did not realize so many shooters had a history of it. Seems like a simple thing to legislate and can't even see it being very controversial.

If you are charged with domestic violence you should be immediately barred from owning a gun perhaps for a probationary period and if convicted for life.

Seems like a win win to me... But then I am not a big gun fan.

[Ptah]

11. Column The NRA has blocked gun violence research for 20 years. Let's end its stranglehold on science

<snip>

It’s widely supposed that Congress enacted a “ban” on federal
funding for gun violence research in 1996. That isn’t quite true,
says Mark Rosenberg, a gun violence expert who was head of the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National
Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the time.
But the truth is even more demoralizing.


Infuriated by CDC-funded research suggesting that having firearms in
the home sharply increased the risks of homicide, the NRA goaded
Congress in 1996 into stripping the injury center’s funding for gun
violence research – $2.6 million. Congress then passed a measure
drafted by then-Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ga.) forbidding the CDC to spend
funds “to advocate or promote gun control.” (The NRA initially hoped
to eradicate the injury center entirely.)

The Dickey Amendment didn’t technically ban any federally funded gun
violence research. The real blow was delivered by a succession of
pusillanimous CDC directors, who decided that the safest course
bureaucratically was simply to zero out the whole field.


<snip>

The consequence is that we’re flying blind on gun violence. Rosenberg
and other experts list four topics on which research is crucial.
First is the scale of the problem — how many people are shot,
is the number rising or falling, who gets shot, under what circumstances,
and with what weapons?
Second, what are the causes? “What leads people to shoot other
people or kill themselves?” Rosenberg asked.
(Two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides, he says.)

Third is learning what works to prevent gun violence, and fourth
is figuring out how to translate these findings into policy.
Legislators across the country have enacted laws allowing
open-carry of firearms on the street or in public places, or
authorizing teachers to carry arms in the classroom or on campus,
“with no idea whether that would result in more people being killed or
more lives being saved,” Rosenberg says.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-gun-research-funding-20160614-snap-story.html

[Kablooie]

15. Yeah. That's the real problem. They don't allow research to find how to prevent gun violence.

I'll bet if they had the budget to really gather data and analyze it we'd learn some surprising things that would help.

Commonsense doesn't always work, especially with complex issues like this.

[moondust]

14. Author suggests domestic abuse.

What Mass Killers Really Have in Common By Rebecca Traister
~

Recent research done by Everytown for Gun Safety has found that of the mass shootings in the United States between 2009 and 2015, 57 percent included victims who were a family member, spouse, or former spouse of the shooter. Sixteen percent of attackers had been previously charged with domestic violence. A recent piece in the New York Times suggested that the impulse toward domestic, gendered violence may be the thing that draws a few terrorists toward the Islamic State, since ISIS’s practices include sexual slavery and a fidelity to traditional gender norms as recruiting tools for young men.
~
Perhaps these disturbed men — and 98 percent of mass killers are men — are drawn to the patriarchal traditions upheld by some religions to make sense of or justify their anger and resentment toward women. But we might do better to examine the patterns of violence toward women themselves.

[JI7]

16. male losers who DO have a history of violent asshole behavior

and lose their jobs or don't get something as a result but blame others and look to take out others with them.

[Alea]

24. This is very true, especially in the big ones

[JI7]

17. if you look at the Terrorists in Europe , they have similar violent loser backgrounds

[Vinca]

19. You don't think it makes sense to close the gun show loophole? Or regulate Internet sales?

Or not allow people with psychiatric problems to buy guns? Most of the shooters tend to favor assault rifles so maybe we should regulate what weapons can be sold to the general public. Changes to gun regulations might not make a big difference since violence is now treated as normal in our society, but even saving one event from happening would be worthwhile.

[Lee-Lee]

21. I'm fine with much of that

Universal background checks I have no problem with as long as the law is done right- by allowing private sellers access to NICS to do the check instead of requiring them to go pay a dealer a fee.

Internet sales are already regulated. If you buy a gun online it must be shipped to a dealer who must do a background check. People who don't do that are already violating federal law.

Absolutely people with psychiatric problems should be on the NICS database of prohibited persons. That should be done the right way with due process protections and a legal process that is defined, not just throwing people on a list. What is needed is the BATFE to start more stringent enforcement of that.

Assault weapons bans are largely ineffective and based on cosmetic features and appeals to emotion of people who don't understand guns and think the terms sounds evil. There are much more effective ways to focuse new laws if you want to reduce gun misuse.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

23. I Can Think Of Two Off The Top Of My Head

1. Mental Illness

2. Access To Guns