NOTE: THIS POST IS CURRENTLY INCOMPLETE (AS OF FEB. 28). I POSTED IT BEFORE FINISHING IT, BUT I DID NOT WANT TO TAKE IT DOWN. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK! 🙂
Mass school shootings – much less than half the story of gun deaths of children in the U.S.
As tragic as the most recent school shooting in Parkland was, the debate over assault weapons, bump stocks, and high capacity magazines is missing the much broader problem of gun deaths in the U.S.
Of course every possible effort should be made to stop mass school shootings. But the fact is that mass school shootings, on average, account for only 0.9% of child deaths by firearms in the U.S.
Here’s how it plays out in the U.S., for children 1-17 years old, by the numbers:
– child deaths by firearms, annually (2012-2014) : 1,297*
– child deaths by suicide, annually: (2012-2014): 492
– child deaths by homicide, annually: (2012 – 2014) : 687
– child deaths by accident, annually: (2012 – 2014): 77
– child deaths by law enforcement, or undetermined, annually: 2012-2014): 41
– child deaths by mass school shootings, annually (2012-2017): 12**
Therefore, to figure out how and why all these kids are getting gunned down, we have to look elsewhere than mass school shootings.
Child deaths by firearms not in mass school shootings are vastly under-reported by mainstream media – how come?
There are two main reasons for under-reporting: one is relatively innocent, the other is ugly.
ONE (the relatively innocent reason): mass shootings are unusual and sensational: they stand out, and are horrific, especially when children die. This requires no further explanation.
TWO (the ugly reason): most deaths by firearms in the U.S., to include deaths of children, occur in poor urban neighborhoods,*** much of it between young men in gangs, with non-gang members as collateral damage.†
I quote below from the first source footnoted in the previous paragraph:***
“CDC data show that within our nation’s cities, black Americans are, on average, eight times more likely than whites to be killed by firearms….”
“The rate of death by gun homicide for black people exceeds those among whites in all 50 states, but there is tremendous variation in the magnitude of this disparity. In 2015, a black person living in Wisconsin was 26 times more likely to be fatally shot than a white person in that state. At the same time, a black person in Arizona was “only” 3.2 times more likely than a white person to be killed by a gun.”
The same source goes on to point out that the differences in firearm deaths among blacks between states correlates with differences in levels of (economic) disadvantage. Wisconsin—mentioned above as especially deadly to urban blacks—has the second highest gap between white and black unemployment rates of all U.S. states.
Statistics explain the disparities in gun homicides, but don’t explain under-reporting itself. To explain that, you need realism about human nature. Middle and upper-middle-class whites don’t concern themselves with gun violence until it happens in their midst—particularly, as we have seen, in the form of a mass shooting in a school in a largely white community. In that situation, middle and upper-middle-class white parents have the level of education and economic resources to mount anti-gun campaigns strong enough to seize media attention.
To continue in a cynical vein, this natural disposition of human nature is compounded by the inattention of news media to inner city violence, since a steady drumbeat of shootings and deaths does not make “news”—there’s little new about it. In addition, the victims and their families are people with little economic and political clout, and a level of education that make them less able to articulate their issues.
This is not to say that whites are callous toward the tragedy of violence in poor black communities—it is to say that, for the most part, such violence is too much out of sight, and out of mind, to elicit group action.
For solutions, you have to look mainly to black leadership, and black leadership has been making strides in addressing the socioeconomic and racial dimensions of violence, that combine with the prevalence of guns
McBride: https://www.faithandleadership.com/michael-mcbride-gun-violence-race-and-church
The essential issue: problem-solving by gun
The overarching issue in the U.S. is that guns have become accepted as a way to solve problems: whether it is a mentally ill loner (often by suicide, occasionally by a multiple shooting), a gang member engaged in an urban turf war, an enraged or spurned lover, a systematic spouse abuser, a drunk in a confrontation outside a bar, a disaffected employee, or an out-and-out racist. Have a problem? Shoot your way out.
Thus the NRA mantra: the only (italics mine) answer to a Bad Guy with a gun is a Good Guy with a gun—which, like many another lie repeated often enough, sinks deep into the consciousness of susceptible people.
Problem-solving by gun is now woven into our social fabric. Popular entertainment reflects it and probably abets it. Over the last 50 years, police and crime dramas have approached shootout saturation
Doubts about the influence of violence in entertainment upon behavior have similarities in terms of multi-factorial complexity. There is a correlation between exposure to violent entertainment in early childhood and aggressive behavior in adulthood (see http://www.apa.org/pi/prevent-violence/resources/tv-violence.aspx. http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/child-adolescent-psychiatry/violence-media-what-effects-behavior
But correlation does not necessarily signify causation. Perhaps the exposure of children to violent entertainment came about because of a consumption of violent entertainment by adults within the home; thus, the primary influence on the growing child’s behavior was not the entertainment itself—it might just have easily been due to a violent home environment, or to genetic inheritance. It could well be that kids inherently violent gravitate toward violent entertainment, with the latter having minimal influence on the eventual behavior.
A further complication is that violent entertainment in itself seems insufficient to explain violent behavior; in isolation, without other risk factors, it might not affect behavior at all. At the same time, it will likely increase aggressive behavior in the presence of other risk factors. See: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/child-adolescent-psychiatry/violence-media-what-effects-behavior
Furthermore, there’s doubt as to the degree of impact of violent entertainment on society as a whole. All studies appear to agree that the correlations (and possibly causation) between violent entertainment (especially in youngsters) and aggressive behavior are found in a very small percentage of the population. So how serious could it be?
Why serious? Lethal violence by individuals (leaving out mass violence such as ethnic persecution and war) is rare—despite its emphasis in the media, and its public relations value among the fomenters of fear such as Donald Trump and his ilk. But guns multiply the damage inflicted by the actions of a few many times over. That is conspicuous among mass school shootings, but is equally the case with killings between gangs—most gang members do not kill, but the few who do kill tend to kill or maim repeatedly, and their killing and maiming are facilitated by the destructive power of guns. It is also the case with domestic abusers—usually men against women—for whom an escalation of violence often ends in killing with a gun, for no better reason that it is available, and easy.
Pew Research report (very revealing!):
Demographics of gun ownership
===================== footnotes follow ======================
** (mass school shootings, 3 or more deaths); includes Sandy Hook in 2012 but not Parkland in 2018: Wikipedia
Note that I have cheated a bit by applying percentages derived from the time period 2002 – 2014 in order to obtain the breakdown of the 1,297 in the period 2012-2014. But I think it’s safe to assume that the ratios are nearly constant over the years.
† The youth gang element is intuitively obvious, but what’s the evidence? Interestingly, the single most emphatic source for this finding is from a group named “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.” http://jpfo.org/articles-assd03/gun-stats-perspective.htm
As to the latter, there are arguments pro and con regarding the effect of violent video games, violent movies, and violent TV series. The arguments against usually take the form of disputing the existence of a “direct link” between violent entertainment and violent behavior.