Why we shouldn't focus on mass shootings

[Tom Sawyer]

And yet shooting your victim in the head is always -- repeat ALWAYS -- easier than threatening him. All the more so if your victim does not seem sufficiently cooperative at first encounter. This is where cowardice comes into play, and a mugger who is frightened of his potential victim will resort to violence the moment it becomes easier to pull the trigger than try to talk the victim into cooperating.

We can't even trust POLICE OFFICERS to avoid escalating to deadly force unnecessarily, why the hell would we expect this of criminals?

Except that has to be balanced by the fact the cops hunt a murderer much harder than they hunt a mugger. The mugger wants money, he has no desire to harm.

Because if there's one thing we know about muggers, it's their ability to do an intelligent cost-benefit analysis of what's in their rational self-interest. They're the smartest of all the criminals.

 

[Horatio Parker]

And yet shooting your victim in the head is always -- repeat ALWAYS -- easier than threatening him. All the more so if your victim does not seem sufficiently cooperative at first encounter. This is where cowardice comes into play, and a mugger who is frightened of his potential victim will resort to violence the moment it becomes easier to pull the trigger than try to talk the victim into cooperating.

We can't even trust POLICE OFFICERS to avoid escalating to deadly force unnecessarily, why the hell would we expect this of criminals?

Except that has to be balanced by the fact the cops hunt a murderer much harder than they hunt a mugger. The mugger wants money, he has no desire to harm.

He may have no desire to harm, but he has to control the situation and the gun is his only leverage. And he's frightened, particularly of losing control.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And yet shooting your victim in the head is always -- repeat ALWAYS -- easier than threatening him. All the more so if your victim does not seem sufficiently cooperative at first encounter. This is where cowardice comes into play, and a mugger who is frightened of his potential victim will resort to violence the moment it becomes easier to pull the trigger than try to talk the victim into cooperating.

We can't even trust POLICE OFFICERS to avoid escalating to deadly force unnecessarily, why the hell would we expect this of criminals?

Except that has to be balanced by the fact the cops hunt a murderer much harder than they hunt a mugger.

Because "Fear of the police" has always been a reliable deterrent before...

The mugger wants money, he has no desire to harm.

That's not true at all. A man who wants money and has no desire to harm engages in panhandling. Or, generally speaking, goes out and gets a job.

The mugger does indeed have desire to harm. He wants to forcibly separate someone from their money and property. He's already crossed the line at that point into morally unacceptable behavior and no longer cares what happens to his victim. He's also keenly aware that it's a lot easier to get away with a mugging when the victim is too dead to describe you to the police.

Except that has to be balanced by the fact the cops hunt a murderer much harder than they hunt a mugger. The mugger wants money, he has no desire to harm.

He may have no desire to harm, but he has to control the situation and the gun is his only leverage. And he's frightened, particularly of losing control.

Which, again, makes them likely to shoot out of irrational fear. And again, this is a problem often enough with LAW ENFORCEMENT that it is naive to think that criminals would have superior impulse control.

 

[Keith&Co.]

And again, this is a problem often enough with LAW ENFORCEMENT that it is naive to think that criminals would have superior impulse control.

Maybe they're more practiced at it.
I mean, cops can go days dealing with domestic violence and runaways and traffic offenses, not facing an armed gunman on every call.
A mugger is going to BE an armed gunman every time he goes to work. He's experienced in the situation, he's put in the hours to certify at it, and he's the one who initiates the encounter.
While the rest of us wonder 'what will I do if I run into an armed gunman, the mugger stands on the street, checks the crowd and picks a target. "That's the guy who's going to run into an armed gunman today."

They should be far more comfortable and relaxed in the situation.

Just like stewardesses on American Airlines might be trained in how to deal with turbulence and angry passengers, if it ever comes up, while the staff on Delta just shrug when it happens. "This again?"

 

[ronburgundy]

Except that has to be balanced by the fact the cops hunt a murderer much harder than they hunt a mugger. The mugger wants money, he has no desire to harm.

He may have no desire to harm, but he has to control the situation and the gun is his only leverage. And he's frightened, particularly of losing control.

Note that to whatever extent your (or Loren's) argument has any validity, it means that having a gun makes a person more likely to mug people in the first place. If muggers are so frightened about the potential risks to themselves and how the victim might act and having a guns calms them down and makes them feel more in control, then that means that if they didn't have a gun, they would more often decide not to go through with the attempt at all due to that fear of risks.
IOW, simply having access to guns cause an increase in muggings and robberies, even when the guns are not used to result in a homicide.
Given that guns also cause muggings to turn into homicides, these combined negative impacts on muggings more than offset any minor reduction in the % of muggings that wind up including non-lethal assault.

 

[ksen]

that's socialist

 

[ronburgundy]

Something worth noting about the murders in the US that use a weapon other than firearms is that these are more likely to be used in either highly personal and/or planned out attacks (spousal murders, serial killings, rapes, etc.). IOW, the person makes a deliberate emotional decision to murder someone, then they choose a weapon. Thus, the nature of the weapon is less causal in determining whether a murder will occur at all. What that means is that these are are murders that are likely to occur anyway, even without guns. However, these are the murders where guns are already not being used as much. The types of murders where gun use is the most dominant are precisely the less personal and less planned murders where the convenience of the weapon and the ease with which it can kill are more causally determining factors in whether a murder occurs at all.

This undermines lame arguments about "Well maybe we should ban knives too". Knives are used in the type of murders in which the weapon has less causal role in the decision to murder. IOW, knives don't cause the murders in which a knife happened to be used, rather anger, vengeance, and other mentally disturbed motives would have found a way and the knife is just a byproduct. In contrast, guns are used especially in contexts where the murder is not an orchestrated forgone conclusion before a weapon is even chosen. The gun plays a major causal role and without it, such murders would often not occur.

The rationale for banning a weapon is not that it happens to be used, but that it plays a causal role and without it many of the murder in which it is used would not have occurred. All the evidence points to this being true of firearms and especially handguns, while not being true for most other weapons which are usually chosen only after the decision to murder is already made and are easily swapped for other object that are just as easy to kill with (again, unlike guns which are by far more easy to kill with than any other available weapon).

 

[arkirk]

Something worth noting about the murders in the US that use a weapon other than firearms is that these are more likely to be used in either highly personal and/or planned out attacks (spousal murders, serial killings, rapes, etc.). IOW, the person makes a deliberate emotional decision to murder someone, then they choose a weapon. Thus, the nature of the weapon is less causal in determining whether a murder will occur at all. What that means is that these are are murders that are likely to occur anyway, even without guns. However, these are the murders where guns are already not being used as much. The types of murders where gun use is the most dominant are precisely the less personal and less planned murders where the convenience of the weapon and the ease with which it can kill are more causally determining factors in whether a murder occurs at all.

This undermines lame arguments about "Well maybe we should ban knives too". Knives are used in the type of murders in which the weapon has less causal role in the decision to murder. IOW, knives don't cause the murders in which a knife happened to be used, rather anger, vengeance, and other mentally disturbed motives would have found a way and the knife is just a byproduct. In contrast, guns are used especially in contexts where the murder is not an orchestrated forgone conclusion before a weapon is even chosen. The gun plays a major causal role and without it, such murders would often not occur.

The rationale for banning a weapon is not that it happens to be used, but that it plays a causal role and without it many of the murder in which it is used would not have occurred. All the evidence points to this being true of firearms and especially handguns, while not being true for most other weapons which are usually chosen only after the decision to murder is already made and are easily swapped for other object that are just as easy to kill with (again, unlike guns which are by far more easy to kill with than any other available weapon).

This is something worth considering. I have felt that we need to remove emphasis on the notion that guns make our lives safer and that to have a gun is to be safer than to not have one. In the light of all the unarmed black people being shot by police you begin to wonder about that till you realize that if those guys all had guns, it would be impossible to make any case against any policeman shooting any black man. To them, to have a gun is to become eligible to be shot to death.

I think the point of the gun being at least partially responsible for its own use and being a causal factor in killings is valid.