The Question

It keeps rattling around in my head, and only partly because it's becoming part of the national zeitgeist:

If school kids can live with the threat

of being gunned down at any moment,

why can't CEOs?

Kinda Shitty - But

... it's pretty much peak Rich Guy Privilege for CEOs to be suddenly all paranoid about the probability of getting shot down in the street.

You know - like school kids, and shoppers at Walmart, and folks at a country music concert, or just regular people watching the local 4th of July parade - or any random black guy driving the wrong car at the wrong time thru the wrong neighborhood.

These corporate pricks are so worried, that security firms are being inundated by phone calls from the bigger corporations, begging for protection.

Got some news for ya, fellas:

This is America. We have lots of guns, and a bunch of us are carrying a heavy dose of grievance, and we're constantly being encouraged to think about solving our problems with gun violence.

Do you get it now?

Are you thinking maybe the seal has been broken? ie: people see what they take as a little righteous retribution, so now there's a fair probability that some of us will assume it's open season on rich pukes like Brian Thompson?

Can we reasonably anticipate that certain attitudes of certain power-holders will undergo a sudden rapid shift?

I dunno. I'm just asking questions.

Numbers Don't Lie

... but an awful lot of politicians - mostly Republicans nowadays -  lie with numbers.

• The murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump has exceeded the murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in every year from 2000 to 2020.
• Over this 21-year span, this Red State murder gap has steadily widened from a low of 9% more per capita red state murders in 2003 and 2004 to 44% more per capita red state murders in 2019, before settling back to 43% in 2020.
• Altogether, the per capita Red State murder rate was 23% higher than the Blue State murder rate when all 21 years were combined.
• If Blue State murder rates were as high as Red State murder rates, Biden-voting states would have suffered over 45,000 more murders between 2000 and 2020.
• Even when murders in the largest cities in red states are removed, overall murder rates in Trump-voting states were 12% higher than Biden-voting states across this 21-year period and were higher in 18 of the 21 years observed.

75% of murders here in

USAmerica Inc

are committed with a gun.

#36 YTD

Mass murder in Lewiston Maine last night.

According to Gun Violence Archive, this makes 565 mass shootings (4 or more people shot), and 31 mass murders (4 or more people killed).

But as you can see in the AP story below, there is some discrepancy on whether the number of Mass Killings is 31 or 36. Like we can't even keep track of this shit anymore?

Which beggars the question - once again:

What the fuck is wrong with us?

More than 3 mass murder incidents per month so far in 2023.

At least 16 dead in Maine mass killing and police hunt for the shooter as residents take shelter

Hundreds of police officers are searching for Robert Card, a person of interest in a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that killed and injured several people.

LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — A man shot and killed at least 16 people at a restaurant and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday and then fled into the night, sparking a massive search by hundreds of officers while frightened residents stayed locked in their homes.

A police bulletin identified Robert Card, 40, as a person of interest in the attack that sent panicked bowlers scrambling behind pins when shots rang out around 7 p.m. Card was described as a firearms instructor believed to be in the Army Reserve and assigned to a training facility in Saco, Maine.

The document, circulated to law enforcement officials, said Card had been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks in the summer of 2023. It did not provide details about his treatment or condition but said Card had reported “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” the military base. A telephone number listed for Card in public records was not in service.

Maine shooting is the 36th mass killing this year

Lewiston Police said in an earlier Facebook post that they were dealing with an active shooter incident at Schemengees Bar and Grille and at Sparetime Recreation, a bowling alley about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) away.

One bowler, who identified himself only as Brandon, said he heard about 10 shots, thinking the first was a balloon popping.

“I had my back turned to the door. And as soon as I turned and saw it was not a balloon — he was holding a weapon — I just booked it,” he told The Associated Press.

Brandon said he scrambled down the length of the alley, sliding into the pin area and climbing up to hide in the machinery. He was among a busload of survivors who were driven to a middle school in the neighboring city of Auburn to be reunited with family and friends.

“I was putting on my bowling shoes when when it started. I’ve been barefoot for five hours,” he said.

Melinda Small, the owner of Legends Sports Bar and Grill, said her staff immediately locked their doors and moved all 25 customers and employees away from the doors after a customer reported hearing about the shooting at the bowling alley less than a quarter-mile away. Soon, the police flooded the roadway and a police officer eventually escorted everyone out of the building.

“I am honestly in a state of shock. I am blessed that my team responded quickly and everyone is safe,” Small said. “But at the same time, my heart is broken for this area and for what everyone is dealing with. I just feel numb.”

After the shooting, police, many armed with rifles, took up positions while the city descended into eerie quiet — punctuated by occasional sirens — as people hunkered down at home. Schools were closed Thursday in Lewiston, Lisbon and Auburn, as well as municipal offices in Lewiston.

The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office released two photos of the suspect on its Facebook page that showed the shooter walking into an establishment with a weapon raised to his shoulder.

Two law enforcement officials told The AP that at least 16 people were killed and the toll was expected to rise. However, Michael Sauschuck, commissioner of the Maine Department of Public Safety, declined to provide a specific estimate at a news conference, calling it a “fluid situation.” State police planned to hold a mid-morning news conference Thursday.

The two law enforcement officials said dozens of people also had been wounded. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.

On its website, Central Maine Medical Center said staff were “reacting to a mass casualty, mass shooter event” and were coordinating with area hospitals to take in patients. The hospital was locked down and police, some armed with rifles, stood by the entrances.

Meanwhile, hospitals as far away as Portland, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) to the south, were on alert to potentially receive victims.

An order for residents and business owners to stay inside and off the streets of the city of 37,000 was extended Wednesday night from Lewiston to Lisbon, about 8 miles (13 kilometers) away, after a “vehicle of interest” was found there, authorities said.

Gov. Janet Mills released a statement echoing instructions for people to shelter. She said she had been briefed on the situation and will remain in close contact with public safety officials.

President Joe Biden spoke by phone to Mills and the state’s Senate and House members, offering “full federal support in the wake of this horrific attack,” a White House statement said.

Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent, said he was “deeply sad for the city of Lewiston and all those worried about their family, friends and neighbors” and was monitoring the situation. King’s office said the senator would be headed directly home to Maine on the first flight possible.

Local schools will be closed Thursday and people should shelter in place or seek safety, Superintendent Jake Langlais said, adding: “Stay close to your loved ones. Embrace them.”

Wednesday’s death toll was staggering for a state that in 2022 had 29 homicides the entire year.

Maine doesn’t require permits to carry guns, and the state has a longstanding culture of gun ownership that is tied to its traditions of hunting and sport shooting.

Some recent attempts by gun control advocates to tighten the state’s gun laws have failed. Proposals to require background checks for private gun sales and create a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases failed earlier this year. Proposals that focused on school security and banning bump stocks failed in 2019.

State residents have also voted down some attempts to tighten gun laws in Maine. A proposal to require background checks for gun sales failed in a 2016 public vote.

To Look Or Not To Look

Google Search: "shooting victims"

(127,000,000 results)

33 Page Downs later ...

NOTE: You can find the more gruesome pix if you try, and I'll leave you to it. But, as the WaPo article says, be careful what you ask for.

My default position here is that we don't change the law until we change the culture, and we don't change the culture until we've changed enough individual minds.

The actual effects of graphic depictions on the public psyche can get more than a little iffy.

Show what's really happening, and people can be moved to take action. The problem is that you can never be sure which direction that action will be going ...

... because you can't be sure public response isn't going to be cynically manipulated so the action goes in a direction that just ends up making everything worse.

Raw videos of violent incidents in Texas rekindle debate about graphic images

News organizations have long held back from publishing explicit or violent images of death, which are now rapidly disseminated across social media platforms

The shooter who killed eight people outside an outlet mall in Allen, Tex., on May 6 was captured on a dash-cam video as he stood in the middle of a parking lot, methodically murdering people.

The next day, when a driver plowed his SUV into a cluster of men waiting for a bus in Brownsville, Tex., a video showed him speeding into and rolling over so many human beings that the person behind the camera had to pan across nearly a block-long field of mangled bodies, pools of blood and moaning, crying victims to capture the carnage. The driver killed eight people.

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These gruesome videos almost instantly appeared on social media and were viewed millions of times before, in many cases, being taken down. Yet they still appear in countless back alleys of the internet.

The footage made clear that the deaths were horrific and the suffering unspeakable. The emotional power of the images would shake almost any viewer. Their rapid dissemination also rekindled an unsettling debate — one that has lingered since the advent of photography: Why does anyone need to see such images?

Images of violence can inform, titillate, or rally people for or against a political view. Ever since 19th-century photographer Mathew Brady made his pioneering photos of fallen soldiers stacked like firewood on Civil War battlefields, news organizations and now social media platforms have grappled with questions of taste, decency, purpose and power that suffuse decisions about whether to fully portray the price of deadly violence.

Newspaper editors and television news executives have long sought to filter out pictures of explicit violence or bloody injuries that could generate complaints that such graphic imagery is offensive or dehumanizing. But such policies have historically come with exceptions, some of which have galvanized popular sentiments. The widely published photo of the mangled body of the lynched 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 played a key role in building the civil rights movement. And although many news organizations decided in 2004 not to publish explicit photos of torture by U.S. service members at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the images that did circulate widely contributed to a shift in public opinion against the war in Iraq, according to several studies.

More recently, the gruesome video of a police officer killing George Floyd on a Minneapolis street in 2020 was repeatedly published across all manner of media, sparking a mass movement to confront police violence against Black Americans.

Following the killings in Allen and Brownsville, traditional news organizations, including The Washington Post, mostly steered clear of publishing the most grisly images.

“Those were not close calls,” said J. David Ake, director of photography for the Associated Press, which did not use the Texas videos. “We are not casual at all about these decisions, and we do need to strike a balance between telling the truth and being sensitive to the fact that these are people who’ve been through something horrific. But I am going to err on the side of humanity and children.”

But even as news organizations largely showed restraint, the Allen video spread widely on Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and other platforms, shared in part by individuals who expressed anguish at the violence and called for a change in gun policies.

“I thought long and hard about whether to share the horrific video showing the pile of bodies from the mass shooting‚” tweeted Jon Cooper, a Democratic activist and former Suffolk County, N.Y., legislator. He wrote that he decided to post the video, which was then viewed more than a million times, because “maybe — just maybe — people NEED to see this video, so they’ll pressure their elected officials until they TAKE ACTION.”

Others who posted the video used it to make false claims about the shooter, such as the notion that he was a Black supremacist who shouted anti-White slogans before killing his victims.

From government-monitored decisions about showing deaths during World War II to friction over explicit pictures of devastated civilians during the Vietnam War and on to the debate over depictions of mass killing victims in recent years, editors, news consumers, tech companies and relatives of murdered people have made compelling but opposing arguments about how much gore to show.

The dilemma has only grown more complicated in this time of information overload, when more Americans are saying they avoid the news because, as a Reuters Institute study found last year, they feel overwhelmed and the news darkens their mood. And the infinite capacity of the internet has upped the ante for grisly images, making it harder for any single image to provoke the widespread outrage that some believe can translate into positive change.

Recent cutbacks in content moderation teams at companies such as Twitter have also accelerated the spread of disturbing videos, experts said.

“The fact that very graphic images from the shooting in Texas showed up on Twitter is more likely to be content moderation failure than an explicit policy,” said Vivian Schiller, executive director of Aspen Digital and former president of NPR and head of news at Twitter.

Twitter’s media office responded to an emailed request for comment with only a poop emoji, the company’s now-standard response to press inquiries.

Efforts to study whether viewing gruesome images alters popular opinion, changes public policy or affects the behavior of potential killers have generally been unsuccessful, social scientists say.

“There’s never been any solid evidence that publishing more grisly photos of mass shootings would produce a political response,” said Michael Griffin, a professor of media and cultural studies at Macalester College who studies media practices regarding war and conflict. “It’s good for people to be thinking about these questions, but advocates for or against publication are basing their views on their own moral instincts and what they would like to see happen.”

The widely available videos of the two incidents in Texas resurfaced long-standing conflicts over the publication of images of death stemming from wars, terrorist attacks or shootings.

One side argues that widespread dissemination of gruesome images of dead and wounded victims is sensationalistic, emotionally abusive, insensitive to the families of victims and ultimately serves little purpose other than to inure people to horrific violence.

The other side contends that media organizations and online platforms ought not to proclaim themselves arbiters of what the public can see, and should instead deliver the unvarnished truth, either to shock people into political action or simply to allow the public to make its own assessment of how policy decisions play out.

Schiller said news organizations are sometimes right to publish graphic images of mass killings. “Those images are a critical record of both a specific crime but also the horrific and unrelenting crisis of gun violence in the U.S. today,” she said. “Graphic images can drive home the reality of what automatic weapons do to a human body — the literal human carnage.”

It’s not clear, however, that horrific images spur people to protest or action. “Some gruesome images cause public outrage and maybe even government action, but some result in a numbing effect or compassion fatigue,” said Folker Hanusch, a University of Vienna journalism professor who has written extensively about how media outlets report on death. “I’m skeptical that showing such imagery can really result in lasting social change, but it’s still important that journalists show well-chosen moments that convey what really happened.”

Others argue that even though any gory footage taken down by the big tech companies will nonetheless find its way onto many other sites, traditional news organizations and social media companies should still set a standard to signify what is unacceptable fare for a mass audience.

The late writer Tom Wolfe derisively dubbed the gatekeepers of the mainstream media “Victorian gentlemen,” worried about protecting their audience from disturbing images. Throughout the last half-century, media critics have urged editors to give their readers and viewers a more powerful and visceral sense of what gun violence, war and terrorism do to their victims.

Early in the Iraq War, New York columnist Pete Hamill asked why U.S. media were not depicting dead soldiers. “What we get to see is a war filled with wrecked vehicles: taxis, cars, Humvees, tanks, gasoline trucks,” he wrote. “We see almost no wrecked human beings. … In short, we are seeing a war without blood.”

After pictures of abuses at Abu Ghraib appeared, it was “as though, rather suddenly, the gloves have come off, and the war seems less sanitized,” wrote Michael Getler, then the ombudsman at The Post.

Still, news consumers have often made clear that they appreciate restraint. In a 2004 survey, two-thirds of Americans told Pew Research Center that news organizations were right to withhold images of the charred bodies of four U.S. contractors killed in Fallujah, Iraq.

Images of mass shooting victims have been published even less frequently than grisly pictures of war dead, journalism historians have found. “Mass shootings happen to ‘us,’ while war is happening ‘over there,’ to ‘them,’” Griffin said. “So there’s much more resistance to publication of grisly images of mass shootings, much more sensitivity to the feelings” of families of victims.

But despite decades of debate, no consensus has developed about when to use graphic images. “There’s no real pattern, not for war images, not for natural disasters, not for mass shootings,” Hanusch said. “Journalists are very wary of their audience castigating them for publishing images they don’t want to see.”

Ake, the AP photo director, said that over the years, “we probably have loosened our standards when it comes to war images. But at the same time, with school shootings, we might have tightened them a little” to be sensitive to the concerns of parents.

For decades, many argued that decisions to show explicit images of dead and mangled bodies during the Vietnam War helped shift public opinion against the war.

But when social scientists dug into news coverage from that era, they found that pictures of wounded and dead soldiers and civilians appeared only rarely. And in a similar historical survey of coverage of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, images of the dead and wounded made up fewer than 5 percent of news photos, as noted by professors at Arizona State and Rutgers universities.

Some iconic images from the Vietnam War — the running, nude Vietnamese girl who was caught in a napalm attack, for example — gained their full historic import only after the war.

 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center,

after a napalm attack on June 8, 1972

In the digital age, publication decisions by editors and social media managers can sometimes feel less relevant because once images are published somewhere, they spread virtually uncontrollably throughout the world.

“People are just getting a fire hose of feeds on their phones, and it’s decontextualized,” Griffin said. “They don’t even know where the images come from.”

The flood of images, especially on highly visual platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, diminishes the impact of pictures that show what harm people have done to one another, Griffin said, pointing to the example of the photo of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian refugee found washed ashore on a Turkish beach, a powerful and disturbing image from 2017 that many people then compared with iconic pictures from the Vietnam War.

“At the time, people said this is going to be like the napalm girl from Vietnam and really change people’s minds,” Griffin said. “But that didn’t happen. Most people now don’t remember where that was or what it meant.”

Social media companies face pressure to set standards and enforce them either before grisly images are posted or immediately after they surface. With every new viral video from a mass killing, critics blast the social media platforms for being inconsistent or insufficiently rigorous in taking down sensational or grisly images; the companies say they enforce their rules with algorithms that filter out many abuses, with their content moderator staffs and with reports from users.

Soon after the Allen shooting, a Twitter moderator told a user who complained about publication of the gruesome video that the images did not violate the site’s policy on violent content, the BBC reported. But a day later, images of dead bodies at the mall — bloody, crumpled, slumped against a wall — were taken down.

Although the biggest social media platforms eventually removed the video, images of the shooter firing his weapon and photos of the shooter sprawled on his back, apparently already dead, are still widely available, for example on Reddit, which has placed a red “18 NSFW” warning on links to the video, indicating that the images are intended for adults and are “not safe for work.”

A moderator of Reddit’s “r/masskillers” forum told his audience that the platform’s managers had changed their policy, requiring images of dead victims to be removed.

“Previously, only livestreams of shootings and manifestos from the perpetrators were prohibited,” the moderator wrote. Now, “[g]raphic content of victims of mass killings is generally going to be something admins are going to take down, so we’ll have to comply with that.”

The group, which has 147,000 members, focuses on mass killings, but its rules prohibit users from sharing or asking for live streams of shootings or manifestos from shooters.

After the attack in Allen, YouTube “quickly removed violative content … in accordance with our Community Guidelines,” said Jack Malon, a spokesman for the company. In addition, he said, to make sure users find verified information, “our systems are prominently surfacing videos from authoritative sources in search and recommendations.”

At Meta, videos and photos depicting dead bodies outside the mall were removed and “banked,” creating a digital fingerprint that automatically removes the images when someone tries to upload them.

But people often find ways to post such videos even after companies have banned them, and Griffin argued that “you can’t get away anymore with ‘Oh, we took it down quickly,’ because it’s going to spread. There is no easy solution.”

Mourners gather at the makeshift memorial in Allen. Images of the shooter firing his weapon and photos of the shooter sprawled on his back, apparently already dead, are still widely available online. (Jeffrey McWhorter for The Washington Post)
Tech platforms such as Google, Meta and TikTok generally prohibit particularly violent or graphic content. But those companies often make exceptions for newsworthy images, and it can take some time before the platforms decide how to handle a particular set of images.

The companies consider how traditional media organizations are using the footage, how the accounts posting the images are characterizing the events and how other tech platforms are responding, said Katie Harbath, a technology consultant and former public policy director at Meta.

“They’re trying to parse out if somebody is praising the act ... or criticizing it,” she said. “They usually [want to] keep up the content denouncing it, but they don’t want to allow praise. … That starts to get really tricky, especially if you are trying to use automated tools.”

In 2019, Meta, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms were widely criticized for their role in publicizing the mass killing at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The shooter, Brenton Tarrant, had live-streamed the attack on Facebook with a camera affixed to his helmet. Facebook took the video down shortly afterward, but not until it had been viewed thousands of times.

By then, the footage had gone viral, as internet users evaded the platforms’ artificial-intelligence content-moderation systems by making small changes to the images and reposting them.

But just as traditional media outlets find themselves attacked both by those who want grisly images published and those who don’t, so too have tech companies been pummeled both for leaving up and taking down gruesome footage.

In 2021, Twitch, a live-streaming service popular among video game players, faced angry criticism when it suspended an account that rebroadcast video of Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. The company takes a zero-tolerance approach to violent content.

“Society’s thought process on what content should be allowed or not allowed is definitely still evolving,” Harbath said.

US Marines - Buna Beach - Papua New Guinea

1942 George Strock

This Is Freedom?

At least 9 killed, including gunman, after Texas mall shooting

A gunman opened fire on an outlet mall in a Dallas suburb on Saturday afternoon, killing at least eight people — including children — and injuring at least seven others before he was fatally shot by a police officer, authorities said.

The officer was at the mall in Allen, Tex., on an unrelated call when he heard gunshots at around 3:30 p.m. local time, found the suspected gunman and fatally shot him, Allen Police Chief Brian Harvey said Saturday evening. Authorities believe the gunman acted alone and that there were no further threats, Harvey said.

Children were among the victims at Allen Premium Outlets, said Rep. Keith Self (R), who represents the area and said local authorities briefed him by phone after the shooting. Self said unconfirmed reports of a second shooter were false.

Six of the eight people killed were found dead at the scene. At least nine people injured in the shooting were taken to hospitals by the local fire department, Allen Fire Chief Jon Boyd said. Two of them died, and as of late Saturday, three others remained critically injured. More people could have been injured and transported in personal vehicles, Boyd said.

Children were also among those injured. The victims being treated at Medical City Healthcare trauma facilities ranged from 5 to 61 years old, said Kathleen Beathard, a spokeswoman for the hospital system.

Aerial footage of the scene, about 25 miles northeast of Dallas, showed what appeared to be bodies underneath white sheets on the ground outside an H&M outlet. Other videos posted on social media showed people fleeing through the mall’s parking lot and corridors.

A video that could not immediately be verified by The Washington Post showed what appeared to be the gunman after he was fatally shot, wearing tactical gear with several magazines of ammunition on his chest. A firearm appeared beside him.

The mass killing at the outlet mall — which was crowded with shoppers on a Saturday afternoon — was the latest high-profile display of the gun violence that has become routine across the United States. In less than five months, the United States has already recorded 199 “mass shootings” this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines such events as a shooting in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the perpetrator.

This is the 127th day of 2023

We're averaging 1½ mass shootings,

and 116 gun deaths per day.

A gunman was arrested Tuesday after he killed five of his neighbors in their yard after they asked him to stop shooting his AR-15-style firearm near their Texas home. In March, a 28-year-old attacker shot and killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville. In January, a gunman killed 11 at a dance hall in Monterey Park, Calif.

Last year, the killing of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., put the state at the center of the ongoing debate about gun control. In 2021, it recorded 4,613 firearms-related deaths in Texas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state’s annual death toll from guns has increased steadily since 2014.

Led by Gov. Greg Abbott (R), Texas has moved in recent years to loosen restrictions on firearms. In 2021, it began allowing permitless carry so residents can carry handguns in public without a license. The state “does not specifically put restrictions on who can carry a long gun such as a rifle or shotgun,” according to a Texas government website.

Abbott said in a statement Saturday that the Allen shooting was an “unspeakable tragedy,” while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said he and his wife were “praying for the families of the victims of the horrific mall shooting.”

Self, the local congressman, rebuked criticism of officials offering “thoughts and prayers” after shootings while opposing gun control legislation, saying on CNN that “people want to make this political, but prayers are important.”

Excuse me, Congressman, but 🖕🏼

Still, gun control advocates called for a substantive response. Shannon Watts, founder of the advocacy group Moms Demand Action, lamented how such killings have become commonplace in the United States. She noted that she’d gone to school in the county where the latest incident took place.

“If you haven’t been impacted yet by gun violence, God bless you. But sadly, it’s coming — to your state, community, school,” she said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) urged Congress to pass gun control legislation, writing on Twitter: “This is freedom?? To be shot at a mall? Shot at school? Shot at church? Shot at the movies? We have become a nation that is more focused on the right to kill than the right to live. This is not what the American people want.”

Today's Eternal Sadness

"Conservatives" have often tried to blame "kicking Jesus out of the classroom" for the gun violence that plagues American schools.

6 people dead at a Christian school - in a Presbyterian church - killed by a former student. I guess maybe we can shit-can the No-Jesus-Allowed Theory. Again. 

No word yet on how, or whether, the shooter's trans-gender-ness factors in. We'll have to wait and see if the manifesto explains anything.

Nashville school shooter who killed 6 was heavily armed, left ‘manifesto’

NASHVILLE — A shooter armed with two AR-style weapons and a handgun killed three students and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville on Monday, the latest deadly rampage in a nation anguished by the regularity of mass killings but deeply divided over how to stop them.

Police identified the shooter as Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, of Nashville. Hale was shot and killed by police who responded to the Covenant School, a small academy housed within a Presbyterian church that served about 200 students from preschool to sixth grade.

John Drake, chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, said law enforcement officials were working to determine a motive but said Hale had attended the school. During a search of Hale’s home, he said, officers recovered a “manifesto” and maps that appeared to include entry points for the school. Police later said they recovered additional material in a car Hale drove to the scene.

Drake said Hale was transgender. Asked if that had played a role in what he described as a “targeted attack,” Drake said it was part of the police investigation.

“There is some theory to that,” Drake said. But, he added, “We’re investigating all the leads, and once we know exactly, we will let you know.”

Don Aaron, a police spokesman, later clarified the chief’s remarks. “Audrey Hale is a biological woman who, on a social media profile, used male pronouns,” Aaron said in an email.

Police identified the victims as students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all 9; and staff members Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.

Koonce was the longtime head of Covenant, according to the school’s website. Peak was a substitute teacher, while Hill was a custodian, police said.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper, speaking at one of several news conferences Monday, called it the “worst day” and a “dark hour” for the city, but he praised first responders including police officers who ran toward the gunfire to try to stop it.

“Even in a remarkably fast response, there was not enough time. And those guns stole precious lives from us today,” Cooper said.

The incident unfolded over less than 15 minutes in a leafy suburban area about 10 miles south of central Nashville. Police said they received a 911 call about a shooter at the school at 10:13 a.m. Dozens of emergency vehicles arrived at the scene, and officers entering on the first floor of the school heard gunfire coming from the second floor, police said.

Five officers proceeded upstairs into a lobby-type area where they confronted Hale, who fired at them, police said. Two officers fired back, fatally shooting Hale, who was pronounced dead at 10:27 a.m.

Police initially described Hale as appearing to be a teenager before revising the age upward to 28.

According to police, Hale gained access to the school by firing through a first-floor side door before opening fire inside the building. It was not immediately clear what security procedures were in place at the school or whether, like schools across the nation in a siege of shootings, it had fortified itself against attack.

Unlike public schools in Nashville, the private school did not have a public safety officer on-site, according to police.

Police later released photos of the scene, including images showing a shattered glass door with bullet holes where they said Hale gained entry into the building. The department also shared photos of police cars with bullet holes and shattered glass, saying Hale fired on responding officers as they arrived.

The shooting was captured on surveillance video, a portion of which was made public late Monday. The footage showed a person the police identified as Hale arriving at the school, dressed partially in camouflage. The video then showed the shooter firing on the glass door, entering the building and going through the hallways while holding an assault rifle.

A police spokesman declined to say where the victims were found, including whether a specific classroom had been targeted. But in a Monday afternoon news conference, Drake said police found material that suggested Hale had considered an attack at another location but ruled it out because there was “too much security.”

Police said Hale was armed with two semiautomatic weapons — an AR-15-style rifle, an “AR-style pistol” and a handgun. At least two of the weapons were purchased legally, according to Drake, who did not give the status of the third. He said Hale had “multiple rounds of ammunition prepared for confrontation with law enforcement” and was “prepared to do more harm.”

The department late Monday released images of the weapons, adding that Hale had “significant ammunition.”

Tennessee’s gun laws, like those in many conservative states, are comparatively loose. The state allows people to own automatic assault weapons and does not have a law banning high-capacity magazines.

In 2022, Guns & Ammo — a magazine dedicated to firearms and ammunitions — ranked Tennessee as the 12th-best state in the country for gun owners. The state recently allowed residents to carry handguns in public without a permit. State officials are considering lowering the age to carry handguns without a permit from 21 to 18, according to the Associated Press.

The incident was the latest tragedy in a country spinning on an endless carousel of mass violence, including bloodshed in schools, hospitals and virtually every gathering place. At the scene, in the Green Hills section of Nashville, cameras captured views eerily similar to those that have played out in other cities that have dealt with mass violence, including Uvalde, Tex., and Newtown, Conn., including footage of children holding hands and being led away from school under heavy guard.

Scores of police cars and ambulances went to the scene as officers in body armor and carrying long guns checked a wooded area next to the school. Local television reported that some of the children had run into the woods to escape the gunfire.

Frantic parents were seen abandoning their cars and running toward the scene in search of their children.

John Wilkinson, 45, was at his chiropractor across the street when he saw a single police car crest the hill near the school. Within seconds, five other police cars had arrived. Within five minutes, there were at least 50 police cars at the scene, he said, as officers entered the building.

“They were showing unbelievable courage,” Wilkinson said.

An officer then entered the building Wilkinson was visiting and told those inside to lock the doors, he said.

After 20 minutes, he said, the first of six ambulances left the scene under police escort. About 20 to 30 minutes after that, he said, other ambulances left, unaccompanied.

Dozens of public school buses eventually ferried children to a reunification point at nearby Woodmont Baptist Church, where parents waited and others went to check on friends who worked at the school. Many of the children inside were crying.

James Jardin, a campus minister at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, was in a meeting when he heard about the shooting at Covenant, where his friend is a minister who teaches music. He left his meeting and drove to Nashville.

Jardin said his friend assured him he was all right — he texted, “I’m OK, please pray for me” — at about 10:30 a.m. local time. Jardin tried to enter the reunification center but was turned away. “There is nothing I can do,” the minister said.

Gillian Stewart said that her friend has a kindergartner who attends Covenant and that the friend described to her the chaos of parents trying to pick up their children. “It was a mad rush to pick up their kids. Cars were abandoned everywhere,” Stewart said.

She was still looking for her friend. “I haven’t seen her yet,” Stewart, outside the reunification center, said through tears.

The Nashville attack drew anguished responses from across the nation, including in Washington, where President Biden called Monday’s shooting “a family’s worst nightmare” and repeated his call for Congress to pass gun-control legislation that includes a ban on assault rifles. He ordered all American flags displayed at government buildings to be flown at half-staff.

“We have to do more to stop gun violence — it’s ripping our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation,” Biden said during a White House event on women in business. “We have to do more to protect our schools, so they aren’t turned into prisons.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), of nearby Brentwood, said in a Twitter message that she was “heartbroken” about the killings.

“Please join us in prayer for those affected,” Blackburn wrote. Her message drew the ire of gun-control activists and musicians with Nashville ties, including singer Sheryl Crow, who responded to Blackburn’s tweet.

“If you are ready to assist, please pass sensible gun laws so that the children of Tennessee and America at large might attend school without risk of being gunned down,” Crow wrote.

Fire these assholes

Today's Tweet

A survivor of the Sandy Hook School mass shooting in 2012 is a student at Michigan State University: “I am 21-years-old and this is the second mass shooting I’ve lived through. We can no longer allow this to happen. We can no longer be complacent.” pic.twitter.com/Jcafl57tmZ

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 14, 2023

Suspect identified in Michigan State University shooting: 3 dead, 5 in critical condition

Morning dawned Tuesday on East Lansing to a rattled Michigan State University campus hours after a mass shooting left three dead and five others critically injured.

An alert was sent at 8:31 p.m. Monday, telling students to "run, hide, fight" with a report of shots fired at Berkey Hall and at the MSU Union.

Two people were killed at Berkey Hall, said university Interim Deputy Police Chief Chris Rozman. The gunman then moved to the MSU Union, where another was killed.

Students were told to shelter in place as authorities searched for the gunman. The 43-year-old suspect was Anthony McRae, Rozman said at a news conference Tuesday. McRae was found off campus early Tuesday before he could be arrested; he had died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

PS) Fuck your thoughts and prayers.

The NRA Lies

It doesn't take a good guy with a gun. It just takes a good guy.

At least twice now, we've had mass shootings that were ended by unarmed people who acted heroically to take down the asshole with the gun.

A Coder Wrested a Pistol From the Gunman’s Hands, Preventing Greater Tragedy

Brandon Tsay, 26, is being credited with preventing further violence by subduing the gunman before he could kill more people.

SAN MARINO, Calif. — Saturday night was winding down at the Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio, with less than a half-hour to go until closing. There were three people left on the spacious dance floor.

Brandon Tsay, the third-generation operator of the family-run dance hall in Alhambra, was in the office off the lobby, watching the ballroom, when he heard the front doors swing closed and a strange clang that sounded like metallic objects hitting one another.

He turned around to see a semiautomatic assault pistol pointed at him.

“He was looking at me and looking around, not hiding that he was trying to do harm. His eyes were menacing,” recalled Mr. Tsay, 26, at his family’s San Marino home Sunday, less than 24 hours after he stared down a gunman who, unbeknown to him, had opened fire at another nearby ballroom, killing 10 people and injuring several others in one of California’s worst mass shootings.

About 20 minutes after that massacre, the gunman, who authorities identified as Huu Can Tran, 72, arrived at Lai Lai, just about two miles to the north, officials said.

Mr. Tsay struggled with the gunman and eventually disarmed him, saving countless lives and averting another tragedy. It was an act that officials roundly praised as heroic. Mr. Tran was found dead Sunday afternoon of a self-inflicted gunshot in a van about 30 miles away, according to law enforcement officials.

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Mr. Tsay said the weapon the gunman was carrying signaled he intended to inflict maximum damage.

“How it was built and customized, I knew it wasn’t for robbing money,” Mr. Tsay said of the weapon. “From his body language, his facial expression, his eyes, he was looking for people.”

Sheriff Robert Luna of Los Angeles County said in a news briefing Sunday afternoon that “two community members” had disarmed the gunman at the Alhambra ballroom. “This could have been much worse,” he said.

But Mr. Tsay and his family, who reviewed the security camera footage from the lobby of the ballroom, said it was he alone who fought the gunman over control of the weapon and wrested it from him. The doors to the ballroom were closed and no one else was involved, they said.

“It was just my son. He could have died,” said his father, Tom Tsay, who said he was proud of his son for the bravery he showed. “He’s lucky, someone was watching over him.”

His older sister, Brenda, who currently runs the business, said the video showed a prolonged, fierce struggle between the two men all over the lobby.


“He kept coming at him, he really wanted the gun back,” she said of the gunman.

The younger Mr. Tsay, a computer coder who mans the ticket office a few days a week at the ballroom started by his grandparents, said it was around 10:35 p.m. Saturday that he turned to face the gunman, whom he didn’t recognize. He had never seen a real gun before, but could tell that it was a deadly weapon, he said.

“My heart sank, I knew I was going to die,” he said.

The next moment, he lunged and grabbed the weapon by its barrel and began wrestling with the gunman for control of it.

“That moment, it was primal instinct,” he said. “Something happened there. I don’t know what came over me.”

They fought over control of the gun for about a minute and a half, and it felt like they were similarly matched in strength, Mr. Tsay said. At one point, the gunman looked down at the weapon and took one hand off it, as if to manipulate the gun to begin shooting. Mr. Tsay said he seized the moment and pried the pistol away from the man.

He pointed the weapon back at him and yelled: “Go, get the hell out of here,” he recalled.

Mr. Tsay, who stayed up all night assisting police with their investigation, said he felt traumatized and hadn’t quite been able to process what he had been through. He particularly felt heartbroken for the community of Monterey Park and surrounding areas where his family and their ballroom had become established as a beloved haven over three decades, he said.

“Lai Lai,” a name his grandmother chose, means “come, come,” in Chinese, his sister said. The assailant, dressed in black, looked like he could easily be one of their regulars, he said.

“We have such a tight-knit community of dancers,” he said. “It feels so terrible something like this happened, to have one of our individuals try to harm others.”

Today's Eternal Sadness

At least 10 dead, and gunman is on the run, authorities say

A gunman is at large after killing at least 10 people in Monterey Park, Calif., on Saturday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said, on a night of Lunar New Year festivities in the area.

At least 10 others were taken to hospitals “and are listed in various conditions from stable to critical,” Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said at a news conference early Sunday.

The gunman fled the scene, Meyer added, and the motive for the shooting was not immediately clear.

Here’s what else you need to know

• Meyer said the shooting took place at a “ballroom dance location.” The department said it occurred on the 100 block of West Garvey Avenue at 10:22 p.m., a little over an hour after a Lunar New Year event in the area was scheduled to end.
• The sheriff’s department described the shooter as male earlier on Sunday but did not provide a name or any other identifying information.
• Meyer confirmed that a firearm had been used in the attack but did not provide any information on what kind.
• Authorities are “looking into every aspect of this” incident, Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Tracy Koerner said, but do not know whether it was a hate crime.

We're 22 days into a new year

averaging 115 dead Americans every day

Today's Eternal Sadness

Headed down the slippery slope - pickin' up speed.

Nobody didn't know this was bound to happen. Nobody.

The Death Of Irony, part ∞

School downplayed warnings about 6-year-old before teacher’s shooting, staffers say

The Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student repeatedly asked administrators for help with the boy but officials downplayed educators’ warnings about his behavior, including dismissing his threat to light a teacher on fire and watch her die, according to messages from teachers obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously unreported incidents raise fresh questions about how Richneck Elementary School in Newport News handled the troubled student before police say he shot Abigail Zwerner as she taught her first-grade class earlier this month. Authorities have called the shooting “intentional” but are still investigating the motive.

Many parents are already outraged over Richneck officials’ management of events before the shooting. Newport News Superintendent George Parker III has said school officials got a tip the boy had a gun that day and searched his backpack, but that staffers never found the weapon before authorities say the 6-year-old shot Zwerner. Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said his department was not contacted about the report that the boy had a weapon before the shooting.

Police and school officials have repeatedly declined to answer questions about the boy’s disciplinary issues or worrisome behaviors the 6-year-old may have exhibited and how school officials responded, citing the child’s age and the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The boy’s family said in a statement he has an “acute disability,” but James Ellenson, an attorney for the family, declined to comment on accounts of the boy’s behavior or how it was handled by the school.

School district spokeswoman Michelle Price said in a phone interview late Friday that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting students’ privacy, prohibits her from releasing information related to the 6-year-old.

“I cannot share any information in a child’s educational record,” she said. “A lot of what you’re asking is part of the child’s educational record, and it’s also a matter of an ongoing police investigation and an internal school investigation. Unfortunately, some of these details I’m not even privy to.”

Screenshots of a conversation held online between school employees and Parker shortly after the shooting show educators claiming that Zwerner raised alarms about the 6-year-old and sought assistance during the school year.

“she had asked for help,” one staffer wrote in that chat, referring to Zwerner.

“several times,” came another message.

“Yes she did.”

“two hours prior”

“all year.”

The messages, which were provided to The Post by the spouse of a Richneck Elementary schoolteacher, do not detail what specific assistance Zwerner sought, or to whom she directed her requests. Zwerner and her family have not returned repeated messages from The Washington Post.

A separate message written by a Richneck teacher, and obtained by The Washington Post from the local teachers union, alleges that school administrators waved away grave concerns about the 6-year-old’s conduct and that the school was overall unable to care for him properly.

Authorities explained the timeline of events that took place after a six-year-old child shot his teacher on Jan. 6 in Richneck Elementary School in Virginia. (Video: The Washington Post)
The Post obtained the message on the condition the teacher’s identity not be revealed because the union feared she would face retaliation. The teacher declined interview requests through the union, the Newport News Education Association, citing worries of professional consequences and a directive from Newport News schools not to talk to the media about the shooting.

On one occasion, the boy wrote a note telling a teacher he hated her and wanted to light her on fire and watch her die, according to the teacher’s account. Alarmed, the teacher brought the note to the attention of Richneck administrators and was told to drop the matter, according to the account. The date of the incident was not mentioned.

The principal and vice principal of the school did not respond to requests for comment on the teacher’s account.

On a second occasion, the boy threw furniture and other items in class, prompting students to hide beneath their desks, according to the account. Another time, the teacher alleges in her account, the boy barricaded the doors to a classroom, preventing a teacher and students from leaving.

The teacher banged on the classroom door until another teacher from across the hall forced it open from the outside, according to the teacher’s account. It was not clear whether the teacher asked for any specific action from administrators after that incident.

The teacher also described strained resources at the school. The lead special education teacher was frustrated because she has a high caseload, according to the account. Some aides regularly missed work, including for as long as a week at a time.

The teacher further alleged in her account that the boy was not receiving the educational services he needed, that it was difficult to get help with him during outbursts and that he was sometimes seen wandering the school unsupervised.

The boy’s family said in a statement Thursday, the first public remarks his relatives have given about the shooting, that the 6-year-old was “under a care plan” that “included his mother or father attending school with him and accompanying him to class every day.” That stopped the week of the shooting, the statement said.

“We will regret our absence on this day for the rest of our lives,” the statement read.

The teacher’s account dovetails with descriptions of the student’s behavior shared by the spouse of a Richneck teacher and a mother whose child is enrolled in a class located across the hallway from Zwerner’s. Both the spouse and the mother, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their families’ privacy, said the student was known campuswide for disruptive and violent behavior, and that school employees struggled to manage him in class.

The Post reached out to dozens of other Richneck teaching staff, administrators and parents to try to corroborate the teachers’ allegations, but most have not responded or declined interviews, citing the ongoing police investigation or fear of reprisals.

Drew, the police chief, has said detectives will look into allegations of the student’s troubling conduct before the incident, though he has not confirmed any specific incidents.

James Graves, president of the Newport News Education Association, said the union is investigating safety concerns raised by teachers in the wake of the shooting.

“We want to know what happened so we can protect our members,” Graves said. “They believe and they know the administration should take their concerns more seriously than they did. This could have been prevented.”

Thomas Britton, whose son was taught by Zwerner, said school officials never formally notified parents in the class about issues with the boy who fired the shot.

He said administrators mishandled the shooting, asserting they should have pulled the boy out of class until they had definitively determined whether he possessed a gun, and conducted a more thorough search.

“That was a shocking revelation that not only did he bring the weapon, but somebody gave a tip he had the weapon,” Britton said. “It seems to me it would be completely avoidable at that point.”

Valerie McCandless, a 52-year-old resident of Newport News who sent six kids to Richneck, said her children had a wonderful experience at the school, but she is troubled that the school’s administrators, some of whom she said are relatively new, failed to take preemptive action.

“I don’t think the teachers there are getting support, they’re not getting compassion, they’re not getting answers, they’re not getting listened to,” she said, adding of the shooting, “this was, I believe, God’s way of saying somebody needs to listen to them.”

Similar concerns emerged this week at a packed Newport News school board meeting, during which dozens of parents recounted their disappointment, anger and frustration with security measures at Richneck and other schools in the district. There have been three shootings on school grounds in Newport News since late 2021.

Several teachers said they received no support when they faced violence in the classroom or attacks from students. Some speakers claimed the district is more interested in keeping discipline statistics low than in taking meaningful action to address students’ problems.

A parent of a child in Zwerner’s class said her daughter had been bullied by classmates. She said she struggled to make the school take her concerns seriously and that the Richneck principal once failed to show for a conference about the bullying, although other officials did come.

She said Zwerner defended her daughter.

“Listen to your teachers when they have concerns,” the woman said raising her voice. “Please!”

Parker, the superintendent, said at a meeting with Richneck students that the district is purchasing 90 metal detectors to install at all Newport News schools and acquiring clear backpacks to hand out to students. He has assigned a new administrator to Richneck and also said officials were taking note of teachers’ concerns.

“We listened and we continue to work to improve current systems and processes to help better manage extreme behaviors that adversely affect the culture and climate in schools,” Parker wrote in a note to staff this week.

Celeste Holliday, a substitute teacher who covered Zwerner’s first-grade class at Richneck Elementary School on one occasion, said Zwerner had difficulty maintaining order in the class of 25 to 30 kids, but Holliday thought she was a conscientious teacher.

“She was great. She was doing the best she could,” Holliday said of Zwerner. “She mentally prepared me. She told me, ‘They’re rambunctious 6-year-olds. It’s going to be a hard day. Do the best you can.’”

Zwerner’s warning proved prescient.

Holliday said the class was rowdier than many others for which she has substituted. Holliday said that, on the day she worked at Richneck, one boy shoved another during recess and the boy scraped his knee. The injured boy had to go to the nurse’s office for treatment.

Afterward, the principal came to the classroom and told the boys to calm down because they were shouting, Holliday said. The principal filed a report about the shoving incident. Holliday said that, after the experience, she decided she would not substitute at Richneck Elementary School again.

Drew said in his online chat that detectives have wrapped up interviews with most students but are still seeking school disciplinary records and other materials related to the boy.

When the probe is complete, Drew said the findings will be sent to the Newport News commonwealth’s attorney to decide whether anyone should be charged. Legal experts say it is unlikely the boy will be charged since children under 7 are presumed unable to form the intent to carry out an illegal act under Virginia law. But Drew has said it is possible someone could be charged for failing to secure the gun used in the shooting.

Ellenson, the attorney for the boy’s family, said in an interview that the gun was secured with a trigger lock and kept on the top shelf of the mother’s bedroom closet. Ellenson said it is unclear how the boy got hold of the gun.

Newport News police declined to comment on the family’s characterization that the weapon was stored securely.

The Jan. 6 shooting occurred as school was winding down for the week. Police said the boy pulled out the gun as Zwerner was teaching and shot her.

Zwerner was rushed to the hospital with critical injuries; Drew said she is continuing to recover. Police said the boy brought the gun from home in a backpack.

The boy’s family said in their statement he is in a hospital receiving treatment and expressed sorrow for the shooting.

“We continue to pray for his teacher’s full recovery, and for her loved ones who are undoubtedly upset and concerned,” the statement read. “At the same time, we love our son and are asking that you please include him and our family in your prayers.”

About Guns

Guns have quite a lot to do with gun violence, but we're having trouble getting enough people to accept that very obvious premise in a strong enough way to countervail the very loud ammosexual minority that, apparently, needs us to keep shooting each other (?)

I do get that there are plenty of unscrupulous assholes out there who just want to turn a buck, and are willing to rationalize anything to keep that revenue stream flowing.

And I get that some people are so bought in to their favorite brand of gun-friendly political marketing (aka: propaganda) that they'll have to be completely deprogrammed to pull them up from the depths.

But even though the true ammosexuals are diehard devotees, they are a minority and their numbers are dwindling - ever so slightly, but still - dwindling.

Over the last 50 years, the number of Americans who own guns has shown a slight net decrease, even as the number of guns sold has been going gang-busters.

Fun With Numbers ("innumeracy" is a thing)

• There are about 334 million people in the US, and almost 400 million guns 
• 20 - 30% of Americans own 1 or more guns, while most Americans believe the percentage of Americans owning guns is 45 - 55%

We do better when we know what the truth is (more or less), and what the lies are (more or less).

Opinion
6 solutions to gun violence that could work

For far too long, those who oppose gun reforms have said that nothing can be done to stem the violence.

Those claims are demonstrably wrong. Research on gun violence is notoriously underfunded, but the data we do have shows that well-designed gun laws informed by science can save lives.

1 Ban weapons of war

The Las Vegas massacre. The killing spree at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo. The Virginia Tech slaughter. The massacre at a Walmart in El Paso.

These are the five highest-casualty (deaths and injuries combined) mass shootings in modern American history. And what did they all have in common? Semiautomatic weapons that allowed the shooter to fire rounds into crowds without reloading.

Based on the evidence we have, banning these weapons probably won’t do too much to curb overall gun deaths. We know this because in 1994, Congress passed legislation to outlaw the sale of certain types of semiautomatic guns and large-capacity magazines, and the effect was unimpressive. Gun homicide rates declined during the ban, but they also continued to fall after the ban expired in 2004. One federally funded study of the ban found that the effect on violence was insignificant, partly because it was full of loopholes.

But banning so-called assault weapons was never meant to reduce overall gun deaths. It was meant to make America’s frustratingly common mass shootings less deadly — even if these horrific events represent a small portion of gun violence.

And, in fact, mass shooting casualties dipped during the ban, although a review of studies by the Rand Corporation found the role the ban played in the dip to be inconclusive.

Here’s what is certain from the research: Semiautomatic weapons and weapons with high-capacity magazines are more dangerous than other weapons. One study on handgun attacks in New Jersey in the 1990s showed that gunfire incidents involving semiautomatic weapons wounded 15 percent more people than shootings with other weapons. A more recent study from Minneapolis found that shootings with more than 10 shots fired accounted for between 20 and 28 percent of gun victims in the city.

So how do we keep such dangerous weapons from being used in crimes? A ban on assault weapons might help, as data from a few cities during the 1994 ban suggest:

But experts say focusing on reducing large-capacity magazines might be more effective. Simply put, gunmen are less deadly when they have to reload.

Such a ban might take time to have an effect, as a 2003 Post investigation showed. But it would be worth it. Alarmingly, crime data suggests that crimes committed with high-powered weapons have been on the rise since the 1994 ban ended.

Again, mass shootings account for a small fraction of gun deaths, so any ban on these weapons and magazines would result in marginal improvements, at best. But even if this step reduced shootings by 1 percent — far less than what the Minneapolis study suggests — that would mean 650 fewer people shot a year. Isn’t that worth it?

2 Keep guns away from kids

Occasionally, gun-reform advocates call for raising the federal age limit for purchasing semiautomatic weapons to 21, as is already required for handguns. But why stop there? Why not raise the age for all guns, including non-automatic rifles and shotguns?

This could make a real difference because young people are far more likely to commit homicide than older cohorts. One survey of prison inmates looked at those convicted of using a legally owned gun to commit a crime and found that a minimum age requirement of 21 would have prohibited gun possession in 17 percent of cases.

Of course, keeping guns out of the hands of young shooters would be difficult, because it’s so easy for people to obtain guns illegally. But age limits in general have proved to be effective in limiting bad behavior, so it’s worth trying.

There’s another reform that could be even more effective at keeping guns from kids: requiring gun owners to securely store firearms in a locked container or with a tamper-resistant mechanical lock.

Nearly 4.6 million minors in the United States live in homes where firearms are loaded and easy to access. One analysis from the federal government shows that 76 percent of school shooters obtain a gun from their homes or the homes of relatives. The same is true for more than 80 percent of teens who take their own lives with a firearm.

Safe-storage laws can help, especially with suicides. In Massachusetts, which has the strictest storage laws in the country, guns are used in just 12 percent of youth suicides, compared with 43 percent nationally. The suicide death rate among youth in the state is nearly half the national average.

In fact, states requiring locks on handguns in at least some circumstances have 25 percent fewer suicides per capita and 48 percent fewer firearm suicides per capita than states without such laws.

Meanwhile, another safety innovation is being developed: smart guns. These are guns that use fingerprint recognition and other means so that only their owners can fire them. The technology is still relatively new, but it’s promising. One small study found that over seven years, 37 percent of gun deaths could have been prevented by smart guns. Lawmakers could encourage their use by incorporating them into laws regulating safe storage.

3 Stop the flow of guns

A general rule: The more guns there are, the more gun deaths there will be. It holds across countries (note how much the United States stands out):

And across states. One 2013 study from Boston University found that for every percentage point increase in gun ownership at the state level, there was a 0.9 percent rise in the firearm homicide rate.

So how do we reduce the steady flow of guns? Three ideas:

Institute a buyback program

In the 1990s, Australia spent $500 million to buy back almost 600,000 guns. Harvard University researchers found that the gun homicide rate dropped 42 percent in the seven years following the law and the gun suicide rate fell 58 percent.

An Australian study found that for every 3,500 guns withdrawn per 100,000 people, the country saw a 74 percent drop in gun suicides and a reduction in mass shootings. That doesn’t prove causation. But the likelihood the drop in mass shootings was due to chance? Roughly 1 in 20,000, according to a 2018 paper.

Of course, the United States is different from Australia. The Australian buyback was mandatory, which would probably run into constitutional problems here. Plus, we have way more guns per capita, so the United States would have to spend exponentially more to make a significant difference.

Still, given Australia’s experience, it’s worth at least experimentation. Perhaps the government can use buyback programs to target specific kinds of weapons, such as semiautomatic firearms and large-capacity magazines.

Limit the number of guns people can buy at one time

Federal gun enforcers have long warned that state laws allowing bulk purchases of guns enable crime. Older studies from what is now called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show that as many as 1 in 5 handguns recovered in a crime were originally purchased as part of a sale in which multiple guns were purchased.

To combat this behavior, some states have instituted “one handgun a month” policies, as Virginia did in 1993. At the time, Virginia was the top supplier of guns seized in the Northeast; three years later, the state dropped to eighth place. The law also led to a 35 percent reduction in guns recovered anywhere in the United States that were traced back to Virginia.

Such a policy isn’t going to solve gun trafficking. The Virginia law didn’t prevent “straw purchases” in which traffickers pay people to buy guns legally so they can be sold elsewhere. But experts say one-gun-a-month laws make it more costly for criminals to traffic guns. And given the success in the past, such policies are worth promoting.

Hold gun dealers accountable

Research has shown that in some cities, guns used to commit crimes often come from a small set of gun dealers. So how do we stop the flow of those guns? Hold dealers accountable.

In 1999, the federal government published a report identifying gun shops connected with crime guns, including a single dealer in Milwaukee that was linked to a majority of the guns used in the city’s crimes. In response to negative publicity, that dealer changed its sales practices. Afterward, the city saw a 76 percent reduction in the flow of new guns from that shop to criminals and a 44 percent reduction in new crime guns overall. But in 2003, Congress passed a law prohibiting the government from publishing such data, after which the rate of new gun sales from that dealer to criminals shot up 200 percent.

Studies show that regulation of licensed dealers — such as record-keeping requirements or inspection mandates — can also reduce interstate trafficking. So can litigation against gun dealers that allow their guns to enter criminal markets. One sting operation conducted by New York City reduced the probability of guns from the targeted dealers ending up in the hands of criminals by 84 percent.

4 Strengthen background checks

Federal law requires background checks to obtain a gun, but those checks are extremely porous.

Under federal law, only licensed gun dealers have to perform these checks; private individuals and many online retailers don’t. It’s hard to pin down exactly how many guns are legally acquired without a background check, but some surveys put it upward of 22 percent.

Some states go beyond federal law and require background checks for all gun sales. But since it’s so easy for guns to travel across state lines, it’s hard to judge the effectiveness of these policies on gun deaths.

Still, there’s evidence that such expanded background checks can help limit the flow of guns into illegal markets. We also know that most gun offenders obtain their weapons through unlicensed sellers. One survey of state prison inmates convicted of offenses committed with guns in 13 states found that only 13 percent obtained their guns from a seller that had to conduct a background check. Nearly all those who were supposed to be prohibited from possessing a firearm got theirs from suppliers that didn’t have to conduct a background check. Closing that loophole federally might help.

What else can we do to strengthen background checks? Four possibilities:

Close the “Charleston Loophole”

Most gun background checks are instant. But some — around 9 percent — take more time, and federal law says if a check takes more than three business days, the sale can proceed. As a result, thousands of people who are not supposed have access to guns ended up getting them, as the Government Accountability Office reported.

Among the people who benefited from this loophole? Dylann Roof, who killed nine people in Charleston, S.C., in 2015. Ending this practice would save lives.

Close the “Boyfriend Gap”

An estimated 70 women each month are killed with guns by spouses or dating partners, according to a 2019 analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data by Everytown for Gun Safety.

Federal law prevents anyone with domestic violence misdemeanors from having a gun, but that law is defined narrowly and doesn’t include all domestic violence perpetrators — for example, boyfriends. More specifically, the law doesn’t keep guns from abusers who are not married, do not live with their partner or do not share a child with them.

Some states have expanded on federal law — and it works. One study found that rates of domestic-violence-related homicide decline 7 percent after a state passes such laws.

Implement waiting periods

The evidence that waiting periods to acquire guns reduce violent crime is limited. But there’s more evidence that they prevent suicides.

Research shows that people who buy handguns are at higher risk of suicide within a week of the purchase, and that waiting periods can keep them from using guns to harm themselves. In fact, one study found that when South Dakota repealed its 48-hour waiting period in 2012, suicides jumped 7.6 percent in the following year.

Improve reporting on mental health

Mental illness is associated with a relatively small portion (around 5 percent) of gun homicides. Federal law already prohibits anyone committed to a mental-health facility or deemed dangerous or lacking all mental capacities through a legal proceeding from having a gun.

But mental-health records are notoriously spotty. There’s limited evidence that improved reporting at the state level might reduce violent crimes. Connecticut started reporting mental-health data to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in 2007, and one study found that violent crimes committed by people with mental illness there significantly decreased.

We can also make it easier for family members to seek court orders to disarm relatives who might do harm to themselves. In Connecticut, which has allowed this since 1999, one study estimated that the law averted 72 suicide attempts through 2013 from being fatal.

5 Strengthen red-flag laws

As much as strengthened background checks might prevent someone from purchasing new firearms, the problem remains that many guns are already in the hands of people who pose a threat to themselves or others.

How to address that? One solution: red-flag laws.

Such laws, which have repeatedly been held constitutional, allow people to petition a court to temporarily confiscate firearms from people who pose a threat to themselves or others. And they work.

California has one of the most expansive red-flag laws in the country, allowing anyone to petition for a court order to take guns from a high-risk individual. There is concrete data to show it is effective: One case study from 2019 found that the law averted at least 21 potential mass shootings, based on credible threats.

And it’s not just mass shootings. Studies have consistently found that these laws help avert suicides. One study from Indiana found that for every 10 to 20 gun-removal orders, one suicide was averted. Another study found Indiana saw a 7.5 percent reduction in its firearm suicides rate in the 10 years after its red-flag law became took effect. Connecticut, in the same study, saw its rate fall 14 percent.

These laws won’t catch every mass shooter or prevent every suicide. They are fundamentally limited by how many people know to use them. But implemented properly, they could do some real good. A 2019 analysis from the U.S. Secret Service found that in 77 percent of school shootings, at least one person knew of the perpetrator’s troubling behavior before the attack.

6 Treat guns like we treat cars

Consider two data points: first in Connecticut, then in Missouri.

In Connecticut, state lawmakers required people to get a license and safety training for a gun, just as we do for cars. In the decade after, it saw a drop in both gun homicides and suicides — at faster rates than other states without similar laws. And at the same time, Connecticut saw no significant drop in homicides not related to guns.

In Missouri, the state legislature repealed its licensing requirements in 2007.

A study found that the law change was associated with an additional 55 to 63 homicides in each of the five years following the repeal — even as homicides committed without guns dropped.

In both cases, it’s hard to prove a connection. But these experiences do strongly suggest something we learned in our decades-long efforts to reduce vehicle-related deaths: Regulation saves lives.

It can also deter crime. Research from the advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns has found that guns sold in states with licensing laws — which are sometimes paired with mandatory registration of guns with local police — end up being exported for criminal activity at one-third the rate of states without the laws.

Why? Because it’s much harder to feed guns into illegal markets if police can trace them to their legal gun owners. After Missouri repealed its licensing laws, police in Iowa and Illinois started reporting an increase in Missouri guns showing up at crime scenes.

None of these reforms alone will stop our gun epidemic. But together, they can make a serious impact that will save lives. The only thing stopping that from happening is a lack of political will.