A reminder that you can (feasibly, with your current resources) run a local initiative, how to define a mass shooting, and media contagion.
Local initiatives and local decisions.
The article below is about a flap in Pueblo, CO. There was a group trying to run a local initiative to not have a mayor.
It's not quite 100% clear, but it would appear as though dates on turning signatures in were balled up and so the initiative could have but didn't get on the ballot. The City Council, in a show of good faith, is considering making the changes themselves. There's more to read in the article below, and I'll leave it to you to do so if you are inclined to.
The larger point, the part that is relevant to you and I outside of Pueblo, is the following: if there is some change you'd like to make in your local community and you can't seem to get the ear of your local policymakers, you can run an initiative locally to put the question directly to the voters.
Statewide initiatives are (anymore) big money deals and complicated to pull off, but local ones are pretty straightforward.
I looked into the numbers myself and to run one where I live I would only need 600 signatures to get something on the ballot. Even just working weekends and putting something out on Facebook with a few friends, I could do that; it's a low money and time commitment.
If this is something you're interested in exploring, let me know. I can connect you to people much smarter than myself who will help you along.
Couple caveats:
1. This is not something you can do for counties. This is only municipalities.
2. Unfortunately, you cannot preempt state law. For example, contrary to what Polis says about it being "local control", you couldn't run an initiative to allow 30 round magazines in your city.
https://www.chieftain.com/story/news/2023/04/17/pueblo-city-council-considering-ballot-question-to-get-rid-of-mayors-office/70116238007/
What do you think of when you think of mass shootings?
Do you picture a Columbine-style attack: someone with a gun stalking through a public place or office?
Do you picture someone shooting their spouse, children, and then themselves?
Do you picture rival gang members shooting each other?
Does it involve one person dying and the remaining 5 people being wounded? Do all the people have to die?
The reason I ask is related to the one of the quotes I share with my students at the beginning of every physics class I teach (it's in screenshot #1 attached). It's from Lord Kelvin and the essence of it is that if we are to talk about anything about our world intelligibly we must quantify it. I'll go even further than that, as I do with my students, we must have a shared definition of HOW we quantify.
Mass shootings are no different. If we're to productively and intelligently discuss this issue, we need to have a shared basis of what a mass shooting is. Otherwise, the statistics that we throw at each other have no meaning; they might each of them be true (according to how we each define our terms), but as shared ideas they no import. We might as well be speaking a different language.
This really hit home for me reading the blurb from The Reload (a gun rights oriented online newsletter I subscribe to--I highly recommend you consider subscribing yourself because it's free and the counterpoint you will receive to the mostly left-leaning media you see is important).
Take a look at screenshot 2 from the first link below for what I mean. It lists 3 quite different definitions used for mass shootings (related to my questions at the top of this post). Further down in the article, you get a real sense for how complicated it can be to then parse out trends in gun violence based on these various definitions. To wit, consider the following scattering of quotes (more in the article itself--this is a sampling):
"The main problem with the broader count is that it includes many shootings that many Americans wouldn’t think of as 'mass shootings.' In fact, it’s likely the vast majority of the 146 attacks don’t resemble somewhat random attacks on groups of people in public by a lone gunman. Instead, many are crime-related incidents or gang shootings–critical issues to find solutions for, but not the same problem as something like Uvalde or Las Vegas."
"Of course, the restrictive nature of the TVP [The Violence Project] count has its own drawbacks. It only provides insight into mass shootings where the perpetrator actually accomplished their goal of killing many people. The FBI’s active shooter report suggests a number of people each year who attempt to carry out such an attack but are unsuccessful at killing many people for various reasons. Sometimes this means that shootings that look a lot like what people would think of as “mass shootings” and garner significant national attention, such as February’s deadly shooting at Michigan State University, don’t make the list because it doesn’t pass the grim milestone of four killed."
"Still, The Violence Project is the best measure of how often someone successfully carries out one of these horrendous attacks. It also has data on every shooting that meets its criteria going back to 1966. That gives it a leg up on the other databases since USA Today‘s data begins in 2006, and GVA’s [Gun Violence Archive's] starts in 2013. That helps provide a broader view of trends in mass shootings. The GVA number gets brought up a lot in media coverage because it’s large and has gotten much larger in recent years. But, since it tracks a much broader class of shootings and is likely correlating closer to overall gun violence, the fact that it only captures the last ten years likely doesn’t tell us much about long-term trends in mass shootings. It may well tell us that shootings and murders have increased recently, which seems to be the case."
If this is a passion for you, I'd suggest tracking back all the links in the article below and familiarizing yourself with the different counting schemes and what you get with each. If you don't have time for that, I think it suffices to note that there is no single definition of mass shooting, and how you count it can vastly affect the trends we see.
Wherever you sit on the spectrum, you should not be shy in asking someone who makes a claim how they're defining the term. Anyone who is forthright and educated on the topic should not have a problem in sharing. If they do, it tells you something about what that individual or group is NOT after, and that's fair discussion and truth.
https://thereload.com/analysis-why-mass-shooting-counts-vary-so-wildly-and-why-it-matters/
Related:
Human beings are terrible judges of risk.
Often the assessment is made based on what they see often around them (in the news or on social media) or by how strongly they emotionally react. See the screengrab and study below.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/risa.13729
One more thing to add to the discussion about mass shootings--media contagion.
Before moving off the topic for a bit, I want to add one more thing to the discussion on mass shootings and it's something you don't see often: media contagion.
In simpler words, does coverage of mass shootings increase the likelihood of them?
Relatedly, and just as importantly (because I think there is value in media coverage of shootings even if there is risk), how can the media cover things like mass shootings so as to limit or eliminate it?**
To help you come to your own conclusions on both, I went and found some articles (and one op ed with a reference list) on the topic. I stuck to .gov and .org sources. They're listed below in chronological order, most recent to oldest.
In reading up on the topic (beyond the three below), I found some patterns which I think are worth sharing. First, however, let me give you a sense of my own thoughts on the topic to help you understand my perspective.
It is not reasonable to assume that without media coverage we'd have no mass shootings (of the "Columbine" type--large public shootings). It's also not reasonable to assume that the media play no role in these events. To be clear: I do not in any way think that the media bear responsibility for the actions of deranged individuals. When I say they play a role, I believe it to be one of inadvertently playing into the fantasies of these monsters. What I mean could be somewhat analogous to a young man imitating a rapper: people repeat behaviors that they believe will get the attention of others.
Some convergences in the research I could find:
--Contagion seems to be a generalizable idea to several behaviors. This seems to point to an underlying need in the human psyche. Put that need in the brain of someone who may not have concerns about hurting others and bad things happen.
--The coverage of the shooter and successful mass shootings seems to vastly outweigh the coverage of those that stopped the shooter or the shootings where the attack failed (or stopped).
--From other "contagion" studies, there seems to be a dosage response effect: the amount of coverage scales with the number of copycats. I believe it reasonable to assume (as many do) that this would hold also for guns.
--Empirical data on the mass shooting media contagion seems to be in short supply. I.e. a lot of what I read seems to point to other contagions and talks about the issue in a hand-wavy, "it just makes sense" way.
The closest brush to empirical data comes from the first link below. Pay careful attention to this particular study if you read it. Note what is studied, what is measured, what is the scope of the conclusions reached. I think it would be fair to sum up this study by saying they didn't notice much in the short term to indicate a media contagion. That is, there is nothing to let them reliably claim that the pattern "shooting --> media coverage --> shooting" holds over the course of days, though it might over longer time scales (and my guess is also with multiple events).
**Note: there is some body of research about the similar topic of media contagion in suicides. Search "media contagion suicide" if you're curious to learn more. The definition and recommendations are relatively similar. There is also a body of research about terrorism.
https://nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/contagion-mass-shootings-interdependence-large-scale-massacres-and-mass-media
https://www.center4research.org/copy-cats-kill/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296697/
Related: as part of the media contagion, I followed a link in one of the studies to find other research that group has done and the list was quite intriguing.
I took a screenshot of the topics and attached and put the link to that specific page below. I am not going to vouch for the studies. Remember to read skeptically. Pay attention to the method, pay attention to the limitations, pay attention to the scope of the conclusions (if any are reached) as you judge what you're reading.
