VikingsGuy
Well-known member
This post is NOT about gun control, the 2A, black scary guns, hardening schools, or arming teachers. This post is an attempt to share thoughts about why indiscriminate public "mass" violence appears to be happening more frequently. If you feel the need to argue about all the things this post is NOT about, please take it to another place.
As for arguments that this post is not about hunting and therefore should be deleted - lots of discussions on this forum are not about hunting. We have discussed mental health in many threads. Wept with fellow members as they shared mental health issues with kids and suicide. It is appropriate that we do so. This is a community - shaped around public land hunting, yes - but a community nonetheless, and communities talk about all kinds of pressing issues. Further, HT users are largely gun owners and none of us or our families are immune from our growing mental health crisis. Discussions about guns and mental health are appropriate (and even necessary) amongst hunting families.
So, to my thoughts.
I have struggled with, "why does it seem worse now?" Many hypotheses have been floated, but the studies end up showing little correlation and no clear causation. Each may be a small straw in the bigger bundle, but none have been able to explain the increase. These include in part:
Increase in single-parent families
Increase in the number of firearms in the country
Increase in the perceived military nature of firearms
Violence in movies
Violence in music
Violence in video games
Loss of religious beliefs
Poverty
Drugs
Self-aggrandizement
Lack of opportunity
The internet causing isolation
Increase in school bullying
Excessive individualism
Decay of the mental health system
Background check "loopholes"
Increased perceived "gun culture"
etc
But if none of these actually correlate well with known shootings/shooters how do we make sense of a clear increase?
Another thought was triggered by my youngest daughter who is taking a social psychology class this semester. She was sharing some interesting observations about the "Riot Effect". The riot effect is the premise that in a given population a very very small percentage would be the first one to throw a rock through a window and start a riot, but a still small but meaningfully larger percentage of a population would join a riot if they saw the first person throw a rock through a window ("second rioters"). Further, a still small but larger percentage would join the riot if they saw 3 or 4 people already in progress ("third rioter"), etc etc etc until you reach a point where the proverbial "average person on the street" is grabbing a looted TV. That at some point, each person will participate in "mob behavior" if enough are already doing it. This is not "copy cat" behavior or "attention-seeking behavior", it is more of a threshold to anti-social action in a "mob setting".
In the case of school shootings now vs the 1970s, could the riot effect explain the difference? In a world with very limited communications about local events in other parts of the country (the 70s) would the very very low frequency of "first rioters" act as a natural cap on such activity? That only a few people in the country would act like this alone, and when they did act, a lack of national immersive coverage would fail to engender the larger number of "second rioters" to act. Not due to lack of "publicity", but rather via the failure to create a sense of common connection/mob for potential "second rioters".
It is a premise that a very very few people are pre-disposed to acting as a lone active shooter/bomber, but that a bigger number (while still small) would do it if they saw others -- and with ubiquitous internet and TV coverage of these shooters, do the "second" or "third rioters" now feel as if they are part of a "group/mob" of the disaffected - an event that wasn't likely in the 70s, where local news was local and national news was on tv for a half-hour a day.
This theory suggests that people haven't changed - the number of pre-disposed first rioters/shooters is the same as always, as is the number of "second rioters/shooters", but the 24/7 news cycle is creating a "virtual mob" that triggers latent "second" and "third rioters/shooters" so to speak.
There is a fairly solid body of evidence that mass violence events tend to come in clusters and that many shooters/bombers in recent years are very aware and tuned into prominent shooters of the recent past such as Eric Harris.
Who knows the truth, but at the moment, this seems to me like the best explanation I have heard to date. And sadly one that offers no simple solution or easy source of unilateral blame.
As for arguments that this post is not about hunting and therefore should be deleted - lots of discussions on this forum are not about hunting. We have discussed mental health in many threads. Wept with fellow members as they shared mental health issues with kids and suicide. It is appropriate that we do so. This is a community - shaped around public land hunting, yes - but a community nonetheless, and communities talk about all kinds of pressing issues. Further, HT users are largely gun owners and none of us or our families are immune from our growing mental health crisis. Discussions about guns and mental health are appropriate (and even necessary) amongst hunting families.
So, to my thoughts.
I have struggled with, "why does it seem worse now?" Many hypotheses have been floated, but the studies end up showing little correlation and no clear causation. Each may be a small straw in the bigger bundle, but none have been able to explain the increase. These include in part:
Increase in single-parent families
Increase in the number of firearms in the country
Increase in the perceived military nature of firearms
Violence in movies
Violence in music
Violence in video games
Loss of religious beliefs
Poverty
Drugs
Self-aggrandizement
Lack of opportunity
The internet causing isolation
Increase in school bullying
Excessive individualism
Decay of the mental health system
Background check "loopholes"
Increased perceived "gun culture"
etc
But if none of these actually correlate well with known shootings/shooters how do we make sense of a clear increase?
Another thought was triggered by my youngest daughter who is taking a social psychology class this semester. She was sharing some interesting observations about the "Riot Effect". The riot effect is the premise that in a given population a very very small percentage would be the first one to throw a rock through a window and start a riot, but a still small but meaningfully larger percentage of a population would join a riot if they saw the first person throw a rock through a window ("second rioters"). Further, a still small but larger percentage would join the riot if they saw 3 or 4 people already in progress ("third rioter"), etc etc etc until you reach a point where the proverbial "average person on the street" is grabbing a looted TV. That at some point, each person will participate in "mob behavior" if enough are already doing it. This is not "copy cat" behavior or "attention-seeking behavior", it is more of a threshold to anti-social action in a "mob setting".
In the case of school shootings now vs the 1970s, could the riot effect explain the difference? In a world with very limited communications about local events in other parts of the country (the 70s) would the very very low frequency of "first rioters" act as a natural cap on such activity? That only a few people in the country would act like this alone, and when they did act, a lack of national immersive coverage would fail to engender the larger number of "second rioters" to act. Not due to lack of "publicity", but rather via the failure to create a sense of common connection/mob for potential "second rioters".
It is a premise that a very very few people are pre-disposed to acting as a lone active shooter/bomber, but that a bigger number (while still small) would do it if they saw others -- and with ubiquitous internet and TV coverage of these shooters, do the "second" or "third rioters" now feel as if they are part of a "group/mob" of the disaffected - an event that wasn't likely in the 70s, where local news was local and national news was on tv for a half-hour a day.
This theory suggests that people haven't changed - the number of pre-disposed first rioters/shooters is the same as always, as is the number of "second rioters/shooters", but the 24/7 news cycle is creating a "virtual mob" that triggers latent "second" and "third rioters/shooters" so to speak.
There is a fairly solid body of evidence that mass violence events tend to come in clusters and that many shooters/bombers in recent years are very aware and tuned into prominent shooters of the recent past such as Eric Harris.
Who knows the truth, but at the moment, this seems to me like the best explanation I have heard to date. And sadly one that offers no simple solution or easy source of unilateral blame.
