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Murder: Some Numbers
At the current rate, an American high school student faces a risk of being murdered in a school shooting in a year of about 0.0014%.
That’s about one in 71,000.
Based on last year’s crime statistics, the overall probability of a person in the US being murdered in a year is about 0.005%.
That’s about one in 20,000.
Also based on last year’s crime statistics, a citizen of St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, or Detroit — including children in those cities — has a risk of being murdered in a year of about 0.049%.
That’s about one in 2,000.
If the current rate continues, there will be about two dozen school shooters this year — based on a reasonable definition of what constitutes a school shooting. Their total victims will constitute about one half of one percent of all United States homicides.
Overall, in the United States, about 16,000 murders will be committed this year. Most of them — about two-thirds — will be committed by males between the ages of 17 and 35.
The 30 most violent cities in America represent about six percent of the US population but account for about a quarter of all murders.
There is nothing trivial about school shootings, but there is also nothing typical about them. If we wish to reduce their frequency, we have to find ways to reach the last 0.0003% of the male high school population. Put differently, 99.9997% of the young men in our high schools are not in danger of becoming school shooters.
Let’s look at the two dozen who are and try to understand their pathology. But let’s not mistake them for normal. Most of the other 99.5% of murders in the United States this year will be more typical, more predictable, and more preventable.
Published in Domestic Policy
Andrew Klavan mentioned you on his show today. I just listened to it and it brought me to the article.
I think you’re spot on, Hank. Keep it up.
-Tom
Thanks, Tom. A friend messaged me to tell me he heard it. Always a thrill when that happens. ;)
We aren’t talking about kids serving in the military nor is anyone suggesting gun owners shouldn’t have access to buying guns.
We don’t rent cars to them but we’ll sell em guns. I’m saying 18 year olds living in suburbia who barely just became legal to see R rated movies don’t need a semi automatic gun.
Let kids rent them at the range and wait until their 21 just like they need to for handguns.
No problem. And it’s 3am here, when all sensible people are sleeping. (I’m working on a software project that’s had me too focused to sleep, but I’ve about hit my limit.)
I’m actually not comfortable with the pistol restriction for the under-21 set, either, and for the reason I mentioned above. There’s a Constitutional ambiguity to it that makes me uneasy.
I understand where you’re coming from, and there’s merit in your argument. Because I think it would make almost no difference, I’m not willing to further muddy the Constitutional status of adults beneath a particular age. If I thought it would make a big difference, I’d be tempted to go along. As it is, it just feels like compromise for the sake of “doing something,” and that doesn’t sit well with me.
I want us to move in a different direction entirely.
I’m a 2A proponent. My family has several guns. A majority of gun murders happened with hand guns so they raised the age to 21. Its been federal law for 50 years. As far as I can tell AR15s weren’t around then, at least not in the form they are now. It’s time to update the ’68 law to include them.
Henry, by the way, don’t take my short answers as not wanting to go into this deeper. I’m typing this on my phone with my stubby thumbs. I’m not suggesting that this will solve all of the problems we’ve been seeing over the past 20 years as, sadly it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. We gotta look at everything.
Let’s say the FBI acted properly. And the police were ready to take action. What could they do exactly? Cruz had no criminal record. No court had found him mentally ill. There is no legislation in place authorizing the authorities to take him into custody along with his weapons. This, despite the fact that the school authorities, and everyone else knew he was a clear and present danger.
Cruz, and the handful of Cruzes who resort to mass murder of school students are Monsters. They are a special breed of criminal, and should be characterized as such in law in order to prevent them from acting out. Their civil liberties, need to be curbed as part of a balancing act in favor of school safety.
I don’t believe throwing money at the problem in the name of mental health is wise. Whose mental health? Providing more guidance counselors and school psychologists won’t stop an animal like Cruz. My bet is that he was no stranger to the mental health professionals at the schools he attended and was expelled from. Go fix Humpty Dumpty. Cheaper to harden the fortress with trained security people as suggested.
Cruz had no business owning a weapon at any age. In order to get at the violent potential of this peculiar type you’d need access to school records. So the focus here needs to be on background checks. Yes, I recognize the liberty issues involved, but regulations can provide reasonable limitations. Why can’t a gun store, or whoever conducts background checks, have access to information that is already widely know in the community (in these special cases the school officials, the police, and the FBI if they’d been on the ball)?
One other alternative: Involuntary civil commitments could be used to get someone deemed to be a danger to himself or society before a Judge. Not perfect, according to Richard Epstein on Law Talk Podcast, but worth a shot.
Wow. No murders in Chicago’s Loop. Just happens to be where all the federal, state, county, and city employees work, with all of their armed security. Just sayin….
That’s ’cause there, they rob you there with a fountain pen and not a gun.
A central problem here is that it’s difficult to remove a monster from society until he does something monstrous. Institutionalizing people for future crimes is tricky business.
Suppose a school district – with the encouragement of state and federal initiatives to keep kids who are of ethnic groups overrepresented among felons as a proportion the total population – stops calling the police when ethnically suitable juveniles are strongly suspected of felonies and handles it administratively.
No arrest, nothing pops on NICS.
Nothing pops on NICS, and juvenile known to have, say, violent tendencies and poor impulse control buys himself a long gun.
I detect a Die Hard reference, and I love it!
Woody Guthrie’s Pretty Boy Floyd
Ooohhhh. Swing and a miss….
“Some will rob you with a six-gun/ And some with a fountain pen” is a really good line, isn’t it? The screenwriters probably
ripped offwere inspired by Woody Guthrie.