About this screening of gun buyers?

[Jackpine Radical]

That's a total fantasy. I happen to be a criminal forensic psychologist with a specialization in violence risk assessment and considerable experience testifying in court on these issues, and I can tell you that we do not have the tools to reliably identify who might be a potential mass killer. It's always easy after the fact--you can always find cues and ask how people cold have missed them.

But--suppose one person in 1 million is a potential mass murderer, and suppose that you have an actuarial instrument that helps you identify people more likely to commit such crimes. The BEST actuarial measuress in the behavioral sciences have likelihood ratios on the order of 3.0. That means that someone who tests "positive" on your instrument is 3 times more likely than the average person to commit a violent crime. Further imagine that 1 person in 100 tests positive on your instrument. That is a very conservative estimate of the rate of "dangerous serious mental illess" in the population, lower than the rate of paranoid schizophrenia, and much lower than the rate of Bipolar Disorder. For simplicity, we will say that the US population is about 300 million. Given that 1-in-1-million figure for mass murderers, your instrument will identify 3 million people as high-risk, but only 300 of them would actually commit a mass murder. You are therefore falsely identifying 100,000 people as high-risk for every one you correctly identify as high risk. Furthermore, since your instrument is only 3 times better than chance, you will be missing about 1/3 of the actual mass murderers.

[NYC_SKP]

1. I don't think that anyone expects to ID every mass murderer.

I think it's only to associate past behaviors with potential misuses of firearms and then act accordingly.

For example, a man or woman with a TRO and a history of domestic abuse might be disqualified.

Or, a man or woman with a history of substance abuse and a conviction of assault might be disqualified.

I'm not sure if it's reasonable, however, to use treatment for depression, bipolar disorder, etc., ought to be considered unless there's also an associated conviction for a violent offense.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. That already happens for felony convictions, and,

in WI, at least, for domestic violence convictions, even misdemeanors.

And yes, that kind of restriction makes good sense.

[Eleanors38]

3. Efforts to stop mass shootings seem to be better directed at the

potential sites of these killings; in particular, schools. Security measues here may have a positive effect in reducing the 2 - 3 such events/year we now experience. Generalized measures such as screenings, time delays, taxes & fees, purchase limits, etc. seem to have no effect on someone who deliberately plans, over time, to carry out such an atrocity.

Gun controllers willingly conflate mass murders with other types of gun-related crime, and have faith that generalized measures will some how and in some way manifest itself in some future good. Until the more outspoken controller/banners better define what they want (after all these years), the debate is unlikely to change, and they will leave the impression that they are only concerned with school shootings, and with making "uncomfortable" (that most horrid of modern societal sins) the routine lives of millions of lawful gun-owners.

Mass shootings on the one hand, and the murmur of nightly violent crime on the other, are 2 different animals. Treat them as such.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Yes, precisely.

"Mass shootings on the one hand, and the murmur of nightly violent crime on the other, are 2 different animals. Treat them as such."