"Why Mass Shootings Keep Happening" ("Esquire" on how to stop mass shootings) --

[tblue37]

From an "Esquire" article about the FBI's Threat Assessment team, which tries to identify and intervene to stop potential mass shooters (emphasis added):

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a30024/mass-shooters-1014/

Since September 11, 2001, according to the START terrorism database, there have been twenty lethal terrorist attacks in the United States, resulting in the deaths of forty-six people. There have been, at most, a handful of assassinations. According to the FBI, from 2001 to 2011, there have been nearly 250 mass shootings, defined as the death of four or more people. According to USA Today, whose data on mass shootings is considered at least as reliable as the FBI's, there have been 191 mass shootings since 2006, with 34 described as "public" shootings—seemingly random events, stranger to stranger. Nearly a thousand people have died; many more have been wounded. What America feared after the 9/11 attacks—that it would be perpetually attacked by outsiders calling themselves Americans—finally has transpired, only with an awful twist: It is perpetually attacked by Americans who call themselves outsiders.

[tblue37]

1. BTW, a ways into the article a guy who *almost* became a mass shooter, but

who now talks to the FBI Threat Assessment team, says that the ready availability of his father's legal firearms in his home definitely shaped his progress toward nearly becoming a mass shooter (emphasis added):

It is the part of his story he wants to make sure people know: "If there were no guns in the picture, it wouldn't have happened the way it did." But wouldn't he have gotten guns illegally if he hadn't been able to get them from his father's gun closet? Wouldn't a person like him have gotten guns in any way he could? "There is no way I would have bought an illegal firearm. I wouldn't have known how. I would have been too scared. When I was in jail, there were two kinds of inmates: There were criminals, and there were people who did crimes. The criminals are the people who'll get a gun no matter what. But I was a person who did a crime. There is no way I would have gone to the inner city and gotten a gun. If I was the kind of person who was able to do that, I never would have done the crime that I did."

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. K&R - good article (nt)

[RobinA]

3. Excellent Article!

Thanks for posting this link. I found it very interesting and informative. Everybody trying to understand what is going on here should read it, including those who think "why" isn't the right question.

[tblue37]

4. Self K&R so more can read the article. nt