Perspectives Matter #2819 - What We Need to Know About Mass Shootings

Join our host Vince Poscente who interviewed key experts on the topic of mass and school shootings, just last fall:

Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones, and the author of Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America, 
Katherine Schweit,
retired FBI agent and author of Stop the Killing: How to End the Mass Shooting Crisis, whom the FBI tagged to create their active shooter program, after Sandy Hook, and
Peter F. Langman, Ph.D., a counseling psychologist and author of Warning Signs: Identifying School Shooters Before They Strike Dr. Langman’s research on school shooters has been cited in congressional testimony on Capitol Hill.

Defined by the Gun Violence Archive as an incident in which four or more victims are shot or killed, mass shootings are on the rise. To date (2023), there have been 184 mass shootings in the U.S.

These mass shootings have led to 248 deaths and 744 injuries. https://abcnews.go.com/US/116-people-died-gun-violence-day-us-year/story?id=97382759

 As Mark Follman states, “The massacres don’t come out of nowhere. This is planned violence.”

Mass shootings are on the rise, caused by personal grievances to the rise in life stressors, both in general and as a result of the pandemic, especially hardships related to finances, employment or family and relationships.

These issues can lead some people “to act out or respond violently,” said Jaclyn Schildkraut, the interim executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the non-partisan Rockefeller Institute of Government. https://rockinst.org/gun-violence/mass-shooting-factsheet/

Our guest’s counsel:

• If you have guns at home, make sure they are safely locked up. 
• Mass shooters don’t just snap! The shootings are carefully planned and thought out.
• There are signals mass shooters drop about their intentions. Most are ignored.

They state “It’s our role as society to place more obstacles and barriers to make sure we stop this violence once and for all.”

 

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