Mass shootings send ripples nationwide
East Oregonian – Aug. 6
Walmart employees in Pendleton this week set up memorials to honor victims of recent gun violence. A gunman murdered 22 people and wounded more than two dozen Saturday at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Another shooter less than a day later gunned down nine people in Dayton, Ohio, and injured 27 others. Merkley spokesperson Sara Hottman reported the senator finds a University of Alabama study “quite striking.” The study shows the United States has 270 million guns and 90 mass shootings from 1966 to 2012.
Burning of Mayan City Said to Be Act of Total Warfare
USA News Hub – Aug. 6
On May 21, 697, according to Mayan hieroglyphs, the city of Bahlam Jol “burned for the second time.” But, like much of Mayan writing and history, the record remained mysterious to modern Maya researchers. Where was Bahlam Jol? What exactly were the Mayans describing with the hieroglyph that is translated as “burn”? … Alexandre Tokovinine, the fourth author, a specialist in Mayan writing at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, searched records of Mayan texts for the city name, and found that in the nearby city of Naranjo, a stone column, specified when the city had burned for the second time.
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Mass shootings and misogyny: The violent ideology we can’t ignore
USA Today – Aug. 6
In the past week, three separate mass shootings have led to national discussions about racism, xenophobia and white supremacy. The other violent ideology animating these attacks has gotten less attention: misogyny. The president said Monday “our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy” and vowed the country would respond with “urgent resolve” to the recent tragedies. But experts say sexism and toxic masculinity must also be part of any conversation about America’s mass shootings. Masculinity does play a role in these crimes, and dangerous ideologies cannot be ignored, but access to guns can’t either, said Adam Lankford, a criminal justice professor at The University of Alabama who studies mass shootings.
‘We are not violent’: Those struggling with mental illness fight stigma, blame
Daily News – Aug. 5
Like clockwork, mental illness has become the focal point for blame following America’s 255th mass shooting this year. “Mental illness and hatred pulled the trigger, not the gun,” President Donald Trump said in a televised statement Monday after two mass shootings took the lives of at least 30 over the weekend. But, people with mental illnesses are 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crimes, and only 3% to 5% of violent crimes can be linked to mental illnesses, according to national statistics. sing broad terms like “mentally ill” in situations of great harm and devastation can have a significant impact on those who suffer from depression, anxiety or other mental illnesses, said Greg Vander Wal, executive director of the counseling center at the University of Alabama.
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A Couple of Thoughtful Articles suggest that The Media needs to Change How they cover Mass Shootings
Daily Kos – Aug. 5
First article suggests, among other things, that: 1) The Media needs to repeatedly hold elected officials accountable for providing solutions; and 2) Sometimes the “impartial” Media needs to “pick a side” — and error on the side of “what’s right.” Adam Lankford, a criminology professor at the University of Alabama, has come to similar conclusions in his own research. He said the news media contributes to mass shootings by offering suspects fame, perversely rewarding higher casualty counts with splashier coverage, and inadvertently inspiring copycats.
Experts: Mental illness not main driver of mass shootings
ABC News – Aug. 5
President Donald Trump’s focus on “mentally ill monsters” oversimplifies the role of mental illness in public mass shootings and downplays the ease with which Americans can get firearms, experts said. A country’s rate of gun ownership is a far better predictor of public mass shootings than indicators of mental illness, said Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminologist who published a 2016 analysis of data from 171 countries.
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That viral tweet about mass shootings by country? It needs additional context
Politifact – Aug. 5
A statistic about mass shootings in the United States compared to 23 other countries exploded on social media after attacks in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. New York City Democratic activist Keith Edwards saw his Aug. 3 tweet shared nearly 390,000 times and liked by over 800,000 and reposted on Instagram and Facebook. University of Alabama researcher Adam Lankford wrote recently that the United States has six times as many mass shootings as the global average based on its population. He reached that finding by culling out cases of lone shooters worldwide. Still, the tweet’s precision for 2019 stumps Lankford, because the hard data are missing.
Why are mass shootings common in the U.S.?
NBC (Boston) – Aug. 5
A recent study by The University of Alabama found the U.S. had 5% of the world’s population and 31% of mass shootings.