Gun Safety
Data Sets to inform discussion on strategies to adopt Countermeasures to
Stop the Shooters from achieving their gory goals More Often than Not.
I.A
About — Katherine Schweit | Stop the Killing
A former executive with the FBI, she currently is a member of the team operating the federally-funded National Center for School Safety, her expertise in law enforcement and school safety supports the University of Michigan led effort to provide extensive, free resources to school administrators, teachers, parents, school resource officers, and law enforcement.
She authored the FBI’s seminal research, A Study of 160 Active Shooter Incident in the United States, 2000 – 2013, and was part of the crisis team responding to incidents, including the shootings at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Pentagon, and the Washington Navy Yard in the Washington D.C. area.
She is the executive producer for the award-winning film, The Coming Storm, widely used in security and law enforcement training in the United States and relied on by the Department of State worldwide.
The film and her research and work combating the active shooter threat earned her a second U.S. Attorney General Award.
Stop the Killing offers insight into what each of us can do to end the active shooter crisis plaguing America. Written by the former head of the FBI’s active shooter program, Katherine Schweit, shares an insider look at what we’ve learned, and failed to learn, about protecting our businesses, houses of worship, and schools. The book demystifies the language around active shooters, mass killings, threat assessment teams, and more.
I.B
On Smerconish Broadcast 06 11 22.
Expert identifies key trend about mass shooters that could stop them (cnn.com)
Smerconish.
Katherine Schweit, a retired FBI agent who created the bureau's active shooter program, discusses ways to identify mass shooters before they kill. “There are tons of flag. Individuals who are doing this kind of violence move on this kind of violence. They get the idea, plan and prepare, Buy their weapons, buy their equipment, surveil the area, plus leak this information Katherine Schweit, a retired FBI agent who created the bureau's active shooter program, discusses ways to identify mass shooters before they kill.”
I.C.
FBI Active Shooter expert on Uvalde police mistakes (cnn.com)
Smerconish
If shots are being fired," says former FBI agent Katherine Schweit, you have ot go in. She created the agency's active shooter program, "you have to go to the sound of the shots, and you have to neutralize the people." Law Enforcement 101 if shots are being fired you have to got the sound of the shots and neutralize the people.
Source: CNN Ms. Schweit wrote the book on Active Shooter for FBI. [Please see I.A.VM] He should have carried this communication gear. He should have assigned somebody to be in charge of the stop the shooter intervention.
II.
June 10, 2022: Advocacy Update spotlight on gun violence prevention
JUN 10, 2022
CONTENTS
AMA renews call for gun violence prevention in wake of Tulsa shooting
The AMA released the following statement in response to the targeted killing of physicians in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the latest in a string of mass shootings across the country.
“As we have said repeatedly since declaring gun violence a public health crisis in 2016, gun violence is out of control in the United States, and, without real-world, common-sense federal actions, it will not abate,” said AMA President Gerald E. Harmon, MD. “The victims are grade school children and their teachers, people shopping for groceries on a Saturday afternoon, those attending their house of worship, and most recently in Tulsa, those who have dedicated their lives to healing. The House Judiciary Committee is taking an important first step...by considering the ‘Protecting Our Kids Act,’ and we urge members to approve life-saving measures and policies endorsed by the very physicians tasked with caring for victims of gun violence.”
In a letter (PDF) to the chairman and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, the AMA highlighted specific, common-sense measures in H.R. 7910, the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” which the AMA supports to curb gun violence. The letter was shared in advance of the committee considering the bill. Provisions include increasing the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles from 18-21 and closing the 'ghost-gun loophole. The House of Representatives approved H.R. 7910 by a vote of 223-204 on June 8.
CHICAGO — The American Medical Association (AMA) today released the following statement in response to the targeted killing of physicians in Tulsa, Okla., the latest in a string of mass shootings across the country.
“As we have said repeatedly since declaring gun violence a public health crisis in 2016, gun violence is out of control in the United States, and, without real-world, common-sense federal actions, it will not abate,” said AMA President Gerald E. Harmon, M.D. “The victims are grade school children and their teachers, people shopping for groceries on a Saturday afternoon, those attending their house of worship, and most recently in Tulsa, those who have dedicated their lives to healing. The House Judiciary Committee is taking an important first step today by considering the ‘Protecting Our Kids Act,’ and we urge members to approve life-saving measures and policies endorsed by the very physicians tasked with caring for victims of gun violence.”
In a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, the AMA highlighted specific, common-sense measures in H.R. 7910, the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” the AMA supports to curb gun violence. Shared as the Committee considers the bill, the provisions include increasing the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles from 18-21 and closing the “ghost-gun loophole.”
The full text of the letter is below, or click here to download a PDF copy.
III.
https://www.psychnews.org/alert_post-AM2022_1i.html
J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D. (left), is the winner of the Manfred S. Guttmacher award for the book International Handbook of Threat Assessment, which he co-edited with Jens Hoffman. The award is co-sponsored by APA and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
Certain Behaviors Can Warn Clinicians About Impending Mass Shootings, Targeted Violence
A decade of research has uncovered certain behavior patterns that may predict an individual’s propensity for committing acts of targeted violence that are planned and purposeful, such as last week’s mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., according to a speaker today.
Among these proximal warning behaviors, one of the most frequently observed is called “pathway” behaviors. Such behaviors involve researching, planning, and preparing for an attack, according to J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D., a forensic psychologist and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego. Meloy has served as a consultant with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit for 20 years and at today’s session was presented the 2022 Manfred S. Guttmacher Award for his book International Handbook of Threat Assessment.
Typically the pathway behaviors are set in motion by a grievance the individual develops, Meloy said.
Research shows that only one-quarter to one-half of individuals who engage in targeted attacks have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder, Meloy said. So it is more important to “focus on an individual’s behaviors in the moment and whether the person is moving on a pathway to violence, rather than to quibble over the diagnosis.”
Another frequently seen behavior prior to attacks is “leakage,” which refers to an individual’s communication to a third party of an intent to do harm through an attack. Prior to assassinating Kennedy, Sirhan told a trash collector that he was going to kill Kennedy. Similarly, prior to the recent mass shooting at the Buffalo grocery store, alleged shooter Payton Gendron informed 15 people of his plans to attack in a private chatroom.
Leakage occurs in the majority of cases—60% to 90%—of targeted violence and often opens the door to investigation of an individual, Meloy said. While most leakage events do not result in an attack, Meloy said he believes all should be investigated.[Items I B and IC refers to this. VM]
Identification with previous attackers/assailants, or as pseudocommandos/warriors, or as agents to advance a particular cause or belief system is also frequently associated with targeted attacks, Meloy said. Nikolas Cruz posted on a social media site “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” before he killed 17 students and staff and wounded another 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
The least frequently observed warning behavior is the directly communicated threat, which occurs in less than 20% of cases, Meloy explained. For example, Anthony Quinn Warner, the suicide bomber who targeted a commercial center in downtown Nashville, Tenn., on December 25, 2020, used a loud audio recording device warning all individuals who could hear the message to evacuate the area.
Meloy said many clinicians mistakenly believe that if there’s no directly communicated threat, there’s no risk. “You cannot depend on the absence of the direct threat as a means of assessing whether a person poses a risk of attack,” Meloy said. “These individuals want a high body count and for their attacks to be as effective as possible and as innovative as possible to build their audience and draw people to their cause.” ■
Factors to be considered:
- Harbors personal Grievance
- Diagnosable Psychiatric Disorder 25 -50% Behaviors leading up to event is more important.
- Leakage of intent 60-90% of the time before the actual targeted shooting.
- Identification with previous attackers/assailants, or as pseudo -commandos or as agents to advance a particular cause.
- Rarely a Directly Communicated Threat to target.
IV. A.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: The damage to the human body caused by firearms - CNN
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: The damage to the human body caused by firearms
By Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent
Updated 9:11 AM ET, Wed June 8, 2022
So, on the last day of his class, we went to an outdoor gun range in Ann Arbor for our GSW lecture. There were handguns there, as well as rifles. In the distance, I saw several watermelons on top of old barrels that would serve as targets. After putting in his ear plugs and donning safety glasses, Hoff shot a watermelon with a handgun. I saw the bullet hit the watermelon but wasn't confident I saw the bullet exit. The watermelon was then brought to us for inspection.
First thing to notice, he told us: There was an obvious entrance and exit "wound," and they were around the same size. We could see the green skin folding in on itself around the entrance wound and the outward beveled tissue around the exit. After we chopped the watermelon open, he pointed out that the bullet seemed to have traveled in a fairly predictable trajectory, a linear bullet-sized line through the body of the watermelon.
Next came the same demonstration with a rifle. This time, I saw the watermelon shudder as it was struck and then immediately saw a significant amount of red tissue fly out the backside. Upon inspection, the first thing I noticed was how much bigger the exit wound was, compared with the entrance. And after opening the watermelon, the purpose of the demonstration became clear: Instead of a predictable linear track, the watermelon looked like it had been cored out and what was left was shredded. He explained that this was a phenomenon known as cavitation, which is just what it sounds like: The bullet doesn't simply travel through the body, it creates a big cavity inside it.
More damage
Nearly 30 years after my med school gun range demonstration, Dr. Ernest E. Moore, trauma surgeon and director of trauma research at the Shock Trauma Center named after him at Denver Health, is also using the watermelon example to draw a comparison between different firearms.
"I often use the analogy that the injury to the liver [with a semi-automatic rifle] would be similar to just taking a watermelon and dropping it on the cement. It's incredible the amount of energy delivered. ... By comparison, the 9 millimeter would drill a hole through the liver. So you'd have a sizable hole, but if you didn't hit a major blood vessel, it's a pretty tolerable injury. In fact, we in civilian trauma will often manage a 9-millimeter liver injury without an operation, whereas a patient with an assault rifle would be dead within 20 minutes if you didn't operate," he said.
Other human tissue in the body reacts differently. "If you struck a bone with an AR-15, like your femur in your leg, it would literally shatter into multiple fragments that would sort of serve as secondary missiles. Whereas ... we've seen 9 millimeters that will actually drill a hole right to the femur," he said. (An AR-15 is a lightweight semi-automatic -- that is, self-loading -- rifle manufactured by Colt; other gunmakers make rifles in a similar style.)
Moore also brings up cavitation as a way of visualizing what is happening in the body. He describes cavitation "as the result of a rapid expansion of the tissues surrounding the path of the bullet. ... In essence, instead of a virtual drill hole with a 9 millimeter, your path of injury in tissue with an AR-15 will be 6 inches wide. And the path beyond that is even wider, but the tissue recoils back into it," said Moore, noting that inelastic tissue -- like the liver, heart and brain -- are the most vulnerable to this type of energy.
A brief history of the AR-15-style weapon
Although the Department of Justice notes that 77.2% of mass shootings -- which it counts as four or more deaths, excluding the shooter -- involve handguns, many of the highest-profile incidents involved assault-style rifles: the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut; Orlando's Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016; the 2017 shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas; and the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, just to name a few.
This kind of rifle unleashes a lot of power, said Moore, who, in addition to being a trauma surgeon since 1976 (who operated on some of the Columbine survivors), co-edited a major textbook on trauma surgery, authored more than 1,700 scientific articles and was the longtime editor of the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.
"The capacity for tissue injury is reflected in the so-called kinetic energy. And the kinetic energy, simplistically, is the mass or weight of the bullet times the velocity squared. So the velocity -- the speed of the bullet exiting the gun -- is really its primary effectiveness," he said.
Moore said a 9-millimeter handgun has a muzzle energy -- the kinetic energy of a bullet as it leaves the gun's muzzle -- of roughly 400 foot-pounds of force. For a rifle like the AR-15, that number is 1,300. "So you have a huge increase in the amount of energy imparted from the gun," he explained.
He said the size of the bullet has less to do with the damage it causes.
"I think there are some misconceptions with ... rifles. A lot of people say, 'Oh, they're big bullets.' Actually, they're small bullets -- interestingly, they're even smaller than many handguns. So the actual bullet that's discharged from an AR-15, for example, is a half the size of the bullet from a 9 millimeter. The difference is the ... velocity," he said.
And, if that rifle is a semi-automatic weapon, the weapon can be fired repeatedly, without manually reloading, simply by pulling the trigger. In Uvalde, hundreds of rounds were fired into classrooms in the first four minutes, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw.
Moore, who grew up in a hunting family, owns firearms and is an avid hunter, has been outspoken in his opposition to civilians owning AR-15-style semi-automatic weapons and does not own one himself. "The rifle that our military uses to fight our enemies is the same rifle that we allow civilians access to and can create these mass shootings," he said.
Public health emergency
Louis Klarevas, research professor at Columbia University and author of the 2016 book "Rampage Nation," credits the 10-year federal assault weapons ban between 1994 and 2004 with significantly reducing the number of mass shooting incidents and deaths (which he defined as injuring or killing six or more people) before rebounding to even higher levels after the ban expired. In 2020, there were an estimated 20 million AR-15 style weapons in circulation in the United States, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Between 1990 and 1999, during the decade in which I traveled to that gun range with Hoff, mass shootings claimed an average of 21 lives per year; from 2012 to 2021, that average had gone up to 51, according to the Violence Project. It defines a mass shooting as four or more people in a public place being killed with firearms, without any underlying criminal activity, excluding the shooter. (CNN defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people other than the shooter are injured or killed by gunfire during one event.)
Federal data on the overall impact of gun violence is lacking. Even obtaining the basic numbers can be a challenge, as I learned writing this article. While the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dashboards for Covid-19 and even monkeypox, gun violence is still an enigma for the public health community. That's in large part due to the Dickey amendment, which, in 1996, made it challenging and potentially financially punitive for the CDC to conduct or fund research on gun violence if it were to be used in any way to promote gun control.
Even today, it is organizations like the Gun Violence Archive -- an independent data collection and research group that collects information on gun violence from more than 7,500 sources daily -- and not the CDC that provide some of the most up-to-date statistics on gun violence and deaths on a daily basis.
The rise of gun violence is something Dr. Bellal Joseph has seen firsthand. He is the chief of the Division of Trauma, Surgical Critical Care, Burns, and Acute Care Surgery at the Banner University Medical Center at the University of Arizona and a professor in the Department of Surgery in the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson.
"I can tell you from our own data, but also from a national perspective, there's no doubt that ... every trauma center in the country is seeing unprecedented numbers of trauma," he said referring to "violent trauma: more shootings, more victims."
"Mass shootings are more prevalent at trauma centers than people actually think," said Joseph. "Oftentimes, it takes a high [profile] school shooting to activate the media, but it actually happens a lot more than we think, unfortunately."
Joseph, who back in 2011 helped treat nine of the survivors of the mass shooting that targeted US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, like every other surgeon we spoke to, wanted to emphasize that injuries from AR-15 style semi-automatic firearms are not like other injuries.
"When you see ... victims from AR-type assaults, what you're seeing is a violent crime against others," he said.
Stalemate in the face of mounting violence.
According to an analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the US ranks first in firearm homicides per capita among high-income countries of more than 10 million -- that's an age-adjusted rate 13 times greater than France's and 23 times greater than Australia's. And, according to the CDC, the most recent data shows that firearms were the leading cause of death in children and adolescents up to age 19 in 2020, claiming more than 4,300 lives. That was a nearly 30% increase from 2019.
The deaths are only a small fraction of those affected. The lives of people who are injured, the victims' families, friends and the community at large are forever ripped apart.
And if you need a reason to look beyond the human cost of gun violence, there is also the cost to society: According to a February 2021 report by Everytown Research and Policy, it comes out to an estimated $280 billion a year, which includes medical, criminal justice and other expenses.
The American College of Surgeons, the professional organization that represents the people who see this type of injury all too often, has been calling for tighter control of weapons and more common-sense rules. In 2018, the ACS's Firearms Strategy Task Force released 13 recommendations that includes items like regulating heavy-duty firearms, more safety training, and increasing recognition of mental health issues. But the bipartisan legislation currently being considered in the House of Representatives falls short of these recommendations.
"There has to be some vetting, training," said Joseph, especially when it comes to weapons like AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles. He noted that to be allowed to drive, a person needs many hours of coaching and practice in order to pass an exam and get a license -- "no one is getting into a car and just driving."
As for objections that "the government can't tell us what to do," Moore says, yes, citizens have rights, but they are not limitless.
"We don't drive tanks through the street. We don't throw a grenade into the parks. ... We need to have some rational thinking," he said.
The same sort of rational thinking Hoff impressed on us so many years ago on a gun range in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
IV. B.
What can an AR-15 do to the human body? A trauma surgeon explains. (yahoo.com)
What can an AR-15 do to the human body? A trauma surgeon explains.
Laura Ramirez-Feldman and Kate Murphy
Thu, June 9, 2022, 4:48 PM·7 min read
How wounds from an AR-15-style rifle compared to wounds from handguns
Naik-Mathuria, who is also a fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, told Yahoo News that some of her colleagues treated patients of the Uvalde school shooting, but that few of the victims survived. “They received very few patients, because unfortunately, this is what happens with assault weapons,” she said.
He explained that “the blast effect, or the cavitation effect” that a handgun shot causes is not as wide and devastating to internal organs as the one inflicted by high-velocity weapons such as the AR-15 and similar rifles... But assault weapons, it's much bigger,” she said, adding that as a bullet from this type of weapon penetrates the body, it typically creates a large cavity that can cause significant bleeding from vessels and completely destroy soft tissue, as well as organs.
“This Map of the USA depicts the deadliest shootings in the past years in our United States…
V.
Texas shooting: US gun control claims fact-checked - BBC News
Texas shooting: US gun control claims fact-checked
By Jake Horton
BBC Reality Check. Published 28 May 2022
The issue of controls on gun ownership is being debated in the United States once again, after a gunman opened fire in a school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers.
US politicians, including President Joe Biden, have been making claims about gun rights.
A 2017 Chicago police department report revealed that almost 60% of the illegal guns used in crimes in the city came from outside the state.
Overall, states with stronger gun laws have lower gun death rates, according to research by the Giffords Law Center, a gun control advocacy group.
"State laws can be effective but they are not completely - each state can put restrictions in place but it's very easy to drive across state lines with illegal products. You're not getting checked at the border," says David Pucino of Giffords.
In the US, each state can make its own criminal laws. For the same law to apply in every state though, it has to be passed at a federal level, and there has been limited success passing gun laws this way.
When it comes to international comparisons, there are several countries which have experienced a reduction in gun crime after nationwide restrictions were introduced following mass shootings.
In Australia following the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, significant gun controls were introduced.
The National Firearms Agreement prohibited almost all automatic and semi-automatic rifles, made gun registration compulsory, and set up a gun "buyback programme".
Following this, gun-related death rates and gun-related mass killings declined significantly.
In the UK, the list of banned weapons was expanded following the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987, and further gun restrictions were introduced after the Dunblane school shooting in 1996.
There have been two mass shooting in the UK following Dunblane, and although gun crime did rise in England and Wales after 1996, it peaked in 2004 and has declined since, which analysts say is as a result of better enforcement.
Switzerland and Finland have some of the highest rates of gun ownership in Europe, with strong hunting cultures, but they both have strict rules in place such as gun registration. Both countries have very few gun-related homicides.
A look at 130 studies from over 10 countries found that restrictions on guns tended to be followed by a decline in gun deaths.
President Biden made two claims here about the Second Amendment, which was passed in 1791 to protect Americans' right to bear arms and is often cited by opponents of gun controls.
The amendment states: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
President Biden's assertion that the amendment is not "absolute" is backed up by a ruling by the US Supreme Court in 2008.
It stated: "It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose."
But he is wrong to say that people were banned from owning a cannon when the amendment was passed.
"He's made this claim a number of times and it's false, there were no laws banning a cannon when the Second Amendment was ratified," says Josh Blackman, a constitutional law expert at the South Texas College of Law.
Greg Abbott, the Republican Governor of Texas, said the gunman who opened fire at the school had "a mental health challenge" and said the state needed to do "better" on mental health.
But in April 2022, he diverted more than $200m (£160m) of funding away from the Health and Human Services Commission, which is in charge of the state's mental health programmes.
The Texas Tribune reported these funds went towards border security efforts.
Texas ranks last among US states for overall access to mental health care, according to the 2022 State of Mental Health in America report.
Correction 30 May: An earlier version of this piece stated there had been one mass shooting in the UK following Dunblane. There have been two, based on the definition widely used in the US of four or more deaths.
VI. A.
https://www.msnbc.com/american-voices/watch/addressing-america-s-gun-violence-crisis-beyond-mass-shootings-141493829514 The conversation with Mr. Bump on the Show was from 3:34 or so to 3:38 PM on Ms. Alicia Menendez Broadcast from 3- 4 PM.
America’s gun violence epidemic stretches well beyond the mass shootings that grab headlines. Philip Bump with the Washington Post joined American Voices with Alicia Menendez to discuss broadening the conversation about gun deaths in America June 5, 2022.
VI. B
Gun violence doesn’t usually look like Uvalde (msn.com)
Gun Violence usually doesn’t look like Uvalde- Philip Bump- Jun 1.
Bottom line- A medical analogy is apt. Incidents like Uvalde are terrifying, acute manifestations of America’s unique gun culture. But the chronic problem is daily death at a smaller scale from people killing themselves or others, often by accident.
Ending incidents like the one in Uvalde is obviously important. But there would still be more than 100-gun deaths a day on average in the United States, most of them people taking their own lives.
Last week, an 18-year-old armed with a semiautomatic rifle entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., and fatally shot 21 people, including 19 children, before being killed by police.
It was a shocking example of the way in which readily available weapons can inflict a high death toll in a short amount of time. It was also an outlier event in America’s enormous annual toll of gun violence.
Sign up for How To Read This Chart, a weekly data newsletter from Philip Bump
To be very clear: What happened in Uvalde was horrifying and demands some effort at preventing similar attacks. But, in part thanks to the enormous amount of attention such attacks receive, it also risks presenting gun deaths in the United States as something other than a grinding, macabre norm that usually escapes the public eye.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, in 2019 and 2020, an average of about 3,500 people per month died of gun violence. The toll was higher in 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. That year was the deadliest for gun violence on record.
While the increase in 2020 was a function of an increase in homicides and accidental shootings, it was still the case that about half of the recorded deaths were suicides. In 2019, about 61 percent of gun-related deaths were suicides. In 2020, about 54 percent were.[Suicide].u
PNotice that we’ve also included the death toll from recorded mass-shooting incidents, using the standard from the Gun Violence Archive. Only a small percentage of deaths in a given month were a function of incidents in which four or more people were shot.
This isn’t good news. That thousands of people are fatally shot a year in separate incidents is a reflection of how widespread gun violence is.
That the shooter in Uvalde used a rifle is also not the norm. There are a few ways to categorize weapon ownership in the country, none perfect. If we look at FBI background checks for new permits or sales (transfers) from licensed dealers in 2020 and 2021, we see that most are for handguns. There were spikes in March 2020 (at the outset of the pandemic) and June of that year (as protests erupted across the country). But in no month during those two years were most checks not for Handguns.
As you might expect, given that bit of data, most of the firearms manufactured in the United States in 2020 were handguns — nearly 60 percent of the 11 million firearms produced in this country. When it comes to firearms used in crimes, handguns are far more common. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found that 80 percent of the 393,000 guns it recovered from crime scenes and traced were pistols or revolvers.
A medical analogy is apt. Incidents like Uvalde are terrifying, acute manifestations of America’s unique gun culture. But the chronic problem is daily death at a smaller scale from people killing themselves or others, often by accident.
Ending incidents like the one in Uvalde is obviously important. But there would still be more than 100-gun deaths a day on average in the United States, most of them people taking their own lives.
Philip Bump, New York, National correspondent for Washington Post. focused largely on the numbers behind politics
VII.
Evidence based successful strategies to effectively Stop the Shooter, Stop the Bleeding, Save Lives and begin to repair and reclaim the community from suffocating choke hold imposed on the whole urban area by small group of terrifying people e.g., a network of 700 individuals in New Orleans or 70% of killings occur in intersections that comprises only 5% of the area of Boston. We can succeed in our efforts by focusing on the Hot spots and hot individuals to restore and rebuild its vital connections and structures after decades of de- investment and neglect and begin the process of healing several generations of traumatized individuals to lift all boats in these high lethality neighborhoods. I am familiar with these areas because I worked in Boston City Hospital and the Dimock Community Health Center and the Methadone Clinic I believe in the Mission Hill Project as part of Mayor White’s Project Turnoff and not from it near Hunting Ave and Longwood ave my passenger side car window was punched out by a bullet
VII. A . The Video an especially the transcript of Ted Talk is invaluable so is the well documented Text book: Violence in the Age of Social Media—Perpetrators, Victims, and You.
James Densley: Violence in the Age of Social Media—Perpetrators, Victims, and You | TED Talk
“..'This is preventable' | Here are some big, and small, steps we can take against mass shootings. Dr. James Densley says the first step is fighting the urge to give up.
” The Law of Crime Concentration emerged out of many corroborating research data that explains the current findings in all of urban areas with hot spots nd hot people and the problem of sticky violence promoting environment. : The Law of Crime Concentration: An Application and Recommendations for Future Research | National Institute of Justice (ojp.gov)
VII. B. … Initiate humane actions: First save lives- First stop the Bleeding – This is especially true in Urban Violence. It is sticky and tends frequently and regularly to occur in hot spots and by hot people in small parts of the urban area
Reducing violence in cities in the US isn't the impossible, intractable challenge many believe it to be, says crime researcher and educator Thomas Abt. He explains how urban violence is "sticky" -- meaning that it clusters among a surprisingly small number of people and places -- and presents an innovative, targeted strategy to make our cities safer, right now, without big budgets or new laws. Initiate humane actions: First stop the Bleeding, Begin to save individual lives, build trust and confidence, restore hope and faith in institutions to stop the progression of certain individuals in hot spots before they become one of the one of the hot people who must be stopped by legal actions including killing the shooter to save lives and protect men, women and children and then we can begin to heal the community.
"Urban violence matters, because it causes more deaths here in the United States than any other form of violence."
Thomas Abt: Why violence clusters in cities -- and how to reduce it | TED Talk The Ted Talk and the Transcript are very valuable in our work as physicians and community leaders who care and want to first save lives in the midst of a pandemic of Urban Violence which happens among disadvantaged and disenfranchised among young men across our country.
The methodology used to arrive at this estimate can be found in Chapter 1, page 8 of Abt's book Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence—and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets.
It was drawn from data as recent as 2018, from the following sources: the University of Maryland Global Terrorism Database; Mother Jones magazine's "US Mass Shootings, 1982–2018: Data from Mother Jones' Investigation"; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In Oakland, that same strategy recently reduced nonfatal gun assaults by 55 percent. In Cincinnati, Indianapolis and New Heaven, it cut gun violence by more than a third." For more on these statistics, see here
The best practices-based solutions for Urban violence is within our grasp, Let us reach out and grab the life line that can be extended to all communities to stop the shooters, Stop the Bleeding and Saves lives, start the healing process and restore communities to its fullness. Then we can affirm with joy that out of the Mountain of Despair a precious stone of Hope emerged as inscribed on the side of the Dr. MLK Jr Memorial in Washington DC. This hyperlink provides very useful background on this phrase. “Out of the Mountain of Despair, a Stone of Hope” – John A. McArthur, Ph.D. (jamcarthur.com)
VIII.
What’s in the Senate’s 80-page bipartisan gun safety bill
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 06/21/22 7:43 PM ET
I salute all those who made the choice to vote affirmative for this Bill, especially the 14 Republican Senators despite the tremendous ferment among their constituents about their choices. Sen Cornyn was booed at the Tx State Republican Convention. But, a majority of Tx Republicans support Sen. Cornin More than two-thirds of Texas Republicans approve of Cornyn despite heat over gun bill: poll | The Hill.
“He has an A-plus rating from the NRA and McConnell has praised him for knowing more about gun-safety policy than anyone else in the Senate GOP conference.” Here is short bios on the 14 brave Republicans who voted to affirm discussion and a full vote on the bill. Here are the 14 GOP senators who voted to advance gun safety bill (msn.com)
When we can pass this package of Gun Safety enhancing measures in the Senate, I firmly believe we are being obedient to our Master when he said this to a lawyer about what a good Samaritan did to make the road to Jericho a safer place in Luke 10 verse 37, “Go Thou and do Likewise. I offer this prayer which is the motto of St. Francis, “Pax Et Bonum” for our USA our home sweet home. Amen We can all receive and be beneficiaries of this blessings of a Saint from the 13th Century when we live by the precepts gifted to us by the Master 20 centuries ago in the Beatitudes and in the Parable fo the Good Samaritan. I offer you ths great performance to find succor and solace and restore our spirits: César Franck: "Les Béatitudes" (Amsterdam, 1977) - Bing video A glorious interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. The graphics, musicians and the voices have combined to create an extraordinary musical and spiritual experience.