euronews: This report tallied the human and economic toll of gun violence in all 50 states. The cost is staggering.

U.S. teens and young adults, ages 15-24, are 50 times more likely to die by gun violence than they are in other economically advanced countries, according to the 50-state breakdown.

In 2017 — the year of a mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 and injured hundreds — nearly 40,000 people died from gun-related injuries, including 2,500 school children, the report said, noting that six in 10 gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides. [...]

Rural states, meanwhile, have the highest rates of gun deaths and bear the largest costs as a share of their economies. Nationally, the cost of gun violence in the U.S. runs $229 billion a year, or 1.4 percent of the gross domestic product, the report said. [...]

The report noted, however, that the economic toll of gun violence is difficult to measure because of a decades-old federal prohibition on funding for research into the problem. Since 1996, Congress has added a little-known amendment to spending legislation that prohibits the use federal funds to advocate or promote gun control. While lawmakers clarified the provision in aspending package last year, stating that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can conduct research on the causes of gun violence, no money was allocated for such research. [...]

It also found economically deprived areas outside of rural America are also hit hard. About 7,500 African Americans die from gun violence every year, the report said — making it 20 times more likely that a young black male will die by a firearm homicide than a white peer.

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Vox: Why the NRA is struggling

A particularly low point came during the 2018 midterm elections, when the NRA was outspent by gun control groups for the first time in recent history, even while allegedly coordinating with GOP candidates in two states.

The NRA has also been enveloped in a Department of Justice investigation into Russian efforts to influence US politics that featured Russian nationals using the organization as a conduit to the Republican Party. It’s been decried for paying millions of dollars to contractors and close associates of the organization while laying off dozens of employees. And that doesn’t even mention that between January 2017 and November 2018, two of the NRA’s biggest legislative initiatives resulted in failure — derailed by high-profile mass shootings.[...]

For the NRA, the Obama administration provided what any organization needs: a motivating threat. But now that threat, however existent or nonexistent it may have been, is gone, replaced by an unreliable ally in Trump. Furthermore, the organization has been so successful in changing not only America’s gun laws but the gun conversation more broadly (and what potential restrictions on guns are even floated as possibilities) that the NRA isn’t thinking big anymore — because it doesn’t have to. [...]

This is perhaps unsurprising from a president who grew up in New York City and once advocated heavily for gun control before he aligned himself with the Republican Party. In Trump’s 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump decried members of the GOP who “walk the NRA line” and resisted restrictions on guns. [...]

And the NRA is certainly on Trump’s side, which might be part of the problem. While real threats to gun rights and the Second Amendment still exist, as we saw in the Philando Castile case — one the NRA decided to opt out of — the NRA’s turn toward Trumpian right-wing culture warring has possibly turned off those who might be supportive of the groups’s actual messaging on guns. Coupled with the group’s stance on bump stocks — which has turned off many gun owners — one source told me that the NRA’s turn toward culture-warring has given rise to more direct criticism of the NRA even from within the gun rights community.

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The New York Times: It's Time to Talk About the N.R.A.

The massacre of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, allegedly by a man with 21 guns registered to his name, was terrifyingly predictable. Every day in America, about 104 people die from guns, while in Japan it takes about a decade for that many to die from gun violence.[...]

Why do we Americans kill each other, and ourselves, with guns at such rates? One answer as it relates to the Pittsburgh attack is a toxic brew of hate and bigotry, but the ubiquity of guns leverages hatred into murder. And let’s be blunt: One reason for our country’s paralysis on meaningful action on guns is the National Rifle Association. If we want to learn the lessons of this latest rampage, and try to prevent another one, then let’s understand that saving lives is not just about universal background checks and red flag laws, but also about defanging the N.R.A.[...]

In the 1920s and 1930s, the N.R.A. favored tighter gun laws, and its president, Karl Frederick, said that the carrying of weapons “should be sharply restricted and only under license.” In 1934, the United States helped pioneer modern gun laws with the National Firearms Act, with the blessings of the N.R.A., and came close to banning handguns. As recently as the 1960s, the N.R.A. supported — more grudgingly — some limits on guns.[...]

The group claims six million members, although many analysts believe that number is inflated. But even if membership is four million, that is still a huge number, and by all accounts the N.R.A. does an excellent job caring for its members and keeping them loyal; indeed, circulation appears to have risen for its magazines. Perhaps more important, there is nothing comparable on the other side; that’s why the N.R.A. wins.

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The Atlantic: Where the Gun-Control Movement Goes Silent

Gun-control advocacy groups occasionally bring up Burger’s words to buttress their campaign against the special-interest group to which he was undoubtedly referring, the National Rifle Association. But in the decades since, as the push for tighter limits on guns has surged and stalled, again and again, none of them have taken up the suggestion implicit in the justice’s critique: There has never been a serious effort to rewrite or repeal the Second Amendment. [...]

The new players in the gun-control advocacy space have not, however, dramatically widened the scope of proposals to reduce gun violence. The main ask for most advocates remains a universal background check system that closes loopholes that allow people with criminal records or mental illness to buy firearms at gun shows or from private dealers. The groups largely also back a ban on assault-style rifles, limits on high-capacity magazines, a crackdown on straw purchasing, and an end to the prohibition on federally-funded research into gun violence as a matter of public health. [...]

In 2008, that all changed. Writing for a 5-4 Supreme Court majority, Justice Antonin Scalia—the conservative who filled the vacancy created by Warren Burger’s 1986 retirement—authored the decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that interpreted the Second Amendment as granting an individual right to bear arms. The ruling struck down D.C.’s handgun ban and provided a landmark victory in the decades-long push by the conservative legal community and gun-rights supporters.  [...]

The simplest reason why there hasn’t been a movement to change the Second Amendment is the daunting process for amending the Constitution, which requires a two-thirds majority vote in each chamber of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the 50 states. The 27th and most recent amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1992, and none of the efforts since—including bids to ban same-sex marriage or require Congress to balance the budget—have come close to success.

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FiveThirtyEight: Why High-Profile Events Like Mass Shootings Often Don’t Lead To Policy Change

The idea that events should change policy is appealing. After each incident of gun violence in the U.S., someone retells Australia’s story. Twelve days after a mass shooting there in 1996, the legislature took up anti-gun measures, including a buyback program and various restrictions on the types of guns that could be sold. But in the U.S., gun control policy has often appeared impossible to pass at the federal level: A common response after Las Vegas seemed to be, “If nothing changed after Sandy Hook, nothing will change now.” Does public opinion — and, as a result, the policy process — actually respond to events? Let’s look at a few schools of thought in political science and public policy. [...]

Major events that dominate the news — such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill — have the potential to alter how the public thinks about an issue (what scholars call “frames”). Because of their ability to shift public opinion, these moments can help interest groups mobilize and pressure elected officials for change. After the Exxon Valdez spill, for example, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. After the Sept. 11 attacks, we saw the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, which strengthened the power of the federal government to investigate perceived terrorist activity, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. [...]

Although events may dominate the news, that’s not the same thing as changing how citizens and policy-makers think and talk about them. As Thomas Birkland wrote in a study of the event’s impact, “September 11 only threw open the window of opportunity for policy change based, in large part, on preexisting ideas.” For example, the Department of Homeland Security was not a brand new idea when it was formed after Sept. 11; lawmakers had been debating for several years about how to coordinate counterterrorism efforts. In other words, the attacks brought terrorism to the top of the priority list, but they didn’t introduce new ways of thinking about how to prevent terrorism. [...]

In both cases, attitude and policy change has come not from a major event that changes people’s understanding of a topic, but rather from more long-term structural changes in society as a whole that result in a gradual reframing of the issues at hand.

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Quartz: Actually, Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock’s massacre was highly predictable

Today, big data and predictive analytics are hard at work stringing together billions of data points and pinpointing future outcomes with unprecedented accuracy. And while you might accept the fact this is occurring on Wall Street and in the US Defense Department you may be surprised to learn how accurately we can predict human behavior. For example, we can now say —with 86% accuracy—whether a person is going to trip and fall within the next three weeks. It turns out a 5 centimeter per second decline in their normal walking gait is the precursor to a fall. Who knew? [...]

Every day, computer algorithms are at work gathering data in real time and spitting out inevitable conclusions about what lies ahead. And as experts comb through Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock’s computer, social media accounts, cell phone records, credit card transactions, medical history, childhood, and other data, we will uncover a pattern of behavior headed for a dangerous criticality. In truth, we have the scientific ability to forecast when a violent attack is likely.

It may not be 100%, but it is accurate enough to identify individuals who are prone to carrying out mass attacks, as well as when they may be preparing to act. [...]

Computer analytics are one thing, but what about free will? Just because a person makes detailed plans and intends to act on a crime doesn’t mean they won’t come to their senses at the last second. Even if a computer model achieves 100% certainty, are we prepared to take preventative measures based on intent?

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Al Jazeera: When does a 'crime' become 'terrorism'?

Paddock's action was no sudden rampage brought on by a rapidly boiling fury. It was not some quick response to a sudden insult. That happens all too often in a country were so many people legally carry guns on a regular basis. There is also no indication at the moment that he held a particular survivalist view of society collapsing, building up resentment at those around him, aggravated by just having lost his job, as was the case, for example, of 41-year-old James Huberty who killed 21 people and injured 19 others in 1984 when he walked into a Mc Donald's restaurant near where he lived in San Diego, shooting customers indiscriminately. [...]

However, there is no simple answer to this important question. Those who study these matters cannot even agree on a definition for what a "terrorist" is. Nor is there much consensus on how people find their way into becoming one. Perhaps the best way to understand what defines a "terrorist" is to go back to one of the first people who promoted the idea of anonymous attacks by individuals or groups against civic targets. This was Mikhail Bakunin, a mid-nineteenth century anarchist who promoted the idea of the "propaganda of the deed". In other words, it was the significance of the deed itself, its symbolic quality, that was crucial. The political idea was that the violent action would be reacted to with such repression by the state that this would alienate more people and so set in motion a revolution. [...]

Beyond the attack on society, it seems to me that for a violent assault to be considered "terrorist" there has to be some articulation of an ideology. There has to be some notion, however bizarre and unrealistic, of what the ultimate objective is that the "terrorist" is reaching for.

The outburst has to be something more than an expression of anger, frustration, depression or confusion. If the threat that the violence poses is to be regarded as something that challenges how we live, with the attendant vast security infrastructure that demands, then it must be driven by more than an idiosyncratic vendetta. 

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Haaretz: Why Trump Is Blaming 'Evil' for the Las Vegas Shooting

The one word he did not mention is terror. And that’s no great surprise, because unless any evidence surfaces in the hours and days to come that the shooter, Stephen Paddock, had converted to Islam – none has emerged, other than the Islamic State making that claim on its Amaq News website – there’s no reason for Trump to designate it as a terror attack. In Trump’s book, if you commit an act of mass violence and you’re Muslim, you’re automatically a terrorist. In fact, that makes you a purveyor of “radical Islamic terror,” pronounced staccato as a shibboleth that, should you refuse to state it in its entirety, proves you are a radical leftist who supports terrorism. If you commit a mass shooting and you’re white and Christian, you’re simply a man who committed an act of evil.

It might be that you’re mentally ill. But even if evidence of Paddock’s psychological health ultimately points in that direction, it will still smack of double-standards: An American Christian’s act of violence can be blamed on his mental health, but if a Muslim shows signs of mental illness – such as in the case of Omar Mateen in the Orlando shooting last year – that hardly matters alongside the label of “radical Islamic terror.”

The textbook definition of terrorism involves the use of violence especially (but not exclusively) against civilians, especially in pursuit of political aims. This last bit is amorphous. We usually label as terrorism those horrific acts that have some political motive – and whether Paddock had one is yet unknown. That said, there have been many acts of terrorism that were designated as such despite the fact that it would be a stretch to call the perpetrators’ ideology political. When members of Aum Shinrikyo attacked the Tokyo subways with sarin gas in 1995, killing 12 and injuring 50, it was designated as an act of domestic terrorism despite the fact that the bizarre cult’s hope to bring about an apocalypse could hardly be classified as a political statement.

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Vox: Lawmakers can’t do anything about mass shootings without politicizing them

The reality, though is both sides are politicizing the tragedy — supporters of gun control by, well, supporting gun control, and opponents of gun control are trying to keep the status quo by getting people to stop talking about guns.

That’s actually fine. Politics is how laws are made, and mass shootings are events that better laws and policies can help prevent. So we should expect the political process to establish an environment where mass shootings won’t happen again or, at least, don’t happen as often. [...]

So we know the federal government could take steps to reduce gun violence, including some mass shootings. We know the political system was set up to solve these kinds of crises that affect broad segments of the population — it is literally the point of government. So why wouldn’t it be okay for the government and the politicians who lead it to try to act? [...]

This is so common that gun control advocates predict it every single time a shooting happens and gets lots of media attention. After his daughter Alison Parker was killed in the shooting of two Virginia journalists in August 2015, Andy Parker said, “Next week, it isn’t going to be a story anymore, and everybody’s gonna forget it.” That is exactly what happened — within weeks, the public had moved on, and the Virginia shooting was no longer in the news, overwhelmed by stories about a Kentucky clerk and Europe’s refugee crisis. No national talk of gun control happened again until the Oregon shooting in October — which again was only discussed for a couple weeks.

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FiveThirtyEight: Mass Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence

First, they’re rare, and the people doing the shooting are different. The majority of gun deaths in America aren’t even homicides, let alone caused by mass shootings. Two-thirds of the more than 33,000 gun deaths that take place in the U.S. every year are suicides (click through the graphic below to see how gun deaths break down):

And while people who commit suicide and people who commit mass shootings both tend to be white and male, suicide victims tend to be older. The median age of a mass shooter, according to one report, is 34, with very few over 50. Suicide, however, plagues the elderly as much as it does the middle-aged.

Second, the people killed in mass shootings are different from the majority of homicides. Most gun murder victims are men between the ages of 15 and 34. Sixty-six percent are black. Women — of any race and any age — are far less likely to be murdered by a gun. Unless that gun is part of a mass shooting. There, 50 percent of the people who die are women. And at least 54 percent of mass shootings involve domestic or family violence — with the perpetrator shooting a current or former partner or a relative.

The historical trends for different kinds of gun deaths don’t all follow the same course. While data suggests that the number of mass shootings similar to the Las Vegas event has gone up, particularly since 2000,2 homicide rates have fallen significantly from their 1980 peak and continued on a generally downward trajectory for most of the 21st century. Meanwhile, suicides are way up, with the biggest increases among women. The trends are different because the situations are different and the people are different. Maybe different solutions are warranted, as well.

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FiveThirtyEight: The Mass Shootings Fix

But mass shootings still account for only a small fraction of the roughly 8,000 gun murder incidents in the U.S. each year.1 This suggests that measures aimed at preventing mass shootings would save more lives if they also prevent other kinds of gun death. [...]

In New Zealand, after a man went on a shooting rampage at a neighbor’s house in 1990 and fatally shot 11 people, the country stopped offering lifetime licenses for guns, requiring gun owners to renew their permits every 10 years instead. Military-style weapons were not banned but required a special permit. After a 22-year-old gunman killed 10 students at a hospitality school and then took his own life in 2008, Finland raised the minimum age to own a gun (from 18 to 20) and added requirements to own a handgun (such as two years of supervised target practice and membership in a gun club). Canada and Germany also tightened access to guns after mass shootings within their borders. [...]

Did Australia and Great Britain’s reforms prevent mass shootings? It’s hard to say, simply because mass shootings are relatively rare. In the post-buyback period, Great Britain has had one massacre with guns while Australia has had none. It’s hard to calculate how many would have been expected without a ban. Australia looks more successful in this regard, because it had more frequent mass shootings before the ban (averaging about two mass shootings every three years from 1979 to 1996.3) Mass shootings in Great Britain, prior to the ban, were rarer. Prior to 1996, there hadn’t been a widely covered mass shooting in Britain since 1987. [...]

In parts of Great Britain, there isn’t strong evidence the ban and buyback saved lives. After the new gun law was implemented in 1996, the number of crimes involving guns in England and Wales kept rising through the 1990s, peaking in 2003 and 2004 before subsiding. The post-2004 drop is hard to credit to the buyback and possibly occurred because of an increase in the number of police officers. It’s possible that any effect of the ban, positive or negative, was swamped by other factors affecting gun violence. There has been one notable mass shooting in Great Britain since the law was passed, making it hard to judge whether the law has been a success in that respect.

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The Conversation: Six things to know about mass shootings in America

In other words, the U.S. had nearly double the number of mass shootings than all other 24 countries combined in the same 30-year period.

Another significant finding is that mass shootings and gun ownership rates are highly correlated. The higher the gun ownership rate, the more a country is susceptible to experiencing mass shooting incidents. This association remains high even when the number of incidents from the United States is withdrawn from the analysis. [...]

A recent study published by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center shows that the frequency of mass shooting is increasing over time. The researchers measured the increase by calculating the time between the occurrence of mass shootings. According to the research, the days separating mass shooting occurrence went from on average 200 days during the period of 1983 to 2011 to 64 days since 2011. [...]

The majority of active shooters are linked to mental health issues, bullying and disgruntled employees. Active shooters may be motivated by a variety of personal or political motivations, usually not aimed at weakening government legitimacy. Frequent motivations are revenge or a quest for power.

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