New scholarly paper: "Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown"

[friendly_iconoclast]

I am posting this in GD given the recent spate of shooting incidents in the news,
as well as the de facto easing of the restrictions on the discussion of guns here

http://hsx.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/11/27/1088767913510297.full.pdf+html

Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown
James Alan Fox and Monica J. DeLateur

Abstract
Mass shootings at a Connecticut elementary school, a Colorado movie theater, and
other venues have prompted a fair number of proposals for change. Advocates for
tighter gun restrictions, for expanding mental health services, for upgrading security
in public places, and, even, for controlling violent entertainment have made certain
assumptions about the nature of mass murder that are not necessarily valid. This
article examines a variety of myths and misconceptions about multiple homicide and
mass shooters, pointing out some of the difficult realities in trying to avert these
murderous rampages. While many of the policy proposals are worthwhile in general,
their prospects for reducing the risk of mass murder are limited...

...Author Biographies
James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at
Northeastern University. He has published 18 books, including Extreme Killing: Understanding
Serial and Mass Murder (Sage 2012), co-authored with Jack Levin.

Monica J. DeLateuris a doctoral student in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at
Northeastern University. Her current research explores sentencing outcomes and decisions to
prosecute, particularly in human trafficking cases.

This is published by the Homicide Research Working Group:

http://homicideworkinggroup.cos.ucf.edu/brief.php

About the Homicide Research Working Group

The Homicide Research Working Group has the following goals:

to forge links between research, epidemiology, and practical programs to reduce levels of mortality from violence,

to promote improved data quality and the linking of diverse homicide data sources,

to foster collaborative, interdisciplinary research on lethal and non-lethal violence,

to encourage more efficient sharing of techniques for measuring and analyzing homicide,

to create and maintain a communication network among those collecting, maintaining and analyzing homicide datasets, and

to generate a stronger working relationship among homicide researchers.

Organized at the 1991 American Society of Criminology (ASC) meeting, the Homicide Research Working Group now has hundreds of members representing many countries and academic and practice disciplines at national, state, and local government public and private agencies. It maintains an active listserv, a newsletter, and the journal Homicide Studies, published by Sage. It has held three-to-five-day meetings each year since 1992, at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) in Ann Arbor, the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, the Centers for Disease Control and Emory University in Atlanta, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada in Ottawa, the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, the Firearms Division Training Center, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, in West Virginia, Loyola University in Chicago, the University of Central Florida in Orlando, the University of Missouri in St. Louis, and the Epidemiology and Prevention for Injury Control Branch, California Department of Health Services in Sacramento, and at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minneapolis. It also holds workshops at the ASC and other professional meetings.

The interdisciplinary focus of the Homicide Research Working Group has been recognized by support from a number of agencies and organizations, including the National Institute of Justice, which published the proceedings of the 1992-1998 Annual Meetings, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which published the 1999-2001 Annual Proceedings, and the many agencies that have hosted an Annual Meeting. (To order the Proceedings, contact the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) at 1-800-851-3420 or download the Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of the proceedings from the HRWG Web site).

IOW, the HRWG are not gun lobbyists.

The paper is an interesting read; the authors argue that several things widely believed about
mass shootings aren't actually true.

[RC]

1. Other actions that would help stop mass shootings are -

In no particular order...

Single payer, universal health care.
Getting our living Wage Jobs back into this country.
Paying a living wage for jobs. i.e., raising the minimum wage.
On going unemployment benefits.
A GI bill for our returning Vets.
Sane drug laws.
Badly needed help for our returning veterans. Stop dumping them on the streets when they can't find a decent job, because there are none, except for police and security jobs.
Stop militarizing our police. Better psychological testing for police applicants. Weed out the 'public as enemy' cops.

I am sure there are many more items that can be added to this list.