another mass shooting

[_Res Ipsa]

Or, maybe it’s the guns. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ns/560771/

The article begins as follows:

Americans of high-school age are 82 times more likely to die from a gun homicide than 15- to 19-year-olds in the rest of the developed world.

The article says nothing about suicide rates, does it? Here's the CDC stats from 2014. These are the most currently posted stats I can locate on the website. According to the 2014 stats, teen suicide rates outnumber teen homicides.

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-ch ... 0w760h.gif

Do you think that the number of students killed in mass shootings is significantly higher than those who died from complete suicide?

Is it the guns or mental illness? Which is the more likely explanation?

Let me preface my response by stating that I very much admire your consistent focus on the well being of children. I think you are an effective and tenacious advocate for children. i also find the notion of suicide by young folks to be tragic. Each suicide by a young person is, in my opinion, one too many.

All that being said, to understand what is going on requires looking at some numbers. The problem with the stats you linked to is that they really don't tell us much. If we're going to list causes of death by frequency, then something is always going to be the number one cause, the number two cause, etc. The fact that suicides rank high for younger folks is, in part, an artifact of the fact that the most significant causes of death in the US (heart disease and cancer) don't affect young people at a high rate. Neither do there diseases. That fact pushes other causes up in the ranks.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when we talk about rates of teen suicide, we are talking about small percentages -- less than .2% As a result, relatively small changes in absolute numbers can result in dramatic changes in percentage increase. Here's an example: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/su ... 15b1be13f4 The article correctly states that the rate of teen suicides by girls doubled over the selected period to time. But that doubling was from a rate of .02% to .04% -- relatively small in terms of absolute numbers.

But the data in the Huffpost article does give us a a bit of historical perspective. Note that the suicide rate for teen boys in 2015 was lower than it was in 1990.

So, let's look at some comparative data. Here's how the rate of suicide in the US compares with other countries: https://www.oecd.org/els/family/CO_4_4_ ... uicide.pdf The US is higher than the average, but is certainly not among the outliers with significantly elevated rates of teen suicide.

How does the US rate of suicide change with age? https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=ht ... g..i&w=960 The rate of teen suicides is lower than that of every older age group. In other words, although other causes of death increase with age and eclipse suicide as a cause of death, the rate of suicide also increases after the teenage years.

The aggregate suicide data for the US conceals some interesting demographic and spatial features. For example, the rates of suicide for white Americans is significantly higher for white folks than it is for black or hispanic folks. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/su ... 9_2014.pdf In fact, for young black men, the rate of homicide is around five times higher than the rate of suicide. https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/m ... /index.htm The rate of homicide for young, male hispanics is also higher than that for suicide, but the difference is much smaller. So, when you focus on the significance of teen suicide over teen homicide as a cause of death, you are doing so through racially tinted glasses.

Finally, suicide in the US displays distinct regional patterns. Here's a recent article from the Department of Health and Human Services that shows the differences in suicide rates by state and discusses the contrast between change of rates in rural and urban areas. It also discusses the linkage between suicide rates and availability of guns. https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/m ... /index.htm.

The article also touches on, but doesn't discuss in detail, problems with the data. As the map in the article shows, many counties simply don't report data on deaths by suicide. This is particularly true in the center of the country. It may be that the only counties that do report suicide deaths in that area of the country are those that have noticed relatively high rates of death. If so, then the nationally reported rate overstates the actual rate.

The article also states:

Alternatively, part of the longer-term increase may simply have to do with how suicides are reported. Advocates say state reporting has improved, and suicide deaths are now better counted in state and federal data.

There has been a significant stigma associated with suicide. The law firm I worked for did defense work for the coroner's office. It defended a number of long, hard-fought, and bitter lawsuits by parents over determinations that their children had committed suicide. in my opinion, part of the stigma has its origins in religious belief. Some in the notion that the suicide of a child reflects a failure by the parents. It is entirely possible that, as with the autism "epidemic," the reported increase in suicides is an artifact of better reporting practices as opposed to an actual increase in the rate of suicides.

Finally, the geographical regions in the US with higher reported rates of gun deaths are also associated with higher rates of gun ownership. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... -in-three/ The map of gun ownership looks quite a bit like the map of suicide rates.

So, what does all this tell us? I think "why" is the correct question, but that doesn't mean the correct question is "why are young people slaughtering themselves?" Rather, the correct question is something like "why does the reported data look the way it does?" Are we really seeing a significant increase in teen suicides, or is the apparent increase due to better and more accurate reporting of cause of death? Why are reported rates of suicide so much higher for young, white, rural men in the US so much higher than they are for women, blacks, hispanics, and urban folks?

In answer to your question, is it more likely that young white, rural men have significantly higher rates of mental illness or that they have easier access to a deadly and efficient way of killing themselves? Given the data we have, I think it's entirely reasonable to start with the guns.

[_canpakes]

Jersey Girl, please elaborate. If he had access to enough firearms to kill 9 other people, then he started with enough to cut to the chase and commit suicide first.

Exactly what I stated. Take the guns out of the picture entirely. Read my above in the context in which it was written.

OK, so here's a recap of how this seems to have played out:

random kid: "I want to commit suicide ..."
:: wonders how to do this ::
:: finds firearm(s) ::
random kid: "I found a gun! I'll go kill other people instead of myself!"

I don't see one of these courses of action as being a clean substitute for the other without some explaining.

[_subgenius]

I love how "silver bullet" is being use to describe something impossible to address while deflecting away from the far more simple and identifiable factor these tragedies have in common.

What a tool you are, subbie.

you mean white kids?
how statistically moronic you insist on being, but please, you were explaining how correlation = causation.

[_honorentheos]

I love how "silver bullet" is being use to describe something impossible to address while deflecting away from the far more simple and identifiable factor these tragedies have in common.

What a tool you are, subbie.

you mean white kids?

You locking in your answer that mass shootings are a white kid problem, subbie?

how statistically moronic you insist on being, but please, you were explaining how correlation = causation.

Yeah, great argument that all one needs is to point to the people who own guns and haven't engaged in a mass shooting to say ease of access to guns does not play a causal role in mass shootings. I'm guessing your grandpa smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and lived into his 90s, too. And your dad drove twice the speed limit everywhere he went and never got in an accident. But people who suffer from mental illness or bullying are murdering left and right with whatever they can get their hands on. Yep.

[_MeDotOrg]

Reading the comments of Jersey Girl and honorentheos, I think it's important to unravel a bit of a cause and effect knot. People are going to kill themselves and each other without guns. Guns make killing more people easier, and they lend themselves to immediate irrational decision making.

I firmly believe that the United States has a dysfunctional gun culture, unique among all advanced Western democracies. No one is going to convince me that of all the Western democracies, the United States is the only one where teenagers play violent video games and are taunted and bullied in high school. My favorite current BS argument was Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who claimed the shooting was a result of too many entrances to the high school.

There is an old fable:

A man walks down the street, and sees another man on his hands and knees under a streetlight peering intently at the ground. The man stops and asks what he is looking for.

"My keys," says the man. But clearly the keys are not on the ground under the street light. The other man is puzzled. "Did you lose your keys here?", he asks.

"No", replies the man. "I lost them in front of my house, but it's dark there because the streetlight is out."

In this instance, the man on his knees is the American Public, his house is the United States, and the street light was shot out by the dysfunctional gun culture, led by the NRA. We're all looking under the street light that wasn't shot out by the NRA. So it's violent video games. It's social alienation. It's the breakdown of the family. It's the lack of God in public school. It's every effing thing except the gun.

Here's how our tolerance for gun violence has increased: The most famous gangland war during the Roaring Twenties was when gangsters dressed as policeman shot members of the Bugs Moran gang in a garage in Chicago. The big war was called the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.

7 gangsters died. Not even a good school shooting today.

[_DarkHelmet]

Reading the comments of Jersey Girl and honorentheos, I think it's important to unravel a bit of a cause and effect knot. People are going to kill themselves and each other without guns. Guns make killing more people easier, and they lend themselves to immediate irrational decision making.

This hit close to home for me just a couple weeks ago. My nephew committed suicide in what appears to be an immediate irrational decision. No note. No clues in the days or hours leading up to the act. It happened in a fit of rage and frustration, and he happened to have a gun handy at the time. The family is left to wonder how we could have missed any clues that he was suicidal. He has displayed wild mood swings since he was a kid, and probably should have never been allowed to own a gun, but I never would have classified his behavior as homicidal or suicidale, and he wouldn't have failed any sort of mental health test that NRA would have found acceptable to prevent him from owning a gun. I don't have any proposed solutions, because I do believe in the right to own guns, and I also believe in sensible gun control laws, but gun violence finally hit close to home, and it's a personal issue for me now.

[_Some Schmo]

This hit close to home for me just a couple weeks ago. My nephew committed suicide in what appears to be an immediate irrational decision.

Wow, man. I'm really sorry to hear this. My condolences. That's awful.

[_Jersey Girl]

This hit close to home for me just a couple weeks ago. My nephew committed suicide in what appears to be an immediate irrational decision. No note. No clues in the days or hours leading up to the act. It happened in a fit of rage and frustration, and he happened to have a gun handy at the time. The family is left to wonder how we could have missed any clues that he was suicidal. He has displayed wild mood swings since he was a kid, and probably should have never been allowed to own a gun, but I never would have classified his behavior as homicidal or suicidale, and he wouldn't have failed any sort of mental health test that NRA would have found acceptable to prevent him from owning a gun. I don't have any proposed solutions, because I do believe in the right to own guns, and I also believe in sensible gun control laws, but gun violence finally hit close to home, and it's a personal issue for me now.

I probably won't reply to any other possible replies made on this thread, but I felt compelled to reply to yours.

It is because this raises personal issues for me as well. I'm not going to sort out the following list of what applies to whom or when. I've got direct exposure and in-the-trenches experience with mental illness, homicide attempt (strangulation), both attempted (hanging and overdose) and completed suicide (gunshot to the head), PTSD/trauma, bullying, early sexual abuse, 5150 psych holds, voluntary admissions to psych hospitals. The preceding list represents the journey's of two people. And at the same time, I live with responsible gun owners who are members of the NRA who abide by personally established strict rules for the use of their weapons.

Now. I suppose a person reading that list could say that I have a personal bias. Bet your ass I do. One of the persons mixed into the above representations, suffered from untreated mental illness. A couple of parents dropped the ball on them, they remained untreated, and today they visit a grave. Another person represented in that list, was followed and hovered over day and night by me, their suicide attempt thwarted by me, forced into involuntary treatment by me and over the course of 7 longest years of my life, I had the gift of watching their rising up and achieve an outcome that I could have never imagined was possible.

I think I've earned the right to comment with confidence.

Yes, access to guns is an issue. The resulting deaths are instantaneous and difficult to thwart. But underneath the pile of bodies created by mass shootings and suicide, I see the common thread of untreated mental illness going back to at least Sandy Hook and very likely in the current shooting that took place, and the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before that and so on and so forth.

It's true that many folks who suffer from mental illness are good at hiding it. It's also true that Adam Lanza's mother alllowed him to stop taking his meds. It's also true that James Holmes' therapist was well aware of his mental illness AND his plans, and dropped the ball on him when he left campus...and she never alerted law enforcement when all it would have taken was her requesting a well check on him at his residence to uncover his plan being put into motion.

How many times have we heard after the fact, that students weren't surprised that it was "him" who committed a mass shooting? How many times?

The list of perpetrators is so long now, we can barely keep track of who/what/when/where any more.

The Parkland shooter had lost both of his parents, he was grieving the more recent death of his mother. The people he was staying with said he locked up his guns. Really? Then who video taped him in the back yard shooting? There weren't any shell casings left in the yard? How many times was LE called to the house for domestic violence on the part of this kid? Not one adult saw this kid as high risk? How many people dropped the ball on this kid?

Yes, guns have the ability to take the lives of one person or multiple persons in scant seconds. At first we attributed the mass shootings to access to assault rifles. This kid in Texas used a hand gun and rifle, and fashioned and planted explosive devices in the building. James Holmes used an AR and rigged his apartment to explode.

This is why I say, as someone who wouldn't care if the NRA were disbanded tomorrow or if guns were completely banned in this country, or gun owners be made to carry high priced liability insurance, that it's not the damned guns. It is mental illness and until and unless we do something to develop comprehensive ways in which to address the reasons why our children are slaughtering themselves and others, we haven't got even a hope in hell of reducing the number of these events--mass killing of students in schools or youth suicides.

None of this is going to change until this society changes it's own heart and mind and determines to address the hearts and minds of it's youth.

[_Jersey Girl]

One more thing and I would have edited my above, but I don't like to change a post when it's possible that others are already reading it and might reply.

What this is going to take is our collective society working it's ass off and pulling from every side imaginable on behalf of our youth. I know this like I know my own name. Not prayers and promises. It's going to take an exhaustive and sustained effort.

Wake up people. Wake up.

[_Jersey Girl]

DarkHelmet I had to run out right after making the post to you. I'm sorry that I didn't stop to offer condolences. I am so sorry that your family is having to deal with this type of deep and sudden loss. You all will live with questions that can never be fully answered. Some day you'll accept the fact that you'll never know the answers to the questions that you have. That day surely isn't today and I know you are all facing a very hard road. I don't wish it on anyone.