We’ve had guns for 200 years but not ones capable of mass shootings. Semiautomatics only became widely available more recently, and most countries have since banned them from casual use but not the USA
The complete unwinding of social safety nets, mental health interventions, and educational funding from the Reagan years finally culminated in a completely vulnerable population. Then we began the era of 24 hour news, extremist Identity politics, and just a general erosion of any semblance of shared American identity.
One variable that I think doesn’t get looked at seriously is class size and school funding. Ask any North American teacher, and you’ll get a grim assessment on the trajectory of schooling since the 90’s. When teachers have more students than they can handle, it’s no surprise that things get out of hand.
I’d argue that part of the solution is more teachers per student. This enables better relationships between faculty and students, and better opportunities for mentorship. Build more schools, hire more teachers, pay them well, make school a place where teachers want to be, and where kids can thrive.
But reforming the existing system is a hot potato that neither the left nor right wants to hold, so, here we are. The system itself is degraded to the point that it doesn’t have the resources to self-correct. We need vision, wisdom, funding, and leadership, to steer things in a new direction. I think that would go a long way in preventing a misguided kid from fermenting the idea that murdering people, or their own classmates, is an answer to their problems.
I don’t mean to paint school shootings as simply a rebellion against a malfunctioning system, but, we really need to look at the system and make sure it’s serving the students that have no choice but to be there.
Well for one we redefined mass shooting a few years back which absolutely spiked the numbers because now any robbery gone wrong or gang turf war gets classified in as a MS.
So when people see 300 MS they think 300 columbines or 300 Aurora theatre shootings. Most of those are much smaller and have nothing to do with the lone wolf shooter that people think of when the words “mass shooting” come up.
The other reason is cultural significance. There’s an increased likelihood of a shooting in a place where a previous mass shooting has occurred. The media spending weeks covering the incidents while plastering people’s likeness all over the place shows the disenfranchised extremist that they too can become infamous in a blaze of glory which leads to increased incidents of mass shooting as well.
Lastly, I think there’s a general air of “there’s no hope and I have no purpose” among people today that previous generations never had to deal with in the same manner. Add that on top of the previously mentioned things and it multiplies.
So basically media coverage and the sociopolitical divide becoming more of a chasm. Access to firearms hasn’t changed much in that time and firearms technology had semi automatic weapons invented for much longer than that.
The media went absolutely batshit. Who were they? Why did they do it? Interview absolutely everyone! The public must know. And they tuned in in their droves to find out.
Incel types took note. If you’ve failed at life and want five minutes of fame, grab a gun and head back to school.
The point he’s making is that the title asks what changed to make mass shootings more commons “in the last 30 years” and you answered it by blaming the difference between guns today and guns 250 years ago, so he pointed out that there was at least a 30 year period where the guns of today were available and yet the mass shooting problem of today didn’t exist (1960-1990).
That would mean that the cause of mass shootings today isn’t necessarily because we evolved beyond the musket.
Ah. My point was not to say that mass shootings are strictly because of advancements in firearm technology. Anyone who thinks it’s not multifactorial is a moron. But anyone who thinks the underlying technology isn’t fundamentally required for the phenomenon to occur is also a moron.
I was only responding to the fact that OP said 200 years, and just from a practical perspective 200 years ago you just couldn’t do a mass shooting. If you ask me why we didn’t have mass shootings in the 50s through 70s that’s a different question that actually gets to the point of the matter. 200 years is such a long timeframe as to be silly. Might as well ask why people didn’t send bulk emails in the 20s.
Well OP is framing the entire timeframe as 200 years but he also specifies the last 30. So 35, 40, 45, 60, 100 years ago are all still more relevant than over 200 years ago.
Were those assault weapons as easily aquirable then as it is now? I imagine back then every supermarket was not suffed with them and they might’ve been much more expensive relatively.
Were those assault weapons as easily aquirable then as it is now?
A lot more easy as a matter of fact. All the stores stuffed with guns now were just as stuffed with them back then, if not more so, and it was easier AND faster to get them into your hands. I mean you’re casually calling a semiautomatic AR-15 an “assault weapon” because it LOOKS like a military gun. But prior to 1986 you could just go and buy a fully automatic machine gun that also FUNCTIONED like a military gun. I mean there was a point in time in American History where you could order a rifle in a paper catalogue.
You could argue that we’re not doing enough to prevent guns from entering the hands of mass shooters, but we are doing more than we ever have before and yet it’s worse than it’s ever been before. At the end of the day guns are a tool used in these crimes that can and do make their execution far more bloody and deadly and something should be done to minimize that as much as reasonably possible, but they aren’t at all the cause.
“Assault weapon” doesn’t mean anything in actual weapon terminology. Regular citizens cannot acquire fully automatic firearms without tens of thousands in permits. The guns used in shootings are all semi automatic, just because it’s stylized like an M-16 doesn’t mean it’s more powerful or capable of anything beyond any other semi automatic weapon.
Yes, you could always go and buy a semiautomatic weapon from the Walmart down the road. I don’t think they changed in price except with inflation though.
The technology and accessibility have always been similar, that’s why it’s weird that the issue seems to have significantly spiked in 1999 when Columbine happened and the entire planet spent a month doing deep dive investigations into the shooter psychology.
It seems more like the change is that incel wannabe badasses realized they can have five minutes of infamy by just grabbing a gun and going to kill some random people. Considering everything else is the same.
Probably because they’re new and don’t realize how pedantic people can be.
The point is that weapons capable of doing this have been available for much longer than the curve of mass shootings, so another factor is likely at play. The SKS, AR-15, and AK-47/Mak-90 have been on the market and owned by citizens of the US for decades prior.
If we’re setting the calendar back 200 years, I’d have to guess that one of the contributing factors is records keeping and reporting. The definition of what is considered a “mass shooting” has also been fluid over the past 50 or so years.
These are not likely to be major contributors, but from Hollywood’s depictions, mass shootings may have been pretty common around 150 years ago.
A lot has been said already, but it’s worth mentioning that modern guns are much more capable of killing than guns 200 years ago. Back then, guns were very inaccurate and had to be reloaded one shot at a time and packed by hand. Now we have automatic weapons with large magazines that can be swapped out in seconds. They have less recoil and greater accuracy. Regardless of cultural and political issues, guns are just more capable of killing than they used to be.
People aren’t buying automatic weapons now. You have to jump through a LOT of hoops to acquire an automatic gun, they can cost as much as $40K, and have to be manufactured before 1986. But 50 years ago they absolutely were available. They were banned in 1986.
Correction: they can cost as little as $40,000 now. That’s close to the minimum price for a legally tranferrable machine gun. An M134 minigun would currently run right around $200,000. There is no legal way for a regular person to get a post-'86 machine gun; dealer samples, et al. are not generally transferable (see also: Larry Vickers).
No, but 100 years ago, you could buy actual machine guns out of the sears catalog. No background check, no ID. Just a money order and postage on delivery.
I remember when my oldest sister bought her first AR-15 at the hardware store, for cash. They didn’t so much as ask for ID. It wasn’t locked up or anything, just take it off the shelf and go check out, no big deal.
Uh, when I first got an AR-15 about ten years ago, I went to Walmart first to see what they had. They had a bunch on a rotating rack you could pick up. Magazines and ammo were inside a glass shelf next to it. You just bought it all there, the only thing they did was walk you out of the store before handing it over.
I didn’t actually end up buying one though, I was given one by a local gun store as payment for saving them about $3500 a year on their IT bill and building them PCs. A nice little mostly custom AR chambered in .300 BLK. My father-in-law took it hog hunting one year.
Actually, before 1986 and the Hughes Amendment, anyone could buy an automatic weapon in Walmart (idk if Walmart sold them, but legally they could). After 86 they became effectively impossible to get (takes months for extensive background checks and costs more than a car)
Thompson submachine guns (Tommy guns) were available by mail order in the 1920s with zero background checks. All you had to do was fill out the order slip, a check or money order, and drop it in the mail.
… which is exactly what the prohibition era gangs did.
blackpowder rifles were actually really good just hard to use. Modern reproductions are interior copies and modern black powder is worse (it’s optimised for different things) .
For example many mid to late 1800s guns could hit point targets out to ~300 yards.
My wife is really into this shit and apparently being a first grade rifleman required something like being able to shoot accurately from a field position to 1000 yards. It was very hard to get that good but many did.
Keep in mind by this time they had all sorts of bells and whistles. Basic cartridges, specialised bullet geometries, progressively narrowing rifling etc.
They were quite slow to fire, but loading a cartridge wasn’t that slow. you basically either breech loaded it or just pushed it down the end and lightly packed it (bullet expands when fired to lock with rifling).
EDIT: she informs me that the 1850something Enfield had assessments hitting a 3 ft wide target at up to 900 yards.
The cartridges were not like modern brass ones but paper, they were more like 2 stage packets that you tore open and poured first the powder, then the bullet. The bullet would readily fall clear down the barrel and require only light tamping to make ready to fire.
apparently this rifle is basically the pinnacle of muzzle loaders.
Also apparently it was mostly used in the north American civil war, but they didn’t buy the English bullets designed for it and consequently it earned a terrible reputation in that war. Don’t cry though as the slavers used it so that’s kinda funny.
Anyway, people are smart and guns have been good for a long time.
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