Serial Murders Have Dwindled, Thanks To a Cautious Citizenry and Improved Technology (nytimes.com) 184
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Rex Heuermann, the meticulous architectural consultant who the authorities say murdered three women and buried them on a Long Island beach more than a decade ago, may have been among the last of the dying breed of American serial killers. Even as serial killers came to inhabit a central place in the nation's imagination -- inspiring hit movies, television shows, books, podcasts and more -- their actual number was dwindling dramatically. There were once hundreds at large, and a spike in the 1970s and '80s terrified the country. Now only a handful at most are known to be active, researchers say. The techniques that led to the arrest of Mr. Heuermann, who has pleaded not guilty to the crimes, help explain the waning of serial killing, which the F.B.I. defines as the same person killing two or more victims in separate events at different times.
It is harder to hide. Rapid advances in investigative technology, video and other digital surveillance tools, as well as the ability to analyze mountains of information, quickly allow the authorities to find killers who before would have gone undetected. At the same time, Americans have adopted more cautious habits in their everyday lives -- hitchhiking, for example, is less common, and children are driven to and from school. That reduces easy targets. And, some theorize, those bent on killing now opt for spectacular mass murders. "The 'perfect crime' concept is more of a concept than it ever has been before," said Adam Scott Wandt, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. More than a decade ago, prosecutors said, Mr. Heuermann tried to cover his digital tracks by communicating with victims using so-called burner phones, prepaid units purchased anonymously for temporary use. But thanks to exponential progress in technology since 2010, investigators were able not only to chart Mr. Heuermann's decade-old movements; they could also monitor exactly what he was searching online in recent months. They saw that he was using an anonymous account for internet queries like "Why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer," prosecutors said. He had also been visiting massage parlors and contacting women working as escorts, they said.
The ubiquity of technology has made it harder to get away with murder, Mr. Wandt said. The amount of data people create in their daily lives is more than many can conceptualize, he said. Just by walking outside, people are now tracked by ever-present cameras, from Amazon's Ring units outside homes to surveillance at banks and retail stores, he said. Every use of a phone or computer creates streams of data that are collected directly on devices or immortalized on servers, he said. A concerted effort by the federal government to ensure that even the smallest police departments can use technology to their benefit has also helped give investigators an upper hand, Mr. Wandt said. In 1987, there were 198 known active serial killers -- people connected to at least two murders -- and 404 known victims across the United States, according to a report published three years ago by researchers who run Radford University and Florida Gulf Coast University's Serial Killer Database. By 2018, there were only 12 known serial killers and 44 victims, according to the report. "The big question is: Are they going underground and finding other techniques?â said Terence Leary, an associate professor in the psychology department at Florida Gulf Coast University and the team leader for the database.
He said that some serial murderers have killed for discrete periods before taking prolonged breaks: "Maybe they decided to give it up. Who knows?"
It is harder to hide. Rapid advances in investigative technology, video and other digital surveillance tools, as well as the ability to analyze mountains of information, quickly allow the authorities to find killers who before would have gone undetected. At the same time, Americans have adopted more cautious habits in their everyday lives -- hitchhiking, for example, is less common, and children are driven to and from school. That reduces easy targets. And, some theorize, those bent on killing now opt for spectacular mass murders. "The 'perfect crime' concept is more of a concept than it ever has been before," said Adam Scott Wandt, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. More than a decade ago, prosecutors said, Mr. Heuermann tried to cover his digital tracks by communicating with victims using so-called burner phones, prepaid units purchased anonymously for temporary use. But thanks to exponential progress in technology since 2010, investigators were able not only to chart Mr. Heuermann's decade-old movements; they could also monitor exactly what he was searching online in recent months. They saw that he was using an anonymous account for internet queries like "Why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer," prosecutors said. He had also been visiting massage parlors and contacting women working as escorts, they said.
The ubiquity of technology has made it harder to get away with murder, Mr. Wandt said. The amount of data people create in their daily lives is more than many can conceptualize, he said. Just by walking outside, people are now tracked by ever-present cameras, from Amazon's Ring units outside homes to surveillance at banks and retail stores, he said. Every use of a phone or computer creates streams of data that are collected directly on devices or immortalized on servers, he said. A concerted effort by the federal government to ensure that even the smallest police departments can use technology to their benefit has also helped give investigators an upper hand, Mr. Wandt said. In 1987, there were 198 known active serial killers -- people connected to at least two murders -- and 404 known victims across the United States, according to a report published three years ago by researchers who run Radford University and Florida Gulf Coast University's Serial Killer Database. By 2018, there were only 12 known serial killers and 44 victims, according to the report. "The big question is: Are they going underground and finding other techniques?â said Terence Leary, an associate professor in the psychology department at Florida Gulf Coast University and the team leader for the database.
He said that some serial murderers have killed for discrete periods before taking prolonged breaks: "Maybe they decided to give it up. Who knows?"
They're doing it quicker (Score:5, Insightful)
"The big question is: Are they going underground and finding other techniques?"
Gun massacres have increased in recent years. Maybe this is an acknowledgement by evil cowards that they're likely to be caught. They lather themselves up, taking wrong turn after wrong turn, and then do it quicker.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
AR-15's allow parallel murders. Serial is so 80's.
Re:They're doing it quicker (Score:4, Interesting)
"The big question is: Are they going underground and finding other techniques?"
Gun massacres have increased in recent years. Maybe this is an acknowledgement by evil cowards that they're likely to be caught. They lather themselves up, taking wrong turn after wrong turn, and then do it quicker.
I doubt it's directly related. Mass shooters tend to be suicidal in one way or another (why they are so rarely taken alive), very different from serial killers who plan extensively not to get caught.
I think some of it is better investigative techniques, this guy had serial written all over him [bbc.com] but got caught with help from cameras and phone tracking [wikipedia.org]. Not to mention the guy who tried to be Dexter [wikipedia.org].
But I wonder if the biggest effect of the investigative techniques and surveillance is deterrence. I'm probably leaning into TV show psych profiles here, but serial killing really seems to be about the idea of having control. You move around undetected, stalk your victim, disappear without a trace, and maintain your image as a nice normal not-serial killer in your community. Almost like it's a game where the objective is to kill without getting caught.
I'm not sure how you do that with all the tech around now. Are you going to take your cellphone with you while you're stalking? Well then you're just giving the cops an easy trail to follow. And if you don't take your phone then you might have to explain why you were offline. Not to mention every block has a doorbell camera that might record you driving by.
I think we've just made all the things serial killers like to do that much harder, and as such a lot of them have decided to stick to just fantasizing about it.
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You don't need to explain why you don't have your phone on you. It's not illegal, yet, to leave your phone at home. All the tracking through cameras is definitely a large part of it though. We have license plate readers everywhere now and as you mention, ring cameras and also red light and speed detection cameras as well.
It's much harder to move around without being tracked and it's easier then ever to go backwards from a crime scene to figure out who done it.
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That's the obvious thing.
Serial killers, generally have a goal in mind. Killing women or children, and defiling the corpse.
Gun massacres are the same psychopaths, but instead of wanting their victim to "feel it" they want the community to feel it, which is why ... you guessed it "school shootings"
So the typical incel that has gone too deep goes out and buys a shit load of weaponry and then goes to find a school for women or children to shoot up and hope to go out by "death by cop". They don't want to be hel
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Of the mass shooters, are they are actually psychopaths? Like, have we done the clinical forensics and really determined they are in fact psychopaths? We can say they are "evil" but that's not really a useful term. Their actions can be classified to be evil but do we have enough to say they are all actually psychopaths?
They all clearly have "issues" but to lump all mass shooters into a psychopaths category is just being lazy. Plus, the word mass now means 4, if I'm not mistaken. Most gang warfare would coun
Re: They're doing it quicker (Score:2)
The 'perfect crime' concept is more of a concept (Score:5, Informative)
I am surprised to have to contradict the professor in criminal law quoted by the NYT, but the perfect crime is unfortunately commonplace. There is a frightening amount of unsolved murders, about 25% in developed countries. Here the data for Canada https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] (20-25% 2012-2014) and here for France https://www.lemonde.fr/societe... [lemonde.fr] (30% in 2016, 37% in 2020 -- they say situation worsened in 2020 due to COVID confinement causing lack of witnesses).
Plus there is a certain number of unidentified bodies found every year that are not even in these statistics because they don't get classified as homicides (body decomposition, lack of evidence).
For the interested, there is a long academic publication on the factor influencing the elucidation of homicides: https://www.cairn.info/revue-d... [cairn.info] (in French).
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I wouldn't be surprised if encouraging others to commit crimes and then being able to identify each by the specifics has the same thrill for them.
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Yep, and I'm specifically talking about online cultivation. There is probably the competitive communities - the ones the cops like to infiltrate - and the sucker groups - like Facebook groups - that they compete for.
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As you point out, your Canadian statistics cover 2012-2014 which is around 10 years ago now.
Since you quote statistics from Canada, do you have any idea whether they have caught the killer who has been operating on the Yellowhead Highway west of Prince George BC for a fair number of years? When I was there a lot of people had gone missing but they had no clue who was responsible.
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Canada 33% unsolved in 2021. "As of December 31, 2021, there were 525 homicides solved out of the 788 reported that year. This translated to a solved rate of 67%," https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n... [statcan.gc.ca]
I cannot help you regarding the murder cases you are facing in your region; I am just a random guy who was shocked to read in 2021 that one out three made it away with murder; I looked around and found it was the same number in different countries.
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I'm fairly sure even straight forward murder cases take quite a while to investigate, get to court and count as solved. Considering these stats are taken on the last day of that year, I'd be surprised if many of the murders in the preceding days, weeks, even months had yet been officially solved. In fact the document has some statistics about time taken to solve cases, with 100 days being a timeframe used for comparison - so no wonder all those murders on 30th December hadn't been solved by the end of the y
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Not forgetting that they may know very for sure who did it, but can't prove it. Under our laws, that's "unsolved".
A lot of murders in Vancouver are gang-related, and honestly, most figure that the killer will get his eventually, live by the sword, etc. As long as we know "that's just gang-related, I'm safe in my lifestyle far from them", we probably don't vote for a zillion dollars to nail the exact hitman every time.
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1) These stats are not from the last day of year, they were published late November next year. 2) "Solved" in police statistics means "an arrest was made".
Rationale for the definition 1) That's the moment police closes its investigation and the file and the suspect are transferred from the hands of the police to the justice system. It's a simple yet sensible criterion 2) Any definition involving the result in court would make definitive statistics impossible to establish, due to the variable timeframe from
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1) These stats are not from the last day of year, they were published late November next year.
That's not what you said, nor in fact the article you were quoting from: "As of December 31, 2021, there were 525 homicides solved out of the 788 reported that year." The paragraph continues: "...It should be noted that during subsequent data collection cycles, outstanding unsolved homicides may be cleared, which would then increase the solve rate for homicides reported in 2021, as well as any other year prior.". Publication date is irrelevant, because they have stated when the data was collected.
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Here is corrected data for France, year 2019: 62.09% same-year report and resolution; 72% day-to-day 12 month from police report.
Sources:
A) Yearly performance report of the government: within same year 2018-2021: 70.29% 62.09% 62.60% 58.3% (same year report and resolution), https://www.budget.gouv.fr/doc... [budget.gouv.fr] (report called "Police Nationale", table 2.1 page 11 of the pdf; collating data from reports of year 2021 and 2023)
B) Statistical bureau, from their exhaustive analysis of the police database https://www [insee.fr]
Missing persons (Score:4, Insightful)
Whilst murders attract much police attention, a person disappearing from sight is usually ignored by law enforcement. As a result we have no idea how many of those missing people are victims of murder.
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In some cases the people are never reported missing [cbsnews.com], by anyone.
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Whilst murders attract much police attention, a person disappearing from sight is usually ignored by law enforcement. As a result we have no idea how many of those missing people are victims of murder. In some cases the people are never reported missing [cbsnews.com], by anyone.
That poor woman was obviously murdered by her husband. They found her in a shallow grave behind a body shop he used to work at. I guess he sold her family a convincing story to prevent them from reporting her missing, but they won't say what it was because the investigation is still ongoing.
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I'm a bit surprised that more "perfect crimes" aren't committed. All the cops I've met are average to below average intelligence, which would ordinarily be fine, but in casual conversation they want to insist that 22 weeks of police academy have honed them into psychical and intellectual supermen. I don't doubt they learned plenty in police academy, but they were sort of an empty bucket to begin with. The real ubermenschen are those detectives with an associate degree's in criminal justice.
Of course on TV t
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Honestly until DNA evidence we didn't catch them (Score:2)
It does help that we don't have lead in our air anymore, though we're seeing more of it in our water lately which is scary. Lead is well known to make people loopy and violent. Crime rates have been declining for years now everywhere (despite what "if it bleeds it leads" media would tell you) and lead is the one thing that every state of the nation has in common.
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Maybe "the perfect crime" is just slang for "a crime who's victim we don't care about". And that's a depressing thought.
Do you remember the good old days? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you remember the good old days? When you could dismember a few hitchhikers and then go home for a peaceful evening with your family? How far has America fallen that we can't even hold on to the title of world's most serial killers? Globalization and the surveillance state truly have destroyed the fabric of our nation's once create culture.
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I LOVED how those "good old days" were depicted in "The Sandman". The serial killer convention was one o the creepiest and funniest thing I've ever seen. Especially at the same time.
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Do you remember the good old days? When you could dismember a few hitchhikers and then go home for a peaceful evening with your family? How far has America fallen that we can't even hold on to the title of world's most serial killers? Globalization and the surveillance state truly have destroyed the fabric of our nation's once create culture.
At this point when the kids come to my van I just give them the free candy. Then I start the engine, drive off, and think back to better days.
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As the hitchhiker climbed in, he asked, "Aren't you afraid that I might be a serial killer or something?"
"Nah," the driver replied. "The chances of two in the same car are astronomically low."
Human insanity is more clear and accepted. (Score:2)
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Not a lot of serial killing victims are shot. It's noisy, attracts attention and creates a bunch of forensic evidence that's difficult to clean up.
I think the opposite is true (Score:2)
They just found this guy in New Jersey, and until they can link victims to either the way they were killed or their characteristics then the FBI can't correlate them as being killed by a serial killer.
There are over 600,000 people who disappear in this country annually. [fox13now.com] While most are "runaways." until the others are conclusively found they're just "missing" like the three women this guy was alleged to have killed. Some of the "missing" wind up being found in plastic bags. [cnn.com] Only forensics and good police wor
Genetic point of view (Score:2)
From a genetic point of view, there's no short term selective pressure that would reduce the incidence rate of psychopathy and sociopath. Psychopaths and sociopaths are are still out there, but maybe they are finding other release valves for their urges. Like politics.
Small problem (Score:2)
It is now safe... (Score:2)
For a single young woman to live in the Pacific Northwest!
The cure sounds worse than the disease. (Score:3)
Re:The cure sounds worse than the disease. (Score:4)
"thanks to"? (Score:2)
Absurd. No one knows why, and only advocates claim to.
51% murder are solved (Score:2)
America is still a violent place (Score:2)
So much for Presumed Innocence (Score:2)
That article if published in the UK or Australia would have led to the Editors being in court for contempt of court and facing an almost certain jail sentence.
So much for presumed innocent.
Maybe the killers are getting craftier, too (Score:2)
and not making it look like it's the same guy who did it all.
Only 12 killers and 44 victims? O rly? (Score:2)
Considering that according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons some 600,000 people simply disappear each year without trace, I challenge the assertion that there are only 12 serial killers out there. There could easily be 10,000 serial killers each disposing of 10 victims per year and it would barely make a dent in the missing persons statistics. What makes the person who wrote this so sure that technology has led to fewer serial killers? Maybe there are ten times as many, yet because of advanc
Re: Yay 1984 is real!!!! (Score:2)
I'll take the occasional mass shooter over the much more widespread violence of the 90s. I don't only care about murder when it's a mass shooter. I prefer murder as a whole to be minimized.
I also have a feeling mass shooters would go away if we stopped talking about them. They are crimes of publicity.
Re:To stop the mass shooters (Score:4)
we'd have to take guns away from Domestic abuses and people with a history of violence.
Felony convictions (violent or otherwise) result in a lifetime ban on firearms ownership in the US. Misdemeanor convictions for domestic violence result in the same. Unless you are suggesting that we punish people without due process of law (unconstitutional in the United States) then we are already doing the above.
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Re:To stop the mass shooters (Score:5, Insightful)
We can stop the school shooters overnight. All we have to do is repeal ALL the gun laws which will allow anyone at all to be armed at school. People shoot up schools because they know that there's no one there that can shoot back.
Of course the data actually shows the looser the guns laws the more mass shootings you get https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/s... [nih.gov] .
Turns out our current reality isnt the wild west and the solution to gun violence isnt doubling down on even more guns in society.
The last era with no gun laws, the 1950's, had zero - count 'em - NO school shootings.
Kind of a side note but what are you basing that on? I cant find any school shooting data going back that far. You didnt happen to just make that up did you?
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Right, "screw data". Maybe go rant on Twitter instead of a science and tech news site.
The facts are as I've shown you, the looser the gun laws the more mass shootings you get. It's almost as if gun availability influences gun usage. Who'd have thought, right?
Re:To stop the mass shooters (Score:4)
Right, "screw data". Maybe go rant on Twitter instead of a science and tech news site.
The facts are as I've shown you, the looser the gun laws the more mass shootings you get. It's almost as if gun availability influences gun usage. Who'd have thought, right?
No, no, the person who lived through the 50s and is therefore in their mid-70s remembers that their anecdote is so correct it overrides any mere facts. Shame on you.
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No, no, the person who lived through the 50s and is therefore in their mid-70s remembers that their anecdote is so correct it overrides any mere facts. Shame on you.
Right? I also love the "I cant cite any data but I expect you to take my word on this" angle as well.
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You have that backwards. The NRA and various gun lobbies were deathly afraid that actual facts would show how badly firearms affect society, so they lobbied to prevent the CDC or any other federal agency from collecting any data, or from studying the problem at all.
Think of the tobacco industry lobbying the government to prevent research on the effects of tobacco and the relationship to lung cancer, and you wouldn't be far off the mark.
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Not to say you are not right, but I do want you to know that the definition of mass shooting varies. Additionally, the focus on guns seems odd, since IEDs and vehicles can and have produced much larger counts. See:
Oklahoma City bombing
9/11
etc.
Just as an fyi, not even 1% of defensive shootings make any news. There are a lot of them.
There is a bigger picture, and even if you are correct, we don't and won't live in some magical utopia where guns are gone, and evil doers don't have them.
It's a bigger, and n
Re:To stop the mass shooters (Score:4, Insightful)
Additionally, the focus on guns seems odd, since IEDs and vehicles can and have produced much larger counts. See:
The difference between cars and guns is that cars are tools used for transportation that sometimes accidentally kill people (very rarely do the operators of cars intentionally kill people with them) meanwhile guns are tools designed to kill people (yes, some are more for hunting but most in the US are designed first for killing people) and most deaths are due to their intentional use to do so.
As for IEDs, the I in IED sort of makes such things impossible to fully regulate and/or ban. We do however try to at least put controls on the purchasing of items that might be used to create them but its tricky because many of these substances have very legitimate uses.
Just as an fyi, not even 1% of defensive shootings make any news. There are a lot of them.
And people in other countries have far less of a need for defensive weapons because criminals have such a hard time getting guns. This is the reason we have gun violence and homicide rates 5 times the first world average. If guns were so great for defense that it out weighed their downside we'd see less murders not drastically more.
There is a bigger picture, and even if you are correct, we don't and won't live in some magical utopia where guns are gone, and evil doers don't have them.
You're correct, there is a bigger picture. The entire rest of the first world has far less guns than us and also far less murders and gun violence. Either our out of control murder and gun violence rates are being driven by our mass availability of fire arms or it's being driven by some metric unique to our country that social scientists havent figured out yet. Personally, Id bet all my money on the prior.
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Yep, USA is a dangerous country to live in. Everyone living in fear should probably just move to Canada or one of those delightful peaceful European countries. Please!
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What would people like you have to complain about then?
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Not to say you are not right, but I do want you to know that the definition of mass shooting varies. Additionally, the focus on guns seems odd, since IEDs and vehicles can and have produced much larger counts. See: Oklahoma City bombing 9/11.
Of course they made ammonium nitrate, and other explosives making materials, much harder to acquire in bulk after OKC, and we all know that airplane hijackings are now much harder to pull off. Note the lack of any repeats of similar events.
Re:To stop the mass shooters (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a fact, in the 50's schools had rifle clubs, and students would bring their guns to said rifle clubs, and guess what? There was no mass school shooting epidemic.
We've already covered that you have no way to prove this. What I have found is homicide rates for this period and the 1950's are more or less as bad as right now (the 1950's homicide rate would still put us as close to 5 times the modern first world average) https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] so unless you care to find some supporting data for your own claim lets move past your glowing reviews of the 50's.
(for example see Switzerland)
Do you mean the Switzerland of reality that has extremely strict gun laws or do you mean the fantasy one some members of our political right claims exists? Sure, everyone who serves gets one but the ownership tracking and regulations involved would make any American right wingers head spin and they can very easily be taken away if someone is acting sketchy or anti social. https://impakter.com/why-gun-o... [impakter.com] .
Also, gun ownership on a per capita basis in Switzerland, while high by first world standards, is around a 5th or 6th of ours https://impakter.com/why-gun-o... [impakter.com] , https://www.thetrace.org/2023/... [thetrace.org]. so it's not a very good comparison from that angle as well
Plus getting run over by a truck is not less lethal than getting shot, and I haven't heard anyone calling for truck control(or pool control since that's what actually kills kids).
That's because trucks, despite their lethal potential, are widely used tools that are used for other purposes and most deaths associated with them are accidents while using them for their intended purpose. Most fire arms on the other hand are tools made specifically to kill people and most deaths associated with them are due to intentional discharges of them. Sure, some guns are made for more for killing animals but most firearms owned in America are not terribly great for hunting.
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Plus getting run over by a truck is not less lethal than getting shot, and I haven't heard anyone calling for truck control(or pool control since that's what actually kills kids).
That's because trucks, despite their lethal potential, are widely used tools that are used for other purposes and most deaths associated with them are accidents while using them for their intended purpose.
Don't forget that trucks are regulated. You need training, a license, insurance, and registration to use one in public, plus you have to publicly display your license plate, which ties the truck to its owner. And if you misuse or abuse it, you can lose your license.
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That's a very good point that I missed. It is in fact pretty crazy that cars are regulated more in this country than devices designed to kill people.
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One is a privilege and the other is a Constitutional right.
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Our constitution once included endorsements of slavery, I'm pretty sure the constitution can be crazy. Nice try though!
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Yes, my whole argument has been brought down by single city experiencing an abnormally large number of murders relative to its history. What a profound person you are.
Meanwhile in reality DC isnt even in the top 10 for murder rates by city in the country but amusingly enough 9 out of 10 of the cities that are are in red states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] .
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I've been a while since I've looked it up, but murder rates tend to line up nicely with poverty rates. Cities that have more poverty have a higher murder rate.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0... [nytimes.com]
A few examples. So it doesn't really surprise me that some of the poorer red states have a higher homicide rate.
Maybe if we wanted to fix our crime and murder problems, we should focus on fixing our poverty problems? Of course, that's HARD so we should j
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I've been a while since I've looked it up, but murder rates tend to line up nicely with poverty rates. Cities that have more poverty have a higher murder rate.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0... [nytimes.com]
A few examples. So it doesn't really surprise me that some of the poorer red states have a higher homicide rate.
Maybe if we wanted to fix our crime and murder problems, we should focus on fixing our poverty problems? Of course, that's HARD so we should just take everyone's guns away instead, right?
I've been a while since I've looked it up, but murder rates tend to line up nicely with poverty rates. Cities that have more poverty have a higher murder rate.
https://www.scientificamerican... [www.scient...merican...] [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/us [theguardian.com]... [theguardian.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0 [nytimes.com]... [nytimes.com]
A few examples. So it doesn't really surprise me that some of the poorer red states have a higher homicide rate.
Maybe if we wanted to fix our crime and murder problems, we should focus on fixing our poverty problems? Of course, that's HARD so we should just take everyone's guns away instead, right?
Yes, poverty is an extremely well known exacerbator of crime. Welcome to your first baby steps into sociology.
Now take a moment and look at the rest of the world. Other first world nations (we compare our selves to other first world nations for stuff like this as doing so controls for many factors such as poverty) have similiar poverty problems as our own and yet not a single one of the dozens of countries that make up the first world have anything close to our homicide or gun violence rates so clearly pove
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One of my favorite stories is a bunch of right wingers in the mid 2000s who decided they wanted to take their rifles and scare some Muslims. So they look up the nearest one and drive down to the nearest mosque. A Nation of Islam mosque.
When they got there and saw the guys out front with assault rifles standing guard they turned tail and ran.
You'll note I didn't mention an assault rifle ban in my list of solutions. That's why. I don't trust this country's people enough to disarm them. The gov't isn't what scares me, it's people who think they're they government.
It always bums me out to see American leftists extolling the virtues of firearm ownership. As much as I enjoy stories of bigots getting owned if those rednecks hadnt had guns to begin with those Nation of Islam folks wouldnt have needed to scare anyone off with their own firearms.
I guess we'll always have homicide and gun violence rates 5 times the first world average and enough mass shootings to make our country seem like a war zone to foreigners.
You don't fix guns by taking them away (Score:2)
Sweden as tons of guns and no gun violence problem to speak of. Switzerland too.
I want guns available for the same reason I want countries to have nukes: Deterrent. Those right wingers didn't show up to that Mosque to fun. Even without firearms they'd likely have numbers on their side. Go look up what Rwandans did with Machetes sometime.
I don't trust our culture to be without guns. I want the
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I want guns available for the same reason I want countries to have nukes: Deterrent. Those right wingers didn't show up to that Mosque to fun.
Yes but the thing with lethal deterrents is that the goal is to not use them. That seems to be working fairly well with nukes and not at all with guns.
I don't trust our culture to be without guns. I want the minorities to be able to protect themselves
As I was getting at before, how often would they need to defend themselves if the people trying to go after them didnt also have guns? America did not invent racism, it is alive and well in every country in the world and always has been (see Europe's increasingly successful far right parties as a single example). The natural tribalism of humanity assures this
Guns highly regulated in Sweden [Re:You don't ...] (Score:2)
you fix it by changing the culture. That's harder than saying "Assault Rifle Ban!" to your voters though. n Sweden as tons of guns and no gun violence problem to speak of.
Sweden? Every gun owner must have a licence to own a gun. You must be eighteen years old or older. To own a handgun you have been a member of a shooting club for at least six months before applying; to own a hunting rifle, you have to pass the hunting exam. Civilians are not allowed to possess automatic firearms, firearms disguised as other objects, and armour-piercing, incendiary and expanding ammunition; private possession of semi-automatic assault weapons is permitted only with special authorization.
And
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Switzerland, as one Harvard paper indicates, has extremely high gun ownership and an extremely low death firearm death rate.
However, Switzerland also has mandatory conscription into the militia of all men between 20 and 30.
The requirements for ownership of militia weapons mandates annual training and practice; laws for transportation and safe and secure storage of firearms are strict and permits to carry are difficult to obtain; citizens are limited to a maximum of three firearms apiece.
Switzerland’s
Re: You don't fix guns by taking them away (Score:2)
Every gun here that you didn't cobble together in your basement has a serial number.
All dealer sales, no matter where, have a background check. In many states, private sales also require background checks.
Guns aren't cheap, and even in states with looser regulations, it's generally the people who have their shit together enough to afford a gun who have a gun.
Texas, of all places, is a sea of legally enforceable gun-free zones.
Reality is usually more interesting than propaganda.
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One word: Uvalde.
Hundreds of police show up and they arrest parents for trying to rescue their children.
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Work (Score:2)
They are going to have to work a lot harder. There are usually around 10 a year, with a significant increase since 2013 when they redefined what constitutes a mass shooting.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Re:It'll be bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess maybe the GOP lead house would block it.
Wasn't the governor Republican at the time? I think they would have refused the help and then blamed Obama for it. Just like how Red States refused to implement parts of the Medicaid(?) expansion and they still blamed Obama for not fixing their state's health problems.
On the other hand, Ted Cruz made a big show about how victims of Hurricane Sandy shouldn't get any government help, but then cried running to Obama when it was Texas' turn.
Re: It'll be bad (Score:2)
Granholm (D) and Snyder (R) served as governor of MI during Obama's presidency. And Snyder was not some slavering racist "not on my watch" Republican like you find in the South.
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The Flint water crisis was a public health crisis that started in 2014...
Granholm was governor until 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
she previously served as the 47th governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011
Republican like you find in the South.
Michigan voted for Trump the first time round. Anti-Obama sentiment was enough to drive any Republican to self-sabotage to score points against Obama.
Re:Oh, The Reason Is Law Enforcement (Score:4, Insightful)
Or there could be another reason [stanford.edu].
For those states that have banned or restricted abortions, it'll be interesting to see what happens to their crime rates in the mid-2040s.
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Anyone wondering why banning abortion (Score:2)
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Since only the abstract is available from your link, it's impossible to tell how the study controlled for other factors besides abortion, such as gun policies or political leanings in general. It's hard to see how abortion restrictions specifically would have an impact on crime rates, unless you're suggesting that people who choose abortions tend to have children who are more likely to commit crimes. Correlation, as they say, is not causation.
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It's hard to see how abortion restrictions specifically would have an impact on crime rates, unless you're suggesting that people who choose abortions tend to have children who are more likely to commit crimes. Correlation, as they say, is not causation.
Why not? One of the reasons women have abortions is so they don't become a single mother. And there's a ton of research showing that children raised by single mothers are more likely to commit crime.
Or to put it in simpler terms, out of the reasons women have abortions is they don't think they're ready to be a parent. In some cases they are correct.
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Your theory might be right, but proving it requires studies with proper controls.
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Your theory might be right, but proving it requires studies with proper controls.
Which theory?
The single mother thing is pretty well documented [sciencedirect.com].
As for the lower crime rates due to women being able to avoid becoming single mothers? Sure, you want a proper study checking for things like the effect size being big enough to make a difference in overall statistics, but there's a clear mechanism involved.
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I was referring to the theory that limits on abortion lead to more crime. And that study did not control for single-parent households.
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The study PDF is here: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-co... [stanford.edu]
You'll notice that the set of controls (Appendix C) does *not* include the proportion of single-parent households.
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The entire PDF study is available from the link I posted above. Here it is. [stanford.edu]
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Thank you, the link is helpful.
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The study does not control (Appendix C) for factors cited by the Serial Murderers article, such as better technology and changes to laws (*other* than abortion).
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Sure, it doesn't, but to me one of the striking findings is that crime rates in states that legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade started falling before those that only legalized it afterwards. I don't think that can be explained away by different laws or better technology.
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You have found a correlation, yes. Correlations are hard to prove, especially without appropriate controls.
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Of course. But in my opinion, the paper makes a pretty convincing case that there is correlation, and we're now playing a very dangerous long-term experiment. We're denying women's reproductive rights now, and may very well be setting ourselves up for a nasty crime wave 20 years down the line.
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The study did not control for factors such as the prevalence of single-parent households, a factor that is known to impact the chances of a child becoming a criminal. What other important factors did it fail to control for?
Here's the thing. If you believe, as many Christians do, that a fetus is really a baby human, then the consequences of banning abortion, in terms of effects on the crime rate, mean nothing. This is because to them, life is sacred, it's not for us to "choose" to take a life because that li
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Banning abortions forces people to have children (presumably that they don't want, likely for economic reasons). There is a very clear link of poverty and crime. I posted about it already with numerous links.
Having children you can't afford is a good way to end up poor and this will increase your risks of becoming a victim of crime.
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If you believe, as many Christians, Jews, and Muslims do, that a fetus is actually a baby human, then none of this matters. By the time the abortion occurs, that child has already begun its life, and we have no right to take it away. To them, it's no different than killing a one-year-old because the parents don't have the money to take care of it, or because the child may be more likely to become a crime victim or perpetrator.
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Following your logic there should be a lot of dead serial killers.
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If you capture someone after they kill one person they never become a serial killer. Most people are arrested for murder, not shot dead.
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They’re scared because DNA evidence is so sensitive they can tell if you spent 5 minutes inside a particular room. Plus the sheer amount of cameras both public and private that can prove your location. Stop with the masturbatory gun fantasies.
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Lead paint, therapy, early identification of certain traits and actions?
There has been a lot done to identify and treat.
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Except that since there's no statistical correlation between any of those things and the number of active serial killers, you can't predict that you've made a dent unless you have treated a significant portion of those groups to affect a drop from 198 to 12, and all of that treatment would have had to have aligned at least, say, what 10-15 years prior to the recorded drop?
Are we maybe doing more now, sure, but I don't think we can claim that we have dealt with all lead paint issues or that all kids matching