For some perspective - a top 10 list of mass killings

[dmallind]

These of course are only crimes rather than acts of war or foreign terrorism.

1) BOMB - 168 people in OKC
2) FIRE - 87 people in the Bronx
3) BOMB - 45 kids in Bath Michigan (worst school killing in history)
4) DYNAMITE - 44 people on a flight from Denver
5) GUN/PLANE CRASH - 43 people died when a plane crashed after one person was shot.
6) GUN - 35 people in a Tasmanian shooting rampage. (Tasmania already had strict gun control by US standards, but this one was the poster child that tipped Australia into accepting a near total ban)
7) *EDIT FOR CORRECTION BELOW* GUN - 33 people killed in VA Tech shooting rampage
8) GUN - 29 people in the al-Ibrahimi Mosque shot by Israeli (Questionable inclusion here - kind of foreign terrorism really but since he was not part of any organized terrorist group I left it in)
9) FIRE - 25 people in LA Apt arson
10) GUN - 23 people in Luby's cafeteria in TX


Conclusions? Guns are a popular choice for mass killings as you would expect - they are an efficient tool for that kind of thing. They are however well down the list of most lethal methods, and there is nothing in this list to lead us to suppose that, even if eliminating guns were possible, people driven to this sort of madness would not be able to find ways to act out their sick intent, as they did in at least half of the list, which includes shooting victims only in the bottom 50%.

[krispos42]

1. Virginia Tech isn't there. Should be #7, I believe n/t

[dmallind]

2. You are indeed correct - my apologies for relying on an outdated listing

Its inclusion however would change neither the number of gun killings on the list (as one would drop off) nor the relative ranking of guns compared to other uses.

That said it would increase the ratio of those killed by guns, and is undeniably true, so I will edit - thanks for the correction.

[lapfog_1]

3. Your list doesn't support your conclusions

GUN was a factor in 5 out of 10 of your mass killing list (probably the determining factor in all 5).

BOMB/DYNAMITE (for this list, I don't think there should be a distinction) is listed in 3 (3 of the top 4).

FIRE is listed only 2 times.

FIRE (Arson) can only lead to mass killings if there is a gathering of people in a constricted space.
BOMB requires only that the mass killer have access to and knowledge of bomb making, plus a suitable target.
GUN is easier to get than BOMB, requires little "expertise" (more important is that the expertise can be gotten completely legally), and only requires some constricted space and a target rich environment (school buildings, restaurants) where one can count on no one being able to fight back.

Of course, counting ALL the victims of GUN to all victims of ARSON and BOMB, one would conclude that GUN is the deadliest form of "mass killing" (more than one victim, whether dead or simply wounded).

[dmallind]

5. Doesn't disagree at all

I clearly state guns are a common tool used in mass killings. That is inarguable. So is the fact that much worse mass killings are done by other means. I drew no other conclusions, so any further inferences are your own and likely mistaken.

[Buzz Clik]

4. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I thought I'd seen it all. The stupid! It burns!!

This is low ebb for gun justification.

I owe firearms and agree we have the right to own reasonable weapons. But the OP is a real embarrassment. It ranks right up there with Holocaust deniers.

[dmallind]

7. Really? Show me exactly where that is

I can see nothing in there at all that even speaks to "gun justification". It is merely a list of facts to demonstrate that the recent furor over mass killings misses some perspective on the relative position of guns used for tools to achieve these killings. What EXACTLY do you disagree with? Where precisely do you infer any position at all beyond the clearly stated ones that guns are indeed often used to kill lots of other people but that other means are more lethal? I wish people would answer arguments, rather than assume what the "hidden agenda" of the post really is. Assuming your statements to be true, I suspect we disagree on little in this case except how much you should extrapolate from a given statement, and believe me it is your position on that spectrum that is stupid, not mine.

[Buzz Clik]

12. It's insane to compare deaths by different means. Completely insane.

I don't give a flying fuck that atomic bombs or napalm have killed more people than handguns. I don't give a shit that you can find mass murders exceeding those done one bullet at a time. I just don't.

The bottom line is this: mass murder by any means is absolutely hideous. Completely and totally. Just because you can find cases with more corpses than Ft. Hood is almost meaningless; the only meaning is that you are so fucking paranoid and insensitive about protecting your "second amendment rights" that you don't even get it.

Get a clue. This isn't about you or your goddam guns.

[PavePusher]

14. Profanity. The last refuge of the fact-less. n/t

[Buzz Clik]

18. weak.

I'm sorry I ruined your moment by writing bad words.

I recognize that I'm the first to do this at DU; I hope you are okay with coming back.

[X_Digger]

15. Dead is dead.. are those killed in OKC any less dead than those in Ft. Hood? n/t

[Buzz Clik]

19. You're starting to get the idea.

I'd be a lot less annoyed at the OP if this kind of information wasn't trotted out in the first days after EVERY gun-related tragedy.

In the calm days, we hear about old ladies shooting and killing intruders. In the aftermath of mass shootings, we hear that guns are not to blame. Funny isn't it? Guns kill bad people, but guns don't kill innocent people because murderers will always find a way. If not guns, then dynamite. Or ammonium nitrate. Or a sword.

After OKC, you could not buy a bag of ammonium nitrate to save your soul, and you still cannot. Time after time with these gun tragedies, we simply hear how guns are really okay and not to blame.

David Sedaris has it right: By the year 2025, you'll be able to buy handguns in vending machines, but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in the country.

[friendly_iconoclast]

16. "A statement of fact can never be insolent"

n/t

[Buzz Clik]

20. n/t? Not even attribution of your quote?

Try this: without the ready available of firearms designed only to kill human beings, a lot of people would be alive today who died needlessly.

Another annoying fact that the deniers hate to face.

[Euromutt]

22. It's a quote from "Blake's Seven," an old British sci-fi series

Specifically, from an AI named Orac. The author of the blog Respectful Insolence (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/) writes under the pseudonym "Orac" and uses it as his tag line ("Orac" is in fact an oncologist from Michigan named David Gorski, who also edits a group blog, Science-Based Medicine http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/).
I'm not quite sure why f_i quoted it; he'll have to answer that.

As for your response:

Try this: without the ready available of firearms designed only to kill human beings, a lot of people would be alive today who died needlessly.

That applies to any object that can be use to inflict lethal physical trauma on another human being, from asses' jawbones to automobiles to atom bombs. However, the judicious employment of such devices has undeniably also saved lives throughout history: motor vehicles have enabled the injured to be rushed to medical facilities before they succumbed to their injuries; the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki removed the need for a ground invasion of the Japanese home islands, probably saving the lives of tens of thousands of American troops, and hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.

Similarly, criminological research indicates--insofar as it is possible to make a credible estimate of events that were averted, given that those events, by definition, did not happen--that legally owned firearms in private hands in the US may enable prospective victims to prevent as many or more homicides as are committed using firearms, and that's a very conservative estimate (since it's based on the assumption that about 1 out of 30 respondents who believed they had "almost certainly" saved a life by using a gun in self-defense was accurate in that assessment; see Kleck, G. and Gertz, M. "Armed Resistance To Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern) vol. 86, no. 1, 1995: 150. (reprinted here http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/KleckAndGertz1.htm). And do note that something in the order of 2/3-3/4 of the respondents used handguns.

The fact is that mass murders can be achieved by other means, such as knives. I can cite you four examples from 2008. Admittedly, such incidents do not result in body counts anywhere near the level of Virginia Tech or Fort Hood, but in the other hand, they readily match the casualty numbers of the overwhelming bulk of multiple-victim shootings. But horrifying as incidents like those at Virginia Tech and Fort Hood are, and undeniable as it is that the death toll would--could--not have been as high had the perpetrators not used firearms, these incidents are rare, and when factored into the annual homicide figures of any population of 300 million people, they are a drop in a bucket.

Just because the pro-RKBA crowd on this forum doesn't preface every post with "while I acknowledge that the death toll most likely wouldn't have been as high if the perpetrator hadn't used a firearm" doesn't mean they (or I) are denying that fact. We know guns are used for ill; it's just that we believe, based on the available evidence, that privately owned guns are used at least as much for good.

Moreover, there is a fundamental principle at stake, which is that government in the US has consistently refused to accept responsibility for failing to make so much as a good faith effort to protect individual citizens from harm (see the Supreme Court's rulings in Warren v. District of Columbia, DeShaney v. Winnebago County and Castle Rock v. Gonzales). This being the case, American government has thereby in effect abdicated the authority (that is, the legitimate power) to deprive the individual citizen of the means to protect him- or herself. Crudely put, if you can't rely on the cops to come and point guns at the mugger or burglar who's threatening you, then nobody has the right to tell you you can't have a gun of your own.

[friendly_iconoclast]

29. I quoted it as there seems to be the idea of some pre-gun Eden

When clearly for most of human history life was "nasty, brutish, and short".

And since the murder rate in the States is going down (even with far more guns in civilian hands)
why do we 'need' more restrictions on guns?

And yes, it was a quote from Respectful Insolence. My bad.

[Euromutt]

32. True; medieval homicide rates were *way* higher than American ones today

I've trotted these stats out in other threads, but given the current proliferation, I can't count on everyone noticing them, so here we go again:

- The U.S. homicide rate in 2005-2006 was ~5.6/100,000; it's dropped slightly since then.
- In the first half of the 14th century, the homicide rate in London varied between 36 and 52/100,000.
- Around 1450, Amsterdam had a homicide rate of ~47/100,000.
- In the 1340s, Oxford had a homicide rate of ~110/100,000.
- Historical evidence indicates that, if anything, rural areas were more violent during the Middle Ages than the major cities, which would mean that regional or "national" homicide rates would be higher than those of the cities.

The long and short of it is that while guns provide a more effective means of killing one's fellow human being, lack of firearms does not prevent homicides from occurring where a sufficiently strong urge exists to inflict them; it's other factors that do that, such as cultural ones that place a higher value on human life (it's to imagine human life was perceived as cheap in the Middle Ages, and besides, if the guy didn't have it coming, he'd go to Heaven, right?) than on one's notion of honor, along with the creation of forces to maintain public order, from city watches to professional police forces. And if those are the factors that bring homicide rates down, then why would it matter how many guns were in private hands? If nobody wanted to kill anyone else, the presence of firearms wouldn't matter.

The way to get people to stop killing each other is to find out why they do, and address those causes. For example, by trying to instil an attitude that a small slight to one's "honor" isn't worth a human life. And I'm not just talking about Middle Eastern and South Asian "honor killings," but also young urban black males in the US, Jamaica and the UK killing each other for showing "disrespect." Perhaps what we really need is to keep working toward providing a higher standard of living to as many people as we can; honor matters more when it's the only thing you've got.

(Always nice to run into a fellow Orac reader, by the way.)

[taurus145]

33. Can you prove that?

Last time I checked, it was still impossible to prove a negative.

Please provide your source(s) with stats.

[dmallind]

24. Apparently it is in your (silly) opinion since that's your armchair shrink diagnosis

Nothing in my post in the slightest suggests any paranoia. I don't even address any potential limitation on my gun rights (nor do I expect any - that ship has long sailed). I merely compare lethality of mass murder attacks based on method used. In what way exactly was I wrong?

[ellenfl]

6. that list is based on the large number of victims.

of course bombs and fires might kill more at once but what about the dc sniper or the postal/disgruntled employee shootings? the number of victims might be less but the incidence of mass killing, meaning more than one death, i would posit is greater by gun. add up all the bomb victims or fire victims and tell me that number exceeds deaths by gun.

guns are just too easy . . . and impersonal.

ellen fl

[dmallind]

8. Undeniably true, and not at all addressed by my OP

guns FWIW are used in about 70% of all US homicides, and handguns in about 80% of those. I am more than aware that guns are the primary weapon of choice for murderers. This is not however, particularly germane to my point - which is solely related to the lethality of mass murder tools, where guns are quite far down on the list. Thank you for at least not assuming what I thought about a separate issue like others did, but please be aware high lethality and frequency of use are, indeed, two separate issues. To address your issue (frequency of use) even more - it should be noted that "assault weapons" either real or copies, are used in very very few murders - less than 2% I believe. The most frequent gun used is IIRC the humble .38 revolver.

[ellenfl]

11. theni guess i disagree with your conclusion.

"They are however well down the list of most lethal methods"

being killed by a bullet is just as lethal as being killed by a bomb. just ask the victims of invading armies. i don't think iraqis or afghanis would appreciate your distinction.

ellen fl

[dmallind]

25. It seems you misunderstand my conclusion

Obviously there are no gradations of death - but there certainly are gradations of body count.

[Loki]

9. Don't forget another Texas shooter

University of Texas, Austin, Charles Whitman, former Marine, killed 14 people, wounded 32, by sniper fire from the University Tower included in the dead were his mother and his wife whom he stabbed to death before starting his killing spree.

[dmallind]

10. Had to stop the list somewhere and 10 seemed reasonable. NT

[eqfan592]

13. How about 9/11?

BOX CUTTERS- Killed almost 3,000 people by hijacking aircraft using box cutters and flying them into buildings.

[Euromutt]

17. The list excludes acts of warfare or foreign terrorism

I admit I don't entirely see why you should count domestic terrorism but not foreign. Maybe it's because foreign terrorists can be assumed to have support that is not subject to American law, enabling them to get hold of automatic weapons and high explosives with less hassle than a domestic terror network would.

[eqfan592]

23. Ahh, thanks. You're correct about what's included there.

Didn't even pick up on that. And while I do get the logic you bring up, it still doesn't change the fact that, in spite of that support network available to them, their primary weapon wasn't a firearm, or even explosive, but box cutters.

[Euromutt]

26. I wouldn't say the primary weapon was box cutters

The "weapon" used to inflict the bulk of casualties were the airplanes; the box cutters were the means to gain control of the "primary weapons."

[eqfan592]

31. I guess it depends on which way you want to look at it.

Either way, it wasn't firearms, which was the ultimate point.

[Euromutt]

21. You're missing the worst spree killing in modern history!

On April 26th-27th 1982, Woo Bum-kon, a South Korean police officer, went on an eight-hour alcohol-fueled rampage through five villages in Uiryeong county. Using two M2 carbines (for which he had 108 rounds) and seven hand grenades taken from a police armory, he murdered 57 people and wounded another 35 before blowing himself up with his last two grenades (his last three victims were also killed in the blast). The reason his rampage went unchecked for so long was that early on, he'd gone to the post office where the local telephone exchange was housed, killed the operator (along with three postal workers) and disabled the exchange.

Note that gun control didn't stop Woo: he was a cop, and used police-issue weapons. Exactly why the South Korean police found it necessary at the time to have provincial substations house automatic weapons and grenades is beyond me, though given that from 1961-1979, and again from 1980-1987, South Korea was in effect under military dictatorship, I imagine it was for "riot control" purposes.

[Katya Mullethov]

27. And the hutu's and the tutsis

" Thou shalt forge thine leaf springs into swords " or machetes , as the case may be .

[Euromutt]

28. I think we're looking at single perpetrators here

There were an awful lot of people involved in the Rwandan genocide. And the machetes were mostly bought from China.

[beevul]

30. Jonestown? 918 deaths.

Arguable that some were suicidal, however, it is doubtful all were, particularly the children.

The events at Jonestown constituted the greatest single losses of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the incidents of September 11, 2001.<141>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown#Deaths_in_Jonestown

[taurus145]

34. Must ban Kool-Aid

Jim Jones proved it! Kool-Aid is evil!

[paulsby]

36. and left wing preachers

jim jones was a leftwing preacher and resulted in that MASSIVE mass killing.

ban preaching!

and leftwingers!

for the children!

[taurus145]

35. Aside from the Kool-Aid

Missy is alive, well, and in my lap.