“Most school shooters grew up with guns as key part of social life, study suggests,” Phys.org claimed on MSN. “A new analysis of school shootings in the U.S. suggests that most shooters had a social background in which guns were a key leisure item, with attached meanings of bonding and affection, which also translated into easy access to firearms.”
That certainly sounds like the study’s author, sociologist Anne Nassauer of the University of Erfurt, believes she’s exploring a new area of inquiry that can yield valuable insights in understanding school shootings, which will be necessary knowledge if society ever hopes to effectively deter them.
Too bad she starts her “Abstract” with a false assertion that absolves us of any responsibility to take the rest of what she says seriously:
“Firearms are the leading cause of death for minors in the United States and US gun culture is often discussed as a reason behind the prevalence of school shootings.”
“The first question is: What is a child?” economist, author, and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, John Lott writes, noting:
Guns Are Not the Leading Cause of Children’s Deaths…The bottom line is that about a third of the firearm deaths for those under 20 involve homicide, where the victims are 18 and 19 years old. Approximately 20% involve homicides for 15, 16, and 17-year-olds. These deaths are largely gang-related, and even banning guns is unlikely to stop drug gangs from obtaining guns to protect their extremely valuable drugs.
It’s not just “What is a child?” As the National Association for Gun Rights demonstrates, it’s also appropriate to ask, “What is a school shooting?”
“Not only are they fluffing up those numbers, but they also use NDs to make the claim that there were 349 school shootings in 2023. Friend of NAGR Brandon Herrera did a great job dismantling this argument when he testified alongside us against the Colorado ‘assault weapons’ ban and was asked why ‘the United States has had 57 times as many school shootings as every other G7 country,’ answering ‘Because of the way you track your statistics. That statistic is a sham. I’ve seen it a negligent discharge in a parking lot that injures nobody is counted as a school shooting.’”
As for Nassauer’s assertion that “US gun culture is often discussed as a reason behind the prevalence of school shootings,” left unaddressed is who is “often discussing it,” and the answer, of course, is those with vested interests in poisoning the well, the gun prohibitionist lobby, Democrat politicians, and the anti-gun media.
Look at how far into this review we are, and we’re just getting done addressing her opening sentence. What about the rest of this “study”?
I’ll stipulate that I’m going to keep things at surface level and let qualified statistical analysts address her methodologies and conclusions, except to note that she really presents none of the latter. You’ll note after it’s all said and done, the strongest statement of validation those promulgating this paper can make is “study suggests…”
Nassauer can suggest a lot of things, and does, with the hyperbolic title to her exercise in innuendo, “The only friend I had was my gun.” That worked—it was, if nothing else, brilliant SEO, as a quick look at Google search results shows that’s the talking point everybody is parroting.
“For some shooters, firearms were their ‘only friend’, the ‘love of [their] life’, or their ‘whole life’,” she writes, cherry-picking a handful of damning anecdotes to apply to the whole. “For others they were ‘therapeutic’, or the only topic that got an otherwise quiet and asocial shooter to passionately engage in a conversation.”
Who talks like that except confused and angry nutcases?
This just feeds another narrative being put forth by such “studies.” See for yourself with some titles designed to “inform” the debate that are being promoted over at Academia.edu:
- Mass Shootings and Misogyny: Broken Males are Pulling the Trigger
- A Conversation between Jackson Katz and Douglas Kellner on Guns, Masculinities, and School Shootings
- Mass Shootings and Masculinity
- GOOD GUYS WITH GUNS: Hegemonic Masculinity and Concealed Handguns
- Sexed Pistols: The Gendered Impacts of Prolific Small Arms
Need I go on? Because I could.
These are fodder allowing leftist trolls (that is, narcissists, psychopaths and sadists) to perpetuate agitator Saul Alinsky’s Rule 5 ridicule with ad hominem logical fallacies like calling gun owners “ammosexuals,” and repeating inadequate “penis” insults (whjile believing themselves to be both witty and original).
We’re supposed be influenced by a statistically insignificant sample of losers and apply that judgment to young people, such as those involved in NRA Youth Interests programs, who are as “law-abiding” as their member parents, arguably the most heavily-armed and peaceable population on the planet…?
News flash: Americans own guns. A lot of guns. And that includes people from all backgrounds (even ones who vote stupidly). Most of us have “a social background” dealing with guns and, aside from some violent criminal outliers that no amount of citizen disarmament will ever contain, we’re not the ones who need to be controlled.
Tarring all with that brush ignores what the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, had to say back in 1994 about boys who lawfully own guns with the approval of responsible parents:
“Boys who own legal firearms, however, have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than nonowners of guns… The socialization into gun ownership is also vastly different for legal and illegal gunowners. Those who own legal guns have fathers who own guns for sport and hunting. On the other hand, those who own illegal guns have friends who own illegal guns and are far more likely to be gang members. For legal gunowners, socialization appears to take place in the family; for illegal gunowners, it appears to take place “on the street.””
Conspicuously absent from the “gun cuilture” finger-pointing is what other factors might have more of an effect, such as effects of psychotropic drugs, or gender dysphoria, and the all-around K-12 mind f–ng by Democrat teachers and administrators bullying collectivist nonsense, hoplophobia, and racial/sexual self-loathing into young, vulnerable minds. Also absent from the discussion is the observable phenomenon that school shootings take place in “gun-free zones,” where armed authorities don‘t show up until after the body count has started racking up, and then all too often hesitate and delay before engaging and stopping the attacker. And it’s an inconvenient truth for those who ridicule arming teachers that there have been no mass shootings at schools where politicians have gotten out of the way and Faculty/Administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response (FASTER) programs are in effect.
Instead, we see “More insights are needed whether those who contemplate committing a shooting but do not have easy access to firearms decide against a shooting, or if easy access gives shooters the idea to commit a shooting.”
Right. Because without being able to come right out and prove it, with the right amount of innuendo masked as research and with media complicity masked as “news,” the low-information segment of the public can be led to a conclusion the “scientists” can’t back up, even though it’s their central thesis: It’s the guns.
Here’s another news flash, one that shouldn’t have to be pointed out to “researchers” about yet another logical fallacy: Correlation is not causation.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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