It is a time to grieve collectively for such a horrific loss of life, especially as many of those lost are so young, and in my mind also a time to think of how many others have been lost to violence resulting from them simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, hated for who they are, in a war zone or the many other unjustifiable reasons people lose their lives, or are injured.
But many questions naturally arise after these incidents, could it have been prevented? Who is to blame? Why did it happen? Is it because of too many guns? What was wrong with the person? Is there a link to personality disorders? Is there a link to mental disorders? What was wrong with the family? Is it a result of increased violence? Is it a result of the glorification of violence in 'X' society? What drove them to do this? and so on.
It is my suspicion that the answers to these tragedies can be found in the answers to all of the questions above and to some questions that have not been asked. I also suspect that there is no single answer that as with everything in life, the answer is more complex than most people have time for, or that they want to admit. Still in my opinion, until we actually look at the data that can help answer some of these questions, perhaps we can start getting some answers to some of these questions.
One last thought before I start graphing stuff, it also seems to me that here in the US we want to live in a world that is perfectly safe, but some crimes are unpredictable, and unavoidable. For all we know, if one thing in Mr. Lanza's life had gone differently in the days before the massacre, perhaps he would not have killed his mother, and all those people at the school. Most of us would never have known he had existed, and would not be debating all the issues that we are debating now. That said, even if Mr. Lanza had not done this, at some point someone else would have, for very different reasons equally unpredictable. That is not to say that we can't do our best to make things safer, as I will show below, we have been doing that, just that we can't predict every crime, and we can't live in a world that is 100% safe.
So is the US getting more violent? Are you more likely to be a victim of crime now, or in 1995 for example. The answer is a categorical no, victimization rates have been dropping dramatically since the early 90's and this has been true for all crime, but especially for violent crime (source data for all graphs: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4494.
In the graph above, we see that there has been a dramatic decrease in the victimization rate over time (this basically looks at your chances of being victimized over time). Also interesting to note is that they years 1993 to 2000 were President Clinton's administration, those from 2000 to 2008 were part of President Bush's administration and those from 2008 onwards are President Obama's administration.
As you will notice the first real increase that we have seen is between 2010 and 2011, until we get more data it is hard to know if this is a trend or a blip. However looking at these years more closely and comparing them with 2002 gives some interesting data.
Of course where you live, and who you are can affect your chances of becoming a victim, a whole blog could be written about that alone, and the data I will show below confirms this. I have to admit I was a little surprised by some of the data that I found. I had no idea the victimization rates for Native Americans/Alaskan Natives and those that consider themselves to be multiracial was so high. This was true for both violent crime,(first graph), or serious violent crime (second graph).
The other surprise I got was looking at victimization rates over time for different areas of the country. In 2002 the Midwest had the highest rates of victimization, the West was close behind followed by the Northeast and the South being the safest area. In 2011, for serious violent crime, the is a tie between the Northeast, the Midwest and the West with the South remaining the safest. If you look at violent crime in general, the areas remain about the same as they were in 2002 for relative safety, but there is a drop in victimization for all regions.
The big surprise for me came from looking at Urban, Suburban and Rural areas. That living in the Suburbs was safest, came as no surprise (again those married white women living in the Suburbs can feel that they are safer than the rest of us, because it is true), but that rural areas are now more dangerous than urban areas came as a surprise to me. This has much to do with the dramatic decrease in rates for urban areas and a much smaller increase in rates between 2010 and 2011, than for rural ares.
I do not think the Sandy Hook Tragedy is directly a result of increasing crime rates in general, the data suggests that victimization rates (crime rates show the same thing), is decreasing over time and has dropped significantly from 1993 to present.
I would also as a liberal in favor of gun control like to blame this on gun control, but as the shooter's mother obtained the guns legally, this crime would not have been stopped by anything short of a complete ban on firearms, which in the US will never happen.
It does not seem to be due to a lack of security on the part of the school, I am impressed with the amazing job the teachers did, trying to keep their kids safe, they clearly had been trained on what to do in this situation and I suspect many more kids would be dead, had they not behaved so admirably.
We will never know if Mr. Lanza had been ill treated as a kid at the school, although making sure that every kid, regardless of how different they are feel welcome and loved in school can hardly be a bad thing, nor can the reduction of bullying (again can't be sure this was at all involved in this situation), be considered a bad thing either.
Now to the mental health aspect, for that I will rely on a quote from a couple of articles on the subject:
(http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/portrait-of-psychopath)
"There is a stereotypical view that serial killers are loners, antisocial, and unable to maintain any relations, but that's mythology," Levin says.
Some psychopaths and serial killers may appear outwardly successful and 'normal'. "Rader, like so many of the others, was extraordinarily ordinary," Levin says. He was married with two children. "He looked beyond suspicion, he was active in the church, a Boy Scout leader and a compliance officer, and that is the secret to the success."
Serial killers often "don't look like sociopaths or deranged killers, because if they looked like monsters, they would be apprehended almost immediately," Levin says.
"Psychopaths wear the mask of sanity," agrees Michael Welner, MD, a forensic psychiatrist and an associate professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. Welner is also an adjunct professor of law at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh.
"Nobody would have called Dennis Rader a psychopath before he got arrested," he says.
and
(http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/294626-overview) It is essential to keep in mind that most people with mental illness are not violent.[2] A study of psychotic individuals found that those with a mental illness were responsible for only 5% of all violent crimes.[3] An exception to this rule involves sexual offenders, who had high rates of substance use disorders, paraphilias,[4] mood disorders, impulse control disorders, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and antisocial personality disorders.[5] Other exceptions include antisocial personality disorder and substance abuse.[6]
I find it irresponsible for the media and some in the medical field to make links to mental health issues, when we don't have any credible information on if this young man had one, or if he had a personality disorder (different thing), or if he was just shy (only a disorder if it impacts quality of life), or an introvert (not a disorder nor a personality defect). The truth is that just because people are different, quiet, introverted or shy (or all of those things), and just because that tends to make extroverts uncomfortable (often leading to teasing and bullying even into adulthood), it does not mean (and there has never been found) that this is any indication that a person will harm others, or themselves.
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