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Secret Service releases study on mass shootings: It's economics, misogyny, and conspiracy theories [1]
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Date: 2023-01-26
Other findings from the study:
96% of the attackers studied were male, 3% were female, and 2% were transgender.
57% of attackers were white.
34% of attackers were Black.
11% of attackers were Hispanic.
4% of attackers were Asian.
1% of attackers were American Indian.
72% of attackers experienced some kind of financial stressor sometime prior to the attack.
Just under 20% of attackers had an “ unstable housing” situation at the time of the attack.
Bystanders intervened in about 10% of the attacks. When that happened, the attacker was killed by the intervening bystander only 2% of the time. (Think the mythic “good guy with a gun.”)
While there was a large age range, the average age of an attacker was 34 years old.
41% of attackers had a history of “engaging in at least one incident of domestic violence.”
And nearly a fifth of attackers exhibited “misogynistic behaviors.”
Our elected officials have been unable and unwilling to pass even the bare minimum of popular gun safety laws to deal with a problem that has gone on for decades, as the proliferation of more powerful and easier-to-use weaponry continues to penetrate the marketplace. Added to this is last year’s right-wing radical Supreme Court decision to mostly nullify states' rights in making gun laws.
“ For 50 attacks, the timing of the acquisition of at least one firearm used was found. In 19, the firearm was acquired within one month of the attack; in 3, it was acquired the same day as the attack.”
On top of everything, we have growing economic inequalities and an acceleration of information technology frequently being abused to spread misinformation. When combined, the two help to grow a large group of Americans who believe in some of the most outrageous conspiracy theories available to the mind these days.
Donald Trump is running for president in 2024, and his exclusivity contract with Truth Social—the failed social media company he started and will tell us he’s never heard of after it finally tanks—ends in June. It has become very clear that Donald Trump, one of the worst purveyors of misinformation and conspiracy theory promotion, will be returning to platforms he was banned from for these very reasons. Twitter, now owned by Elon Musk, has already reinstated his account, and Meta—the parent company of Facebook and Instagram—has said they plan on reopening his accounts in the coming months after his lifetime ban is now being saunas a two-year suspension.
Media Matters put together a breakdown of some of the reasons Donald Trump ended up having his accounts suspended—even though he was the President of the United States at the time.
In October, Media Matters analyzed Trump’s posts on Truth Social and found at least 58 mentions of the word “rigged” in at least 55 posts, and at least 255 mentions of the word “election” in at least 195 posts.
Additionally, Media Matters found that nearly half of Trump's posts on Truth Social in the week after the 2022 midterm election pushed election misinformation, including baseless falsehoods about mail-in ballots and voting machines, or amplified QAnon-promoting accounts.
As of January 25, Trump has amplified QAnon-promoting accounts more than 400 times, far outpacing the pace of his QAnon account amplifications when he used Twitter. Notably, Trump has amplified explicit QAnon content, including with QAnon imagery and video.
There are a lot of things we need to do to fix violence gun violence in our country. The problems are economics-related, social safety net-related, and symptoms of the inequity embedded in our country’s legal system. But they are also obviously related to gun safety legislation. The data, while not perfect, has been in for a long while. Doing what we have been doing—which amounts to a big fat nothingburger—isn’t working.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/26/2149398/-Secret-Service-releases-study-on-mass-shootings-It-s-economics-misogyny-and-conspiracy-theories
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