Gun Violence and Mass Shootings
Rosario Galceran
University of Texas at El Paso
Abstract
Recently gun violence and mass shootings have been a main focus in the
news. People get the idea that mass
shootings are increasing and having gun control laws will decrease the
incident. This paper will review what
law enforcement is doing to respond to mass shootings as well as what type of
weapons are being used in mass shootings.
Statistics on the number of mass shootings have been occurring since
1999 will be presented as well as how many people have died in these mass
shootings. A review of how gun control
laws affect mass shootings and if other factors have been considered.
Keywords: First responders, active shooters, assault
weapons.
Gun Violence and Mass Shootings
Americans are being exposed to the news of gun violence
on a daily basis. The most horrific
incidents are the ones in which many lives are taken in a short period of time,
many times for unknown reasons. These
incidents are labeled as mass shootings, massacres, murderous rampages, active
shooter incidents, or lone shooter incidents.
Once an incident occurs, a national discussion and/or debate on gun
control are initiated through various media sources. Mass shootings can happen anywhere, anytime,
to anyone and in order to know if gun control is a solution, the reader needs to
ask the following:
- What is law enforcement doing to respond to
mass shootings?
- What types of weapons have been used in mass
shootings?
- Can gun control decrease mass shootings?
- What other factors are being considered to
decrease mass shooting?
What
is law enforcement doing to respond to mass shootings?
When discussing mass shootings, most people automatically
think of law enforcement officers being the first to respond to the situation
and taking control giving them the title of first responders. Although this is true, they are not the only
ones responding. A shooting call will
involve a multi-agency response to include law enforcement, emergency medical
personnel and fire fighters. These
incidents are chaotic and unpredictable and by the time they are being reported
to 911 there may already be casualties and will require a rapid response to
stop the shooter or shooters before more victims are injured or killed. “Gunfire, incendiaries, explosives, and
secondary devices magnify the risks to responder” (Vernon, 2012, p.16). In order for these first responders to be
effective and decrease the number of casualties, they have to prepare for an
incident before it happens. According to
Vernon (2012), “Preparation is the key to a mass-shooting incident. That includes a clear idea of what your
actions will be before the incident occurs.”
He continues to explain that this is done by having public safety
agencies review their policies and procedures for active shooter incidents. The public safety agencies must then get
together to discuss and understand their roles keeping in mind that the safety
of the responders is as important as the safety of the public. The agencies have what is called a table top
exercise in which they plan for a possible scenario from beginning to end. Then they rehearse the scenario from
beginning to end evaluating throughout the exercise what is going right and
what is going wrong. Once the rehearsal
exercise is complete, all agencies will come back to the table and discuss the
results. “Coordination and cooperation
are the keys to success” (Vernon, 2012, p.15).
The author of this paper interviewed retired Assistant Police
Chief of Staff Diana Kirk of the El Paso Police Department. Chief Kirk began her career July 1985 as a
patrol officer and 9 years later started her rise up the ranks as a Sergeant at
the Northeast Sub-Station, In-Service Sergeant at the Academy, Lieutenant at
Central Sub-Station, Captain of the Major Crimes Criminal Investigative
Division, Commander, Assistant Chief, and finally as Assistant Chief of Staff
until her retirement March 5, 2013. She
is currently an instructor for Criminal Justice at Park University at Fort Bliss,
Texas and an Assistant Director of Park University. When asked what event lead to how the El Paso
Police Department responded to active shooter incidents, she replied that she
remembered clearly that it was the Columbine incident in 1999. Prior to the shooting in Columbine, police
departments across the country trained one way and that was to secure the
scene, secure the area, and call out for the Special Weapons and Tactics Team
(SWAT). During the Columbine incident,
it was evident that too much time had passed waiting for officers to stop the
threat and not only were the shooters taunting their victims and killing them
but they were not concerned about officers responding and had lots of time to
carry out their plan including their suicide.
After the Columbine event, training changed across the country so that when
there were a certain amount of officers at the scene, these officers did not
wait for SWAT to be called out and their goal was to stop the threat
immediately. She goes on to explain, what
also changed was that schools started to train for active shooter incidents
just like they did fire drills in conjunction with law enforcement. No school and no police department wanted to
be unprepared for another mass shooting.
In Texas, the state’s legislature determines what training officers are
required to review and exercise every 24 months and in addition, the El Paso
Police Department added training for active shooter incidents as part of the
Mobile Field Force training done annually.
This is continuous in-service training that keeps the officers skills
up-to-date.
These two sources clearly let the reader know that the
main goal of not only law enforcement but other public safety agencies is to
stop the threat and minimize further casualties. They realize that by the time they are
notified of the threat, injuries or deaths may have already occurred.
What types of weapons
have been used in mass shootings?
The Office of Legislative Research (OLR) is the
Connecticut General Assembly’s non-partisan research arm and they created a
firearms list used in mass shootings.
The Senior Legislative Attorney, Janet L. Kaminski Leduc identified 49
mass shootings in the United States since the Columbine High School shooting in
Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999.
The list is current as of January 18, 2013 and the weapons vary from one
shooting to the next but the majority of the weapons are semi-automatic pistols
or rifles and considered assault weapons.
To help define assault weapons, the website GunCite.com
explains as follows:
“A genuine assault weapon, as opposed to a
legal definition, is a hand-held, selective fire weapon, which means it’s
capable of firing in either an automatic or a semiautomatic mode depending on
the position of a selector switch. These
kinds of weapons are heavily regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934 and
are further regulated in some states.
However, current “assault weapon” legislation defines certain
semi-automatic weapons as “assault weapons.”
A semi-automatic weapon is one that fires a round with each pull of the
trigger, versus an automatic weapon which continues to shoot until the trigger
is released or the ammunition supply is exhausted. These kinds of “assault weapons” are
sometimes referred to as military-style semi-automatic weapons.”
According to the
OLR weapons list and concentrating on three shooting incidents which had a high
number of deaths, the weapons are described as follows. April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in
Littleton, Colorado, the weapons used in that shooting of 13 deaths are
described as a Savage-Springfield 67H pump-action shotgun, 12 gauge; Hi-Point
995 Carbine, 9 mm caliber; pipe bomb; Intratec TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun, 9
mm caliber; and Stevens 311D double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, 12 gauge. April 16, 2007 at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University (known as “Virginia Tech”) in Blacksburg,
Virginia with 32 deaths, the weapons used in this shooting are listed as
Walther P22 semi-automatic pistol, .22 caliber, and Glock Model 19
semi-automatic pistol, 9 mm caliber. December
14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut with 26
deaths, the weapon used was a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, .223
caliber. According to the OLR weapons
list, the number of mass shootings and deaths differs each year with no steady
increase or decrease. The shootings and
death vary in no particular pattern. The
weapons used in each shooting fit the criteria of assault weapons.
Table 1 shows the number of mass shootings from 1999 to
2012 taken from the OLR Research Report.
Table 2 shows the number
of deaths in mass shootings from 1999-2012 taken from the OLR Research Report.
According to Chief Kirk,
officers have an expectation when responding to an active shooter event that
the shooter has already planned out the situation and officers may be
out-gunned. She states that with
incidents in the past, shooters are not going in with one gun. Officers expect there may be multiple
shooters with multiple weapons; probably high-powered weapons, explosives, and
body armor.
Both sources confirm that
in mass shootings, the type of weapons used will be the type to cause the most
casualties.
Can gun control
decrease mass shootings?
This author asked Chief Kirk if she thought gun control
would decrease mass shootings and she replied, “No. That’s my personal opinion and I’ll tell you
why. Because you can mimic the number of
weapons, the amount of weapons, the type of weapons that people can get
legally, but if a bad guy wants a gun, they’re going to get it. They will buy it from the black market; they
will get it from somewhere. As long as
they can pay the money, somebody out there is going to be willing to sell them
a gun.” Chief Kirk goes on to state that
gun control is only making it harder for the law abiding citizen to own a gun
as part of their second amendment right to bear arms. To this day she states, there are no
background checks for people who buy guns at gun shows and that’s where people,
including convicted felons, are buying guns.
According to NPR news program All Things Considered, aired
March 20, 2013, (Welna 2013); gun control legislation was making its way
through Congress. But the ban was not
getting enough support. Senator Mark
Pryor from Arkansas stated that he was not going to support the ban because he
did not think that the people in his state wanted the ban. He also stated that he did not think that the
ban would be very effective. Another
senator stated that he was “wary of any gun measure that requires more
record-keeping.” According to the
reporter, (Welna, 2013), measures that crack down on gun trafficking and
funding more school security stand the best chance of winning Senate
approval.
In another article, Domenech (2013) writes, “When
tragedy strikes on a national scale, our initial reactions have a commonality
to them: We recoil in shock and are
overcome with sorrow. But then, as anger
and frustration set in, we begin to divide, to blame the things we have always
blamed for the evils around us. We
insist that something must be done, steps must be taken, laws must be
passed.” (p. 25).
What other factors are
being considered to decrease mass shooting?
Chief Kirk states” law makers can come up with something
and there will always be someone coming up with a solution around it. People are spending too much time pointing
the finger at someone else when a mass shooting occurs, when everyone just
needs to take personal responsibility who owns a weapon, the care that needs to
be taken in responsible ownership of a weapon.
Improve what we are already doing, we don’t do a good job conducting
background checks on people who purchase guns and that needs to get fixed. Universal background checks to include gun
shows.” She goes on to state, “As a
police officer I do not think as a country we should infringe on even more on
the rights of individuals, however, I do feel that a long time ago we should
have done more in conducting background checks when weapons were sold wherever
they were sold. But we always wait until
something happen and we as a country start pointing fingers and think that
there is a one size fits all solution.
Gun control is not a one size fits all solution. There are so many factors that have to be
taken into consideration. Look at our
society for the greater protection of society.”
. Similar questions have been asked and according
to Kellermann and Rivara (2013), “The answers are undoubtedly complex and at
this point, only partly known.”
In a Time magazine article, Cloud (2012) writes, “Is
there a way to identify and stop mass killers before they unleash
themselves?” He writes of a study that
was done by the Secret Service and the FBI in which they designed methods to
spot mass killers before they act. He
writes, “The data showed that mass shooters don’t usually act impulsively and
rarely made threats against enemies. But
they do tend to have experience with firearms.”
Conclusion
Based on this research,
gun violence and mass shootings can occur anytime, anyplace, to anyone. The constant training of law enforcement and
other public agencies on how to respond to mass shootings has been essential in
stopping a shooter but not from preventing the incident. Gun control laws have not been effective on
preventing mass shooters from obtaining assault type weapons used in mass
shootings. No experts have been able to
identify a mass shooter in order to stop them from killing.
References
Cloud,
J. (2012). PREVENTING MASS MURDER. Time, 180(6), 33.
Domenech,
B. (2013). The Truth About Mass Shootings and Gun Control. Commentary,
135(2), 25 29.
Halbrook,
S.P., Kleck, G., (2010, October
24). Assault weapons. Retrieved from http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcassaul.html
Kellermann,
A.L., & Rivara, F.P. (2013). Silencing the Science on Gun Research. JAMA
Journal of the American Medical Associations, 309 (6), 549-550. Doi:10.1001/jama,2012.208207.
Leduc,
J. L. K. (2013, January 18). Weapons used in mass shootings. Retrieved from http://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0057.htm
Vernon,
A. (2012). Mass Shooting Incidents: Planning and Response. Fire
Engineering, 163(9), 14-16
Welna,
D. (Writer), (2013, March 20). Assault
Weapons Ban Not Expected To Make It Out Of Congress. [Radio series episode] In A. Walker.(Producer),
All Things Considered. Washington D.C.: National Public Radio
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