It seems that the GOP wants to gain some footing on guns by blaming everything but the gun. Why this works for people who want to delude themselves about the effects of guns and their effects on our society is that there is some validity, however indirect, to their argument. If you want something to be true, you overweight the evidence that supports your point of view and you dismiss the evidence that counterweights that belief.
First, let me say, guns, from the smallest pellet gun to the nuclear missile should all be collected and melted down to make something more useful. My vote would be sailboat ballast. That said. if you flat out discount this element (The video games not the music. Quit lumping them together people. Studies have been done on both. Music doesn't cause the insanity video games do. ) you lose validity of our argument.
Here is the formula.
(Dysfunctional homes+ Video Game + Unhealthy social experience + perceived inequality + unrealistic view of the world+ social media) = Dangerous Person rating (DPR) This is a number of society that falls into these categories divided by the total population to produce a percentage. (A better math problem would weight each of these, but most people have stopped reading already.)
Number of easily accessed guns in a society is chance of a gun being used in a mass shooting expressed in a percent. With the USA having the highest guns, most easily accessed per capita being a "1.00" (I can see an argument to changing this to a rating imaginary, but rather actual "guns per capita. I chose to just use a positional ranking instead for easy of calculation.)
So here is the math.
Now let us use some made up number just to show how the formula works.
Using the approximation of 330 million people in the US.
lets say that 231 million fit into what social scientist have deemed to be "increased risk factors".
231/ 330 = 70% members of dysfunctional families
120/ 330 = 36% Play violent video games
65/ 330 = 19% Unhealthy social experience
50 / 330 = 15% Unrealistic worldview (includes mental dysfunction)
275/ 330 = 83% Regular users of social media
Take an average and you get (with these made up with some quick research numbers) and you get an average of 44.6 as a DPR
So 44.6 X 1= a 44.6 on the potential mass shooter scale.
If a society reduces any of those DPR factors, yes the mass shootings will see a reduction in its chance rating. You can see this to be true in other countries who do not have the same social problems that the "Grand experiment" does. But those are indirect levers on the problem. Right. What happens if you reduce the "access to guns" rating to "0"? No guns = no mass shootings.
Happy "Festival of popular delusion day". Think about what you are thinking!
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