Previously posted reflections from Fall 2024 are available here: Reflection #1 and Reflection #2.

Reflections from previous semesters of Sociology of Guns are available HERE.

By Lucy Flynn

“I’m going to the gun range today” I excitedly announced to my friends Tuesday morning as I was preparing breakfast in my kitchen. I was met with “oohs” and “woah” and questions about the class and why our first day would include a field trip to a gun range. These questions prompted me to think more deeply about the reasoning behind our adventure to the range and the significance of actually handling guns rather than simply discussing their existence and function in class.

As someone who had only held a gun one time prior to this trip, it was beneficial to learn more about various types of guns through hands-on experience as opposed to exclusively reading about them online. Through actually visualizing and holding a 9mm pistol and AR-15, I was able to enhance my understanding of their impact and power rather than judge their intimidating names through stories and articles on the internet.

Growing up in rural Vermont, guns were a central part of the culture surrounding hunting, and I would frequently be reminded of this each time I drove down my road and passed deer hung up outside my neighbor’s garage. My family did not engage in the hunting world, and my youthful mind thus negatively associated guns as animal-killing weapons. In high school, my distaste for guns evolved in the wake of mass shootings I was hearing about in the news and in my liberal private school classes where the general community mindset was pretty anti-gun and supportive of increased gun regulations. I even attended a march my sophomore year in support of passing stricter gun laws and could not fathom why regular people would need to be in possession of a weapon that was designed to be able to rapidly kill multiple people.

At this point in my life I had never even held a gun or seen one used live and my exposure had primarily occurred online or viewing hunting rifles hung up in people’s garages. It wasn’t until sophomore year of college that I finally had my first experience shooting a gun at a skeet shooting range with my friends just outside of D.C. This was a very positive and exciting trip and it showed me that recreational gun use in a controlled environment could not only be fun, but safe. This altered my view of gun usage and made me see the sport-like nature this activity held and why people may be drawn to using guns.

This past Spring around the time of registration, I was introduced to the existence of the Sociology of Guns class and was instantly intrigued. I heard that the class included a trip to a gun range and thought that sounded really cool and a great way to apply actual experience to our classroom discussions and curriculum. I also felt that it was important for me to expand my education surrounding guns and gun legislation in order to have a more informed opinion and judgment about them. I think the controversy around the upholding and protection of the second amendment is very interesting and I want to engage in conversations about it with actual grounded knowledge and understanding.

At the gun range on Tuesday I felt myself already building upon this understanding simply by identifying the differences in appearance and feeling between the various guns we tried.

I was certainly a little nervous and hesitant to go first and felt the weight of holding an object that could easily kill someone. Just as with driving a car, some intrusive thoughts entered my mind, playing out a scenario of what would happen if someone just decided to turn around and point it at one of our classmates. This was daunting and intimidating, particularly once I felt for myself how easily it was to fire the 9mm.

On the other hand, the sporty side of me was drawn to the game of accuracy and attempting to hit the targets to the best of my ability. I was also surprised by the weight and recoil distinct to each gun and the adjustments that had to be made in order to improve my form.

I left the range with an internal giddiness, adrenaline, and desire to share my experience with family and friends all evening! Despite my continued belief in increasing gun control and regulations, I also have an enhanced appreciation for shooting as a recreational sport and my general distaste for guns overall is dimmed each time I have used one. I am excited to continue to learn more about them in this class and greatly value the hands-on experience we got to have at the range.

By Stella Ross

Growing up in a state where the Second Amendment is deeply valued, I was constantly surrounded by guns throughout my youth. When I was 10, my father taught me how to shoot a .22 caliber pistol on my grandfather’s farm in rural Alabama. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that Alabama had one of the highest gun-related death rates in the country, with 26.4 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021 (Gramlich 2023:1). At that age, I lacked the awareness and maturity to grasp the significance of these statistics surrounding gun-related deaths.

I didn’t choose to learn how to shoot out of curiosity or desire. My father insisted that my brother and I master loading and firing a weapon before leaving home. I vividly recall the fear that gripped me as I held a gun for the first time, let alone fired it. My dad drilled into us the critical safety measures—never aim at anything you don’t intend to shoot, always assume the gun is loaded, and keep the firearm pointed down range. He made it clear that the real danger lies not in the weapon itself but in the person wielding it. He emphasized that a gun is just an object. Its potential harm depends entirely on how it’s used. Safety was of the utmost importance in his teaching of how to handle a firearm. Reluctantly, I squeezed the trigger, and to my surprise, I thought, “That was much easier to fire than I expected.”

It wasn’t until my first year of high school that I became acutely aware of the pervasive presence of firearms not only in my hometown and state but across the nation. As I began to engage more deeply with politics and public policy, the phrase “gun control” echoed repeatedly in the discussions surrounding firearms. I found myself reading about mass shootings in the United States, often carried out with semi-automatic weapons. The weapons used in these mass shootings are quite similar to one of the guns that we had used at the range just last Tuesday.

Before Tuesday’s field trip to the gun range, I had only fired smaller handguns, such as a .22 caliber gun. While I grew up around guns, I still get anxious when being near one and even firing one. I was not surprised at all shooting the .22 or the 9-millimeter handgun, as I have fired those weapons before, even if it has been a few years. Once I began shooting the handguns and remembering the feeling of holding and firing one, I even started having fun watching as the bullet hit the target. The same thought came to mind as I fired these weapons: “Wow, that is so easy to fire.”

I felt the most apprehensive about firing the AR-15-style rifle, knowing its notorious association with mass shootings. This connection intensified my anxiety, even if it seemed irrational. As I prepared to fire it for the first time, I heard my father’s words echo: “It’s not the gun that’s inherently bad. The person behind it and how it’s used makes it so.” The controlled and safe environment of the range helped ease my nerves after the first shot. I found myself enjoying the experience of shooting the semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle, yet a sense of unease persisted as I handled such a powerful and potentially dangerous weapon.

While waiting my turn to shoot, I overheard my classmate Avery express her nervousness about firing the gun at Dr. Yamane. Dr. Yamane responded: “You should be; this is a dangerous weapon.” This moment on the range became a pivotal learning experience, reinforcing my understanding of firearms. Guns are not inherently bad, but they must always be handled with extreme care and used in controlled environments where the risk of harm is minimized.

Although accidents can occur, most gun-related deaths result from misuse or when firearms fall into the hands of individuals struggling with mental illness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides, while 43% were homicides (Gramlich 2023:1). These statistics are alarmingly high and raise profound questions about the underlying causes of gun-related deaths in the United States.

As I eagerly begin this course, I am aiming to learn more about guns themselves and, more importantly, the sociology behind using and owning guns. In our political climate today, the idea of gun control is a hot-button topic on the minds of many across the United States. I hope this course will build my understanding of the sociological perspective behind the use of guns to make me a more informed citizen on this critical issue.

Bibliography

Gramlich, John. 2023. “What the Data Says about Gun Deaths in the U.S.” Pew Research Center. Retrieved August 31, 2024 (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/).

Today is launch day for the book so I thought I would reprint the News Service’s Q&A to familiar new folks with my work.

By Kim McGrath

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2023, 72% of U.S. gun owners say protection is a major reason they own a gun. That far surpasses the number of gun owners who cite other reasons including hunting and sport shooting.

Wake Forest University Professor of Sociology David Yamane, an internationally recognized authority on gun ownership in the United States, offers insights about the nearly 100 million American civilians who own firearms. 

His most recent book, “Gun Curious” will be released June 1. Other works include: “Concealed Carry Revolution: Liberalizing the Right to Bear Arms in America,” and the Gun Culture 2.0 blog.

How did guns become such an important part of American culture?

In the early history of the American nation, when the first colonists arrived at Jamestown in 1607 and Plymouth Rock in 1620, firearms were practical tools. But as the U.S. developed, so too did American gun culture. 

In the middle of the 19th century, gun culture took on new emphases, notably hunting as a sport, formalized recreational shooting, and various types of gun collecting. Hunting, target shooting, and collecting continue to be vital aspects of U.S. gun culture today. 

In the 20th century, gun culture shifted from recreational and leisure pastimes to armed self-defense. The social unrest and global uncertainty of the 1960s and 1970s planted the seeds for another shift in gun culture. These seeds sprouted in the 1980s and 1990s with the concealed carry revolution and have been blooming ever since. 

Today, self-defense is the core of American gun culture, even as that culture remains diverse in terms of what people do with and how people think about their firearms.

Who owns guns in the U.S.? 

The statistically average gun owner in America has long been seen as a politically and religiously conservative, middle-aged, heterosexual, white cisgender man from the rural South. The problem with averages, though, is that they mask underlying complexity. Gun owners have always been diverse in the United States, with strong traditions of female and Black gun ownership. Gun owners are also politically and religiously diverse. The relationship between gun ownership and religious belief, belonging, and behavior defies simple description.

Above and beyond diversity among gun owners and the reasons for owning guns, it is important to recognize that guns and gun ownership are common, widespread, and not inherently associated with deviance or abnormalities.

According to  Pew Research Center data, a majority of the population currently lives with a gun in their house or has in the past (66%). Just one-third of adults in the U.S. do not own a gun and cannot see themselves owning one in the future.

Political divisions over firearms notwithstanding, guns are normal for a majority of Americans.

Is gun ownership growing?

There has been an uptick in the number of new gun owners in recent years. By one account, 7.5 million American adults became new gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021. 

Many different kinds of people will respond to a universal concern for safety by purchasing firearms. This was nowhere more evident than during the Great Gun Buying Spree of 2020. Amid social uncertainty and social unrest, it makes sense that a broad swath of the American population would respond by buying guns, including many new gun owners from non-traditional backgrounds. Many of these new gun buyers were already considering gun ownership and motivated by circumstances to get off the fence. 

Compared to existing gun owners, new gun owners tend to be younger, more female, more Black and Hispanic, more urban, more likely to have children, and less likely to have ever been married. These new gun owners represent an important part of the future of American gun culture.

Why is it so difficult to reduce gun violence, including mass shootings, in the U.S.?

There are two challenges in addressing gun violence. First, gun violence is what social scientists call a “wicked problem.” It is a problem that resists simple solutions, and solutions applied often have unintended consequences. There are no easy or, even worse, “common sense” solutions to gun violence.

Second, gun violence is not one thing but many, so is easily misunderstood. Are we talking about criminal homicide and gun injury? Are we talking about suicides? Do we consider accidental injuries and deaths to be gun violence? Are mass shootings properly understood as gun violence or are they acts of terrorism? Different kinds of injury, death and terrorism committed with firearms require different approaches to reduce them.

Gun violence, like all human violence, is socially organized. Homicide, for example, is a health disparity; it is extremely concentrated demographically and geographically in the U.S. Even within neighborhoods, crime runs through particular social networks and concentrates on particular city blocks.

A concentrated problem requires focused responses that address economic and social challenges. Here are two examples.

• CeaseFire programs. These programs target high-risk individuals with swift, severe, and certain punishment, but also offer social services as alternatives to engaging in violent behavior (e.g., job training, mentoring, anger management). They also harness community leaders, such as clergy, to act as a moral voice to dissuade negative and encourage positive behavior.
• Violence interruption programs. These treat violence as a contagious disease that is passed from person to person through networks and seek to disrupt the disease cycle by breaking the links. For example, hospital-based violence intervention programs use credible messengers to intervene with individuals who are hospitalized due to gun violence. They address the trauma of violence and its structural underpinnings by providing social services like mental health counseling, legal assistance, mentoring, job placement, educational opportunities, and housing assistance to “inoculate” victim offenders from future violence.

For suicide and mass shootings the underlying point is the same. These are complex problems that defy simple solutions. But there are ways to address them. Unfortunately, reducing these negative outcomes with firearms requires incremental approaches that don’t win political points and require considerable social investments that we, as a society, are not yet willing to make.

How can we bridge the divide when discussing guns? 

Guns have become a political wedge issue that impedes progress toward recognizing gun owner rights and simultaneously seeking to reduce negative outcomes with guns. 

However, we can lower the heat. The keys to having better conversations are to seek commonalities, embrace empathy and see people as fellow citizens. One of the beauties and challenges of living in a pluralistic democracy of more than 300 million diverse citizens is learning to disagree respectfully.

Will guns be a significant issue in the upcoming election?

The 2024 presidential race will be decided by a very small number of people – mostly suburban white women – in swing states. Guns are unlikely to be a decisive issue for this group in whether to vote for Trump or Biden in comparison to issues like the economy, immigration and reproductive rights.

When did ‘Gun Violence’ become a common term? I find it curious that other forms of violence we talk about are not associated with the weapon like ‘Domestic Violence’, ‘Intimate Partner Violence’, ‘Gang Violence’…

Although it hardly constitutes lexical research, I like using the Google Ngram Viewer to get an initial sense of how the use of particular phrases has changed over time. Ngram searches Google’s database of books up to 2019. I’ve used it to look at “concealed carry” and “gun culture” previously.

Much like the phrase “mass shooting” belongs to the 21st century, it appears “gun violence” really emerged in the 1980s. There is an initial burst during the crack era crime increase (1980-1986), but the dramatic rise in gun-related crimes also likely had a lagged effect on the rise of public health scholarship on “gun violence.”

To wit: Kellermann and Reay published their case-control study of gunshot deaths in King County, Washington, in 1986, and in 1992 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) deepened its commitment to studying gun violence.

Zooming in just to look at the period from 1975-2019, we see some fluctuation in use of the phrase “gun violence” from its initial peak in the late 1990s. This perhaps reflects some regression to the mean or concern with other social issues like the Dot-com bubble bursting and 9/11.

We then observe steady growth from 2007 forward. This highlights the connection between mass public shootings — especially school shootings — and interest in “gun violence.”

This goes back to the late 1980s and early 1990s. The 1989 Stockton schoolyard and 1993 California Street shootings were precursors to the 1994 Assault Weapon ban. This connection is also evidenced in the peak in interest in “gun violence” in 1999 (Columbine) and the accelerated increase from 2007 (Virginia Tech) forward.

We can see this connection even more clearly if we use Google Trends, which highlights what terms are trending on Google Search, Google News, and YouTube. I’ve used it before to look at “concealed carry” over time.

Three major peaks in the topic “gun violence” are December 2012 (Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre), February 2018 (Parkland High School massacre), and May 2022 (Robb Elementary School massacre).

Clearly, trends in the use of the phrase “gun violence” are not perfectly correlated with underlying levels of gun violence, though interest in the phrase seems related to dramatic moments of public mass violence.

The steady rise in interest in “gun violence” from Sandy Hook forward is evidence that there has been some concerted effort to focus our attention on the issue. This is not surprising because sociologists who study social problems have long observed that CONDITIONS exist while PROBLEMS are constructed. Social problems like “gun violence” are constructed through complex social processes that typically involve concerted efforts (i.e., social movements). The rebranding of the gun control movement as the “gun violence prevention” movement is part of this process.

The social construction of “gun violence” as a social problem by public health scholars and activists seems clearly reflected in these data.

I was trying to figure out when the first mass shooting with an AR-15 occurred. After some failed Google searches, I decided to go to Google’s Bard generative artificial intelligence (AI) experimental tool.

The answers I received from Bard were factually incorrect, but in a very telling way.

I first asked, “What was the first mass shooting in American [sic.] in which the perpetrator used an AR-15 rifle.” Answer: The University of Texas tower shooter in 1966. Incorrect.

I tried to help Bard out by asking a more specific question about the Texas tower shooting, and Bard correctly answered that the shooter did not use an AR-15, but then suggested he could not have used an AR-15 because it wasn’t invented until 7 years after the shooting. Incorrect, obviously, but maybe also suggestive of where Bard’s “mind” is — he probably have used an AR-15 if it had been invented?

Google’s Bard frequently generates more than one response to prompts. In this case, the second response to my initial prompt was worse than the first. It identified the Cleveland Elementary School (Stockton, California) shooter not only as using an AR-15 but as using a Bushmaster AR-15 specifically. Incorrect on both counts, though the second paragraph of Bard’s response again hints at where its “mind” is. Bard draws on some common gun control talking points like the AR-15 being the “weapon of choice” for mass shooters.

I tried to help Bard out by asking more specific questions about the Stockton school shooting and the AR-15. Bard was quite confident in its incorrect response.

Wanting badly to lead Bard to the correct answer, I asked if the shooter used an AK-47. No. “He used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.”

Maybe he used a Norinco Type 56S? No. Bard correctly identified the Norinco as a Chinese-made AK-47, but still insisted that the shooter “used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.”

Sorry, Bushmaster, your AR-15 rifle has become so identified with mass shootings that generative artificial intelligence chatbots like Google Bard are being fed bad information.

But the AR-15 has also become so identified in mass shootings that actual human beings also shade the truth, including the authors of The True Story of the AR-15.*

(*Perhaps. I have not had the opportunity to fully fact-check this story, but what I have read leads me to believe they shaded the truth in the case discussed below.)

With both Google and Google’s Bard AI failing me on the question of the first mass shooter to use an AR-15, I turned to McWhirter and Elinson’s American Gun. There I learned that the first mass shooting of U.S. civilians with an AR-15 was outside a nightclub in Klamath Falls, Oregon ion 1977 (p. 161). This was just what I was looking for.

But I read on and also learned that the second mass shooting was in June 1980 at First Baptist Church in Daingerfield, Texas. The shooter “carried an AR-15 and several other weapons. [He] opened fire, then shouted to the 350 people in attendance, ‘This is war,’ and started firing again.” In the end, he had killed five people (p. 162).

Reading more about this case for my long-delayed project on congregational security, I came across an interesting story published in March 1983 in Texas Monthly. The story’s author recounted some details of the event that McWhirter and Elinson left out.

The Dainigerfield church shooter, according to Texas Monthly, had with him a .38-caliber revolver, a .22-caliber pistol, an AR-15, and an M-1 carbine (designed in 1941).

Wielding the carbine, with the AR-15 slung over his shoulder, the left-handed gunman had either kicked the doors open or used the rifle to slam them inward. He charged through the vestibule, took one step inside the sanctuary, and bellowed, “This is war!” Then, swinging the carbine’s muzzle to his right, he methodically opened fire. 

Jan Ried, “Blood of the Lamb,” March 1983

He killed three victims with the M-1 carbine.

The shooter was then confronted by congregants, losing hold of his rifles, and tacked by Red McDaniel.

Still, he had enough strength to shove the .38 revolver hard into Red McDaniel’s middle and jerk the trigger till he was dead. As the man tried to rise, Kenneth Truitt made a dive for him, hit his shoulder, and rolled off. The gunman extended the .38 and fatally wounded Truitt.

He killed the other two victims with a .38 revolver.

But he was carrying an AR-15.

By Aimee Lents

Before visiting the gun range last Wednesday, I had never before been within five feet of a real unholstered gun, much less touched and shot a loaded gun.  Though my father enjoys shooting at ranges, I had never asked to accompany him, nor had he ever invited me to go with him.  This was due perhaps to a stereotyping on both of our parts: he thought that his liberal daughter had no interest in shooting guns, and I was afraid of condescension from people I thought would dominate the gun ranges; i.e., the likes of my conservative, white father.  Despite this, however, I found the field trip to be very enjoyable and informative, and though I was a little nervous leading up to the trip, I felt safe the entire time at the range.

As mentioned, I previously had no real-life experience with guns.  Although I knew that pulling the trigger led to the explosive release of the ammunition, I had never had any particular interest in the mechanics or physics of guns and their firing.  For this reason, I was surprised that smaller handguns had more recoil than the larger semi-automatic rifle.  From what I have seen by watching film and television, cops seem to barely react from firing their handguns, while the rifles of military snipers look to abruptly kick back into the shooters’ chests. 

The pistols were a good introduction to shooting for the first time, though I thought the AR-15 was the easiest to aim with, given its red dot sight.

Nonetheless, this trip occurred a mere two days after the shooting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  While holding and firing the 9mm handgun, I was well aware that this exact type of weapon (though admittedly a very common one) was used to kill the UNC professor last Monday. 

Semi-automatic rifles, like the AR-15, have also been used in many mass shootings.  And yet, because I have been privileged/lucky enough so far in life to live rather unscathed by violence-related trauma and/or tragedies, this knowledge was rather abstract. Similar to the way that I am distantly aware of fatal vehicular accidents every time I drive. Of course, the vast majority of times one enters a car, their subsequent passage will be safe and uneventful, just as many people use guns safely and in an unremarkable manner.  As a society, we have laws against driving while under the influence in some attempt to preserve life when we can, but we endure a base level of deaths to keep speed limits as high as they are.  While vehicular safety and traffic laws are complicated issues, we have ultimately accepted that driving fast is worth a certain amount of deaths. 

I do not believe in banning guns any more than I care for a ban on alcohol, which clearly did not go well.  But this still begs the question: what then, if any, is the acceptable number of gun-related deaths?

In honor of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America, I am keeping my eyes open for clues about America’s gun cultures as Sandy and I travel from our home in North Carolina to Yellowstone National Park and back. My inaugural post on this series can be found here.

From Cody, Wyoming, Sandy and I had a long drive to Custer, South Dakota for days 17 and 18 of our trip. We were in the area to visit Wind Cave National Park. No major gun cultures seen at this stop, but on day 19 we made our way to Badlands National Park via the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Although not the most direct route between Custer and Interior, South Dakota, we went this way to check out the Red Cloud Indian Art Show at the Maȟpíya Lútaand Heritage Center also witness the brutal poverty on the reservation for ourselves. Both were incredible.

But most importantly, we wanted to visit the site of the December 29, 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.

Following the Uvalde massacre in 2022, I was interviewed by CNN’s John Avlon for his show “Reality Check.” The episode was on guns and gun control in America. As I discussed on my “Light Over Heat” YouTube channel, Avlon asked me a question if there were examples of large-scale civilian disarmament by the U.S. government. I answered truthfully, “I don’t know.”

Some people suggested to me as an example the massacre at Wounded Knee, because the shooting took place while the U.S. Army’s 7th Calvary was in the process of disarming the Lakota people they had detained.

For example, the website ammo.com published an article (and related podcast) on “The Wounded Knee Massacre: The Forgotten History of the Native American Gun Confiscation.” The author says, “When we look at the issues surrounding gun confiscation, Wounded Knee gives us an example of the devastation that an unarmed people can experience at the hands of their own government.”

Although it is an interesting retelling of the events from the perspective of gun rights, I don’t think it quite fits the case of civilian disarmament by the U.S. government, because the Lakota did not have standing as U.S. citizens. The U.S. government was not “their own government.” To the contrary, Wounded Knee is best understood as part of the ongoing “Indian Wars” in which the Lakota were seen as foreign enemy combatants.

An interesting treatment of the complex events leading up to and following the massacre is William S.E. Coleman’s Voices of Wounded Knee, which I bought at the Badlands National Park Visitor Center store. Coleman strings together various first-person accounts of the events into a single narrative in a surprisingly readable (and troubling) volume.

Another gun culture take on the Massacre at Wounded Knee is by Karl Kasarda on his InRangeTV channel. He characterizes the event as “The Worst Mass Shooting Event in U.S. History.”

Again, the fact that the massacre was perpetrated by the U.S. government in the context of what was essentially a war being fought against the Lakota people makes the categorization of the event as a “mass shooting” a bit off for me, given our contemporary understandings of mass shootings.

But there can be no doubt that the number killed by U.S. Army soldiers using four 42mm M1875 Hotchkiss mountain guns and other firearms was large and included women and children, some of whom were found miles from the original encampment. Estimates vary, but I feel safe saying 250 to 300 or more, especially if U.S. Army casualties from friendly fire are included.

After chatting with a Lakota grandmother and her grandson about life on the reservation today, I did not have the heart to walk up to the mass grave site up the hill from the Massacre at Wounded Knee sign (but Phil Konstantin (Cherokee Phil) did on his Travels With Phil YouTube channel).

There are certainly lessons about the role of guns in American history to be learned from Wounded Knee, but I don’t think civilian disarmament or mass shootings are the best lessons.

Thanks for reading beyond the headline. If you appreciate this or some of the other 1000+ posts on this blog, please consider supporting my research and writing on American gun culture by liking and sharing my work.

I am Asian-American (half Japanese-American on my father’s side) and grew up in Half Moon Bay, California. The coincidence of this with the mass murder of 7 people in Half Moon Bay by an Asian man led to a conversation recently with Randy Miyan on the Liberal Gun Owners podcast.

My appearance was broken into two separate segments (S2G35 and S2G36) and followed two segments with fellow half-Japanese-American (but also half-Chinese American) Chris Cheng (S2G33 and S2G34).

Although I am not an expert in mass violence, I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on issues that hit very close to home and do so from a very personal perspective at times.

Of course, I typically turn to statistics before getting personal on these issues. The following is the documentation for some of the empirical claims I make during these episodes.

I first observe that the Half Moon Bay shooter was not a U.S. citizen. I mention this only because a 2019 Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans believe immigrants are making the crime situation worse in America. This is perhaps not surprising given political rhetoric that some immigrants are “bad hombres” and “animals” and come from “shithole countries.”

But according to a scholar from the (libertarian not librul) CATO Institute, illegal immigrants (in Texas) have a 45% lower criminal conviction rate than native-born American citizens and legal immigrants have a 62% lower rate. This holds across all types of crime from violent to property-related.

So, the citizenship status of the mass murderer in Half Moon Bay (and, I could add, in Monterey Park, California where the shooter was a naturalized U.S. citizen) does not seem to me to be part of the story.

What about the fact that both the Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park murderers were Asian men?

The fact that they were men almost goes without saying. The vast majority of mass shooters are men, as are mass murderers more generally.

What about the fact that they were both Asian? This, I think, is more interesting. We know that Asians are about 6% of the U.S. population but commit disproportionately fewer murders. In 2019, for example, only 1.0% of those charged with murder or nonnegligent manslaughter in the U.S. were Asian.

But study after study shows that the proportion of MASS murderers who are Asian is closer to their share of the U.S. population, and perhaps even greater than their share. That is, Asians may be overrepresented among “mass shooters” and “mass murderers” in the U.S. This holds across datasets that cover different time periods and have different definitions of “mass shooting” or “mass murder.”

The table above appears in “US Mass public shootings since Columbine: victims per incident by race and ethnicity of the perpetrator” (Preventative Medicine).

9 percent of mass public shooters in The Violence Project database for 1999-2021 are Asian, more than we would expect based on their population proportion, and much more than we would expect based on the overall Asian murder rate.

The table above, produced by Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy, uses the Mother Jones magazine database of 121 mass shootings from 1982 to 2021. He also finds Asian mass shooters to be overrepresented relative to their population proportion.

Using a database of 308 mass murders from 2006-2014, criminologist Adam Lankford again finds the proportion of mass murderers who are Asian to be close to their population proportion, or perhaps slightly overrepresented at 6.3%. Notably, Lankford highlights that Asians are significantly overrepresented among mass murders compared to their proportion of everyday murders (1.5%, z = 6.00***).

Of course, not all mass murders are the same. Indeed, one prominent definition of “mass shooting” highlights their commission in public places (hence “mass public shooting”) and excludes those committed in the context of robbery, gang violence, or conventionally motivated crime (used by Mother Jones magazine and The Violence Project).

This is significant because, as Adam Lankford shows, there are racial differences in mass murder by attack type. Asians (and Whites) disproportionately commit family and public killings, while Black and Latino mass murders are more likely to be in the context of robbery/burglary.

The table above also highlights two other significant findings concerning Asian mass murder. First, Asian mass murders have the highest average body count (6.88, F = 4.57***). Second, Asian mass murderers are most likely to be killed (i.e., commit suicide either directly or by cop) in the commission of their crime (63% vs. 44% for Whites, 38% for Latinos, and 15% for Blacks).

These additional facts highlight the need for nuance in understanding mass murder cross-racially, a nuance that Randy Miyan and I try to emphasize in these podcast episodes.

Even as we try to find patterns and explanations, it’s also important to recognize that Asian mass murder is extremely uncommon. The Preventative Medicine study mentioned above includes 9 total cases of Asian mass shooters over a 22-year period (0.4 cases per year using The Violence Project data). Eugene Volokh’s analysis includes 8 total cases over a 40-year period (0.2 cases per year using Mother Jones data). And Adam Lankford’s data includes 15 total cases of Asian mass murderers in an 8-year period (1.875 cases per year).

My appearance was broken into two separate segments (S2G35 and S2G36) and followed two segments with fellow half-Japanese-American (but also half-Chinese American) Chris Cheng (S2G33 and S2G34).

Although I am not an expert in mass violence, I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on issues that hit very close to home and do so from a very personal perspective at times.

Of course, I typically turn to statistics before getting personal on these issues. The following is the documentation for some of the empirical claims I make during these episodes.

I first observe that the Half Moon Bay shooter was not a U.S. citizen. I mention this only because a 2019 Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans believe immigrants are making the crime situation worse in America. This is perhaps not surprising given political rhetoric that some immigrants are “bad hombres” and “animals” and come from “shithole countries.”

But according to a scholar from the (libertarian not librul) CATO Institute, illegal immigrants (in Texas) have a 45% lower criminal conviction rate than native-born American citizens and legal immigrants have a 62% lower rate. This holds across all types of crime from violent to property-related.

So, the citizenship status of the mass murderer in Half Moon Bay (and, I could add, in Monterey Park, California where the shooter was a naturalized U.S. citizen) does not seem to me to be part of the story.

What about the fact that both the Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park murderers were Asian men?

The fact that they were men almost goes without saying. The vast majority of mass shooters are men, as are mass murderers more generally.

What about the fact that they were both Asian? This, I think, is more interesting. We know that Asians are about 6% of the U.S. population but commit disproportionately fewer murders. In 2019, for example, only 1.0% of those charged with murder or nonnegligent manslaughter in the U.S. were Asian.

But study after study shows that the proportion of MASS murderers who are Asian is closer to their share of the U.S. population, and perhaps even greater than their share. That is, Asians may be overrepresented among “mass shooters” and “mass murderers” in the U.S. This holds across datasets that cover different time periods and have different definitions of “mass shooting” or “mass murder.”

The table above appears in “US Mass public shootings since Columbine: victims per incident by race and ethnicity of the perpetrator” (Preventative Medicine).

9 percent of mass public shooters in The Violence Project database for 1999-2021 are Asian, more than we would expect based on their population proportion, and much more than we would expect based on the overall Asian murder rate.

The table above, produced by Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy, uses the Mother Jones magazine database of 121 mass shootings from 1982 to 2021. He also finds Asian mass shooters to be overrepresented relative to their population proportion.

Using a database of 308 mass murders from 2006-2014, criminologist Adam Lankford again finds the proportion of mass murderers who are Asian to be close to their population proportion, or perhaps slightly overrepresented at 6.3%. Notably, Lankford highlights that Asians are significantly overrepresented among mass murders compared to their proportion of everyday murders (1.5%, z = 6.00***).

Of course, not all mass murders are the same. Indeed, one prominent definition of “mass shooting” highlights their commission in public places (hence “mass public shooting”) and excludes those committed in the context of robbery, gang violence, or conventionally motivated crime (used by Mother Jones magazine and The Violence Project).

This is significant because, as Adam Lankford shows, there are racial differences in mass murder by attack type. Asians (and Whites) disproportionately commit family and public killings, while Black and Latino mass murders are more likely to be in the context of robbery/burglary.

The table above also highlights two other significant findings concerning Asian mass murder. First, Asian mass murders have the highest average body count (6.88, F = 4.57***). Second, Asian mass murderers are most likely to be killed (i.e., commit suicide either directly or by cop) in the commission of their crime (63% vs. 44% for Whites, 38% for Latinos, and 15% for Blacks).

These additional facts highlight the need for nuance in understanding mass murder cross-racially, a nuance that Randy Miyan and I try to emphasize in these podcast episodes.

Even as we try to find patterns and explanations, it’s also important to recognize that Asian mass murder is extremely uncommon. The Preventative Medicine study mentioned above includes 9 total cases of Asian mass shooters over a 22-year period (0.4 cases per year using The Violence Project data). Eugene Volokh’s analysis includes 8 total cases over a 40-year period (0.2 cases per year using Mother Jones data). And Adam Lankford’s data includes 15 total cases of Asian mass murderers in an 8-year period (1.875 cases per year).

Although this is frustrating, I also had a number of experiences last year (2022) that convinced me of the possibility and importance of bringing “light over heat” to the issue of guns. I will post about each of these in turn.

Last fall I was invited to serve as a panelist for a discussion of gun violence organized by Deseret News as part of their “Elevate” initiative. The panel was held in conjunction with the publication of a symposium in Desert Magazine on “How to stop the next mass shooting” (which also looked at the issue of gun violence more broadly).

Of note was the diversity of the panel and the audience at the University of Utah’s Thomas S. Monson Center in Salt Lake City. I represented sociology on the panel, Abigail Vegter from Berry College is a political scientist, and Gary Kleck is a well-known criminologist at Florida State. We were joined by Amy Swearer, a legal fellow with the Heritage Foundation, and Ari Davis from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Audience members included gun rights and gun control activists, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the Mayor of Salt Lake City Mayor and the city’s Police Chief.

What made this event special, beyond the diversity of opinions represented, was that it was structured to begin not with our differences but with what we held in common. None of the panelists or audience members, regardless of their differing views on guns and gun control, were pro-mass shooting or pro-criminal violence.

Although that starting point does not (and should not) mechanically lead to agreement in the end, it fundamentally changed the nature of the conversation we were having. And in a breakout session among the audience, each table was able to find points of agreement in terms of actions that could address the issue of gun violence while respecting the rights of gun owners.

I was pleased that the Deseret News article covering the event began with my point that “guns are normal and normal people use guns.” I was also quoted as saying,

“The more we just focus on mass shootings, the more we’re going to get stalled out. But if we think about why we’re concerned about mass shootings and we leverage that to address broader concerns, and then within that, recognizing that there are legitimate cultural differences in the way people understand guns.”

Another aspect of the event that I thought was very important structurally was that it was held face-to-face. Something I have been thinking about more and more recently, so more on that in my next post.