Curiosity raises its ugly head

Weapons of choice

As a graduate of Michigan State University’s psychology program who also holds an M.A. degree in psychology from Southern Illinois University, my interest in the recent mass shooting on the MSU campus once again piqued my curiosity as to some circumstances surrounding mass shootings.

It’s not so much that I wonder about motives for the shootings, for sometimes there may be no motive; at times, a breakdown in mental health seems to drive the violence. And the killings due to revenge or other anger-producing circumstances are understandable, in an academic sort of way.

But thinking beyond the question of motive, why does a would-be assailant choose one or more firearms to complete the action? Is it because firearms combine effectiveness with distance from the targets? Is it ease of access to firearms? Is it lack of imagination? Is it merely imitation of other assailants?

Or is it maybe a little of each? For those who choose to kill themselves after their initial violence, we’ll most likely never know why guns were the weapons of choice. Experts on violence have noted a variety of reasons why firearms, and especially semiautomatic weapons, are chosen.

For example, James Densley, co-founder and president of the Violence Project, told USA Today in July 2022, shortly after the mass shooting in Chicago’s Highland Park suburb, that since the 10-year Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, semiautomatic weapons are cheaper, more available and more aggressively marketed. Their lethal efficiency and easy reloading could be part of the appeal to mass shooters.

Later in the USA Today article, reporter Ashley R. Williams noted, “Handguns have overwhelmingly been the weapon used by perpetrators since the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium began tracking mass shootings within the past 50 or so years.”

Further, Williams quotes the interim executive director of the consortium, Jaclyn Schildkraut, as saying that over the past five decades, handguns were typically used 3-to-1 in mass shootings.

Wait. Did Densley say semiautomatic weapons have been more aggressively marketed since 2004? Yes, he did. Could that really be part of the problem?

Not to trample on a manufacturer’s or retailer’s First Amendment right to advertise, but should society, as a whole, be thinking about the social effects of certain free speech? Oh my, where does that ideological thought lead?

No, we had better not think about it, let alone act on it. Such action would lead down too many rabbit holes. Instead, let’s be happy that only fewer than 70 people have died in mass shootings so far this year.

Guess I’d best forget to be curious.