Another shooting in Florida

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

The prohibition argument fails on all levels because what is demanded is not a prohibition but common sense regulation. The same way alcohol, drugs, vehicles, and so on are regulated as well.

Indeed. And I don't even know why it's getting brought up. That's why the NRA cannot be trusted.

Right now, the laws we have aren't even being enforced, and if we can't even agree that crazy people shouldn't have guns, we're fucked. Well, probably are.

[mangamuscle]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

Actually it doesn't do that at all. The so called "good guy with a gun" in regards to the 2nd amendment would be private citizens in this context. It doesn't apply to the police.

If anything that just shows that putting absolute faith in the government to save lives is not that great of an idea as they have repeatedly failed to do their job at all levels in this case.

In reality, a private citizen gave their life to save lives. The agent of the government that was supposed to protect people did shit. So....

Again, let me point to the elephant in the room. Trigger happy teenager is on a rampage with a firearm with a 600 yards range. Law enforcement is on the scene with a handgun with less than 50 yards range. Call me a coward, but I would have done the same, you can't run in plain daylight 550 yards with your clearly recognizable police uniform faster than the the time he requires to see you and pull the trigger. Yeah, you would get an heroic death, but receiving a bullet would only have increased the death count.

So the question is, will average patrol police get assault rifles? I can bet they will not.

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by mangamuscle

Again, let me point to the elephant in the room. Trigger happy teenager is on a rampage with a firearm with a 600 yards range. Law enforcement is on the scene with a handgun with less than 50 yards range. Call me a coward, but I would have done the same, you can't run in plain daylight 550 yards with your clearly recognizable police uniform faster than the the time he requires to see you and pull the trigger. Yeah, you would get an heroic death, but receiving a bullet would only have increased the death count.

So the question is, will average patrol police get assault rifles? I can bet they will not.

Well, that's why you and I aren't police.

I mean, I don't blame the man either... and no police probably shouldn't get assault rifles either. But that's another story.

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by Solace

The ACA was a conservative idea that was formulated in the 90's as a response to Hillary's attempts to create a universal health care system. The argument was that the market should have a chance to fix itself. Romney implemented a version of the ACA when he was governor, and then Obama did so as President. The irony here is that not only did conservatives adamantly oppose it when Obama did it, they acted like it was literal treason which would destroy the fabric of the country. They've now successfully destroyed it. It's crazy.

It was a shit plan to begin with. It was even shittier when Obama proposed it. It was made even worse by removing the public option. It deserves to die. The cultural shift isn't because of the ACA. It's in spite of it. People are tired of the "free market" valuing profits over lives.

I'm glad people are stepping up. But then you get a response like this:

Look this tangent about your qualms with ACA wasn't my point, my point was that it moved the healthcare debate and laws forward and that the same can be true of guns. It might not be what the purist in you desires but it definitely is a step forward. I might be totally wrong, but I find these kids inspirational and they give me a lot of hope about what's to come.

I also like to quote what Jon Lovett said about this but:

Being too cynical and pleasantly surprised is not more sophisticated than being too idealistic and disappointed.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Remember what the American population is based on:

Religious outcasts.
Refuges
Political outsiders.
Misfits.
Prisoners.
Indentured servants
Get rich quick gold seekers.
Merchants.
Slaves
Captured natives
Captured colonials from other powers.
and more refugees over the centuries.


What do you want from us?

Be more like Australians?

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by Solace

So let me get this straight. Not only are you blaming something other than guns, which, no shit, the gun didn't jump in the shooters hand and make him kill 17 people. He had to be in a fucked up mental state to want to shoot. But, you're also claiming that it's impossible to do anything to at least reduce the sheer quantity and ease of getting a gun because people will just do whatever they want anyway.https://forums.animesuki.com/showthr...=150693&page=3

THEN, you propose that we go after another industry, like the Pharma, and you somehow believe that these people will be different and totally comply with the law?

Heh. The logic is astounding. Oh yeah, about that "good guy with a gun" theory of arming public places?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-f...-idUSKCN1G62X3

Turns out sometimes that isn't good enough either. Hrm.

You don't get it do you Solace?
The proverbial cat is already out of the bag.
I posted how you can build "Ghost Guns" that have no serial numbers nor go through an FFL dealer. They are among the most popular AR-15s on the market right now.
I also showed you how people are already not complying and will not comply with bans.
The Sheriffs here in Colorado showed how they know this and support it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/us...n-control.html

The gun control issue is lost in the United States, so spare me the emotional tirade. It does nothing to help this situation.
The root cause of mass shootings in the US is psychotropic drugs, your suggestion about attempting to "...at least reduce the sheer quantity and ease of getting a gun." is the same tired and worn out excuse to push for gun bans that has been around since the 1980s. It is no more effective now that it was after the Brady Bill was passed, which BTW was supposed to do what you just proposed and clearly failed miserably.

As for the Sheriff's deputy that failed to do his duty, I fail to see how this is in anyway a failure of having armed security? It is not, it is a failure of that one cop and the failure of the police department to deal with the very real situation of active shooters.
The New Life Church shooting a few years back illustrated the complete opposite of what the Sheriff did when Jean Assan took down a man armed with a paramilitary AK-47-style rifel using only a hand gun.

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec...ion/na-shoot11

The Arapahoe High School shooting a few years later was stopped by an armed resource officer. There are many other examples of this, so one cop chickening out isn't the typical scenario.

Not only can a mass shooting be stopped by armed security, it has been done. Clearly this deputy in Florida needs to train better.
From your own article:

The armed sheriff’s deputy assigned to the Florida high school where 17 people were shot dead has resigned rather than face suspension after an internal investigation showed he failed to enter the school to confront the gunman during the attack, the county sheriff said on Thursday.

In short he failed to do his duty because he pussed out. He didn't even confront Cruz, whereas in the Texas shooting last year, Devin Kelly was shot and killed by a neighbor using his own AR-15 rifle.

https://nypost.com/2017/11/06/sharps...church-gunman/

That guy was a plumber.

So the idea that these incidents cannot be stopped by armed security is emotionally driven rubbish.
That's why schools all over the country are now getting security armed with AR-15 style rifles and it is long overdue that they do so. In Texas they're actually putting in a substation which is not a bad idea.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/educ...-school-campus

What's really sad is that few gun-prohibitionists know that it was President Bill Clinton who first came up with the idea of armed security/police to protect schools.

https://lidblog.com/armed-guards-sch...-clinton-idea/

From the article:

“In our national struggle against youth violence we must not fail our children; our future depends on it,” the president said in his weekly radio address.

Parents, teens, teachers, youth workers and others will discuss research that indicates the preteen years set patterns for behavior and success in adulthood. Other subjects will include the risks, challenges and anxieties faced by young people today and what can be done to avoid dangerous or risky behavior.

“We need to talk about safety and security in every house in America,” Clinton said.

(…) Clinton also unveiled the $60-million fifth round of funding for “COPS in School,” a Justice Department program that helps pay the costs of placing police officers in schools to help make them safer for students and teachers. The money will be used to provide 452 officers in schools in more than 220 communities.

“Already, it has placed 2,200 officers in more than 1,000 communities across our nation, where they are heightening school safety as well as coaching sports and acting as mentors and mediators for kids in need,” Clinton said.

Now that the popular gun control myths presented here have been taken to task, I'll move on to why taking on Big Pharma is so important.
When you study this issue in depth like I have over the last 30-years, you realize that from Charles Whitman's Dexedrine influenced mass shooting at the Texas Tower on August 1st 1966 (where he killed 14 people and wounded 31 others with a bolt-action rifle, those pesky "assault-bolt-guns" and their high-capacity 5-round integral magazine. https://psychiatricnews.wordpress.co...ower-massacre/), to the recent Devin Kelly attack in Texas (who was on psychiatric drugs and was prohibited from owning a gun, but the USAF failed to inform the FBI so he slipped through the cracks: https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/06/us/de...ect/index.html).
We know (as I stated above) that Steven Paddock was taking Diazepam and was an alcoholic (a very dangerous combination).
This most recent shooter, Cruz was reportedly on antidepressants, so the pattern continues.
RedState did a fine piece on that tragedy and the link to antidepressant drugs:

From the article:

I’m not sure why the prevalence of medication, particularly of SSRIs, is downplayed as relates to these shootings, but it always is. I suspect it’s because people are worried that if mental health medication takes a share of the blame, those meds people rely on might be regulated and harder to come by. And there’s certainly a reason for concern there.

However, just as an observer having never been medicated (which might be why I’m comfortable talking about it), there has been, since the early 80s, an unbelievable growth in the use of SSRIs (antidepressants) in this country, with many children being medicated at a very young age. As far back as 2011, Harvard University was talking about the growth in the use of this class of drug:

23% of women in their 40s and 50s take antidepressants, a higher percentage than any other group (by age or sex)
Women are 2½ times more likely to be taking an antidepressant than men (click here to read a May 2011 article in the Harvard Mental Health Letter about women and depression)
14% of non-Hispanic white people take antidepressants compared with just 4% of non-Hispanic blacks and 3% of Mexican Americans
Less than a third of Americans who are taking a single antidepressants (as opposed to two or more) have seen a mental health professional in the past year
Antidepressant use does not vary by income status.

With the rise in diagnoses of things like ADHD and autism in children, to the point that the CDC has been issuing warnings about overmedicating, it’s a fair bet that many, many of the kids you know take some kind of medication before their brains even finish developing.

https://www.redstate.com/slee/2018/0...eople-florida/

Nearly all of these mass murderes have been on or had just gone off psychiatric drugs. This is just a fact. The other facts that I already illustrated via Global Research's website is that these mass shootings started in the 1960s which was the same time that Big Pharma and the Psychiatric/Psychological community began prescribing psychotropic drugs to patients for minor issues like depression. One only has to look at when the increases in the use of said drugs happened and one can see that this closely corresponds to the spikes in mass shootings starting in the 1980s.

Spoiler for Large image graphic:

Now compare that to the prescription drug market since 1960:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...us-since-1960/

And Whallah!, we have ourselves a winner for one of the primary causes of mass shooters doing what they do.
So yes, I am going to place blame where is belongs.
Guns existed prior to the 1960s and they were more readily available, more deadly (since machine guns were legal), and yet the number of mass shooters paled in comparison to what we have now with far more gun laws, far less access, and far less powerful weaponry.
Only one thing changed, and that was prescription drugs which most of these shooters were on.
It's a no-brainer at this point. The evidence is right in our faces, so why don't we demand that either these drugs not be given for depression or trivial reasons, OR, demand that people taking these drugs be restricted from legally acquiring a weapon.
They could still get one illegally (as I alluded to above), but then the police could act on it if family, friends, or co-workers informed the authorities.

[Solace]

Jesus Christ. I'm not responding to Gish Gallop. You can keep thinking that the problem is drugs and that we need more guns. I'll just sit here waiting for the next school shooting because people like you think the only solution to violence is to be armed to the fucking teeth.

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by Solace

Jesus Christ. I'm not responding to Gish Gallop. You can keep thinking that the problem is drugs and that we need more guns. I'll just sit here waiting for the next school shooting because people like you think the only solution to violence is to be armed to the fucking teeth.

You mean you're not going to respond to the evidence presented.
I didn't bring up a series of different arguments, I focused on one and showed how strong it is.
The root cause of mass shootings in the United States is psychiatric drugs and this is undeniable.
As for another school shooting? Of course there is going to be another shooting in a country where 1 in six people are on a psychiatric drug.

[Solace]

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

You mean you're not going to respond to the evidence presented.
I didn't bring up a series of different arguments, I focused on one and showed how strong it is.
The root cause of mass shootings in the United States is psychiatric drugs and this is undeniable.
As for another school shooting? Of course there is going to be another shooting in a country where 1 in six people are on a psychiatric drug.

Right. I'm not going to respond to each and every one of your points and try and refute them. I'd be here all day.

"The root cause of mass shootings....is undeniable."

And this is why these discussions reach an impasse. You've already decided you are correct and that everyone else is wrong. So what's there to discuss?

[OH&S]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Be more like Australians?

You have no idea how true that is. Really, its the perfect retort.

Only difference of course is the mess of a political landscape that the US is; Australian politics is comparatively simple (read as boring).

[mangamuscle]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

Well, that's why you and I aren't police.

I would say it is more correct to say that neither of us is a hero, a bodyguard or a soldier; those are the kind of people that are expected to take a bullet as part of their daily routine.

BTW, cadet bone spurs has already criticized the deputy for lack of courage:

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/tru.../23/id/845056/

Originally Posted by OH&S

Only difference of course is the mess of a political landscape that the US is; Australian politics is comparatively simple (read as boring).

The irony being of course that the reason the USA politic scene is a mess is due to one australian. If you came to the conclusion I am talking about Robert Murdoch, you are damn right. He created fox news with the only purpose of making a propaganda outlet for his right wing beliefs. Trump was right when he said his base would still support him if he shot somebody in cold blood, what he forgot to mention is that it is because fox news would spin the incident to acquit him of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

BTW, I must mention this:

http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/sinc...le-1202707565/

So now even if you do not have cable and do not live in a big city (or can't stand hannity), you will still hear the propaganda sound bites from the murdoch empire.

Pray that murdoch does not manage to buy cnn from warner (I am not implying cnn does not have bias, but just like george bush nowadays seems a decent president when you compare him to trump, so does cnn when you compare it with foxnews)

As a side comment, the other day I saw a clip from Wait till your father gets home (a cartoon similar to the simpsons from the 70s) and it was chilling to see how the lunatic neighbor would be nowadays your average fox news audience, what was fringe nowadays is mainstream.

[Magin]

I can't/won't answer why this happened (everyone has their one take on it and believes they're right while everyone else is wrong), nor do I have much in the way of an answer of how to stop it, other than by nuking every human so that no humans to kill=no humans can be killed, but they tell me that answer is highly frowned upon. Instead, I come here to pose another thought provoking question: These mass shootings are becoming far too commonplace; I really scare myself by knowing that I can literally just shrug it off and say "eh, there'll be another one in a few months anyways". And yet, I wonder if these actually have a purpose. And that purpose is very simple: nature's new form of population control.

Think about it: we've advanced so far in technology and science that most of what Nature throws at us we're able to fend off, whether it's diseases or natural disasters. And yet I firmly believe that nature must have a population control mechanism for its largest species, which in this case is humans. Granted, China is the anomaly in this case, but the US otherwise has one of the largest populations in the world. Are these shootings becoming more and more commonplace because on some uber-deep level, this is now becoming a form of population control? Sure, the impacts so far haven't really been population-changing, but it does take time for this kind of stuff to get to that scale level

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Magin

And yet, I wonder if these actually have a purpose. And that purpose is very simple: nature's new form of population control.

Don't mock the dead by trying to pretend that this is natural, or God did it, or any other nonsense. Nature is not some supernatural being.

[mangamuscle]

The root cause of mass shootings in the United States is psychiatric drugs and this is undeniable.

Population in the USA:

323.1 million (2016)

Population in europe:

741.4 million (2016)

Mental disorders are not exclusive to any continent, ethnicity or culture. Yet I fail to see twice as many mass shootings in Europe. Sure, there are terrorist attacks done by lone wolfs or cells of terrorist organizations (with a clear political motivation), but very few (here, you can use the fingers of my hand to count them) incidents similar to those seen in the USA. <sarcasm>I wonder what is the difference in the amount of mass shootings between the USA and the EU?</sarcasm>.
-------------------------
I think nothing can top the "the solution to mass shootings is more guns" idea from the NRA.

nuking every human so that no humans to kill=no humans can be killed,

OK, I was wrong. But it will no doubt be turned down by the NRA because then there would be no one to buy guns, so go back to the drawing board.

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by mangamuscle

The root cause of mass shootings in the United States is psychiatric drugs and this is undeniable.

Population in the USA:

323.1 million (2016)

Population in europe:

741.4 million (2016)

Mental disorders are not exclusive to any continent, ethnicity or culture. Yet I fail to see twice as many mass shootings in Europe. Sure, there are terrorist attacks done by lone wolfs or cells of terrorist organizations (with a clear political motivation), but very few (here, you can use the fingers of my hand to count them) incidents similar to those seen in the USA. <sarcasm>I wonder what is the difference in the amount of mass shootings between the USA and the EU?</sarcasm>.

Not sure who told you that line of bullshit but there are NOT twice as many mass shootings in the US than in Europe if we are talking per capita.

https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/co...us-and-europe/

Or are you confusing homicide rates with mass shootings?

https://www.thejacknews.com/law/gun-...s-than-europe/

The US does have twice the homicide rate, but it also has over twice as many gang members which as I said above is the leading cause of homicide in general in the US and is not related to the mass shooting phenomena.

As for the shooting in Florida.
It appears that FOUR of the Deputies failed to respond and defend these children.
So tell me again how the public disarming is going to stop criminals?
Oh yeah, it FUCKING WON'T.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/27523...es-ben-shapiro

[Eisdrache]

1) Mass shooters were using drugs
2) Prescription rates have gone up

1+2 = Drugs are the main cause of mass shootings.

Correlation does not imply causation. More drugs translates into a higher likelihood of drugs being involved in a shooting but using drugs doesn't result in a higher probability of shootings. A study of the American Journal of Public Health showed that less than 5% of the 120'000 gun related killings between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.

Additionally it is dubious to compare countries with a low population to the US. Switzerland and Norway for example have had one (1) mass shooting since 2000 but both rank higher than the US with its fourteen mass shootings in the same period in a capita based statistic.

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

1) Mass shooters were using drugs
2) Prescription rates have gone up

1+2 = Drugs are the main cause of mass shootings.

Correlation does not imply causation. More drugs translates into a higher likelihood of drugs being involved in a shooting but using drugs doesn't result in a higher probability of shootings. A study of the American Journal of Public Health showed that less than 5% of the 120'000 gun related killings between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.

Additionally it is dubious to compare countries with a low population to the US. Switzerland and Norway for example have had one (1) mass shooting since 2000 but both rank higher than the US with its fourteen mass shootings in the same period in a capita based statistic.

You forgot to add that nearly every US mass shooter has been on a psychiatric drug and you are mixing homicide in general with mass shootings.
The causes of homicide are generally gang-related.
I've read the JAMA report on the issue of homicide as well as the Harvard study on the subject of homicide in general.
I agree that for homicide in general psychiatric drugs are not a major factor, however gangs are which is why it is a different issue entirely than mass shootings.
Motive is not the same between them and thus I already said they need to be treated separately because of that.
While there have been 120,000 homicides from 2000 in the US, there have only been 518 deaths from mass shooters starting in 1983 to now. That is 23 deaths per year which is a statistical null when compared to the deaths per year from violent crime related homicides.
If you are interested in solutions to the mass shooter problem you have two choices in the US.
One, defend the soft targets with armed and trained personnel.
Two, go after the root cause by addressing and dealing with the psychiatric drug use issue.
We've tried the gun control angle for 83 years and it has done nothing to stop mass shootings.
Even as homicide and violent crime in general have decreased in the US, mass shooting events have increased.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.d8d203173e45

So there's no need to discuss homicide in general since that is outside the scope of the mass shooting phenomena.

It's dubious to compare the US with Europe period as our methods of measuring everything from crime to drug use are different and not uniform.
That's why I don't bother mentioning other countries with regards to this issue. I stick to the data provided by American sources and formulate an opinion from there.
What is clear is that when one looks over all of the shootings from 1966 to the present, nearly all of the shooters where on a psychiatric drug or had just gone off one. That is a fact, end of story.
The prescribing of these drugs needs to be rolled back (even the American Psychiatric Association is recommending this: https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.o...psychnews-site), and the phenomena of mass shootings is an excellent reason to do so. Persons who rely on the drugs should be barred from buying a firearm (as I said previously here) and when they go off the drug they should have to go through a "cool-down/detox" period of a year or so.
What we don't need in the US is to keep trying the same thing and expecting a different result, or do something absolutely stupid like outlawing arms and expecting Americans to turn them in...because they've already proven they won't in Connecticut, New York, and California.

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/...123594949.html

[Eisdrache]

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

You forgot to add that nearly every US mass shooter has been on a psychiatric drug and you are mixing homicide in general with mass shootings.

While there have been 120,000 homicides from 2000 in the US, there have only been 518 deaths from mass shooters starting in 1983 to now. That is 23 deaths per year which is a statistical null when compared to the deaths per year from violent crime related homicides.

No, what I am saying is that your conclusion is wrong. 100% of all car accidents involve a car. Does that mean that driving a car makes one more likely to have an accident? Not by itself, no. In the same line most mass shooters using drugs doesn't equate to being more likely to shoot others. It's just one of many factors. The ease with which it is possible to acquire a gun is one, the massive amount of weapons already in possession of people another. While an improved medical background check is necessary as well, it would have a much bigger impact to reduce the number of available guns.

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

The causes of homicide are generally gang-related.

I agree that for homicide in general psychiatric drugs are not a major factor, however gangs are which is why it is a different issue entirely than mass shootings.
Motive is not the same between them and thus I already said they need to be treated separately because of that.

Gang-related homicides made up for 6% of all homicides in 2008. While the number of homicides with unknown circumstances represented the largest category, it is doubtful that a large percentage of them can be accredited to gangs.

Furthermore, as you said in the grand sum of all gun related killings, there are far less mass shootings than homicides. Homicides in turn are dwarfed by suicides. It is foolish to oppose gun regulations that would positively affect all of them only because a small minority may or may not be affected by it as much as projected.

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

If you are interested in solutions to the mass shooter problem you have two choices in the US.
One, defend the soft targets with armed and trained personnel.

It has been proven that more guns don't solve the problem and in fact may even have the opposite effect.

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

Persons who rely on the drugs should be barred from buying a firearm (as I said previously here) and when they go off the drug they should have to go through a "cool-down/detox" period of a year or so.

Look, we have already established that drugs aren't a major cause for gun related killings. Also improved medical treatment is certainly necessary, mainly because the current situation for patients in the US is garbage. However it has to come alongside regulations or it will only be a drop on a hot stone.

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

No, what I am saying is that your conclusion is wrong. 100% of all car accidents involve a car. Does that mean that driving a car makes one more likely to have an accident? Not by itself, no.

Your own analogy works against you.
Drunk drivers kill more people than murderers do in the US.
There were approximately 38,000 deaths in car accidents in 2016 (last year of complete reports).
Of those, 10,497 were from drunk drivers.
The accidents are all caused by human error and we don't ban cars as a result.
We also don't ban cars over drunk drivers because it's not the cars fault the driver is drunk, we arrest the drunk driver and forbid him to drive if he continues to drive under the influence.
The same can be said for guns (as I've already stated). Prohibit people who are on SSRIs from having a firearm and you'll lessen the number of mass shootings.
The LA Times just did a piece on this today because it is becoming quite clear this is the problem.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...223-story.html

In the same line most mass shooters using drugs doesn't equate to being more likely to shoot others. It's just one of many factors. The ease with which it is possible to acquire a gun is one, the massive amount of weapons already in possession of people another. While an improved medical background check is necessary as well, it would have a much bigger impact to reduce the number of available guns.

I find your counter argument to be mostly wrong as I illustrated above.
The only part I agree with you on is an improved background check system that includes both mental health records AND if a person is on SSRIs. If they are on an SSRI they need to be denied purchase of a firearm.

Gang-related homicides made up for 6% of all homicides in 2008. While the number of homicides with unknown circumstances represented the largest category, it is doubtful that a large percentage of them can be accredited to gangs.

Your link does not say what you are trying to make it say.
In fact what it does illustrate is a breakdown that separates homicides done specifically for gang activity (turf wars, drug dealing, prostitution, initiations, etc), but it in no way accounts for homicides done by gang-members outside of gang business.
In fact it states with regard to Figure 40 on the circumstances of homicides (page 26):

"Arguments include brawls due to the influence of narcotics
or alcohol, disagreements about money or property, and other
arguments. Felony types include homicides committed during a
rape, robbery, theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and violations of
prostitution and commercial vice laws, other sex offenses, narcotic
drug laws, and gambling laws. Gang homicides include gangland
killings and juvenile gang killings."

"Gang" only covers gangland killings, meaning during turf wars, or other direct-gang activity. It does NOT cover gang-members committing homicide during Arguments, or Felony crimes or other non-gang activity.
You do realize that gang-members do commit homicide during arguments and during the course of committing a Felony, yes?

While your link is useless for determining homicides committed by gang-members outside of being part of gang activity, it does illustrate that after the 1994 Assault Weapon ban expired, ALL non-mass-shooting related homicide dropped significantly except for direct gang-activity.

"Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008
PAT T E R N S & TR E N D S
Circumstances
The mix of circumstances surrounding homicides has changed over the last two decades The number of homicides—

for which the circumstances were unknown was greater in 2008
than any known category of circumstances
(Figure 40)

-resulting from arguments declined by nearly half from 10,300
homicides in 1980 to 4,696 homicides in 2008, but as of 2008
remained the most frequently cited circumstance of the known
circumstances

-that occurred during the commission of another felony, such as
a robbery or burglary, declined from about 5,300 homicides in
1991 to 2,600 homicides in 2000, then stabilized

-involving adult or juvenile gang violence increased from
about 220 homicides in 1980 to 960 homicides in 2008. Gang
violence accounted for 1% of all homicides in 1980 and 6% of all
homicides in 2008."

I assume the last part is what confused you, and it can be confusing because of how homicide is broken down by the FBI for their data collection and threat assessments.
FBI's estimates for gang-homicides is twice that number. The total number of gang homicides reported by respondents in the NYGS sample averaged nearly 2,000 annually from 2007 to 2012. During roughly the same time period (2007 to 2011), the FBI estimated, on average, more than 15,500 homicides across the United States (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...tables/table-1). These estimates suggest that gang-related homicides typically accounted for around 13 percent of all homicides annually.

What's worse is that the 13% number is only about gang-homicide, but gangs members are not believed to be confined to only committing acts of gang-homicide, they are also highly likely to be committing homicide during acts of violent crime which includes murder and manslaughter.

"Gangs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions and up to 90 percent in several others, according to NGIC analysis. Major cities and suburban areas experience the most gang-related violence. Local neighborhood-based gangs and drug crews continue to pose the most significant criminal threat in most communities. Aggressive recruitment of juveniles and immigrants, alliances and conflict between gangs, the release of incarcerated gang members from prison, advancements in technology and communication, and Mexican Drug Trafficking Organization (MDTO) involvement in drug distribution have resulted in gang expansion and violence in a number of jurisdictions."


https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/p...eat-assessment

Gang-homicides are defined as being:

"Cases of gang homicide were defined as homicides reported to have been either precipitated by gang rivalry or activity† or perpetrated by a rival gang member on the victim."


So if a gang-banger murders a non-gang-banger that is considered a homicide by FBI, not a gang-homicide (there is good reason for the FBI doing this, it helps in determining gang-activity).
Therefore, you have to look at where the most homicides are committed and compare that to areas with the highest concentration of gangs.
I'll use two maps to show this so as to save space here.

Here is a map of gang concentration in the US:


Here is a map of homicide concentration in the US:



From CPRC: https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/nu...s-69-1-murder/

As the two maps above illustrate, where there is a high concentration of gangs, there is also usually (though not always) a higher rate of murder in the US.

What's worse is that gun laws do not effect gangs AT ALL, so even in areas where gangs are the most concentrated, no laws will stop them or even effect the homicide rate. The 2011 threat assessment I linked to further illustrates how worthless gun laws are in the US.


"Gang members are acquiring high-powered, military-style weapons and equipment which poses a significant threat because of the potential to engage in lethal encounters with law enforcement officers and civilians. Typically firearms are acquired through illegal purchases; straw purchases via surrogates or middle-men, and thefts from individuals, vehicles, residences and commercial establishments. Gang members also target military and law enforcement officials, facilities, and vehicles to obtain weapons, ammunition, body armor, police gear, badges, uniforms, and official identification."

So how do I know that gangs are the major cause of general homicide?
Because where there is a high concentration of gangs, there is also a high concentration of homicides. Just because the homicides are not directly related to gang-activity does NOT mean gang-bangers are not the ones committing the acts of homicide. I won't get into how gangs influence people in their community here because the data on that is VERY thin and inconclusive to say the least.

Furthermore, as you said in the grand sum of all gun related killings, there are far less mass shootings than homicides. Homicides in turn are dwarfed by suicides. It is foolish to oppose gun regulations that would positively affect all of them only because a small minority may or may not be affected by it as much as projected.

Mass shootings are NOT a strong enough reason to infringe on the rights of Americans via gun bans or magazine bans, because they are still quite rare despite the media hyping them up for clickbait and ratings.
While that's not to say something should not be done about them, the clear path to lessen mass shootings is baring people on SSRIs from buying a gun and not allowing them to have a firearm again until they have been off the SSRIs for a detox period of say a year or more.

It has been proven that more guns don't solve the problem and in fact may even have the opposite effect.

Proven?
Not remotely.
You posted David Hemanway's series of "studies" that got nearly all of its data from the gun-prohibitionist lobbyists like the Violence Policy Center and the Brady Campaign.
You may as well ask the NRA to do a study on how many times guns are used in self-defense. I'll bet hard cash they would say millions even though there is no way to know since no data set exists that has that information.
Why do you think that congress banned the CDC from doing these studies in the first place? It's because of Author Kellermann's "study" from the late 1980s that was proven to be a fraud because Kellermann made gross assumptions just like John Lott did with his study to refute Kellermann.
It was that kind of politically-charged scientism that caused congress to put a stop to it before it got out of hand with propaganda from both sides.
Without actual hard data on the subject (and that can only be obtained by getting reporting data from police departments and people involved in defensive shootings) you may as well try to study how many times people pick their nose in a day.
Reason magazine already did a fine piece taking these studies to task:

https://reason.com/archives/2016/01/...-think-a/print

Look, we have already established that drugs aren't a major cause for gun related killings. Also improved medical treatment is certainly necessary, mainly because the current situation for patients in the US is garbage. However it has to come alongside regulations or it will only be a drop on a hot stone.

No, utter emotionally driven propaganda to support gun control which has already been proven a total failure in the US does not establish a damn thing.
What has been established is that there is no compromise on this issue and we are at an impasse because gun control advocates are as bad as gun fanatics (who hate my suggestion of barring people on SSRIs from having guns). Both "sides" (actually extremes) on this issue refuse to accept the fact that mental health and SSRIs are the prime problem with regard to mass shootings.
The gun-prohibitionist extreme refuse to accept that gun bans are worthless in the United States.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...211-story.html

Prior to 1994, the ban on paramilitary arms and standard-capacity magazines may have seemed like a good idea, but after 10-years (more than enough time), it was proven to be an utter failure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/s...apon-myth.html

The gun-free-for-all extreme refuses to accept that we have to restrict PEOPLE (they're right about the gun bans being fruitless, but wrong on many other points) that are high risk from getting these arms.
For decades I've said we need to rebuild the Civil Defense Corps and make it mandatory that if a US citizen wants a paramilitary weapon (which is their right as protected by the 2nd amendment because of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 15 of the US constitution) they need to join said organization.
Gun control fanatics don't want this because their goal is total disarmament of the US population (yeah, good luck with that since non-compliance is already off the proverbial charts).
Gun free-for-all fanatics don't want this because they view it as back-door registration and thus confiscation.
Both sides are fucking nuts.

[Ithekro]

Couldn't the high suicide rate also be tied to the proscribed drugs? Or coming off of them? I have reason to believe that a friend of mine took his own life due to a chemical imbalance from his depression medications (I don't know if he was overdosed or underdosed, or had stopped taking them), but he was a former police officer.