Vice News, citing a study funded by the federal government and conducted by The Violence Project, claims that "Nearly all mass shooters since 1966 had 4 things in common." Curiously — or maybe not — the study leaves off the two most common traits.
The study funded by the Department of Justice found that in instances in which four or more people were shot in a public place, the killer most often had experience with childhood trauma; a personal crisis or specific grievance; a "script" or examples that validate their feelings or provide a roadmap; and the one trait that is common in all shootings, access to a gun. (Well, duh!)
"Data is data," Jillian Peterson, a psychologist at Hamline University and co-author of the study told Vice. "Data isn't political. Our hope is that it pushes these conversations further."
Well, data isn't political, that is true. But people are, and people can slant the data to fit their narrative. And that's what apparently happened here.
The study claimed to have found five profiles of mass shooters. It lists them as:
- K-12 shooters: White males, typically students or former students of the school, with a history of trauma. Most are suicidal, plan their crime extensively, and make others aware of their plans at some point before the shooting. They use multiple guns that they typically steal from a family member.
- College and university shooters: Non-white males who are current students of the university, are suicidal, and have a history of violence and childhood trauma. They typically use legally obtained handguns and leave behind some sort of manifesto.
- Workplace shooters: Fortysomething males without a specific racial profile. Most are employees of their targeted location, often a blue-collar job site, and have some grievance against the workplace. They use legally purchased handguns and assault rifles.
- Place of worship shooters: White males in their 40s, typically motivated by hate or domestic violence that spills out into public. Their crimes typically involve little planning.
- Shooters at a commercial location (such as a store or restaurant): White men in their 30s with a violent history and criminal record. They typically have no connection to the targeted location and use a single, legally obtained firearm. About a third show evidence of a "thought disorder," a term for a mental health condition, like schizophrenia, that results in disorganized thinking, paranoia, or delusions.
Notably absent is a category for gang violence. Blacks (14.6 percent) and Hispanics (17.6 percent) make up only 32 percent of the U.S. population but account for the overwhelming majority of homicides — including mass shooting incidents. According to FBI crime statistics from 2018, blacks and Hispanics together killed 7,894 people. That's almost twice the number killed by whites even though whites make up about 62 percent of the population.
One look at the faces of 2019 mass shooters shows that the overwhelming number are black or Hispanic.
But even if you want to buy into the fake news Vice (and The Violence Project) are peddling — that the vast majority of mass shooters are white — the study still failed to list the most common denominator in the type of shootings it focused on. That is the use of prescribed psychotropic drugs. The website SSRIstories.org has a collection of more than 6,000 stories that have appeared in the media in which psychotropic drugs are a factor.
As usual, Vice is fake news.
It was a bad week for the Communist News Network (CNN)
CNN, known for its garbage reporting and Trump Derangement Syndrome, had a particularly bad week last week, even by its own standards. Now it, and the leftwing Daily Beast, are about to be on the receiving end of a defamation suit.
After spending two weeks proclaiming there were "bombshells" in the impeachment testimony that turned out to be little more than the fizzle of wet firecrackers, both media organs peddled a story last week allegedly from the attorney of indicted Ukrainian businessman Lev Parnas, that Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, had gone to Vienna to meet former Ukrainian Prosecutor Victor Shokin to discuss digging up dirt on Joe Biden.
Nunes denies the story and announced he was going to sue CNN and the Daily Beast, which repeated the story.
A spokesman for Mr. Nunes released an official statement to The Washington Times:
"These demonstrably false and scandalous stories published by the Daily Beast and CNN are the perfect example of defamation and reckless disregard for the truth. Some political operative offered these fake stories to at least five different media outlets before finding someone irresponsible enough to publish them. I look forward to prosecuting these cases, including the media outlets as well as the sources of their fake stories, to the fullest extent of the law. I intend to hold the Daily Beast and CNN accountable for their actions. They will find themselves in court soon after Thanksgiving."CNN's story bears a striking resemblance to a previous phony story peddled by CNN and the rest of MSM regarding secret visits to foreign countries by supporters President Trump. The media claimed for months that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen — who now wears prison stripes for campaign finance violations and lying to Congress — went to Prague to meet with shady Kremlin-linked figures in a conspiracy to get Russia's help in the 2016 election. McClatchy News even claimed that it had evidence that Cohen's phone "pinged" a tower in Prague. The story was fake news.
Nunes is already suing the McClatchy newspaper chain for defamation.
Also, we need to remind everyone — as Nunes reminded in his opening statements — that the pencil-necked Rep. Adam Schiff, who is leading the impeachment charade for the Democrats, actually spoke on the telephone with two Ukrainians who claimed to have nude pictures of the president, and he sought to make arrangements to have the FBI meet with the Ukrainians to get them. It turns out Schiff-for-brains was actually talking on the phone to a couple of Ukrainian pranksters.
Business as usual at Bloomberg News
New York's former Nanny Mayor Michael Bloomberg has opened his multi-billion-dollar checkbook and is seeking to buy the Democrat nomination for president in a late bid to "save" the party from itself.
Bloomberg owns the vast Bloomberg News empire, and his entry into the race has created what might appear to be a sketchy situation for Bloomberg reporters and reporterettes. How are they going to cover the race in a manner that is fair to all parties?
No worries. Bloomberg the company announced it would continue its ongong policy not to cover Bloomberg the man, even though he is now Bloomberg the candidate. Nor would Bloomberg the company cover any of Bloomberg the candidate's opponents in the Democrat field. Bloomberg the company will, however, continue to cover Trump.
In other words it's business as usual for Bloomberg the company. It'll continue working as opposition research for the Democrat Party.
The fake news strategy
One of the most common tactics of the legacy media these days is to publish a story based on hearsay or inuendo, give it a click-baity headline and let it stew on social media for a while. The story gets lots of traction as it scurries across the internet and other outlets pick it up and run with it.
After a short time, the original publishers will pull the story down, sometimes issue a retraction and, more rarely, an apology for the fake news.
But by then the story has done its damage. Most readers don't read beyond the headline. Some read a paragraph or two. Minds are made up and the issue is settled. Hardly anyone knows the story has been pulled, and few, if any, see the retraction, if one is issued. The media have set their narrative.
Some worry that they can no longer tell which media organs are publishing fake news and which aren't. How can you tell?
With a short attention span you can't. You have to spend time reading and verifying. One thing is for sure, if CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, The New York Times and The Washington Post publish it, it's likely propaganda if not outright fake news. Just look back over the last three-plus years at their reporting on Trump-Russia collusion and now the Ukraine hoax and see how much they've gotten wrong.
If they've lied once, they'll lie again. Their strategy is to get a knee-jerk reaction out of you, get you riled up and then move you on to the next phony outrage. It's about ratings, keeping the status quo and keeping you steeped in fake news.
The Slimes is at it again
Here's more fake news from The New York Times. As the Trump impeachment farce has dragged the Democrats into Neverland, the establishment media are working overtime to separate Ukraine from the 2016 election meddling narrative in order to tie Ukraine corruption around Trump's neck.
The official MSM narrative being peddled now by The Slimes and rest of the legacy propaganda media is that Russia engaged in a campaign to frame Ukraine for its own meddling. Thus, the meddling is all Russia and Ukraine corruption is all Trump.
But in 2016, according to The Washington Examiner, The Slimes itself reported that "Ukraine's ‘newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau,' which worked in conjunction with America's FBI, was in possession of a mysterious, handwritten diary that showed (Trump's one-time campaign manager Paul) Manafort was receiving millions of dollars in payments from one of the country's pro-Russian politicians. ‘Investigators assert,' the Times reported, ‘that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials."
In 2017 Politico reported that "Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers."
According to the report, "A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
"The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia's alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails," Politico reported.
Now they want you to believe that it was only the Russians who meddled. And for the record, there is still no direct evidence that the Russia meddled in the campaign, even though that has become conventional wisdom. The so-called "intelligence report" issued in 2016 that Hillary Clinton claimed was endorsed by "17 U.S. intelligence agencies" actually found no conclusive evidence. It claimed that a Russian spend of a couple hundred thousand dollars for ads and fake stories on Facebook, some Russian Twitter bots and some Trump-supporting figures appearing on RT was Russian meddling. And even lying James Comey, the fired and disgraced former FBI director, admitted the FBI never was allowed to examine the Democrat National Committee's computer server for evidence of Russian hacking. Instead, the bureau relied on the word of a Ukrainian-linked company named CrowdStrike that handled the DNC's computer security.
--Jay Baker
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