Michael Shermer Youtube Download Larger Versions#
Michael Shermer Youtube How To Shoot Them#

Michael is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. Preventing highly improbable mass murders like that at Sandy Hook Elementary School is impossible, but there are things we can do to decrease violence.Today we have Michael Shermer and Philip Goff on the podcast. He is also the author of The Believing Brain: The Mind of the Market, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, How We. His latest book is The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University.

On December 14, 2012, 20-year old Adam Lanza broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, killing 20 children and six adultsвЂ”and then himselfвЂ”after first slaying his mother Nancy Lanza in their home. Hugh Hewitt: Special edition of the Hugh Hewitt Show.As we come to the end of what I call the decade of the atheists, I am taking a day here at the end of the year to look back at what that has been about, and what progress or lack thereof has been made in that conversation. Thursday, December 31, 2009.

Michael Shermer Youtube How To Shoot Them

2 Every one of the victims is a heartbreaking story, perhaps best captured by the sole survivor in a first-grade classroom who, after narrowly escaping LanzaвЂ™s bullets by playing dead, exclaimed to her mother, вЂњMommy, IвЂ™m okay, but all my friends are dead.вЂќ 3 Just imagining a first grader uttering those words is beyond horrific.LINK Dr. 1 All of the guns were legally owned and registered, and preliminary reports note that Nancy Lanza was a gun enthusiast who owned at least a dozen firearms and taught her son how to shoot them at gun clubs in her neighborhood. 22 Marlin rifle, the latter of which he used to shoot his mother in the head four times. 45 Henry repeating rifle, a. He had a shotgun in his car, and at home police found a.

14.8M subscribers.This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 18.1 (2013).The response to the tragedy was as emotional as it was predictable, with pundits and the public demanding stricter gun-control measures and more funding for mental-health research and facilities. He explains what they are and how they get us into trouble. Michael Shermer says the human tendency to believe strange things - from alien abductions to dowsing rods - boils down to two of the brains most basic, hard-wired survival skills. In this article from Skeptic magazine issue 18.1 (2013), Michael Shermer takes a look at why preventing highly improbable mass murders like that at Sandy Hook Elementary School is. Brian Huffling at the Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday February 23, 2019.On December 14, 2012, 20-year old Adam Lanza broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, killing 20 children and six adultsand then himselfafter first slaying his mother Nancy Lanza in their home. Michael Shermer performs a postmortem on his debate/dialogue on with Dr.

7 In this context I shall refer to them as Sandy Hook EventsвЂ”high profile, improbable, rare and unpredictable mass murders. They are what Nassim Taleb calls Black Swan events. In fact, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that contra President ObamaвЂ™s characterization, such events are far more random than they are routine. 5 President Obama pronounced: вЂњWeвЂ™re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics,вЂќ then vowed to do everything in his power to prevent such an event happening again, вЂњBecause what choice do we have? We canвЂ™t accept events like this as routine.вЂќ 6That such reactions are emotionally understandable should not distract us from having an objective discussion over whether or not the national obsession over highly improbable events like Sandy Hook is the proper use of our time, energy, and resources toward the overall goal of reducing violence in our society.

Michael Shermer Youtube Download Larger Versions

Nevertheless, we can build a science-based rational response in the form of a two-pronged approach: (1) bottom-up actions by private citizens, experts, and scientists to identify those most likely to commit mass murder and try to reduce the odds that they will do so through various interventions (while recognizing that we can never prevent them entirely) and (2) top-down measures by government, police, and law enforcement agencies to continue the centuries-long trend in the overall decline of violence.Click any graph in this article to download larger versions in PDF.A single PDF (209 kb) contains all graphs.Figure 1: Mass Shootings in the United States, 1980вЂ“2010, tracking incidents, offenders, and victims. However, it is doubtful that Americans would vote to change our government into a Chinese-like authoritarian regime in which controlling guns is possible but at the considerable cost of other freedoms. 8 There really is a difference between a gun and a knife, and in this case that difference is measurable in the number of survivors. It is, perhaps, ironically fitting that the same day as the Sandy Hook tragedy a Chinese man with a knife stabbed 22 children and one adult outside a primary school in the village of Chengping in Henan Province in central China, resulting in zero fatalities. We can postdict them, looking for factors common to the killers, but the most we can ever do is make statistically-based generalizations about the likelihood of a Sandy Hook event happening somewhere sometime in the future.This does not mean we can or should do nothing.

By contrast, according to James Alan Fox, Northeastern University Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy, between 19 there was an average of 20 mass murders per year (defined by the FBI as вЂњa number of murders occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murdersвЂќ 10) with an average annual death toll of about 100, or 5 per shooting. ItвЂ™s a disquieting thought that every hour of every day someone is shot to death. 9 ThatвЂ™s an average of 9,289 people shot dead by a gun, or 774 a month, 178 a week, 25 a day, or a little more than one per hour. Experienced an annual average of 13,700 homicides, with guns responsible for 67.8% of those.

According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, in 2010 a total of 19,392 U.S. вЂњGuns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.вЂќ 12The raw figures are staggering. If we want to save lives by preventing gun deaths, the larger problem of individual homicides, suicides, and accidents is the place to begin, not Sandy Hook Events.A 1998 study published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery on вЂњInjuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home,вЂќ stated that вЂњevery time a gun in the home was used in a selfdefense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.вЂќ In other words, a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt, or a homicide, than it is for self-defense. As well, predicting which week, much less which day and where the mass murders will occur is not possible. But an average annual death rate of 100 constitutes a mere 1% of the average homicide total. This averages out to one mass murder every 2.6 weeks, which when clustered in time and covered in explosive media attention intuitively feels like a veritable plague of violence.

A SENSE OF VICTIMIZATION OR AN IDEOLOGICAL CAUSE. According to Robert Hare ( Without Conscience), Simon Baron Cohen ( The Science of Evil), and Kevin Dutton ( The Wisdom of Psychopaths), the latter of whom I queried for this article, вЂњestimates of the incidence of psychopathy tend to vary from 1вЂ“3 percent in men and 0.5вЂ“1 per cent in women,вЂќ and in prison populations, вЂњaround 50 percent of the most serious crimes on recordвЂ”crimes such as murder and serial rape, for instanceвЂ”are committed by psychopaths.вЂќ 172. Although some forms of mental illness such as schizophrenia have been identified as possible triggers of violent behavior, the best candidate we have for a psychological condition that leads to violence and criminal behavior is psychopathy. PSYCHOPATHY OR MENTAL ILLNESS. For example, research shows that three of the most common characteristics of mass murderers are: 161.

In the case of the Chinese man who stabbed 22 childrenвЂ”reported to be вЂњa long-term epilepsy suffererвЂќ named Min Yongjun who was also вЂњpsychologically affected by rumors of the upcoming end of the worldвЂќвЂ”was quoted as saying: вЂњI learned from the media two years ago that killing children would get me on TV.вЂќ 19There are additional factors that increase the probability of a Sandy Hook Event. Forget American Idol, if you want instant media coverage there is no surer way to gain it in real time than by killing innocent people, especially children. THE DESIRE FOR FAME AND GLORY. He said he did it to вЂњsend a strong message to the people and cause maximum amount of damage to the Labour Party to stop a deconstruction of Norwegian culture and mass-import of Muslims.вЂќ 18 Perpetrators of violence always have their reasons, including taking the law into their own hands when the state wonвЂ™t do what they think it should (more on this below in the real causes of the decline of violence).3.