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That's very specific information.
The next mass shooting will take place on February 12, 2014, in Spokane, Washington. It will be committed by an emotionally disturbed, 38 year-old white man who will kill seven people and wound six more at a place he used to work using a semi-automatic handgun he purchased legally in the state.
If President Obama's second term has been beset by "unpredictable calamities" like the Navy Yard shooting, in the words of the Washington Post's David Nakamura, we thought we'd try and offer a little prediction. Especially since, if such incidents occur at the same pace for the rest of Obama's term as they have since 2009, there could be 14 more before he leaves office.
Interesting information, but very generalized. For example the Boston Bombings where technically done by white people.
White man
Looking at the past 30-plus years of spree- and mass-shootings, this is the easiest trend to spot. Nearly two-thirds of the 67 incidents — 65.7 percent — were at the hands of a white person.
Isn't most places a place of work for someone?
Shooting at work
Most of the shootings in the database occurred at a place of business, either one where the shooter worked or a restaurant or other such facility.
Did they just tailor the above data to fit this model?
38 years old
By focusing on the workplace as the site of the incident, it allowed us to better refine the age of the shooter.
Didn't we already have this conversion? ATS: Anti Depressants
Mental health
While mental health issues are often tricky to diagnose, it's clear that there exists a correlation between a pattern of mental illness and involvement in mass shootings.
Again this seems misleading as it has been shown that while the firearms used in many cases where legally purchased, the individual that used them in the shootings had illegally obtained them. Odd to say the least.
Legally-purchased handgun purchased in-state
The vast majority of guns used in mass killings were obtained legally — 81.8 percent.
This I find very creepy if true.
February 2014
This was one of the more complex calculations. In order to calculate it, we first wanted to figure out how frequently shooting incidents happened. So we figured out how many days passed, on average, between them. Over the past 30 years, that figure is about 222 days — seven months or so.
I think the bolded point is what gets me here. The information is very precise up onto the date and perpetrator. One would think that "IF" this whole thing is just a "Guess-ta-ment" then why the specifics? To me it feels like a setup.
MystikMushroom
Think about how many millions of people are on anti-depressants that don't go out and shoot people.
Sure, we can draw a connection -- but it's like saying "All fish live in water, therefore all water must have fish living in it".
I know many, many people on these drugs that don't claim to feel violent or have "crazy" thoughts. One person I know was on Prozac since it first came out.
Onto predicting these things...
I wonder if someday with powerful quantum computers we might be able to model and predict anything in the future. At that point, "Minority Report" might actually come to pass. Someone could be arrested due to complex calculations computing their "crime potential index".
I think though, that there is always an element of uncertainty that can never be accounted for.edit on 18-9-2013 by MystikMushroom because: (no reason given)
So at best this February date is a guess, and at worst is a heads up of something coming down the wire.
LAMP assumes the future is nothing more than the sum total of all interactions of "free will," both on an individual and international scale. While not an infallible method for predicting the future, LAMP gives the analyst a more powerful method for organizing all available information based on the perceptions of the national actors and uses it to make relevant predictions as to which alternate future is most likely to occur at a given moment in time. This part of the LAMP Portal provides a brief discussion of the 12 steps of LAMP and showcases the technique's use in predictive analysis.
So this whole thing WAS to push some kind of agenda, but now the public is left with more questions. What if some one does a shooting on that date, in that town, at that time? Who's responsible for creating the event? Is it the Atlantic Wire for posting the idea in the first place? What if this is still part of some conspiracy to undermine the government (or worse the public trust and safety)?
Our goal in Tuesday's article was to make the nebulous prospect of a the next "random" attack seem real. We did, so much so that people pushed to demand that the government assure them that it wasn't. Unfortunately, the way such events occur, any assurance that a mass killing won't happen in a particular place is only slightly more statistically trustworthy.
1. A number of people suggested over email and in the comments that by suggesting an attack on February 12 in Spokane, we made it more likely, that some unstable person might read the piece and decide to make it a reality. We'd offer that if Spokane has someone emotionally disturbed enough to go on a killing spree over a blog post, that's a broader issue of concern. But it also reinforces how we consider these attacks: utterly incomprehensible bolts of lightning with little forewarning. That is not the case.
2. One commenter made an argument that came up multiple times: "The author should have noted that Spokane already had a mass-shooting at Fairchild AFB in 1994, where 5 people were killed and 22 were injured. Statistically, a repeat of such an event is less likely and should have affected the calculations." Actually, statistically that doesn't matter at all, as another commenter replied. "A common fallacy. If you've flipped 10 heads in a row, the probability of heads on the next throw is still 1/2. The probability of Spokane having a mass shooting next year is the same as if nothing had happened in 1994." If every municipality had a quota of one mass killing and that was it, that would be both helpful to law enforcement and an assurance to Spokane. But that's not how probability works.
That, at least, is what a look at the data on past such shootings might indicate. We'll say at the outset: Every assertion in the first paragraph is a function of probability, not fact. The next mass shooting — which will happen somewhere, sometime — will almost certainly not be in that place at that time.
Getting people to think about a situation is fine, and I think that's great, but to present a fake as real them exclaim that it was to make us think doesn't sound like a responsible news source does it?