Speaker 1: Hey, everybody looks like Catherine's he already. Katherine, she just
Speaker 1: got some mail from us today. She was our winner
Speaker 1: that got the notebook that we bought in the UK,
Speaker 1: the Crime UK notebook, So she was our monthly school
Speaker 1: No September when we were over there.
Speaker 2: So I just sent it yesterday.
Speaker 1: She's so close that she just got it today.
Speaker 2: But we're here, We're back.
Speaker 1: My bangs and I are back, are here making their appearance. Scott,
Speaker 1: when are you gonna do something different with your.
Speaker 3: Hair or to keep it from receiving any furtheratures of
Speaker 3: us from internship?
Speaker 2: You gotta go tea. We need to put that somewhere.
Speaker 3: Oh I did, Yeah, I have just the go tee
Speaker 3: no mustache. When that was and then the Sister Wive
Speaker 3: show started and I was like, no.
Speaker 2: Time for you associate me with them.
Speaker 3: Not gonna associate with that guy.
Speaker 2: So funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a while since we've been here on
Speaker 1: a live stream. Thank you guys for bearing with us.
Speaker 1: For sure we've missed it. This is going to be
Speaker 1: a great show to come back with too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our last behind the Couch was about three months ago.
Speaker 3: But remember, if you're part of Patreon, we jump on
Speaker 3: into a live stream segment called shrink Wrap whenever the
Speaker 3: inspiration hits us and whenever we can find time to
Speaker 3: do it. And because we had our very densely scheduled
Speaker 3: summer finally over with, we will be doing more of
Speaker 3: them and they're very enjoyable for us because we don't
Speaker 3: really have to do any planning at all. It's basically
Speaker 3: plug and play, jump on and start talking, and that's
Speaker 3: such a joy for us. And you also get an
Speaker 3: audio version of that in your Behind the Couch podcast feed.
Speaker 3: So if you want more content from us, please consider
Speaker 3: joining our wonderful Patreon family. So our newest patrons since
Speaker 3: August we have at the associate level Catherine H, Leanna Jay,
Speaker 3: Rosemary Don S, Teresa H, Michelle Kay, Lisa S, and
Speaker 3: ms BA Kay and welcome to the doctoral level Susan M.
Speaker 1: And just a reminder, if you join at the doctorate level,
Speaker 1: you are entered into a merch giveaway every month, and
Speaker 1: our last three winners were in June.
Speaker 2: We had Laura P.
Speaker 1: In July, Mattie W. In August, Alex S. And then
Speaker 1: as we just mentioned, September was Catherine H.
Speaker 2: And I just pulled a name.
Speaker 1: For October today, So our winner is Ashley A.
Speaker 2: So Ashley, we will be in.
Speaker 1: Touch just regarding your price and what we're going to
Speaker 1: send you and just make sure you got the right
Speaker 1: address on Patreon and all of that good stuff. So
Speaker 1: the perks are there, you guys, and we are. We're
Speaker 1: so incredibly grateful for each and every one of you,
Speaker 1: no matter what level you join at, because it literally
Speaker 1: keeps us running these days, which is you know, we
Speaker 1: try to get more content to you folks as we
Speaker 1: have time.
Speaker 3: So thank you, thank you, And as most of y'all
Speaker 3: already know because you've been around for a while, we rarely,
Speaker 3: if ever do interviews on our podcast because we love
Speaker 3: the opportunity to have a live forum with our guests
Speaker 3: who kindly agree to appear on our show. This month
Speaker 3: is no exception, as we have yet another fantastic guest,
Speaker 3: Doctor Roggy gergis an expert on psychosis and violence and
Speaker 3: mental illness just literally an academic and researcher after our hearts,
Speaker 3: because this guy is the real deal. We are so
Speaker 3: happy to have you. Thank you so much, Doctor gergis
Speaker 3: Roggy for blessing us with your parents. No, no, exaggeration.
Speaker 3: We appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be with you.
Speaker 1: Yes, So I'm going to do a little introduction. So
Speaker 1: bear with us for a moment, then we will absolutely
Speaker 1: jump into it.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Doctor Gergis is a professor of clinical psychiatry at the
Speaker 1: Columbia University Department of Psychiatry and New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Speaker 1: His research often employs advanced imaging techniques such as MRI
Speaker 1: and PET scans alongside clinical trials to explore the complexities
Speaker 1: of psychosis and violence and mental illness, which is something
Speaker 1: our audience can't get enough about. He has received substantial
Speaker 1: grant funding as a principal investigator from organizations including the
Speaker 1: National Institute of Mental Health, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation,
Speaker 1: and the Stanley Medical Research Institute.
Speaker 3: So doctor Gergis is an accomplished author. He's published over
Speaker 3: a one hundred peer reviewed scientific papers and numerous books
Speaker 3: on severe mental illness, including his recent exploration of the
Speaker 3: intersection between religion and psychiatry entitled on Satan Demons and Psychiatry,
Speaker 3: Exploring mental illness in the Bible as a practice in
Speaker 3: Christian Doctor Gergis brings a unique perspective to his work
Speaker 3: merging clinical rigor with a deep understanding of historical and
Speaker 3: religious influences on mental health, and over the past four years,
Speaker 3: he's worked extensively with colleagues to construct one of the
Speaker 3: most comprehensive mass murder repositories in existence, named the Columbia
Speaker 3: Mass Murder Database. First of all, I'm not sure how
Speaker 3: we're even going to get past the tip of the
Speaker 3: iceberg and everything that we and our audience would want
Speaker 3: to know about you, But welcome, doctor Roggy. Before we
Speaker 3: dive into the Columbia mass Murder Database, can you tell
Speaker 3: us just a little bit about your personal background and
Speaker 3: what led you to this particular career. Our audience always
Speaker 3: loves to hear about people's journeys.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you again, doctor Scott and doctor Shiloh for
Speaker 5: having me. I went to medical school knowing nothing about medicine,
Speaker 5: knowing in my family had been a medical doctor. I
Speaker 5: found psychiatry through a summer research internship that I did,
Speaker 5: and I knew right away that I wanted to focus
Speaker 5: on schizophrenia. So fast forward to finishing residency at Columbia
Speaker 5: and then fellowship, I pursued research in my area of
Speaker 5: research is schizophrenia, like you mentioned, primarily dealing with path
Speaker 5: of physiology and development of medications and those sorts of things.
Speaker 5: Around twenty nineteen, a colleague of mine, doctor Gary Ricato,
Speaker 5: and I really wanted to as definitively as possible answer
Speaker 5: the question of how mental illness and mass shootings are related.
Speaker 5: So we put together this database and we tried to
Speaker 5: bring as much of an evidence based, rigorous research design
Speaker 5: to this question.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for sharing about that.
Speaker 1: You know, I think there are those of us in
Speaker 1: the mental health field where psychotic disorders are very gravitating
Speaker 1: towards us and or us towards it, and then there
Speaker 1: are those of us that are like, Nope, absolutely not
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do, And.
Speaker 5: That's exactly my experienced percent. And most people, of course
Speaker 5: run the side of not wanting to be exposed. And
Speaker 5: I'm talking about psychiatrists in that college just not wanting
Speaker 5: to be exposed to psychoticsors in any way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I mean I was also in either practicum or internship,
Speaker 1: and you know, looking in areas around southern California and
Speaker 1: where you might continue to do postdoc work. One of
Speaker 1: the big places that a lot of forensic psychologists were
Speaker 1: going was Patent State Hospital, and I saw a documentary
Speaker 1: on Patent State Hospital and said, you cannot pay me
Speaker 1: enough money to go there yet. Then I talk about well,
Speaker 1: I worked with hiers sex offenders for over a decade,
Speaker 1: and people are like, what, how could you you know?
Speaker 1: It's just again, Scott, and I say all the time
Speaker 1: that there's just someone cut from a cloth to do
Speaker 1: absolutely every type of work under the mental health umbrella.
Speaker 1: So thank you for what you do, because it's really
Speaker 1: important work and someone has to get in there and
Speaker 1: start drilling down on some of these things. So please,
Speaker 1: I mean, can you tell us a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the Columbia mass murder database, because I know that's
Speaker 1: not just inclusive of school shootings but of so much
Speaker 1: more as well.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
Speaker 5: So, as I mentioned, I'm totally a researcher, That's all
Speaker 5: I do.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 5: I'm a clinical researcher, one hundred percent academic. So we
Speaker 5: get doctor Gary Riccatto and I who's a psychologist who
Speaker 5: focuses on forensic issues, really wanted to apply rigorous kind
Speaker 5: of research methodologies and evidence based designs to this question.
Speaker 5: To the field of mass shootings in mass murder research,
Speaker 5: but in particularly this question of the relationship between mental illness,
Speaker 5: especially psychotic disorders, but mental illness in general and mass
Speaker 5: shootings and mass murder. We wanted to include as many
Speaker 5: as we could so increase the sample size, and we
Speaker 5: wanted to have comparison groups.
Speaker 4: That's critical.
Speaker 5: As you all know, and I'm sure many of your
Speaker 5: listeners understand, it's important to have descriptive data like percentages in.
Speaker 4: A group, et cetera. Those sorts of things.
Speaker 5: Those are all very important, but it's also important to
Speaker 5: have comparison groups that allows us to limit bias, understand
Speaker 5: confounding like confounding variables, otheriables that affect whatever you're looking at,
Speaker 5: especially since in virtually all research, including this research, there's
Speaker 5: no way to capture a whole population. If you were
Speaker 5: able to capture a whole population, you wouldn't necessarily need
Speaker 5: need these sourts of comparison groups either way, so we
Speaker 5: also wanted to include comparison group That's why we decided
Speaker 5: to include mass murders perpetrated with other methods in addition
Speaker 5: to mass shootings, which obviously mass.
Speaker 4: Murders perpetrated firearms.
Speaker 5: We figured that was probably the most comparable, least biased,
Speaker 5: or confounded comparison group. So basically we included all types
Speaker 5: of mass murders. We decided also to include mass murders
Speaker 5: perpetrated all over the world to examine, for example, differences
Speaker 5: between mass murders and mass shootings perpetrated in the States versus.
Speaker 4: Elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 5: Very very important questions about that sort of thing, And
Speaker 5: we decided to go back to nineteen hundred two understand
Speaker 5: how these changed over time again to be able to
Speaker 5: control for vearials that might be different between you know,
Speaker 5: modern mass shootings and modern mass murder and mass murder
Speaker 5: perpetrated in for example, the early twentieth century. So we
Speaker 5: have about twenty two hundred mass murders in our database,
Speaker 5: about sixteen hundred or seventeen one hundred of them are
Speaker 5: mass shootings. Mass shootings definitely are more common than other
Speaker 5: types of mass murder, primarily because of the numbers of
Speaker 5: mass shootings in the United States.
Speaker 1: Sure, can you talk a little bit about who or
Speaker 1: what you did not include what you felt like you
Speaker 1: wanted to separate out.
Speaker 4: That's very important.
Speaker 5: So we decided to focus on what we call and
Speaker 5: what other people call personal cause mass shootings. These are
Speaker 5: mass shootings and mass murders that have a personal motivation.
Speaker 5: So this does not include mass murder perpetrated in the
Speaker 5: context of war, date sponsored, a group sponsored terrorism, gang violence,
Speaker 5: or other types of group sponsored or affiliated mass murders.
Speaker 5: So we wanted to focus on personal cause mass murder.
Speaker 1: And if you don't mind just talking a little bit,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've certainly discussed this in some episodes, but
Speaker 1: what seems to be so important about that personal grievance
Speaker 1: in terms of these types of mass murders, again not
Speaker 1: just talking about shootings, and maybe even with that you
Speaker 1: can talk about aside from school shootings or mass shootings,
Speaker 1: what were maybe a couple of other types of scenarios
Speaker 1: that were included.
Speaker 4: Sure, well, that's fundamental.
Speaker 5: It goes to motivation, and I mean, this is exactly
Speaker 5: what we all focus on. Motivation and understanding basically why
Speaker 5: someone would perpetrate a mass shooting, why someone would perpetrate
Speaker 5: a mass stabbing, why they would use a firem So
Speaker 5: the question, so one, the main question is why do
Speaker 5: people use firearms? For example, why do they not use knives?
Speaker 5: Why do they not use autom mobiles. Are why do
Speaker 5: they use automobiles when they use automobiles. There actually have
Speaker 5: been a number of mass murders personal cause mass murders
Speaker 5: perpetrated with planes. United Airlines Flight I think six six,
Speaker 5: twenty nine, Continental Airlines Flight eleven, Egypt Air nine ninety,
Speaker 5: the German Wings, the German Wings disaster.
Speaker 4: Many of these.
Speaker 5: We understand state sponsored, war affiliated, group sponsored gang affiliated
Speaker 5: mass violence very well.
Speaker 4: The motives are clearer.
Speaker 5: It's the personal cause mass murder that we know less
Speaker 5: about we need to understand, and it is exactly those
Speaker 5: motivations that are important to us. So to take us
Speaker 5: that back to the initial question we wanted to answer,
Speaker 5: which was what is the relationship between mental illness and
Speaker 5: in mass shootings?
Speaker 4: In particular?
Speaker 5: This is fundamental and this covers so many questions that
Speaker 5: we probably want to try to answer and speak to today.
Speaker 5: But the top line conclusion or result, and this is
Speaker 5: based on data and these are all published, is that
Speaker 5: ment to illness is overrepresented among mass shooters, and it's
Speaker 5: primarily psychotic illness. And by overrepresented we mean overrepresented compared
Speaker 5: to the background prevalence, and that number is five percent.
Speaker 5: So about say one to two percent of the population,
Speaker 5: for example, in the United States has a psychotic disorder.
Speaker 5: Five percent of mass shootings are attributable to or caused
Speaker 5: by a psychotic disorder, a mental illness.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 5: So ninety five percent of mass shootings are not caused
Speaker 5: by mental illness. They're not associated with mental illness in
Speaker 5: any way, and no other ment to illness is a
Speaker 5: major causative factor in mass shooting. That's the top line
Speaker 5: kind of result or conclusion. We can certainly go more
Speaker 5: into the data to explain how we came to that,
Speaker 5: because we came at that conclusion in many different ways.
Speaker 5: So the data are actually and the results and analysis
Speaker 5: are all very consistent.
Speaker 4: But that's the top line kind of.
Speaker 1: Well, I think off the bat, it is so important
Speaker 1: to just have a study done like this to set
Speaker 1: the baseline and when you said, with using some comparison groups,
Speaker 1: so we can have it to then dive into some
Speaker 1: of these other areas to ask why or isn't that
Speaker 1: interesting or just build on it in the future. And
Speaker 1: I know from what you just said in terms of
Speaker 1: talking about that five percent, people watching this are probably going, Okay,
Speaker 1: wait what, because you know, do we focus on the guns,
Speaker 1: or do we focus on mental illness, or do we
Speaker 1: focus on something else. However, before we get into those
Speaker 1: questions and drill down a little bit more, can you
Speaker 1: just tell us a bit about what the research showed
Speaker 1: in terms of what changed in the nineteen seventies, because
Speaker 1: certainly there was significant difference after some relative stability when
Speaker 1: it came to mass murder.
Speaker 5: Well, that's the twenty five thousand dollars question or million
Speaker 5: dollar question or whatever. We we can speculate, I mean,
Speaker 5: we can speculate with a fair amount of certainty.
Speaker 4: I think what you're getting.
Speaker 5: At is that the prevalence per capita, so accounting for
Speaker 5: population growth and population in general, of mass shootings and
Speaker 5: all types of mass murder was just very stable before
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy, just very stable.
Speaker 4: It just did not change. It was incredible.
Speaker 5: And then starting on nineteen seventy nineteen eighty, around around
Speaker 5: that time, the rate has been increasing fourfold, fourfold things
Speaker 5: twofold for the other types of mass murder. So the
Speaker 5: question is why is it's the case. So first to
Speaker 5: explain how ment to illness is affected or the association
Speaker 5: between ment illness and mass shootings is affected, what we
Speaker 5: have published and what is the case, is that the
Speaker 5: percentage or prevalence of mental illness among mass shooters and
Speaker 5: actually among all types of mass murders, but among my shooters,
Speaker 5: has over the same time period actually decreased. So this
Speaker 5: is just kind of more evidence suggesting that the problem
Speaker 5: is not meant to illness and especially psychotic disorders.
Speaker 4: It is something else.
Speaker 5: So it's not meant to illness because people might think
Speaker 5: it had to do with deinstitutionalization and so forth, it's
Speaker 5: actually the opposite.
Speaker 4: The proportion of.
Speaker 5: Mass shooters and other types of mass murders mental illness
Speaker 5: has gone down since that time, So what else is
Speaker 5: going on? There are a number of potential causes of
Speaker 5: mass shootings and mass murder, and we would need to
Speaker 5: understand what has One among those is different between the
Speaker 5: early parts of the twentieth century and the later parts
Speaker 5: of the twentieth century. And now one of those is
Speaker 5: certainly gun available if we're talking about mass shootings, especially
Speaker 5: gun availability. There's no doubt there are many other causes,
Speaker 5: and certainly if we look at the causes of mass
Speaker 5: shootings as a pie chart, for example, mental illness again
Speaker 5: accounts for about five percent of that, and then firearm
Speaker 5: access and availability and production accounts for a much larger
Speaker 5: part of the pie. And then there are other pieces
Speaker 5: of the pie also, But one factor is gun availability,
Speaker 5: and this is very important. And again there are other factors,
Speaker 5: but the data are very clear, not just related to
Speaker 5: mass shootings, but related to all types of gun violence.
Speaker 5: There is a very strong correlation between gun production and
Speaker 5: gun violence. It's very strong. It's impossible to ignore. That's
Speaker 5: number one. Number two, there is an extremely strong relationship
Speaker 5: between and this is an inverse relationship between the strength
Speaker 5: of firearm laws and mass shootings. And again this is
Speaker 5: per capita. Of course, this is all considering populations and
Speaker 5: population differences and growth and those sorts of things. Number
Speaker 5: three is that the prevalence or occurrence of suicide among
Speaker 5: mass shootings has also increased very substantially since that time.
Speaker 5: Now this is important because at least fifty percent are
Speaker 5: especially now now it's more than fifty percent of mass
Speaker 5: shooter especially also to some degree the other types of
Speaker 5: mass murders. Mass shooters in particular don't just die at
Speaker 5: the time of the event, but actually take their own
Speaker 5: life at the time of the event. Either themselves or
Speaker 5: through the so called suicide by cop method. And again
Speaker 5: we've also published this. This is not incidental or coincidental.
Speaker 5: This is planned. So there's indication from before the events
Speaker 5: that these people went into the events wanting to die.
Speaker 5: That's been proven, that shown, we've published that, so that's clear.
Speaker 5: And as you all know, the relationship between gun production,
Speaker 5: gun availability, etc. And suicide is so strong, so it's
Speaker 5: really hard to ignore the relationship between mass shootings and
Speaker 5: gun availability, and that obviously speaks directly to prevention, but
Speaker 5: other things have happened, so that's what we would refer
Speaker 5: to as a more proximal causative factor or motivation or
Speaker 5: then obviously possible preventive factor. We can go more upstream.
Speaker 5: There are other factors. So mental owns and mass shootings
Speaker 5: in mass murder. System of mental illness is actually kind
Speaker 5: of it's its own category of mass shootings and mass murder.
Speaker 5: So if we're talking about other types of mass shootings,
Speaker 5: we can go further. So, for example, there are potential
Speaker 5: interventions such as limiting the amount that we meaning society
Speaker 5: maybe especially media, share private information or identifying information about
Speaker 5: mass shooters. And in this case we're particularly talking about
Speaker 5: the public mass shooters, there's a I guess we'll call
Speaker 5: it a psychological profile of a public mass shooter in particular,
Speaker 5: and these are the mass shooters of which most people
Speaker 5: are most familiar. The Sandy Hook mass shooter that the
Speaker 5: Washington Navy are, and mass shooter.
Speaker 4: Those sorts of mass.
Speaker 5: Shooters, those are what we referred to as public mass shootings,
Speaker 5: which are actually the third most common type of mass shooting.
Speaker 5: Familiar side mass shootings are the most common type. Those
Speaker 5: are private mass shootings, which probably have different than motivating
Speaker 5: factors and maybe preventive strategies. The second most common type
Speaker 5: are the felonious mass shootings, those perpetrated as of some
Speaker 5: sort of crime or felony. And then we have the
Speaker 5: public maschootings, which account for about fifteen percent of mass shootings.
Speaker 5: Either way, one strategy for decreasing public mass shootings is
Speaker 5: to negate or minimize the third component of the profile.
Speaker 5: So I'll go backwards. But the third component of the
Speaker 5: profile is the severe market desire for notoriety or fame.
Speaker 5: That is why these mass shootings are perpetrated in public
Speaker 5: rather than private. It's this severe desire infamy or fame
Speaker 5: and notoriety. That's number three. Number two again going backwards,
Speaker 5: is the severe nihilism or emptiness experienced by these people,
Speaker 5: and this is almost universal. Nihilism again refers to I'm
Speaker 5: sure a lot of people understand what Nyland has been,
Speaker 5: refers to a sense of emptiness, a sense of having
Speaker 5: no severe sense of having no meaning, almost like you're
Speaker 5: not alive. There's no purpose to life, which in its
Speaker 5: severest form than manifests as suicide. And that's why suicide
Speaker 5: is so frequent among mass and also which we have published.
Speaker 5: Although ninety percent of suicide is usually associated with some
Speaker 5: sort of psychiatric sort of that number is much less
Speaker 5: among mass shooters. So there's this epidemic of emptiness and
Speaker 5: nihilism that we have to deal with and address. And
Speaker 5: then number one, probably the greatest again risk factor potential
Speaker 5: risk factor for masshootings in general, but also public mass shootings,
Speaker 5: is what we've discussed, and that is this It's not
Speaker 5: just availability or access to firearms, which is universal, of course,
Speaker 5: but it is in terms of just the mass shooter.
Speaker 4: Is the market.
Speaker 5: Affinity for or fascination with firearms. So these are the
Speaker 5: three kind of characteristics of nearly all public mass shooters. Again,
Speaker 5: we want to be sensitive, so we want to capture
Speaker 5: all of them, but we also want to be specific
Speaker 5: in terms of statistical terms when we describe this profile.
Speaker 3: So you're blowing my mind because doctor Shiloh and I,
Speaker 3: you know, our work overlaps in our connection to law enforcement,
Speaker 3: and we get sort of the same trainings. But Shiloh
Speaker 3: gets a whole set of training taking her in this direction.
Speaker 3: I go towards threat assessment in a slightly different direction.
Speaker 3: But I love what you're talking about because I've never
Speaker 3: heard it phrase this way about, especially those categorizations you use.
Speaker 3: And I'm wondering if that sense of emptiness also has
Speaker 3: like a then diagram overlap with empty vessel. So if
Speaker 3: there's an empty vessel there, that individual is more likely
Speaker 3: to take on some extreme rhetoric or an extreme movement.
Speaker 3: And is this something that applies to the work that
Speaker 3: you're doing too. That's one part that we may have
Speaker 3: a comment on. But the other thing is what is
Speaker 3: the fascination with weapons? Is that our culture is our
Speaker 3: culture teaching these people that are vulnerable in a search
Speaker 3: for meaning, that we're teaching them that this is the
Speaker 3: magical sword that gives you power. And if we were
Speaker 3: to sort of do a metaphor, do you have any
Speaker 3: comment on.
Speaker 5: That, You're one percent right. I definitely have a comment
Speaker 5: on it, and you're you're exactly right. And this guess
Speaker 5: to prevention and what maybe changed in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 5: So first about the emptiness and maybe you know kind
Speaker 5: of what motive motivates people, and then the first and
Speaker 5: then the first part of the question also, so basically
Speaker 5: and the fascination with guns, they're somewhat related, I think,
Speaker 5: I think, but this goes to kind of motivation and
Speaker 5: how we would prevent these sorts of things. So speaking
Speaker 5: to them, if we're we're understanding this in the context
Speaker 5: of how to then prevent a mass shooting, especially a
Speaker 5: public mass shooting, and this fascination with weapons slightly more
Speaker 5: kind of than you know, distal strategy of prevention specifically
Speaker 5: addressing you know, the fascination with guns is of course
Speaker 5: the effect of media on people. It's the fascination with guns,
Speaker 5: it's the romanticization of guns and gun violence. So guns
Speaker 5: and gun violence are romanticized by the media, and we're
Speaker 5: talking primarily about the entertainment media, so movies, music, video games, television.
Speaker 5: There's this romanticization of guns and gun violence that definitely
Speaker 5: affects people and encourages people and and stokes the fascination
Speaker 5: for affinity with the weapons.
Speaker 4: There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 5: So you can be addressed that that can be addressed
Speaker 5: relatively easily by the entering media. I'm not sure they'll
Speaker 5: do that, but that could be addressed. So then speaking
Speaker 5: to you know, this emptiness, which then I think also
Speaker 5: leads to why people would be so taken with firearms
Speaker 5: and the romantization of gun violence and whatnot. That gets
Speaker 5: more to kind of maybe what changed in the seventies
Speaker 5: and eighties, and I think media again has something to
Speaker 5: do with that.
Speaker 4: We describe a number of.
Speaker 5: Things, you know, lot lots of things changed, but I
Speaker 5: think that the influences, and this is going even more
Speaker 5: kind of distal or closer in this case to maybe
Speaker 5: the fundamental issue or the kind of root causes of
Speaker 5: these sorts of things and the emptiness that you described,
Speaker 5: you know, or earlier, maybe in the twentieth century, the
Speaker 5: primary influences on young people were, you know, their teacher, parents,
Speaker 5: maybe clergy, those sorts of things that that changed in
Speaker 5: the seventies and eighties. And obviously we had media, we
Speaker 5: had television and movies, and those were very important, but
Speaker 5: for example, you know, music television didn't begin really until
Speaker 5: the eighties. People couldn't rent movies until you know, you know,
Speaker 5: the eighties, and then and then of course we have computers,
Speaker 5: and then of course social media and now everything is
Speaker 5: now unfortunately in terms of you know, gun violence and
Speaker 5: mass shootings just growing exponentially.
Speaker 4: So we see that the influences on young people.
Speaker 5: Has changed dramatically, and that change really began and the
Speaker 5: you know, seventies and eighties and is continued. And we
Speaker 5: see this now exponential growth in mass shootings and mass murder.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's terrible, it's very unfortunate. So that's part
Speaker 5: of that's partly how we how we see things having developed,
Speaker 5: and how we then, you know, on the flip side,
Speaker 5: see how we could stem the tide.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's an interesting intervention point. And this
Speaker 1: is not my original thought because we I don't think
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can talk about this by
Speaker 1: naming names, but Scott and I have a colleague and
Speaker 1: another podcaster who's a former federal agent that was actually
Speaker 1: visiting Los Angeles earlier this year and meeting with the
Speaker 1: entertainment industry to talk about how, you know, everyone wants
Speaker 1: to be John Wick after the latest movie comes out,
Speaker 1: and this romanticization that you're talking about, and it can
Speaker 1: be done because of the way that industry phased out
Speaker 1: cigarette smoking on screen, right, So it's kind of looking
Speaker 1: at the same formula and how can we get producers
Speaker 1: and creators to maybe start taking a little bit of,
Speaker 1: you know, a cue from when we looked at that
Speaker 1: public health crisis and apply it to guns. So I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm really interested in how other folks and listeners
Speaker 1: and researchers or anyone watching this if they think that
Speaker 1: that is actually a transition that can be done, because
Speaker 1: I know those conversations are being had between people in
Speaker 1: some of the intervention prevention worlds along with the entertainment executives.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's exactly my thinking. Yeah, I really can't
Speaker 5: add much to that. That's exactly what That's exactly how
Speaker 5: we see it.
Speaker 3: I want to take a little bit of a turn
Speaker 3: here because I don't want to get too far away
Speaker 3: from something that I am absolutely fascinated by Shiloh, and
Speaker 3: I complain all the time about as much as we
Speaker 3: are so enamored with training, it's so hard to stay
Speaker 3: up with the latest developments. And for me, especially working
Speaker 3: clinically in a large mental health agency, working with a
Speaker 3: lot of co occurring personality disorders. You know, I was
Speaker 3: ending my academic career at a time when we were
Speaker 3: still saying that all personality disorders were strictly as a
Speaker 3: result of trauma, and now the paradigm has shifted because
Speaker 3: we have this unbelievable opportunity to utilize brain imaging to
Speaker 3: tell us that no, there are structures, there are issues
Speaker 3: happening organically that predisposed individuals to personality disorders, which then
Speaker 3: has an overlap to the mental illness that you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Maybe not psychosis, but there is that strong element of
Speaker 3: narcissism that displays in some of these shooters. So can
Speaker 3: you tell us about how you're using this amazing technology
Speaker 3: to further your research.
Speaker 5: Well, we haven't, you know, because of the nature of
Speaker 5: mass shooters and mass murders, and that most of them
Speaker 5: dying that they're still relatively you know, huld be it's
Speaker 5: hard to you know, interact with them very much.
Speaker 4: We have been unable to you know.
Speaker 5: For example, image them, which is how I would you know,
Speaker 5: normally study people. We use MRI and primarily positiveno mission
Speaker 5: tomography to understand people. But we do better understand that
Speaker 5: the neurobiology of violence in general, and we can understand
Speaker 5: maybe you know, mental illness or violence in general even
Speaker 5: among you know, mass murders and mass shooters on the
Speaker 5: general by literature, there are brain abnormalities and people who
Speaker 5: perpetrate violence primarily in the you know, I don't want
Speaker 5: to get it too technical, but you know these are
Speaker 5: limbic areas, and these are the areas in which we
Speaker 5: see many abnormalities and all sorts of people with psychiatric
Speaker 5: conditions and other sorts of behavioral conditions, just because I mean,
Speaker 5: that's that's what the Olympic system does. It's involved in
Speaker 5: emotion and behavior and these sorts of things. So obviously
Speaker 5: you'd find issues there in the amygdala and the stritum
Speaker 5: and in those sorts of places. Chances are we'd see
Speaker 5: the same things and people who have you know, perpetrated
Speaker 5: mass murders of any type. What I can say though,
Speaker 5: is that maybe the contribution of our work imaging and
Speaker 5: otherwise in the other phenomenological work that we do in
Speaker 5: violence in general and especially in mental illness can be
Speaker 5: applied to mass murder and understanding mass murder and shootings,
Speaker 5: and another way, going back to the question of mental illness,
Speaker 5: and I definitely want to get to the radicalation the
Speaker 5: emptiness question.
Speaker 4: And then now I'm going to talk about.
Speaker 5: Radicalization because that's extremely important and that's fundamental and probably
Speaker 5: you know, contributes to about or response for about six
Speaker 5: percent of mass murderers. Well, one contribution from the general
Speaker 5: violence and especially violence and mental illness literature that really
Speaker 5: just confirms what we've already shared about the relationship between
Speaker 5: mental illness and mass shootings and mass murder in general.
Speaker 3: It is this.
Speaker 5: So first I'll say that one other kind of result
Speaker 5: that we observed or found when we analyzed our data
Speaker 5: is that while only about five percent of mass shootings
Speaker 5: related to a psychotic men's on this in particular again
Speaker 5: psychotic mental illness being overrepresented among mass shooters, but still
Speaker 5: only being responsible for five percent of mass shootings, that
Speaker 5: number is very different if we talk about mass murders
Speaker 5: perpetrated with other methods.
Speaker 4: That's extremely important.
Speaker 5: So if we talk about mass stabbings and any other
Speaker 5: type of mass murder, we're much more likely to see
Speaker 5: someone who is psychotic. Now, the primary reason for that, well,
Speaker 5: there are two primary reasons. One goes to the question
Speaker 5: of why someone chooses to use a firearm versus something else.
Speaker 5: They are really two main reasons why someone chooses a
Speaker 5: firearm versus something else. Number one is for this infamy
Speaker 5: and fame. They're going to receive a lot more media
Speaker 5: coverage and attention if they use a firearm. That's just
Speaker 5: the case. That's what happens. Number two is because they
Speaker 5: want to take their life. And when people want to
Speaker 5: take their life, they're much more likely to use a
Speaker 5: firem than anything else.
Speaker 4: That's very clear. So people with psychotic disorders who perpetrate.
Speaker 5: A mass murder usually don't want to take their own life,
Speaker 5: and they're certainly not interested in fame. That is not
Speaker 5: the motive in any way. If someone truly has a
Speaker 5: psychotic disorder, it's not about fame. It's again, these people
Speaker 5: are very often paranoid. They definitely don't want media exposure,
Speaker 5: they don't want anyone to know what they're doing. As
Speaker 5: opposed to the mass shooter, who generally wants people to
Speaker 5: know what they're doing. They want the infamy, and that's
Speaker 5: the purpose. So the other thing we have to understand
Speaker 5: about the other types of mass murder is that women
Speaker 5: rarely perpetrate mass shootings of any sort.
Speaker 4: But they rarely do, and they're not interested in using firearms.
Speaker 4: They're just not.
Speaker 5: However, the other category of mass murder is much more
Speaker 5: populated with females, So if a female perpetrates and mass murder,
Speaker 5: they're much more likely to use another method. There are
Speaker 5: a number of reasons for that, but that's also associated
Speaker 5: with and consistent with that the women are much more
Speaker 5: likely to be psychotic than men, even among the group
Speaker 5: of people who perpetrate mass murder with other methods. So
Speaker 5: this is consistent and can be understood through the viol
Speaker 5: the general violence in mental illness literature, it turns out
Speaker 5: that the effect of mental illness on women is different
Speaker 5: than the effect of mental illness on men. So men
Speaker 5: at baseline are already very violent. That's because of hormones
Speaker 5: and biology and a whole bunch of sorts of things.
Speaker 5: So it's just so men are just so violent in
Speaker 5: general especially younger men, that mental illness has very little
Speaker 5: additional effect on violence perpetration in men a little, but
Speaker 5: not very much. The mechanism by which mental illness, especially
Speaker 5: severe mental illness, serious mental illness, increases the.
Speaker 4: Risk of violence is by impairing impulse.
Speaker 5: That's kind of that's common to psychiatric conditions that increase
Speaker 5: the risk of violence, is common to substance use. Young
Speaker 5: men are impulsive in general, so mental illness doesn't have
Speaker 5: too much more of an effect. Young women are not
Speaker 5: as impulsive as young men. So what we see is
Speaker 5: that the effect of mental illness on young women in
Speaker 5: terms of violence perpetration is huge, huge, So that's very
Speaker 5: consistent with what we understand and what we see in
Speaker 5: terms of the risk of women perpetrating mass murder with
Speaker 5: a weapon that isn't a firearm versus with a firearm
Speaker 5: that so many of those people do have schizophrenia. Those
Speaker 5: young people tend to be women. They're very frequently psychotic,
Speaker 5: and so the kind of different lines of evidence are
Speaker 5: very consistent with each other. Now, getting back to this
Speaker 5: question of radicalization and emptiness and also what's changed since
Speaker 5: the nineteen seven these so we have this, we have
Speaker 5: one hundred we have, you know, a certain number of
Speaker 5: one hundred, say, mass mass murders. About five percent again
Speaker 5: or maybe more for including other types of mass murders
Speaker 5: are perpetrated because of mental illness. The other critical factor
Speaker 5: that we have to understand and really speaks to or
Speaker 5: gets that the question of really the forensic questions in
Speaker 5: mass murder is the question of psychopathy. So psychopathy, as
Speaker 5: I'm sure all the listeners known as you all obviously know,
Speaker 5: is real. It's a technical term, that's a diagnosis. We
Speaker 5: have a way of diagnosing it. About five percent of
Speaker 5: the population I think approximately you know, has it would
Speaker 5: be diagnosed as a psychopath. Now, about eighty percent of
Speaker 5: serial killers are psychopaths, ninety about twenty to twenty five
Speaker 5: percent of single or double murderers are psychopaths. Now one
Speaker 5: to two percent of mass murderers are psychopaths. Slightly more
Speaker 5: the mass murders whose other methods are psychopaths. But about
Speaker 5: one percent one and a half percent of mass shooters
Speaker 5: are psychopaths. Now, they still perpetrate the most heinous evil acts,
Speaker 5: but diagnostically they wouldn't be considered psychopaths.
Speaker 4: So this might be hard to understand, but this gets
Speaker 4: too motives.
Speaker 5: So only five percent are mentally ill primarily have a
Speaker 5: psychotic disorder, like a couple percent might be psychopaths.
Speaker 4: So what about all the rest?
Speaker 5: So this gets at what you're talking about, and basically,
Speaker 5: again to use one term, it's radicalization. So basically, all
Speaker 5: these other people are relatively or at one point were
Speaker 5: relatively normal people.
Speaker 4: They didn't have a psychotic disorder. They weren't psychopaths.
Speaker 5: You know, they weren't torturing animals, they weren't sexually assaulting
Speaker 5: people when they were like ten or eleven years old.
Speaker 5: They weren't causing fires those sort of sending like animals
Speaker 5: or things on fire, which is you know, typical young
Speaker 5: psychopath behavior, or people with contact disorder, which which is
Speaker 5: what people usually have before they become psychopaths. They are
Speaker 5: relatively normal people don't have mental illness or at least
Speaker 5: don't have a psychotic disorder, who are radicalized for some
Speaker 5: reason and then perpetrate a mass shooting or a mass
Speaker 5: murder for some other reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that leaves so much open to what doctor Scott
Speaker 1: was saying in terms of looking at personality disorders. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think what still is rising to the
Speaker 1: top for me, which is obviously I don't know if
Speaker 1: epidemic is the right word at this point with our
Speaker 1: population and especially young people of suicidality. Right, just coming
Speaker 1: back to that issue, which I know we're not technically
Speaker 1: talking about that being mental illness in terms of like
Speaker 1: what your study has shown and looking at psychotic disorders,
Speaker 1: but it does leave the door open for so so
Speaker 1: much more for us to say, Okay, okay, it's not
Speaker 1: this stuff. It's not the big, the two biggie psychotic
Speaker 1: or psychopathy. So there's a lot left to start looking
Speaker 1: at for sure. Again, just kudos to why your work
Speaker 1: is so foundational. To then jump off from that point,
Speaker 1: I'd like to ask a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: female perpetrators, because Scott and I always find it so
Speaker 1: interesting to kind of dial down on female perpetrators of violence,
Speaker 1: you know, whether that's sexual assaults or homicide.
Speaker 2: Or what have you.
Speaker 1: What, Because you also did an additional study right out
Speaker 1: of the study and analysis of one hundred and five
Speaker 1: female perpetrated mass murders. Was this interesting to you as
Speaker 1: well to sort of parse that out or what was
Speaker 1: sort of the idea behind focusing on some of those
Speaker 1: numbers with women and or girls. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think this is always very fascinating to our listeners because
Speaker 1: mass murder is often viewed as very male dominated. So
Speaker 1: then we kind of say, Okay, what's going on with
Speaker 1: these women or young women? So I'm just curious about,
Speaker 1: you know, your interest there with the female perpetrators. And
Speaker 1: then were there any findings that sort of challenged existing
Speaker 1: stereotypes or assumptions when it came to gender.
Speaker 5: Well, when we conducted our initial analysis and publish our
Speaker 5: initial paper, we did start to notice some differences between
Speaker 5: men and women and seemed like more women were using
Speaker 5: a non firearm methods of mass murderers. Seemed like more
Speaker 5: of the women mass murders tended to have psychotic disorders,
Speaker 5: so we wanted to investigate that further. There are definitely
Speaker 5: less female mass murderers than the male mass murderers, of course,
Speaker 5: but we had this sample size of one hundred and
Speaker 5: five out of about twenty twenty two hundred, But we
Speaker 5: had the sample of one hundred and five, which is enough.
Speaker 4: For a studion.
Speaker 5: We found maybe what people would expect, maybe not what
Speaker 5: they would expect, but again, so female perpetrators of mass
Speaker 5: murder tend to use other weapons, so they're not interested
Speaker 5: in using firearms.
Speaker 4: Again, that gets to motivate.
Speaker 5: They're very likely to have schizophrenia, and not just have schizophrenia,
Speaker 5: but for schizophrenia really.
Speaker 4: To be the cause.
Speaker 5: So these are people who are experiencing delusions and or
Speaker 5: hallucinations responding to those delusions and hallucinations, and most of
Speaker 5: the time I think the number was like eighty percent
Speaker 5: to seventy five or eighty percent taking the life vi
Speaker 5: of their.
Speaker 1: Okay, that was going to be my question because this
Speaker 1: totally tracks with doctor Philip Resnick's work in looking at
Speaker 1: the different typologies if you will, of kind of familicide.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so.
Speaker 3: Did you see any difference in male versus female population
Speaker 3: regarding the intersection or influence of substance use. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's something that certainly has really increased in since the
Speaker 3: seventies when math made its way basically east from Hawaii
Speaker 3: where it was so prevalent there and then became distributed
Speaker 3: across the US, first in a recreational sense and then
Speaker 3: really causing behavioral changes in the most vulnerable of our population.
Speaker 3: Can you comment on that?
Speaker 5: Absolutely? So Substance use is another part of the pie.
Speaker 5: It's not the biggest, but it's definitely part of the pie.
Speaker 5: Men mass murders tend to have difficulties with substance use
Speaker 5: more than female mass murders. Again, psychotrit schizophreniag just really
Speaker 5: dominates among female mass murders.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so substance uses.
Speaker 5: Is a much bigger deal among male mass murders and
Speaker 5: among mass shooters, much less among the other types of
Speaker 5: mass murders. So it's a bigger issue among mass murders
Speaker 5: who use farms at a bigger issue among men. And
Speaker 5: the primary substance is marijuana. You know, we see people
Speaker 5: who are affected by methamphetamine, of course, and you know,
Speaker 5: ketamine and others are drugs like those, But the primary
Speaker 5: substance affiliated with mass shootings is marijuana. The relationship, the
Speaker 5: association between marijuana and mass shootings has increased over time.
Speaker 5: So that's certainly another thing, you know, with the legalization
Speaker 5: of marijuana. So for an example, the prevalence of marijuana
Speaker 5: use among mass shooters has increased. It is outpaced, for example,
Speaker 5: the prevalence of marijuana use among the background population. And
Speaker 5: one thing that may be hard to understand but maybe
Speaker 5: may not be hard to understand, is that while the
Speaker 5: prevalence of marija want to use among mass shooters has
Speaker 5: has increased over time, and especially around when marijuana was
Speaker 5: legalized first and I think nineteen ninety six medically in
Speaker 5: California and then around it was a twenty twelve or
Speaker 5: twenty thirteen recreationally, but there has been no change in
Speaker 5: the prevalence of marijuana use among mass murderers who use
Speaker 5: other methods.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's it's very strange. I mean, it's that those
Speaker 4: of what the data show.
Speaker 5: But the prevalence of marijuana use has not changed among
Speaker 5: mass murders to use other weapons very strong, but among
Speaker 5: mass shooters it's gone way up.
Speaker 4: It's very strange.
Speaker 3: So I'm always interested, you know. Part of the responsibilities
Speaker 3: of my day job with law enforcement is looking at
Speaker 3: all of these factors. And one of the things that
Speaker 3: I'm always dismayed by is that sort of the idea
Speaker 3: of the cannabis culture, which, hey, it's legal, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like any other substance that can be used to
Speaker 3: an extent that it's dangerous. But what I try and
Speaker 3: educate people on when I can is that what you're
Speaker 3: getting now from the dispensary is five hundred times stronger
Speaker 3: than any skunk weed that was grown in somebody's backyard
Speaker 3: seventy years ago. Like, it's just a completely different I mean,
Speaker 3: it's not a different chemical, but the intensity is so
Speaker 3: much So can you comment or I mean, I'm just wondering.
Speaker 3: Is the cannabis use an attempt to self medicate overwhelming
Speaker 3: anxiety but they're only making it worse? Or are they
Speaker 3: developing psychosis as a result of this overload of cannaboids
Speaker 3: in their system. I don't know if that's related to
Speaker 3: anything you're doing. And just like I see over and
Speaker 3: over again that it's like you're trying to use something
Speaker 3: to calm yourself down that is making the situation absolutely worse.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if there's any connection here.
Speaker 4: To some degree, I'm sure all of that is part
Speaker 4: of what's going on.
Speaker 5: I can say that going back a little bit to
Speaker 5: what I said, that is that the primary mechanism by
Speaker 5: which substance use, or any substances which are of course
Speaker 5: the highest, the greatest risk factor of violence more than
Speaker 5: any other potential risk factor, is that they directly impair
Speaker 5: impulse control.
Speaker 4: All substances impair impulse control.
Speaker 5: That's kind of their nature, probably via disconnecting or disassociating,
Speaker 5: you know, the way that dopamine works from austraatum, the stratum,
Speaker 5: this restratum is responsible for motor control. So that's so
Speaker 5: basically what substances, including marijuana do, is they they they
Speaker 5: take the break off of basically dopamine and austratum, and
Speaker 5: that leads to it, you know, disinhibition and impulsivity. That's
Speaker 5: probably that's probably the mechanism why they're using it.
Speaker 4: There are many reasons.
Speaker 5: Why people use marijuana and other substances, including those that
Speaker 5: you've described. Just even empirically and considering or thinking about
Speaker 5: prevention along the line lines of you know, gun availability
Speaker 5: and gun production is that it's it's very empirical. What
Speaker 5: we know is that the more the more guns are made,
Speaker 5: the more people buy guns and use guns, the more
Speaker 5: marijuana is available and made, or the more substances are around,
Speaker 5: or the more opiates opioids are around, the more they're used.
Speaker 4: And again that that I frame it in that.
Speaker 5: Way just just because that speaks then directly to to
Speaker 5: prevention and and a lot of these potential strategies don't
Speaker 5: require additional rules and regulations. They maybe require a little
Speaker 5: bit of, you know, just a little bit of maybe
Speaker 5: changes in behavior by by let's say, stakeholders and partners
Speaker 5: and in society and culture.
Speaker 3: So out of everything that you've been doing, which is
Speaker 3: so broad. Again, we've eaten up the majority of our hour,
Speaker 3: and I could talk to you for the next four
Speaker 3: days NonStop. What was surprising about your research? Like, what
Speaker 3: did what was expected and kind of came out of
Speaker 3: left field for you? That was, you know, not what
Speaker 3: you expected from this area.
Speaker 5: Sure, well, I think that I don't know how surprising
Speaker 5: this was, but maybe it was. Maybe we were surprised
Speaker 5: at how strong this kind of finding was. And that
Speaker 5: is the relationship between psychiatric medications and mass murder mass shootings,
Speaker 5: and that is of course a negative or inverse relationship.
Speaker 5: Not only are they not not only are are psychiatric
Speaker 5: medications not related to mass shootings not positive.
Speaker 4: Not necessarily in the mass shootings.
Speaker 5: Virtually no mass murders or mass shootings take psychiatric medications
Speaker 5: or are on a therapeutic dose of the psychiatric I
Speaker 5: mean virtually, wow, some, I mean there are some, but
Speaker 5: virtually there and some are maybe some maybe had blood
Speaker 5: levels in their system, but they were sub therapeutic. I
Speaker 5: mean virtually zero mass murders have therapeutic levels of psychiatric
Speaker 5: medications in their system. It's quite from Wow.
Speaker 1: There's so much today that it's like blowing my mind.
Speaker 1: Yet it all makes absolute sense, Like I, you know,
Speaker 1: looking at these and I think for us, you know,
Speaker 1: we've known the numbers and the research has been pretty
Speaker 1: clear about the rates of mass murders as compared to
Speaker 1: how much we.
Speaker 2: Hear about it, right, which then instills.
Speaker 1: Fear, whether it's as parents or kiddos going to school
Speaker 1: and you know, more prevention and drills being done at school.
Speaker 1: What do you think is important in terms of messaging
Speaker 1: moving forward to I mean, I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: alleviate fears, but to get the right data out there
Speaker 1: that maybe as a byproduct, will alleviate some fears.
Speaker 2: How do we do it?
Speaker 1: Do we still just keep having conversations like this, because
Speaker 1: how do you get out in front of it? Right If,
Speaker 1: as one of our listeners in the chat pointed out,
Speaker 1: you know, going back to the entertainment piece, if entertainment
Speaker 1: is mimicking life, and then life is mimicking entertainment, right,
Speaker 1: where do we get in there to have the correct messaging?
Speaker 2: What do you envision that might look like.
Speaker 4: That's a very good question.
Speaker 5: So I think you know the data, the data around
Speaker 5: mass shootings, in mass murder in general are are very
Speaker 5: informative in the lightning at A lot of it, especially recently,
Speaker 5: is new, but a lot of it is at least intuitive,
Speaker 5: but has been shown in one form or another, and
Speaker 5: it's certainly consistent with what we understand but other types
Speaker 5: of gun violence. But as you said, as you actually
Speaker 5: I think just said a lot of what I'm saying
Speaker 5: is super interesting but also makes sense. So these are
Speaker 5: not necessarily I'm not saying, you know anything that is
Speaker 5: so so different than what you know people have shared before. Basically,
Speaker 5: what I'm trying to say is that there are definitely
Speaker 5: solutions to measure. I think we could easily decrease the
Speaker 5: prevalence of mass shootings and other types of mass murder
Speaker 5: we actually know how. This is similar to other cultural
Speaker 5: phenomena and problems that we have, whether they be medical
Speaker 5: or psychiatric or purely social sociocultural. Speaking as an academician,
Speaker 5: to get to the point is that it's hard to
Speaker 5: kind of find reliable.
Speaker 4: Sources of information and data.
Speaker 5: I think just information, valid and reliable information and data
Speaker 5: are important. And what I'm trying to say is that
Speaker 5: those data and research studies and information are out there,
Speaker 5: especially in the the academic literature and the like the
Speaker 5: real literature. Unfortunately, there's there's misinformation. Then there's a lot
Speaker 5: of just bad information out there. I think with a
Speaker 5: little bit of kind of searching in diligence, one should
Speaker 5: feel comfortable and confident on knowing that the information is
Speaker 5: out there being able to find it because by and large,
Speaker 5: researchers in the academic community have actually identified and at
Speaker 5: least proven potential efficacy of these relatively facile and easy interventions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a tough you know, maybe that's even
Speaker 1: the tough or problem is figuring out, you know, how
Speaker 1: do we get the right information out to folks that
Speaker 1: can digest it at least to try and compete with
Speaker 1: just the news and the twenty four hour news cycle
Speaker 1: of all the horrible things we see to start understanding
Speaker 1: it rather than just being fearful of it. Do you
Speaker 1: happen to be a member of a tap the threat
Speaker 1: assessment professionals. We got to get you to come speak
Speaker 1: at their conference.
Speaker 2: By the way, you would be perfect for it.
Speaker 1: But you know, a TAP has done some wonderful things
Speaker 1: in some you know, not obviously not just law enforcement,
Speaker 1: mental health and researchers they've worked with, but letting in
Speaker 1: some journalists who really understand and you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: getting information out via books and trying to you know,
Speaker 1: find other ways when you know maybe nobody's going to watch.
Speaker 2: A YouTube show about it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I just I feel like that's really important
Speaker 1: piece because there are a lot of people living in fear,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to say it's unnecessary because I'm
Speaker 1: definitely a planner. I'm definitely a prepper, definitely have a
Speaker 1: lot of situational awareness, but.
Speaker 2: We also need to be able.
Speaker 1: To live in our you know, go on with our
Speaker 1: lives and live day in and day out and not
Speaker 1: think that this is going to happen to us around
Speaker 1: every corner. So your database is like, no, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of thinking off the top of my
Speaker 1: head here, But this is such an interesting conversation in
Speaker 1: your database. Is that ongoing You guys are adding to
Speaker 1: it all the time. Is that how it's a living,
Speaker 1: living database as we say, that's right, that's very interesting, Scott,
Speaker 1: anything else before.
Speaker 2: We wrap up?
Speaker 3: Yes, our rapid fire questions that are these are going
Speaker 3: to be the hardest things you ever answer.
Speaker 2: This is a new segment.
Speaker 3: I here it is. This is new. We've only did
Speaker 3: a couple of times. But to kind of shake off
Speaker 3: the seriousness. Favorite ice cream, favorite movie, least favorite activity.
Speaker 4: Sure, chocolate ice cream.
Speaker 5: I don't ea as much ice cream anymore, you know,
Speaker 5: nowadays I'm relatively older.
Speaker 4: Chocolate ice cream, you know, the Godfather?
Speaker 2: Oh nice?
Speaker 4: Oh, and no, I run a lot, but I don't
Speaker 4: like it.
Speaker 2: You run a lot? Running is the worst. Running is
Speaker 2: the worst.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do it. Yeah, I read it. Yeah, for
Speaker 4: about twenty four hours ahead of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I love you know. It's a silly little exercise
Speaker 3: to throw these at you, but it's always interesting to
Speaker 3: me the type of person that's able to just know
Speaker 3: exactly what the answers are, and of course that goes
Speaker 3: along with your incredible ability to research and present. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much for giving of your time today. Like
Speaker 3: Shilah was saying, you've blown our minds. You've made me
Speaker 3: even more interested now to go in different areas. I'm
Speaker 3: going to go back and dive into your papers and
Speaker 3: we have to get you attached to a tap like.
Speaker 3: You are absolutely the type of presenter that they would
Speaker 3: would love. So thank you for your time, and please
Speaker 3: we can if we can entice you with a like
Speaker 3: some swag and a couple of gifts or something, please
Speaker 3: come back and let's have an expanded version of this conversation.
Speaker 5: Thank you, it was a pleasure to be with you all.
Speaker 5: I really appreciate I think the work that you all
Speaker 5: do is great. I'm sure your listeners very much appreciate.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sure they're going to be on Discord and
Speaker 3: our Discord channel and among our patrons. I can already
Speaker 3: tell there's a bunch of activity just about our broadcast today.
Speaker 3: So we'll have a lot more questions for you in
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 1: And I will put a link to doctor Gergus's book
Speaker 1: in the YouTube notes, so please if you want to
Speaker 1: check that out. Sounds absolutely fascinating. And yes, thank you
Speaker 1: so much, and thank you to everyone who is here
Speaker 1: tonight and everyone who's going to watch this in the future.
Speaker 1: At some point, have a great Saturday evening and we
Speaker 1: will see you next time. Bie guys, take care, goodbye.
Speaker 1: We sincerely thank you for spending some time with us today.
Speaker 1: La Not So Confidential is part of the Caral Space
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