As a part of holiday reading, I am reading The Ten Day MBA by Steven Silbiger. I like the straightforward style of writing. The contents are not too complicated. I am enjoying it so far, and I will be a Ten Day MBA by 2013 (haha).
In the accounting section, the author introduces accounting basics, and tells about company information MBAs can get from accounting formulas and analyses.
I was thinking about recent mass shooting. Inspired by the formula, I came up with following formula for mass shooting.
Mass Shooting=[Sad Person]+[Social Factor]+[Mental Illness]+[Available Gun]-[Resistance]
Let's assume this formula is correct. To reduce mass shooting, we want to reduce Sad Person, Social Factor, Mental Illness and Available Gun, and increase Resistance.
Sad person does the shooting. He is a product of genetics, environment, education and (lack of) discipline. There have been and will be some Sad Persons in our society. Still we need to come up with ways to reduce their numbers.
Social Factor is an outside encouragement. The former Arizona congressman (along with others including a child) got shot by a madman, and it was argued that encouraging comments by some right wing politician might have influenced the shooter.
As Morgan Freeman pointed out, even a big coverage by mass media, " the man of the day" status, can be an encouragement to Sad Person.
You can include violent movies, TV and videogames in this category.
Mental Illness is talked in many mass shooting cases, including the Newtown and the Virginia Tech. Improvements in treatment, enforcement of medication, systematic patient tracking etc would be the efforts to combat this factor.
We can include this in the Sad Person category, but considering importance of social efforts on this issue, I make this an independent category.
Available Gun is an obvious enabler. It is an essential component for mass shooting by definition.
Let's take another society as a control group. Japan has very strict gun control. Guns are only for the police, military and licensed hunters there. Citizens who carry guns are nearly zero. In the country, mass shooting almost never occured. Yakuza (gang)-related shootings have happened in rare occasions, but they are usually among Yakuzas and the scale is far smaller. Of course there have been Sad Persons with Mental Illness who set out to kill people randomly. But only with a kitchen knife it's a lot harder for them to kill as many.
Availability of Gun in America is determined by many factors, including the legislation factor. There are many interest groups; lobbyists (e.g. the NRA), gun makers, distributers and pro-gun forces in society. Some people just don't want to give up the toys and proclaim the rights.
Here I don't fancy taking on entire gun issues. I will just point out that an available gun is an enabler for a Sad Person and is an essential component for mass shooting.
To make guns less available to a Sad Person, what can we do?
Resistance refers to factors that stop shooting on track. Watchful citizens for prevention, training for the police, an alert system for quick response, security guards, armed citizens, the ALICE training (an active shooter training program, an acronym for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evade )...any force that can stop the shooter.
Guns can involve in Resistance. The fact complicates the overall gun control picture. Some Texans are running a social experiment of arming school teachers. I wonder how it willl work out. There should be a balance point for minimum shooting.
Gun control is talked about much currently. But in the formula, it is not the only thing we should work. We need to work on all.
Bottom line. I don't like mass shooting. I don't want to encounter one. I don't want my loved ones to encounter one. We got to do something about mass shooting, and this formula might help to formulate actionable plans. Even if you are a pro-gun, you can work to be watchful for mental illness issue, for example.
