MASS SHOOTINGS: TOO MANY GUNS, INEPT POLICE DEPARTMENTS, MENTAL ILLNESS, OR TOO MANY SSRI PRESCRIPTIONS WRITTEN BY THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY?

However, since the pharmaceutical companies are dishing out LOTS of money to media outlets, do you suppose there could be a reason the SSRI connection isn’t being mentioned? Why just in 2020, the pharmaceutical industry spent 4.58 billion U.S dollars on advertising on national TV in the United States, unsurprisingly representing a big shift in spending compared to the 2019 pre-covid market. A big shift? Well one BILLION more. In 2020 TV ad spending of the pharma industry accounted for 75 percent of the total ads paid. In 2016 3.1 BILLION. In 2017 3.45 BILLION. In 2018 3.73 BILLION. In 2019 3.79 BILLION. The total for just FIVE years is $18.65 BILLION on advertising. So do you possibly think that a loss of revenue of that amount if the media talked about this connection would be an issue? Or would they just shut up and keep blaming gun owners and guns for the mayhem? That answer is obvious. It the GUN. It’s those GUN NUTS! And yet most of the mass shooters purchased them legally WITH background checks or in the case of Adam Lanza killed his own mother and took the rifle she owned on the shooting spree.

"The SSRI Connection to Suicides, Spontaneous Murder, and Mass Shootings," Mark Reynolds, July 23, 2022. 

Do we need MORE GUN CONTROL? Or BETTER PRESCRIPTION DRUG CONTROL?  "The SSRI Connection to Suicides, Spontaneous Murder, and Mass Shootings," Mark Reynolds, July 23, 2022.

Reason, logic and common sense should dictate the correct answer.

A mass shooting is defined as an incident where four or more people are shot. So far this year, the numbers average out to 11 mass shootings per week. 2021 saw a total of 692 mass shootings throughout the year.

Year 2022, just the first six months: – January: 41 mass shootings, 59 dead, 128 wounded February: 43 mass shootings, 40 dead, 174 wounded
March: 52 mass shootings, 47 dead, 217 wounded- April: 66 mass shootings, 75 dead, 271 wounded- May: 67 mass shootings, 87 dead, 324 wounded-June: 68 mass shootings, 78 dead, 275 wounded- These numbers accumulate to a total of 386 people dead and 1,389 people wounded.

I’m not sure how The Scotsman reporter  Rachael Davies who wrote the article on 05/07/2022 came up with May and June numbers…but hey, that’s main stream media for you!

Now let’s take a look at mass shootings in the USA before 1968 and we will go back as far as 1954. 1968 was the year massive gun control reform was passed with the Gun Control Act. One of the provisions was that no longer could a rehabilitated felon ever have possession of a firearm. Let’s look at mass shootings prior to that day and realize that firearms were taken to school by boys who were going hunting afterward and could be seen in the back windows of their pickups. That you could easily obtain firearms from a Sears & Roebuck catalog without background checks at all and have one sent directly to your home with no FFL dealer involved.

Year, 1968. Country USA. Mass shootings,

ONE: The Robison family murders, also referred to as the Good Hart murders, were the mass murders of Richard Robison, his wife Shirley Robison and their four children; Ritchie, Gary, Randy, and Susan on June 25, 1968

1967 NONE

1966 TWO

On August 1, 1966, after stabbing his mother and his wife to death the previous night, Charles Whitman, a Marine veteran, took rifles and other weapons to the observation deck atop the Main Building tower at the University of Texas at Austin, and then opened fire indiscriminately on people on the surrounding campus and streets. Over the next 96 minutes he shot and killed 14 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 other people. The incident ended when two policemen and a civilian reached Whitman and shot him dead. At the time, the attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history, being surpassed 18 years later by the San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre.

It has been suggested that Whitman’s violent impulses, with which he had been struggling for several years, were caused by a tumor found in the white matter above his amygdala upon autopsy.

On November 12, 1966, 18-year-old Robert Smith shot and killed five people, 4 women and a toddler, and injured two others at the Rose-Mar College of Beauty in Mesa, Arizona. All seven victims had been shot and one of the victims who initially survived her wounds was stabbed in the back.

The shooting is considered to be the first copycat mass shooting with Smith indicating that he had wanted to kill more than Charles Whitman, the perpetrator of the University of Texas tower shooting earlier the same year.

1965 ONE

Late on the night of April 24, 1965, Michael Andrew Clark, who lived in Long Beach, California, left home in his parents’ car, without their permission. In the back of the car, he had a Swedish Mauser military bolt action rifle equipped with telescopic sight and a pistol he had removed from his father’s locked gun safe along with a large quantity of ammunition. Early the next Sunday morning, he climbed to the top of a hill overlooking a stretch of Highway 101 near Orcutt. As the sun came up, Clark began shooting at automobiles driving down the 101 highway.

Two were killed and six more were wounded as the shooting continued for hours before Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office deputies rushed the hill and Clark committed suicide as they closed in. A five-year-old-boy wounded in the head died a day later bringing the total to three dead for the rampage.

Reportedly the two men killed at the scene of the shooting were attempting to assist others who were trapped in a vehicle which had been hit by the gunfire.

1964 NONE
1963 NONE
1962 NONE
1961 NONE
1960 NONE
1959 NONE
1958 NONE
1957 NONE
1956 NONE
1955 NONE
1954 ONE

The 1954 United States Capitol shooting was an attack on March 1, 1954, by four Puerto Rican nationalists who sought to promote the cause of Puerto Rico’s independence from US rule. They fired 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols onto the legislative floor from the Ladies’ Gallery (a balcony for visitors) of the House of Representatives chamber within the United States Capitol.

The nationalists, identified as Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores Rodríguez, unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and began shooting at Representatives in the 83rd Congress, who were debating an immigration bill. Five Representatives were wounded, one seriously, but all recovered. The assailants were arrested, tried and convicted in federal court, and given long sentences, amounting to life imprisonment. In 1978 and 1979, their sentences were commuted by President Jimmy Carter. All four returned to Puerto Rico.

Was there a lack of guns? Obviously not. There were M1 Garands from WWII that the NRA purchased and made available for a low price to members as part of the Civilian Marksmanship program. There were M1 Carbine from WWII and lots of 1911 .45 pistols, lots of WWI Springfield rifles, lots of lever action rifles that could hold 7-10 rounds. There were shotguns from Belgium, there were pistols from Germany and Poland.

Some schools in the south had civilian marksmanship classes to teach children marksmanship and how to properly handle firearms.

Keep reading Mark's fascinating article, . . . 

Mark lives with his wife Kathy of 45 years in the place most folks call Arkansas. The major turning point in his life was after reading the small book “Letters to Jessica” by Robert Bisset and "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine back in the 1990’s. He can be reached here:  markreynolds_bhg5@gmail.com