Paul Meekin talked about the meeting next week at Summit Brewery. The club will set up interests of the district and club in regards to grants for both international and local projects set up by clubs and individuals.
A new member was introduced, John Bennett, is a banker with 21ST Century Bank. He is very involved with the community, including the Port Authority chairman, Equity Service, St Paul Police Foundation, Lowertown Blues Council and has served as King Boreas 68 (to a cheer of Hail Boreas) and Kentucky Colonel for his outstanding service to the community. His hobbies include guitar and studying Spanish.
Carolyn Will talked about upcoming events including the 9/24 Rotation Day, 10/3 at the Camp Bar and the meeting on 10/8.
Carolyn introduced our speakers Dr Jillian Peterson and Dr James Densley, cofounders of the Violence Project. Both have studied patterns of mass murders and have found ways to prevent the violence with data driven evidence. In 2017, nearly 24,000 people committed suicide with firearms, 15,000 homicides occurred due to firearms (which affects people of color), 1000-2000 were killed due to domestic violence which affects mostly women and only 117 were attributed to random mass murders. They have seen a 3% increase annually since 1966 of mass murders (ie at least 4 people killed at one shooting event).
Their database of shooters since 1966 shows the following patterns:
1) Trauma and abuse during childhood
2) Crisis & suicidality
3) Script & validation
4) Access & Ability
With Trauma, many of shooters have had heavy abuse, in particular for young men and they will lash out in their early 20s or above 40 years of age. The Crisis, most expect to die by killing themselves or being killed by police, but 40% will simply give up when confronted. With Script and Validation, events tend to cluster and shooters will look to past shootings as a guide and last of all, they are looking for notoriety. Based on news stories with recent shootings, it is found to be worth 75 million dollars of “free advertising” with the coverage. With Access, most are able to obtain weapons from their parents when used for school shootings. We need to change the gun laws or educate people on the access issue to prevent young adults from taking the weapons.
We have gone through many cycles of fear, be it the 1950-60s with duck & cover, the 1970-80s with serial killers, the 1990s with children abduction and killings, the 2000s with the terrorist attacks and now we are centered on the mass shooters.
How do we solve the problem? Most shooters are “insiders” to the schools or workplaces that they kill people. We need to stop “sending out the script” for copy-cat shooters and need to promote positive actions to prevent people from considering shooting. Approximately 80% will leak their plans; we need to know how to reduce the situation and help “teams” to intervene before the decision is made to shoot. The shooters need connections with people and it can be as simple as making the connections to other individuals. Please go to
www.theviolenceproject.org for more information.
The speakers were given certificates of appreciation for their talk with a donation to “Tree House”. A few happy dollars were announced and the meeting concluded at 1:17 pm.
