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someguy3 ,

Besides what they listed in the article, I would add lead exposure.

It’s a short read, pretty good.

SpaceNoodle ,

I’m shocked that wouldn’t be near the top.

dustyData ,

Lead poisoning is still the prevalent theory, I think. It fucks up brain development in ways that make kids tend to sociopathic personalities.

tsonfeir ,
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

I’m always glad to hear more people know about lead poisoning. It makes a lot of sense.

thejoker8814 ,

I’m curious, you got anything light reading you can recommend to ease into the topic, please pm me. I’d appreciate, if it wasn’t another post which basically recites the content of another post, and so on - far too much out there these days)

mick ,

No. It’s not possible to find light reading about lead.

PhlubbaDubba ,

Badum Tss

NoIWontPickAName ,

Mythbusters disagrees

gibmiser ,

If you have 15 minutes this Veritasium is well done and explains the history that led to the problem.

youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA?si=96jrGM0juzEDGUvb

tsonfeir , (edited )
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

Here are a few. Most people think it’s just in the water or lead paint. This first link is about the air.

nbcnews.com/…/lead-gasoline-blunted-iq-half-us-po…

theguardian.com/…/violent-crime-lead-poisoning-br…

www.bbc.com/news/health-20961241

www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/…/7985130002/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6068756/

theguardian.com/…/lead-poisoning-crisis-us-childr…

DigitalNirvana ,

It’s called The Lead-Crime Hypothesis, and you can find vetted info on it, here (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead–crime_hypothesis?wprov…).

Here’s a recent meta-analysis: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0166046222000667

Society has not yet realized how important it is to clean up this issue. But we’re getting there.

protist ,

Society has not yet realized how important it is to clean up this issue.

If you’re talking about removing lead from our society, it seems the progress made over the past 40 years has been incredibly dramatic

PhlubbaDubba ,

If you’ve got Disney+ Cosmos has an entire episode about the history of the discovery of how bad leaded gasoline was

Immersive_Matthew ,

What is the excuse for mass shootings then?

dustyData ,

Weapons availability and the mental health crisis. In countries without easy access to guns, mass killings are conducted with knives or cars (runovers). And in countries with socialized healthcare that includes mental health, mass killings don’t happen, at all, or very rarely if ever. Socioeconomic inequality is usually the third element, like in the fire triad, mix the three and you get mass shootings.

PhlubbaDubba ,

Availability of weapons mixed with infrastructure development that atomizes communities to the point that the only places some people can find any social activity is nihilistic message boards full of psychopaths that actively encourage terroristic attacks on society but in the oblique way that dodges accountability for it when someone actually goes and does it.

cogman ,
  1. Easy access to guns
  2. The rise of easy access fascist media
  3. The dissolution of public institutions

It’s simply too easy to grab a gun by anyone. Military grade equipment is available to pretty much anyone with a credit card. Then you combine that with a CONSTANT beating drum from people like Alex Jones talking about how much they want crush, destroy, kill their enemies and how corrupt everything is. Then also talking about how people need to rise up and do “something”. While also in the same breath telling people to go off their meds and how any sort of treatment for mental disorders is actually poison. Then pair that with the fact that there’s pretty much no public infrastructure around public health (thanks Reagan). That means if you are having some sort of mental break down, depression, whatever, if you can’t afford the $100s/$1000s of dollars to get regular psychiatric treatment you are basically just going to be untreated. There is also pretty much no safe place to recoup for someone in distress but not at risk of suicide. But even if there were, even if you could afford it, fascists and preachers know that mentally healthy people are harder to grift so they spend all their time demonizing the very help you’d need.

However, not everyone that does this is mentally unwell. Some are just hateful fascists that believe killing gets their hate filled messages into the world. It’s why it is irresponsible for any media outlet to publish the name or manifestos of these assholes. Having notorious killers encourages more notorious killers.

Immersive_Matthew ,

Great explanation. All things we can solve, but choose not too.

shalafi ,

As to that first point, you know we had AR-15s in the 70s, right? (No one gave a shit. They weren’t “cool” until the Assault Weapons Ban. Yeah, that didn’t work out so well…)

You know guns were far easier to get back then? LOL, I got an old Mossberg 500 (think classic 12-gauge pump) that was branded Revelation. They sold those at Western Auto stores.

It was no thing to see a dude with a loaded gun rack in his pickup. Point being, access is not the thing that changed.

And the rest of your post? On. The. Money.

ryathal ,

Current gun laws are pretty restricted compared to things that used to be allowed. The big one is mail order guns, you could just send a money order and get pretty much any semi-auto gun you wanted delivered to your house with no background check at all.

Full auto gums required a tax stamp since the 30s, and weren’t banned until 86.

cogman ,

As to that first point, you know we had AR-15s in the 70s, right?

The other 2 factors are important along with the internet. There may have been less legal barriers to getting an AR-15, that does not mean accomplishing such a task was easy to do. It’s not like there were AR-15 ads on TV or in newspapers (well, there may have been, but that would have been highly regional). It’s not like every city had an “AR-15” guy in the yellow pages. Legal access hasn’t changed, but general access has (particularly to assault rifles).

Regardless, my advocacy is first just starting with laws I think most everyone can agree with, red flag laws. Take away or don’t allow the purchase of guns by a domestic abusers or someone with a history of violence. Heck, you could even put a time limit on that stuff like “within the last 7 years”.

A ton of these cases are fairly young men (<20). So it would be enough to say “hey, if you are under 25 and your school teachers say ‘Do not let this kid in particular have a gun’” then you don’t get a gun until you turn 25. Or even an outright ban on ownership for people less than 25 (though that’d be much less popular).

statista.com/…/number-k-12-school-shootings-us-ag…

theodewere , (edited )
@theodewere@kbin.social avatar

too many scared assholes who love their guns more than anything else.. highly sensitive momma's boys in love with their guns, always ready to lose their shit..

endhits ,

Shit life syndrome. The difference is they turn their misery outwards instead of committing suicide.

teft ,
@teft@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe there is a Dexter on the loose…

tacosanonymous ,

It’s those lazy millennials. They just don’t have the patience or dedication.

Neato ,
@Neato@ttrpg.network avatar

Who has the money or the leave to travel around, book hotels, go on lots of dates and buy power tools,

ZeroCool ,

Boomers: Would you rather eat avocado toast or become a serial killer?

Millennials/GenZ: What the fuck? Uh, I guess I’d rather eat the toast?

Boomers nObOdY WaNts To SerIaL KiLl aNyMoRe!

Shotgun_Alice ,

Millennials are killing the serial killer industry.

motor_spirit ,

oj rollin in his coffin nissan rn shakin his damn head

🍊🥤🧤

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

It was very famously a white Bronco.

motor_spirit ,

right and I highly doubt he’s in it now. I smile at the one I see at work though :')

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

Some say he’s still trying to make it to Mexico.

Neato ,
@Neato@ttrpg.network avatar

https://ttrpg.network/pictrs/image/be609ebb-d323-4a31-8bb3-d9e22c1dab85.jpeg

Zron ,

Most serial killers had their own vehicle and house, and were able to keep those despite most killers not being able to hold down a job once they started the murders.

Try doing that today. You can’t methodically kill people if you’re freezing to death on the streets.

These greedy corporations are just saving us from serial killers by making it impossible to become one without financial ruin.

nilloc ,

Plot twist. The serial killers still have all that time, but they realized the could kill way more people by becoming billionaires and exploiting them to death.

tal , (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

The rise started before 1950, rose the most rapidly from 1960 to 1970, plateaued in 1980, and then collapsed moving towards 2010.

ncesc.com/…/at-what-age-do-serial-killers-start-k…

As previously mentioned, the typical age range for serial killers to start killing is in their late 20s to early 30s.

So figure that the people killing were maybe maybe late 20s to early 30s in late 1950s to 1970, when the numbers were exploding.

That means people born in ~1920 to ~1940; the serial killers probably were mostly born in the interwar period, between World War I and World War II; born in the Roaring Twenties and then the Great Depression.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

Going based on the generations there, that would have mostly been the Silent Generation.

The period of rapid increase was only about twenty years long, so it’s really only about the length of one generation (though that doesn’t mean that it need nicely align with the “generational cohorts” thing).

The Boomers were already falling off.

By the time Generation X rolled around, the spike would already have been done.

Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, long after all this happened.

And one other point – remember that the graph is of absolute, not per-capita numbers. According to it, in 2010, we have numbers in absolute terms comparable to about 1955. But that’s in absolute terms.

www.populationpyramid.net/…/1955/

In 1955, the US population was about 106 million. Today, it is 334 million. That is, in per-capita terms, 2010 is somewhat-lower than any period shown on the chart. It’s not just low, it’s lower than it’s ever been.

Now, all that being said, I’m not sure how they measure the number of concurrently-active serial killers. I would imagine that things like the advent of DNA evidence, buildup of fingerprint databases, and other changes in criminology probably have changed things; one might have assumed that a serial killer was responsible for a copycat/similar crime, or perhaps vice versa in different conditions.

tacosanonymous ,

K

alienanimals ,

This is really great info. Appreciate all the links backing up the data too. Thank you!

tal , (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I was thinking that people returning from WW2 might be a factor, war trauma or something, but that seems like it’s a little too early.

In 1944, this data shows the largest cohorts in an infantry unit being measured being 19-24 years old.

old.reddit.com/…/what_was_the_average_age_of_the_…

A 19-year-old – the youngest cohort listed – would be 33, maybe the end of the peak period to start serial killing – 14 years after 1944. That’s in 1958, and that’d have been the tail end of American WW2 veterans being in the prime serial killer initiation age. The boom had started then, but the highest rate of increase came later…and that’s looking at the very tail end of the WW2 vets.

The serial killers would mostly have been children or young teens during World War II, not actually served in it.

gregorum ,

so… lead paint?

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I think that the reduction in lead is far too late, if you figure that it’s cumulative exposure over someone’s lifetime, not short-term (which I have not looked up, but would expect to be the case).

googles to sanity check

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801257/

In this cohort study of 553 New Zealanders observed for 38 years, lead exposure in childhood was weakly associated with official criminal conviction and self-reported offending from ages 15 to 38 years. Lead exposure was not associated with the consequential offending outcomes of a greater variety of offenses, conviction, recidivism, or violence.

Yeah, so it’s a childhood thing. You’d be talking about on the order of maybe a 20 year delay until a reduction in exposure translates into peak potential serial killer period.

Also, for stuff like lead paint, it’s gonna be around for decades, gets kicked up over time, so it takes an even longer time for regulations to go have an effect, and that effect is very spread out, whereas this is a pretty sharp increase and decrease.

en.wikipedia.org/…/Lead-based_paint_in_the_United…

In 1971, Congress banned the use of lead-based paint in residential projects (including residential structures and environments) constructed by, or with the assistance of, the federal government.[3] The Consumer Product Safety Commission followed with implementing regulations, effective in 1978.[4] Additional regulations regarding lead abatement, testing and related issues have been issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

I’d – without digging up numbers – guess that halting leaded gasoline probably had the most-immediate impact on lead in the air, since burning leaded gasoline is gonna put it straight into the air.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Lead_Replacement_P…

In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency issued regulations to reduce the lead content of leaded gasoline over a series of annual phases, scheduled to begin in 1973 but delayed by court appeals until 1976.

If something were gonna happen in the 1970s to reduce the rate of serial killing, to be a relevant input, it’d have to be something that had a major immediate effect rather than a long-term developmental effect.

borari ,
@borari@sh.itjust.works avatar

And leaded gasoline and leaded diesel and leaded aviation fuel and lead pipes in household plumbing. Probably lead in the cigarettes everyone smoked literally everywhere.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

It might be interesting to see if countries other than the US – and I have no idea if whatever metrics used by the author here can be applied in those countries, might not have the same data available – saw similar changes in serial killer activity, since that’d help let one know if the relevant factors producing the spike were something that the US in particular experienced or not.

cogman ,

The other theory I’ve heard that makes some sense is lead exposure. From 1925 to about 1976, lead was commonly added to gasoline. Lead is known to cause psychological problems including irritablity and general mood disorders.

Pretty much everyone born during that period was exposed to aerosolized lead.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I don’t believe that it’s lead; see my other comment on it. The lead reductions would have come much too late, and the falloff is too sharp.

4am ,

Going based on the generations there, that would have mostly been the Silent Generation.

It’s always the quiet ones

Twentytwodividedby7 ,

Maybe would be serial killers just spree kill in a mass shooting instead…that has certainly grown since Columbine

thefartographer ,

No one wants to ritualistically murder anymore

Son_of_dad ,

Millennials will try anything once, one kill and that’s enough. They don’t stick with things

KrankyKong ,

Speak for yourself!

solidgrue ,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

Nah. It’s an industrialized, mass-produced economy now. Before the 90s, killing people was a bespoke trade. Mass murder was a one-on-one kind of transaction, each murder personally crafted for the victim by a specialist. The really industrial scale deaths at the time were the stuff of nation-states.

The transition of mass murders to the private sector as heralded by Atlanta, Waco, Columbine and Oklahoma City coincided¹ with the Clinton admin and the advent of NAFTA, which promoted mass industrialization of heretofore domestic industries².

Ever since, it’s been death dealt on an ever expanding scale on an j cident-by-incident basis. A sort of Moore’s Law of death and disillusionment.

I hate myself for even penning this diatribe, but the situation is so bleak it feels like no depth of dark humor will reallybshock anyone anymore.

–

  1. Correlation does not imply causation
  2. This is such a badly formed argument even for satire, I’m embarrassed
shalafi ,

I thought it amusing! Keep on keepin’ on OP.

Jimmyeatsausage ,

Or massive amounts of lead poisoning

echodot ,

Be the change you want to see in the world. Go out and kill your entire neighborhood, it’s the patriotic thing to do.

ours ,

Millennials owning their murder house in this economy?

Oiconomia ,

Back in the day you could afford both med school and running an elaborate murder hotel with some gruesome custom made contraptions. Now you can’t even afford a simple murder house. What has come of this country.

ours ,

And don’t come telling us that cutting on avocado toast will suddenly enable us to afford a reasonable home with a decent torture basement.

Flamangoman ,

Mass terror attacks way the fuck up though

BonesOfTheMoon OP , (edited )

67 domestic terrorism attacks by right wing groups in the US from 2017-2022.

EdibleFriend ,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

John Wayne Gacy killed 33 people, that we know of, in his entire life. 21 killed in Uvalde alone.

We just streamlined things.

josefo ,

Why kill them serially, while you can kill them in parallel.

Stupid IT joke, sorry.

JustEnoughDucks ,
@JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl avatar

One could argue that it is preferable to serial killers.

Serial killers meticulously plan and often torture their victims extensively and many of their victims families never get closure because nothing gets tied back to the killer.

Mass gunman attacks, for example, kill orders of magnitude faster with much less pain for many of their victims, the perpetrator isn’t active for a long period of time, and the families get closure.

Of two severely fucked up scenarios that happen, it seems that one is worse.

TheEighthDoctor ,

Not really, ETA, IRA, Al Qaeda the Palestinians hijacking planes, Pablo Escobar blowing up planes, Unabomber, Oklahoma City. These are all things of the past.

nondescripthandle ,

Instant Gratification goes pathalogical, and bam now we have mass shooters.

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