I’ve been poking around to find out what kinds of things happened 20-30 years ago that might be driving the mass shootings we saw in 2022.

USA Today has a clear illustration of the age distributions of mass killers (this includes more than guns).

Consider infant mortality. Whatever happened in 1999 and before might be useful to know:

These were the years when Bill Clinton had just ended “Welfare as we know it”. As it happens, 1999 infant mortality rates by state also correlate well with GVA casualty rates from other recent years.

Infant deaths can be divided into deaths caused by some medical or birth-related condition, and deaths caused by accidents or other non-medical reasons. Data around this distinction are difficult to obtain due to CDC policies that work to protect the identities of those in their database. This is unfortunate because the number of deaths from non-medical causes would contain variation in the rates of child abuse from year to year, and has the potential to be a proxy for the number of children surviving child abuse.

There is at least one study detailing the 1999 infant mortality statistics published in the CDC Wonder database. Unfortunately, this study analyzes the demographics surrounding the medical reasons for infant mortality, but spends no time looking at the non-medical reasons.

What happened in 1999? Columbine, for one. Hurricane Floyd hit North Carolina. Wikipedia has a good overview.

What events in the highest and lowest IMR states drove their numbers to be the highest and lowest? North Carolina had the hurricane.

Before going to that level of detail, we should be able to show a correlation between the state-level multiyear trends in infant mortality in the late 90’s and the more recent state-level multiyear trends in mass shootings. Say for infant mortality – 1996 to 2007 (to include folks 15 or over in 2022), and for mass shootings – 2014 to 2022. Gun Violence Archive data only goes back to 2014.

Maltreatment might be another driver. HHS has state-wise statistics going back to 2012.

So here is another idea. Dave Philips of the New York Times has been studying the possible effects of grenade “noise” on the mental health of a mass shooter. He posits that some large part of combat effects may be due to the concussive noise inherent in combat. Here’s a question – what are the concussive effects of loud music?