The Wall Street Journal - 14.11.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ** Thursday, November 14, 2019 |A

U.S. NEWS

Barr Offers Plan to

Curb Gun Violence

A Justice Department

plan to combat gun violence

aims to improve background

checks by encouraging federal

prosecutors to more quickly

contribute information about

people whose mental-health

history prevents them from

owning firearms.

The effort, part of a

broader program Attorney

General William Barr rolled

out Wednesday, comes in re-

sponse to recent mass shoot-

ings that intensified the gun-

control debate and renewed

focus on flaws in the criminal

background-check system.

Mr. Barr stopped short of

proposing stronger gun-con-

trol measures. He urged au-

thorities to step up prosecu-

tions under existing gun laws

and consider bringing federal

cases against gang members

and drug traffickers who use

guns—already a priority for

many federal prosecutors.

His plan underscores the

absence of a comprehensive

White House proposal to

fight gun violence.

For months, the White

House discussed various op-

tions with lawmakers but

never announced a cohesive

plan, despite President Trump’s

insistence that he would ad-

dress the problem after back-

to-back mass shootings this

summer in Texas and Ohio left

dozens dead.

Mr. Barr himself had

floated an idea to expand

background checks for pro-

spective gun buyers, but it

was mostly rejected by Re-

publican lawmakers.

Mr. Barr said the Justice

Department’s new effort will

help authorities better target

gun offenders and people

who lie to purchase firearms

despite criminal records or

mental-health problems.

Former Attorney General

Jeff Sessions announced a

similar push in March 2018,

directing federal prosecutors

to more aggressively pursue

cases against people who lie

to buy guns.

—Sadie Gurman

Michael Phelps led the U.S. team during the opening ceremony
of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

PAUL GILHAM/GETTY IMAGES

Mass shooters who target
schools and workplaces are
typically insiders such as stu-
dents or employees, calling
into question the effectiveness
of security measures and
training, according to a study.
Barriers, locks and active-
shooter drills do little because
most attackers have access
and are aware of the proce-
dures, said the authors of the
study, Jillian Peterson and
James Densley. The university
professors have created a
mass-shooter database that
goes back more than 50 years.
“Security doesn’t make

sense when the perpetrator is
an insider,” said Ms. Peterson,
who is an assistant professor
of criminology and criminal
justice at Hamline University
in Minnesota.
The authors gathered infor-
mation on 171 mass shootings
in which four or more people
were killed in a public place,
beginning with the 1966 clock-
tower shooting at the Univer-
sity of Texas, Austin. Their list
doesn’t include gang killings.
Mass shootings claimed an
average of eight lives a year in
the 1970s, 15 in the 1980s, 21
in the 1990s and 24 in the
2000s, according to the au-
thors. This decade, the num-
ber rose to 51 deaths a year.
The Federal Bureau of In-
vestigation puts the average
number killed in active-

shooter attacks at 67 a year

since 2010. It defines an active

shooter as anyone trying to

kill people in a populated area.

The FBI’s data, which goes

back to 2000, also found that

attacks are on the rise.

Mass killings make up a

small percentage of the more

than 15,000 homicides each

year, but like terrorist attacks

they create fear that public

spaces aren’t safe.

The most common site for a

mass shooting since 1966 is

the workplace, Mr. Densley

and Ms. Peterson found.

There is no single profile of

a mass shooter, but the study’s

authors found common factors

based on the target. School

shooters, like the 19-year-old

who killed 17 people at a Park-

land, Fla., high school in 2018,

tend to be suicidal white-male

students with an interest in

guns. College shooters tend to

be suicidal nonwhite men with

a history of violence and child-

hood trauma. Workplace

shooters tend to be men in

their 40s of any race who are

having trouble on the job.

Workplace shootings are a

good example of how security

measures such as badges and

locks aren’t enough, said Mr.

Densley, a professor of crimi-

nal justice at Metropolitan

State University in Minnesota.

The vast majority are people

who have been fired, let go or

are having some conflict at

work. Most of them have ac-

cess to buildings and know

about lockdown drills, he said.

The study’s authors recom-

mend programs that help

when there are warning signs:

crisis intervention teams,

mental health services and

suicide prevention.

In schools, the cost of drills

for children outweigh the ben-

efits. Would-be attackers are

BYZUSHAELINSON

Shooter Study

Raises Doubts

On Readiness

learning how to take advan-

tage of drills, which create a

fascination for some student,

said Ms. Peterson.

“You want the adults in the

building to be trained to know

what to do,” she said. “But

training the children who are

the potential perpetrators

doesn’t make sense with our

data.”

Nearly half the killers on

their list shared their inten-

tion beforehand by telling oth-

ers or writing about it on so-

cial media, the authors found.

One-third were suicidal be-

forehand, and 25 percent

showed an interest in previous

mass killings. Two-thirds of

the shooters had mental-

health concerns.

While the majority of

shooters bought their guns le-

gally in instances that data

could be found, underage

school shooters were more

likely to take guns from family

members or friends.

More than three-quarters of

the shooters used handguns,

while one-quarter used semi-

automatic rifles. For all homi-

cides in the U.S., less than 3%

of killers use rifles.

The authors received a

grant from the National Insti-

tute of Justice, part of the U.S.

Justice Department.

Annual deaths by mass shootings

Origin of guns used Most common sites of mass shootings

Source: The Violence Project

Workplace

Other public

Restaurant/bar/nightclub

Retail

K-12 school

House of worship

College/university

Government/civic building

0% 10 20 30

1.2%

2.9%

8.7%

Assembled

Gifted

Illegal purchase

Theft

Legal

purchase

48.5%

Unknown

32.5%

12.9%

0

20

40

60

80

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

LUKE E. MONTAVON/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Mourners attended a vigil after 22 people were killed in August at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

Perpetrators are

often insiders who

know procedures,

researchers say.

ticipating in the Games. She

included a separate letter from

the International Olympic

Committee that set out what

the proposed law should say

and not say to comply with

Olympic rules.

The tactic appears to have

backfired, showcasing the

skepticism the organization

formerly known as the U.S.

Olympic Committee faces.

Lawmakers including Re-

publican Sen. Cory Gardner of

Colorado accused the Olympic

committee of being disingenu-

ous, in part because other na-

tional Olympic committees

with greater political involve-

ment—such as China’s—hadn’t

been barred from the Games.

“I’m not surprised that the

U.S. Olympic Committee

doesn’t want Congress to have

that leverage,” said Sen. Jerry

Moran of Kansas, a Republican

who wrote the bill with Con-

necticut Democrat Richard

Blumenthal.

Mark Jones, a spokesman

for the USOPC, said the com-

mittee would “review the up-

dated language in the bill and

continue to provide comments

we have to address sections of

the bill that we believe will

have negative outcomes.”

lawmakers came after the

USOPC made a late push for

senators to pull back a pro-

posal to let Congress vote to

dissolve its board of directors

and terminate any national

governing body that runs spe-

cific sports within the U.S.

USOPC Chief Executive

Sarah Hirshland told key sena-

tors in a letter sent Tuesday

that giving Congress that

power would run afoul of

Olympic movement rules and

could stop the U.S. from par-

WASHINGTON—The U.S.
Olympic & Paralympic Com-
mittee told Congress that
tightening federal control over
the committee’s leaders in the
wake of sex-abuse scandals
risked Team USA athletes be-
ing barred from future Olym-
pic Games.
U.S. senators looked at the
threats and said they would
take their chances Wednesday.
The stare-down by federal

BYLOUISERADNOFSKY

Olympic Officials Face Senators

advisers and other Democrats,

people familiar with the situa-

tion said.

Mr. Patrick’s employment

since 2015 at Bain Capital, the

Boston-based private invest-

ment firm, could present chal-

lenges at a time when some

candidates in the race have

presented wealth and power as

hurdles to progressive policies.

Last year, Mr. Patrick de-

fended his work at Bain, tell-

ing CNN: “I’ve never taken a

job where I’ve left my con-

science at the door, and I ha-

ven’t started now.”

With Iowa’s caucuses less

than three months away, it

seems most likely that Mr.

Patrick will use his status as a

New Hampshire neighbor to

focus on that state’s Feb. 11

primary.

paperwork to appear on the

ballot for the first-in-the-na-

tion primary, the person said.

His entry comes after some

politically moderate Demo-

crats have expressed uncer-

tainty about the campaign

performance so far of Joe Bi-

den, the moderate and former

vice president—and about

whether the party’s 2020 field

of presidential hopefuls is

moving too far to the left to

defeat Mr. Trump.

Mr. Patrick’s decision re-

verses his December 2018 an-

nouncement that he wouldn’t

seek the presidency, in part

because his wife had been di-

agnosed with cancer.

In recent weeks, however,

the 63-year-old has been lay-

ing the groundwork for a late

entry by reaching out to close

Former Massachusetts Gov.
Deval Patrick has decided to
make a late entry into the
crowded 2020 Democratic
presidential primary field, tell-
ing people close to him that he
will run, according to people
familiar with the conversations.
He would be reversing an
earlier decision not to launch
a bid and injecting more un-
certainty into a race that lacks
a clear front-runner to chal-
lenge President Trump.
The two-term former gov-
ernor, who is now with Bain
Capital, is expected to an-
nounce his candidacy in a
video, one of the people said.
He will likely travel late this
week to New Hampshire to file

BYSABRINASIDDIQUI
ANDJOHNMCCORMICK

Deval Patrick Decides to Enter

Democratic Presidential Race

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