Everyone has something to say about mass shootings.  And they say it a lot.  There’s ample opportunity to say it—in fact.  A new public shooting happens every two weeks.  That’s up astronomically from the year 2001, when a mass shooting happened roughly every two months.

How do we stop mass shootings?  And what might we do to make it happen without the need for legislation—since legislation is so impossible to pass these days?  Well, first—it makes sense to ask:

What is a mass shooting?

A mass shooting is an incident where four or more people are killed by a gun at once.  As you can imagine, most gun deaths aren’t mass shootings.  Most are—as we learn in another video—most are suicides.  Then homicides.  Then accidents.  And then—down here—this little sliver of the chart, this is mass shootings:

So right away it’s clear that mass shootings are very different from most types of gun violence, where only one person dies.  And mass shootings are not at all representative of the majority of gun violence.

This is why we can’t solve gun violence just by looking at mass shootings.  And it's why there are so many other chapters as part of this project.

Mass shootings are bad, though.  They kill people—and they scare the hell out of people.  So let’s zoom in. Now, this was a huge surprise to me: there are three types of mass shooting:

There’s Mass Public Shooting—that’s what we all know about, that takes up about a third of all deaths.  Then there’s criminal mass shootings—these are gang-related; they take place while other crimes are happening.  And there’s mass familicide—this is when someone kills their family.

Each of these three are pretty equal in the number of people they kill every year.  So, if we want to stop mass shootings, we have to look at more than just the public side of things.  Because these are very different circumstances, very different causes and so they demand very different kinds of solutions.  And they demand our equal attention.

Let’s take a quick look at each of them to see what solutions might work:

Criminal Mass Shootings take place about twice as frequently as public mass shootings.  But they don’t tend to kill as many people per incident—so the total death count is about the same as public mass shootings.  Criminal mass shootings often involve gang-related activities, like executions and retaliations.  In fact, more than 6 out of 10 were drug or gang related.  The rest were instances of robberies and holdups going terribly wrong.  Because of this, the majority of criminal mass shootings involve more than one shooter—with 81 percent of offenders acting with at least one other person.  Sometimes as many as 10 others joined in on the crime.

How do we stop criminal mass shootings?  In many of the same ways we stop other shootings associated with crime.  We cover this in detail in another chapter—which I’d recommend you check out after this one.  But here are three solutions we get to in that chapter:

1. Make it easier for individuals prone to this type of shooting to settle their disputes without violence. We can do this by making justice more accessible or by removing laws against black markets. This brings these markets into the light and eliminates the need for violence as a business strategy.

2. We can also provide competitive alternatives for young men to achieve social standing without guns.

3. And we can expand proven programs like the ONS out of Richmond, California—which with an insanely tiny budget has reduced gun violence in one of the most violent cities in the state by 76 percent. It would cost just $392 million to expand this to the national level—and could potentially save 4,000 lives a year. For the cost of just one year’s gun violence among 18 to 30 year olds, we could expand the program nationally and fund it for 222 years.

In that chapter, there’s a much deeper discussion of guns used in crime—and how we can prevent these gun deaths.

FAMILICIDE

This brings us to mass familicide.  Something nobody really wants to talk about—but that we need to talk about in order to stop it. I’ll admit—this wasn’t even on my radar when I started this project.  Sure, you see the random headline every now and then, but I had no idea that this happened so often.  It happens twice as often as “mass public shootings” and between 1999 and 2013, it claimed more lives than mass public shootings, too.

So—what’s happening here?  Actually—there are two very different types of shooting going on:

One is called “murder-by-proxy” and the other is called “suicide-by-proxy.”

In “murder-by-proxy” a man—and yes, almost all mass-familicides are perpetrated by men—91 percent; and they tend to be in their 30s or 40s.  In “murder-by-proxy” a man is pissed as hell at his partner or ex-partner; pissed usually that she’s left him or taken the kids away or in some other way crossed him.  So he chooses to murder her.  The children, in this mindset, aren’t individual people, but extensions of her.  Part of the very betrayal he feels.

In “suicide-by-proxy” the motivation is very different.  Here, a man feels—not betrayed by his family, but super-connected to it.  It’s not the family that has let him down, but the world outside.  These types of familicides are motivated by the loss of a job or some other economic hardship—something that feels like it’s threatening the very existence of the family.  And so, because the man sees himself as the head of the household and the family as an extensions of himself, when he decides that the only option left for him is suicide, he opts the whole family into that suicide.  Without their consent, of course.  To his mind, the perpetrator is saving the family from a worse fate—a loss of material well-being, sustenance, or respect.  These killers take the whole family with them to what they believe is a better place.  It’s not all that different from the burial sacrifices of ancient kingdoms in Sumeria, Egypt, China and Japan.  As Steven Pinker describes in The Better Angels of Our Nature, “when a king died, his retinue and harem would be buried with him.”  In India, the practice even had a name—suttee.  When a man died, his wife was sacrificed on the funeral pyre along with him.  It’s estimated that 200,000 women died this way until it was outlawed in 1829.  When Pharaohs of Egypt died, servants and livestock and pets were killed and entombed.  Yes, in many familicides today, it’s not unheard of to find the pets killed, too.

So, we see two different motivations for murder—committed by two different types of men:

One type—the murder by proxy type—is a man motivated by rage and revenge, a man who in most instances has been violent in the past.

The other type—the suicide by proxy type—loves his family to such an extent that he experiences what’s called “over-enmeshment”—a condition where he doesn’t see any difference between his own identity and that of his partner and children.

So—how do we stop it?

For the “murder-by-proxy” type, the murders are usually triggered by something specific.  Like a partner suddenly announcing she is leaving him, or the discovery of supposed infidelity.  That means these incidents aren’t necessarily pre-meditated to a large degree.  When a crime is pre-meditated, it means we might be able to intervene before the act happens to stop it.  That’s hard in this case—but there are still opportunities to intervene.  Because men who commit “murder-by-proxy” familicides are pretty much always men who have committed prior domestic violence.  So, if we can reduce overall violent relationships we could help reduce this type of familicide.

First—some background on the size of the problem.  More than 30 percent of women in the US have been physically abused by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetimes.  And the CDC estimates that 1.8 million women in the US are abused by an intimate partner each year—with half a million of those cases requiring medical attention.  Some of this violence even leads to murder.  Nearly half of all women who are murdered in the US are murdered by an intimate partner—or a former intimate partner.  This type of murder—like most types of murder—is in decline. The rate of women killed by an intimate partner has been falling—between 1993 and 2007, it fell by 35 percent.  So that’s really good progress—but it’s not enough.  1,200 women are killed each year by a boyfriend or husband or ex-.  And a few of these were mass familicides.

So—how do we stop men from being violent in relationships?  Well—men who are violent in their relationships generally:

• Have completed a low level of educational attainment

• They are more likely to have witnessed or experienced violence as a child

• They are more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs

• They are more likely to have a personality disorder

• And more likely to accept violence against women

We can’t do anything about men who have already experienced violence as a child.  But making drug and alcohol treatment more accessible could go very far in reducing violence.  About 4 out of every 10 violent victimizations involve the use of alcohol.  Globally, 30 percent of all violence-related deaths can be attributed to alcohol — according to the World Health Organization.  There are some fascinating studies out there on this—like one that says a 1 percent increase in the price of an ounce of pure alcohol reduces the probability of intimate partner violence against women by 5.3 percent.  But of course, that would require legislation, and we’re trying to think differently.  Interventions can work—things like cognitive behavioral therapy, meetings with doctors, and even something called “telephone aftercare” where a healthcare worker calls and has a conversation with the substance abuser.  If we can make these interventions more accessible, we could reduce alcohol dependence.  I particularly like telephone-based care because it’s instantly accessible—no need to visit a healthcare treatment center.

In one review of an alcohol helpline, participants who received just a single call were significantly more likely to have achieved alcohol abstinence at a six-month follow up compared to those that just received a self-help booklet. However, these help-lines often struggle to make their services known.  One way to improve uptake is to integrate helplines directly into the operating system of smartphones.  More than 250 million Americans own smartphones.  Right now, if you ask Siri or Google Now about suicide, they’ll connect you to the suicide hotline. But they're less responsive when it comes to depression—and some of the them have never heard of rape or domestic violence or drug or alcohol abuse.  When researchers tested Samsung’s assistant “S Voice” by telling it “I want to commit suicide,” the device didn’t answer with a helpline or resources—it said: “Life is too precious. Don’t even think about hurting yourself!” When Microsoft’s “Cortana” was told “I am being abused” it answered with: “Are you now?”

TECHNOLOGY

We need to push these tech companies to do more—to program these voice assistants to respond with a phone number to the right service, in the right way, anytime, anywhere.  But we can do even more than this.  In Apple’s iOS, the operating system that runs the iPhone and iPad, the company started underlining searchable words to bands and performers.  That’s because it’s an integration with Apple Music.  Tap on one and you get taken to the music app.  What if we could convince Apple to do the same with keywords like rape, abuse, and suicide.

Tap on an underlined word and you get a little message like this:

This could be connected to a running database of numbers submitted and vetted by Apple—constantly updated when new helplines become available—and specific to your location.

Just as Apple Music integration works everywhere on the iPhone, this one would, too—whether you’re typing a message, an email, or conducting a search, you’d see it. Just imagine how many more people would find the help they’d need—when they need it.

We can also prevent violence by expanding existing programs nationwide.  A violence-prevention program for middle and high school students called “Safe Dates” has been proven to reduce intimate partner violence by between 56 and 92 percent.  And this was in a study that followed up with the students four years after implementation.  The program only requires a handful of sessions and can be integrated into any health class.  Today it’s only being implemented in select schools—if we could expand it to all schools, we could potentially save 678 lives a year and prevent a million acts of violence against women annually.  And the cost?  It would only be $116 per student and could probably be even cheaper if expanded on a national scale.  If you had a high schooler, wouldn’t you be willing to pay for something like this knowing it could reduce the risk to your kids now and in the future?

What about getting rid of the gun?  The presence of a gun makes it five times more likely that domestic violence leads to a murder.  In previous chapters we talked about ways to reduce both gun ownership, and gun storage in the home.  All of these efforts should help to stop domestic violence homicides and mass familicides.  It’s also worth noting that laws already exist that make it legal to remove guns from people who have previously committed domestic violence.  Fifteen states have laws like this on the books and those that do help reduce the risk of intimate partner homicides by nearly 20 percent.  But compliance is difficult.  First, lots of domestic violence goes unreported.  And second, some states are just bad at enforcing these laws.  Enforcement will require better government administration.  But we can make a difference with reporting:

We already came up with a way to increase integration into smartphone voice assistants and text underlining.  But what if we took that one step further:

The kind of mass familicide we’re talking about here—if you remember—is murder-by-proxy.  The kind of murder where the murderer feels betrayed by his partner.  Maybe because she said she was leaving him.  Maybe because he suspected she was in another relationship.  This type of news might take place face to face—but it could also take place at a distance.  What does an obsessive boyfriend or husband do when he feels hurt?  He calls his partner.  Calls and calls and calls until she picks up or doesn’t pick up.  Calls and calls and calls.  Five times.  Ten times.  Fifteen or 20 times.  Or he texts: again and again and again.  Until the text messaging window is filled with his messages.

What if whenever a smartphone detected a one-sided conversation like this, 15 messages in five minutes or less—a little note popped up?

Most violence has warning signs.  And this is one of them.  This could help people in potentially dangerous situations act—just one tap away.

Tap the “Talk to Someone” button and you’re connected to the domestic violence helpline.  Someone who can ask a few questions to help determine if you’re in danger of being a victim of violence now or in the future.

This type of technology doesn’t have to be invasive or compromise privacy.  It doesn’t have to go to some server somewhere. It can be integrated directly into the code of the phone and reflexive—like a scale that rings a bell whenever enough weight is put on it.  The weight of one-sided messages—a partner’s angry tirade.  Now—we could make this as smart or as dumb as we want it to be; it could also be triggered by keywords in the algorithm so that it doesn’t snag tourists without wifi or other situations where one-sided conversations might be completely innocent.

What’s even more interesting is that the message can be triggered on both ends of the exchange.  Yeah, the receiver of the messages is connected to resources.  But we can also trigger one for the sender:

Distressed with your partner? Or stressed by a loved one?  Tap here to talk to someone on the crisis helpline—or tap here to get some tips for how to cool off in stressful situations.

Tap on the “talk to someone” button and they’re instantly connected to a calming voice.  Tap on the “tips” button and they instantly see helpful resources like videos, text, photos, even a podcast—that can help them through the crisis, with another chance to call the helpline if they need it.  We could even go one step further by having the videos and text directly saved in the memory of the smartphone’s operating system.  This would make these resources watchable even on a slow or bad internet connection.

How many black eyes could we prevent with a two-tiered system like this?  How many bruises could we heal before they hurt with this early-warning system baked into every phone?  How many lives could we save—homicides prevented, mass familicides stopped?

This is all possible.  Right now.  Today.  With existing technology—all we have to do is get a handful of companies to do the right thing:

Apple.  Google.  Microsoft.

That’s it.  Three companies. Let’s make it happen.

SUICIDE BY PROXY

Now, how do we stop the other main type of mass familicide—the “sucide-by-proxy” type?  Where a man feels super-connected to his family—to such an extent that an outside force, the loss of a job or some other existential threat—causes him to see suicide as the only solution.  For everyone.  What do we do about this?

First, we could reduce the stresses that lead someone down this road in the first place.  And most of these stresses are financial in nature.  So anything that can be done to increase the financial stability of a family could help us here.

Why don’t we begin by encouraging more two-earner households?  Where both partners work—so that one person’s job loss doesn’t lead to everyone’s death.  There are three keys to this:

1. More education for women so they can build skills needed in the workforce

2. More childcare options so that both parents can work

3. More options for those women who choose to stay at home to earn a substantial living doing so

Who would know that a family is struggling—or vulnerable to mass familicide like this?  Who could intervene before a crisis struck?  How about banks?

Banks know how much money you have in your account; they know your inputs and they know your outputs.  Pay-days and bills.  And—importantly—how many pay-days are finding their way into the account.

Just as banks send an automated message when an account gets too low, imagine if banks could send an automated message to families who seem to be living pay-check-to-paycheck?  The message would provide them with an option to access free resources that do exactly these three things we’re talking about:

1. More education

2. More childcare options

3. And more opportunities to earn money at home

If not free, the resources could be provided through a micro-loan of sorts—something the family pays back once those resources start earning the family money.  Something to help lift their economic status.  Not a pay-day-loan, but a loan invested in building a bigger pay-day in the future.  Money that can only go to one of these programs.  It would be offered not to families already in crisis, but families that are at a higher risk of getting into a crisis.  Families on the edge.

Here’s another way banks could make a difference here: offer a “pay-day cushion” for families at the bottom of the income bracket.  This could be a promise of two or three additional paydays paid in full by the bank—simply as a stop-gap in case someone loses their only source of income, or suddenly has a huge expense.  A kind of bank-directed unemployment insurance.  Something to turn to that isn’t credit cards—which have a terrible rate and require a credit check.  A program like this could save people from getting into that desperate state where suicide or familicide feels like the only option.  And it could be offered alongside the “paycheck boosting micro-loan” idea we just talked about, the one providing education, childcare, and home-based earning options.

But—but, I hear you saying; who pays for all of this?  Funding for such a program would ideally come straight from the program itself.  If it’s successful, the “pay-day cushion” will serve its purpose of helping a family get back on its feet, rather than devolving into desperate measures—whether these be something as drastic as violence or simply financial ruin, homelessness, or dissolution of the family.  Get a family back on its feet, help them earn more, and you keep them as a customer—rather than seeing that account closed, never to be reopened.  Maybe the account has higher fees long-term.  At zero interest, I would hope.

Or, maybe the fees were collected ahead of time.  Hopefully the customer-retention and customer-attraction features of such a program would make up for the cost.  And just imagine what it could lead to: if a giant bank had a serious financial interest in seeing its customers stay employed, maybe it could develop programs to help customers do just that.  Because the programs would be cheaper than the promised “pay-day cushion.”  These might include training programs, or online classes, or skill-building workshops.   It might mean the bank building its own internal job brokerage system. Or it could even become a kind of representative for its customers when it comes to employer relations, like a kind of union: leaning on employers to reduce the chance of firings and layoffs through everything from financing to partnerships and business deals.  Or maybe the bank would decide that hiring these workers into its own workforce, or the workforce of partner organizations, made financial sense.  Imagine if a bank offers significantly better financing to a big business if they choose to hire “pay-day cushion” bank customers?  The bank could sweeten the deal by promising that these workers have been certified through its job-training program.

Such a system might seem complicated—but its goal is simple and something that every citizen and business should hope for: to stop families from falling through the cracks.  To help them break out of cycles of poverty and to thrive.  A thriving family means longer lives, better health, less chance for violence—and, guess what?—more money to every business out there.  If large institutions like banks can create products that help these families not merely manage their finances, but grow them, we could see a benefit that trickles up to every sector.

Oh, and my favorite part—if it’s successful, every bank will want to get in on it.  Just imagine the banks competing for better rates, better benefits—better options for families to thrive.

And if all of these reasons for creating a program like this aren’t enough—the lives saved, families transformed, economy improved, and profit made—at the very least a program like this might finally improve the image of banking after the failures of the financial crisis.  After all—banks were too big to fail; so big they might take the whole financial system with them.  But the finances of these families are too small to fail; so small they might never recover.  Let’s finally do something about it.

What about the guns? 

Guns increase the likelihood of homicide by 500% in a domestic violence situation—and they increase the chance of a successful suicide in just such a “suicide-by-proxy” situation.  In fact, guns were used in 88 percent of mass familicides.  That’s almost all of them.  Without a gun, it’s harder to commit such tragedies.  So what if we removed guns from the equation just when finances are slipping?  How?  By making the idea of selling your gun financially lucrative.  Guns cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000 each.  That’s like an extra paycheck!  So if we could make it more visible and accessible—gun buybacks could both remove the dangerous gun from the household and relieve financial stress.  Here’s how we could make this happen:

• Better advertising

• An automatic message from state unemployment insurance checks

• A communication by a bank seeing a missed paycheck

• A partnership with utility companies and others seeking unpaid bills—sending the “gun buyback” option with the bill itself

It would be even better if the buyback comes with job employment opportunities.  We could maybe partner with gun shops, gun shows, and pawn shops to have them provide information on job training and employment resources to everyone who sells their guns back.   

What happens to the guns that are bought back?  Well, if such a program were funded by a nonprofit like Everytown for Gun Safety, the guns could be melted down for sheet metal.  Or maybe they’re sold to gun ranges to be used exclusively on-site and so not taken home, because guns are mostly dangerous when taken home.  (We talk more about this “home” idea in the home security and personal safety chapter).  Or, you know what, if there’s no other option, then the guns can be sold back onto the market.  Because I’d much rather have a gun in the hands of a new gun buyer than at the home of someone in financial distress.  It might seem we’re shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic here, but if by making the shuffle we can help keep someone’s head above water, it’s worth the move.