Jiao is a professor of criminal Justice at Rowan University. His research focuses on policing issues in the U.S. and other countries and regions. Overarching themes of Jiao’s writings include Consent Decrees on Police, Policing Gun Crimes, and Police reforms.
Current media portrayal of and public debate about gun violence are big on shock values but short on solutions. Broad definitions of mass shootings with no differentiation of types of shootings, victims, and circumstances, lumping gang violence, home invasions, armed robberies, familicides, and personal vengeance together with random public mass killings are not conducive to effective interventions.
Only incidents involving four or more shot and killed randomly during a singular event in a public place should be considered mass shootings to differentiate them from more common types of gun violence and allow the police and society to develop relevant and effective strategies tailored to specific types of incidents.
With this definition, there are usually a handful of mass shootings involving fewer than 80 murdered victims out of more than 15,000 total gun violence deaths in a given year. There were 31 mass shootings from 2017 through 2021, about six per year (Marshall Project) and four in 2022 in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Highland Park, Illinois. There were 74 mass shooting deaths among about 15,000 gun homicides in 2019 (CDC.gov and Wilson, 2021). From 1966 -2020, there were 420 mass shootings, 1449 deaths, which account for 27 deaths per year (Rockefeller Institute of Government).
Even including shootings in both public and private spaces, any number of shooters, and regardless of motives, there were 206 incidents in the last ten years from 2012 to 2022, an average of about 20 per year (Every Town for Gun Safety). But there were 15,448 total gun crime deaths in 2019, 19,411 in 2020, 20,100 in 2021, and about 19,592 in 2022 (CDC). Even expansive definitions that include about 550 to 650 events as mass shootings (Gun Violence Archive) still account for less than 1% or only a fraction of all gun murders that occur each year.
Recommendations on Addressing Public Mass Shootings
With random public mass shootings being extremely rare and over 99% of gun homicides involve more routinely occurring incidents, our police and society should differentiate different types of gun violence and implement strategies that capture their nuances and contexts. Due to mass shootings’ rarity and lack of patterns, they are extremely difficult to prevent by police themselves. While gun legislations might be important at the national level, the most immediate and realistic ways to address mass shootings are risk assessment and target hardening at the state and local level (Capellan and Jiao, 2019).
- State-level risk assessment centers should be established to identify and analyze risks and disseminate risk information to local establishments.
- At-risk entities should fortify their facilities, making their environments unattractive, increasing the effort and risks of offenders, and thus disrupting opportunities for mass shootings.
Recommendations on Addressing Routine Gun Homicides
For the overwhelming majority of gun homicides that occur routinely, the police and the public should be able to discern their patterns and apply strategies according to their natures. Several strategies have been proven effective, including problem-oriented policing, comprehensive policing, situational/routine activities, and ten-driven law enforcement (Jiao, 2022).
- Problem-oriented policing involves directed patrols and focused deterrence and may have a significant effect in reducing gun homicides due to street fighting and gang rivalries.
- Comprehensive policing combining immediate tactical responses and community-oriented policing may achieve a sustainable impact on gun violence rooted in underlying social, economic, and cultural conditions such as home invasions and armed robberies.
- Situational/routine activities involve deploying resources in areas and contexts prone to gun violence by using a variety of situational measures such as risk analysis, traffic/pedestrian stops, firearm removal, differential licensing, and sting operations to reduce gun homicides due to drugs, personal vengeance, and family violence that tend to recur in specific locations and domestic settings.
- Tech-driven law enforcement utilizing gun tracing/ballistics analysis can improve gun homicide clearance and thus have a deterrence effect on premeditated gun murders.
Meanings tend to be lost in broad discussions of gun violence data. Accurate definitions and understandings of true mass shootings and other more common types of gun homicides would allow our police and society to focus on specific intervention strategies and reduce gun violence deaths. Research has demonstrated that there are effective strategies at the disposal of our police and society in addressing various forms of gun violence as outlined above.
For more information:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC.gov
- Every Town for Gun Safety. Everytown.org
- Gun Violence Archive. Gunviolencearchive.org
- Marshall Project. Themarshallproject.org
- Rockefeller Institute of Government. Rockinst.org
For further readings
- Capellan, Joel A. and Allan Y. Jiao. (2019). Deconstructing Mass Public Shootings: Exploring Opportunities for Intervention. Albany, New York: Rockefeller Institute of Government, Regional Gun Violence Research Consortiu
- Jiao, Allan Y. (2022). Policing Gun Crimes: A Comprehensive Review of Strategies and Effectiveness. The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles. DOI: 10.1177/0032258X221113454 Wilson, Chris. (2021). 41 years of mass shooting
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.