I recently had the opportunity to see actress Lorri Holt’s riveting solo play, Who Killed Sylvia Plath?, about the life and death of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet who took her own life at the young age of 30 by placing her head in a gas oven in London in 1962. It’s a fascinating work that I highly recommend if you ever get a chance to see it. I learned much, including that, sadly, Plath’s seminal work, The Bell Jar, didn’t reach iconic status until after her death. Her means of suicide intrigued me and reminded me of another book I’d read recently.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, the author spends a chapter on Plath’s suicide. At the time of her death in 1962, 44.2 % of all English suicides were committed by people sticking their heads into ovens and breathing in Town Gas, the type of gas used in English homes back then. In 1977, England detoxified its commercial gas supply and switched from Town Gas to the less lethal natural gas. Once the kitchen oven was no longer viable as an instrument of self-harm, suicides in England plummeted. Those who would have gassed themselves did not seek out an alternative method of death.
Gladwell calls the phenomenon “coupling.” Many suicidal plans are linked to a particular means. When that means is taken away, the suicidal do not seek out an alternative method. Gladwell also uses the Golden Gate Bridge as an example. It’s one of the top destinations for suicides in the world. When people who have planned to jump from the bridge were dissuaded in some way (a suicide barrier was added in 2018), they don’t look for another way to take their own lives. I think that Gladwell’s theory of “coupling” goes beyond suicide. I think that it likely applies to homicides as well. More specifically, mass shootings.
AR-15s are the most popular rifles sold in America. There are currently over 11 million of them in circulation in this country. AR-15s were also the weapon of choice in mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York this year, a Texas Walmart in 2019, Parkland High School in Florida in 2018, a Texas church and the Las Vegas massacre at a country music festival in 2017 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter of first graders in 2012. If the suicidal don’t find alternative methods of death once their planned method goes away, wouldn’t logic dictate that the homicidal would behave in the same way?
According to a recent CBS News story aired after the Uvalde killings, AR-15s are the weapon of choice for mass shooters because of the power of the gun and the speed with which it can be fired. The bullet from an AR-15 travels at three times the speed of sound (3 times the speed of a round from a 9 mm handgun) and can be fired as quickly as the shooter can pull the trigger. That’s approximately 60 times a minute. When altered with a “bump stock,” such as the one used by the Las Vegas killer, it becomes a machine gun. The Vegas shooter was able to fire enough rounds to kill 58 and wound 489. Being wounded by a round from the weapon is no day at the beach either since, unlike most other firearms, its velocity obliterates any internal organs it hits.
AR-15s are rarely used in any other crimes save mass shootings and the overwhelming majority of the killers obtain their weapons legally. That said, if Gladwell’s “coupling” theory is accurate (and it appears to be, again look at Town Gas), wouldn’t it make logical sense to ban the sale of AR-15s in this country? Besides the obvious fact that there is no legitimate reason for civilians in a civilized country to have easy access to weapons of war, maybe without them, mass shooters won’t look for alternative killing tools and abandon the idea entirely.
Just a thought.