learn more about medicare plans in your neighb building a better bay area, moving forward, finding solutions, this is abc 7 news. kristen: hello, you're watching "getting answers." . today the half moon bay and monterey park shootings have renewed the call for tackling mental health as a primary way to stop mass shootings, but what does research really show about the link between the two? a columbia university professor behind an eye-opening study will join us. also, even a san francisco lags behind other big cities in pandemic economic recovery, san

francisco international airport is doing just fine, thank you very much. we will share the interesting numbers. first, just in in the past hour, the suspect in the half moon bay shooting made his first court appearance. he is charged with seven counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. yesterday governor newsom visited the two farms where the shootings unfolded. he met with some of the victims emily's. he was uncharacteristically emotional in the mass shootings that took place in a state with some of the strictest gun laws. state senator josh becker, whose district includes half moon bay and most of san mateo county. thank you for being with us today. >> thanks for having me. kristen: we saw the gover getting very emotional yesterday

as he spoke. have you been feeling all sorts of emotions as well? >> oh, yeah, absolutely. and ended up posting about it monday morning and many people commented and posted likewise. it's been a difficult time for the whole community. kristen: i know you had a chance to visit with some of the survivors and also victims families. i wanted to take this opportunity to put up the names of the seven who died. as we take a look at that in give our condolences to the families, was there a common thread that emerged about who they were, their dreams, and what they were doing? >> we know they were all coworkers who -- many of them

had worked at the farms for many years. half moon bay has a vibrant and large agricultural community. we have over 100 farms, there are thousands of farmworkers, but the conditions can be difficult, and i spent a lot of time with the farmworkers on housing, connectivity, broadband access and education broadly, and pay. the condition sees workers are in, they conditions. you are really -- they are really just trying to get ahead. one we had heard was very excited she was going to get a slight raise. she was just so happy, going to get to go to safeway and pick out some things at safeway. these are people who were hard-working, who had dreams,

and really fed the rest of us. remember these farmworkers were there through the pandemic. they had already been suffering a lot of distress because of the floods, people being out of work. that farm particularly has been reduced to mud and they have been out of work already for a few weeks, so a lot of stress and strain already leading into this. kristen: yesterday when newsom mentioned making nine dollars an hour, i was thinking, is in our minimum around $15? does that mean these wages were legal or illegal? were they getting income in some other way, and does this just scratched the surface? if they were making below the minimum illegally, is that something that may be prevalent in this industry and we just didn't know about it until now? sen. becker: there are many who pay a fair wage, but yes, that is significantly below our minimum wage.

that would be an illegal wage and that is something we are of course looking into. there are many good actors on the farm but the conditions here were not good. kristen: so let me ask you, in terms of providing support, reducing the stressors to all of them, what are the things that can be done immediately and also long-term, in terms of services, things they should have access to? sen. becker: sure. in the short term, we've asked the families, what do you need, what can we do to help you? the county has really risen up and come together, the county manager, dave said we're going to give cash grants. we have some emergency money set aside, we will give cash grants directly to the families to get them through these next months.

because they are worried about not going to work. if they don't go to work, they don't get paid. that is the immediate peace, mental health, as you said, working closely with the county, but also with the nonprofits. if you goo farmworkers, they do tremendous work within the community. they do mental health work for the farmworker community and do scholarly research on that. longer-term issues like housing, there are two projects we've identified and we put $100 million in the budget for farmworker housing. we are trying to get some of that now for this area. long-term, it is just an expensive place to live, so we need to ensure that farmworkers can actually live and work in this community so they can make the food that we all eat.

kristen: absolutely. we've been showing some of the resources there. some of the community colleges taking up collections on campus of things these workers could use. i want to turn our conversation now to the availability of weapons here. as we know, california leads the nation in terms of the strictest gun laws. however, despite that, we also lead the nation in the incidence and number of mass shootings. some would look at that and say is this even working? smaller magazine capacity , is this enough, or are there more things that we need to do? sen. becker: we have one third the deaths or capital from guns and many other states, so i think overall, if you look at our gun laws, they are working, but that doesn't mean anything

to the families of the seven dead in our neighborhood in my district. that just says we are not doing enough. this is an area where of course we are looking at local action, but we ultimately do need federal action. when the constitution, they did not envision round second fire so quickly and unleash so much devastation. there are commonsense reforms we need across the country. ultimately, this is a national issue and we need leadership from washington and particularly from the republican party frankly, in washington. but at the local level we continue to look at every aspect from when people purchase guns, questions asked, to how people are storing guns, to these red flag laws.

it is now appeared that there was an incident previously where the shooter had acted violently towards a coworker. we have to educate people better to say these are opportunities now to have guns removed from people who attempted to suffocate a coworker. that could be grounds to remove guns that were in his possession. that is called red flag laws. we have to work on making those laws work at the local level. it is an epidemic in this country. we are a global outlier compared to other countries. we know what to do, but we just have to have the political will to do it. kristen: i'm going to here because i think ultimately the community needs to heal. a small, rural, quiet the hustle and bustle of the bay area in silicon valley, when you have something this big and tragic happened there, how do you pull everybody together and carry on?

sen. becker: like you said, the community now just needs to heal, and i think we are starting to see that. the families were initially at the place where we had the press conference yesterday, and we saw neighbors coming in, people bringing food, people bringing clothing, so we really saw people step up. in the pandemic there was a lot of work done, i was there personally delivering goods for our farmworkers, and we saw the community rally. this is a community that knows how to heal, the connect is there for each other. that is what we need at this moment, is people to see that. it has been emotionally very devastating, as you stated at the very beginning. kristen: senator becker, thank you so much for your time and insight today. we want to remind you, there are

ways you can help in the wake of the half moon bay mass shooting. the farmworker caravan has put out an urgent call for donations. those will help 40 families that have been displaced because of the shooting. if you like to donate, we have a link to their gofundme page on our website. and the alas group is al accepting donations.

kristen: each of the last three years, the u.s. has logged more than 600 mass shootings, huge increase from a decade ago. each time the debate is renewed over just how big of a driver

mental health is in these mass shootings. what does scientific research show about how the two are linked? joining us is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry i columbia university, who has done extensive work in this area. thank you so much for joining us. in working on this research, this interview, i learned that columbia has a mass murder database? that says something, but what does it do and what is its focus? >> that is correct. we have the largest database of mass shootings in the world. they comprise all of those perpetrated between 1900 and 2019 all over the world. kristen: i know you guys look closely at the relationship between mental health and mass shootings, and of course that question has come up again after these latest ones we saw in california.

his mental health partly, mainly, or completely to blame for mass shootings? what does the research show? >> this is an important question, and i am glad you are discussing it on your show. my mental illness we are primarily talking about mood disorders, increase the risk of violence in general. we find a few things in general. the rates of mental illness among mass shooters approximates the background rates of mental illness in society at large. that suggests that mental illnesses -- mental illness is unlikely to be responsible for the majority of mass shootings. number two, when we examine the motives of the mass shooters, we find that, again, and just a few percent of cases in rates set of

proximate -- approximate have to understand the mechanism by which mental illness increases the risk of violence among people in general. that is by comparing impulse control. that effect is primarily seen in women. the effect of mental illness on violence or impulse in general is primarily seen in women, and we know that virtually all mass shootings are perpetrated by men. this is important to understand, because again this provides evidence that mass shootings are not a mental illness problem. the reason why this effective into illness on impulse control is primarily seen in women is because men, and especially young men in general, have the most impulse control difficulty in general.

women generally do perpetrators of mass shootings in general. kristen: because time is limited, i want to ask you quickly, why do you think the public erroneously link mental illness with mass shootings in general, and what is a better predictor, if you will? >> this goes back centuries and millennia. for thousands of years now, any sort of bad behavior was sin or evil or whatever one wants to call it, was attributable to mental illness. i think that is the primary reason. what is more associated with it is the epidemic of nihilism, emptiness, anger, and narcissism among young men in this country, and in the world in general. but this is very much a cultural and primarily north american problem. kristen: in the half moon bay

case, the older man, there were quotes attributed to him saying he felt disrespected by his coworkers, so that taps into the anger and displacement you were talking about. has the pandemic magnified those stressors and attributes? if so, we might all be worried about that because we just came out of that, and there seems to be a lot of angry people. >> you are right, this is a common theme. the pandemic has made it worse. this pattern, this increase in mass shootings has steadily basically happened since the 1970's, and it is getting worse. kristen: if that is the case, if you peel away the over emphasis of mental illness as the driver, then what remains? and how do we fix the problem? >> number one is the epidemic

nihilism and narcissism we see, especially among young men. number two is the availability of guns. not just the availability of guns, but the romanticization of gun violence. it is romanticized in many ways, implicitly and explicitly. but those are probably the primary drivers. kristen: i want to touch on this because it affects those of us who are working in the media and the industry as journalists. you say there is a negative effect to the media reporting details about the perpetrators. house of? -- how so? >> there is this copycat effect that people might've heard about. when decide to perpetrate a mass shooting, and about half cases they also choose to suicide. deciding to take one's life

takes away the third hurdle or barrier to perpetrating something like a mass shooting. so when you put together the desire to take one's life, the desire for notoriety, people realize that, unfortunately, mass shootings one way to obtain that sort of notoriety as they end their lives. kristen: you've given us a lot to think about. thank you so much. coming up next, airports in the bay area are bouncing back in a big way. i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. the three what? the three ps? what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 54 and was a smoker, but quit.

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use this valuable guide to record your important information and give helpful direction to your loved ones with your final wishes. and it's yours free just for calling. so call now for free information. kristen: if you have flown out of one of the bay area airports recently and found it jampacked, you are not alone. there is an article about travel edging closer to pre-pandemic levels. it seems bay area airports are faring better in getting back to normal than some other major airports. joining

break it down is liz. thanks for having -- thanks for helping us. how is the recovery for us? liz: i think it depends on which airport you are looking at, whether it's a more regional one like oakland versus somewhere like san francisco international. they are closely edging back to pre-pandemic levels. san jose's is back up to 82% of passenger air traffic we were seeing in 2019. some airports across the nation are outpacing us, but a lot of it can be attributed to rising international travel in the last year. kristen: you can also share some local statistics with us. it looks like sfo and san jose are out more than 50%, compared to what period? liz: this

this chart shows that over the last year, san francisco saw the biggest growth out of a lot of these airports in the number of passengers it was seeing going through its airports. again, that is largely attributed to things like international travel in the area. kristen: any idea why our regional airports are doing booming business, when you consider that is not so inner downtowns, with a lot of office space empty in san francisco and many workers having returned to the office and also tourism. is that the whole picture? liz: there was a lot of conversation about how a lot of asian countries are opening up for international travel again. that was good news for airports on the west coast because they serve as hubs or connecting points to travel over the pacific to bring both tourists and people just visiting families are visiting for the first time. that might be one of the causes

and potentially just changes in behavior toward travel. california and san francisco tend to be a little more conservative when it comes to taking risks with the pandemic and covid. there are a lot of behavioral expo nations other than just opening up international borders for travel. kristen: you think that holiday travel woes that we saw over the holidays with the big blizzard rub before christmas, and then we had southwest airlines totally melting down, stranding people for a week or so. do you think these events may dampen travel at all in the near future? liz: yes and no. that was a very isolated incident that was made worse by so many bad weather events around christmas time. the airports that were really hit by that were oakland and san jose, which took the brunt

that december time travel. looks like numbers are still rising for passengers traveling through airports, there might just be a little more caution when it comes to cancellations or bad weather in the future. kristen: i hear tha area airports are planning renovations or upgrades. liz: there has been a lot of news from oakland and san jose that they are receiving a lot of federal funding through the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed by president biden. san jose recently found out it would receive roughly $11 million in funding to upgrade its facilities, add more restaurants and basically make travel better in the bay area region. kristen: because of the recent atmospheric rivers i started to think about whether additional improvements might need to be made to our airports to be able to handle that. for example, drain any flooding more quickly, or if you start to get different kinds of wind

shear or wind directions, do we need to consider configuring our runways a certain way? is that part of the dis climate related airport changes? liz: i definitely imagine so. a lot of bay area airports are not equipped to handle the extreme weather events we are seeing, just like you mentioned. one of our editors was trying to travel the other day and found that san francisco does not have natural defrosting abilities for its planes, so it takes a while for a lot of its airplanes to fly off when it gets too cold or there's too much ice on the runway. kristen: check out more

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kristen: thanks so much for joining us today for "getting answers." tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. the major storm slamming the east. more than a foot of snow in some places. also tonight, at least 20 reported tornadoes now. they say it was an ef-3 hitting right near houston. 140 miles per hour. the couple and their dogs jumping into a ditch to survive. 20 states under alerts from florida to new york to maine. heavy snow, heavy rain and possible flooding. 15 inches of snow or more already reported tonight. and those tornadoes. the images coming in. that major tornado on the ground for 18 miles. and that video tonight of the couple surviving with their dogs in a ditch as the tornado blew ts orover them. muthe rest

new reporting tonight, the teacher shot by her 6-year-old student,