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Most White Collar Criminals Aren't Conniving Assholes, But Hapless Morons

Leo DiCaprio movies aside, white collar criminals are usually portrayed as about the sleaziest type of human beings imaginable. What could motivate someone to screw hundreds or even thousands of people merely to go from "rich" to "even richer"? Is it greed? A belief that they won't get caught? Pure black-hearted evilness? How about greed? Did we mention greed?

Good news, we have an answer! And it's ... balls-out stupidity.

When Eugene Soltes, a researcher who specializes in white collar crime, decided to look into how business leaders could turn on a dime (or a lot of dimes), he found something interesting. Namely, the vast majority kinda bumbled their way into it -- "it" being crime, and then a jail cell.

When Soltes interviewed executives convicted of white collar crimes, one recurring rationale was that for all their brilliance and expertise, they never figured that they were doing anything truly wrong. In their minds, the crimes were so small and the rewards so minute that they didn't really stop to think that they were breaking the law. Even Bernie Madoff, the guy behind the largest Ponzi scheme in history, was like "Eh, it's not that big of a deal."

As the crime itself is so removed from any sense of consequence (over, say, pickpocketing), few consciously say to themselves, "OK, I'm gonna be a criminal now." For the vast majority, it was a slow gradual slide to the bottom, or the consequence of poor impulse-driven idiocy. This is why when Soltes pressed his interviewees about the point at which they knowingly crossed over into doing crime, only a few could identify it in hindsight. We can imagine Madoff watching the Robert De Niro movie they made about him and going, "Ohhh, so that's why I'm doing 150 years in jail."

Related: 7 Brilliant Movie Lawyers (Who Suck At Their Job)

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Most Gun-Related Deaths Are Suicides

Guns are a hot topic nowadays, probably as a result of them being fired so damn much. Many of these discussions about how we're, um ... misusing firearms tend to focus on high-profile phenomena like mass shootings and gang crime. But when you look at the figures, it's clear that the most prolific form of lead infusion, the one that's doing the most damage to society, is suicide. And it's been like that for some time.

BBCTo be clear, we think all the numbers in this graph are awful, including "2016."

2

Vehicle Ramming Attacks Spread Like A Virus

In the last few years, vehicle ramming attacks (VRAs) have become a popular tool of terrorists and murderers. If you don't believe us, literally every other word of this sentence links to a recent story about someone driving a vehicle into a crowd of people, and it's getting a little depressing now holy shit how are we still going.

It's easy to think that VRAs are only a trend du jour because some terrorist think tank determined it's an easy way to get a good kill count, but the actual explanation is much dumber. It's a meme, basically. According to researchers from the Universities of Kent and Copenhagen, this sudden wave is "akin to a virus spread by social contagion whereby a single action leads to a wave of others, which would otherwise not take place."

The people responsible for these attacks have "vastly different political and religious beliefs and backgrounds." Lots are terrorists, yes, but many others are regular wackjobs who just decided to hurt people one day. Then they looked at the TV or their phones, saw all the coverage VRAs were getting, and said, "Hey, there's an idea."

It isn't all bad news, though. As with all memes and viral phenomenon, VRAs will eventually die out, although as the researchers note, "they will be likely be replaced by another form of horrific attack that will also spread through digital networks." Ha, you thought the opposite of bad news was good news, didn't you?

Related: 7 Bullshit Police Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks To Movies)

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We Don't Know Anything About Assassins

Whether they're doing it because of the voices in their heads or because they're on the line for a fat payday, assassins are single-minded predators who think of nothing but the kill. They like disguises, rifles, dodgy accents, and -- in a move that might be singlehandedly keeping the newspaper industry afloat -- sending their intended targets threatening notes or letters.