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[Continuation] Today's Mass Shooting (part 3)

jeremyp said:
Two people shot is two needless deaths and two sets of relatives grieving. Just because it isn't a mass shooting doesn't mean we should ignore it.
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And yet we seem to be VERY hyper-focused on mass-shootings, and pretty much ignoring all the daily individual murders.
 
jeremyp said:
Are you trying to tell us that you think the Holocaust was not a tragedy or that tidal waves and volcanoes are not tragedies?
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I'm saying some tragedies are worse than others, based on the context and facts of how they happened. Acts of God that kill 1,000 people are ******, acts of Man that kill 1,000 are a crime against humanity.
 
Hercules56 said:
I'm saying some tragedies are worse than others, based on the context and facts of how they happened. Acts of God that kill 1,000 people are ******, acts of Man that kill 1,000 are a crime against humanity.
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But an act of a person who kills 5, or 6, or 9 people is not, right.

I find these arbitrary lines rather fascinating.
 
Hercules56 said:
I'm saying some tragedies are worse than others, based on the context and facts of how they happened. Acts of God that kill 1,000 people are ******, acts of Man that kill 1,000 are a crime against humanity.
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Since planned random shootings, gang shootings, individual shootings and domestic shootings are all "acts of Man", they all fall into your second category and are therefore all crimes against humanity. Why are you trying to make irrelevant distinctions?
 
Hercules56 said:
Why are you bringing up race, AGAIN?

We're talking about the difference between planned, indiscriminate attacks upon strangers at small targets vs unplanned attacks by armed people at a party that goes wrong.

One is a mass-shooting, the other is not. If you follow the well-established definition.
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How is a mass of people getting shot not a mass shooting?
 
Hercules56 said:
How is that a strawman? Apparently many folks here believe that any shooting of more than 1 person should be considered a mass-shooting.
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Where have people claimed this?
It's usual to take the FBI definition of 4 or More
 
jeremyp said:
Only because you seem to think there's some important distinction between different kinds of mass shooting. Everybody is just as dead.

This is kind of surreal. People are being slaughtered in America on a daily - almost hourly - basis and a number of the people who live there, and are therefore most likely to be caught up in the slaughter, are bickering about fine definitions instead of what can actually be done to stop it.
There were six separate mass shootings in the USA reported on page five of this thread alone. This is absolutely insane.
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That's because, partly, those responsible for the majority of the, "slaughter" cannot be called out and identified due to a defining characteristic. Or at least that's the way it reads here. A dozen or so, "hood" killings don't equate to one unplanned/planned spree killing.

What, other than bleating, berating and moralising here on ISF, are any of you USians doing about this?
 
Hercules56 said:
How is that a strawman? Apparently many folks here believe that any shooting of more than 1 person should be considered a mass-shooting.
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Whether it's designated as a "mass shooting" or not is arbitrary. The FBI once arbitrarily set the number at 4, but in the end it doesn't matter. One person shot dead is one dead person. Fifteen people shot dead is fifteen dead people. Whether someone puts a particular label on the situation is completely irrelevant.

What matters is if you care that people are dead or not. Why do these dead people count, but those dead people do not?
 
jeremyp said:
Only because you seem to think there's some important distinction between different kinds of mass shooting. Everybody is just as dead.



This is kind of surreal. People are being slaughtered in America on a daily - almost hourly - basis and a number of the people who live there, and are therefore most likely to be caught up in the slaughter, are bickering about fine definitions instead of what can actually be done to stop it.



There were six separate mass shootings in the USA reported on page five of this thread alone. This is absolutely insane.
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It is a symptom of the "societal insanity" I mentioned earlier. Being enmeshed in that insanity the USA folk can't see that from outside all this, it's only a mass shooting if its more than 5/6/7/... it's not an important mass shooting if it involves group X... is absolutely irrelevant and bonkers.
 
Maybe Stalin was right. If less than 4 people get shot, its a tragedy. If more than 10 people get shot, its a statistic.
 
Trausti said:
Because those are usually committed by white guys. Focusing on that helps the narrative. No one wants to talk about the carnage in urban areas. Hush, hush.
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I predict a change in the way "Mother Jones" determines what a mass shooting is in the near future.

Of the 8 mass shootings they have listed so far for 2023, only 2 of them have been committed by white guys. Of the other 6, 2 were committed by Asians, 2 were committed by black men, one by a Latino man and one by a white woman.

The accompanying self-imposed struggle session will be hilarious.
 
bluesjnr said:
That's because, partly, those responsible for the majority of the, "slaughter" cannot be called out and identified due to a defining characteristic. Or at least that's the way it reads here. A dozen or so, "hood" killings don't equate to one unplanned/planned spree killing.
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Yes but there is a simple way to reduce the number of shootings without regard to the characteristics of the shooters....
 
Bogative said:
I predict a change in the way "Mother Jones" determines what a mass shooting is in the near future.

Of the 8 mass shootings they have listed so far for 2023, only 2 of them have been committed by white guys. Of the other 6, 2 were committed by Asians, 2 were committed by black men, one by a Latino man and one by a white woman.

The accompanying self-imposed struggle session will be hilarious.
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Most of us don't care if the people who committed the crime were white, black, brown or purple even. We care that people died who should still be walking the earth right now. It doesn't really matter to me if the killings are gang related or white supremacist, except in so far as there may be different approaches to reduce their occurrence. Too many Americans are shooting dead too many other Americans.
 
jeremyp said:
Yes but there is a simple way to reduce the number of shootings without regard to the characteristics of the shooters....
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Or we could use the one characteristic that is shared by the vast majority of all such killers, indeed so much so the exceptions look like rounding errors. But for some reason those that want to use a singular characteristic that is only shared by some of the shooters to single out a certain group don't like that.

For those that missed my sarcasm.

Mass shooters are male. That is the singular characteristic shared by mass killers. I think there have been something like 4 mass shooting killers over the past 50 years that have not been male.

So if folks think we need to look at killers based on some commonality, choosing race is an extremely poor second choice compared to male.
 
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Darat said:
Or we could use the one characteristic that is shared by the vast majority of all such killers, indeed so much so the exceptions look like rounding errors. But for some reason those that want to use a singular characteristic that is only shared by some of the shooters to single out a certain group don't like that.

For those that missed my sarcasm.

Mass shooters are male. That is the singular characteristic shared by mass killers. I think there have been something like 4 mass shooting killers over the past 50 years that have not been male.

So if folks think we need to look at killers based on some commonality, choosing race is an extremely poor second choice compared to male.
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I Don't Like Mondays.....
7
 
jeremyp said:
Yes but there is a simple way to reduce the number of shootings without regard to the characteristics of the shooters....
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Yes. Round up the criminals and put them behind bars. See El Salvador.
 
Amazing what happens when you go after the low-hanging fruit.

elsalvadorhomicide.jpg
 
sackett said:
Q: Are you recommending Latin American methods to solve the US's problems?
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We don't really have to go that far. Just quit being nice to criminals. Most of these gun homicide offenders in the US already have a long criminal history before they finally kill someone. Why are they out free to victimize society?
 
Trausti said:
We don't really have to go that far. Just quit being nice to criminals. Most of these gun homicide offenders in the US already have a long criminal history before they finally kill someone. Why are they out free to victimize society?
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So you want life in prison for selling a dime bag?

25 years for stealing a BMW hubcap?
 
Hercules56 said:
Suspension of Constitutional rights, application of martial law, to fight a murder rate that is not really that bad? 55 murders per 100,000 people really isn't worth martial law.
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Your neighbors to the immediate north, with whom you share a border, and who have somewhat sensible gun laws, recorded a homicide rate of 1.95 per 100k in 2020. You have a strange idea of "not that bad". From here it looks like a freakin' disaster.
 
Trausti said:
We don't really have to go that far. Just quit being nice to criminals. Most of these gun homicide offenders in the US already have a long criminal history before they finally kill someone. Why are they out free to victimize society?
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The US already ranks very highly for incarceration rates. Very, very highly.

That approach doesn't seem to be yielding much in the way of results.
 
Hercules56 said:
Suspension of Constitutional rights, application of martial law, to fight a murder rate that is not really that bad? 55 murders per 100,000 people really isn't worth martial law.
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Dude... what the ****. 55 murders per 100k per annum would be like pandemonium on the streets. Its borderline mad max territory. Remember for each homicide theres likely going to be 3 or 4 serious assaults.

55 per 100k would mean if you made it to 80 years old, 4 or 5 people out of every 100 you knew in your life would be dead via murder. And being the victim of attempted murder/agg assault something like 12% or 15%. And since crime rates are never spread evenly, parts of the country would be much, much higher.
 
Trausti said:
We don't really have to go that far. Just quit being nice to criminals. Most of these gun homicide offenders in the US already have a long criminal history before they finally kill someone. Why are they out free to victimize society?
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The USA already incarcerates more people per capita than El Salvador: 629 vs 564 [source]. So by your measure the US should have a much lower rate of gun violence than it does now, and it should be 10% lower than El Salvador's.

By contrast, Canada incarcerates only 104 people per 100,000—1/6 that of the States—yet its gun-related homicide rate is only 2.1/100,000; compare that with the States at 6.8 [source.]

Your idea that simply throwing people in jail would reduce the homicide rate in the States seems incredibly simplistic.

ETA: Ninja'd by Steve!
 
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