I’d much rather not have a mass casualty event. I guess you just don’t value human life like I do…
There is no proof that they wouldn’t. The types of events where the perpetrator is largely successful at killing/injuring are highly motivated.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that it’s possible for something to not be racially motivated.
And if these people would still kill by some other means then that is a terrible indictment on the type of people America is churning out.
Are you familiar with this event?
Can’t speak to his access to fire arms, but I’d assume that it was limited. Not having access to his notes and whatnot, just going off of the info provided, but he might have been trying to live out some Nordic battle fantasy or delusion.
Out of curiosity, which aspects of demographic information should be included as a matter of routine? I infer that you consider race and religion always germane, as you mentioned them specifically. How about sexuality? Political affiliation? Stance regarding abortion? Gun control views? Should the lead concerning the FL shooting have been ‘Nikolas Cruz, a 19 y.o. white, lapsed Methodist, straight, Republican, pro-abortion male…’ (Note: for illustrative purposes only; not claiming all these demos are accurate.)
Further, you mention the divulging of demo info in the context of “assailants.” What are the parameters regarding the meaning of this term? That is, should the ‘demo dump’ be limited only to those who kill a certain number of people? How about individuals who commit particularly damaging white-collar crimes–are their demographics as relevant as those of a mass shooter?
Hold on. One comment up, you were advocating for (self) censorship in the interest of the public good. Now you are criticizing NPR for doing precisely that?
What? Now I’m the one who doesn’t understand. This is my point.
I have to take issue with this. It is misleading to describe a decision not to publish irrelevant information as ‘redacting,’ as the term redaction implies the nonpublished info is relevant to the story, but is being withheld for some reason. But as I’m sure you would agree, not all information related to an assailant is relevant. (There’s a reason the vast majority of stories concerning mass shooters don’t mention whether the shooter was right- vs left-handed, that reason being this factoid is irrelevant to the story as a whole.) So, I would argue that what NPR and similar organizations are doing is simply publishing the facts that are relevant to the story–no more, no less. That’s good journalism, not redaction.
Because preferring 30 wounded to 50 dead leads the only conclusion that he wants mass casualty events unlike you.
Fuck logic n all
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OA few things:
People who say that a vehicle attack wouldn’t succeed against a school either haven’t seen the kids leaving school at the end of the school day, or are being very intellectually dishonest. “There’s brick walls!” Sure, and the children are never outside, ever.
Bomb making instructions are readily available on the internet, and the Oklahoma City bombers just used Diesel and Fertilizer. The only difficulty is remote detonation and that is only an issue if you don’t want to get killed yourself.
In the United states the number of justified homicides, “self defense shootings” with firearms is a significant percentage of the gun violence numbers everybody throws around. Nobody actually keeps count of how many are justified. The closest we can get is the FBI, where the justified number comes in around 10%, but only counts it as “justified” if the shooter wasn’t arrested. If you shoot someone in self defense, you’re admitting that you just killed someone, so you’re almost certainly going to get arrested unless the person was breaking into your home. If the shooter is later acquitted on the grounds of self defense, then the shooting was by definition justified, but the FBI doesn’t keep up with that.
I would join the NRA today if I saw them taking positive steps toward stopping this, but the atmosphere is so divisive and toxic that I think they’re trapped in the slippery slope don’t give an inch mindset.
I also think that if the 2 or 3 big media conglomerates (how many is left?) agreed to not make these mass killers famous that would have worked 20 years ago, but in the age of the internet that ship has sailed. Also, obviously wouldn’t be a violation of the 1st Amendment if they voluntarily did it. Obviously.
It really is. And it’s tied up in as much consumerist/identity as anything else. Some of the roughest, toughest generations in American history didn’t conceive of the 2A as their “identity” as much as we see from the crowd nowadays. Culturally, it’s a new phenomenon.
Example? Go find where the Greatest Generation - whose credentials on seeing and knowing war and hard times are impeccable - were running around demanding that they be able to own and carry wherever they please in civil society the weapons of war as an essential feature of their “Americanness”. Didn’t happen.
Fast forward to now - it’s really as much an image as it is an ideology. It’s not about need, it’s about want - the coolest new gadgets, the constant buying and selling of “tactical” gear (that they’ll never use except on their buddy’s farm), the constant broadcasting of their interests (in the same vein as Crossfitters and vegans), etc.
I’m not disparaging gun owners - I’m one (multiple), and I support the right. But as your NRA article pointed out, and as anyone paying attention to pop culture and social media sees, this extremism is a new phenomenon. And what was once common sense in balancing the right against public safety needs now has to contend with this new branch of identity politics. And that’s what it is - identity politics by another name.
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This is kind of an interesting Rorschach test for one’s feelings about this issue.
Some people will look at the incident cited here and say “See, people hell-bent on doing bad things will still do bad things with or without guns, so further restrictions on access to guns is hopeless, no need to do anything.”
Some people will look at the incident cited here and say “See, people hell-bent on doing bad things may still try to do bad things with or without guns, but they’re a hell of a lot less likely to make the same amount of hay with a knife as they are with a gun, so we should make some sensible changes that make it harder for people to get their hands on guns. That knife attack with 20 wounded and 4 life-threatening injuries could have been 20 dead if he had a gun.”
A couple other posts in here have done the same. Two reasonable people can look at the same event or data and draw very different conclusions.
Reading more has helped me better understand why simple solutions that lend themselves to Facebook and memes (i.e. “ban assault weapons!”) are not as easy or desirable as they’re often portrayed. I understand why pro-gun folks are reluctant to give any ground on the issue but also have a hard time believing that there’s literally nothing else that we can do other than maintain the status quo because freedom. Tough issue for sure. Like I said, I don’t love carbidius’ ideas above but I applaud his willingness to be creative (the “3 references” idea).
Let me draw a tortured parallel for a moment. A long-running debate in the sports world revolves around whether college athletes should be paid. I remember reading a fun article on the subject that contained this quote:
One of the neat strategies you’ll see the NCAA’s defenders deploy in the wake of the Northwestern ruling is to start throwing out a million practical questions that have yet to be resolved, as though, if you can’t immediately answer all of them, they must be totally impossible to solve. “I don’t know what happens to their meal cards!” you’re supposed to cry in this situation, throwing your hands up to the heavens.
I’ve started to have a similar feeling when reading any debates about gun control. Raising a concern about the implementation and domino effects of a proposed solution is reasonable, but it’s not necessarily reason to immediately dismiss the idea (which is how things often seem to go in these discussions, IMO).
EDIT: also wanted to include this part of the quoted passage as well…
Raising objections as though the mere existence of practical difficulties shuts down the conversation is the stalling tactic of an exhausted debater. It’s the move of someone with nothing left to defend.
Or 31 dead and 143 injured.
For some reason, human beings have this innate need to draw parallels. For whatever reason, we forget or ignore that every situation is unique, every assailant is unique, so on and so forth.
Bottom line, people that want to harm others are going to take their shot regardless of what tools are available to them. A bunch of dickheads flew a plane into a couple of buildings killing thousands. This twat stabbed 174 people. The fuckface we’re talking about used an AR-15.
It doesn’t mean we do nothing, but acting like it just has to be the guns doesn’t solve anything.
No one is solving the human condition. Guess what, we’re dicks to each other, a lot. You do your best to prevent where you can when you can, use smart legislation to hopefully limit access to certain tools for certain people, and you prepare your mind and body to react if you’re caught in a shitty situation.
*obligatory not directed at you @ActivitiesGuy
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I agree with you, mostly. My Grandfather told stories of going to the hardware store to by honest to god dynamite to blow up stumps, or whatever he wanted, didn’t even need to show them a driver’s license.
Do you know how he got he driver’s license? When he was 14 he walked to the county courthouse and asked for a driver’s license. “Can you drive?” the clerk asked. “Yes.” He was telling the truth because he had been driving since he was 10. So the clerk gave him a driver’s license. “My sister needs one too.” “Can she drive?” “Yes” so the clerk gave him one for her too. Both licenses were less than $2.
The point of my story is, they didn’t think of things the way we do now, and to claim we know how they thought of the 2nd Amendment is disingenuous. From colonial days until the NFA of 1934 civilians could and did own firearms of at least as good a quality and effectiveness as the military.
Even after the advent of fully automatic weapons civilians who could afford them could order them from their local hardware store. And apparently before the lead up to the NFA that was taken for granted. There was no debate about “should we allow civilians to own these weapons,”. They were allowed by default. But when the private ownership of machine guns and short barreled shotguns and the like proved problematic most of the country, including the NRA, went along with restricting them. Just as they went along with making it more difficult to get a driver’s license.
Obviously there were local restrictions. Carrying a concealed weapon was often illegal, because it seemed like you must be up to no good. But pocket pistols go back to the days of the flintlock, and later the pepperbox. So people were obviously carrying concealed somewhere.
But all of that is history. We can and should change the laws if we need to. I think a lot of gun owners would go along with a more stringent processes for purchasing firearms if it was apparent that the measures would help keep them out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill.
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I appreciate your point, but the technologies you cite weren’t even invented…
How many of the greatest generation owned 1911s? The gun that won two World Wars.
65+ has pretty higher ownership rate (obviously some are boomers):
The idea that the wouldn’t own “tactical” gear is purely conjecture. The times were also very different. Also conjecture, I bet they wouldn’t have owned the latest iPhone either nor would their teenage children.
*The image came from pew
I’m one who cites the fact that evil people are still going to do evil things. I would never say “therefore we should do nothing”. I’m for doing a lot to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but the only solution I’ve heard is to completely disarm law abiding citizens, which I think is morally wrong. “Let’s get rid of all guns!” Not possible unless you have a magic wand, or a genie in a magic lamp.
Make semi automatic rifles with detachable box magazines (because why single out the AR -15 when there are many makes and models with similar capabilities), harder to acquire? Yeah, that’s not a bad idea.
No, it isn’t, because we can look at the legislation of the day.
That, too, is the point. Our history is not that of unfettered access - it’s one of prioritizing public safety. As you note, states began passing laws restricting concealed carry in order to prevent murders in civil society. That was perfectly acceptable then, and new laws to help prevent murders should perfectly acceptable now in the sense that such new laws are not some drastic departure from our understanding of “liberty”, but rather an common sense extension.
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I think this is a key point. We (society) have to agree (or at least mostly agree) on this fundamental point first. Anecdotally, I am not sure that everyone actually agrees with this, although I can’t for the life of me understand why other than “FREEDOM.”
To bring back my quote from earlier:
One of the frustrating things that tends to happen in these discussions is the mic-drop, walk-away effect (“Ban ____? So what, people will get them anyway”) as though shutting down the first tweak that someone suggested means there’s no point in continuing the conversation.
Which legislation are you talking about? The NFA of 1934? Civilians who could afford them were buying machine guns without restrictions for several decades before that.
Are you talking about local prohibitions against concealed carry? Most people probably didn’t lose much sleep over what they thought were local, or states rights issues.
That’s irrelevant - the question is one of understanding and intent. Certain restrictions were passed in the 1930s and after that, and there was no storming of the Bastille claiming liberties were being torched. That generation didn’t have the same viewpoint - they weren’t extremists on the issue, by and large.
I didn’t say they would re: tactical gear - my point is that a bunch of people now own tactical gear and have zero need for it. It functions as dress up and toys, nothing more. It’s not like someone is going to don a bunch of tactical gear during a home invasion.
Bottom line is that this new phenomenon is just that: new. It’s a function of identity politics and it relies on a history that didn’t happen. Doesn’t mean I don’t support gun rights, I do - but public safety gets a higher rung on the priority ladder than a glorified type of commando cosplay.
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Ironically, I’ve never heard someone use that argument that feels the same of illegal drugs ala heroine cocaine etc
So? And then a law was passed to deal with issues that arose - one being the NFA. Ok?
I’m sure this is wrong - we’re talking about an era when states took the lead on public safety issues.