[Discussion] Mass Shootings - Yeah, we need a thread just for this...

This year is the deadliest year ever in terms of mass shootings. In a political climate of polarization, it becomes harder to suss out legitimate information from the misinformation propagated by those with political agendas. Complicating this more is the continual resistance of 2nd amendment advocates to allow for political talk surrounding these massacres. This will involve political discussion to see if there are ways we can all agree might be good ways to prevent mass shootings.

This discussion should involve the details of any current, or future mass shooting, and how they compare to past mass shootings. How are they the same? How are they different? Do gun laws have an impact? Does the race of the shooter affect how we treat them? What makes one a hate crime and one an act or terrorism? Are these shootings the price of freedom?

Nevin73 wrote:

I hope this ends the "good guy with a gun" bullsh*t. Reports are saying that police killed the Ohio shooter in less than a minute but he still managed to kill or wound 35 people.

And I hope a troupe of Valkyries descend from the heavens and take me for a ride in their chariot.

I'd put money on my hope before yours.

OG_slinger wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

If we didn’t act after Sandy Hook we will never act. The ship has sailed on the GOP doing anything remotely positive.

There's still hope. The GOP is losing its financial incentive to ignore gun violence.

The NRA is essentially self-destructing at the moment thanks to years of internal graft and corruption. It barely gave $1.6 million to conservatives during the 2018 midterm, down a shocking 90% from its $16 million spend during the 2014 midterms.

There's also been a serious brain drain at the NRA with senior political strategists and fundraisers who seamlessly coordinated with Republican campaigns leaving the organization because of all the inner turmoil. That's left Republican muckety-mucks terrified that a major part of their get out the vote and fundraising effort isn't going to be contributing much in 2020.

And behind all that has been a pretty danged successful anti-gun grassroots groundswell around groups like Moms Demand Action (founded by a mom after Sandy Hook) and Everytown who have been working at the federal, state, and local levels to defeat the expansion of the sh*tty gun laws pushed by the NRA and pass real gun control.

Kind of makes me think that a whole lotta cash was flowing in from a single source, but it got cut off.

Contra to the Lt. Gov of Texas, more emphasis on patriotism and the pledge of allegiance is likely to make this problem worse, not better.

"Patriots" are the ones doing the shooting, after all.

Nevin73 wrote:

I hope this ends the "good guy with a gun" bullsh*t. Reports are saying that police killed the Ohio shooter in less than a minute but he still managed to kill or wound 35 people.

It was the same thing with the California shooter too.

Instead all we got was Neil DeGrasse Tyson trying to sound like a Vulcan about the shootings and being told to f-off by Smash Mouth.

Rat Boy wrote:

Instead all we got was Neil DeGrasse Tyson trying to sound like a Vulcan about the shootings and being told to f-off by Smash Mouth.

Yeah I saw that. 2019: the year I take Smash Mouth's side over Neil DeGrasse Tyson in a Twitter skuffle.

I mean, just because you're not wrong, doesn't mean you have to be right.

I think it is worth exploring why this sort of seemingly random act of extreme deadly violence is almost exclusively the domain of the white, cis, hetero male. I have seen a lot written on it and notice that there is a HUGE intersection between mass shootings and either or both white supremacist "replacement" propaganda and misogynistic "incel" ideology. In either case, the dotted line to motivation is the same: disappointed expectations.

White, hetero, cis males are the only group that is consistently told that they can be anything they want and entitled to the benefits of truly full American citizenship. Minorities of every stripe are, in sharp contrast, consistently told since birth that they have to work several times as hard to achieve the same results and that even that is something for which they should knuckle down and be grateful. Few Asian parents tell their kids "just follow your dreams". That sh*t is what white parents say.

Likewise, every major romcom since the dawn of the talkies has featured some loser white kid winning over the girl through persistence and "being himself". The expectation is simply that if you are white, no matter how poor, socially awkward, or badly educated, simply "being a nice guy" will result in the hot girl falling in love with you. Asians, blacks, hispanics don't see themselves in John Hughes movies except as incredibly racist comic relief.

So when your Dylan Roof or Adam Lanza wakes up one day and realizes that his bullsh*t life is the broken promise of his white male privilege, he gets pissed. We used to call this "economic anxiety", but let's be real, it is just the broken promise of privilege. And when he sees that Indian doctor driving a Benz and talking to his kids in Hindi, he starts believing that bullsh*t about being "replaced".

THIS, more than anything else is at the heart of white male rage.

IMAGE(https://i.redd.it/6p8sngn2zge31.jpg)

Sounds exactly like the kind of person that should own and AR-15 and a 100-round magazine...

Dayton 24/7 Now wrote:

Dayton 24/7 Now spoke with other classmates of Betts' who said he was expelled from school after officials found a notebook where he reportedly wrote a list of people who he wanted to rape, kill and skin their bodies. The classmate we spoke with said Betts was supposed to write a letter of apology to the people on the list. After being expelled, Betts was allowed back to school, according to the classmate. The classmate added Betts was not a loner, but had friends.

And a hot take by Cincy-area news:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/IHi1WLJ.png)

I can imagine nicer.

Rat Boy wrote:

I can imagine nicer.

I despise this kind of journalism; it smacks of laziness and reminds me of what 45 does when he says something he believes prefaced with ‘some people say...,’ or ‘Ive Been told by many people...’ There’s absolutely no way as a journalist you can do some personality write up of a perpetrator by interviewing a couple of people that likely tangentially or superficially knew him and come up with this psychological profile that gleans any meaningful insight.

Those same classmates also mentioned that he kept a hit list and a rape list. That’s a kid that needed help. These events cause a vacuum that people rush to fill with explanations and commentary that add nothing meaningful to the conversation. It’s one of the things I’m really beginning to tire of in this age of information.

I’d call that sort of thing clickbait, but it really has less impact that even that.

The president is attempting to enact the shooter's agenda.

Politico: Trump calls for 'strong background checks,' immigration reform following shootings

President Donald Trump on Monday demanded Congress legislate “strong background checks” but also called for “desperately needed immigration reform,” tying his administration's response to a pair of mass shootings over the weekend to a long-sought and controversial political priority.

Trump also appeared to lay blame for the bloodshed at the feet of the media, accusing it of stoking "anger and rage." He vented frustration once again at unfair press coverage — among the president's most common complaints — predicting worsening violence if reporters do not "start being fair, balanced and unbiased."

Aside from posts to Twitter and brief remarks before boarding Air Force One on Sunday in New Jersey, the president has said little thus far about the weekend shootings in Texas and Ohio that killed at least 29 people. He is scheduled to deliver remarks from the White House Monday morning at 10 a.m.

“We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain. Likewise for those so seriously wounded,” Trump wrote online. “We can never forget them, and those many who came before them. Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!”

The fact that people knew he had a rape list and kill list and said nothing or didn't see anything wrong with that is a huge problem. "Wake up white people" indeed...

I remember a conversation with a gun store owner a while back where he was warning with great sincerity that it would one day be a crime to "be crazy and have a lot of guns".

Ol' 45 blames mental illness, hate, social media, and video games for violence.

Next up will be comic books and "Satanism."

Did any of his speech writers point out that a lot of them are his base?

Reaper81 wrote:

Ol' 45 blames mental illness, hate, social media, and video games for violence.

Next up will be comic books and "Satanism."

Cutting Edge just did a show about Satanism.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/L3aMDaT.png)

It’s seriously sad that the only time Republicans seriously discuss mental health is as a cause of a gun massacre.

Like it doesn’t exist or someone suddenly “snaps” and go on a shooting rampage.

Nevermind the fact they won't ever actually give anyone a way to access it in an affordable and repeatable fashion. Our current healthcare system to those that even can afford it makes sure that mental health is both HARD and EXPENSIVE to access.

Totally. I’ve personally spent $11000 out of pocket over the last 2 years to go to the psych of my choice. And we supposedly have “good” insurance.

I just view it as a tax we have to pay, given the extreme circumstances I’ve dealt with the last few years, but this cost would break most average Americans.

At this point I want people to stop talking about how sad it all is, and how horrible it all is. I want people to simply acknowledge that we don't care, as a society. We didn't care after Columbine, we didn't care after Sandy Hook, we didn't care after Virginia Tech, we didn't care after Miami, and we're not going to care after this weekend. Some people died, and that's always sad for the people who knew the victims, but for the rest of us, we clearly don't care. People who care do things. People who care get laws changed, or Constitutional amendments changed. People who care protest. We can be upset for a few days, but we clearly don't actually care.

Beto O'Rourke isn't pulling punches in calling out Trump (and the Media) for being responsible for this.

Plenty of people truly care. They care enough to constantly submit new laws, join protests, or donate time and money; you can clearly see that after every incident. The problem is that what it will likely take to actually change things is more than what people are willing or even able to do. Nothings changing not because everyone's sitting around doing nothing, but because there is a significantly large and powerful group actively working against those trying to change things and there's no good option for stopping them.

Minor bright spot: after Cloudflare (finally) tossed them out, 8chan went to Bitmitigate (the Content Delivery Network that also hosts such charming places as the Nazi site Daily Stormer). Bitmitigate's infrastructure provider pulled support and that plus DDoS has knocked 8chan off of the open web for the moment.

NBC: 8chan suffers intermittent outages after Cloudflare drops service

Looks like Epik didn't really have much in the way of it's own backend. Voxility pulled ALL of the backend services being used by Epik within 30 mins of being made aware of what they where being used for. They where made aware of it by Tweet.
Gab and the Daily Stormer are now also out DDoS protection as a nice little side bonus.

Stengah wrote:

Plenty of people truly care. They care enough to constantly submit new laws, join protests, or donate time and money; you can clearly see that after every incident. The problem is that what it will likely take to actually change things is more than what people are willing or even able to do. Nothings changing not because everyone's sitting around doing nothing, but because there is a significantly large and powerful group actively working against those trying to change things and there's no good option for stopping them.

I kind of agree with Atras on this one. I think as a nation we say “that’s really awful” but within a week we’ve moved on, knowing it will happen again. If we (as a nation) really cared we would have Puerto Rico style mass protests that basically shut things down until something is done. But there are enough people who actively want to keep the status quo or don’t care THAT much so that nothing ever changes.

I’ll admit to being in the latter group. I sadly have just come to accept that in this country, some innocent people are going to die every couple of months because we love our guns. I will be heartbroken if one of my loved ones falls victim but I just don’t see this country really caring that much, at least not enough to demand change.

Docjoe wrote:

I sadly have just come to accept that in this country, some innocent people are going to die every couple of months because we love our guns.

Dude. I think the States averages a mass shooting a day, depending on your definition.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Docjoe wrote:

I sadly have just come to accept that in this country, some innocent people are going to die every couple of months because we love our guns.

Dude. I think the States averages a mass shooting a day, depending on your definition.

Per Gun Violence Archive, we're at more than one a day.

Docjoe wrote:
Stengah wrote:

Plenty of people truly care. They care enough to constantly submit new laws, join protests, or donate time and money; you can clearly see that after every incident. The problem is that what it will likely take to actually change things is more than what people are willing or even able to do. Nothings changing not because everyone's sitting around doing nothing, but because there is a significantly large and powerful group actively working against those trying to change things and there's no good option for stopping them.

I kind of agree with Atras on this one. I think as a nation we say “that’s really awful” but within a week we’ve moved on, knowing it will happen again. If we (as a nation) really cared we would have Puerto Rico style mass protests that basically shut things down until something is done. But there are enough people who actively want to keep the status quo or don’t care THAT much so that nothing ever changes.

I’ll admit to being in the latter group. I sadly have just come to accept that in this country, some innocent people are going to die every couple of months because we love our guns. I will be heartbroken if one of my loved ones falls victim but I just don’t see this country really caring that much, at least not enough to demand change.

The problem there is that in order to make the changes we want, people need to care about the less flashy things that enable and empower the people working against it, and few people do. We're not going to protest our way to better gun rights. Sandy Hook showed that they're not going to let anyone pass sweeping new laws no matter how horrible the event. If you really want change, you need to tackle things like gerrymandering, money as speech, and voter suppression so we can do something about the politicians that are actively working against gun control. We also need to stop preventing federal funds from being spent on researching gun violence and gun control. While tons of people care about gun control, not enough care about those, which need to be addressed before we'll be able to get actually meaningful laws passed at a federal level.