[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?

Add Texas to the list again.

I don't know why my wife wants to move back to Nashville. A city of civilized people doesn't protect you from a state full of assholes.

Stele wrote:

I don't know why my wife wants to move back to Nashville. A city of civilized people doesn't protect you from a state full of assholes.

Eh, if you're in the US, it's more or less the same anywhere.

Stele wrote:

I don't know why my wife wants to move back to Nashville. A city of civilized people doesn't protect you from a state full of assholes.

*Standard colour-coded caveats apply. MNPD has helped 37208 become one of the highest incarcerated ZIP codes in the country.

8 people dead in a shooting at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis overnight.
Not a lot of details yet but it’s believed the shooter killed himself as well.

If you had Kenosha, Wisconsin on your bingo card, play it now.

3 people killed and 2 injured in shooting in Kenosha, sheriff's department says

The Indianapolis shooter legally purchased the two ARs he used in July and September of last year.

He bought the new weapons because the police confiscated a shotgun he owned in March because his mother was concerned that he was trying to get himself killed by suicide by cop. The police thought he presented enough danger that he was immediately brought in on a mental health temporary hold.

Heck of a system we have when someone's clearly mentally and emotionally unstable and just a few months later we're like "Of course you can buy a weapon that can kill multiple people in just a few seconds. In fact, buy two."

The police are still trying to figure out if there was a racial angle because four of his victims were Sikh. The FBI were brought in to examine materials in his bedroom when he was committed but said nothing representing violent extremism ideology was found.

OG_slinger wrote:

nothing representing violent extremism ideology was found.

Hot-take: maybe owning more than one AR-15 should qualify as 'indicating violent extremism ideology.'

"Not all gun-owners," sure. But a large enough percentage that should worry the "good apples?"

Maybe it's the NyQuil talking. But it seems like maybe we should be able to tell if someone suddenly takes an unhealthy interest in owning weapons like that. And not just after the fact.

It is so odd how most news sites have headlines right now about how the Indianapolis shooter bought his guns legally. I am just a cynic I guess but I don't think this is the fact that will get 2nd Amendment cultists to see a need for gun reform. Of course I have kind of given up after Sandy Hook - when that many kids are murdered and we still (as a society) don't have the will to do anything I don't think there is anything that will move the issue.
Who knows, maybe I am crazy and this will become the thing that changes people's minds but I doubt it.

No way this changes people’s minds after the likes of Sandy Hook and Las Vegas. Like many issues, I fear the only hope now lies with the younger generations, having different attitudes and priorities, supplanting the older.

The thing is, the people have changed their mind. Elected assholes haven't. Universal background checks are overwhelmingly popular and non-partisan. Even in a fake Democracy the people ought to get what they want once in a while.

Oh, hey, sorry. I was in the shower. How many did I miss?

Uh oh. Gun culture might be intruding on football culture:
North Texas football signee Willie Simmons III among 3 killed in Austin shooting

That shooting is messed up.

The shooter was literally the definition of a good guy with a gun: a military- and SWAT-trained sheriff's investigator with over a decade of law enforcement experience. He even had the obligatory civilian death on his hands when a mostly wheelchair bound 78-year-old scared him so much that he and his partner had to shoot the septuagenarian to death.

He was forced to resign from the sheriffs department in July after he spent 16 days in jail because members of his own family came forward with accusations that he had sexually assaulted another family member who was just a child and they feared for their lives. The shooter posted bail and got a restraining order and a GPS tracker while awaiting trial. Five months later a judge ordered the removal of tracker saying he hadn't gone near his family for five whole months and pretty much left him to his own recognizance.

News reports show that the shooter was related to two of the victims. He was the step-father to one of them--Alyssa Broderick, a gifted student and athlete who had been dating Willie Simmons III all throughout high school--and adopted father to Alyssa's younger sister, Amanda.

Sadly, you can pretty much fill in the details: angry dude guns down his own adoptive daughter, who he had sexually abused, along with her older sister and her boyfriend because he couldn't stand the idea of facing the consequences of his own actions. Motherf*cker didn't even have the courage to kill himself after the fact like most of these assholes do.

Texas also does not have so-called Red Flag laws that confiscate firearms from people judged a danger to themselves or others, especially in domestic violence situations.

In Long Island a employee of a supermarket killed one person and wounded two others. They haven't caught the shooter yet. Seems like there is one of these nearly every day. Oh wait there is one nearly every day.

Mixolyde wrote:

The thing is, the people have changed their mind. Elected assholes haven't. Universal background checks are overwhelmingly popular and non-partisan. Even in a fake Democracy the people ought to get what they want once in a while.

Pew Research published a study about American's attitudes towards guns today and you're exactly right.

There's overwhelming support for preventing people with mental illness from buying weapons, universal background checks, and preventing people from carrying concealed weapons without a permit. A sizeable majority of Americans also want a national database of gun sales, a ban on high capacity mags, and a ban on assault-style weapons.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/fSWlT1K.png)

As the study details, there's massive (and growing) partisan differences. Just look at how those same issues break down by political ideology.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/uknL3Ro.png)

Hell, not even one in five Republican/Lean Republican thinks that gun violence is a major problem in the country.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/zw3VDSA.png)

Seriously, folks, WHAT THE f*ck IS GOING ON?!?

garion333 wrote:

Seriously, folks, WHAT THE f*ck IS GOING ON?!?

I was giving my kid a bath. How many did I miss?

Mixolyde wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Seriously, folks, WHAT THE f*ck IS GOING ON?!?

I was giving my kid a bath. How many did I miss?

Is it the North Carolina one?

It isn't any one of them.

WHAT THE ACTUAL f*ck IS GOING ON?!?

garion333 wrote:

It isn't any one of them.

WHAT THE ACTUAL f*ck IS GOING ON?!?

Just America, being great again.

Eight dead at a light railyard in San Jose, not including the shooter. Reports of at least a dozen wounded, as well.

And of course COVID vaccines are being blamed for it on Fox.

Rat Boy wrote:

And of course COVID vaccines are being blamed for it on Fox.

Seriously? That kind of dangerous misinformation should be illegal

polypusher wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

And of course COVID vaccines are being blamed for it on Fox.

Seriously? That kind of dangerous misinformation should be illegal

Seriously.

Rat Boy wrote:
polypusher wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

And of course COVID vaccines are being blamed for it on Fox.

Seriously? That kind of dangerous misinformation should be illegal

Seriously.

Guess the motherf*cker needs to figure out a new scam now that the "COVID-19 Security Service" he was pandering last year isn't viable anymore because people are getting vaccinated.

OG_slinger wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:
polypusher wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

And of course COVID vaccines are being blamed for it on Fox.

Seriously? That kind of dangerous misinformation should be illegal

Seriously.

Guess the motherf*cker needs to figure out a new scam now that the "COVID-19 Security Service" he was pandering last year isn't viable anymore because people are getting vaccinated.

Sounds like a swell guy

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/nzMS0FFK/Screenshot-20210526-175727-Edge.jpg)

Some guy in Arizona drove to three different cities shooting people at random. One person is dead and 12 others injured. Guy was taken alive.

So he was white. What else do we know - let me guess "seemed normal", "quite", "no one expected it from him" etc.

farley3k wrote:

So he was white. What else do we know - let me guess "seemed normal", "quite", "no one expected it from him" etc.

"Just had a bad day"