[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?

Or all the good samaritans who assume black people are always doing something wrong when they are existing too close to them and takes appropriate action.

TheGameguru wrote:

Don't underestimate the ruling recently where a "good Samaritan" ran down his ATM robber and shot at him missing completely and killing an innocent 9 year old girl. Since he was in the act of defending his property apparently that's 100% a-ok to kill someone by accident.

Wait, what? How is that not manslaughter?

Nevin73 wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Don't underestimate the ruling recently where a "good Samaritan" ran down his ATM robber and shot at him missing completely and killing an innocent 9 year old girl. Since he was in the act of defending his property apparently that's 100% a-ok to kill someone by accident.

Wait, what? How is that not manslaughter?

Because Texas. Also he was charged only with aggravated assault, serious bodily injury

CptDomano wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Don't underestimate the ruling recently where a "good Samaritan" ran down his ATM robber and shot at him missing completely and killing an innocent 9 year old girl. Since he was in the act of defending his property apparently that's 100% a-ok to kill someone by accident.

Wait, what? How is that not manslaughter?

Because Texas. Also he was charged only with aggravated assault, serious bodily injury

I hate what this country has become more and more every day.

Bo Knows that people who get their kids killed in mass shootings shouldn't have to worry about how to pay for their funerals.

Bo Jackson covered all funeral expenses for Uvalde victims' families, governor says

Historical rates of enslavement predict modern rates of American gun ownership

Phys-Org wrote:

The higher percentage of enslaved people that a U.S. county counted among its residents in 1860, the more guns its residents have in the present, according to a new analysis by researchers exploring why Americans' feelings about guns differ so much from people around the globe.

More than 45% of the world's civilian-owned firearms are in the United States, where just 5 percent of the world's people live. This disparity may have something to do with the way the majority of American gun owners view gun ownership.

"Gun culture is one case where American Exceptionalism really is true," says Nick Buttrick, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of psychology. "We are really radically different even from countries like Canada or Australia, places that have similar cultural roots."

Pew Research Center surveys show two-thirds of Americans who own guns say it's a way to keep themselves safe, while in other countries, people are more likely believe the presence of a gun adds risk and danger to their lives, considering, for example, the far higher rates of homicide and suicide in households with guns. Gun culture scholars have also explored the role of race in American gun attitudes for some time, Buttrick says, and the two may be linked.

In a study published recently in the journal PNAS Nexus, Buttrick and co-author Jessica Mazen, a psychology graduate student at the University of Virginia, describe a shift in sentiment away from the predominant, pre-Civil War idea of guns as tools for hunting and sport.

In the post-Civil War South, the belief that a gun was necessary to protect family, property and a way of life grew prominent among white southerners. This was driven by a flood of surplus military weapons, the rise of armed, white-supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, and elite rhetoric that Reconstruction governments would not protect the interests of white southerners from newly freed and politically-empowered Black people.

The researchers compared county-level population data from the 1860 census to gun ownership patterns in the present. Because there is no national record of gun ownership, the study uses a widely accepted proxy—the proportion of suicides in a county that involved a firearm, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mortality records from 1999 to 2016.

"What we see is a strong correlation between the number of slaves in a county in 1860 and the number of guns there now, even after we control for variables like personal politics, crime rates, and education and income," says Buttrick, who produced the study while working as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, before joining the UW–Madison faculty this year.

This correlation was strong even when the researchers focused only on white gun owners, narrowing their proxy for gun ownership to firearm suicides involving only non-Hispanic white victims.

The study further pinpoints a particularly Southern root for the American belief that guns keep people safe.

"The extent to which people feel unsafe only predicts gun ownership in counties in the South, where the more unsafe people feel, the more likely they are to own a gun," Buttrick says. "If you look in areas that didn't have any slaves in the 1860s, whether people feel unsafe there today does not predict today's county-level gun ownership."

Additionally, areas in the North and West with more guns in the present day are home to people that are more likely to have Facebook friends that live in parts of the South that had higher historical rates of slavery. In these areas, as in the South, feeling unsafe is more likely to predict increased gun ownership. The researchers say this suggests that social transmission of beliefs about guns is at work.

"The question is, how do these ideas about guns get to the rest of the country?" Buttrick says. "As people move, they bring with them the culture that formed them. We can see the remnants of those moves and the lingering connections to family and community in people's social media connections, and it lines up with the slavery-gun-ownership pattern."

The results may give researchers a clearer sense of how gun culture has developed and evolved differently across the country—why some parts of the country still retain a hunting culture, while others are dominated by a gun culture based around personal protection.

"It helps to elucidate some things—why is it that race and guns are so tightly tied together? Why is it that guns are so present in the public mind and discussion for white people and not for Black people?" Buttrick says. "And it does help make sense of why protective gun ownership is such a popular idea in the United States, but not elsewhere."

America's original sin is the gift that sadly just keeps on giving...

At the car dealership today, middle of the day, in prosperous suburb.

Old guy with a revolver on his hip. Why don't I feel safe?

He's older (65+?), cradling his tiny dog, wearing slip on loafers, with a tank top and slouching pants. I'm not inspired by this guy being the type that will a) make a good decision about when to draw down, much less b) shoot accurately in a waiting room.

And his car hasn't seen an oil change in 15000 miles and the receptionist has to explain to him he needs to do it every 5000.

So he can't be trusted to maintain a $16k vehicle. But we let him carry a $200 pistol. Only in America.

Top_Shelf wrote:

Old guy with a revolver on his hip. Why don't I feel safe?

So that he can.

Carrying a gun in public is American id writ large - my right to feel happy trumps your right to feel anything and I'll f*cking kill you if that's a problem.

I've had my CCW since late 2017. I've still never actually carried once.

Yeah. I went five years with my CCW (until it expired) without carrying. The only time I considered it was during the contentious school board meetings last year; I was concerned about what the anti-mask nutters were capable of. In the end I thought it would do more harm than good for parents and students to find out a school board member felt the need to carry.

Yeah, I honestly have no desire to ever carry a firearm. Only reason I got the CCW is that it needs renewal less frequently than the standard permit in Iowa.

On the one hand, I feel some shame because I would far rather the US have proper gun controls. However, after Charlottesville I became (and still am) very concerned about growing localized and regionalized sectarian violence. I don't want my home or community to be defenseless, so... yeah. I hate it, but I am a firearm owner; but not a staunch 2A maniac by any stretch.

I guarantee that the 2A maniacs don't want you to be a firearm owner because of your concern over localized and regionalized sectarian violence that they'll probably be starting.

Jonman wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:

Old guy with a revolver on his hip. Why don't I feel safe?

So that he can.

Carrying a gun in public is American id writ large - my right to feel happy trumps your right to feel anything and I'll f*cking kill you if that's a problem.

You reminded me of something: in high school I cut a guy off (my lane closed abruptly due to construction, I signaled, looked and moved, he did have to touch his brakes since we were going all of 35mph). Dude was in his 50s and at the next light he got out of his pickup (no kidding, an F-150) walked in oncoming traffic and yelled at me about how lucky I was he didn't have his gun on him.

I laughed at him out of bewilderment at the situation. Because threatening a kid over a minor traffic infraction is normal behavior for a grown ass man.

I'm glad that wasn't in today's world.

Shooting across Memphis, leaving 4 dead, 3 injured. My heart skipped a beat when I saw this on reddit - got a few people I love living right where he was shooting. I think they're all ok.

I want to be excruciatingly clear, I am not blaming or shaming anyone here, I'm just pointing out how insane it is that we had another school shooting this week, and it wasn't top-line news anywhere I saw because only two people died (not including the suspect.)

(Obviously, one cannot totally ignore the demographics involved in said incident and how that might affect media coverage.)

You wanna talk about a rot at the heart of America, "it's barely headline news that there was another school shooting" takes huge precedence, for me, over I don't care how many Drag Queen Story Hours.

f*ck that, we should blame and shame the sh*t out of people. People should be ashamed that they care about guns more than kids, that they have worked to stop even "common sense" gun restrictions.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/urO02fE.jpeg)

Oh no, I simply meant I wasn't doing a "WHY ISN'T ANYONE HERE TALKING ABOUT X" thing.

Was reading about how the school had metal detectors, locked doors, armed security AND his parents worked with law enforcement to remove a gun from their home because of concerns about his mental health.

It's like there's something else that's missing to bring down the risk in this area?

That thing would be responsible leadership in Missouri.

Went nearly a month without another mass shooting. Nearly.

It should be mentioned at every opportunity that the club where the shooting occurred had promoted an all-ages Drag Brunch the next morning.

Y'know, the king of thing Elon's bud's at the Babylon Bee, LibsOfTikTok, Matt Walsh and this piece of garbage have been whipping people into a frenzy about:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FiBqF3sWYAEJmal?format=jpg&name=large)

I mention it knowing they won't see a single ounce of what they deserve (in Walsh and LibsOfTikTok's case, I think they're actively happy to have this blood on their hands.)

And the response to the accusation will be the same. "I didn't specifically call for this, so accusations that I bear responsibility are absurd," etc.

Just a month between big ones. There's been shootings every day.

And yeah this is targeted, and everyone at Fox News and the GOP is responsible with their bullsh*t transphobia the last few years.

Richard Fierro. An absolute hero who likely saved an untold number of lives.

Not that the chuds and Muskians will care, but that is an example of a man more "Alpha" (if such a thing existed), stronger, more of a Real Man than any of those performative cowards prattling bullsh*t about "masculinity" on the internet will ever be.

I'm just so sorry he had to be a hero that day, instead of just enjoying a night out with his daughter.

A good guy without a gun.

dejanzie wrote:

A good guy without a gun.

And when he took one away from the shooter, he used it as a bludgeon instead of firing it.

zeroKFE wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

A good guy without a gun.

And when he took one away from the shooter, he used it as a bludgeon instead of firing it.

I was under the belief he knocked it away, one report said he was subsequently barking orders to the crowd to secure the weapon and call 911, either way, point still stands that he didn't turn the weapon on the gunman.

Clumber wrote:
zeroKFE wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

A good guy without a gun.

And when he took one away from the shooter, he used it as a bludgeon instead of firing it.

I was under the belief he knocked it away, one report said he was subsequently barking orders to the crowd to secure the weapon and call 911, either way, point still stands that he didn't turn the weapon on the gunman.

He knocked the rifle away, but the POS pulled out a handgun. The hero disarmed him and pistol whipped him with it while a trans woman stomped his face with her heels.

Paleocon wrote:
Clumber wrote:
zeroKFE wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

A good guy without a gun.

And when he took one away from the shooter, he used it as a bludgeon instead of firing it.

I was under the belief he knocked it away, one report said he was subsequently barking orders to the crowd to secure the weapon and call 911, either way, point still stands that he didn't turn the weapon on the gunman.

He knocked the rifle away, but the POS pulled out a handgun. The hero disarmed him and pistol whipped him with it while a trans woman stomped his face with her heels.

This should be made into a movie. So inspiring in the face of tragedy.

The dude watched as that POS gunned down his daughter's boyfriend in cold blood and realized he had to do something. He broke down on CNN talking about how he had left the service hoping to get away from this.

There are places where this kind of thing doesn't happen. Where little kids don't have to have shooter drills at school. Where people can go out at night and never think about, "Could I take down the 150 kilo dude with a long arm rifle and handgun?"

Top_Shelf wrote:

There are places where this kind of thing doesn't happen. Where little kids don't have to have shooter drills at school. Where people can go out at night and never think about, "Could I take down the 150 kilo dude with a long arm rifle and handgun?"

Sounds like those places are lacking Freedumb.