[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?

Gremlin, I'm not reading that. The title alone upset me. As for the video doing the rounds, not a hope.

Paleocon wrote:

As mass shootings are increasingly incorporating AR 15's instead of handguns, the lethality is predictably increasing as well. I remember the argument used to be that we shouldn't regulate AR 15's because so few of them were used in deadly shootings. Much of that had to do with the fact that relatively few of them were in civilian hands.... until now.

Sigh.

Can you explain something to me, Paleo? What happened in the last 40 years that increased the popularity of these weapons? I ask because I'm familiar with them because the IRA received quite a number of them during The Troubles but they wanted them to use again a professional army. They also liked to intimated people with them which my father had the privilege of one night. But that is another story.

Back to my question, surely the majority of gun owners think these as dangerous toys? As a middle aged man with kids explain to me how a father can think it's OK for a 19 year old with that history to maintain access to a AR-15? It's something I can't get a handle on.

And don't take this as a demonisation of the father. He took him in. He is probably a caring individual. He just seems to have completely misjudged the risk. And this is what I don't get.

Axon wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

As mass shootings are increasingly incorporating AR 15's instead of handguns, the lethality is predictably increasing as well. I remember the argument used to be that we shouldn't regulate AR 15's because so few of them were used in deadly shootings. Much of that had to do with the fact that relatively few of them were in civilian hands.... until now.

Sigh.

Can you explain something to me, Paleo? What happened in the last 40 years that increased the popularity of these weapons? I ask because I'm familiar with them because the IRA received quite a number of them during The Troubles but they wanted them to use again a professional army. They also liked to intimated people with them which my father had the privilege of one night.

But back to my question, surely the majority of gun owners think these as dangerous toys? As a middle aged man with kids explain to me how a father can think it's OK for a 19 year old with that history to maintain access to a AR-15? It's something I can't get a handle on.

And don't take this as a demonisation of the father. He took him in. He is probably a caring individual. He just seems to have completely misjudged the risk. And this is what I don't get.

I don't think it would be easy to understand this sort of mindset as a foreigner, but in the context of particularly Southern gun culture, the idea of forbidding your adult son from having a firearm (any kind of firearm) would be looked at as as unreasonable as telling him that he wasn't allowed to date or go to the movies with friends. The possession of tremendous firepower is so normalized that it is almost looked upon as odd that anyone would have an objection to it. It really only makes sense in context.

There has been a lot of ink spilled on the origins of this gun market exploitation. A lot of it comes from the decline of hunting as a sport and the need for gun companies to market a winning product. When it became clear that the AR 15 was sexy, they knew they had their winner. And the marketing cycle of tragedy to outrage to ban fears led to greater demand.

Dang, even judging the risk appropriately, it goes in the hopper with all the other priorities of a parent. I get how hard that is.

The FBI knew about the shooter last year:

AP: FBI alerted to YouTube ‘shooter’ post last year

Also in that updating article:

12:50 p.m.

The leader of a white nationalist militia says Florida school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz was a member of his group and participated in paramilitary drills in Tallahassee.

Jordan Jereb told The Associated Press on Thursday that his group, the Republic of Florida, wants Florida to become its own white ethno-state. He said his group holds “spontaneous random demonstrations” and tries not to participate in the modern world.

Jereb said he didn’t know Cruz personally and that “he acted on his own behalf of what he just did and he’s solely responsible for what he just did.”

He also said he had “trouble with a girl” and he believed the timing of the attack, carried out on Valentine’s Day, wasn’t a coincidence.

Nineteen-year-old Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder in the shooting.

[EDIT: SEE DISCUSSION BELOW]

Someone on Twitter wrote:

Let me translate this for you.

A radical terrorist cell in America trained a man who just murdered 17 children in Florida. https://t.co/eCzlpHlyB2

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) February 15, 2018

Some things that contribute to mass shootings in the United States:
- Weak gun control. Particularly lacking in enforcement in the checks for domestic violence (which has a strong correlation with mass shootings). The existing prohibitions have miles-wide loopholes.*
- Domestic terrorist radicalization and training
- Fragile masculinity, which is a whole topic in itself
- The NRA, which radicalized in fear of the Carter Administration under the supervision of a racist killer who did two years for murder.

*

Spoiler:

Unconstitutionally weak gun control. When your "militia" is shooting children, I don't think it is "well-regulated".

Shaun King is pretty great, generally.

Ugh. Some idiot on FB tried to tell me that an AR15 was "just a .22".

For those of you who will run into this tired, ridiculous crap, here is the difference.

IMAGE(https://www.miataturbo.net/attachments/insert-bs-here-4/51966d1344889528-yay-gays-i-mean-guns-22_223.jpg)

The .22lr is 31 grains going 530m/s delivering 277 joules of kinetic energy.

The 5.56 NATO round is 62 grains traveling at nearly 900m/s delivering 1709 joules of kinetic energy.

So though they have roughly the same diameter, the AR 15 round weighs twice as much and travels nearly twice as fast and delivering more than six times the kinetic energy. It also delivers it in the form of a boat tail round that will yaw and disintegrate upon entering the body, resulting in a temporary wound cavity the size of a regulation rugby ball.

If anyone uses this nonsense on you, cut and paste the above response. Tell them they've been outmathed by an Asian.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/xoILbBa.jpg)

Farley - not everyone forgets which is one of the reasons there's a majority of the public that does want some form of gun control.

(I know it's not your image but this sentiment takes away from the fact that the people who do nothing shouldn't be able to pretend they did nothing because everyone 'forgot')

No one forgets, it's just always "too soon" until it's too late for another group of victims.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/4WYFtTV.png)

Rahmen wrote:

Farley - not everyone forgets which is one of the reasons there's a majority of the public that does want some form of gun control.

(I know it's not your image but this sentiment takes away from the fact that the people who do nothing shouldn't be able to pretend they did nothing because everyone 'forgot')

I would say something more like "Media stops covering it" because really that is what happens. The headlines on CNN, Fox, etc. switch and Americans get distracted by the next shiny thing.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...

"For a staggering number of Americans under 40, however, it doesn’t require any leap of the imagination at all. According to an analysis conducted by the Washington Post earlier this month, more than 150,000 Americans have experienced a shooting on campus since Columbine in 1999."

I'm guessing most of them didn't forget.

wordsmythe wrote:

Shaun King is pretty great, generally.

Strongly disagree. Shaun King is a pretty scummy guy who puts on a good face.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/goldie...

Rahmen wrote:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...

"For a staggering number of Americans under 40, however, it doesn’t require any leap of the imagination at all. According to an analysis conducted by the Washington Post earlier this month, more than 150,000 Americans have experienced a shooting on campus since Columbine in 1999."

I'm guessing most of them didn't forget.

This is one of the few places where I am not opposed to "never forget" rhetoric.

Rahmen wrote:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...

"For a staggering number of Americans under 40, however, it doesn’t require any leap of the imagination at all. According to an analysis conducted by the Washington Post earlier this month, more than 150,000 Americans have experienced a shooting on campus since Columbine in 1999."

I'm guessing most of them didn't forget.

So why haven't we had any meaningful change in gun policy?

farley3k wrote:
Rahmen wrote:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...

"For a staggering number of Americans under 40, however, it doesn’t require any leap of the imagination at all. According to an analysis conducted by the Washington Post earlier this month, more than 150,000 Americans have experienced a shooting on campus since Columbine in 1999."

I'm guessing most of them didn't forget.

So why haven't we had any meaningful change in gun policy?

Because they're not the ones in charge of the various branches of the government.

Tanglebones wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Shaun King is pretty great, generally.

Strongly disagree. Shaun King is a pretty scummy guy who puts on a good face.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/goldie...

I'm not going to wade into charity finances, but perhaps I can restate: Shaun King's Twitter account is generally on point.

Edit: Not the thread to go down this rabbit hole. Suffice to say, I disagree re him.

Also, the hoax cycle is in overdrive on this one (and ostensibly will continue to be with any further mass shootings).

Well, that's the kind of people they're trying to recruit, so it makes a sick sort of sense for them to brag about how they trained him.

Yeah, JJ MacNab, who reports on anti-government extremists, said that her spidey sense was tingling about that. It's beginning to look like the link between the shooter and RoF started on 4Chan and that Jordan Jereb, the RoF "leader," took that and ran with it even though he didn't personally know Cruz (and lived hundreds of miles away).

IMAGE(https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/28167133_883465908501985_6977328915861655321_n.jpg?oh=e8912bd27e5189fbe1dabceef3dbf7ae&oe=5B07D2C0)

Yeah, let the be a lesson for me to put too much stock into anything in the near aftermath of one of these.

At least this time it looks like the shooter is alive, so maybe some questions will eventually have answers. I hope that gives families at least a little bit of closure. It won't fix anything, but it's all we can give them at this point.

Well, that and gun control.

farley3k wrote:

IMAGE(https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/28167133_883465908501985_6977328915861655321_n.jpg?oh=e8912bd27e5189fbe1dabceef3dbf7ae&oe=5B07D2C0)

I'm more down for Repeal & Replace.

The Second Amendment no longer has a role in our society. It's a "right" that costs way too much and delivers little, if any, real value.

OG_slinger wrote:

I'm more down for Repeal & Replace.

The Second Amendment no longer has a role in our society. It's a "right" that costs way too much and delivers little, if any, real value.

I agree but I think way to many people are way to brainwashed to accept that without .... more than a fight.... probably civil war honestly.

I am perfectly fine with starting small. Hell baby steps would be such a vast improvement that I would be tickled to death.