Mass shootings

IdleRich

IdleRich
so it turns out this isn't the NYPD's most shining moment:

- the first cop on the scene couldn't help because his radio wasn't working.
- then the cops in the sunset park station forgot to halt other trains and the shooter hopped another train and got away.
- then it was discovered that none of the cameras in the station worked.
- eventually, the shooter called the tip line and turns himself in, and the cops never bother to show up.
- so after waiting around for awhile, he decides to go wander around the east village, when another person recognizes him and calls in a second tip.
- then the cops finally arrive and arrest him.

NY's finest.

It feels there should be a word for the way that the reality and the televised versions move so rapidly apart.

CSI; NY is on here basically every day and in that show Mac Taylor leads a department full of people whom I don't think it would be inaccurate to describe as almost superhuman. And what is more impressive than the fact that they are all highly qualified medical experts in peak physical condition is their dogged commitment to justice. Every single one of them is prepared to go that extra mile, they investigate every clue to the hilt - if they find some grass stains on the trousers they identify the species and then they discover that it only grows in one place, and then they go there and interview every single person who lives in that neighbourhood... and so on and so forth. And yet we find out that in reality your average NY cop would probably follow a fleeing criminal with his eyes as long as he didn't have to turn his head to do so.

Now, of course, I realise that television and reality are not the same. But I do feel there is a particular phenomenon here - something about how the worse and worse the reality becomes, the more determined the entertainment industry is to insist on their unimpeachable qualities. In some sense it strikes me as similar to the thing that Parkinson (of Parkinson's Law) identified with the British (though I expect it could be any) navy - how in 1600 they had 10,000 ships with 500,000 seamen and just 3 admirals. In 1800 they 5,000 ships and 100,000 seamen being directed by 50 admirals along with 250 vice admirals, and by the year 2000 they had 1,000 ships and 2,000 admirals etc etc (you have probably guessed that I just made up those numbers to illustrate the point).
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Of course.

It will continue until a critical mass of American voters who are right-leaning but not totally unmoored from reality accept that the Republican party has become a mad fascist cult.
 
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Slothrop

Tight but Polite
What breaks me is the pro-gun line that anyone calling for gun controls at this point is "exploiting a tragedy to further their political agenda".
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
What breaks me is the pro-gun line that anyone calling for gun controls at this point is "exploiting a tragedy to further their political agenda".
A tragedy which, of course, has nothing to do with the ready availability of guns in the USA.

Just a random thing that could happen anywhere, to anyone.
 

version

Well-known member
I read some Americans making the argument last night that the mass shootings, rather than being a discrete phenomenon, are just the latest manifestation of a violence that's always been there and that it's these lone shooters now because the violent organisations they'd have joined in the past don't really exist anymore, e.g. The Weathermen.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I read some Americans making the argument last night that the mass shootings, rather than being a discrete phenomenon, are just the latest manifestation of a violence that's always been there and that it's these lone shooters now because the violent organisations they'd have joined in the past don't really exist anymore, e.g. The Weathermen.
Yep. There's probably something to be said for the idea of a high background level of dissatisfaction and impotent rage that transcends any conventional division of left and right, and can manifest itself as violence with a range of ideologies glossed over the top.
 

Leo

Well-known member
I read some Americans making the argument last night that the mass shootings, rather than being a discrete phenomenon, are just the latest manifestation of a violence that's always been there and that it's these lone shooters now because the violent organisations they'd have joined in the past don't really exist anymore, e.g. The Weathermen.

except that those organizations had political beliefs, however warped, that they were allegedly fighting for. these lone shooters usually have no guiding principle aside from blind hate or mental illness.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
A tragedy which, of course, has nothing to do with the ready availability of guns in the USA.

Just a random thing that could happen anywhere, to anyone.
It's just - I could sort of deal with someone who stood up and said that while they understand why people might want tighter gun controls to prevent this sort of tragedy, they don't actually think it'd be effective and if we really want to stop the mass murders of children then blah blah blah. I mean, it'd be wrongheaded but it's not as fundamentally and staggeringly indecent as implying [edit: or rather, explicitly saying] that people who argue for tighter gun controls in the wake of a bunch of schoolkids get shot (again) actually just want to take away peoples' guns because they hate American Freedoms and they're just callously exploiting the human tragedy as a means to that end.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
@version Peak Nixon era, all kinds of shenanigans

Glad I’m not raising kids among this bs. Living and working in the US you get to see the misfiring logic of “you wouldn’t take a knife to a gun fight”, which directly infers conflict. It can flip a seemingly rational non-gun owner towards firearms training, yet more guns in the home = more gun violence/accidents/mishaps

If the US enacted legislation today, it would still take decades to filter out into broader cultural behavioural patterns simply from the sheer volume of firearms in circulation

Firearms related mortality is just shy of 40,000 a year and drug deaths now at 100,000. Complex and structurally engineered, compounded by appalling access to care for those with acute mental health issues and no end in sight

Grim America
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's just - I could sort of deal with someone who stood up and said that while they understand why people might want tighter gun controls to prevent this sort of tragedy, they don't actually think it'd be effective and if we really want to stop the mass murders of children then blah blah blah. I mean, it'd be wrongheaded but it's not as fundamentally and staggeringly indecent as implying [edit: or rather, explicitly saying] that people who argue for tighter gun controls in the wake of a bunch of schoolkids get shot (again) actually just want to take away peoples' guns because they hate American Freedoms and they're just callously exploiting the human tragedy as a means to that end.
Well the logical conclusion of that is the assertion that the gun-control lobby doesn't merely try to 'benefit from' or 'exploit' mass shootings, but actually either orchestrates them or fakes them, as per Alex "Fucking Cunt" Jones and his inane (but extremely harmful) bullshit about the Sandy Hook massacre.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I read some Americans making the argument last night that the mass shootings, rather than being a discrete phenomenon, are just the latest manifestation of a violence that's always been there and that it's these lone shooters now because the violent organisations they'd have joined in the past don't really exist anymore, e.g. The Weathermen.
I understand you're not the one making it but that's a very, very dumb comparison

The Weather Underground (not The Weathermen, but whatever, leave the pedantry aside), and the New Left in general, were largely middle-class (and up) students who, whatever their flaws - and they had plenty, let's be clear - always had very clear political goals to their actions. TWU's escalation to violence was specifically a response to the cold-blooded murder of Fred Hampton, and the general milieu was obviously in the context of Vietnam, COINTELPRO, Pine Ridge, etc. You can talk about whether or not it was justified, or misguided, but the violence was never senseless. No one ever walked into an elementary school and started firing into a crowd of children. It's true that any organization doing violence will attract some people who primarily just want to do violence, and I don't think the New Left was free of that - Donald DeFreeze is probably a good example, or maybe Andreas Baader if you want to go outside the U.S. - but its violence was by and large the opposite of senseless.

And of course, lone shooters did exist even at the time - Charles Whitman is, I believe, the first school shooter in American history

let's also be clear, the ideology - when these attacks are ideologically motivated - of modern lone wolf terrorism is almost always either 1) Neonazi - what William Pierce essentially invented in his pair of novels (you can look him up if you want their names), or 2) Islamic fundamentalist. i.e. Dylann Roof, Nazi. that kid who shot a bunch of people in a Buffalo supermarket two weeks ago is a white supremacist. the Orlando nightclub guy was an ISIS fanboi. and so on.

and violent organizations definitely exist. the Oath Keepers. every piece of shit that marched in Charlottesville back in 2017. etc.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
3 related problems in the U.S.

1) social alienation, driven by among other things, lack of economic opportunity, access to mental health care, etc
2) racism (and conspiratorial thinking) magnified by the hothouse of the Internet
3) easy access to weapons

every mass shooting in involves 1 and 3. virtually every ideologically motivated shooting that isn't Islamic fundamentalist - and I read that the Buffalo shooting puts white supremacists ahead of Islamists for post-9/11 body count - also involves 2 (even in the rare case where there's a black perpetrator, i.e. Dallas police shooting a few years ago). (tbc you could absolutely say Islamist shootings involve racism as well, but it's not the single motivating factor like it is for white supremacists)

there's little point in addressing 3 without also trying to address 1 and 2. and count me as one of those Americans who just doesn't think gun control would be that effective - we will never get laws about private gun ownership remotely comparable to Canada, or Europe, or etc, and even if we did everyone who wants to be armed is armed already. and if white supremacists are walking around with assault rifles and body armor, I'd prefer POC, queer people, etc can arm themselves if necessary bc I sure af don't trust law enforcement or the military to protect us. always, let's try to de-escalate but that doesn't seem to be the trend, yunno?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
not to mention the US military
obv there are white supremacists within the military and law enforcement, but it's still a mistake to directly compare them to the Oath Keepers or whoever. the military is actually one of the more diverse elements of American society.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
3 related problems in the U.S.

1) social alienation, driven by among other things, lack of economic opportunity, access to mental health care, etc
2) racism (and conspiratorial thinking) magnified by the hothouse of the Internet
3) easy access to weapons

every mass shooting in involves 1 and 3. virtually every ideologically motivated shooting that isn't Islamic fundamentalist - and I read that the Buffalo shooting puts white supremacists ahead of Islamists for post-9/11 body count - also involves 2 (even in the rare case where there's a black perpetrator, i.e. Dallas police shooting a few years ago). (tbc you could absolutely say Islamist shootings involve racism as well, but it's not the single motivating factor like it is for white supremacists)

there's little point in addressing 3 without also trying to address 1 and 2. and count me as one of those Americans who just doesn't think gun control would be that effective - we will never get laws about private gun ownership remotely comparable to Canada, or Europe, or etc, and even if we did everyone who wants to be armed is armed already. and if white supremacists are walking around with assault rifles and body armor, I'd prefer POC, queer people, etc can arm themselves if necessary bc I sure af don't trust law enforcement or the military to protect us. always, let's try to de-escalate but that doesn't seem to be the trend, yunno?
Yeah I'm no expert on gun regulation policy here in US, or whatever registries are used for gun owners, but I'm under the impression that someone who is alienated/demented enough to set their mind on a public shooting, will find ways to acquire weaponry, despite or perhaps in conscious spite of gun sale regulation. EG 3D printable weapons / "ghost guns".

This is one of those areas where I think the anti-gun arguments are justified, but I don't see tighter regulations necessarily being effective. If anything, I'd suspect they would inflame the problem further. But again, I don't know the policy wonk stuff about how exactly this kind of regulation is handled in the US.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I think the argument that @version referenced has a kernel of truth in it, but I'm not sure I'd agree with however its elaborated upon or extrapolated. And to your point padraig, I'm under the impression there are, and may always be, violent extremist groups which serve as cultural attractors for these would-be lone wolves
 
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