Yet another nut with a gun.

[catty-cb 4,392]

Let's postulate for a moment that this was a 15 minutes of fame situation....

From a New Zealand point of view that's the thing I find the most difficult to understand, mainly I think because in New Zealand this is something that almost never happens here

New Zealand has had 10 mass killings this century (with the last being in 1997) three of them were family murders and two were arson, three of the shootings involved the shooting of people (including family members) know to the killer so semi-family murders, one during WWII involved the killing of police and soldiers and the other shooting in 1990 was the killing of strangers (that one resulted in the gun law being changed to stop people using the kind of weapons he did).

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^Well, I read a thoughtful story some years ago in which mass murder was basically a recreation.  One line stuck in my mind as the police hauled the perp away: "I got more than X, though, didn't I?".  It was a dystopian story, and I don't remember the title, only this one line stuck in my memory.  If we don't publish the names of these killers, nor the head count, this becomes a non-starter.  The problem these days would be muzzling the "social" media.

[catty-cb 4,392]

.... If we don't publish the names of these killers, nor the head count, this becomes a non-starter.  The problem these days would be muzzling the "social" media.

Or in America's case Donald Trump who just made a speech where he describes these people as

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called mass shooters "sick as hell and geniuses in a certain way" in the aftermath of the shooting at an Oregon college that left nine dead.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Dear Donald is certainly doing his best to alienate the Democrats.  this falls right in line with the redneck south by the way.  Only in the U.S. you say, how lucky!

[catty-cb 4,392]

..

Finally, shotguns are particularly well-suited for home defense applications (some of them anyway).  Not enough power to penetrate a wall and be a serious threat to anyone in another room, but still enough stopping power that one or two hits will neutralize whomever it is that shouldn't be in your residence.

Here in New Zealand you must be able to prove that you are doing the following

• You must never put a firearm where a child could reach it.
• You must store firearms and ammunition separately or disable the firearms, or both.
• You must keep your firearms unloaded and locked away in a rack, stout cabinet, steel cabinet or strongroom

It doesn't stop accidents or suicides or even murders but it does stop children doing this to each other

 

America is again reeling from the horror of its gun violence with an 11-year-old boy being charged with murder after allegedly shooting dead an eight-year-old girl in Tennessee, days after the mass shooting in Oregon and a series of drive-by murders of children in Cleveland, Ohio.

The 11-year-old boy has been charged with first-degree murder after he used his father's 12-gauge shotgun to shoot his next door neighbour, McKayla Dyer, through a window as she played outside on Saturday afternoon.

McKayla's mother, Latasha Dyer, told local media that the boy killed her because she would not let him see her puppy.

[Duke87 1,070]

 

Said it before, i'll say it again, guns aren't the problem. America has always had guns, but for some reason mass killings of this kind are going up now.

Why now? Is the question we have to be asking ourselves. What about our society is creating the conditions that give way to this kind of crime?

The seemingly obvious answer is one of modern communications technology. Suicide attempts are very often cries for attention from people who feel neglected. To someone who thinks that the whole world hates them, it is quite logical that they would want to exact some sort of revenge, and all the better if they make national news and achieve infamy.

There was a time, not so long ago, where if something like this happened you might read about it in the paper the next day, or see it on the 7 o'clock news that night. They would cover the story and then move on, and it in many cases would only be covered locally.

Today, whenever something like this happens, word spreads around the world instantly thanks to social media, and the 24/7 cable news networks proceed to spend the next week talking about it non-stop. This greatly magnifies the impact of any such event, which in turn encourages more people to choose this as a means of committing suicide because maximum impact is exactly what they are looking for. If it gives them attention, they will do it in order to get attention.

What this means is that the only way to break this cycle is for the media to start ignoring such events rather than covering them non-stop. If the American population truly becomes numb to them this may eventually happen on its own if such coverage ceases to pull in good ratings, but who knows when we might make it to that point.

And this doesn't help us solve the problem, since stopping excessive press coverage is just as much of a no-can-do as stopping guns. Violates the first amendment instead of the second. Without amending the constitution (which there will not be the necessary support to do), there is no effective means of stopping mass shootings that is within the government's authority.

 

Fortunately, as emotionally jarring as mass shootings are, they remain statistically rare occurrences. A couple hundred dead people every year out of a population of 319 million means that your odds of dying in one in any given year are, well, about one in a million. It would be heartless but not illogical to argue that this is an acceptable risk.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I think this quote is from Thomas Mann: "Every man's death diminishes me because I am involved with mankind."

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Fortunately, as emotionally jarring as mass shootings are, they remain statistically rare occurrences. A couple hundred dead people every year out of a population of 319 million means that your odds of dying in one in any given year are, well, about one in a million. It would be heartless but not illogical to argue that this is an acceptable risk.

This is undeniably true in absolute terms, I guess. In relative terms, however, you sometimes see a disproportion when one thing is compared to stuff that kills far fewer people in relation to something else, but is a much bigger topic somehow and causes much more action. The second disproportion when you put things into relation is that a thing may happen in one country, but not in another (or at least far, far less frequently). I guess these two factors make it harder to accept and live with some things, while other things seem to be more tolerable because they appear to be more general and inevitable.

A third factor is the question whether there's much of an upside to the downside. For example, a certain number of people suffer injuries when doing sports. Of course, injuries are not good, so what speaks in favour of sports? Well, that it's good for your health overall, and that the health benefits by far outweigh the risk of injury for all but a small number of extremely unlucky people. For most by far, this is true on an individual level already - and even more so if we view society as a whole.
Victims of traffic accidents also fall into this category: We know cars and trains and whatnot bear risks and can be dangerous, we know that many people die or get injured in accidents. Then again, mobility has a high value for pretty much everybody's daily life. And still we don't rest our hands in our laps and content ourselves with happily tolerating the number of road kills. We strive for improvements, and while we're willing to tolerate a residual risk, we also try to minimise that residual risk.

How do these factors add up when we look at gun ownership, the US society, and school shootings? I'll leave that up to you guys and gals out there.

In any case, I agree that media coverage in its current form doesn't help, to say the least.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There was less media coverage to the freighter lost as sea in Hurricane Joaquin yet the loss of life was much higher.  The news media chooses those stories that are likely to get the most attention and thus increase their sales.  Greed rears its ugly head in the fourth estate.  They've forgotten what their real mandate is.

Of course the chattering classes on the social media don't help this one bit.

[MintberryCrunch 83]

Two campus shootings today. One at Northern Arizona University and one at Texas Southern University. Both reported one person dead. 

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-two-shot-texas-southern-20151009-story.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/09/us-usa-shooting-arizona-idUSKCN0S317G20151009

So...yeah...

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I wonder if these things trigger copy cats.