Because there’s another mass shooting every couple days. It’s hard to care about why one dude did something crazy 7 years ago while bullets are still flying. People are much more focused on trying to stop the next one.
I agree with all of that, except for the part about people being focused on trying to stop the next one.
If anyone was actually serious about that, we wouldn’t average more than one per day across the U.S.
Focused on trying to stop the next one in every way except restricting guns, or funding mental health care, or reducing hate, or… Well anything that takes more than thoughts and prayers.
What a country.
The mental health care thing is so frustrating.
Let’s enact some gun control laws because most guns used in mass shootings are bought legally.
“No, it’s a mental health issue!”
Well, then let’s fund mental health services and increase access to them.
“No, that’s not my problem.”
Played out again and again. I mean I know it’s all just deflection, but dammit at least try to have a consistent position.
We have tried nothing and we are all out of options.
Gotta appreciate how I Googled that phrase, clicked on the first YouTube link, and the very first comment was along the lines of “US conservatives reacting to mass shootings”
Ah c’mon, give them credit where it’s due. They didn’t try nothing - thoughts and prayers were tried in abundance.
Are they even doing that tho? Like they talk about it a lot, but because these are children we send to slaughter and watch their teachers bleed out while terrified, I demand to see these thoughts and prayers as long as they are preferred in a way that implies moral support. Appalling.
Hot take: “thoughts and prayers” and “doing nothing” are the exact same thing
I didn’t think I needed the /s, but here goes:
/s
I was kind of adding on top of it. Didn’t think I needed to say it either, but here we are lol.
At some point, a long time ago, we collectively transitioned from viewing mass shootings as an alarming epidemic, to something culturally endemic to our way of life. It’s an effortless rationalization made possible by for-profit news and for-profit politics.
South Park had a great episode about this.
People are much more focused on trying to stop the next one.
Are they really? What is really being done?
A lotta hope. My 3 minutes are penciled in tomorrow at 2pm. Same 3 minutes my legislators spend on it. Gotta have hope!¹
- “Gotta have hope!” is a thing you hear in cancer wards and places where people know in their souls that there is no hope.
No, there are not mass shooting every couple of days.
When we hear “mass shooting”, we’re all thinking about the Mother Jones and Violence Project numbers shown (hardly conservative sources). 6 for 2021. (And crime is way down since then.)
And if we go with the worst numbers on there, ~4,000, that’s about a month worth of vehicular fatalities, not dead plus injured.
Everyone on here bitches about capitalism and how billionaires control our lives. Everyone is keenly aware that most media outlets have been combined into Sinclair and a few other owners. But when the media presents a steady drumbeat of death and destruction, no one seems to be able to put 2 and 2 together. They want the commoners disarmed.
I don’t have answers, but all I know is that we had plenty of guns around when I was a kid, and yes, AR-15s as well, and this shit wasn’t anything like today.
Awesome point, yea, the “commoners” need to be disarmed.
So you were around plenty of guns in your childhood? As a child, you knew what an AR-15 was?
Hmmm. It’s almost like children growing up around guns, especially those exposed to rifles as you mentioned, became comfortable and used to them, know how to use them, and where to get them.
Cool graphic you shared in an attempt to justify gun violence. Ml
Switzerland
Disagreed. No one gives a shit about stopping the next one. We’d actually have stricter gun laws if that were true.
*nobody in government.
A lot of people not in govenment are also working against stopping mass shootings. And the only people who CAN stop this are in the government.
It also wasnt a school.
Except they’re not. They’re focused on blaiming everyone around them while not looking for actual causes. The CDC is banned BY LAW from researching the actual causes, because the NRA knows the answer is going to be mass gun ownership and them instilling a very toxic version of gun culture in this country.
No one is doing anything substantial to stop the next one.
Something about the Vegas one (other than total number of fatalities) was so much more sinister. We barely even ever heard about the perpetrator. It’s always seemed bizarre to me.
Not saying we should be giving any media attention to mass killers, but it definitely breaks with the normal media portrayal.
Vegas was a failed hit on MBS by another Saudi Prince. They used the dude as a patsy to cover up the attempted assassination.
Source?
If Americans can be numb to mass killings of elementary school children, Vegas never stood a chance of remaining in the public discourse.
This is the right answer.
It hurts to read but. It’s the answer for sure.
When the discourse goes in circles and gets nowhere, it becomes a perceived waste to continue it. The people who profit from gun sales – including the politicians who reap campaign contributions from exploiting misconceptions about it – like it this way.
So fun fact
The reason why it was the deadliest shooting is because the shitstain was using a bump stock, which makes semiautomatics into pseudo-automatics, so he just mag dumped into a crowd
After it happened, the Trump admin of all fucking people banned bump stocks. Broken clock or something.
Now SCOTUS is about to hear a court case to repeal the ban, and they look poised to legalize bump stocks again under the BS reason that “they’re not technically automatic weapons”
With the added bonus that now everyone knows about them
Not trying to minimize the bump stock thing but I would wager that having 23 different guns and hundreds of rounds of ammo is why so many people got shot that night. This guy had it all planned out including bipods, red dots, cameras etc. this guy even went as far as to nailing his door shut so in any case someone got to his hotel before he was done, he would have extra time.
Yeah the bump stocks made a difference but I don’t think it was by that much.
For those of us who don’t wank ourselves to sleep every night to pictures of guns and have no idea what the fuck a bump stock is -
Essentially, bump stocks assist rapid fire by “bumping” the trigger against one’s finger (as opposed to one’s finger pulling on the trigger), thus allowing the firearm’s recoil, plus constant forward pressure by the non-shooting arm, to actuate the trigger
For those of us who don’t wank ourselves to sleep every night to pictures of guns and have no idea what the fuck a bump stock is
Interesting observation, I’d have thought anyone old enough at the time to follow news of the deadliest mass shooting in history would have known, especially since bump stocks became the largest discussion point of gun violence debate at the time, before Glock switches.
Since you don’t
watch news about gun violencewank yourself to sleep watching gun videos every night, here’s what that is:A Glock switch or Glock auto-sear (sometimes called a button or a giggle switch) is a small device that can be attached to the rear of the slide of a Glock handgun, converting the semi-automatic pistol into a machine pistol capable of fully automatic fire.
largest discussion point
Ha ha you seem to misunderstand that most other countrys’ entire discussion of the matter was “Fucksake the backwards yanks are at it again, must be a day with a ‘Y’ in it” 🙄
Have you tried…not shooting people?
If two people get shot in London or Paris, it’s massive news, and laws get changed.
If ten people get shot in the US, we kinda just shake our heads, and yous do fuck all
No argument on that point, we’re pretty docile through years of bread and circus, and complacency conditioning propaganda¹. George Floyd protests could have been the outrage and protesting in Paris over a cheese manufactured getting wrongly fined by the government, but here it took mandatory lockdowns with everyone out of work and ruin-of-civilization pandemic fears.
I get it. Wish I could personally change it, but the most I can do is vote, and call and email my representatives. If everyone did that every issue, we’d have a different country. Unfortunately see point ¹
I own a gun, a revolver, it was my uncle’s service weapon. I’ve taken it to the range a few times but besides that it sits locked in the safe unloaded and safety on, and I don’t carry it around. I can’t see myself ever needing to actually use it, but it’s nice to know it’s there in case there were ever truly a threat to my family. In places like the UK, I assume people have home defense weapons in the form of knives, billy clubs, pepper spray, etc. I’ve seen the damage it can do at the range, and it’s scary. I’m scared of it. I don’t ever want to become not scared of it.
Yeah that’s fair, the guy was armed to the teeth. The bump stock is just the icing on the shit cake.
Can someone who’s more into gun stuff tell me why people are always talking about the number of guns someone has?
What makes 23 different guns better than one good one? I can see the point of having like two, in case the first jams, but based on my (limited) experience I would much rather have a single HK416 than a dozen of anything else.
Also with fewer guns you need fewer ammo types (unless you for some reason have 23 guns with the same ammo, which to me makes even less sense).
Can someone who’s more into gun stuff tell me why people are always talking about the number of guns someone has?
Can be one of several things, or usually a combination:
- to show how prepared they were
- to imply the person was crazy because they had that many guns
- to imply people having that many guns somehow itself makes them more dangerous
A lot of it is just rhetoric
But it also does raise the question: why did the shooter think he needed a lot of guns?
That is true, maybe he thought he was going to have a multiday standoff, but I don’t know why he’d need so many guns for that.
He brought all those guns to the hotel room he shot from. I imagine it was so he could shoot as many rounds as possible at the crowd with out the need to reload.
But that really makes no sense. Unless you have them all set up in a row pointed exactly where you want, you’re probably not even saving half a second vs reloading. The old “switching is faster than reloading” thing doesn’t apply nearly as much when you’re at a static position and can have all your mags out in the open at arm’s reach.
He was operating a significant number of his weapons on bump stocks. Bump stocks allow firing at a much higher rate than the weapons were designed for. Operating at a higher rate causes the weapons to overheat. Overheating causes misfires and jams (and inaccuracy and can permanently damage weapons, but I doubt he was particularly concerned about those things). He did have them all set up in a row and many on mounts. He broke out the overlooking windows of his hotel room before he started shooting. It seems he was shooting with one until it jammed and then moving on to the next rather than trying to clear misfires.
If that is the case, that he was using a gun until it jammed, it makes more sense to me. At the same time, how often does an ordinary gun jam? I’ve used an HK416 and an MG3 during a year of army service (conscription training) and to my memory you could fire many hundred rounds (thousands in the case of the MG3) without a single jam, and a misfire takes about a second (max) to clear.
Also, I’ve seen people talking about the number of guns someone has also in other settings, as a kind of metric that people who are into guns seem to care about, I guess I’m more wondering about the phenomenon in general than just this specific case.
I have no idea on a metric of how frequently an “ordinary” gun jams, much less these modified ones, but I can apply some logic from my knowledge/experiences. The weapons you mention having experience with are designed with appropriate tolerances to not bind up under heavy use, so are a bit different from the ‘consumer-grade’ type we’re talking about in this specific event.
The type of semiautomatic rifles we’re talking about here use recoil to cycle the action. A bump stock allows the whole weapon to oscillate - and can have an effect similar to not securely shouldering the weapon. This prevents the needed energy from being transferred into the action for complete cycling, and that would make the weapon prone to jamming.
I don’t know if I have much of value to add to or reply to your second paragraph, but yeah that fixation is weird.
Except they can jam up - otherwise as you said it would be better to reload one than to switch?
Because it grabs attention and sounds scary, which really what media outlets care about. My other favorite is when they talk about someone having being caught with “hundreds of rounds of ammunition”, which clearly indicates that’s how many people they were planning on murdering, and isn’t just a pretty typical range day, or in the case of reallly common stuff like 9mm, 22LR, or even 223, can literally be a single box of ammo.
The guy just had a lot of guns. He had 23 with him and he had like another 20 at home.
But I would also imagine that him having them all loaded put into a row each mounted on its own bipod in his suite is faster than reloading.
A lot of people this thing about reloading, but honestly, my reload time after a couple weeks of basic training was under the five seconds you need to pass, and after a couple months of service plenty of people were closer to three seconds. I have a hard time imagining that swapping weapons is quicker. I guess the reloading thing might be the reason to have many guns, but it strikes me as a strange one.
And really, I’m not only talking about this specific case, I get the feeling that people that are into guns will often focus on the number of guns someone has, also outside this case, which seems a bit of a strange metric to be talking about in general.
One life is that much, though.
A SCOTUS that Trump installed.
No hardware required, also not some new technique suddenly discovered:
How to Bump Fire an AR-15/M4
AK47 bump fireThe reason why it was the deadliest shooting is because the shitstain was using a bump stock
No, he was looking over a massive crowd of people with a rifle. He may have killed more people without a bump stock, given the difficulty it causes for accuracy. Saying it is a settled fact that it led to the deaths is just not true.
I mean, he didn’t really have much of a problem with accuracy - he fired a total of 1058 rounds, and those rounds or shrapnel from them injured 413 different people. Of course, many people received more than a single gunshot wound. He killed 58 (later 60) in ten minutes of shooting – effectively one person every 10 seconds. I think it would be difficult for a single person to injure or kill more from where he was standing with any weapon short of an RPG.
kill more from where he was standing with any weapon short of an RPG.
I think short of somehow knocking down a build that would make it more difficult because of the very slow reload speed.
kill more from where he was standing with any weapon short of an RPG.
And a semi-auto rifle can fire much faster than that without a bumpstock
He didn’t exactly need accuracy when there was a sea of targets in front of him, especially if his objective was to hit as many of them as possible before they could disperse.
But he continued to hit people while they were dispersing
Never found a motive? Are you joking? We’ve got tons of info on the psycho who did it. He was a distraught aging white male with a history of depression, gambling, and firearms who wanted to hurt the world and kill himself.
Sad losers are a dime a dozen but at least most of them aren’t as stupid as that guy. There is no reason to discuss this outside of proposed changes to our society as a whole to better prevent these stains on history.
Ahh yes no need to discuss why people become who they are or to change society for the better
I don’t mean to sweep this under the rug, but I think that just stands as another case for the fact that an enormous amount of people in this country have mental health issues. It’s normalized at this point.
Besides that, news outlets that report on this only do so basically of the drama and the views. The solutions are in front of us, always have been, but that’s not what anyone truly cares about.
I think framing it as a ‘mental health’ issue puts all the blame on the individual.
It’s not a ‘mental health’ epidemic. Society is broken and more people are realizing it every day.
These problems will only get worse as the disparity in wealth continues to grow and more people feel like they have nothing to live for as a result.
Oh absolutely. You’re right, framing it that way does seem to ignore the current issues we face as a society.
I believe that our mental health as a society is problematic, but it’s not the individual’s fault due to neglect. There are root causes in the background that are responsible. People don’t need therapy, but rather living conditions need to improve.
Depressed white male dressed as a policeman: So, why did you do it?
Mass shooter: because I’m a depressed white male
Missed the capitalised B in because, but 👏👏👏
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I mean you can discuss it to death, but without facts – which don’t exist, because he didn’t tell anyone the intimate workings of his fucked up mind – the best you can do is speculate. By all means, go ahead.
If you had read my comment then you would know that was exactly what I would rather we discussed.
Racist.
Explain how.
In an alternate universe…
He was a distraught aging black male with a history of depression, gambling, and firearms who wanted to hurt the world and kill himself.
It’s the inclusion of ‘aging white male’ listed with the other negatives, so it could be viewed as ageist, sexist, and racist.
Yes, yes, let your feelings guide the mouse to the downvote button
White men are the most dangerous segment of the population, which is clearly shown by violent crime statistics. There is a reason that rural census tracts (which are overwhelmingly white) are the most dangerous places to live.
? The fuck? The statistics don’t show anything like that and it’s not polite to discuss what they really show.
I believe you may be misinformed. Surely not blatantly making things up to fit your narrative?
Based on data compiled by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, it found that while Black people make up 13% of the U.S. population, they were 33% of persons arrested for non-fatal violent crime (NVC), which includes rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and other assaults. Black people were 36% of those arrested for serious non-fatal violent crimes (SNVC), including rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Similarly, Hispanics make up 18% of the US population and were 21% of those arrested for serious non-fatal violent crimes. Whites, who are 60% of the population, were 46% of persons arrested for non-fatal violent crimes, and 39% of those arrested for serious non-fatal violent crimes.
The designation “Black” and “white” often did not include those who are Hispanic. In 9% of single-offender incidents and 12% of multiple-offender incidents, the victim was unable to tell whether the offender was Hispanic.
…
In 2021, crime victimization rates were higher in urban than rural areas. In urban settings, 24.5 out of 1,000 people aged 12 or older reported being the victims of violent crimes, and 157.5 reported being the victims of property crimes. In rural settings, those figures were 11.1 and 57.7, respectively. How many people report being victims of crime?
In 2021, more than 4.5 million violent incidents involving victims ages 12 and older were self-reported in the US in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). In the same year, 11.7 million property victimizations were also reported, according to the Criminal Victimization report from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Despite this, US crime victimization rates have been on an overall downward trend since 1995. The DOJ tracks crime victimization data by location, which shows how trends vary for urban, suburban, and rural areas. One common narrative is that urban crime victimization rates exceed those in rural areas — and this is true, based on the data.
Arrests and convictions are not a valid proxy for violent acts or crimes committed. If you knew absolutely anything about this area of study you’d be aware of that. Have fun with your willful ignorance.
So the victims say the perpetrator is a white man; police arrest black male. I’ll wait for you to link to the 4 times that’s happened as if it’s a checkmate.
I’m sure you have the added statistics for convictions and they fully support what you’re saying. Pray tell, because your urban vs. rural assumptions on violence is clearly not supported by the evidence.
Convictions show the same? Curious about your reasoning for that, that doesn’t sound wildly racist.
If we’re not going off of facts (statics of arrests and convictions) then what are we going off of? Feelings? I’m more than willing to have my mind changed if you can provide an argument that rural white men are the most dangerous group, as long as it’s based on more than feelings and hearsay. A black man in urban attire walking into a sunset town of 100 people has the same result as a white man in a suit walking down a dangerous inner-city street. Same cause of effect: human nature.
At the risk of sounding racist, I think it’s quite obvious that when you buy a foreign people from their homeland as a commodity (sold largely in part by warlords and warring tribes of the same race, by the way), treat them as chattle (literally) and forbid any written or oral history of their culture or familial past, while raping the women and killing the babies or selling them off, creating extreme intergenerational trauma, hatred, and injustice, and then continue treating them like shit even after the law says you can no longer treat them as less than human…
You may have a societal problem on your hands that doesn’t resolve itself in a measly few generations. A societal problem that results in higher rates of violence.
We need better support in this country in so many aspects. For women and men of all races and creeds. But until we break away from being an overly materialistic consumerist society, that won’t change. What we don’t need is a distortion of reality to fit a false narrative.
Crime victimization survey is, and can be used in conjunction with crime justice system statistics.
That is not what I said, nor is it true. While males are 97.7% of the NIJ’s Index of Mass Shooters, only about 50% were white which is lower than their proportion of the total population. However, depression amongst that demographic is higher and growing, and mental illnesses correlate highly with those who harm others and themselves, so I’m just saying the Vegas Shooter ticked every box on the proverbial check list.
~30% of the US population are white men but according to that link 52% of mass shootings are perpetrated by white men. That is a ~22% increase over what you would expect if the US didn’t raise its white conservative men to be violent and hateful and specifically teach them they are the only types of people who are allowed to be violent or threaten the possibility of violence in public spaces.
How is this not evidence that white men are the most dangerous people in the US? Not in terms of being likely to commit a crime of desperation but rather to be an utter loser and decide to shoot a bunch of random people out of pure hate? White men might not be the most likely to hurt you in the US, but they are BY FAR the most likely to hurt you for no reason other than you who happen to be and what you happen to represent to them.
71% of the USA is white. You’re just being a disingenuous piece of shit, fuck off mate.
Statistics are hard to understand huh?
There’s no need to mention their race right? Unless it was a racially motivated attack, which I don’t remember coming up.
It is unfortunately relevant information on the topic of demographic shifts and marginalized groups. What the shooter did was not typical by any means, but who he was is extremely typical for what he did, sadly.
But but but why did he spray bullets at a crowd with intent to murder hundreds? Why, man, why? We need his manifesto, his tax records, the political affiliations of his associates and family! How else am I supposed to fit him into my narrative if I can’t prove why he thought to do the unthinkable?
/s
This question was posted with a Wikipedia link. I didn’t read it, but let’s assume it didn’t answer the poster’s question.
Now I see in the comments a people saying “we know a lot” (but not Wikipedia I guess) or “it’s just what Americans do” or “we got some good laws out of it”. It just sounds like “move along, move along” to me.
Nobody answered the question. I don’t know the answer, but to say that a person who has never killed anyone before then planned and executed the biggest mass shooting in American history (and that’s saying something!) and we shouldn’t CARE about motive is just weird.
What makes someone arm themselves and go to a movie theater or an elementary school or a concert should be damned important to a society that cares about mental health and the safety of its citizens. It’s SO EASY to say “evil” and put it in the past, especially when the perpetrator is dead. It’s much harder to think about how to prevent the next one. Sure, they use guns. But then it’s knives. Or hammers. Slower you say? Well then how about sarin gas? Mail bombs? Potassium cyanide in Tylenol? Letters containing ricin?
We need to know more about the psychology of the mass killer. We act like saying “evil” is good enough. Are we all religious now? There’s devils out there? Or are they people, people with problems that never got recognized, until it was too late?
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You should report him. Everyone who knows someone with the motive and the means should. You can have guns, or your head filled with caustic bile, but not both.
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Be as detailed as possible in your report, and focus especially on any specific threats against individuals or groups that he has mentioned.
People did answer the question. Re-read the top two comments, sorted by Top. The question was “Why don’t we hear more about…?”.
It is emotionally difficult to accept, but it is the reality that we live in. The richer people have bodyguards and send their kids to better-protected schools, maybe bring in private tutors that are each more expensive than a cheap college education. They deal with this shit in their own way, leaving everyone else to the “freedom” to do as they please - subject to the whims of other lords who e.g. buy up all the media outlets, or buy up all the houses, etc. People do not wish to understand that this is what “absolute freedom” looks like, aka anarchy.
And quite frankly, random gun violence isn’t even the top threat in America, bc climate change seems much more likely to kill us all, or else an actual civil war, or perhaps Russia or China will shut down our entire power grid, if our own home-grown terrorist extremists don’t beat them to it.
iirc, most people here die of heart disease and cancer, and other things that mere exercise may provide a partial solution for. So we don’t care about the deaths of kids or strangers for the sake reason we continue to eat burgers every single day: bc they are tasty and we DGAF about anything else.
I did what you said, sorting by “top,” and I think you’re doing a lot of projecting because I do not read anything there that could be an answer to the question
Second, I read your response, and I’m confused. Are you proposing redistribution of wealth and veganism as a solution to mass killings? If not, I guess I didn’t understand your answer.
We need to know more about the psychology of the mass killer.
I genuinely don’t get why people are confused about someone who feels like they have nothing to live for taking their frustrations out on society.
Like, what is so confusing about that? Why is it so difficult for you to understand?
So, that kinda makes sense to you? Like, you can “get it,” why someone would load up and kill a bunch of people indiscriminately?
Because I can’t. I could go vengeance on someone who hurt my family. I’m sure I could kill in self-defense, or to protect my family.
But to just go somewhere prepared to kill a bunch of people I don’t know? Who never had any contact with me or my life?
“Take out their frustrations on society?” I really hope you are just hyped up or talking out your ass or something. I’m any case, please talk to someone competent about this, preferably a licensed therapist.
“I don’t understand your point of view, so I think you need therapy” is a very condescending point of view.
The comment above you is making the point of
Angry at society -> Take out anger on society
The shooter doesn’t give a shit about the victims as individuals; to him they’re just components of the society, or actors within the society that he thinks wronged him somehow. They’re part of the problem to him.
I think you’re assuming that the shooter was seeing and experiencing the world and interpreting it the same way you do. THEY DO NOT, they are mentally ill, and have different thought patterns to people who are neurotypical. They have managed to convince themselves that they don’t have a problem, that society is the problem.
The article is right there
You didn’t read it
Your point is that we should care more
That about sum things up, super chief?
It’s a lot simpler that that. I mean not the cause of mass killings. That’s never a single factor but a range of mental health issues, a combination of things leading to the act. Impossible to predict.
The main issue is the shocking lack of mental health care. The inability for most to speak to someone at an early stage. There is no (coordinated) safety net.
I don’t know about the lack of mental health care being the “main issue.” A healthy society wouldn’t be in dire need of such extreme amounts of mental health care. These mass shootings are a single symptom (among many) of a very complicated and interwoven set of factors that have brought us to this place. There is no single solution that will fix the problem, and the only way out of this mess will take significant investment and likely generations to break the cycle. But humans are greedy, and particularly in the USA, we only look for simple simgle-issue solutions that can have a measurable outcome (and be economically viable) within the next couple or fiscal quarters or an election term, at most. The solutions we should be implementing don’t work on that sort of time scale, and many will be very costly (in varying terms of both money and/or freedom)… So, we just don’t do those things.
I don’t think you’re considering that bad things happen to good people. Everyone should have the right to easy access to healthcare.
It’s toxic Christianity to believe prayer and being a good person will get you favors with God and grant some kind of immunity to bad things. Bad things happen and it’s okay to feel bad, to have mental problems, to burn out, mourn, worry, etc.
It’s toxic consumer ideology to believe that people are inherently greedy, as it makes you consume more. There is no reason to believe this at all. It’s simply a justification for over consumption in a capitalist system that defines your worth to your wealth.
I’m not trying to make the point that mental Healthcare is some kind of panacea. Mass killings happen everywhere. But I do strongly believe that the rate at which it happens will be drastically reduced by a good system of care.
People have been studying the psychology of mass killers since the 70s. Without an actual living subject at hand in this case, it’s hard to do anything more than speculate. I tend to agree that it would be useful to know more about what pushed him to such an act, but how do you suggest going about this? Should we round up and interrogate everyone he knew in his life? Would that even be productive?
Motive isn’t as mysterious as we like to pretend it is. All it really required was a loss of fundamental empathy for his fellow humans. We see that everywhere these days. He’s not unique in that respect. What’s unique is the lengths he went to to commit this act. He seemed to want the spectacle of it. Like many serial killers, perhaps the idea of murder gave him a rush of feeling he couldn’t find anywhere else in his life, and so he figured why not get as much of that as he could?
Again, it’s all speculation. And it’s also not hard to trace it back to a sickness eating at the roots of our society. What do you do with that knowledge? What can any of us do but try a little harder in our own lives to be kind to others and generous to those who might be quietly slipping down into the lake of poison seething under the world?
What people are looking for is the manifesto or the “ah-ha!” moment. Columbine had plenty of this, as have many other spree killings. Even the tower shooter in Texas was discovered to have a brain tumor.
What people are looking for is a reason that separates him from the rest of us. The box they can check to safely file him away as being a schizo, abuser, or something worse and then snapping.
What they won’t get is the reason. The Vegas shooter was deep in his own mind and seems to have not shared these things with anyone. His life on paper seems kind of grim, but nothing in the way of committing a massive shooting.
should be damned important to a society that cares about mental health and the safety of its citizens
Yeah … but also Las Vegas.
That actually is a good point. This incident being in the news a lot would effect tourism in Vegas and that is big bucks. There may be people paying to suppress news on the killings.
Exactly like shouldn’t we acknowledge it so we can change for the better ?
Well I can’t speak for anyone else, but me personally I never talk about it because I don’t talk about mass shootings in general.
But occasionally I do think about that one. And Sandy Hook. And Aurora. And Uvalde. And Columbine.
Realizing Columbine losing all sorts of national attention, then seeing schools teach kids how to survive a school shooting, and parents buying kids bulletproof bookbags was when I realized we really don’t give a shit about mass shootings, we just work around them.
Pretty much this. I lived through the Columbine days as a middle school student. I remember being confused, even more now looking back, that nobody really made time to talk about “how do we stop this from happening in the first place”, people just seemed to assume that it could happen and we should all be OK with that.
And Santa Fe. And Virginia Tech. And El Paso. And Parkland. And UT Austin.
It is impossible to type out all of the reasons, but here are a few. Check out Bowling for Columbine btw - a movie from two thousand fucking two, 15 years BEFORE that particular one. We’ve seen that particular bullet coming for a LONG time, and the ones before it, and the ones after it, and the ones yet to come - we KNOW, yet we do NOTHING. Most especially the “Pro-Life” crowd.
Lobbying. It’s a thing. The NRS especially is one of the more powerful ones. More than 80% of American citizens - rising to >90% of NRA members even!!! - want some form of extremely limited gun control. However, we do not live in a democracy, not even one dominated by conservatives or rural Americans - rather, we live in a plutocracy where despite the OVERWHELMING support of the VAST MAJORITY of Americans, we cannot manage to get anything done.
Also, much of that money supposedly flowing to politicians from the “NRA” actually has been found to have ties back to Russia. Many of the politicians receiving that money may not even know the true source of where it came from - nor do they particularly seem to care.
Oh, and then billionaires bought up pretty much all of the major news outlets (a handful of others still exist - did The Guardian escape that? Well, even if they were, they seem to be allowed to talk about other corporate take-overs (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/may/03/billionaires-extra-power-media-ownership-elon-musk).
And hopefully you already know what happened to Google, where SEOs took over the searches so that it is nearly impossible to find things that just five years ago were easily retrievable, with the only lingering hold-out being Reddit, before then that whole thing happened…
BTW, the government is literally not allowed to collect statistics on how many violent gun deaths occur in America. I am not sure if this is the video where Jordan Klepper showcases that, but if not then he has a bunch of others. Or take your pick - there are millions if not billions of videos, of varying degree of quality and relevance. I’ve never seen one show a truly “unbalanced” take though - that is just not how for-profit corporations work. You just have to educate yourself by watching a bunch of stuff until you know how trustworthy the source is, and also each and every material topic too. It is sad, but we cannot seem to trust any (especially for-profit) advice these days. Though if you want another recommendation, there’s John Oliver’s whole expose on the NRA. To provide a modicum of balance, on the other side there are series such as Paul Harrell’s Mass Shootings: Causes and Possible Solutions.
And - yes there is always more - there are other arguments such as: “if someone cannot get a gun they will simply make their own bomb” (ignores how much harder it is to do that), and the whole thing of plastic ghost guns (again ignores how difficult it would be to do that). Ultimately, i think that children being sacrificed is itself merely a symptom of a much deeper cause. People on Lemmy call it “capitalism”, which has a LOT of truth to it - but then again, nations such as communist China have their own different issues. But, again, since ~90% of Americans already are in favor of stopping these kinds of mass-shootings, this will not be solved by merely educating yourself or “getting the word out”. In fact, this type of issue is precisely the type of thing that Trump leaned heavily on as his route to the White House - “Hillary Clinton is corrupt so you should elect me and I will get rid of all the corruption, everywhere”. So realistically, this is just something that we are going to simply have to live with, unless and until people fucking DO something about it. e.g. a responsible gun owner could patrol their own neighborhood schools. However, do note that every time someone does try to do that, they end up shooting innocent people instead, and yet it does nothing to stop the actual shooters, who can pull guns out of a bag (long-ish violin or trumpet case maybe?) and start shooting in mere seconds - not enough time to notice and prevent it. So start by educating yourself, since that’s really all you can do, and also it will help enormously to ensure that you are on the correct side of the issue.
For those so inclined, there is a verse commanding the latter point even in the actual Holy Bible, at 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “Test EVERYTHING against what you KNOW to be true”. I don’t know what can be done, after the education stage, but I know it MUST begin with that.
The thing that stuck with me about Bowling for Columbine is that the school was in the same zip code as a DoJ establishment manufacturing rocket technology for war, in the most violent country in modern history. Drawing that connection between the violence done by the State and the violence done by citizens was very eye opening for me. The problem isn’t just the guns, or the NRA, or lobbying - the problem is that the United States is an evil country and we are all complicit in its evil. This is normal. ‘Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction.’ What’s the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?
Normalisation of violence most likely had an effect, but I don’t think that the connection is as simple as
Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction
Edit: I was reminded that the world in the 90s, in this case 25 years ago, was quite different and likely less connected. So probably the point about geographic proximity to centers of violence production played a larger part than I thought
From an interview Michael Moore gave to DemocracyNow he explains the connection pretty well, I think. America is a violent country and it makes violent people.
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the Columbine shootings occurred on the same day as the heaviest United States bombing of the Kosovo war,
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the number one private employer in Littleton is Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons maker
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Rocky Flats, the largest plutonium-making place in the world, is just down the road
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NORAD is just up the road.
But you don’t think children with a childhood steeped in violence and families steeped in violence are going to grow up thinking about this? All of this militarization and violence are a cultural miasma and children absorb the lessons taught to them by America.
Kill your enemies, make them fear you, rule the world, Be a Man!
But you don’t think children with a childhood steeped in violence and families steeped in violence are going to grow up thinking about this?
No, quite the opposite. But what I think is that when a country rallies violence and presents it as something normal, all of the citizens, children included, will be affected. Maybe the fact that those violence factories are near had influence, but I would guess that this influence only added a bit to what everyone got already.
Except maybe if the workers viewed working for military as a cornerstone for their self-identity, maybe that would become a greater factor.
Well remember, this was the 90s. Today we’re all disembodied digital nomads so it doesn’t matter what is near or far, but back then there was still a sense of place that meant having a bunch of military-industrial institutions nearby would effect the local culture.
And maybe that’s why shootings get worse every year. The physical location doesn’t matter anymore.
Yeah, that’s probably true, now 90s seem like a different reality altogether
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As @lad said, it is not the identical same thing, but yeah it certainly does seem connected.
As for evil, I could not name a single country on earth that wasn’t, especially in a historic context, but neither does that excuse the USA for being thus.
Watching Rules for Rulers really opened my eyes on that score though.
The scale of America’s evil is just so much greater than every other country, so the scale of its own social sickness is similarly greater.
I mean… America is influencial, therefore what evil is there gets spread more readily. Also it has historically been more transparent, so what evil is there is easier to see.
But e.g. Communist China has evil too, though it is usually better at hiding the details, and yet it cannot cover everything and what little does come out is rather chilling.
And India, well I can’t start listing every country on earth, but let’s just say that if I did, much evil would be listed out.
Smaller nations with less ability to create evil on a larger scale ofc may demonstrate less evil, but if those nations were to suddenly discover I dunno let’s say vibranium, they would likely become just as evil as the USA. What nation doesn’t have a sordid backstory of murder and espionage and assassination and so on? (Unless it is brand new I guess?) Though America does enjoy it to excess and even puts it on display, so yeah I agree with that part at least.
Check out that video I linked for more.
More to the point, I would hope for something to be DONE about the whole fiasco. Simply calling it “evil” is not enough - of course it’s evil, and it also does good too, ironically, but now what? Commit violence against it? :-P
Yeah yeah I’ve already seen your cynical video. America rules the world and as a result America’s evil is just so much bigger. No one else can compare to the scope and scale of the largest military, biggest weapons manufacturer, largest arms dealer, most aggressive foreign policy, etc. This creates a sick society because Americans (falsely) believe America represents them, so when it does evil it does it in their names.
As for What Is To Be Done, no one is going to save us. We have to do it ourselves.
no one is going to save us. We have to do it ourselves.
Abso-FUCKING-lutely!
Two additional thoughts:
One is that a lot of the evil being done “by America” is actually being done more by evil people who hide behind it like a shield. Even if all of America were to fall, these illuminati types would go on, reduced/diminished but still viable. Like a witch controlling a zombie or a japanese manga type person sitting inside of a robot, the USA may be a good tool for the true master’s purpose (e.g., Haliburton, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, etc.), but they can surely find other tools besides just the one. It is just that the USA prostates itself before them so well that they like this one.
I think it is important to make that distinction, b/c e.g. if someone attacks you and you merely knock the gun out of their hand, the problem is not “solved”, especially if in their other hand they still hold a knife. You imply that we should “wake up” - and I agree, and this is part of that, to disambiguate the various factors involved. America shares an enormous portion of this blame, by virtue of stupidly signing our body away to serve the desires of some other mind than our own - fulfilling its purposes instead of the one that that “we” all want to be done, i.e. for people to be able to live in their own spaces and have a chance at happiness.
Which leads me to the second thing: this video is not necessarily “cynical”, though I understand why you say that. It is truly one of the more unbiased depictions of this matter that I have ever seen or heard or read, and by virtue of it refusing to tell us how to “feel” about the matter, it does come across in our cultures that are traditionally so amped-up in the latter regard that it seems wooden by comparison. I liken it to when astronaughts wanted to make rockets to go into space, and someone gives a dissertation on “gravity”. Knowing about how gravity works is how you get into space - it is not that it cannot be done, it is just a Truism about the world that becomes relevant when talking about leaving the planet. So while talking about gravity may sound “cynical” to someone who wants to talk rather about flying through space, it is in fact a necessary first step.
So rather than cynical, I see it as neutral. Other videos provide plenty of motivational calls to action, but that is not the purpose of this particular one, which is solely to inform - and I actually appreciate that so much about it! e.g. conservatives and liberals alike can watch it and become better informed, without hampering the spread of that information by mixing it along with political rhetoric that allows only a single interpretation of it. I am not saying that *I* am neutral, but I am saying that I like it when information is, b/c imho that is the best way to further the cause of understanding, from which people can be helped better (than by e.g. misinformation and lack of understanding).
Its been a while since i saw it, but isn’t Bowling for Columbine just footage of Michael Moore going around asking people stupid loaded questions?
Possibly. He’s not the best at making documentaries, and perhaps watching a trailer for it would be sufficient and better than watching the whole entire thing. Or maybe that one was actually good? It’s been awhile for me too and I do not recall either the details of how “entertaining” it was, but I do recall that it pointed out how news media aims to make profits rather than inform the public - and that is a very necessary lesson to learn. There are other sources to do so ofc, though this was also a commentary on gun violence at the same time, so I thought of it. But if people want to point to other, better documentaries that’s awesome.
But more than all that, and whether OP actually watches it or not, my point is that it exists, and moreover it did so for DECADES. In all that time since, protections against gun violence have actually gone down, as some stuff has expired and new protections for the violence have been added - e.g. in California where the judge ruled that AK-15s or whatever were perfectly fine home defense weapons. i.e., Bowling for Columbine shows one example of how long we’ve known about all of this stuff. Surely there are other documentaries too - probably some from the 70s even - but this is one that I could recall offhand.
And for that purpose it does its job just fine, merely by existing:-).
For the most part Americans are so desensitized to the gain Violence that it’s not something most of us think about much.
I’ve grown up in a post Columbine world, and mass shootings have been a part of my life since it started. They’re just a really unfortunate part of life here that won’t change unless there’s a massive culture shift.
I like target shooting and clay pigeon shooting. I am also pro-guns because I think progressives should learn and know how to defend themselves. I don’t like or agree with animal/fox hunting as that’s just barbaric. I also don’t think people should get unrestricted access to certain types of weapons.
So I agree with the cultural shift idea, but I don’t want access to guns to go away. But I guess my problem is that I don’t see enough people with this type of measured take. If I am wrong about something, I am open to knowing a different take.
I’m not against gun ownership. I’m against zero gun ownership regulation. Requiring background checks seems like a no brainer but we cannot even get to that part. The next I would suggest is a weekend long course on the proper use, safety, cleaning, and storage of your weapon before you are allowed to buy one. Finally, I think we should have that class reupped every 2 years to keep your license to own the firearm. It’s a dangerous thing to have around and most good gun owners would support some of this, even if it is a hassle. It could be made fun too though. Free ammo for some range practice or something. Maybe a few for the class covers that, I don’t know. Consider it a meetup with other people with similar interests.
Agree, gun ownership should come with discipline and accountability
I am pro gun, I believe that most incidents seem to come from either mishandling or improper/insecure storage.
People need to prioritize safety/security above all with firearms.
… They don’t.
Back in the day it was called “going postal” because of the number of mail workers that used to do it. It’s not that new, sadly. Columbine just seemed to popularity it in schools. Yet another example of women inventing something and men taking the credit.
I already sent the thoughts and prayers what more do you want from me
Yeah like do you want me to change society or something ?
I was just thinking about it.
I think the motive was the guy was angry at the world and wanted to kill as many people as possible before killing himself.
A man that feels he has nothing to lose is a dangerous thing.
A man that feels he has nothing to lose is a dangerous thing.
Billionaires with nothing to gain but money for moneys sake are far more dangerous, it’s just they are going to kill your loves ones with crushing debt or an opioid prescription not a bullet.
Between 1999 and 2015, around 350,000 people died from opioid addiction related deaths in the US.
350,000
Guess whether any of the Sacklers went to jail who knowingly pushed opioid prescriptions in situations where it was dangerous or unnecessary based rational from studies conducted to purposefully sell more opioids?
This is why we can kill 2 birds with one stone via smart ubi
I mean as long as UBI isn’t spearheaded by a bunch of libertarians who think they are bravely forging an unprecedented path forward towards creating a social safety net while ignoring the long history of social safety nets in different societies, and the entire left movement in the US that fought successfully for things like the 8 hour work day.
I think UBI can be great, but there are wayyyy too many libertarians into UBI to the point that the ruling class has a super clear route to catastrophically cutting social welfare programs across the board while saying “we don’t need these if we have UBI!”, making UBI completely insufficient, and fooling libertarians into taking the bait hook line and sinker because they don’t have political or historical knowledge about how social welfare in societies is actually achieved through organization of worker power to leverage against a hostile ruling class.
smart uzi
FTFW
😉
A man that feels he has nothing to lose is a dangerous thing.
There is no defense against the berserker.
– Sir Terry Pratchett
Anyone with no regard for their own safety and a will to harm others is always dangerous
There is a defense… Just make sure he can’t get his hands on guns easily.
Ever been to the Bunkerville/Mesquite, Nevada, area? The Vegas shooter was probably acquainted with the Bundys, of “federal building” and “FBI shoot out” fame. I’ve a suspicion the government would prefer people didn’t know he was probably a right wing terrorist.
You don’t get a collection of guns like that without being right wing. Doesn’t matter who you’re acquainted with. He also had a pretty big victim complex when it came to his all-consuming gambling addiction and was pissed about not being comped with all the perks he thought he deserved for the about of money he spent.
Gun ownership isn’t a right wing exclusive trait, unless you’re one of those people who just move anything they don’t like over the “right”…Do you not know who the Bundys are?
I know who the Bundy’s are. Freeloading terrorists who should be in prison.
Yeah, I absolutely did pigeonhole the shooter as a right winger because that’s who is most likely to own the guns he did and fetishize them to the point he needed bump stocks for lols. Just stating that lefties own guns doesn’t offer anything to the conversation.
One article suggests:
Paddock appeared fixated on three pillars of right-wing extremism: anti-government conspiracy theories, threats to Second Amendment rights, and overly burdensome taxes.
…
a man who loathed restrictions on gun ownership and believed that the Second Amendment was under siege,
So despite law enforcement going way out of its way to avoid mention of paddock’s leanings, it is highly likely he was a regular right wing/libertarian nutter.
Another site with more info with his right wing and fringe leanings.
Edit: and for the record, I enjoy the shooting sports, but I have no time for the morons tying guns to their personal identities and using 2A to avoid sanity and reason when it comes to gun control. Fuck the people that make the rest of society pay for their unfettered access to guns. So no, I didn’t “move something I disliked” unless you count right wing nuts who kill and injure hundreds as a dislike.
If you actually believe the bump stock story, I can’t be bothered continuing this.
From what I understand, he had also recently taken a serious nosedive in the finance department, and while he was still a high roller, he was not the HIGH ROLLER he had been in years before, and he seemed to regard that as an injury to his pride.
I live there. I don’t know if the shooter knew about the Bundy’s story but it’s very unlikely that they ever met. The shooter lived north of the interstate, in one of those fancy estates. I happen to know one of his neighbors. The Bundys lived on the other side of Bunkerville.
Sure, and they also know gun nuts and militia types literally all over multiple states. He’s their type of people, and only a few miles away, in a sparsely populated area.
That is a valid point. My instincts tell me that they didn’t meet and my instincts have a great track record but I can’t (completely) rule it out.
A man that feels he has nothing to lose is a dangerous thing.
Especially if he has easy access to large quantities of weapons and ammunition.
A man that feels he has nothing to lose is a dangerous thing
Especially when they’re a former “responsible gun owner”.
Turns out the dude was likely involved with CSAM, as his brother was arrested for it almost immediately after the shooting.
From what I’ve seen, his brother was one of the only people still in touch with him during his last days.
Nothing new in the case. People have moved on to other things.
I still find that a strange case.
There was seemingly no political motive so there’s no real reason to report on it anymore
I searched it a week ago to check how many people israel killed during their flour massacare. Because both involved shooting bullets into dense crowds.
The hotel massacare killed 60 people
Israel’s flour massacare killed 120 people.
So that basically sums up. The hotel massacare wasn’t “that big of a deal”.
Kinda like the superb owl parade or Thanksgiving parade (last year or two?) shootings. No political use, no story to report.
There was a shooting at the superb owl parade?? I don’t even remember hearing about it.
Kansas City had a shooting at their victory parade.
The guy didn’t say or post much directly about it. Sometimes people do crazy shit for very little reason. You couple that with the ability to get guns easily, mass quantities of ammo, and bump stocks, you have yourself a bloody stew.
People love patterns, but sometimes there just isn’t one. There is no single profile for a mass shooter. The closest you get is male and either 15-24 or 35-44.
Most people shoot others for grievances and having a shitty life. Sometimes not though. Many shooters don’t even take their own life. Plenty of them are still on the run.
The easiest answer is that the vast majority of how our society runs is through the fear or threat of death. The moment someone starts wanting it, they’re capable of nearly anything.
Most people see the greener pasture of nothingness between the loop of a noose at home. Some decide to kill and maim before they go out.
Unfortunately because of the 2nd amendment, it lets people rampage easily with high body counts before dying
Well, I’m convinced.
Most people see the green pasture or love of nothingness between the noose in their own home.
Unexpectedly poetic
Yeah I edited it a bit after since it was kinda worded odd. Joys of mobile.
The old image of a 4chan post or something of a hanging noose and through it was a green idyllic field has always stuck with me.
I figured it got swept into the lone gunman category after all the details about Saudi arms deals and help smuggling the guns in got out. It’s kinda like the Epstein case.
I never head that, do you have a source?
Nothing current sorry. I followed the information drip during the event. Some could have been false information or speculation back then of course. It still seemed to be quite a lot of coincidences. I might check later if I’ll find any retrospective with those topics.
Edit: his Wikipedia article has documented some of those weird details which haven’t been explained
Something I didn’t know before now is his dad was a WW2 Navy vet who worked in a corrections department assigned to helping ‘wayword youths’ and eventually got arrested for con games and bank robbery, after being on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. He looks like you’d expect. Both he and his brother were found to have child pornography on their computers. His house had been broken into during the week leading up to the shooting, I wonder if his brother knew of his plans and tried to remove cp he gave him, as one of the laptops in the hotel room with him in Las Vegas was missing a hard drive.
Both he and his brother were found to have child pornography on their computers.
Can’t the feds just throw some shit on your computer and pin you for it?
No. Not because it’s impossible. But, mainly because it’s only after it goes past court that you’re actually ‘pinned’. So you’re going to have to be certain that will happen, otherwise the political fall out isn’t worth it.
Also let me remind you that the guy shot at a crowd so he was already applying for ending his life in prison. There is no need to turn it into some wicked conspiracy where the feds needed to pin him…
Good points!
In the context of a conspiracy theory, while the csam doesn’t necessarily increase the jail sentence, it could be used as a tool to discredit the shooter, and more importantly, as a tool to silence the brother (where a more conventional disappearing or suiciding might raise suspicions).
“‘The government made him do it’ says local pedophile beaten to death in prison”
Even if they could, I don’t know why you would jump to that idea when the guy fucking shot 400 people. He clearly wasn’t right in the head. He also had a history of heavy gambling and drinking. I don’t smell conspiracy on this one. This was just a mentally unwell guy who made a decision to murder; it is, unfortunately, a quintessentially American story that keeps repeating.
ZERO Fetuses died so why would I care?
-Pro Life Republican making Books Illegal to Save The Children!
