Are we talking about cars, or…?
Sure—when a mentally unstable person intentionally runs down a pedestrian that’s not an “accident” either and it would be disingenuous to describe it as such.
Of course, even with all the cars on the roads today guns are BY FAR the preferred murder weapon. Why do you suppose that is?
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I would say it helps maintaining the perspective. The victim is not any more dead if the brakes failed on the car or on the driver, and the randomness of being at the receiving end is the same.
Point-and-click interface?
Take the interface away, another device will be used instead. You may save a handful of lives, for the price of not saving more by sinking the effort in a low-return-on-investment endeavor of attempting to change the culture that does not want to be changed. Triage; don’t try to save what cannot be saved and spend the effort where it could matter.
Why not ask instead why there are people with brakes failing? Address the social pressures first, the causes instead of the symptoms, and you’ll do more good.
One could, of course, address both.
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And split the resources and annoy half of potential allies.
So, it’s a trade-off? Some people are going to work on fixing mental health issues, but only if no one mentions guns?
When I quipped AllProblemsMatter above, it was just meant as a quick joke. Didn’t intend for it to get adopted.
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Like how the Tsarnaev brothers used homemade pressure-cooker bombs, resulting in two fatalities instead of the dozens they probably could have achieved it they’d chosen to use handguns or AR-15s?
Would you describe their actions as an “accident” too?
It’s one thing to disagree about gun control. Frankly I don’t have the energy for another one of those arguments tonight anyway. But to describe an intentional act of mass murder as a “mass shooting accident” is just bizarre.
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You can see this even within guns, see columbine vs sandy hook. At columbine they had small caliber weapons; at sandy hook an assault rifle. Just compare the death and injury tallies. Stark.
Physics is a hell of a drug.
As Clint Smith says, “The only purpose for a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should have never laid down”.
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Well written perspective from The Hollywood Reporter.
Louisiana is a “shall issue” state for concealed carry, meaning state authorities must issue a license to carry a concealed weapon to any applicant if that applicant meets all criteria set forth by law (no criminal record, history of drug abuse, etc.).
Louisiana also has the second highest rate of gun deaths in the country, with 19.3 deaths due to injury by firearm for every 100,000 people.
And even Fox News
LAFAYETTE, La. – John Russell Houser was deeply troubled long before he shot 11 people in a movie theater in Louisiana, but decades of mental problems didn’t keep him from buying the handgun he used.
Despite obvious and public signs of mental illness — most importantly, a Georgia judge’s order committing him to mental health treatment against his will as a danger to himself and others in 2008 — Houser was able to walk into an Alabama pawn shop six years later and buy a .40-caliber handgun.
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But… what do you do when the guy is really known to have serious mental health issues? When it is not a mere speculation?
Mentally sick, and terrorist aren’t mutually exclusive terms… Do you think the 9/11 hijackers were all there mentally? I don’t. I think they were suffering from particularly vicious brain washing, confused, and triggered to do it by their religious ideology.
Likewise here. The religion of this man encouraged his delusions, and called him to action. He is a terrorist, who is also mentally unhealthy, and was taken advantage of by another sick ideology designed to break people’s minds.
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On the other hand, “terrorist” is a scary word that makes the threat appear bigger than it really is.
208 days have passed in 2015, and there have been 204 mass shootings. Terrorism, #gunfail, or otherwise, that indicates a serious problem that needs attention.
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The idea of this not being terrorism and this just coming down to mental illness are mutually exclusive, I think - and I’m someone who thinks this is terrorism and NOT mental illness, too.
But in all ways this kind of violence is basically accepted by society, with just a sort of “tsk, tsk” and headshake. This guy belonged to a mainstream political ideology that gets featured by news outlets and is treated as normal and potentially right, even when outright calling for genocide.
I refuse to accept that it’s “just mental illness” when all that happened is that this man enacted the ideals of groups that are treated as legitimate by over half the country.
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I was indicating that having so many mass shootings in America in 2015 alone is an enormous problem in and of itself, without regard to why they happened. Hell, at the very least, between the death threats given to people voicing an opinion regarding a video game to road rage to outright murder of innocent people for reasons, we’ve got some serious issues with violence and anger, among many other things.
But I do wonder what ideals you are speaking of that half the country considers legitimate? Do you mean republicans specifically?
First, apologies if I sounded like I was disagreeing - I was just sort of piggybacking off of your reply.
But yes, typical US conservatism, where they outright defend rape, violence against women, racism, and even are OK with calls for literal genocide. Those are mainstream conservative views in the US. They are treated as legitimate, as not at all unusual or shameful or wrong.
When we have major politicians speaking out about how violence is needed to keep the country safe, and this is seen as a legitimate, ok thing, how can we just say that the people who ended up enacting that violence are mentally ill? And it’s not just the conservative stuff too, but the anti-women violence, which is given a huge amount of legitimacy and respectability. Look at how many MRA types there are out there, and how many people resist and scream and cry when they’re fought against.
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Thanks–I got that from the first, but I’m slow this morning and wanted/was hoping for (?) a little clarification.
Sadly, I don’t think the “bomb X into the stone age” idea is specific only to the right wing, although they do seem to happily trumpet the idea whenever possible and as a solution to damn near everything.
The rape and anti-women MRAs and that murdering fuck in LA, yeah, that’s despicable and it…just doesn’t compute for me. I follow some people on twitter who regularly repost some of the horrible stuff people say and do on that platform (just this morning, it’s the rape and death threats against an Australian woman calling for a ban on Tyler the Creator’s upcoming visit).
Perhaps this is another reason Americans need to legalize MJ nationally, so they’ll just chill the fuck out (or more, and with less violence, than we do already).
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That’s almost every day. Given that three dead over there make it to a news ticker crawl on local TV half the world away, and the frequency of such reported events is significantly lower, may I ask about the sources and what counts as “mass shooting” for this number?
Check out the original post–I just added the WaPo link that should contain the information you’re after.
