Agree, if only I’d read your original comment properly and hadn’t replace ‘many’ with ‘all’ then I wouldn’t have made such a tit of myself 
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Perhaps it’s simply an awareness of his own psyche? I’m a gun guy, and I have a concealed carry permit, but I do not carry my gun accessible in my car because I know that under certain circumstances I’m susceptible to road rage. Anyone can snap.
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It’s kinda aggravating how mild the word is though. I’ve been a disgruntled employee several times in my life - I’ve never considered gunning down my coworkers. This man was clearly extremely mentally distressed (and if he was planning this days in advance then likely quite broken down), if his actions relate to his work I’m imagining it left him more than just ‘disgruntled’.
I’m mildly interested in what led to the events, but to be honest whatever it is isn’t going to justify the outcome - it’s a shame he didn’t have a better support network in place to get to him before this happened - for all the victims of this event.
Shot but maybe not dead?
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Right, it’s not that it’s impossible to stage a mass shooting (or other kind of mass murder) in the UK or Australia or other culturally similar countries. It’s that doing so is a non-trivial undertaking.
Easy access to guns is the most effective way to enable mass murder. Just look at the Tsarnaev brothers: all that planning and preparation and they still only racked up a total of three fatalities. Imagine how much higher that number would have been if they’d just decided to use a couple of AR-15s or handguns instead of those homebrew pressure cookers.
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To be fair- part of the reason for the exceptionally low number of casualties in that case was the fact that there was a massive first aid/medical presence yards away- under any other set of circumstances there would have been many, many more deaths.
But your point stands.
According to ABCNews, the reporter had been dating a co-worker. They’d just moved in together. His tweets are just stunned shock.
Something I figured out about myself a long time ago (and which I eventually adopted as a rule of thumb applicable to every last one of us) is that that breaking point is never nearly as far away as we would like to think it is. I truly do believe that everyone is capable of monstrous, horrific acts, if enough pressures and circumstances heap up on them.
A genuinely effective Department of Pre-Crime would round up every last one of us.
If we start to assume that we’re all capable of pulling triggers when pushed far enough, then we can work toward helping people keep from being pushed far enough. And while we’re at it, the prudent thing to do is to minimize the number of triggers available to our itchy trigger fingers.
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Sorry Millie - that was sarcasm. Though I did like to collect stamps, I might do that more in the future too.
Sadly the only reason this is even news was it was live on TV and the victims were white. Two people getting murdered for revenge is called Tuesday in some sections of Chicago and a few other cities. We are numb to the violence in the poor inner city and only when it spills out white suburbia do we start the hand wringing.
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Thinking about it now, this shooting actually makes me feel less bad than the recent black people shot by cops. That’s kinda weird. I think it’s because all the white cops shooting black kids feel like depressing symptoms of how deeply fucked up our society is, while this thing this feels more a genuine “lone nut” scenario. It makes me think “God, what an asshole,” not “I don’t want to live in the world anymore.”
It may also be that I subconsciously perceive news anchors as machines for delivering information, little people who live inside the TV, not human beings with hopes and dreams and families. Random black kid on the sidewalk feels more like a real person to me. Obviously that’s not entirely healthy, but there it is.
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“We”? “hand wringing”? "only when it –
Whatever, Mister Gun Dude. Thanks for nothing. Keep doing nothing for all the people left behind when people they know and love get gunned down. Keep doing nothing, and maybe worse than nothing, for all those who will be gunned down. At least you and yours will get to keep stroking your sick, selfish fetish.
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Mmm, true in general, but I think this would’ve been a news item even if the anchors were both black. Partly because being a news anchor pushes you out of the “teeming urban hordes” category into the “stand-up person with a real job” category for most white people, and partly just because seeing someone shot on live TV is unusual and exciting. Usually we only get to see the aftermath of a murder. If it you can actually show people the film, that’s a hot scoop.
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Yeah, I don’t even think we have a word to properly describe the incredibly destructive & self-destructive murder rage mind-storm that must fuel this kind of event. Even apoplectic doesn’t do it justice.
The good thing about “disgruntled” is that it reminds me that I could be reading pg wodehouse instead of feeling shitty about humanity
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You are only a couple shades away from crying it is a false flag operation to take your guns, or that it was good that the shooter was black so that the liberal response will not be so ridiculous. Enjoy your peers.
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Isn’t every position a couple shades away from something extreme?
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Great. As if this situation isn’t tragic enough, now there’s the probability of a ‘love triangle’ in the mix. Disgruntled ex-employee or stalker-y MRA?
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“Ex-boyfriend” - because of course he fucking was.
What are the stats of women killed by intimate partners?
Fuck everything, nuke it from orbit.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/08/26/3695487/tv-journalist-shooter-id/
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Can we have that long overdue gun conversation, NOW?
What makes you think it will be different this time? If anything, the country still in a period of decreasing gun regulation. Maine, for example, is relaxing the rules even more. The state is going to be a “shall issue” state (it might already be) and you no longer need a permit for concealed carry.
The lax gun laws in this country have a cost. In order for the laws to change, the cost has to be too high for most people. Sadly, I don’t think we are there yet.
Here’s a (bad) analogy - 35,000 people die in car crashes each year. If a law was passed limiting all vehicle speeds to 20 mph or less, that number could be drastically reduced. However, the cost of doing so is higher than the value of 35,000 lives.
In the gun example, it’s harder to quantify the value of gun ownership, but it’s certainly greater than zero for a big chunk of the population.
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That sounds close to an extreme position.
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The cost can be felt in other countries! 60-80% of guns seized in Canada are from the US! Its bonkers! Ugh!
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