A brief write up on the three mass shootings from July 4th:
Particular notable is this graph:
I’d never seen the data presented like that. Quite an alarming look at mass shootings in the US.
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The celebration of this great nation’s Second Amendment continues…
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Five people attending a vigil for victims of an earlier fatal shooting were wounded in a drive-by shooting Tuesday night in the city’s Feltonville section, police said.
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… I thought Texas was a death penalty state 
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It is, but the race of the person who committed the crime plays a role…
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This is the federal trial. Feds took the death penalty off the table in exchange for him pleading guilty.
Texas trial hasn’t finished. He could still get the death penalty there.
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Ah. Makes more sense!
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… how complicated 
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i’m so curious how this works in other countries.
in the general case, it’s baffling to me how a person can be charged for multiple crimes during the same event – like where with stealing a car you might get a trespass charge if you took it from someone’s driveway.
and even in this case, while being in prison for the rest of his life seems correct, it’s wild to have 90 life sentences, with separate state and federal charges.
meanwhile in norway, anders breivik killed 77 people and was sentenced to 21 years. not everywhere is norway, but i still i wonder what is “normal” in most of the world.
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The world is so big that there is no global normal. Some countries will execute you within weeks of your conviction, some will incarcerate you for some years, some will execute you after lengthy incarceration.
Yes, the US is definitely complicated.
The federal charges for which the murderous bit of white supremacist fecal matter was convicted are hate crime charges and firearms charges. The Texas trial will be the actual murder charges. Thus, no double jeopardy.
Prosecutors can really stack the charges when they are so inclined.
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That’s not the whole story, though. Breivig got the maximum custodial prison sentence possible - with the added option of preventive detention seamlessly starting after that. Provided he is still considered a danger to society. Which another court confirmed only last year after an appeal.
Odds are that Breivig will be in custody, one way or another, for the rest of his life.
This is the kind of lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key option which, to the best of my knowledge, every European judicial system has, in one way or another. Judges can’t hand this out willy-nilly, there are criteria that have to be met, of course. But cases like this one… A liberal approach towards criminal justice doesn’t mean being stupid about it.
Also, during the trial this happened:
One of the songs was the Norwegian version of Pete Seeger’s “My Rainbow Race”.
Breivig doesn’t like this particular song. Just a couple of days before the sing along he had stated in court that it was brainwashing children into becoming Marxists.
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totally. i guess my thing is that in the us system, throwing away the key seems to be almost the default, and the exceptions rare. we stack up all the crimes and the punishments to make it so - even potentially for things like drug use - rather than having an explicit criteria for people who commit mass murderer in order to make it so.
it’s all off topic i guess. where’s my continuing ed course in comparative justice?
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two people in critical condition, three injured
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Not a shooting, but a following-up (and not sure where to post otherwise),
News likely overshadowed by all the Trump excitement. Speaking of how slow the justice system moves: the massacre happened close to five years ago!
A lot of the biggest mass shooters are killed at the scene, so this guy ought to consider himself lucky (
spits in his general direction)
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