So, 40% of those 98 people were white, while almost 20% of them were black. Correct me if I’m wrong, but those statistics seem out of proportion with the actual percentage of the population that those groups occupy.
10 Likes
Shhhh!
You’re ruining all the regurgitated justification/apologia.
10 Likes
The hard part is what constitutes “significant barriers” to obtaining weapons. The penalty for knowingly transferring the weapons to a prohibited person is 10 years imprisonment per offense. That seems pretty significant to me.
These homemade machine guns were seized last week in Montreal:
All but two of them were male, which is also way out of proportion to percentage of the population.
1 Like
The fact that he was able to get the weapons in the first place indicates there weren’t significant barriers in place. Like I said, his first time waving that thing around in public could have turned into a massacre just as easily.
7 Likes
Keep going, you’re almost there.
6 Likes
OTOH, that phrase is usually used to imply an excessive focus on crime stories.
In this case, there is not an excessive focus; there is an abnormal complacency. In most countries, a single mass shooting is a major event.
7 Likes
This is practised to a degree in Australia. The bastard who shot up Port Arthur is often (but not always) referred to without his name.
White people are individuals, Black people are a collective mass. All part of the system functioning as designed.
3 Likes
i, for one, totally agree with you.
the part where we might split ways is that by agreeing to adress gun regulation we are in fact agreeing to address culture.
the only reason we don’t require licenses, insurance, etc. for guns is so that white people can feel safe against their government ( and perhaps safe against the non-white minorities who as a whole are dangerous criminals /s )
if we can get people to acknowledge that being a responsible gun owner means being a responsible citizen and supporting reasonable gun control then we are addressing fundamental issues of privilege that say my toys are more important than your lives.
5 Likes
It’s insane, but not even clear that it even WAS illegal for this deranged man who had his guns taken away in Illinois to possess those same guns in Tennessee.
This is madness. Are you really suggesting that existing laws are good enough?
Thankfully he didn’t choose to purchase extended magazines (which also would have been perfectly legal in this great country of ours) so a man was able to wrestle the gun from him when he stopped to reload after “only” murdering 4 people.
9 Likes
Stand by for the expected “gotcha” reference to the Toronto van attack because vehicles, like firearms, are purpose-designed to kill and wound mammals.
7 Likes
The mass shooter just got bond. If his mass-murder-enabling dad or his right-wing buddies from the “sovereign citizen” movement are somehow able to raise the cash he could theoretically be out by the end of the week. Unbelievable*.
*Figure of speech.
8 Likes
I’m suggesting that prohibitionism doesn’t work.
But I don’t think the cultural illness that is increasingly making people want to get their name in the papers for committing atrocities will be addressed until every possible other thing has been tried. So gun prohibition is probably inevitable, and I won’t shed any tears over it. In fact the sooner we can get that failure done with, the sooner we can get to work on the underlying problems.
A suggestion somewhat undermined by the fact that meaningful gun control laws do actually work as intended in pretty much every peer country.
12 Likes
I think it goes beyond that, though. The advice on suicide hints at some of the factors that lead people to emulate others in these kinds of acts (I see a big parallel between suicide and shooting strangers). Part of it is not making them famous. But even if we don’t use their name we’ll probably dwell on the story for too long. I also think that the search for reasons is a big problem. We should accept that people are very complicated and a large number of factors would have lead someone to a point where they would commit a mass shooting. Once they are there, usually the cause looks pretty simple.
To be clear, though, I wouldn’t want anyone misreading what I’m saying here as saying we shouldn’t label attacks as misogynist, racist or islamophobic when they are clearly targeting people based on those bigotries. Bigotry clearly plays multiple roles in these attacks: 1) it focuses the attacks on people who are the targets of bigotry so they have to bear the brunt of society’s failure to address the problems that lead to these attacks; 2) ideologies of hate seem like they must contribute in some way to the underlying condition of being the sort of person who does this. What I don’t anyone to do is paint a simple picture that says if islamophobia then shoot mosque, and the reason I don’t want anyone to do that is that the sort of people who are on the edge of committing these kinds of crimes are the sort of people who will pick up on that message.
I get that sounds crazy. I’m basically saying that I think someone will hear on TV “A guy shot people because he couldn’t get laid” and think, “Well, I can’t get laid, I guess I should shoot people.” But I guess that is what I’m saying. That there is actually someone out there who will do that.
I also worry that we do the thing where we suggest that they achieved some goal by mass killings. We just has a mass killing in Toronto yesterday, and I heard politicians saying, “The city will never be the same.” Good lord! Way to make it seem like he did something important.
Well, they didn’t put it on the BB front page right? Is that because it doesn’t fit the site’s anti-gun narrative?!? /s
But in all honesty, if a politician pointing to Toronto’s attack and said, “See, guns aren’t the problem, racist and misogynist ideologies are!” and then went on to make serious reforms to tackle those, I wouldn’t be holding the gun thing against them.
6 Likes
“The problem isn’t guns, it’s the violence in our culture!” say the people who insist on being prepared just in case they need to start killing all the cops and soldiers.
6 Likes
OOPS SORRY HA HA NEVER MIND 
11 Likes
The NYTimes today said the father could face federal charges. Good. He’s accessory to murder IMO.
6 Likes
I wish the same had been done to the mother of the Sandy Hook murderer. People who don’t properly secure their firearms from their troubled kids need to face real consequences for their negligence and irresponsibility.
5 Likes
Wasn’t she the first person he killed, though? Hard to charge a corpse with accessory.
6 Likes
