Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > I don't bloody understand mass shootings
 
  • Locked thread
JohnGalt
Aug 7, 2012
 There totally were 355 mass shootings this year

* # ¿ Dec 6, 2015 00:34
  • Quote
Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 15, 2024 13:59
  • Quote
JohnGalt
Aug 7, 2012
 Wait. I have a bulldozer at home. What do I need to make it a tactical bulldozer?

* # ¿ Dec 6, 2015 16:57
  • Quote
JohnGalt
Aug 7, 2012

Rah! posted:

The source for the 355 mass shootings does not include a single incident involving pellet/BB guns. It includes 355 incidents where at least 4 people were shot (with bullets, truly a rare occurrence in America, I know), which is the most widely used definition for "mass shooting".

Apparently in the past, they accidentally included a single BB gun incident, which they removed when they realized it involved BB guns. So you and other people who smugly bring that poo poo up whenever the 350+ number is mentioned, should probably stop.

We can still be totally smug, mostly because the 350+ number was called bullshit by an author from the ultra conservative mother jones news.

* # ¿ Dec 6, 2015 21:46
  • Quote
JohnGalt
Aug 7, 2012

Khizan posted:

I'm curious as to what others thing should constitute a mass shooting.

Off the top of my head, this is what I would go with:

  • 4+ victims, not including the shooter, but counting wounded and not just fatalities. I think that only counting fatalities is intellectually dishonest and a way of artificially making the number of mass shootings lower. Modern medicine is a drat amazing thing and I don't think our ability to save lives should bar incidents from being considered a mass shooting. I could shoot 10 random people in the chest tomorrow and if 7 of them survived it wouldn't be a mass shooting? That's bullshit.
  • I would count drivebys, simply because of the nature of the attack. It's both fairly indiscriminate and it's something that's not really feasible without guns.
  • I would count other acts of gang violence as well, I think. Large scale gun violence is large scale gun violence and I think that only counting 'indiscriminate' incidents as mass shootings is another way of making the number lower.
  • Despite that, I wouldn't count murder/suicides of the "man kills 3 kids, wife, himself" stripe. While I don't see gang violence moving from gunfights to knife fights in all cases, I do see these crimes moving from shootings to stabbings.

Including gang violence is pretty dishonest because most of the frenzy to restrict gun ownership isnt spurred by gang violence. That would require people who don't like guns to acknowledge that restricting guns isn't the best way to resolve the issue. San Bernardino, Colorado springs, roseburg (Oregon), Charleston, isla vista, newtown, Aurora: none of these were gang related. There wasn't a massive push for gun control after the Waco bar brawl involving biker gangs.

Gun control advocates are trying to conflate a bunch of other crime with a small number of incidents that the public cares about in order to make gun violence seem like an imminent threat to every single person.

* # ¿ Dec 7, 2015 04:28
  • Quote
  • Locked thread
The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > I don't bloody understand mass shootings