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"defines a mass shooting as an incident with at least four injuries or deaths, not including the shooter."
Which isn't really a good definition. "Mass shooting" invokes an image of someone showing up at a school, church, grocery store, some other public place, with the sole intent of killing as many people as possible.
That's not what's being tracked here.
The classic example tracked by the Gun Violence Archive is this story from my own town:
Two brothers had an illegal marijuana grow. 3 guys from Texas roll up at their house to buy the weed.
It's not clear what went wrong, but words were had, guns were drawn, both brothers were shot and killed, 2/3 Texans were shot and killed. 3rd was arrested later.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/06/two-portland-brothers-two-marijuana-buyers-die-in-gun-battle-during-attempted-drug-ripoff.html
Gun Violence Archive - ZOMG! Mass shooting!
No, that's pretty average drug crime right there. No innocent victims, everyone involved was engaging in illegal activity BEFORE anyone got shot.
Going through the stories on the Gun Violence Archive, you'll see a lot of arguments turned into bar fights turned into shootings and so on. Parties that got out of hand, stuff like that. Scenarios that are completely different from some idiot intending to shoot up a school, or target a minority demographic.
Lumping together all of that under the "Mass Shooting" umbrella sure gets people scared though.
I'm not sure I understand why intent matters (barring accidents, I suppose)?
Who cares what the intent was if guns were involved and people were hurt or died?
If a person is suffering from schizophrenia and thinks they are holding a magic wand, but actually shoot up a mall, they don't have intent but the gun violence still resulted in death. Would that not be a mass shooting in your intent-based definition?
Intent matters because in a true mass shooting event, the mass shooting is the intent.
In an argument turned into a fight with multiple shooters, nobody went out that day looking to shoot people. It turned out that way, but that wasn't their goal when they left the house.
Your explaining the difference but not explaining why it makes a difference.
To matters of gun regulation, of safety in public spaces, of trauma to the affected, of national reputation (pick any one, or all, or something else) why does the intent change anything?
I'll start off: To have the intention to mass-murder purely for the sake of mass murder could be worth isolating and studying because that is a specific and extreme psychological problem worth solving. However, not all mass killings (with intent, for your sake) will have that psychological trigger at root. A religious or racial extremist, for example, is different than a disaffected teenager.
In this circumstance, intent is interesting if one is interested in those other things (psychological issues in American youth, the spread of religious and racial extremism), but ultimately are secondary issues when it comes to measuring gun violence. A mass stabbing by a racial extremist, or a teenager blowing up their high school with fertilizer would still need to be measured.
You are complaining about this organization's yardstick, but I don't hear a compelling alternative from you for this specific measure. You are saying they should be measuring a totally different thing, which is arguably irrelevant to this measure.
It's like explaining the dufference between murder and manslaughter, it's the degree of the crime that counts.
If you accept that there is a difference between shooting people as a crime of passion, and shooting people by a systemic hunting of other human beings, there doesn't need to be a "but why is it different?"
It's different because one, anyone could fall victim to given enough alcohol and anger, and the other requires someone to be fundamentally broken as a human being.
Are you saying that we should have Allowlists vs. Denylists for types of gun violence that are acceptable? This seems to be the fundamental premise upon which we disagree....
From my POV, intention is immaterial because there are no 'good' gun deaths, so splitting hairs has no values.
It sounds to me like you're saying if you go to a mall and have a mass shooting in a totally sober state, that's bad, but if you get hopped up on bath salts and then have a good old fashioned shotgun rampage, that's ok and we shouldn't count those ones....
I'm saying that the phrase "mass shooting" should only be applied to a situation where the shooting is the reason for the conflict, not an argument, robbery, drug crime, or gang crime.
Further, I'd argue that conflating them all together so you can pump up statistics and make people scared denigrates all the victions of actual mass shootings like Uvalde and Sandy Hook.
... Why are you saying and arguing those things, nobody cares about what you think about the way the statistics are counted when you can compare the data to other countries without guns and without any types of shooting events, mass or not.
Do you not understand what all of these different people are trying to explain to you?
Sure, and all these different people haven't said a single thing that counters what I'm saying, telling, isn't it?
We've all countered it. Very telling indeed.
Because all the countries with strict gun laws that you all love to try and compare the USA with, also have strong social safety nets and are not as diverse as the USA...why don't you compare it with say Mexico or Brazil? Both have super strong gun laws but have no real safety nets and surprise....still have tons of firearm related deaths.
Not as diverse as the eu?? Not as diverse as Canada? Wtf are you talking about
Apparently you have never been to the EU... Canada while quite diverse, is mainly Europeans that immigrant to their. Some of my family came from the EU to Canada and then the USA....so it's not really fair to act like Canada is super diverse.
Why don't you answer my question before trying to deflect.
Hit me with some sources first then we'll talk. Judging by this comment I'm not expecting much.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/
Uhh ok? Canada is a jumping point as I stated for people trying to enter the USA...this isn't unknown.
Lol 10 year old, wapo, pay walled article. Let me help you out, Canada is as or more diverse than the US, and saying the eu has no diversity is fucking hilarious. Good try.
So your rebuttal is, nuh uh 10 year old article? Got it...next.
The Canadian census: A rich portrait of the country's religious and ethnocultural diversity
Here ya go dumb dumb.
Super diverse....aka white people from the EU....like I said it was.
Waiting for that EU one...still...dumb dumb
The only way to be diverse in your eyes is to be Muslim hindu or sikh?
Congrats on cherry picking what you want to think... reading comprehension isn't your strong point is it.
Yeah you right. America is special, nothing anyone can do, enjoy your piles of dead children.
O you're not even from here lol what a tool.
Exactly, fuck them dead kids.
Sure, but it's really difficult, if not impossible, to define that in objective terms. A shooting involving 4 or more people is easy to collect all the data on. Trying to search for all shootings where someone showed up to an event with the intent to kill many people isn't really objective or trackable.
Wikipedia seems to do OK:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States
Yeah, no. Not really. It's useful, but it's a much smaller subset. This is all notable mass shootings, not all mass shootings. As the article later goes on to describe, the definition is in contention. There are many different definitions that may include far fewer or far more events, just because of the nature of it it can't be perfect.
For me, I would define a mass shooting as four or more people shot, not counting the perpetrator, where the shooting itself was the objective.
Not a robbery gone bad, not a drug crime, not a gang fight, or a bar fight.
Someone went to a location with the sole intent of shooting as many people as possible.
Most people don't give a fuck about your definition.
I'd wager most people hear "mass shooting" and think it's some guy at a school or a mall with an AR-15 and that's absolutely not what's happening.
I don't give a fuck what you'd wager?
Because someone out there is trying desperately to manipulate public opinion. I'm encouraging you to see what they're doing here.
I see you trying to downplay mass shootings in every fuckin thread about them I see on here and it's gettin real tiring reading your dumbass comments.
The definition is evolving, for the better in my opinion. The below paper describes some thoughts in the realm which seek to develop a more inclusive definition.
Mass outcome or mass intent? A proposal for an intent-focused, no-minimum casualty count definition of public mass shooting incidents
https://jmvr.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/A-Proposal-for-an-Intent-Focused-No-Minimum-Casualty-Count-Definition-of-Public-Mass-Shooting-Incidents-Greene-Colozzi-Silva.pdf
Edit: I should add I have no beef with the GVA, and I don't really think the flack it gets in this thread is warranted, but in this context the distinction I think can help. This is by no means GVA's fault, terms evolve.
You ready to do comparisons to other developed countries yet or what?
Sure, give me another developed country with the equivalent of the 2nd Amendment.
Why lol?
Apples to Apples. You can't compare what happens in other countries to what happens in the US, first because we have the 2nd Amendment and second, because we don't have universal health care. :(
Oh, right good call, I guess we just have to complain about the way they count the bodies on the internet instead of actually trying to do anything about the thousands of dead children on the hands of the American people and politicians. Totally good call lol.
Compare Mexico and Brazil to the USA both have super strict gun laws but lack safety nets for their citizens...
Those are the 2 countries that you wanna be lumped in with?
No safety nets for their citizens, but strong gun control... again more like the US policies than the EU.
So you're saying the US is on par with Brazil and Mexico and not Canada, Germany, France, etc. That's your argument?
The post soecifically is about counting shootings and not proposing solutions, if you want to talk solutions I do have some good ideas about that too.
First, people need to get it out of their heads that banning guns is the answer. It can't be done because of the 2nd Amendment, and changing the 2nd Amendment is a political impossibility. You have to start by getting 290 votes in the House, the same body who needed 15 tries to get a simple 218 vote majority to pick their own leader. 290 on guns is out of reach.
So what DO we do? Well, how about a root cause analysis of each shooting? Let's determine what systemic failures allowed each shooting to happen and make corrections so it doesn't happen again.
Like that guy in Maine - Police knew FOR MONTHS that he was a potential danger. The military had warned them. He had psych evals backing it up. The cops decided he was too dangerous to engage with and did nothing. Even though Maine has a yellow flag law for weapon confiscation.
Apparently too dangerous to engage with so they just let him walk around in public? 🤔 Well, there's your problem.
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/authorities-knew-maine-shooter-was-a-threat-but-felt-confronting-him-was-unsafe-video-shows/
Shooting after shooting we find these people weren't unknown to authorities, their lives were filled with more red flags than a May Day Parade, but nothing was done.
Right, changing a law is impossible, and looking at other country's examples is impossible because Americans are all born with itchy trigger fingers lol.
Given our current divisions? Yes, changing the law is impossible. We saw what it takes to get 290 Congressmen to agree... George Santos. You'll never get a vote like that on guns, or any other hot button issue, abortion, Supreme Court size, term limits... none of it. It's a non-starter.
Exactly. Give up and accept that your country doesn't represent the will of the people. Good call.