Some people also carry because they are HOPING to have an opportunity to, ahem, take out a bad guy. Those are precisely the kind of people who shouldn’t have firearms!
Most of the time, when an officer uses their gun, it’s to shoot an injured animal, and a man who had a legal concealed weapon at the Tucson rally almost shot the wrong person! He saw a man holding an automatic weapon and almost drew his gun, and didn’t do it because he wasn’t 100% certain that man was the shooter. And he wasn’t; he had wrestled the shooter to the ground and took his weapon.
Mass Shootings is a propaganda phrase without meaning, meant to evoke an emotional response. Even the FBI has no clear definition other than “one or more” casualties. One person gets shot, another wounded, and you got yourself another Mass Shooting.
And they are all bad, don’t get me wrong, but we should all recognise propaganda when it it used on us.
The second amendment is part of a legal document, which is amended, when there is the political will to do so. It’s not a fucking mandate from the lips of God. Other amendments have been repealed, others have been added. There’s nothing holy that says we have to have that amendment and that we have to interpret it the way it is today.
Who is progandizing whom, here? By which I mean: how do you think this phrase is being used to manipulate us, by whom, and for what purpose?
I think it’s pretty widely accepted that “mass,” in this case, means “four or more gun deaths in a single incident, excluding that of the shooter.” Now, one could argue that “mass” is hyperbole here, but I do think it’s pretty useful to distinguish between murder, which is usually personal, and the impersonal stranger killings. Maybe this isn’t the way to do it.
This is what I would like to believe, but I’m afraid that you’re only correct on the technicality of this is how it should work. The last time a Constitutional Amendment was ratified was 30 years ago, and only then after a process literally over 200 years long. The last time a Constitutional Amendment was passed with anything like speed was over 50 years ago, with the impetus from the Vietnam War. It’s just not something we do anymore.
There is nobody seriously proposing legislation that will give us an America “without the guns”. We’ll be an America that goes from 400 million guns to 385 million guns. An America that goes from 15,000 gun murders a year to an America with 14,600 gun murders. And progressives will burn up decades of political capital to try and get that.
From a pure utilitarian standpoint, I bet progressives would save more lives by being seen as legitimately, honestly pro-gun and using that political strength to improve health care.
Well, I completely share your pessimism. I don’t ever think anything good can happen in American politics that won’t be trashed and shat on by the Right. They are evil itself, as far as I can tell. My argument was entirely theoretical, with an unspoken “Imagine what would happen if we suddenly became sane”.
I reached that conclusion some time ago. Ugly, and definitely addressable (given the will), but still a pretty low level of risk all things considered.
Is the perception that this is happening more often correct, or are shootings being publicized more? Were these incidents happening all along, but once upon a time they were local news only?
Both gun violence and most “mass shootings” (often defined as 3+ victims) are the result of the War on Drugs- most of the murders in America are drug gang related.
Yes, some nutcase with an AR15 shooting up a school or a dance studio get all the publicity, but they are the tiny, minority of “mass shootings” (as often defined) and an even small number of murders.
Keeping a handgun out of the hands of some gangbanger will reduce the murder rate. Bidens recent law he pushed thru Congress will help keep guns out of the hands of those killers.
Can we keep suicides out of a thread about “mass shootings”?
Well, not without meaning, but the term is very loosely and differently defined . Most “mass shootings” are a drug gang shootout, not some nut with an AK47 opening fire in a supermarket.
mass shooting , also called active shooter incident , as defined by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an event in which one or more individuals are “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Implicit in this definition is the shooter’s use of a firearm.” The FBI has not set a minimum number of casualties to qualify an event as a mass shooting, but U.S. statute (the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012) defines a “mass killing” as “3 or more killings in a single incident.”
But a definitive answer to how many mass shootings there have been is difficult, because organizations tracking such shootings use different methodologies and definitions…Saying that there have been more mass shootings than days so far in 2023 “is truly scaring the people” because that relies on just one definition of a mass shooting — four or more people shot, including injuries — and that definition is too wide, said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist.
“They imagine an MSU kind of incident every day,” Fox said, and “that’s not the case.”
Okay… so the FBI doesn’t use the “four or more” (per one cite; it does per the other) and one criminologist doesn’t like “four or more.” The article listed a variety of organizations and their counts, and the majority of them agreed on this “four or more.” Congress and Mother Jones uses three or more (as of 2013), the FBI uses four or more but can count the shooter, so somewhere in between the Congressional definition and the widespread one.
So everybody agrees "at least three dead, most agree “at least four dead, excluding shooter,” and the only quibble is in how to maintain an accurate national database when the incidents are recorded in a zillion different jurisdictions by law enforcement and / or the press.
Is the point that, since there isn’t 100% agreement, we shouldn’t use the term? Is the point that the difficulty in counting how many invalidates the term?
I stand by my statement, and I use your article as my cite.
The point is, when the American public hears “mass shooting” they imagine some lone nut with a AR15 killing a bunch of people without clear motive. That is very scary and those are the kind that make the national news.
Instead, by those definitions, a “mass shooting” is much more often several gangbangers opening fire with their illegally obtained 9mm pistols on some rival gang members over drugs deals, killing 3-4 gang members and (far too often) some innocent bystander sitting on a stoop. Those do not usually make the national news.
So when people read that there have been something like 40 mass shootings a month, they are deceived.
As my cite said- Saying that there have been more mass shootings than days so far in 2023 “is truly scaring the people” because that relies on just one definition of a mass shooting — four or more people shot, including injuries — and that definition is too wide, said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist.
“They imagine an MSU kind of incident every day,” Fox said, and “that’s not the case.”
Oh, okay. So your point is that people misunderstand the term, much like the problem the pro-gun folks have with people like me who confuse “automatic” and “semiautomatic” and all of the various other types of guns out there.
I don’t think an appeal ad ignorantiam populi is a compelling argument. The phrase means what it means, and it’s not nearly as confusing as a lot of the other euphemistic and double-speak phrases out there.
But the issue here is that it seems to be out totally ineffective and disastrous war on drugs that is causing the “mass shootings” to become nearly a daily occurrence.
Posters here like to use Western Europe (they say “developed nations” but it is obvious what they mean) as a poster boy for lower murder rates and “gun violence”- and yes, no doubt the rigorous gun controls imposed there are part of it. But those nations also have a much more enlightened and modern drug policy. They also do not have the racism and ghettos the USA has, which can cause entire generations to look at drug dealing and gang membership as just about the only option.
This member of the American public does not draw such a distinction. Here around Chicago, you have yahoos shooting each other as they drive along the expressways, gang-related drivebys, and crowds of kids gathering downtown and eventually shooting each other. And what I consider the “more traditional” mass shootings seem to involve pistols as often as AR-15s. They are pretty much all “gun violence” to me, and I don’t make fine distinctions.
Hell, a lot of the “lone nuts” seem to have motives - often work related, or to redress some perceived past grievance.
Add in personal carry and stand your ground laws, and I just figure there is a slim chance that lead might be flying just about anytime I’m out and about - but a higher chance in some locations and situations. So I do my best to avoid those situations and locations, and hope for the best.
This is why I largely stay out of gun debates - it’s literally an unsolvable problem in the United States in any practical sense. It’s not even entirely a right-wing issue (though it has become substantially more of one in recent decades), it’s more broadly cultural. I’ve known hardcore Marxists that wouldn’t give up their guns unless you pry them from their cold, dead fingers. After all, they need something to protect themselves from the right-wing state. Or rapists. Or other criminals. I grew up in a very left-wing household and guns were always around.
Various controls, licensing requirements, training requirements and the like will help on the margins as noted. So I applaud the people that work towards those sort of things. But solving the gun violence problem in the U.S.? Not happening this century.
“No amount of “gun control” is going to solve the actual problem” is only true if you equate “gun control” with “removing guns from society”, whether in whole or in part.
There are other things that could make a big difference, like getting rid of laws that permit carrying guns in public. In Canada, it is entirely possible to get a handgun, and lots of people have done just that. But the laws on where you’re allowed to carry your handgun are extremely restrictive. So restrictive that I’ve never seen a private individual carrying a handgun in public. Even most security guards don’t carry.
This can mitigate a lot of the shootings you have in the US, because seeing someone just carrying a gun becomes a primary enforcement target for police. They don’t need to wait around and see if the person is going to commit some other crime before stopping them, which is pretty much the case now.
When almost everyone is allowed to carry in public, there’s no way to distinguish a “good guy” from a “bad guy” until the bad guy starts shooting. If you banned handguns in public, though, they’d all be bad guys, by definition, as soon as you were aware that they were so armed.