Every one of those threads is about people trying to address the problem of gun violence in general, and the solutions people keep on proposing would address all of the many forms of gun violence.
Oh man, you got us good. Look what hypocrites we are. Damn, we’re totally owned. Pat yourself on the back, you’ve proven yourself superior to us small brained morons. Well done. You can leave the thread now. You’re victorious. There’s no coming back from this one.
Why would it? The dead were already born children, not precious little unborn babies. /s
I guess we have to disagree–I perceive those threads to be overwhelmingly about mass shootings and bans of weapons used in very few gun crimes. I’m sure there are occasional comments about guns more generally, but certainly not the thrust of the thread.
I wonder how many of the same people posting in these outrage threads are against policies that there is strong correlative evidence played a major hand in crime reduction (including homicides) for many years, namely: Broken Windows Policing, and Stop & Frisk policies.
Okay. With respect, Martin, this is:
- Tu Quoque Fallacy
- Whataboutism
- Red Herring
I will submit – and not for the first time – that you’re banging on the door of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and asking them why they don’t appear to give a damn about pancreatic cancer.
ETA: It may be the first time I’ve raised this issue with you. I should have been clearer about that.
Suppose you believe that there is a fundamental flaw in the design of a certain type of brake pad. The manufacturer disputes that there is a problem, and the NHTSA (regulatory body) are unconvinced and hesitant. Are you more likely to motivate them to act by pointing out a series of minor accidents happening almost every day, or the day a school bus goes over a cliff?
The problem is not that we lack motivation to address any and all gun violence. It’s a question of when the opposition to gun violence might take pause.
Here’s a little dose of political reality for the many liberals here–and considering the tenor of this thread as a political thread, this doesn’t seem out of line:
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Republicans will continue to poll well anytime crime is an important issue in a campaign. Ask yourself why that is.
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Democratic messaging on crime, aside from a few local Democrats who have started to smarten up, will continue to focus on mass shootings–which the narrative around these largely doesn’t move the needle electorally. Oddly it seems voters just care a lot more about “regular crime” that actually affects most of them on a daily basis. The mass shooting problem is the primary interaction national Democrats appear to have with crime, and they lose to Republicans in head-to-head polling, most of the time and in most places, when polling concerns handling crime.
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The only other interaction Democrats seem to reliably have around crime are various policies that most voters correlate to being at least somewhat “soft” on crime: police reform, sentencing reform, bail reform, deferring prosecution of “unpopular” crimes et al. Now, some of these policies in isolation, are popular–some I even support, but the reality is the Democrats as a party are widely seen as the party that is skeptical of police and less concerned about crime.
Now as you continue tut-tutting about this most recent tragedy, ask yourself how you can have so much outrage over this type of crime, and yet the Democratic party does wretchedly with voters on the issue of crime.
When I was a Republican this didn’t bother me much because it was to my side’s benefit, now that I am a reluctant Democratic voter due to having no other realistic options, it annoys me to see the party just perpetually fall into this cycle.
The GOP is already lining up to remind their pro-gun voters (who are a vocal and dedicated minority that are almost single issue voters) that “here we go again, the liberals are trying to take your guns”, and then they will continue their hammering attack on “crime infested Democrat cities”, further eroding the standing of the party on this issue. It seems like politically, a lot of Democrats care about mass shooting but don’t care at all about winning on the broader issues connected to it, and don’t seem to care that if anything their over-focus on mass shootings has helped drive NRA donations and GOP antipathy to gun control.
People are specifically focused on school shootings because off all developed nations, regardless of general violent crime statistics, the United States is literally the only country that routinely—as in more frequently than monthly—has mass shootings in schools, which aside from home is the last place that children should ever expect to be threatened or to experience violence and death. That the United States is also at the top of the scale of developed nations in terms of violent crime and crimes committed with firearms is also a major issue that many people would like to address but because this has become a “culture wars” issue there is zero traction to implement even modest and completely rational efforts to curtail such violence or access to firearms by violent and unstable people beyond “thoughts and prayers”, notwithstanding the very real limitations imposed by reasonable interpretations of the 2nd Amendment.
You have correctly focused on the fact that gun control advocates use school mass shootings specifically to highlight the problem of violent criminal use of uncontrolled firearms, largely under the assumption that even the people who believe in “The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” and thus the way to stop violent crime is to have more guns will still perceive school shootings as a reason for some kind of control over availability of firearms. Unfortunately, people opposed to any limitations or regulations on firearms have literally fabulated their way into utter denial and conspiracies about “crisis actors” instead of having any reasonable and negotiable position. Certainly, the NRA and most ardent gun owners view general violent crime as an ‘urban problem’ (read: blacks and gangs) and thus, not their problem, so trying to discuss the issue in broader terms isn’t going to make it more appealing.
Stranger
The hubris is amazing
If only Al Qeda had known: just fly a piper cub into a grocery store or a grade school once a week.
They got pretty much everything they needed in one day; an American fear-driven response that created a power vacuum in the Middle East for them to exploit, and gravely wounding US pride and the American economy to boot after years of an unsuccessful “War on Terror”.
Stranger
I don’t disagree with any of this–my conclusion based on this is Democrats are essentially playing into a cycle that benefits Republicans by choosing to go hard after guns the moment these media frenzy shootings occur.
There is not an easy answer to widespread insanity and crazy thinking, but I do think the party could do much better than it does now.
For those with interest, here’s a real inside look at the top-level thinking of the NRA … when they were scheduled to have a convention in Denver, right on the heels of the mass shooting at Columbine High School (Colorado).
The cynicism is worthy of the worst politicians:
It’s an article from November 2021, based on tapes and transcripts obtained long after the conversations occurred.
AFAICT, they’re mentioning guns, where – at least in my watching of Fox’s “The Five --” I don’t think guns were mentioned in their coverage of this event … even once.
Here you go. A pit thread.
If I was a Republican Congressman I would already be teeing up for a comment like this, not today, but maybe in 4ish days:
“While we have long fought against the crime destroying our cities, the illegal immigration ravaging our border, Democrats have fought to defund the police and to steal your guns, this is all they choose to talk about while ignoring the sort of crime destroying our communities.”
It would frankly be very easy to be a Republican congressman when facing off against the Democrats.
There are so many ways you can say that about the Democrat party on a vast array of issues that listing them would run out of space on the server. But in truth it wouldn’t matter what Democrats do on the issue of gun control; it has been made into a ‘cultural’ issue by a weekend warrior para-militarized contingent of self-described ‘Conservatives’ and played non-stop on Fox News and other far-right media that even the slightest suggestion of background checks or controlling ammunition purchases results in a paranoid rush to condemn the Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer as “coming for yer guns” despite the logistical and political impossibility of actually doing a comprehensive gun roundup. It was this kind of propagandizing that made Barack Obama into the Firearm Industry Trade Association’s “Best Gun Salesman for Eight Years Running”, despite the fact that he never pushed any kind of ban and consistently reaffirmed his belief that the 2nd Amendment protects a fundamental right to own firearms.
Stranger
So if nothing can truly be done–and I am not quite as pessimistic, but I am quite pessimistic on it, the question becomes–is it worthwhile to buy into the rapt media coverage of this to the degree we, as a society, do? If your hypothesis that nothing can be done politically is true, the “virality” of such coverage being at least somewhat demonstrated to lead to future such killings, maybe a preferable option is to intentionally de-platform the coverage of these killings.
“If it bleeds, it leads.”
The consequences of a free press combined with the for-profit motive of getting eyes on screens results in making a media circus of every horrific violent incident.
Stranger
Because they’re of a completely different type in multiple ways.
Mass shootings are terroristic in nature. Part of the motive is the shock value. Plenty of things killed more Americans in 2001 than died in 9/11. Your logic would equally apply there: ‘Why are you so focused on the World Trade Center? Only a few thousand died. If you really cared about American lives, why not improve road safety or ban cigarettes or something?’ I trust we can all agree that this kind of argument is stupid on its face.
It’s also of a different type because guns are strictly necessary for the crime to happen. If guns were outlawed, you could still get killed in a mugging by being stabbed or bludgeoned. But school shooters aren’t going to do the same thing (or have nearly the same effect even if they did, which they wouldn’t) if they only have knives or baseball bats.
Thirdly, the victims of mass shootings are random and indiscriminately targeted. A healthy percentage of gun related homicides involve a motive for why that particular killer killed that particular victim. Disingenuously lumping those all in together misses the forest for the trees. (Not to say targeted homicides are less of a problem; merely saying they are a distinctly different problem.)