Christ, it’s 19 dead elementary school children shot by a lone gunman. Of course it’s going to be on the news. It’s as newsworthy as it gets, and the socioeconomic background of the kids don’t matter one bit. It’s freaking international news. More cynically, it’s one more major incident the media can use for themselves to keep eyes on their content and it’s one more major data point for the gun debate, so ratings ratings rating there, too. The media may care less about the poor black kid who disappeared in Indiana than the rich pretty white girl from Florida (quite frankly, because their audience doesn’t care), but a mass slaughter like this? I mean, dude, the Buffalo shooting was a bunch of targeted, poor, black people. That got plenty of press. And that was adults. And that was fewer people. Of course the little kids are going to get talked about nationally.
In the new timeline, we will also discover that subsequent amendment numbers have been bumped up by one and the 3rd Amendment now reads:
A pox on the leasing-monger Addison Mitchell McConnell III
Yertle the Turtle’s name is actually Addison? ADDISON? Isn’t that, like, a girl’s name?
(Back to our previous programming.)
Yep. Buffalo didn’t matter because victims were black; this one doesn’t matter because shooter (and from my understanding, likely most victims) were Hispanic.
Have I missed anything?
/s in case it isn’t clear.
I used to wonder how people got radicalized. Lately I’m starting to get it.
Buffalo didn’t matter as Tucker Carlson is to blame. He put those crazy, weird racist lies into the young man’s head. Why do we allow him to shout fire in a crowded theater? He needs to be indicted.
And, yes, as I keep saying, we need some good gun laws. But the GOP blocks them all.
The GOP needs the votes, they have lost the demographics battle. So they cater to the weird ass tiny minority that want to block ALL abortion. They cater to the weird ass tiny minority that want NO gun laws. They cater to the weird ass tiny minority that are out and out vocal racists. They need every weird ass tiny minority vote. Meanwhile they enact Jim Crow voter suppression laws.
What if I am camping miles from civilization or any people and I need to protect myself? I’m glad I have my gun with me.
ETA - it’s not as black and white as you think it is.
Is that the only time you have it with you?
As this is political, let’s not forget that the National Russian Rifle Association has been influenced by Russian money; IMHO that money causes a lot of the continuing spectacle of Republican (and some Democratic) politicians folding in fear of the NRA, fear that ends giving us also judges that make things worse. One reason why is that extremists inside gun rights groups were (or are still?) propped up by that foreign support.
Every time Americans die in mass shootings, and in general, makes Putin and his henchmen happy.
It’s more than just Canadian firearms regulation, though. It’s the attitude of Canadian gun owners.
I’m in Canada. My father owned guns, as did many in his family, and he taught me to shoot. Actually, he first spent a lot of time drilling firearms safety into my head. You assume every gun is loaded, unless the action is visibly open and empty. You never trust a safety. You never point a gun at anything or anybody you don’t want dead. You have to carry your gun a certain way from its locker or case to the point on the range, or to the blind in the bush. You never load your firearm until you’re on the point or in the blind. And a lot more.
Most importantly, though, is that I (and thousands of other Canadian shooters) were taught that a gun is not a weapon. That term implies an offensive or defensive capability, and that’s not how Canadians regard firearms. They’re sporting equipment, great for hunting or blasting holes in paper targets, or for varmint control on the farm, but under no circumstances are they to be trained on another human being, loaded or not. I’ve done a lot of sport shooting, and all the people I’ve known at the shooting clubs I’ve belonged to feel the same as I do. There are some outliers, as we have suffered a few mass shootings in Canada over the years, but I’m confident that if somebody said to Canadian authorities, “I need a gun for protection,” that person would be forever barred from owning one.
This is the attitude I referred to above, that of Canadian gun owners to whom guns are sporting equipment, like baseball bats and golf clubs. Guns are not weapons with which to threaten other people. That attitude, plus the regulations, plus the storage requirements, plus the paperwork, may not be perfect, but they do help ensure that events such as happened today in Texas are very few and very far between in Canada.
Guns can also be a tool with which one can defend themself.
True. But background checks upon every purchase won’t curtail your right to defend yourself.
I agree to background checks for every purchase but I don’t think this will ease the problem much, if at all.
I would suggest the issue isn’t just background checks at point of sale - it’s making sure guns don’t then end with people who shouldn’t have them.
Australia, like Canada, has firearms licences. A gun licence lets the person issued the licence own and use a gun. Not their spouse. Not their kids. Not their extended family. Not their mates. Only someone who has a gun licence.
From the outside looking in, it seems the lack of controls over where a gun goes once its been purchased is one of the many, many factors at play with the gun violence issue in the US.
So you’re wondering why we’re “oblivious or uninterested in the 13,000 other gun homicides that occur” and you cite the absence of any thread in the last month on that subject as evidence of this supposed lack of interest?
It’s apparently escaped your notice that the general gun problem is constantly being discussed in virtually every thread that ever comes up about guns. So much so that a moderator started a thread in GD soliciting suggestions on what the hell can be done about the fact that virtually every single gun thread devolves into a general debate about America’s gun problem. And in every such thread, statistics are cited on the incredible magnitude of gun homicides in America compared to every other wealthy developed country in the world.
And you know what happens then? People like you come along and argue that they don’t care about other countries, and anyway the fact that the USA has ten times or fifty times or a hundred times the gun-related death rate of any comparable country is irrelevant because there are “other factors”. That’s right – the fact that the USA has 6100% higher total gun death rates than the UK, and 22300% higher gun homicide rates, is entirely due to “other factors” and has nothing whatsoever to do with gun regulation! What this argument really says is: “USA! USA! Fuck, yeah!”.
And then you accuse gun control advocates of being “oblivious or uninterested” in America’s horrific gun-related death rates. There is certainly a group that seems “oblivious or uninterested” in the tragic rate of gun deaths, but it sure as hell isn’t those arguing for effective gun regulation. In fact a whole group of those spectacularly oblivious and uninterested in America’s gun deaths are meeting in Houston on May 27, where they’re going to strategize (once again) about how to cause more gun-related deaths by arguing that more people should have more guns.
Just unbelievable.
Fucked up the coding…
Jewish Space Lasers. Make them work for you.
As an Australian who has visited the US I understand that we’re two very different countries and that preaching about what has worked here is pointless and condescending.
What I don’t understand is how this can keep happening yet nothing ever seems to happen to fix it.
Gun deaths in the USA in 2022. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
The sheer numbers are incomprehensible to me. Are people just so jaded and accepting of this that it’s just part of life and a mass school shooting like this is what it takes to grab attention for a couple of days, but only a couple of days?
Because many Americans believe that Jesus is a White Man With A Gun. They want to be Saved from unworthy people threatening them with votes.
You do have such people in Australia, but you all call them crazy. We call them Senator.
As another Australian, any gun death happening here makes the news. Whether it be a known criminal blowing another away, whether it be a jilted lover killing the other, whether it be a cop firing on a suspect, every single one makes it to the news. Every. Single. One.
Now I know that the US has a bigger population, but the notion that gun violence and death has become so normalised in your communities that it doesn’t warrant reporting is bloody frightening and immensely disturbing.
You are a first world country, in fact you are the FIRST of the first world nations USA. Get your fucking shit together, get your guns under control, it’s not fucking rocket surgery FFS. Every other first world country has managed to temper gun ownership with pretty decent controls, so it’s rare that mad cunts like the fellow today can get a gun and blow 20 kids away. Why the hell are you so beholden to the NRA and the munitions cartels that you refuse any oversight of gun ownership?
Jesus.
Does anyone here really think that making it harder to acquire a gun in the US will do anything to reduce the number of gun-related deaths?
There is already a vast pool of guns, and even if all sales were stopped today, and the manufacturers closed down, it would make no difference at all to the death and injury rate. All it might achieve is to raise the value of existing guns.
The solution is a political one and very hard to achieve, even with a united legislature. How do you change a whole culture in which being armed is seen as desirable and ‘manly’?
The UK has strict controls and criminals rarely go armed with guns. These days knives are the weapon of choice and, sadly, we see an alarming number of children who believe that they need to carry a knife to defend themselves. At least knives do not lend themselves to self-aggrandising mass killing.