More Deaths By Mass Shooting... Will The Carnage Continue?

From The Atlantic, yet American "leadership" is most likely to continue to say prayers and offer condolences to the families who lose loved ones, as well as partaking of solemn candlelight vigils. American leadership is apparently owned by the NRA, firearm manufactures, and gun nuts who believe the right to own private arsenals trumps the right to life.



Twenty-six people shot dead in Sutherland Springs, November 5.

Fifty-nine people shot dead in Las Vegas, October 1.

Forty-nine people shot dead in Orlando, June 12 of last year.

They are three of the five worst mass shootings in modern U.S. history. All happened in the last two years. Two occurred within the same two months.


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Diseases spread between individuals, but the contagion of mass shootings seems to spread through broadcast media. In an interview with The Atlantic in 2015, Sherry Towers, the ASU paper’s lead author, hypothesized that television, radio, and other media exposure might be the vectors through which one mass shooting infects the next perpetrator. Like a commercial, each event’s extraordinary coverage offers accidental advertising for depravity. One reason why mass-media coverage of shootings might inspire more shootings is that public glorification inspires some mass murderers. Eric Harris, the central planner of the Columbine murders, wrote Ich bin Gott—German for “I am God”—in a school notebook.

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Mass shootings are often committed by lonely and unrooted men, suffering from both grandiose aspirations and petty grievances. The postmortem descriptors are practically rote: He was cold, weird, withdrawn, a loner (and, one must note, always “he”). It’s astonishingly rare to read the antonyms: He is almost never warm, welcoming, the most popular kid in school. Even when they are not, strictly speaking, terrorism, mass shootings still seem to adhere to a sort of dark and nearly invisible ideology of oppressive self-aggrandizement, a bid for greatness that requires the destruction of others. Just because there is no formal institution like ISIS to symbolize this strain of white rage doesn’t mean that the rage isn’t ideological. It’s possible that many instances of white-male mass-shooting violence are, in fact, driven by a media-inspired religion of grievance and greatness, a mass-distributed sickness for which male outcasts are most vulnerable to infection.

“This isn’t a guns situation,” President Donald Trump claimed on Sunday in a brief address from Tokyo. But the statistics offer no doubt. There are more gun deaths in America because, simply, there are more guns. The American rates of firearm homicide, child-firearm mortality, and gun-related suicide are far higher than in any other industrialized country. The United States, home to 5 percent of the industrialized world’s population under 15 years old, accounts for 87 percent of its unintentional firearm fatalities involving that age group, according to a 2003 paper. Mass killings are an epidemic that so many leaders refuse to name, or even to see. If America cannot amend the laws that facilitate such violence, it should at least commit more resources to studying why this seems to be a paradoxical age of historically low crime, yet contagious mass murder.

Trump, echoing the NRA says it's not a gun situation. Following his vacating President Obama's restrictions on the mentally ill owning and possessing firearms he claims the problem is one of... mental illness. Odd indeed. Perhaps the BLOTUS is one suffering from a grave mental deficiency.

Comments

  1. Les... I'm open to suggestions from anyone on what we can do to fix this given the 2nd amendment.

    What will the want, and what is the right willing to give up.

    If the answers are everything and nothing, we've got a problem.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Given what I read and hear from the NRA, the President, and many on the right I fear we've got a problem.

      I used to hunt and own firearms as well as belonging to the NRA 30 years ago. So I believe the 2'nd amendment should be safeguarded and protected from any assault to rid America of it.

      We can have both the 2'nd AND uniform, improved, and effective firearm regulations and control. If we have the will and compromise is not ruled out by one side or the other.

      Delete
  2. RN. & Dave Miller
    There couldn’t be Teo more Bigger Assholes in the Blogosphere!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually Sammy, there is. We ALL know who they are but will leave it for you to exercise your grey matter and figure it out for yourself exactly who they are.

      Delete
    2. Les... the answer generally is the person who is unable to express an idea or thought without relying on words or language that would embarrass any proper grandmother.

      Delete
  3. The problem is not the second amendment. The problem is not even the NRA. The problem is that organizations like the NRA can legally pump millions of dollars to politicians. Nothing will change until all elections are publicly financed with only your and my tax dollars.

    We are who the politicians should be beholding to.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We are who the politicians should be beholding to..

      Spot on Jerry! We've strayed a very long way over a couple of centuries.

      Delete
  4. Is it a gun problem? Is it a mental problem? It is both creating a cultural problem.

    I would add videos and movies to that cultural problem. As long as those who feel unimportant try to attain importance according to popular acceptance of the mass killing games and movies as being an important person, that's what they will try to attain.

    There are 300 million guns in public hands. The Republicans passed a bill saying those with proven mental problems have a right to a gun. The AWB was allowed to sunset without any consideration of extending it. As usual Republicans could care less about this problem of murder and consider it a cost of freedom for having a 2nd amendment.

    The gun genie is out of the bottle. Guns are the weapon of choice for killers. If they can't get a gun they will use a truck.

    The kill genie is out of the bottle. The character of violence is more natural in the American character than other societies and at times in our history it rears its ugliness. In the past stricter gun laws did help curb those times of violence.

    When elected officials don't care and do nothing, it's no wonder the problem gets out of hand. When citizens accept these killings as just part of our culture and stage another prayer session, then that is the society we live in.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A complex issue likely made much worse due to a colossal lack of leadership and will.

      As The Atlantic points out the almost non stop media coverage and analysis is also part of our problem.

      I'm actually thinking the USA may not be smart enough to figure out how to resolve our domestic mass murder violence (problend).

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    2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

      Delete
  5. Les... a few years back, Rebecca Costa wrote a book called "Watchman's Rattle." Her theory on problem solving was influenced by an idea that the Maya essentially disappeared because they had a huge problem that they could only solve by thinking outside their boxes. But they were unable to do so, thus their demise.

    Costa was wondering if the US was in a similar place.

    Perhaps on gun violence, we may be there. Unable to see life saving and needed solutions because we won't, or can't see outside of our boxes.

    Scary thought.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some as they grow long in the teeth gain much wisdom and are able to see things mote clearly. As a result the old paradigms are viewed as less sensible and pass away, making way for a new and more enlighten way.

      Our nation is likely to go the way of the Mayans. Critical out of the box thinking is no longer an American strong suit in many ways. You identified one.

      Far too many believe more firepower, automatic weapons, open carry, 100 round drums, bump stocks, and fewer firearm laws is the answer. Empirical data as well as common sense advised differently.

      Delete
  6. Dave Miller, and Rational Nation USA are 3 of the dumbest Priicks on the blogosphere

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We suggest you return to grammar school and grab some spelling activity. Pricks has but one i.

      Delete
  7. George said... "Dave Miller, and Rational Nation USA are 3 of the dumbest Priicks on the blogosphere"

    Clearly the amount of irony in that sentence is incredible.

    George might want to check out the ChuckleNuts School of Advanced Math...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He should Dave. I picked up his numerical challenges as well but didn't want to embarrass or overwhelm him all at once. 😉

      Delete
    2. There Maybe one of two reasons for that.
      1. It might have been a typo .
      2. He may have thought that RN had 2 heads, because he is that Ugly.

      Delete
    3. Could be. Now that you got that off your chest why not a dress the topic of the post? There's still time.

      Delete
  8. “A Dress” ?
    I guess that you know more about that than I do!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LOL! Yup I do. Haste makes waste.

      Especially on a cellphone. ☺

      Now, the post content big Guy?

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

      Delete

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