"There have been more mass shootings than days in 2023, database shows
The United States has experienced 627 mass shootings so far this year."
The problem is they define "mass shooting" differently from how the public sees a mass shooting.
Their definition is a shooting event where 4 or more people are injured or killed.
So were there 627 events similar to the UNLV situation where a nut with a gun shows up in a public place and starts shooting indescriminately?
No.
Most of the shootings listed on the Gun Violence Archive are situations where there was a party, alcohol or drugs were involved, two parties got into an argument, the argument turned into a fight, and people got shot. That's not how most people define a "mass shooting".
I'd argue for a mass shooting definition of "person(s) arrive at a public location with the sole intention of shooting as many people as possible."
That would rule out the bar fight incidents, or robberies gone bad, or people who go nuts and kill their family in their own house. We should distinguish between psychotic episodes that put the public at risk, vs. normal crime, vs. domestic vioence that does not involve the general public.
So your objection is that they call a mass shooting a mass shooting? What magic number would you like them to use?
No, my objection is they call normal shootings mass shootings with the agenda of making and keeping people scared.
"Normal shootings"
You just made me realize how much I'd love to live in a country where there was no such thing as a "normal shooting".
Gun culture in America is absolutely fucked.
While it's not quite "throw a dart board at a map", it's pretty close.
They're so goddamn brain rotted that they don't even realize how completely fucked that is.
That's just "crime", not a mass shooting, unless you talk to the gun violence archive.
They want you to be scared. You need to ask why.
The "normal" number of people getting shot is 0.
They want you to sweep gun violence under the rug. You don't need to ask why, it's because gun sales bring in millions in profits for the gun-lobby and the Republicans they purchase.
Unfortunately, no, that's never going to happen. Even in countries that severely limit guns, the number is not 0.
I didn't claim the number could be 0, I claimed the acceptable number is 0.
Following every one of those shootings you linked, people demanded to know how it happened. Why did they have a gun? Was there warning signs that were missed? Was anybody negligent? How can we stop it from happening again and limiting the damage if it does?
That is the reaction of a society that finds any number above 0 unacceptable. They treat mass shootings as a failure of the system.
Meanwhile in America, they don't bother to ask those questions.
They had a gun because it's trivial to get your hands on semi-automatic rifles and handguns, even if you can't pass a background check, because there are millions of unsecured weapons and no universal background checks.
The police and politicians are deliberately negligent, staunchly opposing red flag laws despite most mass shooters having multiple red flags.
No effort is made to prevent it happening again, because the murder of 20 children is shrugged off as some kind of inevitability, no more preventable than an earthquake or tornado -- much the same as you're doing right now.
Limiting the damage isn't just staunchly opposed by the pro-gun community, many of them fully support making more dangerous weaponry available.
These are not the actions of people who find all gun violence unacceptable and the only reason the Ulvade police are criticized and the Newtown police are given a pass is because the Ulvade police didn't bother to pretend they cared.
To be clear, I'm not arguing against sensible legislation, there are many things that can and should be done starting with an actual analysis if what could or should have prevented any specific shooting, once you realize that "banning guns" is off the table thanks to the second amendment.
An example I like to cite is the guy who shot up Michigan State. He had previously been arrested on a felony gun charge, was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, did his time, did his probation, had a clean background check, bought guns and shot up the school.
Now, we already prevent felons from owning guns. Maybe, just maybe, if someone is arrested on a felony gun charge, that is something that should not be allowed to be pled down to a misdemeanor? Ya think?
Alternately, since we block felons from owning guns, as well as domestic abusers, and people charged with crimes that can land them in prison for more than a year, how about we block people with ANY gun charge from owning a gun? Felony OR misdemeanor? They've already proven they can't be trusted with a gun.
These are the sorts of conversations we need to have but aren't having because people get so caught up in knee jerk actions that can't be taken.
I remember years ago the call was for "common sense gun reform!" and the action was "Did you know, people on the no-fly list can buy guns? How is that common sense??!??" Obama was making that call.
To which my reaction was "How many of these shooters were on the no-fly list? Oh, right, NONE of them? Good jorb!"
And there's no set process for adding or removing people from the no fly list and it, itself, appears to be non-sensical:
I'm sure that reply was fascinating but you've already revealed that you're full of shit, so I'm not going to read it.
Proving, yet again, why you lose the debate.
Whatever helps you self soothe.
So you'll only care about children dying in school when the numbers go up even higher than they already are?
No, a shooting at a school would most likely be a mass shooting, unless it were something like a gang shooting, or a robbery, or some fight that got out of control.
I'm talking about the Gun Violence Archive posting up stories like this:
Which, regardless of how many people died, is a murder/suicide, not a mass shooting. The general public was not at risk, the killings weren't random, and did not happen in a public space. In fact, based on the early reporting, may not have even been a shooting.
There is no widely-accepted definition of "mass shooting" and different organizations tracking such incidents use different definitions. Definitions of mass shootings exclude warfare and sometimes exclude instances of gang violence, armed robberies, familicides and terrorism.
Maybe it has something to do with it not being any kind of official term and your panties are twisted over how the media writes them up ignoring the pain and suffering from others and building your strawman off semantics?
It's not that the media writes it up in such sensationalist terms, "if it bleeds, it leads" has been journalism 101 since... well since forever.
My beef is the unquestioning repetition. Once you see it, you can't un-see it:
"nearly a thousand mass shootings to have taken place since the Newtown shooting in 2009"
Newtown is the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. So when they conflate those two things in the same sentence they want you to believe that there have been nearly 1000 shootings as horrific, deadly, senseless and random as the one that claimed the lives of 20 six and seven year olds, and that is absolutely, patently, false.
Why are you like this? So since every mass shooting isn't worse than the worst one they don't matter? Stop making up excuses. I'm don't with you.
No, I'm saying it's not the same class of crime and the only reason the media conflates them is to scare people.
I'll give you an example from my own back yard... one of those "thousand mass shootings since Newtown" was this one:
A couple of brothers in Portland decided to do an illegal weed operation. Oregon allows you to grow, own, smoke, sell, and buy weed, but only for in state use.
3 guys fly in from Texas for the illegal weed buy. Words were had, guns were drawn, both brothers shot and killed, 2/3 Texans shot and killed, 3rd Texan arrested sometime later.
That is just normal crime. That's not a mass shooting in the same way Sandy Hook was and to breath it in the same breath as Sandy Hook disresepects each of the 20 kids that died there.
Gun Violence Archive? 4 people dead = "mass shooting". No, robbery gone wrong? Sure. Crime? Absolutely. Save the mass shooting shit for when innocent people get killed.
Read very carefully please. It doesn't matter what people call it, children dying to gun violence at school should not be happening, one per incident or 50 per incident is irrelevant, and the only difference between the US and first world nations where it doesn't happen is our gun culture.
Oh, agreed, which makes it WORSE when they are conflated in the "more mass shootings than days of the year" bullshit.
You have no idea how badly you've outed yourself as living in a little bubble where you think it will never happen to you, so you don't care.
Because you'll never be in a relationship with a domestic abuser that executes a house full of people will you? You're the gun owning male, so you get to decide who around you lives or dies.
4 innocent people were killed -- a number that is much more difficult to achieve without a gun -- but you don't want them counted because they knew the gun owner.
You've let the gun lobby turn you into a fucking sociopath.
That doesn't make a murder/suicide a "mass shooting". I'm sorry apporoaching this rationally has you so upset.
That doesn't make a murder/suicide a "mass shooting". I'm sorry apporoaching this rationally has you so upset
Thanks, I love this reply. It's only two sentences, but its so fantastically revealing.
The first sentences calls your very own example a "murder/suicide", a term which is unquestionably more misleading than "mass shooting". The "murder" isn't even plural, despite there being 4 of them.
If you gathered up a million people, told half of them it was a murder/suicide and half of them it was a mass shooting, then asked them to guess the number of people killed, the latter would easily be closer to the truth.
The second sentence just makes it clear you're a fuckstain.
And resorting to ad hominem attacks proves you have nothing to actually say on the topic. Congratulations, you lose.
This isn't high school debate class. Ad hominem means you're not inherently wrong just because you're a fuckwit. You can still be wrong and you can still be a fuckwit.
The thing is, by resorting to childish attacks, you are showing everyone else reading this thread in the future you have no argument. I'm not after you, you're a lost cause. I'm after them.
They're a lost cause too because before I called you a fuckwit, I pointed out that you were only interested in being misleading in your favor, not actually stopping people from being mislead.
You took "ad hominem" as an easy out and as an added bonus, you were misleading about what ad hominem means.
I don't really understand why it fucking matters. It is literally the number one cause of death among young people in this country. This happens nowhere else in the modern world. It's unacceptable.
Stop trying to make the conversation about semantics
It matters because the Gun Violence Archive and the uncritical mass media are inflating the statistic to make people scared so they can push an agenda.
When you read a headline talking about the UNLV shooting and they go "more mass shootings than days in the year!" they are NOT talking about a random nut with a gun showing up in a public place and killing random people like the UNLV shooter.
It's disingenuous to conflate the two together, and I'd argue, disrespectful of the victims of actual mass shootings.
It matters because the Gun Violence Archive and the uncritical mass media are inflating the statistic to make people scared so they can push an agenda
Bullshit. You're attacking it because it's counter to your agenda.
Republicans, right-wing media, the gun lobby and the pro-gun community routinely fearmonger as a way to boost their own profits and power.
Not only do you not care when they do it, you've enthusiastically put yourself and your own family in more danger because of it.
You're hopelessly compromised and your thoughts about how gun violence statistics are about as trustworthy as a cops views on police brutality statistics.
My agenda is "words mean things" and if you're going to throw around a phrase like "mass shooting" you shouldn't have a low hanging fruit definition that does not take intent into consideration.
Here are two scenarios:
You have a party, two groups of people are talking. Words are had, there's an argument. Punches are thrown. One person pulls a gun, causing another person to pull a gun, multiple shots are fired and 5 people are injured.
You have a party, a disgruntled incel was not invited, shows up with a semiautomatic weapon and shoots 4 people before being dragged to the ground.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, both of these are "mass shootings" and if you go down their list of shootings of the year, the vast majority of them fall under category 1, not category 2.
The difference is, in scenario #1, nobody went to the party intending to shoot anyone. You can't say the same for scenario #2.
Lumping them together so you can make people think there are more cases of scenario #2 than there actually are is disingenuous.
My agenda is "words mean things"
If that was actually your agenda, this wouldn't be your position. You want to lower the statistic using semantics and as an added bonus, take away the vocabulary needed to discuss a huge percentage of gun violence.
The difference is, in scenario #1, nobody went to the party intending to shoot anyone. You can't say the same for scenario #2.
5 people were shot. Intentional vs accidental, premeditated vs impulse, none of that changes the fact that 5 people were shot and the event was a mass shooting.
Even in your own example that you made as contrived as you needed, 3 innocent people were still shot and swept under the rug.
The organizations you're rallying against are completely open about their definitions, making them far more honest than you're being.
I'm sorry if that hurts your guns feelings.
They aren't being honest because they do not discuss intent and they are intentionally trying to scare people by masking that.
I tell you what, starting 1/1 pay attention to what they're doing. By the end of January I expect you'll be stunned at the number of "mass shootings" that aren't what they're trying to scare people into thinking they are.
I should say too, the Gun Violence Archive isn't alone in this:
"This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting." The number is far higher than most other estimates.
But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government's Civil Rights Data Collection.
We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.
In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn't confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn't meet the government's parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn't respond to our inquiries."
So, again, why do they want to keep everyone so afraid?
You know what would be a pretty interesting way to look at this would be?
Lets take every modern nation in the world (we can bicker about what "modern" means later), and lets create a database similar to the one you're taking issue with for each of those nations.
We can be just as uncharitable (or is it charitable?) in our definition of "mass shooting"... The exact issue you're having here right? You think that these statistics unfairly show the US in a negative light.
Well how about we take a look, by that same criteria, how many "mass shootings" these other nations have. Hell, we can even do it per-capita.
How do you think that would look?
I really don't care what other countries are or are not doing, the fact of the matter is other countries a) don't have a 2nd amendment and b) have universal health care, it's not an apples to apples comparison.
What I'm saying is, within the United States alone, there are organizations with a vested interest in making people afraid that they're going to get shot when the actual risk is extremely low.
That's not how most people define a "mass shooting".
That's is I and many others define it...
If you want to scare people, sure, you can define it that way.
No. It just takes some basic intelligence to figure out that mass shootings are shootings of multiple people. Sorry that concept is hard for you to understand.
There is, fundamentally, a difference between a crime that, when reported, makes your average citizen go "OMG! That could have been me!" vs. a crime which, while tragic, does not endanger the general public or people at random.
"Mass shooting" carries with it a sense of reckless disregard or casual indifference that does NOT apply to, say, crimes of passion.
Gun Violence Archive treats that as a mass shooting. Unless you lived next door to the shooter in question, you were never at risk. The shooting was not random, and it did not happen in a public space.
So why do they categorize it as the same sort of crime as the UNLV shooting? Which was random and did take place in a public space?
Because they have an agenda and want to pump up their numbers.
Ummm...why would you not consider that a mass shooting? Do you not have neighbors? It kind of seems like that really could be anybody considering many people have at least one unhinged neighbor around them.
A mass shooting happens in a public place with random targets, making your average person feel victimized even if they weren't there. It's an act of terror, the murder is ancillary.
In the case of a targeted killing at a private home? That's just murder.
Where does your definition come from? I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just not the same as what I and people I know use. For context, I live in the US.
Definition comes from a position of rationality and not wanting to scare people. :)
I'm confused. Is your position that yours is the most generally-held definition, or that it should be?
My position is that when the average person hears the phrase "mass shooting", the scenario that comes to mind is a shooter, going to a public space, with the intent of killing and injuring as many people as possible.
They don't percieve it as extensions of other crimes that weren't planned or concieved as mass shootings. Bar fights, domestic violence, gang shootings, etc. etc.
The Gun Violence Archive fails to make that distinction because they have an agenda, one which the mass media perpetuates unquestioningly.
Alright, thanks. What I'm wondering is why you believe this is the average person's idea of a mass shooting. Is this based on your gut feeling, or is there any kind of evidence you can point me toward? Like I said, it just doesn't match my personal experience, that's the only reason I ask.
Simple, you watch the reactions... "OMG! That could have been me!" Yes, in an actual mass shooting, it very well could have. Other kinds of crimes? Not so much.
People aren't worried about getting shot in a barfight or a robbery because they know those are rare, they ARE worried about the random shooter events which they are made to believe happen more often than they actually do.
Well that's nice that you made up your own definition...
Your distinction can make sense but not how you are looking at it. Saying murder is ancillary is ridiculous. The killers in those cases are not just wildly shooting in the air and it just so happens to hit people and kill them. Killing them is their intent. You could make an argument to split our random mass shootings vs targeted but there is still a pretty obvious base reason for both of those: ease of access to guns.
Of course, it doesn't do any good to say "their definition is bullshit" if I'm not willing to provide an alternative.
We need to distinguish terrorist level events where one or more nuts with a gun enter a public space with the intention of causing as much mayhem as possible than other forms of gun crimes where armed people do end up shooting, but that was not their stated purpose, it just worked out that way.
Sad to see this so heavily down voted. A ton of emotional reasoning from people in this thread rather than by logic.
A gang shooting, police shooting, robbery, self defense etc are not mass shootings. Period. Its dishonesty to include those statistics.
Or even simple bar fights. How long have we been having bar fights in this country? If you include those then this is absolutely nothing new.
There's an issue with Familicides as well. Those are often in private, but can wipe a household out. Ease of access is what is being discussed largely, as well as the general terrorism of a 'public space' mass shooting.
The worst is the Gun Violence Archive and their "mass shooting index" which gets quoted uncritically in the media, so you get headlines like:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/mass-shootings-days-2023-database-shows/story?id=96609874
"There have been more mass shootings than days in 2023, database shows
The United States has experienced 627 mass shootings so far this year."
The problem is they define "mass shooting" differently from how the public sees a mass shooting.
Their definition is a shooting event where 4 or more people are injured or killed.
So were there 627 events similar to the UNLV situation where a nut with a gun shows up in a public place and starts shooting indescriminately?
No.
Most of the shootings listed on the Gun Violence Archive are situations where there was a party, alcohol or drugs were involved, two parties got into an argument, the argument turned into a fight, and people got shot. That's not how most people define a "mass shooting".
I'd argue for a mass shooting definition of "person(s) arrive at a public location with the sole intention of shooting as many people as possible."
That would rule out the bar fight incidents, or robberies gone bad, or people who go nuts and kill their family in their own house. We should distinguish between psychotic episodes that put the public at risk, vs. normal crime, vs. domestic vioence that does not involve the general public.
So your objection is that they call a mass shooting a mass shooting? What magic number would you like them to use?
No, my objection is they call normal shootings mass shootings with the agenda of making and keeping people scared.
"Normal shootings"
You just made me realize how much I'd love to live in a country where there was no such thing as a "normal shooting".
Gun culture in America is absolutely fucked.
While it's not quite "throw a dart board at a map", it's pretty close.
They're so goddamn brain rotted that they don't even realize how completely fucked that is.
Yes, for example:
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/at-least-3-fatally-shot-in-dallas-home-suspect-wanted/
That's just "crime", not a mass shooting, unless you talk to the gun violence archive.
They want you to be scared. You need to ask why.
The "normal" number of people getting shot is 0.
They want you to sweep gun violence under the rug. You don't need to ask why, it's because gun sales bring in millions in profits for the gun-lobby and the Republicans they purchase.
Unfortunately, no, that's never going to happen. Even in countries that severely limit guns, the number is not 0.
Just this year in England for example:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euston_shooting
Or Germany:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hamburg_shooting
Last year in Australia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieambilla_shootings
It is not and never will be 0.
I didn't claim the number could be 0, I claimed the acceptable number is 0.
Following every one of those shootings you linked, people demanded to know how it happened. Why did they have a gun? Was there warning signs that were missed? Was anybody negligent? How can we stop it from happening again and limiting the damage if it does?
That is the reaction of a society that finds any number above 0 unacceptable. They treat mass shootings as a failure of the system.
Meanwhile in America, they don't bother to ask those questions.
They had a gun because it's trivial to get your hands on semi-automatic rifles and handguns, even if you can't pass a background check, because there are millions of unsecured weapons and no universal background checks.
The police and politicians are deliberately negligent, staunchly opposing red flag laws despite most mass shooters having multiple red flags.
No effort is made to prevent it happening again, because the murder of 20 children is shrugged off as some kind of inevitability, no more preventable than an earthquake or tornado -- much the same as you're doing right now.
Limiting the damage isn't just staunchly opposed by the pro-gun community, many of them fully support making more dangerous weaponry available.
These are not the actions of people who find all gun violence unacceptable and the only reason the Ulvade police are criticized and the Newtown police are given a pass is because the Ulvade police didn't bother to pretend they cared.
To be clear, I'm not arguing against sensible legislation, there are many things that can and should be done starting with an actual analysis if what could or should have prevented any specific shooting, once you realize that "banning guns" is off the table thanks to the second amendment.
An example I like to cite is the guy who shot up Michigan State. He had previously been arrested on a felony gun charge, was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, did his time, did his probation, had a clean background check, bought guns and shot up the school.
Now, we already prevent felons from owning guns. Maybe, just maybe, if someone is arrested on a felony gun charge, that is something that should not be allowed to be pled down to a misdemeanor? Ya think?
Alternately, since we block felons from owning guns, as well as domestic abusers, and people charged with crimes that can land them in prison for more than a year, how about we block people with ANY gun charge from owning a gun? Felony OR misdemeanor? They've already proven they can't be trusted with a gun.
These are the sorts of conversations we need to have but aren't having because people get so caught up in knee jerk actions that can't be taken.
I remember years ago the call was for "common sense gun reform!" and the action was "Did you know, people on the no-fly list can buy guns? How is that common sense??!??" Obama was making that call.
To which my reaction was "How many of these shooters were on the no-fly list? Oh, right, NONE of them? Good jorb!"
And there's no set process for adding or removing people from the no fly list and it, itself, appears to be non-sensical:
https://www.aclu.org/documents/statement-david-c-nelson
I'm sure that reply was fascinating but you've already revealed that you're full of shit, so I'm not going to read it.
Proving, yet again, why you lose the debate.
Whatever helps you self soothe.
So you'll only care about children dying in school when the numbers go up even higher than they already are?
No, a shooting at a school would most likely be a mass shooting, unless it were something like a gang shooting, or a robbery, or some fight that got out of control.
I'm talking about the Gun Violence Archive posting up stories like this:
https://www.koin.com/local/clark-county/vancouver-murder-suicide-suspect-victims-identified-by-clark-county-authorities/
Which, regardless of how many people died, is a murder/suicide, not a mass shooting. The general public was not at risk, the killings weren't random, and did not happen in a public space. In fact, based on the early reporting, may not have even been a shooting.
Maybe it has something to do with it not being any kind of official term and your panties are twisted over how the media writes them up ignoring the pain and suffering from others and building your strawman off semantics?
It's not that the media writes it up in such sensationalist terms, "if it bleeds, it leads" has been journalism 101 since... well since forever.
My beef is the unquestioning repetition. Once you see it, you can't un-see it:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/campus-shooting-2
"nearly a thousand mass shootings to have taken place since the Newtown shooting in 2009"
Newtown is the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. So when they conflate those two things in the same sentence they want you to believe that there have been nearly 1000 shootings as horrific, deadly, senseless and random as the one that claimed the lives of 20 six and seven year olds, and that is absolutely, patently, false.
Why are you like this? So since every mass shooting isn't worse than the worst one they don't matter? Stop making up excuses. I'm don't with you.
No, I'm saying it's not the same class of crime and the only reason the media conflates them is to scare people.
I'll give you an example from my own back yard... one of those "thousand mass shootings since Newtown" was this one:
A couple of brothers in Portland decided to do an illegal weed operation. Oregon allows you to grow, own, smoke, sell, and buy weed, but only for in state use.
3 guys fly in from Texas for the illegal weed buy. Words were had, guns were drawn, both brothers shot and killed, 2/3 Texans shot and killed, 3rd Texan arrested sometime later.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/06/two-portland-brothers-two-marijuana-buyers-die-in-gun-battle-during-attempted-drug-ripoff.html
That is just normal crime. That's not a mass shooting in the same way Sandy Hook was and to breath it in the same breath as Sandy Hook disresepects each of the 20 kids that died there.
Gun Violence Archive? 4 people dead = "mass shooting". No, robbery gone wrong? Sure. Crime? Absolutely. Save the mass shooting shit for when innocent people get killed.
Read very carefully please. It doesn't matter what people call it, children dying to gun violence at school should not be happening, one per incident or 50 per incident is irrelevant, and the only difference between the US and first world nations where it doesn't happen is our gun culture.
Oh, agreed, which makes it WORSE when they are conflated in the "more mass shootings than days of the year" bullshit.
You have no idea how badly you've outed yourself as living in a little bubble where you think it will never happen to you, so you don't care.
Because you'll never be in a relationship with a domestic abuser that executes a house full of people will you? You're the gun owning male, so you get to decide who around you lives or dies.
4 innocent people were killed -- a number that is much more difficult to achieve without a gun -- but you don't want them counted because they knew the gun owner.
You've let the gun lobby turn you into a fucking sociopath.
That doesn't make a murder/suicide a "mass shooting". I'm sorry apporoaching this rationally has you so upset.
Thanks, I love this reply. It's only two sentences, but its so fantastically revealing.
The first sentences calls your very own example a "murder/suicide", a term which is unquestionably more misleading than "mass shooting". The "murder" isn't even plural, despite there being 4 of them.
If you gathered up a million people, told half of them it was a murder/suicide and half of them it was a mass shooting, then asked them to guess the number of people killed, the latter would easily be closer to the truth.
The second sentence just makes it clear you're a fuckstain.
And resorting to ad hominem attacks proves you have nothing to actually say on the topic. Congratulations, you lose.
This isn't high school debate class. Ad hominem means you're not inherently wrong just because you're a fuckwit. You can still be wrong and you can still be a fuckwit.
The thing is, by resorting to childish attacks, you are showing everyone else reading this thread in the future you have no argument. I'm not after you, you're a lost cause. I'm after them.
They're a lost cause too because before I called you a fuckwit, I pointed out that you were only interested in being misleading in your favor, not actually stopping people from being mislead.
You took "ad hominem" as an easy out and as an added bonus, you were misleading about what ad hominem means.
I don't really understand why it fucking matters. It is literally the number one cause of death among young people in this country. This happens nowhere else in the modern world. It's unacceptable.
Stop trying to make the conversation about semantics
It matters because the Gun Violence Archive and the uncritical mass media are inflating the statistic to make people scared so they can push an agenda.
When you read a headline talking about the UNLV shooting and they go "more mass shootings than days in the year!" they are NOT talking about a random nut with a gun showing up in a public place and killing random people like the UNLV shooter.
It's disingenuous to conflate the two together, and I'd argue, disrespectful of the victims of actual mass shootings.
Bullshit. You're attacking it because it's counter to your agenda.
Republicans, right-wing media, the gun lobby and the pro-gun community routinely fearmonger as a way to boost their own profits and power.
Not only do you not care when they do it, you've enthusiastically put yourself and your own family in more danger because of it.
You're hopelessly compromised and your thoughts about how gun violence statistics are about as trustworthy as a cops views on police brutality statistics.
My agenda is "words mean things" and if you're going to throw around a phrase like "mass shooting" you shouldn't have a low hanging fruit definition that does not take intent into consideration.
Here are two scenarios:
You have a party, two groups of people are talking. Words are had, there's an argument. Punches are thrown. One person pulls a gun, causing another person to pull a gun, multiple shots are fired and 5 people are injured.
You have a party, a disgruntled incel was not invited, shows up with a semiautomatic weapon and shoots 4 people before being dragged to the ground.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, both of these are "mass shootings" and if you go down their list of shootings of the year, the vast majority of them fall under category 1, not category 2.
The difference is, in scenario #1, nobody went to the party intending to shoot anyone. You can't say the same for scenario #2.
Lumping them together so you can make people think there are more cases of scenario #2 than there actually are is disingenuous.
If that was actually your agenda, this wouldn't be your position. You want to lower the statistic using semantics and as an added bonus, take away the vocabulary needed to discuss a huge percentage of gun violence.
5 people were shot. Intentional vs accidental, premeditated vs impulse, none of that changes the fact that 5 people were shot and the event was a mass shooting.
Even in your own example that you made as contrived as you needed, 3 innocent people were still shot and swept under the rug.
The organizations you're rallying against are completely open about their definitions, making them far more honest than you're being.
I'm sorry if that hurts your guns feelings.
They aren't being honest because they do not discuss intent and they are intentionally trying to scare people by masking that.
I tell you what, starting 1/1 pay attention to what they're doing. By the end of January I expect you'll be stunned at the number of "mass shootings" that aren't what they're trying to scare people into thinking they are.
I should say too, the Gun Violence Archive isn't alone in this:
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent
"This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting." The number is far higher than most other estimates.
But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government's Civil Rights Data Collection.
We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.
In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn't confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn't meet the government's parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn't respond to our inquiries."
So, again, why do they want to keep everyone so afraid?
You know what would be a pretty interesting way to look at this would be?
Lets take every modern nation in the world (we can bicker about what "modern" means later), and lets create a database similar to the one you're taking issue with for each of those nations.
We can be just as uncharitable (or is it charitable?) in our definition of "mass shooting"... The exact issue you're having here right? You think that these statistics unfairly show the US in a negative light.
Well how about we take a look, by that same criteria, how many "mass shootings" these other nations have. Hell, we can even do it per-capita.
How do you think that would look?
I really don't care what other countries are or are not doing, the fact of the matter is other countries a) don't have a 2nd amendment and b) have universal health care, it's not an apples to apples comparison.
What I'm saying is, within the United States alone, there are organizations with a vested interest in making people afraid that they're going to get shot when the actual risk is extremely low.
That's is I and many others define it...
If you want to scare people, sure, you can define it that way.
No. It just takes some basic intelligence to figure out that mass shootings are shootings of multiple people. Sorry that concept is hard for you to understand.
There is, fundamentally, a difference between a crime that, when reported, makes your average citizen go "OMG! That could have been me!" vs. a crime which, while tragic, does not endanger the general public or people at random.
"Mass shooting" carries with it a sense of reckless disregard or casual indifference that does NOT apply to, say, crimes of passion.
For example:
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/at-least-3-fatally-shot-in-dallas-home-suspect-wanted/
Gun Violence Archive treats that as a mass shooting. Unless you lived next door to the shooter in question, you were never at risk. The shooting was not random, and it did not happen in a public space.
So why do they categorize it as the same sort of crime as the UNLV shooting? Which was random and did take place in a public space?
Because they have an agenda and want to pump up their numbers.
Ummm...why would you not consider that a mass shooting? Do you not have neighbors? It kind of seems like that really could be anybody considering many people have at least one unhinged neighbor around them.
A mass shooting happens in a public place with random targets, making your average person feel victimized even if they weren't there. It's an act of terror, the murder is ancillary.
In the case of a targeted killing at a private home? That's just murder.
Where does your definition come from? I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just not the same as what I and people I know use. For context, I live in the US.
Definition comes from a position of rationality and not wanting to scare people. :)
I'm confused. Is your position that yours is the most generally-held definition, or that it should be?
My position is that when the average person hears the phrase "mass shooting", the scenario that comes to mind is a shooter, going to a public space, with the intent of killing and injuring as many people as possible.
They don't percieve it as extensions of other crimes that weren't planned or concieved as mass shootings. Bar fights, domestic violence, gang shootings, etc. etc.
The Gun Violence Archive fails to make that distinction because they have an agenda, one which the mass media perpetuates unquestioningly.
Alright, thanks. What I'm wondering is why you believe this is the average person's idea of a mass shooting. Is this based on your gut feeling, or is there any kind of evidence you can point me toward? Like I said, it just doesn't match my personal experience, that's the only reason I ask.
Simple, you watch the reactions... "OMG! That could have been me!" Yes, in an actual mass shooting, it very well could have. Other kinds of crimes? Not so much.
People aren't worried about getting shot in a barfight or a robbery because they know those are rare, they ARE worried about the random shooter events which they are made to believe happen more often than they actually do.
Well that's nice that you made up your own definition...
Your distinction can make sense but not how you are looking at it. Saying murder is ancillary is ridiculous. The killers in those cases are not just wildly shooting in the air and it just so happens to hit people and kill them. Killing them is their intent. You could make an argument to split our random mass shootings vs targeted but there is still a pretty obvious base reason for both of those: ease of access to guns.
Of course, it doesn't do any good to say "their definition is bullshit" if I'm not willing to provide an alternative.
We need to distinguish terrorist level events where one or more nuts with a gun enter a public space with the intention of causing as much mayhem as possible than other forms of gun crimes where armed people do end up shooting, but that was not their stated purpose, it just worked out that way.
Sad to see this so heavily down voted. A ton of emotional reasoning from people in this thread rather than by logic.
A gang shooting, police shooting, robbery, self defense etc are not mass shootings. Period. Its dishonesty to include those statistics.
Or even simple bar fights. How long have we been having bar fights in this country? If you include those then this is absolutely nothing new.
There's an issue with Familicides as well. Those are often in private, but can wipe a household out. Ease of access is what is being discussed largely, as well as the general terrorism of a 'public space' mass shooting.