200 Mass shootings in 127 Days

[temporal1]

Once there are 200 intentional SUV or baseball bat killings in a few month's time, I can imagine someone starting a thread about that.
But hey, in the meanwhile, we have all sorts of threads about all sorts of things here on MN - some are unique one-time happenings. So anybody can write about anything they wish. There is no threshhold of how many times something needs to happen before a thread can be started.

So if someone wants to call attention to a different form of killings, they are welcome to do so.

Or, update an existing related topic:

Ernie / Auto Accident Fatalities
viewtopic.php?t=2204

For a long time it has bothered me that so many people die in accidents related to autos.

https://www.cars.com/articles/are-the-o ... 682154567/
"The individual American driver’s odds of dying as a result of an injury sustained in an automobile crash (which include pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists involved in car crashes) come out to about 1 in 77."

It seems to me that if the Lord tarries another 100-200 years, future generations will look back on the past century and wonder how in the world humans (and especially Christians) could be so concerned about disease and abortion and so unconcerned about auto related fatalities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_veh ... S._by_year

If we could eliminate drunk driving and driving to fast for the conditions, we could reduce fatalities by about 2/3. I think Christians should be helping to reduce these kinds of accidents.

But this still leaves another 1/3 that is mostly the price of "progress" and "being in a hurry". We are not content to drive at 30 MPH which would greatly reduce the number of fatalities. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-limit-won ... aster.html
Our individualistic mindset and "hurry" doesn't allow us to use/invest more in bus and train travel which are considerably safer.

I wrote about this topic on MennoDiscuss some years ago and thought maybe it is time to discuss this again.

The fact these 2 murderous incidents happened on the same day in Texas, one immediately picked up (for high political value) the other, not, was disturbing. And SOP.

On this forum, members could attempt to not be drawn into political narratives, and avoid labeling others as ignorant, uncaring, etc.
No healthy person wants violence, esp not deadly violence against the defenseless. That should be beyond dispute. If it’s not, try to figure out who is influencing your opinions. And why.

There are many EXISTING laws against murder, and many EXISTING gun laws.
Over+over, ignored by criminals, often, REPEAT criminals.

More laws will further tax and inhibit the law-abiding. What’s the point? “Feel good” laws?
Feeling good is great. Lots of folks want more than that.

(My impression is) vehicular mass murders, knife attacks, etc., are increasing.
Vehicular suicides might be increasing, too.

Violence via motor vehicles is not the mainstream hot topic gun control is.

Ernie:
.. It is one thing to shoot or club someone in the back 40 when no one else is watching. ..

There is no shortage of hidden crime.
Lots of crime is committed, evidently, with desire to be high-profile.

[Dan Z]

It’s telling that some of you are focused on “shootings” yet remain strangely silent about the other mass killing this week, that is, one with an SUV that killed half a dozen people.

Or the lunatic running around Chicago right now beating strangers (including a young mother with a baby) with a baseball bat.

The problem is not guns, or SUVs, or baseball bats.

Umm...the OP was about "Mass Shootings"

Right. So why the emphasis on that, instead of focusing on mass killings? I don't think the method by which someone is killed is particularly important.

Aside from what Ernie said about the sheer volume of gun-related killings, there is also the fact that mass shootings as a category are more trackable - and thus can show us trends.

For example, the oft-cited Gun Violence Archive meticulously tracks mass shootings and gun death in general. Their data show:

• 2023 is on a record pace for mass shootings - that should concern us all!
• The number of total gun deaths in the US has risen 33% in the post-COVID era (2020-2022) over the years prior to COVID (2016-2018).
• The number of mass shootings per year has risen even more - 83% between the pre-COVID years and the post-Covid years!

This increase is alarmingly significant...and may provide hints as to what is going on societally (I'd be interested in hearing some serious thoughts on why this is happening).

In any case, I don't think we can talk about this trend without considering the two factors involved: people and guns. Frustratingly, partisans only seem to want to focus on one of these two aspects (liberals seem to focus on guns and gun control, while conservatives seem to focus on people and culture).

Personally, I think the problem is unstable people with easy access to guns. I know why there are too many guns. So, the question is, "Why the sudden increase in personal instability?"

[Ernie]

Personally, I think the problem is unstable people with easy access to too many guns. The question is "why the sudden increase in personal instability?

I'll suggest a few things...

-Easy access to news perspectives and opinions without those pundits needing to give account for the ideas they floated. Pundits are getting much bolder.
-Virtual reality instead of face-to-face reality (that was sped up during the pandemic)
-Massive cultural revolution
-Substance abuse
-People feeling fearful, bullied, belittled, uncared for, entitled, angry, wrathful, full of malice.
-Violent games
-Less Judeo-Christian framework.

[Ken]

Personally, I think the problem is unstable people with easy access to too many guns. The question is "why the sudden increase in personal instability?

I'll suggest a few things...

-Easy access to news perspectives and opinions without those pundits needing to give account for the ideas they floated. Pundits are getting much bolder.
-Virtual reality instead of face-to-face reality (that was sped up during the pandemic)
-Massive cultural revolution
-Substance abuse
-People feeling fearful, bullied, belittled, uncared for, entitled, angry, wrathful, full of malice.
-Violent games
-Less Judeo-Christian framework.

Also politics is instilling fear in people. Take a look at the following graph which tracks coverage of crime on FOX News. Did crime in the US magically drop in half after the first week of November 2022? What happened during the first week of November that caused FOX News coverage of crime to steadily rise up to that point and then drop by half? Any guesses?

[ken_sylvania]

Personally, I think the problem is unstable people with easy access to too many guns. The question is "why the sudden increase in personal instability?

I'll suggest a few things...

-Easy access to news perspectives and opinions without those pundits needing to give account for the ideas they floated. Pundits are getting much bolder.
-Virtual reality instead of face-to-face reality (that was sped up during the pandemic)
-Massive cultural revolution
-Substance abuse
-People feeling fearful, bullied, belittled, uncared for, entitled, angry, wrathful, full of malice.
-Violent games
-Less Judeo-Christian framework.

Also politics is instilling fear in people. Take a look at the following graph which tracks coverage of crime on FOX News. Did crime in the US magically drop in half after the first week of November 2022? What happened during the first week of November that caused FOX News coverage of crime to steadily rise up to that point and then drop by half? Any guesses?

Sure I can guess. There was an election and FOX News had so much to say about the election that they had no time to talk about crime.

[Szdfan]

Personally, I think the problem is unstable people with easy access to too many guns. The question is "why the sudden increase in personal instability?

I think alienation and disconnect from other people as well as healthy, robust communities is a huge cause. The isolation caused by Covid exasperated these tendencies that were already trending in our culture.

[Dan Z]

Personally, I think the problem is unstable people with easy access to too many guns. The question is "why the sudden increase in personal instability?

I'll suggest a few things...

-Easy access to news perspectives and opinions without those pundits needing to give account for the ideas they floated. Pundits are getting much bolder.
-Virtual reality instead of face-to-face reality (that was sped up during the pandemic)
-Massive cultural revolution
-Substance abuse
-People feeling fearful, bullied, belittled, uncared for, entitled, angry, wrathful, full of malice.
-Violent games
-Less Judeo-Christian framework.

Also politics is instilling fear in people. Take a look at the following graph which tracks coverage of crime on FOX News. Did crime in the US magically drop in half after the first week of November 2022? What happened during the first week of November that caused FOX News coverage of crime to steadily rise up to that point and then drop by half? Any guesses?

I do suspect political coverage is stoking the flame here - but I doubt people are driven to killing as a result of mainstream media sources one way or the other. Going on a killing spree is a wildly radical step in anyone's life. The deep dysfunction or radicalization to get someone to that moment must be profound.

To jump on what SZDFan and Ernie have said - I think of isolation, and the fracturing of relationships is at work here, perhaps, as ken noted, exacerbated by an inability for some to cope with the proliferation of unhelpful information sources. And then if a destabilized person has easy access to a firearm...

[temporal1]

GaryK and Ernie’s views are relevant to this topic:

.. Because of this, no one ever needs to personally answer for the bad policies that they enact. .. ..
.. Rarely if ever does a politician say, "I really messed up bad. I am sorry."
or "I really let the country down while I was in power and I am going to step out and let someone else lead instead."

When would you say society had the design that you would idealize them getting back to?

Whenever it was common for most children to have both undivorced parents in the home
and whenever it was a shame to have sex outside of marriage
and whenever church was a very important entity in communities.

Let every policy and policy maker that contributed to widespread FATHERLESSNESS as the cultural norm be identified, apologized for, walked back, the incompetent and corrupt stepping down - in humility and voluntarily.

FATHERLESSNESS is likely #1 contributing factor for ALL these ills: Violence, drug abuse, mental instability+anguish, lack of boundaries, hopelessness .. i’m not sure there’s a valid historical comparison on any continent.

All caused by well-meaning policies based on the most humane godless reasoning political ideologues could conjur up.
“Smarter than god” stuff.

[Josh]

To jump on what SZDFan and Ernie have said - I think of isolation, and the fracturing of relationships is at work here, perhaps, as ken noted, exacerbated by an inability for some to cope with the proliferation of unhelpful information sources. And then if a destabilized person has easy access to a firearm...

Yet if we look 50 or 100 or 150 years ago, there was a proliferation of unhelpful information sources and plenty of access to firearms, including by unstable people. So those aren’t really contributing factors at all.

[Jazman]

Personally, I think the problem is unstable people with easy access to too many guns. The question is "why the sudden increase in personal instability?

I'll suggest a few things...

-Easy access to news perspectives and opinions without those pundits needing to give account for the ideas they floated. Pundits are getting much bolder.
-Virtual reality instead of face-to-face reality (that was sped up during the pandemic)
-Massive cultural revolution
-Substance abuse
-People feeling fearful, bullied, belittled, uncared for, entitled, angry, wrathful, full of malice.
-Violent games
-Less Judeo-Christian framework.

I think those are all factors, but I would add part of Dan's to the list, "easy access..." I think he's right about the partisans, but there's a whole lot more of us in the middle (myself included) who really do think about and care about the both/ands involved.