"Stochastic terrorism" is the term I hear to convey this.
But "stochastic" doesn't capture the key element heebie describes: the attacks are random, but their frequency has been artificially increased above the background human norm.
I didn't even realize this was an issue, but the House Republicans are backing off (for now) a bill to loosen regulations on silencers.
4: I was thinking that Frowner meant that the NRA is the stochastic terrorist organization.
Stochastic terrorism has a Wikipedia article (currently being considered for deletion), and amusingly, the first "see also" page linked is Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?
9: Russians have been known to arrange for getting a pope shot when they don't like his message.
I wonder how many people I know that have 35 guns? It's non-zero. I'm guessing three, but can't confirm that.
Like, what's even the point? You can only shoot one of them at a time.
I only know two people without two hands.
A serious hunter would probably have a minimum of three rifles (deer, small game, target practice) and three shotguns (duck, upland, skeet). They would also probably have a pistol to put in their belt because onions are out of fashion.
Can they aim with both eyes at once?
Why do target practice with a rifle other than the one you use to shoot things?
Rim-fire ammo is cheaper, but too small for most anything.
The NRA's like the televangelist movement, isn't it? Your life sucks, God will strike you down, be afraid, send me your money- and when people do so and end up broke and eating catfood in their 60s, the televangelist (who has 4 mansions) says the suckers are to blame because they didn't follow God's word properly.
But why train in a way you won't hunt?
I'm not saying everybody has that many guns. Just that it wouldn't be remarkable.
Because you're not training for hunting, target shooting is an independent pastime?
And in America, it's our God-given right to hunt deer with semi-automatic rifles. Because FREEDOM.
25: You might be. But even if you were just practicing, .22 ammo is like a nickel a round. I don't know exactly what deer-rifle ammo costs, but it is going to be close to or over $.50 a round. Much more, if you are buying at a local store. I don't know how many rounds is the 10,000 hours of shooting, but it's more money than many are willing to spend.
Has there been even one mass shooting in US by an adult (i.e. excluding school shootings) where the killer wasn't already a domestic abuser?
I was wondering about that. Because I'm guessing his girlfriend had a reason for being in a different country.
Has there been even one mass shooting in US by an adult (i.e. excluding school shootings) where the killer wasn't already a domestic abuser?
I was going to speculate irresponsibly, but that's better.
28: it's also strongly correlated with Islamic terrorism.
Zeynep Tufekci, among others, argues that focusing on the murderer creates a media cycle that encourages copycats. I was just as interested as anyone else in what was wrong with the guy, so my searches and reading don't help.
To 28, the crime that should have led to gun law changes from considering the social position of victims was Newtown, where neither the killer nor his mom who bought the gun fit the profile particularly. Similarly the kids who shot up Columbine.
Good social services would help a lot of problems, including maybe this one, no argument there. I guess I'm delusional enough to hope for legislation that makes meaningful ID checks and dealer control possible, and attaches some kind of liability to owning an arsenal or selling heavy weapons.
I'm going to complain about something that's happening on social media and then biff off elsewhere:
I've seen two different authors making the argument that "worst mass shooting" is a racist claim, because it erases all of these past race riots/massacres that meet the technical definition of "mass shooting"*. But the listed incidents bear no resemblance to anything that we call mass shootings: all of them involved many shooters, all of them were clearly terrorism, and they had clear motives that were not anomie, desire for fame, or derangement.
And I'm annoyed because you basically can't make this argument on social media lest someone who doesn't know your bona fides get into a purity contest (e.g. "why are you minimizing the Colfax Massacre?" I'm not, it's a whole other thing that I would argue is diminished by being lumped in with this asshole).
*4 people not inc. shooter, not crime or terrorism; it's a pretty non-rigorous definition, which I think is the core of the problem
33: I'm pretty sure the rate of domestic abuse among Islamic shooters is very similar to that among, uh, unaffiliated ones.
With younger shooters, you won't see domestic abuse (lack of opportunity), but you will see a lot of misogyny.
I never want to hear an NRA twirp lecture anyone about the difference between semi-automatic and automatic ever again. A bump-stock on a semi-auto makes them effectively the same thing.
"Hobbyists."
It occurs to me, of course in vain, that right-wingers like to tell me that power corrupts, especially when that power belongs to a nipped-and-tucked lady from San Francisco, a Jewish fellow from Brooklyn or a black guy from Parts Unknown! Read the Internet! #lamestreammedia
But I've never seen a conservative, even a housebroken, clubbable one like David Brooks, reflect upon, much less argue about, the power--savory, corrupting, overwhelming power--of firearms in the lives and minds of gun owners, politicians and everybody in between.
Something most gun deaths are suicides something, I guess.
I think it's called "American culture."
16: I think what's changed over the last 30-40 years is that gun culture has come completely loose from any connection with hunting and become all about fantasies of killing people (criminals, government agents in black helicopters, etc.). When I was a kid, the guns in the house were tools, not fetish objects. Now it's all about being ready to commit mayhem.
focusing on the murderer creates a media cycle that encourages copycats
I also find this idea intuitively appealing -- media coverage both normalizes this stuff and makes it an appealing source of attention -- but I have no idea how you would verify or falsify it.
40: Yes. The hunters have (or at least the modal hunter has) gone from being a local oaf (in the nice sense) to being a suburban guy recapturing what he imagines he lost.
NRA + Congress + SCOTUS: sandbox MMO developers
Normal people: free-to-play players
Gun hoarders: pay-to-win players
35: I had the exact same frustration to probably the same article at The Root and had the exact same common sense not to quibble about it elsewhere.
42: With the imagined loss being largely about self-sufficiency and autonomy and power, and replaced in pathological form with "I may have to live with these assholes, but at least I know I could kill them if I needed to." You can't embrace being a middle class drone, so you avoid that by imagining yourself to be the capable and resourceful one who will survive when it all goes wrong.
42. The hunters I know are all blue-collar local guys. They aren't "local oafs" or nostalgic suburbanites.
Certainly there was a rural white-collar hunting contingent when I was growing up. They had nicer stuff and often dogs, but still not so many guns as today.
OT: I find this cheering. The guy who started "United the Right" is not just guilty of assault but also (allegedly) of perjury.
34, 41
focusing on the murderer creates a media cycle that encourages copycats
Hear this a lot and find it maddening. I see a lot of people complaining about the media making these people famous, or reporting on the incident while studiously avoiding any discussion of the shooter themselves, and it seems like burying their head in the sand. It's not that it's wrong, exactly - sure, that must have some influence, less influence on any individual shooting than the choices made by the shooter that day and more influence than fluoride in the water and economic anxiety - but it can't be THE reason. American media is not significantly more sensationalist or explicit than that of other countries, or of American media in most of its history (IANASociologist but the mainstream decorum of early TV, the creation of a "mainstream", was the exception to the rule IMO).
And yet, America has a hell of a lot more attacks like this. Hmmm, maybe the media is a relatively minor influence, compared to other things. I wonder what it could be.
Mental health care is a similar issue. I'm sure every man on the street or anonymous Internet commenter who blames a lack of mental health care for attacks like this would agree with me about every relevant issue except gun control itself. Fine, who cares. But when you look at actual politicians and advocacy groups, a lot of pro-Second-Amendment forces are very anti-any-meaningful-support-for-any-health-care. Not Sanders or a certain other rural Democrats, but 90 percent of them. Fuck them.
The phrase you're looking for is "leaderless resistance", a big deal among 80s/90s militia/gun nut types.
But there is a clear leadership, with a clear (profit based) agenda.
American media is not significantly more sensationalist or explicit than that of other countries
I would very much dispute this. To pick an arbitrary example, the whole live police chase genre of news footage is as far as I know a uniquely American phenomenon.
More broadly, American media pushes the "Oh my God there's so much crime and you're going to die" thing harder than anywhere else I've watched TV.
You can't embrace being a middle class drone, so you avoid that by imagining yourself to be the capable and resourceful one who will survive when it all goes wrong.
This is more or less the definition of non-1% Republicans today, no? I guess white evangelicals can't embrace being worldly drones, so they avoid that by being godly imagining themselves the righteous ones who will be Raptured when it all goes wrong.
55: Especially local TV news. I hardly ever see it anymore, but when I do, it's jaw-dropping. Christ, the promos alone are enough to convince you that society has broken down.
But Wendy Bell makes it all better by saying something nice to a local boy who is busing tables.
America has a hell of a lot more attacks like this. Hmmm, maybe the media is a relatively minor influence, compared to other things. I wonder what it could be.
You're obviously aiming at "it's the guns" and clearly it is the guns, if you took the guns away then there wouldn't be mass shootings, but it can't be just the guns, because there were millions of guns in the 1980s and far fewer mass shootings. Mass shootings really have taken off massively in the last 30 years. No one's sure why but media's possible; copycat suicide waves are a media-transmitted disease and it's not incredible that mass shootings, which get far more publicity than normal suicides and are generally concluded by the shooter killing himself, might work the same way.
There were guns in the 80s, but there weren't guns-guns. The whole idea of mass ownership of semi-automatic rifles with high capacity magazines and after-market sellers of bump-mods and the like is all younger than I am.
54, 55: Eh, I shouldn't speak too strongly about other the media environments. But, I know there's a substantial right-wing fringe in France, and e.g. Rupert Murdoch and Berlusconi are infamous for their tabloids. Are they not actually as bad as they seem? Are they bad, but in different ways from the American media that are relevant here?
The tabloids are bad, sure. But it's more anti-immigrant hysteria than murder fetishisation, for the most part. Possibly because there's less murder to fetishise.
To give another example, in the wake of the Manchester attacks, the US media published far more graphic photos than the UK press* did.
* If you exclude Mail Online, which legally considers itself a US publication.
Is that why the Mail Online doesn't have actual nipples like the Mail On Paper?
60. When were those innovations introduced? I don't recall hearing about "bump mods" until this shooting. I know I've heard about high-capacity magazines for a while, but again, not sure how long.
ISTM that one really has to be talking in terms of TV on this, not print. Back when I sometimes watched German TV, I never felt like Saarbruecken had its own Van Amberg. Saarlaendiche Rundfunk is a lot more like PBS, which is what you'd expect from a public system.
I've really never tried watching British TV: do Glasgow or Bristol have sensationalist local TV news?
Anyway, I think part of the increase in mass shootings is definitely related to some kind of social transmission, but I don't think you figure that is all media-driven transmission. The NRA has transformed itself from an organization largely focused on hunting and hunters to a manufacturer guilt/political lobbying body that pretends to be what it was formerly. This means that when somebody says "we want to regular semiautomatic rifles" the NRA can act like they are thinking of an older model .308 (which would have a very small magazine because there are rules about how many rounds your gun can hold if you are hunting deer) and run ads for the Bushmaster Penis Extension.
64: I hadn't either heard of it either. At first I thought it was some homebrew thing, but now I see it is a company.
You'd think the internet would have a readily accessible clip of Van Amburg's famous severed-penis-found-down-at-the-railroad-tracks story, but it's not coming up for me.
The more I think about the bump mod, the more I think that company could be* sued into non-existence. That can't be an accurate way to shoot, even compared to a standard automatic. Aside from blowing out the side of an abandoned car, I don't see how it could be used for anything except indiscriminate fire at a large mass of people.
* should be also, but that's a lower bar.
|| I'm pretty impressed with @MobyDickatSea. The raw material is great, sure, but the bot composing tweets exercises excellent curation skills. I, for one, welcome our new robot Moby overlord. |>
6: re silencers -- the argument for silencers is that they will increase the life expectancy of people in bad neighborhoods (the ones that don't get shot) by allowing them to sleep better (see above).
I can't tell if 71 is joking or repeating an actual NRA argument.
I've really never tried watching British TV: do Glasgow or Bristol have sensationalist local TV news?
Not nearly on the same scale. But then Glasgow and Bristol don't really have their own TV news at all. You get the national news on TV and then you get a short regional news bulletin afterwards, but this won't be for Glasgow alone, it'll be for the whole of Scotland.
IMO, compared with the Canadian media there is a lot less focus on the victims and a lot more on the killer themselves (himself, really). Not yet with the five injured in Edmonton (got overtaken by the LV news I suspect); but the guy who killed an on-duty military guy and then got into Parliament. I've seen stories about the military guy and the hard time the security officer has had after he killed the shooter but don't remember any on the shooter.
No time but yes, it's not solely the content of the reporting but the way it amplifies long standing particular American fantasies. The mass shooter is a stock character descended from other well-known stock gunslingers, blah blah blah. The audience here is very primed to find them fascinating and important. And then, of course, the gun sales.
ISTM that one really has to be talking in terms of TV on this, not print.
Primarily, yes. US TV news is a massive culture shock for foreigners, probably much the same way UK tabloids would be.
Also, I should acknowledge that while you arguably don't see as much murder fetishisation in the UK press up to the point of conviction (probably only because of the contempt rules), you do get a lot of it post-conviction. See Myra Hindley/Ian Brady, Fred West etc.
US TV news is a massive culture shock for foreigners
It really is. It's like a comic parody of itself. I imagine Boris Johnson has much the same effect on foreigners; they stand there thinking "this is a wind-up, surely, I mean we obviously know that some Brits are inept, blustering, pompous, arrogant, and xenophobic, but we honestly didn't think any of them were that inept, blustering, pompous, arrogant, and xenophobic."
Only old people and assholes watch TV news here.
Thirding 77. Even the national news really socks me with its awfulness she I see it.
Thirding 77. Even the national news really socks me with its awfulness she I see it.
51. Here is the article Tufekci cites. She has statements along simlar lines from law enforcement people, here.
As others have said, US TV news, both the unrelenting 24-hr feeds and the screaming local stations, are different from the rest of the world's TV as far as I know. I have heard fairly alarming things about segments on Russian TV, but haven't explored. The Russian-language news I've seen in other countries is comparable to low-grade commercial French or Mexican news, a little shouty and with shiny suits, but nothing compared to Fox and time-limited-- that is, one news hour. Maybe other authoritarian third-world countries have something comparable-- what's Egyptian or Chechen television like?
Mental health
Red herring. Half of people recieving treatment for mental illness are women. Some of them kill one or two family members after being clearly delusional to any observer. None of them keep up a sustained facade of functionality and kill a bunch of strangers.
56: Yes.
64: I think starting from late 70s or early 80s and accelerating massively after the Clinton-era assault weapons controls expired. But that's just my impressions; I haven't followed closely.
I finally realized that when Fox and CNN put "Breaking news" at the bottom of the screen for every stupid little item they talk about, they're not describing the stories, they're bragging about what they're doing to the media ecosystem.
86: Is Twitter now "breaking news" and infecting people who couldn't stomach TV news with the same type and levels of hysteria?
87 Perhaps. I don't watch TV news but I am on twitter quite a bit.
Russian state TV has weird Fox-ish talk segments, but I don't know if it also whips up fear in people about their own communities, or sticks more to the international scene.
"None of them keep up a sustained facade of functionality and kill a bunch of strangers."
Not a bunch of strangers all at once, no. But one at a time, yes. Is this a useful distinction to draw?
It's also worth nothing that men who kill just their family members then themselves are legion.
Not as a life tip, but just to point out that killing a bunch of strangers is unusual even for men who decide to kill people.
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/915632423500701698
Heh. Apparently it was reported that Tillerson called Trump a moron and said he was thinking of resigning. Tillerson refuted only half of that.
I guess I'm trying to say don't stigmatize the mentally ill, many of whom are harmless. Nobody should be able to buy a platoon's worth of missiles or machine guns, regardless of whether or not they're in therapy.
If there's a group to define, "men" is an easy cut to make. Not a practical suggestion, but I think honestly neither is mentally ill.
My wish for (I think) practically realizable laws in a US not too different from this one is a) strict ID checks of buyer and seller, so irresponsible sellers get identified and shut down, with a good tracking database of guns, and b) financial liability for manufacturers and sellers, with also steep insurance penalties for individuals owning an arsenal.
||
Some real bullshit recently dropped at work. Beyond the usual. Like of the stealing oy my original observations and research type. It may be salvageable but it may not. This along with the buying of potentially looted heritage materials over my express objections is just too much. I've actually begun writing my expose and thinking of shopping it around. I know it will come off as so much sour grapes and there's a bit of truth to that but I don't give a flying fuck. I'm close to done here. Thinking of when would be a good time for it to drop too for maximum effect, like maybe a week or two after the grand opening? Something like that. Fuck this shit. I'm so close to done.
This may be it for me though, I've no idea what I would do after this or where I would go. It's a good thing I've saved up a bit.
|>
Is the Gulf standoff just festering with no resolution? USians like me have totally taken their eye off it.
93 In a number of ways it's gotten worse.
Both sides continue to funnel money to stupid Western think-tanks. The quartet recently funded a bogus 'dissident' Qatari conference in London, another soon to follow in Paris. The current Emir's popularity is through the roof, among both nationals and expats. Yet KSA has taken some sad-sack great-grandson of a once Emir who's been living in KSA for 40 years and propped him up as a rival claimant to the throne. Reliable reports have it that he'd been threatened with confiscation of all his property. This flies right in the face of the quartet's demand that Qatar refrain from meddling in their domestic politics (this is a complaint about al-Jazeera actually). They keep doubling down and I don't think it's going to end anytime soon. I read some stories that they were actually thinking of invading at the beginning of the crisis but that Trump quashed but I don't believe it because I mean, c'mon. Trump?
The only good personal news is that I've determined that I can go visit the gf, only I have to go via Oman and not link the tickets. Also not use my local credit cards for anything there. But it is possible for Western expats.
It will have to be only Omanism if it doesn't work out.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin reportedly have forged a "suicide pact" in which all three members of President Trump's Cabinet would leave if one of them became a target of the president.
Only old people and assholes watch TV news here.
True, but there are a lot of them. AFAIK local TV news still has by far the largest audience of any news medium in the US.
Right. The baseline level of assholes is high enough that the eldering of the baby boom was enough to elect Asshole Prime.
Just dropping in to reup 35: I'm now seeing it meme- and video-fied, complete with straight-up equating LV with Wounded Knee. Honestly, this is a category error on par with asking why BLM is mad at cops killing black people but not black criminals killing black people. The US Army committed a war crime against Native Americans. White supremacists committed mass terror against African Americans. Those stories are utterly unrelated to this one evil asshole.