• tygerprints@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Meh, leave it to Russia to bungle the whole concept of school shootings. If less than two kids get killed, that’s just a normal school day here in America. And really what is so tragic about kids getting shot? Life is best to those who live the least of it.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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        10 months ago

        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.

        • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          So your objection is that they call a mass shooting a mass shooting? What magic number would you like them to use?

          • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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            10 months ago

            No, my objection is they call normal shootings mass shootings with the agenda of making and keeping people scared.

            • Nudding@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              You don’t think the nra telling people to be scared and that they need a gun to feel safe is more of the issue?

              • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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                10 months ago

                Not really, because the vast, vast, number of gun owners don’t use them.

                Let me give you some perspective…

                We don’t REALLY know, but the best estimate is there are around 474 MILLION guns in the United States.

                https://www.thetrace.org/2023/03/guns-america-data-atf-total/

                In 2021, 48,830 people died from gun injuries.

                https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

                54% of those were suicides. So 22,462 murders or accidents.

                Gun laws are never going to prevent suicides, only national mental health care can do that. So looking at the murders and accidents:

                22,462 / 474,000,000? 0.0000473878

                That’s not a crisis, it’s a rounding error. And, yes, each one of those 22,000 deaths individually is a tragedy, but that also means 473,978,000 guns sat around collecting dust.

                • Nudding@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  In 2021, 48,830 people died from gun injuries.

                  Jesus christ… Let’s compare to other developed nations, wanna do per capita or total?