In other news
It's the ultimate cliché, to observe how resigned we have become to mass shootings in America. Everybody knows that we tune it out as quickly as possible. But as tired a story as our indifference has become, it bears repeating today.
Yesterday some nut opened fire at the Super Bowl victory parade, the ultimate symbol of modern America. And where is the story played on our media?
Last night, on ESPN Sports Center, they spent a good eight to 10 minutes on the highlights of a couple of routine NBA games before they got around to talking about it.
Right now on The New York Times website, less than 18 hours after it happened, it's the sixth story. Sixth! Ahead of it are three Gaza and two Trump, just like yesterday and just like tomorrow.
Twenty-two people were shot, literally half of them children between ages 6 and 15. One person has died.
This crime ranks right up there with the Boston Marathon bombing, but we don't care that much any more. Getting hit by machine gun fire at a party is just a part of life here in the greatest country in the world. For shame.
Spare me your spiel about your constitutional right to have machine guns. Or your learned lecture about what constitutes a machine gun. Or all your legal expertise about "carry."
What is happening with guns in the United States is pure evil. If you can't see that, then you are evil, too.
It will take 50 years to make the country safe from machine guns. But we have to start sometime. Now would be perfectly good.
UPDATE, 8:50 a.m.: Here it the Times print edition. All you get on the front page is a photo below the fold.
The best remark that we hear is that people have the right to quasi-military weapons so they can fight "tyranny."
ReplyDeleteWhat weapons do we fight the tyranny of the minority with? A plurality of voters want this to stop, and want assault weapons off the shelves, but the obstructionist suicide-pact set won't budge even on common sense stuff that >80% want like universal background checks and red-flag laws.
Until we fix that, we can't fix a whole lot of things that need fixing.
We have a universal background check requirement and a red-flag law in Oregon.
DeleteShooters didn’t fit the narrative, memory hole commences.
ReplyDeleteFar more people are shot by gang violence than nut cases, but you are correct this does not fit the narrative so ignored. And as you point out, a nut case is also ignored for the same reason. And please no mention of the millions of people on useless SSRIs that cause psychosis and suicidal thoughts.
DeleteUmm, yeah. Ask Ann Coulter why we're not diving into this conversation: the shooters were gang members. Media condemning violence among black people is realistically a complex topic and a can of worms the media and political class refuse to address. Every single time the shooter is not a white man the media drops the story. The reasons behind this are multifaceted: talking about black folks is likely to lead to resentment and racism toward black folks, furthering stigmas, prejudice, etc. But another equal part is to save face, because plenty of Progressives have written off gang culture as some sort of "authentic" black culture that can't be criticized and certainly not penalized or deliberately persecuted by the law - so we have this crazy reverence for black gang violence where liberals can't talk about it.
ReplyDeleteAnd what's the solution to gang violence really look like? Not good. At best, it's multiple generations of social engineering, which is awful on multiple fronts (like when Canada tried to social engineer native people into white culture), this will absolutely involve separating families and many types of horrors. Or, we do what El Salvador just did and round up and arrest ALL of the gang members, which is a totalitarian nightmare in a different manner given the racial components involved. We'd be talking about concentration camps to house significant portions of the black community, as 1/3rd of black men have a felony already. No one wants wide spread social engineering, no one wants concentration camps, so it's best to just ignore the problem.
Meanwhile, gang violence radically outweighs mass shootings - yet we can't talk about it.
The rate of gun violence for working class white folks in most of America is on par with Europe. The average working American is more likely to use a firearm for suicide than to harm a family member or stranger. In Oregon the firearm homicide rate for white folks is under 0.5 per 100,000, and if you excluded tweakers and self defense it would probably drop to 0.2 - the same as Finland and Australia.
The “we need to have an uncomfortable conversation” crowd doesn’t want to have uncomfortable conversations.
DeleteOuch
DeletePlease disarm all the criminals first!
ReplyDeleteIt's not gonna work like that, friend. We've tried compromise. We've tried meeting more than halfway.
DeleteYou're not interested.
That's cool.
I'm not interested anymore either.
See you at the ballot box.
Bean,
DeletePlease disarm the gangs first.
Nope. There is no first or second. There's only all or nothing. Suggesting we let white dudes keep shooting up country concerts and first grade classrooms while we crack down in brown people is a non-starter.
DeleteIt's going to take a while. I'm patient.
I wonder what happened to the intelligence unit in the Portland police department that kept track of the “gangs” in the area
DeleteHow long was the Stephen Paddock shooting headline in the news?
ReplyDeleteIt had a *little* stick, but not much, considering how massive it was.
I gotta say, post teamsters mob $, LV is one of the angriest most god awful hell holes I’ve had the displeasure to pass thru.
People drive fast in UT (they have god on their side?) & AZ, but LV hillbillying along is a whole other experience before you even get out of the car with little improvement if you’re not into desert weather (Tucson at least has monsoon/a little rain & more elevation to have nights be nice?) or gambling.
Say what you will about Sheriff Joe-land/the worst of the ex military San Diego, San Bernardino, Orange & Phoenix/Maricopa counties & HOAs, LV I dread more than even those places.
Idk what to tell ya?
Weapons / military industrial & info/media are the things we still have major competitive advantage (or at least established legacy largesse?) producing over other countries?
Mexico & Canada can make all the gun laws they want, there’re just so many they still get in.
Idk, Be nice for something positive to happen on this issue, but at the same time, I’m suspicious of liberals hosing their own left flank making them take up this issue in ways that are incredibly unpopular.
So, I hear a lot of noise on this one, but similar to trying to take on police unions directly (plenty of cops are married to teachers), I have practical doubts?
Just look close to home in Woodburn where last week an 11-year shot another juvenile after a fight at a convenience store.
ReplyDeleteGosh, maybe protecting the rights of minors to carry military weapons wasn’t such a good idea? Who could have seen it coming?
ReplyDeletehttps://open.substack.com/pub/wonkette/p/missouri-republicans-gun-toting-children
> some nut opened fire
ReplyDeleteUpdate: Two unidentified juveniles. Probably using giggle switches on their handguns like that esteemed scholar in St John's who was arrested a couple weeks ago for shooting up his own apartment.
Maybe their parents will get dragged into it like Jennifer Crumbley in Michigan? I'm thinking it's unlikely.