https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/live-blog/rcna122436
Follow NBC News' coverage for live updates and developments about the shootings in Lewiston, Maine, that killed at least 18 people.
Fuck all the people who saw the signs but did nothing.
This could have been avoided.
Yeah, some common sense gun laws would have helped. People hearing voices should not have guns in their possession.
The moment he threatened a military base, he should have been locked up and getting treatment.
Already a law in Maine. They have a yellow flag law to stop this. We can’t go around knocking on every gun owner’s door and asking g if they hear voices.
https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/34-B/title34-Bsec3862-A.html
The thing is, he was a prime candidate to fall under the Yellow Flag law with the threats he made.
The police didn't do their job and invoke it.
The problem was, when he made the threats, he was in New York. He was committed for 2 weeks in New York. Maine's yellow flag law had no jurisdiction.
New York has a red flag law, but his home and guns were in Maine.
We solve this problem with a FEDERAL Red Flag law.
Hey dude I hope you're doing good! I'm just popping in to add in here:
It is actually already a federal law that people who were IVC'd in any state have that reported into NICs and have their guns confiscated. It isn't "red flag laws" specifically which seek to broaden the law we already have (depending on state, with a burden of proof as low as "he said she said" in some cases, always at a secret hearing you aren't allowed to even know about much less defend yourself, and then they may return them 1yr later when you finally do get your day in court if you can prove the negative.)
So, we don't have a red flag law nationally, but we do have 18 U.S.C. § 922(d), [which states:] it is unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person “has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution.”
Seems a lot of people (on and off lemmy) aren't aware of this law (which, in this case, would have prevented this had the beaurocrats done their jobs), just figured I'd let y'all know.
That's the problem... the word "adjudicated". Unless it goes through a judge, the guns are NOT confiscated and it does not show up on a background check.
So the Maine shooter was held, it didn't go through a judge, was not "adjudicated".
Same for Jacksonville:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Jacksonville_shooting
"In 2017, he was the subject of a Baker Act call, used to place persons under involuntary detainment for mental health examination for up to 72 hours.[6]"
Same for Allen, Texas:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Allen,_Texas_mall_shooting
"Garcia was then enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 2008, but he never completed basic training: he was terminated after three months due to mental health concerns.[39][40] Because this was an administrative separation, rather than a punitive discharge, Garcia's termination by the Army would not show up on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.[41]"
Ah, I see. To me that isn't necessarily a bad thing though, to require some proof before removal of one's rights. If anyone can just say "my ex said X" then what is stopping people from abusing that? Right wingers calling it in on trans people who are trying to protect themselves from right wing violence for instance, or an abusive ex having his ex-wife's guns taken so he can go hurt her, something like that. I personally believe it should require at least some proof that would hold up in court. I'm also not a huge fan of the whole "Take the guns first, due process second" approach that Trump supported with the red flag law secret hearings business, I think that if someone is making verifiable threats, you should be able to charge them with that in a normal, non-secret hearing, leading to the adjucated IVC, removal of rights, flagged in NICs, etc.
I think there is a way that we could all agree on, gun rights supporters and realistic gun control supporters alike (the no-guns crowd aside). Something like actually sending these people through a judge in a timely manner oughta at least be a step in the right direction.
Because in New York he was reported from a military base and they removed him from the base. They had no knowledge of what he may or may not have had in Maine.
All laws depend on cops to take initiative. That's why they are called "Law Enforcement" lmao.
Nnnooo, it’s still a failure of the cops. The law, as it is, is a good law. The problem here, again, is that the cops didn’t do their jobs.
Edit: Sometimes a law is poorly written so law enforcement can’t do what’s necessary to enforce it or the law doesn’t really address a problem. That’s not what happened here; the cops simply chose not to enforce the law, and that’s entirely on them.
That doesn’t make much sense. That’s not how many laws are enforced. What do you even mean by “initiative”? Weird how they could stop my friend on the street, shove their hands in his pockets to search him for “drugs” (cannabis) and give him a ticket for loitering but when some guy tells someone he wants to shoot up a military base, no problem.
Or they can pull us over repeatedly as teens and say “where are you going tonight? Any drugs in the car? Can I search your car?” Those were failed laws but not due to “initiative”.
Except HE reported having heard voices and threatened to shoot up a military base. No knocking required, the police knew and did nothing
The police don’t do shit when they hear children screaming and dying. They’re not gonna do shit about this.
Here's the scariest Supreme Court decision you'll read today:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525280/
"In a 7–2 opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that due process principles did not create a constitutional right to police protection, despite the existence of a court-issued restraining order."
No, but you can ask anyone that checks in to a ward saying their hearing voices if they have guns.
Sounds foolproof. People being involuntarily committed never lie to the people locking them up!
Too bad there's no way to find out if they have guns like, for example, looking to see if they have guns. But that would be impossible.
We could enact a law that would have people take a yearly gun safety course which includes a psychological assessment to determine their fitness for gun ownership. Failure to comply would start a process for gun confiscation by the state. Failure to provide proof of completion would result in a $10,000 fine and confiscation of guns on the person and on their property.
Yeah here's me not wanting a gun for myself because I sleep walk. How is it that people with dangerous mental disorders can just get whatever they want?
Nah, this blood, as with almost all mass shootings, is completely on the 2A people as far as I'm concerned.
Australia cleaned up their act in response to mass tragedy. Our society just isn't a society.
That would require some degree of cooperation and sacrifice. Modern Americans just don't have those qualities in us.
This is what our people have chosen to be.
yep i realized this when a room full of dead 6 year olds wasnt enough for the 2a people to realize real people are dying for their fake security. ive lost hope
We can't do what Australia did. 2nd Amendment aside (and that alone is a huge blocker), we have a much larger population and a much larger inventory.
Australia confiscated 650,000 guns on a population at the time of around 18 million people. Even that was only 20% of the guns in the country.
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback
The United States has a population over 330 million with over 400 million guns.
20% of 400 million would be 80 million guns. To take those off the street, we would have to run the equivalent of the Australian program 123 times.
Logistically, it's impossible. Even without the 2nd amendment we don't have the capacity to do it. There's no way to collect and dispose of them.
Who says this has to be done in a day? Have gun drop off places which keeps lists, destroy the guns (weld the muzzle or drill in a hole both can be done in 2minutes for a single gun) and then sell them to scrapyards. People have time until the end of 2024.
The Australian plan did take a year, October 1996 to September 1997, and all they got was 650,000 guns which was 20%.
Americans first, have no obligation to give up their guns thanks to the 2nd Amendment and second, aren't as likely to give up their guns.
You aren't getting 80 million (20%) even in a year, and again, we don't have the capacity to collect and dispose of them.
80 million / 50 (yeah, I know, it won't be an even distribution, but let's work the math roughly) 1.6 million per state / 12 months = 133,333 a month per state.
The Australian plan took 12 months to collect 650,000. So the US would need to meet that in about 5 states in one month.
The most successful gun buyback in US history collected 4,200 guns across 4 buybacks.
https://www.hcp1.net/GunBuyback
The Australian plan cannot work here.
I mean, you're throwing out a lot of numbers claiming it is impossible, but we have logistics and resources that Australia didn't in 1996. If Amazon can deliver 7.7 billion packages a year, and the US can count 150 million votes in a week during election season, we can figure out how to break down 400 million guns over a month, a year, or a decade. It doesn't have to happen overnight. The "Australian plan" doesn't have to work here, but getting guns off the street somehow does.
I guarantee you don't want a private company like Amazon handling gun confiscation, public policy should not be up to private companies to enforce. Might as well ask people to drop off their guns at the local WalMart and ask untrained staff to deal with them. No good will come from it.
Elections are a different deal because all you're processing is bits of paper and data, you aren't running the risk of, you know, explosive ordinance.
Even if we had the logistics, which we don't, there's still the 2nd amendment to contend with. We can't force people to give up their guns, that's a right the Australians didn't have.
Repealing the 2nd Amendment can be done, but it starts with 290 votes in the House. You did watch the struggle it took to get the 217 they needed to elect their own leader, right?
I didn't suggest Amazon run the process. I just meant "logistics infrastructure exists on a scale unimaginable in 1996". 600 million COVID doses given out in the US might have been a better comparison. Or 7.2 billion packages by USPS in 2022. There are 708k cops in the US. That's 2 guns recovered per cop per month to have it done in 90 days.
There is literally no argument in the world where "the logistics make it impossible" is a reasonable claim.
Likewise, "we'll never get 290 votes" is a lazy and cowardly claim. Yes, it'll be hard. Yes, it'll be a fight. Yes, we'll have some minds that will be impossible to change. But your apparent argument in defense of gun rights seems to be "aww, jeez, it seems pretty tricky" which is truly mind boggling to me.
mate the gun buyback was only the start. we also completely overhauled laws making it incredibly difficult to buy a gun in the first place. a gun amnesty has been in place since and I think is still in place today (you can walk into a copshop, hand over your gun and all is good). Of course it will take time, but claiming it's impossible is just not remotely correct. mass disposals, collection bins. and it's not like all 400m will be or need to be collected, there will always be legitimate uses for certain types of guns as there is anywhere in the world, but every suburban Bob doesn't need an armoury for "defence".
The only block you have is culture. Fix that, then your constitution can be fixed, then the physical act of reducing guns in circulation commences. if it takes a generation to remove the vast majority of unnecessary weapons it's time well spent. your kids and/or grand kids might have a chance to go to school without the threat of being blown away, but only if you want to change
It's not culture, it's repeated Supreme Court rulings since 2008.
Lots of cited sources below, but the tl;dr is you can't ban entire classes of weapons, you can't require militia membership, everyone has the right to defend themselves and requiring guns be locked up or disassembled defeats that right, the 2nd amendment is not limited to the weapons extant at the time of passing, and states can't place special restrictions on ownership or possession.
Now, could all that change? Sure, this court did strike down Roe vs. Wade after all... it just took 50 years to swing the court the other direction. So maybe by 2073?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
"(1) The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53."
and further:
"(3) The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District's total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of "arms" that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition – in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute – would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional."
Because that was decided against Washington D.C. and not an actual state, there was a 2nd ruling making it clear that this applies to states as well:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._City_of_Chicago
""the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense" (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3026); that "individual self-defense is 'the central component' of the Second Amendment right" (emphasis in original) (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3036 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 599)); and that "[s]elf-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day" (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3036).[21]"
2016 had my favorite ruling in all this because it wouldn't INITIALLY seem to deal with guns. A woman bought a taser to protect herself from an abusive ex. MA ruled the 2nd amendment didn't apply because tasers didn't exist when the 2nd amendment was written.
Enter the Supreme Court:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caetano_v._Massachusetts
"the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding" and that "the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States".[6] The term "bearable arms" was defined in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) and includes any ""[w]eapo[n] of offence" or "thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands," that is "carr[ied] . . . for the purpose of offensive or defensive action." 554 U. S., at 581, 584 (internal quotation marks omitted)."[10]
The most recent is the New York ruling where you needed special permission from the state to get a concealed carry permit, which was often denied, even if you were a law abiding gun owner.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Rifle_%26_Pistol_Association,_Inc._v._Bruen
"The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not 'a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.' We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need."[28]
Where this ruling is especially different is that it sets the grounds for striking down other, in place, gun laws all over the country:
"When the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct [here the right to bear arms], the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual's conduct falls outside the Second Amendment's "'unqualified command.'"
bruh your constitution isn't some holy scripture handed down from heaven in some perfect form. why do you think "ammendments" happened in the first place? they are a legal expression of your cultures appetite for what your country stands for, and can be changed.
you guys (as a whole) don't want it to.
ergo, its cultural
The amendments are there because a 2/3rds vote of the House and Senate voted for them and 3/4 of the states ratified them. Until a similar vote un-does them, they are the law of the land.
You guys put people on the moon in the 60s. You sure as hell can sort this out with enough will power and time. But instead all you offer are excuses.
We haven't been to the moon since 1972 and don't even have our own shuttle program anymore. Our bridges and roads are falling apart, we have absolutely no plan for climate change, and this ass-hat is speaker of the House of Representatives:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/speaker-mike-johnson-legislation-house-agenda/
But here's the crux of the problem that folks outside the US don't get:
The right to own a gun is guaranteed in our founding document. It doesn't matter if you agree it should be or not, it's there and it's been upheld by the Supreme Court multiple times.
We could amend the Constitution again... but doing so starts in the House and takes 290 votes.
They took 22 days to get a simple 217 vote majority to decide who their own Speaker would be, there's no WAY they get 290 votes on removing the 2nd Amendment.
But let's say some miracle happens and we get 290, now it goes to the Senate where we need 67 votes. Same problem, the Senate is incapacitated by a minority who require 60 votes to do ANYTHING and that hasn't been attainable.
But lets say some billionaire swoops in and pays off enough people to get 67...
Now it goes to the states for ratification and we need 38 states for it to become an amendment.
Look at 2020 as a guide - Biden won 25 states + Washington D.C., Trump won 25 states.
You would need all 25 Biden states to ratify + 13 Trump states. For every Biden state you lose, you need +1 Trump state.
Take a look at the Trump states and count up 13 willing to give up their gun rights...
Logistically, it's impossible. Even without the 2nd amendment we don't have the capacity to do it. There's no way to collect and dispose of them.
Australian here, you know what I hear when this argument gets trotted out?
"I have a yard full of prickles and it really hurts when I step on them but there's just too many prickles to even think about trying to get rid of them. Even just the ones from the front porch to the letterbox. Oh, how it hurts when I step on one! But it's just too hard."
Everything starts with small steps. Start doing the small steps. Otherwise you're just parroting The Onion's seminal news story on gun violence, and they were being sadly satirical.
The most successful gun buyback in US history took 4,200 guns off the street.
https://www.hcp1.net/GunBuyback
399,995,800 to go!
This is why small steps are pointless. We have to change the constitution to take significant steps, but even doing that, gun owners WILL NOT surrender voluntarily.
So now what? We've repealed the 2nd amendment, now we take out the 4th amendment on illegal search and seizure and go house to house searching for guns? Knowing that gun owners are armed and won't give up peacefully?
You want a civil war because that's how you get a civil war.
Again with the, "oh we tried that, it didn't work"
My answer to that is, "try harder".
And all the rest of your extrapolatory bullshit I'll just ignore.
Mass shootings cost your communities so much. Price your buybacks accordingly. Work on your gun laws. Work on fixing your mental health system.
Don't just say, "It's too hard."
That's the thing, they don't work at the volume needed to make a difference.
What happens is 2 things:
A bunch of inoperable guns get turned in for cash which is then used to buy more guns.
Gun owners evaluate the cash value of their guns and decline to turn them in since they aren't being paid fair market value.
https://www.thetrace.org/2023/04/do-gun-buybacks-work-research-data/
"The most rigorous studies of gun buyback programs have found little empirical evidence to suggest that they reduce shootings, homicides, or suicides by any significant degree in either the short- or long-term.
This isn’t surprising, experts say. “Even under the assumption of optimal implementation, only a tiny fraction of guns in a given community are going to be turned into gun buyback programs,” Charbonneau said. “It’s unlikely that research using standard statistical methods will be able to identify the causal impact of buybacks on firearm violence.”
An analysis by The Trace earlier this year found that more than 16 million guns were produced for the U.S. market in 2020 alone, and somewhere between 350 and 465 million guns may be in circulation nationwide. Meanwhile, even the most successful gun buyback events collect only a few hundred guns at a time. For example, over a nearly two-decade period, New York City’s gun buyback initiative collected just 10,000 firearms."
I'm actually mostly on your side, I think the US is too far gone. If you took peoples guns off them in the US, I genuinely think there would be a or several small civil wars.
Further a lot of people would just refuse, hide their guns etc.
If the US actually tried to do what Australia did I think you'd actually see a drop in shootings etc but it would take 50-70 years to actually get through the majority of weapons 'on the street'.
But to say it's logistically impossible is absolutely and completely wrong. It's culturally near impossible.
P.s. I'm Australian and our shooting crimes are going up, pistol numbers are going up too and we have the worst self defence laws. I wish I could have a loaded Glock and the right to shoot an intruder in my home honestly.
Think of like this, your average pistol weighs just over a pound (.45kg) and your average rifle around 8 pounds (3.62kg)
So somewhere between 400 million and 3.2 billion pounds of metal, wood, and plastic. Between 180 million and 1.448 billion kg.
Low number is assuming all pistols, high number is assuming all rifles, so the real number is going to be between the two.
As a point of comparison, the US generates 268 million tons of garbage every year:
https://www.dumpsters.com/blog/us-trash-production
You're talking many times that JUST for guns.
The US Military is legally prevented from operating inside the United States:
If you're trolling - hilarious.
If you're not - fuck bro, you need to get out a bit. Literally not the point whatsoever, not even relevant.
Australia cleaned up their act in response to mass tragedy. Our society just isn’t a society.
Australia didn't have a problem with mass shootings, then they had 1 mass shooting. They banned guns, and continued to not have problems with mass shootings. Doesn't prove anything. In fact they have more guns now than they did pre-ban
The first result on google for 'Australia gun ownership rates':
-Australian civilians now own more than 3.5 million registered firearms, an average of four for each licensed gun owner.
-The proportion of Australians who hold a gun licence has fallen by 48 percent since 1997.
-The proportion of Australian households with a firearm has fallen by 75 percent in recent decades.
-Data indicates that people who already own guns have bought more rather than an increase in new gun owners.
And I don't know much about their mass shooting history, but here's an article explaining that homicides and suicides sharply declined after the ban:
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback
What they found is a decline in both suicide and homicide rates after the NFA. The average firearm suicide rate in Australia in the seven years after the bill declined by 57 percent compared with the seven years prior. The average firearm homicide rate went down by about 42 percent.
also other countries take shooting to mass shooting more serious where here in murica they dont make the news with under 6 victims
They need a red flag/extreme risk protection order (ERPO) law in their state, at the very least. If used, such a law could have prevented this. It's one of the things that Moms Demand Action has been pushing for.
As soon as someone comes in with HI/SI that should trigger a response that removes all weapons from someone's home, a 72 hr psych hold, and informs all immediate friends/family that they are not to be allowed near guns/knives. Period
Of course he could have done that step first but instead another damaged and armed asshole imposes his demons on others and inflicts grievous pain on dozens of families before offing themself.
Yet another in a long list of isolated incidents because after trying nothing we’ve run out of ideas.
It's not like we've tried nothing; he should have been dealt with when he made threats, but the police don't want to act on the laws we have in place. They want to wait until a tragedy happens so they can feel like they're being heroes, apparently.
police don't want more stringent gun laws because tons of them beat their wives and they'd be disqualified from carrying guns
I suspect they’re also worried we’d take away all their fun toys if the threat of constant gun violence wasn’t there.
The mass shooting was the 565th in the U.S. in 2023 and the deadliest so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
We’re almost at the end of the year. And I don’t think this incident was as deadly as incidents in previous years, so uh… good job guys? I guess?
We've still got two months to go. At the average rate so far, if that rate holds, could result in ~56 more mass shootings before the end of the year.
Need to do something about all these black mass shooters.
(if it's not obvious that's sarcasm.)
That's an exaggeration, but you're not far off.
They count any shooting with 4 or more injured as a "mass shooting".
I doubt that most people hear the phrase "mass shooting" and think "People at a party having too much to drink, get in an argument, the argument turns into a fight, guns are drawn, and 2 people on one side get shot and 2 people on the other side get shot."
Example from my own back yard so to speak... 3 dudes from Texas show up for a marijuana buy from two brothers in Oregon. Buy goes bad, 2 Texans are killed, both brothers are killed, one dude walks away.
GVA DOES count that as a mass shooting. I don't, for the simple reason that while those people were armed, and DID end up shooting 4 or more people, nobody went down there with guns with the INTENTION of shooting a bunch of people.
For me, and I wish more people defined it this way, a mass shooting is when one or more individuals show up armed in a populated area with the express intention of shooting as many people as possible.
That sort of shooting is FAR rarer. But nobody makes money off keeping people scared if that's the definition.
bruh 4 people injured or killed in a single incident absolutely is a mass shooting. I'm trying to get my head around how you are downplaying this
The standards in America are fucking crazy. "Yeah bro my cousin was buying some weed, next thing you know 4 people shot dead, but that shouldn't count" lmao.
lol the fact it's just a casual story about a drug shoot out with 4 dead with a direct connection to OP and OP doesn't think that's weird is confusing as fuck to me
Right? I literally have never heard of anyone getting shot even if I count friends of friends of friends x10. And I spent half my adult life in connections with very dodgy circles.
Their "just another normal shooting" story would make national news for weeks if it happened here.
Got really sad this summer, relatives from the US visited and we went to the lake to do Stand up paddle. Upon seeing the life veste, I heard, looks like the vest we wear for school shooting drill, :/
Yeah, It's so wild. Like, they are so delusional.
Let's push back the classification of mass shooting to lower the number. Ok, so we need one shooter and at least 10 dead. If people are only injured it shouldn't count. And the victim can't be criminal or have a criminal background. If drug or alcohol, not a mass shooting.
Gang shootings make up the vast majority of "mass shootings"
These gang members are the very definition of criminal, they know their actions are highly illegal. Making more guns illegal will not stop them
Huh? Are you saying that the white school/mall shooters weren't aware that killing people is illegal?
this is the most idiotic reply I've seen on lemmy
Idk, I kind of like this one:
Gang shootings make up the vast majority of "mass shootings"
These gang members are the very definition of criminal, they know their actions are highly illegal. Making more guns illegal will not stop them
Super simple, look at the example I cited of a drug buy gone bad. That's NOT a mass shooting. The Gun Violence Archive counts it as such even though it happened in a private home, not a public place, the shooters and victims involved were committing another crime when the shooting happened, and they were all there for the explicit purpose of committing that other crime, they didn't go there to shoot each other.
If you can't tell the difference between that and some psycho turning up in a grocery store to shoot as many people as possible, I don't know what to tell you. The circumstances are completely different.
the difference is intent, not outcome. 4 people shot. mass shooting. don't care why they shot each other. any other country doesn't just have "drug deals gone bad oops 4 dead but it's just another tuesday" unless it's a literal organised crime thing that went REAL bad and would have greater repercussions than just a couple of hicks you know
People do care why they shot each other, because in one case the general public is at risk and in the other the general public is not at risk.
That needs to be the definition of a mass shooting. Let's pull a hypothetical... if the Heaven's Gate nutjobs had all shot each other instead of poisoning themselves (39 dead), would you consider that a mass shooting?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_group)
For me, it happened on private property, solely among members of a cult, did not involve the public or innocent victims... it's a tragedy, it's a failure of multiple social safety nets, but it wouldn't be the same as someone killing 39 innocent, uninvolved, people in a school or shopping center.
The general public is definitely at risk if a drug buy goes bad a bullets start flying all over the place.
Of course it should count as a mass shooting if 39 people shot themselves/each other. You're looking for the definition of an act of terrorism, that has nothing to do with mass shooting. If we reverse your logic, and a guy kills 39 innocent bystanders but they used a bomb, would you then also call that a mass shooting?
The definition of mass shooting shouldn't detract from the fact that 500+ shootings 4+ injured is too many
500+ shootings in a country with 330 million people and 400 million guns is a rounding error.
Last year there were 42,795 fatal car accidents, we have 233 million licensed drivers. 85 times more than shootings with 4 or more injured.
https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/auto-insurance/fatal-car-crash-statistics/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191653/number-of-licensed-drivers-in-the-us-since-1988/
500+ shootings
Your figure is off by two orders of magnitude, it's ~48k gun deaths, including suicides (for 2022).
So about 5k more than your car accident figure.
And it's odd to me you're arguing the license angle; are you advocating for a licensing system like there are for cars, like written and applied tests a citizen must pass before gun ownership?
Unfortunately, we can't require licensing. The Supreme Court already ruled that the core tenet of the 2nd Amendment is self defense and that can't be burdened.
What I PERSONALLY would like to see is a full root cause analysis on every shooting and plugging the holes that allowed it to happen.
For example:
In the Maine shooting, he bought the guns he used 10 days before being reported for abberant behavior and being involuntary committed for 2 weeks.
Background checks wouldn't work because he bought the guns before there were any reported problems.
Being involuntarily committed should have resulted in a seizure of all weapons. It did not. Why not? In most cases because seizures require a court ruling and if the commitment wasn't court mandated, that doesn't happen.
Bonus - if the commitment isn't court mandated, that also won't turn up on a background check, a common problem with other mass shooters.
That needs to change, and it doesn't involve the 2nd amendment or a change in gun laws, it just has to expand what already happens in court adjudicated cases to non adjudicated cases.
Alternately, you push ALL mental health commitments through court to ensure guns are withdrawn and the commitment shows up on background checks.
And we all know the Supreme Court never reverses a decision. That's why abortion is still legal nationwide.
"In 2021, there were 2,571 child deaths due to firearms"
2,571 / 330,000,000 = 0.0000077909
Yeah, pretty much.
Jesus, at least you're open with your psychopathy.
3k dead kids in a "first world" country, to something so easily avoided, is monstrous.
Happy to see you say it loud and proud, fuck those dead kids. Makes it easier to identify y'all.
Right, but we're not talking about gun-caused child deaths per capita, we're talking about the leading cause of child death. If you do the actual math, it's about 20%.
But of course you know that isn't as compelling for your argument. Thank you for joining me for another lesson in lying with statistics.
What difference does it make why it happened, think of the impact on the community, neighbors, innocent bystanders, hearing or seeing that crap going down. That's PTSD material. And the family of all the people involved, even if they were criminals, that's an exponentially bigger impact than if one or two people are involved.
IMO you're thinking of the difference between terrorism and violence. A mass shooting can be an act of terrorism (inflict harm on a large number of people), but it doesn't have to, it's the number (mass) involved, not the intent.
The intent very much matters. In the example I stated above, the intent on one side was to buy a bunch of weed and the intent on the other side was to sell a bunch of weed. Nobody walked into that looking to shoot someone, it just worked out that way.
Compared to someone hauling an AR-15 into a supermarket and shooting indiscriminately, that's a huge difference in intent.
In the case of the public at large, the latter case results in "oh, shit, that could have been me!" but the former case it's "Well, glad I'm not trying to illegally sell a bunch of weed to out of towners!"
Calling both a "mass shooting" does a disservice to the victims of actual mass shootings.
I'm pretty sure GVA lumps every shooting together because then the only common factor, and then the only solution, is the gun itself
That and they make money by keeping people scared. "ZOMG! MORE MASS SHOOTINGS THAN DAYS IN THE YEAR!!!" and news orgs repeat it without questioning their methodology.
The US has both a gun problem AND a mental health problem. We need more immediate access to long term healthcare.
The addition of the 988 hotline is an ok start but mental health issues are still demonized and have limited resources.
Tragic underfunding + stigma = tragedies
Everyone check in on your friends and loved ones, too.
We need universal mental health care full stop. Even if you're against universal health care in general, and I don't know why anyone would be, start with universal mental health care.
Get people assessed, get them the treatment they need. If they need to be held the rest of their lives, figure out how to make that work safely and humanely.
Even if you’re against universal health care in general, I don’t know why anyone would be
To break it down:
I feel dumber for having written in that voice, and dirty too, yuck.
And now the retort for these arguments:
So yes indeed, it is beyond me why in the fuck a large portion of my fellow citizens are hellbent on keeping the status quo (oh wait, it's due their thorough brainwashing that keeps them in that trance).
Gotta keep funding the insurance companies so they can profit by denying care. What was that about death lists?
My wife also points out that for entirely too many people #1 reads as:
"1. Black and brown people want free shit, I don't want to pay for black and brown people's free shit; make them get a job like everyone else if they want healthcare."
But you know they wouldn't be polite enough to say "black and brown people".
Idk about that, these days they are pretty emboldened by Trump to just say all kinds of racist shit out loud.
#3 Insurance companies exist as death panels currently. Their entire purpose is to deny life saving procedures as frequently as possible.
But let's be clear here, this guy did not do these things because he had a mental health problem. Dude had a plan, a really complex one, and had extensive training in the army to carry a plan out like this , to avoid being captured and to cause as much damage as possible. If he was just suicidal, he would have just offed himself instead of 22 plus other casualties he caused. Do not blame on what he did on his mental health problem and failure to get it sorted
I blame it on society as a whole, the failure to take away his guns whenever he checked into a mental health place, and for failure to take care of his veterans.
Problem is lumping in his problems with other mental health problems that are nothing like his, worsening the stigma.
Had problems with an ex, some old friends, and it looks like he was fired recently from a job. Wanted revenge I guess.
I mean, that's sort of exactly why everyone needs someone to talk to and process stuff. If you've lost a relationship, friends, and a job you should be able to access care when you start having dark thoughts like this.
Exactly, small things that build up can lead to tragedy. Especially when you're mentally unstable to begin with. What happened with him was horrible and tragic, but not totally his fault. Society has some blame to take too because they let him out of that facility without a support system in place and they didn't take his guns. Two things they should have done. In addition to help and support we also need trigger laws that take all your guns and other weapons, and inform your family and friends that this person is not allowed to have guns, and closely monitor his financials to see if he's trying to buy a gun. Any ONE of those would have prevented what happened in Lewiston.
the hotline is a copout to help people ignore the systemic problems fueling depression epidemic
Oh the whole thing is definitely a broader socioeconomic and societal issue, for sure. That's why it's a crisis line and not a therapy line.
stigma
You're adding to the stigma by blaming this fascist terrorism on people with mental problems.
Let’s be real. The only way this stops is when enough republicunt politicians see their own children murdered in such incidents.
When the black panthers started advocating for carrying guns, Republicans supported gun control.
Maybe drag queens should start a pro gun PAC? Start carrying everywhere, but like really cute pink and teal guns?
They are. I've seen a documentary about the creation of black/left-wing/LGBTQ-friendly gun clubs.
Minorities who traditionally were not attracted to guns/shooting are starting to feel unsafe in the current USA and it's not hard to see why.
Jews are starting to get armed. Everyone's getting strapped, America is getting less and less safe by the minute.
Man... why don't these fuckers just kill themselves from the start? Why bring innocent people into it?
And no, I really don't give a fuck if the voices told him to do it or whatever. Funny how these nut jobs never hear voices telling them to feed the homeless or donate their life savings to the cat sanctuary.
I mean, there might be mentally ill people who feel compelled to do things like that, but they don't exactly make the news do they?
Because feeding the homeless or starting a sanctuary for pets is socially beneficial and isn't considered mental illness.
On their own, no, but if someone hears voices that aren't there telling them to go feed the homeless, that person is mentally ill, just the results of that are socially beneficial instead of harmful in this case.
Yeah we should be careful about encouraging mentally ill people to kill themselves and instead encourage (and enable) them to get help
Clearly because they put more value in their lives than those of others. What do these freaks call other people? Non-player characters? They don't matter, because they're not themselves. Narcissism to the extreme.
They hate. They feel antogonistic towards this society. They blame every their failure on it. They want to hurt it, the cosmos of things they hate, to make it burn, to make it suffer.
Offing themselves isn't the goal, but they'd feel weak if they'd just surrender to it. Instead they choose fucking with their pain, with a collective of those they blame for it, while leaving this hydra helpless to presecute them. If they are to quit, what else matters?
In gunning down random people they feel relief, the reclamation of power over their shitty life for once. They don't see people, just parts of thing hurting them, hated by them. They feel like there exists only two actors: they vs the world. And inflicting damage on the world is answering to whatever this world did to them.
One can't rationalize this purely irrational reaction.
I’d venture because that’s their general disposition, anyway. Jeanne d’Arc heard voices too, never took a human life.
I agree with you that people hearing voices does not necessarily mean they are violent or dangerous. The majority of people who hear voices have never and will never hurt anyone.
Jehanne d'Arc technically never took a human life directly...but she's famous for being a rallying symbol of France and strategic wartime leader. That doesn't exactly make her hands clean even if she never technically killed anyone. Shes also reported as having had a pretty vicious temper that lead to her doing things like chasing prostitutes with a sword which isn't exactly the epitome of peaceful and undangerous.
Time for the usual political debate to run it's course and nothing to happen, because any change to the conditions that generate this violence run against capital interests.
It's a free world. Think whatever you think of me. Not that you care but nah. It didn't make me feel like a big man. It just made me feel like I scratched an itch.
Multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News that Robert Card died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Sources told CNN that he was found dead in the woods near the town of Lisbon.
Better that than taking further life.
So he didn't want to get brains all over HIS house, but was happy with killing a bunch of other people. What a shithead.
His whole family was of a similar mindset; better put a laser focus on their activities, because you know they'll be next.
"Robert Card's social media sites showed support for Trump, among other politicians. As shown by the video, Card liked tweets from high-profile conservative figures such as Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, Dinesh D'Souza. He also engaged with publications from former house speakers Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan, as per the video."
He had clear mental health issues. He recently lost a girlfriend and a job. He shot up two locations where he and that girlfriend had spent time. His body was found next to the recycling center he'd been fired from.
He was also a right-wing militia nut job, but nothing about this spree killing suggests that his motivations for it were political.
But it does support the notion that the severely mentally ill or those prone to the sorts of delusions that lead to mass murder are drawn to right wing extremist ideologies. It's why a staggeringly lopsided proportion of terrorist attacks and mass killing acts are perpetrated by the right wing extremists.
I don't disagree with that one bit. Socially acceptable delusions are very attractive for people who are already prone to delusions in general, and make the notion of believing other things without evidence easier.
Multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News that Robert Card died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Sources told CNN that he was found dead in the woods near the town of Lisbon.
Better that than taking further life.