"Do Something"

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/05/2019 at 15:20 • Filed to: None

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The crowd at a vigil for the Dayton victims has some words for the governor. We are all sick of platitudes. Could this finally be a turning point?

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 15:27

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It could be, but this shooter was a Bernie Bro, and the Governor is a Republican, so “do something” might mean he locks up the Bernie Bros.

facw > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 15:27

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Could this finally be a turning point? 

We can hope, but it seems pretty unlikely to me. The GOP has made it pretty clear that they are OK with this (they say they are outraged, but their actions speak louder than their words).

Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 15:27

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I'm doubtful this will be a turning point. I don't want to sound negative and hopeless, but if it didnt change after Sandy Hooke, it won't change now. 

ttyymmnn > Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap 08/05/2019 at 15:30

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I agree, but until today, people have lit candles and cried and let politicians say, “Now is now the time blah blah blah.” We’re sick of being told that now is the time. This crowd certainly was.

Textured Soy Protein > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 15:31

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I say we skip all the half measures and go straight to repealing the second amendment. But I can say that because I’m not a candidate for public office.

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 15:33

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do something!

*starts juggling*

Arrivederci > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 15:35

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Sadly, no.

Shift24 > For Sweden 08/05/2019 at 15:43

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W hile true we dont get shit right here in Ohio alot, we could be the first to do something.

And just because they are Republican doesn’t mean they are for guns. Its actually backwards here in Ohio

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/02/26/nra-ratings-ohio/355432002/

https://cnn.it/2Zzd9DJ

ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) > For Sweden 08/05/2019 at 15:52

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Please provide links to actual sources. I have not seen anything that supports that claim.

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 08/05/2019 at 15:58

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A Bernie Bro? I have heard absolutely nothing about this guy except that he killed his sister. Are you privy to information the rest of us aren’t?

I’m not saying you're wrong, I could just use a citation.

For Sweden > ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) 08/05/2019 at 15:59

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I’m bored, so I can Google in your stead

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dayton-shooter-warren/

He also performed in a “pornogrind” band, whatever that is

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/dayton-shooter-pornogrind-band

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 16:00

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I read Snopes

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dayton-shooter-warren/

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 08/05/2019 at 16:02

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So he was just a lunatic, and not a white supremacist. My money is on incel.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Textured Soy Protein 08/05/2019 at 16:02

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No - leave the second amendment in place, but limit it to weapons that were available in 1791. The longer the barrel the better, making it as awkward to reload as possible, and perhaps as a side effect it  will be easier to get next to the shooter and grab the gun without the risk of being shot.

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 16:03

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I wouldn’t expect a Bernie Bro to be a white supremacist.

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 08/05/2019 at 16:04

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I should have written, “just a lunatic, not a white supremacist lunatic.”

Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 16:09

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Fair point. I guess the fact that we had 3 makor shootings in one week was a wake up call for at least some people. 

ttyymmnn > Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap 08/05/2019 at 16:15

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You would think we had reached the breaking point long ago. But I guess we’ll take what we can get.

I popped over to Faux News for a moment just to see what they were up to. The biggest headline is about how the Democrats are using bad words. Because, really, that’s the most important thing that’s happening today.

Textured Soy Protein > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/05/2019 at 16:31

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Muskets don’t kill people, people kill people!

Ash78, voting early and often > For Sweden 08/05/2019 at 16:39

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Well except for hair. White is the best.

Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 16:55

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So a slow day for them. At least it's not an outright conspiracy theory. 

MrSnrub > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 17:13

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It’s hard to say. People are exhausted, but at the same time the gun culture in this country is strong and denial (it’s mental health, it’s video games, etc) is rampant. The only thing that will really drive down mass shooting deaths is an assault weapons ban, and I don’t see that happening yet. Something smaller like expanded background checks are a definite possibility but I’m not hopeful that will really change things much. Better than nothing I guess

ttyymmnn > MrSnrub 08/05/2019 at 17:21

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As I said in another thread, both of these shooters would likely have passed a background check. Background checks are just another distraction from anything truly helpful.

nermal > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 17:42

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Turning point for what? Guns? Violence? Divisive rhetoric? Civilian surveillance? Censorship?  

Nutjobs gonna nutjob. All of the mass shootings over the weekend (there were two in the shithole section of Chicago that didn’t get as much national attention , one with 7 victims and another with 8 victims ) were the result of years of actions or inactions by multiple parties .

Things didn’t get the way they are overnight, nor will they change that quickly.

MrSnrub > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 17:48

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Yes, the real culprit is the ridiculous number of guns. The only way to fix that is Australian-style confiscation, but our sick gun culture prevents it . 

His Stigness > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 18:37

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This will never change. Gun advocates will never allow it and point to shit like this,

ttyymmnn > His Stigness 08/05/2019 at 18:42

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Neil DeGrasse Tyson, too.

https://deadline.com/2019/08/neil-degrasse-tyson-apology-slammed-tweet- shooting-deaths-1202661285/

His Stigness > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 18:59

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That’s where I came across that tweet.

ttyymmnn > His Stigness 08/05/2019 at 19:03

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The thing is, though, with the exception of abortion, many  those are by and large things we can control. Getting gunned down by a lunatic with an assault rifle is completely out of our control.

RutRut > MrSnrub 08/05/2019 at 19:38

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Confiscation won’t work. Too many guns that are way too difficult to track down. The most efficient way to stop this is to eliminate the consumable. Pull ammo off the shelves, make reloading resources extremely difficult to obtain. The stockpile of ammo currently in private hands has a fixed shelf life for everyone not maintaining it correctly. 

DipodomysDeserti > For Sweden 08/05/2019 at 19:42

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A Bernie Bro who supports Elizabeth Warren? That seems out of character for them.

Hail Satan.

DipodomysDeserti > RutRut 08/05/2019 at 19:47

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I’ve shot ammo that was thirty or so years old and had spent it’s whole life being stored by communists.

Keep ammo out of water and it will last a very long time. There’s no maintenance necessary.

RutRut > DipodomysDeserti 08/05/2019 at 19:50

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But how many people are actually keeping ammo in a sealed contained? I would wager most is still sitting in a cardboard box, eventually humidity is going to get those primers. 

His Stigness > ttyymmnn 08/05/2019 at 20:06

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Well the abortion thing is total horseshit, but that’s what conservatives care about.

But yes, the whole list is total bullshit. But their current argument for two mass shootings in less than 24 hours is video games and social media. 

DipodomysDeserti > RutRut 08/05/2019 at 20:42

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Most surplus military ammo (the kind people buy in bulk), have sealed primers. A lot of the NATO stuff comes sealed in plastic, so you can just leave it in the factory packaging. The stuff is made to survive wars.

Even if it isn’t you can throw desiccant packs in your safe and the ammo would last a very long time.

Also making bullets from scratch is extremely easy to do and not at all sophisticated.

Reloading equipment has also never been regulated, so it would be impossible to track down all that stuff. The only guys I know who reload are former military, and there’s no way they’d ever hand over reloading equipment (or guns for that matter).

ttyymmnn > His Stigness 08/05/2019 at 21:55

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Video games is BS, but I do believe that the echo chamber of hate that is the Internet plays a large role. Social media is ruining humanity, and I don’t think that’s hyperbole.

TheRealBicycleBuck > MrSnrub 08/05/2019 at 21:55

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There’s a lot of confusion out there about “mass” shootings and a lot of that confusion is rooted in the definitions and statistics. Any shooting involving more than four persons (including the shooter if he/she commits suicide) is considered a “mass” shooting. That skews the statistics upward.

The other statistic that is often not reported is the type of weapon. There are twice as many “mass” shootings with handguns as there are with rifles. “Assault” rifles are included in the rifle category. O nly 14% of “mass” shootings involve an “assault” rifle (data from Mother Jones ).

So, if you want to have an affect on “mass” shootings, start by controlling handguns. By the way, you won’ t be able to control all of the handguns. About 25% of the “mass” shootings were conducted with handguns which were either obtained illegally or where they could not determine how the gun was obtained.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Textured Soy Protein 08/05/2019 at 22:33

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Good idea. While we’re at it, get rid of the first amendment . That way the government can approve what articles get written and they can censor the articles so the shooters name never gets mentioned. Since there won’t be an element of fame to be had maybe that will help reduce the incentive for evil people to do evil things.

Since we’re going to need to confiscate all the guns to get them off the street the fourth amendment needs to go. You don’t have a problem with the federal government tearing apart your house to make sure you don’t have any evil guns, do you?  

Once we’re on a roll get rid of the fifth amendment too. That way we can force these sick bastards to testify against themselves. Hel l, have them write out and sign their confession, then just execute them on the spot as soon as they sign it. Oops, we’ll have to get rid of the eight amendment so we can do that.

It’s a shame that all these amendments were written to limit the power of the federal government. Just think of how much they could get done if they could just write laws instead of having to worry about whether or not they were constitutional. We could live in a veritable utopia like China or North Korea if our leaders weren’t accountable to us. 

MrSnrub > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/05/2019 at 22:57

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A 14% reduction is better than nothing.

But I would like to see far fewer handguns as well. The US contains less than 5% of the world’s people but more than 40% of the world’s civilian-owned firearms. Even reducing gun density in America to twice the world average  would entail the elimination of something like 200 million firearms. As you say, impossible. Therefore people will keep dying. But reducing the number of guns is the only real option for reducing gun deaths.

Textured Soy Protein > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 08/05/2019 at 23:08

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But the second amendment is bad mm’ kay.

TheRealBicycleBuck > MrSnrub 08/06/2019 at 06:58

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I lean toward providing more mental health options. There’s such a stigma on providing mental health care and so many barriers to obtaining it that anyone who feels even a little out of sorts is reluctant to seek health. Reporting someone for being a bit bonkers is also a useless endeavor. 

RutRut > DipodomysDeserti 08/06/2019 at 09:59

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Making bullets is easy, powder isn’t bad. But primers could be tricky and at a full grain count brass has a finite life before you fatigue or stretch a wall too thin. You could make ammo, but if the raw materials were regulated it would be significantly harder and more time consuming.

functionoverfashion > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:28

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I would have thought Sandy Hook would be a turning point. Or the March for Our Lives event in March of 2018. Watching that on TV in bits and pieces made me really hopeful that somehow this would be a tipping point. Especially as my kids were getting old enough to ask a lot of questions about the event. 

But once the dust settles, it’s just more of the same. 

functionoverfashion > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:30

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https://www.theonion.com/thomas-jefferson-the-tree-of-liberty-must-be-refreshe-1836974855?_ga=2.234034590.1635640994.1565011383-857814009.1553861245

ttyymmnn > functionoverfashion 08/06/2019 at 10:32

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When the NRA and Alex Jones et al were able to turn the kids’ parents into villains, and nobody in power spoke up, I knew the world was truly upside down and would never right itself.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Donald Trump’s lasting legacy to the US will be that we might actually pass some gun legislation? Not because he supports it, but because people see him as part of the problem. 

ttyymmnn > functionoverfashion 08/06/2019 at 10:33

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Jefferson was a goddam visionary.

functionoverfashion > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:40

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When the NRA and Alex Jones et al were able to turn the kids’ parents into villains, and nobody in power spoke up, I knew the world was truly upside down and would never right itself.

T hat whole thing makes me sick to my stomach from beginning to end.

It certainly would be ironic. He’s really turned things up to a boil if they could be described as simmering before, with small bursts of energy resulting from each incident. I really thought that March for Our Lives would have resulted in something significant. Who can listen to kids pouring their hearts out on a stage like that and do nothing? Individually, so many of our elected legislators are good people. But collectively, it seems they can’t see the big picture. 

ttyymmnn > functionoverfashion 08/06/2019 at 10:44

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Who can listen to kids pouring their hearts out on a stage like that and do nothing?

Because Faux News and the right turned them into villains too. Now they’re pointing at the Dayton shooter and saying, “See? The left does it too!” The only thing that the Dayton shooter and the El Paso shooter had in common was easy access to guns. 

functionoverfashion > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:54

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I said to my wife over the weekend, “Every time, I’m a little closer to wanting to move to Canada, and that’s not a joke.” 

MrSnrub > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/06/2019 at 11:42

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That won’t fix anything. Mental health isn’t the problem. The US does not have higher rates of mental illness than countries with less gun violence, but it does have more guns. Guns are the problem

TheRealBicycleBuck > MrSnrub 08/06/2019 at 14:11

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Mental health isn’t the problem? The database I sent includes the mental health status of each of the mass shooters. Here’s how it breaks down:

A full 50% of the shooters were confirmed with mental health problems before they became shooters. The 35% includes blanks in the database, status marked as “unclear,” unknown,” or “TBD. ”

Chances are good that we could have seen 50% fewer “mass” shootings with proper mental health treatment and that could have gone as high as 85% fewer, depending on the final status for the unclear cases.

MrSnrub > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/06/2019 at 14:38

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Let’s take a group of twenty or so countries, all of which have about the same frequency of mental illness. One of those countries has far more gun deaths and mass shootings than any of the others. That same country also has far more guns than any other country. What does this suggest to you?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html

TheRealBicycleBuck > MrSnrub 08/06/2019 at 20:13

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As is typical in these types of arguments, people can’t seem to keep their arguments straight and continually move the target, so to speak. At first, the author wants to compare mass shooting rates between countries. Then, he goes on to dismiss the mental health connection with this statement: “A 2015 study estimated that only 4 percent of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental health issues.” That’s a false equivalency. T he referenced study is attempting to ease public concerns about violent tendencies among the mentally ill. He either doesn’t understand or is being willfully ignorant about what they say.

Their point is that, even though the rate of violence among the mentally ill is six times higher among the mentally ill, the total number of mentally ill persons in the population is small, so the risk to the general population is relatively low. That 4% he is referencing is here: “Perhaps most importantly, the 1-year population attributable risk of violence associated with serious mental illness alone was found to be only 4% in the ECA surveys.” In other words, the risk to the general population of being a victim of violence of any kind from a mentally ill person is about 4%. The comparable risk from a healthy person is 2%.

Now we get to the numbers. The definition of “mass” shooting differs by agency and by country. The FBI sets a baseline by counting events which   happen in a public place and involve four or more persons killed. They call it a mass murder. Obama decided to screw up the statistics by changing the number to three. Other agencies don’t discriminate between a lone gunman killing strangers and a gang war. Some report   people shot, not people killed. All of these choices confound our ability to analyze the data and understand the trends, but some people are trying .

“There is a common misconception that the United States is one of the top few countries, if not the top country, that have the highest mass shooting rates .

In 2015, the United States was actually number sixty-six on the list of countries in terms of mass shooting rates according to a study done by the Crime Prevention Research Center. In this study, looking at the United States alongside all the countries in Europe alone, the United States has the 12th highest mass shooting rate. A few of the European countries with a higher mass shooting rate than the United States include Russia , Norway , France , Switzerland and Finland .”

Getti ng back to the Times article, the author dismisses this claim by counting the raw number of “mass” shootings in a country of 5.5 million and comparing it to another with a population of 329 million. In other words, where he originally referenced per capita data to show how the U.S. is an outlier (the graph at the beginning of the article) , he later dismisses per capita data because it doesn’t fit his version of the “facts.”

The fact is that over 50% of “mass” shootings in the U.S. are carried out by mentally ill persons and in another 35% of these shootings, the mental status is unclear. Let’s keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and leave the civil liberties of the rest alone.

MrSnrub > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/07/2019 at 00:16

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The rate of violence among the mentally ill isn’t the point. The point is that mental illness is not significantly more frequent in the United States than it is in other countries . Therefore it is not driving the elevated rates of gun violence in the United States.

And I’m not interested in quibbling over the semantics of what constitutes a mass shooting. The Crime Prevention Research Center, which “worldpopulationreview.com ” cites repeatedly, is not a credible source. It is the creation of an ideologue with an axe to grind and a disregard for accuracy or honesty .

While Lott claims the per capita rate in the United States and Europe are approximately the same, his own data tables tell a different story. Accepting his data at face value, between 2009 and 2015, the United States had 25 mass shootings versus 19 in the E.U. and 24 in Europe as a whole. This comes out as a rate of .078 shootings per million individuals in the United States, .038 for the E.U., and .032 for Europe as a whole. The United States has more than double the mass shooting rate of the E.U. and Europe, directly contradicting Lott’s statements about his own data.

Further, Lott’s carefully crafted criteria to include an incident as a mass shooting is highly suspect. Lott goes to great lengths to exclude mass shootings that are the result of burglaries and gang violence, but he includes terrorist attacks. This choice means that while the Texas biker gang gunfight last summer is excluded in his statistics, the November Paris attacks, which accounted for more than one-third of Europe’s mass shooting fatalities, are included.

The only variable that is meaningfully different between the United States and countries with vastly lower rates of gun violence is the number of guns. It’ s not that difficult to see unless you are unwilling to do so , and I am not going to argue about it any further .

TheRealBicycleBuck > MrSnrub 08/07/2019 at 01:41

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Well, I’m glad that it is over. It’s clear that you and I aren’t going to see eye-to-eye on this one. You still fail to acknowledge that the majority of “mass” shootings are because mentally ill people are being violent. You do this by once again moving the target - where this discussion was once centered on “mass shootings” you changed it to “... elevated rates of gun violence....” My point isn’t about gun violence in general. My point is about “mass” shootings. Stay focused!

If you want to talk about firearm deaths in general, the bulk of those are due to suicides, not homicides (including “mass” shootings”). In fact, the CDC reports that suicides by firearm are 64 % higher than homicides by firearm ( National Vital Statistics, Table 11 ). That in itself is a clear indication that mental illness plays a major role in death by firearm.

And if you really want to point out flaws in the data, all of the statistics quoted ignore the numbers of people killed in nations in conflict.

My points are clear. 1. M ental illness plays a major role in “mass” shootings. 2. Mental illness plays a major role in suicides and thus, suicide by firearm . 3. Nobody can agree on the definition of a “mass” shooting, making the statistics difficult to track, even to academics. ( This one is probably the most annoying because people like to lump all shootings into the same bucket when it is convenient even though there are clearly differences between a shooter attacking random strangers, people committing suicide, and gang wars.) 4. Media outlets like to manipulate the numbers to match their agenda instead of using standardized rates. 5. The numbers are very small, so people like to report percent changes in rates in order to create a sense of urgency.

Despite all the hype , t he chances of a person in the U.S. being the victim of a shooting is very small, even with guns being readily available.

MrSnrub > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/07/2019 at 03:19

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I know I said I wouldn’t respond, but I can’t help myself. It’s like you’re not reading what I’m writing, but maybe I’m not being clear enough. I’m not disputing that mentally ill people tend to be more violent. What I’m saying is that other countries have similar rates of mental illness as the US, yet it is only the US that has more gun violence. Therefore, while mental illness is certainly a contributor to violence, it is not the reason why the US has exceptional levels of gun violence. To reiterate, I am concerned with why the situation is worse in the US than it is elsewhere. I am also concerned with all types of gun violence, not just mass shootings, though I believe the US is unusually bad in both categories, so I’ve been using the terms somewhat interchangeably - I wasn’t trying to move goalposts on you. If you want to dispute that the US is worse in total gun deaths, or argue over what constitutes a mass shooting and whether the US really has more of those types of events specifically using such-and-such definition , I’m really not interested in that. I’m interested in what should be done to reduce the rate of people dying from guns to levels that we see in the rest of the world. I don’t think we’re going to agree, but it would be nice if we at least understood where we’re each coming from.