Another reason for mass shootings

[Dirty Socialist]

The availability of the AR-15 being a reason is a given.
However, a recent study claims The United States of America is the third most stressful country in the world to live in. Maybe people just can’t take it any more, so they snap. Did anyone see the movie “Falling Down”?

[malaise]

1. Agree re the availability of assault rifles

The El Paso one was an AK47.

We can't ignore the hate speech being promoted by the Con

[brewens]

29. I remember as a kid in the 70's knowing what an AR-15 was and thinking it would be cool to

have one. No one I knew ever bothered to buy one though. They had one a few times at a local gun shop. Back then, almost no one would but that thing over a nice hunting rifle. Mass marketing those things has been a disaster.

[malaise]

38. I can't process this madness

We have our own gun problems in my neck of the woods and we don't make them

[countingbluecars]

2. Yeah

The poor oppressed white guys can't take it any more.

[Dirty Socialist]

3. Tou don't know the reason

You don’t know the reason for this shooting yet

[StarfishSaver]

5. This response sounds strangely familiar

Are you next going to offer "thoughts and prayers"?

[Dirty Socialist]

8. Don't jump to conclusions

That’s a Conservative reaction

[StarfishSaver]

9. Gaslighting doesn't work on me

[durablend]

14. Riiiiiiiiiight

He was just bored and decided "Hey, I know--it'll be fun to shoot up a bunch of people!"

[StarfishSaver]

4. If stress is the problem, why aren't black and brown people "snapping" like this?

No one is more stressed than our men of color but they're not regularly mowing people down.

But if white men are so "stressed" and prone to "snapping," maybe we should ban them until we figure out what the hell is going on.

[X_Digger]

11. Actually, they are, just in a smaller ratio.

The Virginia Beach workplace shooting was a black man. (DeWayne Craddock)
The Pratt shooting was by Jordan Witmer, a black man.
The Mercy Hospital shooting was by Juan Lopez, a latino man.
The Edgewood shooting was by Radee Ladeeb Prince, a black man.
The Riteaid warehouse shooting was by Snochia Mosley, a black woman.

Mother Jones has compiled a google spreadsheet, you can access it here- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b9o6uDO18sLxBqPwl_Gh9bnhW-ev_dABH83M5Vb5L8o/htmlview?sle=true#gid=0

[StarfishSaver]

12. Oh, please

You had to go back nearly two years to compile this list and the black and brown shooters you referenced killed a total of 29 people - the number of people murdered by two white supremacists in less than 12 hours yesterday.

This list documents more than 700 people killed in recent years by white shooters - 82 in just the last year.

Other than Virginia Beach shooting, black or brown shooters killed 5 persons or fewer. And they were all carried out with handguns and were not deemed to be driven by racism or racial animus.

Pointing to these killings as equivalent to the rampant mass murders by white supremacists or some kind of proof that the racist murders we've been seeing are the result of "stress" (as opposed to racism and racial hate) is ridiculous. The only thing these particular murders have in common with the white supremacist hate crimes is that they were classified as "mass murders" because they killed multiple people.

[X_Digger]

17. I took the top 12 rows in the document.

By all accepted measures, they're mass / spree shootings, no?

You said, "why aren't black and brown people 'snapping' like this?" and I showed you that they are.

There are some notable non-white shooters, if you care to look. Virginia Tech, the Pulse nightclub shooting, San Bernadino, the Washington Naval Yard, Ft Hood, Binghamton, Red Lake.

Do the math, and whites are only slightly over-represented. I know, it goes against popular narrative, but math trumps a popular story.

[StarfishSaver]

19. "Whites are slightly overrepresented"?

Ok. I see what's going on here, but I'm not buying it. Perhaps you could peddle your "It's not a white thing - both sides are doing it" frame to someone who doesn't know better. I hear there are some people scrambling to find diversionary excuses this morning who would probably welcome your input.

[X_Digger]

22. Math is math. *shrug*

Statistically it's overwhelmingly men who do this shit, but the breakdown by race is close to the distribution of the races in the population.

Argue that 2 + 2 isn't 4 if you wish, but that doesn't make it so.

[StarfishSaver]

23. Math is math, but your argument isn't math. It's just a sorry attempt at diversion

As I said, try it on someone else who doesn't know any better.

[X_Digger]

24. Here are the numbers, since you don't seem inclined to do them yourself, even with the link..

Let's take page 1 of mother jone's spreadsheet, shall we?

Number of shooters by race:
Total: 115
White : 65
Black : 20
Latino : 10
Asian : 8
Native American : 3
Other (which seems to be mixed, unknown, or mutiple shooters) : 6

From https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045218
US breakdown by race:
White alone, percent : 76.5%
Black or African American alone, percent(a) : 13.4%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent(a) : 1.3%
Asian alone, percent(a) : 5.9%

65/115 = 56% of shooters are white
20/115 = 17% of shooters are black
10/115 = 8.7% of shooters are latino
8/115 = 7% of shooters are asian
3/115 = 2.6% of shooters are native american

The last time I did this analysis (sometime around aurora), whites represented 77-78% of shooters. It seems things have changed.

[StarfishSaver]

25. Why don't you break it down by numbers of victims and types of shootings

A person shooting three people with a pistol at their office after they got fired or killing their girlfriend and her friend in a domestic violence incident isn't the same as someone writing "manifestos" supporting white supremacy and screeching about taking their country back from "others," arming up with a few assault weapons, strapping on body armour and going to a public place and mowing people down by the dozens.

The first category clearly includes people who "snapped." The second group didn't "snap" from "stress." They are racists on a mission - a mission they carefully thought out and exectuted, the very opposite of "just snapping."

Why not calculate the proportions of black and brown people in that latter category so your "math" actually compares like situations and is relevant to the discussion? Could it be because lumping them all together allows you to obfuscate and make excuses for the inexcusable?

As I said, it's not math. It's bs.

[X_Digger]

28. Yes, lets narrow the criteria to get the result set you want.

Yes, I daresay the number of asians or blacks writing manifestos supporting white supremacy are sufficiently rare as to be non-existent.

You started with:

why aren't black and brown people "snapping" like this?

And I showed you, explicitly, with sources, that indeed they are.


Feel free to put those goalposts down at any time, they must be getting heavy.

[mr_lebowski]

32. If I may interject ... you two are talking past one another ...

You are saying 'yes, they are snapping like this', and she's saying, 'no, they aren't'.

The miscommunication is that your definitions of 'like this' ... are different entirely.

You're apparently thinking 'like this' means 'they're snapping, period'. Starfish is thinking 'like this' ... means 'doing it with ethnic/racial animosity as a primary cause'. And she rejects the idea that carrying out pre-meditated mass murder with body armor and such constitutes 'snapping'. Legally, it's the difference between 2nd and 1st degree murder, if you will.

However there are definitely some examples in your list, like the Muslim dude who shot up Pulse, and the Muslim soldier who shot up his base, and the Muslim San Bernardino shooters ... who were indeed motivated by 'religious' animus.

And these were all pretty brutal cases with large death counts ... so honestly, you're kinda both right, if strictly speaking of 'people of color'.

But American BLACKS are generally NOT shooting up crowds of people based on racial/ethnic animosity, she's quite right in that sense.

Just my $.02, trying to be helpful

[StarfishSaver]

39. Thank you

[MadDAsHell]

34. You seem far more concerned with appropriate classification than with actual loss of life.

Your "concern" is noted.

[X_Digger]

35. I was simply interjecting some facts.

One can go about thinking something is one way, or one can check the facts to be corrected.

For someone not directly in the conversation, your "concern" about my "concern" is also noted.

[StarfishSaver]

37. Yeah. That's it.

Crazy me - thinking it inappropriate to try to argue that a black guy shooting 3 people at work is the same as a white guy radicalized as a white supremacist who mows down a few dozen people because the wants to get rid of a certain kind of people are equivalent because they both "just snapped."

What better proof that I don't care about the victims?

[scarletwoman]

18. Hear, hear!

[uponit7771]

26. THIS !!!!

[ck4829]

6. I'm a white guy, I'm stressed out... I don't go on shooting sprees

Reason 1: I realized that when stress is caused by other people, it's not caused by the 'other', but by people who look like me.

As I always say: We do have stressed out and white people afraid of immigrants and minorities... yet they almost never seem to notice their problems are caused by white people just like them... only richer and more connected.

Reason 2: Murder is wrong.

This man lived in a McMansion, OK, he had enough money to buy an AR-15.

I've gone to bed hungry, I have unpaid bills, my boss is a bipolar pixie ninja, and I've watched several dreams of mine get smashed to pieces in the past year.

I still believe murder is wrong.

"Something's wrong in my life, I got to KILL EVERYBODY!" is a result of systemic racism and sexism and a militarized culture.

[ChubbyStar]

16. Preach it brother

[StarfishSaver]

20. Any port in a storm

The apologists are running out of excuses, so are now resorting to the ridiculous.

[uponit7771]

27. +1, "stressed" isn't driving 10 hours to plug 30 - 40 people that's hate

[Johnny2X2X]

7. El Paso shooter lived with his parents who were rich

How much stress did he have?

[Blue_true]

36. His parents are rich (for the time being) and most likely put a lot of the hate

into his head that had him travel hundreds of miles to insure that he killed as many Hispanics as possible. My guess is Trump only puts the icing on people like the El Paso shooter Mom or Dad or both helped get him to the point where Trump's message of hate resonated.

[lunasun]

10. Giving stress as an reason to shoot people? Watch it someone could use it on you soon

How were Hispanics stressing him? Snapped but took time to write a long manifesto?
Wealthy but didn’t seek health care ?
What excuse for a racially targeted mass murder will I read next?
Did people lynch under stress?

Link to tweet

?s=21

[ck4829]

13. +1. I've snapped before, I've thrown an object or yelled at someone

I didn't write a manifesto or you know... go out there, buy a gun, buy ammo, load it all up, and murder people.

[madinmaryland]

15. These guys are not snapping. They are planning this shit, often elaborately.

[StarfishSaver]

21. Every now and then, someone "snaps" and kills one, two, three, sometimes 5 people

They usually use a pistol or occasionally a rifle and, more often than not, kill people in their workplace or home. That happens to people of all races.

But we also have an epidemic of men, filled with hate and racism of racial and religious minorities and immigrants, consciously suiting up in body armor, arming themselves to the teeth with war-ready weaponry and stockpiles of ammunition intended for carnage, and going out hunting for black and brown people, mowing down scores of innocent people - often after spewing their filth online to make sure the world knows why they did it. These men are overwhelmingly, if not almost exclusively, white.

The only thing these two categories have in common is that in all of the situations, the killer shot more than one person. There is nothing else comparable about them.

Any attempt to morph these two situations is a conscious effort to downplay the racial dynamics at play in the latter and is pure bs.

Why would anyone bring such an argument to a progressive Democratic discussion board?