Mass Shootings

[CainA]

Since we've been on the mass shooting subject lately.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... 5798.story" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I don't see that guy listed that dressed up in the Santa outfit and killed his ex and 4 others, then himself (for a total of 6) in in California. There may be more missing, but that one comes to mind.

-Cain

[Keith B]

Looks like they didn't list those that were purely domestic shootings (a.k.a. shot family members), only ones that included other individuals too.

[Oldgringo]

I'm not sure how the Kent State thing fits in the context with the rest of these killings? I remember that day and I remember how I felt about it then; however, that was then and this is now.

[seamusTX]

I want to point out a propaganda technique that is used in this article: They add up incidents over a long time span, in this case 44 years.

If you look at the period 1998-2009, 11 years, there were 12 incidents, or about 1 a year. This is probably fewer than the number of commercial plane crashes (which typically kill 100-300 people), and far fewer than the number of drunken driving crashes that kill innocent people.

They also list the National Guard shooting of students at Kent State in 1970 as mass shooting. The National Guardsmen in that case were indicted by a state grand jury for homicide, but the charges were eventually dismissed. (I see that Oldgringo beat me to it.)

A "fair and balanced" treatment of this topic would include the number of crimes that were thwarted by the lawful use of firearms (2-3 million a year) and how many rounds were fired in target practice, competition, and games, with no one being hurt (uncounted billions).

- Jim

[shootthesheet]

The whole reason this sort of piece is written is so they can try to tie the misuse of firearms with whatever law their kind in the political arena are going to introduce in the name of stopping this or that. It is less obvious than what I remember before the Clinton self-loading rifle ban because they understand it is going to take longer to get the ignorant people that don't pay attention to facts to buy into a new restriction on their rights because of our work the last few years. The recent talk by the Obama Administration was a sign to the anti-freedom types to begin their campaign to strip us of our rights. I doubt anything will reach a head until mid-2010 and the Leftists run congress will be forced to vote on a bill to satisfy the extremist the Administration has brought to a froth.

We should look for more of this type of irrelevant reporting in print and an increased pressure on the establishment media to ramp up how "WE" are supposedly exporting the guns the criminal organizations in Mexico are using. I am still looking for any proof on that beyond the claim of the Mexican government and the complicit members of that falsehood inside the U.S. Government. I guess it is like man made global warming and just that a few of them agree that that is what is happening so that must be the truth.

I have found references to some 200 guns and thousands of rounds of ammo being found. I have found many reports of arrests where guns were taken from illegal’s and gang members that the government "thought might" be going to Mexico sometime in the future. I found that they found handguns used in crimes in Mexico that were from the U.S. as well as one guy who claimed that is why he was getting people to make straw purchases for him. I may just not know where to look but I have found little on the ICE web site but a reference to "Armas Cruzadas" where they are working with the Mexican government but no list or evidence of what they call "assault rifles", in their press releases, being smuggled in large numbers. I want to get a definition from them of what an assault rifle is because the self-loading rifles that are for sporting purposes in the U.S. do not meet the definition of what the military would call an "assault rifle" from what I remember.

Along with that is that ICE has press releases that seem to be written by the Brady Campaign in describing "high caliber" and "high powered" guns to mean medium caliber or small caliber self-loading rifles and handguns. I think what ICE and the BATFE are doing is over blowing the kinds of guns taken as well as their lethality in a true battlefield situation. I have watched the media reports and most every one shows the clear use of automatic weapons which are not present or available inside the U.S. population in enough numbers to even slightly affect the outcome of any problems they have in Mexico. On top of all that I can't imagine any organization in the world that would go to war with a government using a sporting type gun when they have access to cheap automatic and select fire weapons from Central and South America where they get much of the drugs they are smuggling and selling in the U.S. . What logic would make them use inferior guns when they can easily obtain and import true battlefield weapons. Tie Hugo Chavez into this, it isn't hard to do, and we see that guns from the U.S. are not a big problem in Mexico. Perhaps it is little more than a desire for increased funding for ICE and the other bloated government agencies as well as a more than mildly complicit new President. I am happy that we seem to be stopping more drugs and illegal foreign nationals from entering but, not at the cost of more American freedom when it all seems to based on a lie anyway. Sorry it is so long and this is just my opinion.

[longhorn_92]

Out of the 16 incidents listed - 12 were in No Gun Zones...

Just an observation.

[boomerang]

It's agitprop. Pure and simple.

[srothstein]

Considering the incidents that were not included, I have to wonder what the real purpose of the article was. Two quick ones that come to mind that were not listed are the San Ysidro McDonald's shooting and the San Antonio Fiesta Parade shooting. There are a bunch of others that were primarily domestic or crime (gang retaliation and such) that were also not listed.

I have to think the cases picked were in an effort to show the rate of incidents is picking up. There could be no other reason for this than propaganda that I can think of.

EDIT: And thinking of it while I waited for the post, they left off the Beltway Shootings in DC. I wonder if they considered that as a series of single shootings for the purposes of this.

[seamusTX]

Considering the incidents that were not included, I have to wonder what the real purpose of the article was.

The simple explanation is that the writer's boss told her to compile such a list.

This is standard practice for newspapers, to provide some kind of background or context for emerging stories.

I suspect that the writer simply looked up "mass shooting" or "shooting rampage" in Nexis. That kind of search would miss events that were not tagged with those phrases.

... they left off the Beltway Shootings in DC. ...

If you are referring to John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, I would consider that a different type of crime. They were terrorists who claimed a political motivation, and they were not suicidal, as most berserkers are.

- Jim

[bdickens]

Everyone should read a little book entitled How to Lie withe Statistics. http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistic ... 168&sr=1-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;