4 ms·

Excluding what amounts to "exculpatory evidence facts" shapes the impression readers receive.

• 7952 7y ago
  It's like a form of political correctness. Writers using weasel words so no one thinks they may be hinting at something controversial that may offend people. Perhaps they should put a disclaimer at the start reminding us that guns are not at fault. It is just an unreasonable burden to expect articles about mass killings in America to completely ignore guns. Maybe mass shootings follow the Swiss cheese model [0]. Several sets of circumstances align and you get a terrible outcome. Mental health, family, drugs, propaganda whatever. But guns are also a big hole in the cheese. It shouldn't be contraversial to point that out. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
  • beatgammit 7y ago
    Sure, but it's also not particularly useful. Obviously you need access to guns to use them, so it just serves to distract from the other issues. If guns weren't available but everything else lined up, would bombs be used instead? That would require a couple of other things to line up, but it doesn't prevent the problem. I want to know why these mental issues arise and how we might go about preventing them. I imagine there are more similarities between suicides and mass shootings than the media admits, yet the former gets mentioned with mental health while the latter focuses on access to guns. We need to figure out how these mental health issues develop and find ways to solve them before they become a public problem. Maybe that means controlled, legal access to psychedelics, idk, but we need more than a copout of "gun control will solve everything". Maybe gun control is part of the solution, but it's certainly not the only part.