4 ms·
> Yes, you can jump straight to the one incident that caused more victims than an average mass shooting. Do you know any others? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
by Turing_Machine 4y ago
> Yes, you can jump straight to the one incident that caused more victims than an average mass shooting. Do you know any others?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire (gasoline)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks (box cutters and airplanes)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide (some firearms, but mostly machetes).
There are plenty more, including a bunch of genocides that took place before firearms were even invented.
> Because causing a high victim count with a vehicle attack is not impossible but hard.
Sorry, that's simply not true. All you need is a large vehicle and a crowd.
- bayesian_horse 4y agoYou are making my point: You are cherry picking incidents while ignoring the vast number of mass shootings. All I'm saying is it is easier to kill a lot of people with a proper gun. All the "counter examples" you give are everything but "easy". They take planning and a lot of effort. Mass shooters sometimes buy their gun on the day of the attack. Then all it takes is pulling a trigger. And no, "all you need is a vehicle and a crowd" isn't true. In reality, most of these incidents end up with very few victims if at all. Turns out, a lot can go wrong with that "plan". There can be a lot of obstacles between a car and a crowd that make charging into it harder. Any bump and the car looses speed. Cars get stuck. Bigger vehicles aren't as easy to get a hold of or drive. So no, it's not as easy as with a gun, and that's why in actual reality, in the US amok runners choose firearms over vehicle pretty much every time, and everywhere else man slaughter by car isn't exactly an epidemic either.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago> All the "counter examples" you give are everything but "easy". Nonsense. There's nothing hard about renting a truck and driving it into a crowd. > Bigger vehicles aren't as easy to get a hold of or drive. Nonsense. https://www.uhaul.com/ https://www.uhaul.com/ https://www.pensketruckrental.com/ https://www.pensketruckrental.com/ Also, the Happy Land perpetrator literally walked down to the corner gas station and bought a gas can and a gallon of gas. No waiting. No ID. No background check.
- bayesian_horse 4y agoYet, somehow all of these methods get used orders of magnitude less than firearms to commit mass murders. Both in the US and elsewhere. The US isn't really my standard. In sane jurisdictions you actually need a special license for bigger vehicles. And those still aren't as easy to control as smaller cars, so I suspect you highly underestimate the difficulty involved in committing mass murder with a vehicle. Sure it's not impossible, but pulling a trigger is one heck of a lot easier. People who try to commit amok runs with cars or trucks actually do get stuck quite often.
- Turing_Machine 4y agoYou keep shifting the goalposts -- your original post specifically mentioned the US. The issue here is that you think the problem is "this guy has a gun" rather than "this guy wants to kill a bunch of people". It's like trying to combat alcoholism by banning shot glasses. I think we're done.