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>media really over-estimated this persons competence It is a bit of psychological blindness where we convince ourselves that random murders aren't as easy as t

>media really over-estimated this persons competence It is a bit of psychological blindness where we convince ourselves that random murders aren't as easy as they really are. The truth is that almost anyone -- including people with lots of security theater -- can be nullified by random people. This is quadruply true in the era of drones.

ethbr1 2y ago
There's very little in America to stop a person who is willing to die (or spend life in prison) from killing others. Most normal people just have a healthy self preservation instinct, so aren't willing to accept those consequences.
- ANewFormation 2y ago
  It's not just America. Shinzo Abe was assassinated, with security and at a public event, by somebody using a homemade gun with homemade ammo. As tech advances over time, this will all only become even more true.
  - hedora 2y ago
    Mass shootings in the US don’t even make the news any more. I don’t think that’s true in most countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2024 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_th... 547 so far this year. If we had equal justice for all in this country, this CEO shooting would have barely made local news, maybe.
    - wat10000 2y ago
      The disparity is laid bare by the fact that this wasn’t even the only murder in lower Manhattan on that day. One gets a multi-state manhunt and the top spot on national news for days. The other got a shrug.
      - gruez 2y ago
        Doesn't it make sense for police to go after high profile killings? If they catch the CEO killer that's more good press for them, and if they were slacking there's more chance that they'll get hounded for it.
        wat10000 2y ago
        Sure. NYPD is doing the rational thing in a society that treats the murder of a wealthy CEO as a much worse crime than the murder of a semi-homeless maybe-illegal immigrant. And in a society that strongly valued equality before the law, they wouldn’t dare treat the two cases so differently. Thus we can see that we don’t live in such a society.
        gruez 2y ago
        >And in a society that strongly valued equality before the law, they wouldn’t dare treat the two cases so differently. Thus we can see that we don’t live in such a society. How would "equality before the law" as you described even work? If some celebrity got killed and people wanted to contribute their resources into finding their killer, is that suddenly bad now? If my son got killed and I'm trying to find his killer rather than doing the Right Thing™ by devoting my time equally among all unsolved murder cases, am I a bad person?
        wishinghand 2y ago
        You wouldn’t be, but the police doing so would be in such a situation, if there was equality.
        gruez 2y ago
        Is a police department that shrugs and says "we'd want to solve this high profile murder that everyone wants solved, but because of 'equality' we have to solve this gangbanger murder that nobody cares about" really what we want? Isn't a government that's responsive to citizen demands also an ideal? What happens if they conflict?
    - seanw444 2y ago
      Only two of those sources exclude gang and organized crime-related shootings, which have made up a large portion of the statistic in the past.
      - JCharante 2y ago
        Gang and organized crime-related shootings are very bad to have, most developed countries don't have them either.
        Kye 2y ago
        It's always weird to me when people want to exclude them from stats.
        seanw444 2y ago
        Because it paints the image that normal innocent people are getting shot up in schools and markets more often than they really are, primarily to push the narrative that guns need to be taken from people who have committed no crimes, to stop crime. In reality, the majority of shootings are done by people who will find a way to kill someone, one way or the other. Whether it be with a legally-purchased gun, an illegally-purchased gun, a homemade gun, a knife, a homemade shank, a baseball bat, a vehicle.
        seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        The majority of shootings are actually gun owners or their family members killing themselves. 60% or so.
        seanw444 2y ago
        True, let me revise. The majority of "shootings" are suicides, which can be carried out in all manner of ways. The second largest contributors are gangs and organized crime. The smallest, by far, is what people actually picture in their mind when they hear "mass shooting".
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      >547 so far this year. If we had equal justice for all in this country, this CEO shooting would have barely made local news, maybe. Don't lie at us with statistics like that. The bulk of those so called "mass shootings", normal crimes gone off the rails and other things that are nowhere near what people think when you use the words "mass shooting", which is almost certainly the slight of hand you're going for. 2+ victims is a mass shooting per the FBI definition. While what you say and like you reference is technically true it's also a particularly evil way to mislead the reader to portray it as you did. The typical mass shooting on that list consists of 2-4 people shot over the course of an otherwise normal crime (usually a crime for profit gone off the rails or the drug industry DIYing dispute resolution) wheres the colloquial definition of "mass shooting" is more along the lines of a crazy suicidal person killing as many others as they can. Pretty much every mass shooting by the colloquial definition makes the national news. I am unaware of any one that has not.
      - waterhouse 2y ago
        > Pretty much every mass shooting by the colloquial definition makes the national news. I am unaware of any one that has not. Now that sounds like obvious selection bias. Also, the Wikipedia article says "specifically for the purposes of this article, a total of four or more victims". But the point about the categorization is well taken. As the article says: "Many incidents involving organized crime and gang violence are included."
        randyrand 2y ago
        And this ‘mass shooting’ list also includes injuries NOT caused by shooting. What’s the point of that? “ A man was killed and three women were injured when they fired upon in a vehicle on eastbound Roosevelt Road near Cicero Avenue in Cicero. The victims fled north onto Cicero Avenue into Chicago where they crashed, leading to three others being injured in the crash.[16]” ^ Who would call this a mass shooting?
- wat10000 2y ago
  Most normal people have a healthy aversion to killing. That’s what stops it, not fear of consequences.
  - DontchaKnowit 2y ago
    Eh honestly I think its both but probably suprising amounts of the latter
    - wat10000 2y ago
      People sometimes end up in situations where there would be no consequences, and killing rarely ensues.
  - cal85 2y ago
    We all agree most normal people have an aversion to killing. You're saying that having an aversion to killing stops people killing, which is a tautology. And then you say it's not about consequences. What's your explanation then? It seems intuitive to me that the awareness of consequences plays a central role in preventing anger from turning into violence, every day, everywhere. Have you never seen a fight/argument on the street suddenly diffuse when a cop appears? Or eg, a guy drunk at a bar, starting to raise his voice in anger at someone, only to simmer down when he sees the bartender walking over because he doesn't want to be kicked out? Awareness of consequences is a necessary precondition for people to course-correct. That's an essential feature of people: we are able to notice when we're on course toward a bad outcome (whether that's harm to oneself, or harm to someone/something we care about, or any undesirable situation), and so take responsibility for our actions in advance so we can change course. Without that we'd be amoral creatures. This is what makes us moral beings – that we can take responsibility for the outcomes of our actions. This is a good thing. It's what makes us people, and it's the basis of having a civilisation that is mostly peaceful.
    - heyjamesknight 2y ago
      One can have an aversion to the act itself without considering the consequences. People who have never gotten in a real fight before don't understand that its actually quite difficult to throw a full-strength punch at someone if you've never done so before. It's not the consequences that you're considering in that moment, but an aversion to the violence itself.
mordymoop 2y ago
We came within a literal inch of witnessing the assassination of a presidential candidate earlier this year, by a kid with no particular skills and an easily obtained rifle. We are lucky that people are mostly nonviolent.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Twice, even!
goatlover 2y ago
How rulers like Putin survive so long though?
- clarionbell 2y ago
  By making it appear, and actually, much harder. More surveillance, more body guards, stronger loyalty checks can get you a lot of security. And let's be honest. Who would take a bullet for this CEO of one of the most despised corporations in USA (that's saying something). I honestly think, that the general distaste for this particular industry, is why the law enforcement had such a hard time catching him.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  I did say almost. Putin is kind of the extreme example. If someone is willing to live like an absolute hermit in basically a police state, hiding behind layers and layers of security apparatus, engaging lookalikes and only allowing the loyalty-tested anywhere near him, survival odds improve quite a bit. But for anyone trying to live anything remotely approaching a normal life, or with any real freedom, your continued survival is completely due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in your world have a personal breaker against murder.

ethbr1 2y ago

There's very little in America to stop a person who is willing to die (or spend life in prison) from killing others. Most normal people just have a healthy self preservation instinct, so aren't willing to accept those consequences.

ANewFormation 2y ago
It's not just America. Shinzo Abe was assassinated, with security and at a public event, by somebody using a homemade gun with homemade ammo. As tech advances over time, this will all only become even more true.
- hedora 2y ago
  Mass shootings in the US don’t even make the news any more. I don’t think that’s true in most countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2024 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_th... 547 so far this year. If we had equal justice for all in this country, this CEO shooting would have barely made local news, maybe.
  - wat10000 2y ago
    The disparity is laid bare by the fact that this wasn’t even the only murder in lower Manhattan on that day. One gets a multi-state manhunt and the top spot on national news for days. The other got a shrug.
    - gruez 2y ago
      Doesn't it make sense for police to go after high profile killings? If they catch the CEO killer that's more good press for them, and if they were slacking there's more chance that they'll get hounded for it.
      - wat10000 2y ago
        Sure. NYPD is doing the rational thing in a society that treats the murder of a wealthy CEO as a much worse crime than the murder of a semi-homeless maybe-illegal immigrant. And in a society that strongly valued equality before the law, they wouldn’t dare treat the two cases so differently. Thus we can see that we don’t live in such a society.
        gruez 2y ago
        >And in a society that strongly valued equality before the law, they wouldn’t dare treat the two cases so differently. Thus we can see that we don’t live in such a society. How would "equality before the law" as you described even work? If some celebrity got killed and people wanted to contribute their resources into finding their killer, is that suddenly bad now? If my son got killed and I'm trying to find his killer rather than doing the Right Thing™ by devoting my time equally among all unsolved murder cases, am I a bad person?
        wishinghand 2y ago
        You wouldn’t be, but the police doing so would be in such a situation, if there was equality.
        gruez 2y ago
        Is a police department that shrugs and says "we'd want to solve this high profile murder that everyone wants solved, but because of 'equality' we have to solve this gangbanger murder that nobody cares about" really what we want? Isn't a government that's responsive to citizen demands also an ideal? What happens if they conflict?
  - seanw444 2y ago
    Only two of those sources exclude gang and organized crime-related shootings, which have made up a large portion of the statistic in the past.
    - JCharante 2y ago
      Gang and organized crime-related shootings are very bad to have, most developed countries don't have them either.
      - Kye 2y ago
        It's always weird to me when people want to exclude them from stats.
        seanw444 2y ago
        Because it paints the image that normal innocent people are getting shot up in schools and markets more often than they really are, primarily to push the narrative that guns need to be taken from people who have committed no crimes, to stop crime. In reality, the majority of shootings are done by people who will find a way to kill someone, one way or the other. Whether it be with a legally-purchased gun, an illegally-purchased gun, a homemade gun, a knife, a homemade shank, a baseball bat, a vehicle.
        seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        The majority of shootings are actually gun owners or their family members killing themselves. 60% or so.
        seanw444 2y ago
        True, let me revise. The majority of "shootings" are suicides, which can be carried out in all manner of ways. The second largest contributors are gangs and organized crime. The smallest, by far, is what people actually picture in their mind when they hear "mass shooting".
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    >547 so far this year. If we had equal justice for all in this country, this CEO shooting would have barely made local news, maybe. Don't lie at us with statistics like that. The bulk of those so called "mass shootings", normal crimes gone off the rails and other things that are nowhere near what people think when you use the words "mass shooting", which is almost certainly the slight of hand you're going for. 2+ victims is a mass shooting per the FBI definition. While what you say and like you reference is technically true it's also a particularly evil way to mislead the reader to portray it as you did. The typical mass shooting on that list consists of 2-4 people shot over the course of an otherwise normal crime (usually a crime for profit gone off the rails or the drug industry DIYing dispute resolution) wheres the colloquial definition of "mass shooting" is more along the lines of a crazy suicidal person killing as many others as they can. Pretty much every mass shooting by the colloquial definition makes the national news. I am unaware of any one that has not.
    - waterhouse 2y ago
      > Pretty much every mass shooting by the colloquial definition makes the national news. I am unaware of any one that has not. Now that sounds like obvious selection bias. Also, the Wikipedia article says "specifically for the purposes of this article, a total of four or more victims". But the point about the categorization is well taken. As the article says: "Many incidents involving organized crime and gang violence are included."
      - randyrand 2y ago
        And this ‘mass shooting’ list also includes injuries NOT caused by shooting. What’s the point of that? “ A man was killed and three women were injured when they fired upon in a vehicle on eastbound Roosevelt Road near Cicero Avenue in Cicero. The victims fled north onto Cicero Avenue into Chicago where they crashed, leading to three others being injured in the crash.[16]” ^ Who would call this a mass shooting?
wat10000 2y ago
Most normal people have a healthy aversion to killing. That’s what stops it, not fear of consequences.
- DontchaKnowit 2y ago
  Eh honestly I think its both but probably suprising amounts of the latter
  - wat10000 2y ago
    People sometimes end up in situations where there would be no consequences, and killing rarely ensues.
- cal85 2y ago
  We all agree most normal people have an aversion to killing. You're saying that having an aversion to killing stops people killing, which is a tautology. And then you say it's not about consequences. What's your explanation then? It seems intuitive to me that the awareness of consequences plays a central role in preventing anger from turning into violence, every day, everywhere. Have you never seen a fight/argument on the street suddenly diffuse when a cop appears? Or eg, a guy drunk at a bar, starting to raise his voice in anger at someone, only to simmer down when he sees the bartender walking over because he doesn't want to be kicked out? Awareness of consequences is a necessary precondition for people to course-correct. That's an essential feature of people: we are able to notice when we're on course toward a bad outcome (whether that's harm to oneself, or harm to someone/something we care about, or any undesirable situation), and so take responsibility for our actions in advance so we can change course. Without that we'd be amoral creatures. This is what makes us moral beings – that we can take responsibility for the outcomes of our actions. This is a good thing. It's what makes us people, and it's the basis of having a civilisation that is mostly peaceful.
  - heyjamesknight 2y ago
    One can have an aversion to the act itself without considering the consequences. People who have never gotten in a real fight before don't understand that its actually quite difficult to throw a full-strength punch at someone if you've never done so before. It's not the consequences that you're considering in that moment, but an aversion to the violence itself.

mordymoop 2y ago

We came within a literal inch of witnessing the assassination of a presidential candidate earlier this year, by a kid with no particular skills and an easily obtained rifle. We are lucky that people are mostly nonviolent.

ceejayoz 2y ago
Twice, even!

goatlover 2y ago

How rulers like Putin survive so long though?

clarionbell 2y ago
By making it appear, and actually, much harder. More surveillance, more body guards, stronger loyalty checks can get you a lot of security. And let's be honest. Who would take a bullet for this CEO of one of the most despised corporations in USA (that's saying something). I honestly think, that the general distaste for this particular industry, is why the law enforcement had such a hard time catching him.
llm_nerd 2y ago
I did say almost. Putin is kind of the extreme example. If someone is willing to live like an absolute hermit in basically a police state, hiding behind layers and layers of security apparatus, engaging lookalikes and only allowing the loyalty-tested anywhere near him, survival odds improve quite a bit. But for anyone trying to live anything remotely approaching a normal life, or with any real freedom, your continued survival is completely due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in your world have a personal breaker against murder.