5 ms·
more like mass shooting is poorly defined
by tekknik 1y ago
more like mass shooting is poorly defined
- mjlawson 1y agoMore like that it's politically defined when the numbers become inconvenient.
- abustamam 1y agoWhile "mass shooting" does not have a solid agreed upon definition, there is a commonly accepted definition when we talk about one in the US. It's a shooting incident in which there are 4 or more casualties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United... That's a very low bar.
- insurancesucks 1y agoIt's a dishonest bar. The vast majority of us picture a deranged lunatic indiscriminately shooting innocent people. Gang related incidents are something entirely different. The definition should not obscure the two (but it would be politically inconvenient to separate them)
- abustamam 1y ago> The vast majority of us picture a deranged lunatic indiscriminately shooting innocent people Just because we picture one thing when we hear a term doesn't change the agreed upon definition of the term. If the definition of "mass shooting" were a single person, 600 is still way too many to have in a year. Other developed countries have fewer than 600 gun-related deaths total per year. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/10/31/1209683893/how-the-u-s-gun-violence-death-rate-compares-with-the-rest-of-the-world https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/10/31/1209683... The fact that upping the bar to 4 per incident and still gets us 600 is frankly shameful. > it would be politically inconvenient to separate them Why? No sane person in the United States "likes" gun violence. I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement "600 incidents of a firearm killing 4 or more people is too many incidents." The question that divides people is how we ought to control it.
- tekknik 1y agowe would all love no crime, most of us live in the real world and understand mental illness is a thing that exists.
- abustamam 1y agoYou're gonna have to explain your point better. No one said mental illness doesn't exist. Your comment has nothing to do with the definition of mass shootings. No one defines mass shooting as "a mentally ill person who shoots people." It's pretty much given that a mass shooter is mentally ill. The point of contention is what does "mass" mean.
- komali2 1y agoYou seem to be under the impression that other countries experience even a fraction of the violence Americans experience from guns. We don't. What's happening in America with the gun violence is uniquely horrifying.
- disgruntledphd2 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_... Every time. It's sad that it takes a satirical newspaper to point out the obvious truth.
- tekknik 1y agothis definition is only commonly accepted amongst the left. as an example, would you call a gathering of 4 people a mass gathering. most wouldn’t.
- cosmicgadget 1y agoProbably because those are two different contexts.
- tekknik 1y agono, it’s loaded speech and meant to manipulate human emotion to promote one’s goals.
- abustamam 1y agoI'd love for you to define it then.
- tekknik 1y agoit’s simple, don’t use verbiage meant to manipulate emotions. so just call it a shooting. the qualifier mass serves no purpose and changes nothing about how the case is prosecuted. the suspect is still charged with individual murder or manslaughter charges, not one single charge of multiple deaths.
- potato3732842 1y agoI'll do one further. I don't care if the verbiage is "manipulative" or has a spin to it so long as the term and definition are not specifically crafted to overload plain english terms to facilitate being misleading with plausible deniability. That's how low of a bar I'll set and they still can't meet it.
- Fezzik 1y agoI think of ‘mass’ in the context of defining groups of things as just ‘a lot under the circumstances’. A mass gathering for an NFL game is 100,000 people; a mass crowd for a high-school JV basketball game is probably 100; a mass crowd for a 1 year old’s birthday is maybe 50. It’s relative to what is expected under normal circumstances. 4 people being shot or injured is a lot because nobody should be shot or injured.