General Mass Shooting Thread (originally Las Vegas Strip)

[CousinsCowgirl84]

42 minutes ago, Fergasun said:

As long as individual gun owners and gun lovers want their guns, we'll never stop mass shootings. 

 

I have no idea how often a "good guy with a gun" protects themselves.  I can only think that with all the pro-gun money out there, that we should be flooded with verifiable news storys of "John Smith defended himself with his firearm today" to counterbalance the "ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING" narrative. 

 

Or, the pro-gun folk don't even need to put that out...

 

Golf clap for all the gun owners of Amercia.  This slaughter of innocents is the price you pay so you can feel a (IMHO) false sense of security. 

If we live in a society where good guys with guns defend themselves from criminals who are violent enough to need to be shot, perhaps we should ask first if that is the society we want to cultivate.

Edited October 26, 2023 by CousinsCowgirl84

[tshile]

1 hour ago, Fergasun said:

I can only think that with all the pro-gun money out there, that we should be flooded with verifiable news storys of "John Smith defended himself with his firearm today" to counterbalance the "ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING" narrative. 

Generally I reject your entire post but discussing it means rehashing what is countless pages in the gun control thread which is problematic for two reasons one being this is the wrong thread. 
 

but on this point - the news we see is what the news people want us to see which is the stuff that generates clicks and ad revenue. “law abiding gun owner used their right to own a gun to protect themselves” isn’t a sexy story. It just isn’t. You’ll find those stories predominately on gun enthusiast websites where veracity of the claims is seemingly suspect… so someone like me who sees those stories, isn’t willing to share them, because in addition to be attacked by people that don’t bother to read the story, you run too high of a risk of there being a flaw with the facts in any given story and that’s just not worth dealing with. So they don’t get shared, they never reach trending status, the main news media isn’t interested in pushing it, and so it doesn’t make much noise in the news scene. 

 

however in the day and age where any shooting incident involving more than 2 people is now defined as a “mass shooting” (which is beyond stupid and you can use your own critical thinking skills to think through why that’s the definition now) it’s become very easy to craft a headline with the phrase “mass shooting” in it and you instantly have a trending story. That combines with the ability to write a story that says we have hundreds of “mass shootings” every month, and boom you got another trending story. You can also write a story showing how they’ve increased, without any mention of when and how the definitions have changed or how collection of data has changed, just a chart showing an exponential curve with no nuance to what the curve actually represents - boom trending article.   Journalist integrity, grasp of actual facts and statistics and what it means, matters not; not to the news people, and not to the general public consuming headlines and sharing articles and outrage based on headlines. 
 

I don’t want to try to dive into conversations about responsible journalism not how much publicizing encourages more of these. 
 

I just want to point out that absence of it in your news feed isn’t exactly proof of anything here. There are people who have put effort into tracking or researching this. I know this because I’ve put in the effort and found they do indeed exist. They’re full of lots of interesting information - for example did you know on average a self defense situation involving guns usually lasts less than 30 seconds (it may be 3 minutes, been a while, pretty sure it’s 30 seconds but I can’t shake “3 minutes” from my brain for some reason …) and involves fewer than 6 shots fired? Maybe that isn’t interesting to many,  but I find it interesting and informative especially when trying to decide if you need a gun with a 13 round magazine and 2 spare magazines when you’re carrying… Anyways, if you find a reputable one you’ll find they have an entire section dedicated to just how hard it is to track and why. Full of caveats explaining that they’re doing their best to guess.  One example is that in certain areas in certain situations it isn’t recorded in a way that makes tracking it easy or even possible. 
 

none of that is to suggest there isn’t anything we can or should do about it. Just giving you some information. If you want to really look into topics like that you have to be pretty creative in how you find the data. 
 

For example I once would up in an argument on these forums with someone who foolishly tried to put out there their theory that gun owners were responsible for the bulk of the crime. So I found Virginia state police data (which I think is since no longer public) that showed .03% of conceal carry permits were revoked annually - this is a state that revoked permits for commuting any type of gun crime, drug crime, or assault crime where a gun wasn’t involved. Is that a foolproof argument? Of course not but it’s one data point to shows something that, best to my knowledge, I’ve never seen anyone else put out there or suggest they even know. And it certainly flies in the face of the idea that lawful concealed carry people in Virginia are responsible for any statistically significant portion of violent crime, drug crime, or any type of gun crime - in fact 99.97% have nothing to do with any of those types of crimes on an annual basis. 
 

again - just information. 

Edited October 26, 2023 by tshile

[bearrock]

52 minutes ago, tshile said:

however in the day and age where any shooting incident involving more than 2 people is now defined as a “mass shooting” (which is beyond stupid and you can use your own critical thinking skills to think through why that’s the definition now)

 

I thought it was 4 or more?  Did it change recently?

[tshile]

6 minutes ago, bearrock said:

 

I thought it was 4 or more?  Did it change recently?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting
 

there is no clear definition. I’m not going to argue over whether it’s more than 2 or more than 3 victims. (Which would me 3+ or 4+.). Seems like an irrelevant thing to argue about in the grand scheme of things. 

[bearrock]

8 minutes ago, tshile said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting
 

there is no clear definition. I’m not going to argue over whether it’s more than 2 or more than 3 victims. (Which would me 3+ or 4+.). Seems like an irrelevant thing to argue about in the grand scheme of things. 

 

Yeah, at the end of the day I think it's less about the actual number of victims and more about the random nature of the act.  The sense that the victim has absolutely nothing to do with the shooter but just happens to at the location of the shooting kind of thing.  

 

EDIT: not to suggest 2 victims make it a mass shooting.  Just saying that nature of the crime has more to do with it than numbers in my view

Edited October 26, 2023 by bearrock

[PleaseBlitz]

8 minutes ago, tshile said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting
 

there is no clear definition. I’m not going to argue over whether it’s more than 2 or more than 3 victims. (Which would me 3+ or 4+.). Seems like an irrelevant thing to argue about in the grand scheme of things. 

 

The definition most people use is "a single outburst of violence in which four or more people are shot."

 

This is the definition used by https://massshootingtracker.site/, which is the most-cited tracker that I am aware of. 

[GoCommiesGo]

FBI defines it as four or more murdered with a gun. 

[PleaseBlitz]

1 minute ago, GoCommiesGo said:

FBI defines it as four or more murdered with a gun. 

 

So if 20 people get shot but only 3 die, that's not a "mass shooting"?

 

That's pretty stupid. 

[GoCommiesGo]

1 minute ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

So if 20 people get shot but only 3 die, that's not a "mass shooting"?

 

That's pretty stupid. 

 

That becomes an active shooter event, they track those separately from the mass shootings. 

[PleaseBlitz]

 

As aptly explained by the website I posted above:

 

Quote

The current FBI definition of mass murder, commonly accepted by the media as a proxy for “mass gun violence”, is three or more people murdered in one event. We believe this does not capture the whole picture. Many people may survive a shooting based on luck alone. Some may be left with life long disabilities and trauma, but the mainstream definition of mass gun violence does not account for this.

 

Here at the Mass Shooting Tracker, we count the number of people shot rather than the number people killed because, “shooting” means “people shot”.

 

I added the bolding.  

[Xameil]

Are you guys actually arguing about the semantics of the term mass shooting?!?

[GoCommiesGo]

1 minute ago, Xameil said:

Are you guys actually arguing about the semantics of the term mass shooting?!?

 

Nah, it's just kind of odd that there is not a definitive definition for it. FBI uses four killed, but also at the same time "The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area."

 

I think it's weird and was just giving the FBI definition out. 

[PleaseBlitz]

1 minute ago, Xameil said:

Are you guys actually arguing about the semantics of the term mass shooting?!?

 

I like pointing out when @tshile is wrong.

[Xameil]

1 minute ago, GoCommiesGo said:

 

Nah, it's just kind of odd that there is not a definitive definition for it. FBI uses four killed, but also at the same time "The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area."

 

I think it's weird and was just giving the FBI definition out. 

This reminds me of a line from Broken Arrow...

 

Giles Prentice : I don't know what's scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.

2 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

I like pointing out when @tshile is wrong.

Lol fair enough...carry on

[GoCommiesGo]

@Xameil  Travolta and Slater having a fist fight on a platform train car if I remember correctly. Haven't thought of that movie in a long time. 

 

I do think part of the problem from a tracking standpoint is different organizations use a different definition. 2, 3 or 4+ dead is bad but if you have the bar to low then a double homicide is a mass shooting event, you have to draw it somewhere but for some reason not everyone agrees on threshold. Just an odd idiosyncratic thing that comes up when a terrible event happens. 

[Xameil]

1 minute ago, GoCommiesGo said:

@Xameil  Travolta and Slater having a fist fight on a platform train car if I remember correctly. Haven't thought of that movie in a long time. 

 

I do think part of the problem from a tracking standpoint is different organizations use a different definition. 2, 3 or 4+ dead is bad but if you have the bar to low then a double homicide is a mass shooting event, you have to draw it somewhere but for some reason not everyone agrees on threshold. Just an odd idiosyncratic thing that comes up when a terrible event happens. 

If im being honest...who gives a flying **** about classifying based on how many died.

 

Fact of the matter is, a mentally ill person who if I read correctly, spent time in an institution, did not have his guns removed.

Which, on a quick search, Maine claims to remove guns from people involentarily admitted to a psyche ward.

 

This is the problem.....once this guy had a diagnosed mental illness, he should have had his guns removed. 

 

[GoCommiesGo]

1 minute ago, Xameil said:

If im being honest...who gives a flying **** about classifying based on how many died.

 

Fact of the matter is, a mentally ill person who if I read correctly, spent time in an institution, did not have his guns removed.

Which, on a quick search, Maine claims to remove guns from people involentarily admitted to a psyche ward.

 

This is the problem.....once this guy had a diagnosed mental illness, he should have had his guns removed. 

 

 

No argument from me. 

 

I agree, if they had red flag laws, they should have caught this before it happened. That would be a massive breakdown on the local and state police. 

[tshile]

46 minutes ago, GoCommiesGo said:

FBI defines it as four or more murdered with a gun. 

 

Well, no they don’t. 
 

Quote

mass shooting, also called active shooter incident, as defined by the U.S.Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an event in which one or more individuals are “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Implicitin this definition is the shooter’s use of a firearm.” The FBI has not set a minimum number of casualties to qualify an event as a mass shooting, but U.S. statute (the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012) defines a “mass killing” as “3 or more killings in a single incident.”

the DOJ has a victim count

 

the FBI does not and uses “populated area”

[The Evil Genius]

There seems to conflicting info on the FBI definition. 

 

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/analysis-recent-mass-shootings

 

Quote

For the purposes of tracking crime data, the FBI defines a "mass shooting" as any incident in which at least four people are murdered with a gun. 

 

[tshile]

45 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

I like pointing out when @tshile is wrong.

You didn’t  seem to do that though

 

but don’t let that stop you from thinking you did 

31 minutes ago, Xameil said:

If im being honest...who gives a flying **** about classifying based on how many died

Yeah why would we want to make sure everyone’s using the same definitions when talking about a complex issue. 
 

or point out when people are clearing using different definitions 

 

🤡

32 minutes ago, Xameil said:

Fact of the matter is, a mentally ill person who if I read correctly, spent time in an institution, did not have his guns removed.

Do we know where he got the gun from?

[tshile]

This reminds me of people using the word Patriot

 

the intention is clear - illicit strong emotional reaction 

 

however the word clearly means many different things to different people. 
 

some people think the 1/6 rioters are patriots

 

our government instituted a massive civilian spying operation and called it the “Patriot Act”

 

this Maine incident is a mass shooting

 

Some articles will call gang shootouts mass shooting incidents

 

two very different problems with very different solutions 

 

but call them all the same and hey - some narratives get a little easier to craft. 
 

the same is done with “school shooting” sometimes when an incident happens near school grounds but is otherwise unaffiliated with the school 

 

🤷‍♂️ 

 

in addition to who ****izes terms and who doesn’t, who chooses to not care about it is interesting. 

[GoCommiesGo]

11 minutes ago, tshile said:

Well, no they don’t. 

 

@The Evil Genius Beat me to the link with the definition. So I'll add another one from Cornell The FBI defines mass shootings as “Four or more murders occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders. These events typically involve a single location, where the killer murdered a number of victims in an ongoing incident.”

[tshile]

14 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

There seems to conflicting info on the FBI definition. 

 

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/analysis-recent-mass-shootings

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, GoCommiesGo said:

 

@The Evil Genius Beat me to the link with the definition. So I'll add another one from Cornell The FBI defines mass shootings as “Four or more murders occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders. These events typically involve a single location, where the killer murdered a number of victims in an ongoing incident.”

so I noticed we were all using secondary sources. Even I was with my original definition. 
 

so I went to see if u could find something on the FBI’s site. A primary source.  And look, it matches wha to said. (They use active shooter for the person and mass shooting for the incident)
 

Quote

The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents-in-the-us-2021-052422.pdf/view

 

 

if you go to the third page of the off they offer a more extensive outline of the criteria they evaluate to determine if something qualifies. It’s all about the method and motivation - not about a body count. 
 

but the point was not to see who could correctly google any specific organizations definition. 
 

the point was that the term is not well defined, and you can see people abusing the term to fit a narrative or agenda. 
 

and as you can see in this thread - you can find people who don’t care. And there’s something to say about that too. 
 

i, personally, think the FBI is correct. A victim count is stupid for any number of reasons. Intention and details about how and why are what matters. Indiscriminate killing of random people in public is what a mass shooting is. 

[GoCommiesGo]

4 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

so I noticed we were all using secondary sources. Even I was with my original definition. 
 

so I went to see if u could find something on the FBI’s site. A primary source.  And look, it matches wha to said. (They use active shooter for the person and mass shooting for the incident)
 

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents-in-the-us-2021-052422.pdf/view

 

 

if you go to the third page of the off they offer a more extensive outline of the criteria they evaluate to determine if something qualifies. It’s all about the method and motivation - not about a body count. 
 

but the point was not to see who could correctly google any specific organizations definition. 
 

the point was that the term is not well defined, and you can see people abusing the term to fit a narrative or agenda. 
 

and as you can see in this thread - you can find people who don’t care. And there’s something to say about that too. 
 

i, personally, think the FBI is correct. A victim count is stupid for any number of reasons. Intention and details about how and why are what matters. Indiscriminate killing of random people in public is what a mass shooting is. 

 

Good link, I do want to correct myself on this. They do have a defined amount for a mass killing.

 

Page 2 of the report cite number 4 at the bottom "The federal definition of “mass killing” is defined as “three or more killings in a single incident.” Derived from Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, 28 USC § 530C(b)(1)(M)(i)".

 

I never knew there was a defined definition of mass killing that the Government couples with a specific type of incident. 

[tshile]

5 minutes ago, GoCommiesGo said:

I never knew there was a defined definition of mass killing that the Government couples with a specific type of incident

It gets messy because you have to consider what qualifies for what charges. Then you have your own internal research methods you have to be concerned about. Then you have other agencies you have to interface with - what is their definition?
 

I didn’t mean to totally derail the thread. I think the point has been made on at least a basic level that “mass shooting” is, at best, poorly defined or defined inconsistently. 

Edited October 26, 2023 by tshile