355 days of mass shootings in the u.s.

[WolFish]

The math is weird - I guess they mean 355 incidents this year, with at least 4 dead in each.

It would be interesting to see how many of these folks were not one of the profiled groups. Unfortunately it appear that as in 9/11, I fit the appearance of a profiled group.

Because my parents lied about our ethnicity for so long, I always think my skin color is darker than it is. I was reminded of this yesterday when I got to my hospital appointment and a woman who was holding the shortcut door for everyone purposely closed it when she saw me coming. She pretended that it was a mistake, but you have to lean hard on the door to close it. It closes slowly for gimpy guys like me. Luckily the maintenance guy was right behind me and opened it again.

I thought that she must think that I was some homeless illegal immigrant (I had a full backpack) but my phlebotomist had a better idea. She said the woman probably thought I was a Syrian with a bomb in my backpack. I told her I was sorry for the woman.  I told the nurse imagine what that woman's karma* will be, that she closed the door on a sick, disabled hospital patient - she closed the door to the hospital. I sure wouldn't want to be her the next few days. The sad part is that I briefly considered how I could carry something less profile-able. But my backpack has 11 pockets. Can't give it up.



*I am a person of mixed spiritualities. I've seen kismet work almost immediately in my case. Works better to call it karma.

[Jack]

Is the subject line of this thread related to an article or something?

[MLA]

A bunch of them.  It's the number receiving air time today in an ineffective attempt to get people to realize just how fucked up this is.

[WolFish]

Is the subject line of this thread related to an article or something?

sorry (flashes autism card). It was a news report on the BBC (USA version).

[WolFish]

A bunch of them.  It's the number receiving air time today in an ineffective attempt to get people to realize just how fucked up this is.

It's unbelievable how little people know and how little they care.
I remember when people on train platforms read the newspaper. Now they are busy living in the insular world of facebook updates and music videos. I have students who didn't know what global warming is.

No one will care until there is a massacre either on the scale of 9/11 or as shock inducing as the Paris incident.

[Jack]

A bunch of them.  It's the number receiving air time today in an ineffective attempt to get people to realize just how fucked up this is.

It's unbelievable how little people know and how little they care.
I remember when people on train platforms read the newspaper. Now they are busy living in the insular world of facebook updates and music videos. I have students who didn't know what global warming is.

No one will care until there is a massacre either on the scale of 9/11 or as shock inducing as the Paris incident.

Care enough to do what?

[odeon]

Stop the madness, I guess. At least stop making it so easy for them.

[WolFish]

A bunch of them.  It's the number receiving air time today in an ineffective attempt to get people to realize just how fucked up this is.

It's unbelievable how little people know and how little they care.
I remember when people on train platforms read the newspaper. Now they are busy living in the insular world of facebook updates and music videos. I have students who didn't know what global warming is.

No one will care until there is a massacre either on the scale of 9/11 or as shock inducing as the Paris incident.

Care enough to do what?

Any number of ideas I guess - be creative enough to make suggestions to help prevent such events - that might be asking too much since  a lot of intelligent people (including me) spend too much time navel gazing to notice or care. The only reason I heard this report is because I didn't get up to change the channel when my cartoon went off.

Perhaps provide adequate mental health services to people who need them, adequate first responder resources. Have profiles that work better than targeting ethnicity to detect unusual behavior. A lot of these were perpetrated by non-ethnic folks. Nothing to be done about gun control - that sich is bad enough. 

[Al Swearegen]

To be honest, I am in two minds about this.
Firstly, I am an Aussie. It is well known by the Americans that I talk to that we don't have guns in Australia. Yet they recoil when I tell them most of my extended family have and use guns.
Gun control is not every man and his dog having a gun.
Australians "get it". We had the "right culture" to get it.
Americans are so tightly wound to gun rights it will never happen. Different culture

EDIT: This was not a promotion of Australian culture or values or a denigration of American values.
Guns in Australia were always seen in strictly Military, policing or farming fields.
When the big recoil went in place Australia was not concerned. Farmers still had guns for what they needed them for and the rest of us did not really need them.

Its just different in America and too many guns for any recoil to be effective.

[MLA]

A bunch of them.  It's the number receiving air time today in an ineffective attempt to get people to realize just how fucked up this is.

It's unbelievable how little people know and how little they care.
I remember when people on train platforms read the newspaper. Now they are busy living in the insular world of facebook updates and music videos. I have students who didn't know what global warming is.

No one will care until there is a massacre either on the scale of 9/11 or as shock inducing as the Paris incident.

Care enough to do what?

Change their election habits

[Jack]

A bunch of them.  It's the number receiving air time today in an ineffective attempt to get people to realize just how fucked up this is.

It's unbelievable how little people know and how little they care.
I remember when people on train platforms read the newspaper. Now they are busy living in the insular world of facebook updates and music videos. I have students who didn't know what global warming is.

No one will care until there is a massacre either on the scale of 9/11 or as shock inducing as the Paris incident.

Care enough to do what?

Any number of ideas I guess - be creative enough to make suggestions to help prevent such events - that might be asking too much since  a lot of intelligent people (including me) spend too much time navel gazing to notice or care. The only reason I heard this report is because I didn't get up to change the channel when my cartoon went off.

Perhaps provide adequate mental health services to people who need them, adequate first responder resources. Have profiles that work better than targeting ethnicity to detect unusual behavior. A lot of these were perpetrated by non-ethnic folks. Nothing to be done about gun control - that sich is bad enough.

Thanks for the clarification. Initially mistook your response to Hubert's post to be a bit of a sideswipe at me for not knowing what you were talking about, or am somehow lacking for not genuinely caring once I did know. If the news article were instead about the approximately 1500 US child homicide victims who die at the hands of their own parents each year, the level of give a crap would be the same. There's enough wrongful death of complete strangers, it would be probably be easy to be completely consumed by caring about all of them, and to not be consumed would mean prioritizing which ones to care. Don't use facebook, but yes, would probably rather watch music videos than read about global warming. Sometimes do find homicide statistics by category extremely interesting, though not enough to care but rather a odd fondness for stats.

[WolFish]

I guess the child homicide victims are under-reported. Maybe they don't include the ones who die from child abuse.

[Jack]

I guess the child homicide victims are under-reported. Maybe they don't include the ones who die from child abuse.

The full figure is aproxomately double that; was speaking specifically of filicide, similar to being specific about mass shootings.

[WolFish]

Interesting - how do they tell the difference? Confessions?

[Jack]

Interesting - how do they tell the difference? Confessions?

Not sure; maybe whoever is charged. Then again, just over half of youth homicides are aged 17-19 and filicide is most common under the age of two.