Parkland School Shooting

Guys, this place really does bring out the worst in most. I've posted less and less for numerous reasons, but I think I'm pretty close to being done. If so, I bid you all adieu. May you each come to know the love and grace that I know and don't deserve.

I've noticed you weren't around much lately. I know I've withdrawn from it some. It looks like jpx has too. It's too easy to fall into the trap of being combatant instead of constructive. Be well.
 
I've noticed you weren't around much lately. I know I've withdrawn from it some. It looks like jpx has too. It's too easy to fall into the trap of being combatant instead of constructive. Be well.

Thanks Jaw - you're a great guy. Blessings to you!
 
Anybody else think it’s super weird that the left and right wing media is fighting a proxy war using the Parkland shooting survivors?

My right leaning twitter follows are feeding their followers to Aidan Minoff while my left leaning follows are telling me to follow Emma Gonzalez. Not because the students have anything that actually inciteful to say (they are kids afterwards), but because it’s a convenient unassailable medium to deliver a political take - and of course these kids are predictably willing to stand in the spotlight.

It’s the most bizarre form of contrived celebrity I think I have ever seen.
 
(((DeanObeidallah)))
‏Verified account @DeanObeidallah
1h1 hour ago

BREAKING: CNN just reported the Florida gunman had drawn

on his gun magazines a swastika.

Yes a swastika-yet we werent told for nearly two weeks.

I can assure if he had written "Allah Akbar" on his gun magazine we would've known in minutes!

This confirms his white supremacy

 
(((DeanObeidallah)))
‏Verified account @DeanObeidallah
1h1 hour ago

BREAKING: CNN just reported the Florida gunman had drawn

on his gun magazines a swastika.

Yes a swastika-yet we werent told for nearly two weeks.

I can assure if he had written "Allah Akbar" on his gun magazine we would've known in minutes!

This confirms his white supremacy


****. NOW I think this is a bad dude
 
The actual shooting was incredibly depressing, but I honestly think the politics following the shooting has been even more depressing. I guess this is where we are now and it's only going to get worse.
 
Back to data

http://news.northeastern.edu/2018/0...e-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/

Lots of great charts in here... but I can't figure out how to grab the images... so feel free to read through. Here are some quotes I thought were worthwhile

“This is not an epidemic”
Mass school shootings are incredibly rare events. In research publishing later this year, Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel found that on average, mass murders occur between 20 and 30 times per year, and about one of those incidents on average takes place at a school.

Four times the number of children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today, Fox said.
“There is not an epidemic of school shootings,” he said, adding that more kids are killed each year from pool drownings or bicycle accidents. There are around 55 million school children in the United States, and on average over the past 25 years, about 10 students per year were killed by gunfire at school, according to Fox and Fridel’s research.
 
Back to data

http://news.northeastern.edu/2018/0...e-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/

Lots of great charts in here... but I can't figure out how to grab the images... so feel free to read through. Here are some quotes I thought were worthwhile

They are using some dark CSS magic on those charts for sure. It looks like the graph is actually plotted on the web site, not just a picture.

I thought this part was relevant to the idea that has been floating around (that I had supported) about raising the age requirement to 21 for semi auto weapons:

Banning bump stocks and raising the age of purchase for assault rifles from 18 to 21 are good ideas, and may lead to a decrease in overall gun violence, he said. But he doesn’t believe these measures will prevent school shootings. “The thing to remember is that these are extremely rare events, and no matter what you can come up with to prevent it, the shooter will have a workaround,” Fox said, adding that over the past 35 years, there have been only five cases in which someone ages 18 to 20 used an assault rifle in a mass shooting.
 
I think there's a consistent issue with missing the forest for the trees relative to school shootings versus gun violence in general, and what measures would be most efficacious in limiting either.

School shootings are rare. So are terrorist attacks. So are plane crashes. Is it reasonable to ask what the costs and benefits are of the proposals to ameliorate them?
 
I think there's a consistent issue with missing the forest for the trees relative to school shootings versus gun violence in general, and what measures would be most efficacious in limiting either.

School shootings are rare. So are terrorist attacks. So are plane crashes. Is it reasonable to ask what the costs and benefits are of the proposals to ameliorate them?

In my opinion, the forest is "gun violence is rapidly on the decline, and violent crime is lower in the US to most countries around the world.

The trees are "we should blame the NRA and Marco Rubio for mass shootings and allow policy to be dictated by emotionally charged traumatized kids"
 
hey don't backtrack now.

clearly... the gun - not the shooter is the issue. This is what you were responding to, after all:

Now... if your point was literally the weapon was the tool that killed the children, but is not the reason the children died... I'd agree.

Is that what you meant?

The 2nd point was my actual point. It's the refusal to acknowledge the gun's role in these things that drives me crazy. It's why I was mocking thethe saying "the weapon is not what's killing these children".
 
The 2nd point was my actual point. It's the refusal to acknowledge the gun's role in these things that drives me crazy. It's why I was mocking thethe saying "the weapon is not what's killing these children".

Right. So why blame the gun if you're not willing to blame the truck?
 
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