• @[email protected]
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      691 year ago

      Yes, let’s not rush into to taking any sort of precaution to protect our kids. Much better to have this wild West situation we have going on now just in case me, Clyde, and Peepaw need to go toe-to-toe with the US Government in some sort of hypothetical hyperbolic David vs Goliath scenario. Totes makes fucking sense, dunnit.

      As a gun owner, I recognize how absolutely lax the gun laws are. Let them make it harder to buy a gun. It won’t hurt you. At least then I know fucking “Off-His-Meds” Jeb down the street from me won’t be able to buy an AR-15 and mow down my family because my weeds keep “blowing on his lawn” or whatever inane shit he constantly yells as me about.

      Maybe you could stop being susceptible to all of the gun lobbyists arguments and learn to think for yourself at some point. I don’t know. That’s just my 2¢. Maybe once you have a kid or grandkid going through school your tune will change.

      • tygerprints
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        11 year ago

        Exactly. Let’s not even raise a finger to do the minimum amount to stop guns getting into the hands of impulsive kids or men to begin with…lets just give a gun to every motherfuckin’ buttwipe out there and let everyone shoot at whoever they want. Eventually one person will be left, with nothing but a ruined earth to comfort themselves. And maybe that’s truly what should happen, poetically justice speaking.

      • @[email protected]
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        -61 year ago

        The only times I see pistols is when I see policemen.

        The only times I see machine guns is in the hands of policemen at the airport, or when extremist groups are demonstrating and need protection by the police.

        Why would I even need a gun, when hardly any criminal owns one?

        The concept of gun ownership is flawed in itself.

        • @[email protected]
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          171 year ago

          There’s nothing inherently wrong with gun ownership. However, there is a shit ton wrong on how we handle distribution and tracking of them. We have more prerequisites for operating a vehicle than we do a firearm, and in a country where we have a SIGNIFICANT number of mass shootings, we are doing SIGNIFICANTLY little to fix the issue.

          Gun ownership is totally fine. I bought a handgun and a shotgun on the same day (after someone tried to break in and attack my wife - they didn’t realize that I had just come home from a trip) and was blown away that I could just walk right out the door with them within a few minutes. A rifle for hunting is also not an issue.

          • @[email protected]
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            111 year ago

            Fun fact: handguns are used in mass shootings more often than AR15s. In fact, all rifles, of which AR15s is merely the most popular type, are responsible for ~500/60,000 gun deaths/yr in the US. Probably because, as you may guess, handguns are a lot more concealable than rifles.

            Also, be fair about the buying process, you still went through the National Instant Criminal background check system. Sure instant checks don’t take long anymore due to Al Gore inventing the internet in the 90s, but they do still happen and adding arbitrary length does nothing to stop crimes. In fact even if they did, they don’t stop nor are they designed to stop the types of planned attack we’re talking about (mass casualty events), they are to stop “crimes of passion” (guy killing his wife), and there’s some contention that they effectively do that as it isn’t like the couple necessarily receives the proper counseling, so he just picks it up and does it next time he’s in a wife killin’ mood, or if he can’t wait goes all Chris Benoit or that “Stairs” jerkoff.

                • Flying SquidM
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                  01 year ago

                  There is a difference between regulated and highly regulated?

                  • @[email protected]
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                    11 year ago

                    Crimes like straw purchasing or lying on a NICs form are punishable by 10yr in prison, federal prison in some cases. I’d say that’s pretty “high.”

          • @[email protected]
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            81 year ago

            I cannot relate to that. I am 37 years old and I think I have never witnessed violent crime, except in television or on playgrounds (children are assholes to each other!)

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              Yeah, it was terrifying. Like the guy knew she was there, we had just put the dog outside, so they were obviously watching the house. They tried to kick in the front door, and I ran to the front door have naked and half asleep. The terror slammed full force into me when I realized someone was at our door (could see through glass), and I had no weapon to deal with them. They ran as soon as they saw me. I had just gotten home late the night before, so they obviously knew that I wasn’t home, and the knew that my wife was.

              It still wigs me out to this day.

              • @[email protected]
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                -31 year ago

                How long does the police need to arrive at your home? For me in case of an active break in it would probably be around 120 to 180 seconds. So this usually only happens when nobody is home, it’s too dangerous otherwise.

                Someone stole my e-bike from the back yard. And I have heard of break ins in cellars. But that kind of crime that you describe is very very rare.

                Does that mean that gun ownership is a side effect of a security system that has flaws in itself?

                • @[email protected]
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                  51 year ago

                  National average response time to emergencies is 11min, 23 to non emergencies. In the cities it’ll be “less” (maybe, and not much), but in the country it could be hours.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    01 year ago

                    That’s long. 😱 For non emergencies I have waited long times. Like 40 minutes or even hours. But when I called the fire department once it came like 30 seconds after I had hung up. And it was just a smoking trash can, nothing really dangerous.

                • @[email protected]
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                  1 year ago

                  People are not always logical. Even if the cops could get there within 2 minutes, that’s still 2 minutes that you have to deal with someone that is intent on doing harm to you. I wouldn’t want to risk that.

                  The police also have no legal obligation to protect you. Meaning if there is a situation that they consider “dangerous” they might not even enter the house to protect you. Like…I’m not hedging all of my bets on a cop to protect me. Because there’s still a chance that I lose.

                  I understand your point that there’s not really any point to having weapons when we have a “protector”, but we’ve already seen that those “protectors” have no obligation to actually protect you if they feel endangered. Guns are tools. A rifle is a tool to provide food for yourself. A handgun/shotgun is a tool that you use to protect yourself. We just shouldn’t hand those tools out to literally everyone that wants one.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    31 year ago

                    Here, they are less afraid because almost no household is armed. It is a dangerous situation to enter a home, but they always come in pairs and might do so with guns drawn.

                    But we are talking about very extreme cases. German police shot 14 people in 2017, 11 in 2018, and 15 in 2019. So about the same amount of people that die from lightning strikes. The vast majority of policemen do not discharge their gun in their whole line of duty.

                    If you compare likelihood of violent crime the bigger danger comes from people inside your house, rather than burglary. Therefore, weapons in houses would make life more dangerous here, since you are less likely to escape your step mother armed with a gun, than your step mother armed with a kitchen knife.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    21 year ago

                    PS: I don’t know your step mother. Maybe she is a world class samurai swordswoman. I apologise if my analogy insulted her.

                  • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】
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                    -11 year ago

                    Yeah but my dude, before any of this happens, you’re way morelikely to just lose your shit yourself and murder yourself or one of your family or more.

                    Live by the sword die by the sword I guess.

        • @[email protected]
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          251 year ago

          Every other country has a FRACTION OF A FRACTION of the amount of shootings that we do, and you have the gall to sit there and go “none of what you said or propose will stop someone”, when politicians and gun control groups have literally proposed NUMEROUS extremely common sense fixes to help curb the violence. It’s fucking loons like you that rally against it ad nauseum because “DeMs CuMmInG fEr MuH gUnS!1!”. You’re nothing but a gun lobbyists mouthpiece who would rather let kids get killed so you can keep an overpowered AR than try LITERALLY anything to help alleviate the situation.

          No one is coming for my shotgun, or my handgun, or my hunting rifle. Literally no one will ever pass a law that will ban those. Red flag laws WORK. Mandatory withholding periods WORK. Banning AR weapons and bump stocks would be a step in the right direction. Pushing these laws on a federal level would help. Would it stop everything? No, but it would provide a LOT more opportunities to catch someone before it happens.

          Fuck, do something to help our kids, don’t be the barrier that makes it more difficult.

        • MonsterHighStan
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          71 year ago

          So what do you think is going to decrease school shootings? What are you proposing or support that will improve the situation?

            • @[email protected]
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              1 year ago

              So basically… Fix every other nearly impossible to fix problem first before even deciding to do anything about the actual guns, if anything at all?

              And to be clear, by impossible to fix, I mean politically, not that these problems are actually unsolvable.

                • Flying SquidM
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                  21 year ago

                  So you’re plan is to try and tackle something that’s written into the constitution… that’s your goal?

                  You mean like slavery?

                • @[email protected]
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                  11 year ago

                  I didn’t specify a plan one way or another. I just think it’s crazy that the talking points you presented seem pretty clearly designed to just kick this issue down the road, cause at least that way you still get to have your guns.

                  And believe me, solving all those things you mentioned would be great. But why not also try and do something about the major gun issues at the same time too?

              • prole
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                1 year ago

                No, not crickets. Those things sound great, let’s do them. We should do everything we can, and that also includes stricter gun laws.

                Not term limits though. It may sound like a good idea, but I implore you to research issues with term limits.

                  • prole
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                    11 year ago

                    Term limits will seal the deal to the end of our Democracy.

                    Either you’re arguing in bad faith, and know this, or you’re refusing to inform yourself of the downsides.

            • MonsterHighStan
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              11 year ago

              Those are all fantastic suggestions. In my opinion we absolutely should be taking much more drastic measures to decrease school shootings in the meantime, as nearly everything you suggest would still take at least ~15-20 years to see results. Any dead kid is too many and there are way too many school shootings.

            • @[email protected]
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              01 year ago

              And you can end with bringing your gun regulations up to speed to every other developed nation.

          • tygerprints
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            01 year ago

            Nothing will improve the situation until we make a concerted effort to shut down gun manufacturing and distribution, even forcibly removing them from the hands of criminals any way we possibly can. And since the kid-killers at the NRA won’t allow that, the answer is - this problem of mass murder in schools is only going to intensify until everyone’s child is at risk and can no longer attend public schools of any kind. And that’s only the tip of the horrific iceberg of a shitshow that’s coming to our country.

              • tygerprints
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                11 year ago

                I am as leftist as any human being ever could be - and damn proud of it. Saying the truth always seems like “going off the deep end” to people who aren’t able to comprehend. I consider your remark proof of that.

          • tygerprints
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            11 year ago

            Actually with the new proposals to remove firearms from anyone with any kind of criminal background or mental health disorder, and the law being amended to allow this, there are ways to effectively stop people from having firearms. It’s simple humanitarian guidelines that need to be enacted. Only a churlish dolt would refuse to see the common sense of keeping guns out of the hands of men and boys.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              Since you asked me this twice, I will not answer it again. But I will touch on the black market part, no one can enforce the black market and that’s why it’s called the black market. but just because the black market exists doesn’t mean legal market shouldn’t. if you think a firearm shouldn’t have to be registered legally because it’s possible to get it illegally, then you are missing the whole point of laws and civilization, and I’m not really sure why you’re here. 

    • circuscritic
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      1 year ago

      Just look at counties without school shootings, the answer is pretty obvious: none of them have… video games, mental illness, or Democrats.

      The fact that they don’t have an insane amount of privately owned firearms, or the ability to purchase them legally, easily, and with barely any restrictions, is just a coincidence. Definitely not relevant.

    • SeaJ
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      151 year ago

      NPR is a pretty neutral news source. Your comment on them seems a bit unhinged.

        • @[email protected]
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          41 year ago

          The fucking truth leans left. The fuck do you want? Right wing shit is divorced from reality.

        • prole
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          21 year ago

          I’ve seen the opposite lately, actually. They’ve been criticized historically (unfairly, it was just objective reporting) for leaning left, but they’ve since overcorrected and now lean center-right a lot of the time.

            • prole
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              11 year ago

              I know what the sites say… They’re pretty reliably in the center. I think the whole “reality has as liberal bias” thing made it seem like they leaned left when in reality, that’s just what the center actually looks like.

              From my experience, since I’ve been paying attention, they’ve over-corrected in the other direction. Still mostly center, but they seem kind of scared to be completely objective when it makes the GOP look as bad as it actually is. They seem perfectly OK with the fascist element taking control (who will most likely either do away with all of their funding, or turn it into a state-backed propaganda mouthpiece), because they seem scared that calling people what they are will make them appear “left-leaning”.

              Just my observations. Maybe keep it in mind going forward and see if you notice as well.

        • Lemminary
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          -11 year ago

          I was wondering how long it’d take for the word “propaganda” to show up on Lemmy. 3 seconds flat this time, congratulations!

    • @[email protected]
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      81 year ago

      Americans be like “see, not enough children died, so we should keep our glorious god given guns” as soon as any discrepancies in number of kids killed show up.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          I’m a proper American, from the Americas. You know, one of those countries your country likes to fuck around with every now and then with a little coup or private militia invasion. With those guns you guys worship so much. That kind of American.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              I don’t know of a country there that allows private ownership of firearms

              Well, we do allow private ownership of firearms, just, AFAIK, a very limited number of models provided by a very specific entity rather than just about anywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if most countries in the americas allowed some degree of firearm ownership (don’t care enough to look it up).

              I didn’t mean that when I said “privately owned militias”. I meant the banana companies which dealt with strikes by sending privately owned troops on privately owned ships to these countries in order to reign in their poorly disguised slavery.

    • tygerprints
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      -11 year ago

      So far, anti-gun groups have never made up anything. They don’t have to, the stats are there for anyone who isn’t completely ignorant to see for themselves. Two mass murders in the U.S. in the past two days, and this is what you come up with? It’s no wonder humanity is plummeting into mass murder and insanity keeps rising.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      And Ajit Pai just joined NPR The American Public TV Board of Trustees. I’m not entirely certain if they and NPR are the same organization. so I’m sure the journalistic integrity is going into his giant Reese’s Mug, to be thrown in the toilet.

      https://indiawest.com/ajit-pai-elected-to-public-television-board-of-trustees/

      Edit: found the article, will leave the original text up as the sentiment remains the same, just struck out.

      • @[email protected]
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        161 year ago

        So your objection is that they call a mass shooting a mass shooting? What magic number would you like them to use?

            • 🤘🐺🤘
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              71 year ago

              You just made me realize how much I’d love to live in a country where there was no such thing as a “normal shooting”.

              Gun culture in America is absolutely fucked.

            • prole
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              1 year ago

              They’re so goddamn brain rotted that they don’t even realize how completely fucked that is.

              • @[email protected]
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                1 year ago

                The “normal” number of people getting shot is 0.

                They want you to sweep gun violence under the rug. You don’t need to ask why, it’s because gun sales bring in millions in profits for the gun-lobby and the Republicans they purchase.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    1 year ago

                    I didn’t claim the number could be 0, I claimed the acceptable number is 0.

                    Following every one of those shootings you linked, people demanded to know how it happened. Why did they have a gun? Was there warning signs that were missed? Was anybody negligent? How can we stop it from happening again and limiting the damage if it does?

                    That is the reaction of a society that finds any number above 0 unacceptable. They treat mass shootings as a failure of the system.

                    Meanwhile in America, they don’t bother to ask those questions.

                    They had a gun because it’s trivial to get your hands on semi-automatic rifles and handguns, even if you can’t pass a background check, because there are millions of unsecured weapons and no universal background checks.

                    The police and politicians are deliberately negligent, staunchly opposing red flag laws despite most mass shooters having multiple red flags.

                    No effort is made to prevent it happening again, because the murder of 20 children is shrugged off as some kind of inevitability, no more preventable than an earthquake or tornado – much the same as you’re doing right now.

                    Limiting the damage isn’t just staunchly opposed by the pro-gun community, many of them fully support making more dangerous weaponry available.

                    These are not the actions of people who find all gun violence unacceptable and the only reason the Ulvade police are criticized and the Newtown police are given a pass is because the Ulvade police didn’t bother to pretend they cared.

          • @[email protected]
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            81 year ago

            So you’ll only care about children dying in school when the numbers go up even higher than they already are?

              • @[email protected]
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                61 year ago

                There is no widely-accepted definition of “mass shooting” and different organizations tracking such incidents use different definitions. Definitions of mass shootings exclude warfare and sometimes exclude instances of gang violence, armed robberies, familicides and terrorism.

                Maybe it has something to do with it not being any kind of official term and your panties are twisted over how the media writes them up ignoring the pain and suffering from others and building your strawman off semantics?

                  • @[email protected]
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                    31 year ago

                    Why are you like this? So since every mass shooting isn’t worse than the worst one they don’t matter? Stop making up excuses. I’m don’t with you.

              • @[email protected]
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                21 year ago

                You have no idea how badly you’ve outed yourself as living in a little bubble where you think it will never happen to you, so you don’t care.

                Because you’ll never be in a relationship with a domestic abuser that executes a house full of people will you? You’re the gun owning male, so you get to decide who around you lives or dies.

                4 innocent people were killed – a number that is much more difficult to achieve without a gun – but you don’t want them counted because they knew the gun owner.

                You’ve let the gun lobby turn you into a fucking sociopath.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    41 year ago

                    That doesn’t make a murder/suicide a “mass shooting”. I’m sorry apporoaching this rationally has you so upset

                    Thanks, I love this reply. It’s only two sentences, but its so fantastically revealing.

                    The first sentences calls your very own example a “murder/suicide”, a term which is unquestionably more misleading than “mass shooting”. The “murder” isn’t even plural, despite there being 4 of them.

                    If you gathered up a million people, told half of them it was a murder/suicide and half of them it was a mass shooting, then asked them to guess the number of people killed, the latter would easily be closer to the truth.

                    The second sentence just makes it clear you’re a fuckstain.

              • prole
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                11 year ago

                I don’t really understand why it fucking matters. It is literally the number one cause of death among young people in this country. This happens nowhere else in the modern world. It’s unacceptable.

                Stop trying to make the conversation about semantics

                  • @[email protected]
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                    41 year ago

                    It matters because the Gun Violence Archive and the uncritical mass media are inflating the statistic to make people scared so they can push an agenda

                    Bullshit. You’re attacking it because it’s counter to your agenda.

                    Republicans, right-wing media, the gun lobby and the pro-gun community routinely fearmonger as a way to boost their own profits and power.

                    Not only do you not care when they do it, you’ve enthusiastically put yourself and your own family in more danger because of it.

                    You’re hopelessly compromised and your thoughts about how gun violence statistics are about as trustworthy as a cops views on police brutality statistics.

          • @[email protected]
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            51 year ago

            You don’t think the nra telling people to be scared and that they need a gun to feel safe is more of the issue?

      • SeaJ
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        121 year ago

        That’s not how most people define a “mass shooting”.

        That’s is I and many others define it…

          • SeaJ
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            91 year ago

            No. It just takes some basic intelligence to figure out that mass shootings are shootings of multiple people. Sorry that concept is hard for you to understand.

              • SeaJ
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                1 year ago

                Ummm…why would you not consider that a mass shooting? Do you not have neighbors? It kind of seems like that really could be anybody considering many people have at least one unhinged neighbor around them.

                  • kase
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                    21 year ago

                    Where does your definition come from? I’m not saying it’s wrong, it’s just not the same as what I and people I know use. For context, I live in the US.

                  • SeaJ
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                    1 year ago

                    Well that’s nice that you made up your own definition…

                    Your distinction can make sense but not how you are looking at it. Saying murder is ancillary is ridiculous. The killers in those cases are not just wildly shooting in the air and it just so happens to hit people and kill them. Killing them is their intent. You could make an argument to split our random mass shootings vs targeted but there is still a pretty obvious base reason for both of those: ease of access to guns.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        Sad to see this so heavily down voted. A ton of emotional reasoning from people in this thread rather than by logic.

        A gang shooting, police shooting, robbery, self defense etc are not mass shootings. Period. Its dishonesty to include those statistics.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        There’s an issue with Familicides as well. Those are often in private, but can wipe a household out. Ease of access is what is being discussed largely, as well as the general terrorism of a ‘public space’ mass shooting.