ongoing mass shootings thread

[Irvine511]

since they are so numerous due to the wild availability and ease of purchase of assault weapons in the US, it's impossible to start a new thread for every mass shooting. i expect this to be a heavily American thread, but not exclusively so.

here's the latest. i neither live nor work close to here, thankfully, but have friends with relatives trapped in the building.


Washington Navy Yard shooting: Gunman opens fire at naval building; number of fatalities, wounded unknown.

[AEON]

Yet another horrible incident. It seems there were failures on multiple levels here (based on initial reports). While I do support some gun control reforms - we really need to do a better job in our society of discovering and treating those with mental health issues.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Originally Posted by AEON

Yet another horrible incident. It seems there were failures on multiple levels here (based on initial reports). While I do support some gun control reforms - we really need to do a better job in our society of discovering and treating those with mental health issues.

Yet we do neither! Huzzah!

USA! USA! USA!

Fuck.

[bigjohn2441]

Well if EVERYONE was walking around with AR-15s slung over their backs shootings like this wouldn't happen......

[jeevey]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

Yet we do neither! Huzzah!

USA! USA! USA!

Fuck.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by bigjohn2441

Well if EVERYONE was walking around with AR-15s slung over their backs shootings like this wouldn't happen......

but super bowl riots would be a lot more bloody...

[Pearl]

Originally Posted by AEON

Yet another horrible incident. It seems there were failures on multiple levels here (based on initial reports). While I do support some gun control reforms - we really need to do a better job in our society of discovering and treating those with mental health issues.

I'd love to see society be kinder to those with mental health problems, but that won't happen tomorrow. Too many people are judgmental, even toward those with general depression and anxiety, which are like the common cold of mental health.

In the meantime, we need gun control reform. But good luck with that when the gun lobbyists have a lot of influence in DC.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by AEON

Yet another horrible incident. It seems there were failures on multiple levels here (based on initial reports). While I do support some gun control reforms - we really need to do a better job in our society of discovering and treating those with mental health issues.

A universal single payer health care system might be a great start.

[AEON]

Originally Posted by Pearl

In the meantime, we need gun control reform.

True, but it seems he initiated the attack with a simple shotgun - a weapon unlikely to ever get banned. He then took the weapons of the guards.

So it seems that stricter gun control would not have helped much in this case.

However, the news reports that there was a history of mental illness...

[AEON]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

A universal single payer health care system might be a great start.

I'm actually for universal and FREE healthcare. Another hybrid quasi capitalist/governmental overly regulated soup sandwich is not the answer.

[Popmartijn]

As God tweeted today: "Mass shootings are a small price to pay for the freedom to carry out mass shootings."

[Pearl]

Originally Posted by AEON

True, but it seems he initiated the attack with a simple shotgun - a weapon unlikely to ever get banned. He then took the weapons of the guards.

So it seems that stricter gun control would not have helped much in this case.

However, the news reports that there was a history of mental illness...

Perhaps. But I don't know how we can tackle the mental health problem here. There's a lot of factors to that, and sadly, there will be more mass shootings before mental health is properly treated in this country.

[AEON]

Originally Posted by Pearl

Perhaps. But I don't know how we can tackle the mental health problem here. There's a lot of factors to that, and sadly, there will be more mass shootings before mental health is properly treated in this country.

It looks like Video Games are going to get the blame for this one - instead of the mishandling of his mental issues...

[BoMac]

I never have, and never will, buy the video game or violent music argument.

There are millions upon millions of games sold around the world every year. So while mass shootings happen everywhere, why is it that this seems to be a U.S.-centric issue? There is more at play here besides video games.

[Irvine511]

me either.

Foreigners say they are no longer surprised at U.S. gun violence

By Anthony Faiola and Karla Adam, Updated: Tuesday, September 17, 1:02 PM

LONDON — Jimmy Davis, a 41-year-old London disc jockey, was saddened when he heard about the latest mass shooting in the United States. But like much of the world after the attack at Washington’s Navy Yard on Monday, he was no longer shocked.

The United States is a place where “buying guns is like buying sweets from a sweet shop — it’s no problem,” Davis said Tuesday on a busy shopping street in southwest London. “So when we hear there are shootings like this in America, we are not really shocked. Know what I mean?”

That reaction — of horror, but not surprise — was echoed by bystanders and in other places around the world following the deadly attack. As seen from abroad, the mass shooting, apparently by a lone gunman, appeared part of a new American normal, a byproduct of a treasured gun culture that largely mystifies those living beyond U.S. borders.

Foreigners are aware of the grim list of the sites of recent U.S. massacres: Virginia Tech; Fort Hood, Tex.; Aurora, Colo.; Oak Creek, Wis.; Newtown, Conn. — and now, Washington, D.C. And with gun laws little changed after the earlier killings, many said they fully expect the list to grow.

In China, people commenting on Weibo, a local version of Twitter, reiterated the widespread international view of U.S. gun laws as quixotic and potentially lethal.

“It's time [for the U.S.] to control guns,” posted one user.

“It's a cost of having no gun control!” posted another.

In some quarters, such as India, the shooting spree by yet another gunman in the United States failed to generate big headlines. In some European countries, by contrast, the news dominated front pages and, for a time, TV networks and Internet chatter.

The Navy Yard attack sparked a particularly strong response in Britain, which strictly tightened gun-control measures after its own mass shootings in the 1980s and ’90s. Americans, many here argued Tuesday, have yet to learn the lessons that have been absorbed by this nation of 63 million, where more than 200,000 guns and 700 tons of ammunition have been taken off the streets over the past 15 years. In urban areas, offenders in search of firearms now regularly resort to rebuilt antique weapons, homemade bullets and even illicit “rent-a-gun” schemes.

“America’s gun disease diminishes its soft power,” opined Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland. “It makes the country seem less like a model and more like a basket case, afflicted by a pathology other nations strive to avoid. When similar gun massacres have struck elsewhere — including in Britain — lawmakers have acted swiftly to tighten controls, watching as the gun crime statistics then fell.”

In Moscow, the shooting was seen through the prism of international relations and domestic politics. Alexei Pushkov, head of the foreign affairs committee of the lower house of the Russian parliament, appeared to use it to fan the flames of a transatlantic debate that ignited after President Vladimir Putin slammed the notion of American “exceptionalism” in a recent New York Times opinion piece.

“A new shootout at Navy headquarters in Washington — a lone gunman and 7 corpses. Nobody’s even surprised anymore. A clear confirmation of American exceptionalism,” Pushkov tweeted before the official death toll had been announced.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow tweeted in response: “What’s exceptionalism got to do with it? Why use a tragedy to score political points?”

It’s not as if Russians are unfamiliar with violence. Three police officers were killed and six others wounded in separate bombings Monday in the southern regions of Ingushetia and Chechnya. Pushkov didn’t tweet about that, but he did note Tuesday that 35 people had been killed in violence in Iraq.

In Britain, Foreign Secretary William Hague offered condolences to relatives and friends of the victims, while Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted: “Tragic events at the Washington Navy Yard. My thoughts and prayers are with those who have lost loved ones.”

Elsewhere, pundits reflected on the implications of the latest attack for President Obama, and the likelihood of yet another bruising battle over curbing guns in America.

“The episode arrives at a particularly difficult moment for Obama,” Antonio Cano wrote in a news analysis for Spain’s El Pais. “The crisis in Syria, in which he has shown signs of indecision and weakness, has damaged his popularity. The president is in urgent need of a triumph to win back confidence.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a letter to Obama on behalf of the Israeli people expressing “heartfelt condolences” and describing the attack as a “heinous crime.”

The shooting was not big news in Israel, where armed security guards on school trips and soldiers with rifles commuting on city buses are common sights. In May, when a man shot dead four people at a bank, then turned the gun on himself, Israeli media labeled the shooter “an American-style lone gunman.”

In Lebanon, news of the killings was overshadowed by the diplomatic push for Syria to relinquish its chemical weapons, which has eased concerns of a U.S. military strike on Damascus and the possible ramifications of such a strike for its smaller neighbor.

Najib Mitri, a prominent Lebanese blogger, said there was relief among Arabs that the shooter did not have a connection to the Middle East.

“What is happening in the area here is enough to tarnish our reputations already — the violence, the massacres. It’s a relief that this is not another opportunity to label us this way,” he said.

While Lebanon is no stranger to gun violence, plagued by corruption and groups that have not disarmed since the Lebanese civil war, the fact that a country like the United States was unable to prevent a gunman from breaching security at a naval base was unsettling, Mitri he said. He predicted a bolstered sense of national unity in the aftermath of the killings — something he said happened in Lebanon after recent bombings in southern Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli.

“The more you have weapons, the more you have crime,” Mitri said. “When something like this happens in your country, you stop looking at the political picture, and all that matters is that it needs to be stopped.”

Foreigners say they are no longer surprised by U.S. gun violence - The Washington Post

[Danny Boy]

I hate to admit, but my reaction yesterday was just, "Oh, another mass shooting." Seriously didn't even watch any news coverage yesterday other than a few seconds walking through the lobby at work.

[Popmartijn]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

I'm sorry to say, but this was also my reaction yesterday.
In a way, I'm hoping someone with influence will address the (U.S.A.) nation and say "You want this to happen. And if you don't want this, then do something about it!"

[Galeongirl]

Yeah, to be honest, that is the general response I hear around here as well.

It's not like it can't be expected, with the current US Gun policies.

[LemonMirrorSky]

America, the land of opportunity... with the freedom to do whatever you want... ANYTHING your heart desires.

[elevated_u2_fan]

Originally Posted by BoMac

I never have, and never will, buy the video game or violent music argument.

There are millions upon millions of games sold around the world every year. So while mass shootings happen everywhere, why is it that this seems to be a U.S.-centric issue? There is more at play here besides video games.

Agreed, if I were American I would find this excuse to be insulting, tbh.