U.S Massacre Thread

[American Legionaries]

People should be able to defend those kids.

If more guns is the only way to stop school shootings why has there not been a school shooting in the UK since 1996?

I don't think anyone said more guns alone would stop school shootings.

[Vassenor]

If more guns is the only way to stop school shootings why has there not been a school shooting in the UK since 1996?

I don't think anyone said more guns alone would stop school shootings.

So what is being called for here then?

[San Lumen]

If more guns is the only way to stop school shootings why has there not been a school shooting in the UK since 1996?

I don't think anyone said more guns alone would stop school shootings.

Why doesn’t it happen anywhere in Europe, Canada, Australia and most other advanced countries?

[Forsher]

I find it interesting how American gun fans will buy militarised looking guns and accessories to the tune of billions of dollars a year and then act like it's ridiculous for people to associate those guns with the military.

the question here ofc is why the term "military equipment" has such negative connotations in the first place

If you're not in (or in some contexts, retired from) the military, you have no business looking military... ever.

This is especially true of police forces and politicians.

The issue isn't usually that people have negative views of the military or use military as a catchall for "bad" but because military is not civilian by definition and the subject at hand is what is appropriate in civilian life.

It doesn’t take a Genius to figure out what a guy with a bunch of guns is going to do when he pulls up to a fucking school

Either it's a right in the sense you're above regulation entirely, or it's a regulatable right.

If you want to object to some regulations, eventually you're going to find yourself arguing that not only can you not assume that someone carrying a bazooka into a primary school is not lawfully engaged, but you can also not stop to question them about what they're doing.

That's what search powers are. The ability to acquire, record, synthesise and disseminate information.

How about you learn the difference between an actual weapon of war (the M16/M4) and a civilian sport/defense rifle (the AR15) before YOU start running yours?

You learn the difference between "designed for infantry" and "not designed for and offered to militaries". Not really the same as saying "this is literally the same weapon used by the US in several wars", which is apparently what you've read it as. What a fucking joke.

You can continue to claim something isn't a weapon of war when that was literally why it was created and how they (Colt, technically) originally tried to market it and I'll continue to laugh at how funny your whining sounds.

The solution to mass shootings isn't in examining the how, but the why.

Stop looking at the means and start looking at the cause.

Let me guess, you also oppose reducing speed limits.

Generally the human experience has found that you get much more cost effective results from working with how than examining the why.

It's hardly a trick to point out that gun control advocates don't know the correct terminology for the very instruments they want to restrict or ban, and therefor aren't qualified to propose laws against them.

There's a concept about to shake your worldview to its core... policy capture.

[American Legionaries]

I don't think anyone said more guns alone would stop school shootings.

Why doesn’t it happen anywhere in Europe, Canada, Australia and most other advanced countries?

It does.

[Thermodolia]

Depends on how white looking he was. But still you get the point if the guy was black or fairly dark skinned he would have been shot as soon as possible.

Which means the cops aren’t the good guys and should be disarmed because they can’t do shit

He was open carrying in Texas. Assuming the cops didn't know that he had already shot his grandmother, until he entered the school what law was he breaking for them to stop him?

Federal law which prohibits carrying into schools.

[Vassenor]

Also following up on this from earlier since it shows how much misinformation y'all are willing to swallow if it fits your narratives:

The Far Right Is Falsely Blaming a Trans Woman for the Texas School Shooting

As the horrors of the worst school shooting in a decade were unfolding on Tuesday afternoon, the far right began immediately spreading disinformation about it.

In what is now a sadly typical cycle of information and disinformation related to mass shootings, the false narratives that circulated in the wake of the horrific massacre in Uvalde, Texas, were designed not only to confuse but also to deflect blame from America’s gun laws and onto the far-right’s favorite targets.

The shooter was a “transexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos” tweeted far-right Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, citing a bogus conspiracy theory dreamed up by trolls in the worst parts of the internet.

“I’m not even surprised that Republicans are spreading a false claim that the shooter in Texas is trans,” Cassandra Roxborough, a journalist who covers transgender rights, tweeted on Wednesday morning. “It tracks with their policies which vilify and harm trans people in the USA. The problem is never gun safety—it’s always something else.”

Gosar’s source for his bogus claim was 4chan, where trolls had grabbed random images of a transgender artist from their Reddit account and claimed they were photos of the 18-year-old Uvalde shooter. The images show a trans woman in a red, long-sleeved Coca-Cola shirt and black miniskirt, which the trolls claimed was the shooter, identified by law enforcement officials as Uvalde resident Salvador Ramos.

One post on 4chan discussing the campaign to boost these lies admitted that Ramos was not trans, but that “this was good optics,” adding: “Let’s just call every one of these school shooters trannies. No glory for degenerate losers.”

The images quickly made their way from 4chan to extremist platforms like Telegram and Gab, before moving to mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook, where the disinformation was boosted by accounts like Gosar’s.

Despite Twitter users immediately flagging Gosar’s mistake, the Congressman–who’s known for attending white nationalist conferences alongside people who marched at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally–took over two hours to delete his tweet.

The trans woman whose images were being shared posted a message on Reddit on Tuesday night titled, “It’s not me, I don’t even live in Texas.”

“They are my pics,” she wrote. “People are using [them] to make trans people look like murderers and blaming me for the shooting.”

Many of the tweets and Facebook posts sharing the pictures of the woman and claiming she was the shooter have now been removed, though VICE News was still able to find many posts spreading the disinformation on Wednesday morning.

But the transphobic misinformation is likely to continue. On Wednesday morning, VICE News reviewed several posts from members of the /pol/ board on 4chan where they were already circulating another image of a transgender woman and claiming, without evidence, that it was Ramos.

The decision to use the shooting as an opportunity to spread transphobic content is even more disturbing given the rise in violent attacks against transgender and gender non-conforming people in the U.S. Human Rights Campaign reported that a record 50 members of this community were fatally attacked in 2021, and so far in 2022 there have been 14 such fatalities.

The rise in attacks coincides with attacks on trans rights in many parts of the country, including Texas, which has authorized its department of Family and Protective Services to investigate the parents of transgender children, and has introduced legislation restricting what sports trans men and women can take part in.

Disinformation about the shooter’s gender identity was just one aspect of the false narratives being spread online following the attack.

Because of Uvalde’s proximity to the Mexico border, many on the right began circulating the baseless accusation that the shooter was an illegal immigrant.

Josh Barrett, a GOP candidate for Congress in Arizona who has in the past voiced support for the QAnon conspiracy theory, responded to a tweet about the shooting on Tuesday by asking: “Was he here legally?”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had already confirmed that Ramos was a U.S. citizen.

Adding to the confusion is the now-typical practice of trolls creating fake accounts in the shooter’s name, using the same profile picture as the shooter to try to spread even more disinformation.

In this case, dozens of virtually identical Instagram accounts popped up within minutes of the gunman’s name being released.

The 18-year-old, who was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent during the shooting on Tuesday, perpetrated the worst school shooting since the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, a decade ago.

Ramos shot and killed at least 21 people, including 19 elementary school students and two fourth-grade teachers. He also reportedly shot his grandmother before he drove to the school, though her condition is unknown.

[Mets Hayk]

If a child and/or younger sibling of mine were to die in a mass shooting, I wouldn't want their death to be used to forward a political message. I'm a bit concerned that leeches are using a tragedy to say; "hey, guns bad!" Without knowing that creates more and more animosity between moth sides. It's gotten so bad that you Americans cannot even stand together in times like these, regardless of political ideology, in an event where literal children died, without trying to make it about YOUR views.

[San Lumen]

Why doesn’t it happen anywhere in Europe, Canada, Australia and most other advanced countries?

It does.

No it does not. That is an outright lie.

[Mets Hayk]

It does.

No it does not. That is an outright lie.

I guess someone hasn't done their homework.

[Vassenor]

If a child and/or younger sibling of mine were to die in a mass shooting, I wouldn't want their death to be used to forward a political message. I'm a bit concerned that leeches are using a tragedy to say; "hey, guns bad!" Without knowing that creates more and more animosity between moth sides. It's gotten so bad that you Americans cannot even stand together in times like these, regardless of political ideology, in an event where literal children died, without trying to make it about YOUR views.

So when it's the parents of the dead kids saying those things, what is your response?

[Thermodolia]

You've expressed this particular fantasy before.

We could do it if we got rid of the sacred fillibuster.

No because the court would strike it down as unconstitutional. So even if you removed the filibuster you’d still not get anywhere as the court would just strike the law down.

Congrats you just wasted a bunch of time doing nothing and just spinning your wheels

[Ifreann]

Here's a little tip, say "bolt action rifle" instead of "hunting rifle". When you say "hunting rifle", they're just going to say that AR style rifles are or can be hunting rifles, then you'll say no, it's a weapon of war, and then they've tricked you into arguing minutiae of gun technicalities and it'll be five page before you get back to trying to argue your actual point.

It's hardly a trick to point out that gun control advocates don't know the correct terminology for the very instruments they want to restrict or ban, and therefor aren't qualified to propose laws against them.

I don't think that people need any more qualification for wanting to change the society they live in than living in it.

---

This is already a shit thread anyway so I have only one question
When can I acquire 10 Maxim guns and one million rounds of service ammunition and non-aggressively position them all before the White House

1890.

[Vassenor]

No it does not. That is an outright lie.

I guess someone hasn't done their homework.

For example, a 2019 paper from Econ Journal Watch, a scholarly economics journal, notes that the CPRC data included many events that would be considered military or terrorist actions, such as when 200 insurgents in Ethiopia attacked an oil field and shot 74 people. While these are undeniably tragic deaths, the EJW proposes that they are not what most people associate with the term "mass shooting" and should not be included.

Additionally, a 2021 BBC article used data from the FBI and the Las Vegas Police to point out that eight of the ten deadliest mass shootings in the past 20 years in the United States occurred between 2001 and 2021 (implying that mass shootings are becoming more frequent). A 2016 paper from the University of Alabama compared 171 countries from 1966 to 2012 and concluded that the United States accounted for only 5% of the world’s population, but 31% of its mass shootings.

[The Alma Mater]

Also following up on this from earlier since it shows how much misinformation y'all are willing to swallow if it fits your narratives

Yep, Paul Gosar was only too happy to aid in the spread of lies (though he has now deleted said tweet).

There is also mass-sharing of picture of a transkid that people claim was the shooter and people are now threatening said kid - despite the fact that the ACTUAL shooter is dead.

But hey. Thinking is hard.

[American Legionaries]

It does.

No it does not. That is an outright lie.

Right, those five people in Plymouth last year all died of natural causes...

[Thermodolia]

Don't say "weapon of war" like it's a bad thing.

Weapons of war are fucking awesome tbqh.

Wish I could afford one.

I’d love to get my hands on a T-34, T-72, and a Sherman

[Vassenor]

No it does not. That is an outright lie.

Right, those five people in Plymouth last year all died of natural causes...

In the first mass shooting in the UK in over a decade.

[Morfdon]

I can't believe we still live in a world where your skin colour determines if you get shot or not.

gonna be like that for a while, at least here in the states. the government's not gonna do anything to stop nazis because "muh free speech" and not going to actually put laws to prevent gun violence in place because gun control is a lot more easier for your average joe to understand than mental health treatment.

True

[Mets Hayk]

If a child and/or younger sibling of mine were to die in a mass shooting, I wouldn't want their death to be used to forward a political message. I'm a bit concerned that leeches are using a tragedy to say; "hey, guns bad!" Without knowing that creates more and more animosity between moth sides. It's gotten so bad that you Americans cannot even stand together in times like these, regardless of political ideology, in an event where literal children died, without trying to make it about YOUR views.

So when it's the parents of the dead kids saying those things, what is your response?

Regardless if you're a parent or not; using dead children to further a set of ideas is rather shady if you ask me...

[Vassenor]

So when it's the parents of the dead kids saying those things, what is your response?

Regardless if you're a parent or not; using dead children to further a set of ideas is rather shady if you ask me...

"I don't want other parents to suffer like I have" is apparently shady.

[San Lumen]

We could do it if we got rid of the sacred fillibuster.

No because the court would strike it down as unconstitutional. So even if you removed the filibuster you’d still not get anywhere as the court would just strike the law down.

Congrats you just wasted a bunch of time doing nothing and just spinning your wheels

The justices can then he held liable for the victims of mass shootings and told to take a hike.

[American Legionaries]

Right, those five people in Plymouth last year all died of natural causes...

In the first mass shooting in the UK in over a decade.

But it happened, yes?

[Sordhau]

Right, those five people in Plymouth last year all died of natural causes...

In the first mass shooting in the UK in over a decade.

The claim wasn't that they were common; the claim was that they didn't happen at all, which is factually incorrect.

[Thermodolia]

Food for thought: The school district for Robb Elementary has its own police department with 5 officers and 1 security guard. The city of Uvalde's police department recieved just under 40% of the entire city's budget for the year and got a $500k grant from the state. Neither stopped the massacre.

Maybe it's time to reevaluate skyrocketing police budgets if they're not actually going to help.

This is actually a good point. The police did Jackshit. They should be held accountable for their failure instead of banning guns