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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

This article describes a bunch of events where people obtain weapons, plan an attack, and carry out an attack with the intent to kill others, but end up shooting fewer than 4 people. These are not, but probably should be, counted as mass shootings.

There have been 294 mass shootings this year - where a mass shooting is 4 people shot in one incident.

> But compare him to a post-Columbine shooter like Darion Aguilar, the nineteen-year-old who last year killed two people in a skate shop in a Maryland shopping mall before killing himself.

> Aaron Ybarra walked onto the campus of Seattle Pacific University and shot three people, one fatally.

294 mass shootings is fucking horrific. And the number of events where someone planned to kill other people but somehow didn't is much larger.

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But how many of those 294 mass shootings were criminal vendettas or some such? Something where there were four particular people that were targeted, or three that were targeted and one who was collateral damage.

The shootings that disturb us so -- school shootings and the like -- do not disturb because there are four or more people killed, but because those people had nothing to do with anything. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, falling victim to someone who just wanted to kill as many people as possible. There have probably not been 294 four of those this year.

exactly. turf wars, gang drive-bys and those committed by career gang criminal groups aren't really part of the gun conversation like the sleeper psychopath that goes to a child care center just to kill as many unarmed innocent people as possible for notoriety or some kind of distorted personal-political act is depraved in an entirely different way.

It's kind of like, say you had a murder down the street. You'd be shocked either way, but if a wife murdered a husband for money, you're maybe not as concerned about your community as you would if it were an unsolved unconnected murder rape. Yeah the murder for money shows up as a murder, but it's one you could calmly write out the conversation about crime.

that's why I hate that 294 number people touting lately. Really it's kind of BS.

In other words, there are some crimes you could maybe use laws to kind of get out in front of, but some are just gonna happen, only the means might change a bit. The game is the game always.

And therein lies the rub:

NOBODY on the gun-control side of things care much about the VAST majority of gun deaths; namely, gang-violence or drug-related shootings. By far, these are the largest component of murders by gun and yet the thing that really motivates Sally Housewife to get politically involved is a shooting involving "good people."

MOST gun deaths are suicides. MOST gun murders are committed with handguns. Please explain to me how favorite talking-points like "we need to restrict assault weapons" or "we need to restrict magazine capacity" or "we need to expand background checks" do anything to tackle the real meat of the problem. HINT: they don't.

The problem of gun violence is simply a sub-type of the problem of VIOLENCE. If we could figure out how to completely eliminate violence, we'd have done it by now. My suspicion is that we're asking for the police/government to do something that is impossible: keep all the bad people away from me. if only it were so simple.

You say NOBODY in caps, but this sub thread was started by me (strongly in favour of gun control) when I wondered why "has the intent to shoot many people, but fails" isn't counted anywhere. Elsewhere in the thread I question why people don't care about criminals who shoot and kill each other.

And it's not just me. There have been many many campaigns to reduce gang violence that have wanted to ban guns.

"NOBODY" is wrong.

I meant the hyperbolic nobody as in "the vast majority of people that express an opinion on gun control but do nothing until it comes to their neighborhood."

And here is the issue: you can't ban guns. Even if you do, it doesn't affect gun violence AT ALL. I can point to examples like Washington, DC, NYC, and Chicago as examples. All cities have had very strict gun control laws (and even knife control laws) and yet they haven't eliminated gun violence. In some cases, it actually increased.

So this is a sociological problem that doesn't have a simple answer. Making "guns" the boogeyman is just another example of avoiding the problem by politicians. That's a real issue when it comes to restricting a fundamental right to bear arms.

And yes, I said fundamental. The Constitution was designed to recognize and protect rights, not grant them. Those rights are natural rights given to men by virtue of their existence in the world, not their presence in any particular jurisdiction. It's a distinction that I wish more people were aware of.

Your comment is baffling. It appears to be saying that you don't care if people are shot and killed if they also happen to be criminals.

I find it hard to believe that anyone actually holds that opinion. Am I misunderstanding you?

I find it hard to believe that anyone actually holds that opinion. Am I misunderstanding you?

Withholding my own opinion, I think this is a very common sentiment in the US. Among other things, this is used to justify the lack of action on inmate-on-inmate violence in prisons. More generally, you commonly find people cheering the violent deaths of anyone deemed a terrorist by the government. I don't think this is restricted to the US.

Separately, I don't think 'agarden' is intends to make any normative statement about the correct attitude. Rather, he's pointing out that "innocent" victims tend to receive greater sympathy. If there is a bank robbery in which 4 hostages are killed, there will be greater outcry than a bank robbery in which the 4 perpetrators are killed.

This doesn't mean necessarily that people don't care if the criminals are killed, but does mean that they care less than if non-criminals are killed. Do you doubt this?

>Do you doubt this?

I don't doubt it, but it's still hard for me to hear that other people in the same country just aren't bothered by thousands of preventable[1] deaths.

[1] (Not a gun control argument.)

There is a huge difference between mass shooters who kill everyone in sight, and people who resort to violence in waging a long-running dispute. If you are not party to a gang war, the carnage of a gang war will not be as scary to you as the carange of people with no relationship to their killer happening to be in the wrong classroom at the wrong time.

That is not at all what he's saying, as he explains in the second paragraph...

>>The shootings that disturb us so -- school shootings and the like -- do not disturb because there are four or more people killed, but because those people had nothing to do with anything.

Which I actually agree with. People have always (and probably always will) kill each other for particular reasons: money, personal hatred, revenge, whatever. But a targeted killing of a particular person or people is far different than indiscriminately killing whatever random people happen to be in some random place at a random time. The former is something you might see coming and perhaps avoid. The latter is unpredictable, unavoidable and therefore more frightening.

Good question. Two aspects to the answer.

1) Let's say the article was about people who fell to their death because there was no fence at the top of the Grand Canyon. Let's further suppose that this was a pattern and it has been happening with increasing frequency of late, but it is still rare because the random gusts of wind that push people over the edge are rare, and further that the people falling had no idea that it was a risk posed by touring the Grand Canyon. And then you posted that in fact 294 people fell to their deaths every year but that number includes all the people who were out climbing mountains for sport. That number might be horrific, but the mountain climbers understood the risk and chose to take it. The tourists at the Grand Canyon thought that what they were doing was safe.

2) The solution for the one problem likely has nothing to do with the solution for the other. If many of those 294 deaths are because of gang violence or criminal activity, magically removing all guns might reduce that number, but it probably wouldn't reduce it much. Someone who is out just to shoot up as many people as possible may well not try to kill anyone if he can't get a hold of a gun. But someone who needs Guido dead so that he can't rat him out, he is just going to move to the next best weapon for the job. A crossbow, or a knife, or a poison dart, or a baseball bat, or a rock, or something.

What did you expect from making schools Gun-Free Zones?

Did you expect criminals to obey the sign?

How many school shootings do you think we would have per year if schools were full of security guards?

How many bank shootings have we had this year? Do banks employ lots of security guards?

How ridiculous is it that we protect cash so well but we don't think kids should be protected?

I know many would disagree, but I don't consider rival gang behavior mass shootings. for some reason in my mind the come from a different perspective and rather than mental illness, they are more driven by turf wars and issues of "respect" or revenge. So yeah the shooting at the neighborhood block party committed by one or more gang members or the area drive-by just aren't the same kind of thing.

What did you expect from making schools Gun-Free Zones? Staff, students, and visitors would not be bring guns on the grounds.

Did you expect criminals to obey the sign? No, the sign it not meant for criminals.

How many school shootings do you think we would have per year if schools were full of security guards? A lot of schools do have security guards. Most schools DON'T have the funds to employ small armies.

How many bank shootings have we had this year? Do banks employ lots of security guards? I didn't look it up but know there are a lot of armed robberies in the US. I suspect there is not a lot of shootings because they are there to rob the place not kill people.

How ridiculous is it that we protect cash so well but we don't think kids should be protected? You have a point but there are a lot more bank robberies then school shootings.

> How ridiculous is it that we protect cash so well but we don't think kids should be protected?

You've touched on one of the problems with that argument, but the rest are even easier to address. Money is more easily corralled (it doesn't need to have daily recess). When banks are targeted, the goal is to leave with a bunch of cash; when children are targeted, the goal is to cause as much shock as possible. Banks have a much longer history of robberies (a la wild west and earlier), that stimulated them to have security guards. Those guards are a cost that hasn't historically been necessary for schools.

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