#mass shooters database

[skateebrat]

Blog Post Due 2/13

What is the intersectionality of violent crimes against minorities versus white individuals?

We have heard the tragic stories of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. We have also heard of the mass shootings at Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Vegas. There is a very distinct frame that these black men have versus our white counterparts. The media painted these black men in a dirty lens; he wasn’t cooperating, he looked suspicious, he had a gun, etc. justifying why they were dehumanizing them. While these police officers who have committed these horrific violent crimes are not exactly held at the highest accountability because of their race, gender, and role in government/society. As to the mass shootings across the nation, the media portrayed the shooters in a more light hearted lens; he was a loner, he had depression, he came from a nice family. Throughout middle school and high school, I remember how the intersectionality of discrimination and racism was being discussed but it was still challenging to pinpoint as there were multiple levels of injustice happening. 

How is intersectionality shown in our education today? 

In 2019, the University of Southern California was involved in an admissions scandal. The scandal was that affluent parents were bribing certain officials to get their children admitted to the school. This intersectionality of privilege and wealth was overlooked. I feel that the media framed it as a big joke/surface level issue even if it was a serious matter. Bribing to get into a prestigious school VS getting all the right requirements to be admitted. Let alone, if you are a minority or not. I’m not knowledgeable about the type of people who were involved in the scandal. But it just goes to show that if you have money, you have power. 

What are the dangers and or harms of CalGang? 

CalGang is a large database that law enforcement use to track and trap minorities for gang affiliated activities. For example, simply just being in the vicinity where there is gang activity, can potentially put you on a secret watchlist that you are not even aware of. This is intentionally harmful, whether you are a minority or not. Having your name in a database that you're not conscious about can put you in trouble depending on context. In class we had discussed that if you were in a car accident and you call police for help, but they come to find out your name is registered in the CalGang database, they can potentially detain or arrest you even if you were calling for help. It is not just your name that is inputted in this system, but it can also contain photos taken with or without your knowledge. This should feel unsettling, because in a previous article in Week 2 that had mentioned flaws in facial recognition had led to an arrest and jail. Police officers/law enforcement mindlessly rely on these databases even if this information is misleading, that is what makes it dangerous.

Is Calgang an institutional/systematic weapon for officers or people in higher power? 

As I previously stated in my last question, your information and photos being inputted into a criminal database without your knowledge and having fast growing technology such as facial recognition can lead to something far more complex down the road. Law enforcement or individuals in power can use this as a systematic weapon against you, on top of an already embedded discriminatory code. It can affect your education, work, and other potential opportunities. Latino/Chicano and African American minorities are the most vulnerable because that is what the “data” in this CalGang site shows. It is interesting that there is little to none information on white supremacy groups as that is considered a gang/cult. Yet, Southern California is known for the most white supremacy groups nationwide. 

Crenshaw, K. (2016, December 7). The Urgency of Intersectionality. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOe5-UsQ2o

Muniz, A. & McGill, K. (2012). Track and Trapped: Youth of color, gang databases, and gang injunctions. Youth Justice Coaltion’s REALSEARCH Action Research Center. 

[evil-fact-checker]

That claim is completely false and a textbook example of misinformation.

Why It’s Wrong

There is no database or study that confirms this claim.

No credible research supports the idea that all school shooters were on antidepressants or barbiturates.

Many mass shooters were not on psychiatric medication at all.

It misrepresents correlation as causation.

Even if some shooters had been on medication, that doesn’t mean the medication caused the violence.

People take antidepressants because they already struggle with mental health issues, which is a separate factor from committing violence.

It plays into a conspiracy theory against psychiatric treatment.

This kind of misinformation is popular among anti-psychiatry groups and the pharma-skeptic right.

It pushes the idea that doctors and medication are to blame instead of gun access, radicalization, or untreated mental illness.

What Do the Facts Say?

The vast majority of people on antidepressants are NOT violent.

Most school shooters do NOT have a documented history of taking psychiatric medication.

Many mass shooters have histories of untreated mental illness, abuse, or extremist beliefs—factors more directly linked to violence.

Final Verdict

This claim is a lazy, unverified, and harmful lie designed to undermine mental health treatment while distracting from real causes of mass shootings—like easy access to guns and social radicalization.

Wow 😳

[skiplo-wave]

I don't agree with the deportations, but I do agree with them getting the people out with bad criminal records. We are not the only country that has deportation if you are illegally in the country. I think we should go back to the old way of doing it right, with a background check. But realistically, they need to lower the prices for them to get in and also stop giving them money which would help the tax payers.

That's just my opinion.

I just know it gets harder and harder to become a citizen besides grabbing a green card.

As for background check that kinda sounds impossible to do, assuming US just has database of all immigrants from other countries

And to be honest, we still have problems of our own here aka mass shooters and predators.

[iwantjobs]

4/4/2024: While I , Trang, as the female Buddha, am trying to collect solid evidence of the existence of God via God's database setting our lives out already if we follow our hearts to get to our God's destination or else we'll fall into Satan's destination (which I went towards that direction many times for I nearly got killed and became mental and disabled and lost my condo and most of 401k to bemco a semi-homeless. Solid evidences are weird coincidences that hard to man-made. Here's another weird coincidence for earthlings especially America: that bridge coincidence that involved a cargo that killed those poor bridge workers of laying American immigrants. Well, America is fighting the Houthies over their section of ocean water because they are fighting to support their Hamas friends and Muslim people in Gaza with the Houthies attacking cargo ships. Well this cargo ship that hit American bridge is a Muslim Singaporean ship. Ever since the Gaza war started,most of the shooting involved poor little children especially white children (9 children got shot in that white NFL parade). Most of shooting since that war has been non-muslims: white, light skin blacks, and some light skinned American Latinos. There was a small shooting at a dental office in CA that involved a Muslim against a Jewish. I think the big current mass shooters aren't Muslims for they learned to refrained themselves because they know the world favors them over Israel and America for the world learned Israel stole their land of the last 400 years even though the Israeli jews' ancestors lived there 3,000 years ago before they were driven out by Muslims and Muslims even fought with the Roman on that land too because there are Christian churches in that Gazan land (top 10 oldest churches are found in Gaza). I said ancient Jews probably got kicked out out of their land by Muslims and Roman because they were blamed for nailing Jesus,; however, the current Jews said they were wrongly blamed for the nailing of Jesus. Since the war, a Muslim did do a mass shooting in Canada but he didn't kill anyone. He just shot into building. However, that big mass shooting in Maine after the war involved a white man and it happened right after the war. See folks, religious war in today's time is the destruction of humanity. Better pull back America and western countries if you don't want to lost too much of your colonized land because your approval of helping Israelis win back their ancestors's land will be your loss of losing your colonized land to the indigenous people in years after we die when our children correct our mistakes. Poor white people who still want to colonize colored people's land or take back colonized land from 3,000 years ago of the Jews by the Muslims. Your new rule of the game for humanity (Jews must get their ancestors's land from 3,000 year go back)will back fire for karma will use their new rule to force your children and grandchildren to return the land you stole from the ancestors of the Indians. Karma will also use the same rule for England and Europe for they will be forced to take back their white people in old colonized land from the indigenous people when your children and grandchildren take over humanity after we all die.

[mightyflamethrower]

Mr. Lott said his findings challenge other common narratives surrounding mass shootings, including who is shooting and who is getting shot. His database shows that non-Hispanic Whites accounted for 55% of the shooters and 55% of victims, or about equal to their share of the total U.S. population in 2022. Hispanics represented just 11% of shooters, a bit less than their share of the 2022 population, but accounted for 17% of victims. Black Americans were the opposite: 17% of shooters but just 10% of victims of mass public shootings. Mr. Lott separated those of Middle Eastern origin — usually included as part of the White population — and said they constituted nearly 7% of shooters but less than 1% of victims. Asian Americans accounted for about 8% of shooters and about 10% of victims. Mr. Lott said those findings undercut the sense that mass shootings are frequently White supremacists shooting up minority-heavy locations.

[graymanbriefing]

2nd Amendment Brief: Oregon A U.S. District federal judge has upheld Oregon’s Ballot Measure 114, ruling it constitutional. The measure requires a permit to purchase a firearm, requires live-fire training, creates a public registry with PII of firearm owners (searchable permit database), and limits magazines to 10 rounds or less. Debrief: The judge specifically rendered decisions on magazines (referred to as large capacity or LCMs by opponents of gun rights) saying it is "uncommon for an individual to fire more than ten shots in self-defense, it is common for mass shooters to fire more than ten shots" and "LCMs are not commonly used for self-defense, and are therefore not protected by the Second Amendment [2A]". The judge further said that gun permits have the criteria that protects them from scrutiny of 2A rights violations are are lawful further saying that the measures (BM-114) rightfully allows for the government’s exercising police powers to protect the public" from LCM possesion. The me...(CLASSIFIED, see full brief and analysis by joining on Telegram or Signal at www.graymanbriefing.com)

[chintzwife]

the fact that the official security alert texts to students during the michigan state university shooting included "run, hide, fight" like. the fact that widespread training and awareness of shooting survival methods is so extensive that it can be referenced by law enforcement who are incapable of doing anything else to prevent it and now just have to tell a bunch of college students "run for your life and if you can't escape be ready to fight an armed shooter who is invested in dying in this situation"

[nothorses]

About that "a trans man committing a mass shooting proves trans people really are the gender they identify as" post: women have committed mass shootings too? Okay it's a lot less statistically frequent, but it happens (as the song "I Don't Like Mondays" demonstrates). It reminds me of the time TERFs on Reddit assumed the woman who shot up the YouTube HQ in 2018 was trans, and then when she turned out to be cis, someone immediately speculated she was getting justified revenge on an abusive BF who worked there (though that comment got downvoted and may have been a troll)

I took this opportunity to look more into statistics around mass shooter demographics, and interestingly, there are a lot of myths tied up in this issue.

This article looks into a few studies and databases to investigate the "90% of all mass shooters are white men" myth, and finds that in actuality, "It really depends on what type of mass shooting you’re talking about. Several of the highest-profile mass shootings in recent memory [...] were committed by white males, such as the 2017 Las Vegas attack by Stephen Paddock. But much beyond that, the stereotype breaks down; Muslim man Omar Mateen killed forty-nine people at a Florida nightclub in 2016 on behalf of a terrorism group; white male Adam Lanza killed twenty-seven people in 2012 at an elementary school, though Asian student Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007. And so on."

This article fact-checks the gender-specific claims as well, in the context of trans people, and finds that there have been more claims that shooters are trans than can be reasonably substantiated, and that even this number is overshadowed by the number of cis women who have committed mass shootings.

I bring this up because I think the first article in particular brings a lot of much-needed nuance into the issue:

"The whites-are-overrepresented-among-mass-shooters meme does serve a useful purpose in that it helps displace another myth about mass shootings: that they’re most often perpetrated by angry immigrants from travel-banned countries, and that nothing is more dangerous to America that the scourge of Islamic terrorism. … These are worthy ends, but we shouldn’t have to build another myth to reach them.”

What are we saying when we talk about these kinds of incidents this way?

What I find interesting is that in a lot of these conversations around crime, we recognize that crime is often the result of poverty. Indeed, this study finds that the number of mass shootings increases in countries that experience an increase of income inequality.

We can also often recognize that these numbers are skewed because they rely on media coverage, arrests, and criminal charges; all of which are influenced by societal bias. The first article on mass shootings notes that, "mass shootings with white victims tend to get more attention, both from journalists and those on social media, than those with victims who are people of color. This is a well-known pattern and explains why the public is quicker to react to a missing young blonde girl than a missing young black girl."

Are white mass shooters covered more because their targets- being overwhelmingly people and institutions they have ties to- are also usually white?

If "white men are overrepresented as mass shooters" means white men are particularly dangerous and must be feared, what does this imply about other demographics overrepresented in certain crime statistics? What does it mean when we find this isn't true- is there suddenly just is not an issue of white cis male violence? I would certainly disagree.

And I think this gleeful claim that "trans men are proving their gender" by committing acts of violence- again, far more rare than cis women doing the same- only plays into these issues.

Is crime the result of entitlement and privileged anger, or is it the result of a broken system failing its citizens? Are cis men committing acts of extreme violence because they are all- regardless of race- whiny pissbabies who take joy in hurting others, or is this the result of a system that teaches men they can only express emotion through anger and violence? That human connection is not for them, and that needing things makes them unworthy of manhood, love, or even life?

I'm not saying we need to coddle and woobify mass shooters. I'm asking: is this an issue we fix by fearing and hating and wishing death on whole demographics of people based on how represented they are in criminal statistics, or can we make systemic and cultural changes that meaningfully prevent this from happening in the first place?

Do we condemn groups as Bad because some of them have done violence, or do we examine the causes and work toward meaningful solutions?

Obviously, trans men and trans people in general are not in any way "overrepresented" as perpetrators in mass shooting statistics. But I think the people reveling in any new trans male shooter are making it very clear that they don't care about solving problems; they're just interested in looking for reasons to hate, fear, and condemn this specific group of people they already dislike.

[evidence-based-activism]

Okay, so, a while ago I made this post, which describes the link between mass shootings and domestic violence. Here is an update and an expansion on this topic.

First of all, data about “mass shootings” is ridiculously inconsistent, mainly because there is no official definition of a mass shooting. Therefore, these statistics will describe overall trends, but you should keep the limitations of such data in mind.

Mass shootings and domestic violence

According to Everytown Research, the majority (53%) of mass shootings were domestic violence-related.

According to Geller et al., in 68% of mass shootings the perpetrator either killed at least one partner or family member or had a history of domestic violence

Nearly 3 in 4 (72%) children and teens killed in mass shootings died in an incident connected to domestic violence.

79% of domestic violence-related shootings occurred entirely in the home. This is a particularly important statistic, as many analyses of mass shootings only include incidents that occurred at least partially outside of the home.

While research examining the connections between IPV, misogyny, and mass shootings is severely limited, analysis of recent mass shootings indicates shooters often had histories of IPV, stalking, or harassment.

Guns and domestic violence

92 percent of all women killed with guns in high-income countries were from the US

Access to a gun makes it five times more likely that the abusive partner will kill his female victim.

Two thirds of child fatalities involving domestic violence were caused by guns

Other

Almost all mass shooters (98%) are male. Even in cases where a female mass shooter was involved, they are usually working with a male shooter.  

It is frustratingly hard to find data on the sex of mass shooting victims, but I did an independent analysis of data from the GunViolenceArchive (methodology below cut). Using this I found that, of all the cases where the perpetrator sex was known, 3.5% of all mass shooters since 2013 were female. In addition, I found that, of all the cases where the victim (injured or killed) sex was known, 27.5% of all mass shooting victims since 2013 were female. Importantly, these figures do not take the context of the shooting (i.e. domestic, drug-releated, gang-releated, etc.) into consideration. I will try and refine my methodology using this database and make further posts in the future.

According to one paper, mass homicides had the highest proportion of female victims (52%), and also the highest proportion of child victims compared to multi and single homicides

Methodology for the final bullet point:

Using GunViolenceArchive’s database search feature, I selected:

Incident Characteristic = Mass Shooting (4+ victims injured or killed excluding the subject/suspect/perpetrator, one location)

Participant’s Type = Subject-Suspect for the first analysis and Victim for the second analysis

Created an Any group where Participant’s Gender = Male or Female

Filtered the results by year (each export was limited to 2000 entries, so I divided it into years to ensure I didn’t miss any data points; years 2020 and 2021 had to be split into two groups for the victim category)

Results display = participants

References:

Fowler, K. A., Leavitt, R. A., Betz, C. J., Yuan, K., & Dahlberg, L. L. (2021). Examining differences between mass, multiple, and single-victim homicides to inform prevention: Findings from the National Violent Death Reporting System. Injury Epidemiology, 8(1), 49. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-021-00345-7

Geller, L. B., Booty, M., & Crifasi, C. K. (2021). The role of domestic violence in fatal mass shootings in the United States, 2014–2019. Injury Epidemiology, 8(1), 38. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-021-00330-0

GUN VIOLENCE ARCHIVE. (2022). www.gunviolencearchive.org/

Guns and violence against women: America’s uniquely lethal intimate partner violence problem. (n.d.). Everytown Research & Policy. Retrieved May 28, 2022, from https://everytownresearch.org/report/guns-and-violence-against-women-americas-uniquely-lethal-intimate-partner-violence-problem/

Mass shootings in america. (n.d.). Everytown Research & Policy. Retrieved May 28, 2022, from https://everytownresearch.org/maps/mass-shootings-in-america/

Most comprehensive mass shooter database. (n.d.). The Violence Project. Retrieved May 28, 2022, from https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database/

[ms-cellanies]

Bringing back those “Good Old Days” of the WILD, WILD WEST.  Too many Americans are OBSESSED with guns.  

[leehallfae]

https://www.tumblr.com/leehallfae/713992010181312512/i-dont-transition-to-escape-social-expectations A trans person killed three inocent people last week, one being a little girl. Who's dying again?

“extremist politicians and pundits are focusing on speculations about the shooter and fear-mongering about transgender people because they have no interest or willpower to offer real commonsense solutions to america’s gun problem.”

— jay brown, human rights campaign (x)

“there were 1,529 total mass shootings in 2018, 2018, 2022, and so far in 2023. a mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter. based on that total, four transgender shooters would be 0.3 percent of the mass shooters, compared to 99.7 percent who are cisgender.”

— lisa chiu, “what mass shooters have in common, and what they don’t” (x)

“a spokesperson for the violence project, which records data on mass shootings in the u.s. since 1966 with ‘four or more’ people killed in public [said] that ‘nashville is the first case of a trans’ perpetrator in their database and per their methodology. …the gun violence archive, which began collecting data on gun violence in the u.s. in 2013 […] recorded more than 4,400 mass shootings in the last decade…. of those, ‘the number of known suspects in mass shootings which are trans is under 10 for the last decade,’ which translated to ‘1:880 [or 0.11%] of the 4,400 shootings’ they recorded…. further, the u.s. secret service national threat assessment center (ntac), which studies all forms of targeted violence including mass casualty attacks, published a report with data from 2016 to 2020 [examining] 173 attacks in the u.s. that ‘that resulted in harm to three or more individuals in public locations,’ […] and ‘three attackers (2%) were transgender’…. most mass shootings or violent gun attacks in the u.s. carried are out by cisgender men.”

— “fact check—majority of u.s. mass shooters are cis men, not transgender or non-binary people” (x)

“because ‘the base rate of incidents in general is so small, any increase looks astronomical […] so going from 1 shooting perpetrated by a transgender individual to 2 is a 100 percent increase... it is important to remember that correlation (which this is not even large enough to be that) does not equal causation.’ …mass shooters are ‘overwhelmingly cisgender heterosexual white men, so any deviation from that will certainly be seen as out of the norm.’”

— kahleda rahman, “are transgender mass shootings on the rise? what we know, what we don’t” (x)

“lgbtq+ people are more than twice as likely to be a victim of gun violence than their cisgender and straight peers. …additionally, nearly 20% of all hate crimes are motivated by sexual orientation and/or gender identity bias. …lgbtq+ youth disproportionately face violence at school: notably, 29% of transgender youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property, compared to 7% of cisgender youth.”

— “facts & statistics about the impact of gun violence on lgbtq+ people” (x)

“at least five people were killed and dozens were injured in a late night shooting on nov. 19 [2022], the eve of transgender day of remembrance, which honors the memory of the lives of transgender people who were victims of discriminatory violence. the targeted bar, club q, was hosting its weekly drag show…. acts or threats of violence against the lgbtq have been seen across the country in recent months—including bomb threats toward boston children’s hospital, which offers gender-affirming care, an alleged riot plot from white nationalists at a pride parade in cœur d’alene, idaho, and more. ‘there’s actually a term for this. it’s called stochastic terrorism. and this is a documented phenomenon where when levels of hateful rhetoric towards a community rises, that it’s followed inevitably by levels of hateful actions.’”

— kiara alfonseca, “lgbtq community ‘in deep mourning’ after colorado springs shooting” (x)

[96thdayofrage]

Authorities investigating if retired federal agent knew of Buffalo mass shooting plans in advance

Law enforcement officers are investigating whether a retired federal agent had about 30 minutes advance notice of a white supremacist's plans to murder Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, two law enforcement officials told The Buffalo News.

Authorities believe the former agent – believed to be from Texas – was one of at least six individuals who regularly communicated with accused gunman Payton Gendron in an online chat room where racist hatred was discussed, the two officials said.

The two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation stated these individuals were invited by Gendron to read about his mass shooting plans and the target location about 30 minutes before Gendron killed 10 people at Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue on May 14.

The News could not determine if the retired agent accepted the invitation.

“These were like-minded people who used this chat group to talk about their shared interests in racial hatred, replacement theory and hatred of anyone who is Jewish, a person of color or not of European ancestry,” said one of the two law enforcement officials with close knowledge of the investigation. “What is especially upsetting is that these six people received advanced notice of the Buffalo shooting, about 30 minutes before it happened.

“The FBI has verified that none of these people called law enforcement to warn them about the shooting. The FBI database shows no advance tips from anyone that this shooting was about to happen.”

Agents from the FBI are in the process of tracking down and interviewing the six people, including the retired agent, and attempting to determine if any of them should be charged as accomplices, the two sources with close knowledge of the probe told The Buffalo News.

The two sources did not identify the agent by name and could not confirm what federal agency he worked for.

The Buffalo FBI Office declined to comment on the investigation. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Buffalo declined through a spokeswoman to comment.

Buffalo civil rights attorney John V. Elmore said it will be outrageous if it turns out that a former law enforcement officer had advance notice of the shooting and did nothing to prevent it.

“If he had advance notice, he had a moral obligation to get on the phone and try to notify someone about it,” said Elmore, who represents the family of Andre Mackniel, who was shot dead when he went to Tops to buy a birthday cake for his 3-year-old son.

Attorney Terrence M. Connors, who is representing several families who lost loved ones in the shooting, said: “As outrageous as this may sound, based upon what we are finding in our investigation, it is not surprising.” He declined to reveal the evidence his law firm has collected.

The New York Times reported May 17 that Gendron invited a small group of people into a private chat room on the messaging platform Discord to review his plan about 30 minutes before the massacre at Tops. The Washington Post reported two days later that 15 people accepted Gendron's invitation into the Discord chat room and were able to review his plan and watch his live stream video as he committed the killings.

Federal authorities are investigating if the retired agent provided information to Gendron before he went on his shooting spree, the two law enforcement officials told The News.

In addition to law enforcement sources, two other individuals with knowledge of the mass shooting investigation have also confirmed that federal authorities are looking into the former agent’s relationship to the shooter.

The Sandman

FBI agents are also trying to determine the identity of an individual Gendron calls “Sandman,” and “Saint Sandman” in his lengthy social media diary that appeared on Discord 30 minutes before the attack, the sources said.

In the diary, Gendron indicates Sandman counseled him on manufacturers of AR-15 semi-automatic rifles and their quality. The shooter purchased and allegedly used that type of assault rifle in the rampage, which local authorities have said was fueled by his racial hatred.

In the document Gendron posted on Discord just prior to the shooting, he references Sandman three times.

In a passage dated May 2, he quoted Saint Sandman as saying: "When the time finally comes to deal decisively with a whole host of society's problems, and not go to prison for it, you'll know. Just be ready. You have spent your entire life, from the day you were born, right up to this very moment, reading this sentence, coming to where you are right now. Look around you. Are you content with where you are right now? Are you where you want to be? If so, continue to march. If not, what are you going to do? What's your plan? Get and keep your mind, body, and spirit right. Pray. Lift. Run. Read. Shoot. And teach your kids to do those things.”

A third law enforcement source told The News they are aware of Gendron’s writings involving the quality of different rifles. The shooter ended up using a Bushmaster X-15, a version of the AR-15 rifle, police have reported.

[nancypullen]

I Can’t

I try to keep this space light and silly, I try to steer clear of sensitive issues, but today - I just can’t.  I wrote this yesterday in response to a friend’s email.  I can't seem to stop weeping. I try to go about my day but it bubbles up again. Those sweet children, those faces so bright and full of promise - what have we done? Over and over again, just waiting for the next time. This morning I read that one little girl survived by smearing herself with her dead classmate’s blood and playing dead. That is the childhood that the GOP has given her. I've never understood the fascination with guns. I grew up in Alaska, every home had one or two because most freezers were filled with game. They weren't toys or hobbies, they weren't for show. I'm now 58 and in my adult life I've never had a gun in my home. My husband was a state trooper for many years, never felt the need to have a gun in our home. Who are these people who think their fun is more important than a child's life? My granddaughter is just 4 years old and right now she lives in a world of fairytales and carefree security. In a year she'll go to kindergarten and learn about active shooter drills and the possibility that someone might come to her school and try to kill her. She'll wonder why her parents send her there. That's the burden we've put on her tiny shoulders. What kind of society does that? Forgive my rambling, I'm trying to make any of it make sense. I just can't. When will it be enough? How many of our babies have to die in terror because some guy who didn’t even have a driver’s license was able to walk in and purchase military grade weapons and all the ammo he wanted?  I can’t buy two boxes of Sudafed in a week, every purchase goes into a national database. But anyone with a pulse can buy an assault rifle.   The same party that boasts that they’re “pro-life” is the same party screeching that guns are sacred.  Guns are the number one cause of death of children and teens in America.  Gun lovers blame everything but the fact that this country has too many guns and too easy access to them.  There are more guns than people in America, according to a Washington Post article, “ There are more than 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the United States, or enough for every man, woman and child to own one and still have 67 million guns left over. “  Add to that the fact that only about 33% of Americans own guns - that’s a small percentage of people hoarding those 393 million firearms.  Just 3% of American adults own nearly one quarter of the WORLD’S civilian firearms stockpile. Wrap your head around that - just THREE percent of Americans own a quarter of the world’s guns. So, if we ask ourselves how a minority, a mere 33% of our citizens, call the shots as far as gun regulations, the simple answer is...they don’t. The NRA and the gun lobby pour millions of dollars into the pockets of politicians to keep our laws lax.  It certainly benefits their industry every time another state gets rid of yet another regulation - how many states have recently moved to permitless carry?  The gun lobby is also behind social media plants convincing the weak-minded that the boogeyman is always just around the corner.  He’s at the border, he’s in your neighborhood, he’s coming for you!  Turns out that when it comes to gun violence the boogeyman is right there in your own home. But they don’t want you to know that, the politicians who are swimming in blood money need a new yacht.  The latest defense is that it’s not guns, it’s a mental health problem.  Hmmm.  Every country on Earth has mentally ill citizens (and jilted lovers, disgruntled employees, angry loners, etc) and we’re the only country with weekly massacres.  Mental illness (I’m guessing) is equally divided between men and women, where are all of the female mass shooters?  Not to mention that if they’re going to blame mental illness rather than the toxic masculinity that it seems to be (life isn’t going my way, someone needs to suffer) then why the hell aren’t they making healthcare freely available and easy to access?  Same party that is pro-gun is against that.   Most gun lovers insist that it’s their Second Amendment right to own as many guns as they want.  I think they’re wrong.  The Second Amendment is to ensure a “well-regulated militia” to defend the states.  That’s our National Guard.

I agree with Justice Burger.  I’ll bet that a whole lot of people see it that way, but the politicians who have been purchased by the NRA  are willing to step over the bodies of dead children to cash those checks. More guns for eveyone! Your fun is not more important than our nation’s children. Your “right” to a gun does not trump a child’s right to grow up safely. I absolutely do not understand how anyone can’t see that.  I know a couple of gun nuts.  If I told them tomorrow that they could turn in their guns and give every child in the country a better life, they’d refuse.  I do not understand the worship of guns. I realize that many men have that Rambo fantasy, some unresolved warrior-wannabe fetish, and a gun feeds that hungry ego.  Earlier today I saw this comment and it felt like a bullseye.

What would you give up if it meant no more slaughtered children?  What would you give up to make supermarkets, movie theaters, and concerts safer?  I’d give up just about anything - certainly any of my material possessions.  Honestly,  I wish I cold pack up my whole family and leave this country.  The thought of my grandgirl growing up in a place without active shooter drills in her kindergarten classroom  would be my dearest wish. If you care at all, if those sweet children - fresh from their end-of-the-year awards ceremony, watching Lilo & Stitch in their classrooms on a warm May afternoon, two days from summer vacation, with their entire lives stretching in front of them - deserved better, then I’m begging you to do something.  Vote like your life depends on it, because it does. Say safe, stay well. XOXO, Nancy

[magnetictapedatastorage]

Americans have been saying for a year they want to get back to normal. Tragically, they're getting their wish.

With the gradual return to public places comes a specter the country was all too willing to set aside as it grappled with a pandemic capable of killing thousands of Americans a day. Mass shootings are starting to make headlines again, and though their return is most unwelcome, they've proved to be an inextricable part of life in the United States.

The latest mass killing left 10 dead at a grocery store. For the past 12 months, Americans have been vigilant in grocery stores to avoid contagion. Monday's slayings in Boulder, Colorado, reminded them that even with pandemic hope on the horizon, they should remain vigilant for a different reason.

This is a hard thing to read, but important. Full text under the cut.

CNN | 3/24/2021 | Listen Analysis: Mass shootings signal a dubious 'back to normal' in America Analysis By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN

Updated: Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:21:23 GMT

Source: CNN

Americans have been saying for a year they want to get back to normal. Tragically, they're getting their wish.

With the gradual return to public places comes a specter the country was all too willing to set aside as it grappled with a pandemic capable of killing thousands of Americans a day. Mass shootings are starting to make headlines again, and though their return is most unwelcome, they've proved to be an inextricable part of life in the United States.

The latest mass killing left 10 dead at a grocery store. For the past 12 months, Americans have been vigilant in grocery stores to avoid contagion. Monday's slayings in Boulder, Colorado, reminded them that even with pandemic hope on the horizon, they should remain vigilant for a different reason.

Americans shouldn't have to fret about dying in a supermarket, or at a spa, or anywhere for that matter. Catching a bullet should be far from their minds, but with a return to American normalcy comes the reality that anyone could die for nothing, just about everywhere.

Seven mass shootings in seven days

Just as the country is conquering a new pandemic, an old, familiar epidemic makes its return. The last week has been a harbinger of what "back to normal" means for the US.

The most recent string of senseless gun violence began March 16 when a shooter killed eight people at three Atlanta spas. The next day, a drive-by in Stockton, California, injured five people who'd gathered for a vigil.

Four people were hospitalized Thursday after a shooting in Gresham, Oregon. On Saturday, a pair of shootings at clubs in Dallas and Houston left a young woman dead and 12 people injured. Shortly thereafter, a shooter opened fire at what Philadelphia police termed an illegal party, killing one man and injuring five more.

Now, Boulder makes seven in seven days. When the gunfire at King Soopers stopped, 10 lay dead, including hero officer Eric Talley, the first policeman on the scene. His wife and seven children will pay an astronomical debt for their dad's bravery.

"Flags that have barely been raised back to full mast after the tragic shooting in Atlanta that claimed eight lives and now the tragedy here, close to home, at a grocery store that could be any of our neighborhood grocery stores," Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said Tuesday.

The King Soopers location where the melee unfolded is one of about 1,000 providers in Colorado working to repel the killer Covid-19.

Steven McHugh's son-in-law had queued for a dose of vaccine, like more than a million other Coloradoans. He was third in line, and his daughters chatted with their grandmother on the phone as he waited, McHugh said.

When the gunfire erupted, a bullet found its way to the woman at the front of the line. Her fate is unclear, as is much about Monday's shooting. Authorities haven't divulged a motive, but history tells us it won't make sense.

McHugh's son-in-law fled with the girls -- one in seventh grade, the other in eighth -- to an upstairs staffing area above the pharmacy and hid in a closet. Dozens more shots rang out, McHugh said, citing his son-in-law.

It was "extraordinarily terrifying," the grandfather told CNN, "and of course the little one's saying, 'The coats weren't long enough to hide our feet,' as they were standing behind the coats in the closet."

'A normal we can no longer afford'

The US government doesn't have a centralized database to track mass shootings, but anecdotal accounts indicate they were down during the pandemic as Americans were encouraged to stay home and many of their favorite gathering places were shut down.

Former President Barack Obama called for action Tuesday, expressing disbelief that only Covid-19 could quell the gun violence the country has long endured.

"A once-in-a-century pandemic cannot be the only thing that slows mass shootings in this country," he said. "We shouldn't have to choose between one type of tragedy and another. It's time for leaders everywhere to listen to the American people when they say enough is enough -- because this is a normal we can no longer afford."

For the mass shootings that did unfold amid the pandemic, their locations were frighteningly familiar: a Buffalo, Minnesota, health clinic; a bowling alley in Rockford, Illinois; a Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, mall; parties in Rochester, New York, and Washington, DC; and a brewery in Milwaukee where, authorities would learn later, the gunman had been employed.

Gun violence is not a uniquely American phenomenon, but part of the rich American tapestry are threads of evil and violence: people (almost always men) who use weapons (often firearms) to snuff out innocents. Sometimes they're mentally ill, but more often they're just angry or vicious.

Their reasoning -- when it's attainable -- fails to provide closure. Outrage invariably erupts after each massacre. One side demands stronger gun laws. They're labeled un-American. Their opponents tout the Second Amendment. They're labeled callous. A stalemate ensues until the next killing, then repeat.

Within an hour of the Boulder killings, the National Rifle Association tweeted the Second Amendment. It later retweeted it. Nothing more.

It should surprise no one that a special interest group champions the Second Amendment. The amendment is a promise to every American, but 15 years prior to its ratification, the Declaration of Independence brought other promises of rights deemed "unalienable."

The full guarantees of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" will never be achieved by Officer Talley, Tralona Bartkowiak, Suzanne Fountain, Teri Leiker, Kevin Mahoney, Lynn Murray, Rikki Olds, Neven Stanisic, Denny Strong, Jody Waters -- or any of the thousands of victims who fell before Monday in Boulder.

'Part of the American experience'

In all likelihood, another person died by a gun while you were reading this. Despite the media's breathless focus on mass shootings, gun violence takes myriad and frequent forms.

According to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the country saw 14,414 homicides in 2019 -- about one every 36 minutes -- while another 23,941 souls fatally turned guns on themselves -- roughly once every 22 minutes.

In his statement, Obama called out other scapegoats: disaffection, misogyny, hate. The United States has monopolies on none of these, though it has special brands that can be pernicious.

Sandy Phillips, who co-founded the organization Survivors Empowered to console and guide survivors of gun violence, pointed to the victims who suffer in silence, because the killings of their loved ones are seemingly not important enough for the newspapers or the nightly news.

Doubt her? Google the details about last week's shooting in Stockton, California, one of the most racially diverse cities in the nation.

"We have mass shootings in slow motion every day in this country, in other neighborhoods that never get the press, that never get the opportunity to speak out about what's happening in their communities -- and we need to change that," Phillips, who lost her 24-year-old daughter Jessica Ghawi in 2012 to gun violence in Aurora, Colorado, told CNN.

Those neighborhoods often belong to minorities, who have had a particularly rough time of the pandemic as well. It's another crushing American axiom that society's ills tend to home in on people of color, and those victims must yell so much louder to be heard.

There will be much yelling in coming days, perhaps weeks. Obama is right when he said Americans possess the ability to "make it harder for those with hate in their hearts to buy weapons of war. We can overcome opposition by cowardly politicians and the pressure of a gun lobby that opposes any limit on the ability of anyone to assemble an arsenal."

The margins are thin, though, and the complexity of that American tapestry will be on display. A Gallup poll from late last year showed 42% of Americans had guns in their homes, a number that's risen since 2019. Another Gallup query indicated 57% of Americans want stricter gun laws, a percentage that's on the decline.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said "absolutely nothing" will stop the country's return to pre-pandemic mass violence if lawmakers refuse to curb access to the weaponry.

"This has become part of the American experience, and let's not forget: It's completely unique to us," he told CNN. "There's not another similar country on Earth that experiences the same number, the frequency of mass shootings as we do, and it is directly attributable to the profusion and the availability of guns, particularly high-powered assault-style weapons and how easily pretty much anyone can acquire them here in this country."

[asiaberkeley]

Afghan is beautiful

I am a half Afghan woman. An Afghan-European American. An Afghan American.

Admittedly, it took me awhile to offer up this information in the aftermath of 9/11 when Afghanistan became synonymous with terrorism in the eyes of many Americans. Taking pride in my heritage suddenly and painfully became controversial.

People didn’t know about my Afghan-ness though because I had my mother’s surname and not my Pashtun father’s: Hotaki. Also, I didn’t wear any kind of head covering because I was raised Catholic. It was easy to hide and pass for completely White.

My late father, an aspiring doctor and med school student who spoke six languages, left Kabul with his family before the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan as a child. They were the lucky ones. He spent most of his life in Germany where many Afghans have sought refuge. One of my fondest memories is flying kites with him and my Irish-Swedish-French American mother in the Munich Public Gardens as a child. There was no wind that day and we dragged the kites in dizzy circles…laughing together...just as I imagine him now when he was a boy: kite flying in the streets of Kabul.

Since my father died when I was six, I returned to my mother’s hometown of Boston with her in 1996. I was later left to contemplate what it meant to be Afghan in a place with very few Afghans compared to Virginia, California, and New York. In college, as an Asian Studies major at Wellesley College and later at the University of California, Berkeley, I often corrected people who said that Afghanistan is in the Middle East and not in South-Central Asia. I wondered why it seemed that no one had received much education on this country’s history or people outside of reading the popular Khaled Hosseini novel, The Kite Runner, especially since we have been at war—fighting together with the Afghan forces against the Taliban in the longest war in American history.

Many Americans don’t realize that the attackers on 9/11 were not Afghan. The attackers did seek a hiding and meeting place in Afghanistan, however. But those facts shouldn’t matter. Because it doesn’t matter what ethnicity, race, or nationality someone is if they commit a crime and it doesn’t matter where they were hiding. The guilty party does not represent all people of their background or country just like Hitler does not represent all Germans or all of Germany and El Chapo does not represent Mexico or all Mexicans. Similarly, the latest mass shooter in El Paso doesn’t represent all white American men.

After former President Trump pondered out loud the mere possibility of a concocted plan to kill 10 million Afghans and wipe the country off the face of the earth – presumably through the use of nuclear weapons – I have thought more about what it means to be Afghan American today. And it’s not because of those unimaginably cruel musings which add insult to injury in the homes of all Afghans traumatized by decades of war. Indeed, nearly every person who is not a white man has been made to feel worthless, subhuman and criminal under the rhetoric of the former Trump administration...so Afghans are not alone.

But Afghans were alone in the discussion of their genocide in 2019. I have contemplated my identity even more because not one leader or politician in America of any background spoke out formally against those disturbing statements. (And it doesn’t matter if this was an actual plan of his or just an imaginary scenario dangling in the recesses of his mind.) What does the national silence mean?

After 9/11, Afghan American author of West of Kabul, East of New York and Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary, went viral with an email he sent.  In it, he wrote:

“The Taliban and Bin Laden are not Afghanistan. They’re not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think “the people of Afghanistan” think “the Jews in the concentration camps.” It’s not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity, they were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it…Some say, if that’s the case, why don’t the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they’re starved, exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated.”

After 2001, my family warned me that just telling people I was Afghan may offend or anger them because they may have lost a loved one on 9/11 or they may have had a son or daughter deployed to Afghanistan. In middle school, a classmate told me I was from the land of the terrorists after I proudly showed her an autographed book I received from an Afghan British writer, Saira Shah, called "The Storyteller's Daughter." My American cousin, a veteran, was later deployed to Afghanistan and brought back a burqa which I showed to my classmates in high school to teach them about the Taliban’s oppression. Contrary to what they may have assumed, what they saw was not traditional Afghan clothing. Traditional Afghan clothing, banned under the Taliban, is colorful, intricate, deeply hued, bright and beautiful. Google it.

A year has passed since Trump discussed wiping Afghanistan off the face of the earth. After it happened, I regularly checked Twitter and the news to see if any of our nation’s leaders denounced those remarks. I called my Governor, Congresspeople, and many others asking if just one would put out a statement to support Afghans and Afghan Americans against talk of our annihilation. The Governor’s office simply said that he did not put out a statement. I still haven’t found any. However, some Americans did speak out on social media. Thank you.

We have studied the long-lasting horrors of the U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in our classrooms. I thought we concluded as a nation that something like that could never happen again. That not a single person in power thought it worth it to speak out against the possibility of the U.S. committing another nuclear genocide bewilders and frightens me. Is it controversial to say out loud that Afghans civilians do not deserve to die en masse? Are Afghans so vilified in our society that it’s a public risk to defend us?

If you still blame the Afghan people for 9/11 even if only on an subconscious level, think again. Many of the Afghan people are suffering in ways you can only imagine in your worst nightmares. They are not responsible and took no part in this. Like the poor souls who were killed in the Twin Towers, Afghans are survivors and casualties of terrorism as well. Afghan women have lost their entire families. They have been abused and pillaged. Men, women, and children have been bombed and maimed. Their history, including the rich Buddhist Silk Road history of Afghanistan, has been destroyed by the Taliban and others.

Discussing our nation's capability to conduct nuclear genocide of an entire people and country is an affront to all humans.

So I suggest to all of our nation’s leaders who have remained tight-lipped in the face of the unspeakable: Take time to learn something you don’t know about Afghanistan. Perhaps that could start with the story of progressive Afghan Queen and feminist Soraya Tarzi who asked, "Do you think, however, that our nation from the outset only needs men to serve it? Women should also take their part as women did in the early years of our nation..." Or it could be about the life and death of iconic Afghan singer Ahmad Zahir. You could learn about the courageous resistance of Afghan women and girls throughout history or visit that Afghan restaurant you were too timid to enter and try a sweet pumpkin kadoo dish.

As the war in Afghanistan, a war based on lies and deceit, may be coming to another tragic end with even graver implications for the women left behind who have fought so hard for equality,  maybe it’s finally time to read another book that is not the Kite Runner... and most importantly, time to look deep inside of ourselves and question the possible anger, hate and bias that has developed towards the Afghan people after the catastrophic and traumatizing events of September 11, 2001.

*See the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers which deemed that the American military did not know what it was doing there and that the war was based on lies and deceit. Government officials misled the American public about the war. The war has cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers with many more wounded as well as 100,000+ Afghan civilians killed or hurt. Many of the American troops have returned with PTSD. 30% of the Afghan casualties were children.

Sources

https://apnews.com/a2a8d7a4f89ec0515379dc4d4a38b56a

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/

[dee6000]

2020's Mass Shootings Explosion Was Due Not To The Pandemic But To The Racial Reckoning

Earlier, by Steve Sailer: NYT In 2016: Nearly 75% Of Mass Shooters Are Black

With mass shootings back in the news, above are a couple of graphs of cumulative casualties from mass shootings that I made from Wikipedia’s list of Mass Shooting Incidents in 2020 and 2019. These shed some light on what likely caused the huge violence boom of 2020 — Covid or the Racial Reckoning — and who is doing most of the mass shooting.

Wikipedia uses the usual definition of a mass shooting as an incident with at least 4 casualties, whether killed or wounded.

As you can see, in terms of cumulative mass shooting casualties, the two years started out fairly similar, with 2020 pulling ahead in early March. During the first ten weeks of Covid, 2020 had fewer casualties than in the same period of 2019. But from Memorial Day Weekend onward, there were far more casualties from mass shootings in 2020 than in 2019:

In other words, 2020 started off more violent than 2019 for reasons nobody has sought to explain (in part because they might just be a statistical fluke). When lockdowns occurred, 2020 settled down somewhat. Then George Floyd died and the Racial Reckoning was declared and mass shootings exploded.

This is not to say that we can definitively rule out the pandemic having some mysterious delayed reaction effect that suddenly caused mass shootings to explode ten weeks into it, which just coincidentally happened to be the first weekend of the Mostly Peaceful Riots.

Contrary to what you might imagine from news coverage, the New York Times reported in 2016 that in 2015’s 358 mass shootings, “nearly three-fourths of victims and suspected assailants whose race could be identified were black.” Similarly, Mass-Shootings.info reported that 68% of mass shooters charged in 2019 and 73% in 2020 were black. Of the 15 mass shootings in 2020 with the highest number of casualties, at least 13 involved black social events (the other two involved social events but the newspapers didn’t report the race of the shooters or victims).

So, my impression is that the media-declared Racial Reckoning led cops to retreat to the donut shop and led blacks to party exuberantly, which led to mass shootings. Of course, the real villain in all this is White Supremacy for reasons.

Perhaps this is all just ancient history so why am I bringing up all these hatestats?

Well, the green lines above show 2021 vs. 2019 and the new year looks bad: through March 17, total casualties from mass shootings were up 64% in 2021 over 2019.

I’d like to do similar graphs for total murders in 2020 vs 2019. Gun Violence Archive has the data, but I haven’t figured out how to download more than 2000 lines of their database. Any suggestions?