Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

the shooters are the most selfish people in the world so of course they are outliers. but they always remind me that living for oneself alone is not sustainable. people need to feel some sort of responsibility to the social. anything else leads to monomania/misery/insanity

i think one thing most of these guys have in common is an extended adolescence, or at the very least a poor transition to adulthood. take away the guns and the nurturing of violent power fantasies and a lot of them (not all) would grow out of it given enough time. that's why the gun issue is so central to these cases, because you've got to put more barriers between them and the enactment of the fantasy.

That's what makes that case in the Mother Jones story all the more tragic - they were putting a great amount of manpower and social effort to put this guy on the right path, and as soon as he was away from it, he still committed a shooting.

http://theweek.com/speedreads/581824/people-publishes-all-535-congressional-phone-numbers-asks-readers-push-antigun-agenda

interesting move. although that headline is misleading, the People post clearly doesn't advocate for anything specific

That's awesome. People!!

the problem is that it's so inconvenient to call your representative when you're in the dentist's waiting room thumbing through People

its also possible kids with emotional issues detach from their peers, stick around home with mom, read 4chan all day and lose all empathy for other people.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/hillary-clinton-foundation-state-arms-deals

Could be the leaders we look up to are setting a shitty example.

its also possible kids with emotional issues detach from their peers, stick around home with mom, read 4chan all day and lose all empathy for other people.

― panettone for the painfully alone (mayor jingleberries), Wednesday, October 7, 2015 12:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Before the internet, was it harder to seal oneself off from real human contact? Honest question. What would these ppl have done with their time before the internet? Television gets boring after a while.

People are still going around senselessly murdering kittens, so I don't think people have ever had trouble pursuing psychotic fantasies to fill up their time.

people became weird shut-ins and fully immersed in some complex fantasy life well before the internet but i imagine it was much harder to find a whole ideological justification for your self-exclusion from society. there's a whole fantasized structure of resentment that's already there for them to buy into.

i mean, i was a weird shut-in throughout my early 20s but i just read books and felt sorry for myself, there were no violent urges. i dont think there's even anything unusual about people (usually men) going through that kind of stage, especially if they are introverted, but its the turn to explosive violence that's strange to me and maybe best explained by a combination of a poisonous ideology and some baseline impulsiveness or sociopathy.

you're convinced we want to take your guns away. You know what? You're absolutely right, we DO want to take your guns away.

Small problem. The same people who are convinced that liberals want to confiscate all guns also fervently believe this is a threat to their very existence, so those who are willing to publically come out in favor of repeal of the second amendment and confiscation of guns should be prepared to become the targets of people who are very bit as violent as the Ku Klux Klan. That's a steep hill to climb.

Well it seems the argument finally needs to be had, rather than ducked.

ben carson does not duck, he charges

These people are children

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/us/oregon-roseburg-shooting-umpqua-community-college.html

this is a sickness

sometimes i really wonder how it is that so many people in the world can be so stupid

The article makes it sound like 50/50 why because it's intertsing but I firmly believe the people who are like "gotta go git me a gun now!!" are a small, childish, irresistibly quotable minority

The reason I think it actually does have to be about actually taking people's guns away (though voluntarily, through buybacks) is just the sheer number of handguns and assault rifles etc that exist out there. Even if you banned all sales of those weapons tomorrow there are just hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them sloshing around, waiting to, you know, just, honorably defend someone against a heinous crime all of a sudden

i believe i recently read that gun sales have significantly increased since obama took office (due to impending fascist takeover). i think it's actually a lot of people.

xpost

yes, there's been a massive increase in gun sales since obama was elected, but that doesn't mean that more people have guns.... it's more that the folks who already had guns have more of them. at least that's the impression i got from the various articles on the subject.

http://gawker.com/woman-with-concealed-carry-license-shoots-at-home-depot-1735284267

this is pretty fucked up.. I wasn't aware the 2nd amendment right extended to the right to summarily execute someone committing a crime..

apparently its legal to this to a felon, but stealing $1000 worth of crap from home depot isnt a god damn felony.

is it really legal? it damn well shouldn't be. wtf. (that's aside from the fact that she could have easily hit somebody else.)

also, people referencing the 2nd amendment here, and even if you think that amendment can be construed to mean that individuals have a right to carry a gun, it damn well doesn't give them any particular right to /use/ it under any circumstances.

ahhhhhh ben carson you are a traet

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/23/tennessee-state-university-three-shot-in-nashville

^ basically the opening scene of The Wire?

A very sad sign that -- even though I live in Tennessee -- my first thought on seeing that headline was "Only three? That's not so many."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/us/colorado-springs-shooting/index.html

How long before it'll have to be a famous person on one end of the gun or the other for a spree shooting story to make the news. This one already seems to have been relegated to tomorrow's (or even Monday's) "in case you missed it" spots.

Didn't happen, but still chilling IMO
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/us/minnesota-foiled-school-massacre-john-ladue/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/us/colorado-springs-shooting/index.html

― nomar, Saturday, October 31, 2015 6:07 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So reports coming out now that someone called 911 to report this guy, saying he was carrying a gun and looked like he was in a bad way, and was told, "Hey, this is an open-carry state, we're not sending cops for that."

Compare and contrast, of course, Tamir Rice and John Crawford, who definitely did have cops sent to check it out in an open carry state, and who shot them on sight.

fuck the USA

Bettis said she recognized the gunman as her neighbor — whom she didn't know by name — and that before the initial slaying she saw him roaming outside with a rifle. She called 911 to report the man, but a dispatcher explained that Colorado has an open carry law that allows public handling of firearms.

i'll hazard a guess that this might have been an overreach on the part of a dispatcher that maybe cares a lil too much about gun rights

like, if someone's calling to report that a guy is walking around with a gun, that means someone is concerned about it enough that it probably merits investigation. i'm not sure something with such a potential for a bad (awful, horrifying) outcome as "guy walking around with a gun" is the sort of thing that a dispatcher typically has the discretion to ignore completely

what's going on in paris?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34814203

https://twitter.com/mathieuvonrohr/status/665275757569163264

Mathieu von Rohr Verified @mathieuvonrohr

#Paris shooting happened at a concert venue named "Le Bataclan" (11ème), eye witness tells @BFMTV "everybody was running"

fuck

yeah calling family to see if fine, 10ième/11ième is their neighborhood

I've been to Le Bataclan.

Conflicting reports of a shooting (ABC) and a shootout (AP) at the moment.

*rumours* of explosions at the stade de france wtf

you know that type of person who is like 'i don't have a cellphone i don't need it cellphones are dumb', well i really wish he had a cellphone right now.

i wonder what's up with the football game then

chances are he'll be fine VHS but that must be nervewracking all the same :( xp

Twitter is useless in these situations - half the people are talking about three separate grenade attacks near the stadium, half about one major explosion.

Was about to post this on the Charlie Hebdo thread... but we'll wait to see what this is about.

eagles of death metal apparently playing at le bataclan tonight btw

The BBC report still says it was at a Cambodian (presumably) restaurant:

At least one man opened fire with an automatic gun at the Cambodge restaurant in the 11th district.

The Associated Press ‏@AP 38s39 seconds ago
BREAKING: 2 explosions heard from Paris stadium during France-Germany football match.

Camilla Schick ‏@CamJourno 9m9 minutes ago
A BBC journalist at the scene in #Paris says he can see 10 people on the road either dead or seriously injured.