Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

What a weird day and a half it's been. These things are so routinized that it's really weird to see the behind the scenes view. There is still a half mile section of campus blocked off with police tape and cop cars. There were at least 15 news teams staggered along the street and median right off campus yesterday - every one of them seemed to be two schlubby dudes with cameras and the exact same rectangular reflector panel and one nicely dressed person holding a microphone. Today it was already down to one and all the giant satellite trucks were gone, because really there were "only" three people killed.

At the top of the hour on NPR I heard the president talk about an incident that that happened at the halfway point of my .75 mile walk to work. I heard a man-on-the-street interview and could hear the same wind blowing into the microphone that I could hear outside. I saw a picture of "the rock" that I can see from my classroom at the top of the Washington Post website. After that someone painted over it with a pro-gun message that only lasted an hour or so before someone painted over that.

I didn't know any of the students who were killed but I guarantee that I know people who do. One was in a friend's department and I haven't had the heart to ask yet - was this person in a 300 seat lecture with you, or in a class of 20? I don't know the names of the injured yet other than one because there is a go fund me for her that has raised $230k of the $50k goal in less than 21 hours.

Last night I was texting with a friend who is a faculty member at the university of idaho, where four students were murdered last fall. We were wondering which was worse - having the perpetrator of a quadruple homicide unknown and on the loose for several weeks or spending five hours wondering if a mass shooter is wandering through your neighborhood while helicopters circle overhead and cop cars and ambulances fly down the street every couple of minutes while also wondering how many people got shot and if you know any of them.

School was cancelled the rest of the week which is good - everyone I know is just numb and dumb and I think a lot of students just left town. On three separate occasions yesterday I grabbed can of lacroix from the fridge just lost them, finding them later in weird spot at room temperature. I put one in the freezer to cool down a bit and forgot about that one too until it exploded while I was making dinner and almost gave me a heart attack.

What the fuck am I supposed to do at 8:30 on monday morning next week? Who's going to show up? How many of them spent four hours locked down in the library or a dorm the other night? Or didn't get a return text from a friend for a few panicky hours? Or had to run out of the student union when the shooting started?

What a fucking miserable shithole country we have.

I’m so sorry that you and your area are going through this, joygoat.

imagine getting through COVID yr last two years of high school and then this. horrific.

It's a shithole country.

No doubt that some MSU students are survivors of the 2021 Oxford HS shooting.

sadly correct

Emma Riddle, an 18-year-old freshman at Michigan State University, survived the mass shooting at Oxford High School. On Monday night, she texted with her roommate, father and a friend while hiding in her dorm room during the mass shooting on MSU's campus. https://t.co/3Pu6E7coYT pic.twitter.com/ZKbqAPvUV7

— MLive (@MLive) February 16, 2023

Not much detail yet:

(CNN) Multiple people were shot in Orange County, Florida, on Wednesday, the Orange County Sheriff's Office said on Twitter.
"Multiple people shot on Hialeah Street, same scene as a homicide earlier today," the tweet said.

One person has been detained, the sheriff's office said.

Ugh.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-ne-hialeah-street-homicide-pine-hills-20230222-s3piy43nnbc4jgsx2u7qso3k44-story.html

It's a rough part of town, where cops don't show up or exist merely to harass civilians.

Not quite the same as Russia or Mexico, but it's still the killing of a journalist just doing their job

Not much detail yet, but a shooting at Covenant School in Nashville

fuck...3 dead :(

https://www.wsmv.com/2023/03/27/mnpd-3-students-shooter-dead-after-shooting-covenant-school/

a fucking ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Right wingers are just Harry Lime on the Ferris wheel. “Would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you unchecked gun rights for every dot that stopped - would you really, old man, give up your guns? Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”

Shooter was apparently a teenage girl. Awful.

Legislature meanwhile is considering a bill that would allow 18-year-olds to conceal carry without a permit or any kind of training.

Seven dead, not sure if this includes the shooter

last I heard the dead were 3 children, 3 staff members and the shooter

reports now saying the shooter was 28

Wonder if she's a former employee or something

very unusual to have a woman shooter

yea this is actually the first time I can think of that happening

This is the very first school shooting I remember

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Nick_Corwin

Hit very close to home. The Wikipedia article is something else.

Laurie Dann, not a name I’ve forgotten

Also this one, immortalized by the Boomtown Rats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_(San_Diego)

Yep, will never forget that name either, that one hit our family particularly hard because I had a cousin the very same age at the time attending a different elementary school in Winnetka.

Deadly mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States, but a female attacker is highly unusual. Only four of the 191 mass shootings since 1966 cataloged by The Violence Project, a nonprofit research centre, were carried out by a female attacker..

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nashville-christian-school-shooting-1.6792292

Besides gun restrictions, which won’t happen in the US, is there anything that can be done to disrupt the mimetic contagion of these killing? Clearly the idea of the “mass shooter” has a Romantic presence in these people’s minds. It’s the same pattern each time and they are following a script.

Clearly the idea of the “mass shooter” has a Romantic presence in these people’s minds.

Does it?

I'm not sure "Romantic" is the word I'd use and I have a lot of trouble putting myself in the mindstate of anyone who would commit this kind of horrific act, but something keeps motivating people to do this and, as treeship points out, they have all become so remarkably similar that it does feel like a script is being followed. Something is drawing troubled people to this outcome. Since we can't count on our government to due a fucking thing about gun control, maybe we'd do better figuring out that something so we can attempt, well, fucking anything.

I was in 7th grade when Columbine happened and one thing I kinda remember from the coverage - which was absolutely endless - was that the whole idea of a school shooting was some unimaginable thing. everyone was so horrified. it just never occured to anyone that someone would just do that. and I'm sure the type of person who'd actually carry out such a thing hadn't really thought of it either.

From the source I linked above: There have been 89 school shootings "defined as anytime a gun is discharged on school property" in the U.S. so far in 2023, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, a website founded by researcher David Riedman.

“Romantic” in the sense that a lot of these people are narcissists with persecution complexes and think they are martyrs who will be appreciated by others in their position. This is especially true of the ideologically driven mass shooters — the misogynist killers, the racist killers — but also for the ones who just think they’ve been bullied and isolated or whatever.

I think they get the idea that others will appreciate their massacres from 4chan and places like that.

People in America are angry. Often nonsensically so, but it's a prevailing feeling. Few go to therapy or deal with that anger, often because of patriarchal norms, or no means to do so. And many of these folks have access to deadly weapons.

Schools are a popular place to shoot because they're predictable. It's not like the mall where you might show up and there's only five people there, and all moving, and coming from all directions . People at school are sitting ducks, gathered in place in large numbers for 8-10 hours in tight quarters. For someone who is angry enough to want to take lives, they can do so fairly easily, no matter how many times you ran the drill.

Copycatting plays into it too but schools and packed nightclubs are an easy way for a bloodthirsty person to live out violent fantasies.

I think schools are popular because they represent something to the shooter.

There is just something deeply fucked up about how predictable this is. People feel alienated — get their revenge by murdering innocents — people gnash their teeth and wring their hands but don’t do anything that might stop the patter, repeat. Hundreds of times per year this happens.

People Men in America are angry.

I mean women too but. . .

Well, anger is a universal part of life but usually only men think the way to deal with it is to kill.

The mystery isn’t why are people angry, it’s why does their anger take this form, over and over.

^^^

mental illness, bullying, alienation, becoming radicalized online, emptiness, lack of social structures, and then the all easy access

it's not some grand mystery--men in this country are fucked up and raised to not talk about their feelings

all those things are correct, but that doesn't explain the why of this same scenario at schools. i mean, i know it absolutely does happen elsewhere (malls, grocery stores, workplaces, etc etc) but it seems odd that it is so heavily weighted towards schools when there are so many other potential venues for your average gun-toting American man to snap.

Idk imho it's not that odd--bullying and alienation happens a lot at schools--
the online radicalization. . . people are taught not to trust schools b/c teacher are just gonna groom your kids etc
I get why people ask questions like that like why school but to me it's like asking the question "why did this person kill themselves"-->I get why people are asking the question but looking for an answer that solves the "why" something like this happens, to me, is never going to be satisfying

xxpost I remember just about every therapist I've ever had, I felt like I could never fully be open with them. I'd be sugar-coating some details here and there, omitting a detail here and there, retelling a story that made me look more favorable, fighting my emotions and not wanting to sho weakness, and wondering "why in the FUCK are you doing that in the one place where you don't have to?". It's ingrained.

but we should also not oversell the point that millions that want and need that kind of care can't get or afford it, either, and probably significantly less have access to it than they did 30-40 years ago.

Why “snap” and massacre strangers? This was not always a frequent occurence.

Profound unhappiness, extreme anger, bitterness, these are all part of our common experience as human beings. But the trend here — which I think is totally a mimetic or copycat phenomenon — is about directing one’s anger toward random victims, toward the crowd, and sometimes toward the most innocent among us, children. Like what the fuck.

How is this an everyday thing? What kind of country an I raising my son in?

There is something very bizarre happening here

1) many school shootings happen from aggrieved students/ex-students/ex-faculty, so there's often a "revenge" connection (though obv not always)
2) if you used to go to the school, you know the layout very well, and what actions will probably be taken
3) it's a thing other people have done, so it's an idea that comes to mind quickly
4) People are in all different rooms/buildings so it takes a while for everybody to realize what's going on, where other more open public places people all run at the sound of a bang.

there was a drill once at the local high school here that got mistaken for real active shooters because of how quickly misinformation spread (it was the school's fault). much more opportunity for chaos.

I mean, fuck. (assuming this is genuine that is)

THIS is last year's Christmas card from Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican who represents the district that Covenant School is in in Nashville. #tnleg pic.twitter.com/IpkLzZs5m5

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 27, 2023

not to distract from the larger convo, but fwiw I just saw this shooter likely attended the school at some point