Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

Philadelphia is the poorest city of its size in the United States. Northeast and Rhawnhurst areas near where that incident took place are notoriously rough, with shitty transit options and few social services and community hubs.

I mention this not to excuse this sort of violence, which is reprehensible, but to say that I think it arrives from different social conditions than a lot of spree shootings that have been discussed in this thread.

That’s also the 4th shooting on a Philadelphia bus this week.

Yeah, and none of them can be separated from the social conditions within Philadelphia. I’ve helped bury kids shot in gang beefs, trust me I know what the stakes are and what’s going on in the city where I live.

A guy in Toronto fired at pro-Palestine protesters the other day. With a nail gun. Nobody injured. So glad we don’t have our equivalent of the 2nd Amendment. Yet.

3 dead in Levittown, shooter on the run

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/breaking-suspect-sought-multiple-killed-levittown-shooting/3805011/

Every time this thread is revived I despair.

Seven children, ages 12 to 17, wounded in Indianapolis mass shooting

“Once again, we have a situation in which young people are resolving conflict with firearms, and it has to stop,” said the deputy chief of the Indianapolis metropolitan police department, Tanya Terry.

no one died, so the NYT didn't bother mentioning it. tbf, there have been over 100 mass shootings so far this year; guess you can't cover them all

For once this thread is not being updated because a shooting just happened (though one probably did)

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/09/michigan-school-shooters-parents-sentenced-to-10-years-00151367

still find it troubling that a 15 year old who was clearly displaying serious mental health issues would get life without parole

otm.

The article doesn’t include the most chilling evidence: the text they sent to the kid when they heard news reports of the shooting, saying basically “this isn’t you is it?”. That pushes it over from just “tragic mistakes

Mean to finish: pushes it over the line from “tragic mistakes by parents trying to do their best” to “yeah these are shitty people indirectly responsible for slaughter.”

Apologies if this has come up before, but I was just wondering today - any of y'all know your mass shooter number? It's like a Kevin Bacon number, except instead of measuring how many degrees you're separated from Kevin Bacon, it's how many degrees you're separated from a mass shooter. I figure with all the mass shooters out there, it's harder not for it enter into our lives in a personal way.

I just found out my mass shooter number is 2. I already knew it was three at least two different ways, both through my QPP. Her dad knew Brenda Spencer, you know, the "I Don't Like Mondays" shooter (I fucking hate that song BTW). And my QPP had a couple of cousins who were there when that guy who shot up that San Diego high school in '01. My QPP went to the other San Diego high school.

Anyway this lady I know, I just found out that she was rooming with a neo-Nazi who did a mass shooting in '22. I'm not... surprised? Not because she's a neo-Nazi - very much the opposite. More like, you know, this is how the world is these days. Is my experience, like, normal? I don't know what "normal" is these days. My life didn't used to be like this. I run into so much incredibly fucked up shit, on a daily basis.

Not sure what number this would be, but the guy who shot Gabby Giffords was from the neighborhood I grew up in. He lived on the same street my best friend lived on, but years after I moved away.

my brother's former friend is a wannabe alex jones who was "embedded" w/r1ttenhouse and his crew of larpers in Kenosha.

i met someone who caught a bullet in the Las Vegas music festival massacre, which isn't the same thing.

as noted before i drove by the Seal Beach massacre scene just after it occurred, as the police were first showing up and blocking the road, before the guy got caught.

closest for me would be that I'm kinda still friends with Brendan Dassey's half brother

that does remind me of a bizarre piece of trivia though - theres a widely used sports reaction gif involving a Jaguars fan, if you just Google "Jaguars fan reaction gif" you'll find it. apparently that guy was classmates with the Columbine shooters. there's a class photo and you can spot all 3 of them if you look close enough. small world I guess.

i fucking love meme trivia

here's one i learned today: the lady from the Math Lady meme came out as bisexual last year at age 76

"now we know what she was trying to figure out" - vaspider

probably a better thread for this but idk what it is

that's not Julia Roberts??

I know a woman who lives on the same block that Sirhan Sirhan grew up on (she moved there long after he was jailed). His brother continued to live there after the shooting, and may still be there.

(xpost) it doesn't even look like julia roberts unless you are thinking of something else

yes I think sirhan's brother still lives in the same place. I read or heard an extensive piece on him several years ago. he is very well liked in his neighborhood from what I recall

Math Lady looks like a TV actress I can never place

Either 2 or 3 from one or both of the Columbine shooters..

I don't think I have any real connection to any mass murderers or shooters. The only one I can think of is the student I had who went to Parkland, but was having their wisdom teeth removed on the day of the shooting. Good timing, I guess.

Math Lady looks like a TV actress I can never place

― papal hotwife (milo z)

she's definitely a tv actress. Renata Sorrah played Nazaré Tedesco, one of the best-known Brazilian telenovela villains, in 2004's "Senhora do Destino".

Am I the only one who thinks doing six degrees to fucking mass murderers is a wee bit tasteless? :/

Australian culture can't understand it.

Speaking of, two stabbing incidencts in as many days in sydney. First with 7 dead and second in a church.

Am I the only one who thinks doing six degrees to fucking mass murderers is a wee bit tasteless? :/

no, it is frankly bizarre.

but perhaps a better way to discuss it is...these are terrible events that happen with increasing frequency, and are likely to closely impact more and more of us as time goes on. not the shooters in particular, but the victims and the events, certainly.

Yeah I think that's probably what the original question was getting at, just from a different angle. how close any of us are to such a terrible event via someone who would do such a thing. But unfortunately it's far more likely we will be knowing those who were impacted by it rather than those responsible.

well yeah for sure it is tasteless but the whole phenomenon of mass shootings -- even just the fact that it continues to be a phenomenon -- is just so surreally incomprehensibly horrible, and it just keeps happening, but we just have to keep living with it? somehow? since the mass slaughter of children in classrooms, and crowds of people at concerts/movies/nightclubs/churches/grocery stores, isn't awful enough to cure the gun nut brain worms.

my fucking gun nut brother, when i had to see him on christmas a few days after sandy hook, was so goddamn mad about journalists shoving microphones at traumatized little schoolchildren. it was indecent, he said. he was ranting about that shit all night. i'm not into screaming matches so i didn't bring up all the children who had just been shot the fuck to death.

but like i said we have to live with this, and looking it full in its hideous face with all the seriousness it deserves all the time will just break your brain even worse. so sometimes you gotta be a little silly, it's fine.

Am I the only one who thinks doing six degrees to fucking mass murderers is a wee bit tasteless? :/

― Stoop Crone (Trayce)

i wouldn't say it's a "wee bit tasteless". i'd say it's sick and grotesque. i don't think i've lost any of my moral sense. it's just overwhelmed by the everyday horror of the country i live in. mass shootings are routine. i'd say they're even _banal_.

is it more virtuous to trace one's lineage to a victim than to a perp? is it more respectable? when i say that i fucking hate "i don't like mondays", it's because it buys into the moral narrative those times pushed on serial killers. the idea that brenda spencer really, actually did what she did because she "didn't like mondays". if you look at what her life was like, how she was _raised_. you think brenda spencer's dad was one bit less culpable for her act than jennifer and james crumbley were?

this world, this world where we try to draw distinctions between good victims and bad perpetrators, when we act as if there's some _fundamental innate difference_, when in truth the latter are always, always, drawn from the legions of the former. there is no _sense_ or _reason_ or _compassion_ or _justice_ in any of this. yes, it is horrifying to ponder how much, or how little, separates us from a mass killer. i don't know. maybe i am, like they say, a "highly sensitive person". i look at how _routine_ this sort of horror is in my life, not in "the news" but in _my life_, and... i don't want to bring anybody on a bum trip, but i think it's important for me to be able to acknowledge and communicate those feelings. and it's hard to do that. sometimes. impossible, if i'm also imposing on myself the requirement that i have to be "tasteful".

i'd say it's sick and grotesque

at least you haven't lost any of your moral sense

yeah I mean that's kind of the point, because mass shootings are a tragedy you can ignore if you choose to. god knows those with the power to actually do something about it do. but they've become so routine and commonplace that at some point a bunch of us are gonna be connected to one somehow, so at some point they will affect someone you know. I mean I still think about Uvalde and how much lifelong trauma those surviving kids are gonna have, along with the parents and teachers, to say nothing of those who lost someone. they'll never get over it. even if you're not any of those things just the knowledge of "it can happen here" has got to be in the back of everyone's mind there now.

i'm gonna go off. fuck it, i'm gonna go off. about being two degrees from a mass shooter. because at two degrees you see how it affects people, _what_ affects people.

this lady i know, the lady whose roommate was a mass shooter. what do you think her life is like? it's not great. a lot of the people i know, their lives aren't necessarily great. i don't know her well. she seems like a decent person, but some of the stuff she does, it weirds me out a little. it's not _bad_ or _evil_ or _wrong_. i don't think it's any judgement on her as a person. i just don't wanna get too involved with that stuff.

does her having had a neo-nazi mass shooter as a roommate _explain_ her life, _explain_ the unusual things she does sometimes? not really. it's more like... i mean this is just shit that happens, sometimes, and i guess i just have to radically accept it. marginalized is marginalized. i can see looking at that situation and asking "wait, why was a trans woman rooming with a neo-nazi anyway?" that part of me that understands respectability asks that question, and it makes me mad, because it's not a relevant fucking question. it _should_ be relevant. but it's not. because you do what you have to do to get by and you can't necessarily afford to have standards like "not having a neo-nazi as a roommate", even when you belong to a group that, uh, neo-nazis as a whole are not overly enamored with.

and then that neo-nazi does a mass shooting and, uh. tough shit for her, i guess. i mean nobody in a position of power is gonna do anything to, like, help or or support her. like if they'd ever done that in the first place, she wouldn't have been in a position where she had to have a fucking neo-nazi as a roommate, would she?

i mean fuck it. i don't know her that well. there's a good chance that having a neo-nazi roommate who did a mass shooting isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to her. any emotions i might have about that... there's not really anything i can do with those emotions but acknowlege they exist.

as long as you can make it about you

homerbackingintothehedge.gif

Not helpful mookie

Not sure if it is helpful or intended as such, but damn if it isn't understandable.

Now, now guys. Let's get back to thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers.

I love Kate, she’s one of the most valuable posters here, but I think this is not a very healthy thought exercise. Let’s see more cat pics!

The true solution to all the world's problems
https://i.postimg.cc/Pq28Lw8W/IMG-20240409-103739.jpg

Happy to inform everyone here, you're only one degree of separation away from my cats

There have been three deadly shootings this year so far on my street. I feel that all I can do is avoid complacency and prepare for the possibility of being shot, because if it happened without my anticipating it I'd feel even more foolish. This reminds me I'm even worried about Tuffy the cat sitting at the window.

Not helpful mookie

― H.P

it's not and it is? like it's not constructive criticism at all, it's snark, it's being unwilling or unable to engage seriously with what i'm saying, but it's meaningful and valuable for all that

absolutely fundamentally my posts here are about me, i just found out yesterday that a (not close) friend was rooming with a neo-nazi who did a mass shooting while they were roommates. that's kinda fucked up and i think i got a right to talk about that experience in a thread about spree shootings. learning that information hit me really hard emotionally. i had nightmares all last night about it.

because the thing is i have so much close contact with so much fucked up shit and i barely talk about any of it. i don't think i'm... i don't think my problems are extraordinary, really, but a lot of people around me, the stuff they have to deal with _does_ seem extraordinary. and if i try to talk about any of this shit, this shit that's kind of a regular part of my everyday life, sometimes someone will come up and say that i'm making everything all about me.

see it's valuable in context, in context as part of the thread. a lot of folks here do, i think, get where i'm coming from, get what i'm talking about, and are able to, like, at least engage to some extent with those experiences. the frustrating thing is sometimes trying to talk to people who don't see the same fucked up shit on a regular basis, sometimes our perspectives seem mutually incomprehensible to the extent that i have a hard time understanding what they're even talking about. that scares me. all this shooting, all this violence, the ways it affects those of us in its proximity, and as much of it as there is, a lot of times it doesn't seem possible to talk about it because i'm not doing it in the _right way_ or whatever. i don't want to be dogpiled, but if it's one person, if it's one person who's gonna speak up and be sarcastic and shitty about it and not engage in good faith, in a weird way i think that is helpful, because that is a perspective a lot of people do have, still. it helps me personally to be reminded of that.

i guess it's not a healthy thought exercise for everyone but it has been for me. anyway i'm pretty much done talking about it, it was something i needed to talk about it and i did and i wanna thank all of you who were able to hold space for that. sorry i don't have cat pics. :(

The true solution to all the world's problems
🖼

I probably shouldn't weigh in, but for what it's worth, Kate, I went back and read your first post about this and it's not clear to me that you were responding to something so emotional. I think in particular the first paragraph comes across as flippant rather than a response to pain. To be clear, I fully believe that you were strongly affected -- it makes sense that you would be -- and it makes sense, in retrospect, that the seeming flippancy might in actuality be a screen for deeper and darker feelings. But I don't think it's entirely fair to "go off" on mookieproof for responding negatively to the "mass shooter number" framing.

fwiw i got no hard feelings and lots of gratitude towards/for everyone here. really appreciate having had this space to say some stuff i needed to say. if anyone has any negative feelings or judgements towards me as a result of my posts here, fair enough. :)

fwiw i don't dislike kate (and very much enjoy her music posts, particularly those about how pink floyd does or does not rule; would totally read a book)

and i can understand that transitioning would become one's most important topic

but her personal posts have become increasingly solipsistic -- which is fine in certain circumstances -- but i think rather less so in a thread discussing mass shootings. that's all