I’m not sure I understand why intent matters (barring accidents, I suppose)?
Who cares what the intent was if guns were involved and people were hurt or died?
If a person is suffering from schizophrenia and thinks they are holding a magic wand, but actually shoot up a mall, they don’t have intent but the gun violence still resulted in death. Would that not be a mass shooting in your intent-based definition?
Reason 1: The policies required to prevent mass shootings (as most people understand the term) are going to be different from the policies required to prevent violence of other sorts, like domestic violence, or violence perpetrated in the furtherance of other crimes. These are different kinds of social problems which require different kinds of solutions. Conflating them will not help develop policy to combat them.
Reason 2: People generally understand the term “mass shooting” to mean a rampage shooting where someone targets strangers, typically in public spaces, for reasons that either have no clear motivation (the so-called mental health shootings), or have abstract ideological motivations (e.g . racist terrorism). The definition being used to make the claim in the headline “Second worst year on record for mass shootings” runs the risk of leading people to believe that this year was the second worst year on record for rampage shootings, when that might not be true. You don’t even have to leave this comment chain to see people making the assumption that this about school shootings, but it is not, the overwhelming majority of the cases that support the headline are not rampage shootings, but I’d wager most people would assume that is what the story will be about. Do you really think that fact was lost on the people who wrote that article? Do the people who develop these databases not understand that most people think “mass shooting” is the same as “rampage shooting” as I have described it? It is difficult to believe that the equivocation is an accident, and that has the effect of making people who promote these kinds of stories appear disingenuous.
For all the problems of violence I have raised here, gun control probably has a role to play, but gun control policies are unlikely to be exhaustive of the possible solutions and gun control solutions in one context are not guaranteed to be effective in other contexts. conflating these obviously different types of violence–rampage killings are different from organized crime, which is different from domestic violence–makes policy advocacy more difficult. When advocates of gun control conflate these kinds of violence in ways any reasonable person would immediately recognize as misleading it makes them seem like they are liars, and so untrustworthy. If you live in the US, then you live in a place where gun control is a controversial idea, if your argument for more gun control involves equivocation, or otherwise relies on misleading statements, you are shooting yourself in the foot.
You argue there’s risk in conflating one type of mass shooting with another (domestic violence or criminal pursuit vs. ‘rampaging’) because it changes how policy would be considered, while simultaneously conflating two very different types of mass shooting (psychological instability vs. ideological terrorism) as one and the same. The policy strategy to prevent these two types of violence, I hope you’d agree, would be quite different.
From my point of view, this is the inherent problem with the viewpoint you are trying to defend. You’re trying to bucket some shootings as acceptable and some as bad, and that’s a point, but that’s not the point.
If there was a standard legal or academic definition of mass shooting, and this organization was using an alternate standard, I would see and support your point, but your argument is that in an ill defined space, one organizations definition isnt the same as yours, and is therefore wrong. It’s not tenable as far as I can see. You use this idea of ‘most people’ as some kind of yardstick, which it can’t be in any formal way. It’s sort a nothingism used to attack something with the weight of popular thinking, but not really a viable standard of any kind.
Intent matters because in a true mass shooting event, the mass shooting is the intent.
In an argument turned into a fight with multiple shooters, nobody went out that day looking to shoot people. It turned out that way, but that wasn’t their goal when they left the house.
Your explaining the difference but not explaining why it makes a difference.
To matters of gun regulation, of safety in public spaces, of trauma to the affected, of national reputation (pick any one, or all, or something else) why does the intent change anything?
I’ll start off: To have the intention to mass-murder purely for the sake of mass murder could be worth isolating and studying because that is a specific and extreme psychological problem worth solving. However, not all mass killings (with intent, for your sake) will have that psychological trigger at root. A religious or racial extremist, for example, is different than a disaffected teenager.
In this circumstance, intent is interesting if one is interested in those other things (psychological issues in American youth, the spread of religious and racial extremism), but ultimately are secondary issues when it comes to measuring gun violence. A mass stabbing by a racial extremist, or a teenager blowing up their high school with fertilizer would still need to be measured.
You are complaining about this organization’s yardstick, but I don’t hear a compelling alternative from you for this specific measure. You are saying they should be measuring a totally different thing, which is arguably irrelevant to this measure.
It’s like explaining the dufference between murder and manslaughter, it’s the degree of the crime that counts.
If you accept that there is a difference between shooting people as a crime of passion, and shooting people by a systemic hunting of other human beings, there doesn’t need to be a “but why is it different?”
It’s different because one, anyone could fall victim to given enough alcohol and anger, and the other requires someone to be fundamentally broken as a human being.
Are you saying that we should have Allowlists vs. Denylists for types of gun violence that are acceptable? This seems to be the fundamental premise upon which we disagree…
From my POV, intention is immaterial because there are no ‘good’ gun deaths, so splitting hairs has no values.
It sounds to me like you’re saying if you go to a mall and have a mass shooting in a totally sober state, that’s bad, but if you get hopped up on bath salts and then have a good old fashioned shotgun rampage, that’s ok and we shouldn’t count those ones…
I’m saying that the phrase “mass shooting” should only be applied to a situation where the shooting is the reason for the conflict, not an argument, robbery, drug crime, or gang crime.
Further, I’d argue that conflating them all together so you can pump up statistics and make people scared denigrates all the victions of actual mass shootings like Uvalde and Sandy Hook.
… Why are you saying and arguing those things, nobody cares about what you think about the way the statistics are counted when you can compare the data to other countries without guns and without any types of shooting events, mass or not.
Do you not understand what all of these different people are trying to explain to you?
Because all the countries with strict gun laws that you all love to try and compare the USA with, also have strong social safety nets and are not as diverse as the USA…why don’t you compare it with say Mexico or Brazil? Both have super strong gun laws but have no real safety nets and surprise…still have tons of firearm related deaths.
I’m not sure I understand why intent matters (barring accidents, I suppose)?
Who cares what the intent was if guns were involved and people were hurt or died?
If a person is suffering from schizophrenia and thinks they are holding a magic wand, but actually shoot up a mall, they don’t have intent but the gun violence still resulted in death. Would that not be a mass shooting in your intent-based definition?
It can see two reasons why it matters.
Reason 1: The policies required to prevent mass shootings (as most people understand the term) are going to be different from the policies required to prevent violence of other sorts, like domestic violence, or violence perpetrated in the furtherance of other crimes. These are different kinds of social problems which require different kinds of solutions. Conflating them will not help develop policy to combat them.
Reason 2: People generally understand the term “mass shooting” to mean a rampage shooting where someone targets strangers, typically in public spaces, for reasons that either have no clear motivation (the so-called mental health shootings), or have abstract ideological motivations (e.g . racist terrorism). The definition being used to make the claim in the headline “Second worst year on record for mass shootings” runs the risk of leading people to believe that this year was the second worst year on record for rampage shootings, when that might not be true. You don’t even have to leave this comment chain to see people making the assumption that this about school shootings, but it is not, the overwhelming majority of the cases that support the headline are not rampage shootings, but I’d wager most people would assume that is what the story will be about. Do you really think that fact was lost on the people who wrote that article? Do the people who develop these databases not understand that most people think “mass shooting” is the same as “rampage shooting” as I have described it? It is difficult to believe that the equivocation is an accident, and that has the effect of making people who promote these kinds of stories appear disingenuous.
For all the problems of violence I have raised here, gun control probably has a role to play, but gun control policies are unlikely to be exhaustive of the possible solutions and gun control solutions in one context are not guaranteed to be effective in other contexts. conflating these obviously different types of violence–rampage killings are different from organized crime, which is different from domestic violence–makes policy advocacy more difficult. When advocates of gun control conflate these kinds of violence in ways any reasonable person would immediately recognize as misleading it makes them seem like they are liars, and so untrustworthy. If you live in the US, then you live in a place where gun control is a controversial idea, if your argument for more gun control involves equivocation, or otherwise relies on misleading statements, you are shooting yourself in the foot.
You argue there’s risk in conflating one type of mass shooting with another (domestic violence or criminal pursuit vs. ‘rampaging’) because it changes how policy would be considered, while simultaneously conflating two very different types of mass shooting (psychological instability vs. ideological terrorism) as one and the same. The policy strategy to prevent these two types of violence, I hope you’d agree, would be quite different.
From my point of view, this is the inherent problem with the viewpoint you are trying to defend. You’re trying to bucket some shootings as acceptable and some as bad, and that’s a point, but that’s not the point.
If there was a standard legal or academic definition of mass shooting, and this organization was using an alternate standard, I would see and support your point, but your argument is that in an ill defined space, one organizations definition isnt the same as yours, and is therefore wrong. It’s not tenable as far as I can see. You use this idea of ‘most people’ as some kind of yardstick, which it can’t be in any formal way. It’s sort a nothingism used to attack something with the weight of popular thinking, but not really a viable standard of any kind.
Do you feel the same way about war?
Intent matters because in a true mass shooting event, the mass shooting is the intent.
In an argument turned into a fight with multiple shooters, nobody went out that day looking to shoot people. It turned out that way, but that wasn’t their goal when they left the house.
Your explaining the difference but not explaining why it makes a difference.
To matters of gun regulation, of safety in public spaces, of trauma to the affected, of national reputation (pick any one, or all, or something else) why does the intent change anything?
I’ll start off: To have the intention to mass-murder purely for the sake of mass murder could be worth isolating and studying because that is a specific and extreme psychological problem worth solving. However, not all mass killings (with intent, for your sake) will have that psychological trigger at root. A religious or racial extremist, for example, is different than a disaffected teenager.
In this circumstance, intent is interesting if one is interested in those other things (psychological issues in American youth, the spread of religious and racial extremism), but ultimately are secondary issues when it comes to measuring gun violence. A mass stabbing by a racial extremist, or a teenager blowing up their high school with fertilizer would still need to be measured.
You are complaining about this organization’s yardstick, but I don’t hear a compelling alternative from you for this specific measure. You are saying they should be measuring a totally different thing, which is arguably irrelevant to this measure.
It’s like explaining the dufference between murder and manslaughter, it’s the degree of the crime that counts.
If you accept that there is a difference between shooting people as a crime of passion, and shooting people by a systemic hunting of other human beings, there doesn’t need to be a “but why is it different?”
It’s different because one, anyone could fall victim to given enough alcohol and anger, and the other requires someone to be fundamentally broken as a human being.
Are you saying that we should have Allowlists vs. Denylists for types of gun violence that are acceptable? This seems to be the fundamental premise upon which we disagree…
From my POV, intention is immaterial because there are no ‘good’ gun deaths, so splitting hairs has no values.
It sounds to me like you’re saying if you go to a mall and have a mass shooting in a totally sober state, that’s bad, but if you get hopped up on bath salts and then have a good old fashioned shotgun rampage, that’s ok and we shouldn’t count those ones…
I’m saying that the phrase “mass shooting” should only be applied to a situation where the shooting is the reason for the conflict, not an argument, robbery, drug crime, or gang crime.
Further, I’d argue that conflating them all together so you can pump up statistics and make people scared denigrates all the victions of actual mass shootings like Uvalde and Sandy Hook.
… Why are you saying and arguing those things, nobody cares about what you think about the way the statistics are counted when you can compare the data to other countries without guns and without any types of shooting events, mass or not.
Do you not understand what all of these different people are trying to explain to you?
Because all the countries with strict gun laws that you all love to try and compare the USA with, also have strong social safety nets and are not as diverse as the USA…why don’t you compare it with say Mexico or Brazil? Both have super strong gun laws but have no real safety nets and surprise…still have tons of firearm related deaths.
Not as diverse as the eu?? Not as diverse as Canada? Wtf are you talking about
Sure, and all these different people haven’t said a single thing that counters what I’m saying, telling, isn’t it?
We’ve all countered it. Very telling indeed.