US on track to set record in 2023 for mass killings after series of shootings

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/09/us-on-track-set-record-mass-killings-2023

by Brajeshwar • 3 years ago

55 106 3 years ago

skyyler• 3 years ago

I can't put my finger on it precisely, but it feels like there are outside influences radicalizing people via social media with an ultimate goal of destabilizing the United States.

outside12342• 3 years ago

Occam's Razor: It's the guns.

sdfghswe2• 3 years ago

Guns is a necessary condition, yes, and the problem would be greatly mitigated by removing the necessary condition, yes.

But it's also plausible that like OP says outside influences take advantage of the condition being present.

edgyquant• 3 years ago

That isn’t what Occams Razor means.

throwuwu• 3 years ago

All else being equal my ass.

sdfghswe2• 3 years ago

If it's plausible that that strategy could work, it's plausible that someone will try it.

marl0• 3 years ago

100% I'm surprised this isn't more obvious to others. The media certainly isn't helping the situation either.

LastTrain2• 3 years ago

Please be more specific when you talk about "the media", the most abused term in American culture.

themedia• 3 years ago

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atwebb• 3 years ago

Watching city sub-reddits devolve over the years has me feeling the same way. It seems coordinated.

spacemadness• 3 years ago

I think it is often coordinated but I doubt all of it is “outside influence.” It doesn’t take many extreme nazi/far right folk to make a dent and they can easily coordinate a small group to trash a subreddit to be more effective.

andrewstuart22• 3 years ago

I think there are probably outside influences involved. But also, we've already had a civil war that predates the internet by a long shot, and I don't think we necessarily need outside influence for this to be an outcome given a lot of the incentives for radicalized viewpoints.

giantg26• 3 years ago

With such a large, expansive, and diverse population we are a country with many nations inside it. There has certainly been a long history of different viewpoints in different areas, dating back to the decades long debates over the creation of the constitution and bill of rights.

ElevenLathe• 3 years ago

They don't need to be "outside" influences. We're totally capable of radicalizing ourselves domestically.

mmmm2• 3 years ago

We've become the terrorists we feared in the 2000s.

bryanlarsen• 3 years ago

It's both. Russian troll farms work by amplifying internal destabilizing factors.

alex_sf• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

tehwebguy2• 3 years ago

outside influences radicalizing people

Outside of where?

pphysch2• 3 years ago

You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain why there's a murder problem in a country with a boatload of guns, lax restrictions on violent media, and a culture where infringing on someone's right to do anything can be interpreted as "totalitarian".

No foreign influence required.

Nanana9095• 3 years ago

The “foreign influence” part is when mass shootings are a fraction of a fraction of the deaths, yet 50% of the news coverage. Media publishes sensational pieces about what consumers demand - consumer demand is increasingly driven by online discourse, which is free to manipulate easily.

The best kind of misinformation is misinformation that is true but not representative of the real situation. Have you checked our heart disease deaths? It is *factually* an issue many orders of magnitude more important to the average American. And yet…zero discussion seems to happen about it online?

And why wouldn’t there be foreign influence? It’s quite an easy checklist:

* do Russia and China have the technical capability to make social media accounts and post in English?: Yes, obviously.

* do Russia and China have any motive to drive fearful divisive narratives in the US?: Yes - we are their primary geopolitical opponent

With both of these true, to assume they’re not doing it for some reason out of kindness requires a lot of mental gymnastics.

hanniabu• 3 years ago

Late stage capitalism....divide the country through politics so nothing can get done and remove any nuance from discussions

asg101• 3 years ago

The oligarchs want us to fight each other, rather than fight them. Divide and conquer has never failed them. Push the culture wars to distract from the class war.

licebmi__at__• 3 years ago

Or maybe American corporations amplified American problems while chasing money like usual, and then problems present themselves based on American realities.

No need to look for external causes, although blaming external actors also aligns with American historical actions.

dirtyid• 3 years ago

Or it's just cathartic to laugh at the king, even by the king's vassels (Guardian). Are foreign powers weaponizing US dysfunctional to undermine US society, sure. Are their collective impact remotely as effective as dysfunctional US media weaponizing said US dysunfction for views for massive domestic and international audiences, probably not. Past some point ground reality in US is doing most of the work, pressing these buttons by external forces is just filler work to pass the time. It's not even active measures to undermine US society at this point when US society is doing most of the undermining.

trasz4• 3 years ago

Yup, it's been long known that some state actors, like Russia, do that, usually by amplifying alt-right content.

branon• 3 years ago

Cat's out of the bag on this one. You will never get all the guns back, not without running a very real risk of instigating civil war.

Ms. Jackson Lee thinks the real cause of the problem is "guns, guns, guns" - I say it's criminals, criminals, criminals. Why's Texas have so many criminals willing to use firearms for evil?

outside12342• 3 years ago

The good news is that guns are made of metal and metal rusts. So outlaw the military weapons and replacement parts and wait.

linksnapzz• 3 years ago

Clearly, the technology for making things out of ...ferrous metals...is beyond the ken of ...Americans.

mech765• 3 years ago

World war one rifles coated in cosmoline are just as ready to shoot today as when they were stored in a barrel 100 years ago.

Take a look at the availability of the mosin nagant rifle.

rolph2• 3 years ago

https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/does-individual-need-license...

https://www.nps.gov/spar/learn/historyculture/making-guns.ht...

https://interestingengineering.com/video/guns-factory

Ancapistani5• 3 years ago

FYI: there's a pistol sitting on my desk in front of me, right now, that I had disassembled last night to thoroughly inspect and clean. It was made in 1909.

That 114-year-old pistol is not only still functional, the only way you could tell it wasn't factory-new when I bought it a few years ago was that the black hard rubber grips were starting to turn a little brown at the edges, and the nickel finish was discolored in a few places on the slide. I've since restored the grips and carefully polished the finish to correct those two points.

Off the top of my head, I have at least two shotguns, one pistol, and four rifles that have been in my family for >100 years. One of those rifles is so old that I'm unsure who first acquired it. It's a "Pennsylvania long rifle". Made long before serial numbers were "a thing", I'd date it to about 1820 based on the style. I know my great-great-grandfather had it, because I have a photograph of him using it as an old man in the early 1900s.

andrewstuart22• 3 years ago

If you want to use firearms for any purpose, you probably go to the place where firearms flow like milk and honey.

rolph2• 3 years ago

Its the fomentation of hate, fear, and protracted power struggles.

mindslight4• 3 years ago

It doesn't seem like criminals per se (apart from murders by highly organized crime), but rather people with severe mental health problems. Mental health problems that are seemingly due to mainlining social media memes telling them everyone is out to get them, which have been given a pass due to standing in for real political discourse. For example by the time someone is answering their front door with a gun and pointing it at whomever is there, it's clear that person is suffering from a paranoia that should make them ineligible to possess firearms. And this should be policed by other gun owners! But it's been drawn into this culture war where if we admit that Crazy Bob perhaps shouldn't have guns, then the "liberals" win or whatever.

igetspam7• 3 years ago

Do you have evidence for that because psychologists disagree with you.

But let's pretend they don't. I'm all for universal mental health care. How does that help? What can we do to curtail gun violence, if we take the stance that it's a mental health issue? Evaluate everyone before letting them buy guns? Sold! Hell, I'll give mine back (after I've damaged them beyond use so no one can have them in the future).

We can play "Is it mental health?" all day but even if it is and we're going through a period of collective psychosis, I don't see how addressing mental health could ever really help here.

Ancapistani5• 3 years ago

For example by the time someone is answering their front door with a gun and pointing it at whomever is there, it's clear that person is suffering from a paranoia that should make them ineligible to possess firearms.

First, let me say that "pointing at whomever is there" is a big step too far. Also, arbitrarily pointing a gun at someone who is not a threat to you in order to intimidate them is already a separate crime in the US - "brandishing". In the few states that don't have specific brandishing laws, that act typically falls under "assault" or "assault with a deadly weapon".

That said, it's very common for people to answer the door armed. I do. Generally that's a holstered pistol on my belt, but if I'm not wearing "street clothes" at the time it could be a tiny pistol in my pocket, a full-size pistol in my hand behind the door so it can't be seen, or a carbine similarly concealed.

Why? I grew up in a place where police response averaged a half hour or more. My home was a half mile (~0.8km for those of you outside the US) down a private gravel road; if someone was at my door that I didn't expect or recognize, chances are they were unwelcome. Generally that means salesmen, but we weren't the only people familiar with police response times, so precautions were well-founded.

Today it's partly a habit for me. Like many people, I have a cloud-connected camera system around my home and a doorbell camera. I never have to go to my door without knowing who to expect when I open it. It's not entirely habit though - if I'm physically answering the door and don't recognize the person on the other side, I can reasonably expect that the purpose of the interaction will be to eject them from my property. A firearm is nothing more than a tool to facilitate doing that with minimal risk to myself and my family.

And this should be policed by other gun owners!

We do! Gun stores have the ability to deny a sale to anyone, at any time, for any reason. They exercise it regularly. If you don't believe me, find someone who can legally own a firearm and have them go into a gun store while smelling of weed, or alcohol. Alternatively, have them act erratically in the store. Then ask to buy a gun. Chances are they'll be refused service and told to leave at that point. If not, the person at the counter will give them a "Form 4473". There's a fair chance that the employee will use the time spent by the customer to fill out the 4473 to call the police. If the customer fills it out and their answers indicate that they are not a prohibited person, expect the employee to call in the background check and then pretend that the response is delayed. The customer will be instructed to come back later, at a specific time or when called. Police will be present when they're told to return.

Seriously. I've worked in a gun store and spend a fair amount of time in them, and I've seen this (or variants thereof) play out many times. If you come in and can't suppress your crazy long enough to hold a courteous conversation, you're not buying a firearm from them.

But it's been drawn into this culture war where if we admit that Crazy Bob perhaps shouldn't have guns, then the "liberals" win or whatever.

What I see is that we're not afraid to "self-police", but see attempts to pass laws with an arbitrary means of depriving citizens of their rights without due process as a (rather obvious) attempt for the government to acquire the tools to disarm citizens at their leisure. In other words: it's not that we think Crazy Bob should be armed, but that we would much rather risk Armed Crazy Bob than to give the government the ability to apply the "Crazy" monicker to whomever they like.

GaryNumanVevo• 3 years ago

very real risk of instigating civil war.

Doubtful. Especially considering the American Civil war was started by wealthy land owners, but fought by the poorest conscripted Southerners. I don't really think Americans are willing to give up their extremely consumerist lives to fight and potentially die over what is essentially a hobby to most.

Of course it's a convenient narrative: that Americans would take up arms in a glorious battle to defend the Second Amendment. But, ultimately it's a marketing tactic pushed by gun manufacturers, a scare tactic to get people to buy up excess inventory before the next capital 'D' Democrat takes office.

giantg26• 3 years ago

What these people are missing is that it's not just consumers that would be involved. We can already see how law enforcement is split on the issue when you look at how many rural sheriffs are refusing to enforce new gun laws as they are enacted in various states. This is an issue that has a strong urban/rural divide, which means there are people in all manner of roles that could be on either side. And yes, some companies or people take advantage of that, just as other do from reporting on mass shootings while largely ignoring the everyday shootings that pose a bigger threat.

Ancapistani5• 3 years ago

I don't really think Americans are willing to give up their extremely consumerist lives to fight and potentially die over what is essentially a hobby to most.

I strongly disagree with the characterization that firearms are a "hobby to most".

That might have been the case as recently as the 1980s, but the push for gun control in the 1990s, culminating in the "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994, galvanized gun owners. I believe that a comfortable majority of gun owners today see through a political lens, not as a hobby.

There's a reason the AR-15 became so prominent so quickly: they were (ineffectively) banned in 1994. When the Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, they flew off the shelves. They became symbols of the resistance to gun control, to the point that they acquired the nickname "America's Rifle".

Now consider that in 1994, there were far, far fewer ARs in citizens' hands and a gun culture that was largely oriented around hunting. In 2023, American gun culture is firmly rooted in political activism.

jimmytidey• 3 years ago

A agree you can't 'get all the guns back', but there are still reasons to consider more stringent controls, two spring to mind:

1) It's about the social permission you give to people by making guns easily available. For example, in many European countries, bars, pubs and drinking are an absolutely central part of life, whereas in the US drinking establishments often have a much more 'taboo' vibe about them. Alcohol consumption is much lower in the US than Europe. Obviously there are questions about cause and effect, but I suspect that if the US made gun ownership into a more transgressive behaviour, there would be less gun crime.

2) Sometimes a tiny bit of friction makes a big difference. In the UK you can only buy paracetamol (Tylenol) 16 capsules at a time. Nothing stops you buying more by going to multiple shops, or by going back in the same shop multiple times. But that extra bit of friction has dramatically reduced the amount of paracetamol lying around in people's homes, and suicide from paracetamol has radically reduced as a result.

I get the principle you are articulating, but, in practice, it's probably quite a bit more nuanced. Texas isn't likely to be a state full of criminals, rather it's a state with different social norms around firearms, and permissive gun laws.

giantg26• 3 years ago

"Sometimes a tiny bit of friction makes a big difference."

If it is a tiny bit of friction, then SCOTUS would likely allow it. If not, it could be struck down. But what tiny bit of friction is being proposed that will have an impact on homicides?

It seems your argument is that reducing the number of guns will reduce shootings and that we can reduce them with "a tiny bit of friction". But the courts are generally holding that if the restrictions prevent qualified individuals from obtaining a gun, then it is not a tiny bit of friction, but an infringement on rights. It seems these are incompatible.

Ancapistani5• 3 years ago

Sometimes a tiny bit of friction makes a big difference

I have three firearms in my safe right now that were 100% legal when I purchased them. They came with a copy of a letter sent to the manufacturer by the ATF that clearly and explicitly states that they are legal as configured. January 31st of this year, the ATF decided that not only are they illegal, but they've always been illegal. If I don't destroy, modify, or register them they will each carry the same penalty as if I had manufactured machineguns in - checks calendar - 22 days.

Oh, and the registration process requires me to sign a statement indicating that I have committed a felony. The ATF has promised not to prosecute me for it, but... well, forgive me if I don't trust the ATF.

This is not the first time I've had hundreds or thousands of dollars of my legally-acquired property declared retroactively illegal.

I'd love "a tiny bit of friction", because this is ridiculous.

throwawaysleep2• 3 years ago

You can slowly kill the gun culture over generations, both through legal restrictions and social ostracism of gun owners. Happy that my home country of Canada is becoming ever more anti gun.

Ancapistani5• 3 years ago

Statistics show that laws have had the opposite effect in the US - they've fostered an anti-authoritarian cause that has become by far the dominant meme in gun culture.

WillPostForFood3• 3 years ago

Why's Texas have so many criminals

Texas isn't an outlier in crime. It ranks 21st in murder rate . 84% of the population is urban (15th most urban state). Dallas and Houston are the 4th and 5th largest metro areas in the country, and struggle with the same crime problem as other big metros like New York, LA, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta.

igetspam7• 3 years ago

Is that right?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gun-violen...

stepbeek• 3 years ago

Didn’t Australia do this? Or are you saying that the US is unique in gun culture? Not rhetorical, I’m genuinely interested.

birdyrooster• 3 years ago

I am far less free now that there are daily mass shootings. Me and millions of people stay in their homes and never go to populated places. It sucks and I would be willing to go to a deeper level of hell if it meant undoing these shackles.

igetspam7• 3 years ago

You didn't say if you have kids or not but as a parent, those worries are multiplied. There are lots of things we won't do because of the additional risk. The terrorists (white nationalists, red pills, etc) are winning.

igetspam7• 3 years ago

Sorry, clarifying questions: Are you saying Texas has more criminals? And would that apply to red states in general, as they have the most mass shootings?

giardini• 3 years ago

branon asks: "Why's Texas have so many criminals willing to use firearms for evil?"

What kind of a question is that? Have you ever heard of a criminal who was willing to use firearms for good? If you were in a "Criminals' Bar" and said what you say above, they would laugh you out of the room! The very definition of a criminal requires that s(he) do evil, their very reputations ride upon how evil/badass they are perceived.

I, for one, am glad to see the broad acceptance of firearms in society. They bring with them a protocol that is commonly known, demands respect (under risk of death) and that encourages the adoption of etiquette (good manners), which is a necessity in a civil society. But while firearms keep our society safe, there is a price to pay. It's a sort of tax on society: you don't want it but it is necessary.

Back to the original question:

FWIW if you're a criminal, you'll get more laughs than money by beating someone with say, a shovel or a rake (as long as you don't overdo it). But you can't make decent money in stand-up comedy these days either. Soooo...

In all seriousness fighting is a physically demanding task, especially if it is necessary to survive each encounter. One seeks a tool that will maximize the harvest at least risk and least effort. The firearm comes immediately to mind. For good reason the Colt .45 revolver was call the "Great Equalizer":

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/31/the-story-of-how-samuel...

The same Colt .45 revolver was called the "Peacemaker".

Finally, the more people, the more incidents of crime and thus more criminals. Texas is a growing state. For more details on crime growth maybe ask Joe Biden?

belltaco• 3 years ago

If you're queasy, don't watch any pictures or videos of the last two events, they're pretty bad and the twitter algo promoting checkmark accounts boosted them. The mall one had pictures and videos of bodies in a pile with blood all over and what looked like a kid's brains out on the sidewalk.

Victims: (no gore) https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/allen-texas-outlet-m...

ryandrake• 3 years ago

Maybe what the American public needs is a little gore to snap them out of whatever trance is making them constantly vote for these disasters.

Look at how vanilla and sanitized 'mass shooting' news has become:

    Talking head: "Tonight another mass shooting. Over to our field correspondent..."
    Field reporter: "Thanks, Mike! Another terrible mass shooting."
    [Camera shows vague picture of a police car]
    Police officer: "There was another mass shooting. We came here. Things happened."
    [Camera shows SFW picture of a body bag that may or may not be on top of human-like form]
    Bystander: "Yup, I can tell you there was a shooting and I was scared."
    [Camera shows an ambulance]
    Talking Head: "Well, public, you're now informed. Back to beer commercials!"

Perhaps if they actually showed the brutal, gory aftermath of these things, we might stop supporting representatives who do their best to keep them happening.

dismantlethesun• 3 years ago

No one wants mass shootings. People just disagree on how best to prevent them and what’s most important about life.

Throwing fuel on the fire just leads to hastier emotional decisions not better decisions.

wunderland• 3 years ago

More and more it seems the country is too corrupt to fix this problem. When will Americans realize they are not living in a democracy?

throwaway5959• 3 years ago

What makes you think we haven’t?

suby• 3 years ago

We are living in a democracy. There is a significant portion of the population that does not want any movement on gun control. I understand most Americans agree that we need some type of background checks and other common sense restrictions in place, but the hesitation to implement this is largely because of the extreme faction, and honestly the gun control that there is broad support to pass wouldn't fix the problem anyway.

kmos17• 3 years ago

All polls report a majority of Americans want gun control, it’s not about a lack of movement on gun control, it’s the opposite, controls are being removed with horrible and predictable results. We are heading in the wrong direction on that issue.

throwawaysleep2• 3 years ago

You are living in a democracy. Just one with conservatives who have not over the decades had any concern for the pile of bodies generated by a myriad of things (from AIDs to COVID to guns to healthcare to drugs) unless they could blame a Muslim.

wnevets• 3 years ago

Obviously what this country needs is even more guns! The more guns a country has the safer it is!

igetspam7• 3 years ago

At some point we'll be saturated enough for that "Polite Society" we've been promised by being an "Armed Society" will kick in and we're all gonna feel pretty dumb. Any day now. Any day.

cyclecount• 3 years ago

Why do posts like this get flagged? Are Americans not allowed to talk about their violent culture on HN?

giantg26• 3 years ago

I assume it gets flagged because because it's off-topic and not a new phenomenon. You see the same arguments/comments/flames on every post that comes through here. At least if it was about some new proposed system, fundamentally new analaysis/data/tech, then it would be on-topic.

LastTrain2• 3 years ago

It is an insanely divided topic that leads to heated exchanges which is not the kind of dialogue HN is trying to cultivate.

ThrowawayR2• 3 years ago

Because it's off-topic for HN. From the HN guidelines linked at the bottom of the page:

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic"

archagon• 3 years ago

I didn't flag it, but this is definitely the kind of topic that nothing good will ever come out of on HN. (Alas?)

imtringued2• 3 years ago

Come on it's two mass shootings every day, that's not exceptional, that is the new normal.

porkbeer• 3 years ago

Disturbing to see so many in favor of removing our bedrock rights because they are afraid of a tool. Nobody wants to end up like the UK or Australia in terms of reduced rights. That was literally the impetus for the creation of the USA.

bitcharmer• 3 years ago

What reduced rights are you talking about?

65102• 3 years ago

The guns are there to make sure the public servants don't become the master.

At least, that was the idea.

Freedom2• 3 years ago

Australia's reduced rights was the impetus for the creation of the USA?

plugger2• 3 years ago

Tiring to see so many Americans continually ignore the fact that guns, shooting enthusiasts, and hunters all still exist in Australia. Just a simple google search would reveal shooting clubs exist across this continent. Sure, shooters are not out there with a full auto Barrett 50 (which, funnily enough is now Australian owned) going rock and roll on the local fauna. But guns exist here, they're in people's homes, and this is a fact.

rstuart4133• 3 years ago

Guns, shooting enthusiasts and some people owning lots of guns (I know someone who lives in Brisbane, Australia, with 40 in his home) all exist in many countries. Yet the USA is the singularly the gun death problem.

It's pretty clear the difference isn't the presence of guns, or the "restrictions" (in Brisbane you need a licence that boils down to knowing gun safety), it's an attitude. The attitude in the US seems to be it's perfectly acceptable to use a gun for self defence, up to and including killing someone. In the rest of the world we are happy to delegate killing people for crimes to the government, so under no circumstances is it legal to threaten someone with a gun, let alone shoot them. Accordingly the rest of the world's population is happy to have fairly mild restrictions on gun use that allows their use for anything (sport, farming, game hunting, ...) bar personal protection from other people.

I suspect the person you are respond would disagree violently on this one point. To them the entire point of owning a gun is self defence. They insist they must have the right to kill someone.

US on track to set record in 2023 for mass killings after series of shootings

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