It's okay, and I don't fully know. We always start individual threads, and I noticed today's news and thought, "you know, nobody will even start a thread b/c of the 'low' #" and that made me a little sick at my stomach. We usually have these threads, sometimes mistakenly in the Hangout and they get moved. Far from what our overseas pal Mathloom is saying, I think having a single thread both notes new cases that might not be "big enough" for most of us to notice while also showing us what we've become. It is totally normal for a handful or more of people to die by one gunman in the US. I'm not even being political, in particular, just being a human and a citizen. It's sad. And the bar graph isn't perfect but it shows a trend that suggests we will only have more such shootings with bigger body counts. I'm not a "live in fear" kind of guy, but I live in Northern Cali, and I've noticed starting to wonder, when in crowds, "okay, what is the plan if shooting starts? Where are the exits?" and that sort of thing. Doesn't feel like "liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but it is what it is. ****ed up.
Interesting chart. The 3 worst years in terms of mass shooting deaths of the last 35 years have occurred since 2012. Between 1982 and 2006, there were 4 mass shooting incidents with > 10 deaths. In last 10 years, there have been 10 such incidents.
I agree. Maybe we'll adjust, but at this point, it seems like there are some human minds who just can't handle it, at all.
Whatever their motivations... -bullied -wanting fame -feeling isolated -angry at the world -wanting to start race wars -political -terrorism It almost always has a social media component now. Instead of being isolated in their own little worlds, these sick minds are now exposed to so much that pushed them deeper into darkness. Beyond these shootings, social media has also unraveled so much of society, including bad parts. Take this female backlash against harassment, abuse, etc. This NEVER went anywhere before social media. Racial protests, female protests, etc. it all is amplified beyond belief now because of social media. Social media has changed the world in a way that hasn't happened since the written word was first recorded.
Sandy Hook still saddens and pisses me off at the same time. I have a 7 year old. There is absolutely nothing stopping someone going into his school and doing the same. I’ll fully admit if that happened to him I would not recover. My life would be over. Everyone here is looking for a cause. It’s not just one. There are a ton of different things causing these mass shootings, along with the high amount of general violence and specifically gun violence in this country. I wish that I thought things are going to get better, not get worse. I believe statistically overall violence is down in the US. Mass shootings though are going to escalate and occur more often before they get better it seems.
Its not so much social media. Its the lack of human interaction. Our faces are buried either in one of the TV's that can be found in every room of the house, or our computer monitor or phone. We prefer to communicate digitally over voice. As a society, we are slowly losing the ability to express ourselves and communicate. Depression is at epidemic proportions. Its hard to find happiness when we only look at the best of a personals life on social media. All we see are the perfect pictures, the new toys, new houses, great vacations, happy families. We never see the pain and suffering on the back end. This lack of social interactions leads to people becoming withdrawn and feeling invisible. Just like a little kid who acts out for attention, these grown adults lack of humanity leads them to go on suicidal mass killing sprees.
It's too soon to talk about gun safety. You have to at least wait 5 days but then it will be too soon too since the next mass shooting will have occurred. Never talk about gun safety - it's always too soon after a tragedy.
Apparently the shootings are so interchangeable that this guy just cuts-and-pastes his tweets without looking...
School did a great job of locking itself down when informed of nearby gunfire. The shooter went there, but couldn't enter the property.
Guess the big ongoing philosophical and social question is whether humanity is scalable. yuge populations, yuge cities, yuge individuality/loneliness, and yuger potential for a single apple to spoil the bunch Not to mention the digital age compounding the lack of humanity with the aforementioned factors.
This is a good question, and maybe the question for the modern world. Evolutionary types who study the brain and cognition say we're geared to handle on the order of 150 people (the "Dunbar number" or some call it the "monkey sphere"). Even if that estimate is off by a factor of 10, we're still challenged by cities of millions and seeing millions of voices on the internet, etc. Is there a number, N, or a population density, n, where humanity doesn't form and hold societies very well? Or is there a number N where we start to form very distinct and separate tribes that hate the other tribes? The Star Trek like world seems a long, long way away, maybe impossible.
Bureaucracy is a tool of our own physical limitations in the face of scalable governance. There might be a day where Skynet wins our hearts and minds and divert enough attention from our selfie apps to welcome it with roses. 2 things about that moment though Using technical innovation to solve social issues are generally revolutionary because it takes a few generations for society to catch up for better or worse. Our coding is mostly crap. Functional crap...So if we want a robot government to solve our scaling issues (and eliminate yet another sector in services job) , it'll probably take another robot to build it.
What's worse, some of the creators of social media (maybe all of them?) knew it could be harmful and did it anyways. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/f...icted-deliberately-stu-bykofsky-20171111.html
I wanted to rebump the OP. I really didnt follow this story probably for the same reason most others didnt ... the body count was too low for significance. So it seems the shooter went to an elementary school to shoot it up but could not access the school because it went on lockdown very quickly, thus preventing him from entering the building. The shooter then left the premise after a few minutes and went on his random shooting spree. I find it sad we are not giving credit to the improved measures against people like this. This could have easily been another Sandy Hook. It seems some relish these mass casualties to justify their opinions on this topic.
School lockdowns aren't new. What may have been new is the ability to better communicate school lockdowns via social media and other electronic communication. My daughters get alerts whenever there are potential problems via text messages (ie my oldest got messages from Sam Houston State and Lone Star College when there was a car jacking near the campuses on SH242; my youngest got alerts at Texas State when there were bomb threats). The shooting in Northern California still took the lives of five people, highighting the same problems of mental health, access to weapons, and the need to take a serious effort to address both.
Hmmm. Assume you aren't talking about the OP. This excellent news about the school was not part of the initial reporting. Knowing people affected by Sandyhook, people devastated, I don't relish any of these. Very good news out of Senate today on truly bipartisan bill to tighten existing but loosely followed laws!
I wonder if there is a common link with all of these shootings, perhaps if they looked into what prescription meds these people were taking...
