Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sat May 28, 2022 3:09 pm

I live in one of the most armed states per capita and gun crime is very low here. Most if it is suicides, and those men are not committing suicide because they own guns.

The London x NYC juxtaposition was from 2018, and but a fleeting moment in time: NYC gang turf wars were in a peaceful, stable period while London's gang turf wars were raging due to the deaths of some major players and the arrival of new ethnic gangs hitting critical mass. In 2019, London racked up 149 homicides, NYC 319. The next year NYC saw 462 murders; a sharp curve upwards while London has stabilized at around 110-130 per year since then.

Incidents like Uvalde are very different from the typical American "mass shooting," which is a young man opening fire into a crowd. This can be a party, a club parking lot after closing, a city street during the summer, or even sometimes a funeral. Interesting enough, gun control advocates I know -- sorry, wait, getting a Luntz update here: gun safety advocates I know have no problem conceding that young men make up the vast majority of gun crimes, but they get extremely uncomfortable once I start trying to get more specific than that. A pity, because the demographic differences are stark and remarkable. You'd think they'd want to understand the problem considering how much they care.

DrEvil » Sat May 28, 2022 11:41 am wrote:if you want an armed population then you also have to accept that shootings like this will happen more often. In other words: you have to be okay with daily mass shootings right now as the price for being able to oppose the government at some hypothetical point in the future.

Think of it as an insurance policy that requires daily human sacrifice to remain valid.


Civilization itself, of course, requires daily human sacrifice. Without question, accepting danger means accepting injury and death, as true for automobiles and firecrackers as it is for firearms. What makes firearms exceptional here is that, while they surely liven up any party you bust them out for, the injuries and deaths they cause are very seldom an unintended side effect: it's a point and click interface for accomplishing exactly that, injury, death. It's not like you were trying to shoot your way to work when a pedestrian stepped in front of your barrel, although essentially that does happen at firing ranges every summer.

Anyhow. Just like the freedom of speech necessitates tolerating horrific people and points of view, the freedom to bear arms comes with a cost many find unacceptable. I have total faith that in the long run they will win out, too, on both counts. This is why technological authoritarianism is so inevitable: popular demand. And once the internet is more controlled and regulated than ever, there will always be new threats to defend informed voters from, always new controls to implement, new restrictions to advocate. We all know what "Let's Go Brandon" really means, so why should such obscenities be allowed in public? In front of children, no less.

In the short term, though, I really wonder. There's a lot of popular support for gun cont...gun safety measures, just like there's a lot of popular support for a radically higher Federal minimum wage and universal health care, both approximately as plausible as serious action on guns! The machinery behind this is eager to amplify outrage and protest pressure, but they're using that to elect Democrats and fundraise for their pet nonprofits. There will always be another election, there will always be another fiscal quarter, so there is little incentive to accomplish anything more substantial than that.

How many dead kids will it take? activists and anguished observers alike ask, again and again and again, for years now. The answer: we're all going to find out together. Stay tuned.

In the long run, even after my cynicism is disproven, America faces decades of mass shootings as the huge national inventory gets drawn down one crime, one confiscation raid, one buyback, one ban at a time. Who knows, maybe events like Uvalde will subside once AR-15s are banned. Events like this won't, though.

And could armed citizens prevent that kind of random violence? Well, yes. It does happen, and in fact it happened just this week in West Virginia, to far less fanfare. So disarming citizens will result in deaths, too. That will be considered an acceptable cost, too, worth the price, a necessary sacrifice.
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby DrEvil » Sat May 28, 2022 3:27 pm

The above involves statistics specific to 2 cities, however, and we know statistics can be tweaked to maximize desired presentation.


Indeed they can, like in the above example. The murder rate of NYC is still higher than London, except for the two months referenced above. It was a statistical blip. Could be random chance, or there happened to be a gang war in London at the time, or something else entirely.

Restricting guns isn't going to stop every mass shooting from happening, but the link between how easy it is to get firearms and the murder rate is clear. Harder to get guns = fewer murders, and that's the easiest thing you can do to reduce the number of mass shootings.

Even if the main underlying factor is mental health or cultural issues, if someone snaps and can't get a hold of a gun then they can't go on a shooting spree. Guns are so incredibly easy to use. Point and click. It's an instrument of death even a child can operate. Make the barrier for achieving mass murder just a little higher and the number of deaths go down.

Also, it's not a premise, it's pretty well established that states that make it harder to get guns see a drop in homicides, and states that make it easier see an increase. It's pretty bleeding obvious really: more guns - more shootings.
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby Belligerent Savant » Sat May 28, 2022 4:47 pm

.
This is separate (but related) from the topic of mass shootings, and Uvalde specifically (and we still haven't dug into the shooter's motives, means, etc.), but:

is there a [un-biased - ha!] chart or graph that summarizes gun crime rates in states/regions with more lax gun laws vs states with stricter gun laws? I imagine it'll likely have a number of qualifiers/caveats tied to it, but I'd be curious to see the info if available.

I've heard it said that areas that allow concealed carry among the citizenry tend to have lower crime rates.

This is from Rand (yes, Rand). Haven't dug into it yet:

https://www.rand.org/research/gun-polic ... crime.html

This one is via quick google search; no prior knowledge of the site, so it may well be biased:

https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/resour ... led-carry/

Will have to dig into it further when more time allows. RI sleuths are welcome to pick it apart in the meantime.
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sat May 28, 2022 5:59 pm

Via: Insider (the artist formerly known as Business Insider)

Texas officials on Friday again made crucial changes to their timeline of the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, adding to the lack of clarity around how the massacre took place and how police responded to the attack.

From the initial reports of the shooting on Tuesday to the most recent news briefing by Director of Texas Department of Public Safety Steven McCraw, police have changed the narrative of how law enforcement reacted to a gunman's rampage in which he killed 19 children and two teachers.

Facing withering criticism from parents, McCraw said that a police commander in charge of the scene — Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo — refused to send police in to stop the shooting, calling the decision "wrong."

Here are the main changes to details that law enforcement officials have offered since the shooting:

Uvalde Police initially said the gunman was in custody
In one of the first statements about the shooting, the Uvalde Police Department said on Facebook that the gunman was in police custody.

"Update @ 1:06 Shooter is in Police Custody," the department said in a Facebook post Tuesday.

The department later revealed that a US Border Patrol tactical team fatally shot the gunman inside Robb Elementary.

Nobody actually confronted the gunman before he went in
At a Wednesday press conference, the director of Texas Department of Public Safety Steve McCraw said that "a brave resource officer" engaged with the gunman.

"At that time, gunfire was not exchanged, but the subject was able to make it into the school," McCraw said.

However, on Thursday, Escalon said this was incorrect.

"There was not an officer readily available and armed," Escalon said at a press conference.

And on Friday, McCraw added that the resource officer was not even on school grounds at the time of the shooting.

"There was discussion early on that an ISD ... had confronted the suspect. That did not happen. It was certainly stated in preliminary interviews, but often these preliminary interviews ... witnesses get it wrong," McCraw said Friday.

"The bottom line is that officer was not on scene, not on campus, but had heard the 911 call about the man with a gun, drove immediately to the area, sped to what he thought was the man with the gun, to the back of the school, to what turned out to be a teacher and not the suspect," McCraw continued.

McCraw added that the school police officer actually drove past the gunman, who was hiding behind a car.

How quickly the gunman entered the school
Police have been consistent in the details of the gunman's attack on his grandmother before the shooting and his crash near a funeral home across the street from the school at 11:28 a.m. on Tuesday.

But police initially said the gunman was confronted before going into the school. On Thursday, Escalon said that the gunman was firing outside the school and entered the school at 11:40 a.m., leaving a 12-minute window that was unexplained.

But on Friday, McCraw said that the shooter actually entered the school at 11:33 a.m., three minutes after a teacher called 911 to report the crash and a gunman on school grounds.

Police arrived on scene quickly but backed off for more than an hour
At Wednesday's press conference, McCraw said "Bottom line, law enforcement was there, they did engage immediately, they did contain him in a classroom. They put a tactical stack together, in a very orderly way, and breached and assaulted the individual."

Lt Chris Olivarez on Wednesday in an interview with NBC's "Today" show emphasized the speed of the police reaction. He said that police responded "within a moment's notice."

He also said that officers "without hesitation tried to make entry into that school," but were stopped by the gunman firing at them.

But by Thursday, police said that the gunman had not been killed by a US Border Patrol agent until 12:40, raising questions of what happened in the roughly hour between the shooting beginning and the gunman being shot to death.

According to new information from McCraw Friday, three local police officers got to the school at 11:35, just two minutes after the gunman initially entered the building and opened fire. Two of the cops were grazed by bullets as they entered the school, he added.

In this latest description, McCraw said police exchanged gunfire with the suspect until 11:44 a.m. By 11:51 a.m. a police sergeant and federal agent arrived and as of 12:03, there were 19 police officers in the hallway outside the classroom where the gunman was holed up.

Why didn't cops stop the Texas school shooter?
On Wednesday, Olivarez said, police began breaking windows and evacuating people as the gunman was barricaded in the school until more heavily-armed officers arrived and killed the gunman.

The first narrative did not make clear how long this took. The hour-long discrepancy was revealed on Thursday.

When asked Thursday why officers didn't take down the shooter as he was in the classroom with children, Asked at the press conference why authorities didn't engage sooner, Escalon said: "That's a tough question."

He cited the need to evacuate people as a possible reason, and added in the officers' defense that there was "a lot going on" and that it was "a complex situation."

But parents began sharing that cops outside the school had refused to go in to stop the shooter and restrained parents who tried to go in themselves.

"Nothing is adding up," Jay Martin, a local man, told The Wall Street Journal. "People are just really frustrated because no one is coming out and telling us the real truth of what went down."

One video from outside the school shows police holding back desperate parents who wanted to go into the school and rescue their kids.

One woman, Gladys Castillon, told the Journal that she had been begging police to be more proactive before the arrival of the tactical unit. Officers temporarily handcuffed a mom trying to get into the school, the Journal reported.

The mom ended up jumping a fence and running into the school, pulling her two children to safety herself, according to the Journal.

By Friday, police had new details about the delay: McCraw pointed the blame at the school police chief, Arredondo, who he said ordered police not to engage the suspect because he thought the suspect was "barricaded" and "there were no more children at risk."

McCraw — who wasn't at the scene at the time of the shooting and didn't command the officers at the time — added: "Obviously, based upon the information we have, there were children in that classroom that were at risk and it was, in fact, still an active shooter situation."

He noted that"of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. There is no excuse for that."

"When there's an active shooter, the rules change," McCraw said. "You don't have time."

The Uvalde school district did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

In fact, McCraw revealed that students inside the classrooms where the gunman was firing called 911 nearly a dozen times over the course of the shooting. One girl begged 911 twice to "send police now" after the gunman killed her teacher and some of her classmates.

According to the last timeline provided by McCraw on Friday, police opened the locked door to the classroom using a key and shot and killed the gunman at 12:50 p.m. — 10 minutes later than initially reported.

Questions still remain about the police response
Police have given conflicting reports on the timeline of the shooting, though law enforcement officials have noted that it is not unusual for a more complete narrative to form as police investigate.

Still, Texas authorities' news briefings have often left reporters and the public with more questions than answers. Even as of Friday, it was unclear if 911 dispatchers alerted police at the scene to the children still trapped inside with the shooter and police did not say what ultimately convinced the tactical team to breach the classroom and shoot the gunman.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday reacted to the new information that was revealed earlier in the day Friday about the police response to the mass shooting, saying, "I was misled."

"I am livid about what happened," said Abbott, who days earlier praised the response by law enforcement.

"As everybody has learned, the information that I was given turned out in part to be inaccurate," Abbott said. "And I am absolutely livid about that."
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby MacCruiskeen » Sat May 28, 2022 6:51 pm

^^ They're making it up as they go along. That whole thing makes astounding reading, but note this in particular:

Wombaticus Rex » Sat May 28, 2022 4:59 pm wrote:Via: Insider (the artist formerly known as Business Insider)

[...]
Uvalde Police initially said the gunman was in custody
In one of the first statements about the shooting, the Uvalde Police Department said on Facebook that the gunman was in police custody.

"Update @ 1:06 Shooter is in Police Custody," the department said in a Facebook post Tuesday.
[...]



WHAT?
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby Belligerent Savant » Sat May 28, 2022 7:42 pm

.
Current info available Re: details leading up to and timeframe during the shooting are perplexing and inexplicable.

Any info on how he entered the school? Schools in my area are locked at all times; every visitor has to press a button and announce themselves via intercom before they're buzzed in. Wouldn't this school be similar, or is TX/this district less secure? Will need to look into that.

In any event, if there was shooting outside the school minutes before entry, why wouldn't the doors have been locked at that point, if not already? Who would let anyone in if they heard shooting/commotion outside? Did the shooter break the door open somehow?
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby MacCruiskeen » Sat May 28, 2022 7:49 pm

^^ "We apologise for any misunderstanding caused by our Facebook post, in which we claimed that we had arrested the killer. Anyone can make a mistake. Our brave officers had apprehended a suspect in the classroom who was struggling with a jammed AK-47 and standing among the corpses of several children. While being wrestled to the ground, he stated: 'You don't know what you're getting into here. This is way above your pay grade.'

A phone call from the FBI quickly established that he was in fact an innocent bystander, probably a teacher or something."
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby drstrangelove » Sun May 29, 2022 1:59 am

Belligerent Savant » Sat May 28, 2022 7:42 pm wrote:.
Current info available Re: details leading up to and timeframe during the shooting are perplexing and inexplicable.

Any info on how he entered the school? Schools in my area are locked at all times; every visitor has to press a button and announce themselves via intercom before they're buzzed in. Wouldn't this school be similar, or is TX/this district less secure? Will need to look into that.

In any event, if there was shooting outside the school minutes before entry, why wouldn't the doors have been locked at that point, if not already? Who would let anyone in if they heard shooting/commotion outside? Did the shooter break the door open somehow?

Saw a headline somewhere that the school doors had been "propped open" or something along those lines. Don't ask me for the source. Just a vague detail I picked up when doing my news scanning over the past few days.
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby drstrangelove » Sun May 29, 2022 2:12 am

DrEvil » Sat May 28, 2022 12:41 pm wrote:The simple fact is that more guns equals more shootings. All the research shows a clear connection between ease of availability and homicide/suicide/accidental shooting rates (see here for a ton of links: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05 ... erts-plea/ ), so if you want an armed population then you also have to accept that shootings like this will happen more often. In other words: you have to be okay with daily mass shootings right now as the price for being able to oppose the government at some hypothetical point in the future.

Think of it as an insurance policy that requires daily human sacrifice to remain valid.

But it is my belief that the high frequency of mass shooting events is intentionally amplified by corporate media through providing murderers infamy. So I'd only have to accept some mass shooting events as a consequence of a hypothetical future benefit. And only if they still kept happening with generic handguns, shotguns and rifles after ARs were banned.
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby Iamwhomiam » Sun May 29, 2022 2:53 am

Image


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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun May 29, 2022 11:48 am

Belligerent Savant » Sat May 28, 2022 6:42 pm wrote:In any event, if there was shooting outside the school minutes before entry, why wouldn't the doors have been locked at that point, if not already? Who would let anyone in if they heard shooting/commotion outside? Did the shooter break the door open somehow?


Per yesterday's press conference, they are throwing a teacher under the bus for propping a door open, citing surveillance video footage.

drstrangelove » Sun May 29, 2022 1:12 am wrote:But it is my belief that the high frequency of mass shooting events is intentionally amplified by corporate media through providing murderers infamy.


An unmistakable trend and acknowledged by stuffsuit academics and law enforcement alike. The pattern is pretty obvious. Media outlets know what the consequences of their coverage are. They do not care and will not change.

The shooting rampage is a central fixture of the American imaginal, our embodied Id. Very notable that the vast majority of tips and scares relating to school shootings turn out to be not a future Harris x Klebold plotting out a massacre, but an offhand remark from an angry minor: a tantrum, a moment of rage. And what do they reach for? Shooting up their school.

Whether the millennial Matrix x Basketball Diaries x Columbine convergence was a deliberate ritual or just one of those coincidences, the Great Work is completed either way, and we live in a very different country now.
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon May 30, 2022 3:31 pm

I had expected to hear about a reprisal killing by now, given the holiday / heat / alcohol / grief, but that hasn't happened because all involved are under full time security:

Via Daily Beast

Amid the growing outrage over the botched police response, authorities in Uvalde have reportedly called in reinforcements from around the state to protect the local officers from potential threats.

The additional cops, from various agencies in other jurisdictions, will supplement Uvalde’s ranks for an unspecified period, and will also provide security for the mayor, officials with the Texas Police Chiefs Association told CBS DFW.


"You deserve a nap, bro"

Via NBCDFW

This week, a number of North Texas police departments have deployed members to assist in Uvalde where 19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary on Tuesday.

Lake Worth Police Department has sent two members so far, according to Sgt. Sean Ferguson.

“Their main responsibilities right now are patrolling and VIP security, so the Mayor, Police Chief, things like that. The officers, just giving them an opportunity to take a nap and not worry about the streets and taking care of the community, because we’re doing it for them,” Sgt. Ferguson said. “This tragedy is unimaginable. If this were to happen in our community, I would hope that we would have the same outpouring and support that they have.”
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon May 30, 2022 10:47 pm

The citizens of Uvalde should demand the resignations of their entire police force, at least those on duty that day, the police chief and chief public safety officer, especially the "missing" school public safety officer who was supposed to be working, and replace them all.

Who blocked the door latch leaving the door unlocked? Why didn't a red light flash in the principal's office telling him the building had not been secured and which door it was that remained unlocked?

The citizens shouldn't need to demand their dismissal, the officers should all resign in shame.
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby drstrangelove » Tue May 31, 2022 1:26 am

Justin Trudeau introduces strict gun control on handguns in Canada
"Other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives."

- https://www.axios.com/2022/05/30/justin ... uns-canada

"These are extremists, who do not believe in science, who are often misogynists, often racists too. It is a sect, a small group, but who are taking up space, and here we have to make a choice, as a leader, as a country. Do we tolerate these people?"
- Justin Trudeau, December 2021.


Guns make me uncomfortable but I'd buy a gun if I lived in Canada :shrug:
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Re: Uvalde (& Mass shooting events - root causes, etc.)

Postby streeb » Tue May 31, 2022 11:44 am

Justin Trudeau introduces strict gun control on handguns in Canada
"Other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives."

- https://www.axios.com/2022/05/30/justin ... uns-canada

"These are extremists, who do not believe in science, who are often misogynists, often racists too. It is a sect, a small group, but who are taking up space, and here we have to make a choice, as a leader, as a country. Do we tolerate these people?"
- Justin Trudeau, December 2021.


Guns make me uncomfortable but I'd buy a gun if I lived in Canada :shrug:


Mmm hmm (nodding slowly, eyes fixed on the horizon) and all this on the same day that our unelected new Liberal-NDP coalition government voted to maintain the travel ban for unjabbed Untouchables and just a few days after a ludicrous and highly publicized drill at Toronto's Pearson Airport (currently offering unprecedented chaos for lucky travellers), in which airport security exercised their chops against that greatest of threats to Canada: protestors! And what were they protesting, these Protest Actors, in this realtime 3D gaming scenario? Travel mandates! Lol. Even our psyops are second rate up here.

Sorry. Back to topic.
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