You can't say that anymore.

[Rev. Rye]

And this deterrent theory doesn't make sense when you think about it for more than five seconds, because a sizable proportion of mass shooters end up dying by their own hand (or by cops' hands) when the massacre's over anyway. Granted, it's not as constant a factor now as it was in the 2000s, but it's still common enough that, of the 10 incidents catalogued in Mother Jones' Mass Shootings index for 2019, the gunman only survived twice. So, once again, the assumption that the prospect of a shooter getting shot himself will deter them when mass murderers have only a 20% survival rate in 2019?:

And for how badly deterrence fails, I'll tell you a little story. On December 1, a month ago exactly, give or take 14 hours, a mass of tourists descended on New Orleans for the Bayou Classic football game. Because of this, there were extra cops on Bourbon Street that night. Then, all at once, shots were fired. Nobody died, but ten people were injured, two critically. The cops couldn't make out the shooter, and he's still at large.

You've claimed that something like this could be a sign people should stop relying on the police and take matters into their own hands. Well, that's all well and good for white folks, but people of colour? The news is filled with stories of people who looked like they could have been defending themselves, and ended up getting shot for their troubles. A few hours ago, Tara showed you two tales of black people who died because cops just saw a black guy with a BB gun, assumed it was real, and killed them. And I've heard of people getting shot by police for even less potentially plausible reasons. And people of colour who realised they couldn't trust the police to help their communities, banded together, and took matters into their own hands to stay alive? There's a name for that phoenomenon: gangs. And once you catch wind of their activities, well, something tells me that you wouldn't think they're just "protecting themselves."