Official Mass Shooter Thread

[Irreligious Atheist]

After 3 months into the year, the total deaths from mass shootings is the same as deaths from car accidents caused less than every 35 hours in the US. Less than 150 people dead. Over half a million corona deaths in the US and Republicans still didn't want shut downs, so good luck getting them shaking in their boots over less than 1.5 days worth of car accident deaths.

That’s a false comparison. Mass shootings are deliberate, intentional acts intended to take human life. Car accidents are just that - accidents. It’s only meaningful to compare mass shootings to people driving into people with the intention of killing them.

I don’t have any figures on it, but I’m will to bet that the deaths from mass shootings far outweigh the deaths from deliberate vehicular murder.

Boru

I wasn't arguing that they are the same thing. Just that the numbers of deaths from mass shootings is probably not as high as people might imagine, so it does help with context to add number of deaths when mentioning number of mass shootings, because just bringing up the number of mass shootings can be misleading.

Republicans don't care (or believe in many cases) that millions of people are going to suffer from climate change. Those who hate open discussion and the spirit of free speech on the other hand, take one man firing a gun in a pizza parlor which results in zero deaths, and they say, "We need mass censorship now to prevent this from ever happening again." Um, no one died. Some can take an event where no one dies, and talk about it as if it were a 9/11 type event. A couple of people get shot here in Canada and it's treated like 9/11 just happened again.

There were 387 deaths from mass shootings in the US in 2018. On average there are 33,000 gun deaths in the US per year. 387 is a tiny number compared to gun deaths overall, so I don't necessarily think mass shootings should be the main focus. Nor should so called assault rifles be the main focus, as they cause a tiny fraction of the overall gun deaths in the US.

If I knew I was guaranteed to save 387 lives a year with stop and frisk policies, I wouldn't do it because a stop and frisk policy is wrong and the opposite of freedom. If I knew I was guaranteed to save 387 lives by forcing everyone to have cameras put into their homes to be randomly monitored by police, do I save the lives, or do I let them die because I value my own right to privacy in my own home? If I'm not doing anything wrong, what do I have to worry about with cameras in my home? Am I being selfish because I value privacy over human lives? Do I have blood on my hands?