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~*Official Thread of America's Return to Thoughts & Prayers Normalcy*~


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6 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Black man with a gun. Let's see how the media handle this!

 

Ok Go Reaction GIF by Robert E Blackmon


It will fade away quickly because it doesn’t fit into a broader narrative the media is interested in, like the killings by the old Asian men a few weeks ago.

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1 hour ago, sblfilms said:

It will fade away quickly because it doesn’t fit into a broader narrative the media is interested in, like the killings by the old Asian men a few weeks ago.

 

Most mass shootings don't even make national news. However, they typically fade away quickly unless someone of interest was murdered, and someone of interest is usually a stand in for attractive white folk or small children. The only exceptions being when the body count gets high enough, but those can be overtaken by the very next mass killing that just around the corner. Always got to be ready to have the airwaves clear to cover the next deadly event.

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9 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Black man with a gun. Let's see how the media handle this!

 

Ok Go Reaction GIF by Robert E Blackmon

We'll finally get some Republicans on board with gun control...

 

 

2 hours ago, sblfilms said:


It will fade away quickly because it doesn’t fit into a broader narrative the media is interested in, like the killings by the old Asian men a few weeks ago.

I don't know if those stories "faded away" for the reasons you seem to be insinuating. If anything, they fade so quickly because we have so many of these damn shootings. 67 so far this year... that's more mass shootings than there have been DAYS in 2023 :| If anything, the narrative I'm starting to see take shape is the fact that these mass killers are getting OLDER. The two Asian men, this guy, and there was an incident in NY yesterday where an old man in his 60's plowed a U-hall truck into a crowd of pedestrians. What these cases show is that in addition to the prevalence of guns in this society, there's also some gaps in our mental health situation. One thing it isn't is violent videogames and media :|

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47 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

If anything, they fade so quickly because we have so many of these damn shootings.


This is precisely the point. Shootings in America aren’t some rarity, so absent something that is part of a broader narrative in the media, they aren’t going to continue covering it. What else is there to say?

 

If the recent lunar new year massacre had been perpetrated by a person outside the community for anti-Asian reasons, the news could actually contextualize that within the broader story of anti-Asian crime going up. Given the actual facts, it’s just regular everyday community violence in America. 

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On 2/13/2023 at 10:45 AM, Demut said:

For some reason I never knew that. From what I recalled they were "just" two edgy loners with anger issues. But what that article points out is pretty clear-cut, going around shouting "Heil Hitler", obsessing over WW2, planning the massacre on Hitler's birthday and so on. Was that a common part of the reporting at the time?

 

No it wasn't, it's a common misconception here too and one I'm all too eager to correct. The national reporters in this country resist naming white supremacy where they see it because they have too many racist relatives they rely on to not revoke their trust funds. 

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I was just looking up if this was more of an uptick in reporting or actual cases and ... just w e w. Looks like the pandemic did a number on the U.S. :| Although it's weird that suicides did not spike correspondingly. I wonder what other factors might have contributed to the drastic increase. #DefundThePolice nonsense maybe? That started around the same time, with obvious results.

 

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Not that you lot don't still have a massive problem with your poorly trained police force but since you mentioned the shooting of unarmed black people, wasn't that basically a non-issue statistically these days? Like, ~20 cases a year or thereabouts? To put that into perspective, it's a whole order of magnitude fewer deaths than the number of people who died from falling from trees or got killed by lawnmowers in the United States. Not that "unarmed" even automatically means "unjustified" but that's a separate issue. I also don't get this obsession with black victims of police brutality in [CURRENT YEAR]. From what I remember last time I looked at the stats black people are LESS likely on a per-police encounter basis to be killed by them when compared to, say, white people. Guess all those decades of sensitivity training paid off in the end. Anyway, there were some polls a while ago that polled people on this topic and the distorted view people have of the magnitude of the problem is mind-boggling. Like, a perception 10,000% off from what's actually happening. Good job, media.

 

Also, it's interesting to see that the number of fatal shootings by police officers does not appear to really follow the homicide trend that I posted above.

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Didn't say they were. I'm just pointing out that the problem may be overblown in the minds of people. Sure, every death is one too many and overpolicing is also something to be addressed. But at least to me it's crazy to see seemingly disproportionate outrage over issues that are overall LESS prevalent than in the past. I forgot where I read this, maybe someone here knows more, but there's a phenomenon in psychology where the more uncommon a danger becomes, the more neurotic the response to it. Perhaps this is that phenomenon in action. It's also been cited in regards to the increase in outrage over various -isms which have measurably become less of an issue over time.

 

I guess it kinda works in part like "if it's common you're bound to get used to it and pay it little attention, if it's unusual you are naturally gonna pay more attention to it".

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7 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

If only the issues between American law enforcement and the black community were limited to "only" actual killings.

 

If only.

Yep. And the article demut posted actually is a good example of that! It goes into detail on several officers with problematic pasts who keep getting fired and rehired, for example, even with on and off the job issues. 
 

to say nothing of the study looking at police reports, which are unreliable at best and written by acknowledged undertrained officers who frequently lie in reports and on the stand (not to mention planting evidence!) because it is assumed that they are credible by the media and the courts

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1 hour ago, Demut said:

I was just looking up if this was more of an uptick in reporting or actual cases and ... just w e w. Looks like the pandemic did a number on the U.S. :| Although it's weird that suicides did not spike correspondingly. I wonder what other factors might have contributed to the drastic increase. #DefundThePolice nonsense maybe? That started around the same time, with obvious results.

 

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That data set is limited to gun-related suicides.

 

In total, there were nearly 46,000 suicides in 2020 and nearly 48,000 in 2021.

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But why wouldn't gun-related suicides rise proportionately? Did it fall out of fashion or something? People too poor to afford them? At least naively I'd expect their number to increase uniformly with the general number of suicides.

 

8 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

because it is assumed that they are credible by the media and the courts

And many citizens, unfortunately. I had the misfortune of witnessing that second-hand here as well.

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On 2/23/2023 at 11:30 AM, chakoo said:

Loosening gun laws

Did that affect anything relevant? Guns weren't hard to get in the first place if you are a criminal and I don't think mass shooters etc. care about laws to be honest. It certainly doesn't seem to have had much of an impact on ownership:

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On 2/23/2023 at 11:30 AM, chakoo said:

less fucks given over gun crimes

What does that mean? Lighter sentences? Fewer resources made available to solve them? Less prosecution? All of the above? If so, I can see how that would indeed lead to a rise in crimes involving guns.

 

On 2/23/2023 at 11:30 AM, chakoo said:

No it must be the people who called for defunding the police which didn't actually happen.

Well, first of all, I urge you to seek out evidence to the contrary because locally it definitely did happen. Secondly, if you are referring to my comment, this goes beyond the actual implementation of those thoroughly [ridiculous] ideas of #DefundThePolice and #AbolishThePolice (and don't @ me with the motte & bailey "Um, akshually, what they meant is ..."). It's also about the way the "mostly peaceful protests"™ were handled in many places. Telling police to stand down so as not to "add fuel to the (literal and figurative) fire", stopping to prosecute "small time crimes" and the like did their part in this dissolution of societal trust which in turn inevitably begets violence. Both the correlation and causal link between low-trust societies and high rates of crime are crystal clear. There's few things I can think of that are as corrosive as inciting people to distrust all authority (ACAB :pig:! And fuck the government!) and each other (Everyone's secretly an -ist until proven innocent!).

 

Quite amazing to behold from afar, really. Or terrifying, rather, when experienced first hand, no doubt.

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21 minutes ago, Demut said:

Well, first of all, I urge you to seek out evidence to the contrary because locally it definitely did happen.

 

Whatever budget reductions did occur amounted to little more than a rounding error.

 

GettyImages-1218023764-scaled.jpg?fit=25
THEREALNEWS.COM

Despite right-wing outrage and backlash from the President, there is little evidence that cities are slashing police department budgets.

 

Quote

 

The problem is there was little if any “defunding” of the police. Our analysis of over 400 American municipal budgets found that police departments in America got more or less the same amount of money in 2021 than they did in the previous three years. The budget cuts that did pass in a handful of cities were modest compared to the size of the total budget.

 

We acquired budgets from 2018 to 2022 from 419 American municipalities, selected for prominence, size, location and diversity. We then extracted the amount of the city’s general fund—the bulk of city funding—which was directed to the police department, and compared those amounts across locations and years. A more thorough statistical analysis of our data is available here.

 

Our model found that the percentage of the general fund dedicated to law enforcement stayed consistent from 2018 to 2021—around 29%—after accounting for city- and state-level trends. If police budgets shrank (or grew), they did in proportion to the overall budget. In 2022, cities allocated about 3% less for police, but did so after the “defund” backlash was in full swing.

 

 

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27 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Whatever budget reductions did occur amounted to little more than a rounding error.

You mean overall, in aggregate? Because if so we are in agreement. When I said "locally" I meant "in some local instances", which the article seems to support. That sentence was really just chastising him for the generalizing fake news, it didn't happen sentiment. The larger point remains, obviously.

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Going back on topic, you know what's super cool about how many people die by guns in this country?

 

A bunch of guys got out of a car and randomly shot 7 people including a 2 year old. However, since nobody happened to die this barely makes it beyond the local news.

 

Photos-of-Suspects-in-shooting.jpg?quali
WWW.NBCPHILADELPHIA.COM

Philadelphia Police are searching for three gunmen who shot a mother, her 2-year-old daughter and five teenagers near a Philadelphia school early Thursday evening.

 

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