Monday, June 14, 2010

The Lack of Public Outrage

The Guardian published an interesting article about the Miami shooting of 7 women which we talked about last week.

It seems that America, so often beset by mass shootings and serial killers, is becoming steadily immune to the violence. Neither the public nor the media is especially interested any more. They appear to be subject to a dreadful phenomenon of one-upmanship where only the most dreadful and awful of crimes will now generate significant media attention. After all, if walking into a restaurant and shooting seven women is not enough to generate national news, what is? What does any self-respecting mass killer have to do these days to get attention?

What's your opinion? Have we become inured to the bloodshed? Why would that be? The article says "one wonders if the damage to society has already been done. The one thing worse than a society that gives rise to killers like Regalado is one that ignores them as not especially newsworthy."

Do you believe that? Please leave a comment.

6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Of course, we cannot make any suggestion that firearms might be a factor in this.

    On the other hand, the worst episode of school violence in the US happened to have occured Prior to Television, and even mass radio.

    The Bath School bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, USA, on May 18, 1927, which killed 45 people (38 grade-schoolers and 7 adults) and injured at least 58. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–12 years of age) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax that had been levied to fund the construction of the school building. He blamed the additional tax for financial hardships which led to foreclosure proceedings against his farm. These events apparently provoked Kehoe to plan his attack.

    Anywho, it seems that The number of students in the United States who carry a gun to school, on any given day is 200,000 according to http://www.nssc1.org/ten-hard-facts-about-school-violence.html

    And as the Derrick Bird incident shows
    1) the presence of firearms increases the likelihood of misuse
    2) you can kill a lot more people with a firearm than you can with a knife.

    Of course, when you make a comment along the lines of the "presence of firearms means there is an increased likeliness of firearms misuse" results in comments about how beneficial firearms actually are.

    So, I will say something I have always wanted to say:
    "Putting a loaded handgun to your head and pulling the trigger is likely to lead to serious bodily injury"

    I am curious as to how beneficial this act is since I am sure that the "pro-gun" elements will have to prove that is a false statement. Just another anti-gun lie.

    Kill yourselves guys!

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  3. "And as the Derrick Bird incident shows
    1) the presence of firearms increases the likelihood of misuse
    2) you can kill a lot more people with a firearm than you can with a knife."

    3) You can kill a lot more with explosives and accelerants, than you can with a gun.

    Out of the top 3 deadliest mass killings in American history, none of them involved a gun and all of them had body counts orders og magnitude greater than 7.

    So it's not that we have become inured to bloodshed. It's that we've seen much worse than 7 people getting shot.

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  4. Laci: "...the Derrick Bird incident shows..."

    The Derrick Bird incident also shows that:

    1) Attempts to limit what type of firearm people may own won't stop such things.

    2) Attempts to limit what type of people may own firearms won't stop such things.

    Debating the limiting of what type of firearm people may own or limiting what type of people may own firearms might just be a waste of time, because as we see with the Derrick Bird incident, if that path is taken one will still end up at the point of debating whether anyone may own any firearm at all.

    Perhaps the sooner we realize that, the better.

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  5. RuffRidr said, "Actually I think the phenomenon of school shootings is at least in part a product of mass media and their sensationalism."

    That sounds awfully close to shared responsibility. I thought you didn't go in for that sort of thing.

    AztecRed is completely wrong. The lack of ourrage has nothing to do with the fact that there have been worse attacks using bombs and other stuff. The lact of ourtage has to do with the frequency of these incidents in the States. Murder-suicide and multiple shootings are daily fare.

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  6. So let me get this straight Laci,

    We need to ban guns because the most violent act at a school in U.S. history didn't involve any guns?

    You must be talking to those nutjobs in Virginia that think we need to close the "gunshow loophole" and require background checks for all private transfers because of Virginia Tech. Never mind that the shooter at VT passed a background check and didn't buy his guns at a gunshow.

    But let's not let dead kids go to waste when instead they can use them to make a political argument.

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