<![CDATA[Mass shootings]]>

Did Media Bury A “Mass Shooting” Because Of Shooter's Race?

October 13, 2021 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

Last week, I wrote about the shooting in Arlington, TX. When I wrote about it, I really expected to be talking a lot more about the incident than we did. After all, it met the media’s preferred definition of a mass shooting, and we know how they love milking those for views.

Instead, though, we got relative silence despite there being plenty to talk about.

Yet some think they have a reason why the media has been relatively silent on the matter.

What happens when two of the things you argue against the most happen in a way that makes it difficult to decry one without seemingly perpetuating the other? This is what happened last week, when identity journalism and gun control collided in the news coverage—or rather, lack thereof—of a school shooting in Arlington, Texas.
Last Wednesday, news broke in the morning of a school shooting. A teenage boy fired several shots inside Timberview High School, injuring four people and fleeing the scene. You might have expected the news coverage to follow a familiar pattern after a school mass shooting, starting with the non-stop coverage of the events as they unfold, the ubiquitous cries that “thoughts and prayers are not enough,” followed by a demand by every anti-gun politician who can get him or herself on the airwaves for more stringent gun control. Finally, the president himself would be asked to comment.
But this shooting did not follow the script. Fox News carried the coverage live, but by and large, the other 24-hour news channels did not, despite the active shooter being on the run and a manhunt underway for his capture.
Of course, I can’t know for sure why the news channels abdicated their usual hysterical, wall-to-wall coverage of mass shootings in this instance. But I can tell you what my immediate suspicion was at the absence of coverage: The shooter is going to turn out to be black.

By now, though, we all know that yes, the shooter was black.

“Oh, that writer is racist for thinking that,” someone might quip. However, the author is Charles Love, a black man. Since I’ve been told that black people can’t be racist, try again.

Love may well be right, though.

Obviously, there are other factors that may play something of a factor. For example, no one was killed. You know what they say, if it bleeds, it leads. Yet this still met the definition for a mass shooting used by Gun Violence Archive, which the media is more than happy to quote rather uncritically at every opportunity.

It was a shooting in gun-loving Texas, even, and we know they don’t give up an opportunity to bash Texas’ gun laws. Especially since they’re now a constitutional carry state.

Still, we saw relative silence. Much like how the media was silent when the shooter bonded out of jail or when his family threw him a party when he got home.

There was remarkably little media coverage for that.

Honestly, it seems like race may well have played a factor in this one, and it shouldn’t have. No factor should lead the media to treat Arlington as any different than any other such shooting.

Yet, if race played a factor, it makes you wonder just how many other so-called mass shootings they ignored because the shooter or shooters were black?

Treat people equally, folks. That includes in coverage of their crimes.

Are Grocery Store Shootings Really A Concern?

September 27, 2021 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

With the shooting in Collierville, Tennessee last week, people are thinking about such shootings. Many are worried about whether they can make a trip to the grocery store without getting shot. After all, you’ve had a couple of high-profile shootings in such places this year. There’s a reason people will start to think this.

However, according to one site, shootings in grocery stores are on the rise.

These days, when Eddie Chavez supervises the self-checkout area at the Safeway supermarket where he works in Colorado, he swivels his head back and forth like a pendulum, keeping a constant watch on everyone who comes through the door.
Chavez has worked in grocery stores for four decades, and he never used to feel unsafe. But now “you just never know anymore when it’s going to be the next one,” he said.
This past week, a gunman opened fire inside a Kroger supermarket outside Memphis, turning the routine task of grocery shopping into a terrifying encounter with gun violence.
Such events are no longer exceptional: at least three other deadly shootings have taken place at supermarkets this year, continuing a recent trend.
According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, shootings at grocery stores have risen in recent years. Between 2000 and 2020, 78 people were killed in 28 such incidents, FBI data shows.
While some of the shootings were at smaller markets or convenience stores in gas stations, major chains such as Walmart and Kroger have experienced multiple shootings at their locations since 2018. Earlier this year, a gunman killed 10 people at a King Soopers outlet, owned by Kroger, in Boulder, Colo.

A total of 78 people in 28 shootings over a span covering 21 years.

Well, I’m freaking convinced. It must be an epidemic.

Folks, that’s just over one such shooting per year in a nation of almost 330 million people. It’s just over 2.5 people killed in grocery stores over that same span.

While the rate of such things might be increasing, it’s still not something anyone should really worry about. Being cautious right now while there might be concerns of a copy-cat attack is one thing, but this is really a non-issue, all in all.

Yet we have to acknowledge that 2021 has seen an uptick.

However, the above-linked article touches on something that I think is worth discussing. After all, in addition to King Soopers and Collierville, there was a shooting at a Kroger distribution center in Wisconsin. King Soopers is owned by Kroger and Collierville was also a Kroger. Why the shootings at Kroger?

Two years ago, Walmart and Kroger responded to a spate of deadly shootings by asking their customers not to display weapons in stores located in states that permit the open carrying of firearms. In response, some gun rights advocates called for a boycott of the stores.

Oh, well, that’s why. Shocking, I know.

It seems that the three grocery-related shootings this year were all at a story that publicly stated firearms were no longer welcome at their stores. Absolutely brilliant.

Now, let’s be fair for a moment. This is coincidental, a correlation. Correlation doesn’t equal causation. However, causation does cause correlations.

That relationship, however, isn’t noted. It’s almost like they don’t want to admit that prohibiting guns from a given area just might be something less than a spectacular idea.

The Nation: School Shootings Aren't Just In US

September 25, 2021 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

I can’t tell you how many anti-Second Amendment voices I’ve had tell me that mass shootings in general and school shootings, in particular, are a uniquely American problem. “These things don’t happen in other countries,” they bellow.

Of course, I can point to plenty of examples of where they have, but those are generally ignored. They don’t matter when you’re busy advancing the narrative.

Since left-leaning publications tend to also be anti-Second Amendment publications, you expect them to push this very same narrative. However, The Nation has apparently opted to go off-script.

Scenes familiar to Americans filled the Russian media on the morning of September 20. The country watched as Perm State University students ran to safety. Inside, a shooter went on a murderous rampage, resulting in at least six dead and 20 injured. The shooting, the second one this year, was carried out by a freshman. Just a few months earlier, on May 11, 2021, there was a massacre at a school in the city of Kazan, which ended in the deaths of seven eighth grade students and two teachers.
School shootings have never been a major issue in Russia. Unlike American students familiar with active-shooter drills since the 1999 Columbine massacre, Russian students have worried primarily about becoming hostages in a terrorist attack—a fear born out of the horrific 2004 Beslan school siege. The first school shooting in contemporary Russian history took place at a Moscow school in 2014. The deadliest one occurred in 2018 at the Kerch Polytechnic College in the annexed Crimea region. It claimed 20 lives. Questions of why school shootings happen and how do we stop them have been circulating in the local media for months now.

Good for them…but only to a point.

The author immediately goes on to argue that we here in the US have a problem because we don’t have enough gun control, even while noting that getting a gun is much harder in Russia, yet it still didn’t stop the killer from getting one.

So close and yet so far away.

Yet the author also misses an opportunity to ask just why these things happen in countries with such very different gun control laws. After all, if gun control is the answer, why didn’t Russia’s far stricter gun control laws fail to prevent this from happening.

Or, maybe there’s something about our society that seems to make such acts appealing to those who are so horribly broken?

I can’t help but wonder if social media stardom plays a factor. After all, we see annoying, untalented people become famous for absolute nonsense and others see this and figure they can be famous too. Since these guys are also often angry about everything, they simply decide to shoot up a school instead of start a YouTube channel.

We’ve seen plenty of them talk about getting a “high score” or similar euphemisms for killing more people than others, why else except for fame?

That transcends borders, after all.

Still, it’s a shame that rather than recognize this truth, the author decided the problem was that Russia’s gun control laws weren’t strict enough either.

Again, so close and yet so far away.

8 Killed In Mass Shooting At Russian University

September 20, 2021 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

While the homicide rate has been climbing, we’ve been rather fortunate not to have any real mass shootings for a little while. I’m not talking about them the way the Gun Violence Archive counts them–you’ll never really not have one by that metric–but the way most of us think of them. We’ve been fortunate, but I suspect we’ll see one sooner or later. There’s no way they’re simply not going to happen anymore.

If and when it does happen, we’ll hear all about how these things are distinctly American, how they don’t happen in other countries. We’ll be told that this is purely an artifact of our Second Amendment and that countries with strict gun control simply don’t have these kinds of things.

Russia will be relieved to know that, especially in light of what just transpired there.

At least eight people were killed when a gunman opened fire at a university in the Russian city of Perm on Monday, officials have said.
A suspect entered the Perm State University campus, some 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) east of Moscow, “with an offensive weapon” and began shooting on Monday morning, the university said on its Telegram channel.
Some students and teachers locked themselves into classrooms during the attack, the university’s press service said, state media agency RIA Novosti reported.
Others were seen in footage captured by local media throwing their belongings out of first-floor windows before jumping down and running to safety.
A suspect in the shooting was arrested and wounded after resisting law enforcement officers, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee, a state body that handles major crimes. He has been identified as a male student, though it was not immediately clear whether he was a student at Perm State University.
At least 28 people sought medical assistance in the wake of the attack, including some who were hospitalized with injuries of varying severity, according to the investigative committee, which has opened a criminal murder investigation.

Yep. Purely an American thing.

It’s simple to believe such a thing. It’s convenient, even, and while we may have more mass shootings than you see elsewhere in the world, we’re not the only nation to have such things.

If anything, this should make it clear that while some are thrilled the CDC is ready to trip over itself to study “gun violence,” they probably would do well to spend at least some of their time studying mass shootings. If we can identify the people most likely to be mass shooters and get them treatment early, before they carry out such an atrocity, lives will be saved, and not just in the United States.

This shooting comes on the heels of the mass shooting in England that claimed six lives just over a month ago.

That’s two mass shootings in foreign countries within a six-week span while the United States hasn’t really had any.

However, one mass shooting anywhere is one too many anywhere. I sincerely wish these didn’t happen. Unfortunately, some people have issues that aren’t resolved and seem to think this is the way forward, this is what they should do.

Until and unless we figure out the riddle of that, these will keep happening.

Not just here, but everywhere.