The responded to a phone call by a man saying that he had shot a member of his family dead & was holding the rest hostage. Police went to the address & had surrounded the property when a man came to the door. Apparently they shot him when he didn't respond to instructions to put his hands up & appeared to go to his belt (sound familiar ?)
He was found to be unarmed & all his family indoors were unharmed & nothing wrong. It appears that someone had made a hoax call & sent police to a completely innocent address.
I would hope to think our police officers were better trained & wouldn't just shoot someone dead because of a phone call that they had received. But hey, guns make you safer, right ?
The responded to a phone call by a man saying that he had shot a member of his family dead & was holding the rest hostage. Police went to the address & had surrounded the property when a man came to the door. Apparently they shot him when he didn't respond to instructions to put his hands up & appeared to go to his belt (sound familiar ?)
He was found to be unarmed & all his family indoors were unharmed & nothing wrong. It appears that someone had made a hoax call & sent police to a completely innocent address.
I would hope to think our police officers were better trained & wouldn't just shoot someone dead because of a phone call that they had received. But hey, guns make you safer, right ?
I remember in the book Freakanomics, they found that if you just fired the 3% of cops with the most complaints against them, police violence would drop 50% overnight. Something like that.
Napa......can you give us some idea to the general reaction in The States at this outrageous event.....media and man in the street reactions etc. Are the family going to let it rest or is there more to follow?
Honestly. I think there is "violence fatigue" in the USA. Last week, two kids were wounded in a school shooting and it did not even make the top headline, here. On BBC it was the highest ranked headline. I am not sure most know it even happened! Police shootings have been so common (some justified and some not) that people just don't want to hear about it. People are just putting all these things out of their minds.
We have become an extremely dissipated culture over the last 30 years. Social media has enraged everyone about... everything. Everyone is offended and social media sends news stories at the speed of light, inundating people. And at the same time everyone is just overwhelmed and wants out. The booming economy and stock market and home values are covering up a lot of depression and anger, in my opinion.
I can see why simplistic messages like "make America great again" has traction here. Because to actually have to confront hard issues and realize the American Dream was a sedative rather than a dream is too much to face. For the young, they feel they have no chance at it. For the old, they see it slipping away. For people my age, we are caught in the middle.
I think America is getting stuck in a cycle of denial, alternating with anger.
Imagine living in a country so paranoid that people would give a semiautomatic to a 12 year old to take to school.
That's the problem - they're not paranoid or mad, they just think its the norm & the thing to do. Until there is a change in the law it will just get worse & worse. Not even the assassination of a President (JFK) and an attempted one of another (Regan) has changed the attitude of the Government.
I remember in the book Freakanomics, they found that if you just fired the 3% of cops with the most complaints against them, police violence would drop 50% overnight. Something like that.
Napa......can you give us some idea to the general reaction in The States at this outrageous event.....media and man in the street reactions etc. Are the family going to let it rest or is there more to follow?
Honestly. I think there is "violence fatigue" in the USA. Last week, two kids were wounded in a school shooting and it did not even make the top headline, here. On BBC it was the highest ranked headline. I am not sure most know it even happened! Police shootings have been so common (some justified and some not) that people just don't want to hear about it. People are just putting all these things out of their minds.
We have become an extremely dissipated culture over the last 30 years. Social media has enraged everyone about... everything. Everyone is offended and social media sends news stories at the speed of light, inundating people. And at the same time everyone is just overwhelmed and wants out. The booming economy and stock market and home values are covering up a lot of depression and anger, in my opinion.
I can see why simplistic messages like "make America great again" has traction here. Because to actually have to confront hard issues and realize the American Dream was a sedative rather than a dream is too much to face. For the young, they feel they have no chance at it. For the old, they see it slipping away. For people my age, we are caught in the middle.
I think America is getting stuck in a cycle of denial, alternating with anger.
A lot I agree with in this, very well thought out.
Couple points where I'd disagree or add a caveat: 1) Absolutely agree with shooting fatigue. I have it without a doubt, in part because I know nothing will change. But I would not conflate police shootings with mass shootings or school shootings. I still think the latter two fall in a distinctly different category to the former. But again, agree with the larger point.
2) For large swathes of the country the American dream has always been a myth. I think, potentially for the first time in this country's history you could see a generation end up worse off than their parents (Boomers to Millennials), and that compounds a lot of things in our society. But for every Horatio Alger story there were countless people who were born poor and died poor.
3) I know what you mean about social media, and it does give "tribes" more places to congregate, but if you'd asked me 15 years ago I would have said the same thing about cable news. To some extent its because a 24-hour news cycle compounds and inflates everything, and to some extent its because Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch founded a television channel for a type of nativist conservativism that is as old as the country itself but where those who believes in the ideology felt they no longer had a place in politics. George W. Bush ran on immigration reform and won a lot of Hispanic voters. That is unthinkable today.
That is not to say social media doesn't make things worse. I just think it somewhat exacerbates and compounds fissures that have been there for a long, long time.
4) The NRA, despite having around four millions members, is arguably the strongest and most influential lobbying group in this country. And it is no longer about guns, they have also seized on the nativist, "us versus them" narrative and are kingmakers in the Republican party and an entity many Democrats are terrified of.
5) In a country where new home owners are at a low and only 52% of Americans own stocks, I would argue that the stock and housing markets are part of the problem. Top line numbers may look good, but they cover up the fact that cost of living has far outstripped a rise in wages despite a rise in productivity, and that wealth transference in this country has only accumulated at the top.
Imagine living in a country so paranoid that people would give a semiautomatic to a 12 year old to take to school.
Guns are not a problem if used responsibly - the problem only happens if they are used irresponsibly. Lack of proper training is one of the main issues.
It's not really that big an issue in the US as there are only about 30000 gun deaths a year.
Imagine living in a country so paranoid that people would give a semiautomatic to a 12 year old to take to school.
That's the problem - they're not paranoid or mad, they just think its the norm & the thing to do. Until there is a change in the law it will just get worse & worse. Not even the assassination of a President (JFK) and an attempted one of another (Regan) has changed the attitude of the Government.
They are paranoid. The second amendment is there in case the government tries to over throw them they can fight back! Try and change the law and they think the government is up to something!
America’s gun laws are utter madness - why the hell are there not tens of millions protesting every day for effective gun control? How can the current situation be justified?
RIP the poor victims and thoughts with their families.
Officials are reporting that he used an assault-style gun. Because those are legal. What can ya do? The NRA is an incredibly strong lobbying group with ties to Russia now. They propagate fear not just of the government taking your guns but so of black and brown people. I don't think anything will be done about this for a long time, and personally I'm pretty numb to it at this point.
Officials are reporting that he used an assault-style gun. Because those are legal. What can ya do? The NRA is an incredibly strong lobbying group with ties to Russia now. They propagate fear not just of the government taking your guns but so of black and brown people. I don't think anything will be done about this for a long time, and personally I'm pretty numb to it at this point.
At what point do you think it'd be time for you to do something about it though?
This is what really bothers me about the entire situation, the amount of Americans who don't agree, yet shrug their shoulders and carry on. There must be a tipping point, surely?
Officials are reporting that he used an assault-style gun. Because those are legal. What can ya do? The NRA is an incredibly strong lobbying group with ties to Russia now. They propagate fear not just of the government taking your guns but so of black and brown people. I don't think anything will be done about this for a long time, and personally I'm pretty numb to it at this point.
At what point do you think it'd be time for you to do something about it though?
This is what really bothers me about the entire situation, the amount of Americans who don't agree, yet shrug their shoulders any carry on. There must be a tipping point, surely?
Vegas, with nearly 58 dead and 851 injured, seems to have had little to no impact. Sandy Hook is similar.
It will take a massacre of probably thousands in one event - I'm talking 9/11 style proportions but with guns (and no terrorist/funny foreign people link) - which almost certainly won't happen, so the tipping point won't be reached.
It's awful, tragic, horrible, heartbreaking... pick your words of choice. I just despair.
Yeah but remember, no matter how many shootings and killings there have been, there would have been even more without guns because of the role guns play in protecting people. The solution to this problem is definitely more guns. Arm everyone, even children. If that doesn’t work maybe start arming animals too. The more guns there are, the safer the American people will be.
Officials are reporting that he used an assault-style gun. Because those are legal. What can ya do? The NRA is an incredibly strong lobbying group with ties to Russia now. They propagate fear not just of the government taking your guns but so of black and brown people. I don't think anything will be done about this for a long time, and personally I'm pretty numb to it at this point.
At what point do you think it'd be time for you to do something about it though?
This is what really bothers me about the entire situation, the amount of Americans who don't agree, yet shrug their shoulders and carry on. There must be a tipping point, surely?
By the way, this is not a something that dies because of a lack of public support. Bans on assault weapons, background checks, and a Federal registry of guns polled at around 80% favorable in the wake of the Vegas shooting last year. This is down to a small, vocal, and well funded minority. And Democrats are absolutely terrified of the NRA in House, State, and local elections.
Comments
The responded to a phone call by a man saying that he had shot a member of his family dead & was holding the rest hostage. Police went to the address & had surrounded the property when a man came to the door. Apparently they shot him when he didn't respond to instructions to put his hands up & appeared to go to his belt (sound familiar ?)
He was found to be unarmed & all his family indoors were unharmed & nothing wrong. It appears that someone had made a hoax call & sent police to a completely innocent address.
I would hope to think our police officers were better trained & wouldn't just shoot someone dead because of a phone call that they had received. But hey, guns make you safer, right ?
Nothing to see here, move on.
We have become an extremely dissipated culture over the last 30 years. Social media has enraged everyone about... everything. Everyone is offended and social media sends news stories at the speed of light, inundating people. And at the same time everyone is just overwhelmed and wants out. The booming economy and stock market and home values are covering up a lot of depression and anger, in my opinion.
I can see why simplistic messages like "make America great again" has traction here. Because to actually have to confront hard issues and realize the American Dream was a sedative rather than a dream is too much to face. For the young, they feel they have no chance at it. For the old, they see it slipping away. For people my age, we are caught in the middle.
I think America is getting stuck in a cycle of denial, alternating with anger.
Couple points where I'd disagree or add a caveat:
1) Absolutely agree with shooting fatigue. I have it without a doubt, in part because I know nothing will change. But I would not conflate police shootings with mass shootings or school shootings. I still think the latter two fall in a distinctly different category to the former. But again, agree with the larger point.
2) For large swathes of the country the American dream has always been a myth. I think, potentially for the first time in this country's history you could see a generation end up worse off than their parents (Boomers to Millennials), and that compounds a lot of things in our society. But for every Horatio Alger story there were countless people who were born poor and died poor.
3) I know what you mean about social media, and it does give "tribes" more places to congregate, but if you'd asked me 15 years ago I would have said the same thing about cable news. To some extent its because a 24-hour news cycle compounds and inflates everything, and to some extent its because Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch founded a television channel for a type of nativist conservativism that is as old as the country itself but where those who believes in the ideology felt they no longer had a place in politics. George W. Bush ran on immigration reform and won a lot of Hispanic voters. That is unthinkable today.
That is not to say social media doesn't make things worse. I just think it somewhat exacerbates and compounds fissures that have been there for a long, long time.
4) The NRA, despite having around four millions members, is arguably the strongest and most influential lobbying group in this country. And it is no longer about guns, they have also seized on the nativist, "us versus them" narrative and are kingmakers in the Republican party and an entity many Democrats are terrified of.
5) In a country where new home owners are at a low and only 52% of Americans own stocks, I would argue that the stock and housing markets are part of the problem. Top line numbers may look good, but they cover up the fact that cost of living has far outstripped a rise in wages despite a rise in productivity, and that wealth transference in this country has only accumulated at the top.
It's not really that big an issue in the US as there are only about 30000 gun deaths a year.
Multiple injuries reported in Florida Highschool. Hope they are just injuries and no fatalities.
Nothing on the news wires yet.
Edit: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/14/florida-high-school-under-lockdown-after-reports-shooter-victims-police-say.html
Horrendous. Again!
RIP the poor victims and thoughts with their families.
This is what really bothers me about the entire situation, the amount of Americans who don't agree, yet shrug their shoulders and carry on. There must be a tipping point, surely?
It will take a massacre of probably thousands in one event - I'm talking 9/11 style proportions but with guns (and no terrorist/funny foreign people link) - which almost certainly won't happen, so the tipping point won't be reached.
It's awful, tragic, horrible, heartbreaking... pick your words of choice. I just despair.
Wake up America. That is insane!
By the way, this is not a something that dies because of a lack of public support. Bans on assault weapons, background checks, and a Federal registry of guns polled at around 80% favorable in the wake of the Vegas shooting last year. This is down to a small, vocal, and well funded minority. And Democrats are absolutely terrified of the NRA in House, State, and local elections.
This is someone who was widely considered a rising star in the Democratic Party a couple years ago.