Gun nuts’ infuriating craze: Why they want to redefine “school shootings”

[AthenaAwakened]

What exactly is a think-of-the-children type argument and how do we not think of the children when discussing school shootings where children get shot?

 

[Ford]

What exactly is a think-of-the-children type argument and how do we not think of the children when discussing school shootings where children get shot?

Apparently here's how it works. First off, was there a shooting which just happened to take place at a school? Don't call it a school shooting just yet!

If the person who got shot did so in a self inflicted manner, then it isn't anything to get worked up about. This one might not even qualify as a shooting!

If the person (or persons) who got shot were underage, it doesn't necessarily mean they were children. See, if they were young and in a gang, they chose that life which makes them not children, and certainly not worth our time worrying about. Remember, gang bangers deserve to get shot.

If the people shot were children, but the shooter (or shooters) can at a later date be shown to have a history of mental illness...anything up to and including a visit to a psychiatrist (hang on, that means I'm a person with a history of mental illness! ) ...then it isn't a school shooting either, it is just an instance of our mental health system failing and some innocents (are you sure they weren't in a gang?) unfortunately lost their lives.

It only becomes a school shooting if it could have been stopped by an intrepid armed teacher or armed guard, and if you don't think elementary school kids deserve to be defended by a considerable amount of citizen firepower, then why do you hate children and America?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Most of the "kids" who die from gun violence are gangbangers.

And so they're not really important, right?

This is what I'm talking about. The knee-jerk dismissal of gun violence if it happens to a person considered to be slightly less than a full member of society. White kids in a school gunned down? Big problem. Minority kids gunned down? Gang bangers...move along...nothing to see here!

It is important when people are pulling a think-of-the-children type argument. The reality is that people feel a lot less badly when the victims chose their path than when they were innocents.

I'm glad the Sandy Hook children were gang bangers. Now I feel their deaths were justified. Thanks!

The point is that most of the "children" *DID* choose that path. Bringing up the cases where they didn't doesn't disprove this.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What exactly is a think-of-the-children type argument and how do we not think of the children when discussing school shootings where children get shot?

Apparently here's how it works. First off, was there a shooting which just happened to take place at a school? Don't call it a school shooting just yet!

You've got it wrong. You look at the biggest contributing factor, not the one that best fits your position.

Suicide: The school is incidental to it. It's not a school shooting.

Gangbangers: They were shot because they were in a gang, not because they were <18.

I don't see anyone saying that just because the shooter was crazy that it's not a school shooting. Mass shooters almost always are crazy.

It becomes a school shooting if the school was the target--ie, Sandy Hook, Columbine.

 

[laughing dog]

Most of the "kids" who die from gun violence are gangbangers.

And so they're not really important, right?

This is what I'm talking about. The knee-jerk dismissal of gun violence if it happens to a person considered to be slightly less than a full member of society. White kids in a school gunned down? Big problem. Minority kids gunned down? Gang bangers...move along...nothing to see here!

It is important when people are pulling a think-of-the-children type argument. The reality is that people feel a lot less badly when the victims chose their path than when they were innocents.

I'm glad the Sandy Hook children were gang bangers. Now I feel their deaths were justified. Thanks!

The point is that most of the "children" *DID* choose that path. Bringing up the cases where they didn't doesn't disprove this.

After defining what you mean by "most", "gangbanger" and "choosing a path", please provide disinterested independent evidence to support your claim that most of child victims in school shootings are "gangbangers".

 

[Ford]

After defining what you mean by "most", "gangbanger" and "choosing a path", please provide disinterested independent evidence to support your claim that most of child victims in school shootings are "gangbangers".

There appears to be an alternate reality at work here where kids who would otherwise hew to the straight and narrow suddenly "choose" to be in a gang.

 

[Jayjay]

It becomes a school shooting if the school was the target--ie, Sandy Hook, Columbine.

If a kid gets shot by a gangbanger, because the gangbanger knew that the victim was going to be at the school, then it is no less a school shooting than a mentally disturbed kid shooting at his classmates at school premises because he knows that his victims would be at the school.

By your silly definition, the only legitimate school shooting would be if a person who knows none of the victims. Not even Sandy Hook or Columbine would qualify.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

After defining what you mean by "most", "gangbanger" and "choosing a path", please provide disinterested independent evidence to support your claim that most of child victims in school shootings are "gangbangers".

There appears to be an alternate reality at work here where kids who would otherwise hew to the straight and narrow suddenly "choose" to be in a gang.

not to mention that evidently being a gangbanger, whatever that is, immediately elevates a person to the age of 18 and eliminates from said person any and all innocence. So any 10 year old in any gang is devoid of innocence in any situation so even if the bullet was meant for another student in another gang and the person shot was an accident, the victim was still at fault because he or she is in a gang.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

After defining what you mean by "most", "gangbanger" and "choosing a path", please provide disinterested independent evidence to support your claim that most of child victims in school shootings are "gangbangers".

I didn't say most "child" school shootings, I said most "child" shootings.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It becomes a school shooting if the school was the target--ie, Sandy Hook, Columbine.

If a kid gets shot by a gangbanger, because the gangbanger knew that the victim was going to be at the school, then it is no less a school shooting than a mentally disturbed kid shooting at his classmates at school premises because he knows that his victims would be at the school.

By your silly definition, the only legitimate school shooting would be if a person who knows none of the victims. Not even Sandy Hook or Columbine would qualify.

I disagree.

To me the important point is if they are hunting a specific person who is at school vs whether they are hunting people at school.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

It becomes a school shooting if the school was the target--ie, Sandy Hook, Columbine.

If a kid gets shot by a gangbanger, because the gangbanger knew that the victim was going to be at the school, then it is no less a school shooting than a mentally disturbed kid shooting at his classmates at school premises because he knows that his victims would be at the school.

By your silly definition, the only legitimate school shooting would be if a person who knows none of the victims. Not even Sandy Hook or Columbine would qualify.

I disagree.

To me the important point is if they are hunting a specific person who is at school vs whether they are hunting people at school.

a distinction without a difference.

A shooting in a mall is a mall shooting regardless of the targets of the shooter. The term school shooting depeicts the place of the shooting not the intent of the shooter.

What i am not getting is why the need to segregate victims, to form a hierarchy of the dead? Care to explain Loren?

 

[Unbeatable]

So, what better way to combat this alarming list of school shootings than to redefine the term “school shooting” itself? By doing this, according to gun-rights activists, you knock off, say, 59 of the 74 school shootings, leaving you with only 15 real, true, legitimate school shootings. ONLY 15! That’s nothing. We can live with that, right?

I can live with 74. 74 shootings, with a total of 35 deaths, 28 if you take out the ones where the only death was a person committing suicide. If, as Everytown says, "86 Americans are killed by gun violence" every day, that's over 30,000 a year. How many of those deaths happened to occur in schools? It looks like there have only been 266 deaths from school shootings since 1990, which works out to about 11 per year. If you can live with the first 30,000+ gun deaths that take place in this country in a given year, why not an additional 11, or 35? If about 1 in 1000 deaths happens in a school, so what? If you're going to campaign against guns, do it because of the other 999, not just the last one.

Granted, I'm not trying to run a gun-rights PR campaign, so I have the luxury of not having to make emotional appeals to the masses.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

a distinction without a difference.

A shooting in a mall is a mall shooting regardless of the targets of the shooter. The term school shooting depeicts the place of the shooting not the intent of the shooter.

What i am not getting is why the need to segregate victims, to form a hierarchy of the dead? Care to explain Loren?

Because "school shooting" is a loaded term designed to evoke images of Columbine and Sandy Hook and the like. It's not just a description of words strung together and has far more meaning that simply a shooting at a school. Using it is no different than labelling a position as anti-choice or pro-death in trying to bolster one's argument with an emotional weight which is not helpful to any kind of discussion. While technically correct, it's a poor use of word choice which obfuscates the point being made by using a term which has additional meaning not relevant to the situation being discussed.

If you say "There was a school shooting today" and people start getting worried about the safety of their kids that go there and you follow up by telling them "Oh, it was just some janitor who shot himself in the broom closet in the middle of the night because he got divorced and none of the kids were in any danger from anything" then your initial statement did a horrifically poor job of saying what you were trying to say despite being technically correct from a grammatical point of view.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

a distinction without a difference.

A shooting in a mall is a mall shooting regardless of the targets of the shooter. The term school shooting depeicts the place of the shooting not the intent of the shooter.

What i am not getting is why the need to segregate victims, to form a hierarchy of the dead? Care to explain Loren?

Because "school shooting" is a loaded term designed to evoke images of Columbine and Sandy Hook and the like. It's not just a description of words strung together and has far more meaning that simply a shooting at a school. Using it is no different than labelling a position as anti-choice or pro-death in trying to bolster one's argument with an emotional weight which is not helpful to any kind of discussion. While technically correct, it's a poor use of word choice which obfuscates the point being made by using a term which has additional meaning not relevant to the situation being discussed.

If you say "There was a school shooting today" and people start getting worried about the safety of their kids that go there and you follow up by telling them "Oh, it was just some janitor who shot himself in the broom closet in the middle of the night because he got divorced and none of the kids were in any danger from anything" then your initial statement did a horrifically poor job of saying what you were trying to say despite being technically correct from a grammatical point of view.

"Oh, it was just some janitor who shot himself in the broom closet..."

And this is not worthy of concern why?

 

[Unbeatable]

"Oh, it was just some janitor who shot himself in the broom closet..."

And this is not worthy of concern why?

Do you think Tom Sawyer's main point was that a janitor shooting himself at school isn't worthy of concern? If so, why? What do you make of the entire rest of his post?

If you don't think that was his main point, why are you choosing to ignore the rest of his post?

 

[EricK]

Most of this thread (and the article referenced in the OP) seems to involve this logical fallacy:

A: School shootings are bad
B: Yes indeed.
A: I mean look at these school shootings
B: hmmmm. That one's not a school shooting, nor is that one.
A:OMG you are saying those shootings aren't serious. You monster!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It becomes a school shooting if the school was the target--ie, Sandy Hook, Columbine.

If a kid gets shot by a gangbanger, because the gangbanger knew that the victim was going to be at the school, then it is no less a school shooting than a mentally disturbed kid shooting at his classmates at school premises because he knows that his victims would be at the school.

By your silly definition, the only legitimate school shooting would be if a person who knows none of the victims. Not even Sandy Hook or Columbine would qualify.

I disagree.

To me the important point is if they are hunting a specific person who is at school vs whether they are hunting people at school.

a distinction without a difference.

A shooting in a mall is a mall shooting regardless of the targets of the shooter. The term school shooting depeicts the place of the shooting not the intent of the shooter.

What i am not getting is why the need to segregate victims, to form a hierarchy of the dead? Care to explain Loren?

I'm trying to sort them out because to solve a problem you need to understand it. When you put things in the wrong category you aren't likely to understand what's actually going on. If you hope to solve murder you have to understand why the murder happened.

(And don't be mislead by the mass shootings. They're a very small percentage of all murders.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, what better way to combat this alarming list of school shootings than to redefine the term “school shooting” itself? By doing this, according to gun-rights activists, you knock off, say, 59 of the 74 school shootings, leaving you with only 15 real, true, legitimate school shootings. ONLY 15! That’s nothing. We can live with that, right?

I can live with 74. 74 shootings, with a total of 35 deaths, 28 if you take out the ones where the only death was a person committing suicide. If, as Everytown says, "86 Americans are killed by gun violence" every day, that's over 30,000 a year. How many of those deaths happened to occur in schools? It looks like there have only been 266 deaths from school shootings since 1990, which works out to about 11 per year. If you can live with the first 30,000+ gun deaths that take place in this country in a given year, why not an additional 11, or 35? If about 1 in 1000 deaths happens in a school, so what? If you're going to campaign against guns, do it because of the other 999, not just the last one.

Granted, I'm not trying to run a gun-rights PR campaign, so I have the luxury of not having to make emotional appeals to the masses.

Exactly. I'm looking at the actual problem, not the stuff that makes national news.

And the majority of those 30,000 are suicide, not homicide.

- - - Updated - - -

"Oh, it was just some janitor who shot himself in the broom closet..."

And this is not worthy of concern why?

It's not another Sandy Hook.

 

[Togo]

I tend to take the opposite approach.

If you have a dispassionate rifleman up a clock tower picking off children one by one - that's not really the issue. Because unless you're talking not just about controls over guns, but controls so tight it's functionally impossible to get a rifle, he'll have gotten a rifle anyway.

No, the ones to worry about in the context of gun control are the ones where what would ordinarily be a short-term problem turns into a death or maiming because of easy access to guns. So, suicides, squabbles over a Nintendo, most gang-related incidents, any kind of revenge killing - basically anything that didn't require months of pre-planning.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

"Oh, it was just some janitor who shot himself in the broom closet..."

And this is not worthy of concern why?

Do you think Tom Sawyer's main point was that a janitor shooting himself at school isn't worthy of concern? If so, why? What do you make of the entire rest of his post?

If you don't think that was his main point, why are you choosing to ignore the rest of his post?

I didn't ignore the rest of his post. I included every word in the repost, but if you would like further comment, not problem. Does the term evolke a certain memory, a certain image for some or even most people? Probably, although to say that image is only of one or two specific incidents when we have so many to chose from will be hard to prove.

School suicides described in the original post make up exactly what percentage of school shootings? how prevelant is this misleading of the public?

and do you agree that we must sort gangbangers, whatever they are, out of the group marked "victims of school shootings?"