"Stupid wingnut says something stupid" thread

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/13/cnn-cuts-school-shootings-since-newtown-from-74-to-15-to-appease-gun-advocates/

"It's not a school shooting when someone goes and shoots a specific person on campus. It's a shooting that happens to take place at school," Charles C. Johnson protested.

The Guardian's Alan Burkeman slammed the redefinition as an exercise in semantics, and called it "a truly depressing glimpse of how pro-gun argumentation works these days."

I love that bolded logic and intend to be trying it throughout the rest of the day.

"It's not on fire, it just happens to be covered in flames".

They actually have a point that is particularly relevant when it comes to how statistics are compiled and public perception. For example, a school bus driver was shot by an acquaintance on an empty bus; school shooting? The way the statistics are compiled currently, yes. Gang-related shootings that happen at school go into that statistical pool, a teacher shot in the parking lot by a jealous ex goes into that pool, everything that can be related to a school goes into that pool.

It's extremely misleading.

A high proportion of gang-related violence takes place at churches and funerals, because the shooters know that's where they can find their victim. Is that religious violence? Probably not by any reasonable person's definition. Many acts of violence that are recorded as school shootings are not what the public thinks of as a "school shooting", are actually targeted shootings that would have just as easily occurred elsewhere, had the victim, say, worked at Wal*Mart or been a dropout.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I haven't read the article, I just had this discussion last night with my best friend.

[Junkenstein]

Well the short version is Johnson takes your argument to the wall. He manages to eventually cut the 74 down to 7 with some incredible leaps of logic
http://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-burkeman-s-blog/2014/jun/12/gun-lobby-tactic-redefining-school-shootings?CMP=twt_gu

(each of these followed by snapshot of twitter account)

It doesn't count if the bullet you're injured by, on school grounds, was discharged accidentally:

It certainly doesn't count if you're the one who shoots yourself to death at school:

It isn't a school shooting even if it's a shooting, at school, so long as the victim, on this occasion, is an adult rather than a child:

It most definitely doesn't count if the shooting is gang-related – a recurring theme in Johnson's tweets – though he never clarifies why:

It doesn't count if the shooting arises from a dispute over a games console:

And so on. The two bolded, you mentioned and I'm somewhat unsure about this. I think the original point was to highlight violence, particularly gun violence in schools. While 74 may have included odd fringe cases (apparently at least one never occurred) 7 seems to deliberately exclude anything that could logically be called a "school shooting". If someone shoots in a school environment, it seems a little strange to say it doesn't count because gangs target victims there or whatever. I don't see any reason why something can't be a school shooting and a Gang/robbery/jealous lover thing. Life is messy and events tend to have multiple causes. Deliberately ignoring one cause or consequence (School was shot at but no-one injured so not a school shooting) just seems like asking for more of the same.

Out of curiosity, do you have any links to the targeted shooting stuff? If an unusual level of them are happening in educational environments I have a feeling that's worth a deeper look at. I've got prison pipeline stuff in my head here but I'm hoping it's paranoia.

ETA - Forgot the closer:

And let's not forget the bigger point here. A pro-gun journalist applies the most stringent imaginable criteria to the term 'school shooting'; he rejects every instance he possibly can, for reasons many might regard as spurious, and then triumphantly declares that there have only been ... seven bona fide school shootings in America since December 2012!

Only seven school shootings since December 2012.

I hope I never to get to the point at which the word "only" in that sentence makes even the slightest bit of sense.

[LMNO]

It doesn't count if the shooting arises from a dispute over a games console:

That seems most telling to me of how Johnson is defining "School Shooting" -- It looks to me like he's saying it only counts if it's mass murder at a school targeting children; which in turn makes it so much easier to shift the blame towards mental health and away from gun control.  "School shootings, by definition (mine) aren't because of gun culture.  They happen because of the crazy."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It doesn't count if the shooting arises from a dispute over a games console:

That seems most telling to me of how Johnson is defining "School Shooting" -- It looks to me like he's saying it only counts if it's mass murder at a school targeting children; which in turn makes it so much easier to shift the blame towards mental health and away from gun control.  "School shootings, by definition (mine) aren't because of gun culture.  They happen because of the crazy."

It's a really important distinction, though, because there is a difference between a guy with a bone to pick with another guy, and a generally disgruntled-with-society person spraying a random crowd of kids with bullets. The first is a condition that has always been with society but is generally on the decline. The second is a condition that has always been with society but appears to be on the increase. The distinction that should be made here is not whether the shootings are connected to a school, but what the nature and motivation of the shootings are. "School shooting" is not a very meaningful category, and the media is using that category deliberately to conflate all "school shootings" with mass shootings. Mass shootings can (and do) also take place at malls and churches.

[LMNO]

Upon reflection, that makes sense.  "School Shooting" then, seems like a fnord.

Sorry for the pineal term, but it's a pretty good shorthand.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Basically, using "school shooting" to define the problem pulls a "won't anyone think of the children?" by begging the question "how can we make our schools safer?", while distracting from the question "how and why are these people becoming so hopeless and angry at society that they are willing to randomly injure and kill complete strangers, and how can we prevent it?"

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Upon reflection, that makes sense.  "School Shooting" then, seems like a fnord.

Sorry for the pineal term, but it's a pretty good shorthand.

Yes, it's a good shorthand, because it basically sums up what I was trying to type when you posted that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The problem I have with gun control as a solution for this kind of violence is that it's a bottom-up solution; it's like addressing the fact that poor people are stealing food by making it harder for poor people to go into grocery stores. The problem isn't that angry, disenfranchised young people are able to get guns, the problem is that young people are so angry and disenfranchised that they want to randomly kill a bunch of innocent people.

[LMNO]

[Junkenstein]

Basically, using "school shooting" to define the problem pulls a "won't anyone think of the children?" by begging the question "how can we make our schools safer?", while distracting from the question "how and why are these people becoming so hopeless and angry at society that they are willing to randomly injure and kill complete strangers, and how can we prevent it?"

Thanks for that, actually cuts to the problem rather than the bullshit around the problem. Appreciated!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Junkenstein, this might be helpful... I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but given that the annual rate for all gun injuries in the US is around 100,000 http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/16/16547690-just-the-facts-gun-violence-in-america?lite, 65-ish is a very low proportion.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181998015/rate-of-u-s-gun-violence-has-fallen-since-1993-study-says   

This is also an interesting article: http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/18/navy-yard-whiplash-are-killings-going-up-or-down/

While "school shootings" are certainly the flavor of the moment, I'm not convinced their heavy presence in the media is anything other than a political fulcrum.         

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Basically, using "school shooting" to define the problem pulls a "won't anyone think of the children?" by begging the question "how can we make our schools safer?", while distracting from the question "how and why are these people becoming so hopeless and angry at society that they are willing to randomly injure and kill complete strangers, and how can we prevent it?"

Thanks for that, actually cuts to the problem rather than the bullshit around the problem. Appreciated!

YW!

[Cainad (dec.)]

Junkenstein, this might be helpful... I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but given that the annual rate for all gun injuries in the US is around 100,000 http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/16/16547690-just-the-facts-gun-violence-in-america?lite, 65-ish is a very low proportion.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181998015/rate-of-u-s-gun-violence-has-fallen-since-1993-study-says   

This is also an interesting article: http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/18/navy-yard-whiplash-are-killings-going-up-or-down/

While "school shootings" are certainly the flavor of the moment, I'm not convinced their heavy presence in the media is anything other than a political fulcrum.         

I know we were all having a good chuckle recently at that website which shows correlations between unrelated things, but I think it is very interesting to note that the use of Tetraethyl lead in gasoline began to be phased out in 1973, 20 years before the drop in gun violence.

I know I'm being an unscientific spag by basically saying, "Coincidence?! YOU DECIDE!", but, well, you know.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Junkenstein, this might be helpful... I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but given that the annual rate for all gun injuries in the US is around 100,000 http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/16/16547690-just-the-facts-gun-violence-in-america?lite, 65-ish is a very low proportion.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181998015/rate-of-u-s-gun-violence-has-fallen-since-1993-study-says   

This is also an interesting article: http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/18/navy-yard-whiplash-are-killings-going-up-or-down/

While "school shootings" are certainly the flavor of the moment, I'm not convinced their heavy presence in the media is anything other than a political fulcrum.         

I know we were all having a good chuckle recently at that website which shows correlations between unrelated things, but I think it is very interesting to note that the use of Tetraethyl lead in gasoline began to be phased out in 1973, 20 years before the drop in gun violence.

I know I'm being an unscientific spag by basically saying, "Coincidence?! YOU DECIDE!", but, well, you know.

There's pretty good evidence for there being a connection, and while we may never know for sure, and there may be a number of contributing factors, it seems not unlikely that tetraethyl lead was one of them.