At least 11 dead, 6 hospitalized in a mass shooting at Virginia Beach

Irish Guitarist

The first American mass school shooting was in 1979 (it was the inspiration for I Don't Like Mondays). So that's 40 years this shite has been going on. If they haven't done anything to put an end to it by now they never will.

I saw a video a couple of years ago where a man whose son found his gun and shot himself dead was being interviewed. As distraught as he was he wouldn't say a bad word about guns. It was fucking bizarre.

CelticRambler

By pure coincidence, I watched John Grisham's Runaway Jury last night ("pluckly little lawyer goes up against the pro-gun lobby after a mass shooting") - released in 2003, and every bit as accurate and implausible today as then.

Life is cheap in America: it's not just guns, their death rates are amongst the worst in the world for all kinds of things - drunk driving, drug overdoses, mothers dying in childbirth, prisoners dying in jail, environmental pollution, workplace accidents, etc. You can probably add "from vaccine-preventable illnesses" soon. Oh, and of course they do love a good execution.

kowloon

The Satanist wrote: »

Oh I do, but no amount of mansplaining will help you.

You really don't. You should look it up in a dictionary or something.

Snickers Man

_CreeD_ wrote: »

They have roughty 70x our population, add up the numbers of people shot here and extrapolate, it's not as far off as you think.

Really?

The Washington Post keeps a record of number of fatal shootings by US police over the past few years. These are the overall figures, they don't distinguish between the various reasons and situations in which police have opened fire on people.

Divide by 70 (or by 60 to get a larger number: the true multiplier for the difference between Irish and US populations is between 60 and 70) to get a comparable figure for what fatal shootings by Irish police would be every year if we had a similar situation to the US.

Calendar year White Black Hispanic Other/unknown Total

2015 497 258 172 67 994

2016 465 234 160 103 962

2017 459 223 179 125 986

2018 452 229 164 147 992

I think there was ONE person shot dead by Irish police last year (2018), the guy who was suspected of kidnapping and murdering a young woman in county Wicklow. I don't think there were any fatal police shootings the previous year.

If we had a similar rate to the US the figures for 2015-2018 would have been:
between 14 and 17 people shot dead by Gardai in each of those years.

We're not even close.

Snickers Man

The Satanist wrote: »

Also, the shooter was black so the liberals will keep quiet about this one.

The fashion has now become not to utter the name of perpetrators of mass shootings. It is actually right-wing loonies that have pushed for this, the theory being that such spree killers crave notoriety after they are gone so that if we can impress upon them that their names will not be on anybody's lips after the event, they may be discouraged from carrying it out in the first place! ( I know, right :rolleyes::rolleyes:)

So let's just call them Voldemorts, after He-Who-Cannot-be-named in the Harry Potter books.

Voldemort 1 was the guy who shot all those people at a Mosque in New Zealand. That nice girl who runs the country urged people not to mention his name. I can't recall what it was, but then, that's the idea.

Voldemort 2 has just killed a lot of people in Virginia Beach.

I strongly suspect that Voldemorts 3-12 will be predominantly American but let's see how it all pans out, eh?

_CreeD_

Snickers Man wrote: »

If we had a similar rate to the US the figures for 2015-2018 would have been:
between 14 and 17 people shot dead by Gardai in each of those years.

We're not even close.

I didn't limit the reference to Police/Gardai, why are you? Particularly in a thread whose origin is again not police related. Also I did not say they would be equivocal, I said they were not as far off as most people seem to think.

BTW I do think the amount of shootings by US police is statistically anomalous and more importantly morally unjustifiable, it's one of the reasons we left. While I don't think it is relevant to the point I was making I do agree it is important to highlight. It is one of the worst aspects of the point I was trying to make, where those that should have more scrutiny, training and oversight are committing some of the worst gun related crimes. Especially when you see something like http://ukhealthexpert.com/2019/05/26/americans-want-drug-tests-for-cops-cops-say-its-unconstitutional/

Atlantic Dawn

Access to guns like buying a choc ice, what could possibly go wrong, backward as fook country.

Atoms for Peace

The biggest school massacre was a bombing carried out in 1927.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1927-bombing-remains-americas-deadliest-school-massacre-180963355/