Mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio

[Wolfe]

I wonder if flooding 8chan with meaningless posts would disrupt it's ability to concentrate these hateful ****s? Or if that doesn't work, just DDoS'ing it into oblivion.

Like tearing down an abandoned house filled with pests, they'll scurry to another. Which is precisely how and why 8chan was founded and grew in the first place. The U.S. government appears to agree with that assessment, which is why they have opted to keep an eye on those places, with federal employees literally paid to "How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?".jpg in there. (Twitter, language warning)

The users have also already known about that for years. They're not dumb, which is part of the problem.

EDIT: And now I find this:

Investigators 'reasonably confident' Texas suspect left anti-immigrant screed, tipped off before attack

Investigators are examining a screed believed to have been posted online by the suspect in Saturday's fatal shooting at a Texas shopping mall an hour before the attack, senior law enforcement officials say.
......
The first reply to the posting was “Hello FBI.”
......
Law enforcement was already analyzing the document before the mass shooting began and had connected it to a person, but the writing didn't name a target, time, place or use the suspect's name.

And in the same article...

Terrorism experts warn that nothing should be taken at face value in the propaganda material left behind by hate crime suspects, which aim to provide fodder for social media pickup and mainstream media coverage.

"You really think someone would do that, just go on the internet and tell lies?"

 

[Dotini]

The shooter at Dayton killed his own sister. The Texas Tower shooter fatally knifed his own mother and wife hours before the shootings. Since the Middle Ages, the protection of innocents, especially women, has been enshrined in the male code. No more, at least not in the US.

 

[UKMikey]

The shooter at Dayton killed his own sister. The Texas Tower shooter fatally knifed his own mother and wife hours before the shootings. Since the Middle Ages, the protection of innocents, especially women, has been enshrined in the male code. No more, at least not in the US.

Wasn't the Texas Tower Sniper over fifty years ago? I don't see what his knifing his mum and sister have to do with men forgetting the "male code" today.

 

[Dotini]

Wasn't the Texas Tower Sniper over fifty years ago? I don't see what his knifing his mum and sister have to do with men forgetting the "male code" today.

I am saying the Texas Tower mass slaughter was the first such slaughter of the type we are discussing, and is of a piece with those that have occurred since. You can't understand the phenomenon unless you take the whole thing into consideration. All these slaughters are marked by males heartlessly shooting down defenseless females and children like they were no different from men. This violates ancient codes of behavior embedded into our culture. This shows a very deep part of our psychology is affected. Would you now agree?

 

[Sander 001]

 

[Famine]

More people deliberately killed themselves yesterday alone with their own guns than died at the hands of two knobheads on Saturday. Why aren't we talking about that?

 

[Dotini]

More people deliberately killed themselves yesterday alone with their own guns than died at the hands of two knobheads on Saturday. Why aren't we talking about that?

IMHO, the mass slaughter and elevated suicide phenomena are directly related.

 

[TenEightyOne]

More people deliberately killed themselves yesterday alone with their own guns than died at the hands of two knobheads on Saturday. Why aren't we talking about that?

I think we have. There's a feeling amongst some that the presence of so many guns in a community makes it easier for people to take a gun to settle scores or, more often, to harm themselves. "Cry for help" suicide attempts are a very real part of mental illness and death ideation but they don't really work with guns as well as they can with knives or tablets.

It's obvious that removing guns from a community doesn't fix any other problems in that community in terms of violence, mental health, but it surely helps to remove items of such ready deadliness?

 

[baldgye]

More people deliberately killed themselves yesterday alone with their own guns than died at the hands of two knobheads on Saturday. Why aren't we talking about that?

Because this is a thread about a mass shooting, that quickly grew into a thread about two mass shootings.

 

[Dotini]

I think we have. There's a feeling amongst some that the presence of so many guns in a community makes it easier for people to take a gun to settle scores or, more often, to harm themselves. "Cry for help" suicide attempts are a very real part of mental illness and death ideation but they don't really work with guns as well as they can with knives or tablets.

It's obvious that removing guns from a community doesn't fix any other problems in that community in terms of violence, mental health, but it surely helps to remove items of such ready deadliness?

Let's say you want to remove the guns from the Englewood or Garfield Park communities of Chicago. Legally and morally how could you go about doing that? Gangs and guns are their substitute for hope. They would fight you like hell, then simply get more guns after you left.

Before you start shooting, you should aim first. Before you try to fix stuff - like other people's problems you don't understand - you should have a rational plan to succeed.

 

[Touring Mars]

Donald Trump is currently speaking about this weekend's mass shootings.

So far, he has blamed the internet, video games, mental illness and gun laws.

 

[Novalee]

i found this on twitter.


several classmates of Connor Betts, Dayton Terrorist are disputing the media coverage depicting him as being bullied. Turns out they’re all saying he in fact was a bully that inflicted fear and violence throughout the school especially with the girls.

my question is how come the school did not say anything ?

 

[Joey D]

It's obvious that removing guns from a community doesn't fix any other problems in that community in terms of violence, mental health, but it surely helps to remove items of such ready deadliness?

I'm not so sure. A vast majority of legal gun owners do not want to harm anyone or themselves. Taking guns away from these people will curtail nothing because they were never planning to do anything harmful in the first place.

So really, the problem boils down to: how do you keep guns out of the hands of people that shouldn't have them? I don't think there's an easy answer to this. But I think first off the US government needs to step up its game of preventing illegal guns from entering the country.

I seem to remember watching something on Netflix about various criminal enterprises and it said that many untraceable firearms come out of the Philippines. Basically, they're firearms with no serial numbers and are sought after by criminals. I'm sure they come in from other countries too. So if we made more of an effort at preventing these from entering the US, the price of those that do slip through would go up. In theory, this would help stop easy access to them.

However, it seems like Trump is more interested in spending money to build a goddamn wall that will stop virtually nothing (except maybe a few roaming animals). The billions he wants to spend on that would make so much more sense to spend on measures to actually prevent trafficking of guns, people, etc.

Better background checks would help too. While I'm not a fan of the government interfering in my life, I'm willing to relax a little on that when it comes to background checks. When I bought my pistol, the background check took a couple of minutes and I'm not sure what they really even looked at. When I bought a hunting rifle, there were no checks at all, I just picked out the one I wanted and gave them my credit card.

I'd be willing to submit to a more in-depth background check if it meant fewer people that should have guns would be prevented from buying them.

Concealed carry should also require more in-depth training too. If you have a CCW permit, in many states you do not need to submit to a background check. Getting a CCW permit in many states is ridiculously easy too. In Michigan, it amounted to one class that was basically a lawyer telling you that if you shoot someone you better understand all the legal ramifications. You also need to shoot like 20 rounds to prove you know which end to point downrange.

With regards to suicide though. While firearms, I believe, are the number one method used I feel like if you truly want to end your own life you'll find a way to do so. I don't know enough about suicide though to say why firearms are the number one choice, they're certainly not foolproof by any means.

 

[Touring Mars]

i found this on twitter.


several classmates of Connor Betts, Dayton Terrorist are disputing the media coverage depicting him as being bullied. Turns out they’re all saying he in fact was a bully that inflicted fear and violence throughout the school especially with the girls.

my question is how come the school did not say anything ?

I also saw something on social media about this, but it has now also been reported by Time here:

https://time.com/5643875/ohio-shooter-connor-betts-hit-list-rape-list/

Betts was (apparently) suspended for compiling both a 'kill list' and a 'rape list' several years ago...

The fact that he murdered his own sister and her boyfriend strongly suggests a sexual/sexual frustration element to this - I wouldn't be surprised if he was of the 'Incel' type who was tipped over the edge by his sister developing a sexual relationship.

 

[Dotini]

Donald Trump is currently speaking about this weekend's mass shootings.

So far, he has blamed the internet, video games, mental illness and gun laws.

All these suspects have problems associated with them. But when the epidemic of mass shooting began in 1966, there was no internet, no video games, and few gun laws. The Texas Tower shooter's best weapon was a 6mm turkey rifle. Illness (of some kind) affecting males on a culture-wide basis remains a good guess. I remember the day c1955 when my father hurled a cast iron frying pan at my mother. It missed her, but went halfway through the kitchen wall. I was hiding under the table.

 

[Touring Mars]

All these suspects have problems associated with them. But when the epidemic of mass shooting began in 1966, there was no internet, no video games, and few gun laws. The Texas Tower shooter's best weapon was a 6mm turkey rifle.

Obviously, none of these external factors are of themselves the cause of gun violence - but I would be surprised if none of them were a major influencing factor on at least some of today's crop of mass murderers.

One thing that is common in most of these atrocities is a deep grievance against one group or another, and going on a murderous spree is a high-profile, irrevocable protest at whatever it is these people feel like protesting about.

There is clearly no one factor that can be blamed for the rate of mass shootings in the US, but there will be many factors that contribute to different extents in different individuals.

While mass shootings in the US are clearly nothing new, the US now has to contend with the fact that it is not only still ridiculously easy for virtually anyone to acquire near-military grade weaponry, but there is also now a torrent of information - not much of it useful either - available to anyone who cares to look. Couple that with a culture of media (TV, films, music, games) that are awash with violent imagery and even role-playing, and it is little surprise that disaffected young men are taking out their anger and misplaced sense of entitlement on others.

That sense of misplaced entitlement is typified by the 'incel' movement.

 

[Dotini]

One thing that is common in most of these atrocities is a deep grievance against one group or another, and going on a murderous spree is a high-profile, irrevocable protest at whatever it is these people feel like protesting about.

There is clearly no one factor that can be blamed for the rate of mass shootings in the US, but there will be many factors that contribute to different extents in different individuals.

While mass shootings in the US are clearly nothing new, the US now has to contend with the fact that it is not only still ridiculously easy for virtually anyone to acquire near-military grade weaponry, but there is also now a torrent of information - not much of it useful either - available to anyone who cares to look. Couple that with a culture of media (TV, films, music, games) that are awash with violent imagery and even role-playing, and it is little surprise that disaffected young men are taking out their anger and misplaced sense of entitlement on others.

That sense of misplaced entitlement is typified by the 'incel' movement.

You may be on to some important stuff here, I don't doubt it.

However, I will quibble slightly about the "one group or another" remark. I think we can get more specific here, and I think that group may be females. The poor dumb male, not understanding his rage, will take it out on anyone or everyone. But it will always include females. This is a clue.

 

[GranTurNismo]

 

[HenrySwanson]

The shooter at Dayton killed his own sister. The Texas Tower shooter fatally knifed his own mother and wife hours before the shootings. Since the Middle Ages, the protection of innocents, especially women, has been enshrined in the male code. No more, at least not in the US.

I was reading a thread on these shootings on another forum that talked about the breakdown of the family unit and its possible influence in shooting incidents so this is a point worth exploring.

More people deliberately killed themselves yesterday alone with their own guns than died at the hands of two knobheads on Saturday. Why aren't we talking about that?

This only came to my attention by researching the statistic that the Guardian put out about 100 people dying every day from firearms in the US (the fact that a sizeable amount were suicides wasn't mentioned in the original article).

 

[Dotini]

I was reading a thread on these shootings on another forum that talked about the breakdown of the family unit and its possible influence in shooting incidents so this is a point worth exploring.

Excellent observation!
But IMHO, it goes well beyond the breakdown of the family unit. It goes to the breakdown of the role - the mission, purpose and very meaning - that the male has in contemporary American society. I see this as a one-way street, with no going back anytime soon, involving genetics, memetics and the reptile brain-stem.

 

[Wolfe]

Illness (of some kind) affecting males on a culture-wide basis remains a good guess.

Our whole culture is very ill. The fringes of civil society are fraying, and our political-cultural machine is tugging on the strings in every direction. It's in gaming. It's in sports. It's in comedy. It's in Silicon Valley. It's in writer's communities. It's in knitting communities. It's everywhere. People have lost their minds, and are all pointing fingers at each other. "You're to blame!"

Combine so much turmoil and fear-mongering -- a bulk of it anti-male, to address your concern -- with the economic challenges many young people face, and it's little wonder to see them compelled to take action, as in El Paso, or to take out their deep-rooted frustration in a suicidal attack, as it appears to be in Dayton.

I try to remind myself that the majority of well-meaning citizens just living their lives have no part in this. But the rot is clearly spreading, and every time something like this happens, it spreads a little more, with more finger-pointing, political posturing, and talking heads shouting over each other incoherently. For the El Paso shooter, mission accomplished. 👎

 

[zzz_pt]

I'm not so sure. A vast majority of legal gun owners do not want to harm anyone or themselves. Taking guns away from these people will curtail nothing because they were never planning to do anything harmful in the first place.

One of the issues I see with this mindset is: people change.

Most gun owners might not (and probably don't ever) "plan" to kill or hurt anyone and themselves for quite a long period of time. They can be responsible and even live happy lives. But everyone goes through difficult periods in their lives, and some of them will brake down and commit these types of crimes. If they didn't have access to the guns they owned in a responsible manner before the "brake town", they could go through a tough period in their lives without getting to use bullets on themselves and other people. and come out on top at the end of it. Depression can get the worse out of people if they feel they have the means to end it (whatever the "it" may be).

----

One of the aspects, I think, that contributes a lot to the mass shooting, gun violence and suicide problem in general, is the lack of strong community bonds in today's society. I speak for myself. I live in a western country, in a nice, safe, modern city with everything anyone would want and I don't know a single one of my neighbours. Families and their members don't depend on each other as much now as they did some decades ago, and so if a family brakes down - be it a divorce, someone dying, unemplyment issues, violence, sickness, vice, or just outright lack of care among the family members - the weakest member of that group will often be left and feel alone. Mix unemployment, an unstable political climate and an internet and social media enviroment that revels, grows and profits out of radicalizing political discourse, rewarding victimization, focusing on the misery of others and by amplifying conflict instead of promoting healthy conversation and general well being, and you get an explosive mix. If that person happens to be a young man - especially white young man - it gets probably worse, because it's the demographic that's falling back the most (academic achievement and professional career) while at the same time being the only one (correct me if I'm wrong) that doesn't get any positive attention because they're not seen as a minority - quite the opposite, they're often portrayed as the root cause of all problems.

 

[Joey D]

One of the issues I see with this mindset is: people change.

Most gun owners might not (and probably don't ever) "plan" to kill or hurt anyone and themselves for quite a long period of time. They can be responsible and even live happy lives. But everyone goes through difficult periods in their lives, and some of them will brake down and commit these types of crimes. If they didn't have access to the guns they owned in a responsible manner before the "brake town", they could go through a tough period in their lives without getting to use bullets on themselves and other people. and come out on top at the end of it. Depression can get the worse out of people if they feel they have the means to end it (whatever the "it" may be).

There is some truth in this, but I'd wager the number of people who change to the point of wanting to commit violent acts is still pretty low. Even if you take firearms out of the equation, if you get to the point where you're hellbent on mass violence access to a gun isn't going to make the difference. Look at the Oklahoma City bomber, he didn't use a gun but rather a rented moving truck with fertilizer in it to commit mass murder and terrorism. If you want to kill, you'll figure out a way to do it. Same goes for suicide. If you want to end your own life, you will figure out a way to do it with whatever means you have access to.

With that said, just because some people get depressed and then some of those people end up resorting to violence, I don't think it's a legitimate reason to limit access to firearms. The number of legal, safe, and responsible firearm owners are still significantly higher.

 

[McLaren]

One of the issues I see with this mindset is: people change.

Most gun owners might not (and probably don't ever) "plan" to kill or hurt anyone and themselves for quite a long period of time. They can be responsible and even live happy lives. But everyone goes through difficult periods in their lives, and some of them will brake down and commit these types of crimes. If they didn't have access to the guns they owned in a responsible manner before the "brake town", they could go through a tough period in their lives without getting to use bullets on themselves and other people. and come out on top at the end of it. Depression can get the worse out of people if they feel they have the means to end it (whatever the "it" may be).

That doesn't do anything to change Joey's point, though. The rest of the gun owners shouldn't be punished for the actions of another.

Nevermind the odds of being able to predict, locate, and save a gun owner before they travel down the road of a possible suicide, a depressed person may still find another way to take their life. Out of the 2,347 people below who committed suicide in Ohio, 1,225 chose a different way. It was noted that more of the women chose OD'ing than firearm & 1/5th of the men chose hanging.

More people deliberately killed themselves yesterday alone with their own guns than died at the hands of two knobheads on Saturday. Why aren't we talking about that?

Woah, easy there Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Nobody wants to hear about your facts right now. We're still in the stages of jumping to conclusions to reaffirm our own predetermined beliefs right now about guns, race, and politics.

 

[Carbonox]

Woah, easy there Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Nobody wants to hear about your facts right now. We're still in the stages of jumping to conclusions to reaffirm our own predetermined beliefs right now about guns, race, and politics.

I'm going to applaud you for making the most accurate observation of things so far. It's astonishing how many people jumped into this thread like vultures while the bodies were still warm, to preach their predictable, oh-so-woke anti-white rhetoric. That's all they have in mind when things like this happen, it seems.

 

[baldgye]

So, I guess if America has so many mass shootings (and they seem to have been increasing since the 70s) and that because the problem is so obviously mental health, then that must mean that the US has the best metal health support network in the world?

 

[zzz_pt]

There is some truth in this, but I'd wager the number of people who change to the point of wanting to commit violent acts is still pretty low. Even if you take firearms out of the equation, if you get to the point where you're hellbent on mass violence access to a gun isn't going to make the difference. Look at the Oklahoma City bomber, he didn't use a gun but rather a rented moving truck with fertilizer in it to commit mass murder and terrorism. If you want to kill, you'll figure out a way to do it. Same goes for suicide. If you want to end your own life, you will figure out a way to do it with whatever means you have access to.

With that said, just because some people get depressed and then some of those people end up resorting to violence, I don't think it's a legitimate reason to limit access to firearms. The number of legal, safe, and responsible firearm owners are still significantly higher.

I think that's a slipery slope. If you have a gun in your house, you're probably (I'm using probably because I don't have data here to claim 100% certainty) more likely to use it to kill than if you have to go through other steps. Imagine you have to rent a truck. You not only have to know how to drive a truck in order to accomplish your goal, but you have to go somewhere, have the money to rent it, probably talk with other people, etc. During anyone of those steps, you could back off and "chill". Maybe think twice or thrice about what you're going to do. But if you have a gun at home, your don't have a "chill out" moment.

Also, you only need 1 person to kill and injure dozens. I know they are a small minority but they make a huge impact. Some people won't go to walmart, don't put their kids in public shools, don't go out so often, because despite this being a small minority of people, they make a big impact in how society works and faces their daily life. Of cource in some places it's worse than others but I think it's undeniable.

I'm talking as someone who sees this from far away, so I'll have my own biases.

That doesn't do anything to change Joey's point, though. The rest of the gun owners shouldn't be punished for the actions of another.

I think it does, as I said above. Also, why is it a "punishment"? I think we just view guns in a completely different way, culturally. I don't get how not having a gun is a punishment.

Nevermind the odds of being able to predict, locate, and save a gun owner before they travel down the road of a possible suicide, a depressed person may still find another way to take their life. Out of the 2,347 people below who committed suicide in Ohio, 1,225 chose a different way. It was noted that more of the women chose OD'ing than firearm & 1/5th of the men chose hanging.

You just pointed to another big problem in the USA: drugs. It doesn't surprise me to see that so many people OD'd in Ohio, especially women, unfortunatelly. Suicide is a huge problem in the US, but maybe there should be a dedicated thread for it because it's not only associated with guns.

About NDGT's tweet I think it was unfortunate tbh. I read it as a virtual shrug of the shoulders and carry on type of message.

 

[Dotini]

So, I guess if America has so many mass shootings (and they seem to have been increasing since the 70s) and that because the problem is so obviously mental health, then that must mean that the US has the best metal health support network in the world?

The US used to have a decent mental health system. But is was dismantled and deteriorated into one of the top 100 movies ever made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

 

[Famine]

Because this is a thread about a mass shooting, that quickly grew into a thread about two mass shootings.

And even quicklier grew into a thread about gun control. Which is pretty normal. And apparently comparisons to ISIS, which isn't.

I think we have.

I'm not sure anyone has, least of all the usual suspects who it seems almost can't wait for a spree killing with firearms so that they can talk about firearms, but couldn't care less about any other form of death from any other tool.

"Cry for help" suicide attempts are a very real part of mental illness and death ideation but they don't really work with guns as well as they can with knives or tablets.

Indeed - cry for help suicide attempts are rarely conducted with firearms, because they're exceptionally effective tools for suicide. It's rare to not really mean to do it by the time you have a muzzle pointed into your cranium...

... and incidentally, as many people died yesterday in the USA from suicide methods other than a firearm as those who shot themselves.

It's obvious that removing guns from a community doesn't fix any other problems in that community in terms of violence, mental health, but it surely helps to remove items of such ready deadliness?

Which should lead to two readily obvious conclusions:

* Guns (or rather their use to deliver live ammunition) are a symptom of the issue, not the issue (or issues)
* Talking about guns as if they are the issue is damaging in multiple ways, but primarily because overwhelming yelling about the fake issue means nobody talks about the real issue(s) and that/they continues unaddressed and untreated

Among the real issues are lack of value for human life, normalisation of violence and conflict, them vs. us division, definitely mental health, and "thoughts and prayers" instead of any form of action about any of the above. And probably a lot of other things - but I would contend that a political atmosphere that works on the basis of the above contributes to those issues.

By the time someone has got to the point of visiting an act of deadly violence on another person, what they've picked up to best guarantee the outcome is practically an irrelevance - you're as dead by a bullet as you are by a hammer. It should be of little comfort to your family that your preventable death wasn't by someone who almost certainly shouldn't have been wielding a firearm wielding a firearm.

Roughly by next Saturday, there'll have been as many people actually murdered by knives in the USA as there were in these two mass-shootings. In fact, using 2018 figures, the weekly non-natural death rates in the USA are approximately:

Accidental/Vehicular*: 700
Suicide/Non-firearm: 400
Suicide/Firearm: 400
Murder/Shooting (other than mass-shooting): 180**
Accidental/Fire: 80
Murder/Stabbing: 40
Homicide/Shot by police officer: 19***
Murder/No weapon: 14
Murder/Blunt object: 10
Murder/Mass-shooting incident: 7****
Accidental/Animal-related: 4
Accidental/Auto-erotic asphyxiation: 3
Murder/Serial Killer: 1.3
Murder/Terrorism: 0.3*****

Some of these are just for context of volumes but, sure enough, every time there's a mass shooting - and mass shootings are A Very Bad Thing - we end up talking about the shooter, their weapon/s, where the guns came from, their motivation/manifesto, how guns are bad because they make it easy to cause lots of deaths and literally anything else but why one human arrives at the conclusion that it's fine to pick up a weapon - any weapon, including their bare hands - and use it to visit violence on another human being because of their beliefs, skin colour, gender, sexual preferences, politics, or literally any other factor than immediate threat to their own life or the lives of others.

We ignore that twice as many people will be beaten to death than killed in a mass-shooting incident in an average week. Or that nearly six times as many will be stabbed. Or the fact that cops rack up more kills by May 10th than spree killers will in a calendar year. Or that more people are killed every fortnight by inner city gang violence in the USA**. I'm not sure that anyone wants to note that you're 42% as likely to die in a stranglewank as a spree shooting. And we definitely ignore that for every three gun "homicides", two are suicides - and there's two more suicides by other methods in addition.


Of 300,000,000 guns in private hands in the USA, 299,965,000 - 98.28% - are not used to kill a human being. Of the 1.72% that are, 67% are used to kill the person holding it. That leaves 0.57% of guns used to kill a human being other than the person holding the gun, or if you have a table with 200 guns on it, marginally more than one of them might have been used to kill another human being.

While we are in the safest time to have ever been a human being, the conversation about killings and mass killings needs to be about the act and not the tool. We need to talk about what motivates people to do it - why they don't value human life, why they think race/sexuality/gender/religion/politics/beliefs are a justification for devaluing human life, why they think they have the obligation to act as executioner - and we need to talk about mental health (and yes, we need to talk about how we keep those with mental health issues safe from themselves and others by limiting access to all things that may be used easily to cause widespread injury, including tools we like and have a use for and those we don't). Then we need to talk about how society changes to support those with poor mental health, to make people feel less isolated and marginalised (even when they actually aren't), and make the option of being violent towards those you don't like/don't agree with less attractive and less readily pursued.


But we won't. There'll be another 400 suicides this week by firearm, there'll be another 400 suicides this week by other methods, there'll be another 40 people stabbed to death, and nobody will care. And then this time next week someone will shoot six people at a barbecue and we'll all be back to hurr durr guns.


*Of which murder is negligible enough that I can't even find a number on it
**20% of these will be in Chicago, New York, LA, Philadelphia and Detroit alone; That is a separate problem, which has many of the same factors I mention elsewhere in this response, but packs poverty and gang culture on top just for good measure.
***Homicide, as some may be lawful killings and others may well not be
****For 2019 so far it's 8. Also here's a 'fun' fact: roughly as many people die each day (1) in the UK from jumping in front of a train as die in mass-shooting incidents in the USA.
****Some mass-shooting incidents are also terrorism, although the definitions are blurry and mutable; the most recent shooting in Texas would probably meet the terrorism classification. I've included such incidents in both sections

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

There is some truth in this, but I'd wager the number of people who change to the point of wanting to commit violent acts is still pretty low. Even if you take firearms out of the equation, if you get to the point where you're hellbent on mass violence access to a gun isn't going to make the difference. Look at the Oklahoma City bomber, he didn't use a gun but rather a rented moving truck with fertilizer in it to commit mass murder and terrorism. If you want to kill, you'll figure out a way to do it. Same goes for suicide. If you want to end your own life, you will figure out a way to do it with whatever means you have access to.

With that said, just because some people get depressed and then some of those people end up resorting to violence, I don't think it's a legitimate reason to limit access to firearms. The number of legal, safe, and responsible firearm owners are still significantly higher.

The problem is that I think the fantasy of these rampages (these meaning online Troll come-to-life) isn't just killing people, it's killing people with a military style weapon. The gun is instrumental to the fantasy. I don't think some of the perpetrators would even carry out these types of attacks if they couldn't do it with a gun. When's the last time somebody shot up a mall or a club with a lever-action rifle? Or even a semi-auto hunting rifle. It's not that one couldn't, it's that it doesn't fit the fantasy. In that sense, I do think very much that the gun, and even the type of gun is instrumental to the act. Making bombs is difficult and the act of detonating one doesn't provide the same visceral experience for the perpetrator. Driving a truck through a crowd probably has less chance of success, and doesn't provide the perpetrator with a "glorious exit" unless they also bring a gun. All of that is to say, taking away the gun, the instrument of the fantasy, is in my opinion a viable method of reducing incidents like this. I don't think the same is true for all terrorist attacks (obviously), but it doesn't exactly make them more likely.

Other than it's not fair to the collectors out there, can someone give me a plausible reason why a 100 round magazine should be legal?