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March 29, 2024, 12:49:55 PM

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Shooting #24601

Started by bgmnts, May 15, 2022, 10:28:22 AM

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MojoJojo

Quote from: Dex Sawash on June 06, 2022, 12:27:49 PMA lot of military veterans landed in US postal service as it was a straight across continuation of time served for defined benefit federal retirement plans. No idea if the shooters tended to be ex-military or not but the culture surely would have been influenced.

That and they took on some ex-prisoners on back to work schemes. That was the first explanation, but then it was realised that wasn't enough to explain how many shootings there were, and further investigation revealed that the UPS had become horrible to work in, as tc mentions above. A lot of the shooters were middle aged men losing/afraid to lost their job.

(I expect we're all trying to remember the same episode of You're Wrong About)

Ferris

Quote from: touchingcloth on June 06, 2022, 12:12:03 PMIt's possible that the postal shootings inspired (if not directly, then culturally) Columbine and subsequent mass shootings at schools. It feels like they might have different causes, though, based mainly on the differences in demographics - middle aged men for the postal shootings, adolescent and young adult men for the school ones. That said they're similar in that postal shootings were overwhelmingly carried out by employees against their employers, and school shootings are overwhelmingly carried out by current or (very recently) former students.

As I understand it, the rash of postal shootings are thought to have been caused by structural issues with the USPS at the time - long-tenured workers suddenly finding themselves at risk of being fired or at the very least not promoted, extremely aggressive targets being set for workers by their (equally put-upon) managers, a lack of agency for the USPS as an organisation due to Congress stripping their funding right back and not allowing the service to offer non-postal services to supplement their income (USPS isn't allowed to offer the things that are common from post offices in other countries, such as banking services), and that having a knock-on effect in lack of agency for the individual workers.

Maybe something similar has happened with the US school system since the late 1990s, with it becoming a much more brutalising environment which combined with easy access to guns leads to people channelling their rage through mass shootings, with the huge amounts of media time spent reporting on these shootings providing some sort of inspiration to would-be shooters.

I'd argue there are economic causes at the root of all this that leave kids feeling hopeless and isolated. The rise of the internet to radicalize hopeless, isolated teenagers probably hasn't helped.

And the ludicrous availability of firearms, of course. The shooter in Tulsa bought a rifle on the way to his shooting which is just bonkers.

Dex Sawash

Just remembered a friend's brother who was/is an SRO stopped a high school shooter by tackling him while he was reloading in 2006. Kid killed his father then went to school and shot the place up. He only injured 2 people there, I think shooter stayed outside the buildings. Nice job not killing the bad man with the gun.

robhug

Quote from: Ferris on June 06, 2022, 01:42:15 PMThe shooter in Tulsa bought a rifle on the way to his shooting which is just bonkers.

did he forget to take his actual rifle with him? Thats an oversight and a half.

Ferris

Quote from: robhug on June 06, 2022, 01:55:19 PMdid he forget to take his actual rifle with him? Thats an oversight and a half.

Don't think he owned any, just stopped to pick one up on the way to the massacre. Like coffee or pair of gas station sunglasses.

buzby

Quote from: Martin Van Buren Stan on June 06, 2022, 12:29:05 PMLooking at the list from 1970- the 1990s there were about 7 incidents. That's not comparable to the spate of school shootings and general mass shootings in the last 22 years.
It was enough of a phenomenon at the time for the media to give it a name. School shootings were happening in that period of time too (and one in particular was instrumental in pushing through the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban), but spree shootings in general were not as common then as they are now (there were three spree shootings at schools per year committed by current or former students for the two years previous to Columbine).

School spree shootings by current or former students can be traced back to the 1966 Texas U clocktower sniper. The first school spree shooting committed by a minor was the 1979 Cleveland Elementary School shooting (which insipred I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats).

Looking at the statistics, while the Assault Weapons Ban was in place between 1994 and 2004, there were on average 3 spree shooting incidents of all kinds per year, with 1999 being above average with 7 (which included Columbine and the first 'copycat' shooting a month later at Heritage High School, where thankfully nobody was killed).

After the ban expired, the numbers start to steadily ramp up to 6-7 per year until 2012 where they reach a new peak of 12, dip again for a couple of years and then ramp up to the current 'record' of 22 in 2017. Of those 22, only two were on school premises and neither was commited by a current of former student (one of them was a man who went to kill his wife who was a teacher at a special school, and a student who was standing behind her was killed by overpenetration from shooting his wife).

touchingcloth

Quote from: Ferris on June 06, 2022, 01:42:15 PMI'd argue there are economic causes at the root of all this that leave kids feeling hopeless and isolated. The rise of the internet to radicalize hopeless, isolated teenagers probably hasn't helped.

I agree. The root cause of this stuff is capitalism, but it's easier to have ancillary debates about locking down schools than it is to talk about gun control than it is to talk about access to mental health care than it is to talk about restructuring the global economy and power structures.

robhug

Quote from: Ferris on June 06, 2022, 02:07:01 PMDon't think he owned any, just stopped to pick one up on the way to the massacre. Like coffee or pair of gas station sunglasses.

You can be as anti guns as you want but you've got to admit being able to buy them at the supermarket is handy.

touchingcloth

Quote from: MojoJojo on June 06, 2022, 01:30:24 PMThat and they took on some ex-prisoners on back to work schemes. That was the first explanation, but then it was realised that wasn't enough to explain how many shootings there were, and further investigation revealed that the UPS had become horrible to work in, as tc mentions above. A lot of the shooters were middle aged men losing/afraid to lost their job.

(I expect we're all trying to remember the same episode of You're Wrong About)

There was an interesting musing on that YWA episode where they suggested that the exact same pressures that applied to USPS workers in the 90s should apply to Amazon workers in the now, but that a) Amazon doesn't hire as many Vietnam and Gulf War veterans*, and b) while you might be minded to go to the office and shoot the manager you feel has treated you unfairly, it's a lot harder to work out which particular computer said no.

Who does an Deliveroo driver go postal on? Their bike?

*as noted above, this may have been debunked as a causative factor.

touchingcloth

Quote from: buzby on June 06, 2022, 02:09:18 PMa student who was standing behind her was killed by overpenetration from shooting his wife

I bet they were, the dirty old bollocks.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

Quote from: robhug on June 06, 2022, 02:16:42 PMYou can be as anti guns as you want but you've got to admit being able to buy them at the supermarket is handy.

I must admit, if I lived in America I'd buy a gun just to piss about with it and fire it at tree stumps or old cans. Then I'd get bored of it and stick it in the shed.

Uncle TechTip

Quote from: touchingcloth on June 06, 2022, 02:21:19 PMI bet they were, the dirty old bollocks.

Sounds like a police way of saying the bullet killed two people.

JamesTC

If somebody doesn't stop all these shootings soon then somebody is going to get hurt.

Sonny_Jim

I propose we melt all the guns into one big gun, then we all take turns to use it.

Dex Sawash

Quote from: Ferris on June 06, 2022, 02:07:01 PM. Like coffee or pair of gas station sunglasses.

Ban Rays

steve98

Geldolf made school-shootings cool; he should admit it and offer to make amends.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: steve98 on June 06, 2022, 07:58:02 PMGeldolf made school-shootings cool; he should admit it and offer to make amends.
I'm now imagining Boomtown Rats fronted by a wizard

Martin Van Buren Stan

Fucking state of this (disturbing content).  Brave when an unarmed woman is protesting, shit scared when some Norman Bates cunt with a rifle executes a bunch of kids.


https://twitter.com/HaileyBWinslow/status/1534689761306087424?s=20&t=i9V6b9EJkHm6czPKchpWvA

JesusAndYourBush

For a moment I thought the guy with the skateboard was going to whack twatcop around the head with it.

touchingcloth

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on June 09, 2022, 09:08:48 PMFor a moment I thought the guy with the skateboard was going to whack twatcop around the head with it.

Kyle Rittenhaus enters thread grinning expectantly.

Blumf

Only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is DRONE MOUNTED TASERS!!!!!! FUCK YEAH!!!!

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/07/company-that-turned-excited-delirium-into-a-thing-thinks-it-can-solve-school-shootings-with-drone-mounted-tasers/
QuoteTaser and surveillance vendor Axon has proposed what it claims to be the solution to the epidemic of school shootings in the United States: a remote-controlled flying drone armed with a taser
...
Put together, these two technologies may effectively combat mass shootings. In brief, non-lethal drones can be installed in schools and other venues and play the same role that sprinklers and other fire suppression tools do for firefighters: Preventing a catastrophic event, or at least mitigating its worst effects.

Waking up the next morning, with a steaming hangover, and a lighter ethics board, the company walked it back... a bit

QuoteUPDATE: Since this post's composition over the weekend, there has been a notable development. Axon has, for the moment, pulled the ends of its toes from overhanging the precipice. It only took the resignation of most of the Ethics Board (nine of twelve members) to force the company to reconsider its move towards offering schools access to armed drones.

But this statement from Axon's CEO seems to imply the company is still willing to crane its neck to peer over the precipice until it's socially feasible to go over the edge of it.

Axon's founder and CEO Rick Smith said the company's announcement last week — which drew a rebuke from its artificial intelligence ethics board — was intended to "initiate a conversation on this as a potential solution." Smith said the ensuing discussion "provided us with a deeper appreciation of the complex and important considerations" around the issue.

As a result, "we are pausing work on this project and refocusing to further engage with key constituencies to fully explore the best path forward," he said.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Blumf on June 10, 2022, 01:49:07 AMOnly thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is DRONE MOUNTED TASERS!!!!!! FUCK YEAH!!!!

And reading between the lines, an A.I. drone-mounted taser.

Visions of students pleading with a drone bearing down on them with the kill light activated - "You've misunderstood! I said I was going to shoot some hoops! Alexa, don't shoot!"

buzby

Quote from: touchingcloth on June 10, 2022, 07:52:28 AMAnd reading between the lines, an A.I. drone-mounted taser.

Visions of students pleading with a drone bearing down on them with the kill light activated - "You've misunderstood! I said I was going to shoot some hoops! Alexa, don't shoot!"

Famous Mortimer


Glebe

Insane and bloody awful of course.

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on October 24, 2022, 08:40:20 PMAbout 5 minutes from my house, I pass it all the time.

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/3-dead-after-shooting-at-south-st-louis-high-school-38753882

Jeez I'm meant to be visiting round there to do some work on school mental health in the new year <I didn't realise you are in Missouri FM I might have a few questions for you if everything goes ahead>

Dex Sawash


Somebody shot up Raleigh a week or so back and deaded one of my wife's running acquaintances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Raleigh_shooting

bgmnts

Bloody hell man sorry about that.