Well, I bet you didn’t see this one coming
No, There Has Not Been a Mass Shooting Every Day This Year
This inflated stat all over the media isn’t just misleading—it’s stirring undue fear.Take a moment to consider what type of violent event that headline just brought to mind. The places and horrifying attacks you likely recalled surface instantly for most of us when we see or hear the term “mass shooting”—Columbine and Virginia Tech. Aurora and Sandy Hook. Charleston and San Bernardino.
Even as these mass shootings have grown more frequent and loom large in our consciousness, they are a tiny fraction of America’s gun violence and remain relatively rare. Yet many news outlets keep declaring that there have been upwards of “355 mass shootings this year” or “more than one mass shooting per day.” Many gun control advocates say the same.
This wildly inflated statistic isn’t just misleading the public—it’s stirring undue fear and may be encouraging bad policies.
In fact, there have been four mass shootings this year. Or, if you count using the federal government’s current criteria—three or more victims killed in an indiscriminate public rampage—there have been six mass shootings this year.
Huh. Let’s see
- San Bernardino: Islamist related
- Umpqua Community College: not a white guy, registered Independent, wackjob, held multiple types of political views
- Chattanooga, Tennessee: Islamist related
- Charleston, SC: total wackjob white kid
So, two by wackjobs and two by Islamists.
Anyhow, the article is well worth the read, a fair and impartial bit of actual journalism. What is the solution to stopping any mass shootings, or even “small” shootings? They can’t stop them in nations that have banned private ownership of guns.
Did anyone believe the “mass shooting a day” “stat”? It had the smell of a trumpstat.
Thanks to Mother Jones for doing what the major corporate media outlets used to do.
Dylann Roof may be a wackjob but he is a white supremacist whose admitted motive was to start a race war. Pure ideology. Pure far-right terrorism. Robert Dear is a wackjob but he is an anti-abortion terrorist motivated by his “religion”.
It’s unfair to call every Muslim murderer a Islamic terrorist and yet every right-wing murderer is a lone wolf wackjob.
The world has a problem with Muslim extremists and the US has a problem with far-right extremists. Neither group should have easy access to firearms, but there’s no good way to prevent it in the US.
Note too that Republicans want to shut the borders to Muslims but have nothing critical to say about the far-right terrorists other than to encourage others to get more and bigger weapons.
J., like most liberals, has to up the drama meter by always saying “far right wing” or “radical right”, instead of just right wing., no doubt due to the juvenile notion that anyone who disagrees with them is “radical”.
We’ve been listening to American leadership calling Islamic murderers lone-wolf nutjobs for far too long. Even after it was clear that they wrote and spoke about vengeance for insults to Islam, muslims, or perceived injustice in the muslim world.
For example:
The El-Al killer was called a lone wolf nutjob.
The dude that drove is SUV through the students at UNC was called a lone wolf nutjob, even though his letter clearly stated he was on an Islamic revenge attack.
The dude that shot up the Jewish Center in Seattle was called a lone-wolf nutjob, even though he said he was attacking Jews in retaliation for muslims being harmed in Iraq.
Similarly, the muslim dude that drove across town to run over Jews at, IIRC, a B’nai Brith center or something like that in the L.A. area.
The dude that attacked the Little Rock recruiting station was called a crazy lone-wolf, came back to American after training in Yemen just to kill as many American soldiers as he could. The fact that he ‘only’ killed one soldier was used to frame it as a simple murder instead of the Islamic terror attack that it was.
The D.C. Snipers wrote and talked of Islamic revenge and celebrated the 9-11 attack. Both of them. They were generally referred to as a crazy serial killer and a helpless boy under his influence.
I’m sure there are more. This is excluding a number of honor killings where muslims killed family members or suitors for behavior insulting to Islam, but may also just be behavior insulting to daddy.
Anyone to the right of Joe Stalin is considered a “right-wing extremist” by whackjob little jeffy.
suckingpuppies,
You still suck. I’ve been trying to be nice by differentiating far-right wing extremists from garden-variety right-wingers like you.
Thoughtful little whackjob.
Impressive.
Go on…
The media and the Liberals (sorry, that’s redundant) continue to ignore the huge elephant in the room – the fact that each of these mass shootings took place in a “gun-free zone.”
“So, two by wackjobs and two by Islamists.” Many would argue that all four are wackjobs….
14% of Muslims worldwide believe in suicide missions to promote Jihad. !3% of American Muslims believe the same. I would wager if you polled all Christians or Jews or Zoro Astrians, Buddhists, Hindus, Athiests you would not get 1% who believe that.
Stop being an apologist for a very real threat. Radical Islamist Jihadis are a worldwide problem. No other cause believes kidnapping female children and making them sex slaves is justified. No other group burns their enemies alive in a cage. No other group throws homosexuals off buildings.
Face it the 14% are a worldwide threat.
Nothing here justifies disarming law abiding citizens.
It is not unfair to associate Islam with terrorist acts because Muslims worship a terrorist. Unless you want to make a case for raping little girls, beheading people who make fun of Mohammed or fail to support wars in his name, taking slaves, and converting by the sword then you have to condemn Muslims and tie their violence to their faith because Mohammed did all of those things and called on his followers to do likewise. Simply put, when terrorists murder in the name of Islam they are acting within the tenets of their faith. when Christians do so they are not because their faith has no such tenets. If you can’t acknowledge that then you just aren’t adult enough to be participating in these sorts of conversations.
There is no moral equivalency here. Some cultures and ideologies are just inherently inferior and incompatible with civilization. The Middle East is not one vast hellhole because of the race of the people there, but because of their culture and religion. Whereas Christianity and its ideals built the west and made the Enlightenment possible. The only reason you even have a framework to hang your idea that terrorism is wrong around is because of Christianity. That framework absolutely does not exist in Islam. That an act is done in the name of Mohammed is enough to justify it. The only thing they argue over is whether it advances the cause.
I am not religious so I don’t have an invisible man in the fight. But I am also not a fool and can see the obvious.
FWIW, an eyewitness said that Holloway was screaming “Allah Akbar” out her open window as she mowed down pedestrians on the Las Vegas sidewalk.