I don’t think the safety of the community has much to do with it. Columbine was in a middle class neighborhood and one of the gunmen was from an upper income family and home. Parkland was in a nice area.
Article with more about the suspect:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-shooter-profile-20181108-story.html
Why do we keep up the pretense that we, as a society, don’t accept this as part of the price of something or other?
A man who survived the Las Vegas shooting was killed in this one. I don’t know why that is worse, but it is.
https://heavy.com/news/2018/11/telemachus-orfanos-tel/
Also - the shooter’s former track coach says he sexually assaulted her when he was in high school.
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/11/08/thousand-oaks-gunman-high-school-coach-assault/
Like some bad remake of Final Destination.
Now much of that same area is on fire. Homes burning. Mandatory evacuations. The 101 freeway is closed because the fire jumped over it. Bad days.
Per the Gun Violence Archive (which defines a mass shooting as one in which 4 or more people are shot at the same time/location), the Thousand Oaks attack is the 307th mass shooting in America this year. Today is the 313th day of 2018. Sobering numbers.
Very sad. Heartbreaking for Thousand Oaks, the victims, their families and all the people there. @alwaysamom That statistic of 307 mass shootings in 313 days of 2018 is eye opening
Be careful. Figures lie and liars figure. Not that 307 shootings is a “good number.” But, their definition of “mass shooting” may be different than what we see played out on TV. They will include such things as the parent who kills his family and then himself. Obviously, we don’t need statistics to tell us there are too many shootings, mass or otherwise.
It is sooooo comforting to know that some of those so-called “mass shootings” are merely whole-family murder-suicides. Glad you cleared that up!
From one article: “There doesn’t seem to be an official definition for a “mass shooting” in the United States, but according to the Gun Violence Archive, a mass shooting is described as four or more individuals being shot or killed in the same general time and location.
The F.B.I. defines a “mass killing” as the killing of three or more people in a public place, but the federal agency also defines a “mass murderer” as someone who has killed four or more people in the same location.”
https://www.abc15.com/news/data/mass-shootings-in-the-us-when-where-they-have-occurred-in-2018
I’m in the “even if ‘only’ 1, 2, or 3 people are killed by a shooter, those incidents are also tragic” category of observers.
I’m really trying to understand how this means the figures lie and liars figure. Are you trying to say some shootings of four or more people at one time is ok? Or that it’s ok if the shooter and people being shot know each other? Those somehow shouldn’t count?
I’m reading the facts as there is essentially one of these per day and only some hit the news because they are even more horrific than others. We’re deadened to the “basic” kind - other than perhaps as local news.
When I travel to other countries they tend to be amazed at the violence we put up with. Your post seems to be the type they are amazed at. Whether it’s a distraught family member, gang violence, or lunatic out trying to make a name for themselves by killing random others, it’s still gun violence.
Hmmm. I just read that the killer was on social media just before/during the attack. Supposedly he said:
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
A shooting is a shooting
The “statistic” is kept in such a way as to make it more “scary” than it really is. 307 “mass” shootings in 313 days sounds horrible. When we think of mass shootings, we think of random events such as this nightclub shooting, Las Vegas, the shooting in Pittsburgh. Things that make zero sense. But there is a big difference between the guy who walks into a random place and shoots people for no apparent reason, and the guy who shoots his family because he can’t take care of them, lost his job, or something. One has a direct risk to the public and the other does not. And inner city gang violence is a subject all its own. If you want to solve issues like this nightclub shooting you need to define the problem properly and look for the root causes and correct the root causes. Anything less will be ineffective.
It has nothing to do with accepting shootings and violence. We get alarmed by the “mass” shootings, but 259 can be shot in Chicago and 47 dead in October, and nobody cares. No national news reports. No postings here. We can either get serious about solving our violence problems, mass shooting or otherwise, or we can continue to scream at each other on TV.
And this is exactly the problem the 307/318 is trying to show people. It’s NOT just the big ones that make the news. It’s oodles of others too creating our gun culture violence. Americans have become very accepting of gun violence and consider it part of life. Ho hum. This is not the same in any other first world country I’m aware of.
I’m marveled that you think the murder/suicide version isn’t a risk to the general public. In almost all of the cases of those that make the local news (plenty with less than four shootings), neighbors, friends, and relatives are interviewed saying it came as a big surprise to them. One never knows what any particular relative might do given the wrong set of circumstances and thinking in their mind. They may not even have decided to do it on any different day/night (same with many mass shootings - they’re impulses), but if they have access to guns, then it’s possible. Our culture has now determined that it’s an acceptable response.
Many I talk with would like to stop as many of the 307+ incidents that we can - not just the handful that make TV news. Even gang violence often hits innocent people in the crossfire. Their lives matter to us too.
Last I heard the fires have prevented the crime scene from being processed. The bodies may still be there.