Not believing facts because you don’t want to believe them? Says everything we need to know.

more like mass shooting is poorly defined

abustamam 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

While "mass shooting" does not have a solid agreed upon definition, there is a commonly accepted definition when we talk about one in the US. It's a shooting incident in which there are 4 or more casualties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United...

That's a very low bar.

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tekknik 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

this definition is only commonly accepted amongst the left. as an example, would you call a gathering of 4 people a mass gathering. most wouldn’t.

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Fezzik 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think of ‘mass’ in the context of defining groups of things as just ‘a lot under the circumstances’. A mass gathering for an NFL game is 100,000 people; a mass crowd for a high-school JV basketball game is probably 100; a mass crowd for a 1 year old’s birthday is maybe 50. It’s relative to what is expected under normal circumstances. 4 people being shot or injured is a lot because nobody should be shot or injured.

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tekknik 4 days ago | parent [-]

this is again loaded language. the intent is to make things seem more severe than they were. the bombing of Nagasaki was a mass killing, shooting 4 people is a shooting with 4 victims, not a mass shooting.

	▲	abustamam 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Why are you so intent on the definition of "mass?" whether "mass" means 4 or 400, one "mass shooting" is one too many. Arguing about how many people are allowed to die in an incident before we do something about it does nothing to prevent this from happening.

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ThrowMeAway1618 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's this thing called "context"[0].

You seem to be unfamiliar with it. Perhaps you might brush up on that?

Just a crazy thought. Toodles!

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/context

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tekknik 4 days ago | parent [-]

your hateful response will have no change on anything whatsoever

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ThrowMeAway1618 4 days ago | parent [-]

Hateful?

Really? Providing definitions of words that seem not to be in one's vocabulary is hateful?

Let's see:

hateful[0] (adjective) 1 : full of hate : malicious 2 : deserving of or arousing hate

Defining words arouses hate?

Should I warn the fine folks over at Merriam Webster that you might come for them?

Or is it that you think suggesting that context is an important part of understanding language is a hateful endeavour?

Please, do tell. This is fascinating!

I wish you well and hope there are folks who will welcome you and make you feel loved. Is that more hateful stuff too, friend?

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hateful

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tekknik 2 days ago | parent [-]

it’s your tone and an assumption that i don’t understand the definition of context. it is hateful disagreements like this that radicalize people. your response was hateful, reword it without defining words for people.

	▲	ThrowMeAway1618 a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Nope. Not gonna happen. It's not hateful at all. I wish you no ill will whatsoever. I'm just calling out what seems pretty clearly to be your lack of nuance/flexibility of the language. Which is something you might expect from a recent English language learner or a child. Are you one of those? If not, you're pretty clearly being deliberately obtuse. I won't hazard a guess as to why you might do such a thing, as that would likely be uncharitable. I'll sum up, in case you're still confused: Calling you out for your tone deafness and/or deliberate obtuseness isn't hateful at all. In fact, it's meant to inform you of the above as a service, so that you might provide higher quality discourse here. As for being "hateful," I have no quarrel with you. I wish no harm on you, nor have you earned my ire. Rather, I have no strong feelings about you one way or the other. If a mild remonstration is considered to be "hateful" by you, I can hardly imagine your reaction to actual verbal abuse. I expect it wouldn't be pretty.
	▲	a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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cosmicgadget 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Probably because those are two different contexts.

	▲	tekknik 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		no, it’s loaded speech and meant to manipulate human emotion to promote one’s goals.

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abustamam 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd love for you to define it then.

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tekknik 5 days ago | parent [-]

it’s simple, don’t use verbiage meant to manipulate emotions. so just call it a shooting. the qualifier mass serves no purpose and changes nothing about how the case is prosecuted. the suspect is still charged with individual murder or manslaughter charges, not one single charge of multiple deaths.

	▲	potato3732842 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'll do one further. I don't care if the verbiage is "manipulative" or has a spin to it so long as the term and definition are not specifically crafted to overload plain english terms to facilitate being misleading with plausible deniability. That's how low of a bar I'll set and they still can't meet it.

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insurancesucks 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's a dishonest bar. The vast majority of us picture a deranged lunatic indiscriminately shooting innocent people.

Gang related incidents are something entirely different.

The definition should not obscure the two (but it would be politically inconvenient to separate them)

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abustamam 5 days ago | parent [-]

> The vast majority of us picture a deranged lunatic indiscriminately shooting innocent people

Just because we picture one thing when we hear a term doesn't change the agreed upon definition of the term.

If the definition of "mass shooting" were a single person, 600 is still way too many to have in a year.

Other developed countries have fewer than 600 gun-related deaths total per year. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/10/31/1209683...

The fact that upping the bar to 4 per incident and still gets us 600 is frankly shameful.

> it would be politically inconvenient to separate them

Why? No sane person in the United States "likes" gun violence. I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement "600 incidents of a firearm killing 4 or more people is too many incidents." The question that divides people is how we ought to control it.

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tekknik 5 days ago | parent [-]

we would all love no crime, most of us live in the real world and understand mental illness is a thing that exists.

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komali2 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

You seem to be under the impression that other countries experience even a fraction of the violence Americans experience from guns.

We don't. What's happening in America with the gun violence is uniquely horrifying.

	▲	disgruntledphd2 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_... Every time. It's sad that it takes a satirical newspaper to point out the obvious truth.

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abustamam 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You're gonna have to explain your point better. No one said mental illness doesn't exist. Your comment has nothing to do with the definition of mass shootings. No one defines mass shooting as "a mentally ill person who shoots people." It's pretty much given that a mass shooter is mentally ill. The point of contention is what does "mass" mean.

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mjlawson 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

More like that it's politically defined when the numbers become inconvenient.