Dayton mass shooting

[Alefroth]

I made a comment based off of a linked tweet that claimed hundreds of millions of women were 'disenfranchised disaffected' which I suppose means all of the women in the US if we are talking about hundreds of millions...since this only happens in the US.

Right, because it was the number of disenfranchised women she claimed that you took issue with, not her implication that men were the problem.

[Enough]

In related news, Confusion: Biden offers sympathy for the ‘tragic events in Houston today and also in Michigan’:

Former Vice President Joe Biden misstated the locations of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, while speaking to donors at a high-dollar fundraiser in San Diego on Sunday night.

Biden, 76, mistakenly referred to the shootings as “the tragic events in Houston today and also in Michigan the day before," but later corrected himself, according to a pool report. Biden seemingly confused Houston for El Paso and Michigan for Ohio when speaking to donors about the shootings.

In the same related news,

Mayor of Dayton Nan Whaley: "I've heard that [President Trump's] coming Wednesday but I have not gotten a call. And you know he might be going to Toledo, I don't know."

[Skinypupy]

Independent

Donald Trump has blamed what he called "Fake News" for stoking "anger and rage" in the wake of two gun attacks that killed a total of 29 people, one of which is being treated as a case of domestic terrorism.

In a tweet on Monday morning, the president said the media had a responsibility to safeguard "life and safety" in the United States.

Translated: "You'd better be nicer to me or my supporters will go shoot more people!"

[ImLawBoy]

I know it's not easy with this type of thing and there tends to be a lot of overlap, but we should probably try to keep the more overtly political stuff in R&P and save the EBG threads for news about the shootings.

[Alefroth]

Apparently the gunman and his sister drove to the area together and then split up after parking. She was one of the first people shot. He had to have realized he was shooting his sister, right?

[LordMortis]

Apparently the gunman and his sister drove to the area together and then split up after parking. She was one of the first people shot. He had to have realized he was shooting his sister, right?

The radio this morning believed murdering his sister was his intent. They did not source anything so I don't know why they believed this to be true other than they were working with the same facts you stated.

[Alefroth]

That could be. With the news of the rape list he kept at school, it's looking like an incel type flameout.

[Anonymous Bosch]

An interesting op-ed, worth reading in its entirety, on the commonalities of mass shootings and what can be done to prevent them.

We have studied every mass shooting since 1966. Here’s what we’ve learned about the shooters:

In the last week, more than 30 people have died in three separate mass shootings in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. We believe that analyzing and understanding data about who commits such massacres can help prevent more lives being lost.

For two years, we’ve been studying the life histories of mass shooters in the United States for a project funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. We’ve built a database dating back to 1966 of every mass shooter who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces, and places of worship since 1999. We’ve interviewed incarcerated perpetrators and their families, shooting survivors and first responders. We’ve read media and social media, manifestos, suicide notes, trial transcripts and medical records.

Our goal has been to find new, data-driven pathways for preventing such shootings. Although we haven’t found that mass shooters are all alike, our data do reveal four commonalities among the perpetrators of nearly all the mass shootings we studied.

First, the vast majority of mass shooters in our study experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and/or severe bullying. The trauma was often a precursor to mental health concerns, including depression, anxiety, thought disorders or suicidality.

Second, practically every mass shooter we studied had reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting. They often had become angry and despondent because of a specific grievance. For workplace shooters, a change in job status was frequently the trigger. For shooters in other contexts, relationship rejection or loss often played a role. Such crises were, in many cases, communicated to others through a marked change in behavior, an expression of suicidal thoughts or plans, or specific threats of violence.

Third, most of the shooters had studied the actions of other shooters and sought validation for their motives. People in crisis have always existed. But in the age of 24-hour rolling news and social media, there are scripts to follow that promise notoriety in death. Societal fear and fascination with mass shootings partly drives the motivation to commit them. Hence, as we have seen in the last week, mass shootings tend to come in clusters. They are socially contagious. Perpetrators study other perpetrators and model their acts after previous shootings. Many are radicalized online in their search for validation from others that their will to murder is justified.

Fourth, the shooters all had the means to carry out their plans. Once someone decides life is no longer worth living and that murdering others would be a proper revenge, only means and opportunity stand in the way of another mass shooting. Is an appropriate shooting site accessible? Can the would-be shooter obtain firearms? In 80% of school shootings, perpetrators got their weapons from family members, according to our data. Workplace shooters tended to use handguns they legally owned. Other public shooters were more likely to acquire them illegally.

[Zitterbacke]

I know it's not easy with this type of thing and there tends to be a lot of overlap, but we should probably try to keep the more overtly political stuff in R&P and save the EBG threads for news about the shootings.

Right, but here is something related to gaming at least.

[Isgrimnur]

Whose week was it to watch Jack Thompson?

[naednek]

Whose week was it to watch Jack Thompson?

Not It!

[Skinypupy]

Jack Thompson?

Thank god.

[Jaymon]

Every single time I am reminded of The Onion, and despite their satirical slant, they got it absolutely spot on. Way back in May 2014

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

[Anonymous Bosch]

Frank Shyong of the LA Times echoes my thoughts on the necessity of denying mass-murdering shooters the media notoriety they inevitably desire and, sadly, typically receive.

Column: Mass shooters seek notoriety, and we, the media, provide it. Is there another way?

Tom Teves has told the story of losing his son Alex in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater so many times over the last seven years that the details come automatically.

His son Alex was in the third-to-last row. Techno music blasted in the shooter’s headphones to hide the screams of the injured. It was July 20, 2012, and Alex was sitting next to the woman he had already told his parents that he planned to marry.

Teves wishes he could stop talking about it. It’s a story about grandchildren he never got to hold and memories he never got to make, with no happy ending or healing or lessons to share.

And at the end of the retelling, what he’s left with is another year to pass without Alex, who was 24 when he died, studying to be a counselor. He says it’s like a 100-pound weight he carries everywhere he goes. He can get better at lifting it, but the load never gets lighter.

“People want to hear puppies and kittens and silver linings,” Teves said. “But there’s no silver lining to our story. Alex is dead. For the rest of his life, and for the rest of our life.”

But every time a mass shooting is in the news — as in recent weeks when shooters attacked the Gilroy Garlic Festival, a Walmart in El Paso and a nightlife area in Dayton, Ohio, and left more than 30 dead — he tells the story as many times as he can stand.

“It’s too late for my son,” he said. “The goal now is to save someone else’s.”

After their son’s death, Teves and his wife, Caren, launched an organization called No Notoriety with the goal of denying mass shooters the fame they often seek. They try to persuade media organizations not to publish the names of the shooters or photos that would make them look impressive or intimidating.

These recommendations, which have been adopted in some form by the FBI and many other law enforcement agencies, are based on a growing body of research that says shooters are influenced and inspired by media coverage of other shooters — and that media attention is one of their main goals.

“These perpetrators are specifically seeking a legacy,” said Adam Lankford, a professor of criminology at the University of Alabama.

One study of the deadliest 31 mass shootings since 1966 found that 87% of mass shooters expressed an explicit or circumstantial desire for fame and attention. Another study found that many mass shooters used previous mass shooters as inspiration, role models and idols, fueled by reporting on their backgrounds.

In 2015, researchers documented a contagion effect for mass shootings, offering mathematical proof that mass shootings incited subsequent mass shootings. They calculated that there’s a heightened chance of mass shootings for a 13-day period after one occurs, and that one school shooting incites an average of .22 new incidents. Intensive media coverage played a role, the study says.

A review of mass-shooting coverage by the media also revealed disproportionate attention paid to the shooter — 16 times more images of shooters are published than are those of their victims — according to a recent study.

Those images, and the reams of content we produce about these incidents, fuel a long-standing online subculture in places like Tumblr, Facebook, DeviantArt and YouTube. In these forums, devotees of mass murderers (the Sandy Hook shooter was one) discuss strategies, share articles and debate murderers as if they were favorite athletes.

These spaces incubate future shooters. And repeated media exposure to violent acts breaks down the taboo of killing in the mind of a potential mass shooter, said Peter Langman, an expert on the psychology of mass killers.

“We’re seeing a rise because the phenomenon is feeding on itself,” Langman said. “Every time the taboo is broken, it makes it easier for the next person to cross that threshold.”

This research presents a disturbing challenge to journalism’s values. The science tells us to report on shooters without drama and avoid lionizing or humanizing their actions, which can turn them into antiheroes. But our principles say that truth, drama, action and character are the basic building blocks of stories.

We rank the shootings in order of magnitude to give readers a sense of their historical significance and scale. But research says those rankings, by number of dead and wounded, are treated like video game scoreboards by potential shooters, who then kill more so they can rank more highly.

Every time a mass shooting occurs, reporters come together in an incredible display of teamwork, dedication and sacrifice to write a ticktock, an objective, vivid and comprehensive account of everything we know about the shooting. It serves the public to have a verified record of what happened and helps hold officials accountable to the truth.

Then we send our best storytellers to uncover the motivations of the shooter and share the pain of the victims’ families. Because in the days after a horrific event, a nation in mourning wonders why — and it’s journalism’s job to answer.

But research says these stories, which are often gripping and contain descriptions of graphic violence, fuel the fantasies of the next mass shooter. The more compelling and widely read these stories are, the greater the imagined payoff for a mass shooting.

How do you tell a story about a mass shooting when research tells you that storytelling itself is part of the problem?

[msteelers]

I'm open to the idea of new guidelines being implemented by the media when it comes to how we handle stories of mass shootings. It happened with suicides. Studies showed that stories about suicide influenced others to commit suicide. There was a lot of research done, and the industry adopted new rules that changed how they covered suicide. Guidelines included things like withholding the exact way that the person killed themselves, avoid sensationalizing suicide, and make sure to focus on the impact of suicide by those left behind. These are guidelines that were easy to follow, had a real impact, and still allowed journalists to do their jobs.

The problem I see is that while many argue mass shooters need to be covered differently, they don't have any realistic approach as to how.

[Jaymann]

That Allen Smithee really gets around.