The Pile On Blaming Video Games For Texas Shooting Begins
from the ready-fire-aim dept
Now that we’re encountering mass shootings in America on what appears to basically be a weekly or so clip, all the tired, made-up, bullshit talking points that get trotted out to shift blame are coming off as even more tired and made-up than they did previously. We’ve now had three mass shootings that have been all over the media in the past 3 weeks — while, by definition, there have already been over 200 mass shootings that have occurred just this year in America — all of which used a common AR-15 long-rifle weapon. Beyond that, there aren’t a ton of similarities in the shootings. One appears to have been a racist attack on an African American neighborhood, another the random desire of a sick individual to specifically shoot up an elementary school, while the most recent in Tusla thus far looks to be a more targeted killing event for reasons unknown at the time of this writing.
But, again, all three incidents have two things in common. First, multiple firearms were used, but all included an “assault-style” weapon (yes, I realize this term is problematic). Second, the pro-gun crowd has retreated to those tired talking points I mentioned in the opening. It was social media. It was rap music. And, because of course, it was video games.
And while a certain segment of the popluation will flail about to blame literally anything other than access to firearms for these gun deaths, the pile on to blame video games has begun. It began with Texas’ Dept. of Public Safety Chief Steven McGraw, who first acknowledged that police officers in the building did a whole lot of nothing while children were murdered until Border Patrol showed up, but then pivoted to the evil of “cyber gaming.”
This has to stop. The link between video gaming and mass shootings not only hasn’t been proven, but there are plenty of studies showing the potential for gaming, even violent gaming, to defuse the desire of otherwise potential shooters. To be clear, that isn’t proven either, but that isn’t really the point. The point is that there is zero reason to mention video games in this context at all, even as a throwaway comment such as McGraw’s. Other countries have violent video games and, ostensibly, whatever “cyber gaming” is. And yet they don’t have our mass shooting or gun violence problems.
But McGraw wasn’t alone. Ted Cruz made his way to the NRA Leadership Forum for a jaunty speech in which he also blamed violent video games, while the crowd he was clearly attempting to absolve of any responsibility nodded along.
I can’t make this point enough: there are responsible, thoughtful, caring gun owners in America. I have personal relationships with some. But there is nothing about trying to scapegoat video games instead of giving an inch on access to guns that is responsible. I’ve said this before, but if the NRA and their ilk simply believe that they want their toys more than they want to compromise to stop the deaths of their fellow citizens, including children, I really do wish they’d just say so. It would be horrible, but at least it would be rational.
Instead, monied interests produce fingerpointing at irrelevant targets. Perhaps we can coin that a “mass blaming”, whenever these talking points get trotted out after a mass shooting.
Filed Under: blame, gun control, mass shootings, politicians, video games
Comments on “The Pile On Blaming Video Games For Texas Shooting Begins”
See the positive side.
Nobody is taking the scapegoating serious enough that we get proposals about background checks for video game purchases. Or requiring people to register for being allowed to purchase games where opponents are killed.
And video games are not protected by the Second Amendment. So it is pretty clear that those who blame video games know perfectly well that they are full of it. Because if they believed in their bullshit, they would actually propose “solutions” based on it. But it is very clear that they are only doing smoke screen.
Re:
Even if someone proposed that, given that games now enjoy First Amendment protections, I doubt any such proposal would become anything but.
Re:
Nobody is taking the scapegoating serious enough that we get proposals about background checks for video game purchases.
Age checks against ESRB ratings are already doing that, fool.
Or requiring people to register for being allowed to purchase games where opponents are killed.
Two words: fuck off.
Re:
You’re right, it’s protected by the FIRST Amendment.
and exactly relavent to this discussion is This SCOTUS case (ironically decided by Roberts)
Re:
That’s the same way you can tell they’re not serious about any of these other scapegoats. “Mental health” always comes up, yet I don’t recall any serious proposals from Republican politicians to revamp the US mental health system.
Re: Re:
Because the crazy don’t have good lobbyists or make significant “contributions”
Re: Re:
‘The problem is mental health, not guns!’
‘Okay, so does that mean you’re in favor of providing financial aid to people who currently cannot afford mental health treatment and assistance? You could call it Medicaid or Medicare or something like that.’
‘Absolutely not, that’s socialism!’
Re: Re: Re:
And at the same time they have no problem with their medical coverage from the ACA…
Re: Re: Re:2
To be fair, ‘Obamacare’ was originally conceived of by a Republican. They only gutted it because it was independently created and written into a bill by a Democrat.
Correlations?
In the Netherlands more people die in bicycle accidents than by gunfire. Not surprisingly if you know that we have on average 1.3 bicycles per person. (and hardly any firearms.)
Speaking about the US with 1.3 firearms per person it must be violent video games that kill, or school lunches.
Re:
In the U.S., if you allowed your children to go to school by bicycle, you’d get a visit from child protective services.
But you can buy them a gun as a birthday present.
Re: Re: Traffic safety near schools
The Netherlands has an extensive network of bike roads and paths that keep cyclists separated from the faster traffic. That keeps cycling safe most of the time.
However when I look at parents dropping off their children at school, triple-parking their cars I see how they make the traffic near schools too dangerous for young bikers. 🙁
Re: Re: Re:
I think you are a little confused at what you are seeing, you probably need to go through the line to know exactly what is going on. Carpool or car rider lines are strictly organized so that they can operate quickly, efficiently and safely. Let me tell you, if you move your car or don’t move your car when you are directed, you are going to incur a wrath of crossing guards, teachers, administrators, and other parents. They don’t care if you’re new, they will tear you a new one. And if your kid wants to fool around as kids are known to do, or they drop something they need between the seat, and they hold up the line, you better get that shit in check fast, or your ears are going to ring from the horns blaring at you (yes, it was the child who was doing something you said 10x to stop doing that caused them to lose that book report under the seat but they are honking at your ass, not the kid)
And even if they know you, you must have the placard with your kids name or license to pickup your child- which they never paid any attention to when I was a kid. I could have gone with anyone I wanted, and I often waited outside all by myself for my mom who could be an hour late or more sometimes. I was less than 15 minutes late the first day to pick up my daughter because I had the time wrong and they had already called every number and the emergency contacts! She’s only 4 and in preschool, but I’m told this is how it is for elementary school. I’ve heard busses won’t drop kids off without someone there to meet them until they reach a certain age either.
Slightly OT, I was shocked that Uvalde elementary was freely accessible from the outside, all the elementary schools in DE & MD have had security that requires someone to let you in since Sandy Hook. Then we heard that a teacher had propped the door open, meaning the doors were as secure as the staff was compliant, essentially. Then of course we heard that wasn’t quite accurate, and eventually that the door had been pulled shut as that teacher called 911, but that it didn’t engage the lock. Some how the most basic security on the doors was defective or deactivated, and I have suspicion on the latter. I’ve worked in secured buildings that required a badge, and if the wind caught the door, or somebody stood holding it open too long, it triggered an alarm. And there were multiple doors that you needed to swipe your badge before you could reach any area with staff or sensitive information. Not complicated.
In addition to the failure of the outside doors, based on several accounts from kids, teachers had to use a key to lock their classroom from the inside, which makes no sense to me. That’s how the shooter got into the classroom, the teacher that was ultimately killed, was struggling with getting the key. Why would they have a system requiring a key to lock the classroom from inside, and no quick way to gain access from the outside, like a badge pass system? Who designed this garbage? Who approved it, & how many people held the position to change it and didn’t? It’s not rocket surgery.
Re: Re: Re:2
Oh goodness, please don’t anyone think I’m blaming doors for the death, it’s the killer and easy access to guns. I was just noticing that basic security that can at least slow down an attacker was a failure, which contributed to the delay in getting to those who might still have been saved.
This cascade of failures is just so severe that I find myself wondering if there’s malice instead of just staggering incompetence. Plus, this little shit, he had money. He had at least $5K worth of gear, and the newest, fanciest Iphone, but only worked in fast food for a few months. The little we have heard about him is that he was generally an asshole and a demanding brat, so I don’t get how he didn’t make the retailer he bought the guns from feel suspicious. (It looks like the online receipt was really just a shopping cart print out, but again, not getting straight story so who knows). I mean, I’m not the conspiracy type, but anyone else thinks some of this might point to someone else being involved?
Re: Re: Re:2
Your use of the word “mom” indicates that you’re American, whereas MathFox’s knowledge of road systems in the Netherlands indicates that he’s Dutch. You are aware that different countries have different systems, right, and that your experience at schools may therefore be markedly different to their experience at schools?
Re: Re:
I mean it’s been a minute since I was in high school but I’m pretty sure that’s not true.
Re: Re: Re:
You’d be surprised how many there are in the US who thinks that letting the kids walk or bicycle to/from school is the same as child neglect.
Re: Re: Re:2
You’re kidding, right? Of course it’s child abuse to let your kid go anywhere alone with all those shooters out there! Won’t somone please think of the children? /s
Re: Re: Re:2
I’d be surprised if you produced any provable examples of CPS visiting a parent for that reason and no other.
Re: Re: Re:3
Literally the first example when googling about it:
Re: Re: Re:3
Google Free Range Mom…
Hell there is a story or 3 on here on the topic of CPS being sent after parents who checks notes felt their children could be in the world unsupervised.
Re: Re: Re:3
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arrested-for-letting-a-9-year-old-play-at-the-park-alone/374436/
Its Free Range Kids…
https://www.freerangekids.com/
'Any factor but that!'
Forget about the guns, apparently we need to be super concerned about the video game developers who have somehow managed to create literal mind control in the form of games that turn perfectly sane and rational people into stone-cold killers and force them to go out and kill a bunch of people.
Also I am ever so glad that the only source of violent images and messages people are exposed to come in the form of video games, I mean can you imagine how insanely dishonest it would be to blame video games for desensitizing people to violence with the existence of violent movies, books and tv shows, ones where the heroes are more often than not violent and framed in a good light for it?
Re:
On the less fictional (in some aspects) side, there is the general US culture, some leading exames being police behavior and military adventurism, both of which are highly praised and seen as something to which to aspire.
Re:
While ignoring the NRA who are convincing them that a gun is the solution to all problems.
/very mild sarcasm
As far as I’m aware, there has never been a direct causal link: “This crime happened because of the perpetrator’s reaction to playing violent video games.”
However, Sports Riots exist, and the causal link is there: “This crime happened because of the perpetrator’s reaction to a sports contest.”
So… if video games are the problem in this case, then sports are the problem as well right? Let’s ban football! /s
Re:
This is the U.S. Just wait until we get “this mass-shooting happened because it was more cost-effective training for “Red-Blooded Stop-The-Steal Pro Edition” than in-game purchases would have allowed”.
Cal them what they are
This term should not be problematic, it accurately describes what these weapons were designed for. It’s telling how defensive owners get about this.
Re:
For reference:
the term “Assault rifle” is
1) selective fire (AR-15’s are not, even with bump stocks, they are still semi-automatic rifles)
2) Military Specifications – Mil-spec weapons are generally not able to be sold to the public, for obvious reasons.
Re: Re:
AR-15 was designed as an assault rifle, removing the selective fire to produce a civilian version doesn’t alter that fact.
Re: Re:
Why did you switch to “assault rifle” when the original term used was “‘assault-style’ weapon”?
Re: Re:
Says who?
“Mil-spec” is an abused marketing term that is supposed to suggest superior quality or ability, but the reality is that it often means built in quantity to a fixed cost. Apart from the lack of full auto fire (which soldiers rarely use) there’s not much difference between an AR-15 and an M4.
Re: Re: Re:
Perhaps ‘mil spec’ is meant as “military specification in our ideal world where the gun-toting army/marine/navy/air force personnel have an unlimited budget for armaments.” 😉
Re: Re: Re:2
Mil-spec, military specification.
A set of design requirements.
Has nothing to do with kill-ability and everything to do with accuracy and durability.
Re: Re: Re:3
SA80 Flaws.
Re: Re: Re:4
Nobody said they were good at testing.
Only what the what the term stands for.
Of course it’s easier to blame video games for shootings than to bring in laws that ban under 21 year olds from buying rifles or bring in red flag laws to take guns away from people who have serious mental problems, no other country makes it easy for an 18 year old to buy ar15 automatic rifles,
And of course video games are popular in most country’s in the world
They've got a point.
To this day I still play Fable II and Fable III on the Xbox 360, and it’s caused me to regularly run up to random people, do a gymnastic flip and land on my knees on their shoulders, and then grip their heads between my thighs before fatally breaking their necks with a sharp twist of my hips. The only reason I haven’t yet been caught is that I’m very, very good at hiding the bodies. 😏
Re:
Can I please vote this as funny and insightful?
remove the legal protection for manufacturers and retailers
Let capitalism sort it out. Let the parents sue the manufacturers for loss of a child. What’s the damage on a six year old? Enough to make them not want to sell you an assault weapon?
Re:
Losing a six-year old child in the U.S. will save you hundreds of thousands of dollars. If they can prove that the child may only have lived that long due to an “every sperm is sacred” kind of law, they might bill you for the favor.
Re: Re:
what the actual fuck is wrong with you
Re: Re: Re:
Obvious sarcasm is obvious.
We have video games and social media too
Australia more or less has the same violent games as Americans can access, and the same social media, music, and whatever else you might want to think about. Many other countries do too. What they don’t have is mass shootings, and a complicit media completely unwilling to call out the causes of those mass shootings.
Re:
The causes for mass shootings are not easy gun access. They are much more varied. Easy gun access is the enabler for mass shootings.
Now while you are still working on the causes of mass shootings with lacklustre success, it might be sort of a good idea to suspend enabling them.
Because it’s in everyone’s interest if the causes will express themselves in less massively fatal manners.
I mean, we all know the mantra “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. But if people kill people, giving people guns may not be the smartest move.
Frankly you are all wrong.
Watching this from across the pond, the blindness of both sides is staggering.
Of course guns play a big part. Look at Australia; they solved their mass shooting epidemic with strict gun control. It works, if you actually ban guns and get them off the streets, instead of banning scary-LOOKING guns like the democrats do.
Just to play devil’s advocate here: look at Switzerland. This is a country full of rifles, but there’s still no school shootings. Clearly weapons isn’t the WHOLE problem, though getting rid of them would be a good fucking start. I’d like to suggest that maybe, just fucking maybe, the problem involves mental health issues resulting from socio-economical problems.
This is only a symptom of a much deeper problem that the US refuses to address: your children are fucking miserable. They are locked away in a suburban nightmare where they can’t even walk to school, the park, or their friend’s house. They have no independence. They don’t get enough exercise because you have to drive them through the suburban nightmare you built. The schools are underfunded. The funding is local, so rich areas get rich schools, and everyone else is fucked. Your teachers are underpaid, disinterested and at the end of their rope. Bullying is rampant. No one gets a college education unless they have rich parents or spend 4 years getting shot at in Kabul. You are STILL using a first past the post voting system, so you remain stuck with a 2-party system where nothing ever changes. You have no public healthcare, and it seems your children are in desperate need of counceling. People can’t afford insulin. You have created an opium addiction chrisis among the white, while jailing all the blacks and latinos for smoking a joint. You lead the world in incarcerations (by a fucking LOT, despite competing with china, russia, etc.) Only in america is prison considered “an industry.” WTF!?
The situation is so desperate you have fucking POLICE stationed IN your schools in a desperate attempt to keep the peace. This is not normal! I don’t think even China or Russia has fucking police in the schools! Children are ignorant and naive, but they are not fucking stupid: they learn, and they learn fast. They know they don’t have a future. They understand how fucked they are, even if you don’t. Are you surprised they lash out?
How is it what no one in America can see just how utterly fucked you all are? How can you look at this and then rail against “big government” and taxes? Don’t you all understand that it takes fucking money and organisation to build a future for your country and your children? Get it through your heads: the free market will not fix this for you; it’s not a deity. Stop worshipping it. There’s a reason why your schools are about as good as your god damn broadband coverage.
Fuck.
Re:
Amen
Re:
A lot of the developed world is still very much stuck with their heads firmly in asses. They largely still think that the old methods of “study hard, get a decent paying job, be set for life” will work out, and if you haven’t “made it” yet you must have fucked up in life somewhere. There are some who realized that maybe, just maybe, rising costs of living, incredible mental tolls, the depreciating value of educational qualifications amongst other extenuating factors means that it’s even harder for the later generations than ever, but it’s very much a minority. Why fix problems when you can blame the millennials for their TikToks and avocado toasts? The US makes the news for their access to firearms, sure, but if you gave a place like South Korea similar access it wouldn’t surprise me if their shooting stats were similar; they just top the world in suicide rates instead of gun deaths.
A “fuck you, got mine” mentality, and that extends to the children. Notice that when a child can’t be leveraged for being a source of money through their parents, or yet another political talking point, or a benchmark for traditional conservative standards of success, they’re largely thought of as nuisances. It’s not a surprise kids know how fucked they are when their parents and their parents’ peers are desperately trying to maintain their version of a status quo at everyone’s expense.
I’d be very very surprised if the OP comment doesn’t make it to insightful for the week.
Re:
The UK uses First Past the Post voting too, hypocrite.
Re: Re:
———-the point
O – Your head
|
/\
Re: Re: Re:
Looking in a mirror, dude?
But... what about the Doors?
If we aren’t blaming the latest Celebrity Shooting Incident (that is, a shooting incident that made the evening news, vs those that don’t get celebrity coverage) on video games, we’re blaming it on the Doors. Though, for the life of me, I have no idea what Jim Morrison has to do with it. Maybe that ebil satanic music?
You’d think that folks who are worried about having real guns be taken away wouldn’t be so quick to call for taking away virtual ones, but here we are, having watched it happen for three decades…
Re:
But there is no constitutional Amendment like
It's the guns...
The problem is “video games”!
And it’s the guns.
The problem is “mental illness”!
And it’s the guns.
The problem is “violent movies”!
And it’s the guns.
The problem is “not enough praying”!
And it’s the guns.
The problem is “a culture of violence”!
And it’s the guns.
Take the guns out, take the guns away, get rid of the guns — and you still have all those problems. Yes, that’s true.
But you don’t have the gun violence, the mass shootings, the 100+ a day ‘ordinary non-news gun deaths’.
It’s the guns. The problem is the guns.
Death Cult gonna Death Cult.
Why are we paying to protect these millionaires, who’s net worth MAGICALLY jumps up once they take office despite us not paying them that much?
Are children less important that those taking money to vote against our best interests?
I wonder if an armed nut job made it into the halls of Congress at the same rate as we have school shootings if they would accept thoughts and prayers being the only response beyond promises of having drill so they learn the right way to hide from gunmen.
Its not video games.
Its not lack of religion.
Its not rap music.
Its not anything they want to blame.
It is a deadly combination of the gutting of mental health services & their own bullshit that keeps people buying guns as fast as they can so they don’t get attacked by the government.
Your leaders are taking money from a political lobby that benefits from the lies that sell more guns & ammo… and all its costing you is childrens lives.
Maybe stop being such self centered assholes & consider that if your rights help cause body counts, perhaps those rights need some guardrails on them.
How many dead kids is it gonna take?
I’m terrified what the number might actually be… y’all let 1,000,000+ people die from a preventable disease because masking and the vaccine were to hard to do to save other peoples lives.
So cough it up, how many more dead kids do we need before you MIGHT consider that whats happening is bad and maybe some steps should be taken?
Stop pretending there is an actual debate here, kids are dying and there is refusal to consider any serious things to try and stop it.
How many little coffins do we need to plant?
Tell us the fucking number you assholes.
Re:
Geez, with context spellings like yours, I’d hate to see the briefs you’ve filed in your career. o.0
Re: Re: spelling
Maybe the post is from someone who gets upset after a school massacre? I can’t imagine why, just putting it out there…..
Re: Re:
Despite the hype, I am not nor have I ever been a lawyer.
Re: Re: Re:
So why were you in court during the Prenda case? Were you one of those the company tried to defraud?
Re: Re: Re:2
I never appeared in or attended court during the Pretenda saga.
They did file lawsuits asking a court to unmask myself and others that went no where, and they also mislead several courts about my actions & statements. My tweets, posts, comments have appeared in several courts across the nation but never myself.
Nope, I have never been the target of a copyright troll operation, as I have said from the very beginning…
I just hate bullies.
That also goes along with the statement
‘I never said I was a good guy, I just never shook down senior citizens for their social security checks.’
If I was the player you seem to think I was in this fucstercluck the feebs would have found me to get a statement to put before the court for sentencing… as far as I am aware they never even looked.
Which in turn feeds into my always a bridesmaid never the bride ego complex issue.
Re: Re: Re:3
What you are saying now stands in complete contrast to what you implied a couple of weeks ago.
Re: Re: Re:4
News to me…
Would love a link because while I appear completely untrustworthy, I would never make any claims like what you say I did so…
Show me a link.
Re: Re: Re:5
Link me to the page where your comments posted more recently than 2013 show up and I will.
Re: Re: Re:6
Is there some kind of problem of going to the profile-page and clicking the very obvious Latest Comments-tab?
Or where you confused by the fact that the profile-page defaults to Latest Posts, ie posts featured on TD?
Internet may not be for you if you can’t grok tabs on websites.
Re: Re: Re:7
Is there some kind of problem of going to the profile-page and clicking the very obvious Latest Comments-tab?
“Obvious” isn’t the same as “working”, shit for brains.
Or [were] you confused by the fact that the profile-page defaults to Latest Posts, i.e., posts featured on TD?
Maybe you’re the one confused by the simple statement that nothing posted more recently than 2013 is showing up on TAC’s profile page.
Internet may not be for you if you can’t grok that essential components of websites can break.
Re: Re: Re:8
This is definitely a you problem since you don’t understand that posts and comments are different things located on different tabs available on the profile-page. Use your pointy-thingy-device and click on Latest Comments.
Re: Re: Re:9
Looking in a mirror, dude? “Point thingy” (“mouse and icon” to the better educated) doesn’t do much good on a broken website. When did you last try clicking on either tab? No, wait. Don’t tell me. You didn’t know that there’s more than one tab because you’ve never been to the page in question.
Re: Re: Re:10
And here is the proof of your ineptitude because trying to make some kind of comeback which amounts to that I didn’t know there’s more than one tab after I told you there are is just embarrassing.
But what you don’t seem to grasp is that it’s only you complaining about not seeing the comment history (btw, TAC has at this point 10863 registered comments per his profile page). This indicates that it’s still a you problem and you can’t accept that.
There was a point in using the wording I did which you just proved.
Re: Re: Re:11
There was a point in using the wording I did which you just proved.
If you mean the other AC proved the point that you hold others in contempt because you perceive them as having intellectual disability, you are correct.
Re: Re: Re:8
It works fine for me. Comments prior to 2013 from TAC:
https://www.techdirt.com/user/jdoe668/comments/page/400/
Re: Re: Re:9
How does a link to comments prior to 2013 help when what was requested was comments posted more recently than that, Rocky II?
Re: Re: Re:10
Oh, well in that case, comments after 2013:
https://www.techdirt.com/user/jdoe668/comments/
I mean… you could have figured that out, right?
Re: Re: Re:11
You couldn’t.
Re: Re: Re:12
Oh, sick burn brah!
Re: Re: Re:6
What Rocky said.
And if you remember a specific phrase the site is indexed by google so “that anonymous coward” “phrase” site:techdirt.com would jump you right to it.
I have an inkling about the comment you are talking about but imma think you didn’t parse it correctly.
I made a comment about a court no being defrauded in the latest tiktok lawsuit, but thats based on my logic.
I made a comment about suing someone for defamation but it was from the office of Harder, Daddi, & Harder so satire.
This could be it…
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/11/malibu-media-finally-paid-wrongfully-accused-six-figures-via-collections-agency/#comment-2186133
I recounted a story about pretenda antics in response to someone that said pretenda never took aim at the judges.
I don’t see it as me implying I was a lawyer or a target (well of the extortion).
Pretenda “knew” I had to be one of the lawyers they were up against, but I’ve always been clear that I am not a lawyer.
I helped fiance the trip for first person reporting from a hearing, which is how I knew that Pretenda demanded the judge make everyone in the gallery identify themselves.
They claimed on and off that I was one of several lawyers, its that hubris thing that some kids on the internet totally couldn’t have unraveled their scam.
ProTip: A bunch of meddling kids on the internet took them down.
Re: Re: Re:7
What Rocky said.
Then you’re as dumb as Rocky. Either that, or you don’t know about the bugs on this site, in which case, please refer back to my first sentence in this comment.
Re: Re: Re:8
Have you disabled javascipt and created broken sites for yourself.
Re: Re: Re:9
It’s not possible for me to disable javascript on my browser. I can block cookies (when visiting specific websites), but that’s all. The fact that you would immediately jump to that rather than acknowledge Techdirt’s issues is interesting, though.
Re: Re: Re:10
Profile page is working for me, on a raspberry p1 400, Manjaro and Firefox. Just saying its not working helps nobody, with operating system and browser information. With that somebody may be able to help.
Re: Re: Re:8
So here’s the thing, either you have Javascript disabled which makes you look stupid complaining about a site not working or not displaying information that everyone else can access, or, you have problems clicking on a tab clearly saying “Latest Comments” which also makes you look stupid when you double down on it.
There is also the possibility that you are using a browser that doesn’t follow current HTML-standards and have problems rendering pages, but that also makes you look stupid because you are complaining about issues that you yourself are responsible for.
As I mentioned in a comment above, this is entirely a you problem.
Re: Re: Re:9
Or there’s a third option: the site is indeed broken and you are a Techdirt shill. Oh, well. Better to look “stupid” to the undereducated than be paid by a website that relies on sales for funding.
Re: Re: Re:10
Typing “Prenda” in the Techdirt search bar under “Comments” does, oddly enough, only bring up articles from 2019 latest. At least when I attempted it. But if you’re trying to go back on articles mentioning Prenda – specifically about the articles where Prenda tried to unmask commenters, TAC included, by submitted trawled records of comments on multiple sites – actually finding those articles isn’t difficult. The /tag/prenda-law category still works fine.
I’ll admit that the comment search function hasn’t been the most ideal even before the site revamp. But I fail to see how any of this was relevant to the topic of blaming video games for social ills. Sounds like you wanted to poke at TAC for his involvement with Prenda’s downfall, for no reason other than inexplicable John Steele apologism… which is a pretty strange hill to die on, if nothing else.
Re: Re: Re:11
Sounds like you wanted to poke at TAC for his involvement with Prenda’s downfall…
Sounds like you lack reading comprehension, an attention span, or both.
Re: Re: Re:12
Sweetheart, I’m not the one bitching about TAC being or not being a lawyer harassed by Prenda on an article about blaming video games for mass shootings.
Re: Re: Re:13
It took me a moment…
John just register an account pookie.
Mumbo Jumbo Chicken Gumbo
How was prison?
Re: Re: Re:13
Lokk back before that. It’s only one sentence. Really proves the short attention span charge.
Re: Re: Re:14
Again… you went from whining about perceived context spellings in briefs, to going all in on insisting that TAC must be a lawyer defrauded by Prenda. Now why is that, when the Prenda Law debacle has more or less died by Steele and Hansmeier’s imprisonments in the late 2010s?
Re: Re: Re:8
I can click the box and see my comments, so broken website isn’t broken for me.
Re: Re: Re:3
Pretenda claimed all sorts of insane shit about the lawyers they were up against, up to and including accusing me of identity theft.
A very clear implication that you were one of the lawyers Prenda was facing, wouldn’t you agree?
Re: Re: Re:4
Ohhh oh no sweetie… you weren’t holding your I’m a complete dumbass sign, you know you’re supposed to make sure its visible all the time.
If that was your take away from that series of comments, Imma suggest you get your water tested for lead.
While not the best phrasing (and lets see you started off by bashing how I write things) turning 1 comment into I secretly am a lawyer or made people think I was purposely… yeah no.
Thanks for playing, buhbye now, grownups are talking.
Re: Re: Re:5
You weren’t holding your “I’m a complete dumbass” sign. You know you’re supposed to make sure it’s visible all the time.
Right back atcha. If you can’t see the implication in your own words, then buh-bye. The educated people are talking now.
Re: Re: Re:6
The preponderance of available evidence points to that even “educated people” can be stupid fuckers. Case in point, you.
Re: Re: Re:7
I like your mirror! Where can I buy one?
Re: Re: Re:4
The fall of Paul Hansmeier really tore a gaping hole in the void you call a heart, didn’t it John Smith?
Re: Any price is trivial so long as someone else pays it
So cough it up, how many more dead kids do we need before you MIGHT consider that whats happening is bad and maybe some steps should be taken?
I suspect it would be the same answer that was give in response to covid by those freaking out over things like mask mandates and vaccines: ‘No body count is too high so long as it’s someone else dying’.
Re: Re:
What’s worse: Even if the death of a child at the hands of a mass shooter happens to a Republican lawmaker, that Republican would likely still put the NRA’s “shut the fuck up about gun control” money above actual human lives.
Re: Re: Re:
A piece of fabric to try to slow the spread of a deadly disease was to much imposition on them, they don’t care of their leaders are bought & paid for by outside forces, just so long as they can get more guns to protect themselves during the revolution thats been coming for the last 40 years.
Re:
The tragic thing is, Im very convinced the US either cant or wont understand a running tally.
Seems very much like we’re content to see millions die over time and shrug our shoulders.
Though what I fear most is that if somehow a gunman managed to kill even a million in one incident we might still only muster that same shrug.
Its very sad, I wish we as a society would get our shit together.
The tipping point is within sight.....
Let me link to one of several posted videos of Rep. Eric Swalwell’s outspoken demands of the Republicans in the House:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MVulaW4Rec
It’s about 4:42 seconds long (plus some conjecture on the part of the host, afterwards, take that as you might wish). But you gotta hand it to Swalwell, he’s pulling very few punches; even calls out Jim Jordan directly to the man’s face.
He does stop just short of openly accusing the Republicans of accepting bribes from the gun industry. But for those of us well versed in reading between the lines…..
Re: Wrong country to complain
Accepting bribes from “special interest groups” is not an accusation in the U.S. but political speech. It is the main mechanism for financing political campaigns. It may be an accusation in most of the civilized world but the U.S. has a slightly different take on money in a Calvinist tradition: those little green bills with “In God We Trust” on them are their own letters of indulgence: success is proof of righteousness.
Now that we’re encountering mass shootings in America on what appears to basically be a weekly or so clip,
There are two definitions of mass shooting in use.
The first is the government definition, in use for decades. The second is a much newer definition, adopted less than a decade ago, by the mainstream, leftist media.
The old definition was 4 or more people killed, not including the shooter, in a single incident. The new definition is 3 or more people shot, including the shooter, no fatalities required, and a much broader definition of it all occurring in the same incident.
Under the new definition, anyone who shoots two people then is killed by police, is a mass shooting incident. If a cop shoots three criminal suspects, that’s also a mass shooting. If three people decide to commit suicide together, and they all use a gun on themselves, it’s a mass shooting.
The thing is though, using the old definition, mass shootings were declining in frequency almost every year for the past 60 years. The same pattern shows clearly if you apply the mainstream media definition of mass shooting to all past incidents.
But the mainstream media doesn’t do that. They ONLY apply their new definition to incidents after they adopted it, NEVER to shooting incidents prior to that adoption. This creates an illusion that the frequency of mass shootings suddenly went up by two or more orders of magnitude a few years back, and have remained super high ever since.
That illusion creates an extreme urgency to ban guns that wouldn’t exist using the old definition. After all, under the old definition, your odds of being caught in a mass shooting were similar to those of being struck by lightning. Nobody dives for cover when they hear thunder in the distance, so the anti-gun people needed an increased sense of danger and urgency to get their agenda accomplished. The new definition and that deliberate illusion that mass shootings are becoming drastically more frequent, accomplishes that nicely.
Given the actual rate of mass shootings and that annual decline in frequency, despite what the mainstream media would have you believe, you are safer from mass shootings today than you were as a kid – and when you were a kid, you were safer than your parents were as kids.
Re:
rubs between his eyes
People by either metric are still ending up dead at the hands of someone, who probably shouldn’t have had access to a weapon.
But PLEASE lets debate if a mass shooting is 3 or 4 dead humans, it is obviously way more important than trying to avoid the next class room full of dead children.
We are more likely to be struck my lighting or to die at the hands of cops than in a terrorist attack, which thing has had billions poured into it?
Explain why after every shooting of 3 or 4 people sales of guns skyrocket, could it possibly have anything to do with the talking heads claiming that the other side is going to take your weapons and put you in camps?!
We have more weapons than people to hold them in this nation and when those weapons are misused the fault is never the ease of getting weapons designed to kill humans quickly, it is never that we refuse to admit we’re ignoring mental health, it is always some outside source that we have to do something about but they cant even manage fuckall on that front because nothing they could do would actually stop it… and heaven forbid people have to accept that some people shouldn’t have easy access to weapons and that bigger guns are just pandering to baseless fears that keep being stoked that help cause the mass shootings (3 or 4) in the mentally ill that we have no system to help, track, or stop before it happens again… like 2 days later and 2 days after that and 1 week after that.
We have people who threatened to kill the parents of children murdered in their school, because it was easier to believe the murders never happened & it was just a plot to steal all the guns from them.
Australia was founded to be the place they dumped prisoners… is the US where they’ve been dumping the mentally ill?
Re:
Is your point really that shootings that fall outside the “old” definition are nothing to be concerned with and that they aren’t newsworthy?
Let me clarify one thing, the point is that any kind of shooting is bad – regardless how many were involved, got shot or how it is reported.
In the 80’s the FBI defined a mass-shooting (aka mass-murder) as “killing four or more people in a single incident (not including the perpetrator), typically in a single location”. Congress adopted a new definition of mass-shooting (aka mass-killing) in 2013 as “a single incident that leaves three or more people dead”. There are several more definitions used by different organizations, research institutes and media, and those definitions have been in use for years.
TL;DR: There is no new definition used, so getting all huffy about what definition media uses is just plain silly and totally misses the point which is if one would look at the trend for incidents in the last 40 years using any of the definitions they have been rising and if you look at the fatalities using the same definitions they too have been rising noticeably and non-fatalities have shoot through the roof.
Given that the actual rate of shootings in general (ie gun violence/gun suicide) have steadily increased for the last 8 years, and the actual rate of active shootings have also steadily increased since 2000, I would suggest that your assessment of a persons safety is fast evaporating.
Re: Re:
You know, OP is certainly right in that it isn’t an accident that shootings are all over the less right-leaning news right now as Democrats are struggling to find good reasons for swing voters to pick them in the midterms.
So the current discussion does have a bit of a disingenuous smell to it.
At the same time, it is absolutely horrifying that for decades on end the topic has been ripe for politicizing because people are being killed by guns at unreasonable rates in the U.S. no matter how you count the mass killings. It’s not like a non-mass killing bu gun is a great thing to have, and more people die by them than by mass killings. They just occur far too often to be newsworthy.
Even mass killings aren’t front-page material in the U.S. unless they have uncommonly high numbers of victims or uncommonly diresome circumstances. And yes, it is a real blemish on the U.S. that there is something like “commonly high” and “commonly diresome” in the first place.
So while there may be some kind of political opportunism involved with the current outrage, anything that gets something done is worth doing. And that we are actually talking about “news as usual” is more rather than less reason to start doing something.
I know.
I know. The UK is the embarrassment of Europe. They even had a vote in 2011 to change that system and 68% of the people voted no. Shocking! Out of curiosity though; why does this make me a hypocrite? I’m not from the UK.
I fail to see the point of your comment. It accomplishes nothing. it’s the adult equivalent of “I know I am but what are you?” Hardly makes the whole argument fall apart, mm?
Re:
Who are you replying to?
Stop blaming: period!
Not rap, video games, social media, books, D&D, Harry Potter, drugs in the water, not aliens…!!!
And no! Not rifles!
According to Amnesty International via safeatlast over 500 people die of gun violence per day.
Apx 500 of those people die of handgun violence. So no, it’s not rifles either.
Blame the shooter. And the social constructs that creates them. The two biggest problems that lead to such situation is either people who are unfit for social interaction and need to be treated, properly, before such cases happen. Or! People who have reached their limits of conformity and the end of their tolerance.
Racism, religion, and mental illness cover the majority of mass shootings. Though bullying and ostracism tends to be the drive of younger shooters.
Sad and pointless, but let’s not ignore 500 for 20 or 30 on the news.
When the daily majority is social problems. Not a mass shooting.
Re:
On the one hand, you are absolutely correct that rifles are a pretty small part of the problem. On the other hand, most of these mass shootings, or at least a big chunk of them, do involve AR-15 rifles. So it’s certainly a good thing to address that. The problem is when we focus on the mass shootings and ignore the much larger number of single homicides, typically involving a handgun, and the even larger number of gun suicides, also most often with a handgun.
Re: Re:
My point here is easy. The Democrats instantly jump to banning a rifle, when it makes up a fraction of a fraction of illegal gun crime.
The republicans jump to blame everything but firearms.
Most talking heads and politicians put little effort in unraveling the social aspect of these situations.
The solution has nothing to do with banning anything! We need to find, discuss, and SOLVE the social aspects at play.
Re: Re: Re:
A complete solution involves both gun control and solving other problems.
Re: Re: Re:2
Yes. And I suppose both. Though I’ll assume based on our disagreements of past we disagree on the how of control.
As I said, my disgust is that dems immediately go for banning “assault” rifles. The figure above (500) may be exaggerated slightly in how it counts ‘gun-related’. It is an intentionally broad scare figure.
But yes, AI recorded over non-combat 180,000 deaths from gun related injuries. A few hundred of which are direct premeditated murders with a rifle.
Nearly all of those deaths are handguns or ammunition related. More people die of ammunition problems than rifle murders. Most deaths are accidental.
I’ve made comments in the past about arming everyone, partly seriously and partly in jest.
But the reality is people don’t rob places that display the “we don’t call 911” sign.
We have multiple serious firearms issues in this country.
The knee-jerk “ban” calls help absolutely nobody.
Many of the more violent (not targeted murders) involving rifles are in fact illegal weapons. True automatics. Look at the footage from Louisiana. Those people are holding Italian and Mexican fully automatic sub machine guns. Look at the recent “gang” and “street” shooting footage. That’s far more rapid than ANY consumer sold legal semiautomatic.
Someone interested in committing slaughter are going to find what they want.
——————
We need far more rigorous tracking. Yes. But banning semi- isn’t going to solve much. It helps far less than it actually hurts.
We need to know who, is buying and is using.
We need to know where these weapons are and where they are going.
More importantly we need to address the fact that most gun crimes are related to social ills.
Be it drug money, or milk and eggs.
Be it domestic violence or killing a minority because….
Stop blaming art and entertainment. Stop blaming the tool used.
Start blaming a failed social system
and a media that gives people top rate coverage for their crimes.
Re: Re: Re:
Because that means suggesting actions that are socialist in nature, and in the US ‘that is socialism’ is the cry that gets people to act against their own best interests.
Re: Re: Re:
…illegal gun crime.
What’s illegal gun crime and how does it differ from legal gun crime? 😕
Seriously
First and foremost, I’m truly sorry for all those lives lost but video games aren’t killing people. IT’s guns. That’s the problem. Will they get rid of guns. NOPE! Why? Because guns fund America. Or should I say NRA funds America and the politicians?
https://epicgamershub.com
Yes, we need guns just to walk to the store today (which is a shame) but we can’t start pointing fingers at video games every time a crisis happens.
The point is guns are the problem and they need to ban semi-autos and autos.
If I was in charge, I would ban ALL GUNS. You got beef. settle with your fist. The old fashion way.