To be fair though, this is an America problem.
Not a gun problem, there's all kinds of guns and all kinds of areas of around the world. So what's so special about America that they uniquely have this problem?
I think a lot of The usual suspects can't be blamed because a lot of The usual suspects exist everywhere else around the world. Canada gets American television. So does Europe. We hear American music. We play American video games. Much of the world owns guns, that's not the issue.
So what is the uniquely American problem is leading to these uniquely American tragedies?
Not a gun problem, there's all kinds of guns and all kinds of areas of around the world. So what's so special about America that they uniquely have this problem?
I think a lot of The usual suspects can't be blamed because a lot of The usual suspects exist everywhere else around the world. Canada gets American television. So does Europe. We hear American music. We play American video games. Much of the world owns guns, that's not the issue.
So what is the uniquely American problem is leading to these uniquely American tragedies?
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(long post of me just laying things out and trying to make sense of info...)
America has always had guns and it's inarguable that those guns have led to tragedies throughout its history, but it seems to me that the concept of mass shootings as these routine crimes of passion that aren't related to other crime (Unfortunately, the US is the worst in the world for gun crime that's related to other crime, and that's a separate issue) is a relatively recent phenomenon.
In the late 60s we started seeing some "clock tower snipers" who got up on high towers and started shooting random people, and we had a couple instances in the 1970s, but it wasn't until the 1980s that the term "mass shooting" entered the cultural lexicon.
It was the 1990s that the concept of "going postal" started to grow culturally popular, and in 1999 the columbine massacre occurred and obviously was unusual and shocking enough that the entire world was paying attention. The rate seemed to increase slowly until lately we've been seeing a few notable instances per year.
Unfortunately, the crime is hard to parse out since mass shooting data will include mass shootings related to other crime such as gangland shootings. Such mass shootings are no less tragic, but gangs going around killing each other or innocent people while committing crimes are going to have much different roots than otherwise law abiding individuals grabbing a gun and randomly shooting at innocent people. I live in a pretty remote area, and we recently had a shootout among gang members, some of whom were exported from the US.
On the topic of crime in the US, it's also inarguable that violent crime in the US is way down. The early 1990s were terrible for violent crime, with numbers massively peaking. Today numbers per capita are way below the peak 1990 numbers, but they're still above the 1960s numbers by far, and they're also well above the trough of the post-1990s decline that occurred in 2014. https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
But at the end of the day, I don't know enough to be able to say what is or isn't the cause of the mass shootings unrelated to any other crime as a routine crime of passion. It just seems strange that the problem sort of showed up and started growing. It's like this creeping cultural contagion, and one that is unique to the United States for the past 40 years or so.
It's like... what's different from other countries, and what's changed in the US that would cause this slow growth in something absolutely horrific?
America has always had guns and it's inarguable that those guns have led to tragedies throughout its history, but it seems to me that the concept of mass shootings as these routine crimes of passion that aren't related to other crime (Unfortunately, the US is the worst in the world for gun crime that's related to other crime, and that's a separate issue) is a relatively recent phenomenon.
In the late 60s we started seeing some "clock tower snipers" who got up on high towers and started shooting random people, and we had a couple instances in the 1970s, but it wasn't until the 1980s that the term "mass shooting" entered the cultural lexicon.
It was the 1990s that the concept of "going postal" started to grow culturally popular, and in 1999 the columbine massacre occurred and obviously was unusual and shocking enough that the entire world was paying attention. The rate seemed to increase slowly until lately we've been seeing a few notable instances per year.
Unfortunately, the crime is hard to parse out since mass shooting data will include mass shootings related to other crime such as gangland shootings. Such mass shootings are no less tragic, but gangs going around killing each other or innocent people while committing crimes are going to have much different roots than otherwise law abiding individuals grabbing a gun and randomly shooting at innocent people. I live in a pretty remote area, and we recently had a shootout among gang members, some of whom were exported from the US.
On the topic of crime in the US, it's also inarguable that violent crime in the US is way down. The early 1990s were terrible for violent crime, with numbers massively peaking. Today numbers per capita are way below the peak 1990 numbers, but they're still above the 1960s numbers by far, and they're also well above the trough of the post-1990s decline that occurred in 2014. https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
But at the end of the day, I don't know enough to be able to say what is or isn't the cause of the mass shootings unrelated to any other crime as a routine crime of passion. It just seems strange that the problem sort of showed up and started growing. It's like this creeping cultural contagion, and one that is unique to the United States for the past 40 years or so.
It's like... what's different from other countries, and what's changed in the US that would cause this slow growth in something absolutely horrific?