Okay, so we take the whole US population, which is what, about 300,000,000 and the number of people murdered in mass shootings, not counting the shooters (because, well, fuck them) in your list was 81.
So. 300,000,000 divided by 81. The odds of being killed in a mass shooting in the US in 2012 are 37,037,037 to 1. You just proved my point for me. Your numbers. You want laws to be changed because of an event so unlikely, you'd be better off, making laws to try and prevent multiple lightning strikes on the same person.
I'm sorry, if I sound cold and callous. I can not be controlled by emotional manipulation anymore. My loss, no doubt.
ETA: It jibes with the facts you supplied...
No, it doesn't. And you do sound cold and callous, actually. At least your argument does. It also sounds self-indulgent, to be blunt about it. That assertion that you won't be controlled by emotional manipulation, as if the rest of us are mere puppets being jerked around by sad stories, is neither especially factual nor especially effective in suggesting your vision on this is clearer than other people's. Rather it suggests a level of denial, to one who is looking for a way to be sympathetic to you on this.
I gave you facts that show that, in just one year alone, mass shootings are a common occurrence in the US. And that doesn't even touch on the shootings that are not counted as "mass shootings" -- all the hundreds, maybe thousands, of shootings both fatal and non-fatal that happen in the US in the course of crimes, fights, domestic violence, police actions, and of course, accidents.
Mass shootings are shocking because they are a sudden, large burst of terror, but also because they highlight the lack of gun safety in this country. But proportionate to the nature of the event, they are not rare at all. They may be rare compared to all the other events of gun-violence, but compared to themselves -- to similar events globally and through time -- mass shootings in the US are not rare at all.
They're like fancy-colored lobsters. You know, the blue, orange, pink, parti-colored, and even white ones that have been popping up in record numbers in the Atlantic recently. Such colors have always occurred among lobsters, but in past years they were very rare. Theories suggest their increasing commonness is due to loss of common predators of lobsters -- cod, for instance -- which may have kept down the instance of odd lobsters because they would be more visible and first to get caught and eaten.
The sudden prevalence of formerly rare lobsters is not a sign that there's anything changing about lobsters, but it is a sign something might be changing in the ocean.
Likewise, mass killings have occurred throughout human history, with a variety of weapons. But the way they are happening now in the US, and the rate at which they are happening in the US over the past several years, is not normal for an event like mass killings. We need to look at why this happens here and how to make it become more rare, as it should be.
You can tap dance over those numbers all you like to pretend it ain't no big thing in the statistical larger picture. I stand by my argument based on such data, and I reject your argument as neither factual nor insightful.
