If American can be numb to mass killings of elementary school children, Vegas never stood a chance of remaining in the public discourse.
Why don't we hear more about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting? It was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, we never found a motive, and it seems no one ever mentions it.
Submitted 8 months ago by brt01010101@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Mastengwe@lemm.ee 8 months ago
This is the right answer.
aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 8 months ago
It hurts to read but. It’s the answer for sure.
CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world 8 months ago
When the discourse goes in circles and gets nowhere, it becomes a perceived waste to continue it. The people who profit from gun sales – including the politicians who reap campaign contributions from exploiting misconceptions about it – like it this way.
Witchfire@lemmy.world 8 months ago
So fun fact
The reason why it was the deadliest shooting is because the shitstain was using a bump stock, which makes semiautomatics into pseudo-automatics
After it happened, the Trump admin of all fucking people banned them. Broken clock or something.
Now SCOTUS is about to hear a court case to repeal the ban, and they look poised to legalize bump stocks again under the BS reason that “they’re not technically automatic weapons”
PatFussy@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Not trying to minimize the bump stock thing but I would wager that having 23 different guns and hundreds of rounds of ammo is why so many people got shot that night. This guy had it all planned out including bipods, red dots, cameras etc. this guy even went as far as to nailing his door shut so in any case someone got to his hotel before he was done, he would have extra time.
Yeah the bump stocks made a difference but I don’t think it was by that much.
Mr_Blott@lemmy.world 8 months ago
For those of us who don’t wank ourselves to sleep every night to pictures of guns and have no idea what the fuck a bump stock is -
Essentially, bump stocks assist rapid fire by “bumping” the trigger against one’s finger (as opposed to one’s finger pulling on the trigger), thus allowing the firearm’s recoil, plus constant forward pressure by the non-shooting arm, to actuate the trigger
Witchfire@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yeah that’s fair, the guy was armed to the teeth. The bump stock is just the icing on the shit cake.
CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Can someone who’s more into gun stuff tell me why people are always talking about the amount of guns someone has?
What makes 23 different guns better than one good one? I can see the point of having like two, in case the first jams, but based on my (limited) experience I would much rather have a single HK416 than a dozen of anything else.
Also with fewer guns you need fewer ammo types (unless you for some reason have 23 guns with the same ammo, which to me makes even less sense).
orcrist@lemm.ee 8 months ago
One life is that much, though.
poprocks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
A SCOTUS that Trump installed.
DABDA@lemmy.world 8 months ago
No hardware required, also not some new technique suddenly discovered:
How to Bump Fire an AR-15/M4
AK47 bump fireaidan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The reason why it was the deadliest shooting is because the shitstain was using a bump stock
No, he was looking over a massive crowd of people with a rifle. He may have killed more people without a bump stock, given the difficulty it causes for accuracy. Saying it is a settled fact that it led to the deaths is just not true.
24_at_the_withers@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I mean, he didn’t really have much of a problem with accuracy - he fired a total of 1058 rounds, and those rounds or shrapnel from them injured 413 different people. Of course, many people received more than a single gunshot wound. He killed 58 (later 60) in ten minutes of shooting – effectively one person every 10 seconds. I think it would be difficult for a single person to injure or kill more from where he was standing with any weapon short of an RPG.
CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world 8 months ago
He didn’t exactly need accuracy when there was a sea of targets in front of him, especially if his objective was to hit as many of them as possible before they could disperse.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Never found a motive? Are you joking? We’ve got tons of info on the psycho who did it. He was a distraught aging white male with a history of depression, gambling, and firearms who wanted to hurt the world and kill himself.
Sad losers are a dime a dozen but at least most of them aren’t as stupid as that guy. There is no reason to discuss this outside of proposed changes to our society as a whole to better prevent these stains on history.
Sentient@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Ahh yes no need to discuss why people become who they are or to change society for the better
VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I don’t mean to sweep this under the rug, but I think that just stands as another case for the fact that an enormous amount of people in this country have mental health issues. It’s normalized at this point.
Besides that, news outlets that report on this only do so basically of the drama and the views. The solutions are in front of us, always have been, but that’s not what anyone truly cares about.
Siegfried@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Depressed white male dressed as a policeman: So, why did you do it?
Mass shooter: because I’m a depressed white male
CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world 8 months ago
I mean you can discuss it to death, but without facts – which don’t exist, because he didn’t tell anyone the intimate workings of his fucked up mind – the best you can do is speculate. By all means, go ahead.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 8 months ago
If you had read my comment then you would know that was exactly what I would rather we discussed.
Mango@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Racist.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 8 months ago
It is unfortunately relevant information on the topic of demographic shifts and marginalized groups. What the shooter did was not typical by any means, but who he was is extremely typical for what he did, sadly.
CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world 8 months ago
But but but why did he spray bullets at a crowd with intent to murder hundreds? Why, man, why? We need his manifesto, his tax records, the political affiliations of his associates and family! How else am I supposed to fit him into my narrative if I can’t prove why he thought to do the unthinkable?
/s
Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
This question was posted with a Wikipedia link. I didn’t read it, but let’s assume it didn’t answer the poster’s question.
Now I see in the comments a people saying “we know a lot” (but not Wikipedia I guess) or “it’s just what Americans do” or “we got some good laws out of it”. It just sounds like “move along, move along” to me.
Nobody answered the question. I don’t know the answer, but to say that a person who has never killed anyone before then planned and executed the biggest mass shooting in American history (and that’s saying something!) and we shouldn’t CARE about motive is just weird.
What makes someone arm themselves and go to a movie theater or an elementary school or a concert should be damned important to a society that cares about mental health and the safety of its citizens. It’s SO EASY to say “evil” and put it in the past, especially when the perpetrator is dead. It’s much harder to think about how to prevent the next one. Sure, they use guns. But then it’s knives. Or hammers. Slower you say? Well then how about sarin gas? Mail bombs? Potassium cyanide in Tylenol? Letters containing ricin?
We need to know more about the psychology of the mass killer. We act like saying “evil” is good enough. Are we all religious now? There’s devils out there? Or are they people, people with problems that never got recognized, until it was too late?
Illuminostro@lemmy.world 8 months ago
“What makes someone arm themselves and go to a movie theater or an elementary school or a concert should be damned important to a society that cares about mental health and the safety of its citizens.”
For whatever reason, these people feel scorned, and rejected. They’re full of rage, and they decide to take it out on everyone around them. There’s usually a shitload of narcissism involved. Narcissists don’t take rejection well.
I personally know one of these people. He spends every night alone, because no one wants to be around him, filling his head with hate and fear from Fox and YouTube right wing grifters. He goes out of his way to provoke everyone around him with Nazi and Klan jokes, and sticks his phone with Nazi and Klan memes in everyone’s face, like an overgrown 15 year old edgelord. He’s 53. But he’s not the asshole, everyone else is. Everyone is fucking with him, not vice versa. He has a house full of guns, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he went on a shooting spree if someone provoked him into narcissistic rage.
I’m seriously considering reporting him.
CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world 8 months ago
Be as detailed as possible in your report, and focus especially on any specific threats against individuals or groups that he has mentioned.
OpenStars@startrek.website 8 months ago
People did answer the question. Re-read the top two comments, sorted by Top. The question was “Why don’t we hear more about…?”.
It is emotionally difficult to accept, but it is the reality that we live in. The richer people have bodyguards and send their kids to better-protected schools, maybe bring in private tutors that are each more expensive than a cheap college education. They deal with this shit in their own way, leaving everyone else to the “freedom” to do as they please - subject to the whims of other lords who e.g. buy up all the media outlets, or buy up all the houses, etc. People do not wish to understand that this is what “absolute freedom” looks like, aka anarchy.
And quite frankly, random gun violence isn’t even the top threat in America, bc climate change seems much more likely to kill us all, or else an actual civil war, or perhaps Russia or China will shut down our entire power grid, if our own home-grown terrorist extremists don’t beat them to it.
iirc, most people here die of heart disease and cancer, and other things that mere exercise may provide a partial solution for. So we don’t care about the deaths of kids or strangers for the sake reason we continue to eat burgers every single day: bc they are tasty and we DGAF about anything else.
Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I did what you said, sorting by “top,” and I think you’re doing a lot of projecting because I do not read anything there that could be an answer to the question
Second, I read your response, and I’m confused. Are you proposing redistribution of wealth and veganism as a solution to mass killings? If not, I guess I didn’t understand your answer.
fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world 8 months ago
We need to know more about the psychology of the mass killer.
I genuinely don’t get why people are confused about someone who feels like they have nothing to live for taking their frustrations out on society.
Like, what is so confusing about that? Why is it so difficult for you to understand?
Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
So, that kinda makes sense to you? Like, you can “get it,” why someone would load up and kill a bunch of people indiscriminately?
Because I can’t. I could go vengeance on someone who hurt my family. I’m sure I could kill in self-defense, or to protect my family.
But to just go somewhere prepared to kill a bunch of people I don’t know? Who never had any contact with me or my life?
“Take out their frustrations on society?” I really hope you are just hyped up or talking out your ass or something. I’m any case, please talk to someone competent about this, preferably a licensed therapist.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
The article is right there
You didn’t read it
Your point is that we should care more
That about sum things up, super chief?
Alsjemenou@lemy.nl 8 months ago
It’s a lot simpler that that. I mean not the cause of mass killings. That’s never a single factor but a range of mental health issues, a combination of things leading to the act. Impossible to predict.
The main issue is the shocking lack of mental health care. The inability for most to speak to someone at an early stage. There is no (coordinated) safety net.
24_at_the_withers@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I don’t know about the lack of mental health care being the “main issue.” A healthy society wouldn’t be in dire need of such extreme amounts of mental health care. These mass shootings are a single symptom (among many) of a very complicated and interwoven set of factors that have brought us to this place. There is no single solution that will fix the problem, and the only way out of this mess will take significant investment and likely generations to break the cycle. But humans are greedy, and particularly in the USA, we only look for simple simgle-issue solutions that can have a measurable outcome (and be economically viable) within the next couple or fiscal quarters or an election term, at most. The solutions we should be implementing don’t work on that sort of time scale, and many will be very costly (in varying terms of both money and/or freedom)… So, we just don’t do those things.
CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world 8 months ago
People have been studying the psychology of mass killers since the 70s. Without an actual living subject at hand in this case, it’s hard to do anything more than speculate. I tend to agree that it would be useful to know more about what pushed him to such an act, but how do you suggest going about this? Should we round up and interrogate everyone he knew in his life? Would that even be productive?
Motive isn’t as mysterious as we like to pretend it is. All it really required was a loss of fundamental empathy for his fellow humans. We see that everywhere these days. He’s not unique in that respect. What’s unique is the lengths he went to to commit this act. He seemed to want the spectacle of it. Like many serial killers, perhaps the idea of murder gave him a rush of feeling he couldn’t find anywhere else in his life, and so he figured why not get as much of that as he could?
Again, it’s all speculation. And it’s also not hard to trace it back to a sickness eating at the roots of our society. What do you do with that knowledge? What can any of us do but try a little harder in our own lives to be kind to others and generous to those who might be quietly slipping down into the lake of poison seething under the world?
Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
What people are looking for is the manifesto or the “ah-ha!” moment. Columbine had plenty of this, as have many other spree killings. Even the tower shooter in Texas was discovered to have a brain tumor.
What people are looking for is a reason that separates him from the rest of us. The box they can check to safely file him away as being a schizo, abuser, or something worse and then snapping.
What they won’t get is the reason. The Vegas shooter was deep in his own mind and seems to have not shared these things with anyone. His life on paper seems kind of grim, but nothing in the way of committing a massive shooting.
bstix@feddit.dk 8 months ago
should be damned important to a society that cares about mental health and the safety of its citizens
Yeah … but also Las Vegas.
Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
That actually is a good point. This incident being in the news a lot would effect tourism in Vegas and that is big bucks. There may be people paying to suppress news on the killings.
Sentient@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Exactly like shouldn’t we acknowledge it so we can change for the better ?
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Well I can’t speak for anyone else, but me personally I never talk about it because I don’t talk about mass shootings in general.
Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Realizing Columbine losing all sorts of national attention, then seeing schools teach kids how to survive a school shooting, and parents buying kids bulletproof bookbags was when I realized we really don’t give a shit about mass shootings, we just work around them.
Mirshe@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Pretty much this. I lived through the Columbine days as a middle school student. I remember being confused, even more now looking back, that nobody really made time to talk about “how do we stop this from happening in the first place”, people just seemed to assume that it could happen and we should all be OK with that.
Blank@lemmy.world 8 months ago
And Santa Fe. And Virginia Tech. And El Paso. And Parkland. And UT Austin.
OpenStars@startrek.website 8 months ago
It is impossible to type out all of the reasons, but here are a few. Check out Bowling for Columbine btw - a movie from two thousand fucking two, 15 years BEFORE that particular one. We’ve seen that particular bullet coming for a LONG time, and the ones before it, and the ones after it, and the ones yet to come - we KNOW, yet we do NOTHING. Most especially the “Pro-Life” crowd.
Lobbying. It’s a thing. The NRS especially is one of the more powerful ones. More than 80% of American citizens - rising to >90% of NRA members even!!! - want some form of extremely limited gun control. However, we do not live in a democracy, not even one dominated by conservatives or rural Americans - rather, we live in a plutocracy where despite the OVERWHELMING support of the VAST MAJORITY of Americans, we cannot manage to get anything done.
Also, much of that money supposedly flowing to politicians from the “NRA” actually has been found to have ties back to Russia. Many of the politicians receiving that money may not even know the true source of where it came from - nor do they particularly seem to care.
Oh, and then billionaires bought up pretty much all of the major news outlets (a handful of others still exist - did The Guardian escape that? Well, even if they were, they seem to be allowed to talk about other corporate take-overs (theguardian.com/…/billionaires-extra-power-media-…).
And hopefully you already know what happened to Google, where SEOs took over the searches so that it is nearly impossible to find things that just five years ago were easily retrievable, with the only lingering hold-out being Reddit, before then that whole thing happened…
BTW, the government is literally not allowed to collect statistics on how many violent gun deaths occur in America. I am not sure if this is the video where Jordan Klepper showcases that, but if not then he has a bunch of others. Or take your pick - there are millions if not billions of videos, of varying degree of quality and relevance. I’ve never seen one show a truly “unbalanced” take though - that is just not how for-profit corporations work. You just have to educate yourself by watching a bunch of stuff until you know how trustworthy the source is, and also each and every material topic too. It is sad, but we cannot seem to trust any (especially for-profit) advice these days. Though if you want another recommendation, there’s John Oliver’s whole expose on the NRA. To provide a modicum of balance, on the other side there are series such as Paul Harrell’s Mass Shootings: Causes and Possible Solutions.
And - yes there is always more - there are other arguments such as: “if someone cannot get a gun they will simply make their own bomb” (ignores how much harder it is to do that), and the whole thing of plastic ghost guns (again ignores how difficult it would be to do that). Ultimately, i think that children being sacrificed is itself merely a symptom of a much deeper cause. People on Lemmy call it “capitalism”, which has a LOT of truth to it - but then again, nations such as communist China have their own different issues. But, again, since ~90% of Americans already are in favor of stopping these kinds of mass-shootings, this will not be solved by merely educating yourself or “getting the word out”. In fact, this type of issue is precisely the type of thing that Trump leaned heavily on as his route to the White House - “Hillary Clinton is corrupt so you should elect me and I will get rid of all the corruption, everywhere”. So realistically, this is just something that we are going to simply have to live with, unless and until people fucking DO something about it. e.g. a responsible gun owner could patrol their own neighborhood schools. However, do note that every time someone does try to do that, they end up shooting innocent people instead, and yet it does nothing to stop the actual shooters, who can pull guns out of a bag (long-ish violin or trumpet case maybe?) and start shooting in mere seconds - not enough time to notice and prevent it. So start by educating yourself, since that’s really all you can do, and also it will help enormously to ensure that you are on the correct side of the issue.
For those so inclined, the verse commanding the latter point is even in the actual Holy Bible, at 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “Test EVERYTHING against what you KNOW to be true”. I don’t know what can be done, after the education stage, but I know it MUST begin with that.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
The thing that stuck with me about Bowling for Columbine is that the school was in the same zip code as a DoJ establishment manufacturing rocket technology for war, in the most violent country in modern history. Drawing that connection between the violence done by the State and the violence done by citizens was very eye opening for me. The problem isn’t just the guns, or the NRA, or lobbying - the problem is that the United States is an evil country and we are all complicit in its evil. ‘Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction.’ What’s the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?
sukhmel@programming.dev 8 months ago
Normalisation of violence most likely had an effect, but I don’t think that the connection is as simple as
Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction
OpenStars@startrek.website 8 months ago
As @lad said, it is not the identical same thing, but yeah it certainly does seem connected.
As for evil, I could not name a single country on earth that wasn’t, especially in a historic context, but neither does that excuse the USA for being thus.
Watching Rules for Rulers really opened my eyes on that score though.
datavoid@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Its been a while since i saw it, but isn’t Bowling for Columbine just footage of Michael Moore going around asking people stupid loaded questions?
OpenStars@startrek.website 8 months ago
Possibly. He’s not the best at making documentaries, and perhaps watching a trailer for it would be sufficient and better than watching the whole entire thing. Or maybe that one was actually good? It’s been awhile for me too and I do not recall either the details of how “entertaining” it was, but I do recall that it pointed out how news media aims to make profits rather than inform the public - and that is a very necessary lesson to learn. There are other sources to do so ofc, though this was also a commentary on gun violence at the same time, so I thought of it. But if people want to point to other, better documentaries that’s awesome.
But more than all that, and whether OP actually watches it or not, my point is that it exists, and moreover it did so for DECADES. In all that time since, protections against gun violence have actually gone down, as some stuff has expired and new protections for the violence have been added - e.g. in California where the judge ruled that AK-15s or whatever were perfectly fine home defense weapons. i.e., Bowling for Columbine shows one example of how long we’ve known about all of this stuff. Surely there are other documentaries too - probably some from the 70s even - but this is one that I could recall offhand.
And for that purpose it does its job just fine, merely by existing:-).
BURN@lemmy.world 8 months ago
For the most part Americans are so desensitized to the gain Violence that it’s not something most of us think about much.
I’ve grown up in a post Columbine world, and mass shootings have been a part of my life since it started. They’re just a really unfortunate part of life here that won’t change unless there’s a massive culture shift.
nifty@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I like target shooting and clay pigeon shooting. I am also pro-guns because I think progressives should learn and know how to defend themselves. I don’t like or agree with animal/fox hunting as that’s just barbaric. I also don’t think people should get unrestricted access to certain types of weapons.
So I agree with the cultural shift idea, but I don’t want access to guns to go away.
Kage520@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m not against gun ownership. I’m against zero gun ownership regulation. Requiring background checks seems like a no brainer but we cannot even get to that part. The next I would suggest is a weekend long course on the proper use, safety, cleaning, and storage of your weapon before you are allowed to buy one. Finally, I think we should have that class reupped every 2 years to keep your license to own the firearm. It’s a dangerous thing to have around and most good gun owners would support some of this, even if it is a hassle. It could be made fun too though. Free ammo for some range practice or something. Maybe a few for the class covers that, I don’t know. Consider it a meetup with other people with similar interests.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 8 months ago
Back in the day it was called “going postal” because of the number of mail workers that used to do it. It’s not that new, sadly. Columbine just seemed to popularity it in schools. Yet another example of women inventing something and men taking the credit.
Zehzin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I already sent the thoughts and prayers what more do you want from me
Sentient@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Yeah like do you want me to change society or something ?
fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I was just thinking about it.
I think the motive was the guy was angry at the world and wanted to kill as many people as possible before killing himself.
A man that feels he has nothing to lose is a dangerous thing.
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There was seemingly no political motive so there’s no real reason to report on it anymore
I searched it a week ago to check how many people israel killed during their flour massacare. Because both involved shooting bullets into dense crowds.
The hotel massacare killed 60 people
Israel’s flour massacare killed 120 people.
So that basically sums up. The hotel massacare wasn’t “that big of a deal”.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Nothing new in the case. People have moved on to other things.
I still find that a strange case.
boredtortoise@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I figured it got swept into the lone gunman category after all the details about Saudi arms deals and help smuggling the guns in got out. It’s kinda like the Epstein case.
blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The guy didn’t say or post much directly about it. Sometimes people do crazy shit for very little reason. You couple that with the ability to get guns easily, mass quantities of ammo, and bump stocks, you have yourself a bloody stew.
People love patterns, but sometimes there just isn’t one. There is no single profile for a mass shooter. The closest you get is male and either 15-24 or 35-44.
Most people shoot others for grievances and having a shitty life. Sometimes not though. Many shooters don’t even take their own life. Plenty of them are still on the run.
The easiest answer is that the vast majority of how our society runs is through the fear or threat of death. The moment someone starts wanting it, they’re capable of nearly anything. Most people see the green pasture or love of nothingness between the noose in their own home. Some decide to kill and maim before they go out.
tobogganablaze@lemmus.org 8 months ago
There is a 4 part documentary series called “11 Minutes” from 2022.
BigMacHole@lemm.ee 8 months ago
ZERO Fetuses died so why would I care?
-Pro Life Republican making Books Illegal to Save The Children!
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
nobody ever talks about enron anymore. The CEO only got like 5 years for that. Nobody talks about nortel anymore, the CEO got no time for that, and a shit ton of money, all the employees had no pension.
Etc, etc, etc…
rouxdoo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The dumb motherfucker who did this was just a homicidal twat. There was no “reason” or manifesto that was given, it was just some whack-job wanting to kill lotso-people.
Gun control is a joke in America…I’m sad about that.
model_tar_gz@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s part of Vegas’ branding strategy.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
Aabbcc@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Eminem wrote a song about it so that’s not nothing
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
In 2024 there have been more “mass shooting events” in the US than there have been days in 2024.
One that happened 7 years ago isn’t top of mind for most people.
Darkard@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Without any right wing boogie man traits to point at, the news cycle just moved on to the next shooting that occurred the following day.
They never found a solid motive, so unless there’s some political points to score then the US media doesn’t care.
Smoogs@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This, like any event, comes down to what the family does to keep a case going. There’s many cold cases that are now getting solved by family members rather than police.
There is no agency out there that will keep interest in an issue.
once the media is done with it(they have a super short attention span) and the police will spend all of a few weeks on most things it is the family that keep the interest going. They will pay out of pocket to get attention for it.
There’s even cases where family members that have investigated into commercial air craft incidents because they lost loved ones and helped solve cases on that.
Believe it or not there are people calling the police every day just to keep their attention on a missing person or murder, asking for new leads. These are family members.
Police will not do this on their own.
Schlemmy@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
It was all over the news and years ago. Should we continue talking about it?
Minotaur@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Kind of answered this one yourself. There’s no clear motive other than “weird loner gambling addict decides to commit an atrocity”, and there’s just not much to say on the matter.
CaptainHowdy@lemm.ee 8 months ago
It’s because of what you said: no motive. Crime like this is only sensational when the motive can be applied to some fictional stereotype of villain that could be stopped by new legislation or a war or whatever.
Also I think a big reason we don’t discuss this specific event is the caliber of rifle used. Contrary to popular belief, non “assault” weapons can do a shocking amount of damage in an environment where the targets can’t retaliate. See the Virginia Tech shooting.
Long story short: if it ain’t political and can’t be made political, people in the US won’t care for long.
Sekrayray@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I mean, reading the Wikipedia article is seems like there’s a lot known about the killer and a pretty clear motive of him wanting to kill a bunch of people…
Krudler@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I feel like most horror movies are preying on deep psychological fears of things that don’t or won’t happen, or happen only in the deepest fears of the psyche.
The concept of just leaving your house to get some turnips and getting shot in the face is like a daily thing for every American, so I’m not sure that makes for good psychological horror.
WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Did anyone find it suspicious that the FBI didn’t identify and publish a direct motive? Do you think the reason for his nutjob behavior was somehow covered up by the FBI because of the administration?
theyoyomaster@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You hear about mass shootings (random public ones that are committed to generate news stories, not ones where it’s crime, usually gang related, with multiple people shot due to poor aim) when the media wants to leverage it for a specific angle. Shootings that play into the desired narrative linger for a very long time, shootings that go against the desired narrative disappear in a few hours to a few days. It has nothing to do with how many people were killed or what questions have or have not been answered; it is simply a function of how much it works towards the desired narrative.
The desired outcome of a gun ban was achieved and the fact that there are still unanswered questions means that continued discussion hurts the desired narrative, so it isn’t discussed. Not only has it “served its purpose” but bringing it up now could have a negative effect for those that control the media so the media never brings it up. No, we don’t know why he did it, we don’t even know for sure if he actually used bump stocks, but none of that matters; the headlines got the immediate response they were designed to get and then they moved onto other headlines before questions outside of their narrative were asked.
puntyyoke@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Because there’s another mass shooting every couple days. It’s hard to care about why one dude did something crazy 7 years ago while bullets are still flying. People are much more focused on trying to stop the next one.
actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I agree with all of that, except for the part about people being focused on trying to stop the next one.
If anyone was actually serious about that, we wouldn’t average more than one per day across the U.S.
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Focused on trying to stop the next one in every way except restricting guns, or funding mental health care, or reducing hate, or… Well anything that takes more than thoughts and prayers.
What a country.
henfredemars@infosec.pub 8 months ago
We have tried nothing and we are all out of options.
Hux@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
At some point, a long time ago, we collectively transitioned from viewing mass shootings as an alarming epidemic, to something culturally endemic to our way of life. It’s an effortless rationalization made possible by for-profit news and for-profit politics.
otp@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Are they really? What is really being done?
lars@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
A lotta hope. My 3 minutes are penciled in tomorrow at 2pm. Same 3 minutes my legislators spend on it. Gotta have hope!¹
shalafi@lemmy.world 8 months ago
No, there are not mass shooting every couple of days.
imgur.com/a/h6DvNwE
When we hear “mass shooting”, we’re all thinking about the Mother Jones and Violence Project numbers shown (hardly conservative sources). 6 for 2021. (And crime is way down since then.)
And if we go with the worst numbers on there, ~4,000, that’s about a month worth of vehicular fatalities, not dead plus injured.
Everyone on here bitches about capitalism and how billionaires control our lives. Everyone is keenly aware that most media outlets have been combined into Sinclair and a few other owners. But when the media presents a steady drumbeat of death and destruction, no one seems to be able to put 2 and 2 together. They want the commoners disarmed.
I don’t have answers, but all I know is that we had plenty of guns around when I was a kid, and yes, AR-15s as well, and this shit wasn’t anything like today.
meatwads_tooth@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Awesome point, yea, the “commoners” need to be disarmed.
So you were around plenty of guns in your childhood? As a child, you knew what an AR-15 was?
Hmmm. It’s almost like children growing up around guns, especially those exposed to rifles as you mentioned, became comfortable and used to them, know how to use them, and where to get them.
Cool graphic you shared in an attempt to justify gun violence. Ml
Cold_Brew_Enema@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Disagreed. No one gives a shit about stopping the next one. We’d actually have stricter gun laws if that were true.
Zealousideal_Fox900@lemmy.world 8 months ago
*nobody in government.
HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.one [bot] 8 months ago
It also wasnt a school.
Kalysta@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Except they’r not. They’re focused on blaiming everyone around them while not looking for actual causes. The CDC is banned BY LAW from researching the actual causes, because the NRA knows the answer is going to be mass gun ownership and them instilling a very toxic version of gun culture in this country.
No one is doing anything substantial to stop the next one.
Sekrayray@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Something about the Vegas one (other than total number of fatalities) was so much more sinister. We barely even ever heard about the perpetrator. It’s always seemed bizarre to me.
Not saying we should be giving any media attention to mass killers, but it definitely breaks with the normal media portrayal.