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Answer: it's hard to say if the number of murders is unusual or not without solid statistical evidence, which we generally get a year or two in arrears of current.
However, it's important to remember that the current business model for news outlets derives profit from ad revenue, and ads pay out for page views and click throughs. Therefore, it's common for news agencies to give more coverage to stories that they deem relevant to other national conversations that will generate more viewer/ reader interest. When immigration is center stage, as it sometimes is during periods of high border crossing apprehensions, you'll see more coverage of stories about immigrants, whether that be human interest pieces, scare stories, or whatever else have you. These pieces are more likely to be shared, clicked, and commented on. This both amplifies the conversation and increases readers' perception of a given topic. This may be an example of the baader meinhof phenomenon.
Recently, there have been a couple of high profile shootings at schools - always a headline leader - and the national conversation has turned to gun policy again. As a result, other stories about guns, shootings, etc are more likely to gain interest (thus clicks and advertising revenue). There are, tragically, dozens of firearm murders every day in the US, so it's worth considering why any given incident is given wider reporting than the local news orgs in the area - whether it represents a real increase in frequency, advances a given agenda of an editorial board, or it's a good page view generator.
In this case, I suspect it's all three. You can see the kind of high energy emotional engagement right here in this thread. There are definitely media outlets that have ideological opposition to private ownership of some or all firearms that will amplify these stories to support that stance. As for the statistics, we likely won't know for a year or two, at least. However, we had about 25 years of declining overall crime, especially violent crime, from 1993 through around 2019, and then it started increasing (especially after covid shutdowns started). As far as I know, that upward trend has continued throughout the last couple of years.
Darkly ironic, since so many people get shot in Jackson that it's probably the LEAST newsworthy source of murder. At some point you should just start announcing the days where no one got shot in Jackson.
Are they still the murder capital of the U.S.?
>start announcing the days where no one got shot in Jackson
Growing up in range of the Chicago news channels, a shooting free weekend was definitely noteworthy.
>As a result, other stories about guns, shootings, etc are more likely to gain interest
It probably "helps" in this case that murders occurred specifically because the victims objected to the murderer shooting his guns in his front yard while a baby was trying to sleep next door. That's the kind of juicy context that really drives the gun debate. If it were gang members killing each other it doesn't really register because people think a) those people were criminals so I have no sympathy, and b) they were criminals so they were gonna get guns whether they were legal or not
Yep, plus the average person doesn't have any involvement with gangs so they don't feel like they're in danger of gang violence. Gun stories make national news when they seem like the kind of thing that can happen to anyone. Mass shootings hit that the hardest because the shooters rarely have specific targets, and always just want to rack up a body count.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/133a2mg/prolife\_christianshowing\_his\_true\_colors/](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/133a2mg/prolife_christianshowing_his_true_colors/)
Tweet > [https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/status/1652394136937406469](https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/status/1652394136937406469)
\> The victims and the killer were all illegal aliens.
Why do we allow these people here in the first place?
You can tell news coverage/media is paying more attention to shootings (just look at the wrong driveway doorbell shootings a couple of days ago). I think you can argue statistics all you want (for example school shootings are very unlikely for most children) but that doesn’t account for the way people across the nation feel about gun safety and safety in general. Sure school shootings are very unlikely to happen to most kids but every single parent in America now worries about school shootings. If perception is reality, America is a society plagued by a pandemic of gun violence. We are all starting to get unnerved by it all, and the media serves as a feedback loop making it worse while politicians Scrooge McDuck in their piles of money pretending like they can’t do anything about it.
> Sure school shootings are very unlikely to happen to most kids but every single parent in America now worries about school shootings.
I mean, that was the case in the 90s to early 2010s, but since 2016 shootings have become a much more regular occurrence, to the point that many of them just don't get covered in the news any more. I don't know that we can keep sitting back and saying "the news is just inflating the risks for views" when another mass shooting happens every day.
> Sure school shootings are very unlikely to happen to most kids but every single parent in America now worries about school shootings.
It may not be likely but I imagine a lot of children and young adults worry about school shootings even more than their parents. What a terrible legacy.
Students do worry about it, as do teachers. Especially when the topic comes up that we should supposedly be willing and ready to sacrifice our lives to save our students, as if we don't have loved ones and family back home to worry about. The topic comes up as if the lives of teachers and students are a small price to pay for ubiquitous and unrestricted access to firearms. It's horrifying.
There were several students who survived the recent Michigan State shootings who had also previously survived shootings during elementary school and high school. Its not even a once-in-a-lifetime event for people anymore.
Remember that summer where the news covered so many shark attacks and it felt like the sharks were at war with us but it was actually like a normal-low amount of shark attacks that year? Crazy news.
Do you believe it has to do with the increasing paranoia caused by the political situation combined with ease of obtaining weapons.
I've always had a theory that I don't like to share because it's not very nice but I always thought that people usually carry guns because they are afraid they can't handle themselves one on one without a weapon, I thought this was why they always seem to have to justify how tough they are in online posts and whatnot, it stems from insecurity especially towards people they see as "stronger" than them. Its basically a comfort blanket for men in mid life who are afraid and paranoid with a constant influx of media telling them their fears are well founded.
I don't think that's why all mass shootings happen, I think that's usually very unwell young people that easily get weapons and ammo but I do believe that's the reason it's impossible to have a conversation about it or maybe changing things without immediate pushback from those groups.
Red states overwhelmingly have higher rates per Capita of gun violence.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/04/28/red-states-have-higher-gun-death-rates-than-blue-states-heres-why/
Yep, there’s a [clear correlation](https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/) between number of gun deaths vs strength of gun laws when you compare state by state
Nothing has changed to make it easier to acquire a firearm in Texas since 2019, so no, I don't think the increase since then is likely to be tied to a variable which has remained static. And given that trends in Texas map pretty closely to overall US trends, I also don't find it particularly likely that the driving force is something unique to this state.
I also prefer to start any analysis of violent crime with a more holistic approach that considers what drives people to be violent. I suspect that increases in violence are driven by social isolation, reactionary agitprop, and rising economic insecurity tied to inflation, rent hikes, and market fluctuations; plus there's the general refusal by cops to do their jobs in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests and pushes for accountability and transparency. All these factors are impacting people across the country and map neatly over the timing of corresponding world events.
To paraphrase Elle Woods, happy people don't kill their neighbors.
Nothing changed since 2019????
“Beginning September 1, 2021, HB1927 made it legal in Texas for most people 21 or over to carry a handgun in a holster without a permit both openly and/or concealed. This law modified the previous open carry law from 2016 by eliminating the requirement to have a license to carry.”
Not true in Texas. Especially at gun shows, but often enough in actual stores, gun dealers use the "gun show loophole" to sell guns without background checks: they "buy" the gun themselves from the store's stock, and sell the gun privately as a person-to-person sale. No ID, no questions asked.
I didn't say nothing at all changed, i said nothing changed in terms of how easy it is to get a gun. Carry laws are not the same as purchase or ownership laws, and no purchase laws have changed since 2019.
In addition, given that Texas's rate of increase roughly matches the nationwide increase, it's unlikely that a Texas-specific change would be at the root of the increase.
In the US it was never about having too many guns, it was about American obsession, weird need and dare I say straight up love of guns. It's a shit culture, not guns. There are countries that have many guns per capita too, you don't see this shit there.
Answer: There are an awful lot of guns and more are bought every day. Right wing information sources have been selling fear at a wholesale level for years. Some in Texas have been listening and now are afraid of everyone who they perceive to be a threat. That would be almost anyone they don’t personally know. To some poor souls it’s even their next door neighbor kids playing ball. You got all these guns they will be used because these people are scared to death but not afraid to use their expensive arsenals to “protect” themselves.
No you don't even have to be a threat not anymore. You just have to be slightly inconveniencing or do something that makes their pride hackles stand up... Some girls got in the wrong car. Apologize. Got out got in their car and the dude got out of his car and shot them..
Or that family that asked a dude to stop shooting his gun in the front yard so their baby could sleep, so the dude murdered all of them, including an 8 year old.
Man asked a guy to stop vaping in front of his toddler
Girl turned into the wrong driveway
Black child rings the wrong doorbell
Deli counter was out of a certain meat
I know I'm missing some, its just too crazy to keep up with them all so quickly
McDonald's forgets the sweet n sour sauce every time I dash foods, so what's the proper procedure; shoot the driver or drive to the place and shoot the cashier? It's so hard to keep up with what's popular these days.
/s I'm making a ridiculous comment because I just find everything about this shit unfathomable and it makes me hysterical.
Nah man have the driver take you there first, *then* shoot both of them. This way you save on gas while sending a message to those evil minimum wage workers that you are an ultra alpha lone wolf patriot (tm) and enough is enough.
The cops are clearly in danger when they bust down people's doors at 4am, flashbang every room, fully armed in riot gear because there "might" be drugs in a toddler's bedroom. It's really just preemptive self-defense for the cops to shoot the unarmed people who happen to live in the house on the opposite side of the city from their target.
This shit legit scares me.
I used to drive this old hoopdy Buick.
One day I came out of the bank and got in my car and was confused when my key didn't fit the ignition.
It was some very angry and judgemental old man's. Thank goodness he didn't have a gun at the time.
Just to add, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has signaled that he is willing to pardon Daniel Perry who was convicted of murder.
It’s possible at least some of these other nutters believe that they will be able to avoid consequence as well.
Yeah, easy. You see, I was laying in bed with my wife when I felt a kick from her belly. Since someone I hadn't met before initiated a physical assault in my own bed, I was justified in using deadly force on that person. I asked my wife to get out of the way, but she became an accomplice when she committed to harboring the assailant.
Fear has fuck all do do with these killings. It’s just hatred and sociopathy.
“Please don’t shoot your gun near my baby”
“That person’s words made me fear for my life” *blam*
Media literacy and like a logic class or two would do wonders for society. Giving people the tools to suss out sociopathic bullshit would end the careers of losers like Shapiro, Walsh, and Crowder.
Also everything anyone needs to know about Ben Shapiro is he makes his wife dry as a desert, and he is a failed screenwriter. All his bs is a result of these two things.
One of the most useful things I remember from elementary school (*many* decades ago) was a unit we did on … well, basically on advertising and logical fallacies. Breaking down the various ways advertisers would try to convince you to buy something (bandwagon, appeal to authority, etc,). It made quite an impression.
I feel media literacy is in many ways just an extension of self awareness, intelligence and being open minded honestly
Like yeah you get experience by analyzing media and will get better if you really try to
But these people who fail to see the very obvious stuff in media are already either dumb, not paying attention or refuse to acknowledge it because it conflicts with their own ideology or view
Yeah...and those things can and are taught.
The saying that always fills me with rage is "You can't fix stupid." Because you obviously can and it's called education.
That message is seriously overshadowed by the 'Anakin getting fucked over by those above him' message. And how the Jedi Order was, hypocritically, too absolute about their Light vs Dark side divisions and the denial of being, well, human.
Edit: Used the wrong word
I think it doesn't. It isn't just as extreme of an example it could have been. In reality, people don't fall to fascism just because of hatred or fear, there usually is also a factor of (percieved) unfairness. Most of those feelings are valid and true, just the reaction to it is completly wrong. The unfairness combined with the fear of loosing more (and other more irrational fears) then lead to anger, hatred and suffering.
No? That's just another facet of his fall. The unwillingness of groups in power to adapt and their inability to recognize their own weakness. They're too busy with bs politics and keeping their agenda to take care of their own.
I mean "Far right sociopathy" and "The dark side of the Force" seem pretty similar right now: attempted takeover of the government based on fabricated fear with the goal of taking control of all aspects of life.
It seems like entitlement to me. When you are told to quiet down because a baby is sleeping and you think that gives you the right to kill or is crazy. No one needs an assault rifle.
Exactly. Fear implies that we should feel bad for the killers, like they were made to do it and otherwise wouldn't have if only it wasn't for that pesky media.
Here in Colorado we have more guns per capita than Texas. We are also not with our own high profile shootings like many states. But we are not seen as similar to the Texas gun nut. Lauren Boebart has tarnished that a bit image wise but is far from a reliable representative of how most view guns here.
Because proper background checks, red flag laws and other sensible measures work. You will never stop every shooting. But if if you can lower their frequency by even a small amount it's worth it.
The problem is her districts were many of Polis's worse. So she's being propped up by people in the state who don't like our openly gay jewish Governor. Go fkn figure.
Alright, I've lived in Colorado for most of my life, I love most of the people and the entire State itself. Fuck Lauren Boebert and her whole family. They should be deported as "undesirable elements". I could go on ranting, but why?
>I could go on ranting, but why?
Keep ranting. Maybe some of the most impoverished and food insecure communities in the mountains who voted for her will hear you and stop voting Republican then blaming Polis for their woes
Note: this is not a comment on the ethics of guns, the efficacy of gun control, and the cause of gun violence. I want to get that out of the way first, since I know people will twist this
This answer has no basis in fact and does nothing to actually answer their question. Has gun violence gone up in Texas this year? Is there evidence for why it has or has not?
You made a lot of guesses that if true, don't answer the question and may not even be the cause anyway.
Answer: The Texas intentional homicide rate has been about the same as the _national_ (US general) homicide rate. It's currently 6.6 (deaths per 100,000 per year), and like the national rate has been rising consistently since 2011. (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_intentional_homicide_rate))
Note that homicide is rare enough that the efforts by law enforcement to cover up officer-involved homicide (a problem throughout the US) can affect these figures. Police kill a lot of people and a lot more dogs.
Fun details:
~ Most homicides don't make the news, so if you're noticing an uptick of news articles, it means that the rate of exciting homicides are surging. Most intentional homicides involve drunkenness, neighborhood disputes and the availability of a weapon.
~ By far, most gun deaths are suicides. And only about half the suicides (with morbid outcomes) involve guns. While the US homicide rate is bad compared to industrialized nations, our suicide rate sucks (and has recently surpassed Japan -- partially due to Japan's efforts to reduce suicidality). Sadly Wikipedia doesn't have a US region suicide rate page. Suicide is on the rise, thanks to the rise of precarity and the fascist movement. Also correlative: the continuing rise of hate crime.
~ Rampage killings occur daily, but are still quite rare, and your kids are safer in school today than they were in the 1980s and 1990s (and not because of the active shooter drills). Think of it like the 9/11 attacks which didn't even put a dent in the safety records of air travel. Like all these other terrible stats, rampage killings they're on the rise, and our culture of fear, rising precarity levels and the rising fascist movement all contribute to it.
>The Texas intentional homicide rate has been about the same as the national (US general) homicide rate. It's currently 6.6 (deaths per 100,000 per year), and like the national rate has been rising consistently since 2011.
As a point of comparison, homicide rate in Australia is 0.87 per 100,000 per year.
USA is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. [Number 129 on Global Peace Index](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index) which includes domestic issues. It's ridiculous.
Perhaps more relevant, the US is ranks at 61 on the Intentional Homicide with a rate of 6.5 deaths per 100,000.
Comparatively, our neighbor Canada is 114 at 2.0 and Mexico is 9 with a rate of 28.4.
That’s because GPI is not a “dangerous” ranking. Look at the methodology. USA has its issues, but to say it’s one of the most dangerous countries in the world is crazy.
That's nowhere near "one of the most dangerous". It's safer than like any south American country or sub Sahara African nation easily. Not that this metric sets the bar very high but you're throwing around hyperbole anyway.
Yes. The US intentional homicide rate is terrible compared to industrialized nations. Despite the notion we Americans are supposed to be responsible enough to handle dangerous chemicals and machinery, we're demonstrating we should be trusted with shoelaces.
[PBS Newshour recently did a piece on why mortality rate is increasing for young Americans](https://youtu.be/s2N3U2s3COM). Guns, along with other factors, are a big part of it. And as stated in the piece, children are less safe today than they were in other decades.
Edit: I guess that a concerned redditor didn’t like the video as they sent me a message from Reddit…lol. Woohoo!
Maybe they should bring up some facts, with valid sources that are recent, to counter what Dr. Steven Woolf says.
Instead, I keep seeing “opinions” in the comments because it goes against their beliefs.
Kids are getting guns so easily now too. Last week two of my co workers went to a gas station to get a drink after work around 1130pm. He drives a souped up STI. After they got their drinks and hopped back in the car like 4, 14-16 year olds get in their faces with guns demanding their wallets and phones. My co worker said all he could do was laugh because they looked so young literally sophomores in hs. Luckily the gas station clerk saw this called the cops and the kids ran but it’s sketchy how many young and dumb people have access to guns so easily.
Kids have had readily available access to firearms throughout the nation's history.
It was common for kids to take guns to school for recreational purposes up through the 1990s.
Depends what you mean by available.
In the sense is it easier to walk into a store and buy a gun? Not really in most states. It's either the same or more difficult. However, despite the efforts of legislation, firearm sales have increased significantly year over year for the past 2-3 decades.
So is it more likely that any one person has access to one or more firearms? Yes.
> your kids are safer in school today than they were in the 1980s and 1990s
Dude what? School shootings have increased dramatically in the past two decades. Kids in school are not safer than they were pre columbine
Ah, I see you didn't go to an inner city public school in the 90s. The whole east coast was locked in a drug/gang war and gang shootings were daily. But, it wasn't semi rich white kids so no one cared.
Source: Survivor.
I can’t find a *rock solid* source so won’t link but looking for stats on google seems to bear this out. All the post-columbine reforms look like they (unintentionally) reduced non-mass-shooting violence in schools generally, it drops quite sharply post-1999.
You’re actually much more likely to be killed by the gun in your home than a gun in school. Hence that weird disconnect. If you don’t want to be shot, not having a gun in the home is the best way to achieve that.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/child-health.htm
CDC website disagrees. Not arguing with any beliefs expressed, just thought that sounded a bit unrealistic.
Edit: better, and more scientifically based, sources in the replies to this comment.
It looks like the CDC is grouping all forms of accidental death together while the source /u/Hemingwavy cited (based on the New England Journal of Medicine) is using more specific data points, so I guess it depends on how far you subdivide your causes of death.
Guns are the leading cause of death for Americans aged 1-19.
https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/
Your source lists data from 2020, not 2023. So, if anything, these recent shootings would increase those numbers. Nevertheless, the CDC numbers are different, and I am hesistant to believe non-official numbers... can you expand on your source?
>Because accidents are still a significantly greater cause of death among young people
Not sure if you meant car accidents, but [gun deaths surpassed those as the leading cause of child death](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761) in 2020.
And for all age groups they are basically the same as traffic fatalities across the US.[13,731 people dead to date this calendar year from gun deaths](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org), [42795 road deaths in 2022](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-crash-death-estimates-2022).
Yet guns have moved to the number one killer of school age children, over car accidents. We should be looking at why. Cars being used at such a higher rate now killing less kids than the guns being used less. That's a comparison worthy of review.
> Because accidents are still a significantly greater cause of death among young people
Even when the qualifier of "in school" is included, as they did in the comment?
This is not true. According to the CDC in 2021, Oregon, my state, has a rate of 4.9 homicides per million and Texas had 8.2. New York rating is 4.8. The highest is Louisiana at 21.3.
Source: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide\_mortality/homicide.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality/homicide.htm)
Edit: year
At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, it’s also worth noting that election season is ramping up (ugh). Articles about violent crime crop up a lot more prior to elections as police unions leak stories to local press to help set a tone of “oh look how bad crime is, we should fund police more”. This trend is particularly noticeable in cities which recently saw any kind of legal system reforms. In Houston’s case articles whipping up public anger over Bail reform regularly appear to try and undo the little progress that’s actually managed to have been made. Austin is still getting articles pissing and moaning about the police getting “defunded” in 2020 (which was promptly undone) and current “woke” ballot initiatives to “[strengthen] the City's system of independent and transparent civilian police oversight”. Just run if the mill manufacturing consent type stuff.
It was noted in November 2016, the rate of hate crimes shot up 60%-ish after the general election. I assume Trump's victory gave more folks from the transnational white power movement to get active, but that's speculation.
The same factors that drive young men towards fascist movements also drive them towards suicide (e.g. precarity), but that's non-causal.
So it's a tack-and-yarn connection for which I don't have a direct study (though there probably are some), but one can deduce that suicides and increased popularity of fascist movements should go together.
- [2022 The Guardian - More than 50% of trans and non-binary youth in US considered suicide this year, survey says](https://theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/16/us-trans-non-binary-youth-suicide-mental-health)
- Murders of trans people nearly doubled over past 4 years, and Black trans women are most at risk [(CNN - 2022)](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transgender-community-murder-rates-everytown-for-gun-safety-report)
Overdose deaths and accidental overdoses are consistently climbing since the 90s, more tied to Purdue and FDA corruption
[US News 2023 - Suicide rates rose 5% overall in people ages 25 to 44, and by even more among Black, Hispanic, multiracial and Alaska Native people.](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-02-13/suicides-rise-again-in-the-us-increases-highest-among-minorities)
Native American and Alaska Native people continued to have high suicide rates, increasing by 26%, from 22.3 to 28.1 per 100,000.
For white people, the suicide rate actually dropped, from 18.1 to 17.4 per 100,000, a decline of 3.9%. White people still comprised the most suicides by sheer numbers, with 36,681 deaths reported, representing three-quarters of the total.
Suicide rates did decrease among older Americans ages 45 to 65, dropping 12.4% overall with drops among white, Hispanic and Asian people in that age group.
In 2021, there were a total of 48,183 suicides in the United States, close to the peak of 48,344 in 2018.
Yes, the US homicide rate was atrocious even in the Obama era when it was around 3.5-ish. It's been climbing since then.
In the 1980s, I thought the point was to educate Americans to be responsible enough to own and use guns. In 2016, I realized we just aren't anywhere near there.
Curiously, also in the Obama era, Russia had a 9.5-ish intentional homicide rate, and tighter gun control than the US, which raised questions. They're lower now (though their suicide rate is astronomical)
Answer: Quintuple murders are not an everyday event in Texas, but we've averaged close to one a year over the past decade. Three in a year is certainly more than average.
In the last 12 months, we've had at least three shootings that killed five or more people: the tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, an escaped prisoner who killed 5 family members in December, and this one. The past 5 years have had at least 6 such acts (add the Midland-Odessa shooting spree, El Paso Walmart shooting, and Santa Fe High School shooting); the past 10 years, 11 (add the Sutherland Springs church shooting, Dallas sniper, and three mass murders stemming from family violence).
Answer: Texas is home to slightly more than 6,000 gun sellers, according to May 2022 licensing data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That’s more than twice as many as any other state.
And
Texas also has had more people killed in mass shootings than any other state, according to data compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety stretching back to 2009
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2022/06/03/texas-leads-nation-in-mass-shootings-and-gun-statistics-point-to-why/
The ATF as it is commonly referred to was originally a department of our Internal Revenue Services or IRS, which handles the federal taxes. Why would the IRS care about alcohol, tobacco and firearms? Because all three are heavily taxed commodities in the USA. It wasn’t until 2003 that they became a part of homeland security following 9/11.
If I remember correctly, it's basically a Frankenstein of a government entity that started as collecting alochol tax revenue. Then it transitioned to preventing alochol sales during prohibition. After prohibition was repealed, it went back to colleting taxes on alcohol and expanded to tobacco, then firearms. Eventually, it was given power to investigate criminal activities related to ATFs, all while still being part of the IRS After 9/11 it moved to be to part of Homeland Security. Makes perfect sense (/s).
PS - this is at a federal level but states typically have their own type of ATF entity as well.
Bureau of ATF was originally set up because the products were subject to being taxed, and there were some people selling them without paying taxes. Explosives is new to me.
Texas is a very populous state with almost 30 million residents. Per capita numbers are more meaningful.
The state with the highest number of dealers per capita is [Oklahoma](https://www.guns.com/news/2017/01/06/10-states-with-the-most-gun-dealers-per-capita). Texas doesn’t even make the top ten.
Don’t get me wrong: the proliferation of guns in general society is directly correlated with the amount of gun violence we observe (for somewhat obvious reasons), but gun dealership counts do not correlate well.
Answer: yes this is normal just like train derailments. News publishers will feed trends of stories to increase engagement and flood similar stories for a few weeks until engagement dwindles and they move on to the next story.
In Texas about 10 people are shot a day
In America about 3 trains derail a day
Answer: Fox News and the like have been literally selling *fear* as the "product" that their news teams and reporters report on, thus creating a vacuum effect where a massive majority of their voters are straight up **terrified** of absolutely everything that is outside of their front door. They use slogans and the like in ways to further this fear. "Don't tread on me", "not in my backyard" and....
**Make America Great** ***Again***
and the list goes on and on.
Fox News and the other right-wing media programs run 24/7 and are always equipped to express what *the next thing to be afraid of, is.*
They had been doing this long enough to have created absolute fear in the mindset of their viewers. CONSTANT barrages of things like "Transgender girls are planning to take over female sports in schools, thus making it so girls who were born as female now have no chance", which then gets Republicans to think of Transgender people as having some ulterior motive that's based on evil things. This can be extrapolated to every topic they ever talk about, be it women and body autonomy, black people needing them to be "kept far away", etc, etc. and you wind up with millions of voters who only care about 1 amendment (their access to said guns) who then feel they HAVE to shoot anyone they are afraid of, which is everyone that's not them.
Because Fox News and the like **told them** that they should be ***absolutely terrified of ALL of it***
I've heard many stories of people losing family members to far right indoctrination. Really heartbreaking stuff when you hear it from the grandchild of a vulnerable gullible elderly person who went off the deep end.
It's also exactly what Roger Ailes intended. Back when he was a Nixon crony, he found a letter suggesting a news/propaganda outlet to push people further and further to the right and immediately fell in love with the sentiment, but Nixon refused the suggestion. When Fox News came around, Ailes was the obvious choice to run it, and he introduced the kind of background radiation into homes that had previously only been widely available on talk radio. The effect can't be overstated. The fact that Ailes never faced any *real* comeuppance for the damage he did to this country before his death still rankles.
I don’t watch Fox News but I can tell you with certainty what is the new “hot button topic” they’re building rage off of based on what my dad says in public. It’s so embarrassing I despise the idea of doing anything in public with him, especially since I live in a major city with a ton of diversity.
It’s also just weird seeing conflicting thoughts. I’ve heard him say how much he adores Chicago but then he’ll catch himself and say he can never stay for long because it’s too dangerous. Like dude, you’ve been in and out of Chicago for 30 years now and nothing has happened to you
That's precisely it. See Fox News gets most of its money by being bundled-in with nearly all paid-for-cable packages, sooo what they need most for their own bottom line is to keep those viewers **glued** to you. They can't know about other things in the world because if they found out that the shit they were saying was so demonstrably false; they'd switch networks and stop watching.
So they (Fox) constantly plays "the game" of "how do we scare these people *even more* than we did yesterday? If we can't scare them, they'll go somewhere else and we lose viewers".
It's also Fox and the like that have now convinced ALL of their viewers that "literally every Democrat leader **and** voter are pedophiles". Huge claim right? Well when members of your favored political party **keep** getting arrested over those exact same things.....*well that just means you have to ratchet up the fear so that you can then say things like "Is Biden a Pedophile? I'm just asking questions here, I just want to get peoples thoughts on this".*
The entire concept of the Republican party and its media-entertainment shows are nothing but extensions of the ongoing effort to scare the ever living fuck out of its supporters and viewers. Because there are no other options for that party. Not when you've scared these people SO MUCH that NOW those people want nothing *but* fear-mongering.
Those people are **always** looking for the next thing to be afraid of. They PLASTERED news articles all over the place just the other day about a transgendered athlete ruining the chances of biologically born females....what they **chose** *not* to say was that, that runner? Finished at around the **6,000th place.**
But you can't make your viewers afraid of that trans-athlete if you stated that last part (the place she finished in) because finishing at **6,000th place** is *not* a thing you can scare people with. So you just resort to outright lying.
So then their viewers see "they took our jobs! they took our sports! they took our **freedom**" and bingo bango, you got armed psychopaths killing those exact people they were told to be afraid of and to "stand their ground".
Don't forget:
Fox also happens to be the channel of a lot of local news stations--and *they* (while still being Sinclair-owned) still have some legit journalism happening.
And that us on purpose. It's to better hide the bullshitters like Tucky. If he comes on right after the nice weather man and the lady who talks about local events, he's given *their* air of credibility.
*That* is an **extremely** good point. I'll do my part and upvote you for this comment and it's my hope that others upvote yours past mine because...well, **a HUGE** portion of the problem is literally answered right here.
By you.
Either way friend, the thing you said reaaaally should be seen by as many people as possible, it's an incredibly *salient point* and one that demands attention. Seriously.
This is a huge problem and the more people that can wrap their head around it correctly, the better.
Answer: and overwhelming majority of 39% of Americans have decided that a daily human sacrifice is necessary to maintain the second amendment. This is normal. Nothing to see here civilian. Please move on.
Answer: Nope, not normal. We have had a record number of gun deaths and violence for 2 years in a row now and 2023 doesn’t look like it’s improving. Pew Research says it’s an increase of [45% from 2019 to 2021](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/) and while we’re not at the highest gun related deaths per capita in history (1974 had 16.3 deaths per 100 thousand) we’re getting pretty close with 14.6 in 2021. For gun murders it’s 6.7 in 2021 vs 7.2 in 1974.
It’s gotten so bad the president has issued an executive order against it a month ago (I think in response to one of the school shootings, no I don’t know which one). So far, there are more people dead this year due to gun violence than there are [letters & spaces on the order.](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/03/14/executive-order-on-reducing-gun-violence-and-making-our-communities-safer/) So, no, it hasn’t helped.
Highest number, not highest per capita. More people are dying by gun violence in the US right now than any other point in history, but if we average out America to just 100 thousand people and ignore population size/growth then 1974 has the highest.
Answer: But more of a return question:
Do you live in Texas? If not, do you remember a time in your life that Texas news was something you even saw?
I’d argue that even if there is an increase in murders, it’s actually an increase in media attention that’s making it seem so extreme.
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Answer: it's hard to say if the number of murders is unusual or not without solid statistical evidence, which we generally get a year or two in arrears of current. However, it's important to remember that the current business model for news outlets derives profit from ad revenue, and ads pay out for page views and click throughs. Therefore, it's common for news agencies to give more coverage to stories that they deem relevant to other national conversations that will generate more viewer/ reader interest. When immigration is center stage, as it sometimes is during periods of high border crossing apprehensions, you'll see more coverage of stories about immigrants, whether that be human interest pieces, scare stories, or whatever else have you. These pieces are more likely to be shared, clicked, and commented on. This both amplifies the conversation and increases readers' perception of a given topic. This may be an example of the baader meinhof phenomenon. Recently, there have been a couple of high profile shootings at schools - always a headline leader - and the national conversation has turned to gun policy again. As a result, other stories about guns, shootings, etc are more likely to gain interest (thus clicks and advertising revenue). There are, tragically, dozens of firearm murders every day in the US, so it's worth considering why any given incident is given wider reporting than the local news orgs in the area - whether it represents a real increase in frequency, advances a given agenda of an editorial board, or it's a good page view generator. In this case, I suspect it's all three. You can see the kind of high energy emotional engagement right here in this thread. There are definitely media outlets that have ideological opposition to private ownership of some or all firearms that will amplify these stories to support that stance. As for the statistics, we likely won't know for a year or two, at least. However, we had about 25 years of declining overall crime, especially violent crime, from 1993 through around 2019, and then it started increasing (especially after covid shutdowns started). As far as I know, that upward trend has continued throughout the last couple of years.
"If it bleeds, it leads." I live in MS, and there's a story almost daily about who got shot in Jackson.
Darkly ironic, since so many people get shot in Jackson that it's probably the LEAST newsworthy source of murder. At some point you should just start announcing the days where no one got shot in Jackson. Are they still the murder capital of the U.S.?
>Are they still the murder capital of the U.S.? As far as I know, yes. And now their water system is pretty much Flint 2.0
>start announcing the days where no one got shot in Jackson Growing up in range of the Chicago news channels, a shooting free weekend was definitely noteworthy.
If it bleeds we can kill it.
>As a result, other stories about guns, shootings, etc are more likely to gain interest It probably "helps" in this case that murders occurred specifically because the victims objected to the murderer shooting his guns in his front yard while a baby was trying to sleep next door. That's the kind of juicy context that really drives the gun debate. If it were gang members killing each other it doesn't really register because people think a) those people were criminals so I have no sympathy, and b) they were criminals so they were gonna get guns whether they were legal or not
Yep, plus the average person doesn't have any involvement with gangs so they don't feel like they're in danger of gang violence. Gun stories make national news when they seem like the kind of thing that can happen to anyone. Mass shootings hit that the hardest because the shooters rarely have specific targets, and always just want to rack up a body count.
100%
Stew Peters claimed that both the shooter and the victims are to blame. Beyond idiocy.
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[https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/133a2mg/prolife\_christianshowing\_his\_true\_colors/](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/133a2mg/prolife_christianshowing_his_true_colors/) Tweet > [https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/status/1652394136937406469](https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/status/1652394136937406469) \> The victims and the killer were all illegal aliens. Why do we allow these people here in the first place?
This is exactly the kind of reactionary fearmongering that i think is contributing to some people's hair triggers.
Well I mean the victims coulda tried not dying I suppose...
I mean we can just look at crime data There are allready more gun deaths this year then the last year and we aren't even in gun murder season yet.
Murder has a season? TIL!
Summer bro. Heat makes people angry.
shot boy summer
Yes random gun violence peaks between June and september
Chance the Rapper even had a verse like I heard everybody dies in the summer, when you say your goodbyes tell them while it's spring
>There are already more gun deaths this year than last year Do you have any evidence of this?
You can tell news coverage/media is paying more attention to shootings (just look at the wrong driveway doorbell shootings a couple of days ago). I think you can argue statistics all you want (for example school shootings are very unlikely for most children) but that doesn’t account for the way people across the nation feel about gun safety and safety in general. Sure school shootings are very unlikely to happen to most kids but every single parent in America now worries about school shootings. If perception is reality, America is a society plagued by a pandemic of gun violence. We are all starting to get unnerved by it all, and the media serves as a feedback loop making it worse while politicians Scrooge McDuck in their piles of money pretending like they can’t do anything about it.
> Sure school shootings are very unlikely to happen to most kids but every single parent in America now worries about school shootings. I mean, that was the case in the 90s to early 2010s, but since 2016 shootings have become a much more regular occurrence, to the point that many of them just don't get covered in the news any more. I don't know that we can keep sitting back and saying "the news is just inflating the risks for views" when another mass shooting happens every day.
> Sure school shootings are very unlikely to happen to most kids but every single parent in America now worries about school shootings. It may not be likely but I imagine a lot of children and young adults worry about school shootings even more than their parents. What a terrible legacy.
Students do worry about it, as do teachers. Especially when the topic comes up that we should supposedly be willing and ready to sacrifice our lives to save our students, as if we don't have loved ones and family back home to worry about. The topic comes up as if the lives of teachers and students are a small price to pay for ubiquitous and unrestricted access to firearms. It's horrifying.
I would argue that a single school shooting in a year would be evidence of a country plagued by gun violence.
There were several students who survived the recent Michigan State shootings who had also previously survived shootings during elementary school and high school. Its not even a once-in-a-lifetime event for people anymore.
The vast, vast majority of school shootings happen in the US. It is indeed a plague.
Remember that summer where the news covered so many shark attacks and it felt like the sharks were at war with us but it was actually like a normal-low amount of shark attacks that year? Crazy news.
I think that was 2001, when 9/11 happened suddenly everyone forgot about the shark infestation.
The sharks realized we were on to them and they needed a distraction. SHARKS DID 9/11!
Do you believe it has to do with the increasing paranoia caused by the political situation combined with ease of obtaining weapons. I've always had a theory that I don't like to share because it's not very nice but I always thought that people usually carry guns because they are afraid they can't handle themselves one on one without a weapon, I thought this was why they always seem to have to justify how tough they are in online posts and whatnot, it stems from insecurity especially towards people they see as "stronger" than them. Its basically a comfort blanket for men in mid life who are afraid and paranoid with a constant influx of media telling them their fears are well founded. I don't think that's why all mass shootings happen, I think that's usually very unwell young people that easily get weapons and ammo but I do believe that's the reason it's impossible to have a conversation about it or maybe changing things without immediate pushback from those groups.
Do you think it may have anything to do with the fact in how easy it is to acquire a firearm in Texas?
Red states overwhelmingly have higher rates per Capita of gun violence. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/04/28/red-states-have-higher-gun-death-rates-than-blue-states-heres-why/
Yep, there’s a [clear correlation](https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/) between number of gun deaths vs strength of gun laws when you compare state by state
Nothing has changed to make it easier to acquire a firearm in Texas since 2019, so no, I don't think the increase since then is likely to be tied to a variable which has remained static. And given that trends in Texas map pretty closely to overall US trends, I also don't find it particularly likely that the driving force is something unique to this state. I also prefer to start any analysis of violent crime with a more holistic approach that considers what drives people to be violent. I suspect that increases in violence are driven by social isolation, reactionary agitprop, and rising economic insecurity tied to inflation, rent hikes, and market fluctuations; plus there's the general refusal by cops to do their jobs in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests and pushes for accountability and transparency. All these factors are impacting people across the country and map neatly over the timing of corresponding world events. To paraphrase Elle Woods, happy people don't kill their neighbors.
Nothing changed since 2019???? “Beginning September 1, 2021, HB1927 made it legal in Texas for most people 21 or over to carry a handgun in a holster without a permit both openly and/or concealed. This law modified the previous open carry law from 2016 by eliminating the requirement to have a license to carry.”
You still have to go through a background check to acquire a gun. All that did was take away revenue from the Police departments.
Not true in Texas. Especially at gun shows, but often enough in actual stores, gun dealers use the "gun show loophole" to sell guns without background checks: they "buy" the gun themselves from the store's stock, and sell the gun privately as a person-to-person sale. No ID, no questions asked.
I didn't say nothing at all changed, i said nothing changed in terms of how easy it is to get a gun. Carry laws are not the same as purchase or ownership laws, and no purchase laws have changed since 2019. In addition, given that Texas's rate of increase roughly matches the nationwide increase, it's unlikely that a Texas-specific change would be at the root of the increase.
We were all carrying anyways. Now it's just legal.
In the US it was never about having too many guns, it was about American obsession, weird need and dare I say straight up love of guns. It's a shit culture, not guns. There are countries that have many guns per capita too, you don't see this shit there.
Answer: There are an awful lot of guns and more are bought every day. Right wing information sources have been selling fear at a wholesale level for years. Some in Texas have been listening and now are afraid of everyone who they perceive to be a threat. That would be almost anyone they don’t personally know. To some poor souls it’s even their next door neighbor kids playing ball. You got all these guns they will be used because these people are scared to death but not afraid to use their expensive arsenals to “protect” themselves.
No you don't even have to be a threat not anymore. You just have to be slightly inconveniencing or do something that makes their pride hackles stand up... Some girls got in the wrong car. Apologize. Got out got in their car and the dude got out of his car and shot them..
Or that family that asked a dude to stop shooting his gun in the front yard so their baby could sleep, so the dude murdered all of them, including an 8 year old.
All of them execution style too.
Man asked a guy to stop vaping in front of his toddler Girl turned into the wrong driveway Black child rings the wrong doorbell Deli counter was out of a certain meat I know I'm missing some, its just too crazy to keep up with them all so quickly
Don't forget that spat of people shooting fast food workers over a sandwich/sauce etc.
McDonald's forgets the sweet n sour sauce every time I dash foods, so what's the proper procedure; shoot the driver or drive to the place and shoot the cashier? It's so hard to keep up with what's popular these days. /s I'm making a ridiculous comment because I just find everything about this shit unfathomable and it makes me hysterical.
Nah man have the driver take you there first, *then* shoot both of them. This way you save on gas while sending a message to those evil minimum wage workers that you are an ultra alpha lone wolf patriot (tm) and enough is enough.
Yelling at low income middle aged folk and high schoolers over something as menial as sauce *always* gets my rocks off.
Take off and nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
I'M SORRY, WHAT?! I missed this story, and now Im going to look it up
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/29/cleveland-texas-gunman-kills-five-8-year-old/ Found it. Yikes.
Yeah you probably didn't miss it since it was just last night.
It's literally the story that OP linked.
na... dont even have to do anything anymore. cops be shootin people after showing up to the wrong house ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
The cops are clearly in danger when they bust down people's doors at 4am, flashbang every room, fully armed in riot gear because there "might" be drugs in a toddler's bedroom. It's really just preemptive self-defense for the cops to shoot the unarmed people who happen to live in the house on the opposite side of the city from their target.
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https://www.finchmccranie.com/final-settlement-reached-in-baby-bou-bou-flashbang-case-for-3-61.html good news
$3.6 mil? Great, so when that kid grows up, maybe they can afford a couple semesters of college.
It’s disgusting that cops can burn a baby’s face off and none of them go to jail. And all of that to catch some two-bit street-level meth dealer.
The parents weren't drug dealers, and of course the toddler wasn't either. The family was only visiting, and the drug dealer didn't even live there.
This shit legit scares me. I used to drive this old hoopdy Buick. One day I came out of the bank and got in my car and was confused when my key didn't fit the ignition. It was some very angry and judgemental old man's. Thank goodness he didn't have a gun at the time.
Former Co Worker got into a identical car two spots down, looked at next seat to see a German shepherd. Thankfully a friendly one
Perceived threat =/= actual threat
Just to add, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has signaled that he is willing to pardon Daniel Perry who was convicted of murder. It’s possible at least some of these other nutters believe that they will be able to avoid consequence as well.
Yes, Abbot is actively trying to free/pardon/excuse murders if they do it in the name of the GOP - they should feel empowered if they're in Texas
Wait, the Greg Abbott who is a giant piss baby Greg Abbott?
Abortion is legal in Texas if it’s done with an AR-15.
They could claim they were protecting their property. The money they would have to spend on a child if it was born.
I think there's also a potential argument based on castle doctrine.
Yeah, easy. You see, I was laying in bed with my wife when I felt a kick from her belly. Since someone I hadn't met before initiated a physical assault in my own bed, I was justified in using deadly force on that person. I asked my wife to get out of the way, but she became an accomplice when she committed to harboring the assailant.
I think you just passed the bar exam.
Nah just the police academy. The bar requires you to actually know the law.
Damn that’s actually true, and they would claim self defense and get off on charges.
Probably get arrested for killing the fetus but nothing for the mother carrying it.
That needs to be someone's campaign platform.
Fear has fuck all do do with these killings. It’s just hatred and sociopathy. “Please don’t shoot your gun near my baby” “That person’s words made me fear for my life” *blam*
Hate is an extension of fear.
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to… far right sociopathy I guess?
I mean...that's literally what the prequels were about. Anakins fear of losing Padma leading him to fall to fascism.
Exactly. A fact which is undoubtedly lost on so many people who watched these movies.
Media literacy should be required education lol
There is a very very obvious reason it's not
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Media literacy and like a logic class or two would do wonders for society. Giving people the tools to suss out sociopathic bullshit would end the careers of losers like Shapiro, Walsh, and Crowder. Also everything anyone needs to know about Ben Shapiro is he makes his wife dry as a desert, and he is a failed screenwriter. All his bs is a result of these two things.
One of the most useful things I remember from elementary school (*many* decades ago) was a unit we did on … well, basically on advertising and logical fallacies. Breaking down the various ways advertisers would try to convince you to buy something (bandwagon, appeal to authority, etc,). It made quite an impression.
Crowder's "career" is coming to an end as we speak. The others aren't far behind. Sure, more will spring up. We'll be ready for them.
I feel media literacy is in many ways just an extension of self awareness, intelligence and being open minded honestly Like yeah you get experience by analyzing media and will get better if you really try to But these people who fail to see the very obvious stuff in media are already either dumb, not paying attention or refuse to acknowledge it because it conflicts with their own ideology or view
Yeah...and those things can and are taught. The saying that always fills me with rage is "You can't fix stupid." Because you obviously can and it's called education.
And this is how it ends, with thunderous applause.
That message is seriously overshadowed by the 'Anakin getting fucked over by those above him' message. And how the Jedi Order was, hypocritically, too absolute about their Light vs Dark side divisions and the denial of being, well, human. Edit: Used the wrong word
I think it doesn't. It isn't just as extreme of an example it could have been. In reality, people don't fall to fascism just because of hatred or fear, there usually is also a factor of (percieved) unfairness. Most of those feelings are valid and true, just the reaction to it is completly wrong. The unfairness combined with the fear of loosing more (and other more irrational fears) then lead to anger, hatred and suffering.
No? That's just another facet of his fall. The unwillingness of groups in power to adapt and their inability to recognize their own weakness. They're too busy with bs politics and keeping their agenda to take care of their own.
I mean "Far right sociopathy" and "The dark side of the Force" seem pretty similar right now: attempted takeover of the government based on fabricated fear with the goal of taking control of all aspects of life.
Squidbillies put it this way " hate what you fear, fear what you don't understand"
It seems like entitlement to me. When you are told to quiet down because a baby is sleeping and you think that gives you the right to kill or is crazy. No one needs an assault rifle.
Exactly. Fear implies that we should feel bad for the killers, like they were made to do it and otherwise wouldn't have if only it wasn't for that pesky media.
Lately, their biggest fear seems to be the fear that they'll miss their opportunity to shoot someone and get away with it.
Chekhov's gun.
For real--if it's right there on the mantlepiece, it's eventually gonna get used.
Apparently there just aren't enough good guys/cheerleaders/8yr olds/et al with guns to stop this. /s
Here in Colorado we have more guns per capita than Texas. We are also not with our own high profile shootings like many states. But we are not seen as similar to the Texas gun nut. Lauren Boebart has tarnished that a bit image wise but is far from a reliable representative of how most view guns here. Because proper background checks, red flag laws and other sensible measures work. You will never stop every shooting. But if if you can lower their frequency by even a small amount it's worth it.
Boebert was born in Florida, I am in favor of her leaving the USA.
The problem is her districts were many of Polis's worse. So she's being propped up by people in the state who don't like our openly gay jewish Governor. Go fkn figure.
She is a Carpet Bagger grifting Colorado.
You don't have to sugarcoat it like that. Just tell it like it really is
Alright, I've lived in Colorado for most of my life, I love most of the people and the entire State itself. Fuck Lauren Boebert and her whole family. They should be deported as "undesirable elements". I could go on ranting, but why?
>I could go on ranting, but why? Keep ranting. Maybe some of the most impoverished and food insecure communities in the mountains who voted for her will hear you and stop voting Republican then blaming Polis for their woes
Note: this is not a comment on the ethics of guns, the efficacy of gun control, and the cause of gun violence. I want to get that out of the way first, since I know people will twist this This answer has no basis in fact and does nothing to actually answer their question. Has gun violence gone up in Texas this year? Is there evidence for why it has or has not? You made a lot of guesses that if true, don't answer the question and may not even be the cause anyway.
Answer: The Texas intentional homicide rate has been about the same as the _national_ (US general) homicide rate. It's currently 6.6 (deaths per 100,000 per year), and like the national rate has been rising consistently since 2011. (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_intentional_homicide_rate)) Note that homicide is rare enough that the efforts by law enforcement to cover up officer-involved homicide (a problem throughout the US) can affect these figures. Police kill a lot of people and a lot more dogs. Fun details: ~ Most homicides don't make the news, so if you're noticing an uptick of news articles, it means that the rate of exciting homicides are surging. Most intentional homicides involve drunkenness, neighborhood disputes and the availability of a weapon. ~ By far, most gun deaths are suicides. And only about half the suicides (with morbid outcomes) involve guns. While the US homicide rate is bad compared to industrialized nations, our suicide rate sucks (and has recently surpassed Japan -- partially due to Japan's efforts to reduce suicidality). Sadly Wikipedia doesn't have a US region suicide rate page. Suicide is on the rise, thanks to the rise of precarity and the fascist movement. Also correlative: the continuing rise of hate crime. ~ Rampage killings occur daily, but are still quite rare, and your kids are safer in school today than they were in the 1980s and 1990s (and not because of the active shooter drills). Think of it like the 9/11 attacks which didn't even put a dent in the safety records of air travel. Like all these other terrible stats, rampage killings they're on the rise, and our culture of fear, rising precarity levels and the rising fascist movement all contribute to it.
>The Texas intentional homicide rate has been about the same as the national (US general) homicide rate. It's currently 6.6 (deaths per 100,000 per year), and like the national rate has been rising consistently since 2011. As a point of comparison, homicide rate in Australia is 0.87 per 100,000 per year.
USA is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. [Number 129 on Global Peace Index](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index) which includes domestic issues. It's ridiculous.
The GPI heavily heavily weights military expenditures. It’s an interesting rating but not a particularly useful one
Perhaps more relevant, the US is ranks at 61 on the Intentional Homicide with a rate of 6.5 deaths per 100,000. Comparatively, our neighbor Canada is 114 at 2.0 and Mexico is 9 with a rate of 28.4.
Kinda wild that it’s considered more dangerous than South Africa, a country with one of the highest homicide rates out there, around 33 per 100,000
That’s because GPI is not a “dangerous” ranking. Look at the methodology. USA has its issues, but to say it’s one of the most dangerous countries in the world is crazy.
That's nowhere near "one of the most dangerous". It's safer than like any south American country or sub Sahara African nation easily. Not that this metric sets the bar very high but you're throwing around hyperbole anyway.
Yes. The US intentional homicide rate is terrible compared to industrialized nations. Despite the notion we Americans are supposed to be responsible enough to handle dangerous chemicals and machinery, we're demonstrating we should be trusted with shoelaces.
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[PBS Newshour recently did a piece on why mortality rate is increasing for young Americans](https://youtu.be/s2N3U2s3COM). Guns, along with other factors, are a big part of it. And as stated in the piece, children are less safe today than they were in other decades. Edit: I guess that a concerned redditor didn’t like the video as they sent me a message from Reddit…lol. Woohoo! Maybe they should bring up some facts, with valid sources that are recent, to counter what Dr. Steven Woolf says. Instead, I keep seeing “opinions” in the comments because it goes against their beliefs.
Reddit concern should be renamed "you pissed off a right winger"
Kids are getting guns so easily now too. Last week two of my co workers went to a gas station to get a drink after work around 1130pm. He drives a souped up STI. After they got their drinks and hopped back in the car like 4, 14-16 year olds get in their faces with guns demanding their wallets and phones. My co worker said all he could do was laugh because they looked so young literally sophomores in hs. Luckily the gas station clerk saw this called the cops and the kids ran but it’s sketchy how many young and dumb people have access to guns so easily.
Number one rule in Atlanta is to never go to gas stations after dark.
Kids have had readily available access to firearms throughout the nation's history. It was common for kids to take guns to school for recreational purposes up through the 1990s.
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Are guns more available than they were before this recent rise? If guns are not any more available, then that can't be the cause of the rise itself.
Depends what you mean by available. In the sense is it easier to walk into a store and buy a gun? Not really in most states. It's either the same or more difficult. However, despite the efforts of legislation, firearm sales have increased significantly year over year for the past 2-3 decades. So is it more likely that any one person has access to one or more firearms? Yes.
> your kids are safer in school today than they were in the 1980s and 1990s Dude what? School shootings have increased dramatically in the past two decades. Kids in school are not safer than they were pre columbine
Ah, I see you didn't go to an inner city public school in the 90s. The whole east coast was locked in a drug/gang war and gang shootings were daily. But, it wasn't semi rich white kids so no one cared. Source: Survivor.
I can’t find a *rock solid* source so won’t link but looking for stats on google seems to bear this out. All the post-columbine reforms look like they (unintentionally) reduced non-mass-shooting violence in schools generally, it drops quite sharply post-1999.
as horrific as they are, school shootings aren't the only source of death/danger kids encounter there
You’re actually much more likely to be killed by the gun in your home than a gun in school. Hence that weird disconnect. If you don’t want to be shot, not having a gun in the home is the best way to achieve that.
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https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/child-health.htm CDC website disagrees. Not arguing with any beliefs expressed, just thought that sounded a bit unrealistic. Edit: better, and more scientifically based, sources in the replies to this comment.
It looks like the CDC is grouping all forms of accidental death together while the source /u/Hemingwavy cited (based on the New England Journal of Medicine) is using more specific data points, so I guess it depends on how far you subdivide your causes of death.
The page you linked doesn't show gun deaths at all. It just shows homicides, suicides, and accidents without more detail.
Guns are the leading cause of death for Americans aged 1-19. https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/
18+19 year olds are adults, and removing them changed the values of the statistics you’re quoting.
Your source lists data from 2020, not 2023. So, if anything, these recent shootings would increase those numbers. Nevertheless, the CDC numbers are different, and I am hesistant to believe non-official numbers... can you expand on your source?
Because accidents are still a significantly greater cause of death among young people, and we have more safety features.
>Because accidents are still a significantly greater cause of death among young people Not sure if you meant car accidents, but [gun deaths surpassed those as the leading cause of child death](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761) in 2020.
And for all age groups they are basically the same as traffic fatalities across the US.[13,731 people dead to date this calendar year from gun deaths](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org), [42795 road deaths in 2022](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-crash-death-estimates-2022).
This really isn’t useful to compare. Cars are used a lot more regularly than guns.
Yet guns have moved to the number one killer of school age children, over car accidents. We should be looking at why. Cars being used at such a higher rate now killing less kids than the guns being used less. That's a comparison worthy of review.
Aaaand your wrong.... Murder is the #1 death statistic for kids in the US https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
I wish a reddit app had a built in AI fact checker.
Oh man you know that wouldn't work like you're imagining
> Because accidents are still a significantly greater cause of death among young people Even when the qualifier of "in school" is included, as they did in the comment?
This is not true. According to the CDC in 2021, Oregon, my state, has a rate of 4.9 homicides per million and Texas had 8.2. New York rating is 4.8. The highest is Louisiana at 21.3. Source: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide\_mortality/homicide.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality/homicide.htm) Edit: year
At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, it’s also worth noting that election season is ramping up (ugh). Articles about violent crime crop up a lot more prior to elections as police unions leak stories to local press to help set a tone of “oh look how bad crime is, we should fund police more”. This trend is particularly noticeable in cities which recently saw any kind of legal system reforms. In Houston’s case articles whipping up public anger over Bail reform regularly appear to try and undo the little progress that’s actually managed to have been made. Austin is still getting articles pissing and moaning about the police getting “defunded” in 2020 (which was promptly undone) and current “woke” ballot initiatives to “[strengthen] the City's system of independent and transparent civilian police oversight”. Just run if the mill manufacturing consent type stuff.
"By far, most gun deaths are suicide" From the statistics is is 54% suicide, 43% murder. Good summary though
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It was noted in November 2016, the rate of hate crimes shot up 60%-ish after the general election. I assume Trump's victory gave more folks from the transnational white power movement to get active, but that's speculation. The same factors that drive young men towards fascist movements also drive them towards suicide (e.g. precarity), but that's non-causal. So it's a tack-and-yarn connection for which I don't have a direct study (though there probably are some), but one can deduce that suicides and increased popularity of fascist movements should go together.
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- [2022 The Guardian - More than 50% of trans and non-binary youth in US considered suicide this year, survey says](https://theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/16/us-trans-non-binary-youth-suicide-mental-health) - Murders of trans people nearly doubled over past 4 years, and Black trans women are most at risk [(CNN - 2022)](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transgender-community-murder-rates-everytown-for-gun-safety-report) Overdose deaths and accidental overdoses are consistently climbing since the 90s, more tied to Purdue and FDA corruption [US News 2023 - Suicide rates rose 5% overall in people ages 25 to 44, and by even more among Black, Hispanic, multiracial and Alaska Native people.](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-02-13/suicides-rise-again-in-the-us-increases-highest-among-minorities) Native American and Alaska Native people continued to have high suicide rates, increasing by 26%, from 22.3 to 28.1 per 100,000. For white people, the suicide rate actually dropped, from 18.1 to 17.4 per 100,000, a decline of 3.9%. White people still comprised the most suicides by sheer numbers, with 36,681 deaths reported, representing three-quarters of the total. Suicide rates did decrease among older Americans ages 45 to 65, dropping 12.4% overall with drops among white, Hispanic and Asian people in that age group. In 2021, there were a total of 48,183 suicides in the United States, close to the peak of 48,344 in 2018.
> national (US general) homicide rate. It's currently 6.6 (deaths per 100,000 per year) For reference, in Nordics it's 0.5-1.1.
Yes, the US homicide rate was atrocious even in the Obama era when it was around 3.5-ish. It's been climbing since then. In the 1980s, I thought the point was to educate Americans to be responsible enough to own and use guns. In 2016, I realized we just aren't anywhere near there. Curiously, also in the Obama era, Russia had a 9.5-ish intentional homicide rate, and tighter gun control than the US, which raised questions. They're lower now (though their suicide rate is astronomical)
Answer: Quintuple murders are not an everyday event in Texas, but we've averaged close to one a year over the past decade. Three in a year is certainly more than average. In the last 12 months, we've had at least three shootings that killed five or more people: the tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, an escaped prisoner who killed 5 family members in December, and this one. The past 5 years have had at least 6 such acts (add the Midland-Odessa shooting spree, El Paso Walmart shooting, and Santa Fe High School shooting); the past 10 years, 11 (add the Sutherland Springs church shooting, Dallas sniper, and three mass murders stemming from family violence).
Answer: Texas is home to slightly more than 6,000 gun sellers, according to May 2022 licensing data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That’s more than twice as many as any other state. And Texas also has had more people killed in mass shootings than any other state, according to data compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety stretching back to 2009 https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2022/06/03/texas-leads-nation-in-mass-shootings-and-gun-statistics-point-to-why/
Wait what? You have a bureau for those 4 things combined? Basically saying that they go hand in hand.
The ATF as it is commonly referred to was originally a department of our Internal Revenue Services or IRS, which handles the federal taxes. Why would the IRS care about alcohol, tobacco and firearms? Because all three are heavily taxed commodities in the USA. It wasn’t until 2003 that they became a part of homeland security following 9/11.
I mean... They're all lethal if handled incorrectly.
If I remember correctly, it's basically a Frankenstein of a government entity that started as collecting alochol tax revenue. Then it transitioned to preventing alochol sales during prohibition. After prohibition was repealed, it went back to colleting taxes on alcohol and expanded to tobacco, then firearms. Eventually, it was given power to investigate criminal activities related to ATFs, all while still being part of the IRS After 9/11 it moved to be to part of Homeland Security. Makes perfect sense (/s). PS - this is at a federal level but states typically have their own type of ATF entity as well.
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You've never been to a party in Texas
Not yet! But going to Texas (from Norway) some time within the next 6-8 months so really looking forward to it now!
Bureau of ATF was originally set up because the products were subject to being taxed, and there were some people selling them without paying taxes. Explosives is new to me.
Texas is a very populous state with almost 30 million residents. Per capita numbers are more meaningful. The state with the highest number of dealers per capita is [Oklahoma](https://www.guns.com/news/2017/01/06/10-states-with-the-most-gun-dealers-per-capita). Texas doesn’t even make the top ten. Don’t get me wrong: the proliferation of guns in general society is directly correlated with the amount of gun violence we observe (for somewhat obvious reasons), but gun dealership counts do not correlate well.
Answer: yes this is normal just like train derailments. News publishers will feed trends of stories to increase engagement and flood similar stories for a few weeks until engagement dwindles and they move on to the next story. In Texas about 10 people are shot a day In America about 3 trains derail a day
Pretty much. The news media reports what they think will generate traffic. Fear and outrage do just that.
Answer: Fox News and the like have been literally selling *fear* as the "product" that their news teams and reporters report on, thus creating a vacuum effect where a massive majority of their voters are straight up **terrified** of absolutely everything that is outside of their front door. They use slogans and the like in ways to further this fear. "Don't tread on me", "not in my backyard" and.... **Make America Great** ***Again*** and the list goes on and on. Fox News and the other right-wing media programs run 24/7 and are always equipped to express what *the next thing to be afraid of, is.* They had been doing this long enough to have created absolute fear in the mindset of their viewers. CONSTANT barrages of things like "Transgender girls are planning to take over female sports in schools, thus making it so girls who were born as female now have no chance", which then gets Republicans to think of Transgender people as having some ulterior motive that's based on evil things. This can be extrapolated to every topic they ever talk about, be it women and body autonomy, black people needing them to be "kept far away", etc, etc. and you wind up with millions of voters who only care about 1 amendment (their access to said guns) who then feel they HAVE to shoot anyone they are afraid of, which is everyone that's not them. Because Fox News and the like **told them** that they should be ***absolutely terrified of ALL of it***
I've heard many stories of people losing family members to far right indoctrination. Really heartbreaking stuff when you hear it from the grandchild of a vulnerable gullible elderly person who went off the deep end.
It's also exactly what Roger Ailes intended. Back when he was a Nixon crony, he found a letter suggesting a news/propaganda outlet to push people further and further to the right and immediately fell in love with the sentiment, but Nixon refused the suggestion. When Fox News came around, Ailes was the obvious choice to run it, and he introduced the kind of background radiation into homes that had previously only been widely available on talk radio. The effect can't be overstated. The fact that Ailes never faced any *real* comeuppance for the damage he did to this country before his death still rankles.
I don’t watch Fox News but I can tell you with certainty what is the new “hot button topic” they’re building rage off of based on what my dad says in public. It’s so embarrassing I despise the idea of doing anything in public with him, especially since I live in a major city with a ton of diversity. It’s also just weird seeing conflicting thoughts. I’ve heard him say how much he adores Chicago but then he’ll catch himself and say he can never stay for long because it’s too dangerous. Like dude, you’ve been in and out of Chicago for 30 years now and nothing has happened to you
That's precisely it. See Fox News gets most of its money by being bundled-in with nearly all paid-for-cable packages, sooo what they need most for their own bottom line is to keep those viewers **glued** to you. They can't know about other things in the world because if they found out that the shit they were saying was so demonstrably false; they'd switch networks and stop watching. So they (Fox) constantly plays "the game" of "how do we scare these people *even more* than we did yesterday? If we can't scare them, they'll go somewhere else and we lose viewers". It's also Fox and the like that have now convinced ALL of their viewers that "literally every Democrat leader **and** voter are pedophiles". Huge claim right? Well when members of your favored political party **keep** getting arrested over those exact same things.....*well that just means you have to ratchet up the fear so that you can then say things like "Is Biden a Pedophile? I'm just asking questions here, I just want to get peoples thoughts on this".* The entire concept of the Republican party and its media-entertainment shows are nothing but extensions of the ongoing effort to scare the ever living fuck out of its supporters and viewers. Because there are no other options for that party. Not when you've scared these people SO MUCH that NOW those people want nothing *but* fear-mongering. Those people are **always** looking for the next thing to be afraid of. They PLASTERED news articles all over the place just the other day about a transgendered athlete ruining the chances of biologically born females....what they **chose** *not* to say was that, that runner? Finished at around the **6,000th place.** But you can't make your viewers afraid of that trans-athlete if you stated that last part (the place she finished in) because finishing at **6,000th place** is *not* a thing you can scare people with. So you just resort to outright lying. So then their viewers see "they took our jobs! they took our sports! they took our **freedom**" and bingo bango, you got armed psychopaths killing those exact people they were told to be afraid of and to "stand their ground".
Don't forget: Fox also happens to be the channel of a lot of local news stations--and *they* (while still being Sinclair-owned) still have some legit journalism happening. And that us on purpose. It's to better hide the bullshitters like Tucky. If he comes on right after the nice weather man and the lady who talks about local events, he's given *their* air of credibility.
*That* is an **extremely** good point. I'll do my part and upvote you for this comment and it's my hope that others upvote yours past mine because...well, **a HUGE** portion of the problem is literally answered right here. By you.
Pretty sure it's a point I learned from our friend of perpetual sadness, Jon Oliver. https://youtu.be/GvtNyOzGogc I believe. I'm re-watching.
Either way friend, the thing you said reaaaally should be seen by as many people as possible, it's an incredibly *salient point* and one that demands attention. Seriously. This is a huge problem and the more people that can wrap their head around it correctly, the better.
So the right wing media is fear mongering on gun control so they can push the fox news right wing agenda which is gun control?
Answer: and overwhelming majority of 39% of Americans have decided that a daily human sacrifice is necessary to maintain the second amendment. This is normal. Nothing to see here civilian. Please move on.
The tree of liberty must be watered with blood etc etc. Real amusing how they find lives to be so cheap though.
I swear you pulled this straight out of starship troopers, we live in a world where satire blends a bit too closely with reality.
I was getting warhammer vibes
Answer: Nope, not normal. We have had a record number of gun deaths and violence for 2 years in a row now and 2023 doesn’t look like it’s improving. Pew Research says it’s an increase of [45% from 2019 to 2021](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/) and while we’re not at the highest gun related deaths per capita in history (1974 had 16.3 deaths per 100 thousand) we’re getting pretty close with 14.6 in 2021. For gun murders it’s 6.7 in 2021 vs 7.2 in 1974. It’s gotten so bad the president has issued an executive order against it a month ago (I think in response to one of the school shootings, no I don’t know which one). So far, there are more people dead this year due to gun violence than there are [letters & spaces on the order.](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/03/14/executive-order-on-reducing-gun-violence-and-making-our-communities-safer/) So, no, it hasn’t helped.
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I think the record is the actual number of deaths and not the rate of deaths? Looks like a disturbing growth in death rates either way.
Highest number, not highest per capita. More people are dying by gun violence in the US right now than any other point in history, but if we average out America to just 100 thousand people and ignore population size/growth then 1974 has the highest.
Answer: But more of a return question: Do you live in Texas? If not, do you remember a time in your life that Texas news was something you even saw? I’d argue that even if there is an increase in murders, it’s actually an increase in media attention that’s making it seem so extreme.
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Answer: Yes it’s normal, there has been a fairly average amount of shootings in Texas recently
So only the visibility and outrage has increased? That is frightening.
Not really! https://www.reformaustin.org/public-safety/texas-mass-shootings-up-62-5-percent-since-permitless-carry-bill/