My purpose in writing this post was to show what I considered an interesting screenshot I took today of a British newspaper's reporting about the shooting:
"At least 27 people were shot..."
"Victims were transported to a local hospital and it's unclear if any are deceased"
"At least 27 people have been killed..."
As they say, don't believe anything you hear in the first 24 hours of reporting on a tragedy. Let the facts get sifted through for a bit, then learn what really happened.
Update, 11/6/17: The shooter received a bad conduct discharge, not a dishonorable discharge. This by itself need not have limited his right to own a firearm. I violated my own rule of not paying attention to information within the first 24 hours of reporting on a tragedy!
On the other hand, however, the shooter had been convicted of beating his wife and stepchild, and the air force failed to report this to the FBI. Such a domestic violence conviction, if reported, would have legally prevented the shooter from buying firearms.
Your friend is not correct. This was not religiously or politically motivated; this was an insane man who went to a family member's church, and killed her (as well as many other people). Unlike some other countries (for example, much of the Middle East), the U.S. doesn't have a culture of gun violence and mass shootings are very rarely carried out by sane people. Now, sometimes non-mentally ill leaders of extremist groups (Antifa, neo-nazis, Black Lives Matter) will hint at or outright tell their followers to commit violence, but mass shootings are usually actually committed by the mentally ill. Sometimes, the shooters did have a political motive, such as the man who shot Rep. Scalise or the man who shot up a church in Charleston in an attempt to start a race war, but often there was no motive other than they were mentally ill. What possible political motive could James Holmes have had for shooting up a movie theater? I do think that the media should stop focusing so much on the shooter, it just encourages other mentally ill people to go out and commit mass murder for the attention. They should tell us who the shooter is, why he did it, and then stop mentioning him and just focus on the victims. I do wish we had better mental health services, to prevent the shootings from occurring in the first place.
ReplyDeleteAs for gun control - those who have been dishonorably discharged from the military, convicted of a felony, or known to have a severe mental illness should not be allowed to have guns, and measures should be taken to ensure that they do not get their hands on them. And, although I would like to see gun safety courses required before people are allowed to purchase guns, I see no reason to limit gun ownership in the general population. Switzerland, Finland, Serbia, and Cyprus all have high gun ownership rates coupled with low rates of gun crime. There is no reason to limit gun ownership of those who can handle firearms responsibly, especially at a time when terrorist attacks are on the rise.