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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37946 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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This could shape to be peak toxoplasma. A lot of things are still unknown so my thoughts are pure speculation.

28-year-old woman kills 3 students and 3 adults at private Christian school in Nashville, police say

An armed 28-year-old woman fatally shot three students and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville before she was shot and killed by police, authorities said, in the deadliest school shooting in nearly a year.

The shooter, who was not identified, entered the Covenant School via a side door and was armed with at least two assault-style rifles and a handgun, said Metro Nashville Police spokesperson Don Aaron. She fired multiple shots on the first and second floors of the school, he said.

A five-member team of police officers heard the gunfire, went to the second floor and fatally shot the woman, Aaron said. The first call about the shooting came in at 10:13 a.m. and the shooter was dead 14 minutes later, he said.

Police initially said the shooter appeared to be in her teens but later said she is a 28-year-old White woman who lives in Nashville. Police Chief John Drake said his initial findings showed she was at one point a student at the school. A vehicle was located nearby and gave clues as to the suspect’s identity, he added.

  • The police seemed to have actually acted adequately. It was not Uvalde - so the only thing resembling a good thing in the situation.

  • This is the first mass school shooting by a woman that I know. Probably the first mass shooting I hear at all committed by a woman.

  • The police released the race and age of the shooter, but not name or picture. There was a macabre joke that if the picture is not shown - the shooter is black. She is unidentified so far - which decreases slightly the chances the shooter was far right.

  • Two AR-15 and a handgun ... probably a loadout a bit high unless you are Caleb. (if you get the Blood reference - sorry buddy - you are officially in the risk cohort for covid by age)

  • Low body count - unexperienced shooter.

So I have the suspicion that either the shooter is trans or someone radicalized over Roe v Wade overturn. Also some last minute news outlets started saying female instead of woman. So I guess trans. Anyway CW-wise - will be toxic as hell.

Edit: NBCNews and NYPOST openly call it transgender woman. Not clear if MtF or FtM. And there seems to be manifesto.

As a sidenote, a more extreme group was organizing a "Trans Day of Vengeance" (apparently not an April Fool's joke), some people on twitter highlighted the event, and are now getting locked out for it

There's an obvious non-woke reason to ban the poster--it's inciting violence by trans supporters.

Twitter also bans people who use the poster to point out the incitement, not just people who use it for incitement, because the most efficient way to ban the incitement is to ban the poster, period, without making fine distinctions.

Did they ban accounts who posted about/for the “day of hate”? No. So clearly you are wrong here

Yeah, after giving it some though I figured maybe this isn't the best time to signal boost these crazies, even through criticism.

I am still a bit frustrated by it, especially when I compare it to Posie Parker's recent spat with trans activists in New Zealand and Australia. They get to smear the other side through guilt by (no) association with Nazis, but if you highlight violent extremists that are actually a part their movement, you get smacked down.

Even bigger fish such as MTG (the politician), got banned from Twitter over this.

I wonder what the motive will be here. It may actually be “Christian children deserve to be gunned down because you don’t agree with my identity”, or the motive may just be “I feel hurt and damaged and so will hurt and damage your children”. Adam Lanza was an example of the latter.

She had a lengthy manifesto, but it hasn’t been released yet.

Apparently we are not allowed to know, as Nashville PD has announced they will not be releasing the manifesto

I'd be curious what a female version of one of these manifestos would read like, especially a female transman. My expectation is that it would try, and fail, to pass, so to speak, but I guess we may never know.

in the deadliest school shooting in nearly a year.

To phrase it like that is just hilarious and sad at the same time.

It will be very interesting to see if trans activists feel any pressure to tone down the violent rhetoric now that it has resulted in a bunch of dead kids.

Is there evidence that "violent rhetoric" played a role in this shooting?

Well this at least the third violent shooting by a trans person in only a few years. Given base rates this puts trans people at an extremely high risk level of becoming mass shooters

The temptation to use the nonetheless idiotic concept of stochastic terrorism is great.

I thought stochastic terrorism covered non-violent messages, which is what made it idiotic? There has been plenty of violent rhetoric from trans activists that have cleared the (admittedly extremely low) bar of "stochastic terrorism" and have gone straight to almost fedposting (actual fedposting, i.e. "threat of specific imminent danger" would likely have been removed by the platforms they were posted on).

Well they're apparently now removing the fedposts so I can't argue with that logic.

About as likely as gun activists feeling any pressure to moderate over school shootings.

I would expect frontlash of the, "it's terrible that trans people could be targeted because of this" variety.

Predictions?

My assumption is that plenty already have been concerned about this, and many of the remainder won't be swayed by anything. I wonder how many are in the middle?

WARNING: The following video contains potentially dangerous levels of Freedom™. Do not watch if you have recently been exposed to DDT.

Nashville Police release body-cam footage of officers entering the school and engaging the shooter.

Good to see the police doing a good job putting down a criminal. They need the PR

Good job. I especially appreciated the second officer subtly giving other cops a push when he noticed them vacillating - it can sometimes mean the difference between cowardice and bravery.

Could interpret it either as a push to get them to move forward against their instincts, or perhaps an "I've got your back man, let's do this together" encouragement thing.

Either way, definitely one of those subtle acts that can break a person out of paralysis and into meaningful action.

Probably both.

definitely one of those subtle acts that can break a person out of paralysis and into meaningful action

It's worth noting that pushing the rifle forward was unequivocally the right answer; you don't want to engage a rifle with a pistol if you can help it.

Yeah, I was seriously impressed with the sheer presence of mind on display too. Running headfirst into the shooter wielding a pistol can indeed still be 'heroic' but when you've got backup with shotguns and rifles right behind you, choosing the tactically sound option is completely justified.

Again, keeping those guys moving forward and coordinated enough to act together pretty much ensured a swift end to the conflict. Basically the shooter might have been able to get a lucky shot off and take out one of the officers, but even the mighty AR-15 isn't going to let you gun down 5-6 armed responders before they get you. Unless they panic and can't aim for shit.

Fuck man this stuff really gets me :( - like there's a switch that flips in some peoples' minds when there's somebody that needs help, and they just focus in and do the work.

These guys aren't being slow about it, they're methodically moving towards somebody trying to kill them, because there are some kids that need them.

I don't have much to add here I guess. This video made me tear up. Most human beings have an incredibly powerful instinctual caring for one another, and will absolutely march themselves directly into a meat grinder, without even thinking about it, when it's necessary to help vulnerable people, especially children. If you've ever seen people in this situation you know what I'm talking about.

I don't have much to add here I guess. This video made me tear up.

Same. Especially because everything about the situation is maximally distressing. The lights flashing, the blaring siren, having to walk past a dead kid, not being sure where the shooter is AND knowing there are more kids in the building at risk. Only way it could have been worse is if the power went out and they were plunged into darkness.

Just guys rising to the fucking occasion. I noticed that Officer Rex there dropped the shooter with his first shot and only fired three shots total, no mag dump or panic firing. Complete discipline. Marksmanship like that during an adrenaline rush is impressive on many levels.

Putting my own mind into that situation, I can't say for certain that I'd be able to acquit myself so admirably, but damned if this isn't the standard I WANT to live up to.

As I understand, the alarm was blaring to help the officers by stressing and disorienting the suspect.

And I heard it was one of the students who pulled the fire alarm to warn people about the shooter.

Could be either. All I know is the blaring alarm was causing ME anxiety just hearing it on video.

There's got to be a social aspect to the instinct. That's the only way I can see to explain the seeming unanimity of the response here vs the contrary unanimity at e.g. Uvalde and Broward County. We're not looking at two different models of human, right? There have to be at least a few potential heroes and a few potential cowards in all places? But if you want to be a hero and yet your peers and/or your boss are dithering about "establishing a perimeter", maybe that's enough to keep you from advancing on a gun-toting murderer by yourself; conversely, if your peers are charging forward, even someone who'd rather be elsewhere might not want to be the only coward who doesn't have his friends' backs.

You might be interested in ACoUP’s blogging on military psychology, specifically Total Generalship

morale will get men into uniform, it will sustain them on large marches and cold nights and it will get them to the battle, but it will not get them through the battle. Instead, cohesion gets men through the terror of actual combat, when fear has driven ‘the cause’ far from mind. But of course cohesion isn’t enough on its own either, since it provides no reason to advance or attack or really to do anything at all except stick together.

…

Actual responsiveness to evolving conditions didn’t come from the general at all, but was an emergent property of junior officers empowered to make independent decisions combined with armies that had sufficient training and discipline to act on those decisions in the moment. Such armies could be very effective, but they were also difficult to produce (as were the capable junior officers) and so a relative rarity.

Basically, hunkering down and waiting for a change is a really common historical response, the natural combination of bystander effect and mortal fear. Armies rely on officers and training to try and get around this, and it’s part of the reason a disciplined military tends to steamroll larger ones. The Metro police appear to have had their training and personal initiative kick in, while the Uvalde cops congealed at the perimeter.

The Metro police appear to have had their training and personal initiative kick in, while the Uvalde cops congealed at the perimeter.

Even if we grant this as excusable, they were completely willing to prevent others from going in and doing the job. So that really lays the insult of comparing them to these guys thick.

So yeah, whatever training the Uvalde guys had, it clearly isn't ideal.

Oh yeah. I’m not trying to excuse their behavior. Out of all the possible options they defaulted to a pretty awful one.

There's got to be a social aspect to the instinct

The most plausible explanation I've seen for Uvalde is that the bystander effect took hold as soon as the first few officers didn't charge in. When there are already half a dozen guys with guns standing by the door, there's no rush for the next responders to do something different, then you start calling leadership asking for explicit direction to go in, and the next thing you know it's dozens of minutes later.

I'm not saying it exonerates their behavior, but I can see how it could have happened -- or indeed, gone quite differently with a few minor changes. If so, it's probably reducible with explicit training points about initial response.

As I recall, they actively prevented anyone else from acting and entering the school, which is where it really crosses over into inexcusability.

There's got to be a social aspect to the instinct. That's the only way I can see to explain the seeming unanimity of the response here vs the contrary unanimity at e.g. Uvalde and Broward County.

It might be relevant to note that nearly the entire Uvalde Police department seems to have been mixed race latino (visibly so), while up to 50% of the US Border Patrol is Hispanic or latino.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/06/26/fact-check-are-half-of-all-border-patrol-agents-hispanic/

  • -16

Dude, come on. Hispanic cultures have their flaws, but cowardice is not one of them.

On its own, this would just be a bad comment I'd probably ding for booing your outgroup and not speaking clearly.

However, you now have a very lengthy record of warnings and bans for these kind of low-effort insinuations made without any kind of substantiation, just a curled upper lip and metaphorical wiggling of eyebrows.

We don't ban criticism of Jews, Chinese, blacks, women, Hispanics, and whichever group you hate today. That doesn't mean this is a place where you can just drop your edgiest hot take about the Racial Outgroup of the day. If you wanted to elaborate on why its "relevant to note" that a mostly Hispanic police force performed poorly compared to a mostly white one, you could have done that, if you'd put enough effort into it for it not to be just like your last few manifestos about Chinese robbers or low-effort sneers about the lower breeds.

But you didn't. You're just doing the same thing, over and over, and degrading the quality of the conversation, and certainly not contributing anything interesting or intelligent in the way of racial theorizing.

@naraburns just told you to stop doing this, and he explicitly told you you were looking at a longer ban. I'm making it two weeks this time. Next time will be months if not permanent.

It was a Hispanic bortac agent who took the guy down.

Shh you weren't supposed to notice that, you were supposed to mindlessly parrot the rationalist consensus. ;-)

Eh, what consensus? I don’t even see anything about the unknowable female mindset.

Are you equating "rationalist" with "white supremacist" now?

Not "white supremacist" so much as "bio determinist".

Edit to elaborate/be less inflametory: Let's be blunt the willingness to argue that things like culture, upbringing, economic background, might matter more than one's skin color has already marked guys like facelesscraven and I as outliers here. The rationalist consensus is that "it's all genetics". As much as this particular user may get downvoted, takes like that of @Lepidus' above are the norm here rather than the exception and far more representative of what "rationalism" as a movement stands for than anything I might write.

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I think it’s more that Uvalde is a small town. You don’t expect to deal with that kind of thing there, whereas I’m sure every major metropolitan police force has real school shooter training.

It might be relevant to note that nearly the entire Uvalde Police department seems to have been mixed race latino

I think it’s more that Uvalde is a small town. You don’t expect to deal with that kind of thing there, whereas I’m sure every major metropolitan police force has real school shooter training.

It looked like "making a business decision" to me, not poor planning. As @faceh just posted upthread, they were afraid that the shooter had an AR-15 and knew they'd take casualities. It's unfortunate they weren't equipped to respond to the situation safely. But in any functional non-decadent society, armed men are expected to charge into danger when the community's children are being slaughtered.

Either the men didn't consider the children to be "of their community", or they knew deep down they lived in a low trust dysfunctional society that wouldn't hold them to account for abdicating their fundamental responsibility as men.

This is partially downstream of immigration and ethnic diversity weakening the country's civic bonds, though I don't draw a straight line between the ethnic makeup of the police and their business decision.

Either the men didn't consider the children to be "of their community", or they knew deep down they lived in a low trust dysfunctional society that wouldn't hold them to account for abdicating their fundamental responsibility as men.

It's their fundamental responsibility as cops: willingly going into danger on behalf of the larger community. At those tho haven't forgotten they "protect and serve" the people by upholding the law.

While Texas has gotten more Hispanic over the past years, uvalde has, uh, not been a magnet for immigrants. It’s a fairly homogenously Hispanic town that can plausibly claim to have been homogenously Mexican-American Hispanic since 1848 if not before.

Either the men didn't consider the children to be "of their community", or they knew deep down they lived in a low trust dysfunctional society that wouldn't hold them to account for abdicating their fundamental responsibility as men.

Not a fan of this 'as men' line. Try 'as police officers', or as 'a good person'. I really don't think women should be absolved of such costly responsibilities when they clamor for equality. 'Women can be heroes too'. No, they have to be. Else, the kitchen.

Just because feminism wins in some arenas with its unsustainable social ideas doesn't mean we should cater to all of its delusions. Asymmetry is sometimes better than equality. If we start insisting lady teachers storm doors to stop terrorists, we will get more dead children and teachers. And that will have the disastrous downstream affect of legitimizing more gun control.

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I believe men's lives as expendable in the defense of women and children is a satisfactory social arrangement, possibly the only sustainable one*, extremely honorable, and probably encoded somewhere in our genes. Has there been any culture in history that demanded something like "Return with your shield or on it" of women? I believe that's probably impossible.

* With the ALOHMNBIDTAI proviso ("All Lessons of History May Now Be Irrelevant Due to AI")

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It might be relevant to note that nearly the entire Uvalde Police department seems to have been mixed race latino (visibly so)

So were the students. Not exactly an argument that supports a racial solidarity angle.

At least one of the Uvalde cops, if I remember correctly, had a child inside the school and was restrained from entering. Still trying to get my head around the videos of all that beyond a dismissive 'people get weird in weird situations'

Why is that supposed to matter?

40% percent of Americans say that most people can be trusted while only 11% of Mexicans feel the same way. That demographics that differ in social trust people might show differing levels of willingness to take on risks for strangers --- matters.

https://ourworldindata.org/trust

Upvoted for bringing data, but come on: your support for "trust is genetic, not cultural" includes a graph showing levels of trust in Mexico dropping by two thirds in barely a single generation. Did Mexico just finally get colonized by untrusting Mexican people? Or have there been environmental changes (cartel violence) that didn't reflect in America? The Ciudad Juarez homicide rate went from "3x the USA" to "50x the USA" and back (briefly; it's gotten worse again) in just one decade, while on the other side of a river (and wall, and freeways...) the city of El Paso (14% non-Hispanic white, 80% Hispanic) was untouched at "1/2 the USA". It would be entirely reasonable for Hispanics on just one side of the river to get really skeptical about "trust".

Were any of the Uvalde responders not Americans?

If you’re suggesting a mixed-race Latino police force implies a Mexican national’s level of trust implies lower risk-tolerance for strangers explains their terrible response…that seems pretty tenuous.

Why would it be? Garrett Jones makes a compelling case that even European immigrants only assimilate about half-way, generations after they've forgotten even their original language. There is a considerable IQ gap between mestizos and white europeans. Why shouldn't our prior be an absence of complete integration?

Also, the idea that American citizenship means much when you can obtain it without knowing the language is prima-facie absurd. Even if you are a Civ Nat it should be obvious that we are a long way away from anything resembling integration conducive conditions.

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I don’t know what DDT has to do with this, but I’m proud of the officer response. Training and confidence carry the day.

Unfathomably based. Rex Engelbert, shotgun officer with Rex, and Michael Collazo fuck.

Lots I could say about that officer, but from the culture war perspective:

Just last week there were some interviews released regarding the Uvalde shooting and discussion about how they were allegedly scared to go in because the shooter had an AR-15, making it too big a threat to them. Apparently some claimed this was a sufficient excuse.

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/20/uvalde-shooting-police-ar-15/

As per usual, gun control is the proposed remedy.

Can't think of a greater refutation to that argument than this very video, where decisive action and coordinated aggression ended the threat quickly.

Meanwhile, these guys went up against someone who had two AR-15s!

they didn't have two ARs. they had an AR, a sub-2000 PCC, and a handgun.

how they were allegedly scared to go in because the shooter had an AR-15, making it too big a threat to them.

Too scared to do the right thing then too scared to do the right thing now.

Look at that, they actually figured out the lock! And ran towards gunshots instead of away from them! And had multiple teams clearing rooms at once!

The revealed preference here is glaring.

People aren’t using the preferred pronouns if a child killer, because they don’t care about the preferences of a child killer.

But what that reveals as that even among the most woke, there are no true gender ideology believers. They still know that what they’re doing is a courtesy, not a reflection of reality.

And when they don’t like the person, the courtesy is dropped and the reality is revealed.

Speaking of woke people and their revealed preferences, perhaps the worst take came from David Pakman, who took the opportunity to make fun of the dead children being dead, suggesting it was because they didn’t pray hard enough:

https://twitter.com/dpakman/status/1640666981593382913

He deleted the tweet, but it is archived: https://archive.ph/6Tp4c

When people had the nerve to respond negatively to this, he of course pointed out to them that requesting he not dance on the graves of dead children is anti semitic.

I think the media started out unsure about the facts. Take all the confusion seen in this thread, then multiply it by playing a game of telephone.

Oh, the Post is reporting “Audrey?” Is that his birth name or her chosen name? Wait, are they misgendering on purpose? Do we know if (s)he’s actually trans? Wouldn’t want to fall for a hoax…

Repeat until some editor gestures at a deadline and the author copies whatever the BBC picked.

Edit: if this is the case, I’d expect to see those sites stealth-updating to use preferred pronouns. If they keep articles unchanged, that’s evidence for your reading.

Personally, I’ve been trying to dodge the issue by saying “shooter” or occasionally “loser.” For some reason, mass media hasn’t picked that up.

Personally, I’ve been trying to dodge the issue by saying “shooter” or occasionally “loser.” For some reason, mass media hasn’t picked that up.

I google "Nashville shooting" and I get

washingtonpost.com: "Video shows Nashville police confront school shooter""

cbsnews.com: "A shooter opened fire at a private Christian grade school in Nashville Monday, killing three children and three adults, officials said. The shooter was fatally shot by..."

abcnews.go.com: "A shooter armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun killed three...."

There's also reuters.com who refers to the shooter as "a heavily armed 28-year-old"

I don't think the media is failing to think of of ways to refer to the shooter without referencing their gender.

I for one believe the shooter should not be misgendered. Misgendering is disrespectful to all trans people. I guess I am a true believer.

There was a Reddit thread, a few months ago maybe, discussing a crime committed by a trans person. It was a murder or something similarly universally condemned. Some of the commenters were misgendering the perpetrator, others were criticizing the misgenderers.

One of the arguments brought up by the latter group was that you wouldn't call a Black person a "nigger", even if they have committed a vile crime. Using the word "nigger" is offensive to all Black people. It implies that being Black is bad in and of itself. Likewise with misgendering.

This is, of course, addressed to those who believe that misgendering trans people is not otherwise acceptable. Whether it is acceptable to misgender trans people in general, whether trans people really are their identified gender, etc., is a separate discussion.

I for one believe the shooter should not be misgendered. Misgendering is disrespectful to all trans people.

Nope. Actual trans people are already pushing it, when they demand that the entire society changes their language for their sake. I can see an argument for why good manners demand accommodating people acting in good faith, but criminals have no right to such accommodations. Let alone child murderers, or rapists.

If someone shoots up a school, there's a non-zero chance I'm gonna call them a bad name because I disapprove of their actions. I really don't think it matters if kids are dead and someone gets misgendered or called a "nigger."

NB I don't think it matters in any case, because I was raised that 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.' But I especially don't care about their feelings if they shot up a school

This is not about the shooter's feelings. Calling a Black criminal "nigger" is offensive to all Black people because it denigrates the Black criminal for being Black, not for being a criminal. Likewise, misgendering a transgender criminal is offensive to all trans people because it denigrates the trans criminal for being trans, not for being a criminal.

Not really. "Nigger" refers to a subset of black people. If you disagree, it's because you have no idea how people use that word in the real world.

I don't see how this analogy works. The 1st part seems right to me; calling a black person "nigger" in a derogatory way necessarily implies something negative about all black people, due to the history and connotations of that word. But misgendering a trans person doesn't denigrate all trans people; it just says that you don't consider that specific trans person as belonging to the gender they're claiming to. This doesn't denigrate them for being trans; at worst, it says that respecting their identified gender is conditional on that person not being a criminal. Which means not submitting to the "self-ID is definitionally correct" standard, but that's not denigrating the criminal for being trans.

I'm confused by your argument. A person's gender identity is orthogonal to their criminality. I agree that there are some people who are being knowingly deceitful when they claim to be trans but they aren't, and I don't really feel bad about someone "misgendering" or "deadnaming" Karen White, who is obviously a bad actor exploiting a poorly-designed policy.

But I don't understand the argument "I thought you were a legitimate trans person, but then you committed a crime, which proves that you were malingering all along!" The two things don't have anything to do with one another. "Legitimate" trans people (i.e. people diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a qualified mental health professional, and receiving medical treatment for that condition) commit crimes all the time. Committing a crime isn't a rule-out diagnostic criterion for gender dysphoria.

Maybe Audrey/Aiden Hale was suffering from gender dysphoria, maybe they weren't. If they were, the fact that they committed a horrific school shooting doesn't change that. If they weren't, likewise. It's just a completely irrelevant fact, like what colour shoes they were wearing at the time. Committing a crime doesn't stop a person from being authentically trans - this almost strikes me as a no true Scotsthey argument.

But I don't understand the argument "I thought you were a legitimate trans person, but then you committed a crime, which proves that you were malingering all along!" The two things don't have anything to do with one another.

That's not the argument, though. Charitably, the argument would be more like, "My choice to respect your preferred pronouns as a trans person is contingent on you not committing a crime (implied: of certain severity)." And that's also not my argument, and I don't subscribe to it myself. My argument is that somebody who does subscribe to that argument is not denigrating all trans people by subscribing to and living out such an argument, certainly not in a way similar to denigrating all black people by calling a particular black person "nigger."

The problem is, "not submitting to the 'self-ID is definitionally correct' standard" necessarily implies that some fraction of the time, self-ID may be overcome by an outside judgment, and this fatally undermines the activist position that self-ID is definitive. Admitting the existence of bad actors casts a shadow over every trans person's self-assessment of his own identity as the exclusive and inviolate basis of her social persona.

Right, so it's offensive to a certain subset (admittedly a very large and mainstream subset) of trans activists. And such trans activists are not shy about trying to conflate their own opinions with that of trans people in general. But such conflation has no real basis, and offending those activists doesn't imply offending trans people in general.

Right, so it's offensive to a certain subset (admittedly a very large and mainstream subset) of trans activists.

It's not merely the dominant position among alternatives; it won. There used to be a debate, but alternative positions like "trans identity is based on gender dysphoria" are no longer positions that you may hold publicly in the trans activist space.

And such trans activists are not shy about trying to conflate their own opinions with that of trans people in general.

Certainly true, and further, trans activists are frequently "allies," rather than trans themselves.

But such conflation has no real basis, and offending those activists doesn't imply offending trans people in general.

The first part is not true. The basis of the conflation is that the activists are the public face of the community--whether or not they are even members!--and get to define the community, including socially policing dissenters. "Offending trans people in general" simply does not matter; it's the opinions of the activists that carry social consequences for those who challenge self-ID uber alles.

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Causing offense does not cause me any alarm compared to causing death. In fact, some level of offense is inevitable in a world where people only have control over their own feelings, no?

One of the arguments brought up by the latter group was that you wouldn't call a Black person a "nigger", even if they have committed a vile crime. Using the word "nigger" is offensive to all Black people. It implies that being Black is bad in and of itself. Likewise with misgendering.

This is, of course, addressed to those who believe that misgendering trans people is not otherwise acceptable.

Understanding this is a necessary prerequisite to understanding firmamenti's revealed preferences argument isn't it?

Misgendering an alleged trans person is not the same as calling a black person "nigger". It's more like saying "if you do X, you ain't black". Calling an alleged trans person "tranny" or "troon" would be an appropriate analogy.

I find that progressives do deny that people they dislike belong yo the protected group, but they will almost never use protected group slurs.

Here's a screenshot, he deleted the tweet, citing anti-Semitism and threats. Then he deleted the tweet with the complaint of anti-Semitism.

When people had the nerve to respond negatively to this, he of course pointed out to them that requesting he not dance on the graves of dead children is anti semitic.

To be fair, there was plenty of anti-Semitism in the replies. Even the Taliban PR twitter account (?) joined in.

Pakman could have said something edgy with more plausible deniability like "Sending thoughts and prayers", still in bad taste but could have been said to be a social critique. But "given that lack of prayer is often blamed for these horrible events" is just a WTF. You can say that sending condolences doesn't solve an underlying problem, but it is certainly not "often" that a lack of prayer is blamed. He let the mask slip.

Taliban PR twitter account (?)

This is an old complaint about Twitter. Conservatives get banned, but ISIS and pedophiles get active accounts with no action taken against them.

I don't think the Taliban were exempt from bans in the pre-Musk era. There was a fairly popular account that sprung up in 2021 right after the pullout that was supposedly them, but it got nuked after about a month. By now most, though not all, of the conservative accounts banned under the old regime have been let back on. I think Signals is expressing uncertainty whether the Taliban PR account is genuinely them. I'm leaning towards thinking it's real due to the post informing people that Lord Miles is missing. But it's hard to tell anything these days honestly.

I'm confused by that. If they are taliban, looks like lord miles would be fine. So what would've caused his issues. I suppose just like before, inside Kabul and outside it are two different worlds, security-wise

In case you're still in doubt, the Taliban PR account is satirical.

This is a rare case of me sympathizing with the media because it seems like a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. If they put up a fight and try to affirm their gender, they get made fun of for caring so much about the gender identity of a mass-murderer. If they decide not to do so, they get called out (by the same side) for their beliefs being conditional.

That's like saying that it's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't, if you commit a bank robbery and have to choose between assaulting the officers or surrendering, each of which is bad. Sure, but that's because you robbed a bank to begin with.

This is only a dilemma for the media because of their previous policy about gender pronouns. Either don't follow the policy (showing that they're not sincere) or do follow the policy (showing how absurd it is). If they didn't have such a policy in the first place, they wouldn't have faced the "dilemma" of choosing between an absurd policy and hypocrisy.

They willingly waded into the no-win scenario that I'm sure many people warned them of. Sympathy seems unnecessary.

What, by doing their job?

I guarantee not covering the story would meet backlash, too. And rightly so.

You know full well I'm talking about media outlets twisting themselves in knots over how to gender a mass shooter - or in many cases trying to dodge it altogether by just not mentioning it.

You only find yourself in this bind if you've swallowed trans activists' prescriptions, but now find yourself having trouble fully digesting them.

How did the media wade into it willingly, though?

True enough. Plenty of ways this could have been avoided.

David Pakman

Ah man, that's a trip down memory lane. Funnily enough with the GamerGate thead down below, I first discovered him because of his willingness to actually materially engage in the controversy. He had the usual biases, but at least he wasn't running and hiding from the object level reality of it.

Some time later I saw him on Joe Rogan, and it appeared TDS had completely broken his brain. He was making statements about Biden looking to be in better mental and physical health than Trump. Because of that single time Trump walked slowly down a ramp.

Somehow I'm not shocked he followed that trajectory to where we find ourselves today.

Wow I had almost the exact same experience with him. I saw him first interviewing Brianna Wu, and appreciated his willingness to be intellectually honest towards her.

But this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bd79UsXSLWg. Where he suggests that Trump might be illiterate, and not as a statement about his intelligence, but the claim was that Trump is actually incapable of reading simple statements, made me scratch my head.

People aren’t using the preferred pronouns if a child killer, because they don’t care about the preferences of a child killer.

But what that reveals as that even among the most woke, there are no true gender ideology believers.

It's a little bit more interesting than that. Some preferences are respected, some aren't.

Interesting in how this is being framed in Irish media outlets. The headline refers to the shooter as a "gunwoman", but the URL refers to the shooter as a "gunman".

I think a more inclusive term like "person of firearm" would have been more appropriate.

2 hours ago the same outlet published another article which conspicuously avoids mentioning the shooter's pronouns and in which "gunman/woman" is replaced with "former pupil".

The Irish Times and RTE are also going with 'former pupil'. I don't think Irish people (even Irish journalists) are quite yet up to speed on the trans lingo, so I prefer to imagine this as the editor throwing up their hands and using the only identifying fact they're sure of.

Personally I think The Journal knows exactly what it's doing, but maybe I'm being paranoid.

Yeah I find it hard to believe that an English speaking journalist doesn't know about the trans pronouns debate.

yup time for America's annual mass shooting

school restrictions going to get much worse . Thank god I went to school when this was not such a big problem or fear as it is today

If people actually looked at this incident, there wouldn't be a need for too many changes. The shooter accessed the school through an unlocked exterior door. That's the first problem. [Edit: this was inaccurate, per KMC below.] The second problem was that there wasn't security - the shooter allegedly rejected another potential target he was scoping out because there was security present. That's it.

Schools in other countries don't need armed security.

Unless they're Jewish schools.

English-speaking Nigeria does

Perhaps Americans should try learning non-English languages to solve their school violence problems?

The shooter blasted the glass out of two sets of double doors and climbed through them to enter.

We wish it was annual.

Well now that we know it's a transgendered individual, it will be interesting to see how the culture war plays out with red flag laws. If mental illness is a red flag leading to disarmament this particular incident will be hard to explain away.

Why? This seems to be hinting at "all trans people are inherently disordered" but if you don't grant that premise (as most gun control advocates won't) it is not a problem at all (and is an argument in favor of red flag laws).

I should have thought more before commenting to explain better why I think this will - or could - be interesting. As @desolation has pointed out and hit upon my way of thinking, red flag laws usually have some provisions for mental illnesses. As the definition of transgenderism as a mental illness falls into sides of the culture war I can see red states classifying transgenderism as a criteria for disarmament. Which if it happened would be hilarious to see the group that clamored for red flag laws later say "no, not like that!" Bonus points if it causes red flag laws to be brought in front of the supreme court.

Again, I'm not really seeing the tension (being in favor of a particular kind of law does not require you to be in favor of literally any instance of it), and if anything it would be used to highlight conservative hypocrisy in terms of being pro-gun rights until they can use it as a pretext to discriminate against people they don't like/disarm prospective victims.

There have already been some social justice aligned criticisms of Bruen response efforts like Oregon's Measure 114 along those lines. It would probably be amplified in your hypothetical cases where it's the other team in control of the state though.

Interesting... thanks for that I didn't know about any challenges along these lines.

One caveat- it's not immediately clear to me what Florida defines as "seriously mentally ill," and at least some of those comorbidity studies are counting "specific phobia," which I'm not sure would make sense as a red-flag-violating risk without further context.

Yeah, I think it's worth pointing to this caveat with a big flashing light. The actual statute authorizing Floridian risk protection orders authorizes petitioners to :

Allege that the respondent poses a significant danger of causing personal injury to himself or herself or others by having a firearm or any ammunition in his or her custody or control or by purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm or any ammunition, and must be accompanied by an affidavit made under oath stating the specific statements, actions, or facts that give rise to a reasonable fear of significant dangerous acts by the respondent;

While the courts must evaluate whether :

Upon notice and a hearing on the matter, if the court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the respondent poses a significant danger of causing personal injury to himself or herself or others by having in his or her custody or control, or by purchasing, possessing, or receiving, a firearm or any ammunition, the court must issue a risk protection order for a period that it deems appropriate, up to and including but not exceeding 12 months.

(c) In determining whether grounds for a risk protection order exist, the court may consider any relevant evidence, including, but not limited to, any of the following:

1. A recent act or threat of violence by the respondent against himself or herself or others, whether or not such violence or threat of violence involves a firearm.

2. An act or threat of violence by the respondent within the past 12 months, including, but not limited to, acts or threats of violence by the respondent against himself or herself or others.

3. Evidence of the respondent being seriously mentally ill or having recurring mental health issues.

... [it goes on up to 15.]

That is, mental illness alone of any severity does not meet the requirements for a risk protection order, which instead must depend on clear and convincing evidence of danger to himself or herself or others, according to the statute.

In practice, it's not clear how well the courts tend to treat submissions with a skeptical eye: Orlando v. Velasquez got taken out a couple weeks later, and the guy in that case was an absolute putz, but at the very least the ex parte hearing was quite willing to act based on police box-checking that either was untrue or unable to be proven.

That is, mental illness alone of any severity does not meet the requirements for a risk protection order, which instead must depend on clear and convincing evidence of danger to himself or herself or others, according to the statute.

Isn't the basis of the argument for gender-affirmation that the trans person is an imminent risk to themselves? Affirmation is required to subvert suicidal tendencies; to not affirm is to commit "genocide" because this is all that stands between the trans person and self-harm? And since affirmation relies on the participation of uncooperative third-parties, the stability of the trans person is in constant jeopardy?

I don't know how you square this argument, which is the basis for the current mode of treatment for people with gender dysphoria, with "not a danger to themselves."

As I understand, the recent FTM cohort is mostly inherently disordered people - that is, people with diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, of the sort that used to get eating disorders before.

Hard to find anything on it though, best I recall finding were comments by Finnish psychologists saying something to the effect that members of the big FTM wave post 2010 were far more likely to have psychiatric disorders.

/images/16799920041015923.webp

If mental illness is a red flag leading to disarmament this particular incident will be hard to explain away.

Rules for thee, but not for me. They'll effortlessly decline to address the contradictions or bother to explain anything at all.

Trans activists are already way ahead of you on this one. They have argued many times in the past that transgenderism is not a mental illness, and any law that would consider transgenderism a mental illness in regards to being disarmed would be immediately ridiculed and shot down by trans activists.

shot down by trans activists

So to speak

wielding two assault-style rifles and a pistol

What video game logic is this? Not to make light of tragedy or offer constructive criticism to mass killers, but this is silliness.

As American society has a long and difficult talk about the intersection of trans ideology, mental health, religion, education and the second amendment in the wake of the Nashville shooting, we cut to The Motte

"6 magazines motherfucker! Count it, 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 extra magazines! That's what you want to take on your mass shooting, not another gun!"

"No you dumb piece of shit, who the fuck needs six extra magazines? What are you fucking blindfolded? Do you have parkinsons? An extra rifle is what you need, in case your first one breaks down and you are shit out of luck!"

"An extra rifle?! An extra RIFLE?!"

This is by far the funniest themotte comment ever.

Rather than reciting pro- and anti-gun arguments from memory, but now with added trans debate, I'd honestly rather dispute the wisdom of the "two rifle plan". This is absolutely abhorrent, why also is it informed by video games? You want some piercing critique of our culture? It's right around here.

What is this fixation on "video games"? I've also seen 1 second no fail reloading in video games, doesn't mean it's relevant. I believe others have provided enough arguments in favor of slightly less optimal action (switching guns) being better than an optimal action that requires practice to be optimal (reloading). Plus weapon breakdown risk.

In this specific case, a particular line from Call of Duty is a deep meme of the post-GWOT, heavily video game influenced gun culture. Two long arms, three weapons with different manuals of arms, three different non-cross compatible magazines across two ammo types is in-line with the type of abstractions that video games use (until Halo most shooters had unlimited weapons, simplified ammunition management) and immediately calls to mind that reference.

Honestly, I think we should all be thankful that most mass shooters aren't this logical. Then again, if they were this logical, maybe they wouldn't be mass shooters in the first place, perhaps.

And this is why I love you guys!

Video game logic is right. These are, broadly, mentally unwell people making decisions they think will make them ‘cool’ to themselves. If they were rational actors they would not be mass shooters.

It gets weirder. The load out as reported was a Keltec Sub2000 used as primary, an (10.5 by the look) AR15 pistol as the secondary and a S&W M&P Shield EZ as the pistol. Maybe the Keltec was favored over the AR because short barreled ARs indoors are excessively loud and headache inducing. From what I remember of the Shield line the full size pistol magazines don't work in them unless they're the Shield+ subline M&P9c (and cross compatibility between EZ and regular Shields is questionable) so there isn't even magazine compatibility between the Keltec and the pistol.

Edit: Shield Plus, EZ and regular Shields all seem uniquely non-compatible for magazines. I was thinking of the M&P9 Compact which is compatible with full size M&P9 pistol magazines that variants of the Keltec Sub2000 and the new S&W M&P FPC can also use. Four separate (sub|micro|)compacts, all under the same M&P general branding (as opposed to the CSX, SD and Equalizer lines) none of which play nice with each other, that's some market differentiation.

Okay, that actually sounds somewhat reasonable in terms of carry weight. The SUB-2000 also folds up, making transport easier.

Somewhat lightweight but not much more than a basic AR pistol at 4.25lbs unloaded compared to 5-6lbs. The folding aspect seems pointless in this context, given that they drove to the school then had everything at the ready by the time they got from the parked car to the front doors. Folding is usually more useful for something like a backpack (although the way the S2K folds makes optics much more complicated), not showing up at the front door in camouflage pants wearing a shooter vest. There's also three different manuals of arms to consider.

Hmm. Maybe more video game logic. The logistics of incompatible mags doesn't come up in shooting games. So the lunacy of using three kinds of guns with no shared magazines doesn't occur to someone trained by GTA and CoD.

But they almost made a defensible choice if the sub2000 and the Shield could share mags. Should have googled before buying.

I take it the shooter is the sort of person who says their computer is broken, but really a simple googling would hand them the solution. They should teach basic solution finding through internet search in school.

If you're in your last days, why not buy an extra gun? More is more. It's not like they're infantrymen who'll be running around and fighting for a long time, they don't need to be especially mobile.

Weight is the limiting factor. More loaded mags is top priority.

I like shotgun sports. They are good fun. A loaded shotgun is way too heavy to possibly justify.

What if the gun breaks down though? How heavy is it really to carry an extra ar15? Googling it seems like it weighs about 3.5 kg.

It doesn't seem that ludicrous..

The backup gun is the handgun, not another rifle.

That's ~6 more fully loaded 30 round magazines they could have brought instead

Are you aware of any active shooter situation where the shooter actually ran out of ammo? On the other hand, north hollywood is at least one case where a double-feed disabled the shooter's longarm.

Are you aware of any active shooter situation where the shooter actually ran out of ammo?

I guess not, but apparently they bring less ammo than a guy who's going to the range might bring, as per BJ Campbell.

one case where a double-feed disabled the shooter's longarm.

If I've learned anything from watching Forgotten Weapons, it's that the magazine and feeding reliably is far more important to professionals than magazine size, and that often the magazine gets more engineering effort than the rest of the gun. But from pop culture you'd think the magazines were single-use and disposable.

But from pop culture you'd think the magazines were single-use and disposable.

In fairness, both America and France had the idea of making magazines cheap and disposable (for the original M16 and FAMAS, respectively), but both militaries backed off of the idea really quickly (which probably contributed to the perception of the M16 and the US-issue magazines as unreliable--you have these cheap, easily-bent aluminum magazines serving from Vietnam all the way to the Gulf War, I imagine), because the idea of a cheap magazine just being thrown away probably offended some bean counter or desk officer somewhere. Ian has talked about this before.

They already had a sidearm that was plenty sufficient for engaging unarmed children and senior citizens.

The overwhelming majority of mass shooters are not gun people. If they were, we'd expect to see illegal rifles constantly (illegal magazines are a bit more common but even that's not guaranteed) because the anti-gun side is actually correct about short-barreled rifles being more conducive to increased lethality over a handgun without sacrificing much concealability.

But that observation only appears to be correct in theory: illegal rifles and pistols never show up despite all the parts necessary to create one common to every single gun store for the last 10 years (the "braced pistol" thing), and we've never heard of anyone getting stopped because their rifle was poking out of their bag.

What video game logic is this?

If one stops working, only a gun person will actually know how to fix it. Unreliable equipment run incompetently has ended many sprees, and someone doing research on past shootings would know this.

So might as well have one more; it's an extra 10 pounds and a thousand bucks on a credit card you're not planning on paying off anyway. (Come to think of it, I suspect that loadouts of mass shooters are generally dictated by how high their credit card limits are; if you're planning on suicide, why would paying it back be a concern?)

An experienced shooter (who isn't suffering from a brain tumor) would... well, we don't really know what they do because we've yet to see a conclusive example of one committing this kind of crime and most of the time body count comes from "medical attention was delayed because the police failed to breach and clear in a timely fashion". I guess the Vegas shooter counts; medical attention was timely and that body count is what I'd expect from someone competent (though the number and types of weapons used suggests significant incompetence) but we don't know if he just planned to shoot up the concert or if there was something else going on.

What about the Christchurch shootings? Anders Breivik? Both managed to get very high body counts.

I assume those were the first major shooting sprees in their respective countries. If it's never happened before, the first time could be quite bad.

Unreliable equipment run incompetently has ended many sprees, and someone doing research on past shootings would know this.

Columbine also involved unreliable equipment, although in that case it technically started rather than ended the spree (it was supposed to be a bombing, but the bombs didn't go off).

Would Virginia Tech count as an experienced shooter? 32 killed, all with handguns.

And oddly enough most killed with a 22 using 10 round mags.

Which I take as compelling evidence that semi-automatic rifle and standard capacity mag bans have nothing at all to do with mass shootings. A 22 handgun will 10 round mags, the minimum viable product of modern firearms, is sufficient to kill dozens of people.

That's just East Asian superiority in action. I would expect a Korean-American to actually do his homework and research the best approach to a mass shooting.

Unreliable equipment run incompetently has ended many sprees, and someone doing research on past shootings would know this.

Yes. The 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting involved some silliness regarding a non-standard oversized mag jamming the gun.

it's an extra 10 pounds

10 pounds of loaded mags is massively too valuable to exchange for a second loaded long arm.

If one stops working, only a gun person will actually know how to fix it.

Yeah, but we are friendly and helpful. Just join a shooting group and they'll help. I've shot with immigrants who own a gun but do not know how to clear pistol jams. I show them tap tap rack. It's not that hard.

But I get we are over analyzing a severely mentally unsound person.

10 pounds of loaded mags is massively too valuable to exchange for a second loaded long arm.

To a gun person, yes.

To someone incompetent, I think it's something that, given you know that malfunctions happen but not necessarily why, would mean a second gun (or third, in this case) would sound like a better option.

I'm really just taking the assumption that non-tech people have about computers, or that non-car people have about cars, and applying it: that they're mostly magic black boxes not worth learning the ins and outs of before using one for your task. Tap-rack-bang is absolutely not that hard; neither is asking ChatGPT what to do about Googling an error message.

In all honesty, the criminal just standing there, fumbling about for their extra magazine in their pocket or bag (and the only reason they know they need to reload is because the gun locked open and the trigger's dead) is probably what ends most sprees. By contrast, I wouldn't put good odds on most people if they're up against someone with a fully populated belt liberally dragged through the DAA catalog, even if they're not wearing armor, simply by what wearing that implies.

The 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting involved some silliness regarding a non-standard oversized mag jamming the gun.

Non-gun people just see that 100 is greater than 30. Gun people will claim coffin mags are named that because trusting them to work flawlessly makes it more likely you'll end up in one (the 60 round Surefire and Magpul drum are more reliable than the 100s, and while I don't remember if he had a C-mag or a Surefire 100 I distinctly remember reading it was one of those two).

Just join a shooting group and they'll help.

I don't think that someone who buys a rifle for the sole purpose of committing a mass shooting would have enough patience to make use of a shooting group (either because they're mad now, or because they tend to get booted if they do certain things suggestive of mass shooter-hood).

I don't think that someone who buys a rifle for the sole purpose of committing a mass shooting would have enough patience to make use of a shooting group (either because they're mad now, or because they tend to get booted if they do certain things suggestive of mass shooter-hood).

This is perhaps the most relevant to the discussion at hand - gun nuts aren't the people doing these shootings. If you know a guy that owns a half dozen rifles, hangs around the local range, maybe has a GOA bumper sticker, and can explain what MOA and parabolic trajectory, you probably know a guy that will almost certainly not fire that weapon in anger. I've never seen a clear study on it, but going by the basics of what we see from spree and mass shootings, it's pretty much never the people that putatively need to be disarmed for everyone's safety.

we don't know if he just planned to shoot up the concert or if there was something else going on

Did we ever find out much of anything about him or what was going on with that?

The state's final investigation report is available here. tldr, no, not really.

... except apparently 'final and complete' is a synonym for 'close enough?!'

EDIT: I don't buy it, but it's at least the sorta thing that should have been mentioned at length.

Yeah, maybe I've just been exposed to one too many conspiracy theories, but "rampage of revenge over losing big money in Vegas" feels...unsatisfying as an explanation.

Why? A rifle to dump and drop followed by a second one, with a pistol as backup. Assuming 30 round magazines that's 60 rifle rounds before the first reload. Considering you are, at least in theory, going door to door shooting children I don't see what's so obviously silly about it.

As an example of this in practice, Brenton Tarrant carried a shotgun and a rifle. A shotgun he fired until empty which he then dropped for an immediate rifle follow up.

A rifle to dump and drop followed by a second one

Yeah. This part right here. Reload rather than dumping your longarm and carrying an entire second long arm. This is the silly part.

Tarrant was strictly suboptimal since carry weight is the limiting factor.

I'm still at a loss as to why it is silly. On the other hand I can see a very clear benefit in minimizing the time you are not able to fire. Considering the most immediate threat before police show up is being tackled by someone who is unarmed, the only time you are vulnerable to that threat is if you are not capable of firing. Other than that you are, in theory, going door to door shooting children. What is 8 pounds of extra weight on your chest compared to a rifle backup that is quickly and easily presentable? For a cost benefit analysis I don't see the obvious cost and lack of benefit that render the approach silly.

What is 8 pounds of extra weight on your chest compared to a rifle backup that is quickly and easily presentable?

Weight is everything. A true cost benefit analysis rejects excess weight with extreme prejudice. Here's where I'll assert that weight is a consideration so powerful that "I'll carry a second long arm" is ridiculous. "Quickly and easily" is reserved for swapping mags, not silly video game switching from one rifle to the next.

It didn't look like something out of a silly videogame when Tarrant did it in practice. He, in fact, looked far more vulnerable when he had to reload his rifle compared to when he had to chuck away an empty shotgun to present a loaded rifle. And as I stated before, I don't see the focus on weight being relevant here. You are not traveling long distances. You are not shooting and scooting like John Wick. You are walking door to door shooting children. Worst case scenario is either that you are unable to fire at someone tackling you or that your gun stops working. Carrying an extra gun, ready to fire, solves both of those issues.

I don't see the assertion of a 'true' cost benefit analysis being relevant unless substantiated. There is a very obvious benefit to carrying a secondary rifle. There is a cost that comes with that. But considering the situation I don't see why that cost would be so prohibitive as to be called silly.

He, in fact, looked far more vulnerable when he had to reload his rifle compared to when he had to chuck away an empty shotgun to present a loaded rifle.

Don't over-learn from one example. Reloading is massively faster than throwing away a long gun and drawing a second one. Tarrant be damned in many ways: he was doing the wrong thing and doing it wrong.

This whole discussion is so fundamentally wrong that I can only write it off as video game logic. I know I'm lapsing into "just trust me bro" territory, but this is just dumb. This isn't how it works. Learn to shoot and see how comically wrong this idea is.

reloading is definately more efficient, but clearing a double-feed or other serious malfunction is not. Six extra mags probably isn't all that useful, given that most shooters don't actually make it through more than a mag or two, but serious malfs can and do happen, and render the longarm dead.

Spree killing pretty clearly isn't like other tactical situations. the shooter is not playing the long game; they're almost certainly dead within a half-hour of initiation, probably more like ten minutes. they are not going to be traveling long distances fast. They don't even need a ton of ammo. lethal effect of the ammo isn't even a top-tier concern. there's (hopefully) no backup, and any delay or hindrance is deadly to the shooter's intentions.

I'm giving a single example to your no example after you made assertions that contradicted what happened there. Saying reloading is massively faster than throwing away a gun and presenting one that is strapped to your chest just isn't true. I'm sure it can be true if you are a smooth operator that reloads his weapon every time without hesitation or hitch. But if you are less than perfect at any moment during a reload I'd be much more inclined to say that dropping a gun for another that is strapped to your chest is faster.

Appealing to some greater understanding, be that the assertion of a 'true' cost benefit analysis, personal experience or framing the whole discussion as 'video game logic' just isn't relevant to me. There are plenty of obvious use cases for an extra rifle. And whilst there is a cost associated with that, I don't see why that cost is so obviously high that it renders the act 'silly' or 'comically wrong'.

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Reloading is massively faster than throwing away a long gun and drawing a second one.

It's faster if you have experience reloading a rifle. I have reloaded a rifle exactly once in my life, and I would probably take a second rifle with me as well if I went mass shooting. Well, I would probably take multiple handguns instead.

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Kids these days playing too much Call of Duty and not enough paintball.

Not that I'm complaining mind you, in this context any tactical incompetence on the part of the shooter is a godsend.

two is one, one is none? A spare longarm isn't all that much extra weight, and serious weapon failures aren't unknown in these sorts of situations. North Hollywood shootout comes to mind.

I doubt it's dispositive either way, but it seems improbable they were trying to dual wield.

Pack more glocks. Or MP7. Spare longarm while not much heavier is unwieldy and reduces freedom of movement. And we are talking close quarters anyway.

2 handguns seems much more reasonable by this thought process IMO...

More assault rifles = more dangerous

The 2017 Mandalay Bay Hotel, Las Vegas shooter needed no fewer than 14 AR-15 for maximal lethality (60 alleged victims from over 1000 bullets allegedly fired).

So that is defensible. He was extreme rapid firing from a fixed location. It is when weight and mobility considerations are involved that I start questioning the multi-rifle plan. And when "swapping guns is faster than reloading" comes up I start scoffing and accusing people of video game logic.

I’ll bet my eye teeth it’s a Psyop. I’ve found treating all mass shootings as “Fake and Gay until proven otherwise” is an optimal heuristic. It’s probably why no one knows whether this person is MtFtM or FtMtFtM or something in between. The Newspeak is “TRANS”* this allows the usual suspects to ask why the focus isn’t on the issue of transgenderism/mental illness while the other usual suspects squawk about guns. The new talking point will be the tacit sympathy for a school shooter who was most certainly the victim of transphobia in that Jesus school…

This will also prove to corral people who are super passionate about vilifying the mentally ill (trans pushback is all the rage rn) into showing sympathy for antigun legislation. All part of the new breed of neocon: feminist, gay friendly, in favor of reasonable gun control, and most definitely not okay with trans ruining women’s sports.

Meanwhile, the ultra-reasonable approach of taking anything piped out of any media publication with a giant: “I don’t believe you and even if I did, I’m not so sure I would care,” will be as unpopular as ever. Go figure.

—

*It being a Christian school is a good twist. It hearkens back to the Evangelical meme of the late 90s / early-aughts “Yes. I do believe in God” — the answer given by a young girl to a gunman who asked each potential victim if they did so. (Allegedly he killed everyone who said “Yes”.) Funny, that wasn’t about guns to them either.

  • -19

What exactly is your prior here when you say it's a psyop? That no one actually came and shot people? That the shooter was a government agent?

As I said, I simply start at “Fake and Gay” and wait until it becomes undeniably clear it happened as stated. It may seem perverse but it serves me well in this hyperrealistic world. The default position is: “I don’t believe you. Prove it to me.” If they satisfy the demands of proof they then have to tell me what it has to do with anything I care about.

Sometimes the whole thing proves to be a sham and sometimes only

parts seem to be.

Sometimes the whole thing proves to be a sham and sometimes only parts seem to be.

Are you claiming here that Sandy Hook was a sham? Do you mean that no children actually died, or that it was a government op, or what?

"I believe all mass shootings are fake and gay until proven otherwise" is a bit of a low-effort hot take, but if you are going to make specific claims about specific incidents which run counter to available evidence, you definitely need to provide evidence in proportion to how inflammatory the claim is.

If you have evidence that Sandy Hook was a fraud, I'm sure Alex Jones would like to have it.

The first link posted in the message you replied to is “evidence in proportion to how inflammatory the claim is” — it’s a 90 minute presentation that completely changed my mind about the veracity of the Sandy Hook shootings.

Edit: you might have better luck with this link (can’t get bitchute to load): Unravelling Sandy Hook

Can you summarize the most salient points? I’m two minutes in and so far there’s nothing substantial.

Yeah. Sure.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, No one died at Sandy Hook. No bodies have been recovered. No medical reports have been released.

In news footage taken on the day of the alleged event, the coroner has no knowledge of the bodies he’s just worked on. He cryptically says: “let’s hope the people of Newtown don’t have this come crashing down on their heads later.”

Robbie Parker is hot mic’d walking up to a podium, laughing, smiling and saying “I’ve never done this before should we just start?” a day after his daughter was shot. He then approaches the mic and gives the performance of a very bad actor — not only not crying (for those who “grieve differently”) but fake crying.

A Sandy Hook Elementary student is interviewed on “Dr. Oz”. Having no knowledge that his classmates and teachers were killed, he says the class was having a drill and is very happy that his teachers “help him a lot of the time.”

Sounds like nothing substantial right? That’s why you need to see the actual footage shown in the presentation.

There’s about a dozen equally telling anomalies. Taken one at a time they’re nothing, taken together it’s inescapable: Sandy Hook did not happen as reported. Watch the video.

Too bad none of that holds up in a court of law.

More comments

Probably the first mass shooting I hear at all committed by a woman.

There was a very weird shooting at youtube headquarters a few years ago by a vegan Baha'i woman.

There was the San Bernadino attack in 2015 that involved a husband and wife pair.

And this isn't even the first shooting by an FtM.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colorado-shooting/transgender-teen-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-deadly-colorado-school-shooting-idUSKCN24Q00D

Well, only connoiseurs remember the "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."" teenage girl shooter.

Was a long time ago. She's in her fifties now.

/images/16799922587770493.webp

Well, only connoiseurs remember the "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."" teenage girl shooter.

It inspired a great song, indeed.

Great, I just realised someone’s gonna deepfake a band performance by all the school shooters one day.

If they include the clothing and hair style used in this Live Aid Performance, I'd be all for it.

I’ve already seen Guitar Hero with all Kurt Cobain, so they just need to add the school…

Nasim Najafi Aghdam. A youtube... dancer? Avant garde performance artist? Whatever she was, her videos have a real alien and hypnotic quality about them. You get the impression she would have had a completely different life trajectory if David Byrne or John Waters had ever seen her work. That's if you can find any of her videos of course.

Yeah, it's been a long time but I recall her videos were quite alien.

hoo boy, you aren't kidding

https://youtube.com/watch?v=EFECZcpCN64

Yeah I think of the YouTube shooter as a kind of weird unsung hero or patron saint of those who are slaves to social media view counts. A uniquely 21st century kind of disgruntled.

She was mildly autistic vegan "influencer hopeful" and seriously disgruntled by being on the shit end of algo-censorship. TBH her actions are exactly the kind of response that's deserved by people on google's scale who use giant monolithic algorhythmic censorship without even the possibility of your petitions being seen by a human. Being unilaterally destroyed by a faceless mechanistic org in the pursuit of ever more fractions of a cent of AD money is one of the most infuriating ways to be dehumanized in our internet age.

TBH her actions are exactly the kind of response that's deserved by people on google's scale who use giant monolithic algorhythmic censorship without even the possibility of your petitions being seen by a human.

I definitely don't think that anyone deserves to die over it but I absolutely understand this sentiment. Getting a ~10 year old account banned by some power reddit admin for something that isn't against any written rules and not even getting a ban message, just having your password no longer work and the password recovery system lie about the recovery and there being zero ability to talk to a human about it is so much more dehumanizing than you'd expect it to be. I think the people who design these systems don't really understand what they're inflicting on people and it is unsurprising to me that it would drive someone who was already mentally unwell over the edge.

I'm told this is a standard practice now, it probably does improve some KPIs that make some executives feel good but it is absolutely an abomination.

Less infuriating than claims that one deserves to be shot?

You are treating the people who work for Google as interchangeably damned. If that’s not dehumanizing, I don’t know what is.

TBH her actions are exactly the kind of response that's deserved by people on google's scale who use giant monolithic algorhythmic censorship without even the possibility of your petitions being seen by a human

No, people do not deserve to be shot because the algorithm doesn't favor every creator equally (never mind the fact that the people she shot at weren't responsible for the YouTube algorithms in the first place). That's an insane position and if you truly believe it, you ought to defend it with arguments.

This wasn't a case of a person being wronged unfairly by Google, as happened in the past with people who had their accounts inexplicably suspended. Aghdam's account was never banned, but her videos were suppressed by the algorithm because they were cringe and weirdly sexual (example 1, example 2). This is exactly the kind of content YouTube discourages, partially because filling the frontpage with thirst traps doesn't fit its image, and partially because big advertisers only pay for brand-safe content. If you don't want to play by the rules, you shouldn't be on Youtube.

Whatever algorithm is used for recommendations, it will never be possible for every creator to become popular. It's no different with musicians on SoundCloud or aspiring actors in Hollywood. Any algorithm will therefore have winners and losers (including “completely random” or “newest only” feeds). There's no justification for the losers to go on a killing spree because they couldn't succeed within the ecosystem as it exists.

Oh no, the shooting isn't about "not succeeding". It's about being fed to the algo-wood chipper. About being denied human review. She did have videos explicitly highlighting the still monetized even more sexual videos of major brands (VEVO/etc) in some of her videos where she airs her grievances with youtube. That's her own main stated reason for shooting up the place, being censored by algo shit.

That's an insane position and if you truly believe it, you ought to defend it with arguments.

I'm not FfoC and I don't think I fully agree with him, but I think it's pointing at something that's worth at least a token defence.

Random murder is an important disincentive against systematically being an arsehole, especially white-collar abuse. Even if only 0.01% of people will murder you for being an arsehole, if you're an arsehole to someone new every day you're probably going to get murdered sooner or later, and this is a powerful disincentive even if murder is harshly punished (the arsehole is still dead regardless of what happens to the murderer, and that last fraction of a percent is very, very hard to deter).

One could see the rise of bureaucracy and remote action via the Internet as an erosion of this organic guardrail; by making it impossible rather than merely illegal to murder people for their transgressions, those transgressions are not deterred and increase drastically in frequency (and in the case of white-collar abuse, legal relief is systematically difficult to apply).

So one might conceive of this kind of contempt as perhaps not worth a whole murder but, say, a 0.01% chance of being murdered, and think a low but nonzero amount of revenge-murder is optimal even if revenge-murder itself is still wrong and punishable. That more moderate position would still be edgy, but I wouldn't call it insane.

Even if only 0.01% of people will murder you for being an arsehole, if you're an arsehole to someone new every day you're probably going to get murdered sooner or later

Any possible algorithm on Google or YouTube will have winners and losers. If 0.01% of losers commit mass shootings, then any possible set of choices by Google YouTube will result in barely directed murder.

And there are losers on Amazon. Someone feels aggrieved that their product is on page 2. If 0.01% of them respond with murder then any possible manner of sorting products will result in slaughter.

This principle breaks when it comes up against hundreds of millions of Americans and some portion are aggrieved by some algorithm.

Random murder is an important disincentive against systematically being an arsehole, especially white-collar abuse.

I think the critical issue is whether or not this is indeed "arsehole" behaviour. I don't think that curating the content that gets promoted on your own website makes you an arsehole (either as a corporate entity, or as an individual employee) and I suspect anyone who understands why Youtube uses algorithms to curate its website would agree with me. Even more so given that what is going on here is demotion of sexual content on a site which is very public about demoting sexual content. "This rule is almost never enforced, but you enforced it selectively against me" is a reasonable callout of what is probably arsehole behaviour. "This rule is almost always enforced, I demand you jump through an expensive hoop to explain why I am different to the small number of people who get away with it" is unhinged.

Given that the vast majority of people who will randomly revenge-murder an arsehole (and even more so people who will shoot up the offices of a corporate arsehole with inevitable collateral damage to innocent grunt-tier employees) are unhinged, using revenge-murder as a stochastic disincentive for arseholery doesn't create the correct incentive - behaviour that actually makes you an arsehole can be very different from behaviour that makes an unhinged person think you are one.

Isn't the standard Criminologist line that people respond more to a more certain punishment, even if it is lesser, than an unlikely but stern one? So it would be better to normalize punching arsehole.

Ideally, certainly, but to make it reliable you need control of the legal system (as most people can be deterred by punching being illegal, and because if being punched entitles you to full compensation it's no deterrent to doing punchable things), which is not reliable against white-collar arseholes (citation: every Western law code). You can't compensate a murder victim, though, so murder's still a deterrent even if murder's illegal.

What's the alternative? Before you just had production companies that were and still are very nepotistic and also push whatever they think will sell. Now we have algorithms that just push whatever they think will get views. I guess not making it, because you lacked the connections or wouldn't put out for a Harvey Weinstein esq producer is less dehumanizing. But, only in the sense that the previous system was more humanly terrible. She wasn't making it in either terrible system.

If trans-men committed mass shootings at the rate of cis-men how many trans-men mass shooters would we expect?

The Williams Institute study says 1.3% of the pop 18-24 are trans and 0.4% of the pop 25-64. The shooter is 28, my guess is more than 0.4% of 28 year olds are trans. Education Weekly says there have been 157 school shootings with a fatality since 2018, though usually we think of a school shooting as a multiple fatality event. Cis-men commit 98% of mass shootings so just really rough back of the envelope math here 157 shootings * 98% done by men * 0.4% share of men that are trans, so there's a ~61% chance of a trans-masc shooter every five years? Given that this is the first trans-masc mass shooter I've heard of they probably do mass shootings at a lower rate.

That's rough math though, I don't have too much time right now but if someone has a better number for mass casualty school shootings that would be relevant.

The Williams Institute study says 1.3% of the pop 18-24 are trans

I dispute this number. Not that I have quantified values on hand contradicting this, but I just don't believe it. I'm going to interpret this number as "youths enormously over-report being trans".

It's maddening that all statistics about this are self reported. We're talking about a demographics that takes prescription drugs, we should be able to know the exact number within a small margin of error.

Not every person who identifies as trans takes hormones. In principle that would be a great way of weeding out the malingerers from the people really experiencing gender dysphoria, but argue that and you'll be accused of "gatekeeping" and being a "truscum".

Sure, and then you make a survey where you ask "are you trans? do you take HRT?" and you get a pretty good idea of how accurate your numbers are.

My impression is that the marginal trans*-person is a tomboyish woman who uses they/them pronouns and dresses androgynously but doesn't take any other positive steps to transition. In my day these people were just called "women".

I'm going to interpret this number as "youths enormously over-report being trans".

This might be correct, but also not contradictory to Williams Institute's claims. There's no strict definition of "trans," and I don't know what Williams Institute considers "trans," but one mainstream view among people who consider themselves as "pro-trans" is that reporting oneself to be trans means that one is trans. Under this framework, youths enormously over-reporting themselves as being trans would be equivalent to youths being trans at a higher rate than if some other (transphobic, by the POV of the people who push this standard) standards were used, such as experiencing gender dysphoria or socially/medically transitioning.

For ecgtheow's analysis, I don't know what definition of "trans" would be most relevant, though.

Yeah my guess is that the number of people who self-ID as trans is a bit higher than the number of people who are on HRT and/or have socially transitioned.

If you think testosterone levels rather than XY chromosome or male socialization is the key driver of aggression/violence/criminality than the # of trans identifying vs. # receiving HRT is important. But I also think the Williams Institute's 25-64 binning is annoying and the number of 25-40 year old trans people vs. 40-64 trans people is probably pretty different.

Iirc the shooter has been identified as Audrey/Aiden hale, a FTM.

The local radio news (1010 WINS) made a big point about this not being about transgenderism and this not being a reason to blame all transgender people. If only we saw similar sentiments about men or white men.

Supposedly, there've been 4 'transgender' shooters in the last ten months.

Not really surprising - it's rarely mentally sound people who go for that kind of thing. I remember reading about the Crimo case - guy was a nut, and possibly the entire 'trans' angle was him using make-up / female clothing to make ID-ing him harder. Facial tattoos and all that.

But this is the first one where even people who aren't fans of self-id would admit that yes, this was a transgender individual.

I do think this kind of turns the "stochastic terrorism" angle on its head. Far from all the anti-trans rhetoric and legislation creating an environment where violence against trans people is more likely, it seems that trans and GNC shooters are more common in recent months.

There's much better objections to 'stochastic terrorism' than that.

The powers that hold the megaphone are unlikely to let something as prosaic as reality shatter their narratives.

Especially with something this minor.

I mean, consider the narrative and the reality of what was once called "the Negro problem".

Barely anything has changed in the last 50 years. It's still racism / poverty / bigotry that's causing underperformance and too much crime.

Ah, so could the anti-white/anti-male rhetoric, censorship, hiring (and firing) practices be responsible for all the white/male mass shooters?

Just so long as it's understood that the anti-trans rhetoric is responsible for the violence (unless it's the guns), right?

white

From that link:

About 60% of America is white-only, while current stats show white people carry out about 58% of shootings. But as a proportion of all races and shootings, white people far outstrip others.

I'm pretty under-the-weather and drugged up today, but after rereading the article twice I can't understand this point. What's the argument here, charitably stated?

The argument is that while statistically white people are very slightly less likely to carry out shootings than their proportion of the population would suggest, the author is a good person and wants to assure the reader that they don't have any of the bad, evil and low-status thoughts that usually travel with points like those - of the "actually, Stalin is wrong and lightning comes before thunder" variety.

is that while statistically white people are very slightly less likely to carry out shootings than their proportion of the population would suggest

This is actually really fucking interesting, because it suggests that whatever makes a mass shooter affects all men in equal measure rather than general criminality. I can't even begin to speculate about why that is, but someone should probably study it.

I think that the statistics here are incredibly noisy and hard to generalise from, but if you can find some more rigorous sourcing that would actually be a really interesting avenue to explore or research.

It doesn't surprise me that mass shooting wouldn't correlate to general criminality, but as for speculation to why beyond brain tumors- I agree, interesting but difficult to study.

It's not even unique to guns; the phrase "running amok" is an old one, and the operative word's from Malaysia (of all places). It's a very old observation that's only really ever been considered "weird destructive malfunction for unknown reasons", and something that complicates my amateur categorization of extensive amok coverage and societal over?reaction as an infohazard (if it was, we'd expect immediate copycats and not pithy "inspired to replicate Columbine for XYZ reason" 30 years after the fact).

We've solved most death problems so these cases stand out a lot more. Probably a more common factor in head-on collisions than anyone is comfortable admitting- "fell asleep at the wheel" isn't exactly provable and probably the easiest way to visit death upon random people- but at least we have airbags for that.

One thing does stick out to me, though: most mass killers of this type explicitly say that what they're about to do is wrong, something that's unusual among normal types of criminality (hero of one's own story and all that).

"The Unbearable Whiteness of Non-Violence: an exploration into the racist origins of mass shootings"

The point they're trying to make seems to be that mass shootings make up a higher proportion of all shootings committed by white men compared to their proportion of shootings by other groups. Basically the Despite argument, but with the base being shooters rather than the whole population.

I suspect that a previous draft also included the proportion of non-mass shooters by race but it was removed for crimethink, leaving the current confused mess.

The article is about mass shootings, so apparently it is a typo. Whether the claim is correct about mass shootings, I don't know.

Going by the mass shooting stats provided in the article, though, 64/110 were white, which is the 58% cited. So they seem to be saying that, as whites comprise 60% of the population and despite committing 58% of the mass shootings, they still manage to in some sense end up overrepresented among mass shooters. I just can't figure out the sense.

Maybe some correction that excludes background gang-related violence and includes only random shootings of public places? Perhaps, but that doesn't seem to be where the article is going.

I think they mean 60% and 58% are much larger numbers than the next share probably in the 20% range?

I think it literally means there's far more white (mass) shooters than black or asian shooters. Their proportion is greater, as in, 58% is a greater number than 17% . It's just flatly negating the previous point about percentage of the general population, returning to the beginning, to the thesis of the article: there's a lot of white shooters. It's not very elegant.

Oh. Yeah, I guess that's what they're trying to get at.

I just can't figure out the sense.

Resulting casualties.

https://www.whas11.com/article/news/crime/new-years-day-shootout-breckenridge-lane-arrests-louisville-police/417-a57a3c0f-22d2-4de8-9586-5444e12ce00b

I don't think there is one. Maybe the idea is that the 58% of shootings attributed to whites "far outstrips" the percentage of total shootings attributed to members of other races? Alternatively, maybe there is some additional percentage of shootings that is not "white-only", but white-hispanic, or black-white mixed, or asian-white mixed, or something else, so the total percentage of shootings attributable to people who are at least partly white "far outstrips" other races?

I legitimately have no idea here, but that's my best shot.

My money's on no toxoplasma. It's too one-way: shooting up a school does not attract support. No one wants to root for a mentally ill loser, and school shooters automatically go in that category.

It will certainly get less coverage than, say, Uvalde. Right-wing circles will correctly notice this and incorrectly claim it means coordinated suppression efforts. While it'll be hard to measure, I expect one or two leaked editorial messages a la Alex Jones, followed by assertions of collusion. Six months from now, the only coverage will be Fox News crowing about how left-wing outlets got all embarrassed, as it did with Covington.

incorrectly claim it means coordinated suppression efforts

How do you know this is incorrect?

I don’t!

@desolation has the right of it. I think the (lack of) coverage will be driven by individual discomfort. Editorial meddling will be less common, and inversely proportional to the scale of the outlet. Suppression at the C-suite level will be rarer still, and coordinated suppression between executives in different corporations will be nonexistent.

Thus I expect to see a few leaked conversations at lower levels saying things like “mentioning gender makes us look bad!” or “we’re giving ammunition to people who hate trans.” It goes without saying that this will be spun as strong evidence for Soros (or whoever is the Gay Agenda bogeyman?) commanding his minions to bury the story. I realize I can’t disprove this, since the absence of evidence could just mean a bogeyman is competent. But my expectation is that burial will emerge from individual incentives. Starlings in flight.

@desolation has the right of it. I think the (lack of) coverage will be driven by individual discomfort. Editorial meddling will be less common, and inversely proportional to the scale of the outlet. Suppression at the C-suite level will be rarer still,

All perfectly in accordance with coordination theory

and coordinated suppression between executives in different corporations will be nonexistent.

Yeah, they coordinate on the strategic, rather than operational level.

I realize I can’t disprove this

I'm not even asking for that. Just would be nice if you didn't confidently assert the opposite without providing arguments.

I think this is basically the "prospiracy" idea: there is no central coordination or singular grand plan, but everyone is in the same direction anyways.

There's mailing lists, and discords, and other forms of communication.

The key here is coordinated, which would be virtually impossible to prove anyways; the position is there's no Grand Dragon of Progressivism contacting all the networks to shut it down or else.

That's not what coordinated means. Since problem_redittor decided to jog our memory of GamerGate, I firmly recall it being called a "coordinated harassment campaign" because a bunch of people met up in chat rooms, even though there was no Grand Dragon of GamerGate either.

For me the key is "incorrect". If you're going to say something like that, you should give a compelling argument for why I should consider it so, not hide behind mere lack of evidence for the opposite.

but some people get fussy about "coordination" sounding conspiratorial.

I'm the resident conspiracy theorist here, and my response to "it sounds conspiratorial" is "thanks for noticing".

Or the key could be suppression; no one's "suppressing it," they're just selectively ignoring it because it has some inconvenient features.

While I can't prove it in this specific case, it's not exactly uncommon for an editor/producer to kill a story.

The perfectly tuned manifesto might trigger toxoplasma. I can see "Desparate cry for help from trans youth* brutally abused by religious fanatics" to split the public on whether we should blame the shooter or transphobia more.

* Not actually very young

I think less toxoplasma if the shooter is FTM because the right-wing narrative of FTM is that they're deluded female victims not masculine aggressors. If the shooter was MTF all hell would break lose.

I think the only shooter who kind of succeeded in any of their political goals was the Christchurch shooter. He was an accelerationist and chose his weapons to aid the cause of gun control.

That doesn't prevent mass shooters from writing manifestos and truly believing that they will be the spark that ignites the race war, the holy war, the revolution, or whatever.

Brevik's objective was to wipe out the best and brightest of the next generation of AUF leaders.

Counterfactuals are hard to measure, but I can believe that in 2040 Norway's uniparty will have slightly less competent leadership than it otherwise would have.

I don't know, Christian school bullies trans student who snaps is a compelling narrative (true or not). Depends on the manifesro contents i imagine.

10+ years later?

deleted

Nah because they killed kids. That's a bridge too far.

The manifesto won't matter. There is nothing it can say that will convince normal Americans that a school shooting was a good idea. By extension, news outlets will not take that angle. I expect to see minimization, or at most both-sidesing, and the latter will be considered edgy.

Also,

28 years old

Pretty sure the perpetrator wasn't a student.

They said they were an ex student in the conference though right?

I agree the chance if that narrative us probably not super high though.

If they went in and shot their bullies maybe, but this is going back to your school 10+ years later and killing random kids.

Will we ever see the manifesto? If it hasn't been leaked by now it's probably only the police that have it. The shooter is dead so they don't need evidence. Is there any reason they couldn't just chunk it or leave it on a secure server somewhere?

Apparently the manifesto was found in the home by police, so most likely it was never published online. I doubt the police would ever release it.

Doesn't matter. by this time tomorrow we'll have archives of their social media activity.

Pretty sure the perpetrator wasn't a student.

According to this NBC News article, the shooter was a former student.

Unless the left claims the shooting was motivated by transphobia.

This is the first mass school shooting by a woman that I know. Probably the first mass shooting I hear at all committed by a woman.

Wasn't one of the first notable American school shootings a woman? The Cleveland Elementary school shooting by a 16 year old female perpetrator, which lead to the Boomtown Rats song "I Don't Like Mondays."

rate of transmen prisoners

Might this be a lack of capacity?

Many transmen appear diminutive compared to men. Most of the sporting controversy is MtF in women's sports, have there been instances of FtM successfully competing against men?

First study I saw on Google says, "In unadjusted analyses, height had a moderate negative relationship to violent crime; the shortest of men were twice as likely to be convicted of a violent crime as the tallest. However, when simultaneously controlling for all measured confounders, height was weakly and positively related to violent crime".

There's room to argue about their list of confounders (they controlled for "isometric muscle strength", which is surely not what we'd want to do in this case), but in any case they're just not coming up with solid support for a "diminutive people commit less crime" theory. Maybe more diminutive people commit less violent crime (and thus get lower prison sentences and make up a lower fraction of prisoners) even if they're not committing less crime over all? ... no, wait, this is a study specifically looking at violent crime. Maybe there's a restriction-of-range effect or a location-specific uncontrolled confounder here, and studies of wider populations (they only studied Swedish-born people conscripted in the '80s) would have very different results?

It’s interesting because iirc there is very little to no evidence that transmen taking male hormones makes them more violent (eg. the rate of transmen prisoners, when controlled for the usual factors, is similar to the rate for cis women), even though testosterone is linked to criminal behavior and is generally believed to be a reason men are more violent than women.

Is this also controlled for women tending to get lower sentences than men for similar crimes? I would (wildly) guess that both FTM and MTF would gain some of this advantage, though FTM would gain more. I've anecdotally heard of FTM transmen becoming better at spacial math and more horny (including both from NPR of all places), so I wouldn't be surprised if FTM transmen also experienced increase in aggression to be more like males, though I would also guess that without going through male adolescence, that the level of violence inflicted would be lower on average due to lower strength, even if they had exactly as much of a tendency towards violence as males.

Again, anecdotal and wild guesses, but I'm also guessing that there just isn't much knowledge on this at all due to a dearth of trans people in general on which to do research on this type of stuff.

No, pretty sure the police spokesman said she identified as a transgender woman. That's easier to explain. Very male thing to do. A mass poisoning would have been more affirming.

Edit: Wrong, FtM apparently. https://opoyi.com/usa/is-audrey-hale-a-transgender-covenant-school-nashville-shooting-suspect-allegedly-identifies-as-he-him-on-linkedin/

Maybe it’s an XX genotype who identifies as a transgender woman and prefers he/him? These words don’t mean anything. You can arrange them however you want.

They started off confused about their identity, and if nothing else they have successfully exported that confusion to the rest of us. Letting people decide how others refer to them is the road to madness. They're really screwing with other people's maps. They think if they change the map, they can change the territory.

I read the opposite. The use of 'female' doesn't actually mean female, it means MtF. The kind of people who say trans women are women aren't going to make the woman/female distinction, and those are the kind of people, and outlets, that are reporting on this event.

It appears the shooter is indeed female, not male, so my read was incorrect.

...but gender isn't. To quote the style guide,

We generally use the term and pronoun preferred by the person in question, unless there are editorial reasons not to do so.

unless there are editorial reasons not to do so.

...like being a school shooter?

I would imagine it matters a lot more what official Nashville policy policy is on how they report the sex and gender of perpetrators. That, or AP Stylebook standards on how best to use "female."

I wouldn't necessarily assume from the outset that the man/woman vs. male/female distinction has been removed from journalistic practice yet.

entered the Covenant School via a side door

Once again, actually locking doors seems to be the anti-mass shooting low-hanging fruit

The doors were locked. The perp shot out the glass.

Ah - so then hardening the doors would be the fruit but that is substantially less low hanging.

There's glass that's harder to destroy, but the real low-hanging fruit is giving guns and training to teachers.

Doesn't the US military have loads and loads of old 9mm pistols hanging around ? Ditto for ammo and magazines.

Vastly cheaper, plus, it's not like they have anywhere to run in a school, etc.

Doesn't the US military have loads and loads of old 9mm pistols hanging around ?

No one should want that old inventory.

I mean, is all of the vast pistol inventory that used up ?

Dunno; I'd imagine that, even with how mistreated many acutal military-service M9s may be, it's probably not improbable to refurbish them with spare parts and some TLC post-service. The Beretta 92 overall is still kind of in that "refuses to die" phase, especially since the adoption of the M17/M18 wasn't that long ago.

From the footage released, the shooter did not shoot the lock. Instead, the doors had glass panels, which were shot out and easily traversed through.

Then it makes total sense. Shooting out the lock only reliably works with a shotgun from what I've seen.

I know I know, ">Amerishoots," but when I was in school, every time we had lockdown drills someone would always point out, "couldn't the bad guys just shoot their way through the door?" and the teachers would have to begrudgingly admit that yes, they could do that and that we were pretty much wasting our time.

The proper response to an actual school shooting is to run the f*** out of the school building as soon as possible.

This is of course enormously inconvenient to administrators running a drill, and so they don't do it.

All of the active shooter training I've seen at the university and corporate level emphasizes "run, hide, fight" (in order). Admittedly, I think K-12 does still emphasize locking doors and emptying hallways, but they have invested in better doors and access control in the last decade.

It is the proper response to a guy hiding on the property with a gun after robbing a liquor store, which is when it wasn't a drill for me.

At a small high school where I used to work, this is literally what they said. They did not have drills. It seemed very sensible.

It's not such a good plan at a large elementary school, though.

This will double the cost of all contractor work on public schools. It’s also a massive pain in the ass.

I have never seen a school that had doors that weren't locked from the outside after school hours. The problem seems to be actually locking them, not that they can't be locked

I think this means that if you are doing work that requires you to alternate between inside and outside, you will now need to funnel yourself back through the main entrance rather than go back in the door you came out of.

Though really they should just put card readers on every door. It's a safety issue the other direction as well. Imagine a teacher gets locked out and can't reach a child in distress, for any reason.

https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v14i14.pdf

An estimated 4,000 school building fires were reported by United States fire departments each year

Optimizing for relatively rare events at the cost of more commonplace ones is bad policy.

Is it really possible that you are not familiar with door push bars, standardly installed on just about every institutional door I've ever seen?

"Locking doors" in this case really only requires that the door not open from the outside. A crash bar (and possibly an alarm system) wouldn't prevent safe egress in a fire, but prevents random entry.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nashville-christian-school-shooter-appears-former-student-police-chief-rcna76876

The shooter was identified as Audrey Hale, 28, of Nashville, according to the chief, who said she identifies as transgender.

Glad that we're finally closing the mass shooter gap.

ETA: I'm pretty sure, given the phrasing, that we're talking MtF.

ETA: I'm pretty sure, given the phrasing, that we're talking MtF.

FtM, if this is anything to go by.

FtM, if this is anything to go by.

More FtM school shooters would be (with grim irony) excellent evidence in favor of the "trans people are X minds born in a Y body" framing of the trans phenomenon, as opposed to borderline personality and social contagion which is the more popular explanation here.

I'm not getting any quick google results I trust, but there must be at least 20x as many Gen Z biological males as FtMs. If the ratio of male mass shooters:FtM mass shooters ever converges with the ratio of Male:FtMs in society, that will shift my priors dramatically in favor the LGBT activist framing of the issue being the correct one.

(I'm not suggesting that this ratio will come to pass, but I am registering this in advance as evidence that would falsify my current position.)

You're forgetting the confounding factor that FtM are often prescribed testosterone. I think the more parsimonious explanation would be "Testosterone produces aggressive and violent behavior"

Which... I think is pretty well established.

What if we grant the "X minds born in a Y body" framing. Is it just my impression or is the number of self reported transgenderism spiking in recent years? Could Alex Jones have been right and we're all getting Atrazined out of our minds. The young ones being the canary in the mine as their bodies are just now entering puberty.

Why not update in favor of gender-nonconforming people being generally susceptible to mental health issues?

Shooting up a Christian school is a psychotic thing to do before it is a «male» thing to do. Just because virtually all school shooters are men doesn't mean that the defining characteristic of school shooters is their gender.

Before this, both maleness and presumably some horrible mental health issue were both necessary conditions for school shootings. It seems very telling that in this case when we finally see a woman do it, it's one who saw themselves as a man, and was possibly treated with male sex hormones.

So whether it's "more" about maleness or mental illness doesn't really matter, because empirically you need to have both.

I agree with @ThenElection. You can weight the Male:FtM mass shooting rate against the Cis:Trans mass shooting rate to isolate how much is due to their intrinsic "maleness" vs how much is FtMs just being mentally ill. The math will be complicated by the need to control for the ratio of MtFs:FtMs, but it can be done.

So, a few scenarios that match with different hypotheses assuming Males and Females + MtFs and FtMs are both equally prevalent to avoid said complicated math.

A. "FtMs are male brains in female bodies", "trans people are not mentally ill"

Male:FtM mass shooting rate should be 1:1.

B. "FtMs are male brains in female bodies", "trans people are more mentally ill"

Male:FtM mass shooting rate = Cis:Trans mass shooting rate.

C. "FtMs are females passing themselves as male", "trans people are not mentally ill"

Male:FtM mass shooting rate = Male:Female mass shooting rate

D. "FtMs are females passing themselves as male", "trans people are more mentally ill"

Male:FtM mass shooting rate = Male:Female mass shooting rate * Cis:Trans mass shooting rate

So, a few scenarios that match with different hypotheses assuming Males and Females + MtFs and FtMs are both equally prevalent to avoid said complicated math.

Also, the data is very noisy; this is the first widely-publicized event of a transperson shooting up a school. If we buy that there are 10 events of this type of event per year in the first place and that FtMs are 1% of the population (these are both significant overestimates), then we should expect one shooter every 10 years to be trans.

Transness was (simplification) only invented 5-10 years ago, so we should one event perpetrated by an FtM every 10 years on average for #1 to be correct. This is probably going to take a while.

There was another widely publicized ftm trans identified person shooting up a school in Colorado a few years ago, sentenced to life + 38 years.

So under 4 years for FtM at least.

If for some reason FtM/ MtF disproportionately shot up schools compared to MtF/FtM, there may be some way to tease out some information there beyond the mental health connection, even if the rates for both are elevated above the general population.

Would this actually prove that point?

I feel like it could just prove that masculinizing hormones actually masculinize people, which is hardly a revelation. Plenty of transmen already report anecdotally being quicker to anger, or needing to masturbate more after HRT.

In fact, the inverse being true isn't even catastrophic to the LGBT position. If fewer FtM people are school shooters and violent criminals, then it could be evidence that socialization plays a stronger role in gendered behavior than biology, at least as concerns violent crime. FtM's who are socialized as girls through their early childhood end up less likely to commit crimes than cismen socialized as boys.

Would this actually prove that point? I feel like it could just prove that masculinizing hormones actually masculinize people, which is hardly a revelation. Plenty of transmen already report anecdotally being quicker to anger, or needing to masturbate more after HRT.

It would definitely falsify something about my current position. I understand transitioning to change people at a fairly superficial level.

In fact, the inverse being true isn't even catastrophic to the LGBT position. If fewer FtM people are school shooters and violent criminals, then it could be evidence that socialization plays a stronger role in gendered behavior than biology, at least as concerns violent crime. FtM's who are socialized as girls through their early childhood end up less likely to commit crimes than cismen socialized as boys.

That doesn't follow. Lower FtM crime fits the biological explanation and the socialization one equally well, so it shouldn't update your priors on that point one way or the other.

I stand corrected.

Audrey Hale, 28, of Nashville

From the New York Post

Hale, who said they used he/him pronouns in online profiles was wielding two assault-style rifles and a pistol, was killed by responding officers when they found her on the second floor of the school.

So I think FtM, though that sentence is confusing enough to constitute a case for banning transgenderism on its own.

I’ve seen “please don’t misgender the rapist.” Will we see “please don’t misgender the school shooter”?

They're way ahead of you. (sauce : nypost comment sections. Might be satire ? Poe's law.)

It's not even satire, it's just run of the mill sarcasm which they dropped in the second half of the comment.

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