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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37955 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.

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.

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"

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