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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.

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.

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.