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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27691 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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ongoing shooting in lewiston, maine

reportedly 22+ dead, 60+ shot. shooter is rumored to be an ex army guy. perhaps shaping up to be the next las vegas massacre. stay safe and prepare for the gun control debate to be revved up full force tomorrow

So basically two weeks worth of murders in Chicago. I want to live in a world where these events are not news and the constant drumbeat of urban violence is.

The difference is that people don’t really care when gang members in Chicago kill each other, they do care when people uninvolved in crime who live in middle class or wealthy places get killed randomly.

The vast majority of homicides in the US are things you don’t need to worry about as the average middle class white or asian person. Mass shootings of this kind (or school shootings, or the Las Vegas thing, or Islamist terror attacks on office buildings or a marathon finish line or whatever) trigger a fear and panic response because the people affected are not the kind of people who are the victims of regular violent crime very often.

I bet the homicide rate for white Chicagoans who make more than $100,000 a year is not high enough to be concerning.

I understand this is as a valid reason for why the average middle class American should be more concerned by a mass shooting of this nature rather than gun violence, but in terms of warranted magnitude of concern, I concur with @jeroboam that it rounds out to about zilch.

I don't think that explains it entirely. Middle class white Americans need to be worried about heart disease, not mass shootings.

These shootings won't take 0.01 years off my life span.

It's the sensationalist aspect combined with the ability to push a left wing narrative about "gun nuts" and "America bad" that makes these stories run. Personally, I'll continue to mash the "don't care" button hard.

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