tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post6155239717192278907..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: Hi from CanadaPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-46417908196413805402017-10-04T15:46:23.260-04:002017-10-04T15:46:23.260-04:00Actually checked your links. I was very amused by...Actually checked your links. I was very amused by "Rachel" in the Twitter thread posting a graph purporting to show that mass shootings are "obviously" a white thing when the graph, in fact, shows the opposite. (According to her graph, 5/9 of the last 90 mass shootings were by white people, but the country is 72% white. If I had been using her data, I would have had to say that black men were overrepresented and white men were underrepresented, but I'll stick with my prior data.)Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-1424359085383144302017-10-04T11:36:22.942-04:002017-10-04T11:36:22.942-04:00I said "gun ownership per capita" above,...I said "gun ownership per capita" above, but I should have been more precise and said "number of guns in private hands per capita." Gun ownership rates have actually declined a bit in that time, though there are still at least 35% of people in the country either own a gun or live in a house with someone who does. Hopefully no one was confused by my lack of precision.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-32675840113943648072017-10-04T01:12:50.551-04:002017-10-04T01:12:50.551-04:00Speaking as an Iowan for the last twenty-odd years...Speaking as an Iowan for the last twenty-odd years, I can tell you that guns is one of the major factors in "why you got Trump." Democrats have been losing on this issue for decades now and they're not suddenly going to win any time soon.<br /><br />In the last thirty years, I believe gun ownership per capita has doubled but gun violence (along with all other violence) has declined significantly in that period.<br /><br />Mass shootings have not declined and definitely rose between 2007 and 2013, but that's obviously the mass media's fault. It is also the mass media's fault that people are terrified of mass shootings even though only a tiny number of people die in them. In the same way, people think there are epidemics of child abductions, kids dying in hot cars, black men being killed by cops (there is a very real policing problem in this country, but it's everyone's problem, not just black men's), and so forth, even though virtually no one in the country knows anyone who has been affected by any of these issues.<br /><br />What is the likely motive of the killer in Las Vegas? Most likely he wanted to set a record and the media has obliged him by trumpeting his record as a new mark for the next guy to shoot for. It is one of the more sickening spectacles of love of money trumping love of humanity that it's possible to witness and it happens all over the spectrum - MSNBC, CNN, the broadcast networks, Fox News, all of them.<br /><br />By the by, while it is almost always men (though there was of course Brenda Spencer), white men and black men both commit mass shootings in rough proportion to their share of the population. Asians are quite overrepresented and Latinos are underrepresented. The media just doesn't care that much about mass shootings (or serial killings) committed by people other than white men, unless it's a record like the one in Virginia Tech.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.com