Nearly 90 percent of us
More than a dozen people were killed in a shooting on Wednesday afternoon at a high school about an hour northwest of Miami [Florida], a law enforcement official said.
The authorities said there were 14 victims, but did not say if they were injured or dead. The Broward County Public Schools confirmed fatalities, but would not say how many.
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said the suspect is in custody and the scene is still active.
…
Parkland, an affluent suburb of Fort Lauderdale with a population of about 30,000, is known for its good public schools. Douglas High is among the largest in the Broward school district, with about 3,000 students.
“My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting,” President Trump wrote on Twitter. “No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.”
But that of course does not mean he is going to do anything to make that “should” anything more than a pious puff of air. Of course people shouldn’t feel unsafe in any school, American or otherwise, but in a country awash with guns and in love with violence, it’s futile to say that.
How many school shootings have there been in the US so far this year?
18. It’s only mid-February, and there have been 18.
We lead the world in gun-having, by a huge margin.
So anyway – thoughts and prayers, y’all.
17 dead according to Sky News. The alleged shooter is a 19-year-old white male, a former student named as Nikolaus Cruz.
Florida congressman Ted Deutch tweeted that ‘Tragedies like this happen everywhere. School shootings happen everywhere.’ No they’re not, they are almost uniquely an American phenomena almost uniquely carried out by white American males, and today’s is the 300th. school shooting since 2013.
There’s a lot of thoughts and prayers being given, so that’ll help.
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS – THE GAME
This source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country) puts the US at 101 guns/100 of population. NZ sits at 22/100. I can assure you that school shootings do not happen here. Australia sits at 24/100, same thing. No school shootings. I note that according to the source quoted in the article, the rate of gun ownership in the US has doubled since 1968.
Nearly half of the guns in the US are owned by 3% of the population. I’ve read that the proportion of gun owners is going down even as the number of guns per capita is rising; those with guns are expanding their arsenals. I tried to find data showing the proportion of gun owners for various countries, but had no luck,.although a BBC article did mention that 40% of US households had guns. I’d expect the US to be among the top in that category, too, despite recent drops.
I saw a cartoon the other day and can’t for the lige of me remember where, but the basic idea was that whenever we hear about shootings the natural reaction of most of us is to bring our children close to protect them, but in America the natural reaction for far too many is not to protect their children, but their 2nd. Amendment rights.
A pertinent tweet by Caroline O, quoting NY Daily News:
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/964026888674074624
Many comments, most good.
@AoS #1 – on the other hand, Connecticut senator Chris Murphy said:
The gun lobby doesn’t even represent paranoid ‘home defense’ owners. The huge hoards of quasi-military weapons are the property of anarchist crazies like the Bundys, like Paddock, like whoever the next one is.
It’s because the natural reaction from the rest of us IS to try to protect our children that the reaction from the others is gun-clutching. Protecting our children from crazies with guns calls for keeping our children, the crazies, and the guns separate from one another. While keeping the crazies away from the children is great, we’re not counting on it being enough. Keeping the crazies and guns apart too is imperative, it’s been imperative, and the gun-clutchers know very well we’re going to want to do it every time the crazies treat children like skeet disks.
It’s so familiar it’s scripted anymore.