Mass Shootings

You Can Almost Count on Each New Mass Shooter Being a Veteran

June 2, 2019 David Swanson, Let's Try Democracy Educate! Mass Shootings, Wars and Militarism

“He enlisted in the Virginia National Guard in April 1996, according to spokesman A.A. Puryear. He was assigned to the Norfolk-based 1st Battalion, 111th Field Artillery Regiment, 116th Infantry Brigade Combat Team as a 13B cannon crew member. He was discharged in April 2002 and held the rank of specialist at the time, the spokesman said. His records did not indicate overseas deployments.” —CNN on latest mass shooter We’re supposed to overlook this bit of information. We’re supposed to focus on mental health questions or the inscrutable incomprehensible mystery of the inevitable human tragedy of mass shootings, which bizarrely and unfairly are inflicted by the universe on this particular 4 percent of humanity living in the United States, which quite irrelevantly has been glorifying violence through endless wars for many years.

The Christchurch Shooting And The Normalization Of Anti-Muslim Terrorism

March 18, 2019 By Whitney Webb, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Islamophobia, Mass Shootings, New Zealand, Racism, Shooting, Terrorism

CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND — What is without question the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history took place on Friday when shooters, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant among them, opened fire at two Christchurch mosques. Four, including Tarrant, have been arrested for the heinous act, which claimed at least 49 innocent lives. Tarrant was responsible for killing more than 40 victims, among them several children, in a rampage he live-streamed on Facebook, sending chills throughout the Muslim community, particularly Muslims living in Western countries.

The Culture Behind School Shootings

June 1, 2018 Nick Pemberton, Counterpunch.org Educate! Education, Mass Shootings, Schools

Another week, another mass shooting and still the discourse remains primarily about individual violence. The goal is to inject a fear into the populist. The goal is to divide us. The goal is to make us afraid of each other. The goal is to justify further control of the people and to continue to obliterate civil liberties. The old phrase “If You See Something Say Something” has popped up again. This is the phrase that came out of 9/11. It enlists each one of us in the war on terror, the war on crime, the war on guns. The other phrase now is ____ Strong. Plug in any name. No matter where the shooting happens we must become “stronger”. Not more peaceful. We must become stronger. We remain at war with somebody. And like the war on terror and the war on crime, the villain is both everywhere and nowhere. One of those Middle East countries, forget which one. One of those kids with a hood, forget which one.

Snipers Shooting Unarmed People At 100 Meters Isn’t A ‘Clash’

May 16, 2018 Adams Johnson, FAIR. Educate! Charlottesville, Gaza, Mass Shootings, Shooting

May 14, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - As FAIR has noted before (e.g., Extra!, 1/17; FAIR.org, 4/2/18), the term “clash” is almost always used to launder power asymmetry and give the reader the impression of two equal warring sides. It obscures power dynamics and the nature of the conflict itself, e.g., who instigated it and what weapons if any were used. “Clash” is a reporter’s best friend when they want to describe violence without offending anyone in power—in the words of George Orwell, “to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.” It’s predictable, then, that in coverage of Israel’s recent mass shootings in Gaza—which have killed over 30 Palestinians and injured more than 1,100—the word “clashes” is used to euphemize snipers in fortified positions firing on unarmed protesters 100 meters away...

What Mass Killers Tend To Have In Common

April 28, 2018 David Swanson, Davidswanson.org Educate! Gun violence, Mass killing, Mass Shootings

It may almost seem too obvious to mention, but I don’t think that’s why we so seldom mention it. I don’t mean being male, or being mentally disturbed, or having been cruel to women, or living in places like the United States where it’s easy to acquire weapons of war. These and many other factors are very significant and very often discussed, as they should be, when we consider mass killings. There’s something else that ties a lot of mass killers together, and it’s also obvious, but seldom discussed. The man who killed with a van in Toronto had been briefly in the Canadian military and promoted his crime on Facebook beforehand as a military operation. The same day he killed in Toronto, the G7 countries were meeting at the University of Toronto and declaring their unified hostility toward Russia.

Students Lead ‘March For Our Lives’ Against Gun Violence

March 25, 2018 By John Zangas and Anne Meador, DC Media Group Resist! Gun Control, Mass Shootings, Student Activism

High school students joined hands to lead over a half a million demonstrators in the “March For Our Lives” anti-gun protest on Saturday. They decried gun violence in their schools and criticized the National Rifle Association (NRA) response to mass shootings that have swept the country in recent years. They delivered a message to politicians funded by the gun lobby that they will “never again” let mass shootings happen because of easy access to guns. The vast numbers and intense feelings pervading the march may signal that an absolutist view of “gun rights”—that the Second Amendment is inviolable and should be allowed to trump students’ safety at school—will no longer be tolerated in the mainstream. Among the March’s demands are a moratorium on AR-15 assault weapons, a ban on bump stocks and other devices which render guns into fully automatic weapons, mandatory background checks and an increase in the age of eligibility to purchase guns.

Nationwide Mass Student Walk Out Over Gun Violence

March 15, 2018 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Resist! Gun Control, Mass Shootings, Student Protests

Wednesday, March 14, was one month after the Parkland school massacre in Florida. Students from more than 3,100 schools marked the event with a National Walkout day. Estimates are more than one million students walked out of their classrooms at 10:00 am. Many students planned to walk out of class for 17 minutes — one for every person killed during the horrific mass killing. The students demanded gun law reforms to show solidarity with the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where the attack occurred on Valentine's Day.

Disarm Cops First. Reflections On Narratives Of Exceptional And Systematic Violence After Parkland Shootings

March 3, 2018 Staff, Twincitiesgdc.org Strategize! Mass Shootings, Police, Structural Violence

On February 18th, 2018, A nineteen year old white man entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with his rifle, and murdered 17 people. He was later arrested peacefully by police. The shooter’s social media profiles indicate a racist obsessed with white nationalism and a hatred of women, and a promoter of fascist messages and imagery. He was reportedly obsessed with guns, and his behavior had been reported to law enforcement repeatedly. Law enforcement never took action, which has itself been widely criticized. The reasons for this inaction are not hard to pin down for those willing to look: Cruz, the shooter – was a white man with a gun, and therefore not a threat. In the aftermath, a Neo Nazi organization calling itself the Republic of Florida claimed Cruz as a member.

Mass Shootings Are A Byproduct Of A Militarized Society

March 2, 2018 By Elliot Swain, Codepink.org Educate! Guns, Mass Shootings, Militarization, Violence

An article by Lucian K. Truscott IV, published in Salon last week, addresses the recent Florida mass killing with a novel suggestion. It implores trigger-happy “gun nuts” to forego the civilian gun market and join the Army. Weapons like the AR-15 and the R-15 are replicas of military munitions, designed to annihilate as many human beings as possible. Civilian use of these guns can hardly be justified by self-defense or any other socially legitimate purpose. If you want to play with high-powered killing machines, Truscott argues, there’s a place for that. “Go down to your local recruiting station and join the fucking Army,” Truscott writes. “They’ll give you a rifle for free, and all the deadly ammo you want, and they’ll train you with human silhouette targets, and they’ll send you over to Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria, or Niger, or some fucking hellhole where there are guys with guns very similar to yours who will be good enough to shoot at you, so you can shoot back at them and kill them.”

Guns And Liberty

February 28, 2018 By Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Guns, Mass Shootings, Second Amendment, Violence

The proliferation of guns in American society is not only profitable for gun manufacturers, it fools the disempowered into fetishizing weapons as a guarantor of political agency. Guns buttress the myth of a rugged individualism that atomizes Americans, disdains organization and obliterates community, compounding powerlessness. Gun ownership in the United States, largely criminalized for poor people of color, is a potent tool of oppression. It does not protect us from tyranny. It is an instrument of tyranny. “Second Amendment cultists truly believe that guns are political power,” writes Mark Ames, the author of “Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond.” “[They believe that] guns in fact are the only source of political power.

Why Are Mass Killings So Common In The US?

February 26, 2018 By Eric London, Wsws.org Educate! Mass Shootings, United States, Violence

On February 14, an American horror story played out in southeastern Florida when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17 people, including 14 students. In April 1999, the country was stunned by the mass killing of 13 students and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado by two students, who then committed suicide. In the course of the past 20 years, eruptions of homicidal violence have become almost commonplace, and the death tolls resulting from such incidents have in many cases far exceeded the terrible loss of life at Columbine. The 2017 attack in Las Vegas resulted in 58 deaths. The 2016 attack at the Pulse nightclub in Florida left 49 dead. The 2014 shooting in San Bernardino cost the lives of 14 people.

Refusing To Accept A Society Steeped In Violence

February 25, 2018 Alex Macmillan and Danny Katch, Socialist Worker. Educate! Education, Mass Shootings, Violence, Wars and Militarism

The news last week of yet another horrific school shooting seemed to promise only more despair and mourning--both for the 17 lives lost at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and about the larger direction of U.S. society. Instead, the collective anger and defiance that has been organized and expressed by many classmates of those killed has marked this tragedy as a line in the sand--marked out by young people who are demanding that this country try to actually do something about the epidemic of mass shootings.

Immigrant Youth Stand With Survivors Of Parkland Mass Shooting & Will Take Streets On The March For Our Lives

February 24, 2018 Sheridan Aguirre, Unitedwedream.org Resist! Immigrants, Immigration, Mass Shootings, Protests, Youth

Washington, DC – On March 24th, immigrant youth will march in solidarity with the courageous survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and students across the country who are calling on Congress to protect the lives of young people and communities by enacting stricter gun control laws. Immigrant youth will organize marches at Pompano Beach High School (Pompano Beach, FL), Woodrow Wilson High School (Washington, D.C.), and Central Washington University (Ellensburg, WA) with more to come. Camila Duarte, high school student and immigrant youth leader at United We Dream – Florida, said: “The shooting in Parkland hit home. My friend’s brother was one of the victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and I can’t express just how much this has affected our whole community.

Young America

February 21, 2018 By Randall Amster, Commondreams.org Resist! Activism, History, Mass Shootings, Violence, Youth Activism

Nearly a century ago, Mohandas Gandhi started a new publication to share his vision of nonviolent organizing, filling it with inspiring quotations and political insights. He titled the journal Young India, to indicate that its teachings were intended to help the people plan for eventual independence, fusing the methods of building a movement with those required to begin (re)building a nation. Gandhi saw the means and ends as interconnected, and reflected this in his personal practices and societal aspirations. Of particular interest is the March 23, 1922, issue of the journal, which recounted proceedings from “The Great Trial” in which Gandhi was charged with attempting to promote “disaffection” toward the British colonial government. The exhibits against him were three articles he posted in Young India, including one titled “Tampering with Loyalty.”

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