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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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The local radio news (1010 WINS) made a big point about this not being about transgenderism and this not being a reason to blame all transgender people. If only we saw similar sentiments about men or white men.

Supposedly, there've been 4 'transgender' shooters in the last ten months.

Not really surprising - it's rarely mentally sound people who go for that kind of thing. I remember reading about the Crimo case - guy was a nut, and possibly the entire 'trans' angle was him using make-up / female clothing to make ID-ing him harder. Facial tattoos and all that.

But this is the first one where even people who aren't fans of self-id would admit that yes, this was a transgender individual.

I do think this kind of turns the "stochastic terrorism" angle on its head. Far from all the anti-trans rhetoric and legislation creating an environment where violence against trans people is more likely, it seems that trans and GNC shooters are more common in recent months.

There's much better objections to 'stochastic terrorism' than that.

The powers that hold the megaphone are unlikely to let something as prosaic as reality shatter their narratives.

Especially with something this minor.

I mean, consider the narrative and the reality of what was once called "the Negro problem".

Barely anything has changed in the last 50 years. It's still racism / poverty / bigotry that's causing underperformance and too much crime.

Ah, so could the anti-white/anti-male rhetoric, censorship, hiring (and firing) practices be responsible for all the white/male mass shooters?

Just so long as it's understood that the anti-trans rhetoric is responsible for the violence (unless it's the guns), right?

white

From that link:

About 60% of America is white-only, while current stats show white people carry out about 58% of shootings. But as a proportion of all races and shootings, white people far outstrip others.

I'm pretty under-the-weather and drugged up today, but after rereading the article twice I can't understand this point. What's the argument here, charitably stated?

The argument is that while statistically white people are very slightly less likely to carry out shootings than their proportion of the population would suggest, the author is a good person and wants to assure the reader that they don't have any of the bad, evil and low-status thoughts that usually travel with points like those - of the "actually, Stalin is wrong and lightning comes before thunder" variety.

is that while statistically white people are very slightly less likely to carry out shootings than their proportion of the population would suggest

This is actually really fucking interesting, because it suggests that whatever makes a mass shooter affects all men in equal measure rather than general criminality. I can't even begin to speculate about why that is, but someone should probably study it.

I think that the statistics here are incredibly noisy and hard to generalise from, but if you can find some more rigorous sourcing that would actually be a really interesting avenue to explore or research.

It doesn't surprise me that mass shooting wouldn't correlate to general criminality, but as for speculation to why beyond brain tumors- I agree, interesting but difficult to study.

It's not even unique to guns; the phrase "running amok" is an old one, and the operative word's from Malaysia (of all places). It's a very old observation that's only really ever been considered "weird destructive malfunction for unknown reasons", and something that complicates my amateur categorization of extensive amok coverage and societal over?reaction as an infohazard (if it was, we'd expect immediate copycats and not pithy "inspired to replicate Columbine for XYZ reason" 30 years after the fact).

We've solved most death problems so these cases stand out a lot more. Probably a more common factor in head-on collisions than anyone is comfortable admitting- "fell asleep at the wheel" isn't exactly provable and probably the easiest way to visit death upon random people- but at least we have airbags for that.

One thing does stick out to me, though: most mass killers of this type explicitly say that what they're about to do is wrong, something that's unusual among normal types of criminality (hero of one's own story and all that).

"The Unbearable Whiteness of Non-Violence: an exploration into the racist origins of mass shootings"

The point they're trying to make seems to be that mass shootings make up a higher proportion of all shootings committed by white men compared to their proportion of shootings by other groups. Basically the Despite argument, but with the base being shooters rather than the whole population.

I suspect that a previous draft also included the proportion of non-mass shooters by race but it was removed for crimethink, leaving the current confused mess.

The article is about mass shootings, so apparently it is a typo. Whether the claim is correct about mass shootings, I don't know.

Going by the mass shooting stats provided in the article, though, 64/110 were white, which is the 58% cited. So they seem to be saying that, as whites comprise 60% of the population and despite committing 58% of the mass shootings, they still manage to in some sense end up overrepresented among mass shooters. I just can't figure out the sense.

Maybe some correction that excludes background gang-related violence and includes only random shootings of public places? Perhaps, but that doesn't seem to be where the article is going.

I think they mean 60% and 58% are much larger numbers than the next share probably in the 20% range?

I think it literally means there's far more white (mass) shooters than black or asian shooters. Their proportion is greater, as in, 58% is a greater number than 17% . It's just flatly negating the previous point about percentage of the general population, returning to the beginning, to the thesis of the article: there's a lot of white shooters. It's not very elegant.

Oh. Yeah, I guess that's what they're trying to get at.

I just can't figure out the sense.

Resulting casualties.

https://www.whas11.com/article/news/crime/new-years-day-shootout-breckenridge-lane-arrests-louisville-police/417-a57a3c0f-22d2-4de8-9586-5444e12ce00b

I don't think there is one. Maybe the idea is that the 58% of shootings attributed to whites "far outstrips" the percentage of total shootings attributed to members of other races? Alternatively, maybe there is some additional percentage of shootings that is not "white-only", but white-hispanic, or black-white mixed, or asian-white mixed, or something else, so the total percentage of shootings attributable to people who are at least partly white "far outstrips" other races?

I legitimately have no idea here, but that's my best shot.

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