
Mass Shootings, Political Correctness, and Magical Thinking (2012) - diego
https://diegobasch.com/mass-shootings-political-correctness-and-magical-thinking
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SteveLAnderson
Really? On this day, when people have died, senselessly, you want to link to
an article that says, basically, "It's not a big deal. Even if it were a big
deal, there's nothing we can do about it. Even if we try to do something,
we'll probably just make it worse".

Mass shootings are a big deal, not just because of the direct cost, but
because of the secondary cost - everyday fear for millions.

We can pass meaningful, sensible legislation, that could make a difference
that cannot make things worse. For example, we could allow the government to
actually study gun violence. That would at least allow us to postulate some
answers, and it'd be cheap, with no negative side effects. There's a lot of
other things we can do that wouldn't make things worse, too.

Sorry, defeatism and accusations of "magical thinking" are a ridiculous
response to a mass shooting.

~~~
diego
That is part of my point: I'm afraid of accidents, heart disease and cancer
more than anything. I'm somewhat afraid of gun violence. Given that I live in
a relatively safe neighborhood, I'm more afraid of swimming pools. I'm not
afraid of mass shootings like I'm not afraid of shark attacks because they are
statistically rare.

Gun crime and gun suicides are problems addressable with public policy. Mass
shootings are too statistically infrequent to be addressed without potentially
worse side effects. As for the "everyday fear for millions" is that really an
issue? If you're disproportionally afraid of rare things, the solution is
either education, psychotherapy or both.

~~~
SteveLAnderson
"Mass shootings are too statistically infrequent to be addressed without
potentially worse side effects" \- really? How do you know that? It's a
position like the people who no longer can deny climate change have; they
shifted from "it's not happening" to "we can't do anything about it". Sorry, I
don't accept defeatism as the starting point. By using the word "potentially",
you signaled you don't really buy that argument, either.

Yes, everyday fear for millions is really an issue. Who asks that kind of
question? People are afraid. Think about every person who has a family member
in an Oregon college; think how they felt when they heard, "A mass shooting at
an Oregon college has led to 10 people's deaths".

The minimizing the impact, the "let's focus on heart disease not guns" are
ridiculous deflections, but hey, if you want to go down that path, lets do it.
The President suggested we compare gun violence to terrorism in his address on
this topic today.

[http://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/9437187/obama-guns-terrorism-
de...](http://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/9437187/obama-guns-terrorism-deaths)

In the US, there have been over 10k deaths, per year, by gun violence every
year since 2001. In that same amount of time, 2.6k deaths were caused by
terrorism.

So, let's stop fighting terrorism and start taking care of gun violence. It's
much scarier than terrorism, right? I mean, terrorism is much, much rarer than
gun violence. Why are people scared of it? If they are,"the solution is either
education, psychotherapy or both".

Even though they are rare, we don't ignore shark attacks. We try to prevent
them. We study why sharks sometimes attack people. Why don't we do that for
gun violence?

The right answer is to spend a little money on looking into why we have so
many mass shootings. We need to let the CDC study gun violence. Let's do some
research and see if there is something we can do.

It's time to stop shrugging our shoulders, like the article writer did, and
try something. Ignoring the problem isn't working.

