Check the note at the bottom of that first graph. They're lying in that little space.
"America reached the grim number by the first week of March – record time, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, **excluding the shooter.**"
But at the bottom of the graph the note says that it *includes* the shooter.
Whats more likely, cops realized that doing their job would get them fired, so they stopped? Or they realized not doing their job wouldn't get them fired, so they stopped? For a piece dedicated to debunking lies, you pass along a doozy.
We have evidence of cops not doing their job before 2020, i don't think you need to search deep archives to find it. Granting cops humanity, if theres a new justification not to do the dangerous part of the job, some will use that justification because not doing the dangerous part of the job makes the job better for the job holder
"Science shows that media behavior creates mass shooter copy cats, increasing the net number of true spree killings by 30%."
Ergo, if we severely curtail mainstream media, we can reduce "mass shootings."
I'm only partially joking. I'm a First Amendment absolutist and someone who believes that antitrust law should be used against social media monopolies to curtail their censorship.
But, if we're going to say the First Amendment doesn't apply to these private companies, then perhaps censorship should be redirected where it might have a more positive effect. Quash coverage of violence. Sick Twitter, Facebook and Youtube on the CNNs of the world and let's see what happens.
Well, to be clear, I'm not suggesting that "we" do anything. I'm suggesting the social media monopolies, who all censored COVID dissent in lockstep with one another and (as we now know) in partnership with a host of government agencies, should censor CNN, et al.
Would this limit clicks and thus profits? Sure.
But, COVID dissent was profitable. Folks like Alex Berenson and many others built careers out of it. They were "profitable" for the social media monopolies, but they were still censored.
Likewise, Parler was the most downloaded App when Amazon, Apple, Google and Cloudflare coordinated to shut them down.
Same thing here. If Twitter, YouTube/Google and Facebook wanted to limit this coverage, they could easily do so.
Aaahhh, I hadn't thought about that angle. If Facebook decided to simply ban anyone talking about a mass shooting on the platform then that might get us some of that 30% juice.
I'm not suggesting it would ever happen. All I'm suggesting is that they (social media titans) are perfectly capable of tamping down an issue when it suits their interest.
Regardless, I always appreciate your commentary, particularly when it sheds light on issues that cut against the popular narrative.
Mar 8, 2023·edited Mar 8, 2023Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery
The media voluntarily altering their coverage of mass casualty events is about as likely as politicians willingly voting for term limits and judicial reform. They're just in too deep and benefit too much from the current structure.
We just need to change how mass media covers the events. However it would have to be voluntary and across the entire spread, and we know that someone will be too greedy to go along with it.
Someone with enough eyeballs pointing out how these companies are actively profiting off spree shootings *and* actively encouraging them would be a good step. They respond to wokery shaming, presumably *actually* shameful things might get their attention if enough people made a ruckus. NewsMax?
Yeah, I regularly spar with liberals on Minnpost.com about crime in Minneapolis. I lived in Minneapolis for 20 years, until last summer. Violent crime exploded in 2020 and has gotten worse every year since. Minnpost readers mostly think crime in cities is up because of Republican gun policy. There is not one single republican elected official in Minneapolis. Police numbers last I heard were down about 30%. They recently made it even harder to hire officers, when almost no one is applying. North Minneapolis, which is mostly black, is the brunt of much of the increase in violent crime. The people there generally speaking want more police presence. White liberals are the vast majority in the city, telling black folk in North they need more social workers. Meanwhile a diversity hire to diversify city gov got hired @ $344,000/yr, recently.
I love Minneapolis, but I was not about to stick around waiting for the bottom of liberal delusion.
Home based firearms are the first line of defense against home invasions.
Criminals do not obey laws. Criminals are also opportunists. Therefore, when criminals bent on a home invasion or bodily assault knows the law abiding citizen is unarmed, they become easy prey.
Liberals are either dumb or they are Marxists bent on disarming the people protected by the constitution and then nullifying the constitution. That makes this dispute a political and spiritual dispute.
It is spiritual because Marxists always seek to replace our freedom to worship God with an obligation to worship demon possessed human leaders posing as gods. This all make Satan happy because he wants human worship.
There is an informative nook, "How to Lie With Statistics," that everyone should read. It is available on Amazon and sells for $8.99. Well worth the money. It will open your eyes.
Ok, then all is well? Do you have ideas or examples that would lessen gun violence in the US? Or is it not really a problem? If it’s true that gun deaths are #1 mortality for children in US, should we address this? I realize that the bigger problem is hand guns, including in child mortality data. More police? I’d go for that if they’d invest in more training. I’d love to see an up to date compilation of measures on the table, short and long term, suggested to address the problem (s).
We have to start by realizing that our current murder rate is *slightly below average* for the USA since 1910.
Next we have to realize that "gun deaths are #1 mortality for children in US" is a measure of *teen suicide*, and that gun control measures don't impact suicide. Any time anybody uses the phrase "gun deaths" they're hiding suicides in the statistic to push gun control measures that don't impact suicide. If you want to fix teen suicide, you don't fix it with gun control, you fix it with anti-suicide measures. That they're hiding this prevents us from even beginning to identify the problem.
"More Police" is a fix specifically targeted at homicide, not suicide, and traditionally suicides make up around 2/3rds of gun deaths, so "more police" may or may not work depending on what problem you're trying to fix. A disproportionately large number of murders (and "mass shootings" as defined) happen in a very scant few zip codes, so sending the national guard into those specific areas to bomb them with police presence would probably have the most direct homicide rate impact short term.
If we want to solve the homicide problem long term, though, we have to address the cultural and socioeconomic condition of the black community, which we go into in depth here:
It was better explained later in the thread but yeah.
It's not teen suicides driving the 'child mortality' numbers. It's inner city gang violence with gang members between the ages of 14 and 18, which nobody in power in these cities cares about unless it can be used sans-context to bleat about 'gun violence is killing our children' and not so subtly implying that good babies are being murdered in school when it couldn't be further from the truth.
I don't have the reference (may have been a HWFO article) but I'm pretty sure I remember reading that this 'leading cause of death for children' is also strongly influenced by:
1. Defining children as anyone under 18 (where most people don't consider teenagers children). Just as in this article they gun media defines terms that have some abiguity in order to get the result and headline that will get them the most views.
Further I'd really like to see how they arrive at this 'leading cause of death' - If i Just look up the causes of death for all children on the CDC website I see the top three are Accidents, Self Harm, and Homicide. I'm guessing guns play a strong role in #2 and #3, but with the total given it must be 'guns' by a very slim margin over 'accidents'.
There are several reports recently. And yes, it includes teenagers up to 18, as it should...given rates of teen suicide. Anyhow, here is one with an excerpt with some detail following:
“Not all firearm deaths are a result of violent attacks. In the U.S., in 2020, 30% of child deaths by firearm were ruled suicides, and 5% were unintentional or undetermined accidents. However, the most common type of child firearm death is due to violent assault (65% of all child firearm deaths are assault).
The spike in 2020 child firearm deaths in the U.S. was primarily driven by an increase in gun assault deaths. The child firearm assault mortality rate reached a high in 2020 with a rate of 3.6 per 100,000, a 39% increase from the year before. The firearm suicide mortality rate among children in the U.S. increased 13% from 2019 to 2020, 31% since 2000, and 89% since the recent low in 2010.”
Ooo interesting. That is not at all what I expected, and is basically an inversion of the adult numbers. Thank you so much for this link.
So first off that link includes everyone up through age 19. In that cohort you've got 2832 assault deaths and 1307 suicide deaths. Pull this up and look at figure 22b:
So again it goes back to what I was saying earlier, we have to address culture and socioeconomics within the black community. The link you put forward compares the USA to a bunch of countries that do not have any communities within them which equate in any way to the US black community.
Further if you hone in on 'gun homicide' which is by far the largest number at 3042 - the majority (2611) are in the 15-19 year age range, which defining as 'children' I still maintain is a bit misleading.
Slicing this another way - by location it becomes very clear that if we want to address these deaths in a way that has any sort of impact we have to do so by addressing the cause of violance in Cities. Only about 250 of those 3000 deaths were outside of cities. Given that most of the largest cities in the US already have the strongest gun controls, I believe it is pretty logical that 'more' of the same isn't going to have the desired effect.
I'm not suggesting we can't (or shouldn't) do anything to try and save 4,000 young adults, but it is clear that the media is trying to paint a picture that supports their belief that 'guns = bad', and that we shouldn't believe when the evidence is contrary that doing 'more' of the same thing we've been doing for years is going to solv the issue.
I disagree that "children" should include humans up to the age of 18. That's a very recent evolution in human societal perspective. *Twelve* is still definably "a child". I, personally, was 6' 5" tall and 225 lbs, with a full beard, at 15.
Sixteen year olds carrying guns and shooting at each other are "emancipated adults" by their own recognizance. It does not matter that they can't vote, buy cigarettes, or buy beer.
I disagree. My sons and now grandson were all over 6’2” by 15. So? They were still airheads in so many ways, even though they didn’t believe that. There may be plenty kids out on the streets, they shouldn’t be. And the fact that they are and mostly live in the cities may call for specific measures to address the problems, but in no way does it lessen the tragedy when they are gunned down or gun someone down, or commit suicide.
"Children" is a loaded word. You want to specify "Humans under the age of 20" then do *that*, because when you say "children" people think of elementary school kids.
I'm not saying it isn't a tragedy when a 16 year old gets capped, I'm saying that using that event to bemoan the "gun deaths of children" is obscuring the actual problem.
If you don't accurately define a problem then you *cannot* solve it. Nobody on the "we love guns" side of the argument actually want children to die either. So if we're going to solve the problem without just causing more of them, we have to actually accurately define the thing we're attempting to eradicate.
> A disproportionately large number of murders (and "mass shootings" as defined) happen in a very scant few zip codes, so sending the national guard into those specific areas to bomb them with police presence would probably have the most direct homicide rate impact short term.
"But would be **absolutely** politically untenable, and would, in fact, possibly cause more deaths because the ACAB crowd would flood the place and act stupid and get shot. Also, the woke crowd would never allow the NG to invade Compton, et al."
(Obviously not an actual quote, or an attempt to put words in BJ's mouth, but still, about how one might realistically end that paragraph.
Got back from EU, people were cracking remarks often about the guns & "mass shootings" in the states. The amount of Trumptards in the EU was also a surprise, he hooked, lined and sinkered a whole lot of them. Many EU citizens think people in the states are "free" and have relative "freedom". Tried to explain that people in the states are just indoctrinated fat fucking matrix people, for the last 2 to 4 generations. The US idea, gov, and people are just a big lie like seemingly everything, everywhere.
People experiencing most freedom on the N. American continent are some of the people that live in Mexico, perhaps some in far north Alaska / Canada bush.
Hey BJ, I'd love to have you on my radio show to discuss several of the great articles you've written. Is there a media contact that I can get from you? Or you can reach me at my website t.ly/HYsi
Check the note at the bottom of that first graph. They're lying in that little space.
"America reached the grim number by the first week of March – record time, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, **excluding the shooter.**"
But at the bottom of the graph the note says that it *includes* the shooter.
Do we really believe that any of those are unwittingly told? I don't.
The left are relentless liars, unapologetic and unaccountable.
Whats more likely, cops realized that doing their job would get them fired, so they stopped? Or they realized not doing their job wouldn't get them fired, so they stopped? For a piece dedicated to debunking lies, you pass along a doozy.
That's a good question and I don't have any definitive answers to be honest. I'm only relaying what I heard through the grapevine.
It stands to reason, though, that if not doing their job wouldn't get them fired then we would have seen the evidence of that prior to 2020.
We have evidence of cops not doing their job before 2020, i don't think you need to search deep archives to find it. Granting cops humanity, if theres a new justification not to do the dangerous part of the job, some will use that justification because not doing the dangerous part of the job makes the job better for the job holder
Why not both? If cops are already short-staffed (we're roughly 20% below the median per country, per Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers), the remainder have proportionally more leverage.
"Science shows that media behavior creates mass shooter copy cats, increasing the net number of true spree killings by 30%."
Ergo, if we severely curtail mainstream media, we can reduce "mass shootings."
I'm only partially joking. I'm a First Amendment absolutist and someone who believes that antitrust law should be used against social media monopolies to curtail their censorship.
But, if we're going to say the First Amendment doesn't apply to these private companies, then perhaps censorship should be redirected where it might have a more positive effect. Quash coverage of violence. Sick Twitter, Facebook and Youtube on the CNNs of the world and let's see what happens.
I don't think we *can* curtail media in this regard though, because of the Prisoners Dilemma I pointed out in the other article.
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/i-just-made-100-off-some-dead-kids
Well, to be clear, I'm not suggesting that "we" do anything. I'm suggesting the social media monopolies, who all censored COVID dissent in lockstep with one another and (as we now know) in partnership with a host of government agencies, should censor CNN, et al.
Would this limit clicks and thus profits? Sure.
But, COVID dissent was profitable. Folks like Alex Berenson and many others built careers out of it. They were "profitable" for the social media monopolies, but they were still censored.
Likewise, Parler was the most downloaded App when Amazon, Apple, Google and Cloudflare coordinated to shut them down.
Same thing here. If Twitter, YouTube/Google and Facebook wanted to limit this coverage, they could easily do so.
Aaahhh, I hadn't thought about that angle. If Facebook decided to simply ban anyone talking about a mass shooting on the platform then that might get us some of that 30% juice.
That's a really interesting idea.
I'm not suggesting it would ever happen. All I'm suggesting is that they (social media titans) are perfectly capable of tamping down an issue when it suits their interest.
Regardless, I always appreciate your commentary, particularly when it sheds light on issues that cut against the popular narrative.
The media voluntarily altering their coverage of mass casualty events is about as likely as politicians willingly voting for term limits and judicial reform. They're just in too deep and benefit too much from the current structure.
We just need to change how mass media covers the events. However it would have to be voluntary and across the entire spread, and we know that someone will be too greedy to go along with it.
http://nonadventures.com/comics/2015-06-20-412.png
Someone with enough eyeballs pointing out how these companies are actively profiting off spree shootings *and* actively encouraging them would be a good step. They respond to wokery shaming, presumably *actually* shameful things might get their attention if enough people made a ruckus. NewsMax?
That would require them to be capable of feeling shame.
This post is *Chef's Kiss*
Excellent piece. Thank you.
Yeah, I regularly spar with liberals on Minnpost.com about crime in Minneapolis. I lived in Minneapolis for 20 years, until last summer. Violent crime exploded in 2020 and has gotten worse every year since. Minnpost readers mostly think crime in cities is up because of Republican gun policy. There is not one single republican elected official in Minneapolis. Police numbers last I heard were down about 30%. They recently made it even harder to hire officers, when almost no one is applying. North Minneapolis, which is mostly black, is the brunt of much of the increase in violent crime. The people there generally speaking want more police presence. White liberals are the vast majority in the city, telling black folk in North they need more social workers. Meanwhile a diversity hire to diversify city gov got hired @ $344,000/yr, recently.
I love Minneapolis, but I was not about to stick around waiting for the bottom of liberal delusion.
Home based firearms are the first line of defense against home invasions.
Criminals do not obey laws. Criminals are also opportunists. Therefore, when criminals bent on a home invasion or bodily assault knows the law abiding citizen is unarmed, they become easy prey.
Liberals are either dumb or they are Marxists bent on disarming the people protected by the constitution and then nullifying the constitution. That makes this dispute a political and spiritual dispute.
It is spiritual because Marxists always seek to replace our freedom to worship God with an obligation to worship demon possessed human leaders posing as gods. This all make Satan happy because he wants human worship.
There is an informative nook, "How to Lie With Statistics," that everyone should read. It is available on Amazon and sells for $8.99. Well worth the money. It will open your eyes.
Ok, then all is well? Do you have ideas or examples that would lessen gun violence in the US? Or is it not really a problem? If it’s true that gun deaths are #1 mortality for children in US, should we address this? I realize that the bigger problem is hand guns, including in child mortality data. More police? I’d go for that if they’d invest in more training. I’d love to see an up to date compilation of measures on the table, short and long term, suggested to address the problem (s).
We have to start by realizing that our current murder rate is *slightly below average* for the USA since 1910.
Next we have to realize that "gun deaths are #1 mortality for children in US" is a measure of *teen suicide*, and that gun control measures don't impact suicide. Any time anybody uses the phrase "gun deaths" they're hiding suicides in the statistic to push gun control measures that don't impact suicide. If you want to fix teen suicide, you don't fix it with gun control, you fix it with anti-suicide measures. That they're hiding this prevents us from even beginning to identify the problem.
"More Police" is a fix specifically targeted at homicide, not suicide, and traditionally suicides make up around 2/3rds of gun deaths, so "more police" may or may not work depending on what problem you're trying to fix. A disproportionately large number of murders (and "mass shootings" as defined) happen in a very scant few zip codes, so sending the national guard into those specific areas to bomb them with police presence would probably have the most direct homicide rate impact short term.
If we want to solve the homicide problem long term, though, we have to address the cultural and socioeconomic condition of the black community, which we go into in depth here:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-gun-solution
Thanks for this…food for thought!
It was better explained later in the thread but yeah.
It's not teen suicides driving the 'child mortality' numbers. It's inner city gang violence with gang members between the ages of 14 and 18, which nobody in power in these cities cares about unless it can be used sans-context to bleat about 'gun violence is killing our children' and not so subtly implying that good babies are being murdered in school when it couldn't be further from the truth.
I don't have the reference (may have been a HWFO article) but I'm pretty sure I remember reading that this 'leading cause of death for children' is also strongly influenced by:
1. Defining children as anyone under 18 (where most people don't consider teenagers children). Just as in this article they gun media defines terms that have some abiguity in order to get the result and headline that will get them the most views.
Further I'd really like to see how they arrive at this 'leading cause of death' - If i Just look up the causes of death for all children on the CDC website I see the top three are Accidents, Self Harm, and Homicide. I'm guessing guns play a strong role in #2 and #3, but with the total given it must be 'guns' by a very slim margin over 'accidents'.
There are several reports recently. And yes, it includes teenagers up to 18, as it should...given rates of teen suicide. Anyhow, here is one with an excerpt with some detail following:
https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/
“Not all firearm deaths are a result of violent attacks. In the U.S., in 2020, 30% of child deaths by firearm were ruled suicides, and 5% were unintentional or undetermined accidents. However, the most common type of child firearm death is due to violent assault (65% of all child firearm deaths are assault).
The spike in 2020 child firearm deaths in the U.S. was primarily driven by an increase in gun assault deaths. The child firearm assault mortality rate reached a high in 2020 with a rate of 3.6 per 100,000, a 39% increase from the year before. The firearm suicide mortality rate among children in the U.S. increased 13% from 2019 to 2020, 31% since 2000, and 89% since the recent low in 2010.”
Ooo interesting. That is not at all what I expected, and is basically an inversion of the adult numbers. Thank you so much for this link.
So first off that link includes everyone up through age 19. In that cohort you've got 2832 assault deaths and 1307 suicide deaths. Pull this up and look at figure 22b:
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
There's your assault deaths. Guaranteed.
So again it goes back to what I was saying earlier, we have to address culture and socioeconomics within the black community. The link you put forward compares the USA to a bunch of countries that do not have any communities within them which equate in any way to the US black community.
breaking down the numbers by age or race gets even more interesting.
Gun deaths under 13 years are essentially a rounding error.
This is the data I see for 2021 (most recent available in wonder):
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D158;jsessionid=264E07BD36AD49F34F5825E571DD
If you look 'all gun deaths' only just barely beats 'auto accidents' as the leading cause. All gun deaths are 4,628. Auto Accidents are 4,433.
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D158;jsessionid=1AFCC01BFDDAA7A788998756BA23
Further if you hone in on 'gun homicide' which is by far the largest number at 3042 - the majority (2611) are in the 15-19 year age range, which defining as 'children' I still maintain is a bit misleading.
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D158;jsessionid=1AFCC01BFDDAA7A788998756BA23
Slicing this another way - by location it becomes very clear that if we want to address these deaths in a way that has any sort of impact we have to do so by addressing the cause of violance in Cities. Only about 250 of those 3000 deaths were outside of cities. Given that most of the largest cities in the US already have the strongest gun controls, I believe it is pretty logical that 'more' of the same isn't going to have the desired effect.
I'm not suggesting we can't (or shouldn't) do anything to try and save 4,000 young adults, but it is clear that the media is trying to paint a picture that supports their belief that 'guns = bad', and that we shouldn't believe when the evidence is contrary that doing 'more' of the same thing we've been doing for years is going to solv the issue.
I disagree that "children" should include humans up to the age of 18. That's a very recent evolution in human societal perspective. *Twelve* is still definably "a child". I, personally, was 6' 5" tall and 225 lbs, with a full beard, at 15.
Sixteen year olds carrying guns and shooting at each other are "emancipated adults" by their own recognizance. It does not matter that they can't vote, buy cigarettes, or buy beer.
I disagree. My sons and now grandson were all over 6’2” by 15. So? They were still airheads in so many ways, even though they didn’t believe that. There may be plenty kids out on the streets, they shouldn’t be. And the fact that they are and mostly live in the cities may call for specific measures to address the problems, but in no way does it lessen the tragedy when they are gunned down or gun someone down, or commit suicide.
But they aren't *children*.
"Children" is a loaded word. You want to specify "Humans under the age of 20" then do *that*, because when you say "children" people think of elementary school kids.
I'm not saying it isn't a tragedy when a 16 year old gets capped, I'm saying that using that event to bemoan the "gun deaths of children" is obscuring the actual problem.
If you don't accurately define a problem then you *cannot* solve it. Nobody on the "we love guns" side of the argument actually want children to die either. So if we're going to solve the problem without just causing more of them, we have to actually accurately define the thing we're attempting to eradicate.
> A disproportionately large number of murders (and "mass shootings" as defined) happen in a very scant few zip codes, so sending the national guard into those specific areas to bomb them with police presence would probably have the most direct homicide rate impact short term.
"But would be **absolutely** politically untenable, and would, in fact, possibly cause more deaths because the ACAB crowd would flood the place and act stupid and get shot. Also, the woke crowd would never allow the NG to invade Compton, et al."
(Obviously not an actual quote, or an attempt to put words in BJ's mouth, but still, about how one might realistically end that paragraph.
Have you seen https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-gun-solution
I haven’t! Thanks…will check it out.
Got back from EU, people were cracking remarks often about the guns & "mass shootings" in the states. The amount of Trumptards in the EU was also a surprise, he hooked, lined and sinkered a whole lot of them. Many EU citizens think people in the states are "free" and have relative "freedom". Tried to explain that people in the states are just indoctrinated fat fucking matrix people, for the last 2 to 4 generations. The US idea, gov, and people are just a big lie like seemingly everything, everywhere.
People experiencing most freedom on the N. American continent are some of the people that live in Mexico, perhaps some in far north Alaska / Canada bush.
Love your analyses on this topic . . . because there is nothing but lies across the whole spectrum of media.
Excellent work. Keep it up!
Hey BJ, I'd love to have you on my radio show to discuss several of the great articles you've written. Is there a media contact that I can get from you? Or you can reach me at my website t.ly/HYsi
I filled out your contact form. You can also DM me on Twitter.