Sure, it seems like a lot of mass shootings are committed by angry white men... except for the mass shootings committed by Christopher Dorner (black ex-police officer) and Seung-Hui Cho (the asian Virginia Tech shooter), of course. But never mind when the facts get in the way of racism and sexism.
The author is plainly missing the point:
This is the wrong question. Mass murderers are an extreme symptom of a
common, everyday problem. Yes, the risk of being terrorized by a lone,
mass murderer is slim. But everyday people live with fear and terror in their homes. There is, sadly, nothing unique about men with guns in this country killing people every day.
In the case of mass murders, the extreme symptom of this disaster, the
question is, "Why did another angry, young, white man act this way and
kill these people?"
The vast majority of mass killers become mass killers not because they are white, or male, or angry. They become mass killers because they are crazy. Not just a feel-good way to "otherize" the shooter; no, I mean, literally crazy, often with detectable physical symptoms.
To be sure, that's not true of every day violent crime, but as far as mass shootings in otherwise low-crime areas it's pretty consistent.
So why is it such big news when it happens? It's big news because it's unusual, and it's unusual because in most of America you pretty much have to be crazy to commit murder. There are places in America where the crime rates are much higher than the average, where murder is not just the realm of the criminally insane, and when a mass shooting happens there, it's not considered news.
This entry was published Sat Jul 27 20:06:21 CDT 2013 by TriggerFinger
and last updated 2013-07-27 20:06:21.0.
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