Mass murders a white-male, not mental-health, issue.

[BobFromBucks]

I thought this was an April's Fool joke but these two "progressives" are serious. White men are mass murders and white politicians are complicit in protecting them...or something like that.

The good old Philly Inquirer/Daily News published this tripe. They also published a story about the director of Cease Fire PA along with more school shooting references. It is obvious the media will talk Sandy Hook every day from now until a vote in Congress. We must continue to fight every day.

CHARLOTTE AND HARRIET CHILDRESS, For the Daily News
POSTED: Monday, April 1, 2013, 3:01 AM

IMAGINE if African-American men and boys were committing mass shootings month after month, year after year. Articles and interviews would flood the media, and we'd have political debates demanding that African-Americans be "held accountable."

But when the criminals and leaders are white men, race and gender become the elephant in the room.

Nearly all the mass shootings in this country in recent years have been committed by white men and boys.

Unlike other groups, white men are not used to being singled out. So we expect that many of them will protest that it is unfair if we talk about them. But our nation must correctly define their contribution to our problem of gun violence if it is to be solved.

When white men try to divert attention from gun control by talking about mental-health issues, many people buy into the idea that the United States has a national mental-health problem, or flawed systems with which to address those problems, and they think that is what produces mass shootings.

But women and girls with mental-health issues are not picking up semiautomatic weapons and shooting schoolchildren. Immigrants with mental-health issues are not committing mass shootings in malls and movie theaters. Latinos with mental-health issues are not continually killing groups of strangers.

Each of us is programmed from childhood to believe that the top group of our hierarchies - and in the U.S. culture, that's white men - represents everyone, so it can feel awkward, even ridiculous, when we try to call attention to those people as a distinct group and hold them accountable.

You can read the rest here. http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion...th__issue.html

[GunLawyer001]

The vast majority of multiple-fatality car accidents are caused by people who attended public schools.

Most of the prison inmates are right-handed.

So?

A factoid becomes significant when a group that comprises X percent of the population routinely commits 10X percentage of crime, or a similarly disproportionate percentage of all computer advancement (look at pictures of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak).

Men commit a lot more than half of all violent crimes, although we are only half the population. That says something about men and violence. I accept that.

If they want to look at race and gender, black men are around 6-7% of the population. If we saw that they committed over half of all American murders, that would be worth commenting on, based on the race-based logic of the article in the OP.
In fact, they do:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...048197464.html

The total number of murders in the USA is a statistically significant group, on the order of 15,000 per year. When your subject group is tiny, like "people who commit large numbers of murders in a very short time", statistics are meaningless, between 0 and 5 per year. Sylvia Seegrist shot up a mall, she was a white woman. John Allen Muhammad shot 13 people in the DC Beltway area, he was a black guy, with a black conspirator. The Columbine shooters were white teens, a white girl bought them a gun. The Aurora and Sandy Hook shooters were 20-something white guys, one of them took the guns from his white mother. So what? There aren't enough of these shooters to be statistically significant.

Most of us are familiar with the stories of most of the group shootings, we know about the Texas Tower shooting by Charles Whitman in 1966, we remember Sylvia Seegrist from 1985, we obsess over the murders by Charles Manson's groupies in 1969, we know about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, 84 years ago. There are so few group murders that we remember them. The ordinary day-to-day muggings and rapes and kidnappings and home invasions that actually impact society, we have to dig to get even rough numbers.

Depending on how you count, we could argue that 10% of all American political assassins are ethnic Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship. Because Sirhan Sirhan was one of very few political assassins. Small groups skew everything.

[streaker69]

Depending on how you count, we could argue that 10% of all American political assassins are ethnic Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship. Because Sirhan Sirhan was one of very few political assassins. Small groups skew everything.

So what you're saying is that we need more political assassinations so that we can get accurate statistics.

[GunLawyer001]

So what you're saying is that we need more political assassinations so that we can get accurate statistics.

Have you ever wondered how many black SUV's could fit on your street?

[RyanMosley]

Have you ever wondered how many black SUV's could fit on your street?

I was thinking something similar, but you said it much better than I could have.

[gummy jones]

if we add up all the murders by black males we would have to label it genocide (of their own people more often than not).

[stainless]

Have you ever wondered how many black SUV's could fit on your street?

I do believe he is about to find out...

Perhaps we can start an over/under on this.

[Calzonewdippingsauce]

I guess they forgot about the beltway snipers..

[Grey Bearded One]

I guess they forgot about the beltway snipers..

That was different and if you don't know how it was different then I can't explain it to you.

[streaker69]

Have you ever wondered how many black SUV's could fit on your street?

Hey, I was just interpreting what you said from your legalese so that everyone else could understand it. So, how many black SUV's fit on your street?