The only difference between the conservative Burundi government and the conservative American government is what they think they can get away.

Probably lots of reasons, all of them fucked.

The main reason is probably money. There’s no better way to turn billions of dollars of public funds into billions of dollars of private profits.

It also reassures neoliberals that for all his rhetoric about forgiving loans and improving healthcare access, he’s still willing to kill children if there’s money in it.

It’s also a chance to show off the unstoppable force of American arms against people who are considered completely expendable to America.

Whatever helps you self soothe.

They’re a lost cause too because before I called you a fuckwit, I pointed out that you were only interested in being misleading in your favor, not actually stopping people from being mislead.

You took “ad hominem” as an easy out and as an added bonus, you were misleading about what ad hominem means.

I’m sure that reply was fascinating but you’ve already revealed that you’re full of shit, so I’m not going to read it.

This isn’t high school debate class. Ad hominem means you’re not inherently wrong just because you’re a fuckwit. You can still be wrong and you can still be a fuckwit.

That doesn’t make a murder/suicide a “mass shooting”. I’m sorry apporoaching this rationally has you so upset

Thanks, I love this reply. It’s only two sentences, but its so fantastically revealing.

The first sentences calls your very own example a “murder/suicide”, a term which is unquestionably more misleading than “mass shooting”. The “murder” isn’t even plural, despite there being 4 of them.

If you gathered up a million people, told half of them it was a murder/suicide and half of them it was a mass shooting, then asked them to guess the number of people killed, the latter would easily be closer to the truth.

The second sentence just makes it clear you’re a fuckstain.

My agenda is “words mean things”

If that was actually your agenda, this wouldn’t be your position. You want to lower the statistic using semantics and as an added bonus, take away the vocabulary needed to discuss a huge percentage of gun violence.

The difference is, in scenario #1, nobody went to the party intending to shoot anyone. You can’t say the same for scenario #2.

5 people were shot. Intentional vs accidental, premeditated vs impulse, none of that changes the fact that 5 people were shot and the event was a mass shooting.

Even in your own example that you made as contrived as you needed, 3 innocent people were still shot and swept under the rug.

The organizations you’re rallying against are completely open about their definitions, making them far more honest than you’re being.

I’m sorry if that hurts your guns feelings.

It matters because the Gun Violence Archive and the uncritical mass media are inflating the statistic to make people scared so they can push an agenda

Bullshit. You’re attacking it because it’s counter to your agenda.

Republicans, right-wing media, the gun lobby and the pro-gun community routinely fearmonger as a way to boost their own profits and power.

Not only do you not care when they do it, you’ve enthusiastically put yourself and your own family in more danger because of it.

You’re hopelessly compromised and your thoughts about how gun violence statistics are about as trustworthy as a cops views on police brutality statistics.

You have no idea how badly you’ve outed yourself as living in a little bubble where you think it will never happen to you, so you don’t care.

Because you’ll never be in a relationship with a domestic abuser that executes a house full of people will you? You’re the gun owning male, so you get to decide who around you lives or dies.

4 innocent people were killed – a number that is much more difficult to achieve without a gun – but you don’t want them counted because they knew the gun owner.

You’ve let the gun lobby turn you into a fucking sociopath.

While it’s not quite “throw a dart board at a map”, it’s pretty close.

I didn’t claim the number could be 0, I claimed the acceptable number is 0.

Following every one of those shootings you linked, people demanded to know how it happened. Why did they have a gun? Was there warning signs that were missed? Was anybody negligent? How can we stop it from happening again and limiting the damage if it does?

That is the reaction of a society that finds any number above 0 unacceptable. They treat mass shootings as a failure of the system.

Meanwhile in America, they don’t bother to ask those questions.

They had a gun because it’s trivial to get your hands on semi-automatic rifles and handguns, even if you can’t pass a background check, because there are millions of unsecured weapons and no universal background checks.

The police and politicians are deliberately negligent, staunchly opposing red flag laws despite most mass shooters having multiple red flags.

No effort is made to prevent it happening again, because the murder of 20 children is shrugged off as some kind of inevitability, no more preventable than an earthquake or tornado – much the same as you’re doing right now.

Limiting the damage isn’t just staunchly opposed by the pro-gun community, many of them fully support making more dangerous weaponry available.

These are not the actions of people who find all gun violence unacceptable and the only reason the Ulvade police are criticized and the Newtown police are given a pass is because the Ulvade police didn’t bother to pretend they cared.

The “normal” number of people getting shot is 0.

They want you to sweep gun violence under the rug. You don’t need to ask why, it’s because gun sales bring in millions in profits for the gun-lobby and the Republicans they purchase.

“Normal shootings”

So your objection is that they call a mass shooting a mass shooting? What magic number would you like them to use?

One of the most common responses to “we need to fix America’s gun laws to stop arming domestic terrorists” is “they’d just use bombs or cars or something else”.

Well here is a bomb. It did less damage than a child with an AR-15.

You’re already projecting compassion he doesn’t have by assuming he’d wait for them to turn 18. If he thought it would work, he’d march 5 year olds in bomb vests over the border then have Elon announce that Ukraine kills children.

He’s just using abusive partner/parent tricks to manipulate people. I doubt they have any real basis in logic.

So in other words, it would have been more expensive.

If there was no difference in labour costs or materials, why weren’t they already being produced domestically?