The Scourge of Mass Killings in US and the Word. The Wrap May 28, 2022 — Edition 20, Volume 2
21 people were murdered in Uvalde, Texas on May 24. 19 Children, students in 2 classrooms, and their 2 teachers. They were gunned down and killed by an 18-year-old armed man. It is not the largest mass killing in the United States. This is the evolving Wikipedia entry for the shooting at Robb Elementary School.
As we know too well there are many crises around the world. Wherever you are and whatever is most on your mind today we offer a reminder that we are one world and that the only way to solve our problems is together. We felt it especially crucial to acknowledge the fresh tragedy in Uvalde, Texas.
There are no words to adequately express the pain and horror of this event, and sadly, the many similar events that took place before yesterday. There’s no making sense of this and there is no adequate segue from here. But let’s all take a moment before we begin our session to reflect on all that has been lost, and all that needs to change. Ultimately, a better tomorrow is ours to create. It is our hope the tools and insights you gain today will help inform a better future for us all.
“There are no words”. What does that even mean as we say words and write them to record the history of the work and to predict the future, from the next seconds to the next 100 years and more? Here are some words:
Congress should vote immediately to take back every penny of unused Covid relief money,” he said. “Take it back from the states and use that money to quickly establish impenetrable security at every school all across our land.
NRA Conference Donald Trump May 27th, 2020
Thank you, Governor. To all the families, first responders, to the community of Newtown, clergy, guests — Scripture tells us: “…do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away…inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. We gather here in memory of twenty beautiful children and six remarkable adults. They lost their lives in a school that could have been any school; in a quiet town full of good and decent people that could be any town in America.
Sandy Hook Memorial , Barrack Obama, Dec 16, 2012
So, as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: ‘From my cold, dead hands!’[6]
— Charlton Heston, May 20, 2000
The National Shooting Sports Foundation — an industry trade group — estimates 18.5 million sales last year, its second-highest annual figure, behind 2020’s 21 million sales. Meanwhile, the FBI ran 38.9 million background checks in 2021 and a record-breaking 39.7 million in 2020, though the FBI’s data doesn’t correspond perfectly with purchases because not all background checks are associated with individual sales of new guns.
Can gun laws reduce gun violence? Here again are the facts: According to a 2016 study in Epidemiologic Reviews, wherever a country has imposed “new restrictions on gun purchasing and ownership,” these steps were “followed by a decline in gun deaths.” As Vox’s Zach Beauchamp reported, the study concluded that “gun violence declined” any time “countries pass a raft of gun laws at the same time.” Moreover, the gun safety packages these countries opted to fashion “all tended to share similar features”: bans on “powerful weapons,” such as “automatic rifles,” the implementation of background checks, and mandatory permits and licenses. As the study’s lead author told Vox, “Across countries, instead of seeing an increase in the homicide rate, we saw a reduction,” wherever gun restrictions of this variety were passed. — The New Republic, May 27, 2022
No other high-income country has suffered such a high death toll from gun violence. Every day, more than 110 Americans die at the end of a gun, including suicides and homicides, an average of 40,620 per year. Since 2009, there has been an annual average of 19 mass shootings, when defined as shootings in which at least four people are killed. The US gun homicide rate is as much as 26 times that of other high-income countries; its gun suicide rate is nearly 12 times higher. An Explainer, focused on Mass Shootings, Vox, May 2022
Sensemaking or sense-making is the process by which people give meaning to their collective experiences. It has been defined as “the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize what people are doing”. Wikipedia
These are a collection of stories related to the tragic events in Uvalde, Texas this week. We use this information squeezed through the lenses of media on the internet to seek to understand, and how to understand the unknowable. They draw no conclusions and serve to ask and frame new questions and approaches to understanding emerging phenomena, whether that be rapid, explosive events, or slow-moving emergence that manifest in cultural norms or accepted policy. There is judgement passed in the selection of and classification of the items, as Unbelievable, Awful, Bad, Ugly, and Uncertain. Hopefully, we can use them to learn, converse and unveil new and different ideas to help make the world a better place.
This is the Wrap. It was edited by @robtyrie with submissions from Swans from around the world as we think through the most important incident and change in the world today and in the future.
Warning, these articles depict and discuss human violence and political and ethical divisions.
The Unbelievable
The Awful
The Bad
The Ugly
The Uncertain
Some Better Things
The Tapestry
All the wonders of the zeitgeist get selected filtered, upvoted, downvoted, retweeted and deleted. This is a set of things that are echoed and amplified in the news cycle related to this week’s awful topic. This of the opposite of sweeping things under the rug.
News
The SWAT Team
Uvalde, a town of about 16,000, is spending $4.4 million, or 38%, of its $11.5 million budget for 2021–2022 on its 40-member police force.
A Documentary — July 18 — a Documentary — The Norwegian Mass Murder of 77 people at a student leadership camp
Sandy Hook, CT 2016
Coumbine 1999
Best Practices for Journalism from the Columbia School of Journalism
The Columbia School Of Journalism coded for compliance with the following best practices:
- Don’t publish the shooter’s name.
- Don’t link to or publish the name of the forum that the shooter posted on to promote the attacks.
- Don’t link to or publish the name of the shooter’s manifesto.
- Don’t describe or detail the shooter’s ideology.
- Don’t publish or name specific memes linked to the shooter’s ideology.
- Don’t refer to the shooter as a troll or his actions as trolling.
- Follow the AP guidelines for using the term “alt-right” (contain it within quotation marks or modify it with language such as “so-called” or “self-described”).
