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You know what bothers me.... regarding Newtown killings...

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OlafSicky said:
You don't have to look abroad for murders I bet there are more murders on a single weekend in Chicago than in Newton. But is anyone crying No does anyone care NO. The answer to this killing and many others is total gun ban. No handguns no rifles no knifes longer than 3"
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Maybe it's a presumption that it's drug dealers and gang members shooting up other drug dealers and gang members. I don't see a point of bans when there are already millions of guns in circulation, they not going to magically disappear and their owners are Not going to turn then in, OP, the reason is simple, these were 1st graders, executed one at a time with multiple bullets, I can only imagine that a lot of those funerals had to be closed-casket due to the nature of the shots, my god, going to your 5yr old's funeral a week before X-mas because some nutjob shot his/her face off, think about it on those terms..
 
unokitty said:
Other people are also making a similar point. For example:

Some black Connecticut residents question media attention on Newtown shootings

From the article:
“Where is the moral outrage and large media coverage when there are hundreds of murders of young black men in cities like Chicago, no one really cares about black kids as much as they care about white kids or white life,” said Gregory Webb, of New Haven. ...

Chicago has set a record with 516 murders this year, according that city’s police department website. The majority of those victims and known suspects of those homicides are identified as young black men, according the Chicago Tribune."

Uno
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How is a gangbanger getting murdered in some alley the same as a child being mowed down in school?
 
NFS4 said:
How is a gangbanger getting murdered in some alley the same as a child being mowed down in school?
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It's not. Murder is never a good thing but if a criminal who has engaged in hoodlumery his entire life gets blown away I don't feel bad about hot giving a shit.
 
Most of the victims were very young children. They didn't get a chance to grow up, and it happened in a location that should be been safest of all. THAT'S why there's such an outcry.
 
I find it super annoying when my facebook is plastered with "My heart goes out for the families", or "My thoughts and prayers are with those affected", or "Praying for the
families".

What is the point of posting that for all the see? The only reason I can see is that you just want people to know, as Cuda said, just how "emotional" and "caring" they are for their own selfish image. I guess it somehow makes them feel like they've done their part in all this by posting to the world that they are saying a prayer for the families. Gee, thanks for letting me know you are doing that. I can sleep better at night now. 🙄

If you're sad about it, then be sad about it w/o blurting to the whole world about it. If you're going to pray for them or keep them in your thoughts, then do that w/o announcing it to the world.

I was incredibly saddened when I heard about the story, but I wasn't thinking "oh man, perfect opportunity to post on FB to show that I'm a compassionate person by saying that my thoughts and prayers go out to them!" It's unfortunate that when I see those FB posts, majority of the people who post them I feel just want to get as many "likes" for their post.
 
Wait, there's really that many of you that think the media isn't reporting anything else?

What media do you guys watch/listen/read? I've seen a variety of other stories, including multiple ones about the "fiscal cliff" and a lot of other topics. Everyday (regardless of there being a big story like this) I see reports on shootings that happen all over the world so where you people are acting like that doesn't get ever get mentioned either I don't know.

bononos said:
Take for example the bodycount of Iraqi civilians. There is zero media coverage of the sort of carnage that was going on despite being ~100 times larger than the US troop casualties.
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What?!? There were almost daily reports about mosque bombings, military fuck-ups that killed civilians and all sorts of shit. There were a lot of people going off on the media for supposedly painting our military badly because they were reporting on so much of the stuff.

DrPizza said:
I completely understand what you're saying Cuda. People have no grasp of the actual reality around them, because generally, they're insulated from that reality. Why are they insulated from that reality? Because those other events aren't newsworthy. (Or as they said above, it makes money.)

Since Friday, more kids have died as a result of child abuse than were killed in Newton. More kids have died in car accidents than were killed in Newton. Most people don't even realize a single kid died from either of those causes, or any other cause, because it's not newsworthy.
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Bullshit. How many goddamn witchhunts have we had every time there's a few similar deaths from car wrecks?

There's a new thing being made a fuss about every 5 minutes and you know what most people's reaction is? WTF? What's the big deal, who cares, happens all over.

Seriously, are you guys just going based off of the headlines? JHumeC, you whine that the news doesn't cover shit but you guys don't seem to do anything but just follow the big stories. That's your own fucking faults as there is a shit-ton of other stuff being reported on almost constantly. You don't even have to dig much for it, and there's a ton of sites setup so that you can be exposed to a wide variety of news stories about just about anything and everything from wherever you want.

Do you really think that instead of reporting on this, they should have just randomly interjected a story about starving children as their cover story? That's not just money grab, that's because its a big story that people want to be informed about.

Seriously, WTF? Some of you are even actually trying to blame the media for these types of shootings for making the shooters "celebrities" while also going off about how blaming guns is stupid. Do you not realize its the same logical failing in both?

One last thing. So, deaths of young black men in Chicago aren't being reported, yet somehow this?
Chicago has set a record with 516 murders this year, according that city’s police department website. The majority of those victims and known suspects of those homicides are identified as young black men, according the Chicago Tribune."
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That is literally an example of them being reported. 😵

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG7LjVCj50Y
 
darkxshade said:
It will stop if we put a ban on guns :ninja:

/waits for it
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Worst school massacre in US history occurred in 1927 in Bath, Michigan. 38 Children and 6 adults were killed and 58 others were injured and not a single person was shot. Guns don't cause these disasters. Mentally unstable people do.
 
rpsgc said:
Because that == actually helping, obviously! Herr Durr derpa derp :hmm:
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Not sure if you are being serious or sarcastic, but how does posting "I'm so sad for them" or "My thoughts and prayers go out to them" help anything? It just shows me you want people to like your post and give you attention, or that you want people to know how compassionate and caring you are.
 
Atomic Playboy said:
1. Proximity
2. Number of victims
3. Relative age of victims

We care more about Americans than non-Americans (it's human nature), we care more about mass killings than individual murders and we care more when the victims are very young. A massive killing of American kindergartners is going to resonate with us a lot more than other horrifying events. It's not necessarily a bad thing. We should care more about young people who are unable to defend themselves. We should care more about what happens in our own backyard (we have more control over it). It is what it is.
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Also add:
4. Socioeconomic status and race of the victims
5. That it takes a considerable higher amount of "evil" to commit #2 #3 in the same event relative to your everyday murder that most likely had a more defined motive.

All in all, I wouldn't say that it's getting more attention than 9/11 but I am annoyed that the media and others have sensationalized this to be a gun control issue when the majority of Americans (including me) don't think so.
 
ATOT's cynicism really shows in this thread.

Was going to make a few points, but Areacode707 & darkswordsman17 covered all that I wanted to say, in better ways than I could have done.
 
unokitty said:
Other people are also making a similar point. For example:

Some black Connecticut residents question media attention on Newtown shootings

From the article:
“Where is the moral outrage and large media coverage when there are hundreds of murders of young black men in cities like Chicago, no one really cares about black kids as much as they care about white kids or white life,” said Gregory Webb, of New Haven. ...

Chicago has set a record with 516 murders this year, according that city’s police department website. The majority of those victims and known suspects of those homicides are identified as young black men, according the Chicago Tribune."

Uno
Click to expand...

lol @ comparing murders in gang riddled areas that probably happen out on the street to people who are running the streets to a mass murdering rampage of children in a kindergarten classroom.

this is just more proof that racism in the black community is what is holding them back as a community. just like the guy hating on RG3 because he's not "black enough" for him.
 
AreaCode707 said:
The reason is that many more people can envision themselves in the role of the victims or families in this tragedy than in other tragedies.

Middle class people don't read about gang violence and immediately picture themselves in the ghetto, fighting to keep their children in school and out of gangs, scraping together the rent and being unable to be home. They can see themselves dropping jr off to a safe school and heading to work.

They don't see themselves in a little Japanese apartment next to a nuclear plant, living on a crowded tiny island right next to a volatile fault line, with their families washed away to sea. They can imagine what their reaction would be hearing that there's been a shooting at their child's school.

We lack the ability to empathize with "the other" and we have a strong ability to empathize with people in our group. I don't see this as an intentional bias in most people, just the way our brains are wired.

People aren't truly tearing up because these families lost their children; they're tearing up because they are imagining their own children lost in similar circumstances. They're not awake all night because of the pain of the survivors; they're staying awake all night terrified that the same thing could happen to them.

The realistic monster that could find you is always scarier than the monster that is completely implausible. The sympathetic character in a story is always the one most like yourself.

People identify with these victims, these families, more than they are capable of in other different tragedies. The unpredictability, intentionality, inexplicability of the cause heightens their sense of alarm - you can avoid gang violence by not living in a gang controlled area, you can avoid tsunamis by not living on the coast, but how do you avoid a completely random act of horror by a disturbed mind?
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I think the problem middle class suburban whites have is their lives are so safe they cant imagine ANY monster until after it happens. Then they're so shocked and clueless their first instinct is to lash out, find a victim, and whine for help against the big scary world.
I dont blame them. Thats how I grew up. But I joined the Navy, hit Kosovo and Afghanistan and saw some things in the world. I no longer have illusions of safety and I also know to take care of myself and not overreact when bad things happen.
 
darkswordsman17 said:
Wait, there's really that many of you that think the media isn't reporting anything else?

What media do you guys watch/listen/read? I've seen a variety of other stories, including multiple ones about the "fiscal cliff" and a lot of other topics. Everyday (regardless of there being a big story like this) I see reports on shootings that happen all over the world so where you people are acting like that doesn't get ever get mentioned either I don't know.
Click to expand...

Well, lets see. Yesterday I woke up and turned on Good Morning America for another round of interviews with victims. So I changed to CBS. Different victims being interviewed. Switch to NBC. More pictures of victims. I finished my breakfast and turned it off.

On the way to work I turned NPR on. Discussions about the shooting. I changed it to the local morning show. More discussions on the shooting. So I switched to the CD player.

At work I opened my WSJ newspaper. Front page (and numerous following pages) mostly about the shooting

So yeah - there has been a bit of a blanket of coverage

More of the same today although the WJS shooting articles only occupied about 1/2 the front page instead of almost all of it
 
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Exterous said:
Well, lets see. Yesterday I woke up and turned on Good Morning America for another round of interviews with victims. So I changed to CBS. Different victims being interviewed. Switch to NBC. More pictures of victims. I finished my breakfast and turned it off.

On the way to work I turned NPR on. Discussions about the shooting. I changed it to the local morning show. More discussions on the shooting. So I switched to the CD player.

At work I opened my WSJ newspaper. Front page (and numerous following pages) mostly about the shooting

So yeah - there has been a bit of a blanket of coverage

More of the same today although the WJS shooting articles only occupied about 1/2 the front page instead of almost all of it
Click to expand...

ironically, the only place i've heard about this story the past few days is on ATOT.
 
Exterous said:
Well, lets see. Yesterday I woke up and turned on Good Morning America for another round of interviews with victims. So I changed to CBS. Different victims being interviewed. Switch to NBC. More pictures of victims. I finished my breakfast and turned it off.

On the way to work I turned NPR on. Discussions about the shooting. I changed it to the local morning show. More discussions on the shooting. So I switched to the CD player.

At work I opened my WSJ newspaper. Front page (and numerous following pages) mostly about the shooting

So yeah - there has been a bit of a blanket of coverage

More of the same today although the WJS shooting articles only occupied about 1/2 the front page instead of almost all of it
Click to expand...

Everyone is trying to "outscoop" each other and get the up-to-the-minute-info. This really doesn't improve our lives at all except to remind us to love a little harder and actually appreciate the short time we have on this Earth.
 
These were the children of a very influential demographic. (ie high net wealth families) So you can expect a much bigger impact in media reporting and how the Government treats the incident.

even the NRA stayed quiet this time.
 
Hugo Drax said:
These were the children of a very influential demographic. (ie high net wealth families) So you can expect a much bigger impact in media reporting and how the Government treats the incident.

even the NRA stayed quiet this time.
Click to expand...

Out of respect for the dead. They are hosting a news conference on the 21st.
 
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