by Guy Lancaster
Dr. Guy Lancaster is the editor of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System, and the author or editor of multiple books on racial violence, most recently American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching.
There is a Real “Great Replacement” – But Not the One the Right Talks About
Tag: mass shootings
The Contagion Effect: From Buffalo to Uvalde, 16 Mass Shootings in Just 10 Days
The latest mass shootings in Texas and New York highlight the frequency of such attacks — and how they can spread like a disease
The Contagion Effect: From Buffalo to Uvalde, 16 Mass Shootings in Just 10 Days
Related:
Our Narrative of Mass Shootings Is Killing Us
Mass Shootings Are Contagious:
The idea that violence might be contagious is not new. Suicides often cluster, in a phenomenon known as suicide contagion, in which vulnerable people are inspired to take their own lives after reading about the details of previous suicides. In an attempt to stop the contagion, many media outlets abide by voluntary reporting standards to not sensationalize suicides.
…
“The contagion that appears to be apparent in the mass killings and school shootings may have something to do with the media coverage,” Towers said.
This doesn’t mean the media shouldn’t report on mass shootings, Towers said. But voluntary efforts to de-emphasize the killer’s name and portrait might help stave off additional shootings.
American Shooter: The Intersection of Alienation and Desperation Under Capitalism
American Shooter: The Intersection of Alienation and Desperation Under Capitalism
Universal Healthcare and Easy Access Mental Health Services
59% of gun deaths are suicides. Getting healthcare in the United States is nigh impossible for many people whether it be the cost of services, lack of insurance, or the stigmatization that comes from seeking medically necessary mental health services. We need to make concerted efforts to ensure that anyone who needs healthcare can walk into a facility and get the help they need with no questions asked nor strings attached. Whether it is nationalizing healthcare or instituting dual power healthcare structures we need to get this done and we need to do it now. Getting people the healthcare they need drastically reduces rates of mental illness while also reducing the rates of economically motivated crime which is sometimes violent in nature.
In May 2002, The Secret Service published a report that examined school shootings. Among much else, they found that the majority of school shooters had difficulty coping with loss and personal failures, attempted suicide, felt persecuted, and exhibited alarming behaviors toward those around them. All of these are signs to immediately provide accessible healthcare, particularly mental healthcare. We need to be proactive about getting people the help they need. Simply scapegoating mental health issues as the conservative gun lobby does is about as helpful as thoughts and prayers. We need to directly address mental healthcare and build the systems that prevent violence.
Stable Food and Housing
Violence is quite often a symptom of economic distress. Ensuring the stable material conditions of a community not only reduces the incentive to commit economically motivated violent crime, but it also reduces interpersonal violent crime. We need to build communities that have affordable housing and accessible food. The fastest and easiest way to work towards both is to ban R1 zoning because this form of zoning creates food deserts, makes communities car dependent, and skyrockets the cost of housing. This is not to say that we should not be working on dual power structures in housing. We also need free lunch and breakfast programs run by local radicals and community-powered housing programs.
Source: Socialist Rifle Association
May Was the 34th Consecutive Month With 1 Million or More Guns Sold
Innumerate media types will look at the NSSF’s graph of adjusted background check data and thrill to the fact that May, 2022’s total was down significantly from the 2020 spike and the 2021 total.
But if you look at the May, 2022 bar on the graph in relation to The Time Before years, you’ll see that last month’s adjusted NICS total was about 20% higher than it’s been in any previous May. Let that sink in for a minute. Americans are still buying guns a relatively blistering pace and with the current push in Washington to take advantage of the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings, that isn’t likely to change any time soon.
May Was the 34th Consecutive Month With 1 Million or More Guns Sold
Corporate Media Hypocrisy Revealed in Buffalo Shooting Coverage
The corporate media’s contradictions in covering nazism exposed in Buffalo shooting coverage.
Corporate Media Hypocrisy Revealed in Buffalo Shooting Coverage
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visits China
A blow for Western diplomacy: the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Chilean national Michele Bachelet, has just completed a six-day visit to China, looking in particular for evidence of the “Uyghur genocide”, but had to leave empty-handed. Going back 17 years, none of her predecessors has ever set foot in China.
Ms. Bachelet interviewed several dignitaries, heads of associations, religious leaders and witnesses at large. She even paid a visit to Kashi prison, but could find nothing that conflicted with the official Chinese version.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visits China
Related:
Statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet after official visit to China
US keeps manipulating high-profile UN Xinjiang visit to attack China: FM
Re-post of The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights (Reprise)
My personal notes:
Republicans will blame gun violence on mental health, psychiatric medications, or violent video games, yet they aren’t willing to support solutions, such as affordable healthcare, affordable prescriptions, or defund the military industrial complex! As for Democrats, all they will offer is banning guns!
Speaking of mental health, and psychiatric medications, Peace Labor May made some good points in her most recent YouTube video (you may have to turn your volume up).
Re-post of The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights (Reprise)
In light of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, and because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’m re-posting a link to my left argument for gun rights from 2017. (One among many. See links at end of article)
Some points covered in the article:
The class concept of the state. It’s not a neutral arbiter to be trusted with a monopoly of armed power. “The concentration of wealth and the concentration of armed power in the hands of a few, are both bad ideas—and the one has everything to do with the other.”
The net effect of eliminating the right of citizens to possess firearms will be to increase the power of the armed capitalist state. Whatever strict gun-control regime is instituted, ruling-class families and institutions will still have all the guns they want.
But what about horrible mass shootings? Recognize that *gun homicides have declined even as gun ownership has increased,*. that mass shootings are a small portion of gun deaths in the US & a lousy index of the social problem of gun violence. But they do grab one’s attention.
For the full argument, go to the article:
The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights
(Reprise)
Related (including some random archived links that I noticed were behind paywalls and/or 404):
A Marxist-Leninist response to Gun Control
Read More »Kayfabe Populism: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Mass Shootings: The Vicious Cycle Fueled By America’s Toxic Cult of Violence
“Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of violence cannot be abstracted from either the culture of business or the corruption of politics.”—Professor Henry A. Giroux
Mass Shootings: The Vicious Cycle Fueled By America’s Toxic Cult of Violence
Related:
YouTube: John Whitehead interviewed by Judge Napolitano
Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA
No Way Out but War
Permanent war has cannibalized the country. It has created a social, political, and economic morass. Each new military debacle is another nail in the coffin of Pax Americana.
No Way Out but War
H/T: Unorthodox Truth
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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