If 10 shooters kill 6 people is it still a "Mass Shooting"?

 

It is only 29 hours since the 2:00AM shootings in Sacramento yielded six dead and another dozen wounded. 

Early reports said 50 to 70 rounds fired; another said 40 of those little evidence markers on the ground at the scene.

Little is known, and early reports are often spectacularly unreliable. But where there's blood, it's never too early for the Blood Dancing.

You know.  2:00AM on a weekend night. Crowd on the street. A little family friction becomes a spark. Democrat-controlled hell-hole. Rounds are fired (and sights not used, apparently). And . . . 

Next thing you know, the droolers-in-chief are saying the solution to urban violence is to take guns away from Bible-thumping, flag-waving Duck Dynasty fans. 

People who don't trust you are not to be trusted

This item is a cross between a super-soaker and a fly-swatter. It shoots a small quantity of table salt to down pesky flies.

The highlighted text says, "This item cannot be shipped to your selected location."

That location would be, of course, California.

Note that Amazon does not sell guns.  Not real guns.  Never did.

So somebody (*cough*kamalaharris*cough*) must have put the kibosh on wing-shooting musca domestica, for their own nefarious reasons.

[Edit, 20 September 2017:  Apparently it is just an Amazon ban.  Californians can order direct from the manufacturer.  I could even get one from the local ACE Hardware. So, 'sup wi'dat, Amazon? ]

People who know nothing about statistics can also lie

Newtown school shooter Adam Lanza played video games.  (Well doesn't everybody?)

But now it's a big deal.  Conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on 19 March 2013 maintained at length that it is now known that "violent video games" produce violent school shooters, and that in fact the makers of the video games could / should be sued for damages by survivors of Sandy Hook Elementary victims -- because a reasonable person would conclude that playing a game leads to sociopathic behavior and homicide. 

"He didn’t snap that day, he wasn’t one of those guys who was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore,” the man said. “He had been planning this thing forever. In the end, it was just a perfect storm: These guns, one of them an AR-15, in the hands of a violent, insane gamer. It was like porn to a rapist. They feed on it until they go out and say, enough of the video screen. Now I’m actually going to be a hunter."  The person who said this is identified as "[t]he man to whom I spoke, a tough career cop who did not wish to see his name in the newspaper" by writer Mike Lupica in the New York Daily News.

Well there you go.  

See, reporters and anonymous cops know how the mind works. Little boys who stare at curvy pictures become rapists; players of video games become mass murderers.  Except they don't.  What's the p-value on that "porn to rapist" factotum?  Probably nearly null.  But I bet it's greater than the p-value for gamer to murderer. 

The idea that artists -- authors (even blog authors), movie makers, and video game producers included -- are to be held liable for the insane acts of art consumers, is itself insane.  When legislators or regulators get an idea like that, it is dangerously insane.  Think of the chilling of creative activity.  Think of the Taliban-style enforcement. Thought Police.  They know better.  Like that anonymous cop quoted in the New York Daily News.  He knows better, just ask him. 

I don't for a moment believe the gamer-to-murderer hypothesis.  I'll tell you one thing I do believe.  History.  There is  a strong p-value for the transformation of Big Government to Genocidal Regime.  

Platelet Theory

About 40 years ago I had an accident with a power tool.  An immortal and infallible teenager working for a general contractor who did home remodels, I got into a shoving match with a bottom-of-the-line Skil brand 6" circular saw.  The dull blade bound up, kicked back, bounced off my torso, and back into my left hand.  This was going to require stitches.

As it turned out, no tendons or bones had been terribly damaged.  Many stitches and many years later, it's good as new, plus the added features of having a Wizard Grade lightning-shaped scar on the second knuckle of my left thumb, plus the ability to predict rain 36 hours in advance.  (Don't ask me how it works, but I can feel it.)

But here's what I want to focus on today:  on the way to the Emergency Clinic, the bleeding stopped.

In a battle between skin and steel, skin always loses.  Blood will flow.  But the instant the bleeding starts, it also starts to stop.  At least the body attempts to stop the loss of blood.  Clotting agents being present in sufficient number, and absent high pressure arterial bleeding, the bleeding will stop.

Here's the point.  One platelet cannot stop the bleeding.  But a whole bunch can.  At least they can do their microscopic damnedest to stop it.

What I'm really talking about is Gun Control.

What good can one armed citizen do against the might of a tyrannical government?  That question is used to pooh-pooh the idea that Joe Citizen's right to keep and bear arms was spelled out in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States because Joe just might have to do something to stop a Government Gone Wrong.  One armed citizen -- what good can that do?  Might as well turn all those guns in and trust to the benignity of the controlling power.  What good can one armed citizen do when the bloodletting starts?

What good can one platelet do when the bleeding starts?  

We The People act in unison to defend as well as originally to create these United States.  And yes the fact that the people are free to keep and bear firearms is important every day, whether called into action  or not.  Only by being extremely numerous and widely spread can the body politic be adequately protected by these platelets of freedom.