Why Isn't There More Violence ?
There are more guns than people in the United States.
Most people have the ability to go anywhere they want in the country.
There is no shortage of violent rhetoric in online social media and web site comment sections.
There is a known copy cat mentality that exists among people.
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A few years ago during an argument here I had reason to go look at the web site of pro-gun group of "patriots". I can't recall the specific group, but there are a number of them. After looking at the article being discussed on NT , I did as I sometimes do when I go to sites I am not familiar with and looked at some of the comment section. To this day I specifically remember numerous comments to the effect that if Barack Obama or Eric Holder set foot in the state of ______ they would be shot dead by , the commenter. Yep, commenters to web sites said they would personally shoot the president dead if he came to their hometown. Of course they had some anonymity and I imagine faced no particular backlash for their trouble.
And you know, there may very well be liberal web sites where the same thing happens.
So why don't we have more incidents? Maybe the country is not as hopeless as we all think.
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Because of our guns they know they are out numbered and outgunned by the good guys. When they challenge us they end up dead like the guy today.
Do you think the guy today thought he was going to get away with it?
No.
No but he thought he was going to take down a lot more of us than he did due to a member of the house leadership having security with him. He likely didn't anticipate that. He likely thought he had 6-8 minutes to do his massacre before his suicide by cop happened.
It's possible you are right , but just as likely someone thinking straight would assume that a group of US senators and congressmen would have armed security with them.
Could be John, but remember that he knew enough about the internal workings of the Congress to know where the practice was being held. Or he may have done the math. There are 537 Representatives and Senators. There simply are not enough Capitol Policemen to provide one or two armed guards to all of them. Two guards with three shifts equals six guards per Congressman. Multiply that by 537 and you have 3222 guards. Add 25% more to allow for sick days, days off etc, and you have 4028 guards. That's about 30% more than the basic Presidential Protection Detail. Pretty expensive protection for people who aren't that likely to be targets anyway.
He might even have thought that he could get away with it since I don't think that he intended anybody to be in shape to call the police. He missed the fact that there were a couple of good guys with guns available and it turned out to save a bunch of lives and cost him his own.
I do not know, but I imagine he could learn the locations and times of congressional gatherings from their various websites or the various capitol hill newspapers.
Why couldn't the Republican baseball team have said, "we have 25 guys going to the park to practice baseball. Can you send a couple cops with us?"
So why don't we have more incidents?
More incidents of what, John? Are you saying there should be more of a correlation between the social media equivalent of school yard trash talk, and actual violence?
The shooter today is not any different in a sense than thousands of other people who voice extreme anger about politics and have access to guns. There is violent rhetoric all around. If the Democrats or the Republicans are inciting violence, why isnt there more violence?
I am not asking for more violence, I just think the causes may not align that much the way some assume they do.