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When Mass Shootings Don’t Matter 

Memorial Day weekend brought news of multiple mass shootings. Three masked gunmen unloaded dozens of rounds into a crowd gathered outside of a rap party in Miami on Sunday. Two were killed and at least 20 people were wounded. Another mass shooting in Miami on Friday claimed one life and wounded at least six others.

Hours after the Miami rap party shooting, a mass shooting took place at a crowded club in Houston, Texas. A man opened fire in the club, killing one and wounding two others before an off-duty cop shot and killed him. There were other mass shootings over the weekend in St. Louiss and San Antonio, both of which took place at social gatherings. 

Mass shootings have plagued America for many years. It’s common for the media to focus on a particular shooting and ascribe it to their political enemies. 

The media has given the public the impression that nearly all mass shootings are committed by dangerous white men. These white men are either deranged white supremacists, gun lovers, incels, or some other kind of villain liberals love to hate. Whenever a shooting grabs the media’s attention, gun control and hate speech laws are demanded immediately to ensure this “never happens again.” Liberals have done a very good job convincing Americans that mass shooters are white losers acting alone, and further that we need to give up some of our basic liberties to erase them. 

But none of these Memorial Day weekend mass shootings fit the preferred profile. The suspects appear to be black in all the shootings. Most of these acts of violence appear to be gang-related or simply nightclub brawls that spiraled out of control. The rap show shooting looks to be a targeted hit carried out by hardened criminals based on the surveillance footage. 

The media gives these incidents little or no air time because they don’t fit the narrative, yet most mass shootings resemble these attacks. 

The standard for an act of violence to be labelled a “mass shooting” is arbitrary. Some studies require the act to be carried out by a lone gunman not otherwise connected to crime or gangs, and the event has to result in the death or maiming of a minimum number of people. Wikipedia lists over 300 mass shootings so far this year, and most of them are drive-bys or nightclub shootings. 

One typical example is a shooting that occurred in Minneapolis a week before Memorial Day weekend. Two black gangbangers engaged in a gun duel on a crowded bar street. One of the gangbangers killed his rival and a white college student who tried to flee the scene. The surviving gunman also wounded seven others. We did not hear any calls for gun control or more censorship of tweets after that shooting.

While we’re primed to believe that mass shootings are mainly committed by white males, the data proves otherwise. Studies that used narrow parameters to define mass shootings as basically a lone gunman on a rampage found that whites are underrepresented among shooters compared to their proportion of the general population (55 percent of gunmen versus 63 percent of America). 

Using a broader definition of mass shootings that includes drive-bys, nightclub brawls, and other criminal activity, however, gives us a very different picture. In an exhaustive 2016 report, the New York Times determined that roughly 75 percent of identified mass shooters in 2015 were black. Its definition of mass shooting simply means a violent event that resulted in at least four dead or wounded. 

It’s unlikely that figure is way off for 2021 considering the kinds of mass shootings listed by Wikipedia and other sources. These datasets are probably intended to show the dangerous nature of America’s gun culture and that’s why they use a broader definition. The studies’ authors seem to assume readers won’t look at the individual cases, and will likely conclude such shootings are just like the mass casualty events they see on the news.

The more common mass shootings generally get less attention than the ones that fit the preferred liberal narrative. Even though the Miami drive-by shooting received national attention, it still did not generate the same kind of outrage as the Atlanta spa shootings in March. That shooting featured a lone white gunman acting out on bizarre motives (he told cops he couldn’t control his sex addiction and lashed out at temptation). Most of his victims were Asian, which made media commentators dub the violence racially motivated—even though there is no evidence of racial animosity behind the massacre. The media quickly seized on the event to call for gun control and new “hate crime” laws. Some commentators even exploited the event to demand an end to “whiteness.” 

Some may argue this shooting rightfully deserved more attention because it claimed more lives than the typical drive-by. That may be true, but it certainly generated more outrage than a mass shooting that occurred a few days later at a Colorado grocery store. Ten people were killed in that mass shooting. It was initally labelled another case of white male violence until the suspect was identified as a Syrian Muslim. All of his victims were white. The shooting quickly faded from news coverage afterwards. There were no articles blaming all Muslims for the violence.

America faces a soaring murder rate and out-of-control crime. Officials warn we have a very bloody summer ahead of us. We’re guaranteed to see more violence like we witnessed over Memorial Day weekend. One way to stop these outrageous crimes is to fund police and strictly enforce the law. But those aren’t popular solutions with the crowd in charge. That’s why they don’t want as much attention paid to these kinds of shootings. You’re only supposed to worry about white people with guns, even if black criminals with guns are a far greater threat to black lives.

 

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