‘Mass Shooting’ Climate

June 18, 2015

f264be62c56fb5f5bbc3bea2ac7b5e18Light overcast this early Thursday on California’s north coast, maybe hinting of real sunshine quickly coming as heat burns off the fog allowing a brighter air — instead of the gloomy-gothic gray.

In context of pessimism, Pope Francis was set for pontificating on climate change this morning, but tragically the encyclical event was overshadowed by a perplexing horror: ‘The FBI on Thursday identified the suspect in the killing of 9 people at an historic black church in downtown Charleston as Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old from Columbia, S.C. area, according to news media reports.’
Added terror is the asshole actually sat with the group for nearly an hour before opening fire, reloading five times.

Odd terror — rate of all mass shootings in America has essentially tripled in the last four years, though, no increase in mental illness rates during the same span to maybe ‘“…help explain the rise in mass shootings.”

(Illustration: Pablo Picasso’s ‘The Tragedy,’ found here).

And it’s just not the fucking guns — people are killing in mass with less firearms around.
From the Washington Post this morning:

The General Social Survey has been asking Americans about whether they have a gun in their home for decades, and last year essential tied the record low level of gun ownership reached in 2010.
As you can see the chart below, 31 percent of adults reporting having a firearm in their household in 2014.
That is 17 percentage points below the peak gun ownership from 1977 to 1980.

And the Post reports on survey data released last year by the Pew Research Center:

Overall, about a third of all Americans with children under 18 at home have a gun in their household, including 34 percent of families with children younger than 12.
That’s nearly identical to the share of childless adults or those with older children who have a firearm at home.
The new research also suggests a paradox: While blacks are significantly more likely than whites to be gun homicide victims, blacks are only about half as likely as whites to have a firearm in their home (41 percent vs. 19 percent).
Hispanics are less likely than blacks to be gun homicide victims and half as likely as whites to have a gun at home (20 percent).
Pew found that gun ownership is concentrated among older adults, rural residents, and whites, especially white Southerners.
Whites in the South are more likely to own guns than whites in other regions.

And according to ABC News this morning, one question asked was whether South Carolina would fly their Confederate flag furled a-top the capital dome at half-mast in sorrow for the shootings?
Apparently, there’s an earth/sky environment, and a social environment, both crazy…

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