While "mass shooting" does not have a solid agreed upon definition, there is a commonly accepted definition when we talk about one in the US. It's a shooting incident in which there are 4 or more casualties.
I think of ‘mass’ in the context of defining groups of things as just ‘a lot under the circumstances’. A mass gathering for an NFL game is 100,000 people; a mass crowd for a high-school JV basketball game is probably 100; a mass crowd for a 1 year old’s birthday is maybe 50. It’s relative to what is expected under normal circumstances. 4 people being shot or injured is a lot because nobody should be shot or injured.
this is again loaded language. the intent is to make things seem more severe than they were. the bombing of Nagasaki was a mass killing, shooting 4 people is a shooting with 4 victims, not a mass shooting.
Why are you so intent on the definition of "mass?" whether "mass" means 4 or 400, one "mass shooting" is one too many. Arguing about how many people are allowed to die in an incident before we do something about it does nothing to prevent this from happening.
it’s your tone and an assumption that i don’t understand the definition of context. it is hateful disagreements like this that radicalize people. your response was hateful, reword it without defining words for people.
It's not hateful at all. I wish you no ill will whatsoever.
I'm just calling out what seems pretty clearly to be your lack of nuance/flexibility of the language. Which is something you might expect from a recent English language learner or a child.
Are you one of those? If not, you're pretty clearly being deliberately obtuse.
I won't hazard a guess as to why you might do such a thing, as that would likely be uncharitable.
I'll sum up, in case you're still confused: Calling you out for your tone deafness and/or deliberate obtuseness isn't hateful at all.
In fact, it's meant to inform you of the above as a service, so that you might provide higher quality discourse here.
As for being "hateful," I have no quarrel with you. I wish no harm on you, nor have you earned my ire. Rather, I have no strong feelings about you one way or the other.
If a mild remonstration is considered to be "hateful" by you, I can hardly imagine your reaction to actual verbal abuse. I expect it wouldn't be pretty.
it’s simple, don’t use verbiage meant to manipulate emotions. so just call it a shooting. the qualifier mass serves no purpose and changes nothing about how the case is prosecuted. the suspect is still charged with individual murder or manslaughter charges, not one single charge of multiple deaths.
I'll do one further. I don't care if the verbiage is "manipulative" or has a spin to it so long as the term and definition are not specifically crafted to overload plain english terms to facilitate being misleading with plausible deniability.
That's how low of a bar I'll set and they still can't meet it.
The fact that upping the bar to 4 per incident and still gets us 600 is frankly shameful.
> it would be politically inconvenient to separate them
Why? No sane person in the United States "likes" gun violence. I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement "600 incidents of a firearm killing 4 or more people is too many incidents." The question that divides people is how we ought to control it.
You're gonna have to explain your point better. No one said mental illness doesn't exist. Your comment has nothing to do with the definition of mass shootings. No one defines mass shooting as "a mentally ill person who shoots people." It's pretty much given that a mass shooter is mentally ill. The point of contention is what does "mass" mean.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United...
That's a very low bar.