Thresholds of Violence: How School Shootings Spread

Re:Thresholds of Violence: How School Shootings Spread by nkurz on Tuesday October 13, 2015 @04:27PM (#10383227)

I find it hard to believe that anyone actually holds that opinion. Am I misunderstanding you?

Withholding my own opinion, I think this is a very common sentiment in the US. Among other things, this is used to justify the lack of action on inmate-on-inmate violence in prisons. More generally, you commonly find people cheering the violent deaths of anyone deemed a terrorist by the government. I don't think this is restricted to the US.

Separately, I don't think 'agarden' is intends to make any normative statement about the correct attitude. Rather, he's pointing out that "innocent" victims tend to receive greater sympathy. If there is a bank robbery in which 4 hostages are killed, there will be greater outcry than a bank robbery in which the 4 perpetrators are killed.

This doesn't mean necessarily that people don't care if the criminals are killed, but does mean that they care less than if non-criminals are killed. Do you doubt this?

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Re:Thresholds of Violence: How School Shootings Spread by DanBC on Tuesday October 13, 2015 @04:32PM (#10383263)

>Do you doubt this?

I don't doubt it, but it's still hard for me to hear that other people in the same country just aren't bothered by thousands of preventable[1] deaths.

[1] (Not a gun control argument.)

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