Someone is truly in here going 
The hundreds of people gunned down daily is really a small percentage of the population so it's all just scaremongering. Several dozen people are upvoting it. I think I'm done with hexbear for a bit. Thanks for the fun posts, everyone
Being a child is criminalized. And the children are suffering. The point of childhood anymore doesn't seem to enjoy some innocence and learn life lessons and make mistakes in a loving or caring environment where you're shielded from most of the consequences. The purpose of childhood is to mold you into an ideal member of the proletariat. And to never ever misbehave, because the Eye in the Sky (whether that's your parents or the police state) is always watching and you'd better get used to it.
I've talked about the atrocious state of childrens' rights in this country, and had some really good discussion here about it. It's only getting worse. Don't walk or bike home from school, wait for your parent to come get you in an SUV. Don't go skateboarding, you hooligan. Don't hang out with friends or other kids in the neighborhood with only the admonition of being back before dark. Don't drink a beer, even as an adult- you'll go to jail. Don't host a party, you'll go to jail. Don't have awkward teenage sex. Don't go hang out downtown or explore the woods, you'll be raped and abducted and sold into slavery! Just stay home, on your phone where it's safe.
I fucking hate this. This shit honestly makes me despair more than climate change. I'm not sure why that is, obviously what we're doing to the climate could well spell the end of human civilization. I think I'm just really upset at this very clear, yet less dramatic impact of living in a fascist society. Being a child is criminalized.
Yup. I'm 100% on board with the "it's illegal for kids to be in public" and walking, being in a park, or being in a city center all carry a small (
) but real chance of police harassment. Malls barely exist. Public transit sucks.
I spent one summer really in to home automation. I realized that the door locks could log, with a time stamp, when people went in and out, the cameras never saw anything but my roommates and neighbors, i could get logs of whose phones did what interactions wit the " smart" homes, when motion sensors were tripped, when lights were turned on and off, even when sensor equipped windows were opened and closed.
At the time it creeped me out bc it was a perfect toolkit for domestic abuse and rigid, to the second control of your partner's or family's movements. I didn't consider it in the context of "normal" parents monitoring their children but it's a 1:1 fit and, frankly, just as abusive to monitor your children on that level. Something I didn't see mentioned; once kids had cell phones they were expected to carry those phones at all time, and answer immediately when their parents called no matter what they were doing.
Also, the cops can see some or all of the recordings and info from Ring cameras, no warrant needed.
I turned almost all of it off except being able to unlock the door with your phone (one of the only actually useful things the system could accomplish), the camera i had aimed at my back yard to watch the opossum, and the open/closed sensor on my bedroom windows (it'd send me a push notification if it was going to rain and the window was open).
Idk much about the academics side of it. I graduated right before "No Child Left Behind" was brought on line and the destruction of the education system kicked in to high gear. As an older Millenial the mantra was "go to college go to college go to college" without any real guidance beyond that. Why? For what? Then everyone graduated in to the wreckage of 2007 (and in 2005 Biden made it illegal to discharge your debt under the pretense of someone, somewhere, might "cheat" the system somehow).
Where are kids supposed to party? They're under constant surveillance from countless cameras, cops, and concerned parents. Same with sex and dating, there's a ton of ways for parents to intrude on you at all times, even if it's just calling your cell to demand to know where you are. And all the cool places shut down in 07, the survivors crashed and burned in 19, so where do you go? The mall? Do malls even exist? And $$$$$$$$$$$$$
And "school resource officers" installed in schools to enforce submission, criminalize dissent and any attempt to push back at school as a system of control, reinforce us state race terrorism, and simplify the slave procurement system.
Also, "school shootings" given so much media attention people think they're common and widespread and kids are legit terrified they're going to be gunned down every day bc it's plastered across the news 24/7. "Active shooter drills". This is a personal peeve, I became sentient right when the 24/7 cable news cycle industry started with the First Gulf War. I've watched them go from war to PCP to salmonella on your kitchen counters to workplace shootings to "urban youth gangs"
to trrrism (Al-Qaeda is in your shitty town!) To heroin, trying everything to discover what could create maximum terror in their viewership to ensure maximum engagement. Well the fuckers found it; there's nothing more terrifying than your helpless children being murdered at school where they're outside your control and observation. And the news has just hammered and hammered and hammered on that for years to keep people afraid and eyes on advertising, never you mind how low the odds of it actually happening are (i have a separate screed about "mass shooting" being cynically refined in the public imagination from meaning situations where a person deliberately intended to kill strangers to any shooting where more than one person was hit).
It's all very fucked. "Kids staring at their phones!" aren't the problem (though social media as a form of ruthless sousveillance, all kinds of gambling bullshit, attention stealing is). Phones are the last plave kids have where they can interact with the world without being hounded by parents, disciplined by school staff, harassed by cops, watched by hostile Nextdoor Gestapo, chased out by shop owners, or expected to pay to exist.
Like when was the last time you saw an eight year old or a ten year old wandering around unaccompanied catching bugs and swinging a stick? I literally cannot remember, but I used to wander all over town back in the day, walk miles to and from school, try to catch turtles in the creek all afternoon. This was not idyllic, i was maximizing my time away from an abusive home situation at some points. But not being home, and not being bothered about it, was an option to get away from that situation.
This is a rant i've ranted many times. Kids are no longer allowed much if any autonomy and are subject to constant, sometimes violent (physically and otherwise) surveillance and discipline wherever the go in life, supported by the digital panopticon that would have made the famed and much maligned STASI go "okay this is too intrusive y'all need to calm down"
Literally the definition used when you hear "x mass shootings have happened this year", where x is usually greater than the number of days we are into the year, is 4+ people shot. For any reason, with any outcome, with any relationship between the victims and the perpetrator.
But that's not what you think of when you think of a mass shooting. You think school shootings, attacks on mosques, synagogues, and gay nightclubs, and whatever the fuck the Las Vegas shooting was about (side note: the deadliest mass shooting in history and we still have no idea what the motive was, that's always been suspicious). Public spaces, much more than 4 deaths, the victims usually don't have much of a relationship with the perpetrator or even each other (besides maybe whatever reason they were in the same public place, like classmates or fellow worshipers). i.e. someone decided they want to kill a bunch of people either for the terror, bigotry, infamy, revenge on society, or just because. What you don't think of is someone killing their partner and children in their home in a domestic dispute, but they count that for some reason.
I dont really see the use in arguing the semantics of what is or is not a mass casualty event, considring many of what you mention as mass shootings in the popular consciousness do start out with the shooter killing people they know (often women) in their home, workplace etc.
this post reads pretty conspiritorialy, they're not hiding the a mass shooting is 4 people number, it's there for anyone who cares to look. obviously there's some hyperbolic shit in the media, but by this statistic, someone like Kyle Rittenhouse is not a mass shooter, food for thought.
i'm not sure if this is the mindset where they're taking our guns, we need them, rah rah revolution is the base, but do you know what we need a whole lot more than guns? comrades we can trust. communities that are organised and ready to support each other.
I'm not from the USA, but i've seen friends argue about this, and i've especially seen the impact these semantic like points have had on friends who have lived in the USA. Talk of condemning ourselves to pointless slaughter if we're not armed, its unhelpful, it's only driving us apart and keeping us at arms length.
The individualist drive to arm every man woman and child in school, churches, and supermarkets, in their bedrooms, for their protection, does nothing but line the pockets of the arms dealers who would have us all on the frontlines sooner than you could say I will not fight my working class brothers and sisters in Vietnam
sorry that's scattered and a bit ranty, but I absolutely consider someone shooting their partner and child to be a part of the issue we're up against, the conditions we face, capitalism, imperialism, white nationalism, and oppression of the powerless.
haha dark and awful, but we're almost discussing if a shooting is more impacting, if say, it were taken out on a large, christian family, 10 kids or something, uh, #greatreplacement or something I guess.
whew i'm glad I've finally taken the time to articulate that, even for myself.
People don't look. They "know" what they "know" and don't think to look up the official FBI definition. Kyle Rittenhouse is not a mass shooter. He doesn't count by the "official" standard. He killed two people and injured one. That's not a mass shooting, either in public conscious or official statistics. But it does highlight the problem; The concept of a mass shooting has gotten to the point where two people being killed in a fight is a "mass shooting". Which is somehow worse than a double homicide. The notion has been used to sensationalize gun violence and create an atmosphere of terror. People think they could be gunned down at any time when, I cannot stress this enough, violent crime is at or near an all time low in the US since they began keeping records. Things have gotten worse since the pandemic started but that's a function of the economy being in free fall collapse. Poverty drives violence.
Calling it a "mass shooting" doesn't make it any less of a crime or a moral offense. It doesn't make it extra bad or wrong. but it does mislead people in to thinking masked gunmen are executing dozens of white suburban parents every day, contributing to the atmosphere of terror that has contributed to children being locked in a social and political cage as we're discussing.