I think the current death toll for the recent Uvalde, Texas, school shooting is up to 22 (or 21?), but I gather it could go higher. 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a high-school student, first shot his grandmother (she's alive but in critical condition, hence the vague death toll: she was initially thought dead), then went to nearby Robb Elementary School, where he shot at least 19 students, ranging from 2nd to 4th grade, and a couple adults. Ramos, in body armor and armed with an "AR-15-style" rifle, barricaded himself but was eventually killed by authorities. Here's Styx's commentary on the aftermath:
The usual suspects are using this situation to scream about gun control yet again, forgetting that the suspect was taken down by men with guns, most of whom arrived too late to save those kids. "When seconds count, the police are minutes away," as the saying goes. Styx notes, above, that many mass shootings happen in states that already have strict gun-control laws; making the laws stricter isn't going to stop the problem of law-ignoring criminals. Styx also notes that the mass-shooting narrative tends to shift largely as a function of the gunman's race: if he's white, then he's a racist; if he's not white, then it's the guns that are the problem. How convenient. Lastly, Styx comments on the sloppy journalistic coverage of this event as people pore over the gunman's motives.
While I think mass shootings are an embarrassing problem for Americans, (1) they make the news because, statistically speaking, they remain rare, and (2) all things considered, being armed is better than being defenseless.
Meanwhile, a recent murder in NYC gets little coverage because, well, narrative.
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