death in the US

I'm a bit late to the party regarding the death of Jordan Neely, a black homeless man who was known for at least a decade as a Michael Jackson impersonator. Neely's mental instability worsened over time, and he had an ever-growing rap sheet that included theft, turnstile-jumping, and assault (of at least two women). The day before his death, he had attempted to push someone onto the subway tracks. Neely was in the midst of some loud, threatening ranting on a subway when he was tackled by a white man who put Neely in a chokehold. Neely died; the man who tackled Neely claimed that killing Neely was never his intention. The left immediately leaped to Neely's defense, trying to spin this as another racist attack on an innocent lamb (US Representative Ayanna Pressley, a member of the so-called Squad in Congress, deliberately mislabeled this a lynching). Of course, with the new Twitter, people who try to spread lies now get fact-checked, so Pressley was rightly dogpiled:

I hope Daniel Penny, the Marine who restrained and choked Neely, is cleared of any charges (I don't think he's been charged yet). He was obviously defending the people around him.

And in other death-related news: another mass shooting! This one happened at a mall in Allen, just north of Dallas, Texas. I'm beginning to think the stereotype about Texans being armed to the teeth isn't true. Then again, are liberal Texans who live in big cities real Texans? Your guess is as good as mine, but their leftism may explain why they're unarmed. My flippancy aside, this shooting represents an ongoing and rapidly evolving situation. The shooter, who was killed by police, has not yet been named as of this writing. The gunman killed eight and injured at least three before he himself was gunned down by police. The names of the victims have also not been released at this time.

George Carlin routinely accused America of being a death culture. There are times when I think he may have had a point. One thing I can guarantee, though, is that the shooter, who was white (Latino?), and who committed this crime with an AR or something similar, was not an NRA member. These crazies never are, but the NRA always gets shit whenever mass shootings happen despite the fact that the organization strongly advocates for responsible gun ownership (hilariously, some lefties think the NRA sells guns).

Does it seem as if this sort of thing is happening more on Biden's watch than on Trump's? This Wikipedia entry has a chart that lists mass-shooting incidents in the US. During Trump's term, there were nine such shootings, with none, apparently, in 2020. For Biden, the chart lists four incidents, not counting this latest one... so five on Biden's watch thus far. No matter who's in the Oval Office, these stats don't look good. Is taking guns away the answer? I'd say it obviously isn't. Triggers don't pull themselves, and people can find all sorts of creative ways to kill each other even when deprived of guns.

The US's overall homicide rate is around 6.5 people per 100,000, or 0.0065% (source). South Korea's, by comparison, has been hovering around 0.6 for the past few years, or 0.0006% (source). That puts the US rate at over 10 times the South Korean rate. We really do like to kill each other, I guess. Viewed at the macro level, both stats are vanishingly small, but the US stats are still a source of shame. I know the argument that, if you screen out murders in big cities, suicide by gun (which other countries don't report when giving their gun stats), and gang-related killings, the US gun-violence rate would drop below that of Europe. While I appreciate the argument, it's not particularly reassuring.

How to address the problem, then? Mental health should obviously be a factor when it comes to obtaining and keeping guns. Styx has argued strenuously against this, but given how the preponderance of mass murderers is mentally unstable (how sane can you be if you want to kill a bunch of people?), I think sanity needs to be factored into whether one should be allowed to have guns. I'm still fleshing out my thoughts on this—there's obviously something very Orwellian about allowing others access to your psych profile, and the whole notion of declaring someone mentally unfit is just ripe for abuse—but that's where I am instinctively. If you're not sane, you shouldn't be anywhere near guns.

Meanwhile, there's more death to come, I'm sure. For 2023, it's still early days.