Sure they did, but just as in the incident that prompted Bob Costas' commentary, the fallacy here is the assumption that such killers work in a logical progression --
(1), "I'm going to kill Jane"; (2) "how shall I do it?"
For a straight intentional murder, it's reasonable to assume that's how it works. But with gun slayings, especially mass slayings, that's not what we're talking about. We're conflating murder with what the Newtowns and Auroras and Columbines really are-- carnage.
People who murder have a specific target and a specific reason -- jealousy over a jilted lover, insurance fraud, eliminating some business rival... there is some cause and effect. They're settling some perceived score, however flawed that perception is.
On the other hand gunnists who burst into a schoolroom or a mall or a movie theater gunning down people they don't even know, cannot possibly have those motives. They're not settling scores and they're not there for that reason. They're there for the carnage. The blood flow, the wailing of helpless victims trying desperately to get out of the way. It's no more about murder than rape is about sex -- it's about power. ALL of these mass shooters --I know not a single exception-- had some kind of power issue. Fired, outcast, enraged by something.
When you go to murder someone you have all kinds of tools: bludgeoning, poisoning, accidenting, stabbing, they all accomplish the goal of murder. But when the goal is visual carnage, the gun is the only way to go.
Let's first get real about what's going on and how this works and quit the false equivalencies.
To say it's a "gun culture" is the false part. The gun is just a tool used in the culture
It is a culture built around a tool
Exactly. And that's the definition of "fetish", and that's why I call it that. Fetishizing an inanimate object is always kinda weird. That's why they don't want to talk about it.
You say "tool", I say "fetish", whatever. But we can agree that it's a carnage tool. Whereas knives and poisons and strangulation are not.
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