Four dead and 18 hurt in Alabama mass shooting
Four dead and 18 hurt in Alabama mass shooting
Police say multiple gunmen fired on a group of people outside on a street in the city of Birmingham.
At least four people have been killed and 18 injured in a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, police say.
“Multiple shooters fired multiple shots on a group of people” late on Saturday in the Five Points South area of the city, Birmingham police officer Truman Fitzgerald said.
Officers found the bodies of two men and one woman at the scene, while a third man later died of bullet wounds in hospital, Birmingham Police said.
There have been more than 400 mass shootings across the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed.
Anyone know why there isn’t a governmental database of mass shootings?
That’s right.
Republicans blocked the CDC from starting one because they deemed gun violence to not be a public health issue despite it being the leading cause of death in several demographic groups.
That's not exactly true. The Dickey amendment was introduced to prohibit the CDC from conducting gun control advocacy. In practice, it prevented research as well.
Fortunately, in the past few years it came under close review, and in 2018 it was finally clarified, and since then the CDC has actually been able to do gun violence research.
No they did not...the director at the CDC at that time stated they were going to make any numbers they came up with a biased for gun control. That's not what the CDC is for, it's supposed to report accurate facts and statistics. They have done plenty of gun research during this time, it just doesn't jive with the antigun crowd says it should so it hardly is ever used.
The GVA is also a terrible place to get info as it will catalog things that never happened.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/no-there-were-not-355-mass-shootings-this-year/
When motherjones and NPR call you out, you're info should be taken with a grain of salt.
No they did not...the director at the CDC at that time stated they were going to make any numbers they came up with a biased for gun control. That's not what the CDC is for, it's supposed to report accurate facts and statistics. They have done plenty of gun research during this time, it just doesn't jive with the antigun crowd says it should so it hardly is ever used.
The GVA is also a terrible place to get info as it will catalog things that never happened.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/no-there-were-not-355-mass-shootings-this-year/
When motherjones and NPR call you out, you're info should be taken with a grain of salt.
That's why I was thinking.
"What makes this one news?"So...
What makes this one news?Someone decided to report on it.
Do the line, onion.
Do they republish the article for all shooting or only for the school ones?
They publish it for notable shootings, not just school shootings.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/'No_Way_to_Prevent_This,'_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens for a list.
Example of non school shooting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting
Oh hm, good question. I’m not sure
Probably just permanently hard code it to the front page
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens' - The Onion, but not really.
Sounds gang-related. Just another reason we need to address socioeconomic inequality.
At the scene, multiple people pulled over in a car and fired with at least one automatic weapon at one person before getting back into the vehicle and fleeing the scene, Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond said in an update Sunday morning. More than 100 shell casings were collected at the scene, among other pieces of evidence, and bystanders were caught in the crossfire.
Thurmond said the shooting was not random and may have stemmed from an alleged murder-for-hire against an individual in the Five Points South entertainment district at the time. No one is in custody, but police are asking for businesses and witnesses to report any information they have.
City and police officials believe a switch — a small device that can convert a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon — may have been used in the shooting.
https://wbhm.org/2024/birmingham-police-4-dead-dozens-injured-in-five-points-south-mass-shooting/
The shooting may have been a result of a murder-of-hire plot, Police Chief Scott Thurmond was quoted as saying by local news outlet Al.com.
Isn't this, like, just about the worst possible way to conduct a hit? Even if you have a callous disregard for human life, it should be obvious that more victims + more witnesses = more heat. Single murders go unsolved all the time. Murdering a whole street full of people basically guarantees that the police will eventually find you and whoever hired you, unless you manage to flee the country or something.
I know the murderers are real people and not, like, Agent 47, so they can't be perfectly subtle, but they didn't even make the smallest token effort to avoid collateral damage by, for example, jumping the target while they were alone. It's almost like they were hired to do as much damage as possible... but who would be dumb enough to take a job that's basically certain to be their last?
I suspect discount assassins aren't as well organized as the sort that James Bond would typically encounter.
I mean, lots of people who aren't particularly well organized manage to at least murder their victims without killing any bystanders. Doing the hit in public and also killing or injuring over 20 bystanders is either intentional or astonishingly incompetent.
Maybe they watched Jack Reacher and thought "kill a crowd to hide the real target"
Multiple shooters?
Gang violence?
Surely the day is approaching where enough Americans have been personally affected by gun violence that there are more that have than haven't. I often wondered if the reason it persists is because it is something that happens to other people so there is no feeling of urgency to put it at the center of politics. But it happens every fucking
month??? ...wait, I just checked and I'm being too generous with "month". They happen almost every day. We only seem to hear about them once or twice a month outside America. You guys have them more regularly than sports games.Assuming the US lasts long enough I’d imagine there’s two potential outcomes:
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Enough people will have grown up facing gun violence, school shooter drills etc. that there’ll finally be enough people to effect change.
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With any luck all the gun nuts end up shooting each other allowing the rest to live in relative peace.
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This really sucks for Birmingham. Birmingham, AL is a really cool town with really down-to-earth people.