Mass shootings, as most people think of them, are shootings that take place outside of the home. This is an important distinction when discussing horrific events because the discussions surrounding how to deal with them depend a lot on just where such a thing happens.
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Unfortunately, some people will call too many things “mass shootings” and thus muddy the waters severely.
Especially since there are some crimes that are horrific enough that we don’t really want to get into the discussion of whether it’s a mass shooting or not.
I’m referring to a shooting in a Texas home that left two people dead, and two others injured. Newsweek termed it a mass shooting. It’s not, just awful.
Thanksgiving morning gathering ended in tragedy when a mass shooting at a home in San Antonio, Texas, left two people dead and two others injured.
Five people, who all knew each other, had spent the night at a house in the 600 block of Potomac Street, on the East Side. As one man left Thursday morning, he fired a handgun, striking four individuals inside, police said.
Two men in their 20s were pronounced dead at the scene. The injured victims included one man in his 20s and an unidentified individual who were taken to hospital. Their conditions were not immediately disclosed.
Police detained a man believed to be the shooter a few blocks away near East Houston Street and North New Braunfels Avenue. San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said investigators are still working to determine the shooter’s motive.
“This is a tragic incident, and we are working to piece together what led to this senseless act of violence,” McManus said during a press briefing.
Newsweek then cites the Gun Violence Archive and talks about mass shootings.
This isn’t quite the same thing. This is something different; right now, we don’t know exactly what it is. These were all people who clearly knew one another, but that’s about it.
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I don’t know the neighborhoods of San Antonio, but I do have access to Google Maps street view, and a quick look at that block suggests that we’re not exactly talking about a high-income neighborhood by any stretch of the imagination. It also seems that this crime map of San Antonio shows this as being a fairly high-crime area.
Does this matter? Well, yeah.
We know this, in and of itself, is a criminal act. That’s not really a matter up for discussion.
What matters is if this was in conjunction with any other criminal act. For example, if this was an argument over drug profits–purely a hypothetical, for the record, because we don’t have a clue one way or another–then this is hardly in the same category as, say, Uvalde.
But calling it a mass shooting does, in fact, do just that, which just makes people more anxious about life in general.
What we have right now, though, is an awful tragedy and absolutely no way to know just what happened, what caused this, anything that might help us to understand it. We also have two grieving families and others that are worried about a loved one.
I’m quite sure that’s not how anyone wanted to spend Thanksgiving.
