But mainly, nine dead at a school is much more dramatic. Plus, three shot does not rise to the definition of mass murder. That takes four or more killed by the shooter.

Perhaps more to the point, each and every day in this country at least thirty people are murdered by guns. If each and every one of those murders became front page news and the lead story on every news cast, maybe people would finally start getting it about just how many people are killed every day with guns. Right now it takes a "mass murder" to engage anyone's interest.

Not really the same at all as a person shooting people at random. Tragic as well but not the same type of incident.

that random shootings can happen to anyone.
Most people can dismiss family killings by thinking that "it could never happen to me"

... where a woman who was said to be suicidal was shot and killed by three sheriff deputies here not far from where I live here in Beaverton.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141223431

She probably wasn't a person of color as I noted at the bottom of the thread after she was identified, but it is another example that of when we have an excessive number of murders, a huge number of those that aren't the most sensational of murders or police shootings get little of no attention, when if these happened in other countries where their gun deaths are a lot less than ours would be giving these other cases a lot more attention. Maybe if someone had a video shooting of this woman getting shot, or similarly for that other murder in the report of the original post here, they might have gotten more attention.

We are getting desensitized by not being able to give attention to all of these cases at once. And therefore unconsciously we're getting more used to violence being a part of American life. It's pretty sad, but I think this is a side effect of having so many guns out there in society, and many of them getting misused.

And do not forget that at least thirty people die EVERY SINGLE DAY in this country from gun violence. And that's not counting the suicides or the "accidents" and I'm pretty sure it doesn't count those killed by police, which is more than one a day.

... and as I note are becoming desensitized when faced with them all, where they focus on the big ones like Sandy Hook or Roseburg, and the others get almost ignored, where in other countries where they don't have near the same amount of violence that we do, other incidents that get ignored would be talked about a lot and dealt with more instead of forgotten the next day.

I think this is why cops feel that they can get away with so much here too. Because they think we're desensitized to all of these different reports, and don't really have time in our lives to think about them constantly. It isn't until many start having the video of the details of that violence being shown on the news and social media that really puts in front of us what really happens with them that has made it more of an issue recently.

I think one should look at Australia's gun buyback program and other efforts there to stop their earlier violence when they had more weapons at large like we do now and how it has significantly reduced violence there. We should be looking at borrowing what they did or some variant of it to help us stop this now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/

Now, I'd also like to see us borrow instant runoff voting and mandatory voting processes that they put in place to there, but that's another question for another thread!