Are the recent random shootings the beginning of a societal breakdown?

[kentuck]

Have guns and violence finally pushed our country to a breaking point?

A small girl is shot attempting to retrieve a basketball from a neighbor's yard.

A young lady is murdered because she pulled her car into the wrong driveway, while looking for the home of a friend.

Young cheerleaders are shot as they mistakingly get into a car in a grocery story parking lot.

A young black man is shot because he rang the doorbell of someone while he was looking for his brother.

Someone was shot because he got into the wrong car at a gas station.

People delivering groceries by paid delivery are shot at by a neighboring homeowner.

Is this a new phenomenon or has this been happening all along but is just now being reported?

Or has the hatred, division, and paranoia finally taken root?

[erronis]

1. I'll say yes, probably. But for many Americans it has been happening for decades, centuries.

The non-whites have always had to deal with these issues. Class, gender, race, religious distinctions have been around forever.

Recent immigrant groups have been marginalized and harassed and even murdered.

The societal breakdown along purely ideological divisions may be happening. But these are probably also part of the race, gender, etc. model. If I'm a (r) white man facing a (d) white man then it's unlikely that it's a societal discussion. We may shoot each other over an argument about beer or money or sex or something.

We need a multi-dimensional Venn diagram to map all of the overlaps and places where "breakdowns" can occur.

[Sympthsical]

2. We're running about our usual

We're at 5,531 gun deaths exempting suicides so far this year. Source:

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

We're a little less than a third of the way through the year. Account for an uptick in summer, because that's a thing, and we'll land somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 deaths. The numbers will be similar to 2020, 2021, and 2022.

We're at 169 mass shootings so far, which puts us on track to be maybe a little lower than last year (647).

The biggest jump in gun violence in recent years is between 2019 to 2020.

Long story short, I think Covid messed up society a bit - people forgot how to cope and deal with other people. My theory at least. Turns out isolation isn't so great for human behavior.

At the moment, the media have decided to discuss it.

[EarnestPutz]

3. I'd say that our division, anger and hatred have increased with the politics of grievance, ......

......starting with Reagan and coming to full bloom with TFG. But I think that all the shootings, the ease with which people pull out a gun as a response to anything that angers or threatens them is a phenomenon that feeds itself. The more it happens, the more people feel that's it's an appropriate response. Just read about a man who pulled a gun and waved it around because the butcher wasn't helping him fast enough. When arrested he said he wasn't going to shoot anyone, just wanted his steaks.

[Irish_Dem]

4. The greatest moral decline in American history.

[Upthevibe]

5. kentuck.............

The grandson of the 85 year old who shot the black 16 year old teenager who rang his doorbell said that his grandfather had been radicalized by the news and he specifically noted Fox News.

The 65 year old who killed the 20 year old girl who accidentally pulled into the wrong driveway has been described as having a "sour" disposition.

The teenage cheerleaders realized they were in the wrong car and were walking away when they were shot!

I am sick to my stomach. IMHO, it IS THE EFFING GUNS!!!!!!!! Combined with the radicalization by the media..........

I think old fashioned gun fights in parking lots, grocery stores, etc. will start taking place more and more. Especially in states where the gun laws are so lenient.....

Maybe this will wake up Mr. and Ms. average citizen (those who stay out of politics) who don't feel this effects them....I just don't know........

[hardluck]

6. No. It's background noise in a country of 335 million

Gun violence was much higher in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I grew up in Los Angeles and the news every Monday morning in the 80s was all the shootings that occurred during the weekend.

These types of random shootings have been a constant since at least the 60s.

Here’s the one I remember from the 90s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Yoshihiro_Hattori

There were many more.