Apr. 1-Apr. 7: The YouTube Shooting
Active shootings are, unfortunately, commonplace, but this week’s instance was an anomaly for multiple reasons.
Welcome to the Zeitgeist Chronicle. Every weekend we catch you up on the past week’s most noteworthy current events. Sometimes it’ll be what everybody’s talking about, other times it may be something we’d like to bring attention to. Our goal is keep you informed enough to be able to have a conversation about any of these current events. This week:
The YouTube Shooting
This past Tuesday, a woman by the name of Nasim Najafi Aghdam entered YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, and opened fire on YouTube employees sitting at an outdoor patio. Four people were wounded, but nobody was killed, besides the shooter, who shot herself.
Since the shooting, we have learned that the shooter’s motivation appears to be revenge for YouTube changing it’s guidelines that determine whether or not a channel can be monetized. (But of course, some prefer to focus on her nationality).
The shooter was a creator on YouTube who’s videos were particularly popular in Iran, and she was allegedly upset that YouTube raised the bar for channels like hers to be eligible for advertising.
While shootings in the U.S. are, unfortunately, not uncommon, this instance was particularly abnormal for two reasons. First: the shooter was a female, which is almost never the case with active or mass shootings. It happens so rarely, in fact, that studies can’t even be conducted on them.
The second: the gun used in the shooting was a Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol. This stands out because the guns used in many of the recent mass shootings have been assault rifles, and as mentioned, four people were wounded, meaning nobody was killed, something that does not happen when the gun used is an assault rifle.
Following the fallout from the Florida Parkland shooting and the March For Our Lives led by some of its survivors, you might think that we’re on the verge of change. I have my doubts.
You can never control or legislate what’s in people’s hearts. Anger will arise. What you can control is the means by which angry people have to take out their anger. You don’t even have to get rid of all guns! The difference between going on a shooting spree with an assault rifle, which generally has 30+ bullets in a magazine, compared to a pistol, which often has half of that, is the difference between 12 people dying and 4 people being wounded. Now imagine that difference for each of the mass shootings over the past few years and how many people would still be alive, and then ask yourself why assault rifles are not banned and whether or not things really are changing.
