It was channel 4 for us, because channel 3 was the local CBS affiliate and it would interfere with the signal from the NES. There was a switch on the console to flip between 3 and 4, because it varied depending on location which channel was optimal.
Channel 3 was CBS, 5 was ABC, 12 was NBC, and that was it.
The ABC affiliate would also broadcast Sesame Street because for most of my childhood, we didn't have a local public television station. When we finally did get one, you had to get cable to pick it up where I lived. I have vague memories of having cable in the house for a brief time around the time the ABC station stopped carrying the show, but my parents dropped it pretty soon afterward when we started to want to watch exclusively Nickelodeon. At least I always assumed that was the cause, but the cost of cable was probably a bigger factor. They compensated for that by recording movies that came on network TV with the VCR, and we happily rewatched those constantly instead of whatever we were missing on cable. We had whole shelves full of just VHS tapes full of movies recorded off the TV.
When the discourse goes in circles and gets nowhere, it becomes a perceived waste to continue it. The people who profit from gun sales -- including the politicians who reap campaign contributions from exploiting misconceptions about it -- like it this way.
He didn't exactly need accuracy when there was a sea of targets in front of him, especially if his objective was to hit as many of them as possible before they could disperse.
People have been studying the psychology of mass killers since the 70s. Without an actual living subject at hand in this case, it's hard to do anything more than speculate. I tend to agree that it would be useful to know more about what pushed him to such an act, but how do you suggest going about this? Should we round up and interrogate everyone he knew in his life? Would that even be productive?
Motive isn't as mysterious as we like to pretend it is. All it really required was a loss of fundamental empathy for his fellow humans. We see that everywhere these days. He's not unique in that respect. What's unique is the lengths he went to to commit this act. He seemed to want the spectacle of it. Like many serial killers, perhaps the idea of murder gave him a rush of feeling he couldn't find anywhere else in his life, and so he figured why not get as much of that as he could?
Again, it's all speculation. And it's also not hard to trace it back to a sickness eating at the roots of our society. What do you do with that knowledge? What can any of us do but try a little harder in our own lives to be kind to others and generous to those who might be quietly slipping down into the lake of poison seething under the world?
I mean you can discuss it to death, but without facts -- which don't exist, because he didn't tell anyone the intimate workings of his fucked up mind -- the best you can do is speculate. By all means, go ahead.
But but but why did he spray bullets at a crowd with intent to murder hundreds? Why, man, why? We need his manifesto, his tax records, the political affiliations of his associates and family! How else am I supposed to fit him into my narrative if I can't prove why he thought to do the unthinkable?
Even if they could, I don't know why you would jump to that idea when the guy fucking shot 400 people. He clearly wasn't right in the head. He also had a history of heavy gambling and drinking. I don't smell conspiracy on this one. This was just a mentally unwell guy who made a decision to murder; it is, unfortunately, a quintessentially American story that keeps repeating.
Those gun bans weren't passed until 2023, which really puts the lie to the assertion that we stopped talking about it.
Maybe it's more accurate to say we ran out of new things to say about it, and that's why it's not front and center in the news at this current moment. It's also a hugely divisive issue and nobody seems to have a solution to the problem that doesn't just piss off a bunch of other people, so in an election year it's the last thing policy makers want to bring up.
I have a group text with my immediate family so we can coordinate semi-regular get-togethers, and I do the same with my own kids, but that's it.
(There's no way I'd be able to get my parents to learn how use anything more complicated anyhow, and just getting everyone in my own household to use a shared calendar was a whole thing. Simpler is better.)
My wife, however, likes staying informed, if not always in touch, and so dutifully does all the obligatory proud parent posting on facebook.
She lets me know if anything important comes up from one of the relatives on there.
Distant family stays distant, which is how I like it, because most of them are pretty right wing anyway and the less I have to engage with their gibberish the better. Otherwise I only visit facebook occasionally to browse a shitposting page for a podcast I listen to. It's better this way.
It was channel 4 for us, because channel 3 was the local CBS affiliate and it would interfere with the signal from the NES. There was a switch on the console to flip between 3 and 4, because it varied depending on location which channel was optimal.
Channel 3 was CBS, 5 was ABC, 12 was NBC, and that was it.
The ABC affiliate would also broadcast Sesame Street because for most of my childhood, we didn't have a local public television station. When we finally did get one, you had to get cable to pick it up where I lived. I have vague memories of having cable in the house for a brief time around the time the ABC station stopped carrying the show, but my parents dropped it pretty soon afterward when we started to want to watch exclusively Nickelodeon. At least I always assumed that was the cause, but the cost of cable was probably a bigger factor. They compensated for that by recording movies that came on network TV with the VCR, and we happily rewatched those constantly instead of whatever we were missing on cable. We had whole shelves full of just VHS tapes full of movies recorded off the TV.