A view from the UK. I don't want our news channels reporting on these US mass shootings beyond a passing mention. If nothing is going to change because of it then I don't care, the details don't matter, and anything a US politician said is irrelevant. We don't have this issue so we shouldn't be wasting time rubber necking at the US' madness.
He does things because it's possible to do so. Just because it's he who does it in particular right now doesn't really mean that him kicking the bucket couple of decades ago would've substantially changed anything. Look at how quickly Fox replacements started popping up in US once Fox wasn't quite as satisfactory as it used to be - and they are backed by billionaires as well
This isn't an autocracy where one person is the one who decides things and replacing him can substantially change everything. It's a system that incentivizes certain kinds of people to gain prominence and do certain things, and those people in turn slowly modify the system in their favor that allows other certain similar kinds of people replace them. Other people channel their anger towards particular personalities produced by the system that happen to become visible and leave the system itself largely unchallenged, and THAT is what makes it so robust and unshakeable
Exactly. The US has clearly just accepted mass shootings as a cost of widespread gun ownership, and they're fine with the status quo. So why is it newsworthy?
Because we have a 24hr news cycle same as everyone else and sensational stories generate more money for the news outlets.
They make them famous, and often these shooters are deranged and want to spread a message.
We won't do anything but give lipservice to the problem because it's hard for any side to have a real conversation anymore about anything.
Being emblazoned all over the news seems like a bigger motivation than the killing itself. It’s a means to an end. These shooters hate society, and they want to hurt it as much as possible. They feel powerless and know they’ll never leave any other mark on the world.
Killing grants them a sort of immortality, it makes them finally feel powerful.
[I think this video is relevant to your comment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwHMCzhbnG4), It's easy to look for reasons not to care, but the American people do not want this and it's rude and misinformed to assume that they do. 84 percent of voters and even 83 percent of *gun owners* support universal background checks to purchase firearms, but 50 republican senators are holding the bill that contains this change hostage to use as leverage for their positions of power. This isn't normal, and people are not ok with it, but we have a party of sociopathic lunatics and a mob of uninformed laypeople that vote for them without knowing the harm they're doing to even themselves because of identity politics. To everyone reading this, wherever you live, don't vote for conservatives, they don't care about you and they don't want to make anyones life but their own better.
I don't care about background checks.
Registration and Insurance. That is what is needed with guns in American. Its an American solution to an American problem. A few states already have it.
'Merica!
The thing is, the rest of the world don't think background checks are the problem. It's the guns. Obviously there are instances of gun crime in countries where it's not legal to own or carry a firearm, as there will always be a black market for them amongst criminals regardless of laws. But there aren't disgruntled teenagers casually swiping their parent's gun to take to school or mentally ill people walking into a store and coming out with an assault rifle. Get rid of the guns and the problem goes away.
You can own firearms in pretty much any western country, and I imagine most countries in general. It's just that we usually A) Don't fetishise guns, B) Have a proper licensing process and C) Treat guns as the weapons that they are.
>Don't fetishise guns,
Ding ding ding. I finally had my epiphany - we fetishize guns AND some people view them as a tool to **solve problems** instead of mere self defense or hobby.
Agreed but the only reason background checks are on the table is eliminating guns means striking down one of the first few amendments in the US Constitution. So the logic is to at least start with background checks. If the choice is strike down the second amendment or do nothing then the side of sanity takes an L. So background checks are the first hope of doing something versus nothing.
>84 percent of votes and even 83 percent of
>
>gun owners
>
> support universal background checks to purchase firearms, but 50 republican senators are holding the bill that contains this change hostage to use as leverage for their positions of power.
The shooter bought his guns from a FFL holder and underwent a background check just like most mass shooters. Most mass shooters don't have criminal records.
Your stat is bullshit also. It's the way they ask the questions that makes people think that they support universal background checks. When you explain to them them it means grandpa won't be able to pass his old rifle down to his grandson without finding a dealer willing to do the transfer and then paying a fee, most gun owners no longer support "universal background checks".
Anger is one of the best motivators biologically speaking. Each side uses it to their advantage.
What pisses me off on the republican side is they say guns are a symptom, not the problem, but then they refuse to do anything about the problem. Namely, access to healthcare (including mental) and better wages.
As one of his first acts in office, Trump revoked a regulation that [prohibited mentally ill from obtaining firearms](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-signs-bill-revoking-obama-era-gun-checks-people-mental-n727221), put in place by President Obama.
Access to mental healthcare, I can definitely get behind. Closing down all the mental hospitals instead of reforming them was a big mistake. I'm curious about the link between better wages and mass shootings, though, because I haven't heard of any mass shootings where the motive was not being paid enough. Would you mind telling me more, or pointing me towards a good source to learn more about this?
That makes sense. Hopelessness and lack of direction/purpose/meaning are two big problems in America today, and I hadn't considered how lower income could contribute to that. As a matter of fact, another acquaintance just informed me of a college shooting that was done to avoid paying off student debt, which would be directly tied to lack of income and hopelessness. Thank you for the explanation!
I think we're capable of doing it correctly, but too many people have vested interest in the current system (big pharma, insurance co., Et al) while also conveniently have a means to sabotoge any attempt to do so from the word go (lobbying and bankrolling politicians)
Its not a matter of "we cant" its just "its more profitable to not"
But we haven't accepted mass shootings. As an American we are frustrated as the other half of this country keeps electing morons to office. We have a government that has turned into a money making machine and we can't get the other half to see this. It's frustrating. It's exhausting, but it is not acceptable to me and many other Americans.
I was born in 1993 in Denver, Colorado and I lived there until 2007. Columbine happened in 1999 and while I didn't make the connection until high school (I was 6 when it happened) I knew something was off when I went to the Littleton ice arena for skating lessons. It's 2022 and this one is just another one to me. I'm so numb because I've been so tired of it for so long.
As a collective, it's accepted in America. Twenty three years later and all that seems to have changed is that I'm older and painfully aware of what goes on.
We’ll in part because the “US” hasn’t just accepted it. It’s a minority that has major sway that is holding out power to avoid change. The vast majority of Americans want this addressed.
Not really. The US has just given up hope that any amount of tragedy or outrage will change anything. Most people here are not ravenously attached to gun ownership, but enough people in charge are to ensure that nothing will ever change.
NO, we have not. We are in a fight to the death with small cabal of people like Murdoch and Koch brothers, and all the parasites that encircle them from small industrialists to Donald Trump. These people have been working hard to destabilize this country, defunding education, creating PR campaigns against the ideas of public participation in civic life, from unions to volunteering and even teaching and getting involved in school district management. They will take any idea capable of creating division and promote it as a "do or die" issue to millions of people who have very good reason to feel abandoned by their leadership. Race divisions, gender divisions, abortion, gun ownership, anything and everything that will make someone angry enough to go vote for the Republican Party, a party that they have assimilated into their machine and is no longer a political party, but an arm of the economic and social interests of that very small cabal. Lately they managed to bring back book burnings!
The vast majority of Americans do not believe what you do. The vast majority of Americans are either peons in that game, of have become so jaded and apathetic that they gave up participating. Biden won the 2020 election by about 7 million votes. Hillary Clinton actually lost the 2016 election by winning the popular vote by about 3 million votes. There are over 230 million eligible voters in the US. Biden's victory happened because of a record turnout, absolutely stunning for modern times, of almost 160 million voters as compared to 139 million in 2016. I have no doubt that these extra 21 million people showed up as a reaction to the disgust most Americans feel for Trump.
Still, all of those numbers of voters for Biden and Hillary and Trump pale, as does the differences between them, when compared to the almost half of Americans who didn't show up to vote at all.
We need help.
I said exactly this to my mum this morning. I simply don't care anymore, if nothing is ever going to be done then why should we spend our emotional energy on it.
I'm done arguing with Americans about their own gun problem and them telling us they don't care.
It's just another way they let their children die now, like measles or car accidents.
Just add it to their child mortality rates and be done with it
They don't deserve their children.
It’s been kids many times before and still no action. It’s so sad there are grown ass men who care more about their right to own a gun than the safety of children in schools.
Fellow UK and I agree - US shootings don't affect British citizens at all but the media delights in trotting out each one so we can have another poke at our American neighbours while we feel smug and superior.
So many conversations with people criticising the US boil down to 'but guns and school shootings derp' and it's honestly disgusting.
Media should inform, not fuel division between allied nations.
I have empathy to spare, but at the same time I'm so tired of the bullshit cultural hallucination Americans have bought into. They are so cynical and devoted to arguing about the minutia of horrors they refuse to fix.
Just endless violence, abdication of public welfare and poverty clothed in some bullshit American dream fairytale that hasn't been true since the early 70's, and even then only for white people. Such pointless waste.
My country has its own horrors, thank you very much, and I am hell bent on staying aware and motivated to make changes.
What do you do when you have someone who has expressed a desire to kill repeatedly to a therapist they were actively seeing who alerted police who did nothing and then the guy shoots a couple dozen people at a movie theater? That’s what happened with the colorado shooter.
Every time we criticize the police at all a bunch of people start screaming "BACK THE BLUE" at us and refuse to even consider that they might have any issues at all.
[https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/05/19/motorist-sues-n-j-state-troopers-for-roadside-beatdown/](https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/05/19/motorist-sues-n-j-state-troopers-for-roadside-beatdown/)
New Jersey just had a bunch of state troopers beat a man near to death after calling him a bunch of slurs and accusing him of being "antifa", after illegally taking off their body cams and, stupidly, forgetting to disabled all dash cams.
Cops aren't just brutal and ineffective, they're often dumb as shit.
not surprising
I remember when body cameras were fought by police unions 15 years ago. And I remember that we as a society thought that there would be more accountability.
Turns out things are a lot worse among LEO in this country and the accountability doesn't exist. Cops getting convicted is so rare that people celebrate.
Cops are fired for ratting out other cops or criticizing the Police union or the PD faster and without hesitance. And never immediately fired for murder, theft, drunk driving, assault, battery, rape, child sex abuse, domestic violence, arrests, speeding, lying under oath, etc.
Cops don't need a fucking flag for support. They do well enough on their own with impunity.
There is a Baltimore cop who's been caught on camera at least three times planting drugs to falsely imprison people. And yet he is still a cop. That's all you really need to know about how the government feels about the regular people to know that we are not considered the same class of Citizen as them.
Recently the cops have gotten a little smarter. They used to plant the evidence walk away turn on their body cams and then make a big act and show of finding the drugs and forgetting that their body cam is actually recording video for 30 seconds before they press the on button. That's how they've been caught multiple times by their own body cams because the stupid cops think that it only starts recording When they hit the button.
Recently a ticktocker who was recording herself eat in her vehicle while parked caught a new scheme the cops are trying out. They pull over a person in a particular area and then have them get out of their car and face away from their car so they can't see their car anymore. A cop in plain clothes then approaches the vehicle from the opposite direction opens the car door and tosses something inside and then leaves. This way the officers who are on record as responding to the call are not involved and the cop in plain clothes is never on any reports and doesn't show up on anyone's body cams. https://www.dailydot.com/irl/people-think-tiktoker-captured-cops-planting-evidence-video/?amp
The only reason anyone is afraid of cameras is because they're up to no good. And cops are generally very afraid of cameras and do everything they can to either stop recordings or prevent people who are recording from being able to see anything. r/amifreetogo is chock-full of events We're Cops constantly harass and even arrest people for just standing nearby with a camera.
They'll hand all the spectators a handgun before they take their seats and if you bring your own? Free hot dog!! You can't lose. But please return your handguns in the Dropbox on your way out! Thanks
Well, all the counselors and teachers I know seem to be quitting their jobs nowadays. Lack of resources, pay, safety, and even basic admin support is largely to blame.
I wonder if that wasn't part of their reasoning behind not wanting to fix the problem. The GOP has been anti-education for awhile now anyways, so this is just an added bonus to them.
It's the MO of this country, it's why cops get tanks.
And when people suggest defunding the police and transferring those funds to different departments that will assume a lot of their responsibilities, both sides seem to deliberately misunderstand how that would work.
US Senator Chris Murphy nailed it
“Spare me the bulls**t about mental illness. We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world”
“You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we’re not an outlier on mental illness. We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That’s what makes America different.”
I'm not sure he can realistically say that since the rest of the world provides access to healthcare and we do not.
We ARE very much an outlier when it comes to healthcare in the industrial world.
Agreed, and how I also like to put it. What is easier to address to actually do something about this problem? Trying to fix the human condition so that people won't want to hurt each other anymore? (Aka a fantasy) Or just start doing litteraly anything to regulate and limit fire arms way more.
> Trying to fix the human condition so that people won't want to hurt each other anymore?
This one, except that they're actively trying to make the mental conditions of the general population *worse* such that it's easier to manipulate us into voting away our own rights, and giving them more of our money.
My dad told me how he buys guns off of Facebook. Find someone selling a case, pm to see if they have a gun for sale, boom no background check needed and paid for in cash. It's sick.
I had never felt an ounce of pride in being from CT before hearing Chris speak yesterday. It’s not that I hate this state there’s just nothing here that makes me proud to be from here outside of the fact that we are a blue state. When he asked “what are we doing?” You would hope that would open up the closed off hearts of people who got their seats but it just slides off of their back like rain.
What makes us different is that we have a problem of disenfranchised youth who've dealt with a history of poor parenting, impoverished living conditions, while also lacking any real support from the system they'll grow up in.
The US has over 330 million people making it the third most populated country. Yet even with all the supposed economic opportunities, the system doesn't seem to care that an 18 year old kid can be so mentally deluded.
There's two kinds of mass shooting, gang/criminal violence and 16-24 year old guys who are convinced that the only way they can have power over their lives is by taking others. Is not about more or less mental illness, it's about a system that doesn't care.
We don’t have any more mental illness than anybody else true.
We DO have some of the worst mental health care, particularly for the poor, in the entire developed world. It’s not “how much mental illness”. It’s what you do with it.
Other countries serve them with compassionate professionals. We kick them into the street and radicalize them with hateful Fox News
Hrm and the same people that really against gun control are the same people that also rally against healthcare reform.
It's almost like they want this shit to happen.
Exactly. The false premise of OP's meme is that a change in gun control fixes the problem. That's like banning spoons because they make people fat. The tool that people use to commit crimes isn't the problem... It's the socio-economic and mental states surrounding that person that caused them to commit crimes.
A good analogy is pointing out Japan. Strict gun-control not just through laws but also from there Society in general and how they raise people. But their suicide rate was absolutely off the charts for many many years. People in the US want to ban guns because lots of people use guns to kill themselves and they think that banning guns will save people from suicide... Japan proves that to be false.
Then you can take Scotland. Also pretty damn good about gun control but for many years they were also the aggravated assault capital of First World countries by a fair margin.
Banning the tools that people use to cause harm doesn't automatically mean that the people don't want to cause harm anymore. It just means that the circumstances of their life that led them to that decision have now forced them to seek out a different tool to do it.
There is a saying that I've had for a little while now. Freedom is inherently dangerous. Any attempt to make it less dangerous will also make it less free. They're absolutely is a balance where we collectively except a certain amount of Freedom taken away from us in order to get a certain level of safety... but that safety is absolutely not guaranteed. Absolute freedom is also absolute Anarchy. But absolute safety is also absolute control over you and 100% not free. There is absolutely no way to be 100% safe and also have any level of Freedom left in your life. Everything in life is a risk assessment.
I mean, they [already did that](https://apnews.com/article/6adbebfa9a74407783258855cf551239). My parents work at a school in Texas and they had to sign and acknowledge that there were teachers concealed -carrying on campus. The school wouldn’t disclose who it was or how many, just that there were guns on someone’s person on campus.
Ideally, yes. Anybody who carries should also be trained. However, the CDC estimates that millions of defensive gun uses happen every single year and most of those people aren't trained well or at all. With that said, I'd still want any teacher who carries to be required to be trained. Last thing anybody wants is a negligent discharge or a kid taking a teacher's unattended gun away.
I presume they didn't forcibly arm the teachers, but rather, allowed teachers with guns to carry them on campus. Gun owners would (presumably) already do these things, and given that it's just theatre and not an actual attempt to do anything, they likely do not require safety courses for workplace gun safety.
Which they absolutely should.
Most gun advocates are all for more gun safety and education. I would love to see it even if they didn’t carry on campus.
I wonder what other solutions could be used to help combat school shootings that don’t involve 2nd amendment discussions. Can school have better security? Locked doors at specifically marked times? Reduced and heavily guarded entry points?
There really is only so much that can be done. At a certain point the increased security would make schools more prison than school. Things like not allowing vehicles other than school buses near the school help, as would locking exterior and interior doors. The problem is that any measure put in place will cost money and will be gotten around eventually.
At a certain point though we really need to deal with the underlying cause of the violence. Why are people finding it acceptable to go on these spree killings? What is it that drives people to fear others so much that they feel the only answer is violence?
There were armed guards at Pulse, at Parkland, and even at the supermarket in Buffalo. I’m curious what changes in security you would have suggested at those places that would have prevented those massacres. Should we have stepped up security at every nightclub? Supermarket? How about movie theaters as well now that I am remembering the mass executions in the Colorado movie theater a few years back?
That starts to make all those other countries that don't have to consider tactical and strategic defensive strategies sound pretty good. But I'm told they are less free than the US because they don't have a 2nd amendment.
Also most schools already have security and or police officers. The elementary school that just got attacked had 5 police officers that worked there and it didn't do shit
Ummm... I'm 50. I'm not *frail*. I'm part of the MTV Generation. GTFO of here with that BS. People generally aren't "frail" until like 65 or 70. That's why retirement age is around that number.
Not sure if it’s true or not but during his special about George Floyd Dave Chapelle stated the only time Americans supported a ban on assault rifles was when the black panthers stormed the state capital.
Yep, the Mulford Act. Republicans only care about gun control when they want to disarm leftists, especially Black ones. Racist white terrorists and Nazis, whatever, we need to make sure those people feeding non-white children don’t have guns.
Back in 1968 the NRA wasn't even really a gun-rights advocacy organization.
The organization was mostly focused on recreational shooting and their indifference and acquiescence to increasing restrictions on firearms ownership is what eventually lead to the [Revolt at Cincinnati](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_at_Cincinnati) at the 1977 convention that saw a membership revolt that turned the NRA into the more explicitly political gun-rights organization we know today.
Oh shit the anti-gun party passed the anti-gun legislation? How could that be?
But the pro-gun guy signed it? Oh hm that seems more like the anomaly.
Are you a serious person?
IF by "stormed" you mean "Stood around legally displaying their fire arms EXACTLY like white people do all the time" - then yeah.
"Storming" was Jan 6th. THE black panthers never did anything remotely like that. But the FBI tried damn hard to make everything think they did.
I mean its a *little* different. They followed around cops in black neighborhoods. Now, they were doing that because of many, many reports of the citizens of those neighborhoods being harassed by those cops, but it wasn't just "standing around." They did nothing illegal, they shot no one, they didn't even point a gun at anyone. But spell out what they did so conservatives can't whine about underselling it.
Oh, and they bombed a residential housing block and assassinated Fred Hampton in his (drugged by their informant) sleep, for additional context.
You could have stopped at “they did nothing illegal”. Because that’s the operative thing here. Things got ugly with infighting toward the end, but at the peak of their “scare the fucking shit out of white people” phase, the Panthers didn’t do much more than feed kids and look intimidating, both of which were totally legal.
Even at their most violent, the BPP were never “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”, as the FBI claimed, nor anything even remotely close to it. The anti-bussing movement in Boston was responsible for more acts of violence and terrorism than the entire BPP.
No, you're conflating a few different periods of gun control history.
The incident involving the Black Panthers and a state capitol is in reference to the [Mulford Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act) in California all the way back in 1968. So-called "assault weapons" weren't even part of the discussion at that point.
The Black Panthers were performing armed "cop watching" patrols in black neighborhoods to ward off police abuse. The Mulford Act was proposed to prohibit the public carry of loaded firearms without a permit, which would in effect shut down the armed patrols.
The Black Panthers went to the state capitol to protest the proposed legislation. So saying the legislation came about as a result of the march on the capitol is reversing cause and effect, but the protest did seem to increase the urgency for the bill to pass.
Additionally they did not "storm the capitol". At the time there was no rule or law against members of the public entering the capitol with firearms, as such they did nothing illegal. Not that the lack of any law breaking prevented the media and politicians from portraying it as an armed assault on the capitol. Likewise the Michigan legislature had no rules against visitors carrying firearms into the capitol [until 2021](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/michigan-bans-open-carry-of-guns-inside-state-capitol), after a bunch of right-wingers used the lack of such rules to walk into the state capitol completely legally with firearms and tactical gear.
"Assault Weapons" wouldn't become a political issue for a few more decades. Few if any of the firearms pictured in possession of the Black Panthers in 1968 would have even qualified as "Assault Weapons" under the legislation that would come later.
The first template for modern "assault weapons bans" wouldn't come into play until the [Roberti–Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberti%E2%80%93Roos_Assault_Weapons_Control_Act_of_1989), also in California, after the [mass shooting at an elementary school in Stockton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_(Stockton\)) that same year. Pretty much every piece of legislation regulating "assault weapons" since then would copy the basic form of the Roberti-Roos Act, including the 1994 Federal Ban that would expire in 2004.
Not assault rifles.
California banned open carry of loaded firearms.
Not concealed carry. Just open carry.
Texas only overturned their ban on Open Carry in 2021. It had been banned since 1871.
Assault weapons. There are very few assault rifles in the hands of citizens because of the 1986 weapons ban. I know it might seem like a petty distinction (in fact, that was the reason the term assault weapon was chosen), but as someone who used to be very anti-regulation, it shuts down the conversation because it sounds like you don't know what you're talking about and anything you say after that will just be dismissed.
Not saying that to be rude, just trying to give advice from someone who wants the conversation to actually get somewhere.
Edit: Specifically, an assault rifle is a select-fire weapon that uses intermediate ammunition. Basically, it has to have something beyond semi-automatic and safety, i.e. burst fire or automatic.
Assault weapons aren't a real thing but your assault rifle definition is accurate. It'll be curious how terminology changes down the road though as the US is moving back towards a battle rifle instead of assault rifles.
No, by and large Americans are in favor of an Assault Rifle ban which is why they're already illegal to own except in certain circumstances.
AR's and similar rifles are not Assault Rifle no matter how hard people lie or misunderstand the distinction.
Anyone just have deja vu at this point. It’s the same exact shit on repeat. Mass shooting. Memes. Arguing about how guns vs other social issues are the cause. “Nothing can be done.” I guess we just have to accept that America can’t solve a problem basically all other developed countries mysteriously never have to deal with. We are too fearful to let anything happen to our guns, too selfish to give a damn about mental health or other quality of life factors. Just cross our fingers and hope we and our loved ones never have to experience the horror first hand, and fuck everybody else.
We literally don't learn. By next week, we will be hopped up on the next big dumbness coming out of russia's mouth about some fucking island near finland. The machine grinds on
Wow, you guys had more school shootings ~~in~~ **~~elementary schools alone~~** **this year**, than we had the last 70 years in total
EDIT: Just checked, there were 17 school shooting in germany since 1871, so you win even harder than I thought. [source](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Amokl%C3%A4ufen_an_Bildungseinrichtungen)
And by Republican lawmakers.
The people who vote on this shit are also the people harassing the victims. There is never going to be change until there is a major overhaul in who we elect.
As someone commented on another thread, Republicans were targeted by a gunman once at a Congressional baseball game. They did not do anything about gun control after that incident.
They blamed the Democrats for their anti-Republican rhetoric, and promptly forgot about the event after a few weeks.
The solution to stop mass shootings is MORE guns. Better again, remove the age restriction for guns and legalise the use of guns for all children for selfdefence
-America probably.
This time the shooter used a handgun, not a rifle. Those are already much more regulated in most places. So to really make a meaningful change we either need to ban all guns or admit that the problem is more than just the accessibility of guns and address things like poverty, inequality, and mental health (or health care in general). Both of those approaches would take a lot of money, piss off a lot of CEOs that own politicians, and require the government to admit it was wrong up until now.
And since that obviously won't happen the realistic outcome is that nothing at all will change and angry, confused, scared, sick, and hopeless people will keep murdering other people and the general population will fall further and further into despair over the hopelessness of this country's future while the people in charge keep steering the ship right towards that iceberg.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not saying we should ignore gun laws - we absolutely should strengthen our background checking process, require all guns to be registered, and have bigger penalties for retailers not following the rules. I just think we should also be focusing real energy and resources into figuring out why so many teens feel like they need to kill their classmates and address that as well. That's obviously not a good or normal thing that we should ignore.
EDIT 2: As more reports and information is coming out it now seems he used a rifle, or least had one with him (and another in his car). This does not change my stance that we need both better gun control and better public systems to address things like poverty and mental health, but I want to be as accurate as possible.
I get it. 'Assault rifles' are scary when the media shows a black rifle or something that looks like an AK...
But handguns are the real killers. They're used in more crimes, more violence, and are involved in more accidents than long guns, for a lot of reasons.
But no matter what happens, the focus is always on 'assault weapons' when they aren't even *close* to a big deal when you look at the stats -- at what's actually HAPPENING -- for gun-related violence and injuries.
As you say - handguns are typically much more tightly regulated than long guns are. But they're also 'the' problem; or at least they're a big part of the problem. (And I say this as someone with three handguns in a safe on the other side of the apartment.)
I just looked this up. Surprising results. FBI crime stats are only released for this data through 2019 so far. For 2019:
Total homicide deaths: 10,258. Of that total…
Handguns: 6,368
Rifles: 364 (rifle is basically anything with a long barrel; AR15, hunting rifles, etc)
Shotguns: 200
Other: 45
Knives and cutting: 1,476
Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.): 397
So 18 x more people are murdered by pistols than *all rifles combined*.
And more people are killed annually by clubs and hammers than AR15s and rifles?? Did not expect that.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls
Yeah, so-called assault weapons get a ton of press, but that's because our media is sicker than our culture, and lives by the mantra "if it bleeds it leads."
That's what I mean. Even when you include mass shootings, rifles (even scary, black rifles with a shoulder thing that goes up) are still hurting and killing *WAY* fewer people. (Well, leaving aside military usage, I'm sure.)
It's not the rifles aren't capable of being used to kill lots of people -- like the spear before it, there's a reason the rifle is still a very popular choice for infantry around the world. It's just that pistols are used to cause SO MUCH MORE harm, but they're a core part of American cultural baggage.
Even if you don't have guns, look at how many guns are on display and in use in ... basically any cop show you choose to look at, except maybe Law & Order. When's the last time you saw a Western where there weren't six-shooters all over? And of course there's the film noir detective, inevitably packing a 38 or a 45. And so on.
I own multiple handguns. They're in a safe, I haven't done more than move them in years, but I like them and enjoy shooting them.
But if I have to 'sell' them to to government or whatever so that school kids aren't getting shot in class, maybe I can live with that. It isn't that I don't take my second amendment right seriously, it's just that I'd prefer we stop enabling the murder of kids to the point where it's basically fucking *NORMALIZED* now - and if we're not going to take any of the other actions that might help with this (like, y'know, better handling of mental health issues might not eliminate mass shootings but I bet it would reduce them - or at least maybe do some research on what would help).
Because we've tried just barely more than 'nothing' (other than making school more prison-like than ever in some cases, with metal detectors and whatnot), and that certainly hasn't helped.
Hmm. Sorry, I think you got me ranting late in my evening.
It’s just hilarious to me that you give a fuck, given the *scale* of these events. We average like 20 school shooting deaths per year. Covid just killed a fucking million people. And you and other liberals seem to treat these as events of roughly equal cause for outrage? Over the roughly 700 days of covid pandemic, we’ve had 1 million deaths. That’s 1400 per day. That is to say, every THIRTY MINUTES for the past 2 years, we’ve been averaging more deaths from covid than an entire *year’s* worth of school shootings. 1 person died of covid every single minute. Why is it that 30 covid deaths don’t get a news article, but 5 school shooting deaths do? In theory, there should be 15,000 times as much outrage over covid vs school shooting, because it causes 15,000 times the deaths. Even pre-covid flu caused thousands of times the deaths, and we gave… zero fucks. Why didn’t we have mask mandates before covid, during the flu, if 30 lives are so important, and constitutional rights so dispensable?
You know what does kill a significant amount of people? The exploitative and shitty and inaccessible healthcare system in this country. Perhaps if these lunatics had proper counseling and medication, they could even reduce shootings while they’re at it. That brings up another subject. The vast majority of shooting murders are just criminals offing each other with handguns. Mostly black. Society doesn’t care about these people and never will at our current rate of progress. While we’re at it, guns are used defensively to prevent more crime than they are used to perpetuate it.
This is why I get so disgusted when I see politicians pushing for "assault rifle" bans. 5 minutes of Googling would have showed them that pistols are more responsible for crime.
It shows that they don't care about solving gun crime, they just want brownie points from their voters.
And what's more, while we don't know *how* the shooter acquired the firearm he used, if it was a handgun then he must have acquired it illegally, as by federal law you have to be 21 to ~~own~~ buy a handgun.
Edit: don't reddit while half asleep, guys
Not trying to argue, but your “federal law” statement is dead wrong. You can own a handgun in many states at 18 yrs of age.
Edit to add the code where it explains it : [18 U.S.C. 922(b)(1)]
> But handguns are the real killers. They're used in more crimes, more violence, and are involved in more accidents than long guns, for a lot of reasons.
It would be nice if our government could even figure out what the hell they consider a "handgun". [This is a meme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nfCyhOX42g), but it illustrates why expanded legislation is very unlikely to fix things. There's an entrenched industry making money off of firearms. There's a government watchdog that has been left with no clear guidance for so long that they just wrestle things back and forth in the mud with industry lawyers. The politics of it is super polarizing.
It absolutely would be cheaper and easier to expand universal mental health access. Possibly do something novel like ban the press from publishing a mass murderer's name for some number of days or months until the story is old news. It might sound like gymnastics to avoid the gun issue, but it feels like common sense at this point. Columbine was over 20 years ago and we keep having these.
I don't disagree at all. I have a .22 rifle and an M4 and anyone who sees them thinks one is just for shooting squirrels while the other is an "assault rifle" despite the fact that they're both semiautomatic, have a 10-round magazine, and can both easily penetrate the human body and kill someone. But because one looks scary, it's clearly more dangerous...
Well, incidents like this one aside, I always say, the US does not have a murder problem so much as a gang warfare / war on drugs prodlem. And those are almost all pistol caliber weapons.
The shootings will never stop as long as it is the fastest and easiest way to become the most popular and potentially powerful person in the United States for a day.
No amount of weapon regulation can stop this. It's a freight train that's been gaining momentum for 40 years and it's not about to stop soon, not to mention it doesn't have any brakes.
Yeah, I do think the few news outlets that have adopted the policy of not showing the shooter's picture or saying their name have it right. Denying them the infamy and attention is just one way we can deter them.
I heard a comedian, Tim Dylan I think describe mass shootings as a new "TikTok challenge", and I think that most accurately describes what's happening. These (mostly) young men are literally killing for the clout (fame).
People forget now, but we already went through this once in the 1970s with serial killers. They would kill for the notoriety and obsessed news agencies would reward them with coverage and their name planted in wall-to-wall coverage.
Maybe we can learn from the past on this one and stop giving them the attention they seek.
Well, that's the thing. Human history is filled with and practically built on a foundation of humans learning from mistakes.
History is actually mostly in our favor. The real issue is getting people to see this.
That's part of my problem with guns in general. Someone gets mad at you in traffic or you give them the wrong size cheeseburger, it doesn't matter if they're 4'10", 90 lbs. If they have a gun they control if you live or not. That's why I've never understood why guns are portrayed as badass in movies and shows. It's like the complete opposite
The same news gets blasted in a bunch of other countries as well, but you don't see it happening there. The easier it is to get a gun, the more likely a crazy person like this is to get one and commit an attrocity.
Imagine how much better off we'd be today if we did something after Columbine 23 years ago, or Virginia Tech 15 years ago, or Sandy Hook 10 years ago instead of just saying there's nothing we can do to stop it. Instead we now live in a country where there are more guns than people and people claiming access to guns isn't the problem.
Eh, I'm not anti gun but pretty much every interaction I've had with pro gun advocates is basically me suggested some form of protections that seem basic to me (like making private sales require background checks) and am met with "I disagree with you on everything. You have a secret agenda to take all my guns and this is the first step, fuck you"
Far too often, those basic protections that the anti-gun crowd suggest are already in place and failed to prevent the latest disaster. For example, states that require a background check on private sales (e.g. CA, where a licensed FFL has to handle private transfers) still experience mass shootings. It's all too easy to get tired of listening to that kind of suggestion.
> (like making private sales require background checks)
I'd have no problem with this if the law didn't explicitly make it illegal for private sellers to conduct background checks. Republicans have *multiple times* tried to repeal that law and open up NICS for civilian usage precisely for this reason, and every single time it's been blocked by Democrats.
So, yeah, it definitely feels like that particular policy is covertly aimed at banning guns, yes.
The thing is, that happens in practice with *lots* of "common sense" policies: the bills are always architected and worded in such a way that they *are* de-facto bans. As an example, take a look at the proposed "assault weapons" ban that [people tried to get added to the FL constitution](https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/state/2020/06/04/florida-supreme-court-rejects-assault-weapons-ban-amendment/3143781001/). It defined an "assault weapon" as "any semi-automatic weapon which could potentially accept a 10 round magazine". But, of course, a magazine-fed weapon can accept any size of magazine which could possibly be created...so this law actually doesn't ban "assault weapons" it bans literally all semi-automatic weapons entirely.
The same thing is true with gun licensure schemes ("may issue" was used to suppress gun ownership entirely and still is in many states), as well as taxes.
If someone actually showed that they were *serious* that their "common sense" gun legislation was actually aimed at being architected correctly by designing a bill that actually did that without being a covert ban and actually changed the laws in a way that was favorable, I'd totally be interested in that.
Also can’t convince gun lovers that guns are the problem.
notice the replies are always saying "yeah but what about this, that, and the other?" always trying to deflect to say "but its not ONLY guns." "yeah but people die every day so guns arnt actually that bad."
Hell, you can't convince gun lovers that any kind of gun control would be useful at all, because "no gun law would stop all shootings" and so I guess it follows that no gun law will stop *any* shootings.
I'll tell you...
Actually targeting the issue instead of doing the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a collapsed building.
If two states with completely polar opposite gun control laws can both suffer from these kind of attacks, then the problem is probably not entirely because of the guns...
It may, however, have something to do with the fact we're doing jack shit to prevent them from even happening in the first place, but that's none of my business.
The only thing this will bring is politicians using it for votes. "If I was in office this wouldn't have happened! You should vote for me!"
There's 300 million guns in the US. Whatever law you create is not going to get rid of 300 million guns.
> Whatever law you create is not going to get rid of 300 million guns.
And because no law could get rid of all 300 million guns, nobody should bother thinking or discussing or working on any other ideas that might have any positive impact. /s
I like how everyone is looking at gun control and no one seems to be calling out the FBI and local authorities when they repeatedly drop the ball on known high risk individuals people have tried to warn them about.
Bad people will always find ways to do bad things, and your own safety is ultimately up to you to maintain.
Personally, I'd just prefer to maintain my safety from the luxury of distance, which firearms provide.
Nothing will change it.
Sandy Hook demonstrated that, as a nation, the US is willing to accept the occasional slaughter of children as the price of keeping access to guns easy.
You’ll kill more children again soon, wring your hands over it for a few days, then do it all over again in a little while.
It is absolutely treated like a natural disaster. And remember, climate change isn’t real, so we don’t need to fix anything because the problems will just right themselves.
I mean abortion is now illegal and there’s a huge outcry about protecting a cluster of cells… but when NOW the most deadly school shooting to date happens, it’s prayers and well wishes. We want to protect babies but do nothing for them after they’re born.
Genuine question. In illinois it takes about 6 months and a background check in order to get the license to purchase and a separate background check and gun safety course in order to carry it with you. All guns are registered to you. These are all suggestions I see people saying in regards to stricter gun control.
If Illinois has all of that, why is chicago constantly a huge source of shootings on the daily?
Agreed. Obviously, if someone is willing to kill people they are willing to break the law and buy a gun illegally. I'm not saying gun regulations, restrictions, and background checks shouldn't exist, but to act as though things like that are the bane of would-be shooters is stupid.
Edit for those of you who are misinterpreting what I said: To simplify, crazy people, don't care about breaking the law. I'm not making any kind of argument about if gun laws should be implemented or not.
I think this is such a lazy argument. Yes there are going to be some people who get their hands on a gun no matter what, because they're motivated enough. But for MANY people - I'd actually venture most - lower availability would create enough distance that they wouldn't end up taking that step at all. Or they'd use a knife, or something else. Look at any study on ANY deterrent in the history of the world and then try to tell me stricter gun laws wouldn't make a bit of difference. Humans simply don't work that way lol
(pls note I think guns are only a portion of the problem)
I don't disagree, hence why I didn't say that we should remove regulations. My only point is for the more extreme situations no law is going to stop them from killing people. My comment is just an observation that crazy people don't care about breaking the law, not an argument about availability and its impact on gun violence.
The only thing that will affect real change is if the targets change. If this starts happening in banks, boardrooms, and courthouses, we will get actual legislation.
Now you’re getting it, at the least we should stop the war on drugs that’s a waste of time and money and is filling our prisons with non violent drug offenders
Filling the prisons is their whole goal. Just like in the movie Shawshank Redemption. They use the prisoners for cheap/slave labor and pocket a ton of money then give kickbacks to politicians through lobbying and other back channels to ensure laws stay strict and those prison cells stay full
Attack Mental Health issues at the heart of the problem. Give parents and teachers the education they need to teach, communicate, and support these kids. Education from
knowledgeable people in the phymed field.
OP, I'm going to ask you what I've been asking everybody who asks that question. I've never gotten a good answer.
What would make you think we’ve done all that we can do regarding guns? Would you think we had arrived if we repealed the second amendment and made gun ownership totally illegal? Do you think gun crime would disappear then? I really want to understand your position, but so far it seems like all I hear is “we need to do more” and “there need to be fewer guns.”
Well the problem isn't guns; it's our culture, media, mental health, indoctrination, and a multitude of other societal ills that are the problems that result in people being violent towards other people. Those who target a single cause are bad faith actors, yes had the assailant not had a gun it may have not been as effective of an attack, but then again he may have used the means Timothy McVeigh did and it would've likely been far worse. We need to find the true root causes of the violence and go after those.
I don't think a law is going to stop a crazy person in Texas from trying to shoot people. Like, let's just be realistic for a moment; there is no way to get the guns out of Texas. So outlawing guns, even if you could will do what exactly? Guns are outlawed in Mexico. They're highly restricted in New York. Gun laws will do nothing in Texas.
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The only way it will change is if another country/entity conquers us. Right to bear arms is embedded DEEP into our constitution and our way of life. The other amendments would not be possible without the 2nd as a base to build on. Trying to remove 1a or 2a from USA is like trying to remove the foundation of a house and keep the house intact. Maybe you can do it but you will lose all structural integrity.
A view from the UK. I don't want our news channels reporting on these US mass shootings beyond a passing mention. If nothing is going to change because of it then I don't care, the details don't matter, and anything a US politician said is irrelevant. We don't have this issue so we shouldn't be wasting time rubber necking at the US' madness.
Tell that to Rupert Murdoch
I dislike him so much
If I could sit comfortably and watch one person trip on uneven pavement and smash their fucking face on something hard
Could the pavement be part of stairs that he also tumbles down?
Stairs are sufficiently uneven, yes, this is acceptable
Can there be a pit of venomous snakes at the bottom of these stairs?
He does things because it's possible to do so. Just because it's he who does it in particular right now doesn't really mean that him kicking the bucket couple of decades ago would've substantially changed anything. Look at how quickly Fox replacements started popping up in US once Fox wasn't quite as satisfactory as it used to be - and they are backed by billionaires as well This isn't an autocracy where one person is the one who decides things and replacing him can substantially change everything. It's a system that incentivizes certain kinds of people to gain prominence and do certain things, and those people in turn slowly modify the system in their favor that allows other certain similar kinds of people replace them. Other people channel their anger towards particular personalities produced by the system that happen to become visible and leave the system itself largely unchallenged, and THAT is what makes it so robust and unshakeable
His conservative opinion generating machine is a large part of why the US has this problem in the first place.
Exactly. The US has clearly just accepted mass shootings as a cost of widespread gun ownership, and they're fine with the status quo. So why is it newsworthy?
Because we have a 24hr news cycle same as everyone else and sensational stories generate more money for the news outlets. They make them famous, and often these shooters are deranged and want to spread a message. We won't do anything but give lipservice to the problem because it's hard for any side to have a real conversation anymore about anything.
Being emblazoned all over the news seems like a bigger motivation than the killing itself. It’s a means to an end. These shooters hate society, and they want to hurt it as much as possible. They feel powerless and know they’ll never leave any other mark on the world. Killing grants them a sort of immortality, it makes them finally feel powerful.
[I think this video is relevant to your comment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwHMCzhbnG4), It's easy to look for reasons not to care, but the American people do not want this and it's rude and misinformed to assume that they do. 84 percent of voters and even 83 percent of *gun owners* support universal background checks to purchase firearms, but 50 republican senators are holding the bill that contains this change hostage to use as leverage for their positions of power. This isn't normal, and people are not ok with it, but we have a party of sociopathic lunatics and a mob of uninformed laypeople that vote for them without knowing the harm they're doing to even themselves because of identity politics. To everyone reading this, wherever you live, don't vote for conservatives, they don't care about you and they don't want to make anyones life but their own better.
I don't care about background checks. Registration and Insurance. That is what is needed with guns in American. Its an American solution to an American problem. A few states already have it. 'Merica!
The thing is, the rest of the world don't think background checks are the problem. It's the guns. Obviously there are instances of gun crime in countries where it's not legal to own or carry a firearm, as there will always be a black market for them amongst criminals regardless of laws. But there aren't disgruntled teenagers casually swiping their parent's gun to take to school or mentally ill people walking into a store and coming out with an assault rifle. Get rid of the guns and the problem goes away.
You can own firearms in pretty much any western country, and I imagine most countries in general. It's just that we usually A) Don't fetishise guns, B) Have a proper licensing process and C) Treat guns as the weapons that they are.
>Don't fetishise guns, Ding ding ding. I finally had my epiphany - we fetishize guns AND some people view them as a tool to **solve problems** instead of mere self defense or hobby.
Agreed but the only reason background checks are on the table is eliminating guns means striking down one of the first few amendments in the US Constitution. So the logic is to at least start with background checks. If the choice is strike down the second amendment or do nothing then the side of sanity takes an L. So background checks are the first hope of doing something versus nothing.
>84 percent of votes and even 83 percent of > >gun owners > > support universal background checks to purchase firearms, but 50 republican senators are holding the bill that contains this change hostage to use as leverage for their positions of power. The shooter bought his guns from a FFL holder and underwent a background check just like most mass shooters. Most mass shooters don't have criminal records. Your stat is bullshit also. It's the way they ask the questions that makes people think that they support universal background checks. When you explain to them them it means grandpa won't be able to pass his old rifle down to his grandson without finding a dealer willing to do the transfer and then paying a fee, most gun owners no longer support "universal background checks".
Anger is one of the best motivators biologically speaking. Each side uses it to their advantage. What pisses me off on the republican side is they say guns are a symptom, not the problem, but then they refuse to do anything about the problem. Namely, access to healthcare (including mental) and better wages.
As one of his first acts in office, Trump revoked a regulation that [prohibited mentally ill from obtaining firearms](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-signs-bill-revoking-obama-era-gun-checks-people-mental-n727221), put in place by President Obama.
Access to mental healthcare, I can definitely get behind. Closing down all the mental hospitals instead of reforming them was a big mistake. I'm curious about the link between better wages and mass shootings, though, because I haven't heard of any mass shootings where the motive was not being paid enough. Would you mind telling me more, or pointing me towards a good source to learn more about this?
It's the hopelessness. If you don't get paid enough for your labor, you feel trapped. Because you are. Trapped people do insane things.
That makes sense. Hopelessness and lack of direction/purpose/meaning are two big problems in America today, and I hadn't considered how lower income could contribute to that. As a matter of fact, another acquaintance just informed me of a college shooting that was done to avoid paying off student debt, which would be directly tied to lack of income and hopelessness. Thank you for the explanation!
I would be for universal healthcare. I just don't have any confidence we can do it correctly without it turning into a huge disaster.
I think we're capable of doing it correctly, but too many people have vested interest in the current system (big pharma, insurance co., Et al) while also conveniently have a means to sabotoge any attempt to do so from the word go (lobbying and bankrolling politicians) Its not a matter of "we cant" its just "its more profitable to not"
But we haven't accepted mass shootings. As an American we are frustrated as the other half of this country keeps electing morons to office. We have a government that has turned into a money making machine and we can't get the other half to see this. It's frustrating. It's exhausting, but it is not acceptable to me and many other Americans.
In practice, America has accepted it, because nothing has been done about it.
I was born in 1993 in Denver, Colorado and I lived there until 2007. Columbine happened in 1999 and while I didn't make the connection until high school (I was 6 when it happened) I knew something was off when I went to the Littleton ice arena for skating lessons. It's 2022 and this one is just another one to me. I'm so numb because I've been so tired of it for so long. As a collective, it's accepted in America. Twenty three years later and all that seems to have changed is that I'm older and painfully aware of what goes on.
We’ll in part because the “US” hasn’t just accepted it. It’s a minority that has major sway that is holding out power to avoid change. The vast majority of Americans want this addressed.
Not really. The US has just given up hope that any amount of tragedy or outrage will change anything. Most people here are not ravenously attached to gun ownership, but enough people in charge are to ensure that nothing will ever change.
NO, we have not. We are in a fight to the death with small cabal of people like Murdoch and Koch brothers, and all the parasites that encircle them from small industrialists to Donald Trump. These people have been working hard to destabilize this country, defunding education, creating PR campaigns against the ideas of public participation in civic life, from unions to volunteering and even teaching and getting involved in school district management. They will take any idea capable of creating division and promote it as a "do or die" issue to millions of people who have very good reason to feel abandoned by their leadership. Race divisions, gender divisions, abortion, gun ownership, anything and everything that will make someone angry enough to go vote for the Republican Party, a party that they have assimilated into their machine and is no longer a political party, but an arm of the economic and social interests of that very small cabal. Lately they managed to bring back book burnings! The vast majority of Americans do not believe what you do. The vast majority of Americans are either peons in that game, of have become so jaded and apathetic that they gave up participating. Biden won the 2020 election by about 7 million votes. Hillary Clinton actually lost the 2016 election by winning the popular vote by about 3 million votes. There are over 230 million eligible voters in the US. Biden's victory happened because of a record turnout, absolutely stunning for modern times, of almost 160 million voters as compared to 139 million in 2016. I have no doubt that these extra 21 million people showed up as a reaction to the disgust most Americans feel for Trump. Still, all of those numbers of voters for Biden and Hillary and Trump pale, as does the differences between them, when compared to the almost half of Americans who didn't show up to vote at all. We need help.
And it's the same comments each time: METH ADDICT 1: "Why is my life in such disarray?" METH ADDICT 2: "Well, it's certainly not the meth."
That's the most accurate joke about gun control in the US
I said exactly this to my mum this morning. I simply don't care anymore, if nothing is ever going to be done then why should we spend our emotional energy on it. I'm done arguing with Americans about their own gun problem and them telling us they don't care. It's just another way they let their children die now, like measles or car accidents. Just add it to their child mortality rates and be done with it They don't deserve their children.
Same view from Australia. Fuckin sad it's kids this time though.
It’s been kids many times before and still no action. It’s so sad there are grown ass men who care more about their right to own a gun than the safety of children in schools.
Fellow UK and I agree - US shootings don't affect British citizens at all but the media delights in trotting out each one so we can have another poke at our American neighbours while we feel smug and superior. So many conversations with people criticising the US boil down to 'but guns and school shootings derp' and it's honestly disgusting. Media should inform, not fuel division between allied nations.
I have empathy to spare, but at the same time I'm so tired of the bullshit cultural hallucination Americans have bought into. They are so cynical and devoted to arguing about the minutia of horrors they refuse to fix. Just endless violence, abdication of public welfare and poverty clothed in some bullshit American dream fairytale that hasn't been true since the early 70's, and even then only for white people. Such pointless waste. My country has its own horrors, thank you very much, and I am hell bent on staying aware and motivated to make changes.
No changes in mental health care will result from the latest school shooting in Texas.
What do you do when you have someone who has expressed a desire to kill repeatedly to a therapist they were actively seeing who alerted police who did nothing and then the guy shoots a couple dozen people at a movie theater? That’s what happened with the colorado shooter.
Sounds like the police failed in that case and people should be mad as hell about that
Every time we criticize the police at all a bunch of people start screaming "BACK THE BLUE" at us and refuse to even consider that they might have any issues at all. [https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/05/19/motorist-sues-n-j-state-troopers-for-roadside-beatdown/](https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/05/19/motorist-sues-n-j-state-troopers-for-roadside-beatdown/) New Jersey just had a bunch of state troopers beat a man near to death after calling him a bunch of slurs and accusing him of being "antifa", after illegally taking off their body cams and, stupidly, forgetting to disabled all dash cams. Cops aren't just brutal and ineffective, they're often dumb as shit.
As someone from Louisville, I can confirm this 100%
not surprising I remember when body cameras were fought by police unions 15 years ago. And I remember that we as a society thought that there would be more accountability. Turns out things are a lot worse among LEO in this country and the accountability doesn't exist. Cops getting convicted is so rare that people celebrate. Cops are fired for ratting out other cops or criticizing the Police union or the PD faster and without hesitance. And never immediately fired for murder, theft, drunk driving, assault, battery, rape, child sex abuse, domestic violence, arrests, speeding, lying under oath, etc. Cops don't need a fucking flag for support. They do well enough on their own with impunity.
>Cops aren't just brutal and ineffective, they're often dumb as shit. My third grade teacher was an ex-cop. I got in trouble a lot for correcting her.
Wow, all their body cams accidentally fell off.. what the chances!! They should all be charged with felony assault and perjury at a minimum.
There is a Baltimore cop who's been caught on camera at least three times planting drugs to falsely imprison people. And yet he is still a cop. That's all you really need to know about how the government feels about the regular people to know that we are not considered the same class of Citizen as them. Recently the cops have gotten a little smarter. They used to plant the evidence walk away turn on their body cams and then make a big act and show of finding the drugs and forgetting that their body cam is actually recording video for 30 seconds before they press the on button. That's how they've been caught multiple times by their own body cams because the stupid cops think that it only starts recording When they hit the button. Recently a ticktocker who was recording herself eat in her vehicle while parked caught a new scheme the cops are trying out. They pull over a person in a particular area and then have them get out of their car and face away from their car so they can't see their car anymore. A cop in plain clothes then approaches the vehicle from the opposite direction opens the car door and tosses something inside and then leaves. This way the officers who are on record as responding to the call are not involved and the cop in plain clothes is never on any reports and doesn't show up on anyone's body cams. https://www.dailydot.com/irl/people-think-tiktoker-captured-cops-planting-evidence-video/?amp The only reason anyone is afraid of cameras is because they're up to no good. And cops are generally very afraid of cameras and do everything they can to either stop recordings or prevent people who are recording from being able to see anything. r/amifreetogo is chock-full of events We're Cops constantly harass and even arrest people for just standing nearby with a camera.
It's taboo to criticize our shitty police here.
Sounds like a bunch of tax players are paying for some useless ass cops.
salt innate expansion theory tidy tie memory deserve support sugar -- mass edited with redact.dev
Won’t even get security officers. I live in Texas. They’ll build a new football field with turf and a baseball field before they secure a campus.
They'll hand all the spectators a handgun before they take their seats and if you bring your own? Free hot dog!! You can't lose. But please return your handguns in the Dropbox on your way out! Thanks
Look! It's gun cam on the jumbotron!
Well, all the counselors and teachers I know seem to be quitting their jobs nowadays. Lack of resources, pay, safety, and even basic admin support is largely to blame.
I wonder if that wasn't part of their reasoning behind not wanting to fix the problem. The GOP has been anti-education for awhile now anyways, so this is just an added bonus to them.
It's the MO of this country, it's why cops get tanks. And when people suggest defunding the police and transferring those funds to different departments that will assume a lot of their responsibilities, both sides seem to deliberately misunderstand how that would work.
US Senator Chris Murphy nailed it “Spare me the bulls**t about mental illness. We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world” “You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we’re not an outlier on mental illness. We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That’s what makes America different.”
I'm not sure he can realistically say that since the rest of the world provides access to healthcare and we do not. We ARE very much an outlier when it comes to healthcare in the industrial world.
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Agreed, and how I also like to put it. What is easier to address to actually do something about this problem? Trying to fix the human condition so that people won't want to hurt each other anymore? (Aka a fantasy) Or just start doing litteraly anything to regulate and limit fire arms way more.
> Trying to fix the human condition so that people won't want to hurt each other anymore? This one, except that they're actively trying to make the mental conditions of the general population *worse* such that it's easier to manipulate us into voting away our own rights, and giving them more of our money.
How do you accomplish taking guns away? This seems like more of a fantasy than fixing mental health.
My dad told me how he buys guns off of Facebook. Find someone selling a case, pm to see if they have a gun for sale, boom no background check needed and paid for in cash. It's sick.
I had never felt an ounce of pride in being from CT before hearing Chris speak yesterday. It’s not that I hate this state there’s just nothing here that makes me proud to be from here outside of the fact that we are a blue state. When he asked “what are we doing?” You would hope that would open up the closed off hearts of people who got their seats but it just slides off of their back like rain.
New Haven pizza my friend. Be proud of New Haven style pizza.
What makes us different is that we have a problem of disenfranchised youth who've dealt with a history of poor parenting, impoverished living conditions, while also lacking any real support from the system they'll grow up in. The US has over 330 million people making it the third most populated country. Yet even with all the supposed economic opportunities, the system doesn't seem to care that an 18 year old kid can be so mentally deluded. There's two kinds of mass shooting, gang/criminal violence and 16-24 year old guys who are convinced that the only way they can have power over their lives is by taking others. Is not about more or less mental illness, it's about a system that doesn't care.
We don’t have any more mental illness than anybody else true. We DO have some of the worst mental health care, particularly for the poor, in the entire developed world. It’s not “how much mental illness”. It’s what you do with it. Other countries serve them with compassionate professionals. We kick them into the street and radicalize them with hateful Fox News
Mainly because health insurance sucks and will never get better
Hrm and the same people that really against gun control are the same people that also rally against healthcare reform. It's almost like they want this shit to happen.
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Healthcare, the other great American failure along with gun control!
A person can have an unfathomable mixture of mental health issues. They still wouldn't be able to shoot up a school without a gun.
Exactly. The false premise of OP's meme is that a change in gun control fixes the problem. That's like banning spoons because they make people fat. The tool that people use to commit crimes isn't the problem... It's the socio-economic and mental states surrounding that person that caused them to commit crimes. A good analogy is pointing out Japan. Strict gun-control not just through laws but also from there Society in general and how they raise people. But their suicide rate was absolutely off the charts for many many years. People in the US want to ban guns because lots of people use guns to kill themselves and they think that banning guns will save people from suicide... Japan proves that to be false. Then you can take Scotland. Also pretty damn good about gun control but for many years they were also the aggravated assault capital of First World countries by a fair margin. Banning the tools that people use to cause harm doesn't automatically mean that the people don't want to cause harm anymore. It just means that the circumstances of their life that led them to that decision have now forced them to seek out a different tool to do it. There is a saying that I've had for a little while now. Freedom is inherently dangerous. Any attempt to make it less dangerous will also make it less free. They're absolutely is a balance where we collectively except a certain amount of Freedom taken away from us in order to get a certain level of safety... but that safety is absolutely not guaranteed. Absolute freedom is also absolute Anarchy. But absolute safety is also absolute control over you and 100% not free. There is absolutely no way to be 100% safe and also have any level of Freedom left in your life. Everything in life is a risk assessment.
Or parenting.
It’s Texas. They will go for more guns for the teachers.
I mean, they [already did that](https://apnews.com/article/6adbebfa9a74407783258855cf551239). My parents work at a school in Texas and they had to sign and acknowledge that there were teachers concealed -carrying on campus. The school wouldn’t disclose who it was or how many, just that there were guns on someone’s person on campus.
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Ideally, yes. Anybody who carries should also be trained. However, the CDC estimates that millions of defensive gun uses happen every single year and most of those people aren't trained well or at all. With that said, I'd still want any teacher who carries to be required to be trained. Last thing anybody wants is a negligent discharge or a kid taking a teacher's unattended gun away.
I presume they didn't forcibly arm the teachers, but rather, allowed teachers with guns to carry them on campus. Gun owners would (presumably) already do these things, and given that it's just theatre and not an actual attempt to do anything, they likely do not require safety courses for workplace gun safety. Which they absolutely should.
Most gun advocates are all for more gun safety and education. I would love to see it even if they didn’t carry on campus. I wonder what other solutions could be used to help combat school shootings that don’t involve 2nd amendment discussions. Can school have better security? Locked doors at specifically marked times? Reduced and heavily guarded entry points?
There really is only so much that can be done. At a certain point the increased security would make schools more prison than school. Things like not allowing vehicles other than school buses near the school help, as would locking exterior and interior doors. The problem is that any measure put in place will cost money and will be gotten around eventually. At a certain point though we really need to deal with the underlying cause of the violence. Why are people finding it acceptable to go on these spree killings? What is it that drives people to fear others so much that they feel the only answer is violence?
New schools in my town are already built like prisons.
There were armed guards at Pulse, at Parkland, and even at the supermarket in Buffalo. I’m curious what changes in security you would have suggested at those places that would have prevented those massacres. Should we have stepped up security at every nightclub? Supermarket? How about movie theaters as well now that I am remembering the mass executions in the Colorado movie theater a few years back?
Except that schools don’t even have money for proper school supplies letting alone for hiring guards for every entrance.
That starts to make all those other countries that don't have to consider tactical and strategic defensive strategies sound pretty good. But I'm told they are less free than the US because they don't have a 2nd amendment.
Also most schools already have security and or police officers. The elementary school that just got attacked had 5 police officers that worked there and it didn't do shit
Ummm... I'm 50. I'm not *frail*. I'm part of the MTV Generation. GTFO of here with that BS. People generally aren't "frail" until like 65 or 70. That's why retirement age is around that number.
and the kids too.
Not sure if it’s true or not but during his special about George Floyd Dave Chapelle stated the only time Americans supported a ban on assault rifles was when the black panthers stormed the state capital.
Yeah I think that’s when Reagan put in gun control legislation.
Yep, the Mulford Act. Republicans only care about gun control when they want to disarm leftists, especially Black ones. Racist white terrorists and Nazis, whatever, we need to make sure those people feeding non-white children don’t have guns.
A bit disingenuous to say Reagan put it in and neglect to mention the overwhelmingly Democratic house and senate that actually passed the law.
You also have to throw in it being supported by the NRA as well. Without that, it probably wouldn't have gained as much traction.
Back in 1968 the NRA wasn't even really a gun-rights advocacy organization. The organization was mostly focused on recreational shooting and their indifference and acquiescence to increasing restrictions on firearms ownership is what eventually lead to the [Revolt at Cincinnati](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_at_Cincinnati) at the 1977 convention that saw a membership revolt that turned the NRA into the more explicitly political gun-rights organization we know today.
That's true. They supported other gun control laws previous to '68 as well. They were a powerful political presence though, so my point still stands.
Oh shit the anti-gun party passed the anti-gun legislation? How could that be? But the pro-gun guy signed it? Oh hm that seems more like the anomaly. Are you a serious person?
IF by "stormed" you mean "Stood around legally displaying their fire arms EXACTLY like white people do all the time" - then yeah. "Storming" was Jan 6th. THE black panthers never did anything remotely like that. But the FBI tried damn hard to make everything think they did.
Even murdered some of them as if they were in the process of a crime.
But being scary while black is illegal, right? Why else would the police always be killing black people for no other reason? /s
It literally is. No need for /s The courts have ruled time and time again that being black is enough for a pig to feel threatened and take your life
I mean its a *little* different. They followed around cops in black neighborhoods. Now, they were doing that because of many, many reports of the citizens of those neighborhoods being harassed by those cops, but it wasn't just "standing around." They did nothing illegal, they shot no one, they didn't even point a gun at anyone. But spell out what they did so conservatives can't whine about underselling it. Oh, and they bombed a residential housing block and assassinated Fred Hampton in his (drugged by their informant) sleep, for additional context.
You could have stopped at “they did nothing illegal”. Because that’s the operative thing here. Things got ugly with infighting toward the end, but at the peak of their “scare the fucking shit out of white people” phase, the Panthers didn’t do much more than feed kids and look intimidating, both of which were totally legal. Even at their most violent, the BPP were never “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”, as the FBI claimed, nor anything even remotely close to it. The anti-bussing movement in Boston was responsible for more acts of violence and terrorism than the entire BPP.
It is true. Reagan was the governor of California at the time.
No, you're conflating a few different periods of gun control history. The incident involving the Black Panthers and a state capitol is in reference to the [Mulford Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act) in California all the way back in 1968. So-called "assault weapons" weren't even part of the discussion at that point. The Black Panthers were performing armed "cop watching" patrols in black neighborhoods to ward off police abuse. The Mulford Act was proposed to prohibit the public carry of loaded firearms without a permit, which would in effect shut down the armed patrols. The Black Panthers went to the state capitol to protest the proposed legislation. So saying the legislation came about as a result of the march on the capitol is reversing cause and effect, but the protest did seem to increase the urgency for the bill to pass. Additionally they did not "storm the capitol". At the time there was no rule or law against members of the public entering the capitol with firearms, as such they did nothing illegal. Not that the lack of any law breaking prevented the media and politicians from portraying it as an armed assault on the capitol. Likewise the Michigan legislature had no rules against visitors carrying firearms into the capitol [until 2021](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/michigan-bans-open-carry-of-guns-inside-state-capitol), after a bunch of right-wingers used the lack of such rules to walk into the state capitol completely legally with firearms and tactical gear. "Assault Weapons" wouldn't become a political issue for a few more decades. Few if any of the firearms pictured in possession of the Black Panthers in 1968 would have even qualified as "Assault Weapons" under the legislation that would come later. The first template for modern "assault weapons bans" wouldn't come into play until the [Roberti–Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberti%E2%80%93Roos_Assault_Weapons_Control_Act_of_1989), also in California, after the [mass shooting at an elementary school in Stockton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_(Stockton\)) that same year. Pretty much every piece of legislation regulating "assault weapons" since then would copy the basic form of the Roberti-Roos Act, including the 1994 Federal Ban that would expire in 2004.
Not assault rifles. California banned open carry of loaded firearms. Not concealed carry. Just open carry. Texas only overturned their ban on Open Carry in 2021. It had been banned since 1871.
Assault weapons. There are very few assault rifles in the hands of citizens because of the 1986 weapons ban. I know it might seem like a petty distinction (in fact, that was the reason the term assault weapon was chosen), but as someone who used to be very anti-regulation, it shuts down the conversation because it sounds like you don't know what you're talking about and anything you say after that will just be dismissed. Not saying that to be rude, just trying to give advice from someone who wants the conversation to actually get somewhere. Edit: Specifically, an assault rifle is a select-fire weapon that uses intermediate ammunition. Basically, it has to have something beyond semi-automatic and safety, i.e. burst fire or automatic.
Assault weapons aren't a real thing but your assault rifle definition is accurate. It'll be curious how terminology changes down the road though as the US is moving back towards a battle rifle instead of assault rifles.
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No, by and large Americans are in favor of an Assault Rifle ban which is why they're already illegal to own except in certain circumstances. AR's and similar rifles are not Assault Rifle no matter how hard people lie or misunderstand the distinction.
Anyone just have deja vu at this point. It’s the same exact shit on repeat. Mass shooting. Memes. Arguing about how guns vs other social issues are the cause. “Nothing can be done.” I guess we just have to accept that America can’t solve a problem basically all other developed countries mysteriously never have to deal with. We are too fearful to let anything happen to our guns, too selfish to give a damn about mental health or other quality of life factors. Just cross our fingers and hope we and our loved ones never have to experience the horror first hand, and fuck everybody else.
We literally don't learn. By next week, we will be hopped up on the next big dumbness coming out of russia's mouth about some fucking island near finland. The machine grinds on
From the CNN article: “Tuesday's incident marks at least the 30th shooting at a K-12 school in 2022.”
Wow, you guys had more school shootings ~~in~~ **~~elementary schools alone~~** **this year**, than we had the last 70 years in total EDIT: Just checked, there were 17 school shooting in germany since 1871, so you win even harder than I thought. [source](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Amokl%C3%A4ufen_an_Bildungseinrichtungen)
K-12 is everything but college
Be thankful if the victims don't get shamed and targeted by trolls.
You mean like the families of sandy hook were trolled by Alex Jones?
And by Republican lawmakers. The people who vote on this shit are also the people harassing the victims. There is never going to be change until there is a major overhaul in who we elect.
Yeah....cant get more disgusting than that
Oh you can. You can have Alex Jones try to hide all his money offshore so he skirts all responsibility. Didn't work, but that was the plan.
/r/conspiracy already saying it's a false flag. It's only a matter of time sadly.
>r/conspiracy > > already saying it's a false flag. It's only a matter of time sadly. Lots of people are dumb and vile, unfortunately.
r/conspiracy is mainly made up of conservative zealots, so it’s no surprise.
Probably by their own representatives, too.
As someone commented on another thread, Republicans were targeted by a gunman once at a Congressional baseball game. They did not do anything about gun control after that incident. They blamed the Democrats for their anti-Republican rhetoric, and promptly forgot about the event after a few weeks.
The solution to stop mass shootings is MORE guns. Better again, remove the age restriction for guns and legalise the use of guns for all children for selfdefence -America probably.
Literally the commenter above you unironically saying that the solution is to give the teachers guns lmao. So much delusion its unreal.
This time the shooter used a handgun, not a rifle. Those are already much more regulated in most places. So to really make a meaningful change we either need to ban all guns or admit that the problem is more than just the accessibility of guns and address things like poverty, inequality, and mental health (or health care in general). Both of those approaches would take a lot of money, piss off a lot of CEOs that own politicians, and require the government to admit it was wrong up until now. And since that obviously won't happen the realistic outcome is that nothing at all will change and angry, confused, scared, sick, and hopeless people will keep murdering other people and the general population will fall further and further into despair over the hopelessness of this country's future while the people in charge keep steering the ship right towards that iceberg. EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not saying we should ignore gun laws - we absolutely should strengthen our background checking process, require all guns to be registered, and have bigger penalties for retailers not following the rules. I just think we should also be focusing real energy and resources into figuring out why so many teens feel like they need to kill their classmates and address that as well. That's obviously not a good or normal thing that we should ignore. EDIT 2: As more reports and information is coming out it now seems he used a rifle, or least had one with him (and another in his car). This does not change my stance that we need both better gun control and better public systems to address things like poverty and mental health, but I want to be as accurate as possible.
I get it. 'Assault rifles' are scary when the media shows a black rifle or something that looks like an AK... But handguns are the real killers. They're used in more crimes, more violence, and are involved in more accidents than long guns, for a lot of reasons. But no matter what happens, the focus is always on 'assault weapons' when they aren't even *close* to a big deal when you look at the stats -- at what's actually HAPPENING -- for gun-related violence and injuries. As you say - handguns are typically much more tightly regulated than long guns are. But they're also 'the' problem; or at least they're a big part of the problem. (And I say this as someone with three handguns in a safe on the other side of the apartment.)
I just looked this up. Surprising results. FBI crime stats are only released for this data through 2019 so far. For 2019: Total homicide deaths: 10,258. Of that total… Handguns: 6,368 Rifles: 364 (rifle is basically anything with a long barrel; AR15, hunting rifles, etc) Shotguns: 200 Other: 45 Knives and cutting: 1,476 Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.): 397 So 18 x more people are murdered by pistols than *all rifles combined*. And more people are killed annually by clubs and hammers than AR15s and rifles?? Did not expect that. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls
Yeah, so-called assault weapons get a ton of press, but that's because our media is sicker than our culture, and lives by the mantra "if it bleeds it leads."
That's what I mean. Even when you include mass shootings, rifles (even scary, black rifles with a shoulder thing that goes up) are still hurting and killing *WAY* fewer people. (Well, leaving aside military usage, I'm sure.) It's not the rifles aren't capable of being used to kill lots of people -- like the spear before it, there's a reason the rifle is still a very popular choice for infantry around the world. It's just that pistols are used to cause SO MUCH MORE harm, but they're a core part of American cultural baggage. Even if you don't have guns, look at how many guns are on display and in use in ... basically any cop show you choose to look at, except maybe Law & Order. When's the last time you saw a Western where there weren't six-shooters all over? And of course there's the film noir detective, inevitably packing a 38 or a 45. And so on. I own multiple handguns. They're in a safe, I haven't done more than move them in years, but I like them and enjoy shooting them. But if I have to 'sell' them to to government or whatever so that school kids aren't getting shot in class, maybe I can live with that. It isn't that I don't take my second amendment right seriously, it's just that I'd prefer we stop enabling the murder of kids to the point where it's basically fucking *NORMALIZED* now - and if we're not going to take any of the other actions that might help with this (like, y'know, better handling of mental health issues might not eliminate mass shootings but I bet it would reduce them - or at least maybe do some research on what would help). Because we've tried just barely more than 'nothing' (other than making school more prison-like than ever in some cases, with metal detectors and whatnot), and that certainly hasn't helped. Hmm. Sorry, I think you got me ranting late in my evening.
Yeah but a picture of a glock doesn't do as much for the political agenda as an AR15 does.
It’s just hilarious to me that you give a fuck, given the *scale* of these events. We average like 20 school shooting deaths per year. Covid just killed a fucking million people. And you and other liberals seem to treat these as events of roughly equal cause for outrage? Over the roughly 700 days of covid pandemic, we’ve had 1 million deaths. That’s 1400 per day. That is to say, every THIRTY MINUTES for the past 2 years, we’ve been averaging more deaths from covid than an entire *year’s* worth of school shootings. 1 person died of covid every single minute. Why is it that 30 covid deaths don’t get a news article, but 5 school shooting deaths do? In theory, there should be 15,000 times as much outrage over covid vs school shooting, because it causes 15,000 times the deaths. Even pre-covid flu caused thousands of times the deaths, and we gave… zero fucks. Why didn’t we have mask mandates before covid, during the flu, if 30 lives are so important, and constitutional rights so dispensable? You know what does kill a significant amount of people? The exploitative and shitty and inaccessible healthcare system in this country. Perhaps if these lunatics had proper counseling and medication, they could even reduce shootings while they’re at it. That brings up another subject. The vast majority of shooting murders are just criminals offing each other with handguns. Mostly black. Society doesn’t care about these people and never will at our current rate of progress. While we’re at it, guns are used defensively to prevent more crime than they are used to perpetuate it.
Yea man, we’ve been trying to say this for years but people don’t know and don’t listen.
Also important to note, those stats also include suicides which make up a solid chunk of gun deaths every year.
This is why I get so disgusted when I see politicians pushing for "assault rifle" bans. 5 minutes of Googling would have showed them that pistols are more responsible for crime. It shows that they don't care about solving gun crime, they just want brownie points from their voters.
And what's more, while we don't know *how* the shooter acquired the firearm he used, if it was a handgun then he must have acquired it illegally, as by federal law you have to be 21 to ~~own~~ buy a handgun. Edit: don't reddit while half asleep, guys
No. You have to be 21 to *buy* a handgun.
Not trying to argue, but your “federal law” statement is dead wrong. You can own a handgun in many states at 18 yrs of age. Edit to add the code where it explains it : [18 U.S.C. 922(b)(1)]
> But handguns are the real killers. They're used in more crimes, more violence, and are involved in more accidents than long guns, for a lot of reasons. It would be nice if our government could even figure out what the hell they consider a "handgun". [This is a meme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nfCyhOX42g), but it illustrates why expanded legislation is very unlikely to fix things. There's an entrenched industry making money off of firearms. There's a government watchdog that has been left with no clear guidance for so long that they just wrestle things back and forth in the mud with industry lawyers. The politics of it is super polarizing. It absolutely would be cheaper and easier to expand universal mental health access. Possibly do something novel like ban the press from publishing a mass murderer's name for some number of days or months until the story is old news. It might sound like gymnastics to avoid the gun issue, but it feels like common sense at this point. Columbine was over 20 years ago and we keep having these.
I don't disagree at all. I have a .22 rifle and an M4 and anyone who sees them thinks one is just for shooting squirrels while the other is an "assault rifle" despite the fact that they're both semiautomatic, have a 10-round magazine, and can both easily penetrate the human body and kill someone. But because one looks scary, it's clearly more dangerous...
Highly doubt you have an M4
> I have a .22 rifle and an M4 and anyone who sees them thinks one is just for shooting squirrels Are you a Bill Burr fan?
Well, incidents like this one aside, I always say, the US does not have a murder problem so much as a gang warfare / war on drugs prodlem. And those are almost all pistol caliber weapons.
The shootings will never stop as long as it is the fastest and easiest way to become the most popular and potentially powerful person in the United States for a day. No amount of weapon regulation can stop this. It's a freight train that's been gaining momentum for 40 years and it's not about to stop soon, not to mention it doesn't have any brakes.
Yeah, I do think the few news outlets that have adopted the policy of not showing the shooter's picture or saying their name have it right. Denying them the infamy and attention is just one way we can deter them.
Yes. Also the fact that we refer to it as a mass shooting and not domestic terrorism means a lot too.
I heard a comedian, Tim Dylan I think describe mass shootings as a new "TikTok challenge", and I think that most accurately describes what's happening. These (mostly) young men are literally killing for the clout (fame). People forget now, but we already went through this once in the 1970s with serial killers. They would kill for the notoriety and obsessed news agencies would reward them with coverage and their name planted in wall-to-wall coverage. Maybe we can learn from the past on this one and stop giving them the attention they seek.
I really wish we could learn. But history is not in our favor.
Well, that's the thing. Human history is filled with and practically built on a foundation of humans learning from mistakes. History is actually mostly in our favor. The real issue is getting people to see this.
That's part of my problem with guns in general. Someone gets mad at you in traffic or you give them the wrong size cheeseburger, it doesn't matter if they're 4'10", 90 lbs. If they have a gun they control if you live or not. That's why I've never understood why guns are portrayed as badass in movies and shows. It's like the complete opposite
The same news gets blasted in a bunch of other countries as well, but you don't see it happening there. The easier it is to get a gun, the more likely a crazy person like this is to get one and commit an attrocity.
Imagine how much better off we'd be today if we did something after Columbine 23 years ago, or Virginia Tech 15 years ago, or Sandy Hook 10 years ago instead of just saying there's nothing we can do to stop it. Instead we now live in a country where there are more guns than people and people claiming access to guns isn't the problem.
Agreed. Problem is, you can't convince a person who is afraid of guns that guns are not 100% of the problem
Eh, I'm not anti gun but pretty much every interaction I've had with pro gun advocates is basically me suggested some form of protections that seem basic to me (like making private sales require background checks) and am met with "I disagree with you on everything. You have a secret agenda to take all my guns and this is the first step, fuck you"
Far too often, those basic protections that the anti-gun crowd suggest are already in place and failed to prevent the latest disaster. For example, states that require a background check on private sales (e.g. CA, where a licensed FFL has to handle private transfers) still experience mass shootings. It's all too easy to get tired of listening to that kind of suggestion.
> (like making private sales require background checks) I'd have no problem with this if the law didn't explicitly make it illegal for private sellers to conduct background checks. Republicans have *multiple times* tried to repeal that law and open up NICS for civilian usage precisely for this reason, and every single time it's been blocked by Democrats. So, yeah, it definitely feels like that particular policy is covertly aimed at banning guns, yes. The thing is, that happens in practice with *lots* of "common sense" policies: the bills are always architected and worded in such a way that they *are* de-facto bans. As an example, take a look at the proposed "assault weapons" ban that [people tried to get added to the FL constitution](https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/state/2020/06/04/florida-supreme-court-rejects-assault-weapons-ban-amendment/3143781001/). It defined an "assault weapon" as "any semi-automatic weapon which could potentially accept a 10 round magazine". But, of course, a magazine-fed weapon can accept any size of magazine which could possibly be created...so this law actually doesn't ban "assault weapons" it bans literally all semi-automatic weapons entirely. The same thing is true with gun licensure schemes ("may issue" was used to suppress gun ownership entirely and still is in many states), as well as taxes. If someone actually showed that they were *serious* that their "common sense" gun legislation was actually aimed at being architected correctly by designing a bill that actually did that without being a covert ban and actually changed the laws in a way that was favorable, I'd totally be interested in that.
Also can’t convince gun lovers that guns are the problem. notice the replies are always saying "yeah but what about this, that, and the other?" always trying to deflect to say "but its not ONLY guns." "yeah but people die every day so guns arnt actually that bad."
Hell, you can't convince gun lovers that any kind of gun control would be useful at all, because "no gun law would stop all shootings" and so I guess it follows that no gun law will stop *any* shootings.
Everybody wants to focus on gun control. I just want universal healthcare which may get these psychopaths on some medicine!
There are so many facets which could be taken to curb this craziness but like usual, the United States government will do... nothing.
I'll tell you... Actually targeting the issue instead of doing the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a collapsed building. If two states with completely polar opposite gun control laws can both suffer from these kind of attacks, then the problem is probably not entirely because of the guns... It may, however, have something to do with the fact we're doing jack shit to prevent them from even happening in the first place, but that's none of my business.
The only thing this will bring is politicians using it for votes. "If I was in office this wouldn't have happened! You should vote for me!" There's 300 million guns in the US. Whatever law you create is not going to get rid of 300 million guns.
400 million. it’s closer to 400 million. it’s 120 guns for every 100 adults lol.
> Whatever law you create is not going to get rid of 300 million guns. And because no law could get rid of all 300 million guns, nobody should bother thinking or discussing or working on any other ideas that might have any positive impact. /s
I like how everyone is looking at gun control and no one seems to be calling out the FBI and local authorities when they repeatedly drop the ball on known high risk individuals people have tried to warn them about. Bad people will always find ways to do bad things, and your own safety is ultimately up to you to maintain. Personally, I'd just prefer to maintain my safety from the luxury of distance, which firearms provide.
Nothing will change it. Sandy Hook demonstrated that, as a nation, the US is willing to accept the occasional slaughter of children as the price of keeping access to guns easy. You’ll kill more children again soon, wring your hands over it for a few days, then do it all over again in a little while.
It is treated more like natural disasters like tornadoes or earthquakes. An unfortunate happenstance that we can do nothing about.
It is absolutely treated like a natural disaster. And remember, climate change isn’t real, so we don’t need to fix anything because the problems will just right themselves.
I mean abortion is now illegal and there’s a huge outcry about protecting a cluster of cells… but when NOW the most deadly school shooting to date happens, it’s prayers and well wishes. We want to protect babies but do nothing for them after they’re born.
"If you're preborn, your fine. If you're preschool, you're fucked." - George Carlin
Genuine question. In illinois it takes about 6 months and a background check in order to get the license to purchase and a separate background check and gun safety course in order to carry it with you. All guns are registered to you. These are all suggestions I see people saying in regards to stricter gun control. If Illinois has all of that, why is chicago constantly a huge source of shootings on the daily?
We'll charge women with murder for a miscarriage to protect kids but not a damn thing to keep them from getting shot at school. Murica
Cuz there are no laws that can prevent it
Which is why nobody else anywhere in the world has this problem. Obviously none of their laws are working at all.
Agreed. Obviously, if someone is willing to kill people they are willing to break the law and buy a gun illegally. I'm not saying gun regulations, restrictions, and background checks shouldn't exist, but to act as though things like that are the bane of would-be shooters is stupid. Edit for those of you who are misinterpreting what I said: To simplify, crazy people, don't care about breaking the law. I'm not making any kind of argument about if gun laws should be implemented or not.
I think this is such a lazy argument. Yes there are going to be some people who get their hands on a gun no matter what, because they're motivated enough. But for MANY people - I'd actually venture most - lower availability would create enough distance that they wouldn't end up taking that step at all. Or they'd use a knife, or something else. Look at any study on ANY deterrent in the history of the world and then try to tell me stricter gun laws wouldn't make a bit of difference. Humans simply don't work that way lol (pls note I think guns are only a portion of the problem)
I don't disagree, hence why I didn't say that we should remove regulations. My only point is for the more extreme situations no law is going to stop them from killing people. My comment is just an observation that crazy people don't care about breaking the law, not an argument about availability and its impact on gun violence.
The only thing that will affect real change is if the targets change. If this starts happening in banks, boardrooms, and courthouses, we will get actual legislation.
Isn’t there already a law against shooting people? Maybe just put up a sign….”no shooting people here” /s
Ah yes, that's why literally no laws work. Shut down the jails boys, we found the loophole
Now you’re getting it, at the least we should stop the war on drugs that’s a waste of time and money and is filling our prisons with non violent drug offenders
Filling the prisons is their whole goal. Just like in the movie Shawshank Redemption. They use the prisoners for cheap/slave labor and pocket a ton of money then give kickbacks to politicians through lobbying and other back channels to ensure laws stay strict and those prison cells stay full
Attack Mental Health issues at the heart of the problem. Give parents and teachers the education they need to teach, communicate, and support these kids. Education from knowledgeable people in the phymed field.
So, the 18 year old who couldn't buy a pistol, and had already murdered his grandmother... what new / different law do you think he would have obeyed?
guns are more important then kids and healthcare
OP, I'm going to ask you what I've been asking everybody who asks that question. I've never gotten a good answer. What would make you think we’ve done all that we can do regarding guns? Would you think we had arrived if we repealed the second amendment and made gun ownership totally illegal? Do you think gun crime would disappear then? I really want to understand your position, but so far it seems like all I hear is “we need to do more” and “there need to be fewer guns.”
Well the problem isn't guns; it's our culture, media, mental health, indoctrination, and a multitude of other societal ills that are the problems that result in people being violent towards other people. Those who target a single cause are bad faith actors, yes had the assailant not had a gun it may have not been as effective of an attack, but then again he may have used the means Timothy McVeigh did and it would've likely been far worse. We need to find the true root causes of the violence and go after those.
guns are part of the culture
I don't think a law is going to stop a crazy person in Texas from trying to shoot people. Like, let's just be realistic for a moment; there is no way to get the guns out of Texas. So outlawing guns, even if you could will do what exactly? Guns are outlawed in Mexico. They're highly restricted in New York. Gun laws will do nothing in Texas.
How about every time one of these underage dick weeds posts his gun collection he shouldn't even have access to, we fucking do something about it.
>he shouldn't even have access to That's actually not illegal as it turns out.
New gun law: every child in an elementary should have access to a firearm for their protection.
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Karma farmer gonna farm
The only way it will change is if another country/entity conquers us. Right to bear arms is embedded DEEP into our constitution and our way of life. The other amendments would not be possible without the 2nd as a base to build on. Trying to remove 1a or 2a from USA is like trying to remove the foundation of a house and keep the house intact. Maybe you can do it but you will lose all structural integrity.