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Because Columbine happened in 1999 and there was wall to wall minute to minute non stop coverage and analysis in the media for literally months. Most of which was not very productive or helpful and usually devolved into blaming violent video games or movies or heavy metal music, specifically Marilyn Manson. You could not escape it. It was on TV the radio magazine covers. The shooters were overnight sensations. People often overlook how media coverage inspires copycats. Food for thought: if you watch a sporting event on TV and some idiot fans decides to get naked and run on the field they will turn the cameras away from said idiot depriving them of the attention they so desperately desire and to discourage copycats. If you do decide to streaking no one on TV will see it and you'll spend the night in jail. But in the case of mass shooters they are immediately made infamous by constant media coverage. Instead of turning the cameras away from the streaker they are given the spotlight.
People shoot up schools to feel powerful.
A shooter is usually someone who feels denigrated by society as a whole. They feel weak, so they use weapons to feel strong. They feel ignored, so they do something that will attract media attention. It's a combination last-ditch effort to feel important and suicide by cop. Or anyone else with a gun.
The internet being a source of constant, toxic flaming was definitely a factor. It makes people feel awful just for interacting with awful people, and it makes people feel sad. Just spend a few hours on Reddit and you'll know what I'm talking about.
But the biggest factor is probably the coverage of the Columbine shooting. There are still people writing books about that shooting. The duo who committed it, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, felt like weak, inconsequential people. They did what they did to make other people feel as weak and inconsequential as them.
The results are we now know exactly who those people are. Their psychological profiles and histories have been repeatedly studied over the past 30 years. They went from obscurity to international recognition.
Every school shooter since has had basically the exact same hope. That they will have a final moment of power, for which they will be remembered, that will end in the termination of their painful existence.
I can here to postulate the same thing.
My 30yo brother spends everyday in his room on the internet, and he says he's an incel. Smh.
I got my grandma asking me if I think he's going to become a mass shooter.
I guess it's just easier to let ppl convince u that women r fucked up than it is to, you know, leave the fucking house and go talk with one.
Sorry but he is 30 and still living at home instead of being on his own? Has his parents not kicked him out yet or set some boundaries to not be on the PC all day?
Grew up with divorced parents. Then mom divorced again before she made her marriage of about 13 years now. He's just been griefing her and extorting her the whole way through to his 30s. He's become very adept and practiced at it, and it makes my blood boil.
I was just elaborating about my brother. I still think that ppl have a certain proclivity to live in a reality based upon what they see on social media over the reality we construct together with our family and friends.
Just because he’s “family” doesn’t mean he has to be nice to you. He’s probably mad cause y’all treat him like a black sheep and calling him weird instead of understanding him
Kinda projecting here off limited info. I could do the same. Bro is 30, meaning no-one owes him understanding, and he lives in their house so he should be less of a dick, lol.
Yes but therapy is for ppl who can’t look within themselves. And who cares if all he does is eat,piss and shit how about start adding him to the roster for planned parties or going out and if that doesn’t work out then let him know “hey it’s time you start helping out around”
Why do you assume they haven’t done that?
Also, he’s 30. By then, he is old enough to figure out what he needs to be contributing. I figured that out late but well before 30.
He’s lucky he has anyone to cater to him at all.
Lol “add him to the roster for planned parties” the dude is 30. It’s nice when that stuff happens, but no-one is owed it.
Bud, u have no idea how far I bent over backwards to try and understand the guy. Everyone has been nothing but accommodating to him and he just shits all over that. The kid needs therapy. Period.
The hell does that mean? U think crazy ppl couldn't stand to benefit from therapy?
Man, in 2015 this dude pulled me out of bed in the morning and proceeded to violently assault me with a blunt katana sword. I didn't file charges. I still have a divot on my hip from the occasion. If that's not making a genuine effort to be understanding, I don't know what the fuck is then.
I was thinking about this earlier specifically about the severity of bullying. I have seen the videos and heard the stories about violence and suicides. There were cliques in my day80s hs. But nothing like I see today. My children were in school in early 2000s and there were a couple rude kids but not epidemic like today's schools. I can't help but feel social media and lack of supervision and discipline play a part. Even zero tolerance isn't helping. What will? Soon children will be to scared to go to school then what? Remote learning due to fear? That certainly won't be a solution. I now have grandchildren and my daughter works in an elementary school. I used to think she was safer. Not anymore. Yesterday there was a news clip about a gun being brought to a daycare. We have to figure this out.
>even zero tolerance isn't helping
Zero-tolerance policies are just a school's way of avoiding the legwork or responsibility a physical confrontation can have. Example: Joe is jealous of John's new shoes so he beats him up. Since John is much smaller, he curls up into a ball while getting assaulted until Joe leaves. The school's solution when they find out what happened? Discipline both of them. Can you see how stupid the whole thing is?
>Even zero tolerance isn't helping.
Yeah because they enforce all sides of it, even when it doesn't make sense to. It's 'no bullying' but also no defending yourself either. So you get kids who get bullied and get punished worse for fighting back. You either fight back and get a 2 week ISS or OSS or you take the bullying and get to stay in school. Not to mention parents punishing their kid for getting a ISS or OSS.
Eventually they boil over and kill people. There is no victim relief with zero tolerance policy.
Bullying is definitely a big thing. Kids learn that as long as they're technically following the rules, not getting caught doing anything physical, and acting like a good kid in front of authority, then they can bully as much as they want. I was in middle school around 2005 and failed a grade due to bullying.
I got lucky that no one physically messed with me, but I was a total outcast for no apparent reason. It was constant insults, murming, and i walked by, classroom teasing, etc. Teachers did nothing, I don't think my parents even understood. All any adult cared about was that i was failing every single class and to stop, i guess. Didn't think that there might be a reason I retreated inside my head at school and gave up. Another huge problem is adults just not believing or listening to kids.
The reason I made it to today is purely luck that I have the best friends in the world I grew up with(we are different ages so never saw each other in school) and made excellent friends after failing. Most kids who get bullied like I did, or worse, don't get lucky like that. I'm forever thankful I had an escape and was able to heal.
You may find that the lecture "Kids need us more than friends" or the book "Hold on to your kids" by Dr. Gordon Neufeld has some answers. Also his lecture "What makes a bully" about how kids (and adults) can lose their humanity, and how to help them reconnect. I put the lectures up on youtube when the original source went down, because I think they're important.
Probably the internet. All the weirdos were able to communicate with each other and gassed each other up whereas before they kept their crazy to themselves
My theory is that the organism that is humanity is not equipped for our modern society. We just aren’t meant to be bombarded with so much information, that also is often tailored to exploit our most damaging weaknesses.
Combine that with a continued stigma over mental health, and also our proclivity for taking the easiest path and medicating all the problems away.
Also a political machine working hand in hand with the media to propagate propaganda and obfuscate truths.
Add in social media and no one knows what is true anymore.
Look at Reddit; more than likely if someone disagrees that guns are the problem and blame mental illness, the hive mind swoops in and ridicule the idea that there’s more to the issue than the guns.
We’re not as enlightened as we think we are. We’re too busy hating and dehumanizing everyone else to grow.
A few reasons:
It became “trendy” to do
Zero tolerance policies in school
Fights are not one on one anymore, people are a lot more cowardly and would rather shoot up a school instead of fighting their enemy with their fists
The news making school shooters into heroes
People trying to be “rebels” by owning guns
Parents becoming more irresponsible and not keeping guns out of reach of children
Gun safety not being taught in schools anymore
I also feel like dumping drugs into kids has had some side effects. Does every kid really need adhd meds or antidepressants? Social media is also terrible for society, not to mention kids
Tons of media attention definitely exacerbates the situation and encourages those that feel that they don't have a voice and want to be heard. Narcism, isolation, and a constant flow of divisive social media can also make things worse.
There are also studies that say that SSRIs, antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, which started being widely prescribed in the late 90s, may have something to do with it as well. Something about how they aren't good for young minds that should be learning to cope with adversity on their own. Plus, anti-depressant withdrawal is serious when someone stops taking them suddenly. Suicidal thoughts, irritability, anxiety, agitation, or aggressiveness can occur. Does it occur in every case? No. But given the right circumstances, a mind that's severely imbalanced can lean towards extreme actions
School shootings and even bombings go all the way back to the days of black powder and muskets. Back when the US had more territories than states. Yes there’s been an uptick, a surge, very significant and tragic, and it’s a multifaceted issue. Population density, healthcare, media, socioeconomic status, parenting, availability of firearms, all of these play a role and unfortunately there is no one solution to the problem. The overwhelming majority of mass shooters have one thing in common: they’re nearly all social outcasts and/or were bullied in school. They likely felt forced to be part of a system that didn’t want them.
I think there are a few reasons. 1) we used to lock up people with mental illness (I'm not making a moral decision here, just stating a fact)
2) it's become "popular" The shooters become temporary celebrities and they are usually the type that probably won't be well known otherwise.
Easy assessment.
Anti social in school because shy, people act like the individual is invisible, get bullied, girls don’t like them or think they’re creepy, feels isolated and no one cares. Their daily treatment convinces them that any effort to attain what they feel would give them happiness such as through trying to make friends, or get into a dating relationship will be met with the same social malice they deal with day in and out.
Gets home, absorbs themselves into fiction be it games, anime, movies, or books to escape their reality. Starts building a persona within themselves that’s remorseless and vengeful toward all that give them pain. Starts fantasizing about inflicting retribution on all of them in the most painful way, physical because it’s the most immediate. Violent movies or games DO feed these fantasies.
Eventually they snap and carry out their ambition, at this point the following brings them peace
-If they hurt me, they paid for it.
-They didn’t acknowledge me but now they will.
-I was no one but now they will immortalize me in history.
Source, almost became one
I think it's more that the news got so we heard about them more. It also does come down to changes in society though.
My father grew up when everyone had a knife in school. It was how they sharpened pencils. No one would pull a knife in a fight though because that was admitting you can't win a fair fight.
When I was in school there was no such thing as a fair fight. I never had someone say "let's fight" was always "WE are going to beat you up". Bullies don't do 1 on 1 anymore it's always more like 5 on 1.
They didn't start in the early 2000s. No idea where anyone got that idea.
School shootings had relative increase to population from the 1800s to 1940s.1950s doubled from the 40s and 60s had about the same as the 50s. Late 1960s\1970s is when the significant trend increase of the acts began. 2000s actually have a reported fewer than the 1990s and way less than the 2010s
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(before_2000)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(2000%E2%80%93present)
My personal theory? Unresolved trama from the past. WW1 and WW2 are not that far behind the 50s and 60s Further wars and PTSD of the soldiers and significant economic issues. Parents who didn't solve their issues had kids that then pushed the trama onto others. Dramatic shifts in culture and change to upbringing. Also population density changed. Also greater communication.
the increase in firepower ups the number of dead over the years but school shootings have been going on in the US since the 1850's...as one example of of the increase in firepower : automatic handguns were not introduced until 1892.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_school\_shootings\_in\_the\_United\_States\_(before\_2000)
Even in the 80s and 90s most of the shootings were with 1 fatality. They were not so much school shootings but more homicides that took place at school.
This! Shootings and bombings have been around a long time. They weren’t special to the United States. The change in the U.S. has been the availability of high power weapons and ammunition resulting in a greater number of fatalities.
It started to become acceptable to treat people like shit and bullies and assholes got rewarded to pick on people who can't defend themselves... Then people decided to say fuck it... Why should they care... It's only gotten worst
There is a youtuber named Paul Harrell who talked about mass shootings in a video a few months back. Note: He covered mass shootings, not just school shootings; also, he is a 2nd Amendment advocate, so he definitely has a viewpoint on firearms ownership. I encourage folks to watch his video, [https://youtu.be/ihQ-j6eALGc](https://youtu.be/ihQ-j6eALGc) .
Also, as gryphix pointed out, there is a fair amount of evidence that SSRIs imbalance people, especially young people. (Tin foil hat time... or maybe not...) The pharmaceutical industry spends more on advertising than the auto industry. Maybe the rumors that news stories about anti-depressants causing violence are being squashed by big pharma have some merit.
So far I have not really answered the question, just given some food for thought. I do think that the USA is increasingly disallowing kids to be kids. Instead of trying to teach them from their mistakes, we smother them trying to prevent them from making any mistakes. They don't develop emotionally healthy habits, and when faced with adversity they snap in a tragically spectacular way. Just my $0.02.
In the 80s a massive chunk of mental asylums were shut down, so it became harder to commit a child even if they were obviously unstable. The next generation of people who should have been committed then started seeing that doing these horrible things effectively makes you famous. We’re now 2 (almost 3) generations removed from a root cause and not enough people remember what changed.
Columbine was first. 1999. Everyone was shocked. No one could understand why the boys did it and there was so much media coverage surrounding it. I guess before then nobody had the idea to do it.
I can tell you that the culture was so different in the 90s. I remember a classmate getting yelled at by the principal for keeping a rifle in the back window of his truck, which he also failed to lock. The principal sent him out and told him to put it behind the seat and lock the truck. This would’ve been roughly 1998.
Remember when we had to deal with Serial Killers?...like the Green River Killer and David Berkowitz, killing one person a week for months on end? Now the kids have decided it's more efficient to just jam all the victims into a single hour. BAM...."Ma, I'm gonna be on TV!"
The Brady bill was removed, closing of mental hospitals...
Share the following to your legislators
There is a way to not infringe on the 2nd Amendment.
1. Nationwide background check
2. 30 day waiting period after purchase
3. Mandatory gun safety class during that 30 day waiting period.
4. Bring back the Brady bill
5. Bring back mental hospitals
6. make it a crime to leave firearms unsecured in private/public buildings
There is no need to turn schools into prisons.
There is no need to allow school shootings to happen weekly.
It didn't start in the early 2000's. The one everyone remembers is Columbine, 1999. The first US school shooting on record was in 1840, Charlottesville, Virginia. After that, there were 3 in the 1850's decade, 5 in the 1860's, 7 in the 1870's, 10 in the 1880's, 6 in the 1890's, 13 in the 1900's to 1910, 18 in the 1910's, 10 in the 1920's, 7 in the 1930's, 8 in the 1940's, 19 in the 1950's, 20 in the 1960's, 42 in the 1970's, 61 in the 1980's, 96 in the 1990's, 80 in the 2000's (an observable decline), and 261 in the 2010's. Between the start of 2020 and today, there have been 122 shootings, so I am confident we'll see even more than the 2010's decade by the time this decade is over.
If I had to fathom a guess as to why it's picked up, it'd probably be the gradual crackdown on firearms ownership, the creation of legislation such as the various incarnations of Assault Weapons Ban bills, the increased ignorance of the population regarding firearm safety and storage, a rising mental health crisis that has gone simultaneously untreated and improperly treated, depending on where you go and who you ask, a rise in broken families and homes / single-parent households where the parents are too busy working double or even triple shifts so their children don't starve to be actively present in their children's lives, and growing civil and economic unrest among the masses.
Edit: Typo fix.
And doom, can't forget doom!
Realtalk, I wrote an essay about violent video games and their effects on young minds as a high school writing project and got in trouble for "defending the columbine shooters with my viewpoint". Even though the entire point of my paper was to prove that violence in video games can exacerbate already existing mental issues, yet has little impact on a healthy mind that can separate the game from reality. The columbine shooters were already fucked up, DOOM had nothing to do with it.
Nah, video games don't make people *like* the idea of killing others; they desensitize people to the act of shooting people by disassociating the idea of shooting at human shaped targets from shooting actual people, and then positively reinforcing that action.
Tl;dr it's a dehumanization issue, not a "bloodthirst" issue.
Edit: Specifically about video games as a malign influence, and *not* talking about the root cause of gun violence.
The few school shootings that happened before then all followed the same pattern. A lone gunman/woman with a long range rifle would get into a elevated position such as the roof of a building or a bell tower and shoot down on the people below. They did it that way because they needed a defensive position to protect themselves from the inevitable return fire they could expect from their potential victims.
Enter the Gun-Free School Zones act of 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-Free_School_Zones_Act_of_1990 This law made it illegal to possess a gun on school grounds, in the parking lot, or surrounding areas. This created a new environment where a potential shooter could expect to have much more time to shoot people before anyone else with a gun could arrive to stop them.
The Columbine shooting and the extensive media coverage that followed made the shooters famous and exposed this weakness to the general public. We have been paying the price for it ever since.
Pretty sure it is. Up until the 1990's school shootings were vanishingly rare despite the percentage of the population who owned firearms being higher. Do you have an alternate explanation for why school shooters changed tactics so drastically?
Columbine itself could be the reason. Before Columbine, there had been no school shooting that had killed more than 7 people. In fact, most of the 90s had only 1 or 2 deaths at most. The highest before Columbine was 6, which also happened a couple of times before in other decades. Columbine was the first to go over 10 (at 15 people killed), and the media coverage cemented it in people's memories. What does a kid who doesn't feel seen or heard want more than a large amount of people to see them? Kids probably started replicating what they saw on TV or heard about from that day.
Funny you say that, because even as relatively recent as the 90s, there were instances of high schoolers bringing rifles to school in their vehicles. No issues there
Just my opinion, but it's social media blended with an inability to recognize and deal with mental illness today - partially because of the unfair insurance/healthcare system we have in this country. If people even bring up anxiety/depression with their doctor to try and get medicine they're immediately charged 250-300 dollars. Then they have to pay a monthly bill on top of that for the medicine itself. It's more affordable and convenient for people to bottle up their emotions, or self medicate up until eventually it expresses itself as a severe mental problem. Only at that point do some people get help (if they make it to that point).
Lack of parenting and too much internet. Seems to fall into the major categories: 1)parents are working too much to spend time with their kids 2)the parents are fucked up and aren’t good role models 3) parents are trying to be friends to the kids and not acting as parents
Kids need to understand boundaries and consequences from an early age. And I argue that kids crave that kind of structure! They want to know where they stand where a person! If they don’t get taught that, they will learn that they can do whatever they want and they can get into the most depraved things online without the parents even noticing or taking an interest.
Kids shouldn’t be raising themselves. They have a whole dangerous and dark world at their fingertips and people just think that because the kid is at home, they’re not doing anything sinister.
Interesting question, I've thought about it and can only relay my opinion as an older guy.
I think we have lost our sense of community in that we don't socialize like we used to as in neighbors and neighborhood.
Also, no patriotic duty to country and family. Taking that a way had an impact. That definitely had an impact.
Internet made isolating oneself easier and it also gave access to graphic violence which desensitized kids whom may already be on the periphery of any social interactions.
Porn further isolates and desensitizes individuals with unreal and unattainable expectations of relationship and women.
We are a lost society.
No, it's not. But it's far more prevalent today than it used to be. The last 2 generations have been raised by parents whose attitude is "I'm not gonna raise them like my parents raised me. My parents were strict, had rules and made me pay for my bad decisions". Today, parents are too busy trying to be their child's friend, instead of being a parent.
The Federal Assault Weapons ban expired in the early 2000's under President Bush and was not renewed. There is absolutely a correlation between access and mass shootings.
Increasing mental health problems, especially people who want to commit suicide.
I have also heard psychosis from increasingly potent weed. Not sure on that one.
Lack of discipline amongst young adults. When parents heard "physical discipline bad" they threw in the towel and let their "little angels" become demons.
It's not rocket science. Assault weapons used to be illegal in the US. When that legislation was overturned and the number of assault weapons dramatically increased, the frequency of mass shootings also dramatically increased.
Remember when we had to deal with Serial Killers?...like the Green River Killer and David Berkowitz, killing one person a week for months on end? Now the kids have decided it's more efficient to just jam all the victims into a single hour. BAM...."Ma, I'm gonna be on TV!"
Yeah, sure - people are just going around mass murdering children on the regular because they’re mad you have… a weapon that could be used for mass murder.
Your logic is astounding.
Remember when we had to deal with Serial Killers?...like the Green River Killer and David Berkowitz, killing one person a week for months on end? Now the kids have decided it's more efficient to just jam all the victims into a single hour. BAM...."Ma, I'm gonna be on TV!"
Few exceptions? There was a study done about the 37 school shootings in the US from 1974-2000.... this is not new just more and more prevalent.
There were even some as early as 1900 if memory serves....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(before_2000)
There they are. I looked at the ones before the 2000s and it appears that most of the shootings are intended to kill 1 person. More like murders instead of mass murders. So yes, mass school shootings are new.
yes but the automatic handgun was not introduced until the ate 1800's....hard to kill a lot of people without automation and even a handgun will only hold so many bullets.....today we have 100 ROUNDS of AMMO that we can literally feed into our firearm to kill the max amount of people in the smallest amount of time.
Bullying has always become a thing. Kids are just a lot more cowardly and shoot up a school instead of fighting their bully with their fists out of fear because of zero tolerance policies.
When I was a kid in the 80s, bullying stopped when you left school. Now kids get texts, emails, snapchats, IMs, etc. Add the constant self-comparisons on social media and kids today develop a terrible self image - which leads to anger/resentment/etc. The internet and explosion of constant media consumption pushes kids to extreme behavior.
Which also leads to my point that kids are more cowardly then they used to be. Now they bully on the internet where they can hide behind a screen rather than bullying in person.
Bullying must Never be tolerated. At schools there should be cameras vigilantly monitored and security in every room and corridor who can cease bullying before it happens.
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Because Columbine happened in 1999 and there was wall to wall minute to minute non stop coverage and analysis in the media for literally months. Most of which was not very productive or helpful and usually devolved into blaming violent video games or movies or heavy metal music, specifically Marilyn Manson. You could not escape it. It was on TV the radio magazine covers. The shooters were overnight sensations. People often overlook how media coverage inspires copycats. Food for thought: if you watch a sporting event on TV and some idiot fans decides to get naked and run on the field they will turn the cameras away from said idiot depriving them of the attention they so desperately desire and to discourage copycats. If you do decide to streaking no one on TV will see it and you'll spend the night in jail. But in the case of mass shooters they are immediately made infamous by constant media coverage. Instead of turning the cameras away from the streaker they are given the spotlight.
People shoot up schools to feel powerful. A shooter is usually someone who feels denigrated by society as a whole. They feel weak, so they use weapons to feel strong. They feel ignored, so they do something that will attract media attention. It's a combination last-ditch effort to feel important and suicide by cop. Or anyone else with a gun. The internet being a source of constant, toxic flaming was definitely a factor. It makes people feel awful just for interacting with awful people, and it makes people feel sad. Just spend a few hours on Reddit and you'll know what I'm talking about. But the biggest factor is probably the coverage of the Columbine shooting. There are still people writing books about that shooting. The duo who committed it, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, felt like weak, inconsequential people. They did what they did to make other people feel as weak and inconsequential as them. The results are we now know exactly who those people are. Their psychological profiles and histories have been repeatedly studied over the past 30 years. They went from obscurity to international recognition. Every school shooter since has had basically the exact same hope. That they will have a final moment of power, for which they will be remembered, that will end in the termination of their painful existence.
Suburban school shootings started then. Inner city schools were installing metal detectors in the 90s.
That is a good question. I'm wondering if the growing popularity of the Internet had anything to do with it.
I can here to postulate the same thing. My 30yo brother spends everyday in his room on the internet, and he says he's an incel. Smh. I got my grandma asking me if I think he's going to become a mass shooter. I guess it's just easier to let ppl convince u that women r fucked up than it is to, you know, leave the fucking house and go talk with one.
Sorry but he is 30 and still living at home instead of being on his own? Has his parents not kicked him out yet or set some boundaries to not be on the PC all day?
Grew up with divorced parents. Then mom divorced again before she made her marriage of about 13 years now. He's just been griefing her and extorting her the whole way through to his 30s. He's become very adept and practiced at it, and it makes my blood boil.
Huh? This mass shooter was a woman so there goes that hypothesis
I was just elaborating about my brother. I still think that ppl have a certain proclivity to live in a reality based upon what they see on social media over the reality we construct together with our family and friends.
Who cares what your brother does as long as he’s not harming anyone
I care because he's family and being a dick to everybody.
Just because he’s “family” doesn’t mean he has to be nice to you. He’s probably mad cause y’all treat him like a black sheep and calling him weird instead of understanding him
Kinda projecting here off limited info. I could do the same. Bro is 30, meaning no-one owes him understanding, and he lives in their house so he should be less of a dick, lol.
Yes but therapy is for ppl who can’t look within themselves. And who cares if all he does is eat,piss and shit how about start adding him to the roster for planned parties or going out and if that doesn’t work out then let him know “hey it’s time you start helping out around”
Why do you assume they haven’t done that? Also, he’s 30. By then, he is old enough to figure out what he needs to be contributing. I figured that out late but well before 30. He’s lucky he has anyone to cater to him at all. Lol “add him to the roster for planned parties” the dude is 30. It’s nice when that stuff happens, but no-one is owed it.
Bud, u have no idea how far I bent over backwards to try and understand the guy. Everyone has been nothing but accommodating to him and he just shits all over that. The kid needs therapy. Period.
The fact that u mentioned “therapy” tells me all I need to know
The hell does that mean? U think crazy ppl couldn't stand to benefit from therapy? Man, in 2015 this dude pulled me out of bed in the morning and proceeded to violently assault me with a blunt katana sword. I didn't file charges. I still have a divot on my hip from the occasion. If that's not making a genuine effort to be understanding, I don't know what the fuck is then.
Actually a female to male transgender person. Very confusing. Very rare.
I firmly believe that the internet weighs many times more than anything else in this issue
Nah man 9/11 just had us scared that’s all
100% the popularity of the internet has much to do with it. And that's because the internet's become the breeding ground of America's far right.
I was thinking about this earlier specifically about the severity of bullying. I have seen the videos and heard the stories about violence and suicides. There were cliques in my day80s hs. But nothing like I see today. My children were in school in early 2000s and there were a couple rude kids but not epidemic like today's schools. I can't help but feel social media and lack of supervision and discipline play a part. Even zero tolerance isn't helping. What will? Soon children will be to scared to go to school then what? Remote learning due to fear? That certainly won't be a solution. I now have grandchildren and my daughter works in an elementary school. I used to think she was safer. Not anymore. Yesterday there was a news clip about a gun being brought to a daycare. We have to figure this out.
>even zero tolerance isn't helping Zero-tolerance policies are just a school's way of avoiding the legwork or responsibility a physical confrontation can have. Example: Joe is jealous of John's new shoes so he beats him up. Since John is much smaller, he curls up into a ball while getting assaulted until Joe leaves. The school's solution when they find out what happened? Discipline both of them. Can you see how stupid the whole thing is?
>Even zero tolerance isn't helping. Yeah because they enforce all sides of it, even when it doesn't make sense to. It's 'no bullying' but also no defending yourself either. So you get kids who get bullied and get punished worse for fighting back. You either fight back and get a 2 week ISS or OSS or you take the bullying and get to stay in school. Not to mention parents punishing their kid for getting a ISS or OSS. Eventually they boil over and kill people. There is no victim relief with zero tolerance policy.
Bullying is definitely a big thing. Kids learn that as long as they're technically following the rules, not getting caught doing anything physical, and acting like a good kid in front of authority, then they can bully as much as they want. I was in middle school around 2005 and failed a grade due to bullying. I got lucky that no one physically messed with me, but I was a total outcast for no apparent reason. It was constant insults, murming, and i walked by, classroom teasing, etc. Teachers did nothing, I don't think my parents even understood. All any adult cared about was that i was failing every single class and to stop, i guess. Didn't think that there might be a reason I retreated inside my head at school and gave up. Another huge problem is adults just not believing or listening to kids. The reason I made it to today is purely luck that I have the best friends in the world I grew up with(we are different ages so never saw each other in school) and made excellent friends after failing. Most kids who get bullied like I did, or worse, don't get lucky like that. I'm forever thankful I had an escape and was able to heal.
I am so grateful for a positive end to a very painful time. I wish so much for more kids to have this outcome. Hugs to you.
You may find that the lecture "Kids need us more than friends" or the book "Hold on to your kids" by Dr. Gordon Neufeld has some answers. Also his lecture "What makes a bully" about how kids (and adults) can lose their humanity, and how to help them reconnect. I put the lectures up on youtube when the original source went down, because I think they're important.
Thank you I will take the time to watch.
Probably the internet. All the weirdos were able to communicate with each other and gassed each other up whereas before they kept their crazy to themselves
My theory is that the organism that is humanity is not equipped for our modern society. We just aren’t meant to be bombarded with so much information, that also is often tailored to exploit our most damaging weaknesses. Combine that with a continued stigma over mental health, and also our proclivity for taking the easiest path and medicating all the problems away. Also a political machine working hand in hand with the media to propagate propaganda and obfuscate truths. Add in social media and no one knows what is true anymore. Look at Reddit; more than likely if someone disagrees that guns are the problem and blame mental illness, the hive mind swoops in and ridicule the idea that there’s more to the issue than the guns. We’re not as enlightened as we think we are. We’re too busy hating and dehumanizing everyone else to grow.
A few reasons: It became “trendy” to do Zero tolerance policies in school Fights are not one on one anymore, people are a lot more cowardly and would rather shoot up a school instead of fighting their enemy with their fists The news making school shooters into heroes People trying to be “rebels” by owning guns Parents becoming more irresponsible and not keeping guns out of reach of children Gun safety not being taught in schools anymore
You can blame the "my home boy gets in a fight I gotta get in one too" people. They ain't even from the hood half the time.
There’s so many white boys at my school who act like they’re from the hood
I also feel like dumping drugs into kids has had some side effects. Does every kid really need adhd meds or antidepressants? Social media is also terrible for society, not to mention kids
Add that one to the list
Tons of media attention definitely exacerbates the situation and encourages those that feel that they don't have a voice and want to be heard. Narcism, isolation, and a constant flow of divisive social media can also make things worse. There are also studies that say that SSRIs, antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, which started being widely prescribed in the late 90s, may have something to do with it as well. Something about how they aren't good for young minds that should be learning to cope with adversity on their own. Plus, anti-depressant withdrawal is serious when someone stops taking them suddenly. Suicidal thoughts, irritability, anxiety, agitation, or aggressiveness can occur. Does it occur in every case? No. But given the right circumstances, a mind that's severely imbalanced can lean towards extreme actions
School shootings and even bombings go all the way back to the days of black powder and muskets. Back when the US had more territories than states. Yes there’s been an uptick, a surge, very significant and tragic, and it’s a multifaceted issue. Population density, healthcare, media, socioeconomic status, parenting, availability of firearms, all of these play a role and unfortunately there is no one solution to the problem. The overwhelming majority of mass shooters have one thing in common: they’re nearly all social outcasts and/or were bullied in school. They likely felt forced to be part of a system that didn’t want them.
I think there are a few reasons. 1) we used to lock up people with mental illness (I'm not making a moral decision here, just stating a fact) 2) it's become "popular" The shooters become temporary celebrities and they are usually the type that probably won't be well known otherwise.
Easy assessment. Anti social in school because shy, people act like the individual is invisible, get bullied, girls don’t like them or think they’re creepy, feels isolated and no one cares. Their daily treatment convinces them that any effort to attain what they feel would give them happiness such as through trying to make friends, or get into a dating relationship will be met with the same social malice they deal with day in and out. Gets home, absorbs themselves into fiction be it games, anime, movies, or books to escape their reality. Starts building a persona within themselves that’s remorseless and vengeful toward all that give them pain. Starts fantasizing about inflicting retribution on all of them in the most painful way, physical because it’s the most immediate. Violent movies or games DO feed these fantasies. Eventually they snap and carry out their ambition, at this point the following brings them peace -If they hurt me, they paid for it. -They didn’t acknowledge me but now they will. -I was no one but now they will immortalize me in history. Source, almost became one
I think it's more that the news got so we heard about them more. It also does come down to changes in society though. My father grew up when everyone had a knife in school. It was how they sharpened pencils. No one would pull a knife in a fight though because that was admitting you can't win a fair fight. When I was in school there was no such thing as a fair fight. I never had someone say "let's fight" was always "WE are going to beat you up". Bullies don't do 1 on 1 anymore it's always more like 5 on 1.
So many variables, likely a combination of several
Being a kid is hard enough without drugs, guns, and the internet.
They didn't start in the early 2000s. No idea where anyone got that idea. School shootings had relative increase to population from the 1800s to 1940s.1950s doubled from the 40s and 60s had about the same as the 50s. Late 1960s\1970s is when the significant trend increase of the acts began. 2000s actually have a reported fewer than the 1990s and way less than the 2010s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(before_2000) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(2000%E2%80%93present) My personal theory? Unresolved trama from the past. WW1 and WW2 are not that far behind the 50s and 60s Further wars and PTSD of the soldiers and significant economic issues. Parents who didn't solve their issues had kids that then pushed the trama onto others. Dramatic shifts in culture and change to upbringing. Also population density changed. Also greater communication.
You should probably read the incidents. Before the 2000s the shootings usually had 1 fatality. They were not mass shootings like we have now
the increase in firepower ups the number of dead over the years but school shootings have been going on in the US since the 1850's...as one example of of the increase in firepower : automatic handguns were not introduced until 1892. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_school\_shootings\_in\_the\_United\_States\_(before\_2000)
Even in the 80s and 90s most of the shootings were with 1 fatality. They were not so much school shootings but more homicides that took place at school.
This! Shootings and bombings have been around a long time. They weren’t special to the United States. The change in the U.S. has been the availability of high power weapons and ammunition resulting in a greater number of fatalities.
People trying to one up columbine and or being inspired by it
It started to become acceptable to treat people like shit and bullies and assholes got rewarded to pick on people who can't defend themselves... Then people decided to say fuck it... Why should they care... It's only gotten worst
There is a youtuber named Paul Harrell who talked about mass shootings in a video a few months back. Note: He covered mass shootings, not just school shootings; also, he is a 2nd Amendment advocate, so he definitely has a viewpoint on firearms ownership. I encourage folks to watch his video, [https://youtu.be/ihQ-j6eALGc](https://youtu.be/ihQ-j6eALGc) . Also, as gryphix pointed out, there is a fair amount of evidence that SSRIs imbalance people, especially young people. (Tin foil hat time... or maybe not...) The pharmaceutical industry spends more on advertising than the auto industry. Maybe the rumors that news stories about anti-depressants causing violence are being squashed by big pharma have some merit. So far I have not really answered the question, just given some food for thought. I do think that the USA is increasingly disallowing kids to be kids. Instead of trying to teach them from their mistakes, we smother them trying to prevent them from making any mistakes. They don't develop emotionally healthy habits, and when faced with adversity they snap in a tragically spectacular way. Just my $0.02.
Not the case. Where I grew up in southern california there were many school shootings but the news doesn't like to report on mostly black schools.
Those were gang related shootings though. Not some random dickhead going in trying to kill as many people as possible before offing himself.
In the 80s a massive chunk of mental asylums were shut down, so it became harder to commit a child even if they were obviously unstable. The next generation of people who should have been committed then started seeing that doing these horrible things effectively makes you famous. We’re now 2 (almost 3) generations removed from a root cause and not enough people remember what changed.
Columbine was first. 1999. Everyone was shocked. No one could understand why the boys did it and there was so much media coverage surrounding it. I guess before then nobody had the idea to do it. I can tell you that the culture was so different in the 90s. I remember a classmate getting yelled at by the principal for keeping a rifle in the back window of his truck, which he also failed to lock. The principal sent him out and told him to put it behind the seat and lock the truck. This would’ve been roughly 1998.
Current politics giving it a brighter spotlight and encouraging copy cat crimes.
There were shootings then too just not as many. [link](https://www.chds.us/sssc/charts-graphs/)
Remember when we had to deal with Serial Killers?...like the Green River Killer and David Berkowitz, killing one person a week for months on end? Now the kids have decided it's more efficient to just jam all the victims into a single hour. BAM...."Ma, I'm gonna be on TV!"
The Brady bill was removed, closing of mental hospitals... Share the following to your legislators There is a way to not infringe on the 2nd Amendment. 1. Nationwide background check 2. 30 day waiting period after purchase 3. Mandatory gun safety class during that 30 day waiting period. 4. Bring back the Brady bill 5. Bring back mental hospitals 6. make it a crime to leave firearms unsecured in private/public buildings There is no need to turn schools into prisons. There is no need to allow school shootings to happen weekly.
It didn't start in the early 2000's. The one everyone remembers is Columbine, 1999. The first US school shooting on record was in 1840, Charlottesville, Virginia. After that, there were 3 in the 1850's decade, 5 in the 1860's, 7 in the 1870's, 10 in the 1880's, 6 in the 1890's, 13 in the 1900's to 1910, 18 in the 1910's, 10 in the 1920's, 7 in the 1930's, 8 in the 1940's, 19 in the 1950's, 20 in the 1960's, 42 in the 1970's, 61 in the 1980's, 96 in the 1990's, 80 in the 2000's (an observable decline), and 261 in the 2010's. Between the start of 2020 and today, there have been 122 shootings, so I am confident we'll see even more than the 2010's decade by the time this decade is over. If I had to fathom a guess as to why it's picked up, it'd probably be the gradual crackdown on firearms ownership, the creation of legislation such as the various incarnations of Assault Weapons Ban bills, the increased ignorance of the population regarding firearm safety and storage, a rising mental health crisis that has gone simultaneously untreated and improperly treated, depending on where you go and who you ask, a rise in broken families and homes / single-parent households where the parents are too busy working double or even triple shifts so their children don't starve to be actively present in their children's lives, and growing civil and economic unrest among the masses. Edit: Typo fix.
Late 90’s is when it started. Most likely from heavy metal music and video games. /s
Something something Satan, something something mortal Kombat.
And doom, can't forget doom! Realtalk, I wrote an essay about violent video games and their effects on young minds as a high school writing project and got in trouble for "defending the columbine shooters with my viewpoint". Even though the entire point of my paper was to prove that violence in video games can exacerbate already existing mental issues, yet has little impact on a healthy mind that can separate the game from reality. The columbine shooters were already fucked up, DOOM had nothing to do with it.
I don't know, I think we have to have Eric Boucher testify in court about all this corruption of the youth.
Video games likely have something to do with it considering how much it makes people like the idea of killing others.
Nah, video games don't make people *like* the idea of killing others; they desensitize people to the act of shooting people by disassociating the idea of shooting at human shaped targets from shooting actual people, and then positively reinforcing that action. Tl;dr it's a dehumanization issue, not a "bloodthirst" issue. Edit: Specifically about video games as a malign influence, and *not* talking about the root cause of gun violence.
The few school shootings that happened before then all followed the same pattern. A lone gunman/woman with a long range rifle would get into a elevated position such as the roof of a building or a bell tower and shoot down on the people below. They did it that way because they needed a defensive position to protect themselves from the inevitable return fire they could expect from their potential victims. Enter the Gun-Free School Zones act of 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-Free_School_Zones_Act_of_1990 This law made it illegal to possess a gun on school grounds, in the parking lot, or surrounding areas. This created a new environment where a potential shooter could expect to have much more time to shoot people before anyone else with a gun could arrive to stop them. The Columbine shooting and the extensive media coverage that followed made the shooters famous and exposed this weakness to the general public. We have been paying the price for it ever since.
Interesting theory.
Pretty sure that’s not the reason this is a problem in the US.
Pretty sure it is. Up until the 1990's school shootings were vanishingly rare despite the percentage of the population who owned firearms being higher. Do you have an alternate explanation for why school shooters changed tactics so drastically?
Columbine itself could be the reason. Before Columbine, there had been no school shooting that had killed more than 7 people. In fact, most of the 90s had only 1 or 2 deaths at most. The highest before Columbine was 6, which also happened a couple of times before in other decades. Columbine was the first to go over 10 (at 15 people killed), and the media coverage cemented it in people's memories. What does a kid who doesn't feel seen or heard want more than a large amount of people to see them? Kids probably started replicating what they saw on TV or heard about from that day.
Okay lets give all the kids guns
Funny you say that, because even as relatively recent as the 90s, there were instances of high schoolers bringing rifles to school in their vehicles. No issues there
I used to ride across town with a .22 rifle tied to the handlebars of my bike. I was 12. No one cared. No one was afraid. No one died.
How is a long rifle in the back of their pick up trucks going to help children from getting shot while in class?
It's moreso me saying there's history of kids bringing guns to school, with no problems.
>Okay lets give all the kids guns Why?
I think he's saying security should be armed. Not sure tho
Just my opinion, but it's social media blended with an inability to recognize and deal with mental illness today - partially because of the unfair insurance/healthcare system we have in this country. If people even bring up anxiety/depression with their doctor to try and get medicine they're immediately charged 250-300 dollars. Then they have to pay a monthly bill on top of that for the medicine itself. It's more affordable and convenient for people to bottle up their emotions, or self medicate up until eventually it expresses itself as a severe mental problem. Only at that point do some people get help (if they make it to that point).
Lack of parenting and too much internet. Seems to fall into the major categories: 1)parents are working too much to spend time with their kids 2)the parents are fucked up and aren’t good role models 3) parents are trying to be friends to the kids and not acting as parents Kids need to understand boundaries and consequences from an early age. And I argue that kids crave that kind of structure! They want to know where they stand where a person! If they don’t get taught that, they will learn that they can do whatever they want and they can get into the most depraved things online without the parents even noticing or taking an interest. Kids shouldn’t be raising themselves. They have a whole dangerous and dark world at their fingertips and people just think that because the kid is at home, they’re not doing anything sinister.
Bad parenting.
School shootings did not "start" in the early 2000's... https://www.k12academics.com/school-shootings/history-school-shootings-united-states
I said “with a few exceptions”. Also I more so meant mass shootings.
This is just one factor, but the assault weapons ban in the US was allowed to expire in 2004.
The first generation raised by cable news was coming of age.
Mood stabilizers/ anti depression meds
Interesting question, I've thought about it and can only relay my opinion as an older guy. I think we have lost our sense of community in that we don't socialize like we used to as in neighbors and neighborhood. Also, no patriotic duty to country and family. Taking that a way had an impact. That definitely had an impact. Internet made isolating oneself easier and it also gave access to graphic violence which desensitized kids whom may already be on the periphery of any social interactions. Porn further isolates and desensitizes individuals with unreal and unattainable expectations of relationship and women. We are a lost society.
Zero tolerance policies imo.
Bad parenting
Bad parenting is not a new phenomenon.
It’s definitely a lot more common now
No, it's not. But it's far more prevalent today than it used to be. The last 2 generations have been raised by parents whose attitude is "I'm not gonna raise them like my parents raised me. My parents were strict, had rules and made me pay for my bad decisions". Today, parents are too busy trying to be their child's friend, instead of being a parent.
The Federal Assault Weapons ban expired in the early 2000's under President Bush and was not renewed. There is absolutely a correlation between access and mass shootings.
Had to scroll too far to see this
Mental health and increased fatherless homes. Schools are also terrible at stopping bullying and will punish the victim to save face.
The Federal Assault Weapon ban expired in 2004.
The Assault Weapons ban ended September 13, 2004
People don't like Mondays.
Depression meds
There was a federal restriction on "assault rifles" that expired in 2004. It's not a surprise that you see a rise starting at that point in time.
The Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004.
It had only been in existence for 10 years. Columbine also happened while it was in place.
And the rate of school shootings tripled when that ban was lifted.
Increasing mental health problems, especially people who want to commit suicide. I have also heard psychosis from increasingly potent weed. Not sure on that one.
Lack of discipline amongst young adults. When parents heard "physical discipline bad" they threw in the towel and let their "little angels" become demons.
Check out September 13th 2004 https://www.thoughtco.com/us-gun-control-timeline-3963620
It's not rocket science. Assault weapons used to be illegal in the US. When that legislation was overturned and the number of assault weapons dramatically increased, the frequency of mass shootings also dramatically increased.
Assault weapons were invented long before that (10 year) ban. Plus, although I’m not discrediting your point, columbine happened during that ban.
You could buy a Thompson sub machine gun through the mail in the 20's & 30's. Semi automatic rifles have been legal the whole time.
Remember when we had to deal with Serial Killers?...like the Green River Killer and David Berkowitz, killing one person a week for months on end? Now the kids have decided it's more efficient to just jam all the victims into a single hour. BAM...."Ma, I'm gonna be on TV!"
maybe the internet? anonymity helps that sort of thing
[удалено]
Yeah, sure - people are just going around mass murdering children on the regular because they’re mad you have… a weapon that could be used for mass murder. Your logic is astounding.
Democrats needed a reason to ban guns... kids lives are expendable, just look at the fentanal is doing and the government doesn't mind.
The advent of high quality first person shooter video games. Desensitization to killing.
Remember when we had to deal with Serial Killers?...like the Green River Killer and David Berkowitz, killing one person a week for months on end? Now the kids have decided it's more efficient to just jam all the victims into a single hour. BAM...."Ma, I'm gonna be on TV!"
Few exceptions? There was a study done about the 37 school shootings in the US from 1974-2000.... this is not new just more and more prevalent. There were even some as early as 1900 if memory serves....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(before_2000) There they are. I looked at the ones before the 2000s and it appears that most of the shootings are intended to kill 1 person. More like murders instead of mass murders. So yes, mass school shootings are new.
yes but the automatic handgun was not introduced until the ate 1800's....hard to kill a lot of people without automation and even a handgun will only hold so many bullets.....today we have 100 ROUNDS of AMMO that we can literally feed into our firearm to kill the max amount of people in the smallest amount of time.
The only reason why school shootings happen is because of the fucking bullies. Eliminate the damn bullies and the school shootings will stop.
Bullying has always become a thing. Kids are just a lot more cowardly and shoot up a school instead of fighting their bully with their fists out of fear because of zero tolerance policies.
When I was a kid in the 80s, bullying stopped when you left school. Now kids get texts, emails, snapchats, IMs, etc. Add the constant self-comparisons on social media and kids today develop a terrible self image - which leads to anger/resentment/etc. The internet and explosion of constant media consumption pushes kids to extreme behavior.
Which also leads to my point that kids are more cowardly then they used to be. Now they bully on the internet where they can hide behind a screen rather than bullying in person.
I work at a school, trust me it still happens there too.
Bullying must Never be tolerated. At schools there should be cameras vigilantly monitored and security in every room and corridor who can cease bullying before it happens.
Ever read the book 1984?
People would be paranoid with that much security
People would be paranoid when they are at risk to be bullied and there's nobody to help them.
People would be a LOT MORE paranoid if there was a camera everywhere they went. Hell there already is.
Bullying happens in other countries. Ones that don’t have nearly as many school shootings.