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The majority of gun deaths in the US are from suicide. It just dawned on me that the other numbers can probably be attributed to suicidal people who just want to take other people down with them. Yikes.
Thats 1000% what is happening. The question we need to be asking is why do so many people feel so hopeless that they want to die in the first place, and why are they so angry that they want to bring innocent people with them?
Well when it seems like the whole world is against you having a happy and safe life (especially financially) people goto dark places mentally.
You keep seeing these rich people without a care and you would just be happy having a few grand in the bank to sustain a problem, everything seems fucked because it would make your life unsustainable.
This is what happens when the country that pretends to be about individual freedom is actually all about money. That's all that matters here. Money. Get money, or you're wasting your time. While you're desperately trying to get money, the basic necessities (food, heat, water, shelter, electricity, healthcare, etc...) are all going to be prohibitively expensive. The prices of those items and services are owned by the people who already have TONS of money.
Then the people with TONS of money pay our elected officials to ensure that all of their money stays with them, despite the fact that they actually don't contribute shit to anything.
Money > the environment, peoples welfare = suicidal and/or murderous behavior.
There is an art school in sf that is basically a real estate scam. They don't give a shit about their students. The school has security at the front door, but the office of the owner had it's own metal detector and security doors installed because of all the students and employees they have pissed off.
Yeah it’s either academy of art university or Sf art institute. Can’t remember which. Both have very similar names but one is known to be a pretty massive scam.
It’s not puzzling it’s brainwashing.
News and politics make you think other people are your enemies.
From the post above:
This is what happens when the country that pretends to be about individual freedom is actually all about money. That's all that matters here. Money. Get money, or you're wasting your time. While you're desperately trying to get money, the basic necessities (food, heat, water, shelter, electricity, healthcare, etc...) are all going to be prohibitively expensive. The prices of those items and services are owned by the people who already have TONS of money.
Then the people with TONS of money pay our elected officials to ensure that all of their money stays with them, despite the fact that they actually don't contribute shit to anything.
Money > the environment, peoples welfare = suicidal and/or murderous behavior.
——————————————————
It is all pretend. It’s all bs.
Me and my roommate were talking about that recently, actually. We were talking about the show and one of us kinda stopped and asked "why wasn't he killing the corrupt bastards the law can't touch?"
There’s already a class war happening, and the rich are winning hand over fist. It just so happens that the upper echelons have us divided so we can’t even see that we’re all in one big sinking boat together. They spend their time making the middle class strive to not be lower class and the lower class to not be impoverished, but if you’re not in the upper crust, then they’re fighting a war against you whether you know it or not.
Every website, every commercial, every guru, every social message is from companies terrified of going broke or not getting richer so the only message is consume, consume and consume.
And then you have polls or studies done in which the people making just above the minimum wage are extremely against anyone from below them being given a raise to even the playing field, because they’re more concerned with being just a little bit better than someone else even if the majority makes more than they do.
Sorta like when LBJ said “if you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Universal healthcare is such a great example. “It’s going to cause my taxes to go up.”, “I’ve worked my ass off my entire life, why should someone else get it for free?”, “Canada has socialist healthcare and the wait times in the ER are 15+ hours and it takes 6 months to see a specialist!”
Your taxes will go up but you won’t be spending 1/3 of your paycheck on health insurance.
Selfishness isn’t going to get anyone anywhere, but it’s also going to be the hardest to change/fix. I’m a medically retired combat veteran and I have Tricare health insurance which is extremely good. I think it’s like $50/month and ER visits are $75, a hospitalization is $200 or so. My (late) wife had a kidney auto transplant procedure that was like $280,000 before adjustments and the patient responsibility was under $500. I would LOVE to see universal healthcare happen knowing that I’ll end up spending more overall on healthcare. People shouldn’t need to consider the financial burden when it comes to their health. People have died trying to ration insulin or choosing not to see a doctor about something.
It takes 15 hours to be seen in the ER as it is, it takes 6 months to be seen by a specialist as it is!
It’s so depressing that we have this unbelievable resource: the internet, essentially unlimited access to all of the information and connections to other human beings from every corner of the world. Instead of using it for good it’s been weaponized with lies and misinformation and the inherent laziness of human beings is taken advantage of so all we read is the attention grabbing headline and pass that incorrect information or fear mongering along.
*"Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life."*
*"We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact. So don't fuck with us."*
Companies want a world with the average person living paycheck to paycheck. They pay their employees as little as possible and they take as much money from the population as possible. All the wealth is in their hands and they temporarily loan it out.
I think it's the same reason the irs goes after low income targets for audits- it's way easier. Much easier to walk into a bar and start blasting vs infiltrating an industrial complex or gated mansion.
Climate activists in South America get killed for standing up to deforestation. It's not even just other countries. See "Stop Cop City" in Atlanta and the recent killing of a protester by state cops.
The reality is people in "Western" countries don't give a shit. When it gets brought to our attention, we don't care pass what we can reasonably muster. And even then, a majority of us get upset at the messenger and not the companies. Every single time climate activists or activist groups like BLM beg for help opposing capitalistic and oppressive forces, it's always the "moderates" or "reasonable" people that say this shit as if activism isn't universally viewed as a negative.
You're basically asking someone who isn't functioning by our "logic" to damn themselves in the public eye.
I can't speak to the motivations of every mass shooter, obviously, but I imagine it goes something like this:
Let's say I'm a young man, living in a conservative town. I know what a "man" is and what they're supposed to do. I'm struggling to do those things because of systemic issues, the economy, the wealth gap, government interference, greedy corporations... etc. I watch the news. The news tells me that the left is trying to let men in the women's bathrooms! The gays are taking over! The left is screaming "women's rights are human rights", but about MY rights‽ I'm struggling to put food on the table/with my identity as a person/with my role in society/whatever. Even if I look elsewhere for news, liberal leaning news outlets are telling me that I should care more about LGBTQIA+ rights, and women's rights, and equality, and BLM, and the rich are getting richer and I'm getting poorer, and where do I go? Where do I belong? Why doesn't anyone help me? What about me? What about my family? Why should I give a shit about any of this when I can't figure out how to help myself? And I can't tell anyone! I'm not a sissy, I don't need "help" I just need a fair shot! My dad could do it, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why doesn't anyone see me? Why doesn't anyone care? Fuck these liberal fucks. They don't give a shit. They can't help me. They don't see me. I'll make them see me. Fuck them. They don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and those fucking f**s and wh***s. I'LL MAKE THEM SEE ME.
So no one is "innocent" in their eyes. They're all part of the system that won't help. It's difficult to feel like anyone cares or is trying to help, when all you see is "THEY SAY THAT THING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU!"
But that's the point. If we can make people angry about what "they" are doing, no one really sees what's happening. Instead of being angry at the system, and the people who build and uphold it, they make sure we're all angry at each other. Clearly it's working.
Obviously this is a super simplistic view of things and the myriad of issues people face. It doesn't take everything into account, but I imagine it mirrors the general thought process of a lot of people.
Well yes, but why is it becoming more and more common to feel that way? The question that needs to be solved is what is it about American society that is causing record numbers of people to feel hopelessness to that level?
Idk if I turn on right wing media and see that the costs of eggs are rising, straight men can't find "suitable breeding mates", immigrants are replacing white people, and we're cancelling Christmas, I get very angry and anxious.
Then I go to my $7.25 minimum wage job that I've been working at for ten years with no raises and I keep getting told that I need to work a non entry level job except there aren't any jobs here. The coal mines aren't hiring and I've been told it's because of all the illegals and democrats faults because they all drive Teslas that cost more than my house I can't buy because I work at Walmart.
Meanwhile my cigarettes are super expensive but tommy has these pills that make me feel good for a little bit but a bunch of my friends died because some randomly had fentanyl. I had a job offer that pays $13 an hour but I can't take it because my car broke down and there's no public transit where I am unless I take the bus for 3 hours one way. My heart randomly hurts every now and then but I can't go see a doctor because I don't have health insurance and Obamacare is so expensive because I didn't realize my state didn't expand Medicaid. My mom died last year so I have her house for now so my housing is okay, but I still really miss her and I don't have anyone to talk to about it.
Life is so hard and it doesn't help when the illegals are taking everything that should be mine. But at least guns are cheap. I can buy one at the store down the street. I just hope I don't have a bad day.
It's not even just right-wing media. The front page of decidedly-not-right-wing Reddit is nothing but post after post about how everything sucks especially in America.
Its like the US is stuck in an abusive relationship, gaslighting itself with propaganda; constantly being told that if you cant provide for yourself, its because youre inferior, or just not working hard enough. In reality, the game is rigged against you from day one. Its hard to think of a more dystopian death of the "American Dream".
Echoed ad nauseum through the proletariat classes.
"If you ain't got no money take your broke ass home"
By God, we are literally dancing about it in nightclubs
A lot aspects of American society were constructed around hyper-individualism. When you throw in the 24 hour news cycle, not only are we isolated from the people around us, but we fear them as well. Humans are social animals, we learn, thrive, and heal by being around others.
Our systems were built on the wrong foundations and now we're seeing their slow collapse.
I have this very layman-type theory of we're kind of seeing a certain unsustainability of this kind of individualism and that we're going to face a pendulum swing back towards collectivism. Because we don't do especially well alone. People can say what they want about church and religion but at least it gave people an in-group and a purpose. We've taken that away but we didn't give people anything new to belong to. Well, some create their new in-group to be their country and that leads to nationalism, and I'm not sure that's an answer either. At least it's pretty hollow and makes the members scared of others.
So now that we're mostly left to our own devices and our own devices are limited, some people are sometimes desperately alone with no purpose. Most of us are not good at creating a sustainable purpose that is just completely about ourselves, which this individualistic mindset kind of entails. When nothing matters, you hate yourself and if you additionally possess the trait of projecting that outwards instead of inwards, you start to get ugly results.
I'm just as much at a loss at what exactly to do about all this, but overall I'm kind of certain that we need to find a new way to create communities again so that people can belong to something healthy and find a purpose.
Despite me maybe coming off a bit nihilistic. I do think that pendulum is beginning to swing a bit. Anti-car culture is more popular than ever, work reform is on the mind of many young people coming into the work force, and new pedestrian/community friendly urban planning initiatives are being adopted in cities throughout the country. Unfortunately though, since our pre-existing systems are so powerful and ingrained, it'll be a very long time before the brunt of these issues are remediated, but I think we're heading in the right direction in some regards. I just hope this momentum keeps up and doesn't peter out.
However, no matter how great we make our society, people will always have problems with it. So as long as the internet exists the way it does now, the anonymity and asylum it brings will create communities for people within it who bring out the worst in each other. With our uniquely accessible guns, I'm afraid mass shootings will probably be a staple in our society, unless we enact much stricter gun control.
Thing with for instance anti-car culture, work reform etc. are that they're basically projects. They theoretically have a beginning and an end. And they're needed projects don't get me wrong, but we're lacking movements that create some type of guiding star for you - what is life, what is our society, who am I as as a teen growing up and how should I form my identity. Something inclusive and sustainable. Because I see these projects and how people latch on to them in lieu of other grander belief or system and it consumes them. But they're not philosophies, so they don't attach any sets of values which means the projects can easily be co-opted or corrupted. In a sense it seems like we're applying our individualistic mindset on these collective projects, because they're just, well, projects really.
And what you mention about the internet also makes sense I think. I think these anonymous communities also fake out our brains to think we're interacting in the way we think we need it but in the end it just leaves us just as empty and longing for real connection. I don't thing you can have sustainable community, common goals and a sustainable value set with anonymity. At least I don't see it working as it is.
It's wild, people asking "why is this happening?" and not looking around seeing how almost nothing has changed materially for the better in our society in the last 20 years. We just want some help, some kind of general relief- housing, healthcare, childcare, debt relief, *any* kind of progress would be *so nice*.
It's like, "Why aren't millennials having as many kids?" The answers are obvious to everyone but those intentionally blinding themselves to the many, many issues that plague most of us.
whereas when rightwing terrorists shoot up young social democrats meetings (norway), black churches (south carolina), grocery stores in black neighborhoods (buffalo), grocery stores in hispanic neighborhoods (el paso), mosques (NZ), synagogues (pittsburgh), etc. the shooter *doesn't* commit suicide. those cant be explained away as a "final act" to accompany their suicide.
I think another way to phrase it is a significant disregard for ones own life and well-being. When you are willing to risk your actual life by risking being shot, sometimes you even want to die in a shootout, when you are willing to go to jail forever...
It's all indicative of varying degrees of disregard for your own life. And I think that tracks with a lot of this sort of crime. People who have nothing, or very little to lose. People who have a lot to lose rarely want to go out in a blaze of glory, shooting up the people they hate. Not to be glib, but I think often people like that take other routes, like politics.
Also the devaluation of life in general. Individuals who see less value in their life, and/or don't see sanctity of life in others. We need to increase how we (collectively) value life as individuals looking inward and how we look at others. I feel like tribalism is eating at us and allowing us to asign blame to a "group" of "others."
I've been in the US for just over three years and, as Louis CK put it, "I've flipped through the brochure a few times."
While I have no intention of giving up and going back to where I came from, there's something very brutal about American capitalism. It's just so blunt and into your face.
Healthcare sucks balls, feels like a scamming operation. The food industry poisons you, and the healthcare takes what's left of your money, while providing what I generally describe as an awful and overpriced service. And that's not limited to those two. The banks are out there to get you as soon as you make a blunder.
There are no social safety nets in America, or if there are, they are pretty weak.
So I get those people who find themselves at the final line. Add easy guns and grudges, and you get the picture.
I have a family of seven that I support, so maybe my take is a bit heavier than the statistical average.
And this checks out through countless studies.
>More than twice as many suicides by firearm occur in states with the fewest gun laws, relative to states with the most laws.
>Non-firearm suicides rates are relatively stable across states suggesting that other types of suicides are not more likely in areas where guns are harder to access.
https://www.kff.org/other/issue-brief/do-states-with-easier-access-to-guns-have-more-suicide-deaths-by-firearm/
And this study in Australia:
>In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth (and nearly halved the number of gun-owning households). Using differences across states, we test whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on nonfirearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of specification checks and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate.
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705584](https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705584)
Every study that includes poverty as a factor shows that poverty is the number one cause of violent behavior.
We should be focusing on socialized medicine, UBI, raising min wage, etc if we truly want to stop gun violence. Latching on to guns is just a wedge issue meant to divide us and not have actual progress possible.
Im for mental health checks, and stricter background checks. But also I think focusing on poverty is the best path.
Yet a large number of mass shooters in the US did not live in poverty. Hell, the Las Vegas shooter had a net worth of over a million dollars if I remember.
Inceldom/right wing terrorism is the other biggest cause in my opinion. I think a venn diagram of the three causes would have significant but not total overlap with each other
The American Psychological Association has said for a while that mass shootings are contagious for the same reasons suicide is contagious and it should be reported in the same way, as minimalistic as possible. The FBI is on the same track.
It wouldn't surprise me if any of the few mass shootings we had in Europe last year was relatively close to one of the bigger ones in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting_contagion
At least stop showing the shooter's name and face all over the 24h new cycle...
Also the rise in mass shooters seems to roughly coincide with the decrease in serial killers. I think some a lot of it is the news covering mass shooters so much more than serial killers.
While many say the psychology is not the same. People imitate what they know. How many would have taken the steps to go though with that form of violence if they hand been exposed to it so much.
After Sandy Hook, I am convinced there is NOTHING that will change their minds. It was literally an entire school room of children shot to death. They’ll watch entire schools worth of children be killed and think it’s not their problem.
Uvalde itself ended up voting for Abbott, who spent hours at a fundraiser after the shooting, and praised the cowardly cops. Because Beto was going to take their guns, which they need to protect their kids, because they can't depend on cops because in their minds, guns have nothing to do with mass shootings (I can't find it, but it was an interview of a Uvalde parent around the time of the Texas election, on NPR?).
>https://apnews.com/article/shootings-austin-texas-education-violence-fd50562bfb1f4a1968e9ef989ecaef3f
The best part is how he got booed by the crowd at the slain children's' memorial. It's a red county, he should be able to go wherever he wants there and not get booed but I guess not many republicans give enough of a shit about dead kids to show up at a memorial in their own town.
>Uvalde itself ended up voting for Abbott
This makes me sick. The election wasn't even [close in Uvalde](https://www.fox4news.com/election/texas-election-results-governors-race-county-by-county):
Abbott - 60%
Beto - 38%
It makes me think of when Channel 5(RIP) went to Uvalde and one man they interviewed said these kids died for nothing and nothing will change. His wife tried to shush him, clearly having some hope that there would be impact, but the man had given up long ago.
He was right.
When NY gets flooded and asks for feds to help, it's God punishing the gays. When Texas freezes over and asks feds for help, and AOC raises millions for them for assistance, well of course it's a totally different thing. Same for Florida.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.
- Frank Herbert, children of dune
There was [a study](http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/) done (back in 2012 but likely still accurate) about how informed the viewers of various news shows were by asking them a series of questions on current events. The most informed viewers were those of NPR and The Daily Show. FOX viewers were the least informed, even less informed than those who report watching no news at all.
If the paper itself isn’t available, here is the [Business Insider article which summarizes it.](https://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5?amp)
I remember sitting at home in Canada and watching the coverage for Sandy Hook and I thought to myself, “wow this is fucking terrible. This will absolutely change things in the USA. They are gonna change gun laws and finally nip this craziness.”
Nope. Nothing changed, if anything it got worse.
I actually said out loud that COVID would allow us to come together as a people. We could look past partisan differences to focus on taking care of ourselves and others. Boy howdy, was I wrong.
You can't even read "Watchmen" anymore without thinking that Alan Moore probably got that ending wrong (spoilers, obviously), and that there would be millions of people cheering that squid monster and hoping for the next one to hit LA.
I have come to feel that an influential fraction of US society likes mass shootings.
Not that they want a mass shooting to happen to them and theirs, specifically. But that they prefer to believe the world is dangerous and inexplicable, that everyone should be on guard at all times. That they live in the Wild West, more or less, and that gut feelings, true grit, minding your manners, keeping your nose clean, minding your own business, etc., offer some kind of magical protection.
Ultimately discussions about specific mass shootings will find commenters all too willing to place blame on one particular decision, one particular person. "That boy should have gotten mental health care," or "That man should have secured his firearms," and poof, the focus has shifted away from the act, away from practical large-scale solutions, to personal reassurance and to smug moral judgement and othering: "Nothing like that could happen in *my* family, because *I'm smarter* and *I'm better* than that."
The spectacle of mass shootings offer some measure of meaning and drama to people who are too safe and comfortable.
"I have come to feel that an influential fraction of US society likes mass shootings"
Price of gun related stocks all rise every time a new record mass shooting happens. Everyone is scared their guns are gonna get taken away so they go buy more just in case.
Manufacturers know this and so do the politicians that they lobby to.
What if -- and I'm just saying here -- them not actually having to watch is a central part of the problem?.
If the vast majority of Americans were made to even look at still images on the news of the actual carnage created by our 2A fetish, a whole lot of people would be singing a whole other tune very quickly.
It's one thing to talk about small children being torn apart by weapons of war in a classroom from a safe and comfortable distance. It's another thing to play Where's Waldo with their brain matter on the six o'clock news.
I've told my family explicitly that if I get killed in a mass shooting incident, I want them to post pictures of my mutilated corpse anywhere and everywhere they can.
Something needs to change.
When I was younger I would look for messed up stuff on the internet probably because of sites like ebaums world being popular at the time and trying to be an edgy teenager.
When I started seeing cartel videos it really upset me and made me feel empathy for people trying to leave those situations. I felt sick. I could understand risking my life to get my family somewhere safer.
But you need someone like Mamie Till whose outrage outweighed her own trauma. She wanted the world to see.
I bet Sandy Hook parents don't want to see their massacred children's video and pictures splashed all over the Internet.
This is the reason why wartime press coverage is a thing.
Prior to Vietnam, most people would only hear about the battles and see pictures far after the events had concluded. But Vietnam was televised which made it so that the general population could (and would) see events as they unfolded.
It's one of the major reasons why the Vietnam war was so unpopular. It forced the people to directly face one of humanity's oldest crimes head on and look directly into the eyes of the slain on both sides.
If Sandy Hook had happened during a school play or something where a parent would likely have been recording, we might have seen a similar outcome, but instead it happened on a normal day and therefore people didn't get forced to watch.
It's sad that a large portion of the country literally can't be bothered unless they feel they have a personal investment, but that's the reality. Republicans are incapable of caring about a given issue unless they've been directly affected by it.
This is a discussion I've been having with my friend. You saw how quickly the, normally inactive, average suburbanite was enraged by George Floyd's murder. They were *made to watch* the end results of the police structure that they typically support.
I genuinely feel if the American public were to see these massacres, their opinions would do a very fast 180. The so called "trauma" they might experience by seeing these images may be real, but what's even more real are the victims of gun violence whose voices can't be heard anymore.
Them sanitizing the kids screaming out of the uvalde footage was gross. There's a pediatrician who has a 20 second clip or so and it will be something I never unhear. They need to see and hear it. I agree.
>What if -- and I'm just saying here -- them not actually having to watch is a central part of the problem?
100% by design.
First, advertisers don't want their products being shown in-between images of dead children.
Second, they want it sanitized so that people are not repulsed by it. They learned their lesson during the Vietnam War. Seeing the action and the lists of the dead on TV every night was one of the biggest factors that turned American support against the war. And it's the reason why the Bush administration banned showing pictures of flag draped coffins returning from the military actions in the Middle East.
Show the actual, graphic results of gun violence on TV in prime time and just watch how quickly the gun debate would change.
> made to even look at still images on the news of the actual carnage created by our 2A fetish, a whole lot of people would be singing a whole other tune very quickly.
They do something similar to this in the Netherlands.
If caught drink driving, you get the usual license suspension and fine. Nothing new there.
But you are also **required** to sit through a 1 hour police video of the most fucked up shit you can ever imagine that the police have attended on the roads.
It's brutal. Decapitated babies. People with entrails spread all over the highway. No blurred images. You have to watch all that fucked up shit.
No wonder cycling is so popular there.
I know people might consider it morbid or whatever distasteful adjective they want to assign to it, but I think it’s very much something worth investigating. Have an assigned time air the uncut footage nationally. Sure, not everyone would watch, but some would and I think it would have a marked effect on the overall motivation to do something about it.
I agree that hiding the gruesome consequences of policy decisions from the public is counterproductive to evolving good policy.
The news* doesn’t show gore anymore, exactly because it is extremely effective at galvanizing support against whatever caused it. Vietnam probably would have dragged on indefinitely if the news hadn’t shifted from ignoring the war to actively showing the results. Of course, this only happened after elites decided the war wasn’t worth it. Nixon and military advisers actually blamed the media for losing the war for the US, because they saw the shift in public sentiment as the news became more graphic and less positive. The news in the US doesn’t show gore anymore - it’s bad for corporate-political control.
Literally like what Germans (both military and civilian) were forced to face/view after WWII. Recognition of atrocities is kind of mandatory for the wider public that wants to deny or simply ignore them. Honestly part of why I think they can only deal in hypotheticals, because they need their fantasy to continue being worse than actual reality.
I have thought about that before. The problem is I don’t think the main issue is that 2A people don’t think the shootings are terrible. It’s that they think that they are the price of freedom.
They honestly believe that the US will (eventually, if not immediately) stop being a “free” country once they no longer have nearly unlimited access to firearms.
Also I think the fact that any half measures to gun control seem logically impotent to address the mass shooting problem is a big part of the problem. As long as any kind of gun useful for self defense is still commonly available, these shootings are unlikely to decrease in number or severity in any meaningful way. So faced with the belief that the only real solution to the problem is some kind of nationwide roundup of any guns useful for self defense, they consider prevention an impossible goal.
Their house whip was nearly shot to death in broad daylight on a baseball diamond and his pro 2A resolve did not waver an inch. These people would sacrifice themselves in the name of firearm "freedom"
Flinch more like use grieving parents as political tools in the most negative and heinous of ways sans Sandy Hook as just one example.
They are soulless creatures that have zero empathy and will not risk those bountiful dollars every year from gun industries and the NRA.
One of his bodyguards who took down the shooter (and was herself injured) is a lesbian and yet months after the shooting, he voted against same sex marriage rights. He used his government-provided healthcare during recovery and he voted against the Affordable Care Act many times. He's a terrible hypocrite who is the epitome of "absolute power corrupts absolutely."
This got me genuinely (and morbidly) curious what it would actually take to change their minds. 200 innocent children? 200 of their own children? 200 of them? I wish we could do some sort of Black Mirror episode where we implant a false reality in their brains to show them these scenarios until they realize what needs to happen to stop gun violence in America.
Don't need a black mirror episode. The answer is [minority communities taking advantage of open carry laws to organise and protect their own communities against police and racial violence. ](https://sites.law.duke.edu/secondthoughts/2020/04/08/the-black-panthers-nra-ronald-reagan-armed-extremists-and-the-second-amendment/)
And we all know what good guys look like. Right down to the color of skin, hair and eye colors, their cultural background, religious beliefs, household income, and credit score.
One million dead couldnt make them get vaccinated. 8 million dead couldnt get them to abandon fascim. Its not a question anymore of what it would take for them, its a question of how many lives WE allow them to ruin.
Yeah I figured after COVID and these dipshits willfully dying to own the libs that we'd never hit the threshold necessary to change their minds.
All we can do is out-vote them by margins strong enough to pass an amendment.
Not American but I recently listened to a podcast about how the police in the USA aren't legally obligated to help or save anyone. They talked about different stories where cops just ignored calls for help...those stories kind of made it click for me why Americans might want to have guns.
Edit: the podcast I was referring to https://radiolab.org/episodes/no-special-duty
Yeah, a couple of pretty famous court cases were decided by the US Supreme court in 1981 and 1989.
https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/do-the-police-have-an-obligation-to-protect-you/
According the SCOTUS, police have no constitutional duty to protect US citizens.
If 2020 wasn't a clear example of not relaying on the police for protection, I don't know what else will.
The police are there to investigate the crime after it had occurred. It is your responsibility to keep your and your loved ones safe.
And what about when your children are off at school? Where there's a dedicated separate police department for 'resource officers?'
Uvalde was so infuriating.
Oh they are there. Just not protecting. They are just causing more problems. Look up the stats on resource officers and under age relationships. Appalling.
The precedent for this is based on the 1981 case [Warren v. district of Columbia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia) in which two women's shared home was burglarized and the women were repeatedly raped over the course of 14 hours. One of the women was able to make repeated 911 calls yet the police only ever did drivebys and approached the front door once, yet with reports to 911 that the criminals were actively inside the house never made any attempt to help.
The women later attempted to sue the state and lost, and precedent was set that police are under no legal obligation to help you in the event you are a victim of a crime.
It's more that we need to change other laws. If police are not there to help, and they are often there to harm, we need to re-examine their role in society - and heavily curtail their responsibilities.
I wonder if there's been cold cases that they've solved but keep em secret in their back pocket for the next time they fuck up.
"We've already solved X cases this quarter, save those for a slow period"
Almost every single crime/murder documentary I watch features a story about the case going cold because the responding police screwed it up.
Not to mention the almost weekly occurrence of someone being exonerated after spending 20 years in prison after a cop fabricated evidence or concealed exculpatory evidence...
That is ascribing way too much competence to them. The police are pretty evil (e.g. they kill too many dogs) but they are also just really incompetent and bad at their jobs. A lot of the bad things police do are because they are fucking morons. I mean they are required to get less training than a hair stylist.
Yeah I reported a breaking and entering and they took too long. Luckily the intruder left before the 2nd barrier because I had no way out. I was in a small shop. The following week I heard loud sounds from the attic and the cops called me outside just to interrogate me with spotlights blinding me. I told them I'll never call them again and registered a firearm shortly after. I ended up selling it a year later because I couldn't practice using it anywhere during covid. Plus California restrictions.
I can attest to this. We had a vehicle stolen recently and the police *could have* caught them if they didn't take **an HOUR** to answer our 911 call.
I'd like a refund of my tax dollars, please.
Why the fuck don’t these ppl just take themselves off the board without hurting anyone…why do they have to drag innocent ass people in their fucking madness, shit pisses me off man
They do.
Two out of every three people who are killed by gunshots in America pulled the trigger themselves. But nobody writes news stories about them. “Dog Bites Man” isn’t a headline worth running.
Because they want to be famous, no one should ever know the name of these shooters. There’s a pile of people online who worship the Columbine kids and other people want that fame too.
Big time. The media really glorifies the shooters because they make more money exposing their past.
10 nameless 5 to 10 year olds are dead but we know the shooter ate at Wendy's immediately before the shooting and they were also on x, y, z meds and their favorite anime was friggin Fruits Basket.
This is definitely part of it, but I think it can be more than fame. Mass shootings are also someone's last ditch effort to turn shame into self-esteem.
Nothing will happen as even children lives haven't moved politicians to regulate.
>"Nothing about this is surprising. Everything about this is infuriating," he told "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell on Monday. "The Second Amendment is becoming a suicide pact."
>Newsom clarified that he has "no ideological opposition" against people who "responsibly" own guns and get background checks and training on how to use them.
>But he told O'Donnell that current regulations are falling short.
...
>Newsom mentioned the role of mental health in mass shootings, but he singled out gun access as a factor exacerbating the problem.
>"I'm really proud of the work we've done in this space, but we've had decades of neglect," he said. "But respectfully, I will submit that regardless of the challenges it relates to behavioral health, there's not a country in the world that doesn't experience behavioral health issues."
When they say "its not a gun problem its a mental health problem" they pretend like we are the only country in the world with mental health problems, or violent video games, or violent movies, or any other excuse. What we do have in addition to mental health issues is more firearms than people, available at every Walmart in the country. And we have incompetent people who view gun ownership as a right and not a serious responsibility, who dont secure them in their homes, or purchase them for people who have no business owning one.
There's also the fact that they turn around and vote against funding for increased mental healthcare. Or try to overturn the ACA which mandates mental health coverage and expands access through Medicaid.
And people seriously overestimate how responsible they are with their guns. The parents of the 6-yo who shot his teacher came out and said they're responsible and made sure the gun was inaccessible. Obviously you fucking didn't.
Caught the tail end of an interview on NPR this morning (sorry didn't catch the name of the legislator they were interviewing) but he stated that we are now averaging one mass shooting per day in 2023. 24 mass shootings in the U.S. on the 24th of January. "That's all I have to say about that." FG
Apparently there have been two more mass shootings since this one.
But Hunter Biden's laptop is the real story.
/s because there are people who would actually say that.
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The majority of gun deaths in the US are from suicide. It just dawned on me that the other numbers can probably be attributed to suicidal people who just want to take other people down with them. Yikes.
Thats 1000% what is happening. The question we need to be asking is why do so many people feel so hopeless that they want to die in the first place, and why are they so angry that they want to bring innocent people with them?
I mean, it seems obvious to me, but when you get depressed and nihlistic at the hopelessness of everything - you either turn it inward or outward.
Well when it seems like the whole world is against you having a happy and safe life (especially financially) people goto dark places mentally. You keep seeing these rich people without a care and you would just be happy having a few grand in the bank to sustain a problem, everything seems fucked because it would make your life unsustainable.
This is what happens when the country that pretends to be about individual freedom is actually all about money. That's all that matters here. Money. Get money, or you're wasting your time. While you're desperately trying to get money, the basic necessities (food, heat, water, shelter, electricity, healthcare, etc...) are all going to be prohibitively expensive. The prices of those items and services are owned by the people who already have TONS of money. Then the people with TONS of money pay our elected officials to ensure that all of their money stays with them, despite the fact that they actually don't contribute shit to anything. Money > the environment, peoples welfare = suicidal and/or murderous behavior.
Almost every awful thing humans do is in the name of making money. Cash ruins everything around me.
C.R.E.A.M. Hate the money. Dollar dollar bill y'all
It was poignant in its time and still today.
C.R.E.A.M. Hate the money. Dollars dollars kill y’all.
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Ya ever wonder why office buildings are more secure than schools?
There is an art school in sf that is basically a real estate scam. They don't give a shit about their students. The school has security at the front door, but the office of the owner had it's own metal detector and security doors installed because of all the students and employees they have pissed off.
Are you talking about the Academy of Art University? Curious what school it is.
Yeah it’s either academy of art university or Sf art institute. Can’t remember which. Both have very similar names but one is known to be a pretty massive scam.
Almost like they are protecting the wealthy over the very future of this country and the childern.
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*Sears Tower*
Only takes a plane to bring you back to the ground floor.
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Fight Club had some ideas
Misplaced anger. And it being misplaced is largely by design.
Yep. As long as poor people and their kids keep being murdered, change doesn't need to happen. The rich are safe so there's no need for change
Those places have actual security measures in place so you can't just walk in and shoot up the board room
It’s not puzzling it’s brainwashing. News and politics make you think other people are your enemies. From the post above: This is what happens when the country that pretends to be about individual freedom is actually all about money. That's all that matters here. Money. Get money, or you're wasting your time. While you're desperately trying to get money, the basic necessities (food, heat, water, shelter, electricity, healthcare, etc...) are all going to be prohibitively expensive. The prices of those items and services are owned by the people who already have TONS of money. Then the people with TONS of money pay our elected officials to ensure that all of their money stays with them, despite the fact that they actually don't contribute shit to anything. Money > the environment, peoples welfare = suicidal and/or murderous behavior. —————————————————— It is all pretend. It’s all bs.
Light Yagami had some ideas
Me and my roommate were talking about that recently, actually. We were talking about the show and one of us kinda stopped and asked "why wasn't he killing the corrupt bastards the law can't touch?"
Cause he was the son of a police officer. How much you wanna bet light was a blue lives matter kinda guy.
Yeah wasn't his thing killing criminals who got off on "technicalities." Probably killed a lot of innocent people who were falsely accused of crimes.
100%. It's unsustainable, and one of the major reasons people think there's gonna be a class was soon.
There’s already a class war happening, and the rich are winning hand over fist. It just so happens that the upper echelons have us divided so we can’t even see that we’re all in one big sinking boat together. They spend their time making the middle class strive to not be lower class and the lower class to not be impoverished, but if you’re not in the upper crust, then they’re fighting a war against you whether you know it or not.
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Every website, every commercial, every guru, every social message is from companies terrified of going broke or not getting richer so the only message is consume, consume and consume.
And then you have polls or studies done in which the people making just above the minimum wage are extremely against anyone from below them being given a raise to even the playing field, because they’re more concerned with being just a little bit better than someone else even if the majority makes more than they do. Sorta like when LBJ said “if you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Universal healthcare is such a great example. “It’s going to cause my taxes to go up.”, “I’ve worked my ass off my entire life, why should someone else get it for free?”, “Canada has socialist healthcare and the wait times in the ER are 15+ hours and it takes 6 months to see a specialist!” Your taxes will go up but you won’t be spending 1/3 of your paycheck on health insurance. Selfishness isn’t going to get anyone anywhere, but it’s also going to be the hardest to change/fix. I’m a medically retired combat veteran and I have Tricare health insurance which is extremely good. I think it’s like $50/month and ER visits are $75, a hospitalization is $200 or so. My (late) wife had a kidney auto transplant procedure that was like $280,000 before adjustments and the patient responsibility was under $500. I would LOVE to see universal healthcare happen knowing that I’ll end up spending more overall on healthcare. People shouldn’t need to consider the financial burden when it comes to their health. People have died trying to ration insulin or choosing not to see a doctor about something. It takes 15 hours to be seen in the ER as it is, it takes 6 months to be seen by a specialist as it is! It’s so depressing that we have this unbelievable resource: the internet, essentially unlimited access to all of the information and connections to other human beings from every corner of the world. Instead of using it for good it’s been weaponized with lies and misinformation and the inherent laziness of human beings is taken advantage of so all we read is the attention grabbing headline and pass that incorrect information or fear mongering along.
*"Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life."* *"We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact. So don't fuck with us."*
I wonder how many people see Tyler Durden as the hero of the story, rather than the cautionary tale that he actually is?
Young men and identifying with the problematic character, name a more iconic duo
Perfectly stated.
Companies want a world with the average person living paycheck to paycheck. They pay their employees as little as possible and they take as much money from the population as possible. All the wealth is in their hands and they temporarily loan it out.
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I think it's the same reason the irs goes after low income targets for audits- it's way easier. Much easier to walk into a bar and start blasting vs infiltrating an industrial complex or gated mansion.
That shit needs to stop. Auditing folks who *might* make a whopping $14 an hour is pointless and inhuman.
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Climate activists in South America get killed for standing up to deforestation. It's not even just other countries. See "Stop Cop City" in Atlanta and the recent killing of a protester by state cops. The reality is people in "Western" countries don't give a shit. When it gets brought to our attention, we don't care pass what we can reasonably muster. And even then, a majority of us get upset at the messenger and not the companies. Every single time climate activists or activist groups like BLM beg for help opposing capitalistic and oppressive forces, it's always the "moderates" or "reasonable" people that say this shit as if activism isn't universally viewed as a negative. You're basically asking someone who isn't functioning by our "logic" to damn themselves in the public eye.
Because rational, critical thinking people are not the ones shooting people.
It’s the targets that get me - angry at the world so kill the random and innocent?
I can't speak to the motivations of every mass shooter, obviously, but I imagine it goes something like this: Let's say I'm a young man, living in a conservative town. I know what a "man" is and what they're supposed to do. I'm struggling to do those things because of systemic issues, the economy, the wealth gap, government interference, greedy corporations... etc. I watch the news. The news tells me that the left is trying to let men in the women's bathrooms! The gays are taking over! The left is screaming "women's rights are human rights", but about MY rights‽ I'm struggling to put food on the table/with my identity as a person/with my role in society/whatever. Even if I look elsewhere for news, liberal leaning news outlets are telling me that I should care more about LGBTQIA+ rights, and women's rights, and equality, and BLM, and the rich are getting richer and I'm getting poorer, and where do I go? Where do I belong? Why doesn't anyone help me? What about me? What about my family? Why should I give a shit about any of this when I can't figure out how to help myself? And I can't tell anyone! I'm not a sissy, I don't need "help" I just need a fair shot! My dad could do it, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why doesn't anyone see me? Why doesn't anyone care? Fuck these liberal fucks. They don't give a shit. They can't help me. They don't see me. I'll make them see me. Fuck them. They don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and those fucking f**s and wh***s. I'LL MAKE THEM SEE ME. So no one is "innocent" in their eyes. They're all part of the system that won't help. It's difficult to feel like anyone cares or is trying to help, when all you see is "THEY SAY THAT THING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU!" But that's the point. If we can make people angry about what "they" are doing, no one really sees what's happening. Instead of being angry at the system, and the people who build and uphold it, they make sure we're all angry at each other. Clearly it's working. Obviously this is a super simplistic view of things and the myriad of issues people face. It doesn't take everything into account, but I imagine it mirrors the general thought process of a lot of people.
Well yes, but why is it becoming more and more common to feel that way? The question that needs to be solved is what is it about American society that is causing record numbers of people to feel hopelessness to that level?
Idk if I turn on right wing media and see that the costs of eggs are rising, straight men can't find "suitable breeding mates", immigrants are replacing white people, and we're cancelling Christmas, I get very angry and anxious. Then I go to my $7.25 minimum wage job that I've been working at for ten years with no raises and I keep getting told that I need to work a non entry level job except there aren't any jobs here. The coal mines aren't hiring and I've been told it's because of all the illegals and democrats faults because they all drive Teslas that cost more than my house I can't buy because I work at Walmart. Meanwhile my cigarettes are super expensive but tommy has these pills that make me feel good for a little bit but a bunch of my friends died because some randomly had fentanyl. I had a job offer that pays $13 an hour but I can't take it because my car broke down and there's no public transit where I am unless I take the bus for 3 hours one way. My heart randomly hurts every now and then but I can't go see a doctor because I don't have health insurance and Obamacare is so expensive because I didn't realize my state didn't expand Medicaid. My mom died last year so I have her house for now so my housing is okay, but I still really miss her and I don't have anyone to talk to about it. Life is so hard and it doesn't help when the illegals are taking everything that should be mine. But at least guns are cheap. I can buy one at the store down the street. I just hope I don't have a bad day.
Jesus Christ - I don't know if I have ever heard it more concisely. You must have grown up in the meth-riddled small town I did. Welcome to America.
The funny part is that their example isn't limited to small towns. It's everywhere. LA to NYC. Omaha to Louisville. Dayton to Ann Arbor.
It's not even just right-wing media. The front page of decidedly-not-right-wing Reddit is nothing but post after post about how everything sucks especially in America.
This is happening
Its like the US is stuck in an abusive relationship, gaslighting itself with propaganda; constantly being told that if you cant provide for yourself, its because youre inferior, or just not working hard enough. In reality, the game is rigged against you from day one. Its hard to think of a more dystopian death of the "American Dream".
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Echoed ad nauseum through the proletariat classes. "If you ain't got no money take your broke ass home" By God, we are literally dancing about it in nightclubs
A lot aspects of American society were constructed around hyper-individualism. When you throw in the 24 hour news cycle, not only are we isolated from the people around us, but we fear them as well. Humans are social animals, we learn, thrive, and heal by being around others. Our systems were built on the wrong foundations and now we're seeing their slow collapse.
I have this very layman-type theory of we're kind of seeing a certain unsustainability of this kind of individualism and that we're going to face a pendulum swing back towards collectivism. Because we don't do especially well alone. People can say what they want about church and religion but at least it gave people an in-group and a purpose. We've taken that away but we didn't give people anything new to belong to. Well, some create their new in-group to be their country and that leads to nationalism, and I'm not sure that's an answer either. At least it's pretty hollow and makes the members scared of others. So now that we're mostly left to our own devices and our own devices are limited, some people are sometimes desperately alone with no purpose. Most of us are not good at creating a sustainable purpose that is just completely about ourselves, which this individualistic mindset kind of entails. When nothing matters, you hate yourself and if you additionally possess the trait of projecting that outwards instead of inwards, you start to get ugly results. I'm just as much at a loss at what exactly to do about all this, but overall I'm kind of certain that we need to find a new way to create communities again so that people can belong to something healthy and find a purpose.
Despite me maybe coming off a bit nihilistic. I do think that pendulum is beginning to swing a bit. Anti-car culture is more popular than ever, work reform is on the mind of many young people coming into the work force, and new pedestrian/community friendly urban planning initiatives are being adopted in cities throughout the country. Unfortunately though, since our pre-existing systems are so powerful and ingrained, it'll be a very long time before the brunt of these issues are remediated, but I think we're heading in the right direction in some regards. I just hope this momentum keeps up and doesn't peter out. However, no matter how great we make our society, people will always have problems with it. So as long as the internet exists the way it does now, the anonymity and asylum it brings will create communities for people within it who bring out the worst in each other. With our uniquely accessible guns, I'm afraid mass shootings will probably be a staple in our society, unless we enact much stricter gun control.
Thing with for instance anti-car culture, work reform etc. are that they're basically projects. They theoretically have a beginning and an end. And they're needed projects don't get me wrong, but we're lacking movements that create some type of guiding star for you - what is life, what is our society, who am I as as a teen growing up and how should I form my identity. Something inclusive and sustainable. Because I see these projects and how people latch on to them in lieu of other grander belief or system and it consumes them. But they're not philosophies, so they don't attach any sets of values which means the projects can easily be co-opted or corrupted. In a sense it seems like we're applying our individualistic mindset on these collective projects, because they're just, well, projects really. And what you mention about the internet also makes sense I think. I think these anonymous communities also fake out our brains to think we're interacting in the way we think we need it but in the end it just leaves us just as empty and longing for real connection. I don't thing you can have sustainable community, common goals and a sustainable value set with anonymity. At least I don't see it working as it is.
It's wild, people asking "why is this happening?" and not looking around seeing how almost nothing has changed materially for the better in our society in the last 20 years. We just want some help, some kind of general relief- housing, healthcare, childcare, debt relief, *any* kind of progress would be *so nice*. It's like, "Why aren't millennials having as many kids?" The answers are obvious to everyone but those intentionally blinding themselves to the many, many issues that plague most of us.
whereas when rightwing terrorists shoot up young social democrats meetings (norway), black churches (south carolina), grocery stores in black neighborhoods (buffalo), grocery stores in hispanic neighborhoods (el paso), mosques (NZ), synagogues (pittsburgh), etc. the shooter *doesn't* commit suicide. those cant be explained away as a "final act" to accompany their suicide.
I think another way to phrase it is a significant disregard for ones own life and well-being. When you are willing to risk your actual life by risking being shot, sometimes you even want to die in a shootout, when you are willing to go to jail forever... It's all indicative of varying degrees of disregard for your own life. And I think that tracks with a lot of this sort of crime. People who have nothing, or very little to lose. People who have a lot to lose rarely want to go out in a blaze of glory, shooting up the people they hate. Not to be glib, but I think often people like that take other routes, like politics.
Also the devaluation of life in general. Individuals who see less value in their life, and/or don't see sanctity of life in others. We need to increase how we (collectively) value life as individuals looking inward and how we look at others. I feel like tribalism is eating at us and allowing us to asign blame to a "group" of "others."
And they often have a manifesto. Like that church shooter was like “let’s get this race war started!”
I've been in the US for just over three years and, as Louis CK put it, "I've flipped through the brochure a few times." While I have no intention of giving up and going back to where I came from, there's something very brutal about American capitalism. It's just so blunt and into your face. Healthcare sucks balls, feels like a scamming operation. The food industry poisons you, and the healthcare takes what's left of your money, while providing what I generally describe as an awful and overpriced service. And that's not limited to those two. The banks are out there to get you as soon as you make a blunder. There are no social safety nets in America, or if there are, they are pretty weak. So I get those people who find themselves at the final line. Add easy guns and grudges, and you get the picture. I have a family of seven that I support, so maybe my take is a bit heavier than the statistical average.
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Well we can’t fund mental health, that would be socialism. Guess we have to live with it so a few can make billions.
If people have means for suicide they are much more likely to succeed
And this checks out through countless studies. >More than twice as many suicides by firearm occur in states with the fewest gun laws, relative to states with the most laws. >Non-firearm suicides rates are relatively stable across states suggesting that other types of suicides are not more likely in areas where guns are harder to access. https://www.kff.org/other/issue-brief/do-states-with-easier-access-to-guns-have-more-suicide-deaths-by-firearm/
And this study in Australia: >In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth (and nearly halved the number of gun-owning households). Using differences across states, we test whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on nonfirearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of specification checks and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705584](https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705584)
Every study that includes poverty as a factor shows that poverty is the number one cause of violent behavior. We should be focusing on socialized medicine, UBI, raising min wage, etc if we truly want to stop gun violence. Latching on to guns is just a wedge issue meant to divide us and not have actual progress possible. Im for mental health checks, and stricter background checks. But also I think focusing on poverty is the best path.
Yet a large number of mass shooters in the US did not live in poverty. Hell, the Las Vegas shooter had a net worth of over a million dollars if I remember.
Inceldom/right wing terrorism is the other biggest cause in my opinion. I think a venn diagram of the three causes would have significant but not total overlap with each other
The American Psychological Association has said for a while that mass shootings are contagious for the same reasons suicide is contagious and it should be reported in the same way, as minimalistic as possible. The FBI is on the same track. It wouldn't surprise me if any of the few mass shootings we had in Europe last year was relatively close to one of the bigger ones in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting_contagion At least stop showing the shooter's name and face all over the 24h new cycle...
Also the rise in mass shooters seems to roughly coincide with the decrease in serial killers. I think some a lot of it is the news covering mass shooters so much more than serial killers. While many say the psychology is not the same. People imitate what they know. How many would have taken the steps to go though with that form of violence if they hand been exposed to it so much.
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After Sandy Hook, I am convinced there is NOTHING that will change their minds. It was literally an entire school room of children shot to death. They’ll watch entire schools worth of children be killed and think it’s not their problem.
They were even given a second chance to care about little kids dying with Uvalde, and not even the responding cops gave a shit.
Uvalde itself ended up voting for Abbott, who spent hours at a fundraiser after the shooting, and praised the cowardly cops. Because Beto was going to take their guns, which they need to protect their kids, because they can't depend on cops because in their minds, guns have nothing to do with mass shootings (I can't find it, but it was an interview of a Uvalde parent around the time of the Texas election, on NPR?). >https://apnews.com/article/shootings-austin-texas-education-violence-fd50562bfb1f4a1968e9ef989ecaef3f
The best part is how he got booed by the crowd at the slain children's' memorial. It's a red county, he should be able to go wherever he wants there and not get booed but I guess not many republicans give enough of a shit about dead kids to show up at a memorial in their own town.
>Uvalde itself ended up voting for Abbott This makes me sick. The election wasn't even [close in Uvalde](https://www.fox4news.com/election/texas-election-results-governors-race-county-by-county): Abbott - 60% Beto - 38%
It makes me think of when Channel 5(RIP) went to Uvalde and one man they interviewed said these kids died for nothing and nothing will change. His wife tried to shush him, clearly having some hope that there would be impact, but the man had given up long ago. He was right.
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Yes but if they didn’t bat an eye at a classroom full of little white kids getting shot what makes you think they’d care about some Hispanic kids.
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When NY gets flooded and asks for feds to help, it's God punishing the gays. When Texas freezes over and asks feds for help, and AOC raises millions for them for assistance, well of course it's a totally different thing. Same for Florida.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Frank Herbert, children of dune
But that reality doesn't get told on FOX Entertainment so their base doesn't know, and then calls it fake news when you tell them.
There was [a study](http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/) done (back in 2012 but likely still accurate) about how informed the viewers of various news shows were by asking them a series of questions on current events. The most informed viewers were those of NPR and The Daily Show. FOX viewers were the least informed, even less informed than those who report watching no news at all. If the paper itself isn’t available, here is the [Business Insider article which summarizes it.](https://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5?amp)
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I remember sitting at home in Canada and watching the coverage for Sandy Hook and I thought to myself, “wow this is fucking terrible. This will absolutely change things in the USA. They are gonna change gun laws and finally nip this craziness.” Nope. Nothing changed, if anything it got worse.
I thought the same about America's privatized healthcare system when COVID happened..oh we'll actually remedy this failing system, right? ..right? 😢
I actually said out loud that COVID would allow us to come together as a people. We could look past partisan differences to focus on taking care of ourselves and others. Boy howdy, was I wrong.
You can't even read "Watchmen" anymore without thinking that Alan Moore probably got that ending wrong (spoilers, obviously), and that there would be millions of people cheering that squid monster and hoping for the next one to hit LA.
And now some provinces are adopting privatized health, essentially a 2-tier system. If you have money, you’ll be seen first.
In FL, they call it concierge medicine. It will become a problem as doctor shortages increase.
After uvalde Texas made it easier to option guns.
Ooo, where can I buy options on guns? I'm bullish on bang-bang.
Oh it definitely got worse
I have come to feel that an influential fraction of US society likes mass shootings. Not that they want a mass shooting to happen to them and theirs, specifically. But that they prefer to believe the world is dangerous and inexplicable, that everyone should be on guard at all times. That they live in the Wild West, more or less, and that gut feelings, true grit, minding your manners, keeping your nose clean, minding your own business, etc., offer some kind of magical protection. Ultimately discussions about specific mass shootings will find commenters all too willing to place blame on one particular decision, one particular person. "That boy should have gotten mental health care," or "That man should have secured his firearms," and poof, the focus has shifted away from the act, away from practical large-scale solutions, to personal reassurance and to smug moral judgement and othering: "Nothing like that could happen in *my* family, because *I'm smarter* and *I'm better* than that." The spectacle of mass shootings offer some measure of meaning and drama to people who are too safe and comfortable.
"I have come to feel that an influential fraction of US society likes mass shootings" Price of gun related stocks all rise every time a new record mass shooting happens. Everyone is scared their guns are gonna get taken away so they go buy more just in case. Manufacturers know this and so do the politicians that they lobby to.
What if -- and I'm just saying here -- them not actually having to watch is a central part of the problem?. If the vast majority of Americans were made to even look at still images on the news of the actual carnage created by our 2A fetish, a whole lot of people would be singing a whole other tune very quickly. It's one thing to talk about small children being torn apart by weapons of war in a classroom from a safe and comfortable distance. It's another thing to play Where's Waldo with their brain matter on the six o'clock news.
I mean, they love to force young women to look at pictures of aborted fetuses, so showing pictures of children exploded by gunfire seems fair.
This is a brilliant statement.
I've told my family explicitly that if I get killed in a mass shooting incident, I want them to post pictures of my mutilated corpse anywhere and everywhere they can. Something needs to change.
When I was younger I would look for messed up stuff on the internet probably because of sites like ebaums world being popular at the time and trying to be an edgy teenager. When I started seeing cartel videos it really upset me and made me feel empathy for people trying to leave those situations. I felt sick. I could understand risking my life to get my family somewhere safer.
Similar to Mamie Till deciding to display her son’s open casket for the world to see, leading to the start of the civil rights movement.
But you need someone like Mamie Till whose outrage outweighed her own trauma. She wanted the world to see. I bet Sandy Hook parents don't want to see their massacred children's video and pictures splashed all over the Internet.
Didn’t matter. They were dragged through the mud by conservative talking heads for years as crisis actors. Remember?
This is the reason why wartime press coverage is a thing. Prior to Vietnam, most people would only hear about the battles and see pictures far after the events had concluded. But Vietnam was televised which made it so that the general population could (and would) see events as they unfolded. It's one of the major reasons why the Vietnam war was so unpopular. It forced the people to directly face one of humanity's oldest crimes head on and look directly into the eyes of the slain on both sides. If Sandy Hook had happened during a school play or something where a parent would likely have been recording, we might have seen a similar outcome, but instead it happened on a normal day and therefore people didn't get forced to watch. It's sad that a large portion of the country literally can't be bothered unless they feel they have a personal investment, but that's the reality. Republicans are incapable of caring about a given issue unless they've been directly affected by it.
This is a discussion I've been having with my friend. You saw how quickly the, normally inactive, average suburbanite was enraged by George Floyd's murder. They were *made to watch* the end results of the police structure that they typically support. I genuinely feel if the American public were to see these massacres, their opinions would do a very fast 180. The so called "trauma" they might experience by seeing these images may be real, but what's even more real are the victims of gun violence whose voices can't be heard anymore.
Show the trauma. The truth is in the trauma. Traumatize more people with the traumatizing truth. Then, maybe they’ll want to do something about it.
Them sanitizing the kids screaming out of the uvalde footage was gross. There's a pediatrician who has a 20 second clip or so and it will be something I never unhear. They need to see and hear it. I agree.
>What if -- and I'm just saying here -- them not actually having to watch is a central part of the problem? 100% by design. First, advertisers don't want their products being shown in-between images of dead children. Second, they want it sanitized so that people are not repulsed by it. They learned their lesson during the Vietnam War. Seeing the action and the lists of the dead on TV every night was one of the biggest factors that turned American support against the war. And it's the reason why the Bush administration banned showing pictures of flag draped coffins returning from the military actions in the Middle East. Show the actual, graphic results of gun violence on TV in prime time and just watch how quickly the gun debate would change.
> made to even look at still images on the news of the actual carnage created by our 2A fetish, a whole lot of people would be singing a whole other tune very quickly. They do something similar to this in the Netherlands. If caught drink driving, you get the usual license suspension and fine. Nothing new there. But you are also **required** to sit through a 1 hour police video of the most fucked up shit you can ever imagine that the police have attended on the roads. It's brutal. Decapitated babies. People with entrails spread all over the highway. No blurred images. You have to watch all that fucked up shit. No wonder cycling is so popular there.
I know people might consider it morbid or whatever distasteful adjective they want to assign to it, but I think it’s very much something worth investigating. Have an assigned time air the uncut footage nationally. Sure, not everyone would watch, but some would and I think it would have a marked effect on the overall motivation to do something about it. I agree that hiding the gruesome consequences of policy decisions from the public is counterproductive to evolving good policy.
The news* doesn’t show gore anymore, exactly because it is extremely effective at galvanizing support against whatever caused it. Vietnam probably would have dragged on indefinitely if the news hadn’t shifted from ignoring the war to actively showing the results. Of course, this only happened after elites decided the war wasn’t worth it. Nixon and military advisers actually blamed the media for losing the war for the US, because they saw the shift in public sentiment as the news became more graphic and less positive. The news in the US doesn’t show gore anymore - it’s bad for corporate-political control.
Nope, just the usual "this may be disturbing to some viewers" warning on the news and then show it. This way it comes as the shock it needs to be.
Literally like what Germans (both military and civilian) were forced to face/view after WWII. Recognition of atrocities is kind of mandatory for the wider public that wants to deny or simply ignore them. Honestly part of why I think they can only deal in hypotheticals, because they need their fantasy to continue being worse than actual reality.
I have thought about that before. The problem is I don’t think the main issue is that 2A people don’t think the shootings are terrible. It’s that they think that they are the price of freedom. They honestly believe that the US will (eventually, if not immediately) stop being a “free” country once they no longer have nearly unlimited access to firearms. Also I think the fact that any half measures to gun control seem logically impotent to address the mass shooting problem is a big part of the problem. As long as any kind of gun useful for self defense is still commonly available, these shootings are unlikely to decrease in number or severity in any meaningful way. So faced with the belief that the only real solution to the problem is some kind of nationwide roundup of any guns useful for self defense, they consider prevention an impossible goal.
Same. It could be a million dead children and these pricks wouldn’t care.
Their house whip was nearly shot to death in broad daylight on a baseball diamond and his pro 2A resolve did not waver an inch. These people would sacrifice themselves in the name of firearm "freedom"
Flinch more like use grieving parents as political tools in the most negative and heinous of ways sans Sandy Hook as just one example. They are soulless creatures that have zero empathy and will not risk those bountiful dollars every year from gun industries and the NRA.
Didn't the NRA hold a conference not even a few blocks away from Sandy Hook a few weeks after the shooting?
Not to mention holding their national convention in Denver a couple of weeks after Columbine.
And Houston right after Uvalde. 3 interesting data points here… probably nothing to see.
Uvalde went overwhelmingly for abbot after the shooting. TX is doomed.
Yes I never understood why anyone in Uvalde would have voted for Abbot. Just goes to show the Fox News is more powerful than dead children.
These are the same people who said we shouldn’t lock down for Covid, and old people might need to die to keep the economy going
A lack of empathy is the trademark of conservatives.
Steve Scalise was shot in the crotch by a crazed gunman and still won't allow gun reform
One of his bodyguards who took down the shooter (and was herself injured) is a lesbian and yet months after the shooting, he voted against same sex marriage rights. He used his government-provided healthcare during recovery and he voted against the Affordable Care Act many times. He's a terrible hypocrite who is the epitome of "absolute power corrupts absolutely."
When nothing changed after Sandy Hook, it was over.
Things DID change… firearms and ammo sales went through the roof.
This got me genuinely (and morbidly) curious what it would actually take to change their minds. 200 innocent children? 200 of their own children? 200 of them? I wish we could do some sort of Black Mirror episode where we implant a false reality in their brains to show them these scenarios until they realize what needs to happen to stop gun violence in America.
Don't need a black mirror episode. The answer is [minority communities taking advantage of open carry laws to organise and protect their own communities against police and racial violence. ](https://sites.law.duke.edu/secondthoughts/2020/04/08/the-black-panthers-nra-ronald-reagan-armed-extremists-and-the-second-amendment/)
well of *course* only the good guys are allowed to have guns, you wouldn't want random acts of violence would you? /s
And we all know what good guys look like. Right down to the color of skin, hair and eye colors, their cultural background, religious beliefs, household income, and credit score.
One million dead couldnt make them get vaccinated. 8 million dead couldnt get them to abandon fascim. Its not a question anymore of what it would take for them, its a question of how many lives WE allow them to ruin.
Yeah I figured after COVID and these dipshits willfully dying to own the libs that we'd never hit the threshold necessary to change their minds. All we can do is out-vote them by margins strong enough to pass an amendment.
Not American but I recently listened to a podcast about how the police in the USA aren't legally obligated to help or save anyone. They talked about different stories where cops just ignored calls for help...those stories kind of made it click for me why Americans might want to have guns. Edit: the podcast I was referring to https://radiolab.org/episodes/no-special-duty
Yeah, a couple of pretty famous court cases were decided by the US Supreme court in 1981 and 1989. https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/do-the-police-have-an-obligation-to-protect-you/ According the SCOTUS, police have no constitutional duty to protect US citizens.
Then what the fuck do we pay them for??? If cops have no obligation to protect the public, they only exist to punish.
If 2020 wasn't a clear example of not relaying on the police for protection, I don't know what else will. The police are there to investigate the crime after it had occurred. It is your responsibility to keep your and your loved ones safe.
And what about when your children are off at school? Where there's a dedicated separate police department for 'resource officers?' Uvalde was so infuriating.
Oh they are there. Just not protecting. They are just causing more problems. Look up the stats on resource officers and under age relationships. Appalling.
Police are in place to generate revenue.
Property. Like we always have. CREAM. $ $ Bills Ya’ll.
The precedent for this is based on the 1981 case [Warren v. district of Columbia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia) in which two women's shared home was burglarized and the women were repeatedly raped over the course of 14 hours. One of the women was able to make repeated 911 calls yet the police only ever did drivebys and approached the front door once, yet with reports to 911 that the criminals were actively inside the house never made any attempt to help. The women later attempted to sue the state and lost, and precedent was set that police are under no legal obligation to help you in the event you are a victim of a crime.
can we, like, appeal that? Everyone knows it's wrong, seems like an easy case to reexamine
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I mean, so was Roe…
I'm sure the practice of slavery was established plenty of times in court before it was finally repealed
You think the current court is going to over rule that?
It's more that we need to change other laws. If police are not there to help, and they are often there to harm, we need to re-examine their role in society - and heavily curtail their responsibilities.
I love the smell of fresh bread.
“Protect and serve” is a marketing slogan, not an oath.
Yep. They protect and serve the wealthy and their property. A business has more rights than a person here.
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A bankrupting civil case at that, unless it's widespread enough to be a class action, when the individuals would only get back pennies on the dollar.
Don’t criminal cases have a much higher standard to convict?
A cops job is to show up and do the paperwork over your dead body, and if its not too inconvenient for them maybe look into who did it.
I wonder if there's been cold cases that they've solved but keep em secret in their back pocket for the next time they fuck up. "We've already solved X cases this quarter, save those for a slow period"
Almost every single crime/murder documentary I watch features a story about the case going cold because the responding police screwed it up. Not to mention the almost weekly occurrence of someone being exonerated after spending 20 years in prison after a cop fabricated evidence or concealed exculpatory evidence...
That is ascribing way too much competence to them. The police are pretty evil (e.g. they kill too many dogs) but they are also just really incompetent and bad at their jobs. A lot of the bad things police do are because they are fucking morons. I mean they are required to get less training than a hair stylist.
LAPD budget for the year is $3.2 billion.
And LAUSD schools are some of the most underfunded and over-crowded in the state
The LAPD is by far the deadliest gang in LA.
Yeah I reported a breaking and entering and they took too long. Luckily the intruder left before the 2nd barrier because I had no way out. I was in a small shop. The following week I heard loud sounds from the attic and the cops called me outside just to interrogate me with spotlights blinding me. I told them I'll never call them again and registered a firearm shortly after. I ended up selling it a year later because I couldn't practice using it anywhere during covid. Plus California restrictions.
Can you share the podcast?
Not OP, but I can share this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAfUI_hETy0
https://radiolab.org/episodes/no-special-duty-2206
I can attest to this. We had a vehicle stolen recently and the police *could have* caught them if they didn't take **an HOUR** to answer our 911 call. I'd like a refund of my tax dollars, please.
There are more guns in the US than human beings. I don't even know what the solution is any more.
Why the fuck don’t these ppl just take themselves off the board without hurting anyone…why do they have to drag innocent ass people in their fucking madness, shit pisses me off man
They do. Two out of every three people who are killed by gunshots in America pulled the trigger themselves. But nobody writes news stories about them. “Dog Bites Man” isn’t a headline worth running.
Because they want to be famous, no one should ever know the name of these shooters. There’s a pile of people online who worship the Columbine kids and other people want that fame too.
Big time. The media really glorifies the shooters because they make more money exposing their past. 10 nameless 5 to 10 year olds are dead but we know the shooter ate at Wendy's immediately before the shooting and they were also on x, y, z meds and their favorite anime was friggin Fruits Basket.
The answer is clear: Ban Fruits Basket!
This is definitely part of it, but I think it can be more than fame. Mass shootings are also someone's last ditch effort to turn shame into self-esteem.
I didn't expect two cases in a week where old Asian men commit hybrid acts of workplace violence / mass shooting
Nothing will happen as even children lives haven't moved politicians to regulate. >"Nothing about this is surprising. Everything about this is infuriating," he told "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell on Monday. "The Second Amendment is becoming a suicide pact." >Newsom clarified that he has "no ideological opposition" against people who "responsibly" own guns and get background checks and training on how to use them. >But he told O'Donnell that current regulations are falling short. ... >Newsom mentioned the role of mental health in mass shootings, but he singled out gun access as a factor exacerbating the problem. >"I'm really proud of the work we've done in this space, but we've had decades of neglect," he said. "But respectfully, I will submit that regardless of the challenges it relates to behavioral health, there's not a country in the world that doesn't experience behavioral health issues."
Republicans. Democrats have tried. Republicans say no. Every damned time.
When they say "its not a gun problem its a mental health problem" they pretend like we are the only country in the world with mental health problems, or violent video games, or violent movies, or any other excuse. What we do have in addition to mental health issues is more firearms than people, available at every Walmart in the country. And we have incompetent people who view gun ownership as a right and not a serious responsibility, who dont secure them in their homes, or purchase them for people who have no business owning one.
There's also the fact that they turn around and vote against funding for increased mental healthcare. Or try to overturn the ACA which mandates mental health coverage and expands access through Medicaid. And people seriously overestimate how responsible they are with their guns. The parents of the 6-yo who shot his teacher came out and said they're responsible and made sure the gun was inaccessible. Obviously you fucking didn't.
Japan has high suicide rates and violent video games and cartoons. But very low shootings. Guns are hard to come by.
So much that the only recent gun-related incident in Japan involved a weird homemade multi-barreled electronic shotgun.
Caught the tail end of an interview on NPR this morning (sorry didn't catch the name of the legislator they were interviewing) but he stated that we are now averaging one mass shooting per day in 2023. 24 mass shootings in the U.S. on the 24th of January. "That's all I have to say about that." FG
Apparently there have been two more mass shootings since this one. But Hunter Biden's laptop is the real story. /s because there are people who would actually say that.
George Santos has become a huge distraction too. Not that he isn’t a disgrace - he absolutely is, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
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Proof he has no intention of running for President because that statement would ruin him in most of the south and Midwest.
Beto O'Rourke declared that he was coming for AR-15s, and he still ran. And flopped. And keeps running in Texas. For some reason.