Gun manufacturers and the NRA will be popping champagne
Frustration at not being able to shoot people?
The Active Shooter Thread
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Gun manufacturers and the NRA will be popping champagne
Not that I disagree as such but you can't talk about gun massacres without talking about gun control. The two are inextricably linked.
Apparently there were plenty of warning signs with this kid. He even posted something on social media about wanting to kill lots of people with his AR15.
RIP to the victims 
Its an evil world we live in.
Its an evil world we live in.
At this very minute, some parents have still not been told if their child have died because some of the victims have still not been identified.
How awful must it be knowing your child has not made contact and you know they're almost certainly deceased, but no one is confirming it to you.
How awful must it be knowing your child has not made contact and you know they're almost certainly deceased, but no one is confirming it to you.
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Indeed it is. I actually think a lot of these shootings are more to do with anger and evil than mental health. If you look at most of the shooters they were eaten up with anger and dissatisfaction at something. To most sane non violent people its hard to comprehend their actions so we put it down to mental health. I think most of them are just angry evil cnuts.RIP to the victims
Its an evil world we live in.
It is absolutely down to mental health, and the prejudice the ‘rough and tough Americans’ have against acknowledging it.
Forget politics,gun control, right to bear arms or whatever, this is fecking brutal, deepest sympathies to all families and may the victims rest in peace.
I saw a pic of a mother earlier with the ash cross on her forehead. She’d been called from church service to that chaos. Horrible.
There are many millions there that agree with him and want to see schools, nurseries, churches etc have people with access to guns.
There's no "could" about it. You can't kill so many people in such a short time with a knife (close combat) as you can with a gun (ranged combat) and due to the close nature of knife crime, it is easier to apprehend the attacker.
Las Vegas shooting had 59 deaths and 851 injuries (422 by gunfire) according to wiki. If a knife was used instead, there'd be maybe a couple of fatalities and a handful of injuries.
I'd say the number of incidents overall would go down as well. If someone has a problem with someone else, it is easy to get the gun out and attack them from a distance. You can't do that with a knife.
Suicides. So many people attempt to kill themselves with guns, and those that fail due to not aiming the gun at the right place live the rest of their lives in misery. Not having access to a gun would reduce the number of successful suicide attempts.
All about ease of access.
Donald Trump says that for domestic cases of gun crime like this, it is because the perpetrator is mentally ill. A year ago he made it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns and he, and the other politicians under the thumb of the NRA and in awe of the second constitution will continue to make it easier for these atrocities to occur.
(Sorry Raoul, just the wording "death toll 'could' decline" irritated me)
May the victims rest in peace.
CNN saying 150,000 children have experienced gun violence in schools since Columbine. What the actual feck America.
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What exactly does that mean?
children not people*
they have direct experience of gun violence, whether surviving or dying at a similar event to this
My guess is its the number of people on or in the vicinity of a school campus when a shooting occurs.
Research over the last 30 years has consistently shown that diagnosable mental illness does not underlie most gun violence.
http://behavioralscientist.org/myth-mental-illness-causes-mass-shootings/
There's apparently been 212 school-shootings so far in the 21st century, so a reasonable average of 500 students per school arrives in the ballpark.
There were apparently 226 school-shootings during the entirety of the 20th century.
A key question now will be why none of his family or friends noticed anything. Some of the things posted on his social media were troubling and i'd definitely be concerned if i saw some one i know post images like that on their profiles.
They are all listed on Wiki. Many of them are not dramatic events. One is simply some firing a pellet gun at a school window.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States
From what I can see and have experienced living in i.e. Northern Europe vs in the US is that a surprisingly large number of people in the US are either actively seeing a psych or have seen one - but to me it seems that is often more due to the fractured social life many appear to have. For instance - a lot of people who had friends in college end up being spread thousands of miles apart over time making it next to impossible to maintain some of those relationships, same with family.
I also find it is often very much a faux pas to talk about feelings on a deeper level than "my life sucks and let me tell you why". Add to that the extremely polarized climate we often have in this country with regards to politics and social beliefs that people instead of being able to discuss with those of opposing viewpoints openly - are avoided and instead you get this odd climate of lets just all smile and pretend like everything is dandy. Obviously not everyone is that way here and there are certainly many close minded and non personable (for lack of a better word) people in Europe as well.
Is mental health in this country broken? Hell yes it is - but why do we even need it so much?
I also find it is often very much a faux pas to talk about feelings on a deeper level than "my life sucks and let me tell you why". Add to that the extremely polarized climate we often have in this country with regards to politics and social beliefs that people instead of being able to discuss with those of opposing viewpoints openly - are avoided and instead you get this odd climate of lets just all smile and pretend like everything is dandy. Obviously not everyone is that way here and there are certainly many close minded and non personable (for lack of a better word) people in Europe as well.
Is mental health in this country broken? Hell yes it is - but why do we even need it so much?
In the first 43 days of 2018, America experienced:
18 school shootings
29 mass shootings
1,796 total gun deaths
3,099 total injuries
Let that sink in.
18 school shootings
29 mass shootings
1,796 total gun deaths
3,099 total injuries
Let that sink in.
That is probably down to access due to private health insurance. It is relatively easy to see any type of healthcare professional in the US if you have insurance, which the majority do. No need to see your GP or get a referral just pick up the phone and make an appointment. A lot of employers have programs that give you access to therapists as well.
Its actually seven school shootings. One was a pellet gun shot at a school bus window, and four were involved no fatalities. Still bad but not quite as bad as some try and portray.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States
January 9, 2018 Forest City, Iowa 0 0 A man shot a pellet gun at a school bus full of children, shattering a window. No one was injured.[539]
January 20, 2018 Winston-Salem, North Carolina 1 0 A student was fatally shot on the campus of Wake Forest University.[539]
January 22, 2018 Italy, Texas 0 1 A 16-year-old male student fired at a 15-year-old classmate in the cafeteria of Italy High School. The gunman left the school immediately after opening fire.[540][541][542]
January 22, 2018 New Orleans, Louisiana 0 1 Shots were fired from a truck in the parking lot of NET Charter High School, targeting a crowd of students during lunch time. One student was slightly injured, apparently from injuries unrelated to gunfire. One person was arrested in connection with the shooting.[539]
January 23, 2018 Marshall County, Kentucky 2 18 Marshall County High School shooting: A 15-year-old male student shot 16 people in the lobby at Marshall County High School and caused non-gunshot injuries to 4 others. Two 15-year-old students died: one killed at the scene, another died of wounds at Vanderbilt Medical Center.[543][544][545]
February 1, 2018 Los Angeles, California 0 5 Two 15-year-old students, a boy and a girl, were shot and injured inside a classroom at Sal Castro Middle School, which shares a campus with Belmont High School. Three other people suffered injuries unrelated to gunfire. A 12-year-old girl was arrested and put in custody.[546]
February 14, 2018 Parkland, Florida 17 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting: A 19 year old expelled student began shooting after pulling a fire alarm.
That's a good point and hadn't thought about that. It's indeed "easier" to get in front of a psych here. Most employers indeed have an EAP or other type of counseling contract, universities have counseling centers and indeed if you re on a PPO you wouldn't need a referral all in most cases. One thing where it definitely gets messy though is if you have to see a psychiatrist vs a psychologist (if you re lucky.. More likely a social worker than a PhD) - wait lists are often long and so people will simply bounce back their pcp to get drugs and skip any further professional counseling or guidance.
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Social media companies need to get a grip.
So much fake/misleading information being published related to this incident. Some are posting images of someone wearing antifa clothing, but he's innocent and had nothing to do with this attack.
So much fake/misleading information being published related to this incident. Some are posting images of someone wearing antifa clothing, but he's innocent and had nothing to do with this attack.
What a leader.Guardian said:
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Man that's horrible.
I don't even know how the US fixes this issue. The UK banned gun ownership after the Dunblane Massacre (a decision I'm thankful for), but weapons were far less commonplace and Brits didn't have a second amendment to hide behind.
It's just incredibly sad that this happens on such a regular basis. They're fecking kids.
17 dead?!
This has become so normal that I will go through my day today without even talking about it much to anyone. It's almost what we expect to hear in the news at this point. I remember weeks, if not months of discussion about Columbine. Those poor children and parents .
.Its crazy, Columbine had fewer deaths, spawned at least 1 film and documentary and was debated globally.This will get a few days in the press until the next mass shooting.This has become so normal that I will go through my day today without even talking about it much to anyone. It's almost what we expect to hear in the news at this point. I remember weeks, if not months of discussion about Columbine. Those poor children and parents
(This turned into a bit of an essay, and is not really just a response to your post, so apologies
)For me, any violence or any behaviour originates within a person's thinking and consciousness, and the foundational issue with any shooting, say, is what happens within the human being, regardless of whether it's classed as a diagnosable mental illness.
Our society brings the worst out of people, and what interests me is that, when you look at the various native and ancient philosophies of the human being around the world that have not come from Western society (quite the opposite - often from places that have been invaded or where there's been colonialism from 'the white man'), such as Vedic, Buddhist, Kahuna, Sufi, etc, it starts to look like there's basically a sort of perennial philosophy, or a default philosophy that people ended up in before the influence of Western society, and the example of this I've been most taken aback by is a tribe in the Amazon called the 'Piraha tribe', whose philosophy and perspective on 'presence' is seemingly consistent with those up there. They live in the middle of absolutely nowhere, yet they have views on 'presence', 'the immediacy of experience', etc that are consistent with these other philosophies, and this sort of thing is often talked about in terms of a link to happiness, love, peace, etc, and has even cropped up sometimes in the West with people like the theosophists and the stoics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism
To bring this back to the issue of what causes violence in the world, you have a situation today where you have a society that probably causes some of the most wide-ranging variety of stress imaginable, yet there is absolutely nothing in our culture or any school curriculum that tries to get us to understand ourselves, and how to deal with all the sadness, worry, isolation, etc of the human being that can then come to cause violence, anger and madness. There's a sort of collective conscience that many people agree upon in terms of what we feel is right, what is moral, etc, but nothing in our education that aims to get us to really see any of this as self-evident. To be honest, you could maybe say our current approach is more prone to leading to moral relativism and nihilism.
With gun control, it reminds me of the political correctness issue, and how society seems to tripping over itself to cater for people who are apparently offended. You can establish laws left, right and centre telling people what they can do, what they can possess, etc, but at some point something like the above approach surely has to be embedded into our culture with the aim of preventing violence before it happens.
It's like in football how you don't need to learn how to defend as well if you can control possession and prevent the other team from really getting much of the ball in the first place. If we put more effort into developing a more controlled and happy state of awareness amongst the populace, perhaps you wouldn't need to put so much effort into defending people, and at the cost of liberty and freedom of speech.
The majority of mass shooters kill themselves instead of handing themselves over to the police. They don’t want to spend the rest of their lives in prison so using a gun is much more appealing because using a truck or knife doesn’t give them an opportunity to commit suicide. There have been terror attacks in Europe but we don’t see regular people commiting mass murder with knives or trucks because they couldn’t get ahold of a gun. I think not being able to use a firearm would be enough of a deterrent for many of these mass killers.
There's a question to ask here I think about where you draw the line with everything. With regards to the truck stuff and how prominent that has been in the news in recent years, down the line this could be used to justify the view that the only cars that should exist should be driverless. For example:
https://www.inverse.com/article/38003-driverless-cars-answer-truck-attacks
https://www.express.co.uk/life-styl...-self-driving-petrol-diesel-ban-electric-2025
And this quote has been attributed to Merkel:
So the discussion is already there, and it would again be this chipping away of liberty in the name of safety, because if a time like that ever comes, you could only go where your car is able to take you, which is probably going to be determined more and more by a select few companies as time passes.
With regards to other things that could hurt other people, you also have alcohol, which is clearly a massive contributor to violence, death and abuse all around the world. It's the same situation in that you have people who feel they gain something positive out of it (social benefits, relaxation, etc), just as people may feel with owning a gun (safety and recreational enjoyment), and in both situations you have industry leaders that would presumably be vehemently opposed to any prohibition. And again, as you say:
Back to that point again.
Control of one thing as a single act may seem quite harmless on its own, but it's worth thinking about what sort of monstrosity of a society in terms of legislation and prohibition we could be heading towards because of this sort of incrementalism.
Just do both.
Multiple policemen on every school and better gun control.
Except that won't happen
Multiple policemen on every school and better gun control.
Except that won't happen
Mental health is always brought up after events like this and it’s a complete red herring. Your risk of mental illness is similar in America to most other developed nations. Your risk of being shot isn’t. Join the fecking dots!
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