Texas shooting.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Texas shooting.:
Certainly guns should be considered, but maybe there's other things?
I've been toying around with something -- can't call it a concept because it's too undeveloped, but don't know what else to call it -- that might somewhat answer this.
Maybe pointing to specifics like guns or white supremacy or lust for fame or whatever is invalidly narrowing down the answer to a dangerous degree, to make everything appear simpler to understand -- a fruitless strategy that sends people haring all over the place and feeling virtuous (and getting elected) like they're accomplishing something and making themselves feel better, but not much else.
Maybe it's more useful to think of school shootings as one of many manifestations stemming from a very widespread discontent -- discontent with one's lot, feeling trapped in a society that is terribly damaged throughout, which results in many forms of lashing out, of which shootings, school or otherwise, are but one.
Some actions cause more damage and pain than others, but they all have this in common. Misery, frustration, the heartbroken despair, the belief that nothing will ever get better. The job will still suck in ten years; the marriage ditto, the leg lost in Afghanistan, the countless attempts to get clean that haven't worked, and on and on and on.
Failed expectations. Unfulfilled or broken promises.
How much of this can people, can society, take? Something eventually gives way and BAM.
We are past facile explanations, facile advice for cures. I don't know what to do about it, but I'll tell you what: Aqua is right on about the media. You want to set blame, look to the clickbait-loving slime that shovel out content that constantly reinforces and inflames an already tragic set of conditions. Those, and the goddamn social media. Jolly asks why didn't we have school shootings dunnamany years ago; well, duh, we didn't have social media then, either.
I'll stop. I fear there is no way to fix us without some significant catalyst that I see no sign of on the horizon.
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@89th said in Texas shooting.:
For better or worse, America is different.
That's exactly what Australian famers and ranchers said before the Port Arthur shooting in 1996. That precise argument.
What changed was the Port Arthur shooting. Enough gun advocates had had enough at that point. That's what made the country call for changes, and what made the changes work.
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@89th said in Texas shooting.:
@bachophile said in Texas shooting.:
But even if I accept the premise that mental health is a greater problem in the US then elsewhere, then all the more reason to do everything possible to keep guns away from potential nutjobs....by drastically increasing the regulation over arms sales.
Sure, but how? I think there are 94 million adults who live in a gun-owning home already and most active shooters use someone else's gun.
But forget them, for new buyers, how would you properly screen for mental health issues? Heck you can buy a car without a drivers license, today, too. How can there be a sufficient mental health check on gun transactions? Walk me through what that would look like, I would be for it if it was possible. Even if possible, it would maybe have prevented this shooting... maybe. But wouldn't have prevented Sandy Hook and others.
I like how you're actively advocating for doing nothing because this is all somebody else's problem.
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@89th not really sure how it would work
a mandatory police background check and a mandatory medical certification, where shrinks could be held liable . I dont know. seems to work in other countries.
and that nonsense about america being different. american exceptionalism. thats fine if the exceptionalism is good and positive. what if it stinks? what if it means America is worse than most other places in some respects.
its very saddening.
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@Larry said in Texas shooting.:
@Jolly said in Texas shooting.:
Well, I'm looking at what has changed.
We didn't have mass shootings at schools for most of the 20th century.
We do now.
Why?
Value system.
Or lack thereof.
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@Copper said in Texas shooting.:
There are many thing differences between the United States and other countries.
We have laws that prohibit what this murderer did, strict laws.They don't appear to be working very well.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Texas shooting.:
@89th said in Texas shooting.:
@bachophile said in Texas shooting.:
But even if I accept the premise that mental health is a greater problem in the US then elsewhere, then all the more reason to do everything possible to keep guns away from potential nutjobs....by drastically increasing the regulation over arms sales.
Sure, but how? I think there are 94 million adults who live in a gun-owning home already and most active shooters use someone else's gun.
But forget them, for new buyers, how would you properly screen for mental health issues? Heck you can buy a car without a drivers license, today, too. How can there be a sufficient mental health check on gun transactions? Walk me through what that would look like, I would be for it if it was possible. Even if possible, it would maybe have prevented this shooting... maybe. But wouldn't have prevented Sandy Hook and others.
I like how you're actively advocating for doing nothing because this is all somebody else's problem.
I'm for any changes needed to prevent senseless acts like this. I don't see how stricter gun laws, waiting periods, background checks... first, I don't see how they could even be implemented given the number of gun owners already and the volume of gun transactions each day, and second, I don't see how it would really prevent these types of events. Your kid has a 1 in 107 chance of dying in a car accident, and a 1 in 137,000 chance of dying in school violence. On average, there are 3 active shooter deaths per month in this country... 3. Compared to 1,900 gun-related deaths per month (3,700 if you include suicides), 8,000 drinking-related deaths a month, and 40,000-smoking related deaths a month. Ban guns? First ban alcohol or tobacco, if you're interest in saving lives. Let's just ban everything!
These school active shooter events are extremely rare and almost all would not be changed with stricter laws. I'm not saying do nothing... I'm saying, let's do something (if anything) that would actually make a difference and if the goal is to reduce deaths, there are much MUCH bigger laws in this country that should be changed first. If stricter background checks or requiring a gun test/license would do something, I'd be fine with it. I just don't see that changing these rare and tragic events from happening.
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@89th said in Texas shooting.:
Oops my reply was long.
TL;DR
- Media makes shooters famous and inspires others, it's now "a thing" you can do if you're feeling crazy and violent
- Gun laws mostly don't change a shooter's access to weapons
- Try to ignore, 99.9% of bad events you see out there have zero impact on your life... focus on your local community, try to improve it there, if everyone did that...
- The media is most certainly complicit. Buy a gun, kill a lot of innocent people and go out in a blaze of glory.
- The two rifles used in the shooting were legally purchased, complete with NICS.
- Another one of those conservative pundits that AL abhors so much, Bill Bennett, coined the phrase "Defining deviancy downward". I think we've been on that path since the 1960's. Inch by inch, acceptance by acceptance.
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@bachophile said in Texas shooting.:
Ill put in my two cents although I admit I have had this back and forth with Jolly in the past over some other horrific shooting, I certainly don't remember which one. so nothing new being added here.
Jolly you immediately put forth the mental health issue as the major issue, thus shunting gun control out of the spotlight and concentrating on the bad state of mental health in the US.
my response is twofold: one, hard to imagine that the number of people with serious and probably criminal mental health problems is so much greater in the US then in any other developed country with the same access to violent games or media, Given a certain proportion of any population will naturally harbour sociopaths and crazies, because that's the way the world has always been...no reason to think America has a greater share than anywhere else....
But even if I accept the premise that mental health is a greater problem in the US then elsewhere, then all the more reason to do everything possible to keep guns away from potential nutjobs....by drastically increasing the regulation over arms sales.
Be that as it may, I think that gun lobby proponents who use the constitution as an excuse for bearing arms (a la Lauren Boebert), seems to me that a simple reading of the original framers, maybe im an originalist??? is that arms were necessary for militias to defend a nascent nation and have no connection to the legal right of an 18 year old angry boy to buy weapons to slaughter children.
there i said it. I know I cant convince Jolly, but at least thats how I see it.
At what point do Israeli young people begin their compulsory service in the IDF? 18? At that point, do they undergo weapons training? Used to be Ghalil's, then I guess it was M4's and now I think they have Tavor's. So, at 18, they have access to assault weapons, live ammo at times and possibly much heavier weapons (grenades, mortars, etc.)
Why don't I read about Israeli young people going mad and killing other Israelis either on base with a legal weapon or with an illegal weapon purchased on the black market?
As for the militia...The militia in the U.S. is all able-bodied males 17-44 - U.S. Code Title 10; Section 248. Unless we change our Constitution, that issue is pretty cut and dried.
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@Catseye3 said in Texas shooting.:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Texas shooting.:
Certainly guns should be considered, but maybe there's other things?
I've been toying around with something -- can't call it a concept because it's too undeveloped, but don't know what else to call it -- that might somewhat answer this.
Maybe pointing to specifics like guns or white supremacy or lust for fame or whatever is narrowing the answer down to a dangerous degree, to make everything simpler to understand -- a useless strategy that sends people haring all over the place and feeling virtuously (and getting elected) like they're accomplishing something and making themselves feel better, but not much else.
Maybe it's more useful to think of school shootings as one of many manifestations stemming from a very widespread discontent -- discontent with one's lot, feeling trapped in a society that is terribly damaged throughout, which results in many forms of lashing out, of which shootings, school or otherwise, are but one.
Some actions cause more damage and pain than others, but they all have this in common. Misery, frustration, the heartbroken belief that nothing will ever get better. The job will still suck in ten years; the marriage ditto, the leg lost in Afghanistan, the countless attempts to get clean that haven't worked, and on and on and on.
Failed expectations. Unfulfilled or broken promises.
How much of this can people, can society, take? Something eventually gives way and BAM.
We are past facile explanations, facile advice for cures. I don't know what to do about it, but I'll tell you what: Aqua is right on about the media. You want to set blame, look to the clickbait-loving slime that shovel out content that constantly reinforces and inflames an already tragic set of conditions. Those, and the goddamn social media. Jolly asks why didn't we have school shootings dunnamany years ago; well, duh, we didn't have social media then, either.
I'll stop. I fear there is no way to fix us without some significant catalyst that I see no sign of on the horizon.
Rats in a cage.
And it's not a bad theory.
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@bachophile said in Texas shooting.:
@89th not really sure how it would work
a mandatory police background check and a mandatory medical certification, where shrinks could be held liable . I dont know. seems to work in other countries.
and that nonsense about america being different. american exceptionalism. thats fine if the exceptionalism is good and positive. what if it stinks? what if it means America is worse than most other places in some respects.
its very saddening.
The mandatory NICS exists. Here's a link with the current 4473:
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/atf-form-4473-firearms-transaction-record-revisions
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@Jolly said in Texas shooting.:
There's been some talk of Red Flag laws being an area of compromise.
All right, Dems. Make you a deal...This last shooter was transgendered. Let's go back to the future and label transgendered people as mentally ill and red flag their 4473.
I haven’t seen anything about the shooter’s self identification. Where are you seeing that?
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@Horace said in Texas shooting.:
@Jolly said in Texas shooting.:
There's been some talk of Red Flag laws being an area of compromise.
All right, Dems. Make you a deal...This last shooter was transgendered. Let's go back to the future and label transgendered people as mentally ill and red flag their 4473.
I haven’t seen anything about the shooter’s self identification. Where are you seeing that?
Apparently, a rumour started on 4Chan. According to this article, it's bogus.
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It's odd how the mentally ill in other countries don't do this.
Particularly when we're told that US Healthcare is better than all that socialized rubbish.
Maybe demonizing trans folk based on some rumour started on 4chan isn't such great idea, unless actual evidence emerges.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-school-shooting-victims-were-killed-in-one-classroom-11653484041
Texas School Shooter Had No Known Mental Health Issues or Arrests
The gunman who killed 19 students and two teachers Tuesday in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, wasn’t known to law enforcement ahead of time and had no documented mental-health issues and no known arrests, state officials said Wednesday.
The first warnings of violence came in the form of Facebook messages shortly before Salvador Ramos, 18, shot his grandmother and proceeded to Robb Elementary, where the mass shooting took place. Ramos wrote on Facebook “I’m going to shoot my grandma” and then, after doing so, posted, “I shot my grandma,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news conference. Less than 15 minutes before arriving at Robb Elementary School, he wrote, “I’m going to shoot an elementary school.”
A spokesman for Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., said on Twitter that the communications were private messages sent to another individual, not public posts.
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@Mik said in Texas shooting.:
My question is how did he get in? We have gone to two local schools this week. Both of them required we be buzzed in.
If you were a former pupil, it probably wouldn't be that difficult to beat most school security. When I go, it's not exactly Fort Knox.