Poll of the Day > Another Day, Another Mass Shooting! (Kids This Time)

(+) Yeah! (+)

What scares me is the 10 year lag Canada has. So we'll be seeing these soon. We already have mass killings now. The Nova Scotia killer, Holy crap that's scary. And in Winnipeg it appears to be daily homicides now. One step from mass killings.
Something needs to be done, and I have no idea what. Gangs and poverty are the basic reason. But you can't solve poverty by throwing money at it. Which seems to be all Canada does. And we certainly can't try education, lest we risk residential schools again. So what's left? Do we round them up and encourage them purge style?

DrPrimemaster posted...

But I bring up this example because I think it shows that other countries do have people that do this behaviour as well. And I want to hear why other people think that is.

The simple answer is that there are bad people in the world, and there unfortunately always will be. The reality is a bit more nuanced than that, but the bottom line is that you're never going to be able to stop everyone from doing bad things (not without extreme authoritarianism, at least).

The problem is that a lot of people take that sort of fatalistic approach to gun violence in the US, believing nothing can be done and that it's just human nature to have the occasional bad apple. That's not a particularly sensible approach, though, given that the situation is so much worse in the US than in many other countries (and without the clear justifications that most of the worse countries have, such as war). These incidents will never go away completely, but that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement.

What if all these guns are the problem

Only cowards need them

adjl posted...

The simple answer is that there are bad people in the world, and there unfortunately always will be. The reality is a bit more nuanced than that, but the bottom line is that you're never going to be able to stop everyone from doing bad things (not without extreme authoritarianism, at least).

The problem is that a lot of people take that sort of fatalistic approach to gun violence in the US, believing nothing can be done and that it's just human nature to have the occasional bad apple. That's not a particularly sensible approach, though, given that the situation is so much worse in the US than in many other countries (and without the clear justifications that most of the worse countries have, such as war). These incidents will never go away completely, but that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement.

I wonder if banning guns might work, but it would take a long time to gain footing. Like we ban guns now and then we are where we want to be in 20 years.

Muscles posted...

This so sad, fuck these kind of people that go and shoot up schools but this isn't a gun problem, how can you really say that when we have had guns in this country since before the modern school system and school shootings haven't become prevalent until the last 20 years or so? What was different before that lead to everyone having guns but not having school shootings?

This is true, people may be sadder now

But is america sadder than others? And why?

We have way more guns here now. More guns than people. Impossible to keep track of even. And some of the 3D printing shit going on is terrifying.

Yeah bullets be flying everywhere. Chicago is a warzone.

Revelation34 posted...

Yeah technology is definitely the reason mass shooters exist.

https://youtu.be/2M0EGCZTj6E

DrPrimemaster posted...

I wonder if banning guns might work, but it would take a long time to gain footing. Like we ban guns now and then we are where we want to be in 20 years.

As NRA folks are fond of pointing out, if guns are banned, those who want to kill others will use other methods. By and large, guns do a better job than most others, but even without guns, you still see knife attacks (usually with dramatically lower casualty counts), vehicle attacks (which can be comparable), and bombings (which can be comparable). On top of that, banning guns altogether creates other issues, not least of which is the fact that there are a lot of guns in the US and you'd inevitably end up with a whole lot of non-law-abiding people making things very dangerous for those that gave theirs up.

Ultimately, having guns around isn't inherently bad, it's just a matter of keeping them out of the hands of people that would do harm with them and identifying those that are at risk of causing harm with or without guns. Every gun sold should require a criminal background check, safety certification, and recent psych evaluation, as well as a mandatory two-week waiting period (which has been overwhelmingly demonstrated to significantly reduce suicides by firearm). Every gun owned should be effectively secured (with ammo secured separately) at all times when not in use (carrying counting as "use"). Gun owners need to be held legally accountable for ensuring that guns are not used by unlicensed users, including assigning some liability for any crime committed with their gun if it has not been reported stolen (and even then, if it's stolen because it was inadequately secured, there should be penalties for that negligence).

Will these measures fix the entire problem? Obviously not. But that last point in particular would go a long way toward stopping teenagers from taking their parents' guns and shooting up schools with them, which accounts for many school shootings, and mental health assessments and waiting periods are critical for keeping crises from driving people to commit gun violence. On top of that, there need to be better mental health supports all around, including anti-bullying efforts (in both schools and workplaces), for the sake of preventing those crises from happening in the first place.

Fewer guns

More katanas

teddy241 posted...

Yeah bullets be flying everywhere. Chicago is a warzone

Have you actually been to Chicago?

adjl posted...

As NRA folks are fond of pointing out, if guns are banned, those who want to kill others will use other methods. By and large, guns do a better job than most others, but even without guns, you still see knife attacks (usually with dramatically lower casualty counts), vehicle attacks (which can be comparable), and bombings (which can be comparable). On top of that, banning guns altogether creates other issues, not least of which is the fact that there are a lot of guns in the US and you'd inevitably end up with a whole lot of non-law-abiding people making things very dangerous for those that gave theirs up.

Ultimately, having guns around isn't inherently bad, it's just a matter of keeping them out of the hands of people that would do harm with them and identifying those that are at risk of causing harm with or without guns. Every gun sold should require a criminal background check, safety certification, and recent psych evaluation, as well as a mandatory two-week waiting period (which has been overwhelmingly demonstrated to significantly reduce suicides by firearm). Every gun owned should be effectively secured (with ammo secured separately) at all times when not in use (carrying counting as "use"). Gun owners need to be held legally accountable for ensuring that guns are not used by unlicensed users, including assigning some liability for any crime committed with their gun if it has not been reported stolen (and even then, if it's stolen because it was inadequately secured, there should be penalties for that negligence).

Will these measures fix the entire problem? Obviously not. But that last point in particular would go a long way toward stopping teenagers from taking their parents' guns and shooting up schools with them, which accounts for many school shootings, and mental health assessments and waiting periods are critical for keeping crises from driving people to commit gun violence. On top of that, there need to be better mental health supports all around, including anti-bullying efforts (in both schools and workplaces), for the sake of preventing those crises from happening in the first place.

Do you have an opinion on why a person might kill themselves vs. a violent outburst?

Anecdote,

There was a guy at my high school nicknamed "twist". I played on the same football team as him, but never really interacted with him. All I remember is that he was kind of a dick, but wasnt bullied. He was mostly just left alone.

He ended up shooting himself, so he obviously had mental health issues and access to a gun. So I wonder why he didnt attack the school. Would that change today?

Are a lot of these shooters today people that would have gone quietly 20 years ago.

DrPrimemaster posted...

Do you have an opinion on why a person might kill themselves vs. a violent outburst?

I'm not really qualified to speak to that. It's going to depend on the exact nature of their mental illness, but largely, it's a balance between self-loathing and hating others/wanting more attention.

When guns get banned, I'd expect to see a lot more bombings.

TomNook posted...

When guns get banned, I'd expect to see a lot more bombings.

Of the bombers themselves since most of them will fuck up while building a bomb.

adjl posted...

As NRA folks are fond of pointing out, if guns are banned, those who want to kill others will use other methods. By and large, guns do a better job than most others, but even without guns, you still see knife attacks (usually with dramatically lower casualty counts), vehicle attacks (which can be comparable), and bombings (which can be comparable). On top of that, banning guns altogether creates other issues, not least of which is the fact that there are a lot of guns in the US and you'd inevitably end up with a whole lot of non-law-abiding people making things very dangerous for those that gave theirs up.

Ultimately, having guns around isn't inherently bad, it's just a matter of keeping them out of the hands of people that would do harm with them and identifying those that are at risk of causing harm with or without guns. Every gun sold should require a criminal background check, safety certification, and recent psych evaluation, as well as a mandatory two-week waiting period (which has been overwhelmingly demonstrated to significantly reduce suicides by firearm). Every gun owned should be effectively secured (with ammo secured separately) at all times when not in use (carrying counting as "use"). Gun owners need to be held legally accountable for ensuring that guns are not used by unlicensed users, including assigning some liability for any crime committed with their gun if it has not been reported stolen (and even then, if it's stolen because it was inadequately secured, there should be penalties for that negligence).

Will these measures fix the entire problem? Obviously not. But that last point in particular would go a long way toward stopping teenagers from taking their parents' guns and shooting up schools with them, which accounts for many school shootings, and mental health assessments and waiting periods are critical for keeping crises from driving people to commit gun violence. On top of that, there need to be better mental health supports all around, including anti-bullying efforts (in both schools and workplaces), for the sake of preventing those crises from happening in the first place.

I would much rather have a guy going crazy with a knife trying to kill people than an assault rifle. It's far easier to get distance from that guy and he has to usually spend more time killing each person, firing 50 rounds into a crowd usually does a lot more damage faster then even the most expert knife wielder on Earth.

The NRA is fucking stupid, they act like well it would just happen with other things when those things are far less efficient at killing people. No one has a problem with the Government restricting people owning a fully operational tank but once we start talking about banning assault rifles or making them harder to get watch out.

the nra is also a massive, and i mean massive, mlm scheme.

like they're not even trying to hide it, but it just goes over all of their heads

DrPrimemaster posted...

Do you have an opinion on why a person might kill themselves vs. a violent outburst?
Anecdote,
There was a guy at my high school nicknamed "twist". I played on the same football team as him, but never really interacted with him. All I remember is that he was kind of a dick, but wasnt bullied. He was mostly just left alone.
He ended up shooting himself, so he obviously had mental health issues and access to a gun. So I wonder why he didnt attack the school. Would that change today?
Are a lot of these shooters today people that would have gone quietly 20 years ago.

Don't conflate mental illness in general with some sort of propensity for violence against others. People with mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators, and those who struggle with a will to live... that isn't something that is typically externalized into violence against others. It almost always manifests in harm against the self in some way, for obvious reasons. There's a difference between depression and nihilism.

Violence against others is (usually) a behavioral/personality issue that is typically rooted in something learned. For example, there is a large intersection in the USA between gun violence and misogyny; 2 women are murdered in domestic violence situations every day on average in the USA. Misogyny is not ingrained in people; it is learned. People like to scapegoat mental illness to avoid admitting that many of these shooters were acting off of beliefs that many non-violent people share with them. These carefully constructed manifestos these murderers make are deliberately designed to incite more people to commit mass shootings. They aren't flipping some sort of "mental illness switch"; they're convincing people.

If you are looking for solutions that don't involve gun control (and I support a multi-faceted approach, including gun regulation), one thing that could be done would be to give generic, mandatory classes in public school on Cognitive behavior therapy and Dialectical behavior therapy, to make sure everyone has BASIC skills for managing emotional and behavior issues, as well as more heavily focusing on critique/critical analysis in basic education. It would result in people being less likely to fall for bullshit fearmongering and give them some standard tools for managing emotions and deconstructing harmful behaviors, which is something that EVERYONE, not just mentally ill people, can benefit from.

Count_Drachma posted...

Schools are gun-free zones, so no.

And the vast majority of mass shootings happen in gun-free zones.

Or, you know, put the gameboy in your pocket. But considering the GBA-SP was disco'd 15 years ago or so, it doesn't feel like something you need to worry about.

200+ years ago they knew there'd always be people who abused rights, but didn't see that as an excuse to take them away. And you should be happy about that, considering some of the protections.

Mexico has far stricter gun control than the US yet more mass shootings. And the gun violence has only increased as the gun control has.

Otherwise, the US is the third-most populous nation in the world. And the nations more populated than us have similar problems with random mass violence,

Except guns aren't necessary for anything other than killing. So that reason alone is damn good enough to repeal the 2nd amendment.

Gaawa_chan posted...

Don't conflate mental illness in general with some sort of propensity for violence against others. People with mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators, and those who struggle with a will to live... that isn't something that is typically externalized into violence against others. It almost always manifests in harm against the self in some way, for obvious reasons. There's a difference between depression and nihilism.

Violence against others is (usually) a behavioral/personality issue that is typically rooted in something learned. For example, there is a large intersection in the USA between gun violence and misogyny; 2 women are murdered in domestic violence situations every day on average in the USA. Misogyny is not ingrained in people; it is learned. People like to scapegoat mental illness to avoid admitting that many of these shooters were acting off of beliefs that many non-violent people share with them. These carefully constructed manifestos these murderers make are deliberately designed to incite more people to commit mass shootings. They aren't flipping some sort of "mental illness switch"; they're convincing people.

If you are looking for solutions that don't involve gun control (and I support a multi-faceted approach, including gun regulation), one thing that could be done would be to give generic, mandatory classes in public school on Cognitive behavior therapy and Dialectical behavior therapy, to make sure everyone has BASIC skills for managing emotional and behavior issues, as well as more heavily focusing on critique/critical analysis in basic education. It would result in people being less likely to fall for bullshit fearmongering and give them some standard tools for managing emotions and deconstructing harmful behaviors, which is something that EVERYONE, not just mentally ill people, can benefit from.

Yeah, that works. Classes that will do actively shit all to solve the problem. The answer is repealing the 2nd amendment. Except the Rethuglican cock suckers are too cowardly to demand it.

Jen0125 posted...

Have you actually been to Chicago?

No given that there isn't an active military presence there day and night suggests that their gun control laws would work if the police actually enforced them. Repealing the 2nd amendment is the only solution.

DrPrimemaster posted...

I wonder if banning guns might work, but it would take a long time to gain footing. Like we ban guns now and then we are where we want to be in 20 years.

Better that than never trying and continuously killing each other all the time and saying there is no solution to it.

Muscles posted...

This so sad, fuck these kind of people that go and shoot up schools but this isn't a gun problem, how can you really say that when we have had guns in this country since before the modern school system and school shootings haven't become prevalent until the last 20 years or so? What was different before that lead to everyone having guns but not having school shootings?

Then explain why Australia has had no school shooting since they enacted their gun reform and took the guns away. Or rather, explain why there hasn't been mass violence of the type that we get everyday here in the U.S. If guns weren't the problem then obviously the violent acts would still be happening. Unless, you are just full of shit and just want to continue sucking that Rethuglican dick because you for some fucking reason think the Rethuglicans will reward you for it.

Far-Queue posted...

I'm sure that the founding fathers knew when they drafted 2A 200+ years ago that limpdicked lunatics were going to murder schoolchildren by the busload, so of course they would see no need to correct course.

I'm certain they would want to keep 2A completely intact and unassailable, and keep allowing school-aged children to be massacred by the dozen. This is exactly how they envisioned America. Land of the free, home of the spineless gun-toting dipshits gunning down babies, because by golly that's their inalienable right as free Americans

Except the second amendment is only intended to allow a well-regulated militia the right to bear arms to protect the state and its citizen, not that every single citizen should have the right to bear arms. The text is blatantly misinterpreted and propaganded by NRA lunatics who want to profit from the mass selling of firearms. The founding fathers never agreed with this to begin with. In other words, being pro guns is being anticonstitutional. The very thing they use as an excuse is based on a lie.

Arcturusisnow posted...

Except guns aren't necessary for anything other than killing. So that reason alone is damn good enough to repeal the 2nd amendment.

It's more of an issue of how it has been "interpreted" to mean something completely different than what it actually says. It specifically calls for things to be well regulated and yet we have pure evil organizations like NRA saying it means complete lack of regulations.

Accrovideogames posted...

Except the second amendment is only intended to allow a well-regulated militia the right to bear arms to protect the state and its citizen, not that every single citizen should have the right to bear arms. The text is blatantly misinterpreted and propaganded by NRA lunatics who want to profit from the mass selling of firearms. The founding fathers never agreed with this to begin with. In other words, being pro guns is being anticonstitutional. The very thing they use as an excuse is based on a lie.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c

Accrovideogames posted...

Except the second amendment is only intended to allow a well-regulated militia the right to bear arms to protect the state and its citizen, not that every single citizen should have the right to bear arms. The text is blatantly misinterpreted and propaganded by NRA lunatics who want to profit from the mass selling of firearms. The founding fathers never agreed with this to begin with. In other words, being pro guns is being anticonstitutional. The very thing they use as an excuse is based on a lie.

When you use this argument. It does one of the following.

Shows your ignorance on subject, or lack of reading comprehension.

Shows you are making a disingenuous argument.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61615236

Looks like another shooting happened, but the shooter was killed by a civilian. Could have been terrible. Obviously this isn't going to be big national news, but it's one of those things that you think about if it had gone differently, it would be yet another one this week in the headlines.

TomNook posted...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61615236

Looks like another shooting happened, but the shooter was killed by a civilian. Could have been terrible. Obviously this isn't going to be big national news, but it's one of those things that you think about if it had gone differently, it would be yet another one this week in the headlines.

Gun nuts gonna use their "good guys with guns" argument ad nauseum now

sodium-chloride posted...

Gun nuts gonna use their "good guys with guns" argument ad nauseum now

Every time we see a school shooting democrats use the "guns should be banned" argument ad nauseum so I guess it's even

Muscles posted...

Every time we see a school shooting democrats use the "guns should be banned" argument ad nauseum so I guess it's even

One side shits in a toilet and one side shits into its own mouth same thing

Muscles posted...

Every time we see a school shooting democrats use the "guns should be banned" argument ad nauseum so I guess it's even

bullshit

for years democrats have been trying to pass basic common sense gun laws and the right continues to fight basic shit like background checks for online purchases and red flag laws

if the shooter was a cishet white male they would be wined and dined while gently escorted to prison alive.

instead the shooter was killed because minority