Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
1–10 of 1001 posts
Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
#2I sincerely hope this does not descend into a flamewar.
We can't have discussion about this in an intellectually stimulating way in congress, we can't have this discussion in the media, we obviously can't have this discussion on social media so HN is the last bastion of hope.
It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity. The fact stands that USA has a school shooting problem [1] unlike any other country in the world. My main question is how did we get here? There must be an inflection point in the past - any historians out there who can tell us when did this began to be a thing and what was the root cause?
Also any argument like "mental illness" or "ease of access to firearms" needs to explain why the same does not apply to the rest of the world. There are mentally ill people everywhere and many countries have easily accessible weapons, yet no school shootings at this scale.
Can we investigate all the contributing factors? What can we do as individuals and as a society to move forward on this issue?
(parent of three elementary school kids here)
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-sh...
edit:
I see many comments already default to "guns are the problem". I was hoping for a more nuanced discussion.
Let's look at data. While US has most guns per capita, other countries are close, in the same order of magnitude [2].
For example Serbia has 40 civilian firearms per 100 people (!) and zero school shootings in its entire history. United States had 288 just this year. Why is that? Where does the urge to kill innocent children come from?
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
#3For context: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently attributed all gun crime to mental illness, saying at a press conference that "anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health problem, period."
Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
#4For context: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently attributed all gun crime to mental illness, saying at a press conference that "anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health problem, period."
He's not wrong.
Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
#5I sincerely hope this does not descend into a flamewar. We can't have discussion about this in an intellectually stimulating way in congress, we can't have this discussion in the media, we obviously can't have this discussion on social media so HN is the last bastion of hope. It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity. The fact stands that USA has a school shooting problem [1] unlike any other country in…
Only a very small number of Americans can't have this discussion. Most Americans (and people living elsewhere) can have it easily and think the solutions are obvious.
Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
#6We need gory pictures from the executed kids everywhere.
Until we understand the magnitude of the horror.
I look at my FB and see proud gun owners cracking jokes and I really cannot comprehend how it is possible.
Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
#7For context: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently attributed all gun crime to mental illness, saying at a press conference that "anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health problem, period."
He's not wrong.
The kids that find a gun and shoot their siblings, parents or themselves are mentally ill?
Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
#8Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
#9For context: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently attributed all gun crime to mental illness, saying at a press conference that "anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health problem, period."
He's not wrong.
https://www.salon.com/2022/05/25/you-are-doing-nothing-erupt...
"These massacres are not natural disasters, acts of God, or random. They are totally predictable, direct consequences of the choices made by Greg Abbott and the majority of those in the Texas legislature," O'Rourke wrote to supporters in a Wednesday email.
Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)
#10I sincerely hope this does not descend into a flamewar. We can't have discussion about this in an intellectually stimulating way in congress, we can't have this discussion in the media, we obviously can't have this discussion on social media so HN is the last bastion of hope. It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity. The fact stands that USA has a school shooting problem [1] unlike any other country in…
It likely will for a variety of reasons.
People will make up all kinds of reasons why "this doesn't happen anywhere else", they'll completely ignore the actual cause of the violence (a person), they'll make excuses, bring up solutions that are illegal, entirely ignore cultural issues, ignore that psychopaths are looking to be famous, point at more laws which won't do anything because the existing ones didn't work/etc.