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Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

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Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#251

Post by marcosdumay »

dragontamer wrote: post #63
onesafari wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause may be bullying and ostracization combined with the media contagion effect. This is a repeating pattern. Bullying: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/25/uvalde-texa... The gunman in Tuesday’s elementary school massacre was a lonely 18-year-old who was bullied over a childhood speech impediment, suffered from a fraught home life and lashed out violently against peers and strangers recently an…

Are there no Bullies in say, the United Kingdom? The big difference between UK and USA is the number of guns we have in our country compared to theirs. We probably can't stop bullying, but we actually can do something about the number of guns in our country.

> Are there no Bullies in say, the United Kingdom?

Quite possibly, not much.

It's something that varies a lot from one culture to another, and you need a lot of it, unchecked for years to destroy a person.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#252

Post by throw0101a »

maxerickson wrote: post #167
soneil wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself the middle. My mother is right-leaning American and my father is left-leaning European. Long story, to say the least. I maintain the US has a bruce willis problem. An ethos that a good guy with a gun is the solution to all problems. It may even be, the issue is when someone thinks they're the good guy with a gun, and they're not. They think they're bruce willis, and they're not. They think they're r…

Is the celebration of impunity embodied in American action movies not popular around the world? Lots of movies made outside the US seem to have similar themes (But I guess I haven't watched that many; a recent one is The Raid).

> Is the celebration of impunity embodied in American action movies not popular around the world?

Some of us can tell the difference between fact and fiction, between make-believe and reality.

I am reminded of the end of this scene from the movie Team America: World Police where the Parisians have mouths agape:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIPljGWGNt4

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#253

Post by pclmulqdq »

tomrod wrote: post #241
a_square_peg wrote: post #221

Maybe slightly off-topic, but I think this is a part of a larger trend of a declining empire - its inability to solve problems that have already become non-issues in other societies. From big issues like healthcare to small stuff like getting rid of pennies, I'm amazed at how the US is beholden to special interest groups under the guise of democracy and freedom, as well as its exceptionalism. One can see this in dysf…

Ray Dalio's Changing World Order is a good read. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8

I think Ray Dalio does a good job talking about the decline of the American empire, but I'm not sure his huge bets on the rise of China are well-placed. India also appears to have a good case for "next big empire" and it is often the case that when two world powers fight, they destroy each other. For example, the UK and Germany in WWII - the UK won the war, but ended up in huge financial trouble that caused its decline.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#254

Post by nemo44x »

a_square_peg wrote: post #221

Maybe slightly off-topic, but I think this is a part of a larger trend of a declining empire - its inability to solve problems that have already become non-issues in other societies. From big issues like healthcare to small stuff like getting rid of pennies, I'm amazed at how the US is beholden to special interest groups under the guise of democracy and freedom, as well as its exceptionalism. One can see this in dysf…

America is ready to go from our republic phase into our empire phase. We only need our Caesar…

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#255

Post by natsup123490 »

onesafari wrote: post #59
freediver wrote: post #2

I 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 root cause may be bullying and ostracization combined with the media contagion effect. This is a repeating pattern. Bullying: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/25/uvalde-texa... The gunman in Tuesday’s elementary school massacre was a lonely 18-year-old who was bullied over a childhood speech impediment, suffered from a fraught home life and lashed out violently against peers and strangers recently an…

Kids get bullied everywhere, in every culture. It's part of growing up.

I have no comment on the contagion effect.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#256

Post by rvr_ »

freediver wrote: post #2

I 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…

School shooting is a memetic behavior, on the classical sense disseminated by R. Dawkins, not Internet's one.

Can we rephrase the problem as: how do a society gets rid of a bad meme?

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#257

Post by BobbyJo »

a_square_peg wrote: post #221

Maybe slightly off-topic, but I think this is a part of a larger trend of a declining empire - its inability to solve problems that have already become non-issues in other societies. From big issues like healthcare to small stuff like getting rid of pennies, I'm amazed at how the US is beholden to special interest groups under the guise of democracy and freedom, as well as its exceptionalism. One can see this in dysf…

I honestly don't see this as a symptom of that. Economic and tax base problems, where our best knowledge can point to us doing the "wrong" thing, or at least not doing the "right" thing, sure. Those objective things that we mess up are indicative of systemic issues.

Some people just aren't scared of guns, or of a world where everyone has one, regardless of the real risk such a world would entail.

Differences within the populace with regard to risk tolerance and perception doesn't tell you anything about systemic issues. It just points to cultural differences. That is itself an issue, but certainly of a different flavor than "declining empire". It could still tear things down, but it would be more explosion than stagnation and collapse.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#259

Post by Pxtl »

xvector wrote: post #191
artificialLimbs wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no one has said it yet and I don’t have a precious study to trot out, but: My >80 year old friend has suggested to me that this kind of problem didn’t exist before we started handing out pharmaceutical drugs of the variety that ‘handle’ mental illness. Sidebar semi-related story time: my wife got her Masters in childhood education and went directly to work for a public high school after. She was a.. I forget, co…

Mental illness, mental healthcare and pharmaceutical treatments are a thing in Europe too. The US is not a special outlier when it comes to bullying and mental health. But you don't see children being gunned down every other week in Europe. The problem is guns.

You don't have to go all the way to Europe. Canada exists. Canada is culturally very similar to the USA, has a similar incidence of mental health, has similar usage of drugs to treat mental health.

However, Canada has stricter gun laws. While bolt-action hunting rifles are legal and unregistered in Canada, owning one involves getting PAL, which is similar to earning a driver's license. It involves lessons and tests.

And more... murder-y weapons like pistols and "assault-style"[1] rifles are either banned or restricted. Restricted means the gun is registered, you take extra certifications, and you fill out paperwork just to transport it from your home to the firing range, which is basically the only place you can legally fire the thing.

Shootings still happen. There was a tragedy in Quebec City a few years back where a "great replacement" nut shot up a mosque (which illustrates how we have the same cultural problems as Americans). But the number, per capita, is tiny compared to Americans.

It's hard to escape the obvious conclusion that the reason there are so many gun deaths in America is because guns are so poorly controlled.

Most of the street crime guns here are smuggled over the border (America is to guns as Escobar's Colombia was to cocaine), so the lax gun laws don't just impact the USA.

[1] yes I know it's a vague term but you also know what I mean don't @ me.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#260

Post by pdonis »

freediver wrote: post #2

I 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…

> (parent of three elementary school kids here)

Then my first question to you, regarding your "what can we do" issue, is simple: are you connected to your kids? Are you engaged in their lives? Do they feel like you care about them?

When I was a kid, my answer to all three of those questions about my parents was always an unqualified yes. And the idea of committing any kind of violence, let alone a school shooting, would never have occurred to me. You could have had me at the gun range practicing every day and it would never have crossed my mind to actually try to kill someone with a gun, unless it was absolutely necessary for self-defense.

When the background eventually comes out on mass shootings, one common factor I always see about the shooters is that they weren't connected to other people. So I think one obvious thing any of us can do for others to keep such things from happening is to give other people connections.

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