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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)

#581

Post by pjc50 »

twayt wrote: post #282

How about having a mandatory committee that seriously investigates {physical, social, cyber, etc.}-bullying more instead of just ignoring it? We can both work on stringent gun laws and take the mental health of children/teenagers more seriously. There is a clear pattern of which demographic of people consistently commit such crimes. Using this subset of gun owners to dictate gun ownership policies is going to be a ho…

I suspect in a lot of cases you'd find the shooter either was the bully, or was ostracised because of their failure to follow basic social norms. The Columbine shooters were neo-Nazis. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...

People have repeatedly called out online hate speech as a contributory factor in mass shootings, and that runs into first amendment problems.

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

#582

Post by pjc50 »

bifrost wrote: post #81
EugeneOZ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a foreigner, I have an impression that americans can buy a gun at 18, but cun buy a cigarette at 21. Maybe I’m wrong, but still... Call me an “old-timer” but I do think you could use better psychological tests before letting them buy a gun.

Its because buying a gun is a civil right. Smoking is not. That said, the 21yo requirement may be unconstitutional as well.

> buying a gun is a civil right

Yeah, this is the point of insanity; so long as people continue to believe this, there will be a school shooting in the US every few weeks. That's what people mean by "the US has chosen this".

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

#583

Post by rswail »

Until Americans realize that owning a gun is a dangerous thing, there will be no change.

Guns are a force multiplier, they allow someone that is armed to have much greater lethality than someone that is not.

No, I don't care if you go hunting or target shoot for "sport". Tough. Live with it. The world won't be worse off if you don't shoot deer or rabbits or ducks.

Weapons have specific uses in agriculture (removing pests, humane disposal of injured livestock), they have specific use in law enforcement, and they have obvious use in military activities.

All other uses are nonsense in 2022. There are occasional times where someone armed has been able to use those arms in self-defense, but the use of deadly weapons as opposed to self-defense or incapacitating weapons is not an adequate reason to outweigh the disadvantages of these weapons being generally available.

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

#584

Post by Mordisquitos »

glogla wrote: post #483
librish wrote: post #89

It's time we start legislating based on empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals. Yes, if everyone was responsible perhaps it would be OK for all of us to own firearms. But so many people are utterly irresponsible, and guns make that irresponsibility lethal. People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child. People shouldn't point a gun…

I wonder what would you say about the same argument for mandatory veganism or outright banning cars? The evidence is pretty clear there as well.

Is it? What empirical evidence do we have that mandatory veganism or outright banning of cars would be a net positive, let alone feasible? To me those two ideas sound like perfect examples of the non-empirical lofty ideals that the previous comment was rejecting in the very first sentence.

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

#585

Post by grecy »

elforce002 wrote: post #135

As a foreigner I find this subject very complex since the right to bear arms in on the US constitution. To change or "rewrite" the constitution trying to deal with this subject could dissolve the US. Banning guns altogether (rather improbable) will only leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals. More protection in schools could be a starting point to address these awful events. I'm still in favor of law ab…

> Banning guns altogether (rather improbable) will only leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals.

So, ah, what are the Police for?

Also, hundreds of millions of people in developed countries without guns around the globe live "at the mercy of criminals" but experience less crime, less violence, less homicides and less gun deaths than people living in America.

Your statement makes no sense.

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

#586

Post by hunterb123 »

rswail wrote: post #583

Until Americans realize that owning a gun is a dangerous thing, there will be no change. Guns are a force multiplier, they allow someone that is armed to have much greater lethality than someone that is not. No, I don't care if you go hunting or target shoot for "sport". Tough. Live with it. The world won't be worse off if you don't shoot deer or rabbits or ducks. Weapons have specific uses in agriculture (removing p…

> Guns are a force multiplier, they allow someone that is armed to have much greater lethality than someone that is not.

So is a van, see Europe.

> Guns are a force multiplier, they allow someone that is armed to have much greater lethality than someone that is not.

Tell that to wild hogs. Population control is a thing, especially needed for invasive boar.

> and they have obvious use in military activities.

Exactly, 2A is for a well regulated militia. It's to protect the rest of your rights. We'd still be under the crown and possibly still in the slave trade if not for guns. (GB and other powers did not end it first, they simply outsourced it to America)

> There are occasional times where someone armed has been able to use those arms in self-defense, but the use of deadly weapons as opposed to self-defense or incapacitating weapons is not an adequate reason to outweigh the disadvantages of these weapons being generally available.

There are many instances where civilians are able to defend themselves or others. Guns are equalizers for weaker humans against stronger ones, they are also deterrents. Gun crimes usually happen in strict gun controlled areas because criminals know it's unlikely they will be met with force.

I carry every day just in case, both for animals and humans. Criminals will not respect your gun laws, you are only hurting law abiding citizens.

edit: to below, you'd have to look at it by city, not state. most gun violence is driven by gang/cartel violence, which exists largely in certain key cities of a certain political spectrum that happen to have strict gun laws.

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

#587

Post by rjbwork »

bruce511 wrote: post #527
DeathArrow wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before fire arms being invented people took other's lives with knives, swords or clubs. Or poison. Or bare hands. What makes you think that not owning a gun will make people less murderous?

It's an issue of volume. It's hard for an 18 year old to kill 20 people with their bard hands, or even knives, without being subdued.

20? Yeah, maybe. A bunch though? Not particularly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China

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

#588

Post by rswail »

cypress66 wrote: post #504
la6472 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now it is hard to look at our kids faces and not feel the impact of this tragedy. I don’t know about everyone but for most people their kids lives are way more important than their right to bear military grade guns. If there is no perfect solution we have to live with a less than perfect solution. If the solution is to legally make it harder for people to access such guns then so be it.

As tragic as these events may be, the probability of your kids dying to a school shooting is still incredibly low, and a few orders of magnitude less than car accidents. Doing some quick math, it seems like it's around 100 to 1000 times more likely that some kid dies to some accident than a mass shooting. But people don't seem to worry 1000 times more about these accidents than school shootings. And it would actually…

On that reasoning, all of the "lockdowns" and "active shooter drills" and all the other bullshit that the US makes its children undertake in school are a complete waste of time.

Are you seriously trying to argue that school shootings don't happen often enough to try to stop them? Or that society can't do two things (reduce accidental deaths and reduce mass murder) at the same time?

The rationalization of an insane gun culture is incessant and foolish. Guns are a tool and the bullshit that somehow the civilian population would "defend" itself against military coups by the US military, or even more ridiculous, against invasion, is an excuse to allow the ongoing fetish of guns.

For 99.99% of the population, guns are dangerous to have, not because someone might attack you, but because guns are dangerous to have in the home. They are misused, mistakenly left unsecured, and accessed by people (children, those with mental illness) that shouldn't.

Hell, you can't even agree on background checks because of some stupidity regarding having a "register" in case the "government" comes after your weapons.

The US is an empire in decline, and your internal division around this "culture" is a large part of the dis/mis-information exercise that has infected the body politic.

The NRA is a lobby group for gun manufacturers that has bought numerous politicians, while lying to its members about its purpose. The fact that so many actually believe the bullshit is a prime example of dis/mis-information.

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

#589

Post by rswail »

lliamander wrote: post #565
la6472 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now it is hard to look at our kids faces and not feel the impact of this tragedy. I don’t know about everyone but for most people their kids lives are way more important than their right to bear military grade guns. If there is no perfect solution we have to live with a less than perfect solution. If the solution is to legally make it harder for people to access such guns then so be it.

There are (conservatively) hundreds of thousands of defensive gun uses per year. Many just involve presenting or brandishing the gun without having to use it. Could you look someone in the face who has used a gun to protect themselves or their family and tell them they will need to give up that gun for "public safety"?

Absolutely. Nowhere else in the civilized world do people rely on having a gun to "protect themselves or their family".

Perhaps you need to look at why, in your society, there are so many "opportunities" for "defensive gun uses".

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

#590

Post by pjc50 »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #332
elementalest wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. When compared to places like Australia, where guns are highly regulated and barely anyone owns a gun, such that there have been no mass shootings for 35 years, the solution really is obvious.

> the solution really is obvious. Well, from a programmers perspective - it's all about what you are optimizing for. We can end all car related deaths as well by outlawing all automotive vehicles. We can eliminate or curb most sexual diseases by regimenting who one can have sex with. We can end homelessness, by quartering local vagrants in the homes of the citizenry. Solutions are easy. Side effects are less so. If w…

Broadly this is what the downthread "Americans have chosen this" means. An armed, radicalized populace is one that's forever carrying out acts of lethal violence against strangers.

Disarm the populace and you get less lethal violence. (The UK has quite a lot of nonlethal violence, mostly alcohol related. We don't need to re-litigate what happened when trying to ban alcohol.)

If you rule out disarming, how about de-radicalizing? Many mass shooters leave behind helpful manifestoes detailing their reasoning.

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