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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)

#241

Post by tomrod »

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

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

#242

Post by _gabe_ »

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…

I'm sorry, I'm just really hesitant to believe that "the fact stands that the USA has a school shootings problem" with the statistics you linked. The website you linked to cites two sources for its data. One of the sources is CNN. The second source is something called everytownresearch. Their method for counting school shootings were:

> Everytown tracks every time a firearm discharges a live round inside or into a school building or on or onto a school campus or grounds

Which means they're counting individual fights, and or gang violence in with all these shootings. In addition it looks like the vast majority of their data points list no injuries or deaths. They also include things like this in their statistics:

> A car entered the east parking lot at a high speed and hit one student. The CCSD police officer ordered the car to stop, and when it didn't, fired their gun at the car. Two teenagers in the car-- one a 16-year-old boy and one a juvenile-- were struck and injured by the officer's gunfire.

So this is an injury sustained from an officer trying to stop two kids who injured somebody with their car, not a gun.

If you want to talk about how we can combat school shootings how about we agree to use honest statistics? It doesn't help anyone to quote shoddy studies like this. In addition I found this[1] research paper that claims the original paper people quote to show the US is the leader in school shootings does not show how they got their data. In addition they refuse to show how they calculated their statistics. This paper goes on to show that the US may be significantly lower than the number one spot.

The reason I even looked at this stuff is because in the link you posted it said there 288 school shootings in the US this year! That claim sounded very far fetched. I know there have been some nasty events so far this year, but if there had been 288 shootings this year alone, I feel like there would have been a lot more news about it. That averages to almost 2 shootings every day this year. And I'm expected to believe these statistics are a factual claim?

Edit: And yes I know that this paper is from 2018, but I'm posting it because there is clearly weird stuff going on with the statistics that were quoted in the original posters linked "research" website.

[1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3238736

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

#243

Post by kochikame »

mberning wrote: post #62
KerrAvon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity It really is not. There are too many guns available, too easily obtained, to too many citizens who have not been properly indoctrinated with a sense of civic responsibility, let alone trained in the proper ways to handle a gun. The answer isn't to throw more guns at the problem or to blame inadequate mental health facilities. It is to reduce gun availability. A…

That’s like saying food availability is a core component in the obesity epidemic. I suppose there is some truth in that, but the solution it suggests is wholly inadequate.

No, it's a good analogy.

For example, it might make sense to restrict the availability of very high-calorie, low-nutrition foods like fast food, or tax them to raise their price and/or subsidize healthy food. It would make sense to educate people about nutrition and exercise and healthy eating.

This kind of thinking could easily hold for the gun control conversation. Let people buy guns if they want, but not the really unnecessarily dangerous ones, and only one at a time. An 18 year old walks into your gun shop and wants to buy two powerful rifles. Why? What do you want them for? Why do you need two? These are valid questions.

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

#244

Post by tomrod »

softcactus wrote: post #186
settrans wrote: post #24

Let's see what happens when you apply critical analysis and derive conclusions from data instead of rhetoric: Real Talk about School Shootings – where show how school shooting numbers are a terrible thing around which to craft policy. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/real-talk-about-school-shootings > The Gun Solution - where we fix the entire gun problem. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-gun-solution >

The Gun Solution proposed here is one of the more measured and level-headed assessments I have come across. The proposals it puts forth make a lot of sense, but I think it is missing a few things: 1. It completely ignores non-fatal gun injuries. I cant find a source atm but I believe around 40% of non-fatal gun injuries are accidental. To me, this is an indication that SOME level of training is required. Even if it's…

> Because we all exist in our own media echo chambers.

I disagree strongly. Some do, in the US it is typically right-wing though smaller left-wing media echo chambers exist. But mainstream US media is not an echo chamber.

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

#245

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

bitwize wrote: post #33
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…

Australia has had three mass shootings since 1996. The USA has had 52 mass shootings in April of 2021 alone. If it's such a "complicated issue", why did the frequency of mass shootings in Australia drop to negligible levels after they took the simple step of enacting a comprehensive gun ban? Ban. The. Guns. It's that simple.

>the simple step of enacting a comprehensive gun ban?

Except that's not what they did. Meanwhile New Zealand went much longer than Australia without a mass shooting without restricting people's rights. Unfortunately, they cracked down after Christchurch, but you get the point.

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

#246

Post by copperx »

trevcanhuman wrote: post #169
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…

I think you have a great point, yet something that I haven't seen anyone talk about is scale . The scale of the schools in the United States is enormous. I hear about 2000,3000, 5000-student schools. Some family's studied in the U.S., and even their middle school and elementary is 2000 students ! That's enormous, gigantic! Here in Mexico schools are small-scale. Education here is much, much smaller scale. I think tha…

As someone who studied high school in Mexico and the US and saw students get bullied in both, cultural issues at play make all the difference. Even the most vicious bullies had a sense of "oh crap, we've gone too far" in my Mexican high school. I saw the students defend the bullied kid at both schools, but in Mexico, both bullies and the rest of the students showed some compassion towards the bullied. And the bullied got to play soccer with the other students during recess. The bullied were never wholly ostracised. In contrast, when the other students defended the bullied in the US school, there was this feeling of "you should fend for yourself; nobody is going to help you. You're on your own." It's hard to explain, but that's what I felt being a spectator.

All this is just my n=1 experience, and I could be misreading things, but I'm convinced there's a cultural element that can explain the helplessness of bullied kids in the US school system.

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

#247

Post by blounderdoo »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #158
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…

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…

Sorry, no. Precisely nobody employed by a school district is getting involved in medication nor diagnosis for children. Nobody. Not even in Texas, and especially not a new grad with “assistant” in their title. Nurses might dispense prescriptions as prescribed but that is a firm end to the involvement in a child’s medical situation. Your wife’s master’s degree does not permit diagnosis of mental health and suggestion of medication or diagnosis in a counseling setting would be criminal, prosecutable behavior. The alleged people pushing her to do so would both know this and be just as culpable. And cui bono? You realize for your story to be true there has to be a pharmaceutical rep/third party paying a school district to perpetuate trivially prosecutable behavior for everyone involved, right?

In the United States this has not been controversial for decades and is common knowledge among educators. I’m sorry, either you gravely misunderstood the situation, or your story is complete fiction. I’m concerned that you don’t know what her title was but you know they wanted the kids on drugs and maybe if we didn’t do that some kids would still be alive. I’m also concerned your story just happens to be in Texas, of all the places.

Source: Educator.

Edit: lol, six downvotes between HN cache misses kinda proves my subtle allegation, genius

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

#248

Post by brandonmenc »

belorn wrote: post #113
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…

If we look at the data we can see a significant increase in the last decade, and the mass school shootings are almost exclusively a modern concept from the last 30 years. A question one might ask is then what changed in the USA during those years to trigger this. In addition those factors should be compared to other nations. We should also look at what prevent school shootings. What in society might protect against a…

> mass school shootings are almost exclusively a modern concept from the last 30 years. A question one might ask is then what changed in the USA during those years to trigger this.

The invention of the first person shooter (aka: the mass shooting simulator.) 30 years almost to the day.

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

#249

Post by jjcon »

condercet wrote: post #68

It is not fair to place the blame for this epidemic of violence squarely on those suffering from mental health issues. Mental health issues are distributed globally, but the gun violence problem is not. People who suffer from mental health issues are tremendously more likely to be victims of violence, rather than the perpetrators. These individuals already suffer from tremendous discrimination and hardships in their…

> Mental health issues are distributed globally, but the gun violence problem is not.

I'm not so sure that is true. I'd wager that Americans are suffering more than most right now due to institutional rot (or at least the perception and portrayals of it).

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

#250

Post by jkestner »

freediver wrote: post #139
deltree7 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a country of 330,000,000, people who have shot up schools may be around 330 or 0.0001%. It is impossible to assign any single causality to events that have such low occurrences unless you have billions of examples. (Yes, the rest of the world data can provide counterfactual data, but it is still mathematically impossible because there are 100s of variables at play)

It is possible and airliner crashes show that. They happen even less often and almost every single one had a precisely defined cause that was discovered after rigourus investigation. The reason why we do this despite the events having small chance of occurance, is because the impact is enormous and we give it as much scrutiny as we possibly can to prevent it from happening again. The same level of scrutiny is not hap…

A 25-year hiatus on funding research on gun violence didn’t help. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/us/politics/gun-violence-...
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