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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)

#281

Post by Pxtl »

rvr_ wrote: post #256
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?

Memes are international. American cultural hegemony is global. Evidence: I'm a Canadian and can name all members of the US supreme Court from memory and zero members of the Canadian one.

Memes do not stop at borders, and yet the hot zone for the school shooting plague is localized within the USA.

It's the cheap plentiful, underregulated firearms.

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

#282

Post by twayt »

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 hotly contested political issue and it is going to take a while to make progress on that. I personally would hope for a future where gun ownership is very very strictly controlled. However, to claim that gun ownership is the root cause of such incidents occurring doesn't sit right with me. Sure it amplifies the amount of damage that can be done but I don't think that most of these individuals randomly woke up and decided to cause mayhem.

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

#283

Post by bergenty »

philistine wrote: post #261
nemo44x wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You have him already.

If it is who I think you’re referring to, America needs its Brutus now.

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

#284

Post by dsizzle »

jonathanfoster wrote: post #265

For those interested in learning more about this topic, I recommend checking out the Violence Project by Jillian Peterson and James Densley [1]. This book opened my eyes to how complicated and multivariate this problem really is. It's much more complicated than simply guns and mental illness. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56969516-the-violence-pr...

What are some takeaways? Normally I can get a sense from reading summaries and reviews, but finding it hard in this case.

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

#285

Post by LinuxBender »

dragontamer wrote: post #18
bifrost wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, I overheard my coworkers discussing pretty awful talking points. Ex: saying that gun control won't work because we'll just be killing each other with swords. Which ignores the fact that its a lot harder to kill 18-children + 1 teacher with a sword, than it is to kill the same number with a gun. -------- There's also the discussion point where "background checks won't have any effect", except we know that this…

There have been a number of mass stabbings with swords in recent years. Japan appears to have quite a pattern of this and the body count is often higher. I am no expert with a sword but I have cleared a few acres of brush with a machete and the first thing that comes to mind is that it doesn't go bang thus giving the attacker a little more time before confrontation. The downside was that I got a nasty blister on my thumb due to using the wrong gloves but I can clear brush for hours on end.

I would never harm anyone unprovoked and attacking anyone in my state would be suicide as everyone here is packing. The ratio is something like 221:1 firearms to people, yet no mass shootings, yet. No idea why. There are virtually no ammo or suppressor restrictions. My state and a neighboring state have a 66% firearm ownership rate but I think that counts children.

The only thing that really comes to mind is that most folks here are religious, mostly Mormon. They are very family oriented and if a kid is getting picked on the parents will confront the other parents, likely in church. There is a bit of peer pressure to not be a bad person. But that could be entirely unrelated.

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

#286

Post by mahastore »

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…

>> 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

- Well Afghanistan people have access to lot of guns , lots of it and maybe even tanks. But they don't go to school that much. And in Serbia the population is thinly spread across vast swatches of ice. Not exactly LA.

Lets simply stop talking and just bring a bill to buy back all automatic guns and destroy them. This country needs it.

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

#287

Post by refurb »

beloch wrote: post #83

Canada is the U.S.'s neighbour and is probably closer, culturally, than any other nation. Gun ownership is also high in Canada. In terms of guns per capita, the U.S. is #1 by a long shot, but Canada is #7 [1]. In Canada, guns owned per capita is one third of what it is in the U.S.. Canada also has mass shootings. The annual deaths from mass shootings per capita in Canada is 0.032, which is about one third that of the…

Indeed. Canada had a mass shooting in 2020 where 23 people were killed. The person had been in contact with the police on many occasions, but still had legal and illegal guns on hand. And this is with Canada's much more strict gun control laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nova_Scotia_attacks

There are regular shootings in public in Vancouver and Toronto due to gang activity. Hell, some random innocent person was killed in Calgary when shooting started during a traffic incident.

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

#288

Post by honkdaddy »

beloch wrote: post #83

Canada is the U.S.'s neighbour and is probably closer, culturally, than any other nation. Gun ownership is also high in Canada. In terms of guns per capita, the U.S. is #1 by a long shot, but Canada is #7 [1]. In Canada, guns owned per capita is one third of what it is in the U.S.. Canada also has mass shootings. The annual deaths from mass shootings per capita in Canada is 0.032, which is about one third that of the…

Mass shootings are very different from mass _school_ shootings though. Outside of the obvious Polytechnique, for which Canadian engineering schools still mourn for every year, I don't think Canada's experienced anything close to what this article's referring to.

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

#289

Post by pdonis »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #233
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…

There's a psychological link between "freedom" and "guns" going back to US independence. Guns = independence from the yoke of UK rule, therefore guns = freedom from tyranny, therefore guns = good. It's ingrained. A threat to gun ownership is equated to a threat to the freedoms fundamental to what makes the US 'the best country in the world'. Any argument restricting gun ownership, no matter how logical or however gre…

> The US' foundation is based on a war fought for freedom, using guns.

A "war fought for freedom" is a long, long way from shooting innocent people at a school. Equating the two is a huge slap in the face to the vast majority of gun owners in the US who are responsible, law-abiding citizens and, while they would use their guns to defend themselves against tyranny, would never even think of using their guns to shoot an innocent person.

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

#290

Post by lghh »

katbyte wrote: post #270
BobbyJo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Scared of guns or not, they seem to be willing to put "guns" before lives. children's lives. Unwilling to make even the smallest compromise to prevent mass shootings like so many other countries have.

It feels like gun-owners in the US hav made lots of compromises about weapon ownership. I feel like saying otherwise is dishonest.
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