What bothers you more, children dressing unconventionally or children having to learn what to do if someone comes to kill them?

[goaded]

This is obviously mostly a question for our American cousins, since here are some statistics:

19 Countries with the Most School Shootings (total incidents Jan 2009-May 2018):
United States — 288
Mexico — 8
South Africa — 6
Nigeria & Pakistan — 4
Afghanistan — 3
Brazil, Canada, France — 2
Azerbaijan, China, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Kenya, Russia, & Turkey — 1

And if you think that's bad, there's a fact check here https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/05/26/fact-check-school-shootings-far-more-common-us-than-elsewhere/9944841002/

"Our rating: Missing context
Based on our research, we rate MISSING CONTEXT the claim that the U. S. has had 288 school shootings while other countries two or less. The data cited here tallies only shootings from 2009 to 2018, so it doesn't include a vast number of shootings before and after that timeframe. One database pushes the tally past 2,000 school shootings in the U. S."

https://i.insider.com/5d5d971a2da44800ff6d0333?width=1000&format=jpeg

children dressing unconventionally

356,000 students experiencing gun violence at school since Columbine

Don't know, see results (why don't you know?)

[Thatpearl26]

Learning how to protect yourself is a good thing. Ever since I was younger I was taught how to use a gun and when to use it. I come from a long line of people in my family who are in the armed forces. Even when I was in elementary, middle, and high school they would always have fire, earthquake, and the occasional lockdown drills. It was to prepare for the worst. While it’s true that it would be better that we didn’t need to be taught this it was a smart decision to have children learn how to react when presented with dangers. Better to be aware than ignorant.

[goaded]

Not being in danger in the first place is better. Not having to worry about whether someone is carrying a firearm is better.

There's nothing you can do about earthquakes, and fires happen, but you can do something as a society about guns.

[Thatpearl26]

The thing is even if we restrict guns people will still get their hands on them. We are just restricting them from law abiding citizens.

[GreatBigCircles]

It's more impactful to focus less on the guns killing children, and ask why the children are killing children. The nature of our society has become increasingly filled with memes (in the memetics sense, not the funny joke sense) that encourage violence against others. You can't legislate that kind of thing away, it's a generational wound that takes a generational effort to heal.

[goaded]

@GreatBigCircles It also requires having leaders that don't encourage that kind of behaviour. Instead, you have a party of bullies who are encouraging the othering of anyone LGBTQ+ (and a SCOTUS that's enabling it).



Limiting the amount of damage a single firearm can do by, for example, limiting magazine sizes is also worthwhile for the relatively rare cases of mass shootings.

[GreatBigCircles]

One reason I disagree with a lot of firearm regulation, is that a lot of it is drafted and written by people who don't know much about guns, or specifically use guns as a political boogeyman to scare their constituents. But I also hate a lot of people that push for gun rights that outright ignore people's anxieties and legitimate concerns about guns. Bullying, demeaning, or dehumanizing is something that sadly happens on both sides of this argument (a lot of anti-gun people caricaturize people who are pro-gun as uneducated, rural (which adds further to the terrible stereotypes that a lot of rural people have to suffer), and hyper-aggressive anti-social people. Meanwhile pro-gun people try to paint anti-gun people as naïve out of touch ivory-tower people, criminal appeasers, or rich hypocrites. And both sides love to accuse the other of encouraging a police state (Progun saying disarmament enables the police state, while anti-gun say allowing guns necessitates it).

I strongly believe in gun rights but I'm not going to stick my head up my ass and pretend I infallible in my judgements and beliefs, and that I have a magical answer. Maybe I am right, maybe I'm completely wrong, maybe the solution is even more extreme, or maybe its a compromise. But finding that kind of answer won't happen without a sustained attempt to work with people, and being willing to try things. Laws are only permanent if we allow them to be, and if we collectively try to be a dynamic and cooperative society, we can actually... Try adjusting to find a good way to handle things. (my post got too long whoops)

[GreatBigCircles]

I guess in my ideal utopic situation gun control could be accepted as a temporary measure to reduce the damage of the memes that have been pushing people into extreme actions, until said memes are fixed. I do feel a bit hopeful though; young people are increasingly rejecting the idea of political dualism because they've been crushed under it; a more dynamic and reform oriented government could come to be because of it (as opposed to a government that just adds law after law without looking on itself and reorganizing and reaffirming old biases, assumptions, and laws on a regular basis).

Sorry for the kinda jumbled rant. tl;dr I disagree with gun control as a philosophy, but I think it's important to consider it in a larger context and don't think you should be silenced for having that opinion.

[goaded]

@GreatBigCircles Interesting point of view. I believe the traditional way for finding out what laws work and which don't was to leave them up to the states. Of course, since states have open borders to each other, firearms can spread from the more gun-accepting states to the others.

I could imagine a federal law or simple agreements among states that ensured that firearms can only be legally sold to residents of that state (the federal government has the right to regulate inter-state commerce, I believe).

Instead, what seems to be happening is that the NRA and gun manufacturers are pushing ideas about the 2nd amendment that would have been laughed out of the room 50 years ago, and SCOTUS is making them federal law.

[GreatBigCircles]

I agree that too much of the US legal system has been pushed to the federal level. But what I was more talking about is how our legal corpus is bloated with tons of laws that overlap and interact with one another in bad ways. An important part of maintaining a civil society is maintaining the legal code. Part of that is looking back through old laws, removing the unneeded ones and replacing conflicting and duplicate laws with fewer better written laws.

[goaded]

@GreatBigCircles If you've got a few minutes, this is an interesting interview with Ryan Busse, former executive at Kimber America, a major gun manufacturer, or you can read a pro-publica article here: www.propublica.org/.../ryan-busse-explains-roots-of-us-gun-violence

https://youtu.be/n-m7NkBEFnY

[menina]

I'm not from the United States, but for me it's obviously children learning how to defend themselves in case of a shooting. This shouldn't happen. They're suppose to learn, play, make friends and have fun in school. They're supposed to feel safe there, not scared.
This is awful!

[goaded]

Me neither. I'm in Germany, and there was a school shooting a while ago, in a high school. The response is doors that only open from the outside with a key, and probably teacher training. We don't have to traumatise kids in kindergarten by teaching them to hide.

en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_mass_shootings_in_Germany
Schools: 2009, 2006, 2002, 1983, 1913.

[menina]

I had no idea. I could never think about a school shooting in Germany. I guess that getting a gun in Germany is harder than in the United States, right?
That sounds like a good response. Kids don't need to learn that and up to a certain age, they don't understand what's going on.

[goaded]

They're easier to get in Germany than the UK, but hardly anywhere is it easier to get a gun than in the US.

[goaded]

I didn't know this: "Anyone under 25 is required to pass a psychological evaluation before getting a gun licence" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60111141

[menina]

Ok, I thought it would be the same in both countries. True, it's very easy in the US. That's why some many people have guns there.

[menina]

""Anyone under 25 is required to pass a psychological evaluation before getting a gun licence"- That makes sense to me. It should be always like that, instead of having teenagers with guns.

[goaded]

Yup. In the UK it's even stricter, you have to be a member in good standing of a shooting club for some time, etc. Surprisingly, if you do all these things, even AR-15s are available. I didn't know that until someone on here pointed it out.

[menina]

I didn't know that either. Yes, it's very strict. It should be like that everywhere.

[menina]

Thank you for the MHO.

[Anonymous]

I watched a documentary a couple of years ago in the uk about mass shootings and the links to SSRIs. Apparently they are all on them.
There was this one case where they were interviewing this widower who was left raising their son on their own. He on these SSRIs and one day he just decided that his son would be better off dead. He had no emotion about it at thd tike, it was like a switch flipped in his brain where he had no empathy or emotion. He smothered his son with a pillow.

[goaded]

Well, if that's the case, it needs more research and better regulation, but I've never heard of a school mass pillowing. Teaching children to fear their parents sounds even worse than teaching them to expect active shooters.

[Opinion Owner]

Before I was born near where I live a month after the Dunblane massacre a man walked into a classroom with a homemade flamethrower. After thar a lot of measures were put in place, like you just can't walk into a school off the street anymore, there are security doors and gates, I don't think we ever had an incident like that b4.
My opinion is that its largely a mental health problem and every mass shootings seems to inspire the next one. The guy sndre brevnik shot like 60 people but he also planted a bomb that killed 8 but injured 200, it could have been so much worse.

[goaded]

You could be right, although easy access to guns makes killings more likely than less. So does doing nothing after each mass shooting. Make it harder for the copycat to do what the last one did, and it's less likely to happen again. Don't bother, and there's bound to be some nutcase wanting the attention. They'll probably also be a first time purchaser.

[Opinion Owner]

I always get the impression that these mass shootings could be much worse

[goaded]

They will be.

[Static_In_The_Attic]

In the states 288 school shootings happened because the schools allowed them to happen. On the other hand shootings in airports don’t happen because the airports don’t allow them to happen. Schools need to learn from airports.

[goaded]

Presumably so should churches, and mosques, and temples, and shopping malls, and concerts. But heaven forbid a town, city, or state should ban firearms, to save them all the trouble.

[Littlejugs99]

Which country on the list has the highest use of antidepressants among men?

[goaded]

Of course it must be the anti-depressants and not the guns. Or the society that makes so many people depressed because they have no access to health care or rely on their employer for it. Have you ever heard of 70+ people killed in a mass stabbing?

[Littlejugs99]

No access to healthcare but access to expensive prescription meds?
I've heard of a lorry killing more than a mass shooting ever did.

[goaded]

Guess what happened after that lorry attack. The authorities took steps to ensure it wouldn't happen again. It was also a terrorist attack, not just someone bored of life.

[Littlejugs99]

They stopped giving out lorry licenses to men on antidepressants?

[exitseven]

Nothing wrong with kids getting some survival skills.

[goaded]

Nothing wrong with kids dressing unconventionally.

In most other countries teaching their children survival skills means teaching them how to swim or what to do in the unlikely event of a fire, not how to cower from one of their own wanting to kill them.

[Juxtapose]

You should always teach children about how to act when confronted by evil. Why is that bad?

[goaded]

Isn't it better that they aren't confronted with it? Why do you think almost no other countries have this problem?

[Juxtapose]

Safety is an illusion and it is important to teach that. You should always be prepared and be aware of your surroundings.

Well this wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the inner cities and these far leftists who are letting these repeat offenders out over and over again. They are the people causing most of the gun deaths by faaar.

[goaded]

You, possibly all Americans, are broken people. You don't have to live as if you were in a war zone, it's not normal.

[Juxtapose]

You're naive. Go to any martial arts school and one of the first things they will teach you for self-defense is awareness of your surroundings at all times. I didn't train there 11 years for nothing.

I bet you don't even monitor where your drinks are. Are you looking to get your drink spiked?

[goaded]

I'm 57 years old. I don't think I've even seen a fight since I was in school. And, yes, I did years of karate. Why would someone spike my drink? To take my wallet? They're welcome to it, it's not a capital offence, and they will be caught eventually.

Would you use your martial arts against someone with a gun? Why don't you understand that it's better if they get arrested for having a gun before they use it to commit another crime?

[Juxtapose]

Well it depends on your region. If you live in some poor area in Ohio or Illinois, fighting is going to be a part of your life. If you grew up where I did in a nice area? Violence is going to be frowned upon and viewed as something barbaric.

Well, or they could take your kidneys. Have fun with that.. or sex traffic you.

Well that depends, can I do something before they can pull the trigger? Or even get the gun out?

No, if anything everybody should be walking around with guns so mass shooters know they will be executed and politicians know that any citizen can help revolt.

[goaded]

You know what happens when people have guns and there's a mass shooter about? Anyone with a gun gets shot by the police. It's not normal to live like you're in a war zone. Really. Ask anyone who doesn't live in the US or an actual war zone. Probably most people who live in war zones, too.

[Juxtapose]

You shoot the guy who was shooting after multiple people running away. It's actually not that hard.

You are also arguing essentially that teachers should just be cool with a school shooter coming in while they are unarmed and sitting ducks.

[Juxtapose]

If guns were the problem then everybody in the USA would be dead since there are three guns for every human being.

Like I've said before, it's the problem of these far left nut jobs who are going easy on repeat criminal offenders.

[goaded]

Yes, you've lied before. Strangely, most Americans don't own a gun.

"Thirty-two percent of U. S. adults say they personally own a gun, while a larger percentage, 44%, report living in a gun household"

[Juxtapose]

No, lol. You're disingenuous or foolish.

www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/crime-and-guns/

[Juxtapose]

Myth: Private guns are used to commit violent crimes
CRIME AND GUNS - Homicides and Handgun Supply by State with high-population cities compared
Handgun use in crime as a percentage of handgun supply - 2017
Fact: 90% of all violent crimes in the U. S. do not involve firearms of any type. 24

Fact: Even in crimes where the offender possessed a gun during the commission of the crime, 83% did not use or threaten to use the gun. 25

Fact: Fewer than 1% of firearms will ever be used in the commission of a crime. 26

Fact: Two-thirds of the people who die each year from gunfire are criminals being shot by other criminals. 27

Fact: Cincinnati’s review of their gang problem revealed that 74% of homicides were committed by less than 1% of the population. 28

Fact: 92% of gang murders are committed with guns. 29 Gangs are responsible for between 48% and 90% of all violent crimes. 30

Fact: Most gun crimes are gang related, and as such are big-city issues. In fact, if mayors in larger cities were more diligent about controlling gang warfare, state and nationwide gun violence rates would fall dramatically.

[goaded]

Well, those seem like excellent reasons to do nothing.

Why do you think you have to live like this?

If you live in a city, why do you want violent gangs roaming the streets freely with guns?

If you live in the country, why are you so scared, the gangs are in the cities, right?

Your country has 5-10 times as many homicides as European countries, and they have cities and gangs, too.

[Juxtapose]

As I have said numerous times, it is literally because of these faaaar left leaders that are increasing crime and whatnot deliberately. Why else would anyone let these repeat offenders out over and over with a slap on the wrist? This is the deep state trying to destabilize the country, kind of like how racist people in the past in our government would purposely destabilize the black community. All these drugs and whatnot that inner city blacks use? All the crime and fatherlessness? You can thank the United States government for that.

Chicago as an example was devastated by these light on crime policies.

"Fact: Most gun crimes are gang related, and as such are big-city issues. In fact, if mayors in larger cities were more diligent about controlling gang warfare, state and nationwide gun violence rates would fall dramatically."

Remember, 74% of Cincinnati's homicides are committed by less than 1% of the population.

[Juxtapose]

And I try to always be wary even in rural areas because you are almost never safe enough to take your safety for granted, anywhere.

[goaded]

If that's not paranoia, then you reall are living in a war zone, and that shouldn't be necessary. It must really mess with your head.

What do you mean by "Remember, 74% of Cincinnati's homicides are committed by less than 1% of the population." Since there were fewer than 100 murders in a city of over 300,000, the group of murderers is obviously less than 1%, so you're going to have to tell me what 1% you're talking about. I doubt it's the richest 1%.

[Juxtapose]

Well as I am trying to hammer home, take care of the gangs and repeat offenders. All of a sudden these violent problems are going to drastically go down.

This is all literally because of far leftists who are pushing some weird agenda. I'm not saying the far right is correct and wanting to be brutal and make America further into a penal colony but we need to take these repeat offenders more seriously.

[Juxtapose]

The 1% are gangbangers.

[goaded]

Really? Because according to CPD: "Most of the homicides committed in Cincinnati in 2022 were a result of domestic or intimate partner violence, data shows. In 2022, 28 of the 78 total homicides were a result of domestic violence, according to the report. The next highest motive category listed, "sudden dispute," made up 20 incidences".

Of course you're not interested in looking at ways to prevent young people joining gangs in the first place or teaching children how to settle differences non-violently.

[Juxtapose]

Most gun violence is committed by repeat offenders. Domestic violence doesn't need to always include a gun.

[Juxtapose]

People who are stupid enough to join gangs are dead to me. Everybody who is an adult has 100% personal responsibility for virtually all of their choices.

[goaded]

Even when they join as what you would call a child (14-17)?

[Juxtapose]

Kids are different and can't consent. Minors get more restrictions than majors but they're protected more.

Gangbangers letting kids in are extra repulsive..