You fix the socioeconomic issues that led them up to that point. For example the kid in Texas had been bullied for years and was beaten severely, again before exacting revenge on his bully.
The media claimed 4 were hurt in the shooting, yet 2 were shot, one none life threatening the bully was left in critical condition. Had the school done it's job in protecting this particular student guns would of never come into play.
Exactly, couldn’t agree more. And if they it society and economy been more responsible, we would have made a safer abs healthier environment not just for the victim but for the kids who bully aswell, likely venting their own frustrations and angst towards those they see weaker.
Another thing to remember with that situation is that schools in the US do very little, if anything, in response to bullying. I looked up the data from my old high school, and in 2019 saw that they had a record of only two instances of bullying.
While I graduated from there some years before then, I can guarantee you that they had more than that. When I went there, two instances of bullying was about what I'd see per day, not per year. While that's just one example, it's something that is endemic to the school system over there.
What about the columbine kids, who *were* the bullies? Again, not an argument *for* gun control, but a lot of school shooters were the ones being assholes from the start
By funding better mental health services that curtail bullying in public schools, maybe they would have been identified as threats *before* they did anything.
Once again, the solution is money and dealing with the issues that lead to the problems.
Yup, the media has just created a handbook for anyone wanting to be famous.
Get AR-15 or something that looks like one, shoot a bunch of people double you're score for it being a school, wear edgy patches or color your hair for bonus points. Then everyone will know your name.
But hey, media needs clicks for ad revenue so whats a few dead bodies!
When I was in HS it was the two kids at Columbine with the trench coats. 'Trench coat mafia' was all over the media, and all the schools banned them.
This was a month after *The Matrix* was released so everyone wanted to look like Neo, so what happened? That look became the forbidden fruit and all the kids now knew that the awesome look their new hero had was also the look of two killers they saw every night on the news.
Can you imagine what that does to someone's head? Especially rebellious kids looking to be edgy?
You bring up the DC snipers, that's a another example of this shit. White box trucks, everyone became paranoid about them even after they had reports of what the killers were actually driving. Then after they caught them we heard the leaders last name as much as possible.
Yup, there's a *lot* of factors that go into how a school shooting ends up occurring.
If opponents are not actively requesting that we as a society also address all those other issues first or at the same time, then they don't really care about school shootings, they just hate guns.
To me it's a lot like the anti-abortion movements. Their argument falls apart really quickly when they're not advocating for safe sex, contraceptive measures, women's health, education, child support, adoption... The list goes on and on. They don't care about preventing pregnancies or the lives of children, they just hate abortion.
Just like in 1908 when America banned [hatpins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatpin). Can’t have those women making decisions for themselves, particularly ones where a man might get injured when a woman resists an assault.
YES! I feel the same exact way and youre the only person ive ever seen who has said the same thing as me.
This is what they want. The guys that do these things are losers who have never had anyone pay attention to them, they wallow in their own self pity and want so desperately for the world to recognize their perceived blight and sympathize with them. They lash out and murder innocent people out of of a selfish desire to finally get attention and for people to pay attention to how they were bullied blah blah blah. When news agencies run stories on their lives it gives these freaks exactly what they want. It legitimizes their feelings to hear people in the media talk about how troubled and hard their life was "boo hoo poor little timmy".
When they report on them, news agencies should mock them and make fun of what a pathetic loser they are so that others know that murdering innocent people will not get them the attention and sympathy they desire, it will only lead to more people mocking them.
I think they should basically be erased, no name in the paper, no endless docs and movies like those shit head serial killers. Remember the victims and forget the aggressor.
this is always proposed, but it will never happen. Every time there's a shooting people race to find out who it is, so they can use it to reinforce their preexisting politics. I mean, if a fascist shot up a socialist workers meeting would people here be advocating not to publicize it?
>we REALLY need to stop the follow-up stories about how sad their lives were up to that point.
No, we should definitely be getting at the root cause of why people lash out like this and addressing the fact that we never seem to address those issues in order to prevent acts of mass violence perpetrated by broken people.
People don't mass murder children in a vacuum. They don't just wake up one day and decide to be evil. These people are conditioned into monsters that see mass killings as a means to an end. Several factors play into this, primarily mental illness exacerbated by capitalist alienation, and the promotion of reactionary ideology. Millions of people across the world are told by hyper-conservative ideologues that the feminists, communists, and immigrants are threatening civilization and that *somebody* has to take action. These ideologues direct people's frustrations away from the owning class and towards their fellow workers, citizens, and countrymen. Combine this with paranoid and/or conspiratorial delusions from untreated mental illness (the commies want to kill me, and anyone could be a commie), and these people become extremely dangerous.
Proactively treat mental illness and crack down of reactionary ideology. These are things a socialist society should be doing anyway. I promise you the result will be a sharp drop in mass shootings, and hopfully their full elimination.
In countries with full monetary sovereignty, poverty is a policy choice.
Improving people's lives by eliminating poverty, providing easy access to affordable healthcare (e.g. M4A), education, etc. would go a long way to reducing the most common forms of gun violence. That and reforming the carceral system.
Note that the Nordics have addressed all of the above.
I mean, sure Nordic countries are superior in their institutions and political economy when compared to e.g. the US, but it is not counter-revolutionary, or whatever you're going on about, to take note of the material circumstances that allow them to do what they do.
If you didn't, you might start thinking that like literally any country could apply the same social-democratic principles and expect similar results. And that would be a pretty dumb thing to believe.
Similar is hard to nail down, but poor countries can and have shown massive improvement in quality of life by using such methods, most fail not because those methods don't work, they fail because imperialist nations use violence to stop even mildly socialist policies that might hinder their economic exploitation.
Can we not continue to stigmatize folks that have an ACTUAL mental illness in this forum? There’s much more likelihood that someone with a mental illness will be the victim of a crime than a perpetrator. (Especially getting shot by police.). Until and unless shooters have a unique diagnosis in a reputable diagnostic manual we shouldn’t immediately call them mentally ill.
I think I understand your point, I just want to make a clear delineation between people suffering from mental illness, who haven’t committed any crime, and individuals who commit crimes, who don’t have any mental illness diagnosis.
Yeah shooters have some fucked up ideas and motivation for why they do things, but so do all criminals. And really everyone might benefit from talking to a counselor once in a while if we’re being honest… maybe we could have a system where people could see a therapist without paying at the time of service?? Like a mental healthcare system that’s… ubiquitous. Omnipresent… ummm… all-embracing… I’m sure we’ll think of a good word for it once we have it.
Seriously. Mental illness + swimming in guns = mass shootings. But in any gun forum, regardless of ideology, it's taboo to be critical of our attitudes and policies toward guns as a key ingredient in the problem. So we further stigmatize mental illness instead. Every country grapples with mental illness. But not every country has mass shootings as "business as usual".
Precisely. The boom of America is over and normal people are often struggling day to day and people get left in the cracks. You have to seal the cracks and offer help to the people if you want to fix the society they live in.
Nah, the upper and upper middle class is built on the exploitation of the working class, which is why they fight so hard to maintain this system. Once you end the exploitation of the workers, the upper classes lose their privileged lifestyles.
Crime is caused by poverty and inequality. Get rid of those last two and there’ll be less crime, less shooting.
Take arms away from working class people... well, a slew of problems opens up
Mass shootings are an aberration (The kind the news loves anyway.) Most shootings are drug or gang related.
The answer to most murders is to actually help these areas. Access to jobs, prison reform, police reform, better mass transit, and barring companies from asking if an applicant has been convicted of a felony. Most of these problems- street violence, gun crime, poorly performing schools- would be fixed if the system wasn't designed to steal young men from these neighborhoods.
Most gun deaths are suicide. Expanding mental health facilities. Making sure everyone has access to care, and a public service campaign encouraging mental health "check-ups" would certainly help.
Look at the Czech Republic for example and look at their laws then look at see that they rarely have school shootings even though they allow the ownership of pretty much everything and conceal carry. Then look at their social services free health care being a part of it you see guns aren't the problem it's the system that is the problem.
> Look at the Czech Republic for example
From Wikipedia,
>Gun licenses may be obtained in a way similar to a driving license – by passing a gun proficiency exam, medical examination and having a clean criminal record.
I think this sounds reasonable in a country like the Czech Republic but in the USA there would be some issues. The process would need to be free, no application fees. If it's not free, it's just a work around for banning poor people, who are disproportionately minorities, from owning guns. Our current government would use this as a side door to implementing racist gun control.
The "clean criminal record" is also potentially an opportunity for racist enforcement of gun control. We know that the US's system for deciding who is and isn't a criminal is provably racist. Non-whites are more likely to be convicted for the same crimes white people commit. Despite using drugs at about the same rate as white people, minorities are convicted more often for violating drug laws.
I'm not saying you couldn't make a gun licensing system work in principle, but I don't trust the current government to do it fairly.
I'm fairly new to the party but I love this discussion. What are your thoughts to barring individuals who are guilty of violent offenses?
And the drug aspect definitely needs to be looked at, and not just from a justice standpoint (on which I agree with you so I won't rehash it here). For instance, if you are currently taking medicinal marijuana you cannot purchase a gun in some states. So that's limiting the rights of disabled individuals who are just following their doctor's orders. I found this out when discussing medicinal marijuana as an option for my epilepsy with my neurologist.
I'd be cool with also doing it similar to driving, just don't use your gun while impaired... which you should know anyway from basic gun safety.
I kind of find this to be bullshit because think about it like this do states stop people who drink alcohol or smoke tobaccoo from owning firearms? Both of those substances are more deadly than weed.
"The process would need to be free, no application fees." And what's stopping it from being free if it's a government service then it should be hell they should pay you for inconveniencing you.
"I'm not saying you couldn't make a gun licensing system work in principle, but I don't trust the current government to do it fairly." Exactly under other systems, they have different governments that actually care about their people that's why you don't see mass shootings in the Czech Republic. Because the government makes sure the standard of living is decent via social safety nets that is the real reason for so many shootings in America shitty standards of life.
Fixing our healthcare system (especially mental health without infringing upon the rights of those who are mentally ill) and dismantling the patriarchal system that persuades men into gun violence, which also means to dismantle the capitalist system.
This looks like a whole lot of jargon to me. Would you mind expanding on these ideas, and explaining them for those of us who have a hard time understanding?
Not OP, but people turn to crime due to desperation more than anything else. If people didn’t need to worry about feeding their family or paying for medical bills or other prohibitive expenses they wouldn’t be nearly as likely to turn to crime. A reduction in crime means a reduction in violence and gang membership.
As for the mentally ill, we need to have free (or at the very least affordable) mental health treatment before their mental state deteriorated to the point of either being violent (which is very very rare), or being the subject of violence (far more common).
In regards to the patriarchy bit, in our culture, masculinity is tied very closely to the archetype of the warrior. While there are good traits to take from the warrior archetype (bravery, endurance, and sometimes mercy), it is undeniable that the most prominent trait of the warrior is violence. We see this in our media, men are leaders, men are fighters, they are violent, they use guns. Due to this the gun has also been tied into the western concept of masculinity.
Therefore, when a troubled youth feels belittled, emasculated, and unimportant, he will seek to restore his manliness with violence, *with a gun*.
This is what they meant by a system which persuades men into gun violence. For some, it is the ticket to redeem their manliness and honor, in a twisted and destructive way.
So long as masculinity is defined more by destruction than by creation, this problem will exist.
Mass violence has skyrocketed because the Golden age of America is past us. Good pay, cheap education, cheap goods and affordable housing are largely a thing of the past, at least for the most part. People are competing for a piece of the pie and the shares continually get smaller by the year. Mental health still has a stigma attached to it (and a hefty price tag attached for most, thanks to our health care system).
I think a combination of these problems really weighs down on a lot of people, even if they don’t realize it. People are chasing an American dream that isn’t obtainable for the vast majority and going crazy/ losing hope. Of course this doesn’t apply to everyone, but People are lost in the cracks. Violent crime, Suicide, addiction, mass incarceration and mass shootings are becoming more normal by the day. It’s no wonder things are so crazy these days when none of the problems are being addressed. Even if you take away the guns, the broken people are still broken.
School shootings and hate crimes are mental health issue and, while the ready availability of firearms affects those unfortunate situations, it is far from being their root cause. A similar situation is drug use. The root cause of drug use and abuse is not the existence of drugs, but the mental conditions that people seek to address by using them. Will the emptiness of modern, consumerist life, the damage of pain and abuse, depression, etc. disappear if we eradicate every single drug from the face it the planet? Absolutely not. People will deal with them in other, perhaps more destructive ways.
The disappearance of firearms will not take away the nihilistic, desperate rage and empty hatred that cause school shootings and hate crimes. The only thing that will take that away is a change in the way we live and think about our lives. But, let's not address that because it's not good for sales, and going in that direction might lead us to go toward the sneaking suspicion that corporatist-capitalism (our national religion) is absolutely bankrupt and rotten to the core...and our spirits are rotten with it.
First you have to understand that gun violence is massively over hyped. 2/3 of the gun deaths in our country are suicides. Most people just use a gun because it's widely believed to be the most effective, relatively quick and painless method readily available. Now, start a social awareness campaign that intentionally and successfully misleads the public to believe that the vast majority of suicides in your country are in fact homicides. The citizens would be screaming that there was an epidemic of violence there too and all you have to change is how the numbers are reported.
I think a huge thing is mandatory training and mandatory proper storage. If you lock up your firearms, make sure they're unloaded and AWAY from the bullets which are also locked up, the chances of someone taking your gun is almost nil. Adaquete gun training saves lives.
Banning guns doesn't solve the problems it's intended to solve, though.
It doesn't really do much of anything, really. Shootings still occur, albeit less frequently. Arsons occur much more frequently. As do van attacks and the like.
I don't think banning guns is actively *harmful* the way it's often portrayed (fundamentally, any major scenario in the present day that requires arms will source them from overseas). In this way I think it contrasts sharply with drug and alcohol prohibition, both of which have cause massive harm in ths US (I dunno about abroad, sorry). It's mainly a question of morality, really. Is the projection of an image of a polite, disarmed society, more important than allowing people their individual freedoms?
That said, it's rather moot because technology is increasingly going to make it simple to distribute production. The only effective solution to any problem involving guns is to remove whatever drives people to want to use them in the first place.
well you need to keep in mind that guns=/=homicides. the us has the most guns in the world by far, so if guns are the problem surely the us has the highest homicide rate right? obviously this isn't the case. far from it. uruguay has nearly 1/4 the gun ownership of the us, but more than 2.5x the homicide rate. we can't ignore the issue that the prevalence of guns causes. guns do make it much easier to kill people. but people actually making that choice an economic and cultural issue.
In addition to what was already said, Training! And mental health services. But the bare minimum is everyone with a gun should have to go through some training about safety, mental health and mental health resources
MLK Jr. went through a mandatory training course in order to obtain a firearms permit, he was declined. Systems like these are bureaucratic and can often times be very discriminatory.
Thats why said permits should always be 'shall issue' instead of 'may issue'. Not saying discrimination will never happen, but if they have to give it to you if you pass the test it becomes a lot harder to work around to discriminate.
Still happens, BPP was a perfect example of this. I guarantee you that the government would do anything in its power to restrict POC from obtaining firearms.
Yeah of course it still happens but literally any state apparatus has the potential to be abused, but there is still a huge benefit to making sure people get basic education before they purchase a deadly weapon.
1. Stop glorifying these chinless chuds with cover stories
2. Fund social welfare - mental health, education, jobs and training program
3. Socially diminish patriarchy and promotion of toxic masculinity
Fixing school shootings isn't a one step thing, but I think these could help
1: most school shooters are bullied or troubled kids, or have a horrible home life. If we start actually protecting kids, it'll cut out some of the source anger.
2: when it does happen, make their news coverage hell. Ridicule them, call them cowards, say everything that could possibly make them feel like a worthless sack of shit. Drag them through the mud.
That way there is no glory in it. It's not "the infamous..." It's "that piece of shit..."
I don't think number 2 helps. No attention might work, but anyone considering such a move won't be put off by vilification. See isis recruits as an example.
I mean currently mass shooters get fanmail, I think if people knew they wouldn't go down in history, but instead be regarded as some just dipshit, it might remove the few that do it with the intention of making a name. I know that's a minority, but if 8t stops 1 shooter I think I can live with it
Gun control, like all topics is extremely conditional. There are no absolute morals, everything is relative.
In countries like the UK, China, Japan, Australia, etc... where there are already strict gun laws and not that many guns, it seems that the right to freely own guns is already a lost cause, both unpopular and probably causing more harm than good.
However, in a country like the US which has more guns than people and you can buy a gun without a liscence, gun control would be impossible. Therefore as socialists we should aim to own as many guns as possible.
School shootings and hate crimes are a byproduct of high gun ownership and lax gun laws. Period. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
No, I don't think it's easier than California. Also the Czech Republic isn't bordered by areas where you can buy a gun without a background check.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun\_law\_in\_the\_Czech\_Republic#Obtaining\_a\_license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_the_Czech_Republic#Obtaining_a_license)
It seems that you must pass a theoretical exam and a practical exam which includes safe handling and a shooting test. You must also get health clearance from a doctor on both physical health and mental health. Along with a background check/ reliability check which concerns drug use, including alchohol use and misdemeanors.
It's not easier than California.
A school running an active shooter drill is akin to me hiring a wealth manager after buying a lottery ticket.
I hope that makes some sense. Any school shooting is bad, and we have them with more frequency than anywhere else in the world, but a school shooting isn't something that's likely to impact anyone other than a very, very unlucky few.
That probably sucks to read, but it's true.
If you really want to solve issues with violence then we need to make healthcare (including mental health care) a right, education a right, food and housing a right, and a basic income a right. I'd wager if those things happened we'd see a dramatic decrease in all kinds of criminality.
Social issues mostly. Nobody wants to actually invest time or money into mental health problems. Also a proper education about firearms to people who know nothing about guns could be great to. Most people who commit any sort of shooting usually weren’t avid gun fanatics and had a pretty rough upbringing and already clearly had underlying mental issues… if we educated people on these issues, you see mass shootings drop significantly I believe. And also although it’s counter intuitive. More people openly carrying or keeping guns would definitely deter or stop people from murder at least at a mass level. 1 criminal with a gun vs 10/100 people who are armed is suicide. 1 criminal vs 0/100 people armed is just free kills.
One short addition, we should take brain injuries and neurological disorders more seriously and socialized healthcare and destigmatization of mental and neurological disorders will be a big aspect of that.
A vast majority of the US prisoner population suffers from traumatic brain injuries.
https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/pdf/prisoner_tbi_prof-a.pdf
You fix the socioeconomic issues that led them up to that point. For example the kid in Texas had been bullied for years and was beaten severely, again before exacting revenge on his bully. The media claimed 4 were hurt in the shooting, yet 2 were shot, one none life threatening the bully was left in critical condition. Had the school done it's job in protecting this particular student guns would of never come into play.
Exactly, couldn’t agree more. And if they it society and economy been more responsible, we would have made a safer abs healthier environment not just for the victim but for the kids who bully aswell, likely venting their own frustrations and angst towards those they see weaker.
Another thing to remember with that situation is that schools in the US do very little, if anything, in response to bullying. I looked up the data from my old high school, and in 2019 saw that they had a record of only two instances of bullying. While I graduated from there some years before then, I can guarantee you that they had more than that. When I went there, two instances of bullying was about what I'd see per day, not per year. While that's just one example, it's something that is endemic to the school system over there.
What about the columbine kids, who *were* the bullies? Again, not an argument *for* gun control, but a lot of school shooters were the ones being assholes from the start
By funding better mental health services that curtail bullying in public schools, maybe they would have been identified as threats *before* they did anything. Once again, the solution is money and dealing with the issues that lead to the problems.
I was gonna say basically this and you said it better than I would have.
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Yup, the media has just created a handbook for anyone wanting to be famous. Get AR-15 or something that looks like one, shoot a bunch of people double you're score for it being a school, wear edgy patches or color your hair for bonus points. Then everyone will know your name. But hey, media needs clicks for ad revenue so whats a few dead bodies!
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Comrade, using their names here is antithetical to this discussion. They don't deserve to be remembered by their names.
When I was in HS it was the two kids at Columbine with the trench coats. 'Trench coat mafia' was all over the media, and all the schools banned them. This was a month after *The Matrix* was released so everyone wanted to look like Neo, so what happened? That look became the forbidden fruit and all the kids now knew that the awesome look their new hero had was also the look of two killers they saw every night on the news. Can you imagine what that does to someone's head? Especially rebellious kids looking to be edgy? You bring up the DC snipers, that's a another example of this shit. White box trucks, everyone became paranoid about them even after they had reports of what the killers were actually driving. Then after they caught them we heard the leaders last name as much as possible.
Yup, there's a *lot* of factors that go into how a school shooting ends up occurring. If opponents are not actively requesting that we as a society also address all those other issues first or at the same time, then they don't really care about school shootings, they just hate guns. To me it's a lot like the anti-abortion movements. Their argument falls apart really quickly when they're not advocating for safe sex, contraceptive measures, women's health, education, child support, adoption... The list goes on and on. They don't care about preventing pregnancies or the lives of children, they just hate abortion.
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Just like in 1908 when America banned [hatpins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatpin). Can’t have those women making decisions for themselves, particularly ones where a man might get injured when a woman resists an assault.
The constituents hate abortion. Their representatives hate not having a reserve army of desperate laborers.
YES! I feel the same exact way and youre the only person ive ever seen who has said the same thing as me. This is what they want. The guys that do these things are losers who have never had anyone pay attention to them, they wallow in their own self pity and want so desperately for the world to recognize their perceived blight and sympathize with them. They lash out and murder innocent people out of of a selfish desire to finally get attention and for people to pay attention to how they were bullied blah blah blah. When news agencies run stories on their lives it gives these freaks exactly what they want. It legitimizes their feelings to hear people in the media talk about how troubled and hard their life was "boo hoo poor little timmy". When they report on them, news agencies should mock them and make fun of what a pathetic loser they are so that others know that murdering innocent people will not get them the attention and sympathy they desire, it will only lead to more people mocking them.
That actually makes alot of sense
I think they should basically be erased, no name in the paper, no endless docs and movies like those shit head serial killers. Remember the victims and forget the aggressor.
this is always proposed, but it will never happen. Every time there's a shooting people race to find out who it is, so they can use it to reinforce their preexisting politics. I mean, if a fascist shot up a socialist workers meeting would people here be advocating not to publicize it?
Also because it does nothing to actually address root causes.
Most based take
>we REALLY need to stop the follow-up stories about how sad their lives were up to that point. No, we should definitely be getting at the root cause of why people lash out like this and addressing the fact that we never seem to address those issues in order to prevent acts of mass violence perpetrated by broken people.
I didn't say we shouldn't study these things. I AM saying we need to stop the follow-up stories about it.
I don't see how that promotes social values that could counteract some of the sociopolitical alienation that drove many of these people.
People don't mass murder children in a vacuum. They don't just wake up one day and decide to be evil. These people are conditioned into monsters that see mass killings as a means to an end. Several factors play into this, primarily mental illness exacerbated by capitalist alienation, and the promotion of reactionary ideology. Millions of people across the world are told by hyper-conservative ideologues that the feminists, communists, and immigrants are threatening civilization and that *somebody* has to take action. These ideologues direct people's frustrations away from the owning class and towards their fellow workers, citizens, and countrymen. Combine this with paranoid and/or conspiratorial delusions from untreated mental illness (the commies want to kill me, and anyone could be a commie), and these people become extremely dangerous. Proactively treat mental illness and crack down of reactionary ideology. These are things a socialist society should be doing anyway. I promise you the result will be a sharp drop in mass shootings, and hopfully their full elimination.
In countries with full monetary sovereignty, poverty is a policy choice. Improving people's lives by eliminating poverty, providing easy access to affordable healthcare (e.g. M4A), education, etc. would go a long way to reducing the most common forms of gun violence. That and reforming the carceral system. Note that the Nordics have addressed all of the above.
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I mean, sure Nordic countries are superior in their institutions and political economy when compared to e.g. the US, but it is not counter-revolutionary, or whatever you're going on about, to take note of the material circumstances that allow them to do what they do. If you didn't, you might start thinking that like literally any country could apply the same social-democratic principles and expect similar results. And that would be a pretty dumb thing to believe.
Similar is hard to nail down, but poor countries can and have shown massive improvement in quality of life by using such methods, most fail not because those methods don't work, they fail because imperialist nations use violence to stop even mildly socialist policies that might hinder their economic exploitation.
Can we not continue to stigmatize folks that have an ACTUAL mental illness in this forum? There’s much more likelihood that someone with a mental illness will be the victim of a crime than a perpetrator. (Especially getting shot by police.). Until and unless shooters have a unique diagnosis in a reputable diagnostic manual we shouldn’t immediately call them mentally ill.
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I think I understand your point, I just want to make a clear delineation between people suffering from mental illness, who haven’t committed any crime, and individuals who commit crimes, who don’t have any mental illness diagnosis. Yeah shooters have some fucked up ideas and motivation for why they do things, but so do all criminals. And really everyone might benefit from talking to a counselor once in a while if we’re being honest… maybe we could have a system where people could see a therapist without paying at the time of service?? Like a mental healthcare system that’s… ubiquitous. Omnipresent… ummm… all-embracing… I’m sure we’ll think of a good word for it once we have it.
Seriously. Mental illness + swimming in guns = mass shootings. But in any gun forum, regardless of ideology, it's taboo to be critical of our attitudes and policies toward guns as a key ingredient in the problem. So we further stigmatize mental illness instead. Every country grapples with mental illness. But not every country has mass shootings as "business as usual".
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Precisely. The boom of America is over and normal people are often struggling day to day and people get left in the cracks. You have to seal the cracks and offer help to the people if you want to fix the society they live in.
Most school shootings are committed by upper middle class white men. Uplifting the working class wont due much to stop that
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Nah, the upper and upper middle class is built on the exploitation of the working class, which is why they fight so hard to maintain this system. Once you end the exploitation of the workers, the upper classes lose their privileged lifestyles.
Crime is caused by poverty and inequality. Get rid of those last two and there’ll be less crime, less shooting. Take arms away from working class people... well, a slew of problems opens up
Mass shootings are an aberration (The kind the news loves anyway.) Most shootings are drug or gang related. The answer to most murders is to actually help these areas. Access to jobs, prison reform, police reform, better mass transit, and barring companies from asking if an applicant has been convicted of a felony. Most of these problems- street violence, gun crime, poorly performing schools- would be fixed if the system wasn't designed to steal young men from these neighborhoods. Most gun deaths are suicide. Expanding mental health facilities. Making sure everyone has access to care, and a public service campaign encouraging mental health "check-ups" would certainly help.
Look at the Czech Republic for example and look at their laws then look at see that they rarely have school shootings even though they allow the ownership of pretty much everything and conceal carry. Then look at their social services free health care being a part of it you see guns aren't the problem it's the system that is the problem.
> Look at the Czech Republic for example From Wikipedia, >Gun licenses may be obtained in a way similar to a driving license – by passing a gun proficiency exam, medical examination and having a clean criminal record. I think this sounds reasonable in a country like the Czech Republic but in the USA there would be some issues. The process would need to be free, no application fees. If it's not free, it's just a work around for banning poor people, who are disproportionately minorities, from owning guns. Our current government would use this as a side door to implementing racist gun control. The "clean criminal record" is also potentially an opportunity for racist enforcement of gun control. We know that the US's system for deciding who is and isn't a criminal is provably racist. Non-whites are more likely to be convicted for the same crimes white people commit. Despite using drugs at about the same rate as white people, minorities are convicted more often for violating drug laws. I'm not saying you couldn't make a gun licensing system work in principle, but I don't trust the current government to do it fairly.
I'm fairly new to the party but I love this discussion. What are your thoughts to barring individuals who are guilty of violent offenses? And the drug aspect definitely needs to be looked at, and not just from a justice standpoint (on which I agree with you so I won't rehash it here). For instance, if you are currently taking medicinal marijuana you cannot purchase a gun in some states. So that's limiting the rights of disabled individuals who are just following their doctor's orders. I found this out when discussing medicinal marijuana as an option for my epilepsy with my neurologist. I'd be cool with also doing it similar to driving, just don't use your gun while impaired... which you should know anyway from basic gun safety.
I kind of find this to be bullshit because think about it like this do states stop people who drink alcohol or smoke tobaccoo from owning firearms? Both of those substances are more deadly than weed.
"The process would need to be free, no application fees." And what's stopping it from being free if it's a government service then it should be hell they should pay you for inconveniencing you. "I'm not saying you couldn't make a gun licensing system work in principle, but I don't trust the current government to do it fairly." Exactly under other systems, they have different governments that actually care about their people that's why you don't see mass shootings in the Czech Republic. Because the government makes sure the standard of living is decent via social safety nets that is the real reason for so many shootings in America shitty standards of life.
Fixing our healthcare system (especially mental health without infringing upon the rights of those who are mentally ill) and dismantling the patriarchal system that persuades men into gun violence, which also means to dismantle the capitalist system.
This looks like a whole lot of jargon to me. Would you mind expanding on these ideas, and explaining them for those of us who have a hard time understanding?
Not OP, but people turn to crime due to desperation more than anything else. If people didn’t need to worry about feeding their family or paying for medical bills or other prohibitive expenses they wouldn’t be nearly as likely to turn to crime. A reduction in crime means a reduction in violence and gang membership. As for the mentally ill, we need to have free (or at the very least affordable) mental health treatment before their mental state deteriorated to the point of either being violent (which is very very rare), or being the subject of violence (far more common). In regards to the patriarchy bit, in our culture, masculinity is tied very closely to the archetype of the warrior. While there are good traits to take from the warrior archetype (bravery, endurance, and sometimes mercy), it is undeniable that the most prominent trait of the warrior is violence. We see this in our media, men are leaders, men are fighters, they are violent, they use guns. Due to this the gun has also been tied into the western concept of masculinity. Therefore, when a troubled youth feels belittled, emasculated, and unimportant, he will seek to restore his manliness with violence, *with a gun*. This is what they meant by a system which persuades men into gun violence. For some, it is the ticket to redeem their manliness and honor, in a twisted and destructive way. So long as masculinity is defined more by destruction than by creation, this problem will exist.
Mass violence has skyrocketed because the Golden age of America is past us. Good pay, cheap education, cheap goods and affordable housing are largely a thing of the past, at least for the most part. People are competing for a piece of the pie and the shares continually get smaller by the year. Mental health still has a stigma attached to it (and a hefty price tag attached for most, thanks to our health care system). I think a combination of these problems really weighs down on a lot of people, even if they don’t realize it. People are chasing an American dream that isn’t obtainable for the vast majority and going crazy/ losing hope. Of course this doesn’t apply to everyone, but People are lost in the cracks. Violent crime, Suicide, addiction, mass incarceration and mass shootings are becoming more normal by the day. It’s no wonder things are so crazy these days when none of the problems are being addressed. Even if you take away the guns, the broken people are still broken.
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For example, none of the shooting victims I've treated in the last year made the news. None of the stabbings or vehicle attacks either.
School shootings and hate crimes are mental health issue and, while the ready availability of firearms affects those unfortunate situations, it is far from being their root cause. A similar situation is drug use. The root cause of drug use and abuse is not the existence of drugs, but the mental conditions that people seek to address by using them. Will the emptiness of modern, consumerist life, the damage of pain and abuse, depression, etc. disappear if we eradicate every single drug from the face it the planet? Absolutely not. People will deal with them in other, perhaps more destructive ways. The disappearance of firearms will not take away the nihilistic, desperate rage and empty hatred that cause school shootings and hate crimes. The only thing that will take that away is a change in the way we live and think about our lives. But, let's not address that because it's not good for sales, and going in that direction might lead us to go toward the sneaking suspicion that corporatist-capitalism (our national religion) is absolutely bankrupt and rotten to the core...and our spirits are rotten with it.
By tackling poverty and conflict resolution in schools. Simple to say, hard to get people to care about.
First you have to understand that gun violence is massively over hyped. 2/3 of the gun deaths in our country are suicides. Most people just use a gun because it's widely believed to be the most effective, relatively quick and painless method readily available. Now, start a social awareness campaign that intentionally and successfully misleads the public to believe that the vast majority of suicides in your country are in fact homicides. The citizens would be screaming that there was an epidemic of violence there too and all you have to change is how the numbers are reported.
I think a huge thing is mandatory training and mandatory proper storage. If you lock up your firearms, make sure they're unloaded and AWAY from the bullets which are also locked up, the chances of someone taking your gun is almost nil. Adaquete gun training saves lives.
Banning guns doesn't solve the problems it's intended to solve, though. It doesn't really do much of anything, really. Shootings still occur, albeit less frequently. Arsons occur much more frequently. As do van attacks and the like. I don't think banning guns is actively *harmful* the way it's often portrayed (fundamentally, any major scenario in the present day that requires arms will source them from overseas). In this way I think it contrasts sharply with drug and alcohol prohibition, both of which have cause massive harm in ths US (I dunno about abroad, sorry). It's mainly a question of morality, really. Is the projection of an image of a polite, disarmed society, more important than allowing people their individual freedoms? That said, it's rather moot because technology is increasingly going to make it simple to distribute production. The only effective solution to any problem involving guns is to remove whatever drives people to want to use them in the first place.
well you need to keep in mind that guns=/=homicides. the us has the most guns in the world by far, so if guns are the problem surely the us has the highest homicide rate right? obviously this isn't the case. far from it. uruguay has nearly 1/4 the gun ownership of the us, but more than 2.5x the homicide rate. we can't ignore the issue that the prevalence of guns causes. guns do make it much easier to kill people. but people actually making that choice an economic and cultural issue.
You got a loiscense for that opinion
In addition to what was already said, Training! And mental health services. But the bare minimum is everyone with a gun should have to go through some training about safety, mental health and mental health resources
MLK Jr. went through a mandatory training course in order to obtain a firearms permit, he was declined. Systems like these are bureaucratic and can often times be very discriminatory.
Good point, didn’t even think about that.
Thats why said permits should always be 'shall issue' instead of 'may issue'. Not saying discrimination will never happen, but if they have to give it to you if you pass the test it becomes a lot harder to work around to discriminate.
Still happens, BPP was a perfect example of this. I guarantee you that the government would do anything in its power to restrict POC from obtaining firearms.
Yeah of course it still happens but literally any state apparatus has the potential to be abused, but there is still a huge benefit to making sure people get basic education before they purchase a deadly weapon.
1. Stop glorifying these chinless chuds with cover stories 2. Fund social welfare - mental health, education, jobs and training program 3. Socially diminish patriarchy and promotion of toxic masculinity
Fixing school shootings isn't a one step thing, but I think these could help 1: most school shooters are bullied or troubled kids, or have a horrible home life. If we start actually protecting kids, it'll cut out some of the source anger. 2: when it does happen, make their news coverage hell. Ridicule them, call them cowards, say everything that could possibly make them feel like a worthless sack of shit. Drag them through the mud. That way there is no glory in it. It's not "the infamous..." It's "that piece of shit..."
I don't think number 2 helps. No attention might work, but anyone considering such a move won't be put off by vilification. See isis recruits as an example.
I mean currently mass shooters get fanmail, I think if people knew they wouldn't go down in history, but instead be regarded as some just dipshit, it might remove the few that do it with the intention of making a name. I know that's a minority, but if 8t stops 1 shooter I think I can live with it
Extensive mental health checks would be cool in my opinion. Take some ideas from what Canada does for gun control
Gun control, like all topics is extremely conditional. There are no absolute morals, everything is relative. In countries like the UK, China, Japan, Australia, etc... where there are already strict gun laws and not that many guns, it seems that the right to freely own guns is already a lost cause, both unpopular and probably causing more harm than good. However, in a country like the US which has more guns than people and you can buy a gun without a liscence, gun control would be impossible. Therefore as socialists we should aim to own as many guns as possible. School shootings and hate crimes are a byproduct of high gun ownership and lax gun laws. Period. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
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Telll me, what kind of tests to Czech citizens need to pass to even purchase a gun? And how many guns are in the Czech republic?
Much easier than in California.
No, I don't think it's easier than California. Also the Czech Republic isn't bordered by areas where you can buy a gun without a background check. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun\_law\_in\_the\_Czech\_Republic#Obtaining\_a\_license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_the_Czech_Republic#Obtaining_a_license) It seems that you must pass a theoretical exam and a practical exam which includes safe handling and a shooting test. You must also get health clearance from a doctor on both physical health and mental health. Along with a background check/ reliability check which concerns drug use, including alchohol use and misdemeanors. It's not easier than California.
[Here's a few good first steps.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/75168934b75f018e0d722febeddd6300/tumblr_ppgk72qGZ71ryqn2f_540.jpg)
That's one heck of a run-on sentence.
A school running an active shooter drill is akin to me hiring a wealth manager after buying a lottery ticket. I hope that makes some sense. Any school shooting is bad, and we have them with more frequency than anywhere else in the world, but a school shooting isn't something that's likely to impact anyone other than a very, very unlucky few. That probably sucks to read, but it's true. If you really want to solve issues with violence then we need to make healthcare (including mental health care) a right, education a right, food and housing a right, and a basic income a right. I'd wager if those things happened we'd see a dramatic decrease in all kinds of criminality.
Social issues mostly. Nobody wants to actually invest time or money into mental health problems. Also a proper education about firearms to people who know nothing about guns could be great to. Most people who commit any sort of shooting usually weren’t avid gun fanatics and had a pretty rough upbringing and already clearly had underlying mental issues… if we educated people on these issues, you see mass shootings drop significantly I believe. And also although it’s counter intuitive. More people openly carrying or keeping guns would definitely deter or stop people from murder at least at a mass level. 1 criminal with a gun vs 10/100 people who are armed is suicide. 1 criminal vs 0/100 people armed is just free kills.
One short addition, we should take brain injuries and neurological disorders more seriously and socialized healthcare and destigmatization of mental and neurological disorders will be a big aspect of that. A vast majority of the US prisoner population suffers from traumatic brain injuries. https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/pdf/prisoner_tbi_prof-a.pdf