Gunman kills 19 children, 2 adults in Texas grade school

[Ostfriese]

Originally Posted by Kptlt. Neuerburg

Ah the don't blame the tool argument.. Well while there are plenty of other ways to commit mass murder if the gunman didn't have the gun then what would he use? A knife, a hammer, an axe, a concrete in-cased bulldozer? A person is a lot more likely to survive a stab or a slash then they would after a bullet explodes someones brains all over a 5 year old students desk.

In addition to that:
The "tool" doesn't exist in a vacuum. Besides their function as a killing "tool" (unlike a knife they don't have another function) they are a symbol, and they influence people in a negative, damaging way, and especially young people have a hard time resisting these influences.

[Cybermat47]

Mental healthcare and the ease with which people are getting their hands on firearms both need to be adressed.

In Australia, you need to go through a whole process before you're allowed to own a firearm. As a result, we've gone decades without a mass shooting and I've still been able to send plenty of lead downrange.

The idea that the US doesn't have a similar system on the federal level seems absurd to me, but how else are all these insane people getting their hands on firearms?

The only people with firearms should be people who have proven that they can use them safely and responsibly. The US already does the same with other dangerous tools like cars, after all.

[August]

Originally Posted by Ostfriese

In addition to that:
The "tool" doesn't exist in a vacuum. Besides their function as a killing "tool" (unlike a knife they don't have another function) they are a symbol, and they influence people in a negative, damaging way, and especially young people have a hard time resisting these influences.

No the tool doesn't exist in a vacuum which is kind of the point but it's irrelevant how many uses you can get out of rifle that doesn't involve killing (although I can think of three off the top of my head) as human rights, especially constitutionally protected ones, do not have to be justified.


Another thing one should realize is that abuse of a right does not justify denying it to everyone. There's a fine legal term (in Latin no less) that Platapus is fond of which illustrates this principle. If it did we would soon have no rights at all, because they all have been abused at some point somehow.



The problem is not guns any more than SUVs were the problem in the Black Racist attack on that parade in Wisconsin last winter. The problem is how we ignore lunacy like that until it's too late.

[mapuc]

Instead of discussing what your favorite politician have said they would do(as they do each time this happens)

I ask you what would you do to, not prevent because this is impossible, but to make it harder to buy a weapon ?

Markus

[Rockstar]

Making it harder for me to buy a firearm I don’t think will change the mind of someone who has no regard for human life. Since the early 1960s research evidence has been accumulating that suggests that exposure to violence in television, movies, video games, cell phones, and on the internet increases the risk of violent behavior. TAKE THAT AWAY. make that harder to access. Make better standards of living and health care MORE accessible. Take away the video games, cell phones and social media platforms.

The kids cellphone and social media platforms gave him instant access to fame and notoriety.

The number of firearms I own didn’t have jack squat to do with it.

[Ostfriese]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Making it harder for me to buy a firearm I don’t think will change the mind of someone who has no regard for human life. Since the early 1960s research evidence has been accumulating that suggests that exposure to violence in television, movies, video games, cell phones, and on the internet increases the risk of violent behavior. TAKE THAT AWAY. make that harder to access. Make better standards of living and health care MORE accessible. Take away the video games, cell phones and social media platforms.

If that were true then explain to me why this is a problem only in the US. TV, movies, video games, cell phones aren't exclusive to the US, but are also extremely common for people in Europe, in Japan, in South Korea, in Australia, in New Zealand and in other parts of the world, of which NONE suffers similar problems.



There have been 27 mass school shootings in the USA in 2022, and it's not even June. There hasn't been a mass shooting at a school anywhere else in the world this year, most countries in the world haven't experienced mass shootings for DECADES.


Firearms are the number one death cause for US American teenagers. Let that sink in. Not drugs, not alcohol, not car accidents nor other accidents.

[Rockstar]

I guess we could start with the number of hours per day children in each country spend on TV, social media, what is presented on TV, social media and amount of time spent playing violent video games.

I just can’t deny the studies that suggest all of the above DOES have an affect on children. Obviously access to firearms is also an issue which was why I also suggested maybe raising the age limit to 21 particularly for high capacity semi-automatics.

I’ll be the first to admit I do not have all the answers. I am very curious to know what motivated him because it wasn’t always like this, what changed? Was he on prescription meds? That seems to be very common theme for a lot kids these days too

[Ostfriese]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

I guess we could start with the number of hours per day children in each country spend on TV, social media, what is presented on TV, social media and amount of time spent playing violent video games.

I agree in principle - but shouldn't that be left to the parents rather than being regulated by the state? I may be wrong here, but isn't one of the conservative talking points in the US "less government!", yet this proposal would mean the opposite.

I just can’t deny the studies that suggest all of the above DOES have an affect on children. Obviously access to firearms is also an issue which was why I also suggested maybe raising the age limit to 21 particularly for high capacity semi-automatics.

Why not for any guns regardless of whatever limitation you can think of? You can't buy alcoholic drinks of any kind legally in the US if you are under 21. What would be so difficult to create a similar law in which the word "alcohol" is replaced by "gun"?

I’ll be the first to admit I do not have all the answers. I am very curious to know what motivated him because it wasn’t always like this, what changed?

When there's a person who you'd like to ask "what (has) changed" would you still want this very same person to be able to get a gun? Shouldn't the simple fact that you have doubts be enough to raise the red flags?

[August]

Originally Posted by Ostfriese

There have been 27 mass school shootings in the USA in 2022,

Where did you get that crazy figure?

[Skybird]

Mass shootings have become so common in the US that we have developed a pathology for how to react. The aggrieved families who have lost someone they loved are the recipients of thoughts and prayers. Law enforcement is praised for keeping the tragedy from becoming even more horrific. Counseling is offered to survivors. Politicians come to town to express their sympathy and outrage, and vow that the latest community will recover and stand "Texas strong" or "Sandy Hook strong" or "Parkland strong."

But nothing happens to prevent another shooting.

We pray. But don't legislate. And prayer clearly is not stopping the slaughter. In all the statements to come from conservative politicians following up Tuesday's deadly shooting in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two adults were killed, do not expect to hear even a solitary voice suggest gun reform. The Second Amendment is always treated as more important than the lives of children. Words like "evil" and "incomprehensible" and "horrific" will be thrown around and, as Republican US Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas urged us, we will be encouraged to "come together as a nation." But I suspect we -- or some of us -- already have. Some of us came together and decided that no horror caused by guns can be worse than restricting access to guns.

The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, a very conservative Republican, went before television cameras Tuesday and said, "When parents drop their kids off at school, they have every expectation to know they will be able to pick that child up when that school day ends." The governor ought to be asked how a parent can have that assurance when he said he was upset his constituents weren't buying enough guns.

"I'm EMBARRASSED," Abbott tweeted in 2015. "Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let's pick up the pace Texans."
He helped his state compete in that gun-buying contest with California. Just last year, Abbott proudly signed into law what he called a "constitutional carry" bill, which allowed anyone over 21 to carry a gun without getting a permit, and he did it after the El Paso mass killing in 2019. There is always the flawed premise that more guns will make it likely a murderer will be stopped by one. Prior to Abbott's signing of the measure, a license to carry required fingerprints, four to six hours of training, a written exam and a shooting proficiency test.

But that's over. Guns in Texas won. Regulations and reform lost. Wasn't even a real contest. Gov. Abbott is quick, however, to ban books that offend his political sensibilities, but gun ownership cannot be constrained.

When President Joe Biden, however, spoke in the hours after the Uvalde tragedy, his words were angry, though mostly aspirational because he knows the political reality confronting gun reform proponents. All he has right now is words, and his opponents have the votes. A bill to expand background checks on gun buyers passed the US House of Representatives two years ago but there is nowhere near the number of yeses in the Senate to get it to the president's desk.

"As a nation," President Biden said. "We have to ask, when in God's name will we stand up to the gun lobby. When in God's name will we do what we know what has to be done ... I am sick and tired of it. We have to act and don't tell me we can't have an impact on this carnage."

Biden pointed out that the previous ban on assault weapons reduced mass killings but when it was repealed, he said, they tripled. He said the public and politicians have to be encouraged to stand up to the gun industry and he wondered while on his 17-hour flight home from Asia why the US is the only nation in the world that deals with recurrent mass shooting incidents.
"These kinds of mass shootings rarely happen in other parts of the world," he said. "But they have mental health problems. They have people who are lost ... Why are we willing to let this happen? Where, in God's name, is our backbone? It's time to turn this pain into action."

Those other nations don't have gun lobbies?

Gun rights advocates seem to have plans while reformers struggle against a powerful manufacturers' lobby, the National Rifle Association and with how much regulation is too much.

The Second Amendment doesn't have to be destroyed to save our country. The Constitution is a living document. Maybe it needs to be tempered for the times and adjusted from a 1776 context to an era when there are computers that can talk to each other, and guns that can fire an astonishing number of rounds. Isn't there a law that can be written to order state and federal databases for mental health and criminal records and gun purchases to all interact and share information? Aren't we smart enough as a culture to find language to protect our fundamental rights and our children?

The era of mass shootings in which we live probably began in Texas on August 1, 1966, when a gunman climbed the University of Texas tower with a high-powered rifle and began shooting people walking on campus. Charles Whitman killed 16 people that bright summer day after he had already murdered his wife and mother. The incident was the first to transpire live and was broadcast to a horrified city of Austin. Since then, Texans have watched certain towns gain notoriety for dark reasons. Mass killings in Sutherland Springs and El Paso and Santa Fe and Midland-Odessa and Dallas and the cafeteria shooting in Killeen and a Fort Hood mass slaying. The full list is even longer.

Hard to deny that the horrors started here. Now let this be the time and place that creates the political will to let Texas be the place where it comes to an end.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/25/o...ore/index.html

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And this statistics display. It puts America to shame. Amok runs you have in other countries, too. But not at this number, it just does not compare. Never. Nowhere. In no way.

https://www.nationalworld.com/news/w...attack-3708741

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Bowling for Columbine hinted at the root problem, and that is the cultivation of the violence cult in American culture. Where violence gets glorified in a culture from top to bottom, the fruits harvested are according to the seeds that had been sown. There is no surprise in the results.

Be that as it may, the uSA is not the first civilization in history to hold regular human sacrifice in high esteem, though this is additionally reinforced here by profit motive.