DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Mass Shootings Continued..

Boy the irony there is about as thick as it can get.

In a way, Yes. You and 888 misrepresent what I say.

Also, the questions were answered. You just didn't take the time to find them. You were intentionally trying to steer the conversation away from its purpose. Mental Health in schools has been defined. By the National Board of School Psychologists.

I also was very clear that I believe that it is a mistake not to profile the students because of their individual rights. I think the rights of the masses is more important than the rights of those who are clearly defined as having mental health issues that may cause harm to others and/or themselves. Others may disagree w/that statement and that's fine w/me. But please, let's stop pretending we don't have the means to do something that would go a long way in drastically reducing the amount of mass murders and suicides.

Additionally, I think it is a misperception to think that those students are being punished. Contrarily, I think providing them the help they need to deal w/their problems is actually a benefit. We must get past this barbaric ideology of thinking getting psychological counseling is somehow bad. That antiquated attitude prevents many people from trying to get the help they need. It's like they are weak or deficient or not good people just because they suffer from a mental illness. We don't hate on people w/cancer, diabetes, etc. Yet, getting help for mental and health illnesses is still somehow a stain on that person's overall being.

So, let's just push it all to the side and blame guns and the left or the right. Brilliant!

Just to be clear about what you are saying is a lie: You did spend two days spamming the board calling me 'evil'. Fact and witnessed by many. You spend many days referring to my kids - fact, witnessed by many. You are the absolute king of personal attacks. Most of the time I let it go - sometimes like today I want to be certain to highlight what and who you are.

I've never just blamed the guns. I believe there are also common sense measures relating to guns that will help cut down on the body count but that too will not stop or prevent school shootings. Just a few posts ago I stated that I thought the very issues you brought up would also help the situation. I don't see this as an either or type of thing but something I think has several factors that should be addressed.

In actuality I think our views on this topic are much more closely aligned than you may think.

Mainly I blame the reason for not being able to do anything about mass shootings on the extremes of both parties. Banning assault weapons I believe is an extreme that won't solve anything. I do however think that lessening the amount of rounds that a magazine can hold would. Many of these shooters are very young and not adept at quickly changing magazines. So the more often they have to change magazines the more openings there are to neutralize the shooter. I'm not opposed to school resource officers as long as they have been heavily certified in active shooter training to make it safer for everyone involved.

I think you might agree that those measures do not make the extremes on either side happy. And while your perception may be that I was trying to steer the conversation away from its purpose, that's not what I was trying to do at all. Identifying things that would help lessen our children being slaughtered in our nations schools is something very critical in at the very least slowing down this scourge on our nation. But how such things would be implemented is a very critical part of that. And I believe the very point you are making about the political element in all of this is the very reason for why that is.

Correlation is not causation. Just because it is easier to commit suicide with a gun doesn't mean suicides happen because people have access to guns. Someone bent on suicide will find a way, regardless of access laws.

It is a bit simplistic to assume that there is only one problem that results in mass shootings.

Defining the problem has numerous results.

I think we need to address 2 things, the why and the how. Then ask the what, what can be done about it.



The why?

Mental illness for sure but why the increase?
My personal opinion is social media, how much time children and teens spend with their faces buried in their phones, the neurochemical changes in the brain the occur because of these activities. In my mind I have no doubt this/these are major contributing factors.

Poor/lazy parenting. This has been an issue for as long as there have been parents. Has On line porn. this increased lately? I don't know the answer nor do I know how to evaluate that.
Another thing as to the why is that it seems to have become the fasionable thing to do

The how?
Guns clearly play a role. You cannot have a mass shooting without a gun being involved. You can have mass killings but not a mass shooting. This is clear. What isn't clear is the significance of that distinction. Regardless, but making guns more difficult to come by, you necessarily make mass shooting more difficult. Without the rapid/high discharge weapons, it is much more difficult (though admittedly not impossible) to kill large numbers of people.



The results?

We are creating more mentally unstable individuals, giving them these horrific outlets, and making the execution of these horrific outlets as easy as possible for them.



What to do about this?

1, Address mental illness. How to do so is unclear but the majority of people don't seem to want to support that.

2, Restrict access to guns. It seems that the majority of people are in favor of this but a very loud minority is against this. They have a strong voice in congress.

Something I didn't say - something I don't think anyone has ever said. But there you go.

So then the point of stating this was?

Someone doesn't commit suicide because of a gun. There are more successful suicides when there is easy access to guns.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/

The fact that a gun is available does not trigger someone to commit suicide which is what your statement implied : "doesn't mean suicides happen because people have access to guns.". As we agree suicide is a mental health issue. However - when there is easy access to guns - suicide rates DO empirically increase. The statistics back that up and you cannot argue with it. Maybe they increase because it's relatively "easy" to pull a trigger, it's fast and can be done on impulse. Maybe rates are higher because of only the fact that the success rate is much higher. I suspect it is both.

But if we are talking about helping reduce the numbers of firearm deaths - mass shootings and school shootings get much of the attention, but it's also worth considering the potential benefit of reducing suicides.... Not only from the mental health aspect but also from the ease of gun access.

Those are good points. I do want you to know that I am not looking for agreement. I was posting my thoughts and the research that I did so people could have a chance to educate themselves on some alternative theories and how this is such a multi-faceted issue. I do wish you would go back and read some of the posts I made and the links that I provided. I was very cognizant of posting articles that did not favor one party over another. I posted stuff that were really against the right. I posted stuff that says this is far deeper than just a gun issue or a political party issue. I know it will take a bit of time to read, but I think you might enjoy it all. Much of it aligns w/your opinions on this matter. There are also some other things. Anyway.......one way or the other......my intent is not to argue about it, but instead discuss it or just leave my opinions for others to ponder.

you are 100% correct. my error

I'm leery of saying this due to our history, but I'm going to accept that you were not trying to steer the topic somewhere else. It felt that way at the time because I believed the answers were already provided. For example, I do not feel qualified to determine the mental health of children. Instead, I posted the link to the what the National Association of School Psychologists said about mental health of students. I do disagree w/their idea of not profiling students, but I understand why others would object. Then again, I have always placed more importance on the many rather than the individual. I am including myself in that. In no way would I ever want special treatment.

You are almost certainly right about how politics would get involved in how any of this is implemented. And we both know that will just lead to more grandstanding and division while the lines on the map move from side to side and our young people will continue either murder others or take their own lives.

It's all very frustrating.

Thank you for the clarification. I am not "talking about reducing the numbers of firearms deaths". I want to reduce the number of murders. If someone is in such pain as they feel the need to kill themselves that is a decision left to them. If a firearms helps with that I suppose that is tolerable, though it does leave a mess for someone else to clean up, but all deaths do.

I find it ironic that people (not saying you) want to reduce suicides using guns because guns and at the same time want to have publicly assisted suicide.

JMHO, all the professionals point to mental illness, proliferation/availability of guns....and those things won't change- what to do? Decades ago- during bad old 30s- repressive measures taken- Legion of Decency- our anything goes culture AND amount of time kids/adults spend on WAR/Killing games- it has to take a toll. Right to own arms written in 1700s shouldn't prevent common sense limits on anyone owning essentially a machine gun/s with 30/50 round capability- that's nuts. We are the ONLY country with mountains of children killed by guns. Period. Says something about the Great USA culture.

1st, do you mean physician assisted suicide? I don't think any sane person is advocating for people to commit suicide in public.

2nd, people want to reduce the number of suicides period. Not just gun related suicides. Not because guns. I think that part of the conversation got distorted because this is a mass shooting thread.

3rd, there is a big difference between someone committing suicide because they are experiencing a severe transient despair for some reason and an assisted suicide by someone with a terminal illness in severe intractable pain that will never improve and most likely continue to worsen who has undergone psychological evaluation prior to.

While it is interesting to want to solve the suicide issue, it is not germane to the topic of mass shootings.

I understand that suicide by mass shooting is a motive, but that does not work either.

The underlying point is that seemingly random individuals going about their normal lives are being killed or if they are lucky wounded by indiscriminately by mass shooters.

And that's where we are. And yes it's so very frustrating. That's far more why my responses to you were focused on how we can accomplish implementing the ideas you had posted. As I said, I'm all for ideas in ways to help reduce school shootings and you certainly presented some very constructive ideas. I'm more concerned that even great ideas will fall by the wayside because the political division in this country is so bad that those in power seem to care more about scoring political points and creating division than solving problems.

j/c

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/nine-injured-shooting-texas-high-school-prom-party-2023-04-23/

Thankfully no casualties reported.

Clearly as well as arming teachers, we need to arm the caterers, the DJ's, the entertainers (especially the clowns for kids parties) as well. We just need more damn guns, 433 million is not nearly enough.

Is Texas one of those states that make it easy to get guns? But impossible to get an abortion?

Hmmm…. If modern medicine could figure out a gun based abortion I bet they’d go for it in parts of the country…. Just sayin’.

Well, they could just shoot the pregnant woman and justify it by saying she should have not gotten pregnant in the first place.... Think that would work?

If they figured a way so that it was the men who get pregnant - abortion would be legal everywhere right away.

If it were only old white men getting shot, they'd outlaw guns LOL

Clinics would be as common as Starbucks. One on every corner. Hell, the lobbies would probably have a Starbucks and a Subway.

j/c:

Our children are victims in mass murders in our schools. Teen suicides are way up. And the Left makes juvenile jokes about guns and abortion.

Classy!

Thought I'd correct it for you,,,,

Read the last 9 posts before mine. Hell, you contributed to it.

Assault rifle ban shutdown in Colorado. I guess the left isn't serious about gun control after all.

jc


For those that think banning guns will make this all go away.

Teen accused of fatal rock throwing took picture of victim’s car ‘as a memento,’

I don't agree with your take. All over the country the left is fighting for some kinda of gun control.. The left does indeed care about it..

It's the right that gets a lot of funding from the NRA that doesn't. They don't have the balls to stand up and say enough

And the left gets all sorts of money from Bloomberg and his organizations. Heck Everytown wrote SB1 here. The "sponsor" didn't even know half of what was in it but he certainly thought it made sense and would stop "gun violence" .

You don't agree w/my take? You guys were the ones making adolescent jokes regarding guns and abortions in a thread about mass murderers. It's like a game to you. Mass murders and suicide are nothing to joke about.

And from another perspective, some don't have the brains to understand that people are the problem.

Daman my friend. It's a people problem. Not a gun problem.

There has been broad agreement that this is a people problem, but if guns were not part of the problem we'd see similar pattern around the rest of the civilized/industrialized nations on the planet. We do not - even when allowing for the USA to be "more divided" according to some metrics - the differential between mass shootings here versus the ROTW is disproportional by a factor of more than 200. Ignoring that doesn't help move the discussion forward. Just like focusing on Guns alone doesn't help move the discussion forward.

What's interesting or telling is that once we had some agreement that people are a significant part of the problem and the discussion moved to what to try to do to make a difference, the conversation dried up.

As for the fake outrage over humor - well, least said the better.

Actually what you are calling jokes are accurate. The fact you don't wish to admit it is a you problem.

Stop it? First off I'm not for banning guns and nothing will ever "stop murder". But in over 8 out of 10 murders in Americas guns are used. Providing weapons that make it so easy to kill is certainly a huge contributing factor.

What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

Here comes the trump brigade with false narratives about gun control again. Pffft.

We have the second amendment, and we have guns. I get it.

But mass shootings are first and foremost about time. How many rounds can it fire and how quickly can the magazine be changed.

We know the examples, with Las Vegas being on of the most obvious. Bump stocks there are well.

At some point, that self defense rationalization becomes an offensive threat.

Mass shootings are not about suicide prevention, or self defense. They are about the indiscriminate shooting of people in a timely manner.