How much longer until mass shootings make us hermits?

Post Reply New Topic

This is not some crazy, off the wall correlation though, like incidence of cereal eating and cat ownership. It's a correlation between a mind altering drug and minds that have apparently been altered in very serious negative ways. People should be much more worried than they are about this.

Have to agree with the idea of this stuff being monitored .. And more research be made available . It certainly is not a panacea to be abused . Am quite sure that all of its dangers or qualities or detrimental possible effects need to be
Published and made available. But neither am I a supporter of alcohol abuse . Especial given the side effects of a solvent on brain tissue. ( alcohol) . If not used with responsibility.
No crazy correlations meant to be implied either.

Funny, Canada and other countries have similar or higher consumption and more progressive policies on drugs and yet, don't have the same issue with mass shootings.

Marijuana is not always a "feel-good" drug.

It can make one paranoid; I've seen this with my own eyes.

The main issue, to me, is the combination of the availability of guns, plus the lack of availability of mental health services.

We have to stop getting political about the "Second Amendment." I don't believe the Founding Fathers would have wanted everybody to have the right to have multi-magazine assault weapons, had they been available then.

The Senate might pass a sort of watered-down version of the House bill on reducing guns on the street.

There are a lot of angry people out there and if they have guns, shootings are going to happen. Things like this have been happening since the beginning of time.

Law enforcement stronger enforcement of new and current laws regarding fire arm possession amongst irresponsible people.

Think long time responsible gun owners are most likely never wanting to use them against humans

The link is an intermediate one between drugs and mental illness and then from mental illness to violence. There are many variables that might affect how that violence is expressed - including more timely intervention or better mental health services provision, Walrus' social contagion and indeed the availability of guns (though there are arguments to think that might not be the primary factor).

Come off it. Biden’s recent immigration plan would offer a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants (sorry, I mean “undocumented immigrants”) in the US. The “conservative” Ronald Reagan did something similar, granting amnesty to the 3 million illegal immigrants in the US during his period in office.

Are we really supposed to believe it was too difficult for the US (a country that can carry out targeted assassinations overseas) to prevent 11 million people illegally entering the US over recent years or to find them and remove them after they got in? Of course not. The US could control its borders, but the political will isn’t there. You just have to look at the way the most powerful US politicians gush about immigration and diversity to see that.

Then there is the whole refugee resettlement industry in the US as documented by Ann Corcoran from Refugee Resettlement Watch, among other people.

Let’s face it, there will probably never be a country on earth whose borders are wide open enough for your liking.



No, most shooters in the US are not motivated by any explicit political ideals. I am not talking about the political ideals that shooters might imagine they are fighting for, I’m talking about the effect that the surrounding American culture has had on them, and that culture is a left-liberal one.



Me too in as far as I think Americans concerned about their personal safety should focus more on the potential for falling victim to single shootings, stabbings, beatings, rapes and muggings. But the abnormally high number of mass shootings in the US should be a concern for any American who cares about the state of their society.



You can dress up your political beliefs with nice-sounding buzzwords like “tolerance” if you like, but modern liberalism is really about the tolerance of degeneracy, the rebellion against social standards (mostly by people who can’t live up to them), and the dissolving of the various natural bonds that give meaning to people’s lives. In addition to the effects of liberalism in America, and in addition to the natural conflict that so often arises in multiracial societies, you have leftist activists who are constantly looking for new groups they can stir up with resentment towards the mainstream majority, whether it is feminists or the ever-growing list of sexual minorities.

According to stats about 13% of US adults are on antidepressants, and about 25% of them have mental disorders. Now I know that, because of the nature of this forum, most posters won’t want to admit it, but these are not normal numbers. An honest assessment would be that most of these people have nothing innately wrong with them; instead it is the surrounding society that is making them sick.

The BLM riots were an indication of this, for anyone with eyes to see. You had thousands of resentment-filled BLM and antifa criminals committing assaults, robberies, arson and other property damage against innocent people, all under the cover of a supposed social justice movement. And then you had liberals so lacking in any sense of identity or meaning in their lives that all they could do in response was engage in bizarre, quasi-religious self-flagellation rituals.



As far as I can see, the changes in the US murder rate (see here) provide more support for my political positions than for yours.

Firstly, the US murder rate (see statistica.com here) significantly increased in the years following the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It roughly doubled between 1960 and 1980.

Secondly, the US murder rate only started to decrease in the 1980s. This was about the same time that the US started to ramp up the War on Drugs, and the US prison population started to rapidly increase (a rare instance of a “right wing” trend, for better or worse, pushing back against the general left-liberal movement of US society since the end of the World War 2)

Thirdly, the US murder rate increased by about 30% between 2019 and 2020. This coincided with the BLM riots, during and after which the police were hamstrung and certain segments of the US population realised they had a fair chance of getting away with various forms of violence.

Fourthly, even in 2019, the murder rate for “first world” USA was still higher than the murder rate for supposed third world countries like Liberia, Mozambqiue, Pakistan and Kenya (see Wikipedia here).

As to my main point, to be honest I don’t expect you to understand. You seem to be one of these people who spends all his time reading about politics but who’s never bothered to try and understand human beings, or basic common sense.

That’s a lotta insight in the above post , but I did find it to be a good worthwhile read …^^^^^^

I agree, an interesting line of thought.



A point often missed in discussions about murder rates is how much emergency medical services have improved over the 20th century. Many, many incidences today of GBH, assault with a deadly weapon etc. would have resulted in the death of the victim only a few decades ago and added to the murder statistics.

Murders organized by law enforcement and bad health care do not make the totals . Because then it would mess with the results . Of what they , the media wish to demonstrate .

'Black-gun' culture is wrong. It's time for responsible gun owners to call it out
Phil Boas, Arizona Republic
Tue, June 21, 2022 at 4:28 PM·6 min read
https://www.yahoo.com/news/black-gun-cu ... 25917.html

"
... Through the years I’ve known many gun owners like him, people who respect firearms and treat them as a tool, albeit one that if misused can do serious harm. I’ve known farmers and police officers and hunters and outdoorsmen within the family and beyond whom I trust implicitly with these weapons.

They make me feel good about the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. They are not the gun problem in America. They are the soul of this country, and I think we need them now more than ever.
"
...

"
Of all the ocean of words that spilled out across the internet since a young man with guns killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, one essay among the thousands stands out to me as a breakthrough – an idea that moves us beyond the ocean of words that spilled out after Columbine, Newtown, Las Vegas, Orlando, El Paso, Buffalo.

The writer is David French, a constitutional attorney and religious conservative, who often annoys me with his never-ending critique of the right. There’s no denying American conservativism deserves the regular lashing it gets from a principled conservative like French. American conservatism has grown every bit as decadent as the rest of the country and needs a street cop to set it straight.

French picked up the nightstick.

I just wish he would apply a little more of that nightstick to the left in this country. They’re decadent, too, and unrelenting in their efforts to control their fellow countrymen and trample free expression.

Be that as it will, I respect French and admire his thinking, and was intrigued with the lament he wrote post-Uvalde about the country’s gun culture and how it has grown corrupt.

French sadly acknowledged he could no longer write the same column he wrote four years ago for The Atlantic defending America’s gun culture.

His newer essay published on June 5 on Substack is headlined “Against gun idolatry” and argues that responsible gun culture, such as I saw in my Uncle Ralph, is “under threat”:

“I’m not talking about the threat of gun control. Few cultural and political movements are more successful and politically dominant than America’s gun rights movement.

“... No, the threat to America’s gun culture comes from the gun rights movement itself. The threat is gun idolatry, a form of gun fetish that’s fundamentally aggressive, grotesquely irresponsible, and potentially destabilizing to American democracy. And it’s become so prevalent that I would not – I could not – write the same piece for The Atlantic again.”

French described the “tactical” or “black-gun” lifestyle that has become ever present at gun shows and shops, in which “civilians intentionally equip themselves in gear designed for the ‘daily gunfight.’ It’s a form of elaborate special forces cosplay, except the weapons (and sometimes the body armor) are very real.’ ”
"
...

"
Responsible gun owners must reject gun idolatry

There is no cure-all for the gun problem in America. It’s well understood by now that the gun problem is many problems that require many different solutions.

One problem we can begin working on today is the worship of weapons that has become too prominent in our society. We need to go back and imbue gun ownership with a seriousness worthy of gun rights.

Guns are an important tool fundamental to our self-protection, but with that comes responsibility and a sober understanding that guns aren’t playthings. They are extremely dangerous tools that should never be casually displayed in a fun or threatening manner. We don’t have a Second Amendment so we can entertain ourselves.

We need responsible gun owners of all political stripes to call out and stigmatize those who irresponsibly use these weapons. Call out the campaign ads and the gun ads and the movies that glorify guns; call out the manufacturers who build rifles to look like a John Rambo's rapid-fire mega-weapon.

Will it stop rampage shootings? No. But it will put firearms back in their proper place as a tool that requires respect, utmost caution and a little bit of humility.
"

2 killed , several wounded at Oslo gay bar....he used a ww2 machine gun , those are rare , not common like AG3

You should always carry a loaded water pistol in your pocket.

They are a much merrier way to go about you day to day business.

People will almost always find an excuse to go outside, so I don't think this is a necessary worry.

Would a supersoaker be considered too far?