Timothy McVeigh killed 15 children with no gun at all. |
I really wish people wouldn't refer to these monsters by their names. They should be nameless and faceless and forgotten as much as possible. We should remember the victims and learn the lessons we need to learn to prevent future tragedies of the same kind, not glorifying the murderers. Enough with their names already. |
I haven't tracked the marital status of most shooters' parents but I do know that both of the Columbine ahooters had parents who were still married, as did Kip Kinkle (the shooter in the '98 Springfield, OR school shooting) & Andrew Golden (one of the two kids who shot up their middle school, killing several people, in Jonesboro, AR in '98). |
That's some tap dancing. When the Oklahoma federal building was bombed, I don't remember hearing anybody say, "Oh well, what can you do? It's a mental health issue. Can't stop the crazy!" Nobody, but nobody, is saying that gun regulations will stop all killing. Or even all gun violence. But it will reduce gun violence. And that's what we're talking about here -- gun violence. If you want to talk about bombings, start your own thread. |
FP. Again and again you and other people are making a correlation and assuming it is causal. The prevalence of guns in correlational, not causal. I hope you are not a teacher when you are posting repeatedly the same mistakes of fact. It shouldn't be that hard to understand that other countries have different societies (history, value systems, social systems, etc). In this case, attesting that the gun ownership, or lack thereof, of some random person in another country is an indicator of whether or not that country will have mass violence is akin to saying that we all need to eat pasta because that's how they do it in Italy and they have a lower incidence of heart disease (remember that one from 10-20 years ago?). The causal relationship is mental illness. Unfortunately, here in the US we ignore and don't treat mental illness. In fact, just look at your post. You take great pains to avoid addressing the issue of mental illness of the young man. In your post you are completely focused on an inanimate object that requires some sort of human or mechanical intervention in order to operate. Again, I am not a gun owner nor am I a gun advocate but I do have to say that if we as a society had treated this young man's mental illness then likely this tragedy would have been averted. It is very clear from the early reports that this shooter in Florida had significant mental health issues. He should have been in treatment, possibly hospitalized and most certainly on medication yet he was not. This young man was failed by us as a society, by law enforcement that did not act on tips, by his family and by his community. None of the people around him pushed for help for him when he was incapable of recognizing his own illness. And because of those systemic and societal failures, 17 people died. This is a tragedy that could have and should have been averted by the timely actions of the young man's family, community and law enforcement. I refuse to strike when the strike is focused on the wrong problem. I will not support a walk-out either. |
No, it's causal. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html If you don't want to strike, then don't strike. If you don't want to support a walk-out, then don't support a walk-out. |
Why are you so insistent on addressing the symptom but not the root problem? |
Based on the information I was able to find, it appears that at least half (maybe more) of the perpetrators of the 10 or so most deadly school shootings had parents who were still married. So, sorry first PP, you're going to need to find something else besides divorce & having kids out of wedlock to divert the blame for this epidemic away from our ridiculously lax gun laws. |
Why are you so insistent on talking about anything except guns? This thread is about guns. Let's talk about guns. |
Oh, dear. Reading comprehension is a problem for you. Did you make it all the way down to the end of the article or did you stop midway? Just wondering but based on your posts I already know the answer ... sigh. |
No matter how you & other NRA brainwashed shills try to spin it, this country's unwillingness to elect officials who will enact common sense gun laws IS the root of the problem. |
Here's the end of the article: The United States is one of only three countries, along with Mexico and Guatemala, that begin with the opposite assumption: that people have an inherent right to own guns. The main reason American regulation of gun ownership is so weak may be the fact that the trade-offs are simply given a different weight in the United States than they are anywhere else. After Britain had a mass shooting in 1987, the country instituted strict gun control laws. So did Australia after a 1996 shooting. But the United States has repeatedly faced the same calculus and determined that relatively unregulated gun ownership is worth the cost to society. That choice, more than any statistic or regulation, is what most sets the United States apart. “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.” This doesn't say that it's not guns. This says that it's guns, but we in the US don't want to do anything about it. It's time to change that. |
And you made my point. That's it, I'm off. Enjoy your discussion of guns. |
Not to mention the fact that divorce & having children out of wedlock is quite common in many other industrialized nations, as well, yet none of them have regular mass shootings or as high a rate of not just gun homicides but homicides period (do you think this might be bc the quickest & most likely to be lethal way to try to kill someone is to use a gun & bc the easist industrialized country to get a gun in is the US?). |
The only "point" you made clear is that idiots such as yourself have been so brainwashed by NRA propaganda that you refuse to see or accept what is obvious to many of your fellow Americans & to the entire rest of the industrialized world. |