Changing the Debate on Guns

a reply to: crazyewok

The thread is not about gun control

Ya, the op spent half the thread telling us that.

I think the problem started with people treating their kids as friends. Lack of parenting is the bigger issue in my opinion.

We have created a society of people who DEMAND that you agree with them, or you're a hater and will be dealt with.

I don't know how to fix that.

originally posted by: jaws1975
a reply to: crazyewok

The thread is not about gun control

Ya, the op spent half the thread telling us that.

So why bring it up?

Guns are only the how, not the why of the problem.

a reply to: crazyewok

Guns are only the how, not the why in the problem.

That basically sums up this whole thread!

There's a lot of talking to be done but a lot of people, from both sides, drop their standard dogmatic line and then walk away.

Most people ought to have guns if they want them.
Some people should not.

We need to stop listening to the people that say we can't have a conversation about this because all regulation is infringement (it's not).

We need to stop listening to the people that say we need to outlaw guns all together (we don't).

Then there's things we can do as a society that don't involve legislating gun ownership at all that can help lower the number of gun related deaths per year.

Poverty, I would wager is the largest common denominator. It's why so many people turn to drugs, to crime.

Ending the drug war... decriminalizing drugs would end the need for armed smuggling, dealing, turf protection etc.

Addressing the failure of our mental health system as well as our society in general, our society is in bad shape, we hate each other.

a reply to: crazyewok

Because this happens every day across the country in inner-city's, and the op wants to focus on when a white male does it every few months. It's a dishonest premise, but let's talk about these isolated shootings because the news outlets shove it down our throats.

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

I don't think mental illness is the problem I think its more of a social problem that there are many young men who feel so isolated and disillusioned that they commit these horrible and evil crimes.

I think if we just dismiss it as a mental health problem we are not fixing it, we need to look deeper and find it why they feel the way they do and what can be done with parents, teachers, the police and their peers to highlight people at risk of this and to help them before they do these horrible things.

I

Political correctness has abandoned these young men.

My daughter is a teacher who had a student who was as described mentally in your OP.
One day he snapped and ran around the room wildly endangering others.
My daughter cornered him behind her desk while awaiting assistance.
The young man had decided to jump over the desk and would land on another student.
My daughter put her hands on his shoulders to stop him as help arrived.
He slugged her in the eye.
What happened? My daughter must go to a three day class on how to properly restrain a student and pay a sub for those days. The student, one day suspension.

The teachers can not be to blame,
they have their hands tied by
political correctness and not being
allowed to even save another student
from harm if it involves actually
touching the offending student.

The teachers and even the parents long ago
saw that the student needed help,
but the bureaucracy has their hands tied
and the political correctness of handling
him with such kid gloves -
that the parents are unable to get him
the help he so desperately needs.
In the meantime it is mandated he attend
school and be mainstreamed so the other
children can experience diversity in the
classroom.

I can only go on my own observations & experiences here in the UK, but I think its probably a similar situation in the US maybe worldwide I don't know.

Parenting has changed. Social skills are declining fast. Actual physical interaction between children/teenagers and young adults is becoming a rarity. Most interaction is now online. Kids count total strangers as "friends". Actual friends that they go out with and interact with are taking 2nd place to online friends. Children and teens are often closeted in their rooms with a pc or laptop often existing in a virtual world of gaming or online chat facebook twitter etc. They have little to do with the actual family "unit" anymore, often eating in their rooms isolated from the family.

Parenting isn't the same anymore. When you have kids having kids, by the time their child is around 5-6yrs old, the mothers are realising "hey I want to go out and party" they start to realise that they have missed their teenage years or further education or whatever. They start passing the kid to granny to look after, or sister or aunty....the child can often be brought up more by a family member than the actual mother. More often than not there is no father around, or regular change of various boyfriends. The child grows up with no real role models, constant disruptions in care coupled with an inability to get close to a father as the "fathers" keep changing. In the past mealtimes were a time when everyone sat down at a table and ate together. There were discussions and chats. Now it seems most will either eat in separate rooms or eat on their knees in front of the tv. Little actual conversation or interaction which seems to lead to social awkwardness and an inability to interact properly in social situations. Online these kids or young adults too seem fine chatty witty and fun...take them offline...sullen unable to communicate and bored easily. I have to agree with what people say often which is "Why don't kids play out anymore"? That's down to parenting too dont' let them sit in a room 24/7 its like a prison sentence with perks!

Parents are too eager to play the blame game, blame teachers, blame Governments, blame Welfare blame anyone but themselves for how their children turn out

Personally, I refused to let my children have computers in their rooms, all pcs (we had 4 lol was like a call centre!) were downstairs, not only so I could keep an eye on what was going on, but also so I could be involved, kept up to date with new apps or games so we had things to talk about and also so no-one was isolated.Even now my 32yr old son has his computer desk next to mine. We chat exchange info watch films together. It maybe online as it were, but we interact

originally posted by: jaws1975
a reply to: crazyewok

Because this happens every day across the country in inner-city's, and the op wants to focus on when a white male does it every few months. It's a dishonest premise, but let's talk about these isolated shootings because the news outlets shove it down our throats.

Mass shootings are not normal.

The rest of the world do not experience such things on such a regular basis.

A healthy society would want to investigate trends that are not normal.

Inner city crime on the other hand happens everywhere. Uk has its fare share of inner city gang bangers so does every other western major city with any substantial population.

You all do realize the shooter was raised in the UK?

So which society do you blame?

Remember he was raised in a totally gun free society.

He attacked a gun free zone, knowing that even
the "guards" did not carry guns, as in the UK.

So your talk of blaming society, does it rest with
who influenced most of his life?

I think this is a pertinent and overlooked
thing to look at in this discussion.


Or does it rest with where he only spent a tiny
percentage of his life?

a reply to: grandmakdw

If we are to allocate blame I'd say society generally as per my above post and parents

originally posted by: PhyllidaDavenport
a reply to: grandmakdw

If we are to allocate blame I'd say society generally as per my above post and parents

But which society?

The US culture and the UK culture, while they share a common language
are quite different in many ways. They are not the same culture at all.

The UK culture is gun phobic
and US culture is gun friendly
The UK culture values structure and class
The US culture values classlessness (in so many ways, not just social strata)

These are not the same culture or society at all.

So when you say culture in general, you can not lump
the two countries together as one culture.
As anyone who has been to both countries for any
amount of time can attest.

a reply to: grandmakdw

Then clearly both cultures are to blame. However, I can say with some certaintly that the online isolation is present in both cultures and THAT I blame for most problems

there is no why. Reasonable, logical people are always looking for an explanation to crazy behavior. There isnt one, at least one thay will be very satisfactory.

However.....on the angle of disenfranchised young men, a very good podcast interview on the Joe Rogan podcast with Milo Yiannapoulis discussed this very thing at length. He argues that the decades long assault on traditional masculinity has left many young men without a sense of identity and feeling they dont belong anywhere. Some good points raised.

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

You can not blame both societies as they are
way too different in their approaches to raising
children and their ideas about guns and violence.

However,
As for parenting, you are correct.
Even the American Pediatric Society agrees with you on screen time.

Parents allow too much non-interaction
and encourage too much non-interaction
by allowing unlimited TV, videos games, internet, phones etc.

For children under 12 they should
not be allowed more than 2 hours per day total
of all combined screen time if they are to grow up into healthy socially adept adults.

For everyone over 12, more than 3-4 hours per day
of TV, internet fun, games, social and fun activities on the phone
(outside work/school tasks in other words)
is extremely detrimental to mental health and to ones ability to socially interact.

That said, why is a 32 year old sitting next to his mother at home
on the computer? Shouldn't he be in his own place or married or
with a lover of any sex rather than sitting by Mom?
That is the kind of red flag that everyone is talking about.

a reply to: crazyewok

Shooting anybody is not normal, but if I am to stay on topic I would say there are a lot of disenfranchised pissed off suicidal white males out there. They know that they they will be talked about internationally for weeks if not months, and even the president will talk about you.

Maybe there will be less of these shootings as we are finally figuring out how to not promote these people by plastering their name and face everywhere. Ideally the media would barely talk about it at all, and I would bet that number would drop even further.

a reply to: grandmakdw

haha He's taken over as my carer as my daughter has gone to University. He studies part time and we both play online together when he's at home. I don't own a tv so we watch things together on the pc

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

When society makes everybody the same vanilla flavor instead of letting boys be boys, this is the result.
You can't take the human out of human.

originally posted by: grandmakdw

You all do realize the shooter was raised in the UK?

So which society do you blame?

Remember he was raised in a totally gun free society.

He attacked a gun free zone, knowing that even
the "guards" did not carry guns, as in the UK.

So your talk of blaming society, does it rest with
who influenced most of his life?

I think this is a pertinent and overlooked
thing to look at in this discussion.


Or does it rest with where he only spent a tiny
percentage of his life?

But he lived in a country where guns are easy to get hold of. I would suggest he wouldn't have walked into a college in the U.K and start randomly shooting students as guns are not part of our culture.

Sure you can get hold of a gun in the U.K if you know the right people, but obviously it would be obtained illegally and I doubt he would go to the lengths of obtaining one in this way. Of course I cannot categorically state this would be the case, as I do not know what circles he associated with, but I believe it wouldn't happen here.

Or maybe mk ultra works better on white males.