Another spate of "Get The Guns!" threads...

We all know that another mass shooting has occurred in Florida this time. Yes, it seems to happen quite often. And yes, it has to stop. This is where sensibility typically leaves the room without looking back, never to return. That has to change if we are ever to solve this problem.

Every time there is a mass shooting of some kind, mass being more than one now, there is a spate of calls to ban 'this' gun or 'that' gun or guns in general. It is as though none of these people have ever heard of Chicago. For those who apparently know little of this little mid-western gem, it has some of the toughest gun laws in the county and also has one of the highest rates of death involving guns in the country. To anyone looking with honest eyes it is obvious that not only did legislation fail to solve the problem but since the legislation the problem has gotten much worse, especially compared to other large cities who did not pass similar legislation.

No solution was found amidst the banging of gavels enacting stricter more stringent legislation. So what do we do now? Well, if you are a democrat the answer is simple: keep doing the same thing and hope it works this time. Sorry, but I have had enough of that stupidity.

This problem will never be solved if it can't be identified. Therein is part of the problem. This is not a single source problem. It is multi-faceted. We will have to address each contributing factor in order to solve this disgusting trend. Lets take a look at a few of these facets and see what is being done to resolve them.

First, a story from my teenage years. I had a friend named Mike. Mike was a big guy, tough, and enjoyed a good fight now and then. He was, by most standards, an a$$hole. He picked on people and even took their lunch money. One day someone told Mike that if he really thought he was that tough he should go downtown and mouth off to some of the punks down there. Well Mike did exactly that. The news said my friend was killed by a street gang. Mike had been beaten to death with baseball bats or similar instruments. He never stood a chance. That same weekend, another teen was killed. He had been shot. The news said he was killed by a gun. Not a gang, or a person. A gun. The focus was now on the tool used, not the person who did it.

After Mike died, no one said it was baseballs fault. No one sued Louisville slugger. No one said Ernie Banks was a bad roll model. Everyone agreed it was a gang that killed Mike not a piece of wood. But that other teen was treated entirely different. He was not killed by a person. He was killed by a gun. The person who did it was hardly mentioned in the story, treated like an afterthought. And that is part of the problem.

1. You can't blame the tools used for the action of criminals. Tools will always be there. You need to address the criminals.

IMHO the biggest facet is the complete and total lack of respect for human life and dignity. Never before has the willingness to inflict injury or death upon the innocent been so rampant. Guns have been around for a long long time. This indignant disregard for humanity is relatively new. I was a teenager of the 70's. We had our issues. We weren't perfect and we knew it. But the idea of killing someone, or a group of people, to make a statement was just not part of who we were. We had our share of trouble makers. There were a few guys in high school that pretty much everyone knew would end up in prison or dead. We were right. If you hung out with those guys you were on the short road. I had a few run-ins with one of them who just decided one day he didn't like me. I went to my car after school and he and a few friends were there waiting for me. When I drove away one of them was just getting up, the rest were still on the ground. (I have two older brothers: a Green Beret and a professional Karate instructor. My whole childhood was training for that moment) Except for a few minor incidents it pretty much ended there. Even the lowest IQ can understand a good a$$ whoopin'. And that brings me to my point.

The last 25 years or so has brought us the mass killing by angry youths or empathy stinted adults. Looking at the youth aspect, what has changed in the last 25 years? In my eyes one of the most glaring changes is the idea that every child is a winner just for participating and all the entitlement garbage that goes along with that viewpoint. All that "We don't believe in spanking, he is just expressing himself" crap. You know what? The real world is a tough place. People are mean. Work sucks. Life isn't always fair. You don't get a participation trophy along with a paycheck at the end of the week just for showing up. You don't get to get in someone's face and scream like an idiot without getting your teeth knocked out. Your good intentions are not going to pay your bills at the end of the month. If you haven't been taught how to deal with these realities as a child you are going to be one screwed up adult - if you make it that far.

So we fast-forward to the teenage years. These coddled little brats now have raging hormones, access to everything, and no sense of civic duty, respect, or dignity. Their sense of self-worth, their self esteem, was in those damned participation trophies that stopped coming one day with no notice or warning. So they act out the way they always have only this time they get teased and laughed at instead of coddled and placated with shiny toys. Their world is broken. They aren't being treated with the respect and dignity they grew up believing was automatically bestowed upon their person just for being there. Cracks start to form in the foundation. It has begun.

2. If you raise a generation of children who were never punished for acting out and believe they deserve everything they want, you have raised a generation of a$$holes who will be very angry when they realize life doesn't work that way.

About this time you are probably thinking these are very small catalysts trying to explain very large behavioral problems. You are right. It is bigger than just these things. But together they start to become a powerful force.

Misdirected efforts. Resources to combat these problems and find solutions are limited. Every time those resources are misdirected the solution to the problem gets further and further away. The Chicago effect. Something bad happens. The knee-jerk reaction: lets make guns more illegal than they already are. Nothing accomplished but wasting time and resources. When someone commits a crime using a firearm on average between 10 and 15 laws are broken, most of them felonies. Murder, Unlawful Use of a Weapon, discharging a weapon within city limits, illegally owned or concealed weapons, etc, etc, etc. Murder is illegal 15 different ways and we are powerless to stop it. Please explain why if it were illegal 16 ways things would be different. But don't forget, when it was illegal 3 ways we thought 4 would solve the problem...and so on.

3. If your solution hasn't worked for the last 50 years its time to try a new solution.

Continued...

I wonder, how does our country solve disputes and disagreements? Do we respect other countries and their sovereignty? Do we resort to violence when we don't get our way? Do we simply kill people because we view them as the enemy or terrorists?

Do we hold life and the freedom of life to the highest regards?

Then why are we so surprised when the citizens simply adopt the style and methods of our government?

Continued...

Liberalism. This is going to flip a few switches to the Rant position but that's too bad. You will just be proving my point.

Liberalism is often defined as favorable to progress or advancement. In order to be liberal today, you must advocate further advancement than previous liberals did. If you are not advocating change or advancement, you are not liberal. Today's liberal has to push that boundary, that envelope, or lose the title liberal. The behavior continues to become more and more extreme. The nature of liberalism is based on out doing the previous version. You have to be more over the top or you fail in your primary obligation to advance the agenda.

On the surface you may think this has nothing to do with violence but it does. This same thought process, the automatic escalation of actions, is mirrored in the behaviors of these troubled youths. Now understand, it is not my contention that all of these shooters are liberals or democrats. My point is that it is the same necessity to out do the previous that draws the comparison. I am not saying political affiliation is to blame. If one person brings one gun to school and shoots one person to show how desperate they are in their life then the next will have to shoot two people to demonstrate how they are even more desperate and so on. This is a never ending cycle, like liberalism, that feeds on itself and does not limit its response but rather sets a new high score to be beaten by the next player.

4. Sometimes change is not necessary or good. You don't have to constantly out do the previous generation. This inevitably leads to extremism, which is never a good thing.

We need a solution to this problem and we need it now. But we will never find it if we constantly rehash the same old whipping post answers that have failed repeatedly in the past. We need to address the child rearing process and parenting in general. We need to hold parents accountable for the actions of minors in their care. We need to tell the village to mind its own business and put the responsibility back in the hands of parents. We need to make it ok for parents to discipline children who misbehave. It is not fair to the child to reward or ignore unacceptable behavior until the day they become an adult then imprison them for it.

This is a problem that will be solved at home. One child at a time.

3. If your solution hasn't worked for the last 50 years its time to try a new solution.

But it's so much easier to go after guns and whittle away at the 2nd Amendment till you get to the point where people are armed with black-powder muzzle loaders.

It's way too hard to accept the fact that Americans have had the right to keep and bear arms for a couple hundred years and it's only been the last 15 to 20 years that mass shootings have become common, and then to take a good hard look at the things that have changed in the last two decades ranging from psych meds and big pharma, to the 24/7 media cycle rushing from one hype-job to the next, to the government's willingness to use that "big stick" a lot more often, and so on and so forth.

Option #1 is way easier to get people worked up over, and way easier to attack than option #2.

Well said, but I disagree with this:

2. If you raise a generation of children who were never punished for acting out and believe they deserve everything they want, you have raised a generation of a$$holes who will be very angry when they realize life doesn't work that way.

As true as this statement is, it's not exclusive to Americans. But other civilized nations don't have mass shootings near the extent of America.

Then why are we so surprised when the citizens simply adopt the style and methods of our government?

Our chickens have come home to roost.

F*** your thread is way better than mine. Delete it now!

I say we start treating the first amendment like the second.

Maybe all the bull snip will stop.

Not betting on it though.

a reply to: Vroomfondel
how can somebody say mass shootings are common? They are actually quite uncommon when compared to just about every other crime in existence. I went to school in a Florida public high school, we had an armed resource officer. Where was this schools armed resource officer??

All schools should have an armed RO.

a reply to: Vroomfondel

If twenty (five and six year olds) being splattered in their classroom got nothin', why in the world would anyone expect this last shooting to change anything?

originally posted by: RomeByFire
Well said, but I disagree with this:

2. If you raise a generation of children who were never punished for acting out and believe they deserve everything they want, you have raised a generation of a$$holes who will be very angry when they realize life doesn't work that way.

As true as this statement is, it's not exclusive to Americans. But other civilized nations don't have mass shootings near the extent of America.

Then why are we so surprised when the citizens simply adopt the style and methods of our government?

Our chickens have come home to roost.

It is not exclusive to Americans, but, the cumulative effect of all these things is.

a reply to: neo96

Isn’t that the thought behind the Fairness Doctorine? Treat the First like the Second by regulation of Talk Radio?

originally posted by: MiddleInsite
If twenty (five and six year olds) being splattered in their classroom got nothin', why in the world would anyone expect this last shooting to change anything?

Oh, it won't change anything. Unless you were directly affected in some way, it's just another blip in the news cycle. Because of the higher number, this one has a little more weight to it than the last one -- Remember that one? No? -- but it will also soon be forgotten once we go back to focusing on race and gender issues or some hip-hop star's wardrobe.

Over 40,000 people died in automobile accidents in the US last year. Some things get people riled up, some don't.

originally posted by: Ahabstar
a reply to: neo96

Isn’t that the thought behind the Fairness Doctorine? Treat the First like the Second by regulation of Talk Radio?

I guess in a way yes.

he Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented.

en.wikipedia.org...

The basic gist then would be.

We can own firearms, only what they tell us we can, and certain people( the cops/the state) will have better ones than us.

The fairness doctrine applied to firearms.

a reply to: Vroomfondel

In my eyes one of the most glaring changes is the idea that every child is a winner just for participating and all the entitlement garbage that goes along with that viewpoint. All that "We don't believe in spanking, he is just expressing himself" crap. You know what? The real world is a tough place. People are mean. Work sucks. Life isn't always fair. You don't get a participation trophy along with a paycheck at the end of the week just for showing up.

This must be a talking point from some right-wing pundit or ten because it's the third time I've read it today, it makes absolutely no sense and it's clearly derived from the existing "participation trophy" meme.

This kid and his brother were adopted. Their adopted father died when they were young. The adoptive mother died a year ago. He apparently had a history of mental illness/behavioral disorders of some sort. He was reportedly expelled following a fight with another boy over a girl. It's probably not a coincidence that he did this on Valentine's Day.

Now it's being reported that he has some involvement with a white nationalist militia group.

But it's participation trophies?

I think what we're seeing is that conservatives are trying way too hard to have some way of blaming school shootings on something they've already been conditioned to blame everything involving children on. Other countries have done away with corporal punishment in schools. Do you think that they're raising kids much differently in Canada then we do here? The UK? Most Western nations?

Why haven't their "coddling" and participation trophy giving led to similar outcomes in those countries?

My personal theory is that there's something at work similar to suicide clusters or copycat murders. Remember when Natural Born Killers came out? I was in high school at the time and a 15 year-old kid from a neighboring town killed his parents. That murder was part of a small rash of copycat murders. In that case, it didn't take long for the hysteria to die down.

"School shooter" entered the American lexicon shortly after Columbine and with it, like a mental contagion, the archetype of the "school shooter." I think that in some ways, it's a phenomenon that feeds on the attention given to the incidents.

a reply to: Ahabstar

That's exactly the thought process behind it.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: Vroomfondel

I think that in some ways, it's a phenomenon that feeds on the attention given to the incidents.

That is an excellent observation.

Before Columbine, we had Jeremy



Not quite the same...but still pretty damned close. Suicide pact, and Pearl Jam saved us the added gore. I remember how that video just stood out.

a reply to: neo96

Bingo. We will arrange a meeting with Mary Beth Cahill to get you a seat in the House. About time we get some DINO’s in office for a change.

Guns, death, violence, crime, etc. etc. is never going away. Instead of being hyper-acceptive of peoples cultures and lifestyle choices, get busy accepting the fact that humans are inherently competitive, envious and fiercely judgemental. This leads to the uses of racism, bigotry, homophobia, blah, blah,blah...to deflect the fact that practically every "connected", technology worshipping "drone" is in complete denial!

The technology is EXTERNAL not INTERNAL!

Until, as a species, we come to terms with our lack of spiritual depth, this will continue.

That's the trade off folks...reap it.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Now it's being reported that he has some involvement with a white nationalist militia group.

Saw that reported I think on ABC, and about an hour later MSNBC said he had no affiliation with white nationalists.

By now you would think folks would know to wait for the rush to give the most outrageous report has died down before holding the early reports as gospel.

ETA:

My personal theory is that there's something at work similar to suicide clusters or copycat murders. Remember when Natural Born Killers came out? I was in high school at the time and a 15 year-old kid from a neighboring town killed his parents. That murder was part of a small rash of copycat murders. In that case, it didn't take long for the hysteria to die down.

I think your right when looking for some of the mental health aspects of whats wrong.

originally posted by: Irishhaf
By now you would think folks would know to wait for the rush to give the most outrageous report has died down before holding the early reports as gospel.

Tell that to the 9/11 Truthers!