But Seriously...

Totally legit. They're scared, and they want something done.

But why are they scared? Why are schools in London, Ontario, protesting? Are they scared of being shot?

Is there REALLY such a big chance of them getting shot in a school shooting?
Why aren't they more afraid of being killed by a drunk driver?
Or overdosing on drugs?

 

Fair enough. 10,000 monkeys kind of thing, for sure. But, having been a kid, and knowing kids, the signal:noise will be hugely biased towards the illegitimate.

I think they are the raw embers that are being fanned into flames.

Once again, I think it's the combination of social media and the 24 hour news cycle, and the race to the bottom for sensationalist coverage.

 

So?

Seriously... why does that matter? 17 out of how many?

An average of 51 people die each year because of lightning strikes. Where's the outrage over poor lightning containment?
An average of 1,000 people die each month due to drunk driving. Where's the outrage and protests over that?
200 kids per year die because of food allergies. Where's the outrage and protests over that?

But sure... tell me again how 17 kids is an epidemic worthy of this reaction...

 

I went to Saunders... nobody was afraid of shootings, or violence other than school bullying.

No guns, maybe a knife or two, but only for show.

One teacher had a hammer embedded in his skull by a "special" student, but that was a huge outlier... it's not like they banned hammers in shop class after that.

The only people that I see that are afraid are the parents. There is such pressure by parents to walk their kids to school, drive them, pick them up, do anything but let them go by themselves, it's fucking nuts. An old neighbour of mine was being shit on by fellow parents because she dared to let her 3 kids walk the 1.5 blocks in a private area in Westmount, to their school. A formal letter admonishing her for such disregard of her children's well being was sent to her. Nothing illegal, just judgement due to fear mongering fucking idiots who watch too much news about 17 people being shot up in a school somewhere they've never been.

 

I've been thinking about this.

You don't have a gun problem, you have a violence problem.

Canada has more guns per person than you do, and nowhere near the violence.

Access to guns is not the real issue, it's just an easy thing to point to and blame. Guns are the last step in the chain of events, and are an easy release for someone to lash out with. I do think that the US needs to do more with their gun laws and at least try and have meaningful restrictions for gun ownership, but that in and of itself will not fix the problem.

Getting rid of guns won't solve your problem... because then people will turn to something else that is at hand to lash out... like a car. Or they'll build a bomb. Or something else. Never mind the fact that you have so many guns that even if you really wanted to get rid of them, you couldn't. Bad people will always get their hands on them. That's just a fact.

So what's causing it?

I think it's a whole bunch of small, seemingly insignificant things that all add up to cause people to snap.

• too much overly-sensationalized news, such as the latest school shooting, that is just front and centre for days on end, dumbed down into simple talking points that stupid people can latch on to, removing all rational and nuanced opportunities for discussion
  
• over-saturation of violence from the real world... again, news reports of deaths, violence, bombings, war in the Middle East, guns, more bombings, gory car crashes from places you've never heard of, train derailments, helicopter crashes, buses off cliffs, sinking ships, poisoned spies, and on and on. Every news feed that I've seen that is available is just full of the latest tragedy that has happened somewhere. It's trying to draw you in with sensational, ABNORMAL events, that have become so heavily reported that they are skewed insanely out of proportion to the real world. And then, after an hour of doom and gloom you get, "and now here's a 10 second viral video of a cute cat" to be the cherry on top of the shit sundae.
• a fucked up education system... zero tolerance, inadequate budgets, and the gamification of funding, have all led to a very dehumanized education experience. As much as individual teachers may well give a shit and treat little Johnny as a special person who will make it somewhere, the system as a whole is rigged against him. Something happens and he's involved in a situation, and "zero tolerance" rules put in place to cover the school's ass leads to an incredibly fucked up scenario for very impressionable kids. The contradiction between what they are being told on one hand is moral and ethical behaviour and the actions they are subjected to as a result of zero tolerance are not something that a young, immature mind can properly deal with. Combine that with fucking terrible food and other "revenue before kids" business endeavours, and school becomes something you try and survive, not something that you thrive in, or that prepares you for future life. And then you have schools doing everything they can to get funding based on bullshit metrics and testing criteria, and they quickly learn how to "game the system" to their maximum benefit... and again, funding trumps the individual kid.
  
• social media and technology... Phones are everywhere. Video cameras are everywhere. Social media is everywhere. It used to be if you fucked up you only had to worry about one of your friends hearing about it, and now if you fuck up and do normal stupid kid stuff, a million assholes on the internet can be talking shit about you, and it never goes away. And everyone at school now knows you as that kid who did something stupid, and they all pile on... because kids are assholes who are trying to fit in and socialize, and the path of least resistance for such acceptance is joining the group and picking on the weakest in the herd. All fun and games, until you're the one being picked on. Hell, we do that shit around here, and we're supposed to be grown-ass adults. People are not meant to handle that kind of stress, never mind school kids. I just read a story about a 12 year old kid who committed suicide due to that kind of shit. 12 years old! And we give too much of a shit what other people think online... and online pulls us in, and cocoons us from the real world, where it is hard. You get strong by doing hard shit... and by making it easier and easier to be introverted and remove yourself from social interaction, you don't grow, and you become warped, maybe even damaged as a result. I've been saying this for a while now, but Facebook is not healthy... at least not the way most kids are using it. I think we'll come to realize that in a few years, and things will adjust back to something less immersive, but until then, online communities are no replacement for real social interaction.
• bullshit politics are everywhere... it has been going down the drain for years now. No longer can people discuss issues or debate rationally, it's all a big screaming match that immediately denigrates into name calling and finger pointing. Us vs Them. Dems vs Republicans. It's all THEIR fault! People are getting sucked into it, and people are becoming less nice as a result. All of this is made so much easier thanks to online anonymity... there are no natural balancing or moderating forces, it's just pure vitriol. There's a reason a ton of sites have a "no politics" rule... because people can't seem to keep themselves civil. Even around here it's a struggle a lot of times. Never mind the trolls and bullshit like InfoWars that is only made possible thanks to the easy and immediate low-cost access afforded by cheap technology.
• failure of the family unit... I think more and more families are devolving into roommate scenarios rather than healthy family lifestyles. People are too busy, and there's too much other stuff for them to do, rather than spend time together, especially when young, and learning ethical and moral behaviour. Single parent families where one or the other parent is no longer in the picture. A seeming decrease in just doing the right thing, or teaching kids to do the right thing... "not my fault". Parents setting the wrong example for their kids, and their kids learning from and adopting that behaviour.
• economic stress... work is emotionally harder these days, and you're getting less money for it (by and large). And it never stops. It used to be you checked in at 8, ended at 5, and you were done. These days, smart phones, emails, and the Internet mean you don't really get to unplug from work, unless you are one of the very few people who have learned how to do just that. Long term jobs are going by the wayside... the constant need to "improve the bottom line" thanks to an MBA or technology means that you don't have a guaranteed job for life, implied or otherwise. You're now lucky if you keep a job for 3-5 years in most cases. And then what? As you get older, it's harder and harder to find that next job. And what about savings? Do you have enough for retirement? Most people don't have enough to live on for a year, never mind a proper retirement. That stress is savage, and affects you in ways you may not realize. Even if you're a kid who's going to school and not working yet, you may be exposed to a lot of that just by being around your parents. Stress propagates.

I think if you add up even some things from that partial list, being a kid is fucking hard these days. Never mind when you get some normal school drama or other life issues piled on top of it. You feel angry, like you need to lash out, but nobody has taught you how to deal with that shit in an effective manner, so instead, "you'll show them.", and THEN you reach for that gun.

So yeah, the gun, it seems to me, is the effect, not the cause.

Someone really needs to start looking into the cause, but instead they're waving their political dicks around at the effect.

 

Politics, education, and economic stress (student loans and medical coverage) are far more extreme in the US than they are in Canada, I'd say. Same goes for your news coverage. In Canada we get all of your politics and MSM, and our Canadian stuff is tame by comparison. Your news is very, very slanted towards political party, ours, not so much. So much of your news coverage is "THE SKY IS FALLING!" and wild supposition.

As to the source of the gun numbers, I was wrong... I was looking at some skewed numbers that only took into account the Yukon, not all of Canada vs all of the US. You're ranked first, we're ranked 10, with about 1/3 the number, as a whole.

 

Not only that, many people called and said, "hey, there's a guy on a balcony who's going to jump", and nobody did anything.

I'm not saying that the US doesn't need better gun control... I'm just saying that shitty or non-existent gun control is near the end of the chain of events. Best to get shit sorted out earlier, before the need to fuck up a bunch of kids hits you.

I believe there's some weird disconnect when it comes to mental health and gun control... there should be restrictions. The problem is that most "crazy" people can fill out the forms in such a way that they pass any kind of automated filter. Here in Canada, the 8-10 true/false questions you have to answer are so fucking extreme, it's not funny. "Do you hear voices... do you want to hurt yourself or others... are you a felon... etc". If you answer "yes" to any of them, you fail. That's it.

There needs to be personal input into such a system... from a family member, health worker, friend, co-worker, etc, that has to trigger a "pending until further review" process.

In the case of Cruz, this happened... many, many times... it's just nothing happened because of it.

 

I’ve never known why the government hasn’t just created a free online nics portal for private sellers who want to run a potential buyers if they wanted. Having used armslist a few times you see people all the time that take similar precautions with bill of sales or only selling to licensed ccw holders.

Since sorely missed left leaning peeps still seem to lurk this thread I have to ask. What makes you treat guns wildly different as far as level of laws and restrictions wanted over xyz issue that on their face should create equal if not more ire? I was told yesterday by a friend that it’s a false narrative to point this out because any other given issues have rules and regulations being tested and advanced all the time, he implied this is not so for guns. I pointed out that is just as disingenuous of him to say that as owning and possessing guns come with thousands of federal, state, and local laws that govern all sorts of safety issues. Off the top of my head I can think of a dozen I have to follow simply taking a gun to my grandpas farm to hunt deer. Any number of which have very stiff penalties. Hell the comically evil NRA supported gun removal protection orders after sandy Hook and just came out again in favor of them a few days ago.

I just don’t get the ever growing rabid anti gun hate. It seems it just comes down to people simply not having interests in guns and their only real interaction with them is seeing the media’s negative portrayals of them. If all you’ve ever experienced was nightly news about horrific massacres I guess I can see it?

Why does something like say alcohol not rile people to the same level? You have MADD that focuses on an section of bad behavior but that’s about it. Since drinking is much more acceptable in our culture the huge negative impacts, magnitudes more than guns, are all but ignored compared to what gun control people push for. It’s simply not fair and highly hypocritical to not see similar outrage and equally harsh regulations pushed for it because soccer mom isn’t giving up her glasses of wine. You don’t see a National push for hard liquor bans , you don’t NEED assault liquor more than 40 proof to get drunk. You don’t see alcohol free zones pushed on campuses. So on and so on.

Some issues on alcohol ignored by this passivity on the issue:

It’s roles in mental health issues
It’s role in domestic violence and violence towards women
It’s role as the number one date rape drug
Health care costs
Teenage binge drinking and it’s role in mental health issues and development.
Staggering dui related deaths regardless of harsh laws.

 

It was only a matter of time. Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes charged with fraud. How did none of the VCs/investors that gave her money do any due diligence whatsoever around the feasibility of her claims? Was she too busy cosplaying as the female Steve Jobs to realize that it was a huge ruse? Jesus, idiots all around.

 

This still doesn’t excuse anyone for virtually ignoring the modern issues we have with alcohol yet scream to the hilt about guns. I’m generally curious to the disconnect.

Also another blanket ban that was a colossal failure no one seems to remember when they wanted a assault weapons ban.

 

Well, by the SEC at least. They cant bring criminal charges against her, but they can severely limit what she can do in public companies and force her to relinquish her shares. The Justice Department has a continuing investigation against her, so I wouldn't be surprised if she's eventually charged by them. It was just a whole lot of bullshit and her presenting lofty goals as accomplishments, combined with VCs hunger for a female CEO.

 

Interestingly enough it was because they outright lied on their SEC filings about having delivered a ton of services to the military, when they hadn't.

I don't get why they would lie so outright in such an easily detected manner... it makes no sense.

"claimed that Theranos’ products were deployed by the U.S. Department of Defense on the battlefield in Afghanistan and on medevac helicopters and that the company would generate more than $100 million in revenue in 2014. In truth, Theranos’ technology was never deployed by the U.S. Department of Defense and generated a little more than $100,000 in revenue from operations in 2014."


“The charges against Theranos, Holmes, and Balwani make clear that there is no exemption from the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws simply because a company is non-public, development-stage, or the subject of exuberant media attention.”​

Normally, a company would make "forward looking statements" on their filings in order to get away with any kind of spin they wanted to do... but this was just an outright lie, that is easily caught out.

Can't say that I'm not happy to see her get busted... something was always fucked about her gig.

 

Sure it does. The huge lofty promises and "fake it 'til you make it" mantra of Silicon Valley usually works, except when it comes to healthcare and applications for the military. There are a ton of security and regulatory forces at work that quickly snuff out bullshit because you're playing with people's lives and wellbeing. Its a little different than when its just some bullshit app to waste time on. The red flags were there early on. They refused to have their devices and results independently peer-reviewed by other medical professionals. Boom.