You’re assuming 30-50 years ago we were all rational and sane. People have always been fucked up. That is an indisputable fact. Whats happened during this time is that guns have from gone tools for hunting, use by the military and occasionally target shooting to a fetish that has resulted in there being more guns in the US than ever before, perhaps more than the number of people. https://www.thetrace.org/2023/03/guns-america-data-atf-total/ What conservatives disengenously ignore is that people will always be fucked up, but if you put guns in their hands you are giving them the means to kill on a grand scale. Which we are now seeing on an almost daily basis.
I won’t argue that people were fucked up and insane decades ago, although I’d argue there’s a societal change that people are MORE fucked up now than they were then. Additionally, the way we treat mental health and the mentally ill has declined since then as well. I’m not saying there aren’t improvements to be made in our country’s gun policy. I just think that at the same time this country and its society needs to take a long hard look at itself as a whole.
Your country does not have strict gun ownership. The restrictions are not tight. This has not improved. My country could write yours a clinic on strict gun laws, and they still aren’t strict enough here. I guess you guys could play the long game: wait until eventually everyone has had a loved one killed by a gun, and by then people will be given a reason to care. Because that’s the only thing that changes a person’s mind. “I have now seen that guns are bad in the form of my son’s brains being painted on a school trophy case.”
30 years ago anyone could walk into a gun shop, say "I want that one", fork over the payment, and walk out the door with a shiny new weapon in a matter of minutes. I once bought a used .357 and as they were filling out the paperwork the clerk realized the serial number had been filed off, they shrugged and sold me the gun anyways. That would not happen now. Now, when I guy a new gun, I have to show ID, submit to a background check, and come back a week later to claim my purchase.
I'm usually in and out within 30 minutes. Because I have a CCL, the process is expedited. It takes me longer to type the info into the computer than it does for the background check to return. No waiting period in Texas. Point being, laws vary state to state. That's one of the many, many problems. Imo the solution to gun violence should begin with greater investment in, and access to, mental health services. But I would also love to see mandatory training hours for continued gun ownership -- if teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc. have to maintain training hours, why shouldn't gun owners? I get the "muh freedums!!!" argument. I really do. I love guns. But I also think there is a point where the "muh freedums!!!" argument also runs up against my freedom to live without a rational fear of being shot wherever I go.
I feel like the two biggest changes in gun law over the last 30 years were the expiration of the assault weapons ban, and District of Columbia v. Heller, both of which were in the loosening direction.
Also, a smaller percentage of the country owns guns. There is the criminal based mass shootings, IE gangland shootings that make up the vast majority of mass shootings. There are so many layers of issues addressing that it is almost completely ignored. Leaves us with the mass murder for the sake of mass murder shootings, which is what you are getting at. Semi automatic rifles with detachable magazines have been around for decades prior to the assault weapons ban. Not as ubiquitous but far far from being hard to obtain. So why is it that ~18-35 year old men seem to be choosing this route more than they did 20 years ago? Id make the argument the rise of the internet, social media and the shift to online mass media in the past 20 years, are contributing the most to the decline in mental health in younger people and normalizing it as an option with instantaneous sharing of the footage is why we see it on the rise. Social Media's effect on teenage mental illness and suicide is prevalent across cultures and countries. Isolating and radicalizing. There are a lot of cesspits online that breed this type of thought process. Just the general negativity of social media like twitter, doom scrolling, trolling, adds to the decreasing empathy and unease in our society.
So 7 people were killed in Brownsville when a car intentionally drove into a crowd waiting for the bus, and conservatives are all over Twitter asking if we have to ban cars now. And my answer to that is nooooo, don't ban cars. Don't build human-scale cities with good public transit. Don't restore urban tree cover and reduce the heat island effect. Don't build cities with cleaner air and tighter community bonds. Don't increase childhood independence by allowing them to walk and ride bicycles away from the home, and visit nearby shops and parks. Nooooooo.
So when are the people who keep saying mass shootings are mental health issues are gonna actually fund mental health facilities? Maybe people might actually stop taking the lives of kids trying to just live. And most importantly, the gun fetishizing can continue. Oh wait, Reagan defunded mental health and you can't ever go against the Godking Reagan, can you? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980
you almost made the point that mass shootings are essentially ritualized suicide, which ties a nice bow on your opinion I otherwise completely agree with. There's a bunch of finger pointing, no one clear solution, yada yada yada -- we can all agree on that. But to what you said that social media (as well as just the media writ large) is encouraging these things, as well as being the starting point for the VAST majority of mass killer's descent into that mindset which ultimately leads them to, literally, pull the trigger.... social media also provides them with a way of being immortalized. Instead of just "johnny hung himself today rip," every year they can have all of social media around the world talk about "today was X years from the day that johnny shot up YZ." They've already decided they're gonna die. With the internet, suicidal individuals of a certain mindset can now make one last point -- whether people listen to them or not -- and be remembered by society at large as well. Is the answer as simple as "stop talking about it and it'll go away"? Fuck no. But it would be one hell of a start.
Thats a wildly, obviously because of the poster, misrepresentation of the situation. Id expect nothing less from ya' pal. Deinstitutionalization started under JFK, weakened by the ACLU in the 70s through lawsuits that you couldnt medicate or institutionalize people against their will, and public support eroded by Hollywood with films like One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. There were many other contributing factors but you can't ever rise outside of the cheap political jab? Have anything other than superfluous twitter drive bys?
What was left of mental health system was gutted by Reagan in the 80s. You know, I’m not sure how old many of you are but I’m getting tired of refuting arguments by people who were either not alive/aware for events over the last 50 years.
What am I supposed to say to people who are apparently against people living if it means a mild inconvenience when it comes to buying a tool whose primary purpose is to kill something? You tell me. I'm sick and tired of living in a world where the default response from the people in government who can actually do something about it is that it isn't guns that are the issue. Well, what's the common denominator of all these mass shootings? It isn't race, gender, creed, or socioeconomic status. It was the fact that a gun was easily accessible to someone who wanted to hurt as many people as possible. The problem with gun owners is that they don't seem to realize or if they do, don't give a shit about the fact that non gun owners are usually the ones that pay for the irresponsibility of gun owners. The only time a gun owner gives a shit about what a non gun owner thinks is when we'd like gun owners to take some responsibility and pass some responsible gun control laws. But gun owners would rather unironically squawk about "muh rights", while forgetting that us non gun owners have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of not getting shot while we're getting a fucking cookie at Mrs. Fields.
Speaking of mental healthcare, Senator Wyden has been pushing on doing something about ghost networks recently. Ghost networks are basically lists of providers maintained by health insurance companies, and provided to patients looking for healthcare, that are essentially mirages. The providers on the list are either no longer practicing, aren't taking new patients, or just straight up don't accept the insurer's insurance. It can make finding a provider incredibly difficult (which the insurance company doesn't mind because if you don't get treated, they don't have to pay anyone).
Mental health treatment has been consistently whittled away since the 60s. It’s still heavily stigmatized, and I think from the general public’s perspective, it’s harder to wrap their heads around since it’s not as simple as: Disease >> Medicine >> Better And if the public did that it would be fraud. So much shit slips through the cracks I wonder how much providers are even aware of it.
For those of us who don't have living memories of the 1930s. Our nation's pitiful history on mental health is much older than that but modern psychiatry didnt really kick off until the early to mid 20th century. Blaming Ronald "RaYgUN" Reagan exclusively is disingenuous at best and willful ignorance at worst. Be honest. Token laws like universal background checks and an assault weapons ban would do fuck, and all, to actually reduce a thing. With tens of millions of assault rifles and hundreds of millions of pistols, rifles, and shotguns floating around the only thing that could realistically lower the numbers in a meaningful way would be a mass confiscation (call it a buy back call it whatever you want). This by the numbers solution is so unpopular it borders on fantasy.
I mean, I hate that we have to rehash this discussion every time one of these shootings happens, but I think what annoys me so much about the general discourse on these shootings(not on TiB) is that people just say stuff they think should be done without any thought about implementation. The mental health shit is always a noble cause and needs attention, but tying it to gun sales and whatnot opens the door for absolutely egregious HIPAA violations and further stigmatization. No one ever goes a step further and and explains which conditions disqualify gun ownership and how a gun seller or law enforcement agency gains access to that info about you. I think longer waiting periods that involve checking for not just convictions but other accusations of domestic violence and other abusive/violent behavior would shave off some numbers of the really bad mass shootings. It always comes out later that these people were either known by various law enforcement agencies or had previous complaints. Pumping the brakes on their ability to buy a gun to do a little more leg work would hurt absolutely no one.
Don't you worry! Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, the government has authority to snoop into your medical records! Question for @Jimmy James: if someone waved a magic wand, and all of the guns were gone, what if mass killings still occurred, just through other means? We just saw how 8 people were killed in Brownsville (puro pinche 956 a la verga!) by a motorist. What if there is an uptick in vehicular mass killings? Or bombings? Or poisonings? The people doing these things are obviously very angry about SOMETHING, so why don't we try to get to the bottom of that? If they are hell-bent on hurting others, they will find a way to do it.
The idea that a "good guy with a gun" will stop mass shootings is probably the most fallacious of arguments. The latest TX shooting had an officer already there on unrelated business and look at the body count. Hell, even in combat zone where everyone's armed and ostensibly with a heightened state of alert it doesn't stop an attack. Nine Americans Killed by Afghan Pilot I have zero faith that a random armed bystander has had and continues to attend on a regular basis quality training and practice. Responding to & returning accurate, aimed fire under duress is a highly perishable skill. Plinking paper at the range or cans in the back field a couple times a year doesn't cut it. I don't think it's unreasonable, nor outside the "well regulated" part of the 2A to group weapons into different classes and then require an initial qualification certification as well as periodic refresher training. Fuck, the military requires it, why shouldn't civilians? You want to own an AR-15? Fine, attend a series of classes. For those that think this is a roundabout way to registration; nobody said you had to buy an AR-15/AK-47, etc., in order to attend the course or own one afterward. All it is is a certification. While we're at it, part of the course is a psych profile and the instructors are mandatory reporters. For those that think this is a way to limit ownership to only those with money, well, the NRA can provide the training for discounts or for free to those they feel are income disadvantaged. Besides, I don't see many bitching about the cost of purchasing a weapon in the first place...which invalidates that argument. As shitty as the current NRA is, they do run some very comprehensive and quality training classes already. As far as I'm concerned, the government can set the course objectives to keep if from turning into a wink wink nudge nudge course, and the NRA or their competitors can offer classes.