Elephants and Jackasses...

I think every time there's a school shooting between now and the election, JD Vance has to wear just a bit more eyeliner, to show he's sad.

School shootings only happen here with this level of frequency, magically everywhere else on Earth has figured out how to prevent them.

That's the hypocrisy. Someone hiding behind glass, yet aspiring to the highest levels of power refusing to acknowledge this is a solvable problem. A fucking marine who is somehow more protected from bullets than our children.

If you're going to suggest we all collectively accept that our kids could get shot at any minute in school, then you, as a leader, need to accept the same risk as an elementary school student.

 

Dead kids don't have a side.

Parents of dead and traumatized kids seem to be picking one, though. The survivors all seem to have a similar perspective. The folks like Vance who have no skin in the game nor relevant perspective don't make as compelling an argument. "You were a Marine when you had to deal with people shooting at your friends. I was a 3rd-grader."

I'm looking at Uvalde and thinking more security in schools isn't a solution.

Also, the more security in schools is kind of terrifying. I've been through a few iterations of active shooter training, and it's either laughably futile or gruesomely bleak. The idea that we're forcing kids to be in a more secure environment because the most common solution worldwide just can't be applied rubs me the wrong way. It certainly sends the wrong message about this as a "solution", especially since most places I'm familiar with have cops in schools, and it hasn't stemmed the tide. My niece's school has a lot of security presence, and when I asked "why", the threat of school shootings and divorced parent kidnappings were the most commonly cited responses. My niece isn't ignorant of these threats, and as she's gotten older, she's well aware of how flimsy the security is.

I'm not saying gun control is a painless or issue-free solution. But eventually, the pile of children's corpses is going to overwhelm the gubernatorial stacked deck. You'll start to see some single-issue candidates (like the Hogg kid that survived Sandy Hook) gain a lot more traction, especially as shit related to the shootings plays out in courts. The shooting itself is in and out of the news cycle pretty quickly, but the court cases don't, and that keeps the attention focused on "why isn't there a solution to this yet?"

 

Yeah, because they want to turn the schools into prisons.

I hate to be one of "those guys," but I gotta:

They're both going after the symptoms, and not the cause.

WHY are these young people shooting up schools?!

I don't buy the gun argument, because the guns were always there. Semi-automatic rifles have been available longer than any person on this board has been alive.
They aren't some magical new invention, like AI or cryptocurrency.

What is pushing these young people to think that killing a bunch of people in spectacular fashion is the answer to their problems?

I want to hear what you smart people have to say about it.

Because fortifying schools will just be a waste of money (unless you're one of those "As long as it saves one life..." types), and banning guns is an absolute nonstarter, because they aren't going to stop with "assault" rifles.

 

bingo

Wish there was an easy answer. I would start with a lack of mental health resources, wage gap/class issues, and the media pushing this stuff out every time it happens -- yes it's news and we need to address it, but also talking about it leads to copycats (ie they didn't know it was a thing until they heard it was a thing)

 

Trump's sentencing for his conviction in New York has been pushed back to November 26.

Judge really setting the precedent that being the side that threatens to kill a judge's family gets you better outcomes than being the side that doesn't.

 

Or they just don’t want to be seen as election interference on appeals. I firmly disagree with it, but also I understand it.

 

A real judge would have written down the sentence and put it in a sealed envelope.

And said "Ya'll can find out if this convicted felon is going to jail after the election."

I assume all judges need to say "Ya'll" like the judge does in My Cousin Vinny

 

With regards to the school shootings, there was another one in Joppastowne, Maryland as well as 3 year old shooting himself in the face. This country is LITERALLY the only developed country in the world where this happens...and CONSTANTLY. While I 100% agree that there are factors about mental health, wage/class gap, and MANY other social issues at play, guns and the trivially easy access to them are the #1 factor in all of these events and the "Big gov is comin fer yor guns" fear mongering is part of the problem blocking ANYTHING from getting down since they also block just about every attempt to look into any of these issues.

 

Hey 'Nerds, you know what's funny?

You and I, the guys regarded as the dumbest idiots on The Idiot Board, are the only ones who wanted to address the fact that there might be some other problem than guns or school safety.

What do we know, right? You and I are FUCKING IDIOTS, after all. I'm an idiot who can never own a gun again because (checks notes): I was speeding after having too many beers.
You're an idiot who (checks notes): accidentally discharged a firearm in his own house! (But you can still own a gun.)

None of the smart people had anything to say refuting this.

I'm sure that banning guns and fortifying schools is a winning strategy that will never backfire.

EDIT:

Doomrider7 responded before I did. Still didn't give a reasonable answer.
"There are lots of guns, and they are easy to get."

IT WAS ALWAYS LIKE THAT.
Why are the kids/ people doing that now?

 

I'll take a crack.

You were banned from owning guns because you lack the ability to make good decisions in relation to society as a whole, just like a child.
The reason kids are now thinking it's a good idea to kill people because they haven't been taught, mostly by their parents, how to make good decisions in relation to society.
This is an unfixable problem as the core reasons are a complete shift in how society operates and unless there is a giant shift to something different, this problem will continue in perpetuity.

One of the easy ways to combat this problem, HEAVILY restricting access to firearms/ammunition/etc. I know you think this is a non-starter, but making things difficult, takes care of about 90% of the problem. We as a society have decided it's literally easier to order food from somewhere and pay excess fees to have it delivered to our door, wasting money, than it is to just cook a meal. WE ARE LAZY AS FUCK. If you put up barrier after barrier after barrier, you solve most of the problems. It's really that easy.
To relate this to you, how many people 30 years ago used to work on their cars regularly instead of taking it to a shop? How many people work on their cars now? Easy design, parts widely available, no computer controls, houses available to work on a car, turned into, super complicated designs, parts not readily available, mostly computer controlled, a new generation having nowhere to stick a car to work on it. In almost every school shooting, the common thread is EASY access to a gun. Plug that hole and in a generation I can almost guarantee the problem goes away.

 

I will give a hot take: the majority has always been white men, and we have always dictated what violence is acceptable. For the first time in history of our country, the status of white men is uncertain and threatened, there are signs of decline that are systemic and the reaction is violence.

These boys may just know how fucked they are, and decide that the line for socially acceptable violence is where they, the slighted and aggrieved, draw it. "If John Wick can murder the population of St. Louis over his dead dog, then I can shoot the 5 assholes at school who keep calling me a faggot." is 14 year old logic when there's no recourse, no intervention, easy access to guns, a culture that doesn't exactly glorify peaceful, non-violent examples of masculinity, and adults who can't seem to engage until it's too late ("they'll respect me when I've killed someone, but not before").

The LGBT angle is also kind of....well, simple. The political climate leads to erosion of LGBT rights and protections, including tacit permission to harass, bully, assault, etc. That puts these folks at higher risk of violence. NO AMERICAN IS GOING TO TOLERATE VICTIMHOOD WHEN VIOLENCE IS AN OPTION. The same shit with the African American communities in the 1980's and 1990's (and to this fucking day, sadly): if the legal system offers no protection or recourse, and it steadily declines, I will handle my shit myself. If society makes it ok to victimize me, I will make society a victim. It's just that simple.

I often wonder about the suicidality of these shooters, and I assume it's damned near 100%. If that's true, then logically, people who are higher risk of suicide/self harm are then higher risk of becoming shooters. The LGBT youth are astronomically at higher risk of suicide and self harm. I would bet in places like Georgia, the lack of an open and accepting LGBT community puts kids at risk of isolation, furthering that spiral. The recent backlash and laws around LGBT folks as groomers, pedos, etc. means that the LGBT community is reluctant to engage with minors, and that's REALLY problematic for kids trying to figure their shit out at a turbulent age. It's one of the reasons drag queens went to read to kids in the first place. So, you have this combination of legal and social shit storm that makes community members withdraw, AND stigmatizes a kid, who doesn't fully understand what's happening anyway. The end result is an anti-social ("fuck me, no fuck you!"), isolated, kid at real risk of self harm who has a perceived axe to grind.

Guns were always there, sure. Columbine was 1998, so...almost 25 years ago. The Texas tower shooting happened in 1961, although that wasn't perpetrated by a minor. I don't think this is new by any sense. Shootings have been around as long as there were guns. Shootings perpetrated by children at schools are not new, they are old enough to fucking vote, and some of them are literally older than my parents. The only thing that might have made them a bit more frequent is the internet, where you can find every detail about a shooters existence, including most of the words they have written across their entire life. The same can't be said for the pre-Columbine shooters. Also, the permanent nature of the internet means that even when these shooters are out of the news, you can still find out things about them.

 

I want to point out that Hunter Biden got the same treatment.

I'm not saying that to to be a conservative smart-ass that wants to see the "Biden crime family go down". It's rules being applied differently to people in power, from both sides. Deja Taylor didn't have to wait this long for her sentencing for nearly identical crimes.

 

it's the Texas stereotype man, and honestly I'd rather play into it for the jokes than get all butt hurt about the opinion of some strangers on the internet who don't have or even care about my bona fides. My ego can take the hit, I come here for the entertainment anyway.

Regarding school shootings, I would never buy another gun again if banning guns stopped them. It won't though. A hammer is just as deadly and a lot easier to conceal. If we don't address the underlying societal issues (and, again, media issues) at play that lead to these, then we're going to continue to see them happening again and again and again.

Unfortunately, in the process of addressing these issues, it's going to lead to a lot of uncomfortable conversations, and I don't think people are ready for that. Do they wanna address that their parenting is bad and potentially dangerous? Do we want to discuss that people are overworked, spending less time at home and thus leaving children with their underdeveloped brains more time to themselves to consume media that hasn't been properly vetted? Do we really wanna go after youtube and their algorithms, and do we wanna spend the financial resources going after all these people? Will that interfere with 1A stuff, and do we wanna address that?

No other country has the school shooting problem because no other country has the social and constitutional problems that we do. Sure, we can take away the guns and let that bandaid work until the bleeding starts somewhere else. Or we can address what causes one to bleed in the first place.

 

To add onto this, I listen to a true crime podcast hosted by a journalist/psychologist couple, and they talked about mass shootings. The psychologist brought up studies that have basically shown a common theme:

being bullied/ostracized —>
depression —>
decision to enact self-harm —>
nothing to lose decision to avenge bullying

And what do you hear most about these shooters? They were weird, they weren’t popular, they kept to themselves, and a lot of times they were bullied.
Even after Parkland when the kids were being criticized about known bullying, I remember the one victim who wasn’t David Hogg - the one with the shaved head - said basically “well you don’t understand - he was really fucking weird!”
I had a classmate in high school who was weird. We treated him like absolute shit. When my brother died, he wrote a note of condolence saying his brother had died young and he knew it was hard. I ignored him because…he was weird and I didn’t want people thinking we were friends. I regret it and hope he’s okay. I’m gonna teach my son that you don’t have to be close friends with everyone - but be kind and don’t treat them like the unclean.

I’m not offering this as some quick fix, or like a “kindness wins everything” Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad. But helping kids learn to show empathy during formative years should be a goal. And I’m not saying the victims are to blame for the shooter’s actions because they maybe called him weird.

I’m just saying mental health should be addressed, and not in a “what makes them want to kill these people” way, but more of a “what makes them depressed enough to harm themselves or others” angle.

 

Parents do a lousy job. In addition to not restricting access to gun, parents give 16 year olds brand new sports cars for their birthday. I don't think they've properly learned to handle that weapon at 16. Over 115 people die, every day, from fatal car accidents in the U.S. There is no conversation about getting rid of cars. But, we have driver's licenses and teach safe driving in school. Over 20 teenagers die every week from drug overdose. How's the war on drugs going? Parents are happy that little Johnny is locked in his bedroom, but at least he's staying out of trouble, meanwhile playing a first person shooter game for hours on end. I wonder where the shoot 'em up revenge ideas come from.

I don't know if you can stop school shootings, but to make progress the conversation has to be civil, it will have to come from both sides of the political aisle, and it will take efforts from parents, politicians, doctors, educators, and others. I liked that the school in Georgia had installed the panic button system that teachers could press, and they say that limit the tragedy. Let's get our smart tech wiz people on more systems like that.

 

Oh I 100% fucking agree with this shit to the outmost max and think it's fucking great your taking steps with your son. The problem is what both what Rush-O-Matic and downndirty said that a lot of parents do shit jobs at the whole parenting thing and soceity as well at making mental health a serious topic of discussion. All of this ultimately still does tie into the gun issue and ease of availability since Japan has similar(if not worse) mental health issues for a developed country, but don't have the school shooter issues due to their stricter gun laws.

Make no mistake, I'm with you about the mental health and empathy thing, but that's something that will take YEARS to not just study with certain groups(let's be honest that it'll be everyone on the right) getting in the fucking way. Guns amd easy accessibility are something we KNOW is a major problem we can do something about MUCH more quickly to staunch the literal bleeding while taking care of the long term mental and social issues.