Is the US doomed to have recording breaking mass shooting for the rest of our lives?!

[Hardkill]

I am getting very upset and very scared about these unusually high amount of mass shootings that have been happening over the past few years now in the US.

It seems like the Democrats in Congress will never have the votes to ban assault weapons and pass many other gun control laws like the kind that Canada and other first world countries have. Plus, the courts have always been stack too heavily in favor of the Republican Party and have been bribed by every extreme right-wing mega donor in the US, especially with the US Supreme Court.

A lot of times, I am not even sure if it okay to go to a night club or bar like in Vegas or go to any city or rural part of the country.

The last time a federal assault weapons ban was passed in America was in 1994 with the Clinton Crime Bill or Biden Crime Law.

Listen to what Michael Moore just recently said about how we have to stop this gun violence madness:

 

Edited May 13, 2023 by Hardkill

[Buck Edwards]

We need a mental health check. 

Until that is left unresolved, we'll keep suffering the same fate. 

There's a mental health epidemic. 

[Leo Gura]

Even if there were the votes for gun control, it would not solve the mass shooting problem.

You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube.

At this point we need better security.

Progressives need to get serious. You will not ban 400 million firearms. Yelling about gun bans does nothing. A gun ban is only effective if most of your population doesn't already own guns.

Edited May 14, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Raze]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sst1jQrKhqQ

[abundance]

24 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Even if there were the votes for gun control, it would not solve the mass shooting problem.

You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube.

At this point we need better security.

Progressives need to get serious. You will not ban 400 million firearms. Yelling about gun bans does nothing. A gun ban is only effective if most of your population doesn't own guns already.

Its a little ridiculous that you seem to put the onus on Progressives to get serious on the issue. The desire to have gun restrictions isn't just something progressives want. Most Americans across the political spectrum agree that we need stricter gun laws. Its absolute buffoonery that an 18 year old or someone mentally ill can purchase an AR 15. That needs to stop, regardless of how many people already own these weapons.

Yes, we need gun restrictions and perhaps a national gun buy back program. In addition we need to aggressively expand mental health care in this country. 

Edited May 14, 2023 by abundance

[Hardkill]

30 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Even if there were the votes for gun control, it would not solve the mass shooting problem.

You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube.

At this point we need better security.

Progressives need to get serious. You will not ban 400 million firearms. Yelling about gun bans does nothing. A gun ban is only effective if most of your population doesn't own guns already.

But isn't that like saying that "You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube" with economic regulations because once you give businesses such economic freedom you won't be able to take such freedom away from them?

Also, how come Clinton and Biden successfully passed the 1994 federal assault weapons ban? Also, why currently has Biden and other pragmatic centre-left Democrats like VP Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Booker, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, and many others like them have been strongly urging Congress and the rest of the US government to pass many gun control laws that take away assault weapons and possibly more?

Hell, even Joe Manchin, the most conservative Democratic congressman has wanted to ban assault weapons: 

 

Edited May 14, 2023 by Hardkill

[Hardkill]

46 minutes ago, Enlightement said:

We need a mental health check. 

Until that is left unresolved, we'll keep suffering the same fate. 

There's a mental health epidemic. 

Why does Canada and every other 1st world country not have anywhere near as much violence as the US does?

[Hardkill]

36 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

At this point we need better security.

I don't see how better security will work to dramatically reduce the amount of murders from mass shootings.

The military and law enforcement apparently have already tried, but have failed.

Btw, I remember when you said in your "When Does The Left Go Too Far?" series that you now see the point in the idea of bearing arms in order to protect yourself from a possibly intrusive government. With all due respect, I absolutely disagree with that point you made on that. Most people in Canada, western Europe, Australia, and Israel believe that such a notion is ridiculous, atomizes societies, and unnecessarily undermines the much needed trust in the infrastructure of our governments. 

This is what an article from the Israel Times said about their philosophy of gun ownership and the state:

“The United States is deeply heterogeneous, and deeply aware of its heterogeneity, and that fosters deep distrust generally,” explained Daniel Correa, who teaches law at the University of North Texas at Dallas.

“There is a triple fear that drives” the American gun debate, he said, and “every one of these fears is internal to the US, not external. Right-of-center people are afraid of the federal government becoming so powerful that states can’t retain their sovereignty. Among libertarians, there’s a fear that government generally, whether state or federal, will run amok unless citizens can protect themselves from it. The third level is the distrust people have toward each other in the United States.”

Those fears are not limited to conservatives, Correa said. “The Democratic base has the same type of fear, but tries to promote the idea that government is good, or at least capable of being good, so people don’t need to be armed the way governments are armed — you don’t need AR [assault rifles] or tanks, but only the bare minimum for personal defense, like a handgun.”

Since the state is the danger, American laws don’t just permit owning guns; they actually forbid the government from tracking those guns.

For example, the so-called “Dickey Amendment” passed by the US Congress in 1996 (PDF of the law, amendment appears on p. 245) ensures that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”

As columnist Charles Blow noted in The New York Times this week, that amendment denied the CDC millions of dollars over the past two decades for the study of the public health aspects of mass shootings and gun violence generally.

Tourists seen at a shooting range in Gush Etzion, in the West Bank, during a training session on fighting terror. April 8, 2015. (Gershon Elinson/FLASH90)

That was “disastrous,” Blow argued, because “we now propose policy prescriptions largely in an information vacuum.”

But isn’t that the point? Information is power, and the gun fight in America is really about where power resides in society, about statist impulses vs. individualistic ones — competing with each other to shape the ethos of American society.

The federal government is literally forbidden under law to track gun sales because knowing where the guns are would make it possible to take them away.

......

It doesn’t take much imagination to grasp how, in the aftermath of the Civil War, southerners might have come to see the right to bear arms as a kind of rallying cry in defense of their states and local cultures against the imposing Yankee-led federal juggernaut, or how many northerners and African Americans might have come to view gun ownership as a check on the efforts by those very states to rob individuals of their hard-won freedoms.

Israeli Jews, meanwhile, lie deep within the liberal Democratic camp when it comes to gun control. They believe the state can and should do good. Despite their deep social and political divides, Israeli Jews maintain a deep and abiding faith in their shared fate and communal solidarity. After the Jewish experience of the genocidal 20th century, the Israeli state represents for them an instrument of collective action that literally rescued them from oblivion. A powerful state is thus synonymous with both national security and personal safety."

https://www.timesofisrael.com/comparing-america-to-israel-on-gun-laws-is-dishonest-and-revealing/

Edited May 14, 2023 by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

14 minutes ago, abundance said:

Its a little ridiculous that you seem to put the onus on Progressives to get serious on the issue. The desire to have gun restrictions isn't just something progressives want. Most Americans across the political spectrum agree that we need stricter gun laws. Its absolute buffoonery that an 18 year old or someone mentally ill can purchase an AR 15. That needs to stop, regardless of how many people already own these weapons.

Yes, we need better regulations.

However, you are asking about when mass shootings will stop. They will not stop from those regulations.

Regulations will stop a few mass shootings, but not the majority.

So what are you gonna do then?

You cannot buy back all the handguns in the country.

Edited May 14, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Roy]

Mass shootings are a symptom of a deep cultural sickness and lack of hope, values and leadership in society generally.

Guns facilitate an easy and destructive way to express this sickness. If you take them away, the sickness will still find a way to express itself.

You have a society hooked on drugs, medication, alcohol, pornography, poison food, toxic work habits, etc. All deluded in a stew of social media and no general purpose or meaningful things to work towards for the common person.

It's no wonder people are going so crazy they are shooting each other.

[Hardkill]

10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, we need better regulations.

However, you are asking about when mass shootings will stop. They will not stop from those regulations.

Regulations will stop a few mass shootings, but not the majority.

So what are you gonna do then?

You cannot buy back all the handguns in the country.

Then what kind of security would stop mass shootings? 

What if we showed people very graphic images of disturbing massacres caused by gun violence? Why couldn't that appeal to the humanity of enough Americans to the point that it causes a nationwide movement to stop this madness like the way that Dr. King, Malcolm X, other civil rights leaders, and the graphic images shown on television of black people being brutally harm and killed during the 60s spurred the nationwide civil rights movement to push Congress to end all Jim Crow Laws once and for all?

[Hardkill]

9 minutes ago, Roy said:

Mass shootings are a symptom of a deep cultural sickness and lack of hope, values and leadership in society generally.

Guns facilitate an easy and destructive way to express this sickness. If you take them away, the sickness will still find a way to express itself.

You have a society hooked on drugs, medication, alcohol, pornography, poison food, toxic work habits, etc. All deluded in a stew of social media and no general purpose or meaningful things to work towards for the common person.

It's no wonder people are going so crazy they are shooting each other.

Well, they say that it's much less violence and murderous in Canada.

I am now getting more afraid of practicing cold approach or meeting new people in a big city like Vegas, LA, New York, Chicago, Austin, or Phoenix or even in any urban area in the US for that matter.

Edited May 14, 2023 by Hardkill

[Buck Edwards]

23 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Why does Canada and every other 1st world country not have anywhere near as much violence as the US does?

Canada is uniquely advantaged in that it does not have a mental health crisis on the same level as the US. Canada has a much smaller population and not an extreme political racial social divide. 

Also I don't think guns are ubiquitous in Canada. 

US has a systemic gun problem. Top it up with mental health issues, lack of social support and abuse of drugs, you'll get a gun  crisis. 

Grassroots solution - fix mental health, fix family system. 

Oh Yea I forgot that. Canada does not have an extremely high divorce rate with family dysfunction whereas family values in the US are in the dumpster. Family systems in Canada are conservative, at least in comparison to the US. 

So the grassroots solution - fix mental health, fix family system, better security and better regulation on safety checks, protocols, licenses are given without proper background verification, that won't work. Stringent verification. 

 

[Hardkill]

6 minutes ago, Enlightement said:

Canada is uniquely advantaged in that it does not have a mental health crisis on the same level as the US. Canada has a much smaller population and not an extreme political racial social divide. 

Also I don't think guns are ubiquitous in Canada. 

US has a systemic gun problem. Top it up with mental health issues, lack of social support and abuse of drugs, you'll get a gun  crisis. 

Grassroots solution - fix mental health, fix family system. 

Oh Yea I forgot that. Canada does not have an extremely high divorce rate with family dysfunction whereas family values in the US are in the dumpster. Family systems in Canada are conservative, at least in comparison to the US. 

So the grassroots solution - fix mental health, fix family system, better security and better regulation on safety checks, protocols, licenses are given without proper background verification, that won't work. Stringent verification. 

 

and why is all of Western Europe much less violent even its population size is close to that of the US?

Why does Canada, Europe, and Australia not have a mental health crisis and as much of an extreme political social divide?

[Buck Edwards]

6 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

and why is all of Western Europe much less violent even its population size is close to that of the US?

Why does Canada, Europe, and Australia not have a mental health crisis and as much of an extreme political social divide?

Europe and US are very different. Europe is a conglomerate of different countries and cultures. Europe is more homogeneous racially. Most people in Europe don't have guns. There's a fallout of the wild west culture in the US that has always lingered around. We don't see glorification of guns in Europe. If you take a single country from Europe, it's nowhere close to US in size. 

Canada, Europe and Australia don't have toxic social family  culture, they are way more conservative, with a relatively smaller distribution of guns. Historically America has always been glorifying guns. 

Mental health issues generally have a root in family, social structure, drug usage and food. All these have been perversely exploited by different industries for profit. For example, American food is known for junk, toxic chemical buildup, drugs are distributed irrationally. The rate of drug consumption itself is extremely high, you can look into opiate and cocaine and the recent fentanyl crisis. 

Homelessness is a big issue. Most Mass shooters come from low income groups. 

Crime is normalized to some extent. When you grow up in environments of crime, violence, drugs, and toxic food, it's easy to see how it all creates a volatile mix. 

[Tanz]

Hiring retired police officers and military vets to protect the schools would get mass support from left and right.  Doing this would help solve 2 problems because 10% of homeless people are vets that have no purpose in life after going back to civilian life.

The government just bailed out a bank in a heart beat yet they can't even create solutions to protect our children, its fucking disgraceful.  

[Hardkill]

13 minutes ago, Enlightement said:

Europe and US are very different. Europe is a conglomerate of different countries and cultures. Europe is more homogeneous racially. Most people in Europe don't have guns. There's a fallout of the wild west culture in the US that has always lingered around. We don't see glorification of guns in Europe. If you take a single country from Europe, it's nowhere close to US in size. 

Canada, Europe and Australia don't have toxic social family  culture, they are way more conservative, with a relatively smaller distribution of guns. Historically America has always been glorifying guns. 

Mental health issues generally have a root in family, social structure, drug usage and food. All these have been perversely exploited by different industries for profit. For example, American food is known for junk, toxic chemical buildup, drugs are distributed irrationally. The rate of drug consumption itself is extremely high, you can look into opiate and cocaine and the recent fentanyl crisis. 

Homelessness is a big issue. Most Mass shooters come from low income groups. 

Crime is normalized to some extent. When you grow up in environments of crime, violence, drugs, and toxic food, it's easy to see how it all creates a volatile mix. 

and why doesn't Canada, Europe and Australia have as much as of a toxic social family culture as America does? Why have they never glorified guns like America has? What about the fact that western Europe and Australia have an even worse drinking problem than the US?

[Buck Edwards]

1 minute ago, Hardkill said:

and why doesn't Canada, Europe and Australia have as much as of a toxic social family culture as America does? Why have they never glorified guns like America has? What about the fact that western Europe and Australia have an even worse drinking problem than the US?

I don't think most mass shooters had a drinking problem. I think an inverse correlation exists between guns and alcohol. People who get drunk do get violent but only short term resulting into club brawl fights. In fact drinking causes much less violence long term since it inhibits executive functions and most people who drink are scarcely able to handle themselves let alone carry out a shooting that needs measurable levels of alertness. With drinking, there can be a massive increase in drunk driving fatalities and domestic violence but not mass shootings. Drinking inhibits aggression. Most regular drinkers aren't known to commit serious crimes because they lack coordination and agility. 

Regarding the glorification of guns, this is a historical thing and every country has a history that has uniquely shaped itself into existence. There is one crucial difference. Slave trade was much more common and widespread in the US than in Australia or Europe. There's a distinct slave history in the US. This says that the general culture was more hostile than other places. 

The toxic family culture in part due to feminism, erosion of church values, these values are still intact in other countries. 

If you replace a church with a club, things are going to be a bit shady. 

 

[abundance]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, we need better regulations.

However, you are asking about when mass shootings will stop. They will not stop from those regulations.

Regulations will stop a few mass shootings, but not the majority.

So what are you gonna do then?

You cannot buy back all the handguns in the country.

The point isn't to stop all mass shootings, its to reduce the likelihood of them occurring. I believe stricter gun restrictions accompanied with better mental health services will have a positive impact on reducing mass shootings. 

And you're right that we can't possibly buy back all the guns in this country. That isn't the point though. The point is to reduce the number of guns floating around in society. More guns ultimately mean more death. I think such a campaign would be quite effective too because everyone is in need of free money. 

Also we really need to change the gun culture in this country. For too many firearms (particularly AR-15's) are tied to masculinity when it shouldn't be. 

 

 

Edited May 14, 2023 by abundance

[Hardkill]

13 minutes ago, Enlightement said:

I don't think most mass shooters had a drinking problem. I think an inverse correlation exists between guns and alcohol. People who get drunk do get violent but only short term resulting into club brawl fights. In fact drinking causes much less violence long term since it inhibits executive functions and most people who drink are scarcely able to handle themselves let alone carry out a shooting that needs measurable levels of alertness. With drinking, there can be a massive increase in drunk driving fatalities and domestic violence but not mass shootings. Drinking inhibits aggression. Most regular drinkers aren't known to commit serious crimes because they lack coordination and agility. 

Regarding the glorification of guns, this is a historical thing and every country has a history that has uniquely shaped itself into existence. There is one crucial difference. Slave trade was much more common and widespread in the US than in Australia or Europe. There's a distinct slave history in the US. This says that the general culture was more hostile than other places.

I see.

14 minutes ago, Enlightement said:

The toxic family culture in part due to feminism, erosion of church values, these values are still intact in other countries. 

If you replace a church with a club, things are going to be a bit shady. 

Wait, but Western Europe, Australia, and Canada are significantly more secular than the US. So, why does the US not as a collective hold more religious  and family values than other 1st world countries do?