News Us politics - read first post before comment

[Justmehere]

The US needs to address why kids are killing each other, and it's due to more reasons than guns being prevalent. Five Thirty Eight has a great informative infographic series here: Gun Deaths In America They point out that there is a wide variety of causes, and the solutions must be as varied as well.

2/3 of deaths involving a gun are suicide. Where is the March for our Lives for them? Tens of thousands of people have died using a gun to kill themselves - far more than all mass shootings combined. No marches. Why? Little attention is paid to this cause and the people trying to stop this in the media.

The rate of gun violence deaths as a whole has been decreasing in the US since 1993. But the attention grabbing mass shootings... should we be so surprised that those acts of gun violence are increasing? Look at how much attention we give those heinous crimes but not the gun violence that takes far more lives.

I really like the idea of a gun restraining order as reported on by NPR. I don't agree with much of what David French says, but I do agree with him on this:

Well, it has a chance to work because it's individualized. It's based on a person's behavior. And it provides due process. And so we have this paradox in this country right now where gun violence has been decreasing and - as far, far below the numbers of 25 years ago, even though guns are more accessible than they've ever been. But at the same time that general gun violence is decreasing, these spree killings, these mass killings - as everyone has been able to see - have been increasing and increasing in particular since the Columbine massacre.

The culture right now in the US is a bit narcissistic self absorbed. More teenagers kill via texting while driving than with guns. 1 in 4 car accidents are caused by texting while driving. That is a culture that is not doing well when sending a text or a selfie is more important than not dying or killing others. Millennial are more connected via tech than any other generation before them. They are also the most unable to have face to face conversations, and the most depressed and anxious. I'm not implying in any way that social media is to blame for mass shootings (AT ALL) but that all these issues are symptoms of a greater underlying problem.

These mass shooters, they want to be headlines. Of course they will be headlines. What bleeds is what leads. But perhaps we need to report on these mass shootings differently and deal with changing our culture to not be so self obsessed... and that kids like the Parkland shooter can get the help and attention they need long before it's a headline. The kid REPORTED HIMSELF to 911 as being a danger. The laws to stop him were in place already. Even the shooter tried to get law enforcement to intervene. Government failed. Government will sometimes fail. Greater government control isn't always the only solution to every problem. In terms of these mass shootings, laws and regulations, and limiting access to the weapon(s) of choice are part of the solution, but they will not solve the larger issues. We need to shift whatever is going wrong in the culture in the US, and I think that is going to take a lot more work and than passing more gun control regulations. How to do that? I have no idea. I'm still processing it all through, and considering all kinds of viewpoints myself.

 

[Mee]

I have been in so much pain I've not cared whether I died. And most of it came from other people doing me w...

Hmm. No it doesn’t excuse it but it does part way explain it.

Kinda like not everyone gets PTSD.

For the record I absolutely would agree I should never have a gun now.

 

[Muttly]

@Mee My friend who has PTSD and I have had this conversation. We both agree we have no business owning guns. If I had a gun, would I still be alive? I don't know.

@Justmehere Marches regarding suicide happen every year. There's the Veteran's March and Out of Darkness walk and I think probably others. I know for sure the Out of Darkness walk happens every across the nation and is well attended.

Also, adults our worse than teens about texting while driving (source)

As far as teens being the most narcissist, I hear this all the time and I don't encounter it in my personal experience. Your post made me curious so I looked for the data. I found a really fascinating article, that indicates the research is unclear. The work of one psychologist, and her book, has been picked up by main stream media and is oft quoted. However she's got a lot of critics in the field.

Having said all that, I don't disagree with with all you are saying. It's clear that that screen time causes issues for teens and adults. I can get on a whole band-wagon about the media and the damage it does.

And I am going to have to follow the link to the gun restraining order. That sounds very interesting

 

[Deleted member 46276]

Sideways: "I’m just gonna throw it out there, from someone who doesn’t live in the US:

Kids having problems at home, kids getting bullied, kids being ostracised? None of those are American problems. They happen everywhere.

High school masacres on the other hand? Don’t happen everywhere. Most countries? They don’t happen ever. Mass shootings, by students, in schools - are a pretty unique problem to the US."

One thing that might be different is the US media has a long history of glorifying behavior of violent killers from Jesse James to Bonnie and Clyde to the film "Natural Born Killers"

The Natural Born Killers is important in all this because it was a big influence, along with first person shooters, for the Columbine school shooters. The Columbine school shooters have a population of fan girls (google it if you don't believe me). Looking around most shooters are aware of the columbine shooters and are in some sort of competition to get more victims than previous shooters.

Another thing that might be different is the US is fairly multicultural. This probably matters because people who are recent immigrants and who are still very close with traditional ways involving large extended families, like Mexican immigrants, rarely shoot up places.

Another thing that might be different is that there is a big divide in the us between political inclinations of this in social sciences and those in media and the rest of the population. The US might be more conservative in general than other western countries, but media executives and leading psychological researches are overwhelmingly liberal. Like the parkland shooter's brother who said he bullied shooter is black, the kid who he thought stole his girlfriend and he later lost a fight with his black. The parkland shooter clearly had some frustration with blacks, though neither the black brother or black kid who was his girlfriends new boyfriend actually thought he was racist...,but if he tried to talk about this frustration to psychologist he might well be accused of being a racist, making him less likely to get help or listen to advice.

Then there is of course guns.

I think guns are a factor, but other factors tend to be uncomfortable for liberals who actually are fairly dominant media, so there is overfocus in guns as the issue and under focus on all the other factors

 

[Justmehere]

Is American culture different and facing a problem that needs to be solved? yes. Are there more mass shootings in the US than should be happening? Of course. Are the numbers for mass shootings that grab headlines on the rise? Yes.

That being said, I think that claiming there are no mass shootings anywhere else in the world is going a little too far.

High school masacres on the other hand? Don’t happen everywhere. Most countries? They don’t happen ever. Mass shootings, by students, in schools - are a pretty unique problem to the US.

Here's one article that outlines the data: Link Removed

The U.S.' index of 0.12 per 5,000,000 places it behind Norway (recall the Anders Breivik massacre), Finland, Slovakia, Israel, and Switzerland - at half the ratio. [/qoute]
From 2009-2015, Norway, Finland, Solvakia, etc... all had more mass shootings per capita.

Left leaning Politifact confirmed the data above and has a very partial list of mass shootings, including a variety of school shootings, in other westernized developed nations here.

 

[joeylittle]

@Endofwar - you have interesting things to say, provocative things: nothing wrong with that around here.

But fundamentally this is a forum for people dealing with trauma and PTSD. So far, you’ve just been commenting on political issues (this thread and elsewhere).

Are you living with PTSD (as a sufferer or supporter), or just here for the political/societal debates?

 

[Sideways]

@Justmehere - totally get that people get shot elsewhere in the world.

Which is why I specified in my post that mass high school shootings, by students, in schools? Seems to be a largely US phenomenon.

Wasn’t trying to get rid of all gun deaths in the US. Wasn’t trying to imply gun deaths aren’t a problem elsewhere. They are.

But students, killing other students en masse in schools? That combination? Seems to be a regularity in the US, and yet be an almost non-existent problem in schools, by students, elsewhere in the world.

IMO? Mass shootings by children? Is not the same problem mass shootings by adults.

 

[scout86]

I haven't fact checked this, but it looks credible. Dead Link Removed

I'm thinking there's a big bias that relates to news coverage.

Edited to add that a lot of those ARE in the US, but a lot of them aren't and I'm not up to the challenge of the math it would take to figure in the influence of population. They are also not all school shootings, but it turns out there are more of those elsewhere than I've ever heard about.

 

[Sideways]

Edited to add that a lot of those ARE in the US, but a lot of them aren't

It’s interesting how people interpret data. Which is what a lot of this is about. And I definitely agree that data isn’t collected equally in all countries, or necessarily represented without bias.

What is interesting to me, is that my reading of that same table? Says to me (and so this is a subjective interpretation) - most of those shootings are in the US. And for data like that to make this seem like this is something that does happen everywhere in anything like the way it happens in the US? You’re comparing the US statistics against the rest of the world, not the US in comparison with any other particular country.

Australia? Never happened. New Zealand? Nope. Japan? Etc etc. Some countries, it has happened. But you can count them on one hand.

So, does it happen elsewhere? Sure. Not disputing that. But if you compare any one of those countries against the number of shootings in the US? Country compared with country? It is happening in the US far more than it is happening elsewhere, and in most countries worldwide, mass school shootings of students, by students, in schools - hasn’t ever happened. Like, ever.

This is not me trying to pit the US against the rest of the world - at all. But we have a very particular problem here, that is incresingly normal in the US, and only normal in the US.

And it isn’t about guns to me. It’s about children. Specifically children. Gun violence generally is a mammoth and complicated issue. Mass shootings in schools by students is far more specific.

The reason this issue is different to the issue of mass shootings generally? We have a positive obligation to children to keep them safe. Children have a fundamental and inalienable right to be kept safe, and the responsibility for ensuring that occurs rests on the shoulders of us adults. This tragic social issue? Is a failure of childrens rights, in a way that is different to the way we handle safety issues or gun issues among adults.

 

[scout86]

Actually, Australia is on the list, but only once.

What I meant about not being up to doing the math is you really need to take population into account when you look at that kind of thing. There ARE more US shootings on that list, but there are also more people here than in Australia.

And, I don't think it's quite fair to say this sort of thing is "normal" in the US. It's getting a lot of media attention. I think an outsized amount of attention. For example, I totally sure more kids are killed in texting and driving accidents than in shootings, but that's not the same kind of news story.

I think VIOLENCE is a mammoth and complicated issue, not just gun violence. And, personally, the part of all this that bothers me the most is that there are people out there who believe killing other people because they feel bad is something that makes sense and is justifiable. I'm not at all sure that's a US issue. I think it's an issue when and where people feel disenfranchised. Some of them shoot up schools, some of them become suicide bombers.

 

[Justmehere]

Children have a fundamental and inalienable right to be kept safe, and the responsibility for ensuring that occurs rests on the shoulders of us adults.

I don't believe anyone here is arguing children should not be kept safe. I think the disagreement is how to keep them safe.

 

[Sideways]

Actually, Australia is on the list, but only once.

Yes, the Port Arthur Masacre in the 1990s. It’s pretty famous - our mass mass shooting.

It was an adult, at a tourist destination. So, different issue altogether.

And the gun culture here (as well as the laws) changed fairly dramatically preetty much instantly, and nationwide.

What makes me nervous? Is that although we’ve not had a school massacre here, we haven’t had one yet. And American culture does seep through, you know? If the problem isn’t resolved in the US, it worries me that it is just a matter of time before that culture starts to be reflected more commonly elsewhere.