So what's the US doing?

[Rachel20]

...solutions.

Yes, thanks for the correction. I fixed it.

 

[renniks]

What about the rest of the civilised Western world that doesn’t have the Second Amendment?

People are profiting from the paranoia they’re instilling in you.

You mean like Australia?
They have few actual rights left. Paranoia is good when they really are out to take away your rights.

 

[Servus]

Why would having a bigger population prevent you from doing something?

Doesn't the US have laws like all other countries?

OB

If you can't see the vast difference between a gigantic melting pot of 50 states compared to Australia, I don't think I could explain it to you.

 

[High Fidelity]

You mean like Australia?
They have few actual rights left. Paranoia is good when they really are out to take away your rights.

What about Australia? Pretty happy folks there last I checked.

 

[Occams Barber]

What about Australia? Pretty happy folks there last I checked.

Thank you. We are all very happy.

I think we live in the world's happiest concentration camp.

OB

 

[Occams Barber]

If you can't see the vast difference between a gigantic melting pot of 50 states compared to Australia, I don't think I could explain it to you.

Of course there are differences but those differences don't prevent you from having laws like every other country.

OB

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

You mean like Australia?
They have few actual rights left. Paranoia is good when they really are out to take away your rights.

What rights would those be?

We're much less likely to be shot by police, hauled off off jail at gunpoint for being 18 and buying a beer, have our kids strip-searched by the TSA, and we don't have to register for the draft. I'd say we're doing pretty well.

Meanwhile we also get the bonus of not having our kids machine-gunned while at school It's a win-win

 

[renniks]

What about Australia? Pretty happy folks there last I checked.

Lots of unhappy folks according to the footage I saw during the pandemic.

 

[renniks]

What rights would those be?

We're much less likely to be shot by police, hauled off off jail at gunpoint for being 18 and buying a beer, have our kids strip-searched by the TSA, and we don't have to register for the draft. I'd say we're doing pretty well.

Meanwhile we also get the bonus of not having our kids machine-gunned while at school It's a win-win

No one has been machine gunned. Your government has already become more restrictive and since you all gave up your guns you can expect that to continue to get worse.

 

[renniks]

What rights would those be?

We're much less likely to be shot by police, hauled off off jail at gunpoint for being 18 and buying a beer, have our kids strip-searched by the TSA, and we don't have to register for the draft. I'd say we're doing pretty well.

Meanwhile we also get the bonus of not having our kids machine-gunned while at school It's a win-win

BTW your perception of the US is amusing. People don't get hauled off at gunpoint for underage drinking. And you won't get shot by the police unless you pull a weapon on them.

 

[Occams Barber]

Lots of unhappy folks according to the footage I saw during the pandemic.

None of us were ecstatic about the lockdowns. We all grumbled and a very few people, mainly anti-vaccers protested late in the process. The thing is, that in spite of the grumbling, we saw it was in everyone's interests to cooperate. The principle was one you may have heard of:

"Love thy neighbour"​

The state governments which imposed the lockdowns remained popular - some even became more popular since they were seen as taking action to keep us all safe.

We ended up with one of the lowest Covid death rates in the world and one of the highest Covid vaccination rates in the world.

OB

 

[Servus]

Of course there are differences but those differences don't prevent you from having laws like every other country.

OB

sigh. I didn't say prevent, you did. Find someone else to have that argument with.

 

[Landon Caeli]

Of course there are differences but those differences don't prevent you from having laws like every other country.

OB

We don't want their laws or their metric system... And we like Apple and Android having two different plugs.

 

[Oompa Loompa]

Maybe they’re taking note on the success Republicans have had by feigning to care about abortion beyond getting guaranteed votes each cycle. Worked quite well for them.

Perhaps. But political pandering nonetheless.

 

[trophy33]

The American government's weaponry is far too sophisticated for us peasants' handguns to stand a chance. Besides, we'd probably be put in jail for shooting the Feds.

Not to say your assets confiscated, credit cards deactivated etc. I am afraid that people thinking guns give them freedom are not considering the current situation of a modern society. But guns would work in the 17th/18th century, yes.

 

[trophy33]

Lots of unhappy folks according to the footage I saw during the pandemic.

I do not know of any country that was happy during the pandemic.

And certainly not the USA (oh mine, so many beast/antichrist/microchip/vaccination/Bill Gates conspiracies from Americans in those times).
Half of Americans were scared to death of tyranny and the other half in a high risk because of a wide-spread obesity and bad healthcare system.

 

[Tom 1]

... Tom, you might need to actually present your documentation on this point. I'm kind of feeling that the latest slew of mass killings in the U.S. have been done by individuals with unstable mental states.

Here's something to start with, mostly focused on the role of MH professionals in understanding the prevalence of mass shootings over there: Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Future of... : Harvard Review of Psychiatry

From the abstract:

'...researchers must abandon the starting assumption that acts of mass violence are driven primarily by diagnosable psychopathology in isolated “lone wolf” individuals. The destructive motivations must be situated, instead, within larger social structures and cultural scripts.'

And from the main text:

'There is no existing or forthcoming unified theory of impaired brain functioning or of cognitive, mood, or behavioral dysregulation that could adequately explain mass shootings or multiple-victim gun homicides.

Symptoms of mental illness by themselves rarely cause violent behavior and thus cannot reliably predict it. Certain psychiatric symptoms, such as paranoid delusions with hostile content, are highly nonspecific risk factors that may increase the relative probability of violence, especially in the presence of other catalyzing factors such as substance intoxication. Yet the absolute probability of serious violent acts in psychiatric patients with these “high risk” symptoms remains low. In general, focusing on individual clinical factors alone leaves too much unexplained, as it tends to ignore the important social contexts surrounding mass shootings and multiple-victim homicides. To assume that gun violence is primarily a problem confined to a perpetrator’s brain may impede inquiry into a ranges of factors that could be crucial to a full understanding of mass shootings—factors such as the perpetrator’s sex, race, socioeconomic status, relationships, attitudes, personal history, the place where a shooting occurs and the perpetrator’s (dis)connection to it, and the ways in which local gun cultures and unrestricted access to guns might create the conditions under which these events become more likely.'

There's more to it, but the general idea is that labelling shooters 'insane' is a red herring and that a much wider net needs to be cast for research to be of any use.

I'll find something with a focus on societal issues later on.

 

[Tom 1]

Yes, I get that. But with some bonafide research in one hand to present and a DSM-5 in the other, then I'm sure your point will be more impactful.

Keep in mind, I'm thinking about what happened in Texas (or even at Columbine High School decades ago) at the current moment.

This is interesting too: Understanding Mass Killings

'George W. Bush once said that he took the U.S. to war in Iraq so that we could fight “over there” and not at home. It is an attractive fantasy that, by using the military to intervene in the Middle East, we can corral the violence there. But we are learning that a connected world does not work that way. Intervention “over there” generates terrorist attacks by angry Muslims in the capitals of Europe and in nightclubs and office buildings in the U.S. And the soldiers we send “over there,” to the land of violence, bring the war back with them. Many of our mass killings at home are a haunted shadow of our interventions abroad.'

Although this isn't the main point of the article, it's easy to get the impression from the outside that at least some Americans have a kind of love affair with retributive violence, and the fantasy that everything can be solved if you just lock up or kill enough bad guys, as in the average Hollywood action movie. Like those characters who chased down and shot that black jogger last year, there do seem to be a minority of otherwise law-abiding citizens who exist in a kind of fantasy world in which every societal problem can be solved with more prisons, more guns, more violence - so long as it's the 'right people' who have the guns. It can seem like some sort of mass delusion, like the idea that private gun ownership would somehow deter a government bent on tyranny.

The arguments put forward for the 2nd amendment reflect a simplistic worldview that has little to do with the real world we all live in. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the mindset of one of these mass shooters is just another aspect of that basic view of the world, the 'I have problems, I'm a special snowflake so it can't be my fault, it must be the fault of those other people/the govt/society etc' that comes out of the confusion between individual agency and the fact we all share the planet together.

 

[Tom 1]

Yes, I get that. But with some bonafide research in one hand to present and a DSM-5 in the other, then I'm sure your point will be more impactful.

Keep in mind, I'm thinking about what happened in Texas (or even at Columbine High School decades ago) at the current moment.

These are some notes on a broader study: Are All Mass Shooters Mentally Ill?

This article has a more pragmatic view of possible solutions, if it is accepted as fact that a Republican-controlled congress will never allow any restrictions on access to firearms to become law then threat assessments might be one of the more effective band-aid solutions: Can Researchers Show That Threat Assessment Stops Mass Shootings?

 

[Tom 1]

Lots of unhappy folks according to the footage I saw during the pandemic.

If you choose to focus only on the things that support what you want to believe, you'll never have a real understanding of anything.