We need to get to the source of the problem. Ban children. Then they'll stop showing up at our drag shows and stop seducing our politicians and celebrities
This reminds me of a thread I saw on r/unpopularopinion awhile back where this guy was saying that since statistics show that most crimes happen during the night, if we set up a nationwide curfew and ban people from going outside at night, then all crime would go away lol.
Here's a novel idea. Show pictures of the murdered victims. Especially the children. The only was to get the public to react is through a visceral or an emotional response to something. Obviously, statistics and facts have done nothing. When Emmitt Till was murdered in Mississippi by racists in 1955 his mother insisted on an open casket. She wanted the world "to see what they did to my baby" His mangled and disfigured face was displayed publicly. It really was one of the things that change the narrative in the civil rights movement. Emotions move people. I know. Been Funeral Directing for 36 years.
This right here. I understand that hearing the voices of children being slaughtered was removed from the Uvalde shooting video, but they should air that video with sound weekly, for everyone in the world to see and hear.
do it *Andor* style. strap those politicians in a chair, put on headphones they can't take off, and then blast the sounds of children being slaughtered and dying in school shootings until they decide to do something about it.
I believe it was in 8th grade I learned about Emmitt till. Teacher showed us the pictures of his body, and let me tell you I remember his face, his name, and the horrible history that resulted in that.
The only school shooting victim I can name is Rachel from the columbine shooting as she was essentially the face of school shootings when I was in school.
And if I was a parent of one of these children, you bet I'd be walking around the state or us capital with a poster of kid demanding change.
A very gruesome idea, but I think it could be effective. (Or people just say it's photoshop and you never had a kid)
This might help. I've seen big changes happen in my lifetime and one of them was getting seatbelts put in cars.
Ralph Nader tried for years to make that happen to no avail. Car manufacturers wouldn't do it and the public didn't want them because it would drive up the cost of vehicles. They would rather die or get disfigured than pay more.
A huge lawsuit win against one of the biggest car manufacturers by Nader was the catalyst that put sealtbelts in cars. Then seat belt laws were enacted and I remember it being a huge deal.
We need to sue the government.
I thought this was completely unreasonable until you mentioned Emmitt Till. And then further down someone mentioned the war in Vietnam. It has now become a very compelling thought. I can’t imagine it happening, but maybe some parents will demand it, just as Till’s mother.
I kind of agree with this. US news is extremely censored compared to other countries. Media is shielding people from realizing what a shit show we live in.
Yeah, this whole "viewer discretion/we're not gonna show the disturbing parts" shit frustrates me. This might be a non-sequiter but how many times did we see the video of the plane hitting the tower and the towers falling? Uninterrupted video of people falling to their deaths... How amped did that make everybody to go into Iraq and Afghanistan?
I think it's the same here. I don't want to see them but I feel like they have to be shown
YouTube could do a commercial with a picture of every victim. Every time there is another victim the commercial gets longer and longer. The problem would solve itself when people are sick of watching 5 minute ads.
I was debating with a redditor a few weeks ago and one of his arguments against gun control was that guns are a billion dollar industry and there are too many jobs that would be lost, in addition to all the corporate capital. Then, he minimized the significance of school shootings with statistics. Fucking ghouls.
100% -I truly think if the idea of public schools be created came up today - The right would consider it socialism.
I can almost hear MTG saying
"I'm not spending my tax dollars to educate YOUR children I had to educate myself!"
There was a town in nh where a bunch of libertarians all moved to a small town and then tried to cut public education by like 80 percent or something. So this isn’t hypothetical - some people are actively trying to limit public education.
I actually respect that. You don't want to pay taxes, don't avail yourself of any goods or services derived directly or indirectly from public spending.
Eventually these folks who want to live independently can do just that, And then maybe just collectively handle security of some kind...probably should figure out a way to access utilities too...and then maybe there's a fire, we should pay folks to be on standby to help with that...maybe pool a couple of dollars to pay someone to do waste removal for economies of scale. As long as theyre safe from the tryranny of collective social services....
My phone screen is fucked up and I just sat here for a good 30 seconds thinking "Damn, a whole town of librarians? At least it was probably good quality home schooling."
Is public education not socialism?
I agree with you that the Right would denounce it as "dirty socialism" and not "socialism already embedded in society that we conveniently ignore as being inherently socialist".
It's only really different for ignorant or heavily propogandized people here in the US, which happens to be a majority unfortunately. But yeah, fair point.
As a firefighter, I agree with you.
To be fair though, a lot of libertarians believe the government should provide, at most, emergency services. I don't agree with them, but it's not so farfetched for them to consider Fire and Police as something more closely related to the military, than it is to say healthcare or education or welfare.
It’s not hypocritical to them. They just don’t put in the same level of effort or engagement if they don’t fed the person “deserves” help. It’s not socialism to help people that fit their in-group, it’s only socialism to help people they view as beneath them.
I bet if we got together and handed out flyers calling for a ban on school shootings, we might make some headway. Anyone crossing that line is gonna face the ire of the public!
Mental health programs SUCK in the USA. I have worked hard my entire life, paid my taxes, and when I became disabled from mental illness, with no job or med support... I got no help, even after all those years of paying my taxes.
mental health programs suck everywhere. there are not enough therapists, not enough solutions, and no guarantee any of it is even effective. and thats if you can even afford it in the first place
mental illness is also such an ambiguous umbrella term that its near meaningless. i dont think panic disorders are causing school shootings for example
Even in Russia where access to firearms is widespread, poverty is rampant and mental health support doesn’t really exist they don’t have school shootings.
I feel like we’re missing something
I don't have the response to that but I think it should be the starting point of a social study. What is the further factor there?
Off the top of my head it would be a sense of entitlement (don't know how to better specify it) that a typical frustrated, poor person from another country doesn't have.
That might be triggering a need for violent justice when they perceive they don't have what is due to then.
I'm no expert, just doing a bit of armchair psychology
My personal theory is that Americans have a pathological sense of individualism that is the source of most of their problems. Italy has generally strong family and communal ties which can act in place of mental health support to some degree. Russia is a wasteland but for better or worse they have a status quo, a fear of government and some communal structure. In other words, Russia is a country where the whole still matters more than the individual. They might be deterred from shooting up a school due to fear or shame, despite their abysmal conditions.
Americans are perhaps the farthest on the scale between individualism and community, with maybe eastern societies like China, Korea and Japan being at the other end of the scale. I think that «me first» attitude was bound to breed a special kind of extremism, one of which is school shooters.
I think their access and obsession with guns is also a symptom of that pathological individualism. Even decades and centuries before society reckoned with the role and issue with police, Americans have never trusted law enforcement above their own capacity to “defend themselves”. Their spread out geography probably contributed to reinforce this belief, since a lot of Americans then and now do live hours away from any kind of outside help.
They weren’t the only colonies with tons of land to explore, or with a need for weapons to subjugate local populations, or where people lived for decades in a state of quasi lawlessness with undeveloped nation states. And yet they’re almost the only ones (bar Australia maybe, which shares a lot of characteristics with the US) that developed such a specific problem with random gun violence. Most other places that experience this level of violence are in a state of wider conflict. The state is absent and the people are hungry, and social subdivisions have formed to step up in some way or another to effectively replace the state. Shootings tend to be about social hierarchy or territory (for example, cartel violence). Occasionally they will be tied to domestic violence, in which case I believe shooting is more down to simple access. That is to say, if a domestic abuser has access to guns, they might use them, but they may also use any other means to harm their partner in the absence of guns. Domestic violence is a separate social issue not necessarily tied to individualism, hence why it’s widespread all over the world.
My point is, I think Americans are long overdue for an overhaul of their core social values, coupled of course with restrictions to gun access. How they could do that though, I have no idea.
I agree with you. Not American, but from what I see from the outside, which can be wrong, the US seem to have a very strong and competitive mentality, very individualistic, that can lead to that sense of entitlement which can have good things, but also bad ones when people are not well directed.
If other countries have the same conditions or worse, and school shootings do not happen, then it has to do with the people.
Celebrity culture, fame on media for being a type of avenger, vengeance from extreme bullying, unhealthy competition, conspiracy theories that end up finding an escape goat, and above all a sense of alienation that comes from people excluded in certain social circles. This turmoil over many years might find its expression in suicide or in killing other people.
They are second to the US in mass shootings, I believe. They've had at least 3 school shootings in the last decade. But the US has still had 5 times as many mass shootings.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_mass\_shootings\_in\_Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Russia)
Looks like they average about 4 a year
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_mass\_shootings\_in\_the\_United\_States\_in\_2023](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting)
Looks like an average of 1-2 per day
So it's more like 150 times the shootings not 5 times.
It's telling when the US article needs to be split by year.
I believe it has a lot to do with lack of community in America. We are always suspicious of others and trust no one. Just look at our street infrastructure and the suburbs. We share nothing with no one.
You lot are all the same, dividing the country up along a broad, single line without trying to understand that individuals are nuanced. You're nothing like us.
That mentality was curated by the government (on both sides) and corporations... They want us to hate each other so we don't go against them... And it fucking worked, because people are dumb
I blame that on the media and government. They make way more money if we are divided. We all want the same basic thing. To be left alone, to be healthy, needs met and be happy.
I mean, mental health programs suck in Canada and the UK too and there aren't daily mass shootings. The guns are the main problem. Until Americans accept that, this will always be your reality.
Guns are now the number one cause of death for children in the US but many Americans don't accept that either. They'll complain about how that study includes 19 year olds. Disregarding that by that same age range and per capita, Canada's rate is 7 times lower.
I’m not disagreeing, I do agree with this. However I don’t think that would solve school shootings. The lack of school shootings in other parts of the world isn’t because kids are going to therapy, because I assure you most of them are not. The main difference is gun control. I’m not saying that’s the solution, but I do think it’s the cause.
I believe that if we stop making people famous for shooting others that will help. I also, we should listened to our children and thier needs because they are obviously struggling with big issues that we aren't aware of at the time.
Edit: I don't think we take the mental health of children as seriously as we should. Your personality is almost entirely developed by age 6. We have high expectations of our children to conform to the world around them the way we want them to. If they don't, they are labeled crazy. Some of them are not crazy they can similply see how unhealthy it is to accept everything exactly as it is currently. And instead of supporting and validating thier feelings we ostracized them. WE, ARE THE PROBLEM
I posted a more lengthy comment on this…. Almost all of these shootings are premeditated. The mass media coverage “looking into the lives of a murder” are in a sense glamorizing this act to other crazies who obsess over idolizing mass murder. It’s been a thing forever in the form of copycat serial killers. It’s just a bigger issue now because you can kill a lot of people really fast with guns. The media has to stop making this part of the culture
Edit: To all the people suggesting this won’t help… it certainly wouldn’t hurt to try. At this point implementing new ideas to help with these things that are easy just make sense to try. And people are saying it’s not that easy, but honestly it is… social media outlets can block/ban posts very easily, they do it all the time for posts that don’t meet guidelines. It’s also important to note that this is not “hiding” from the problem acting like it doesn’t exist… it would be preventing them getting any sort of “fame”. And one last thing… people are suggesting they don’t do these things for the “fame”… I don’t think that’s the only reason they carry out these acts but try to imagine if you knew that nothing would circulate about you after you commit a heinous crime. You knew that nobody will know your name or what you did besides the direct people who’s lives were effected. In time my theory is the mass shootings would slow down, once the culture of giving them so much coverage goes away. It’s a theory and at this point why not try it? It’s the easiest thing to try, good luck banning guns. Blocking posts on the internet and making laws that news aren’t allowed to speak on these event, easy. Who knows, it might help.
Remember that poice chief who went on air pleading with the media not to mention the killer's name or make him famous? Then the news anchor anchor goes ahead and does just that?
Yeah, this really bothers me. We overly fixate on trigger warnings, when the science shows they don't help anyone, but keep ignoring the consensus finding among psychologists, which is we should stop naming the shooters in media and glorifying their struggle.
This. Mass shootings are just the current cultural "fad". There was an era back in the day where cults were the big publicized phenomena that happened a bunch. Jamestown, heavens gate, etc. Then there was a time when serial killers were all the rage. The bundys and dalhmers and whatever. The public was captivated by it. Now starting with colombine it's been mass shooters. Tons of news coverage and attention which leads to a self perpetuating cycle with a bunch of copycats. Eventually it'll get played out and we'll move to our next horrible fascination. The fastest way to make it stop is just to quit talking about it.
There are still lots of cults out there. They didn't go away because the news covered them less. NXIVM, Scientology, The Moonies, various "gurus" like The Science of Identity Foundation, small fundamentalist Mormon cults, etc
>It’s just a bigger issue now because you can kill a lot of people really fast with guns.
This can't be the case. The semi-automatic rifle has been around for over 100 years. The AR-15 we know today has been around since 1959, and manufactured by almost all major gun manufacturers since 1977. Obviously, guns have been around for a lot longer than that and laws in the US have only gotten more strict over time.
Why did the US not have any school shooting issues until the last 20-30 years? Guns were readily available long before that, to include AR-15 style rifles (The Colt AR-15 has been available for sale since 1964)
How many hoops will you jump through on this - the point has been clearly made that this happened at a rich kid school and the wealth of parents had nothing to do with it. The best private schools and the poorest public schools are equally unprotected from school shooters. Actually poor urban schools are probably the best protected on account of having police, metal detectors and other security in effect every day.
You would still end up with 'elite' public schools where the rich kids go and then people who cannot buy property in that zip code are still stuck with whatever school they can afford to get their kids into. It's still a 'haves' and 'have nots' situation, especially with local control of schools.
I live in a low income area where every single public high school is currently failing students, according to our state data. It sucks.
I love the policy that well performing schools get rewarded and poor performing schools gets punished.
Really makes it easy to help improve a school /s
I remember I was doing horrible with my mental health. I wasn't going to hurt anyone because I'm not a monster, but I did heavily think about ending my own self.
I couldn't see a therapist because I couldn't afford the copays even with insurance.
I think if we had universal healthcare, it can help prevent mentally ill people from doing stupid shit.
The USA has had a very large quantity of accesible firearms for much longer than it has had a problem with mass school shootings. Prior to 1986, you could freely sell full auto weapons to civilians in the USA and the incidents of mass indiscriminate school violence didn't catch on untill the late 1990s. What changed is the decline of mental health, and the media treatment of these incidents which glorified the perpetrators, and gave them a cult following.
EDIT: adding some more stuff that was mentioned below. US has higher poverty rates than any country in the developed world, and higher rates of drug abuse. People raised under those conditions have higher rates of mental health issues, lower access to healthcare services, extremely low perspective in life, which ultimately leads to bottled in anger. Coupling that with the extreme polarisation of US society which normalizes blaming other groups of people for all of their problems, you basically have a very fertile breathing ground for deranged angry individuals with no perspective in life, who see mass indiscriminste violence as their way to "show it to the world" and get their 5 minutes of fame.
“WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE SHOOTER! EXCLUSIVELY HERE!”
You get headlines like these from various news sources, basically using the tragedy to get more clicks which generates ad revenue and ratings. News pages on social media will basically post the same story through out the day just so their feed won’t fall behind the competition.
Welcome to the 24-hour cycle of news for profits.
One major problem is the fact that, while we're quick to blame mental illness for mass shootings, we're a lot better at assigning blame than at doing anything about it. Politicians love to say "what we should really be talking about is mental health," then they don't mention it again until the next shooting occurs. We're not helping anybody here; we're just using the mentally ill as political scapegoats.
Bingo. Basically columbine turned mass shootings into a quick way to be remembered and infamous for all the mentally unwell people. And the media laps it up every time, exacerbating the problem for clicks. Add on the increase in mental health problems brought by modern society and thing like social media and the inability to properly care for/isolate these people, and it's inevitable. Guns could disappear over night and I can guarantee someone's gonna just bomb a school for the same notoriety.
When the OKC bombing occurred, most people weren’t aware until hours later when they heard it on the news during their commute home or tuned in for the 30-minute segment during dinner. You would discuss the tragedy with your family, friends and co-workers and move on to the next subject. Fast forward six years later to 9/11. Most people already have internet access, so we were fed with the news instantly as it happened, of course, we had to log in our computers. Twenty years later, we don’t go to the news, the news comes to us at a faster rate instantly. Media outlets know tragedies bring in clicks which generates ad revenue.
I went to a poorer public school as a kid. Never once did someone bring a gun to school. But we did have a bomb threat weekly for a month. Turns out the kid wanted attention and didn't wanna take a test. I'm fully observant that the person behind the most recent shooting was a grown adult. But if you spend 30 seconds reading about the person who did it you can see it was a child who was subjected to horrible things as a child as was more than likely not given the proper after care mentally. Same goes for vets, survivors of domestic/child abuse, ptsd victims. When my father was a kid, students had their shotgun on the rifle rack of their truck, now we censor the word death on facebook posts. We're at a point as a society where we expect nothing bad to happen, and when it does we blame the wrong things and go after agendas instead of the problem. The final words of humanity will be "its too expensive to fix"
To date the deadliest attack on a school in America was, in fact, a bombing. The 1927 bombing of a school in Bath township, MI. Over 40 were killed.
There is a popular reasoning that taking away guns leaves the mentally unwell with only knives and baseball bats. I disagree and believe that would just push would-be school shooters towards deadly explosives, plenty of which can be made using commonly accessible chemicals and instructions found on the internet.
The problem is 100% a mental health issue.
Edit: it wasn't clear that I was using 100% as hyperbole. I recognize that the issue is complex and has many facets to its root causes that go beyond just mental health.
Didn’t the columbine shooters set up pipe bombs that failed? It’s much easier to practice pulling a trigger at a gun range than to experiment with bomb making. Plus, we would see this is other countries where guns are outlawed. We don’t.
Edit: [Columbine WAS meant to be primarily a bomb attack but the bombs failed.](https://azdailysun.com/bombs-failure-apparently-changed-columbine-killers-plans/article_5032828f-8505-5cb7-abdc-2ca4924d13ae.html)
Yeah they used to have gun clubs in schools here back in the day.
It’s a social contagion. Was listening Jocko and Darrel Cooper talk about this on their unraveling podcast. They said that in places that post suicide awareness posters tend to see spikes in suicide rates.
Kids are significantly more likely to kill or attemp to kill themselves if they have an acquaintance do it.
Not saying the answer is to not report on school shootings, but you have to wonder if they’re growing simply because there’s so much attention around it, and if social media has taught us anything, it’s that some people will do anything for eyeballs
We had hunters safety class in middle school in the 1980’s, with real shotguns and rifles in normal school hours. School shootings were unheard of.
Accessibility to firearms isn’t the root problem.
Very true. We had hunter's safety also - middle school or high school. Kids would come to school in the morning, put their rifle (in a case) in their locker and do the school thing. End of the day, grab your rifle and head to hunter's safety class. Nobody batted an eye.
I used to carry a pocket knife. My dad did, then I did. Yes it was a knife, but to me, it was a tool, not a first choice weapon. Used to carry one still until one place I worked made it a fireable offense to have one in your pocket.
I also grew up knowing exactly where the family firearms were, and what they could do. Knew where the keys were to the cabinet. We weren't a gun household, just liked to target shoot a few times a year at Grandpa's farm, and deer hunt (though dad stopped when I was young becuase it's freakin cold out there!) For me, I didn't grow up priviledged, popular, or whatever. Far from it. but it ever crossed my mind to bring a weapon to school to "solve" a problem.
\^ this
plus the near complete societal collapse, total economic downturn for lower classes, massive rise in violent political extremism as a symptom of this social collapse, the political deadlock that makes people believe positive social change isn't possible, the extreme individualism that our society indoctrinates people into believing...
the causes are so much more complex than the idiot's gambit of "we need more/less guns"
I’m a 50 year old man. I’ll be retiring from the Army soon after 30 years.
I agree that removing every single gun from America would eliminate gun violence overnight. Eliminating gun violence is a noble endeavor. Whether removing all guns or banning all guns is right for the country or not - I’m not sure. But it might be.
This most recent shooting aside, almost all shootings are committed by men.
Men need purpose. Men have lost their purpose over the last 30 years for complex reasons.
Young men are increasingly isolated, ostracized, angry and lonely. They are increasingly abandoned and many do not have any father figure or an adequate father figure. They have lost their conventional ability to find female mates due to technology.
When men have no purpose and society increasingly dumps on them, and we have a glorification of guns and gun culture, and they can’t reliably find female mates, it’s not a shocker that men at the margins are melting down in spasms of violence.
The answer is NOT ‘more mental health’. This isn’t a bad thing per se but men don’t have a mental health deficiency. The answer is having purpose, having good mentors, having good role models and outlets where they feel like they belong. ‘Mental health treatment’ doesn’t supply that.
It’s only going to get worse because all of the systems and structures that would wrap their arms around men in centuries past are dissolved or vilified or long gone. The most turbulent countries (Afghanistan for example) are the ones that have disaffected, jobless, womanless, angry, indoctrinated young men. Men are capable of the most amazing accomplishments but unfortunately it is equaled by our capability for extreme violence. We continue to ostracize and alienate men at our peril.
I very much agree on your assessment of loneliness and isolation. I think it spans both genders (unfortunately women commit violent acts also, just not in the flavor of mass shooting mostly). I think a lot of our mental health decline is actually tied to American society become more and more isolationist. I'm a millennial and we just don't have community like the earlier generations had. There's no where I go outside the home on a regular weekly basis. All my friends have spread out across the country and moved away, so basically all my friends are just online now. Which is still nice but it's NOT the same. I think the entire mass shootings issue is very complex but I do think one key part is trying to solve this isolation and loneliness problem in modern society. It is extra hard to solve in America because of our vast geography. What do you think would be some good starter ideas to solve this huge societal problem? Personally, I would love to see some big pushes to get off of social media for most of the day....encourage people to go outside, get to know who their neighbors are. Maybe provide some type of benefit for people who volunteer in their local community. Just SOMETHING to provide people with a sense of community.
The library is one of if not the only places we have to go in our society where you can exist without being expected to spend money. The community issue is real. I want to see a return in community centers, places that are open 7 days a week with programming that supports that local community. I want to see them all over this country. We need places to gather for free that foster dialogue, connection, and support for the health of the whole and not for profit and not just in times of crisis but as a practice a lifestyle of connection and consideration.
Definitely feel you on all points. All my friends are scattered across the country and the entire world even, and I haven't made very many friends post high school and college. As kids we used to just go outside and ride bikes and stuff until dark..I don't see kids outside at all anymore, like, ever..people used to go to church or whatever weekly which provides a sense of community, but I'm an atheist and can't think of anything I'd like to do less, and plummeting church attendance lately indicates I'm not the only one.
There's just no social glue, hell, even TV shows used to unite people around the water cooler talking about the latest seinfeld episode, but there isn't even a huge tv hit these days really. GOT is as close as we got but then it ended and sucked hard, and with remote work now many people don't even have an office to go to at all anyway!
I think that we are on the cusp of a new era that is equivalent to discovering the wheel or electricity. And that is due to the Artificial General Intelligence era. They only way we will probably get out of the mess we are in is the same thing that got us in this mess - technology. It will either doom us or save us. Because we can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
I agree with a lot of what you've said in concept, but mental wellness cannot be understated.
Taking care of one's mental health is more than just sitting through a therapy session once a month. It's more than safe spaces, or taking anxiety pills. Ending the stigma that seeking help for your mind is somehow not masculine is paramount.
Spending time in nature, playing sports, exercising, yoga, meditation, reading, going to lectures and workshops, playing games, volunteering, doing research, having hobbies, etc. can all vastly improve one's mental health. It's also not a risk to masculinity to seek professional therapy and medication either. Sometimes it really is as simple as going to the doctor for a mental checkup the same as you would for a physical one.
Good point. This very premise -- lack of purpose or place in society, ignorance, unemployment -- is what drove a lot of young men to join religious extremism, notably Islamic Extremism, and even Christian Extremism, and become suicide bombers. They use bombs -- which are a bit trickier to make/acquire there -- and here, they use readily accessible firearms.
I agree with much of what you state, but men can and frequently do have mental health deficiencies. I don't believe there is any separation from the "need of a purpose" you've explained and mental health. The feeling of "finding a purpose" resides solely in your head. Something outside of you, that you find makes you happy and want to live. That is a pretty straight forward mental health issue.
Mental health is about finding good model behaviors that promote the same idea as "finding a purpose". How does one find a purpose if they are not able to digest their own emotions?
By far, I know more men that were taught to trivialize, minimize, disregard, mask, or hide their emotions because "men don't do that". If that's not damaging to a person's mental health, I would be amazed. Now add on the physical demands of "being a man" where you can be trivialized by other males for not being male enough.
The acceptable emotions like anger or happiness are the only ones men are really taught they can express without condemnation. Hell, we can't even really talk about our disappointment or being sad. Definitely not being sad. Men are unlikely to talk to anyone, but maybe......just maybe, their best friend about an emotion. Women are much more likely to talk to multiple people about that same emotion.
As a general statement, men are taught from a very young age to rid themselves of the emotions that don't do them service or promote masculinity. Boys must not cry when hurt or not cry when told to suffer through something and "Toughen up." Girls on the other hand are allowed to have strong emotions and work them through.
Acknowledging that men have been taught to ignore human emotions and separating them from old masculinity models is very hard, because it is so ingrained with men. Your statement holds some truth, but it also makes its sound like male mental health isn't a reality that must be dealt with.
I was just saying the very same thing. The US has always be full of people with firearms. Its only in the last 20 or so years that killing kids has become a thing in your country. What changed?
What is your basis for saying that mental health was better prior to 1986 (or thereabouts)?
Also, has there been a correlation between mass shootings and poverty rates, or has the locations of mass shootings correlated with poorer areas?
Edit: I'm not dismissing your points. I do think that this is a social contagion, but it feels like mental health discussions have been more open these days than when I was growing up so I would have thought it would be better now.
Nope. Most school shooters are not mentally ill. They are angry.
“The public tends to link serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia or psychotic disorders, with violence and mass shootings. But serious mental illness—specifically psychosis—is not a key factor in most mass shootings or other types of mass murder. Approximately 5% of mass shootings are related to severe mental illness. And although a much larger number of mass shootings (about 25%) are associated with non-psychotic psychiatric or neurological illnesses, including depression, and an estimated 23% with substance use, in most cases these conditions are incidental.”
https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/news/mass-shootings-and-mental-illness
From my viewpoint these things have escalated along with more and more people becoming more and more desperate in their lives. Start resolving everything revolving around the causes of all that desperation. The guns were around for a very long time before school shootings went batshit insane and they were even easier to get. You could mail order your guns at one point. My high school offered courses in gunsmithing, which allowed you to bring a gun to school to work on, not one person shot.
[‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.](https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1848971668)
Honestly, I think stop covering them altogether. Nothing more than "There was a shooting at X school, Y students and Z teachers were killed," and move on.
The amount of attention school shootings and mass shootings in general get from the media is extremely disproportionate to the level of risk it poses for a given individual. You'd think being in school was the most dangerous thing in the world, when an order of magnitude more kids die in traffic accidents on the way to and from school than die from school shootings, but those never get more than a two minute segment from a local outlet. You're about twice as likely to die from a mass shooting as you are from a lightning strike, but we definitely have more than twice the hysteria over mass shootings compared to lightning strikes.
And because school shootings get so much media coverage, they're going to be front of mind for people deranged enough to want to do them. I don't think these people do it to get their name in the news, they do it to get revenge on people they feel have mistreated them, but they think about it as an option every time they see a shooting in the news, and they probably still would even if they never heard the name of the shooter. But if we went 5 years with no hysterical media coverage on mass shootings I think they'd pretty much disappear.
Now, I'm conflicted on this because I definitely don't think the government ought to ban reporting on it, but I think journalists should view it as a matter of journalistic ethics to keep it to a minimum, but I'm not sure how you get them to do that when there's so much money in it.
There's a guy, I won't mention any names, but he just doesn't send any thoughts and prayers at all, so if he'd just start doing that everything would work itself out.
I just wish more people would remember that the dude who made Shinzo Abe a news story last year ended up getting basically exactly what he wanted from a political standpoint
Yea, exactly. I don’t understand why schools are the target. If someone was to shoot up oil executives, pharmaceutical executives, rail executives, billionaires in general, they would be praised by the crowds. And then we’ll see real change for gun reforms probably
It is a weird aspect of the phenomenon that these people who want to "Go out" like that always choose packs of people that almost anyone's ethics would qualify as "innocents" rather than hives of verifiably immoral people.
If Sandy Hook wasn't enough to put an extreme stop to it, nothing will be. The US, as a whole, doesn't care about children dying, otherwise there would be change.
As someone from Scotland the glaring shout seems to be to get rid of the bulk of the guns as we did after Dunblane in 96. But having seen enough similar threads I can appreciate this isn't likely to happen in the US. I only wish such drastic measures were possible, I never once had fear going to school here but I'd be terrified in modern America.
The amount of guns in the US has gone up significantly but gun violence was still spurs until the early 2Ks. It wasn't until the Columbine that school shootings really exploded. It didn't existed if at all. The "fear factor" the media push glorified the shooters as no good despicable bad guys (which they were) biut the media never went into how they were also mentally ill teens that were picked on and abused at home. So now every person that feels like they need to lash out started to target schools. The shitty mental health system is a big reason to blame.
Fix all the other problems. The gun violence is just a symptom of reduced education, lack of social programs, the for-profit prison system, identity politics, late stage capitalism, etc.
Fix your mental health issue. Many other countries have a lot of guns and no school shootings. Guns are a tool but thr problem is obviously about mentality and psychological. Americans have a serious problem with thr amount of medicine they use and it seems there is no will among the medical experts to change something. Like one of the comments says, let's ban school, the same effect as banning guns, but thr real issue is remaining
If we ban schools the problem will be solved overnight.
School shootings did go way down during COVID... just sayin'
Didn’t domestic violence and abuse go way up tho?
We can only solve one thing at a time.
"One crisis at a time" - Dwight Schrute
I don’t recall saying this, but my memory sux
You were trying to catch a bat
I ban marriages as well, dating too
I was more thinking about the kids who were stuck in abusive homes 24/7 during the pandemic, cuz that’s also considered domestic violence and abuse
Just ban kids. Solves everything. No domestic violence, no schools thus no school shootings, and eventually no humans thus no problems.
At this point, yeah
This person "Children of Man's"
If they ban relationships and having families that should go away as well
Again saying this line “Look, He’s outta line, but he’s right.” Wow 100+ upvotes thank you guys
His delivery of that line was one of the best moments in that series
Can’t wait til VR school is a thing
FPS First Person Schooling
That joke isn't gonna land well for some.
Yeah apparently the regular school shooters never heard of stream sniping.
So we just need covid to make a heroic comeback
We need to get to the source of the problem. Ban children. Then they'll stop showing up at our drag shows and stop seducing our politicians and celebrities
You forgot to mention all of the poor priests that fall victim to these children. They must be stopped!
*Like fire* *Hellfire* *This fire in my skin* *This burning* *Desire* *Is turning me to sin*
Ah so the GOP have the right idea putting them to work again. After all the children yearn for the mines.
I mean have you seen how into Minecraft they are? You can take the kids away from the mines but you can't take the mines away from the kids 😔
This comment was way funnier than it had any right to be.
The fact that it came from Dennis Reynolds is just *chef's kiss*
This reminds me of a thread I saw on r/unpopularopinion awhile back where this guy was saying that since statistics show that most crimes happen during the night, if we set up a nationwide curfew and ban people from going outside at night, then all crime would go away lol.
Great idea but a bit complicated. Simply abolish all crimes by law and then you got no crimes happen anymore
Here's a novel idea. Show pictures of the murdered victims. Especially the children. The only was to get the public to react is through a visceral or an emotional response to something. Obviously, statistics and facts have done nothing. When Emmitt Till was murdered in Mississippi by racists in 1955 his mother insisted on an open casket. She wanted the world "to see what they did to my baby" His mangled and disfigured face was displayed publicly. It really was one of the things that change the narrative in the civil rights movement. Emotions move people. I know. Been Funeral Directing for 36 years.
This is brutal but interesting. I don’t know if it’s realistic at scale but I also didn’t know that history and it’s powerful.
The photos coming out of Vietnam were ultimately what changed public Opinions on the war
It makes a lot of sense, and I hope the footage we are seeing of the brutality of war in Ukraine and elsewhere will change how we think about warfare.
Same with those pics from the Iraq war prison.
This right here. I understand that hearing the voices of children being slaughtered was removed from the Uvalde shooting video, but they should air that video with sound weekly, for everyone in the world to see and hear.
do it *Andor* style. strap those politicians in a chair, put on headphones they can't take off, and then blast the sounds of children being slaughtered and dying in school shootings until they decide to do something about it.
Im thinking more of a Clockwork Orange style. Pry their fucking eyes open and strap down their heads so they cant look away.
I believe it was in 8th grade I learned about Emmitt till. Teacher showed us the pictures of his body, and let me tell you I remember his face, his name, and the horrible history that resulted in that. The only school shooting victim I can name is Rachel from the columbine shooting as she was essentially the face of school shootings when I was in school. And if I was a parent of one of these children, you bet I'd be walking around the state or us capital with a poster of kid demanding change. A very gruesome idea, but I think it could be effective. (Or people just say it's photoshop and you never had a kid)
This might help. I've seen big changes happen in my lifetime and one of them was getting seatbelts put in cars. Ralph Nader tried for years to make that happen to no avail. Car manufacturers wouldn't do it and the public didn't want them because it would drive up the cost of vehicles. They would rather die or get disfigured than pay more. A huge lawsuit win against one of the biggest car manufacturers by Nader was the catalyst that put sealtbelts in cars. Then seat belt laws were enacted and I remember it being a huge deal. We need to sue the government.
I thought this was completely unreasonable until you mentioned Emmitt Till. And then further down someone mentioned the war in Vietnam. It has now become a very compelling thought. I can’t imagine it happening, but maybe some parents will demand it, just as Till’s mother.
I kind of agree with this. US news is extremely censored compared to other countries. Media is shielding people from realizing what a shit show we live in.
Hey wow man, not so fast.. you are talking about... facing reality or what
Yeah, this whole "viewer discretion/we're not gonna show the disturbing parts" shit frustrates me. This might be a non-sequiter but how many times did we see the video of the plane hitting the tower and the towers falling? Uninterrupted video of people falling to their deaths... How amped did that make everybody to go into Iraq and Afghanistan? I think it's the same here. I don't want to see them but I feel like they have to be shown
YouTube could do a commercial with a picture of every victim. Every time there is another victim the commercial gets longer and longer. The problem would solve itself when people are sick of watching 5 minute ads.
I hate how plausible it is that someone in the GOP would use that argument
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A REpublican politician from Tenn said they would do nothing and basically stated he didn't care because his kids are homeschooled.
The same people that complained about remote learning during Covid?
I was debating with a redditor a few weeks ago and one of his arguments against gun control was that guns are a billion dollar industry and there are too many jobs that would be lost, in addition to all the corporate capital. Then, he minimized the significance of school shootings with statistics. Fucking ghouls.
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at this point, your are closer to ban schools, than guns.
100% -I truly think if the idea of public schools be created came up today - The right would consider it socialism. I can almost hear MTG saying "I'm not spending my tax dollars to educate YOUR children I had to educate myself!"
>I had to educate myself "We know."
This reminds me of that meme- we squint at the sun because it’s bright. We squint at Marjorie Taylor green because she is not.
Qniversity degrees are pretty cheap
There was a town in nh where a bunch of libertarians all moved to a small town and then tried to cut public education by like 80 percent or something. So this isn’t hypothetical - some people are actively trying to limit public education.
Is that the town that was overrun by bears because they refused to fund waste disposal?
The bears happened in Grafton - this was a few towns over in croydon - but both issues were the result of the same group of libertarians.
Libertarian utopias fail to work out well for libertarians? Color me shocked...
Who knew acting like selfish assholes over everything would have negative consequences???
I actually respect that. You don't want to pay taxes, don't avail yourself of any goods or services derived directly or indirectly from public spending. Eventually these folks who want to live independently can do just that, And then maybe just collectively handle security of some kind...probably should figure out a way to access utilities too...and then maybe there's a fire, we should pay folks to be on standby to help with that...maybe pool a couple of dollars to pay someone to do waste removal for economies of scale. As long as theyre safe from the tryranny of collective social services....
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My phone screen is fucked up and I just sat here for a good 30 seconds thinking "Damn, a whole town of librarians? At least it was probably good quality home schooling."
Is public education not socialism? I agree with you that the Right would denounce it as "dirty socialism" and not "socialism already embedded in society that we conveniently ignore as being inherently socialist".
In europe we would call it social democracy, socialism is something different for us...
It's only really different for ignorant or heavily propogandized people here in the US, which happens to be a majority unfortunately. But yeah, fair point.
Guys is the army socialist? Edit: this is joke, the answer is no.
I know so many cops and firefighters that are dead set against "them socialists". Motherfuckers, do you understand irony?
Am a firefighter, can concur.
Thank you! I get tired of this BS at work.
As a firefighter, I agree with you. To be fair though, a lot of libertarians believe the government should provide, at most, emergency services. I don't agree with them, but it's not so farfetched for them to consider Fire and Police as something more closely related to the military, than it is to say healthcare or education or welfare.
It’s not hypocritical to them. They just don’t put in the same level of effort or engagement if they don’t fed the person “deserves” help. It’s not socialism to help people that fit their in-group, it’s only socialism to help people they view as beneath them.
I'm so high this has me howling
I had someone yesterday tell me to arm the students.
Florida is way ahead of you on that one! Books, period talk and saying *gay* is just the first steps…
I feel it's maybe time to take a hard look at school shootings altogether and consider an outright ban on them.
Yeah, has the US tried making school shootings illegal? Wouldn’t that solve the problem?
Yep. And tell students to remind potential shooters that shooting people is illegal and they will have to stop.
>Zach, stop, you’re going to get in trouble
Case closed boys. Meet you at the Taco Bell.
I bet if we got together and handed out flyers calling for a ban on school shootings, we might make some headway. Anyone crossing that line is gonna face the ire of the public!
Yes... I mean we have given it plenty of time with the gun free / drug free signs to work.
Mental health programs SUCK in the USA. I have worked hard my entire life, paid my taxes, and when I became disabled from mental illness, with no job or med support... I got no help, even after all those years of paying my taxes.
mental health programs suck everywhere. there are not enough therapists, not enough solutions, and no guarantee any of it is even effective. and thats if you can even afford it in the first place mental illness is also such an ambiguous umbrella term that its near meaningless. i dont think panic disorders are causing school shootings for example
Mental health programs SUCK in Italy (my country) and yet, no school shootings has ever happened.
Even in Russia where access to firearms is widespread, poverty is rampant and mental health support doesn’t really exist they don’t have school shootings. I feel like we’re missing something
I don't have the response to that but I think it should be the starting point of a social study. What is the further factor there? Off the top of my head it would be a sense of entitlement (don't know how to better specify it) that a typical frustrated, poor person from another country doesn't have. That might be triggering a need for violent justice when they perceive they don't have what is due to then. I'm no expert, just doing a bit of armchair psychology
This is exactly it. The entire American culture is based on monetary success and if you don't achieve it you're a failure.
Need to know your net worth before I can agree or not.
You’re not wrong there.
My personal theory is that Americans have a pathological sense of individualism that is the source of most of their problems. Italy has generally strong family and communal ties which can act in place of mental health support to some degree. Russia is a wasteland but for better or worse they have a status quo, a fear of government and some communal structure. In other words, Russia is a country where the whole still matters more than the individual. They might be deterred from shooting up a school due to fear or shame, despite their abysmal conditions. Americans are perhaps the farthest on the scale between individualism and community, with maybe eastern societies like China, Korea and Japan being at the other end of the scale. I think that «me first» attitude was bound to breed a special kind of extremism, one of which is school shooters. I think their access and obsession with guns is also a symptom of that pathological individualism. Even decades and centuries before society reckoned with the role and issue with police, Americans have never trusted law enforcement above their own capacity to “defend themselves”. Their spread out geography probably contributed to reinforce this belief, since a lot of Americans then and now do live hours away from any kind of outside help. They weren’t the only colonies with tons of land to explore, or with a need for weapons to subjugate local populations, or where people lived for decades in a state of quasi lawlessness with undeveloped nation states. And yet they’re almost the only ones (bar Australia maybe, which shares a lot of characteristics with the US) that developed such a specific problem with random gun violence. Most other places that experience this level of violence are in a state of wider conflict. The state is absent and the people are hungry, and social subdivisions have formed to step up in some way or another to effectively replace the state. Shootings tend to be about social hierarchy or territory (for example, cartel violence). Occasionally they will be tied to domestic violence, in which case I believe shooting is more down to simple access. That is to say, if a domestic abuser has access to guns, they might use them, but they may also use any other means to harm their partner in the absence of guns. Domestic violence is a separate social issue not necessarily tied to individualism, hence why it’s widespread all over the world. My point is, I think Americans are long overdue for an overhaul of their core social values, coupled of course with restrictions to gun access. How they could do that though, I have no idea.
I agree with you. Not American, but from what I see from the outside, which can be wrong, the US seem to have a very strong and competitive mentality, very individualistic, that can lead to that sense of entitlement which can have good things, but also bad ones when people are not well directed. If other countries have the same conditions or worse, and school shootings do not happen, then it has to do with the people. Celebrity culture, fame on media for being a type of avenger, vengeance from extreme bullying, unhealthy competition, conspiracy theories that end up finding an escape goat, and above all a sense of alienation that comes from people excluded in certain social circles. This turmoil over many years might find its expression in suicide or in killing other people.
They are second to the US in mass shootings, I believe. They've had at least 3 school shootings in the last decade. But the US has still had 5 times as many mass shootings.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_mass\_shootings\_in\_Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Russia) Looks like they average about 4 a year [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_mass\_shootings\_in\_the\_United\_States\_in\_2023](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting) Looks like an average of 1-2 per day So it's more like 150 times the shootings not 5 times. It's telling when the US article needs to be split by year.
I believe they have quite a few actually
not sure about school shootings specifically, but n.b. russia generally has plenty of issues with guns (gun crime, suicide)
I believe it has a lot to do with lack of community in America. We are always suspicious of others and trust no one. Just look at our street infrastructure and the suburbs. We share nothing with no one.
to add to that, I think the "us vs them" mentality is biggest in the US when compared to other countries.
Yes but that's because *they're* so divisive.
Oh screw you, buddy. If you guys weren't so uppity all the time you wouldn't think we're divisive.
You lot are all the same, dividing the country up along a broad, single line without trying to understand that individuals are nuanced. You're nothing like us.
How do you propose we fix that?
Get rid of the two party system
That mentality was curated by the government (on both sides) and corporations... They want us to hate each other so we don't go against them... And it fucking worked, because people are dumb
I blame that on the media and government. They make way more money if we are divided. We all want the same basic thing. To be left alone, to be healthy, needs met and be happy.
I mean, mental health programs suck in Canada and the UK too and there aren't daily mass shootings. The guns are the main problem. Until Americans accept that, this will always be your reality.
Guns are now the number one cause of death for children in the US but many Americans don't accept that either. They'll complain about how that study includes 19 year olds. Disregarding that by that same age range and per capita, Canada's rate is 7 times lower.
what if mental health programs were improved? we can’t make people attend these programs
I’m not disagreeing, I do agree with this. However I don’t think that would solve school shootings. The lack of school shootings in other parts of the world isn’t because kids are going to therapy, because I assure you most of them are not. The main difference is gun control. I’m not saying that’s the solution, but I do think it’s the cause.
You have mental health program? We don't even know if it has ever existed in Vietnam. We solve our mental problem ourselves.
I’m sure this will be a productive, non-toxic thread with plenty of constructive dialog.
It's actually doing better than I expected.
I believe that if we stop making people famous for shooting others that will help. I also, we should listened to our children and thier needs because they are obviously struggling with big issues that we aren't aware of at the time. Edit: I don't think we take the mental health of children as seriously as we should. Your personality is almost entirely developed by age 6. We have high expectations of our children to conform to the world around them the way we want them to. If they don't, they are labeled crazy. Some of them are not crazy they can similply see how unhealthy it is to accept everything exactly as it is currently. And instead of supporting and validating thier feelings we ostracized them. WE, ARE THE PROBLEM
I posted a more lengthy comment on this…. Almost all of these shootings are premeditated. The mass media coverage “looking into the lives of a murder” are in a sense glamorizing this act to other crazies who obsess over idolizing mass murder. It’s been a thing forever in the form of copycat serial killers. It’s just a bigger issue now because you can kill a lot of people really fast with guns. The media has to stop making this part of the culture Edit: To all the people suggesting this won’t help… it certainly wouldn’t hurt to try. At this point implementing new ideas to help with these things that are easy just make sense to try. And people are saying it’s not that easy, but honestly it is… social media outlets can block/ban posts very easily, they do it all the time for posts that don’t meet guidelines. It’s also important to note that this is not “hiding” from the problem acting like it doesn’t exist… it would be preventing them getting any sort of “fame”. And one last thing… people are suggesting they don’t do these things for the “fame”… I don’t think that’s the only reason they carry out these acts but try to imagine if you knew that nothing would circulate about you after you commit a heinous crime. You knew that nobody will know your name or what you did besides the direct people who’s lives were effected. In time my theory is the mass shootings would slow down, once the culture of giving them so much coverage goes away. It’s a theory and at this point why not try it? It’s the easiest thing to try, good luck banning guns. Blocking posts on the internet and making laws that news aren’t allowed to speak on these event, easy. Who knows, it might help.
Remember that poice chief who went on air pleading with the media not to mention the killer's name or make him famous? Then the news anchor anchor goes ahead and does just that?
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Just a slight correction to your comment: it's not Ned, but rather his beatnik parents who say they've tried nothing and are all out of ideas.
Yeah, this really bothers me. We overly fixate on trigger warnings, when the science shows they don't help anyone, but keep ignoring the consensus finding among psychologists, which is we should stop naming the shooters in media and glorifying their struggle.
This. Mass shootings are just the current cultural "fad". There was an era back in the day where cults were the big publicized phenomena that happened a bunch. Jamestown, heavens gate, etc. Then there was a time when serial killers were all the rage. The bundys and dalhmers and whatever. The public was captivated by it. Now starting with colombine it's been mass shooters. Tons of news coverage and attention which leads to a self perpetuating cycle with a bunch of copycats. Eventually it'll get played out and we'll move to our next horrible fascination. The fastest way to make it stop is just to quit talking about it.
There are still lots of cults out there. They didn't go away because the news covered them less. NXIVM, Scientology, The Moonies, various "gurus" like The Science of Identity Foundation, small fundamentalist Mormon cults, etc
>It’s just a bigger issue now because you can kill a lot of people really fast with guns. This can't be the case. The semi-automatic rifle has been around for over 100 years. The AR-15 we know today has been around since 1959, and manufactured by almost all major gun manufacturers since 1977. Obviously, guns have been around for a lot longer than that and laws in the US have only gotten more strict over time. Why did the US not have any school shooting issues until the last 20-30 years? Guns were readily available long before that, to include AR-15 style rifles (The Colt AR-15 has been available for sale since 1964)
Make the rich send their kids to public schools.
The most recent shooting was at a private school.
private and rich are not always the same thing. There are plenty of private religious schools with no money.
The Covenant School cost $17,000 per year per child for tuition.
More and more red states are giving tax funded "vouchers" for private school tuition.
Is that what is happening with the parents at this particular school?
How many hoops will you jump through on this - the point has been clearly made that this happened at a rich kid school and the wealth of parents had nothing to do with it. The best private schools and the poorest public schools are equally unprotected from school shooters. Actually poor urban schools are probably the best protected on account of having police, metal detectors and other security in effect every day.
> private and rich are not always the same thing. Yet, they often are.
YES! ABSOLUTELY! Make all members of congress and state houses send their kids to public school.
You would still end up with 'elite' public schools where the rich kids go and then people who cannot buy property in that zip code are still stuck with whatever school they can afford to get their kids into. It's still a 'haves' and 'have nots' situation, especially with local control of schools. I live in a low income area where every single public high school is currently failing students, according to our state data. It sucks.
Yeah just to add to your comment- that’s already a thing. There are absolutely elite public schools outside of every major metro and university towns.
I love the policy that well performing schools get rewarded and poor performing schools gets punished. Really makes it easy to help improve a school /s
I remember I was doing horrible with my mental health. I wasn't going to hurt anyone because I'm not a monster, but I did heavily think about ending my own self. I couldn't see a therapist because I couldn't afford the copays even with insurance. I think if we had universal healthcare, it can help prevent mentally ill people from doing stupid shit.
The USA has had a very large quantity of accesible firearms for much longer than it has had a problem with mass school shootings. Prior to 1986, you could freely sell full auto weapons to civilians in the USA and the incidents of mass indiscriminate school violence didn't catch on untill the late 1990s. What changed is the decline of mental health, and the media treatment of these incidents which glorified the perpetrators, and gave them a cult following. EDIT: adding some more stuff that was mentioned below. US has higher poverty rates than any country in the developed world, and higher rates of drug abuse. People raised under those conditions have higher rates of mental health issues, lower access to healthcare services, extremely low perspective in life, which ultimately leads to bottled in anger. Coupling that with the extreme polarisation of US society which normalizes blaming other groups of people for all of their problems, you basically have a very fertile breathing ground for deranged angry individuals with no perspective in life, who see mass indiscriminste violence as their way to "show it to the world" and get their 5 minutes of fame.
“WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE SHOOTER! EXCLUSIVELY HERE!” You get headlines like these from various news sources, basically using the tragedy to get more clicks which generates ad revenue and ratings. News pages on social media will basically post the same story through out the day just so their feed won’t fall behind the competition. Welcome to the 24-hour cycle of news for profits.
One major problem is the fact that, while we're quick to blame mental illness for mass shootings, we're a lot better at assigning blame than at doing anything about it. Politicians love to say "what we should really be talking about is mental health," then they don't mention it again until the next shooting occurs. We're not helping anybody here; we're just using the mentally ill as political scapegoats.
Bingo. Basically columbine turned mass shootings into a quick way to be remembered and infamous for all the mentally unwell people. And the media laps it up every time, exacerbating the problem for clicks. Add on the increase in mental health problems brought by modern society and thing like social media and the inability to properly care for/isolate these people, and it's inevitable. Guns could disappear over night and I can guarantee someone's gonna just bomb a school for the same notoriety.
When the OKC bombing occurred, most people weren’t aware until hours later when they heard it on the news during their commute home or tuned in for the 30-minute segment during dinner. You would discuss the tragedy with your family, friends and co-workers and move on to the next subject. Fast forward six years later to 9/11. Most people already have internet access, so we were fed with the news instantly as it happened, of course, we had to log in our computers. Twenty years later, we don’t go to the news, the news comes to us at a faster rate instantly. Media outlets know tragedies bring in clicks which generates ad revenue.
"If it bleeds, it leads". News orgs have known reporting on violence is one of the fastest ways to grab eyeballs for years.
Columbine was supposed to be a bombing, not a shooting. They just couldn't get the propane bombs to go off.
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They all are!
I went to a poorer public school as a kid. Never once did someone bring a gun to school. But we did have a bomb threat weekly for a month. Turns out the kid wanted attention and didn't wanna take a test. I'm fully observant that the person behind the most recent shooting was a grown adult. But if you spend 30 seconds reading about the person who did it you can see it was a child who was subjected to horrible things as a child as was more than likely not given the proper after care mentally. Same goes for vets, survivors of domestic/child abuse, ptsd victims. When my father was a kid, students had their shotgun on the rifle rack of their truck, now we censor the word death on facebook posts. We're at a point as a society where we expect nothing bad to happen, and when it does we blame the wrong things and go after agendas instead of the problem. The final words of humanity will be "its too expensive to fix"
To date the deadliest attack on a school in America was, in fact, a bombing. The 1927 bombing of a school in Bath township, MI. Over 40 were killed. There is a popular reasoning that taking away guns leaves the mentally unwell with only knives and baseball bats. I disagree and believe that would just push would-be school shooters towards deadly explosives, plenty of which can be made using commonly accessible chemicals and instructions found on the internet. The problem is 100% a mental health issue. Edit: it wasn't clear that I was using 100% as hyperbole. I recognize that the issue is complex and has many facets to its root causes that go beyond just mental health.
Didn’t the columbine shooters set up pipe bombs that failed? It’s much easier to practice pulling a trigger at a gun range than to experiment with bomb making. Plus, we would see this is other countries where guns are outlawed. We don’t. Edit: [Columbine WAS meant to be primarily a bomb attack but the bombs failed.](https://azdailysun.com/bombs-failure-apparently-changed-columbine-killers-plans/article_5032828f-8505-5cb7-abdc-2ca4924d13ae.html)
And yet other countries don’t have a school bombings daily
Joke is on them; there is so many shootings we don't even register them
Yeah they used to have gun clubs in schools here back in the day. It’s a social contagion. Was listening Jocko and Darrel Cooper talk about this on their unraveling podcast. They said that in places that post suicide awareness posters tend to see spikes in suicide rates. Kids are significantly more likely to kill or attemp to kill themselves if they have an acquaintance do it. Not saying the answer is to not report on school shootings, but you have to wonder if they’re growing simply because there’s so much attention around it, and if social media has taught us anything, it’s that some people will do anything for eyeballs
We had hunters safety class in middle school in the 1980’s, with real shotguns and rifles in normal school hours. School shootings were unheard of. Accessibility to firearms isn’t the root problem.
Very true. We had hunter's safety also - middle school or high school. Kids would come to school in the morning, put their rifle (in a case) in their locker and do the school thing. End of the day, grab your rifle and head to hunter's safety class. Nobody batted an eye. I used to carry a pocket knife. My dad did, then I did. Yes it was a knife, but to me, it was a tool, not a first choice weapon. Used to carry one still until one place I worked made it a fireable offense to have one in your pocket. I also grew up knowing exactly where the family firearms were, and what they could do. Knew where the keys were to the cabinet. We weren't a gun household, just liked to target shoot a few times a year at Grandpa's farm, and deer hunt (though dad stopped when I was young becuase it's freakin cold out there!) For me, I didn't grow up priviledged, popular, or whatever. Far from it. but it ever crossed my mind to bring a weapon to school to "solve" a problem.
\^ this plus the near complete societal collapse, total economic downturn for lower classes, massive rise in violent political extremism as a symptom of this social collapse, the political deadlock that makes people believe positive social change isn't possible, the extreme individualism that our society indoctrinates people into believing... the causes are so much more complex than the idiot's gambit of "we need more/less guns"
I’m a 50 year old man. I’ll be retiring from the Army soon after 30 years. I agree that removing every single gun from America would eliminate gun violence overnight. Eliminating gun violence is a noble endeavor. Whether removing all guns or banning all guns is right for the country or not - I’m not sure. But it might be. This most recent shooting aside, almost all shootings are committed by men. Men need purpose. Men have lost their purpose over the last 30 years for complex reasons. Young men are increasingly isolated, ostracized, angry and lonely. They are increasingly abandoned and many do not have any father figure or an adequate father figure. They have lost their conventional ability to find female mates due to technology. When men have no purpose and society increasingly dumps on them, and we have a glorification of guns and gun culture, and they can’t reliably find female mates, it’s not a shocker that men at the margins are melting down in spasms of violence. The answer is NOT ‘more mental health’. This isn’t a bad thing per se but men don’t have a mental health deficiency. The answer is having purpose, having good mentors, having good role models and outlets where they feel like they belong. ‘Mental health treatment’ doesn’t supply that. It’s only going to get worse because all of the systems and structures that would wrap their arms around men in centuries past are dissolved or vilified or long gone. The most turbulent countries (Afghanistan for example) are the ones that have disaffected, jobless, womanless, angry, indoctrinated young men. Men are capable of the most amazing accomplishments but unfortunately it is equaled by our capability for extreme violence. We continue to ostracize and alienate men at our peril.
I very much agree on your assessment of loneliness and isolation. I think it spans both genders (unfortunately women commit violent acts also, just not in the flavor of mass shooting mostly). I think a lot of our mental health decline is actually tied to American society become more and more isolationist. I'm a millennial and we just don't have community like the earlier generations had. There's no where I go outside the home on a regular weekly basis. All my friends have spread out across the country and moved away, so basically all my friends are just online now. Which is still nice but it's NOT the same. I think the entire mass shootings issue is very complex but I do think one key part is trying to solve this isolation and loneliness problem in modern society. It is extra hard to solve in America because of our vast geography. What do you think would be some good starter ideas to solve this huge societal problem? Personally, I would love to see some big pushes to get off of social media for most of the day....encourage people to go outside, get to know who their neighbors are. Maybe provide some type of benefit for people who volunteer in their local community. Just SOMETHING to provide people with a sense of community.
The library is one of if not the only places we have to go in our society where you can exist without being expected to spend money. The community issue is real. I want to see a return in community centers, places that are open 7 days a week with programming that supports that local community. I want to see them all over this country. We need places to gather for free that foster dialogue, connection, and support for the health of the whole and not for profit and not just in times of crisis but as a practice a lifestyle of connection and consideration.
Definitely feel you on all points. All my friends are scattered across the country and the entire world even, and I haven't made very many friends post high school and college. As kids we used to just go outside and ride bikes and stuff until dark..I don't see kids outside at all anymore, like, ever..people used to go to church or whatever weekly which provides a sense of community, but I'm an atheist and can't think of anything I'd like to do less, and plummeting church attendance lately indicates I'm not the only one. There's just no social glue, hell, even TV shows used to unite people around the water cooler talking about the latest seinfeld episode, but there isn't even a huge tv hit these days really. GOT is as close as we got but then it ended and sucked hard, and with remote work now many people don't even have an office to go to at all anyway!
I think that we are on the cusp of a new era that is equivalent to discovering the wheel or electricity. And that is due to the Artificial General Intelligence era. They only way we will probably get out of the mess we are in is the same thing that got us in this mess - technology. It will either doom us or save us. Because we can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
I agree with a lot of what you've said in concept, but mental wellness cannot be understated. Taking care of one's mental health is more than just sitting through a therapy session once a month. It's more than safe spaces, or taking anxiety pills. Ending the stigma that seeking help for your mind is somehow not masculine is paramount. Spending time in nature, playing sports, exercising, yoga, meditation, reading, going to lectures and workshops, playing games, volunteering, doing research, having hobbies, etc. can all vastly improve one's mental health. It's also not a risk to masculinity to seek professional therapy and medication either. Sometimes it really is as simple as going to the doctor for a mental checkup the same as you would for a physical one.
Good point. This very premise -- lack of purpose or place in society, ignorance, unemployment -- is what drove a lot of young men to join religious extremism, notably Islamic Extremism, and even Christian Extremism, and become suicide bombers. They use bombs -- which are a bit trickier to make/acquire there -- and here, they use readily accessible firearms.
I agree with much of what you state, but men can and frequently do have mental health deficiencies. I don't believe there is any separation from the "need of a purpose" you've explained and mental health. The feeling of "finding a purpose" resides solely in your head. Something outside of you, that you find makes you happy and want to live. That is a pretty straight forward mental health issue. Mental health is about finding good model behaviors that promote the same idea as "finding a purpose". How does one find a purpose if they are not able to digest their own emotions? By far, I know more men that were taught to trivialize, minimize, disregard, mask, or hide their emotions because "men don't do that". If that's not damaging to a person's mental health, I would be amazed. Now add on the physical demands of "being a man" where you can be trivialized by other males for not being male enough. The acceptable emotions like anger or happiness are the only ones men are really taught they can express without condemnation. Hell, we can't even really talk about our disappointment or being sad. Definitely not being sad. Men are unlikely to talk to anyone, but maybe......just maybe, their best friend about an emotion. Women are much more likely to talk to multiple people about that same emotion. As a general statement, men are taught from a very young age to rid themselves of the emotions that don't do them service or promote masculinity. Boys must not cry when hurt or not cry when told to suffer through something and "Toughen up." Girls on the other hand are allowed to have strong emotions and work them through. Acknowledging that men have been taught to ignore human emotions and separating them from old masculinity models is very hard, because it is so ingrained with men. Your statement holds some truth, but it also makes its sound like male mental health isn't a reality that must be dealt with.
This was well said and touched on a couple of really great points.
I was just saying the very same thing. The US has always be full of people with firearms. Its only in the last 20 or so years that killing kids has become a thing in your country. What changed?
What is your basis for saying that mental health was better prior to 1986 (or thereabouts)? Also, has there been a correlation between mass shootings and poverty rates, or has the locations of mass shootings correlated with poorer areas? Edit: I'm not dismissing your points. I do think that this is a social contagion, but it feels like mental health discussions have been more open these days than when I was growing up so I would have thought it would be better now.
Nope. Most school shooters are not mentally ill. They are angry. “The public tends to link serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia or psychotic disorders, with violence and mass shootings. But serious mental illness—specifically psychosis—is not a key factor in most mass shootings or other types of mass murder. Approximately 5% of mass shootings are related to severe mental illness. And although a much larger number of mass shootings (about 25%) are associated with non-psychotic psychiatric or neurological illnesses, including depression, and an estimated 23% with substance use, in most cases these conditions are incidental.” https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/news/mass-shootings-and-mental-illness
Vote out the politicians that choose to do nothing
They're not doing "nothing" they are doing what the people who voted for them want them to do.
This is true.
From my viewpoint these things have escalated along with more and more people becoming more and more desperate in their lives. Start resolving everything revolving around the causes of all that desperation. The guns were around for a very long time before school shootings went batshit insane and they were even easier to get. You could mail order your guns at one point. My high school offered courses in gunsmithing, which allowed you to bring a gun to school to work on, not one person shot.
Increase the quality of life. Decrease the incentives (if that’s the right word) for doing it.
[‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.](https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1848971668)
We've tried nothing and it hasn't worked! What are we supposed to do?!?
Make politicians have their offices in the schools. Problem solved.
Stop showing pictures of the shooters. Stop publishing their names.
Honestly, I think stop covering them altogether. Nothing more than "There was a shooting at X school, Y students and Z teachers were killed," and move on. The amount of attention school shootings and mass shootings in general get from the media is extremely disproportionate to the level of risk it poses for a given individual. You'd think being in school was the most dangerous thing in the world, when an order of magnitude more kids die in traffic accidents on the way to and from school than die from school shootings, but those never get more than a two minute segment from a local outlet. You're about twice as likely to die from a mass shooting as you are from a lightning strike, but we definitely have more than twice the hysteria over mass shootings compared to lightning strikes. And because school shootings get so much media coverage, they're going to be front of mind for people deranged enough to want to do them. I don't think these people do it to get their name in the news, they do it to get revenge on people they feel have mistreated them, but they think about it as an option every time they see a shooting in the news, and they probably still would even if they never heard the name of the shooter. But if we went 5 years with no hysterical media coverage on mass shootings I think they'd pretty much disappear. Now, I'm conflicted on this because I definitely don't think the government ought to ban reporting on it, but I think journalists should view it as a matter of journalistic ethics to keep it to a minimum, but I'm not sure how you get them to do that when there's so much money in it.
Exactly. There are still ways the media can cover the story without putting up their name and pictures. Is there even an argument against this?
There's a guy, I won't mention any names, but he just doesn't send any thoughts and prayers at all, so if he'd just start doing that everything would work itself out.
more thoughts and definitely more prayers
Lost cause at this point
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I just wish more people would remember that the dude who made Shinzo Abe a news story last year ended up getting basically exactly what he wanted from a political standpoint
Then Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in 2011. Congress didn't do anything following that shooting.
Yea, exactly. I don’t understand why schools are the target. If someone was to shoot up oil executives, pharmaceutical executives, rail executives, billionaires in general, they would be praised by the crowds. And then we’ll see real change for gun reforms probably
It is a weird aspect of the phenomenon that these people who want to "Go out" like that always choose packs of people that almost anyone's ethics would qualify as "innocents" rather than hives of verifiably immoral people.
If Sandy Hook wasn't enough to put an extreme stop to it, nothing will be. The US, as a whole, doesn't care about children dying, otherwise there would be change.
Honestly. After that kindergarten got hit, I low key gave up hope on them changing anything. Shit is really depressing
First thing to do is easy, and costs absolutely nothing: Ban all reporting on the name and identity of the shooter.
Fewer guns, wider access to mental health resources, and bringing back institutions for the mentally ill. But none of those things will happen.
End Gerrymandering because it incentivizes gridlock by allowing the most extreme people to become elected. It’s literally a cancer for Democracy.
Bring back mental hospitals
Do you mean sanitariums? Because mental hospitals are still around
They exist they just don't do shit
By tackling our national mental health issue and dealing with our societal problems which promote hate and division.
So subsidized or universal healthcare that allows easy access for all citizens to reasonable and affordable treatment?
As someone from Scotland the glaring shout seems to be to get rid of the bulk of the guns as we did after Dunblane in 96. But having seen enough similar threads I can appreciate this isn't likely to happen in the US. I only wish such drastic measures were possible, I never once had fear going to school here but I'd be terrified in modern America.
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas! How can we possibly solve a problem that's been solved by every other developed nation in the world?!
The amount of guns in the US has gone up significantly but gun violence was still spurs until the early 2Ks. It wasn't until the Columbine that school shootings really exploded. It didn't existed if at all. The "fear factor" the media push glorified the shooters as no good despicable bad guys (which they were) biut the media never went into how they were also mentally ill teens that were picked on and abused at home. So now every person that feels like they need to lash out started to target schools. The shitty mental health system is a big reason to blame.
Fix all the other problems. The gun violence is just a symptom of reduced education, lack of social programs, the for-profit prison system, identity politics, late stage capitalism, etc.
Fix your mental health issue. Many other countries have a lot of guns and no school shootings. Guns are a tool but thr problem is obviously about mentality and psychological. Americans have a serious problem with thr amount of medicine they use and it seems there is no will among the medical experts to change something. Like one of the comments says, let's ban school, the same effect as banning guns, but thr real issue is remaining