2 words: GUN CONTROL
Too bad I'm too lazy to back up my words and to even discuss :((
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Most advocates of gun control are unable to understand that criminals don't follow the law, and only law abiding citizens will disarm themselves. They don't seem to understand that practically every shooting (I know of) occurs at a "Gun Free Zone" or at places where conceal carries are unlikely to be at (College Campus', Nightclubs, stores which don't allow conceal carry's, ect.)
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Edit, I deleted my reply because I wasn't following my own rule :(
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i think it has mostly to do with your social systems.
if you take security from people and make them live their lives in constant fear of ending up on the street or dead than things like this happen more frequently.
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Australia heavily regularized guns after the '96 masssacre. Now spree shootings are anecdotical compared to the yearly occurrences they used to endure.
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The current reality is true. When I looked into it, though, I found that the decline in levels of violence was already beginning prior to the 1996 ban, and following it, there was no sudden precipitous drop in crime levels. It was the same downtrend that had already begun. I don't have that resource now, but I'm curious if that's accurate.
Intuitively, I'd suspect a sharp downtrend (or uptrend, if everyone revolts at the new law). That makes me suspect the reality in the USA is something cultural or social.
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Well, I wouldn't mind seeing governments banning guns, because I'm against violence. It's not the Wild West, where you could just go around with your gun and take the law in your hands. I don't really know in which countries people usually have guns. Still, I'm pretty sure people would be better without guns. Yes, maybe that would leave them defenseless, but as I said, it's not the Wild West and we aren't the ones to take the law in our hands. What do I mean though? That the police is doing its job well and we should trust them? Not really. A lot of policemen are neither good people nor effective in their job. Then what should we do? Do nothing? Well, you should obviously call the police when you see a crime and try to defend yourself with a melee weapon. And what should the police do? Be more effective, but less trigger-happy. Of course, these things aren't that simple. It's not easy to defend yourself against a criminal with a melee weapon. But what if the criminal finds your gun first? What if you're not good with shooting and accidentally kill a member of your family? It's also not easy for the police to become more effective. They need much more training for that. And how to stop mass shootings? Well, I'm pretty sure there's security in most clubs, businesses, etc., so why can't they do their job more effectively and stay always covered behind something like a booth (so they won't get shot without expecting it)? Now, about why USA has so many mass shootings, I doubt that anyone knows - not even the Americans. Anyway, my comment isn't really helpful, but it's just my opinion.
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I wasn't sure about much of anything, either, but it's useful to think it through at least.
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Mass shootings don't occur everyday in the US. They're very occasional. There are a lot of countries where a lot more people die, and the difference is that the US has sensitivity to that and media that likes to sensetionalise things.
Throughout most history of most countries, like 99.9% of it, violence was the norm. We're more sensitive to it now, so we care more when this happens, but it's not something that's easily solvable.
But, yes, I do think that there's a problem when people from societies which don't share western values are transplanted into a modern western society. If a society is intolerant of LGBT people, for example, people from it will be automatically predisposed against LGBT.
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An incident with four or more people shot. It averages out to roughly every other day: https://www.massshootingtracker.org/data
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I stand corrected, but googling, this rate is not that unusual. Norway and Switzerland for example look like worse countries to live at in this respect.
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ButI mean, the case of Norway is because this one bloke went insanely apeshit on that Summer Camp Island. It's only one occcurrence and heavlily influences the mean.
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Norway has over twice as many incidents relative to the population than the US, according to that article. That one bloke would count as one incident.
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I actually saw those statistics before, but it also hit me that the one incident in Norway would heavily skew the results. I'm not sure if per capita would be the best way to look at rates (but it's definitely meaningful) and I'd prefer to see something like violence rates stacked up against firearm ownership.
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As much as I'd like to read everything you've wrote, I just don't have the time right now. I've read your first paragraph about the relation with muslims, and to an extent, I totally agree. No, muslims are not evil as a whole, there are plenty of good people out there are muslim, in a similar fashion there a lot of people out there who are evil and are christian. The whole point is, most people don't despise muslims as a whole, but it's more to do with their culture, in particular Islam. Their religion is used as a tool to manipulate the weak minded, the same way the bible was used hundreds of years ago to control big chunks of people (Teutonic Crusades, as an example). But that's just my opinion. ^^
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The problem is that this country has a very adversarial system, from the courtroom, to the newsroom. This includes politics.
You only hear the extremes "they want to take all our guns away" vs "they want any crazy moron to have access to military grade weapons".
If people with opposing views would actually talk to each other, they'd realize they have a lot more in common. I've talked to staunch anti-gun activists, and they're usually OK with responsible gun-ownership, and to gun-toting nutjobs who are ok with some regulation. Basically, both sides are ok with requiring some kind of license and some kind of training in order to own a gun. (what that training and licensing should entail is a different matter)
But, politics being a binary system here, means that our representatives are not allowed to compromise, so the "pro-gun" crowd won't entertain any discussion that would limit their constituents' ability to buy guns, whereas the "gun-control" politicians try to push too far (see e.g. DC's attempted handgun ban).
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"but that just completely ignores our different cultural temperaments compared with, say Switzerland, and in any case, it's too late for that to be a valid blanket solution in the USA. It goes against the legal system, the borders are far too large, and it just doesn't mesh with the cherished, though false, nationwide libertarian, boot-straps mentality."
Too late? Countries changed (and improved) far more radically in history, then the switch from "gun are parts of our culture and rights" to "no guns here". If Australia managed that change, I don't see a reason why the USA should not.
As far as I can tell a majority in the US wants less guns too, but the political system and lobbying prevent that anything will change.
But funny enough, support for a complete ban of guns was historically far higher than it is these days. Since the mid 90s it constantly dropped. Considering all the mass shootings that happened ever since, you can only conclude that the NRA successfully managed to brainwash people, to have it their way. But that the US politics got more and more unreasonable in the past 2 decades isn't really a new discovery. Sadly.
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I was trying to find when the mood began to shift, and could only come up with vague, late-1980s gut feeling, but couldn't find anything substantive on it.
For Australia's case, it may well have been easier for them, as control can be enacted on a federal level by Customs. Geography allows them more realistic control than you'd have in the USA. Hell, our guns get trafficked into Mexico to be bought there. The reality of geography is brought up as a counterargument by gun-supporters, and it is something to be considered.
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Sure it has to be considered. But seriously, just because it isn't easy isn't really an argument not to even try it. Not to mention that the US fought far more futile wars, as its war against drugs.
And there are plenty enough countries that even have open borders and yet manage a good level of gun control. The most important part about banning guns is to take it out everyone's mindset that buying, owning and handling guns in public is normal, or that they'd somehow enrich someone's identity.
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Gallup shows the shift http://www.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
From 1975 till 1993 it always shows around 40% for a complete ban of guns. Since then it kept dropping, till it reached the mid 20% now.
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This is very interesting. It came around the time of the 1994 crime bill too.
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My ideal solution would be to have these things not reported in the media. It just gives people ideas and leads to copy cats. Especially when they give details of how the bad guy went about things, if he built a bomb and what materials he used, etc.
I agree with you that it has nothing to do with religion in general. Because there have been people who shoot up an office because they are mad at their boss. Or McDonalds, or wherever. Some guy loses his job and gets depressed and kills his family and himself. My point being that there will always be some excuse for doing what they are doing. It's just a surface excuse for the real reason: I'm mad and/or depressed and want others to suffer as I have suffered.
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The US had guns for a long time, but this amount of mass shootings is a recent thing. Maybe this is being caused by mental issues becoming more prevalent due to things such as a work mentality where you have to have a very good reason to not be employed for a period longer than about 3 months if you ever want to find a job again, or maybe ulterior motives behind these.
The FBI, for example, tried to use the San Bernadino shooting to get a precedent allowing phones to be cracked. I mean, cyber pathogens? Seriously?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, crazy, or whatever - but there's a lot of unexplained things in these shootings.
For example, this.
Why are cops carrying multiple victims towards the nightclub?
There also have been conflicting reports of 3 shooters at the scene, but i don't have enough information to confirm or dismiss that.
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This [pic] is how it turned out to be in some cities of the UK, Swedistan, France, Beligistan and if things continue Germanistan.
I'm not pulling that out of my arse ... just google/read up on how other religions get treated in Muslim majority countries and
on radical Islam in European cities and you know.
In the US on the other hand there are only "a few" in relation and they keep things "chill" ... they don't even get as far to demand special rights / sharia law but as occurred in the recent cases (San Bernadino/Orlando) they might spontaneously decide to go FULL RAMBO.
While most won't hop on that train a few will, and that is enough, with their fellows just keeping it silent otherwise they'd be
silenced in some way. As long there is "a cause" and support from their known allies this game will continue for some time ...
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Honestly, there are a variety of problems involved and we certainly don't know all of them. One obvious problem that most people probably won't admit is that human beings in general are not nearly as mature as they like to pretend they are and react to people with different beliefs than them by throwing giant temper tantrums (we're all guilty of it at some time or another and it's basically what passes for political debate at this point). Fortunately, the majority of the time this is limited to merely verbal attacks as the cost of turning things physical usually outweighs the benefits, but occasionally you get something like this where that's just not the case. It's not a problem with any particular religion, political group, culture etc.; being a dick transcends all of these boundaries (which are completely made up and unimportant distinctions anyway). As a more specific problem for the US, part of it likely has to do with the general soldier worship present in our culture and the fact that we tend to glorify violence against people we disagree with. Obviously the full answer is much more complicated and we certainly don't know all of the underlying causes, but this is almost certainly a big part of it. I could probably go on a much longer rant, but I'm going to stop here because no one wants to read an (incredibly pessimistic) 20 page essay about why humans suck.
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[If I've managed to not offend anyone here, please let me know below, but I'd appreciate if you'd take the time to at least try to fidget. Very curious how people feel. There's no GA here; just something I wrote out when I should have been doing something else. You can stop now if you're looking for a giveaway.]
We are more like our worst enemies than our friends. I've lived in around a dozen countries where mass shootings didn't occur every other day. If our question is why the USA has so many, first of all, I suspect the answer has little to do with the Muslim community as a whole. I've lived in four different primarily Muslim neighborhoods, worked alongside them, and even ate a ham sandwich with Malibu rum once in the desert, and unless if I'm remembering incorrectly, I have still yet to be murdered, despite clearly being an infidel who didn't fit into their worldview. When I try to think how they felt about me, it makes me wonder if they were actually expecting me to murder them too for the same reason, and it all just resolved itself in some kind of sitcom-level misunderstanding 22 minutes later. But given all the evidence I had, I concluded that they, like me, just didn't really give too much of a shit about me being around, and also had to go to work, or get back to their mobile game, or pray, or do other human stuff that I've seen other humans do.
The truth does seem to be that they, like most anyone else anywhere, just want to live in relative peace and security, responding to the existentialist realities of the world with their own particular worldview. And I shrug, because that's what I've seen everyone do everywhere in the history of everytime. It's a human thing. It does seem to be the case that individuals who are Muslim can be radicalized, or slighted, or hurt, or threatened, or in any other way fall out of favor with Fate and commit some atrocity to re-establish some fleeting meaning in a meaningless entropic world. That singular religious label then is pressed down hard upon their entire community, who are expected to step up to the Mantle of Apology to remind everyone else that, "Hey, that one guy was really an asshole, am I right?" Personally, I don't see why we need the Mantle of Apology in the first place, when the other mass shooter just a few days ago, or a few days before that, or a couple days before that, was just excused as "not a true Christian." Maybe he [or, to be fair, he] was "mentally ill." The same standard doesn't seem to apply. Here we are, more like our worst enemies than our friends.
Returning to the question, I imagine the answer is likely rooted in culture, with a medley of nationwide mental health deficits intermixed. This particular kind of continuous violence does seem endemic to the USA and a few other war-torn countries. I tend to doubt our own rash of violence stems entirely from our short-changed mental health system--this would imply that every other country has collectively cured mental illness and left the U.S. out of the loop, just to serve as some sort of social experiment. What would they be testing for, anyway? To find what can go wrong when certain aggrieved people equate guns to the very notion of liberty?
I think the answer depends on what labels we choose to address in our solution. Statistically, the few correlations among all the mass shootings is that the shooters are generally white, male, and holding guns. Should we, then, act to ban white males? It would seem we'd all be safer for it. Where is the Back to Europe campaign to send this dangerous group of hooligans back to where they came from? Europe has been at war with itself almost continuously for the past millennia--why isn't this treated as evidence of their maladapted violent temperament? I'm already long since out of the country, but I suspect that many white males would wake up everyday and feel rightfully aggrieved by the notion of being unwelcome in their own country. I would remind everyone, before opening the wardrobe to choose their labels every morning, to zip up your pants first--your confirmation bias may be showing. Again, we are more like our worst enemies than our friends.
Then, the other common factor in mass shootings, guns. Should we act to ban guns? I'd argue against it. It wouldn't work, either.
Many Americans use and view guns as tools for hunting or target shooting, while others just like collecting or learning about them. Most of those people aren't murderers, no more than the Muslims or maladapted white males I've lived with. It's the reality of the culture in the USA, and overlooking it is missing a very important aspect of the worldview of many Americans. Assume that you are one of these Americans, and you've watched coverage of the latest mass shooting and feel strongly for the victims and a bitter sadness/anger toward the person responsible. A rifle is, to you and all your neighbors, just a means to hunt some animals in the woods. Maybe your family taught you and you're going to teach the skill to your family. Maybe the nearest police department is several miles away and you want something that makes you feel safer at home--whether it statistically does or not is irrelevant to you, since at least you feel safer--and then assume that some people come in on the TV who seem to have drawn what you think are the wrong conclusions, who don't seem to trust you from the outset because of a tool you also have, who don't seem to understand--or even try to understand--your worldview and just want to eliminate it. After a while, wouldn't you start to feel deep distrust and antipathy toward anything they told you? All the while, the irony of everyone painting everyone else with a wide brush is lost on the individuals being painted by that brush on both sides of the argument. We are more like our worst enemies than our friends.
The point isn't to stop all mass shootings--that's just the ideal--because statistically, somewhere, sometime, something will go wrong. The universe is disordered, and idealism yields failure. People die, empires and bones crumble to dust, that dust accumulates. Disorder piles up all around us.
The point is to reduce the number of times it can happen. Unfortunately, any attempt to regulate guns has been trained to be viewed as a blatant overreaching power-grab to take away all guns. I don't think this mindset should be overlooked or rejected out-of-hand; many Americans really do feel that attempting to regulate gun violence is a sneaky backdoor to take away part of their worldview. Personally, I do think it is rational to conclude that everyone in the USA would be safer if everyone didn't have guns, and I personally never want one, but that just completely ignores our different cultural temperaments compared with, say Switzerland, and in any case, it's too late for that to be a valid blanket solution in the USA. It goes against the legal system, the borders are far too large, and it just doesn't mesh with the cherished, though false, nationwide libertarian, boot-straps mentality. Conveniently enough, this is why people aren't proposing to "ban all guns," but the debate on what the debate actually is debating is still debatable.
A good start in this debate would be to learn more about it, since this would build more mutual understanding: "Assault rifle" is actually an artificial term, "clips" aren't "magazines," automatic machine gun weapons already are banned, a domestic violence conviction is grounds to be denied a right to gun ownership, and background checks are (mostly) required. And yet this has all been proven repeatedly to be ineffectual. What's a nation with a temper problem to do? Tighten purchasing loopholes that exist, extend the 3-day default proceed period, further restrict semi-automatic rifles, approach mental health issues more carefully, act somehow to divert primarily male violence, bolster vulnerable communities through education? Yeah, most of that, probably. I don't know. I know the answer isn't banning Muslims, shipping off white men, demonizing the very people who most need outreach, because all of that would all make us more like our worst enemies than our friends as we watch with reluctant wonder as it happens again and again and again.
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