How many more children need to die before the USA can have gun control? | Page 4 | INFJ Forum

How many more children need to die before the USA can have gun control?

It's good to maintain perspective, the US in particular tends to lose its shit any time anything happens.
The other thing is in the last couple of decades the media here has gone from soft, quiet lies to aggressive manic shit stirring.
I think that's right, and our media does the same in the UK. I don't see people from our countries queuing at the borders of other parts of the world trying to get out either - on the contrary the queues are all the other way, with people desperately trying to get in. No matter how bad things seem to us, it appears they are far worse elsewhere in the world.
 
But we get gangster rap and drill music ‍♂️

I just realized you were perhaps trying to "prove me wrong" in some way with your link.
You misunderstand me. I wasn't implying there was "more" or "less" violence in either country.
Only that the way it is enacted is different.
 
I just realized you were perhaps trying to "prove me wrong" in some way with your link.
You misunderstand me. I wasn't implying there was "more" or "less" violence in either country.
Only that the way it is enacted is different.
I was just curious to make the comparison. USA is fair bit worse than U.K. But many poorer countries far worse than both. Pretty good correlation with wealth.
 
I was just curious to make the comparison. USA is fair bit worse than U.K. But many poorer countries far worse than both. Pretty good correlation with wealth.

Ok, I just wanted to be clear on my own intent mainly
 
 
It's good to maintain perspective, the US in particular tends to lose its shit any time anything happens.
The other thing is in the last couple of decades the media here has gone from soft, quiet lies to aggressive manic shit stirring.
This 100%.

I wanted to point out when this happened that it's a bit sad that a very small percent of the population is creating such an amount of fear and a sense of us being unsafe when the reality of the threat happening to you is very slim.

It reminds me of how when people are victims of a crime like a mugging or assault it is extremely common to have PTSD and feel threatened in everyday situations.

When our perception of safety has been shattered we can overreact to non threats.

It seems like news predates on people's emotional state. I used to be very liberal and biased and think that more conservative news outlets were emotionally based and not fact based but over the years I've been able to step back from even things I believe and see when the argument isn't based on facts but meant to comfort my emotional state/re-enforce my own perceptions of the world and my biases.

It's impossible to not have these tendencies, but we can at least be aware of them, and the awareness of our blind spots and biases itself can help us to check ourselves.

I've made all sorts of emotionally based arguments in this thread myself but I hope that by sharing our ideas even if we don't agree with each other we can get a rounder perspective of the issue and find angles we haven't yet explored.
 
The media use a propaganda model to slant (lol) news in favour of big business and the rich, although right wingers like Jordan Peterson think they are left wing biased like universities, partly because he’s so right wing and because people mix up cultural left wing with economic/political left wing. Being woke is seen as left wing but that’s just cultural political correctness. There is no real left wing anymore in the west. Just different shades of right-wing pro business and rich parties and news outlets. The bias is done largely by selective recruitment.
 
Just look at the UK and their lack of guns to see what would happen in the US if we somehow magically got rid of all the guns (impossible).
People would turn to knives, acids and other methods.
Violence is only stopped through cultural shifts.
The culture of the US is one of violence, has been for a very long time.

This is the prevailing issue at play here. With all due respect, but US culture is fucked up from an international perspective. To a certain extent, republicans are right that guns are just tools and that the problem lies with the wielder of the weapons. A pdf report from 2020, from the UK Home Office, which I came across (p. 9) indicates such:

The availability of guns appears to be a factor in explaining differences in rates between nations but generally does not explain trends within nations. In the year ending March 2018, just 4% of homicides in England and Wales were by shooting. This is a markedly lower proportion than for the US (73%), but it is also lower than most European nations, for example Sweden (27%) and the Netherlands (28%). However, previous legislative attempts to tighten supply further, following mass shootings in Hungerford in 1987 and Dunblane in 1996, did not have noticeable effects on the homicide trend in England and Wales.

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I'm not going to go into a deep research dive right now, but the general opinion is that a lot of our homicides (at the very least) here in the UK are attributable to gang-related crimes and county lines drug trafficking, hence the higher proportion of black British victims and offenders as there is an ethnic disparity within the more impoverished areas. Within a few years of drastically increasing acid attacks and the widespread coverage of it, the rates have been steadily falling as far as I'm aware since our Government passed legislation restricting access to strong chemicals/acids back in 2017.

A number of years back, when I was still in secondary (high) school, we had a fence perimeter erected where entry required either senior (Sixth Form/College) students knowing the passcode for the gate, or requiring a buzz in from the main office. They were only left open at the beginning of the school day where teachers oversaw each entrance, or at the end. Requirements enacted as a result of the fear of domestic terrorism (at least from what I recall for the reason given at the time), as the nation was still at high alert and feared that they may attack more vulnerable areas such as schools.

To a certain extent, I think the issue can be curtailed in greater firearm restrictions. I don't understand at all the really fucking strange obsession so many US Americans have with weapons of death. But the issues are far more rooted than what appears on the surface.
 
As far as I understand it, most of the massacres are carried out by disaffected and alienated youths or young men, acting alone. They are almost certainly mentally disturbed, if not ill, and there will be many factors that have got them this way - I'm very much with @slant on this that a practical way forward is to identify them in advance and nip the problem in the bud. That takes resources and expertise - it sounds like some States are willing to do this and others aren't. I doubt that it's all that difficult because most of these guys don't seem to be all that clever - a teenage lad is pretty transparent. The islamicist terrorists who have carried out atrocities in the UK seem to have a similar sort of profile - angry and alienated young men with a degree of mental instability, but they can be a bit harder to find ahead of the game. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but most of these guys will be victims of some sort, driven to extremes by goodness knows what demons.

This is on-point, and I agree, but the cultural and gender roles assigned to young men in the United States make this approach and process difficult because the need for help in men is culturally equated with weakness, which is mutually exclusive with being a “man.”

Of course, there is also potential for the stigma associated with mental illness and treatment, depending on your mindset, and family/community.

As American boys become teenagers and begin the process of individuation, the family/community/culture begin to wash their hands of him. He needs nothing, because he is now a man. The culture at large does not challenge the idea he has right-minded agency and autonomy. He goes forth, and will make something of himself, or so says the myth and the expectations of his role.

That he would ask for help, or we offer it, would shame both the man, and the culture—him for his failure to meet expectations and play the role he was assigned, and the culture for pretending men are both more and other than they are...human.

Until we love our boys, and in turn young men, for who they are, as they are, and recognize their worth, and their needs, we will continue to lose them to a darkness that preys upon them, breaks them, and discards them, resulting in suffering for us all.

Perhaps some of the problem is caused by systemic dysfunctionality in government, but I think it's misleading to project all the faults of society onto this possible problem. The solution has to lie also with people individually or in local organisations taking responsibility rather than putting it all on 'Them', the oppressors. I'm not saying there isn't truth in it, but there are other deeply rooted problems too such as (for example) the effect of family break-ups on children, the lack of stable father role models for many youngsters, bullying, and social isolation. This is a social problem, not just one of government, and there will be others too, such as the impact of the media and social networking. Of course many people don't like looking at their own individual behaviour and thinking about it's impact on their immediate family and on society as a whole - but, far more powerfully than our votes, our individual attitudes and behaviours add up into those of the whole society around us. We end up with the society that we invent through our own individual attitudes and contributions - and we inevitably end up with governments that reflect this grass roots culture regardless of the way they come into power.

Exactly. There is a systemic aspect, yes, but the root of losing these young men is fed by the pain of their unmet human need. It begins with the self, the family, and the community. Those things are shaped by larger systems, but those systems are not causal.

I've reflected on it, and I don't think I have anything useful to say on whether or not you should ban personal ownership of firearms in the USA. I can't see that gun ownership serves the purpose of guaranteeing freedom - personally I'd have been scared silly as a kid if my school had had to be controlled by armed guards and I would have felt very unfree indeed. But maybe that's just me, living in a very different sort of society. But as others have said, the problem wouldn't go away if you banned them. There are just too many already out there, and people who feel strongly about it would get access to them come what may.

Nods.

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Martin Luther King Jr. said that a riot is the language of the unheard. That’s for a neighborhood, a community, a city.

The violence of a lone shooter at a school—that is also the language of the unheard, but only one voice is speaking–with a gun—because we are wilfully deaf to the plaintive wail of their soul’s longing.

Forgive us, for we know not what we do,
Ian
 
This is on-point, and I agree, but the cultural and gender roles assigned to young men in the United States make this approach and process difficult because the need for help in men is culturally equated with weakness, which is mutually exclusive with being a “man.”

Martin Luther King Jr. said that a riot is the language of the unheard. That’s for a neighborhood, a community, a city.

The violence of a lone shooter at a school—that is also the language of the unheard, but only one voice is speaking–with a gun—because we are wilfully deaf to the plaintive wail of their soul’s longing.

Forgive us, for we know not what we do,
Agree whole-heartedly Ian. I have no doubt that poverty has a role to play here, but there are many sorts of poverty and not all are the sort cured by economics. You can throw all the money in the world at this sort of thing, but if someone is starved of love and alienated from the world around them then they will still be destitute - it's no wonder some of them turn into monsters, and that's down to social as much as economic poverty. This isn't something that can be fixed top down - it's as much to do with the bottom-up norms of our world for raising children and preparing them for a fulfiling place in the world. That's a matter for all of us.
 
I have no doubt that poverty has a role to play here, but there are many sorts of poverty and not all are the sort cured by economics.

Yes, but penniless and happy is possible. The one true poverty is a poverty of the soul. The fruits that are the heart, the mind, and the body, all begin to wither on the vine when the taproot of the soul goes unfed, and bitter fruits cause grievous illness.

This isn't something that can be fixed top down - it's as much to do with the bottom-up norms of our world for raising children and preparing them for a fulfiling place in the world. That's a matter for all of us.

Absolutely. Inasmuch this is true, only Love will show us the way, and only action in loving service will deliver us from this suffering. This is not to be fixed through legislation. The Law has already been spoken, and already exists. We suffer because we ignore the Law. Our suffering is wilful, and proud. Our redemption awaits us, and it is patient, and it is kind.

Best to You,
Ian
 
Honestly thought this was fake so I checked and it's not.
I'm just like, what? Why? What is the motive here, other than to create discord.

I can imagine a number of things, and although I do not know his intent, I don’t have the sense he was trying to stir the pot as an agent of chaos.

But I’d love to hear him elucidate on it. Twitter is great :rolleyes: for running off with flaming batons of misunderstanding.

Cheers,
Ian
 
I can imagine a number of things, and although I do not know his intent, I don’t have the sense he was trying to stir the pot as an agent of chaos.

But I’d love to hear him elucidate on it. Twitter is great :rolleyes: for running off with flaming batons of misunderstanding.

Cheers,
Ian

Just comes off as super insensitive and oblivious, as well as overt catering to his own self interests/interests of who lines his pockets.
Bunch of children are killed, hey guys forget about that for a minute and remember this other dude.
 
Just comes off as super insensitive and oblivious, as well as overt catering to his own self interests/interests of who lines his pockets.
Bunch of children are killed, hey guys forget about that for a minute and remember this other dude.

Agreed on that. Which is why it confused me. It seems out of character. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Confused,
Ian
 
Honestly thought this was fake so I checked and it's not.
I'm just like, what? Why? What is the motive here, other than to create discord.
I'm interpreting it as some covert blame being placed on the police's (in)action. I suppose an ex-president can't exactly come out and say "I think the police response was horrific and they're partly responsible for this". For more context, the other posts he made:
Opera Snapshot_2022-05-27_225350_twitter.com.png


I myself think it's crazy that they waited so long for armed swat and wouldn't enter. If they didn't want to risk their lives going in, apparently there were a number of parents begging for police equipment for themselves to use.
Can't help but wonder how they/the commander would have reacted if it were an elementary school primarily full of white children. Instead they prioritised with disclipining and establishing order with distraught parents. (Before anyone potentially quotes this, I had formed this opinion before reading anything about Obama's response)
Dunno what to expect from US police anymore.
 
I myself think it's crazy that they waited so long for armed swat and wouldn't enter.

I'm not sure why this narrative is going around now, but it seems to me like he boarded himself up in one room and they just decided to react as though it were a hostage situation and/or that everyone inside was immediately presumed dead. So the appropriate action would be to play a waiting game.

What do I know though. Half of me feels angry about it too. Just bust in there guns blazing immediately.
 
When we talk about mental health, it is important not to use it as an excuse. The vast majority of people with mental health issues do not commit such crimes, and most of the shooters do not belong to a demographic that has the least access to mental healthcare. (Black women traditionally have the least access to mental healthcare.) The shooters do, however, belong to a demographic that has traditionally been told they can have the life they want, or a good life, easier life, and our country increasingly fails to provide opportunities, connection, community, support, avenues for improvement, etc for these young people. This makes these young men susceptible to being radicalized because they will turn to people who seem sympathetic on the surface, and will look for reasons for this cultural (and government) failure.

Despair is suffering without hope and many young people do not have hope. We all suffer according to our own personal limits. (For example, someone who has it easier doesn't fail to suffer because others have a bigger struggle. It's all relative.) On top of this, most young people feel angst, anger, high emotions, and a sense that they are different and don't belong.