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All mass shootings in a year nationwide are about equal to a month in Chicago or Baltimore. Statistically speaking, the "mass shootings" barely register as a blip. Way over sensationalized for the political goal of disarming middle aged white men who might one day resist the liberal deep state.
Although it is well known there is a mental health crises especially among young men, no one knows that cause. There are lot of speculative ideas with some correlation:
Video Games
Cell Phones
Social Media.
Pampered upbringing/overprotective parents eliminating all risk or adversity and stifling their kids.
However as far as shooting go, overall shootings are down. Not really sure "mass shootings" are up, maybe. Are school shootings up? It comes down to definitions.
When I was in school it was common for drunk kids to drive by the school and shoot at it with their rifles. This never made the news not ever. One time a kid from our school emptied his gun, then later stuck the barrel in his moth and pulled the trigger after saying to his girlfriend sitting next to him "Wouldn't this be funny if the rifle was still loaded?" It was. A misfired round fired and killed him. The story got a brief mention on the fifth page of the local newspaper. Nothing in the major paper for the region. Certainly no TV crews. This was not considered a school shooting, just an idiot kid committing suicide or accidentally killing himself through stupidity. Now it would be national news. "School shooting, "Rifle kills 17 year old student!"
Boredom - no real need to do anything to survive.
Lack of Opportunity - poor outlook for the future.
Societal pressure and definitions of failure.
Chemicals/hormones or psychiatric drugs in the drinking water.
Chemicals in our food (or the substitution of chemicals for our food).
EMF.
Feminism/feminizing boys - raising males, especially white males to believe they are inherently evil and the things that appeal to them are bad and should not appeal to them (you should be more in touch with your feelings - eg you should be more feminine); or the feeling of uslessness. Women are proving they do nto need men. this has an effect on men. What is our purpose in society now? None.
Genetics - the looming extinction of the Y chromosome.
Air pollution.
Obesity/lack of physical action.
The elimination of socializing (but no explanation why men are more effected than women).
I am old enough to know that this did NOT used to happen. I am also a retired teacher and never in my teaching days did we think about being shot at school. Things are VERY different the last few decades than they ever were before. Believe it or not, we had TV! We had national news! People read the national newspapers! We had radio stations with news! Even without the internet, we knew what was going on.
I have no idea what's causing it except for copy cat ideas. Crazy people see it on tv or read about it and for some reason, they get the idea into their heads.
I remember when I was a kid we didn't worry about a mass shooter but we did worry about a nuclear attack. There was a TV movie which aired in 1983 about a nuclear attack from Russia and it really scared people to the point where I remember hearing that some people were not going to have kids so they wouldn't face nuclear annihilation.
Looking back today it was silly of course but it still frightened enough people and in some ways still does when you consider the false alarm that was sounded in Hawaii that North Korea had launched.
Of course the fears were real following WW2 through the 50's when nuclear bombs were tested and their destructive powers increased. The fear was real throughout the cold war and it was revived in 1983 and brought back to life today with NK threatening.
Today the fear of everything is spread round the world in seconds through the internet and I do think it gives people ideas to mimic and copy cat terrible deeds.
All mass shootings in a year nationwide are about equal to a month in Chicago or Baltimore. Statistically speaking, the "mass shootings" barely register as a blip. Way over sensationalized for the political goal of disarming middle aged white men who might one day resist the liberal deep state.
As tragic as mass shootings are you are right they are barely a blip on the ticker tape of other types of unnecessary deaths.
I heard an ad on the radio yesterday about making sure your food is cooked at a high enough temperature to kill all the bacteria in it. The ad said that 3000 people a year die from eating under cooked meat with food poisoning.
The CDC estimates that since 1970 the amount of people that die every year from the flu is between 3000 - 49,000.
Those are real numbers that you can look up yet we don't have protests against the flu. Some might say it is different when someone gets sick and dies versus a deranged killer barging in to slaughter innocent kids but in the end the results are the same.
Another shocker that is controversial but still not as extreme as the protests against guns is abortions. Planned Parenthood performed 328,348 abortions in 2015-2016.
The World Health Organization estimates that there is between 40-50 Million abortion per year across the world which is about 125,000 per day. That is a lot of innocent babies being murdered.
The thing with gun violence is that no one is for it, including the NRA and its law abiding members but they are being made out as the bad guys.
There are literally hundreds of millions of guns in America in the hands of millions of law abiding responsible people that would never use their firearms to murder innocent people let alone kids but the Left is trying to demonize them in order to further their gun banning agenda.
The warning signs were there that could have stopped the Parkland shooter just as there are warning signs for many of these would be shooters but the thing is they signs go unheeded and we need to demand answers as to why.
The taking of a human life is treated so casually today. Violent video games TV shows, and movies make death seem so "not real" and simply something to be entertained by.
Parents who don't put their kids' needs ahead of their own and don't bother to teach them right from wrong from day one and then act shocked or detached when their child grows up to be a monster that craves attention and is devoid of any normal human compassion.
As a side effect of the above, the mass breakdown of the nuclear family. How many kids today grow up with unmarried, uncommitted parents and spend more time with Mom's serial boyfriends than their own father? It's hard to care about a stranger's life when no one has ever really much shown a lot of concern for you.
The over medication of children whose behavior problems often stem from how they have been raised and treated but to absolve the guilt of the parents they get a diagnosis slapped on them and meds poured down their throat from an early age.
The national media attention and glorification that comes with committing a heinous act like this. I just read in my local paper this morning that the Parkland shooter is getting actual fan mail in prison. Young men and women are actually sending him their pictures along with letters of support. This is sick. Our society is sick.
I remember seeing Mike Huckabee on TV a few years ago after one of these mass shootings and he made the comment that when he was a teenager growing up in Arkansas, most of the boys in his school had a rifle and took it to school with them to go squirrel hunting after school. He said that even though all these loaded weapons were lying around, nothing ever happened because the kids would have never remotely considered that they would use a gun on a fellow human being. If you can explain why that was the case then and why it isn't now, then you probably have the answer to the question posed in the title of this thread.
Although it is well known there is a mental health crises especially among young men, no one knows that cause. There are lot of speculative ideas with some correlation:
Video Games
Cell Phones
Social Media.
Pampered upbringing/overprotective parents eliminating all risk or adversity and stifling their kids.
However as far as shooting go, overall shootings are down. Not really sure "mass shootings" are up, maybe. Are school shootings up? It comes down to definitions.
When I was in school it was common for drunk kids to drive by the school and shoot at it with their rifles. This never made the news not ever. One time a kid from our school emptied his gun, then later stuck the barrel in his moth and pulled the trigger after saying to his girlfriend sitting next to him "Wouldn't this be funny if the rifle was still loaded?" It was. A misfired round fired and killed him. The story got a brief mention on the fifth page of the local newspaper. Nothing in the major paper for the region. Certainly no TV crews. This was not considered a school shooting, just an idiot kid committing suicide or accidentally killing himself through stupidity. Now it would be national news. "School shooting, "Rifle kills 17 year old student!"
Boredom - no real need to do anything to survive.
Lack of Opportunity - poor outlook for the future.
Societal pressure and definitions of failure.
Chemicals/hormones or psychiatric drugs in the drinking water.
Chemicals in our food (or the substitution of chemicals for our food).
EMF.
Feminism/feminizing boys - raising males, especially white males to believe they are inherently evil and the things that appeal to them are bad and should not appeal to them (you should be more in touch with your feelings - eg you should be more feminine); or the feeling of uslessness. Women are proving they do nto need men. this has an effect on men. What is our purpose in society now? None.
Genetics - the looming extinction of the Y chromosome.
Air pollution.
Obesity/lack of physical action.
The elimination of socializing (but no explanation why men are more effected than women).
Girls still socialize, they will always find a way. Guys used to do it through physical activities outside the home, now it's mostly gaming where they don't leave their chair or organized sports. Boys used to be more physical in a very natural way. I was surprised how extreme some sports have become. In the past it wasn't taken so seriously. We used to skateboard for fun and leisure not to get our faces broken.
It seems like everything has become too loud, too much. Education, technology, politics, sports, entertainment, everyone divided and taking sides, it is so much coming from all directions and we are not computers, we are still only human.
What has changed? More people are buying AR-15s and .223/5.56 ammo. More people are joining the NRA. More people are sending money to the NRA. Democrats see these shootings as another opportunity to chip away at our Second Amendment rights (Never let a good crisis go to waste) while keeping their eye on the ultimate prize...total disarmament of every American. And make no mistake about it, that is their ultimate goal. The rest of us are going to make sure that doesn't happen.
^^^ This is it, right here. This is what has changed.
When I was in school in the 1950s and 60s, children weren't placed on psychotropic medications. Teachers were trained to handle disorderly, energetic little boys without complaint. Children, especially boys, are loud, boisterous, active, and sometimes unruly. We had outdoor recess twice a day to help work some of the energy off, and it did quiet us down for about an hour. Nobody thought to drug us into quietude. Our behavior was normal.
Now? Kids are kept indoors all day, even after regular school hours. Their pent-up energy can overflow, and teachers won't put up with that behavior. It is SO much easier to just have the kids diagnosed with ADHD and put on Ritalin. These kids don't have ADHD. They are being suppressed from displaying normal childhood energy and behavior.
Ritalin isn't the worst of it. They get put on Paxil, Zoloft, and a wide variety of 'calming' and anti-depressant drugs. These drugs were made for adults, not young kids. When the young brain is still growing and developing, the effects of these drugs are catastrophic.
We would be so far ahead by stopping the wholesale medication of our kids, and just let them grow up normally, which 99.9% of them do. Unfortunately, that does not fit the agenda of some who want to control our population. They know damn well that banning guns won't change a thing. But they're just using these shootings to do what their agenda dictates.
I couldn't give you more REP points but I totally agree.
The taking of a human life is treated so casually today. Violent video games TV shows, and movies make death seem so "not real" and simply something to be entertained by.
Parents who don't put their kids' needs ahead of their own and don't bother to teach them right from wrong from day one and then act shocked or detached when their child grows up to be a monster that craves attention and is devoid of any normal human compassion.
As a side effect of the above, the mass breakdown of the nuclear family. How many kids today grow up with unmarried, uncommitted parents and spend more time with Mom's serial boyfriends than their own father? It's hard to care about a stranger's life when no one has ever really much shown a lot of concern for you.
The over medication of children whose behavior problems often stem from how they have been raised and treated but to absolve the guilt of the parents they get a diagnosis slapped on them and meds poured down their throat from an early age.
The national media attention and glorification that comes with committing a heinous act like this. I just read in my local paper this morning that the Parkland shooter is getting actual fan mail in prison. Young men and women are actually sending him their pictures along with letters of support. This is sick. Our society is sick.
I remember seeing Mike Huckabee on TV a few years ago after one of these mass shootings and he made the comment that when he was a teenager growing up in Arkansas, most of the boys in his school had a rifle and took it to school with them to go squirrel hunting after school. He said that even though all these loaded weapons were lying around, nothing ever happened because the kids would have never remotely considered that they would use a gun on a fellow human being. If you can explain why that was the case then and why it isn't now, then you probably have the answer to the question posed in the title of this thread.
A great post canudigit. I think you have hit on many of the problems that plague our society today and it is not only school shootings where the problem is manifesting.
It comes down to respect or a lack of it.
I know a guy that works as a custodian in a high school where most of the kids come from upper middle class families. The kids are terrible in how they treat this guy and the parents are not much better. They look down on him like he is a servant. He sucks it up because he is getting close to retirement but the stories he tells of these privileged punks who are given everything in their lives except discipline.
Violent games, movies and even songs that glorify the thug life are all influencing people in a negative way.
The prescription drugs are out of control. If a kid has too much energy and can't sit still they give him a drug to calm him down when what they should be doing is having him run a few extra laps in gym class.
There are many places in this country where kids could still bring their hunting rifles to school like Mike Huckabee did and we wouldn't have any problems but there are also schools that would literally be turned into massacre scenes.
Can we chock it up to Nature V Nurture?
I would say it is 99.9% of peoples nature to be kind and they would never think to shoot someone.
What do you think is the percentage of people that had a terrible nurturing as they grew would shoot a rival, a bully or just to rob someone they didn't like?
It used to be that when a person snapped they would kill themselves.
Then it was killing the person that had pushed them over the edge such as their boss and this type of murder spawned the term "going postal". Or a ex husband would kill his ex wife.
Then it was "death by Cop" where a deranged person would threaten to commit a crime, the cops would come and the person would act in such a way that the cops had to protect themselves or someone else and put a stop to that threat.
Now the deranged try to kill as many innocent people as they can using either a gun, bomb, knife or car and then they wait for the cops to arrive to kill them.
What has changed in America that has pushed people so far that they are willing to commit terrible acts against as many innocent people as possible?
We don't hear too much about mailmen going postal anymore so what did the PO do to change this behavior and can it be applied to our current society to stop the mass killings?
The MSM news coverage.
School shootings are actually on the decline.
But you would never know it from the 24-7-365 coverage.
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