Why are we surprised?

[Ex New Yorker]

Originally Posted by Volobjectitarian

It's not a left/right thing. It's not a black/white thing. It's a freedom/probability thing.

I already crunched the numbers about guns owned versus guns used in evil ways. 99.9975% of all guns owned in America will never do harm, except to paper circles at practice ranges. Both left/right, white/black, male/female and straight/not-straight own firearms in this country, and 99.9975% of them will never use their firearms with evil or irresponsible intent.

But guns are legal, the ownership and use of them is explicitly protected by the 2nd Amendment, and there are more guns than people in the United States right now, with more being made every single day. It's a genie that is never going back into the bottle, no matter what emotional sensationalism any of us throw at it.

The key point someone else made in another discussion is that America is a tough place to exist, because freedom gives you all sorts of opportunity to succeed and along with it, all sorts of opportunity to fail. When most of your life comes down to you, your choices, your behaviors, etc...that is the burden of individualism, and very few places on Earth have a larger burden of individualism than the United States. 335 million individuals mostly allowed to be individuals. That is no small thing, regardless of how much comfort and distraction we have that makes us think it is easy.

In such a place, where individual life is indeed challenging but everyone is free to live that individual life, and where guns, freedom of movement, freedom to not be harassed/molested by authorities and freedom from intrusions into your life and affairs all coexist, there is a probability, albeit a tiny one, that folks at the mentally ill end of the population distribution curve will misuse some/all of those freedoms in ways that shock and horrify the 99.9975% of us who would never dream of such things.

Freedom + 335,000,000 + law of probability = occasional horror. Good order, cooperation and generally getting along is the rule, by vast aforementioned 99.9975% majority, but that 0.0025% can get up to serious amounts of no good, and we recoil in horror and despair when they do. But the rule keeps being a good rule - MORE FREEDOM.

It is tough, it makes life in America challenging, but there's a reason the rest of the world wants to live here and most of us don't want to leave. Getting rid of freedom is never the best answer, nor rarely even a good or logical one. Taking each individual situation as that, an individual situation with an individual set of solutions, and doing so in ways that enhance safety without sacrificing freedom...that is where we should be or at least want to be.

“But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow. …
For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. 
Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding.”

“A law which restricts the liberty of the innocent because of the behavior of the guilty, that rests on the principle that the conduct of criminals [or psychos] dictates the scope of liberty for the rest of society, in no sense ‘fights’ crime.”
For society has permitted its fear of crime, and craving for safety, to turn the force of law against the innocent and law-abiding. Far from fighting crime, the criminalization of otherwise innocent activities represents a society in retreat from crime. This is a society desperately accommodating itself to crime.”
— Jeff Snyder

[StillwaterTownie]

Originally Posted by BaptistFundie

Our nation kills 600,000 babies a year in abortions. Why are we surprised when some sicko decides to kill some schoolkids?

Our nation has a culture problem. It's broken. We need to fix the culture.

So, to you, the mass shootings will stop if there is a nationwide ban on all abortions, except when needed to save the life of the mother. Also all women who get abortions must all go to prison for the remainder of their child bearing years. So, a 20 year old woman would have to go to prison for 30 years.

[StillwaterTownie]

Originally Posted by EscAlaMike

Government schooling is public enemy #1 as far as I'm concerned.

It's where the seeds of anti-human ideology are nurtured and allowed to germinate.

Who knows what nonsense children are learning in private religious schools?

[Troyfan]

It is broken. It's very broken. In many cities there are uncivilized areas. They are barbaric in the true meaning of the word. It began years ago and is beyond the power of people and governments to stop, let alone reverse.

But we have to live now and with what we have. The old regime, Hapsburg Vienna are not available to us.

[VA Yankee]

Originally Posted by EscAlaMike

Government schooling is public enemy #1 as far as I'm concerned.

It's where the seeds of anti-human ideology are nurtured and allowed to germinate.

So sayeth social media!!! The same people that are condemning our Public Education Systems today are the the ones not 20 years ago who were protesting the Harry Potter series of books as an evil influence on our students.

Given your way ever child would be in a straight jacket and force fed whatever religious tripe you deem appropriate. Talk about the fast track to the end of modern civilization...