After I’d read that the Trump shooter had looked at photos of Trump and Biden and their upcoming speech locations and the fact that the shooter was a lone wolf and bullied at school, I read part of the Wikipedia page about the Uvalde shooting . The Uvalde shooter also was a lone wolf and also used an AR-15. My thoughts right now are like this :
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The lone wolfs probably have suffered badly from an inferior complex due to bullying and alienation
and wanted to do something which made them feel historically “significant” instead of feeling completely “useless”. -
The US appears to have a pretty dominant machismo culture (Think about GOP with their MAGA, it is humiliating for women and minority groups) and so-called snowflakes are looked down upon. This is very bad for everyone involved.
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Cops are afraid of citizens having an AR-15 on them.
What can be done ?
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Should vote with our wallets ? Like stop using exTwitter now that Elon Musk has publicly shown support for Trump ? (On Mastodon I’ve seen many comments about people that did cancel their subscription to the New York Times and that seemed to have some effect. Finally the NYT is posting more critical articles about Trump and Project 2025.)
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Should people talk more often to each other and avoid alienation ? In books of Gabor Maté he talks about the fact that most people in society look down on hard drug addicts but these junkies are still human beings. And the same goes for homeless people and refugees of course. They are still human beings. No need to automatically view them as inferior beings, right ?
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Should we limit our screen time on mobile phones ? Are we silently producing a sort of zombies that cannot think for themselves anymore ? Should tech companies be obliged to make phone apps less addictive ?
Should mobile phone usage during class in school be forbidden ? -
Should we promote exchange projects as part of cultural improvement ? Like say 50 people from Congo Republic in Africa swap places with 50 people from California for 1 year, and then after swapping back talk about the experiences.
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Should we in our education system or during leisure time educate people more on what happened in World War II and what we can still learn from that ? For example the book by Umberto Eco about how to recognize a fascist ( Ur-Fascism ) could be used.
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Should bullying at school be pro-actively approached and make victims and bullies talk to each other under professional supervision ?
The US has too many guns. QED
The only country with the problem wonders why there’s a problem.
Overanalyzing is a feature, not a bug.
Yep. This is it, anything else is just fluff. You need to fix that before “stop using X” will have any effect.
How do you think we should take care of that?
We can make owning guns as simple as it is to own and operate a car. A gun owners exam and insurance against your gun accidents.
Edited to add: Wecan also make it so that you as a gun owner are prepared to save a life until paramedics show up in case there are gun accidents. You want a tool that has the power to take a life? You Need to learn how to save one.
The gun groups I’m part of have regular Stop The Bleed seminars/training. Ive put a lot of practice TQs on myself, we’ve gone over wound packing, hell even how to convince someone expirencing blood loss to not loosen the tourniquet because no your arm/leg isnt going to go so numb it dies and yes it DOES need to be this tight. Id recommend gun owners to own a comprehensive first aid kit and an individual first aid kit.
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I’ve been advocating for a big killer astroid to strike the Earth, wiping out all human life, and starting the 3rd ice age.
“You’re gonna need a constitutional convention for that”
Like Europe.
- The US should improve treatment of mental health issues.
- The US should recover public confidence in its political system.
The things you have suggested are just distractions away from these two points and won’t fix anything.
I agree with you, but it’s important to address the elephant in the room of our absolute stockpile of and the ease of access to weapons of war. Not just pdw or hunting, you can get some really cool shit, with less effort than it takes to get your license in many places.
I like guns the same way I like high end fireworks/ordinance, they are definitely fun, but it shouldn’t be so easy to get them and the folks who base their identity around them are sad/scary af.
That’s my issue. The ease with which you can obtain high-end fire arms is too high. I have to do a written test, 30+ supervised hours of driving by another person, then pass a skills test, to get a vehicle license.
Meanwhile, I can walk into a store in my state and walk out with an AR15 today. I can then open carry that AR15 wherever I please. There is a background check for federally licensed dealers, but no other sales. I don’t need to register it. I don’t need training to carry it amongst the public. The biggest barrier to obtaining one is the cost.
Part of the issue with the attempt on Trump was the guy was outside the SS perimeter, so they didn’t have “jurisdiction”, and the guy was following PA laws for the most part up until he pulled the trigger.
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I hadn’t seen that; the last “official” position I saw on it was that it was still in question on how he obtained it, but that it was presumed to be his father’s. But even then, that highlights difficulties with gun ownership. Someone giving me a car doesn’t grandfather me in to use, so if it was gifted from his father, that bypasses some current checks. If it was a gun his father owned that he took, then it likely wasn’t secure as it should be, again failing the traditional gun safety terms and responsible ownership.
But that’s only a small issue if you look at the actual murder stats. The vast majority of deaths by gun are not committed with “high-end firearms” with only an average 3% of homicides involving rifles. Knives and blunt instruments kill many times more people than rifles. Cheap handguns are the number one firearm used in homicides.
Don’t disagree. Just limited my scope because the discussion was on the Trump attempt, and used the “high-end” version of firearms because that should arguably be more heavily regulated because of the amount of damage they could cause.
I think you are correct about the mental health issues. It scares me that the health care is private, and not all can afford it
You know what they say:
Get rich or die trying (because you can’t afford to see a doctor)
Yes, we’re underfunded as hell on mental health services but the person that thinks mass murder is the best solution to their problems is probably not going to opt in to treatment.
If that is indeed true, my follow up questions would be “why not?” and “how do we solve that?”.
Probably awareness. There should be a public hotline at well known as 9-1-1 that anyone can call for counseling and referrals. There should also be an expectation or pathway to retaining your rights. It’s probably policy in many states that to check yourself in to a mental health facility means you have to work 10x harder to get a job, a gun, or even vote someday down the line when you’re in a better state.
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The US should improve treatment of mental health issues.
The US should recover public confidence in its political system.The things you have suggested are just distractions away from these two points and won’t fix anything.
Your point about mental health issues is about the victim being bullied or being avoided by others I guess ?
If I refuse to buy Nike shoes like all others, and if I decide to wear all black clothes with heavy metal shirts and I prefer to read books rather than talk loud and the rest of my class mates avoid me for reasons, does that mean I need to get therapy ?I think anyone who wishes harm on another has some issues they need to work through. Not just people who want to shoot up schools or whatever, but also people who feel so much hate for certain minority groups, or get too involved in sensationalist media.
I honestly think giving each child a yearly “checkup” with a psychologist where they can air greivences and get support would improve the quality of life of so many children.
So many people are scared and angry nowadays (and for good reason), yet don’t know if any healtht coping mechanisms.
we’ve learned that they didn’t militarize the police force to protect anybody from anything they just did it
The only real takeaway is that our politicians won’t do shit until the bullets start flying in their direction.
Local cops seem unable to deal with armed gunmen in a consistent manner.
“See something, say something” doesn’t work.
I think first of all there is a problem with gun violence in the USA. You should address that first before analzying the steps 2 layers down the chain. And that’d be pretty effective and way easier to do than fix the mental health of millions of people. After that you shoud do that too. Make it so the nation cares for people, helps them and educates them. Make life enjoyable and reduce hatred. You can’t prevent every assassination attempt of a president, but certainly save the lives of lots and lots of other people that way.
Many of us including me had as hard a time as those two assassins, but you don’t see any of us taking it out on world leaders.
We could implement age limits for semi-auto rifles, like age 25+
Bolt-action and other non-repeating rifles / shotguns could stay at age 18
Handguns are already at age 21, maybe we should make that just revolvers or single-shot handguns age and move semi-auto to 25+
This is based on the common factor of young men using semi-auto handguns and rifles to do a lot of murders, before their critical thinking skills are fully mature and stuff
We could implement age limits for semi-auto rifles, like age 25+
It’s a start but I would actually want to push back on the policy of being able to wake up one morning and buy thousands of dollars in guns and ammo when you had zero the day before. If you want a semi-auto anything you should have to establish a history of gun use or get a certificate of need (e.g. you live in a particularly violent area). Otherwise a manual-action revolver, shotgun, or rifle and very limited ammo is all you can get.
Should bullying at school be pro-actively approached and make victims and bullies talk to each other under professional supervision ?
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Let kids fight. You’re NOT going to prevent bullying in school at that age. You’re just not. At that age, the bullies think they can get away with anything…except now they’re right. The schools will punish the victim just as much as the bully if an incident is brought to their attention. So now victims aren’t bringing their bullying to anyones attention.
But when I was in school, it was different. I got bullied for the first 2 weeks of school. Then I punched him in the mouth. Knocked out 2 of his teeth, cut my own hand, and that was that. He nor anyone else bullied me the rest of 6th grade.
And I moved schools, and had to do the same thing in 7th grade.
And 9th grade.
And 10th grade.
You get the idea. Anytime I was in a new school, kids thought they could just bully me. And I said no. With my fist.
No bullets fired. No tragedy. Just a string of kids with broken noses or knocked out teeth.
Schools these days have let the issue get so out of hand, that now kids gang up in groups of 30, and it’s all “your crew vs my crew” while a bunch of kids not in the fight record on cell phones. Then someone pulls a knife, or a gun, and everybody scatters. Then the news shows up to cover a story about dead kids.
And so you look back at the first school shooting, columbine, and realize that these “bullies” are like the preppiest douches ever. If the columbine kids had just grew some balls, and threw a punch, it would be impossible to say where the butterfly effect would take us today. But it would be different, and I’d like to think better.
I can’t definitively say what the bullying was in Columbine. But those pussy kids don’t seem like fighters to me. They look like the type who shop at the gap, and “do brunch”. Their bullying was probably all words. One punch, boom, done.
I can never remember a single public shooting in the 90s. The closest thing would be the unibomber, and the oklahoma city bombing. But nothing like today. I guess I have to commend MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, and any other big sports arenas in America. You never hear of shootings in a sports venue where it would do the most damage. 70,000 around a football field could probably kill 300 people in seconds.
But none of this existed until columbine. And no, I’m not counting the JFK assisination, or the Lincoln assasination. Those weren’t public shootings. Those were political shootings that happened in public. At no time was the general public the target.
Now we have to have mental health support that doesn’t exist. Look at these shooters. Always male. Men (and even boys) don’t have a place to vent. It’s a common to not even have friends you feel close to in that way. Wifes will ask their husbands what the boys talked about. And there won’t really be answers, because we don’t talk about deep things. We talk about who’s starting in the game. What meat venders are new to the area. How many marbles can Todd fit in his mouth? Wait, no, how many marbles CAN Todd fit in his mouth??? No way it’s 100. I say 50 max…200??? You’re crazy!!! Ok, I got $10 on this. TODD!!! GET YOUR ASS IN HERE…AND BRING MARBLES!!! WHAT? NO! NOT FOR YOUR BUTTHOLE!!! Has Todd been putting marbles in his butthole? Why would that be the first thing he thinks? Heeey, Todd, how many of those marbles can you fit in your mouth??? BECAUSE I GOT $10 RIDING ON THIS, THATS WHY!!! DON’T FUCK ME OVER TODD!"
Tangent aside, you’ll notice nothing of significance was discussed. Not even though Todd is going through a nasty divorce. It’s not that guys don’t care…we just have no way to talk about it. Societal norms are that guys don’t talk about that stuff. You’d lose your friends if you tried. Women will think less of you as a man if they saw a guy cry. Not all women, but a higher number than you’d think.
Some guys don’t even like sports that much, but its a safe topic that won’t get emotional in a real way. It’s the safe option.
The problem is, men ARE just as emotional as women. But we gotta push it down into the deepest darkness we can, and never speak of it again. Until one day, we just lose all control, fly off the handle, and mentally break. Thats when bullets start flying, and bodies start mounting. And the final straw could be over some trivial shit too. Maybe Target was out of that queso cheese you like for the 3rd time. And now you’re remembering eating nachos as a kid before your dad walked out on you as an 8 year old. But you can’t cry. People will look down on you. Gotta hold it together for everybody else…but fuck everybody else! Nobody cares about me, why do I care about them?
And then BAM BAM BAM just like that years of repressed emotions come flying out in violent ways. In uncontrollable ways. In ways that were never planned. It just happens, because there is no other outcome.
And it all leads back to schools. If that guy hadn’t been bullied for 12 years, he’d have less to repress. Because emotional scarring never goes away. The things that hurt you at a young age, will hurt you if you make it elderly age. Why did Becky turn you down for valentines day in 1st grade, and say you had a stupid face? Again, trivial on it’s own, but it leads to a bigger picture. And all because society is too scared to let a 14 year old punch another 14 year old. This modern world is the outcome.
The example you are giving about fighting back turned out to be in your favor.
But things could have gone wrong, especially when a whole group would have backed the other guy.
And by that you are sort of advocating a survival of the fittest which is maybe not a good idea
when you are small and timid versus some strong guy.
I believe it is not wrong to involve school personnel when bullying happens.In Europe anti bullying policies were implemented years ago. I remember reading that in newspapers.
Here is an example of a school which has anti-bullying policy :
https://www.eeb3.eu/app/uploads/2022/03/B3-Anti-bullying-Policy-EN.pdf- Our Anti-Bullying Policy is based on the principles that:
- Each individual must be treated with respect
- Bullying is never an individual problem, as it degrades the atmosphere at school.
- Bullying is a problem that can be addressed.
- All members of the school community (school staff, parents and pupils) are called upon to prevent and
react against all forms of bullying. - All members of the school community must have the opportunity to be listened to, respected and
supported.
Gavrillo Princip and Lee Harvey Oswald show it’s hardly new.
Both bullied outsiders who wanted to show the world they weren’t weak and could leave a mark on history.
Edit: your overall point about the constraints on masculinity though is very much on the mark I think, though. All the more reason to break down gender norms.
That we should take in consideration the Coriolis effect.
