WE: After school shooting in Connecticut, Piers Morgan blasts America’s ‘gun madness’

[Larry]

There is no doubt that the availability of guns in our country makes these crimes more possible. I don't know anyone who would argue that.

The larger point, what nobody really wants to talk about, is the illness of our society that is clearly getting worse. It is manifesting itself right in front of us for the past 10 years.

A Larry Quick and Dirty Theory, here.

I wonder if some of our country's divisive political dialog, lately, might be a contributing factor.

Seems to me, at least, that kids growing up today are fed a pretty steady diet of "the country's screwed, you're all gonna starve, you're gonna be taxed all your life, and your parents are gonna spend all the money and stick you with the bill, blah, blah, blah".

That at least seems to be something new. Something that's changed, last 10-20 years.

But then, it also seems to me that if that were the case, then the school shooters would be from the lower SES. And my uninformed opinion says that they aren't. These things aren't happening in the ghettos. They happening in more suburban environments.

(Although maybe that's part of the pattern: Being raised with a standard of living which they're being told that they won't have.)

[zoony]

Is anyone watching the CNN coverage? Anyone find it strange that there are construction workers building a rock wall in the background while victims are being interviewed at the scene?

Uhhh, someone call the foreman and tell him to send his guys home for the day.

[Larry]

As a lover of psychology, I would be VERY curious to see what gun-restrictive psychological assessment the government cooks up. What would they be screening for? Suicidal ideation? Instability? Antisocial personality disorder? Schizophrenia? Just being a crazy nutbag who wants a gun?

Start with the birthers and the Tea Partiers.

[/sarcasm]

[Thiebear]

War on Guns!!!!

Problem solved.

[Larry]

Ugh, huckabee, now is not the time. Your not helping your ministry or anyone else's right now

But I bet he's getting donations.

[Jumbo]

Uh, there are, I believe, people on ES who actually have professional expertise in psychological assessment. (I am NOT one of them.)

I am one of those who would say zoony is more correct in his suspicions than not, and yes, the cultural availability and acceptance of guns and the efficiency of guns (achieving the LEVEL of sense of power and impact desired by the killer) seriously and powerfully enable the occurrence and resulting deadliness of such sprees.

But I stay out of most typical abortion, gun, and god/no god discussions in most venues because I almost always find them useless to me.

On increased "gun control" per se, (and I love guns) I think a U.S. social sea change will eventually happen (most likely), but it will take even a far more serious level of "tipping point" (in cumulative as well as contemporary at the time events) than we now have, as crazy as that may seem to many.

[Jumbo]

Uh, there are, I believe, people on ES who actually have professional expertise in psychological assessment. (I am NOT one of them.)

I am one of those, and one who would say zoony is more correct in his suspicions than not (not that I think much can or will be done to change that on the broad society-wide level), and yes, the cultural availability and acceptance of guns and the efficiency of guns (achieving the LEVEL of sense of power and impact desired by the killer) seriously and powerfully enable the occurrence and resulting deadliness of such sprees.

But I stay out of most typical abortion, gun, and god/no god discussions in most venues because I almost always find them useless to me.

On increased "gun control" per se, (and I love guns) I think a U.S. social sea change will eventually happen (most likely), but it will take even a far more serious level of "tipping point" (in cumulative as well as contemporary to the time events) than we now have, as crazy as that may seem to many.

[Bacon]

You guys are arguing about the wrong thing altogether. It turns out not having prayer in schools is the root cause.

Huckabee: Schools ‘A Place Of Carnage’ Because We ‘Systematically Removed God’

Holy crap, it's like clockwork. I think Huckabee emerged 14 hours after Aurora, but that happened pretty late at night and I'm sure he's in bed by 7.

I would have to say that darn near anything "should" help. Its also sad that we can't trust our government to do something like this without mocking how bad they'd mess it up. That's another big reason that people need to pay attention to who they vote for.

Listen, any movement whatsoever toward restriction of any kind has my support. If there is a noticeable benefit to it, small restrictions create precedent for larger ones. I make fun, yeah, but even a ****ing inkblot test shows the government cares somewhat. Right now, I'm not so sure. I trust the authenticity of Obama's sorrow, but I don't think he has the balls to step out of the NRA's pocket. I don't.

[2v2nv]

Holy crap, it's like clockwork. I think Huckabee emerged 14 hours after Aurora, but that happened pretty late at night and I'm sure he's in bed by 7.

Listen, any movement whatsoever toward restriction of any kind has my support. If there is a noticeable benefit to it, small restrictions create precedent for larger ones. I make fun, yeah, but even a ****ing inkblot test shows the government cares somewhat. Right now, I'm not so sure. I trust the authenticity of Obama's sorrow, but I don't think he has the balls to step out of the NRA's pocket. I don't.

Do you own any type of firearm for personal protection? I'm not going to take this out of hand I just want to know a statistic.

[zoony]

I am one of those who would say zoony is more correct in his suspicions than not, and yes, the cultural availability and acceptance of guns and the efficiency of guns (achieving the LEVEL of sense of power and impact desired by the killer) seriously and powerfully enable the occurrence and resulting deadliness of such sprees.

But I stay out of most typical abortion, gun, and god/no god discussions in most venues because I almost always find them useless to me.

On increased "gun control" per se, (and I love guns) I think a U.S. social sea change will eventually happen (most likely), but it will take even a far more serious level of "tipping point" (in cumulative as well as contemporary at the time events) than we now have, as crazy as that may seem to many.

As someone who has always been a staunch supporter of gun rights, I am just reevaluating things. I'm just not sure our society is responsible enough to have that kind of freedom anymore. Pains me to say, I just can't take this kind of thing anymore. I've reached my limit

I don't trust our society to do what would actually be right... To unplug, power down, turn off the boob tube, and reconnect with our humanity and spirituality. Those days are gone and those environmental factors that are destroying us are here to stay. I'm thinking you just cannot have that and access to mass killing devices at the same time

[Bacon]

Do you own any type of firearm for personal protection? I'm not going to take this out of hand I just want to know a statistic.

No, I do not.

[Prosperity]

It is better. My point is, anyone who wants to do damage is going to find a way.

this would be a good point if people were arguing that we could end all violence by regulating guns

[Larry]

As someone who has always been a staunch supporter of gun rights, I am just reevaluating things. I'm just not sure our society is responsible enough to have that kind of freedom anymore. Pains me to say, I just can't take this kind of thing anymore. I've reached my limit

I haven't reached my limit. (I'm a libertarian. I think we ought to have pretty high limits, before we start restricting freedoms.)

But I'll admit that I'm not a staunch in that position as I was.

[Jumbo]

As someone who has always been a staunch supporter of gun rights, I am just reevaluating things. I'm just not sure our society is responsible enough to have that kind of freedom anymore. Pains me to say, I just can't take this kind of thing anymore. I've reached my limit

I don't trust our society to do what would actually be right... To unplug, power down, turn off the boob tube, and reconnect with our humanity and spirituality. Those days are gone and those environmental factors that are destroying us are here to stay. I'm thinking you just cannot have that and access to mass killing devices at the same time

I can generally agree, even from the POV of "I don't know have all the answers, but this **** sure ain't working." I just am skeptical it will change. Socially, we have sold ourselves to a me-first, me-always, materialist/consumerist lifestyle where greed, status and acquisition rule (I think Larry might call it "Ferengi-like"), and individually, to the accompanying ego-fueled (self-identity drives) internal fires that require constant stoking (which include maximum self-indulgence and immediate gratification as the ideal). This is despite much lip-service many of our social institutions give to being otherwise. Fortunately, many people have this at east somewhat ameliorated by having and caring responsibly for children, and many of us are still clinging to other socially benign traits that haven't died out completely. So there's hope!

(except for internet mods)

[2v2nv]

No, I do not.

Do you understand the fear that most would have if there would be super strict laws on firearms? I'm not talking strict as in me being afraid of losing mine, because I haven't done anything legally or mentally wrong to take them away. But as you mentioned, smaller laws lead to larger laws, which could mean so strict that not many people have them, even me. In that case, I fear that criminals will only break the law like they usually do and still obtain these guns, thus making the general law abiding public more prey than ever. I'm not asking you to agree with with the made up situation but moreso to understand where I'm coming from.

And without an criticism on that coming from me, do you understand why people protect themselves with firearms?

For me, this is less of a debate now and more so in wondering what non gun owners think of gun owners.

[twa]

These crimes are consistently perpetrated by desensitized young males of the same generation using advanced weaponry, body armor, and techniques.

anyone know the stats on drug usage (including prescribed) among our young desensitized shooters?

just curious

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-philip-zimbardo/post_3387_b_1543693.html

n the 2006 PBS documentary, Raising Cain: Boys in Focus, we learned that shockingly, 85% of all stimulant medications are prescribed to American boys. This brain-behavior interaction is also impacted by the social variable of fatherhood. A 2010 study of over a million Swedish children ages 6 to 19 found that kids raised by single parents were 54% more likely to be on ADHD medication, and the National Center for Health Statistics reports that a child of unwed or divorced parents who lives only with their mother is 375% more likely to need professional treatment for emotional or behavioral problems.

There is now evidence for reciprocal causality for attention problems and impulsiveness, and video game playing. Researchers at Iowa State University and Singapore examined over 3,000 children and adolescents for a 3-year period and found that even when controlling for gender, age, race, SES, and earlier attention problems, kids who spend more time playing video games have a higher rate of attention problems. They also found that kids who are more impulsive or start out with more attention problems will then spend more time playing video games, thus leading to a higher likelihood of subsequent additional attention problems or impulsivity. Video gaming has also been associated with decreased school performance, desensitization to violence, and can influence how one learns and socializes due to a lack of balance between time spent gaming and engaging in other activities, like socializing with friends and girls.

http://www.offthegridnews.com/2012/08/14/psychiatric-drugs-and-mass-murder-exploring-the-connection/

But when we discover that many of those who have been involved in mass killings (the Columbine shooters, the Virginia Tech gunman who murdered thirty-two people in an on-campus rampage, a Louisville man who shot and killed nine people at the Standard Gravure Company, a sixteen-year-old Native-American boy who gunned down nine on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota, just to name a few) had been taking SSRIs during the time of their killing sprees, everyone’s alarm bells should be ringing loudly. Again, it must be emphasized that we are not just talking about a few isolated incidents here – most of the perpetrators of mass murder over the past fifteen to twenty years had been taking prescription medicines at the time of their killings, and the drugs they had been taking were usually SSRIs or other medications commonly used to treat depression and/or anxiety disorders.

And this relationship is not just confined to mass murder. Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, who authored a book called “Prozac, Panacea or Pandora?”, studied thirty-two murder-suicides involving mothers and their children, and she found that in twenty-four of those cases the women had been taking Prozac at the time of the homicides.

[Larry]

I agree with the folks saying that they think that a big part of the problem is cultural.

OTOH, this is a thread about political reaction to these events. And personally, I really don;t know how to change a culture, but I somehow suspect that the government really isn't the right tool.

(I confess I'm not sure what is the right tool. Education? Is the much-talked-about income inequality a factor? The fragmentation of our media from a common, shared, cultural experience into almost completely separate realities? And, if it is one of those factors, how do you change it?)

[Kindred]

Hypothetical question: Would you rather be trapped in a room where everybody has a gun or nobody has a gun?

[zoony]

Hypothetical question: Would you rather be trapped in a room where everybody has a gun or nobody has a gun?

That's a good question. I would choose everyone.

Now my hypothetical. Would you rather be trapped on a desert island with 99 other people with 15 guns floating around, or none?

[mikered30]

NBC said that the guns used belong to his mom, so even the strictest of control laws wouldn't have stopped him from shooting.

[Bacon]

Do you understand the fear that most would have if there would be super strict laws on firearms? I'm not talking strict as in me being afraid of losing mine, because I haven't done anything legally or mentally wrong to take them away. But as you mentioned, smaller laws lead to larger laws, which could mean so strict that not many people have them, even me. In that case, I fear that criminals will only break the law like they usually do and still obtain these guns, thus making the general law abiding public more prey than ever. I'm not asking you to agree with with the made up situation but moreso to understand where I'm coming from.

And without an criticism on that coming from me, do you understand why people protect themselves with firearms?

For me, this is less of a debate now and more so in wondering what non gun owners think of gun owners.

I wrote a fairly lengthy post about this earlier. I don't think less of gun owners for responding to this tragedy the way they did. The genie is out of the bottle. If you have the option to protect yourself in this manner, and you were raised to consider it a reasonable option, of course you would wish to purchase a gun to protect yourself.

What I'm concerned for is our country in the long term. We have children being raised in a society full of adults raised by generations of cowboys, and we now find that technology has caught up with us. Guns are more dangerous than ever, and it's time to start raising our children in accordance with that. That's how I'm going to do it, and I don't fear for them either. The odds of being involved in a school shooting are still remote.

Well, they are here, anyway. I appreciate that on a Skins board of all places people might treat guns differently. PG county has always been a mess.

[Thiebear]

War on guns! Problem solved.

[zoony]

War on guns! Problem solved.

Drive by douchebaggery! More of the same from their Team Captain.

[Bang]

Do you understand the fear that most would have if there would be super strict laws on firearms? I'm not talking strict as in me being afraid of losing mine, because I haven't done anything legally or mentally wrong to take them away. But as you mentioned, smaller laws lead to larger laws, which could mean so strict that not many people have them, even me. In that case, I fear that criminals will only break the law like they usually do and still obtain these guns, thus making the general law abiding public more prey than ever. I'm not asking you to agree with with the made up situation but moreso to understand where I'm coming from.

And without an criticism on that coming from me, do you understand why people protect themselves with firearms?

For me, this is less of a debate now and more so in wondering what non gun owners think of gun owners.

I don't have a problem with the vast majority of gun owners. As many correctly point out, most are law abiding responsible people withb their firearms.

But the ones that are not do cause one hell of a problem.

My issue with the gun group is that there is no room for ANY discussion. this is a closed discussion on one side of the table. And that is causing a large problem.

I don't think banning any of the firearms we're curently free to use is the answer.

I do think that the current registration requirements must be strict, and their MUST be a system of red flags. Take the case of the Aurora theater shooter.. if a person buys that many guns in that short a period of time, I think it bears at least a cursory investigation. if this person also buys 100 round drums and body armor.. ok, I think we can start to really look at this person. if it turns out he recently lost a job or a spouse, or something else that is a common stresser, then something has to be done at the administrative level that shuts down his ability to arm up.

I think the answer lies in enforcing the laws we have more stringently, and look into putting some safeguards into the registration process that can possibly weed out the crazy.

That won't stop everyone, but it may stop some.

People will scream that it's an invasion of your privacy,, but your privacy is already invaded in this manner. If you don't think so, go buy 20 or so sun lamps and leave them on in your basement 24/7. By the end of the month, the power company will alert the cops to your massive inrease in usage, and they will show up at your door looking for a growing operation.

Hell, just try and go buy a bunch of hydroponic equipment to grow carrots. They'll definitely be at your door to make sure it's just carrots.

But we're OK with that.

but even bringing UP trying to get a handle on this problem meets nothing but a stone wall.

~Bang

[Jumbo]

NBC said that the guns used belong to his mom, so even the strictest of control laws wouldn't have stopped him from shooting.

That comment implies that the suggestion that there may be something to examine in the culture that makes it relatively normal and relatively easy for some regular mom to have such, is pointless. But these issues are filled with "un-thinking" on any number of angles and on more than one "side."