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American needs to fight against terror closer to home

314 replies

josil · 25/05/2022 00:25

And focus their energy on teenage boys who seem to be causing terror frequently by shooting us schools. Supermarkets etc etc.

What never ceases to amaze me is somehow these shooters manage to escape the stereotypes that others ethnic groups find it impossible to shake off.

RIP to those dead ok the latest massacre in the US.

The US needs to fight against terror and start with those close to home.

OP posts:
Topgub · 25/05/2022 14:54

@JosephdeMaistre

There was a camping against the ban of hand guns in the UK so its not true to say everyone just quietly went along with it.

I'm proud to say that most did and the dickheads were ignored.

My country took the right steps to protect its children on that occasion at least

Topgub · 25/05/2022 15:06

I was wondering that too @Cartoonmom

Most Americans are in favour of stricter gun control.

Those not and prepared to die for their guns are definitely not a majority

Ncwinc · 25/05/2022 15:21

’Owning a gun literally makes your children less safe.’

Yes. Children have been killed because they’ve found their parents guns and played with them. Children have accidentally killed siblings or friends while playing with guns. Teenagers have been killed by their parents who hear an ‘intruder’ downstairs and shoot only to realise it’s their own child.

CapMarvel · 25/05/2022 15:28

JosephdeMaistre · 25/05/2022 14:36

“So how are you going to stop this happening again. And again. And again.”

I’m not an American. I don’t have the power to influence policy in other countries.

So you don't have an answer then. Why am I not surprised.

It's really simple. You either try to make America safer by reducing the number of devices solely designed to kill other people, or you accept that many more innocent people will die. It's depressing how many people keep coming up with excuses - and that is all they are - as to why the former is not possible.

CaveMum · 25/05/2022 15:29

A key factor that is (deliberately, in my opinion) not talked about is that much of this violence is rooted in misogyny. I saw a thread on Twitter that said a study had been carried out by a California university that showed a common link between all mass shooters is hatred of women - 80% have a history of domestic violence, most kill a female relative/partner/ex-partner first, etc.

twitter.com/GeauxGabrielle/status/1529221838261338112?s=20&t=rm5LWDpzohDG6n6q_HWa-Q

JosephdeMaistre · 25/05/2022 15:32

“So you don't have an answer then. Why am I not surprised.”

you don’t have any answer to the very real prospect of violent insurrection that your “simple” solutions could cause.

CaveMum · 25/05/2022 15:35

People should look at Gun Violence Archive. They track and record every reported incident involving guns in the US. The stats on children are horrific - 140 children aged 0-11 killed so far in 2022 with a further 289 injured.

www.gunviolencearchive.org/

Ferngreen · 25/05/2022 15:39

I don't think it's that easy. If everyone's got guns and you declare an armistice I don't think the bad guys will be the first to hand theirs in
And whilst the police are armed I doubt the bad guys would hand theirs in.
So you end up with police and bad guys armed and the rest not.
I would think they could attempt to ban repeat firing weapons though

CapMarvel · 25/05/2022 15:41

JosephdeMaistre · 25/05/2022 15:32

“So you don't have an answer then. Why am I not surprised.”

you don’t have any answer to the very real prospect of violent insurrection that your “simple” solutions could cause.

I think this idea that if you gradually and thoughtfully restrict gun ownernship overtime is going to cause some kind of mass uprising is nonsense.

Yes, it will take time. Yes, it will annoy some people but you cannot think that keeping the status quo - or in some cases hellotexas making it easier to buy a gun - is the way forward.

knittingaddict · 25/05/2022 15:48

All this talk of "there will be a civil war" and "what about the inevitable insurrection" just makes the US look even more disfunctional and fucked up. It's not a good look.

What with their justice system, racism, misogyny, gun culture, ignoring the poor and disadvantaged, lack of care for the sick and mentally ill, banning abortion, Christian hypocrisy, inadequate education, etc, we might as well write them off now. They are not the leaders of the free world, that's for sure.

RamblingEclectic · 25/05/2022 15:50

Part of me agrees, but I also think that it goes well beyond the weapons -- there is a lot of terror way beyond that, much weighed by the state, and that we'd need to look at more local regional issues. When looking at a map of mass gun shootings, it's interesting that the states with the highest gun ownership per capita - Montana and Wyoming - appear blank. Some of that is population differences, but I think there are also cultural components in how guns are viewed and also which guns are bought.

With gun laws, I think the US would be better going closer to the Swiss model of focusing more on ammunition, having centres which store them rather than on guns. I think there needs to be a shift to that more communal approach, though I don't really see how the US can get there from where it's at.

This suggests that guns are secondary to a primary cause. Mental health.
Or access to high-speed weapons happened. Or increase in media consumption and news. Or changes in diet. Or increases in education rates and laws requiring it. Or many other things.

Pathologizing violence doesn't actually solve anything and actually ignores a lot of the data around how copycat violence happens.

why are teenage boys wired in this way to keep doing this crap.

Wired? Seriously?

maybe American schools can do something simpler, look at school security.

UK school security makes sense when the mass shooting was done by an outsider.

The US ones are more commonly done by school students though, who have a right to be there and for whom current UK security wouldn't really do much - in fact it might make it worse if you have schools like my DDs where there are barriers to leaving as well which would leave those kids sitting ducks in an active shooter situation until someone can release the doors. It's also logistically more difficult with older high school students in the US where in many districts may be studying at 2-3 sites during the day, coming and going at different times which makes the UK practice of locking up the gates at particular times not work well.

Back when my sister and I were born in the 60's and 70's, our birth certificates state that we are of "white" race but of "Mexican" heritage.

Yeah, there has been an issue up to today of American Indigenous and Latino children among others being labeled White on the birth census in the US, even when they stopped putting it on birth certificates. It's a way they fuck with the numbers. Who gets counted as white changes a lot and has little to do with how the families view it.

I actually experienced this a bit in the UK with one of mine, I had a HCP who labeled my child as 'White, Other'. He couldn't be labeled as White British because I'm not, but she wouldn't use my ethnicity either and wouldn't allow me to correct it so by hospital records, my DS was labelled White Other even with no White Other heritage.

Which just goes to show how bonkers America is. The rest of the world sees people of Spanish heritage as white

No they don't. Not everyone who looks at the pictures going around of Salvador Romas is going to see ~Spanish Heritage~ or a White boy. For many of us, what we're seen as varies by viewer, even in the UK, and we are treated differently by how we're viewed. Also, not everywhere uses those European race markers as much as they got exported.

Really, I find your insistence that all Latino people are White very imperialistic and also a bit confusing, like you seem to have forgotten the people who lived there before the Spanish (many who were already colonized which is part of how the Spanish had it so easy, there were a lot of already pissed off people who were easy to divide). After independence, many groups embraced a mixed heritage that combines and yet is outside of those European racial markers.

Seriously, one drop of European blood does not a white person make and Latinos all have different views of our ethnicity and race depending on many factors: in the US, yeah, there is a significant portion who identify as White, but there is also a significant portion who don't and outside of the US, it gets way more complicated how we view ourselves because really, a lot of us have no idea how much mixing we have and many of us don't care.

American needs to fight against terror closer to home
CaveMum · 25/05/2022 15:55

Research has shown that these shootings are socially contagious - shooters want notoriety, they actively research previous shootings for “inspiration” or in an effort to “beat the body count”.

We should not name the perpetrators, they should be forgotten and the victims honoured instead.

I stumbled on a poem the other day called “Shame”. I don’t know who the author is (it’s at least 5 years old from what I can find), but it’s very appropriate:

Shame

I do not want to know his name.

Let it be silenced. Buried in shame.

Don't bother to name his neighbourhood.

He has no place, amongst the good.

Don't tell me where he went to school.

No child is born with a heart so cruel.

Don't talk about his faith, his race.

Such evil has no human face.

Don't air his rhetoric or ideas.

There's no value in what he thinks or feels.

Don't glorify details of his crimes.

Let them be lost, erased in time.

Don't play his video nor his voice.

Let's not pollute the air, by choice.

I do not want to know his name.

Let it be silenced Buried in shame.

DdraigGoch · 25/05/2022 15:55

JosephdeMaistre · 25/05/2022 15:32

“So you don't have an answer then. Why am I not surprised.”

you don’t have any answer to the very real prospect of violent insurrection that your “simple” solutions could cause.

Don't be ridiculous. Banning the sale of automatic weapons, requiring licences and secure storage for the rest, and offering an amnesty is not going to incite people to throw tea into the sea.

orwellwasright · 25/05/2022 15:58

It's all part of the narrative isn't it?

'You think gun ownership is bad? Well, just try taking it away and then you'll know what bad really is'

What else can you expect from paranoid people who already believe guns make them safe even though it's demonstrably the opposite.

CaveMum · 25/05/2022 15:59

I highly recommend listening to the “Real Crime Profile” podcast, they’ve talked about mass shootings and what can be done to prevent them on several occasions. It’s all sensitively done, no glorification of the perpetrators just honouring of the victims:

Confronting Columbine pt1 - podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497?i=1000534707196

Confronting Columbine pt2 - podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497?i=1000535384959

How to stop a mass shooting pt1 - podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497?i=1000537711586

How to stop a mass shooting pt2 - podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497?i=1000538477326

Dashdotdotdash · 25/05/2022 16:15

JosephdeMaistre · 25/05/2022 12:26

It’s not as “simple as that” countries with stringent gun control regimes already had low rates of personal gun ownership and no cultural or political attachment to guns. When hand guns were banned here in the U.K. owners just quietly surrendered them to the police.

If that was to happen in the states you Would be looking at months, if not years, of violent armed disorder and insurrection, and deadly no knock raids from the FBI and ATF.

Stop pretending every country is U.K.

But Australia managed it.

daimbarsatemydogsbone · 25/05/2022 16:23

Dashdotdotdash · 25/05/2022 16:15

But Australia managed it.

What was the rate of gun ownership per head in Australia vs the current USA rate?

daimbarsatemydogsbone · 25/05/2022 16:42

CaveMum · 25/05/2022 15:59

I highly recommend listening to the “Real Crime Profile” podcast, they’ve talked about mass shootings and what can be done to prevent them on several occasions. It’s all sensitively done, no glorification of the perpetrators just honouring of the victims:

Confronting Columbine pt1 - podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497?i=1000534707196

Confronting Columbine pt2 - podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497?i=1000535384959

How to stop a mass shooting pt1 - podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497?i=1000537711586

How to stop a mass shooting pt2 - podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497?i=1000538477326

This is excellent and highlights the complexity and why "just banning" stuff isn't the (whole) answer for the USA even though it's worked in other places.

DrippyLongstocking · 25/05/2022 16:47

daimbarsatemydogsbone · 25/05/2022 16:23

What was the rate of gun ownership per head in Australia vs the current USA rate?

There’s a big difference between the guns per capita statistics. It was 17.5 guns per 100 people in Australia in 1996, compared to 91 per 100 in the US (that 91 has now risen beyond 100).

A lot of the difference though is that American gun-owners are far more likely to own multiple guns. There aren’t reliable statistics on the % of households with guns in Australia in 1996, but as of around 1980 about 25% of households had a gun. It’s about 45% in the US. That’s still a significant difference but I don’t think the per capita figures tell the whole story.

daimbarsatemydogsbone · 25/05/2022 16:55

Of course guns per capita don't tell the whole story - but they paint part of the picture of why the USA is very different. Apart from anything else, it's a vast place with very different situations in different places - so many people even in the USA don't bother with guns at all BUT there are significant numbers who do own a gun and significant numbers with multiple weapons. Getting all or a very high proportion of those people to give up their guns is not a trivial undertaking nor the simple answer that a lot of the weird absolutists posting seem to imagine.

pixie5121 · 25/05/2022 16:59

This reply has been withdrawn

Withdrawn at poster's request.

CapMarvel · 25/05/2022 17:06

daimbarsatemydogsbone · 25/05/2022 16:55

Of course guns per capita don't tell the whole story - but they paint part of the picture of why the USA is very different. Apart from anything else, it's a vast place with very different situations in different places - so many people even in the USA don't bother with guns at all BUT there are significant numbers who do own a gun and significant numbers with multiple weapons. Getting all or a very high proportion of those people to give up their guns is not a trivial undertaking nor the simple answer that a lot of the weird absolutists posting seem to imagine.

"Weird absolutists".

Sure. Us crazy people who think that less guns = less people being killed by guns. Nuts, right?

American has a shitload of guns. A shitload of americans get shot. There is not a complex narative going on here.

pixie5121 · 25/05/2022 17:10

This reply has been withdrawn

Withdrawn at poster's request.

Flaxmeadow · 25/05/2022 17:19

This guy makes a good points about other countries and also about the 2nd amendment

"WASHINGTON, FRANKLIN, JEFFERSON...WADDA YA THINK THEY'RE THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW? YA THINK THEY THOUGHT THIS!!!!..."

DrippyLongstocking · 25/05/2022 17:21

I agree you couldn’t simply impose UK-esque gun laws on the US currently, and likely not for a long time.

Imposing stricter background checks (including closing current loopholes) and a going-forward ban on assault weapons would be more achievable in the shorter term.

Gun control absolutely works in reducing homicide rates, but the US almost certainly is a special case when it comes to implementation. Realistically, change needs to be incremental and gradual.