The Ongoing American Shooting Epidemic

Speaking of that, where's wonderful Flagg? I can't believe he's not chomping at the bit to put in his 2 cents.

I'm sure we'll have a 3 page diatribe about holding strong to our guns by Friday.

I've got two peeps on my FB friends list that are Mo's living in SLC. Both frequently post pro gun pictures/shares after these shootings. Today the wife is posting/sharing some forward about 20 angels getting to heaven for Christmas.




It's just like...hello???? Anybody there?

WTF???

I'm sure we'll have a 3 page diatribe about holding strong to our guns by Friday.

Lol, that sounds about right.

Maybe they should shoot themselves and accelerate their trip to heaven

Still a few days to get there before xmas

I've got two peeps on my FB friends list that are Mo's living in SLC. Both frequently post pro gun pictures/shares after these shootings. Today the wife is posting/sharing some forward about 20 angels getting to heaven for Christmas.




It's just like...hello???? Anybody there?

That is some fucked up shit! Just wow.

Lol, that sounds about right.

Lets at least let him speak for himself first

Lets at least let him speak for himself first

Nah, I think I'll speak for him. Oh wait, that wasn't actually me who did that.

Nah, I think I'll speak for him. Oh wait, that wasn't actually me who did that.

Forgot this doesn't double quote

Forgot this doesn't double quote

I thought you could? It must not work.

y

Wow, stupidest thing I ever read...

http://nymag.com/dai...tion-award.html

"I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. "

I thought you could? It must not work.

Probably you can but not from the iphone app I use sometimes.

If people are serious about stopping this sort of thing they will take a number of steps:

1. Homeschool. Take away the power of the radicals in the classrooms. Makes your kids safer, too.

BARBARIAN AT THE GATES! The idiot claiming that liberals are trying to exploit a tragedy to push gun control is --- wait for it --- exploiting the tragedy to push an anti-public schools agenda.

And homeschooling isn't the solution to anything, except taking our Facebook society and making it even more isolated and socially inept.

2.Back Right to Work legislation for the public sector. Teacher’s unions have helped cement much of this in place. As long as we have group think in the classrooms we will never see the end of this.

Exactly. Teacher's unions are pro-murder of teachers and students. See above explanation which might as well read "What a fucking hypocrite!".

3.Engage in more frank discussion of race and culture. For far too long we have tiptoed around these issues, fearful of being branded a racist. If black thugs kidnap and rape a woman, ask if there is something in the black culture that fostered that. If an evil white kid murders a bunch of children at the school, ask the same question of the white community. What was it that spawned this behavior? What was this kid taught? We have to stop hiding from our respective national sins.

Frankly, I think this guy is probably a racist. Four reasons: first, in his hypothetical examples, it's blacks versus white...as in plural versus singular. To him, blacks doing this is more likely and, thus, pluralized. Second, those same fictional blacks are thugs whereas the white kid is evil. Note in his manifesto how evil is attributed to the devil...but thuggishness, I'm guessing, is probably just a condition of being black. Third, he's equating kidnap and rape with mass murder. Both are deplorable, but they're not equal. At least someone kidnapped or raped can have the possibility of physical and mental recovery. He has to make this leap because of reason number four, by far the most important, which is that THIS WAS DONE BY A WHITE GUY! Why are we even bringing blacks up? The kid who did this shit was a white as can be. What shade of white? At Home Depot, his paint color is "Lilly Fucking". And that same fact applies to almost every mass murder I can recall. That nut in Colorado, the guy in Arizona, Columbine, Oktahoma City...yeah, the DC Sniper was black and the Virginia Tech shooter was Asian (if I recall), but it's hard to imagine that we need to raise all of this as a race issue. Or, if we do, then it seems to be primarily a white issue.

4.Stop reporting on these things so much. One of the biggest drivers in modern popular culture is the thirst for fame. It’s the reason social networking media is so popular; it makes the individual feel as if they are somehow famous or important. It has become the Quest, the modern El Dorado, for our young people today. I suspect many of these killings are at least partly driven by the knowledge that for a time the perpetrator will have great notoriety, people will know their names. Much like Old West outlaws (and I suspect many of these punks see themselves that way) they will be remembered for the evil they have done. And why not? In a Godless, material world there is nothing more important than to be remembered. Who cares if the memory is bitter? At least you are going out with a blaze of glory.

These people should generally remain nameless when they do their deeds, and the intimate details of their lives should be put aside for the most part. Oh, it’s important that we know who they are and what they did and perhaps even why, but there should be an effort to keep them at arm’s length. These sorts of things used to happen in the past, but were largely ignored or downplayed for this very reason. The 24/7 news cycle has made it so that the most heinous acts are now given wall-to-wall coverage, and the evil person who did them becomes notorious. That has to stop.

Meh. If they thirst for fame were this pronounced, then there would be far more of these shootings, as every actor-turned-waiter unleased hell on a Los Angeles cafe to "make it big". I agree that our news is shit, but there's not much to do about it. Apparently he forgets that free speech and press are just as much of a civil liberty as gun rights.

5.Call evil out. We have to stop being sorry and start being angry. This is not a time for national grief so much as a time for national anger. We should stop tolerating this sort of thing. Indeed, stop tolerating any bad behavior. If you see kids jumping ahead in line, say, call them out. If you see punks bothering their neighbors call them out. Say something to the idiot blaring his car stereo. Say something to the foul-mouthed teens. Tell the brats to pull up their pants; nobody wants to see their filthy underwear and pimply behind. We have to start saying something, stop ignoring it. The first way any society maintains order is through social pressure from individuals. We have insanely given that up.

Hey Evil! Stop being such a dick!

Did that work?

Also, it's worth noting that almost nothing in the above point is actually evil. "Foul mouthed teenagers"? "Jumping ahead in line"? "Blaring" stereos and pants below the waistline? We've officially left the fucking reservation.

6.Work to devolve power back to the parents, the local officials, and the communities. A society that is top-down will inevitably lead to alienation of the sort we have seen here. This young man was twenty years old, and his actions were neither spurious nor random. As an FBI profiler said on television last night, he undoubtedly felt powerless and sought to remedy that. Why does a twenty year old feel powerless? He could leave his mother’s home at any time at his age. He feels powerless because he has lived in an over-bureaucratized society, one run ultimately from a far-away central location. He sees his life as at the mercy of others, and sees himself as having no real input or control. He has been coddled all his life, given free rein to indulge his senses but not to face the responsibilities that freedom necessitates. He was an eternal juvenile, a child who was not allowed to grow up. He lived in a world of the Progressives making, not in reality.

The family is the fundamental building block of civilization, and from it all power originates. The Left has systematically destroyed the family for the purpose of empowering the State, and this has destroyed so many lives. Individuals - especially immature individuals - need to be taught how to live, how to think, how to believe. Man’s animal passions must be placed in check and his rational faculties engaged. His moral compass must be set. Liberalism sought to destroy all the controls by destroying the family and community, centralizing power in meta institutions and granting the individual absolute moral autonomy without giving him the wisdom he needs to exercise it. . It is a recipe for disaster, as we have seen.

Wow. Just...wow. BUREAUCRACY?!?!?! He felt powerless because of bureaucracy? I have nothing to add here.

7.Restrict the sex in movies, television, on the internet. There is a reason why young people commit these sorts of crimes, and sex plays no small part. Their passions are eternally inflamed, and they wander the Earth with no outlet for their overstimulated glands. People have understood the close relationship between sex and violence through history; sex was an inducement to military service in ancient times (and modern, too) and it has traditionally been understood that a sexually robust individual will fight harder and more aggressively. We are engaging half this equation, overstimulating our youth while denying them a planned outlet. Even if they were to live promiscuously (a very bad thing for society) they still cannot find adequate outlets for their passions, which have grown to titanic volume. Fighting is the traditional outlet. Societies have always carefully planned ways to release this tension constructively - through physical labor, through hunting, through military service, sometimes even through intellectual pursuits. Now we have nothing, no place for this pent-up frustration to go. The only answer is to follow the other societal coping mechanism, which is to tone down the sexual stimulation, encourage chastity and modesty. Our society has conveniently thrown that away as well. We have to restore it.

Parents, monitor what your children watch, what they look at on the internet. Make sure they dress modestly.

Again, free speech. This is why I don't trust the tea party. It's more anti-civil liberties conservatism dressed up as a general concern about government size. But when forced to, it always comes back to being socially conservative and jumping all over the Constitution in order to avoid putting the lightest of toe touches on the 2nd Amendment.

8.Control drugs. Do not think that puffing a joint is harmless. Several American states decriminalized Marijuana, and it is actually legal in Washington and Colorado. Is it a coincidence that this shooting just occurred? Probably, but not in the long haul. Drugs and crime and violence go together. Trayvon Martin, the youth shot and killed by a neighborhood watch captain after he was assaulted , was likely high http://www.freerepub...88655/postswhen he was shot - and George Zimmerman has claimed Martin assaulted him, something backed by medical testimony. Martin had trace amounts of marijuana in his system, http://articles.nyda...4_1_medical-... should be pointed out. Would Martin have done that had he been sober? And medical marijuana is a joke; there are far better substances that can be used. It is nothing but a way to backdoor legalization.

Being high doesn't cause trace amounts of marijuana in your system...it causes a clear and obvious amount of marijuana in your system. What causes trace amounts is being high days or weeks before. And neither is an excuse to be fucking shot.

9.Support the creation of local organizations to act as “neighborhood watch” for schools. Had George Zimmerman been at the front door instead of some mechanical card reader those children would still be alive. Perhaps it’s time we start asking for volunteers to protect our children. It will require security checks, but isn’t that worth it? This dovetails with the union problem; the unions will fight this measure tooth-and-nail.

George Zimmerman killed an unarmed teen. Presumably that doesn't matter if the teen is black.

I don't think volunteers is the right way...a volunteer isn't accountable, because they can simply not show up, with no repercussions.

10.Go back to church. We need God more than ever, need prayer. It’s time the Ten Commandments were taught again. It’s time the Bible was taught. It’s time people learned the examples of the heroes of our Judeo-Christian heritage - heroes like Moses, who gave up his life as an Egyptian noble to become a shepherd and eventually lead his birth mother’s kin out of slavery, or David who spent years hiding from King Saul, and who, at one point, had Saul completely under his power (in the cave of Adullum) but would not smite the Lord’s anointed, or of John the Baptizer, a man who spoke the truth until his head was cut off, or of any of the Apostles who died for their faith. Most of all they should learn of Jesus, who refused to turn from the Truth and allowed himself to be sacrificed in the most painful manner possible for other people’s sins.

It's worth noting that some of this world's most violent people act in the name of religion. But I do appreciate the need for a moral code. Unfortunately, I don't know that good morals fixes mental illness. You can call a person evil if you want, but most evil people don't seek to harm themselves. They seek to harm and exploit others to their benefit. Hitler was evil, but he didn't walk into a camp, kill some Jews, and then off himself. It's a stupid oversimplification to dumb this down to evil. The act was evil, but I'd bet anything that it was driven by mental illness or psychiatric trouble of some sort. And church can't fix that (and neither can any of the other stupid shit this guy advocates).

What can we say anymore?

We have a country full of loons who have witnessed the attention mass shootings garner and have decided to use them as a template for their final act (give or take a few revisions.)

I think this is the underlying point. The USA (for better and for worse) places more value on success/failure than other western countries in my experience. This has only been amplified by instant, mass communication - internet, reality TV. Mix someone who perceives themselves as a loser, or isn't popular, or hasn't achieved what they see people achieving, throw in the mental stress of modern life, add guns and what happened is pretty much inevitable - and it spirals, you kill 5 people and no one will remember you anyway, so in a country of 300+ million there will always be those who want to outdo the previous atrocity. People are complex, guns are simple - there is no solution which only addresses people.