Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting

[EvilNed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._homicide_rate Let's put this in perspective. The US doesn't really have a gun problem, it has a crime and poverty problem. On the list of homicides per capita, the US is number 94 out of 214. But the reason we hear so much about the US killings is that the US gets so much media attention. It's supposed to be and act like a progressive first world country, but underneath the polished surface there's just so much poverty that the high crime rate should come as no surprise. But even so, I bet your ass that if you want to cut down on gun crime, your first step is to get rid of poverty. Because poverty is what drives people to crime anyway. Sure, there'll be the occasional school shooting anyway but you can't win them all I suppose.

[Neil]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._homicide_rate Let's put this in perspective. The US doesn't really have a gun problem, it has a crime and poverty problem. On the list of homicides per capita, the US is number 94 out of 214. But the reason we hear so much about the US killings is that the US gets so much media attention. It's supposed to be and act like a progressive first world country, but underneath the polished surface there's just so much poverty that the high crime rate should come as no surprise. But even so, I bet your ass that if you want to cut down on gun crime, your first step is to get rid of poverty. Because poverty is what drives people to crime anyway. Sure, there'll be the occasional school shooting anyway but you can't win them all I suppose. Fair points, but if we take say the school shooting in question? Crime or poverty? And for example the recent Vegas shooting? Crime or poverty? It may well be that reducing poverty may well reduce general crime and therefore gun related crime. But there's the other issue which is simply the ease of access to guns, and the nature of those guns? ie: Is it a wise to allow people to pop into a shop and buy weapons like an AR-15 with 30 round clips?

[MinionZombie]

Yeah, there's general crime - and Ned's points are very valid - but the mass shootings tend to be a different breed of crime driven by other factors that are more influential, such as mental health or some bizarre manifesto or just flat out hate or in some instances politics (in which case those are classed as an act of terrorism). All the more worrying as, in this particular case, so many clear signs were missed/ignored, especially when America has had so much experience with mass/school shootings to know exactly what the warning signs are. Beat_Truck - I wasn't suggesting you were an expert on the issue, but was just asking as you're someone living inside that culture on a day-to-day basis irrespective of your own degree of gun ownership, whereas we're on the outside looking in, if that makes sense?

[EvilNed]

Here's two links that shed some light on specifically mass shootings in other parts of the world - in this case Europe. They are not as uncommon as we are led to believe. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4...europe-in-2016 https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/co...us-and-europe/ Even with this data on hand, can we say that the US has a unique gun problem? I don't think so. Now let me get something straight, I do not support or condemn american gun laws. I am an american citizen. I can move and live there at any time. But I would never do that. I would never want to live in a society which values outdated principles higher than the well-being of it's own populace. The US is a crime riddled shit hole with a polished surface. It's politics are corrupt. It's free market admiration has given rise to extraordinary powerful lobby organisations. It's got the worst social welfare system of any western country. Now, there's plenty of freedom in the us but the backside of that coin is that there's also plenty of fear. I don't want to live there, because the entire society is built upon fear. Even the second amendment, which we're discussing here, is validated by the fear of the government. But having resigned myself to this fact, I'm also aware that I, as an expatriate, shouldn't tell others what to do because of differing cultural perceptions. There's a reason why guns are a big deal in the US and I wouldn't presume my version of the truth is what's best for the US. What I would argue is that the US needs a better wellfare system and regulate it's policies toward bridging the gap between rich and poor. That would take care of the violence, too.

[Neil]

Interesting article about the change of gun laws in Australia - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-35048251 - - - Updated - - - Making it harder to buy guns isn't the answer. Reducing mazagine sizes drastically down isn't the answer. Putting more guns in schools is the answer! Why not mount a gatlin gun at the front of each classroom next to the teacher for even greater safety!

[MinionZombie]

Putting more guns in schools is the answer! Why not mount a gatlin gun at the front of each classroom next to the teacher for even greater safety! It's like something out of a movie, isn't it, that idea? Does anyone suggesting that idea stop to think that, gee, maybe with having two people running around a school with a gun that there might be a whole load of stray fire? How many would get injured or killed by a poor shot fired in a stressful, panicked situation? A teacher isn't a soldier! The whole thing is stunning, but hopefully those kids staging these walk outs and protests can help shift the narrative away from the ever-repeating cycle that we currently have. I believe there's a plan to 'lie down' outside the White House, and it reminded me of the quilt that was made in the 1980s to provide a visual to explain the seriousness and scale of the AIDs problem and it helped push the issue forward towards better results. A strong visual can say more than any speech sometimes, although it does have to be backed up with serious thought and consideration. I've been impressed by the students who I've seen speak about the issues, though. Apparently there was a Tweet going around pushing the idea of 'the student speakers are actors' (*sigh*), but the Tweet's location tag was Moscow, Russia. Talk about slipping on your own banana peel! - - - Updated - - - I see Trump's blaming movies, videogames, and the Internet now. We've had that same, tired old argument over and over again and the evidence simply shows no correlation between violent media and being violent. Violent people may watch violent media, but they were capable of violence already. If you're not capable of violence, then no matter how much you watch, you're not going to turn into a maniac. If that was the case the world would be over-run with nutters after they watched a movie - but that's not the case, ergo, it's a bullshit distraction of an argument. The slimy idiocy of such arguments is truly offensive, in my opinion. All the weirder in that he's going on about needing a movie ratings system - is he not aware of the MPAA, who've been rating movies for many, many, many decades?!

[Neil]

Doesn't throwing thousands of guns into American schools in itself then risk students getting hold of a gun? ie: Where are these guns going to still kept to be easily/quickly accessible? And what's next if this new policy fails? Head Masters with bazookas?

[Neil]

I see Trump's blaming movies, videogames, and the Internet now. Here you go - https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-...r-gun-violence

[MinionZombie]

Here you go - https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-...r-gun-violence So the same old ignorant garbage all over again. Never mind that the majority of games - a medium that has been rated for many years now - are rated 12 or under (ratings of 16 or 18 are relatively small compared to the giant swathe of games on the market) ... never mind that media violence and real-life violence are two totally different things (for instance, the former isn't real and the latter is real) ... never mind that you can't properly learn something in a virtual environment. Never mind that no credible study has shown a link between media violence and real world violence - the only 'desensitisation' you might experience is 'desensitisation' to media violence (as in you'd still be shocked/appalled/disgusted/repulsed by actual real-life violence - just take me as an example, I've seen all kinds of effed-up movies and games and TV and books and comics etc - but real-world violence shocks and disgusts me). The list goes on. How long before someone points at Grand Theft Auto and says "you get points for killing prostitutes"? Never mind that there are no 'points' awarded in GTA, don't let that little fact get in the way, or that if you do that you'll probably end up getting the in-game cops after you. “I think you only have to look at Canada,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “They see the same video games that Americans do. They get all the same cultural signals and they don’t have a problem with gun violence as we do. In the end it is not about video games.” The same thing can be said of Britain, too. We're playing the same games - but we have very different laws and cultures around guns compared to America. Our stats for 'death by shooting' are infinitessimal to those coming from America on an annual basis. I hope the ESA goes to this cobbled together meeting loaded for bear, if you'll excuse the awkward pun, and bury Trump in an avalanche of facts. It’s a common talking point for the National Rifle Association—a key Trump ally—as well. In the wake of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Wayne LaPierre, the group’s executive vice president, took aim squarely at the video game industry. “There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games with names like ‘Bulletstorm,’ ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ ‘Mortal Kombat,’ and “Splatterhouse,’” he said. “Guns don’t kill people,” LaPierre declared. “Video games, the media, and Obama’s budget kill people.” What bloody dreck, this is, and the use of those titles is kinda funny. "Splatterhouse", really? They made one recently, but how many people played it, hell, how many people are even aware they made a newer one a few years back? That's hardly a well known franchise these days, and hasn't been for decades. "Bulletstorm"? You're blasting mutants and monsters for the majority of the game - on a distant planet - and the violence is so absurdly cartoonish you aren't supposed to take it seriously. "GTA" - one of the most successful franchises in the world, yes it's violent, but it's also complex, and evidently despite it's huge success there isn't a crime wave in the name of GTA happening and there hasn't been since it debuted twenty years ago! The idiocy ... it hurts.

[shootemindehead]

Dragging out that hoary old cliche? Video games? Jaysis wept, that's desparate. The perennial goto for conservatives. Let's not deal with the actual issues, but blame something nebulous and have other hand wringing morons nodding in agreement. “We have to look at the internet because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds, and their minds are being formed,” Trump said. “I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.” It's incredible, just how out of touch this billionaire property developer is. Violent video games have been around for decades in every country in the world, practically, and nowhere has either the fixation or the problems with guns and gun violence that America has. Guns are too easily accessed and there isn't a workable healthcare system in place that's fit for purpose. But, let's keep ignoring those two massive elephants in the centre of the room all for the sake of keeping an industry that sells weapons going strong. “Guns don’t kill people,” LaPierre declared. “Video games, the media, and Obama’s budget kill people.” Wow. Just wow. I'm hard pressed to recall a more stupid, not to mention woefully inncorrect, sentence. That would have to boggle the mind of every rational, thinking, person...regardless of where on the political seesaw they sit.

[MinionZombie]

Apparently this is the highlight reel of videogame violence that Trump had shown at this cobbled together meeting: Pathetic beyond belief. The man clearly has no time for context. This is the same bullshit the moral panic brigade lead by Mary Whitehouse pulled in Parliament in the 1980s regarding video nasties ... now you can buy almost all of the video nasties (the final 39 and the original 72) at any media retail store in the UK, and can buy all of them online, and yet there's no mass murdering swathe of psychopaths charging about. Also, in that reel, several clips come from games that came out years and years ago. Call of Duty Black Ops, for instance, or even further back with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (which came out in 2008, IIRC). They show a clip from the "No Russian" mission, two clips in fact, but again - utterly out of context and failing to mention that 1) if you do the mission you don't have to shoot at any innocent civilians, 2) you're warned in advance that the game contains graphic sequences, and 3) you can choose to not do the mission at all and skip to the end of it, and of course, it fails to mention the reason for the mission in the first place: you're an undercover agent who has infiltrated a Russian terrorist group whose purpose in this mission is to start a war with Russia (they go to a Russian airport, slaughter their own people, but pretend to be American), and you as the agent are killed at the end of the mission by the leader of the terrorist organisation. You also get to kill the terrorist leader in the following game with him beaten and hanged. Interesting that they use clips from Sniper Elite and Wolfenstein - where you play as an American soldier killing Nazis in, respectively, World War 2 and a hideous alternate future where the Nazis won WW2. Absolutely pathetic showing, and surprising that they didn't use clips from various other games that are more recent.

[shootemindehead]

Apparently this is the highlight reel of videogame violence that Trump had shown at this cobbled together meeting: Pathetic beyond belief. The man clearly has no time for context. This is the same bullshit the moral panic brigade lead by Mary Whitehouse pulled in Parliament in the 1980s regarding video nasties ... now you can buy almost all of the video nasties (the final 39 and the original 72) at any media retail store in the UK, and can buy all of them online, and yet there's no mass murdering swathe of psychopaths charging about. I'm going take a "wild" guess and say that's where they got the "idea" from.

[MinionZombie]

I'm going take a "wild" guess and say that's where they got the "idea" from. Yep, wouldn't be surprised - and once they got to that point they no doubt stopped reading the history book on the subject.

[Neil]

Yep, wouldn't be surprised - and once they got to that point they no doubt stopped reading the history book on the subject.

[MinionZombie]

American politics and nuance don't really mix, do they? Then again, nuance has been tossed out the window all over the place in the last few years, including here in the UK.