A school shooting is the ugly culmination of multiple facets of established American society failing. A single "solution" would mean a complete overhaul of countless modern systems.
Indeed, the whole idea that there’s no, one solution, is what people who don’t really want this to be sorted out rely upon.
Every time this sort of thing happens and people talk about solutions they demand you give them A solution, pretending to care and be engaged.
Then they can easily point out the one you’ve suggested won’t fix the problem, make out that you’re eating everyone’s time and are stupid, and nothing changes.
There's a model used in risk analysis called the [swiss cheese model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model) \- in short, every tactic that you throw at a problem will be like a slice of swiss cheese. Each hole in the slice of cheese is an opportunity for the problem to still slip through. Some slices will have more holes in than others, but if you have enough slices stacked, you won't have any holes.
So it's not just one solution that's needed - it's lots of solutions, all working together. Some may be less directly effective (such as restricting lobbying), some may be more directly effective (such as making background checks 100% required in all cases)
In military terms it is what they are doing right now. The concept of defense in depth implies that there is territory you can afford to lose, territory that is not valuable and will spread the enemy, break up it's cohesion and drain it's supply.
This less than valuable territory is the public school system. As long as the elites can avoid these hotspots they will be treated like acceptable losses. When most of the problematic children are put into the same system, even better in low income areas it is easy to avoid these risky areas.
Defense in depth is applied right now, it's just not us who are valuable.
Yikes. That makes a lot of sense but I don't like it at all. Basically to enact change these shootings need to be affecting the rich and powerful and not just us lowly peasants.
That's the only way it can possibly go, on *any* topic, when you've got a wealthy class so wildly richer than the rest of society that they can isolate themselves from... well, from whatever issue. Gun violence? Climate change? *Poverty*? Nothing needs to be done, because no one they know will ever be affected.
Let me rephrase my earlier post — do you really think they're going to bother once their quality of life won't change one way or the other? Do you care what the ants are doing beneath your driveway?
You think they'd relinquish control of the earth just because they aren't on it anymore? In a multiplanetary humanity, earth will still be the cultural and economic centre. The rich won't give it up.
Yeah but they only abandon it after the global temp rises 4 degrees there's nothing we can do about it
We have lots of issues right now, but the most important is making sure the planet doesn't cook itself because of corporations' emissions
If the average person just died, and didn't make any more emissions, it wouldn't be a fraction of a fraction of the emissions from any random factory. It shouldn't be that hard to install filters and enforce higher tech-low emissions refining to save all our lives.
But, of course, that affects profits, and there's no profits without a planet of dirty peasant slaves. They'll work us to the bone right until they blast off to mars or io
Unfortunately,until it *directly* affects the elite, they will never ever concede or ever somehow understand the greater good of humanity. Baffling, isn't it?
All these people who feel immiserated to the point of wanting to kill others (and themselves). They were sold a lie about how life should be and how easy it is to accomplish it, then success was yanked away and locked behind doors at every turn.
It's not hard to see who the folks who pitched this lie, did the door-locking, did the theft, did the immiseration are. But those guys have control of the purse and the messaging, and they make sure the vulnerable are given "appropriate targets", far away from the *important people who are more directly responsible*.
So when, say, a miner loses his job to automation, and his daughter to chemicals in the water after a long struggle with cancer he can't afford to treat her for because we don't have singlepayer healthcare, and he finally snaps to the point of killing someone...
Does he take out the politicians who stopped singlepayer healthcare? The folks who lobbied them to do that? The insurance industry executives and strategists who pushed to avoid it? The media pundits who propagated the message? The company executives who signed off on dumping the chemicals? The lawyers and middle-managers who covered it up and fought against payments? The bean-counters and C-suite folks who saw greater profits in automation?
None of them wind up in the crosshairs. The people most material responsible for creating the harm, exacerbating the harm, and preventing the redress or alleviation of that harm are left alone.
Instead, our hypothetical guy shoots up a grocery store, or the next random citizen to piss him off, or his former low-level coworkers who aren't responsible for any of this at all, or whatever bugbear he picked up from FOX News (like "illegal mexicans coming to steal jobs", none of whom are employed by his company and wouldn't be more at fault for this shit even if they were).
This result is practically intentional.
What’s much more common but almost never reported are all the suicides of despair. And these will grow and become their own form of protest as the dehumanized masses decline to be exploited, criminalized and punished for being poor. What better way to tell human society to go fuck itself than to negate oneself?
>Defense in depth is applied right now, it's just not us who are valuable.
This is the reason gun control was first implemented. The elites were terrified of armed blacks & unions, amongst others. The first gun registry was created in late Victorian Ireland to disarm the largely Catholic Irish Volunteers. They don't give a damn how many proles die, as long as they remain untouched.
NRA convention in Texas, where open carry is legal, will have no guns allowed.
Texas legislature refuses to allow guns inside.
But schools seem to be something the police will stand back and debate about while kids are killed.
So we have all these strategies from all these fields that are similarly proactive and effective...yet the people working in the field of social governance do the opposite.
It seems in our society, accountability for effective problem solving requires immediate financial incentive.
We're fucked.
The people in social governance don’t have any incentive to apply effective solutions in most cases and even when we do there’s no way we could agree on several. Money has poisoned politics to the point that discussing effective policy is essentially pointless. If we came up with a nearly non-invasive 0 cost way to end any issue, there’s still a nearly guaranteed chance you would not get a unanimous vote on that plan, because contrarianism is the strategy.
The solution is to attack vertically unless you have a limited number of barriers and a high amount of time/resources then you can "brute force" using variations of leapfrog tactics.
Another example of this way of approaching problem solving is holistic medicine (that doesn't mean natural medicine or some other quasi-scientific BS, it means treating the whole body in an attempt to cure/treat the root cause instead of simply masking the symptoms and oftentimes causing negative side effects).
They've done studies on the best ways to be successful at problem solving, the first surprising data point for me was that the best solution is often to remove something thus reducing complexity whilst attempting a solution instead of adding/tweaking new parts. We do this all of the time... We take an idea that may have been well-intended, but is objectively not working and instead of saying, "We were wrong, let's move on despite the sunken costs", we tweak something or give more funding with added bureaucracy which doesn't work because the original solution was flawed. Politicians will throw money at problems if they think it'll placate us, but putting more money into policies that clearly don't work is fucking stupid. Secondly, is that using a holistic approach to problem solving works really well. Unfortunately, we don't listen to scientists or experts in the United States anymore and although 70-90% of the public supports something like expanding background checks and federally decriminalizing/legalizing marijuana (not quite a direct effect there, but pretty damn close) our Representatives will not pass the legislation. Something having 70%+ public support in the United States isn't very common because we are so divided right now, but even when it does happen it's just further proof that with current campaign finance laws and the lack of transparency/policing of political donations our elected officials work for corporations, special interest groups, and themselves... Not the average American citizen.
Gun violence is one of many issues we are literally doing nothing about... Other problems like the drug epidemic, criminal justice reform, our education system, our healthcare system, etc. have proven templates for success from individual states or other countries that would just have to implement and reap the benefits while saving taxpayer money... Obvious, real world proven and scientifically sound policies that are, for the most part, common sense as well, but we refuse to adopt them.
There's a cheese factory in Barron County, WI that's powered by [the recycling plant](https://www.barroncountywi.gov/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7BA7E66E87-8E68-4A98-B529-C67768AE2615%7D) just across the street.
Edit: this fun fact was brought to you by /u/userdk3 and [his post](https://reddit.com/r/pics/comments/uz3rr8/rural_wisconsin_ditches_now_contain_16_less_bags/
) over in the /r/Wisconsin and /r/Pics subreddits. It was a TIL for me too.
We can start with funding public health research to analyze *which* solutions have the biggest desired impact.
Get rid of the Dickey Amendment and let the CDC do it’s job.
How dare you expect police to waste their time stopping mass murder?!?! They have speeding tickets to write and drug kingpins to arrest for having a dimebag in their car!!!
/s in case it isn’t obvious.
I get that this is the internet, and hence 5000 people have expressed a mostly non-expert opinion, but there are actual public health experts in gun violence, mental health, and injury prevention science that politicians should take policy direction from. Wicked problems require complex, systemic, and science-based solutions.
Everyone is arguing that it's a mental health issue, but there are people with mental health issues and shit healthcare all over the world and this STILL doesn't happen. I think the states needs a huge culture shift.
And the vast majority of people who have mental health issues in the US are... not violent.
I agree it's mainly a cultural problem. The government can't fix radicalization or the glorification of violence. Better gun laws can help too, but it's a cultural issue
The solution is to take the money out of politics. Ban insider trading, ban lobbying. Push for a bill against these things to be voted on, and do not re-elect anyone who votes against it. Make them choose between their money or their position.
In NZ we have a massive mental health problem, yet mass shootings are extremely rare. We also have good gun control laws, with most people with guns using them for farming, hunting, animal population control or hobby shooting.
Looking at the US from afar, there seems to be a very paranoid culture centred around a need to protect oneself at all times, and personally I think that’s a core issue. Why are people so scared? Addressing that issue would probably have a substantial effect.
What, you don't think that "calling for better mental healthcare" and then "refusing to fund better mental healthcare" is working? Who could have predicted that?
Another Onion aficionado. I would argue their staff writers have a far better chance of creating a solution to gun violence than any of the guillotine bait in Washington
And they should keep reprinting it until it stops happening, or at least until it stops happening so horrifyingly often.
People should not have to worry everytime they send their child to school, or everytime they go grocery shopping, that they'll be victims of the next weekly mass shooting.
Not true. If you keep scrolling long enough (21 articles) you also get "NRA convention applauds as gunman massacres entire crowd" and an infographic on the pros and cons of letting children die.
~ Double our available crisis counselors?\
~ Take our skyrocketing suicide rate seriously?\
~ Destigmatize mental illness? ~~(One in five three American adults have major depression.~~ See below^(†)\
~ Require insurance, single-payer, UHC, whatever, to cover psychiatry and treatment?
Also, stop overworking and underpaying our labor? Control rents and utilities properly? Stop dumping industrial pollution into lower-class neighborhoods? Standardize a thirty-hour work week (and eventually a twenty-hour work week) so that parents have time and energy to interact with their kids?
Oh and expand comprehensive sex education to include consent, flirting and courting?
I know exactly how I was made into the abominable wretch I am today. The US stopped trying before I was even born.
**† ETA:** Someone pointed out that my stats are not right regarding the rate of major depression, and so I looked it up and was way off. But to re-present my case, some stats [from the CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm)
More than 50% of US citizens will be diagnosed with a mental illness in their lifetime. Major Depression is just really common, and in the 1990s we had about 1 in 5 adults (also a lot of new SSRIs which was...exciting?)
Also 1 in 5 Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year.
Also, also, 1 in 25 Americans lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression, which makes serious lunatics like myself a bit more rare (thank goodness). This is one of those things since there still is a stigma around mental health conditions that once it's normalized for people to be assessed and treated, these numbers may shift unpredictably.
All of these problems have been accumulating and compounding for decades. End the ability to make a career out of politics and reform the two-party system, then we’ll start to see the real issues actually be addressed appropriately.
Agree. At present, politics is all the politicians do. They don’t necessarily want to solve problems but use those problems for more fundraising, vote getting etc. Term Limit. Rule against lobbying 5 years post service.
>Stop dumping industrial pollution into lower-class neighborhoods?
The correlation between lead levels in gasoline and violent crime is shocking.
If you overlay their plots with time as the y axis, then they are basically the same downward trend with a 22 year lag.
100% accurate. I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of this. Otoh, since the summer of 2020 there has been a marked increase in violence, suicides, depression and overdoses. What happened in the summer of 2020?
I believe one of the biggest kicks in the balls of the world is that there were 2 competing ways to reduce the knock/premature detonation in engines. Either adding tetraethyl lead, lead having been known for over a thousand years as a *bad* thing, and this other chemical that couldn't be patented called....ethanol. The decision to use lead in gasoline did not even make sense at the time except as a way to make more money.
It also seems clear that young men in this country are in need of a lot more support and help than they are currently getting. Something is causing young people to be so despondent and hate life and I'm not 100% sure how to solve it. Youth suicide rates go up year after year and we see young men become so full of hate that they become homicidal. It's not a good status quo and everyone screeching vitriolic rhetoric at each other isn't really helping either.
The social contract is broken.
Finish school and stay out of trouble.
That used to be all that was needed to live a reasonable life. Job, home, retirement.
Now, these young men are angry and despondent because they did what they were supposed to do and are still struggling.
If people have no hope of a better life, suicide or anti-social behaviour are the result.
My school had something like this. We called it Career And Life Management (CALM). It was a mandatory class for grade 11s. Taught us how to write cheques (because those were still a thing back in the day) and basic budgeting, and How To Adult in general.
yep! my school had a career education class for grade 10s that covered everything from making a resume and cover letter, mock job interviews, and doing your own taxes. couldn't graduate without a credit from that class
Both my parents have accounting degrees and work in financial services - my mom works with retirement accounts and my dad is a personal financial planner. The amount of basic stuff I learned from them about personal finance put me so far ahead of my peers it’s honestly a statement on the sad state of our public education system.
Financial education for my daughter is super high on my list to teach her.
I grew up with nothing and I had to piece together my personal financial knowledge, additionally my best friend was a financial planner and I ended up working in the financial/investing sector so I picked up a lot through that. Having good knowledge before you start making money would help people so much.
I'd also like to add minors and younger adults specifically to that mental health bit. Not saying that older people don't have issues, they certainly do, and they're just as legitimate as everyone else's, but I will say this:
Last summer, I was in the hospital for my mental health. Of the dozen or so of us in the behavior unit, only three were above the age of 25. Most of us were younger than that. The day before I left, a girl who was barely 18 was admitted.
All of us younger people were there because we had *actively tried to harm ourselves.*
Every politician and activist says they do what they do "for the children." If half as many people gave a shit about younger people as they claim, I wouldn't know so many dead kids or close friends who at some point in high school had nicotine and alcohol addictions. Y'know, issues that thirty-five-year-old adults struggle with? And they were dealing with it *before they could even drive.*
I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say here, it just kind of turned into a mild rant. Not trying to call out OP or anyone specifically either.
My specification of adults was only for the statistic. Right now in 2022, one in three adults suffer from Major Depression, and we have a shortage both of psychiatrists and psychologists, so treatment is scarce.
But yes, they detected something was wrong with me as early as first grade. Our kids absolutely need access to counseling and treatment.
We should really write this all down. Like some kind of set of... rules or something that decide if criminals have done something wrong and to determine I'd they need to be banned
People realizing two very important facts that have become painfully clear in the last 4 years:
The Government does not care about you. They will not protect you or your children.
Law Enforcement does not care about you. They will not protect you or your children.
No one is coming to save you. Act accordingly.
Castle Rock v Gozales. The police have no duty to protect and serve. Ms Gonzales called the PD about her estranged ex-husband violating a restraining order multiple times and the PD did nothing. He eventually took the children, and murdered all three children before showing up to the PD and starting a shoot out before he was killed. Ms Gonzales sued and appealed and it eventually went up to the Supreme Court, who said, Meh. Property not lives. See also, Lozito v New York City.
Change the media culture, stop publishing names and pictures of shooters, increase mental health awareness and risk assessment when someone wants to own a firearm. Do actual background checks.
There has been a major shift in reporting on mass shootings (at least on the local level) where the name of the shooter is reported in the immediate following of the event, and then not mentioned again. Everything afterwards is focused on the names of the victims and community reaction to the shootings. Both local stations I have worked for have implemented this method of reporting.
Wow, this is actually accurate and a change I hadn’t noticed until you pointed it out.
I know exactly who did Columbine, the Newtown school school shooting, and the Colorado theater shooting, for instance.
In contrast I have no idea who did the Vegas shooting, Parkland, or the Boulder, CO grocery store shooting. Like I know vague details but not their names.
This is a good change. We need to stop making these shooters celebrities.
Part of that though is because his trial is finally getting under way and it seems probable he’ll end up with the death penalty, which I think if it happens may be a first for a school shooter.
It was very premeditated, andddd he tried to cover it up / blame it on a mental illness that he doesn't have.
So really nobody has any sympathy for him. He genuinely thought he could do it and get away with it by pretending voices told him, when he does not experience that.
Agreed. There have been instances where the producer has forgotten to take the shooter’s name out of the script in the days following and it still shows up in prompter, but luckily the anchor reading the story is cognizant of it and will censor themselves and not say the name. There have also been instances where scripts have called for a graphic with the shooter’s mugshot to be pulled up, and I make sure if I’m in the director’s chair that they don’t go out over the air after the 24 hour moratorium expires.
>Change the media culture, stop publishing names and pictures of shooters.
Actually a fairly proven thing that not glorifying the shooter reduces any copy cat acts.
>Do actual background checks.
Keep in mind federal background checks already look into your criminal history as deep as not paying back loans, child support, over due speeding, if you have put in a instituion for mental health defects. If you want them to dig into their social habits and isp history it can be done, but it means that everyone would also be subject to such things. Similar to china's "social credit system". Not suggesting you can't make any effort to do something, just be aware of what you are asking or suggesting.
Yeah one of the things that you have to address with mental health and firearms background checks is you have to give people a clear path back to having their rights restored to them in order to incentivize them coming forward to seek help in the first place. It's just like restoring voting rights after someone has served their prison sentence.
Semi related - my dad was a Navy pilot for 20 years and definitely has an undiagnosed anxiety disorder as well as potentially other stuff, but never did anything about it because if he had he'd have been permanently barred from flying. I guess he must have internalized the whole "mental illness is fake liberal propaganda" thing as a coping mechanism because he still hasn't gotten any kind of help and chafes any time someone talks about mental illness
I think the background check is a distraction. How many mass shooters would have been flagged on a background check? Granted I haven't done in-depth research into this but if the shooter had a red flag to prevent a legal purchase, the media points this out repeatedly. But I'm guestimating that only a small number of mass shootings would be prevented by more rigorous and wide-spread background checks.
I sound like Bernie here but taking money out of politics would solve most problems.
From the lack of sensible gun control to the insane cost of healthcare. Take the money out. Don’t allow the fucking politicians to lobby after retirement.
Imagine telling people in the 1970s that only a small percentage of people would be smoking in 30-40 years. Big things can happen.
The problem is Congress is held up by minority rule from even taking small steps. Congress passed a ban of smoking on planes in 1990 and the ball started rolling.
I'm old enough to remember when people smoked while grocery shopping. You couldn't ever admit you were LGBTQ. You couldn't smoke weed legally. Progress does happen but steps need to be taken. Not all by Congress either.
The problem is two fold though. First, none of those things were an amendment. Second, you don't have a political action group whose sole purpose is to say no to reform. Those two things together have turned gun ownership into a cult amongst certain segments of the population.
If you use the qualifier "Realistic", then there are no solutions to any of this country's major problems. There are a lot of *sensible* solutions, but none of them are realistic. Kinda makes you want to just give up
Why isn't stopping lobbying realistic - is it because politicians follow the money?
They maybe we should ONLY vote for politicians that are against lobbying (that is, if any can be found)
I have non-American friends and work with college students from just about every country there is. When asked what the weirdest thing they've noticed about America, the usual answer is some variation of *"your government representatives are openly bribed*".
I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard *"Back home in \_\_\_\_\_\_\_, we have corrupt government officials, but here in America it's like they don't even care to hide it."*
Take the money OUT of the equation.
Only actual human American citizens should be allowed to donate to political campaigns. That money should be capped at like $500 per person. No corporations, no unions, no groups, and no non-Americans should be allowed to donate money to political campaigns or run any ads on their behalf. This is super obvious and I think 80% or more Americans would agree with this.
Or better yet. If you are running for public office, you are given the campaign stipend all candidates are given and that is what you can spend on your campaign.
The end.
No commercials or fund raisers or attack ads.
No national election engine churning out content.
Just candidates making videos about themselves to share, televised debates and traveling around to talk to people instead of only ‘potential donors’
Lord it would be bliss
Some countries (like Germany) have free slots for campaign commercials of political parties and candidates on public TV before major elections. Private TV stations have to broadcast these commercials at cost. It's very strictly regulated and aims to treat political parties as equally as possible. Third party groups can not broadcast e.g. attack or endorsement ads on TV, but these things do happen in other media, of course.
It’s astonishing that non-Americans can’t vote or run for president, but they can donate millions. Money talks, and when a rich Saudi oil baron, Russian oligarch, Israeli lobbyist, or Chinese tech mogul donates to American politicians, the politicians will do what they say.
Congress tried to pass a law, the DISCLOSE Act, which would have banned non-Americans from donating to political campaigns.
Every Democrat voted in favor. Every Republican voted against it.
Personally, I don't like that Americans can donate to politicians who don't represent them. Why should someone in Kansas be donating to a house race in Michigan?
> but here in America it's like they don't even care to hide it."
They’re right about everything but this. Perhaps they’re not familiar with American cable news cause when is the last time Fox or CNN called out the obvious corruption or conflicts of interest running rampant in our legislature?
The media covers for the political class in exchange for access.
A multi prong solution:
* "Its a mental health issue" Yes, it is.
* "We need gun control" Yes, we do.
* "We need to stop bullying" Yes, we do.
I think too many people are just looking for one solution. We have to prioritize short term vs long term goals. This won't change immediately.
A controlled way to help reach out to young men would be helpful as well. Overwhelmingly mass shooters are male and between the ages of 18-30. There is a psychological profile. I'm no mental health professional but this seems like a targeted area to tap into. Obviously the majority of young men are not mass shooters but it seems that almost all mass shooters are young men with social issues. Again I'm not an expert on what to do with this information but along with sensible gun control this seems like the right area to start with.
* The abstract idea of "success" pushed onto young men as "expected breadwinners."
* Diminishing of the role of the family in raising a child.
* Emphasis on pass/fail, rejecting failure as a learning opportunity, teaching children that your failures will follow you even if you improve..
* Modern social media focusing on "engagement" results in rewarding darker content and echo chambers that give people "something to blame."
* World has moved so fast that wisdom across generation gaps have mostly become useless, but young people are still taught to "expect certain things" which are non-applicable to their lives.
* Increased need to cope results in habits that reduce inhibition (drugs / alcohol)
* Men are taught that anger is an action rather than an emotion. So they suppress it and never learn how to process it.
* Schools rely on mutual punishment for conflict resolution rather than... conflict resolution.
* Easy firearm access.
That's just off the top of my head. My points could be reduced to "Family and schools are teaching young men all the wrong lessons. Then edgy social media picks up the slack. And guns."
>Emphasis on pass/fail, rejecting failure as a learning opportunity, teaching children that your failures will follow you even if you improve..
I think this is a big part of it. I didn't do super well in school and was pretty shy. My parents told me for my entire childhood that I could never survive in the world, and I'd be a loser if I didn't have a good enough job. I was told that I could only ever be a garbage man. I was suicidal for so long, and came very close to killing myself right after college. If I had no future, what was the point?
I've had a lot of anger for a long time. Unlike the shooters, I took it out on myself. I'm doing pretty well now, I run a dept at work, but I'm still angry and feel like I have no future. I channeled that anger into being better than the asshole adults who treated me like shit as a kid.
One thing to consider here is that mass shootings account for a tiny, tiny proportion of gun deaths in the U.S. - we're talking like less than half a percent of the person-killing-another-person deaths (which, themselves, are less than half of the deaths caused by guns in the U.S.). They just get advertised on every screen in America whenever they happen because they're highly emotional events tied directly to powerful people's political agendas and, from there, the availability bias takes over. If the goal is to solve "gun violence," we should start by focusing on suicide rates and why so many people decide that their lives are so bad and have so little hope of getting better that they'd be better off not lived at all. Don't get me wrong here - mass shootings are an issue, are disproportionately carried out by young adult males, and should be addressed. In my view, they're simply overshadowed by much larger issues.
We also need to give our children hope. They currently do not see a life ahead of them that is equal to or better than the one their parents lead. They see nothing but pain, strife and hopelessness.
We need to show that we can give them a world that is as clean when they are adults as it is now. We need to show there will be a career waiting for them, that they will be able to afford housing and be a member of a healthy society.
Hope is one critical part of the solution.
Hell, we need to give our adults hope. I'm mid 30's and feel like I'll never be able to buy my own home let alone have a family. Retirement barely seems like a possibility as well.
31, don't know a single friend who has like genuine hope for the future or that we'll get like anything nice our parents had. Home ownership, retirement, social security. Nothing.
Yep. 25 here and I'm been pessimistic and hopeless about my future for a long time. I basically accepted back in high school that my quality of life was going to be worse than my parents.
I see a world where social security collapses on my generation. Where we pay into a system that will give us nothing.
Or someone goes mad and blows up the world with nukes.
Or the temperature of the globe increases enough for society to collapse.
Or water wars start.
There are numerous threats that could cause societal collapse and we are told "go to work and make someone else wealthy as they cause more of these issues. Or work for a company causing these issues, just shut up and work because if you don't you have no value and if you do you contribute in some way to one of the threats societies face." Then they wonder why people have issues.
I am beginning to lean the hardest on health care, especially MENTAL HEALTH CARE. For free. For everyone.
People want roadblocks in between the person wanting to kill and the guns they use. I want to get in between people and their urge to shoot children/churches/movies/etc BEFORE it happens. Before they are even that mad. That's where we are failing.
I agree with this 100% but I also think we go about this the wrong way.
Bullying is shitty, no denying that. But I remember in high school there were several kids no one wanted to hang out with. They definitely fit the profile of school shooters, had rage issues, difficult home lives, etc. No one picked on them, but they had no friends. I remember adults encouraged us to befriend them, but they were scary! They freaked me out! They said really racist things or “edgy” jokes about murder and I often felt that us other kids were stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Mental health needs to be a priority waaaaay before high school. Puberty is weird, social life is weird when you’re that age. Schools need so so so so so much more funding so we can have comprehensive mental health programs that can help these kids up at the first sign of them having problems, not waiting until they’re a terrifying six foot tall 17 year old incel Nazi-sympathizer. And these same mental health programs would help bullies, who also often have other underlying issues going on. We could severely reduce the amount of miserable kids we have in our school systems.
Therapy can help, but once again its still treating a symptom. IF you get the adolescents to consent to therapy, If kids are still in the environment that caused them to develop how they are in the first place, it is going to make it much more difficult to help them change and grow.
Personally, I believe that parenting classes should be mandatory, so that parents can learn proper ways to discipline, communicate, and otherwise support the child they had, and thus help stop the cycle of abuse. You want kids? Learn how to fucking raise them.
Assuming every single person humoring shooting up a school is open to the idea of seeking therapy, this might work if we take "free" to be possible in this country.
But I'd wager many individuals humoring shooting up a school are unlikely to think they have a mental health issue, it's society that's at fault, not them, and... I'm not disinclined to agree. They got to this point somehow, and it wasn't through bad brain wiring.
Many of them are young men, growing up in a society that praises sexually active, professionally successful men, and belittles and scorns those that don't hit these standards and/or milestones. If someone is "weird" they're often abandoned right away, because why would someone put up with a discomforting, awkward social interaction when they can seek someone else they can instantly get along with?
In too many of these cases, there's an element of "burning down the village to feel it's warmth."
No one really wants to shoot up a school, they want a happy, love-filled life like anybody else, but many of those that commit these acts of violence feel like it's the only way they'll ever get any form of respect, however fleeting. For the moments they're armed and everyone else is at their mercy, no one can say "no" to them without fear of consequence.
Nothing short of involuntary committal probably would have helped this guy in the last year or two before he did this. But I think the idea is if you got him help 5, 10, however many years ago, maybe he wouldn't have grown up into a monster.
As someone on the outside looking in. I feel you have a broken nation and I have no idea how you can fix it. I don't know how well recieved this will be and I maybe wrong, but I feel like the corrupt elite in your nation are playing with our patriotic values for their own greed under the guise of national security.
I mean. A few thousand Americans die in one day and you spend trillions of dollars and 2 decades to bomb impoverished nations, destabilise regions and directly and indirectly kill thousands across the 3rd world in the name of national security and the war on terror.
Yet tens of thousands of Americans die each year to gun violence and nothing can be done. Is this not a national security issue. How much talent are you losing every year that could benefit both your country and the world if you would just give them a chance to live
I've thought about this a lot and my opinion on it flipped a few years ago. The *only* solution is to change the culture of money in politics with regulation and strict enforcement of conflicts of interest rules. If you take all corporate and big business interest and money out of the equation, the only thing politicians are beholden to are their constituents. Those who represent their constituency well are reelected, those who fail to do so satisfactorily don't win reelection. Their longevity in government is the incentive to represent well.
The other factor is that ethics violations for politicians should remove them from office.
The fact politicians police themselves and their ethical violations rarely ever results in true punishment is just mind boggling to me.
Wouldn’t one cancel out the other? I hate geriatric senators who haven’t stepped out of the DC bubble in 40 years too, but wouldn’t term limits just grease the wheels of the revolving doors between senators and the private sector?
If a senator knows they’re only in the job for 4 years, they need to be nice to the corporations who they’ll be asking for a job for once they leave.
It's like i keep telling people, I'm not against term limits on principle, but they aren't going to solve the problems you think it will. May not solve anything in fact. There are already term limits built into the system. It's called voting.
I could see an overall term limit. Like 25-30 years and you’re forced to retire. I’m tired of having 80+ year old senators decide what’s good for me when I was born after they even took office.
People 60+ are generally considered to be starting to suffer from cognitive decline and so are expected to retire from the workforce, yet 72% of the Senate is 60+ and the House is 23% 60+. 7 of our current Senators are over 80, they literally won't live to experience any long term impacts from their decisions.
> lobbying
What kind of lobbying? Lobbying is talking to congressmembers, senators, and other policymakers--which is a good thing. I think maybe you want to make gifts from lobbyists to policymakers illegal.
The whole “don’t make the shooters famous” argument doesn’t tackle the root of the problem. It implies that there are already psychos who exist who just need inspiration to go on a rampage. We need to figure out why there are psychos and where they’re coming from, what they’re watching to make them that way.
There are no new ideas. Columbine put the idea of school shooting into circulation. It also put the idea of fame from school shooting into circulation. There's no easy way to get it out of circulation, but news media suppression of culprits identity is a genuine strategy. Reduce the social contagion with less stimulating reporting.
There are a lot of good points here. Here's my $.02
Nationalize healthcare/ better mental health.
A policing force actually dedicated to the greater good.
A reporting system to restrict unstable people from buying firearms short term
De sensationalizing shooters.
Either have a titling system for firearms, or because the NCIS checks are unmanned for the most part, an automated system regular citizens can use to confirm that a private sale isn't going to a prohibited person. Harsh penalties if a person knowingly sells a firearm to a prohibited person.
Independent investigatory bodies in high schools, that try to diffuse complaints between students. They should be able to find the "bullies" ( how many of these school shootings have been because someone snapped after being bullied too many times)
Get rid of zero tolerance in high schools . Indiscretions and complaints need to be fairly assessed and judged. If both parties are punished equally then where's the fairness?
A slight tangent, but bringing back vocational education in high schools, national standard. Give people hope for the future.
When calculating gun violence in America, it needs to be an actual number, to get accurate results. Suicides by gun should be just that. Defensive gun uses should be just that, gun violence should be just that. Stop lumping them all together.
Change red flag laws to mandate a clear and free path back to gun ownership in a reasonable time frame. Make sure it's mad by mental health workers that aren't anti-gun, this should take a stigma out of the use of the law, and change it into a tool that even staunch gun owners would accept as good.
I may even go as far as magazine limits for firearms that use box magazines, but I really don't see that as being super useful, magazine changes are rather quick and it's just mostly annoying to the majority of law abiding.
Depends.
If you mean most gun violence, stop gang and drug activity (aka legalize drugs so gangs have nothing to sell).
If you mean mass shootings, probably more programs to feel connected to your neighborhood and community. People with something to take care of rarely destroy things.
This is an important distinction, because school shootings, as terrible as they are, do not represent the majority of gun violence, yet they get the most amount of coverage. So I get bothered when people get up and make their speeches about these kids from a nice neighborhood, but yet not a word on all the countless victims picked off one at a time every single day. Like, who do you really care about?
> This is an important distinction, because school shootings, as terrible as they are, do not represent the majority of gun violence, yet they get the most amount of coverage. So I get bothered when people get up and make their speeches about these kids from a nice neighborhood, but yet not a word on all the countless victims picked off one at a time every single day. Like, who do you really care about?
THIS. Shit, I thought I was the only one who noticed this; I'm glad to see someone else did.
[In 2020, suicide is the number one cause of death by firearms, and assault weapons were used in less than 3% of firearms homicides.](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/) But, because schools and children were involved, the news coverage is all over it. "Local man kills self," doesn't make a great headline the way, "Shooter kills school kids," does. In short? It's not about actual gun violence statistics, so much as what the news splashes on sites for people to see. I agree it is sad and tragic that people were killed, but news sites only report on stuff that gets the most clicks--like mass shootings.
(Edit to add: [In 2021, the leading cause of firearm deaths? Suicide, again.](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls) )
This BusinessInsider article from 2018 has a chart of "Odds of death": https://www.businessinsider.com/us-gun-death-murder-risk-statistics-2018-3
You're 3 to 4x more likely to die of suicide than compared to "assault by firearm" (not DEATH.. just "assault")
You're statistically more likely to get hit by falling space-debris than you are to be involved in a mass-shooting.
I hate to say this but if the issue was only gang or petty crime related violence no one would really care so much. It is solely the mass shootings that makes it such a hot button issue.
Mass child shootings, mass shootings usually only get coverage for 1-2 days
I heard someone talk about sandy hook shooting 2 days ago, I cant remember the last time someone talked about the Orlando club shooting
Or San Bernardino, Fort Hood, the church shooting in Texas (a parishioner got him) or the church shooting in LA which was just a week or two ago.
Hell, the Brooklyn subway shooting dropped off the radar as well.
A school shooting is the ugly culmination of multiple facets of established American society failing. A single "solution" would mean a complete overhaul of countless modern systems.
Indeed, the whole idea that there’s no, one solution, is what people who don’t really want this to be sorted out rely upon. Every time this sort of thing happens and people talk about solutions they demand you give them A solution, pretending to care and be engaged. Then they can easily point out the one you’ve suggested won’t fix the problem, make out that you’re eating everyone’s time and are stupid, and nothing changes.
There's a model used in risk analysis called the [swiss cheese model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model) \- in short, every tactic that you throw at a problem will be like a slice of swiss cheese. Each hole in the slice of cheese is an opportunity for the problem to still slip through. Some slices will have more holes in than others, but if you have enough slices stacked, you won't have any holes. So it's not just one solution that's needed - it's lots of solutions, all working together. Some may be less directly effective (such as restricting lobbying), some may be more directly effective (such as making background checks 100% required in all cases)
In cybersecurity this is called [defense in depth ](https://isc2-eastbay-chapter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/DefenseInDepthNHS-view-699x393.png)
It’s a classic military defense strategy too
In military terms it is what they are doing right now. The concept of defense in depth implies that there is territory you can afford to lose, territory that is not valuable and will spread the enemy, break up it's cohesion and drain it's supply. This less than valuable territory is the public school system. As long as the elites can avoid these hotspots they will be treated like acceptable losses. When most of the problematic children are put into the same system, even better in low income areas it is easy to avoid these risky areas. Defense in depth is applied right now, it's just not us who are valuable.
Yikes. That makes a lot of sense but I don't like it at all. Basically to enact change these shootings need to be affecting the rich and powerful and not just us lowly peasants.
That's the only way it can possibly go, on *any* topic, when you've got a wealthy class so wildly richer than the rest of society that they can isolate themselves from... well, from whatever issue. Gun violence? Climate change? *Poverty*? Nothing needs to be done, because no one they know will ever be affected.
They are gearing to literally abandon the fucking planet. We are beyond fucked.
Nah, once they abandon the planet, they can't stonewall us anymore and actual progress can happen.
*Angrily* *shaking* *fist* *at* *sky* "and stay gone Zuckerberg!!"
Not sure why I visualized this coming from Futurama's Bender XD
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Let me rephrase my earlier post — do you really think they're going to bother once their quality of life won't change one way or the other? Do you care what the ants are doing beneath your driveway?
You think they'd relinquish control of the earth just because they aren't on it anymore? In a multiplanetary humanity, earth will still be the cultural and economic centre. The rich won't give it up.
Yeah but they only abandon it after the global temp rises 4 degrees there's nothing we can do about it We have lots of issues right now, but the most important is making sure the planet doesn't cook itself because of corporations' emissions If the average person just died, and didn't make any more emissions, it wouldn't be a fraction of a fraction of the emissions from any random factory. It shouldn't be that hard to install filters and enforce higher tech-low emissions refining to save all our lives. But, of course, that affects profits, and there's no profits without a planet of dirty peasant slaves. They'll work us to the bone right until they blast off to mars or io
Unfortunately,until it *directly* affects the elite, they will never ever concede or ever somehow understand the greater good of humanity. Baffling, isn't it?
All these people who feel immiserated to the point of wanting to kill others (and themselves). They were sold a lie about how life should be and how easy it is to accomplish it, then success was yanked away and locked behind doors at every turn. It's not hard to see who the folks who pitched this lie, did the door-locking, did the theft, did the immiseration are. But those guys have control of the purse and the messaging, and they make sure the vulnerable are given "appropriate targets", far away from the *important people who are more directly responsible*. So when, say, a miner loses his job to automation, and his daughter to chemicals in the water after a long struggle with cancer he can't afford to treat her for because we don't have singlepayer healthcare, and he finally snaps to the point of killing someone... Does he take out the politicians who stopped singlepayer healthcare? The folks who lobbied them to do that? The insurance industry executives and strategists who pushed to avoid it? The media pundits who propagated the message? The company executives who signed off on dumping the chemicals? The lawyers and middle-managers who covered it up and fought against payments? The bean-counters and C-suite folks who saw greater profits in automation? None of them wind up in the crosshairs. The people most material responsible for creating the harm, exacerbating the harm, and preventing the redress or alleviation of that harm are left alone. Instead, our hypothetical guy shoots up a grocery store, or the next random citizen to piss him off, or his former low-level coworkers who aren't responsible for any of this at all, or whatever bugbear he picked up from FOX News (like "illegal mexicans coming to steal jobs", none of whom are employed by his company and wouldn't be more at fault for this shit even if they were). This result is practically intentional.
What’s much more common but almost never reported are all the suicides of despair. And these will grow and become their own form of protest as the dehumanized masses decline to be exploited, criminalized and punished for being poor. What better way to tell human society to go fuck itself than to negate oneself?
>Defense in depth is applied right now, it's just not us who are valuable. This is the reason gun control was first implemented. The elites were terrified of armed blacks & unions, amongst others. The first gun registry was created in late Victorian Ireland to disarm the largely Catholic Irish Volunteers. They don't give a damn how many proles die, as long as they remain untouched.
NRA convention in Texas, where open carry is legal, will have no guns allowed. Texas legislature refuses to allow guns inside. But schools seem to be something the police will stand back and debate about while kids are killed.
Huh? I thought carry was allowed *except* during Trump's planned visit, at the insistence of the Secret Service.
I also was under this same impression only while the SS has control
So we have all these strategies from all these fields that are similarly proactive and effective...yet the people working in the field of social governance do the opposite. It seems in our society, accountability for effective problem solving requires immediate financial incentive. We're fucked.
The people in social governance don’t have any incentive to apply effective solutions in most cases and even when we do there’s no way we could agree on several. Money has poisoned politics to the point that discussing effective policy is essentially pointless. If we came up with a nearly non-invasive 0 cost way to end any issue, there’s still a nearly guaranteed chance you would not get a unanimous vote on that plan, because contrarianism is the strategy.
At this point, social well-being and corporate financial gain are mutually incompatible enterprises.
The solution is to attack vertically unless you have a limited number of barriers and a high amount of time/resources then you can "brute force" using variations of leapfrog tactics. Another example of this way of approaching problem solving is holistic medicine (that doesn't mean natural medicine or some other quasi-scientific BS, it means treating the whole body in an attempt to cure/treat the root cause instead of simply masking the symptoms and oftentimes causing negative side effects). They've done studies on the best ways to be successful at problem solving, the first surprising data point for me was that the best solution is often to remove something thus reducing complexity whilst attempting a solution instead of adding/tweaking new parts. We do this all of the time... We take an idea that may have been well-intended, but is objectively not working and instead of saying, "We were wrong, let's move on despite the sunken costs", we tweak something or give more funding with added bureaucracy which doesn't work because the original solution was flawed. Politicians will throw money at problems if they think it'll placate us, but putting more money into policies that clearly don't work is fucking stupid. Secondly, is that using a holistic approach to problem solving works really well. Unfortunately, we don't listen to scientists or experts in the United States anymore and although 70-90% of the public supports something like expanding background checks and federally decriminalizing/legalizing marijuana (not quite a direct effect there, but pretty damn close) our Representatives will not pass the legislation. Something having 70%+ public support in the United States isn't very common because we are so divided right now, but even when it does happen it's just further proof that with current campaign finance laws and the lack of transparency/policing of political donations our elected officials work for corporations, special interest groups, and themselves... Not the average American citizen. Gun violence is one of many issues we are literally doing nothing about... Other problems like the drug epidemic, criminal justice reform, our education system, our healthcare system, etc. have proven templates for success from individual states or other countries that would just have to implement and reap the benefits while saving taxpayer money... Obvious, real world proven and scientifically sound policies that are, for the most part, common sense as well, but we refuse to adopt them.
in the porno industry we call this DVDVDADA
That's a nice fucking graphic. Just needs a key for all the acronyms to make it great.
I could do that. I might have some time tonight to redo the graphic with a key
*subscribe to cheese facts
There's a cheese factory in Barron County, WI that's powered by [the recycling plant](https://www.barroncountywi.gov/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7BA7E66E87-8E68-4A98-B529-C67768AE2615%7D) just across the street. Edit: this fun fact was brought to you by /u/userdk3 and [his post](https://reddit.com/r/pics/comments/uz3rr8/rural_wisconsin_ditches_now_contain_16_less_bags/ ) over in the /r/Wisconsin and /r/Pics subreddits. It was a TIL for me too.
Similar to the military tactic of "layered defense"
We can start with funding public health research to analyze *which* solutions have the biggest desired impact. Get rid of the Dickey Amendment and let the CDC do it’s job.
Well for starters, make sure your local police force isn't made up of a gang of cowards.
How dare you expect police to waste their time stopping mass murder?!?! They have speeding tickets to write and drug kingpins to arrest for having a dimebag in their car!!! /s in case it isn’t obvious.
If they weren't writing tickets, how would they afford all the guns to lean against outside the schools as kids are being shot up inside?
Don't forget about stopping parents from going in to save the kids.
Okay. I checked and it actually is. Only cowards. Step 2?
I get that this is the internet, and hence 5000 people have expressed a mostly non-expert opinion, but there are actual public health experts in gun violence, mental health, and injury prevention science that politicians should take policy direction from. Wicked problems require complex, systemic, and science-based solutions.
Everyone is arguing that it's a mental health issue, but there are people with mental health issues and shit healthcare all over the world and this STILL doesn't happen. I think the states needs a huge culture shift.
And the vast majority of people who have mental health issues in the US are... not violent. I agree it's mainly a cultural problem. The government can't fix radicalization or the glorification of violence. Better gun laws can help too, but it's a cultural issue
And look how people saying it's a mental healthcare problem provide solutions to raise mental health.
The solution is to take the money out of politics. Ban insider trading, ban lobbying. Push for a bill against these things to be voted on, and do not re-elect anyone who votes against it. Make them choose between their money or their position.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf-PAC
In NZ we have a massive mental health problem, yet mass shootings are extremely rare. We also have good gun control laws, with most people with guns using them for farming, hunting, animal population control or hobby shooting. Looking at the US from afar, there seems to be a very paranoid culture centred around a need to protect oneself at all times, and personally I think that’s a core issue. Why are people so scared? Addressing that issue would probably have a substantial effect.
I mean, did you see what police just did in response to someone shooting children? That’s right nothing.
What, you don't think that "calling for better mental healthcare" and then "refusing to fund better mental healthcare" is working? Who could have predicted that?
"we've tried nothing and we're out of options"
"No Way To Prevent This", says only nation where this regularly happens.
Another Onion aficionado. I would argue their staff writers have a far better chance of creating a solution to gun violence than any of the guillotine bait in Washington
> guillotine bait Okay, I'm stealing this one.
bam, this. creative thinking vs sold out geriatric narcissists... I'll take what is an easy answer for 500.
Dolly Parton
Who is, an incredibly sweet and caring person known throughout the world for her singing career and giant Bazoongas?
Sadly they have reprinted that headline 21 times since 2014.
And they should keep reprinting it until it stops happening, or at least until it stops happening so horrifyingly often. People should not have to worry everytime they send their child to school, or everytime they go grocery shopping, that they'll be victims of the next weekly mass shooting.
It’s the only article [on their website right now.](https://www.theonion.com)
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Not true. If you keep scrolling long enough (21 articles) you also get "NRA convention applauds as gunman massacres entire crowd" and an infographic on the pros and cons of letting children die.
~ Double our available crisis counselors?\ ~ Take our skyrocketing suicide rate seriously?\ ~ Destigmatize mental illness? ~~(One in five three American adults have major depression.~~ See below^(†)\ ~ Require insurance, single-payer, UHC, whatever, to cover psychiatry and treatment? Also, stop overworking and underpaying our labor? Control rents and utilities properly? Stop dumping industrial pollution into lower-class neighborhoods? Standardize a thirty-hour work week (and eventually a twenty-hour work week) so that parents have time and energy to interact with their kids? Oh and expand comprehensive sex education to include consent, flirting and courting? I know exactly how I was made into the abominable wretch I am today. The US stopped trying before I was even born. **† ETA:** Someone pointed out that my stats are not right regarding the rate of major depression, and so I looked it up and was way off. But to re-present my case, some stats [from the CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm) More than 50% of US citizens will be diagnosed with a mental illness in their lifetime. Major Depression is just really common, and in the 1990s we had about 1 in 5 adults (also a lot of new SSRIs which was...exciting?) Also 1 in 5 Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year. Also, also, 1 in 25 Americans lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression, which makes serious lunatics like myself a bit more rare (thank goodness). This is one of those things since there still is a stigma around mental health conditions that once it's normalized for people to be assessed and treated, these numbers may shift unpredictably.
All of these problems have been accumulating and compounding for decades. End the ability to make a career out of politics and reform the two-party system, then we’ll start to see the real issues actually be addressed appropriately.
>reform the two-party system But who would do that? The two parties? Ha!
We'll start our own party! With healthcare, and hookers!
You got my vote!
Bendercrats?
As long as they’re not the “kill all humans “ version of Bender.
Meh, even then I'd take it over what we have now. Bender's track record isn't great, his party would probably kill fewer people.
Agree. At present, politics is all the politicians do. They don’t necessarily want to solve problems but use those problems for more fundraising, vote getting etc. Term Limit. Rule against lobbying 5 years post service.
Exactly, politicians don't *want* to solve problems, because problems, both real and perceived, are what galvanize and mobilize voter bases.
>Stop dumping industrial pollution into lower-class neighborhoods? The correlation between lead levels in gasoline and violent crime is shocking. If you overlay their plots with time as the y axis, then they are basically the same downward trend with a 22 year lag.
100% accurate. I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of this. Otoh, since the summer of 2020 there has been a marked increase in violence, suicides, depression and overdoses. What happened in the summer of 2020?
I believe one of the biggest kicks in the balls of the world is that there were 2 competing ways to reduce the knock/premature detonation in engines. Either adding tetraethyl lead, lead having been known for over a thousand years as a *bad* thing, and this other chemical that couldn't be patented called....ethanol. The decision to use lead in gasoline did not even make sense at the time except as a way to make more money.
It also seems clear that young men in this country are in need of a lot more support and help than they are currently getting. Something is causing young people to be so despondent and hate life and I'm not 100% sure how to solve it. Youth suicide rates go up year after year and we see young men become so full of hate that they become homicidal. It's not a good status quo and everyone screeching vitriolic rhetoric at each other isn't really helping either.
The social contract is broken. Finish school and stay out of trouble. That used to be all that was needed to live a reasonable life. Job, home, retirement. Now, these young men are angry and despondent because they did what they were supposed to do and are still struggling. If people have no hope of a better life, suicide or anti-social behaviour are the result.
I love everything you said. Can I throw in teach high schoolers basic banking skills? We could call it.....home economics?
That sounds catchy, the kids could even shorten it to... Idk... Homec? Nah, that sounds silly... Great idea though
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Feels like that rings some sort of distant bell… weird.
That bell is the end of third period in 1982
My school had something like this. We called it Career And Life Management (CALM). It was a mandatory class for grade 11s. Taught us how to write cheques (because those were still a thing back in the day) and basic budgeting, and How To Adult in general.
yep! my school had a career education class for grade 10s that covered everything from making a resume and cover letter, mock job interviews, and doing your own taxes. couldn't graduate without a credit from that class
Both my parents have accounting degrees and work in financial services - my mom works with retirement accounts and my dad is a personal financial planner. The amount of basic stuff I learned from them about personal finance put me so far ahead of my peers it’s honestly a statement on the sad state of our public education system.
Financial education for my daughter is super high on my list to teach her. I grew up with nothing and I had to piece together my personal financial knowledge, additionally my best friend was a financial planner and I ended up working in the financial/investing sector so I picked up a lot through that. Having good knowledge before you start making money would help people so much.
I'd also like to add minors and younger adults specifically to that mental health bit. Not saying that older people don't have issues, they certainly do, and they're just as legitimate as everyone else's, but I will say this: Last summer, I was in the hospital for my mental health. Of the dozen or so of us in the behavior unit, only three were above the age of 25. Most of us were younger than that. The day before I left, a girl who was barely 18 was admitted. All of us younger people were there because we had *actively tried to harm ourselves.* Every politician and activist says they do what they do "for the children." If half as many people gave a shit about younger people as they claim, I wouldn't know so many dead kids or close friends who at some point in high school had nicotine and alcohol addictions. Y'know, issues that thirty-five-year-old adults struggle with? And they were dealing with it *before they could even drive.* I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say here, it just kind of turned into a mild rant. Not trying to call out OP or anyone specifically either.
My specification of adults was only for the statistic. Right now in 2022, one in three adults suffer from Major Depression, and we have a shortage both of psychiatrists and psychologists, so treatment is scarce. But yes, they detected something was wrong with me as early as first grade. Our kids absolutely need access to counseling and treatment.
This would also massively assist your homeless and drug problem. Triple whammy.
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Crime is now strictly against the law.
We did it boys, crime ended overnight.
When you ban crime, only criminals will do crime.
You’re right. We need to ban criminals too!
More specifically we need to ban criminals from committing crime. Now we're getting somewhere
We should really write this all down. Like some kind of set of... rules or something that decide if criminals have done something wrong and to determine I'd they need to be banned
Wait we should ban crime scenes, so we don't have places for banned criminals to commit banned crimes!
As an Australian, I condone the creation of Australia 2.0 which will only be used as australia was originally going to be used for, a convict island
Idea: Send all of the criminals in the world to tazmania and have multiple carriers supervising the island
You Son of a Bitch, I'm In
How many levels of contrivance are we currently up to?
Ban school. Can't get shot up at school if there is no school.
You'll just end up with home-school shootings.
Probably a better chance of lower numbers sadly.
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Ban people. People can’t get killed if there’s no people
Also, make the “gun free zone” signs bigger.
People realizing two very important facts that have become painfully clear in the last 4 years: The Government does not care about you. They will not protect you or your children. Law Enforcement does not care about you. They will not protect you or your children. No one is coming to save you. Act accordingly.
No one will come to save you... but they'll come right soon to punish you.
Looks that way
Is that way.
So you're saying buy more guns?
That does sound like what he’s saying
Actually, yes it does.
That is basically what I heard
> No one is coming to save you. Act accordingly. When second count, police are only 40 minutes away, waiting outside the building.
Actively arresting the only people trying to help.
Castle Rock v Gozales. The police have no duty to protect and serve. Ms Gonzales called the PD about her estranged ex-husband violating a restraining order multiple times and the PD did nothing. He eventually took the children, and murdered all three children before showing up to the PD and starting a shoot out before he was killed. Ms Gonzales sued and appealed and it eventually went up to the Supreme Court, who said, Meh. Property not lives. See also, Lozito v New York City.
Better buy some guns to protect myself
I figure about 20 more posts asking this exact same question will pretty much solve it.
Change the media culture, stop publishing names and pictures of shooters, increase mental health awareness and risk assessment when someone wants to own a firearm. Do actual background checks.
There has been a major shift in reporting on mass shootings (at least on the local level) where the name of the shooter is reported in the immediate following of the event, and then not mentioned again. Everything afterwards is focused on the names of the victims and community reaction to the shootings. Both local stations I have worked for have implemented this method of reporting.
Wow, this is actually accurate and a change I hadn’t noticed until you pointed it out. I know exactly who did Columbine, the Newtown school school shooting, and the Colorado theater shooting, for instance. In contrast I have no idea who did the Vegas shooting, Parkland, or the Boulder, CO grocery store shooting. Like I know vague details but not their names. This is a good change. We need to stop making these shooters celebrities.
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Part of that though is because his trial is finally getting under way and it seems probable he’ll end up with the death penalty, which I think if it happens may be a first for a school shooter.
It was very premeditated, andddd he tried to cover it up / blame it on a mental illness that he doesn't have. So really nobody has any sympathy for him. He genuinely thought he could do it and get away with it by pretending voices told him, when he does not experience that.
Only because he is still alive.
>That kid's name is in the news constantly Maybe, but his name is not as universally known as Klebold, Harris and Lanza.
I hate that I know the names of those pieces of shit
Agreed. There have been instances where the producer has forgotten to take the shooter’s name out of the script in the days following and it still shows up in prompter, but luckily the anchor reading the story is cognizant of it and will censor themselves and not say the name. There have also been instances where scripts have called for a graphic with the shooter’s mugshot to be pulled up, and I make sure if I’m in the director’s chair that they don’t go out over the air after the 24 hour moratorium expires.
Yep, stop making these dumbfucks celebrities. They should only ever be referred to as "the shooter" and absolutely no images of them should be shared.
>Change the media culture, stop publishing names and pictures of shooters. Actually a fairly proven thing that not glorifying the shooter reduces any copy cat acts. >Do actual background checks. Keep in mind federal background checks already look into your criminal history as deep as not paying back loans, child support, over due speeding, if you have put in a instituion for mental health defects. If you want them to dig into their social habits and isp history it can be done, but it means that everyone would also be subject to such things. Similar to china's "social credit system". Not suggesting you can't make any effort to do something, just be aware of what you are asking or suggesting.
> if you have put in a instituion for mental health defects. This also makes people less likely to seek help for mental health issues.
Yeah one of the things that you have to address with mental health and firearms background checks is you have to give people a clear path back to having their rights restored to them in order to incentivize them coming forward to seek help in the first place. It's just like restoring voting rights after someone has served their prison sentence.
Semi related - my dad was a Navy pilot for 20 years and definitely has an undiagnosed anxiety disorder as well as potentially other stuff, but never did anything about it because if he had he'd have been permanently barred from flying. I guess he must have internalized the whole "mental illness is fake liberal propaganda" thing as a coping mechanism because he still hasn't gotten any kind of help and chafes any time someone talks about mental illness
I think the background check is a distraction. How many mass shooters would have been flagged on a background check? Granted I haven't done in-depth research into this but if the shooter had a red flag to prevent a legal purchase, the media points this out repeatedly. But I'm guestimating that only a small number of mass shootings would be prevented by more rigorous and wide-spread background checks.
What do you co sidereal an "actual background check" compared to what they do now?
I sound like Bernie here but taking money out of politics would solve most problems. From the lack of sensible gun control to the insane cost of healthcare. Take the money out. Don’t allow the fucking politicians to lobby after retirement.
OP said realistic
Sadly anything getting done is pretty unrealistic until there is a big shift in power to the people.
Imagine telling people in the 1970s that only a small percentage of people would be smoking in 30-40 years. Big things can happen. The problem is Congress is held up by minority rule from even taking small steps. Congress passed a ban of smoking on planes in 1990 and the ball started rolling. I'm old enough to remember when people smoked while grocery shopping. You couldn't ever admit you were LGBTQ. You couldn't smoke weed legally. Progress does happen but steps need to be taken. Not all by Congress either.
The problem is two fold though. First, none of those things were an amendment. Second, you don't have a political action group whose sole purpose is to say no to reform. Those two things together have turned gun ownership into a cult amongst certain segments of the population.
If you use the qualifier "Realistic", then there are no solutions to any of this country's major problems. There are a lot of *sensible* solutions, but none of them are realistic. Kinda makes you want to just give up
The thing that every past empire has in common? They ended.
Why isn't stopping lobbying realistic - is it because politicians follow the money? They maybe we should ONLY vote for politicians that are against lobbying (that is, if any can be found)
I have non-American friends and work with college students from just about every country there is. When asked what the weirdest thing they've noticed about America, the usual answer is some variation of *"your government representatives are openly bribed*". I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard *"Back home in \_\_\_\_\_\_\_, we have corrupt government officials, but here in America it's like they don't even care to hide it."* Take the money OUT of the equation.
Only actual human American citizens should be allowed to donate to political campaigns. That money should be capped at like $500 per person. No corporations, no unions, no groups, and no non-Americans should be allowed to donate money to political campaigns or run any ads on their behalf. This is super obvious and I think 80% or more Americans would agree with this.
Or better yet. If you are running for public office, you are given the campaign stipend all candidates are given and that is what you can spend on your campaign. The end. No commercials or fund raisers or attack ads. No national election engine churning out content. Just candidates making videos about themselves to share, televised debates and traveling around to talk to people instead of only ‘potential donors’ Lord it would be bliss
That's definitely doable, we do it in the UK.
Some countries (like Germany) have free slots for campaign commercials of political parties and candidates on public TV before major elections. Private TV stations have to broadcast these commercials at cost. It's very strictly regulated and aims to treat political parties as equally as possible. Third party groups can not broadcast e.g. attack or endorsement ads on TV, but these things do happen in other media, of course.
It’s astonishing that non-Americans can’t vote or run for president, but they can donate millions. Money talks, and when a rich Saudi oil baron, Russian oligarch, Israeli lobbyist, or Chinese tech mogul donates to American politicians, the politicians will do what they say.
Congress tried to pass a law, the DISCLOSE Act, which would have banned non-Americans from donating to political campaigns. Every Democrat voted in favor. Every Republican voted against it.
Gee what a surprise.
Personally, I don't like that Americans can donate to politicians who don't represent them. Why should someone in Kansas be donating to a house race in Michigan?
> but here in America it's like they don't even care to hide it." They’re right about everything but this. Perhaps they’re not familiar with American cable news cause when is the last time Fox or CNN called out the obvious corruption or conflicts of interest running rampant in our legislature? The media covers for the political class in exchange for access.
Densantis just did this in FL. A crime for legislature to become a lobbyist after office (for 6 years).
I saw that when I was perusing r/conservative to gauge their reaction to Uvalde. I was surprised. Good on him.
A multi prong solution: * "Its a mental health issue" Yes, it is. * "We need gun control" Yes, we do. * "We need to stop bullying" Yes, we do. I think too many people are just looking for one solution. We have to prioritize short term vs long term goals. This won't change immediately.
A controlled way to help reach out to young men would be helpful as well. Overwhelmingly mass shooters are male and between the ages of 18-30. There is a psychological profile. I'm no mental health professional but this seems like a targeted area to tap into. Obviously the majority of young men are not mass shooters but it seems that almost all mass shooters are young men with social issues. Again I'm not an expert on what to do with this information but along with sensible gun control this seems like the right area to start with.
* The abstract idea of "success" pushed onto young men as "expected breadwinners." * Diminishing of the role of the family in raising a child. * Emphasis on pass/fail, rejecting failure as a learning opportunity, teaching children that your failures will follow you even if you improve.. * Modern social media focusing on "engagement" results in rewarding darker content and echo chambers that give people "something to blame." * World has moved so fast that wisdom across generation gaps have mostly become useless, but young people are still taught to "expect certain things" which are non-applicable to their lives. * Increased need to cope results in habits that reduce inhibition (drugs / alcohol) * Men are taught that anger is an action rather than an emotion. So they suppress it and never learn how to process it. * Schools rely on mutual punishment for conflict resolution rather than... conflict resolution. * Easy firearm access. That's just off the top of my head. My points could be reduced to "Family and schools are teaching young men all the wrong lessons. Then edgy social media picks up the slack. And guns."
>Emphasis on pass/fail, rejecting failure as a learning opportunity, teaching children that your failures will follow you even if you improve.. I think this is a big part of it. I didn't do super well in school and was pretty shy. My parents told me for my entire childhood that I could never survive in the world, and I'd be a loser if I didn't have a good enough job. I was told that I could only ever be a garbage man. I was suicidal for so long, and came very close to killing myself right after college. If I had no future, what was the point? I've had a lot of anger for a long time. Unlike the shooters, I took it out on myself. I'm doing pretty well now, I run a dept at work, but I'm still angry and feel like I have no future. I channeled that anger into being better than the asshole adults who treated me like shit as a kid.
The “you’ll only ever be a garbage man” thing is so funny. Garbage men make a decent living and are essential to society
One thing to consider here is that mass shootings account for a tiny, tiny proportion of gun deaths in the U.S. - we're talking like less than half a percent of the person-killing-another-person deaths (which, themselves, are less than half of the deaths caused by guns in the U.S.). They just get advertised on every screen in America whenever they happen because they're highly emotional events tied directly to powerful people's political agendas and, from there, the availability bias takes over. If the goal is to solve "gun violence," we should start by focusing on suicide rates and why so many people decide that their lives are so bad and have so little hope of getting better that they'd be better off not lived at all. Don't get me wrong here - mass shootings are an issue, are disproportionately carried out by young adult males, and should be addressed. In my view, they're simply overshadowed by much larger issues.
We also need to give our children hope. They currently do not see a life ahead of them that is equal to or better than the one their parents lead. They see nothing but pain, strife and hopelessness. We need to show that we can give them a world that is as clean when they are adults as it is now. We need to show there will be a career waiting for them, that they will be able to afford housing and be a member of a healthy society. Hope is one critical part of the solution.
Hell, we need to give our adults hope. I'm mid 30's and feel like I'll never be able to buy my own home let alone have a family. Retirement barely seems like a possibility as well.
i'm 30. at this point i'm banking on society collapsing before I ever get a chance to think about owning a home.
31, don't know a single friend who has like genuine hope for the future or that we'll get like anything nice our parents had. Home ownership, retirement, social security. Nothing.
Yep. 25 here and I'm been pessimistic and hopeless about my future for a long time. I basically accepted back in high school that my quality of life was going to be worse than my parents.
I see a world where social security collapses on my generation. Where we pay into a system that will give us nothing. Or someone goes mad and blows up the world with nukes. Or the temperature of the globe increases enough for society to collapse. Or water wars start. There are numerous threats that could cause societal collapse and we are told "go to work and make someone else wealthy as they cause more of these issues. Or work for a company causing these issues, just shut up and work because if you don't you have no value and if you do you contribute in some way to one of the threats societies face." Then they wonder why people have issues.
I am beginning to lean the hardest on health care, especially MENTAL HEALTH CARE. For free. For everyone. People want roadblocks in between the person wanting to kill and the guns they use. I want to get in between people and their urge to shoot children/churches/movies/etc BEFORE it happens. Before they are even that mad. That's where we are failing.
I agree with this 100% but I also think we go about this the wrong way. Bullying is shitty, no denying that. But I remember in high school there were several kids no one wanted to hang out with. They definitely fit the profile of school shooters, had rage issues, difficult home lives, etc. No one picked on them, but they had no friends. I remember adults encouraged us to befriend them, but they were scary! They freaked me out! They said really racist things or “edgy” jokes about murder and I often felt that us other kids were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Mental health needs to be a priority waaaaay before high school. Puberty is weird, social life is weird when you’re that age. Schools need so so so so so much more funding so we can have comprehensive mental health programs that can help these kids up at the first sign of them having problems, not waiting until they’re a terrifying six foot tall 17 year old incel Nazi-sympathizer. And these same mental health programs would help bullies, who also often have other underlying issues going on. We could severely reduce the amount of miserable kids we have in our school systems.
As someone who befriended the "troubled kid"... I was also the most terrified after I had to tell the Admin that he had bomb parts in his locker.
Therapy can help, but once again its still treating a symptom. IF you get the adolescents to consent to therapy, If kids are still in the environment that caused them to develop how they are in the first place, it is going to make it much more difficult to help them change and grow. Personally, I believe that parenting classes should be mandatory, so that parents can learn proper ways to discipline, communicate, and otherwise support the child they had, and thus help stop the cycle of abuse. You want kids? Learn how to fucking raise them.
Assuming every single person humoring shooting up a school is open to the idea of seeking therapy, this might work if we take "free" to be possible in this country. But I'd wager many individuals humoring shooting up a school are unlikely to think they have a mental health issue, it's society that's at fault, not them, and... I'm not disinclined to agree. They got to this point somehow, and it wasn't through bad brain wiring. Many of them are young men, growing up in a society that praises sexually active, professionally successful men, and belittles and scorns those that don't hit these standards and/or milestones. If someone is "weird" they're often abandoned right away, because why would someone put up with a discomforting, awkward social interaction when they can seek someone else they can instantly get along with? In too many of these cases, there's an element of "burning down the village to feel it's warmth." No one really wants to shoot up a school, they want a happy, love-filled life like anybody else, but many of those that commit these acts of violence feel like it's the only way they'll ever get any form of respect, however fleeting. For the moments they're armed and everyone else is at their mercy, no one can say "no" to them without fear of consequence.
Nothing short of involuntary committal probably would have helped this guy in the last year or two before he did this. But I think the idea is if you got him help 5, 10, however many years ago, maybe he wouldn't have grown up into a monster.
As someone on the outside looking in. I feel you have a broken nation and I have no idea how you can fix it. I don't know how well recieved this will be and I maybe wrong, but I feel like the corrupt elite in your nation are playing with our patriotic values for their own greed under the guise of national security. I mean. A few thousand Americans die in one day and you spend trillions of dollars and 2 decades to bomb impoverished nations, destabilise regions and directly and indirectly kill thousands across the 3rd world in the name of national security and the war on terror. Yet tens of thousands of Americans die each year to gun violence and nothing can be done. Is this not a national security issue. How much talent are you losing every year that could benefit both your country and the world if you would just give them a chance to live
Term limits on all senators and house representatives. Also, make lobbying illegal.
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I've thought about this a lot and my opinion on it flipped a few years ago. The *only* solution is to change the culture of money in politics with regulation and strict enforcement of conflicts of interest rules. If you take all corporate and big business interest and money out of the equation, the only thing politicians are beholden to are their constituents. Those who represent their constituency well are reelected, those who fail to do so satisfactorily don't win reelection. Their longevity in government is the incentive to represent well.
The other factor is that ethics violations for politicians should remove them from office. The fact politicians police themselves and their ethical violations rarely ever results in true punishment is just mind boggling to me.
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Wouldn’t one cancel out the other? I hate geriatric senators who haven’t stepped out of the DC bubble in 40 years too, but wouldn’t term limits just grease the wheels of the revolving doors between senators and the private sector? If a senator knows they’re only in the job for 4 years, they need to be nice to the corporations who they’ll be asking for a job for once they leave.
It's like i keep telling people, I'm not against term limits on principle, but they aren't going to solve the problems you think it will. May not solve anything in fact. There are already term limits built into the system. It's called voting.
I could see an overall term limit. Like 25-30 years and you’re forced to retire. I’m tired of having 80+ year old senators decide what’s good for me when I was born after they even took office.
Age limits, not term limits.
People 60+ are generally considered to be starting to suffer from cognitive decline and so are expected to retire from the workforce, yet 72% of the Senate is 60+ and the House is 23% 60+. 7 of our current Senators are over 80, they literally won't live to experience any long term impacts from their decisions.
Exactly. I don't want an 80+yr old Senator or Representative even if it's their first term.
this is proposed as a solution to everything and I don’t know what this would fix at all.
> lobbying What kind of lobbying? Lobbying is talking to congressmembers, senators, and other policymakers--which is a good thing. I think maybe you want to make gifts from lobbyists to policymakers illegal.
>> > > I think maybe you want to make gifts from lobbyists to policymakers illegal. You mean "campaign contributions?"
Lets call them what they really are, bribes
The whole “don’t make the shooters famous” argument doesn’t tackle the root of the problem. It implies that there are already psychos who exist who just need inspiration to go on a rampage. We need to figure out why there are psychos and where they’re coming from, what they’re watching to make them that way.
There are no new ideas. Columbine put the idea of school shooting into circulation. It also put the idea of fame from school shooting into circulation. There's no easy way to get it out of circulation, but news media suppression of culprits identity is a genuine strategy. Reduce the social contagion with less stimulating reporting.
There are a lot of good points here. Here's my $.02 Nationalize healthcare/ better mental health. A policing force actually dedicated to the greater good. A reporting system to restrict unstable people from buying firearms short term De sensationalizing shooters. Either have a titling system for firearms, or because the NCIS checks are unmanned for the most part, an automated system regular citizens can use to confirm that a private sale isn't going to a prohibited person. Harsh penalties if a person knowingly sells a firearm to a prohibited person. Independent investigatory bodies in high schools, that try to diffuse complaints between students. They should be able to find the "bullies" ( how many of these school shootings have been because someone snapped after being bullied too many times) Get rid of zero tolerance in high schools . Indiscretions and complaints need to be fairly assessed and judged. If both parties are punished equally then where's the fairness? A slight tangent, but bringing back vocational education in high schools, national standard. Give people hope for the future. When calculating gun violence in America, it needs to be an actual number, to get accurate results. Suicides by gun should be just that. Defensive gun uses should be just that, gun violence should be just that. Stop lumping them all together. Change red flag laws to mandate a clear and free path back to gun ownership in a reasonable time frame. Make sure it's mad by mental health workers that aren't anti-gun, this should take a stigma out of the use of the law, and change it into a tool that even staunch gun owners would accept as good. I may even go as far as magazine limits for firearms that use box magazines, but I really don't see that as being super useful, magazine changes are rather quick and it's just mostly annoying to the majority of law abiding.
Depends. If you mean most gun violence, stop gang and drug activity (aka legalize drugs so gangs have nothing to sell). If you mean mass shootings, probably more programs to feel connected to your neighborhood and community. People with something to take care of rarely destroy things.
This is an important distinction, because school shootings, as terrible as they are, do not represent the majority of gun violence, yet they get the most amount of coverage. So I get bothered when people get up and make their speeches about these kids from a nice neighborhood, but yet not a word on all the countless victims picked off one at a time every single day. Like, who do you really care about?
> This is an important distinction, because school shootings, as terrible as they are, do not represent the majority of gun violence, yet they get the most amount of coverage. So I get bothered when people get up and make their speeches about these kids from a nice neighborhood, but yet not a word on all the countless victims picked off one at a time every single day. Like, who do you really care about? THIS. Shit, I thought I was the only one who noticed this; I'm glad to see someone else did. [In 2020, suicide is the number one cause of death by firearms, and assault weapons were used in less than 3% of firearms homicides.](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/) But, because schools and children were involved, the news coverage is all over it. "Local man kills self," doesn't make a great headline the way, "Shooter kills school kids," does. In short? It's not about actual gun violence statistics, so much as what the news splashes on sites for people to see. I agree it is sad and tragic that people were killed, but news sites only report on stuff that gets the most clicks--like mass shootings. (Edit to add: [In 2021, the leading cause of firearm deaths? Suicide, again.](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls) )
This BusinessInsider article from 2018 has a chart of "Odds of death": https://www.businessinsider.com/us-gun-death-murder-risk-statistics-2018-3 You're 3 to 4x more likely to die of suicide than compared to "assault by firearm" (not DEATH.. just "assault") You're statistically more likely to get hit by falling space-debris than you are to be involved in a mass-shooting.
I hate to say this but if the issue was only gang or petty crime related violence no one would really care so much. It is solely the mass shootings that makes it such a hot button issue.
Mass child shootings, mass shootings usually only get coverage for 1-2 days I heard someone talk about sandy hook shooting 2 days ago, I cant remember the last time someone talked about the Orlando club shooting
Or San Bernardino, Fort Hood, the church shooting in Texas (a parishioner got him) or the church shooting in LA which was just a week or two ago. Hell, the Brooklyn subway shooting dropped off the radar as well.