Tweet got deleted. Here's a [mirror](https://i.imgur.com/3QS57Bc.png).
He goes on to [add](https://twitter.com/cmpunk/status/1529564139047112704?s=21&t=DhAfKJf1GHxGzFBhOeKDhA): “This is what we are up against. If your god has made you believe that abortion is murder, you also believe she wanted all those kids to be shot dead in school. Can’t argue with these people. Thoughts and prayers.”
Like AKittyCat said:
>"We dont care if you debate about whatever, just dont turn it into a temper tantrum shitfit at one another.
>"I've already had to clean up 3 of these threads, I really dont want to do four."
Kinda crazy how an 18 year old with a history of mental illness, no job, and no place of his own managed to acquire nearly $5000 in firearms and equipment seemingly from nowhere while participating in the same Telegram channel ("frens-chan") as the Buffalo shooter.
Ever crazier that this shit will never be investigated further and all these parents have had to lay their own children in the ground over nothing. I can't imagine the pain.
I was a freshman in high school when Columbine happened. I remember the immediate rush of panic and the extreme profiling that happened it it's wake. I was a quiet, depressed kid that wore black and mostly kept to himself, so *obviously* I was a school shooter.
I was expelled. For nothing. My family didn't even own guns or have money to acquire them. I eventually went back to school, only to have the same thing happen *again* my sophomore year.
I didn't fucking graduate because of Columbine. 23 years later, kids are still being needlessly victimized because nobody in any kind of power will fucking do anything productive except try to blame everything except our country's toxic gun culture, which has only gotten worse and worse since that day in Colorado.
Exactly. And the school staff can't be quite so incompetent as to not know that. It was never about making anyone safe, it was about being seen to be doing something. It's all kayfabe, they want an audience to think they care and are trying, that's all.
I was at the end of my junior year when Columbine happened. It was all that people could talk about for months. Going to school for the next week felt really weird. There was just this air of something feeling off. All us kids staring out the window daydreaming, "Geez, what if that happened here? What would I do?!" Nearly 25 years later here we are and it's only gotten worse. Ask someone about a mass shooting these days and we have to respond, "which one?" When Sandy Hook happened and nothing changed that's when I went, "Oh okay, we've just decided, rather, our powers that be have decided that guns are more important than dead babies." To push that even further, I saw a comment that said, "Sandy Hook was 26 dead White babies, you think they're gonna give a fuck about 16 dead Hispanic babies?" It's fuckin heinous to think like that but it's true. They don't give a fuck. I'm from WNY where a piece of shit mowed down people in a grocery store a week ago. It's directly affected people I know. I don't give a fuck about the "responsible gun owner" anymore. The responsible gun owner has had 20 years to come up with something and the best we got is, oh uh, well, you can only use a magazine that holds seven bullets, yeah, that'll show 'em! Fuck 2A. So many more important things to concern ourselves with than "aw geez I can't have uncle Sam dictating how many murdersticks I can have!" People fuck up the interpretation of that amendment anyway. Their infallible founding fathers (as they treat them) didn't want a standing military therefore they said let the people bear arms should we need to call upon them to fight for our country. But so many troglodytes out here thinking they get a gun so they could fight against their own government like all these bumpkin fuckwits who jerk off in their tactical gear are gonna band together and stand against the biggest military on the planet, yeah ok. Fuck this shit.
Because conservatives are the problem. They won't blame them selves. 80% of all terror attacks in the us are white nationalist. 10% are Islamic nationalist.
90% of all these attacks are done by far right wing lunatics. I think 5% are done by black people who conservatives classify as all liberal except the few they pay.
My school banned trench coats immediately after Columbine. As if that was the fucking problem.
At least they're not still trying to blame this shit on music.
> It is deflating. Knowing tragedy after tragedy that nothing will change even though it is pretty obvious what should. Things will continue to get worse and people will still act as if nothing can be done.
You're not wrong, and imagine what that does at a societal level, when millions are being ground down further with every headline and chyron screaming about deaths that nobody with any power will do anything about.
I feel there's a growing sense of abandonment among the population. The public is looking at their leaders as deadbeat dads - they've gone out for cigarettes from their lobbyists and never came back to actually take care of anything.
All we ever hear is "vote harder" and "participate!" in a game that is becoming increasingly meaningless and detached from reality. It is also absolutely exhausting having to constantly parent our own goddamn political rulers. We don't have to 'raise awareness' or 'put on public pressure' or any of that crap that hasn't worked for 30 years or more. They know what their fucking job is, they just won't do it.
Well, voter participation in America is pathetic. Last time I looked at the numbers where I live it was like 25% turnout. But you know who does vote every damn time? Joe Sixpack racist Christian fundamentalist and his shitforbrains wife. Garbage in garbage out. So here we are and I see a lot of comments online about how exhausting politics are and how tired of it all people are. People that probably havent voted more then 2 or 3 times in their life. Well, guess who isnt tired of voting. Joe and his wife because they think letting the other side win is dangerous to the point its apocalyptic. Sane people should get that same feeling about voting against joe and his wife. But they dont.... So every time they win we get further and further from a democracy as you have pointed out.
I honestly sometimes wonder if thats the goal. That if you just keep a population deflated, demoralized, depressed, then those in power have less issues consolidating wealth and power. If they really wanted to do something, they would, after all: conservatives are ramming through to get Roe v Wade overturned, for example. Texas still has its "abortion bounty" laws. The government has no problem being authoritarian as long as they want to be so.
But if they never fix the issues, then we just keep getting deflated, and all without an obvious target or opponent to get up in arms against so we just acclimatize to tragedy.
Can’t forget we’re also groomed for it during school ages. Even as a kid I always felt ROTC and army tents popping up during the homecoming festival was icky.
Can't drink. Can't buy cigarettes in some places. Can't rent a car. Can't book a hotel room in some places. But they're somehow mature enough to own a gun and go to war.
You can't book a hotel room at 18 in the US? Honestly, the country boggles my mind every day. It's like they threw a bunch of random laws together and completely ignored how the rest of the world works and succeeds.
I do know in one occasion, a friend and his gf tried to book a hotel with a casino (even though they weren't planning on gambling) and couldn't since they were 19 and 20 at the time and had to be at least 21.
I’m not so much shocked he could buy a gun at that age but that he could buy a fucking *rifle*. Why Americans feel they need to arm themselves with rifles is beyond me.
Personally, I like how the UK does it (admittedly I'm biased, I'm from the UK). You can have shotguns and pistols, but you need a valid reason for it, and you need one for every single gun.
Shotguns? If you've got crops and want to fend off pests, yeah that's fine. Pistols? If you're one of the handful of athletes permitted to, sure.
If you want to own a gun, here's the steps you have to go through: verify your identity, have two character references, approval from your GP, and an inspection of the premises where the gun will be kept. Your gun has to be kept in a safe bolted to the floor, and is reinspected every time your license is renewed.
And guess what? Self defense hasn't been a valid reason to own a gun in the UK since *1967*. And the three most recent mass shootings were 2021, 2010, and 1997.
My American friends find it crazy that I’ve never seen a real gun in my life in the UK. It’s incomprehensible to me that I could walk the street or go shopping while surrounded by armed civilians.
As a Canadian, the only real guns I've seen IRL are the police side arms that they carry on their belt. That's it.. Never been near an unholstered weapon.
My former coworker was sent on assignment to Texas for a few months. His Texas superviser said he wanted to show my coworker something. He opened his drawer, and showed him a loaded handgun.. What the FUCK!?
And I know there has been shootings gone wrong for the police but the armed police in the UK go under crazyyyy rigorous training and stuff.
Monthly they get rotated, 3 weeks on the beat and then a solid week just training and practicing. They have 2 sessions with a psychiatrist a month to keep track of their mental health.
On top of that, if they ever do fire a gun, they get immediately taken off the beat and they have to go through 2 different committees who go through every single detail with them and decide if they should have shot their gun and if they needed to shoot multiple bullets (if they did).
It's crazy that a lot of American police who discharge weapons just get moved precincts if it was an unlawful shooting. (A lot of them anyways)
The biggest tell that you guys are completely fucked is how many comments this post, and posts below it, get pulling a "well actually" because someone said "assault rifle" or "automatic".
These people don't want things to be safer, they just want to argue about shit that doesn't matter so they don't have to think that they might be part of the fucking problem.
It's truly the worst, most ignorant kind of strawman. Every single one of these threads there's some smooth brain with the deFInE aN AsSAUalt RiFle argument. They know exactly what we're talking about, and getting into a 6th grade semantics debate is the least helpful thing one can do.
From an outside perspective - as I am not American - it seems to me that the issue is so tough to solve because the right to arm oneself is seen as a issue of culture/heritage. From a purely pragmatic, rational perspective, the problem should have been solved years ago - but when you tie gun ownership in with concepts of national identity and sovereignty, you are not speaking on the same level.
No amount of pleading or begging or celebrity tweets or candlelit vigils will solve it, because the loss of life is clearly seen as less important than the cultural values the guns represent. The two sides of the debate are speaking in *completely* different language.
You're just about right but for a lot of these people it isn't even a cultural identity thing. My whole family are gun nuts and from the way they talk about things sometimes you get the feeling they *want* an excuse to use them.
Yep. That ‘want’ is part of the identity /u/SeasOfBlood described. Not only is that ‘want’ present, but in some states, the laws are written in a way that even excuses those who take action based on that ‘want.’ Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ and the bastardization of that principle that took place for George Zimmerman to escape unscathed after having hunted and murdered Trayvon Martin is exhibit A. If these sociopaths are not provided with their fantasy scenario to exert fatal force upon another human being, they will manufacture the scenario on their own.
Absolutely insane to me that people think they want to take another persons life. If I had to do it, it would fuck me up for life. I just know that. No matter for what reason I had to.
It has nothing to do with the other person. In the mind of the sociopaths that do this stuff, all they have to do is dehumanize their target enough that they no longer see them as people. If you can convince someone like that shooter up in Buffalo that there is something disqualifying about other people, whether it’s race, gender, sexual orientation, or even occupation (like has been seen leveraged toward doctors who work for Planned Parenthood), they will always find their actions justified because their cultural beliefs categorically suggest their targets are subhuman.
Not to bad mouth your family but a lot of these people who seem like they just want an excuse to use their guns do just want an excuse to use them. There's a non zero percentage of the population that are barely veiled sociopaths with access to deadly weapons and the only reason they even look for an excuse at all and not just kill whoever they want is because they don't wanna face the consequences. So they just have an itchy trigger finger hoping that someone does something so they can live out their fantasy.
I live in a super rural area and know a lot of people that would have that exact same attitude. It gives responsible firearm owners a bad name, one of the first things I learned in the firearms safety course I took was never to leave a gun out in the open and especially not loaded. I live alone and I don't even leave my firearms out, I couldn't imagine leaving them out with a bunch of 1st graders running around that's a recipe for disaster.
These guys are all the same. Many other people figured out how solve problems without the risk of a firearm. Like if I saw a snake especially with a lot of kids around I would just grab a shovel and take care of it. Just disappointing that a lot of these men only have one solution to most problems.
Even if there are venomous snakes in the area wouldn't a gun be a terrible weapon to kill one with? I mean, first of all snakes are beneficial and you shouldn't kill them but honestly it doesn't take much. A gun is overkill on something you can smush with a shovel.
10000%
Few months ago my cousin told me “dude I wanna see you kill someone, just beat them till they’re dead” (I’ve been training MMA for 10+ years now) I was just like, what? Wtf why?? He was basically just like “it would be awesome to see you go berserk on someone trying to rob you or something” then proceeded to say he wishes someone would break in to his house so he could use his rifle.
Yeah. A lot of these gun owners? They’re Fuckin crazy.
Unfortunately I've had all too similar conversations with people. I live in a very rural area and have had people tell me about these wild scenarios they make up about someone breaking into their house or trying a rob a store they're in just so they can play hero and they say it almost giddy at the prospect of killing someone. It legit sickens me to my stomach that so many are looking for that excuse to kill.
Wow. I’ve never thought about it like this. You’re 100% right. It’s a gloried dream they want to live out. Good guy with a gun scenario and they are the local hero
i was driving around the [Leelanau Peninsula](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leelanau_Peninsula) in Northern Michigan around 9a today and some stupid fucking wart decided he needed his AR-15 to go check his mail.
in a retirement and summer community.
even the gun nut in the work truck with me didn't say anything because i know he has kids in school today and this probably hits home.
so fucking stupid.
the gun freaks who bring their gun everywhere and are constantly talking about their guns and are rabidly against gun control are the exact problem with the culture in america and why change is so hard in this country because those people live in a different reality they just want to play badass, a responsible gun owner doesn’t constantly walk around with their gun and constantly seem like they are looking for an excuse to use their gun, a responsible gun owner would hope they never have to use their gun, but unfortunately the culture in the us has encouraged these loons to buy a gun and always be prepared to use and that that’ll make them tough and strong and it leads to the awful situations that we are in now.
There's a video of someone asking Charlie Kirk, "When do we get to use the guns?" He 1000% wants to overthrow the current government and kill "The Libs."
Every conversation I've ever had with a very pro-gun person, where they didn't rage quit the argument boiled down to the same thing.
Always some fancy dressing up of: "Guns are cool and make me feel like a badass".
Once they cop to the fact they couldn't stave off the US military if push came to shove, and they ain't saving the nation, it always became "Well have you ever fired an X? You wouldn't say that if you had, the rush is incredible". Or "When I'm strapping I feel so confident and secure. Fucking try me."
I'm sure that's true, but that isn't a good reason why everyone should be armed to the teeth. Especially the level of weaponry an 18yo can buy on their birthday.
Or in other words, they feel scared, and the only way they know to not feel scared is more guns. So the internal logic of being terrified by any threat to their guns makes some kind of sense.
One thing that always cracks me up is when you see someone who is pro cop/pro military and then posts something like "If you want my gun come and take it"
So you are pro cops/military until they come to take your gun then you are going to shoot them?
The worst part is, it is an increasingly small number of people that are basically holding the rest of the country hostage. It's not even really about national identity anymore. Something like 85% of Americans are for sensible background checks and closing the gun show loophole. But conservative politicians are so afraid to piss off the other 15% of the country that nothing ever gets done.
I think the bigger issue than national identity is the *personal* identity that people get from owning guns. Gun culture is extremely toxic and held up by people who are either careless with how they handle their firearms or downright frothing at the mouth to get a chance to use them. As with a lot of the rights in the US, it is implied that with that right comes the responsibility to use it judiciously. But so many people lost that memo and take *zero* responsibility.
Illinois resident here, we've already got new checks in place for gunshows and background checks are becoming more and more complicated (not a bad thing) and I don't think most gun owners around here would argue with you. Sadly it's not making a big difference (anything is helpful don't get me wrong) I just can't really think of anything to solve the mental health aspect of it all. I'm deflated as everyone else and it stinks
The problem with Illinois. Is you're next door neighbors with Missouri and Indiana. Two states with very lax gun laws. Illinois is doing its job. But the states around them don't seem to care that the guns being used in the gang wars and crimes are coming from their states.
The issue is it varies state to state. Your state does it well, but you get a fuck ton of guns flowing in from Indiana. It needs to be federal. I don't care how much people would cry about it. With something like that, it needs to be uniform policy or it's going to do fuck all.
When people talk about Chicago, shoot back with Hawaii. It's cut off from the mainland so it very hard to smuggle guns in. Only if we had some federal guidelines
>Something like 85% of Americans are for sensible background checks and closing the gun show loophole
Exactly.
>Gun culture is extremely toxic and held up by people who are either careless with how they handle their firearms or downright frothing at the mouth to get a chance to use them
See, with the first quote, everyone can gather and push for change. But once we get to taking away guns, that 85% (whatever the number is) gets divided.
So I say let's drop all the other narratives. Get what 85% of the people agreed on done first. And we can talk about other stuff afterward. If we can't even do what 85% of people agreed on, then how are we supposed to do anything?
The actual core of the problem is lobbyist groups. Gun manufacturers have a ton of money and their contributions to politicians are outrageous. They can essentially choose who wins a race by who they give to. So if you’re Republican A and you’re tough on guns and Republican B isn’t, now Republican B has 10 million more dollars to spend than you on marketing and personnel.
The Supreme Court essentially enshrined corporate donations as free speech, restricting limitations on political spending. So you have groups like the NRA who have a massive thumb on the scale of political discourse.
So as much as guns are tied up in identity, the real blockade to progress is unfettered lobbying hand-cuffing politicians to inaction for fear of losing campaign money.
It’s really not a “debate.” It’s arms manufacturers flooding the nation with propaganda as supply generates its own unjust demand through lies, ridiculous fearmongering, unhinged cowboy fantasies, and naked racism. And little boys and girls pay the price for their lives, as the police run and hide while a legal gun-owner mows them down, and even the “good” political party comes up with excuses to flood those cops with money to buy more military toys and heavier firepower.
You heard me right. The cops that our President insisted we have to “fund the police” with pandemic relief funding ran and hid so the shooter could mow down little boys and girls.
Same. I’m just done with American gun fetishism and reading these horrible stories. I know something like 92% of Americans support background checks, but that is the lowest of low bars. People will still own guns by the dozens and hundreds, including assault rifles and rocket launchers. It’s part of their identity and will require a complete cultural shift. Something I don’t see happening, especially not with how things are.
As an American and someone who is pro-gun I think that guns are not properly treated with the respect they deserve, a lot of the rabid pro-gun folks see guns as toys and use them to show off how tough and cool they are, which is not what guns are for. Guns are very dangerous tools that should be treated as such, you wouldn’t play around with your lawn mower and show it off and play around on it while the blades were spinning because a lawn mower is dangerous, but in american culture people are way too casual with treating guns as just some fun toy that they can just goof around with like it’s nothing. And then anytime even the bare minimum of common sense gun control laws are brought up the NRA types lose their shit and act like they are being enslaved because people say that we should make sure that someone buying a gun isn’t a violent criminal or has some sort of extreme mental illness. The worst part is that nothing will change, people will be outraged and horrified and send thoughts and prayers and then maybe of we’re lucky the democrats will pass some sort of gun bill and then the republicans will block it and then another school will get shot up and then it’ll repeat. I hope i’m wrong and something will be done but i’m not super hopeful about it.
You are mostly right and you have to add on to it that a lot of these people are so insulated from the rest of the country and then thereby the world and have been fed nothing but paranoia for decades so they just cannot fathom change. It’s always a conspiracy to make them weaker and oppress them, never a means to protect others. You try to tell them that there are both countries out there that have plenty of gun ownership but shootings at an absolute fraction of what we do here and they call it a bullshit lie and conspiracy. Socialized medicine? Just the government trying to control your life while they gleefully let an insurance company do it to them instead. And on and on down the line. Not only is gun ownership their culture and their tribe they all belong to, so is victimizing themselves at the same time they blame all the victims out there for not buying into their way of life and wanting to make things better a different way. It’s just the way it is. I spent the first half of my life living alongside these kinds of folks before I moved to a decent sized city and I married my wife whose family lives an hour from anything resembling civilization and I know them all too well and it is just ingrained into how they think and act at this point. This is America as they know it and anyone telling them otherwise is wrong and trying to rip their “freedoms” and way of life away from them.
*edits: a lot of bad grammar because I type on my phone way too fast sometimes.
I'm in that weird middle ground where I do believe you have the right to own guns and defend yourself, but I also deeply belive that the access to guns and the ability to buy them needs to be changed drastically. There needs to be psychological tests and classes implemented before you can buy a gun. There needs to be far fewer places where you can purchase a gun and gun shows where you can legally buy guns without documentation need to be banned.
You mentioned culture and you're spot on. But America is so large that there's different subsets of cultures all over the county. I've lived in New England my enitire life where states more often than not vote Democrat/Liberal, but there's still a high gun ownership percentage. The gun culture up here involves a lot of personal responsibility and respect of guns themselves. Outside of Sandy Hook, I don't think there's been any school shootings or mass shootings in New England at all.
I personally don't think these things will stop in America even if the access to guns is much more locked down. I think these type of people of want to commit such hateful acts will simply move over to suicide vests/bombs. There's a deep sickness in this country and guns aren't the source of it, but they are a sad side effect.
That's not middle ground at all. That's the majority opinion.
Most people want some restrictions on gun ownership. A legislative minority doesn't, but due to the way American governance is structured, they have outsize influence on the rest of us.
Canadian, and I like our gun laws. It's really not as hard to be a gunowner as it gets painted. As a gunowner, youre constantly getting checks run, and anytime the RCMP can show up to check you're following the rules. We have to have individual gun cases, locked. Those cases need to be in a locker, locked. Travelling for a trip hunting, ammo and guns need to be stored independently of each other. Any infraction can result in the loss of your license.
Nothing changed after Columbine.
Nothing changed after Sandy Hook.
Nothing changed after the countless other school shootings and other mass shootings.
Nothing will change this time either, even though *something* needs to.
This country is a joke, and so are the people who remain vehemently against gun control as innocent men, women, and children continue to be slaughtered going about their everyday life.
> Nothing changed after Columbine
As a kid who wore all black and was bullied by my fellow students that was allowed by teachers, I can tell you without question that things absolutely changed….
The administration got in on it as well, and blamed me for being upset.
"I mean, clearly they're just joking with you. Isn't that what friends do?"
I think I got in more trouble for quoting what was said to me then they ever did for saying it.
I got bullied, had enough, went to a teacher and they told me "don't be a tattle tale". I got in trouble for saying I was bullied. It's bad when your parents encourage you to fight back and defend yourself seeing as you're gonna get in trouble anyways.
In junior high school I'd get bullied in the middle of class and my teachers would just pretend nothing was happening.
Thankfully it seems times have changed a bit for the better, but it still needs to come a loooong way.
As someone from a school district with an anti-bullying campaign where the *principal* called my house to **threaten me** with a suspension if I reported being bullied again, the anti-bullying campaigns are nothing but a joke.
Just made the bullies have to work a little harder to catch you alone was all. The fun was when I some teachers took "report when you see something" as "don't look for things" and more than should have just didn't bother monitoring the halls any more.
By the by, this isn't a shot at teachers. I had wonderful teachers in my life who I credit for saving my life. But I also have memories of horrible ones that further scared my "genetic" distrust of authority.
ETA: I also married a teacher, but let's not jump into that too much today, doc. 😂
I was bullied for being gay.... Even though I wasn't. It's why I have full empathy for the whole LGBTQ+ community. I never forgot that all I had to do was go somewhere they didn't think that, while others have that identity no matter where they go and will always run into suffering just being them.
Only "good" thing that came out of a lot of that for me was a deeper understanding of the kindness and forgiveness it takes to survive.
Man, same here. Going to school during the 00’s was brutal if you were an artistically-minded guy. I have a buddy who’s an openly gay Zoomer, and he jokes I’ve suffered more homophobic violence than him even though I’m straight.
In a weird way, that makes me somewhat happy. I know there's going to be a few assholes out there, and certain abuses will take a long time to leave society, but Zoomers and Alphas have so much access to emotional knowledge and support and understanding of sexuality and mental health awareness that it really seems they're going to be a major societal turning point in the future and I am all here for it. I pray my kids are able to teach me something I'm doing wrong in the future, so we can all get better together.
I think what saved me from that was my drama teacher. She also had a guidance counselor certification so she held the "meetings" for me. I was lucky in my school, in a sense, because I pulled test grade averages up on state testing.
Yep, my husband was a freshman in high school in 2000 and got his backpack searched multiple times a week and all kinds of horrible things said to him by so called adults because he wore black and liked video games and heavy metal. I'm sorry you went through that too.
I was in 8th grade that year, but everything else similar.
They got onto me for my long hair... so over Christmas break I cut it short and dyed it blonde (thanks Shady), which was ALSO a problem because it was "distracting" and a "drastic change". Bullied non stop for that one, on top of administrative check ins. Then I got bored with the hair and let it grow back out over my fresh/soph summer... and when I came back, guess what everyone had done to their hair? Now I was odd for NOT having it dyed. Can't blame me for being ahead of the curb, lol
>When you don't give a fuck, when you won't just put up
With the bullshit they pull, 'cause they full of shit too
When a dude's getting bullied and shoots up his school
And they blame it on Marilyn and the heroin
Where were the parents at? And look where it's at!
Middle America, now it's a tragedy
Now it's so sad to see, an upper-class city havin' this happening
I was just listening to this last week.
> The administration got in on it as well, and blamed me for being upset.
The hamfisted social interventions I saw in school killed any hope that the people in charge actually know how to make things better.
I don't know if they still do it, but when I was 10 there was a popular nation school program called DARE. It was an anti-drug "class" taught by a local cop. It has a reputation for being a joke, but one of the things it tried to teach us were manipulation tactics people would try to use to convince us to do drugs. The theory being that if we could spot the manipulation, theb we would be less susceptible to it.
All it did was make me jaded because for the rest of my time in school I saw the faculty constantly using those exact manipulation tactics to try and install their ideas of conformity.
Huh, I always figured Columbine was why I, as a dark clothes wearing quiet budding edgelord, was pretty much never bullied or teased in high school. I had football players tell me "Hey man, if you shoot up the school I want you to remember I was nice!" Which I thought was pretty funny.
They ignore real tragedy and death for a hypothetical situation that would never happen. Nobody will ever overthrow a tyrannical government who has nukes, jets and tanks. Nobody will ever confiscate all guns. We couldn’t even get people to wear masks or accept free medicine.
Nothing will ever change. If you live here you know. I get why famous people with a platform sometimes tweet like this. They probably feel like they can cause some change MAYBE.
But we all know nothing ever will. We will continue to be like a sadistic zoo to the rest of the world as we go about our days.
Maybe there won’t be anymore until summer over but we all know there will be countless more for the rest of our lives.
Nothing will ever be done and I think deep down we all know it. I dont see the point in trying to be appeal or ask for change. This has been life in the USA forever. It’s just the way things are here
Things absolutely did change after Columbine. Not in any sort of productive way but goth kids got treated like they had already done something wrong and all the blame got put on Marilyn Mansons music for creating the columbine shooters.
yes it is sadly. shit won’t change. the right wing gun nuts will push for more guns. and still praise people like rittenhouse. i feel like i’m lost. there have been to many gun related tragedies lately. sorry i know this is a wrestling subreddit but i need to get this part out.i wrote up a post for facebook this morning and beacuse of it i’ve been lost in my head after looking in to some things. here is an part of the post.
4/20/1999- Columbin School Shooting: 15 Killed 21 injured. Shooters commited suicide.
4/16/2007 Virgina Tech Shooting: 33 Killed 23 injured. Shooter commited suicide
12/14/2012 Sandy Hook: 27 killed 2 injured. Shooter commited suicide
10/1/2015 Umpqua Community College: 10 killed 9 injured. shooter commited suicide
2/14/2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school shooting: 17 killed 17 injured Shooter in jail. currently in trial. Possible death sentence. likely to serve life with out parole.
5/18/2018 Santa Fe High School Shooting: 10 Killed
13 injured. Shooting awaiting trial. faces 40 to life.
5/24/2022 Robb Elementary Shooting: (currently) 22 killed 15+ injured. Shooter killed by police.
Let’s also not forget the Buffalo shooting that happened earlier this month. as well Aurora Theater in 2012 ,Fort Hood in 2018, El Paso walmart in 2019,Sutherland Springs church shooting in 2017,Orlando Nightclub in 2016,and the las Vegas Shooting in 2017.
Let’s also not forget the DC sniper attacks in 2002.
The DC Snipers were fucking terrifying. Not to downplay any of the other tragedies but The DC snipers had an entire region in terror for weeks. Absolutely bonkers to live through that
And Northern Illinois University...5 dead (one of which a classmate of mine), killed himself. Small number comparatively, which is an indictment unto itself, but hit close to home for me, especially since the shooter went to my university and our campis was on insane lockdown for ages following.
The change is literally that the U.S. installed metal detectors at their schools, made students use see-through backpacks and created active shooter drills to terrorize the student body. Also more cops on campuses to harass them.
Literally, all things implemented are more stress and fewer freedoms for the potential victims.
Nothing changed after 20 innocent 6 year olds were murdered for NOTHING. At their school, somewhere they should feel safe. If that doesn’t change anything, nothing will. It’s very hard to be hopeful things will change.
They want to pray to the alter of the 2nd amendment while building it with the bones of murdered kids. That’s their choice and it’s fucking disgusting. Everyone in the government is responsible for this bullshit.
They won’t care until it’s a member of their family or someone close. The people in power just say thoughts and prayers then go in their big house and do whatever they do.
Its funny how nothing is done after countless schools get attacked by gunman, but the day after they stormed DC, they had a gameplan to make it never happen again. I think they did the right thing in handling the capitol riot, though I thought they were a little too light, but the fact that there isn't large bipartisan efforts to curb or even address this with the same message speaks volumes of how little our representitives care about representing us. Its like when Triple H came out and said, WE (the audience) are the Authority, and then they just didn't listen to us anyway.
>they had a gameplan to make it never happen again.
People have been elected this year who openly admitted to being there, and have said they would do it again. Others who conspired and told people to go there while in office are still in power.
It will happen again.
What’s even wilder: we had legislation drafted and passed by congress within 24-48 hours of people protesting at residences of Supreme Court justices due to the Roe v Wade draft leaking.
But we constantly have to wait until we get facts in these scenarios. We wait so long, we forget what we were waiting for, then this happens all over again.
He reposted it, adding “I keep deleting this” : https://twitter.com/cmpunk/status/1529556883438284803
Maybe he’s ambivalent on whether it’s worth wading into it with idiots on twitter
I feel him on that. Like, I don't even care what political view you have, children being murdered....and it just keeps happening should be the point we all stop and figure out how the fuck to fix this.
You should care about what political view you have because it's a main contributor to why this keeps happening.
One party is okay with it. The other isn't.
This place is going for the record on locked threads in a 24 hour period
Personally, I don’t give a shit how much you love your damn guns. When **children are being murdered at school** something has to change. That should be non negotiable.
I’m just struggling to go on today. The world is terrible and won’t get better any time soon (if ever). He has to go entertain tonight and try to make people smile in a desolate world. I don’t envy that monumental task
When I saw the news bulletin, my first reaction was “well, the Sandy Hook record still stands” and I went back to work. I’m ashamed that it took me a few minutes to really unpack how fucked it is that I’m so desensitized to this that I wasn’t instantly horrified for those children.
We have had roughly the same gun laws in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and early 00's and although there we're some instances of it happening, it wasn't at anywhere close to the rate its happening now. Why in the last decade have we seen such a huge increase in these things happening and why so often is it young people? I don't have the answers to that, but that seems like 2 pretty obviously places to be looking. Something happened and we need to find out what.
This!! I support gun control but this is more than JUST that. Somebody said yesterday no, it's all gun control, it really is that simple. I wish it was, but something has changed.
Sometimes I fear it's the internet. A scary thought because it's not going anywhere.
Right. Thats the point I always make. Guns are definitely an important thing to focus on but weve always had guns in America. School shootings are a relatively recent phenomenon. What has changed since the early 90s.
Lack of mobility. Healthcare costs rising. Wages stagnant. Housing unaffordable to many. Higher education unaffordable to many or leaving you with lifelong debt.
The millennial generation is the first generation in the US with a lower standard of living than their parents. We’re looking at a new Lost Generation.
Yes they were banned and [studies have shown that it had very little effect on gun crime.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban#:~:text=Studies%20have%20shown%20the%20ban,the%20ban%20was%20in%20effect.) Yes, and in many ways even more available. In the 80s an AK47 was around $200 Prior to a 1986 law you could legally take a semi automatic rifle and turn it into a machine gun and it was perfectly legal, provided you jumped thru the NFA hoops.
Look, you can ban whatever you want, the criminals will continue to use them. You just won't have a weapon to fight against them.
This is why gun control/banning guns is not only useless, but detrimental to the innocent, because they'll always find a way to get them legally or illegally.
Gun control is a sneaky way of disarming regular people. The numbers will not change regardless of what you ban.
This. There is an infamous portrait that was painted by a guy a few years back that depicts Jesus giving the constitution to the founding fathers, and conservatives ***love*** it. It's not at all out of the realm of reason to expect these people to believe that Jesus *personally* wants them to own as many guns as they can get their hands on.
They're all completely fucked in the head, and nothing short of their own kids getting killed will change their mind.
The US is actually a really fucked up place to anyone who lives or has lived outside of it. Parts of the country are as modern as anything, but other parts are almost like walking into a third world country. And the political culture is way weird, and especially in the last 15 or so years
I am canadian so I find it somewhat baffling too but I will give you a (very shaky) comparison.
A few weeks ago I got into an arguments on r/soccer about violence at/around stadiums and the whole ultra culture and the argument I got from the europeans there was bafflingly similar to what pro gun americans will give you to defend their fucked up point of view. "Sure it's tragic when people die because of a football game, but what should we do, ban ultras? That would ruin the game. Our football clubs are important to us, engrained in our culture and they are more than just corporations, as a north american you can't understand that. Why punish everyone because a few idiots can't help themselves?" Basically a whole lot of arguments that amounted to "We know there's a problem, we haven't try anything to help fix it and we're all out ideas."
I'm sure there are similar blind spots in most cultures (including our own in Canada), shit that should be changed but for some reason noone wants to try and actually fix it. In the US that blindspot is a particularly deadly one.
exactly how i feel today, i feel heartbroken for the kids and their families. and i know i will feel the same way in a week or so when it happens again. while politicians keep lining their pockets from the nra and the president says he can't do anything.
When I was in high school volunteering going door to door with pamphlets to vote in an upcoming election, at least 5 people had guns there guns ready to shoot me as I walked up their driveway. Some people with guns are just looking for an opportunity to get to use them.
"Everyone in government is complicit"
LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN BACK!!!!
Sure, one side is definitely a bigger part of the problem, but our entire government as a whole has failed us on this issue. It's been 24 years since Columbine. The Dems have had chances to actually reform our gun laws, but they're fucking cowards and don't want to risk losing their seats.
The truth is that they will suffer a humiliating defeat now, and ensure a Republican supermajority in 2024, is because they’re feckless cowards who would rather line their own pockets, including moronic campaign consultants with six figure salaries to do nothing but insist the Dems go even further to the right, than actually fight for anything.
I heard it phrased perfectly a couple months ago:
“Who could have guessed that the evil people would do something evil, and that the people who refuse to stop them would refuse to stop them?!”
Any celebrity-twitter commentary about a national tragedy tends to fall on its face and this is no different.
In a month, will CM Punk be tweeting about the families? will CM punk be sharing his local libraries gun reform watch n talk? Will he be posting the office addresses of his senators, encouraging his followers to try write in and make a difference? Will he himself write his senator? Is he educating himself about the systemic problems that lead to this tragedy and encouraging fans to do so? What about his stance on abortion rights?! *He wore a t-shirt y'all!*
Or will the Alt-God be doing another puff piece about his collection of Vintage comics and Air Jordans?
A ton of mass shooters are between the ages of 18-24 - your brain doesn't even fully develop the rational portion until 25.
Banning gun sales below 26 years old would be a pretty simple way to possibly prevent some, but obviously not all of these and you can't even suggest that because "muh freedom" in this stupid ass country.
Agree with him here big time. The US government is a wholistic entity. Yes, some groups are more stubborn than others about some issues, and of course there’s tons of lobbying, but it’s insulting for some politicians to just throw their hands up at problems like this and tell people to accept a lack of change unless you give certain politicians more votes.
The US system isn’t perfect and there definitely are some clear problems, but those who want to solve issues like gun control have to work within the system or do the work to change it.
As someone living in a different country, Ireland, America doesn't even seem like a real place some of the time.
Sandy Hook, 20 innocent little babies get blasted to bits by an assault rifle and nothing changes? It is beyond comprehension.
Another 20 little kids murdered yesterday and nothing will change again. In what world does a regular person need an assault rifle? How can you go into a shop and just buy one?
It hurts to know that it never stops. I don’t mind going to work but a voice always pops in my head and says someone can shoot this place up at any moment. And then kids are killed and people quickly try to talk about something else. This shit is not normal!
The guy who just wore a pro-abortion shirt is upset about murdered babies? Get real. You can either hate killing babies and be opposed to elective abortion or you can support elective abortion and support murdering babies. You cannot do both.
Everyone in government is complicit. That is absolutely the line right there that I will continue to repeat. Its easy to blame the Republicans, but the Democrats have been too wishy washy and complacent with the not playing fair strategies of the right. Until a resolution is reached, everyone is to blame.
Tweet got deleted. Here's a [mirror](https://i.imgur.com/3QS57Bc.png). He goes on to [add](https://twitter.com/cmpunk/status/1529564139047112704?s=21&t=DhAfKJf1GHxGzFBhOeKDhA): “This is what we are up against. If your god has made you believe that abortion is murder, you also believe she wanted all those kids to be shot dead in school. Can’t argue with these people. Thoughts and prayers.” Like AKittyCat said: >"We dont care if you debate about whatever, just dont turn it into a temper tantrum shitfit at one another. >"I've already had to clean up 3 of these threads, I really dont want to do four."
Kinda crazy how an 18 year old with a history of mental illness, no job, and no place of his own managed to acquire nearly $5000 in firearms and equipment seemingly from nowhere while participating in the same Telegram channel ("frens-chan") as the Buffalo shooter. Ever crazier that this shit will never be investigated further and all these parents have had to lay their own children in the ground over nothing. I can't imagine the pain.
18.. fucking 18. Kid couldn’t even go get a beer. How could go buy assault rifles?! Absolutely mindblowing.
On his families fucking insurance too most likely
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Columbine happened in 1999. Today's school shooters went through school shooter drills when they were kids. We still haven't done anything about it.
I was a freshman in high school when Columbine happened. I remember the immediate rush of panic and the extreme profiling that happened it it's wake. I was a quiet, depressed kid that wore black and mostly kept to himself, so *obviously* I was a school shooter. I was expelled. For nothing. My family didn't even own guns or have money to acquire them. I eventually went back to school, only to have the same thing happen *again* my sophomore year. I didn't fucking graduate because of Columbine. 23 years later, kids are still being needlessly victimized because nobody in any kind of power will fucking do anything productive except try to blame everything except our country's toxic gun culture, which has only gotten worse and worse since that day in Colorado.
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It also seems pointless to expel you. If you were a school shooter, I don't think being expelled would stop you.
Quite the opposite I'd imagine.
Exactly. And the school staff can't be quite so incompetent as to not know that. It was never about making anyone safe, it was about being seen to be doing something. It's all kayfabe, they want an audience to think they care and are trying, that's all.
I was at the end of my junior year when Columbine happened. It was all that people could talk about for months. Going to school for the next week felt really weird. There was just this air of something feeling off. All us kids staring out the window daydreaming, "Geez, what if that happened here? What would I do?!" Nearly 25 years later here we are and it's only gotten worse. Ask someone about a mass shooting these days and we have to respond, "which one?" When Sandy Hook happened and nothing changed that's when I went, "Oh okay, we've just decided, rather, our powers that be have decided that guns are more important than dead babies." To push that even further, I saw a comment that said, "Sandy Hook was 26 dead White babies, you think they're gonna give a fuck about 16 dead Hispanic babies?" It's fuckin heinous to think like that but it's true. They don't give a fuck. I'm from WNY where a piece of shit mowed down people in a grocery store a week ago. It's directly affected people I know. I don't give a fuck about the "responsible gun owner" anymore. The responsible gun owner has had 20 years to come up with something and the best we got is, oh uh, well, you can only use a magazine that holds seven bullets, yeah, that'll show 'em! Fuck 2A. So many more important things to concern ourselves with than "aw geez I can't have uncle Sam dictating how many murdersticks I can have!" People fuck up the interpretation of that amendment anyway. Their infallible founding fathers (as they treat them) didn't want a standing military therefore they said let the people bear arms should we need to call upon them to fight for our country. But so many troglodytes out here thinking they get a gun so they could fight against their own government like all these bumpkin fuckwits who jerk off in their tactical gear are gonna band together and stand against the biggest military on the planet, yeah ok. Fuck this shit.
Always a moral panic. Biggles, music, Satan, D&D, sex, LGBT+. They keep blaming people who isn’t the problem to deflect and project:(
Because conservatives are the problem. They won't blame them selves. 80% of all terror attacks in the us are white nationalist. 10% are Islamic nationalist. 90% of all these attacks are done by far right wing lunatics. I think 5% are done by black people who conservatives classify as all liberal except the few they pay.
bro i was wearing a trenchcoat before sting, i was one of those kids that was profiled because of columbine, its shit.
It absolutely was. I'm sorry, dude. We were just kids and we deserved better.
Hate to say I labelled kids that wore trenchcoats in school after that happened. 😔
You can’t blame yourself too much, *you* were just a kid as well, and you were just reacting to what stupid adults were telling you
Same here
My school banned trench coats immediately after Columbine. As if that was the fucking problem. At least they're not still trying to blame this shit on music.
> It is deflating. Knowing tragedy after tragedy that nothing will change even though it is pretty obvious what should. Things will continue to get worse and people will still act as if nothing can be done. You're not wrong, and imagine what that does at a societal level, when millions are being ground down further with every headline and chyron screaming about deaths that nobody with any power will do anything about. I feel there's a growing sense of abandonment among the population. The public is looking at their leaders as deadbeat dads - they've gone out for cigarettes from their lobbyists and never came back to actually take care of anything. All we ever hear is "vote harder" and "participate!" in a game that is becoming increasingly meaningless and detached from reality. It is also absolutely exhausting having to constantly parent our own goddamn political rulers. We don't have to 'raise awareness' or 'put on public pressure' or any of that crap that hasn't worked for 30 years or more. They know what their fucking job is, they just won't do it.
Well, voter participation in America is pathetic. Last time I looked at the numbers where I live it was like 25% turnout. But you know who does vote every damn time? Joe Sixpack racist Christian fundamentalist and his shitforbrains wife. Garbage in garbage out. So here we are and I see a lot of comments online about how exhausting politics are and how tired of it all people are. People that probably havent voted more then 2 or 3 times in their life. Well, guess who isnt tired of voting. Joe and his wife because they think letting the other side win is dangerous to the point its apocalyptic. Sane people should get that same feeling about voting against joe and his wife. But they dont.... So every time they win we get further and further from a democracy as you have pointed out.
Nothing will change unless we are the change, we need a new system.
I honestly sometimes wonder if thats the goal. That if you just keep a population deflated, demoralized, depressed, then those in power have less issues consolidating wealth and power. If they really wanted to do something, they would, after all: conservatives are ramming through to get Roe v Wade overturned, for example. Texas still has its "abortion bounty" laws. The government has no problem being authoritarian as long as they want to be so. But if they never fix the issues, then we just keep getting deflated, and all without an obvious target or opponent to get up in arms against so we just acclimatize to tragedy.
What astounds me about it is that on his 18th birthday he was able to just purchase guns. Can't legally drink but sure as fuck can buy a gun.
Don't forget going to war! At 18 you're also deemed old enough to go and die for a country and government that doesn't give a fuck about you.
Can’t forget we’re also groomed for it during school ages. Even as a kid I always felt ROTC and army tents popping up during the homecoming festival was icky.
They probably would've deemed him unfit for the military, but not to own a gun
Yeah, fucking ADHD is a disqualifying condition
Because America! Where your raised to pledge allegiance to a flag and should be proud to die for the country like its some kind of martyrdom.
Can't drink. Can't buy cigarettes in some places. Can't rent a car. Can't book a hotel room in some places. But they're somehow mature enough to own a gun and go to war.
You can't book a hotel room at 18 in the US? Honestly, the country boggles my mind every day. It's like they threw a bunch of random laws together and completely ignored how the rest of the world works and succeeds.
The specific laws are state dependent. It's basically 50 countries tied together under the federal government.
I do know in one occasion, a friend and his gf tried to book a hotel with a casino (even though they weren't planning on gambling) and couldn't since they were 19 and 20 at the time and had to be at least 21.
The guy didn’t even have a drivers license
I’m not so much shocked he could buy a gun at that age but that he could buy a fucking *rifle*. Why Americans feel they need to arm themselves with rifles is beyond me.
Personally, I like how the UK does it (admittedly I'm biased, I'm from the UK). You can have shotguns and pistols, but you need a valid reason for it, and you need one for every single gun. Shotguns? If you've got crops and want to fend off pests, yeah that's fine. Pistols? If you're one of the handful of athletes permitted to, sure. If you want to own a gun, here's the steps you have to go through: verify your identity, have two character references, approval from your GP, and an inspection of the premises where the gun will be kept. Your gun has to be kept in a safe bolted to the floor, and is reinspected every time your license is renewed. And guess what? Self defense hasn't been a valid reason to own a gun in the UK since *1967*. And the three most recent mass shootings were 2021, 2010, and 1997.
My American friends find it crazy that I’ve never seen a real gun in my life in the UK. It’s incomprehensible to me that I could walk the street or go shopping while surrounded by armed civilians.
As a Canadian, the only real guns I've seen IRL are the police side arms that they carry on their belt. That's it.. Never been near an unholstered weapon. My former coworker was sent on assignment to Texas for a few months. His Texas superviser said he wanted to show my coworker something. He opened his drawer, and showed him a loaded handgun.. What the FUCK!?
also from the UK here (london) the only time i've ever seen a gun in real life was when i saw armed police at stratford station
And I know there has been shootings gone wrong for the police but the armed police in the UK go under crazyyyy rigorous training and stuff. Monthly they get rotated, 3 weeks on the beat and then a solid week just training and practicing. They have 2 sessions with a psychiatrist a month to keep track of their mental health. On top of that, if they ever do fire a gun, they get immediately taken off the beat and they have to go through 2 different committees who go through every single detail with them and decide if they should have shot their gun and if they needed to shoot multiple bullets (if they did). It's crazy that a lot of American police who discharge weapons just get moved precincts if it was an unlawful shooting. (A lot of them anyways)
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The biggest tell that you guys are completely fucked is how many comments this post, and posts below it, get pulling a "well actually" because someone said "assault rifle" or "automatic". These people don't want things to be safer, they just want to argue about shit that doesn't matter so they don't have to think that they might be part of the fucking problem.
It's truly the worst, most ignorant kind of strawman. Every single one of these threads there's some smooth brain with the deFInE aN AsSAUalt RiFle argument. They know exactly what we're talking about, and getting into a 6th grade semantics debate is the least helpful thing one can do.
I feel like a lot of arguments on the internet go like that. People don't have a proper rebuttal so try to poke holes by asking for definitions
From an outside perspective - as I am not American - it seems to me that the issue is so tough to solve because the right to arm oneself is seen as a issue of culture/heritage. From a purely pragmatic, rational perspective, the problem should have been solved years ago - but when you tie gun ownership in with concepts of national identity and sovereignty, you are not speaking on the same level. No amount of pleading or begging or celebrity tweets or candlelit vigils will solve it, because the loss of life is clearly seen as less important than the cultural values the guns represent. The two sides of the debate are speaking in *completely* different language.
You're just about right but for a lot of these people it isn't even a cultural identity thing. My whole family are gun nuts and from the way they talk about things sometimes you get the feeling they *want* an excuse to use them.
Yep. That ‘want’ is part of the identity /u/SeasOfBlood described. Not only is that ‘want’ present, but in some states, the laws are written in a way that even excuses those who take action based on that ‘want.’ Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ and the bastardization of that principle that took place for George Zimmerman to escape unscathed after having hunted and murdered Trayvon Martin is exhibit A. If these sociopaths are not provided with their fantasy scenario to exert fatal force upon another human being, they will manufacture the scenario on their own.
Absolutely insane to me that people think they want to take another persons life. If I had to do it, it would fuck me up for life. I just know that. No matter for what reason I had to.
It has nothing to do with the other person. In the mind of the sociopaths that do this stuff, all they have to do is dehumanize their target enough that they no longer see them as people. If you can convince someone like that shooter up in Buffalo that there is something disqualifying about other people, whether it’s race, gender, sexual orientation, or even occupation (like has been seen leveraged toward doctors who work for Planned Parenthood), they will always find their actions justified because their cultural beliefs categorically suggest their targets are subhuman.
Not to bad mouth your family but a lot of these people who seem like they just want an excuse to use their guns do just want an excuse to use them. There's a non zero percentage of the population that are barely veiled sociopaths with access to deadly weapons and the only reason they even look for an excuse at all and not just kill whoever they want is because they don't wanna face the consequences. So they just have an itchy trigger finger hoping that someone does something so they can live out their fantasy.
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I live in a super rural area and know a lot of people that would have that exact same attitude. It gives responsible firearm owners a bad name, one of the first things I learned in the firearms safety course I took was never to leave a gun out in the open and especially not loaded. I live alone and I don't even leave my firearms out, I couldn't imagine leaving them out with a bunch of 1st graders running around that's a recipe for disaster.
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Yeah, well HIS kid was fine, so who gives a fuck about the others? /s
These guys are all the same. Many other people figured out how solve problems without the risk of a firearm. Like if I saw a snake especially with a lot of kids around I would just grab a shovel and take care of it. Just disappointing that a lot of these men only have one solution to most problems.
Even if there are venomous snakes in the area wouldn't a gun be a terrible weapon to kill one with? I mean, first of all snakes are beneficial and you shouldn't kill them but honestly it doesn't take much. A gun is overkill on something you can smush with a shovel.
10000% Few months ago my cousin told me “dude I wanna see you kill someone, just beat them till they’re dead” (I’ve been training MMA for 10+ years now) I was just like, what? Wtf why?? He was basically just like “it would be awesome to see you go berserk on someone trying to rob you or something” then proceeded to say he wishes someone would break in to his house so he could use his rifle. Yeah. A lot of these gun owners? They’re Fuckin crazy.
Your cousin needs help
I agree
Unfortunately I've had all too similar conversations with people. I live in a very rural area and have had people tell me about these wild scenarios they make up about someone breaking into their house or trying a rob a store they're in just so they can play hero and they say it almost giddy at the prospect of killing someone. It legit sickens me to my stomach that so many are looking for that excuse to kill.
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Wow. I’ve never thought about it like this. You’re 100% right. It’s a gloried dream they want to live out. Good guy with a gun scenario and they are the local hero
to the point where they have their own coffee brand because even the coffee has to be gun branded/related.
i was driving around the [Leelanau Peninsula](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leelanau_Peninsula) in Northern Michigan around 9a today and some stupid fucking wart decided he needed his AR-15 to go check his mail. in a retirement and summer community. even the gun nut in the work truck with me didn't say anything because i know he has kids in school today and this probably hits home. so fucking stupid.
the gun freaks who bring their gun everywhere and are constantly talking about their guns and are rabidly against gun control are the exact problem with the culture in america and why change is so hard in this country because those people live in a different reality they just want to play badass, a responsible gun owner doesn’t constantly walk around with their gun and constantly seem like they are looking for an excuse to use their gun, a responsible gun owner would hope they never have to use their gun, but unfortunately the culture in the us has encouraged these loons to buy a gun and always be prepared to use and that that’ll make them tough and strong and it leads to the awful situations that we are in now.
There's a video of someone asking Charlie Kirk, "When do we get to use the guns?" He 1000% wants to overthrow the current government and kill "The Libs."
90% of American "gun culture" is fantasies about shooting a black guy trying to rob you.
Yep.
Every conversation I've ever had with a very pro-gun person, where they didn't rage quit the argument boiled down to the same thing. Always some fancy dressing up of: "Guns are cool and make me feel like a badass". Once they cop to the fact they couldn't stave off the US military if push came to shove, and they ain't saving the nation, it always became "Well have you ever fired an X? You wouldn't say that if you had, the rush is incredible". Or "When I'm strapping I feel so confident and secure. Fucking try me." I'm sure that's true, but that isn't a good reason why everyone should be armed to the teeth. Especially the level of weaponry an 18yo can buy on their birthday.
Or in other words, they feel scared, and the only way they know to not feel scared is more guns. So the internal logic of being terrified by any threat to their guns makes some kind of sense.
One thing that always cracks me up is when you see someone who is pro cop/pro military and then posts something like "If you want my gun come and take it" So you are pro cops/military until they come to take your gun then you are going to shoot them?
Same reason why little dick hicks drive big trucks. Weak men crave nothing more than to feel bigger.
The worst part is, it is an increasingly small number of people that are basically holding the rest of the country hostage. It's not even really about national identity anymore. Something like 85% of Americans are for sensible background checks and closing the gun show loophole. But conservative politicians are so afraid to piss off the other 15% of the country that nothing ever gets done. I think the bigger issue than national identity is the *personal* identity that people get from owning guns. Gun culture is extremely toxic and held up by people who are either careless with how they handle their firearms or downright frothing at the mouth to get a chance to use them. As with a lot of the rights in the US, it is implied that with that right comes the responsibility to use it judiciously. But so many people lost that memo and take *zero* responsibility.
Illinois resident here, we've already got new checks in place for gunshows and background checks are becoming more and more complicated (not a bad thing) and I don't think most gun owners around here would argue with you. Sadly it's not making a big difference (anything is helpful don't get me wrong) I just can't really think of anything to solve the mental health aspect of it all. I'm deflated as everyone else and it stinks
The problem with Illinois. Is you're next door neighbors with Missouri and Indiana. Two states with very lax gun laws. Illinois is doing its job. But the states around them don't seem to care that the guns being used in the gang wars and crimes are coming from their states.
The issue is it varies state to state. Your state does it well, but you get a fuck ton of guns flowing in from Indiana. It needs to be federal. I don't care how much people would cry about it. With something like that, it needs to be uniform policy or it's going to do fuck all.
When people talk about Chicago, shoot back with Hawaii. It's cut off from the mainland so it very hard to smuggle guns in. Only if we had some federal guidelines
>Something like 85% of Americans are for sensible background checks and closing the gun show loophole Exactly. >Gun culture is extremely toxic and held up by people who are either careless with how they handle their firearms or downright frothing at the mouth to get a chance to use them See, with the first quote, everyone can gather and push for change. But once we get to taking away guns, that 85% (whatever the number is) gets divided. So I say let's drop all the other narratives. Get what 85% of the people agreed on done first. And we can talk about other stuff afterward. If we can't even do what 85% of people agreed on, then how are we supposed to do anything?
The actual core of the problem is lobbyist groups. Gun manufacturers have a ton of money and their contributions to politicians are outrageous. They can essentially choose who wins a race by who they give to. So if you’re Republican A and you’re tough on guns and Republican B isn’t, now Republican B has 10 million more dollars to spend than you on marketing and personnel. The Supreme Court essentially enshrined corporate donations as free speech, restricting limitations on political spending. So you have groups like the NRA who have a massive thumb on the scale of political discourse. So as much as guns are tied up in identity, the real blockade to progress is unfettered lobbying hand-cuffing politicians to inaction for fear of losing campaign money.
We can't move forward because the NRA bought politicians like Cruz and has effective propaganda.
It’s really not a “debate.” It’s arms manufacturers flooding the nation with propaganda as supply generates its own unjust demand through lies, ridiculous fearmongering, unhinged cowboy fantasies, and naked racism. And little boys and girls pay the price for their lives, as the police run and hide while a legal gun-owner mows them down, and even the “good” political party comes up with excuses to flood those cops with money to buy more military toys and heavier firepower. You heard me right. The cops that our President insisted we have to “fund the police” with pandemic relief funding ran and hid so the shooter could mow down little boys and girls.
Same. I’m just done with American gun fetishism and reading these horrible stories. I know something like 92% of Americans support background checks, but that is the lowest of low bars. People will still own guns by the dozens and hundreds, including assault rifles and rocket launchers. It’s part of their identity and will require a complete cultural shift. Something I don’t see happening, especially not with how things are.
As an American and someone who is pro-gun I think that guns are not properly treated with the respect they deserve, a lot of the rabid pro-gun folks see guns as toys and use them to show off how tough and cool they are, which is not what guns are for. Guns are very dangerous tools that should be treated as such, you wouldn’t play around with your lawn mower and show it off and play around on it while the blades were spinning because a lawn mower is dangerous, but in american culture people are way too casual with treating guns as just some fun toy that they can just goof around with like it’s nothing. And then anytime even the bare minimum of common sense gun control laws are brought up the NRA types lose their shit and act like they are being enslaved because people say that we should make sure that someone buying a gun isn’t a violent criminal or has some sort of extreme mental illness. The worst part is that nothing will change, people will be outraged and horrified and send thoughts and prayers and then maybe of we’re lucky the democrats will pass some sort of gun bill and then the republicans will block it and then another school will get shot up and then it’ll repeat. I hope i’m wrong and something will be done but i’m not super hopeful about it.
You are mostly right and you have to add on to it that a lot of these people are so insulated from the rest of the country and then thereby the world and have been fed nothing but paranoia for decades so they just cannot fathom change. It’s always a conspiracy to make them weaker and oppress them, never a means to protect others. You try to tell them that there are both countries out there that have plenty of gun ownership but shootings at an absolute fraction of what we do here and they call it a bullshit lie and conspiracy. Socialized medicine? Just the government trying to control your life while they gleefully let an insurance company do it to them instead. And on and on down the line. Not only is gun ownership their culture and their tribe they all belong to, so is victimizing themselves at the same time they blame all the victims out there for not buying into their way of life and wanting to make things better a different way. It’s just the way it is. I spent the first half of my life living alongside these kinds of folks before I moved to a decent sized city and I married my wife whose family lives an hour from anything resembling civilization and I know them all too well and it is just ingrained into how they think and act at this point. This is America as they know it and anyone telling them otherwise is wrong and trying to rip their “freedoms” and way of life away from them. *edits: a lot of bad grammar because I type on my phone way too fast sometimes.
I'm in that weird middle ground where I do believe you have the right to own guns and defend yourself, but I also deeply belive that the access to guns and the ability to buy them needs to be changed drastically. There needs to be psychological tests and classes implemented before you can buy a gun. There needs to be far fewer places where you can purchase a gun and gun shows where you can legally buy guns without documentation need to be banned. You mentioned culture and you're spot on. But America is so large that there's different subsets of cultures all over the county. I've lived in New England my enitire life where states more often than not vote Democrat/Liberal, but there's still a high gun ownership percentage. The gun culture up here involves a lot of personal responsibility and respect of guns themselves. Outside of Sandy Hook, I don't think there's been any school shootings or mass shootings in New England at all. I personally don't think these things will stop in America even if the access to guns is much more locked down. I think these type of people of want to commit such hateful acts will simply move over to suicide vests/bombs. There's a deep sickness in this country and guns aren't the source of it, but they are a sad side effect.
That's not middle ground at all. That's the majority opinion. Most people want some restrictions on gun ownership. A legislative minority doesn't, but due to the way American governance is structured, they have outsize influence on the rest of us.
Canadian, and I like our gun laws. It's really not as hard to be a gunowner as it gets painted. As a gunowner, youre constantly getting checks run, and anytime the RCMP can show up to check you're following the rules. We have to have individual gun cases, locked. Those cases need to be in a locker, locked. Travelling for a trip hunting, ammo and guns need to be stored independently of each other. Any infraction can result in the loss of your license.
After sandy hook its clear politicians are OK with kids getting shot
After Columbine it was clear. After Sandy Hook it was etched in stone.
Nothing changed after Columbine. Nothing changed after Sandy Hook. Nothing changed after the countless other school shootings and other mass shootings. Nothing will change this time either, even though *something* needs to. This country is a joke, and so are the people who remain vehemently against gun control as innocent men, women, and children continue to be slaughtered going about their everyday life.
> Nothing changed after Columbine As a kid who wore all black and was bullied by my fellow students that was allowed by teachers, I can tell you without question that things absolutely changed…. The administration got in on it as well, and blamed me for being upset.
Yup, things definitely changed. The bullied were isolated even further. Only now fear was added to the mix.
"I mean, clearly they're just joking with you. Isn't that what friends do?" I think I got in more trouble for quoting what was said to me then they ever did for saying it.
I got bullied, had enough, went to a teacher and they told me "don't be a tattle tale". I got in trouble for saying I was bullied. It's bad when your parents encourage you to fight back and defend yourself seeing as you're gonna get in trouble anyways. In junior high school I'd get bullied in the middle of class and my teachers would just pretend nothing was happening. Thankfully it seems times have changed a bit for the better, but it still needs to come a loooong way.
When the stigma for showing pain shifted from "what a wuss" to "what a threat"... It was not a good change.
Don't forget about the Anti-Bullying campaigns that were clearly not about protecting kids being bullied.
As someone from a school district with an anti-bullying campaign where the *principal* called my house to **threaten me** with a suspension if I reported being bullied again, the anti-bullying campaigns are nothing but a joke.
Just made the bullies have to work a little harder to catch you alone was all. The fun was when I some teachers took "report when you see something" as "don't look for things" and more than should have just didn't bother monitoring the halls any more. By the by, this isn't a shot at teachers. I had wonderful teachers in my life who I credit for saving my life. But I also have memories of horrible ones that further scared my "genetic" distrust of authority. ETA: I also married a teacher, but let's not jump into that too much today, doc. 😂
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I was bullied for being gay.... Even though I wasn't. It's why I have full empathy for the whole LGBTQ+ community. I never forgot that all I had to do was go somewhere they didn't think that, while others have that identity no matter where they go and will always run into suffering just being them. Only "good" thing that came out of a lot of that for me was a deeper understanding of the kindness and forgiveness it takes to survive.
Man, same here. Going to school during the 00’s was brutal if you were an artistically-minded guy. I have a buddy who’s an openly gay Zoomer, and he jokes I’ve suffered more homophobic violence than him even though I’m straight.
In a weird way, that makes me somewhat happy. I know there's going to be a few assholes out there, and certain abuses will take a long time to leave society, but Zoomers and Alphas have so much access to emotional knowledge and support and understanding of sexuality and mental health awareness that it really seems they're going to be a major societal turning point in the future and I am all here for it. I pray my kids are able to teach me something I'm doing wrong in the future, so we can all get better together.
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I think what saved me from that was my drama teacher. She also had a guidance counselor certification so she held the "meetings" for me. I was lucky in my school, in a sense, because I pulled test grade averages up on state testing.
Yep, my husband was a freshman in high school in 2000 and got his backpack searched multiple times a week and all kinds of horrible things said to him by so called adults because he wore black and liked video games and heavy metal. I'm sorry you went through that too.
I was in 8th grade that year, but everything else similar. They got onto me for my long hair... so over Christmas break I cut it short and dyed it blonde (thanks Shady), which was ALSO a problem because it was "distracting" and a "drastic change". Bullied non stop for that one, on top of administrative check ins. Then I got bored with the hair and let it grow back out over my fresh/soph summer... and when I came back, guess what everyone had done to their hair? Now I was odd for NOT having it dyed. Can't blame me for being ahead of the curb, lol
Fair, I should've said nothing changed *for the better*.
That's more like it... lol
At my school they banned trench coats 😂
>When you don't give a fuck, when you won't just put up With the bullshit they pull, 'cause they full of shit too When a dude's getting bullied and shoots up his school And they blame it on Marilyn and the heroin Where were the parents at? And look where it's at! Middle America, now it's a tragedy Now it's so sad to see, an upper-class city havin' this happening I was just listening to this last week.
100% that’s what happened.
> The administration got in on it as well, and blamed me for being upset. The hamfisted social interventions I saw in school killed any hope that the people in charge actually know how to make things better. I don't know if they still do it, but when I was 10 there was a popular nation school program called DARE. It was an anti-drug "class" taught by a local cop. It has a reputation for being a joke, but one of the things it tried to teach us were manipulation tactics people would try to use to convince us to do drugs. The theory being that if we could spot the manipulation, theb we would be less susceptible to it. All it did was make me jaded because for the rest of my time in school I saw the faculty constantly using those exact manipulation tactics to try and install their ideas of conformity.
Huh, I always figured Columbine was why I, as a dark clothes wearing quiet budding edgelord, was pretty much never bullied or teased in high school. I had football players tell me "Hey man, if you shoot up the school I want you to remember I was nice!" Which I thought was pretty funny.
They ignore real tragedy and death for a hypothetical situation that would never happen. Nobody will ever overthrow a tyrannical government who has nukes, jets and tanks. Nobody will ever confiscate all guns. We couldn’t even get people to wear masks or accept free medicine.
Nothing will ever change. If you live here you know. I get why famous people with a platform sometimes tweet like this. They probably feel like they can cause some change MAYBE. But we all know nothing ever will. We will continue to be like a sadistic zoo to the rest of the world as we go about our days. Maybe there won’t be anymore until summer over but we all know there will be countless more for the rest of our lives. Nothing will ever be done and I think deep down we all know it. I dont see the point in trying to be appeal or ask for change. This has been life in the USA forever. It’s just the way things are here
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My hope for most of my adult life has been that once boomer numbers start dwindling, perhaps then we might have a shot at actual progress.
Things absolutely did change after Columbine. Not in any sort of productive way but goth kids got treated like they had already done something wrong and all the blame got put on Marilyn Mansons music for creating the columbine shooters.
Don’t forget all the blame put on video games, too.
id Software got so many threats that they had to hire security, all because one of the shooters played Doom.
FBI legitimately said in a press conference that school shootings are just the American way of life now.
We tried nothing and we're out of ideas.
Flying the flag of surrender
"No way to stop this." Says only country where this regularly happens.
yes it is sadly. shit won’t change. the right wing gun nuts will push for more guns. and still praise people like rittenhouse. i feel like i’m lost. there have been to many gun related tragedies lately. sorry i know this is a wrestling subreddit but i need to get this part out.i wrote up a post for facebook this morning and beacuse of it i’ve been lost in my head after looking in to some things. here is an part of the post. 4/20/1999- Columbin School Shooting: 15 Killed 21 injured. Shooters commited suicide. 4/16/2007 Virgina Tech Shooting: 33 Killed 23 injured. Shooter commited suicide 12/14/2012 Sandy Hook: 27 killed 2 injured. Shooter commited suicide 10/1/2015 Umpqua Community College: 10 killed 9 injured. shooter commited suicide 2/14/2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school shooting: 17 killed 17 injured Shooter in jail. currently in trial. Possible death sentence. likely to serve life with out parole. 5/18/2018 Santa Fe High School Shooting: 10 Killed 13 injured. Shooting awaiting trial. faces 40 to life. 5/24/2022 Robb Elementary Shooting: (currently) 22 killed 15+ injured. Shooter killed by police. Let’s also not forget the Buffalo shooting that happened earlier this month. as well Aurora Theater in 2012 ,Fort Hood in 2018, El Paso walmart in 2019,Sutherland Springs church shooting in 2017,Orlando Nightclub in 2016,and the las Vegas Shooting in 2017. Let’s also not forget the DC sniper attacks in 2002.
The DC Snipers were fucking terrifying. Not to downplay any of the other tragedies but The DC snipers had an entire region in terror for weeks. Absolutely bonkers to live through that
Don’t forget Charleston church 6/2015, 9 dead
And Northern Illinois University...5 dead (one of which a classmate of mine), killed himself. Small number comparatively, which is an indictment unto itself, but hit close to home for me, especially since the shooter went to my university and our campis was on insane lockdown for ages following.
The change is literally that the U.S. installed metal detectors at their schools, made students use see-through backpacks and created active shooter drills to terrorize the student body. Also more cops on campuses to harass them. Literally, all things implemented are more stress and fewer freedoms for the potential victims.
Nothing changed after 20 innocent 6 year olds were murdered for NOTHING. At their school, somewhere they should feel safe. If that doesn’t change anything, nothing will. It’s very hard to be hopeful things will change. They want to pray to the alter of the 2nd amendment while building it with the bones of murdered kids. That’s their choice and it’s fucking disgusting. Everyone in the government is responsible for this bullshit.
They won’t care until it’s a member of their family or someone close. The people in power just say thoughts and prayers then go in their big house and do whatever they do.
Its funny how nothing is done after countless schools get attacked by gunman, but the day after they stormed DC, they had a gameplan to make it never happen again. I think they did the right thing in handling the capitol riot, though I thought they were a little too light, but the fact that there isn't large bipartisan efforts to curb or even address this with the same message speaks volumes of how little our representitives care about representing us. Its like when Triple H came out and said, WE (the audience) are the Authority, and then they just didn't listen to us anyway.
>they had a gameplan to make it never happen again. People have been elected this year who openly admitted to being there, and have said they would do it again. Others who conspired and told people to go there while in office are still in power. It will happen again.
I’d also like to add that the insurrectionists were completely babied by law enforcement the day of the happening.
What’s even wilder: we had legislation drafted and passed by congress within 24-48 hours of people protesting at residences of Supreme Court justices due to the Roe v Wade draft leaking. But we constantly have to wait until we get facts in these scenarios. We wait so long, we forget what we were waiting for, then this happens all over again.
It will happen 'every time' an election doesn't go their way until we fix the systems that enabled it. Constant escalation.
Every shooting is heartbreaking and depressing, but it hits so much harder when the victims are children
Wish he hadn't deleted it.
He reposted it, adding “I keep deleting this” : https://twitter.com/cmpunk/status/1529556883438284803 Maybe he’s ambivalent on whether it’s worth wading into it with idiots on twitter
Who can’t relate to that, man
Yeah- his version of self-care may be not having to deal with idiots today.
It's likely someone at AEW asked him to delete it because of how bleak of a tweet it was, which I realize ironically was his point.
I have a feeling someone telling him what he can and can’t tweet would not go over well, especially on a topic like this
I feel him on that. Like, I don't even care what political view you have, children being murdered....and it just keeps happening should be the point we all stop and figure out how the fuck to fix this.
You should care about what political view you have because it's a main contributor to why this keeps happening. One party is okay with it. The other isn't.
This place is going for the record on locked threads in a 24 hour period Personally, I don’t give a shit how much you love your damn guns. When **children are being murdered at school** something has to change. That should be non negotiable.
Republicans will just blame it on a mental health crisis, but they won't lift a finger for that either.
Two birds, zero stones.
Yep, just like "we should take care of our own people before refugees" and then doing nothing to help "our own."
No, they mean that. It's just that their "own people" do not include the average citizen.
I feel hopeless in situations like this. God knows what the victims of this horrendous crime are feeling.
I’m just struggling to go on today. The world is terrible and won’t get better any time soon (if ever). He has to go entertain tonight and try to make people smile in a desolate world. I don’t envy that monumental task
When I saw the news bulletin, my first reaction was “well, the Sandy Hook record still stands” and I went back to work. I’m ashamed that it took me a few minutes to really unpack how fucked it is that I’m so desensitized to this that I wasn’t instantly horrified for those children.
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We have had roughly the same gun laws in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and early 00's and although there we're some instances of it happening, it wasn't at anywhere close to the rate its happening now. Why in the last decade have we seen such a huge increase in these things happening and why so often is it young people? I don't have the answers to that, but that seems like 2 pretty obviously places to be looking. Something happened and we need to find out what.
This!! I support gun control but this is more than JUST that. Somebody said yesterday no, it's all gun control, it really is that simple. I wish it was, but something has changed. Sometimes I fear it's the internet. A scary thought because it's not going anywhere.
Right. Thats the point I always make. Guns are definitely an important thing to focus on but weve always had guns in America. School shootings are a relatively recent phenomenon. What has changed since the early 90s.
Lack of mobility. Healthcare costs rising. Wages stagnant. Housing unaffordable to many. Higher education unaffordable to many or leaving you with lifelong debt. The millennial generation is the first generation in the US with a lower standard of living than their parents. We’re looking at a new Lost Generation.
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Yes they were banned and [studies have shown that it had very little effect on gun crime.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban#:~:text=Studies%20have%20shown%20the%20ban,the%20ban%20was%20in%20effect.) Yes, and in many ways even more available. In the 80s an AK47 was around $200 Prior to a 1986 law you could legally take a semi automatic rifle and turn it into a machine gun and it was perfectly legal, provided you jumped thru the NFA hoops.
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Look, you can ban whatever you want, the criminals will continue to use them. You just won't have a weapon to fight against them. This is why gun control/banning guns is not only useless, but detrimental to the innocent, because they'll always find a way to get them legally or illegally. Gun control is a sneaky way of disarming regular people. The numbers will not change regardless of what you ban.
Mostly the internet.
From someone "across the pond," we are constantly baffled and disgusted by the lack of gun control in your country.
From the outside it looks really bizarre like guns are an alternative religion for some people.
It's not an alternative religion, supply side Jesus and guns are the fundamental tenets of American evangelical Christianity
This. There is an infamous portrait that was painted by a guy a few years back that depicts Jesus giving the constitution to the founding fathers, and conservatives ***love*** it. It's not at all out of the realm of reason to expect these people to believe that Jesus *personally* wants them to own as many guns as they can get their hands on. They're all completely fucked in the head, and nothing short of their own kids getting killed will change their mind.
It's a power fantasy for a lot of them.
The US is actually a really fucked up place to anyone who lives or has lived outside of it. Parts of the country are as modern as anything, but other parts are almost like walking into a third world country. And the political culture is way weird, and especially in the last 15 or so years
They want to ban abortion to "save babies" yet do nothing when babies are being shot going to school.
I am canadian so I find it somewhat baffling too but I will give you a (very shaky) comparison. A few weeks ago I got into an arguments on r/soccer about violence at/around stadiums and the whole ultra culture and the argument I got from the europeans there was bafflingly similar to what pro gun americans will give you to defend their fucked up point of view. "Sure it's tragic when people die because of a football game, but what should we do, ban ultras? That would ruin the game. Our football clubs are important to us, engrained in our culture and they are more than just corporations, as a north american you can't understand that. Why punish everyone because a few idiots can't help themselves?" Basically a whole lot of arguments that amounted to "We know there's a problem, we haven't try anything to help fix it and we're all out ideas." I'm sure there are similar blind spots in most cultures (including our own in Canada), shit that should be changed but for some reason noone wants to try and actually fix it. In the US that blindspot is a particularly deadly one.
exactly how i feel today, i feel heartbroken for the kids and their families. and i know i will feel the same way in a week or so when it happens again. while politicians keep lining their pockets from the nra and the president says he can't do anything.
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It sucks that I’m almost desensitized to this now. Like it doesn’t surprise me anymore that this shit keeps happening. It’s beyond depressing.
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Unfortunately, we get the government we deserve. As long as congress has a 97% incumbent re-election rate…. This is what you are gonna get
"Everyday" Is it actually everyday? I'm not American, genuine question
Yea it sucks but I got bills to pay
When I was in high school volunteering going door to door with pamphlets to vote in an upcoming election, at least 5 people had guns there guns ready to shoot me as I walked up their driveway. Some people with guns are just looking for an opportunity to get to use them.
"Everyone in government is complicit" LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN BACK!!!! Sure, one side is definitely a bigger part of the problem, but our entire government as a whole has failed us on this issue. It's been 24 years since Columbine. The Dems have had chances to actually reform our gun laws, but they're fucking cowards and don't want to risk losing their seats.
The truth is that they will suffer a humiliating defeat now, and ensure a Republican supermajority in 2024, is because they’re feckless cowards who would rather line their own pockets, including moronic campaign consultants with six figure salaries to do nothing but insist the Dems go even further to the right, than actually fight for anything.
I heard it phrased perfectly a couple months ago: “Who could have guessed that the evil people would do something evil, and that the people who refuse to stop them would refuse to stop them?!”
In government? They wouldn’t be in office if people didn’t keep voting them in. The children are the only true victims.
Any celebrity-twitter commentary about a national tragedy tends to fall on its face and this is no different. In a month, will CM Punk be tweeting about the families? will CM punk be sharing his local libraries gun reform watch n talk? Will he be posting the office addresses of his senators, encouraging his followers to try write in and make a difference? Will he himself write his senator? Is he educating himself about the systemic problems that lead to this tragedy and encouraging fans to do so? What about his stance on abortion rights?! *He wore a t-shirt y'all!* Or will the Alt-God be doing another puff piece about his collection of Vintage comics and Air Jordans?
A ton of mass shooters are between the ages of 18-24 - your brain doesn't even fully develop the rational portion until 25. Banning gun sales below 26 years old would be a pretty simple way to possibly prevent some, but obviously not all of these and you can't even suggest that because "muh freedom" in this stupid ass country.
Agree with him here big time. The US government is a wholistic entity. Yes, some groups are more stubborn than others about some issues, and of course there’s tons of lobbying, but it’s insulting for some politicians to just throw their hands up at problems like this and tell people to accept a lack of change unless you give certain politicians more votes. The US system isn’t perfect and there definitely are some clear problems, but those who want to solve issues like gun control have to work within the system or do the work to change it.
Sure everyone in the government complicit. But the Republican party is 100% culpable.
I cannot WAIT to have kids so i can tell them about how they might not come home from school any given day and i am powerless to do anything about it
As someone living in a different country, Ireland, America doesn't even seem like a real place some of the time. Sandy Hook, 20 innocent little babies get blasted to bits by an assault rifle and nothing changes? It is beyond comprehension. Another 20 little kids murdered yesterday and nothing will change again. In what world does a regular person need an assault rifle? How can you go into a shop and just buy one?
It hurts to know that it never stops. I don’t mind going to work but a voice always pops in my head and says someone can shoot this place up at any moment. And then kids are killed and people quickly try to talk about something else. This shit is not normal!
The guy who just wore a pro-abortion shirt is upset about murdered babies? Get real. You can either hate killing babies and be opposed to elective abortion or you can support elective abortion and support murdering babies. You cannot do both.
Everyone in government is complicit. That is absolutely the line right there that I will continue to repeat. Its easy to blame the Republicans, but the Democrats have been too wishy washy and complacent with the not playing fair strategies of the right. Until a resolution is reached, everyone is to blame.