Discussion about the real reason why the United States has more mass shootings than o

[ccmdfd]

I have to imagine that desensitization to gun violence via Hollywood and video games also plays a role. It's a cop-out excuse in many ways but it's bound to be a factor with some individuals.
The destruction of the traditional family unit is also a factor in my opinion. There are a lot of angry children and now adults that were basically raised by wolves.
You can't blame society and just give these people a free pass but you also can't ignore that the USA has had a lot of guns for a long time and yet these mass shootings seemingly are a relatively new occurrence.

A couple of years ago I had a patient who was a former drill sergeant / drill instructor ( whatever they're actually called nowadays) in one of the Armed forces, can't remember which one.

Somehow we got to talking about things unrelated to his health. He told me they had done some studies that said that the younger recruits were a lot more Trigger Happy than older recruits and that they had blamed that on the video game industry and fascination. The younger kids had no concept of consequences.

Don't know if that's in the literature anywhere, but it certainly was his point and he said it had been studied.

[corneileous]

I appreciate that a lot of you guys have touched on the part about how a lot of these mass shootings numbers are probably a lot more highly inflated than what they actually are, especially on what is now considered a mass shooting from what was once considered a mass shooting.

I thank all of you guys for your responses because I know gun control is not the answer, nor is gun bans, gun free zones, red flag laws and all that bullshit but without knowing or even thinking about what was said here beforehand, it really makes a person wonder why we have more of a problem here than they do other countries. Which, I still don’t think either Australia or Canada is a very good example by some of these people to rely on when it comes to saying gun bans work but in some of the European countries, like I said, can make a person wonder if they didn’t have all the information to help their decision on how they feel about whether or not extreme gun control in other countries is actually the sole reason why they don’t have a problem like we do.


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[camel]

When you look at whatever event you are seeing ( mass shooting, mass vehicle assault etc). The circumstances involved are each unique to the event and do not lump into clearly defined patterns of this is the problem so we can do x to fix it and y is sunshine and roses.

It’s a people problem. Not a cultural problem not a government problem. Availability of a tool to commit crimes as heinous as murder is not the problem.

[Paul Blackburn]

There is no good reason to go out and shoot innocent people.

You have to be a complete dumb ass.

[CraigS]

Is this # mass shootings per 100,000 population? Or # mass shootings per country? Also why just mass 'shootings' vs mass killings.

[El Cid]

Just my opinion:

Main reasons:
- No real mental health treatment options and far too many mentally ill out among the public. They don't get held/locked up until they do something horrific.
- "Gun Free Zones" which create easy victim pools.

Contributing reasons:
- Over medication of Americans (especially wrt mental health issues).
- Violent video games that desensitize (especially in young minds who don't have parents teaching them moral values).
- Sensationalized media coverage and perceived "status" of people who do these terrible things.
- Refusal by the left to do ANYTHING to protect soft targets (especially schools), and instead focus on the moronic fantasy of banning guns/mags/etc.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

There's no real mental health diagnosis before the fact. What seems to come out is there is a sense of grievance from many of the shooters. This leads to them wanting to make a statement to influence society by their making a statement with their 'revenge'. Be it a racial enemy, governmental enemy, employer enemy, relationship enemy. Add suicidal ideation and wanting to die a warrior's death instead of lone loser suicide. Now, some of the shooters do later diagnosis as discernible mental illness but not all by all means.

Some of the sense of grievance may be related to our destruction of good work places to crappy jobs. This may be esp. true in the increase in certain urban area violence, gangs, drugs, respect (which might be separated from the seemingly random shooter). Pretty clear in the USA and across the world, that loss of solid employment for males leads to area disintegration, more kids out of wedlock, single mom families (not to criticized those mothers), more gangs and associated gang violence.

Access to guns - of course, that is a factor in more fatalities given the ease of use, separation distance. However, get rid of the societal factors and gun ownership isn't that much of a problem - example Switzerland. Are games and TV a factor - research of a direct connection is iffy for driving normal folks over the age. Does it give info or channel those prone - probably. The fetishizing of past events is well known and seems to focus those going over the edge. The criminlogist/psychologist world has been saying for years that the extreme coverage of such events, replaying, showing grief, etc. acts as vicarious reinforcement for the next shooter. They get rewarded by the fantasy of their proposed act seeing the effects of others. So the media shows a beautiful young female, described as lighting up the room, helping others, etc. Biff - the great athlete, etc. Let's cry and wave candles. See our pain. Well, I want to inflict that and show the world that the Biffs deserve it and you mistreated me.

So there's no guaranteed causality. Societal factors leading to grievance. Reciprocal altruism by teaching society a lesson how you treated me with the warriors' death suicide. Some real mental illness. Crime related, urban problems related to discrimination and lack of solid employment.

Gun free zones - our focus perhaps. Yes, we have cases of target choice based on that but plenty of shooters in carry friendly areas.

Does the media downplay successful gun based defense - you bet they do. Some changes though. CNN had a good story on
Asian-American gun owners and the Washington Post had a good photo essay on Black SD oriented gun owners. However, the major editorial focus is clearly anti.

Hear me the clouds. Clarence get off your butt and say clearly that the right of SD is fundamental. No more history of Dumbford Bumblenuts in 1689 with his blunderbuss. Carry should be allowed for all law abiding citizens unless there is a strictly technical local reason (MRI room). No extreme classes - a day should suffice if proposed. No bans on semi auto guns based on features and capacity. Same for mag bans. That's it - say that. Cut to the chase. Shall not be infringed is sufficient. Too many legal scholars on the pro side think the historical standard is too messy. No remanding cases because you want to scold the lower court. You delay rights with such dominance BS.

[RevolverRob]

Is this # mass shootings per 100,000 population? Or # mass shootings per country? Also why just mass 'shootings' vs mass killings.

Ultimately, because the United States politicians run on four core issues at present:

Guns
Abortion
War
Immigration

Those four issues form the core of any political stance (Right, Center, Left) in our country and they're precisely why we don't do things like...pass legislation to protect guns or protect abortions. Or make unilateral Congressional-approved declarations of war. Because the money is in all of these things.

Money for guns. Money for abortions. Money for war. Money for immigration.

Money for politicians.

Money is to be made in creating drama and capitalizing on it. Some 90% of economic growth in our country is pinned to futures, speculations, options, risk. Anything that mitigates risk is a challenge to making dinero, moolah, baksheesh...And the only thing our 'leaders' want more than to stroke their own egos is fat bank accounts.

The problem in our country is not gun violence or even violence, it's politics. We can't even get accurate numbers on violence, because we don't want them. We're afraid those numbers will either be too bad or too good. But regardless our 'leaders' don't care, because those numbers don't make them money. Those numbers throw cold, hard, facts into the open, cold water on a hot fire, and that's not good for their bottom line.

___

Some countries run on having more facts brought to light in their political process. Either due to culture, laws, or just that smaller populations mean that there is still more direct honesty about things. There is really no denying that the larger the country, the more money it is worth and makes, the more obfuscatory the political process becomes. And still, the United States is the highest performing country with a population over 130 million people with the greatest transparency in its political process. Could we be better? Damn skippy. Could we be worse? Oh fuck yes we could.

[TiroFijo]

Just an observation from a foreigner (south america)...

The first thing that strikes us when we first visit the US is the amount of lonely people, and even with some apparent mental issues due to this: talking alone while eating, behaving funny, etc.

All this in contrast to much poorer and less organized countries, with more corrupt governments, but with some family/friends/neighbours/social interactions that somehow help people cope with their mental adjustment problems.

[Joe in PNG]

Just an observation from a foreigner (south america)...

The first thing that strikes us when we first visit the US is the amount of lonely people, and even with some apparent mental issues due to this: talking alone while eating, behaving funny, etc.

All this in contrast to much poorer and less organized countries, with more corrupt governments, but with some family/friends/neighbours/social interactions that somehow help people cope with their mental adjustment problems.

PNG has pretty much nil mental health infrastructure, and sadly, it shows. Crazy people having violent screaming fits in public with a bushknife in hand is a very common occurrence.