“It’s NOT a gun control issue, it’s a mental health issue!”
“Then we’re expanding access to mental healthcare?”
“Fuck no, that’s SOCIALISM and psychiatry is bullshit anyway!”
It’s frustrating because I believe it’s a mental health issue primarily. But god forbid we actually help people deal with their trauma and pain.
It can be both! And a problem with bullying in schools. And lack of ways to escape poverty. But having any changes that affect any of those things is verboten to the places where land gets more of a vote than people in cities do.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m for gun control. I just believe that if we lived in some utopia with zero mental health issues, it wouldn’t be an issue regardless.
Therapy and meds can’t fix poverty perpetrated by the ruling class.
But I generally agree.
And did you know utopia means “place that cannot exist” while eutopia means “a perfect place”. Not correcting you, I just think it’s funny that euphemistic drift has flopped it fucky.
Never thought if describing the electoral college that way but it is actually a pretty good analogy
It’s not even a mental health issue either, ultimately! The traumas that result in mental health issues themselves have a cause, which tends to boil down to systemic inequity of some form or another. And our rulers not only have fuck-all interest in fixing that, but also a vested interest in actively perpetuating it.
My opinion is that these shootings are a greater failure in this country than simply gun control. There is a LOT we need to work on to decrease mass shootings. While I admit, I am more on the personal responsibility side of the gun control debate, I am not against well thought through legislation. I don’t think that most of the proposals for gun control are rational, detailed, and written with an even cursory understanding of firearms.
To start to address mass shootings, I believe that we need to expand our healthcare in this country. Both physical and mental healthcare. If people are physically well, and can get treatment that doesn’t threaten to bankrupt them, then they will have more opportunities to develop better coping mechanisms. They will be able to seek healthcare options and not feel like they are left to fend for themselves. The isolation from a society that doesn’t care or help them is detrimental, and while I have no studies to back it up, I would think that a society with a healthcare system thats prerogative is the patient instead of profit would help.
I think the aspect of mental healthcare speaks for itself. So people don’t lash out and can seek other means of dealing with issues. I also believe that the stigma of seeking mental healthcare and it’s ability to impact people’s rights and job prospects is a hindrance. We should not make it so that if someone seems help, that they are punished for it.
I believe we have a big culture shift that needs to occur. Too much do we use rhetoric that reinforces that firearms and gun violence is the ultimate solution to a disagreement. “Fuck around and find out” when used in the context of firearms is terrible. Firearms should be considered the last resort to protect life. Not property and not your feelings.
Firearms are not conflict resolution! We need to work to give people better ways of solving and deescalating conflicts.
We need to work on our wealth disparity. We should be elevating our poorest so that they don’t have to resort to violence or crime. As most firearm crimes are not mass shootings, we need to address the other parts of firearm use.
We need to work on our community involvement. Bring people together, break down the walls between us, and get past the cliques.
There is a lot we need to do, but gun control is only a small piece of solving gun violence.
Addition:
Stop the 24 hour news cycle and please please please stop naming criminals by name and showing their faces. Delete the “claim to fame” angle that comes with horrible crimes.
For community involvement, what comes to mind for me is: walkable neighbourhoods, libraries even in small towns and local sports clubs.
But there must be a minimum of gun laws: Buying, owning, operating only under license, storage at home in a safe and ammunition in a separate safe. That’s really the bare minimum.
For those who haven’t heard, yes, there was another school shooting, this time a highschool in Georgia (United States, obviously). 2 students and 2 teachers were killed, nine people injured, and the suspect is in custody. (How they’re not dead is beyond me)
I’ve gotten so used to school shootings that I see one like that and think “hooray, only four deaths!”
Unfortunately it did work out better than others, and yet two teachers and two 14 year old children were killed.
The FBI had been out to see the 14yr old who murdered classmates and teachers. Spoken with his parents, and him. He denied everything, no probable cause, so they put the schools on alert, and that made for a quicker response.
Which means this went really well by comparison to other school shootings, and yet it clearly wasn’t good enough - two 14 year old students and two teachera died.
The FBI had been out to see the 14yr old who murdered classmates and teachers. Spoken with his parents, and him. He denied everything, no probable cause, so they put the schools on alert, and that made for a quicker response.
Oh, so we knew this kid was a problem but we didn’t actually do anything but tell the school to be ready to get shot up.
What a fucking stupid country.
They also went to the kids house and investigated, but they didn’t have proof of anything that would meet any criteria for arrest, yeah.
So they discussed with the parents, discussed with the school, discussed with the police, etc. I can’t say I blame the FBI here for what they were able to do based on anonymous reports about comments made online. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with giving any federal agency just free reign to arrest on anonymous reports alone, that’s just opening a new form of swatting to me.
But clearly, its not enough, and that’s the issue. For example, restricting the access to guns would have been good. Restricting access on a larger scale would be better.
Instead… We have two teachers and two 14yr old kids dead.
Yeah I was watching something on TV and they cut to a special news report to cover this. I was shocked. Isn’t there a school shooting pretty much every day now? Why did this warrant cutting into valuable day time TV programming? So I’m watching this breaking news wondering what’s so special about this particular shooting that can’t wait until the nightly news at 10:00, and the local police chief is giving a press conference breaking down in tears about how he never thought he would have to handle a school shooting and I’m like has your dimbass been paying attention to anything that’s been going on in this country for the last few decades? I would expect you to have a manual on your desk with procedures on how to handle this. Instead this yokel is rambling on about good and evil. I just smh.
No there isn’t, the media and gun control groups love to act like there is. The reality is much more nuanced than guns bad. Ban them and all this magically stops
Will probably work better than whatever is done now. Which is fuck all.
It won’t, we fix the underlying foundation. You don’t repair a house with foundation issues by painting the walls.
It’s literally the foundation in your stupid analogy. But whatever, it’s your kids, what do I care.
I’ll keep upvoting these Onion posts every week it happens.
No it’s not, people don’t become violent because of an object…and you’re right, if you don’t live here then keep your nose out of the issue.
