Why is this happening? To me it's a combination of several things- I think the main issues are the overwhelming dosage of violence in movies, TV, music and video games. It has been marketed to be cool and even fun and is inescapable. Add to that an inadequate mental health system and more people mentally/emotionally ill and the increase of both illicit RX and street drugs and finally easy access to guns and it creates a toxic mix that breed tragedy on an epic scale that has no end in sight. So what to do? Needless to say thats a massive debate, but take these catagories- movie/music/TV/video violence, mental/emotional health, drugs and guns, break them down and find a way to fight this within those and maybe some headway can be made. Just my opinion.
I don't totally disagree with you, but I'll say that 17 year old are legally not allowed to see R-rated movies unless with their parents/guardians, or play M video games. Does that help?
First thing that popped into my mind. You have your policy debate today, if you must. I'll worry about viewing these deaths to fit my own politics later, if ever. How I was "poking fun" at 20 dead kindergartners, well, that's your issue, and totally fucking wrong in your assumption.
as info comes out there will be time to discuss if it could have been prevented, early warning signs, etc right now its best to just hug your kids, mourn for the victims families, and if you believe in a god, pray
There is no two paragraph explanation for "why?" All I can say is that I suspect what you are talking about BP are merely the symptoms of what ails us. There is a deep seeded sense of paranoia and a proclivity for resolving our issues with violence in our society that goes all the way back to the founding. I think that fundamentally this is who we are on some level, the only thing that seems to have changed in the last fifty years is that the veneer of civility and decency that used to temper our collective behavior has been gradually eroded. It seems we live in a culture that celebrates bloodsport (UFC, football, etc.) lionizes violent resolutions to conflicts and drapes it all in a red, white and blue flag and calls it "freedom." changing some laws, pointing fingers and looking for some institution, form of entertainment or whatever else as the root cause misses the point ... and it won't change a damned thing.
Pretty much my take, too. Lashing out with a valid opinion, and there are a lot of them when it comes to politicizing this massacre, while fueled with emotion isn't a foundation for a productive debate.
There is no great increase in violence in America, the opposite is actually true. There is no great increase in mass shootings, they are less frequent than death by bee sting or death by lightning strike. The increase is in media prostitution of these extremely rare but tragic events, and in the guileless opportunism by gun control advocates. Both should be utterly ashamed of their actions.
I have friends on Facebook who are going off on rants right now, and huge flame wars are breaking out. Kind of sad to see adults jump right into the blame game without taking time to appreciate what they have themselves, and to mourn 20+ families who are in similar situations as many of us, at least in terms of having kids in school.
I'm a believer in positive motivation trumping negative motivation. I'd like to hope its more effective to make positive improvements in peoples wellbeing then to add restrictions on what people can't do out of our fear of bad events happening.
"Half the nation's worst shootings ever have occurred since 2007" http://now.msn.com/newtown-school-shooting-ranks-among-the-worst-in-history?ocid=ansnowrel1
But is there an increase in the number, or frequency of them? That statistic just shows that they have become increasingly more violent, possibly due to the choice of weapons.
I posted this in the other thread but now that this one is up its probably more appropriate here. A little outside the box... I believe the root cause is our governments monetary policy and constant inflation. What you say? Here goes.... Think back to the 50's family structure. We had mostly single income family supported by the Dad with the Mom taking care of the kids. These kids had their Mom available to help nurture and support kids through their deveolpment and teaching them how to deal with issues. When inflation really kick started, once we got off the gold standard, the American family compensated by sending the Mom to work, at least part time, to make up the income difference. As time goes on and it bacame harder for these familys to make ends meat so the Moms became more and more career orientated spending less time at home to support their children emotionally so they could support their kids financially. Even when the parents were home they are often were so exhausted and not willing to deal with their kids. Each generation became less family oriented and more work oriented and with less parenting skills or abilities leading to a higher divorce rate and single parents with even less support for raising their children. Fast forward to the 90's where many more kids were raised by TV's and to the 2000's where TV's were replaced by video games and we are seeing an exponential increase in these types of troubled kids who are now becomeing young adults and have no copeing abilities.
Exactly. California at one point had over 4,000 gun deaths in a year - more than we lost soldiers in Iraq in 10 (Iraq much more violent, and similar sized population). Last year, 877 gun deaths in California.
