OT Hard to have a debate when the information is being skewed

You seriously think that idea hasn't crossed the mind of the Coen Brothers?

 

This is fine...and intelligent people also draw from experience and value systems...these are not exclusive but if you need a law library to talk to...I'm probably not your guy.....if that's all they've got....they're just reading and pasting view they agree with....that's why there is original thought...whether you respect those thoughts is another issue....it's a trend in this political environment to lead by insult....all good...I wrote a post about the submachine gun in the 20's and crime sprees on an earlier debate and it became an argument about what machine guns are..to each his own...consider that shootings in schools, churches, discos and country concerts in Vegas in my 64 years is a pretty new type of violence in the America I've grown up in. Bank robbers, criminals, sure...gang members ..sure..most of them in the 20s would not shoot up a high school...feel free to post a poll in response if you like

 

But that's really my point. Guns have been around for a long time. By your own admission.

So why suddenly in the past 20 years are kids shooting up schools? Guns aren't new. Schools aren't new. Bullying isn't new.

So what changed? Why aren't we looking at what HAS changed and not what HASN'T changed?

 

Good thing Einstein didn't have this attitude

 

If you didn't understand what I was getting at, then I don't know what to tell you...

Thoughts are great, lots of people have thoughts that they never act on. But those thoughts should lead to research. To theories that can be proven. Einstein didn't stop because he merely had a thought about relativity. He pushed forward and worked to prove his theories.

 

well this won't get much support but people playing games that are about killing people for hours on end to win the game in front of a screen.....bit different from when I went rabbit hunting in the fields as a kid....

 

so..good thing I'm not Einstein....but then again, I'm not trying to prove a point....I'm expressing an opinion about school shootings and whether guns keep you safer or not....that's my barstool

 

I think kids have definitely been desensitized because of games, movies, television.

I think we have seen an extreme growth of prescription drugs with kids in the past 20 years, and it's continuing to grow. I read somewhere that 90% of the shooters were on some kind of anti-depressant.

The internet and social media has changed our society in ways that we're only starting to understand.

My only point is that guns have been around for a long time. School shootings have been occurring for a long time as well, but not of this magnitude. So I just have a hard time understanding why we're not looking for the root cause of these shootings, instead of just laying the blame on the guns. It doesn't make sense to me.

 

I have pointed out one country that doesn't have the problems we have with this sort of violence....someone else pointed out Australia has successfully changed direction with gun laws....what happens then is a barrage liberal insults....then..the conversation is dead....somebody tried to link escalation in suicides to Australia's gun laws....fact....folks don't want to talk about it...they want to talk at each other

 

Make that 19

 

rage....that's the root cause...why rage...that's a complex sociological problem. Mental illness is also there but I think rage is the biggest issue.

 

To me, this is like blindly prescribing the same medication without actually looking at the symptoms of an illness.

One glaring example - "The most dramatic of these was a buyback program in which the government purchased and destroyed more than 600,000 long guns, nearly halving the number of gun-owning households in the country."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...top_mass_shootings_in_australia_probably.html

Then we have the US, "According to the Congressional Research Service, there are roughly twice as manyguns per capita in the United States as there were in 1968: more than 300 million guns in all."
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/05/462017461/guns-in-america-by-the-numbers

That was in 2015, so there's probably at least another 30-40 million guns on top of that number. From that link, manufacturing has doubled in recent years to 11 million guns produced in 2013. So implementing legislation similar to Australia simply is not realistic. If they only had 1.2 million guns in their country when they instituted that ban, that's not even 1% of the number of guns in the US. Think about that. Guns are a HUGE part of the culture here. To remove guns is, in my opinion, impossible. No database exists that lists who owns what, and where they can be found.

It's an impossible task. The only thing you can restrict is the sale of future guns. That's that only realistic change you can make. But that doesn't get the ones that are already out there off the streets.

 

Parental upbringing or lack thereof fits in this puzzle.

 

I think plenty of people have gone through moments of rage. So what is it about these people specifically that puts them over the top?

 

If the goal is to copy Australia, that means you need to remove roughly 150 million guns from circulation. The amount of money, man power, and cooperation from Federal, state, and local agencies that would be required to remove 150 million guns from circulation is, in my opinion, impossible. It's not going to happen. You'll never get the kind of backing from the government to do it. Our government has never shown the ability to remove anything from society. They couldn't do it with alcohol during prohibition. They can't do it with drugs like cocaine, meth, or marijuana.

Putting a man on the moon is childs play compared to trying to control something, like drugs, alcohol, or firearms.