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

How are we supposed to have an actual debate about a topic like gun control when there are organizations out there who are spreading misleading data?

They put out a number, like 18 school shootings in 2018, and that number spreads like wildfire because it's an attention grabber. Nobody fact checks it. Nobody verifies that it's true. They just run with it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...1d91fcec3fe_story.html?utm_term=.9a358ad1d163

"Just five of Everytown’s 18 school shootings listed for 2018 happened during school hours and resulted in any physical injury. Three others appeared to be intentional shootings but did not hurt anyone. Two more involved guns — one carried by a school police officer and the other by a licensed peace officer who ran a college club — that were unintentionally fired and, again, led to no injuries. At least seven of Everytown’s 18 shootings took place outside normal school hours.

Shootings of any kind, of course, can be traumatic, regardless of whether they cause physical harm.

A month ago, for example, a group of college students were at a meeting of a criminal-justice club in Texas when a student accidentally fired a real gun, rather than a training weapon. The bullet went through a wall, then a window. Though no one was hurt, it left the student distraught.

Is that a school shooting, though? Yes, Everytown says.

“Since 2013,” the organization says on its website, “there have been nearly 300 school shootings in America — an average of about one a week.”

But since Everytown began its tracking, it has included these dubious examples — in August 2013, a man shot on a Tennessee high school’s property at 2 a.m.; in December 2014, a man shot in his car late one night and discovered the next day in a Pennsylvania elementary school’s parking lot; in August 2015, a man who climbed atop the roof of an empty Texas school on a Sunday morning and fired sporadically; in January 2016, a man in an Indiana high school parking lot whose gun accidentally went off in his glove box, before any students had arrived on campus; in December 2017, two teens in Washington state who shot up a high school just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, when the building was otherwise empty."

How are we supposed to have a debate about this topic while we have organizations spreading misinformation for their own purposes?

When you hear the term "school shooting," do you think of a guy killing himself on school property at 2 in the morning?

 

Nobody who shares that stat seems to fact check it. I saw riverman share that stat in another thread.

 

I mean that makes sense to me, I’d feel more comfortable sending my daughter to school if I knew there was a reliable and well trained security team in place.

 

We spent $598 billion on our military in 2015.

If that's defense spending, maybe we should use some of that "defense" to protect our schools?

 

You prolly should clarify this.
As unless you're going to call white nationalists a gang. Or the 15 year old who shot up his school in washinton... gang members... I'm not sure it applies.


So please clarify.

 

I think that is 100% a fair point.

 

I think it’s pretty clear... adding security would have added benefits other than prevent mass school shootings.

Like reducing gang violence within schools, which exists largely.

 

Yes, adding security would help at schools pending every student enters from one door. But that doesn't always happen, especially at high schools.
Which is a fine statement.

But this florida school shooting, nor the one up in Washington had nothing to do with gang violence. I bet I could keep going if I really wanted to....
These kids had no involvement in gangs.
Unless you're ready to call a white nationalist group a gang.(I'm not sure they should be qualified as such)

 

I prefer to talk about issues that concern me without pasted polls, news articles, etc....the fakenews trend is now the debate...I've lived in a country with gun laws and one without....so I compare the experiences....I've been assaulted with handguns in America....I draw from that experience....early in the morning for me it's conversational...not debating the articles on the AP feed endlessly....I'm not selling my position on gun control...I'm disgusted when 17 high school kids get shot be a teenager .....I try to address it but don't always come to the conversation armed with pages of info to use as my opinion....because it's my opinion ...Denny loves to throw his library at me.....rather than the debate ping pong game...how about a conversation about how you actually feel about the situation....without making someone read your library or news clips....original thought..a dying form of communication

 

That’s why a security TEAM is needed, to guard all unlocked accesses to the school.

And no one is saying the shooters were gangbangers... but a security team would help with the amount of kids getting jumped for stupid gang shit. A positive by product.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States


I find it hard to believe that gang violence had anything to do with many of these school shootings.
To say it does I find it to be bunk.

 

And that's a completely fine thing to say.
However that's not what denny said. Nor what he seems to be asserting.

He said security at schools will keep the gangs out and that will at the very least vastly reduce the amount of shootings at school.

I think that's a pretty dumb comment given most of these kids who shoot up schools aren't affiliated with gangs.
Gang violence exists, but they're not the ones killing 18 people in florida.

 

There's no such thing as original thought. Every thought has been thought before. Intelligent people use facts and evidence to support their thoughts and claims. Anecdotal evidence is weak at best.

Despite all the horrible news that we hear, violence is down. We are currently living in one of, if not the, safest times to be alive in human history. You wouldn't know it by watching the news though.