Another Fucking Mass Shooting At US School

[steve_bank]

I think our current problem is mostly cultural.

I think it's genetic - a product of overpopulation-meets-technology.
I know a lot of people who will start in on the vast theoretical "carrying capacity" of the earth at the first mention of overpopulation. But my definition has nothing to do with carrying capacity. It's about sustainable quality of life.

If you compare the population density in the US with most of the rest of the world, this theory falls apart completely.

Average population density includes places like Wyoming and Kansas.

 

[steve_bank]

Here in Seattle it is exacerbated by a diminished police force, but the amount of violent crime is overwhelming regardless.

At the beginning of the year in Seattle there was court backlog of about 4,000 cases.

The progressive mantra is we are going to treat all as a mental problem and treat our way out of the crisis.

It is not hard to understand. When Washington state law prohibits high speed chase unlees it is say a child being kidnapped car thefts go up.

If there is no fear of punishment or there is a lack of empathy for others or if someone does not care if he lives or dies, the result is mass shootings and random shootings.

 

[Copernicus]

I think our current problem is mostly cultural.

I think it's genetic - a product of overpopulation-meets-technology.
I know a lot of people who will start in on the vast theoretical "carrying capacity" of the earth at the first mention of overpopulation. But my definition has nothing to do with carrying capacity. It's about sustainable quality of life.

If you compare the population density in the US with most of the rest of the world, this theory falls apart completely.

Average population density includes places like Wyoming and Kansas.

But the problem in the US isn't population density, which is much worse in many other developed countries than in the US. It is the easy availability of guns, especially military style weapons that lend themselves to mass murder, and extremely lax regulation on gun ownership. That is an American thing.

 

[laughing dog]

This shooting will probably fade from public consciousness even more quickly than Sandy Hook, which made a big splash. However, Texas is one of the worst states for gun fetishism, so the gun lobby will be able to bat down calls for new gun control legislation fairly easily. Almost all the politicians there brag about how good they are with guns.

What is the point of new laws if the old ones are not enforced? It’s a straw man that conservatives don’t want to get illegal guns off the streets. But if local judges and prosecutors are lenient on criminals using guns, what do you expect? ACAB! Abolish prisons! Bail reform! Okay.

Do you have any evidence that there is leniency in TEXAS ( a very red state) where this shooting occurred?

 

[laughing dog]

These shootings will continue sporadically (at least I hope only sporadically) until enough US citizens become sufficiently sickened to act. I seriously doubt that is going to happen in my lifetime or that of my children.

 

[prideandfall]

If there is no fear of punishment or there is a lack of empathy for others or if someone does not care if he lives or dies, the result is mass shootings and random shootings.

hard disagree - this is entirely the wrong take, IMO, and is a sad view of the world for you to have.

it's not about a fear of punishment, it's about a reduction in humanity caused by late stage capitalism.

seattle is a perfect example: predatory capitalism leads to vast wealth inequality, which leads to insane levels of gentrification that causes massive displacement.
that displacement leads to a domino effect on its own, and then combined with the national situation for the last 5 years and what you end up with is a huge number of people who have been ejected from the social contract.

i've been saying this for years: if you shit on people long enough and deprive them of their end of the benefit from adhering to the rule of law, eventually they're going to stop adhering to the rule of law.
people in the US so easily forget that civilization only works when everyone agrees to participate, and everyone will only agree to participate if they're getting something from the deal.

 

[prideandfall]

But the problem in the US isn't population density, which is much worse in many other developed countries than in the US. It is the easy availability of guns, especially military style weapons that lend themselves to mass murder, and extremely lax regulation on gun ownership. That is an American thing.

especially where it concerns school shootings i think a huge issue is cultural - specifically, that in the US the people hate nothing more than someone who stands up to a bully.
it's OK to be a bully in the US, in fact it's passively accepted. and if you're a jock or otherwise belong to the social of economic upper class, it's actively protected from any sort of limitation or retribution.
but... if you're a kid who gets bullied, and you stand up to the bullying and you fight back, the school administration system will bring the hammer of fucking god down on you, and you'll find that defending yourself is an intolerable crime that gets you lectured and shamed and punished.

the lesson is that being a bully has zero consequence and you can escalate as much as you want.
the lesson is that you have no options within the existing system to stop bullying and so your only recourse is to go outside the system.

 

[Toni]

I think our current problem is mostly cultural.

I think it's genetic - a product of overpopulation-meets-technology.
I know a lot of people who will start in on the vast theoretical "carrying capacity" of the earth at the first mention of overpopulation. But my definition has nothing to do with carrying capacity. It's about sustainable quality of life.

If you compare the population density in the US with most of the rest of the world, this theory falls apart completely.

Average population density includes places like Wyoming and Kansas.

What? There are no rural areas in Great Britain? France? Sweden? The US population density is fairly low, particularly among the developed nations. We're not too over populated.

 

[Toni]

But the problem in the US isn't population density, which is much worse in many other developed countries than in the US. It is the easy availability of guns, especially military style weapons that lend themselves to mass murder, and extremely lax regulation on gun ownership. That is an American thing.

especially where it concerns school shootings i think a huge issue is cultural - specifically, that in the US the people hate nothing more than someone who stands up to a bully.
it's OK to be a bully in the US, in fact it's passively accepted. and if you're a jock or otherwise belong to the social of economic upper class, it's actively protected from any sort of limitation or retribution.
but... if you're a kid who gets bullied, and you stand up to the bullying and you fight back, the school administration system will bring the hammer of fucking god down on you, and you'll find that defending yourself is an intolerable crime that gets you lectured and shamed and punished.

the lesson is that being a bully has zero consequence and you can escalate as much as you want.
the lesson is that you have no options within the existing system to stop bullying and so your only recourse is to go outside the system.

I've lived in the US all my life and I've never found any of that to be even a little bit true.

 

[prideandfall]

I've lived in the US all my life and I've never found any of that to be even a little bit true.

i've lived in the US my entire life and i've found it extremely true, though granted i've found it extremely true anecdotally because it's largely one of those things that IMO is like how "anti-abortion people don't care about life, they care about controlling women" is true even though i don't know i could prove it to a standard of scientific scrutiny.

anyways...
obviously our culture pays lip service to the idea that bullying is bad, but if you look at the reality behind how we treat the existence of bullying it proves the lie.
what do we say about bullying? "ignore them and they'll go away" or "don't stoop to their level" or "just go tell an adult" - the narrative about bullying is always about how to respond to it, how to passively defend yourself or how to retreat and beg a higher authority to intervene.
(excepting the single "punch 'em in the nose" cliche but even that is always shown as a radical notion outside of the bounds of accepted behavior)

the narrative in the US is *never* about what a piece of shit you are for bullying and how being an asshole is socially intolerable.
the lessons and the lectures are never about framing life within civilization about cooperation and tolerance, it's always about "well boys will be boys what can ya do"

we love the idea that the scrappy underdog will stand up and take a swing at their oppressors, but the reality is that if you do that what ends up happening is you get suspended for a week for fighting and the kid who was harassing you for 3 months leading up to that is told "oh now be nice" and otherwise left alone.

 

[Toni]

I've lived in the US all my life and I've never found any of that to be even a little bit true.

i've lived in the US my entire life and i've found it extremely true, though granted i've found it extremely true anecdotally because it's largely one of those things that IMO is like how "anti-abortion people don't care about life, they care about controlling women" is true even though i don't know i could prove it to a standard of scientific scrutiny.

anyways...
obviously our culture pays lip service to the idea that bullying is bad, but if you look at the reality behind how we treat the existence of bullying it proves the lie.
what do we say about bullying? "ignore them and they'll go away" or "don't stoop to their level" or "just go tell an adult" - the narrative about bullying is always about how to respond to it, how to passively defend yourself or how to retreat and beg a higher authority to intervene.
(excepting the single "punch 'em in the nose" cliche but even that is always shown as a radical notion outside of the bounds of accepted behavior)

the narrative in the US is *never* about what a piece of shit you are for bullying and how being an asshole is socially intolerable.
the lessons and the lectures are never about framing life within civilization about cooperation and tolerance, it's always about "well boys will be boys what can ya do"

we love the idea that the scrappy underdog will stand up and take a swing at their oppressors, but the reality is that if you do that what ends up happening is you get suspended for a week for fighting and the kid who was harassing you for 3 months leading up to that is told "oh now be nice" and otherwise left alone.

I agree that schools are often ineffective or worse, nonresponsive with regards to dealing with bullying. Yes, sometimes one does get suspended for fighting the kid who has been harassing you for 3 months--or a couple of years, in the case of my kid. It was not the end of the world. It did not keep him from being accepted into the college of his choice. I believe the bully ended up doing some time for some petty crime or another--don't remember and don't care.

But---there is no way on earth that the shooter in this school shooting was being bullied by the elementary aged kids he murdered, or their teacher. He may well have had a horrible home life. Reportedly, he also killed his grandmother. No doubt there will be many attempts at analyzing what happened. It won't make a difference in preventing the next shooting. There will be a next.

 

[bilby]

I think our current problem is mostly cultural.

I think it's genetic - a product of overpopulation-meets-technology.
I know a lot of people who will start in on the vast theoretical "carrying capacity" of the earth at the first mention of overpopulation. But my definition has nothing to do with carrying capacity. It's about sustainable quality of life.

If you compare the population density in the US with most of the rest of the world, this theory falls apart completely.

Average population density includes places like Wyoming and Kansas.

World population density includes places like Hong Kong and The Netherlands.

You are simply wrong here; It’s up to you how stupid you wish to appear clinging to this obvious error, but I would strongly advise bailing out of your untenable position earlier rather than later.

 

[prideandfall]

But---there is no way on earth that the shooter in this school shooting was being bullied by the elementary aged kids he murdered, or their teacher.

oh i'm not saying that he was, in this specific case - i'm saying that a pervasive cultural attitude that if you're being bullied there's effectively nothing you can do to effect any kind of relief from the situation, plus an insidious mindset that guns and violence are a viable solution to one's problems, plus the generally insane emotional intensity of teenage years (which is another thing we do NOTHING to prepare children for or how to cope with it and get some perspective on it) leads to an incredibly obvious endpoint where taking out your grievances through an act of wanton murder is not only predictable it's completely inevitable.

He may well have had a horrible home life. Reportedly, he also killed his grandmother. No doubt there will be many attempts at analyzing what happened. It won't make a difference in preventing the next shooting. There will be a next.

of course there will, because mass shootings are not a glitch in the program - they are the system working as intended.
human social evolution and ingrained behaviors have not yet caught up to modern civilization, so there's way too many instincts for a world in which we no longer live that conflict with the societies we're trying to maintain.
countries with lower incidence of violence seem to have infrastructure which attempts to limit the opportunities for these instincts to manifest: IE, *generally speaking* people who are physically healthy and stable tend to be more mentally healthy and stable and tend to go off on violent benders less frequently.

in a country where you're just born into a shark pool and whether you live or die is more or less a crap shoot and nobody gives a shit, violent reactionary behavior is the expected outcome.

 

[Copernicus]

I've lived in the US all my life and I've never found any of that to be even a little bit true.

i've lived in the US my entire life and i've found it extremely true, though granted i've found it extremely true anecdotally because it's largely one of those things that IMO is like how "anti-abortion people don't care about life, they care about controlling women" is true even though i don't know i could prove it to a standard of scientific scrutiny.

anyways...
obviously our culture pays lip service to the idea that bullying is bad, but if you look at the reality behind how we treat the existence of bullying it proves the lie.
what do we say about bullying? "ignore them and they'll go away" or "don't stoop to their level" or "just go tell an adult" - the narrative about bullying is always about how to respond to it, how to passively defend yourself or how to retreat and beg a higher authority to intervene.
(excepting the single "punch 'em in the nose" cliche but even that is always shown as a radical notion outside of the bounds of accepted behavior)

the narrative in the US is *never* about what a piece of shit you are for bullying and how being an asshole is socially intolerable.
the lessons and the lectures are never about framing life within civilization about cooperation and tolerance, it's always about "well boys will be boys what can ya do"

we love the idea that the scrappy underdog will stand up and take a swing at their oppressors, but the reality is that if you do that what ends up happening is you get suspended for a week for fighting and the kid who was harassing you for 3 months leading up to that is told "oh now be nice" and otherwise left alone.

I suspect that I've lived in the US even longer than you have, and I agree with Toni. This shooting had absolutely nothing to do with bullying and everything to do with the fact that a disturbed young man could walk into a gun store and buy two assault rifles without needing any licensing, registration, gun safety training, insurance, waiting period, or interview with local police. Every country has disturbed teenagers, but ours allows them to buy military style weapons that can be used to easily commit mass murder. However, I do agree with you that Americans seem inured to mass murder, even mass murder of very young children. Our culture has been brutalized by the everyday level of violence and mayhem. If Americans actually wanted to change that situation, they would simply stop voting for Republicans until some serious measures were taken to pass sensible gun control laws. That won't happen, given the chokehold that Republicans have on our legislatures and now the Supreme Court. Any gun legislation that Democrats could get through Congress and signed into law would likely be struck down by the ideological imbalance on that body.

 

[TV and credit cards]

This shooting will probably fade from public consciousness even more quickly than Sandy Hook, which made a big splash. However, Texas is one of the worst states for gun fetishism, so the gun lobby will be able to bat down calls for new gun control legislation fairly easily. Almost all the politicians there brag about how good they are with guns.

What is the point of new laws if the old ones are not enforced? It’s a straw man that conservatives don’t want to get illegal guns off the streets. But if local judges and prosecutors are lenient on criminals using guns, what do you expect? ACAB! Abolish prisons! Bail reform! Okay.

I see. So your idea is that mass shootings like this happen because of liberals and lenient law enforcement. What's the point of actually making it difficult for a troubled teenager to buy two assault rifles on his 18th birthday? The solution is to get tougher on criminals using guns. That kid would have thought twice before walking into an elementary school in body armor (in case the teachers and kids were armed) with two assault rifles.

A rational shooter would have.


A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This shooting will probably fade from public consciousness even more quickly than Sandy Hook, which made a big splash. However, Texas is one of the worst states for gun fetishism, so the gun lobby will be able to bat down calls for new gun control legislation fairly easily. Almost all the politicians there brag about how good they are with guns.

What is the point of new laws if the old ones are not enforced? It’s a straw man that conservatives don’t want to get illegal guns off the streets. But if local judges and prosecutors are lenient on criminals using guns, what do you expect? ACAB! Abolish prisons! Bail reform! Okay.

I see. So your idea is that mass shootings like this happen because of liberals and lenient law enforcement. What's the point of actually making it difficult for a troubled teenager to buy two assault rifles on his 18th birthday? The solution is to get tougher on criminals using guns. That kid would have thought twice before walking into an elementary school in body armor (in case the teachers and kids were armed) with two assault rifles.

Yeah, an 18 year old non-felon massacred how many children, and Trausti and TSwizzle feel they need to mount their partisan hobby horses and launch on their personal crusades... and no, their crusades aren’t about mental health.

 

[Elixir]

I think our current problem is mostly cultural.

I think it's genetic - a product of overpopulation-meets-technology.
I know a lot of people who will start in on the vast theoretical "carrying capacity" of the earth at the first mention of overpopulation. But my definition has nothing to do with carrying capacity. It's about sustainable quality of life.

If you compare the population density in the US with most of the rest of the world, this theory falls apart completely.

Average population density includes places like Wyoming and Kansas.

World population density includes places like Hong Kong and The Netherlands.

You are simply wrong here; It’s up to you how stupid you wish to appear clinging to this obvious error, but I would strongly advise bailing out of your untenable position earlier rather than later.

I’m not talking about carrying capacity, or how many cows Wyoming can support. I’m talking about global human sanity, which at some (past) point starts holding an inverse relationship to population.

 

[southernhybrid]

The shooter had a speech problem and had been bullied throughout much of his childhood. Of course, that doesn't excuse him, but I always wonder what kind of lives young people have had when they resort to such a horrific crime. It's another American tragedy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/25/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-gunman/

The gunman in Tuesday’s elementary school massacre was a lonely 18-year-old who was bullied over a childhood speech impediment, suffered from a fraught home life and lashed out violently against peers and strangers recently and over the years, friends and relatives said.

Using weapons purchased this month, days after his 18th birthday, authorities said, Salvador Rolando Ramos shot and critically wounded his grandmother. He then went on a shooting rampage at Robb Elementary School near his home in Uvalde, Tex., killing at least 19 children and two adults and injuring others.
Ramos also was fatally shot, apparently by police. The Texas Department of Public Safety said he was wearing body armor and armed with a rifle.

They used to play video games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty. But then Ramos changed. Once, Valdez said, Ramos pulled up to a park where they often played basketball and had cuts all over his face. He first said a cat had scratched his face.
“Then he told me the truth, that he’d cut up his face with knives over and over and over,” Valdez said. “I was like, ‘You’re crazy, bro, why would you do that?’”
Ramos said he did it for fun, Valdez recalled.
In middle school and junior high, Ramos was bullied for having a stutter and a strong lisp, friends and family said.
Stephen Garcia, who considered himself Ramos’s best friend in eighth grade, said Ramos didn’t have it easy in school. “He would get bullied hard, like bullied by a lot of people,” Garcia said. “Over social media, over gaming, over everything.”

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I've lived in the US all my life and I've never found any of that to be even a little bit true.

i've lived in the US my entire life and i've found it extremely true, though granted i've found it extremely true anecdotally because it's largely one of those things that IMO is like how "anti-abortion people don't care about life, they care about controlling women" is true even though i don't know i could prove it to a standard of scientific scrutiny.

anyways...
obviously our culture pays lip service to the idea that bullying is bad, but if you look at the reality behind how we treat the existence of bullying it proves the lie.
what do we say about bullying? "ignore them and they'll go away" or "don't stoop to their level" or "just go tell an adult" - the narrative about bullying is always about how to respond to it, how to passively defend yourself or how to retreat and beg a higher authority to intervene.
(excepting the single "punch 'em in the nose" cliche but even that is always shown as a radical notion outside of the bounds of accepted behavior)

the narrative in the US is *never* about what a piece of shit you are for bullying and how being an asshole is socially intolerable.
the lessons and the lectures are never about framing life within civilization about cooperation and tolerance, it's always about "well boys will be boys what can ya do"

we love the idea that the scrappy underdog will stand up and take a swing at their oppressors, but the reality is that if you do that what ends up happening is you get suspended for a week for fighting and the kid who was harassing you for 3 months leading up to that is told "oh now be nice" and otherwise left alone.

I suspect that I've lived in the US even longer than you have, and I agree with Toni. This shooting had absolutely nothing to do with bullying and everything to do with the fact that a disturbed young man could walk into a gun store and buy two assault rifles without needing any licensing, registration, gun safety training, insurance, waiting period, or interview with local police.

This is a false dichotomy. Both statements can be true at the same time. While we certainly know that an 18 year old shouldn't be allowed to buy weapons like that, that is one part of the problem. It is also probably the easier part of the problem to address... if a significant minority of the nation wasn't neurotic over gun laws, making it impossible to address access to weapons.

Every country has disturbed teenagers, but ours allows them to buy military style weapons that can be used to easily commit mass murder. However, I do agree with you that Americans seem inured to mass murder, even mass murder of very young children. Our culture has been brutalized by the everyday level of violence and mayhem.

Americans were lied to by the NRA, and those aligned with the NRA are so sold on the lie, they think the solution is more guns in schools. You know... get potentially psychopathic students closer to weapons. They believe this deeply and we can't reach them. Dozens of children can be massacred, and they want to be the ones that feel victimized. Well lost that battle and this is the cost. All lives matter my ass.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Politicians from the federal level to the local level have threatened to take guns from law-abiding citizens — but we will not let that happen in Texas. Texas will always be the leader in defending the Second Amendment, which is why we built a barrier around gun rights this session. These seven laws will protect the rights of law-abiding citizens and ensure that Texas remains a bastion of freedom. Thank you to the Texas Legislature for getting these bills to my desk.

link

When parents drop their kids off at school, they have every expectation to know that they're going to be able to pick their child up when that school day ends. And there are families who are in mourning right now.

link

Well, those children didn't yesterday. A "law-abiding citizen" bought two weapons and massacred them. Hopefully many of them didn't know what happened. But some probably felt a lot of pain. Though probably not as much as their families will feel right now and for quite a long while. But at least you protected the shooter from the evil Federal Government's interference and attempt to block his right to buy those weapons. Questioning the maturity and psychological state of a person buying semi-automatic weapons is an infringement of the killer's rights.