Guns in America - HC Richardson

[Fun CH]

Just checked, the FBI has a list of stressors that the FBI postulates is a motivation for school shooters.

Here are three of them, so it looks like even the FBI doesn't rule out "conflict with friends and peers" as a motivation.

"Conflict with friends/peers: general tension in the relationship beyond what is typical for the active shooter’s age or specific instances of serious and ongoing disagreement.

Conflict with other family members: general tension in the relationship beyond what is typical for the active
shooter’s age, or specific instances of serious and ongoing disagreement.

"Conflict with parents: general tension in the relationship beyond what is typical for the active shooter’s age, or
specific instances of serious and ongoing disagreement.

[Fun CH]

The piece includes reports by FBI, links to who the shooters were. Use the links, that's what they're there for.

I added a fact check on your vox article in my above post. The FBI link is from a year 2000 assessment and I get a "page not found" following that link. How many school shootings have occurred since the year 2000? Has the FBI assessment been updated?

[Rideback]

The piece includes reports by FBI, links to who the shooters were. Use the links, that's what they're there for.

[Fun CH]

https://www.vox.com/2014/11/3/7132879/s ... ting-facts

that's an opinion piece I'm citing research. If you are an extreme left media outlet like VOX, you're target audience are folks who want to see assault weapons banded. Its best to cater to that group with these types of opinion pieces. Money always talks.

That opinion piece, which draws the conclusion that High School shooters are not bullied, used as one example of Washington state school shooter.

According to this WP article, that shooter was bullied.

"A week before the shooting, Fryberg was suspended from school for fighting with a football player who, he said, made racist remarks toward him."

So if the WP is accurate, that vox opinion piece couldn't even get the facts correct.

So Rideback, are you OK with ignoring some of the root causes for mental health issues with school bullying being one of those issues?

[Rideback]

https://www.vox.com/2014/11/3/7132879/s ... ting-facts

[Fun CH]

In response to a tweet from Ted Cruz 'Heidi & I are praying for the families of the victims...'

These Twitter postings jumped out after I read your post.


"livia Julianna 🗳
@0liviajulianna
·
12h
The thing that pisses me off the most is the republicans saying we just have to pray.

The Bible LITERALLY teaches us in Psalms, Peter, James, John, AND PROVERBS that prayers without pure & humble intentions are never enough.

you’re not even really Christians."

And this highly provocative protest poster.

FsQmgylWAAQ1jpL.jpeg (22.8 KiB) Viewed 1348 times

[Fun CH]

Of course we should acknowledge the role that easy access to high-powered weaponry contributes to these types of mass shootings.

However, there are things that we can do now to stop contributing to this cycle of violence. Using derogatory language sets a poor example for children. Children model adult behavior and then direct that "normalized" use of derogatory language towards others at school in the form of bullying behavior.

"The Safe Schools Initiative Report also suggested that 71% of the attackers were victims of bullying and 10% of the attackers who were receiving treatment for their
diagnosed mental illness failed to comply to take their prescribed psychiatric medications. In regards to bullying, 87% of school shooting perpetrators left behind evidence that they were victims of severe bullying. "


"U.S. Air Force Logo
Air Force
The power behind derogatory terms

"Published Dec. 14, 2011
By Staff Sgt. Candice Compton
28th Bomb Wing Equal Opportunity Office
ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, S.D. (AFNS) -- Derogatory comments are comprised of words that tend or intend to detract, disparage or belittle and can often be considered offensive. Derogatory words have the power to hurt and potentially cause violence or other forms of hostility"

[mister_coffee]

From ( https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ng/542229/ ):

A parable:

A village has been built in the deepest gully of a floodplain.

At regular intervals, flash floods wipe away houses, killing all inside. Less dramatic—but more lethal—is the steady toll as individual villagers slip and drown in the marshes around them.

After especially deadly events, the villagers solemnly discuss what they might do to protect themselves. Perhaps they might raise their homes on stilts? But a powerful faction among the villagers is always at hand to explain why these ideas won’t work. “No law can keep our village safe! The answer is that our people must learn to be better swimmers - and oh by the way, you said ‘stilts’ when the proper term is ‘piles,’ so why should anybody listen to you?”

So the argument rages, without result, year after year, decade after decade, fatalities mounting all the while. Nearby villages, built in the hills, marvel that the gully-dwellers persist in their seemingly reckless way of life. But the gully-dwellers counter that they are following the wishes of their Founders, whose decisions two centuries ago must always be upheld by their descendants.

[Rideback]

In response to a tweet from Ted Cruz 'Heidi & I are praying for the families of the victims...'

Jim Wright Replies:

'Really?
Heidi and I are praying for the families of the victims?
Really?
What are you praying FOR? What are you asking your god to DO?
It's not just Ted Cruz and his boilerplate "Heidi and I are praying..." schtick every time there's another shooting, which is about three time a day now. No, it's all these politicians, left, right, other, I don't care. All these holy rollers who elect them. All these people sitting in the pews today, or watching some billionaire Bible Man on the TV yelling about hell and damnation. You, you praying to the sky right now, what do you expect your god to do?
No, seriously. When politicians who themselves have the power to stop this, and who not only refuse to do so but actually actively enable more and worse gun violence through insane legislation designed to arm even more of the population, what then are those people praying for?
When the population keeps electing these goddamn murderous lunatics to run the country, what exactly are you praying for?
What do you expect your god to DO?
Tell me. What are you praying for? Dear God, if Jesus isn't doing anything, maybe you could have him come on over and help us mop up the blood? Maybe multiply the buckets and squeegees?
Like that, maybe?
Or maybe you're asking your god to bring the dead back to life? Raise up some zombies? No, that would be crazy. So it's more like you're asking your deity to make everybody good with it? Dear Jehovah, yeah, could you maybe make the victims just accept the slaughter, be happy, oh well, they're in a better place, you know that sort of thing? That would be cool. Thanks.
Or is it more like Oh Dear God, please don't let them take mah gunzzzzzz!! Help me, Jesus! Help me! Pass the ammo and stand your ground! Also, please God, if it's not too much trouble, can you make the NRA check this month double, because baby needs a new swimming pool, amen and hallelujah!
That's it, isn't it?
I mean, tell me, what exactly do you expect your god to DO?
Because he sure as hell ain't STOPPING the bloody mayhem.
In fact, the evidence would suggest that your god just don't give a damn at all.

[just-jim]

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On the eve of yet another mass shooting - 9 dead in Dallas. A write-up by an author some here follow.

Simply, something HAS to change!
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The crux part of the piece: ”Until 1959, every single legal article on the Second Amendment concluded that it was not intended to guarantee individuals the right to own a gun. But in the 1970s, legal scholars funded by the NRA had begun to argue that the Second Amendment did exactly that”.

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https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... dium=email
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For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority. The idea that massacres are “the price of freedom,” as right-wing personality Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is new, and it is about politics, not our history.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution, on which modern-day arguments for widespread gun ownership rest, is one simple sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” There’s not a lot to go on about what the Framers meant, although in their day, to “bear arms” meant to be part of an organized militia.

As the Tennessee Supreme Court wrote in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

Today’s insistence that the Second Amendment gives individuals a broad right to own guns comes from two places.

One is the establishment of the National Rifle Association in New York in 1871, in part to improve the marksmanship skills of American citizens who might be called on to fight in another war, and in part to promote in America the British sport of elite shooting, complete with hefty cash prizes in newly organized tournaments. Just a decade after the Civil War, veterans jumped at the chance to hone their former skills. Rifle clubs sprang up across the nation.

By the 1920s, rifle shooting was a popular American sport. “Riflemen” competed in the Olympics, in colleges, and in local, state, and national tournaments organized by the NRA. Being a good marksman was a source of pride, mentioned in public biographies, like being a good golfer. In 1925, when the secretary of the NRA apparently took money from ammunition and arms manufacturers, the organization tossed him out and sued him.

NRA officers insisted on the right of citizens to own rifles and handguns but worked hard to distinguish between law-abiding citizens who should have access to guns for hunting and target shooting and protection, and criminals and mentally ill people, who should not. In 1931, amid fears of bootlegger gangs, the NRA backed federal legislation to limit concealed weapons; prevent possession by criminals, the mentally ill and children; to require all dealers to be licensed; and to require background checks before delivery. It backed the 1934 National Firearms Act, and parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act, designed to stop what seemed to be America’s hurtle toward violence in that turbulent decade.

But in the mid-1970s a faction in the NRA forced the organization away from sports and toward opposing “gun control.” It formed a political action committee (PAC) in 1975, and two years later it elected an organization president who abandoned sporting culture and focused instead on “gun rights.”

This was the second thing that led us to where we are today: leaders of the NRA embraced the politics of Movement Conservatism, the political movement that rose to combat the business regulations and social welfare programs that both Democrats and Republicans embraced after World War II.

Movement Conservatives embraced the myth of the American cowboy as a white man standing against the “socialism” of the federal government as it sought to level the economic playing field between Black Americans and their white neighbors.

Leaders like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater personified the American cowboy, with his cowboy hat and opposition to government regulation, while television Westerns showed good guys putting down bad guys without the interference of the government.

In 1972 the Republican platform had called for gun control to restrict the sale of “cheap handguns,” but in 1975, as he geared up to challenge President Gerald R. Ford for the 1976 presidential nomination, Movement Conservative hero Ronald Reagan took a stand against gun control. In 1980, the Republican platform opposed the federal registration of firearms, and the NRA endorsed a presidential candidate—Reagan—for the first time.

When President Reagan took office, a new American era, dominated by Movement Conservatives, began. And the power of the NRA over American politics grew.

In 1981 a gunman trying to kill Reagan shot and paralyzed his press secretary, James Brady, and wounded Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and police officer Thomas Delahanty. After the shooting, then-representative Charles Schumer (D-NY) introduced legislation that became known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, or the Brady Bill, to require background checks before gun purchases. Reagan, who was a member of the NRA, endorsed the bill, but the NRA spent millions of dollars to defeat it.

After the Brady Bill passed in 1993, the NRA paid for lawsuits in nine states to strike it down. Until 1959, every single legal article on the Second Amendment concluded that it was not intended to guarantee individuals the right to own a gun. But in the 1970s, legal scholars funded by the NRA had begun to argue that the Second Amendment did exactly that.

In 1997, when the Brady Bill cases came before the Supreme Court as Printz v. United States, the Supreme Court declared parts of the measure unconstitutional.

Now a player in national politics, the NRA was awash in money from gun and ammunition manufacturers. By 2000 it was one of the three most powerful lobbies in Washington. It spent more than $40 million on the 2008 election. In that year, the landmark Supreme Court decision of District of Columbia v. Heller struck down gun regulations and declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

Increasingly, NRA money backed Republican candidates. In 2012 the NRA spent $9 million in the presidential election, and in 2014 it spent $13 million. Then, in 2016, it spent over $50 million on Republican candidates, including more than $30 million on Trump’s effort to win the White House. This money was vital to Trump, since many other Republican super PACs refused to back him. The NRA spent more money on Trump than any other outside group, including the leading Trump super PAC, which spent $20.3 million.

The unfettered right to own and carry weapons has come to symbolize the Republican Party’s ideology of individual liberty. Lawmakers and activists have not been able to overcome Republican insistence on gun rights despite the mass shootings that have risen since their new emphasis on guns.

Tonight, I am, once again, posting yet another version of this article.
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