The freedoms that make the USA great also balance out with things that are horrid on the other end. In my opinion.

TedSheckler;1343610 wrote:The freedoms that make the USA great also balance out with things that are horrid on the other end. In my opinion.

Agreed, and our founding fathers knew this.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."- Ben Franklin

believer;1343548 wrote:The paradigm shift in our culture away from God, family, and individual virtues like selflessness, forgiveness, giving, and integrity have been replaced by selfishness, narcissism, materialism, and immediate gratification. The breakdown of our core family culture has retarded individual coping skills in today's fast paced, all-about-me culture.

This creates a fertile environment for the propagation of psychopathic & sociopathic behaviors among the obviously mentally unstable.

The answers to tragedies like this will never lie in any amount of gun-control laws current or planned, but rather in the core of our cultural values system.

We, as a society, should be ashamed of ourselves....not for failing to pile on more & more worthless gun-control laws, but for failing to establish the moral values and individual accountability necessary for a safe and healthy social network.

/end of thread....

and reps.

....add to that the persistent exploitation of violence in the media for ratings and profit. Kids are exposed to glorified violence in slasher flicks, video games, shoot 'em up cop shows and the like. Kids don't come home at nite and watch Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriett and Carol Burnette anymore. Combine that with inattentive, distracted parents...or missing parents that don't provide positive role models....and you have a recipe brewing for this kind of stuff. Now you could take 10,000 kids and 9999 are gonna grow up okay....but it only takes 1.

Gosh a ruddies the good old days when bigots beat, killed and lynched people every year. We taught people bigotry was wrong. And we started to enforce laws protecting people against those attacks and they diminished

Race card played!.....the default argument of the left. This has nothing to do with anything being discussed here.

If I didn't feel sorry for you, I would laugh at you for even bringing this up.

majorspark;1343513 wrote:Outside 'Merica soccer fans prefer crushing.

Guns get the job done more efficiently and take more lives in the hands of a rabid soccer fun. Would be gun-slayers can cause less damage in the aggregate when the seek to crush.

BoatShoes;1343653 wrote:Guns get the job done more efficiently and take more lives in the hands of a rabid soccer fun. Would be gun-slayers can cause less damage in the aggregate when the seek to crush.

Less damage shouldn't be the goal.

believer;1343548 wrote:The paradigm shift in our culture away from God, family, and individual virtues like selflessness, forgiveness, giving, and integrity have been replaced by selfishness, narcissism, materialism, and immediate gratification. The breakdown of our core family culture has retarded individual coping skills in today's fast paced, all-about-me culture.

This creates a fertile environment for the propagation of psychopathic & sociopathic behaviors among the obviously mentally unstable.

The answers to tragedies like this will never lie in any amount of gun-control laws current or planned, but rather in the core of our cultural values system.

We, as a society, should be ashamed of ourselves....not for failing to pile on more & more worthless gun-control laws, but for failing to establish the moral values and individual accountability necessary for a safe and healthy social network.

That all sounds good but is a convenient excuse for doing nothing because our relatively free markets have squeezed out a supposedly preferable culture in the past.

Prior to banning semi-automatic weapons in 1996, Australia, another industrialized country that has a similar large swath of rural country and populated coasts and a similar affinity for guns, had suffered 13 mass shootings in the previous 18 years. They have had zero since. There are plausible solutions to these problems that don't involve some appeal to a supposedly better, more moral time in the past.

We can stop these types of things from happening. It is a choice. We can choose these types of things to be an acceptable consequence or take reasonable steps to solve the problem. Meaningful action to curb a degradation in moral values would take much greater governmental interference into the market system than simply imposing reasonable gun-oriented laws. Blaming it on the supposed degradation of society when there are solutions that work elsewhere is a mistake we've always made and we go about or ways until the next massacre happens.

HitsRus;1343639 wrote: ....add to that the persistent exploitation of violence in the media for ratings and profit. Kids are exposed to glorified violence in slasher flicks, video games, shoot 'em up cop shows and the like. Kids don't come home at nite and watch Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriett and Carol Burnette anymore. Combine that with inattentive, distracted parents...or missing parents that don't provide positive role models....and you have a recipe brewing for this kind of stuff. Now you could take 10,000 kids and 9999 are gonna grow up okay....but it only takes 1.

Trying to stop the overwhelming force of our free markets rejecting Ozzie and Harriett and the like would take much more government intervention and limitations of freedom than simply imposing reasonable laws on firearms/bullets.

It's like a South Park parent looking to avoid responsibility and take action to do something that has shown to prevent these types of things in the future. "Blargh....it's all society going to shit!"

We can do something about these things and stop them from happening.

Gun violence in all likelihood will not cease to be in the United States. But taking modest steps could make a tangible difference. cutting it down by a third saves 10,000 people from being dead a year.

Trying to stop the overwhelming force of our free markets

We can do something about these things and stop them from happening

But taking modest steps could make a tangible difference

That's all great and sounds really good....but like you been saying on these threads, you need to "own" the responsibility for that freedom. And just as you expect/demand that gun owners "own" gun violence as a consequence of the freedoms we have, then those responsible for pushing the agenda that destroys our family values, moral integrity, the sanctity and preciousness of life, and pushes a narcissistic entitlement mentality must also take "ownership" for these events as a consequence of their actions. I'd be pretty certain that is not going to happen as there is a concerted effort in the media and governmnet to portray people who resist this agenda as 'right-wing nut jobs'.

Forgetting the other two thirds is sad. Focus on the real problem.

HitsRus;1343691 wrote:That's all great and sounds really good....but like you been saying on these threads, you need to "own" the responsibility for that freedom. And just as you expect/demand that gun owners "own" gun violence as a consequence of the freedoms we have, then those responsible for pushing the agenda that destroys our family values, moral integrity, the sanctity and preciousness of life, and pushes a narcissistic entitlement mentality must also take "ownership" for these events as a consequence of their actions. I'd be pretty certain that is not going to happen as there is a concerted effort in the media and governmnet to portray people who resist this agenda as 'right-wing nut jobs'.

Well I'm not sure it is the necessary consequence as you say it is. People in the UK watch Breaking Bad, have a large welfare state, have an even more overly celebrity and narcissistic obsession with celebrities than we do, a supposed "entitlement mentality" (which is pure bullshit but it won't stop you or Believer from believing it)etc. and they don't have massive amounts of gun violence.

So even if we accept your and Believer's assertions (which are tenuous scapegoats at best) and that this supposedly "horrid" culture results, we can "own" that it supposedly less moral folks and still have less gun related homicides as these other similar moral wastelands in the developed world have done.

Your argument is that if we had a better culture there'd be less would-be murderers. The UK has probably a worse culture than we do so they must have all these would-be sociopaths walking around following your and Believer's reasoning. Yet, they're not committing mass murders with guns because they can't get their hands on them. So although it may be true that we could make a better culture...we can also mitigate the effects of a bad culture through reasonable gun laws.

Either that, or there's really not would-be murderers walking around at all and that throws your whole premise out the window and this blaming it on this supposed culture degradation that people have been complaining about since the dawn of time is a convenient excuse not to do anything that would make a tangible difference and save a lot of lives.

Con_Alma;1343693 wrote:Forgetting the other two thirds is sad. Focus on the real problem.

NOBODY IS FORGETTING THE OTHER TWO THIRDS

BoatShoes;1343708 wrote:NOBODY IS FORGETTING THE OTHER TWO THIRDS

How can you be so sure? Nobody?

What are the country efforts with regards to all of those effected?

BoatShoes;1343705 wrote:...
Your argument is that if we had a better culture there'd be less would-be murderers. The UK has probably a worse culture than we do so they must have all these would-be sociopaths walking around following your and Believer's reasoning. ....

The UK has never had the culture this country has with regards to guns. The length, depth and governmental actions regarding the issue in the US. dwarf those in the UK.

Your argument is that if we had a better culture there'd be less would-be murderers. The UK has probably a worse culture than we do so they must have all these would-be sociopaths walking around following your and Believer's reasoning.

But in Russia, there is no guns but several times the violent crime there is here. You can't have it both ways.

The reason why Mayor Bloomberg and others feel the need for more government to solve problems of violence is because society, mostly, has rejected the notion of self-government (as believer so eloquently stated). And when self-government disappears, heavy-handed government always steps in and fills the vacuum.

Then again, it's a wonder why anyone would bother to hold any absolute moral values when he or she believes that humans are nothing more than a random assortment of amino acids and subatomic particles descended from an accidental collection of less advanced life forms. I mean, what we would call murder happens all the time in the animal kingdom, where it is called "nature" and "survival of the fittest". If the Darwinian theory of life's origin is indeed true, then human beings have no special significance in and of themselves, and are really of no greater worth than a fly or a dog.

Thus people looking for a solution will ignore appeals to morality and will instead focus on inanimate metal objects.

HitsRus;1343720 wrote:But in Russia, there is no guns but several times the violent crime there is here. You can't have it both ways.

Russia is a dilapidated country still trying to recover from the collapse of communism. It is considered a developing country. All developing countries have more violence, gun and otherwise, than in the OECD. It's not a good comparison

jhay78;1343722 wrote:The reason why Mayor Bloomberg and others feel the need for more government to solve problems of violence is because society, mostly, has rejected the notion of self-government (as believer so eloquently stated). And when self-government disappears, heavy-handed government always steps in and fills the vacuum.

Then again, it's a wonder why anyone would bother to hold any absolute moral values when he or she believes that humans are nothing more than a random assortment of amino acids and subatomic particles descended from an accidental collection of less advanced life forms. I mean, what we would call murder happens all the time in the animal kingdom, where it is called "nature" and "survival of the fittest". If the Darwinian theory of life's origin is indeed true, then human beings have no special significance in and of themselves, and are really of no greater worth than a fly or a dog.

Thus people looking for a solution will ignore appeals to morality and will instead focus on inanimate metal objects.

Secular people still think it is immoral and wrong to murder people and that those kids would've had meaningful lives worth living with pleasure, pain, happiness, and sadness! Jeeez! Humans have evolved beyond the state of nature and have formed social contracts bro! Even the founding fathers who you act like are on your side knew that men were not angels and consequently a life that was not nasty, brutish and short could not be made for humans with reliance on individual self-government. And thus, reasonable limited governments are formed from which reasonable limitiations on products designed principally for killing can be created. Heavy handed overbearing government is not necessary and that's not what reasonable limitations on guns would created.

BoatShoes;1343726 wrote:Russia is a dilapidated country still trying to recover from the collapse of communism. It is considered a developing country. All developing countries have more violence, gun and otherwise, that in the OECD. It's not a good comparison.

The vast differences in culture among the US and others provide no "good comparison".

BoatShoes;1343734 wrote:Secular people still think it is immoral and wrong to murder people and that those kids would've had meaningful lives worth living with pleasure, pain, happiness, and sadness! Jeeez! Humans have evolved beyond the state of nature and have formed social contracts bro! Even the founding fathers who you act like are on your side knew that men were not angels and consequently a life that was not nasty, brutish and short could not be made for humans with reliance on individual self-government. And thus, reasonable limited governments are formed from which reasonable limitiations on products designed principally for killing can be created. Heavy handed overbearing government is not necessary and that's not what reasonable limitations on guns would created.

More important is the desire of the type of society the people want and the associated costs that go with it. There are negative impacts either direction the country takes. The decision regarding actions comes down to what the collective wants.

Con_Alma;1343735 wrote:The vast differences in culture among the US and others provide no "good comparison".

We have a similar culture to the UK and Australia and Canada (among others in modern capitalist, wealthy societies) and they have successfully curbed gun violence.

Japan is not a similar culture but their example can give us even greater hope. The Japanese were a violent people who had imperialism ingrained in their society and committed one of the most notorious massacres in the modern world that affected its entire nation and still affects relations in that socio-economic region of the world and they have successfully curbed gun violence as they have become a modern capitalist state rejecting their imperial culture.

These countries, by and large, benefit from great amounts of freedom. We can have similar success if we decide that gun massacres are not acceptable consequences of our own version of freedom.

BoatShoes;1343741 wrote:We have a similar culture to the UK and Australia and Canada (among others in modern capitalist, wealthy societies) and they have successfully curbed gun violence. ...

We do not when considering the influence of historical significance of the role guns have played in the lives of the people for centuries and how that has permeated the many different capital opportunities that exist.

TedSheckler;1343610 wrote:The freedoms that make the USA great also balance out with things that are horrid on the other end. In my opinion.

right we are the only free country in the world.

HitsRus;1343639 wrote:/end of thread....

and reps.

....add to that the persistent exploitation of violence in the media for ratings and profit. Kids are exposed to glorified violence in slasher flicks, video games, shoot 'em up cop shows and the like. Kids don't come home at nite and watch Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriett and Carol Burnette anymore. Combine that with inattentive, distracted parents...or missing parents that don't provide positive role models....and you have a recipe brewing for this kind of stuff. Now you could take 10,000 kids and 9999 are gonna grow up okay....but it only takes 1.




Race card played!.....the default argument of the left. This has nothing to do with anything being discussed here.

If I didn't feel sorry for you, I would laugh at you for even bringing this up.

tsk, tsk, tsk our society has diminished racial violence through combination of law and change of attitudes. Now lets do it with another blight on our society, guns.