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Downvoted for utterly ignoring the real solution, which is to actually fix systemic inequity that drives people to despair in the first place.
They can fuck all the way off with that "behavioral threat assessment" bullshit, which basically amounts to refusing to lift a goddamn finger to help anybody until after they've gotten so fucked up that they've become a threat.
Isn't the real solution to gun violence just gun control? Not that I think the other problems shouldn't be tackled holistically, but in regards to things we know we can do effectively and immediately, changing America's collective perception of itself seems like a goal rather than a next step.
No, that's just masking a symptom instead of fixing the problem. Take away guns and suicidal kids seeking to take their abusers out with them will just switch to things like knives and explosives instead. It's the abuse itself that must be stopped!
Experts reveal what really works to prevent mass shootings
"Fuck the experts, they're wrong and I'm right"
No, fuck fallacious appeals to authority.
professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University
I don't know, this authority seems pretty reliable to me. Surely more reliable than "[email protected]".
Appeals to authority are only fallacious in formal rhetoric. Just because an authority said it doesn't mean it's always right, but it usually is. And that is enough in contexts outside of formal logical argument, such as this one.
By your reasoning, if a professor of epidemiology says, "the best way to prevent the spread of disease is to wash your hands and stay home when you're sick," and I share that statement to convince you to wash your hands, that is equally an appeal to authority. Yet the argument is still correct.
The only fallicious use of appeals to authority is to say "This person is an authority, therefore they are always correct." And it is considered a logical fallacy in formal rhetoric because statements therein are generally absolute. It is not fallicious to say "This person is an authority, therefore their opinions are likely well-reasoned and based in knowledge and experience that most people don't have."
It must be understood that when an argument comes from a reliable authority, while it cannot be said that argument is therefore correct, it can be said that argument is therefore likely to be well-reasoned.
Surely it does not require this many words to say that we should listen to the experts in matters of public policy.
Wow, you're completely missing my point. I'm not saying that the experts' claims are incorrect in a narrow sense; I'm saying that they fail to trace the chain of causes all the way to its beginning.
Take these parts, for instance:
Researchers have identified several circumstances shared by people who commit mass violence. They are almost (but not always) men, many of whom have suffered from some form of early childhood trauma or abuse. Most are suicidal.
Among the most important is a history of domestic violence. In 2021, researchers found that a majority of mass shootings were domestic violence-related. “A substantial fraction of mass shootings are not these killings of strangers in public places, but they occur in ongoing domestic disputes,” says Nagin.
I'm not disputing that mass shooters tend to have suffered trauma due to exposure to domestic abuse. What I'm asking is, what strategies are the researchers suggesting to prevent the domestic abuse before it happens? The answer appears to be fuck-all!
Instead, the experts are suggesting we cruelly let the abuse happen, identity the small subset of victims who decide to retaliate, and only then give them any scrap of help.
And that cruelty is what you're defending with your bullshit fallacies. You should be ashamed of yourself!
Well, that question is easy to answer.
That's because the guy in the article isn't an expert in domestic violence. He's not proposing that nothing be done, he's showing restraint by not talking out of his ass about a subject he's not an expert in.
You ask the statistics guy what solution he's got for the problem and he's going to give you a statistics answer. And maybe you can use that answer to ask other experts follow-up questions, but that's beyond the scope of your conversation with this particular person.
But it sure as Hell is within the scope of an article that purports to consult with multiple experts to arrive at solutions to the problem. So where the fuck is the paragraph about what the DV expert had to say? It isn't there, and that's what I've been complaining about this whole damn time!
The article is shit and deserves to be downvoted because -- as you have just effectively admitted -- it fails to even cite the right experts in the first place. Which means you trying to paint me as wrong for disregarding experts that don't even exist in the article is, again, complete and utter bullshit. Q-E-fucking-D.
Disagree. Not every article has to cover absolutely everything.
It's like talking about problems with drug addiction. There are two facets:
You do not need to present a solution to both in order to present a good solution to 1.
Even if that's true -- and I'm not conceding that point -- that's not the argument you've been making. Instead, you started off this whole thing by trying to ridicule me for strawman nonsense you made up, and haven't even apologized yet. I'm really sick and tired of your blatant bad faith.
decline
So I’m guessing gun control is still off the table eh?
There are two broad approaches that can help mitigate the threat of mass shootings: proactive efforts to identify threats in advance, performed by behavioral threat assessment teams; and targeted gun regulations like red flag laws and bump stock bans.
Okay, yeah, let's look at these.
Proactive efforts. See, here's your problem: lots of things that might be a sign of a school shooter in the making are also protected speech. The US Secret Service released a document a while back looking at things that mass shooters had in common--and in this case, 'mass shooter' is defined as largely random violence that wasn't domestic or part of some other crime, e.g., your typical school shooter--and the things they found as risk factors were very general. Like, kids that are bullied are at risk or committing a mass shooting. Kids that have divorced parents are at risk. Kids that make threats might be at risk. But no murderer met all of the criteria, and hundreds of thousands of people do have multiple risk factors, but never go on to commit mass murder.
Statistically speaking, mass murder events are RARE. We hear about them mostly because they make national news; we get 24/7 coverage of them when they happen, for weeks after the event. They're so rare that addressing every single person that has one or more risk factor would be millions of people, and that millions of kids that now have a record of being interviewed by some kind of pre-crime cops.
Second, look at this -
At least four people were killed, and nine were injured after a shooter opened fire at Apalachee High School in northern Georgia on Wednesday, the latest in more than 250 mass shootings that have taken place in the US in 2024.
Did you catch it? It's quick, and if you're not paying attention, you're going to miss it. They said that there have been more than 250 mass shootings in the use, in nine months. When you look at one of their solutions, they list "bump stock bans". Did you see what they did? They implied that semi-automatic tactical rifles were one of the primary types of arms used in mass shootings (you can't put a bump stock on, for instance, a Glock) by proposing a 'solution' that affects only rifles. Buuuuuuuuuut... That's just not correct. Most mass shootings, by far, involve handguns only. Yes, people that are trying to inflict maximum carnage use them disproportionately, but most mass shootings are actually committed with handguns, and not rifles. They're doing a bait-and-switch; they're proposing 'solutions' that affect rifles, while knowing that--even if they were legal--they would have a very minimal effect on the actual number of people killed in mass shootings, because of how few people are killed with rifles in mass shootings.
Red flag laws have a different problem; you're taking away constitutional rights without a criminal trial, and on the basis that someone might commit a crime at some indeterminate point in the future. The threshold can be very low, depending on how laws are written. If you want to fight them, well, since it's nan administrative case rather than a criminal case, you're going to have to pay for your own attorney. But the core problem remains: it's punishing someone before a crime has been committed, by seizing their property.
Nagin, who helped develop a series of evidence-based recommendations for reducing mass shootings, says that “the sheer volume of firearms” circulating in the US, which are “far more lethal than they were in the past,” [...]
Okay, this is just wrong. Modern small arms are less lethal than their WWII counterparts. The US switched from the M1 Garand to the M14, and then to the M16 because they simply didn't need a full-powered cartridge. A smaller intermediate cartridge--the .223 Rem or 5.56x45mm NATO (they're almost identical)--allowed soldiers to carry less ammunition, at the cost of both range and lethality. Same thing with pistol cartridges; the .45ACP was slow, heavy, and big, and soldiers just didn't need something with that much recoil and ammunition weight, when the 9mm Luger worked well enough in almost all cases. (Note that yes, the FBI said that it was underpowered, used the 10mm briefly, then switched to .40S&W, and now pretty much everyone is back to 9mm, because there wasn't any real advantage to the other cartridges, except in very, very rare edge cases.)
If you want to address violence, look at the material conditions. Fix the issues that lead to violence in the first place, rather than trying to address symptoms.
PS - like it or not, the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, which has been affirmed by both multiple SCOTUS cases, and 200+ years of precedent. Don't like it? Propose a constitutional amendment, get it passed by a supermajority of both the house and senate, and then get 38 states to ratify the amendment with a popular vote. Or, alternatively, get 2/3 of all state legislatures to pass the same constitutional amendment.
If you can't do that, well, quit fucking with constitutional rights.
We managed to pass the 14th, we even got--and repealed--prohibition. So fuckin' get on it if you really, truly believe that having too many rights is the problem.
Have they tried gun control for a change? Real gun control like they use in all those countries that don't have several mass shootings per day?