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I'm glad we've taken care of the access to guns and made progress on the societal issues that led to school shootings in the past 12 years, and that they're no longer common.
Oh, wait, we didn't do either of those things?
Columbine was 25 years ago, those 'kids' are in their 40s now and nothing's changed.
Edit: not saying it was their responsibility to fix it, just that the school shooting stuff has been a reality for a whole generation.
Something definitely broke in society around that time though, and "access to guns" only describes an outlet or mechanism, and not the underlying problem.
Pre-1968, civilians could buy full auto machineguns. At one point in the 1930s the Sears catalog would send a full auto Tommy Gun straight to your house via mail order with no background check. And yet in those eras the idea of a grand spectacle suicide/homicide event would have been absolutely unthinkable, even among the most disposessed in society.
The root problem is something more like cultural narcissm, for lack of a better word.
The concept of a deep cynical anti-hero move like publicly murdering pseudo-random aquaintances is a relatively modern problem. Maybe we need to do a better job suppressing "main character vibes" and narcissism, the acting out and sociopathy that is prevalent now.
At one point in the 1930s the Sears catalog would send a full auto Tommy Gun straight to your house via mail order with no background check. And yet in those eras the idea of a grand spectacle suicide/homicide event would have been absolutely unthinkable, even among the most disposessed in society.
Ummmm...
https://www.historynet.com/how-1930s-american-gang-violence-paved-the-way-for-gun-control/
Yes I'm not saying there was zero violence in society. There were things like Al Capone's St. Valentines Day Massacre, Bonnie and Clyde, the Kansas City Union Station shootout, etc. but these were extreme outliers in society at large and were international news because of it.
What is relatively new is the concept of an average student or worker becoming disgruntled and deciding to mass murder peers in a singular incident, usually with some grandiose manifesto attached to it.
School shootings in particular are a "new thing" - I'll grant that. But in general gun violence in the US is definitely not a new thing.
EDIT: Also - schools shooting today are actually still "extreme outliers" on the order of the gang violence of the '30s. They're far more common than they should be, but they're still pretty rare given the number of schools in the US.
for every school shooting there's like 5 "school lockdown because of unidentified person on campus"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
People could also buy dynamite pretty easy, this was a 1927 school killing.
Crazy finds a way, however the frequency uptick these days is bonkers. Regardless of the device used to kill, I (with no evidence) think a lot of general community fracture has occurred over the last decades, people now have internet echo chambers reinforcing stupid ideas at a much higher accessibility, and foreign actors manipulating the general public. The local communities are more distanced as people choose their online pockets.
Can't downplay the firearm aspect though. The AR-15 is ridiculously easy to shoot with no formal training and easy to hit a tight grouping at 20 yards the first time you pick it up. Other firearms require more skill and training to be remotely as effective. This drops the barrier to entry so low that any asslarper can pick one up and go murder a ton of people.
Something definitely broke in society
Population density has increased dramatically, more people in constant contact = more conflict with opportunities to escalate.
We should let people out in the middle of Alaska carry GAU-10s if they want, and if you live in a city you shouldn't be allowed to carry a handgun.
It's a question of risk assessment, crazy people have a rough normal distribution, but are significantly more dangerous when armed in dense population centers.
We should let people out in the middle of Alaska carry GAU-10s if they want, and if you live in a city you shouldn’t be allowed to carry a handgun.
There's precedence for this, as most towns in the Old West would require people to check in their guns when they arrived.
If you can carry a GAU-8 Avenger, which is traditionally mounted in an A-10 Warthog, no one is going to stop you.
Damn, I conflated the two numbers. I am shame.
No worries, the air guard base near me flies A-10s, so I see them all the time & nerd out about them a little.
Physics might. No one else could.
GAU-10s if they want
I am heavy weapons guy
No, I am heavy weapons guy
Pre-1968, civilians could buy full auto machineguns. At one point in the 1930s the Sears catalog would send a full auto Tommy Gun straight to your house via mail order with no background check.
Slight correction, between '30-'68 you could still get full auto thompsons mailed to you at 12yo (if you had the dough, of course). The GCA of 1968 is what gave us the background checks, and they became instant in the 90s thanks to the internet. Full auto wasn't banned (yes yes I know "technically it isn't banned.." yeah it basically is) until 1986.
And high profile murders did happen but it was mostly stuff like the Valentines Day Massacre, the SLA killing the first black superintendent, Kennedy, Lennon, y'know, not school shootings.
That said I agree with your assessment.
Pre-1968, civilians could buy full auto machineguns. At one point in the 1930s the Sears catalog would send a full auto Tommy Gun straight to your house via mail order with no background check. And yet in those eras the idea of a grand spectacle suicide/homicide event would have been absolutely unthinkable, even among the most disposessed in society.
OK this is not true. Firstly I seriously, SERIOUSLY doubt that Sears ever did that in the 1930s. I looked up the Sears-Roebuck catelogs from 1897 to 1926 (as much as I could find online) and I learned some surprising things.
Firstly, prior to WW1, the Sears-Roebuck catalog absolutely DID sell firearms, including handguns, to anyone with no questions asked. The handgun section in the 1912 catalog was quite exciting to look at if you are the type of person who likes old school handguns. Ammunition was also sold without any requirements other than money.
And besides handguns, the rifles and shotguns section was also quite good for just about everything that a North American sport shooter/hunter would want.
But after 1912? People started complaining that many criminals were using the catalog to get handguns and it was starting to worry people (in the 1910s and 1920s the crime rate was starting to rise rapidly) and so in 1918 handguns were no longer available for 'just cash'. They started selling handguns to only people who proved that they were legally permitted to own and carry a handgun, and you needed to provide a signed letter from a local sheriff or mayor or other authority figure that knew you, and by 1922 the handgun section shrunk to a single page and after that Sears no longer sold handguns.
The long gun section, however, remained as is. So yes, if you wanted a rifle or shotgun (even a semi-auto rifle or shotgun, which were around back then and sold by the catalog) you could buy it no questions asked.
The first federal gun law in the US wasn't the NFA in 1934. It was earlier in 1927 that forbade mail-order handguns.
The National Firearms Act in 1934 very strictly controlled fully-automatic guns. There was no way, NO WAY, any seller could find a 'mail-order' loophole to bypass it.
IIRC one of the Columbine survivors was a student during the Virginia Tech shooting...
Well shit… now I feel old. I was almost 30 when that happened.
Being in school was wild when that happened. My school banned baggy pants over night and required us to carry clear backpacks. We weren’t allowed to carry more than the book we needed for the next class, and cameras went up.
I was overheard telling a friend (jokingly) that I was going to kill myself if I had to take another timed test. Police showed up soon after and handcuffed me. Some girl overheard me and swore I said I was going to kill other people. Luckily one of the officers was from my neighborhood and believed me, but I was still suspended and he drove me home.
You know what really sucks though? All these years later and people are still terrified. Last week I woke up a few minutes after my teenage daughter got on the bus, my wife said, “Maybe you should go get her. Someone has threatened to shoot up the school.” I drove over and got her, fortunately the officer guarding the door just let her leave with me and was understanding. A day later and another threat hits. Someone says they’re going to shoot up the pep rally. I didn’t send her to school. Two unexcused absences in one week at the beginning of the school year over that shit.
She did online school last year and it was a nightmare, but I’m all over the place on that right now. I want her to be able to make friends and things. It wasn’t healthy for her last year. I only did that because her mom had recently died and I wanted to give her a break from everything.
I guess some kids thought it would be funny to do that last week. I just wish no one had to take them seriously.
Consider that those shootings are getting way more frequent. We get a Columbine about four times a year now and around 43 other shootings where there might be only injuries or singular casualties. Kids grow up in the States with lockdown drills. That entire voting block is going to be old enough to vote in 12 years.
I expect anti gun sentiments are growing now as each year new voters are growing up in that system where these events aren't considered rare anymore. Where parents who came of age in the 2000's have kids and are now front row to that milliterization and afraid because their families have skin in that game.
These laws are gunna happen one day.
Over 400 school shootings since Columbine. We as a society have failed our children.
....my first reaction was going 'Wait, only 400?' immediately followed by 'Jesus christ, 400.'
I'm not sure which of those is actually worse.
I mean we got Alex Jones for saying their parents were actors? Progress?
Until he's living in a van down by the river and eating whatever he scrapes off I-35, I'm not willing to say that we've "got him".
Wow, had no idea it’s been that long already! 🤯
Probably because Alex Jones's court case about it was so recent.
The gears of justice move slowly (or some similar line of dismissive bullshit)
Man, I was like why are 12 year olds voting?
This is my unsurprised face as 40%+ of them continue to vote republican, just like their parents always have.
I wonder which way many of these new voters lean. Willing to bet on the general direction of the group as a whole. There's always outliers, but I'm pretty confident on this one.
I remember a story from one of schools that got shot up. There was always one that got highlighted in right wing news. They were going to be the Kyle Rittenhouse spokes like person but I think they couldn't stand being ridiculed by everyone
I know a guy who was a student there when it happened. Newtown is white-bread upper-middle Connecticut. Fairly conservative, in the actual sense, not the Republican sense. They've been fairly evenly split in the past few presidential elections. While some of the people directly affected might lean more left, I'm not sure if it's a significant number.
I am older than the Sun
The big yellow one is the sun!
Hang in there. Don't forget your meds.