You guythhh remember Casper the Friendly Ghost?





That was mean. I feel bad.

Okay, let's talk about sex bay-bee.

School shootings, mass killings.

On school shootings, according to the CDC in 2015 there were 58 homicides in "Other specified place, including school, sports/athletics area, or cemetery"

That is not just from shootings

https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/nvdrs/nvdrsController.jsp

Hopefully that link works

If not try wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/nvdrs/nvdrsDisplay.jsp

according to
iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/teenagers/fatalityfacts/teenagers/2015

A total of 2,715 teenagers ages 13-19 died in motor vehicle crashes in 2015.

2715/58=46.8

Cars literally kill over fifty times as many kids as school shootings do

This is certainly not the time to let the internet stoke your anger.

Why do more girls in Third World nations pick a STEM education than their First World counterparts?

https://www.facebook.com/BOXPIOLIN/photos/a.172811836062425.43919.138039479539661/1829867390356853/

Is this a Russian bot or just plain stupid?

https://twitter.com/dorothyofisrael/status/964245461786820608

Troll level: grand master.

https://www.barstoolsports.com/barstoolu/kim-jong-un-impersonator-trolls-the-north-korean-cheerleaders-gets-arrested-and-trolls-the-police-who-cant-touch-him/

Womanspreading, level Asian

https://mobile.twitter.com/mombot/status/964380143115370497

Is this a Russian bot or just plain stupid? ~ Sixclaws at February 16, 2018 4:52 AM

It's stupid. And she doubles down on the stupid in the subsequent comments.

...mass killings. ~ Crid at February 15, 2018 11:40 PM

Very interesting. And along the lines of something I talked with my wife about last night. Throughout history Americans have had widespread and easy access to guns, but mass shootings were rare.

I had dorm-mates in college who had rifles and would sneak them into the dorms (against the rules at the time) when they were going hunting the next day. No shootings.

What happened? What changed about society that mass shootings are now happening with an alarming and depressing frequency? It's not the guns; they've been around for centuries.

I would love to know the answer to Conan's question. Is it a copycat thing?

I'm being stalked by an apparently mentally ill man right now, JustinNey.com. Stalked and harassed. It's terrible. I filed a police report yesterday, and another woman I know did as well. He's not in LA -- he's in Somerville, MA -- but it's very disturbing. He's been messaging business colleagues to tell them I'm a "homophobe" and a "rape lover" and more.

As anybody who's been around here for any amount of time knows, I'm a strong supporter of gay rights, gay parenting, and gay marriage, and I've written volumes of material that reflects that.

It's wearying and I've been very upset.

> What happened? What changed about society that
> mass shootings are now happening with an alarming
> and depressing frequency?

Less socially enforced monogamy. Top end guys get more pussy than ever, low status guys have a more and more difficult time getting laid.

Like in polygamous societies, low status guys who can't get laid get violent.

A comprehensive — and rather lengthy — list of all the shitty kids who have threatened a "Florida 2.0" since the latest school shooting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/02/15/threats-hoaxes-anxiety-and-arrests-an-uneasiness-in-schools-after-florida-shooting/?utm_term=.a4c6127baf82

I'm quite over the notion of withholding the names of minors in these cases.

At one point in time, the Thompson sub-machine gun was advertised for sale to the public as protection for large estates and ranches.

And yet no mass shootings involving innocents being randomly gunned down.

Once again we have a school shooting in which

(1) the school administrator claims they didn't know nuffin 'bout no shooter's bad behavior prior to the shocking mysterious came outta nowhere violence never nohow - which is proven to be absolute BS within 24 hours, and

(2) the shooter was on psych drugs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5391341/Passenger-films-toddlers-eight-hour-tantrum-flight.html

The nightmare eight-hour tantrum on a transatlantic flight.

The plane never should've left the gate with a child in that condition.

Social analysis from the blogs Qute Racisstt™!

> enforced monogamy. Top end
> guys get more pussy

Force! Hierarchies! Deprivation!...

No.

As a rule, the "guys" who don't "get pussy" aren't supposed to.

> Force! Hierarchies! Deprivation!...
> No.
> As a rule, the "guys" who don't "get pussy" aren't
> supposed to.

It's pretty simple math. The more polygamy in a society, the more guys who can't get pussy.

So, the more a society moves to a polygamous one, the more guys there will be who can't get pussy.

It's well established that there is a lot more violence in polygamous societies by young men, then in monogamous societies.

All I'm saying is that over the last few decades, are society is becoming more like a polygamous one. So we are seeing a lot more violence by young men.

> As a rule, the "guys" who don't "get pussy" aren't
> supposed to.

By definition this can't be true, because in different societies, there will be different percentages of men who can't get pussy.

Similarly, even in the US, in different time periods, there will be different percentages of men who can't get pussy.

> What changed

I'm not sure anything did. Nowadays history is well-transcribed, with names and dates and recitations from living memory and maybe a few official documents. Back in the day, and all too recently, shit that happened down in the valley (up in the hills, across the river, out on the plain) wasn't so tidily recorded in books, newspapers, or even the conversation of burghers who could be intimidated into forgetfulness with knives or fisticuffs.

It's.... (Ahem.) It's like when Amy pretends that Islam is some *new* category of horror that civilization's never faced before.

It ain't, and neither are disturbed boys who want to kill old schoolmates but who don't have family around to keep the lid on.

Look around: The thing that makes the Left so obnoxious today (and the Right too, for that matter) on the internet is their certainty that they know who the problem people are: It's the ones who interfere with their seizure of government authority in order to slay the monsters!

Could these presumptions *possibly* be new to our character? I deeply doubt it.

> Similarly,

I'm not sure you're old enough for that kind of language.

> I'm not sure you're old enough for that kind of
> language.

So again, you've got no counter argument.

I mean, a "guy" who cheerfully announces that 'I'm a racist and you are too' is probably not in a position a of sufficiently mature & dispassionate observation to pompously explain how human hearts work in matters of [A.] love or [B.] violence.

> Back in the day,

Except we're talking about the last few decades, not centuries.

> I mean, a "guy" who cheerfully announces that 'I'm
> a racist and you are too'

You're a typical lefty - calling someone a racist wins the debate in your mind.

"I'm being stalked by an apparently mentally ill man right now, JustinNey.com"

This is a job for Reddit!

> You're a typical lefty

I dunno, maybe

> calling someone a racist

Muffin, you called YOURSELF racist, as publicly as our darling little forum will permit. Can't we trust you?

Trouble is, Kevin, that's likely what those "shitty kids" WANT.
_________________________________________

I had dorm-mates in college who had rifles and would sneak them into the dorms (against the rules at the time) when they were going hunting the next day. No shootings.

What happened? What changed about society that mass shootings are now happening with an alarming and depressing frequency? It's not the guns; they've been around for centuries.

Conan the Grammarian at February 16, 2018 5:53 AM
_________________________________________

(The following is what I spelled out to someone else):

Re Florida, what's interesting was something I found in a column a week ago by controversial psychologist John Rosemond (born in 1947), who argued that guns and wildlife hunting were all the rage among teenage boys (including himself and his classmates) in the 1960s, in the state of Georgia, and so, during hunting season, there were always plenty of rifles and such in the cars in the school parking lot (and at other schools as well), but one didn't hear of teenagers committing school shootings back then. Therefore, he says:

https://www.abqjournal.com/1132948/feelings-and-a-lack-of-shame-ndash-not-guns-ndash-are-the-problem-in-america-ex-firearms-may-be-the-means-for-shootings-but-emotional-entitlement-syndrome-is-the-real-issue.html

"No, guns are not the problem. The problem is feelings. I am a member of the last generation of American children whose parents disciplined not only our behavior, but also insisted that we exercise emotional self-control...

"...As I said, guns are the means, but the problem is what I term emotional entitlement syndrome – the narcissistic belief that certain feelings are all the excuse one requires to justify anti-social and/or self-destructive behavior.

"To widespread emotional entitlement one can add the effects of encouraging high self-esteem (which is associated, we now know, with low respect for the rights and property of others) and the demonization of shame, the primary purpose of conscience. A calamity was sure to ensue, and it has. It includes not only school shootings, but the widespread use of social media as a platform for acting out personal soap operas (i.e., emotional dramas), a dramatic rise in child and teen depression and suicide, cutting, epidemic bullying, and millions of children on psychiatric medications that may cause more problems than they solve (if they solve any)."

(end)

I'm surprised the media aren't attacking him yet for saying that - but maybe they don't want to give him extra publicity.

I personally think he's 60% right. That is, what he doesn't seem to want to talk about is that emotional entitlement, unfortunately, is nothing new in the US, contrary to what he implied. Specifically, what other people in the media have pointed out about school shootings, time and again, is that the young gunmen are almost always white (and, sometimes, involved with white supremacy groups). So, one might say, what's the difference between their behavior and the lack of "emotional self-control" that was common among white ADULT Americans between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the 1960s, considering that lynchings of both black and white people - but mostly black - were so common that, despite the efforts of thousands of people, the anti-lynching bills of the 1920s and 1930s were blocked by the Senate and did not pass.

From Wikipedia: "Roosevelt was concerned about a provision of the (1935) bill that called for the punishment of sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs. He believed that he would lose the support of the white voters in the South by approving this, and lose the 1936 presidential election."

And, from the FDR archives:

"It was not until 2005 that the US Senate apologized formally for its shocking failure to pass any anti-lynching legislation '…when action was most needed.' "

Extra note: If you're going to ask why white teen shooters don't necessarily target only people of color, maybe it's because that would be too much advance work; they're teens and they're targeting innocent individuals anyway, so they don't necessarily care what color they are; they feel that every person who didn't help them get something for nothing is a guilty "accomplice" anyway and deserves to die.

"What changed about society that mass shootings are now happening with an alarming and depressing frequency? It's not the guns; they've been around for centuries."

Not addressing the "frequency" issue now, though I doubt it - but there are three things I can imagine having an effect:
• Widespread prescription of drugs, which began in childhood for some shooters
• The "creep" of instant gratification
• The immense publicity accorded every psychopathic loser and his fantasies. He'll be more famous than anyone who wouldn't talk to him; he'll even get the whole nation to drop a flag longer than it was for the death of an American legend and his lifetime of service.

We even rank killings. Hey, gotta beat that number!

First up, crid

It's.... (Ahem.) It's like when Amy pretends that Islam is some *new* category of horror that civilization's never faced before.

And yet, everytime she mention how its been a blight on humanity since its inception 1500+ years ago

Hardly new, even by your reckoning crid

Now now Lujlp, you well know that Crid is as old as the hills and the seas. The birth and death of the stars in the heavens is just a flickering moment in Crid's eye.

As for the gun thing, it used to be common for everyone to be armed. Boys in school had knives. I don't know what the girls had but I expect they had something similar. So schools weren't soft targets where no one fought back. And that was the 1950s. Before all the 'gun free zones' the few school attacks I can remember were all bombings that sometimes devolved into shootings when the bombs didn't work. Also as Rad and Lujlp mentioned, the frequency problem. School shootings are very rare. Natural population growth may account for a lot of it.

As to why more mass shooting in schools?

US Population 1840 017 Mil
US Population 1918 103 Mil +500%
US Population 2018 326 Mil +215%

US schools 1840 3.7 million 21% of population
US schools 1918 21 million 20% of population
US schools 2018 81 million 25% of population

The population is 20 times larger than 200 years ago, school age population is 22 times larger

You could have twenty times as many school shooing as two hundred years ago and it would still be less statistically

"You could have twenty times as many school shooing as two hundred years ago and it would still be less statistically"
Statistically I believe it wouldn't go up linearly, but closer to the square of the population increase. Since both perp and victims are of the same increased population.

"Connan" What happened?

A number of possible things or a combination of all of them.
As was pointed out just an increase in population would account for some of an increase.
Social societal changes: Fame/infamy of perp. Feelings of anonymity of common person, with a few others reaching super stardom for odd reasons (kardasians).
Drug/medication use
Changes in religion/societal norms. Rewriting/definitions of what "crazy" is, often for political purposes.
Politicization of this issue makes it much more visible and talked about but also obscured in certain ways (that it is all about gun control or mental health issues, no one trusts the numbers).
Trolling.
And a slew of others.
Similar to an odd conversation I was having about a Trump cartoon. Liberal friend, "Trump is unstable and reckless and has his finger on the button. So we have to attack and insult him"
My response if you actually believe him that unstable and dangerous the last thing anyone would do is insult him.

What happened?

Maybe a case of this?

https://rightcogency.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/unknauthor_problem-cartoon.jpg

Getty Images fucking up the internet as usual

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after-google-removes-view-image-button-bowing-to-getty/

When Texans visit San Francisco

Ban assault rifles. Destroy the AR-15, which has been the primary weapon of choice in most of the mass shootings in the past 15 years and is ridiculously inexpensive to buy at less than $1000. The number of rifles manufactured in the US has DOUBLED since 2008. That's a problem. Shotguns have stayed nearly static since the '80s, as have revolvers. Pistols have shot up remarkably, but rifles have had astronomic growth rates in manufacturing. It's also estimated that about 20% of all rifles sold are AR-15 pattern. Assault rifles are not used to hunt game and they sure as hell shouldn't be used by an 18-year-old who can buy one easier than a pistol. Ban all bump stocks and oversize clips -- there is no function for them unless you are in the military.
In war. I'm sorry, but there is something very, very wrong with how we view assault rifles in the US.

Oh, I forgot to post this, but wanted to say that I agree with the above reasoning behind the desire to pick up a gun and kill someone. I just think until we get that sorted out, maybe make it a little harder to find a gun to pick up.

https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/docs/undefined/firearms-commerce-united-states-annual-statistical-update-2017/download

> Hardly new,

FFS, if you learn to read, you'll learn to take the point.

Assault rifles are not used to hunt game and they sure as hell shouldn't be used by an 18-year-old who can buy one easier than a pistol. ~ gooseegg at February 16, 2018 9:34 PM

And you know that no one has ever used an "assault rifle" to hunt game, or that "assault rifles" are somehow deficient for those purposes?

In a recent article I read, the author recommended the AR-15 as an ideal home protection weapon, citing its pistol grip and layout as easier for maneuvering around doorways and furniture in the dark.

Of course, most of the world's militaries have given up on the M-16 as too large for tight situations, preferring the bull pup design as more compact and maneuverable.

Goose, the second amendment has nothing to do with hunting. The founding fathers feared tyrannical government and wanted the people armed and able to resist any government encroachment on their rights. That some have chosen to use this freedom to kill their fellow citizens is abhorrent and must be stopped. But, as I pointed out earlier, the guns have always been there. It's the shootings that are new.

In an essay I read a few years ago the author compared medieval France to medieval Britain. In war, the British depended upon the longbow, which took years to master. Every yeoman was required to have in his dwelling a longbow and be proficient in its use. The French peasant, when France went to war, was provided with the loan of a crossbow, a weapon that could easily be picked up and used by an amateur. The British king thus knew that his peasantry was armed (legend of Robin Hood, anyone?), while the French king knew that his peasantry was not. Guess which country evolved a democracy and tradition of individual rights without a violent revolution and period of extended tyranny and bloodshed.

Ban all bump stocks and oversize clips -- there is no function for them unless you are in the military. ~ gooseegg at February 16, 2018 9:34 PM

First, it's not a clip. It's a magazine. Clip vs. Magazine

Second, why on earth would the military need bump stocks? The military has fully automatic weapons. A piece of plastic that requires brute muscle power to allow a semi-automatic to mimic an automatic is not necessary for anyone with a real automatic.

I just think until we get that sorted out, maybe make it a little harder to find a gun to pick up. ~ gooseegg at February 16, 2018 9:43 PM

This is the most cogent point you've made so far, perhaps the only one. I disagree with it, but it's a cogent point with a straightforward point.

The number of rifles manufactured in the US has DOUBLED since 2008. That's a problem.

That number reflect domestic sales as well or just manufacture which also feeds into the US government selling arms to other nation states and what inevitably become terrorist cells?

Also, dont need that many bullets?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/georgia-mom-shoots-home-intruder-face-article-1.1234400

That guy git shot five times in the face, what if he had realized she was out of ammo and continued his attack? What if there was more than one assailant?

I'd agree to an ammo cap on one condition, that those advocating it put their names on a list, and should it be proven that anyone died as a result of not having enough ammo to protect themselves some one from that list is chosen at random and one of their children is executed in recompense.

No one should be allowed to dictate to another free person what they use or how they choose to defend themselves without offering up the life of someone they love as payment for possibly killing someone they dont know

Conan, no one "needs" an AR-15 for home protection. Because someone somewhere recommends it for home safety doesn't mean the average homeowner actually needs that weapon. The ability to kill 17 people and wound 17 more within a 6-minute time span is insane. No one needs that firepower. I am sick and tired of seeing this nation reduced to tears and trembling after every mass shooting and not one dang thing being done about it. This doesn't happen anywhere else in the entire world, yet we have normalized it that it is a problem of the insane, not the weapons. The most obvious place to start is with the weapon of choice and then move on from there. No one "needs" an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. For anything. Gabby Giffords was shot by a man using a pistol that had been converted with a magazine that holds 33 rounds. If you need 33 rounds to shoot someone inside your home, then you're dead anyway. You all want to spout the second amendment and the right to bear arms, but at the time no Founding Father ever thought that a snot-nosed kid would have their hands on a weapon that could do that damage. It took 4-1/2 minutes to load a second round when that amendment was written. In that amount of time the shooter here had struck 34 people. Besides the fact that if we are ever overrun by our own government or any government for that matter, all the AR-15s in the world aren't gonna help us against the advanced drones, heavy artillery, and smart weapons out there. You go ahead and console your kids and grandkids and tell them it's because one day the world will implode and I want to have a semi-automatic rifle. You go on now to school because it's active-shooter drill day and practice being quiet while someone knocks on the doors of every classroom (which happens MONTHLY where I live). See how they sleep at night and tell yourself you really, really need that AR-15.

Even after the gun ban Australia has had mass shootings, just a few years ago in Norway that guy killed a bunch of kids

Your emotional reactions have already blinded you to the fact that this does indeed happen elsewhere on this planet

Given we have ample proof of your inability to acknowledge facts that disagree with your emotional suppositions why would you think your solutions would be any less flawed than your current reasoning?

Australia, you say? Well, let's go there.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/02/15/australia-hasnt-had-fatal-mass-shooting-since-1996-heres-what-did/340345002/

And ah yes, the beautiful argument that says, since we don't know that will work, we shall sit still and do nothing. And wait for someone to kill 80 people at an outdoor concert, 35 kindergarteners, or 75 college kids. What number do you have to get to? 500 in one event? 1000?
What number makes a difference in the eyes of the NRA? Because that, apparently, is who really controls things in this country.

And no, this doesn't happen in other countries. Mass shootings are rare, rare like albino dolphins are rare, in other countries. Because one rare shooting occurs, are you seriously equating this with 'Merica? That's emotionally twisted, to look in the face of the mass casualties and say that because it's normal to me it's normal elsewhere, right? It's not normal -- it's just normal here.

Conan, no one "needs" an AR-15 for home protection. ~ gooseegg at February 17, 2018 7:20 AM

Well, it's a good thing we have you, a firearms expert, to tell us what we "need" for home protection instead of those experts who write articles and regularly research the subject. Between you and Joe "just fire a shotgun into the air" Biden, it's a wonder the thugs aren't running for the hills.

You're deliberately blind to the main point. The Second Amendment is not about thugs breaking into your house, nor is it about hunting. It's about the check on government tyranny that an armed populace provides. And yes, an populace armed with semi-automatic AR-15s can fight an advanced army - just ask our troops in the Middle East about the effectiveness of the AK-47 armed guerrillas there.

Nor is it about reload times. When the second amendment was written the difference between civilian and military weapons was pretty slim, but the point the Founding Fathers were making about an armed populace still stands. By the way, a skilled musket user with paper cartridges could get off as many as 45 shots in a minute, a much faster reload rate than your 4.5 minute estimate.

As for consoling our children, let's find the real source of the problem instead of telling them they're safe with the band-aid of gun control. G. Gordon Liddy said in his book, Will, that none of the people in prison with him for gun crimes had gotten their guns legally. And that was when guns were all metal and had to be machined in a gun shop. Now, you can print a gun on a 3-D printer with very few metal parts. The current ones last only a few shots right now, but with better plastics, the day of a durable home-printed gun is coming. Good luck banning those.

The guns have always been there, the mass random shootings have not. The Thompson submachine gun spits out 1,500 rounds per minute of .45 caliber ACP ammunition and was invented in 1917; it was widely available to the public after World War I. The "tommy gun" was popular with the Prohibition era gangsters, but was never used in a random mass shooting of the public. It's not the guns. As much as we'd love for this issue to have a simple solution like gun control or background checks or anything, this is not a simple problem and band-aids will only leave us vulnerable.

My final quibble is the term "assault rifle." It's really just a made-up term to make some weapons sound scarier than others. Some folks trace it back to the Nazi "sturmgewehr" or "Storm of War." But, until the discussion of the government's Assault Weapons Ban, it didn't really exist.

Given USA today is not an arbiter on the definition of mass shooting who cares what they say

They had a mass shooting a few years ago, that cafe thing, and right after that people who appointed themselves definers of mass shootings changed the criteria so that incident no longer qualified.

You say you are tired of kids dying, more kids are killed by hand guns each year than AR15s

More kids are killed by cars, more kids die as a result of their parent refusing medical treatment than die in mass shootings.

You wnat few kids to die? Who doesnt.

Articulate a DISPASSIONATE plan of action that
A) Doenst interfere with other peoples rights
B) Actually prevents such a tragedy from occurring

Becuase in the last 20 years I have yet to hear of a policy that would have prevent any of these shootings

"Ban assault rifles"

You can do that by destroying the Constitution. Go for it, dood.

Here's an idea for you, Goose, a gun-violence restraining order (GVRO).

"...most forms of gun control proposed after each mass killing represent a collective punishment. The rights of the law-abiding are restricted with no real evidence that these alleged 'common sense' reforms will prevent future tragedies in any meaningful way."

"...there is broad conceptual agreement that regardless of whether you view gun ownership as a right or a privilege, a person can demonstrate through their conduct that they have no business possessing a weapon."

"Time and again mass shooters give off warning signals. They issue generalized threats. They post disturbing images. They exhibit fascination with mass killings. But before the deadly act itself, there is no clear path to denying them access to guns. Though people can report their concerns to authorities, sometimes those authorities fail or have limited tools to deal with the emerging danger."

"In other words, proper application of existing policies and procedures could have saved lives, but the people in the federal government failed. And they keep failing. So let’s empower different people. Let’s empower the people who have the most to lose, and let’s place accountability on the lowest possible level of government: the local judges who consistently and regularly adjudicate similar claims in the context of family and criminal law."