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Mass Murder Media Reporting Template
"Ten people have been shot in XYZ city. In cooperation with other major news outlets, we're following specific guidelines about how this story is brought to you.." | |
To prevent future mass murderers from being enticed by
the instant, perverse, postmortem stardom they can get
by
killing a lot of people before they commit suicide, major
news outlets should consider a template on how these
things are reported. This latest nutjob was evidently star
struck
by the guy who killed that reporter on live TV
talking about how he went from obscurity to "fame" over
night. To try to limit the fame appeal to future killers,
beyond all the details of the killing:
1- No mention of the person's name. (which I know has
been suggested before) Descriptions can be given, "20
year
old white male, 5'8", 170 pounds." etc. If it's absolutely
necessary put a picture of the guy's face up, put a dark
rectangle over his eyes.
2- A brief synopsis of what his motivation was. This is
just
a reality of the situation, people are going to want to
know "Did he hate religious people? A certain race? Was
it
totally random?" But no reading of his manifesto, blog
pages, notebooks or anything else he might want the
world
to know about from his perspective. Go over it and give
the people the general idea. "He thought he was too
clever
for the world." "He was mad that nobody liked him."
3- Heavy, heavy speculation as to what a loser the guy
was.
Bring in the psychologists and have them talk about how
the guy couldn't get a date to save his life, was
awkward,
had no friends. This is the ONLY time it's appropriate to
tear somebody apart, after they've killed a lot of people
and they're dead anyway. I would bully the hell out of
this
nameless faceless dead guy as an example to the next
loser. "Wow, everybody just talks smack about you but
nobody even knows who you are."
The story given to everybody should be "Nameless,
stupid,
dull, boring, unattractive, immature nobody kills a lot of
innocent people." Nothing's being held back that really
matters, it's the TRUTH, and new outlets have no
problem
putting a little spin on their stories, so there you go.
It's almost like you can go from nobody to superstar
overnight. President holds a press conference about you,
the flag on the White House gets lowered to half mast,
everybody talking about you, your picture everywhere. I
think the allure to sick minds that this provides really
needs to be considered.
Sorry, ranty I know, but the idea is to only do those three
things in the reporting.
http://www.breitbar...-with-deadly-force/
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 04 2015]
Shocking
http://www.politifa...all-wars-says-colu/
enough to believe anti-gun nuts [4and20, Oct 05 2015]
Seems like the Auxiliary Police Force Training is under question
http://articles.chi...nforcement-training
Given lousy state agency book keeping, apparently. [RayfordSteele, Oct 05 2015]
Other relevant articles
http://www.wsj.com/...training-1429141610
[RayfordSteele, Oct 05 2015]
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Annotation:
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I think it's humourous (for a suitably broad definition of the word) that everybody's squawking about gun control or lack thereof. The second amendment has existed unchanged for well over 200 years, and it mostly just ratified preexisting conditions anyways. |
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Why hasn't anybody bothered to check the school systems ? |
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I have long thought that this is what they should have done
with terrorists from the very start. |
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Every one of them has been a loser, but whereas losers exist in every society, the broad emphasis on winners and losers is in fact introducing randdomness into a few (ok, mostly one) social system. |
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A BBC reporter made an interesting couple of
comments when covering the latest school
massacre. He pointed out that (a) all countries
have their share of mentally ill people, but in most
countries those people don't have easy access to
guns; and that (b) the problem in the US is not
simply the abundance of guns but the fact that
people see gun ownership and gun use as a means
of expression. Hence, in the US you have a large
population of loonies who see it as natural to
express themselves by large-scale killing. |
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From the outside, the US looks a little crazy in this
respect, especially when a common response to
school shoot-fests is "if only the teachers had been
armed". |
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//I’m quite surprised the people who do this don’t broadcast it// |
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I'm not surprised at all. |
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Although a US citizen, I have to agree somewhat with
[MaxwellBuchanan] --but the real problem is, in my
opinion, a bit more subtle. There is something MISSING
here, which needs to be matched with the prevalence
of guns. That thing is "gun education". There is lots of
talk about when sex education is appropriate in the
schools, and nothing about gun education. |
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While it is well-known that it is easy to use a gun, the
message doesn't seem to be getting passed along, that it
is not so easy to use a gun SAFELY. Which is exactly
what gun education should be about. After which, see,
everyone could walk around carrying a gun all the time,
and everyone could be fairly confident that it is getting
done safely. |
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And then, of course, if some loony starts shooting, it
will be ended quite quickly. Every time. With minimal
casualties. |
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//Surely the whole point of doing such a thing in the first place is to make a point?// |
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//From the outside, the US looks a little crazy in this
respect, especially when a common response to
school shoot-fests is "if only the teachers had been
armed".// |
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Well, "Nobody is going to like you unless you do things
our way." is never a very convincing argument. |
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I personally think we should be in or out with guns.
Ban them or
do them right by putting them in the hands of
carefully selected, highly trained citizens. By highly
trained I mean the same training and vetting police
get to carry a gun. |
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The idea's always been shot down but I've suggested
before having a citizen police force, a "well regulated
militia" where people have gone through all the
police training necessary to deal with a situation like
this but none of the other training a uniformed patrol
officer gets. You don't
hand over speeding tickets, you don't arrest
shoplifters, you only shoot people who are shooting
people. |
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There really is no intelligent rebuttal to this solution.
It's simply saying "put thirty million highly trained
plain clothes policemen among us." It keeps guns out
of the hands of crazies, arms citizens in such a way
that you have an average of 1 cop for every 10
people and makes violent crime in any given group a
futile endevor. Any nutcase knows that the odds are
he'll be quickly shot by a trained conceal carry militia
member. And they're everywhere and free because
the citizens pay for their training themselves. |
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But there's no money in this for anybody and it
doesn't pander to our "Pick your side, solution A or
solution B." tribal way of approaching problems so it's
not going to happen. And it's got the word "militia" in
it which is a word that's been tarnished by years of
misuse in my opinion. Unfortunately sometimes
solution C is the answer. I don't see a lot of thought
being put into problems these days, only drum
beating for "Our side." |
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//But we’ve had similar expressiveness here.
Michael Ryan, as recently as 1987, and a few other
people. If someone wants to get a gun, or toxin
such as ricin, or explosives such as that which blew
up South Quay DLR station, legality of possession
isn’t going to stand in the way all that much.// |
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Mass shootings (and shootings in general) are very,
very rare in the UK (or even France,
Germany...etc) compared to the USA. And, as I
pointed out, it's not just the ready availability of
guns in the USA; it's also the fact that they are
seen as normal, and are therefore a natural means
of expression for people who are angry or just
plain nuts. |
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The Swedes also have fairly high gun ownership,
but the culture there is not so different from that
in the rest of Europe - guns are "unusual" enough
that people don't automatically turn to them as
readily as they do in the USA. |
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//the message doesn't seem to be getting passed
along, that it is not so easy to use a gun SAFELY.//
[Vernon], I don't think gun safety is the main
problem. About 30,000 people (half a Vietnam's-
worth) per year are killed by guns in the USA, and
less than 1000 of those are due to "accidental
discharge". |
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I think the solution for the USA is to stop expecting
there to be a solution. As I understand it, the
constitution gives people the right to guns; the
arms manufacturers fund US politics via the NRA;
and nobody particularly wants to change anything. |
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In any case, 30,000 deaths per year isn't a huge
number compared to other causes, so it's not an
urgent problem. It's just a fact of life, at least for
the foreseeable future. |
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I'd very much enjoy having a gun, probably for the
wrong reasons, but UK law won't let me. Again,
it's just a fact of life for the foreseeable future,
and I can live with that. |
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Well, we could just talk about how it's a particular
political party or organization's fault and the solution to
this problem is the same as the solution to every other
problem in society: having a one party political system
where we put the people who are right all the time in
charge. |
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Alternatively, I would just propose that we stop making
things worse by enacting a small, free, non-legislative
action that would potentially reduce the allure of doing
this sort of "sensation killing" to future psychopaths
looking for negative attention. |
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That or the one party system solution. Call them the
"Always Right On Every Issue All The Time Without Ever
Being Wrong, Not Even Once" party. They'd get my vote.
Especially since they'd be the only party on the ballot. |
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Dr., the intelligent rebuttal to that line is that having
a bunch of Wyatt Earp wannabe cocky gun-nuts and
mall cops deputized after taking a class or two, as
the market-efficient solution demands, and
then all coming together and shooting at
perceived bad guys isn't going to work out the way
that you expect. |
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Vernon, even most well-trained people don't score
that well in random threat tests. |
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You know that in the end it always comes down to bullying.
Some of you probably know just how close to the edge of snapping it is possible for one's peers to push a person to through alienation and torment.
Not that there can be any reasonable excuse for such actions, but unless someone is born sociopathic then they were 'made' into killers, and the motivation to destroy everything around you is not fame... that's just a perk.
They know the effect their actions will have on their families. They know dent their actions will have in the community which shuns them, and they know that they will no longer be suffering silent and alone. |
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Until we can solve those issues... I'm kinda favoring Arkansa's point of view. [link] |
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//after taking a class or two,// |
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Ray, if you do both sides of the argument as you're
prone to do, you'll win every time. |
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What part of "all the police training necessary to deal
with a situation like this" didn't you understand? |
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ALL the EXACT training a police officer gets.
Background check, months of training, years of
cumulative training and regular re-certification,
monitoring by a central regulating agency. They're
limited duty police officers. |
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//Well, we could just talk about how it's a
particular political party or organization's fault and
the
solution to this problem is the same as the solution
to every other problem in society: having a
one party political system where we put the
people who are right all the time in charge.// |
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No, I'm not saying that, and I don't think anyone in
America is right all the time. It's _all_ political
parties. The NRA happens to be a hamstring on
any politicians breaking ranks, but that's only an
exacerbating factor. And it's also the American
people. |
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Basically, Americans want ready access to guns,
and that is a collective decision, and they have
that ready access, so that's OK. |
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What I _was_ saying is that there's no answer, and
it's probably best to accept that. The number
of gun deaths in the US is large in absolute
standards, but small in relative terms, and it's not
as if
the US is underpopulated. Many more people die
every day from cancer, from road accidents,
from infectious disease and from heart attacks
than die in the occasional school massacre (or,
indeed, from all gun deaths on any given day), so
why gripe about it? Tackle the bigger problems
first. |
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//Well, we could just talk about how it's a particular political
party or organization's fault and the solution to this problem is
the same as the solution to every other problem in society:
having a one party political system where we put the people
who are right all the time in charge.//... |
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//Tackle the bigger problems first.// |
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I agree Max, even though I was following your post, I was
sort of making a generalization about the whole debate,
my acerbic tone wasn't directed at you. |
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I'm just thinking there may be new circumstances like
copycat killers that might require a new procedure, like
minimizing this "glorified martyr" vibe that crazy people
are taking away from news reports about previous killers. |
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Would reporting these murders differently help? I have no
idea. Might be something to consider at least. |
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It probably would help a little, but to be honest it's
not going to
happen. TV networks are in the business of
attracting viewers,
and the channel that shows the phone-video of the
gunman will
get the most viewers. If all the stations report
that the gunman
was 5ft1 and impotent, one station will break the
news that he
was actually a 6ft2 white supremacist. |
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Again, it comes down to the fact that the people
have what
they want: free access to guns, and the
excitement of watching
the consequences on TV. Neither of those is going
to change,
and that's OK - a few thousand deaths per annum is
not a big
price to pay for a few tens of millions people being
a little bit
happier. What you can't have, though, is that bit
of happiness
without some random deaths. (Unless you're
Swedish, but many
people aren't. And in any case Swedes don't seem
particularly happy.) |
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Just read that gun death totals in the U.S., starting in 1968, outnumber the total U.S. losses in all wars. Hard to believe. |
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Just checked and apparently that's true. Over two thirds
of gun deaths are among black or Hispanic people.
Considering that together they make up less than a third
of the population that's a troubling statistic right there. |
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According to one article, of total gun deaths, two thirds
are suicides. Supposedly the suicide rate is climbing while
the murder rate is going down. |
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Anyway, there's nothing I can do about it. Getting on
Halfbakery and bringing everybody down probably isn't
doing much good. |
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//all the police training necessary to deal with a
situation
like this" didn't you understand?// |
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The part where it interacts with a market of people
whom
all want a gun, with a gun lobby that will push to
make
those classes as minimal as the law (as influenced
by that
same lobby) allows, the part where the fact that not
everyone is cut out to be a cop or could pass the
training,
the part where the guns that they acquire are never
found
on any gray / black market for any reason or if they
are
what is done
about that, the part where cops are given psych
profile
tests on a routine basis, and the part where they are
accountable for their actions to the city and can be
told to
turn in their badge. Find some method of handling
these
issues in this fantasy land of yours and maybe I'll be
sold on
the idea. |
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4and20, source? That seems highly dodgy. |
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//source? That seems highly dodgy.// |
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Wikipedia lists number of US casualties by war,
with a total of about 1.3 million going back to the
revolutionary war in the 1770s. |
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Gun deaths in the US (presumably excluding wars)
have run at about 10,000 per year since the mid-
1970s (I couldn't find data before that), or about
400,000 since 1975. So, a total of >1.3 million
since the 1770s is not at all unlikely. |
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If there's no possibility of introducing gun control legislation in the US to prevent unstable people purchasing assault weapons, how about really, really tight ammunition control laws, prohibiting the production, sale, import and possession of any ammunition? Then people could safely own as many guns as they want. |
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Incidentally, according to Wikipedia: |
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"As of September 8, the U.S. was averaging 1.05 mass
shootings per day in 2015 (defined as incidents in
which four or more people are shot)" |
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So the latest one is just another dot on a graph,
really. |
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//Find some method of handling thise issues in this
fantasy land of yours and maybe I'll be sold on the
idea// |
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They already do this, the fantasy land where this
works is called planet Earth. They're very common all
over the world, look up "auxiliary police force". The
idea can easily be expanded to have additional
training given to specifically deal with mass shooting
situations. |
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I know I had said if you do both sides of the argument
you'll always win but I see now that's not always the
case. |
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As far as the inevitable gun control debate,
generations of Americans were trusted to hold
firearms without these rampant gun deaths. What's
changed? Are we getting stupider? |
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Evidently by the way, homicide and other gun
violence has been dropping in America since 1993 so
the reason why should be part of any search for a
solution. |
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//As of September 8, the U.S. was averaging 1.05
mass shootings per day in 2015// |
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I'm not the only one considering the "instant stardom"
effect in the minds of these killers. Guns aren't going
to be outlawed any time soon so something else
should be considered to at least try to address the
problem. |
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I've always said laws should be considered like
patent applications. The people proposing the law
would first
have to cite similar laws in place, if any, to
address the specified problem (prior art). They
would then have
to explain why they didn't work, how this law is
different, and how this law would work. |
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So if there are screening laws to keep guns out of the
hands of crazy people, (something I support by the
way) would they have worked for this shooter? How
about this other example, and this one over here? If
the law is put under scrutiny as theoretically being
applied to past circumstances with known variables
and it wouldn't work, we know it's not worth doing. |
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Would "crazy guy" screening have worked with this
last case? I don't know. If being depressed and not
being able to get a date is reason to keep firearms
from somebody, well, that's one way to keep guns out
of the hands of absolutely everybody. Thing is, if
somebody told me they've never been depressed and
un-able to get a date, I'd say that was reason enough
to keep them from having gun: they're lying on their
application. |
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In other words, I'm all for solutions, but there might
be a little thought put into whether they would do
anything more than polish the image of the politician
proposing them. |
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I think we've gone over this before. I'm mostly for the idea, except for section 3: |
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//Heavy, heavy speculation as to what a loser the guy was.// |
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I think that's going to have some unfortunate consequences. People will start assuming that 'losers' (loner / unattractive / eccentric / short / fat etc.) are likely to go off on a killing spree, and mistreat them more than they already do. |
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Either, you chose some random and ideally incongruous slur which the media agree to call each one ("the pooey pants killer", "captain halitosis", "rat-tail mullet murderer" etc), or...
well, if you as a country really do want to keep the guns, why not pretend that it's because of how crap they are with them? |
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"Ten people have been shot in XYZ city. The gun-owner unfortunately lost control of his weapon killing nine bystanders and himself." |
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"Ten people have been shot in XYZ city. A man, possibly of limited intellectual capacity, repeatedly confused the safety-catch and trigger, ceasing only when he ran out of ammunition, ironically mortally wounding himself with the last bullet." |
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"Ten people have been shot in XYZ city. Police say the man had brought N guns to an impromptu game of show and tell at his office, which went horribly wrong because he'd neglected to perform basic safety checks." |
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Wow. I'd heard New York was bad, but there's no way
I'm going anywhere near XYZ City. Those guys are
just plain crazy. |
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//I've always said laws should be considered like patent
applications. The people proposing the law would first
have to cite similar laws in place, if any, to address the
specified problem (prior art). They would then have to
explain why they didn't work, how this law is different,
and how this law would work.// |
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//Auxiliary Police Force// |
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Interesting. See, I can be reasonable. |
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//I know I had said if you do both sides of the argument
you'll always win but I see now that's not always the
case.// |
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That usually rings true for any given ad-hominem, I find. |
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//As far as the inevitable gun control debate, generations
of Americans were trusted to hold firearms without these
rampant gun deaths. What's changed? Are we getting
stupider?// |
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More stressed, more populated, faster paced, and more
global bringing about larger mixes of different and
disparate cultures together into a frothy blend. Add to
that mix higher tech weapons and a host of higher-stakes
oneupsmanship issues like social media and you have the
makings of a society that spits out maniacs like a vending
machine. |
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Yea, probably a bit of all of that. |
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I should probably just not let it get to me when stuff
like this happens. There's really nothing I can do
about it. |
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//I've always said laws should be considered like patent
applications. The people proposing the law would first
have to cite similar laws in place, if any, to address the
specified problem (prior art). They would then have to
explain why they didn't work, how this law is different,
and how this law would work.//
This is a good idea
only if we include the corollary: that any law which fails
to be sufficiently novel is not subject to the state's
monopoly of enforcement, and any person or enterprise
is free to exploit enforcement as it, in its market-led
wisdom, sees fit. |
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My own pet theory for why the US is so massively into gun
rampages is (a) that the US is so massively into gun
rampages and (b) most people don't have an original idea
in their heads. Without wishing to make light of the
terrible lives and burdens that teenagers might want to
escape, the press in the UK have, by and large, stopped
reporting on teen suicides in the fairly reasonable belief
that the more teen suicide is reported on, the more
teens might think that suicide is a Good Plan for them to
follow through on. What I take from this inherently
confirmation-biased observation is that if we - and when I
say we I mean the media / press / we - stop reporting
these things at all, then hopefully disaffected young men
will find better way to express themselves (video games,
model railways, ragewanking, whatever). |
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Yes, there's a real cause and effect with this copycat
stuff regarding reporting. |
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In the very weird city I live in there's been a rash of
youth suicides by train. It's so horrible I hesitate to
even discuss it, but they've stopped reporting them.
We just hear "Another pedestrian hit by a train."
They've posted 24 hour guards at all the railroad
crossings and put up barriers, everything you can
think of. |
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It seems to have worked, we were getting several a
year and it's been several months since I've heard of
one. |
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Christ, this whole post is becoming so depressing.
Who's the asshole who put this up in the first place? |
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"Oh, we cannot understand WHY someone would do this!!" |
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Well, maybe they are doing it for attention, and we are
giving these morons more attention than they could possibly
otherwise attain. |
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Long ago, my pop told me, "The best way to get famous?
Kill a celebrity". It taught me that fame wasn't necessarily
merit-based. |
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(Oh, and neither he nor I ever attempted any murder of any
kind. We like thought experiments.) |
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Just as people troll themselves online out of self-loathing, I
would expect this to encourage some people to do this
precisely because they'll be vilified and forgotten. The
question is how many people would do that compared to the
current situation. In the meantime it probably doesn't matter
very much to the people close to the victims because their
loved one is dead regardless, and one death is too many. |
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It looks like in this particular example that the mom showed
poor judgment in allowing her mentally-and-socially
challenged son unfettered access to unlocked weapons and
injecting a bit of that paranoid mentality herself. Ways to
reduce any of that would be stronger community reach for
kids on the spectrum, a free gun safe for all families who buy
more than 1 weapon or perhaps as a package deal with some
firearm insurance, and perhaps some shorter working hours
for nurses, who, lets face it, are completely frazzled by their
schedule. |
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Could go the super high tech route. The only guns
allowed are connected wirelessly to a central
command center where they're tracked and can be
shut down if they're at a school or something. |
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Yea, I was thinking about how complicated it would
be vs how easy it would be to dismantle the system,
hence the "Naa". |
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Maybe I'll post it anyway for discussion. |
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