I went to university in the states and on my second day there was an active shooter on campus, it was the second time it had occurred in 3 years. The attitude towards guns from so many Americans is baffling. In the UK the far right and far left don't agree on much but guns being bad easily unites them
Will anything make a politician/president actually risk it all and sort this out?
So backwards.
You would hope so....but I bet it doesn't happen.
The NRA are pretty powerful and very very wealthy. It's nigh on impossible to pass gun control laws through congress. Some individual states have made a strong stance but little they can do for the rest of the country
I looked this up because I didn't know the answer... 42% of american households own at least one gun, and it's fluctuated between 47% and 37% since the 70's. It's not as if a majority of households, let alone adults, have guns. Wondering if like smoking it can be turned into a generational thing that people just go off them?
The worst bit is that it takes 18 children killed at once to raise this sort of clamour. But I'll bet more than 18 kids were killed in separate events over the previous couple of months
Once again, the ability for people with damaged minds to get hold of high powered weaponry is why I won't ever move to the USA.
Often people point to the ideology behind the shootings being the issue. It's an issue, but that issue is compounded many times over by the availability of weaponry. This person doesn't appear to be a Muslim terrorist or a right wing terorrist. He appears to be a kid that has been bullied in the past, something that we see in a lot of US school shootings.
When the constitution was written, a dozen people with the high powered rifles of today could probably have conquered America.
The constitution is absolutely not fit for purpose with respect to arms.
That's without going into suicides. The suicide rate in the USA is more than double that of the UK. No doubt that is in part down to the ready availability of guns. The ability to make a decision to kill yourself and then go through with it within 10 seconds is crazy.
The second amendment actually says "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
I suppose we'll hear the narrative that violent video games, that are now so realistic to real life visibly and where you can walk round a shopping centre,a library a school and shoot people to smithereens has absolutely nothing to do with this.
The second amendment actually says "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Bandit country.
In keeping with the Constitution, any private individual seeking to own a gun, without meeting restrictive conditions and background checks, should be allowed to have one, provided it's a flintlock musket or pistol, reflective of the weapons of that era.
The Republican Party, and it's overwhelmingly the Republican Party, has, for reasons entirely associated with their desire to retain power at all costs, despite representing an ever decreasing percentage of the American people (which is why they concentrate so effectively on local and state elections, so they they get to organise the elections and count the votes, excluding thousands of those that they consider unfriendly), decided long ago that semi-automatic and automatic firearms and military grade ammunition are less dangerous and worthy of regulation than a woman's uterus.
The second amendment actually says "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Bandit country.
In keeping with the Constitution, any private individual seeking to own a gun, without meeting restrictive conditions and background checks, should be allowed to have one, provided it's a flintlock musket or pistol, reflective of the weapons of that era.
The Republican Party, and it's overwhelmingly the Republican Party, has, for reasons entirely associated with their desire to retain power at all costs, despite representing an ever decreasing percentage of the American people (which is why they concentrate so effectively on local and state elections, so they they get to organise the elections and count the votes, excluding thousands of those that they consider unfriendly), decided long ago that semi-automatic and automatic firearms and military grade ammunition are less dangerous and worthy of regulation than a woman's uterus.
I suppose we'll hear the narrative that violent video games, that are now so realistic to real life visibly and where you can walk round a shopping centre,a library a school and shoot people to smithereens has absolutely nothing to do with this.
That's because they have little to nothing to do with it.
"Texas, where the governor was more concerned with keeping masks out of schools than guns".
20 years ago I used to travel to Dallas regularly in my job. A local said remember 2 things…there are 17 million people in Texas and 68 million guns…second thing “if you hear shots - get down low as the police have a policy of shoot first and ask questions later”… at certain events like rodeos guns can be worn as long as visible! It’s like they’re stuck in the 1800’s…
The worst bit is that it takes 18 children killed at once to raise this sort of clamour. But I'll bet more than 18 kids were killed in separate events over the previous couple of months
Reported in one of the papers at least 22 people killed and at least 50 injured in shootings last weekend alone.
I suppose we'll hear the narrative that violent video games, that are now so realistic to real life visibly and where you can walk round a shopping centre,a library a school and shoot people to smithereens has absolutely nothing to do with this.
That's because they have little to nothing to do with it.
Gamer are you ?
How do you know what goes on in the f****d up heads of these crazy kids? Fuelling their mental fire cannot be helping. dismissing violent games as NOTHING to do with this relatively new phenomenon is naive.
I suppose we'll hear the narrative that violent video games, that are now so realistic to real life visibly and where you can walk round a shopping centre,a library a school and shoot people to smithereens has absolutely nothing to do with this.
That's because they have little to nothing to do with it.
Gamer are you ?
How do you know what goes on in the f****d up heads of these crazy kids? Fuelling their mental fire cannot be helping. dismissing violent games as NOTHING to do with this relatively new phenomenon is naive.
It’s naive to think that violent games cause school shootings when school shootings only happen in one country, despite violent video games being available in pretty much every country on earth.
I don't think that video games cause school shootings, but at the very least they provide a pretty good training platform for these people and desensitise people to the idea of dead people in front of them. The same way a plane simulator helped 9/11 hijackers.
You could say the same thing about paintball though, but I think it is incredibly naive to say that there is zero link.
There are definitely more depraved things online than just video games as well.
I think the problem with all these shootings is that they are now actually part of the culture of the USA. It is very hard to unravel a culture.
I suppose we'll hear the narrative that violent video games, that are now so realistic to real life visibly and where you can walk round a shopping centre,a library a school and shoot people to smithereens has absolutely nothing to do with this.
That's because they have little to nothing to do with it.
Gamer are you ?
How do you know what goes on in the f****d up heads of these crazy kids? Fuelling their mental fire cannot be helping. dismissing violent games as NOTHING to do with this relatively new phenomenon is naive.
"Focusing on violent video games as the cause of mass shootings almost certainly distracts legislators and government officials from the pressing need to deal with more fundamental causes. It is a moral imperative for federal and state legislators, government officials, and all others concerned with lethal violence to confront the underlying problems and not take symbolic refuge in blaming violent video games."
I don't think that video games cause school shootings, but at the very least they provide a pretty good training platform for these people and desensitise people to the idea of dead people in front of them. The same way a plane simulator helped 9/11 hijackers.
You could say the same thing about paintball though, but I think it is incredibly naive to say that there is zero link.
There are definitely more depraved things online than just video games as well.
I think the problem with all these shootings is that they are now actually part of the culture of the USA. It is very hard to unravel a culture.
Think I get this. It's seen as the ultimate statement. Obviously, if guns weren't accessible then it wouldn't happen
Violent games are on sale here too. I think the issue is that the USA is a shithole.
FTR in the last 6 months i have been to; New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Honolulu.
We don't have access to guns, though. We have knives instead, which fuel our very own issue.
The terrorist attacks at London Bridge the terrorists carried out their attacks with knifes and got shoot by police officers. Our issues are incomparable.
I suppose we'll hear the narrative that violent video games, that are now so realistic to real life visibly and where you can walk round a shopping centre,a library a school and shoot people to smithereens has absolutely nothing to do with this.
That's because they have little to nothing to do with it.
Gamer are you ?
How do you know what goes on in the f****d up heads of these crazy kids? Fuelling their mental fire cannot be helping. dismissing violent games as NOTHING to do with this relatively new phenomenon is naive.
Yes, I am and no I don't know what these people are thinking, but equally, neither do you.
As far as I'm aware though there's been no link between this or any of the recent events and video games, so it just seemed to me like you'd shoe-horned a personal ideology into the current debate with no discernible link. As Huskaris pointed out the general access to violent themes in all media - films, music, on the internet, as well as in video games - undoubtedly does desensitise people somewhat. But of all the variables influencing people to commit these horrific acts, I think video games specifically, and media at large, to be one of the least influential IMO.
If violent media of all forms were banned today I daresay the frequency/number of shootings in America would be largely unaffected. The problem in the vast, vast majority comes down to socio-economic and cultural issues, and as RandyAndy has shared as well, there have been studies to support that point of view.
But lets not turn this thread into a Games good/bad debate.
Without looking at the stats, I can imagine 'per head' they are just as bad (if not worse) than us in terms of knife-based murders.
But the damage you can do with a knife is drastically lower than that you can do with a gun - I daren't imagine how much worse it would have been if those who committed the London Bridge attacks had guns instead of knives.
It's also a lot harder to thoroughly control knife access, at the end of the day we all have knives in our home, compared to how easy it would be to control gun access, which not everyone has in their home or has access to. Obviously America has let the cat out the bag in that a % of the country does already have access to guns.
over half of gun deaths in the USA are suicides. Another human cost. Their suicide rate is twice ours (whilst not being one of the highest, but in the top 25)
The worst bit is that it takes 18 children killed at once to raise this sort of clamour. But I'll bet more than 18 kids were killed in separate events over the previous couple of months
I am afraid the true picture, on average, is far, far worse. 18 children (ages 1-17) are shot dead in the United States, not every two months, but, horrifically, every nine days.
I wouldn't discount the media and gamers totally but only purely from a cultural aspect.
These people who cause these atrocities often feel marginalised by the media and popular culture in general. They become bitter and looking to blame something/someone for their own perceived failures.
You only have to go on one of those websites previously mentioned (4chan) to see the hatred and feeling of being alienated in their own country by the media and by the causes that do not resonated with them personally. In fact they can actually despise those causes. Metoo, Black lives etc.. there is a hell of alot of people who fuel this on those sites. Louis Theroux did a documentary on it not that long ago and most of them are gamers, where racism, misogyny, antisemitic, homophobic along with other abhorrent views are shared and applauded. Though the gamer element is probably coincidental as its a hobby for alot of young people. Takes one to be bullied, paranoid or unhinged anyway to say fuck it im going to my school (where most of them see examples of the views they distrust) to do something about it.
Without looking at the stats, I can imagine 'per head' they are just as bad (if not worse) than us in terms of knife-based murders.
They do indeed.
5 per million killed by knives in the USA vs about 3.3 in the UK. About 34 per million killed by guns in the USA vs about 0.3 in the UK.
Americans play on average 7.7 hours of video games a week vs 7.17 in the UK, so not a huge difference.
I'm certainly no expert, but the way the UK seems to be going i'd expect that gap to close in the coming years.
Saw a video on twitter a couple of weeks ago where a woman was pushed over and then stabbed by a schoolkid in Croydon. He didn't give a shit, done in broad daylight, in front of people filming and at least 50 onlookers.
Comments
Agree with the opinions about a civil war if you tried to take away the guns; But if you don't, this carnage will carry on for ever.
It breaks my heart with the mass murder of Children and the inability of solutions to solve the wild west mentality of the right to bare arms.
This is interesting The demographics of gun ownership in the U.S. | Pew Research Center
That old Chris Rock joke about how they don't need gun control they need bullet control, where each bullet costs £5000 might not be such a bad idea!
Often people point to the ideology behind the shootings being the issue. It's an issue, but that issue is compounded many times over by the availability of weaponry. This person doesn't appear to be a Muslim terrorist or a right wing terorrist. He appears to be a kid that has been bullied in the past, something that we see in a lot of US school shootings.
When the constitution was written, a dozen people with the high powered rifles of today could probably have conquered America.
The constitution is absolutely not fit for purpose with respect to arms.
That's without going into suicides. The suicide rate in the USA is more than double that of the UK. No doubt that is in part down to the ready availability of guns. The ability to make a decision to kill yourself and then go through with it within 10 seconds is crazy.
Bandit country.
The Republican Party, and it's overwhelmingly the Republican Party, has, for reasons entirely associated with their desire to retain power at all costs, despite representing an ever decreasing percentage of the American people (which is why they concentrate so effectively on local and state elections, so they they get to organise the elections and count the votes, excluding thousands of those that they consider unfriendly), decided long ago that semi-automatic and automatic firearms and military grade ammunition are less dangerous and worthy of regulation than a woman's uterus.
EDIT - Links:
How do you know what goes on in the f****d up heads of these crazy kids?
Fuelling their mental fire cannot be helping.
dismissing violent games as NOTHING to do with this relatively new phenomenon is naive.
You could say the same thing about paintball though, but I think it is incredibly naive to say that there is zero link.
There are definitely more depraved things online than just video games as well.
I think the problem with all these shootings is that they are now actually part of the culture of the USA. It is very hard to unravel a culture.
To quote the last paragraph:
"Focusing on violent video games as the cause of mass shootings almost certainly distracts legislators and government officials from the pressing need to deal with more fundamental causes. It is a moral imperative for federal and state legislators, government officials, and all others concerned with lethal violence to confront the underlying problems and not take symbolic refuge in blaming violent video games."
FTR in the last 6 months i have been to; New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Honolulu.
Without looking at the stats, I can imagine 'per head' they are just as bad (if not worse) than us in terms of knife-based murders.
As far as I'm aware though there's been no link between this or any of the recent events and video games, so it just seemed to me like you'd shoe-horned a personal ideology into the current debate with no discernible link. As Huskaris pointed out the general access to violent themes in all media - films, music, on the internet, as well as in video games - undoubtedly does desensitise people somewhat. But of all the variables influencing people to commit these horrific acts, I think video games specifically, and media at large, to be one of the least influential IMO.
If violent media of all forms were banned today I daresay the frequency/number of shootings in America would be largely unaffected. The problem in the vast, vast majority comes down to socio-economic and cultural issues, and as RandyAndy has shared as well, there have been studies to support that point of view.
But lets not turn this thread into a Games good/bad debate.
5 per million killed by knives in the USA vs about 3.3 in the UK.
About 34 per million killed by guns in the USA vs about 0.3 in the UK.
Americans play on average 7.7 hours of video games a week vs 7.17 in the UK, so not a huge difference.
It's also a lot harder to thoroughly control knife access, at the end of the day we all have knives in our home, compared to how easy it would be to control gun access, which not everyone has in their home or has access to. Obviously America has let the cat out the bag in that a % of the country does already have access to guns.
These people who cause these atrocities often feel marginalised by the media and popular culture in general. They become bitter and looking to blame something/someone for their own perceived failures.
You only have to go on one of those websites previously mentioned (4chan) to see the hatred and feeling of being alienated in their own country by the media and by the causes that do not resonated with them personally. In fact they can actually despise those causes. Metoo, Black lives etc.. there is a hell of alot of people who fuel this on those sites. Louis Theroux did a documentary on it not that long ago and most of them are gamers, where racism, misogyny, antisemitic, homophobic along with other abhorrent views are shared and applauded. Though the gamer element is probably coincidental as its a hobby for alot of young people.
Takes one to be bullied, paranoid or unhinged anyway to say fuck it im going to my school (where most of them see examples of the views they distrust) to do something about it.
more guns is the answer.
If they allowed 7 year olds to be armed, they could have prevented such a high loss of life.
Saw a video on twitter a couple of weeks ago where a woman was pushed over and then stabbed by a schoolkid in Croydon. He didn't give a shit, done in broad daylight, in front of people filming and at least 50 onlookers.