Anon learns about Material Conditions.
How come none of these nutcases ever go shoot a billionaire or two instead of random Innocents?
“Guy with shit circumstances decides to buy a gun and decides to go somewhere with the gun and decides to shoot undeserving people with the gun, it’s society’s fault”
Way to blame the victim anon. No, this was his decision. I know folks who have life shitting all over them and it doesn’t make them want to kill children and families.
It’s both. Even terrible people with something to lose are less likely to throw it all away.
If this guy makes $35k a year at dollar general, he probably doesn’t go on a murder spree.
But you could also just not be an asshole. Why go after random people instead of someone who actually helps cause the bullshit?
You’re right, we should be targeting the bourgeois, aristocrats and ultra rich with our killing sprees. What we need are eco terrorists, not senseless killings.
Fuck that. We don’t need terrorists at all.
the guy wants “good” terrorist he advocates while wiping the doritos off his desk and washing down his everclear with sugar free juice.
Both apply. Yes, he ultimately chose to do it. However society shaped and funneled him into that position. It’s not a binary decision between individual and systematic, both can apply. In this case, social systems failed and put a large number of people in a bad situation with an apparent easy way out. Almost all then chose not to go on a killing spree. Unfortunately, “almost all” is “all”. Some will make the bad choice, when put in that position.
As a society, we can’t change individual choices. What we can do however is change the framework those choices are made in. If we aim to put fewer people in that position, then fewer will make the wrong choice, and we will all be safer for it.
You only said that some people have a lower threshold.
You guys are groomed in social=bad.
society isnt you or i society is the general way things are and yes society is the cause of shootings. mental health is a direct measure of society.
society fights tooth and nail to have guns be super easy to get.
society also fights tooth and nail to keep (mental) healthcare behind an impossible wall.
so now we are generating mentally ill people that have easy access to guns. multiply that by the internal bias and bigotry you were raised with and many millions of potential offenders. boom you have a shooting every freaking day.
yes the shooter is shitty and should be killed or in jail but society is at fault for the shooting even ever coming close to occuring.
No. You’ve just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia. Most of us don’t mass murder with machine guns.
That only happens in America because you’ve chosen to elect people who make sure crazy people can exercise your Constitutional right to carry machine guns and stand your ground when King Charles comes on your property or you carry your emotional support machine guns to a protest. That’s not “society’s” fault. It’s every single Republican MAGA protect the second amendment voter.
You’ve just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia.
What the actual fuck are you talking about?
Damn, life looking pretty grim homes. King Charles?!
most people on Earth outside of American suburbia
Inside. You mean inside of American suburbia, the depressing, isolating, boring American suburbia. People in the first world outside of America have social nets and help from the society if they’re on the downswing. People in first world go to therapist when they feel bad about circumstances of their lives, not into sporting shop to buy a gun.
But you’re completely right, the situation when people can go to a random shop and buy a gun is fucking insane.deleted by creator
You may want to adjust your term “assault rifles” to “scary black rifles.”
Assault rifles are a type of machine gun, to be an assault rifle it must have select fire, semi and full/burst.
The second wasn’t drafted only for protection, but also for government oversight.
Nobody outside of the USA gives a shit about the distinction.
Most of us in the US also don’t give a shit about the gun pedants and their attempts to disrupt the conversation again like they always do
Not really sure what matters in this context.
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Ok. Not that anybody asked.
The “sad” fact is that most people outside of the US don’t know the difference, because outside of perhaps a hunting store, or rarely seeing armed police in airports/during police incidents, most people have never seen a gun.
Also everybody living outside USA is dirt poor woth zero prospects and low IQ apparently.
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you can’t acquire an automatic weapon, or “machine gun”, in the US without either an FFL, or buying an expensive as fuck and extremely rare automatic gun from pre-1986. You might see firearms with fire rates similar to automatic weapons as a result of illegal modifications, like that of the bump stock, but there are also less reversible modifications someone might end up doing. Anyways that’s more like a theoretical, really stupid correction for me to make, because it’s kind of up in the air as to whether or not automatic weapons would even be more effective if you wanted to kill a lot of people, as military doctrine generally employs them (full auto) as suppression or cover fire, making active zones of danger which enemies can’t pass through or fire from, rather than for the use of killing people. Though, the military doesn’t really tend to kill large unarmed groups of people, or, they prefer to do that with drone strikes, anyways. You don’t really care about any of that, though, probably.
I would also like to posit that probably america has a unique combination of factors which spurn on violence. Insane amounts of wealth disparity, probably only comparable to some places in the middle east, if that, but also a sense of entitlement towards middle class living, aka the “american dream”, which creates a kind of scorn and spite in the american mind when that middle class ideal is denied, or revealed as false. The way that these ideologies work is that they say that X is entitled to middle class living, that they deserve it, but that Y minority or Y oppressed group is in the way.
Also, these mass shootings, mass shootings of this specific type, tend to be relatively rare. Or at least, not as big of a problem as the media would have you believe, relative to: the vast majority of firearm violence, which primarily happens with handguns, and is related to gang violence (this category includes shootings by the police). Which is quite obviously related to poverty, and the protection of drugs as a high-value good that obviously can’t be protected by the actual government. So you see a local monopoly of force evolve taking advantage of the poor in order to bring themselves to a more economically workable position, yadda yadda, I’m sure you’ve heard that story before. And then on top of that you have handgun suicide comprising somewhere between half and a third of all gun deaths (I can’t quite remember).
All that considered, in combination with a lack of political will to get rid of guns, for somewhere around half the population, I’d probably make the prescription that you would see a better drop in violence from the legalization, or decriminalization, of drugs, universal mental healthcare, rectifying economic inequality, and of course, “common sense” gun laws, which would probably mostly apply to screenings for mental illness, primarily depression, but also conspiratorial thinking. The latter there, “common sense” gun laws, I think is agreeable to the majority of the population.
Dont glamourize mass murderers.Dont even publish their names, publish the names of the victims.
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…with ready access to guns.
So much commentary here focusing on societal ills, but even in other countries with lots of poverty and shit social services they don’t have individuals committing random mass murders like us because they don’t have a collection of high capacity personal arms. There’s plenty of people in other countries that have commonality with his life, yet they don’t commit mass murder. Yeah, shootings do happen elsewhere…but not like in the US, and the difference is access to firearms.
I hate the argument people make sometimes, “Anything can be a weapon, I could go around stabbing people with a pencil if I really wanted to. Even if you banned guns, it wouldn’t matter.” Yeah, except you can’t kill dozens of people within a few minutes with a pencil. We’ve got huge problems with economic disparity, a quiet epidemic of mental health disorders with little means to help the people that need it, coupled with ridiculously easy access to high-powered firearms in our country. There will never be enough “good people with guns” to protect the world. We need to reduce access to gun ownership to prevent mentally unbalanced people from having such powerful weapons at their disposal for when they eventually snap (since they’ll never have access to treatment), but that’s just a pipe dream at this point in time in America.
I had believed in the good guy with a gun idea until a citizen trying to stop a shooter by shooting back got himself shot by the police. Then I imagined myself in the position of the police in that scenario. It’s not neat and tidy. It gets worse as I imagine more people getting involved with their own firearms.
In a small space where everyone can see everyone, the aggressor is clear. I think of the guy who tried to rob a gun store. Everyone there hears what he said and sees how he’s acting. As soon as someone walks in without seeing the situation unfold, it becomes messy really fast.
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“Any is too many” - obviously we don’t want anyone murdered, but good luck doing anything to completely stop that. People kill for any number of reasons, it’s happened since the beginning of time. Someone says something under his breath and gets killed waiting in a fast food line by somebody they’ve never met before. A jealous ex-lover shows up at a party and stabs their ex to death. A calculating spouse poisons their SO to collect insurance money. A soldier sees someone wearing the enemy uniform and shoots. Someone goes off the deep end and shoots up a music festival and kills 58 people in a matter of minutes. A troubled teen goes into a school and kills dozens of kindergarteners in their classrooms. All those are tragedies and seemingly daily occurrences, but the low-hanging fruit here is quantity. Saving more people in less amount of time is better. Utopia can wait, people need helped now.
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One of the problems with arguments made by gun control opponents is that they concoct these ridiculous all-or-nothing scenarios. Like, we obviously can’t enact any sort of solution unless it’s a Magic Bullet that universally solves every problem ever that humanity has ever faced. If a solution doesn’t solve world hunger, prevent accidental overdoses, car accidents, acid showers, lightning strikes, or cure cancer, then obviously it’s doomed to failure.
Or even attempting to do ANYTHING at all about the problem is just the first step in jack-booted Government thugs kicking down you front door, dragging your grandmother out, raping her in the street and then shooting your kids and your dogs… for reasons. OR, we can’t talk about gun control solutions because obviously we’ll start illegalizing knives, acid (?), and cars next, just like they’ve done in all the countries of the world that have gun control, like those hellholes in Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada. OR, if anybody anywhere dies from a shooting after enacting gun control legislation, then obviously it was a failure and a waste of time, why did we even bother?
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In the UK knife crime is a big issue for those in poverty or those in struggling cities. Having access to weapons of course increases risks of people dying ot those weapons, but removing guns isn’t going to just convince everyone trying to lash out to just lie down and suffer in silence.
I don’t live in a contry with civilan access to guns, and I don’t live in a situation where I feel the need to protect myself with weapons, so I’m not gonna stake a claim in the gun control debate. But if you ban every weapon ever conceivable, without addressing why people are becoming violent to begin with, people will just result to using their own hands (or perhaps more realistically, going above the legal means. Like with Shinzo Abe’s assassination).
At least with a knife, you can’t mow down a room full of people. Here in the U.S. dozens of people can be killed in a short time by a single person due to guns. We give them out like candy.
Both access to guns (force multiplier) and the underlying issue (poverty, lack of social mobility, etc) need to be addressed.
Well, yeah. I’ll take your word on the issue of US gun control.
However, if we want to tackle both these issues it’s probably a bad habit to redirect the conversation to gun control when we are talking about the motivations a situations that are generating the violent outbursts to begin with, since gun control gets a hell of alot more talk anyway, while societal issues keep getting pushed away from the collective spotlight, and are usally coming from underprivileged postions that stuggle to get a word in to begin with.
I agree, which is why I usually bring up both when it makes sense to do so.
I wasn’t aware candy required going through a background check and being a legal adult.
I guess I’ve been trick or treating in the wrong neighborhoods…
ok, kill as many people as he did with a knife.
Right, let’s keep pretending it’s about the weapon over actual program solving.
It is about the weapon. If someone wanted to inflict a lot of damage, they would use bombs. That has happened several times in the past but doesn’t compare to the number of mass shootings. Why? Because guns are simply just plentiful and easy to get, and too many apologetics keep allowing them to be plentiful. It really is that simple. Yes it doesn’t fix society’s underlying issues but that is a MUCH harder problem to solve than simply getting rid of (as many) guns (as possible), or at least not just allow so mamy people to own them willy nilly.
The goal is to drastically reduce the number of innocent lives being taken ASAP, not to argue about weapons or social ills or all of this other nonsense.
Because guns are simply just plentiful and easy to get, and too many apologetics keep allowing them to be plentiful.
You seem to be close to a moment of understanding here but not quite getting it. You seem to recognize that there are other tools available to affect such disastrous outcomes we’d be doing nothing to address, but to also pretend that there’s no indication nor chance anyone would use any of these other tools.
You seem to recognize the futility of the whack-a-mole game while recognizing its existence.
Yes it doesn’t fix society’s underlying issues but that is a MUCH harder problem to solve than simply getting rid of (as many) guns (as possible), or at least not just allow so mamy people to own them willy nilly.
It really isn’t. How much effort do you believe will be required to bring about an amendment to the constitution of the United States?
How much less effort will be required to bring about simple legislative changes? By simple comparison of the two vectors of change, one of them is unquestionably easier than the other. Spoiler: It isn’t undoing the 2nd amendment.
Interestingly enough, you seem to double-down on the previous recognition the problem - pressures toward mass violence - would be left unaddressed but with the vast majority of options for mass harm still very much present and ignored.
The goal is to drastically reduce the number of innocent lives being taken ASAP, not to argue about weapons or social ills or all of this other nonsense.
Which is more effective: A change which is quite impossible to bring about, or a change which can be brought about with some difficulty and compromise?
Which is more effective: A change which removes one of unbounded options to bring about a given end, or a change which reduces the count of people seeking to bring about a given end with any tool available?
We both know you know the answer.
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Lol, gl with that. In the meantime other people are still allowed to set more reasonable and feasible goalposts.
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Right, like bringing about constitutional amendments requiring a majority of states and Congresspeople instead of a change which simply requires a majority of Congresspeople.
So much more feasible.
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If only there were other factors which could impact the highlighted systemic issues… perhaps Canada’s notable single-payer healthcare system, social safety nets, etc. impacting the desperation and providing help?
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He typed It poorly, but I think his point was: Try to kill 30 children in a school with a knife.
If the person wants to kill, they will kill, but a gun (a big gun even) will make this task, orders of magnitude easier.
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The point isn’t If it’s bad or not, of course it’s all bad.
But If I had to notify 30 families of their deceased parents over 1 family, the choice is obvious.
You are right the guns won’t shoot anyone by themselves, but they’re very much an easy access to whoever wants to mass kill people.
Trying to solve people’s heads is a long term effort, and taking away guns is a short term bandaid. The thing is people are dying Now, you need to save people now, while simultaneously trying to solve the root problem.
If you’re thinking only talking to people Now, will help anyone, we’re in for many more kill streaks
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try reading before commenting next time, i find it helps me not look like a fucktard
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what the fuck is this incoherent pile of sludge
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That not the point. Ideally we just wouldn’t have people doing this to begin with, right?
Yeah, you treat the symptom, but in an effective way. It’s called mass shooting, because so many people die, when guns are involved. You do not have this, if there is someone trying the same with a knife. Banning guns is a band aid during the time necessary to fix the underlying problem.
It’s also impossible given the state of partisan gridlock and the constitutional amendment necessary.
Fortunately, actually solving problems here is far simpler than asinine bans.
There will still be kids slipping through. They also say it themselves:
Too often in politics it becomes an either-or proposition. Gun control or mental health. Our research says that none of these solutions is perfect on its own. We have to do multiple things at one time and put them together as a comprehensive package. People have to be comfortable with complexity and that’s not always easy.
There will still be kids slipping through. They also say it themselves:
Indeed.
So, what’s more effective?
Reducing the scope of those seeking to commit such atrocities to a small fraction of those now, or hoping for improvement via symptom whack-a-mole?
But muh well regulated militia!
If you want to ban guns you need to ban metals and CNCs, will buying a CNC require a gun license and a clear criminal record?
Always the extremes with you, trying to make everything zero sum or a binary choice. There’s no room for reason and moderation if your go-to is pounding the table with the nuclear option every time.
I’m saying, if you prohibit somebody from buying a gun, I’d they’re really dedicated they can easily build it themselves. Do you ban steel because 0.0001% of the population could bypass gun restrictions?
Keep trying bro. Again, the hyperbole. There is no perfect solution. No, you don’t enact absurd bans. But you don’t make perfect the enemy of good enough by saying an imperfect solution isn’t an acceptable solution. I’m not interested in discussing your CNC or steel hyperbole.
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The US can’t even do cheap healthcare. How the fuck is UBI ever going to happen?
By force
1,000 billionaires, 1 guillotine. That’s how.
As an engineer, I think if we add a larger load to the top of the blade then we can probably get away with the full 1000 without sharpening or swapping the edge out. Sharp edges have a lower force requirement but a blunt edge will still work with enough force.
If we need a test group I think the Sackler Family are an ideal target.
They will learn of our peaceful ways
In comparison to how complicated fixing our healthcare system will be, implementing a UBI will be dead simple. The only thing we need is the political will to do it.
I agree with UBI fully, but we ain’t got nothing on Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa was just the king. It’s like saying that everyone in America is rich because Jeff Bezos is rich.
Also, Mansa Musa’s wealth has been exaggerated a lot and the crashing economies while on pilgrimage thing is probably bunk.
Yup, I’m going to trust your source-less comment over my University professors
Did your professor teach you that “my professor disagrees!” is a compelling argument?
Syas the one rebuttling without any sources
I’m not even the same person. But more importantly, I’m not the one acting like asking for sources is a rebuttal when a) you haven’t brought any either, and b) this is an internet conversation, not an essay. If you really want to read up on what someone is saying, there are internet services that can be used to find more information to support or oppose what others say on the internet.
Mali only had an estimated 400 billion in treasury and it was a hereditary kingdom where only Mansa himself would have benefited directly. The United States treasury distributes 3 trillion across all federal agencies (some SUPPOSED to benefit citizens but y’know).
As for Ubi, there needs to be incentive to tie it to at least having a job or being on qualified unemployment or education. Know too many 18 year olds that would start cashing that just to stay at home and do nothing useful.
Im honestly tired of this argument.
Ive worked several jobs across my life time and if we paid people room and board to stay the fuck at home the world would be better for it.
Far from it but it’s your fantasy land, my dude. Antisocial freaks who don’t conceptualize the amount we need logistics and services can seethe on cope all day ig.
Automation and AI (it’s not true AI but it’s displacing workers all the same) and handling more and more logistics as time goes and the tech gets cheaper and better, there are less jobs that an 18 year old would qualify for.
Do you want someone doing that job that actually wants to work, or someone showing up and doing the bare minimum they can get away with to collect a check?
And the jobs that do actually have need of peiple? Well now they can do their part to attract those with the skill and knowledge to do them rather than rely on a revovling door of people just showing up because someone told them they had to.
You must never have worked in logistics. There are so many jobs that automation cannot do at this moment and won’t for a very long time.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about then because everything from truck drivers and trains to warehouse workers are being primed to be replaced by automated or AI networked machines. There are very few jobs in that sector not up to be replaced by a machine and most of those are things that require a masters degree in engineering or mathematics and statistics.
Pretty much everything that would be considered an entry level job someone with a high school diploma or GED would have a chance of getting isn’t going to be around 10-15 years from now, and those that are will have a high level of competition that anyone not overqualified simply doesn’t qualify against anyone else needing a job. What jobs can’t be entirely automated or done by a machine are going to have more potential applicants than the company could ever hope to employ, let alone need to.
So yeah, TL;DR if we started UBI now with no strings attached and let people without a desire to work, you’re not going to see a drop in productivity or services. The only places that might feel the hurt are the places that exploit that young adults without college degrees willing to work a job for 3-9 months before quitting and finding a new job.
Why can’t someone cash in on UBI and do nothing? No one chose to be born here, to be alive, I am perfectly happy working and paying taxes to help people do nothing if that’s what they want. Enough people want to do useful things that society is perfectly able to accommodate a good number of people doing nothing. Maybe that is also incentivized by nearly all the work available to a young person being bullshit that is degrading and pays very little.
Because then all you are is unironically a cancerous growth within society like the morbidly obese and unemployment abusers. To participate within society you sign and agree with the contractual terms. Nothing in this world is free of resource and labor, thereby nothing can be given without getting. It’s the basic core of a finite resource, be it time or material. The idea that “enough people have ambition that we can support the lazy to fuck off until they die” is so unequivocally revolting.
‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’ applies to the same principle of a UBI. If you wish not to assist in continuing our society further and assist in the services needed to operate, then you deserve nothing and should be left behind. Work on improving the conditions afforded workers and the work available, rather than incentiving actual mongrel degeneracy.
I don’t remember signing shit before I was born. Lemme see that contract.
You benefit from the resource and labor collectivized to ensure you don’t have to eat rotten food every night, sleep outside and die of exposure, or die in a bloody war against your will. It is a miracle you’re even allowed to live considering how rough all of human history has been, and to ensure that keeps going while you benefit from it, you agree to assist in maintenance.
All that comes from the exploitation of the human population. If everyone was out to better the world we would be leagues further than where we are now. But a handful of people do and spend everything they can to stay in power.
Even if we overlooked all the exploitation that happened, where we are now thanks to everyone in human history, we don’t need to work like we have in the past. Everything can be automated and everyone happier. But then the rich and powerful wouldn’t get to be rich and powerful
We are already being robbed every day, all profits of the working people are being funneled to the rich. Whatever amount this average teenager could waste by not working is completely insignificant compared to the trillions spent on speculation, weapons, political manipulation, and other billions of dollars spent on things that make all of our lives worse. How much money do you think a trillion dollars is? We are being tricked every day. There are billionaires that sit on their ass and do less than any lazy average person, and make thousands while doing it.
Current populist rhetoric using half truths is all this is. Yes there are reasons to be upset at our current situation, but the easy out of “muh billionaires” is so lackadaisical and falsified as a straw man for the stock market, politicians, and evil people who are actually an issue.
Lazy people are exactly the reason why shit is so bad as is. Look at any period of history pre-80s and you’ll find a group of unified citizens actually doing something about their issue and making the government fear them using the necessary violence (the only language these fuckers understand as it removes their control through ‘civility’). Now you say you want to give rise to a new class that happily takes their state mandated paycheck and then sits on their ass to not question why things aren’t getting any better. Yeah no, it fucking disgusts me, this philosophy.
Yeah it’s not just ‘the billionaires’ that’s obviously a short hand for the greater issue. You hear about those people because they made differences, but throughout history most people are just as lazy as they are now. Sitting down and not working itself is a form of rebelling against this fucking bullshit that wants us to do something all the time. Fuck that, for what? I want to make the government fear the people that want to sit and do nothing. Because what the fuck is life for. What are you living for?
“You should be grateful serving your betters. Kneel like a good peasant, and I’ll let you have a chicken bone to eat.”
You should be happy serving your community and benefiting society. Live for something greater than yourself.
You can serve your community and benefit society without making the rich richer.
It’s not “universal” if you start tying it to stuff. There are many cases where people cannot work (recessions, disabilities, need to care for family members, etc). The incentive to work would still naturally be there (to get more than “basic” income). Also, everyone wants a purpose, even if you may not see it as useful; it is a human need.
You need to get rid of your “work or die” mentality. Not everyone needs to work. Only those who want more than what the UBI gives them should work.
The world literally is work or die. God I would love to see any of you people try to exist before modern amenities allowed you freedom. You are morally obligated to assist in keeping this going
The US government isn’t trillions in debt and just using money like it’s non existent? News to me
Do you not understand the concept that we don’t just pay our debt back immediately. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/
Still debt. Still less than the 400 billion that Musa had
Also what you posted straight up said we’ve collected 4.4 trillion and spent 6.1 trillion
That’s… Not how anything works. I’m sure Bezos is far more in debt than you are and yet his spending capability dwarfs you.
What a shitty argument. Lol your so dumb
If people don’t have to worry with the stress of just surviving the month, they’ll want to do more with their life and get more. People will always want a bigger house, nicer car, faster PC, there’ll always be the motivation to find work, and when they have the freedom and ability to achive that, they’ll go do it. It’s one of the ways we can utilise our greedy nature in a positive way.
What UBI will do is make it so the average person isn’t at the mercy of minium wage jobs that will go nowhere, just to not die on the street. An effective slave.
Had me nodding in agreement until that last line.
Cruz’s Crime is not “100% society’s fault.” Cruz literally and figuratively pulled that trigger. At best maybe a 50:50, but to completely absolve Cruz of any wrongdoing is asinine.
I don’t think that the blame assigned is in the literal sense I think it is in the philosophical sense.
Meaning the chain of events that led here had many MANY interruption points where society could have prevented this from escalating. There is no 1 person to blame for this entire thing, it’s a shared societal burden.
It’s essentially the Swiss Cheese Model for society and social outbursts.
Edit: I’m not saying what happened wasn’t wrong, I’m saying is that we can prevent this shit, and we keep failing over and over.
What I find weird about this is how unbalanced people assign blame. A white young male mass shooter: absolutely society’s fault.
When anybody else does something bad, the internet is much less forgiving.
Take an incredibly tame example as comparison: Amber Heard. The internet hates that person, although her life was shit and she isn’t even a murderer. I’ve never ever seen someone say it’s society’s fault that she acted like a douche.
Or take another mass shooter: Andrew Bing, who was a young black man and killed 6. You don’t have people on communities like 4chan, Lemmy and Reddit falling all over themselves blaming society and discussing his tragic life.
It does come off a lot as if the average person online, has a much easier time to sympathise with some people. And in consequence they give these people much more leeway than others.
I completely agree. However, if we’re talking about solutions, blaming someone like this doesn’t get us anywhere, and it certainly won’t prevent another similar tragedy.
The people interested in actually solving this problem aren’t wasting their time on the motives of the shooters. They are all aberrations, but when the number of aberrations starts rising, that tells you there’s a problem in the system, and treating the symptoms won’t make it go away.
It will prevent a similar tragedy by blaming him because that involves locking him up so he can’t do it again.
You’re missing the point when people say it won’t solve future issues. Yes, lock the perpetrator up (ignoring the issues with the penal system in the first place), that’s a no brainier. But locking up that person and placing all the blame at their feet doesn’t do anything for the other people in very similar situations.
Then we’re in complete agreement. I think perhaps I’m not the one missing points here.
The person you were talking to was making a broader societal point. Placing the blame for this whole situation, which is the fruit of many of the failings of society, just enacted through a single man, and saying we’re good 'cause that boogeyman is dead or in prison does NOTHING to address the root causes, the actual problems. That’s the point you’re missing.
I understand exactly what they were trying to say.
Unlike them, I’m not making a broader point, I’m not in a larger discussion of societal reform. Attempting to shift this conversation to that is a fault. If you scroll through this thread I’ve been extremely consistently saying that Cruz bares responsibility for his actions and condemning him does serve a vital, albeit very disheartening, purpose for all of us.
If you think about it from my perspective it seems that the only purpose of talking about the faults of society in the context of my statements would be to detract from Cruz’s guilt, which as I stated previously is asinine.
You’re painting a false dichotomy, though. Both of these things can be true at the same time, and in fact are. It does everyone more good to accept that yes, Cruz did a bad thing and should be held accountable, and to accept that, yes, society at large has a hand to play in this.
This guy Cruz had a horrible life, there’s no doubt. But that doesn’t excuse his going out and committing mass murder. The people he killed did not make his life the misery that is was, and killing them only brings even more misery and murder into the world. There is no “fantastic” outcome. No mass murderer has ever caused a sea-change of how things are, as a result of the murder they commit.
The guy who shot up all those black people at the Tops Market in Buffalo - did he really think killing random black people, would stop black people from existing? Or prevent people from supporting black people? Mass murder never has the results these killers seem to think it will.
And how despicable to say that kids should be armed. No “Good kid” would ever murder another kid, whether that kid is good or bad. The minute you kill someone you’ve become a corrupt monster without redemption. GUNS ARE THE PROBLEM, they are NEVER the solution.
But it takes intelligence and maturity to see that. I am 65 years old. If you aren’t, I don’t expect you to understand and get why guns are so bad. So don’t bother to reply if you’re not old enough to get what I’m saying, it’s a waste of your time and mine also.
“Excuse” isn’t what matters, only address, prevent, protect.
People make the same mistake without say child abuse. Doubling down on punishments without addressing the real harms of over punishing.
if it “excused” it, we’d say “oh, okay, on that case that’s fair. no further action needed”
what this does is explain it. and with the insight offered by this explanation, we can say, “oh, yes, I can see how this could have come about. now I know what to look for/do to prevent similar tragedies in future”
I think you missed the point here. This shooter had no opportunities prested to him. He wasn’t smart enough or connected enough to ever be comfortable, let alone actually do something noteworthy. Being on the news for a day or two is the only “fantasy” he could possibly achieve. It not about causing a sea-change, it’s just about getting noticed.
He wasn’t born a monster, but violence was the only obvious route to having any impact on his surroundings.
American society loves guns and hates helping poor people, this is what we get.
Maybe he was just angry, too. Maybe he just wanted to express that anger and be heard for once.
So don’t bother to reply if you’re not old enough to get what I’m saying, it’s a waste of your time and mine also.
Wasting time is what I’m here for. Did you expect that gatekeeping responses to your own post would work?
Sounds like thinking is not something that he’s interested in doing.
No mass murderer has ever caused a sea-change of how things are, as a result of the murder they commit.
The exception that proves the rule being Martin Bryant at Port Arthur.
My fellow Americans just don’t give a shit about the death toll.
It’s not positive or what the shooters intended but I think Columbine had a significant cultural impact.
The guy who shot up all those black people at the Tops Market in Buffalo - did he really think killing random black people, would stop black people from existing?
No, he probably didn’t think it would stop black people from existing. Instead, he probably thought that he had no feasible options to do so, and if he were able to do anything as an individual, then it would be carrying out a mass shooting and trying to “make an impact.” These “manifesto” shooters are typically immersed in some kind of online group that promises to applaud and echo the violent behavior. Regardless, the outcome is awful.
EDIT: From an excerpt on the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto:
The author also expressed support for [other] far-right mass shooters
As much as 57% of the text-based ideological sections were plagiarized
It’s about being isolated from the real world, whether physically, mentally, or both, and then being sucked into a private group that idolizes bigotry/racism, violence, and other mass murderers.
“I’m older, so I’m right”
No mass murderer has ever caused a sea-change of how things are, as a result of the murder they commit.
Mass murder never has the results these killers seem to think it will.
History is full of examples of people who murdered hundreds or thousands of people and not only got away with it, but became heroes for it.
Even recently, the killer of Shinzo Abe seems to have succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
Violence is wrong, of course, but let’s not pretend that it never works.
Never skip your social studies classes, kids
“Hey man, you wanna be a star/take this, and show them who you are/make them pay in, blood for every scar/there’s no saving you, from the monster you are” - Bulletproof by From Ashes to New
There is no “fantastic” outcome.
Fantastic != Good
No mass murderer has ever caused a sea-change of how things are, as a result of the murder they commit … Mass murder never has the results these killers seem to think it will.
And what results are those? I can’t speak for any spree killers, but I’ve never gotten the impression that they believed their killings would actually change anything. They typically seem to be acting purely out of revenge, albeit misplaced.
And how despicable to say that kids should be armed.
Who said that? The OP on 4 Chan didn’t. I haven’t seen anyone in these comments say that.
GUNS ARE THE PROBLEM, they are NEVER the solution.
Gun control would be an effective way to reduce gun violence, and on its own that’s a credible argument. But guns literally are not the problem. The problem is the fact that people want to lash out at society and the societal/governmental forces that push them there. I’m not saying guns are good or not to control them, just don’t forget you’re treating a symptom rather than the root problem. If we were to only pass gun control these problems will continue to fester. Again, I’m not saying don’t do it.
I am 65 years old. If you aren’t, I don’t expect you to understand
Most of the people in power and in the electorate who have been stonewalling gun control as well as any kind of social welfare programs that could prevent mass killings are older than 65. It is old indifference, or even contempt, that’s holding us back, not young ignorance.
the child who is not embraced by its village will burn it down just to feel its warmth
We can’t have gun control - guns aren’t the problem - people are.
Oh good - you support the creation of strong social safety nets, and free access to mental health care, right?
…
You support the creation of strong social safety nets, and free access to mental health care, right?
There are also millions of people with intellectual challenges and horrid childhoods who do NOT go out and murder people.
People react differently to being abused by people and society for years and years, until they have every last ounce of hope drained from them.
No the deciding factor is to decide at some point that others are supposedly at fault for your problems and that they deserve to be hurt for it.
Yes but it doesn’t mean it’s excusable or justifiable to murder innocent people.
100% this is such a bad strawman.
I mean yeah society has a role to play in this but there are millions of.people who are in or have gone through this same situation without murdering a bunch of people
If 1 in a million people will go on a killing spree, when driven to rock bottom, then you would expect to have a few, if you drive millions of people to that position.
Victorian England introduced various social safety nets not primarily out of goodness, but out of cost. It was actually cheaper to just feed the starving, rather than stopping them stealing for food, and punishing them afterwards. The fact it improved the lives of the downtrodden was just a convenient positive.
I think this post intends to convey that society has done those people dirty too and that we shouldn’t wait until those “millions of people who are in…this same situation” turn into shooters before doing something.
Assigning blame does nothing. It’d be great if potential murders would stop and think “hey maybe murder is wrong. Maybe other people have solver similar problems without murdering anyone!” But that’s not going to happen.
And yet those ppl are now dead. So advocating for any position other than the one which removes the possibility of people making the choice to kill others is to support those deaths. Which is to say to support the status quo in the USA is to support the deaths of these people.
Okay, let me try this.
- Mother smoked and did drugs when pregnant with me
- Born with autism, mild cerebral palsy, medical issues
- Mom heavily neglected and abused me
- Lived in many foster, adoptive homes, boarding schools, went to many schools and extreme right-wing churches
- In all of them, was either physically, emotionally, or sexually abused
- Abandoned as adult
- Joined USAF, medical discharge out of tech school when they realized their mistake
- Lived in homeless shelters and then adult foster care
- My name online is usually some form of the word “orphan”
So what am I doing? Well, I’m poor and on disability and I’ve struggled to manage my emotions, and I’ve had to grow like anybody. But I’m an ex-Christian theist, empathetic liberal, and have never done any crime. I spent a lot of years in social programs and with social workers. I live in an apartment now with two best friends. I’m writing a science fantasy novel I hope to change the world with, sharing a lot of what I experienced and what I learned. I wrote a symphonic rock and power ballad soundtrack for it.
“The Solemn Dream” Blurb:
After a very unhappy childhood, “Solemn” dies at 25 and wakes up in the space-age afterlife of Heleia, where everyone’s home planet is chosen by the seraphs— demigod social workers and keepers of the peace— based on that person’s emotional and ethical maturity. Here, Solemn chooses to become a young child again, hoping to heal and to finally find a loving family.
Jessi Vargas is a forever-19 bully who lives on Nemesis, the planet for those who don’t care that they’re harmful. Sick of being surrounded by terrible people, she prepares to leave the planet— even though she may not be worthy.
Lu Montsely is a kind and patient humanitarian who hides a terrible past. After a century of effort, she is almost ready to ascend to the utopian world of Themis to join her loving husband. Lu mentors Solemn and Jessi as her final test, and— along with their wise and humorous helper android Iota— they form a small family on Eleos.
But many do not believe that criminals deserve second chances. When the seraphs discover mass-produced weapons, they need the aid of Solemn’s new family to investigate. Solemn soon finds themselves the recipient of powerful abilities that give them a unique role in the growing conflict. And before long, Solemn and family are not only fighting to become happier, kinder, and greater— but also for the fate of the entire Helian afterlife.
…I don’t think that having lived through shit means you need to be a shit person. Sure, some misfortunate people are going to have personalities that push them towards being shit people, but… those people were likely going to be shit people anyway, unless people guided them a little more carefully.
That’s all nice but not everybody is you and I don’t think we can reasonably expect every single person to be you. This is actually pretty close to the “homeless people just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps” mentality.
You can absolutely reasonably expect people to not go on a murder spree, no matter their situation.
Reality disagrees.
No it’s not? Not being a shithead is a completely different expectation from becoming financially stable?
Are you even thankful for the socialized support you got? Where do you think you would be right now without disability payments? Or your friends? Do you think you’d be equally mentally healthy right now?
…I wouldn’t have started doing crime, or shooting people?
True, also make any lethal weapon illegal in usa
Or, you know, we could just reallocate these egregiously huge military/police funds to healthcare + infrastructure. There are innumerable reasons people in this country are driven to violence but the number one is the violence it inflicts on us.
Pretty fucked to watch people blame doctors for mass shootings, because the pro-gun crowd doesn’t want anyone blaming guns.
The Maine shooter received urgent, emergency mental healthcare. 2 weeks in a psychiatric ward, being given daily treatment and observation by doctors, who did everything they could to stabilise him.
What did you want them to do? There’s no instant, perfect cure. There’s no pill or surgery to fix “I want to kill as many people as I can with my legal firearms”.
Or does the group constantly bleating about “freedom” want to indefinitely hold people against their will in a psychiatric ward, for the crime of “not being healthy enough to sell guns to”?
Doctors need months to stabilise a patient and potentially years for full remission. Since America is fucked, they also need someone to cover the tens of thousands of dollars since for-profit insurance companies and for-profit politicians will do everything they can ensure it isn’t them.
But the gun manufacturers only need a couple of days and a few hundred bucks for everything they need to kill everyone in sight. The far-right politicians, media companies, sock puppets and suckers have already been working on them for years, making sure they know exactly who their targets should be when they snap.
It took the gun lobby 25 years to find their perfect excuse – “It’s a mental health problem”. A tidy little catch phrase that sounds right if you don’t think about it, that demands we jump a hurdle that will cost tens of billions of dollars and take 50 more years of medical research.
But it’s no more bullshit than “violent video games” or “not enough prayer” or “too many doors” was.
If America has 20 social problems causing people to use their legal firearms to kill as many people as possible, then America has 20 reasons why the current gun laws are hopelessly insufficient for the society they’re supposed to serve and the pro-gun crowd has 20 things they need to fix if they want to indiscriminately sell that society guns.
Nice strawman argument you have there. Nobody is blaming doctors.
You must have the head of a scarecrow if you think that’s a strawman.
It is tho haha u literally can’t point to anywhere in this thread that was said.
https://www.google.com/search?&q=us+blame+mental+health+mass+shootings
The world extends beyond the thread you’re reading.
None of the links in that search support your argument. Saything that mass shootings are a mental health crisis, or a healthcare crisis (regardless of whether either is true) is not the same as blaming doctors for it.
The Maine shooter received urgent, emergency mental healthcare. 2 weeks in a psychiatric ward, being given daily treatment and observation by doctors, who did everything they could to stabilise him.
Hey, uh, about that. Just because someone gets sent to a mental ward doesn’t mean they’re getting properly treated. I’ve been in one before, they did nothing to help me and I left with the same problems I had before, except they gave me PTSD too. They didn’t release me because they thought they’d helped me, they released me because they believed they couldn’t help me (what the fuck?). I’ve talked to other people and many of them had similar experiences. There’s this myth that all mental health services are the same, but they aren’t; especially when you are the emergency mental health service for the area. I’m not saying that we don’t need better gun control, but what I am saying is that the US mental healthcare system is a burning trash fire, especially emergency services, and needs a lot of help, if not a straight-up overhaul.
Edit: it doesn’t help that, iirc, there’s a maximum holding period for people with mental health issues. A normal hospital can hold a patient for years while they’re being treated, but what I’ve been told is that, as a result of the abuse 19th-20th century psychiatric wards would inflict on their patients, there is a maximum duration that mental health wards are allowed to hold patients (not sure if this is federal or just some states). Additionally, because they are typically private companies, they tend to put profit above health. The result is that some places will hold patients long after they’re healthy enough to leave because the hospital is draining their bank accounts. Alternatively, sometimes they release patients long before they’ve healed because the patient doesn’t have any more money.
“America’s mental healthcare system is amazing and flawless” wasn’t the point of my post, nor a view I hold.
There is no mental healthcare system that could possibly be built that would make America’s gun laws safe.
If you know a way they could have prevented this, please share it with the world – they’d love to know the cure for these problems.
The reality is that the pro-gun “it’s a mental health problem” is functionally identical to saying “cigarettes aren’t the issue, we just need more oncologists”
I think you’re misunderstanding my point as well. Your statement implied they released him because they believed him to be mentally well, but what I’m saying is that just because they released him doesn’t mean he was mentally well.
We do need better gun control. We also need existing gun control to actually be enforced. His two-week stay should have disqualified him from owning a gun, yet it sounds like he was not only allowed to continue to own guns, but he was allowed to continue to work as a firearms instructor. That shouldn’t happen.
To be clear about something, I’m someone who believes that people should have a path to being able to own guns, including actual high-power weapons like anti-materiel rifles, if they want to. However, not everyone should be able to get one, in order to do so they should be required to pass tests, mental health evaluations and background checks, the depth of which would increase with the power of the weapon (a basic double-barreled shotgun would be easier to get than a Browning M2, the latter of which would involve a metaphorical colonoscopy and MRI courtesy of the FBI and ATF). Additionally, I believe there should be laws about what can or can’t be advertised as gun storage; many lockboxes, for an example, are often advertised as being a good solution for gun storage. However, they’re often so flimsy and weak that a toddler could open one by accident without even needing a key. Finally, I believe that if your gun is used in a crime, then you should be considered complicit; with your only defense being that your gun was properly secured prior to the crime and that you reported the weapon as missing the moment you discovered it to be gone (aka within a reasonable amount of time).
I know this runs against the views a lot of people around here have as it would permit someone to own a heavy machine gun if they wanted to. However, if I’m not mistaken, there is at least one European country (possibly more) with similar systems. Finland, for an example (unless this was changed within the past 5yrs or so), allows you to own any firearm. The catch is that it’s very hard to legally obtain something like a Browning M2 because you have to have a museum/collector’s license and justify your purchase, which can be difficult to do. You also have to be willing to let the cops stop by and check in on you whenever they feel like it, even if that happens to be at 3am. Yet Finland doesn’t have the issues that the US does because they’re very strict about who can or can’t buy weapons and which weapons they can buy.
The reason why I hold this view is because I believe people should be allowed to do what they want so long as they aren’t hurting others directly or indirectly (within reason, otherwise christofascists could claim gay people are hurting them spiritually or some bullshit). I know there are tons of people out there who could be trusted to own, take care of, and properly store pretty much any firearm imaginable. A law that completely bars them from being able to own a firearm because of something that another person, or group of people, have done just doesn’t sit right with me. However, I also recognize that it’s far too easy for people to be able to acquire a gun and we need more restrictions in order to weed out the people who’d use them to harm others.
Edit: I guess what I was trying to say, or what I wanted to say, is that in my opinion, gun control is like painkillers for a broken leg. The painkillers help, but if the cause of the pain isn’t addressed then you’ll eventually end up back where you started. Would it decrease the number of mass shootings? Yeah, probably. However if you don’t fix the mental health system and normalize mental healthcare, you’ll probably get people who are even more radicalized and aren’t afraid of resorting to other measures.
So in other words, America isn’t doing well enough socially for the current gun laws to work, but Republicans will staunchly oppose any attempt to address the underlying problems and everything they can to enable mass shooters.
But your “people should be able to own whatever they want” is self-absorbed trash. Why should thousands of people have to politely tolerate the risk to their lives just so some reactionary with a limp dick can own a minigun?
There is literally nothing in it for the public. The people who wouldn’t wear a mask in a pandemic aren’t going to lay down their lives for democracy. The guns haven’t lowered the crime rate at all, they’ve just added a layer of gun violence to it. Minorities are still executed in the street by the state and if they have a gun anywhere near them, there won’t even be an investigation.
You didn’t fully read my message dude. I know this because you brought the “gun self-defense” argument into this, which I didn’t bring up. Additionally, I don’t even own a gun. I don’t trust myself with one because I’m highly likely to take my own life with it if I had one. However, go ahead and tell me how I’m self-absorbed for thinking that there are plenty of people who could be trusted with one. Then again, I crave the sweet release of death and the idea that I might not have to live another day is very appealing, so maybe I just want to get shot in a mass shooting, right?
I already laid out my thoughts on how gun control could be improved. I gave an example of a country with a similar system and it seems to be working pretty fucking well for them, and it’s something which is better than the nothing that’s currently happening.
At the end of the day though, it’s not like it matters. American politicians only respond to threats of violence or when minorities get “”“too uppity”“” and “”“don’t know their place”“”. So what’s the point? Why even bother? It’s not like the US will get any better; it’s only going to keep getting worse. Why even bother caring…
We can make it harder to get a gun. But there are so many already in the US its difficult to rein that back in.
More guns is the solution, like in schools. Arm the custodians! Arm the vice-principals! Arm the unarmed!
Tangential, I find the push to arm teachers so weird. I can only imagine the job offers. “Your job will require you to teach children, raise them and show kindness and compassion. Also you need to kill them if they start shooting.”
“Also while working in war zones might come with danger pay, you’re a teacher so we will pay you barely starvation wages and you’ll have to buy supplies from your personal money.”
I support gun rights but I think it’s crazy to think about arming teachers. It just seems like such a disconnect to me.
We should probably train the cops not to run away like a bunch of cowards.
There’s been a few shootings where the school had a cop on duty, who was armed, and the cop ran out of the building when the shooting started.
Should be a crime to abandon people, let alone children, like that
I agree. I get being scared but you signed up to do the job.
I was a volunteer cop for many years. I cringe when I hear about cops refusing to enter a building or running away from the gun fight.
I get there are times when it makes sense, single gunman barricaded in a room, yeah, maybe wait for more people or SWAT but they could have saved many lives by doing something.
Hell most of these turds shot themselves when confronted. It is rare for there to be a shootout with the cops.
Why I believe in police reform so badly. I admit I want a unicorn, but I want a cop who is compassionate and enforces the law without prejudice. A person who can see it from the lens of the person who he is dealing with but can also kick ass when needed.
Combining your comment and another one talking about how America’s mental health also sucks and often makes illnesses worse the thing about America is that everything is corrupted and lazly done ether it be our politicians or the medical field we have the services people need but corruption is making it so when shit happens to you you might as well be on your own
Well if you support more people having guns, it’s inevitable people are going to look for solutions to some of those people shooting up schools
Also, it’s the same people who trust teachers with guns in the classroom that think teachers can’t be trusted with books in the classroom.
Arm all of the kids while we’re at it. Only a good kid with a gun can stop a bad kid with a gun.
You know how many babies get abducted from hospitals?! Arm them too!
I dunno about you and yours, but my babies come from the stork with arms
Oh shit, better do nothing then.
Not what i said.
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Just have the same beuracroracy you have for vehicles. Yearly registration. And same licensing as liquor. Only licensed sellers.
Implement a buyback program like Australia did. They stopped the sales and paid above market value for any gun for a certain period of time. It works.
Australia had nowhere near the saturation of gun ownership America has, and the common firearms there were simpler and cheaper. A gun buy-back would be much more expensive.
Then there’s the differences in public sentiment. It’s pretty obvious the American right-wing would overwhelmingly refuse to sell their guns at any price, and they represent the majority of gun owners. With current lefty distrust of police and rising extremists in the right, left wing gun owners don’t seem likely to willingly disarm either. If anything I’ve seen an uptick in leftists arming themselves.
But even if I’m wrong, a buy-back would do nothing if we don’t stop the sales of new guns first which would require an amendment to the Constitution effectively repealing one of the bill of rights. That’s pretty much the highest hurdle possible in the American government.
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No, I say illegal, not harder to get.
Yes and that’s why we’re all making fun of you now.
Yeah slap more bandaids on the issue. That’ll fix it.
“Any lethal weapon” lmao dumbass. Just because you’re not allowed to touch the kitchen knives doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t.
Okay then start with sensible gun laws, most countries know how to implement them except the US.
Completely agree.
And what have you and your fuckfaced, pro-gun friends fixed in 25 years of insisting you alone have the solutions? Which have your bullshit promises have come true?
You’ve enthusiastically pushed America the closest to authoritarianism out of any wealthy country. Property crime is no rarer than anywhere else, it’s just got a layer of gun violence on top. You’ve enabled domestic terrorisism at frequency and lethality that makes Middle Eastern extremists blush. Minorities are executed on the street by police that go unpunished and thrown into for-profit prisons to be used as slave labor. The families you all insisted you were going to keep safe with your guns are scraping their children’s brains from the ceiling at an unprecedented rate.
It wasn’t violent video games. It wasn’t Marilyn Manson. It wasn’t Dungeons and Dragons. It wasn’t too many doors.
It was self absorbed dogshit like you and it has been the entire time.
A Regular Day In The Life Of The American
You wake up in the morning to the sound of your padded alarm clock going off. You remove your one thin sheet, after all, it could suffocate someone if air couldnt pass through it. You think about when it used to be legal to use pillows, those were good days.
As you start to get ready for school, you begin to tape your pants together, as is tradition since belts got banned. You pull your shirt on and the fibers get stuck in your beard that you havent been able to shave in years.
You walk the several miles to school, and think to yourself that the air smells a lot better since all vehicles were banned. Your teacher starts to tell you to take out your pencils, until she remembers. She must not’ve gotten enough sleep last night. You shrug, it has been cold this winter.
Slippery slope is really slippery today, huh?
Not much of a slippey slope when his exact words were “ban all lethal weapons”
If he meant guns, he should’ve said that.
You post something mindnumbingly stupid and people are going to ridicule you.
Ehh, between the bad-faith interpretation, their bad wording, your bad example and also failure in effectiveness as ridicule, the lack of anything new in this entire comment section…
Idc. Gonna pack it up on this one. Go nuts.
So, start with hands? Water? Rocks?
arms… of any kind.
In America, we should have the right to the while bear, not just the arms.
Negative.
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There are also loads of guns that are old enough that there is no way we could know who owns them. I legally possess a firearm that I’m the 4th person it’s been handed down to, and it didn’t even start in my family. There is no way it could be tracked by a law enforcement agency looking to get all the guns. I used to live in Illinois, and the law there says the gun seller has to maintain the sale record for 10 years. So, after 10 years, it becomes super hard to track. It would be a logistics nightmare to try and confiscate them all.
What a stupid take. Other than a few far right idiots, nobody is going to risk their life over a gun. And those oh so tough gravy seals are going to roll over at the first sign of serious pushback. That just leaves the real nutcases that definitely shouldn’t have guns in the first place. And the police being unwilling to do their job is an argument for police reform not for inaction.
An everyday hammer can be turned into a lethal weapon, should I not be allowed to have finger nails just because I could scratch someone to death?
The people dismissing this somewhat miss the bigger picture, that statistically this had to happen because there are so many like him there.
Though I’m not sure why this guy calls the act ‘fantastic’, I doubt even the shooter thought what he did was fantastic, unless I’m out of the loop…
Notorious (as a subgroup of famous) would have been a better word choice. They got the point across reasonably well otherwise, however.
I think by fantastic the 4channer meant “newsworthy”, or “that really affects people’s lives”. The chances of someone with that kind of background doing something fantastic in a good sense is really small
In this context I read fantastic in a morally indifferent sense, as in it set him apart from others and allowed him to leave an impression on the world, albeit a hugely harmful one.
Fantastic could mean unusual or extraordinary.
Or following through on a fantasy.
Fantastic has the word fantasy as its root, but the meaning has shifted and that usage has fallen out of favor a bit. The same happened to terrific, which is an even greater oddity, terror being the root. The act was both fantastic and terrific but not in the most common contemporary usage of those words.
Problematic is that some people try to frame it as if his problems were the cause and reason for his actions. While obviously the point where people turn into mass shooters is when they decide to hate and blame (a specific group of) other people for it.
There is far from enough help for people who are struggling, but to prevent mass shootings the media probably shouldn’t talk about them this much and we need to look at people much closer who turn their hatred outwards.
