Yes, it’s only the safety and stability of a functioning, relatively orderly society that allows people to fantasize about how good it would be to not have stability and orderly living. The actuality, in nearly every society worldwide, has been a desperate desire to move from the law of the jungle to some form of civil society.
I really do think that these yahoos reject the very idea of a social contract. They really do believe they are fully capable of handling all problems themselves, and that government and law should only apply to other people. Of course, they are also probably the ones in that survey that said they could beat a grizzly bear hand to hand.
Guess I’ll just throw this on the pile here instead of starting a new thread.
That’s only a few miles north of our house. We drive by there regularly. Oof.
I propose we seize Mitch’s front yard under eminent domain and start a cemetery for the victims of gun violence on the land. Who’s with me?
rowe33
7850
Ah fuck, I forgot to stock up on prayers last time, just have some scattered thoughts to send over there.
ShivaX
7851
I think all of his points are correct.
3 is iffier since “bans” never ban existing items, just the purchase of new ones. So odds are good that a potential mass shooter already has one or can buy one fairly easily privately. Though if they can’t, then 3 becomes more likely. Less total people shot perhaps, but more people killed in those instances.
I would love to see some solid research on statistics comparing workplace-related mass shootings in the USA with such things elsewhere. I suspect that we have more of them proportionally than most other places. If so, I wonder how much of that is our gun culture, and how much of it is our “root, hog, or die” economic culture where unemployment can be a literal death sentence.
ShivaX
7853
The second part is a lot of it. Getting canned can basically be a death sentence (or seen as such by people at least), so people treat it like they’re being physically attacked and respond with force.
I recall being late for work and considering driving through a red light across traffic because I was pretty sure my new boss was going to fire me. I was perfectly willing to be crippled or possibly killed, this wasn’t some amazing job, but I knew my life as I knew it was over because I overslept and hit all the wrong lights.
Please. People get fired, all the time, but they don’t go out and perform mass shootings. And if you think America is the only place where losing your job can drastically affect your life because there isn’t a strong social safety net, you need to go travel the world, more (outside of Europe, for example). America is not exceptional in that, like we are exceptional in mass shootings.
Let’s not turn a mass shooting into a platform to attack American capitalism—it’s frankly no better than what this Fox News wacko is doing (Mocked Fox News segment ties San Jose shooting to vaccinations).
This is especially true for this story, as it seems that this guy wasn’t even fired from his job.
ShivaX
7855
I’d argue that a rational cause and effect discussion (even one you disagree with) is much better than completely insane horseshit every day of the week.
Why would that cause Democrats to lose? The chance and want to ban assault weapons is phenomenally strong in all Millennials and younger. They hate what it’s turned schools into. It’s helped make my nieces hardcore Democrats.
I have to respectfully disagree, in that the problem of gun violence in this country is not isolated from the other problems our society faces. I think it is a valid approach to consider mass shootings, for example, as at least in part symptomatic of broader social ills. Our gun culture and easy availability of firearms color our response to those ills in a somewhat unique way vis a vis the rest of the world, certainly. To say gun violence and social tensions over the economy, identity, culture and all the rest are not related though seems unproductive at best.
No, it’s not a simplistic “durr shootings because capitalism bad!” thing. It is more nuanced than that, but I think there are definite relationships between an economic culture of competition and zero-sum approaches to success, and feelings of helplessness and desires to lash out. What those relationships are, and how significant they are, is something up for discussion.
I am also skeptical about how similar our situation is to “the rest of the (non-European) world.” Many societies outside of Europe have more communal cultures that provide a host of unofficial safety nets that we don’t have here, for instance. Few if any of those countries also share our deeply internalized Social Darwinism, either.
Canuck
7859
Millenials don’t vote (enough).
ShivaX
7860
And their electoral votes aren’t great either.
Majorities don’t mean much when they’re concentrated in 4 or 5 states, especially if it means you lose 15 other states in the process.
Texas is a “young” state. So is North Dakota. I wouldn’t count on winning either of those. Meanwhile Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are older. Trying to pass an AR ban means losing the Senate and the House. Probably the White House as well. Also it literally can’t pass. It will get filibustered and would lose on a vote.
ShivaX
7863
Democracy’s future is uncertain, so this shouldn’t be that much of a shocker.
Also people realized cops aren’t really there to protect them.
So many dumbasses opting out of the social contract to Do It Themselves! Also known as “gun nuts”.
-Tom
