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How many more school shootings before the NRA allows common sense?

tiltdeac said:
Just take a quick step back and think about the circular argument you are making here. You claim to support gun control, but are attacking the messengers because even though you agree with them, you don't like the way in which they presented the message. You claim it will "give folks who desire to detract from the main issue the chance to do just that by poking those holes," which is EXACTLY what you are doing, detracting from the main issue.

I'm glad you brought up suicides though, because gun control and its subsequent impact on suicides is even more important than these school shootings. They are linked, and we should be working to fix both.
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You've got to be smarter than this. Let's say I am with my friend and we share the same opinion on something and we are talking to other people who do not share that opinion and we are trying to convince them - if my friend starts spouting statistics that support our opinion but I know they are exaggerated or just wrong, I am going to be pissed and tell him to cut it out. Why? Because it makes us looks stupid and makes others less likely to listen to us. Just like it makes one look stupid when they try to say there have been 20 "school shootings" in 2018.

The real statistics are damning enough - use those.

And you are right about suicides - I have very personal experience there.
 
scooter84 said:
You've got to be smarter than this. Let's say I am with my friend and we share the same opinion on something and we are talking to other people who do not share that opinion and we are trying to convince them - if my friend starts spouting statistics that support our opinion but I know they are exaggerated or just wrong, I am going to be pissed and tell him to cut it out. Why? Because it makes us looks stupid and makes others less likely to listen to us. Just like it makes one look stupid when they try to say there have been 20 "school shootings" in 2018.

The real statistics are damning enough - use those.

And you are right about suicides - I have very personal experience there.
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One of the 18 school shootings - the school had been closed for 7 months and was a parking lot

The man is a military veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a traumatic brain injury and depression, according to police.

East Olive Elementary has been closed since June and no children or staff were on scene at the time of the incident.

That suicide is a tragedy, and highlights several things we are doing wrong - not taking care of our veterans, allowing easy access to guns - but it's not a school shooting
 
73deac said:
I am politically independent. I try to break things down to the bare minimum and I don't mind changing my point of view if I am shown a different way to view something that makes sense to me. What if tomorrow there were magically 0 guns left in the United States except for active military or active police (100% hypothetical). Now, you have a kid that has grown up and has lost both parents as the kid did in Florida. He is socially awkward and doesn't seem to fit in. He was living with a friend and really had no family to speak of. He may or may not have been diagnosed as having a mental illness but many classmates have said they had predicted this may happen. He had been suspended from school and had broken up with his girlfriend earlier. Now, lets say this kid had 100% determined that he is going to kill as many people as he can. He doesn't have access to any guns so he drives to campus and waits until school let's out. He sits at the bus line and waits until the most people are in a confined area and immediately drives through the crowd attempting to kill as many people as possible and continues to drive them down throughout the parking lot. he ultimately kills 20 to 30 people? Ultimately if your kid has died, you may not care if it was by a mentally ill person in a pickup truck or a mentally ill person with a gun. Now, I agree when someone says gun laws may not stop all the killing but at least we're doing something to try and stop it and not sitting by idle watching it happen. I also agree that making guns less available would be better that having free access to them. However, in the above scenario you are as dead as the kids are in Florida. I don't know that if guns with multi round magazines weren't as available it would reduce the number of murders but once someone crosses the threshold to murder then they are not going to be deterred if that option is gone. So, if taking away guns isn't going to eliminate the problem then let's skip to something more effective. A person that is passionate about killing that has one option taken away (guns) will go to the next available option (vehicle, bomb, etc.). I would say more kids have access to vehicles than guns and I think I would be correct. Now we shift the prevention of violence to barriers around the schools and gates to stop all the vehicular crime taking place at schools or ballgames. I don't know where the prevention of the object used as a weapon becomes a waste of time and where finding out why someone wants to use a weapon becomes the best answer? The root problem I believe is a breakdown of the family unit and a desensitizing of human life. Society is much different today and I believe the excess of resources and quality of life in America has transformed into a detriment to kids instead of a benefit. In closing, what happens when you remove one option and then another becomes the main choice of weapon. Do you shift focus to prevention of the next weapon or stop and try to repair what is causing the motive?
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this may be a crazy idea.... but maybe we could improve our mental health treatments AND tighten gun control?
 
scooter84 said:
You've got to be smarter than this. Let's say I am with my friend and we share the same opinion on something and we are talking to other people who do not share that opinion and we are trying to convince them - if my friend starts spouting statistics that support our opinion but I know they are exaggerated or just wrong, I am going to be pissed and tell him to cut it out. Why? Because it makes us looks stupid and makes others less likely to listen to us. Just like it makes one look stupid when they try to say there have been 20 "school shootings" in 2018.

The real statistics are damning enough - use those.

And you are right about suicides - I have very personal experience there.
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I think your approach is counterproductive. Don't waste your time telling your friend to cut it out, or at the very least, don't ONLY do that. If you have a stronger and better argument than your friend, make your argument to the people who need convincing. We do this all the time. We cut down each other's arguments without actually making any of our own. The gun control argument doesn't need perfect stats (good gun stats don't exist anyway, thanks to the NRA and GOP). It doesn't need people who largely agree with the big picture fixes that need to happen to quibble with each other to craft the perfect message. It needs voices, and votes.

I hear your frustration. I wish people made better, stronger arguments. I just feel like we waste so much time and energy "well, actually-ing" each other. If someone you know is arguing for gun control, and you believe in gun control, and that person says there have been 20 school shootings this year as part of their argument, it blows my mind that your first response is "dude you're an idiot, there have ONLY been 5 where people were wounded or killed, you are muddling the message" and not "holy fuck what can we do to fix this gun problem."
 
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tiltdeac said:
I think your approach is counterproductive. Don't waste your time telling your friend to cut it out, or at the very least, don't ONLY do that. If you have a stronger and better argument than your friend, make your argument to the people who need convincing, people who matter. We do this all the time. We cut down each other's arguments without actually making any of our own. The gun control argument doesn't need perfect stats (good gun stats don't exist anyway, thanks to the NRA and GOP). It doesn't need people who largely agree with the big picture fixes that need to happen to quibble with each other to craft the perfect message. It needs voices, and votes.

I hear your frustration. I wish people made better, stronger arguments. I just feel like we waste so much time and energy "well, actually-ing" each other. If someone you know is arguing for gun control, and you believe in gun control, and that person says there have been 20 school shootings this year as part of their argument, it blows my mind that your first response is "dude you're an idiot, there have ONLY been 5 where people were wounded or killed you are muddling the message" and not "holy fuck what can we do to fix this gun problem."
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I know what you are saying but my point is a pretty simple one and I am surprised that it is receiving push back at all. Just argue passionately but don't make crap up or exaggerate. Why is that so hard to understand? If someone is on the fence on the issue and I make a passionate argument for gun control based on the fact that there have been 20 school shootings this year - and that person either knows or finds out that there really have "only" been a couple, what are they now going to think about the rest of my argument?

Instead, make the same passionate argument supported by the actual facts that over 20 students have been killed and over 30 injured THIS YEAR (by mid-february) in purposeful school shootings (I think that is right, could be more)...

Hell, you don't even need the made up numbers - mass shootings, school and otherwise, have been in the news enough that everyone knows that plenty of them have been going on. The argument should be around the causation and ways of preventing.
 
It's not 20 students injured. It's 18 separate mass shootings at schools since Jan. 1.
 
scooter84 said:
I know what you are saying but my point is a pretty simple one and I am surprised that it is receiving push back at all. Just argue passionately but don't make crap up or exaggerate. Why is that so hard to understand? If someone is on the fence on the issue and I make a passionate argument for gun control based on the fact that there have been 20 school shootings this year - and that person either knows or finds out that there really have "only" been a couple, what are they now going to think about the rest of my argument?

Instead, make the same passionate argument supported by the actual facts that over 20 students have been killed and over 30 injured THIS YEAR (by mid-february) in purposeful school shootings (I think that is right, could be more)...

Hell, you don't even need the made up numbers - mass shootings, school and otherwise, have been in the news enough that everyone knows that plenty of them have been going on. The argument should be around the causation and ways of preventing.
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It should be, yet here you are arguing otherwise.
 
buckets said:
this may be a crazy idea.... but maybe we could improve our mental health treatments AND tighten gun control?
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This is the correct answer, but people on these boards seem to think that even questioning whether or not mental heath and treatments are playing a role in mass shootings take away from the gun control issue. Therefor they freak out when people mention it, because it is not a part of the team discussion.
 
WFcatamount22 said:
This is the correct answer, but people on these boards seem to think that even questioning whether or not mental heath and treatments are playing a role in mass shootings take away from the gun control issue. Therefor they freak out when people mention it, because it is not a part of the team discussion.
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Lies.

But I assume you hate these assholes, then.

 
WFcatamount22 said:
This is the correct answer, but people on these boards seem to think that even questioning whether or not mental heath and treatments are playing a role in mass shootings take away from the gun control issue. Therefor they freak out when people mention it, because it is not a part of the team discussion.
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I don't think I've ever seen this happen at all. What I have seen happen is someone says "guns don't kill people, people kill people we need to look at what's wrong with these people and address mental health issues and not guns" and then people respond and say nah dude.
 
No they freak out because the R response (per actual response by the GOP today) is to say that we can’t possibly make gun laws and should talk more about mental health
 
It’s about guns.

It’s about mental health.

Ok. Let’s address both.

*address neither*
 
WFcatamount22 said:
This is the correct answer, but people on these boards seem to think that even questioning whether or not mental heath and treatments are playing a role in mass shootings take away from the gun control issue. Therefor they freak out when people mention it, because it is not a part of the team discussion.
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Your first post in this thread literally said we should focus on pills, not guns. You literally dismissed the gun control issue by blaming increasing school shootings on meds.
 
RJKarl said:
It's not 20 students injured. It's 18 separate mass shootings at schools since Jan. 1.
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Jeez Louise - no its not. Not even close to "18 separate mass shootings at schools" this year. This is why it is dangerous to spout these statistics, people believe them.
 
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