The rest of the world has access to all the violent movies, TV shows, and video games that come from America. They don’t go around shooting people at random all the time.
15 Likes
I may be wrong here (not Canadian) but that gun ownership culture tends to be outside of places where people actually live, I think. If you don’t live right next to the border where all of the population is, or if you like heading up there on the weekends for hunting.
Missy probably knows more than I do, but if you’re in Canada or one of the Nordic countries (also high gun ownership) I think you’re actually allowed to take someone with a gun in public as a threat, unlike the US where it’s just Tuesday.
3 Likes
Each other. And the Government, if that’s not the same thing.
1 Like
Just a guess … access to weaponry isn’t there and/or access to affordable mental health professionals IS there.
2 Likes
Probably because we have a lot of restrictions around the procuring and storing of fire arms?
Its mostly hunting or gun clubs, not personal “safety” devices.
@tekk - I don’t actually know… I mean I could google… but living in the largest city in Canada, I can count on one hand the number of people I know that have ever shot a gun. (We go to Buffalo to go to gun ranges apparently.) And the number of firearm owners I know is significantly less than that… like… maybe two?
2 Likes
I thought there was lots of ‘personal “safety” devices’ though, I am half-remembering this from Bowling for Columbine though, so wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t true.
Please stop with the inflammatory term “shooting.”
They’re Liberty Piercings.
Thank you.
19 Likes
They have handgun restrictions but rifles for hunting are prevalent. It’s reasonable and well thought out.
6 Likes
Because that is ridiculous. You’re going to test millions of people because a handful per year decide to hurt others? Shouldn’t we test EVERYONE? I mean, I am crazy, want to hurt people, but I haven’t tried to buy a gun through legal means - yet. Or I have one through illegal means. Shouldn’t I be rooted out too? There are other ways I can cause harm with out a gun. What about people who bought a gun 10 years ago and then develop problems?
IIRC you are already a restricted person if you have been formally committed and deemed insane. I honestly don’t know the exact criteria, but it is one of the things to get you on a restricted list. Of course there are thousands of people running around with out any diagnosis so they system isn’t perfect. No system we can come up with will be perfect.
You can’t bubble wrap the world. I can suggest banning things that would save lives too, but you people use them and would thing I am silly.
2 Likes
Sheer coincidence!
2 Likes
I think if there was a single cause for all this, which there almost certainly isn’t, American attitudes to mental health would probably top my list of candidates. Specifically the ease to which you seem to rely on medicating at the slightest hint of any problem (whether or not it’s actually even a problem in the first place). Obviously sane gun control laws would fix the most pressing issue here, but would still leave the larger problem in place.
2 Likes
Except that I am not convinced that traditional narrative devices such as “hero” and (choke) “bad guy” have any place in postmodernism. Does depicting a story require value judgements of identifying the characters as good/bad? Even as an exercise in moralism, would this allow for any nuance?
Another consideration is that it might not be a valid assumption that all media serve as entertainment for all people. For some it might merely kill time, while for others it might be a form of communication, or a cultural artifact.
As far as the psychology of human motivations go, if people are looking for excuses to kill others, then the excuses themselves are interchangeable diversions from what really motivates their actions. If they are determined to harm themselves or others, they choose whatever excuse seems convenient at the time. Causally, I’d say it comes from the norm being poor problem-solving skills, which makes me more critical of education than arts or entertainment.
1 Like
I think he got a bit loosey goosey with the per capita data of gun ownership…
We don’t have a lot of people, but we have a lot of rural areas where gun ownership skews the numbers.
3 Likes
But everyone other developed country does much better than the US at keeping the mass killings down. I don’t know whether to read this argument as a staggering claim that the differences in the rates of mass killings between America and other countries is purely luck, or as a claim that Americans are just monstrous by nature and that the country is riddled with evil and villainy.
For the record, I don’t think that gun control measures would do a lot in America - given the culture of guns there they might be about as good as prohibition of alcohol was. But sometimes it just feels like America had given up. Not just on guns and mass murder, but on everything. If @cowicide is right then maybe President Sanders will spark a wave of getting the American government to give a single fuck about its citizens. But I just feel like America is becoming (has become?) the living embodiment of the idea that “There is no such thing as society.”
Homer fucking Simpson said, “It’s funny because it’s not me.” The reality in America is “I don’t give a shit because it’s not me.”
If you want to blame something, you have to blame something that is unique to America, not something that is exported and popular over many developed nations because other developed nations don’t have this problem. Postmodernism isn’t even made-in-America. Where are the mass shootings in Germany, in Canada, in Norway? There is something different, and you haven’t hit on it here.
#1 in mass shootings!
I am against national pride.
People like to point at mental illness but mental illness is not a good predictor of violent behaviour. When there is something wrong inside of you, you still get your method of reacting to that from outside of you. If you look at different cultures and different periods in history, you see a lot of different descriptions of how people act when they mentally break. It’s like the culture provides a menu of options to choose from. For some reason, America’s menu includes “Go shoot up a public space before killing yourself” when that doesn’t appear on anyone else’s menu. Why? It’s not violent media or culture. It’s not lack of care for mental illness because care for mental illness in Canada is pretty much bullshit as well.
19 Likes
We’re talking about regulating things, not banning things. Like how we regulate the sale, distribution and use of cars and airplanes and explosives and anthrax cultures and cyanide and thousands of other potentially dangerous things.
Can you name any other product that kills 30,000 Americans a year which isn’t heavily regulated?
21 Likes
Everyone who wants a gun? Yes. Absolutely. We test everyone who owns CARS, who owns HOUSES, who has an INCOME, who SELL MEDICINE. We should include deadly firearms right up there. Why wouldn’t we?
Well-Regulated Militia is part of that amendment. I see a lot of broken people with massive firepower. Gun owners don’t want that (the good gun owners never get on the news). Other people don’t want that (the good gun owners aren’t the target of most gun control laws). It is not a well-regulated militia. It is a free-for-all.
18 Likes
Pretty sure people didn’t drink buckets of sugar water in movies until fairly recently. Certainly did not when I was a kid (and that’s not aeons ago)
2 Likes
Can we agree to fund the ATF? They sounded like an entity with things they can do.
3 Likes
If the 1950’s are considered “recent,” sure.
After the war, in the mid- to late-1940s, theater owners grappled with another threat—television—that made it more important than ever to capitalize on snack sales. According to Maggie Valentine’s The Show Starts on the Sidewalk, theater owners were successful in their efforts: From 1948 to 1956, despite a 50 percent decrease in theater attendance, concession sales increased fortyfold. The end of the war meant a return to sugar. Soda flowed freely, and candy counters tempted moviegoers with Goobers, Sno-Caps, Chuckles, and Black Crows, as well as newer delicacies such as Junior Mints and M&Ms.
