After the Gun Ban - Reason.com

Relevant article...

https://reason.com/archives/2018/02/20/after-the-gun-ban

Interesting read.

Very good read. With the way the media is playing up a ban and politicians from both sides that represent pro-2a citizens being pressured by teenie-boppers and their parents, it could very well become an unfortunate reality.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

New restrictions on semiautomatic firearms had been driven by concerns over mass shootings, but it remained almost impossible to tell if the law had any effect on crime. The U.S. remained average to above-average in the frequency and impact of what had always been unusual crimes. "Though rampage shootings are rare in occurrence, the disproportionate amount of coverage they receive in the media leads the public to believe that they occur at a much more regular frequency than they do," scholars noted before the law changed. Such incidents remained rare—and frustratingly horrifying—after the new laws passed. Few actual experts had held out much hope anyway. As one gun skeptic commented after researching various proposed policies, "the case for the policies I'd lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence... I can't endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them."

Click to expand...

A quote that AG Frosh or the liberal/progressive legislators in the Maryland General Assembly would NEVER utter.

An especially troubling development is that political violence appears to be on the rise in a country where the seams are beyond frayed and where members of opposing political factions "despise each other, and to a degree that political scientists and pollsters say has gotten significantly worse over the last 50 years." A line appears to have been crossed in the minds of many Americans, and what were opponents are now enemies.

Click to expand...

That line was FSA2013 ...

New elections loom, but nobody expects them to resolve much of anything.

Click to expand...

See previous paragraph ...

Good read. Probably pretty close to reality. I know a LOT of folks on the 80% train for just that reason.

80% train is great for as long as that lasts...I'm thinking more along the lines of Bracken's scenario...maybe tin foil hat is too tight?

snakep said:

80% train is great for as long as that lasts...I'm thinking more along the lines of Bracken's scenario...maybe tin foil hat is too tight?

Click to expand...

Bracken's writing in pretty interesting. I also find Kurt Schlichter's red state/blue state model interesting.

I don't think we're much more than a decade from this becoming reality

SteveG75 said:

Bracken's writing in pretty interesting. I also find Kurt Schlichter's red state/blue state model interesting.

Click to expand...

Thanks...and I like that Heinlein quote...s

The article is an interesting read. However, I wonder what it will take for the politicians and MSM to actually think about what are the root causes of these shootings?

Do some background and google checks into the personality traits and psychology of previous shooters. The vast majority of school shooters are youths which have been bullied, isolated, emasculated, and belittled from their classmates. They are also often from broken nuclear families, suffer social awkwardness, have mental development challenges (learning disabilities, autism spectrum, depression, etc) or have psychological issues. Many adults have failed them, ignored or minimized their concerns. Peers have shunned them. They feel powerless.

While some find the help needed, grow out of it or adapt; far too many others attempt or commit suicide. Some are enraged enough to attempt to regain some misguided power by obtaining firearms and seeking revenge. Where do they seek revenge? The schools. Where their teachers, councilors and peers bullied and marginalized them. I’m not condoning or excusing these mass murderers. It’s my thoughts on root-cause analysis.

Guns were a tool or symptom; not the cause of the rage and intent to kill. Banning, confiscating, or most forms of gun control will not fix anything. Someone with intent will utilize the next available tool. Kids are typically short-sighted have little to no stake to gain or lose in this 2A fight while under 18. Yet, Kids do/repeat what others present. Moreover, guns are the “easy target”. Far easier than naming, blaming or taking responsibility for the true social injustices.

Exuberon said:

While some find the help needed, grow out of it or adapt; far too many others attempt or commit suicide. Some are enraged enough to attempt to regain some misguided power by obtaining firearms and seeking revenge. Where do they seek revenge? The schools. Where their teachers, councilors and peers bullied and marginalized them. I’m not condoning or excusing these mass murderers. It’s my thoughts on root-cause analysis.

Click to expand...

Indeed. But the central consistent pathologies are
a) an individuals sense of insignificance which the individual can reverse by becoming famous and actualizing a fascination with prior shooters media fame.

This sharply and clearly points to wall to wall coverage of these events as inducing more of them.

If you remember candid camera, "jerry springer" (and I am sure analogues among some Instagram personalities who make idiots of themselves for fame); you know that a certain portion of the human popuiona conflates being famous with being infamous

A lot of people don't realize that you can be narcissist AND feel yourself insignificant. We associate egotism and narcissism with fame and success, when in fact these are as present among losers.

combine:

• fame through infamy in you are guaranteed a huge amount of media and name recognition, even if you die; with
• the general cultural message today that any problem YOU have is someone else's fault,
• a couple of below adjudicatable mental illness (Asperger's, anxiety, disassociate disorders, etc
• often some psychiatric prescribed drugs

And you get a cocktail that often makes these killers. You don't need a gun to do it wither as we know from Andreas Lubitz who killed 150 people with no gun in France


Frankly the kids demonstrating against the second amendment are themselves part of this pathology albeit in a less severe form. They are expression of the "you are either an aggrieved/owed class or you are nothing." A white male highs school student, like the leader of the demonstrations, has been taught that he has a generational guilt and is an oppressor of everyone else. But along comes an issue where they can be an aggrieved class as well! Oh the second amendment makes me a victim! I am bullied by the Second Amendment (never mind that Americans high school students had a nearly 300% higher rate of homicide victimization 25 years ago)

The first spate of notable school shootings were directly related to a book, "Rage", by Steven King. We all know "Carrie" where king celebrated and lionized a bullied girl who kills scores of kids, many of them innocent. but in Rage he actually had a book out where the hero kills his classmates with a gun. That book was found among the effects of four seminal pre-columbine school shooters. The columbine par in turn were fascinated with beating those prior King inspired killings. Because of the media coverage of columbine -- and Michael Moore (another person at fault for these shootings expanding) eternizing the blame away from Kliebold and Harris and toward instead the Second Amendment -- all the large school shooters after that were fascinated with Columbine, and wanted to beat that killing to attain fame thanks to CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox and also the gun control groups making those people famous.

Connections to actual school shootings
The novel's plot vaguely resembles actual events that have transpired since the book's publication, to such a degree that the author is no longer comfortable with the book's being in print for fear that it may inspire similar occurrences ("[Rage is] now out of print."[1]) as it had already been associated with incidents of high school shootings and hostage takings:
Jeffrey Lyne Cox, a senior at San Gabriel High School in San Gabriel, California, took a semi-automatic rifle to school on April 26, 1988, and held a humanities class of about 60 students hostage for over 30 minutes. Cox held the gun to one student when the teacher doubted Cox would cause harm and stated that he would prove it to her. At that time three students escaped out a rear door and were fired upon. Cox was later tackled and disarmed by another student. A friend of Cox's told the press that Cox had been inspired by the Kuwait Airways Flight 422 hijacking and by the novel Rage,[2] which Cox had read over and over again and with which he strongly identified.[3]
Dustin L. Pierce, a senior at Jackson County High School in McKee, Kentucky, armed himself with a shotgun and two handguns and took a history classroom hostage in a nine-hour standoff with police on September 18, 1989, that ended without injury. Police found a copy of Rage among the possessions in Pierce's bedroom, leading to speculation that he had been inspired to carry out the plot of the novel.[4]
On January 18, 1993, Scott Pennington, a student at East Carter High School in Grayson, Kentucky, took a .38-caliber revolver that was owned by his father and fatally shot his English teacher Deanna McDavid in the head, during her seventh period class. He subsequently shot and killed the school's custodian, Marvin Hicks, and held the class hostage for 20 minutes before releasing them.[5] Just before the shootings he had written an essay on the book Rage and was upset that McDavid had given it a C grade.[6]
...
In December 1997, Michael Carneal shot eight fellow students at a prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. He had a copy of Rage within the Richard Bachman omnibus in his locker. This was the incident that moved King to allow the book to go out of print.[8]

Click to expand...

Stephen King, Michael Moore and the media have made heroes out of these bullied people who lash out