methodmissing wrote:It's a media contagion issue. The media whip up a frenzy of by-the-minute reporting, plaster the killer's face, name, hobbies, manifestoes, and instragram photos all over the TV for 3 days, and a nationwide hysteria erupts.

Consume advertising revenue, wash hands, repeat.

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases ... agion.aspx

Johnston and her coauthor, Andrew Joy, BS, also of Western New Mexico University, reviewed data on mass shootings amassed by media outlets, the FBI and advocacy organizations, as well as scholarly articles, to conclude that “media contagion” is largely responsible for the increase in these often deadly outbursts. They defined mass shootings as either attempts to kill multiple people who are not relatives or those resulting in injuries or fatalities in public places.

“If the mass media and social media enthusiasts make a pact to no longer share, reproduce or retweet the names, faces, detailed histories or long-winded statements of killers, we could see a dramatic reduction in mass shootings in one to two years,” she said. “Even conservatively, if the calculations of contagion modelers are correct, we should see at least a one-third reduction in shootings if the contagion is removed.”

Media organizations will not simply "Make a pact." Not today, when they're starving for attention in a changing media landscape. We have to hit them in the Ads, just like they did to O'Reilly. Email the editor and tell them to stop it, and that you won't be reading their website anymore. Install a website blocker extension and ad blocker and block the site on your browser.

We can organize as a grassroots effort to boycott the advertisers and pressure them to withdraw from media organizations which are glamorizing shooters. It doesn't have to be about gun control, gun rights, the second amendment, self defense or freedom. It's simply about stopping the contagion. Stop glamorizing mass shooters, everybody can get on board. No thoughts or prayers needed. No divisive rhetoric applies. No wedge issues or identity politics.

Then take it to social media. Tell your friends and networks not to share information about the shooter or his identity or motives. Link the APA article. Spread the information and recruit them to the cause.

This is pretty much what I've been saying. Stop glamorizing and trying to explain these pieces of shit. Just stop spreading the contagion.

These pieces of shit are into a fucking competition now. Check out the latest assholes' facebook page before it was scrubbed. 2 minutes after the event, another asshole mocking him for not getting high score...

Stop acting as their publisher.

It has to be done to all media including the huge networks.

While I agree that the contagion effect is real and demonstrable part of this problem, the media feel the first is an inalienable right that cannot be infringed upon...as they slant their reporting to restrict another inalienable right.

Unfortunately it's the citizens and society that glamorize them.

If the citizens weren't interested, the media wouldn't lay on it. When Bundy was on trial, women would show up dressed just how he liked his victims. It's a disease among society. I get the media plays into it but the rot in the roots is at the feet of the people who decide what they do and don't want to watch.

Have you noticed that they (the media) stopped hyping teenager suicide and cutting and Goth culture? Gee, I wonder why..?

senorgrand wrote:While I agree that the contagion effect is real and demonstrable part of this problem, the media feel the first is an inalienable right that cannot be infringed upon...as they slant their reporting to restrict another inalienable right.

A small quibble...the media feel the first is THEIR inalienable right, but not YOURS. YOU need to shut up and do, and act, and think, and feel as you're told by your cultural superiors...

awshoot wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 1:18 am

AndyH wrote: Mon May 21, 2018 2:45 pm...
No, that's not being responsible. At the heart of is, you're promoting an anti-gun plan at best, and an 'only the rich can have guns' at worst. This is a universal and natural right you're talking about here. So no - it's not reasonable to suggest that people in lower economic brackets - the ones most likely to actually need to defend themselves - should accept only your prescription in order to be 'responsible'.

With enough school shootings, none of us, rich/poor/middle, will be having any gun rights. Just south of me in OR there is in initiative that will go to the voters this fall and if it passes, it will ban virtually anything semi-auto -- just check out how broad the definition of "assault weapon" is: http://oregonvotes.org/irr/2018/043text.pdf Seriously -- explain how this law would not arguably describe every single SA rifle that has a stock, even a wood one:

<snip>

Personally, I feel that if a person can't afford secure storage for their gun when it is not in their immediate possession, that person is being irresponsible toward people who are harmed by the gun when it escapes their control AND being especially irresponsible and cavalier toward the rights of their fellow gun owners. Insecure storage is selfish and only acts to unfairly shift the costs of that action, costs which include confiscatory legislation, to innocent bystanders. Besides that, when they ban the gun your hypothetical poor person owns, getting another is going to cost at least 3x more than a $50 safe.

Yes, I've read the various gun ban threads. This conversation isn't about those. What I'd like to remind you is that we already have laws across the country that require gun owners to keep guns away from kids. Some portion of gun owners comply with those in various ways - and I know for a fact that the requirements can be met without a safe. Additionally, not all households with guns also have children. So...your push to force everyone to have a safe is as incorrect as the antis calling all semi-autos 'assault rifles'. It's also redundant and places yet another regulatory burden on people that do not need a safe. It just doesn't 'logic', and it doesn't 'civil right'. No, I have to respectfully decline your draconian offer, even if you think a self-imposed draconian demand will somehow deflect the anti-gunners from their efforts. That's doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason.

Nato wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 9:27 am As I read was reading this, it struck me as to why we are having the same discussion every year with the same arguments. I am not just talking about the "LGC" I am talking about the country as a whole. Everyone is looking for a solution to the problem of "Kids bringing guns to school and shooting their classmates" through the prism of "What is differant now" from when I was a kid. We didn't have widespread violent video games that must be the problem, we didn't have mass social media pipped in through electronics that must be the problem, I didn't have access to guns when I was a kid that must be the problem. I am not seeing anything that says, this is how the world and or society has changed in the past two decades, how do we equip our children to handle the world as it is now and as it will be.

Exactly. Right now we have a serious firearm public relations issue with kids getting guns and shooting other kids and if it goes on, there are going to be awful measures taken against all firearm owners. Secondly, even in a far more perfect world where root causes can be accurately identified and cured, we are going to have this problem because some people are just bad. However, the debate about root causes is going to be long and fraught -- the right wing Christian is going to have vastly different opinions about what the root causes are and honestly, I wouldn't want that group making the laws to address what they perceive as root causes.

What is simple to identify however, is the symptom -- kids shooting kids at school. This can be adequately addressed directly while we spend the next two decades figuring out the root, by three methods:

1) Prevent kids from getting guns (hence my focus on secure storage earlier, though that is not the only method).
2) Prevent kids who get guns from getting into schools -- yep, that's going to mean metal detectors or other ugly methods, but apparently, it's necessary.
3) If a kid with a gun gets into a school, make sure he or she gets killed fast -- that means either more guards or arming teachers and those things come with their own bad consequences, one of which is NOT draconian gun control legislation.

USA Today's take on the firearms used, from the 18th.
Texas school shooter used shotgun, pistol in deadly assault

The guns may have slowed down the gunman’s deadly rampage because they have a slower firing rate than firearms used in other recent mass shootings, such as the AR-15. Abbott said it was unclear whether Pagourtzis' father knew that the weapons were missing.

High-powered rifles such as the AR-15 can be fired more than twice as fast as most handguns. The standard magazine for an AR-15 holds 30 rounds, allowing a shooter to continue firing uninterrupted for longer, making the weapon more lethal than other firearms, though clearly the use of any gun can be deadly, especially a shotgun at close range.

Other shootings, including the deadly attack at Virginia Tech included less lethal weapons. Student Seung-Hui Cho used two pistols to kill 32 people in 2007.

https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/997612866881679362

USA TODAY
‏Verified account
@USATODAY
Two details set the Santa Fe shooting apart from other recent deadly attacks: explosives and the use of less-lethal weapons.

So we get to play "what if" until the facts align with our preconceived notions? I'm not sure what to call that, but "journalism" is certainly at the bottom of the list.

And good thing the kid didn't have a chainsaw bayonet.

Fuck USA Today. They deserve about as much journalistic respect as my local Pennysaver.

Um, so a SA AR fires twice as fast as a SA handgun? Please gunsplain that to me, USA Today.

Because reasons...and chainsaw bayonets...

Don't let the nannies see this...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzHG-ibZaKM

or this...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFoM8S3JwZU

That dude is super friggin human

DougMasters wrote: Wed May 23, 2018 2:35 pm That dude is super friggin human

He is a machine.

Who knew Terminators had Southern accents?

Wabatuckian wrote: Mon May 21, 2018 10:40 am

My argument isn't solely amphetamines; isn't solely video games; isn't solely bad home life; isn't solely isolation by technology, esp social media; isn't solely bullying.

Rather, it's an aggregate of all these and more. In my opinion, dismissing any of the possible factors is a helluva big mistake.

Regards,

Josh

My view on this has been to take the mystique out of cool dangerous activities. If kids know they can do activities safely anytime by just asking, they gain an understanding of how dangerous an activity can be, and have no fantasies to live them out.

For my children it was the following:

We use to save the real xmas trees. Every January we would take some old but still functional fire extinguishers and go to the cul-de-sac and set a tree on fire. Kids took turns pulling the pin and extinguishing the dry trees.

Driver's ed was spending 4 days with two other kids and a police officer in an old cruiser. One day of that was skid track.

Range time included M16, MP5SD and Thompsons. Not mine unfortunately.

I really agree with Josh.

senorgrand wrote:Who knew Terminators had Southern accents?

I don't know about the rest of him, but to get 6 rounds of .44 mag on target in 1 second, he must have hands like steel traps and forearms made of iron...

Mental Illness Common Thread for Mass Shootings

"Charleston shooter Dylann Storm Roof was reportedly taking a drug that has been linked with sudden outbursts of violence.

The past decade lays out tragic evidence of the thread uniting mass shootings and mental illness:

* Seung-Hui Cho. As a child, Cho was diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder and placed under treatment. On December 13, 2005, he was found "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization. On April 16, 2007, he killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at a University in Virginia.

* Jiverly Wong. In a letter dated March 18, 2009, Wong expressed his concerns to a local television station that undercover police officers were changing the channels on his television, making the air “unbreathable,” and had figured out a way to play music directly into his ear. On April 3, 2009, Wong walked into the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York and killed 13 people, wounding four others.

* Maj. Nidal Hasan. In early 2009, the mental health officials who worked alongside Hasan held a series of meetings where they discussed his bizarre and paranoid behavior. Some openly wondered whether Hasan was psychotic. On November 5, 2009, Hasan opened fire at an army base near Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 30 others.

* Jared Loughner. On September 10, 2010, Loughner was asked to leave Pima Community College in Tucson on mental health grounds – a psychologist who reviewed his journals believes he showed symptoms of schizophrenia. Four months later Loughner unloaded his 9mm Glock pistol into the parking lot of a Tucson shopping mall, killing six and injuring 13.

* James Holmes. Between March 16th and June 11, 2012, the psychiatrist who treated Holmes, Dr. Lynn Fenton, wrote in her notes that Holmes "may be shifting insidiously into a frank psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia.” On July 20, 2012 Holmes walked into an Aurora, Colorado movie theater and killed 12 people, injuring 70 others.

* Aaron Alexis. On August 4, 2013, naval police were called to Alexis' hotel at Naval Station Newport and found that he had "taken apart his bed, believing someone was hiding under it, and observed that Alexis had taped a microphone to the ceiling to record the voices of people that were following him.” On September 16, 2013, Alexis fatally shot 12 people and injured three others at the Washington Navy Yard.

In the case of Newtown, Connecticut shooter Adam Lanza, the warning signs of a severe mental health issue were right out in the open for everyone to see.

Adam, who was diagnosed as a child with Sensory Perception Disorder, a condition that made made bright lights, loud sounds and certain textures unbearable, secluded himself in his bedroom for weeks at a time. While left to himself he covered his windows with dark garbage bags to block the light out, and spent his time played violent video games and studying mass killers, compiling an extensive database that read like a scorecard.

A Yale psychiatrist who briefly treated Lanza says he "displayed a profound autism spectrum disorder with rigidity, isolation and a lack of comprehension of ordinary social interaction and communications.”

Lanza never accepted his diagnosis and refused to take medication or undergo further treatment. Since he was over the age of 18, his mother, Nancy Lanza, who was acutely aware of his severe mental health issues, could only hope for the best."

http://www.newsweek.com/charleston-mass ... ngs-344789

NoEyeDeer wrote: Wed May 23, 2018 8:45 pm

Wabatuckian wrote: Mon May 21, 2018 10:40 am

My argument isn't solely amphetamines; isn't solely video games; isn't solely bad home life; isn't solely isolation by technology, esp social media; isn't solely bullying.

Rather, it's an aggregate of all these and more. In my opinion, dismissing any of the possible factors is a helluva big mistake.

Regards,

Josh

My view on this has been to take the mystique out of cool dangerous activities. If kids know they can do activities safely anytime by just asking, they gain an understanding of how dangerous an activity can be, and have no fantasies to live them out.

For my children it was the following:

We use to save the real xmas trees. Every January we would take some old but still functional fire extinguishers and go to the cul-de-sac and set a tree on fire. Kids took turns pulling the pin and extinguishing the dry trees.

Driver's ed was spending 4 days with two other kids and a police officer in an old cruiser. One day of that was skid track.

Range time included M16, MP5SD and Thompsons. Not mine unfortunately.

I really agree with Josh.

I agree with you about training and experience. I do the same sorts of things with my son to make things real.

I can't agree with Josh on this because he keeps giving validity to things that are false. Kids aren't shooting up schools because of video games or their ADHD meds, and therefore it actually is not a mistake to dismiss the BS so we can use our limited resources to fix the real problems.

I really need to find a cop and a skid track - it's hard to find an icy parking lot around here!

rascally wrote: Wed May 23, 2018 2:20 pm Don't let the nannies see this...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzHG-ibZaKM

or this...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFoM8S3JwZU

Yeah, I knew how fast he is and all the while I hear people saying bump stocks made a semi-automatic into a machine gun. It's just physics and muscle control. Bans are silly. Ban Jerry!

Good article with links out.

Writing in 2015, Malcolm Gladwell wrote what I think is still the best explanation for modern American mass shootings, and it’s easily the least comforting. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex argument, essentially he argues that each mass shooting lowers the threshold for the next. He argues, we are in the midst of a slow-motion “riot” of mass shootings, with the Columbine shooting in many ways the key triggering event. Relying on the work of Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter, Gladwell notes that it’s a mistake to look at each incident independently:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/w ... planation/

CDFingers

The "incel" phenomena is being offered up as a reason for the shooting. It all makes my head swim.

eelj wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 12:06 pm The "incel" phenomena is being offered up as a reason for the shooting. It all makes my head swim.

Really? Joy.

See people? When women don't put out then it drives men to kill; so ladies, get those legs spread open for the sake of the children!

The Santa Fe shooting suspect, 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis, used his father’s guns in the massacre, authorities say. But the family will likely not be held accountable for allowing him to access those weapons because he was 17, too old to be covered by Texas’ child-access prevention law.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/05/31 ... -teachers/