After I’d read that the Trump shooter had looked at photos of Trump and Biden and their upcoming speech locations and the fact that the shooter was a lone wolf and bullied at school, I read part of the Wikipedia page about the Uvalde shooting . The Uvalde shooter also was a lone wolf and also used an AR-15. My thoughts right now are like this :
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The lone wolfs probably have suffered badly from an inferior complex due to bullying and alienation
and wanted to do something which made them feel historically “significant” instead of feeling completely “useless”. -
The US appears to have a pretty dominant machismo culture (Think about GOP with their MAGA, it is humiliating for women and minority groups) and so-called snowflakes are looked down upon. This is very bad for everyone involved.
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Cops are afraid of citizens having an AR-15 on them.
What can be done ?
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Should vote with our wallets ? Like stop using exTwitter now that Elon Musk has publicly shown support for Trump ? (On Mastodon I’ve seen many comments about people that did cancel their subscription to the New York Times and that seemed to have some effect. Finally the NYT is posting more critical articles about Trump and Project 2025.)
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Should people talk more often to each other and avoid alienation ? In books of Gabor Maté he talks about the fact that most people in society look down on hard drug addicts but these junkies are still human beings. And the same goes for homeless people and refugees of course. They are still human beings. No need to automatically view them as inferior beings, right ?
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Should we limit our screen time on mobile phones ? Are we silently producing a sort of zombies that cannot think for themselves anymore ? Should tech companies be obliged to make phone apps less addictive ?
Should mobile phone usage during class in school be forbidden ? -
Should we promote exchange projects as part of cultural improvement ? Like say 50 people from Congo Republic in Africa swap places with 50 people from California for 1 year, and then after swapping back talk about the experiences.
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Should we in our education system or during leisure time educate people more on what happened in World War II and what we can still learn from that ? For example the book by Umberto Eco about how to recognize a fascist ( Ur-Fascism ) could be used.
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Should bullying at school be pro-actively approached and make victims and bullies talk to each other under professional supervision ?
The things you have suggested are just distractions away from these two points and won’t fix anything.
I think you are correct about the mental health issues. It scares me that the health care is private, and not all can afford it
You know what they say:
Get rich or die trying (because you can’t afford to see a doctor)
I agree with you, but it’s important to address the elephant in the room of our absolute stockpile of and the ease of access to weapons of war. Not just pdw or hunting, you can get some really cool shit, with less effort than it takes to get your license in many places.
I like guns the same way I like high end fireworks/ordinance, they are definitely fun, but it shouldn’t be so easy to get them and the folks who base their identity around them are sad/scary af.
That’s my issue. The ease with which you can obtain high-end fire arms is too high. I have to do a written test, 30+ supervised hours of driving by another person, then pass a skills test, to get a vehicle license.
Meanwhile, I can walk into a store in my state and walk out with an AR15 today. I can then open carry that AR15 wherever I please. There is a background check for federally licensed dealers, but no other sales. I don’t need to register it. I don’t need training to carry it amongst the public. The biggest barrier to obtaining one is the cost.
Part of the issue with the attempt on Trump was the guy was outside the SS perimeter, so they didn’t have “jurisdiction”, and the guy was following PA laws for the most part up until he pulled the trigger.
Didn’t he get the gun from his father?
I hadn’t seen that; the last “official” position I saw on it was that it was still in question on how he obtained it, but that it was presumed to be his father’s. But even then, that highlights difficulties with gun ownership. Someone giving me a car doesn’t grandfather me in to use, so if it was gifted from his father, that bypasses some current checks. If it was a gun his father owned that he took, then it likely wasn’t secure as it should be, again failing the traditional gun safety terms and responsible ownership.
But that’s only a small issue if you look at the actual murder stats. The vast majority of deaths by gun are not committed with “high-end firearms” with only an average 3% of homicides involving rifles. Knives and blunt instruments kill many times more people than rifles. Cheap handguns are the number one firearm used in homicides.
Your point about mental health issues is about the victim being bullied or being avoided by others I guess ?
If I refuse to buy Nike shoes like all others, and if I decide to wear all black clothes with heavy metal shirts and I prefer to read books rather than talk loud and the rest of my class mates avoid me for reasons, does that mean I need to get therapy ?
Yes, we’re underfunded as hell on mental health services but the person that thinks mass murder is the best solution to their problems is probably not going to opt in to treatment.
If that is indeed true, my follow up questions would be “why not?” and “how do we solve that?”.
I was talking mental health with this doctor the other day. He said he had a patient once wake up during minor surgery and knocked out three nurses kick him in the nuts then ran down the hallway bleeding allover the place. It was never in his chart he had mental illiness. Come to find out later after security and police were called he had a record of asualt and domestic violence. Had we have known that we would have taken precautions. But we could have known if we put him in a mental health floor or something like that. About 3 months later I asked the doctor again what the hospital is doing now. They said they opened up a wing for mental health patients. Still its a start but still a really long way to go.