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Originally Posted by Unguarded
Some things need to be censored. In a war, the press should not reveal the location of our troops. When investigating a serial killer, the police have to keep a lot of info secret from the press.
I am not saying we should totally 1984 mass murderers, but for ****'s sake... putting them on the cover of every magazine, newspaper, news show, book, etc. for the next week? That is really messed up.
First paragraph: That's a different story. I'm not saying that the state should freely divulge all information to the media.
Second: Let's assume I agree with you that that is "messed up". Who's fault is that? In my opinion, the fault resides with the public, because they are the ones demanding this information.
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The media mostly just tells us what we want to hear... what sells. This is very different from "exposing the truth".
Well, this is probably true at times. One problem in this discussion is that "the media" is not some massive singular entity. "The media" is composed of many, many different groups with different aims. As it should be.
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There is very little correlation between mental illness and violence. Hitler, Timothy McVeigh, and Bin Laden were all quite sane. That crazy people are more violent is mostly a myth.
Crazy or not, mass murderers are trying to make a point. They want the world's attention.
Bolded -- is there evidence of that? On the face of it, I'd disagree, but admit I haven't done a ton of research there.
And yes, mass murderers probably are trying to make a point. But the second sentence doesn't necessarily follow from the first. It's just a "happy" side-result.
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That the Columbine killers were bullied more than normal is mostly a myth. It is pretty well documented now that they were actually bullies themselves. And come on, what kind of weak excuse is being bullied for killing a bunch of people? Most people get bullied pretty bad as teens... if not by their classmates, then by their dysfunctional families.
Also, they tried to blow up the entire school. They planted bombs that would have killed pretty much everyone if they had gone off as planned. The bombs didn't explode. Going in and shooting people was more of a Plan B.
What's absurd is to try and paint these people as victims when we have overwhelming evidence (mass murder?) that they are victimizers. Every criminal has some sob story about how life wasn't fair to them. Some excuse. Some justification for their actions.
I should have been more accurate in my language. It's not that the Columbine killers were ACTUALLY bullied to a massive extent, it's that they believed that they were (that's what I remember from researching this when it happened, it's been a while). Something of a persecution complex, one that is found throughout survivalist/gun nut/far-right-wing literature. What could account for this disparity between reality and perception? Mental illness seems like a big one.
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Originally Posted by Unguarded
Just not gonna happen. It's a cultural thing. Attempting to control firearm sales risks a second civil war in this country.
This is a good point. Gun nuts are obsessed with doomsday scenarios in which THE STATE comes in to forcefully take everybody's guns (see my above statement re: persecution complexes). It quite literally could spark a civil war. Of course, this war would last about 2 weeks. These dudes suffer from a weird delusion that they would have a shot against the US military, because of "guerrilla warfare herp derp". This isn't 1776. Or even 1965. They have tanks and planes and predator drones. And probably all sorts of other **** we're not even aware of. You have the equivalent of sticks and stones.
In this scenario, the civilian militias are a team composed of SSSH's 12 best basketball players and the US government is the Miami Heat. We're gonna lose 274-2 (I think I could get a bucket vs. Norris Cole).
I don't want all of this to indicate that I'm a far-left anti-gun wingnut. I'm very mildly pro-gun, in that I don't really care if some citizen has one. But it's a big reason why I can't get with the US Libertarians. Those guys are unnaturally obsessed with guns.