Quote:
Originally Posted by that_pope
More guns are better!
The insanity in a presidential hopeful basically promoting an arms race at schools, and that a lot of Americans will agree with this, is very, very sad.
I'm sure that having several people patrolling the grounds of every school would reduce school shootings dramatically. Hey, then it would just be reduced to snipers who are only able to pick off two or three kids before they scatter and take cover! Or they'll turn to other places, and next you can set up armed guards at all the malls that don't already have them, and daycare centers, and waterslides...
Sure, there's some hyperbole in there. But the idea that the solution is "more armed law enforcement" is absurd. A society in which every school has to have armed law enforcement sounds like one in which the terrorists have won.
In Canada despite the fact that, as Rococo said: "Canada has very high levels of civilian gun ownership by international standards", we're going the opposite route. I think the biggest police presence we see at most Canadian schools, are secondary schools that have some version of school liaison officers, whose prime purpose isn't to guard the school from attacks - and many schools are removing them in response to concerns about how they affect students, especially BIPOC students. As for armed law enforcement at elementary schools, I'm sure that's something that 95%+ of Canadians would find appalling. And I've never heard anyone even make such a suggestion, because there's no need for that here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ledn
Canada/UK/Aus also doesn't seem to have a problem with young men becoming so infused with hatred toward society that they fantasize and desire to murdering as many innocents as possible.
How do you know that's true? Could it simply be that we all have that issue, but in other countries it isn't so easy to act on it?
From a CNN article:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/sc...rnd/index.html
So just comparing US to Canada, and accounting for the US having ~9x our population, we're still left with 16x more shootings in the US. Are there really 16x more US young men (per capita) than Canadian young men "so infused with hatred toward society that they fantasize and desire to murdering as many innocents as possible"? The number might be higher there, but it seems unlikely to be that much higher.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ledn
That seems to be a unique American problem and is the root of mass shootings.
Let's say that it is, that American young men really are that much more prone to being "so infused with hatred toward society that they fantasize and desire to murdering as many innocents as possible". Might the general culture towards guns play even a small role in that? Would it not be an improvement to American society if they were to start to take even small steps to improve this culture? Significant progress will take decades if not generations, so there's no time to waste IMO.
Improving the mental health of young people, and improving the gun culture, are not mutually exclusive. Why not both?
Last edited by Bobo Fett; 05-25-2022 at 06:28 PM.
Reason: More clarity on quoted post.