School Walkouts

[Guest]

A fun map. http://demographicdata.org/facts-and-fig...tatistics/

[PaulW]

I like that link. Hawaii scoring very well there and gun ownership going down.
Glad to hear you also dream of a country and a state where it's difficult for children to get their hands on guns. We need less guns.

[Rob Tucker]

It is a tragic shame that another school shooting puts one in the morgue and two in a hospital
Here's a question... Is youthful immaturity a mental illness?%

[Guest]

Nice try Paul.

For most i would say no Rob, empathy and value of life come with maturity. IMO

Morals are not inherent either.

[birdmove]

Part of the problem is probably the fact that "social media" has taken over so many people's lives. Taunting, bullying, making a teenager's already difficult period so much worse. The internet, despite it's usefulness, may be the bane of our society.

Jon in Keaau/HPP

[kalakoa]

"social media" has taken over so many people's lives

If only this "social media" generated data which could be analyzed to discover fragile humans.

Which is to say, if only that kind of analysis were important, and performed proactively.

[TomK]

"What about b) Deaths attributed to school shootings since we started counting (some 200 years ago), do not even total 500?"

Apologies, I hardly ever post in threads about guns, but I find the comment above very disturbing. It reminds me of those that won't vaccinate their kids. Collateral damage is just fine because an irrational belief supersedes the safety of other children.

All - just a request, but when you quote numbers or stats, please cite your sources and more, let everyone know if you are talking about a rate or total numbers otherwise it's meaningless. Some have made claims that are so unbelievable and probably nonsense and it really is the domain of kooks who claim things but don't provide evidence or say look it up yourself. I see it in the teacher thread as well.

http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/en...aloney.pdf

Doubt I'll post in the thread again, but from the very first thing in, ahem, RWR's post:

"A fun map. http://demographicdata.org/facts-and-fig...tatistics/":

"With 88.8 guns per 100 residents, US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world. Based on 2014 data, whilst the US houses 4.6% of the world’s population, the nation has around 35-50% of civilian-owned guns worldwide. Furthermore, the US has the highest gun-related death rate among the advanced countries. Recent 2014 survey completed by the Pew Research Center highlighted about a third of all US citizens with children under 18 years old at home have a gun in their household. This includes 34% of families with children younger than 12 years old."

There has to be a time when people need to stop and wonder why the US is like this - it is unique to a so-called 1st-world country.

[MarkP]

Modern media coverage means that anybody anywhere can become famous for better or worse as long as they do something dramatic enough. It also shows people who may have impulses or ideas rare enough that they would not normally be able to share them with anyone in their normal circle of contacts that there are indeed others like them. In the case of wanting to shoot up a school, that's unfortunate. I do think that the availability of firepower makes the problem worse and I support reasonable gun control. I don't see why people accept speed limits but still feel that any limit on guns is unbearable. Nevertheless I think the main thing behind mass shootings of today is the lure of the notoriety to be had.

[Chas]

I agree. “Hey, I could have my 15 minutes of fame” seems plausible.

When these first started happening I thought maybe it would cut down on bullying, thinking that a bully would think twice if there was a possibility of being shot.

How times have changed. I remember it was nothing to see guns in my fellow student’s vehicles because they were going hunting after school.

[Eric1600]

You guys are on computers connected to the internet. You can look up information on this. In general fame is not a very common factor.

Common Factors:
* White Male
* Not strangers to the victims
* Rarely mentally ill
* Profoundly alienated from society and have suffered failures
* Malignant aggression rooted in the desire to make a distinct mark on the world
* Blame others for their failures -- personal grievance that will start a person on a pathway to mass murder
* Fantasizes about weapons and hordes them

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/us/ma...erers.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opini...story.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...er-motives
https://www.thealternativedaily.com/fact...-shooters/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/...n-america/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/201...full-data/

Fame does play a role increasing the incidents:

Some researchers believe killers feed off the publicity from prior killings, using them as inspiration for their own attacks.

“If you blast the names and faces of shooters on news stations and constantly repeat their names, there may be an inadvertent process of creating a blueprint,” Dr. Deborah Weisbrot, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Stony Brook University who has interviewed hundreds of mostly teenage boys who have made threats, said in 2015.

The major exception is the Las Vegas shooter. He breaks the "normal" patterns. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/las-v...sy-is-done