Tbh I don't buy your premise that guns aren't "the direct cause" of school shootings. If you could run an experiment where you randomly assigned societies to having either lots of guns or very few guns, I think it's safe to say there'd be more shootings where there are more guns. That's how we typically think of causality in science.
I think what you're really asking is what motivates violence. The U.S. isn't super special in that regard. Other countries are pluralistic and have similar social conflicts, and America isn't the only place where troubled young men crave notoriety. It's more like the U.S. just sees to it people have increasingly sophisticated means to act on their violent motives.
My point was that the amount of guns a society has isn’t directly proportional to the number of mass shootings. There must be other factors. Here, I was merely speculating about what those might be. Hopefully there will be real answers soon. I think gun control is a main part of the solution, but I think there are other, less superficial problems that need to be addressed as well.
Fair enough. We certainly have other problems. I wonder if the gun ownership rate is the best variable to correlate with mass shootings. Other countries with high rates of ownership have tighter safety rules -- you have to register them, get trained, get screened, etc. (And untrained civilians definitely can't own anything like an AR-15.)
Maybe there's a way to compare countries on rates of unregistered firearms, but differences in data quality would be an issue.
I regularly visit 4 chan's /pol and reddit, and after a while, school shootings kinda makes sense.. the amount of hatred, of reification, the violence, against jews, nazis, antifa, trumptards, qultists, BLM members, black people, transexuals, political correctness transgressers, white supremacists, RINO s, pedophiles, women, Muslims, atheists... Is staggering.
We allow ourselves to hate on each other, to say the unspeakable, casually.
Not sure it explains anything, but after spending a long time lurking in these very active, very public forums, shootings just don't feel that unthinkable, and shooters sound sadly familiar.
Two of the more common explanations for mass shootings and gun violence in general (particularly by those who want to make it about anything besides guns) is violent entertainment and a decay of societal values. As mentioned, there doesn't seem to be any scientific support for violent video games and movies causing an increase in violence. However, studies have shown a correlation between violent political rhetoric and increased violence - including one that showed a correlation to mass shootings.
While these studies typically look at the connection between violent political rhetoric and political violence, I wonder if that could have a spillover effect on violence in general. In a society where dehumanization is more common and violence is seen as a solution to problems, it seems that would make it easier for someone struggling emotionally to dehumanize others and be prone to violence. The operative word is "easier" because, of course, dehumanization and violence are innate human characteristics.
Maybe we should look deeper at the portrayals of violence in society - not in the fictional settings of games and movies, but in the real world of news, social media, and political discourse. One aspect of a society's attitude towards violence is its attitude towards guns. When guns (and the implied violence) are seen as a solution to societal issues instead of a contributor to them, it's not hard to understand why an individual would see guns as an acceptable answer to their problems.
It does seem that decay of social values is a contributor to the problem - just not in the way the people who often use it intend.
Though you cannot prove the causation to gun availability statistically, it is quiet evident when you compare the number of shootings with rest of the world and think how countries with much much lesser resources do not have this problem. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-shootings-by-country
Tbh I don't buy your premise that guns aren't "the direct cause" of school shootings. If you could run an experiment where you randomly assigned societies to having either lots of guns or very few guns, I think it's safe to say there'd be more shootings where there are more guns. That's how we typically think of causality in science.
I think what you're really asking is what motivates violence. The U.S. isn't super special in that regard. Other countries are pluralistic and have similar social conflicts, and America isn't the only place where troubled young men crave notoriety. It's more like the U.S. just sees to it people have increasingly sophisticated means to act on their violent motives.
My point was that the amount of guns a society has isn’t directly proportional to the number of mass shootings. There must be other factors. Here, I was merely speculating about what those might be. Hopefully there will be real answers soon. I think gun control is a main part of the solution, but I think there are other, less superficial problems that need to be addressed as well.
Fair enough. We certainly have other problems. I wonder if the gun ownership rate is the best variable to correlate with mass shootings. Other countries with high rates of ownership have tighter safety rules -- you have to register them, get trained, get screened, etc. (And untrained civilians definitely can't own anything like an AR-15.)
Maybe there's a way to compare countries on rates of unregistered firearms, but differences in data quality would be an issue.
I regularly visit 4 chan's /pol and reddit, and after a while, school shootings kinda makes sense.. the amount of hatred, of reification, the violence, against jews, nazis, antifa, trumptards, qultists, BLM members, black people, transexuals, political correctness transgressers, white supremacists, RINO s, pedophiles, women, Muslims, atheists... Is staggering.
We allow ourselves to hate on each other, to say the unspeakable, casually.
Not sure it explains anything, but after spending a long time lurking in these very active, very public forums, shootings just don't feel that unthinkable, and shooters sound sadly familiar.
Two of the more common explanations for mass shootings and gun violence in general (particularly by those who want to make it about anything besides guns) is violent entertainment and a decay of societal values. As mentioned, there doesn't seem to be any scientific support for violent video games and movies causing an increase in violence. However, studies have shown a correlation between violent political rhetoric and increased violence - including one that showed a correlation to mass shootings.
https://researchfeatures.com/assessing-link-violent-political-rhetoric-mass-shootings/
While these studies typically look at the connection between violent political rhetoric and political violence, I wonder if that could have a spillover effect on violence in general. In a society where dehumanization is more common and violence is seen as a solution to problems, it seems that would make it easier for someone struggling emotionally to dehumanize others and be prone to violence. The operative word is "easier" because, of course, dehumanization and violence are innate human characteristics.
Maybe we should look deeper at the portrayals of violence in society - not in the fictional settings of games and movies, but in the real world of news, social media, and political discourse. One aspect of a society's attitude towards violence is its attitude towards guns. When guns (and the implied violence) are seen as a solution to societal issues instead of a contributor to them, it's not hard to understand why an individual would see guns as an acceptable answer to their problems.
It does seem that decay of social values is a contributor to the problem - just not in the way the people who often use it intend.
Though you cannot prove the causation to gun availability statistically, it is quiet evident when you compare the number of shootings with rest of the world and think how countries with much much lesser resources do not have this problem. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-shootings-by-country
School shootings include not only families; but the place where we learn about community.
They are more than the destruction of individual lives; they tear apart the commonality of place.
I wish we knew more about why some lone individuals choose to attack not only innocent lives but the heart of what ties people together.
Thanks for your thoughtful writing