I'm glad we've taken care of the access to guns and made progress on the societal issues that led to school shootings in the past 12 years, and that they're no longer common.
Oh, wait, we didn't do either of those things?
Columbine was 25 years ago, those 'kids' are in their 40s now and nothing's changed.
Edit: not saying it was their responsibility to fix it, just that the school shooting stuff has been a reality for a whole generation.
IIRC one of the Columbine survivors was a student during the Virginia Tech shooting...
Well shit… now I feel old. I was almost 30 when that happened.
Being in school was wild when that happened. My school banned baggy pants over night and required us to carry clear backpacks. We weren’t allowed to carry more than the book we needed for the next class, and cameras went up.
I was overheard telling a friend (jokingly) that I was going to kill myself if I had to take another timed test. Police showed up soon after and handcuffed me. Some girl overheard me and swore I said I was going to kill other people. Luckily one of the officers was from my neighborhood and believed me, but I was still suspended and he drove me home.
You know what really sucks though? All these years later and people are still terrified. Last week I woke up a few minutes after my teenage daughter got on the bus, my wife said, “Maybe you should go get her. Someone has threatened to shoot up the school.” I drove over and got her, fortunately the officer guarding the door just let her leave with me and was understanding. A day later and another threat hits. Someone says they’re going to shoot up the pep rally. I didn’t send her to school. Two unexcused absences in one week at the beginning of the school year over that shit.
She did online school last year and it was a nightmare, but I’m all over the place on that right now. I want her to be able to make friends and things. It wasn’t healthy for her last year. I only did that because her mom had recently died and I wanted to give her a break from everything.
I guess some kids thought it would be funny to do that last week. I just wish no one had to take them seriously.
I was 19.
Consider that those shootings are getting way more frequent. We get a Columbine about four times a year now and around 43 other shootings where there might be only injuries or singular casualties. Kids grow up in the States with lockdown drills. That entire voting block is going to be old enough to vote in 12 years.
I expect anti gun sentiments are growing now as each year new voters are growing up in that system where these events aren't considered rare anymore. Where parents who came of age in the 2000's have kids and are now front row to that milliterization and afraid because their families have skin in that game.
These laws are gunna happen one day.
Something definitely broke in society around that time though, and "access to guns" only describes an outlet or mechanism, and not the underlying problem.
Pre-1968, civilians could buy full auto machineguns. At one point in the 1930s the Sears catalog would send a full auto Tommy Gun straight to your house via mail order with no background check. And yet in those eras the idea of a grand spectacle suicide/homicide event would have been absolutely unthinkable, even among the most disposessed in society.
The root problem is something more like cultural narcissm, for lack of a better word.
The concept of a deep cynical anti-hero move like publicly murdering pseudo-random aquaintances is a relatively modern problem. Maybe we need to do a better job suppressing "main character vibes" and narcissism, the acting out and sociopathy that is prevalent now.
People could also buy dynamite pretty easy, this was a 1927 school killing.
Crazy finds a way, however the frequency uptick these days is bonkers. Regardless of the device used to kill, I (with no evidence) think a lot of general community fracture has occurred over the last decades, people now have internet echo chambers reinforcing stupid ideas at a much higher accessibility, and foreign actors manipulating the general public. The local communities are more distanced as people choose their online pockets.
Can't downplay the firearm aspect though. The AR-15 is ridiculously easy to shoot with no formal training and easy to hit a tight grouping at 20 yards the first time you pick it up. Other firearms require more skill and training to be remotely as effective. This drops the barrier to entry so low that any asslarper can pick one up and go murder a ton of people.
At one point in the 1930s the Sears catalog would send a full auto Tommy Gun straight to your house via mail order with no background check. And yet in those eras the idea of a grand spectacle suicide/homicide event would have been absolutely unthinkable, even among the most disposessed in society.
Yes I'm not saying there was zero violence in society. There were things like Al Capone's St. Valentines Day Massacre, Bonnie and Clyde, the Kansas City Union Station shootout, etc. but these were extreme outliers in society at large and were international news because of it.
What is relatively new is the concept of an average student or worker becoming disgruntled and deciding to mass murder peers in a singular incident, usually with some grandiose manifesto attached to it.
School shootings in particular are a "new thing" - I'll grant that. But in general gun violence in the US is definitely not a new thing.
EDIT: Also - schools shooting today are actually still "extreme outliers" on the order of the gang violence of the '30s. They're far more common than they should be, but they're still pretty rare given the number of schools in the US.
Yes. No generation owns gun violence and schools. It’s been going on since before Y2K at least.
Over 400 school shootings since Columbine. We as a society have failed our children.
....my first reaction was going 'Wait, only 400?' immediately followed by 'Jesus christ, 400.'
I'm not sure which of those is actually worse.
I mean we got Alex Jones for saying their parents were actors? Progress?
Until he's living in a van down by the river and eating whatever he scrapes off I-35, I'm not willing to say that we've "got him".
He hasn't had to pay anything yet, has he ?
I don't know. Probably not.
I tend not to pay a lot of attention to people like him.
I'm glad we've taken care of the access to guns and made progress on the societal issues that led to school shootings in the past 12 years, and that they're no longer common.
Oh, wait, we didn't do either of those things?
Columbine was 25 years ago, those 'kids' are in their 40s now and nothing's changed.
Edit: not saying it was their responsibility to fix it, just that the school shooting stuff has been a reality for a whole generation.
IIRC one of the Columbine survivors was a student during the Virginia Tech shooting...
Well shit… now I feel old. I was almost 30 when that happened.
Being in school was wild when that happened. My school banned baggy pants over night and required us to carry clear backpacks. We weren’t allowed to carry more than the book we needed for the next class, and cameras went up.
I was overheard telling a friend (jokingly) that I was going to kill myself if I had to take another timed test. Police showed up soon after and handcuffed me. Some girl overheard me and swore I said I was going to kill other people. Luckily one of the officers was from my neighborhood and believed me, but I was still suspended and he drove me home.
You know what really sucks though? All these years later and people are still terrified. Last week I woke up a few minutes after my teenage daughter got on the bus, my wife said, “Maybe you should go get her. Someone has threatened to shoot up the school.” I drove over and got her, fortunately the officer guarding the door just let her leave with me and was understanding. A day later and another threat hits. Someone says they’re going to shoot up the pep rally. I didn’t send her to school. Two unexcused absences in one week at the beginning of the school year over that shit.
She did online school last year and it was a nightmare, but I’m all over the place on that right now. I want her to be able to make friends and things. It wasn’t healthy for her last year. I only did that because her mom had recently died and I wanted to give her a break from everything.
I guess some kids thought it would be funny to do that last week. I just wish no one had to take them seriously.
I was 19.
Consider that those shootings are getting way more frequent. We get a Columbine about four times a year now and around 43 other shootings where there might be only injuries or singular casualties. Kids grow up in the States with lockdown drills. That entire voting block is going to be old enough to vote in 12 years.
I expect anti gun sentiments are growing now as each year new voters are growing up in that system where these events aren't considered rare anymore. Where parents who came of age in the 2000's have kids and are now front row to that milliterization and afraid because their families have skin in that game.
These laws are gunna happen one day.
Something definitely broke in society around that time though, and "access to guns" only describes an outlet or mechanism, and not the underlying problem.
Pre-1968, civilians could buy full auto machineguns. At one point in the 1930s the Sears catalog would send a full auto Tommy Gun straight to your house via mail order with no background check. And yet in those eras the idea of a grand spectacle suicide/homicide event would have been absolutely unthinkable, even among the most disposessed in society.
The root problem is something more like cultural narcissm, for lack of a better word.
The concept of a deep cynical anti-hero move like publicly murdering pseudo-random aquaintances is a relatively modern problem. Maybe we need to do a better job suppressing "main character vibes" and narcissism, the acting out and sociopathy that is prevalent now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
People could also buy dynamite pretty easy, this was a 1927 school killing.
Crazy finds a way, however the frequency uptick these days is bonkers. Regardless of the device used to kill, I (with no evidence) think a lot of general community fracture has occurred over the last decades, people now have internet echo chambers reinforcing stupid ideas at a much higher accessibility, and foreign actors manipulating the general public. The local communities are more distanced as people choose their online pockets.
Can't downplay the firearm aspect though. The AR-15 is ridiculously easy to shoot with no formal training and easy to hit a tight grouping at 20 yards the first time you pick it up. Other firearms require more skill and training to be remotely as effective. This drops the barrier to entry so low that any asslarper can pick one up and go murder a ton of people.
Ummmm...
https://www.historynet.com/how-1930s-american-gang-violence-paved-the-way-for-gun-control/
Yes I'm not saying there was zero violence in society. There were things like Al Capone's St. Valentines Day Massacre, Bonnie and Clyde, the Kansas City Union Station shootout, etc. but these were extreme outliers in society at large and were international news because of it.
What is relatively new is the concept of an average student or worker becoming disgruntled and deciding to mass murder peers in a singular incident, usually with some grandiose manifesto attached to it.
School shootings in particular are a "new thing" - I'll grant that. But in general gun violence in the US is definitely not a new thing.
EDIT: Also - schools shooting today are actually still "extreme outliers" on the order of the gang violence of the '30s. They're far more common than they should be, but they're still pretty rare given the number of schools in the US.
Yes. No generation owns gun violence and schools. It’s been going on since before Y2K at least.
Over 400 school shootings since Columbine. We as a society have failed our children.
....my first reaction was going 'Wait, only 400?' immediately followed by 'Jesus christ, 400.'
I'm not sure which of those is actually worse.
I mean we got Alex Jones for saying their parents were actors? Progress?
Until he's living in a van down by the river and eating whatever he scrapes off I-35, I'm not willing to say that we've "got him".
He hasn't had to pay anything yet, has he ?
I don't know. Probably not.
I tend not to pay a lot of attention to people like him.