Another shooting - 20 children killed

JemyM · December 17, 2012

dteowner said:
It must be comforting to truly believe you have all the answers. Think of it this way- Sammy will at least have options during his crazed, irrational response. Best you'll have is to blockade a door with textbooks and hope somebody shows up to save your enlightened butt.

Thought-terminating clichées, no matter how witty, effects nothing beyond your dissonance. That said, since you both sit there and deliver the same threats, I hope you never claim to support freedom. That would be blatantly dishonest.

JemyM · December 17, 2012

dteowner said:
If the ivory tower types want to help, give us something we can actually do, otherwise get the hell out of the way and we'll do the best we can while you call us knuckledraggers from your well-worn seat on the sideline.

When you look at statistics and look at what factors are different between nations you don't go "it's because God have been rejected from the classrooms" because you know thats absurd considering Japan or Sweden are both the least theist and the least violent. You give explanations like that if you do not believe in honesty.
And you can't say that US have more madmen, because thats not true either. Videogames? Nuh-uh. Movies? Nuh-uh.

Thing is, the answer is the same, it have been the same for a long time.

dteowner · December 17, 2012

"Thought-terminating cliches"? Is that enlightened-speak for "you're absolutely right, but I don't care for the implications" ? Or do you deny the truth of my "witty" construct?

dteowner · December 17, 2012

JemyM said:
And you can't say that US have more madmen, because thats not true either.

That's funny. I seem to remember you being quite snarky about some terribly impressive study that showed 50% of Americans had some sort of mental illness, or some such enlightened hooey. I can't say I committed the exact percentage to memory. Can't have it both ways, perfesser.

zahratustra · December 17, 2012

dteowner said:
See, that's where I start ranting again. An "answer" that cannot be realistically implemented isn't an answer at all—that's called a fantasy. Pointless navel gazing. Rainbows, unicorns, and deficits that go down… If the ivory tower types want to help, give us something we can actually do, otherwise get the hell out of the way and we'll do the best we can while you call us knuckledraggers from your well-worn seat on the sideline.

You don't understand dte. What realistic for some is not realistic for others. For example: racial purity was very realistic for NSDAP but it's a fantasy for Arian Brotherhood.

dteowner · December 17, 2012

When even the supporters (in this case, you) say your answer has no realistic application, I'd say that's fairly convincing. The thoughts of the detractors aren't even necessary to make that decision. Might as well call it "wish upon a star" and present it in a Jimny Cricket voice. It seems to be a common theme of enlightened "solutions".

crpgnut · December 17, 2012

You're responding to Jemy, dte? Why? He doesn't live in the real world. He's a chronic "student". It's impossible for him to relate to human beings outside of a classroom/school setting. Until he has a spouse, a real job, a home he owns, etc., I just think of him as a high school student who forgot to grow up. I think of Jemy as the new Peter Pan. I just can't take anything he says as having any touch with reality. I read his posts strictly for comedic relief. In that way, he's entertaining.

I'm sure he sees me as mentally disturbed. I also own guns. Oh my!

JemyM · December 17, 2012

dteowner said:
"Thought-terminating cliches"? Is that enlightened-speak for "you're absolutely right, but I don't care for the implications" ? Or do you deny the truth of my "witty" construct?

Thought-terminating clichés are repeated cookie-cutter responses to uncomfortable facts. The behavior quell cognitive dissonance with minimum effort, avoiding the energy required to adjust incoherent thought patterns. They are self-destructive when used to delay the need to deal with dangerous or destructive situations due to the uncomfort of dealing with them.

dteowner · December 17, 2012

JemyM said:
When you look at statistics and look at what factors are different between nations you don't go "it's because God have been rejected from the classrooms" because you know thats absurd considering Japan or Sweden are both the least theist and the least violent. You give explanations like that if you do not believe in honesty.
And you can't say that US have more madmen, because thats not true either. Videogames? Nuh-uh. Movies? Nuh-uh.

Thing is, the answer is the same, it have been the same for a long time.

you know, there's some fancy Latin for setting up a false duality. I'm sure you can supply it. You're attempting to lead us to answer, "well, crap the bed perfesser, the only difference between them there countries are the gun laws, uh-huh!" Unfortunately, you conveniently avoid the complicated issues of cultural differences, economic differences, demographic differences (not an issue in this particular case, but in many others).

It should be noted that the gun laws in the state of Connecticut are some of the most restrictive in the country.

JemyM · December 17, 2012

dteowner said:
That's funny. I seem to remember you being quite snarky about some terribly impressive study that showed 50% of Americans had some sort of mental illness, or some such enlightened hooey. I can't say I committed the exact percentage to memory. Can't have it both ways, perfesser.

Begin by noting what I said in the middle of my first statement.

What I said before, and what you refer to, is that it's estimated that 20-25% of Americans have some sort of diagnosable condition. This is generalizable to other nations. The American culture tend to induce fear, stress and neuroses, but none of those are diagnosable conditions.

dteowner · December 17, 2012

JemyM said:
Thought-terminating clichés are repeated cookie-cutter responses to uncomfortable facts. The behavior quell cognitive dissonance with minimum effort, avoiding the energy required to adjust incoherent thought patterns. They are self-destructive when used to delay the need to deal with dangerous or destructive situations due to the uncomfort of dealing with them.

That's very impressive, and yet does absolutely nothing to answer the question. Do you deny the truth of my "witty" construct? A simple yes or no will do fine, perfesser.

blatantninja · December 17, 2012

Keeping people from having easy access to guns that shouldn't have that access is extremely difficult. These guns all belonged to the shooters mother. Assuming that she was mentally stable, the shooter would still be able to get at them fairly easy.

And banning guns won't particularly help. There's big money in guns and if we ban them, there is no doubt that the smae criminal element that dumps tons of drugs in our country and ushers illegal immigrants in will add massive gun running to their business. We can't stop the drugs or illegals, how would we keep the the guns out?

And that assumes that we can somehow round up and get rid of the existing supply of guns.

The answer is cultural change. While not the same thing obviously, in less than a generation we took smoking from a social norm to a social taboo. It was done through education, aggressive marketing, and in many cases health care support. I don't see why we can't make a similar shift in the attitudes towards mental illness and gun use.

redman5427 · December 17, 2012

I don't like the idea of gun control either(especially the thought of funding another bureocracy) but I think its time to look at it. One of the senators is introducing a bill to ban assault weapons which should have done a long,long time ago. I hate the idea of limiting freedoms as much as anyone but just the thought that it could have been my little children is all I need. There was a big push in the eighties to reduce mental health spending and turn everyone into a outpatient. Maybe that should be looked at again. From what I'm hearing, some people who knew the boy said they weren't surprised at all and they all thought he was capable of this act of insanity. Maybe people should speak up a bit more when they have suspicions.

There was a guy in Michigan last month picking cars off on the i-96 expressway(with a rifle), about 40 cars.They finally caught him and no one was injured but he didn't even have a record. He did have family who believed he was mentally ill and suffering from extreme paranoia. He refuse treatment they said. I think the family should have just come together and insist that he had treatment.

JemyM · December 17, 2012

Thought-terminating clichés (or Newspeak as it's called in 1984) are frequently used in sects and totalitarian movements to disable thought processes. It's detected when the language "explain" something in a way that when taken to the extreme promote not thinking. Common in such movements are promoting not thinking as a good quality as well as promoting thinking as a negative quality.

crpgnut said:
He's a chronic "student".

crpgnut said:
It's impossible for him to relate to human beings outside of a classroom/school setting.

crpgnut said:
Until he has a spouse, a real job, a home he owns

JemyM · December 17, 2012

dteowner said:
That's very impressive, and yet does absolutely nothing to answer the question. Do you deny the truth of my "witty" construct? A simple yes or no will do fine, perfesser.

Yes, as it didn't address what I said, nor did it even attempt to.

"It must be comforting to truly believe you have all the answers."
This is a thought-terminating cliché. It doesn't say anything in itself, instead it's a promotion of not thinking, coding lack of attempt to use ones brain as a positive character trait. Works in some groups but in reality it just makes you look stupid.

dteowner said:
Think of it this way- Sammy will at least have options during his crazed, irrational response. Best you'll have is to blockade a door with textbooks and hope somebody shows up to save your enlightened butt.

And this didn't address what I said. It just ignored the facts that refuted his comment without addressing them.

DArtagnan · December 17, 2012

dteowner said:
You said it so well that I just felt the need to copy it. Oh, you mean you weren't explaining the Euro terror complex when it comes to any situation that could be remotely violent? Sorry, I must have missed the point.

What are you talking about? Are you seriously saying the entirety of Europe has a terror complex because those of us with experience with strict gun laws are suggesting it for the US?

Are you the same person who recently had a meltdown because someone talked about your children? 20 innocent children were just shot down - and yet you insist on remaining in denial?

You can't excuse yourself with being stupid, because I know you're not. I have zero doubt that you have a feeling we have a very good point. So, how many children must die before you stop supporting utter insanity? I guess your own children matter and others don't.

Lives are worth more than your pride.

blatantninja · December 17, 2012

redman5427 said:
He refuse treatment they said. I think the family should have just come together and insist that he had treatment.

He can still refuse. The solution is that mentally ill people should be forced to accept treatment.

dteowner · December 17, 2012

blatantninja said:
The answer is cultural change. While not the same thing obviously, in less than a generation we took smoking from a social norm to a social taboo. It was done through education, aggressive marketing, and in many cases health care support. I don't see why we can't make a similar shift in the attitudes towards mental illness and gun use.

Well said. I'm not sure how you'd couch the marketing, though. You can't really use a "wave the flag" approach since gun control entails pissing on the Constitution. You can't really use social pressure to "demilitarize" the gangs and criminals, because they don't respond at all to social pressure, and might even be inclined to go the other direction. You might be able to scare people out of it with draconian penalties for misuse of firearms, but that's certainly not an iron-clad solution and the lefties would get their panties twisted over that anyway. Probably better to focus on the mental illness aspect. At least you get a grip on the folks that don't know any better. The criminals that are willing to pull the trigger have already demonstrated a complete disdain for societal boundaries, so while a social solution won't work for them perhaps we can cobble up a better response by carving them out of the equation and doing the best we can for what's left. Then we could put together a different approach for those criminals we carved out, possibly involving long drops on short ropes.

CrazyIrish · December 17, 2012

Many of these arguments ignore several important points.

Any gun control short of total repossesion by the state will have little appreciable effect on gun violence in the US. This is not my opinion. Multiple studies have shown that the effect of gun control in the US is inconclusive at best. Many of these studies were performed by organizations that had a vested political interest in proving that gun control laws are effective. A new assault weapons ban won't save lives anymore than tougher anti drug laws will keep people from getting stoned.

Repossesion by the state is in direct violation of the natural human rights that the US Constituion was founded on. You can talk about the awful behaviour of this country all you want, but in fact, all of that awful behaviour is also in direct violation of those same principles. I don't think that further straying from them is a solution.

The US is not europe. Trust me, I've traveled all over both places. Americans are a strange lot and what works for Europe wont neccessarily work for the US. Most of the countries in Europe with heavy gun control and low homicide rates had low homicide rates before they enacted their gun control laws.

DArtagnan · December 17, 2012

Obviously you need to repossess weapons. The constitution? Are you kidding me? When was that formed again?

We're talking about a cultural change - not a mild suggestion.

If you have a brain, you hold on to traditions or ancient outdated rules if they help you and the society at large. If they prevent you from saving innocent lives - then you're a moron if you hold on to it.

Question is simple enough, do you really want to be a moron?

I'm talking about the nation as a whole. You have to choose between changing words or ending more lives.

Just because they shove the constitution down your throat in school, it doesn't mean everything about it is perfect or sacred.

Another shooting - 20 children killed

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