courtesy stephenkingrevisited.com
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Commenter TT wrote the following under an earlier post:

I would not be surprised if we see more school shootings as copycat phenomena.

The evidence is, and there is science on this, that it is the massive news coverage that motivates these shooters. The kids and adults who commit these mass shootings all have one constant: deep-rooted feelings of insignificance.

A properly adjusted person does not confuse and conflate infamy with fame. But it is a country of 350,000,000 with even a tiny fraction of people who do, you have a problem.

Look at social media. There are people who will profoundly embarrass and shame themselves to get notoriety. It’s a staple of certain reality TV shows where some otherwise utterly insignificant people will behave like complete fools, making a mockery of themselves for attention.

We know the progression of this phenomena with mass school shootings:

1) In 1977, and republished again in 1985, Stephen King (under a pseudonym) writes a popular novel about a kid bullied in school who then exacts revenge, in school, with a gun. King lionized this kid as an insignificant bullying victim who strikes back (like he did with “Carrie”).
2) There were at least four school shootings where the shooters had the book or credited it with the idea for their shootings. The media give extensive coverage to the shootings and shooters.
3) The evidence is so clear that King withdraws the book.
4) The Columbine shooters, referring to both the book and the media coverage of the actual school shootings, vow to commit one even bigger.
5) Other future shooters reference and fixate on the prior shootings and the media coverage of them.

The problem isn’t guns. More than half of the households in America have guns. Yet our total lethal violence rate (suicide+homicide by all means) is far lower than many developed democracies with no civilian-owned guns at all.

The problem is clearly not AR-15s or “assault weapons” since the largest US school shooting — by far –was accomplished with a pistol. Pistol/s are far more lethal in a school environment since the shooter can move within a school building or campus undetected by security as the shooter, as Seung-Hui Cho did at Virginia Tech to maximize the number of victims.

The problem, in fact, is the gun control lobby. As with blaming guns on suicide rates (when the evidence shows removing guns may actually increase suicides because it creates more non-gun suicides, initially undetected and classified as accidents), blaming guns for mas shootings diverts attention from he root cause: mental illness.

In fact the gun control lobby has actually blocked funding for mental health funding and armed school guards by poison-pilling legislation that would help, but holding it up if it doesn’t include gun bans on their agenda.

The gun control lobby also works to keep these shootings and shooters in the news. Maintaining 24-hour news coverage is a stated strategy of the gun control lobby following incidents like Parkland and Santa Fe. This rewards school shooters.

The ACLU is also at fault. They have filed and fought over 40 major cases in the US, creating national legal precedents since the 1970’s, making it far more difficult to detain, hold, evaluate and order treatment for people suffering from mental illness. These efforts are exactly coincident with beginning with of these shootings. The EU, Canada, Australia and others have between 50% more to 200% more persons who receive mandatory treatment that does the US.

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97 COMMENTS

    • This is what I’ve been saying ever since the first columbine shooting. The problem always begins with bullying and administrators who are tolerant of it.

      • For lib/Progs the Truth doesn’t matter. Lives doesn’t matter. Liberty doesn’t matter.

        The only thing that matters to them is “The Narrative(TM)”.

  1. You have missed your target audience, unfortunately, they have their heads shoved in a place that is so dark there is no light to read by.

    Well written and thought out, even if I am not in the target audience.

    • And the media will never stop. Ratings and agenda are what drive them. These incidents allow them to push both.

  2. Well put…may I add some kids are evil and depraved. The whole loser mentality of victimization. Bullied weinies. Almost everyone is bullied but very few resort to mass murder…

    • Schools aggravate the problem by insisting that victims of bullying be wienies. It would be much better if they fought back. In addition to teaching the bullies that their behavior has a price, it would relieve psychological pressure on the victims. Instead, they are forced to suppress their anger until they explode.

      Remember that Columbine was a failed bombing. Shooting was the backup plan after the bombs failed to detonate. Sooner or later, these kids will figure out how to build reliable bombs. Then, instead of casualty counts in single or double digits, they will be triple or even quadruple. Think what it would be like to have an incident on the scale of the Oklahoma City bombing every month.

      • We already saw that with the kid in Austin, Texas. Terrorizing society with explosives… I wonder why the government doesn’t want to release the 25 minute video he made as to why he did it.

        • It would seem the whole point of the commentary is that the Gummint SHOULDN’T release his 25 minute video.

      • Good points, but the other part that’s left out of the equation is the fact that most of these School shooters come from broken homes. Most of these young boys have not had a healthy Father Figure to show them how to handle these kind of situations in a balanced and healthy way. So combined with zero tolerance policies that don’t allow these kids to constructively confront these bullies by standing up to them and fighting them without being punished, they are left with no resort in their own minds, when they finally snap, to come back with a gun and “solve” the problem permanently.

        This very major point is not brought up, at least rarely, is because it would put into question the entire governmental supported feminist agenda that basically attacks the intact nuclear family.

  3. I mentioned before that this is all because parents stopped spanking their kids, which is a good way to sum it up in one sentence. But in a more nuanced explanation, it’s not just the lack of spanking or even just a lack of discipline. Kids are brought up from the start being told what special little snowflakes they are and they’re given their participation trophies and they make sure that nobody gets their feelings hurt. If you’re over 40 you were brought up constantly being reminded that you’re NOT special and you’re never going to be anything special without a lot hard work.

    Problem is that somewhere between puberty and adulthood these precious little snowflakes figure the truth out, that they’re not only not special but in fact lame. So they seek notoriety. Some do this by starting a You Tube channel, others in less creative ways.

    We should probably start sending our kids to Sunday School again too.

    • When I was a kid I had a drug problem. My parents drug me to church, they drug me to school and they drug me to work when I got a part time after school job. I’m sure that it violated my rights and scarred me for life, but somehow I turned into a decent member of society who never committed a crime and fed his family through hard work. We always had beans (food), blue jeans (clothing), beer (recreation) and bullets (target shooting and hunting) – and a roof over our heads. Today I don’t owe dollar one to anybody except for my taxes and insurance.

      • Dave…….That was the old school way and it works. Didn’t have all this trouble and I never remember any privileged snowflakes back then either. When you aquire things thru hard work and savings then these things are appreciated and taken care of. This also creates self esteem which seems to be rare these days.

    • Very close, but I think it misses one critical point. It’s not that they realize they aren’t special… They have the mentality that they are special, and nothing can change that.
      Rather, what they lack, is coping skills. Coping with loss, and coping with failure, coping with authority. Coping with life’s disappointments is an extremely important part of maturing, and modern kids aren’t taught these skills, or allowed to experience anything to build these skills during their formative years. As a result, they fight cops when they are caught shoplifting. They shoot their schoolmates when they are rejected.

      Two rules to remember:
      1. You can’t have anything your want.
      2. There will always be someone better than you.

      • I agree that we are raising kids that are incapable of coping with life’s realities (and that continues right through college), but the reality they can’t cope with is their own mediocrity. If they truly believed that they were special they wouldn’t need reassurance from their peers. Their disappointment in themselves is so great that they are willing to end their own lives and in order to gain notoriety they wish to do so by taking as many of their peers with them as possible. The more that die the more notorious they’ll be. One last shot at infamy.

        So spank your kids when they’re bad and send them to Sunday school. For the children.

    • The lack of parents disciplining their children is a major issue today. I remember in the police academy, an instructor asked us how many people in our class were spanked as children. 21 out of 23 police cadets raised their hands.

      The instructor said that it’s pretty telling that 21/23 millennials in that room were spanked as kids and grew up to be well adjusted law abiding members of society.

    • Absolutely, Mr. Petomane!!! I was raised with discipline, and it began at an early age. We were taught as children that we have to EARN what we get, not have it handed to us. Being told “NO” from an early age, when parents decided we were not going to do something or go somewhere without their approval or permission laid the groundwork for a future of no behavioral problems. We have an entitlement problem these days. I raised my children with RULES…as long as they lived in my house and I paid their bills, they were going to abide by my rules. Kids may not always agree with parental rules but they KNEW beyond anything else, they were loved and protected, and both are healthy, contributing members of society today. Parents must assume most of the responsibility if their lame or lax child-rearing shoves a kid in the wrong direction. I am sick of the mentality that bad behavior is always someone elses’ fault!! When are people going to take responsibility for their OWN ACTIONS and stop blaming everything and everyone else??

  4. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, Japan and Western Europe
    all have reasonable gun control laws (not confiscation)
    and a fraction of our violent crime rate.

    Yet to see these countries turning “tyrannical”. These countries have more personal freedoms, excellent educations, economy, healthcare, quality of life and very low violent crime.

    I don’t see the Japanese Defense Force dragging citizens out of their homes. I don’t see the Australia SAS executing people in the streets. I don’t even see the Canadian Special Marines escorting people to death camps.

    This does not happen on the rest of the world on a daily basis.

    The criminals mostly DO follow the law in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, Japan and Western Europe. Which is why they have a fraction of our violent crime rate. Their laws make it not worth the effort of criminals arming up.

    It’s easier to survive being attacked with a knife, rock, baseball bat, a pair of scissors even simple fists than being shot dead.

    Murderers and rapists in the USA dont follow the law, so we should have no laws against child rape and murder?

    So we need to keep guns out of the hands of “bullied youths and mentally deranged people”, But the NRA and supporters like you and this fake news hate site blocks attempts to do this.

    Your “right” violates the genuine constitutional rights of others especially the right to not live in fear. The American people want the freedom of not having to fear going to school, work or their place of business without of the possibility of their day being their last day on earth.

      • Bullying, snobbery and plain old unfettered adolescent rudeness probably cause most of these events.

        Smart kids ( and teachers ) will always treat all fellow students with dignity and respect.

        • I just said this to someone else earlier.
          These kids that are doing the shootings at schools are mentally unstable and filled with hate.
          These are Loners and outcasts not the starting QB on the high school team. They have been bullied, exiled and forgotten.
          They shoot up a school and they are remembered. Also the media is nonstop with their name. They get the recognition they never would have got.

    • Europe and the UK will be like Iraq and Syria within a decade or less.
      The Sharia faction will win and the “Continental” fruits like you will become extinct.

      I can’t wait to see it happen.

      • Last time I checked there were far more terror incidents in Europe and this country caused by those with belief ties to right-wing extremism, doomsday survivalists and militia fanatics than religious radicals.

        Terror incidents are still extremely rare in Europe and actually caused by people who are natural born citizens than a refugee from a war-torn country.

        It’s easier to stop with a psycho with a knife or a brick than one that’s armed with a gun.

        • European news media and governments cover up their terror attacks. Sweden alone has had 50 hand grenade attacks over the last two years. That’s one every two weeks.

          Europe is a simmering pot about to boil over. It will erupt faster than anyone can imagine.

        • I don’t want to get close to someone who has a knife.

          I can’t grab a knife like I can grab a gun. I can’t disable a knife like I can a gun. A knife can cut and stab. A gun has to be pointed directly at you.

          If someone has a pistol, you can grab the slide and direct the barrel away from you so when the gun fires it jams, thereby disabling the gun. Then you can also press the magazine release to completely make the gun inoperable or in some cases stop the gun from being able to fire regardless of having a round in the chamber. I can’t do that to a large knife.

        • Keep on telling yourself that. It might make you feel better, but it won’t change reality.

          Reality also is that since I have a legally carried gun, I don’t have to worry much about what kind of weapon any given psycho might be carrying — because I have the best psycho-stopping tool ever invented.

        • Over 800 people from the UK alone joined ISIS and half returned. There haven’t been anywhere near 800 foiled or completed mass shootings in the US, and the US has 5 times the population. Evil or disturbed people find outlets. In the US it used to be serial killers and then suicides while the media hyped those topics. Once media attention shifted away both of these phenomenon decreased drastically. Ever since columbine the FBI and researchers have identified a clear copycat effect fueled by the media. Europe, the UK, Canada, and Australia also have between 50% and 200% greater mental health services provided, depending on country and definition.

          Nevermind all that research, it has to be the guns.

    • Your a left-wing Troll with nothing useful to say. It is militant, one sided thinking and infringes upon the rights of the people. I respectful petition TTAG to have this socialist Marxist troll banned from this comments board! Period! Since the 1st Amendment doesn’t cover modern devices like the PC, tablet, or smartphone. Use a quill, ink and paper next time or send a carrier pigeon!

    • Great, It’s mom turn the basement internet service back on. See also above “have their heads shoved in a place that is so dark there is no light to read by.”

    • How come none of you virtuous “let me show you how others do it because you are so wrong” individuals never quote the violent crime and propensity of Puerto Rico? Or Mexico? or Nicaragua? or El Salvador? or Colombia? or Brazil? Because your argument does not hold water. I don’t know of any US state or territory with more draconian gun laws than Puerto Rico, yet the 20.3 murders per 100,000 people is 3x higher than the 5.9 per 100,000 in the continental US. How do you respond to the “they are not totalitarian” fact you pose vs. the recent warning from the police in the UK “UK Police Warn People Not to Speak Out Against Terrible Treatment of Alfie Evans” If that is not tyrannical then what is? How about Germany “Social media monitoring law a step in the right direction” ? Obviously you just missed the recent Australian massacre. Japan somehow learned to deal with their angst by channeling their anger by using movies where the Monster is eventually defeated by use of force none the less. I was bullied as a child and have been bullied as an adult. You have never read about stories involving my name and snapping for those acts. I had to learn to move on and deal with it. I am going to assume that your perspective does not include having a gun pulled on you and stuck in your abdomen to remove you or your possessions including your car when the word car jacking had not been invented yet; or does not include having a business and being visited 3x by gun toting criminals who held your mother at gunpoint while ransacking the cash register; or living behind bars in an upper middle class neighborhood because someone may target your home tonight to force their way in while you and your family are there just to take some cash and cheap watches. No, I didn’t think so. Don’t tell me how to live my life. I moved away….looking for the freedom to defend myself..you have the same choice. One more thing…that hard-on that you and your kind has for the NRA why don’t you direct it to ALL THE GUNOWNERS that don’t give 2 shitz about the NRA or their “owned politiicans”? Direct it at the owners of the more than 300 million firearms in this country. And don’t worry, when more tyranny shows up at your door, it’s us who are going to come to your rescue, even though you don’t deserve it. You are welcome.

      • That is incorrect. The UK didn’t even have a lower violent crime rate when police departments completely ignored at least 20% of all crimes reported to them, which included not recording the crime to make the rates look lower (like Russia does) .

        What is true is the US has the lowest violent crime rate and murder rate since the 1960s with more guns in circulation than ever.

    • Europe does not have a lower violent crime rate than the US. They have a lower murder rate. But Europe doesn’t have a gang problem. That is why they have a lower murder rate. Outside of 200 or so zip codes the US is safer than almost any European country except maybe Switzerland.

      But the US is not like Europe. It is like Mexico. Disarm the population and gangs like MS-13, will murder at will just like they do back home. If you really wanted us to be like Europe then you would support limiting immigration to Europeans and Asians. However, you and gun control supporters act as apologists for gangs and oppose immigration restrictions on countries where violence is out of country.

    • “Your “right” violates the genuine constitutional rights of others especially the right to not live in fear.

      Where the hell did you see that?

      • There is no such right. Fear is a subjective feeling. Nothing we can do about your feelings. If you let the media to brainwash you into fear of extremely unlikely mass shooting incident, that’s on you.
        On the other hand, if you don’t admit to yourself that any day might be your last on this Earth, you are fooling yourself.

        • exactly. there is no right to live without fear and never has been. fear is in the mind and it is able to be used to get you out of a situation that might well end in your death. it can also cripple you to where it effects your death. your choice it controls you or you control it. driving a car it is what enables you to steer that car away from a potential danger, in combat it gives you extra strength and endurance to do what is needed, in the case of a mother it gives the strength to push a boulder that has fallen on a car with her child in it. fear is a useful tool if you train your mind to be able to use it. most professional boxers etc say that if they feel no fear going into a fight then they know they will loose. there is no right to life without fear. i rest my case

    • Yeah, man! We should ban cops from having guns — even China did that. Japan and England have unarmed cops.

      I have feared for my life when 2 cops hunted me down with no probable cause, illegally came on to private property, pointed their guns at me, threatened my life, illegally searched me (even had to take off my socks), illegally interrogated me and threatened to arrest the person with me for obstruction. All of that because when I entered “their” little burger hangout they didn’t like what they saw and made delusional conclusions. Luckily I wasn’t the BLM type otherwise I would be dead and the cops would eventually get promoted. No innocent kid should have to go through that ever.

    • Demonstrably false, the UK has twice the violent crime rate of the US. You can check their home office website and compare it to the data from the FBI.

    • Really? I guess a over a hundred thousand Japanese Americans interred into concentration camps during World War II might have something to say about tyranny. Funny how the disarmament liberals forget this inconvenient evidence of government tyranny in our own country…

    • You can rant n rave all you want, but don’t say nuthin bout a Gulag, the moderators will take down your post. What’s up with that anyway, the New Canadian censorship of TTAG? That pissed me off.

    • Australia, UK, and Japan all confiscated arms. Australia and UK paid for them, but it was mandatory and made criminals out of all who didn’t comply. The Japanese never had many guns, as the ruling class had long blocked importation of European guns and disarmed the peasants of their swords. A class on world history would do you well. Seeing as you’ve made such a critical error in your very first paragraph, the rest of your diatribe can be ignored.

    • The part when you said, “But criminals DO follow the law in…” the countries you mentioned proves what a paste-eating moron you are.

    • Get at least some of your facts straight, please.

      UK has a higher violent crime rate than the US.
      SAS is British. SASR is Australian. JGSDF is what you meant referring to Japan. A knife wound is not easier to treat than a gunshot. These are just a few to start with.

    • I’m 91% sure by now that “RealAmericanblahblahblah…” and “Cisco Kid” are the same person. They use the same phrasing and misspell a lot of the same things.

    • you say we dont have tyranny? what is your definition of tyranny? our medical system is heavily controlled by the govt…. i call that tyranny. we are taxed to the point where just surviving is a struggle…. i call that tyranny and theft. i also say the only reason it has not devolved into absolute tyranny in australia at least is that there are those of us out there that still have firearms and are highly proficient in their use, in fact more so than before the gun laws. pull your head out of your ass and then you may smell the pungent stench of death lingering in the air…. we also have far higher rates of crime and most of the crime in the US (gun deaths included) are in areas where most of the guns are not in the hands of the public. in fact that amounts to 90% of the crime. here in “not tyrannical” australia if some criminal armed comes into your home and you defend yourself chances are you will be charged and put on trial and more often than not convicted…. that in my book is tyranny. here in australia even private schools are told what to teach and how

      • I’ve heard from a few sources that have contacts in the services that if there was an order to conduct house-to-house searches for firearms, the military would openly mutiny and march on Parliament House.

        They even said so at a ministerial and cabinet meeting in the 1990s. When asked to elaborate, the defense spokesman said for the Australian military to be ordered do this, the country is no longer the one their fathers and grandfathers fought and died for.

        Many US service personnel would have similar sentiments.

        The Australian military has a long history of open mutiny against their officers and even their own government. If officers want their troop’s loyalty, they have to be loyal in return. The price of citizen soldiers over conscripts.

        • Southern Cross, that is exactly why they would not get Australian troops to do it. it would be UN troops from a country that has dissimilar values to australians or in the case of the US troops other than US troops…. say russian troops for example. TBH this is the real reason why the UN was formed

    • Meh… you’re not as fun as “the kid”. You’re more like some old, bitter hippie who because of all the cannabis in your head screwed up his investment portfolio. But okay I’ll make a couple of comments.

      Why do you hippies always bring up Japan? The culture there is completely different from most western countries. Suicide and shame for the family are very big there. There is little of any independent thought among the general public. People follow the laws like sheep and then commit suicide if they fail to get into a good college.

      Being able to shoot math in San Francisco whenever you want is not freedom. It’s chaos. Go smoke a reefer old man.

  5. The problem isn’t guns. More than half of the households in America have guns.
    The problem is clearly not AR-15s or “assault weapons”..
    The problem, in fact, is the gun control lobby….

    Yeah, uhm, so. After reading this it seems as if the commenter is suggesting that it is the manufactures that caused this problem. It totally isn’t a culture thing, no not at all. It is the companies that made the tool used.

    So what should we do? Should we tax them more, make owners buy “safety insurance”? No, I know we will regulate them with “Common Sense” safety programs taught by qualified individuals. Like the Sheriffs and Police nationwide who discharge their firearms, accidentally of course, in schools.

    As for “Mental Health” that is one house vote away for you, dear commenter, of being declared crazy or insane for even thinking of wanting to look at a firearm. The CDC did a study on gun violence, this Blog TTAG, covered it. The CDC didn’t like the numbers so they memory holed it.

    • The author isn’t blaming gun manufacturers. He’s blaming the gun *control* lobby, i.e. the Democratic Party, CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg and Soros funded astroturf gun control orgs, .etc.

  6. Good post. If there is anything that I may disagree with is the idea that school shooters are often bullied. Yes, that does have precedent but a bunch of school shooters, especially those under 25, were never bullied. Some may think they were. Many were were not popular – “insignificant” even (common speak for “maladjusted”) but it is scary how many of them were normal, or at least looked that way, prior to going on a rampage. I think the author comes closest to hitting the nail on the head with calling out the human need for recognition. It is so deep that humans will seek negative forms of it if the need is not met: infamy vs. fame. Spree shootings are multifactorial. I don’t see this as an easy fix. It seems to be a symptom (among many) of a society and culture that is seriously ill.

  7. Every mass shooting and nearly all of today’s everyday violence with firearms is caused by Liberal Terrorists™️. These anti American subversive leftists continue to insist on maintaining killing fields known as gun free zones, as well as keeping those willing to try to stop or slow down these murderous lunatics, unarmed. Furthermore, the overwhelming amount of violent offenders, nationwide, are located in cities that are completely controlled by domestic enemies of the democrat party. All of our nation’s most serious problems are caused by the democrat party which has no morals, who support the destruction of our Constitution and which supports the termination of our national sovereignty by enabling the erasure of our country’s borders. We can easily fix every problem in our country by eliminating democrats.

  8. On one of the TV dumbass talking head shows this morning leading dumnass David Brock actually suggest “perhaps” the TV twits should stop mentioning the name/bio of these teenage twits as just giving them the 15min they crave. YA THINK?

    • Outrage brings views, views create fame, fame can create popularity, popularity leads to privilege, privilege leads to entitlement, entitlement leads to tyranny, tyranny leads to imprisonment, imprisonment leads to death.

      Outrage culture has layers of negatives. Cruelty, division, murder, etc. Be it a kid on Youtube filming a dead body for money to a kid creating dead bodies for their cause. American youth want to be outraged or to create it. Within an unhealthy environment the phenomenon becomes normal and consistent.

      What is society if not a constant? If a behavior continues to persist it’s because the society wants it and will protect what is necessary for it to exist. Politicians, corporations and media are major controllers/influencers of society. If the controllers want the machine to stay the course they will continue to follow the program. The influencers will continue the necessary marketing.

      So called gun free zone exist because it’s part of the program. The news pay tribute to school shooters because it’s part of the program. Celebrities put out misdirected propaganda because it part of the program.

      Who wrote the program?

    • Why do people have no fear of walking into a bank with an armed guard yet are terrorized at the prospect of a trained guard in a school?

    • I’ve had to retrieve money from a bank in a sketchy Philly neighborhood because a Check was drawn there and I didn’t think it was good.
      Walking out to my car and being a different hue than those standing around watching me wasn’t pleasant. I was hoping 18 hollow points would be enough.
      Gun free zone? I didn’t know or care. I would of needed a surrogate to get the check cashed or at least three other people.

  9. I beg to differ on most of this. The real problem with nearly everything in the US today is IGNORANCE.

    Ignorance about firearms, ignorance about how kids think, ignorance on how to raise children, ignorance on the affect of a male in the raising of children (I can’t say a 2-parent family anymore with all the gays adopting or artificially conceiving kids), ignorance of what children should actually be studying (and learning) in school, ignorance about what children should learn from their parents, ignorance of human nature, ignorance of the history of this great country, ignorance of the US and various state Constitutions, ignorance of the affects of a broken penal system, ignorance of the breakdown occuring from allowing millions of fence-jumpers into this nation and then working to keep them here against all US and state laws… Ignorance of the presence of a being higher than humans- I can go on for pages.

    I use the work “ignorance” because that’s what has become en vogue over the past 40 years or so. We know that what we allow, put up with, vote for, often advocate is against the natural laws of the world we live in but we choose to let things slide anyway by ignoring them because that’s the easy choice, we don’t have to hurt someone’s feelings or take a stand and those around us will be our buddies. We’ll continue to be accepted- right up the end.

    Study the collapse of any great civiliztion and you will see the parallels to Western society. I still believe it is possible to turn things around in this greatest of all nations but it will not come via threats, bullying, chest thumping and intimidation because that is exactly what the ignorant are trying to prevent in the first place.

    It will take great thought and respect for those different than our state of mind at the present, and the presentation of solutions and a way to arrive at them that the vast majority of Americans can agree with. Using school shootings as an example: The vast majority of Americans still do not believe taking away firearms, or certain types of them will solve the problem or they would have already been taken away by now, 2nd Amendment or not. There may be a few locales in which the Kool Aid has been consumed but not many.

    I urge everyone involved in the fight to refrain from just getting mad, getting even, or staying in your own little cliques and preaching to a chior that often is singing out of tune. Use your brains to offer suggestions in these “debates” that others can turn to- the majority of Americans really want someone to lead them out of this. We understand firearms- we need to lead.

    • I am not convinced that homosexual couples are capable of raising a properly functioning human. Society should study the consequences thoroughly before it allows countless children to be put in such circumstances.

      Kids naturally want a mother and a father. Also, your children do care if you are their biological father and mother. That will not simply change because society wants it to; it’s how humans have evolved to be.

      • Anybody fool that spouts the stupidity that same-sex parents are just as good as hetero parents just ask them one question……

        Which parent, your mother or father, contributed absolutely nothing to your life?

  10. Putting ideas into a person’s head isn’t going to make them do it. There needs to be other factors in play. Kids know about the gang life yet not every kid is a gang member. The kids that become gang members have a common profile amongst each other.

    Fame can make people do all kinds of things. However, the people who merely seek popularity want to live that famous life rather than die in infamy. Those with grievances want to punish the offenders in notorious fashion and send a message that lives on after their death. In this case you could say, “terrorists are not born, they are made.”

    These shooters are actually quite relatable… Many kids are sympathetic to their plight. They can spot the kids who are more likely to commit suicide or murder. It’s not a surprise to many of them that a school shooting occurred, why it happened and who did it. Yet parents are shocked and confused; even the shooters parents are confounded.

    As a parent you have to ask yourself: if children can see the situation and adults are oblivious to it, who is the problem? Where does the problem reside? Is it really an object?

  11. Mental health issue , not a gun issue. Great read , it’s basically what we have all known when the first mass shooting took place. Don’t think for a minute that the tyrants trying to disarm us don’t know that everything you stated is factually true & right. Thing is , the left has to have something big to focus on , and thus they get their big mouths heard & believed by many. Birds of a feather & all that. Win elections by lying to the public , who in turn spread the lies. Everyone that took psychology 101 knows the root of the problem. But the truth doesn’t get them votes. Attention getting . gaming kids trying to kill as many in violent games as they can are playing these roles out in real life scenarios. The undeveloped mind is one thing. The same undeveloped mind of a person with so much anger & hatred is the person that will follow thru on the urges to get illegal Gun possession and shoot a bunch of kids. When sickness goes untreated people do sick things.

  12. Copycatting can be a contributing factor, but only at the end. Kids aren’t sitting there watching the news and suddenly say, “That’s it! I want that to be me!”

    What mass shooters generally have in common is they understand right from wrong, but have been wronged themselves (either real or perceived) enough that they give themselves permission to act in the wrong. They believe their actions are justified. Their victims deserve what they are getting. Yet they still understand what they’re doing is wrong.

    So how do you stop that? Well, first kids need to learn how to deal with failure, rejection, bullying, etc. They can’t be insulated from it; they need these experiences to learn how to cope. They need parents and peers that help them. All too often, parents have abdicated the raising of their children to the schools, but at the same time, object to the slightest constructive criticism from the school.

    Add to it the societal removal of stigma to any behavior. Everything is fair game. This can be a double edged sword, where too much stigmatization leads to bullying, but too little eliminates social controls.

    There’s also mainstreaming, mental health, medicating, zero tolerance policies, there’s a slew of contributing factors.

    In short, copycatting or searching for fame/infamy might be the “last straw” when they’ve already hit the point of no return. But it’s not going to take some perfectly normal kid and make them into a mass murderer.

  13. Google “Andrew Kehoe.”

    The perpetrator of the deadliest school massacre in US history did not use a gun.

    Also google “Happyland Social Club Fire” or “Nice France Truck Atrack.”

  14. Mental health screening is just so nonsense. You can go to 5 different shrinks and have 5 different diagnoses. Let’s stop pretending that psychiatry is scientific. It is not like going to a regular doctor, getting a X-ray and seeing the evidence of a problem. With psychiatry, there is nothing to prove anything. In fact, psychiatrists commit suicide at a higher rate than the population as a whole. Doctor, heal thyself!

    • From what I seen, those people are not qualified to do the job. They read a book then think they know how to deal with the individual. They can only judge the information they get; most of the time they don’t have what they need or they get very little. It’s much easier for them to put someone on drugs than solve the riddle.

  15. The problem is communism and soft-target schools.

    If the government creates the problem (soft-target schools) while preventing our self-protection against communism and communists (and whatever other deemed threat), then we have to use our guns on our neighbors who needed a job (our government).

  16. I looked at my Wanted Poster, I’m only worth $500 dollars dead or alive, I’ve got to go rob some more banks n blow up some trains, Billy’s worth $1000, that’s not right, I’m just as bad an out law as the Kid.

  17. I’m afraid for the country I grew up in. It doesn’t look good. And there isn’t much we can do about it except vote every few years and cross our fingers.
    We sure can’t stop what is going on culturally or in the education industry. Even foreign governments and some billionaires have more say than we do.

  18. The Media should treat mass shootings like they do suicides. They go into very little detail and spend very little time covering it.

    What they currently do with mass shooting only inspires more people to do it. It creates a culture of copy cat shooters with each shooting only upping the ante for the next one to be more deadly.

    https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117288&page=1

  19. Banning guns in response to school shootings is intellectually lazy and does nothing to prevent violence. It makes as much sense as would banning detergent in response to a kid dying from the Tide Pod challenge. The problem rests in the kids and their culture/values. Suicides, or more accurately, reports and news of suicides inevitably trigger more of the same- forming clusters. In a way many of these events are high-profile suicides or suicide attempts.

  20. agree 100%. the kids themselves validate this when there are interviews. “they all ignored me, i didn’t fit in” but now everyone knows who he is. they get exactly what they wanted and the media gives it to them on a silver platter.

  21. at the same time you/we need to clarify what we mean by “mental illness”. because that is yalls go to excuse and scapegoat. if we are going to say that, we need to clarify what we MEAN by that. As in the most recent case, as with most: if the guy is willing to kill many innocent people and then plans on killing himself, there is some sort of mental issue there BUT to simply yell out ‘MENTAL ILLNESS” again, makes us/you look uncredible and irrational. it makes it look as if all we care about ourselves is simply shifting the blame from guns to “mental illness”. which we know if virtually impossible to detect en masse without serious rights infringements. we all have mental issues but coupled with long periods of isolation, not to mention hormone imbalances of puberty, you have a time bomb.

    I encourage my kids to keep an eye out for the kid at school who is maybe really poor or doesn’t have friends or gets picked on and try to show that kid that there is people out there that care. Sometimes its that one person that changes that kids mind completely.

  22. why does it have to be any one cause ? it’s more likely a bunch of factors… SSRI’s, inability to retaliate against a bully without being expelled, snowflaking, lack of parenting, lack of respect due to not spanking, the new “internet fame at any cost”, ineptitude of the government charged with ‘protecting’ people, promulgation of notoriety by the media, outright lying by government and media and yes, probably the fact that kids are just fucking stupider than kids when I was young. ( we’ve made their world so safe for the last 30 years that Darwin hasn’t been taking the ones that shouldn’t breed.. I mean, Tide Pods ffs…)

    the list goes on. there’s probably a dozen more factors.

    I can’t fix society or the government. all I can do is make myself and my family a hard target.

  23. Regarding the ACLU, has that august organization ever acted in the defense of The Second Amendment and or the inherent right of the citizen to the tools necessary for their self defense, the courts having many times opined that the forces of Law and Order owe no such service to the individual. In-so-far as I know, correct me if I’m in error, they haven’t.

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