# Another School Shooting \[Stoneman Douglas\] (2/14/2018) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 14, 2018, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843 "2018-02-14T20:22:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/241 "2018-02-17T10:05:11Z")
Ha, well you do now. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/242 "2018-02-17T10:12:23Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Nope. The perception, and I think it’s correct, is that with any of those guys it would just be business as usual, with the Republicans making promises that they promptly forget about once elected. Conservatives have largely lost faith in the Republican party to actually _do_ anything, and that’s why Trump mopped the field with all the other Republican candidates. Sure. But that’s not what you said. You said they were voting for Trump to seek an “adult country”. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/243 "2018-02-17T10:13:36Z")
I bet they were surprised to see Trump getting off on pretending to be a truck driver, with a real truck and everything! For the record, I wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/244 "2018-02-17T10:32:15Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Nope. The perception, and I think it’s correct, is that with any of those guys it would just be business as usual, with the Republicans making promises that they promptly forget about once elected. Conservatives have largely lost faith in the Republican party to actually _do_ anything, and that’s why Trump mopped the field with all the other Republican candidates. You already proved what you think is correct is utter nonsense. You have a rosy view of the past. You think that the legalized racism was the good old days, that those who were victims of night riders “had it a little bad”, and that the social ills in the schools did not happen. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/245 "2018-02-17T10:54:13Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > You already proved what you think is correct is utter nonsense. You have a rosy view of the past. You think that the legalized racism was the good old days, that those who were victims of night riders “had it a little bad”, and that the social ills in the schools did not happen. Horse! Fucking! Shit! I get soooo fucking tired of you assholes acting like the only reason anyone would appreciate anything about the 50s and 60s is because they’re racists. It’s not only cheap and dishonest but blatantly obvious. You know as well as I do that you couldn’t prove a word of that shit to save your life! And what social ills in the schools do I think didn’t happen? Mass shootings? No, I don’t think they didn’t happen, I know they didn’t happen. Apparently the bar to be a Straight Dope Science Advisory Board member isn’t all that high. Cripes, what a despicable lying sack of shit you are! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/246 "2018-02-17T10:56:48Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Right:D:p > Given the choice a million times between the society of 2017 and the society of 1957 I’ll take 2017 as a bloody obvious no-brainer for absolute superiority every time. Oh, c’mon, weren’t we all so much better off when a woman’s place was in the kitchen (and if she got raped, she was probably asking for it), when blacks knew their place, country clubs wouldn’t allow Jews as members, and oral and anal sex were felonies in almost every state? Seriously, **fuck** 1957. I’m just old enough to remember that world, and it was wrong in so many ways, it’s hard to list them all. I’m sure it was great for us white men, though. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/247 "2018-02-17T11:26:04Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > And what social ills in the schools do I think didn’t happen? Mass shootings? No, I don’t think they didn’t happen, I know they didn’t happen. You know _why_ they didn’t happen? Because while there were handguns and hunting rifles back then, high-capacity semi-autos like AK-47s and AR-15s were pretty much unknown in civilian life. Shootings could and did happen, but mass shootings almost never happened because of the great difficulty in committing one. Take the [University of Texas tower shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting) back in 1966. The shooter had been a Marine sharpshooter, and he was picking people off from a vantage point 230 feet above the ground. Over the course of 90 minutes, he killed 14 people. How long did it take the Newtown shooter to mow down 20 kids and 6 adults 46 years later? It was [less than five minutes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting#Mass_shooting_begins) between the time he used his Bushmaster to blow out a window next to the school’s locked entrance, and the time he killed himself. And he hardly needed any special skillz to slaughter a couple dozen people in just a few minutes. _There’s_ what’s rotten with the culture: _that we allow the presence of weapons in civilian life whose only use is to kill a shitload of people in a hurry._ It’s a moral sickness, and it’s [overwhelmingly a Republican sickness](https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=1&vote=00101). ---
**Author:** ![computergeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e56c9b/32.png) [@computergeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/computergeek)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/248 "2018-02-17T11:29:23Z")
Back to the subject of the school shooting in Florida, it’s really interesting that the affected students and other teenagers are really, really pissed about this incident and the decided lack of follow up and desire to do something about guns from the GOP. It’s starting to resemble a call for political action. I’m not sure what’s changed between the previous school shootings and this one, but the reactions from teenagers is decidedly different than before ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/249 "2018-02-17T11:39:35Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > And a propos my main point about current society being the cause of school shootings, this just popped up on my Facebook feed. > > [Link (from last Sept.)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P89CBU8E6jU) Points in video games ? What is this, 1980 ? Also, feel free to list one (1) game where rape awards points of any kind. Hell, feel free to list one (1) game where the _protagonist_ commits rape (I was going to say “where rape is featured at all”, but then I remembered playing a few games with rapes in them. Typically you get to kill the perpetrator. When you don’t it’s because the games was made in Russia or some other post-Soviet state and that’s just because their outlook on life in general is “life is dour and dark, there’s no justice and people will torture each other over a crust of bread, pass the vodka” :D). ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/250 "2018-02-17T12:42:53Z")
You’re either posting stupid, dishonestly, drunk, or on drugs, or a combination of the foregoing. Frankly, I don’t give a tinker’s damn which. Where did I say thhe only reason you appreciated the 1950s was racism? My point–as actually intelligent people, those able to read what was actually posted, managed to glean–is that you gloss over the social ills that made the 1950s and 1960s anything but “the good old days”, well, unless you happened to be White, male, and Protestant. Get this for social ills: By law in many places, one could not marry outside one’s race. I have an uncle who had to leave his state to get married to the love of his life. That was more than simply institutionalized racism; it was legislated racism. School shootings happened, as you have been shown, and there were other kinds of attacks. Anyway, [here](https://www.ranker.com/list/scary-school-shootings/natalie-hazen) is something for you to educate yourself on the issue. By law in many places, schools were segregated by race. There were also official and unofficial quotas for other “socially undesirable” (read: Jewish, among others) to get into certain universities and certain professions. There were both legalized and “unofficial” restrictions on housing based on race and religion. What about unwed student mothers? That one’s easy to gloss over, too, isnt it? The girl would be expelled or, if she and her faily had the werewithal, she would “go away” for a few months starting before the pregnancy showed and then return as though nothing happened. Rape? Of course that happened, and the victims were treated horribly by police, medical professionals, courts, and society. Those are the good old days you tout. They sucked. The stuff that sucked outweighed the little good that was to be had if you lived in those days. And I am not a liar, you pathetic waste of organic chemicals. > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Horse! Fucking! Shit! > > I get soooo fucking tired of you assholes acting like the only reason anyone would appreciate anything about the 50s and 60s is because they’re racists. It’s not only cheap and dishonest but blatantly obvious. You know as well as I do that you couldn’t prove a word of that shit to save your life! > > And what social ills in the schools do I think didn’t happen? Mass shootings? No, I don’t think they didn’t happen, I know they didn’t happen. > > Apparently the bar to be a Straight Dope Science Advisory Board member isn’t all that high. Cripes, what a despicable lying sack of shit you are! ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/251 "2018-02-17T13:20:11Z")
People voted for Trump because they were scum and idiots. They voted for him because they hated anyone who wasn’t white, or Christian, or a man, or American, or stupid. They voted for him out of spite and bigotry, because they wanted an America where as many people as possible would suffer. They want an America where they can rape any woman they can catch, murder anyone who isn’t white, straight and their particular version of Christianity, kill anyone they suspect of being “liberal”. That is what Trump voters and the Republican party stand for. And they want to wreck the world in general out of hatred for the young people whom they know will never agree with them. They want those younger than them to have nothing, and be forced to live in a ruined world. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/252 "2018-02-17T13:41:32Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Thanks, **iiandyiiii**. I appreciate that. > > The thing is, yeah, things were worse for some people back then. But what was wrong could have been remedied without the hugely problematical consequences of the counterculture revolution and its aftermath. > > The counterculture revolution never occurred in order to secure better rights for women and black people anyway, and predated those movements by about six or seven years. What the counterculture revolution was about first and foremost created by the British musical invasion kicked off by the Beatles and the other British bands that followed. So young people started wanting to wear their hair long, dress crappily, do drugs and bed-hop without having to get married first, all of which created a huge generation gap and brought them in for a lot of abuse from the adults of the time. > > That then gave rise to the idea that everything associated withe the older generation (i.e., the ‘Establishment’) had to be overturned or rejected outright, which in the fashion of both the young and liberals in general, meant throwing the baby out with the bath water accompanied by a singular lack of concern for the consequences. All this began circa 1964 and by the time race and women’s issues came to the fore in '70/'71 people had already been fucking their lives up with drugs, making themselves unemployable by their attitudes, and having kids without benefit (to the kid) of a stable two-parent home, for six or seven years. > > The idea that the counterculture revolution came about to fight racism and sexism is both a myth and a fallacy. It was 90% about pleasure and 10% about Vietnam. > > ETA: And if you want to know who the real Trump voters are out there, they’re comprised of millions of people who grew up at the same time I did and feel the same way I do, if not moreso. And surprisingly enough most of the ones on my Facebook feed are women. You’re not going to convince me that your view of the 50s and 60s is more accurate than the many other older folks, black and white, who’ve told me very, very different things about it. Their experiences were wildly different than yours, but just as valid and real. As far as Trump, Nate Silver said the single best statistical predictor for whether a geographical area had high likelihood of supporting Trump was Google searches for nigger: > That doesn’t mean that every Trump voter was a racist. But it’s evidence that the biggest difference, on average, between Trump voters and those who oppose him, is cultural views about race. And I think that continues to bear out. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/253 "2018-02-17T14:48:35Z")
> [@Bored\_work](#): > > My first post and all but looking at your posting history it seems like you thought fucking a paper towel cardboard tube was an effective method of defending a child molester. Starving Artist, you’re clearly a fucking idiot. Your time is better spent licking a window somewhere aboard a short bus. > > Why the fuck do any of you fucks take this fucking idiot seriously? I have him on Ignore. In fact, that very thread was where and when I decided to write his worthless ass off. It’s very rare for me to build up an active dislike (putting it mildly) and disgust over Message Board bullshit, but this is a special case. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/254 "2018-02-17T14:55:10Z")
> [@anomalous1](#): > > Exactly. > > Maybe some voted out of spite, I could actually understand that. People want to be left alone and not told how they are supposed to speak, act, dress etc. to fit in with what the media depicts as normal. People are tired of the whining and making excuses for the shortcomings of others. That is why he got elected. > > Just my theory. Fake news. Sad. Unfair. The election is rigged so Trump will lose. Mexicans took our jobs and want to rape us. Muslims want to murder us. Brown people are stealing our entitlements. Etcetera. Sorry, but no. They are a bunch of whiny crybabies, and they voted for a whiny crybaby. And they did it out of spite. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/255 "2018-02-17T14:55:16Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Right:D:p > Given the choice a million times between the society of 2017 and the society of 1957 I’ll take 2017 as a bloody obvious no-brainer for absolute superiority every time. I always like to point out that the American Exceptionalism of the 1950’s extolled by SA was funded by the 91% top marginal tax rate of the time. I think it was good for society, it made business owners and employers less avaricious and more likely to value quality products and good treatment of employees over profits. But he won’t want to hear that. He’d rather blame everything on hippies and the fact that women don’t wear high heels and foundation garments while doing housework anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/256 "2018-02-17T15:31:19Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > The overwhelming draw for Trump is that he appears to be the last hope for turning all this nonsense around. It’s what MAGA is all about and it’s why he got elected. There was a pro-Trump image going around on social media prior to the election with Sam Elliot saying, “We the people have had enough of this shit!” That sentiment bore fruit when Trump was elected. “MAGA” is all about falsehoods. The main falsehood, of course, is that the country was no longer great. The next greatest falsehood is that it was built on is that of White/Christian persecution. That’s what is all about. ---
**Author:** ![Batano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b487fb/32.png) [@Batano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batano)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/257 "2018-02-17T15:53:11Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > I always like to point out that the American Exceptionalism of the 1950’s extolled by SA was funded by the 91% top marginal tax rate of the time. I think it was good for society, it made business owners and employers less avaricious and more likely to value quality products and good treatment of employees over profits. > But he won’t want to hear that. He’d rather blame everything on hippies and the fact that women don’t wear high heels and foundation garments while doing housework anymore. And high union membership ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/258 "2018-02-17T16:39:07Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > My point–as actually intelligent people, those able to read what was actually posted, managed to glean–is that you gloss over the social ills that made the 1950s and 1960s anything but “the good old days”, well, unless you happened to be White, male, and Protestant. Spot on. People like SA will grudgingly acknowledge that the subjugation of nonwhite people and women was wrong, but mumble something vague about how it could have been addressed differently if those uppity agitators had just patiently waited. The reality is that if black and brown people, and housewives, had quietly continued to act in an uncomplaining subservient role for white men (while gay people and atheists stayed in the closet), dollars to donuts SA and the rest of the MAGA crowd would have mysteriously neglected to ever get around to granting any of the rights they now grudgingly acknowledge were due marginalized groups. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/259 "2018-02-17T18:06:03Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Spot on. People like SA will grudgingly acknowledge that the subjugation of nonwhite people and women was wrong, but mumble something vague about how it could have been addressed differently if those uppity agitators had just patiently waited. > > The reality is that if black and brown people, and housewives, had quietly continued to act in an uncomplaining subservient role for white men (while gay people and atheists stayed in the closet), dollars to donuts SA and the rest of the MAGA crowd would have mysteriously neglected to ever get around to granting any of the rights they now grudgingly acknowledge were due marginalized groups. Well golly gee. It only took a WAR to end slavery. If only they’d been more patient, mebbe we wouldn’t have whipped or maimed them so much. Maybe. Or maybe not. ---
**Author:** ![Itself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Itself)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/260 "2018-02-17T18:55:58Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > **Starving Artist** strikes me as probably a nice guy, but he’s just so wedded to the idea that America has gone to hell since the 50s, no matter the experiences of many other Americans, that I find it kind of impossible to discuss anything related to that with him. No matter what the problem is, he blames it on liberals, and he refuses to consider that maybe his experiences, and those close to him, are not representative of tons of other Americans, and those other experiences are just as valid and true as his own. He also strikes me as the sort of person who insists on bringing every single discussion back to his favorite topic: how (exaggerated and overrated) cultural changes in the 60s ruined everything forever. He’s a senile crackpot, furiously jerking off a load of dust and bile as he uncritically watches the latest outrage against Real Americans that’s shown on FoxNews. He’s the political equivalent of the cranks we regularly get here who have long-winded screeds claiming to disprove evolution, relativity, quantum theory, or whatever other obsession they only half-understand but are absolutely sure ruined everything in science. And maybe they’re perfectly reasonable people outside this board (though it’s more likely that they spend their time yelling at bus stations), but this is the only context we see them in, and they’re useless tools. But that’s what ignore lists are for. Anyway, back to school shootings. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843.md?page=14)