Your cite does not say what you claim it says. The cite is saying that a paddling today might prevent a shooting in the future. The obvious assumption being made is that kids corporal punishment prevents delinquency and eventual criminality. I don’t think this is true but they are not saying that their kids are lucky they are getting paddled rather than shot.
These random mass shootings are horrible but they represent a teeny tiny sliver of gun deaths in America. Most gun murders are committed by people who are not allowed to possess guns in the first place. As long as your side of this argument continues to treat all gun owners as fungible potential murderers, you will keep losing on this issue.
It is sad but I don’t know that anything would have prevented that suicide. In fact, while suicides make up the majority of gun deaths in America (a country awash in guns), our suicide rate is dead fucking average for industrialized nations (even if you ignore the high suicide rates in East Asian countries). If guns increased the prevalence of suicide, you would think that our suicide rate would be at the top of the spectrum but they’re not, they are right in the middle of the pack.
With that said, we need better mental health care.
I guess we here on the other side of the pond should be very, very afraid then. Some countries - like mine - have outlawed violence against children (perhaps better known as “paddling” or “corporal punishment” to some people) several years ago. I guess we have to prepare for the inevitable wave of juvenile delinquency and mass shootings. Funny it hasn’t happened already, though…
What I don’t get is why gun-related deaths are considered a holocaust-level crisis now, any more than at any time in the last 150 years. Revolvers date to the Civil War era, semi-automatics to the end of the 19th century. Murders, suicides, lethal accidents, and even massacres committed with firearms have been happening all along. Why weren’t people demanding stricter gun control for example after a maniac killed 8 and wounded 32 back in 1915?
The only reason I can see is that back then crimes were considered the evil deeds of individuals who had abdicated moral responsibility, to be addressed by upbringing and retribution. Now they’re considered the epidemiological result of social forces, to be addressed by changes in the social environment, including the availability of weapons.
That’s why I only compare suicide rates in industrialized countries. Presumably life here is not much worse than life in Western European countries like France or Germany. I don’t doubt there may be some marginal reduction of suicides if we were somehow able to repeal the suicides and ban guns entirely but that would require a very large shift in public opinion.
I think it would be a much lighter lift to get the public to change the way it thinks about mental illness and focus on better mental healthcare.
I don’t agree with the notion that corporal punishment should be liberally applied but I do believe that the initial post characterized the article to say that some guy said that his kids were lucky to only be paddled because he could be shooting them instead.
Reasonable people can disagree on the costs/benefits of corporal punishment in the development of a child but I don’t think its reasonable to characterize gun owners this way.
My post had nothing to do with gun owners and everything to do with the insinuation that if you don’t beat kids they’re more prone to grow up to be juvenile delinquents and mass murderers.
The police in Pasco, Washington, population 59,000, have shot and killed more people in the last six months than all police in the UK and Germany combined, total population 160,000,000. Yes the gun fetishism disease that the US suffers from includes police, making them more inclined to use guns as a first resort.
Although she was a wingnut, it’s still sad that she died so young. If I was a headline writer, I’d find it hard to resist using “Titty Titty Bang Bang”.