While “look what you made me do!” is a common cry from the right, it actually is not a rational reaction.
There is much complaining about how, whenever there’s a bunch of dead kids in the news, the Democrats start talking about gun control, and how unreasonable that is. And to some extent, I agree, as gun violence is a daily occurance, and that there are those who are only motivated by the horrendous is a problem.
OTOH, you have gun advocates who need only see a post on a message board to show great care, compassion, and empathy for their guns.
There is not and the nursing shortage in our schools highlight this. The nurser at my wife’s school is a traveling nurse but fortunately accepted a position at the school. How long she’ll stay is anyone’s guess. The schools are all seeing this issue here in VA with nurses and other positions as well.
@Martin_Hyde Lots of countries have inner-city crime problems but very few places have a mass shooting issue anywhere near like the US, because in most places mass shootings happened, common sense gun reform was enacted, problem vastly ameliorated.
Only in the US are people so in love with their guns that they desperately search for any possible handwave.
Also, in terms of your point about getting tough on crime, the US also imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any country on earth. Vastly more than China or Saudi Arabia, or, well, anywhere.
What more would need to happen before we can conclude that stiffer sentences don’t work, and gun control does?
I used to go to a local gun range from time to time. Was with my friends, more recently solo, though my sister has invited me to her local range, and I may take her up on that.
One of the main reasons that I stopped going was because they did stupid things with their guns. People would load their gun, then turn around with the gun pointed chest high, so that everyone in the range was crossed with their line of fire. The first time, I was aghast, thinking that was the number one rule of guns that was drilled into me by my friends before we ever headed to the range.
Apart from that, I’ve seen so many irresponsible and unsafe handling practices, that I just stopped going. A better outcome would be that they wouldn’t be allowed to handle guns until they demonstrated they could do so safely.
Basic cultural change. Recognition that the 2nd is an anachronism. Eliminate the frontier individual idolatry. Change the rules of engagement to favor the victim. Raise the average level of education. Treat public display of a gun like public display of a penis.
Again, on this line–how do you translate this statement to any meaningful political action? What political capital do you think exists within the United States based on how other countries do things? I actually don’t know very many ways to harm your political position more in the United States than the “appeal to foreign countries.” This formulation creates very effective and very well-worn lines of Republican attack. “Oh, you want us to be like Denmark? Well they are socialists there, they have no freedom, they have death panels, it takes forever for them to see a doctor, their taxes are 5 times as high.” I sometimes feel like I live in a different world from most of you–you guys think we live in a world where the GOP has to respond to things using honesty and integrity and following some rules of good discourse. They don’t. There’s no moderators. They get to run the most distorted and most stupid plays they want, and they often work.
I don’t know about getting “tough on crime”, generally. What I have said I think is a good law is New York City’s felony gun law–which makes any illegal possession of a gun an instant felony, which typically carries a multiple year sentence. It also means that person can (typically) never legally have a gun again, because without a complicated “right’s restoration” procedure convicted felons cannot legally buy or possess guns in the United States.
I have also said pairing that with stop and frisk was effective in contributing to gun crime reductions.
You’re right. We should cater to the lowest knuckle-dragging common denominator: subliterate, likely inbred, and beyond misinformed, actively reveling in their ignorance. That’s the spirit that eliminated smallpox and put men on the Moon, by gum.
The Apollo program is actually an example of pretty savvy Democratic politics though, right? If it was sold as a scientific or technical endeavor, it is questionable if it would have gotten the political support needed to secure funding. But it was sold as a patriotic conflict with the evil communist Soviet Union.
Kennedy was ten times the politician of most 21st century Dems.
A couple of things here.
Firstly, we shouldn’t ignore the actual data of what works and what doesn’t.
Secondly, I dispute that this is a “well-worn line of attack”. The fact of the matter is, a lot of Republican talking points rely upon ignorance about how the rest of the world works, not casting it in a low light or whatever. It’s much easier to sell jingoistic crap about America is #1 when the audience is unaware of all the ways that it is not.
Finally, let’s not pretend that there are things that Democrats could say that would get a reasonable, grown up reception from the current crop of Republicans. They are full conspiracy theory wackos who spend more time talking about sticking it to the Libs than actual policy. There is no use in trying to pander to them.
I just don’t know what you do with it in terms of politics. Like maybe an issue less emotion-laden with guns (although arguably it has a bigger impact on society), is healthcare, you can look at U.S. spending per capita on healthcare, and our health outcomes, to see our system is not functioning that well. We have some world class hospitals and doctors, but we have a lot of people with poor access to care, higher than norm maternal mortality and infant mortality, life expectancy figures plateaued etc. The left has been trying since the 70s to sell the country on adopting the health ideas of other countries (and the PPACA was significantly modeled on Germany’s system of State Run health funds), I would argue that it hasn’t been super effective. I do think the general opinion has shifted considerably on health care, but I’m not sure how much of it was really promises of Scandinavian nirvana versus increasing, undeniable sticker shock at health bills and premiums (an undeniable thing that even delusional voters can’t as easily dismiss–guns don’t have that level of immediacy since despite how terrible they are, the vast majority of the country will never be directly connected to a mass shooting.)
Republican elected officials I agree there isn’t much to be done–but the “people who vote Republican” is a big group, I’m not 100% sure that 0% of them can be persuaded.
Actually it was sold as a technical endeavor and in comparison to other nations. It was patriotic propaganda, but that was secondary to the boost in public interest in US technology and education.
Uh, remember who was the president that later made a call to Armstrong and Buzz on the moon? Hint: it was not a Democratic party president.
Right now, many extremists in the Republican party and the NRA were (or remain) cozy with Russia’s Putin. So, a bit harder to sold an effort of pushing gun control as a way to counter the Ruskie enemy nowadays.
I agree with @Martin_Hyde and @SenorBeef here. Our disgust and horror at this and similar tragedies do not make promoting gun control a viable political tactic.
It absolutely sucks that this is where we’re at, but this is where we’re at.
IMO, we can leverage the overturning of Roe, but not gun control. Not now. And, sadly, probably not for at least a generation.
I am not. I have no interest in mass shootings. I track spree killings. (That is to say killings of four or more people in a single emotional event by a single killer in a single emotional event.) It is possible to shift through a list of mass killings and get all the mass school or other shootings that result in more than four deaths, but that is not my interest.
But mass school shootings would (I suppose) be those were four or more people were hit (not killed) in a school in session. They are very rare events.
It is simply sad that in our modern America we have as many names for killings as the Inuit (supposedly) have for snow.