Sandy Hook Elementary School Victims Relief Fund

Thanks for reposting my post from another thread... these sites were on NBC News here today in CT.

 

Man school shootings are so common as to no longer be discussed, this was the newest thread on the subject I could find

makes you think

K-12 School Shooting Database - data-map

28 already this year, with the most being in Texas

 

33 so far this year.
Data for the last 51 years:
K-12 School Shooting Database - view-chart

See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test

 

The solution is obvious. They need to ban schools.

 

Deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes, alcohol-driven abuse and violence, drug overdoses, etc., surpassed that threshold very long ago. They are so numerous that news-tainment just doesn't have the space and time to cover most of them, and are so ordinary that readers/viewers aren't much interested in most. There usually has to be something special or unusual or celebrity, or spectacular pictures, to get coverage.

Note also the racial bias aspect, very similar to missing white woman syndrome. Back three+ decades ago, when mostly disadvantaged and minority (i.e. strongly correlated with "Black") students were being murdered (shot / stabbed / beaten) at school at higher rates than now (though mostly just one at a time), it wasn't national 'news'. Except when two Black students were shot just before NYC Mayor Dinkins was scheduled for a visit. But when school killings shifted somewhat to middle-class white kids getting shot in groups, each incident was given spectacular wall-to-wall coverage.

The last time I saw some more broad figures, a few years ago, killings of non-white students (all means, not restricted to shootings only) were still generally getting negligible coverage compared to the white students. At least the later has lead to much better security in all schools, to the benefit of students in disadvantaged districts too.

It is well known that sensational coverage of suicides begets copycats. That is why journalists have guidelines to minimize copycat suicides. Many newbies forgot or didn't know when Robin Williams died, causing 1800+ copycats. Journalistic discipline broke down again with the deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. But now, almost every news item I see mentioning suicide, also includes pointers to suicide prevention resources.

Journalism today still appears to lack any similar guidelines for covering mass shootings, so sensationalism still rules. And it keeps inspiring more copycats.

 

100,000 overdose deaths last year.
10,000 drunk driving deaths, including over 250 children.

The solution is obvious.
They need to ban cars and syringes.

ESPECIALLY high capacity motor vehicles and syringes.

 

... and all commerce in pills too.

 

Also, to be fair, when mass shootings do get discussed, they tend to end up in FHoPolitics, as this may also. They tend to get filled with bemusement and confusion by foreigners who think school shootings are not desirable, and by whataboutery from gun rights people.

 

i love all the deflection regarding death from other causes, as if that is supposed to make the parents of the dead and wounded children feel better.

'hey, your kid would have died in a car accident or from a drug overdose anyway. sorry!'

 

who cares if alec baldwin killed someone with a gun? he could have just as easily stabbed her. knives are dangerous!

 

Only some of them.

One of the reasons that I'm rooting for Scottish independence is that they don't have this weird muscle memory of having once been relevant in world politics. They pretty much dig just being Scotts, and they do not (sometimes illegally) export smarmy 'political commentators' to stir feces in other countries' media.
Before my first submarine patrol, my skipper gathered up the noobs and had "the talk" about Not being "the ugly American" while we were in Scotland....something that Americans learned ALL TOO WELL from their older cousins.

We BOTH got along much better that way.

 

It's really not about whether anyone thinks their country is particularly relevant to world politics.

It's just that pretty much everyone in pretty much every country outside the US finds the idea of regular school shootings undesirable. We find it strange that it's something your country is prepared to tolerate when the rest of us really wouldn't.

We're not telling you to follow our rules because our country is "relevant" or "irrelevant"; we're just saying we find it a strange thing to want to allow to happen, and that we tend to avoid them in our countries, in the second-most-obvious way possible (the most obvious way, of course, would be banning schools, as I said earlier).

The view in Scotland is broadly in line with this: as Andy Murray will tell you, they had one school mass-shooting in 1996, didn't like it, and decided to stop them. They also don't really understand why another country would decide to let them continue, with a new one every couple of weeks.

I'm generally pretty good on empathy. But I really struggle on this one: I find it very hard to understand why your country is OK with school shootings when no-one in any other country that I've been to is. But it's your choice and you are of course welcome to it.

 

And as for Scots..... Your last President was prepared to ban Irn Bru - Scotland's Other National Drink - because it might make a mess of the carpets (Donald Trump: Irn-Bru banned at US President's luxury golf resort - CNN), but it never seemed to occur to him how hard the aftermath of a mass shooting can be to get out of the carpets.

I think tiled floors are the solution here.

 

I have never run into anyone who is OK with school killings. But there are plenty of people who narrowly demand only the "second-most-obvious" solution for one issue, involving an item of a protected type they are unfamiliar with or don't use, while flatout rejecting the same approach to mitigate the even greater damages from other items or practices because they happen to be more familiar with or even enjoy them. Then use "whataboutery" as a shield to avoid addressing these inconsistencies or hypocrisies or tilted risk tolerances.

But then I don't expect to ever come to agreement with people who are suggestive of political violence in anything remotely close to our current or recent political environment. Be it Rep. Gosar (cartoon portraying killing of AOC), or Rep. Boebert (expressing concern that any backpack on Rep. Omar would be a suicide bomb), or January 6 Insurrectionists using violence attempting to bypass the defined political processes, or a forum member previously calling for the same thing. They are cut from different sides of the same cloth.

Having a Stauffenberg threshold is one thing, I have a very vague idea of where mine might be. But I cannot have any respect for those who feel we are at or have been anywhere near such a line during our lifetimes, let alone already across it.

 

more deflection

 

Oh yes you have.

In the whataboutery section, you talked about road deaths. I am OK with road deaths. Each one is sad and terrible, of course. And we should do everything we can to keep them to a minimum - as we do, with drink-driving regulation, brakes, seat belts, air bags, pedestrian protection, speed limits, driver licensing, police monitoring and so on. But on balance, I think we need cars, trucks and buses to move people and goods around. The necessity of this means I do not think society should give up road transport. And that means I am OK with a certain level of road deaths if that is the price to be paid for me being able to travel, and for food being delivered to my local shop.

Similarly, many have decided that school massacres, family massacres, workplace massacres, church massacres and so on are OK if they are the price to be paid for the benefits of gun ownership - shooting holes in pieces of paper or shooting holes in deer or ducks or whatever. They think those benefits outweigh the deaths that are an inevitable consequence of widespread gun ownership.

That is fine: I am not making a moral judgement here. I'm just saying that these people should not pretend that they are not OK with school massacres (and other massacres, and murders, and stuff). They know that not giving up their guns has the inevitable consequence of school massacres (etc) and they still choose not to give them up.

Much as I may dislike them and everything they stand for, armed January 6 insurrectionists were the closest thing I've ever seen to an accurate interpretation of the Second Amendment.

They believed - wrongly, but they believed it - that they were a militia necessary to the security of a free state, and this was why they were armed. That's a lot closer to the Second Amendment than people owning a gun for a hobby.

 

The above demonstrates the need for people to be realists and why absolute juxtapositions for or against a single “right way” fails everyone.

I agree with much of the above which is rare.

I might add January 6 individuals believe their 21st century view of absolute freedom to do what they want somehow aligns with the 18th and 19th century views or even our agnostic founders views of what a militia was and did, even though all evidence says the founders would have likely brutally and uncaringly crushed individuals like them and would have been on the other side of the fence.

Fantasy and misinformation needs to be reigned in or even corrected on sight with minimal tolerance given our societies current trend of regression, non-democratic training wheels may be needed if an excess of our populace looses their ability to function in a democracy.

Our tolerance for nonsense only goes so far until it threatens our existence, our country has a long history of revoking individual rights when they are perceived as dangerous or infeasible, our current generation doesn’t seem to understand freedom isn’t absolute and comes with a code of conduct and consequences