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stux⚡

For those who believe todays music, video games & movies are causing mass shootings:

You are WRONG.

If this was the case it would happen all over the world. Here in Europe we listen to the same music, play the same games & enjoy the same movies but we do not have daily mass shootings because we don’t have the GUNS.

GUNS are WRONG

@stux@mstdn.social Guns don't kill people, people wielding them do. It should be horribly obvious to you

@yakumo_izuru So if you take away the guns….?

@stux@mstdn.social people can kill each other with a myriad of ways that don't involve guns

@yakumo_izuru correct but I’m talking about ‘mass shootings’ 🤷

@stux @yakumo_izuru

I will have to agree with Stux here. Unless the person wielding then is experienced and athletic, there won't really be any mass shooting with bow and arrows. Really. Think about it. Hawkeye from the Avengers going on a rampage. That's what you're talking about with bows and arrows.

With a gun, you're average Kentucky-fried, armchair, army-surplus-store soldier can lightly pull a trigger 10 times and seriously change the lives of 5-10 other people.

@acrousey @yakumo_izuru That! Thank you Adam :blobcathighfive:

I think even the most skilled archers do not come even close to any hawkeye scene :bloblaugh:

@yakumo_izuru @stux if that's just the same, why have armies changed? Why don't police officers walk around with bows and arrows? (Which would be much more cool)

@yakumo_izuru @stux A little less mass shooting, because people have more time to run away. 🏹

@yakumo_izuru @stux
Let them do so.

If you take away the guns, it immediately becomes much more personal, and hands on.

Not many people have played with actual knives, swords, straight razors, poisons, garottes, et al.

I'm willing to bet numbers will go down. Significantly.

It's the guns.

@BlippyTheWonderSlug @yakumo_izuru @stux believe it or not, a "hands on" approach would for most people pose a significantly higher inhibition threshold than pulling a trigger from a distance. Basic Psychology 101...

@yakumo_izuru @stux if that were true, the same number of yearly murders would be commited outside the US. But that's not the case, by a huge, huge margin.

@stux I have loads of guns… but only in games.

@stux People said the same things in the 90s.

@stux A lot of their core political agreement is bound up to a very jaded view of freedom, right and left exercise it differently, mostly in bizarre ways muratk5n.github.io/thirdwave/e

thirdwaveEvil Geniuses

@stux If video games caused shootings, shouldn't Seoul and Tokyo be burnt-out post-apocalyptic hellscapes by now?

Last I checked their primary issues are the usual "large wealthy metropolis" types of stuff.

@stux Can I also add that the most popular movie genre (in the USA at least) in the 50s/60s we’re westerns. The plot of nearly every western was: yada yada yada, and then people shoot at each other.

In the 80s, the A-Team was a top 5 TV show for a couple years. The final 5-10 minutes ALWAYS included a frenzy of bullets (and often explosions) that would put Wolfenstein to shame.

Gun supporters have never really opposed depictions of gun violence. They just dislike games/music.

@stux does anyone genuinely still think this? I foolishly hoped that noise died down when Jack Thompson finally got debarred 😊

@stux they said that about Rock n Roll back in the 50s, that it was the cause of juvenile delinquency... so I take such claims with a major pinch of salt.

@stux it's sloppy thinking. we need to think in terms of mass killings not shootings. guns make it "easier" sure, but what are the actual reasons for mass killings. people don't just pick up a gun and then are magically changed into wanting to kill people with said gun. that's a non-thing and horrible logic.

the moment we start to actually tackle the issue, look at it, and acknowledge it, can we truly begin to prevent it from happening regardless of it being committed with guns, knives, or cars

@PetterOfCats @stux mass killings are the small minority of gun deaths in the US

@PetterOfCats @stux my bad. Must have forgotten to re-read the original post

@stux Guns don't kill people. Bullets kill people. Guns just make the bullets go reel reel fast.
A person could go into a store, hold up a handful of bullets and say 'Gimme all your money or I'll push these into your body!' Of course he would have to deal with the hot coffee thrown onto him while everyone laughs at him.

@stux My 2 cents ... yes, remove the guns and mass shooting will fall drastically. But the obsession of the guns come from an incredible fear, fed by the media (nothing like fear make $$$). Until this irrational fear of everything is present in the american society, NOTHING will change. Is like trying to remove a soother from a newborn !

@stux the issue isn't guns, it's the American attitude in general. We are nowhere near as careful, nor as caring, as most Europeans.

Not to mention we're pretty easily radicalized thanks to the impetus on free speech meaning that radical, terrorist content is really easy to come by and be influenced by.

@stux You also don’t have Republicans promoting violent behavior. That may be at least as big a contributor.

@stux even here in Canada, where we have a fair amount of guns (not nearly as many) it's different. I think it's as much the culture connecting machismo to gun violence. Here we see guns as something dangerous, my dad (who hunted) drilled it into my head that you don't point a gun at someone unless you want to see them dead. In the states they're seen as a status symbol, something you wave around for cred. There should be gun safety taught in US schools IMO to counteract the deadly toxicity.

@stux another thing we don't have much here in Europe is Americans from the USA.

@stux America's 2A stopped serving a useful function 50-100 years ago, and now does *vastly* more harm than good. Time to put it to bed.

When the leading cause of death in children is firearms, there's a problem.

@stux Here in Canada we have ~1/4 the #guns per capita as in the US.
34.7 / 100 ppl, vs 120.5 / 100 ppl (yes. there are more civilian firearms than ppl in the US).

Bewilderingly, we also have 1/4 the # firearm related death per capita (2.26 / 100k vs. 10.89)

Who woulda thought? #guns! hooah! what are they good for, absolutely nuttin!

@stux "It's hard to be a man when there's a gun in your hand!" (TEARS FOR FEARS)

@stux damn, mentioning the fact that uncomplicated access to guns increases the likelihood of people getting caught up in a shooting surely is poking the hornets nest even around these parts of the internet, huh?

@madoka you'd be surprised how easy it is to get your hands on guns in most places even in Europe, and yet mass shootings are not happening every week in Serbia.

it's an attitude problem, not a weapon-specific one.

@Fishbed thanks for proving my point.

you are of course entitled to your own opinion, does not make it any more sensible tho :3

@madoka if mericans weren't so confrontational they started keyboard warrioring every time gun control was mentioned online, they orobably wouldn't be so confrontational as to abuse guns

@stux people blaming popular media forms as the root of societal issues is SOOOOOOOO 90's

@stux they've been trying to play this card since the 90s

No data has ever shown it to be true

American Football and beer is likely responsible for more violence in the States but we can't go there, they're a big sponsor

@stux the point of the NRA argument was not to be rational, but be a distraction behind which their supporters can hid from rationality.
None of their arguments are good faith arguments.

@stux In my US, guns are how corporations make $$$ off mentally unstable men, at the cost of school children & shoppers & people out enjoying themselves at bars. And the corporations keep lots of political pals in their pay.

Livin' in the USA

There are a lot of societies with guns that don't have mass shootings. Commonplace mass shootings for whatever reason are a uniquely American phenomenon.

My hypothesis rolls around two different things.

The first, not the guns themselves, but the attitude towards the guns. I don't know of anywhere else on Earth that guns are considered as a very first resort sort of solution to problems with other people. Canada only very rarely has school shootings, and it's considered to be a big deal if they do happen. And Europe has had some school shootings as well, they do happen other areas of the world just not as commonly. But you can see it even in the gangs that come to Canada from the us. Canadian gangs are very rarely used firearms, but American gangs are coming in through toronto, and they're bringing their American gun culture with them, and now more and more we're seeing criminals carrying guns in canada.

The second, is the overprescription of antidepressants. I've conceptualized antidepressants as emotional morphine. Whatever you are feeling gets the volume turned down. Now in the case of negative emotions like depression, that might be a good thing. But sometimes those emotions are things like discussed at the idea of going to shoot up your school. It's one of the same reasons that suicide rates are so much higher amongst people who are prescribed antidepressants, because the powerful emotion that would stop someone has been repressed by the drug.

In switzerland, every able-bodied man between certain ages has a military rifle at home in case they get conscripted into military service. So obviously just having guns around doesn't automatically cause these things, because Switzerland has a very low instance of gun crime.

@stux

Guns aren't wrong.

I'm with the NRA on that one: guns don't kill people.
Mind you, their conclusion is mental.

It's precisely because it is people who kill people that you should never allow them near a gun.

@Jantar So you would first enrtrust people with guns to see who’s gonna shoot someone else and after that keep them away from guns? :blobcatgiggle:

I would start by keeping the general people away from guns in the first place, most of them only feel they need them because other do the same

And so the circles goes around

@stux
I would never entrust people with guns, because you can't trust people.

To venture into the absurd: I wouldn't mind guns owning guns; they wouldn't fire them, after all.

@stux Obviously there's a pretty clear correlation between gun availability and shootings, but I think this blind assumption that reducing gun availability suddenly erases murderous intent is just silly.

The US has had a gun culture forever. There hasn't been an increase in the availability of firearms in the US but the crimes are increasing.

Blaming the mechanism instead of the cause gets nowhere closer to fixing any of it. When the desire to murder is so strong removing the mechanism is just going to select for another one.

Trading shootings for cafeteria poisonings or pipe bombs isn't a big improvement.

(Blaming music, video games and movies is just plain stupid though.)

@PCOWandre @stux

The over-arching issue is that the US is an adversarial society. Everything is couched as a "war" against something. And then there's the idealization of the "rebel"; the idea that anyone challenging the establishment, no matter the ideals, is to be admired. Add on top of that our lukewarm already to mental healthcare.

That being said, it is quite clear as a society, the US it's unable to play nicely with it's "toys" and they need to be restricted or taken away.

@PCOWandre @stux Compare the US gun culture from pre 2008 with post Heller & then MacDonald v Chicago (2010) though. The C21st US Supreme Court view of the 2nd Amendment flatly contradicts its C19th & C20th position, and has increased both the number & power of privately held firearms (eg especially since termination of the assault weapon ban in 2004)

@PCOWandre @stux

The over-arching issue is that the US is an adversarial society. Everything is couched as a "war" against something. And then there's the idealization of the "rebel"; the idea that anyone challenging the establishment, no matter the ideals, is to be admired. Add on top of that our lukewarm already to mental healthcare.

That being said, it is quite clear as a society, the US it's unable to play nicely with it's "toys" and they need to be restricted or taken away.

@PCOWandre @stux

The over-arching issue is that the US is an adversarial society. Everything is couched as a "war" against something. And then there's the idealization of the "rebel"; the idea that anyone challenging the establishment, no matter the ideals, is to be admired. Add on top of that our lukewarm already to mental healthcare.

That being said, it is quite clear as a society, the US it's unable to play nicely with it's "toys" and they need to be restricted or taken away.

@stux actually no.

has even more illegal guns per capita thx to two world wars, the cold war, balkan wars and .

What is different in - including where people can still legally buy new - is that we don't reward said acts of with screentime.

Guns ain't the problem but people.

Otherwise , , and would've equal amouns of .

youtube.com/watch?v=K3VQULyT390

@Kevin Karhan :verified:
Guns ain't the problem but people.


Then why would you want the problem to have guns?

@kkarhan @stux You wrote : "Guns ain't the problem but people."
What about allow paranoid, fearful, mentally sick people to buy guns ?

REMOVE THE GUNS and you solve the problem of mentally people buying and use them.
If somebody feel the NEED to have a gun, there is the proof that that person SHOULD NOT have a gun.
Since is difficult to evaluate every single case, just ban the damn guns ! They exists ONLY to kill other people. If you feel the need to have one means you are ready to kill somebody.

@kkarhan @stux

ch.ch/en/safety-and-justice/ow suggests Switzerland doesn't generally allow machine guns to be owned.

They're forbidden, but if you're a sport-shooter (member of a club, participate in competition shootings "regularly"), or a collector, you might get exempted.

Regular would be at least 5 times in a 5 year period, so not actually that much.

www.ch.chOwning a weapon in SwitzerlandThe Weapons Act governs who is allowed to own a weapon in Switzerland. Depending on the type of weapon, you will require a sales contract, a weapon acquisition permit or an exemption permit.

@chrisn @stux Case in point: Getting that permit as an individual is actually feasible and trivial in most cases compared to getting the U.S. Equivalent [Destructuve Device Manufacturer] which the ATF is ordered to "shall deny" unless proven otherwise.

But that:s not the point.

Fact is there are at least 16.700.000 confirmed and over 40.000.000 estimated guns in illegal curculation in Germany alone...

youtube.com/watch?v=No7BTPf52NM

@chrisn @stux
Ranging from Pre-WW1 Needle Rifles and WW2 inventory losses to MP5's recently stolen from police armories...

In fact, it's easier to illegally obtain a gun than to legally buy even a legal gas gun, acquire the legal to use lesser lethal cartridges that aren't banned for anti-personnel use and getting a permit to carry said gas pistol.

I will not do the former instead of the latter out of principle:
Convictions make one less able to lobby successfully...