Question for gun folks...

[anderson750]

Guilty for me and my daughter. We both have chronic depression/anxiety and no matter how hard I try to pull us out of the dark abyss I rarely feel like I get a win for the both of us at the same time.

I don’t intend to play victim I never have. I try to find the joy in every moment and live life to the fullest as life is fan-f#%cking tastic ‘most’ of the time and I try to share the joy with everyone I know family or not.

I dunno I wasn’t going to post anything but figured I would—kinda goes back to the mental health thread more than anything but there’s two sides to that coin.

I think this is completely different than what Paul was saying. You may have an issue.. but you know it. You address it. You cope with it. You work on it. You know how to handle adversity. You are an active player in your kids life. You are a productive member of society.


Paul is talking about the kid who was getting evicted from his apartment so he decided to shoot up a mall.

100%. I know there are legitimate mental health issues and I don’t mean to paint with a broad brush. My wife deals with anxiety and my daughter has also but like you we take a proactive approach to it. There are to many people who do not act like parents that blame society or mental health issues for their problems. They let their kids run without direction.

I know my example is bad for the masses here but it is the only thing I know. My parents got me into racing motorcycles as a kid because I was being a trouble maker. If I wanted to ride and race I had to behave. While racing I learned responsibility, failure, success, and most importantly how to act in all of those situations. My parents spent a lot of money for me to learn those lessons.

All of this is why I got my kids into riding and racing and every penny I have spent has been worth it. I am proud of my kids and the adults they have become because they have learned how to fail and get back up. They have learned to succeed and go work harder and get better. But here is the thing…..my parents took responsibility to make sure I did not become a trouble maker and taught me that it was my responsibility to raise my kids…..not society.

So back to the original thing. People like you @Rot Box are not part of what I consider the problem. You are not one of the lazy parents

 

[glockman]

Honest assessment- comes across (intended or not) as a lot of "not my problem".

While I do not pretend to have the solutions, all forms of gun deaths seem to be common enough that we should be looking for answers. Those who choose to stay out of the discussion run the risk of steps being forced on them they don't like.

We have answers, they just aren't the ones you want.
If access to guns was the problem the top 10 states for firearms ownership and the top ten states for firearms violence would at least overlap significantly. They don't. The only two states on both lists are Alaska and Alabama. This is ground zero for determining a direction to stop gun violence.
When you point to this blatant and absolute rebuttal of every gun control argument the gun control folks start to backpedal or go off on tangents.
If someone can't accept that access to guns isn't the problem, I have zero interest in that person's opinion. They are not interested in saving lives, they are only interested in reducing gun access, almost universally because they are uncomfortable with people like me having access to guns.
I can't understand how people today can look at Australia and not see the bold font writing on the wall. It took 25 years from the date they took away private firearms ownership for the government to lock people in their homes. They sold that as "common sense gun control ". I interact with aussies today that think they are free and that gun control was a good idea, while simultaneously bitching about covid tyranny.

Common sense isn't universal. It's dependant on your lived experience. Common sense tells me that if you have a dick and have sex with women, you don't get to compete as a woman, against women in college sports . Not everyone agrees with my common sense. That's fine by me.

 

[jeeper]

We have answers, they just aren't the ones you want.
If access to guns was the problem the top 10 states for firearms ownership and the top ten states for firearms violence would at least overlap significantly. They don't. The only two states on both lists are Alaska and Alabama. This is ground zero for determining a direction to stop gun violence.
When you point to this blatant and absolute rebuttal of every gun control argument the gun control folks start to backpedal or go off on tangents.
If someone can't accept that access to guns isn't the problem, I have zero interest in that person's opinion. They are not interested in saving lives, they are only interested in reducing gun access, almost universally because they are uncomfortable with people like me having access to guns.
I can't understand how people today can look at Australia and not see the bold font writing on the wall. It took 25 years from the date they took away private firearms ownership for the government to lock people in their homes. They sold that as "common sense gun control ". I interact with aussies today that think they are free and that gun control was a good idea, while simultaneously bitching about covid tyranny.

Common sense isn't universal. It's dependant on your lived experience. Common sense tells me that if you have a dick and have sex with women, you don't get to compete as a woman, against women in college sports . Not everyone agrees with my common sense. That's fine by me.

"But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else"

 

[Houndoc]

Lets shift some of this discussion of to one of the root causes of this and that is the "mental health issues" that seem to be so prevalent in today's society. I use the quotes because I feel that a lack of accountability and coddling to the last 20 years of kids that have been born plays a huge role in the victimhood and lack of ability to cope with life. Most have not been taught to deal with "stress" properly and productively. They have been taught to play victim and say its not my fault. Then we start down this path of I am going to kill you or life is to hard and I am going to kill myself.

I know I have just opened a can of worms, so lets see where they crawl to.

While we all like to blame bad parenting and condemn younger generations as inferior (happens every generation), I think your take on mental health is very out of date, even though your later post tried to back pedal and separate those who are and are not dealing with their mental health challenges. But as other threads on mental health have discussed, anything that puts a stigma on mental health makes it less likely for people to seek treatment.

I also think it is very hard to use your description of shooters anyway. Yes, the recent shootings in Texas and Buffalo have been by young men, but others like the 2017 in Vegas was a 64 year old.

We have answers, they just aren't the ones you want.

Not sure what you are meaning by "you" in this case, as I have not said a single thing about specific gun control ideas- my comments have been solely that as gun owners WE need to be part of the discussion on gun violence or we leave the solutions to those with either little knowledge of firearms or political agendas we don't agree with.

 

[anderson750]

While we all like to blame bad parenting and condemn younger generations as inferior (happens every generation), I think your take on mental health is very out of date, even though your later post tried to back pedal and separate those who are and are not dealing with their mental health challenges. But as other threads on mental health have discussed, anything that puts a stigma on mental health makes it less likely for people to seek treatment.

I also think it is very hard to use your description of shooters anyway. Yes, the recent shootings in Texas and Buffalo have been by young men, but others like the 2017 in Vegas was a 64 year old.



Not sure what you are meaning by "you" in this case, as I have not said a single thing about specific gun control ideas- my comments have been solely that as gun owners WE need to be part of the discussion on gun violence or we leave the solutions to those with either little knowledge of firearms or political agendas we don't agree with.

My opinion is that bad parenting does play a role in it........not trying to blame anybody. Stating a very strong belief. I was not back pedaling either, I was clarifying my first very general statement. A back pedal is something somebody does when they don't truly believe and willing to back up what they have said.

I am shooting from the hip here.........yes I meant to use that metaphore......but I would wager that most of the shootings have been done by somebody under the age of 40.........a group that has grown up in the world of glorifying gun violence in movies and video games. Tell me how you cannot take that into account and give it credibility.

 

[glockman]

Not sure what you are meaning by "you" in this case, as I have not said a single thing about specific gun control ideas- my comments have been solely that as gun owners WE need to be part of the discussion on gun violence or we leave the solutions to those with either little knowledge of firearms or political agendas we don't agree with.

I didn't mean for that to seem accusatory. I should have said we have answers, but people don't want to accept them.

The overwhelming majority of mass shooters are under 25 and white unless you change the criteria for mass shootings from 4 to 3, then it becomes overwhelming young black males. I wonder why they set the criteria the way they did🤔

 

[Houndoc]

My opinion is that bad parenting does play a role in it........not trying to blame anybody. Stating a very strong belief. I was not back pedaling either, I was clarifying my first very general statement. A back pedal is something somebody does when they don't truly believe and willing to back up what they have said.

I am shooting from the hip here.........yes I meant to use that metaphore......but I would wager that most of the shootings have been done by somebody under the age of 40.........a group that has grown up in the world of glorifying gun violence in movies and video games. Tell me how you cannot take that into account and give it credibility.

Does parenting play a role in violence and crime? Of course. Can abuse and neglect contribute to mental health issues? Yes. But I do disagree that parenting plays the major role in mental health issues overall.

The movie and video game issue is an interesting one. Violence in movies has been discussed since back when I was a teen (40 years ago).

 

[jeeper]

I also think it is very hard to use your description of shooters anyway. Yes, the recent shootings in Texas and Buffalo have been by young men, but others like the 2017 in Vegas was a 64 year old.

Just to clarify, the Vegas shooter was a 1 off that can't be explained by anyone, friends, family, fbi, etc. Medical examinations of his body and brain revealed nothing odd. There is not even a single clue as to why he did what he did.. there are NO 'OTHERS' like him. period.

Every other shooting as far as I know has at least some reasoning behind it.

Older males are usually job related retaliations or political ideology.

Younger males, like paul said, have a easily identifiable pattern on lack of parenting, bullying, being loners, etc.

 

[anderson750]

The movie and video game issue is an interesting one. Violence in movies has been discussed since back when I was a teen (40 years ago).

Compare the violence in movies 40 years ago to violence of the last 20 years and get back to me with your opinion. I think you will find that it has gotten steadily more graphic. It's kind of funny though if you think of comedy like Blazing Saddles is horrible by todays standard and gun violence is horrible by yesterday's standards.

Something is not right here.

 

[bobsled84088]

I don’t think it’s the movie violence,
I believe it’s the first person shooter games that desensitize and act as training simulators

 

[anderson750]

I don’t think it’s the movie violence,
I believe it’s the first person shooter games that desensitize and act as training simulators

I agree with your assessment of the first person shooting games, but the violence in movies can add to that fantasy also. That is where they see people being glorified for it.

 

[Cody]

But putting the blame for someone's mental health issues on their parents creates a host of other issues. Do they want to blame their parents necessarily? Do they want to come forward and deal with the stigma that their parents were failures and that's why they have struggles? Not that a single one of us is even qualified to make that blanket statement anyway.

I certainly believe parenting is a big part of the issue, and agree with the lack of accountability and coping skills the younger generations seem to lack. But you can't in one breath say "it's ok to talk" and then in another thread say "you have issues because your parents let you play video games and watch tv and always gave you participation trophies". Let's try to align our empathy with our message a bit eh? I think the unwillingness to even engage in a conversation with someone who has a different perspective is just absurd. THAT is the problem

You can point to the need for access to mental health resources, but when the call to change funding allocations to bring more of those people into situations where they would be useful, or to make access to more mental health services easier, it's "socialism" and the government shouldn't be involved in any of that. So we want to point to mental health as the problem, we just don't want to do anything about it because that would increase government social welfare programs and that's not our cup of tea. Got it. We'll just hold hands and pray that something changes. That should get'er done.

 

[jeeper]

So we want to point to mental health as the problem, we just don't want to do anything about it because that would increase government social welfare programs

This is a whole new discussion and a huge rabbit hole. I have yet to see a government program that is not a complete joke. No matter how much money it gets, the incompetence is never fixed.

 

[anderson750]

But putting the blame for someone's mental health issues on their parents creates a host of other issues. Do they want to blame their parents necessarily? Do they want to come forward and deal with the stigma that their parents were failures and that's why they have struggles? Not that a single one of us is even qualified to make that blanket statement anyway.

I certainly believe parenting is a big part of the issue, and agree with the lack of accountability and coping skills the younger generations seem to lack. But you can't in one breath say "it's ok to talk" and then in another thread say "you have issues because your parents let you play video games and watch tv and always gave you participation trophies". Let's try to align our empathy with our message a bit eh? I think the unwillingness to even engage in a conversation with someone who has a different perspective is just absurd. THAT is the problem

You can point to the need for access to mental health resources, but when the call to change funding allocations to bring more of those people into situations where they would be useful, or to make access to more mental health services easier, it's "socialism" and the government shouldn't be involved in any of that. So we want to point to mental health as the problem, we just don't want to do anything about it because that would increase government social welfare programs and that's not our cup of tea. Got it. We'll just hold hands and pray that something changes. That should get'er done.

There is no easy solution to the problem but it needs to be addressed at the core first and that is the mental health aspect. I agree with @jeeper that there has never been a .gov program that has done historically good job. I have no faith that would do anything more than waste money. But that is not a reason to modify a constitutional right. A right that I would argue keeps the US from ever being invaded by another country. There are more personal guns in possession of citizens than any military that may think about invading. You modify the 2nd amendment and that is the camels nose under the tent for more taken away.

 

[Cody]

Do you guys honestly think that any country that declares war on the US would do so in a way that your guns would matter? I mean, beyond providing you power and security in the post apocalyptic wasteland that you'd be living in?

 

[Pike2350]

This is a whole new discussion and a huge rabbit hole. I have yet to see a government program that is not a complete joke. No matter how much money it gets, the incompetence is never fixed.

While I generally agree with you I have also come to the conclusion:

I Hhave yet to see/hear about a private contractor NOT tskw advantage of government contracts.

So while .gov is terrible so is giving private contracts to corporations that will take advantage of it. One of the worst double edged swords we have in balancing .gov control vs private control/.gov funding. You could argue that the .gov shouldn't fund it...sure, then who will? There will always be some private groups that are ultruistic enough to do it, but at the scope the world needs mental health, there is no way the private sector could or would do it.

 

[Herzog]

Do you guys honestly think that any country that declares war on the US would do so in a way that your guns would matter? I mean, beyond providing you power and security in the post apocalyptic wasteland that you'd be living in?

A lot of farmers in the middle east held their ground well enough to be a concern and annoyance to the largest military industrial complex in the world. 🤷‍♂️

 

[DAA]

Yeah but an invasion on the ground, here, seems a lot more far fetched and a few high hot ones.

Mental health and gov... I remember when a lot of the homeless people with mental issues that you see sleeping on the sidewalk these days were actually being taken care of in state hospitals. And I think they, and we, were a lot better off for it.

- DAA

 

[Herzog]

I Hhave yet to see/hear about a private contractor NOT tskw advantage of government contracts.

Probably because more often than not the contractor has a relationship of some sort with the official granting the contract.

 

[Herzog]

Do you guys honestly think that any country that declares war on the US would do so in a way that your guns would matter? I mean, beyond providing you power and security in the post apocalyptic wasteland that you'd be living in?

And... So because of [Theoretical scenario A] we should all just give up our guns? Nah.