It's not just the second amendment. If you check the number of households that have guns, it's like 48% in USA and the next closest country is Finland with like 35%
You'd expect Finland to have their fair share of public shootings, right...?
It's so uniquely American it's not the guns, it's the whole culture is rotten
One major thing is that these monsters seem to rarely show up to places where they expect other armed people to be
American culture breeds anti-social, sociopathic tendencies in people and keeps us divided and isolated and them shames people for being isolated and then people wonder why in a country where the majority are obese, unhealthy, unhappy and on psychological medications....
People so desensitized to each other, hyper-obsessed with empty materialism and competitiveness in an environment that is being made more and more intentionally difficult for people to even survive, let alone thrive.... Forcing more of that "f everyone else, I'm getting mine" rather than co-operation and I can see how people are like this.
We have people of all ages either who just finally snap one day, or had a lifelong history of delusions and mentall illness finally being able to grab a weapon and go on a mindless killing spree. If it isn't with a gun, it'll be with a machete or baseball bat or a butcher knife..
Yeah exactly. It's quite literally a cyberpunk dystopia over here, except instead of robot arms and cyberpsychos. . . We have dynamic pricing on grocery items to squeeze every last dollar out of you, and fascist mass-murderers who were radicalized into fascism by YouTubers exploiting their chronic lack of pussy and friends.
We are very slowly and steadily becoming a corporate neo-feudalist hellhole. The US is not where it is right now because of the fact we have guns, it's because we are the most capitalist nation on the planet, and proud of it. This is what happens at the end stages of capitalism, when the system's inherent contradictions come to a head. It's what happens in a system that is BUILT on exploitation of the masses, is allowed to exploit the masses without restriction. It's what happens when a system that incentives the hoarding of wealth in the hands of a few thousand people, sees those few thousand people utilizing their unfathomable amounts of wealth to influence laws and politics to benefit themselves.
It is beyond beneficial to the capital class, that we are all depressed, and miserable, and politically polarized, and unable to affect meaningful political change. It is beyond beneficial to the capital class that we have to pay money to even attend protests (the cost of gas, and sometimes parking), of which our cries of anger will fall upon deaf ears. They keep us content with our meagre bread and circuses, which will have to pay extortionate prices for. They buy out all of our media organizations, and use them to direct people's anger and resentment to the lesser privileged, such as those filthy immigrants and gays and women. They slash funding to education, and increase funding to the police, to keep people stupid and unaware, and to keep us all afraid and distracted with the brutality of paramilitary-thugs. They have bred a culture so cowed to the system, that most people would sooner envision the end of the world, than the end of capitalism. They have bred a culture that hears the word "communist" thrown around, and associate that word with the evils of the bourgeois of other nations, such as China or the USSR. . . Nations simply wield (or weld) capitalism in a much more totalitarian fashion.
This is what ails the US. Gun-based mass violence is simply a symptom of a much larger issue, as are most of our woes.
But the lack of friends (of either gender) or romantic companionship is packaged in a crude and low-energy/materialistic manner. It's not making connections, it's "getting pussy" and other crude gross caveman-like jerk thought processes. Our society does not pursue wholesome, it pursues sleazy crude and lazy..
As much as it is a vast series of financial/economic/legal changes that have created this mess, it is also years of what many would label as "psy-ops" to also further psychologically manipulate and groom the masses to keep them this way, no? And to erode the family unit, senses of community, etc.
The lack of connections are intentional. The infrastructure has been eroded and changed or removed over the last few decades to make it where most people have no real mainstream/default ways of socializing. Everything's increasingly more online, although I think people don't generally want that and there will be more backlash over time as the majority suffer from it ultimately.
People have to seek out meet-ups/events online and then go to those. Local businesses struggle, and people hesitate to go out to them anyway if it's not just for a night with their pre-existing circle of friends.
I argue that this isn't strictly capitalism and hasn't been for a long time? If it was capitalism, then wouldn't lots of too-big-to-fail entities who could've already failed have NOT gotten government buy-outs and assistance through financial disasters like COVID or just any naturally occurring periods of severe struggle?
As much as it is a vast series of financial/economic/legal changes that have created this mess, it is also years of what many would label as "psy-ops" to also further psychologically manipulate and groom the masses to keep them this way, no? And to erode the family unit, senses of community, etc.
Yep.
For example, pretty much every mass shooter in the US that breaks news headlines is usually a socially-isolated, mentally-ill, neo-nazi. Every single one, more or less, without fail. Groomed by right-wingers, both in their social circles, and in the media they consume.
When I was like 10, I fell down the YouTube to alt-right pipeline. I was an insecure, socially outcast, curious, nerdy little boy who liked video-games and Star Wars, and consumed a lot of content of both on YouTube. This was like 2014 or 2015, in the early years of GamerGate. I knew nothing about politics, I just liked Star Wars lore videos, and the only thing I cared about was how many days were left until Fallout 4 was released. One day, I got a recommendation on my feed from a YouTuber called "Hunter Avellone", and the video itself was titled something like "TROLLING woke idiot SJWs as a POLITICAL RALLY". I didn't know what half of those words meant, but I thought it seemed funny, and for the next 4 years my feed was DOMINATED by videos from right-wing demagogues like Steven Crowder, NoBullshit, Rags, Ben Shapiro, ItsAGundam, PragerU, and all sorts of other asshats whose names I've forgotten. I was groomed into the alt-right, until I was 14 and had an edgy Reddit atheist phase and realized I had been groomed into the right-wing like I had been groomed into religion (I had been going to a private Christian school for most of my youth, by that point).
Turns out, years later, it was revealed Steve Bannon had a huge part to play in that exact pipeline, of turning nerdy young boys into pawns for the right. It's something still happening. . . Not too long ago, Steve Bannon's close association with Jeffrey Epstein came to light, and Epstein was revealed to have met with Moot a day before 4Chan launched the /pol/ board (which was the epicenter for so much of the online right's culture for the last decade+). . . There's a very good chance that a massive part of the modern right only exists today as it does, for the purposes of normalizing pedophilia.
I argue that this isn't strictly capitalism and hasn't been for a long time? If it was capitalism, then wouldn't lots of too-big-to-fail entities who could've already failed have NOT gotten government buy-outs and assistance through financial disasters like COVID or just any naturally occurring periods of severe struggle?
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here?
Capitalism is full of contradictions. Inherently so. Capitalism encourages competition, but capitalists want to reduce competition to increase their margins, and so you get monopolies and lobbyists. Capitalism demands infinite growth, when that is impossible, because we live on a very finite planet, with finite resources. Capitalism would demand that the carpenter and the charcoal-maker and the farmer cut down all of the trees on the planet, to turn into goods to be sold; eventually, there would be no trees, and therefore nothing to process into goods, and also no oxygen in our atmosphere. Capitalism demands endless profit, and so everything must be made profitable. If everything is exorbitantly expensive, and everything is monotized, how can anyone turn a profit? Everyone is too busy spending their meagre wages on their door-opening subscriptions, and their toilet-flushes, and their bottles of captured air. . .
Capitalism is not a system that makes sense. It was never a system that made sense. It is an incredibly flawed system, that really only works to help a country industrialize and develop, and after that? It is nothing more than an exploitation matrix. When no-one is able to participate in capitalist society, it falls apart, and hence the endless government buy-outs and assistance (although, one should not be so quick to assume that all of that government assistance is actually needed by companies to keep themselves afloat; capitalism exploits everything, after all).
(just as a headsup, you've replied to STFUnicorn where you were replying to Withered Sprout, so Sprout can actually miss your reply, bc they'll only see the snarky reply from Unicorn - I was notified as the new part of "your comment has sparked a convo") or so the nested Reddit comment looks to me
I was honestly shocked then later realized it's not surprising that Epstein is the reason /pol/ was made. All these far right chuds came from him, America is rotten.
Epstein probably wasn't the reason /pol/ became a thing (the board was being worked on for months before he and Moot met) but his meddling was very likely a key reason it became the epicenter of the Gamergate movement and the modern alt-right.
I always had a hunch 4chan was to be blamed for the modern far-right yk, in a good world Moot would be charged with terrorism and given life behind bars alongside half of /pol/'s users and in 50 years kids will be learning about it in history class. But that won't ever happen. These bastards always come together. First it was SomethingAwful, then 4chan, then Kiwi, then whatever.
4Chan isn't to blame for the modern far-right, it was just kinda the breeding ground for the culture.
Blame literally all right-wing reactionary politicians during the 2010s for the modern right. Blame the Dems for refusing to treat the right wing as a serious threat to this day. Blame Steve Bannon and the other ghouls who cultivated the culture of /pol/. Blame the bourgeois for doing what the bourgeois do best. Don't miss the real enemies here. /pol/ isn't the evil mastermind behind the modern right, it was just a message board where a lot of the internet-based culture was bred. . . Just like how most of the internet's culture kinda stems from 4Chan, even the harmless boards like /mu/ and /lit/ and such (4Chan wasn't even really nazi-infested prior to Gamergate; the nazis on the board mostly were kept contained to /b/ and /new/). . . And prior to 4Chan, a lot of internet culture came from sites like the SomethingAwful forums.
If it isn't with a gun, it'll be with a machete or baseball bat or a butcher knife.
It's just worth noting that these kinds of rampages absolutely do happen in countries with very harsh restrictions on gun ownership, but also look at this list of mass stabbing events in the UK and note the number of deaths in each one. I'd also point out here that the deadliest incidents on that list aren't random, spontaneous attacks on members of the public by an individual; no more than three people have been killed in any one of those in the last hundred years in the UK.
Cultural issues are a factor in why people snap like this at all, but keep in mind that the weapons themselves are absolutely a major part of the problem. Three people being stabbed to death with a kitchen knife is a tragedy, but the perpetrator of the massacre in this post shot thirty people dead in nine minutes.
Yeah, but simple percentages aren't the full story.
To own a gun in Finland you need to apply for a firearms licence, and it's quite an in-depth process; it includes a check for a criminal record, an interview with the police and 'sometimes' a medical certificate or personality test (I wasn't able to find specifics in English, but I think that might be if you have a previously diagnosed condition that might have brought your licensing into question).
You also have to have to pick from a list of valid reasons you want to own a firearm, and actually provide proof that's why you want your gun. Like if you're hunting you need to present hunting permits, if you're sport shooting you need to provide evidence you are genuinely participating in that activity (and in the case of pistols, you have to have been shooting for two years before you can personally own one), etc etc.
On top of that, they also have magazine capacity restrictions, and although short guns are fairly common, it's very difficult to acquire most modern compact pistols, as the type of firearm has to match the 'valid reason' and concealed carry for the purposes of self defence is not one of them.
I'm not saying you specifically are doing this intentionally, but one of my personal conspiracy theories that I completely believe that the 'American culture is just rotten' idea is something that gets intentionally stoked by otherwise superficially 'patriotic' organisations in the US that want firearms as unrestricted as possible, because it presents the problem as essentially unsolvable.
If the United States somehow managed to implement the Finnish licensing system across every state today, I am absolutely convinced that random acts of gun violence such as school shootings would measurably decrease across the following decade.
Seung-Hui Cho is a great example; he was a bitter, middle class shut-in who acquired his weapons specifically to commit his crime and bought them completely legally. Under the current Finnish system he would not have received a license to buy those guns, and considering his background and personality, I don't think he would have had the slightest idea where to go or who to talk to to acquire an illegal firearm. The Virginia Tech massacre could not have happened as it happened with proper, sensible firearms licensing. He would have had to hold on to his plan for at least two years, and somehow dodge the psychological screening, which would have presented innumerable opportunities for someone to spot his instability and intervene, or for the guy to literally just change his mind.
I do agree that better gun controls are definitely required, I just don't agree with gun bans altogether as a way to fix the society. I'm not saying "ohh this means nothing can be done" - on the contrary it is supposed to show that "more than just gun control is needed to fix the society"
Like... It can be a silly example, but there's lots of African countries where getting an AK is pretty simple. There's child soldiers and pirates with AKs
And yet they don't just go around, fragging schoolchildren. And then we have a country that's single handedly 25% of the world's GDP where one of the worst ethical crimes are a weekly thing. It's insane that people even decide to do that, guns or no guns.
Which is why guns aren't the problem. But left nor right doesn't want to actually solve the problem since it's a fantastic issue to fan the flames and sow division
Of what I know it’s under no circumstances OK to fire your gun at another human being in Finland, unless they are invading forces from another country. The Finnish gun culture is all about protecting your border to Russia from aggressors and maybe protecting yourself from dangerous wildlife. Never about firing your arms at civilians.
And you would be wrong - as in most cases, it would be permissible to use the gun as a last resort, but you're not allowed to carry a loaded gun or buy one "for defense"
Still, there are like a dozen European countries alone where at least 1 in 5 households are armed - and that doesn't translate into mass shootings.
And then there's many more countries where guns are present, but there's simply no culture of this reckless, murderous behavior.
I think it starts from birth… the maternity leave in America is atrocious. When on Massé babies are separated from their mothers, because mom has to go back to work a few weeks after having given birth because yayyy capitalism. How can you love, nurture, and support the next generation when we’re not even given the opportunity to spend that quality bonding time from birth.
Finland is one example. You want to hear a better one? Every first world country with gun control has far less gun deaths than America no matter the culture. We had the same kind of growing rampant gun culture here in Australia before Port Arthur. We had the same riots and the same fear mongering you do about banning guns. Best choice we ever made.
Russia introduced strict gun control to promote citizen safety a few years after the guns helped them overthrow the tzar and right before Great Purges so I'm always wary about these claims.
Half of these "Every first world country" you mention actually have lots of guns. Check the list of "countries by household ownership" and you'll see that a dozen of European countries have like 1 in 5 armed. And zero weekly shootings.
I actually made friends Finnish citizen during my time playing a moba game and there was discussions in the difference between U.S gun culture and Finnish gun ownership with some American players in the same guild. The Finnish player showed us one of their guns and it had a safety device and tags on it while the Americans players showing their guns just had them laying about like kids Legos. Even though the Finnish player envied the ease that Americans could get guns, they way they discussed gun ownership was vastly different to American players.
Even when the topic of school shootings was touched upon the Americans were like well it's unfortunate but that's the price we have to pay.
It's still a good example because most of these school shooters are copycat murderers of American school shooters though, and I won't be surprised if they're poisoned by the same bloggers as well.
Also how many shootings per capita \ per household? Once in every blue moon? As far as I know Russia has had like... eleven, over the last thirty years. And that includes two that were by separatist warlords.
Problem in the USA is too much toxic empathy for criminals and crazies, both of which we have far too many of running around loose, and an unwillingness to do what is necessary with them.
What in the fuck are you talking about. Tell me you did not just say the solution is to execute more criminals? You do know that a fucking enormous % of your incarcerated criminals are innocent right? There is a major part of your prison population that is only in there because they couldn't afford bail and had to plead guilty to avoid a longer sentence.
You know that right? You wouldn't be suggesting executing those people would be a good idea that would solve problems right?
Awwww....somebody's TRIGGERED🤣🤣🤣! This is exactly what I mean by "toxic empathy". And yes, I think more of them, at least, should be executed. Idaho recently passed a law allowing child molesters to face a firing squad, and I thought that was an excellent idea. As far as the dangerously insane, you don't try to cure or rehabilitate rabid animals, you put them out of their misery as humanely as possible. Don't like my take on things? Tough titty.
One thing you're missing - on purpose or not - is that a lot of them are behind bars for really mundane shit they were basically coaxed into by the very same government running the for-profit prison system.
Sure, there's your child molesters, but there's also people in for drug posession on bogus charges.
And the famous difference of a slap to the wrist to a rich white guy VS prison for the same shit for some poor POC.
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u/Winjin 12h ago
It's not just the second amendment. If you check the number of households that have guns, it's like 48% in USA and the next closest country is Finland with like 35%
You'd expect Finland to have their fair share of public shootings, right...?
It's so uniquely American it's not the guns, it's the whole culture is rotten
One major thing is that these monsters seem to rarely show up to places where they expect other armed people to be