The war against individual freedoms

[_honorentheos]

Ever watch films from Asia, Markk? They're kinda known for being more permissive of violence than American films. Yet one doesn't see a lot of school shootings in Japan or South Korea. Violent video games? They are pro video game powerhouses.

Can we really infer there is a causation then?

[_EAllusion]

The President of the United States encouraged his followers to beat up people at his rallies and offered to pay for their legal bills. Pear-clutching over violence in video-games is a retread argument from the 1990's that could not more obviously be given in bad faith.

[_MeDotOrg]

What the President wants are local citizens, locally organized and trained, to protect our schools. So we will have a well-regulated militia, necessary for the security of safe schools, protecting our children against the well-regulated militia that is necessary for the security of a free state.

Perhaps a member of the NRA can explain the logic of this position.

[_Markk]

Ever watch films from Asia, Markk? They're kinda known for being more permissive of violence than American films. Yet one doesn't see a lot of school shootings in Japan or South Korea. Violent video games? They are pro video game powerhouses.

Can we really infer there is a causation then?

I think we can...very much so. The movies make thief's and murders heroes. Music that make women tramps and gang life some what cool. Again, guns and other weapons are a tool for the violence...what do you think make these people do what they do here.

[_honorentheos]

What makes people pick up a gun and use it on another person? You could start with something more science-based maybe. Like -
http://www.apa.org/pubs/information/reports/gu ... ntion.aspx

A complex and variable constellation of risk and protective factors makes persons more or less likely to use a firearm against themselves or others. For this reason, there is no single profile that can reliably predict who will use a gun in a violent act. Instead, gun violence is associated with a confluence of individual, family, school, peer, community, and sociocultural risk factors that interact over time during childhood and adolescence. Although many youths desist in aggressive and antisocial behavior during late adolescence, others are disproportionately at risk for becoming involved in or otherwise affected by gun violence. The most consistent and powerful predictor of future violence is a history of violent behavior.

...

What Works: Policies to Reduce Gun Violence

The use of a gun greatly increases the odds that violence will lead to a fatality: This problem calls for urgent action. Firearm prohibitions for high-risk groups — domestic violence offenders, persons convicted of violent misdemeanor crimes, and individuals with mental illness who have been adjudicated as being a threat to themselves or to others — have been shown to reduce violence. The licensing of handgun purchasers, background check requirements for all gun sales, and close oversight of retail gun sellers can reduce the diversion of guns to criminals. Reducing the incidence of gun violence will require interventions through multiple systems, including legal, public health, public safety, community, and health. Increasing the availability of data and funding will help inform and evaluate policies designed to reduce gun violence.


"The most consistent and powerful predictor of future violence is a history of violent behavior."

[_EAllusion]

Ever watch films from Asia, Markk? They're kinda known for being more permissive of violence than American films. Yet one doesn't see a lot of school shootings in Japan or South Korea. Violent video games? They are pro video game powerhouses.

Can we really infer there is a causation then?

I think we can...very much so. The movies make thief's and murders heroes. Music that make women tramps and gang life some what cool. Again, guns and other weapons are a tool for the violence...what do you think make these people do what they do here.

If only there was an extensive body of research on this question.

[_EAllusion]

One of my favorite quotes I've seen in the past few years was someone saying that Fox News did to our parent's generation what they worried video games would do to our generation.

Just a perfect observation that yields rich returns the more you think about it. It's not that media can influence people's thoughts or bend them towards a desire for violence (we have a case in point in cable news), but that the causative relationship between violence depicted in fictional video games and film has a tenuous connection to violent behavior and easily subsumed by other factors. It's an effort to scapegoat something other than guns.

And it could not more obviously be so because people who outright inflame violence in the media are the one's making the argument.

Wayne LaPierre is behind this messaging:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/na ... 2de0d54a86

[_honorentheos]

One of my favorite quotes I've seen in the past few years was someone saying that Fox News did to our parent's generation what they worried video games would do to our generation.

Just a perfect observation that yields rich returns the more you think about it. It's not that media can influence people's thoughts or bend them towards a desire for violence (we have a case in point in cable news), but that the causative relationship between violence depicted in fictional video games and film has a tenuous connection to violent behavior and easily subsumed by other factors. It's an effort to scapegoat something other than guns.

And it could not more obviously be so because people who outright inflame violence in the media are the one's making the argument.

Wayne LaPierre is behind this messaging:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/na ... 2de0d54a86

I was at a doctor's appointment yesterday waiting for the doctor and overheard another patient announce to someone next to him, "Do you know who Maxine Waters is? Look at this stupid thing she said." (paraphrasing, of course.)

He then read some quote about security guards and why she didn't need to carry a gun. The person he was talking to said something about, "What an idiot. She sure gets how the rest of us live." Someone else said something equally derogatory. What none of them said was, "Hey, I wonder if the source for that is reliable?" Looking at them, they fit the Fox News demographic of 60+ years old, white, middle class, and apparently just savvy enough to read Facebook posts but not savvy enough to use Google to check a suspicious source.

Turns out, it is a fake Twitter account that Snopes.com has an article on because it started circulating after the Parkland shooting:

https://www.snopes.com/maxine-waters-gu ... now-tweet/

So, thanks for what may be the best quote I've read in a while. Angry, afraid, and blinded sounds pretty accurate.

It also gets at a real issue with modern media that Markk isn't talking about which affects our liberties, too. That being, there are people on both sides who want to see people with whom they disagree shut down but aren't willing or possibly capable of engaging in civil debate anymore. Far easier to feed one's biases, and while a fake Twitter account is a silly example there are far more serious technological tools out there that can make it very hard to understand if someone really is the source of something attributed to them. We're a blink away from seeing videos that are fakes in both speech and movement but indistinguishable from authentic video footage. Are we ready for this?

[_Kishkumen]

According to LaPierre, nobody proposing more gun control is really interested in stopping gun violence, or at least that's a secondary aim, whereas the primary aim is to destroy individual freedoms. What is this guy smoking?

I don't know, but I sincerely doubt that our weekend warriors and militia nuts could stand up against our own federal armed forces.

[Alf'Omega]

I don't know, but I sincerely doubt that our weekend warriors and militia nuts could stand up against our own federal armed forces.

Isn't this the crux of the issue? Who thinks the handgun in the bedside table (or even their AR-15) is going to save them from the US military? Don't we have the best spangled military in the world?

ETA: And it wouldn't surprise me if a great percentage of the most avid gun proponents are also people who think we need to spend more money to improve our military.