• Grayox
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    11 months ago

    Anon learns about Material Conditions.

  • finkrat@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    “Guy with shit circumstances decides to buy a gun and decides to go somewhere with the gun and decides to shoot undeserving people with the gun, it’s society’s fault”

    Way to blame the victim anon. No, this was his decision. I know folks who have life shitting all over them and it doesn’t make them want to kill children and families.

    • Serinus
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      11 months ago

      It’s both. Even terrible people with something to lose are less likely to throw it all away.

      If this guy makes $35k a year at dollar general, he probably doesn’t go on a murder spree.

      But you could also just not be an asshole. Why go after random people instead of someone who actually helps cause the bullshit?

      • specfreq@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        You’re right, we should be targeting the bourgeois, aristocrats and ultra rich with our killing sprees. What we need are eco terrorists, not senseless killings.

          • sock@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            the guy wants “good” terrorist he advocates while wiping the doritos off his desk and washing down his everclear with sugar free juice.

    • cynar@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Both apply. Yes, he ultimately chose to do it. However society shaped and funneled him into that position. It’s not a binary decision between individual and systematic, both can apply. In this case, social systems failed and put a large number of people in a bad situation with an apparent easy way out. Almost all then chose not to go on a killing spree. Unfortunately, “almost all” is “all”. Some will make the bad choice, when put in that position.

      As a society, we can’t change individual choices. What we can do however is change the framework those choices are made in. If we aim to put fewer people in that position, then fewer will make the wrong choice, and we will all be safer for it.

    • sock@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      society isnt you or i society is the general way things are and yes society is the cause of shootings. mental health is a direct measure of society.

      society fights tooth and nail to have guns be super easy to get.

      society also fights tooth and nail to keep (mental) healthcare behind an impossible wall.

      so now we are generating mentally ill people that have easy access to guns. multiply that by the internal bias and bigotry you were raised with and many millions of potential offenders. boom you have a shooting every freaking day.

      yes the shooter is shitty and should be killed or in jail but society is at fault for the shooting even ever coming close to occuring.

    • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
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      11 months ago

      You only said that some people have a lower threshold.

      You guys are groomed in social=bad.

  • Yerbouti
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    11 months ago

    Dont glamourize mass murderers.Dont even publish their names, publish the names of the victims.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    …with ready access to guns.

    So much commentary here focusing on societal ills, but even in other countries with lots of poverty and shit social services they don’t have individuals committing random mass murders like us because they don’t have a collection of high capacity personal arms. There’s plenty of people in other countries that have commonality with his life, yet they don’t commit mass murder. Yeah, shootings do happen elsewhere…but not like in the US, and the difference is access to firearms.

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I hate the argument people make sometimes, “Anything can be a weapon, I could go around stabbing people with a pencil if I really wanted to. Even if you banned guns, it wouldn’t matter.” Yeah, except you can’t kill dozens of people within a few minutes with a pencil. We’ve got huge problems with economic disparity, a quiet epidemic of mental health disorders with little means to help the people that need it, coupled with ridiculously easy access to high-powered firearms in our country. There will never be enough “good people with guns” to protect the world. We need to reduce access to gun ownership to prevent mentally unbalanced people from having such powerful weapons at their disposal for when they eventually snap (since they’ll never have access to treatment), but that’s just a pipe dream at this point in time in America.

      • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I had believed in the good guy with a gun idea until a citizen trying to stop a shooter by shooting back got himself shot by the police. Then I imagined myself in the position of the police in that scenario. It’s not neat and tidy. It gets worse as I imagine more people getting involved with their own firearms.

        In a small space where everyone can see everyone, the aggressor is clear. I think of the guy who tried to rob a gun store. Everyone there hears what he said and sees how he’s acting. As soon as someone walks in without seeing the situation unfold, it becomes messy really fast.

        • paddirn@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          “Any is too many” - obviously we don’t want anyone murdered, but good luck doing anything to completely stop that. People kill for any number of reasons, it’s happened since the beginning of time. Someone says something under his breath and gets killed waiting in a fast food line by somebody they’ve never met before. A jealous ex-lover shows up at a party and stabs their ex to death. A calculating spouse poisons their SO to collect insurance money. A soldier sees someone wearing the enemy uniform and shoots. Someone goes off the deep end and shoots up a music festival and kills 58 people in a matter of minutes. A troubled teen goes into a school and kills dozens of kindergarteners in their classrooms. All those are tragedies and seemingly daily occurrences, but the low-hanging fruit here is quantity. Saving more people in less amount of time is better. Utopia can wait, people need helped now.

            • paddirn@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              One of the problems with arguments made by gun control opponents is that they concoct these ridiculous all-or-nothing scenarios. Like, we obviously can’t enact any sort of solution unless it’s a Magic Bullet that universally solves every problem ever that humanity has ever faced. If a solution doesn’t solve world hunger, prevent accidental overdoses, car accidents, acid showers, lightning strikes, or cure cancer, then obviously it’s doomed to failure.

              Or even attempting to do ANYTHING at all about the problem is just the first step in jack-booted Government thugs kicking down you front door, dragging your grandmother out, raping her in the street and then shooting your kids and your dogs… for reasons. OR, we can’t talk about gun control solutions because obviously we’ll start illegalizing knives, acid (?), and cars next, just like they’ve done in all the countries of the world that have gun control, like those hellholes in Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada. OR, if anybody anywhere dies from a shooting after enacting gun control legislation, then obviously it was a failure and a waste of time, why did we even bother?

    • LazyBane@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      In the UK knife crime is a big issue for those in poverty or those in struggling cities. Having access to weapons of course increases risks of people dying ot those weapons, but removing guns isn’t going to just convince everyone trying to lash out to just lie down and suffer in silence.

      I don’t live in a contry with civilan access to guns, and I don’t live in a situation where I feel the need to protect myself with weapons, so I’m not gonna stake a claim in the gun control debate. But if you ban every weapon ever conceivable, without addressing why people are becoming violent to begin with, people will just result to using their own hands (or perhaps more realistically, going above the legal means. Like with Shinzo Abe’s assassination).

      • PizzaMan@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        At least with a knife, you can’t mow down a room full of people. Here in the U.S. dozens of people can be killed in a short time by a single person due to guns. We give them out like candy.

        Both access to guns (force multiplier) and the underlying issue (poverty, lack of social mobility, etc) need to be addressed.

          • AzureKevin@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            It is about the weapon. If someone wanted to inflict a lot of damage, they would use bombs. That has happened several times in the past but doesn’t compare to the number of mass shootings. Why? Because guns are simply just plentiful and easy to get, and too many apologetics keep allowing them to be plentiful. It really is that simple. Yes it doesn’t fix society’s underlying issues but that is a MUCH harder problem to solve than simply getting rid of (as many) guns (as possible), or at least not just allow so mamy people to own them willy nilly.

            The goal is to drastically reduce the number of innocent lives being taken ASAP, not to argue about weapons or social ills or all of this other nonsense.

            • Jeremy [Iowa]@midwest.social
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              11 months ago

              Because guns are simply just plentiful and easy to get, and too many apologetics keep allowing them to be plentiful.

              You seem to be close to a moment of understanding here but not quite getting it. You seem to recognize that there are other tools available to affect such disastrous outcomes we’d be doing nothing to address, but to also pretend that there’s no indication nor chance anyone would use any of these other tools.

              You seem to recognize the futility of the whack-a-mole game while recognizing its existence.

              Yes it doesn’t fix society’s underlying issues but that is a MUCH harder problem to solve than simply getting rid of (as many) guns (as possible), or at least not just allow so mamy people to own them willy nilly.

              It really isn’t. How much effort do you believe will be required to bring about an amendment to the constitution of the United States?

              How much less effort will be required to bring about simple legislative changes? By simple comparison of the two vectors of change, one of them is unquestionably easier than the other. Spoiler: It isn’t undoing the 2nd amendment.

              Interestingly enough, you seem to double-down on the previous recognition the problem - pressures toward mass violence - would be left unaddressed but with the vast majority of options for mass harm still very much present and ignored.

              The goal is to drastically reduce the number of innocent lives being taken ASAP, not to argue about weapons or social ills or all of this other nonsense.

              Which is more effective: A change which is quite impossible to bring about, or a change which can be brought about with some difficulty and compromise?

              Which is more effective: A change which removes one of unbounded options to bring about a given end, or a change which reduces the count of people seeking to bring about a given end with any tool available?

              We both know you know the answer.

              • Dkcecil91@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Lol, gl with that. In the meantime other people are still allowed to set more reasonable and feasible goalposts.

            • Jeremy [Iowa]@midwest.social
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              11 months ago

              If only there were other factors which could impact the highlighted systemic issues… perhaps Canada’s notable single-payer healthcare system, social safety nets, etc. impacting the desperation and providing help?

        • LazyBane@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          That not the point. Ideally we just wouldn’t have people doing this to begin with, right?

          • hswolf@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            He typed It poorly, but I think his point was: Try to kill 30 children in a school with a knife.

            If the person wants to kill, they will kill, but a gun (a big gun even) will make this task, orders of magnitude easier.

              • hswolf@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                The point isn’t If it’s bad or not, of course it’s all bad.

                But If I had to notify 30 families of their deceased parents over 1 family, the choice is obvious.

                You are right the guns won’t shoot anyone by themselves, but they’re very much an easy access to whoever wants to mass kill people.

                Trying to solve people’s heads is a long term effort, and taking away guns is a short term bandaid. The thing is people are dying Now, you need to save people now, while simultaneously trying to solve the root problem.

                If you’re thinking only talking to people Now, will help anyone, we’re in for many more kill streaks

      • Sodis@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        Yeah, you treat the symptom, but in an effective way. It’s called mass shooting, because so many people die, when guns are involved. You do not have this, if there is someone trying the same with a knife. Banning guns is a band aid during the time necessary to fix the underlying problem.

          • Sodis@feddit.de
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            11 months ago

            There will still be kids slipping through. They also say it themselves:

            Too often in politics it becomes an either-or proposition. Gun control or mental health. Our research says that none of these solutions is perfect on its own. We have to do multiple things at one time and put them together as a comprehensive package. People have to be comfortable with complexity and that’s not always easy.

            • Jeremy [Iowa]@midwest.social
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              11 months ago

              There will still be kids slipping through. They also say it themselves:

              Indeed.

              So, what’s more effective?

              Reducing the scope of those seeking to commit such atrocities to a small fraction of those now, or hoping for improvement via symptom whack-a-mole?

    • frippa
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      11 months ago

      If you want to ban guns you need to ban metals and CNCs, will buying a CNC require a gun license and a clear criminal record?

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Always the extremes with you, trying to make everything zero sum or a binary choice. There’s no room for reason and moderation if your go-to is pounding the table with the nuclear option every time.

        • frippa
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          11 months ago

          I’m saying, if you prohibit somebody from buying a gun, I’d they’re really dedicated they can easily build it themselves. Do you ban steel because 0.0001% of the population could bypass gun restrictions?

          • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Keep trying bro. Again, the hyperbole. There is no perfect solution. No, you don’t enact absurd bans. But you don’t make perfect the enemy of good enough by saying an imperfect solution isn’t an acceptable solution. I’m not interested in discussing your CNC or steel hyperbole.

  • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    We can’t have gun control - guns aren’t the problem - people are.

    Oh good - you support the creation of strong social safety nets, and free access to mental health care, right?

    You support the creation of strong social safety nets, and free access to mental health care, right?

  • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
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    11 months ago

    Had me nodding in agreement until that last line.

    Cruz’s Crime is not “100% society’s fault.” Cruz literally and figuratively pulled that trigger. At best maybe a 50:50, but to completely absolve Cruz of any wrongdoing is asinine.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I don’t think that the blame assigned is in the literal sense I think it is in the philosophical sense.

      Meaning the chain of events that led here had many MANY interruption points where society could have prevented this from escalating. There is no 1 person to blame for this entire thing, it’s a shared societal burden.

      It’s essentially the Swiss Cheese Model for society and social outbursts.

      Edit: I’m not saying what happened wasn’t wrong, I’m saying is that we can prevent this shit, and we keep failing over and over.

      • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        What I find weird about this is how unbalanced people assign blame. A white young male mass shooter: absolutely society’s fault.

        When anybody else does something bad, the internet is much less forgiving.

        Take an incredibly tame example as comparison: Amber Heard. The internet hates that person, although her life was shit and she isn’t even a murderer. I’ve never ever seen someone say it’s society’s fault that she acted like a douche.

        Or take another mass shooter: Andrew Bing, who was a young black man and killed 6. You don’t have people on communities like 4chan, Lemmy and Reddit falling all over themselves blaming society and discussing his tragic life.

        It does come off a lot as if the average person online, has a much easier time to sympathise with some people. And in consequence they give these people much more leeway than others.

    • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world
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      11 months ago

      I completely agree. However, if we’re talking about solutions, blaming someone like this doesn’t get us anywhere, and it certainly won’t prevent another similar tragedy.

      The people interested in actually solving this problem aren’t wasting their time on the motives of the shooters. They are all aberrations, but when the number of aberrations starts rising, that tells you there’s a problem in the system, and treating the symptoms won’t make it go away.

      • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
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        11 months ago

        It will prevent a similar tragedy by blaming him because that involves locking him up so he can’t do it again.

        • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          You’re missing the point when people say it won’t solve future issues. Yes, lock the perpetrator up (ignoring the issues with the penal system in the first place), that’s a no brainier. But locking up that person and placing all the blame at their feet doesn’t do anything for the other people in very similar situations.

            • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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              11 months ago

              The person you were talking to was making a broader societal point. Placing the blame for this whole situation, which is the fruit of many of the failings of society, just enacted through a single man, and saying we’re good 'cause that boogeyman is dead or in prison does NOTHING to address the root causes, the actual problems. That’s the point you’re missing.

              • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
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                11 months ago

                I understand exactly what they were trying to say.

                Unlike them, I’m not making a broader point, I’m not in a larger discussion of societal reform. Attempting to shift this conversation to that is a fault. If you scroll through this thread I’ve been extremely consistently saying that Cruz bares responsibility for his actions and condemning him does serve a vital, albeit very disheartening, purpose for all of us.

                If you think about it from my perspective it seems that the only purpose of talking about the faults of society in the context of my statements would be to detract from Cruz’s guilt, which as I stated previously is asinine.

                • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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                  11 months ago

                  You’re painting a false dichotomy, though. Both of these things can be true at the same time, and in fact are. It does everyone more good to accept that yes, Cruz did a bad thing and should be held accountable, and to accept that, yes, society at large has a hand to play in this.

  • dcat@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    the child who is not embraced by its village will burn it down just to feel its warmth

  • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I mean yeah society has a role to play in this but there are millions of.people who are in or have gone through this same situation without murdering a bunch of people

    • cynar@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      If 1 in a million people will go on a killing spree, when driven to rock bottom, then you would expect to have a few, if you drive millions of people to that position.

      Victorian England introduced various social safety nets not primarily out of goodness, but out of cost. It was actually cheaper to just feed the starving, rather than stopping them stealing for food, and punishing them afterwards. The fact it improved the lives of the downtrodden was just a convenient positive.

    • DahGangalang@infosec.pub
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      11 months ago

      I think this post intends to convey that society has done those people dirty too and that we shouldn’t wait until those “millions of people who are in…this same situation” turn into shooters before doing something.

    • OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      Assigning blame does nothing. It’d be great if potential murders would stop and think “hey maybe murder is wrong. Maybe other people have solver similar problems without murdering anyone!” But that’s not going to happen.

    • hglman
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      11 months ago

      And yet those ppl are now dead. So advocating for any position other than the one which removes the possibility of people making the choice to kill others is to support those deaths. Which is to say to support the status quo in the USA is to support the deaths of these people.

  • HunterBidensLapDog@infosec.pub
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    11 months ago

    No. You’ve just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia. Most of us don’t mass murder with machine guns.

    That only happens in America because you’ve chosen to elect people who make sure crazy people can exercise your Constitutional right to carry machine guns and stand your ground when King Charles comes on your property or you carry your emotional support machine guns to a protest. That’s not “society’s” fault. It’s every single Republican MAGA protect the second amendment voter.

    • rishado@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You’ve just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia.

      What the actual fuck are you talking about?

    • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      most people on Earth outside of American suburbia

      Inside. You mean inside of American suburbia, the depressing, isolating, boring American suburbia. People in the first world outside of America have social nets and help from the society if they’re on the downswing. People in first world go to therapist when they feel bad about circumstances of their lives, not into sporting shop to buy a gun.
      But you’re completely right, the situation when people can go to a random shop and buy a gun is fucking insane.

    • daltotron@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      you can’t acquire an automatic weapon, or “machine gun”, in the US without either an FFL, or buying an expensive as fuck and extremely rare automatic gun from pre-1986. You might see firearms with fire rates similar to automatic weapons as a result of illegal modifications, like that of the bump stock, but there are also less reversible modifications someone might end up doing. Anyways that’s more like a theoretical, really stupid correction for me to make, because it’s kind of up in the air as to whether or not automatic weapons would even be more effective if you wanted to kill a lot of people, as military doctrine generally employs them (full auto) as suppression or cover fire, making active zones of danger which enemies can’t pass through or fire from, rather than for the use of killing people. Though, the military doesn’t really tend to kill large unarmed groups of people, or, they prefer to do that with drone strikes, anyways. You don’t really care about any of that, though, probably.

      I would also like to posit that probably america has a unique combination of factors which spurn on violence. Insane amounts of wealth disparity, probably only comparable to some places in the middle east, if that, but also a sense of entitlement towards middle class living, aka the “american dream”, which creates a kind of scorn and spite in the american mind when that middle class ideal is denied, or revealed as false. The way that these ideologies work is that they say that X is entitled to middle class living, that they deserve it, but that Y minority or Y oppressed group is in the way.

      Also, these mass shootings, mass shootings of this specific type, tend to be relatively rare. Or at least, not as big of a problem as the media would have you believe, relative to: the vast majority of firearm violence, which primarily happens with handguns, and is related to gang violence (this category includes shootings by the police). Which is quite obviously related to poverty, and the protection of drugs as a high-value good that obviously can’t be protected by the actual government. So you see a local monopoly of force evolve taking advantage of the poor in order to bring themselves to a more economically workable position, yadda yadda, I’m sure you’ve heard that story before. And then on top of that you have handgun suicide comprising somewhere between half and a third of all gun deaths (I can’t quite remember).

      All that considered, in combination with a lack of political will to get rid of guns, for somewhere around half the population, I’d probably make the prescription that you would see a better drop in violence from the legalization, or decriminalization, of drugs, universal mental healthcare, rectifying economic inequality, and of course, “common sense” gun laws, which would probably mostly apply to screenings for mental illness, primarily depression, but also conspiratorial thinking. The latter there, “common sense” gun laws, I think is agreeable to the majority of the population.

    • Neil
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      11 months ago

      deleted by creator

      • FluorideMind@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        You may want to adjust your term “assault rifles” to “scary black rifles.”

        Assault rifles are a type of machine gun, to be an assault rifle it must have select fire, semi and full/burst.

        The second wasn’t drafted only for protection, but also for government oversight.

      • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The “sad” fact is that most people outside of the US don’t know the difference, because outside of perhaps a hunting store, or rarely seeing armed police in airports/during police incidents, most people have never seen a gun.

        • Klear@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          Also everybody living outside USA is dirt poor woth zero prospects and low IQ apparently.

  • Someology@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    There are also millions of people with intellectual challenges and horrid childhoods who do NOT go out and murder people.

    • ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      People react differently to being abused by people and society for years and years, until they have every last ounce of hope drained from them.

      • GreenM@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yes but it doesn’t mean it’s excusable or justifiable to murder innocent people.

        • Pogbom@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Damn another strawman! He didn’t say “ehh let’s forgive him, he had it rough”. It’s just an explanation for why it probably happened.

          • Djtecha@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            They claim it’s 100% societies fault. So even while trying to defend they remove all agency from this guy. Yes, let’s work to improve systems to give everyone a better shake, but don’t discard his own horrible actions.

          • GreenM@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Post itself sugests it’s society fault not his as if making him innocent. If someone is strawman it is you for picking things out of context.

            • Pogbom@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              He is morally innocent though which is the point, even if he’s criminally guilty. The strawman is hearing “we can’t be surprised and we can still feel bad for him” and equating that to saying “he should be let go!”. He can still be guilty for his actions even though it’s almost entirely society’s fault.

        • LazyBane@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Nobody is justifying anything. If we want to stop these things from happening we need to actually understand why they happen.

          • GreenM@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Post itself suggests its somehow excusable I disagree.
            To me makes sense to stea money but to kill other just for sake of killing them is closer to serial killer thinking than desperation .

      • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        No the deciding factor is to decide at some point that others are supposedly at fault for your problems and that they deserve to be hurt for it.

        • Cypher@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          others are supposedly at fault

          So you’re saying it’s his fault his mother drank and that he was abused by his foster parents?

  • orphiebaby@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Okay, let me try this.

    • Mother smoked and did drugs when pregnant with me
    • Born with autism, mild cerebral palsy, medical issues
    • Mom heavily neglected and abused me
    • Lived in many foster, adoptive homes, boarding schools, went to many schools and extreme right-wing churches
    • In all of them, was either physically, emotionally, or sexually abused
    • Abandoned as adult
    • Joined USAF, medical discharge out of tech school when they realized their mistake
    • Lived in homeless shelters and then adult foster care
    • My name online is usually some form of the word “orphan”

    So what am I doing? Well, I’m poor and on disability and I’ve struggled to manage my emotions, and I’ve had to grow like anybody. But I’m an ex-Christian theist, empathetic liberal, and have never done any crime. I spent a lot of years in social programs and with social workers. I live in an apartment now with two best friends. I’m writing a science fantasy novel I hope to change the world with, sharing a lot of what I experienced and what I learned. I wrote a symphonic rock and power ballad soundtrack for it.

    “The Solemn Dream” Blurb:

    After a very unhappy childhood, “Solemn” dies at 25 and wakes up in the space-age afterlife of Heleia, where everyone’s home planet is chosen by the seraphs— demigod social workers and keepers of the peace— based on that person’s emotional and ethical maturity. Here, Solemn chooses to become a young child again, hoping to heal and to finally find a loving family.

    Jessi Vargas is a forever-19 bully who lives on Nemesis, the planet for those who don’t care that they’re harmful. Sick of being surrounded by terrible people, she prepares to leave the planet— even though she may not be worthy.

    Lu Montsely is a kind and patient humanitarian who hides a terrible past. After a century of effort, she is almost ready to ascend to the utopian world of Themis to join her loving husband. Lu mentors Solemn and Jessi as her final test, and— along with their wise and humorous helper android Iota— they form a small family on Eleos.

    But many do not believe that criminals deserve second chances. When the seraphs discover mass-produced weapons, they need the aid of Solemn’s new family to investigate. Solemn soon finds themselves the recipient of powerful abilities that give them a unique role in the growing conflict. And before long, Solemn and family are not only fighting to become happier, kinder, and greater— but also for the fate of the entire Helian afterlife.


    …I don’t think that having lived through shit means you need to be a shit person. Sure, some misfortunate people are going to have personalities that push them towards being shit people, but… those people were likely going to be shit people anyway, unless people guided them a little more carefully.

    • clearleaf@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      That’s all nice but not everybody is you and I don’t think we can reasonably expect every single person to be you. This is actually pretty close to the “homeless people just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps” mentality.

      • orphiebaby@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        No it’s not? Not being a shithead is a completely different expectation from becoming financially stable?

        • clearleaf@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Are you even thankful for the socialized support you got? Where do you think you would be right now without disability payments? Or your friends? Do you think you’d be equally mentally healthy right now?

      • ahornsirup@sopuli.xyz
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        11 months ago

        You can absolutely reasonably expect people to not go on a murder spree, no matter their situation.

  • HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nl
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    11 months ago

    The people dismissing this somewhat miss the bigger picture, that statistically this had to happen because there are so many like him there.

    Though I’m not sure why this guy calls the act ‘fantastic’, I doubt even the shooter thought what he did was fantastic, unless I’m out of the loop…

    • cynar@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Notorious (as a subgroup of famous) would have been a better word choice. They got the point across reasonably well otherwise, however.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      I think by fantastic the 4channer meant “newsworthy”, or “that really affects people’s lives”. The chances of someone with that kind of background doing something fantastic in a good sense is really small

    • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      In this context I read fantastic in a morally indifferent sense, as in it set him apart from others and allowed him to leave an impression on the world, albeit a hugely harmful one.

    • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      Problematic is that some people try to frame it as if his problems were the cause and reason for his actions. While obviously the point where people turn into mass shooters is when they decide to hate and blame (a specific group of) other people for it.

      There is far from enough help for people who are struggling, but to prevent mass shootings the media probably shouldn’t talk about them this much and we need to look at people much closer who turn their hatred outwards.

    • Floey@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Fantastic has the word fantasy as its root, but the meaning has shifted and that usage has fallen out of favor a bit. The same happened to terrific, which is an even greater oddity, terror being the root. The act was both fantastic and terrific but not in the most common contemporary usage of those words.

  • Striker@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Mixed feelings on this.

    Yes, I think he was dealt a very bad hand and that undoubtedly played a factor in why he but what he did but At the end of the day Cruz still choose to do what he did. That’s why I don’t like the “100% society’s fault” no, a person still made a choice. We can recognise what kind of dysfunctional people society can create while also not absolving them either.

    Just adding cause I know someone will misinterprete my comment if I don’t. Yes I think gun laws in the US are in dire need of being reformed and that the US desperately needs to improve its safety nets but at the end of the day we need to acknowledge personal agency in these situations as well.

  • mycatiskai@lemmy.one
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    11 months ago

    There are too many shootings to keep track. Which shooting was this? A few days ago or a month ago or a year ago.

  • LazyBane@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Nooooo! We can’t help people who are in a shit situation in life, that’s communism …because rightwingers said so! And that’s baaaad …b-because it just is okay?

    Tax money should only go towards private corporations that don’t make our lifes better! This person was a bad person, and I can’t stomach thinking my tax money could have gone towards getting them the help they needed and completely averting the horrible things they did! My tax is much better going to the military industrial complex so we can help bomb kids even better!

    I for one think it’s billaint that western societies are set up to regularlly leave people behind with no way to escape their situation! And when these poeple act up instead of just sitting around to die a slow painful, but conveniently quiet death, we should act like their motivations are completely incompressible! Because we all know hte alternative is to change a society that we have thrived in, and then we might not thrive as much!