Talk Hearts Daily News Thread

[Cheeky Gnando’s]

Oh shi-

America is fucked, like proper fucked. The standard excuses for doing nothing about this will be trotted out and life will go on until the next one, though.

[Del-icious]

Fucking white people.

[Cam]

Sandy Hook revealed that killing children was bearable to Americans; thus ending pretty much any hope of gun control.

[I.J]

Don't worry guys, no one's shot me yet.

[The Great Khali]

Don't worry guys, no one's shot me yet.

I would be gutted tbh.

Would take away the chance of a flying car smashing you in the face during the hurricane.

[Del-icious]

I would be gutted tbh.

Would take away the chance of a flying car smashing you in the face during the hurricane.

[Fire Doinks]

Sounds like an utterly broken and lonely individual, school shooters are always the same kind of person. They feel neglected and abused by society and then they go and shoot a bunch of people as an expression of how they feel inside.

America has a bigger problem with mental health than it does with guns and these shootings year after year are such a clear sign that this is the case. There is something so fundamentally wrong with society that these people feel this is a logical course of action or that they're mentally backed in to some kind of corner and that this is how they manifest their sadness and anger.

[Mikey]

American society and culture is fucking disgusting.

[Cheeky Gnando’s]

Sandy Hook revealed that killing children was bearable to Americans; thus ending pretty much any hope of gun control.

Anything is bearable as long as they have their guns. From my cold dead hands amirite This is a country where families of Sandy Hook victims speaking out in favour of increased gun control was described as "emotional blackmail" and "a publicity stunt" by conservative outlets like the National Review.

I just can't get my head around the mentality that still insists guns make the USA a safer place.

[Mr A]

Anything is bearable as long as they have their guns. From my cold dead hands amirite  This is a country where families of Sandy Hook victims speaking out in favour of increased gun control was described as "emotional blackmail" and "a publicity stunt" by conservative outlets like the National Review.

I just can't get my head around the mentality that still insists guns make the USA a safer place.

It's because you don't understand it.

They need guns so they can form an armed militia to rise up against Black Osama and other tyrannical democrat leaders.

[The Great Khali]

Sounds like an utterly broken and lonely individual, school shooters are always the same kind of person. They feel neglected and abused by society and then they go and shoot a bunch of people as an expression of how they feel inside.

America has a bigger problem with mental health than it does with guns and these shootings year after year are such a clear sign that this is the case. There is something so fundamentally wrong with society that these people feel this is a logical course of action or that they're mentally backed in to some kind of corner and that this is how they manifest their sadness and anger.

Good post.

[Fire Doinks]

It is a totally different culture and when these shootings happen within a totally different part of the country (geographically and politically) to the areas where gun lobbies are strong of course there is a degree of detachment.

It's incomparable to Europe, many Americans sincerely believe their right to bare arms is the final and most tangable guarentee of their rights as a citizen. The level of state force that would be required to enforce adaquate levels of gun control would probably make these gun rights advocates feel entirely vindicated in their stance and would respond with violence rather than consent.

Each time something like this happens gun control comes up which is a horribly intractable argument in American society, and it diverts everyone away from the real discussion which is what are the extent of the USA's mental health problems and what is happening to young people that makes a significant number of them either consider or follow through with brutal acts of mass murder? To put it down solely to the availability of guns is wrong and ignores the fact that so many Americans simply see things differently you'll never make progress if that's the focus of your attention.

[Fire Doinks]

Good post.

Thx m80

[Cheeky Gnando’s]

It's because you don't understand it.

They need guns so they can form an armed militia to rise up against Black Osama and other tyrannical democrat leaders.

Well, obv they need to get the old Minutemen band back together to crush the British dictatorship with their muskets and hunting rifles. And obv the slave owning m, genocidal, racist top boeys the Founding Fathers wanted ownership of guns, and since they never did anything wrong or held anachronistic opinions, you've got to have your assault rifle to protect your Second Amendment right and your goddamn country.



But yeah, it's utter insanity. New York brought in the NY SAFE Act a couple of years ago and it didn't even introduce radical reforms - just increased sentences for gun crime, background checks for ammo sales and a limit on magazine sizes - but shootings reduced by about 350 incidents (about a quarter) from the previous year. What happened next? The Republican state senate forced through legislation to roll half of it back and the gun lobby appealed to the Supreme Court, just like they did when Chicago banned handguns. The amazing thing is, people with serious mental health issues can't fucking shoot rooms full of kids if they don't get access to guns. Not sure what the correlation is, but I read that guns make the USA safer so it can't be that

The above isn't a response to Dank's last post, which he posted as I was typing this.

[Fire Doinks]

Of course it's a statement of fact that if someone can't get a gun then they can't shoot people with it, but that fails to accept the reality that Americans from all parts of the political spectrum have views on the right to bare arms that will unquestionably come in to conflict with aspects of these reforms, or even if they don't will see it as an erosion of their constitutional rights.

I'm not saying this is correct, but I am saying that it's the way it is and impassioned speeches after shootings are likely to have the opposite of the desired effect on the very people that the message needs to target. That's why I firmly believe that getting the American discourse on to the area of mental health is critical and that bashing the gun lobby won't produce results.

That is a response to your post Begbie but not a direct comment on what you're saying, more how I feel that the discussion over the coming days and weeks in the US won't produce any progress. Watch the comments from the next Democrat and Republican candidates play to each side (which always happens in the primaries) reinforce what I'm saying that the argument both sides appear to want to have is intractable. Maybe that's because the mental heath question is far to big and complex for any candidate to take an intelligible position on.

[CritchSmile]

Some good posts here lads.

As an aside, the advice the boy in the video was giving was awfy like the advice acey was giving to a poster in another thread regarding being accepted by the THF.

[Cheeky Gnando’s]

Just typed up a reply there and wifi dipped out, lost the lot

I get what you're saying regarding political realities Dank, and I don't disagree that mental health treatment and dialogue surrounding the issue at all levels in the US is completely insufficient. Quite obviously, there is a profile the majority of these mass shooters fit into, and mental health is an important aspect of that. My view, though, is that to focus on mental health as the critical issue is to overlook the huge numbers of gun crimes perpetrated by people with no history, diagnosis or sign of mental illness, and doesn't take into account research which has suggested a correlation between mental illness and violence, but not a particularly strong one. An interesting article from The New Yorker below which goes into some of the key issues and references research into the correlation:

http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-k...n-violence

An important point raised there is that no amount of improvement in mental health services/treatment would prevent one of these events if it was the first diagnosable act by the perpetrator. Jaylen Fryberg is a perfect example of this. I believe that access and availability of guns is the single biggest factor both perpetuating gun culture in the USA and in creating the conditions for these massacres. I can say what I like on this one with impunity, because I'm just some cretin off a god forsaken corner of the Hearts supporting Internet and the gun lobby don't care that I think they're retards. I'm not ignoring the political reality when I attack them either, not at all - I'm attacking that political reality as being completely absurd in my opinion. That's why we will see the playing to the gallery over the coming days as you say, because both sides are now so entrenched and (particularly the pro-gun side) are so unwilling to compromise that very little will happen. Politically, the lines have been drawn in the sand, so that virtually any attempts at increasing gun control will be fought against and blocked at every turn, as they see it as the first step down the road to the ultimate goal of the anti-gun lobby - a full ban. So I totally agree with you on the real politik, I just reject that reality as being the way it has to be.

To illustrate that, the fairly modest gun controls Obama put to Congress a couple of years ago were supported by 92% of the polled public, whilst the majority were not in favour of an outright ban as I would be - so in my eyes there is still room for progress to be made, without any fundamental erosion of the 200-odd year old bill of rights and without taking people's guns away from them. However, the decline of bipartisanship in recent years has meant that Congress is even more impotent in dealing with the issue than in the past. The problem for me is, you can't ever prevent all violent crime, and with that comes the fact you certainly can't prevent gun crime when there is a wide availability of guns, particularly for people who really shouldn't have access to them. That IMO is the primary concern, rather than mental health. But that said, it is an issue that presents a huge challenge.

[Fire Doinks]

Can't disagree with anything you've said there, I don't sympathise with the attitude of pro-gun people in the US but I think I do have an understanding of their position and realise that it's not one of pure indifference towards the victims of mass shootings.

It's for that reason and my recognition of their, on the face of it, complicated beliefs that I consider the anti-gun lobby to be unhelpful in meaningful progress as everything just becomes point scoring and a chance for them to say how backward the other side are.

[Sterling Archer]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Edinburgh_Unive..._shoot_up/




Stay safe Fam

[Zizou]

There are massive mental health issues in Britain, but because guns aren't available, this doesn't happen.

Guns are the source of the problem in America.