We can talk about more gun laws, less gun laws, less video game violence, a psychological approach, a strong-family-as-a-deterrent... or anything else we can imagine. But those solutions will never stop these crimes. We can only attempt to control this issue on the margins, and hope that we can find practical solutions that try to curb these random acts of violence. But the brutal truth is that they are a part of the nature of our species, inherent and practically unstoppable. Sometimes I'm shocked they don't happen more in a world of around 7 trillion human beings.
So this debate disgusts and annoys me to no end. How about we keep this national conversation geared towards respecting the memory of those who have passed, instead of as a vehicle to progress our personal politics. Because we're not solving this issue and we're looking at it all wrong.
Changing the way we approach video games will have no appreciable affect on these tragedies. People who are so mentally bent as to carry out heinous acts of violence against other humans will always find a way.
I don't believe in a stark concept of "Good vs Evil" in a biblical sense. However, as much as people do not like to admit it, as much as everyone wants to think that a few hours of psychotherapy and some modern pills will turn any lost soul around, there will always be those people who are outliers and are simply "broken".
> "But the brutal truth is that they are a part of the nature of our species, inherent and practically unstoppable. "
We may never stop all violence, but this debate is worth having specifically because other societies of our species (i.e., not American) have been able to achieve much lower rates of violence in their societies than we have.
Not everywhere is as violent as the USA. These mass shootings are statistical outliers no matter which way you cut it, but violent crime (involving firearms or otherwise) in the US is substantially higher than many developed nations.
The question remains as to how, and why, these other nations have been able to achieve a dramatically lower incident rate of violence.
BTW, there are ~7 billion people on Earth, not trillion.
> "People who are so mentally bent as to carry out heinous acts of violence against other humans will always find a way."
Violent crime is not in and of itself indicative of mental illness. There are many perfectly rational (at least at the local level) reasons to hurt or kill someone.
We can talk about more gun laws, less gun laws, less video game violence, a psychological approach, a strong-family-as-a-deterrent... or anything else we can imagine. But those solutions will never stop these crimes. We can only attempt to control this issue on the margins, and hope that we can find practical solutions that try to curb these random acts of violence. But the brutal truth is that they are a part of the nature of our species, inherent and practically unstoppable. Sometimes I'm shocked they don't happen more in a world of around 7 trillion human beings.
So this debate disgusts and annoys me to no end. How about we keep this national conversation geared towards respecting the memory of those who have passed, instead of as a vehicle to progress our personal politics. Because we're not solving this issue and we're looking at it all wrong.
Changing the way we approach video games will have no appreciable affect on these tragedies. People who are so mentally bent as to carry out heinous acts of violence against other humans will always find a way.
I don't believe in a stark concept of "Good vs Evil" in a biblical sense. However, as much as people do not like to admit it, as much as everyone wants to think that a few hours of psychotherapy and some modern pills will turn any lost soul around, there will always be those people who are outliers and are simply "broken".