Lots of shootings...

[StevenC]

I'm not afraid to call a spade a spade.

He says while calling a leftist a liberal.

 

[bostjan]

...after he illegally interfered with the peace talks to win the election of 1968 (known as the Chennault Affair) and lied about it on tape after being confronted by LBJ.

Right. Again, I'm not defending Nixon. He was a piece of shit when it came to spying, sabotaging, and betraying his own country. I just want the record here to remain accurate.

But, at least in Nixon's eyes, those peace talks were going to ultimately lead to a bad outcome anyway. Nixon had already sent Kissinger (who was not a diplomat at the time) to Vietnam to negotiate a cease-fire (no argument from me that he did it to score political points, but even if it was, it'd still further the anti-war cause in the process), and Johnson refused the proposed deal that Kissinger brought back, simply because North Vietnam insisted that we cease carpet-bombing whilst discussing the peace treaty. Johnson wasn't running in the election anyway. My point was that Nixon wasn't as pro-war or even any more racist than his political opponents at the time. It doesn't make him good, just that he is often vilified in modern media for the wrong reasons.

Like, Hitler was a total piece of shit, but if people started accusing him of being a pedo or something, I'd still feel compelled to say, "hey, wait a minute, WTF?"

 

[StevenC]

Right. Again, I'm not defending Nixon. He was a piece of shit when it came to spying, sabotaging, and betraying his own country. I just want the record here to remain accurate.

But, at least in Nixon's eyes, those peace talks were going to ultimately lead to a bad outcome anyway. Nixon had already sent Kissinger (who was not a diplomat at the time) to Vietnam to negotiate a cease-fire (no argument from me that he did it to score political points, but even if it was, it'd still further the anti-war cause in the process), and Johnson refused the proposed deal that Kissinger brought back, simply because North Vietnam insisted that we cease carpet-bombing whilst discussing the peace treaty. Johnson wasn't running in the election anyway. My point was that Nixon wasn't as pro-war or even any more racist than his political opponents at the time. It doesn't make him good, just that he is often vilified in modern media for the wrong reasons.

Like, Hitler was a total piece of shit, but if people started accusing him of being a pedo or something, I'd still feel compelled to say, "hey, wait a minute, WTF?"

Are you telling me that Nixon wasn't selling children's organs to zoos for meat and going into people's houses at night to wreck up the place?

 

[bostjan]

Are you telling me that Nixon wasn't selling children's organs to zoos for meat and going into people's houses at night to wreck up the place?

Not personally, at least. He had people to do the latter one of those for him.

 

[Riff the Road Dog]

Right. Again, I'm not defending Nixon. He was a piece of shit when it came to spying, sabotaging, and betraying his own country. I just want the record here to remain accurate.

But, at least in Nixon's eyes, those peace talks were going to ultimately lead to a bad outcome anyway. Nixon had already sent Kissinger (who was not a diplomat at the time) to Vietnam to negotiate a cease-fire (no argument from me that he did it to score political points, but even if it was, it'd still further the anti-war cause in the process), and Johnson refused the proposed deal that Kissinger brought back, simply because North Vietnam insisted that we cease carpet-bombing whilst discussing the peace treaty. Johnson wasn't running in the election anyway. My point was that Nixon wasn't as pro-war or even any more racist than his political opponents at the time. It doesn't make him good, just that he is often vilified in modern media for the wrong reasons.

Like, Hitler was a total piece of shit, but if people started accusing him of being a pedo or something, I'd still feel compelled to say, "hey, wait a minute, WTF?"

There are a lot of thing here that are not as I understand/learned them, including what Kissinger's role and direction was and it makes no difference LBJ wasn't running - Humphrey was and favored unconditional cease of bombing in the North, etc., as we'll go further down the off-topic rabbit hole. I get your point but to the contrary, lots of folks seem to want to give Nixon more credit than he's due, nowadays. He may have actually pulled the US out but the guy really didn't seem to care much about more lives lost when he saw the opportunity to score points against his political opposition.

 

[bostjan]

There are a lot of thing here that are not as I understand/learned them, including what Kissinger's role and direction was and it makes no difference LBJ wasn't running - Humphrey was and favored unconditional cease of bombing in the North, etc., as we'll go further down the off-topic rabbit hole. I get your point but to the contrary, lots of folks seem to want to give Nixon more credit than he's due, nowadays. He may have actually pulled the US out but the guy really didn't seem to care much about more lives lost when he saw the opportunity to score points against his political opposition.

If he was pro-war, though, he could have scored political points by turning the war around or being more aggressive or whatever. Again, I don't agree with his specific tactics, but getting us out of the war was his call to make and he followed through.

Humphrey was no angel, either. Snubbed by the DNC in '72, he betrayed McGovern and supported Nixon.

We can always speculate that Humphrey would have been a better president than Nixon (he very likely would have been, but who knows?) or that he might have done a better job withdrawing from Vietnam (not sure how, but it could be an interesting theoretical topic), but, ultimately, Humphrey lost, so we'll never know.

What we do know, though, is that Nixon was anti-war and pro-civil-rights for his time. He was a really bad president and kind of a piece of garbage human being, but he's far from the worst we've had in office.

But, we're off on a tangent. To try to slowly bring this back around, what do you think about the stats? Trump's administration prosecuted more procedural gun violations than any other administration, ever, making him tougher on gun control than Obama or even Clinton. Yet gun violence remained and still remains bad in the USA (compared to the Clinton era). So, are the current gun control policies effective? I'd say that we have a preponderance of evidence that it is not.

 

[DiezelMonster]

Okay we are getting off topic, this should make things better.

Having watched Bowling for Columbine and looking at some recent stats again, it seems that Canada, PER CAPITA has more firearms than the USA but our gun violence, while seemingly on the rise at least where I live, isn't at all as bad as it is in the USA.

So why is that?

So, what do the fine folks here think is a contributing factor.

In Canada, we have socialized health care but when it comes to "mental health" we are far behind. Mostly because people still fall through the cracks, wait times are very long and a number of other issues such as mental health as a stigma.

We have coast here in Ontario, which is a service that has a mental health worker or workers go with police when someone is in distress. I've experienced it personally and it was helpful. I am Caucasian though so you're mileage may vary.

 

[bostjan]

Okay we are getting off topic, this should make things better.

Having watched Bowling for Columbine and looking at some recent stats again, it seems that Canada, PER CAPITA has more firearms than the USA but our gun violence, while seemingly on the rise at least where I live, isn't at all as bad as it is in the USA.

So why is that?

So, what do the fine folks here think is a contributing factor.

In Canada, we have socialized health care but when it comes to "mental health" we are far behind. Mostly because people still fall through the cracks, wait times are very long and a number of other issues such as mental health as a stigma.

We have coast here in Ontario, which is a service that has a mental health worker or workers go with police when someone is in distress. I've experienced it personally and it was helpful. I am Caucasian though so you're mileage may vary.

Canada 34.7 firearms per 100 people. 2.26 firearm deaths per 100k population.
USA 120.5 firearms per 100 people. 10.89 firearm deaths per 100k population.

So 3.5x as many guns per person and almost 5x as many gun-related deaths. I don't think that's all that shocking to anybody. Obviously, more population density is also a factor. But culturally, the USA is far more used to seeing violence. Canada isn't very great either, though, compared to Europe.

But my point back months ago, somewhere buried in this thread, was that exposure to violence tends to make a person more prone to be violent. We've got a huge cultural problem here in the USA where we love seeing heads getting cracked open. It's a positive feedback loop as violent people make violent neighbourhoods. And, then, in a violent neighbourhood, the police tend to be more jumpy, which leads to more violence, which leads to more people being exposed to violence, which makes more people prone to become violent, which makes the neighbourhood more violent...

We have a huge mental health stigma here in the USA. Probably it exists everywhere, but it's significant here. We have less of a social safety net, so more people tend to find themselves in desperate situations where they are more likely to consider crime as an option for survival. All of those things add up and mix together like the ingredients of a bomb. And it's possible that we've already exceeded the point of no return here. That is, no enforceable policy change could be put into effect to start any immediate improvement.

We can't reduce the number of firearms without setting off certain potentially violent groups (not to mention that this is unjust unless done very tactfully). We can't offer people better mental health care because a lot of mental health services here are ineffective anyway. We can't rout out corruption in those services without making more people more desperate and potentially driving up crime. We can't eliminate crime without police becoming more brutal, driving up exposure to violence. We can't cut down on exposure to violence without reducing crime. ... it's essentially hopeless!

 

[Riff the Road Dog]

We really do need to do more root cause analysis as to why the US is an outlier with regards to gun violence. It goes much deeper than number of guns per capita. Yeah, Captain Obvious, I guess, but ya gotta keep asking why? until you can't anymore.

 

[DiezelMonster]

Canada 34.7 firearms per 100 people. 2.26 firearm deaths per 100k population.
USA 120.5 firearms per 100 people. 10.89 firearm deaths per 100k population.

So 3.5x as many guns per person and almost 5x as many gun-related deaths. I don't think that's all that shocking to anybody. Obviously, more population density is also a factor. But culturally, the USA is far more used to seeing violence. Canada isn't very great either, though, compared to Europe.

But my point back months ago, somewhere buried in this thread, was that exposure to violence tends to make a person more prone to be violent. We've got a huge cultural problem here in the USA where we love seeing heads getting cracked open. It's a positive feedback loop as violent people make violent neighbourhoods. And, then, in a violent neighbourhood, the police tend to be more jumpy, which leads to more violence, which leads to more people being exposed to violence, which makes more people prone to become violent, which makes the neighbourhood more violent...

We have a huge mental health stigma here in the USA. Probably it exists everywhere, but it's significant here. We have less of a social safety net, so more people tend to find themselves in desperate situations where they are more likely to consider crime as an option for survival. All of those things add up and mix together like the ingredients of a bomb. And it's possible that we've already exceeded the point of no return here. That is, no enforceable policy change could be put into effect to start any immediate improvement.

We can't reduce the number of firearms without setting off certain potentially violent groups (not to mention that this is unjust unless done very tactfully). We can't offer people better mental health care because a lot of mental health services here are ineffective anyway. We can't rout out corruption in those services without making more people more desperate and potentially driving up crime. We can't eliminate crime without police becoming more brutal, driving up exposure to violence. We can't cut down on exposure to violence without reducing crime. ... it's essentially hopeless!

We are exposed to the same violent movies, music and entertainment as the USA, I'd argue that we are just as violent per capita, but what makes people in the US reach for a gun to solve the problem VS us here in Canada?

I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor, so I can't begin to understand, but we have a huge amount of road rage, especially here in Ontario.

I dunno..

 

[bostjan]

We are exposed to the same violent movies, music and entertainment as the USA, I'd argue that we are just as violent per capita, but what makes people in the US reach for a gun to solve the problem VS us here in Canada?

I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor, so I can't begin to understand, but we have a huge amount of road rage, especially here in Ontario.

I dunno..

I really don't think it's quite the same effect, though, when it's a movie or a show or even a game. It's so detached from reality.

OTOH, when you are just trying to take out the trash, and find a dude in the dumpster with a hole in his head, it sticks with you profoundly. Or growing up in a neighbourhood where the people who you interacted with weekly or daily get murdered, even if you don't see it happen, it has an effect that normalizes violence in a more real, or maybe surreal way.

 

[Drew]

Humphrey was no angel, either. Snubbed by the DNC in '72, he betrayed McGovern and supported Nixon.

Less to nitpick and more to add color, I have a hard time saying the DNC snubbed Humphrey in '72. It was more that McGovern pulled off a coup, and managed to make rule tweaks to the nomination process that ultimately resulted in his winning despite being the heavy underdog. Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing '72" is some of the unexpectedly best political coverage I've ever read, for his play by play on what went down on the convention floor.

It was immediately after that that the DNC abandoned the proportional representation rules that gave McGovern enough delegates to have a shot, and that let Trump win the GOP nomination because they didn't follow suit.

 

[StevenC]

We really do need to do more root cause analysis as to why the US is an outlier with regards to gun violence. It goes much deeper than number of guns per capita. Yeah, Captain Obvious, I guess, but ya gotta keep asking why? until you can't anymore.

Lack of socialised medicine, lack of education equality, lack of social equality, lack of social mobility, lack of infrastructure funding, lack of social services, lack of capital regulation, lack of veteran care, lack of safety nets, lack of cultural education, lack of media regulation, lack of...

You get the picture. Not a real country. You can see the same thing happening in the UK currently after 12 years of Tory government starving every service in the country of resources.

 

[Riff the Road Dog]

Lack of socialised medicine, lack of education equality, lack of social equality, lack of social mobility, lack of infrastructure funding, lack of social services, lack of capital regulation, lack of veteran care, lack of safety nets, lack of cultural education, lack of media regulation, lack of...

You get the picture. Not a real country. You can see the same thing happening in the UK currently after 12 years of Tory government starving every service in the country of resources.

I think you're on the right track. Continue asking why that is and I believe you will get somewhere.

 

[narad]

I think you're on the right track. Continue asking why that is and I believe you will get somewhere.

I plan to take this approach for participating in all future "What pickup should I get for X" threads.

 

[bostjan]

School administrators were warned 6-year-old had a gun before he allegedly shot Newport News teacher, lawyer says | CNN

Administrators at the Newport News, Virginia, elementary school where a teacher was allegedly shot by a 6-year-old earlier this month were warned the day of the shooting that the child had a gun, according to the teacher's lawyer.

edition.cnn.com

Around 12:30 p.m., another teacher told the administrator she believed the student had put a gun in his pocket and taken it out to recess, Toscano claimed. The administrator allegedly “downplayed” the possibility, Toscano said, responding that the boy had “little pockets.”

Then, shortly after 1 p.m., a third teacher told administrators that another child – described by Toscano as “crying and fearful” – had informed the teacher the 6-year-old “showed him the gun at recess and threatened to shoot him if he told anybody.”

A fourth employee then asked the administration for permission to search the boy but was denied, Toscano claimed.

Zwerner was shot almost an hour later, her attorney said.

I don't know what to make of this. I guess it's more or less what you all have been talking about in here and in the teacher shortage thread, so it's way less of a surprise than it ought to be.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

School administrators were warned 6-year-old had a gun before he allegedly shot Newport News teacher, lawyer says | CNN

Administrators at the Newport News, Virginia, elementary school where a teacher was allegedly shot by a 6-year-old earlier this month were warned the day of the shooting that the child had a gun, according to the teacher's lawyer.

edition.cnn.com

I don't know what to make of this. I guess it's more or less what you all have been talking about in here and in the teacher shortage thread, so it's way less of a surprise than it ought to be.

I've been listening to the public testimony at the Newport News school district meeting that took place after the shooting. It's long, I've been listening in chunks and still digesting. There are a few similar threads in the testimonies so far but I'm waiting to hear it all and let it sink in before I form an assessment. Also listened to the school board discussion surrounding the vote to part ways with the superintendent.