Can someone explain...

L

Little-e

New member
What has happened over the past few years that has caused what seems to be a dramatic increase in firearm violence?

Let me explain a little more. I was "re-educated" a few years ago. When Ruby Ridge and Waco happened, I believed they were a bunch of wackos and didn't feel all that bad. Not so any more and every day I become more and more irritated with what I see in the news.

So, is this violence something new or has it been happening for years and just not reported like it is now? Or, is this something new? I've spent quite a few hours thinking of what might be causing it and unfortunately don't think there is an answer. So many factors could be influencing it and I'm not sure we as gun owners and citizens will be able to address everything before it is too late.
 
Hmmm. Supposedly, actual violence is down. Now, I'm not defending the ATF's actions in any way, shape or form, but Koresh WAS a wacko...any grown man who thinks it's his religious duty to have a bunch of children with girls in their early teens is not my idea of a poster boy for gun rights.
 
Violent crime, including gun crime, is actually _decreasing_. It seems to be going up because major news outlets are increasingly sensationalizing events. What used to be a factual reporting is now "Day 17: <dramatic music> Tragedy At Columbine: Half-brothers of the lawyers of the decedent's casket-makers." They've taken basic factual talking-head reporting with a few snippets of video, and replaced it with theme music, logos, special coverage, and interviews with as many vaguely-related people as they can dig up.

It's also the political move. A few people get shot, and it's all over the national news. A few people get intentionally run over, and it's a passing item on the local news.

There have been three nearly identical shooting incidents in the last week. One of them had a victim that fought back and stopped the attack before more died. Guess which one _wasn't_ sensationalized - or even mentioned - on ABCCBSNBC.
 
Violence has always been around, fireram or otherwise. If you're referring to the mass killings that have been happening lately... I think it's just a tragic new fad. A new "social statement." Suicides have been happening since the beginning. For one reason or another, certain people become depressed enough to want to end their own lives.

Someone finally figured out that they may as well take the people they hold "responsible" with them :(. Super-hyped media coverage ("for the children") gave all the others the same idea. Hopefully, it will go away as quickly as its come.

No amount of legislation... guns, bombs, baseball bats, cadillacs... will stop it. Just be vigilant and protect those you care about. The more of these that are stopped before they become tragic, the sooner it will lose fashion and go away. My humble .02


[This message has been edited by JJR (edited August 06, 1999).]
 
I guess I wasn't very clear. Koresh and Co. may very well have been wacko's and I really don't have any desire to hang out with folks like that. The point I was trying to make was my attitude when viewing the response of the government is much different now compared to what it was a few years ago.

I guess I'm trying to figure out what goes through peoples' minds when they say "Gee, today seems like a nice day to wack a few people."
 
the planet is drastically overpopulated with a destructive species with no predators
weather we will admit it or not we are an animal driven like all others by our environment

we think we can ignore stress

unless we are enlightened enough to transend our physical & mental shackels, we are doomed to be turned by the progressing wheel.

look to the millenial religious fevers of the last century change

consider the events of
jonestown
waco
solar temple
aum
are these unique events or symptoms of our malaise?

we are deficit spending against a loan
we are borrowing from our grandchildren

it's enough to make you sing the blues...

dZ
 
Many years ago, I read part one, of a two part article, in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, called, if memory serves, THE RAT SYNDROME.
It gets rather complicated, but they took a group of rats, placed them in an environment with a reasonably sufficient food and water supply. Then nature was allowed to take its course.
As the population increased, strange things began to occur. Mother rats killed their babies. Some rats literally formed gangs and killed other rats. Other rats became killers. Many of the other ills we see in our human worldwide society were also noted in these rats. The only thing that remained constant was the food and water supply. Finally, when rat murder, warfare and disease reduced the population to below a certain level, things returned to normal.
There was a bell curve, with a median line. As long as the population stayed below the line, things were normal. Once the population rose above this line, the aberrations began reaching a peak at the top of the bell curve. Finally when the deaths brought about by these aberrations reduced the population to well below the line, the rats returned to normal.
I may have gotten some of this wrong, because I read the article 38 years ago, but the similarity of that experiment and what is happening in our world today is something to coincidental to ignore. I find this chilling. There is just too much similarity.
Unfortunatly, I was not able to read the second part of the article, so maybe I missed something.
It does seem to explain some of the things that have been happening on an increasing basis. Anyway, it is something to think about. Maybe someone other than myself has read the article, and can clear up any errors I may have made.
Paul B.
 
I'm not a psychologist nor do I play one on TV but I think the following are factors:

1) Increased societal permissiveness
2) Increased self-indulgence
3) Decreased personal responsibility expectations
4) Media pandering
5) A need to make a name or gain fame, tho transitory
6) Laws discouraging/impeding self-defense

40 yrs ago a guy like Barton would have killed maybe 2 folks before he was gunned down or split before he was. If caught alive by the cops, he'd be beaten, publically reviled, go on trial, get death and play with Ol' Sparky. Also, I believe that 40 yrs ago a man who lost big on stocks like Barton, would have either offed himself soley or either split for a new start.
As for the kids (Columbine, Oregon, Jonesboro)...they wouldn't dare think of doing something like that. They knew no one would feel sorry for them, the "fame" would not be the kind they wanted, the shame brought onto their families would be undesireable, etc.

Look to the differences...then and now. It ain't guns, which we freely available back then. Its pure selfishness and self-indulgence. "Mom and grandma fight....I'm abused", "The other kids don't like me...I'm alone and misunderstood"....blah, blah, blah.

------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"
 
If man is view stricly as an animal, then the rat analogy would hold true. However, man is not strictly an animal. Skirting the religious aspects of this statement for the moment, man has a much higher level of awareness than the other animals. His reasoning and deductive powers should be capable of limiting this type of behavior by punishing those that display it. Where we have failed in this aspect is that we have thrown rational thought out the window, desiring to reley on our own animalistic "feelings" ... i.e. "if it feels good, do it", etc...

Now to bring in the religious aspect; reguardless what religion you hold to, if you believe that there is a higher power to which you must answer - whether you are punished here in this life is immaterial. It will affect your life. The generation of my father (WWII) for the most part held to this idea. This is probably one of the reasons they were able to approach the task of defeating the Axis powers with a determination to complete it, rather than a defeatist attitude. They felt that they were in some way fighting for what was right. A moral absolute. A universal truth. Today, "we're just animals" tends to debase the human race. If I'm just an animal, and there is nothing that can happen to me beyond death, I'll do what I darn well please. This combined with the attitude that "society" is to blame for the way people turn out (the abdication of personal responsibility) has only harmed the polite society that once existed in the world.

That is not to say, this globe isn't becoming crowded, nor do I wish to discount the effects of stress, but in general, most people are blaming stress, global warming, overpopulation, and the ozone hole for nearly everything they can ... once again abdicating any personal responsibility they have for thier own actions.

Now as to answer the original question, not ever having been in a position of feeling like I would want to go out and whack a few people I can't really say why someone decides to do so, I can only conjecture. Perhaps, they believed they had no alternative. (poor excuse in my viewpoint, as far as most of these recent events are concerned)

Some are simply a random act. Something snaps, it's my only explanation that can be accepted by nearly everyone.
 
It is true that humans, like any other animal species, are capable of "violence".

In many debates with animal rights activists on the subject of whether animals feel pain, or know they're about to be shot, I've always used this symbolism. Take whitetail deer for example.

Deer live in a fairly secluded environment in the sense of what they are exposed to. Deer know death and dying from a standpoint of survival. They may occassionally see another deer which has been hit by a car, or injured jumping over a barbed wire fence. They may investigate the injured, dying, or dead animal closer by smelling, licking, or inspecting it. But, most of a deer's life is spent sleeping, eating, drinking, traveling, and surviving in its environment. Competition among deer is typically for the best browse, the best does, and the best and safest bedding areas.

Now let's look at how humans live. We absorb everything because we can effectively and intelligently communicate, we are educated by our parents, schools, classmates, our friends, television, things we read, things we hear, etc etc. All of this is absorbed into a complicated set of receptors and a complex brain. On our major forms of mass media, we see violence on a daily basis, humans killing humans, whether fact or fiction. Blood, guts, brains splattered, bullets, explosives, tire irons, you name it. Couple all that input with a lack of parental mentoring, lack of discipline, lack of punishment for doing something morally wrong. There is no real value for human life in a small part of our population today, and this makes it even easier to take another human life for some people.

Then on top of all of that, you have a media controlled by leftists who have an agenda to change human behavior through visual propaganda. And they are succeeding. What we are experiencing today can be said to be part of a sinister plan, disguised as society gone wild.
 
there are the enlightened, the aware and the unaware.

ask a street kid in LA to point out LA on a map of the US

most can tell you where the local hang out is but have no knowledge beyond their sphere of travel

are we raising a generation of uninteligencia?

From the SF gate:
>
> For many Bay Area students, Independence Day means
> hot dogs, family picnics, fireworks - and not much else.
>
> Out of four dozen teens quizzed in an informal survey in
> San Francisco, Concord and Pacifica, most knew that the
> Fourth of July had something to do with America's
> independence, but less than half could name the country
> from which we won our freedom.
 
from the same article:
> "I'm not smart in history," she said. "It's summertime. We're not
> supposed to think in the summertime."
 
Did anyone see the recent PBS documentary on the architect Frank LLoyd Wright? His live in mistress fired their cook who; nailed all but one of the doors and windows of the estate shut and then poured gasoline around the house and lit it. As the family and guests tried to escape he killed them with an ax. I believe that the final result was 6 or 7 killed and 20 injured. Wright was not there but his mistress and a couple of her kids were among the dead. This happened in the early 1900's. Mass murder, even work related ones aren't new. Back then they blamed the murderer and didn't look too closely at the ax.
 
Paul B,
We discussed the rat syndrome (whatever the title was) overseas. I never saw the article but want to find it.

Your best guess is "Scientific American" around 1961, right?

[This message has been edited by Dennis (edited August 06, 1999).]
 
"No amount of legislation... guns, bombs, baseball bats, cadillacs... will stop it. Just be vigilant and protect those you care about. The more of these that are stopped before they become tragic, the sooner it will lose fashion and go away."

"Unless we are enlightened enough to transcend our physical & mental shackles, we are doomed to be turned by the progressing wheel."

"Decreased personal responsibility expectations"

"Laws discouraging/impeding self-defense"

"Then on top of all of that, you have a media controlled by leftists who have an agenda to change human behavior through visual propaganda. And they are succeeding."


These are some disturbing responses. The worst part is that I can't find an argument to combat any of them. It looks like today's problems will continue on long after the gun debate comes to a close. I just hope someday, everyone will realize we will not get the solution from politicians. The removal of guns from society will put us in the pocket of the government and in turn allow the problems to go on for years and years.

Disturbing, yes.
 
Well, we'll get a good chance to see with this Alabama guy.
Prediction:
If he is NRA...he will be portrayed as an evil congenital Southern Bubba racist homophobe and the Liberals will want the death penalty and his family sued into poverty.
If he isn't NRA and has either a low IQ or some type of learning disorder...he will be absolved as a dupe of the NRA, evil Conservatives and evil Southern tradition. The dead folks will be smeared if they were NRA. All will be blamed on the NRA, the heartless political climate and the lack of Federal programs that surely would have been in place but for the heartless politicians.

No one will just see it as it is...he is a nutbar.

Remember what they did to Richard Jewel.

------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"
 
as the population increases, you will have more crazy people ,more brilliant people, more ugly people, more pretty people, and on and on...
with this increase of population you have immediate comunication.
if two trains hit head on in india( which they did the other day)- you will know about if you live in iowa.
as the population has gotten dumber, it also has virtually no idea the scale of the world we live in.
 
http://www.biology.uc.edu/faculty/mikemllr/rat%26men.htm

INFORMATION AGE: 1975-future.

Power transformed from control of technology to control of money and information. Rich and poor divided by socio-economic
systems. World-wide this the source of most strife.

RAT ECOLOGY--A self-regulated population.

Population Regulation: Social dominance hierarchy based on combat and recognized by odor. Young disperse or are killed to maintain
regulated density.

Calhoun put rats in a 10,000 ft^2 pen with superabundant food and nest boxes, but little habitat heterogeneity. Density
regulated at 150 = 6.2 m^2/rat, within range found in Cincinnati studies in diverse urban sites. Young aborted, killed by males,
much stress, parasites & disease in colony without dispersal possible.
 
Paul B's comments on the "rat thing" are close enough. There was a lot of research done at UT during the '30s/'40s, when my mother was working on her PhD in Psych. Her comments to me support his...

Regardless of "higher thought" or religion, biology still works. Nature bats last. We're some 280 million in the US, and only some half-dozen a year go bonkers? Sounds good to me, given what COULD happen.

Many different factors are contributory to this increasing problem on. One is the pace and stress of life--more folks are generally tenser. Some of it is "expectations", engendered by everything from TV representations (do the sets where "poor folks" programs are filmed really look all that "poor" to you?). Some could be government programs which tend to take personal responsibility out of the equation of life. The idea of "society's fault" doesn't help in this.

The general looseness of morals tends to let financially risky life-styles get farther toward self-destruction than in the past. Too much stuff available for the VISA-card life-style, too free a credit system, and all of a sudden there is intolerable (for some) pressure.

Add in the world of Prozac and Ritalin, and consider the side effects and the effects of getting off the stuff. A high percentage of recent mass-shooters had a history of psychiatric drugs...

About all I can say is, it's a mess, and from what I read, it's gonna get worse.

Sorry...Art
 
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