The REAL causes of gun violence

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Oh, the causes are complex and interrelated. They probably fall into three categories: stressors, feasibility, and culture. You could make a list as long as your arm. Here's some to add:

1. Increased population and its structure, particularly population density combined with transience.

2. Lots of available guns.

3. Violence celebrated as a way of life and approach to life. What are the numbers? Kids see 8,000 murders on TV alone before leaving elementary school. 200,000 acts of violence on TV alone before age 18. (America is bizarre: a woman's bare breast or a man's bare backside gets a movie an automatic R rating. There's virtually no limit, though, to the number of murders you can show and still be PG-13.)

The list could go on and on.
 
1. Too much time spent playing violent video games at an early age is brain-mapping 6-10 year olds to run combat scenarios, reinforced by thousands of hours of repetition.

I fully disagree with this as I spent many many hours playing video games , on top of many many hours in the woods playing "guns" with my neighborhood friends.

2. The absence of real human interaction, texting and emailing as a primary form of communication robs us of a normal connection with other humans, which allows normal empathy and compassion to develop. This is at odds with millions of years of evolution where we actually had to talk with, or learn to play nice with another person to communicate.

This is something I will agree with in that it changes peoples persepctives when they don't have any consequences to their personalities. The anonymity and relative safety of the Internet changes the way people interact with the world ... Without someone there to punch you in the face once in a while for being an idiot and Or to see how your actions effect people in a very real sort of way ... people lose the reality and harshness of their actions.

3. The disintegration of the traditional, nuclear family, has removed normal role models from the picture so that no example is present for children to learn how a normal, mature adult (male in most cases) behaves. In the absence of a proper role model, TV characters, rappers, or other artificial role models have been adopted in their place.


/Agreed.... in a way , but mostly with the italics part .... as regardless of the Nuclear family .... It's what I feel is liking in these cases.





I also agree with the person shortly there after in that violence in tough economic times is not really all that uncommon. ( look at riots throughout history )

Typically the poor are the most prone to violence ( look at any of the lower income neighborhoods in the country )

But on top of this I believe it is the results of the people not wanting to take their own responsibility for their happiness and wealth. The constant feeling of entitlement that has taken over this country ( and being fed by our President and congress ). Instead of accepting their situation and acting responsibly to fix it , they decide to steal, sell drugs and kill.

As mentioned above they blame everyone else for their problems and are filled with such anger and hatred.
 
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I fully disagree with this as I spent many many hours playing video games , on top of many many hours in the woods playing "guns" with my neighborhood friends.
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To be our resident research designer - I might suggest that one's person experience is not up to evidential standards.

The idea of the media impact theorists is that media violence channels the operationalization of violent action by those pushed to it by various causes.

So without the reason to be violent, exposure does little. But if the reason exists, media and games might give it a specific form.

There is a controversial but large literature that exposure to violent depictions and more realistic depictions and games prime more aggressive behavior.

It is a mistake to view the media/games aggression link as all or none. Or view the availability of guns as all or none. Both may prime aggression behavior or channel it if the underlying pathology exists in a violent actor.

Just because you played with guns or didn't - isn't a compelling argument against the thesis.
 
I thought the compelling argument is that It's my opinion , as prefaced with " I disagree "

:)

Not stating it as fact or fiction...

I believe the deeper issue though is that these kids were not taught TV, Games , Cartoons , etc ... are for entertainment value only and are not real.

Parents have no problems teaching their children about make believe like in Wizard of Oz , but seem to have a very real problem teaching their children that the entertainment of Television is NOT the same as taking someones life.

Teaching them to understand other lives effected and ruined , and giving them a little perspective of Real life vs TV and video games.

I mean really... Cartoon violence has been around since the 1930's. Watch Bugs Bunny and Silvester .... with good 'ol Yo Sammity Sam. The difference is back then the kids were taught not to see it as more than entertainment value.

It's the same with Video games to this day. Sitting in front of your PC/Console and firing off a couple fake rounds at a fake target is NOT the same as the raw power of a real gun and the destruction and death that can occur for not handling them responsibly.




For me the argument for game and Cartoon TV violence , would be more so about accidental deaths and discharges because the kids see the glorified gun , and don't understand it's danger potential.
 
Many of you are too young to remember. In the '60s the supreme court managed to completely remove God from the public schools. This left a big vacuum in regard even to "values" and such.

Through the '70s and '80s the teaching establishment managed to even remove EVERY trace of values based teaching. In the '80s and '90's they began teaching a "new morality" that permitted everything, and also managed to even eliminate teaching most critical thinking techniques - no rules (critical thinking is what allowed the little boy to recognize that the emperor was wearing no clothes). I remember my daughter coming home from school and explaining to me that any thing you did was OK as long as you had a reason for doing it.

The sizable vacuum began to be filled with the new morality, i.e. relative morality and the biggy, SELF-ESTEEM. The vacuum grew.

Because we had done away with critical thinking, no one noticed that self-esteem is a synonym for egotism and narcissism. The thinking was that if you didn't feel good about yourself that.. that.., well, that you would feel bad about yourself, which would cause you to struggle in life. Lack of critical thinking, of course, kept us from realizing that we are supposed to struggle and, in fact, that we NEED to struggle in order to develop properly.

Because we have done away with the idea that there are absolutes in morality that cannot be relativized, and because we have become so narcissistic, and because we cannot be bothered with the results of critical thinking, you'd think that we would be happy.

How is this working for us?

How is it working for you?

What can we do about it?

If you people don’t kick me out of TFL real soon, I’ll be back and say what I think and believe.
 
I think parents with no inkling of their responsibilities is the main root cause. But among the plethora of additional contributors to the causes are ones that are easily fixed. For instance, in the case of the Binghamton killer, why would we allow someone who has so miserably failed to integrate into our society to stay here?
 
why would we allow someone who has so miserably failed to integrate into our society to stay here?
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How was that evident? A poor grasp of english isn't enough to deport a naturalized citizen. In any case, a failure to deport certain individuals who are naturalized citizens, hardly makes the list of fundamental causes of violence in our society.
 
A poor grasp of english isn't enough to deport a naturalized citizen.
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He should never have been naturalized. We have no obligation or even rational interest in naturalizing people who can't/won't integrate. A functional proficiency in the language of the realm is key to integration and should be a requirement.

In any case, a failure to deport certain individuals who are naturalized citizens, hardly makes the list of fundamental causes of violence in our society.
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I said "among the plethora of additional contributors"; a bit different from "fundamental causes".

My point being that in the case of Jiverly Wong, it would have been an easy one to prevent and more than a dozen people would be alive today if this guy had been deported just as soon as he demonstrated that he wouldn't/couldn't integrate. That was a long time ago.
 
We have no obligation or even rational interest in naturalizing people who can't/won't integrate.
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not sure where you get your info from, but that statement couldn't be farther from the truth. People are naturalized who can't/won't integrate ALL THE TIME.
 
Seung-Hui Cho; another example of a troubled individual who gave all sorts of clues that he was unstable and could have simply had his green card revoked, possibly saving the lives of 32 people. Again; my point is not that these people are the root cause, but rather that it would have been fairly easy to prevent the crimes they committed.
 
This thread is starting to wander far afield.

Supreme Court decisions about religion, meanderings about immigrants when we have plenty of "American" shooters - the majority of them!

So it needs to get back on track to legit analysis rather than spouting off political opinions without validity.

As I said before - most of these cases fit a classic profile that has little to do with those factors.

I could easily say deport social conservatives as we had a couple of them go rampage lately - or is it because of an underlying pathology?

Geez.
 
There is some excellent discussion going on here, recent tangential points notwithstanding.

I think most of us would agree that a properly naturalized citizen, whether fully integrated or not, does not represent a significant threat of causing a mass shooting, and certainly not beyond the rate of risk that exists for natural born citizens. If there is a statistical difference, it is very small, and may even fall in favor of the immigrants.

If that's where this thread is headed, I'll close it myself, if a moderator doesn't beat me to it.

I hope we can continue, as this has been illuminating.
 
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I have a valid point, but so does Glenn.... I'll concede that I was "meandering" off topic. Sorry maestro. :o.

I'll stick to my main point now; lousy parenting. I really believe this to be the largest contributing factor.
 
in my previous post i think i expressed my distaste for the "general media"... just another thought --- all the negatives piled up on top of one another in ones life can lead someone to the edge or shall we say "snap"... that point at which they think they have no alternative but to make every one in their immediate "social bubble" feel their pain...

again we ask,,,,,why "gun" violence???????

i think it is nothing more than what has been impressed in their minds... where did they ever get the idea to grab a gun and do the things they do...if there were no guns, only swords, or maybe just clubs and or rocks, dont you think the same things would happen? (well it has)....

as a culture we need to start promoting more positives in peoples lives, everyone we "touch"...even the small things make a difference... we need to start doing it soon, so concentrate on it:D


cheers!
 
Folks act out based on models they see in part.

Look at the guy who was flying the Cessna so that the USAF would shoot him down. If it weren't for 9/11 - it wouldn't come to mind most likely.

Social cognitive learning theory clearly shows us that people can observe the outcomes of actions and mimic them.

The repeated coverage of Columbine, VT and other rampages reinforces the next rampager. He or she is driven by their underlying pathology but models their action on what they learned.

Every memorial, weeping parents and friends and pundits discussing the rampager reinforces some next one who sees him or herself generating the pain, being psychoanalyzed by some schmuck Dr. Phil, etc.

Legit experts have been beating the drum of not doing this media blitz but it falls on deaf ideas.

When a school has a big gathering and everyone waves candles, Mom cries on TV how Victim Biff and Tiffany were good kids (he was on the team and she was a cheerleader), the police chief thunders that the shooter was a coward and Dr. Phil-oid says he was disturbed (and if only we helped the poor soul) - the pathological person is vicariously rewarded for planning the next action. Seeing Mom cry over Biff and Tiff is rewarding to them.

Unfortunately, the world of sensationalist TV - it won't stop. How many other shooters and Octo-Moms (ban hi-cap Moms?) are now planning their actions?

That's what's going on - not the looney stuff (antigun plots, Supreme court, immigrants, etc.)

1. Underlying pathology
2. Life stresses that exaggerate the stresses and increase patholology (so losing your job, going nuts over politics, problems as an immigrant, being ditched by YOUR LADY, etc. are examples of a stressor)
3. Anger at some group and/or society - felt picked on or not supported by something or someone.
4. Modeling a violent action - so that they become an expressive killer and/or plan a suicide with hostile intent. That can come from video games, watching coverage of past rampages, focusing on weapons related media. They can focus on gun culture and weapons. More exposure to weapons probably interacts with these folks to enhance their violent ideation.
5. They intend to die a 'warriors' death' as compared to a lonely suicide - they want to make a point with their death - Revenge, change society to take into account their concerns (a weird and perverted altruistic motive).

That's the package.
 
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