Mass shootings - Interesting read

[AYHJA]

OK, I'll bite hl...

QUOTE("highlife")Whats going on now in our culture we didnt have 20 years ago.

Such as..?

And why differentiate between shootings..? Can you pull figures from an international source that would support your claim of "36 in this country means there common in the US..."..? How proportionate to our population is this violence to other places..? Sure, you could say only two people in Hoboken got shot, but if there are only 10 people there, that's significant...How many school shootings were in Pakistan..? France..? Nigeria..? How many Americans have enjoyed countless years of schooling as opposed to ghastly situations in order for you to consider it common in the U.S...?

There has to be a contrast, doesn't it..? How proportionate is the occurrence of violence in our schools to non violence..? Where are the statistics, the sources..? I want to read the proof on which you formed your opinion if you got it...Or, are you simply just kinda stating your personal thoughts..?

[x3n]

I think the Media's unflinching, disconnected feeding frenzy is worth looking into as a link. This race over who gets to paste the killer's mug and his MySpace page first, certainly is no deterrent.

These fuckers are so desperate to be the "on site before you" team. ALWAYS jumping to conclusions, always asking the same superficial and repetitive questions. DRENCHED in fake concern and so obviously desperate to rack up credibility points.

Hell, I don't know if ANYONE does as much for these little assholes with guns as these overpaid Jerry Springers.
Those kids can't find a clique, a friend, a teacher, or even a doctor to listen to their bullshit, until they make it on the TeeVee. Now EVERYBODY knows you. Sure beats going to jail for killing jocks.

I sincerely doubt that this is some US-exclusive problem. It might be more prevalent or perhaps notorious because of how much audiovisual garbage the average North American consumes, and like McDonald's...everybody's lovin' it all over the world. I don't have the data or "independent studies" to say that these massive school shootings are mainly a US problem. I can tell you with all certainty that massive killings, by individuals or death squads certainly aren't. The media coverage for them, however, THAT shit is unparalleled.

[highlife]

Uber¦I want to read the proof on which you formed your opinion if you got it...Or, are you simply just kinda stating your personal thoughts..?

Me¦.When it comes to school shootings were all ..including you." simply just kinda stating our personal thoughts"
.
Uber¦Where are the statistics, the sources..?
Uber¦.How many school shootings were in Pakistan..? France..? Nigeria..?

Me¦Brains stated a common opinion among other countries that school shootings are an American trend. You said it happens all over so dont point at us. Brains than gave you a 20 year time line that shows worldwide school shootings. 36 here and 11 for the rest of the world. In my opinion ( personal thoughts) one or 2 is not a trend.... 36 is a trend. The question isnt what else am I basing my opinion on but what are you basing your opinion on?. If you want to take this farther than you do the research. Dont start with Newsweek because this weeks issue calls all these shootings "a depressingly American pattern".

x3n.....Hell, I don't know if ANYONE does as much for these little assholes with guns as these overpaid Jerry Springers.
Those kids can't find a clique, a friend, a teacher, or even a doctor to listen to their bullshit, until they make it on the TeeVee.

me....I think the guys at colombine wrote privatly they were looking for movie star type fame. These nuts want there own one time reality tv show. They dont relate to the real world so maybe there looking to become part of the media that is part of there fantasy world.

.. If anyone cares here are some articles on the medias influence.

"We keep fueling the contagion every time we show footage of Columbine-style kids jumping out the window," said Northeastern University criminal justice professor James Alan Fox. He and others also are troubled by references to the Virginia Tech massacre as setting a record for the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.

http://www.theiacp.org/pubinfo/pubs/pslc/svmedia.htm
http://www.salon.com/media/1998/05/22mediab.html
http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=104&sid=1121283

Having put my 2 cents in here I just want to say research shows that school is still statisticaly the safest place for a kid to be so dont let this freak you out.

[highlife]

Oops..double post. Got rid of the text but dont know how to get rid of the post. While im here ....Uber what does the new header letters mean.

[AYHJA]

Ask me via PM sometime HL, I'll try to explain it... /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

And like I said, while I agree that the shootings are fucked, my entire point is that we are in a state of disinformation with the media...You can't flick on the TV w/o some shitty story being promoted....Hundreds of thousands of people go to school and have been to school and will never seen an incident like this...

And then, you have places the news simply doesn't care about...Like I said, the U.S. is like a big movie star...If Mel Gibson talks some shit about Jews, OMG its everywhere...If an actor from a 2 bit soap says the same thing, you'd never know it...

So, with that in mind, I'm just saying that until I see some more information...Some real international intelligence, this problem isn't even remotely being American...

That guy from Australia is the perfect example of this...

[deepsepia]

And like I said, while I agree that the shootings are fucked, my entire point is that we are in a state of disinformation with the media...You can't flick on the TV w/o some shitty story being promoted.

That's not "disinformation"-- its what people want to watch.

We live in a time when we have more access to more information than one could have dreamed of, ever. Want to see a satellite photo of a Chinese submarine base? It showed up on Google Earth! http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn12204

We live in a remarkable time when you can get near real time information from people on the other side of the world . . . people want to look at Hayden Pannettiere's chest more often than they want to read economic analysis. . . who can blame them.

As to school shootings and guns, its a simple matter of numbers that the US has far more guns, and far more gun crime than any other developed country. Some gun enthusiasts are confused about that, but the numbers are what they are . . . having lots of guns around means that its more likely that when someone gets drunk, pissed, pyscho, depressed, greedy or vengeful that they'll make use of a gun.

That's not the media's doing . . .

[AYHJA]

Yes, but the problem is perspective...What percentage of the U.S. poplulation do you think has seen someone die violently..? Where I live, more people probably die in drunk driving accidents than guns...

More guns means more gun deaths, yeah that makes sense...But that's not a proportionate to violence, which is the issue...If I'm more likely to visit another country and get my ass kicked in a bar, I think I'd rather take my chances being here in the U.S. and getting shot...People are taking these very rare, spread out incidents and making it seem like there is a problem....Do you think that the availability of guns actually has anything to do with violence..? Could a person wanting to simply kill a mass of people not hop in a dump truck and drive through a shopping mall..?

[deepsepia]

.Do you think that the availability of guns actually has anything to do with violence..? Could a person wanting to simply kill a mass of people not hop in a dump truck and drive through a shopping mall..?

He could, but not nearly as easily. Guns make killing easy . . . five pounds of pressure on a trigger. There have been mass killings conducted with exotic means in countries with effective gun control, but they're very rare.