Why now?

[marshman]

I have a habit of over simplifying things, at least according to my wife, but my take is pretty much "there has always been crazy people, now there are a lot more people than there used to be, so there are a lot more crazy people ".
That's it.

 

[Stocker]

Not enough real struggle anymore.
Too much time on everyone’s hands to think about how they’re not fitting in or never gonna make their mark.
One generation ago they didn’t even have central air bro.

You completely nailed it. Along with parents having so many distractions that the kids aren’t top priority.

i don't understand how any rational person can say, with conviction, that guns are not the problem. I'm not infering that there aren't alot of other factors, but come on. Isn't there a saying about like "the first you have to do is admit you have a problem"

We’ve been a nation of guns since we started and now this is a thing and it’s the guns fault?

I guess the modern spoon is just more efficient at making people fat too…..

 

[marshman]

Have you ever noticed when these things happen a lot of times the mother is mentioned, maybe a grandma but seldom hear much about a dad or grandpa?
A lot of young men do not have a father figure in their life.

 

[gouch]

i don't understand how any rational person can say, with conviction, that guns are not the problem. I'm not infering that there aren't alot of other factors, but come on. Isn't there a saying about like "the first you have to do is admit you have a problem"

Guns are the problem if you define the problem as that people who want to do harm have easy access to the means to do that harm. Guns are not the problem if you define the problem as that there are too many people who want to do harm. This is why nothing ever gets done to solve problems. People separate into different camps that define the problem in different ways and then argue vehemently for or against totally different solutions.

 

[VikingsGuy]

Have you ever noticed when these things happen a lot of times the mother is mentioned, maybe a grandma but seldom hear much about a dad or grandpa?
A lot of young men do not have a father figure in their life.

There is no proven correlation between mass violence events and single-parent families. There is no proven correlation between anything on that list - that was kind of the point of the post. Eric Harris by way of example came from two-parent home and a mom was stay at home until the kids were older.

 

[Jorgy]

We’ve been a nation of guns since we started and now this is a thing and it’s the guns fault?

I guess the modern spoon is just more efficient at making people fat too…..

Your response pretty much sums up why we will continue to have problems. I wouldn't be able to convice you that water is wet.

 

[marshman]

There is no proven correlation between mass violence events and single-parent families. There is no proven correlation between anything on that list - that was kind of the point of the post. Eric Harris by way of example came from two-parent home and a mom was stay at home until the kids were older.

In many cases I think this parental issue does have an impact when it comes to guns and learning the correct life lessons associated with them.
There is generally never just one cause for situations like these for sure.

 

[Stocker]

Your response pretty much sums up why we will continue to have problems. I wouldn't be able to convice you that water is wet.

Anyone who cannot see the damage that Social media, adults letting kids make life altering decisions at a young age, breaking down the family structure with a welfare state, medicating people instead of finding a root cause, medicating children just because they are a little “hyper” , and most of all taking GOD and morality out of our society and letting people do what feels good is a major cause is not someone who thinks it through rationally and just uses emotion.

 

[Farmerj]

Have you ever noticed when these things happen a lot of times the mother is mentioned, maybe a grandma but seldom hear much about a dad or grandpa?
A lot of young men do not have a father figure in their life.

I think you’re almost there…


It’s not the LACK of a male figure…

It’s the vilification of males.

Bias against dads in the court, family, maternal raising of kids etc.

The fact people blame all the worlds faults on toxic masculinity…

And then you get a trial like the Depp/ Heard case and you still see how the male gender is vilified when the truth does come out.

 

[TOGIE]

interesting how, at least as i've seem to have found in the news, and, unfortunately even had to attend a funeral in the last 7 months, is that suicide seems to disproportionately be plaguing people that seem to have it most together. high achieving, happy loving families, happy loving spouses, good jobs, academic success, athletic success, etc.

from that angle it seems hard to pin the blame on family structure or lack thereof.

now the mass shooters seem to typically be a different profile of person than the suicides, so you can't necessarily compare them. but the mental health aspects ring true for both. and it seems to be getting worse everywhere you look.

i dunno. i really don't.

 

[SAJ-99]

I think you’re almost there…


It’s not the LACK of a male figure…

It’s the vilification of males.

Bias against dads in the court, family, maternal raising of kids etc.

The fact people blame all the worlds faults on toxic masculinity…

And then you get a trial like the Depp/ Heard case and you still see how the male gender is vilified when the truth does come out.

Are you claiming you’re the victim here?

 

[Stocker]

Are you claiming you’re the victim here?

 

[OntarioHunter]

Actually, it's kinda old news. The new thing is the mass killings now are done by individuals rather than small groups of individuals which was historically the case in America. Look at Bloody Kansas, the Jim Crow lynchings, the turf wars during the cattle drive era, Plains Indians Wars (if any "hero" of the American West deserved to be shot and chopped to pieces, it was G.A. Custer), etc. The big difference between gun violence here vs America is Canada simply does not have the history for violence. The grand total death count for our one and only plains Indian war (Saskatchewan Rebellion) was about 39 if I remember correctly. Our only "civil war" cost less than ten people their lives. Canada was not a country born of illegal armed insurrection that somehow succeeded (the Revolutionary War was not won by the Americans ... it was lost by British incompetence with some crucial assistance from the French navy). The Founding Fathers justified violent insurrection rather than working within the system and that legacy continues to this day. I think if a volcano blew Ottawa off the face of the earth tomorrow, Canadians could continue to live peacefully long enough to put a new government together even if it took years. Just the way we are up here.

Edit: Memory not so good in my old age. Over three hundred dead during the civil war (simultaneous rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada colonies) including a couple dozen British soldiers, 29 executed for treason, and rebels killed in combat. About forty deaths in the Saskatchewan Rebellion which was the closest thing we had to a plains Indian war (rebels were a mixed bag of Metis, Indians, and disgruntled white settlers).

 

[CraneMan]

I would add another straw to the bundle: a general breakdown in community based organizations that linked people to where they live and promoted neighborly behavior (churches being one of them as well). Without a sense of belonging to a community or society, its easier to throw that rock through the window, burn that f&$!!# down or whatever. How many community based organizations and groups can you think of in your own town that have dwindled to the point of having to shut down in the last two decades? Eagles, Kiwanis, FOE, Knights of Columbus, and the list goes on and on. Even our small town wildlife clubs in the heartland find that they no longer have enough participation to justify continued existence. Everyone is too tied up with their own lives and families in this fast paced world to get involved in these groups that fostered the sense of community that once existed in our Country. Couple this with the increasing trends of interaction and communication by technology, and many people live in an isolating vacuum and have lost the ability to actually connect socially. This loss of community based orgs decreases the opportunities available for those who do wish to participate and once gone, they are not likely coming back. My local wildlife club used to spend $20-30k each year in our community sending youth to fishing and conservation camps, but that is sadly no longer an option due to our litigious (cover your ass) world. Now in a post covid era where many jobs have either gone to work from home or report to the office only 2-3 days a week, just another venue to interact with other people and maybe more importantly, opinions is fading. Not so sure this bodes well for our overall mental well-being as interactions with others who may not think exactly like you do, face to face (where you can't hide behind the keyboard), is an important part of being a well rounded human in my opinion.

 

[Stocker]

Actually, it's kinda old news. The new thing is the mass killings now are done by individuals rather than small groups of individuals which was historically the case in America. Look at Bloody Kansas, the Jim Crow lynchings, the turf wars during the cattle drive era, Plains Indians Wars (if any "hero" of the American West deserved to be shot and chopped to pieces, it was G.A. Custer), etc. The big difference between gun violence here vs America is Canada simply does not have the history for violence. The grand total death count for our one and only plains Indian war (Saskatchewan Rebellion) was about 39 if I remember correctly. Our only "civil war" cost less than ten people their lives. Canada was not a country born of illegal armed insurrection that somehow succeeded (the Revolutionary War was not won by the Americans ... it was lost by British incompetence with some crucial assistance from the French navy). The Founding Fathers justified violent insurrection rather than working within the system and that legacy continues to this day. I think if a volcano blew Ottawa off the face of the earth tomorrow, Canadians could continue to live peacefully long enough to put a new government together even if it took years. Just the way we are up here.

 

[Stocker]

Actually, it's kinda old news. The new thing is the mass killings now are done by individuals rather than small groups of individuals which was historically the case in America. Look at Bloody Kansas, the Jim Crow lynchings, the turf wars during the cattle drive era, Plains Indians Wars (if any "hero" of the American West deserved to be shot and chopped to pieces, it was G.A. Custer), etc. The big difference between gun violence here vs America is Canada simply does not have the history for violence. The grand total death count for our one and only plains Indian war (Saskatchewan Rebellion) was about 39 if I remember correctly. Our only "civil war" cost less than ten people their lives. Canada was not a country born of illegal armed insurrection that somehow succeeded (the Revolutionary War was not won by the Americans ... it was lost by British incompetence with some crucial assistance from the French navy). The Founding Fathers justified violent insurrection rather than working within the system and that legacy continues to this day. I think if a volcano blew Ottawa off the face of the earth tomorrow, Canadians could continue to live peacefully long enough to put a new government together even if it took years. Just the way we are up here.

Canada was a a British government puppet state and let the British trod all over them as a colony.

So the Canadians stood by and helped as British abused people in foreign lands under the colonial system. Tell me again how Canada is much better……

 

[Johnny Bravo]

You forgot about all of the chemicals that are changing peoples brain chemistry....I think that is a HUGE factor in all of this craziness. Every time you turn around there is a drug commercial on TV and when you turn the other way here comes a company putting something out that makes animals grow larger, makes food resistant to "something"....etc.etc.

 

[Hunting Wife]

Not so sure this bodes well for our overall mental well-being as interactions with others who may not think exactly like you do, face to face (where you can't hide behind the keyboard), is an important part of being a well rounded human in my opinion.

I think this is a very important point. Rather than interacting with the cross section of society present in the local community, people retreat to their online echo chambers where they don’t have to deal with “others”. No need to empathize, consider other views, see other perspectives, learn new things. Tolerance decreases, fear of “new” or “different” ideas grows, and we end up with paranoid isolationists who fear anybody that isn’t a carbon copy of themselves.

I have no data, but my gut tells me social media does not play an insignificant roll in the social problems we see today.

 

[Irrelevant]

I strongly disagree with many of the claims being made on here.

IMO...
It doesn't have anything to do with God, whichever flavor you prefer.
It doesn't have to do with 2 parent households, shitty parents exist they always have, and they exist on this forum, and they likely don't realize they're shitty parents, and there's nothing you're going to do about it.
It doesn't have anything to do with soccer, or movies, or video games, teachers or babysitters.
It doesn't have anything to do with your definition of morality, religion, or preferred version of history.

The best arguments are that we don't actually have a problem, "we" are simply fabricating one to fill some psychological void. A 1:10,000,000 event is not a real problem it's a black swan event. It's an unfortunate occurrence, often times tragic, and even if we analyze each one and determine that each one would have been preventable if..." ". They're not actually preventable because you don't prevent 1:10,000,000 events. Throw in that our current technology has allowed more free time and more ability to see terrible things that happen (while completely ignoring the 9,999,999 other events) and you've got a recipe for unnecessary social unrest.

If someone were to try and convince me that "something" was actually happening I'd lean towards it being way simpler and less definable. I think one might argue that we're simply seeing natural selection at work. Nature has all kinds of self-correcting mechanisms that we don't understand, and they don't all have to be physical attributes. We should expect to see more things that kill lots of us (disease, war, behavior, etc). Humans cannot live forever, populations cannot grow forever, and our species appears to prefer to burn the candle at both ends. We've massively constructed lives and societies that simply aren't resource sustainable. We've boomed, and now-maybe, we'll bust.

 

[LWC55]

I strongly disagree with many of the claims being made on here.

IMO...
It doesn't have anything to do with God, whichever flavor you prefer.
It doesn't have to do with 2 parent households, shitty parents exist they always have, and they exist on this forum, and they likely don't realize they're shitty parents, and there's nothing you're going to do about it.
It doesn't have anything to do with soccer, or movies, or video games, teachers or babysitters.
It doesn't have anything to do with your definition of morality, religion, or preferred version of history.

The best arguments are that we don't actually have a problem, "we" are simply fabricating one to fill some psychological void. A 1:10,000,000 event is not a real problem it's a black swan event. It's an unfortunate occurrence, often times tragic, and even if we analyze each one and determine that each one would have been preventable if..." ". They're not actually preventable because you don't prevent 1:10,000,000 events. Throw in that our current technology has allowed more free time and more ability to see terrible things that happen (while completely ignoring the 9,999,999 other events) and you've got a recipe for unnecessary social unrest.

If someone where to try and convince me that "something" was actually happening I'd lean towards it being way simpler and less definable. I think one might argue that we're simply seeing natural selection at work. Nature has all kinds of self-correcting mechanisms that we don't understand, and they don't all have to be physical attributes. We should expect to see more things that kill lots of us (disease, war, behavior, etc). Humans cannot like forever, cannot grow forever, and our species appears to prefer to burn the candle at both ends. We've massively constructed lives and societies that simply aren't resource sustainable. We've boomed, and now-maybe, we'll bust.