On summer nights, in the suburb where I lived in the late 1980ies, I often heard gunfire at night – a regular popping kind of noise, like pebbles dropping into a metal bucket. The every-day noise of the city died away, as well as sounds of traffic on the highway between Zaragoza and Logrono. Very distant, of course – the firing range at Bardenas Reales was at least thirty miles north as the crow flies, but the sounds of artillery, air gunnery, and military war games carried quite well, under certain conditions. I was often reminded then, of accounts from both world wars – recollections of residents in France and England; miles from the front, but who could hear the war, at a distance. The popping sound of distant firing also reminded me of other accounts, like this one – of submarine warfare in WWI, and how pressure worked on the hulls of early submarines, quite often fatally to their crews.
The noise – hissing, popping, creaks and groaning, as the pressure builds, and builds. I cannot help thinking that the shootings in an El Paso Walmart, at a bar in Dayton, and at the Gilroy garlic festival are symptomatic of pressure building to a nearly unbearable level. Those young men, the shooters in each case (as well as earlier shooters like Dylan Roof and Adam Lanza) are the weakest rivets popping loose.
And no, for the hundredth and thousandth time – it’s not guns, their availability, laws governing sales of guns, the Second Amendment, or politicians and editorialists pleading for so-called “sensible gun control” who emerge, like the groundhog in spring, in the wake of horrific events. I have often wished that they would vary the program by suggesting a round of “sensible nutbar control”, just for the sake of variety. I have also come to think that the constant and unsubtle anti-male bashing in intellectual, educational practice and entertainment circles over the last twenty, thirty, or forty years might have a great deal to do with teen and twenty-something men going completely off the rails. The best-adjusted of them settle for low-rent jobs, a meager social life and turn to on-line gaming, dangerous hobbies involving heights, long falls, and high speed. The worst-off take comfort in the kind of solace and sympathy available among the like-minded in the darker corners of the internet. The very worst-off find a weapon and use it on living, breathing, bleeding targets. Such young men can’t get a worthwhile job or a worthwhile relationship – so much for having a steadying family life and long-term commitments as earlier generations of males did. Adding a heaping helping of social and political contempt for being white, working class, and living in Flyoverlandia is just the topping to this whole rancid dish.
Your thoughts, and insights? We are all damned by our so-called betters as irredeemable, far-right racist deplorables, anyway; may as well speak honestly while we can.
Sarge, in the last few days it is looking more and more like we are about at the time of separation. Not only the shootings in Dayton and El Paso. Although I have to note that the Dayton shooter was a certifiable nutbar. He was suspended from high school for writing a list of girls he wanted to rape and kill on the bathroom wall in the school, and a more extensive list was found at home that included cannibalism. He was suspended but not evaluated or treated and then let back into school. They talk about keeping weapons out of the hands of dangerous people, and yet will not deal with those making threats.
But we have seen that Senator Rand Paul had to have part of a lung removed this last weekend due to complications after an attack by a Leftist neighbor. Senator Mitch McConnell had Leftists surround his home and threaten to stab him. Congressman Joaquin Castro, brother of Democrat presidential candidate Julian Castro, released the names and workplaces of donors to President Trump in San Antonio. A convenient hit list for Antifa.
We’ve about run out of social contract.
Subotai Bahadur
In addition to public execution, preferably hanging, I would be open to exploring collective responsibility and, if necessary, collective punishment. Family, friends, neighbors, teachers, police, social workers, therapists, doctors, pharmacists. They all need to be questioned and examined for what they knew, what they did, and what they didn’t do.
Every county, municipality, commercial development, mall, school, or church should form a mass shooter civil defense system with members representative of every area of the jurisdiction, customer base, or congregation. There should be clear standardized plans, professional training, and monthly drills that include armed participants under the supervision of local, state, and federal law enforcement.
It is true that these shooters are dumb losers who comprise a minuscule percentage of total violent crime. However, like all terror attacks the shock value of mass shootings have multiplicative effects that are fragmenting the political landscape and damaging civil order. We have to bring people back together somehow.
“Sensible Nutbar Control”.
Well, if you refused to allow Democrats to obtain guns (and succeeded, of course), you would stop about 90% of all homicides, and almost every one of the serial killers of the last 20y.
Despite whitewashing efforts, it appears as though the Asshole of El Paso was a Democrat.
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
Matthew 10:34-36
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
If these words seem familiar to you, you are more well read than the Antifa Mob trying to tear this country apart.
To a certain extent the “ban guns!” argument comes down to confusing the method with the objective. Pretty sure the thought process isn’t “I want to use guns for something, no matter what. I know, people!” The objective is to kill and terrorize. A gun is relatively reliable, simple, and moderately foolproof as a way of reaching the objective. But it isn’t the only way. I don’t think taking the means away will stop the people that desire to kill people.
There is pressure, but honestly, the pressure isn’t that great relative to what humans have always dealt with. I think part of it might even be that there isn’t enough pressure. Like, the design was fine, but the iron was run through a new process and is subpar. Plus, there are all the attacks on the country, the people, and the culture itself. The Nihilistic/socialist interpretation of man as being low-value interchangeable parts of the machine. And even the machine isn’t important. In particular, the machine of now is seen as a negative. Now, if you’re someone who has never dealt with real stress, you reject people and the culture, don’t put much value in people, society, or your place in it, and you come across something you want, why not go for it?
You’ve rejected the restraints of culture and civilization. You don’t respect the autonomy or individuality of man. You’ve suffered a bee-sting worth of stress and are a bit suicidal anyway. Why not go out in a blaze of glory. At least everybody will know your name.
That, and there are people who are clearly dangerous who shouldn’t be left unsupervised who are in fact left unsupervised. More or less a case of, not only were there warning signs, but the warning signs were blinking.
I have an idea that I would like to call the Red Flag Law. The way it would work is like this: every instance of antisocial or sociopathic behavior by a potentially unstable person is to be reported with no consequences to federal authorities (federal so that this is handled the same way in every state). This would be the kind of behaviors that we all note in hindsight after a shooting by a psychotic individual. A flagging can’t be reported anonymously; someone will have to give a name, address and date and time and circumstance as well their relationship to the subject, and swear that the information passed along is the absolute truth, with a false statement being a felony. No action would be taken at all for any reports; however, when the subject seeks to purchase a firearm or ammunition, the seller would required to notify local law enforcement to check the red flag database for a cumulative total of the number of red flag reports against that individual. More than three red flags, no purchase allowed. If the individual wishes to contest the decision, at his own cost he may request a hearing with a panel of three mental health individuals to determine his mental state and suitability for owning a firearm. Other kinds of behaviors would also trigger an automatic red flag: a drunk driving conviction, some types of misdemeanors involving minor violence, and drug offenses. A felony conviction would automatically bar someone for life.
The idea is not to take away anyone’s weapons, it’s to keep someone from getting them in the first place. The red flags we talk about concerning an individual psychotic behavior need to be acknowledged. This would not be concerning quirks of personality, but the kind of thing that gives people pause when they encounter it.
Subotai Bahadur wrote:
“We’ve about run out of social contract.”
If it weren’t so potentially catastrophic, the “Nude Eel” social contract would read like a Marx Brothers script, like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Sy6oiJbEk
“I have an idea that I would like to call the Red Flag Law.”–Sixty Ville
Abuse would render your red flag list worse than the feds’ No Fly List. You don’t really want to go there, do you Sixty Ville?
Dave M. Says:
August 7th, 2019 at 2:34 am
At least everybody will know your name.
This is at least part of the problem. Not in a fame sort of way, but a Cheers sort of way.
When nihilism takes hold, and your ‘friends’ are all Farcebook friends instead of real ones, and the only people that will listen to you are therapists who recommend medicating you, you might just want to be ~known~.
Current culture makes it harder to find a real solution (which is a real community of friends).
(No, that culture won’t stop the psychopath. But it will make him stand out much more than does from current society.)
Only when spoiled-brat Boomer and Gen X parents go their gimme-gimme ways, most likely not ’til cratering demographics blast post-WWII narcissistic “Me Generations” [Christopher Lasch, 1979] stupifyingly inane celebrity-popcult c. 2026 – ’30, will post-Millennial cohorts begin to stem entitlement’s something-for-nothing Red Tide.
Meantime, Rats’ suitably tinctured, pipsqueak WOC-a-babies will bleat-and-squeak away, concerned solely to tear down rather than build up. Channeling Harry Truman’s VP Alben Barkley, from Fauxcahontas to Camel-Toe, Coco Loco and assorted other pigtail-poseurs, the whole Rat gang “ain’t worth a bucket of warm spit”.
The media and the Democrat party, in their hatred for Donald Trump, are driving the country into a hysterical frenzy. They’ve directly inspired several mass shootings now, on “both sides”. I actually firmly believe that the couple of “white nationalist” attacks happened because the media/Democrats make such people think they are much more representative of a wider movement than they really are.
But it’s lunacy to take a few extreme events and behave as if they are representative. Total madness. We aren’t seeing “an epidemic of gun violence” no matter what the “news” says.
The Democrats, and the media, are liars, and they are playing with dynamite, because they think it will give them power. Next year will be really dangerous, but I honestly think what follows will be much, much worse, no matter who wins the election.
Imagine how bad the left will be if they lose next year?
But, imagine how much worse they will be if they win.
Because Facebook has become the public commons these days….
A post by my Progressive friends today exclaims that mass shootings are caused by “young males with dangerous machines in their hands”. This is actually, mostly, true. But of course the National Discussion they wish to have ignores the first and more important part of it. The list of ways that a person with darkness in their soul could kill is long and does not merit elaboration.
But what to do about the first part of the equation?
For all the myriad faults of same, the public education system is practically the only place these rare monsters – and they are that, both rare and monsterous – come on the radar screen. So, IF we had a way to detect them early, what would we do with it? Too often they are just slid along to the next grade/school/community hoping the inevitable detonation is far off and not too bad. Should reporting of say, pre teens who torture animals be mandatory? Should failure to report incur liability to the school? How many of these troubled youngsters actually will go on to harm others? What treatment, and at what price tag, will make a difference? How many young lives will be damaged by being put on the red flag list? What ratio of damaged young lives will you accept to save one innocent one? We’d probably write off the future of one proto-Columbine shooter to save ten innocent lives. But would you accept a more realistic 100 to one ratio? Or thousand to one?
Maybe there is no global solution. But I feel like saying to anyone who will listen “Go home and throw out all modes of entertainment that normalize the killing of sub human beings. No zombie hunting, no Call of Duty, no Star Wars with storm troopers dying bloodlessly. Progressive friends, look at the entertainment world that is so inhabited by your fellow travelers and take note. Oh, and if at all possible keep a decent male role model in the household.” Few single moms are able to stand up to even the early stages of this blight and when it reaches its dark full stage they are often the first one to die.
Sad times.
TW
By the precautionary principle, we should test the red flag law. Let’s begin by red flagging every resident of a city governed by Democrats for more than 25 of the last 35 years.
Who could object? Lots of crime there. Take away their guns.
Have the National Guard surround Chicago, then conduct house-to-house searches for illegal weapons. Any illegal immigrant found in a residence with an illegal weapon is immediately deported and banned from re-entry. Any criminal on probation found in a residence with an illegal weapon is immediately returned to prison. Any family found in a residence with an illegal weapon has its children permanently made wards of the state.
Then Baltimore. Atlanta? Detroit.
The Democrats wish it, want it, will it; let’s give to them good and hard.
The 2A represents a major “check” in our system of checks & balances. Any attempt to diminish it via legit Constitutional means or by Judicial fiat or whatever, will result in an imbalance between the People & the Gov’t. IOW, if we as a nation decide to disarm the people, then what will be the proportional burden, or “check” placed on the Gov’t to maintain said balance?
I watched Dan Bongino on youtube present some facts on ‘mass shootings’. The USA is not the leader in mass shootings, and are down around number 62. We are also not the leader in gun caused deaths, as in the Americas, there are multiple nations with a per-1000 death rate varying from 4 to 6(?) with the USA at .6, that was less than one.
As far as gun deaths, ~36% are homicide, and the other are suicide and accident. From memory, and it aint what it used to be.
If you watch, you will realize that our media is blowing up this very sad situation into something it is not.
Chicago alone had 7 homidices over the last weekend. Back in the day, its homicide rate made it more dangerous than Baghdad, Iraq, or Kandahar, Afghanistan. Troops were safer waking the streets in a ‘combat zone’ than at home in Chicago.
The murderer in the FL school had been noted as ‘troubled’, but his misbehavior, multiple occasions, were dismissed. Why? Because the ‘numbers’ on minority youth in schools had to be improved. If the problems were dismissed, and were not reported, the numbers would be good, and the administration get rewarded (somehow).
People who have problems dealing with their own devils, or with other people are no longer kept in mental health facilities.
A ‘red flag’ would mimic the recent law that allows seizure of weapons upon accusation by anonymous ‘do-goods’. The local LEOs are allowed to, or are directed to confiscate all weapons from those accused of ‘having problems’ by anonymous ‘citizens’. Don’t remember where.
Politicians will react in haste and repent at leisure, to paraphrase an old saw. Anyone concerned should be contacting their representatives to indicate that lemming-like behavior in reaction to tragedy is not a good thing.
“I would be open to exploring collective responsibility and, if necessary, collective punishment.”
I understand the sentiment, but this is almost certainly the wrong approach. If the law starts making parents, teachers, loved ones, employers or coworkers retroactively responsible for not preventing such things because they “missed warning signs,” it will be setting up conditions for a culture of total mutual surveillance worse than anything Facebook is doing, and creating so many false positives in overreaction (of which there are already too many) that nobody will be able to pay attention to all of them any more. The Boy Who Cried Wolf works just as well as a tragedy about a paranoid shepherd, instead of merely a warning about an irresponsible one.
Plus, the idea of collective responsibility and punishment is simply antithetical to the West’s entire philosophy of justice and tradition of law, and strikes me as the nose in the tent from a camel already too entrenched to permit further entry.
Re: worst off. Chicago Boyz and other such places are much more of a balm than you give them credit for. :) Sure, nothing on the internet is alone enough to maintain an approximation of sanity. The contact with people who work on their problems has helped me with my tendency to wallow.
Though, common sense education control. XD
Plus, the idea of collective responsibility and punishment is simply antithetical to the West’s entire philosophy of justice and tradition of law, and strikes me as the nose in the tent from a camel already too entrenched to permit further entry.
There’s a simple way to escape the tyranny of Facebook, and that’s to log off and never log back in. Similarly, there is way to escape the scrutiny of your family, friends, and community. Leave and never talk to them again. However, the risk is that love and support and fulfillment come bundled along with judgement and scrutiny.
Freedom is not free. Toil and treasure are only perilously divided. The rights we now consider universal and inviolable were not always so, but they were secured for us through great sacrifice. My proposal is for people interested in staying and shouldering the responsibility and further sacrifice that’s required to keep our rights secure.
When one looks at what the Best & Brightest have achieved, it is almost staggering. Women have been made to feel that motherhood is somehow a waste of their talents, instead of the sine qua non of civilizational survival. Young males have been told they are worthless and denied any opportunity to get out and do things. Large numbers of human beings have been told they are “minorities” and mere helpless victims. Irreplaceable resources have been wasted on unsustainable “renewable energy”. Entire industries that used to provide jobs & tax revenues have been offshored to China and elsewhere, leaving former workers with emptiness and dependence. If the aim of those Best & Brightest had been patiently to destroy western societies, what would they have done differently?
A small part of the Political Class’s war on society has been the invention of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder — what used to be known as being an active young boy. An astounding number of young boys have been put on psycho-active medication for years to “cure” them of their alleged ADHD and make them sit still in class, and who knows what the long-term effects of that medication are? I wonder if any/many of the young shooters had been on medication for ADHD?
“…teen and twenty-something men going completely off the rails.”
That covers some cases, but by no means all of them. The Mandalay Bay shooter was 62 years old, twice married, and successful in business (he sold his real-estate holdings for over $5M in 2015). He had enough money to be treated as a VIP in Vegas for his heavy gambling, and a few weeks earlier sent $100,000 to his girlfriend, who was in the Philippines. (He owned over 50 firearms, including 12 AR-15s.)
In other cases, the killer was clearly “off the rails” from childhood; for instance, a 2013 Omaha spree killer who carried a loaded gun to school at age 7, had committed multiple assaults including a knifing by age 12, and was imprisoned for two carjackings at 17.
The Vegas shooter had red flags. Anxiety medication prescriptions and heavy gambling debts. Under my proposed Collective Responsibility Protocol, he would’ve needed testimonials from friends and family to complete his gun purchases.
So I have my tinfoil hat on today and was thinking…all of this helping out mentally challenged folks is actual work. Hard, unforgiving, unrecognized work. And it seems that it is work that nobody in particular is interested in. The cops certainly don’t seem interested. But the cops sure are interested in picking up the pieces and tsk..tsk’ing us when they do. My thought is that the cops maybe don’t mind it this way. They get more power, we get more helpless.
“Under my proposed Collective Responsibility Protocol, he would’ve needed testimonials from friends and family to complete his gun purchases.”
That is still trying to address the mechanics of the issue rather than the cause. After all, disaffected Londoners wander the streets knifing people — no gun required.
I can’t help but think that part of the cause (of indiscriminate shootings, as well as other things like homelessness) is the way in which we now treat (or do not treat) the mentally ill and the addicted. Through good intentions about keeping people in the community, we have made things worse for those unfortunate individuals — and for the community as a whole. The decline of San Francisco is a classic example.
Pyrthroes: that was John Nance Garner, FDR’s first VP.
That is still trying to address the mechanics of the issue rather than the cause. After all, disaffected Londoners wander the streets knifing people — no gun required.
The problems in big cities like London and San Francisco were partly caused by a universalist lack of boundaries and partly caused by a breakdown in social cohesion. Banning guns obviously didn’t work, but that’s not what I want. I want guns. I want people to want guns because that’s how the system will then fix our problems.
Collective Responsibility Protocol™ (and mass shooter civil defense squads too) will rebuild social cohesion. Guns will actually be the vehicle to get people back together, to watch over each other again, and to operate as a cohesive unit again. If someone can’t function in the community then it will be immediately recognized, and they will get help.
These tragedies will provide the purpose that we’ve been missing for so long. “What punishments of God are not gifts?” as Tolkien wrote.
Huge, anonymous public schools with student counts in the thousands don’t help.
Any financial “economy of scale” benefits resulting from these monstrosities are surely outweighed by the harm caused in social disconnection. And I bet that the financial benefits, if looked at properly, would turn out to be illusory as well.
“A small part of the Political Class’s war on society has been the invention of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder — what used to be known as being an active young boy. An astounding number of young boys have been put on psycho-active medication for years to “cure” them of their alleged ADHD and make them sit still in class, and who knows what the long-term effects of that medication are? I wonder if any/many of the young shooters had been on medication for ADHD?”
Probably a goodly number of them GL. I can’t claim to be in the teaching profession, or in the mental-health one, either — but I was a sister, mom, baby-sitter, Sunday-school teacher, camp-counselor … and in all that time and exposure, I only ever knew a single small boy who was what I would call hyper-active.
The kid was the younger brother of my daughter’s best friend in pre-school. And he was go-go-go-go for twenty hours in the day. No kidding. He was a ball of fire from the moment of his getting up in the morning … and if his mom made him take a nap in the afternoon … then he was up until eleven or midnight, IIRC. Otherwise, napless, maybe nine or ten. (She was afraid to have any more children — another one like him would have killed her, she said.)
Otherwise – small ordinary boys. My tactic as a SS teacher was to send them to run three times around the church complex, as fast as they could. Drugging boys into compliance … that is purely horrible in so many ways.
I wound up sending my own daughter to a small private Catholic school for her HS years. And the thing that came to me was that at a small school, a student had a chance to shine at something, because the school itself was so small. If the school wanted to field a team – they had to pull in any student at all who had some kind of skill or interest.
Not that that team would be division or world-beating, at all … but that the kid would have a chance to participate, and you wouldn’t have that dreadful set of sports cliques developing – the kind where the kids in it feel that they are lords and masters, above any kind of discipline, or punishment for awful behavior.
Abuse would render your red flag list worse than the feds’ No Fly List. You don’t really want to go there, do you Sixty Ville?
Agreed. Leftists could easily submit false “red flag” reports to the Feds with no risk of prosecution: All they would have to do would be to falsely report what was said in a private conversation; thus there would be no witnesses to refute the claims. “Yeah, sure, Joe is careful what he says in groups but in that conversation he let slip his true feelings.” And not only do we know that leftists could do this, we know they would do it a lot.
It would be kind of amusing to see how fast the Dems realize who it is who would be red flagged overwhelmingly–hint: not suburban white dudes…
Sgt. Mom: “… at a small school, a student had a chance to shine at something, because the school itself was so small.”
The late lamented Ross Perot was once involved in a study of Texas schools to improve education. They found that about 500 students was the optimum size for a high school — but most Texas high schools at that time had over 2,000 students. Turned out the reason was that, if a school wanted to have a competitive football team, they needed 2,000 – 2,500 students to give them a big enough talent pool.
If we really wanted a sustainable society, we would have to fix the educational system from Kindergarten onwards. It would take decades to accomplish, and decades more before the benefits really started to filter through to society at large. We really have screwed ourselves.
Vegas- Vegas was an outlier so far beyond the standard profile of mass shooters/shootings it would take a Hubble to bring it into focus. I don’t know why what happened there did, but the shrink wrap went on quick and tight. The alleged shooter was not a “gray man”, he was virtually transparent. The number of unanswered questions are legion. Something very politically sensitive was at risk.
Problem: The country’s sliding toward another civil war*.
Solution: Gun confiscation!
The idea that anyone’s going to hand over their guns when it’s looking every more likely that they’ll be needing those guns real soon now, is the sort of madness that only liberals could think up.
*Please don’t say “second civil war” because our ancestors fought brutal civil wars in 1860, 1776, 1649, 1455, and many times before that. The rebels sometimes win, sometimes lose, sometimes win the war but lose the peace, and sometimes it isn’t clear which side is “the rebels”.
It would be kind of amusing to see how fast the Dems realize who it is who would be red flagged overwhelmingly–hint: not suburban white dudes…
The leftist doctrine of “equity” demands that such a law be applied in such a way as to immunize the “not suburban white dudes” people. And of course the liberal concept of a “living Constitution” allows leftist judges to interpret laws in whatever way they suits their agenda.
Dan from Madison – August 7th, 2019 at 2:07 pm – Says:
“My thought is that the cops maybe don’t mind it this way.”
Cops hate dealing with the crazy.
They are dangerous and unpredictable. They can’t be reasoned with and may erupt into violence for no good reason. They have to be subdued by force. They often resist custody, kicking and clawing and biting. Those living on the street are often infested with diseases and parasites, besides being filthy and ragged. Many are armed with knives, clubs, or even guns. They are often capable of moments of superhuman strength and speed, and immunity to pain.
But they aren’t evil, and if an officer has to kill a loonie in self-defense, he faces immediate personal criticism and professional trial. All sorts of things can go wrong.
For instance, this incident in Chicago a few years ago: A young man, with no record, an angineering student, went gradually mad. He lived with his family, but went dangerously off the rails from time to time. One day it got so bad his family called the police. When the police arrived, the man charged down the front staircase waving a baseball bat, and an officer shot him dead. This horrified his family, of course. But there was much worse. A neighbor lady looked out or stepped out on the staircase to see what was happening, and was killed by a stray bullet.
The resulting s—storm cost the city million$ and trashed that cop’s career.
There are lots of similar stories, besides those where loonies killed or seriously injured cops.
No, cops don’t like this at all.
I think the real key is that whatever is discussed to solve this issue, it should be ineffective and trivial, with an eye to what the neighbors would say. The new patriotism is giving up without a fight.