WTH is going on!!

Sorry, I was typing while you posted. If you don't like stats I'm sorry. We will have to agree to disagree on the subject.
 
No, Chuck, I love statistics, and have used them many times to good effect. They are great for scoring points in a debate. One of my favorite sources is the Statistical Abstract of the United States. You can prove or disprove almost anything with that tome.

They just don't serve real conversation very well. The problem is the conversation shifts to whose stats are better, and what sources are more reliable, and so on. Completely avoids the underlying REAL discussion of the issues.
 
I'm a parent of a child in elementary school so I would like to contribute. I sure can understand the outcry for gun control but I don't think that is the solution. I think the solution is revisiting the mental health of America as a whole. Video games, TV...the ultraviolence that young men are exposed to. I remember watching the GI Joe cartoons and I got plenty out of that. There are kids in my son's 2nd grade class that are allowed to play Call of Duty. For me that seems excessive.

I would also really like to know what kind of prescription meds history the Lanza kid had.

I found an article that I thought spoke to the issue more than anything else I've read. I haven't fact checked everything but I think a lot of it is very apparent.


"22 Stats That Prove There Is Something Seriously Wrong With Young Men In America"

#1 Males account for approximately 70 percent of all Ds and Fs in U.S. public schools.

#2 About two-thirds of all students in "special education programs" are boys.

#3 The average American girl spends 5 hours a week playing video games. The average American boy spends 13 hours a week playing video games.

#4 The average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21.

#5 One study discovered that 88 percent of all Americans between the ages of 8 and 18 play video games, and that video game addiction is approximately four times as common among boys as it is among girls.

#6 At this point, 15-year-olds that attend U.S. public schools do not even rank in the top half of all industrialized nations when it comes to math or science literacy.

#7 In 2011, SAT scores for young men were the worst that they had been in 40 years.

#8 According to a survey conducted by the National Geographic Society, only 37 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can find the nation of Iraq on a map.

#9 According to the New York Times, approximately 57 percent of all young people enrolled at U.S. colleges are women.

#10 It is being projected that women will earn 60 percent of all Bachelor's degrees from U.S. universities by the year 2016.

#11 Even if they do graduate from college, most of our young men still can't find a decent job. An astounding 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor's degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed during 2011.

#12 Pornography addiction is a major problem among our young men. An astounding 30 percent of all Internet traffic now goes to pornography websites, and one survey found that 25 percent of all employees that have Internet access in the United States even visit sex websites while they are at work.

#13 In the United States today, 47 percent of all high school students have had sex.

#14 The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate on the entire planet. If our young men behaved differently this would not be happening.

#15 In the United States today, one out of every four teen girls has at least one sexually transmitted disease. If our young men were not sex-obsessed idiots running around constantly looking to "score" these diseases would not be spreading like this.

#16 Right now, approximately 53 percent of all Americans in the 18 to 24 year old age bracket are living at home with their parents.

#17 According to one survey, 29 percent of all Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are still living with their parents.

#18 Young men are nearly twice as likely to live with their parents as young women the same age are.

#19 Overall, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents in the United States right now according to Time Magazine.

#20 Today, an all-time low 44.2% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 are married.

#21 Back in 1950, 78 percent of all households in the United States contained a married couple. Today, that number has declined to 48 percent.

#22 Young men are about four times more likely to commit suicide as young women are.
 
That's it!....we lock up all males from 16 to 30 and make them attend classes in prison. When released they will be safer for themselves and society, as well as educated...a win win :)

If one looks at the statistics for black males, it is even more depressing. 50% of black males deaths in the 20-25 age group are homicides, suicides and "unintentional injuries" add almost another 30%. That means that the death rate is about 20% from illness and such, and 80% is mostly from black on black crime ( in one form or another).
 
People "went postal" long before video games were invented. They aren't the reason why people do this kind of thing.
We cannot begin to solve this issue until we can understand it. We will never understand it until we can admit to ourselves that the capacity to commit these "monstrous" acts lies within us all, given the right circumstances and the right triggers. The parent will (completely understandibly) happily admit to doing "anything" to protect their family. Commit acts they'd never contemplate under different circumstances. Specific circumstances, specific trigger.

Edit: Regarding the sexual activity stats, unless the prevalence of rape is abnormally high, it takes 2 to tango.
 
Complex issue easy to drift off topic.
Most of these incidents seem to be some kind of "revenge for rejection" scenario. Either direct revenge on the kids (insider attack) or indirectly on the parents/community (outsider attack). I think the "fame" issue is incidental but might help to bolster resolve.
 
I dont think that there is a single person in their right mind that doesnt agree that these shootings are complete tragedies. I am saddened for the lost lives of all the people from the firefighters from New York, the children and teachers from Newton, the shoppers in the mall, the moviegoers in Aurora; every one of these was a tragedy and no matter what weapon used to kill another person it is a sad day for an innocent person to lose their lives.

I will preface with the fact that I am a gun person, I am a gunsmith and as such I work on firearms for a living. This is something that I went to school to learn how to do, I wasn't raised around guns and my father hasn't owned a single gun (outside of a CO2 bb pistol) in my entire life. I was a computer geek, I played video games (not all of them violent) growing up and still do, I am a huge movie fan and have watched many violent movies among thousands of non violent movies; I bought my first firearm 3 months before I started gunsmithing school. I own an AR platform firearm, I bought it specifically so that I could take an armorer's class to be certified by Armalite (the original patent holder for the AR platform). I have never been in the military or law enforcement, I have the utmost respect for every single one of those people however.

There are many people out there that have no idea how to treat a firearm, many that have no idea about the 4 rules of firearm safety (Firearm is always loaded, Do not point at anything you dont intend to destroy, Be sure of your target and what is behind it, Keep finger off trigger until you have the target in your sights). I see it at work, a couple will come in, one will pick up a gun and point it at their "loved one". I had a family get mad at me one day because their son kept pointing a pistol at his mom, not on purpose; he just wasn't mindful of his muzzle, I moved the muzzle away and they all looked at me like I smacked him. The dad basically told me, it didnt matter because the gun wasnt loaded anyway...

In my opinion:
I think that schools should offer teachers the option to carry a firearm at school and if they do, they are required to qualify with it at the local PD.
I think that schools should have police officers assigned to the school, put federal funding towards that, they are federally funded public schools anyway, why shouldnt they be protected.
I also think that there should be gun safety taught in schools by either LE or military instructors.
And this may not be a popular opinion, but having a zero tolerance policy for fighting at a school creates more issues by bottling up emotion.
-Lets say there are 2 boys, who in the past, could settle their differences by having a fist fight and walking away with a split lip and maybe a broken nose, now are told that if they so much as push one another they are expelled. If they get expelled, they have parents who are going to be pissed off at them and in many cases arent willing to listen to the child as to what actually happened. So one of these boys may just shrug it off and call it a day, but the other one holds onto that anger and lets it fester inside of him and then he gets into another disagreement and another and finally says "F it, I will SHOW these people!" Goes and steals the key to his dad's gun lock, takes his pistol and goes and opens fire on whoever he "feels" deserves it.
Is this somewhat of a stretch of the imagination? Maybe, but look at the 2 boys from Columbine (which happened during the last Assault Weapons Ban), look at the kid from Pearl River, MS (a school shooting that was stopped by an Asst Principal and his .45)

To many people, firearms offer a certain mystique that is seen in movies and video games, take that mystique away and people will start to see firearms for what they are. A MACHINE. A machine that can be a lot of fun and can teach discipline, hand-eye coordination, sportsmanship and even math and science (ballistics and reloading). Yes, it is a machine that can kill, so is a car.

Stacy, I would have reacted in much the same fashion as you with the guy waving his gun around, there is absolutely no reason for that whatsoever. I will not say that I haven't had a new firearm out and been going over it and cycling it and whatnot when I get a new one, but I am at home, alone and it doesnt even get pointed towards my computer.

More laws will not make less criminals. The guy that shot the firefighters in New York this past week, he was a convicted murderer who spent 18 years in prison, yet he got himself a rifle and shot those first responders after he lured them to him, why? Because he was flipping crazy and liked killing people.

Someone asked why I NEED an "Assault Weapon", I dont have an assault weapon, I have a 223 rifle that is fun and cheap to shoot. I dont have to have scope for it like a hunting rifle, it isnt as expensive for ammunition as a 30-06, I can take it to almost any range to shoot it.

I would define an "Assault Weapon" as a weapon used for assault, in which case Cain slew Abel with an Assault Rock.

I like discussing things with people who are reasonable and I try to be reasonable as well, that includes religion and politics, but I tried not to get too far into either of those here.

/Dismount Soapbox

Jake
 
The AR is much more than an assault rife. Not only is it an engineering success, but an American success story in a way. It doesn't deserve the bad reputation. it is the current musket for citizens, as described above it is an economical rifle.
 
Shaw Blades said:
#13 In the United States today, 47 percent of all high school students have had sex.

#14 The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate on the entire planet. If our young men behaved differently this would not be happening.

#15 In the United States today, one out of every four teen girls has at least one sexually transmitted disease. If our young men were not sex-obsessed idiots running around constantly looking to "score" these diseases would not be spreading like this.
Click to expand...

I have read this whole thing and the one thing that pushed past me over the top was the above quote.

#14 The young girls are not respecting themselves, thus are allowing these boys with the genetic material pushing them to pollinate as many flowers as possible.

#15 Again if girls were not allowing these boys to score they would not have the diseases.

There are so many easy to understand reasons why this is happening, such as population's exponential explosion diluting the gene pool, or the fact that medications can allow certain people to seem "normal" allowing them to mate, further adding "flawed" genes to the pool. In addition to that, our young men are not only the first in history where it is seriously frowned upon to fight amongst ourselves because it is bad for society, but also at the same time in history where society allows the females to behave just like men sexually. These young men are the first/second generations that are not needed by women for any of the reasons we were needed for in the entire history of humans, protection from animals, and other humans.

I probably should not post this, but I have been drinking, and will post much more coherent thoughts tomorrow. Good night.

Oh and has anyone seen the documentary about the elephants that were transplanted to a new animal refuge in Africa? They moved females and per-adolescence males, due to the fact that Bull Male elephants would be too difficult to tranquilize and transport. Once established the adolescent males formed gangs and started to stay in heat constantly. They started killing Rhinoceroses and charging park rangers trucks. Finally someone came up with a hypothesis that since there were no bull males to keep them in line they were just doing whatever they wanted. Once Bull male elephants were brought in all the teens went out of heat and stopped harassing. The point I'm trying to make is fathers and strong male role models can fix society if we can only balance out the initial over swing of the women's movement, not that there was anything wrong with that. The problem is women built up the movement for so long that they finally had enough and did something drastic about it. Males will not get there for a while, if at all, and by then it may be too late.
 
To teach respect one has to have respect. To demand respect is to be a liar and be lied to. Unfortunately society says that's ok as long as you have nice things.

In the words of "V": "...truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror."

I can personally guarantee one thing. If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem.
 
To teach respect one has to have respect. To demand respect is to be a liar and be lied to. Unfortunately society says that's ok as long as you have nice things.

In the words of "V": "...truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror."

I can personally guarantee one thing. If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem.
 
Carl_First_Timer said:
I have read this whole thing and the one thing that pushed past me over the top was the above quote.

#14 The young girls are not respecting themselves, thus are allowing these boys with the genetic material pushing them to pollinate as many flowers as possible.

#15 Again if girls were not allowing these boys to score they would not have the diseases.

There are so many easy to understand reasons why this is happening, such as population's exponential explosion diluting the gene pool, or the fact that medications can allow certain people to seem "normal" allowing them to mate, further adding "flawed" genes to the pool. In addition to that, our young men are not only the first in history where it is seriously frowned upon to fight amongst ourselves because it is bad for society, but also at the same time in history where society allows the females to behave just like men sexually. These young men are the first/second generations that are not needed by women for any of the reasons we were needed for in the entire history of humans, protection from animals, and other humans.

I probably should not post this, but I have been drinking, and will post much more coherent thoughts tomorrow. Good night.

Oh and has anyone seen the documentary about the elephants that were transplanted to a new animal refuge in Africa? They moved females and per-adolescence males, due to the fact that Bull Male elephants would be too difficult to tranquilize and transport. Once established the adolescent males formed gangs and started to stay in heat constantly. They started killing Rhinoceroses and charging park rangers trucks. Finally someone came up with a hypothesis that since there were no bull males to keep them in line they were just doing whatever they wanted. Once Bull male elephants were brought in all the teens went out of heat and stopped harassing. The point I'm trying to make is fathers and strong male role models can fix society if we can only balance out the initial over swing of the women's movement, not that there was anything wrong with that. The problem is women built up the movement for so long that they finally had enough and did something drastic about it. Males will not get there for a while, if at all, and by then it may be too late.
Click to expand...


:thumbup:
 
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