Ghostrider said:
FormerFlash said:
It's not the guns. It's not one political ideology or another. It is the way we address (or don't address) mental health. It is the way bring up boys and young men.
The last four instances of mass killings in this country featured and Asian man in California, a black man in New York City, a white man in New York, and a young Hispanic man in Texas. They had varying extremist political views both right and left. These events occurred in both states with highly restrictive gun laws and those with less restrictive gun laws. What they had in common was they were all perpetrated by men, they all had demonstrated mental health issues, and they all chose relatively soft targets.
We need to focus on protecting vulnerable targets like schools and churches and address mental health issues with individuals head on. There should be a zero tolerance policy for threats of violence in schools. Someone mentioned 2 weeks suspension. No thanks. This issue is too serious. If a student makes a verified threat of mass violence (written, social media, witnessed by a teacher, etc), they should be expelled, flagged in systems, and go through mandatory mental health counseling.
Both sides need to stop trying to score political points and talk about actually addressing issues related to this topic. We cant rationalize, support, and even celebrate mental health issues in some areas while demonizing it in others. We need politically neutral mental health experts to stop pandering to cultural movements and to speak truth about what constitutes actual mental health issues and what effective treatment should look like.
In schools, a single point of entry with multiple layers of doors. My school growing up had a resource officer. His office was tucked away somewhere secluded, although he did make rounds. That person's office should be in eyesight of that single point of entry. Magnetic locks and panic buttons should be installed. These are the kinds of things public dollars should be funding in schools. All schools, not matter how rare public school shooting instances are. I live in Oklahoma. The chance of your home getting hit by a tornado is relatively low but that doesn't stop almost everyone from installing a storm shelter. Prepare for the worst and invest in the safety of our children. Evil/mentally ill people will always exist and some may look for ways to inflict harm on others at scale. Let's not make it easy for them.
so pushing alternative lifestyles, saying men can be women and have babies, etc isn't helpful? To many these people are mentally ill. I wonder if they will be allowed to purchase a gun? Guess it depends who is defining mental illness.
"pushing alternative lifestyles"???
Who is "pushing" anything?
And, if you really believe in freedom, why is it any of your business who somebody else dates or marries or how they dress? Or even whether they undergo medical procedures to change themselves in some fundamental way?
Since you have freedom of association, you can avoid those people.
Your church also gets to tell them they aren't welcome, at least if they identify as LGBTQ, because they're craven sinners who are rejecting God's plan for their lives, about which your church leaders presume to be much better informed than they are.
As somebody who is at the far end of the straight spectrum, I've always been utterly mystified by same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria, just as I will never know what it's like be the opposite sex even though I've been married for more than 40 years.
But I also believe people's personal choices about dating and mating and how they want to live their lives are absolutely none of my business, as long as they don't hurt anybody else.
It's baffling to me how the same people who think everyone should be completely free to own and carry any type of deadly weapon get so upset that people should also be lawfully free to choose a spouse of the same sex or to make very personal decisions involving their bodies for themselves without government intrusion of any sort.
If you are so strongly in favor of restrictions on personal freedoms in such fundamental areas of life as who Americans can date and marry and what medical procedures they can have and when, why not in others, say, to reduce the danger of mass shootings?
Perhaps the LGBTQ lobby needs to spend as much money as the gun lobby buying the votes and loyalty of senators and congressmen.
Because that's why we have so little control over sales of deadly weapons that angry kids like Payton Gendron and the Uvalde shooter could easily load themselves up with enough ammo to kill lots of people.
