School shooting in Colorado!

[Mbelle]

5 hours ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

I'm just piggybacking off your mention of Australia @Mbelle

I'm in Australia. In my extended family we have six teachers, spanning primary, secondary, state and private schools. This experience spans many, many decades and many, many different socioeconomic areas of our large city. 

Over all this time and all this experience, the only true risk I can remember anyone talking about was when a scared horse was loose in school grounds, resulting in a lockdown but no injuries to anyone.

No guns. No fear.

Why is the culture here so different? 

As you mentioned, I'm sure there are issues in lots of schools, but fear about just being there isn't one of them.

I'm not up on all the politics and govt, but we do sometimes talk about cultural differences in our family.  

Some differences..John Howard, a heavy conservaitve, railroaded the gun laws into existence in Australia.  In the US it is iiberals for the most part pushing for these laws.  Gun rights people trend to being conservative, so maybe it would be helpful if a heavyweight conservative took on this issue.  Liberals do also own guns but would prefer much more controls.  I think it did not happen so smoothly in Australia as it appears to be happening in NZ, there were obstacles and objections to the laws and with Howard powering through it got done.  The other difference is cultural and that is that it seems like Australians are more likely to follow the law once it is set even if they really are upset about it.  I could be way off with all of this and this is just armchair talk in our home.

I think in the US that the way to go is something similar to what happened with smoking.  In the 1970's everyone smoked by 1990 it was embarrassing and a social no no by and large.  Cigrarette's have never been banned.  I'm wondering if some social engineering will work?  

[Sneezyone]

8 hours ago, TCB said:

Sorry did not mean to imply that they don't care, just that they don't say anything about it, which seems strange to me as it seems usual to comment or acknowledge in some way when tragic things happen, especially when it involves the deaths of children. Not sure why they don't. 

 

ETA - The perception of these things is always very interesting. I just looked up the homicide rates ( per 100,000 ) and the homicide rate in the US is quite a bit higher than in the UK.

 

It's a freakonomics thing. The perception of risk (death by homicide) is much higher than the actual risk (death by car accident) but that doesn't mean there's no risk at all. Some people, of course, are at higher risk than others. When we moved to Bahrain, I had family ALL OVER my facebook feed telling us to be safe. I had to post the ACTUAL data showing that we were safer there and all over Western Europe than in the mainland U.S. Some still didn't believe it.

[TechWife]

The primary problem in the US is that, culturally, we care more about our individual rights than we do about the well being of other people. We are a self-centered society. There is no common good. The mindset has infected every area of our culture - including those who are supposed to be serving others (I am tired of police officers shooting black people because they are afraid for their lives - why are we hiring police officers that are afraid of black people?).

Why are we depending on children to stop shooters? Why? Because, culturally, we don't care about the lives of the children.

 

[Ausmumof3]

13 hours ago, Mbelle said:

I'm not up on all the politics and govt, but we do sometimes talk about cultural differences in our family.  

Some differences..John Howard, a heavy conservaitve, railroaded the gun laws into existence in Australia.  In the US it is iiberals for the most part pushing for these laws.  Gun rights people trend to being conservative, so maybe it would be helpful if a heavyweight conservative took on this issue.  Liberals do also own guns but would prefer much more controls.  I think it did not happen so smoothly in Australia as it appears to be happening in NZ, there were obstacles and objections to the laws and with Howard powering through it got done.  The other difference is cultural and that is that it seems like Australians are more likely to follow the law once it is set even if they really are upset about it.  I could be way off with all of this and this is just armchair talk in our home.

I think in the US that the way to go is something similar to what happened with smoking.  In the 1970's everyone smoked by 1990 it was embarrassing and a social no no by and large.  Cigrarette's have never been banned.  I'm wondering if some social engineering will work?  

Not only that but also it’s an ongoing push pull process as new tech etc makes existing laws inadequate.  

[Mbelle]

4 hours ago, TechWife said:

The primary problem in the US is that, culturally, we care more about our individual rights than we do about the well being of other people. We are a self-centered society.

 I think  currently we care more about gun rights than we do about the vulnerable in our society.  However individualistic societies are not inherently more self centered.  Individualism allows for more creativity and acceptance of differences than societies that adhere more closely and in some cases strictly to one group norm. Despite needing new gun laws, a more open and indivualistic society is far safer.

There is no common good.  

 I do agree it is easy to be pessimistic in the US right now, but honestly people are working for the common good all the time from grass roots organizaitions on up.  Some days it is hard to believe it though! There are plenty of nasty folks and organzations such as the NRA, but look at people who are working to solve this problem such as you and me.   I personally don't own any weapons, but this is the US and people are going to own weapons, but could they own only certain styles and certain amount?  Could there be more training and background checks? I think yes, but clearly we haven't reached a majority with that view ...yet.  What will it take to stop the mass shooters, because mass shootings themselves don't seem to be having any effect ?   We are a nation that argues outloud for everyone to see and read about, and that's not a bad thing although at times is can be annoying as heck, and sure hope we can come to a  reasonable solution very soon which doesn't involve bringing in even more guns and violence to the schools.  

The mindset has infected every area of our culture - including those who are supposed to be serving others (I am tired of police officers shooting black people because they are afraid for their lives - why are we hiring police officers that are afraid of black people?).

I'm not sure why we reach for guns as a first reaction to being scared of people .  I would like to see more of an approach of do the least harm necessary and really sometimes there is absolutely nothing scary going on when supposed perpatrators get shot.  It is ridiculous.

Why are we depending on children to stop shooters? Why? Because, culturally, we don't care about the lives of the children.

I'm also feeling uneasy about praising children as hero's instead of pointing out they are victims of  domestic terrorist murdered with guns.  Something is not right about that in a multifaceted way.

 

 

[Sneezyone]

5 hours ago, Mbelle said:

I'm also feeling uneasy about praising children as hero's instead of pointing out they are victims of  domestic terrorist murdered with guns.  Something is not right about that in a multifaceted way.

 

Louder for the people in the back! These are children who deserve protection not heroes in waiting. I get that they've shown more courage than most Americans and politicians ever will but that's not their job and we shouldn't be asking it of them.