Dont glamourize mass murderers.Dont even publish their names, publish the names of the victims.
Anon learns about Material Conditions.
How come none of these nutcases ever go shoot a billionaire or two instead of random Innocents?
Had me nodding in agreement until that last line.
Cruz’s Crime is not “100% society’s fault.” Cruz literally and figuratively pulled that trigger. At best maybe a 50:50, but to completely absolve Cruz of any wrongdoing is asinine.
I completely agree. However, if we’re talking about solutions, blaming someone like this doesn’t get us anywhere, and it certainly won’t prevent another similar tragedy.
The people interested in actually solving this problem aren’t wasting their time on the motives of the shooters. They are all aberrations, but when the number of aberrations starts rising, that tells you there’s a problem in the system, and treating the symptoms won’t make it go away.
It will prevent a similar tragedy by blaming him because that involves locking him up so he can’t do it again.
You’re missing the point when people say it won’t solve future issues. Yes, lock the perpetrator up (ignoring the issues with the penal system in the first place), that’s a no brainier. But locking up that person and placing all the blame at their feet doesn’t do anything for the other people in very similar situations.
Then we’re in complete agreement. I think perhaps I’m not the one missing points here.
The person you were talking to was making a broader societal point. Placing the blame for this whole situation, which is the fruit of many of the failings of society, just enacted through a single man, and saying we’re good 'cause that boogeyman is dead or in prison does NOTHING to address the root causes, the actual problems. That’s the point you’re missing.
I understand exactly what they were trying to say.
Unlike them, I’m not making a broader point, I’m not in a larger discussion of societal reform. Attempting to shift this conversation to that is a fault. If you scroll through this thread I’ve been extremely consistently saying that Cruz bares responsibility for his actions and condemning him does serve a vital, albeit very disheartening, purpose for all of us.
If you think about it from my perspective it seems that the only purpose of talking about the faults of society in the context of my statements would be to detract from Cruz’s guilt, which as I stated previously is asinine.
You’re painting a false dichotomy, though. Both of these things can be true at the same time, and in fact are. It does everyone more good to accept that yes, Cruz did a bad thing and should be held accountable, and to accept that, yes, society at large has a hand to play in this.
“Guy with shit circumstances decides to buy a gun and decides to go somewhere with the gun and decides to shoot undeserving people with the gun, it’s society’s fault”
Way to blame the victim anon. No, this was his decision. I know folks who have life shitting all over them and it doesn’t make them want to kill children and families.
No. You’ve just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia. Most of us don’t mass murder with machine guns.
That only happens in America because you’ve chosen to elect people who make sure crazy people can exercise your Constitutional right to carry machine guns and stand your ground when King Charles comes on your property or you carry your emotional support machine guns to a protest. That’s not “society’s” fault. It’s every single Republican MAGA protect the second amendment voter.
most people on Earth outside of American suburbia
Inside. You mean inside of American suburbia, the depressing, isolating, boring American suburbia. People in the first world outside of America have social nets and help from the society if they’re on the downswing. People in first world go to therapist when they feel bad about circumstances of their lives, not into sporting shop to buy a gun.
But you’re completely right, the situation when people can go to a random shop and buy a gun is fucking insane.
True, also make any lethal weapon illegal in usa
We can make it harder to get a gun. But there are so many already in the US its difficult to rein that back in.
No, I say illegal, not harder to get.
Determinism is a helluva drug…
But seriously, we gotta look at the structural issues at play in things like this. A lot of gun control advocates want to point at things like this, and say, see, this shit doesn’t happen in any other country in the world, obviously the guns are the problem, we need to take the guns! But when you look at other countries, you see that the US is one of the few that has both guns and almost no social safety nets. The proposed solution on the left is never “fix the problems that lead to crime and violence”; rather, it’s “take the tools used to commit crime and violence”
You can use the facile response of saying, no, this is all on Cruz, he made a choice. And it’s true, kind of, except that his choices were significantly constrained by the social conditions that were imposed on him. That’s not saying that what he did was right, nor does it make it the ‘fault’ of the people he victimized. But things like this simply do not happen in a vacuum.
Here’s another way of looking at it.
If you take a dog as a puppy, starve it, leave it outside all the time, ignore it, kick it, never give it any positive interaction, and always punish it for any ‘infraction’ when you’ve never put in any time to teach it better, are you going to be surprised when it mauls someone? Why do you expect any other animal to behave better than a dog just because it walks upright and has no fur?
The proposed solution on the left is never “fix the problems that lead to crime and violence”; rather, it’s “take the tools used to commit crime and violence”
What left are you talking about? Social issues and solving them is generally by definition leftist. If one suggests it they get called socialist/communist in the US even if they’re closer to center if compared to rest of the world.
We also discuss the issue of tons of crime being caused by poverty and lack of social nets, especially when discussing police brutality and the like. Now many of the members of congress people consider/accuse of being leftists are really just centrists, or close to it, or people who want to maintain their power, get votes, not really change the status quo. I’d say they match your definition, but if you’re saying leftists don’t want social solutions then you either haven’t been talking to leftists, or you aren’t fully listening.
As I said in response to someone else: what passes for the left says that they want this, until the rubber meets the road. Criminal justice reform/defund the police? That’s great, until you have a lot of homeless people scaring the Good, Decent, Upstanding citizens. High-density, affordable housing? Oh no, not in my charming, turn-of-the-century neighborhood, that would ruin it’s charm and wreck my property values! MLK Jr. said that the white liberals were the enemy, and–as a white leftist–he was right!
Republicans are honest; they want to fuck everyone over as long as they make a buck, or believe that they’re doing their god’s will.
Personally, I side with the anarchists that are at least trying to work within their communities to make shit better in whatever small ways they can.
