(2018 thread) Active Shooter - Stoneman Douglas High School (near Coral Springs, FL)

The other thing that's fascinating about the brain is the shearing of the synapse that take place during adolescence. Think about all of these connections starting to disconnect when you become a teenager. Kids moods change, they are forgetful. Why is this? Their brain is rewiring. And in some cases, it goes on for years - hence the 25 yr mark. Its different for kids, but for many, their brain is shearing those synapses well into their early 20s and your brain has to re-route information which causes the moodiness & forgetfulness. Couple that with overstimulation while your brain is going through this "refinement" if you will. Information is getting rerouted along avenues that it never travelled before. Now different parts of your brain are literally in information overload. Yet we want to sell semi-automatic guns to kids who can't remember that their parents asked them to take the garbage out 5 times in 30 minutes?

It's absolutely insane.

NationalTitles17 said:

I don't think this situation has anything at all to do with economics, but this generation does seem to harbor a certain hopelessness. You can blame capitalism, but that would be missing the mark, IMHO.

Click to expand...

I was just answering Bazza’s post about things like this not happening when we were growing up. Back in the 60’s an even 70’s people’s wages were tied to productivity. Starting in the 80’s that changed, wages became detached from productivity. American worker productivity is higher now but wages have remained stagnant while profits have soared. You can look at any graph you like they all show the same thing. Wages declining, productivity increasing, profits soaring. To say that economics isn’t playing a role here is naive imho. Not trying to argue, I respectfully disagree.

CrimsonRuss said:

I was just answering Bazza’s post about things like this not happening when we were growing up. Back in the 60’s an even 70’s people’s wages were tied to productivity. Starting in the 80’s that changed, wages became detached from productivity. American worker productivity is higher now but wages have remained stagnant while profits have soared. You can look at any graph you like they all show the same thing. Wages declining, productivity increasing, profits soaring. To say that economics isn’t playing a role here is naive imho. Not trying to argue, I respectfully disagree.

Click to expand...

Perhaps you have a point (which the latter part of my post actually admits), but it's just a part of the problem and it's not capitalism per se that is the problem.

TIDE-HSV said:

It's played a part all the way back to Columbine...

Click to expand...

This is why we should follow the European model and get rid of all the violence on TV and add more nudity. I am serious.

In Europe the kids are playing the exact same video games and are watching the same violence on TV and in Films.

They are subject to the same developmental and social issues, I'd bet my last penny we have a very similar percentage of bad apples and likewise a similar percentage of violent incidents/outbursts in schools.

The kid who brings a knife to school though, can't do the same amount of damage as the kid who brings firearms.

The availability of and access to guns is the major difference.

So we have established that what has changed since my 'yoot' is the presence of Social Media. Especially popular for the youngsters.

What are the folks at.....

• You Tube
• Google
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Facebook
• and Snapchat

....doing.....to help us with the problem?

CajunCrimson said:

Could this be why you have so little violence?

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/People/Equality/Equalities/DataGrid/Ethnicity/EthPopMig

You just don’t have the diversity of most countries. The same reason you don’t see this in other countries that have little to no immigration. Now, that’s from 2011...I’m guessing that you’ve had more immigration as of late, and I’m guessing a jump in crime rates.

Click to expand...

I honestly don't think we have a violence shortage, we just don't have the gun violence and mass shooting aspect.

The last mass Shooting was Dunblane in 1996 and the scumbag who did that just so happened to have access to guns when he had his breakdown.


I'm from the West of Scotland, crime rates have never been that low fed by poverty and deprivation, there has long been gang and religious divisons creating tensions too.

Immigration has not had a major impact till now, although that tipping is fast approaching, I think.


Had we had access to better weaponry I suspect that we'd be just as competent at killing each other as anyone else .


I just cant see how getting into an arms race with a hypothetical criminal/bad guy who may or may not want to break into your home or otherwise do you harm is a freedom, to me that's a restriction.

cbi1972 said:

What I owe to future generations is preservation of the freedoms I hold most dear. There is a cost to freedom, and sometimes that cost is high.

Click to expand...

Go to a memorial service at the school and say that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

crimsonaudio said:

The difference is 2A. I know I keep coming back to that, but as a democratic republic, the law is above all. It might not seem like much, but it becomes a huge hurdle if people want to create an unarmed (regarding firearms) society like you guys have.

The reality is Pandora's Box has been opened for a long time over here wrt firearms - we just just expect to pass a few laws and gun violence will just disappear. It simply won't happen. And since there are so any firearms, the criminals have them - what would you prefer, allowing criminals to break in and do whatever they wish because they have guns or have the option to legally defend yourself and your family?

Maybe we're just wired differently but I want to ability to defend myself on equal ground.

Click to expand...

I get that CA and the reason I have always tried to read and avoid commenting on these threads is because I grew up in a different world/culture and who am I to comment on how Americans run their country.

But when was 2A penned? 1791 according to Internet Selma, 227yrs ago, is it really that relevant to today's America?

I'm British, politically I'm on the right side of the right ride, if I was in the States I'd be a Republican in all but a couple of discussions, gun control being one that's why the debate intrigues me.


Finally, on Pandora's Box, your American, your country put a man on the moon and brought him back home safely, 49 years ago, I suspect if you really WANTED too, you could find a way to close it.

NationalTitles17 said:

I don't think this situation has anything at all to do with economics, but this generation does seem to harbor a certain hopelessness. You can blame capitalism, but that would be missing the mark, IMHO. Perhaps that has a small part but the overarching theme seems to be that everything is pointless, meaningless, corrupt, etc;...The pessimism is abundant. Society is decaying. The earth itself is being destroyed. There is no opportunity for advancement anymore. I'm not debating the merits of any one of those, but that is the sentiment, by and large.

Click to expand...

I agree with you. I also agree that the extreme violence of video games and all sorts of media distorts reality to some who may be more vulnerable socially. Our society is coming apart and many retiring baby boomers find it difficult to envision a future for their children and grandchildren and in turn they often find it difficult to envision a future for themselves.

I live in the relatively affluent Huntsville area and I see many young couples having multiple children. Yet I find it difficult with my experience to understand how they could justify bringing children into such an uncertain, dangerous environment

This does point to a very wide chasm between the educated affluent and the poor in our society where life is often totally dangerously chaotic. This is another obvious factor involved in the violence.

CajunCrimson said:

Could this be why you have so little violence?

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/People/Equality/Equalities/DataGrid/Ethnicity/EthPopMig

You just don’t have the diversity of most countries. The same reason you don’t see this in other countries that have little to no immigration. Now, that’s from 2011...I’m guessing that you’ve had more immigration as of late, and I’m guessing a jump in crime rates.

And again...if you remove guns from the citizenry, only two groups will have them. Police and Criminals. That’s a bad recipe for any melting pot

Click to expand...

I don't know the shooter's motivations but diversity does not seem to be the root cause of this. Tribalism? Perhaps in some cases.

crimsonaudio said:

Because we live in the safest era in human history?

I know it's easy to read the internet and think things are bad, but that it's worse now than any time before literally couldn't be further from the truth.

Click to expand...

That's the paradox: We live in the most prosperous and least dangerous time (in some ways) in human history). In most places in the USA you can walk the street at night in relative safety (compared to long ago, anyway) and yet kids feel more hopeless than perhaps ever. But we also have the capability to destroy the world many times over with nuclear weapons. We don't have a single enemy like communism but we do have an unpredictable foe in terrorists and rogue actors like the shooter here. Uncertainty, I guess.

cbi1972 said:

What I owe to future generations is preservation of the freedoms I hold most dear. There is a cost to freedom, and sometimes that cost is high.

Click to expand...

Crimson1967 said:

Go to a memorial service at the school and say that.

Click to expand...

That's ok, they have people telling them it was God's will and that they are in a better place now, and other such nonsense.

I don't need to tell them the truth about the tradeoffs we make in daily life any more than I need to hear emotion override reason and tell me how I need to sacrifice my rights so somebody can feel better about their loss. They don't want to hear from me, and I don't want to hear from them.

I've been held at gunpoint. My mother has been shot. My godfather committed murder and suicide. My emotions in a difficult moment didn't drive me to abandon my commitment to our most fundamental rights.