Mass Shootings - Maybe a Reason: Lost Boys

made in hell . . .

Last night, some assholes thought it would be funny to walk around Columbine High School with fake weapons - and they livestreamed it. To make money. Someone donated to these shitheads.

Link to tweet

When you don't send them off to war.

Nobody wants to admit it, but ... the societal problem of excess young males has been known of for 1000's of years, and that's how rulers have always dealt with it. Make 'em part of the 'state' and make them fight wars of conquest.

There's no biological reason for males and females to be at 50/50 ratio ... other than than so males can go to war and claim territory and resources. At least you put them in the military so they feel they have jobs/purpose.

Not that I'm pro-War, certainly not. But history will show that this is what happens when there's peace for 'too long'.

Ultimately it's not the guns, it's not video games, it's not social media. It's human nature and our evolutionary history playing out on a grand scale.

You don't send them off to war, they make war at home instead. Easy availability of guns just makes that easier for some of them to do in bloody fashion.

MHO

I also hate war. But I think that is my voice as a woman speaking. I would certainly defend my land if attacked. I think females have always been defenders. But men are also aggressors.

I wonder if there would be benefits to sending young men to Ukraine.

and content, socially adjusted family life, it's outrageous to think that the only thing to do with them is to start a war (see Putin's Ukraine debacle as a current example of what a poor decision unprovoked war is...an authoritarian's megalomaniac vision is really what that is).

Responsible, non-mmaniaclal, societal leadership works to provide education, attainable asprirations and work for young males, and females. Unprovoked was is never the answer.

Gun violence deaths: How the U.S. compares with the rest of the world
Updated January 24, 20233:49 PM ET

Most of the bar charts are dates 2019.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/24/980838151/gun-violence-deaths-how-the-u-s-compares-to-the-rest-of-the-world

Comparing European Countries to the USA

The U.S. firearm homicide rate in 2019 was 4.11 people per 100,000, compared to 0.19 in the 27-nation European Union. Bulgaria had the EU’s highest firearms homicide rate 0.56 per 100,000 – more than seven times lower than the U.S.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022/12/05/gun-homicides-rates-us-european-union-fact-check/69697014007/

Sad to say, too many boys and men have brains that don't serve them or anyone else in "modern" society anymore. Their aggression, rage and violent tendencies are now turned on humans (both familiar people and strangers) for psychological reasons (like attempting to compensate for their deep feelings of insecurity) instead of being used to hunt down food or protect their tribe/village/cave clan from predators.

And in this country, we're awash in guns. It's a terrible combo.

The males that are more properly adapted to current 1st-world life ... are the ones with more female-like personality/genes.

Hot take.

I’m saying they evolved for societal conditions that no longer exist — 200,000 years of evolution versus only 150 or so years of “modern” society that no longer requires the levels of brute force/aggression that used to be an advantage.

The Priesthood was also a destination for "surplus males".

But there has never been a nation with a guns per capita ratio like that of America unless it's in a literal war. There are barely any controls; semi-automatic weapons are cheap, plentiful and easy to acquire both legally and illegally. The more guns, the higher the chance guns will be used. Male anger is omnipresent in every nation, gun saturation isn't.

Paraphrasing, but "We're living in an ongoing social experiment: what happens when you flood a nation with weapons?" -J. Bouie

Iceland, New Zealand, Sweden, etc. Shouldn't they just about ready to explode with all the pent up peace?

Iraq and Afghanistan.

Things only got worse.

Your maths doesn't add up.

based on the christofascist American Taliban's religious fundamentalisms of faith about misogyny, the very first discrimination, and what it takes to fulfill the only named orientations that don't allow for equality or shared freedoms of humanity's opportunities and choices. Testing hypotheses of what it personally takes to lead (win - free of ROL) and serve (lose - free of life-affirming remuneration) or even naturally exist at all has caused the overwhelming cognitive and limbic craziness in all other constitutionally named discriminations. To some degree, it's set most of us up to this standard of capitalist competitive duality of "black and white" thinking about the knowledge of good and evil. The stress from deciding what separates good and evil and the ensuing violence has caused the advanced bitter fruit of generations.

In the 27 congressional sessions following Johnson’s presidency, one-party control has existed for just eight total sessions.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/02/03/single-party-control-in-washington-is-common-at-the-beginning-of-a-new-presidency-but-tends-not-to-last-long/

Of these, only 4 years were Democratic Control. We can add 2 years for Biden. A total of 6 years of Democratic One Party Control.

The above article also depicts One Party Rule for the 20th century.

Notably, any socially responsible laws were passed during Democratic Party rule.

Wars and depressions were launched during Republican rule.

I chalk up a lot of responsibility for policies that have allowed American youth to be raised in despair with little hope for a meaningful life. This void is filled with easily accessible ideologies facilitating the enrollment of youth raised on hunger and homelessness because tax cuts for the rich are the goals of the Republican Party

10% youth experienced hunger in the USA
https://frac.org/hunger-poverty-america#data

Homelessness and Aging Out of Foster Care: A National Comparison of Child Welfare-Involved Adolescents
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29056803/

Just a couple of reasons why Americas youth might have mental health issues.

Most somehow survive without a need to go on a rampage killing spree.

Some mass shooters simply let hate for “others” dominate.

And now we have the worst income divide since just before the Great Depression, access to every thought on the internet, easy gun access.

Despair and hate have more fuel available to the minds of our children who are mostly in their own while both parents struggle to keep a roof over their heads and sufficient food on the table while they watch the well off kids living the good life.

It’s a recipe for disaster.

And disaster is what we have.

Uniquely American version

about the "willful ignorance" within the family of my youth and DH's as well. In fact, we met and married at our small childhood church. Although every one of mine seem to have been registered Democrats, none of them ever acted with any tolerance or wellfare for the female members. There was a lot of benign neglect on both sides that covered over what was then (and still exists) a multitude of religious sexual "sins." Add transgenerational trauma, IMHO, with religious misogny at the core and a home broken by grand-parental divorce on DH's side. My mom lost a younger brother early in life from meningitis; Mom rarely spoke of him, and her father never returned from WWII. He had worked at Swift, a meatpacker, in the city. Mom was basically unchurched and sporadically cared for by her grandmother because her mother was a domestic companion. With a dirt poor, low-paid job by the necessity of having earlier dropped out of HS at age 16, she met my dad, a WWII vet, as he was rebounding from both war a few years earlier from the jungled savage nations of the Pacific and a previous engagement. That lady was Catholic and would not convert. Mom and Dad were 8 years apart in age and I was born soon after they were wed; two siblings would follow, a sister and a brother. My paternal grandmother never processed the break-up and did not attend their wedding, so Mom had a lot to prove about being a "good fundamentalist" Missouri Synd Lutheran and, boy, did she ever with major abandonment issues as we departed the nest and married. My younger brother never left home; never dated much or married, never even had his own phone number, but he did have a post-HS technical education and a good job. He stayed more than a decade after my Dad's death to take care of our mother. They ended up across the hall from each other in hospice, 92 and 64, passing this world's suffering a few months apart--It's not on his death certificate, but I believe stress caused his NASH liver issues and cancer. Faithful to a promise? or hiding from his own truth? - I don't know and really don't care why he'd continue that existence without a partner in his life. I won't even discuss the family manipulations of my younger sister; we remain estranged. My family and I were the family scapegoats for all of it because "I should have known better." As the oldest, I should never have moved even 30 miles away with my husband who went to a corporate IT school after HS graduation and was then drafted. Two more moves have followed. We married in 1970 and only Elizabeth Warren has explained exactly the economic story of my life. I paid for all the degree I could afford out of my own working pocket but still earned only half of what DH gets in SS. Hmmm...

DH's mom went to work during the war and met a woman who got sick. His mom brought her home and nursed her back to health; that woman never left the home, not even when DH's dad came home from his enlisted Navy service to the same job he left. DH grew up in what seemed on the surface a platonic menage a tois, but perhaps not??? Was that other woman abused and acused in her childhood? Likely - a 2nd lesbian emotionally enmeshed mother???, a sister, or just a close pal/auntie from the good old days??? In any case, neither of the women ever finished HS or rec'd a GED; DH's mom died first; her friend retired from Woolworth's; she gave DH one of her cars, and left by dying, DH's dad, who had primarily supported them all, was the last to go and caused the lion's share of our wedded problems about what to do with Dad. His parents were very active in the care and maintenance of "our" church. They gave generous cash donations as well but did not believe in personal investments of any kind.

We never asked those hard questions or never had the "right" opportunity. We had two daughters together who are now middle age and a grandson, but we now live, unhappily and terrified of our future but still married in semi-loving roommate roles sliding down the slippery slope of our finances and terrified by our previous choices to work out those challenges that include one I cannot ever be legally compelled to tell; so yes, despairing of burdening our children in a state that mandates bu code familial responsibility for housing and last elderly care. Daughter No 1 actually inferred that I'd sue for that support...WTH? This debt ceiling deal things the cruel GOP's want to happen are very scary should we live long enough to lose SS and Medicare w/supplemental. I think our kids would adjust, though their personalities lend themselves to oil and vinegar, or perhaps they'd try the GoFundMe routes to bury us in the least expensive way--Our SIL is a great guy with his own family and cultural issues, but the pressure is all on the 13 year old grandson as the single next generational leaf upon the family tree!

Thank you. I believe many of today’s elderly are living with great anxiety if they are tuned in.

Just posted a few issues facing our generation.

To think, in our youth we taught like hell to wipe out poverty

Then along came Nixon, the rat fuckers so-called and. All except for 6 years of Democratic Ine Party rule since 1980.

Will this country ever wake up?

I wish more elderly would share their stories.

✨✨💕✨✨

A significant number of young men have always faced a difficult time transitioning to adulthood. I'm sure the same is true for young women, but they're much less likely to respond with deadly violence. Some men seem to become adults effortlessly, but it's a tough time for many, perhaps most. How many men would like to be twenty again, with all that entailed, really?

I'm not justifying gun violence; I'm saying that what separates today's violent young men from past generations is not the angst and anxiety of today's young men. It's the guns, and a culture that promotes violence as the solution to most problems. Now we're combining near universal access to guns with a culture that places enormous social, economic, and interpersonal strain on young adults and leaves many of them without hope for a better future anytime soon. And of course, our political climate works overtime to stoke their social grievances to the advantage of office seekers.

Wouldn't that be nice.