Preventing Massacres - the serious solutions thread.

Agreed. ive always thought America needs a solid dose of dead school kids to make a change....but being a big population maybe more than a couple of classes is required. In Scotland it only took one class before we went crazy about it.

And we're glad we did.

 

I hold concealed carry only on a may-issue basis as a possible solution, as studies show there is no correlation between shall-issue concealed carry laws and decreasing crime rates. There is also no correlation between shall-issue concealed carry laws and increasing crime rates. The empirical evidence points to such laws being negligible to unknown in their effects.

 

Keep the guns.

Make all the people leave.

Or only let native Americans and blacks have guns.

 

Some ideas:

- better access to mental health
- stricter gun regulations, with psychiatric background checks
- teach gun safety in schools

A blanket ban on guns is completely unrealistic, and it is not even needed, as evidenced by countries like Switzerland or Norway with lots of guns and little gun deaths.

 

No I do not believe you can make a weapon to kill safe. A Bow, spear, or knife is less dangerous but still not safe. I believe you are confusing my usage the word respect. I do not believe the shooter did respect the weapons used no more than he respected his mother he shot dead. The word respect at least to me means a healthy fear of them. Not a phobia but much like a relative or a friend who you like but know if you disrespect them you will have a price to pay. While I can understand the horror mass shootings cause they are a small part of our violence problem just gets the most attention.

Training children start with getting them to treat toy guns with "respect" I do not allow them to point cap guns or even laser type toys at a human or other living thing. Whatever safety device is on a gun you assume it will fail I have never seen it actually fail but always treat them that way. A firearm is tob considered loaded even when you are positive it isn't. You learn how to clean and maintain the firearm. You then let them practice shooting targets if they have treated them with "respect" and followed my instructions perfectly on the use. You do so for the same reason you teach a child to drive it is safer than just setting them loose. I keep my firearms secure they are not toys they are deadly weapons. If I have not explained it well I apologize. It is more of a hands on process reading it doesn't do much good. The weapons are kept in a gun safe with a combination lock. Not completely safe from thieves nothing is they are far more secure than the old glass door gun cabinets that were used in my youth. Unless they are stolen by a advanced burglar my weapons are safely kept.

 

I have a creeping feeling that if the US paid attention to this, at ALL, it would be in some punative and nasty way, which would set the treatment of people back, 30-50yrs.

Would you trust that country, or rather, it's state?

The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. It was published in the journal Science under the title "On being sane in insane places.The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.

Rosenhan's study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudo patients" (three women and five men) who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders.

After admission, the pseudo-patients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had not experienced any more hallucinations. Hospital staff failed to detect a single pseudo-patient, and instead believed that all of the pseudopatients exhibited symptoms of ongoing mental illness. Several were confined for months. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release. The second part involved an offended hospital challenging Rosenhan to send pseudo-patients to its facility, whom its staff would then detect. Rosenhan agreed, but sent no pseudopatients. Yet, out of 195 new patients in the following weeks, the staff identified 42 ordinary patients as impostors and suspected 48 more.

The study concluded, "It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals" and also illustrated the dangers of dehumanization and labeling in psychiatric institutions. It suggested that the use of community mental health facilities which concentrated on specific problems and behaviors rather than psychiatric labels might be a solution and recommended education to make psychiatric workers more aware of the social psychology of their facilities.


[video=youtube;FG4mOpQpmpw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FG4mOpQpmpw[/video]


Will just be the latest group for Americans to demonise...


Many Black Triangle prisoners were either mentally disabled or mentally ill. The homeless were also included, as were alcoholics, the habitually "work-shy," prostitutes, and others (including draft dodgers and pacifists).[


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_(badge)

 

Nope, we are focused on you...you should feel so honored.................

 

I hope for the sake of decency you are talking about the baby boomers dying of old age. If so I am partial to agree that will help with the change you seek.

I can not tell from this statement if you meant that or the death of more children to advance your cause. I would hope that is not what you meant.

 

The paranoid gun fetishists want nothing to change, and political lobbyists like Squinty LaP only offered his absurd suggestion to prevent progress.

If nothing happens, the slaughter of America's children will continue.

Licensing and registering the operation and ownership of firearms is as reasonable as licensing and registering the operation and ownership of automobiles. There are people who should not be allowed either, and a system to identify them is essential to public safety.

Any nuts that might be scared silly that "the gub'mint" is going to seize all the cars if they know where they are have been rendered irrelevant by demonstrable reality. Follow the proven paradigm.

Is it foolproof? Of course not. It's only reasonable.

 

So you think Frank Luntz is in the tank for the anti-gun lobby. Interesting.

Even more interesting that you think requiring a background check amounts to being "anti-gun."

 

I think Frank Luntz is an opportunist and will go to the highest bidder and relies on emotion instead of rational thinking. Irregardless, the study was commissioned by a group that has an agenda and a very clear bias. Do you deny that?

 

How about educated parents who actually care about their children?

 

Of course I don't deny it. But that doesn't change the results of the survey. Are you saying he tampered with the findings, fabricated data, what?

 

Provide a link to his actual study and the methodology and we'll see. Surely you've already looked over the methodology, right?

 

No, I'm not going to indulge the paranoid idea that Frank Luntz would write a piece for a conservative newspaper in which he both contradicts conservative dogma AND lies about his own study.

 

Yeah, uh-huh. You couldn't even if you wanted to because he hasn't released his methodology, which makes the survey less than worthless.

Maybe you should read up a little bit on your pal Luntz before you go around citing him as if he were some kind of credible authority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz

Luntz frequently tests word and phrase choices using focus groups and interviews. His stated purpose in this is the goal of causing audiences to react based on emotion. "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think." "If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak."[2]

In an article in The New Yorker Luntz is quoted as saying, "The way my words are created is by taking the words of others.... I've moderated an average of a hundred plus focus groups a year over five years... I show them language that I've created. Then I leave a line for them to create language for me."[7]

In a January 9, 2007, interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Luntz redefined the term "Orwellian" in a positive sense, saying that if one reads Orwell's Essay On Language (presumably referring to Politics and the English Language), "To be 'Orwellian' is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening… and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever."[8]

Luntz's description of "Orwellian" is considered to contradict both its popularly defined meaning as well as that defined by George Orwell. Luntz believes that Orwell would not have approved of many of the uses to which his pseudonym is applied by quoting Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language", where Luntz focuses on how Orwell derides the use of cliché and dying metaphors.[citation needed]

Luntz's description of his job revolves around exploiting the emotional content of language. "It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional." "...my job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion." "We know that words and emotion together are the most powerful force known to mankind.."[2]

Additionally in his January 9, 2007, interview on Fresh Air, Luntz discussed his use of the term, "energy exploration" (oil drilling). His research on the matter involved showing people a picture of current oil drilling and asking if in the picture it "looks like exploration or drilling." He said that 90 percent of the people he spoke to said it looked like exploring. "Therefore I'd argue that it is a more appropriate way to communicate." He went on to say "if the public says after looking at the pictures, that doesn't look like my definition of drilling—it looks like my definition of exploring—then don't you think we should be calling it what people see it to be, rather than adding a political aspect to it all?" Terry Gross responded: "Should we be calling it what it actually is, as opposed to what somebody thinks it might be? The difference between exploration and actually getting out the oil—they're two different things, aren't they?"[8]

James L. Martin, chairman of the conservative 60 Plus Association, described Luntz's role as being that of pollster and popularizer of the phrase "death tax".
Martin gained an important ally in GOP pollster Frank Luntz, whose polling revealed that "death tax" sparked voter resentment in a way that "inheritance tax" and "estate tax" couldn't match. After all, who wouldn't be opposed to a "tax on death"? Luntz shared his findings with Republicans and included the phrase in the GOP's Contract with America. Luntz went so far as to recommend in a memo to GOP lawmakers that they stage press conferences "at your local mortuary" to dramatize the issue. "I believe this backdrop will clearly resonate with your constituents," he wrote. "Death is something the American people understand." Apparently, he's right. Spurred by Luntz, Republicans have employed the term "death tax" so aggressively that it has entered the popular lexicon. Nonpartisan venues like newspapers and magazines have begun to use it in a neutral context--a coup for abolitionists like Martin.[9]​

He's a self-declared expert on manipulating people to think or say how/what he wants them to think or say. With enough money I could go to Luntz and have him produce a survey saying whatever I want it to say. THAT is, in fact, his specialty.

 

How about them? Define "educated" and while you are at it "care"