A dozen generations of American children grew up learning to hunt and shoot targets without significant incidents. School shootings only became epidemic post-9/11, or maybe the late 90s if you stretch the definition. Guns are dangerous but there’s more happening here than a direct causal relationship.
Wealth inequality is higher. Education is waning. Food security is a big problem. Limiting access to guns is a solution but it isn’t the root issue for sure.
Yeah, grew up around guns and always had easy access to them. I also grew up learning gun safety for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is my grandfather teaching me how to handle the bb gun he bought me for my first Christmas safely and that guns were dangerous and not to be treated as toys.
I also had a terrible time in school and easy access to them if I had wanted to do a school shooting but the thought never even occurred to me. I did get into fights and some of those I instigated but that was all. Something else is wrong with these people that do mass shootings. Gun owners should be keeping them away from unsupervised kids but also there needs to be counseling in place to catch the ones that are prone to violence before they do something. Even if you take every single gun out of circulation violent people will still do violence.
What’s “wrong” is that their brains are still developing. I’m glad that you were able to control yourself, but it isn’t exactly surprising that other kids who are surrounded by guns and gun culture (and often racism and bigotry which appear to come with it) are not.
There’s more to it than that. It was pretty normal where I grew up to have guns in the house and accessible. Almost all of my classmates grew up similarly and nothing happened. I’d wager it’s the same in our demographic back then. All those developing brains with access to guns and school shooting were a rarity. There’s other factors that we should be working to identify so that those individuals can get the help they need before they do something terrible.
That’s not to say that gun owners shouldn’t be more responsible about locking them up than we were when I was growing up but we can be doing a lot more than that bare minimum.
A dozen generations of American children grew up learning to hunt and shoot targets without significant incidents. School shootings only became epidemic post-9/11, or maybe the late 90s if you stretch the definition. Guns are dangerous but there’s more happening here than a direct causal relationship.
A dozen generations of high powered long guns designed to kill as many humans as possible in a short amount of time?
Wealth inequality is higher. Education is waning. Food security is a big problem. Limiting access to guns is a solution but it isn’t the root issue for sure.
Things shifted when guns became less of a tool and more of a cool thing.
It took one generation for my family to only have hunting rifles they used in the house… to collecting various guns just because they can.
Yeah, grew up around guns and always had easy access to them. I also grew up learning gun safety for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is my grandfather teaching me how to handle the bb gun he bought me for my first Christmas safely and that guns were dangerous and not to be treated as toys.
I also had a terrible time in school and easy access to them if I had wanted to do a school shooting but the thought never even occurred to me. I did get into fights and some of those I instigated but that was all. Something else is wrong with these people that do mass shootings. Gun owners should be keeping them away from unsupervised kids but also there needs to be counseling in place to catch the ones that are prone to violence before they do something. Even if you take every single gun out of circulation violent people will still do violence.
What’s “wrong” is that their brains are still developing. I’m glad that you were able to control yourself, but it isn’t exactly surprising that other kids who are surrounded by guns and gun culture (and often racism and bigotry which appear to come with it) are not.
There’s more to it than that. It was pretty normal where I grew up to have guns in the house and accessible. Almost all of my classmates grew up similarly and nothing happened. I’d wager it’s the same in our demographic back then. All those developing brains with access to guns and school shooting were a rarity. There’s other factors that we should be working to identify so that those individuals can get the help they need before they do something terrible.
That’s not to say that gun owners shouldn’t be more responsible about locking them up than we were when I was growing up but we can be doing a lot more than that bare minimum.