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this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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It is impossible to type out all of the reasons, but here are a few. Check out Bowling for Columbine btw - a movie from two thousand fucking two, 15 years BEFORE that particular one. We've seen that particular bullet coming for a LONG time, and the ones before it, and the ones after it, and the ones yet to come - we KNOW, yet we do NOTHING. Most especially the "Pro-Life" crowd.
Lobbying. It's a thing. The NRS especially is one of the more powerful ones. More than 80% of American citizens - rising to >90% of NRA members even!!! - want some form of extremely limited gun control. However, we do not live in a democracy, not even one dominated by conservatives or rural Americans - rather, we live in a plutocracy where despite the OVERWHELMING support of the VAST MAJORITY of Americans, we cannot manage to get anything done.
Also, much of that money supposedly flowing to politicians from the "NRA" actually has been found to have ties back to Russia. Many of the politicians receiving that money may not even know the true source of where it came from - nor do they particularly seem to care.
Oh, and then billionaires bought up pretty much all of the major news outlets (a handful of others still exist - did The Guardian escape that? Well, even if they were, they seem to be allowed to talk about other corporate take-overs (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/may/03/billionaires-extra-power-media-ownership-elon-musk).
And hopefully you already know what happened to Google, where SEOs took over the searches so that it is nearly impossible to find things that just five years ago were easily retrievable, with the only lingering hold-out being Reddit, before then that whole thing happened...
BTW, the government is literally not allowed to collect statistics on how many violent gun deaths occur in America. I am not sure if this is the video where Jordan Klepper showcases that, but if not then he has a bunch of others. Or take your pick - there are millions if not billions of videos, of varying degree of quality and relevance. I've never seen one show a truly "unbalanced" take though - that is just not how for-profit corporations work. You just have to educate yourself by watching a bunch of stuff until you know how trustworthy the source is, and also each and every material topic too. It is sad, but we cannot seem to trust any (especially for-profit) advice these days. Though if you want another recommendation, there's John Oliver's whole expose on the NRA. To provide a modicum of balance, on the other side there are series such as Paul Harrell's Mass Shootings: Causes and Possible Solutions.
And - yes there is always more - there are other arguments such as: "if someone cannot get a gun they will simply make their own bomb" (ignores how much harder it is to do that), and the whole thing of plastic ghost guns (again ignores how difficult it would be to do that). Ultimately, i think that children being sacrificed is itself merely a symptom of a much deeper cause. People on Lemmy call it "capitalism", which has a LOT of truth to it - but then again, nations such as communist China have their own different issues. But, again, since ~90% of Americans already are in favor of stopping these kinds of mass-shootings, this will not be solved by merely educating yourself or "getting the word out". In fact, this type of issue is precisely the type of thing that Trump leaned heavily on as his route to the White House - "Hillary Clinton is corrupt so you should elect me and I will get rid of all the corruption, everywhere". So realistically, this is just something that we are going to simply have to live with, unless and until people fucking DO something about it. e.g. a responsible gun owner could patrol their own neighborhood schools. However, do note that every time someone does try to do that, they end up shooting innocent people instead, and yet it does nothing to stop the actual shooters, who can pull guns out of a bag (long-ish violin or trumpet case maybe?) and start shooting in mere seconds - not enough time to notice and prevent it. So start by educating yourself, since that's really all you can do, and also it will help enormously to ensure that you are on the correct side of the issue.
For those so inclined, there is a verse commanding the latter point even in the actual Holy Bible, at 1 Thessalonians 5:21: "Test EVERYTHING against what you KNOW to be true". I don't know what can be done, after the education stage, but I know it MUST begin with that.
Its been a while since i saw it, but isn't Bowling for Columbine just footage of Michael Moore going around asking people stupid loaded questions?
Possibly. He's not the best at making documentaries, and perhaps watching a trailer for it would be sufficient and better than watching the whole entire thing. Or maybe that one was actually good? It's been awhile for me too and I do not recall either the details of how "entertaining" it was, but I do recall that it pointed out how news media aims to make profits rather than inform the public - and that is a very necessary lesson to learn. There are other sources to do so ofc, though this was also a commentary on gun violence at the same time, so I thought of it. But if people want to point to other, better documentaries that's awesome.
But more than all that, and whether OP actually watches it or not, my point is that it exists, and moreover it did so for DECADES. In all that time since, protections against gun violence have actually gone down, as some stuff has expired and new protections for the violence have been added - e.g. in California where the judge ruled that AK-15s or whatever were perfectly fine home defense weapons. i.e., Bowling for Columbine shows one example of how long we've known about all of this stuff. Surely there are other documentaries too - probably some from the 70s even - but this is one that I could recall offhand.
And for that purpose it does its job just fine, merely by existing:-).
The thing that stuck with me about Bowling for Columbine is that the school was in the same zip code as a DoJ establishment manufacturing rocket technology for war, in the most violent country in modern history. Drawing that connection between the violence done by the State and the violence done by citizens was very eye opening for me. The problem isn't just the guns, or the NRA, or lobbying - the problem is that the United States is an evil country and we are all complicit in its evil. This is normal. 'Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction.' What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?
Normalisation of violence most likely had an effect, but I don't think that the connection is as simple as
Edit: I was reminded that the world in the 90s, in this case 25 years ago, was quite different and likely less connected. So probably the point about geographic proximity to centers of violence production played a larger part than I thought
From an interview Michael Moore gave to DemocracyNow he explains the connection pretty well, I think. America is a violent country and it makes violent people.
the Columbine shootings occurred on the same day as the heaviest United States bombing of the Kosovo war,
the number one private employer in Littleton is Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons maker
Rocky Flats, the largest plutonium-making place in the world, is just down the road
NORAD is just up the road.
But you don't think children with a childhood steeped in violence and families steeped in violence are going to grow up thinking about this? All of this militarization and violence are a cultural miasma and children absorb the lessons taught to them by America.
Kill your enemies, make them fear you, rule the world, Be a Man!
No, quite the opposite. But what I think is that when a country rallies violence and presents it as something normal, all of the citizens, children included, will be affected. Maybe the fact that those violence factories are near had influence, but I would guess that this influence only added a bit to what everyone got already.
Except maybe if the workers viewed working for military as a cornerstone for their self-identity, maybe that would become a greater factor.
Well remember, this was the 90s. Today we're all disembodied digital nomads so it doesn't matter what is near or far, but back then there was still a sense of place that meant having a bunch of military-industrial institutions nearby would effect the local culture.
And maybe that's why shootings get worse every year. The physical location doesn't matter anymore.
Yeah, that's probably true, now 90s seem like a different reality altogether
As @lad said, it is not the identical same thing, but yeah it certainly does seem connected.
As for evil, I could not name a single country on earth that wasn't, especially in a historic context, but neither does that excuse the USA for being thus.
Watching Rules for Rulers really opened my eyes on that score though.
The scale of America's evil is just so much greater than every other country, so the scale of its own social sickness is similarly greater.
I mean... America is influencial, therefore what evil is there gets spread more readily. Also it has historically been more transparent, so what evil is there is easier to see.
But e.g. Communist China has evil too, though it is usually better at hiding the details, and yet it cannot cover everything and what little does come out is rather chilling.
And India, well I can't start listing every country on earth, but let's just say that if I did, much evil would be listed out.
Smaller nations with less ability to create evil on a larger scale ofc may demonstrate less evil, but if those nations were to suddenly discover I dunno let's say vibranium, they would likely become just as evil as the USA. What nation doesn't have a sordid backstory of murder and espionage and assassination and so on? (Unless it is brand new I guess?) Though America does enjoy it to excess and even puts it on display, so yeah I agree with that part at least.
Check out that video I linked for more.
More to the point, I would hope for something to be DONE about the whole fiasco. Simply calling it "evil" is not enough - of course it's evil, and it also does good too, ironically, but now what? Commit violence against it? :-P
Yeah yeah I've already seen your cynical video. America rules the world and as a result America's evil is just so much bigger. No one else can compare to the scope and scale of the largest military, biggest weapons manufacturer, largest arms dealer, most aggressive foreign policy, etc. This creates a sick society because Americans (falsely) believe America represents them, so when it does evil it does it in their names.
As for What Is To Be Done, no one is going to save us. We have to do it ourselves.
Abso-FUCKING-lutely!
Two additional thoughts:
One is that a lot of the evil being done "by America" is actually being done more by evil people who hide behind it like a shield. Even if all of America were to fall, these illuminati types would go on, reduced/diminished but still viable. Like a witch controlling a zombie or a japanese manga type person sitting inside of a robot, the USA may be a good tool for the true master's purpose (e.g., Haliburton, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, etc.), but they can surely find other tools besides just the one. It is just that the USA prostates itself before them so well that they like this one.
I think it is important to make that distinction, b/c e.g. if someone attacks you and you merely knock the gun out of their hand, the problem is not "solved", especially if in their other hand they still hold a knife. You imply that we should "wake up" - and I agree, and this is part of that, to disambiguate the various factors involved. America shares an enormous portion of this blame, by virtue of stupidly signing our body away to serve the desires of some other mind than our own - fulfilling its purposes instead of the one that that "we" all want to be done, i.e. for people to be able to live in their own spaces and have a chance at happiness.
Which leads me to the second thing: this video is not necessarily "cynical", though I understand why you say that. It is truly one of the more unbiased depictions of this matter that I have ever seen or heard or read, and by virtue of it refusing to tell us how to "feel" about the matter, it does come across in our cultures that are traditionally so amped-up in the latter regard that it seems wooden by comparison. I liken it to when astronaughts wanted to make rockets to go into space, and someone gives a dissertation on "gravity". Knowing about how gravity works is how you get into space - it is not that it cannot be done, it is just a Truism about the world that becomes relevant when talking about leaving the planet. So while talking about gravity may sound "cynical" to someone who wants to talk rather about flying through space, it is in fact a necessary first step.
So rather than cynical, I see it as neutral. Other videos provide plenty of motivational calls to action, but that is not the purpose of this particular one, which is solely to inform - and I actually appreciate that so much about it! e.g. conservatives and liberals alike can watch it and become better informed, without hampering the spread of that information by mixing it along with political rhetoric that allows only a single interpretation of it. I am not saying that *I* am neutral, but I am saying that I like it when information is, b/c imho that is the best way to further the cause of understanding, from which people can be helped better (than by e.g. misinformation and lack of understanding).