Question Of The Month. (July 2017)

No such thing as gun violence. People commit acts of violence not inanimate objects.

Being that acts committed with firearms have decreased rapidly since the 90s. Nope. It's just a bunch of effing propaganda by mass media.

Where did you get this question from? MSNBC? CNN? HuffPo?

I think "GV" is a reflection of a failed "parental system" in urban settings and elsewhere. With no parental guidance over what is right and what is wrong, monkey see, monkey do... (no offense meant, Water!)

Yeah answering this question is admitting that you believe in some things which may not be true.

It "presupposes facts not in evidence", as Perry Mason would say.

But if you should ask the question, "why are people shooting each other?" Well of course we know that they are.

I sure as hell don't blame it on the schools or the teachers. I've been to 14 different schools and I've known too many teachers in my life.

My opinion (and it's my opinion only for I have no proof) is that the sensationalist nature of Television media has driven people to the edge of sanity. That's the education that I think is causing our problems.

If people see something often enough eventually it becomes commonplace to them. It's not as horrifying or unbelievable or undoable as something more strange and rare.

Day after day, common people are confronted with dozens of multimillion-dollar TV ads tempting them to eat and eat and eat. Half the people in America are quite overweight. Coincidence? Well the people designing these ads are experts on human psychology and they're using it against us to make money.

Day after day people are confronted with multimillion-dollar movies of people who solve their problems with guns and violence. Hey, even Superman solves his problems with violence, everybody thinks he's Justified, and everybody wants to be Superman. Compared to an unarmed person that gun makes you Superman.

This is the kind of education that is repetitive and relentless and horribly effective, and basically unavoidable to a nation of Television Watchers.

As for our "failed educational system", I remember back in 1960 when they were showing us that television would be the greatest educational tool ever created, and that all people would eventually go to school simply by watching television.

Instead we fostered the system where education for profit by commercial interests teaches people to be less and less sensitive to the things which should really matter. It teaches them to concentrate on the things which are most easily to Pander. Gluttony, lust, greed, hatred, violence.

It's not a matter of educational failure but the fact of too much educational success in the wrong hands.

Is “Gun Violence” A Reflection of Our Failed Education system?

If by "education system", you mean "failed fathers", then yes. It's never too early to teach a child a sense of morality, consequence of actions, responsibility for self, and kindness to others.

Waiting a decade for someone else to teach those things to your children is the root of the problem. I don't want my son's school teacher wasting time on trying to teach my kid not to shoot people. I've already done that. I want his teachers to focus on math, science, etc.

Pick your favorite flavor of calamity, social scourge, or injustice. I'll so you a weak/missing/dumbass father at its root.

I don't know.

Well I certainly get this. But unfortunately I think the fathers (and mothers) are victims in this as well. This education we've been getting has been going on for nearly 70 years. It's spanning the generations.

The media has pushed the image of idiot TV fathers and the horror of the feminist radical agenda to the point where lots of men have found themselves in a lose-lose situation when it comes to society around them.

I see this is a huge cause of alcoholism and drug abuse.

On the other hand the same thing has happened to women. The media has pushed the feminine ideal of beauty contest looks to the point where women were starving themselves to be skinny. Unfortunately they quit eating all those cheeseburgers and so we had to start promoting the idea that fat women were beautiful too. A lot of fat guys found this concept easy to accept. Evidently millions of fat women did too, because they're all convinced that their fatness is genetic and out of their control but they're beautiful as long as they can put on enough fancy clothes and makeup and jewelry with a nice hairdo.

On the other hand you have women who are not fleshed out enough to be really attractive to men, becoming lesbians because they find it easier to be like a man than to attract a man. Besides they have all seen enough TV to know how horrible and stupid men are anyway.

I don't think it is a result of a failed education system any more than fast food restaurants are the cause of obesity. They are both symptoms of a society that forgot about personal accountability.

It is easier to blame something large and intangible than to accept that we have failed to maintain a moral society. We blame the absent fathers, the neighborhoods, the color of someone's skin or ethnic background before we blame the individual. We are too lenient on the young and are no longer instilling a sense of fairness and right/wrong. We are a self-indulgent society obsessed with the "right" to do anything that pleases us even at the cost of someone else's rights or pursuit of happiness. Just look at the heroin epidemic around here. Addicts are no longer locked up or hospitalized. They are Narcan'd and released immediately to OD again and again and again. God help you if you raise your voice and say "Enough!". We're told it is not their fault, it is a disease (please, spare me. It's not).

The so-called gun violence has been coming to the forefront for a long time. The gun banners know it and use that to their advantage. They could care less about the lives lost because it feeds into their BS machine. The more, the better (for them).

There are those who are educated and still use the blame crutch to explain away the wrongs they do. It is time for that to stop. Own what you have done...it's yours lock, stock and barrel.

The fallacy here is that you can put down a diseased dog but it's not okay to put down a diseased human being.

When the disease is self-inflicted, I say it is OK.

Once a person has taken enough drugs that they've gone crazy, there's no good reason for us to keep them on this Earth. If a person gives drugs to themselves we say this is a victimless crime or a disease. We can't find it in ourselves to punish them. At the same time if a person gives potentially deadly drugs to another person then clearly we can lock them up or execute them for murder should death occur.

The thing is that most all drug users share drugs with each other. They buy and sell and give drugs back and forth all the time.

I think you would be hard-pressed to find one that has not done this: bought, sold, imported, exported, solicited for, or otherwise supplied drugs to another human.

Yes the other human might be a total scumbag too, but that does not mitigate the crime of poisoning someone by drugs.

Lots of great posts here. I think all of my thoughts were very well covered.

Lack of accountability and responsibility.

Well we got far, far from our original topic there.