Mass Shootings - Why?

[Muddyboots]

Ok this thread can get ugly or we can have a thoughtful dialogue on why.

How about we start with how many of these mass shootings may have been prevented if government did their job? Many of the mass shooters were known, interviewed and cut loose even with social media posted violence statements? Red Flag laws go after folks on far less but yet the FBI, state and local law enforcement and even school officials fail to do whatever is required to restrict these known violent people? This is not a general across the board LEO bash so don't go down that road, this is directed at those who investigated and turned these people loose. We have a process that identifies high risk potential shooters, they are interviewed and yet this system fails to protect us. If someone trips a potential high risk shooter red flag, how the hell are they being turned loose?

We need answers on this egregious system failure before anything else can be considered IMO. We need to push our representatives to get answers. What corrective preventive actions MUST be taken by those Agencies and Education to stop a potential shooter?

 

[Orange Dust]

Muddy, I'm going to try and give my opinion without being too Political, hopefully. I'm in the camp of hardening the schools, arming all the adults with the guts for it, and having them train with the school resource officers AND the entry teams. However, I feel like this is the same thing as the old fable of the little boy who plugged the hole in the dike with his finger. This has all happened after some important changes came about in our Country. The Federal Government took over the schools and has been teaching out children Socialism, and wokeness instead of History and Civics. Those children now have children in schools. That, and the breakdown of the core family unit, and their values have been all but wiped out. We all need God in our lives. We need to love and respect others and their property, and most of all we need to learn the history of past mistakes made as a Society and not repeat them. There are too many laws and too many fathers in Prison. They are no longer able to properly pay their debt to Society and return to it. They live a lifetime of crime. This has to stop. There is a long list, but I promised not to be too Political.

 

[TRnCO]

Along the same lines of Orange Dust's post, I always wonder why is it that everyone prays to God AFTER these incidents, but yet God has been removed from all other aspects of our lives, including schools.

 

[Plinker147]

The reason is simple- not trusting in god and Jesus, decline of society as a whole, destruction of of family structure.

None of these shooting are directly the governments fault but government supporting the removal of religion and morals from education is a big part.

Media constants blitz of these shooting praying on peoples worse day creates the next one. Media takes no responsibility of their actions. When mentality disturb people see one of these wackos get their minute of fame it puts it in their head to do the same. Instant media has been one of the driving forces for our society declining as a whole

 

[2buffalo]

My gut tells me to stay off this thread but.....

What we are seeing in this country in my opinion is degradation of morals period. I could go on and on but I think the majority of people here can come up with their own list.

The unfortunate part of this is too many people want to control the few psychopaths at the expense of freedom. In a "free' society that is losing its moral way it will never stop. We can out better security in place in soft targets but it will never completely go away because there will always be a soft target somewhere.

The interesting or not so interesting part of this which depends how you think is after January 6th where there was very little actual violence our "leaders" surrounded themselves with a fence and security guards with guns but these same people will not do this for children in schools.

 

[BW64]

JMHO because I have a grandson that went through thru this. When he was young he was too hard to handle so they gave him Ritilin. Now he is more or less a 5 year old. Watches cartoons all day & he's 26 years old. Drugs at an early age can ruin a kid. That plus fatherless homes, lack of dicipline & yes wokeness in schools. The mind is fragile growing up & can be easily steered in the wrong direction. Both parents passed form COVID so now we're looking for a place for him to stay.

 

[Mark37082]

This is very tough nut to crack. People generally want their cake and eat it to. They scream about profiling people and privacy abuses, yet are the first to condemn lack of adequate response and preventative measures. I fall on the side of more aggressive monitoring and action of potential higher risk individuals. The fine line of protecting civil liberties yet protecting our most valuable assets (children) should err on the side of protecting the innocent and precious children. Isolation can promote mental illness, but the lack of positive influences in a persons life is IMO the biggest issue to address. Intervention is the only hope we have to reduce the likelihood of future tragic events. My faith in government oversight is low in this Woke world.

 

[2buffalo]

This is very tough nut to crack. People generally want their cake and eat it to. They scream about profiling people and privacy abuses, yet are the first to condemn lack of adequate response and preventative measures. I fall on the side of more aggressive monitoring and action of potential higher risk individuals. The fine line of protecting civil liberties yet protecting our most valuable assets (children) should err on the side of protecting the innocent and precious children. Isolation can promote mental illness, but the lack of positive influences in a persons life is IMO the biggest issue to address. Intervention is the only hope we have to reduce the likelihood of future tragic events. My faith in government oversight is low in this Woke world.

Mark,

The problem IMO with what you are saying is who is in charge of identifying a "high risk individual"? What is the definition of a "high risk individual"? Who defines "aggressive monitoring"? Seems ripe for abuse if someone doesn't like what someone else has to say and one person's definition can be completely different than another person's definition. Should we aggressively monitor all who were involved in the riots of recent years? I think some would say yes whether it was BLM, ANTIFA, or the January 6th riots and it would all depends on people's political views whether they think so or not. We currently use the IRS and FBI as political bludgeoning tools. Do you think what you are suggesting would be any different? Where would we get all these government employees to "aggressively monitor" all these people that could reach 10's of thousands to hundreds of thousands? Just something to think about.

 

[codyadams]

Being in law enforcement, I see these problems often, and I can tell you, it generally has nothing to do with LE. When we get an individual that is a threat to themselves or others, but has not committed a crime, in this area they are held on what's called a title 25, different states may have different names for it.

After that, they must be "evaluated" by a mental health physician, within 24 hours of their detainment.

Essentially all a person has to do is act relatively "normal" and tell the evaluator that they are fine, and make it seem like it was a temporary laps in judgement, or they only said what they said or acted how they did because they were under the influence of something. After that, the title 25 is generally dropped, and we must release them, often times with no follow up from the evaluator.

This loop continues until they break the law in some fashion. Then they may be brought in on charges as well as a title 25, or simply just charges.

Once they go to court, if they try to say they are not mentally stable, or if they act mentally unstable, then they have to be evaluated by a state run hospital, in our case. We have had people in our jail for over 7 months at times in limbo, simply waiting to get evaluated. People that very possibly don't belong in jail, but instead a permanent mental facility, and seriously need help, and jail is only making their condition worse. Then once they finally get in for evaluation, who knows what happens. I have seen them say someone was "unrestorable", then the judge says "well, they did 6 months jail time waiting for evaluation, that is likely as much time as they would have done for these misdameanor charges. Release them, time served". With little if any mental follow up. And they are back on the streets, unsupervised, or put on a supervised probation that everyone knows they will fail, because they are mentally unstable, amd are only going to self medicate with drugs and alcohol, which is obviously a violation of their probation.

Then, when they get arrested again a few weeks/days after getting out, the process starts over. But it gets worse.....

They finally, 6-7 months or more later, get back in for another mental health evaluation. The same mental health doctor does the evaluation. The same evaluator that, 6-7 months ago, said this person was "unrestoreable". But on this evaluation, they say this person is mentally fit to stand trial. But again, this person has done 6 months for their crime, which in this case, is sufficient. So they are let go on the streets, again. And again, arrested a week or two later, and again, wait on another mental health evaluation.

The biggest problem is the broken mental health system, which is exacerbated by the fact that they are being inundated with more and more patients due to all the drug use problems in the country, drug problems that are being advocated by certain states such as Washington, California and others, where one can get on disability because they are addicted to drugs, and get paid by the state so they can continue to buy more drugs with their tax payer funded dollars. All the while, law enforcement across the country can't keep their departments staffed, and government ran mental health facilities are functioning sub par due to a lack of proper management, funding and staffing.

Hopefully that wasn't too political, but that is the problem as I see it from where I stand, dealing with people like this directly, on a regular basis.

 

[jessej]

Those children now have children in schools. That, and the breakdown of the core family unit, and their values have been all but wiped out. We all need God in our lives.

Nailed it. Lack of parenting.

 

[codyadams]

Nailed it. Lack of parenting.

Yup. The very base, root of these problems, is exactly that. The nuclear family is becoming less and less prevalent. The rest of what I said is just how it continues to fall apart.

Don't get me wrong, there will always be certain people that are just evil, even with a strong family unit, but the ratio of that is nothing like we see today. It is being intensified by the lack of wholesome moral values.

 

[jessej]

.

 

[jessej]

This kid suffered from "gender dysphoria " and lived with his grandma.
I wonder if he had had a father who taught him wrong from right and taught him how to work when he was young ( push mower, cleaning fence rows, digging post holes, ) if this would not have happened.

 

[Elkeater]

I guess I'll offer my thoughts as the father of two young children (who are homeschooled). I think we are continuing to try to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause. We have a society of absentee parents. We push to have a consumer lifestyle that forces both parents to work in many cases and we have culturally accepted single parent households, divorce, screens as a babysitter, poor nutrition, and lack of a loving healthy mental environment for kids. We also have issues with society constantly asking the government to do more but complaining about increased taxes which means public servants continue to make less and less while being asked to do more and more which means that the good ones quit and move on to private industry and the bad ones just sort of do the bare minimum. There has to be a shift towards personal accountability and we as a society need to accept some responsibility for the state of our affairs.

Just my thoughts.