14 Children and Teacher Killed in Texas Elementary School Shooting

[loramin]

Originally Posted by robayon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I agree with your larger point. I think the general effects of the information age have really just exaggerated and amplified the capacity for insane violence. Any of us can pick a completely insane idea and find a group of like minded invidiuals online if we know how to search. I can't even remember how young I was when I first saw people dying on rotten.com or something linked through SA.

But I also believe American culture is extremely violent in a lot of ways, and we normalize violence in ways most cultures don't have to because we have to keep our population complacent and consuming. Panem et circenses. I think if most people saw first hand the violence it takes to give us, say, $4 tshirts at Old Navy, or $3 jars of condiments made with palm oil, they'd start to ask questions about the ethics of all of this consumer culture we have built. And the powers that be can't have that, so some of the most brutal forms of labor get outsourced so that it's out of sight and out of mind.

However, school shootings absolutely happened before Columbine. Not that you were saying they didn't, it was just more localized and information wasn't as easy to access as it is now.

https://www.ranker.com/list/scary-sc.../natalie-hazen

I don't think we have yet realized the full scope of the door we opened when we allowed the public access to the internet. Not that there's any going back, really. I feel like humanity getting the internet might have been some aliens violating a prime directive. Ugh

I think you guys are overthinking things. This isn't some cultural cliff that we've fallen off (because of Columbine or the Internet or whatever), and now it's a hopelessly complex problem; it's far more basic.

We voted in a bunch of politician who removed gun control laws. Science has shown gun control laws save lives. If we want to fix things, we need to elect politicians who pass gun control laws.

It's that simple.