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PaperclipPerfector  20hr ago (text post)   3410 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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The problem with gun control is that it really only reliably disarms people who obey laws. It doesn’t really work on people who break the law. No gang member, spree shooter, or assassin is bothered by the illegality of their weapon or signs prohibiting guns from some venue. In fact, they very likely love seeing those no guns signs because no one else is likely to be armed. So passing more no guns in school laws or whatever other gun control laws aren’t going to work.

Furthermore, the chances that Americans will ever go for the type of gun control that happens in Europe or Australia is precisely zero. It’s a nonstarter, and thus it’s kind of a waste of time. If the debate is bans or restrictions on gun ownership it’s going to be the same debate we have had for decades, and will for decades to come. It’s not going anywhere and honestly I feel like it’s a distraction and a waste of time that could be spent on ideas that Theres a chance of getting done in the next couple of years. The kids getting shot at school in the 2020s don’t have twenty or thirty years to wait.

Mental health seems a similar dead end. The help available is only available if you actually go and get it, and only if you happen to somehow mention the symptoms that would unlock the diagnosis. If the person isn’t willing to be brutally honest and tell the doctor everything even someone who is seeking help isn’t getting it. But most people are reluctant to get help. Men especially feel that going to see a psychiatrist is weak. Add in the red flag laws, and you make it very likely that a troubled young male will clam up instead of even trying. And if he does, he’s likely to be careful to downplay his problems so that he doesn’t trip any triggers and get himself into trouble.

As terrible as the idea sounds, the only thing we can probably do to is to in some form or fashion make sure that the places where shootings are likely to happen have at least someone who is armed. Nothing else will work today and it’s not something we can wait for.

The US didn't have mass shootings back in the past. Schools and public life could be much healthier.

The suicide rate of 15–19 year olds tripled between 1950 and 1990. It wasn't that mental health professionals were really good back in 1950, there just doesn't seem to have been such severe stress and suffering among young people back in the day.

Obviously 'fix society' or 'fix education' is not something the US is very good at, probably been going in the wrong direction for ages. Nevertheless, it's possible in principle.

Mental health treatment was much worse back then, and consisted heavily of involuntary confinement, surgery, or just enough benign neglect to let nature take its course. But it did have the effect of keeping it away from the rest of society to a higher degree.

The Bath School Disaster in the 20s. Charles Whitman in the 60s. That guy who suicide bombed his kid’s school in Texas in the 50s. That racially motivated mass shooting on the train in San Francisco in the 70s. That McDonalds mass shooting in the 80s. That mass shooting at that college in Canada in the 70s. There were a lot of others, they just didn’t get much ores as a phenomenon.

Sure, I guess I was wrong in saying it didn't happen:

https://www.theviolenceproject.org/databases/mass-shooters

But it happens much more than it used to and young people are much less mentally healthy than they used to be.

Your not wrong and America is too awash with guns to make any ban effective. However, most school shooters lack the connections to get illegal firearms. I don't think we should ban guns but a gun ban would likely significantly reduce school shootings.

As terrible as the idea sounds, the only thing we can probably do to is to in some form or fashion make sure that the places where shootings are likely to happen have at least someone who is armed

Schools having an arms room with at least two men on duty with M16s and body armor should do it. It's politically a non starter but it would work and wouldn't even be that expensive. Just cut two school admin flunkies and replace them with ex-infantry or current national guard.

Men especially feel that going to see a psychiatrist is weak.

Not when you have to go to one to get a permit to buy a gun or to renew your license. If you think that's too harsh, let teachers and social workers anonymously blacklist specific children they think shouldn't be trusted with a gun when they grow up. Then it should come up every time a gun seller does a background check. Again, can only be cleared by a psych evaluation.

If you think that's too harsh, let teachers and social workers anonymously blacklist specific children they think shouldn't be trusted with a gun when they grow up.

You're making a good case for homeschooling there.

If you think that's too harsh, let teachers and social workers anonymously blacklist specific children they think shouldn't be trusted with a gun when they grow up.

They already do this in a process called "voting". The blacklist they've settled on is "literally all of them", which is why the compromise is on "scary features" mostly as an effort to make kids self-select out of wanting guns because it's boring.

The misunderstanding of how guns work is a feature, not a bug. Fixing the remaining violence from straightwhitemen would require the least bit of attempting to understand them, and why understand them when you can just hold up examples of misbehavior to justify oppressing them mitigating their inherent risk further?

Given that teachers and social workers as a demographic are overwhelmingly D voters, doesn't this policy just result in certain teachers coordinating to enroll entire classes onto the "no gun/precrime" list? You'd have something like fifteen years before anyone noticed, and the resultant mess would be enormous and difficult to unwind. That schools are already prepared to conceal children's alternate identities from their parents when it comes to LGBT issues shows that means and opportunity are both present, and I think enough teachers would take the opportunity that the results would be disastrous.

As terrible as the idea sounds, the only thing we can probably do to is to in some form or fashion make sure that the places where shootings are likely to happen have at least someone who is armed. Nothing else will work today and it’s not something we can wait for.

Paul Harrell had a video on this and noted that these kinds of random spree killings tend to happen in places you wouldn't expect to have anyone armed. I agree, this is the best we can do. Supposedly church shootings went out of fashion after enough church shooters got domed before killing very many people.

The problem with gun control is that it really only reliably disarms people who obey laws. It doesn’t really work on people who break the law. No gang member, spree shooter, or assassin is bothered by the illegality of their weapon or signs prohibiting guns from some venue. In fact, they very likely love seeing those no guns signs because no one else is likely to be armed. So passing more no guns in school laws or whatever other gun control laws aren’t going to work.

I agree with you here, but I have to steelman the gun control argument here so we can have a debate against something worth debating: even if the laws only directly affect lawful owners with non-criminal intentions, guns being so readily available to criminals is downstream of them being readily available for lawful citizens. Be it straw purchases, thefts, etc... A gun loving culture will have a lot of guns around and some of those will be used for crime. The point of gun control laws, while it could not be expressed overtly as such because populations in democraties tend to resist top-down attempts at changing its culture, is not so much in controlling access to guns on technical grounds, but in deliberately attacking and damaging "gun culture", making guns less cool, less attractive, more annoying to get, less popular. In the hope that there will be, as a result, less guns around for criminals to get and use in crime.

Officials pushing for gun controls cannot say it outright, and pro-gun control citizens don't have to say it because they instinctively understand its the point. They just hope that their mental model of the red tribe is accurate and that they are all actual morons who cannot figure out that this is the actual point all along and that they might actually acquiesce to "compromises" that always go in the direction of attacking "gun culture".

Counterpoint- Mexico, Brazil, and in fact most new world societies, have very high murder rates and very strict gun laws simultaneously.

Counter-counterpoint- those societies all suck (relative to the US) at enforcing a lot of other laws, so it is not surprising that they would suck at enforcing their gun laws. Everyone in Belize routinely speeding is not much of an argument against the viability of speed limits in the US.

Everyone in the US does routinely speed.

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