this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 102 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anon learns about Material Conditions.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"Guy with shit circumstances decides to buy a gun and decides to go somewhere with the gun and decides to shoot undeserving people with the gun, it's society's fault"

Way to blame the victim anon. No, this was his decision. I know folks who have life shitting all over them and it doesn't make them want to kill children and families.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's both. Even terrible people with something to lose are less likely to throw it all away.

If this guy makes $35k a year at dollar general, he probably doesn't go on a murder spree.

But you could also just not be an asshole. Why go after random people instead of someone who actually helps cause the bullshit?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You're right, we should be targeting the bourgeois, aristocrats and ultra rich with our killing sprees. What we need are eco terrorists, not senseless killings.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago

We can't have gun control - guns aren't the problem - people are.

Oh good - you support the creation of strong social safety nets, and free access to mental health care, right?

...

You support the creation of strong social safety nets, and free access to mental health care, right?

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Dont glamourize mass murderers.Dont even publish their names, publish the names of the victims.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Had me nodding in agreement until that last line.

Cruz's Crime is not "100% society's fault." Cruz literally and figuratively pulled that trigger. At best maybe a 50:50, but to completely absolve Cruz of any wrongdoing is asinine.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't think that the blame assigned is in the literal sense I think it is in the philosophical sense.

Meaning the chain of events that led here had many MANY interruption points where society could have prevented this from escalating. There is no 1 person to blame for this entire thing, it's a shared societal burden.

It's essentially the Swiss Cheese Model for society and social outbursts.

Edit: I'm not saying what happened wasn't wrong, I'm saying is that we can prevent this shit, and we keep failing over and over.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (2 children)

the child who is not embraced by its village will burn it down just to feel its warmth

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (54 children)

…with ready access to guns.

So much commentary here focusing on societal ills, but even in other countries with lots of poverty and shit social services they don’t have individuals committing random mass murders like us because they don’t have a collection of high capacity personal arms. There’s plenty of people in other countries that have commonality with his life, yet they don’t commit mass murder. Yeah, shootings do happen elsewhere…but not like in the US, and the difference is access to firearms.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I hate the argument people make sometimes, "Anything can be a weapon, I could go around stabbing people with a pencil if I really wanted to. Even if you banned guns, it wouldn't matter." Yeah, except you can't kill dozens of people within a few minutes with a pencil. We've got huge problems with economic disparity, a quiet epidemic of mental health disorders with little means to help the people that need it, coupled with ridiculously easy access to high-powered firearms in our country. There will never be enough "good people with guns" to protect the world. We need to reduce access to gun ownership to prevent mentally unbalanced people from having such powerful weapons at their disposal for when they eventually snap (since they'll never have access to treatment), but that's just a pipe dream at this point in time in America.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I mean yeah society has a role to play in this but there are millions of.people who are in or have gone through this same situation without murdering a bunch of people

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

If 1 in a million people will go on a killing spree, when driven to rock bottom, then you would expect to have a few, if you drive millions of people to that position.

Victorian England introduced various social safety nets not primarily out of goodness, but out of cost. It was actually cheaper to just feed the starving, rather than stopping them stealing for food, and punishing them afterwards. The fact it improved the lives of the downtrodden was just a convenient positive.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (14 children)

No. You've just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia. Most of us don't mass murder with machine guns.

That only happens in America because you've chosen to elect people who make sure crazy people can exercise your Constitutional right to carry machine guns and stand your ground when King Charles comes on your property or you carry your emotional support machine guns to a protest. That's not "society's" fault. It's every single Republican MAGA protect the second amendment voter.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

You've just described the life of most people on Earth outside of American suburbia.

What the actual fuck are you talking about?

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There are also millions of people with intellectual challenges and horrid childhoods who do NOT go out and murder people.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (18 children)

People react differently to being abused by people and society for years and years, until they have every last ounce of hope drained from them.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Okay, let me try this.

  • Mother smoked and did drugs when pregnant with me
  • Born with autism, mild cerebral palsy, medical issues
  • Mom heavily neglected and abused me
  • Lived in many foster, adoptive homes, boarding schools, went to many schools and extreme right-wing churches
  • In all of them, was either physically, emotionally, or sexually abused
  • Abandoned as adult
  • Joined USAF, medical discharge out of tech school when they realized their mistake
  • Lived in homeless shelters and then adult foster care
  • My name online is usually some form of the word "orphan"

So what am I doing? Well, I'm poor and on disability and I've struggled to manage my emotions, and I've had to grow like anybody. But I'm an ex-Christian theist, empathetic liberal, and have never done any crime. I spent a lot of years in social programs and with social workers. I live in an apartment now with two best friends. I'm writing a science fantasy novel I hope to change the world with, sharing a lot of what I experienced and what I learned. I wrote a symphonic rock and power ballad soundtrack for it.

"The Solemn Dream" Blurb:

After a very unhappy childhood, “Solemn” dies at 25 and wakes up in the space-age afterlife of Heleia, where everyone’s home planet is chosen by the seraphs— demigod social workers and keepers of the peace— based on that person’s emotional and ethical maturity. Here, Solemn chooses to become a young child again, hoping to heal and to finally find a loving family.

Jessi Vargas is a forever-19 bully who lives on Nemesis, the planet for those who don’t care that they’re harmful. Sick of being surrounded by terrible people, she prepares to leave the planet— even though she may not be worthy.

Lu Montsely is a kind and patient humanitarian who hides a terrible past. After a century of effort, she is almost ready to ascend to the utopian world of Themis to join her loving husband. Lu mentors Solemn and Jessi as her final test, and— along with their wise and humorous helper android Iota— they form a small family on Eleos.

But many do not believe that criminals deserve second chances. When the seraphs discover mass-produced weapons, they need the aid of Solemn’s new family to investigate. Solemn soon finds themselves the recipient of powerful abilities that give them a unique role in the growing conflict. And before long, Solemn and family are not only fighting to become happier, kinder, and greater— but also for the fate of the entire Helian afterlife.


...I don't think that having lived through shit means you need to be a shit person. Sure, some misfortunate people are going to have personalities that push them towards being shit people, but... those people were likely going to be shit people anyway, unless people guided them a little more carefully.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

The people dismissing this somewhat miss the bigger picture, that statistically this had to happen because there are so many like him there.

Though I'm not sure why this guy calls the act 'fantastic', I doubt even the shooter thought what he did was fantastic, unless I'm out of the loop...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Notorious (as a subgroup of famous) would have been a better word choice. They got the point across reasonably well otherwise, however.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Mixed feelings on this.

Yes, I think he was dealt a very bad hand and that undoubtedly played a factor in why he but what he did but At the end of the day Cruz still choose to do what he did. That's why I don't like the "100% society's fault" no, a person still made a choice. We can recognise what kind of dysfunctional people society can create while also not absolving them either.

Just adding cause I know someone will misinterprete my comment if I don't. Yes I think gun laws in the US are in dire need of being reformed and that the US desperately needs to improve its safety nets but at the end of the day we need to acknowledge personal agency in these situations as well.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nooooo! We can't help people who are in a shit situation in life, that's communism ...because rightwingers said so! And that's baaaad ...b-because it just is okay?

Tax money should only go towards private corporations that don't make our lifes better! This person was a bad person, and I can't stomach thinking my tax money could have gone towards getting them the help they needed and completely averting the horrible things they did! My tax is much better going to the military industrial complex so we can help bomb kids even better!

I for one think it's billaint that western societies are set up to regularlly leave people behind with no way to escape their situation! And when these poeple act up instead of just sitting around to die a slow painful, but conveniently quiet death, we should act like their motivations are completely incompressible! Because we all know hte alternative is to change a society that we have thrived in, and then we might not thrive as much!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are too many shootings to keep track. Which shooting was this? A few days ago or a month ago or a year ago.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

can we accept people are going to react to their shitty lives differently, and just because it doesn't make you go on a murderous spree, it doesn't mean that it is the case for everybody. the real solution isn't to make these dumb arguments against shooters etc. which might be as correct as you want them to but it's to make lives fucking dignifying in a situation where one may not be thinking rationally. if one doesn't have the strength to not make a certain choice, calling them pathetic doesn't fix shit. every single one of us is delusional.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (9 children)

We always had lots of guns, why are mass shootings a modern phenomenon?

I think we should regulate them the way we do cars. But also there’s clearly some underlying issue. Maybe cultural where people see guns as a way to escape or see them as part of their personality.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Because old guns took 30 seconds to reload one bullet and were inaccurate past like 3 meters

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You could walk into a gun store and buy a fully automatic submachinegun until 1986.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

It's almost as if mass shootings increase with the number of guns in circulation

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