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mechrist

Gym climber
South of Heaven
Apr 9, 2013 - 11:21pm PT
As your Daddy, I have to say I'm disappointed in you for not taking on, The Bird.

Daddy, please don't be disappointed.


I thought I did a pretty good job of correcting his spelling. If that was TheBird, that was his only post. I'd hate it if we (I) scared him away... so soon... with so much more potential for making fun of the old geezer!
TGT

Social climber
So Cal
Apr 9, 2013 - 11:28pm PT
Somehow I am unable to come up with any unacceptable outcome resulting from Joe Biden going hunting in heavy brush with Dick Cheney.

Joe would trip and shoot himself before Dick ever had a chance to get a shot off.
Toker Villain

Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Apr 10, 2013 - 01:02am PT
And?


I said unacceptable.
Gary

Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
Apr 10, 2013 - 01:21am PT
Joe would trip and shoot himself before Dick ever had a chance to get a shot off.

One thing they have in common: both supported the war in Vietnam, and both dodged the draft. Two chickenhawks!
Shack

Big Wall climber
Reno NV
Apr 10, 2013 - 03:33am PT
Curious what the average street cop thinks about "gun control"?
You might be surprised.

http://www.policeone.com/Gun-Legislation-Law-Enforcement/articles/6183787-PoliceOnes-Gun-Control-Survey-11-key-findings-on-officers-thoughts/
TradEddie

Trad climber
Philadelphia, PA
Apr 10, 2013 - 12:40pm PT
Curious what the average street cop thinks about "gun control"?
You might be surprised.

Thirty question supposedly on gun control, not one about universal background checks?

Asking police officers to comment on the effectiveness of unpublished "White House proposed legislation"?

Comprehensive survey, NOT.

Nothing surprising at all, I was a Gun Nut once, joined the military because of it, I'm sure plenty of Gun Nuts become cops for the same reason.

TE

mechrist

Gym climber
South of Heaven
Apr 10, 2013 - 01:00pm PT
Not surprised at all. LEOs deal with the dregs of society on a day to day basis. They see the worst society has to offer. They see the world VERY differently than it really is for most Merkins. By far the most uptight, worried, paranoid people I know are LEO's. And rightly so... they are put in unpredictable situations and face potential danger constantly.

An example is Ron, a former LEO. I mentioned meeting some Hispanic hunters in the woods a while back. He immediately assumed they were poachers... up to no good. I wonder if he would have thought that if they were white, but that is another issue. He wondered if I had considered they may be poachers and if I checked their hunting licenses or thought to report them.

OF COURSE NOT. I assumed they were just folks out hunting. They kindly moved their truck off the road so I could get by. We climbed all day, waved as we passed them on the way out, and that was that.

Totally different reality. One assumes everyone else (especially Hispanics) are up to no good. The other assumes most people are just people like the rest of us. The only reason for everyone to be armed is if you think everyone else has malicious intent.
dirt claud

Social climber
san diego,ca
Apr 10, 2013 - 01:21pm PT
I thought this blog was a good one, not about gun laws, but rather a question about what influences the violence. I thought it was an interesting read. The comments are informative as well.

http://peterbrownhoffmeister.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/on-school-shooters-the-huffington-post-doesnt-want-you-to-read-this/


After the Huffington Post signed me on as a blogger and allowed me to write op-ed pieces on any topic, for two years, ranging from books to sports to reviews to pop culture, something changed in our relationship. It was sudden.
I wrote this piece for Huff Po in late December, 2012. For some reason, the editors wouldn’t print it. Like every other article I’d written, I submitted the piece on their backstage for signed bloggers, but nothing happened. It didn’t go up on their site. I waited, and it didn’t happen.
A few days went by. Then a week. I contacted the editors, and they didn’t respond. Then I contacted again, and they let me know that they wouldn’t publish the piece.
I asked why.
No response.
I emailed again.
No response again.
And now they won’t let me write anything at all. I’m off the blogroll.
So I must have touched a nerve. And that made me ask, who’s paying salaries here?
Why is the Huffington Post’s Tech section so popular?
Who is advertising?
Who is vetting content?
What follows is an op-ed article on a piece of the school shooter puzzle. I don’t pretend that this covers everything, but here is a key component from my point of view. And as a current high school teacher and a former troubled teen, I have a strong opinion on the topic.
This is what the Huffington Post doesn’t want its readers to see.
My junior year in high school, I was caught with a loaded, stolen handgun on school property at my school in East Tennessee. Since the owner of the pistol didn’t want to press charges, I simply forfeited the handgun to the local sheriff’s deputy, then was promptly expelled from the school. No arrest. No counseling. No follow-up. I was never required to see a psychologist or explain my intentions. This was 1994, long before the famous shootings at Thurston High School, Columbine, Red Lake, Aurora, Clackamas, and Newtown.
Although I had some loner tendencies, I was also what psychologist call a “failed joiner.” I tried to fit in at each school I attended. I tried to be cool, but I usually failed. I was gun obsessed. I considered killing myself, but more often I thought about killing others.
I carried a loaded pistol my junior year in high school. I stuffed it in my belt, ready for use.
The next year, I carried a sawed-off shotgun in my backpack. I liked guns and I had access to them. But I also carried a sheath-knife. I was obsessed with weapons of all kind. For a while, I carried a framing hammer.
Thankfully, I never shot or stabbed or bludgeoned anyone. Although I got in many, many fights, and although I thought about seriously hurting people with the weapons that I carried, I never did. And eventually, with the support of some incredible adults in my life, plus some maturing experiences, I moved past my tendencies toward violence, matured, got back into school, and grew up. After three high school expulsions, I have now – ironically – become a high school teacher.
As a teacher, I’ve spent a lot of time this past week [December 27, 2012] thinking about the Newtown shooting, school shootings in general, their causes and possible preventions.
It’s scary now to think that I ever had anything in common with school shooters. I don’t enjoy admitting that. But I did have a lot in common with them. I was angry, had access to guns, felt ostracized, and didn’t make friends easily. I engaged in violence and wrote about killing people in my notes to peers.
But there is one significant difference between me at 16 and 17 years of age and most high school shooters: I didn’t play violent video games.
As a child, my mother taught me that all video games were “evil.” That’s the word she used. And although that word might be a little extreme, I grew up thinking that there was something very, very wrong with pretending on a video screen. My mother also called playing video games “wasting your life” and “dumbing yourself down.” I thought my mother was ridiculous, but her opinions stuck with me anyway.
Thus, when it came to high school, when I was a social failure and very, very angry, I had no practice with on-screen violence. ”Call of Duty” didn’t exist yet, but even if it had, I wouldn’t have played it. I wouldn’t have practiced putting on body armor and I wouldn’t have shot thousands of people with an AR rifle. I have likewise never practiced “double-tapping” people. I have never walked into a room and killed everyone inside. My students tell me that it’s possible to “pistol whip a prostitute” in Grand Theft Auto, but I haven’t done it.
But Jeff Weise did. He played thousands of first-person shooter hours before he shot and killed nine people at and near his Red Lake, Minn., school, before killing himself.
And according to neighbors and friends, Clackamas shooter Jacob Tyler Roberts played a lot of video games before he armed himself with a semi-automatic AR-15 and went on a rampage at the Clackamas Town Center in Portland, Oregon last week.
Also, by now, it is common knowledge that Adam Lanza, who murdered 20 children and six women in video-game style, spent many, many hours playing “Call of Duty.” In essence, Lanza – and all of these shooters – practiced on-screen to prepare for shooting in real-life.
Now I am not anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson. I’m not suggesting that everyone who plays a video game will act out that video game in reality. But I am saying that it is very dangerous to allow troubled, angry, teenage boys access to killing practice, even if that access is only virtual killing practice. The military uses video games to train soldiers to kill, yet we don’t consider “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3″ training for addicted teenage players? A high school boy who plays that game 30 hours per week isn’t training to kill somebody?
I am not surprised that school shooters love violent video games. As an angry, troubled teen, I would’ve probably loved to shoot hundreds of people on-screen. That might’ve felt nice.
But now, as a teacher, I worry about my most troubled male students playing games like “Halo 4″ and “Assassin’s Creed 3,” bragging about violent actions that they’ve never done in the real world. A scrawny, angry boy’s who’s failing socially is a scary video game addict.
I was walking behind two teenage boys in the hall at my high school the other day and I heard one talking about slitting someone’s throat. He said, “I just came up behind him, pulled out my knife so quietly and cut his throat.”
The other boy said, “Yeah, then I killed everyone else in less than, like, 10 seconds. Just slaughtered them.”
I looked at these two boys: Tall and awkward. Unathletic. I knew that they weren’t tied-in socially, that they both struggled in classes and with peers. Yet they were capable of incredible and sudden violence on screen. Together, they could slit throats and shoot everyone. I asked one of them later, and he said that he played Call of Duty “an average of 40 hours per week, at least.”
Is this what we want angry, adolescent boys to do? Do we want to give them this practice? Do we want them to glorify violent actions, to brag about violence in the school’s hallways? Or even worse, given the perfect equation of frustration + opportunity + practice, do we want them to do as Weise, Roberts, and Lanza did, and act out these fantasies in real life? Do we want them to yell, “I am the shooter” as they enter a crowded mall – as Roberts did? Or dress like video-game shooters – as Lanza and Roberts were – before heading into a murder spree?
Especially with teenage boys, we have to decide what we want them to do, what we want them to love, what we want them to emulate. Even if they don’t end up shooting people in a school, if they’re practicing car-jackings, knifings, and putting on body-armor as first-person shooters, what are they preparing to do with the rest of their lives? Will these video-game practice sessions make them better husbands or fathers? Will these boys become patient and understanding friends? Better co-workers?
Please support the bill introduced Wednesday by U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller, directing the National Academy of Sciences to examine whether violent games and programs lead children to act aggressively. Please lobby with your local representatives as Rockefeller presses the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to expand their studies.
But I have another idea beyond important political action. Something positive to think about:
Get kids outside. Take them out and let them wander around in the woods. Let them canoe across a lake. Let them backpack through a mountain range. Give them a map and compass assignment. Give frustrated youth an opportunity to challenge themselves in the natural world.
Have you ever heard of a school shooter who’s hobbies are kayaking, rock climbing, and fly-fishing? If that seems absurd – and it does seem absurd to me – we might be onto something. I don’t think that those hobbies can create a school shooter. There’s just something abut the natural world that defuses anger.
I know this because the outdoors helped saved my life. An outdoor diversion program for troubled teens started the process when I was sixteen. Camping and hiking and climbing helped me mature further as a nineteen and twenty year old. And now, as the director of a high school outdoor program, one of my student leaders said recently that “the outdoor program saves lives.”
That’s not me. That’s nature. Kids need the outdoors.
Help the young people. Get them outside.
mechrist

Gym climber
South of Heaven
Apr 10, 2013 - 01:31pm PT
Interesting. I'm not convinced video games (or movies) lead to violent actions and I don't play them and I'm clearly not an expert on anything... but I find it interesting the first killing game I played (Doom) was given to us (illegally I might add) by someone who is now an LEO. All my "bad" stoner friends were playing Tony Hawk skate something something and the like... to this day I don't think any of them play those stupid violent games.

But I did name a boulder problem "double tap" so you never know, I could snap.
dirt claud

Social climber
san diego,ca
Apr 10, 2013 - 02:10pm PT
I was more in agreement with the getting the kids outside thing, let nature teach you some things, those outdoor programs for troubled youth seam to make sense and work.
Norton

Social climber
the Wastelands
Apr 10, 2013 - 02:56pm PT
But Jeff Weise did. He played thousands of first-person shooter hours before he shot and killed nine people at and near his Red Lake, Minn., school, before killing himself.

And according to neighbors and friends, Clackamas shooter Jacob Tyler Roberts played a lot of video games before he armed himself with a semi-automatic AR-15 and went on a rampage at the Clackamas Town Center in Portland, Oregon last week.

Also, by now, it is common knowledge that Adam Lanza, who murdered 20 children and six women in video-game style, spent many, many hours playing “Call of Duty.” In essence, Lanza – and all of these shooters – practiced on-screen to prepare for shooting in real-life.

Now I am not anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson. I’m not suggesting that everyone who plays a video game will act out that video game in reality. But I am saying that it is very dangerous to allow troubled, angry, teenage boys access to killing practice, even if that access is only virtual killing practice. The military uses video games to train soldiers to kill, yet we don’t consider “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3″ training for addicted teenage players? A high school boy who plays that game 30 hours per week isn’t training to kill somebody?
I am not surprised that school shooters love violent video games. As an angry, troubled teen, I would’ve probably loved to shoot hundreds of people on-screen. That might’ve felt nice.
But now, as a teacher, I worry about my most troubled male students playing games like “Halo 4″ and “Assassin’s Creed 3,” bragging about violent actions that they’ve never done in the real world. A scrawny, angry boy’s who’s failing socially is a scary video game addict.
I was walking behind two teenage boys in the hall at my high school the other day and I heard one talking about slitting someone’s throat. He said, “I just came up behind him, pulled out my knife so quietly and cut his throat.”

wow, I had no idea all of those mass murders were related to brutal video games


easy access to assault weapons plus isolated young white males plus video games EQUALS ......


but most importantly, we should continue to make assault weapons real easy to get ahold of

the NRA is OPPOSED to more background checks

yet 45,000 "bad guys" were prevented from buying guns last year because of background checks

yet the NRA is opposed to expanding what clearly "works", background checks


someone please, defend the NRA on this one, help me understand
ontheedgeandscaredtodeath

Social climber
SLO, Ca
Apr 10, 2013 - 03:00pm PT
I think the NRA is currently being exposed as the nutjob/ pro-criminal organization that it actually is. The Obama administration seems to be confronting it head on, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
mechrist

Gym climber
South of Heaven
Apr 10, 2013 - 03:20pm PT
Gun manufacturers, the number 1 supports of the NRA and master of the frightened sheeple, would go out of business without crime resulting from easy access to firearms and the subsequently perceived necessity for self-defense.

They LOVE mass shootings... people realize just how easy it is for HOMICIDAL MANIACS to get guns LEGALLY and call for tighter restrictions on gun sales (which has NOTHING to do with the 2nd amendment)... that puts gun nuts in a frenzy about tyrannical governments, impending shootouts in their driveways, etc... which leads to stockpiling ammo and guns... and Gun Corps rake in massive profits.

Once the hysteria dies down, they are left to lobbying for loopholes that will allow the streets to be flooded with guns... making straw purchases easy with very light consequences (couple years incarceration at most). Of course nobody in their right mind would object to harsher penalties for straw-purchasers... which is how we know the NRA (=GUN MANUFACTURERS) ARE FUKING NUTS.
hillrat

Trad climber
reno, nv
Apr 10, 2013 - 04:34pm PT
Wow. I,d have thouit you dudes would welcome a study on the possible corrolation between simulated violence and atual violence, especially when questioned by a dude who openly admits to having been close to being a mass murderer. Instead its the same old rhetoric.
Where,s the open-mindedness and fact-finding desire we,re suppose to have?

Granted, the dude,s a statistical minority, but then so are the mass murderers when compared to the majority of responsible gun owners.

As to the NRA, well they,ve got their heads up their ass.

If you keep doggedly pointing at guns and their easy availability as the root cause then you,re band-aiding the whole violent crime issue and you really need to dig a little deeper.

Lets say we ban ALL the semi-auto hi-cap guns, hell, round em up and destroy em. How long til you call for the revolvers and the pump guns? Cause you have to KNOW that all ynu,d have done was slow down the murder rate by some statistically insignificant amount by taking the scary guns.

And another thing- saying gun mfgrs and NRA are pro-criminal armament, well, is like calling Obama a closet muslim, but i guess there,s enough empirical evidence for both, eh?

Take a look around, some of you same sane people calling for tighter gun regulations are the same saying that climbing closures aren,t realistic either. Take a look around you, check the threads like NRA bolt chop thread at lake mead, to name one. It,s easy to see why people get worked up when the people in charge so often seem SO clueless, be it guns, climbing, or whatever the hot-button issue may be. As often as not what we end up with is some overly restrictive garbage that either doesn,t work, or consequently serves as a blanket-ban that takes years of dedicated work to even come clore to a tenuous reparation, at best. No wonder the "gun nuts" get their panties in a bunch. But hey, at least it aint a bolt war.
mechrist

Gym climber
South of Heaven
Apr 10, 2013 - 05:42pm PT
Interesting. I'm not convinced...

I found it interesting, yet remain unconvinced. How is that unwelcoming?

Where,s the open-mindedness and fact-finding desire we,re suppose to have?

Waiting for applicable studies?


Note: no references = unsupported opinion... that goes for me as well as everyone else.


And another thing- saying gun mfgrs and NRA are pro-criminal armament, well, is like calling Obama a closet muslim, but i guess there,s enough empirical evidence for both, eh?

Except that when Muslims threaten the security and safety of Merkins Obama does not suggest we all convert... he imposes sanctions or just kills them with his drones. When gun companies see gun violence threatening the security and safety of Merkins they call for... yep... MORE GUNS... really, it is the only sane answer, right?
hillrat

Trad climber
reno, nv
Apr 10, 2013 - 05:58pm PT
yeah, recognize that,s not a study. no reason to blast the whole theory.

gun co,s sell based on more than just self defnce.

obama comment was tongue-in-cheek.
geezus.
Norton

Social climber
the Wastelands
Apr 10, 2013 - 06:03pm PT
If you keep doggedly pointing at guns and their easy availability as the root cause then you,re band-aiding the whole violent crime issue and you really need to dig a little deeper.


hilltop, no one here is saying that ONLY stressing the availability of guns is THE root cause

wherever did you get that idea, I have not read that from any posting this entire thread

everyone, literally everyone, has pointed out many many "other" contributing factors

we here are not as naive and single minded as you obviously think we are

but then you are pretty new to this thread, so likely you missed all those posts
hillrat

Trad climber
reno, nv
Apr 10, 2013 - 06:23pm PT
yeah. i overgeneralized.

there are, however, plenty of people who think banning is THE SHIZNIT. oh well. i was around at the beginning, then left, then returned, got disgusted and left, now here i am.

made my point. probly ouita sit in the corner awhile again, try to get out and flail some 4th class instead.
Reeotch

Trad climber
4 Corners Area
Apr 10, 2013 - 06:29pm PT
It may not even be clear that there is s consistent correlation between rates of gun ownership and violent deaths/suicides, according to this Harvard study:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

Some interesting statistics in that study. I was able to bring up the entire article with that link.


Nevertheless, the bur‐
den of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal
more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, espe‐
cially since they argue public policy ought to be based on
that mantra.149 To bear that burden would at the very least
require showing that a large number of nations with more
guns have more death and that nations that have imposed
stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions
in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are
not observed when a large number of nations are compared
across the world.

Norton

Social climber
the Wastelands
Apr 10, 2013 - 06:54pm PT
there are, however, plenty of people who think banning is THE SHIZNIT.


many?


I know of only ONE person posting here who calls for any new "banning" and that is Joe Hedge.

Mechrist does not, and neither do I, and all we are calling for is some reasonable stuff like greatly expanded penalties for straw buyers and expanded background checks, mostly.

So WHO are these "many? people on this thread calling for actually banning guns?
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