The New York Daily News cover on Va. shootings

Step away from the internet for one year, and that feeling will go away.

 

I've often found that spending too much time online makes me a man who has locked himself in a small, dark padded room, wondering why he's claustrophobic.

 

Hokie_pokie makes a good point that I've been thinking of, and missing, throughout this entire thread.

What has happened to personal responsibility and basic respect for life? I get people trying to have wider, broader views and discussions, but really, this is an aspect that is usually glaringly absent from, or lost in, such talk.

I don't think "this is the society we've chosen." I don't think everything can be pinned on society, "too much " freedom, the media, video games, or even religion, racism or mental illness, and I hate that such acts are so quickly and readily tied to such conditions.

None of those things would ever make me commit such an act as this one, or do any other heinous thing as if it was of no consequence. Nor would they excuse it if I did so.

Flanagan did this. And nobody and nothing "made" him do it. It is possible to have someone say something you don't like, or dislike you (and for you to dislike them), and even to be outraged and galvanized, without becoming a killer.

People generally know right from wrong, and no matter how Flanagan felt at the time he did this, you won't convince me that he didn't know that what he was doing was wrong and that nobody else was responsible. In the end, people need to be responsible for themselves and their own issues.

Just doing that prevents, eliminates or resolves most other deeper, wider problems.

 

Wow, personal responsibility. What a concept. Maybe it'll catch on. Maybe we can become a nation of self-reliant, accountable people committed to working toward making themselves and their lives better and helping others achieve those same goals.







Nah.

 

It'e easier to get people to vote for you if you tell them you'll take care of everything. Our "leaders" gave up on personal responsibility long ago. The masses are just following along.

 

I agree, we need more personal responsibility and respect for one another.

But, hell, we beat each other up, even on message boards. The anonymity of the Internet and this Information Age is part of the bigger problem.

We don't really know people, and there are so many people out there, so fuck it, killing some of them randomly is so impersonal.

But this VA attack was highly personal and premeditated and designed for shock value.

I am going to start building a doomsday bunker, complete with a mineshaft. Not sure where I am going to get the 10 to 1 ratio though.

 

Coincidentally, other countries of our ilk have many more people who take "personal responsibility."

Nations like Venezuela and Honduras have a very high percentage, according to the chart I posted, who don't take "personal responsibility."

All coincidental.

 

Does anyone have a screengrab of the original cover? I never saw it.

 

http://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NY-Daily-News-Cover.jpg

 

That's pretty horrible. Is that a freakin' newspaper or tabloid? (I know the answer, just making a statement in the form of a question).

 

And with stricter enforcement, ie assault weapons banned and magazine sizes reduced in some states, gun deaths have decreased. Maybe you didn't read the other thread

spikechiquet posted:
"According to FBI stats, the number of firearm related murders in 1994 was 16,305. In 2013 (latest year data is available) it was 8,454.
We aren't more violent. We have always been violent. We are just more televised."

 

Most experts think it was the end of the crack epidemic, actually.