No Way To Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

[klook]

Time for this AGAIN, alas:
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1823016659

PARKLAND, FL—In the hours following a violent rampage in Florida in which a lone attacker killed 17 individuals and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Indiana resident Harold Turner, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

[samnsara]

1. i basically said this to my t party sis who said 'its not rocket science...

....everyone in the school needs to be armed...and the Isis search' blah blah blah..... can you imagine? weren't there 3000 kids there? ( or maybe that was the district).

Don't get me wrong...I own guns and I love them... sis and I are fighting, but we are on the same side...confusing?
So... I guess we are in agreement about Citizens have a right to own guns...AND we agree the wrong people shouldn't have them. BUT the disagreement comes in the definition of the latter....

[napi21]

2. I blame a lot of these shootings on most men idolizing the wild west.

It's the stories of the cowboys and Indians that kids play as children but never outgrow. Even I, as a kid, idolized Wyatt Earp, Hop Along Cassidy, Zorro, and The Lone Ranger & Tonto. I'm female, but I had a silver plated revolver with ivory (plastic) grips. Mention those things to grown men and the majority get that silly grin. The way they are able to be a little like those idols is by having their very own gun!

The shooter today was another story, but was enabled by the American love affair with the wild west and their guns.

[klook]

3. When I was a small child, I went to sleep every night in my Roy Rogers outfit,

and I wore my six-gun holster with cap pistol every chance I got for a year or two during kindergarten & first grade.

After that I played army very often, complete with plastic rifle and helmet. I adored making vocal war noises of screaming bombers, tanks, and bombs. I even owned a G.I. Joe doll, as embarrassing as that is to admit.

In my "tween" years, I owned a BB gun and enjoyed target practice.

Years later, when I was deemed mature enough, I went turkey and deer hunting with my father and grandfather, and owned a very nice Browning shotgun. I don't hunt any more, but I don't condemn those who do so responsibly.

Never once have I turned a firearm on another human being. Never once have I been tempted to gun down students, co-workers, movie-goers, concert-goers, drivers, shoppers, holiday revelers, or any other category of human.

So, while I understand your point about American gun worship, I don't think that explains today's massacre, or others before it. I think it's time we faced the fact that in our country there is a toxic mix of not only easy availability of firearms, but also an alienation and devaluing of human life that eats at our collective soul like a cancer.

The perennially posted Onion article lays the question out for us. What is different about us among First World countries? We'd better start trying to change that.

Gun homicides in Spain are about as common as deaths from excessive natural heat in the United States.
Gun homicides in Iceland are about as common as deaths from electrocution in the United States.
In Germany, being murdered with a gun is as uncommon as being killed by a falling object in the United States.
and so on...