Apple CEO Tim Cook calls for ‘good people with different views’ to come together to address mass shootings

45 Comments

1. For each of your basket of prayers, there are two containers of ammo. For each of your thoughts, there are two military-style magazines awaiting. Trump’s right,another great thing is going to come out of this: another great mass shooting perpetrated by one of his fellow white supremacist terrorist americans. The only thing no one knows is when.

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   1. I’m going to burst your little bubble of false narrative in the service of reality:

      Connor Betts, the Dayton, Ohio mass shooter, was a self-described “leftist,” who wrote that he would happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, “I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.” On Nov. 2, 2018, he wrote: “Vote blue[Democrat] for gods sake.”

      https://heavy.com/news/2019/08/connor-betts-twitter-politics-social-media/

      What he wrote stands pretty much in polar opposite to accused El Paso shooter Patrick Crusius, whose own social media accounts indicated support for President Donald Trump and anti-immigrant measures, such as the border wall.

      Each of these murderer’s politics are equally meaningless, as the underlying problem isn’t the tools, but the people wielding them – mentally ill people who are not being identified and treated.

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      1. The false narrative is surely, that two wrongs make a right and cancel each other out. They don’t. They are both wrong.
         I would suggest the gun lobby comes up with some sound policy to control their followers. After all it’s not folk who ‘don’t’ own guns who perpetuate mass slaughter

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         1. WTF. We’ll get nowhere with blather such as yours muddying up the issue. “The gun lobby” doesn’t have anything to do with “controlling” the mentally ill.

            Law-abiding gun owners, many millions upon millions, are just that: law-abiding.

            The problem isn’t guns any more than the problem is trucks when those are used for mass murder. The problem is sick minds, secularization, violence condoned as entertainment, etc., but mostly sick, mentally ill minds that need to be identified and institutionalized for their and everyone else’s safety.

            The secondary problem is liberals who killed the mental wards back in the 70’s because they were “inhumane” and who will fight any attempt to get nutjobs out of society and into mental wards, so that mass shootings will once again very rare, as they were when we still had “loony bins.”

            Pre-routine mass shootings, these conditions existed:
            Right to bear arms, hundreds of millions of guns, and loony bins.

            With routine mass shootings, these conditions exist:
            Right to bear arms, hundreds of millions of guns, and the severely mentally ill going untreated walking among us, time bombs waiting to go off.

      2. Ignoring your presumptuous nickname, I will explain how biased you are with your supposedly accurate selection of information.

         If you spent less time childishly playing with your gun thinking how you can be an hero sometime in your life, you’d have more time to read and think about the manifesto which that AH wrote. He shares the same view as POTUS about immigration, that is, that immigrants are the cause for the economic difficulties of working-class americans and widespread crime. That is a FACT. And the city he chose as a target is, surprise, near border, with a lot of immigrants and mexicans he sought to eliminate. That is also a FACT and it’s on his manifesto.
         Also a FACT is that no Dem has strict immigration control as part of their pledges and none makes a connection between migration and crime or shouts immigrants (from poor countries, of course) have no place in the US. Trump does exactly that, even with US citizens and representatives.

         Your quest for individualizing the problem is also a fallacy: if you compare the US to other industrialized countries in which gun control forbids military-grade weapons, you’ll see that this kind of crimes is a lot less prevalent. That is a proof of causality. You can’t say the US has more deranged people than other countries, statistically speaking. Even a minimally intelligent republican understands that.

         One more thing: the second amendment is BS for today’s standard.
         If you think it should be kept for the right of self defense, I remind you that mass shootings, when they were prevented, it was because of police intervention. Almost no examples of the hero citizen bearing a weapon. Unless you say there should be an M4A4 in every school room, in each mall store, and hanged in the back of each one of us (which would make me think you are the deranged), it’s absolutely unreasonable to think a guy with a small pistol will be a hero. No guns for anyone usually works best.
         If you think the second amendment is about prevention of tyranny in government, my friend, I really have to wake you up to the reality. The US spends almost 700B in defense each year. If there was someone wishful of abusing power in the White House (who could that be?) and the military supported him, you could bring all your weapons and smgs and rifles and granade lauchers you stupidly keep at your country bunker. You already lost before you start.

         So think twice before trying to seem a smartie boy.

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         1. Anyone who believes that gun control is about safety is naive. The desire and effort to control guns is a small but highly significant battle in the war for the soul of this nation. Gun control advocates have locked onto firearms and regulating them as a powerful method of manipulating constituent emotions, while simultaneously demoralizing conservative voters. It is 100% politics. It is the unethical exploitation of tragedy for political gain. Even worse, the constant, aggressive, and insidious attack on the 2nd Amendment is an attack on the Constitution itself. If they can defeat the 2nd Amendment, they can dismantle the entire Constitution at will.

         2. Wise gun control is like automobile seat belt laws. At first some car makers and most car buyers thought they were unnecessary but every year they save lives. Only the most stupid people refuse to use seatbelts today. Big bad government intervention for the betterment of all, with statistics to prove why. Even if sometimes seatbelts don’t save everyone.

            One might believe your delusion that laws cannot possibly work if you acted like a logical person. But you just flipped from flag-wearing patriot to camo-clad conspiracy believer that the USA is out to kill you. Let’s explore your delusion that the USA wants to disarm you personally and dictate all your decisions and take away your freedom, just because. If the big bad government still used muzzle loaders with black powder, maybe they would hesitate to attack you for a few seconds. If you burned federal land and holed up in an Oregon compound with high power weapons, the federales might actually hold back for days even. But in the end, the law will prevail and no Waco incident will ever be won by armed citizens. Think about it. That is precisely why terrorists cannot win — not because of random untrained good guys with guns, but because no individual and no militia regulated or otherwise is going to stand up against modern military following the law. The long arm of the law gets top suspects. The discussion point you refuse to acknowledge is that the law not only doles out punishment to criminals after they commit their acts, laws also mitigate future issues with prevention like seatbelts. If you wanted to use your brain and turn off your victimization act, you certainly could imagine better ways to keep crazy people from assembling arsenals full of weapons of mass destruction.

            Why would any sane person want or need to spray bullets at firing rates that prevent accuracy? Defense? No. Chris Kyle, RIP, would have been able to take down any target before they saw him. Usually you cheer for spending trillions on making the US military untouchable. Now you pretend that a few million untrained people with small arms will bend the US government to your will. That is delusional. If you were a lawless terrorist, the police and military of the US and any other civilized nation of laws would have you taken out in a matter of days, if not minutes, with law-abiding firepower that no individual human should ever freely possess.

            Please join the 21st century.

         3. …and to this very day, a gun has never killed anyone…on it’s own.

         4. …and your point is?

            By your logic, a nuclear weapon never hurt anyone on its own. Yet Orange Dope claims he will prevent North Korea from getting one. (No progress there but beautiful letters).

            Could there possibly be a common ground where everyone agrees to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of people who have demonstrated they cannot be trusted? Like motorists on the road. Why not? How is it that some people can be deemed unfit to drive but there is no legal means to keep guns out of the hands of crazies?

            Is it a problem of scale? How many dead in a single incident is acceptable? Is it simply mathematics? With a planet population of well over 7 billion, why do you care if 1,000,000 nuclear victims die? 50,000 in a skyscraper? 400 in a jet? Or 150 in Las Vegas? Mathematically, no scenario is significant compared to total human population.

            Perhaps it only matters country of origin of the trigger man? Or is it a matter of method? Is radiation poisoning less attractive than bleeding out onto the asphalt? Or tradition? Man has had guns for centuries, so that’s acceptable. It will take a little more time before personal nuclear dirty bombs for self defense become accepted?

            If without question all Americans should have unlimited armaments, can someone explain why bump stocks, tens of rounds of ammo, and so forth is wise to distribute to a population with extreme income difference, violent media and video games, racial and political animosity, etc? A gun is actually a very ineffective defensive weapon. Takes too long to aim. Grenades make so much more sense. Or is this getting out of hand? Could it be that eventually limiting firepower really is necessary? If to want to strictly the interpret the Constitution, why not honor the context of era, when a musketeer could fire about one shot every 45 seconds?

            Maybe as tech advances, regulations should advance too. Otherwise just as Apple shrinks computers, some bad actors will shrink weapons and there will be no preemptive legal means to stop them. I suppose your next argument will be that murder cannot be prevented so there is no point in trying. Okay, then tell Trump to stop wasting everyone’s time pretending to make progress in halting the spread of nuclear arms. North Korea could only take out parts of the Pacific coast and you don’t really care about those people anyway. Admit it.

         5. Nice rant. Makes little sense, pertaining to my original statement, and I see you even squeezed some Trump Derangement into the mix. BTW…the Pacific coast is a lost cause apparently….

         6. Sure…I’m willing to sacrifice California. It’s half way there already.

      3. The other false logic is that both shootings were politically motivated. They weren’t. The Dayton shooter was an unstable individual with personal grievances; he shot his own sister and a friend, among others. His instability was well known, yet he was in possession of a military-grade rifle with a huge magazine. He was thus prepared to copycat the El Paso shooting earlier in the day. We cannot know if Dayton would have happened without El Paso—which was clearly motivated by white nationalism.

         The issue of nationalist terrorism, and more generally of angry white gunmen like Las Vegas, is not going to be helped by Whataboutism, blaming the victims, or drawing false equivalencies between the “very fine people on both sides.”

         See presidential comments trying to link background checks to the entirely separate issue of immigration and blaming the media for reporting his own divisive remarks. This is a crisis that needs to be addressed on its own terms before another 30 people die.

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         1. Now 31. I have relatives in El Paso and have shopped in the Cielo Vista Apple Store. Like Mr. Cook, I would like to visit it again without worrying about a crazy guy with heavy weapons.

         2. Further update—We now know that the Dayton shooter belonged to the spectacularly misogynistic “pornogrind” scene. He did vocals for Menstrual Munchies, whose album “6 Ways of Female Butchery” exemplifies the genre. Another form of white extremism, not what anyone would find to be typical leftiness.

         3. Profile and history of El Paso, Texas Walmart shooter:

            Racist eco terrorist who fantasized about mass murder to save the planet. Maybe in his twisted psyche he thought he was Thanos or Samuel Jackson’s character from Kingsman, plus racism.

            Excerpts from his stupid manifesto follows. It’s creepy. Why did he not have a mental health evaluation and get on NICS? I was grieved to read that the 15 year old who was killed had tried to get into the bank in Walmart for safety, but those inside refused to unlock it. He was killed at the door. Don’t know yet if he shared his fantasies about mass murder beforehand, to raise any red flags.

            “In the near future, America will have to initiate a basic universal income to prevent widespread poverty and civil unrest as people lose their jobs (to automation). Joblessness is in itself a source of civil unrest. The less dependents on a government welfare system, the lower the unemployment rate, the better. Achieving ambitious social projects like universal healthcare and UBI would become far more likely to succeed if tens of millions of defendants are removed.”

            “The decimation of our environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources.”

            “I am against race mixing because it destroys genetic diversity and creates identity problems….But the idea of deporting or murdering all non-white Americans is horrific. Many have been here as long as the whites, and have done as much to build our country. The best solution to this for now would be to divide America int a confederacy of territories with at least 1 territory for each race.”

   2. Root causes: D I V O R C E (specifically fatherless boys) and a culture that has devalued life with rampant on-demand A B O R T I O N.

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      1. Most European countries have much higher rates of single parenting and lower rates of church attendance than the US. They also have enormously lower homicide rates. Your proposed cause is not even a correlation.

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2. Been waiting for this one and I can guarantee a long wait for common sense suggestions and consensus.
   Despite all the fine words nothing has been done. Nothing. It’s beyond reasonable doubt that aggressive partisan politics has been weaponised – literally; discussion of safety measures is all about ‘the Constitution is inviolate!’ and amendment rights!
   So how about applying some of those rights to protect the living, not the dogma.
   Surely somebody must care?

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   1. Everyone with a working brain and heart cares.

      The Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. The only such way to remove it is through a Constitutional Amendment. The U.S. Constitution was drafted 232 years ago. In that time there have been exactly 27 successful attempts to amend it, of which, 10 were the Bill of Rights, three required a Civil War, and one repealed another.

      Prohibition taught us many important lessons about human nature and what happens when government oversteps the will of the people or tries to dictate morality that should be remembered.

      There are more gun laws on the books that anyone would believe. It is illegal to shoot and murder people on the streets, in schools, markets. etc. It is illegal to run down pedestrians on the sidewalk. No extra laws on top of already-existing laws will prevent these things.

      Mental health issues must be addressed.

      Before the raft of mass shootings, we had what were commonly referred to as “loony bins.” The wholesale elimination of these facilities on moral grounds (mistreatment of the mentally ill) has resulted in the mentally ill walking among us with access to firearms that’s difficult, if not impossible to prevent.

      We need a modern, safe system of identifying and segregating the dangerously mentally ill from the innocent public (they way the used to be before mass shooting became a seemingly routine occurrence) while they undergo treatment.

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      1. Pompous twaddle. And a worthless red herring.
         As if locking up all the homicidal maniacs does anything. There are countless potential homicidal maniacs roaming the streets. They don’t self advertise.They carry on normal lives…until they don’t. They might have a minor blow out or worse. You seem to be advocating mass incarceration of millions who might/may/could theoretically have a major event at some point in future. That’s demented fascist nonsense. The point being, until stupidly easy access to guns is clamped down with extra measures, those potential maniacs remain a threat. Your idea does sweet fa and ensures more deaths, more sorrow and more guns being the normal.

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3. Nothing is going to come from this.

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   1. “In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings.

      On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose…

      500 to Medical Errors
      300 to the Flu
      250 to Suicide
      200 to Car Accidents
      40 to Homicide via Handgun

      Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.“

      Should we ban doctors and cars on top of guns? The best thing to ban would be the mass media broadcasts that trigger leftists to bulldoze our basic human right to self-defense.

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      1. Ban Chicago as well.

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      2. Putting things into perspective

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4. I doubt very seriously if a man like Mr. Cook is truly interested in examining the underlying social causes of these killings. Like most, he’s looking for a quick answer. Things like changing the gun emoji to a water gun. Most on the left blame guns. It’s sad when predominantly young white males are committing these crimes that instead of looking for the root cause, we focus on the weapon. Misdirection.

   Others like a prominent Republican congressman, whose name I forget at the moment, want to blame video games, when study after study after study finds no connection between video games and violence. More Misdirection.

   The answer isn’t simple, but it is hidden because misdirection is being employed to make us look at the wrong things. Things like “white supremacy.” Please, if you believe that this is the issue, your capacity for reason is almost nil. Stop letting CNN drag you around by the nose. If you blame Donald Trump, your capacity for reason isn’t almost nil, it is nil. I hope you know better and that you’re just suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

   In order to understand why this is happening, we’re going to need to go back to a time when it was not happening and look at the differences in our society and my guess is that many of us are not going to like the answers and we are going to reject them.

   In the 1950s there was only 1 mass shooting. Plenty of guns were around. The gun laws were much more lax. Yet these incidents did not occur. So what changes. We’re talking the entire decade here. In the 1960s with all that turmoil there were 6. In the 1970s there were 13. In the 1980s there were 32. In the 1990s 42. It seems that even as gun laws became more strict, something else was still causing mass shooting to take place.

   In the 1970s there was a horrific mass killing at a gay club in New Orleans I believe. As I recall over 30 people were killed. Only this wasn’t done with a gun, it was done with a match.

   So what changed that effected society in such a negative way? Many things.

   The Decline of Religion in America, particularly Christianity. We had stronger communities because of religion. I say this and I AM AN ATHEIST. Religion gave us a sense of morality. When I was growing up in the 60s, there was still a sense of community. I was a part of the community. I had responsibilities to the community, and the community, much to my chagrin, kept an eye on me.
   In our zeal to be tolerant of everything, to not hurt anyone’s feelings, society has become tolerant of almost anything. Everything goes no matter how ridiculous. Back in the 50s, and 60s we had standards of behavior that simply no longer exist. There were standards that were reflected back at us by our media. Today nothing could be further from the truth.
   We had a national ethnicity. No we weren’t all fascistic nationalists, but we were proud of our accomplishments. From being a large part of defeating fascism in WWII to landing 12 men on the moon. During the 60s I had to say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in school. I liked being an American.
   The DECLINE OF THE FAMILY, meaning a FATHER a MOTHER and children. This is huge and can be connected to the rise in feminism especially radical feminism, the feminization of men, social welfare policies that rewarded men for not being around, etc.
   Schools have evolved from being institutions of learning to institutions of leftist indoctrination.
   The war on men. The mere concept of what it means to be a man in society, to be responsible, to be of good character, to be a family head, provider, and protector has been all but obliterated and relabeled “the patriarchy.” Young men have no idea what their place in society is anymore.
   The war on boys. In schools the natural behavior of young men is not just frowned upon but we increasingly try to drug it out of them. We’re creating loner misfit boys due to lack of family and nonsense schooling. In school their mental health takes a back seat to learning to appreciate Islam and other idiotic things.
   Copy cat murders thanks to a media that glorifies these young men.

   All of these things and many more come together and allow for the cretion of the monsters we see carrying out these killings. And I don’t know how we go back in time.

   I’d like to see things like separate boys and girls schools. It is going to take a great deal of attention to teach young boys how to become men. Boys taught by men.

   We can’t keep pretending its guns. We can’t keep pretending its games. We can’t keep pretending that the cause is anything other than ourselves, and what we’ve done to our society.

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   1. Your comment reminded me of the one below, one I actually saved and passed around because it struck me as so true:

      The time has come to turn to God and reassert our trust in Him for the healing of America… Our country is in need of and ready for a spiritual renewal. —  Ronald Reagan

      The reason so many Dem/Lib/Progs become so incensed over petty politics is because they have shunned God, their creator, and replaced Him with political ideology. Their religion is politics, about which they are fanatical.

      These mass shootings are the spawn of the leftist revisionists’ incessant push for the secularization of America based on misreading the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

      Americans are frequently reminded of what the revisionists deem our greatest achievement: “Separation of Church and State.” Crosses are ripped down in parks. Prayer has been banished from schools and the ACLU rampages to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Moreover, “Separation of Church and State” is nowhere found in the Constitution or any other founding legislation. Our forefathers would never countenance the restrictions on religion exacted today. — Bill Flax, Forbes, July 9, 2011

      America has lost her way and these are the consequences.

      No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example. — Thomas Jefferson

      It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. — Patrick Henry

      Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. — George Washington

      You’ll never see these quotes in the mass media or even on most college campuses.

      God is the answer.

      Cue the clueless secularist lib gun-grabbers. Their “solutions” are always the wrong ones for the actual problem. They’d rather pick off leaves, accomplishing nothing, than cure the roots.

      — First 2014, Then 2016, – Feb. 15, 2018 at 9:24 am

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      1. A white nationalist opposed to race-mixing kills 22 Hispanic shoppers a week after another angry white guy kills 3 “meztizos” at a festival, and you blame it on leftists? God is indeed the answer, but the Christian Identity movement isn’t. Hate in the name of the Prince of Peace isn’t. You don’t have an answer, except to roll back the calendar to the nineteenth century.

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5. Bottom line in all of this, no matter what Dem. enacts a feel good law is, Insane criminals with intent won’t be stopped by any law. Ever.

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   1. I disagree. We all personally know people who aren’t responsible enough to own a gun. This has to be recognized. If a law isn’t 100% effective that doesn’t mean it isn’t a step in the right direction.

      If gun laws enhanced ability to keep firearms out of the hands of psychos and halted the spread of automatics & semiautos kept clip capacity to under ~10, then no legitimate sportsman would have his rights violated and “good guys” might have a chance to stop these deranged domestic terrorists before dozens are shot.

      No NRA propaganda can refute that. Las Vegas should have been the wake up call. Still bump stocks are available. The USA may never be able to stop single shootings, but there are definitely steps that will stop mass murder. Don’t conflate statistics of thousands of separate accidents with the domestic terror that the NRA and their ilk claim cannot be slowed (except by escalating arms sales of course, that is their only mission today).

      There is a pragmatic middle ground here, people.

      a former NRA member and current competitive target shooter

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      1. Require trained officers to protect people wherever groups are assembled. Simple but effective solution. We have way too many gun laws as it is especially since we are a country with freedom to bear arms in the highest law of the land. As our founding fathers have said, gun laws only serve to disarm law abiding people, not criminals.

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         1. Well, I will just say that trained officers were at Gilroy and people still died. You cannot win anyway you look at it.

         2. Sure, if people want to kill others they will find a way to do it regardless if guns exist or not. The main point I’m making is to prevent “mass” gun killings via lethal force deterrence.

      2. I also disagree with your previous post. My point is if a person is willing to commit murder and kill either 1 or 1000, they will find a way no matter what law is on the books. Sure you can limit things, but the pols want it all to stop. It is not realistic and neither are politicians. The shooter from Dayton was in the clear to purchase firearms. No law would ever have stopped him. The pols are focusing on the wrong thing anyways.

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6. I’ll just add this: All politicians are just talking heads and hypocrites. There are no real leaders anymore. Just bickering idiots that try to score political points. If you trust any of them, you are deluding yourselves. And the media feeds off of them like rabid sharks in a chum pool. I don’t trust anything that comes out of their mouths.

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7. The solution has been known for a long time. Create laws requiring armed trained officers at locations with groups of people. This will deter 99% of all mass shootings since they almost always happen where there are strict gun laws or not guns. This would save lives and has been PROVEN in other countries like Israel protecting school children, so ask yourself, why has this not been done or even proposed here?

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   1. Another reason no sane person wants to live in Israel. Without US taxpayers propping them up, Israel would have bankrupted itself with expensive police state style tactics long ago. They respond to every rock thrown by an idiot Palestinian with a few million dollar missile strikes, then claim peace talks cannot proceed. Peace would break out fast if US taxpayers cut off the foreign aid.

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      1. You’re obviously Anti-Israel and have a bone to pick. So, please try to stick to the FACTS, thanks.

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   2. Problem is this is the United States and not a police state like Israel. So that won’t happen. Nice try though….

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      1. It doesn’t have to be government officials it can be required by law of any group/company/organization of people to have a firearm trained person or persons that is ARMED (and with a scope I would say) at entrances etc. to prevent a mass shooting. This is not rocket science and is common sense. Many places already have this like banks and businesses in bad areas have armed security people, just make it a requirement where there is a large group of people. This WILL stop 99% or mass shootings.

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   3. Zeos, the Dayton shooting happened in the presence of armed trained officers who had neutralized the threat within 30 to 60 seconds. He still killed 9 other people. The El Paso shooting started in a public parking lot in a state with massive numbers of people who can lawfully carry open or concealed firearms, plus many more carrying illegally. There would have been more folks carrying, whether lawfully or not, inside the store. Walmart has store security. The police were on scene within minutes. He still killed 22 people and wounded 24 more.

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      1. People can still kill other people if they are determined regardless of guns. My point is to prevent “MASS” shootings. Keeping armed AND TRAINED individuals at entrances and scattered around would prevent most “mass” shootings because of deterrence of lethal force. A mass shooter typically picks places where there are nobody to stop them i.e. no guns (or a place with strict gun laws) because they want to inflict lots of damage but if they are quickly killed and they KNOW they will be stopped before they can then they will probably not bother trying. We could use better training I’m sure for the armed individuals/officers. All this is common sense

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      2. The fallacy is in assuming that mass shooters can be deterred by the threat of force. Actual force, once employed, yes. Threatened force, no. Most of these men are seeking suicide by cop. Few, if any, expect to survive. They do not care if there are fifty police there to shoot them or only one. Additional police might shorten the duration of the episode, but they absolutely will not prevent any mass shootings. The Dayton Police were in plain sight, but that only capped the death toll at nine.

         Having armed police on every corner works fine for limiting the impact of shooters, particularly in combination with cameras everywhere and taps on every phone conversation. That may be acceptable in Israel, but I doubt Americans would put up with it.

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8. Again, I’m an atheist. Throughout my younger life I always felt I did not need a god to tell me what is right and wrong. What I did not consider is that maybe others do. I admit it. I was wrong about the need for religion.

   We’ve been dismantling our society in the name of good, only we’ve been tossing out the baby with the bath water. If you want to see where we’re headed next, just look at France.

   “The West no longer knows what it is, because it does not know and does not want to know what shaped it, what constituted it, what it was and what it is. (…) This self-asphyxiation leads naturally to a decadence that opens the way to new barbaric civilizations.” — Cardinal Robert Sarah, in Le soir approche et déjà le jour baisse (“The Evening Comes, and already the Light Darkens”).

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9. It’s not mental health. All other developed countries have corresponding mental health problems.
   It’s not video games. All other devoped countries play the same or corresponding games.
   It’s not lack of religion. The US is BY FAR the most religious developed nation. The most secular nations are, in fact, dramatically less violent.

   The US MASSIVELY outstrips ALL other developed nations in gun murders… in many cases being TENS of times greater.

   The two factors that ARE different in the US are:
   1. Enormously easier access to guns.
   2. A poisonous macho attitude tieing guns into the male sense of self worth and power.

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10. Through out the early 1900’s in the U.S., Mental Asylums dotted the landscape.

    Some of these institutions had horrible conditions. Hollywood chimed in with some movies exasperating the issue.

    Over the coming decades these facilities were stigmatized in the public’s eyes and were closed instead of fixed for the vast majority and in some cases still dot the landscape as decaying relics.

    Since that time, the people who should be in these institutions are out among the populace. If some are lucky enough to get treatment, it’s done with questionable chemistry in some cases.

    There are now segments of the population, from multiple generations, that do not get the help that they need, nor are there enough proper institutions to help.

    We really do have a mental health issue in society, but it’s not a quick, cook your complete dinner from a box, fix.(read: it’s not going to be easy and convenient) It is going to take years to fix this.

    Part of the problem is the absolute hatred being espoused by the everyday person. The vitriol in social media that has spilled over into the public square. Everyone wants to blame everyone. And the Do Something crowd.

    As evidenced in other countries and our recent history, get rid of one weapon a mentally ill person will use another. Boston Bombers, Oklahoma City Bomber, Acid attacks in the UK, Knife murders on the rise. (UK is currently working to ban common kitchen knives. using PSA’s and Knife drop boxes)

    Investigation of the true Violent Crime numbers from other countries proves this out.

    The really scary part about this, is in a previous paragraph. The hatred of some, and power grabbing controlists, don’t want to fix it, they will attempt to use biased statistics to attempt to prove these statements wrong rather than help work toward a solution for the people that really need it.

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