Dark Knight Rises killings in Aurora

[Dazz]

Well there goes the country.

[Kosheh]

Also, we at the United States kind of suck when it comes to stress levels. We're on the edge on a consistent basis because we're always rushing to do things, always have deadlines, always need to be somewhere, doing something, anything... it's a legitimate mess and it's no wonder why people can just snap under all the pressure.

James Holmes here snapped because he was bombing out of his Ph.D. To put this in perspective, he bought one of his rifles after failing an important oral exam.

Now, that's not really all that big of a deal to some of you guys, but our college system in America kind of sucks. We pay a lot of money to attend these higher-end universities, and failing a class means anything ranging from a loss of scholarship to the postponement of graduation. Usually, if your GPA is awesome, you don't need to worry about a scholarship loss. However, postponing graduation is horrible; this means that you have to pay a ton of tuition money to make up the class, and I don't believe scholarships will cover make-up semesters so you're stuck paying for the retake at an additional cost out of your pocket. This was probably the case with James.

Guns and gun control aren't the problem here; the problem is because we're crammed into a really painfully stressful country, where we have the desire to succeed and to succeed at an inhumanly accelerated pace. This kind of pressure isn't easy to bear, and people unfortunately snap. And, when they snap, they snap with weapons. It's stupid to try and ban guns when we could very well try to make people happier and less stressed out here.

well little rosie, playing devils' advocate, unbearable stress is not really that "american" of a thing. there is far more pressure to getting into a good school and a good education in Japan, to the point where they have summer "cram schools" where they cover so much in so little time so you can pass the standardized testing necessary to get into your college of choice. most people there don't shoot up others to release the stress and tension -- it's much more likely that they'll kill themselves to escape a life of despair, dissapointment, and a minimum wage mcdonald's job now that they've shamed their family.

Spoiler

come to think of it, with that logic, remember learning about the east indian "caste" system, where they'd describe the "untouchables" as the worst possible social class with no possible hope/escape from their position in the caste? it makes me wonder if the untouchables had a extremely high suicide rate like "oh shit, i'm an untouchable, time to come back as a king"

what it boils down to mostly -- and I hate to admit this as an American -- that violence is just a part of our shitty American culture. if you've had that bully beating you up, most parents here in the states to react by also being violent towards the aggressor. we're just a country so used to beating the shit out of each other; whereas a place like England, Japan, or even Brazil has a different set of values that while we have those same "American" problems they're most likely not going to react in those "American" ways.

this is kinda just generalizing here and not actually living in england, but i presume most violence occurs as a precursor to robbery or something of the like, correct?

[Rosencrantz]

well little rosie, playing devils' advocate, unbearable stress is not really that "american" of a thing. there is far more pressure to getting into a good school and a good education in Japan, to the point where they have summer "cram schools" where they cover so much in so little time so you can pass the standardized testing necessary to get into your college of choice. most people there don't shoot up others to release the stress and tension -- it's much more likely that they'll kill themselves to escape a life of despair, dissapointment, and a minimum wage mcdonald's job now that they've shamed their family.

Spoiler

come to think of it, with that logic, remember learning about the east indian "caste" system, where they'd describe the "untouchables" as the worst possible social class with no possible hope/escape from their position in the caste? it makes me wonder if the untouchables had a extremely high suicide rate like "oh shit, i'm an untouchable, time to come back as a king"

what it boils down to mostly -- and I hate to admit this as an American -- that violence is just a part of our shitty American culture. if you've had that bully beating you up, most parents here in the states to react by also being violent towards the aggressor. we're just a country so used to beating the shit out of each other; whereas a place like England, Japan, or even Brazil has a different set of values that while we have those same "American" problems they're most likely not going to react in those "American" ways.

Okay, yeah, you're right. I wasn't really considering how we're okay with violence and how we act more violently towards others because of our culture.

At the same time, though, I wasn't saying that we're the worst when it comes to stress and stuff; I'm just saying we kind of suck when it comes to owning it. I know that Japan is especially stressful because they refuse every kind of failure, and I never really thought of the caste system like that -- but then again, I would think that suicide would be a pretty unforgivable act in the caste society, and that murdering oneself would probably knock you down even further in the reincarnation cycle.

So really, I should have probably focused more on how we're just a violent nation and that because of this, we'd be more prone to harm against others over harm to ourselves when it comes to a fracture point in our stress levels, right?

[Jamuk]

@Kosheh: I don't know how much violence we have in England compared to you, having never been to the US myself. I'd suspect we have less, but I could be wrong. We have a fair amount of knife crime and rapes, almost always in cities and by people lower on the economic scale.

America does seem to be quite a, for want of a better word, "violent" nation. Over the time it has been, it has had a civil war, a revolution, been involved in both World Wars, been one of the super nations in the Cold War and even started several (Korea, Vietnam, War on Terror etc.) And all that is without having some sort of ambitious dictator/ruler (e.g. Napoleon, Hitler, Queen Victoria)
We have had our fair share of war in the UK, but part of that comes from being an island; people want to take us over. We've had Germanic tribes BC, the Romans, Vikings, French, Germans during WWII etc.
All this has been over a much longer time than America's 400 or so years of existence.

[Goemar]

Japan has a lot, and I mean a lot, of alcoholism (which many don't even consider an issue) and suicides (from what I've heard).

England didn't use Crossbows for years because it was seen as "cheating."
America sees the Winchester as "The gun that won the war."

I think that pretty much sums up the difference in gun attitude, though I'm really just repeating what I said earlier I guess...

[DioShiba]

While this has no significance to the discussion regarding gun laws and this topic hasn't had a post in awhile, I figured I'd share this composition Hans Zimmer Made in response to the shootings I happened to find after lurking a bit.

I kind of find it relieving in a way that people who were involved in making the movie is showing a sense of compassion for everyone who lost their lives in the shootings.