Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Uvalde Residents Soul-Searching for Answers After the Massacre" video.

  1. The thing about "if someone wants to do damage they'll find a way to do it" is that it's a strawman argument. You are using this because of your confirmation bias, because subconsciously you are putting your right to own and carry weapons and the pleasure you have on it above that of the potential beneficial effects this can have for your community, and society of your country at large. You can chose another hobby or take another sport for the sake of your kids and community, right? I'd hope so. See, no one is saying that legislation to regulate weapons will stop terrorism and that tragedies will stop happening. It's not about that. The call for it comes when tragedy happens, but the idea behind regulations is not as simple as "if we had them, this wouldn't have happened". The black market will continue existing, terrorism and terrorist attempts will continue happening, and people will always get creative to do whatever evil stuff they have in mind.... as people are very creative doing good things too. It's about this general mentality though. But it's exactly about making it harder, and doing something other than just crying and sending thoughts and prayers. Because in a country that mass shootings are quickly becoming a weekly if not daily event, it's clear that some action, any action, is better than just sitting around and seeing the massacres happen, the only reaction afterwards being to send thoughts and prayers. No situation changes with only that. Assault weapons were designed to and have just one utility in hand - to kill living things fast and efficiently. You can use cars, knives, and other stuff to kill people too, sure, but it's just not as efficient, convenient, and inconspicuous as weapons are. More importantly, it's not made for purpose - weapons are. This might not sound like much, but it actually has widespread consequences. The general problem with US mass shootings and domestic terrorism is multi-faceted. What the US really needs it a broad, reaching and complete cultural revolution to really start solving all of this. It's not only regulation on weapons, mental health system reform, and rethinking of the entire police response system and training... it's even deeper and more tied to culture. The message that is going in TV news, what is taught in schools, what you see in movies and entertainment, what is glamourized or exploited and sensationalized in media, what people see as tools for resolving conflict as they grow up, what society considers adequate in conflict situations, all the way up to wealth distribution, discrimination laws, what the state does to guarantee the citizenry basic needs and rights. There are reasons why people with deeply troubled lives reaches the conclusion that picking up weapons and shooting strangers in cold blood is some sort of way out... and it has to be fed through the culture they are in, or else a mass shooting epidemic would be present in every single country. But it isn't. Some countries that are even more liberal about gun ownership don't have it, as well as countries that completely forbids firearms ownership and purchasing with very few exceptions. Problem is, a complete cultural reform such that is needed to revert what is happening in the US is even less likely than remediation measures such as imposing more scrutiny on who owns a gun. Put very simply, if the US can't even pass gun regulation laws to reduce the likelihood of those things happening, it cannot ever change itself as much as it needs to even start solving the problem. No one should expect for better gun regulation to solve the problem completely, but the situation the US is currently in is that if you don't take any measures, any at all, to reduce the probability of these shootings happening - they'll just continue happening. In fact, they'll likely keep going up as other factors become worse. Racism, tribalism, political divide, prejudice in all forms, religious radicalism, all forms of extremism... if the outlet you have for people who are deeply troubled by all sorts of problems is mass killings, then when these things gets worse, what you get is more mass killings. You have to try something no matter if it's not all that much effective, because your culture needs to signify in some better way that things cannot continue as they are. Because thoughts and prayers, telling people to stay strong, sending messages that your community won't stop being itself because of yet another horrible massacre, just isn't working. Gun reform is a start, and only a start. People have to get behind actions, not only being sad and empathizing in some insignificant useless level. Imagine if all that people did with the pandemic was send thoughts and prayers for the family of victims. The world is seeing a drastic reduction in deaths and cases because something was done about it... preventive measures and fast track vaccination system that came at extremely high costs and joint efforts of the doctors, scientists and researchers. This is what mass shootings in the US should be looked at as. This is why some people call it an epidemic. Because it needs to be seen as something that needs action, real action and real changes to if not be solved, at least be better prevented.
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