After I’d read that the Trump shooter had looked at photos of Trump and Biden and their upcoming speech locations and the fact that the shooter was a lone wolf and bullied at school, I read part of the Wikipedia page about the Uvalde shooting . The Uvalde shooter also was a lone wolf and also used an AR-15. My thoughts right now are like this :
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The lone wolfs probably have suffered badly from an inferior complex due to bullying and alienation
and wanted to do something which made them feel historically “significant” instead of feeling completely “useless”. -
The US appears to have a pretty dominant machismo culture (Think about GOP with their MAGA, it is humiliating for women and minority groups) and so-called snowflakes are looked down upon. This is very bad for everyone involved.
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Cops are afraid of citizens having an AR-15 on them.
What can be done ?
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Should vote with our wallets ? Like stop using exTwitter now that Elon Musk has publicly shown support for Trump ? (On Mastodon I’ve seen many comments about people that did cancel their subscription to the New York Times and that seemed to have some effect. Finally the NYT is posting more critical articles about Trump and Project 2025.)
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Should people talk more often to each other and avoid alienation ? In books of Gabor Maté he talks about the fact that most people in society look down on hard drug addicts but these junkies are still human beings. And the same goes for homeless people and refugees of course. They are still human beings. No need to automatically view them as inferior beings, right ?
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Should we limit our screen time on mobile phones ? Are we silently producing a sort of zombies that cannot think for themselves anymore ? Should tech companies be obliged to make phone apps less addictive ?
Should mobile phone usage during class in school be forbidden ? -
Should we promote exchange projects as part of cultural improvement ? Like say 50 people from Congo Republic in Africa swap places with 50 people from California for 1 year, and then after swapping back talk about the experiences.
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Should we in our education system or during leisure time educate people more on what happened in World War II and what we can still learn from that ? For example the book by Umberto Eco about how to recognize a fascist ( Ur-Fascism ) could be used.
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Should bullying at school be pro-actively approached and make victims and bullies talk to each other under professional supervision ?
We could implement age limits for semi-auto rifles, like age 25+
Bolt-action and other non-repeating rifles / shotguns could stay at age 18
Handguns are already at age 21, maybe we should make that just revolvers or single-shot handguns age and move semi-auto to 25+
This is based on the common factor of young men using semi-auto handguns and rifles to do a lot of murders, before their critical thinking skills are fully mature and stuff
It’s a start but I would actually want to push back on the policy of being able to wake up one morning and buy thousands of dollars in guns and ammo when you had zero the day before. If you want a semi-auto anything you should have to establish a history of gun use or get a certificate of need (e.g. you live in a particularly violent area). Otherwise a manual-action revolver, shotgun, or rifle and very limited ammo is all you can get.