RE: Michigan GOP Governor candidate used to play for WMU football program.
The link between Covid shutdowns and children's mental health is speculation. It has no doubt affected them, but can we prove that Covid lockdowns have caused more violent behavior in youth? Probably not. That research will take years, considering Covid isn't even over, and will likely be inconclusive because there are so many other factors at play (changes in social media, changes in home life, access to firearms, etc)
Suicides and ODs had also been going up for years before Covid. Violent crime has spiked over the last two years, true. What are some solutions?
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As for the rare school shooting, I don't think there is an easy answer for that, mostly all result from extremely poor parenting or psychotic people. Need to figure out how to keep guns from these people. More background checks and increasing legal age to 21 on certain guns may help but probably not much.
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Does anyone really think increasing the legal age to own certain guns to 21 would have made a difference with a Uvalde type school shooter? If he is crazy/sick at 18, he would be crazy/sick at 21, 22, 23.... And if he couldn't get certain guns at 18, he would have used what ever guns that would be available to him, i.e. a shotgun and or rifle. And if he couldn't get any type of a gun, he would just get a car/truck and mow over a group of kids standing at a bus stop.
Crazy is crazy, that's the really issue and needs to be the focus, along with school security. And what about the school and social services? Reading about this kids upbringing and troubles, he clearly was a ticking time bomb that should have been identified long before he turned 18. The system defiantly failed him.
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Well it has been proven that human brains don't fully mature until our early to mid 20s, so maybe raising the minimum age to buy firearms is a good idea. Can't drink until 21, can't even rent a car until you're 25 or something like that. Why should a kid that just turned 18 be able to walk in to a gun store, buy two semi-automatic rifles on credit, with no waiting period, no mental competency exam, no extensive background check...and just walk out and kill a bunch of kids. That's exactly what happened in Uvalde.
Why is the right wing response to this just a collective shrug? You say mental health, social services, teachers and school staff...but the GOP wants to cut funding to mental health services, social services, and education. There are really basic suggestions around making it more difficult to buy firearms, especially for young people, domestic abusers, the mentally unstable, but certain people just have a melt down and cry "oppression" and claim that we're trying to take their guns away. They cling to their guns like old ladies clutching their pearls. Right wing pundits have convinced them to be afraid all the time, to the point where they need an arsenal in their home. They're so scared and paranoid, afraid of their own shadows. If anyone needs mental health services, it's those people.
And I hear all this garbage about arming teachers, which is so dumb on so many levels. But the narrative keeps coming back to putting more responsibilities on teachers. Schools are already struggling to hire people, because it's a crap job. I have several music teacher friends, and hearing them talk about work is brutal. They work 60-70 hours a week and often have to do things at home as well. The pay is crap and they have to deal with angry parents, bureaucratic school systems, zero budget, etc... Now they have to worry about fighting off armed attackers or being human shields for their students? Teachers are leaving the profession left and right, and we want to put MORE responsibility on them? Like, life or death type stuff? They aren't cops. They are TEACHERS.
I just don't get this logic. "crazy is crazy"...okay, then what are we actually doing to stop crazy people from shooting up schools and churches and shopping malls and theaters? You want to put an armed guard in every room of every building in the country? Maybe we can tackle the common denominator instead.
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Thank you for a rational comment. To do nothing is insane. The simple acts of raising the age, background checks, security of weapons laws, etc. don't hurt
law abiding gun owners. If raising the age and checking licenses don't matter, why bother with liquor, automobile licenses and having ID's checked to purchase booze. Hell, why do we have to wear seatbelts. Or helmets when riding a motorcycle. The POLICE don't want all these weapons in everybody's hand and want something down.
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