Try not to cheat, and watch the video first, then click on the fold:
Ok so first up Sandy Hook Promise is a group I have a knee jerk reaction to. In reality they’re a school safety group that was formed in reaction to the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. They aren’t an anti-gun group, but they are frequently fostered by anti-gun groups.
But my big beef is while they do step outside the mold of the true gun-ban groups and talk about mental health.
But in the end their actions, like the one above ring hollow.
The first big elephant in the room is you are likely never to be involved in a school spree-shooting. I have some concerns about terrorist attacks becoming more common, but not events like Columbine, Virginia Tech, or Sandy Hook. They happen, and they happen rarely, and when you factor in how many schools exist here, getting too concerned about school shootings, and certainly getting your kids scared about them is pretty shameful.
Also given that there has NEVER been a school shooting on a campus that allows Concealed carry (The University of Texas shooting in 1966 comes close, but concealed carry was illegal in Texas then, but students were allowed to have guns on campus…and they did!), the various campus carry movements might end up making it even more rare.
But now we need to talk about this fucking video.
We have several high-profile school shootings to look at. NONE of them showed ANY warning signs that they were planning violence. Ironically, the killer at Sandy Hook wasn’t even a student there.
You have to go outside school shootings to get things CLOSE.
The Killer at the Charleston Black Church was a white supremacist, and he was trying to get a bunch of his fellow racist assholes to join him in a massive genocide. Nobody wanted to play ball, and it turns out he was likely the ONLY white supremacist on the internet who isn’t completely full of shit.
The Killer at the Aurora Movie Theater told his psychiatrist of his violent desires….and she told the police….and nothing happened. That is something that needs to change.
Other than that, I’m drawing a blank.
The dicks at Columbine did everything in secret. The only other people who MIGHT have known were the people who illegally transferred firearms to the killers. All but one of those people spent time in prison for their crimes. The other one worked with the anti-gunners to enact gun laws that would have changed NOTHING, and got a pardon.
All the other shooters I can think of were total loners, and with the exception of people saying “Yeah, he was really weird” (No shit, he was CRAZY!) there were never any “Warning Signs” that could be observed.
Now let’s talk about the bullshit in this video.
#1 Reading Gun Magazines. Guess who read gun books (they stocked books on weapons in my school library, no magazines) in middle school and high school? ME! Oh and guess what, I was ANTI-GUN back then, and didn’t even shoot my friend’s BB gun when he brought it over to my HOUSE!
#2: Watching Gun Related Youtube Videos: I’ve done a bunch of cool stuff as a New Media guy, and a gun guy. 90% of the shit I do NOBODY cares about. The average person doesn’t know what Heller V DC is, let alone who Alan Gura is, so when I say I’ve hung out with him, they don’t care. People don’t care about industry reps I’ve met, or even about my gun collection.
What they DO think is cool is 1) I’ve shot machine guns, and that’s cool, and 2) I’ve met an interviewed Hickok45
Gun youtube videos are things people do. Not just gun people, but PEOPLE! And when little anti-gun me was reading about the parts of an AK-47 in a technical book in my library, I was probably more interested in watching a video like this, just they didn’t exist in the 90s!
#3 Being an anti-social Asshole: This is called being an adolescent.
#4: Posing with guns for profile pictures. I can’t even tell in the video if that’s a real gun or a fake one. Dipshits might get all tough and pose with their airsoft guns, maybe even modify them to look more real to get some attention. People who live in the ever-growing number of houses that own guns, might learn to shoot and feel some pride in that.
BTW in looking at a freeze-frame, the social media picture with the gun has 50 some likes….I thought nobody liked this dickhead in the narrative?
#5: What doesn’t get talked about, the “Big Reveal” dude walks into school with a rifle with full Hollywood bravado. No fear, no sneaking, no stealth…..because schools are like video games with invincibility codes.
Again, there has NEVER been an incident in a school where carry was allowed by either students or staff.
Just stuff to think on.
Know the signs…
Except for that last scene where Mr Antisocial was standing with a rifle, that was me and my friends in High School.
The whole school hated on we gamers (table-top-rpg’s) and we hated them right back. The only group that got treated worse were the “non-conformists” and the kids who’re openly gay.
But all the gun magazines and books were simply research for Top Secret and Twilight 2000.
Speaking about warning signs, if someone ever intercepted one of the emails with my old gaming buddies not knowing that we were speaking “in game”, we’d have some serious splainin’ to do.
…”a school safety group that was formed in reaction to the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. They aren’t an anti-gun group…”
Oh, yes, they are. A dipstick New York immigrant introduced a universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence bill in New Hampshire a few years ago. Among those who showed up to speak in favor it were two people who identified themselves as “Sandy Hook Promise” members. They argued for universal background checks because that would have magically prevented the Newtown school shooting. I contacted the group and confirmed that those people were representing SHP.
Considering that their own site says they want to “Enact sensible gun violence prevention laws, policy and regulations at a state and federal level, in the areas of mental health & wellness and gun safety that result in the reduction of gun-related death and injury.” I’m going to call them a victim disarmament group.
Well I think you missed a couple of huge problems with the video.
#1. In today’so school, it would be nearly impossible to read a gun related magazine without being reported, either by a student or teacher. Especially in the library.
#2. The Internet access in schools are filtered and watched more than corporate systems. It would be nearly impossible for watch videos like that on a library system.
Again and again we see the anti-gun side having to lie.
I watched to the end, and the initial take-away I had was that we are now expected to watch, in detail, what every other human around us is doing, how they’re being treated, by whom, and step in to stop it. Also, we’re expected to be up in everyone’s business, monitor what they are reading, shoulder-surf their computer sessions, report every questionable social media posting, etc. The jury is out on whether we’re supposed to watch their bedroom windows with night-vision binoculars for signs of erratic behavior.
Basically, report on our neighbors and be the next generation of Judenrats. Because SAFETY, or something.
Upon reflection, I also noticed the main character “Evan”, the spree shooter, and the bullies picking on him were all — you guessed it — white males. Because being a white male makes them automatically suspect, or something.
The video was a cute story up to a point, and then it went total anti-freedom-SJW crap.
The families that make up this group were flown all around the US in 2013 to promote anti-gun bills including IL, NJ, and Delaware. Lots of people asked what they were doing in those states and who was paying for them. We never got answers.
As to the ‘lists’, it’s near identical to what BADD put out in the 80’s about role playing games. http://www.rpgstudies.net/stackpole/pulling_report.html