The Right gloats 
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Iâm not sure what side of this you fall on, but surely youâre kidding right?! Of course liberals are more depressed: Conservatives behave in increasingly sociopathic ways to the great detriment of society. Depression is a sane response to insanity.
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Could you find another source besides Breitbart, please? Theyâre one of the less reliable sources in American media.
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Thatâs funny, because conservatives would say the same about liberals (I believe the technical term is âclown worldâ). So, if both sides are frustrated because they appear to be losing â whoâs actually winning right now? 
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Iâm assuming youâre of the conservative persuasion, because your comment is telling. You think in term of winning and losing. Progressives tend to prefer win/win. In other words, if one of us is losing, then we both are. Zero sum thinking already sets you up for antisocial attitudes. As for sociopathic behavior, progressives didnât try to overthrow the government. Progressives arenât intent on torturing the poor so that corporations can increase their bottom line. Progressive donât claim to be pro-life and âfor the childrenâ and then continue to create the only advanced western society in which children are regular shot to death while in their classrooms.
What youâve done there is called a false equivalency.
Why are we talking about me now? (Itâs a rhetorical question.)
Itâs called a good deal.
Should I see a shrink?
Actually⊠they did. Unhappy with government and taxes, they went completely nuts. Even killed some people in the process. Thatâs how the US of A came aborning.
You mean Apple is a conservative company now? 
Actually, thatâs exactly the society they created. If you had to guess, which state saw more school shootings between 1970 and 2020, California or Texas?
Furthermore, if you had to guess: More school shootings between 1840 and 1900 or between 1970 and 2020? I mean, they had plenty of guns in the Old West, more poverty, less social security (basically none), more worshipers, less civil rights, all this genocidal and civil war stuff going on, right�
32 vs. 200
No, itâs way worse than that. What Iâve done is called invoking a sermon.
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Weâre talking about you because you were the one invoking the false equivalency. I merely read between the lines. I noticed in a different thread you were requesting that no political posts be made in this forum, and yet you are the first to jump into the fray when a political post is made.
Youâre going to have to be less terse. I have no idea what this is trying to say.
Not for me to say. I can say for certainty that conservatives overwhelming prefer dominance over cooperation, as every conservative action and piece of legislation aptly demonstrates. This is a recipe for an increasingly violent and fractured society.
So your solution now is to revert to colonial solutions to the problems of modernity? Wonât work. A ârevolutionâ in this instance â if thatâs what youâre suggesting â would by definition be a civil war, and we know how well the last one worked out for you guys.
Well yes. To the extent that they are abusing the poor for their own gains, that is exactly what Iâm saying. You donât get to claim the progressive principles of fairness and equality in name only. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it must be a conservative.
This could take a while:
First, my point was that the United States, with the misreading of the Second Amendment and a legislature in the pocket of the NRA â and the resulting and staggeringly criminal lack of effective gun laws â as a country is in the grips of a conservative nightmare. Whether the school shootings happen in California or on the steps of the White House makes no difference. Itâs all the result of sociopathic, conservative thought processes.
Secondly, the comparison between now and the old west is either intentionally dull or just plain idiotic. Of course there are more mass shootings now. There are more schools and more people in them. Large swaths of the population have moved from rural to urban areas. Mass media has forever altered the understanding and mindset of the entire population. Such a comparison is beyond useless. Again you seem to be pretending that if we just turn back the clock to a bygone era that everything would be ok. Time doesnât work that way. For a useful statistic we can look here: School Shootings by Country 2023
Let me pull out the most salient part:
19 Countries with the Most School Shootings (total incidents Jan 2009-May 2018 - CNN):
With a straight face can you look at those statistics and not see that weâre doing something wrong? This can only be the result of American attitudes about guns. Period. If the second listing was 225 shootings and third listing was 167 or something, then we could reasonably talk about nuances. But we jump from 288 to 8. And that was in Mexico!
Yep. I think you did.
By the way, Iâm muting this thread. Iâve said everything I have to say. Last thing I want is a drawn out discussion with a conservative.
Nope. Thatâs just your accusation. I shared an observation: Both sides think the other one is crazy, evil, stupid and taking over the(ir) world. So if both lose, from their perspective, then whoâs winning? Thereâs not an inch wrong with that. And I have no answer, either.
You, on the other hand, are smart enough to come up with one. But you chose not to and instead diagnose me.
Actually⊠You jumped first, then kewms second. And given the time difference of those posts, itâs not exaggerated to say that I merely crept in.
It says that any halfway decent person prefers a win-win situation. I doubt that itâs a defining characteristic specifically of âprogressivesâ (only).
I donât understand how you came to this conclusion. Most likely (just guessing here) terms like âdominanceâ or âcooperationâ mean something very different to you.
Not true. Dictatorships (is that dominant enough?) can and do produce surprisingly peaceful und unified societies in exchange for total obedience. Doesnât mean we should try that (again), though.
I didnât offer any solution, I just falsified your statement.
Whoâs âyou guysâ in this picture? And as far as I can tell: It worked out in 50% of the cases. Iâve seen worse chances. Not saying itâs a good idea, but obviously it can work.
Or a duck. Just sayinâ. But I kind of agree with:
And you know whoâs powerful enough to âmotivateâ them to honor their large quantities of signaled virtues? You? I? Or rather⊠Tim Cook and the U.S. government? Who is running the company and the country?
Generations of distinguished lawyers read it and read it again and then once again and came to the surprising conclusion that it actually means what it says. But obviously didnât consult you first.
Wait, do you think in terms of winning and losing right now?
How many school shootings happen on the steps of the White House?
How does this work? Conservatives send guns to California to make liberals look stupid?
Both. Definitely both.
OkayâŠ
1960: ~179 million, urban 69.9% â 20 incidents
1970: ~203 million, urban 73.6% (+13.4%) â 41 incidents (+105%)
1980: ~227 million, urban 73.7% (+11.4%) â 62 incidents (+51%)
1990: ~249 million, urban 78.0% (+9.8%) â 97 incidents (+56%)
2000: ~281 million, urban 79.0% (+13.2%) â 77 incidents (-21%)
2010: ~309 million, urban 80.7% (+9.7%) â 236 incidents (+207%)
2020: ~332 million, urban 80.0% (+7.4%) â 377* incidents (+58%)
* estimated, until 2023: 113 incidents
I didnât count the number of schools, but the correlation between âmore peopleâ and âmore incidentsâ is probably a little bit⊠different than you think. Urbanization didnât change that much during this period.
So, why do you want to ban guns â and not mass media?
Nope. (I mean⊠it probably would, however thatâs not the point here.) But Iâm certain this problem will continue to grow. According to the numbers.
I didnât even know that there are still 3 schools left in Afghanistan.
In how many of those countries can you criticize the government without risking repercussions or stand a chance against organized crime? (Which is sometimes the same.)
Yup. Donât talk to those pesky conservatives. I should better run, too.
ADD: Some numbers, just in case anyone wonders what happens in a society with very limited access to firearms. They use (predominantly) knives, but also hammers, meat-cleavers, box-cutters, axes, explosives (!), chemicals, fire⊠with great âsuccessâ (for lack of a better word).
E.g. in Mainland China, years 2010â2019, school and kindergarten (!) attacks: 83 people killed, 418 injured (US, same period: 204 killed, 373 injured). Zero guns involved. And Iâm pretty sure those are just the cases that couldnât be covered up.
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May be you didnât see this part before the link to Breitbart.
The Right gloats
That is good. Except that they say it times of crisis it is the moderates who are liquidated first.
Iâm not commenting on Breitbartâs well-known far-right bias, Iâm commenting on their alarming tendency to make stuff up.
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How did they force Matthew Yglesias to make this stuff up, though?
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Chinaâs population is also triple that of the United States.
Which is not to argue that China is a healthy society, just that your comparison doesnât support the point you are attempting to make.
If conservatives or guns are the cause of this problem, or a major contributor to it, a by and large âgunless societyâ run by communists should have (close to) zero cases, no matter if three times or ten times bigger.
@mdmullins original comment referred to âadvanced western society,â which China is most definitely not. So youâre already putting up a straw man by mentioning China at all.
I canât speak for @mdmullins, but the argument I would make is that the ready availability of guns in the US makes all other social pathologies worse, or at least more lethal.
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So, you must have completely missed that the OP introduced the following countries as (quote) the âmost salient partâ: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China and Russia. Which are, as we all know, advanced western societies. Or so.
Was that a strawman? Yeah. Was it my strawman? Hell, no.
Imagine you remove all firearms from this equation and donât touch the problems that lead some people to abuse them. I guarantee you that the following year knives, cars and all sorts of kitchen and home improvement tools end up on the âwhat to ban nextâ list.
ADD: Also worth mentioning â Switzerland doesn't have mass shootings despite having a high rate of gun ownership (Yes, they handle some aspects better, but every nutjob still can get a knife and go berserk â but somehow doesnât. Maybe because itâs less fun against armed people.)
On the other hand, Switzerland has a universal military obligation, which means that the vast majority of gun owners have far more training than is required in the US, and concealed carry permits are quite rare. Moreover, while Swiss gun ownership, at about 28% of households, is the highest in Europe, that is still lower than all but nine US states. (Probably not coincidentally, the seven US states with the lowest per capita gun deaths are also the states with the lowest gun ownership rates.)
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In this case they were just commenting on the original article and giving their spin on it. The main reason I mentioned it was to show they were gloating over it not the veracity of their reporting.
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