The Great Gun Debate.

Well, outside of philosophy, the value of any commodity is based entirely on what someone is willing to trade for it. Human life is just a commodity like any other. I used money only because currency makes for a single universal measure of value, historically we've used many ways to present how much a human is worth an ultimately it always boils down to what use can be derived from them and how difficult deriving that use is. We can use market economics to model the value of life, the supply of available life vs the demand for it, and while it is accurate it's also extremely uncomfortable. We like to maintain the illusion that we are unique, individual and have an unquantifiable value, this makes us feel secure with ourselves even though reality is constantly proving it wrong.

Anyhow I just like to stomp down hard on self righteous people who like to shove religion down others throats as though belief in fantasy makes them morally superior.

Ok. I'm going to elaborate a bit while pretending this is a thread about mass shootings and the level of gun violence even though no one has really brought it up because I've been sitting on this for a while.

I'm going to say this straight up: I don't really believe the availability of guns is the reason for these things-- or mental health, or whatever other reason people tend to come up with.

Think for a minute or two about why you would ever kill someone. Are they threatening you in some way that forces you to defend yourself? Most people would kill a crazed intruder without a second thought-- but no consider this: What if the crazed intruder is someone you deeply care for? Would you still kill them?

What I mean is, people actually don't care about each other nearly as much as they once did. It is no longer a "terrible" or "awful" thing to hear in the news when scores of people die horribly-- so long as it's no one we know.

I'm not saying we should pretend we care, either. Far from it. I'm just saying how it is. Years ago, we used to have neighbors. Kids played outside and people knew each other. I can't quite explain how, but things are different now.

When I say "value," I mean the very image we have for our fellow man. It feels as thought something changed around the 1970's or 80's. It wasn't a sudden change. At some point everything started getting cheaper in general. The homes we lived in, the things we owned, the jobs we had. Everything feels so cheap and plastic now, and the lives most people live reflect that tremendously.

I mean, there are a lot more people running around today than there have ever been. It's like we're all a bunch of mass-produced cardboard cutouts-- just a bunch of cheap *** trying to make some money for a moment of mild amusement or some low grade barely edible food.

So of course we're all killing each other. The people we kill don't matter. We don't matter. What difference do consequences make when you'd otherwise be working some shitty job and living in some shitty apartment your whole life anyway? That guy you just shot for playing his music too loudly is probably better off now anyway.

It might sound crazy to those of you who live well-off, but I believe that is the thought process that goes on behind a lot of the violence which wouldn't exist otherwise.

The perceived value of life has gone down because our overall quality of life has gone down.

Woah woah woah, don't you tell me what the value of my life is. I don't even want it!

I'd like to agree, its a lack of respect of one's own worth and the projected lack of worth of others. that said that is the very definition of mental health issues.

when people think insane or mental they often consider the extreme cases, very few people have lived flowery bubbly trouble free lives of fictional family.

Each of us have some form of trauma in our lives. what differs is not how bad our trauma is compared to others but how well we handle it.

What has happened to you is the worst thing that has happened in your life, nothing else can change that, even if others have it worse off, we often tell each other to suck it up "back in my day we had it worse because xyz" ect. and minimize each others problems and discourage each other from seeking help because you might be one of those mentally challenged people.

sorry im a bit tired ill try rewriting this in the morning if don't make any sense >.<

Amen.

Your country has needed gun control for years and when Obama acts it's only to restrict you to 3 guns, to me that seems really soft, who needs more than 3 guns? But people seem to be having a massive tantrum over it.

That's not psychotic or anything.

Oh and the beauty of the comments section...

God damn you guys have some nut jobs.

EDIT: Just looked it up and the story is a fake: http://www.snopes.com/obama-three-guns-eo/

But still, holy ***at those comments.

I get it!

Nobody tiptoes around that, nor is it exactly fact.

this post was thoughtful, interesting, and well delivered. I wish it was typical of our P&R section here.

I agree to a point, and I think what you're describing accounts for some violence issues. But please remember that a lot of what goes on now is also because finding out what happened half a world away from you is easy as two clicks in a web browser. No television or radio news filtering what you see. Certainly not having to wait for a newspaper.

Click. Click. Find out about random rape and murder in Seattle when you live in Miami.

I agree that what you describe is a problem with or without the violence factored in, but like so many other things I don't feel boiling it down to one or two things is doing the issue justice. It's not just a loss of values. It's not just easy access to firearms. It's not just a societal attitude about mental healthcare that is incompetent and borderline negligent.

There are many, many factors.

And while "sensationalized" types of shootings are up, overall gun violence -- and violence in general -- is down, if I remember my statistics correctly. At least in the U.S.

So while I still agree with aspects of what you're saying -- not even as necessarily relates to violence, but life and the quality of -- I would also say don't fall victim to media sensationalism one way or the other.

Please note, I'm not against, nor advocating for, any particular political talking point here. I'm just saying that remember nostalgia for times gone by is just that, and the past had plenty of its own serious drawbacks too, and remember that back then you didn't have the access to know about how many horrible things were happening elsewhere.

You were blissfully ignorant of other people's problems.

Sadly, it's much harder to stay insular in today's world and pretend the only problems out there are the ones in your proximity.

I don't even have time for you today Spicy, have fun.

While you have excellent points on the perceived value of human life, you need to understand that it also depends on the assessor (aka the individual) who values life.

Remember, we live in a time where the value of life depends on the age of the being itself.

What's worse is, somehow, we have the government involved in assessing value of a human's life too....

No, actually doing work and stuff. Had my gun cleaned yesterday though (no pun here), while I was building my friend's new computer.

They did!

I disagree. Most people won't ever resort to a mass shooting or killing anyone in general so I think it's suspect to transpose on society that we've somehow become more bloodthirsty or don't care. This teeters on the shaky logic that everything was better in the past.

In general, it's very difficult for people to 'care' about people they don't know. In the past this was far worse because information was sparse and what little you did know was fashioned by ignorance and fear. Remember how good old Americans described Africans? Or the Irish? Or the Japanese? Puerto Ricans?

Disconnects between neighbors is more pronounced in an urban environment yet most of these shootouts occur in suburban areas. Availability of guns is something that cannot be discounted here.

If we must lay blame on something, I'd argue information is as much to blame as mental health, availability of guns et al.

Consider:

1. We now have a 24/7 news cycle and every square inch of the US is connected by the internet. If a pin drops in Bumblefuck, USA you can probably hear about it.

This makes shootings, deaths and more strange occurrences in Florida something previous generations would have lived in blissful ignorance of.

2. We glorify mass shooters. Some news outlets go as far as to give them cutesy names and dress up their lives as dramas. If you manage to go on a mass killspree, you're far more likely to be remembered than the victims and you get to be famous!

3. Brinksmanship and the partisan life in America is at a point where escalation of violence is openly encouraged by many vocal voices thanks to the likes of YouTube and that 24/7 media. Everyone wants to peddle their ideological purity and it comes at the expense of amplifying the crazies to act. Violently.

Which god?

But no, it was used to be put away.

Basically what I was trying to say.

It's not that everything is worse now. It's that the terrible things are more greatly amplified.

Governments have always done this. Each and every one. Ever. They have to, or they're not much of a government.

I'm pretty sure there isn't a nation out there who hasn't sent troops to combat, or at least had to decide to not. In doing so they've gauged some cause worth sending their citizens to die or not.

I could link at least two videos on YouTube where the presenter is essentially encouraging viewers to arm up and crush the 'enemy'. If your life is already *** up, you might actually buy this garbage and do something. It's the same logic that gets young men to sign up for a Syrian adventure.

What keeps most people from doing their best militant impression is that they have a life. With things to do. In some ways that pesky family, job, hobbies and bills keeps people from devolving back into Kalishnakov-wielding maniacs.

Yeah. It's always fun remembering that people you may not have thought you ever actually even wronged want strongly to kill you for some ideological reason, and are only kept in check by not wanting to offload their kids on their shitty brother-in-law.

Are you asking for a quantification? Do you realize how silly that sounds?

One usually doesn't find common ground when others are pushing to violate their rights.

Andorra

It is celebrated in a Pete Seeger song as well.

That's in 1960ish dollars. Today they might spend all of $25.

I wasn't talking about military actions. That was obvious.

I'm talking about civil actions. The value of a human life weighed in how much effort and money a government is willing to spend on them.

Mainly, Medicare. That is what I was referring to.