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Comment by twayt | Hacker News Reader

How about having a mandatory committee that seriously investigates {physical, social, cyber, etc.}-bullying more instead of just ignoring it? We can both work on stringent gun laws and take the mental health of children/teenagers more seriously. There is a clear pattern of which demographic of people consistently commit such crimes. Using this subset of gun owners to dictate gun ownership policies is going to be a hotly contested political issue and it is going to take a while to make progress on that. I personally would hope for a future where gun ownership is very very strictly controlled. However, to claim that gun ownership is the root cause of such incidents occurring doesn't sit right with me. Sure it amplifies the amount of damage that can be done but I don't think that most of these individuals randomly woke up and decided to cause mayhem.

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How would that work? lol. There are thousands of weirdos and anti-social kids for every one school shooter. Plus if a disproportionate number of black kids are investigated it would be legally challenged.

You basically described the adult world. While our justice system isn’t perfect, it helps to curtail the chaos caused by the “thousands of weirdos and anti-social” adults.

I don’t claim to know the intricacies of this problem but it seems directionally correct to have such a thing rather than not.

The goal shouldn’t be to necessarily punish kids but to better identify issues and rehabilitate kids. The school systems are currently turning a blind eye and letting problems fester and compound. That is not the way to go.

From what I understand, there are legal implications for teachers who intervene and this prevents them from doing anything even if they wanted to. We can definitely do better.

> How about having a mandatory committee that seriously investigates {physical, social, cyber, etc.}-bullying more instead of just ignoring it?

Because that's actually hard, and requires a culture change. Much easier to simply add extra regulations (that criminals will ignore) for the average law abiding citizen and get reelected claiming you "did something".

Anything that violates the tight seal that the nuclear family has relative to society in the United States is universally hated. All the problems start in the family but you are not allowed to go there here, probably because of religion. It's just the way we are, unfortunately.

While most of the comments here centre on the 2nd amendment, this small thread is the only one that touches what matters.

Why are kids plotting mass shootings? It's not because they have access to weapons. It's because something is VERY broken in their family nucleus and values.

I understand your point that there's no way the government can police family education. But what I would suggest is to make parents and legal guardians directly and fully responsible for their kids crimes.

Your children killed? You are charged with accessory murder or manslaughter. Your daughter stole? YOU are charged as well.

It is YOUR choice what you decide to teach or not to your kids. But on the flipside, it also becomes your responsibility.

This would also work with the problems the UK had (I lived there several years ago) of delinquent kids. You had 10 year olds doing crime who just got ASBOs (collectable paper for them,) and the parents were nowhere to be seen. Charge the parents for their children crimes, as adults.

This is a joke, right?

I suspect in a lot of cases you'd find the shooter either was the bully, or was ostracised because of their failure to follow basic social norms. The Columbine shooters were neo-Nazis. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...

People have repeatedly called out online hate speech as a contributory factor in mass shootings, and that runs into first amendment problems.

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