Well, despite the invalid comparison between a weapon and drugs, pharma companies SHOULD be held accountable for over-producing more pills than could ever be prescribed.

It's actually a very valid comparison

No, it's not.

Then go somewhere else, ya foddy

When it comes to lots of people dying and nobody in the government doing about it because the companies that own them are making money, it's quite a valid comparison.

Then why does OP limit this to school shootings when he or she includes ALL overdoses? It's a misleading comparison, and one done purposely.

If it were up to me I would have just said gun deaths in general. Including gun involved suicides. I think both drugs and guns are an issue in this country that the politicians won't touch as long as big companies are funding their campaigns.

I would include all gun deaths, but intentional and unintentional, since we can also assume there are unintentional and intentional overdoses.

But, as I mentioned, despite what is a misleading comparison, both gun makers and drug makers should have certain liabilities for the products they produce.

Yeah I agree with that. I guess I just think both these things are a huge problem and we can't do anything about it because the politicians need that corporate money to get elected. It's a damn shame and needs to change. Or for a lot of people to grow some integrity.

The only problem about adding suicides is that most of the time all suicides get lumped together.

also most suicide data suggests people will just find a way to kill themselves in another way.

Yeah and I really hope thats the reason they group them. Cause otherwise its just to make it seem even worse for guns.

do you not believe people should be sovereign over their own lives enough to take it? it's their body

It depends for me. If they are only impacting their own lives then its their lives and they can do with it as they want. But it becomes more of a problem/issue when they are impacting the lives of other people.

Is it fair for someone to take their live and then cause other people to have intense suffering for months and years later?

Hell thats the reason I didn't end it back when I was younger.

should we consider others feelings for all our actions? personal suffering is way more important than people grieving.

if people have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and they fill suicide would fill all those areas- I fully support them.

asking someone to suffer, whether emotionally, physically or any other way because it might upset others is immoral.

it's not the suffers fault that others have unhealthy grieving habits. it would be no different, than an accidental death.

I said it was my thoughts.

And your trading 1 sufferer into 2 or 10. So now we have let’s say 5 suffers after the first killed them self. So out of those 5 we can say 2 will kill them selves. Then there might be 13 people that are suffering and out of those 13 people maybe 5 kill them selves.

If suicide was legal and was not looked down on then you could have a run away issue where 1 could become 100’s.

I am saying that suicide could be the answer for some people.

You can also look at another thing that is really a solo thing. Why do we have seatbelt laws when the only person your hurting is yourself?

except for all the municipalities in the world and all the suicides say that doesn't happen.

seat belt laws are also immoral. there is no victim and it doesn't mean the criteria for a crime. it's just more policing for policings sake

Sure but those are less effective. Women attempt suicide at a higher rate than men but more men die of suicide. Why do you think that happens? Probably because men use guns at a much higher rate which are much easier to kill yourself with and take much less effort to prepare.

but men just hang themselves when guns are banned as indicated by Australian long gun restrictions and massive increase in hangings.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drug-overdose-deaths-heroin-opioid-prescription-painkillers-more-than-guns/

Exactly

How is it valid? One is given to you by a dr after they were more than likely paid by the company that produces the product and kills you slowly. The other is purchased by an individual and used by them. One has really only one intended purpose and abuse of that is what leads to death. The other can be used for a multitude of things one of which is causing death.

So how are they similar ?

Is obviously over your head, and I don't have time to explain to a child

Got it. You don’t have an actual answer so you just act superior. Really making a good argument there.

For what it’s worth I also don’t see how it’s an either or thing. Why can’t we work on solving both problems?

Totally agree we need to work on both problems. Since we can find common ground we can discuss this

And let me back up. I think you are overthinking the comparison. OP was just making a point that more people die from drug overdoses than from gunshot wounds. We could perhaps have a bigger impact on overall death toll if we focus on a larger problem. This is make any more sense?

Ah. Yes that is a fair a point. And I would rather tackle the larger issue first, I just don’t think it means we should ignore the other.

I'm dumb too. I see how they are similar problems. Misuse and irresponsibility causing death. Please explain how they are not at all the same.

But what if, and this is radical, but what if we did something to make guns less accessible? Why not affect something in the chain?

but that's not how shootings happen. most mass shootings happen due to radicals, and most shootings occur over, you guessed it, drugs.

It would be if it was comparing the number of people who died in school shootings to the number of people who died from school drug overdoses.

"How dare people try to solve issue A when there's issue B"

I know what you mean but by the same token you are trying to circumvent the dialogue OP is requesting.

OP is piggybacking an issue to try and make himself look morally superior by pointing out that there are other issues that need to be addressed.

It's just pointless virtue signalling.

But then I could point out at any other issue and ask you why don't your care about that

Opioid crisis? Well there are lots of suicides!

Suicides? What about kids being raped!

Etcetera

Solves nothing but helps me smell my farts

SP for the win

Let's find the biggest cause of pain in the US and order it by which we are most likely to be able to fix based on current public will, political will, etc, and focus on that. The less pain in this world, the better. It doesn't matter where that pain comes from.

you're talking too much sense in this thread.

The government is bought. Succumbing to political will is playing their game, increasing their donor contributions, keeping people in Congress for life. Vote em out 2018

Or you know we can work on more than one thing at a time? Ya dipshit

What about stupid responses as well...seems to be an epidemic.

He’s questioning the order of importance for these problems. School shootings are terrible. They are also terribly hyped by the media vying for attention. If death is the drug then focusing on school shootings is like taking down a street dealer while focusing on the opiate epidemic is like taking down a large scale supplier.

Hence my original comment of people saying "why do you care about issue A instead of issue B" until everyone are just fighting on which issues is more important instead of solving any of the issues.

Like questioning a vegan about him caring about animal abuse when there are kids starving.

and here you are calling the kettle black

I don't see how my point would have changed if OP instead said "why people care about opioid crisis when there are kids dying because of gun violence"

As soon as people start killing others with drugs against their will then your argument will hold up. Somebody choosing to put drugs into their body despite the risks is not equal to somebody gunning down innocent bystanders.

Suicides are used to inflate “gun violence” statistics. Take those out and look at the numbers.

I still don't see how guns are in the same conversation as drugs. Drugs are used by people on themselves. Guns are used to do harm to others. If all the gunowners in the world only shot themselves I don't think people would be nearly as critical of gun ownership.

Drugs are used by people on themselves.

Funny you say that, because a large percentage of (non suicide) gun deaths in America have to do with gangs fighting over control of illegal drug distribution/territories.

I still don't see how guns are in the same conversation as drugs

This is either naive or intentionally missing the point. We're not talking about coroner's reports, we're talking about causation.

Do you really not think that control over drug distribution doesn't have anything to do with murder rates?

Places with more gun control have less gun violence regardless of the drug situation. The United States has a gun problem. You have to be blind to not see that.

Places with more gun control have less gun violence regardless of the drug situation.

Like Mexico! Or Braxil!

Or maybe you're completely full of shit!

Hahahaha!

"We're not as bad as Brazil!"

Nice pivot.

I'll translate for you: "Yes, I made that claim up."

No he's cherry picking his argument. I'm not going to get drawn into a pissing match of comparing crime statistics of other countries. Why? Because I don't really care that much. I don't live in your damaged country and I can walk down the street without worrying about being shot. Obviously there are a lot of people in the U.S. that are going to be against any form of gun control no matter how many school shootings or mass killings occur. I don't expect that to end with any comment I'm going to make on here. It just saddens me that people love their guns more than other people's kids.

No you're cherry picking your argument.

You made an assertion with literally no support. Me calling you out for making something up is not "cherry picking."

I'm not going to get drawn into a pissing match of comparing crime statistics of other countries. Why? Because I don't really care that much

That would be a lot more effective of a claim if you weren't actively trying to make a point on the issue.

"I don't care but here's a paragraph about why I'm correct!"

*sigh

Here you go.

"Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the United States' gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. And, even though the United States' suicide rate is similar to other countries, the nation's gun-related suicide rate is eight times higher than other high-income countries, researchers said."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-other-countries/

Compared to 22 other high-income nations

So you're saying that you've changed your standard from gun laws to "high-income nations."

Isn't it just easier to admit you're full of shit?

No I'm comparing countries in which a fair comparison can be made. Mexico and Brazil are not even first world countries for Pete's sake. Why don't you address the evidence I presented to you. Why are there SO much more gun violence in the U.S. than any developed country? Could it have something to do with the fact that there are more guns per capita than any other nation?

Drug Overdoses are also overwhelimingly self inflicted, so I think it's 100% fair as a comparison in this case. Plenty of analysis has shown that access to a gun makes people much more likely to go through with killing themsleves too, so it's not like that number would just transition somewhere else if there were no guns.

I'd like to point out that while it's certainly the most hyped up version of gun violence, comparing school shootings to every type of drug overdose seems dishonest. There are about 11,000 deaths to gun violence every year in the US (13,000 total, when accidents are included). Still not as many as there are drug overdoeses, but the number people should be concerned about is way higher than 7.

Thank you re: discrimination of drug type. My anger comes at this. Only people who do not use guns think guns are the problem. If you are shoot skeet or hunt or have home protection & you are trained then the last thing you think of when someone shoots up a school is "gun control." If you are trained then your thought is if ONLY there had been a HEALTHY WELL TRAINED PERSON THERE WITH A FIREARM TO STOP THE INSANE PERSON. So too with the "opiate" crisis. Only people who live a healthy, happy life without pain or being crippled thinks DOCTORS, PAIN PILLS when they hear "overdose or opiate." If you yourself or someone you knows lives with chronic pain and takes their legitimate medications as prescribed thinks, "my God why would someone shoot an unknown substance into their body for fun?" I watched my old mother be forced off of 2 pills a day. a 7.5mg morning and a 7.5mg night dose of hydrocodone. She went from a high functioning, happy, babysitting granny to a bitter, depressed recluse. She has never watched television and she is now living her life by watching the lives of others on tv. She gets angry when I try to reason with her about going to a football game, "NO! LEAVE ME ALONE! I AM NOT GOING TO GO BECAUSE I WILL BE UP ALL NIGHT WITH MY BACK SCREAMING..." So I shush my kids not to talk about the game until we are out the door. Now if one of you smarty pants with the doctors writing out prescriptions for 1000 pills a month can explain how my mother's 2 pills a day is HELPING A HEROIN ADDICT...i'll shut up and listen. The truth is that my mom's medication nor her doctor were harming anyone!!! LEAST OF ALL HER! She now lives with chronic pain and wishes to die. She tells me how all of her friends are dead so what is the point. 2 YEARS AGO SHE WOULD TELL ME ABOUT THE CAKE SHE WAS BAKING FOR HER BUNKO NIGHT!!!!! Dammit shame on all of you people! YOU HAVE CREATED AN UNTENABLE CONDITION FOR THOUSANDS OF PAIN PATIENTS AND FOR WHAT GOOD?!?!!? So you could proclaim loudly about those evil damn doctors and horrible monsters making pills? You are all idiots. YOU ARE ALL GLUED TO YOUR FUCKING TELEVISIONS EVERY NIGHT LISTENING TO THOSE TOOLS WHO MANIPULATE YOU INTO WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO BE BUYING NEXT MONTH OR NEXT YEAR AND ITS ALL A GAME TO ENRICH PEOPLE HELLA SMARTER THAN YOU!!!!! Just shut up. If you want to talk about the devastation of the true drug infestation then you should talk about the heroin of Appalachia or the crack/meth in the southern states or the cocain and ecstacy on the west coast BUT SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT PHYSICIANS AND THEIR EVIL LACKEY DRUG COMPANIES!!!! YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE FUCKING TALKING ABOUT!!!! Here is a little factoid for you... us veterans wth missing limbs suffer from excruciating phantom limb pain. With proper pain relief AND A DAY PROGRAM OF SPORTS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION they experience less pain AND THEY REBUILD PRODUCTIVE LIVES! For veterans receiving medication only they rebuild at high rates but in a much slower fashion. Veterans WITHOUT ACCESS TO PROPER PAIN RELIEF.....they have a dramatically higher use of ILLICIT DRUGS and rampant alcoholism and RARELY REBUILD and effective life. Do you guys ever think of those people as you scream your self important bullshit about "THOSE CRAZY DOCTORS AND CRAZY PILL MANUFACTERERS AND THEIR CRAZY PILL POPPING PATIENTS..." just shut the fuck up unless you have read the research, the government publications, and gone to a VA to see some of the great work that is now being done to help these guys. Programs like wounded warriors get them out into canoes and boats...4wheelers...setting up camp while sitting in their wheelchairs....AND YES! MANY OF THEM NEED THEIR PROPER DOSE OF MEDICATION SO THEY CAN DO THOSE THINGS!!!!!!!!! The goal is not "get them off of their medications." The goal is GET THEM INVOLVED AND FUNCTIONING AGAIN BECAUSE THE MORE ACTIVE THEY ARE THE LESS MEDICATION THEY WILL NATURALLY USE!!!! AND THOSE STATISTICS ARE ROCK SOLID GOLDEN IN PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES!!!!! People who have rewarding careers and happy families do not lay around and say, "Oh yay! Tomorrow I go to my crazy doctor and buy my pills from my crazy physician so I can be a crazy pill popping HAPPY PRODUCTIVE PARENT AND PROFESSIONAL!"

WILL YOU GUYS JUST MAKE AN ATTEMPT TO BE RATIONAL IN YOUR QUESTION FOR VIRTUE? Instead of preaching, "Weeeell what we need here is some good ole fashioned LAW MAKING!" YUP....WITH MORE LAAAAWS WE'LL HAVE LESS DEAD KIDS BY GOD!" Here is some news for you.....THERE ARE ALREADY GODDAMN LAWS PEOPLE! IN FACT WE ARE SWIMMING IN SO MANY LAWS THAT EVEN THE SUPREME COURT CANT FIGURE OUT IF OBAMACARE IS LEGAL BECAUSE IT IS A TAX OR IF IT IS LEGAL BECAUSE IT IS NOT A TAX!!!!!!!

You want to know what would have saved those children & 2 heroid men in Florida? I'll tell you. If that foster child's parent had not been using drugs or staying drunk during her pregnancy. I have a pretty good hypothesis he was FES in addition to the autism. Because of ASD and FES he should have had a weekly meeting with a CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST biweekly and weekly contact with a counselor teaching social skills and coping behaviors. That should have been a regular part of elementary, junior, and high school. After the 2nd call to the police or the 1st evidence of animal mutilation HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MANDATED TO BIWEEKLY THERAPY WITH A LICENSED PSYCHOLOGIST...NOT A MASTER'S LEVEL THERAPIST BUT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL! That psychologist then develops an effective treatment clan to include LPCs, occupational therapy, anger management, work study training, and social activities that are in vivo social skills training and coping behaviors use. The psychologist refers and follows the mental health medical treatment with psychiatry and/or pediatrics. When he became a young adult OR WHEN HIS MOTHER DIED he should have been moved to RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT where he lives in a real house with rules, chores, boardgame nights, movie nights, Christmas trees, Sunday at church with a couple of house mothers who are trained by professional therapists/psychologists. A licensed psychologist would be made available 24hrs 7 days a week for any unexpected events. Nikolaus should have been protected from himself and from the society that he was not equipped to understand or navigate successfully. Had he been protected from himself and society those kids and those brave men WOULD BE ALIVE TODAY!!!! So why wasn't Nikolaus receiving that level of care that could have overcome the negatives of FAS and ASD and would have allowed him to be a contributing (but still odd ) and safe member of society??? WELL BECAUSE OF CONGRESS! BECAUSE THE LOBBYISTTS AND MSM DO NOT TELL YOU ABOUT THOSE SERVICES!!! THERE IS NO MONEY IN GETTING KIDS LEGITIMATE HELP. they say, "Hey! we send that kid a $700 check every month! why don't their parents take them for therapy? Weeeell mr smartpants politician wearing a sequined cowboy hat...that $700 pays for food and marijuana and beer for the fucked up, uneducated foster parent that you placed him with or let him be adopted by!!! BUT IF IT WAS RUN BY LICENSED PROFESSIONALS WITH KNOWLEDGE, ETHICS, CARE, AND INTELLIGENCE...and likely no sequined cowboy hats except at Halloween....THEN THE BOY MIGHT GROW UP TO BE MORE CAPABLE THAN THE FOSTER CARE/ADOPTIVE SYSTEM!!! The money is in something sexy or tragic. the money is freely given when what dies is a schoolful of potential rather than a little defenseless frog. AND YOU PEOPLE WITH ALL YOUR GOOD IDEAS ABOUT GUN LAWS...don't you think you sound more intelligent with rational common sense solutions that would parallel the way you run your own homes?

Look...if your child wrecks the family car and kills the family dog when he does it.... 14 yrs old and DRUNK...then what is your response? Your previous rules were 1. Be where you say you are going to be. 2. Always tell the truth. then junior comes home smelling of alcohol one night so rule 3 is added. 3. No drinking alcohol until you are 21. so then junior comes home reeking of alcohol AND has a new pair of $400 shoes you did not buy. So rule number 4 is born. 4. No stealing. And then Junior comes in reeking of alcohol with hickies all over his stomach and back... uhm are you gonna go to NEW RULE JUNIOR! 5. NO SEX UNTIL WITHOUT A CONDOM.... at what rule do you stop to say, "hmmmm y'know..I'm not sure junior even understands the concept of 'a rule.'" Because you have a whole shitload of RULEZ but not only is he BREAKING THE ESTABLISHED RULES BUT YOU HAVE TO ADD NEW RULES TO THE RULES HE IS ALREADY NOT FOLLOWING!!! At what point do you say, "JUNIOR! YOU AINT GOING NOWHERE BUCKO! YOU ARE GONNA SIT IN THIS HOUSE SO I CAN SEE YOU ARE NOT DRINKING OR STEALING OR LYING OR FUCKING.....and <deep calming breath> you will be going to therapy weekly until you can figure out a better life than the current lying, stealing, drinking, fucking course you are currently on." Will Junior get shut down and into therapy at Rule #5 or Rule #25??? Because let me tell you this....at Rule#5 I can PROBABLY help ur kid BUT...YOU BRING mr bigshot bigballs you aint stopping me from nothing bitch into my office at Rule #25 ... my advice to you will be, "strap in and get ready for a nightmare! Cause one way or the other this process is gonna be painful and long for ALL OF US!" A child who is continually allowed to break the rules and invent new ones is a kid who has had the worst of his behavior REWARD (inadvertently) and REINFORCED FOR A LONG LONG TIME. Bad behavior and poor choices has become a habit for your kid. A child who is brought to therapy who has been allowed to reach rule #25 is a FAMILY PROBLEM THAT MUST BE ADDRESSED BEFORE I can do anything with the individual child.

And the OP created a thread to postulate on what he sees as an incongruity when it comes to the accountability of firearms manufacturers as opposed to pharmaceutical manufacturers. Why don't you share your thoughts on that rather than dismissing the discussion? This is after all a forum for discussing conspiracy and it seems the OP believes there is a conspiracy driving the incongruity in the application of accountability.

Also, would you care to explain your reasoning for downvoting my comment?

Their point is this seems a lot less like a genuine attempt to discuss an issue, and more of a defense against another, being the huge gun problem. The more people want to avoid it by pointing at other problems like Op has done, the easier it is to not talk about it properly. Even just making the comparison, opiate ODs kill more people than guns, is incredibly misleading and doesn't help make the issue or its resolution clearer. There are just a lot more people taking opiates than there are people wanting to shoot up schools. That doesn't make the school shootings less of a problem, but it does make it sound easier for people like OP to distract.

What is the goal of preventing school shootings?

To prevent pain and suffering, correct?

What if I told you there was something out there that caused more overall pain and suffering than school shootings and we were ignoring it? What if I told you that we could probably make more progress with this other thing given the measly effort we put into fixing guns? Because we've had pretty common school shootings now for about ten years and every single time its the exact same public and political response. We aren't improving the quality of life on that front. We might be able to improve the quality of life for more people on the opiate/Big Pharma front.

What if I told you kids in Africa have it worse than us so we should just let everything go and not care about any other problems. You see how fucking stupid this argument is?

Personally, I think the as high as 400,000 deaths per year in this country caused by obesity is a measurably greater concern.

When people put an equal or lopsided emphasis on one over the other when they are measurably unequal i think thats pretty insane and worrisome.

When was the last time you saw a post about the addictiveness of sugar vs the last time you saw a post about gun control?

I almost never see the former.

why are we even talking about gun manufacturers?

isn’t this more about the laws and or mental health?

how many of the last shooters of these mass murders were not showing signs of mental illness?

if not mental illness, they were the stereotypical profile such as the narrative about paddock.

either way the gun manufacturers and the pharmaceutical manufacturers are to blame.

they have been producing over the demand for decades and even pushing their products through exposure on television and such.

In uk the company licensed to make and sell xanax, is licencsed to make so much per year, now i cant remember exactly how much but its like 2 tons of it. Yet less than 20 prescriptions are filled each year in the uk, where does the rest go? Its not being used or sold legally thats for sure.

Less than 20 Rx filled per year in the UK for Xanax... Could you please link your source?

Sounds legit to me, I wonder where the other ( 2 tons - 100 grams ) are.

you do know there are other benzos than just xanax?

I do, yes— but twenty prescriptions per year in the entirety of the UK? I find that hard to believe.

Mental illness treatment could be improved.

The laws on guns could be improved.

These two separate things will decrease the amount of shootings.

Gun manufacturers and pharma companies just make stuff that people use. Corporations are just groups of people trying to, in theory, legally make money. It's a fair system if the law is properly maintained.

It's the people we elect to government who should oversee the law being justly applied instead of being bribed with a nice life to be complicit in a variety of circumstances that directly result in mass death and imprisonment.

Corporations are legally people according to SCOTUS. If they're people then they should be eligible for the death penalty.

yes yes AND YES!!!!!

THANK YOU for some rational thought! I would upvote your comment 100x if I could. You are correct the problem is about mental health. You should expand your thoughts one step further. What has changed in the past 20 yrs that we see such a sharp decline in the overall general mental health of America now?

1. Internet expanded sphere of influence to young people for early exposure to sexual content in addition to sexual content that is extreme and others would define as out of the norm!

2. Television and Film aka Hollywood/NewYork ballooned into a vehicle for pushing and normalizing extreme behaviors. We are now in the midst of a push to make pedophilia "normal." or just another sexual preference....as if somehow the child being victimized is an object and not a real live human being who is learning and evolving every moment and every experience.

3. A rapid increase in the use of alcohol. It has become such a normal expected part of daily life that people are actually in SHOCK when I explain I do not drink...anything...ever...not a drop. They say, "oh you must be in recovery." And I say, "No, I saw a brain that had been physically damaged by the alcoholic body is lived in for 40 years and I was HORRIFIED." The college kids are being decimated...wiped out by alcoholism but Hollywood makes movies that glorify alcohol use. They treat it like its marshmallows and hotdogs for summer camp...and IT IS KILLING YOUR COLLEGE STUDENT PEOPLE! I PROMISE YOUR CHILD AT COLLEGE IS DOING THINGS THAT WOULD MAKE YOU VOMIT. Our latest abomination was to have 3 students brought into the ER who had used an enama bag to poor EVERCLEAR LIQUOR into their intestines! One of those boys will have several surgeries to correct the damage. STOP FUCKING DRINKING IN FRONT OF YOUR FUCKING LITTLE CHILDREN YOU EMBECILES!!!!

Okay. My post is finished for now. I'm so furious by the insanity gripping this country. You idiots stay drunk and watch your insanity influences from Hollywood and then wonder why some poor foster kid (probably a drug baby) who was bullied horribly, fixated on the power of guns as portrayed in the movies, who was ridiculed because he asked for sex in the only way his autistic brain knew how to do it and had the only stable influence in his life die 3 months earlier BLOWS AWAY THE VERY PEOPLE HE BELIEVED CAUSED HIS PAIN!!!! Why did he think his pain originated in the school? Because he was AUTISTIC! If he was not experiencing it in the moment he did not think about it. At home with this mother he was happy with his guns and movies. At school he was laughed at and ridiculed, called names and his social confusion was excruciatingly painful. When his mother died his pain from that loss was conflated with the pain experienced in the school. In short...he held those kids responsible for ever bad thing in his life. AND THE FUCKING SHERIFF?!?!?! THAT IDIOT SHERIFF WHO IS SCREAMING POLITICAL SHIT ABOUT ELECTIONS AND GUN CONTROL?!?!!? ASK THAT BASTARD HOW MANY TIMES HIS OWN DEPUTIES WERE CALLED TO THAT HOUSE! ASK HOW MANY TIMES THE CITY POLICE WERE THERE! ASK IF THEY KNEW HE WAS MUTLATING ANIMALS!!!! AND THEN ASK THEM WHY THAT BOY WAS NOT TAKEN TO A RESIDENTIAL FACILITY FOR HIS OWN FUCKING SAFETY!!!!! WHY DONT YOU FUCKING PEOPLE ASK THOSE GODDAMNED QUESTIONS INSTEAD OF BITCHING ABOUT MORE FUCKING LAWS THAT DO NOTHING EXCEPT MAKE WASHINGTON RICHER AND MORE POWERFUL!!!!! DO THAT HOW ABOUT IT~!

slow clap*

And the OP created a thread to postulate on what he sees as an incongruity when it comes to the accountability of firearms manufacturers as opposed to pharmaceutical manufacturers.

He could have done that without belittling people who want to at least attempt to solve gun violence.

Also, would you care to explain your reasoning for downvoting my comment?

I don't downvote comments I reply to.

What incongruity? Gun manufactures are one of very few industries that have a legal exemption against being held responsible for the actions of their products. By law, you're not allowed to hold firearm manufacturers accountable.

Yes, there is some shady shit going on with opioid manufacturers and the Government, especially in the McKesson pharma case, and we need to fix that, but at least a case is allowed to be started.

So ... what incongruity are we talking about?

No, it's not.

The government would like to have rights that you don't. They would like to have the right to weapons and distribution of opiates, whilst simultaneously promoting that you peon citizens should have access to neither - and if you do it'd better be heavily regulated.

Point is to see the double standard and recognize that if you're scared of Joe Schmoe having access to either, you'd better definitely be scared of your government having control of both. Cuz guess what? You're government is full of Joe Schmoes who probably don't give a fuck about you.

Point is to see the double standard

Careful there, any mention of double standards or hypocrisy on this site can now apparently be dismissed with a mention of 'whataboutism.'

It's actually quite impressive how quickly that term has taken over in order to wave away any sense of context or consistency in the application of ideology.

Similarly, you can also see a lot of conclusory statements made as if the commenter's certainty adds legitimacy to their point (e.g. op saying "invalid comparison" without even attempting to explain why it's 'invalid').

On the politics sub, you'll see a lot of comments saying variations of "your perspective is wrong and you know it.

These types of comments are gaslighting 101

Wow, the way your comment has no reference whatsoever to the content in my comment is almost like it could be Written

By

A

Bot

Said the Joe Schmoe who probably doesn't give a fuck about me either.

On the contrary, I can tell you for certain I wish you only happiness such that it infringes not on another's happiness.

Likewise. Such is the case with pretty much everyone I've met in my entire life. Except somehow everyone in the government wants do all these bad things according to you. You realize that the government is made of people just like you and me, right?

I said what I said to show that you haven't thought critically about your views on government. You lack the necessary nuance required to come to meaningful conclusions about how government should operate and what powers they should and should not have. To you, "they" (as if the government is a single entity) are the enemy and should be dismantled. Maybe try finding some sort of middle-ground in your views so you can stop sounding like an angsty teenager mad at the world. Like, I appreciate your passion and everything but you need to grow the fuck up and understand that issues such as governance are not nearly as black and white as you think.

Why not hand a toddler a loaded gun or why did we ever invent childproof caps?

Because just like toddlers, many people lack self control. And no amount of stern talks will stop them from hurting themselves or someone else.

The government decides on what rights you have. And seems like gun control is much more beneficial to the society than your fear of government having the power over you.

Look at gun violence statistics of Europe compared to USA.

But that's not even the point, the point is that OP compares two unrelated problems and dares to question why people try to solve the gun violence problem while there's some other unrelated problems that exist.

Which, as I previously said, is just pointless.

I don't have a fear of government, I just don't want to be dependent on them for my own self defense.

Don't get me wrong, it's a real great convenience to have cops show up in no time to defend you, but what if there comes a day where they are busy or unavailable? That's why people should have the right to bear arms.

Just trying to explain a different point of view to people with a different one than my Own.

Your view is reasonable, I understand where it's coming from and I accept that.

It's just one of those things that America will have to have a debate on and decide as a nation.

The government doesn’t grant rights, how can anyone support that? Government have historically murdered and abused their citizens. You should move to Venezuela with that attitude.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

"We" as in the USA government. And it took the government another 100 years to abolish slavery and another 100 years to accept that black people deserve equal rights.

You just made my point, the government shouldn’t tell us what right we have... can’t be trusted

But government is the one protecting your rights and liberty through laws

ah god "virtue signaling" has already become the next parroted reddit buzzword

It's valid criticism in this case I think. Please point out if I'm wrong though.

Love being wrong.

Love being wrong. Makes me more knowledgeable.

I must have taken a wrong turn and left Reddit behind somewhere.

No, it shows how people are selectively outraged. 80 people shot in Chicago, no one bats an eye. 66k die from pills, meh. 17 kids in a school, stop the presses. All life matters.

Then why did OP compare gun violence to an unrelated issue instead of saying this?

It's not an unrelated issue. The issue is that people are selectively outraged and not paying attention to what are actually likely to affect them.

YES!

'morally superior'

Of he's just asking a simple question.

You’re the only one trying to sound ‘morally superior ‘ give us a break.

It's not pointless, it's demonstrating that school shootings aren't nearly as big an issue as the MSM would have you believe.

He’s making a comparison then questioning the differing attention. A good topic for discussion.

O.P should have checked in with you first to make sure you would approve of this particular virtue. Please notify us when it is an appropriate time to address the issue of big pharma, and please include a list of acceptable distinctions and comparative topics, so that we can pass through your well kept gate.

I have nothing against people who want to address the issue of big pharma.

I'm just saying belittling people who want to solve issue A is pointless virtue signalling.

I don't see how O.P is belittling anyone here.

Not here, but don't you see how "why do you care about issue A when there's issue B" belittles anyone who cares about issue A?

No. You shouldn't feel personally belittled. O.P is not making personal attacks. Just drawing distinctions. People do it everyday. It does not invalidate the one argument to mention the other.

I have no personal stake in this, I don't even live in USA.

And the problem is not the mentioning of the opiate crisis, but using the gun violence problem as a podium.

Why is that a new problem, he started a new thread, referenced one public health and safety topic to segway into another. They are tangentially related. He didn't steal the podium from another topic, he brought a different podium altogether.

I don't see how gun violence and opiate crisis are related.

Also I have a problem with OP misrepresenting (and belittling) the gun violence issue.

They are both public health and safety issues. But with disproportionate degrees of public and governmental response

You can tell by the number of downvotes the manipulations being held here. Your comment is valid and on point without any malice, and yet has been downvoted beyond 0.

Pepperidge farm sees thru the shills.

Sometimes downvotes are... just downvotes.

Have an upvote.

Have and upvote Agent Smith

I agree

OP's request is stupid.

Both situations suck.

"now is not the time to politicize this trajedy." - until people stop talking about it.

It's what people said when Trump stated we needed to work on infrastructure after that Train wreck in Washington State. If we can't get on board with things like fixing US infrastructure, then why should we get on board with eliminating a right?

If we can't get on board with things like fixing US infrastructure, then why should we get on board with eliminating a right?

"How dare people try to solve issue A when there's issue B"

"How dare Trump politicize a tragedy"

"Hey, we need to change policy because of this tragedy"

Eliminating a right? You don't have a 2nd amendment right to personally own a nuclear weapon, rocket launchers, etc. Why should the 2nd amendment be interpreted to mean you can have certain guns, high capacity mags, and lack of safety features that make it easier to have mass casualties?

For the same reason you don't want the rights you actually care about to be infringed upon. You can't say absolutely anything, some speech isn't protected. Should the fact that this guy was radicalized restrict your freedom of speech? Should that extend to any and all speech that could be considered subversive including quite a bit of religious speech to be illegal?

Those kids and staff died in a mass shooting, not a mass speaking. We have an epidemic of mass shootings. Let's figure out how to reduce the number of mass shootings and/or reduce the number injured or killed in a mass shooting when it happens.

So we don't address a root issue here, a fundamental cause of the problem, just the tools used in the actions? I don't know that that would be a good path to take.

It's a two-part approach: mental health and gun/ammo control. The mental health part reduces the chances that someone will attempt a mass shooting. The gun/ammo control reduces the number of injured/killed when it happens.

But this kid was radicalized. Are you willing to give up your free speech rights on order to prevent this?

You are trying to divert the discussion from the real issues. He was mentally ill and possessed weapons that made it easy to kill a bunch of school kids and staff.

With regard to him being "radicalized" by a white supremacy group, the fact that he shot and killed indiscrimanately by color should suggest to you that having been "radicalized" wasn't the issue.

I can't really get on board with gun control. There is no common sense baseline for advocates, and if there were, the next event would have everyone calling for more. It's not a fallacy, this has been a literal slippery slope for decades now. In my state, the gun show loophole was closed, but the push for more regulation has continued despite that being the last big "common sense gun control" push locally.

Until you get a very firm stopping point, I'm not interested in having my rights infringed upon. You showed that you wouldn't want to infringe upon rights you care about by weaseling out of answering any first amendment questions, and so you should understand how I feel about giving up second amendment rights.

But Obama did it too.

Throw this in if the public starts to get a little to nosey

It’s the Bjorn Lomborg approach and it’s pretty dumb.

"No one solve these murders till we cure heart disease!"

We should try to solve both, but there should also be priorities.

Username checks out.

"Let's a see whata problems can we solve? Problem 1? No." -John Mulaney

People should be responsible too though although it is big pharmas fault too people should research stuff

Sure they should, but there's enough responsibility to go around> And, I would never say a shooter should not be responsible for their actions and that the gun maker is totally at fault.

I was just referring to people who take prescription drugs my friend lol

Eh... if the gun maker is marketing it as "the safe gun" and funding studies that somehow conclude "the gun is very unlikely to result in injury/death", I think the equation shifts a bit.

People should be a lot of things, the problem is they quite often don’t live up to expectations.

Irresponsible patients do not equate to being murdered by a gunman.

A quick search and personal experience shows that 1-5mg hydrocodone lasts 3-4 hours or longer. If you are taking more than this, you are being irresponsible with your prescription or you need to reevaluate treatment with your doctor. Read the printout the pharmacy supplies that explains usage, side effects, drug interactions, and warnings. Also a search on drugs.com will tell you specifically what drugs you are taking will interact adversely. It's not rocket science.

What are the overdose stats? What dosages were these patients on? Were they taking legally prescribed opiates? Were they ingesting alcohol? Were they mixing prescriptions that could cause death if taken together?

No one shoves medication down a person's throat. On the other hand, school shooters don't give choices to their victims. So that's a apples to oranges comparison.

Also, manufacturers shouldn't be held responsible anyway. Both guns and powerful prescription drugs should be regulated because they have the potential to have fatal effects if used incorrectly. Hold consumers responsible by having them take a class. God forbid people should be educated.

except big pharma controls the drug studies and frequently markets these drugs (heroin, oxy, benzos) as safe and non addictive and give doctors incentives to prescribe these medications. not to mention the doctors themselves, who are the professionals and who supposedly take an oath to heal, are the ones over-prescribing.

"controls the drug studies" lmao...yeah man.

do you deny that pharmaceutical companies conduct their own testing?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2013/10/02/pharma-controls-clinical-trials-of-their-drugs-is-this-hazardous-to-your-health/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC156458/

no i do not. maybe i'm caught up in the semantics of this, but when you say "the drug studies" to me, it implies that pharmaceutical companies have a hand in all investigations of the drugs they produce. there are thousands and thousands of articles published in the most prestigious scientific journals in the world that spell out plainly the negative consequences of all opioid classes of drugs, from the cellular level to the epidemiological level and everywhere in between. no clinical trials data available refutes the widely held belief among the scientific and medical community that all opioids are addictive and should be prescribed sparingly. the vast majority of medical practitioners know this and act accordingly.

i appreciate your skepticism, but your arguments are lazy and all over the place. then again, i'm i think might be in the wrong subreddit if i expected anything else.

you assumed wrong. clinical trials are human test subjects and the nih study I posted clearly states they manipulate the results to be favorable for them at the expense of the patient.

i'm not sure what you're trying to say?

we were talking about all drugs.

clinical trials are the final step before a drug trials acceptance and the NIH study linked shows they suppress negative studies and glamorize positive studies to suit their agenda.

yes, and that's a bad thing. but it doesn't change that fact that the efficacy and safety of new drugs on the market are constantly being evaluated -- using opiates as an example, the suspect studies published by pharmaceutical companies are dwarfed in comparison to the scores of studies out there today that plainly spell out their potential danger, resulting in opiate prescriptions being harder to obtain.

you're pointing out a systemic failure of the drug dev process, but i still don't understand your point. what do you propose to do to fix it? or are you just gonna keep going "yeah man the pharma's control everything bro" and leave it at that?

evaluated after people have died in horrible ways via addiction, unknown side effects.

people are doing something, they said something to their congressmen and they are acting. what else is there?

so again, what is your point?

you keep saying things that everyone knows, what is the reason?

do you plan on ever wrapping this up or will you continue to state the obvious?

wrapping what up? you injected yourself into my statement. you're right, youre probably in the wrong subreddit

okay dude, you're woke as fuck, i get it. pharmas controllin' the world brah, nothin' we can do about it brah.

Anything you can get high off of or can cause euphoria is going to be addictive. The human brain wants to feel good.

Schedule II drugs are so regulated now, at least in my state, that it is impossible to over-prescribe. I would like to know where these doctors are that just throw pain pills at you. Because even if they did, pharmacies carry the minimum quantity and sometimes you will need to drive from store to store just to find one that has them in stock.

I have chronic jaw/neck/shoulder pain and went through the pain management hoops a couple years ago. I just deal with it now because it was so hard getting help and I tried everything even med marijuana and cbd. But I always wonder if anyone that is so against opiates has ever experienced chronic pain or had to deal with getting it treated... I know how it used to be but that was 4 years ago.

I'm not against opiates I just know doctors over prescribe them.

I know drug companies down play the risks.

Fortunately and unfortunately this is changing for opiates because they moved up a schedule. It would be great if there was an in-between Motrin and Vicodin.

Diet and exercise has a huge effect on a lot of diseases but it doesn't seem to be part of the healthcare moneymaker so patients aren't pushed to make lifestyle changes like they should be. They give everyone antidepressants and antibiotics for anything which is just as worrisome.

It's not rocket science.

No... it's just ordinary science. You're acting like you're talking to the typical redditor (i.e. hs and some college at least), this does not describe the majority of people falling into the pain management trap.

Irresponsible patients is hardly the case. These " Irresponsible Patients" become addicted to the medications their trusted doctors prescribe them. If only it were as simple as "read the printout the pharmacy supplies"

And they are getting sued all over the place to hold them accountable.

That should answer OPs question nicely, then

a couple factors that make it hard to assign blame when it comes to the opioid epidemic—pain meds are lawful drugs, approved and regulated by the federal government, and there are “a whole lot of intermediaries: in the distribution process. “You’re bringing litigation against companies who appear to be complying with the law.”

He says the opioid suits could also potentially go the way of the gun industry. In the early 2000s, gun makers successfully lobbied for protection from such lawsuits.

Also, there has been A LOT of attention on the opioid crisis lately, an stricter regulations are in place at the federal level and in every state. Heck, even the manufacturers of the opioids are being called to task, not to mention the doctors who overprescribe. Regulations are making it harder and harder for people to get opioids.

Literally none of those things have happened with guns. Guns continue to be further deregulated (see Obama expanding gun rights to national parks and trains, and Trump rescinding an Obama EO that would have restricted people access to guns for those who were adjudicated mentally ill). And if there's ever a peep that gun manufacturers or gun stores should be held accountable for gun deaths and school shootings, it is shut down faster than you can reload your 22-round high-capacity magazine.

because we like guns. they are a right. I thought conspiracy people were pro-gun? that they acknowledged that our government is evil and we will be tasked with protecting ourselves and our common man when SHTF?

I agree with what you said about gun regulation but there’s a lot more to the opioid crisis than holding manufacturers accountable and putting regulations in place to make them harder to get.

Treatment is huge. I’d call state funded rehabs a JOKE if they weren’t actually a total nightmare. I’ve been to more than a few due to not having health insurance (and due to my stupid ass not staying clean, of course). They’re making it harder to get prescription opioids, that’s great, maybe that’ll prevent people from becoming addicts. What about all the people who are already addicted and desperately need help?

I don’t think the two issues really can be compared so easily, it’s just not that simple.

I agree completely. Treatment should be given more funding by the federal government and state governments. My only point was that in response to the opioid crisis, we've seen numerous regulations and crackdowns, whereas we've seen none of that with guns.

Well the difference is that everyone agrees on the opioid crisis, whereas with guns half the country doesn't agree that there's a problem at all. I think you are selectively seeing a lack of gun regulations and "numerous" opioid regulations. The other half of the country probably sees it exactly opposite as you.

And if there's ever a peep that gun manufacturers or gun stores should be held accountable for gun deaths and school shootings, it is shut down faster than you can reload your 22-round high-capacity magazine.

For starters, there is a law saying you can't sue a gun manufacturer for legally selling a firearm to a dealer who then legally sold it to an individual. What more do you want them to do?

I disagree. Over production of medications would be helpful in crises because there will be surpluses of needed drugs

Of opioids??

Physiological side effects of untreated pain hurt the body. In a crisis situation, pain would probably need to be treated adequately. I'm not defending "big pharma" they monetize care for patients which lead to more many for them and less care for patients, but making blanket statements about the medical industry without knowledge of how it actually works, leads to misinformation being spread about what is actually going on in the medical industry. We shouldn't sue a company for making a bunch of pain meds and selling to hospitals, that would just deter companies from wanting to make and distribute medication to hospitals and patients.

How dare OP imply the tireless crusade against guns looks stupid when there are far, far graver avoidable threats to public health.

Right there with ya, buddy

To piggie back on this your number comparison is skewed. That may be school shooting deaths but total gun deaths this year is already 1800+ and this one incident yesterday more than doubled that 7 number. I agree something needs to be done about drugs but that does not discount the fact something needs to be done about the gun violence.

You talk about skewed comparisons but use a skewed number yourself. 70% of those 1800 gun deaths are suicides, and another 20% are justifiable self defense shootings. Actual gun homicide is nowhere near what you think it is.

Agreed I was just simply trying to show the number wasn't 7. How many of those 66k overdoses are accidental versus intentional. I don't know but it doesn't mean any death regardless of the reason is less important.

I’m currently physically addicted to prescription SSRIs from my physician. Going on 7 years.

Tried several times to wean myself off.

Let me tell you, the worst I’ve ever felt, has been the day after I drop my dosage. Just absolutely done with living.

This was supposed to provide a boost towards recovery, but now I just feel normal like I did before I became mentally ill...so I should be done taking the meds right???

Oh, no. No. I’m dependent on them.

I physically get “brain zaps” which make me nauseous, dizzy and very confused. Panic attacks. Vomiting.

The fuck??

Yup. Had the zaps for two months. Sucked.

I tried using motion-sickness dissolvables, but they did nothing. Literally, after two days felt like that moment when you’re drinking booze, and you know you’re gonna puke...just never puking

I had brain zaps while ON them. Was fucking nuts. Stopped after 4 months. Was gone in a few days.

I would get the zaps in the afternoon if I forgot to take the pill in the morning.

Please do not wean yourself off without some sort of medical/psychiatric supervision, or you're gonna have a bad time. Even a good general practice / family doc might not know how to deal with this, so a specialist would be best.

I'm currently being weaned off of sertraline, and my family doc initially told me to just jump from 150mg/day to 100mg/day. Needless to say, I had a bad time with the brain zaps. Currently going from 100 to 50, but this time I also got a script for the 25mg pills, which lets me bump things down by 12.5 every couple of weeks. It's going much much better.

One other thing I would suggest is to ask about other drug-classes to help ease the transition. Mood stabilizers and NDRIs can be really helpful and induce less physical dependency.

Again, do not do this without medical/psychiatric supervision. If your primary care doc doesn't want to help, see a psychiatrist for a pharmacology consult. That's what they do, and they know their shit.

Best of luck my dude(tte?).

Addicted to SSRIs. LOL! Almost as funny as the people addicted to robitussin

Physically addicted, you ignorant troll. The best part of you ran down your mother's leg.

I myself was on Paxil for a while. There's nothing physically addicting about them. and edgy

Says the person working for Pfizer

If I stop, I can feel my brain spazzing out. When I take it again that effect goes away. Isn’t that a physical addiction??

Actually GlaxoSmithKline makes paxil. Lol its always the crazy ones using the MUH SHILL!! card as a response.

Doesn’t matter who the actual company is, you got the point. And thanks, I am!

Fuck that. Legalize it all and let people make their own mistakes.

its not invalid. it demonstrates the disproportionate reaction toward guns. gun regulation is more about virtue signaling than solving any problem.

Also compares situation A in a very small subset of the country (gun deaths in schools) to opioid deaths across the whole country

Apples to oranges. Also ignores point that those who likely want to hold gun manufacturers responsible would definitely agree that opioid manufacturers who send excess drugs should be responsible

This logic would break most redditors minds

Who do you think fills the pockets of our senators and representatives? Big pharma, big oil. They'll never be held accountable

There are many groups calling for opiate enforcement just like gun enforcement.

There is also a huge difference with people doing something that effects themselves and something that effects hundreds/thousands of people at a time.

Opioids don't affect hundreds/thousands at a time?

I never said they don't. Do you not get the difference between something that affects you and something that affects others? How often does someone taking opioids kill 10+ people cause they took them?

You're neglecting to talk about the guy who sells the opioids and distributes them... How many people does he kill? He offs a few dozen folks and didn't have to blow his brains out at the end of the day. Not to mention his lucrative pay out.

Also consider the fact that addictions affect more than the addicts themselves, sometimes leading their friends and loved ones to suffer a fate worse than death.

The dealer is killing a few dozen folks at once?

Are their friends and families all suffering a fate worse than death at once when the person pops a pill?

Cause I specifically said "at a time" and you even responded to that part of it. You're moving the goal post when it was clear what I said.

Because the point you made ignores the point of this article. Opioids, meant to help and heal, kill more people than guns. Saying drugs are less dangerous because they only affect the individual taking them ignores a whole host of factors. If they were less dangerous, why do they kill more people? Somewhere along the line people are supplying those individuals on a massive scale, fully aware of the dangers they impose. That factor is what makes opioids so deadly and that is what is being ignored

They do, however, kill 10 times more people per year.

I think you took my question out of context. I know that but in context I was trying to get this individual to understand what you just stated

I think you took my question out of context.

It sucks when people ignore what you're saying just so they can insert their own narrative, huh?

Bullshit comparison. Overdosing by your own hand is nowhere near the same as being killed by an automatic weapon designed for exactly that purpose.

Genuine question: did the FL shooter have an automatic weapon? I heard those have been illegal for over 30 years.

muh favorite gun terminology, invalid!

Well it's kinda relevant.

Do we next make alcohol and driving for fun illegal?

Hey man no need to get reeally angry. I reread my comment and I don't think it insinuates that I was trying to make a point? The comment even is even prefaced with "genuine question" to let the reader know that a question will be following.

I was asking a question that I didn't know the answer to. I looked it up and /u/mindboglin was wrong; the shooter did not have an automatic weapon.

I hope you have a blessed day and so sorry if my original comment made you angry.

Assuming that you're posting in good faith, my apologies.

The question you asked ("was he using an automatic weapon?") is pretty much the exact point brought up to argue against anyone who is passionate about reducing gun deaths but happens to misuse terminology. Just because it's not an automatic weapon doesn't invalidate the point.

What automatic weapon?

Semi-automatic is still automatic, no?

Not at all.

No... That's why it has that "semi-" word in front of it.

The usage of the term automatic may vary according to context. Gun specialists point out that the word automatic is sometimes misunderstood to mean fully automatic fire when used to refer to a self-loading, semi-automatic firearm not capable of fully automatic fire. In this case, automatic refers to the loading mechanism, not the firing capability.

Come on now. As far as the general firearms community and public uses the terms, no.

Semi-auto = 1round per trigger pull Auto = continuous fire while the trigger is pulled

That's why semi comes before automatic. The loading mechanism is the same, it just cycles one at a time instead of multiple.

I agree, hold both accountable.

Safely disposing of firearms? Wtf are you on about?

They already pay for education on safely storing firearms. Unfortunately you cant force people to lock them up.

*fortunately

I should have worded that better.

Unfortunately, people lack the common sense and fortitude to safely store their weapons when not in use, which nothing good can come from such actions

that's not correct. I keep a gun on my nightstand when at home and I have no kids living at home why is this dangerous? if anything it speeds up my reaction time to a home invasion situation

ON your nightstand? As in, laying on top of it? Where anyone could see it and grab it?

Yeah, no not dangerous at all - as long as you're the only one in the room ever and you never leave ever so it becomes impossible for someone else to walk in and get it first.

You should at the very least have it out of sight lol

when I leave it's on my person. when I have guests it's on my person.

What are you so afraid of?

the 30 minute drive for the police officer to respond to an emergency when I'm on my land? For the crazy tweakers trying to steal my anhydrous ammonia?

Yeah, hearing you live rural really changes the spin for me, I can't imagine leaving a weapon in the open like that, but I'm in the city, sharing a duplex with three people I met on Craigslist so between them and their friends I don't want any guns in the house for someone I'm not fully introduced to to have access to them around me.

oh yeah I see that. I keep a ar15 in my tractor and in my truck because I can be in the middle of nowhere and I've have had people attempt to start trouble over my equipment/chemicals.

Lol it must be nice living in the country where cops aren't the people you have to worry about defending yourself from.

yeah I grew up in Southern California in a varrio and it's a BIG improvement

Maybe part of it is that in those rural areas the cops are neighbors and members of the communities they police. In a lot of cities the cops commute from the suburbs and have no personal stake whatsoever in the actual beats they walk.

yeah, that and rural police practice proactive policing.

Keeping it on your nightstand would fall under the category of being in use. I do the same thing

Safely disposing of firearms? Wtf are you on about?

If you don't want it anymore, because it's old or whatever reason, either selling it or disposing of it in a way that it doesn't end up on the black market.

You do know gun stores exist, right? And they buy guns on the regular? And that they keep track of all guns bought and sold?

Guns end up on the black market because of straw purchases (which is already a felony) and theft (which is also a felony)

Some of the companies that produce the opiods are the exact same manufacturers for drugs to help get off said drugs. Get them on the way, get them on the way out

Because opiates are no threat to the status quo, while guns can be seen as a direct threat.

Also, rich people party and enjoy the warm hug of an opiate.

Hugs not drugs brother :)

Great comparison, these 2 issues have more in common than what you notice at first glance.

• Both drugs and guns are excellent tools, and can be used in a positive way, with moderation
• Both can be dangerous when incorrectly used
• Banning either will not stop abuse (As proven by the failed war on drugs, users (gun and drug) will find a way to get their hands on what they want whether its legal or not)

This.

I mean gun control works though? The UK banned handguns after a school shootings, remains the only one in history, Australia banned guns and it's worked out great.

What do Australia and the UK have in common compared to the u.s.? Real simple question that has a HUGE impact.

Who would you like to do the job of enforcing UK style gun control in our country? I nominate the "idea guys".

Didn't affect their homicide rate.

Knife atracks don't kill 10+ people at once.

The difference is, I can't go out a murder a bunch of people with opiates. I can't force them to take an overdose amount.

Also banning guns is quite effective. Just look at Australia and the UK.

Where homicide rates were unaffected and continued decreasing at precisely the same rate as before.

You could've banned pomeranians and had the same effect on the overall murder total, that doesn't mean pomeranians have an effect on the murder rate.

Source please

The difference is, I can't go out a murder a bunch of people with opiates. I can't force them to take an overdose amount.

Also banning guns is quite effective. Just look at Australia and the UK.

No it isn't. Look at Mexico and Brazil and Venezuela and Columbia. Look at Chicago and Detroit.

Murder rates are sky high while guns are illegal or effectively illegal.

let's look at Switzerland

Yeah, let's look at Switzerland. * About half as many guns per capita as the US * Very different culture, people generally don't have guns "for protection" * To buy a gun or ammunition you need a permit * Carrying a loaded gun is illegal (both open and concealed carry)

The Swiss gun laws are much more restrictive than the laws in most US states. Most people asking for more gun control would be pretty happy with these laws.

Both drugs and guns are excellent tools, and can be used in a positive way, with moderation

erm, one is a necessary medication and the other is primarily a tool for fun. And, btw, one is mostly illegal and the other is mostly free - if guns were as regulated as opioids there would be no discussion about harsher gun laws.

Gonna go out on a limb and suggest that neither should be held responsible for the misuse (accidental or purposeful) of their products.

Our civilization has loads of dangerous shit. Responsibility is a sharp knife.

Make no mistake, rights are responsibilities.

It's not misuse when you flood states with more pills than people.

Pharma companies are handing their pills out for Halloween. Irresponsible doctors are prescribing them.

do you except each person to use 1 pill?

No but I expect each person to use fewer than 1,000 pills per year on average over a 7 year span:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/30/581930051/drug-distributors-shipped-20-8-million-painkillers-to-west-virginia-town-of-3-00

20.8m pills to a town of 3,000 people over 7 years. That's just shy of 3m pills per year, or just shy of 1,000 pills per person over a 7 year span. That's absolutely absurd and should be criminal.

Nice, I was just about to post this.

5,624 pills per person in ONE fuckin town in this country. I don't see the NRA flooding states and advertising their products on every platform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country

Only country in the world with an average of more than 1 gun per person. That's not per non-minor person, that's per any resident, including children. That's double the per-capita rate we had in 1968.

Which shows only one thing, increased prosperity. Not to mention the fact that there were almost no mass shooters before the last 20 years, yet access to guns was ubiquitous. You could buy them in a hardware store no questions asked. High schools had shooting teams and firing ranges. You could borrow a gun AT school and bring your own whenever you felt like it.

If guns are the problem, why were they magically not a problem until the 21st century?

Our per capita number of cars has gone way up since then too, is there an emotionally charged political dialogue surrounding fatal road accidents which kill orders of magnitude more people than murderers who chose to use guns? Is there an evergreen political dialogue around heart disease and death caused by putting sugar and corn syrup into every product in the supermarket, killing orders of magnitude more people than the combined total of every mass murderer in the US that ever chose a gun as his weapon in the entirety of history?

Homicide has declined significantly since 1968 alongside practically every other type of crime and the only underlying factor that correlates consistently with it is economic prosperity. If guns are your target and statistics are your weapon, you've picked up a venomous snake by the tail in a swordfight. The health of society and the economy is the factor determining how much violence is directed at said society by its own citizens, not access to guns.

If we regulated guns the way we regulate cars I'd be much happier.

Do they run a background to buy a car? A Mental Health check? Waiting period? Require a license to purchase? Fingerprints?

Everyone takes driver's ed, and many states require a number of supervisory hours under a learner's permit before a full license is granted. You have your vision checked and take a driver's test before you're licensed, and the state can revoke your license if you have certain mental conditions, which they can learn about in a number of ways that don't require your consent. Your license gets revoked when you get too many points or commit certain offenses. Cars are strictly titled and ownership of every car is recorded with the state. Cars themselves are inspected annually and must contain certain safety features, like airbags, seat belts, backup cameras (in recent years), etc., and there are constantly new regulations being put in place as new technology becomes available which may make them safer (again, see backup cameras as an example).

Not to mention cars have significantly more utility than guns do. Most people commute with a car - I don't know of anyone who commutes with a gun. I can go get groceries with a car, but would starve to death in my city if I had to rely on a gun to hunt for my food. Those who do need guns for jobs generally do go through extensive checks, which I'm cool with, but 99% of people have no need for a gun in their day-to-day life. And if you intend to hunt with a gun, you don't need to be able to fire multiple rounds per second, so at the very least the sorts of guns people have access to should be limited to not those that are basically only designed for warfare.

and yet you ignore the drug issue that this post was created to draw attention to.

No, I don't, and there's literally no reason we can't address both problems. If you read up the comment chain you'll see that I acknowledge that I think the prescription drug manufacturing in this country is also borderline criminal. Seriously, go like 6 comments up.

thats great, because thats actual reason this post exists.

If guns are the problem, why were they magically not a problem until the 21st century?

Your assumption that guns only became a problem in the 21st century is simply false.

America was a fairly safe country from 1890-1910. Then crime rose massively, which the country is only just now recovering from.

The NRA doesn't produce anything...

What NRA products?

Hats and shitty duffel bags.

thanks didn't know that.

Happy to educate. Thanks for being receptive.

This is also why multinational companies love libertarians. Libertarians basically advocate for very few rules if any, which allows companies to easily exploit people.

Can't make smart choices if you don't know that cigarettes are unhealthy, which happened in the 20th century. Or if you are bombarded with cigarettes and ads from the age of 3, like happens in countries like Indonesia.

who's talking about libertarianism?

Me

I don't get it in the context of them sending millions of pills to a small town.

were they libertarian towns or something?

In a libertarian utopian world, there are no regulations, only the NAP, and companies are free to do so.

okay? I still don't get what you're talking about in the context of this parent?

Do you have low IQ?

in relation to whom or what population? it still doesn't answer my question of why libertarianism got brought up in this parent.

That's true.

Yeah pharma is to blame for the opiate crisis, they had hordes of drug reps pushing oxy.

just read about that perdue family or w/e. how are they not hung?

I'd love to have the pill mills back. Deaths went way up when people switched to heroin after they made it harder to get pills.

I don't care if they;re paving the street with pills. Until they're forcing an individual to use the product, that individual is responsible for their use or misuse or the product.

What the hell is so hard to understand about this very simple concept, I don't know, but thank you.

Pill companies are paying doctors to push pills. Not to mention they are preying on people with serious addiction problems.

Pill companies are paying doctors to push pills

They are not.

Not to mention they are preying on people with serious addiction problems.

As are alcohol, tobacco, and food industries. Doesn't matter: people are responsible for their own addictions.

Mind you, we-as-a-society are responsible for ensuring that addicts have easy and common access to help once they decide to get clean, but addicts are responsible for their own addictions even if it takes them straight to death.

So do vaccines count as an example of big pharma forcing us to use their product despite the risks? Or are you going to tell me that my kids have a personal choice to choose not to go to public schools? Or that it's a violation of the rights of others that I attempt to prevent my own rights from being violated?

No.

Uhh they're bribing doctors to prescribe them. They are literally forcing people to use their product...

i have fucking heaps of expired prescriptions i never used. being prescribed something is not the same as being shot in the face.

you filled the script, you took the pills. how the fuck you blame that on the doctor or the pharma lobby, i don't know. isn't america the land of personal freedom and responsibility?

sooo... you ever think about NOT snorting hydromorphone then? seems to me, you have that freedom.

Most people trust their doctor to prescribe medication that is going to help them. So if a doctor is prescribing medication inappropriately that would absolutely be on the doctor and by extension the pharma lobby which is pushing the prescriptions so hard.

How the fuck you twisted that into people taking their medication in good faith as the people at fault is beyond me.

yeah ok. "people take their medication in good faith."

then people are fucking retards.

so humans are unable to understand why opioid painkillers are so famous for destroying lives, and that's not their fault. that's the pharmaceutical lobbies fault.

but they're totally able to take responsibility for the firearm deaths they cause, because "guns don't kill people, people kill people".

seems legit. people are fucking morons in need of a nanny state to tell them what not to put in their body.. unless they have a gun in their hands, at which point they're a bastion of responsibility, because, lemme guess.. freedom?

I never said anything about guns. That's a whole different issue that needs tackling in its own unique way. We are talking about over prescription of known dangerous drugs by people who are in a position of authority and respect because of their historical service.

I won't argue that people are not regards but that does not excuse the people knowingly exploiting that.

I never said anything about guns.

thats great. guns are the overt context of this thread though. you've read the title, yes?

you being responsible with your drugs doesnt invalidate the problems with drugs in our culture.

i'm not responsible with drugs at all tbh.

that said, i don't need to be, because if anything goes wrong, i'm the only person that dies, its a fundamentally victimless situation.

compare that to being shot in the face by someone while you're minding your business.

lets try a different perspective:

i don't particularly mind if you take drugs and die. i've never met you and people die every day. I mean, i'm sure you're lovely, and i guess its sad, if i think about it, but i won't hear about it, because its between you and your god.

i give a big fuck if you shoot me in the face.

The over all influence of big pharma and the impact it has on the health, safety, culture, economics, and quality of of life is the issue. The odds either one of us get shot in face is low as shit. But big pharma is impacting us both daily. The net effect is the issue, not the one off potential effect of guns.

The net effect is the issue

Not my issue. My issue is someone shooting me. that's a thing i care about, because it directly effects me. Not some random junkie dying peacefully behind a dumpster.

tbh, it's not an issue for me at all.. I don't live in the US lol.

if you think your not directly effected by big pharma then you practically gas lighting yourself

sure, when my sciatica fucks out and i get back on the lyrica, i can walk again without my leg buckling due to the nerve pain shooting down to my toes... pretty effected.

Small picture talk

its simple ethics. if you kill you, you're a suicide, if i kill you, I'm a criminal.

but if this is the whataboutism you need to engage in to feel better about your children getting gunned down at a rate seen nowhere else in the western world, so be it. enjoy it.

You're still thinking in parts, rather than wholes. You clearly are either unable to see the larger long term impact. If you want to crusade then be my guest. Best of luck

crusade? I'm not the one trying to save the junkies, i simply don't want my kids getting shot at school. that's not a crusade, that'd just not being a cuck.

so fucking narrow minded.

and now all you've got is insults because you're salty that i disagree with you.

enjoy your country while its still around babe, chinas coming for ya ;)

It's just funny how some people can only conceptualize tangable visable threats, and block out the threats that undermine them slowly and steadily. But hey this isn't your problem do why are you worried about your kids being killed or your sciatica?

lmao... so, if they're an issue, ban the drugs then.

tell me how that works out, its not like anyone's tried it before.

It's not about banning. This conversation is fruitless. Fuck it.

well, its not about pharmaceutical companies either. They're not the ones cutting chinese fent into the H supply.

ok

perdue was slinging OC80s for 20 years. the OD epidemic only started a few years ago, AFTER they made oxy non-abusable.

ok

I'm glad you agree

Actually if you're not finishing antibiotics you're just as dangerous to humanity as people with guns lol. Don't create super diseases.

I'm talking about analgesics, but you're correct, antibiotic courses should be finished... that said, people not finishing amoxicillin scripts are nowhere near as bad as what they do on chinese pork farms. mrsa is one thing. colistin resistant swine flu otoh..

Consider the the faith that the typical individual has in modern medicine. Consider the trust in the Dr.

Consider the inundation and normalization of the products. Consider the cultural normalcy of PILLS PILLS PILLS.

Consider the revolving door between pharma and government. And the policies that stem from it.

Consider the ease of access to dangerous and addictive pills that flood society nearly unfettered.

Consider the health care and insurance cost incurred by the over prescription and misuse of the drugs. Consider the physical an mental side effects and the cost of those as well.

Consider the suffering.

Now compare it to guns. And be honest.

Sure but there is an explicit need for medicine, guns? Not so much.

There is definitely not an explicit need for all these drug in all these quantities. Thats what im saying. Its ridiculous

That's not "literally forcing."

This country has more guns that people. Can't hold it against one without holding it against the other.

rights are responsibilities.

I really like that.

In the same way that we've put the onus of safety on car manufacturers, that onus for safety needs to be put on gun and pharma manufacturers.

That's already done. Car companies are held responsible if a car malfunctions and someone dies. Gun companies are held responsible if a gun malfunctions and someone dies.

Car companies are not held responsible if some berserker drives over a bunch of schoolkids, nor if a drunk kills someone driving home late at night. Nor should gun companies be held responsible for mass shootings or accidental discharges.

Yeah because people can't be misinformed by massive wealthy industries that purposely spread misinformation. We should never try to protect our fellow citizens against greedy billionaires who go over their corpses to make more money. Propaganda NEVER works of course and anyone influenced by it is a stupid dumb dumb.

Man you're every corporations wet dream. Advocating against your own self interest just to sound like an adult.

I don't think you are correct, but I don't know, you might know a hell of a lot more than me about propaganda and misinformation. Let's have a little test, shall we? 2 questions, no Google:

1. Who is Edward Bernays?

2. What did Cambridge Analytica do in 2016, why did it matter, and how did it relate to Edward Bernays?

Humans are the best in the world when it comes to killing shit so we shouldn't be surprised when it happens

I mean, if you don't want to die in a shooting, you can always carry a firearm of your own. The odds of surviving a violent attack go up if you defend yourself, and go up even more if you defend yourself with a firearm.

Granted, there are situations like Las Vegas where having your own gun would do jack shit. But that is not how most of these events happen.

At the end of the day, there are no guarantees in life. The best you can do is adjust risk probabilities.

Ah yes because at a school shooting I really don’t see why the students and teachers aren’t arming themselves.

If you can't stop mass killers, the next best strategy is harm reduction.

You expect an environment made for kids young as 10 and 11 to frequent daily should have guns?

When I was 8 or 9 years old, I lived in a part of the US that was frequented by mountain lions, wolves, and bears. My parents always carried firearms when we went out walking in the forest.

When children are potentially threatened by predators, it is entirely reasonable for their guardians to be capable of protecting them.

wutabut muh guns!

Both are problems. Both can be dealt with.

I know this predates the years you mention, but this shows a lot higher of a number in previous years, 16 of them can be considered mass shootings in over 200 school related shootings.

I went looking for gun related deaths in the years you mentioned, and came across this article

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/15/us/school-shootings-sandy-hook-parkland.html

opiates are not designed specifically to kill people. also they are already illegal. what a dumb post.

yet they kill more people than guns...interesting

They feel a lot better than bullets when they enter your body. It is Darwinian.

yeah they should really ban them.

What about what-about-ism? Surely we should should do something about that.

That term has only become popular since trump has become president lol

i wonder why?

because the CIA has successfully implemented Newspeak

you think the CIA made the term whataboutism popular?

I wouldn't doubt it. it seems like a forced meme, just like "virtue signalling" "cultural marxism" and other buzz words.

I don't have any evidence but the general fuckery and haze surrounding all information put out can't help but invoke imagery of how other coups have been performed by the CIA and with the repeal of the Smith-mundt sct., it just furthers the speculation

it's not like it stopped them terribly before

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evidence necessary. reals before feels

you are in /r/conspiracy. if you can't handle speculation you are in the wrong sub.

The Smith-mundt act repeal stands on it's own, as we all know the CIA is extrajudicial, arming ISIS to further their agenda in the Middle east.

even the JFK file release to discrediting criticism of the Warren report- the CIA is active in our borders

Because it's a diversion... ANY comparison can be met with "that's whataboutism". Trying to compare trumps first 100 days in office with any other president? That's whataboutism. Comparing gun deaths to pill deaths? That's whataboutism. See my point?

Also the term fake news got implemented. It's to soften the tone of propaganda, which is literally fake news. Propaganda should be illegal, but since the average citizen is softened to "fake news" when they hear that anything is propaganda, they shrug it off. See my point?

ANY comparison can be met with "that's whataboutism"

A comparison alone is not whataboutism. The reason OP is getting called out is because he's literally going "What about this..." instead of actually making an argument.

those things aren’t whataboutism. it’s a label made to point out a very specific type of cop-out argument. and what does the term fake news have to do with that? sorry, i don’t see your point

Nah, I've been seeing it used against the Russians bullshit for years before that.

That's the real problem right there. Let's fix that first.

7 people died in school shootings over tge course of a year?

I find that very hard to believe

It's called cherry picking.

It's called cherry picking.

It's not called cherry picking? Have you ever looked at the numbers?

8 deaths - 2010 4 deaths - 2011 42 deaths - 2012 19 deaths - 2013 17 deaths - 2014 21 deaths - 2015 9 deaths - 2016 15 deaths - 2017

These #'s include single deaths from suicides and random shootings that happen in parking lots of colleges with single deaths.

July to July. School shootings as a subset of all mass shootings. It's cherry picking statistics to make the number of gun deaths seem as small as possible.

The whole year of 2016 only has 2 more deaths than OP said.

A school year is generally August to June, so to make it a full year, OP added a month on each side.

And gun deaths is misleading. In 2016(?) there were 30,000 gun deaths, but 20,000 of those were suicides. Also, op is only talking about school shootings b/c of yesterday. So no, its not cherry picking to exclude mass shootings outside of schools if you are talking about schools shootings.

Yes. It is cherry picking. People don’t get upset after school shootings, people get upset about mass shootings and the general amount of deaths caused by guns in our country.

It would be relevant if OP compares deaths from school shootings to death from overdoses on campus.

The fact that OP is bringing up stats about school shootings right now, while not including the school shooting that literally just happened, is cherry picking for sure.

No... people are agitated to be upset about it by MSM coverage for juicy shooting ratings.

Most people would never even hear about a shooting in their area because there aren't any. Compared to deaths from stuff like drugs, road accidents, sugar/corn syrup induced diabetes/heart disease, deaths from mass murderers are tiny, yet they receive outsized coverage because they're exciting.

Do you have a source for that last bit, about most shooters being on antidepressants? Not trying to refute it, I just struggled to find a concise one.

I’m sure at least some of the drug overdoses were suicdies too

The "mass shootings" statistics often quoted are far worse and include stupid shit like paintball and bb guns where inanimate objects were shot and nobody was injured

And the "18 school shootings so far this year" include 3rd grade student reaching into a police officers holster and hitting the trigger... They are calling a legally armed law enforcement officer having an accidental discharge a "school shooting".

Quote from op

The cdc list for drug overdoses listed those dates (July 2016-July 2017) so I used the same dates for school shooting DEATHS

I don't think your numbers are quite correct, here is a link that lists deaths and injuries in school shootings by month: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/15/us/school-shootings-sandy-hook-parkland.html

My numbers are accurate. NYTimes is saying 138 deaths since 2012 including 2018.

138 deaths in six years and you motherfuckers are crying foul? That's an insanely low number. I wonder if MSM tells everyone this?

I mean in all honesty it should be zero. Zero people should be shot and killed at school.

idk. if a dangerous criminal enters a school, I believe he should be shot.

This isn't a fairy tale. Shit happens.

Impossible

That's not only cherry picking months, that's cherry picking only school shootings.

well, at least he also cherry picked only opioid overdoses

It is only a bad shooting if it is at a school, the other shootings do not matter.

It is hallowed ground like in Highlander.

There can be only one....type of shooting, that is bad

We could designate safe areas like in some games of tag.

Can't shoot me I am on the steps!

dark

The majority of them are police and self-defense shootings.

I hear what you are saying, but can you also agree that if you added up all of the mass shooting victims over the year that it still would fall considerable short of 60k?

You're right, but it's still not completely a good comparison because the gun deaths were caused totally by others.

good point.

It's still cherry picking. Mass Shootings to overdoses. A specific type of act to a broad type of act. Compare mass shootings to mass suicides/overdoses or compare all shootings to all overdoses. If you did it like that, your numbers fall apart

Definitely.

This timeframe and parameters ignore the pulse nightclub shooting.

Your stats show it's cherry picking. OP could have went with 9 in 2016 or 15 in 2017 but instead found the lowest 12 month period.

Ok cherry pick the worst the , 42 deaths vs 67,000.

The point is still just as valid.

No the point is not valid. Even if you tried a better comparison which would be the amount of drug related deaths in schools versus gun related deaths in schools you still miss the most important factor. Gun deaths involve innocent bystanders, While drug overdoses involved participants who made a choice and by making that choice excepted a certain amount of risk.

Oh, so you don’t understand the opioid epidemic at all.

Ok cherry pick the worst the , 42 deaths vs 67,000.

No,- the worst would be deaths by shootings vs. forced overdoses at schools.

Did you not understand what I had said?

I did. OP compared two completly different data sets.

Did you understand me though? You know I’m not op right?

That’s school shootings. It is cherry picking. So shootings don’t matter when it’s not a school? How about movie theaters? Concerts? Churches? Gun violence is a real threat, but the person that made this post has a specific agenda and is basically saying gun control isn’t a priority in the US

Your claiming there is 15 deaths TOTAL, from ALL shootings that took place on a school. ANY school, elementary-college?

I have no source, but i just find that so hard to believe, just in sheer numbers.

According to the census report for 2017 there were 74.6 MILLION students across america!!!!

I mean there wete probably 15 deaths from students tripping and hitting there head in schools...

Shootings dont always hit MSM. just local news if small, 1 or 2 deaths.

Huh I don’t see a year with seven???

So when OP said seven deaths between July 2016-2017, he was cherry picking the data.

Regardless of this fact, his point remains valid.

OP replied here with their reason for the odd choice of presenting the data.

this says that one person killed 26 people in a school shooting in 2016. So where are your numbers coming from and how accurate are they?

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Where did you get those numbers? Been looking for a source forever

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/15/us/school-shootings-sandy-hook-parkland.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States

Well, the cherry-picking is isolating school shootings, as if they are the only times people are killed by guns in the US.

It's extremely easy to believe.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States

Can you explain why you aren't using the figure for mass shooting deaths?

Don't cherry pick your data and don't try to make this shit about manufacturers.

The cdc list for drug overdoses listed those dates (July 2016-July 2017) so I used the same dates for school shooting DEATHS

Why didn't you just used overdoses in the school age bracket?

Yea seems that there are some morons in that sub here

Specifically ‘school’. I guess compare to opiate deaths in schools then?

This is a dumb comparison but Pharma companies should be held accountable as well.

By the same logic, the family of people who kill themselves off tall building should be able to sue the builder of the building right? Good ole liberal logic.

Kind of a bad analogy since ut is suicide, not mass murder, and if every few weeks someone new used the building to jump to his death landing on and killing others, the building owner sure as heck going to be sued. You can sue an owner for slippery floors!

If people started OD'ing en mass in schools like that the school would be accused of running a magic suicide cult rather than anything be done about Opiates.

They’d have an assembly! Geeze man. Assemblies fix everything, dontchaknow!

And a PEP RALLY!

BE! EXCITED! B-E! EXCITED!

To be fair, our local elementary school held a pep rally, and the Eagles won the Superbowl.

Come to New England. It's basically happening already. No one gives a shit because politicians get money from the pharma companies.

The AG in MA unilaterally banned AR-15s after pulse nightclub, citing the 7 deaths by rifle in the previous decade. Meanwhile around that maybe people die of opiate overdoses every few days here and nothing is being done about it other than shoveling more tax dollars toward bloated rehab programs that don't do shit to begin with. All this while every hospital in the state pumps everyone full of painkillers and antidepressants for every little fucking thing and then we gasp and wonder why everyone's on heroin.

Im in CT and the gun laws are crazy. I am currently getting my pistol permit and had to pay $150 for a 10 hr class, $15 for finger prints, $75 to the town, $150 for my permit and I think there were some other fees too. Oh I also have to wait 8 weeks to get my background check done. I have already waited 3 weeks and I have to go get my fingerprints done again because they fucked them up. Meanwhile, my friend got prescribed adderall by literally filling out a self evaluation for circling the amount you are effected by symptoms. It just pisses me off how easy these drugs are to get meanwhile an upstanding citizen and student has to fucking dish money out just for the FREEdom to buy a gun.

You sound appropriately inconvenienced to me. Waiting less the 3 months and spending $400 to pay for the process is crazy to you?

I get that you probably don't literally mean that but c'mon dude, you should be happy to do your part in maintaining national security by going through the process.

Making it harder for mentally unwell people to get guns will decrease the likelyhood of a shooting. A mentally unwell person is less likely than a person who is responsible enough to own a gun to be able to go through the process you described.

Comparing guns and drugs how you are is not useful.

You should be pissed of that potentially dangerous medication is prescribed at a criminally negligent level. And you should advocate for gun laws similar to yours.

you should you should

I can just imagine who you voted for - to have such a cavalier authoritarian attitude. You don't seem to understand - no you don't seem capable of understanding, that all the law is doing is making it harder and longer for a good person to protect their family. Any person not wanting to go through that simply won't.

No, I don't think there should be no laws - yes I think they should be regulated. But the buck has been passed too far towards the law abiding citizen precisely BECAUSE it hasn't been done towards mental health.

You're not going to like this either but I voted for Jill Stein. I know, she's the image of authority.

I think you're right that in some places gun rights are unjustly restricted as a result of politicians taking the easy route of throwing out some "feel good" ineffective and inconvenience.

But the fact that tackling the mental health aspect is ignored doesn't logically imply that more restrictive gun laws will reduce avoidable gun deaths.

And you don't get to say what the effect of a law will be. You don't know because no one does. We can only make reasonable changes and see what happens. It's way too complex of a system to talk about how you are.

"But they'll still get what they want" Yeah, alright. How is that going to work? Imagine an insane person.

They can either get the gun legally and easily for a fair cost or have to find a criminal contact who would sell them a gun for a big price increase.

Guns are not drugs. There is not nearly enough willing illegal gun users to support this idea that some random crazy guy could buy a gun as easily as some weed.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I live in a bad neighborhood, I have "criminal contacts", I can buy an unmarked (no SN) glock for less than 400 FROM the fucking guy I buy weed from. And he's making a profit, so clearly he's getting them for less.

I believe that to be unusual. I live in Chicago, know many drug dealers (not just weed either, hard stuff). None of them sell guns.

I can definitely drive a half hour over the border into Indiana and, even with a head full of acid, could buy an AK off one of the many private sellers walking around with them. They won't even ask me for ID. Just cash.

Yeah. Because all of that leads us to believe that you are a good person. /S

Because all of that leads us to believe that you are a good person

Gave up trying to convince even myself of that long ago.

Where do you live that people nonchalantly peddle rifles up and down the street?

Should have been clearer. I can drive 30 minutes into Indiana and go to a gun show where there will, easily, be 50 people milling around with assault weapons ready to sell them to people no questions asked.

I've bought weapons at gun shows, literally, blacked out drunk with no ID.

I love that bullshit term... Assault weapon. So scary.

As for being blacked out drunk, I’m surprised they let you in. But if they actually did, then that’s illegal. Private-party transfers between states still legally require background check. That’s on them for not checking your ID.

I've done this several times in a couple neighboring states. No one's asked me where I was from, my ID, if I was sane, American, nothing. They asked if I had the money, then gave me the gun.

I refer to mine as my rifle. I'm very pro-gun.

Just because you could get a gun illegally doesn't mean most people could.

When I was first licensed in GA it cost me $42, I was fingerprinted and had a background check done and received my permit in 5 working days. At my renewal time they had contracted out the printing of permits to the private sector. It cost me $72 and it was 6 weeks to receive my new card. Way to go on the privatizing to make government more efficient and cheaper Georgia!

I wish there was reddit coal or something stronger than a downvote that I could give you for your ignorance

Yeah the process really didn’t sound that terrible to go through.

Ever heard of the Constitution? Judging by your post, I'm assuming not.

Ever heard of making well thought out and well researched decisions in the context of your current situation rather than relying on a law that was made for people 300 years ago when guns were dramatically weaker than today?

I still believe in making guns available to responsible owners, isn't that enough?

Those gun laws are not crazy.

Do you still get a gun after all of this? Yes. Then it's not crazy.

ULPT - get script for drugs, sell on the street, recoup enough dough to buy a gun AND pay for permits and fees!

Maybe this makes me a bad person but if I went to buy a gun and they told me they thought that I shouldn’t be allowed to own one, I would have one by that evening. And I’m not a criminal. Imagine it’s even easier for criminals to find guns.

most of the criminally-used guns in MA come from NH, which to me demonstrates the incredible bad-faith and bad logic of the "states rights" arguments on both of these issues.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-laws-stop-at-state-lines-but-guns-dont/

This is such an ignored point.

I disagree with adding laws that prevent people from getting the medication they need. Perhaps stricter control around manufacturing or something, but mental health already carries a huge stigma that causes people who could use the help to shy away from getting it, and making it harder to get help will make the problem worse

reply to the wrong comment?

Yep lol my bad

Yeah my bad lol

That’s what the ATF is for.

I'm not sure what you are suggesting. Border Checks between states on every road?

I'm saying that solutions need to be federal level because we can't build walls and stuff around states.

Come to New England. It's basically happening already.

Phoning in from Maine here, they're really playing down how severe the crisis is here. I'm pretty sure my area has more junkies than dogs. I saw two guys carrying a passed out woman through the center of town at noon on a sunday, and nobody batted an eye. There are so many used needles on my street that I've considered bring a broom while walking my dog.

I don't know what the solution is, but we have a major problem. Fortunately, my state at least respects my right to arm myself.

You comments regarding narcotic pain medication is utterly, completely false. I know you don't want to be an ignorant person who makes claims of which you know nothing, correct?

I'm pretty sure colleges don't have to report suicide numbers on campus, which is thought to be a pretty big issue.

Yeah a suicide cult seems like a perfectly logical assumption

Probably start enforcing dress codes and banning rock music.

My friends were dying from Heroin overdoses back before this "opiate" crisis. Doctors got my dad hooked on oxy, but wont give me a fucking naproxen. MAKE DRUGS LEGAL.

Yeah, that actually sounds like something they would do...

And let's sue Tide for people eating laundry detergent. And let's sue breweries, vineyards, and distilleries for drunk driving. And let's sue McDonald's for fat people. And let's sue construction companies and municipalities for people that commit suicide by jumping off bridges. And let's sue car manufacturers for drive-by shootings. And let's sue spray paint manufacturers for graffiti. And let's sue chalkboard manufacturers and nail salons for screeching noises.

I'm gonna get a patent, and then I'm gonna sue your balls off!

All of those products have legitimate uses besides murder

I have several firearms mostly for the enjoyment of refurbishing them and collecting. Many I have never shot, and I have never hunted an animal in any way. To say that a firearms only purpose is murder is stupid. I'm not going to go out and fucking shoot people with my rifles, I'm going to sit around and rub them down with Rem Oil and hang them over my fireplace and admire them. Lots of people do that. Some people just enjoy them.

To say that a firearms only purpose is murder is stupid

No its not. That is literally what they are made for. No amount of twisted rationale will change that. Your country needs to get a grip. It's the only first world country that has this problem.

How about you just collect replica firearms?

I'm not saying we don't have a problem, but with the same rationale let's ban cars, they're dangerous. Didn't a terrorist ram people with their car in France? And knives, they're dangerous. Wasn't there a recent stabbing in France too? And baseball bats too, they're dangerous. Lots of people get beaten with those.

You can own things and be a responsible adult. The people who do this are not responsible adults. I advocate for strict background checks, mental health checks, a national firearm registry, and strict fines for selling guns illegally / obtaining guns illegally. Also I'm down with banning the AR-15 and I own one of those too. They're enjoyable to shoot. I've never shot one anywhere but a range and I never plan to.

mental health checks

What would that entail?

a national firearm registry

Because those have never once been abused. (Or is it that they have never not been abused...)

strict fines for selling guns illegally / obtaining guns illegally

We already have these!

Also I'm down with banning the AR-15 and I own one of those too.

Lead by example in destroy it.

Mental health checks would entail if a person has ever had a medical history of it. Yes I am aware that not everyone reports it but lots of people have been diagnosed with mental illnesses and don't get treatment and yet buy firearms.

A national firearm registry already sort-of exists with the Federal Firearms Lisence that the federal government has. My father has one. These have extensive background checks as well as a monetary hurdle. I think we should instate a FOID card like system that Illinois has with Mandatory waiting periods for both firearms, ammunitio, and accessories. Make gun sellers hand over their buyers list and start soliciting people to enroll, fine them when they don't. Increase the fines stupidly, and garnish wages. They'll comply eventually. You're not removing their rights to own guns so they can't bitch about the second amendment.

It's not perfect but I believe that we as a nation need to be more accountable and responsible when it comes to firearms. Mandatory education classes, education on fines and penalties for law breaking to everyone who purchases them.

Also we need better accountability to parents and their children. Obviously something was mentality wrong with the Florida shooter. Was anything done about it? We know he was reported multiple times to law enforcement and yet had guns. How did that happen? Where is HIS accountability as a person? As an adult, who votes in this country? How did he end up that way? Was he unable to afford care because sickness = bankruptcy in this country?

Mental health checks would entail if a person has ever had a medical history of it. Yes I am aware that not everyone reports it but lots of people have been diagnosed with mental illnesses and don't get treatment and yet buy firearms.

NIH said there is no evidence to suggest that those diagnosed with mental illness are any more dangerous than the general public.

A national firearm registry already sort-of exists with the Federal Firearms Lisence that the federal government has.

That is only for dealers, not for individual gun sales.

I think we should instate a FOID card like system that Illinois has with Mandatory waiting periods for both firearms, ammunitio, and accessories.

What purpose does a waiting period serve? At best, maybe someone is delayed long enough to change their mind about a shooting (though most of them plan it for months) and at worst, someone who needs it now will not be able to protect themselves because they were waiting.

Make gun sellers hand over their buyers list and start soliciting people to enroll, fine them when they don't. Increase the fines stupidly, and garnish wages. They'll comply eventually. You're not removing their rights to own guns so they can't bitch about the second amendment.

Removing and infringing are two different words. To infringe is to act so as to limit or undermine. Waiting periods, mandatory registration and fines for non compliance wouldn't be an infringement?

Also we need better accountability to parents and their children. Obviously something was mentality wrong with the Florida shooter. Was anything done about it? We know he was reported multiple times to law enforcement and yet had guns. How did that happen?

I agree. Something was up and someone should have been able to see the signs. I think it would be helpful for people to figure out what the signs are, so everyone knows what to look for.

Those items you have listed have other purposes, guns do not, unless you're talking about a Galil bottle opener or something. Guns shoot bullets out that harm fleshy beings, nothing else. Cars have a purpose of transporting you to a location, sure they can be used for bad purposes but that is not their only purpose.

Harming fleshy beings is a legitimate reason. Some fleshy beings decide they want to come harm you. Maybe they're some tweaker looking for their next fix or maybe they want to oppress you via a totalitarian regime. Or maybe those fleshy beings are deer out in the woods and you need to feed your family.

Must suck to live in a country where you always think someone is coming to murder you

I don't think somebody is coming to murder me, but statistically, at least one person is coming to murder somebody else right now. I don't even have a gun, but I'm not about to tell people that they can't protect themselves from the violence that we all know exists out there in the world. People have a natural right to defend themselves from aggression. There are also some good arguments that the social contract with government can only be assured if people can hold their government to its promises, which would ultimately need to be backed by the threat of force in extreme circumstances.

Let them man pretend that violence just doesn't happen and having means of defending yourself is stupid. He probably thinks we're both gun nuts when in reality I'm just a collector who's not even shot half of my collection (one had its 100th birthday last year!) and you sound like a reasonable dude.

Also I know several people who hunt for their own meat because it's cheaper that way. Would we ban hunting rifles and shot guns as well? This is America where low income assistance is a joke and some people "make too much money" to get help. What about those people? Just no meat? No food for them?

Absolutely; I have family that hunt their own meat because it's cheaper. Meat is expensive.

let's ban cars, they're dangerous

But they aren't made for murder a firearm is.

Yes I would like a small m&m vanilla McFlurry please

That’s exactly the point he’s trying to make

I assume he's trying to say that people are responsible not the product.

The difference between all of the above is that they have uses beyond murder.

Self-defense, hunting, sports, and resitance to tyranny aren't legitimate uses?

If he thinks that guns are only used to murder people you might as well save your effort. You're not going to reason a person like that from their position.

Either you are advocating for unarmed police and military, or you are calling police officers and soldiers murderers...

I understand the need for an armed response unit but Frontline police shouldn't carry firearms.

So that they are just pay phones who call the real police when we need help?

Try look at how england does it.

Yes, the police are pay phones who call the armed police to clean up when everything is over.

So do opiates and guns.

Whst use do firearms have besides murder?

Shooting targets. Shooting deer. Shooting home invaders. Shooting Gestapo or Stasi agents.

So murder?

Clearly you can't read or don't understand the definition of "murder".

So you prefer to maim, rather than kill?

"Kill" doesn't mean "murder". Actually, I would prefer not to maim or kill. I don't like violence. However, if someone is going to harm me or other innocent people, I would prefer to stop the threat in whatever way requires the least risk to innocent people. That's usually killing.

Good old vigilante justice. The corner stone of a healthy society.

Do you not understand the difference between vigilante justice and self-defense?

How is it that the rest of the civilised world works just fine without the need for readily available firearms?

Remove all warning labels and watch Darwinian wonders happen.

I don't think the kind of people who warning labels are intended for will read warning labels, anyway.

Well then someone must be reading them to them, because they're still breeding and reproducing.

well, one on hand, guns are being used by one person to kill other people against their will. On the other hand I bet the people overdosing are aware of the inherent risks, and are not harming others in the process.

Working with troubled teens on a regular basis I can assure you that many teenagers at least are not aware of many of the risks involved, and the harm it causes hurts more than just them. That's teens though

I hope one day you have a better understanding of addiction. I'm not absolving all people of their own choices, but it isn't as simple as, well at least they knew the risks. It's important to have some empathy in this crazed world.

Doctors aren't even fully aware of the risks of prescription opiates, yet you think random addicts are?

Let's go back to reality.

Companies that advertise their products as safe should b held responsible, such as Purdue Pharma, who advertised OxyContin as safe. They are basically legal drug dealers.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

Thank you for sending me the article, it’s quite interesting, and it confirms what I already (thought I) knew

Advertising for any medicine is illegal in many European countries, and for a good reason. Why do should you have the need to watch ads if Doctors already know what's good for you?

This moves the problem to the doctors, that's why there are strict rules for doctors receiving gifts from Pharma companies and such as well.

Americans have a problem with trusting authority, unless they are getting paid.

Blame the doctors too. They push drugs all the time people dont even need. I watched my dad fight opium addiction for 10 years. I think it even had something to do with his passing. He would go to pain doctor after pain doctor giving him oxycontins and oxycodone. Its an awful cycle, even my dad used them right at first but it caught him and my mom for a little while. Watching my dad break his ribs on purpose and calling the ambulance and telling them he fell was just heartbreaking. It turned him into a nother person. He didnt take them to get high, he actualy needed them at first ,He was burried in a ditch that collapesd in on him and ge was bed riddrn for a year. But it spiraled into something more. Its just an awful thing to deal with weather it be the user or the people around them.

Doctors get lobbied just like senators

This is a disgusting use of cherry picking data. Sure only 7 people died in schools in 2016-2017, but you completely ignore the other 15094 people who died via firearms in 2016 and 15590 in 2017.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls This data was checked yesterday. I assume they're making sure their data is correct because of increased traffic to their website during this time.

Seriously, you guys need gun control. Why can you not accept this? This is completely mental to me. I live in Australia and my brother owns a shotgun and a few lower caliber rifles for pest control. All it took was time and patience to get these weapons, none of which you idiots seem to have. I've also never bore witness to a shooting in public (or private), ever... How many Americans can claim the same? I'd love to see those stats.

The vast majority of he American public has never witnessed gun violence. Per capita comparatively against the rest of the planet the USA is barely above average for gun deaths.

I can't find accurate or up to date average statistics. Can you provide them? Wikipedia's data is all over the place. And other websites only compare USA vs the rest of the developed world and America has violence twice as bad as the next country below which is Finland.

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/United-Kingdom/United-States/Crime

Murders with firearms per million 32.57 Ranked 10th. 138 times more than United Kingdom.

That's far above average. Data appears to be from either 2006 or 2011.

Per capita against the rest of the planet is barely above average by around a point. Comparing a country that allows guns and one that doesn’t is cherry picking

I wasn't comparing countries or cherry picking anything. That was you comparing America vs the UKs statistics.

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/United-Kingdom/United-States/Crime

America is literally ranked the 10th worst country in the world for gun violence homicides and is literally the only developed country in that top 10. But all the statistics are out of date, so it could be worse or better.

Yes but there is no reason to do that as it provides you with 0 meaningful data. It would be like comparing electrical deaths in the USA vs a country with no electricity.

So you think the UK and USA gun violence statistics cannot be compared because the UK has gun control? What a bullshit argument.

The UK, Australia have guns in the hands of the public, just less of them, because you need a reason to own a gun in these countries. Unlike in America, you can literally walk into a store and buy a gun, a lethal weapon, over the counter, no questions asked, no license required (driving a car, which is also a weapon, requires a license, why not a gun?). Guns in the hands of unstable people who might be angry at someone for petty reasons, or brainwashed with dangerous ideology (like the guy in this shooting).

You can't just keep allowing the public to so easily acquire lethal weapons.

You also need a license to watch television in the UK. Some countries are free and some aren’t. Guns aren’t going to change here because the majority don’t want it to.

It's not a license, it's a tax. Your ignorance and weird line of thinking scares me. They just require everyone to pay a tax to offset costs of the BBC.

Hahahaha, what?

Comparing a country that allows guns and one that doesn’t is cherry picking

So what you're saying is gun control works. Glad we got that sorted out.

Seriously, you guys need gun control. Why can you not accept this?

Because the majority of homicides are gang related or drug related and confined to a few highly populated areas. It makes no sense to impose huge regulations on such a massive country in hopes that it will stop criminals in a few urban areas.

I've also never bore witness to a shooting in public (or private), ever... How many Americans can claim the same?

The vast vast vast majority of them. Have you ever been to America, or are you judging your opinions on sensationalized news broadcasts that are plumped up to improve ratings?

You do realize that criminals exist in other countries as well, yet, somehow those countries don't have people shooting each other in those rates?

Well I think we have a few issues. First, high homicide rates coincide almost perfectly with racial minority concentrations and very well with poverty. As a start, most of those countries are almost entirely European. Blacks make up 3.5% of the population in the UK, 1.6% in Australia, 1.42% in Ireland, 1% in Sweden and Finland, vs 13% in the US. So considering the violence is centered around these groups, and most other countries don't have these groups, that explains enough of the violence to get the US on par or below the rest of the world.

So considering the violence is centered around these groups, and most other countries don't have these groups, that explains enough of the violence to get the US on par or below the rest of the world.

Yeah, you've got a violence/gun problem on top of a racism problem on top of the social problem - doesn't really change the fact that you've got a gun problem. Because e.g. mass shootings ain't a racial minority problem and those also mostly happen in the US.

Racial minorities aren't just blacks. Those European countries have huge Muslim/Arab population.

Leaving that aside, what is your solution for the gun violence issue in the US? Do you agree there is an issue, correct?

Is giving someone the liberty to take their own life really giving them liberty or taking it away? If our goal is to preserve life and liberty occasionally we have to fight against the freedom to destroy one's own liberties.

People in my town die every day from opioids and other drugs, and people just say "it happens"

It happens because we let it happen. They are victims to those facilitating dangerous product to feed addictions for their own gain. It makes them money, which to them is more valuable than the lives of those they sell to. For the victims, I can say from experience, they are indoctrinated daily in our schools to believe drugs are fun and cool, and we do very little to stop that indoctrination.

We would be fools if we said that drugs we're not as dangerous as guns

Maybe this doesn't apply to the US, but here in Australia our last mass shooting was in the 90s. Then the government passed extremely strict laws on firearms.

And since the law’s passage, there has not been a single mass shooting in Australia.

Before all this we had a mass shooting about every two years or so.

Why wouldn't these same laws be applicable to the US in order to reduce the number of mass shootings?

The government bought back some 600k firearms, and destroyed them all.

That's tyranny.

... but um, no more mass shootings is the point here. We are all entitled to our opinions, but we aren't entitled to our own facts. The fact is, no more mass shootings.

There are still guns, but it's much harder for a 19 year old to gain access to one.

Some Americans can’t get past the fact that the amendment they’re standing by was written over 200 years ago and that things have changed.

There is also a process for changing that 200 year old amendment. Why don't they do that?

Because everyone who’s against it is going to continue doing their best to stop it. Gun restrictions don’t take away the right to own guns, and I have no clue why people seem to think they do. Just like Jim Crow laws and other voting restrictions didn’t violate the 15th, they just made the process harder.

Gun restrictions don’t take away the right to own guns

The amendment doesn't say take away, it says infringe. Americans have the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, the government is specifically restricted from doing anything that would act so as to limit or undermine that.

Just like Jim Crow laws and other voting restrictions didn’t violate the 15th, they just made the process harder.

Didn't most of them get overturned for violating the 15th?

Jim Crow laws were overturned in 1964 by the Civil Rights act.

And I guess you’re right about the wording of the second amendment. Still though, how people can care more about that then the fact that lives are being lost is beyond me.

The lives being lost are damn few, and there are many solutions that are being ignored, because they don't meet the goal, which is restrictions on guns. The conversation is never "How can we improve this." its "When will we be allowed to restrict guns." I have a plan that I think would help, at the very least, make a difference.

End gun free zones. All they do is disarm law abiding concealed carriers, who are statistically more law abiding than police, who are allowed to carry. Force any school shooter to confront the idea that someone might very well shoot back.

Decriminalize drugs. The war on drugs helps no one. Addiction is a disease, not a crime. Legalize marijuana and tax it, funnel the money into healthcare (of all kinds, not just mental health, people need help). This will also hit gangs hard since drug sales are usually their main source of income.

Start outreach programs for students who are struggling. They need to know someone is there to help, and that they aren't at it all alone.

Seal records of most felons. When they get out of prison, they have served their time and repayed their debt to society. As long as their crime was non-violent (and a few others), we gain nothing by making them report it when trying to get a job, and then they end up either right back in crime, or right back in jail.

Encourage media outlets to stop sensationalizing mass murder. We know there are individuals out there with the necessary conditions to commit mass murder. Research suggests the media reports (some of them like a damn scoreboard) inspire more shooters, as well as teach them how to carry our their shooting better.

All options that I would be good money would cost significantly less, wouldn't violate anyone's rights, and solve multiple problems at a time, instead of just making one of the tools harder to get.

I agree with ending gun free zones and decriminalizing drugs, but for different reasons. Gun free zones are only ineffective because you can leave the area and just bring a gun back, they really are a complete waste of time. And a persons drug use won’t directly kill or harm other people around him, so I don’t see why that isn’t just a personal choice, albeit a harmful one. All we can do is offer help, and if they decide that they wanna kill themselves and keep using drugs, that’s their choice.

Outreach programs are a good idea, but they don’t necessarily work unless the student tells someone that they need help, or they ask for it themselves, and although I guess they might still be useful, they require the student of their parents to request the help first.

I also agree with the fact that the media should stop sensationalizing mass murder, but there isn’t really anything we can do to legally prevent that without infringing on the first amendment.

Sealing the records of felons is a very touchy thing, but assuming that the crime or situation which caused it (at the discretion of a court), was of good reason, I wouldn’t be against it.

The thing with all of these is, as smart and useful as they are, is that it’s still possible that one traumatized kid might get through all of these things, buy a gun, and kill someone.

Gun restrictions have been proven to work in almost every other first world country, and the only reason America can’t move forward with them, is the Second Amendment. People like to compare guns to cars and knives and other stuff, but the thing is that those things serve other important purposes. They weren’t intended for killing. A gun does one thing, and that is kill, so why people are so determined to defend their right to kill is beyond me.

no it's freedom from being fucking murdered.

Call what you want, it is what it is.

nah. there's a reason your country is the one with all the fucked up school shootings and shit. the rest of us are quite happy with having reasonable restrictions on assault rifles and such. then again, we're all big fans of our universal health care systems too, which you seem not to be into. you guys are kinda on your own on the guns and the health thing. so i guess.. uh... good luck?

The health care system is clearly shit here. I never said otherwise, I just don't agree with gun control.

If you use the definition for mass shootings that the US likes to, you have had several mass shootings since.

Why wouldn't these same laws be applicable to the US in order to reduce the number of mass shootings?

For starters, there is scale. It would require confiscation of 60-80 million guns here which would either cost a fortune we don't have, or require repealing 2 constitutional amendments. They can't possibly get the votes, and the Supreme Court has several rulings stating the same laws would be unconstitutional here. Not sure if you know how our laws work, but if the Supreme Court says they are not constitutional, they are null and void.

The government bought back some 600k firearms, and destroyed them all.

They confiscated them. I guarantee they didn't pay full value, and it wasn't optional. That's not a buyback.

I agree. The accountability from any manufacturer is non existent. Now they're going after doctors who prescribe too much and patients who need their meds and the manufacturers get off scot free, if anything they'll be fined a couple of million dollars while raking in hundreds of billions per year. They win. Ethics clearly doesn't exist in the corporate world anymore.

I believe this is a bigger issue than guns. Walk around any metro area and tell me what you see more of? In Brooklyn it's flooded with drug addicts looking for a way to get their pills, most of them don't have guns, they would hock it immediately.

A few kids were killed yesterday, how many people died from an overdose or accidental overdose? The only reason everyone is up in arms about this shit is because it's muh children so they try to guilt you into feeling bad. Watch what is going to happen now. Schools are going to have cameras everywhere, police in and around schools, students arrested for "acting out" just look at this sub crying like bitches to further the police state, now imagine the rest of the docile country.

People choose to use opiods and drugs. No one chooses to be shot in the head while studying.

People are forced and coerced to use opioids and drugs. In states like Colorado, "you can't use medicinal Marijuana and be a patient here, instead take these 30mg oxycontin. They're not addictive." That's how it starts.

When drawing a comparative stat in a timeline it’s best to choose the largest example period to make the point. This way nobody can say data was cherry picked.

It's the individuals fault.

Is that you mario

Wasn’t Hitler that took everybody’s weapons before becoming the piece of shit he was?
I guess nowadays it takes planning mass murders of innocent people to convince people to do the same.

That's actually kind of an optimistic note. At least we've learned enough from history that our emotions have to be dramatically manipulated to sucker us into giving up our defenses against tyranny. And even then there's strong resistance.

It's amusing that the only people jockeying for this are people who already voluntarily forgo owning a firearm.

Exactly. I’ve never seen such blatant support for authoritarianism before in this sub.

A CONSPIRACY sub.

Most dictators in history start by disarming their population. It is a lot harder to control a country that is well armed.

Quite the opposite. Gun laws were very strict in Germany before Hitler rose to power, and he loosened regulations for "good, law-abiding citizens" (Nazis), while still banning Jews from owning guns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_theory

If gun manufacturers should be held responsible for the actions of their products, why not opiate manufacturers?

[Raises hand]

Because you can't fight back against a Deep State shadow government by throwing prescription drugs at them?

Michigan and other states and municipalities are in a lawsuit against a few pharmaceutical companies for their pushing opioids on the general public. So yes. They very well may be legally held responsible.

Oh yeah, fine them $100 million while they keep their hundred billion dollar profits. That'll teach them. They should be fined based on profits, take 70% and see shit get done.

Do u know how legal precedent works? If they successfully sue the companies and hold them liable, then if the companies continue the practice, they'd be liable for any other damages that result from those practices. Once you say "you can't do that" it behooves the company to change their practices.

Where did you get that number? It's a pending lawsuit.

More far-right slanted bullshit getting upvoted in r/conspiracy. Surprise surprise. Sad what happened to this sub.

You don't have to be on the right to support your rights.

Both sides agree we have the right to be safe from being gunned down. But the NRA blood money is corrupting our politicians like usual.

The problem is irresponsible usage. If you use you meds/guns in a responsible manner there should be no worries

So your'e only taking into account school shootings? What about all the other fucking shootings? Fucking dumbass.

Por qué no los dos?

If you're going to make this nonsensical comparison, you'd be better off comparing all shootings in the US versus death from drugs. You can't justify one demon with another, greater one.

Because opiate manufacturers aren’t producing illicit Fentanyl. In addition to the CDC double counting numbers (and coming clean which hasn’t been published mind you as commonly known) as a result contradicts lower script writing, and an overall decline in overdoses attributable to pharmaceutical narcotics since about 2009. Big Pharma knows this and is fighting tooth and nail because they actually tried to fix this problem after the Florida, Kentucky, and West Virginia Pill Mill issues came about. The charts show a completely different story when you compare real numbers vs propaganda to finance Medicaid paid rehab and drug court mandated programs of course created by big PHARMA with drugs like Vivitrol. Look no further than Indiana’s new law. The company actually drafted the laws for the state lol. It’s ridiculous. So now instead of making mills off pills, they’re making $1,000 per shot on the tax payers dime (Medicaid approved rehab drugs), vs what was happening on the insurer’s dime.

Of course deaths reported by medical examiners and labs during this period of time wasn’t specific in the type of narcotic most overdose from outside of a morphine equivalent. When samples have been retested and specific to the drug moving forward they’re finding the typical culprit as an illicit Fentanyl or a mix of alcohol, benzodiazepines, and other drugs where labels specifically say not to mix with the drugs.

At some point you have to blame the largest supplier of street narcotics, the drug cartels, CIA, and of course China - as well as human citizens of the USA, I mean our appetite for drugs is extreme. Meanwhile the DEA, CDC, and Federal Government are blaming the Pharma industry when analysts who study Afghanistan have proven our military involvement was like pouring fertilizer on the illicit Heroin trade, shaking up drug markets - if not the entire reason we where there to start with?

Islamic hardliners (now called ISIS) had actually banned the production of illicit poppy which showed a massive decline in street heroin (forcing a new more powerful drug to take its place) until we showed up relinquishing control back to the farmers actually allowing them to produce even more heroin. When the ideal solution would have been offering a white market for big Pharma, but that’s controlled through countries west of the Middle East - so the black market raged back, and then some, combining Fentanyl, thus a much higher number of overdoses.

Drug cartels realized early on when we fucked up the heroin market is was easier and much more profitable to just mix Fentanyl in with the slighter flow of heroin in turning a profit. Then, realized it was easier to just produce illicit Fentanyl inside the US after shipping from China, through Canada, and down into Chicago for distribution across the US vs the southern border - directly into their market the Midwest and East Coast.

Now they produce Fentanyl based - Xanax, Hydrocodone, Oxy, Roxy, whatevs you want in millions of pills daily right here in the US. About two years ago the DEA noticed an alarming trend. At the border less and less narcotics were coming through, replaced by pill presses and mixing/stepping chemicals to produce dark Pharma lookalikes. Most of the illegal pills going around now are simply Fentanyl look-a-likes as most of the Pharma loose control and slip through narcotics have dried up for the most part outside of Classic markets where it’s distributed via foreign markets and redistributed back to the US.

This is why.

Yes! Right now there are ever-tightening controls on pain medication and legit cancer patients can't find treatment for their pain and ppl with pain conditions are being left to suffer. Meanwhile, the propaganda machine keeps saying the problem is prescription opiates. The main problem in 2018 illicit heroin/fentanyl, NOT prescription opiates.

"Between 2010-2015 opioid overdose deaths in the US increased by 65%, roughly 13,000. And even a cursory examination of Figure 2 shows that increase was entirely due to injectable drugs like heroin or fentanyl."

https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/08/16/heads-sand-—-real-cause-todays-opioid-deaths-11681

Yup. Check out Pharmacist Steve’s blog. He’s the one that called out the CDC. They actually responded and said it was flawed. Which I couldn’t believe. I have an entire database full of research on this topic and working on a book, but you know how that goes;)

Will check it out, thanks. Hope I'm quoting a passage from your book in the near future, but meanwhile how about a post on the topic? Truly one of today's biggest conspiracies.

I did once and here’s what happened: And I’m not a paranoid weirdo.

It was down voted to oblivion even with tons of research linked, quoted, and cited. One of the websites even sent me a DMCA notice of copy-write for quoting their statements and I did so within the bounds of the law at the time.

I got tons of hate mail in my inbox from families who’s children died from overdoses. And it was well written with zero accusations or mean spirited. It was just the truth, backed up with morgue and medical examiner statements and facts about what is tested and when they started actually deciphering drugs, but still to this day only about 1/3 of the largest cities do it, and zero rural communities. It costs too much is always the complaint, but that’s not always true.

My links were then redirected to an Amazon ad virus.

And lastly the sub deleted my post.

Two weeks later I started getting downvotes to every single thing I posted from pics of my dog, to random comments on things that just don’t even matter. So, I deleted that UN and am starting over basically.

Just WOW. Some ppl in groups that advocate for fair medical treatment (that includes access to pain relief) are reporting similar happenings and harassment.

Prescription pill abuse is undeniably a massive problem.

Well of course it is, but we’re not getting the entire story. I can’t deny it wasn’t fueled early on and yes they’re guilty, but at some point you have to see what’s going on now that controls are almost to the point you couldn’t get pain pills if your cancer diagnosis required it.

As someone in chronic severe pain that is sick of being treated as an addict and denied pain relief, thank you for what you do.

As someone in chronic severe pain that is sick of being treated as an addict and denied pain relief, thank you for what you do.

The pont that everyone omits and/or misses is that guns, shootings, and drugs are just symptoms, and not the real issue at play here.

Until we stop telling people to suck it up, and start tackling emotional/psycological issues as seriously as they deserve, all of this will keep happening.

No real conspiracy here folks, just a lot of peoople seeing what is more profitable.

What about the Droid attack on the wookies?

Guns kill people in more places than just schools.

Gun manufacturers are legally BARRED from any lawsuits against them for the use of their products.

Pharmaceutical companies SHOULD be culpable.

I don't get your framing at all, and your misuse of the numbers (narrowed down to school shootings alone) is bizarre.

Look nobody is denying that drug addiction kills, cancer kills, knives kill. These are valid discussions to have. It just looks like a desperate attempt to change the subject. People want to talk about guns right now. For very good reasons.

You have to lower the death count across the board by percentage all at once or it irritates his OCD.

Why not both?

How many of those were in schools?

Probably a lot if schools around the country are stocking up on Narcan and trying to pass legislature.

Who blames the gun manufacturer?

I agree. Idk how you could.

Blaming the manufacturer is the same as blaming the gun instead of blaming the person or the society that drove them to it or the antidepressants that cause homicidal thoughts every school shooter has been on.

Gun manufacturers shouldn’t be blamed in the first place, they do sell a product that is needed by a lot of people (hunting etc). But people who aren’t directly affected but want to seem like they care don’t have anyone to blame so they pick the next thing they haven’t, and thus why gun manufacturers are blamed.

Let's be honest, other than maybe wild boars and the occasional backcountry people, nobody actually needs to hunt.

Hunting provides a shit ton of meat for little cash. Deer tags are usually under $20 for in-state rates. There are plenty people that can live on wild game without needing to pay our livestock industry for their courtesy

My state forestry service says without hunting, deer populations would quickly overwhelm most forests leading to ecological collapse, and that without that population control, we could expect between 5 and 10 times as many animal related traffic fatalities.

You are actually correct I did forget about that. But it will just amend my statement instead of change it because whenever our local parks have deer problems they have hunters kill deer but they are limited to bows only. So my statement is now very few people actually need to hunt with guns.

It’s not just for necessity, it’s a sport too

Yeah I'm sure grenade throwing would be a fun sport too but nobody is complaining that it's illegal.

Im not advocating the way gun laws are now, I’m just saying people will rebel to any industry online if they believe that people will thinks they’re doing good for it

Both should

Only one of them has legislation explicitly and specifically protecting them from liability though (hint: it's not the pharmaceutical industry)

Only one of those is "death by choice", supposedly... Plus money.

Drug users kill themselves. Gun users kill other people. And besides that, opioids actually serve another purpose besides killing things. Guns are for one thing only, and that is to shoot and kill things.

Secondly, gun manufacturers shouldn’t be held responsible, the person who shot should. All we need to do is create stricter gun laws and regulation. Almost every first world country has them, and almost every first world country that has them, has no where near as many problems. The problem is clear, the answer is clear, and the only thing standing in the way is people who stand by a 230 year old amendment.

Who can forget when the mass doser burst into a school and forced every kid to take opiates.

I guess you never been to a VA clinic.

Are VA clinics in schools?

The mass provider forced the prescriptions to be for drugs they made extra addictive. There are still victims and "shooters"(Big Pharma) in the opiate situation.

At the moment, neither is held responsible. Though suing a physician, hospital, or drug manufacturer seems more likely.

But I like the way that the poster limited the number of gun deaths by focusing it so narrowly. It's like only counting the number of opioid deaths that were deliberate murders by physicians.

I'm surprised only school shootings would be used as a comparison to overall drug overdoses between that period of time. There were 38,000 gun related deaths in 2016 of which 11,000 were murders.

Does that include the 963 gun related murders by police?

pharmaceuticals are not a common murder weapon however many deaths they cause

Ar15s aren't a common murder weapon either, but that doesn't stop us from pouring millions of dollars into trying to ban them.

270 people are murdered with all types of rifles combined on average per year in the US.

True but at the same time more mass shootings are committed with AR-15s than other weapons.

Neither are AR15s. https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/

Rifles as a category are 7th, ranked behind knives, fists, and blunt objects, yet the media message is "WE MUST BAN AR15s TO SAVE TEH CHILDREN".

Yeah I agree, let's keep doing nothing, that'll work

Why not both?

Opioids are heavily regulated. The death toll would be insanely higher without those controls.

Why not both?!

Both should be.

Doesn't fit the narrative.

Here is a good segment on that. I never really thought of the distributors being a major problem to this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/30/581930051/drug-distributors-shipped-20-8-million-painkillers-to-west-virginia-town-of-3-00

Well doesn't Freedom (TM) mean you have a right to anything you want?

The desire to have guns and drugs are both fanned by the people who benefit from it.

Easy: big pharma funds pretty much every news station. Ever watch Fox/CNN/ABC/NBC/etc.? Notice how every other commercial is trying to sell you this pill or that pill?

Those are the sponsors that control the puppets that come on during the programming.

For the same reason gun manufactures aren't held accountable for suicides.

Por que no los dos?

There is around 10,000 gun-related homicides a year in the US. This is not including the all the people who commit suicide or accidentally kill themselves with firearms.

There is around 65,000 opioid related deaths each year in the US.

This does not detract from the bullshit that was the title of this post.

Lol this is going to be old news within a week. Remember the Vegas shooting? 400 fucking people shot and that shit was swept under the rug within 2-3 weeks.

Because it would involve taking down a ton of high profile doctors as well. Oh and Big Pharma cash, but this is a great idea I'm all for the movement.

Is OP post considered a false dilemma.

yeah.

Idk, we only have so much time and energy to put towards activism. What do we prioritize on changing as a society? The gun issue is right up there w/abortion, gay rights, and immigration as a political issue. Liberals won the gay rights thing mostly, maybe reforming Big Pharma can b the focus over that now.

Whatever happened to individuals being responsible for themselves?

So what you expect us to give every child crisis training, a bulletproof vest, and say Be careful out there. Children are just as much victims as the people who take these pills only to learn they alter their brains far more than they were told initially.

That's still ignoring the individual responsible for the act.

And all the car manufacturers for the traffic deaths

I think big pharma takes in more money then guns, oil and military combined. At least its something like that. Please though, i mean did you ever hear about Bayer producing a blood specifically for children that they knowingly put on the market then when it was proven tainted and law suits occured they pulled the drug, eventually selling it to 7 other countries. This was for children. The president of the company "we did nothing ethically wrong" not a single person went to jail. And, most likely, you never heard about this. Untouchable

Not only that, but the lobbying of big pharma far surpasses the NRA and other pro-gun lobbying.

Death is business, business is money, money is power and power means pizza

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

In people's minds the 7 were innocent and the 66,000 were drug addicts who deserved it. Could also count how many gang killings there were, but again those are people that deserved it. Suburbia is only concerned with things that could happen to "me."

The Pharm Companies are up there with the top contenders that run this country. They’ll only get slapped with a fine, that the govt gets and nothing will change. The same company that made hundreds of millions of dollars off of a fentanyl spray that created thousands of addicts also mass produces narcan for when they overdose. This companies make money on both sides!

Is anybody trying to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the actions of their products?

If memory serves, there is specific legislation to prevent wrongful use lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

1) They should. Both of these are good things to hold people to account over.

2) You're comparing all (opioid?) overdoses to school shootings, inflating the gap between the two numbers. This is at best lazy and at worst deliberately manipulative.

Well one has to overdose to die so...I reckon if the overdose happened.. via another person.. forcing the pills down the persons mouth. Might have some ground to stand on and it would be different. I would blame the doctors more than the drug company. These "doctors" are the real drug dealers. They stuff kill way more than illegal drug dealers...other than it being illegal.. Any weak ass punk can pull a trigger. One bullet can hit two targets.. pretty sure there aren't any pills that will kill a fool with one pill.... as far as I'm concerned these people lettin the Internet raise they kids. Are major part of the problem. All these little assholes running around...are not getting an upbringing.

Take a karate class or stand up for your fellow classmates. When they getting picked on. Sure my 8 and 12 year old been pcmasterrace since they could use a mouse and keyboard. And would rather play pc games... but they gonna learn how to treat other humans.

This video perfectly highlights the reasons behind why drug companies continue to do what they do

Tl;DW: Money.

Gotta keep the population in check

Both problems are cultural in nature, not political.

Because people do drugs. They don't go to a school and shoot kids with drugs.

Pretty simple.

OP, drug manufacturers and even dealers of illegal drugs are indeed held responsible for deaths due to their products

Why cherry pick that date range?

Why cherry pick that date range?

Explain exactly how gun manufacturers are being held responsible for the actions of their 'products'? Keeping in mind that these products aren't designed for a certain purpose and then being misused, they are designed specifically with no other purpose than to kill and destroy at the highest rate possible. Opiates are actually still to this day the most effective relief for acute pain, the problem isn't with the product, it is with the distribution and lack of regulations in place to provide the drugs to those who truely need it. This is the paradoxical nature of the first amendment right in full view, in that its fine to want access to military grade weapons and hospital grade narcotics but without regulatory bodies in place to limit the access to these things, they are always going be exploited and misused by certain elements of the popultion. Im neither American nor religious, but divine intervention is possibly the only thing that can save the U.S from itself currently...

Do you mean the second amendment?

I do...

because more than half the people advocating for gun control on law abiding citizens would be forced to face their own drug addictions.

the reality is neither is completely correct. Gun manufactures are not responsible for what people do with their firearms, but they are responsible for lobbying against gun control.

Same shit with pharma, they are not responsible for overdoses, but are responsible for lobbying against non opioids that would do the work.

Well if shooting people in school could be compared to self inflicted drug overdose...

Shooting a school is being compared to producing drugs that are far more addictive than Big Pharma lets on or than they need to be then lobbying to legislate over prescription of said drugs.

Between July 2016-2017 in the US, 58 people died from Cows, while 7 died from school shootings. If gun manufacturers should be held responsible for the actions of their products, why not cattle farmers?

Do people really die from cows?

Do people really die from cows?

surprising amounts of them. And sometimes the families then want to sue the farmers..

On the other hand far more cows are killed by humans so it is still a pretty good trade for the humans..

They weight a lot, and an angry cow can really fuck you up. Plus a crash with one means a catastrophic accident.Horses also kill quite a bit.

Agree, most of the shootings are manufactured & people died b/c deep state wants to scrap Second Amendment to the United States Constitution so they can confiscate money, gold, land and farm when the dollar collapse.

Because the NRA is an easier target than Big Pharma. They're both evil, but Big Pharma has bipartisan lobbying control so you will never see this kind of reaction to the opiate epidemic. Shit's fucked up.

You limited your title to only school shootings but did not limit the drug overdoes in the same way.

The real number of deaths from public shootings in the U.S. for that time span is closer to 1500 deaths.

Gun manufacturers aren't held responsible though?

Short answer- they are. Many municipalities involved and going after the opiate manufacturers as we speak.

Not only that but if you look at the number of shooters that have been on\ taken off SSRIs irresponsibly, then it is hard to not think that big pharma is not a major factor behind theses shootings as well.

We as a society need to focus on preventive mental health and we need to stand up to big pharma. We all hurt and we all can do better.

Follow the money

It all needs to be regulated better. But the big difference here is nobody walks into a classroom and forces 17 people to take opiates til they are dead. You don't get to choose to be shot, somebody makes that decision for you.

If gun manufacturers should be held responsible for the actions of their products

That's a big "if" since they aren't held responsible for their products and never will be.

That’s why they’re being sued out the ass by governmental organizations and large classes of individuals. They’ll take a hit, one that they can weather, but enough to piss them off, if not make them remember. The wheels of justice grind slowly, especially in the American legal system.

Because the new world order demands U.S. Citizen be disarmed so we concoct stupid reasons to make our children's schools soft targets by removing all guns from them, attracting homicidal maniacs and creating regular crisis opportunities so we can advance further stupid demands to remove all guns from U.S. cities.

The killings will accelerate until all guns are gone. Then shits gonna get real bad.

I'm sorry, but who is holding gun manufacturers responsible? That's the dumbest thing I've heard yet. People make guns to make money, and they shouldnt be responsible for what happens to them any more than cigarette manufacturers to their customers. I'm not sure where this post is coming from. Was this said somewhere in the media?

Some idiot parents tried to sue Remington over sandy hook. I'm not sure what happened but I hope they lost. Also, Hillary was campaigning this shit as well.

That's just retarded. I'm a liberal and I can see how stupid this is, some people man.

I think in order to compare the death from overdoses, then you have to compare them to the death due to guns overall, which would include homicide and suicide outside of school. Unless you compare the stats for school shootings vs school overdosing. It's not cool to portray the data to take the heat off guns. But you are right, the pharma companies also have lots of explaining to do about overdosing, but that doesn't mean we neglect gun usage

The difference is that opioid deaths are self inflicted. The person takes the drugs and they die, not other people.

In the case of guns, it's a person taking other people's lives.

Or Planned Parenthood’s murder of 300,000+ children a year since 1973?

Because there is a traceable fun manufacturer. Opiates aren’t advertised, there aren’t opiate fairs or varying opiate regulations state to state. If you could just go fine/ban Walmart selling opiates I’m sure they would try.

Fun fact, in the US in 2015 there were 355 mass shootings.(4 or more victims)

355.

Three hundred and fucking fifty five.

You know what's rare? A school shooter anywhere else than the USA. Freedom though

It's not about the production of the product, it's about the distribution in both cases. Make all the pills/guns you want, it's the people dealing them out that need to be regulated.

Opiate manufacturers should certainly be investigated

40,000 died in auto accidents. If you want companies held accountable for what everybody does with their products, we will be out of companies to make products really quickly.

People are choosing to take drugs...they are not choosing to allow others to shoot them in the head

Also, addiction takes place over time and you have a chance to beat it...you can only get shot in the head once.

Since you seen to not have experience with opioids (bless you), addiction is extremely, extremely quick. Which is a huge part of the problem. I had an massive arm injury mountain biking and was prescribed heavy pain killers post surgery/reconstruction. My wife, knowing the dangers only let me take them for about a week. Coming off the drugs was worse than the pain, crazy mood swings, depression, and irritability borderline rage(I'm a super chill guy). That shit is scary. I cant imagine what it would have been like had I taken the 3 weeks worth and then had to come off cold turkey.

Granted I'd rather do that than be shot in the face, but too many people blow off just how fucking scary addiction can be and how hard and fast it can hit you with these strong prescriptions even when not abused.

Addiction can be quick, yes, but people who actually need them for pain abuse at very low rates.

That's my point though. I wasn't abusing it. I was actively wary of it and it still fucked me up. I was chemically addicted at 3 days of appropriate use, and my prescription called for 3 weeks and I could have gotten refills no sweat. I WANTED more of it but I had a strong support system who kept me in check. My point being, when it comes to these heavy pain killers, people need to be more aware. Most opioid abusers do so, or at least started, on a legit prescription.

No, they don't. Prescriptions aren't the issue, future opioid misuse and abuse is mostly predicated by recreational use. People who are prescribed opioids for chronic pain only abuse and become addicted at very low rates, going as far as around 8% of the time. Treating genuine pain patients as addicts is humiliating, cruel and is causing widespread stigma and suffering.

Also why isn't society held accountable for these issues, why do we try to point the finger somewhere else but fail to reevaluate the morals that lead to these atrocities.

Just about everyone that can make a difference already makes some sort of sizeable income due to opiets and probably doesn’t want them gone unless it makes them more money.

Yes to both.

it's an idiotic analogy. opioid overdoses are analogous to smokers dying from lung cancer or obese people dying from shoveling too much fried food into their mouths. in those examples at least you're only killing yourself with your choices - in the case of guns you are taking wholly innocent people out with you.

Opiate addiction isn’t a divisive enough problem to garner attention for votes yet. Everyone is affected by addiction. Almost everyone knows someone that suffers from some form of drug addiction.

That and the money. The left doesn’t want to take guns away. They still want those weapons to be made and sold to people. Just not the people in their serfdom.

These are both extremely big industries. I guess what it boils down to is people are more comfortable watching a loved one die slowly and painfully through addiction than instantly at the end of a gun.

Like tobacco companies. Guns. Opiates. Next cars.

Ban them all.

People use drugs of their own volition. Shooters inflict death on others. Just sayin.

It's A NOTHING HAMBURGERRRRR REEEEE÷EEEEEEEEEEEEE

Gun manufacturers shouldn't be held responsible, people who make a tool are not responsible for how it's used or misused. Why are you trying to sneak anti-gun rhetoric into the title?

Drug makers should not be held responsible for addiction/ODs either, any substance can be abused, a bottle of tylenol could take a few people out if they took handfuls of them.

What they should be held accountable for lobbying to keep alternative treatments like marijuana illegal or restricted. The issue is people with mental illness rely on big pharma drugs, and big pharma and the government are working hard to keep it that way and disallow any viable alternative treatments.

They are not all avoidable. Alcohol, guns, drugs, knives, ropes, cars, planes, tall buildings, cancer.... ban them all.

I think it's because most people that OD, have taken the drugs themselves. Most people that end up getting shot in school shootings, are innocent people that have done nothing to deserve such a fate.

im half reptile

There are a lot of attempts (lately) to hold Big Pharma accountable. Cities (including mine) are suing the drug companies for dumping opiates like chiclets.

I remember hearing a lot about it starting last summer.

money

i hate it when people make dumb, rhetorical questions like this because it slows down the conversation instead of taking it to the next level. although this post's intention seems more for griping than anything more in-depth.

Drug use is self inflicted.

if i die from an overdose, thats my problem, that i caused for myself. shit happens, if i'm concerned about it maybe i shouldn't have been a junkie.

if i randomly shoot 17 people, thats inflicting a problem on 17 innocent people.

i mean, its a subtle difference, but murdering cunts is a bit different to getting high, you get that yeah?

Presumably because drug deaths (as with alcohol and tobacco) are self inflicted.

Nobody is crying out for gun control as a result of gun based suicides.

if Drs were wantonly handing out guns, and essentially acting as weapons dealers and people were killing themselves left and right with those guns and the news was reporting on it everytime you turned around, I think you would probably besinging a different tune.

I... uh... what

Idk bad analogy, fuck it.

Nobody is crying out for gun control as a result of gun based suicides.

oh yes they are.

Not to the extent that they are off the back of the weekly massacres

And that's where you're wrong... remember all these statistics "60000 gun related deaths in the US in one year!"... yeah, those are 2/3 suicides.

I mean the outrage for mass murders is much greater than that for individual suicides

that's true, nevertheless they still use those stats to push their anti-gun agendas.

All statics you will see on mainstream media use suicide as part of it, and those account for easily 50%+ of deaths.

They’re not mutually exclusive. Plus there’s a pretty important distinction to be made between a person being killed by a prescription drug overdose and a person being killed by an assault rifle. The first is an instance of abuse of a product. The second is an instance of a product doing exactly what it was designed and manufactured for.

Most opiate deaths are not from prescription drugs. Even the ones that are from prescription drugs are related to the use of benzodiazepines.

I know that. The OP is talking about opiate manufacturers being held responsible though. The manufacture of recreational opiates is illegal and anyone caught doing so will most certainly be held responsible. It stands to reason he wasn't talking about opium farmers.

Because opiates are fun, being shot is not

we need people fighting for every issue. Instead of arguing with people about which issue should get the most attention, decide for yourself what issues you find important and try to do something about it

It looks like he is.....

The solution is to ban NARCAN. Let these idiots die from overdoses. Stop helping them.

Just my point of view but I feel as though this comparison is completely irrelevant? Yes pharmaceutical manufacturers need to be dealt with but I am certain that all these drug overdoses are not from junkies running around stabbing people with drugs. The difference is people who die from drugs are the ones who of drugs. Random people don’t just get a prescription and overdose (not majority of the time at least). The difference is that innocent children going to school getting an education and psychopaths and people with other mental illnesses have access to weapons they shouldn’t. How can you compare drug addicts to innocent kids getting shot for no reason?

JFC, how original

Gun manufacturers are exempt from most litigation that may arise from using firearm; try suing a gun mfg and see how far you get.

And if my grandmother had balls she'd be my grandpa, wtf.

The real crime is the war on drugs which makes taking any of these drugs safely much much harder.

Opiate users do it to themselves. People who commit homicides with guns shoot unsuspecting people.

imagine a gun that shoots heroine laced with phentanyl instead of bullets.

You can care about both of these issues

Because no one held a gun to their heads.

Why not accountability for both?

They both should, they both are not. Because money.

why not both

$$$

You can't compare school shooting and total ODs. You should compare total shooting deaths to total ODs or school shootings to ODs in schools.

lmao bit of a whataboutism

Hundreds of thousands died of heart related diseases too but you won't eat healthily either.

But the gun makers arent being made accountable.

Nothing will change. We should give up.

That's JUST school shootings though...

Because people make money with those deaths

Why not both?

I agree. More people die from heat disease than anything else. Why don't we hold fast food companies accountable? And cars. Christ, do you know how many people die in car accidents? SMFH How about we just take personable accountability?

Furthermore, more than 100,000 people die each year solely from adverse reactions to drugs that were prescribed by a person's doctor and take in accordance with the directions. We're not talking about abuse here.

You are not wrong, but this is some next level whataboutism bullshit.

gun manufacturers should not be held responsible for anything. legislators should.

What are you talking about? Gun manufactures are one of very few industries that have a legal exemption against being held responsible for the actions of their products.

Americans are truly the most stupid people on earth, speechless

A) Why on Earth would you compare school shootings to general OD's, and not school OD's?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

Around 1.4 million Americans have died to firearms in the last 50 years, since 1968. That averages out at around 20,000 a year.

B) You tend to shoot other people against their will when killing them. It's incredibly rare for someone to OD via doing drugs against their will. Comparing the two is pretty simple.

Don’t forget, Philly is opening a “safe space” to shoot up so you won’t OD instead of enforcing laws against drugs.

Unrelated, they’ve also mentioned making safety glass in convenience stores (the kind that protects cashiers from robberies, etc) because it makes people “feel discriminated”

Gun freedom is a must but drugs and nudity is satan

A lot of state AG's are already going after opiate manufacturers in court, in case you haven't heard.

Classic 'whataboutism'. A tactic used by proponents of batshit policies to draw attention away from those policies.

anotherNRAshooting

NRAisresponsible

Not a conspiracy at all here. Pharmaceutical companies have so much money that fighting them is damned near impossible. And, I know I've heard of a couple of lawsuits like this. But when you can out right buy a state legislator , it's hard to be held to task for something.

Drugs don’t kill people. People kill people. Wait, what?

You can't compare school shootings to all drug overdoses. What about mass shootings in other places, murders of one person with a gun, gang fights, suicides etc.

I see what you did there...basically cherry picked your data. If you’re going to compare the totality of opiate-related deaths, then compare it to the totality of gun-related deaths. I’ll bet your number changes.

Oh wow. Everyone who eats carrots dies. Now let me waste everyone's time making them explain to me how and why and under what circumstances and in what ways carrots are different from guns. Can we elevate please?

Jesus Christ that number is appalling

All while the FDA is trying to ban kratom, one potential solution to the problem.

Why not look into/fund more mental health research so we can kill two birds with one stone?

The .1% don't want us to have guns, but they do want us pacified and broke.

While these are all great arguments might I add one that is oh so true yet so ugly and without solution that is a real threat to all humanity? That fact that there are people who along with their partners married or not should by the very maligned genes that make up their existence have no business whatsoever creating children. Children who grow as copies of both bad genes, who in turn continue the genetic line only worse through no fault of their own. We all no people like this, we see them and say, please for the sake of our humanity do not have any more!

This is extreme and vile and of course impossible to imagine in any way correcting right. My God it brings up visions of the worst memories of history.

And yet when you step back and se it objectively, it's true.

It's true at its most palatable form as mental illness or in another form as racial hatred, depression, sociopathic behavior, or even straight stupidity.

What is the answer to this since it is inevitably apart of the equation to all arguments here. And no, kindness or putting the children into a good home never changes the genes.

I'm sure there will be a viscous hatred toward me for even mentioning it, but nonetheless this truth is part of all the evolutionary perils we face.

Any takers?

We live in a script where gun deaths are fake but opiate deaths are all too real. Please don’t desecrate the memory of the truly departed by comparing them with fake statistics.

If you think school shootings are real, and you are not paid to comment/post on Reddit, you don’t have to comment; We know there are people who think the news/shootings are real. You don’t need to argue your point.

(The people who comment to say this is foolish or wrong or mock and call names will be people paid to do so. If good people do not pick fights and focus on what we share and think in common then we would know who the trolls are because they are the only ones sowing seeds of discontent.)

Oh poor child, nobody will be held responsible

Drugs are bad ummmmkay?

Stupid cherry picked data aside - Can anyone obtain opiate drugs legally in the US without prescription?

Not a paid commenter, just a sensible gun owner that believe in sensible gun regulations, universal background checks, closing the gun show loop hole and outlawing bump stocks. If you love the second amendment and your guns, you would be wise to get on board with moderate gun reform because the alternative is that the millennial generation that is growing up terrified of being murdered in school will eventually repeal the 2nd amendment and take your guns. The public outcry is growing and while it won't happen tomorrow it will eventually happen if something isn't done to stop these mass shootings.

Also, school shootings are absolutely real there are hundreds of victims and thousands of witnesses. Furthermore, if you are honest with yourselves you know that owning an a couple of ARs and 10,000 rounds of ammo is no deterrent to the Federal Government. Gun owners like to act like they are the final check and balance for a corrupt government. A few thousand nut jobs with MOAN ABE tattoos who can't agree if 9/11 was perpetrated by the government, the Illuminati, or international Jewish conspiracy aren't capable of uniting to become any kind of armed fighting force. Gun owners are fed NRA propaganda until it runs down their leg and you guys regurgitate it on these forums right on cue. Our government is so incredibly incompetent and inefficient that they can't even keep the Federal Government funded. You guys like to get on these forums and talk big about how you are the only ones who see the danger and the government is trying pacify and disarm you so that they can take advantage of the people. They don't need guns to do that, they are already doing that by funnelling your tax dollars to their rich friends and engaging in dirty business practices and deregulating big banks. The gap between the richest and poorest is wider than ever and everyone still has their guns. They keep you distracted by telling you that libtards are coming for your Bibles and guns while they are cashing out. Your votes are more powerful than your guns, but first you have to realize you been had.

Neither should, unless something illegal is found.

Alcohol mfgrs for drunk driving? WARNING: Do not stick this fork in your eye TV networks and writers for 'shows that gave them ideas'

Personal responsibility.

Population control ?

Straw man

So this is why I can’t find statistics on how many people died from school shootings in 2017, it was only 7. All I ever see is “hundreds of shootings” yet they hide the numbers

They absolutely should be. I think we'll look back at this era of medicine and ask ourselves why big Pharma were allowed to operate like unregulated drug cartels

Why not do something about both. That 7 people number is very misleading btw.

There seems to be a lot of misinformation here, and unfortunately the title just adds to it.

Opiate manufactures have faced more legal accountability than gun manufacturers. Multiple major cities (most recent is NYC) have sued Purdue for damages and misleading advertising about their dangerous product related to the opioid epidemic. Chicago won their lawsuit. More could be done to help the opioid epidemic, but it should be noted that gun companies have not yet faced this same level of legal accountability. As of this week Purdue declared they no longer will advertise directly to doctors. Currently gun manufactures give millions of dollars to the NRA for advertising and lobbying. Stopping this and holding them legally accountable for the damages they've caused with the mass shooting epidemic is absolutely a good start to making change. It's better than doing nothing, which has been the current solution.

It's the user, not the maker of the product. If that was the case, then every accident in a vehicle would result in a lawsuit to the auto manufacturer. Just like any drug, if taken in enough quantities, can kill you. It's not the manufacturer of the product that's at fault. Too many doctors hand them out like candy. Although stricter laws should be in place, the people who really need the pain killers would suffer greatly.

Article related to question of OP. Since the start of February many Dutch institutions (doctors, universities, cities and NGOs) are collaborating on sueing the tobacco industry for being responsible on making people addicted to tobacco. Depending on what the outcome of this case is, this example may be followed up by other countries and on other industries 😄

I don't think pharma drugs are even counted in the drug death statistics?

Because opiate Mfgs are paying politician’s campaign bills sonny, welcome to the great US of A.

OP you got a sauce for this info? It’s very interesting info

Yep did my own research and it’s accurate ty man

The difference is one is a victim-less crime. No one else is suffering when someone OD's. Whereas a school shooting, multiple innocent people die at the hand's of another.

Or maybe alcohol manufacturers since there are over 80,000 alcohol related deaths per year.

Get people addicted to pills equals a lot of money. They will buy them for the rest of their life. Most guns owners buy a few and never buy another one.

But gun manufactures have never been held accountable. People have tried to sue them but the cases never even went to trial as far as I know. It'd be like trying to see Toyota if a drunk driver killed a family member using a Toyota.

Any regular of this sub knows about anti-opiate agenda currently being pushed by MSM and is going to recognize this post as shill work.

The real problem always arises in /r/conspiracy, obviously banning guns is part of the agenda, make whites a minority and when they are powerless, get minorities to kill the rest, simple as that.

Umm that 66,972 number is ALL deaths be it illegal drugs and other prescription drugs.

Most people who OD have other substances, (up to six different drugs) in their system including alcohol yet you push these numbers as if it is only prescription opioids.........just like the government wants you to since they like to pile up these numbers and really don't want dissect the difference and causes....

BTW a whopping 92% of people don't finish their prescribed pain medication and chronic pain sufferers are even less likely to abuse their medication......I know I was one of them.

they should

Same goes for alcohol, which kills many more than guns.

In the 2011 censes there was 17 million students that were attending high school during that year between 9th through 12th grades. We can assume that those numbers are higher today. Out of all these millions of people only a handful have committed these terrible crimes by bringing weapons to school and shooting other students. Although these are very tragic events, the odds of having more of these type of crimes committed as per the population that attends school show that we can not blame video games, guns, nor administration as the cause. We have to understand that our schools are safer than we believe and publicizing these tragic events so strongly and then using them as examples to push gun control is irresponsible. We are very lucky there hasn't been a whole lot more of these incidences in comparison to the school population in our nation. If we keep putting out into the public domain all this shock and awe we are encouraging another broken person to commit the same monstrosity.

Its not about gun control, video games, etc.

This is a little bit of a red herring. Something should be done about both, however the inaction on either issues seems to stem from money in politics.

Meanwhile 600,000 people in the US die each year from preventable heart disease.

Neither are held responsible. This is 'Merica!

Ok, but pills hijack the chemical processes in your brain to make you want more. School shootings are sick scum that take advantage of a system to allow them to commit their acts. You see less because they’re WIILDLY different and your post is why I can’t take this subreddit seriously.

Also, if you’re going to talk about shootings, include mass shootings and not just school shootings in your statistics. Pretty sure more than 7 people died in Vegas in October and the same arguments are being brought up.

Bravo OP. Bravo. My friend died of an overdose over Christmas. Profits are being made so no one cares, especially with all the big Pharma lobbying.

You can't shoot hundreds of other people from a hotel window with prescription pills.

They both should be held accountable. Just because one isn’t doesn’t mean the other shouldn’t. I can never understand this reasoning. There’s always going to problems. You can’t not fix problems because other problems exist. That’s just juvenile.

Who the fuck is holding gun manufacturers responsible?

A person can't defend themselves with Opiates.

Are gun manufacturers being held responsible?

Cause they are Jews? Seriously look into who grows all the poppies in England, Spain and Australia. The goy spice must flow.

7 seems like a lot to me

are you claiming no one has ever suggested that Pharmas are to blame for the opioid epidemic? dont try to make this a one or the other situation. neither thing has to do with each other. You know what is common about both though, we complain about the sources of these problems, and the government never does anything about it. Elected politicians are not looking out for their constituents, they are looking at that Pharma and NRA money that will come their way if they vote against the interests of the people that voted for them.

Hows that saying go?

Two wrongs don't make a right

Seems like a no-brainer, which makes no sense because there are millions who don't agree with your post who have no brains.

Why not both?

Gun manufacturers should not be responsible for what people do with their products. If someone uses a gun inappropriately they need to be held responsible. You will never stop random acts of violence and you will never stop killers and criminals from doing their deeds. Its a shame people want to take guns from responsible people and not worry about the real problem: illegally acquired high powered fire arms. Get off the bandwagon and educate yourselves.

Money makes the world go round, and big Business has way more money and influence then most of us realize unfortunately. In the US at least.. Pot is a great example of this, once big pharmaceutical companies figure out a way to profit off pot whether it be via patents for certain genetics (like Monsanto did with soy), cutting out the little guys buy basically “lobbying” for new laws/regulations, or artificially increase land prices to push out anyone smaller and eliminate competition, then I promise pot would be legal nation wide in no time. Same thing with these politicians speaking in favor of an oil company that has in some form or another, given them something of monetary value. Probably a good time to clean house and start fresh..

theres no medical use for a gun....

You can thank negroes for this, the lazy things can't seem to work a real job.

really makes you think

The drug addicts made a choice, the shooting victims didn't.

Sorry but people most likely make a decision to start using. Of course they could be in a tremendous amount of pain and opiates are their only choice, but children in schools don’t get to make a decision about being murdered

Because as heartless as it sounds those people all did that to themself.

The government would never take responsibility over opiate deaths. They are the reason merica has such a drug problem.

That term has only become popular since trump has become president lol

ANY comparison can be met with "that's whataboutism"

A comparison alone is not whataboutism. The reason OP is getting called out is because he's literally going "What about this..." instead of actually making an argument.

those things aren’t whataboutism. it’s a label made to point out a very specific type of cop-out argument. and what does the term fake news have to do with that? sorry, i don’t see your point

Let's be honest, other than maybe wild boars and the occasional backcountry people, nobody actually needs to hunt.

oh yeah I see that. I keep a ar15 in my tractor and in my truck because I can be in the middle of nowhere and I've have had people attempt to start trouble over my equipment/chemicals.

Oh yeah, fine them $100 million while they keep their hundred billion dollar profits. That'll teach them. They should be fined based on profits, take 70% and see shit get done.

Less than 20 Rx filled per year in the UK for Xanax... Could you please link your source?

Because everyone who’s against it is going to continue doing their best to stop it. Gun restrictions don’t take away the right to own guns, and I have no clue why people seem to think they do. Just like Jim Crow laws and other voting restrictions didn’t violate the 15th, they just made the process harder.

you do know there are other benzos than just xanax?

Of course just using them is a risk factor, I'm not arguing that, but legitimate prescriptions are way lower on abuse and addiction than people buying them on the street, which is happening more and more because of the drug war. I just think we should be treating addiction as a public health issue rather than a criminal one.

That's the real problem right there. Let's fix that first.

Does that include the 963 gun related murders by police?

The over all influence of big pharma and the impact it has on the health, safety, culture, economics, and quality of of life is the issue. The odds either one of us get shot in face is low as shit. But big pharma is impacting us both daily. The net effect is the issue, not the one off potential effect of guns.

You do realize that criminals exist in other countries as well, yet, somehow those countries don't have people shooting each other in those rates?

You're not going to like this either but I voted for Jill Stein. I know, she's the image of authority.

I think you're right that in some places gun rights are unjustly restricted as a result of politicians taking the easy route of throwing out some "feel good" ineffective and inconvenience.

But the fact that tackling the mental health aspect is ignored doesn't logically imply that more restrictive gun laws will reduce avoidable gun deaths.

And you don't get to say what the effect of a law will be. You don't know because no one does. We can only make reasonable changes and see what happens. It's way too complex of a system to talk about how you are.

"But they'll still get what they want" Yeah, alright. How is that going to work? Imagine an insane person.

They can either get the gun legally and easily for a fair cost or have to find a criminal contact who would sell them a gun for a big price increase.

Guns are not drugs. There is not nearly enough willing illegal gun users to support this idea that some random crazy guy could buy a gun as easily as some weed.

Americans have a problem with trusting authority, unless they are getting paid.

I do, yes— but twenty prescriptions per year in the entirety of the UK? I find that hard to believe.

So what you expect us to give every child crisis training, a bulletproof vest, and say Be careful out there. Children are just as much victims as the people who take these pills only to learn they alter their brains far more than they were told initially.

Yeah. Because all of that leads us to believe that you are a good person. /S

Where do you live that people nonchalantly peddle rifles up and down the street?

True but at the same time more mass shootings are committed with AR-15s than other weapons.

If you can't stop mass killers, the next best strategy is harm reduction.