Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[pbrower2a]

(12-02-2018, 05:06 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-02-2018, 09:05 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-02-2018, 05:22 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-01-2018, 03:52 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: My comment: Does "prohibition" work? Yes, various degrees of prohibition can have some effect in the matters related to the ban, according to many researchers, though not according to all.

Well, if you were to simply look at the charts you presented and take nothing else into account as far as social/cultural changes then one could/would see it/view it your way pretty easily.

So what are the "social/cultural" changes?

I would be curious too.  Suicides are more commonly abusing weapons recently.  A while ago, many more people believed in the Jim Crow interpretation, that only government employees have a right.  That was all they taught in the law schools for years.  The standard model academic research is only a few decades old.  The NRA and the gun issue have become far more politicized, with the Brady center following suit .  Still, the red valuing of weapons and rural uses of them are quite old.  I don't doubt that the issue has changed recently.  It has.  But which aspects do you consider as changing most?

1. Economic inequality is becoming more severe. The divide between poverty and privilege is approaching that of the Gilded Age, and without obvious necessity. America had huge divides between the industrial North and the agrarian South in overall results in the economy, anyone not a WASP was almost certainly at a disadvantage, disparities between rudimentary education and elite education were severe (this was when a 'solid eighth grade education' was enough to allow one to get a clerical position where one might work 60 hours a week and have a 60-year lifespan because one was not working as destructively hard as industrial toilers who had little schooling at all) and the business ethos was simply to treat workers as serfs for maximal profits -- the only measure of economic success.

The Gilded Age ideology has returned, and it exemplifies itself in Donald Trump -- profits first, profits only, and people are motivated most effectively by threats of hunger and homelessness.

2. The mass culture does not affirm life. The Great Depression may have been  horrible, bit people seemed to trust family, community, and  institutions that sought to mitigate the realities of life. The dominant media of the time, movies, had a code that few current movies now could meet. Good guys were winners, and bad guys ended up badly.  Contrast something generally considered acceptable for family viewing today -- the Star Wars series has genocide as an essential part of the plot. Maybe after Hitler and Stalin (and more recently Saddam Hussein) we can no longer have a naive hope in human goodness... but if we do not foster human goodness we get horror. A daring movie by 1930s standards, Angels with Dirty Faces, shows a 'successful' gangster bringing death and destruction even to a crooked lawyer, but eventually going to the electric chair. The lesson: do your civic duty, do not lust after easy money, be modest in your demands in life, and rely upon faith and family to get you (and otherwise-helpless people) through difficulty.

3. The economic elites and most figures of popular culture are horrid models for emulation. Donald Trump would have never become President except for the debasement of mass culture in America. He is Big Business and mass low culture. Yes, I recognize that the Hollywood figures of the Golden Age were not people to imitate -- but they had to do their depraved behavior in secrecy. Tody people put their worst behavior out in public as an expression of Self.

4. The sorts of shared experiences that youth get are not what they used to be. Being a Boy Scout used to mean something, and it was a common experience among boys of a certain age. It is now a rarity; Scouting takes up too much time, has no dazzle, and demands too much suppression of individuality and indulgence.

5. Economic shifts have been particularly hard in "Red" America. People with limited education have had industrial work that has become less precious as the economy becomes less thing-oriented and  more experience-oriented. Making more stuff does not correlate with making customers happy and allowing profitable manufacturing that allows industrial workers to keep their jobs in profitable businesses. When the factories shut down, then what is left? Opportunities may exist for people with college degrees, but if you are managing a coffee shop, who would you hire as a barista to talk people into another latte or cappuccino? Some underemployed college grad who has the 'wrong' college major, or someone who just lost a factory job? Which one is less likely to unleash an F-bomb? Which one is likely to carry on a conversation that might drift into high culture?

I'm guessing that the hardest-hit part of America is the rural Mountain South. The Mountain South has always had a gun culture, and it has been more violent than other parts of America when one adjusts for economic realities and educational attainment.

6. Drugs and alcoholism. Drug deaths indicate a lack of fear of drugs -- and a willingness of people to turn  to them. Note that the Mountain South has had a heavy concentration of some of the most dangerous work (mining) possible. Deaths do not lead to drug addiction, but painful injuries. (See also logging areas for much the same effect). Miners and loggers get inordinate numbers of serious injuries, and they were the ones most likely to get prescriptions for oxycodone, which a few years was touted as the miracle pain-killer so long as people did not grind the pill to make what became known as "hillbilly heroin".

Addicts and alcoholics have always had high suicide rates.