Its a fact that these shootings ARE isolated incidents. I don't think these guys attended a meeting before columbine and thought "Okay, evey year or so one of us is gonna go batshit crazy and shoot up a school. Sound like a plan?". No it happens because individuals of weak mental constitution exist in society. And a fraction of a decimal of those individuals are so messed up that they decide it jolly right to go shoot up their peers.
No one has suggested it's anything different than that. The fact remains that advocates of gun control and greater mental healthcare availability argue that these crimes, or at least the severity to which they are committed, are enabled by bad policy. If you accept the liberal premise that lower rates of gun ownership leads to lower rates of crime then these crimes are obviously related in that they are enabled/worsened by a common policy point. Obviously you don't accept that premise, BUT that's still the point you need to attack if you want to knock down the liberal argument here which you've so far sidestepped.
Now they can say banning assault weapons makes the world a safer place but that simply is not true, more murders are committed by handgun than any other type of firearm.
What simply isn't true is the idea that something needs to be the leading cause of murder for it's ban to reduce the rate of murder. It is, in fact, obviously not the case. Death by snake bite is pretty rare on the whole but that doesn't change the fact that if there were no more snakes there would be no more deaths from snake bites. You'll have to come up with a better argument than "X isn't literally the worst thing ever" to justify X.
Now I know the following is a heartless point that will offend your meager liberal sensibilities but it is true. These things happen. There will always be people of weak mental constitution. There will always be a fraction of a decimal that end up going on an insane rampage regardless of availability of arms or not. Look at China's meat cleaver bus mass murders. Or kids who bring knives to school in countries where guns are not readily available. These are essentially the same phenomenon with a different weapon. And they happen at a similar rate as it does in America.
If you want that point to work you'll both have to demonstrate that non-gun mass killings happen with the same relative frequency in other countries as gun related mass killings in the US AND that gunless mass killings have comparable death tools. I'm skeptical on both points.
The only way for these things to never happen again is to have a mental health system that can screen out these individuals which is damn near impossible unless you live in an insane statist dystopia that has rigorous and invasive mental health screens daily. Now I am not saying that mental health care is pointless. I am saying that the system needed to end things like this from happening is not possible. It would definitly be possible to improve our mental health care and get these individuals the help they need without stigmatizing them for wanting to go on a murderous rampage but that would require they tell someone about it and most of the individuals who carry out these attacks are extremely socially isolated individals.
On the point of "Americas loos gun control" all I should have to say is SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.
No, you should have to say more than that because most of us have realized that the US constitution is not some artifact of divine wisdom. The constitution has been altered before and we can change it again if we happen to find the edicts of niggers who lived 200 years ago don't suit the needs of a people living in the 21st century.
The problem is that we are centering on these things as if they are issues we can fix. As if they are issues we can rid society of. But violence is an integral part of the human condition. And society is human meaning that violence is an integral condition of society. There are individuals who will be violent shitheads and do things like this. So why give them the time of day? Why publicize them and give them fame? Why not say "Sure, you may make this terrible horrible decision, but your name will never be known, your victims will be honored and remembered and you only serve as an agent to destruction by making the commitment" Why not shift the focus off these incidents which cannot reasonably be controlled and dedicate the time and energy we usually focus on them to a constructive and realistic end.
I assume you're a capitalist, right? Truly you'd be hard pressed to find a more perfect apparatus of capitalism than the news media. People will watch/read/listen to these stories and that's why the media produces them. So that's why we focus on these incidents. Do you have a problem with that? Do you perhaps think you know better than the general public what should be on TV, in the news, on our air waves? If so you might be a liberal.
There will never be a perfect society. There will always be violent degenerates. No matter how many social programs you have, no matter how strict your gun or blade or chemical regulations, no matter how many times you say "Tragedy like this shouldnt happen", no matter how extensive and invasive your mental heath screenings are, it wont change the fact that society is packed full of violent degenerates and always will be.
Sure, but you could say the same thing about literally any policy aimed at upholding law and order. A police force will never be 100% effective but that doesn't mean we should totally give up on trying to make the streets safe or investigating crimes. "Why try to stop bank robberies, they're inevitable! Just open the vault doors and let anyone grab what they want!"
