1) there's a lot of problems with mental illness, poverty, inequality and the correlated collection of issues in the united states.
2) therefore, they need more money for services, more wealth redistribution, more resources for integration, more attention on changing social attitudes, etc.
3) however, the deeply anti-intellectual culture in the country (fostered by elites through media and by politicians) rejects this in favour of militarization.
4) therefore, they're fucked until they change their attitude.
hey, look. a cloud.
the way i see it is that mass shootings are an expected result of american culture, and no sane person could look at the culture and expect anything different. so, i'm really not shocked. it's just expected. it would be shocking if americans just randomly stopped shooting each other for no good reason.
they don't need more gun control. they don't need more cops. they need a collective slap upside the head and a collective attitude adjustment.
it's a social issue, and they need a social revolution to address it. there's currently almost no understanding of this, and no reason to expect it to stop.
i'm not trolling. really. i don't want to hear about immigration reform. i don't want to hear about hiring more cops. i don't want to hear about gun control, either.
laws don't solve problems. jails don't solve problems. cops don't solve problems. what solves problems is people listening to each other.
so, that's what i want to hear about.
http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/07/25/the-gun-violence-epidemic/
but, you won't hear about a sane approach. you'll just hear bloviating nonsense back and forth.
there's nothing left-wing about gun control. it's harshly statist and deeply authoritarian.
a real leftist would approach the issue with a root-cause analysis and argue for more funding for mental health services.
but, there is no left in the united states.