The Big Picture: On The Subject Of Violence

[uhohimdead]

i know it's a bit off topic but anyone see the newest Zero Punctuation? Yahtzee took a swing at poor MovieBob

 

[TheKaduflyerSystem]

Before we do almost anything we unintentionally analyse what may and may not happen, every action we take is an action where a risk VS reward scenario has been thought up and concluded in the time it takes for you to decide which way to go to work today.

 

[Mechanix]

You know Bob, it's you're show and you're free to pick any topic you want. But don't feel like you need to always pick happy topics to appease us. If you feel like doing a serious video or a video about past cartoons, go for it, there will still be someone watching. If I'm the only one in your audience who enjoys your serious videos, well, okay.

 

[Frankfurter4444]

Well said, Bob.

 

[Brad Gardner]

all I can say is thank you. I felt I was in a world of Black and White where there is no room for surrender at all. And Thanks for reminding us that we can back away from I have to be right

 

[JWAN]

That was actually, a fantastic argument.

As for the gun control debate, this guy was smart enough, dedicated enough, and unstable enough to wire his apartment to blow. He would have found whatever he needed to accomplish his fucked up ends no matter how far away or inaccessible guns become. He could have thrown tear gas then right after that bombs into the crowd.

I really dont think that a better mental healthcare system or really anything could have turned this guy back. Some people are just that deranged. How can we protect ourselves from people like this? To understand and respect our ability to defend ourselves.

 

[ManInRed]

I don't think I could say it better myself.

There doesn't seem to be much of a connection between this psycho and the Joker. I mean the closest thing he has to a Joker costume is red dyed hair, and everyone knows the Joker has green Hair. It feels more like he choose the name and the venue to help make him famous, so the only logical response I can have to this is to forget him. Never bring up his name or face and let the perpetrator fade into absurdity.

Artists and their creations deserve to have their work immortalize. And this coward is no Joker, no Mark Hamill, no Jack Nicholson, no Heath Ledger. He doesn't deserve to be remember like them.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Does any one know what could have prevented the Denver incident? GUN CONTROL!!

Nope.ave That makes too much sense

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Well said, Bob. We're quick on the jump to blame various media for certain things, but we're not as quick to blame the individual. An unusual mind can't be predicted, and can't be preempted. Sad, unfortunate, but true. You can protect probabilities to a certain extent, but you can't plan for everything.

 

[tmande2nd]

You cant control other people.

You can try, but it never works.
Build a wall? They get around it
Ban something? They go and find it
Condemn something? They do it anyway.

As a species we are nothing if not creative in finding how to get our way.

 

[grigjd3]

Well said.

 

[lowkey_jotunn]

Just want to reiterate/paraphrase one line, because it really sums up the whole argument perfectly.

"You can't predict the actions of crazy people, that's what makes them crazy."

Q.E.D. bitches, end of argument. If you could have 100% assuredly predicted FOUR years ago (well more than that, if you want to count production time) that Heath Ledger's (R.I.P.) inspired performance of the Joker would cause this brutal act half a decade later... then we would still make Batman movies and go after the CRAZY PEOPLE whom we've just identified.

And personally, I don't believe for a second that Batman (or the Beatle's Helter Skelter, or Modern Warfare, etc) are unilaterally responsible for inspiring these crazy people. Those just happen to be their avenue for expressing the crazy. If this nutjob didn't have the Joker to fall back on, he would have called himself Tyler Durden, Anton Chigurh, Ezio Alditore, Holden Caulfield or the Cheshire fucking Cat.

Oh, and final point, as a big fan of the new Batman series, I'd just like to point out how wrong this guy is to adopt the Joker pseudonym. Do we not remember one of the defining traits of the Joker : "Guns are too quick. You can't savor all the ... little ... emotions."

 

[awdrifter]

Art is the first thing to be censored throughout most of history. That's just how it is. But artists/people will usually bounce back and make more art.

 

[Gunner 51]

Spoiler: Two Quotes

Ok. not to be a jerk here... but to put it in perspective... These kinds of media candy shootings REALLY don't tend to happen too often. And the number of people that die from such loony actions is absurdly small compared to the number of people who die from other things such as traffic accidents or cancer or war or what have you. Those are just booring deaths though, and these are fun so we must suck them up like another form of entertainment.
Nothing needs to be done. The one thing that MAY help, however (that will never ever happen) is to NOT have extensive coverage of these incidents (outside of maybe the local town where it happens on a very small scale).
I believe a large driving factor for the majority of the people who do these things is knowing for an absolute fact that they will be infamous. They want attention. Now i realize what i am suggesting is another form of censorship... but...
Admit it people, we kinda like when things like this happen (assuming we have no connection to anyone involved). We suck it up with excitement and research it and have conversations with friends trying to figure out why the shooter did what he did exc. LETS JUST NOT.

As a schizophrenic, I feel I have to make this point, because the media is insistent on being fucktards about it.

The Colorado killer has not been officially diagnosed with anything. The media is already stamping labels on him like "schizoid" and "psychopath," using them as if they were catchall phrases for people who do bad things and completely ignoring not only the very specific context in which these terms are used in psychology, but how badly this misrepresents the vast majority of us who have mental disorders.
I'm Schizophrenic. Yes, I have delusions of persecution. Yes, I experience auditory and sometimes visual hallucinations. Yes, I am at times impulsive and irrationally over-emotional. But I have never in my life had any inclination to do something violent, nor do I have any desire to ever do so because I consider the use of violence to be abhorrent and would rather find any other means to resolve conflicts first.
We are not, as a rule, dangerous to society because we have identifiable symptoms of mental illness. Anyone - and I mean ANYONE - can go off the deep end if external circumstances effect them in the wrong ways and I am sick and tired of every killer being automatically labeled as "schizo" or "psychopathic" by a media which refuses to get its facts straight in favor of sensationalizing their stories.
And I'm disappointed in you, Bob, for using the term "psychopath" in the same way, no matter how much I think you have a point on every other issue you addressed in this video.
Please stop making people like me out to be naturally born bad guys.

@Katya: That's not a bad idea now that I think of it. Idiots who go around shooting places up to gain infamy deserve nothing more than to be forgotten. There will always be folks like them and the best thing for mental health professionals can do is try to spot them. But seeing invisible conditions or madness will always be an uphill battle for our mental health professionals.

@RJ Dalton: I'll agree with you the media are nothing short of idiotic about this kind of thing. Splashing evocative words like psycho doesn't help anything - but sadly the media isn't in the business of helping people understand mental illnesses and conditions or even telling the truth in a wise way. It's in the business of ratings, webshits and selling papers - and nothing grabs attention quite like evocative and shocking wording. They may tell you the truth, but they'll tell you the truth the way they want you to see it. Putting their own spin on it, if you will. (Which is also one of the reasons why I stopped watching the news - it's nothing but a depression laden finger wag-fest.)

Admitting that you're schizophrenic is a mighty ballsy thing to do on a public forum like this, so you got props from me for that. (Mind you, I'm a guy who's crushing on a schizophrenic who doesn't want people knowing that she's one.) There's your normal boring psychopath who functions as well as anyone else in public - and then there's idiots like that gunman. The thing with most psycho or even sociopaths is that they're more of a danger to themselves than everyone else - the media should take stock of this little nugget of truth.

But using the term "schizo" to describe the insane is something of a bugbear of mine too, it shows a lack of intellect and imagination on part of the speaker. There needs to be more awareness about schizophrenia and other mental illnesses and conditions and less stigma about it - the better life will be for everyone.

 

[Torrasque]

I know I say "I couldn't have said it better" frequently, but to say it in this case would be a massive understatement.
Movie Bob's argument and his thought process is so incredibly well done and carried out, that I can't even find any flaw or mistake to pick at--not that I'd want to, but its just something I've been trained to do.

 

[Lyvric]

Very well done Bob

 

[conflictofinterests]

Interestingly enough, the Joker in the Dark Knight expresses this very topic in an exemplary manner. "Do you want to know how I got these scars?" or basically "Do you want to know why I'm a deranged psychopathic robber/arsonist/murderer?" Answer: "Some [people] just want to watch the world burn." Attributing any cause to this version of the Joker is superfluous at best and impossible to satisfactorily accomplish at worst. Same with someone who would come to a movie theater filled with people with 3+ fully loaded guns.

 

[Mkvenner]

That was awesome Bob well done

 

[Froggy Slayer]

*slow clap*

Well, I think I can forgive you for your Amazing Spider-Man review now, Bob. I wasn't that angry in the first place, but you've shown here that you are actually a very intelligent, thoughtful person.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

*snip* due to wall of text

I'm sorry (or not ;-) but I'm gonna quote myself
"But gun control is more likely just a part in the solution to start with, best is education and/or banging some sense in to people.
You don't need a guns, you need intelligent people whom understand that since you don't have a gun they don't either....

But why am I arguing it probably wont change anyones mind and "Don't argue with idiots, they drag you down to their level and beat you whit experience.".... =D"

Well... you seem to have missed some of my major points. There are several different things that you said that are worth responding to separately, so I'll post different responses to each of them.

Let's just put aside aside the typical liberty vs. safety arguments (as I said in my post, I don't think gun control will lead to tyranny). Your main point seems to be that gun control should be part of the solution. I provided plenty of arguments to suggest that the type of gun control that most of these people lobby for won't be any real solution to our main problem. I suggest you go back and look at points 6 and 7 in my original post.

To summarize my points in the most succinct manner: gun control laws don't really affect gang violence, and gang violence is the overwhelming cause of gun deaths. Hence, gun control won't really solve much of anything.

Gun control isn't the perfect solution to gun related murders, but why does guns have to be?
If no one has a gun, including the gangs etc, who (in the whole world) would kill you with a gun?

I never said that gun ownership is a solution to these problems. The argument that if more people owned guns stuff like the Colorado shooting wouldn't happen is a common (and very stupid) argument made by gun-control opponents, but it is not one that I have made or intend to make.

But guns isn't the main problem it's the attitude of a few that endangers the rest that somehow needs to be changed, Switzerland is one quite good example of this they somehow have the same or less gun problems. So I would go over and check what's so different. If it's the gangs or other crime related people then thats what you need to focus on how to solve the current polices is quite obvious not working since people in USA feels so unsafe that they need guns.

No, no, no. Americans don't just own guns because they feel unsafe. Many of them own guns for recreational purposes as well. And the vast majority of them are law abiding citizens. My argument was that gun ownership is part of the right to defend one's self, and thus we should be careful about how we restrict it.

I don't believe in absolute rights because rights are really just conventions and have no power outside of the will of the public to enforce them. I just want people to clarify what they want and make sure they weigh the costs and benefits of restricting any particular liberty.

Listen very carefully: the cause of gun deaths in America isn't a bunch of paranoid suburbanites shooting each other: it's the gangs fighting for turf to sell drugs on.

And that was my entire point. What's different is that America has a huge gang and illegal drug problem that is the source of the vast majority of gun deaths. Gun control does not affect this problem. You seem to think that stricter gun control is part of the solution. What I'm telling you is that it really isn't.

Why? One word: enforcement.

A law is just a piece of paper until the police enforce it. Heroin and cocaine are highly illegal, but they're still easy to get. The police have to have the power to enforce the laws in order for the laws to actually work. The problem is that the gangs already have their illegal guns, and don't get these guns through legal means. Passing laws restricting how people can legally purchase firearms will do absolutely nothing to remove the guns from the gangs.

In order to really take care of the problem, you would have to grant police the power to search and seize these weapons without a warrant. Like I said, the illegal gun problem is directly tied to the sale of illegal drugs, so the powers we would have to grant to police would inevitably also give them the power to search for drugs. That screws over a lot more people than just the gangs.

And why why stop there? If you're concerned with the occasional psychopaths, you should also give the police the right to search electronic media. After all, the Colorado shooter used the internet to buy his guns, the VT shooter had all sorts of disturbing stuff on his FB account that could have tipped people off, as did the Columbine guys.

When was the last time you visited a place where you had to use a seatbelt whilst in a moving car?....
(giving up the freedom for safety again...)

Here is the crux of my argument:

The loss of liberty that Americans would have to incur to really solve our violent gun-death problem isn't just the loss of our guns: it's a state where the police have the ability to come into anyone's home with little-to-no justification.

That, my friend, is something that everyone should be concerned about.

I do also know that most people are not murdering maniacs even in USA but why give the few such an easy time...

I understand the argument that the recreational benefit of things like assault rifles is outweighed by public safety. The problem is that banning assault rifles won't do anything unless you've give the police the power they need to get the illegal ones off the street. Plus, the vast, vast majority of gun deaths are caused by hand guns. What people seem to be preoccupied with are the extremely rare scenarios where psychos shoot up a public place. That's like trying to prevent lightning strikes.

Legally banning things like assault rifles isn't going to stop a committed psycho because it's too easy to get these things illegally. I know it might sound stupid: surely banning these guns will make it much harder for people to get them, that's just common sense! Well, sure, it makes it harder to get them, but that only slows people down. Prohibition didn't work with alcohol, it isn't working with drugs, and it wouldn't work with assault rifles.

Go back and look at point #11 from my original post. If you really want to prevent the occasional madman your best bet isn't to ban guns (because, as I've argued above, that is almost impossible); it's to put in a more thorough system of monitoring that will allow us to potentially spot the psychos before they carry out their plans. If you make assault rifles illegal it only slows them down, because they'll just go and get them illegally.

But if you require thorough background checks and licenses for these sorts of things the psychos will set off red flags that the police can follow up on. That's really the only chance we have of preventing these things.

Think of it this way, which is a better way to prevent terrorism? Trying to close down the borders and deport all the Muslims in the hopes that you'll keep all Islamic extremists out of the country, or putting more money into surveillance and covert operations? Putting aside the fact that the former is extremely unjust, it would be almost impossible to carry out.