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(speaking as a non-american) I don't think that the press publishing pictures of dead kids after school shootings will change anything in how the US views that

(speaking as a non-american) I don't think that the press publishing pictures of dead kids after school shootings will change anything in how the US views that issue specifically. All it will do is throw a bunch more gross photos out there on social media. People in the US are too politically encamped for pictures of dead kids to move the needle on gun rights at this point. It's not happening; it's been made clear over and over again that no matter the cost in human lives, "muh guns" is what triumphs over everything else for Americans. The consequences are obvious and the stalemate is so eternal that "a school shooting happened in the US" doesn't even make the local news here anymore in 99% of the cases. From an ethical perspective, publishing those pictures will only harm the relatives of the victims - once it's been normalized by a regular outlet to try and push this needle, there's a whole array of sleazeballs out there with less ethics that will do it for every shooting, regardless of the wishes of the family, whether that's to move the needle or to just be a dick to the relatives. It's also not comparable to the horrors of war in this case - there the needle can be moved with that kind of shock imagery because people are so used to the sanitized view of war. School shootings are already bloody - it won't move any needles.

01100011 3y ago
I think the pro-gun side is convinced that there will be many more dead kids in a world without guns, so showing them pictures of actual dead kids isn't going to do much. > People in the US are too politically encamped I think politics is the wrong label for this. Politics is the forum in which the underlying worldviews express themselves. There are a few, strongly developed worldviews at play here and reducing it to just politics misses the depth of the disconnect.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    Hey, could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments / name-calling / flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly (another example is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38438522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38438522). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Your good comments are quite good, though, so if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
gillytech 3y ago
Speaking as an American, I can tell you that pictures of dead kids is not going to do anything to further the gun control agenda. Nobody but a madman supports murdering children. In fact, murder is illegal in this country, as is assault and brandishing firearms. These laws don't stop insane people from using weapons to murder people. Just like strict knife laws don't stop stabbing. The problem is society is degrading to a point where people are willing to take lives. The more I see dead kids from a school shooting, the more I will advocate for armed guards at schools to help dissuade would-be shooters from attempting anything. I would also advocate for the abolition of "Gun-Free Zones" as they only advertise to criminals that nobody is likely to be armed in these areas. Unfortunately history has shown us time and time again that oppressive leaders disarm their populations before subjecting them to horrific abuses of their power. We aren't falling for it again.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  [flagged]
- baz00 3y ago
  Um, fine over here in the UK. I mean our entire yearly list of shootings is a bad Saturday night in Chicago. And before anyone says "what about the stabbings", our per capita stabbings are about half the US!
  - RobertRoberts 3y ago
    You can go to jail in the UK for a drunk tweet on X (twitter). That is not a free society at it's core. Your other freedoms are breath away from being all gone.
    - baz00 3y ago
      Amazing that a US colleague of mine was fired for saying "fuck" to another US colleague. Really free country that with protected speech... When people say freedom in the US it tends to be people free to be assholes to their fellow countrymen. Edit: I have freedom from not being shot in the face in Costco too! That's my favourite freedom.
yodsanklai 3y ago
> I don't think that the press publishing pictures of dead kids after school shootings will change anything in how the US views that issue specifically. Hard to say. Maybe not overnight, but it can slowly move the needle.
Prickle 3y ago
I want to throw another perspective here. I had a friend on a voice call earlier this month. He lives in California, which in theory has very strong gun control laws. While on call, his house alarm goes off, so he grabs his shotgun out of the safe and goes to find out what is happening. We, on the call, waiting for him to come back, heard three distinct gunshots. Turns out some guy, high on some substance was trying to break into the house, and opened fire when our friend showed up at the door. This is to my limited understanding, a "strong gun control" state. So from our perspective, it looks like you must have a gun to be safe; that the law does not help. And this is after California banned body armour, which he was complaining about.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  There is no state in the US that has strong gun control laws. It ranges from weak to basically unregulated.
  - throwawa14223 3y ago
    There is not a state in the US that has lax gun control laws. It ranges from nanny state to fascist jackboots.
    - NickC25 3y ago
      Used to live in AZ during my undergrad days. I could buy a gun in cash on the spot from a gun show with no background check. I know several people that did just that in the wake of a shooting happen a few minutes off our campus, where a Federal senator got shot in the face. Lots of people thought 44 was going to take the guns away so they purchased en-masse. Nothing happened. I currently live in Florida. Where I am, if you've got a clean background, it's very easy to buy a handgun or shotgun.
    - nitwit005 3y ago
      So all the countries where normal people aren't allowed to own guns are somehow ultra fascist super nanny states in your mind? Perhaps you have a strange sense of what's normal.
dclowd9901 3y ago
I believe the opposite actually. I think the only reason nothing has happened is because we have sufficiently commoditized school shootings into a media package that is uniform and neutered. If (ugh, when) the next school shooting happens, the pictures of 8 year olds’ half blown away faces would turn the collective public guts inside out. Americans are _very_ good at burying their heads in the sand. It’s only when you force them, Clockwork Orange style, to confront what they’ve made, they actually start to change their opinions.
- 303uru 3y ago
  Agreed, it's a meme at this point. What a tragedy. Here's that Onion article.
anon291 3y ago
> People in the US are too politically encamped for pictures of dead kids to move the needle on gun rights at this point. One thing I notice is how quick people are to ascribe malevolence to those on the right. Meanwhile, leftist prosecutors and DAs who make it a policy point of their election to not prosecute crimes or to not protest paroles, or leftist governors who say they are going to release prisoners and then do, never face any accusations of malevolence, when those same people go on to kill. To use my own city of Portland as an example, we've had multiple instances of children being killed or endangered by people released with violent tendencies or let out without bail. We've had several incidents of gun crime committed by people just released from jail. Yet, when you point out that the right-wing pro-gun crowd is not the ones at fault in Oregon, since we have copious gun laws, and the main issue seems to be the left-wing that has held power in our cities and state for decades at this point, everyone immediately starts group therapy in which they re-assure themselves that the elected official's hearts were really in the right place, despite all evidence to the contrary.
- 303uru 3y ago
  [flagged]

01100011 3y ago

I think the pro-gun side is convinced that there will be many more dead kids in a world without guns, so showing them pictures of actual dead kids isn't going to do much. > People in the US are too politically encamped I think politics is the wrong label for this. Politics is the forum in which the underlying worldviews express themselves. There are a few, strongly developed worldviews at play here and reducing it to just politics misses the depth of the disconnect.

1letterunixname 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Hey, could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments / name-calling / flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly (another example is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38438522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38438522). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Your good comments are quite good, though, so if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

gillytech 3y ago

Speaking as an American, I can tell you that pictures of dead kids is not going to do anything to further the gun control agenda. Nobody but a madman supports murdering children. In fact, murder is illegal in this country, as is assault and brandishing firearms. These laws don't stop insane people from using weapons to murder people. Just like strict knife laws don't stop stabbing. The problem is society is degrading to a point where people are willing to take lives. The more I see dead kids from a school shooting, the more I will advocate for armed guards at schools to help dissuade would-be shooters from attempting anything. I would also advocate for the abolition of "Gun-Free Zones" as they only advertise to criminals that nobody is likely to be armed in these areas. Unfortunately history has shown us time and time again that oppressive leaders disarm their populations before subjecting them to horrific abuses of their power. We aren't falling for it again.

doctor_eval 3y ago
[flagged]
baz00 3y ago
Um, fine over here in the UK. I mean our entire yearly list of shootings is a bad Saturday night in Chicago. And before anyone says "what about the stabbings", our per capita stabbings are about half the US!
- RobertRoberts 3y ago
  You can go to jail in the UK for a drunk tweet on X (twitter). That is not a free society at it's core. Your other freedoms are breath away from being all gone.
  - baz00 3y ago
    Amazing that a US colleague of mine was fired for saying "fuck" to another US colleague. Really free country that with protected speech... When people say freedom in the US it tends to be people free to be assholes to their fellow countrymen. Edit: I have freedom from not being shot in the face in Costco too! That's my favourite freedom.

yodsanklai 3y ago

> I don't think that the press publishing pictures of dead kids after school shootings will change anything in how the US views that issue specifically. Hard to say. Maybe not overnight, but it can slowly move the needle.

Prickle 3y ago

I want to throw another perspective here. I had a friend on a voice call earlier this month. He lives in California, which in theory has very strong gun control laws. While on call, his house alarm goes off, so he grabs his shotgun out of the safe and goes to find out what is happening. We, on the call, waiting for him to come back, heard three distinct gunshots. Turns out some guy, high on some substance was trying to break into the house, and opened fire when our friend showed up at the door. This is to my limited understanding, a "strong gun control" state. So from our perspective, it looks like you must have a gun to be safe; that the law does not help. And this is after California banned body armour, which he was complaining about.

nitwit005 3y ago
There is no state in the US that has strong gun control laws. It ranges from weak to basically unregulated.
- throwawa14223 3y ago
  There is not a state in the US that has lax gun control laws. It ranges from nanny state to fascist jackboots.
  - NickC25 3y ago
    Used to live in AZ during my undergrad days. I could buy a gun in cash on the spot from a gun show with no background check. I know several people that did just that in the wake of a shooting happen a few minutes off our campus, where a Federal senator got shot in the face. Lots of people thought 44 was going to take the guns away so they purchased en-masse. Nothing happened. I currently live in Florida. Where I am, if you've got a clean background, it's very easy to buy a handgun or shotgun.
  - nitwit005 3y ago
    So all the countries where normal people aren't allowed to own guns are somehow ultra fascist super nanny states in your mind? Perhaps you have a strange sense of what's normal.

dclowd9901 3y ago

I believe the opposite actually. I think the only reason nothing has happened is because we have sufficiently commoditized school shootings into a media package that is uniform and neutered. If (ugh, when) the next school shooting happens, the pictures of 8 year olds’ half blown away faces would turn the collective public guts inside out. Americans are _very_ good at burying their heads in the sand. It’s only when you force them, Clockwork Orange style, to confront what they’ve made, they actually start to change their opinions.

303uru 3y ago
Agreed, it's a meme at this point. What a tragedy. Here's that Onion article.

anon291 3y ago

> People in the US are too politically encamped for pictures of dead kids to move the needle on gun rights at this point. One thing I notice is how quick people are to ascribe malevolence to those on the right. Meanwhile, leftist prosecutors and DAs who make it a policy point of their election to not prosecute crimes or to not protest paroles, or leftist governors who say they are going to release prisoners and then do, never face any accusations of malevolence, when those same people go on to kill. To use my own city of Portland as an example, we've had multiple instances of children being killed or endangered by people released with violent tendencies or let out without bail. We've had several incidents of gun crime committed by people just released from jail. Yet, when you point out that the right-wing pro-gun crowd is not the ones at fault in Oregon, since we have copious gun laws, and the main issue seems to be the left-wing that has held power in our cities and state for decades at this point, everyone immediately starts group therapy in which they re-assure themselves that the elected official's hearts were really in the right place, despite all evidence to the contrary.

303uru 3y ago
[flagged]