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Violence has been going down drastically over the centuries as the world has gotten less religious. This is an indisputable fact. Norway, Sweden, and Japan are majority agnostic/atheist - tons of gun violence and violent crime in those countries. Oh wait...no, there isn't.

Steven Pinker wrote a great book on violence, it's called The Better Nature of Our Angels. You should read it.

We literally live in the most peaceful time in recorded human history. You just hear about the heinous stuff immediately and you hear about it more because of 24/hr cable/internet cycles.

Violence in the USA has been rising dramatically for a number of years now.  Those are the facts.

I read where there were over 4500 children 18 and under killed  y gunfire in the United States since 2019, and 43 of those were school shootings. 

this is much bigger than just the schools.

and some of our major cities violent crimes of all kinds ( with or without a gun) are up 30, 50, 70%.  Suicides are up.  Drug overdoses are up. 

Easy access to guns by bad people is definitely part of the mass shooting challenge- but why so much violence?

Two points. 1.) If we have enough money to leave $80 billion worth of equipment in Afghanistan and send another $40 Billion to Ukraine, we can come up with money to protect our schools. We just need to come together on our priorities.

I think you accidently acknowledged the ugly truth to all of this.
Keeping our kids truly safe (not the illusion of safety) isn't a priority in our country.  Not at the expense of more dollars and certainly not at the expense of even the idea of giving up a tiny sliver of your gun collection.  The sliver not meant for hunting or home defense, btw.  The sliver of your gun collection that feeds into your massochhistic wet dream of the gubmint coming to git you, and you fighting off the entire US military and being a hero in your own mind.
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But yes, plainly put, our country doesn't make this a priority.  Yawn.  Done.  Over.

Doesn't matter since violent crime overall is down (lol) as Atheism is on the rise.

The point of this thing you scoff at is that no one does anything in the name of atheism.  No guilt from failing a god.  No suppression of who you are or how you want to be.  No haunting voice telling you to do wicked shit.
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Atheism simply doesn't cause you to do anything because of it.  Religion can and does.  Somethings good, sometimes bad.

You're citing numbers over a few years, mdot's citing the larger picture of decades and centuries. 

exactly. just look at 60 years ago- they used to hang black people from trees in the South. 80 years ago we were in the middle of a World War which killed tens of millions of people- and millions in Germany and German occupied territories were killed just because they were "other" or "lesser than". Nazi party was interwoven in the German Catholic church. The uniforms of all the Nazis wore belt buckles that said "Got Mitt Uns" - God is With Us. The Nazis were not atheists. They were CHRISTIAN. 30 years before that World War- we were in another World War- which killed tens of millions of people as well.

We used to own people in this country 160 years ago. That's not that long ago. That's like 2 people ago. Look at the Wild West- people used to fight each other to death with guns in duels. This was considered widely acceptable. Look at pedophilia- that shit was widely acceptable- 30+ year old men were marrying 14 year olds just 100 years ago.

Look at all the wars in Europe vs the great powers during the centuries. Look at the time before recorded history when we were not much more than cave dwelling apes- which coincidentally is right around when some jerkoff came up with the torah off which the bible is based- you could just kill someone and take their shit for shits and giggles- just because you wanted their shit and felt like it. Or what about the crusades- where Christians invaded foreign lands and slaughtered millions of people just because....they weren't Christian.

We have continued to evolve and progress and become more moral and decent people as we lose religion over time.

We have continued to evolve and progress and become more moral and decent people as we lose religion over time.

I'm not sure this is because we are losing religion, but I'm not certain it isn't either

RE: the article from the WSJ I posted above.. it's disturbing to me because I have a nephew who is similar to this killer.

He's a nice boy, but he's got a speech impediment, for which he gets bullied. His family is broken. He spends every waking moment on video games, playing online with others, who are probably like him. These are violent games too.

All traits of this killer.

He just got out of 8th grade. He was supposed to go to a special needs school, but my brother's pride got in the way of that. So now he's going to be in a huge high school without that special support he so very much needs. He is not normal in any way.

In fact, I think he's autistic to some degree, and maybe even Asperger's. He should not be in a huge high school with "normal" kids.

I don't talk to my brother much, for a lot of reasons, but I feel like I need to say something here.

So, what do I do?

First, violent video games have nothing to do with any of this.  This is a long debunked talking point.  The safest, non violent, countries in the world all have access to the same games.  In fact, they are extremely popular in Japan.  Yet those countries do not have these incidents.

As to your nephew, characteristics of all these mass shooters shows the same types of personalities.  They all have narcissistic tendencies.  Low self esteem, surprisingly, isn't a common factor.  Narcissism is.  All of them are set off to violent reactions by feeling humiliation.  Bullying can certainly lead to that humiliation, as seen in many school shootings.

So is your nephew narcissistic, does he feel humiliated, and does he have access to guns?  If so, that's the recipe.

I don't talk to my brother much, for a lot of reasons, but I feel like I need to say something here.

So, what do I do?

just be honest

your brother might not take it well, but it could cause him to give it some thought after his initial reaction