Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

This ties in to a lot of other areas, I suspect.  For example, social media is rewiring our brains in ways we don't even understand, and while the extent and specifics aren't fully understood, what we do know for sure is that it is changing us (the younger the person, the more the change), and it's generally not for the better.  None of this has made it into the DSM, and likely won't.  But it's real.  And the correlations between social media impact on young people and negative behavioral trends for those users is staggering.  Does this have anything to do with higher rates of tragic behavior, gun violence amongst them?  I doubt anyone can say for sure, but I suspect it does, and the correlation is present, at least. 

You can find fault with the methodology, but not the volume. So let's say the CDC is wrong by some margin of error. You're still talking about an epidemic that is fundamentally different than any of our peer countries.

Suicide exists in Canada and western Europe. So does poverty. So does drug use. So does gang violence. So why is the U.S. such an outlier relative to our peer nations? Firearms. That's why.

https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/insights-blog/acting-data/gun-violence-united-states-outlier
That isn't some anti-gun activist group: https://www.healthdata.org/

I don't think copycat behavior is new. But access to information is dramatically different, meaning the broadcast that results in copycat behavior is much more significant.

Unless there's data or supporting evidence on that, there are multiple assumptions in that statement that I don't think are justified accepting.  

I, for one, think incremental change for the better is worth it.

Good, we agree.  Incremental change so that more people are like you and I, who, together in a room with an AR-15, a bazooka, and some tactical knives engraved "Tigers vs. Badgers Thunderdome," would never think of using them on each other, is definitely worth your time.  Heck, and you're even a lefty, who I'm at least predisposed to zing a spitball at with a rubber band.  

So you're saying that violence and suicide is everywhere, and people use various available tools to accomplish that, and in a place where guns are available, they get used for the same purpose as other available tools elsewhere? 

I don't know if this is front page news.

If the point is to restrict young people's access to guns, well, Badger has suggested charging the owners with murder, which I disagree with, but that's one way to go, I guess, but I'm on board with some non-murder-charge criminal liability and I agree with you that access needs to be feasibly restricted, if possible.

And I humbly request that you in turn advocate for or at least start paying attention to some of the other factors I'm talking about.  The argument that "it happens in Canada and Western Europe too, but less because gUnZ!" does nothing to refute that they too have mental health problems or undermine my assertion that it's a root cause.  Which is one of the things I'm proposing to address.  Why be content to point out that they kill less than we do without guns?  If there's anything society can be doing to lessen the mental problems both here and elsewhere, I'm sure you're for it.  Just as the resident lefty, you have to argue with us so much that you probably forget how much you want to help people

But here, where we offer "thoughts and prayers" after another teenager shoots up a school, I think that throwing our hands in the air and saying there's nothing we can do is a poor response to a problem that has proliferated in our lifetimes. We can and do throw our energies, as a society, behind lots of things that are far less destructive than gun violence, but for this one area, the American gun fetish is resolute. We will do next to nothing, but feel sad that things aren't getting better.