WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?

There have always been mass shootings since the invention of the gun, and there have been no shortage of school shootings, but the mass school shootings are an oddity that actually didn't happen before 1970 in the U. S. I have no figures for other countries. My information also only includes well known incidents. My research has been in no way comprehensive, but it has been telling and it suggests a very disturbing social dynamic in the U. S. that has nothing to do with with guns, guns merely being a tool of convenience, but I don't think their absence would prevent many mass school killings, and I do have reasons for believing that. One main reason is the mindset of a person that has set his heart on murder. He's going to kill or die trying. Putting the world in a rubber room is also no good solution to a problem like this. Now there is a trend of mass killings in this country right now, that tighter gun control could definitely prevent, but we're not addressing the problem, but the symptom.

Before 1970, I can only find one; in the 1790s, a group of Native Americans took over a school house, killed the schoolmaster, the teacher, and the children with only one child surviving. This was the first mass school shooting in America, and until 1970, was the only one. Now, between those years, there were many school shootings, but none of them were a person trying to kill as many people as they could. They were such instances as a parent shooting a teacher for beating a child, jilted lovers killing their love interests or committing suicide (in one case, a guy convinced his girlfriend that the gun was a toy and tricked her into shooting him.) The vast majority of these shootings were adults having a disagreement and fighting over it, with accidental discharge being the second most common reason for school shootings.

So what happened in 1970? Well, a group of students at Kent State University in Ohio were protesting the Cambodian campaign of the Vietnam War (and no, I will never call it a "conflict")as part of a nationwide protest. After unknown arsonists burned down the ROTC building on May 2, the governor banned protest in the state of Ohio and declared the students communist revolutionaries, promising to drive them out. On May 4th, a scheduled protest took place regardless of efforts to stop it. The National Guard showed up, and when the students wouldn't disperse, 29 guardsmen opened fire, firing 67 rounds, killing 4 students and wounding 9 others.

That was the second mass school shooting I could find in U. S. history. The next one was just two weeks later in Jackson, Mississippi. Police opened fire on students killing one and injuring 12. The next one was November 11th, 1971, when a student entered the Catholic church on the Spokane, Washington Gonzaga University campus with a rifle, killed the caretaker and injured four students. Then another on December 30th, 1974 in Olean, New York when the best shot on the rifle team at his highschool killed three and wounded 11 during a 2-and-1/2-hour standoff.

Here, we see a pattern forming, and we also see when this started and a possible trigger for these schools shootings. Now, this information is not up to date, but here it is: There have been over 200 mass shootings in the United States for the year of 2015. This is according to a crowdfunded anti-gun program called mass shooting tracker. According to their information, the current number for 2015 is 296 mass shootings for this year. Tighter gun control can definitely reduce this number, but again, that only addresses the symptom. There is a great deal of anger in this nation right now. There is a sense of powerlessness and helplessness and people are lashing out. So far, every action has been entirely reactionary. Nobody is addressing the problem, and seems they don't want to address the problem; an apathetic nation that has lost trust in authority and is caught in a massive social disconnect.

Here is what has occurred in Australia, since we keep hearing about it. After the Port Arthur massacre, the Australian government initiated a gun turn-in program and a buyback program. During this time, gun homicide reduced by half, leading academics to call the buyback program a success. Unfortunately, the claim failed to take into account the fact that knife violence also fell by nearly the same percentage. Because of that, as it stands, it cannot be verified that the gun ban has affected violence in Australia in any way, and the decrease in violence probably the result of a psychological shift within the overall social dynamic of the Australian population; a reaction to violence in general, a reaction that the gun ban was a part of, not the cause of. As for mass killings in Australia: they haven't been affected in the slightest. The weapon of choice is now arson in lieu of guns, with a few notable knife mass killings. Still, there aren't many mass killings in Australia and it's helpful that mass killings weren't very common to begin with.

Banning guns:

While I don't support banning guns, I do support tighter gun control. A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. What people often skip over is the "well regulated" part. That militia thing extends to all able bodied people. The well regulated part means those able bodied people need to be competent and fall within the common understanding of sanity. I do believe that before a person may own a gun, he or she should be required to prove that s/he can be trusted with a gun. I don't think it's a lot to ask.

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My question is, "Why?" Can you pass under it with a boat? That's the only reason I can think to make a bridge like that. Other events won't be able to pass under it. Is there anything under it you can grab (which, of course, would require you to fiddle with the events that are already there)? Other than that, I suppose it'd be a nice presentation. I like using charsets as tiles, too. In this case, though, it seems like a very small payoff for an awful lot of work.

It does look cool, though.

This should be all you need from that charset for this particular bridge, just spaced out properly of course.



Then it's just a matter of setting up passability events and tileset reference changes.

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