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Science Explains Why Gun Activists Can Easily Exploit Teen’s Emotional Trauma
The Revolutionary Act ^ | 02/22/18

Posted on 02/22/2018 12:23:00 PM PST by Liberty7732

The fallout from the Parkland school shooting is demonstrating how left-wing activists are willing to exploit vulnerable teens in pursuit of a political agenda. It’s a despicable act. We should be protecting grieving teens from this sort of manipulation, not using them as pawns. But expect to see more, and younger children, too.

Part of our culture is willing to make children secondary to adults’ lives, quickly pushing them out of the way to pursue careers or more money; willing to rack up a national debt that is an abomination they will have to pay for — merely to help personal re-elections; shove them in front of violent, graphic “entertainment” to make a buck; and generally make them secondary to our lives.

But suddenly, when they are useful for a political agenda, they’re super important and we turn them into pawns to be used by adults willing to prey on their emotional vulnerability. This is a vulgar treatment of children.

Now is the very moment they should be nurtured, helped through their grieving, allowed to move beyond the atrocity committed, grow through understanding of dealing with tragedy in life.

Activists who exploit them for their left-wing agenda are particularly awful given the developmental state of teens, as understood through the science of the brain.

Teenagers as a group and compared to their adult selves, are not good decision-makers, and certainly not up to the task of advocating for wise public policy in a complicated issue.

The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that drives rational thought, good judgement and long-term consequences, does not fully develop in a person until age 25 or so. But the amygdala, the part of the brain that drives emotions, develops more quickly.

In a teen, these are out of balance (it was that way for all of us) as the amygdala is further along. This is why teens so frequently baffle their parents by responding so emotionally and apparently irrationally to situations. Their amygdala is overriding the undeveloped prefrontal cortex. As they age, this balances out more.

This is explained easily by the University of Rochester Medical Center. It’s also explained pretty fairly at The Conversation, offering help for parents dealing with irrational teens. If you think about teens, yourself as a teen, those you have seen and known, you know this is true.

Something else crucially important: Teens, generally speaking, are easily influenced by peers and the need to fit in, and are particularly easy to manipulate and exploit compared to what they will be in 10 or 20 years. This is also due to the same developing brain structure, although every parent knows it to be true.

Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous organizations that will take advantage of an atrocity, such as the Parkland school shootings, and use teens as their emotional proxies to pursue bad policy. This doesn’t mean the teen’s suffering (those from Parkland, specifically) is not real, or that they do not feel totally sincere in their protests. Surely, both are true.

It does mean that they are being manipulated by what are not good people, willing to exploit teen grief for their own political ends. It is well reported that these are not spontaneous demonstrations. The organizers of the Women’s Marches are behind the rallies in Tallahassee, Washington and around the nation, marches and school walkouts. All basic, long-time tactics of left-wing activists to apply emotional pressure.

When NBC News reports that “Students seize control of gun debate, plan walkouts and march” they should run a correction. More like, “Seasoned left-wing activists seize control of gun debate, use students as tools.”

So when you see the demonstrations in the news, breathlessly being covered by a sympathetic media, what you are actually witnessing is an exploitation of emotionally grieving teens by adult activists who have been otherwise unsuccessful in changing a policy.

I will not be paying much attention to the teens at the demonstrations, because I cannot learn more than that they feel deep grief for their lost classmates, and I already know that. What they need is guidance and help processing their grief, not being abused as tools by “any means possible” people.

If it is on the gun-control debate, I want to hear from people who have studied the issue, who are well versed in facts and reality and considered solutions based on what has worked and not worked. Not from grieving teens who are being used by manipulative exploiters.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: 2ndamendment; banglist; florida; nra; parkland; secondamendment; teen; teenbrain; teens

1 posted on 02/22/2018 12:23:01 PM PST by Liberty7732
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To: Liberty7732

How about these study results:

Mass murderers don’t follow gun laws.


2 posted on 02/22/2018 12:28:58 PM PST by reasonisfaith ("...because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." (2 Thessalonians))
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To: reasonisfaith

Or these study results:

Gun laws make it easier for sociopaths to commit mass murder.


3 posted on 02/22/2018 12:30:42 PM PST by reasonisfaith ("...because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." (2 Thessalonians))
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To: Liberty7732

Kids being used for the political agenda of others.


4 posted on 02/22/2018 12:32:47 PM PST by Biggirl ("One Lord, one faith, one baptism" - Ephesians 4:5W)
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To: Liberty7732

I have an Answer!

Make it a Voluntary Option to be put on the NO GUN BUY LIST, and Challenge ALL these little pukes to sign up for LIFE!!!


5 posted on 02/22/2018 12:34:44 PM PST by eyeamok (Tolerance: The virtue of having a belief in Nothing!)
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To: Liberty7732

6 posted on 02/22/2018 12:37:23 PM PST by OttawaFreeper ("If I had to go to war again, I'd bring lacrosse players" Conn Smythe)
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To: Liberty7732

Why liberals are like perpetual teenagers. THIS. This is why.


7 posted on 02/22/2018 12:39:08 PM PST by Secret Agent Man ( Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: reasonisfaith

Or even:

Words on paper do not stop a persons’ evil intentions.


8 posted on 02/22/2018 12:40:02 PM PST by Secret Agent Man ( Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Liberty7732
I can't help but to suspect that school shootings are orchestrated, encouraged and as in this case not stopped, just to provide fuel for the anti-gun movement.

9 posted on 02/22/2018 12:42:31 PM PST by BitWielder1 (I'd rather have Unequal Wealth than Equal Poverty.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

“Why liberals are like perpetual teenagers...”

Hmm, I wonder...is liberalism possibly brain development related?

Could water tratment (chlorine, fluoride) be a player in this? Fluoride toothpastes? Sugars? Other?


10 posted on 02/22/2018 12:48:19 PM PST by polymuser (Its terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged today. - Chesterton)
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To: Liberty7732

“Science” explains....
No need ti read further.
Writer and science are enemies.
Writer and IQ are enemies.


11 posted on 02/22/2018 12:48:31 PM PST by Da Coyote
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To: OttawaFreeper

Wow


12 posted on 02/22/2018 12:51:27 PM PST by Williams (Stop tolerating the intolerant.)
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To: Liberty7732
More C R A P !, from a SHRINK!!!
13 posted on 02/22/2018 12:57:34 PM PST by SandRat (Duty, Honor, Country)
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To: OttawaFreeper

Violent people. Hate, Anger and Bigotry


14 posted on 02/22/2018 1:07:32 PM PST by realcleanguy
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To: Liberty7732

I’m no ‘Scientist’ but I HAVE raised teenagers to adulthood.

Their skulls are full of MUSH until they’re 25 or so.


15 posted on 02/22/2018 1:21:20 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin (I don't have 'Hobbies.' I'm developing a robust Post-Apocalyptic skill set.)
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To: Liberty7732
Because the Democrat Party is a gang?

16 posted on 02/22/2018 1:22:21 PM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (Presses can be 'associated,' or presses can be independent. Demand independent presses.)
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To: Liberty7732
I agree with this analysis. It is especially true with recently traumatized people generally, being in a high state of activation due to stress, and prepared to act on their aggression.

For these students to have been instigated to act on their aggression will prove to have done them lasting harm. What they need is to be at home with family and friends who can restore normal relating and a sense of safety. After this histrionic orgy of righteous indignation fades, they will be abandoned by the cynical media and left in a bad place.

17 posted on 02/22/2018 1:36:16 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: Liberty7732

The fact that the left does this is proof that the 2nd Amendment is vitally important and should be defended at all costs.


18 posted on 02/22/2018 2:08:57 PM PST by TigersEye (13 Russian Facebook trolls ... and a Siberian partridge in a Russian Olive tree.)
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To: OttawaFreeper

Sounds like Mr. Kasky is another mentally ill kid sending up red flags like balloons at a parade. When will he snap?


19 posted on 02/22/2018 2:11:30 PM PST by TigersEye (13 Russian Facebook trolls ... and a Siberian partridge in a Russian Olive tree.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

Hey, I wasn’t like this douchebag when I was a teen, nor were the majority of the people I hung out with...


20 posted on 02/22/2018 8:26:14 PM PST by Axenolith (Government blows, and that which governs least, blows least...)
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