Mass Shootings and Gun Debate 2018 Thread

[HeadphonesandLSD]

I agree, but the Constitution is the basis for our entire judicial system as well, so I see interpretation of the 2nd as a federal issue. I see where you're coming from, tho. Tbc, I don't think private citizens should be prevented from owning guns.

Oh it's a federal issue for sure. Just because a state makes a law doesn't mean that the feds can't overturn it. I didn't mean to imply that a state could ban guns outright or impose impossible restrictions. I just think the federal Government has overreached a lot on certain issues and going back to the original intention where states can more freely Govern themselves would probably solve a lot of issues we have these days. It's a fine line but I tend to favor local/small Government. In my own state things like Voter ID will be challenged again at the federal level I'm sure. I've always been fine with that.

Could women do the training, in your view? What about noncombat roles?

Of course, Women have always served an important role in the military. My only issue with the current state of affairs is the front line service aspect. Women on the front lines in combat roles cause a lot of issues that don't otherwise happen. It's hard for Women to remain in the field where they don't have access to hygiene products for example. The main issue is the fact that the men around them will make decisions they otherwise wouldn't. If you have a case where a man would normally be left behind/for dead things change dramatically if you replace that man with a woman. The Army has done several studies on this and found that men will take risks to save a woman that they wouldn't take otherwise. It's just ingrained instinct and the Army has been unable to find a way to train it out of soldiers. Even if that could be trained out it wouldn't solve many other problems that arise in the social structure when you have a co-ed force. For example, the presence of a woman ends up with every man around her competing for attention/sex/companionship. People get jealous of each other (again, instinct) and problems come up that don't happen in an all male social circle.

I know you disagree on this point but there have been several studies done on this that seem to get buried in the name on political correctness. I can recall one incident where women were being flown out every few days for showers while the men were forced to spend many months deployed without leaving base. It's hard to leave a woman in the field without resupply for too long because of the hygiene issue where males can stay out for far longer without worries of suffering major complications. There is also the issue of the Army having to lower standards on physical tests so more women could pass. In the field this would become an issue because they may not be able to render assistance to a fellow soldier due to being unable to lift their weight. Sorry to go on a tangent just pointing out at the very least women on the front lines does make logistics more complicated even if you exclude all the other issues it causes.

This goes deeper than just the Army/front lines. I don't have a problem with co-ed institutions for people mind you. I just think there needs to be a balance where you can have clubs/boys only/girls only being allowed as well. A lot of the issues we are currently having with men probably come from the fact that male-only spaces have been pretty much totally eliminated in society now. This leads to a huge lack of male bonding and places where men can be men. Currently, we live in a society where a male-only club is demonized for not allowing women in but women/girl only clubs are not. We need a healthy balance between co-ed and non co-ed social clubs.

Really interesting posts, Headphones. Got me thinking...
I can't say whether or not SSRIs are a big factor, but I wouldn't be surprised. My ex's cousin, when she was 16, got put on Zoloft, she was getting into drugs and her parents assumed it must be because she was depressed and the psychiatrist and her parents basically forced her onto it. Within a few months, she became crushingly depressed and her personality changed substantially, and she started to become obsessed with the idea of killing her family and herself. Fortunately she had the presence of mind to tell her parents she wanted off Zoloft and why, and fortunately they took her seriously. Once she got off of it, she went back to normal. This was before they started adding the disclaimer that "they may cause suicidal or homicidal ideation in children, teens and young adults" that they use now.

I do think the gross overuse of prescription mood-altering drugs in our society has a variety of insidiously negative repercussions, and could very well be a main underlying factor in why we have mass shootings, especially school shootings.

The SSRIs causing those issues is well documented and some studies have been done on it and pretty much all of them that I've read linked them with suicides/homicides. Most of them do say it right on the warning label that this can be a side effect. In my experience with using them they do cause this type of thinking and can provoke violent outbursts. They also seem to lower inhibitions and/or critical thinking that normally override such thoughts. Thoughts like that are normal but most people know not to act on them and realize that they aren't good ideas. SSRIs really scare me because they are prescribed so liberally and often thrown at someone that doesn't get more screening than a 10-15 minute visit with a family doctor. That's how I got several prescriptions for various SSRIs over the years although I rarely took them. I've been prescribed them multiple times for off-label sleeping problems and found that they don't really work better than benadryl but would cause major changes in my personality. They made me feel like a zombie and would often cause distorted thinking.

I am highly suspicious of big pharma and I'm sure the reason the link between use of SSRIs and mass shootings is suppressed so much is due to the fact that so much money is made off prescribing these drugs to people. I've seen far more bad results from long term use of SSRIs than I have good ones. I currently have a family member that's been attempting to ween off of them for a year now that can never seem to make the jump away from them. Once off of them for longer than a week she gets very moody, violent, and not the person she normally is. On SSRIs she's like a zombie that have no emotion whatsoever. Before she started using them 5-6 years ago she didn't have these issues. I can't remember now why they were originally prescribed but I do know it was off-label and not due to mental issues.

I don't mean to demonize an entire class of drugs I just think we need some restrictions on allowing them to be given out like candy. We've all seen what happens when drugs are treated as "harmless", we're currently living in an opioid crisis due to the very same attitude about prescription drugs. Most people don't realize just how little most doctors don't know about the drugs they're handing out. My own doctor has admitted to me that he has little time to stay on top of this and is forced to trust people advising him about these drugs. The people advising him are pharma reps which obviously aren't medical doctors and are employees of a company mostly concerned with profits. If you have journal access take a look at studies related to SSRIs and shootings/violence and you'll see lots of papers related to this subject. It's scary that it isn't talked about more often. The only person I can recall talking about it on national television was Alex Jones during his "debate" with Piers Morgan. While I respect him attempting to get the information out there most people do not take him serious and he didn't present the information in a way that people would have looked into it deeper.

The Alex Jones/Piers Morgan debate. Took me awhile to find this, CNN has scrubbed most mirrors from youtube and it doesn't come up in search results unless you go way down the list. The main one that comes up now is CNN's copy which is highly edited lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XZvMwcluEg

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

you wouldn't have the means to aquire an illegal gun to commit your mass shooting if they were highly regulated or illegal.

Drugs flow like water and they're highly illegal and regulated yet I can order them directly to my house or ride to areas in the city where they are sold in the open. Making something illegal doesn't make it vanish into thin air. There will be a demand for guns and people will find a way to get them or make them. Even in places where they're regulated heavily people make and sell them all of the time. I can make a simple machine gun with spare parts just laying around my shop. I can make a shotgun from a couple of pieces of pipe and a nail.

If there were an outright prohibition on guns it'd just be like it was with alcohol and in the current drug war.

 

[swilow]

As interesting as the miltary/gender discussion is, let's try and keep this focused on guns and stuff.

Drugs flow like water and they're highly illegal and regulated yet I can order them directly to my house or ride to areas in the city where they are sold in the open

I think this is largely really relevant to the US where you guys have more guns than people. Personally, most people I know are not going to be able to access guns, legally or otherwise. But I live in Australia where, for the most part, gun culture of the US is utterly inexplicable. I have never felt any need to own a gun, and one reason is that I have absolutely no fear of encountering one 'in the wild', ever. In a society with absundant (too many) guns, it makes sense that people feel obligated to own a gun to protect themselves from all the other "tool owners" out there.

I personally think SSRIs are the root cause to most of these shootings.

Is there a reason you think this- like a source or something? You've made a few statements about SSRI's but I'm not sure I've seen any real substantiation.

Just as comparison, Australia also administers a lot of these drugs. The graph below doesn't specify SSRI's, but as they are frontline treatments, its likely that a significant percentage of the antidepressants used are of the SSRI class.

NSFW:

-SOURCE

I guess I am curious as to why countries with antidepressant usage akin to the US don't have anywhere near the same amount of mass shootings if such medications are as causative as you think.

One read of this would be to say that the reason the US has more mass shootings is because (drumroll please) you have more guns than anywhere else.

 

[invegauser]

@HeadphonesandLSD: great posts in this thread of late, i'm a lil jealous but not hating or self deprecating. good info too. though towards the end i agree you got a lil off topic but i see where you were going with most of it and it's hard to get back OT with it, i know. keep up the good posts.

@swilow: love the cynicism as always. just had to share this for the accuracy mate.

suicides are high in australia. just because here someone decides to take others out with them and go death by cop or turn the gun on themselves to punch their ticket doesn't mean much of a difference besides body count when it comes to SSRI's (statistically speaking). the psych meds are drugs themselves, just legal ones. they are not perfected yet, they have some fine tuning to go and are more effective than when they first hit the scene (and better options than what science had before that) but there are long lists of side effects/withdrawal symptoms that comes with quiet a few meds today. depression, suicide, irrational beliefs, psychosis and yes, they even have been known to give temporary mental illness to those who had none or a different one to begin with; to name a very few in the very long list.

people try to quit smoking cigarettes using the pill chantix/champix end up with some very irrational thoughts if not suicidal tendencies and that's a smoking cessation aid (not an SSRI). but i digress...

links to support australia's suicide rate is becoming alarming plus to note it's higher than what we have here in the states. so when it comes to psych meds it's not just about mass shootings in other countries, there are other problems that come with it too. they present themselves in other ways. and in this case, SSRI's can cause one to be off their rocker enough to perform mass shooting but are not the sole reason for them (probably not a large one either).

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ks-calls-for-national-target-to-reduce-deaths

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

to answer your question: ya, more guns equals easy access and adds to the whole convenience of it. but we have more pressure here than anywhere else in the world in a few ways. our rights come with a huge burden of responsibility. i laughed recently when someone said "if that caravan reaches the border we should shoot them." i wouldn't really endorse shooting them though. i laughed because i remember when i was a kid you could say things like that and it had a different meaning, it was a way to bring levity to a room and move on in the conversation by pointing out that someone is a jack ass. today you say something like that and your condemned as an evil person because people take things way too literally.

i know that's all over the world in general but here where having so many freedoms is now becoming a burden instead of a blessing it puts a lot of pressure on the average person. we are more accustomed today to turning away from conflict between people here instead of being reasonable and finding a solution that instances like these happen are not to be considered uncanny imo.

no one really thinks for themselves (again some of this rings true for all around the world), they are more invested in the latest convenience and the self instead of being more involved with putting in effort to keeping the system running, acquiring appropriate or reasonable materialistic values and being involved with their neighbors, community and government be it state and/or federal.

i agree we have way too many guns here, i also agree people should have that right to have that many guns in this country. what i don't agree with is so many people treating such a dangerous weapon that requires a certain level of respect and responsibility to handle the way that they do. not just those committing these crimes but those on the opposite end of the spectrum as well.

it's an ugly world we live in and it's going to get uglier before it gets better. being irrational about a topic like this (not saying you are swilow) in any way shape or form is going to hasten and possibly make things even worse. i'm just thankful the average idiot here committing these crimes due to what i believe aihfl called extinction bursts among the two other reasons; are doing so only with guns. imagine if it was an explosive, chemical or germ device being used. diabolical!

I'm sure Trump has an answer. I'm also sure it's a bad one.

HAHAHA!!

However, I don't think it's a simple thing to understand why someone shoots a bunch of people and then commits suicide, is captured alive, or killed. In this vein, the mass murderer might not even know why they're motivated to do what they do. I believe they probably don't.

there is no emoji for touching the finger to the nose, so i'll say agreed.

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

As interesting as the miltary/gender discussion is, let's try and keep this focused on guns and stuff.

I ramble given a bit of information, I do apologize for getting off topic.

I think this is largely really relevant to the US where you guys have more guns than people. Personally, most people I know are not going to be able to access guns, legally or otherwise. But I live in Australia where, for the most part, gun culture of the US is utterly inexplicable. I have never felt any need to own a gun, and one reason is that I have absolutely no fear of encountering one 'in the wild', ever. In a society with absundant (too many) guns, it makes sense that people feel obligated to own a gun to protect themselves from all the other "tool owners" out there.

Do you live on the coast or in-land? When guns were banned over there tons were turned in but I assure you many more were buried and hidden. You don't see a gun culture there because it's widely hidden. This is anecdotal but I speak with many friends from down under that have large caches of guns buried or hidden on their property. Your country is often cited for gun control working but personally think it mostly did not and people over there with guns are smart enough not to mention them. The situation is basically the same everywhere else that has outright banned guns or imposed heavy restrictions. People register one or two guns for a purpose where they'll be seen with it (farm work, daily carry) and hide the rest of them. Even with the so-called lax restrictions in my own country I know of many people that have tons of them hidden and enough ammo to supply a small Army. I've even given thought to hiding some myself. I assure you that if I did they'd never be found. I live on a large enough piece of property that it would take years to cover it all and find all the good hiding places.

The "more guns than people" stat comes from just the guns the US Government knows about. We probably have four or five times that amount in our country. We also have a country to our south with tons of guns in it and it's very easy to export them over without anyone finding out about them. The talks of banning them just spook people too. Every gun buyback I've seen locally ends up having a ton of locals come out offering more cash than the local police force for them. Every hint of a ban causes folks to go buy ammo, build kits, and rifles in bulk. Every "prepper" I personally know is sitting on a small arsenal to defend the other items they've stocked up on. Most of these people are respected members of the community with good jobs and you wouldn't know they were sitting on this stuff unless you were long time friends with them. Lately it seems people are hoarding more ammo than ever. That's why it was so hard to get .22lr ammo for so many years.

Is there a reason you think this- like a source or something? You've made a few statements about SSRI's but I'm not sure I've seen any real substantiation.

I guess I am curious as to why countries with antidepressant usage akin to the US don't have anywhere near the same amount of mass shootings if such medications are as causative as you think.

There are several studies, if you have journal access search for "SSRIs and suicide". There have been several articles related to it as well. Here are a few from a quick google search:

https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3697/rr-4
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4034101/
https://www.cchrflorida.org/antidepressants-are-a-prescription-for-mass-shootings/

Note that this isn't a problem soley limited to guns/mass shootings. People have been "running amok" all throughout human history. For some reason SSRIs and related chemicals seem to bring out this behavior. The problem isn't the day-to-day when using these medications it's when major life events happen while using them. SSRIs cause a change in thinking that overrides the normal "this may be a bad idea" thought processes. Also because violent acts that aren't classes as mass shootings are rarely scrutinized to the degree a mass shooting suspect is (they don't make major news) a ton of them seem to slip under the radar.

What first led me to believe this link between SSRIs and shootings that make the media was the fact that every time one of them happened it seemed like the suspect was always medicated on these substances. If you look into the medical history of the Columbine shooters, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, and almost every other mass shooting/killing the suspect(s) are almost always taking SSRIs or something similar. This is rarely talked about in the mass media for several reasons the main one being SSRIs and related drugs make a lot of money for the pharmaceutical companies and they have enough clout to get any bad press about their drugs buried. They are some of the major sponsors for most of the mass media companies that report these shootings. The link is there and it has been noted for going on two decades now but you don't hear about it outside of medical/scientific studies/journals. Any mention outside of those circles always seems to come from the Alex Jone types that have been labeled as crazy people/talk in the mass media.

I want to find the root cause just like everyone else but I'm often discouraged that any attempt to find it outside of banning guns is rarely discussed. It always seems to come back to that key issue with a huge shouting match by both sides. Any other theories on the subject always seem to get lost in the on-going battle to have guns banned. Gun debate aside suicide has replaced homicide as the second leading cause of death in America and that seems to line up with the wide use of SSRIs in society. I think we need to look more deeply into this issue considering SSRIs are widely prescribed off-label for various things like sleeping problems. You can be labeled as "depressed" in 5 minutes by a regular doctor and walk out with a substance that is known to cause dependance and change your personality. This seems very dangerous in my mind.

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

To avoid this getting lost in my wall-of-text here is the text from the last article I linked: https://www.cchrflorida.org/antidepressants-are-a-prescription-for-mass-shootings/

Before the late nineteen eighties, mass shootings and acts of senseless violence were relatively unheard of. Prozac, the most well known SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressant, was not yet on the market. When Prozac did arrive, it was marketed as a panacea for depression which resulted in huge profits for its manufacturer Eli Lilly. Of course other drug companies had to create their own cash cow and followed suit by marketing their own SSRI antidepressants.

Subsequently, mass shootings and other violent incidents started to be reported. More often than not, the common denominator was that the shooters were on an antidepressant, or withdrawing from one. This is not about an isolated incident or two but numerous shootings. The question is, during the past twenty years is the use of antidepressants here a coincidence or a causation?

There have been too many mass shootings for it just to be a coincidence. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School. Eric was on Luvox, an antidepressant. The Virginia Tech shooter killed thirty-two people and he was on an antidepressant. While withdrawing from Prozac, Kip Kinkel murdered his mother and stepmother. He then shot twenty-two classmates and killed two. Jason Hoffman wounded five at his high school while he was on Effexor, also an antidepressant. James Holmes opened fire in a Colorado movie theater this past summer and killed twelve people and wounded fifty-eight. He was under the care of a psychiatrist but no information has been released as to what drug he must have been on.

Psychiatrists generally will tell you that these people were mentally ill and they weren’t treated in time or didn’t get enough help to prevent the tragedy. However, Dr. Peter Breggin, who is a psychiatrist, stated that depression rarely leads to violence and that it’s only since the SSRI’s came on the market that such mass shootings have taken place.

In a study of thirty-one drugs that are disproportionately linked to reports of violence toward others, five of the top ten are antidepressants. These are Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor and Pristiq. Two other drugs that are for treating ADHD are also in the top ten which means these are being given to children who could then become violent. One could conclude from this study alone that antidepressants cause both suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. This is a prescription for mass shootings.

No one can talk their way out of explaining how a person who is previously non-violent and given antidepressants suddenly becomes violent or suicidal. There are multiple cases of children who have committed suicide days after starting to take an antidepressant. In a YouTube video, various parents tell their story about what the antidepressants did to their kids.

A parent retells how his child couldn’t stand how the drugs made him feel and so he committed suicide. Another parent is stuck with the image of his child running in front of a moving car because the child wanted to die. Imagine calling 911 because your child is trying to kill herself when you know your child was not like that before taking the antidepressant. Imagine what you would feel like upon finding out that your child is the shooter in a murderous rampage on the school campus.

While on a mix of antidepressants, sixteen year old Cory Baadsgaard took a rifle to school and held twenty-three students hostage. His father said he was not a violent kid before he took the drugs but while on the medication he was volatile and susceptible to blind rage. Cory does not remember anything other than waking up, not feeling so well and going back to bed. The next thing he remembered was being in juvenile detention. Luckily no one was hurt, but it could have become another mass shooting.

A Harvard psychiatrist closely monitors his patients as he has seen firsthand that those that were not suicidal before became agitated, restless and completely preoccupied with suicidal thoughts. When these patients were taken off the drug, the thoughts went away. Clearly this demonstrates it’s the drugs causing these violent feelings, not the mental health of the patient.

They claim that these drugs are safe and effective but obviously they aren’t. Doctors themselves may not be aware of the dangers of these drugs, but their patients are the ones who will suffer the consequences if they are not told of the potentially lethal side effects. Doctors should at the very least go over the FDA Black Box warning which is on all antidepressants. This warning states that there is an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior by taking the drug. Otherwise, doctors are pretty much pulling the trigger themselves so-to-speak.

The worst part is we are all being misled with false information in regards to “mental illness.” Given the fact that there is not a single diagnostic test for depression or any other “mental disorder,” how can one even attempt to diagnose a “mental disorder” without a shred of scientific evidence to back it up? Opinions about symptoms are not science! There is the “chemical brain imbalance” theory, but where is the science to prove it exists?

The point is you can’t prescribe an antidepressant or any other psychiatric drug when you don’t know the cause of the symptoms. Nothing ever gets treated, helped or fixed without a cause. Instead, mind-altering drugs are being given to our future generation for no sensible or logical reason other than profits for pharmaceutical companies. The only result is dead bodies from mass shootings and that is truly senseless. Check it out for yourself and watch the YouTube video. Check out the list of school incidents linked to SSRIs below. Ensure your children are safe!

References:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...2/top-ten-legal-drugs-linked-to-violence.aspx

http://ssristories.com/index.php?p=school

I encourage anyone interested to look into this for themselves. Don't take my word (or the word of this article) as fact. If you research this subject like I have I'm sure you'll come away with the same concern about SSRIs.

Not that I'm not trying to demonize this drug or any other. I think all drugs should be fully legal and people should be able to use them as they see fit. I'm not saying SSRIs don't have legitimate medical uses I'm just saying they're widely prescribed and doctors are too loose with them like they were with opioids, benzos, and many other substances over the years that have proven to be bad ideas in the long run. I feel like any bad press about these substances is buried in the name of profits just like the bad press about Oxycontin in the early 2000s was buried in the name of profit.

 

[Xorkoth]

My ex's cousin got sent to a psychiatrist as a teenager. She was doing drugs and her parents and the shrink figured she must be depressed so they put her on Zoloft. She ended up totally withdrawing and started fantastizing about killing her family and then herself. Fortunately, she talked to her parents about it and they got her off of it and she stopped feeling that way, Just saying.

 

[aihfl]

Hide, deny, spin, threaten

How the school district tried to mask failures that led to Parkland shooting

BY BRITTANY WALLMAN, MEGAN O?MATZ
AND PAULA MCMAHON
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL

Immediately after 17 people were murdered inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the school district launched a persistent effort to keep people from finding out what went wrong. For months, Broward schools delayed or withheld records, refused to publicly assess the role of employees, spread misinformation and even sought to jail reporters who published the truth. New information gathered by the South Florida Sun Sentinel proves that the school district knew far more than it's saying about a disturbed former student obsessed with death and guns who mowed down staff and students with an assault rifle on Valentine's Day. After promising an honest assessment of what led to the shooting, the district instead hired a consultant whose primary goal, according to school records, was preparing a legal defense. Then the district kept most of those findings from the public.

School administrators insist that they have been as transparent as possible; that federal privacy laws prevent them from revealing the school record of gunman Nikolas Cruz; that discussing security in detail would make schools more dangerous; and that answers ultimately will come when a state commission releases its initial findings about the shooting around New Year's. Beyond that, though, the cloak of secrecy illustrates the steps a beleaguered public body will take to manage and hide information in a crisis when reputations, careers and legal liability are at stake. It also highlights the shortcomings of federal education laws that protect even admitted killers like Cruz who are no longer students. Behind a shield of privacy laws and security secrets, schools can cover up errors and withhold information the public needs in order to heal and to evaluate the people entrusted with their children?s lives.

Nine months after the Parkland shooting, few people have been held accountable or even identified for mishandling security and failing to react to signs that the troubled Cruz could erupt. Only two low-level security monitors have been fired. "Obviously it seems to me there were multiple failures in the system," said longtime businessman John Daly Sr. of Coral Springs, who with a few others started the activist group Concerned Citizens of Broward County in response to what they considered security lapses. "And basically it looked, more or less, like a cover-up, because they weren't forthcoming about how they handled the situation."

Superintendent Robert Runcie stresses that the school district has made no attempt to conceal information except when lawyers said it could not be released. "That can't be characterized and should not be characterized as the district doesn't want to provide more information," he said. "We work to be as transparent as possible. We have nothing to hide. There's no conversation anywhere in this district about withholding any information that we can readily provide. I haven't had those conversations. I haven't heard about them."

Familiar promises
Runcie has professed openness from the beginning, but reporters and families of dead children have been denied information time and again. In March, he said, "We cannot undo the heartbreak this attack has caused in the community, but we can try to understand the conditions that led to such acts in hopes of avoiding them in the future." That statement came as he announced what he called an "independent, comprehensive assessment" that would be done with "transparency and a sense of urgency." The review fell short of what he described. Without taking bids or interviewing consultants, the district let its outside law firm hire Collaborative Educational Network of Tallahassee. CEN?s contract, for $60,000, did not demand the thorough and transparent review that Runcie promised. Rather, it directed the consultant to analyze Cruz's school records, interview educators and keep the details secret. The contract required the consultant to "further assist the client in ongoing litigation matters."

CEN spent several months analyzing one issue: whether Broward schools satisfied the law in the education of Cruz, a onetime special education student, or whether "areas of concern" should be addressed. The review made no attempt to assess whether the district adequately protected students or failed to act on Cruz's often-spoken plans for violence. Though Runcie said other agencies would be interviewed, none were. The report, released in August after a court battle, concluded that the district generally treated Cruz properly. Exactly how, the public could not tell. With a judge's approval, the district obscured references to Cruz, nearly two-thirds of the text, to protect his privacy under law. Only when the Sun Sentinel obtained and published an uncensored copy did the truth come out: Cruz was deeply troubled; the district improperly withdrew support he needed; he asked for additional services; and the district bungled his request, leaving him spinning without help.

What the report didn't say
Startling as those details were, they pale in light of new information obtained by the Sun Sentinel, none of it included in the consultant's report or shared publicly by the school district. The district was well aware that Cruz, for years, was unstable and possibly murderous: "I'm a bad kid. I want to kill," Cruz, now 20 years old, ominously told a teacher in middle school. "I strongly feel that Nikolas is a danger to the students and faculty at this school,?" Cruz's eighth-grade language arts teacher wrote in a behavioral evaluation. "I do not feel that he understands the difference between his violent video games and reality." In middle school, he stated he felt nervous about one day going to jail and wondered what would happen to him if he did something bad.

At the beginning of eighth grade, one girl's mother called to have her transferred out of Cruz's class because she was concerned for her child's safety. The mother called Cruz a "menace to society," according to a psychosocial assessment. In short, the school district's own records reveal Nikolas Cruz to be a tortured teen liable to explode at any time. Yet the analysis the district commissioned to help the community understand, as Runcie promised, makes no mention of those episodes. Said Ryan Petty, whose 14-year-old daughter, Alaina, was murdered at Stoneman Douglas: "I have absolutely no trust that the district has any interest in policing itself."

Fighting public access
The school district began to lock down information right after the shooting, declaring that all Stoneman Douglas records were secret, even those the public had a legal right to see. "At this time, any records pertaining to Stoneman Douglas High will not be released," the district's risk management department said in an email to reporters in February. Even employees were subject to restraints. Some received letters of reprimand not for mishandling Cruz, but for accessing his private records after the shooting. Officials refused at times to respond to even simple questions from reporters, telling them to wait for the consultant's report. At one point, the district said it would cost $2,600 for reporters to see copies of letters that teachers and staff sent to School Board members after the shooting. The district said it would charge $2,700 for Principal Ty Thompson's emails related to Cruz, the tragedy and security. Journalists obtained some of the letters months later after negotiating a lower price. Other emails were released only after the parents of dead students sued the school district, saying they had been unable to obtain public records. The Sun Sentinel has petitionedto join that suit, one of several cases that have led the district into court over secrecy.

Just two weeks after the attack, news companies sued the district to obtain surveillance video from outside Stoneman Douglas so the public could evaluate the response of police officers. The school district argued that the footage would give away security secrets. An appellate judge rejected that argument, calling the video "something that the parents of students should be able to evaluate to participate in future decisions concerning the safety of their children." The school district was back in court after its consultant's report was completed. After first refusing to release the report, school lawyers suddenly sought a judge's permission to do so, but only with vast sections blacked out to hide Cruz's information. When the Sun Sentinel published an uncensored version, the school district swiftly asked a judge to hold two reporters in contempt, which could result in their jailing. School officials maintain that they did not attempt to sanction reporters, only to inform the court that the full report had been published. Yet their petition asked the judge to initiate contempt proceedings and impose proper sanctions as deemed appropriate.

Backers in business
Aside from legal issues, the school system has considerable reason to be concerned about its reputation, finances and stability. It is the sixth-largest school system in the country, with more than 270,000 students and a budget of more than $4 billion. Broward County's largest public sector employer, its leadership wields tremendous power and influence, and the community's top businesspeople have been among Runcie's staunchest supporters. "The business community has confidence in Bob Runcie 100 percent," said Keith Koenig, president of City Furniture and chairman of the Broward Workshop, a nonprofit organization made up of the county?s major corporations, including school district vendors and contractors Koenig credits Runcie with raising graduation rates, scaling down inefficiency, improving productivity, winning an $800 million bond issue in 2014, and passing a property tax increase this past August for teacher raises and school security, a campaign waged as questions about Parkland went unanswered.

School districts nationally have taken similar steps to protect information during crises, experts say. In Madison, Ala., one ninth-grader fatally shot another in a hallway at Discovery Middle School in February 2010. Although students were texting the shooter's name to one another, the school district could not confirm it because he was a minor, said communications consultant Barbara Nash, who was hired to help with public relations. "I wanted to. We wanted to. But we couldn't," Nash said. "It would have been against the law to say so. It's ridiculous."

Mellissa Braham, associate director of the National School Public Relations Association, said: "Sometimes you might think that it seems as if the district is trying to hide something, when it might actually be that they're trying to be thoughtful about the process or trying to provide a reasonable accommodation of the laws. And not get themselves in additional trouble." Even then, she said, most districts would do their own internal reviews to see what mistakes were made. Broward schools never did. It was five months after the shooting when the school district announced it would launch a thorough investigation into school security and other issues that the consultant CEN was not considering. By then, the state commission was investigating the shooting and asked the district to avoid another review, in order to not interfere with the commission's work.

A "whitewash?"
David Frankel, one of Cruz's attorneys, called the CEN report a "whitewash" that underplayed or omitted evidence of Cruz's psychological problems in order to help the school district evade responsibility. Christy Noe, president and CEO of CEN, defends the report as "not a whitewash at all." The report, in part, explored why Cruz was transferred to Stoneman Douglas from a school that gives emotionally and behaviorally disabled students the extra support they need. Cruz's behavior deteriorated quickly at Stoneman Douglas and he was forced to withdraw, but the report concluded that the school district did nothing wrong by sending him there. If people understood the laws related to educating a special-needs child, Noe said, they'd understand that Cruz wasn't meant to stay in the sheltered environment of a special school forever. Even with his history of aggression and threats to kill people, she said she stands by her report's conclusion that he had improved enough to be sent to a regular school. Cruz was just one of about 1,000 students in Broward public schools with emotional and behavioral disabilities, Noe said. "If you were to review the full educational records of those students, you would find many, many instances in which they said or wrote disturbing or threatening statements," Noe said. "Unfortunately, how we see things in hindsight is often very different than what we perceive in the moment."

Still, plenty of people knew that Cruz was bent on violence, but their concerns appear nowhere in the consultant's report. In February 2016, just weeks after Cruz started full time at Stoneman Douglas, a neighbor reported to the sheriff's office how unhinged he was. Cruz posted online that he planned to "shoot up a school," the neighbor said. The statement does not appear in the consultant's report. Instead, the report portrayed the volatile Cruz as a success story at the time. He was "experiencing positive academic progress with only minor behavioral challenges," the report said.

No help for Cruz
At Stoneman Douglas, Cruz disappeared on a giant campus with 3,300 students and no structure for emotionally troubled students like him. Some in the community wonder whether Cruz's problems at Stoneman Douglas led him to target the school later. The school district's actions were "just total negligence; serious, not minor," said Dottie Provenzano, a retired special education coordinator for Broward schools. "The way I look at it, we don't have dead children if the school district had done what they needed to do."

The district has tried to dispel that perception. Public Information Officer Tracy Clark has repeatedly distributed "talking points," or suggested comments, for administrators and school board members to make publicly, according to emails obtained by the Sun Sentinel. Similarly, the district attempted to mitigate any public outcry about its consultant's report. A news release proclaimed, "This report verifies that the district's systems are appropriate and are in place." Clark then sent out talking points for board members, who were advised to say, "I have not yet seen the report." Or: "It seems clear that the review was thorough." And: "We must never forget that Nikolas Cruz is responsible for this tragedy."

Staff writer Scott Travis contributed to this report.

 

[TheLoveBandit]

Gun purchasers may need to submit social media history under proposed New York legislation

Those looking to buy a gun in New York may need to submit their social media profiles and search history prior to purchase if new firearm legislation in the state becomes law.

Under the legislation drafted by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and State Senator Kevin Parker, both Democrats, up to three years? worth of search history on social media would be able to be reviewed, ABC Action News reported.

Senate Bill 9191, according to WHAM, mandates "social media and search engine reviews prior to the approval of an application or renewal of a license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver; requires a person applying for a license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver or a renewal of such license to consent to having his or her social media accounts and search engine history reviewed and investigated for certain posts and/or searches over a period of 1-3 years prior to the approval of such application or renewal; defines terms."

Under the proposed legislation, law enforcement officials could investigate "commonly known profane slurs used or biased language used to describe race, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation; threatening health or safety of another person, or an act of terrorism."

"There should be more restrictions on how guns are purchased. We should have more background checks," Paul McQuillen, director of the Buffalo chapter of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, said. "We?ve obviously seen some of the mass shooters have a social media history that should have sent red flags," he said.

The bill could be troublesome to push through as critics argue it violates multiple constitutional rights.

The legislation is currently in committee and no vote is scheduled.

So what do you think - all your online activity should be fair game for LEO to review?

 

[Xorkoth]

I mean... it's a slippery slope, maybe. Because my online history (not my socisal media history however) is full of drug-related stuff. If they determined that meant I was unsuitable as a gun owner, that would suck and I think it would be unjust as well. On the other hand, the Parkland shooter, for example, had a social media history full of red flags. There's a guy who I used to sort of hang out with when we were kids, everyone thought he was weird. He ended up getting a gun and explosives and driving to Times Square. He bought the gun shortly before this. His plan never came to fruition because he was pulled over and caught. But afterwards they discovered that his social media was full of intense posts about bringing out society and stuff of that nature. Had those posts been looked at, they could have not sold him the gun. Not that he did anything with it,but he was planning to.

After thinking about it, I think publicly available content you post should be part of a background check. If you're posting violent messages publicly, I think it makes sense that you should be restricted on guns. It's public domain information anyway, it seems prudent to check it as part of a background check. Now if this was revised to say that they need access to your private data, I would change my tune because that would be unnecessarily intrusive to people.

 

[invegauser]

if my boss can't get my social media password (not like i have one) then the gubement shouldn't either.

what does pornhub have to do with me buying a gun, honestly?

joking aside i agree with Shadowmeisters points.

tbh i can't see how stopping 50 or so people through their social media accounts will stop the other 250 or so that will make it happen cause they're smart enough to read the laws and work around it. (there have been over 300 mass shootings in 2018 alone) garage sales, street vendors, gun shows, stealing them, other people buying them, having a clean social media account, etc.

it's like trying to stop people from using drugs.

 

[cduggles]

It's not viable. Who the heck can check a single person's social media history, much less a bunch of them until Skynet?

And of course your privates would be included and yes drug users would be "red-flagged" because Reefer Madness, dood. :D (I am serious that private stuff included, actually that's what they'd want first, and yeah, drug users need not apply.)

 

[Xorkoth]

Yeah I'm sure that's how it would go in reality.

 

[invegauser]

@cduggles: HAHA! very cool. %)

Self defense training and an armed populace. When there are friendlies with guns roaming around soft targets are eliminated and you don't end up with people bringing guns into no-gun zones and shooting people like they're fish in a barrel. We need to bring back mandatory rifle training for the youth in schools. We need to teach adults how to defend themselves. Remove the unwarranted fear of the tool/gun and teach everyone gun safety at some point while growing up (which used to be common in this society). The running/hiding techniques simply do not work against someone armed with a gun with the desire to kill everyone. Waiting for the police to show up 10 minutes after everyone is already dead also doesn't work.

this is what i have not heard a lot of people weigh in on and i'm curious as to people's take on it.

 

[TheLoveBandit]

Self defense training and an armed populace. When there are friendlies with guns roaming around soft targets are eliminated and you don't end up with people bringing guns into no-gun zones and shooting people like they're fish in a barrel. We need to bring back mandatory rifle training for the youth in schools. We need to teach adults how to defend themselves. Remove the unwarranted fear of the tool/gun and teach everyone gun safety at some point while growing up (which used to be common in this society). The running/hiding techniques simply do not work against someone armed with a gun with the desire to kill everyone. Waiting for the police to show up 10 minutes after everyone is already dead also doesn't work.

To follow on invega's lead, I didn't comment on this but here's my take:

I very much wish fire arm training was compulsory. Firearms exist everywhere, and even if you are against them you invariably be exposed to them (knowingly or not) in that there are concealed carry persons around (state laws permitting), hunters homes you may visit when meeting with friends, and of course both law enforcement and criminals. Here in America, guns are everywhere whether you see them or not. I think everyone should be trained on how to handle them (ensure safety engaged, ensure no loaded ammo ready to fire, how to load ammo, how to fire safely).

If taught at a kids age (8-12 as is done typically with hunters) you can build the respect for the weapon and the damage it can do. Moreover, even if guns are not in your home, your 8-12 yr old will know how to stay safe around a weapon in a friends home rather than an 'accidental' shooting We drill it into kids heads all the time - look both ways before crossing the street. Why? Because it is a safe behaviour, an understanding of the danger involved and how to minimize the risk. IMO, we should do the same for guns. Also, if done in a regimented way (ie, if not in schools then through a community program by LEO and/or licensed gun trainers) there is an increased chance of finding the 'at risk' kids who might take the knowledge to a detrimental direction. Right now, those 'at risk' kids are off the radar, growing more determined to make a mark and seeing guns as a means to do it....proper courses, IMO, will reveal these 'at risk' kids and get them the attention they need before they cause another mass shooting.

To me, it is a matter of being 'prepared' in case a situation arises. I'd rather know WHAT to expect and what do than hide and pray.

= = =

I may go a bit off topic here, but as an extension to this, I've always been interested in the compulsory service some countries have (Israel and Sweden, for instance). If you look at countries with compulsory service, a lot of them are by necessity. Small countries with hostile neighbors, a large swath of north and central Africa where warring is constant. For these countries, it is a necessity to have a population ready and able to defend at any time, and the compulsory service ensures a trained population.

However, I've often imagined we (America) as a country could benefit from compulsory service for a few reasons. There is the 'ready population' I just mentioned, but that isn't so much of a need for us when the volunteer, or career, military personnel are enough to defend us (and war abroad 8) ). But having this common training for all citizens would be an extension of public education - level baseline for all in terms of personal discipline, breaking down of differences and working with others regardless of background/race/religion/etc. A means of building more bonds among the population, of bridging rather than isolating from others for whatever reasons. This basic service would also enable the gun training mentioned above (and subsequent screening for 'at risk' persons). While not at war, the troops can be used for infrastructure endeavors (recall the CCC of 1933-1942) as a means of greatly lowering unemployment while improving our country. And, like regular volunteers today, many would have a chance to learn employable skills for when they got out.

There could be an argument made that this then becomes more gov't programming and propaganda feeding to the public. I'd argue it is no more than we get today through public schooling and biased media.

Essentially, I could see us divert welfare funding (which I see as a handout in a lot of situations) to something more constructive (paying people during this service while developing them, and getting much more out of them in return). This isn't to say shut down welfare as there are those who do indeed need it. But I could see a gradual shift, for example, nobody can be on unemployment or welfare under the age of 25 - instead they join this program for however long is needed to pass the basic compulsory time frame but then stay in until they can jump to real employment. This military service could then standardize more on who is incapable of work by a common federal definition (not state by state) and therefore eligible for welfare benefits.

/steps off soapbox

 

[TheLoveBandit]

Parkland Dad Andrew Pollack: ‘March for Our Lives’ Made America’s Kids Less Safe

(full article quoted)

Two years ago today, my daughter Meadow and sixteen others were murdered in the Parkland school shooting. For the families of the victims, it was an unspeakable tragedy. But for others, it was an incredible political opportunity.

The shooting propelled a handful of shrill student activists to fame. The most prominent one, David Hogg, later mused, “We really only remember a few hundred people, if that many, out of the billions that have ever lived. Is that what I was destined to become?”

No, David. My daughter wasn’t murdered so that you could fulfill your “destiny” of tweeting about historically marginalized “indigenous lgbtq women and non binary” gun control activists.

She was murdered because of the failures of the Broward County school district, sheriff’s office, and mental health services. Failures that partisan agitprop, spewed by you and the other March For Our Lives (MFOL) activists, helped to shield from the public eye.

Although I disagreed with the gun control kids politically, I made it a rule not to criticize them publicly. Because I figured that despite our differences, we all wanted the same thing: safe schools.

But the last straw came last month, when MFOL teamed up with the Southern Poverty Law Center to sue the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, which had investigated everything that went wrong and proposed concrete solutions.

They sued because a meeting adjourned before one of the gun control kids could speak, presumably to denounce the commission for proposing solutions other than gun control.

My first reaction when I heard that was to be surprised that any of the gun control kids even showed up. The Commission had been meeting for a year-and-a-half, and I never saw MFOL take an interest in why their peers got murdered.

After a meeting in August, 2018, the parents of all of the victims stood united to call out the school district’s failures and call on Broward County to elect new school board members. Only one MFOL kid showed up, Cameron Kasky, and he was about to quit the organization.

We tried hard to get David Hogg and his friend, Emma Gonzalez, to take an interest in understanding what went wrong, and holding local officials accountable. Both of them gave me their word of honor that they would support our effort to elect new school board members. The Broward County establishment was trying to smear the families of victims as right-wing reactionaries for demanding answers and change.

One tweet by either of them could have turned the tide of public opinion and helped to deliver justice and accountable for the murdered. But they totally ghosted us. Not even one tweet.

David Hogg told us that he couldn’t endorse any candidates. But that didn’t stop him from endorsing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a “future president” and later endorsing a socialist for a school board race in another school district. For all Hogg’s tweets about keeping billionaires and dark money out of politics, we now know that MFOL was bankrolled by dark money from liberal millionaires and billionaires.


Liberal billionaire Eli Broad gave the group one million dollars. His organization, the Broad Foundation, also trained and celebrated Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie and promoted the leniency policies that he pioneered in Broward, which played a key role in letting the shooter slip through the cracks.

So maybe it was no wonder that Hogg and his friends refused to stand with the parents of the victims. After all, if you’re an ambitious kid who thinks you’re destined for world-historical greatness as a leftist Twitterer, it’s probably not smart to criticize someone your biggest funder supports.

It’s a deep shame, because the local failures in Parkland have major national implications. As Eli Broad’s organization has boasted, the Obama administration took note of Runcie’s “PROMISE Program,” which reduced arrests by 70 percent by giving students three free misdemeanors ever year, and made national policy based on it.

The Parkland school shooting was the most avoidable mass murder in American history. And the Obama administration took the policies that made it inevitable and forced them into school districts across America – including probably your child’s.

For my part, I did everything I could to expose the truth so that parents could learn from the facts and understand what they need to do to keep their kids safe. That’s why I wrote Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies that Created the Parkland Shooter.

But most Americans never heard any of the facts. They just saw a bunch of teenagers, funded by millions of dark money dollars, throw temper tantrums on stage and on Twitter.

Any question of what went wrong or why was quickly stigmatized by a sycophantic media as a “right-wing” thing. And any criticism of those kids’ opportunistic and ridiculous behavior was condemned as somehow beyond the pale.

Still, I never wanted to criticize them. But now that they’ve decided to sue the state commission that found the answers about why their peers were murdered, it’s my turn to “call BS.”

Those activists became nothing more than a crude political tool of the Democrat party. They accomplished absolutely nothing productive. They hijacked the tragedy to register more kids to vote for Democrats. They kept the truth of what went wrong and why out of the national spotlight.

Students across America are less safe because of them.

In summary, father of one of the killed kids:
- Has made it a point not to criticize those who leapt into the public eye, in hopes they would help bring about positive changes
- The group of kids getting attention (Hogg, Gonzalez) never gave support for proposed changes
- The group appears to be funded by the same deep pockets that caused such an environment to be ready for killings (dont bite the hand that feeds you)

 

[JGrimez]

^people were smeared as conspiratorial or inhumane for suggesting that those kids in MFOL were politicized in the aftermath of the shooting (same concept as little Greta)
I think this whole event was orchestrated as a political campaign to promote gun control. There's a ton of evidence of second shooters at Parkland, a teacher even gave an eyewitness description of the shooter who was dressed like SWAT with a "rifle I've never seen before". Plus 4 cops waited outside.

So I'm not surprised by this