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Mass Shootings and Gun Debate 2018 Thread

FTR jess:

I think people really overlook the tendency of high school age kids to chastise and ostracize their peers. When these shooting like Columbine and Santa Fe are performed by the students themselves, I think we know the true source - teenage bullying and angst. I never wanted to shoot up my peers but there were times my peers thought I might back in high school. In fact, they're assumption that I might be that crazy was my main defense against bullying. If they thought I might kill them, at least they left me alone.

But you're right, people use mental health to divert the attention away from guns. Truth is we could address both at the same time.
 
My bad, apparently I did miss it. I must have completely glossed over it somehow cause I remember parts of that post. Just not the Columbine reference.
 
I definitely agree that an understanding of and a full acceptance of mental illness is the only thing that will actually fix this problem, as basically the lack of awareness/understanding/acceptance is what allowed it to happen in the first place. Teachers, hell, any and every adult and teenager, should be aware of what kinds of behavior they see in others might indicate something dangerous, and act on it to get this person help early on. Or in the cases where someone is truly a psychopath, make sure they don't hurt anyone. I mean the behavior of some of the adult surrounding this is almost beyond belief to me. Survivors seem to often claim that no one was surprised, that people had been saying things for years. Especially in Parkland, where people actually called the police about it multiple times and it was never looked into. That's fucked up, it means something is wrong with the system, something wrong with our society that makes people brush mental health issues under the rug, sort of.
 
Armed Law-Abiding Civilian Guns Down, Kills Active Shooter at Restaurant
https://truepundit.com/armed-law-abiding-civilian-guns-down-kills-active-shooter-at-restaurant/

The suspect in the shooting that injured multiple people in an Oklahoma City restaurant has died after he was shot by an armed civilian, according to police.
The Oklahoma City Police Department tweeted that investigators were on the scene of the shooting at Louie’s Grill & Bar near Lake Hefner Parkway.
The customer was outside when the suspect walked into the restaurant and began opening fire around 6:30 p.m. local time, Oklahoma City Police Public Information Officer Bo Matthews said in a press conference after the shooting. The civilian then confronted the suspect and shot him to “death,” police wrote on Twitter.
Both the suspect and the civilian were armed with a handgun, police said.
 
I definitely agree that an understanding of and a full acceptance of mental illness is the only thing that will actually fix this problem, as basically the lack of awareness/understanding/acceptance is what allowed it to happen in the first place.

I disagree. Lots of countries have mentally ill people, but most countries still don't have gun-violence like we do in America. Because in America we have more guns. The guns are the problem. The guns themselves, and the sheer number of them, are the root of the problem. It's not people. It's not mental illness. Or anything else. It's just too many guns.

And I say this as a person who owns a bunch of guns, but I'm also not a dumbass: I know most people probably shouldn't be allowed to own guns. And there's also an on-point Supreme Court case, DC v. Heller, authored by Justice Scalia (one of the most conservative Justices ever), which allows for aggressive regulation of firearms without offending the 2nd amendment. We need to take away most of the guns, imo. Plain and simple.
 
I dont really know your gun laws etc being from South Africa and that but the amount of school shootings actually confounds me, there has to be a reason why a kid/s would go into a school and open fire, if we can get to the root cause of that then I believe that the problem would be solved.

I am a legal gun owner and in my opinion maybe there should be much stricter gun laws, here in SA in order to get a fire arm legally you have to do exams on the laws of the country, you have to do competency courses and pass, you have to have a psychological evaluation, the do a home check on your gun safe etc etc this can take at least a year and most times people give up because its just too damn difficult to get a license

Its not easy to just get one unless you go and buy black market of course.

I also believe its not the gun thats unsafe, its the person wielding the gun....
 
I dont really know your gun laws etc being from South Africa and that but the amount of school shootings actually confounds me, there has to be a reason why a kid/s would go into a school and open fire, if we can get to the root cause of that then I believe that the problem would be solved.

I am a legal gun owner and in my opinion maybe there should be much stricter gun laws, here in SA in order to get a fire arm legally you have to do exams on the laws of the country, you have to do competency courses and pass, you have to have a psychological evaluation, the do a home check on your gun safe etc etc this can take at least a year and most times people give up because its just too damn difficult to get a license

Its not easy to just get one unless you go and buy black market of course.

I also believe its not the gun thats unsafe, its the person wielding the gun....

You know, even if we had a 100% absolute no ambiguity model of why some kids go and shoot up their schools, that doesn't in itself mean we'd know how to stop them doing it with that information.

Though I really don't think it's that mysterious. Some people are psychos who have no empathy for other people, some people have a deep seated need to be heard and remembered, and some people find high school hell on earth. Add it all together and add in that the media has shown anyone who's in it for the attention how effective it is, and it really doesn't strike me as surprising that some kids would shoot their school up.

You don't need to be able to empathize with it to understand it.

We have this cultural belief that all kids are innocence incarnate, but it's total bullshit. Some kids are just as evil as any adult. And others are so fucked up in the head that good and evil doesn't even come into it.
 
The guns themselves, and the sheer number of them, are the root of the problem. It's not people. It's not mental illness. Or anything else. It's just too many guns.

Yeah because in my kitchen I have a lot of knives, and I just can't help stabbing people all the time. I need to reduce the number of knives in my house, that will fix the problem. It will also stop criminals from stealing my knives and using them to rob people...

On-topic: Brazil has some quite strict and very commonsense gun laws. Laws that the Left would love to implement in America.
There are still 40,000 gun deaths in Brazil a year, most of them by illegal firearms.
 
You know, even if we had a 100% absolute no ambiguity model of why some kids go and shoot up their schools, that doesn't in itself mean we'd know how to stop them doing it with that information.

Though I really don't think it's that mysterious. Some people are psychos who have no empathy for other people, some people have a deep seated need to be heard and remembered, and some people find high school hell on earth. Add it all together and add in that the media has shown anyone who's in it for the attention how effective it is, and it really doesn't strike me as surprising that some kids would shoot their school up.

You don't need to be able to empathize with it to understand it.

We have this cultural belief that all kids are innocence incarnate, but it's total bullshit. Some kids are just as evil as any adult. And others are so fucked up in the head that good and evil doesn't even come into it.

Thats true too Jess
 
I disagree. Lots of countries have mentally ill people, but most countries still don't have gun-violence like we do in America. Because in America we have more guns. The guns are the problem. The guns themselves, and the sheer number of them, are the root of the problem. It's not people. It's not mental illness. Or anything else. It's just too many guns.

And I say this as a person who owns a bunch of guns, but I'm also not a dumbass: I know most people probably shouldn't be allowed to own guns. And there's also an on-point Supreme Court case, DC v. Heller, authored by Justice Scalia (one of the most conservative Justices ever), which allows for aggressive regulation of firearms without offending the 2nd amendment. We need to take away most of the guns, imo. Plain and simple.

Disagree, entirely.

A world without people would mean no one gets shot.

It's a mental health crisis.

Most people should be allowed (and are allowed) to own guns (in the US)

And am so thankful Scalia died, only hoped it'd be more painful for him.

Armed Law-Abiding Civilian Guns Down, Kills Active Shooter at Restaurant
https://truepundit.com/armed-law-abiding-civilian-guns-down-kills-active-shooter-at-restaurant/

I heard about this in the main news channels too; it's not a story being buried.

Glad that Americans were able to arm and defend themselves.

On-topic: Brazil has some quite strict and very commonsense gun laws.

Pass.
 
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And am so thankful Scalia died, only hoped it'd be more painful for him.
Why's that?

What do you mean by this?

Right now, Brazil actually has tough gun laws. If you want to own a gun legally these are the requirements:
- a fixed address
- proof of legitimate income
- no criminal record
- a mental health test
- proof you know how to handle a gun and shoot it
- evidence of why you need a gun. For example, a police report of an attack against you.
Even if a prospective gun owner supplies all this information, the police can arbitrarily deny a request for a gun permit.

All firearms are required to be registered with the minimum age for gun ownership being 25
It is generally illegal to carry a gun outside a residence
To legally own a gun, an owner must hold a gun license and pay a fee every three years to register the gun

Almost 60,000 people were murdered in Brazil in 2014, most with guns. While some Latin American countries have higher per capita murder rates, in absolute numbers, Brazil is the deadliest place in the world outside Syria. Brazilians are far more likely to be shot to death than Americans, a more populous country where there are about 8,000 to 9,000 gun homicides each year.
 
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https://mises.org/wire/there-are-fewer-school-shootings-now-during-1990s#.WwiP1lccYz0.facebook
There Are Fewer School Shootings Now Than During the 1990s
Ryan McMaken

Now that I have several children, I'm often in the company of other parents who talk about the way things "used to be." When the issue of child safety comes up, I hear parents sadly shake their heads and say things like "it's not like it was when we were kids ... the world is so much more dangerous now."

Usually, the sentiment behind this idea is that there are more murders now than there used to be.

Now, I'm not exactly known for being a Pollyanna, but I am willing to admit when things are not, in fact, getting worse.

And when it comes to things like homicides, there is no evidence that things are getting worse. It is indeed true that things aren't like they were "when we were kids," but that's a good thing. There were far more homicides in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s than there are today. Things were even worse than that during the 1970s. In fact, the homicide rate in the US was cut in half between 1991 and 2014. And while the homicide rate has inched up over the past two years, it is nowhere near where it was "when we were kids."
homicide1%20%281%29.png


For anyone familiar with these trends, it should not be a shock to hear that a subset of those homicides ? school shootings ? have decreased over that period as well.

In response to the latest shooting in Florida, Northeastern University released a preview of new research by James Alan Fox slated for publication this fall which shows, quite clearly, that there is no growing trend in school shootings. The university notes:
Mass school shootings are incredibly rare events. In research publishing later this year, Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel found that on average, mass murders occur between 20 and 30 times per year, and about one of those incidents on average takes place at a school.

Fridel and Fox used data collected by USA Today, the FBI?s Supplementary Homicide Report, Congressional Research Service, Gun Violence Archive, Stanford Geospatial Center and Stanford Libraries, Mother Jones, Everytown for Gun Safety, and a NYPD report on active shooters.

Their research also finds that shooting incidents involving students have been declining since the 1990s.

Four times the number of children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today, Fox said.

?There is not an epidemic of school shootings,? he said, adding that more kids are killed each year from pool drownings or bicycle accidents. There are around 55 million school children in the United States, and on average over the past 25 years, about 10 students per year were killed by gunfire at school, according to Fox and Fridel?s research.​


In a February 22 article, New York Magazine came to a similar conclusion, noting:

Schools in the United States are safer today than at any time in recent memory. Criminal victimization in America?s education facilities has declined in tandem with the nation?s collapsing crime rate. Meanwhile, as of 2013, the year after the Newtown massacre, mass shootings accounted for only 1.5 percent of all gun deaths in the United States, or 502 total fatalities.​


New York was drawing on research from the US Justice Department showing that "school victimization" rates have plummeted since 1992, as a graph provided by the Justice Department shows:
victimization.PNG


Fox, the author of the Northeastern University research, does not oppose policy changes like increasing the age for purchasing guns. But he notes it's unlikely to impact the numbers very much:
The thing to remember is that these are extremely rare events, and no matter what you can come up with to prevent it, the shooter will have a workaround,? Fox said, adding that over the past 35 years, there have been only five cases in which someone ages 18 to 20 used an assault rifle in a mass shooting.​


Ironically, those most familiar with the data on shootings are often less likely to assume that gun control measures are an easy solution to the problem of homicide.

For example, last year, Leah Libresco at the Washington Post ? hardly an organ of the NRA ? concluded that gun control measures are of extremely limited value:

?my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I?d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence...

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn?t prove much about what America?s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths...

By the time we published our project, I didn?t believe in many of the interventions I?d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don?t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can?t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them.​


What Libresco did conclude, was that a host of societal issues are driving much of what we hear about in terms of so-called gun violence. Mental illness, suicide, gang violence, and domestic violence are all important factors that drive gun violence. The problem, Libresco admits, is that simply prohibiting certain types of guns doesn't really address these issues.

Accepting the "Crisis" Narrative

In the wake of last month's Florida shooting, many opponents of gun control made the mistake of simply accepting the claim that school shootings are getting worse, and are more deadly overall.

According to Fox's research, though, this is simply not the case. And we also certainly know that homicides overall are way down from where they were in the good ol' days of my youth.

These apparent facts, of course, don't stop even rightwing professional Cassandras like Rod Dreher from authoring articles like this one called "Underestimating American Collapse" which uses school shootings as evidence that American civilization is basically on the brink of collapse:
Why are American kids killing each other? Why doesn?t their society care enough to intervene? Well, probably because those kids have given up on life  ?  and their elders have given up on them. Or maybe you?re right  ?  and it?s not that simple. Still, what do the kids who aren?t killing each other do? Well, a lot of them are busy killing themselves.​


Maybe American society is in a more perilous position that in the 1980s. But if we're looking for evidence of that, the homicide data won't help the argument. Dreher is right to question why American kids are killing each other. But an equally relevant question might also be "why are fewer American kids killing each other now than 25 years ago?"

School Shootings and Opportunity Cost

Part of the problem with accepting the crisis narrative is that it ignores other priorities and other problems that may deserve our attention elsewhere.

After all, resources for schools ? or anything else ? are not unlimited, and it is unclear that extremely rare events like school shootings can be put forward as a priority.

This problem of priorities can be seen in the fact that cities where snow falls irregularly do not maintain a huge fleet of snowplows. In Naples, Italy last week, for example, the city experienced the largest snowfall it's seen in 50 years. According to the Daily Mail, the snowfall was seen as a citywide emergency and "[r]esidents have been told not to leave their homes unless it is 'strictly necessary.'" One man was said to have even frozen to death in the unexpectedly frigid temperatures.

Now, if even a few inches of snow can bring the city to a standstill and endanger the lives of residents, why does the city not have far more snow plows than it does? Why is there not a network of emergency workers to ensure that residents are not caught in the cold where they can be injured or even killed by cold temperatures?

The answer, of course, is that the opportunity cost of such measures would be extremely high. By maintaining personnel and equipment designed to address a rare snowfall, the city would be foregoing the opportunity to train people or purchase equipment for a wide variety of other activities that are no doubt also deemed essential.

While school shootings no doubt have a greater psychological impact than frigid temperatures, it is no less true that spending large amounts of resources on anti-shooting measures carry with them their own costs.

Now, in the US, many organizations, both public and private have elected to devote sizable amounts of resources to security. But none of them deny that there is an opportunity cost to doing so.

Indeed, opponents of added security in schools have been quick to point out the costs of more security measures.

And yet, proponents of more gun control act as if there are no opportunity costs to these measures. In reality, of course, the costs of enforcing government prohibitions can be very high, both in terms of tax dollars and costs imposed upon otherwise law abiding citizens. The drug war has made this quite clear. In the absence of individual gun ownership, professional security will become more necessary, and in many cases more costly. This imposes a real cost on citizens, especially on those who cannot afford professional security. Relying on the police for protection, of course, has been shown to be unwise at best.

What Are We Doing Right?

Many observers will still point out that even a small number of school shootings is too many. That's true enough, but when the multi-decade trend is downward, it would hardly be honest to attempt to frame the current situation as a "crisis." Indeed the challenge should be to discover what factors have led to the decline in violence, and act accordingly. Given that gun ownership has greatly increased in recent decades, it may be that the answer lies somewhere beyond a simple government prohibition on guns.
 
I don't actually know the trends in the school shooting stats one way or the other. But I do wanna say, when you're right you're right. This idea that things are getting more violent is total bullshit perpetuated by the media.

In terms of murder and violent crime things have been improving for decades around the developed world. And fuck anyone who says otherwise.

While I do agree with you there, any suggestion that increased gun ownership is responsible is the usual confusion of correlation with causation. This decrease in violent crime and homicide can be seen in many other developed countries with no increase in gun ownership.
 
Why's that?


What do you mean by this?

Right now, Brazil actually has tough gun laws. If you want to own a gun legally these are the requirements:
? a fixed address
? proof of legitimate income
? no criminal record
? a mental health test
? proof you know how to handle a gun and shoot it
? evidence of why you need a gun. For example, a police report of an attack against you.
Even if a prospective gun owner supplies all this information, the police can arbitrarily deny a request for a gun permit.

All firearms are required to be registered with the minimum age for gun ownership being 25
It is generally illegal to carry a gun outside a residence
To legally own a gun, an owner must hold a gun license and pay a fee every three years to register the gun

Almost 60,000 people were murdered in Brazil in 2014, most with guns. While some Latin American countries have higher per capita murder rates, in absolute numbers, Brazil is the deadliest place in the world outside Syria. Brazilians are far more likely to be shot to death than Americans, a more populous country where there are about 8,000 to 9,000 gun homicides each year.

Brazil is home to tons of narcotics traffickers, who have tons of guns. They are not efficient in keeping unregistered guns off the streets.

Cops likely corrupt and take a cut of cocaine/paste sales, prostitution, human trafficking, etc.

A lot of this came to a head and got international media attention during the world cup, which Brazil was also woefully ill-equipped to deal with.

If people are dying from gun violence but aren't getting recorded statistically, then maybe Brazil looks like a great place, on paper.

I posit that the US is probably just better at detecting when a crime's been committed that involves the shooting of someone else. Now, I'm just waiting for Xorkoth or alasdairm to shred this last point to bits %)
 
And I say this as a person who owns a bunch of guns, but I'm also not a dumbass: I know most people probably shouldn't be allowed to own guns. And there's also an on-point Supreme Court case, DC v. Heller, authored by Justice Scalia (one of the most conservative Justices ever), which allows for aggressive regulation of firearms without offending the 2nd amendment. We need to take away most of the guns, imo. Plain and simple.

Would you give yours up?
 
Hmmm... for fair value I would give up most of my guns. But the collectibles would be really hard to give up. I wouldn't ever carry those though.

I do occasionally shoot with one of them though...amazing.
 
Hmmm... for fair value I would give up most of my guns. But the collectibles would be really hard to give up. I wouldn't ever carry those though.

I do occasionally shoot with one of them though...amazing.

And what if you later found out that statistically no lives had been saved for your sacrifice?

What if no life's were saved statistically, but school shootings stopped? That might at a glance seem contradictory, but it's not when you remember that school shootings are such a small number that they don't register in the stats anyway. Ordinary fluctuations from randomness in the system save or lose more people in any given year.

What about then?
 
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