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Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

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Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#951

Post by twayt »

ryan93 wrote: post #663
twayt wrote: post #282

How about having a mandatory committee that seriously investigates {physical, social, cyber, etc.}-bullying more instead of just ignoring it? We can both work on stringent gun laws and take the mental health of children/teenagers more seriously. There is a clear pattern of which demographic of people consistently commit such crimes. Using this subset of gun owners to dictate gun ownership policies is going to be a ho…

How would that work? lol. There are thousands of weirdos and anti-social kids for every one school shooter. Plus if a disproportionate number of black kids are investigated it would be legally challenged.

You basically described the adult world. While our justice system isn’t perfect, it helps to curtail the chaos caused by the “thousands of weirdos and anti-social” adults.

I don’t claim to know the intricacies of this problem but it seems directionally correct to have such a thing rather than not.

The goal shouldn’t be to necessarily punish kids but to better identify issues and rehabilitate kids. The school systems are currently turning a blind eye and letting problems fester and compound. That is not the way to go.

From what I understand, there are legal implications for teachers who intervene and this prevents them from doing anything even if they wanted to. We can definitely do better.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#952

Post by mahastore »

spicymaki wrote: post #944
lliamander wrote: post #914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I also think a more controversial step is needed: eliminate gun free zones. If the expected outcome of an attempted mass shooting is a quick and ignominious death it will be a major deterrent. Teachers and administrators have been voluntarily carrying concealed firearms in Utah for roughly a decade.

You are making bad assumptions here: Imagine the chaos of multiple people with guns trying to take down an assailant with the police involved. Who are the good guys here? Friendly fire happens with cops accidentally shooting hostage victims occasionally and they are well trained. Do civilians really know how to deal with hostage scenarios? Do teachers want to carry firearms to protect elementary school students? Are…

Exactly .. Here is a YouTube video who clearly knows his shit lay it out why it is NOT a good idea to arm teachers:

https://youtu.be/1o1l2LQGyP8

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#953

Post by subsection1h »

lliamander wrote: post #945
spicymaki wrote: post #944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making bad assumptions here: Imagine the chaos of multiple people with guns trying to take down an assailant with the police involved. Who are the good guys here? Friendly fire happens with cops accidentally shooting hostage victims occasionally and they are well trained. Do civilians really know how to deal with hostage scenarios? Do teachers want to carry firearms to protect elementary school students? Are…

Here's one qualified person's explaination: https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/06/23/an-opinion-on-gun... Edit: and let me just respond to one thing > You are making bad assumptions here I'm not just making assumptions. This is the conclusion I come to from reading firearms experts like the one I just linked, sociological analysis of gun ownership, use of force law, etc. I'm not saying a chaotic situation like that…

> This is the conclusion I come to from reading firearms experts

To what extent have you studied criminology? How many relevant research papers have you read that have been published in the journals of the American Society of Criminology, which is the largest criminological organization in the US?

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#954

Post by lliamander »

mahastore wrote: post #952
spicymaki wrote: post #944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making bad assumptions here: Imagine the chaos of multiple people with guns trying to take down an assailant with the police involved. Who are the good guys here? Friendly fire happens with cops accidentally shooting hostage victims occasionally and they are well trained. Do civilians really know how to deal with hostage scenarios? Do teachers want to carry firearms to protect elementary school students? Are…

Exactly .. Here is a YouTube video who clearly knows his shit lay it out why it is NOT a good idea to arm teachers: https://youtu.be/1o1l2LQGyP8

I respect his professional opinion (he was a former military contractor, correct?) I think his arguments would probably someone with more training and experience than myself to properly assess.

But the following facts I think make a good case to believe his is mistaken about this scenario:

- statistics on the utility of CCW in mass shooter scenarios

- the preference of mass shooters to target gun-free zones.

- the precedent of Utah allowing teachers with CCW for roughly 10 years without real incident.

It's certainly not the only step that should be taken to curb mass shootings in schools, but I think there's good evidence it will help.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#955

Post by neartheplain »

spicymaki wrote: post #604
neartheplain wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Canada is the U.S.'s neighbour and is probably closer, culturally, than any other nation. Your point about cultural similarity holds true mainly for descendants of European immigrants. The shared culture here isn't just Marvel movies but values passed down among families from the Old Country like a Christian moral framework, Anglo-American law, the Protestant work ethic, Puritan attidues towards sex, etc. If you bre…

You are dodging the issue with white nationalist talking points. The issue at hand is not the black murder rate. The discussion is should we restrict assault weapons, limit access to who can purchase firearms (via licensing, safety training, etc.), limit ammo capacity, etc in order to reduce mass shootings. Texas has a strong gun culture, Christian culture, NRA approved and funded government, extremely lax gun contro…

Dismissing what people living in Oakland, southeast D.C., and the north side of Milwaukee know from frequent painful experience to be true as "white nationalist talking points" says more about your views than it does mine. Try following crime reporters on Twitter for a few weeks, like D.C. Realtime News. It's a constant march of death in these troubled communities, almost entirely bubbled up and separate from the rest of America. You won't get it until you really dive into it. Then you'll wonder why the people who purport to care for black lives never say a word about it. The victims of this violence wonder that too, out loud and on social media, but not in places most HN users or policymakers try to see.

Backing up, there are two issues here which you're conflating, and which I didn't do a good job of separating: total gun homicides and mass shootings. They intersect but also have differences. I already went deep on total gun homicides. The weird thing about mass shootings is that 70 years ago, gun ownership was more widespread than it is now, yet mass shootings were an extremely rare occurence... until Columbine. Semiautomatic and even fully-automatic weapons were commonly available beginning in the 1920s (remember Al Capone's mob and their Thompson submachine guns? Bonny and Clyde with their BARs?), yet we didn't see this rash of mass shootings until just the last few decades. What happened in the 90s, and how to we fix it?

Side note, and I'm sure it's been covered elsewhere, but 99% of gun deaths in the US do not involve AR-15s or "assault weapons." 97% of all gun deaths are from handguns. Many mass shootings were carried out with handguns; they are deadly, concealable, and potentially also very high-capacity. Personally I support much stricter controls on handgun sales and ownership. I think that would be a reasonable starting point to approach both total gun homicides and mass shootings.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#956

Post by spicymaki »

lliamander wrote: post #945
spicymaki wrote: post #944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making bad assumptions here: Imagine the chaos of multiple people with guns trying to take down an assailant with the police involved. Who are the good guys here? Friendly fire happens with cops accidentally shooting hostage victims occasionally and they are well trained. Do civilians really know how to deal with hostage scenarios? Do teachers want to carry firearms to protect elementary school students? Are…

Here's one qualified person's explaination: https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/06/23/an-opinion-on-gun... Edit: and let me just respond to one thing > You are making bad assumptions here I'm not just making assumptions. This is the conclusion I come to from reading firearms experts like the one I just linked, sociological analysis of gun ownership, use of force law, etc. I'm not saying a chaotic situation like that…

Qualified? In what? He is not very articulate.

A firearms expert is not the same as a physical security specialist who can do a full threat model on the pros/cons of arming teachers. The assumptions are “bad” primarily because they are overly optimistic. I have yet to read an pro gun analysis that states any downsides to this method proposed. They do not state any downsides at all. That gives me pause, it demonstrates lack of real physical security expertise.

Do these schools even have basic security reviews, district level security practices, crisis training, surveillance, lock down procedures, egress planning?

That all requires funding from tax payers. Is Gov. Abott going to fund that across Texas?

The strategy seems to be arm teachers (conceal carry)and shooter will either get killed or avoid the situation entirely. It is hard to know what a enraged psycho will do. You have to plan for it.

Read the play by play for the Ulvade shooting. The shooter entered from an unsecured backdoor and barricaded himself in the classroom. It was a surprise attack in an enclosed space with tens of children. Total chaos. The teacher(s) most likely would not have time to respond even with training. Even safety officers (with training and arms) have been known to flee (see Parkland shooting). This has to factor into the analysis.

Once you are in a hostage situation the stakes are extreme and school teachers are not really prepared to deal with that. Two trained police officers were shot in the situation, there is no real hope for a teacher with a few hours on the shooting range. What are the ages of these random teachers, capabilities, fitness, etc? It is a total tossup. The assailant was just one 18 year old, what if there are two or more (see Columbine).

These simplistic solutions fall apart on quick review.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#957

Post by refurb »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #788
refurb wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Prior to the 1968 Gun Control Act, you could order pretty much any gun through the mail. The political violence and radicalism of the 60’s drove the legislation. Only automatic weapons were controlled before that. So seems silly to claim “radicals took over the NRA” when any type of gun control is a very recent phenomenon. Hell, even during the 80’s most of the US had incredibly lax gun control laws compared…

I don't understand why "any type of gun control is a very recent phenomenon" means that a claim that "radicals took over the NRA" is "silly". Whats the reasoning?

The claim is that the NRA was "radicalized". However, the same time the NRA was "radicalized", new more restrictive gun control law was pursued.

Why would anyone be surprised the NRA went from "all about recreational shooting" to "aggressive gun rights organization" at the same time restrictive guns laws were introduced? They had no reason to aggressively oppose gun control laws because none were being discussed.

It's like saying a homeowner "suddenly became violent" when someone tried to break into his home. There was nothing "sudden" about it, it was a response to an external trigger.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#958

Post by BobbyJo »

a_square_peg wrote: post #305
BobbyJo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't see this as a symptom of that. Economic and tax base problems, where our best knowledge can point to us doing the "wrong" thing, or at least not doing the "right" thing, sure. Those objective things that we mess up are indicative of systemic issues. Some people just aren't scared of guns, or of a world where everyone has one, regardless of the real risk such a world would entail. Differences within t…

> Differences within the populace with regard to risk tolerance and perception doesn't tell you anything about systemic issues. How we deal with it as a society does though - some people don't mind going fast but we as a society decided to impose speed limits on roads, especially around schools. Some people don't mind the smell of cigarettes but we as a society decided that indoor smoking shouldn't be allowed in gene…

> This is where US feels like a dysfunctional society when viewed from outside. If US views occasional mass-shootings as a non-issue, sure. But if it does see it as a problem and it's not able to deal with it because for whatever reason (culture, freedom, constitution etc.), I think that's a problem.

My interpretation isn't that some people don't see a problem, its just that different people believe in different solutions because the 'cost' of proposed policies is different to them. The cost of new guns laws is huge for some, and non-existent to others.

Honestly I think the national gun debate is kind of a joke. Most of the farthest left states don't even enforce or do a good job implementing the laws they have already. What difference would it make if the policy in DC changed when the cops on the street and the capital at home don't care. Buying a gun in California is just as easy as it is in Florida, it's just a bad idea because you can be thrown in jail the rest of your life if you use it even in self defense, so people don't buy them as often.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#959

Post by la6472 »

cypress66 wrote: post #504
la6472 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now it is hard to look at our kids faces and not feel the impact of this tragedy. I don’t know about everyone but for most people their kids lives are way more important than their right to bear military grade guns. If there is no perfect solution we have to live with a less than perfect solution. If the solution is to legally make it harder for people to access such guns then so be it.

As tragic as these events may be, the probability of your kids dying to a school shooting is still incredibly low, and a few orders of magnitude less than car accidents. Doing some quick math, it seems like it's around 100 to 1000 times more likely that some kid dies to some accident than a mass shooting. But people don't seem to worry 1000 times more about these accidents than school shootings. And it would actually…

There has been a 13.5 percent increase in children mortality due to firearms between 2019 and 2020.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#960

Post by TexanFeller »

librish wrote: post #89

It's time we start legislating based on empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals. Yes, if everyone was responsible perhaps it would be OK for all of us to own firearms. But so many people are utterly irresponsible, and guns make that irresponsibility lethal. People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child. People shouldn't point a gun…

My body, my choice. Suicide is not a valid reason to restrict guns.
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