3547

This is one of the better articles I’ve read about the rash of school (and other public arena) shootings. Not about gun control specifically, although it is mentioned as one of several things that would treat the symptom, not the root cause.

Gun control gets the headlines. Mental health care gets the headlines. Violence and video games and misogyny and internet forums and atheism — the list is endless at this point.

Here’s what doesn’t get the headlines: Empathy. Listening to those around you. Even if you don’t like them very much.

Despite being relevant and important discussions, the glamorous headlines are ultimately distractions — they just feed into the carnage and the attention and the fame the killer desired. They are distractions from what is right in front of you and me and the victims of tomorrow’s shooting: people who need help. And while we’re all fighting over whose pet cause is more right and more true and more noble, there’s likely another young man out there, maybe suicidally depressed, maybe paranoid and delusional, maybe a psychopath, and he’s researching guns and bombs and mapping out schools and recording videos and thinking every day about the anger and hate he feels for this world.

And no one is paying attention to him.

However, I do think the author misses a couple of key points. For one, this idea that connecting with these people before they go out on their blaze-of-glory spree would prevent disaster is easier said than done. I’m sure in this world of billions of people, there’s one or two who would be able to take the right approach with each of the potential killers. But getting the right person in touch at the right time, and getting the potential killer to listen, is a pretty tough row to hoe.

Another thing glossed over here is the way that the mass media/viral social media enables these kinds of events. People do these things because they want to be noticed. The more we pay attention, the more likely another one is to decide it’s a good idea to kill a bunch of people so their particular grievance gets some air time.

3548

The article does mention that in passing, but you’re right, I think it’s a significant contributing factor. “I’ll be a legend! Everyone will know my name after this!” is a thought that I’m sure runs through the heads of the vast majority of shooting spree perpetrators. There’s no way to fix it, though. Tragedy has always captivated the public’s attention and it always will. In nations with a free press, the “it bleeds, it leads” mantra is going to shape news coverage.

3549

This is where I think we are now – I’m convinced that half of the rash of school shootings we have now would have been “normal” suicides just a few years ago… or nothing at all. Suicides tend to be copy-cat in nature: if there is one high-profile hanging that gets a lot of media attention, there will be a clutch of others using the same method soon after. Likewise jumping off a bridge, slitting ones wrists, etc.

The grim fact is that suicide-by-school-shooting seems to be edging its way into the mainstream.

3550

I like where this thread is going for a change!

3551

Slight shift in tone, but I would just like to say: Hahahahahahahahahaha.

3552

I loved the “I’m giving two of your guns male names and rubbing then together” bit. I’ve always thought my Glock 30 looked a bit light in the magazine, if you know what I mean.

3553

My favorite part was the 15 minute video he made explaining how little he cared about the trolls. I especially liked the fact that he sounds like Aziz Ansari.

3554

My GP100 is very macho. But that doesn’t stop my Kahr 9 from hitting on him.

3555

My M1 is a dirty whore.

3556

I was specific in saying what you seemed to want to do nothing about. I repeatedly acknowledged the social disorder point you made. You were very emphatic in placing the blame entirely and solely on one point and one point alone, “It’s not the combination of guns and violence that’s the problem, it’s the violence, period.”

“Not the combination.”

“Period.”

That kind of absolves guns entirely. That’s not concentrating, that’s being exclusive. Period. Now, if you wish to backpedal, if you wish to say you misspoke, that’s perfectly fine. But that’s on you, not me.

Second, that I think gun control is completely off the table. I know, I know, I said above the at it was useless, let me qualify that with a “relatively.” My beef is that whenever we talk about violence the immediate lament is, “Oh, when will we pass more gun control laws?” when we should be saying, “What can we do the break the violent nature of our society?”

In the short term, get the goddamn guns out of the hands of the violent.

3557

I think this is an idea everyone can get behind, but it has the same issues that many other solutions do - how does it get implemented? I can think of a coulpe of ways to go, but neither seems likely.

Option 1 - ban the guns. It would pretty much have to be every single one of them (except, ostensibly, the police and military). No grandfathering, as they’d still be available to be misused. Obviously, there are significant issues here. Not only would it fly in the face of constitutional law, but it wouldn’t work 100% as criminals will still scoff at that law just as they would whatever other law they happen to be breaking. Sure, they’d have to smuggle the guns, but the “war on drugs” has certainly taught us the lesson that smuggling things isn’t exactly hard to do. If this was somehow allowed (which it can’t be shy of a Constitutional Amendment that would never pass), it would at least reduce things like “rage shootings” where people take privately owned guns and go crazy with them. Verdict - never gonna happen.

Option 2 - ban far more people from gun ownership. This sounds easier, but it gets even far dicier. How do you identify the potentially violent people? Assuming you can do that, how do you keep the guns out of their hands?

Per the Gun Control Act of 1968, the following people are not allowed to own guns:
[ul]
[li]Anyone under indictment or convicted of a crime for which the penalty is a year in prison or longer.
[/li][li]A fugitive from justice.
[/li][li]Illicit drug users and addicts
[/li][li]Mental defectives (declared by a court) or those who have been committed to any mental institution
[/li][li]Illegal immigrants
[/li][li]Those who renounce their citizenship
[/li][li]Someone under a restraining order
[/li][li]Someone convicted of domestic violence
[/li][/ul]

While one or two of those may be a little odd (is there really a point in making it illegal for a fugitive to own a gun?), it’s at least a good start. If we’re trying to keep the guns out of the hands of the violent, then there are two different approaches (which are thankfully not exclusive): expand the restricted list, and better implement the restrictions.

But here’s the real question - how? Do you ask therapists to report concerns to some kind of agency? They’d lose patients if they did, and it would only address those affluent enough to have a therapist (an expensive service). Even if this could work and that maybe the therapy industry became nationalized, mandated, paid for 100% by taxes, and made immune to legal challenge so as to better identify threats, how would you do this while still respecting the rights of the people that person lives with? Let’s say you have a spouse who is on the restricted list. Would it be stupid for you to have a gun in the household? Sure. But should you be forced to abandon or sell it? That seems to cross the line to me. Making such a person liable for misuse of their own firearm, regardless of who pulls the trigger, seems like a reasonable (if legally untenable) allowance, but would that really stop someone who is hell bent on murder? I rather doubt it.

As for raising the ability to enforce these restrictions, it would likely require a significant reduction of privacy - some kind of increased and reviewed reporting of who lives where, a much larger agency to police it. I’m a fan of privacy, but I give up some when it seems worthwhile (cf - smartphones). But how much privacy would I or someone else be willing to give up in order to better police this situation? I suppose you could go with a “no gun list” that is available to the public, but that opens up huge issues and also would have dubious benefit to the cause at hand.

In short, I just don’t see a viable way to resolve the issue without drastically changing society in a manner that would almost require divine intervention. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t do anything, but we have to be a realistic in both our goals and means.

3558

Register all guns, license all gun owners. Ban interpersonal transfers. Regulate the hell out of gun vendors.

Otherwise let people own (and even carry!) whatever they want.

3559

The kids can just get bulletproof blankets.

http://bodyguardblanket.com/

3560

Those look pretty cuddly, lol

3561

And expensive and nearly useless. I’m reminded of duck and cover videos from the 50’s.

3562

They were originally designed for natural disaster protection, but when they went on sale a couple of weeks ago “crazed gunmen have entered our schools prepared to kill our children and teachers” is stated as one of the reasons to get them in the pitch video.

Steve Walker, who came up with the idea for the blankets, told the Oklahoman, “By no means would we ever say that this is more protective … but when you have budget constraints, this might be a viable alternative.”
…

Schone told the Oklahoman that the blanket passed a National Institute of Justice Class 3A test, which rates police body armor against projectiles, “including 9 mm and .22-caliber bullets.”

Manufacturers of bulletproof backpacks and school supplies also say they have seen increases in sales in communities after school shootings, despite the general opinion of safety experts that such products are often ineffective and costly.

3563

To be fair, if the standard policy is still hiding kids in closets, at least they’ll have some protection.

3564

The cost is ridiculous for that. If we’re in magic wave-a-wand land, yeah, having the blanket is better than not having the blanket. But what about the cost-benefit of getting to that place?

This is particularly true in today’s environment when schools don’t even supply friggin’ paper and pencils. We’re fortunate to live in a very good school district. But even here, nearly all of the funding for the classroom supplies for our kids comes from the PTA, via parent donations. It’s sad to see a school running solely on what they get from government funding.

3565

But here’s the problem: If you look at the stats, anywhere from 50% to 70% of those committing violent acts are already banned from owning guns, either by felony conviction or age. Crime doesn’t happen randomly in the population, it is centered around a subgroup that repeatedly commits crime, and has a trend of escalating crime throughout the career. That’s why I have issues with sweeping measures that are supposed to trickle down to this group, it’s Reaganomics in reverse; if we screw everyone, eventually we’ll screw the right guy. As you note, the things that would actually make it hard for criminals to get guns are politically impossible, and even if we managed it there would only be a few years of lag until the criminal class established supply lines from the South.

And still, there’s not good science that shows even the extreme measures work. Analysis on the Australian program by the British Journal of Criminology has determined that it didn’t have an effect on anything but suicide rates. I’m sure it can be cooked the other way, but a quick google seems to suggest the positive effect of the program is taken as a given, without actual analysis. Registration is the last thing that would stop the mass shootings, in almost every case the guns were either bought legally by the shooter or stolen from a legal purchaser.

I do get torn on registration for prevention of straw purchasing. It’s a significant source of guns used in crime, but it’s also the biggest political landmine in the debate. It’s also, let’s be honest here, the only way to effectively institute a gun ban and confiscation scheme down the road, although the recent experience in Massachusetts and New York show that even registration isn’t very useful if people don’t comply in the first place, again similar to what was seen in Australia and the UK when they implemented their registration and ban schemes.

3566

Sort of. I mean it’s not like it covers the body that well. If you hide in a closet you might not get seen at all, which is better protection that hiding under what looks like a cushion from some sort of outdoor furniture and hoping for the best.

The only place I could see it being useful is if you were trying to escape down a hallway or something and could put it between you and the shooter. And considering .22s and 9mm aren’t especially big rounds, it might give a false sense of security in some cases.