Another Fucking Mass Shooting At US School

[Toni]

I think you’re wrong, Loren. Regulation of firearms reduced the number of gun homicides and suicides when it was put into effect.

People keep claiming this about Australia's actions--but the murder rate doesn't show it.

I do expect there is some effect on suicide.

I was talking about in the USA, not Australia.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Self-defense killings always exceed mass shooter deaths.

How many mass shootings are stopped with a gun in self-defense? That's the better comparison, if you're going to exclude all other shooting deaths.

I'm looking at the effects.

Criminals rarely get guns by legal means in the first place, making it harder to buy a gun legally will have basically zero effect. Mass shooters, however, generally don't have the underworld ties to get their hands on illegal guns and would be hindered. Likewise, those defending themselves will be hindered to an even greater degree. Thus the proper comparison is between mass shooters and self defense.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Apparently, the Oklahoma shooter bought his AR15 a few hours before his rampage in that Tulsa hospital. He blamed a back surgeon there for pain he was suffering after his surgery, so he wanted to murder him. It's really convenient not to have those pesky waiting period laws or intrusive background checks to get in the way of an instant solution. Oklahoma's Republican lawmakers have been hard at work to get the government off the backs of citizens in a hurry.

And a waiting period law would have done what? He was upset for some time, a waiting period would simply have delayed the result, not prevented it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I am no fan of the NRA and the republican insanity on guns especially assaultl rifles, but they are not really the main problem.

Would Harris and Klebold have been problems if they didn't have access to firearms?

Pretty sure that if guns weren't an option, they would be perfectly fine developing and deploying more pipe bombs.

Pipe bombs are already illegal.

Which didn't stop them.

 

[Jarhyn]

I am no fan of the NRA and the republican insanity on guns especially assaultl rifles, but they are not really the main problem.

Would Harris and Klebold have been problems if they didn't have access to firearms?

Pretty sure that if guns weren't an option, they would be perfectly fine developing and deploying more pipe bombs.

Pipe bombs are already illegal.

Which didn't stop them.

It does stop the large-scale availability of easy to use relatively safe explosive primers, due to liability, and the people who blow themselves up making them and are afraid to blow themselves up making them does stop pipe bombs in large part.

 

[laughing dog]

I am no fan of the NRA and the republican insanity on guns especially assaultl rifles, but they are not really the main problem.

Would Harris and Klebold have been problems if they didn't have access to firearms?

Pretty sure that if guns weren't an option, they would be perfectly fine developing and deploying more pipe bombs.

Pipe bombs are already illegal.

Which didn't stop them.

So? Using your reasoning, laws against murder are ineffective since making murder illegal didn’t stop it.

 

[Jarhyn]

A lot comes down to supply chain viability and acquisition logistics.

As is noted, illegal guns are bought legally, originally. They have a chain of custody and you would have to be daft to think it doesn't start with legal purchases.

I wonder how folks can afford gun collections like that...

Just saying, guns are expensive just like big trucks and a drinking problem.

The harder it is to have massive unaccounted gun collections, the harder it is to be an undetectable arms dealer.

I don't like the legality of super suspicious behaviors that are unnecessary and indistinguishable from the activities of an illegal arms dealer to who-knows.

 

[Rhea]

Sorry Rea, my experience says otherwise.

In the 50s 60s as kids we acted out what we saw in movies and TV. I once gave a girl a bloody nose mimicking Moe from the Three Stooges.

Maybe you and I watched different TV in the 60s and 70s. I remember a LOT of guns. Cowboys, war…. then on to Dirty Harry. Just look at Clint Eastwood alone and his start in war and westerns in the 1950s.

You must have a very rosy picture of those years. There was a lott of gun violence. We played it at home. Bang bang bang.

Now retired I watch more tV than I ever have. The amount of gun play and violnce to music is astounding in TV and movies. People shooting each oter is routine.

Yeah and all of those shows are available in every country.

What’s different about the US?

A few weeks ago a woman was shot to death in a parking lot when people in two cars stared shooting at each other. This kind of thing has become routine around here. The majority of it is teens and yiung adult males across races.

You must be remembering just the WHITE 1950s and 60s. For others in the USA, “that kind of thing was routine” back in your golden days, too.

Media influences people including kidss who have no emotional defenses.

An yet, again, these advertisements and movies are available worldwide. But only in AMerica does it influence the kids? What’s different between the US and Australia?

To say media has no influnce on kids is if nothing else unscientific.

You MUST address the fact that the same media is available for all the countries that DON’T have our gun death rate. And since it comes up every time we discuss this, and here you are still talking as if that is not a glaring piece of relevant data, I have to wonder why.

Availability of guns adds fuel to the fire, but the violnce is a symptom of society.

Bingo. The easy availability of guns “adds fuel to the fire,” by making it more deadly, more easily done on impulse, more easily hidden until deployment.

There you go. You answered your own question. Guns are the problem.

The NRA is an easy target. Blame them and we can avoid questions about the foundation and morality of our culture.

They ARE the major question about the morality of our culture. What are the morals of a culture that has an NRA?

Anybody who thinks kids playing video games getting points for killing and destroying is healthy might want to seek counseling themselves, IMO.

But kids play this is other countries and do NOT get their hands on guns to act it out.

And where is parenting in all this? A kid or young adult is out late a night with a gun and ends up shot by police.

Ha ha. Ha ha ha. HAhahahahahahahahaha!

Child of the 50s and 60s. Are you freakin’ kidding me here? Our parents had NO IDEA where we were.

They had no phones to call us, they told us “I don’t want to see your face until dinner” and then off we went again out into the dark. Where were OUR parents in all this, Steve?

Today’s parents are significantly more attentive than yours or mine were.

parents cry out why the kid had to be shot by police. How is it a teen is out at night with a gun? What if any is parental responsibility?

Seriously, steve, when I was a kid, *I* was out at night with a gun. We shot stuff. We were reckless and stupid.

How the hell does a grade school kid show up at school with a loaded gun?

Here you are ready to answer your own question again. He* does it because the NRA and the American gun culture makes sure it is easy peasy for him to get it.

* (it’s almost always a he)

It happend recently around here. The primary resonsibility for kids rets with the paents.

I support laws that penalizes parents if guns are not adequate kept from kids at home and the kid uses a gun or takes it outside. A kid shows up at school with a gun lock up the damn parents.

The last kid bought them legally, didnt he? It was the laws that let us down.

It is the culture that has to change.

Yeah the gun culture has to change.

 

[Rhea]

Rules applied to legally-owned guns do nothing about guns that aren't legally owned.

I think you are completely wrong here Loren.

Laws applied to legally owned guns - including their safe keeping and sale are absolutley fruitful in reducing gun deaths.

1. Making sure legally owned guns in stores don’t get marked as “missing” with no follow up. Research demonstrates that this is the source of thousands of “illegal” guns on the street. Legal guns that weren’t made to follow the rules.
2. Making sure legally owned privately held guns don’t end up “missing”. Again, research shows that if they were followed up, they would not end up on the street.


You say “it’s the illegal guns,” but every one of those started it’s life with a manufacturer, a seller and a buyer. And the laws that apply to those people are not being upheld.

The only way you would have any effect is by reducing the number of guns stolen by criminals--and there's so many around that you're not going to accomplish much.

Again, not true. Illegal guns have a much shorter shelf-life than legal ones. They are discarded and destroyed to prevent implicating in crimes. The are “ditched.”

Research shows that when there are strict laws and sever penalties for being caught with an illegal gun, then people carry them around less, decreasing the opportunistic crimes and shortening the lifespan of the guns because it’s better to ditch it than be caught with it.

 

[Hermit]

In the 50s 60s as kids we acted out what we saw in movies and TV... Now retired I watch more tV than I ever have. The amount of gun play and violnce to music is astounding in TV and movies. People shooting each oter is routine.

In the 50s 60s western movies dominated the big screens as well as television. There were duels, large scale shootouts and threats of shootings everywhere. I watched "Fort Laramie", "Bonanza" and other such TV series as a ten year old kid. The blockbusters in cinemas were movies like "Showdown at the OK Corral" and all those spaghetti westerns. And westerns were not the only genre showcasing gun violence. Most episodes of cop shows (e.g. The Asphalt Jungle, Dragnet, Miami Undercover, The Untouchables) involved gunfights.

You are suffering from selective memory.

 

[bilby]

Criminals rarely get guns by legal means in the first place, making it harder to buy a gun legally will have basically zero effect.

Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise, for reasons I have already presented several times in direct response to your posts, and which you have never addressed.

It might not interest you to know that all the guns now in criminal hands were once sold legally. But it should make you think harder about the broken connection between your premise and your conclusion.

 

[bilby]

I am no fan of the NRA and the republican insanity on guns especially assaultl rifles, but they are not really the main problem.

Would Harris and Klebold have been problems if they didn't have access to firearms?

Pretty sure that if guns weren't an option, they would be perfectly fine developing and deploying more pipe bombs.

Pipe bombs are already illegal.

Which didn't stop them.

Hence the weekly mass pipe bomb murders that we are so incapable of preventing.

 

[Hermit]

…and we never had a civil war in order to resolve differences of opinions.

We do have State of Origin, though, which comes close.

Dems figthin' words! Beer scullin' showdown at high noon!

Up the mighty

Oops. Wrong footy code. Sowwy. Lemme me try again.

Up the mighty blues! Down the stupid moroons!

 

[Hermit]

We have a traffic problem. Let's solve it by banning cars. People can make do with trucks fine.

Not that canard again. Nobody is proposing a blanket ban on all firearms. The campaigns are about gun control, where firearms specifically designed to kill people are to be banned and people with a criminal record or mental problems are not allowed to own any of the others.

It's not as though that is very different from motor vehicles. You need to qualify for a drivers license to operate one in public, the motor vehicle has to be registered to an owner, and it has to meet safety standards. You'll never be permitted to drive around in a privately owned tank or howitzer.

 

[Hermit]

I think you’re wrong, Loren. Regulation of firearms reduced the number of gun homicides and suicides when it was put into effect.

People keep claiming this about Australia's actions--but the murder rate doesn't show it.

It does. While the US has a murder rate of 6.2/million, Australia's is 0.9. One significant reason is that private ownership of handguns has been regulated out of existence since the end of WW II. We obviously have no concealed or open carry permits either. I put it to you Australia's firearm regulations are a significant factor for the difference in murder rates.

As for the 1996 National Firearms Agreement, it was specifically aimed at reducing the incidence of mass killings rather than the overall murder rate, and in that it has succeeded. In the 25 years leading up to the agreement there were 15 mass killings (defined as four or more fatalities excluding the perpetrator) perpetrated with firearms resulting in 118 deaths. In the 23 years following the agreement there were 4 mass killings (defined as four or more fatalities excluding the perpetrator) perpetrated with firearms resulting in 18 deaths. It is true, people found other means to commit mass killings, chiefly arson (40 deaths, up from 15) and knives (13 deaths, up from 4), but the sum-total of victims per year was almost halved. It dropped from 6.12 to 3.57. I put it to you the gun buyback program resulted in a significant reduction of deaths due to mass killings.

I do expect there is some effect on suicide.

Don't. The suicide rate in Australia has dropped (slowly) at the same rate after the 1996/7 gun buyback scheme as before it.

 

[Swammerdami]

It may be tempting to dismiss mass shootings as incidents of limited significance to a big picture. After all, about 1800 Americans died of heart attacks the very same day as the Uvalde massacre. And 1800 died of heart attacks the day before, and another 1800 the day after.

But Google headlines just presented me with a heart-breaking factoid:

CDC data shows that for children and adolescents ages 1 to 18, and ages 1 to 19, firearms were the leading cause of death in 2020.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins, the University of Michigan, and the Rockefeller Institute of Government analyzed CDC data and confirmed these findings.

 

[Tigers!]

Up the mighty blues! Down the stupid moroons!

The Blues! Are you mad? Carn the Tigers!

 

[Thomas II]

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I am no fan of the NRA and the republican insanity on guns especially assaultl rifles, but they are not really the main problem.

Would Harris and Klebold have been problems if they didn't have access to firearms?

Pretty sure that if guns weren't an option, they would be perfectly fine developing and deploying more pipe bombs.

Pipe bombs are already illegal.

Which didn't stop them.

It does stop the large-scale availability of easy to use relatively safe explosive primers, due to liability, and the people who blow themselves up making them and are afraid to blow themselves up making them does stop pipe bombs in large part.

Klebold and Harris had pipe bombs. The illegality didn't stop them.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A lot comes down to supply chain viability and acquisition logistics.

As is noted, illegal guns are bought legally, originally. They have a chain of custody and you would have to be daft to think it doesn't start with legal purchases.

I wonder how folks can afford gun collections like that...

Just saying, guns are expensive just like big trucks and a drinking problem.

The harder it is to have massive unaccounted gun collections, the harder it is to be an undetectable arms dealer.

I don't like the legality of super suspicious behaviors that are unnecessary and indistinguishable from the activities of an illegal arms dealer to who-knows.

There's no reason to think there are large undetectable arms dealers. Guns are a street trade, not a big supply chain.

(Although the dark web does open the possibility of large scale underground arms sales. You provide the Bitcoin, you get pictures and high precision coordinates of where the gun is buried. It would be very hard to catch such a dealer.)