Yet another shooting thread

[Gospel]

State prosecutors better do their homework on Grandpa before putting him on the stand as a character witness, no matter how good it seems. They can’t risk jeopardizing the case over anything. If something seems too good to be true, it’s probably a scam—and this grandpa seems a little too perfect as a character witness for the prosecution.

Who needs him? The kid was investigated by local law enforcement. The parent indicated guns were not accessible. He knew there was an issue. We don't need proof that he is a bad Dad, just that he was criminally negligent.

I believed it was important to establish that they were criminally negligent, not just by pointing to one isolated incident, like purchasing a firearm after a police investigation that reportedly found no issues. I thought demonstrating a pattern of behavior or a parenting style that shows ongoing negligence would better illustrate a reckless disregard for the consequences of their actions, which is a key element in proving criminal negligence. However, it seems I may have misunderstood how the law defines criminally negligent. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Shooter is 14! Just a freshman entering the high school presumably. Has not had time to get bullied yet....

High school is when the bullying ended for me. The ringleaders lived on the other side of 39th and thus went to a different high school. Without the ringleaders the rest weren't a problem.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Banning "assault" rifles can't have more than a 5% effect on the murder rate and in reality almost all of it would probably simply be displaced to other weapons. The lack of a rifle isn't going to stop someone from shooting. Thus I very much think this is a camel's nose.

First, if someone doesn't have an AR15 type weapon, then they cannot use it for a mass shooting, so it will stop them if they don't have something else.

In other words, it's just a prelude to banning all guns.

You're admitting it's a camel's nose.

Second, what do you have against camel's? So what if it is the camel's nose? A first step towards reducing the number of firearms in the US is still the first step.

Do you not understand the meaning of "camel's nose" in this context?!?!

I’ve been listening to such concerns, only about registering firearms for more than 50 years.

Instead of enacting some common sense control of firearms ( registration, licensing, mandatory safety training, expectations regarding storage, etc.) we’ve seen an enormous proliferation of guns and mass shootings.

Registration? You mean like the local law requiring registration of handguns--the law that was finally scrapped when the police admitted it had never been of use in solving a crime? The set of (guns people would register) and (guns used in crime) have very little overlap.

Licensing? By now you should realize I feel there should be a gun license akin to a driver's license.

Safety training? I object to this one on principle--I dislike legislation of training, I want legislation of knowledge. Same as with driver's licenses--you demonstrate knowledge of the law and proficiency, how you get that skill is not dictated. I do think it belongs on the license exam.

Storage? The problem is that this is used as a roadblock. Mandating gun safes--something that typically apartment dwellers can't do. Guns should be locked up well enough they don't casually walk out the door, mandating more than that is being unreasonable.

The irrational fear of any regulation of firearms makes as much sense as the anti-vax movement. Both have deadly consequences, mostly for children, minors and young adults.

No. The proper comparison is abortion. The right tries to ban abortion bit by bit, the left tries to ban guns bit by bit. Do not be one bit surprised that the right takes as hard a line on gun laws as the left does on abortion laws.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Shooter is 14! Just a freshman entering the high school presumably. Has not had time to get bullied yet....

Oh, middle school is very much a training ground for bullies…

I meant at the new school he started this year.

I don't know about that particular community.

But around here new high school students are in school with their middle school compadres. Buildings change, but the student body doesn't.
Tom

Depends on the school. My high school was larger than my grade school. My grade school had a catchment of one mile by one mile and sat right in the middle of it. I do not know the exact boundaries of my high school, I know that in my direction they extended one mile east and one mile north of the school--if it was symmetric that would mean a two mile by two mile catchment. The northern boundary of both was the same, the eastern boundary from the high school went right through the middle of the catchment for the grade school and thus only half of the students went to the same high school.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Georgia school shooting suspect struggled with mental health, aunt says

The 14-year-old arrested after a mass shooting at Georgia’s Apalachee High School had been “begging for months” for mental health help before he allegedly carried out a deadly attack Wednesday, according to an aunt of the suspect.

He “was begging for help from everybody around him,” the aunt, Annie Brown, told The Washington Post. “The adults around him failed him.”

Brown, who lives in Central Florida, declined to elaborate on the teen’s mental health challenges but said she tried from afar to get him help. She said his struggles were exacerbated by a difficult home life. He and his family had “previous contacts” with the local child services department, Chris Hosey, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said at a news conference Wednesday night.

Brown said that in January, she helped her nephew enroll at Haymon-Morris Middle School in Barrow County so he could finish eighth grade following a period of absenteeism. He had just started ninth grade at Apalachee High this school year, she said.

Not in the least surprising. There's usually something seriously wrong at home when these things happen.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The shooter’s father has been arrested. Seems he bought the kid the gun as a Christmas present. Unbelievable level of stupidity.

Yup, and it's not the first time we've seen parents buying a gun for a disturbed kid. All I can figure it they think it will let them get their aggression out on a piece of paper, but that's a pretty serious lack of thinking.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Minors shouldn't be tried as adults. Their brains are NOT the same as adults and should not be treated as such. If the crime is so egregious (as I agree is the case in this shooting), then address it with the juvenile justice system.

View attachment 47648

I agree that it doesn't serve to try a 14 year old in "adult court". But definitely - charging the father is the way to go. It's the only thing that could come out of this making everyone even fractionally safer.

We need to make a big deal about these parents charged for complicity in school shootings. Make others realize it's a very dangerous road.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Do any of you know that a bunch of other kids have been charged with making terroristic threats, related to the 14 year olds school shootings? This is insane. The AJC doesn't allow me to gift articles, but I'll quote part of it, and some of you can probably slip behind the paywall or read most of the article if you want. This is some crazy shit. I lived in Gwinnett country about 26 years ago. All I can say is WTF is going on in these kid's heads and WTF is wrong with Kemp and company that they won't even discuss making gun laws more reasonable! At the very least demand that guns be locked up if their are minors in the home and establish an age for gun possession. You can't buy one if you're 14, but you can possess one, how crazy is that!

https://www.ajc.com/education/threa...ulting-in-arrests/K35EHT7IMZC7BINES2B3NUJJBI/

More than a dozen juveniles and one adult in Georgia have been arrested and accused of making school threats in the days after four people were killed and nine others were injured in a shooting at Apalachee High School.

The students — who range in age from 11 to 17 — were arrested in Clarke, Forsyth, Gwinnett, Hall, Hart, Jackson, Newton and Oconee counties and charged with making terroristic threats. If convicted of a felony charge, they could face fines or jail time, in addition to discipline from their schools.


“You’ve got these 11- and 12-year-old kids that don’t understand the consequences and the far reach of what their words can cause,” Oconee County Sheriff James Hale told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Two Oconee County Middle School students were charged after making potential threats of school violence. “These kids don’t understand that by saying that, it puts into motion a machine that is a runaway train sometimes.”
Explore

I think patterns are far more important than individual incidents. When the same person keeps coming up you've got a problem, not just someone making noise.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You bring up a valid point about sentencing under juvenile jurisdiction in Georgia, and I understand and agree that charging him as an adult is important in this case. However, I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding about my original comment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What I was trying to say is that charging him as an adult, while it may ensure a longer sentence, doesn't address the underlying issues that allow these tragedies to keep happening in the first place. My point is that focusing on how a single individual is prosecuted won’t prevent people—including those with mental health issues—from getting easy access to firearms. That’s more a reflection of broader societal problems like gun availability and policies that need to be addressed.

I did not miss the point. I just pointed out that criminal prosecution is not the proper avenue to address deeper societal issues.

The broader issues you bring up are more difficult. I agree that we should address our gun laws. But even that is not a panacea. A sufficiently motivated person can cause a lot of mayhem with e.g. a knife, like the Syrian fakefugee who stabbed three to death in Germany recently.
Syrian man confesses to stabbing to death 3 people at German festival

Or a car. I'm thinking of the sidewalk across from my high school where the smokers would congregate. Play Death Race, you could probably bag a fair number.

 

[Toni]

Banning "assault" rifles can't have more than a 5% effect on the murder rate and in reality almost all of it would probably simply be displaced to other weapons. The lack of a rifle isn't going to stop someone from shooting. Thus I very much think this is a camel's nose.

First, if someone doesn't have an AR15 type weapon, then they cannot use it for a mass shooting, so it will stop them if they don't have something else.

In other words, it's just a prelude to banning all guns.

You're admitting it's a camel's nose.

Second, what do you have against camel's? So what if it is the camel's nose? A first step towards reducing the number of firearms in the US is still the first step.

Do you not understand the meaning of "camel's nose" in this context?!?!

I’ve been listening to such concerns, only about registering firearms for more than 50 years.

Instead of enacting some common sense control of firearms ( registration, licensing, mandatory safety training, expectations regarding storage, etc.) we’ve seen an enormous proliferation of guns and mass shootings.

Registration? You mean like the local law requiring registration of handguns--the law that was finally scrapped when the police admitted it had never been of use in solving a crime? The set of (guns people would register) and (guns used in crime) have very little overlap.

Licensing? By now you should realize I feel there should be a gun license akin to a driver's license.

Safety training? I object to this one on principle--I dislike legislation of training, I want legislation of knowledge. Same as with driver's licenses--you demonstrate knowledge of the law and proficiency, how you get that skill is not dictated. I do think it belongs on the license exam.

Storage? The problem is that this is used as a roadblock. Mandating gun safes--something that typically apartment dwellers can't do. Guns should be locked up well enough they don't casually walk out the door, mandating more than that is being unreasonable.

The irrational fear of any regulation of firearms makes as much sense as the anti-vax movement. Both have deadly consequences, mostly for children, minors and young adults.

No. The proper comparison is abortion. The right tries to ban abortion bit by bit, the left tries to ban guns bit by bit. Do not be one bit surprised that the right takes as hard a line on gun laws as the left does on abortion laws.

I don’t even know where to begin with this. You are dramatic call off base. Probably because laws regarding gun control affect you and laws regarding access to abortion do not