President Proposes School Arms Race as Solution to Mass Murder

The so-called 'listening session' was all about Trump stating his proposal to keep students safe in their schools: Arm "talented" teachers with hand guns. Claiming 20% of teachers must "volunteer" for special training in order to withstand the assault from assault rifles in the hands of anyone who comes on campus with murderous intent is the wisdom of a self-identified "very stable genius."

Stupid?
Brilliant?

Costly?
Cheap?

Pro-NRA?
Pro-Student?

Safer environment?
More dangerous?

The "American" thing to do?
Solution of a madman?

"Right to bear arms"?
Armageddon?

You tell me.

Par for the course from someone who is a thoughtless moron. I don't suppose it's occured to him that a teacher might one day get so pissed at his/her class that he/she might use the gun and gun training they've gotten to turn their anger back on their students. The republican party is so afraid that their NRA support will go away that they're going to skirt around this problem forever. This wouldn't solve a fucking thing--it would only make things so much worse.

Why would you want to train up teachers to be able and willing to shoot an intruder? I can see a stand-off going very badly all 'round. Can you count on every teacher knowing when it might be appropriate to pull out weaponry. And where would they stash the guns during the school day so as to have them handy and yet safe from students?

The idea of arming school personnel has been floated before in these fora:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/196457#5294718

Dumber than dirt.

If you have ever trained with weapons one thing you know is that in order to be effective you have to practice,practice, practice which means just throwing some training at someone and giving them a weapon isn't going to do much.

So, to get around this problem I'm sure the next proposal will be the construction of on school site shooting ranges for daily teacher practice complete with student silhouette targets.

This will give us armed teachers and daily practice at gunning down students or anyone else who offends ....but what about ready access to a weapon when someone charges the school (or any other place for that matter). Having a weapon locked up in some safe storage place won't be of much value in the kinds of situations we have seen.

The obvious answer to this is all teachers shall be required to walk around with pistol, belt, ammunition, and open carry before, during, and after school hours.

Yup, that'll do it.

...well, no actually that won't. There is still the surprise factor which can wreak havoc with the best plans. So what will be needed next is random practice drills.

Let's see - it would go this way. The inspection team arrives on the school grounds during class time. They go to the principals office to let him/her know they are around (of course, if it is to be a school wide inspection they will only need to inform the local police department). They randomly select classrooms and, without warning, slam in through the classroom door screaming, shouting, and shooting blanks. The teacher will be assessed on his/her ability to quick draw and get off a few shots in their general direction. There will be the problem of live round expenditure and ricochets but that is just the price you have to pay.

Final teacher grade will be based on speed of draw and fire and whether or not the shots were fired before or after the inspection team judge declared the teacher KIA.

The statistics of these tests will be compiled by the NRA on a monthly basis and school districts will be graded accordingly. Federal education money (oh, never mind - that funding won't be available after 2017) - state education money will be apportioned according to the school ratings on these tests. - Our motto - Education Will Take Care of Itself.

Why the Stupid Think Arming Teachers is a Good Idea

• Arm teachers because shooters just stand still with their arms to their sides like a silhouette on a paper target;


• They never shoot first;


• They never shoot back with a mega-clip military weapon;


• They never move or hide; An armed teacher will always be able to come up behind them and drop them with a single shot;


• They never barricade themselves in a room;


• They never take hostages;


• They never overwhelm the teacher and find themselves with yet another loaded gun;


• They never wear body armor, helmets, or other protective gear;


• They always behave in a predictable and sane manner — just look at them now;


• Bullets that ricochet never hurt anyone, nor the shrapnel, either;


• Teachers never miss what they’re aiming for, unlike police;


• Besides, that’s what teachers are for. Why else do we pay them so much money?

The idea isn't going to happen. Students don't want armed teachers in class. Teachers don't want it. School administrators don't want it.

Discussing it is a waste of time.

On the other hand, who doubts that there are armed security-guards on permanent duty at exclusive private schools where "important people's" children are in class?

When was the last school-shooting spree at an excusive private day-school or boarding school?

Who will pay for the guns? ammunition? training courses?
Will substitute teachers be eligible for certification?
How often will teachers need to be re-certified?
Who will certify the teachers? your local Barney Fife, the NRA?
Will the guns and ammo be stored at the schools at night and on weekends or will teachers be expected to store them at home?
Who will pay for the extra liability insurance?
Will armed teachers deserve extra pay?
Maybe we should limit teaching positions to ex-military only?

Think back to all your teachers. Would you want them all to be packing heat? Would you really want any of them to be armed?

Trump plan at odds with teacher #ArmMeWith movement

"Arm me with the resources and funding needed to help students experiencing mental health issues, not guns," the #ArmMeWith movement urges.

Other #ArmMeWithproposals include books, school supplies, time to address emotional needs of students, time for relationship building — and "a world without fear."

The movement was created Tuesday on Instagram by teachers Olivia Bertels (@missbertels_) and Brittany Wheaton (@thesuperheroteacher). Bertels, who teaches middle school English in Kansas, had a friend associated with the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. She told USA TODAY the duo started #ArmMeWith to combat the "absurd notion being espoused by largely NRA-funded politicians" that arming teachers will keep schools safe.

>7 proximity1: Typical of you to try to dismiss a topic which you have no argument to support the side you're on. "Fake news!" How tired. How old. How Trumpian.

>8 Taphophile13:

Your points are excellent.

Imagine the lawsuit(s) against an innocent teacher whose bullet is determined to have slain an innocent bystander. There's no liability coverage in the world for the amount of damages that could be awarded against him or her.

Even an armed security guard would face the same liability.

If the NRA wants -- and they do want, according to LaPierre's speech today -- additional armed security personnel (presumably armed with ARs or AKs in order to be equally armed) on campus, let them PAY for it. It's their position; they advocate for it; it aligns with their world view; let them underwrite it as part of their lobbying efforts. Heck -- let them supply the 8 "volunteers" with "gun adepts" from their own ranks. Those are the people who can prove they love our kids as much as they love their guns. This is only a slight modification of Trump's proposal yesterday and should be perfectly acceptable to Trump, the NRA, wimpy Republicans, and ammophiliacs.

>11 Limelite: And perhaps they can all be identified by wearing brown shirts, eh?

Full disclaimer: I know nothing about childhood psychiatric issues or the associated pharmacology that has been employed in an attempt to treat it. However, the points mentioned below have been raised by those who consider themselves experts. I'm interested in responses from people qualified to comment.

Psychiatric drugs are documented by 27 international drug regulatory agency warnings and 16 published medical studies to cause side effects including mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation.

There have been 65 high profile cases of mass shootings/murder committed by individuals under the influence of psychiatric drugs, yet there has never been a federal investigation into the link between seemingly senseless acts of violence and the use of mind-altering psychotropic drugs (https://www.cchrint.org/2017/10/10/another-mass-shooting-another-psychiatric-drug/)

The United States reportedly has 8,389,034 kids on psychiatric drugs (https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/). That’s more than the entire population of Switzerland.
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Guns have been around for centuries. Psych drugs, not so much. What has changed to prompt recent school violence?

Consider the source. Given that CCHR is owned and operated by the Scientology group and given that they are militantly anti-psychiatry I'd say you are quite likely looking at cherry picked data/documents which are not providing an accurate/fair representation of the issue/facts.

NBC news reported this evening that the trained deputy school officer did nothing at Parkland school. He's no longer employed by the county. So if a trained deputy fails in his duty, what chance does a teacher with a few hours training have to stop a massacre? I've been teaching 19 years, and I can't tell you what other teacher feel. But this teacher thinks it is one of the stupidest ideas ever.

>13 TrippB:

Just like Mr. Pruitt of the EPA, don't cite non-peer reviewed sources from unreliable organizations unqualified in professional specialties such as engineering and medical science. You will be able to avoid framing wrong implications like: 1) drugs cause increased violent behavior in psychiatric patients, not the mental pathology and; 2) since guns have been around for 100s of years but psychotropic drugs haven't, it must be the drugs to blame for "recent school violence."

When your premises are faulty, conclusions drawn from them will also be faulty.

Psychiatric patients exhibit the same effects from their pathology at a level worse than possible side-effects -- "mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation" -- in most cases. When drugs prove worse in their effects than diseases they're designed to treat and fail to deliver management of them, they are removed from treatment protocols and even manufacture -- based on scientific and empirical evidence. Not anecdotal collections of cases.

One can infer from you number that of the 8M+ on drugs, there are several more millions psychiatric disorder sufferers who have not been diagnosed and are wandering around without benefit of medication, treatment, or even diagnosis. They have equal access to guns.

It's difficult to conduct mass slaughter w/o a weapon of mass destruction that can fire 30 to 100 rounds on a squeeze of the trigger. For hundreds of years of gun history ARs and AKs did not exist. Psychiatric patients were incarcerated like criminals. Schools with enrollments of 1000s of children were unheard of in the entire world. Public school education is an American invention that arose in the 19th C. War weapons accessible to teenagers and the mentally troubled are not available to any population but an American one. No other country in the entire world allows -- much less has an organization that promotes and pushes -- the sale of war weaponry to private citizens as an unlimited right. No other nation in the world has the rate of gun deaths in its civilian population at the hands of civilian shooters that approaches ours.

So, it's obvious that the right question to ask is why do we persist in allowing unrestricted access to assault rifles by anyone from teen-aged up who has the means to pay for them, even when they present an expired I.D. Because only we do and only we lead the world in gun deaths as a result of our insane kowtowing to the only organization in the world that lobbies to protect a policy that has been rejected by two-thirds of American VOTERS.

Support for universal background checks is itself almost universal, 97 - 2 percent, including 97 - 3 percent among gun owners. Support for gun control on other questions is at its highest level since the Quinnipiac University Poll began focusing on this issue in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre:

67 - 29 percent for a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons;
83 - 14 percent for a mandatory waiting period for all gun purchases. It is too easy to buy a gun in the U.S. today, American voters say 67 - 3 percent. If more people carried guns, the U.S. would be less safe, voters say 59 - 33 percent. Congress needs to do more to reduce gun violence, voters say 75 - 17 percent.

Stricter gun control would do more to reduce gun violence in schools, 40 percent of voters say, while 34 percent say metal detectors would do more and 20 percent say armed teachers are the answer.

All of which PROVES the NRA is out of step with Americans and that there is NO REASON for them to wield control of this country's gun policies except for the fact that it donates millions of dollars to REPUBLICAN candidates to sacrifice common sense and personal integrity as they serve the interests of the NRA (increased gun sales and membership of gun owners) but not the interests of their constituents, sane or not, medicated or not.

>10 Limelite:

It's said that an overwhleming majority of (U.S.) Americans want to see far stricter control of citizen-owenership of and access to firearms--especially firearms which are designed for military-like assault and used in indiscriminate shootings in public places.

The obvious question is: why is this not reflected in current public law? And the obvious answer is: because the U.S. political system is reliably operated by interest groups which keep it from reliably reflecting the political desires of the overwhelming majority of the adult public when these do not already comfortably conform to the preferences of the dominant political-power interest groups.

To effectively change this status quo requires the very thing which is lakcing: a responsive political system based on a fair and effective democratically-based electoral system. The U.S. has neither of these and, quite probably, also lacks both the material and the intellectual prerequisites to acquire or obtain them in any deliberative, peaceful, manner.

If repeal of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were put to a vote in a national referendum, it is not clear to me that in a free and fair referendum, voters would elect to repeal that amendment; I'd personally vote against its repeal if I were to cast a vote in such a referendum.

The issues surrounding these episodes of school-shootings concern administrative failings:

open, unrestricted access to school-grounds by armed individuals is one aspect of persistent failure. I am at a loss to explain why, after so many shootings, this remains the case. Since school-shootings are almost always commited by people who have legally obtained the weapons they use, it seems to me that there is always a danger that a legally-owned weapon can be turned to such an act, no matter what the restrictions on illegal weapons may be.

I see school-shooting episodes as a symptom of wider and much more serious social failings and ignoring them in so exclusive a focus on a symptom of a much bigger set of problems strikes me as both futile and marvelously typical of U.S. society as it has been throughout my life: short-sighted, knee-jerk, simplistic, on-again-off-again attention, widespread ignorance and general indifference except just after a disastrous episode.

The U.S. is a failed-(pseudo) democracy as a society and the nation-state part of being a "failed-state" is just lagging behind the current circumstances:



__________________________________________________

Your obvious purpose in posting this thread:

"President Proposes School Arms Race as Solution to Mass Murder"

is a cheap, shallow, partisan-political point-scoring effort in which you are mainly interested both figuatively and literally in seeking to take political advantage of this recent episode which cost the lives or the whole-health of the victims, making them secondary to your interest in once again picturing President Trump as a moron.

>17 proximity1:

The root of mass murder evil IS unlimited access to guns, especially assault weapons. NOT government. Of course you'd vote against repeal of the 2nd Amendment, a meme NO ONE has raised. You, no doubt, fear the wing nut fear mongering trope that only possessing weapons of offense can we poor downtrodden gun pornographers defend ourselves from the tyranny of a liberal government.

Only Trump and his minions can MAGA in the face of a liberal press, liberal truth bias, liberal insistence on equality for all over white male privilege, liberal judges, and liberal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. "God bless Putin's Puppet!"

Aren't you tired of being tiresome yet? Hasn't your career on this thread of being a harpy been wearing on your psyche? Doesn't constant whining keep you from having friends?

Analyze your own motives for attempting to censor a discussion. Nobody on LT gives a flying fickle finger of fate about your offended insensibilities and carping repetition of worn out right wing Internet memes. But you're entitled, even when you think I'm not.

Besides, as you have affirmed, I SCORED BIG TIME POINTS. BWAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

>18 Limelite:

"NOT government. Of course you'd vote against repeal of the 2nd Amendment, a meme NO ONE has raised."

__________________________________

22 February 2018 :

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who identifies as a conservative, defended his call to repeal the Second Amendment in an MSNBC roundtable discussion on Thursday about guns.

LOL!!!!!

>16 Limelite: Thank you for your response, although I was hoping someone might reference a comprehensive study of links between psych drugs and mass murder. The mental health industry—both practitioners and pharmaceutical companies—seem to be very defensive and secretive about such data. Why? I’d like to see exactly what drugs were in mass killers’ systems when they committed their crimes. I think most people would be interested in such information. Do psych drugs pose a greater threat to society than firearms? We don’t know, because the information has never been shared.

It is not my intent to target the pharmaceutical companies (although they have wreaked absolute havoc on U.S. society by pushing doctors to unnecessarily prescribe opioids and a host of other questionable drugs). I’m sure the mental health industry would argue that psych drugs help the vast majority of people using them, and that the number of people who exhibit violent side effects are too statistically insignificant to be used as a reason to focus on the drugs as a motivating factor. Ok, fine. If it is a statistically insignificant risk, then I think any reasonable person should accept that position. Why persecute the many peaceful users of the drugs for the murderous actions of just a few very disturbed people?

Using the exact same logic, the outlier use of firearms to commit mass murder should not be used as a reason to infringe upon the rights of the millions of law-abiding people who choose to own firearms. Nor should it be used to target semi-auto rifles, as what could be considered a statistically insignificant number of them are used to commit murder. Why persecute the many peaceful users of firearms for the murderous actions of just a few very disturbed people?

It's difficult to conduct mass slaughter w/o a weapon of mass destruction that can fire 30 to 100 rounds on a squeeze of the trigger.
Then you haven't been paying attention. More mass slaughter has been conducted without a single squeeze of the trigger of a gun. Even when guns have been used, it's taken a squeeze of the trigger for each and every single round that's been fired.

Also, thank you for mentioning the NRA in your response. It reminded me that I haven’t made an NRA donation in a few years, and I just gave them more than I’ve ever spent on any book. Considering what I’ve paid for some of the books in my library, I’m sure it will result in value to support my position on the peaceful ownership, and sporting and self-defense use, of firearms.

Clarification: By sporting, I mean target shooting and other marksmanship use, including the Olympic Games biathlon. I would never support the use of firearms for hunting, as I don’t consider killing innocent animals to be a sport.

>20 TrippB:

By all means give your cash to the NRA, an organization that bears no resemblance to its roots, but is now only a lobby to promote wing nuttery and sales of armaments (made in the USA -- hurrah!) founded on a specious argument about the "well regulated militia" amendment, not peaceful ownership of guns. Just as the Republican Party of today has not been the "Party of Lincoln" since the earliest days of its Southern Strategy which gave birth to wedge and identity politics by setting the black man up as the scapegoat for the white man's woes after WWII.

Here's another reminder -- don't forget to donate to your citation source, an organization that proclaims itself a church but is just an aggregate grifters' machine. Scientology pseudos. Pardon me if you've heard this before: A fool and his money are soon parted.

BTW, trying to draw an analogy between gun mass murder and psychotropic drug side-effects. Reminds me of the Southern Strategy: "Look over there! He/It is the REAL cause of your misery," when he'it has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

A better analogy would be to liken gun proliferation to the opioid crisis. To your way, the NRA members' way, of thinking, the solution to the opioid crisis would be the easier access to more and cheaper pills, just as long as the buyers promise not to abuse them and take the "Responsible Pill Owner Pledge" after giving a donation to the National Opioid Association. Of course, only the "evil" or "crazy"opioid addicts would abuse the drugs, or sell them illegally. Only the irresponsible pill owners would leave them lying around their houses where kids could get at them and take them to school. After all, if we didn't let unfettered sale of opioids to everyone, only addicts would have them. Now you and I both know that only gun mfrs. and pill mfrs. benefit from that mindset.

You're the one who hasn't been paying attention, you have been deliberately obtuse. But you can change that. Read better source material. Mass murder by civilians using "America's Rifle" has increased since the repeal of the sensible ban on assault rifles was not renewed.

Congratulations on not slaughtering animals for sport and claiming you "eat the meat" or "balance Nature" to excuse your hobby.

>21 Limelite: Read better source material.
You missed my primary point. There is an apparently intentional lack of better source material. I’d like to see even just a simple table that lists the mass murderers over the last 20 years along with the psych drugs they were taking. Does such a list exist?

This is an area that needs attention. Perhaps we need a national registry of psych drug users. It’s a matter of public safety. Each year, some 0.0001 percent of psych drug users might be responsible for mass murder. Forget the 4th amendment on this issue. The founding fathers could never have envisioned so many Americans on psych drugs that have potential to increase homicidal tendencies. If the poll questions were framed just right, I’d predict that 97% of people would support such a registry. I also think the victims of the violent outbursts should sue the drug companies and mental health practitioners when their patients kill. They must be held responsible for the actions of individuals who decide to kill.

By the way, when I was making my donation to the NRA, I ordered a nice looking NRA jacket. They have a fantastic online gift shop.

There was a healthy debate going on in this thread, with some actual attempts at sourcing (some of them very questionable, and nothing rigorous or peer-reviewed, sadly... except for the research into the correlation between gun control and mass shootings!).
https://www.quora.com/Has-there-been-any-research-into-the-correlation-between-m...

>23 TrippB: You're right, there is an intentional lack of better source material and the cause of that lack of source material is the NRA. In 1997 a bill with the strong backing of the NRA was passed which prohibits the CDC from studying firearm violence. Prior to that time the CDC had been gathering data and studying the issue.

The bill doesn't "specifically" ban such gathering and analysis but the vagueness of what was and was not permitted stopped research in its tracks since no one was willing to risk their career or additional agency funding to try to find out. To further insure no research was done (and emphasize that it shouldn't be done) the CDC budget cut based on that bill was precisely $2.6 million which, oddly enough, was the exact amount the CDC had spent on firearms research in the previous year.

What makes all of this really "cute" is that it allows the NRA to claim they didn't do anything and the lack of research isn't their fault while simultaneously allowing them to complain about the lack of good source material.

>25 alco261: I’m not knowledgeable about legislated limits or historical appropriations of the CDC, but it took about 20 seconds of searching to see you are apparently referring to the 1996 appropriations bill rider known as the Dickey Amendment. The amendment declared that "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” I agree completely on that issue--research and findings should be based on facts, including individual rights, and not a political agenda--particularly during the era of Clinton's scary-looking gun ban.

There was absolutely nothing in the bill that blocks research on gun violence, nor does it prohibit public health data collection.

A bill passed 20 years ago blocked $2.6 million. The 2016 CDC budget, according to readily available sources, was more than $11 billion. The information I’d like to see—a simple table of mass murderers and the drugs they were on—would take a CDC college intern about a week to compile.

Blaming the NRA for the lack of data on the link between psych drugs and mass killings is quite a stretch.

>23 TrippB:

Fair enough. An evaluation of the use of psychiatric drugs by mass murderers might help to shed light on parts of the problem. I would like to see a serious study of all mass murders over the past 20 years, evaluating ALL factors that may have contributed.
What drugs were they using, if any, and why?
What percentage of psychiatric drug users become mass murderers?
Were there any cases where the murderers needed mental health care (possibly even including psychiatric drugs) and did not obtain it?
What weapons did they use, and where and how did they obtain them?
If obtained legally, are there any indicators that might distinguish someone who wants to acquire a weapon for mass murder, vs someone who has a legitimate purpose in mind?
What percentage of gun owners become mass murderers?
Did violent video games and/or media play any role?
In the specific case of school shootings, since most of the school shooters have been former students of the schools they attended, is there any correlation with average class size or average school population?
What percentage of mass murderers appear to be provoking "suicide by cop"?
What percentage of mass murderers are facing financial problems?
What about family dynamics? History of domestic violence in which the mass murderer was either a victim or a perpetrator?
I am sure there are many more questions that could be asked.

That would require more than one intern's research for a week, but all valid questions, and well worthy of asking. It might provide answers I'd prefer to not know, but I'd be willing to give up my preferences for answers that would help. The family dynamics aspect might be particularly disturbing.

Regardless, I'd support $2.6 million in public funding to compile that data.

>26 TrippB: I know what it says and I also know that it is vague ...as you quoted " none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control" ...and just exactly what are we going to define as "used to advocate or promote gun control"?

That phrase can be twisted just about any way the original sponsor and the NRA would want to twist it. For instance, I as a researcher do a study and another group, completely divorced from any of my activities, takes my studies and uses them to push for something the NRA decides is "advocating gun control"...one guess as to where that is going to leave me and the institution I work for.

So no, it's not a stretch. As has been pointed out elsewhere it is the reason the work is not being done - for example

From ABC News

Dickey: Why the feds don't research gun violence

Passed in 1997 with the strong backing of the NRA, the so-called "Dickey Amendment" effectively bars the national Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from studying firearm violence -- an epidemic the American Medical Association has since dubbed "a public health crisis."

The amendment, which was first tucked into an appropriations bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton, stipulates that "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control." A similar provision was included in the Appropriations Act of 2012.

Named for Republican Rep. Jay Dickey of Arkansas, a self-proclaimed "point man for the NRA" on The Hill -- the Dickey amendment does not explicitly ban CDC research on gun violence. But along with the gun control line came a $2.6 million budget cut -- the exact amount that the agency had spent on firearm research the year prior -- and a quiet wariness.

As one doctor put it, "Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear ... but no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency's funding to find out."

Critics argue that the government should not try to limit the collection of scientific information, which is by nature apolitical.

.....

I realize it's not possible to check any personal claim made by anyone on the internet but I work in a medical facility and the subject of this kind of research has come up in the past. The comments made by my physicians about this issue mirrored the quote attributed to the "one doctor" in the above article...and yes, since it summarized what I have heard, it was that "one doctor's" turn of phrase I used in my initial post to describe the impact of the bill.

Maybe the NRA should hold more conventions. The New England Journal of Medicine has just released a study that found gun violence is reduced by approximately 20% when NRA conventions are in session.

They got to this in a back door way, by compiling emergency department visits and hospitalizations for firearm injuries during NRA convention dates and during identical days in the 3 weeks before and 3 weeks after NRA conventions in a national database of privately insured patients during 2007 through 2015. Interestingly, there was no difference in the proportion of crimes involving a firearm between convention and control dates.

. . . a teacher with a gun:

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/ga-teacher-opened-fire-inside-classroom-charged...

While we're investigating, let's see what causes the disease (the CDC is not allowed to research) that causes so-called "responsible" gun owners to leave their guns lying carelessly around the house so their 13-year-old son, Keith Simons, can pick up parental unit's shotgun, hide it in his trousers on his way to school, and shoot himself fatally in the school bathroom because at the last minute he changed his mind about slaughtering his peers with it?

Children managing to get their hands on weapons are an epidemic in the US.

In 2016, 27.54 million background checks were performed, representing at least that number of guns sold that year. (Hillary fear spurred sales.) What's troubling is that not all the background checks were approved. No checks were performed on guns bought from unlicensed retailers at gun shows, by special order, and from private sellers, to mention just a few sources of "under cover" weaponry available in the regulation-free market.

As of today 98 children 11 and under are dead by gunshot this year. As of today, 2018 has seen 461 12-17-year-olds die by gun shot wounds. Most of those dead children are too young to buy guns on their own. The rest can get them legally or illegally, from their households or stolen at some time from other "responsible" gun owners' gun safes -- no doubt. Saddest of all, 272 deaths of the 9,132 as of today are classified "unintentional."

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

Where's the NRA when gun safety and real responsible ownership are clearly NOT part of America's gun culture? Busy off fear-mongering about Hillary Clinton, still, to drive up gun sales, of course.

Gun deaths rates rise in a corresponding fashion to gun sales. Remember 2016, the last presidential election year?
2016 Rise in Gun Deaths
2016 Record Gun Sales

>32 Limelite: Trigger locks and gun safes. Back in the day when I actually owned pistols and lived alone in an apartment, I put trigger locks on all of them except at night when I kept one at the bedside.

>32 Limelite:

"Children managing to get their hands on weapons are an epidemic in the US."

Access to guns is not the cause of mass shootings. There is likely much less access now than 25, 50, or 75 years ago. I knew where my parents' unlocked .22 revolver was hidden by the time I was about 11. By about the same age, I knew where the parents of most of my friends kept their guns, too, because they weren't hidden--they were on open gun racks or in decorative (often unlocked) glass-front display cases. Ammo was usually in the cabinet below the display. Gun cabinets held semi-auto rifles, shotguns, military issue M1 rifles, and all kinds of handguns. Many pickup trucks had a rifle rack in the back window. It would not have been a challenge to amass enough guns to stock a small armory in the span of an afternoon.

What seems to have been different then is that fewer kids followed through on a maniacal urge to commit mass murder. Fewer kids were on psych drugs in those days, too. Is there a link between those two observations? I have no idea.

>34 TrippB: One of the "slippery slope" ideas I embrace is allowing the CDC to study the mass shootings with the goal of determining the underlying causes. It is not simply access to guns (though a factor), nor violent society (again, a factor). Can it be that the increase usage of prescription drugs? I don't know, but I'd sure like to know.

The study would have the double benefit of making the NRA and Big Pharma lobbyists very unhappy.

Access to guns is not the cause of mass shootings. There is likely much less access now than 25, 50, or 75 years ago. Your statement is a good observation for why the causes of gun violence are not clear.

A liberal may say, "Get rid of the guns and you won't have to worry about mass shootings." I'm a wee bit cynical of this reasoning because we can never get rid of all the guns in the U.S. even if we become a police state. I don't want to live in that kind of society.

Look at the factors and address them. Do we need to look at drug side effects (making us more violent)? Do we need to increase support for mental health screening? Do we need to adequately resource our schools to create a more positive environment where fewer people fall through the cracks? Do we need to require universal background checks on all firearm purchases (instead of the mishmash state-to-state rules)?

I have questions, but very few answers. I just think we need to dig for the causes.

>35 pmackey: One of the "slippery slope" ideas I embrace is allowing the CDC to study the mass shootings with the goal of determining the underlying causes.

Good idea, but while the CDC is conducting studies that are going to take 5 years or more to come to a definitive answer, we can take the precaution of removing access to the most powerful weapons that can be used to kill dozens of people in minutes.

>35 pmackey: Look at the factors and address them. Do we need to look at drug side effects (making us more violent)? Do we need to increase support for mental health screening? Do we need to adequately resource our schools to create a more positive environment where fewer people fall through the cracks? Do we need to require universal background checks on all firearm purchases (instead of the mishmash state-to-state rules)?

Or is there a problem with America's gun culture itself? A couple years ago a man shot someone outside of a Dallas Cowboys game. He had been drinking:

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/arlington/article169245302.htm...

And in fact it turns out there is a strong correlation between alcohol consumption and gun violence:

https://www.thetrace.org/2017/02/gun-owners-alcohol-abuse-crime/

So how about: If you are over the limit, your gun gets taken away. What if the consequences for drinking and carrying were on a par with those for drinking and driving? What if we, as a culture, responded to "don't drink and carry" in the same way we've responded to "don't drink and drive"?

>34 TrippB: What seems to have been different then is that fewer kids followed through on a maniacal urge to commit mass murder. Fewer kids were on psych drugs in those days, too. Is there a link between those two observations? I have no idea.

While we're talking about things where nobody has any idea, why not "fewer kids were brought up with the idea that life matters only until it's born"? How about "fewer kids believed the gun was divine right, to be owned because the evil liberals want to take them away"? Heck, we could talk about the whole conservative swing in the US; LBJ's "Great Society" was torn down by Reagan and on the socialist-capitalist spectrum, Obama might have been to the right of Nixon.

Is there a link between those observations? I have no idea, and I'm sure nobody here has any clue why I brought them up instead of other "I have no idea" observations.

(To be honest, I suspect that a large part of it is in fact that mass shootings are now a thing. But I actually like the idea that the NRA has pumpkinified the gun, justifying the use of it by some angry white men in acts of violence.)

>34 TrippB: I guess it depends on your time frame. I'd have to disagree with your statement "There is likely much less access now than 25, 50, or 75 years ago". My Dad enjoyed hunting and every time we moved (which was a lot) he would link up with other individuals who also liked to hunt. I too remember seeing gun cabinets and also the occasional individual with a gun rack in the back of the jeep or pickup. However, the level of armament was much less than what I've seen in the last 20 years or so.

From a very young age I was quite interested in firearms so on those many occasions when our host offered a show and tell I was very attentive and paid close attention to the weapons collection. The home gun racks of the day typically had a bolt action 30-06 with a scope to be used for deer hunting, an over/under or double barrel shotgun for birds, a .22 single shot or lever action rifle for plinking or varmint shooting and sometimes a single handgun. The handgun was most often either a revolver, the military style 1911, or something like a clip fed .22 Ruger. The only real variations you would see would be a pump shotgun in place of a double barrel or an over/under or a lever action rifle in place of the bolt action and, on the rarest of occasions, you might see an additional weapon in the form of a prized custom rifle whose basic mechanism was either a semi-automatic M1 Garand with the standard issue 8 round clip or a bolt action rifle with a Mauser mechanism. The car gun racks typically had 2 or 3 long barrel weapons - bolt action rifle, a shotgun, and a .22 rifle and these, even in many of the rural areas where we lived, were not common.

Noticeably absent were the plethora of semi-automatic weapons in military garb, weapons with large capacity magazines and home gun racks holding large collections of rifles, shotguns, and hand guns. Granted, my sample was small but our family lived in almost every section of the U.S. except for the deep south and, regardless of where we went, the weapons count/type in the home arsenals I got to see remained fairly constant.

Problem is (cf. title of thread), Florida Senate agrees.
http://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/03/03/florida-senate-debates-...

Sort of...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/florida-senate-bill-arms-school-staff_us_5a...

And this interesting news item:

Fearful Of Fellow Legislator, Colo. Lawmakers Began Wearing Kevlar At State Capitol

Here we go: "US Teachers Train to Carry Guns in Class"
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/teachers-gun-training-school-shooters-1.4584612

"Librarian Jace Daily is visibly shaken after seeing that some of the shots she fired hit the child in her training target. 'I need some practice,' she admits."