I think it’s important to remember that the majority of these mass shootings are intended to be suicides. The shooter is simply sending a big FUCK YOU, WORLD! message by killing random strangers before he comes to the main event, which is either offing himself or committing suicide-by-cop. And we know that intensive media coverage influences suicide rates and can promote copycat suicides and suicide clusters, which is why the media has guidelines for how it covers “ordinary” suicides. I think it might be time to develop similar guidelines for how the media covers mass shootings (and for that matter, suicide bombings), so they aren’t inadvertently encouraging copycat behavior.
In the Clackamas Mall shooting in Oregon a few days before the Sandy Hook school shooting, there was a concealed carry permit holder in the mall.
He didn’t shoot because he thought that he might hit people in the background. Just being responsible, as he should. This was not heavily covered by the news media.
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html
How? It didn’t have any effect at Columbine. From Wiki:
So his regular presence was not a deterrence and during the action he was not able to be everywhere at once. I seriously question how effective an armed guard would be at a school and I really hate that this idea has traction for a few reasons. This is America, not Beirut. I don’t want armed guards posted everywhere; we should be better than that.
As an aside, yesterday I was a watchdog at my daughters elementary school. I wondered the halls, patrolled the campus, made sure doors were locked, helped out in classrooms, etc… If some nut had come in with some guns bent on shooting some of the kids, I seriously doubt I would have been able to stop them immediately if I had been armed. I could not watch the whole school at once and it would be trivial for someone to sneak past me.
Would you believe two guards who ate at different times?
As carnivorousplant notes, there should be two guards in a school that size either so one can relieve the other for bathroom breaks, lunch, etc or even for one to watch over security monitors while the other roams.
I can envision a scenario where an armed guard spends most of his time in front of TV monitors watching all entrances via CCTV. These entrances are supposed to be locked so any visitors coming to the school must be buzzed in.
One measure I thought of that might be helpful is some kind of parent ID card that’s barcoded whereby the locked doors at a school could only be opened to a visitor with a proper ID card that would be scanned by a reader at the main entrance or something.
This surprises me. I’m no expert on guns, but if some asshole was mowing down a bunch of innocent people left and right, I’m thinking I might take a calculated risk of hitting innocent people with a bullet or two while I take him down.
That depends upon how well you shoot and how close you are. One certainly wouldn’t want to shoot someone else, and I refuse to consider it mathematically.
It also depends on interpreting the chaotic nature of the situation correctly and as calmly as possible. It is not out of the realm of reason to think that a CCW would-be hero may do more harm than good by spraying bullets into a crowd, especially when and if the crowd itself is already seeking cover and may do a better job of saving their own lives than a potential hero could.
And the armed campus police at Virginia Tech, and the armed soldiers at Ft Hood? How many do we need? :rolleyes:
A college campus has police, yes, but they are a small force (a few maybe?) and a college campus is HUGE compared to even a high school one, let alone an elementary school. And as to Fort Hood, clearly you have no knowledge of how arms are kept on military bases. Yes, you may have hundreds, thousands of soldiers milling around…while all the weaponry is kept locked away in the armory awaiting an alert, a deployment, range qualifying…soldiers are UNARMED on military bases by and large with the exception of MP’s and gate guards (Unit Police).
What makes you think that is possible in this day and age? It’s one thing if the national media doesn’t report a few individual suicides, but it’s pretty dumb to think they can prevent the “infamy” that will come when you mow down dozens of people. It’s just too big a story. Even crimes like rape where the names are withheld from the media are almost always leaked if the story is big enough.
Who is gonna pay for that in every school, mall, park, game, etc. Even if you limit it to schools, you do realize that most large high schools have at least a dozen entrances and exits. The Newtown guy broke into the school via a locked door. You can’t have a guard at every door, or cameras in every classroom. Not to mention there is nothing to prevent this guy from just shooting the cop as he enters the building.
I think you greatly overestimate most people’s desire to get involved in a shootout. Not only might you injure other, but you make yourself a target to the shooter and any other people with guns (including cops).
He is saying mostly the same stuff the old White guys are. Just cause he doesn’t look like them doesn’t give his arguments any more merit. Frankly, it’s kinda insulting.
I was barking about this in all the threads after Sandy Hook.
Essentially, you have guys who are ready to commit suicide who feel that the world have wronged them and want their revenge, or at least they want to be noticed, go out with a bang. They see how infamous mass killers become, how there will be weeks or even months of weepy news coverage (in their view) glorifying them. The world will give them the attention in death it never gave them in life.
Now we try to stop these guys by trying to ban the particular kind of guns they used even though any other similar gun would’ve worked just as well or better, or by trying to come up with background check enforcement that won’t even work for cases where the guns were taken or stolen or someone simply snaps and has no criminal or mental health background issues that would’ve prevented them from possessing a gun. Or by pretending “gun free zones” somehow create a magical forcefield that prevent people wielding guns to enter them.
All of these are going to be ineffective. You could ban every “assault weapon” you wanted, and a guy could use a run of the mill handgun or shotgun to do these. You could magically ban all guns, and if people were determined to go out with a bang, they could make home made explosives or think up other ways to go out in a blaze of glory.
No, the solution to this problem is to not give them exactly what they crave. The infamy, the attention, the shock, the horror, the grief. Could you imagine if Sandy Hook were covered by a 1 minute blurb on all the nightly news hours just as another random tragedy that killed 26 people would’ve? What if we just accepted it and moved on, rather than spent endless hours of interviewing the victims, psychoanalyzing the killer, speculating, wallowing in it? You can fault the media outlets - but they’re just giving the public what they want. It’s ultimately your willingness to watch this endless coverage - for what I can only speculate is recreational outrage and grieving that dictates tha the media gives it to you.
If that happened, if it were only minimally covered, and we didn’t give these psychos exactly what they craved, then the next one might think twice about going out in a blaze of glory if he thinks no one will even notice.
Over and over again, I’ve been told how I’m somehow guilty for the mass shootings as a gun owner who’s never actually harmed anyone. That I should still feel some collective shame. Well, I’ll turn it around. If you are one of the people who obsess over this sort of thing, who watch all the coverage and give all the attention, you’re more guilty. The best thing we can do to stop these things is to stop giving them what they want.
What proof of this do you have at all? Are all these guys news junkies? Aside from the fact that they would not off themselves if they were really interested in the fame and “glory”, there is also the issue that nobody has even attempted to offer any proof of this phenomena beyond anecdotal evidence. More importantly, the media coverage works both ways. Even if you argue it encourages some people to lash out, it likely does the opposite for others, and it convinces many others to reach out to at risk kids who might have done something without intervention. Some of the main things that came out of Columbine as a direct result of the media coverage were better security procedures at schools, and (at least when I was in HS), a focus of reducing bullying and reaching out to at risk kids. The administration in my town asked every teacher to report any kid they thought was being bullied or might lash out, then they spoke to each of those students individually. This idea that bottling the truth, even if it were possible, will prevent bad outcomes is not really backed by much evidence.
And if Jodie Foster would stop motivating these guys, everyone would be better off…:dubious: Aside from the irony that you only know what supposedly motivated these guy due to the media coverage you think should exist, I am curious as to why you think fame is a necessary and meaningful condition for mass shooters to take action? The vast majority of these guys are crazy. Batshit insane. Why do you put so much stock in what a few of them say motivated them, and accept that as a necessary precondition when they implicate the media, but not if it’s Jodie Foster, or any thing else. I am not saying the media can’t temper their coverage, but there is no evidence it is a overall negative.
I think you are responsible to some extent. Ultimately, gun ownership has costly externalities that individual owners don’t pay for. I don’t think it makes you a bad person, but it does mean you are partly responsible in a way others without guns aren’t. And btw, I don’t think the focus should even be on mass shootings. The real crime are all the handguns used in any number of crimes that only exist because people like you won guns.
Can’t refute him cause he is the best person I’ve seen on youtube in the last few weeks. If I could put money on this dude going far doing SOMETHING (I dunno what) then I totally would.
Having said that I don’t say this as a pro gun control person. By UK standards I am a complete lunatic, although by US standards I probably about in the middle of the democrat party (when it comes to guns)
Well at last a glimmer of reason. Yes…handguns are the primary weapon of murder, accountable for the overwhelmingly vast majority of homicides in this country. Which illustrates the point about how weak and stupid this current administration is in addressing this issue because they want to focus on the sensational aspect of so-called “assault” rifles in terms of their “legislation”. Which only furthers the point, IMO, that this really IS a media and politically driven issue rather than one that makes even a modicum of sense.
It’s a knee-jerk reaction to a recent, horrifying couple of events that feature a certain type of rifle that is no more or less efficient at killing people than any other manner of firearm.
I own a single gun…and yes, it is a handgun, a .45. I had on my list exactly TWO more purchases, a Mossberg 500 shotgun and an AR-15. I don’t see how anyone could need more than a handgun, a shotgun and a rifle. But that’s me and it isn’t for me to decide what people want or need…noris it for you.
But in light of real factual evidence, I would gladly turn in my .45 if the government actually gave a shit about protecting people by banning handguns instead of rifles and “scary things”. I could easily live without it. I don’t CCW, and a shottie and a rifle is fine enough for me.
So I say address the REAL problem government! Handguns! But they will not and we all know why: WAY too strong political resistance. But if you want your real murder culprit, there it is: handguns. There’s no denying that.
And yet currently only a vanishingly small percentage of the eligible population carries at any given time, even in gun-friendly areas, despite the recent proliferation of shall-issue permit laws. If that 88% figure actually meant that four-fifths of the people you see on the street had a gun on them, society would be radically different- though in what way I’ll grant there’s a dispute. Deduct all the long guns that no one would routinely carry, deduct how many guns belong to the same owners, and the US isn’t the Dodge City the raw numbers would suggest.
As I’ve said multiple times in multiple threads, we currently are in close to the worst of both worlds: people who premeditate gun violence have little trouble obtaining firearms, while only a token number of people are as routinely armed as police or security guards are. Thus the biggest potential deterrent to committing gun violence- that the intended victim might themselves be armed- is nearly absent. So we have plenty of guns, but a severe shortage of lawful people with guns.
Yes, but he isn’t old, he isn’t white, and he isn’t saying the same things in the same way they do. He presents his argument in a better way, period. If all people could express themselves with such decorum we would have a much better and more effective time debating important issue like this, without all the associated drama.
It’s the first non Ted Nugent-like pro-gun guy making a video that I have seen, and I appreciated the obvious contrast.
More of the same if you ask me. He talks about “responsibility” being that we have to fight to defend ourselves. Sorry, this isn’t Hobbes “State of Nature.” In actuality, we live by a social contract and the responsible thing to do would be to have GUN CONTROL LAWS.
Politics is the art of the possible. There is not way to get any substantive legislation passed that controls handguns in any meaningful sense. The current proposed laws are more mitigating the harm in catastrophic events like Newtown. Closing the gun show loophole will help and banning assault weapons, will at worse, mean the next asshole has to reload a few more times.
This is demonstrably false. Look at the differences between how a shooting like the one at the LIRR vs. Newtown. Semi-autos and huge clips make killing much more efficient. There is really not much debate on that point. That why hunters who do use those weapons do so to kill large herds more efficiently.
Who should decide then? How far do you want to go with this? Is it none of your business if I own grenades and rocket launchers? More importantly, why is your right to own a gun greater than another person’s right to not be shot with your gun once it gets stolen and sold on the street?
I agree. But don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The fewer guns that are accessible to nutjobs, the better. Even if the pretense is on shaky footing.
Why should anyone respect your opinion when you admit you are most interested in the appearance of the speaker and the style of the presentation rather than the substance of the speech?
First, I think you are greatly overstating his supposedly eloquence. Using terms like “willful retardation” and “endorphin spike” makes this guy an effective communicator? I honestly don’t see how you could think this guy is a great speaker. And to be honest, I think many of you are giving him extra points because his appearance lowered your expectations. Go to any HBCU, and you will meet dozens of people who are more eloquent. That said, I have heard every argument he has made. In fact, the NRA has made most of them, and has done so much more effectively. See here. Plenty of sane, rational people on both sides. Doesn’t mean the arguments are any different because they come from a Black guy.
See above link.