# How can we better prevent school shootings?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [December 14, 2012, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051 "2012-12-14T18:46:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/41 "2012-12-14T20:03:17Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#):
>
> It is completely possible that public opinion will change on that issue over time -
It is theoretically possible that the giant purple butterflies in my ass are counting time through the piano intro to Free Bird, too. Ain’t likely, though.
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### Author:  [@Docta\_G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Docta_G)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/42 "2012-12-14T20:09:04Z")
> [@Oakminster](#):
>
> The bottom line is that giant purple butterflies will fly out of my ass singing _Free Bird_ before that happens. Seriously proposing it is political suicide pretty much anywhere other than very urban areas. It only takes 14 states to block a Constitutional Amendment. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virgina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arizona, Nevada…none of these states are likely to ratify such a whackadoodle proposal.
In other words, Americans are idiots.
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### Author:  [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/43 "2012-12-14T20:20:30Z")
> [@Absolute](#):
>
> Things like mass shootings are simply the price of freedom.
And yet, I think they happen less frequently per-capita in a lot of other free countries. I think there’s room for improvement here.
> [@](#):
>
> There is really no effective way to determine who is going to turn crazy. Short of banning guns outright, we’ll never stop this. And that will never happen, nor should it.
There’s a reason the thread title said “better prevent”, not “prevent”. I’m not expecting 100% success. And even a gun ban wouldn’t guarantee that, as people could still get guns illegally.
But I don’t believe that it would be impossible to take steps to make this sort of thing happen _less often_.
> [@Oakminster](#):
>
> There’s always a trade off between security and freedom. If I had kids, I would not want them strip searched before entering a school secured behind barbed wire fences with machine gun towers with overlapping fields of fire.
Me neither. And I do have kids. I’m hoping there’s a less extreme option.
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### Author:  [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/44 "2012-12-14T20:28:19Z")
If there were no guns in the United States, there would be no mass shootings. Doesn’t it then make sense that reducing the number and types of guns would result in a decrease in shootings? We need to have reasonable gun control laws that permit guns for hunting and perhaps basic protection, but automatic weapons, AK-47s, and the like have no place or useful purpose. If shoulder-fired nuclear weapons became available, would those who disagree with me think ownership of them should be legal?
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### Author:  [@Sanity\_Challenged](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sanity_Challenged)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/45 "2012-12-14T20:34:36Z")
I would never honestly condone abridging any of our constitutional rights, but consider this flying leap into hypothetical land.
If we as a nation really decided that the problem of mass spree killings was worth curbing our constitutional rights, would it not be more effective to curb freedom of speech and ban reporting of these incidents? Making mass shootings more illegal isn’t likely to have any practical effect, but taking the glory out of going out in a blaze of glory would certainly reduce the incentive to commit these acts. After all, these types of crimes have increased with the rise of 24-hour news networks and internet media, not with any increase of freedom in gun ownership.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/46 "2012-12-14T20:35:45Z")
I’m a liberal who doesn’t think gun control would work- why would banning guns be any more effective than banning marijuana? In fact, I think it would be _far less_ effective then banning drugs- drugs are used up, while well-maintained guns can last decades.
It’s kind of a catch-22- strict gun control can only be effective in places without many guns. Once there’s a lot of guns in a country, it’s way too late for gun control to have much of an effect on crime. There’s just too many guns.
So not only would banning guns be politically impossible, it would be ineffective, IMO.
That’s why I think the focus needs to be on mental health for these kinds of mass shootings, and on poverty in general for other types of violent crime.
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### Author:  [@Doubticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doubticus)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/47 "2012-12-14T20:36:51Z")
It seems like the last few mass shootings we have had, people who were familiar with the shooters were not surprised by their actions. A system of identifying and screening for these type of individuals would be to our advantage. That and an outright ban on assault weapons would be a good first step.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/48 "2012-12-14T20:37:44Z")
> [@Sanity\_Challenged](#):
>
> If we as a nation really decided that the problem of mass spree killings was worth curbing our constitutional rights, would it not be more effective to curb freedom of speech and ban reporting of these incidents?
I doubt it’d be effective. The good news is that you’d be well on your way toward creating a society that isn’t worth living in anyway.
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/49 "2012-12-14T20:40:40Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#):
>
> We need to crack down on guns and gun carrying. Want a rifle or shotgun to hunt deer? Fine. Want one revolver to keep at home to guard against intruders? Well, the odds are slim that you’ll ever use it for that purpose, but they should be registered and licensed like cars, and their ownership traced. Think you need a gun that fires 100 rounds in a minute? Forget about it- you DON’T.
You think these mass shootings are done by people with fully automatic rifles? Mass shootings are done with run of the mill rifles. Semi-automatic rifles. The exact same kind that people hunt deer with. A rifle doesn’t get less deadly just because it has a walnut stock instead of black plastic.
The problem with keeping guns away from crazy people is that you have to determine which people are crazy before they, you know, shoot up a school. In other words, everyone gets psychological evaluation, and based on the word of the psychiatrist they’re deemed either dangerous nutjobs or law-abiding citizens. How’s that going to work?
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### Author:  [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/50 "2012-12-14T20:43:46Z")
> [@Doubticus](#):
>
> That and an outright ban on assault weapons would be a good first step.
Do you even know what an assault weapon is? Can you define the term? You understand that there were no assault weapons used in today’s shooting?
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/51 "2012-12-14T20:45:38Z")
> [@Oakminster](#):
>
> You understand that there were no assault weapons used in today’s shooting?
Just so we don’t get sidetracked, what is the official definition of “assault weapon”?
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/52 "2012-12-14T20:46:22Z")
Let’s think outside of the box.
- Mandatory school uniforms in all schools public and private and part of the uniform includes a bullet proof vest.
- Detention for all students not adhering to the dress code.
- Physical education classes will include defense tactics, such as “duck and cover”.
- Federal government grants to promote archery and markmanship competitions within elementary and secondary school systems, which would include promotion incentives so that it would overtake football and basketball as the top school athletic pursuits.
- Card key access for all faculty and students onto campuses. All visitors would have to enter through a secure entrance and be screened.
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### Author:  [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/53 "2012-12-14T20:47:20Z")
[I liked Chris Rocks solution.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWjhTWv9eUs)
“Bullets should cost 5000 dollars a piece. Because then there would be no more innocent bystanders.”
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/54 "2012-12-14T20:49:20Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> - Physical education classes will include defense tactics, such as “duck and cover”.
Schools already do drills for this kind of thing. They have since Columbine. (And kids don’t need to be taught to duck.)
> [@](#):
>
> - Federal government grants to promote archery and markmanship competitions within elementary and secondary school systems, which would include promotion incentives so that it would overtake football and basketball as the top school athletic pursuits.
Yes, that’ll cut way down on shootings.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/55 "2012-12-14T20:50:56Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Just so we don’t get sidetracked, what is the official definition of “assault weapon”?
I don’t think there is one. I think when most people say “assault weapon”, they think they mean an automatic weapon like an AK-47 or M-16. But these are already illegal, IIRC (except for a small number of automatic weapons grandfathered in before the automatic weapons ban of a few decades ago). And most of the mass shootings recently have not involved automatic weapons- gun control has actually _worked_, in general, for automatic weapons, because there weren’t all that many to begin with.
There are non-automatic versions (semi-auto, which means 1 pull of the trigger = 1 bullet comes out) of guns like the AK-47 and M-16 (such as the AR-15), but they’re no more dangerous than a quality hunting rifle (depending on magazine size).
Banning large capacity magazines may have a small beneficial effect, but there’s many of these already out there too (and they can be re-used).
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### Author:  [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/56 "2012-12-14T20:54:18Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#):
>
> If there were no guns in the United States, there would be no mass shootings. Doesn’t it then make sense that reducing the number and types of guns would result in a decrease in shootings? We need to have reasonable gun control laws that permit guns for hunting and perhaps basic protection, but automatic weapons, AK-47s, and the like have no place or useful purpose. If shoulder-fired nuclear weapons became available, would those who disagree with me think ownership of them should be legal?
Again, the problem with this is that practically none of these shootings are performed with the types of weapons you’re talking about. Automatic weapons and actual assault rifles are expensive, and pretty much only owned by well-off collectors and hobbyists.
You can buy guns that look scary, and some styles of gun sell well because they look scary (some definitions of “assault rifle” include purely cosmetic features that have little actual benefit outside of a military environment, e.g. a rail to mount a grenade launcher). But mechanically, these guns are semiautomatics and no different from hunting rifles. You’re not going to stop people from shooting up a mall by banning guns that look scary. They’ll just use a less-scary-looking gun to shoot 20 people. This is sort of the equivalent of trying to prevent people from speeding by banning cars that “look fast”.
If there were a way to ban guns that were useful only for shooting up malls and schools, I’d be all for it. The problem is, any semiautomatic gun or revolver can shoot a lot of people very quickly. So unless you ban all guns except antique muzzle-loaders and single-shot sniper rifles, you’re not going to be able to come up with a gun ban that has any significant effect on what crazed shooters are able to do.
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### Author:  [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/57 "2012-12-14T20:55:54Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Just so we don’t get sidetracked, what is the official definition of “assault weapon”?
I’m not playing that game. I want to hear from the guy that proposed banning “assault weapons”.
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### Author:  [@artemis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artemis)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/58 "2012-12-14T20:58:13Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#):
>
> We need to crack down on guns and gun carrying. Want a rifle or shotgun to hunt deer? Fine. Want one revolver to keep at home to guard against intruders? Well, the odds are slim that you’ll ever use it for that purpose, but they should be registered and licensed like cars, and their ownership traced.
Every weapon you mentioned in your post will do the job of mass killing just fine. Personally, if I ever decide to go utterly bonkers and shoot up a bunch of total strangers, I’m going to leave my 9 mm semiautomatic handgun at home and take the right tool for the job: a shotgun loaded with 00 buckshot. Works great on deer. Works even better on people.
We have to find a way to intercept these people LONG before they can get their hands on a gun. Which is going to be tough since most of them don’t quite seem to meet the criteria which would require them to be reported to the NCIS database as mentally ill. But I think that’s where the changes need to be made: making it easier to get people adjudged as mentally ill before they have the chance to take their problems out on the rest of us.
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### Author:  [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/59 "2012-12-14T20:58:32Z")
I don’t think additional gun registration, waiting periods, or background checks are going to help with these sorts of things. IIRC, the guns for both Columbine and VT were obtained illegally, so I’m unsure how more laws would have really prevented that.
Instead, I would be a proponent of allowing school staff to be armed. It seems odd to me that we’d trust these people enough to watch over our children, but by virtue of providing their education also have significant impact on molding who they are and what they believe, essentially already holding their futures in their hands, but then not trusting them with the means to protect them.
To that end, I wouldn’t propose that just anyone should be allowed to carry, but allow the staff to take some courses handling these types of scenarios, register the weapons they would potentially bring to the school with the school, have basic safety requirements about how they carry and stow their weapons, and go from there.
I don’t even really think these sorts of measures would have necessarily prevented situations like Columbine or VT, I don’t think any of them planned to live through it so death wouldn’t have detered them, but I do think if someone were armed in those situations, they probably could have at least reduced the death count.
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### Author:  [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2012, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/60 "2012-12-14T21:03:34Z")
Online schools. Subsidize google fiber to every house in the nation. (It’s only 500 billion, Google would pay for some of that, in return for advertising opportunities, and anyway, we, as a nation, should be deeply embarrassed by sub-standard internet situation in the US.) Buying laptops for every child would probably cost about $150, wholesale. Part of the curriculum involves advance computer science topics, so the kids can do their own maintenance (and let’s face it, nobody is better with computers than kids are), and we pay for them with a $25 tax per box of ammo.
We’d have more workplace shootings, I’d guess, but at least the kids would be safer.
I’d prefer to see the US have gun control laws similar to those in European countries where this sort of thing is more rare but unless we can go back in time and erase the second amendment, I think it’s probably a waste of time. There’s just too many guns in too many hands to be effective at this point in time, imo. The future is all online, anyway.
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