# 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:** 9
### Author:  [@d1a1s1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/d1a1s1)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/161 "2012-12-15T06:55:31Z")
> [@Oakminster](#):
>
> This kind of thinking is typical kneejerk stupidity. Adam Lanza was 20 years old. No longer a child in most states. And one of the victims was his mother. How long would you like to incarcerate her corpse?
Oh, I didn’t realize we were discussing ideas that only apply to this exact scenario that played out in CT. I was under the impression this was a forum for ideas moving forward.
Furthermore, if a prosecution can prove that the parents had prior knowledge of their child’s instability before the age of 18 then they have a case in my mind.
Your response was typical kneejerk stupidity. Why don’t you take a moment to understand what someone posts before you spew. This is a forum of ideas.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/162 "2012-12-15T07:15:44Z")
> [@HoboStew](#):
>
> Feel free to cite an example where armed people have helped any of these situations. I vaguely remember citizens firing back at Whitman, but thats the only one that comes to mind.
Pearl, Mississippi
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/163 "2012-12-15T07:22:14Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> But here is a plan for that. All existing owned guns would be grandfathered in, but would have to be registered, and have a serial number added.
You really don’t understand current gun laws, do you?
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> I wonder what Madison and Hamilton would have thought about the current situation. The guns they protected were single shooters. It is not at all clear to me that the 2nd Amendment would be the same if the Founding Fathers had anticipated the current technology.
Do you wonder the same about the 1st Amendment or the 4th?
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### Author:  [@JXJohns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JXJohns)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/164 "2012-12-15T07:25:56Z")
> [@HoboStew](#):
>
> Feel free to cite an example where armed people have helped any of these situations. I vaguely remember citizens firing back at Whitman, but thats the only one that comes to mind.
[Colorado Springs, Co](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Colorado_YWAM_and_New_Life_shootings)
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### Author:  [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/165 "2012-12-15T07:28:04Z")
> [@d1a1s1](#):
>
> OK. After a lengthy discussion on Facebook with an old friend of mine we came up with an idea that could help in lot of these situations. Hold parents criminally negligent if they don’t do everything they can to discourage and prevent violent behavior. If it turns out that this kid showed signs of mental instability and can be proven in a court of law, then the parent(s) are held responsible. This coupled with Mnemnosyne’s ideas sounds like a good plan. This can also be extended to the licensed gun holders. SO basically, if you are licensed to a gun and someone steals said gun, assuming it was stored/controlled properly, they can be held liable to any or all consequences. This would also require some sort of legislation dictating a storage/safety standard for gun owners at a national level, not state.
Why is it that with some people, whenever someone commits a wrong, it’s always somebody else’s fault for not stopping it?
But be that as it may, define “everything they can.” Short of chaining their offspring to a wall in the basement for the rest of his life, just how do you propose that the parent of a child showing “mental instability” (a condition that can lead to a wide range of behaviors, many of which are not violent, btw) discourage and prevent violent behavior short of that? How do you set the parameters that delineate where their responsibility ends? How much discouragement is sufficient? How much prevention? And for how long into that person’s adulthood?
And besides, “discouraging” and “preventing” are two entirely different things. Are the parents off the hook if they can prove they discouraged violence but didn’t prevent it? And what if their child’s behavior, although apparently “mentally unstable,” was of a type that never showed any inclination toward violence?
Hell, we have people now who are clear threats to other people and we can’t even protect people from them. How many people have been attacked and beaten or stabbed or shot and even killed by someone they had a protective order against? The problem has always been that the police can’t do anything until someone acts and by then it’s too late.
And then how do you define “hold the parents responsible?” Life in prison? The death penalty? What should be the appropriate penalty for not being a mind reader and preventing your child from growing up to be a mass murderer?
And as long as we’re going down that road, what about the parents of serial killers? And serial rapists? And…well, you get the idea.
This might be a forum of ideas, but yours seem…flawed.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/166 "2012-12-15T07:34:14Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> Why is it that with some people, whenever someone commits a wrong, it’s always somebody else’s fault for not stopping it?
Because it’s difficult to believe that this person’s family did not know that something was seriously wrong with him. We’ve seen this movie enough times. That being said, I agree that proposals to punish the parents are kind of absurd. If they’re failing, the time to identify that failure is before the child kills people, not after.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/167 "2012-12-15T07:37:36Z")
> [@d1a1s1](#):
>
> If a child or teen is identified by a school counselor as showing any mental health issues then that’s it! Put he/she in a database that prevents any future access of any kind unless cleared by a PHD.
You want to ban women who were anorexic as teens from ever owning a gun? Or children that had imaginary friends? Or someone who admits to having once been depressed or having anxiety? Not really a “right” at that point then is it?
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### Author:  [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/168 "2012-12-15T07:43:24Z")
> [@Marley23](#):
>
> Because it’s difficult to believe that this person’s family did not know that something was seriously wrong with him. We’ve seen this movie enough times. That being said, I agree that proposals to punish the parents are kind of absurd. If they’re failing, the time to identify that failure is before the child kills people, not after.
I’d wager there are thousands if not tens of thousands of kids whose parents may feel wrongly or rightly that their kid is weird enough to go postal some day, but the number who actually do is infinitesimally small. What are we going to do, start institutionalizing people in childhood or adolescence because we think they fit the profile of someone who might go ballistic and commit mass murder? I’m much more fearful of a society like that than I am of the occasional nutball with an assault rifle, and so should everyone else be. Once we start allowing the government to lock people up simply because they fit a certain profile, none of us are safe.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/169 "2012-12-15T07:53:05Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Gun-carrying teachers as a solution? According to ABC News the gunman carried four weapons and wore a bullet-proof vest. Unless your hypothetical teacher was a trained sniper already set up to take a head shot…
I’ll wager that ABC News is wrong about this, like the MSM was wrong when they said the Aurora shooter had “body armor”. Misinformed eye witnesses see a tac vest and assume it must be bullet-proof when in reality it is usually not. Also, I understood that the shooter used two pistols. The .223 rifle was left in the vehicle, and I haven’t heard what the 4th gun was or where it was found.
Besides all of that, most of these crazy folks tend to off themselves at the first sign of resistance. I suspect that in a lot of cases someone merely firing in their general direction will be enough to instigate suicide, regardless of whether they hit or not.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/170 "2012-12-15T07:54:33Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> I’d wager there are thousands if not tens of thousands of kids whose parents may feel wrongly or rightly that their kid is weird enough to go postal some day, but the number who actually do is infinitesimally small.
I don’t think I would take that wager.
> [@](#):
>
> What are we going to do, start institutionalizing people in childhood or adolescence because we think they fit the profile of someone who might go ballistic and commit mass murder?
No, but maybe we could get better treatment for people who are severely ill. Some of these shooters and perhaps all of them qualify. That doesn’t mean they need to be forcibly institutionalized for life; it means they need adequate treatment for their problems. When there isn’t a functioning system, at most they might be prescribed medication, but there’s no follow-through and it either doesn’t help or they stop taking it and get worse and worse. Some small number of people do need full-time care - not because they might shoot up a school, but because they’re deeply disturbed and their families (who unfortunately in some cases are biased by their love or their own problems and are not trained professionals) are not equipped to help them. At least some of these guys really should not have been on the street. I’m thinking of the Virginia Tech and Arizona shooters in particular. They were both totally delusional.
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### Author:  [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/171 "2012-12-15T08:03:01Z")
[Here’s an article that cites abstracts from about six studies into this type of killlings and what could prevent them.](http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/mass-murder-shooting-sprees-and-rampage-violence-research-roundup) There is no clear answer.
What they do know:
1. There is no correlation with violent video games!
2. While the usual perp is a young male who
> [@](#):
>
> are isolates, often bullied in childhood, who have rarely established themselves in effective work roles as adults. They have personalities marked by suspiciousness, obsessional traits, and grandiosity. They often harbor persecutory beliefs, which may occasionally verge on the delusional.
, psychological profiling to prevent such tragedies doesn’t work. Shooters are not that different from others who fit that that profile, untill they start shooting.
3. There’s the copycat effect. Monkey read about a shooting spree. monkey read about the attention and, in a way, respect, such a shooter gets, monkey plans his own shooting spree. One feasible avenue of dealing with such shootings is to give them absolutely ZERO attention in mainstream media. And any attention the shooters _do_ get should be in terms of dismissal and derision, not anger and fear. That is also one of the recommendations in Gavin the Beckers book, “The gift of fear”.
4. Opinions on such shootings, are highly partisan and political instead of scientific and practical.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/172 "2012-12-15T08:25:28Z")
> [@Jragon](#):
>
> When I first heard about the shooting today, I was thinking about Gun Control legislation, but then I was informed of [another mass killing in China](http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-man-slashes-22-children-near-china-school-20121214,0,6383015.story) this morning.
>
> He killed a similar amount of children using a knife. Judging by the article I linked, this has happened before, it reports 20 dead and 50 injured (children, too) by similar incidents in 2010, and another recent slashing of women on a train with a boxcutter.
>
> Given that, I’m not certain gun control will do much, the weapon of choice might change, and they may choose harder to police locations (i.e. backalleys and subways instead of schools), but I’m not sure it will prevent mass killings. I think it’s a deeper societal problem that requires social changes, and especially better access to mental healthcare to solve.
You _really_ should read links before posting them. In the U.S. a man used guns to kill a dozen and a half kids and a few adults.
In China a man used a knife to slash 22 kids, four seriously-_no killings._
If you’re grasping for the tired “He could have done it just as easily with a knife as with a gun!” excuse, find another cite.
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### Author:  [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/173 "2012-12-15T08:29:39Z")
Demilitarize America, disarm American police, disarm the citizenry. Less weapons that make it easy to kill masses of people=less mass murders.
You didn’t ask me what was realistic. But that’s my solution. One that is working quite well in a number of countries that I would like to move to. I should start working on that seriously.
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### Author:  [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/174 "2012-12-15T08:34:48Z")
If you’re thinking of moving to a country where the police, the citizens and the country itself are all unarmed, chances are that the country in question owes its existence to the protection of another country that is.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/175 "2012-12-15T09:36:49Z")
> [@Oakminster](#):
>
> I’m not playing that game. I want to hear from the guy that proposed banning “assault weapons”.
[**Airman Doors** didn’t mind play that game.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=15798570#post15798570)Not every question is a trap designed to ensnare the gun rights advocate. Sometimes it’s just a way to get an answer.
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### Author:  [@Mnemnosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mnemnosyne)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/176 "2012-12-15T10:07:00Z")
> [@artemis](#):
>
> And that purchase and transfer was illegal, as neither Harris nor Klebold was legally eligible to own the eapons (and the purchaser knew it).
I looked this up; two of the individuals involved were indeed prosecuted for their part in obtaining the guns, but one of them wasn’t. But, strengthening the penalties for this sort of thing is precisely my intention in the idea of registering and providing severe penalties for unauthorized users firing the weapon. While imperfect, it should help to discourage people from purchasing guns for those who do not qualify to own them legally.
> [@artemis](#):
>
> Not a bad plan overall, **MnemNosyne** , although I’m not sure just how you’d design a suitable mental health examination. I’m not opposed to all firearms regulations, only poorly thought out ones (like trying to ban “assault weapons”).
I’m not sure how such an examination would be designed either, as I have only the most minimal knowledge of that field, but I suspect that if we were trying to come up with a reasonable and fair examination, it could be arrived at by experts in the field.
> [@Oakminster](#):
>
> What the fuck is a “safety examination”? I’ve handled guns for 40 years. There is no reason I need to demonstrate my skills/knowledge to any agent of the state to keep any weapons I may have.
>
> Who pays for this “mental examination”? Doctors don’t work for free and my taxes are too high already. What protections are there to ensure the examiner gives a fair examination rather than arbitrarily disqualifying everyone he sees to advance an anti-gun agenda? Peer Review? Appeal? Who pays for that?
>
> In my state, currently any felony conviction disqualifies a person from possessing a gun forever, unless they manage to get their rights restored through a convoluted process that is rarely successful. I’d keep it that way.
A safety examination would show that you understand basic gun safety. You may have handled guns for years, but many people have not. Many people do extremely stupid things with their guns because they don’t know any better; they obtain guns without going through a mandatory safety course, because they think it’s so simple and obvious they couldn’t possibly screw up. Thus do accidents happen.
As for who pays, I think it’s a sufficient level of public interest that there’s good reasons to pay for it through taxes. We want sane, rational people to have guns, we don’t want insane, irrational people to have them. Making such a test mandatory doesn’t seem unreasonable, and I strongly believe it would reduce access. Certainly it would not completely eliminate it, but I think it’s a better solution than having no real checks on such things, as is the case now. And while there may be examiners that try to push an agenda, if the system is set up reasonably, fairly, and with adequate oversight, they won’t last long.
> [@d1a1s1](#):
>
> OK. After a lengthy discussion on Facebook with an old friend of mine we came up with an idea that could help in lot of these situations. Hold parents criminally negligent if they don’t do everything they can to discourage and prevent violent behavior. If it turns out that this kid showed signs of mental instability and can be proven in a court of law, then the parent(s) are held responsible. This coupled with Mnemnosyne’s ideas sounds like a good plan. This can also be extended to the licensed gun holders. SO basically, if you are licensed to a gun and someone steals said gun, assuming it was stored/controlled properly, they can be held liable to any or all consequences. This would also require some sort of legislation dictating a storage/safety standard for gun owners at a national level, not state.
I don’t agree with holding parents criminally negligent if they don’t do ‘everything they can to discourage and prevent violent behavior’. I can’t even imagine a way to establish a standard by which you could determine whether someone had met that requirement. It puts too much of the wrong part of the blame on people other than the culprit. Additionally, it sets up an excessive expectation that people should be reporting others. Which to some degree perhaps is true, but a punishment for _not_ reporting people just doesn’t feel like the right way to go. Other solutions are needed to encourage getting potentially dangerous people the help they need. Most of all, we would need to make sure that such help is affordable.
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### Author:  [@d1a1s1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/d1a1s1)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/177 "2012-12-15T10:15:11Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> Why is it that with some people, whenever someone commits a wrong, it’s always somebody else’s fault for not stopping it?
If you have a child with a history of mental illness and that child gets ahold of your guns, who would you hold responsible? If a three year old gets a hold of their parents gun and accidentally shoots themselves, who would you blame? In the case of mentally unstable children I would most certainly blame not just “someone else”, I blame the parents.
> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> But be that as it may, define “everything they can.” Short of chaining their offspring to a wall in the basement for the rest of his life, just how do you propose that the parent of a child showing “mental instability” (a condition that can lead to a wide range of behaviors, many of which are not violent, btw) discourage and prevent violent behavior short of that? How do you set the parameters that delineate where their responsibility ends? How much discouragement is sufficient? How much prevention? And for how long into that person’s adulthood?
Obviously we don’t have anything set up to address these situations and that is part of the problem.
> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> And besides, “discouraging” and “preventing” are two entirely different things. Are the parents off the hook if they can prove they discouraged violence but didn’t prevent it? And what if their child’s behavior, although apparently “mentally unstable,” was of a type that never showed any inclination toward violence?
Semantics.
> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> Hell, we have people now who are clear threats to other people and we can’t even protect people from them. How many people have been attacked and beaten or stabbed or shot and even killed by someone they had a protective order against? The problem has always been that the police can’t do anything until someone acts and by then it’s too late.
This is another topic. Try to focus on the topic at hand.
> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> And then how do you define “hold the parents responsible?” Life in prison? The death penalty? What should be the appropriate penalty for not being a mind reader and preventing your child from growing up to be a mass murderer?
Just plain ridiculous
> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> And as long as we’re going down that road, what about the parents of serial killers? And serial rapists? And…well, you get the idea.
>
> This might be a forum of ideas, but yours seem…flawed.
This wasn’t a serial killer. Again. Try and focus. They say starvation has cognitive effects. Go eat something please.
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### Author:  [@d1a1s1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/d1a1s1)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/178 "2012-12-15T10:26:16Z")
> [@Mnemnosyne](#):
>
> I don’t agree with holding parents criminally negligent if they don’t do ‘everything they can to discourage and prevent violent behavior’. I can’t even imagine a way to establish a standard by which you could determine whether someone had met that requirement. It puts too much of the wrong part of the blame on people other than the culprit. Additionally, it sets up an excessive expectation that people should be reporting others. Which to some degree perhaps is true, but a punishment for _not_ reporting people just doesn’t feel like the right way to go. Other solutions are needed to encourage getting potentially dangerous people the help they need. Most of all, we would need to make sure that such help is affordable.
We’re talking about mentally ill children here. It amazes me that we are even considering NOT holding parents at fault. You’re telling me that someone with real mental disabilities is fully responsible for their actions? In just about every recent case of an individual shooting up a theatre, school, mall…etc there were in fact signs of mental illness. I agree that the individual that committed the crime is in fact the culprit but the blame rests on the parents that gave a mentally unstable individual access to weapons.
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### Author:  [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/179 "2012-12-15T10:45:54Z")
> **[Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/12/14/nine-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/)**
>
> Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that's unacceptable. What follows here isn't a policy agenda. It's a set of facts that should...
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2012, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-better-prevent-school-shootings/644051/180 "2012-12-15T11:48:32Z")
> [@d1a1s1](#):
>
> We’re talking about mentally ill children here. It amazes me that we are even considering NOT holding parents at fault. You’re telling me that someone with real mental disabilities is fully responsible for their actions? In just about every recent case of an individual shooting up a theatre, school, mall…etc there were in fact signs of mental illness. I agree that the individual that committed the crime is in fact the culprit but the blame rests on the parents that gave a mentally unstable individual access to weapons.
Exactly. See the beginnings (I hope) of a discussion on this [in this Pit thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=15799400&posted=1#post15799400).
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