How can we better prevent school shootings?

[HoboStew]

@CutterJohn

Yes. And the deaths of the 3000 children per year to auto accidents is also significant to the parents. And the 700 deaths to falls. And 30 deaths on playgrounds. And 800 deaths due to poisoning. And the many thousands of deaths to childhood diseases. And the several hundred deaths due to suicide. Several hundred to the flu. Several hundred to drowning. Several hundred to fires. Etc, etc.

But guns are unnecessary. We don’t need them. Their utilitarian value to destructive value is lopsided in the destructive axis, unlike cars etc.

[Marley23]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

The shooter carried a Glock handgun and a Sig Sauer rifle, the latter of which seems to meet the (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) AWB criteria for an “assault weapon”, and is certainly an assault rifle.

I obviously misunderstood what kind of gun the Sig Sauer is.

[Mdcastle]

A car can’t protect me from a burglar breaking into my house.

[UltraVires]

@Human_Action

I’m not saying it would prevent all or even most shootings, but allowing concealed-carry permit holders employed by the school to carry on the job would help. Designating schools as gun-free just means the shooter knows he won’t encounter resistance until the police arrive, which is plenty of time for his evil purposes. No one who is willing to break the moral and legal restrictions to murder would be deterred by also breaking a gun-free school zone law.

I agree. And for a couple of reasons:

1. It may be impossible to stop mentally unstable people from committing mass homicide. It has happened throughout history.

2. At a minimum, the state should allow law-abiding people the opportunity to stop it. Let’s say that my child (and that terrifies me) attended that school. Let’s say that a CCW permit holder was allowed to carry in a school in Conn and was, in fact, carrying while meeting with the principal. Perhaps there might have been only one or zero casualties there today.

I realize that there are a lot of maybe’s in #2. But since the current hi-tech security system allows a guy to be buzzed in through the photo ID system with at least one rifle, all you do by having a gun-free school zone is disarm a person who might otherwise help a situation like this.

It seems like we’ve done this debate before, but that remains my opinion: Allow people who have no criminal background to be armed in this situation, because you KNOW the murderers will be armed..

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Marley23

I obviously misunderstood what kind of gun the Sig Sauer is.

I gather the initial reports said it was a handgun (they make those too).

[Lobohan]

@Mdcastleman

A car can’t protect me from a burglar breaking into my house.

That depends. How wide are your hallways?

[Gangster_Octopus]

@Mdcastleman

A car can’t protect me from a burglar breaking into my house.

A gun can’t drive you to work.

[CutterJohn]

@HoboStew

But guns are unnecessary. We don’t need them. Their utilitarian value to destructive value is lopsided in the destructive axis, unlike cars etc.

No, we don’t need them. But the money, time, effort, and political capital you’d spend banning guns and enforcing said ban would save far more lives if spent elsewhere. It is very demonstrably an insignificant risk. We’ve much bigger fish to fry if you’re looking for results.

[HoboStew]

@Mdcastleman

A car can’t protect me from a burglar breaking into my house.

No but there are plenty of things that can that aren’t guns.

[Malthus]

@Gangster_Octopus

A gun can’t drive you to work.

Are you guys going to compromise on a tank?

[UltraVires]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

I gather the initial reports said it was a handgun (they make those too).

It thought it was a .223 rifle. How he concealed that, I’m not sure…

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

It was. See the post Marley was responding to.

@CutterJohn

No, we don’t need them. But the money, time, effort, and political capital you’d spend banning guns and enforcing said ban would save far more lives if spent elsewhere. It is very demonstrably an insignificant risk. We’ve much bigger fish to fry if you’re looking for results.

I don’t think political capital really comes into the equation. If you’re talking about whether a given policy is a good idea, the fact that people may irrationally oppose it* isn’t really a relevant issue. It’s like saying the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shouldn’t have been passed because doing so required so much political capital.

For what it’s worth, the Dunblane school massacre in the UK more or less directly led to the effective ban on handguns in the UK (semi-automatic long arms were already banned). No school shooting sprees have occurred since, and the only other shooting spree that has occurred since was perpetrated by a license firearm owner.

The distinction, of course, is that there weren’t as many privately owned firearms in the UK before Dunblane, and there are no land borders. Whether that would actually make a difference in preventing people from obtaining guns illegally is an open question.

*assuming that the policy is otherwise the correct one, of course.

[Oakminster]

@Doubticus

Well, I can’t speak to the specifics of today’s tragedy as news is still forthcoming. But I was using the word “assault” meaning a weapon designed for a primarily offensive purpose, generally anything that wasn’t a hand gun, shot gun or hunting rifle. Something that holds more than 6 rounds, etc.

So a Winchester 1894 (the year it was designed) chambered for .357 magnum is an “assault weapon” in your world because it holds 10 rounds?

[Absolute]

@HoboStew

But guns are unnecessary. We don’t need them. Their utilitarian value to destructive value is lopsided in the destructive axis, unlike cars etc.

We don’t need anything other than food, water and shelter. We could reduce deaths by vastly more than the number of people killed in mass shootings by banning alcohol. Alcohol is totally unnecessary and is involved in about 100,000 deaths per year, many of them innocent people who got struck by drunk drivers or whatever.

Obviously, we’ve decided that the pleasurable aspects of alcohol outweigh the negative aspects, and haven’t banned it, nor is there any significant campaign to ban it.

Guns are exactly the same. The vast, vast majority of gun owners use their guns totally legally as a recreational activity, or for protection, etc. They would rank their utilitarian value quite high, and accept the destructive value as an unavoidable consequence, just as society does for alcohol. You only come to a different answer between you don’t give a shit about guns, just like some people don’t give a shit about alcohol, and because you vastly over-consider for emotional reasons the negative effect of a few tens of people being killed each year in a country of over 300 million where 3 million people die annually.

Twenty kids being killed all at once in an elementary school is tragic and horrible, but also rare, which is why it gets on the news in the first place. Twenty kids die every fucking night because of drunk drivers, but no one really notices because we’re used to it and it’s so damn common.

[DSeid]

I hope that what I am going to say does not sound callous but we really do need to keep the risk in some kind of perspective. These mass shootings are like airplane crashes: very dramatic and tragic and very much the center our attention when they occur but ultimately a very small number of deaths compared to other preventable causes of death.

The leading cause of mortality among youth in the United
States is unintentional injuries (48%) with motor vehicle
injuries accounting for the majority of these deaths (see Figure
3) Other leading causes include homicide (13%) and suicide (11%).

Those 13% of deaths that are caused by homicide?

Since 1993, homicide rates for teens ages 15 to 19 has declined
significantly, from 20.7 deaths per 100,000 to 10.4 deaths per
100,000 in 2007 (see Figure 5).13
Weapon-carrying among youth has also declined.

There are over 21 million kids ages 15 to 19 in America which means tere are over 2100 murders a year even at today’s lower rates. Mass murders less than 1% of them. Suicides? Almost the same, about ten times more common than being killed in a mass shooting. Undertaking major action* to further reduce deaths from these mass shooting is not “where the money is.” Build on the success in lowering the murder rate over all, reduce suicide rates, instead.

*Be it stricter gun control to arming teachers to bullet proof vests for school kids.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Absolute

Guns are exactly the same. The vast, vast majority of gun owners use their guns totally legally as a recreational activity, or for protection, etc. They would rank their utilitarian value quite high, and accept the destructive value as an unavoidable consequence, just as society does for alcohol. You only come to a different answer between you don’t give a shit about guns, just like some people don’t give a shit about alcohol.

You realize that nothing prevents you from attempting to convince others to ban alcohol, right? As a citizen, you have the right to petition the government to do just that. That’s ultimately what this thread is about: convincing others that banning guns is worthwhile because the risk outweighs the utility.

[Absolute]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

You realize that nothing prevents you from attempting to convince others to ban alcohol, right? As a citizen, you have the right to petition the government to do just that. That’s ultimately what this thread is about: convincing others that banning guns is worthwhile because the risk outweighs the utility.

My point is:

1. If you wish simply to have a significant effect on unnecessary and tragic deaths in this country, it would be far more rational for you to spend your effort trying to ban alcohol than guns.

2. It is hypocritical of someone to call for banning guns because they personally don’t like or enjoy them (as many of the people in this thread are doing, calling for measures that would do nothing but harass legitimate gun owners while doing nothing to stop crazed lunatics), but be okay with the far more deadly alcohol because they like having a drink now and then.

3. Many people calling for banning guns are doing so for irrational and emotional reasons and a spiteful dislike of guns and gun owners, not a rational consideration of the risks and values involved. Czarcasm, this is what was referred to in another thread as “shrieking”.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@DSeid

I hope that what I am going to say does not sound callous but we really do need to keep the risk in some kind of perspective. These mass shootings are like airplane crashes: very dramatic and tragic and very much the center our attention when they occur but ultimately a very small number of deaths compared to other preventable causes of death.

That’s the thing, though: society has generally accepted that large numbers of people dying at once (as in shooting sprees and plane crashes) are worse than small numbers dying at a steady rate. That’s why public opinion was solidly in favor of the invasion of Afghanistan (3,000 people killed in 9/11 attacks), while nobody wants to invade Colombia (6,000 people killed by cocaine in all forms annually). Is it rational? No, but it’s How Things Work.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Absolute

My point is:

1. If you wish simply to have a significant effect on unnecessary and tragic deaths in this country, it would be far more rational for you to spend your effort trying to ban alcohol than guns.

2. It is hypocritical of someone to call for banning guns because they personally don’t like or enjoy them (as many of the people in this thread are doing, calling for measures that would do nothing but harass legitimate gun owners while doing nothing to stop crazed lunatics), but be okay with the far more deadly alcohol because they like having a drink now and then.

1. Well, not really. We’ve already established that banning alcohol doesn’t work. Hell, we’re re-establishing that principle every day with the war on drugs. The same may not be true of firearms.

2. Not really. First, (1). Second, very few people are “okay with alcohol”. Most people support laws restricting alcohol purchases by minors; you can buy a gun before you can drink a beer. I doubt anyone wants to repeal drunk driving laws, as another example. Third, comparing alcohol to firearms is silly because they are utterly dissimilar products with utterly dissimilar uses. Just about anyone can brew beer in their kitchen, but hardly anyone could construct a gun from first principles in their garage.

[UltraVires]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

That’s the thing, though: society has generally accepted that large numbers of people dying at once (as in shooting sprees and plane crashes) are worse than small numbers dying at a steady rate. That’s why public opinion was solidly in favor of the invasion of Afghanistan (3,000 people killed in 9/11 attacks), while nobody wants to invade Colombia (6,000 people killed by cocaine in all forms annually). Is it rational? No, but it’s How Things Work.

An excellent point. I don’t have a cite, but I would guess that more than 20 children were killed today in automobile accidents in the United States. However, besides that, here’s what I can’t get past about gun bans: Forget the 2nd amendment, forget hunting or any positive gun uses; let’s put that aside for now.

If tomorrow, we decreed that all guns were illegal, turn em in or else life in prison, then how many would stay out there? Obviously death didn’t bother this guy for his shooting spree. How many thousands would be squirreled away Just in Case and available for nutcases to use? Guns last long enough for your great grandchildren to use, and if you are going on a shooting spree, you only need to make sure they work on that one day.

How would a full gun ban, enacted tomorrow WORLD WIDE, stop this from happening many centuries into the future?