Texas elementary school shooting…

[zitothebrave]

I'm honestly open to ideas. The guns are out there already. There are 1.2 guns per person in the US. I don't think you can get that genie back in the bottle.

Even in other countries with large numbers of guns you don't see school shootings like this.

My kid starts school this fall and this stuff scares me to death. I have no idea how to stop it.

I mean it's never gonna stop it. But mandatory minimums for commiting crimes with guns that are more strict than anything else.

For example, if you rob someone with a gun (or pretend gun) you get a minimum of 10 years vs. 5 with no weapon, knife, bat, etc.

That and tax the **** out of ammunition.

[sturg33]

The mass murder is tragic as they all are. Of course the politicians will try to capitalize on the rare event

Tragic from all angles

[zitothebrave]

I’m not sure what’s worse: her original tweet in general, or the fact that once it was confirmed the border had nothing to do with it, she doubled down on it anyway.

It's gross. She deserves all the flack she gets for this.

[zitothebrave]

The mass murder is tragic as they all are. Of course the politicians will try to capitalize on the rare event

Tragic from all angles

Are you attempting to say that politicians trying to tackle school shootings is equally tragic as school shootings?

Also I woudln't really call it rare, there were 27 school shootings this year, that's 5-6 per month. If I had explosive diarrhea every week, I wouldn't call that rare. I'd think I had a problem.

[Tapate50]

Taxing ammo isn’t gonna stop a guy with a one way ticket to suicide by cop

[goldfly]

Seriously, every single time

“Nothing we can do”

And every other developed nation is like “that’s ****ing stupid to say. We have basically stopped this from happening”

[cajunrevenge]

personally I blame marijuana prohibition. People dont smoke weed and shoot up schools. Some people need something to help them chill.

[sturg33]

Are you attempting to say that politicians trying to tackle school shootings is equally tragic as school shootings?

Also I woudln't really call it rare, there were 27 school shootings this year, that's 5-6 per month. If I had explosive diarrhea every week, I wouldn't call that rare. I'd think I had a problem.

more people die from gun violence in chicago every month than school shootings in a year... nobody cares

tragic from all angles

[zitothebrave]

more people die from gun violence in chicago every month than school shootings in a year... nobody cares

tragic from all angles

Ah yes the classic non-sequitur from sturg.

[sturg33]

Ah yes the classic non-sequitur from sturg.

I recognize that the Chicago shootings aren't as easy to politicize than others but all of the murders in this country are tragic

[zitothebrave]

I recognize that the Chicago shootings aren't as easy to politicize than others but all of the murders in this country are tragic

I agree, but I want to work to solve it you just want to throw up your arms.

[cajunrevenge]

how many shootings were there in Chicago before the war on drugs? We know the why, unfortunately reversing course wont immediately fix all the problems caused by the 50 years of bad policy, so better to just double down on the failed policy. Last thing we need is less crime because then we need less police.

[sturg33]

I agree, but I want to work to solve it you just want to throw up your arms.

Your solutions to solve it won't work

[goldfly]

might as well wrap up this thread and just wait for the next shooting so we can rehash the same points there

got all the right wing talking points in before even all the parents of their children that have died have been identified

[goldfly]

it will never not be wild to me that so many people's response to these things and gun violence in general is "nothing to be done"

when literately you can just look at stats of every other developed nation and see their gun violence isn't close to ours after multiplying their numbers by 10 etc

[Jaw]

it will never not be wild to me that so many people's response to these things and gun violence in general is "nothing to be done"

when literately you can just look at stats of every other developed nation and see their gun violence isn't close to ours after multiplying their numbers by 10 etc

No one but you has said nothing can be done. You just don't like what was said because it doesn't align with the talking points you decided to swallow. Stop acting like a child.

[striker42]

it will never not be wild to me that so many people's response to these things and gun violence in general is "nothing to be done"

when literately you can just look at stats of every other developed nation and see their gun violence isn't close to ours after multiplying their numbers by 10 etc

What do you recommend?

[sturg33]

What do you recommend?

I'm happy to provide his robot answer for you:

"Do what every other 1st world country does and has managed to not have these events"

^ and he'll think that is answering your question

[nsacpi]

A since-deleted tweet by Congressman Paul Gosar. The good doctor (and maybe others) seems to believe leftists and their trans and illegal allies are waging some sort of civil war to destroy the greatest country on earth.

[striker42]

There's an almost dogmatic response by many to any of these shootings that gun control will be effective in curbing them. It's way more complicated than that. Imagine you have a raging MRSA infection and someone says "You should take a single dose of penicillin." That's honestly what most of the gun control arguments are like. A single dose of penicillin wont have any effect on a MRSA infection just like most gun control measures wont have any impact on school shootings.

Background checks? Guns in these school shootings would almost all have not been stopped by background checks. Bans on assault weapons? There are already enough assault weapons out there to fight a major war. Ammunition tax? People hell bent on killing a bunch of kids aren't going to worry about what would happen to their financial security if they buy a bunch of bullets.

I'm not against gun control. What I'm against is gun control that would only serve in making it harder for responsible gun owners to get and own guns while not actually stopping events like this.

If we're going to talk about gun control, it needs to be targeted at stopping the actual problem. If the problem is mass school shootings then background checks and taxes aren't going to be effective. So what would be?

I'd start with pushing for a minimum age to own and carry a gun to be 21 (though this might require a constitutional amendment). The top 6 deadliest k-12 school shootings have all been perpetrated by people under the age of 21. You have to go back to the 1700's to find an incident of k-12 violence with double digit deaths done by someone over 21 (and that was part of Pontiac's War). Keeping these kids from buying guns themselves would be the first step.

Second, I'd establish tort liability for people who give someone access to their guns and that person then goes and kills people and I'd make that tort liability non-dischargable in bankruptcy. If these kids can't buy guns themselves, they have to take someone else's guns, most commonly a parent's gun. So there needs to be strong incentive for people to limit the access of others to their guns. Basically make it clear that if you let your kid have access to your gun and your kid goes and shoots up a school, you'll lose everything and live in squalor the rest of your life.

But this isn't a problem you can come close to addressing with gun control measures alone. If we're going to curb this it needs to be a multi-prong effort.

I think the next thing you have to do is study the problem in depth. I don't care if it's allowing the CDC to do it, tasking the ATF to do it, or outsourcing it to research institutions but we need exhaustive research into all of the causes of these shootings. We can't fix a problem we don't fully understand. Why do other developed countries with high gun ownership, such as Canada, not have this problem? We need to find out.

Two areas I'd definitely address is mental health and school security. Access to mental healthcare is improving in this country but we still need to do more. We definitely need to try to overcome the stigmas associated with getting help or getting your kid help. Why people don't consider mental healthcare to be the same as physical healthcare is beyond me. Early intervention would prevent the vast majority of these shootings if we could just get to that point.

Second I'd address school security. Someone walking into an elementary school and shooting it up isn't doing it because they just really hate children. They're doing it to go out in a blaze of infamy. They're often suicidal and want to show the world how wrong it was to mistreat them. The harder you make it for them to achieve infamy by attacking a school, the more likely they are to choose other targets. Maybe the same number of people still die but at least it's not a group of almost exclusively children.

I want to see federal appropriations to make schools legitimately harder targets. I want to see bullet proof doors and glass installed, have at least two cops per school whenever kids are there with one being assigned to guard the main entrance, camera and buzzer systems, etc. The worst school shootings aren't done by the kid hiding a handgun in their backpack, they're done by someone walking into the school with a rifle and body armor. Make it extremely difficult for these people to gain access.

This isn't an easy problem and traditional gun control ideas aren't going to touch it. We need new ideas and a new approach. Sadly this wont happen. It'll just devolve into a debate about the same, old, ineffective gun control measures.