Texas elementary school shooting…

[msstate7]

Bullet-resistant glass and doors are a good idea, and lots of schools in bigger cities in Mississippi are already doing it. It is incredibly expensive though. At the very least, you could use security film by 3M



This film is also expensive, and certainly not fool proof, but minutes count in these attacks. Rifle and handgun shots would shoot holes in the film, so it would still take effort to break through

ETA... gun control, bullet resistant glass, and security all seem to be like seeing you have a leak in your ceiling bc the drywall is stained and just fixing the drywall. You still have a serious problem that will eventually show up again

[nsacpi]

Setting aside international data, if you look at the state data on gun ownership and deaths involving firearms there is a very strong positive correlation. As I've often pointed out correlation does not always imply causation. But sometimes it does.

This is not to say that measures promoting gun safety and responsible gun ownership are not to be welcomed. Or measures that promote mental health. Etc etc.

There is no silver bullet...to indulge in a tasteless pun.

But it does seem likely to me that reducing the number of guns in circulation will reduce the number of deaths from firearms.

[chop2chip]

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.

Great post striker. I agree with every single recommendation.

In a better world, you could ban assault weapons and people participate in a gun buy back program. Unfortunately, that’s just never going to happen in this country. You have to construct the best policies around that fact. Good news is that 99% of these weapons are owned by non psychos.

There seems to be bipartisan support to address the mental health crisis. The gunman is a demon, but he’s also a victim. We need to be vigilant in stopping the next 18 year old kid from doing this.

[nsacpi]

[nsacpi]

Tough guy culture at its finest.

[sturg33]

ahh what a shock tyrant nsacpi has joined the disarm the public bandwagon

[nsacpi]

I see a certain symmetry between the abortion and gun debates. The current status quo in both cases rest upon debatable interpretations of the constitution. It would be far better to move to an accommodation that leaves states with the latitude to regulate (including ban) both according to their local sensibilities.

[nsacpi]

Warren is not the only recent Supreme Court justice to hold this view. John Paul Stevens has advanced similar arguments in a dissent. The historian Joseph Ellis has delved into what the framers intended. It may take a long time but the pendulum will eventually swing on this matter.

[acesfull86]

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

I’m wondering how high the tax would even have to be to make a noticeable impact. I’m not a gun guy, but those on this board can probably speak to what ammo prices have done in recent years. I think the prices for some calibers quadrupled from the start of COVID to the middle of last year. Some came down, but are still double their pre-COVID prices. And that’s if you can even find it. Clearly a dramatic rise in price hasn’t led to a level of shootings/mass killings that anyone is comfortable with.

[nsacpi]

I’m wondering how high the tax would even have to be to make a noticeable impact. I’m not a gun guy, but those on this board can probably speak to what ammo prices have done in recent years. I think the prices for some calibers quadrupled from the start of COVID to the middle of last year. Some came down, but are still double their pre-COVID prices. And that’s if you can even find it. Clearly a dramatic rise in price hasn’t led to a level of shootings/mass killings that anyone is comfortable with.

Purely for PR purposes I would favor creating a trust fund to be used to compensate victims of gun violence and to be funded from proceeds of taxes on ammo and firearms.

[sturg33]

Bullet-resistant glass and doors are a good idea, and lots of schools in bigger cities in Mississippi are already doing it. It is incredibly expensive though. At the very least, you could use security film by 3M



This film is also expensive, and certainly not fool proof, but minutes count in these attacks. Rifle and handgun shots would shoot holes in the film, so it would still take effort to break through

ETA... gun control, bullet resistant glass, and security all seem to be like seeing you have a leak in your ceiling bc the drywall is stained and just fixing the drywall. You still have a serious problem that will eventually show up again

how much of these could $40B buy?

[acesfull86]

Purely for PR purposes I would favor creating a trust fund to be used to compensate victims of gun violence and to be funded from proceeds of taxes on ammo and firearms.

Isn’t there a 10-11% federal tax on guns/ammo that supposedly goes towards wildlife preservation? Should be easy to divert some of those proceeds towards a victims fund, if legislators were so inclined

[nsacpi]

Isn’t there a 10-11% federal tax on guns/ammo that supposedly goes towards wildlife preservation? Should be easy to divert some of those proceeds towards a victims fund, if legislators were so inclined

It is something that should be done. For symbolic value more than anything else.

[chop2chip]

It is something that should be done. For symbolic value more than anything else.

Blood money?

[msstate7]

how much of these could $40B buy?

Lol, quite a bit. Maybe we should worry about Ukraine first

[Jaw]

I’m wondering how high the tax would even have to be to make a noticeable impact. I’m not a gun guy, but those on this board can probably speak to what ammo prices have done in recent years. I think the prices for some calibers quadrupled from the start of COVID to the middle of last year. Some came down, but are still double their pre-COVID prices. And that’s if you can even find it. Clearly a dramatic rise in price hasn’t led to a level of shootings/mass killings that anyone is comfortable with.

I saw pawn shops selling ammo at 4x the pre COVID price and still selling out. Academy prices were roughly 3x and there was a line outside every morning before they opened because the only way to get it was to be among the first few in the store.

Ammo taxes would make it more difficult for responsible owners to practice, they won't matter to the guy putting an AR on his credit card who plans to be dead before the bill arrives. And gun grabbers know that.

[Jaw]

I'll go back to what I always say when this happens. When I was in high school in the 90s there were dozens of guns in parking lot every day, and no school shootings. Something besides access to guns changed that, so why is access to guns always looked at as the solution?

[msstate7]

I'll go back to what I always say when this happens. When I was in high school in the 90s there were dozens of guns in parking lot every day, and no school shootings. Something besides access to guns changed that, so why is access to guns always looked at as the solution?

Exactly.

I really would like an answer to my 1st page question about there being a link between these shooters and no father figure in the home. Seems maybe as our families have crumbled, so has our society

[acesfull86]

Ammo taxes would make it more difficult for responsible owners to practice, they won't matter to the guy putting an AR on his credit card who plans to be dead before the bill arrives. And gun grabbers know that.

Agreed. Market forces over the past few years helped simulate what a dramatic tax increase would look like. Seems the result was what a lot of skeptics of that policy predicted - criminals, gang members, and psychopath lunatics are significantly more price inelastic than Joe Sportsman when it comes to ammo purchases.

[nsacpi]

High school and middle school mass shootings in the 1990s

Lindhurst HS 1992 14 shot
Wycliffe MS 1994 4 shot
Frontier MS 1996 4 shot
Bethel HS 1997 4 shot
Pearl HS 1997 10 shot
Heath HS 1997 11 shot
Westside MS 1998 15 shot
Parker MS 1998 5 shot
Thurston HS 1998 29 shot
Columbine HS 1999 39 shot
Heritage HS 1999 6 shot