Suicide by cop. I think the Las Vegas shooter that was his plan. Saying mental health care would help these issues would mean more if the proponents of guns also wer in favor of better mental health care.
Perfect example of blame the gun!!!! Nowhere did I say celebrate that only 2 people were killed. I said this needs to be example of how we move forward. Give me your example of the utopia we can create where these kinds of incidents can be totally avoided. You are a smart guy, I read your posts, don't always agree but at least they are well thought out and generally have common sense in them but how do we eliminate this as a problem? Every submarine mentioned in the past several years has screen doors and not a realistic perfect solution. So, in your utopia we going to create where do we start today???
To avoid school shootings? This isn’t some rare unobtainable utopia, this is a matter of failed policy and decades of gun advocacy. There isn’t another 1st world country with the level of problem we have here. In fact, you could literally try any other county in the world except maybe Kenya/Somalia where they deal with el Shabab. So yeah, avoid countries with Islamic militants or war zones and your children are safer - at least while in their school.
So, what is the steps to get to this place of no school shootings? Site all you want about what we should have done 10, 15, 20 years ago but it doesn't change where we are today. What do we do today???
I don’t think any of us want a utopia. We just want a level of gun violence on par with literally every other civilized planet on earth. What we don’t want is to be the freakish outlier that we are with regards to gun violence. I propose we pick any other civilized country that doesn’t have this problem and then we mirror their gun laws.
Anything we do today will take years to make an appreciable difference in gun violence. It will take policy change AND a great deal of patience. There is no quick fix here.
To go from the most violent place on earth for students to “no school shootings” is not a realistic goal, and shows a level of intellectual immaturity since you are relying on absolutes. Just as this didn’t get switched on overnight, it won’t be switched off overnight. Even if we adopted “sane” policy, it would likely take decades to correct and you will never achieve absolute zero, even places with extremely strict gun ownership aren’t 0% risk (although they may at least go years between school shootings). Still, the goal should be to at least move it significantly in the other direction across a period of time. Some part of the equation actually is “more guns”, in terms of security at the school to dissuade would be shooters, that is the band-aid to address the immediate threats. Longer term, we need to have less guns in society and make sure those who carry are trained and not mentally ill while still respecting the constitution. That cannot be perfect, but the nutjobs pushing zero permits, constitutional carry, weak background checks - they are making the future even more violent and children lives less secure. While the specifics may be up for debate, the general idea is stricter gun laws and standards across the board. The nutjob states repealing state gun regs are doing us no favors as gun laws are only as good as the weakest link. Gun activists seem pretty convinced “more guns = more safety”, at a societal level this is demonstrably untrue, but especially when you look at UNREGULATED guns (we aren’t talking Switzerland style high gun ownership levels where they are all highly trained and regulated, in the U.S. we have too many morons and insane people with access to guns).
Honestly, I don't think we can get there from here. We have too many people who value their guns more than the children of others. Sandy Hook made it clear that we have no will to prevent these deaths, and so these deaths will continue. And we are less able to deal with reality and craft effective policy than we were when Sandy Hook happened. We are a wealthy nation, with a significant amount of power in the world, so our dysfunction won't end us quickly, but I don't see a way for us to maintain what we have if we can't get everyone on board with reality in the next decade or so.
If we ever do manage to propose meaningful gun reform legislation you can already see what the playbook is going to be from the right. "See, the laws don't make any difference!" when no instant results are produced.
Actions speak louder than words. Despite all the disingenuous babble of "thoughts and prayers" it is painfully obvious that they don't give two damns about the issue and it is clear where the priorities are. Just the cost of doing business. Rinse and repeat.
Reminds me of the farmer's rabbits in Watership Down. They know he kills them, but they don't talk about it, and hope it happens to others instead of them. And attack those who do want to talk about it.
The Venn diagram of sacred cows. Mental health, hippa, whisper, whisper and worship of guns. The age requirements are cool, but a mental health component needs to be combined. What it is, I don’t know, as it will be litigated to death. Serious societal issues at play.
Never researched it so this is just based on what I've seen and read about the ones in my city. They are actual police officers assigned to the school. When I've seen them, they were mostly on the younger side and in good shape. I don't recall if they were armed but I'm guessing they have access to weapons. As far as I know, there aren't any in our elementary schools but there are in the middle and high schools. That tells me the school system is more concerned about internal violence than someone from the outside coming in. My only personal experience with the police and our school system is when my stepson told me there were rumors that a student was planning to bring a gun to school the next day to shoot another student. I called the police that night(main number, not the school police) and they said they were already aware of it. For whatever reason, they didn't confront the kid until he rode the bus to school and he did have a loaded gun in his backpack. So basically, they let a kid with a loaded gun get on a bus with other kids.
I agree with your opening statement and I highlighted the rapid police response in the OP. I think the responses here have been about more than you suggest, though, and that you might be focusing in on the responses you do not approve of. To your final point, I wonder if it's true. There have certainly been a number of school shooters who were killed by police or committed suicide. That data might be difficult to mine, as some outlets refuse to grant attention to the shooter. Given the mental health theme with these instances, I wonder if other shooters being killed is any kind of deterrent.
Some the points above are good and I'm not asking for immediate results. I'm asking how do we get there? Yes, absolutely there are some zealots that want no gun control, but that is a very small number. I think this debate is like any other big debate we have in our free society. The quiet common-sense majority do not prevail. Just like the abortion debate, the fringe left says totally until birth the women's right to choose, the right saying it's murder right after conception. The reality is I think we all believe there should be some limits but not outright banned completely. We have this same debate on gun control, some want to confiscate every gun, while some want to be able to open carry into a courtroom. The vast majority of us feel we have right to keep arms but with some restrictions and limitations. We can't have those discussions though because "I DON'T CARE ABOUT KILLIN KIDS BECAUSE I WANT TO KEEP MY GUN". When this is how the debate is started, I leave the discussion. I'm sure the same but opposite on the other side. In today's society no one wants to give an inch in compromise because rightfully so or not we are afraid if we give an inch the other side will take a mile!! No longer do we care about results but who gets credit for it. It is very evident in our own little societal test tube here on THSG. Very little actual discussion on how to solve anything and more about how we can call the other out. The one thing I will say that is a nonstarter is when we try and compare other countries and what they do. There is no other country on this earth that is close to America. Size, freedoms, economic power, nothing close.
