She wanted to die. Told her friend that morning she wanted to die and was going to do something that would make her die. She was also high functioning autistic.
One of my reasonable suggestions mentioned up thread. Make magazines difficult to change out shouldn’t be able to swap out like per dispensers. But really with 400M guns it’s all about the ammo.
Well, I can buy as much as I personally want since I don’t use it ….. I trip on that stuff. But the substance of the matter is a person can buy as much as the need which is a15 day supply up to 3x per month. In your attempt to control gun violence by mentally ill people, you are deciding how much ammunition a law abiding citizen can purchase when you have no idea how much they require for the safe, legal use of their legally owned firearms. That is very different than the restrictions on medicines.
The substance of the matter is that there are plenty of things you can’t buy as much as you want and lots of things that require hoops to jump through and even more that are tracked
Thanks for your post as you reminded me of the following. I wonder if this indicates that transgender and gender-confused individuals should be prohibited from owning firearms? “People who are transgender or nonbinary are more likely to be autistic. One large study found that it's three to six times more common. Researchers are working to understand the connection and how society can be more accommodating to people who live at this intersection. Lesley McClurg from member station KQED in San Francisco has more.” “Gender specialists first noticed decades ago that a large number of people who seek treatment for gender dysphoria also seemed to have autistic traits. Research on this phenomenon goes back to at least the 1990s, when the first case study of an autistic child with gender dysphoria (then called gender identity disorder) was published. As studies investigating the co-occurrence (or correlation) between gender dysphoria and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have trickled in, there is a growing consensus in the medical community that the two do co-occur at disproportionate rates. This consensus is based on numerous studies reporting that gender-dysphoric youth are more likely to be autistic than would be expected based on autism rates in the general population. (This may also hold true for adults, although the research on adults is sparser.) This co-occurrence has implications for the treatment of both gender dysphoria and autism in young people, and hints at a connection between the biological causes of both transgender identity and ASD.” A Disproportionate Number of Autistic Youth Are Transgender. Why?
Your “reasonable” suggestions are anything but reasonable to those that understand and handle firearms in a regular basis. You want to limit law abiding citizens.. the vast vast majority of gun owners in nstead if finding ways to curb the use by those who have mental issues/anger issues/violent pasts. Audrey Hale had mental issues/anger issues etc… and shouldn’t have been able to buy the firearms.
Unfortunately the suicide through mass incident has become a thing. Need someone else to do it for you.
She was also a "law abiding citizen" when she bought the guns, so .... you also want to limit law abiding citizens from getting weapons and ammo right?
I don't. Network TV is about the same as it has always been. Movies and pay TV are more available sure. Been a million studies of gaming and it doesnt lead to increased violence just like watching horror movies doesnt make you put on a hockey mask and go chop up people. I think perhaps the more likely culprit might be the increasing growth in loneliness people are reporting since the mid-70's through pre-pandemic as they became more busy at work due to productivity gains. People lose time to connect with friends and time to parent. That's my guess. Having said that the US is infinitely more safe than it was in the 70s-90s. Massive meta-analysis finds loneliness has increased in emerging adults in the last 43 years
Imagine telling the parents of children killed in a school shooting that you aren't open to even trying stricter measures of gun regulation and vetting periods because the processing delays would be a "burden" to gun enthusiasts. Or that school shootings create the appearance of a problem because people get emotional about them. This is the mentality stopping any nuanced discussion in its tracks...
The school shootings are likely just another form of “suicide by cop”. https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2017.120107 “Those who want to kill themselves and are not willing to complete the act themselves employ diverse methods of accomplishing death. Suicide by cop is one such method. Suicide by cop is a forensic phenomenon that is relatively common in the law enforcement field. Literature on suicide by cop estimate its prevalence at about 10% (2) to 36% (1) of police shootings. The concept is credited to Dr. Marvin E. Wolfgang (3), who, in 1959, named it “suicide by means of victim-precipitated homicide.” In his publication on research conducted on the topic between 1948 and 1952, Dr. Wolfgang reported on 588 cases of police officer-involved shootings in the city of Philadelphia's Homicide Squad and concluded that 26% fit the criteria. The term was created to accentuate the fact that “the victim in these … cases is considered to be a suicide prone [individual] who manifests his desire to destroy [him]self by engaging another person to perform the act” (3). The actual term suicide by cop was first used around the early 1980s by Karl Harris, a Los Angeles County examiner.”
What is a bit odd about this discussion of keeping firearms out of the hands of mentally disturbed individuals is ….. progressives who are seemingly all about helping the “less fortunate” refuse address the fact more needs to be done by families of mental health professionals treating those mentally disturbed people …. and improving the system to identify those folks to the community that can better restrict their access to firearms. That should be the focus of the progressive…. not unconstitutional gun laws.
This is a two way street. You have some folks locked in to their heavy investment that the problem MUST be solved with gun control ONLY and those locked in to their heavy investment that the problem CANNOT be solved with ANY gun control measures (seemingly). I think it is prudent to consider more avenues than just restriction of the means. Surprisingly, it was almost exclusively those on the left who bit back hard against the idea of learning more about the shooter to see what areas of human development we can improve on. If you only look at one type of solution without considering others, then you can't accuse others of sticking your head in the sand (not you, but just in general). Then you have the people who mock those who express compassion in their own way, they not only don't help, but they antagonize the situation. People on this thread tell jokes, and then accuse others of not caring about the problem. We live in a sick society. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
We've already heard concerns about the slippery slope of exactly what constitutes a high risk individual. The fear pushed from your side (not saying you personally) is that it will be too broad a spectrum and therefore invasive to gun rights. Does everyone need a mental health evaluation for purchase? If you see a professional on a regular basis are you disqualified? If you take antidepressants are you excluded? You disagree with my prior comment but it's just paraphrasing if not quoting a couple here in this very thread. There is no one answer but any further restrictions or regulation gets fought as even a portion of the answer.
Saying one executive order was unlawful and that congress can't agree on a particular issue is not the same as saying do nothing. That is, frankly, how our system of government works. You have to have enough votes to pass or change laws. It's a check against bad or partisan law. But the fact is, under the law, bump stocks do not meet the definition of a machine gun which has been defined in statute since 1934, and it is not within the authority of the executive branch to redefine existing law where there is clear statutory definition. It is on congress' constituents to hold them accountable, but frankly most people only hold them accountable when they do something bad, not when they don't do something as it is too easy for individual representatives to collude and then blame their colleagues come campaign time. Frankly, most of us just don't want something like the Marjory Stoneman Douglas bill going through federally. It was bad law in Florida but our state legislature passed it because they felt pressure to do "something", even if that something was the wrong thing and wouldn't have actually prevented the shooting in the first place. There were pieces of it that were alright, but there were other pieces like denying second amendment rights to the same adults between the ages of 18-21 that we allow to serve in the military, or red flag laws with poorly defined due process provisions that end up becoming rubber stamped by judges ex parte and get weaponized by people like disgruntled exes or the karen next door. There have been efforts made around closing NICS gaps and securing schools, which were largely bipartisan efforts. The Safer Communities act was also passed last year and contains provisions around mental health funding, red flag laws, domestic violence, etc., along with some things around who is an FFL that it looks like the Biden administration is planning to abuse in much the same way they have abused the authority of the ATF since taking office with things like the pistol brace ban, redefining established law around receivers and homemade firearms, etc. through executive fiat. So to say nobody wants to do anything is incorrect. We just can't get people to agree on what the right "something" is, and it is hard to have an honest conversation when it always begins liberal histrionics trying to ban guns before the blood is even mopped up.
Burger was wrong, and dishonest in trying to apply the same definition of "regulated" that is used today (meaning controlled/constrained by government regulation) to an 18th century document where the definition of "well regulated" meant "in regular working order" or "well-functioning" e.g. well-organized, well armed, well-disciplined
not being flippant but seems you just want to say something just to something. It’s very easy and cheap to make your own ammo. Any person willing to walk into a school and do what she did can research and figure it out in one afternoon. Making billions of magazines difficult would require a small modification. That mean someone can create an easy work around. Again, bad guys don’t follow laws. If she did use the keltec as it appears that is basically a pistol so making certain guns illegal wouldn’t have slowed or made her less lethal. What has shown to work in this case and others. Appears she chose the softer of the target options. Appears the schools lock down and keeping kids in classrooms behind secure doors worked. Appears the principal made contact with the shooter at the entrance. What is else could she have done?
I think one of the biggest problems is that people think that everything is an either/or situation. We can have reasonable restrictions AND increased mental health access and funding. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, most of us anyway. Binary thinking is killing us, literally.
I saw this last night and was thinking about it. I never did a deep dive on the historical evidence of intent/understanding. But in terms of language and construction, it seems notable to me that in the 1st Amendment, the drafters used the word "or" several times and made it very obvious that they were creating a list of separate and distinct rights which each stood on its own. In the Second Amendment, however, there is a reference to a "well regulated Militia" and a also the right of "the people" to keep and bear Arms. The word "or" is not used, and the comma placement makes it confusing. It's not obvious to me if that language reflects two rights or is simply saying that the Federal government could not ban state militias. They clearly knew how to write more clearly, so why didn't they? Was it the result of compromise or meant to be vague?
