Tragic. But when it comes from US it is hardly a news.

So because you believe that getting rid of guns won't affect people getting killed, your response is to try... nothing?

https://www.theonion.com/...re-this-r-1823016659

You are onto something. Sometimes I feel that Americans want 100% guarantee of success 100% of the time or they want even try. At least when guns are in question.

Ad Muncher

Thankfully we have the "thoughts and prayers" movement to bring awareness to complicated social issues like this. If that isn't sufficient, we can always put a watermark on our facebook profile pic.

In all seriousness though, I'm disgusted by it all. Politics has so completely polarized the country that we can't solve the most basic problems. Problems that should be absolutely top national priority such as "how to keep our children from being murdered at school".

I said "shithole country" in semi-jest. But it's really becoming like that when we won't even agree to protect our children from being murdered by lunatics. My child doesn't go to public school, and when I retire in 4.5 years, I'm taking my family and moving us out of this fucking insane place. Some of you arrogant fucks will tell me "good riddance" but I will be the one to really mean "good riddance" when I say it back to you as I'm leaving.

With that mentality. Let’s try this. Do away with gun free zones. This should take away the soft targets.
Arm every teacher and teach them to shoot properly. I’d pay more taxes to support the additional costs.

What do you say. Worth a try?

I've worked in public schools for 20 years. Most teachers won't have anything to do with guns. Furthermore, most of them are people that you would not want handling a gun due to total incompetence. These are people who can't even press a power button on a printer when they want something to come out of their magical paper copying machine.

Sure, why not, it's worth a try, they're your kids not mine. I don't expect the results to be good, but in a year or two you'll have some data.

So where are ya'll gonna move to?

/r

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Steve

If they teach with loaded gun pointed at the door with finger on the trigger, then yes, try it. If they keep the gun anywhere else, then no.

Portugal and/or Denmark depending on my son's university prospects.

<SIGH> indeed. From which gun porn site are you getting this BS? You are truly exhibiting a Trumpian capacity to replace reality with 'alternative facts' that you prefer.

In the 10 years prior to gun reform we had 112 mass killings by guns alone.

In the 23 years since gun reform we have had 76 mass killings from every means in total. Mostly arson, vehicular, & stabbings; with gun mass killings, as Matty notes, have been virtually eliminated.

No, we haven't "solved" the problem of mass killings, but we have massively reduced them, in the period in which they have spiraled ever further out of control in the USA. Along the way, there was a huge drop in armed hold-ups, in domestic violence murders and in suicides (which, all causes, dropped by about 70% - a huge side benefit to the primary motivation for gun reform.)

BTW (and this not for you, JSA, but rather for any rational readers) Matty mentions the Sydney siege in 2014. It is highly instructive of the differences between gun control in our countries. The Sydney perp was an ISIS inspired Muslim radical. He was known to police and anti-terrorism authorities. He had assault and other criminal charges pending. He made the decision to go out in a blaze of inglory, committing suicide by cop, taking as many victims with him as he could and gaining international notoriety.

Had he lived in the US, he'd have done what the Las Vegas gunman recently did - exercise his Constitutionally guaranteed right to collect as many military-grade weapons as he could feasibly transport, find a crowd and start shooting. The Las Vegas outcome was 58 dead and 851 injured.

In Australia, he didn't have the same options. Although the evidence showed he had planned his siege for some time, and executed it with some care, when it came to weapons procurement all that he was able to obtain was an old twin-barrel shotgun, which he sawed down for concealment. No handguns. No "assault" weapons. He was highly motivated, but had limited options.

The result was, when he decided to unleash hell, he shot, and killed, one person. The SWAT team killed him, and horribly, a hostage in a ricochet from a SWAT team shot.
3 victims: one by the perp, one accidental victim and the perp himself constituted the most nationally traumatic shooting incident in the nation in the entire year.

But then we remind ourselves that in the USA in 2017 (& to date in 2018) there were worse mass shootings (4 or more deaths - up to 58) on average every single day. Mass shootings, pretty much daily. In the USA, it needs to have some special media appeal to even gain national reporting. DavHamm is right - it is an entrenched and accepted part of quotidian life for Americans. You see it as inevitable and normal, although it really doesn't need to be.

Independently, 2 people commented to me today that although it is horrible that kids are being slaughtered, it is no longer possible to feel sympathy for the USA as a whole. This is an ongoing self-inflicted wound that you have an implacable determination to continue.

I say it's a great troll post. Not a troll? Most idiotic thing I've read since the last time it was said. More guns. The answer is ALWAYS more guns. Idiotic.

I can't help you if you don't see the differences here. They are stark and they are significant.

The somewhat controversial (or, he at least holds "controversial" views on some things) Australian politician Bob Katter was interviewed by Sky News Australia yesterday about the school shooting tragedy:

"Three years before the Port Arthur ban, there were less gun deaths then the three years after the ban. And that’s a sign in East Germany that the highest death rate with guns was in East Germany, a Communist country. The lowest death threat with guns in Europe was Switzerland, where every single household had a gun. There’s no relationship between gun ownership and death. But there is definitely some sort of serious problem occurring and it seems to be confined to the United States."

He does make a salient point about a problem, and it seems to me it's more to do with us as a people, culturally rather than with guns specifically.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Exactly. We had quarterly nuclear attack drills. That said, at some point they became like a fire drill. Ho hum because nobody every attacked the school with a nuclear bomb. These gun attacks/murders are recurring.

Agreed that this topic gets snarky quickly. Probably because there is no foreseeable solution.

Not sure about FL but this training/drills is occurring in AZ schools.

I've heard some reports that say the school just had some sort of training session or discussion among staff and teachers about active shooters. Not sure if that's true or not.

Other reports also confirm suspicions about the shooter: He was a giant, flashing red warning sign -- complete with sirens and whistles -- that screamed "I'M GOING TO KILL A LOT OF PEOPLE SOON!!"

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

You do realize that these mass killings were not all shootings, right?

There were 101 people killed up to and including Port Arthur Massacre (I didn't count 2 since it didn't specifically said shooting and it wasn't even needed to beat your argument).

There were 14 due to shooting since then.

Now, please continue going around telling anyone who disagrees with you that they're ignoring and dumb.

Why can't it be our cultural attitude towards guns? Gun advocates always want to be separating the two when they are intricately intertwined.

Well, at least you admit you have not solved the problem of mass killings.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I cannot believe you continue to miss the point. No one is arguing that the banning of guns would not reduce shootings. Of course it would. But many are arfothe banning of guns would reduce mass killings. There is no evidence of that. We have evidence to the contrary.

If you are going to ask for the elimination of a Constitutional Right, you better be able to show there will be dramatic positive results. If you cannot show a reduction in mass killings then you will get no support for that proposition.

It isn’t that hard to understand.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I think the problem runs deeper than Americans' historical and traditional acceptance of guns -- handgun and rifle -- in our lives. I mean, many schools used to have shooting clubs, where rifle handling and firing were accepted parts of the curriculum. No one back then was taking those rifles and committing mass murder with them. But as schools became more progressive and less accepting of guns those clubs slowly faded away in many parts of the country.

For myself, my most memorable birthday was my tenth, when my uncle gave me my first .22 rifle for Christmas and we actively began to go 'up North' for small game hunting season. There were responsibly handled guns in our household for as long as I can remember, and I've been a gun owner (including concealed carry) ever since.

I'm sure Steve Hawley, JSA and many others here have had the same or very similar experience. We all were taught that guns were a tool and, like all tools, had to be handled seriously. They weren't toys (we had cap guns for that).

Nowadays, I think there are a variety of cultural input factors that are combining to give these folks the impression that grabbing a handgun (they're what the Virginia Tech shooter, Choi, used to kill 33 people, with a combination of a Glock 19 and a Walther P22) or a rifle (an Armalite-style rifle in .223 caliber, usually) and killing as many people as possible is an acceptable response to the pressures they're dealing with.

I think we're going to find, as well, that as with most of these shooters, Cruz left a bright trail of clues behind him as he made his way towards infamy and villainy. At any one point, if some intervention had occurred, there would have been no shooting.. That makes yesterday's event doubly tragic, in my opinion.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Just replying to the last post in the thread:

After Columbine, there were those who wanted to place the blame on Marylin Manson.

But "oh no-no-no, that's not it"

Then there were those that wanted to place the blame on video games.

"Oh no-no-no, that's not it"

When the blame turned to firearms: "Yes! That's it!"

The shooter in this most recent scenario wasn't some well adjusted youth who touched a firearm for the first time and suddenly went crazy.

A long series of events occurred that lead to his decision that this was the best way to resolve whatever was going on internally.

I think both "sides" of the gun control debate can agree that that is a problem.

Alcohol prohibition in the 1920's didn't do jack.

Heroin is illegal and my city is flooded with it.

It's not that "Americans" or gun owners don't care, it's just that a very large percentage of the population understands that banning a certain type or even all fire arms won't make the problem of violence go away.

So, everyone: How do we, as a society, set about helping youths who are in crisis before they act out?

My solution: Licensing parents before they are allowed to produce offspring. Children produced by unlicensed parents will become wards of the federal government.

"But wait - that won't work..."

See?

Brett

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"Du or Du not-there is no Tri" - Yoda

I have not said a single thing about constitutional rights, suggested bans, or anything of the sort.

I just pointed out that while you brag about being so smart and knowledgeable, and 'gave statistics demonstrating gun control does not work', you didn't even bother checking cause of death in the massacres listed. You wrongfully argued that the numbers of gun deaths were the same prior and after Port Arthur and I pointed out it's blatantly false.

My guess is that you're fully aware of that. You were just thinking no one would notice or know that the number of mass murders from guns actually decreased significantly post Port Arthur. It did drastically decrease numbers. It's not that hard to understand, especially with such a superior intellect...