It was reported last night that the school had an armed security guard on site, and that it was a single secured entry facility, as are most public schools today. And now it's the site of one of the worst school shootings in our history.

You're right about it being a symptom of a cultural illness. But that illness runs through an ocean of readily available, high capacity, historically lethal weaponry, and this is what we should expect as a result. Because we're incapable of fixing the former, and unwilling to budge on the latter.

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

I don't know about the armed part, but the first victim identified was an assistant football coach and security guard at the school. The shooter took him under fire prior to entering the building.

It's obvious Cruz -- who knew the layout of the school as well as its various responses -- sought to kill those who'd likely have put up resistance, including any security people. He killed a number of people outside before going inside. Reports are also mixed, but some say the school office instituted a lockdown procedure and sounded the alarm. At the same time, Cruz may have pulled the fire alarms in the halls, hoping kids would stream out of their classrooms, at which point he would shoot them.

Finally, it appears he made his escape by throwing away his gear and weapons and mingling with evacuating students as they ran from the building, getting past the initial police cordon that had been emplaced. All of his actions indicate a high degree of planning and a desire to escape without losing his own life.

Now, would he have undertaken an attack on the school absent an ability to obtain his AR-style weapon? We don't know yet. I'm curious where it was he got the rifle, his magazines and the ammunition and other gear he brought with him.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Show me a single time I said gun control doesn’t work. I have used this argument multiple times in exactly the same manner I used it here. I have steadfastly stated that Australia shows us gun control does not reduce 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

Yup, I have been saying this for a while now. Call them the shooter, or whatever you will but don't name them, that is what they want.

Fuck these assholes.

Every time I see one of these shootings I am thankful that I live in a quiet suburb with little to no gun violence. Two murders in Whitby since I moved here in 2009.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

If the trail was so bright, how did they get permits to have guns? If the trail was so bright, why weren't their guns confiscated? The current gun control system is broken. But hey, let's just yell and scream you ain't takin my guns.

Here's the gun lobby's response to that.


He's either lying about the reason, or Flynn has a valid reason for not using limited resources to go after these denials. What do you think is the truth?

What do you think of a 30- or 60-day waiting period to buy a gun? If a gun purchaser wants to make the argument that the gun is needed immediately (e.g, for defense against an aggrieved spouse), provide a mechanism for police protection if the threat is deemed credible.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Ask the teachers in your city if they have all the resources they need to teach, then ask if they might have any use for that $250,000.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I think the gun lobby comment has some truth, but is exaggerated.

I would make it harder to buy a gun. I’m not sure waiting periods are the right answer. If I have 3 guns already, why would I have to wait 30 days for number 4?

But, I have advocated for a longer qualifying process for ownership. I have talked about having to go through the CCW process (or something like that) to get a permit before one can purchase any firearms. I also have no issue with more detailed background checks. There are a lot of procedures of which I would be in favor.

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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

My teacher wife and I agree on one thing for sure: when they start arming teachers, she's done as a teacher.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

That ought to do it. This sort of thing never happens in places where guns are allowed.

For the record, I don't think that "Gun free zones" work. Nor do I think they are "target areas". Both arguments are absurd.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Does that truth explain Flynn's reluctance to go after those 70,000 denials?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

My response would be, "where were the required interventions?" This is from a legal as well as psychological and social sense. There were most likely well-defined points along this gentleman's road to evil where someone or some agency was legally required to intervene and yet didn't do so.

This is the curmudgeon in me talking now, but where is the once-widely-enforced respect for authority, including adults, when it comes to kids' lives? I think we've taken the whole "I'm not my brother's keeper" thing way too far these days. The result? We end up with 19-year-old shooters like this who have managed to stumble through their formative years and late adolescence largely unsupervised and with no one to check their basest impulses.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Sigh. Someone remind me what the FBI is good for these days?



The FBI Was Warned About A School Shooting Threat From Nikolas Cruz In September
In September, a YouTube user named Nikolas Cruz left a comment on a video stating: "I'm going to be a professional school shooter." The video's creator alerted both the FBI and YouTube.
buzzfeed.com

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

i think that what some of these guys are saying is that a "responsible" gun owner means being accepting responsibility for more than just your own use of your own gun. it means recognizing and advocating for limitations on the right to own a firearm, and what kinds of firearms are sold.

there's a reason stephen paddock shot semi automatic rifles with bump stocks out his window in las vegas (and not a handgun). same reason why nikolas cruz brought the gun he brought to his old high school.

outlawing guns which have as their only use mass carnage; outlawing overlarge magazines; and the sales of guns at shows; are reasonable limits. if you don't want to feel under siege from those who feel that the restrictions on gun ownership should be much, much tighter even than this, then the responsible thing the community of responsible gun owners should do is band together with those who see things differently than you do and hash out compromises which will mean limits on gun rights.

alternatively, just say "fuck you" to those who don't see things as you do.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Too much talk of Rights in this thread and not enough talk of defensive use of firearms. A "Right" is an abstract thing, so as an argument isn't going to resonate with the opposition. Until it's a Right, they care about, that is.

What needs to be added to the conversation is the annual 500k to 3million "defensive use of firearms", each one an honest citizen protecting themselves. The spread of the #'s is because the various folks going after the statistic have a dog in the fight.

When I hear folks advocating more gun-laws, I hear folks advocating for a defenseless populace. Of course innocent deaths and injury due to easy access to firearms is a cost. But so is making those 500k to 3million folks defenseless.

Don't ask the guy going to practice his hobby at the range re. the "cost" of his hobby, ask the lady that defended herself with a handgun.

Also, when people go after firearm casualty statistics, they usually don't bother to notice how many of the deaths were innocent. Sure, it's callous, but who here applies the same measuring stick of tragedy to kids in a HS gunned down, to teenage gangbangers gunning each other down? Gun violence becomes an emotional issue when innocents get gunned down, but the #'s are almost all violent criminals and suicides. It's hard to be sympathetic to a violent criminal, and if I decided it was time to take my own life, I certainly wouldn't thank anyone trying to interfere with a decision I perceived to be pretty fundamentally "mine".

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

That is really unfortunate but are we really talking about one throwaway youtube comment (even assuming it's the same guy)? Spend half an hour on youtube or reddit, let alone 4chan and you could find 100 better leads for the FBI to chase.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

He was turned in by another viewer or user. I'd be curious to know what, if anything, happened after that. Whether a referral was made to local law enforcement, or if the FBI sent an agent around to visit and then file a field interview report or anything at all.

Somehow, we have other three-letter federal intelligence gathering agencies able to pick out the most obscure of details from millions and billions of cellular calls daily, and this fellow managed to skate through unchecked after basically saying he was going to be a school shooter. It's a little concerning, I have to say.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

much more likely for that lady to get killed by her husband's handgun.

the thing that is just incredulous to "us" is that the gun ownership community has created a cult-of-the-gun, and then is trying to tell us (as you are now) that the solution is for the rest of us to join your community, rather than accept any responsibility to rein in the excesses of your community.

were it up to me i'd rather repeal the 2nd amendment than have the situation be as it now is. but i'd be willing to negotiate a compromise. while you can't see it now, there will eventually be a pendulum swing. you're going to eventually lose all your gun ownership rights altogether. there's going to be a #nomore. it'll show up on your doorstep one day and you'll lose it all with breathtaking speed.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I'm not against anything you are saying here. Probably all rights have costs, so I'm not against contemplating them. I'm also not against some tweaks in the gun laws to try and avoid these school shootings.

At the same time, this is the lowest personal cost we've ever had with respect to the 2A in our country's history. It seems counterintuitive to give up what we've always regarded as an important civil right when the cost of that civil right is at its lowest.

For the record, I don't think that "Gun free zones" work. Nor do I think they are "target areas". Both arguments are absurd.


Brian,

Nothing will work on the short to mid-term because the U.S. is too far gone with this. Forget the (somewhat wrongful) interpretation of the constitution - the gun culture is VERY deeply ingrained. I see that.

As a Canadian I struggled for a long time to try and understand it all. A few years ago I arrived at the following philosophical position to put some frame-work to it:

Many Americans (a majority?), honestly and deeply feel that a safer society is a society where more people have more guns. Reasons: 1) If I was going to violently attack someone somehow, I would be crazy to do that knowing that the other person might have a gun on them. 2) That the Good-Gun owners will somehow come to the defense, somehow of society. On the SURFACE, I can see this makes SOME sense. However, the U.S is paying a HUGE price in lost lives for this position with a total number of guns deaths that is proportional off-the-charts compared to all other western democratic counties.

In all those other western democratic countries, we feel that simply having less guns leads to a safer society with less gun deaths. And the numbers do bear this out.

Are there shootings, gun deaths etc . . in Canada (most often with illegal firearms from the U.S.!!), Europe and elsewhere - yes there is, but they are extremely rare! The U.S. has had what are now termed and considered a "mass-shooting" incident, 18 times already this year!!

Again, as hard as it is, forget the constitution, until the U.S. decides that it REALLY wants to decrease gun deaths - this will go on. It will take MASSIVE cultural and societal shifts in attitudes to do that, and that sort of thing only comes from multi-generational time lines - in other words a VERY long time.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

But for now..

I have stopped arguing for tougher gun laws. Nothing the US can do will stop this sort of thing. JSA rightly points out that they aren't willing to enforce the laws that are on the books already. Tougher laws will just be further ignored.

They are fucked.

And I am glad I live here.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

The US is not even remotely close to Switzerland for a multitude of reasons; homogeneity being perhaps the most important.

There are other major differences between the US and comparator, not least of which is access to mental health support and without venturing in to the socialised medicine debate that will have some impact on capturing SOME of those likely to do this slightly earlier.

As a parent i would never want my child in a school with any adult who is armed simply because the presumption would be that those adults are less susceptible to mental health issues than the general population but that is materially not the case so sending your kid to a school where a teacher is every bit as likely to go all falling down as anyone else is ridiculous

You need to check the source of those numbers and compare that to more accurate sources. For instance, this.

Here's one thing to consider when talking about those honest citizens: "In 2014, the FBI reports there were only 224 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm. That same year, there were 7,670 criminal gun homicides. Guns were used in 34 criminal homicides for every justifiable homicide."

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"Go yell at an M&M"

But the right won't budge one little bit when it comes to ANY kind of gun control at all. The lack of any action taken after Sandy Hook drove this point home. As one astute observer said:

"Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."