Agree, I can't see how any wide scale gun confiscation would work.

While people like to toss around the term "Gun nuts" the reality is most gun owners are normal, rational, people who support keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys. The problem is the GOP politicians who cater to extremists.

That is hopeless.

The problem the US has is how to prevent, or at the very least lessen the frequency of mass shootings. Your answer is “well killing is illegal so let’s enforce the law”.

That is not preventative. If the mass shooter survives their shooting spree, prosecuting them doesn’t prevent the same thing happening again, and again, and again.

Looking at the US from the outside, the problem it has is simple. The right to own a gun is more highly valued than any interest in reducing the number of children who are shot. It’s that simple. I’ve no doubt that gun owners don’t want children to be shot in schools. But they prize their guns so much they are not prepared to take the necessary steps to de-arm the general population of the US.

None of this is difficult or complicated. It just takes a collective will that is entirely absent. And what should be concerning is this: the repetition of mass shootings is not shifting US public opinion in any meaningful way. That means the population is inured to these events. They have become a regrettable but acceptable price to pay for gun ownership.

Are you kidding about this?

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OK - with kids being murdered? Of course not and your a dick for implying that. Didn't take you long to resort to that, so have a good day.

Per CNN - "He was engaged by an Uvalde ISD police officer who works here at the school. And then after that, he was engaged by two other officers from the Uvalde Police Department,"

Why couldn't 3 officers stop him? If they did their job - zero kids killed.

If nothing changed after sandy hook nothing was ever going to change...so what happened yesterday or just last week in Buffalo (old news now) means nothing.

The fact is that there are millions of people that are fine with the slaughter of school children just so long as the children don't have to hear about our country's racist history or have the opportunity to read a book that has a gay rabbit in it.

Instead of doing something, the right is content with making the children bear the responsibility for their own safety, "active shooting drills."

Their answer is to turn schools into prisons and in their sick and twisted fucking minds they think that Tommy seeing a gay man is more painful to Tommy's little psyche than literally having to train at school to try to save his own life...while they see the news on how that doesn't fucking work anymore than hiding under our desks to fend off a nuke from the USSR.

Just more feeble excuses to carry on killing every day and every week.
I'll remind you of it at the inevitable next mass shooting.

The African American community was the target and victim of the Buffalo shooting.

The Mexican-American community appears to be disproportionately affected in the Texas shooting.

Sandy Hook victims were largely white, affluent, middle and upper class. The fact that nothing changed after *that* shooting made it clear that nothing will ever be done at the federal level on this issue. The country has already seen and experienced the worst it can imagine and yet, nothing is done.

Don’t expect an elementary school full of dead brown children to move the needle today. We simply don’t care.

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Unfortunately, it is looking like you are correct about all of this ...

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The US population also consumes 90%+ of the world's hydrocodone, even though we are only 350M out of a world population of close to 8B. The point of this is the US somehow has to be the extreme for a lot of strange stuff. Gun ownership and dependence on opioids being two of them.

I don't know what to do about these issues. On social media, I see a lot of people getting mad because the Texas shooter, and the Buffalo shooter, are touted as having mental illness. Yes, its hate in their blood but they have to have some kind of mental illness to push them to the point of taking this kind of drastic action. No sane, reasonable person would do this.

This also leads me to think, what has changed in our country over the years. Yes we own a lot of guns now but people, at least where I grew up, have always owned a lot of guns. Hell, we use to have hunting rifles on a gun rack in our truck in the school parking lot. Friends would have pistols in their glove compartment. And these cars were sitting in the school parking lot with everyone knowing these guns were there. Most were in plain sight if you simply look through the back window of several trucks there. But, despite plenty of fights, being mad at teachers, or pissed off at relationships, no one ever thought to go grab one of these guns and shoot up a classroom. Something has changed about the mental processing of our society, and I don't know how to explain it, but it's definitely contributing to a lot of our current issues.

How many of the recent mass shootings were perpetrated by "current" criminals, and how many were perpetrated by "law abiding citizens" (until they were no longer law abiding)?

"Current" criminals don't go into schools or supermarkets and kill large numbers of people, and it isn't because they're afraid of all the gun-toting law abiding citizens that might be there. They don't because it's not in their wheel houses. Take away guns from *all* law abiding citizens and these mass shootings don't happen.

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They think they are the good guys. And the good guys kill bad guys with guns. At least that's what the gun nuts tell me.

The only policy thing directly related to schools shootings and guns and parents I can offer up is something I got lambasted for saying in the past: apply the penalty to the parents the parents would have gotten if they were the ones that went into the school and shot it up instead.

If you own the gun, and your kid goes out and shoots up people.........you're on the hook for life in prison or the death penalty.

If they want the age in their state to buy guns so easy to be 18, OK. Keep the parental implications age at 21. You're not off the hook as a parent for that crap until they're 21. You don't like that or think that's super unfair, change the legal purchasing age to be higher.

The pushback I've gotten on this in the past is folks saying that a 16 y/o, 18 y/o, 20 y/o is a grown adult the second they murder and are deemed separate from the parents for that decision. I disagree. Keep the parents involved and on the hook and I'd bet this "troubled youth" nonsense would be reduced.

For specifically school shootings..........what's the average age of the murderers? I'd be curious.

My husband owns a couple guns primarily for protection as we live in the middle of the woods, and it would take LE at least 30-40 minutes to help us, let alone find us if we experienced a home invasion. It may seem unlikely but there is quite a bit of drug crime in these small rural towns in the Northeast of New England. I don't love guns. I don't even like them. But I believe responsible adults should be allowed to own them, especially when you feel a bit vulnerable.

Where I live, I could go down to the local gun shop and bring home a gun for myself quite easily. A quick background check only takes a few minutes. It's easy peasy. My husband was in and out with a gun (sig sauer) in probably less than 20 minutes over a year ago. I would prefer if I needed training, education and possibly a license before I was allowed to own a gun. At the moment, I'd probably accidentally shoot my foot off if I purchased a gun (ok just kidding, but not really). I would be all for taking a class, learning to shoot, having a shooting test, much like getting a drivers license. I realize this won't prevent all shootings but if it prevented one death, to me that is worth it. So if this 18 year old had to jump through a few hoops to get a license and buy a gun, would this have deterred him? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. I'm also for better and more comprehensive background checks, but that doesn't catch people with mental illness. But it may stop a few "bad people" which to me is also worth it.

Honestly I really don't see much happening to reduce mass shootings in our lifetime. We go through these discussions every time there is a mass shooting. Nothing changes. The NRA is too powerful. Half the Senate will never change. It's also a deeply imbedded cultural thing here in the US. Banning guns won't stop all shootings. It may stop some. I'm all for common sense gun control. Can we also work on the root cause? I wouldn't even know where to start with that. How does a person harbor such evil and hatred. Who is at fault for these gunmen?

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Removing guns won't work but restrictions on bullets with tracking who's buying could make a dent. An assault rifle without ammo isn't much of a gun

I think most people want this. Just standard procedures that make sense to own a deadly weapon. People understand the need to own a gun, especially for safety in their own home. People generally want background checks, license to own, safety classes, insurance, and ways to track guns. But for whatever reasons the GOP doesnt want this.

If people were unwilling to go through the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask during covid, they are not willing to go through minor inconveniences for gun control.

In other words keep our head in the sand and accept nothing will change. Nothing about what types of assault weapons are sold, enhanced background checks, etc.

Thanks for your enlightening post.

End the gun lobby is step 1. Until this is done nothing can be done. Because the gun lobby greases politicians left and right, to preserve the status quo.

I agree 1000% (no typo)

The GOP doesn't want to support gun control because this will cause outrage among their voter base and they will also loose $$ and support from the very powerful NRA. Like I said it's a deeply embedded cultural aspect of our society here in the US. Many other westernized countries believe gun ownership to be a privilege and not a right. Is it a coincidence that these countries have less gun violence?

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I have a request for you to do something. I would like you to sit in a comfortable spot and daydream for 5 minutes about a time, in just one or two years from now, when we will have gun laws that reduce the number of school shootings. Without worrying about exactly how it will happen, play a fantasy in your head that it exists.

I used to daydream in high school a lot about the world and my plans. It’s an enjoyable thing to do. I’ve been encouraging my own kids to daydream about the world and their futures because I think it makes neural pathways that we might use later. I think it might be the first step to accomplishing things.

I’m optimistic. There are more good people who want common sense gun laws than assholes who think dead kids is a fair price for a gun-saturated society. We’re not going to buy what they’re selling. So, envision what we want. And we will get there. We’ve reduced unhealthy consumer products before, like cigarettes. Where there’s a will, there is a way. ☀️

Just a hypothetical thought. If the NRA was having a convention with all their top brass and there was a mass shooting at the event, including top management.

Would they still do nothing. Easy answer, they would still do nothing as they still want all the money coming in.

I like this post!

I actually imagine peace in Ukraine when I go to bed every night. I don't pray since I lean towards being an atheist. But I wish for peace. I could do the same for gun violence in the US.

I do believe there are many good people in the world. However, I also feel like the "bad guys" have been winning lately here in the US and abroad.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I admire your optimism. I'm 45, and I remember a talk in high school about Yucca Mountain and the future of clean nuclear power. That was so exciting. I still think about the props the DOE speaker had showing how France handled their nuclear waste. And to this day we still haven't chosen to solve that problem.

My 9 year-old asked me about the shooting on the way to school this morning. When I told him, his response -- "ok." Even he can see that nothing will be done. There are times when I regret going into a profession that is heavily regulated and not so easy to find employment out of the country.

Maybe this love of guns will go the way of drunk driving. Remember when a to-go beer was the norm? I was in grad school when Texas finally banned open containers in cars. Drunk driving is now culturally unacceptable. Yes, people still do it, but it's not cool and we as a society agree on that.

Stop being a fucking tool. I didn’t imply that and you completely dodged the question. Stop looking for things that aren’t in my post.

Again:

ARE YOU OK WITH IT BEING LEGAL FOR A KID TO BUY GUNS ON HIS 18TH BIRTHDAY? A KID WHO SEEMED TO BE SOMEWHAT DISTURBED BASED ON HIS SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS?

You talked about compliance with the law. This kid was allowed to buy guns on his 18th birthday and without any form of background check. ARE YOU OK WITH THESE LAWS? Simple enough question.

The sadness is, it comes down to seflishness. And I don't say that with a judegmental tone, but an objective one.

Gun owenership and rights is rooted in selfishness. I want a gun. I want to protect me. I want to protect mine. And then lawmakers go along because I want votes.

There is a degree of selfishness to all that we debate and fight for. But gun ownership, the ability to possess a tool to use immediate lethal force, is the height of selfishness. Justifiable? That is the crux of the debate. To your point, I fully appreciate wanting protection when in remote areas. I fully appreciate wanting one in the backcountry with large animals. Even shooting as a hobby. Many rational arguments can be made.

I am not suggesting some fantastical solution where guns just disapear. Nor am I arguing that folks should not be allowed to legally and respsonsibly own guns. I am just noting that I can't see how our current culture reverses this mindset. Even when something like yesterday happens, half the country immediately thinks more about how to protect themselves.

I'm a little older than you, and I don't remember that. I distinctly remember drunk-driving being uncool in high school.