The American mass shooting thread

[a_chap]

let's put djt in the same position and then see what he does

What's The Hairy Cornflake got to do with it

 

[Johnny Vodka]

let's put djt in the same position and then see what he does

Would have solved at least one problem.

Fucking nuts though that a citizen can easily be more heavily armed than the cops.

 

[Pickman's model]

Would have solved at least one problem.

Fucking nuts though that a citizen can easily be more heavily armed than the cops.

in america, with the cops they've got, i'm not sure there's anything really wrong with that as such.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

let's put djt in the same position and then see what he does

38 vs. AR-15. My money is on the AR-15.

 

[Pickman's model]

38 vs. AR-15. My money is on the AR-15.

there'd be some moments of pitiable 'don't do it' from djt before a single shot silences him

 

[Pickman's model]

38 vs. AR-15. My money is on the AR-15.

anyway it's fake news he's 38, it'd be 71 v ar15

 

[Johnny Vodka]

in america, with the cops they've got, i'm not sure there's anything really wrong with that as such.

Fair enough, but no-one should be surprised if one man with a pistol doesn't go up against another with an assault rifle.

 

[Pickman's model]

Fair enough, but no-one should be surprised if one man with a pistol doesn't go up against another with an assault rifle.

i'm not surprised in the slightest, i'm just disappointed it wasn't the man i'd have liked it to be

 

[not-bono-ever]

speaking with the boy tonight about the school shootings- he asked if the shooters were all pupils/ ex pupils, then they would have a better idea of how to get in, where to go and what the alarm / shooter procedures would be - more so than the the cops. sorta make sense.

 

[Yossarian]

Trump being as un-presidential as it's possible to be.

Again

Trump suggests Florida officer a 'coward'

Trump has spent so much time blabbering about armed teachers over the last couple of days that they've taken on mythical proportions inside his head - they're the most expert marksmen around, tougher than cops, and capable of stopping school shootings before they begin.

At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Nikolas Cruz pulled a fire alarm then opened fire with an AR-15 at people leaving classrooms - in Trumpworld, an armed teacher would have put a bullet in his brain by the time the alarm had started ringing.

“Well-trained, gun-adept teachers and coaches should be able to carry concealed firearms,” Trump said. “A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened.”

Midterm campaign Trump debuts at CPAC

 

[xenon]

Yeah, is anyone apart from Trump and the NRA seriously talking about arming teachers in the US?

I mean if it's being debated, the arming teachers as a solution... Well, you might just perhaps, maybe dare I suggest, have gone completely round the fucking bend.

 

[CRI]

Good work!

 

[a_chap]

 

[Archimage]

I was thinking that gun control will amount to nothing as always, so what is the solution? Of course arming teachers is a very bad idea, so what can be done?
I know in Los Angeles, it's more like a prison than a school in some areas. Metal detectors, barbed wire around the school area and what not. I wouldn't want that either, but it's an option I suppose. Anyways, does anyone have a workable solution?

 

[Nylock]

As a teacher (admittedly UK) I find the idea of delivering a class with a sidearm on my hip horrifying....

 

[fishfinger]

As a teacher (admittedly UK) I find the idea of delivering a class with a sidearm on my hip horrifying....

"Pick up the pencil, go on, pick it up..."

 

[Nylock]

'liked' but for black humour only

 

[october_lost]

If armed teachers went on strike, would that lead to a military stand-off?

 

[CRI]

I was thinking that gun control will amount to nothing as always, so what is the solution? Of course arming teachers is a very bad idea, so what can be done?
I know in Los Angeles, it's more like a prison than a school in some areas. Metal detectors, barbed wire around the school area and what not. I wouldn't want that either, but it's an option I suppose. Anyways, does anyone have a workable solution?

I caught sight of something, but I didn't save it at the time so would have to look, about how since the Columbine shootings, security measures have been stepped up, including armed guards in schools. However, this has happened more frequently in areas with a high population of Black and brown students, not typically the types of schools targeted by shooters. Also, there was a chart showing in the past 20 years, this has lead to students being arrested where previously, the would have got detention or suspension for the same violations. And, when broken down by ethnicity, guess who's most likely to be arrested?

I think it has to be a multi-pronged approach. What the young people are doing in their campaign to boycott firms working with the NRA is an important strand. In my day, the NRA was more concerned with teaching people to use guns safely. Now their purpose seems to be increasing gun sales, bankrolling right wing causes and politicians and accepting bungs of cash from outside the US to wreck American democracy. They need to be shunned for what they have become.

Also, remove the protection against liability for gun manufacturers and sellers. Bankrupt them with class action suits. Make it economically unfeasible for them to continue their trade. It's made a massive impact on the tobacco industry, so why not guns?

The second amendment is about the right to bear arms, but it doesn't say the purchase or use can't be licensed or taxed. Rack up both to at least 5 figures for each weapon. Sure, the rich will still be able to indulge their hobby, but it will remove plenty from circulation. If those out there already are subject to a fat license fee - say $5000 a year, how many ordinary folks can pay that. There could be exemptions, like there is in the UK, for people who have a legitimate reason to own and use a gun. But include restrictions on that - training, safe storage, limiting the type of guns they can have, etc.

Yes, there will still be illegal guns in circulation, but fewer and fewer of them. Yes, there will be sovereign citizen and militia types kicking off about it, but they have done that before even with lax gun laws.

I think it needs to be a radical, if incremental change. Turning more people against "guns don't kill people, people do" and "well, there's nothing you can do about it," or all the other empty platitudes is a start. Isolating and deservedly demonising the NRA is also a start.

 

[YouSir]

I caught sight of something, but I didn't save it at the time so would have to look, about how since the Columbine shootings, security measures have been stepped up, including armed guards in schools. However, this has happened more frequently in areas with a high population of Black and brown students, not typically the types of schools targeted by shooters. Also, there was a chart showing in the past 20 years, this has lead to students being arrested where previously, the would have got detention or suspension for the same violations. And, when broken down by ethnicity, guess who's most likely to be arrested?

I think it has to be a multi-pronged approach. What the young people are doing in their campaign to boycott firms working with the NRA is an important strand. In my day, the NRA was more concerned with teaching people to use guns safely. Now their purpose seems to be increasing gun sales, bankrolling right wing causes and politicians and accepting bungs of cash from outside the US to wreck American democracy. They need to be shunned for what they have become.

Also, remove the protection against liability for gun manufacturers and sellers. Bankrupt them with class action suits. Make it economically unfeasible for them to continue their trade. It's made a massive impact on the tobacco industry, so why not guns?

The second amendment is about the right to bear arms, but it doesn't say the purchase or use can't be licensed or taxed. Rack up both to at least 5 figures for each weapon. Sure, the rich will still be able to indulge their hobby, but it will remove plenty from circulation. If those out there already are subject to a fat license fee - say $5000 a year, how many ordinary folks can pay that. There could be exemptions, like there is in the UK, for people who have a legitimate reason to own and use a gun. But include restrictions on that - training, safe storage, limiting the type of guns they can have, etc.

Yes, there will still be illegal guns in circulation, but fewer and fewer of them. Yes, there will be sovereign citizen and militia types kicking off about it, but they have done that before even with lax gun laws.

I think it needs to be a radical, if incremental change. Turning more people against "guns don't kill people, people do" and "well, there's nothing you can do about it," or all the other empty platitudes is a start. Isolating and deservedly demonising the NRA is also a start.

I'm not sure how, in a country where at any given time half the people consider themselves to be in a culture war, limiting gun ownership to the wealthy would be any help at all. It's hard to imagine any other single measure more likely to stir up conspiracy theorists, righteous indignation and resistance. Not to mention the implication that would be read into such a measure that rich people, by dint of being able to pay, are inherently more responsible, able or moral in their gun ownership. Imagine any gun control advocating campaigner or politician trying to introduce that one to the public, then imagine the confirming narrative Fox and the firearm industry would create around it. It'd hit the left too, not just the traditional pro gun faction, given that it'd be an overt segregation of rights along the lines of wealth. On top of that it wouldn't actually take any guns out of circulation, unless you want bailiffs going door to door repossessing firearms from people who don't have $5k to hand, people would just ignore it and I doubt any LEA would want to take up the duty of stopping them. Expands the black market too.

So yeah, terrible idea.

 

[CRI]

I'm not sure how, in a country where at any given time half the people consider themselves to be in a culture war, limiting gun ownership to the wealthy would be any help at all. It's hard to imagine any other single measure more likely to stir up conspiracy theorists, righteous indignation and resistance. Not to mention the implication that would be read into such a measure that rich people, by dint of being able to pay, are inherently more responsible, able or moral in their gun ownership. Imagine any gun control advocating campaigner or politician trying to introduce that one to the public, then imagine the confirming narrative Fox and the firearm industry would create around it. It'd hit the left too, not just the traditional pro gun faction, given that it'd be an overt segregation of rights along the lines of wealth. On top of that it wouldn't actually take any guns out of circulation, unless you want bailiffs going door to door repossessing firearms from people who don't have $5k to hand, people would just ignore it and I doubt any LEA would want to take up the duty of stopping them. Expands the black market too.

So yeah, terrible idea.

If you read my post, making it too costly for most people to own guns without a legitimate reason for having them is only ONE of the strands. Making gratuitous gun ownership socially and morally unacceptable will be what shifts the culture, like it did with smoking, like it did with slavery. And no, before you say it, smoking hasn't stopped altogether, and the legacy of slavery is still very present in the US partly because the abolitionists lost their bottle after the 13th amendment, like the suffragists after the 20th.

What's your solution then, or do you care, as America is far away?

 

[YouSir]

If you read my post, making it too costly for most people to own guns without a legitimate reason for having them is only ONE of the strands. Making gratuitous gun ownership socially and morally unacceptable will be what shifts the culture, like it did with smoking, like it did with slavery. And no, before you say it, smoking hasn't stopped altogether, and the legacy of slavery is still very present in the US partly because the abolitionists lost their bottle after the 13th amendment, like the suffragists after the 20th.

What's your solution then, or do you care, as America is far away?

It's the strand I picked up on, because it's a stupid one. Well done on trying to guess what I was going to say though, even if you were wrong.

I agree, making it socially and culturally unacceptable is the way to go, in the meantime I think the small, practical gains pushed for by anti-gun lobbyists are the best that can be done. Selective bans on certain firearms and accessories, improved background checks, safety courses, storage requirements etc.

In the long run though I think the change will come from beyond both sides in the discussion. The gun culture in the US is tied in to a dozen other historical identities and cultural myths - the necessity of violent individualism, the imminence of cultural/racial conflict, the reticence towards communal responsibility towards personal safety, notions of strength and masculinity. It's the groups which are trying to deconstruct those and implement change in the society who're going to undermine the imagined necessity for a personal arsenal to the point where no excuse for having one will seem particularly convincing any more. Unfortunately I think that'll take generations, not years, to come about - although the kids speaking out recently are definitely cause for optimism.

You can drop the suggestion that I don't care too, even if it it is your nature to scatter gun attacks based on who you imagine you're talking to.

 

[existentialist]

I think that the culture of the gun is so embedded - and celebrated - in American culture in general that the only thing likely to get rid of it is something cataclysmic. We've already seen that killing young children isn't cataclysmic enough, nor is the ending of the lives of 17 young adults in Florida. The Las Vegas shooting incident wasn't cataclysmic enough, either...and if those things aren't going to do it, then I struggle to imagine what kind of event would have to occur where sufficient individual Americans were able to get together and say "enough". I don't know what "sufficient" would need to be, given how many even quite moderate Americans regard their right to hold guns as completely inviolable.

The only other kind of "cataclysm" I can think of is a generational shift - that so many younger people grow up with a hatred of their country's gun culture that they opt out of gun ownership, the culture that says guns solve all of life's problems, Made America Great, etc., yada, and gun ownership ages out of the population. But that'd take two or three generations to reach the point where enough of the population was out of the gun thing to be able to say to the remainder "Right, we're taking your guns. No arguments."

What would have to happen to start that process off, I have no idea, if these repeated shootings aren't doing it.

 

[YouSir]

I think that the culture of the gun is so embedded - and celebrated - in American culture in general that the only thing likely to get rid of it is something cataclysmic. We've already seen that killing young children isn't cataclysmic enough, nor is the ending of the lives of 17 young adults in Florida. The Las Vegas shooting incident wasn't cataclysmic enough, either...and if those things aren't going to do it, then I struggle to imagine what kind of event would have to occur where sufficient individual Americans were able to get together and say "enough". I don't know what "sufficient" would need to be, given how many even quite moderate Americans regard their right to hold guns as completely inviolable.

The only other kind of "cataclysm" I can think of is a generational shift - that so many younger people grow up with a hatred of their country's gun culture that they opt out of gun ownership, the culture that says guns solve all of life's problems, Made America Great, etc., yada, and gun ownership ages out of the population. But that'd take two or three generations to reach the point where enough of the population was out of the gun thing to be able to say to the remainder "Right, we're taking your guns. No arguments."

What would have to happen to start that process off, I have no idea, if these repeated shootings aren't doing it.

I think the process is already an ongoing one. It's a bit tangential but look at the removal of Confederate statues, not a big thing by any means but it was a moment of self-reflection on the countries history and what it really meant/led to. More stuff like that will erode the perceived justifications for gun ownership by deconstructing the culture that encourages it. Same goes for Black Lives Matter or the minor resurgence of Democratic Socialism in the US - both are manifestations of a willingness to question and break down the founding myths and identities of the culture.

As you say though, takes generations and there's no guaranteeing that the pendulum won't swing the other way, in fact it almost certainly will in some parts where the prospect of honest self-reflection is an attack in itself.

 

[CRI]

True, at the moment, things look generally to be going down the shitter, but I still have hope that it won't. I don't think with gun control, or any other issue, there is one silver bullet solution. Radical but incremental and multi pronged.

Reform stands the best chance of success though if the GOP are kicked into touch, forever. And, they're using every dirty trick they can muster to prevent that. So.

 

[CRI]

Soz - could only find this on Twitter.

 

[spring-peeper]

 

[dylanredefined]

Fair enough, but no-one should be surprised if one man with a pistol doesn't go up against another with an assault rifle.

That is what he was paid to do though. At the first sign of opposition mass shooters tend to flee or top them selves. Mans a coward.

 

[likesfish]

actually allowing school staff who are prepared to carry a pistol is insane but if you're not going to stop mad people from getting guns and the cops will only turn up after the shootings finished.
Its stupid but nobody's got a more workable idea
Trump's one piece of gun-related legislation undid restrictions aimed at mental illness - CNNPolitics
The House Passes a Gun Measure Supported by the ACLU and Mental Health Advocates. Media Hysteria Ensues.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/progressive-gun-:facepalm:

 

[Pickman's model]

What they should do is have watch towers at schools with snipers in, just waiting for someone to try it on #workforexsof