Can we talk about the mass shootings in America?

[rodheadlee]

So what is the root causes of these mass shootings?

1) Easy gun access 

2)Single family home 

3)Information overload at too young of an age

4)Lack of God in family life 

5)Lack of God in public life 

6)Violent TV and video games available to youngsters 

Comments?

[bluebell]

I don't want to talk about it; it's still so heartbreaking to even think about this latest one in Texas.  But talking about it might be helpful. 

I have no idea what the root cause is, but we are obviously broken.

I don't think it is easy gun access, because other countries with easy gun access do not have the same level of gun violence that we do.  So it's probably something (or many things) in our current culture that makes getting a gun and shooting a lot of innocent people sound like a great idea. 

But, though easy gun access might not be the root cause of people wanting to kill and maim as many people as possible, easy gun access does make it easier for people to live out these sick fantasies.

[Pyreaux]

Hmmm... those are all kind of populist left thoughts, so for me to offer ideas outside of the box here, I'll come in from the right.

There are no school shooting in India, all the teachers there are armed. In fact, there hasn't been a single mass public shooting in any school that allows teachers and staff to carry guns legally. There have been no hijackings of Israeli planes in recent years with armed sky marshals.

It seems mass shooters and hijackers are cowards. So as odd as it sounds, playing the devil's advocate as far as evil guns are concerned; the solution is we need more of this necessary evil, we need more guns, more legally armed citizens and we need less restrictions on guns for legal citizens, less restrictions as far as ownership and carrying in public are concerned, not necessarily less restrictions on things like background checks, locks and storage of guns, etc so that gun do not fall in the hands of children and criminals.* [* edited for clarity]

There are multiple angles to come at this issue.

As far as the correlation between mass shooters and violent games; violent media does tend to desensitize people to violence and the military has been taking advantage of this to help develop games and recruit kids for years. However, its almost impossible to know whether violent games cause people to become violent or whether violent people simply enjoy violent games. If the problem is that we glorify simulated war in games, we would have to ban sports too, as those are also simulations of war.

Edited May 26, 2022 by Pyreaux

[Robert F. Smith]

22 minutes ago, bluebell said:

........................But, though easy gun access might not be the root cause of people wanting to kill and maim as many people as possible, easy gun access does make it easier for people to live out these sick fantasies.

We have also made schools with small children gun-free zones with little to no security.  Same for our churches.

Govt bldgs, on the other hand, generally have strict search-screens to prevent entry of people who are armed.  Why is it that we do not value the children enough to make their learning experience secure?  Why is that crazy people choose to go to gun-free zones, such as schools and churches?  Seems like a no-brainer.  Why are our teachers and school administrators so uninterested in doing something intelligent for a change?

[Robert F. Smith]

4 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

.................., not background checks, locks and storage of guns................

Those who have been in the military and in law enforcement know just the opposite:  We need disciplined and trained gun-owners, not lackadaisical libertarians who have no sense of responsibility.  Rights = responsibility.

[Pyreaux]

4 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Those who have been in the military and in law enforcement know just the opposite:  We need disciplined and trained gun-owners, not lackadaisical libertarians who have no sense of responsibility.  Rights = responsibility.

Sorry, I meant the opposite than it appears there, let me rephrased that, I meant lets keep regulations that reduce the chance legal guns fall in the hands of children and criminals.

*Edited the post*

[bluebell]

12 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

We have also made schools with small children gun-free zones with little to no security.  Same for our churches.

Govt bldgs, on the other hand, generally have strict search-screens to prevent entry of people who are armed.  Why is it that we do not value the children enough to make their learning experience secure?  Why is that crazy people choose to go to gun-free zones, such as schools and churches?  Seems like a no-brainer.  Why are our teachers and school administrators so uninterested in doing something intelligent for a change?

I agree that gun free zones are a joke.  And I do think that we should probably have more security at our schools, at least until we can get a handle on this kind of stuff and lessen it happening.  

But I don't think that arming teachers is the answer.  As the meme says, if we don't even trust our teachers right now to pick library books, why would we trust them with a gun?

And lastly, if this were an easy problem to solve and all it took was some intelligence, I think we would have solved it already.  It's a problem because we don't really know what is causing it, so we don't really know how to stop it.  It's probably a combination of a lot of different things and with so many options on the table, there are an equal number of options for resolution--and in our current broken political climate that means a lot of fighting and very little of doing anything.

[strappinglad]

Do not , I repeat , DO NOT , start giving guns to the untrained. How many times have there been police involved shootings( and police are trained regularly) where dozens of shots were fired at the perp and most missed. Adrenalin takes over in high stress situations. 

By all means harden access to the building.

[Pyreaux]

It wouldn't have to be used, apparently the mere knowledge of an armed school staffer is enough to prevent a school shooting from happening in the first place. As we find in every school that has such a thing.

Edited May 27, 2022 by Pyreaux

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

We have also made schools with small children gun-free zones with little to no security.  Same for our churches.

Govt bldgs, on the other hand, generally have strict search-screens to prevent entry of people who are armed.  Why is it that we do not value the children enough to make their learning experience secure?  Why is that crazy people choose to go to gun-free zones, such as schools and churches?  Seems like a no-brainer.  Why are our teachers and school administrators so uninterested in doing something intelligent for a change?

Because we don’t want our schools to turn into the equivalent of day prisons. More than they already are anyways.

1 hour ago, Pyreaux said:

It seems mass shooters and hijackers are cowards. So as odd as it sounds, playing the devil's advocate as far as evil guns are concerned; the solution is we need more of this necessary evil, we need more guns, more legally armed citizens and we need less restrictions on guns for legal citizens, less restrictions as far as ownership and carrying in public are concerned, not necessarily less restrictions on things like background checks, locks and storage of guns, etc so that gun do not fall in the hands of children and criminals.* [* edited for clarity]

This shooting suggests that this is not the problem. This should have been the ideal situation to prove it. From what I have read so far the culprit was fleeing police and fled into the school. So the “good guys with guns” were already on the scene. They didn’t stop it. From reports they withdrew to regroup. One would think active shooter in school would be the stuff hero moments are made of. People eviscerated the security guard at Sandy Hook for not charging in but we had three police officers on scene with more on the way and they didn’t do anything. I am hoping there will be reports on why they did nothing but I am not holding my breath. We will just be told they need more money again and maybe another APC.

This also makes me question why we are giving the police all this quasi-military gear if they are not willing to step up when the situation gets dangerous. If you can only use your tacticool gear to intimidate protestors and to take out unarmed civilians maybe you shouldn’t have it. 

 

Third worst school shooting in US history occurs in out state and our governor points out it “could have been worse”. We are told not to politicize this tragedy or suggest any knee jerk changes as Texas government was hard at work in the last year slashing requirements for gun ownership and carrying.

 

[The Nehor]

This is the best take I have seen:

https://www.theonion.com

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Why is it that we do not value the children enough to make their learning experience secure? 

I highly doubt it is a value issue instead of having additional needs that are seen important and more likely to occur if surrounded by guns on a daily basis as opposed to the very low statistic of being shot in a mass shooting at school. And that is the ones making the rules are more focused on letting children be able to be children without adult cares and not have guns as part of their reality.  Part of protecting children is protecting them from harsh realities, from fear. You don’t tell your kids you are worried about having money to cover the mortgage, for example.

School is thought, I am guessing, to be seen as a safer place if children don’t see and therefore won’t think about guns while in school. 

However, my guess is with the mass of news surrounding kids these days, the above is an unrealistic dream and kids will feel safer with armed security people around. I am not sure about having teachers armed, but if our country has allowed the proliferation of guns so they are easy to get, we need to live with the consequences and pay for greater security measures in school. 

I’d ask my sister, the grade 5 teacher, what she thinks about allowing guns in school for security measures, but she probably is too freaked right now and needs to have space from the tragedy when at home. (She was obsessive about cleaning and Covid masks because she couldn’t bear thinking she might pass in Covid to a child or another teacher, who then suffered from a bad case, little fear for herself.) 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Pyreaux said:

If the problem is that we glorify simulated war in games, we would have to ban sports too, as those are also simulations of war.

And movies and the rest of the visual arts. 

[Tacenda]

Raise the age limit on purchasing AR 15 weapons first off. I'd love them to be banned, but we live in America. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/25/chris-murphy/fact-checking-chris-murphy-ages-mass-shooters/

[Tacenda]

This would be good for communities to try to do. 

ATTENTION ALL TEACHERS AND PARENTS

This is an article that needs to be repeated:
Every Friday afternoon Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.

And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.

Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
Who doesn’t even know who to request?
Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
Who had a million friends last week and none this week?

You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down- right away- who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.

As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children – I think that this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold – the gold being those little ones who need a little help – who need adults to step in and TEACH them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot – and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said – the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.

As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea – I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said.
Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine.

Good Lord.

This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that ALL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH DISCONNECTION. All outward violence begins as inner loneliness. She watched that tragedy KNOWING that children who aren’t being noticed will eventually resort to being noticed by any means necessary.

And so she decided to start fighting violence early and often, and with the world within her reach. What Chase’s teacher is doing when she sits in her empty classroom studying those lists written with shaky 11 year old hands - is SAVING LIVES. I am convinced of it. She is saving lives.

And what this mathematician has learned while using this system is something she really already knew: that everything – even love, even belonging – has a pattern to it. And she finds those patterns through those lists – she breaks the codes of disconnection. And then she gets lonely kids the help they need. It’s math to her. It’s MATH.

All is love- even math. Amazing.

Chase’s teacher retires this year – after decades of saving lives. What a way to spend a life: looking for patterns of love and loneliness. Stepping in, every single day- and altering the trajectory of our world.

TEACH ON, WARRIORS. You are the first responders, the front line, the disconnection detectives, and the best and ONLY hope we’ve got for a better world. What you do in those classrooms when no one is watching- it’s our best hope.copied for hope to save more Children

 

 

[Tacenda]

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

I agree that gun free zones are a joke.  And I do think that we should probably have more security at our schools, at least until we can get a handle on this kind of stuff and lessen it happening.  

But I don't think that arming teachers is the answer.  As the meme says, if we don't even trust our teachers right now to pick library books, why would we trust them with a gun?

Correct.  Mutual trust in America is at an all time low. 

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

And lastly, if this were an easy problem to solve and all it took was some intelligence, I think we would have solved it already.  It's a problem because we don't really know what is causing it, so we don't really know how to stop it.  It's probably a combination of a lot of different things and with so many options on the table, there are an equal number of options for resolution--and in our current broken political climate that means a lot of fighting and very little of doing anything.

Our courts do not have shootings inside for a simple reason:  They have adequate security.  Judges just don't like their courtrooms filled with armed citizens.  Why is the concept so hard to deal with?  Uvalde Elementary had an open door (easy access), and the police who responded did what they usually do (they waited around for an hour while children and teachers were bleeding to death), and that has all happened before.  This problem is not new.  Criminals and crazy people love gun-free zones.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Because we don’t want our schools to turn into the equivalent of day prisons. More than they already are anyways.

So our populace would prefer these mass shootings to having the kind of adequate security we have in our courthouses?  Really.  So, you would prefer no TSA at airports?  Even with TSA we still have plenty of unarmed donnybrooks in planes and airports.  At least they are unarmed encounters.

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

This shooting suggests that this is not the problem. This should have been the ideal situation to prove it. From what I have read so far the culprit was fleeing police and fled into the school. So the “good guys with guns” were already on the scene. They didn’t stop it. From reports they withdrew to regroup. One would think active shooter in school would be the stuff hero moments are made of. People eviscerated the security guard at Sandy Hook for not charging in but we had three police officers on scene with more on the way and they didn’t do anything. I am hoping there will be reports on why they did nothing but I am not holding my breath. We will just be told they need more money again and maybe another APC.

This also makes me question why we are giving the police all this quasi-military gear if they are not willing to step up when the situation gets dangerous. If you can only use your tacticool gear to intimidate protestors and to take out unarmed civilians maybe you shouldn’t have it. 

 

Third worst school shooting in US history occurs in out state and our governor points out it “could have been worse”. We are told not to politicize this tragedy or suggest any knee jerk changes as Texas government was hard at work in the last year slashing requirements for gun ownership and carrying.

So we are going to continue to pretend that things will get better by not doing anything?  Govt by fantasy.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

I highly doubt it is a value issue instead of having additional needs that are seen important and more likely to occur if surrounded by guns on a daily basis as opposed to the very low statistic of being shot in a mass shooting at school. And that is the ones making the rules are more focused on letting children be able to be children without adult cares and not have guns as part of their reality.  Part of protecting children is protecting them from harsh realities, from fear. You don’t tell your kids you are worried about having money to cover the mortgage, for example.

School is thought, I am guessing, to be seen as a safer place if children don’t see and therefore won’t think about guns while in school. 

Yes, a mass shooting at school is quite rare, like winning the lottery.  So, don't worry, be happy.  Many will just pretend, as they have been doing.  The harsh reality of frequent youth suicide should have told us that the fantasy was gone.

2 hours ago, Calm said:

However, my guess is with the mass of news surrounding kids these days, the above is an unrealistic dream and kids will feel safer with armed security people around. I am not sure about having teachers armed, but if our country has allowed the proliferation of guns so they are easy to get, we need to live with the consequences and pay for greater security measures in school. .....................

Exactly.  There was a time in America in which this was not necessary.  I can still remember it well.  Then bad things began to happen, and terror became almost normal -- or at least seemed so.

[strappinglad]

There is a question about the slow response of officers in this shooting. I must remind myself that there were about 600 people in that school and if police had gone in guns blazing who knows the outcome. The headlines could have read " 26 children killed by stray bullets in shoot-out . " 

Edited May 27, 2022 by strappinglad

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

So our populace would prefer these mass shootings to having the kind of adequate security we have in our courthouses?  Really.  So, you would prefer no TSA at airports?  Even with TSA we still have plenty of unarmed donnybrooks in planes and airports.  At least they are unarmed encounters.

Don’t get me started on TSA.

Children shouldn’t have to endure having their backpacks scanned to get into school. We need to start hitting the roots of these problems instead of focusing on mitigation. Everyone talks about how a school is a soft target so we need to harden it. The thing is we aren’t in a war zone. Why are we okay with a bunker mentality?

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

So we are going to continue to pretend that things will get better by not doing anything?  Govt by fantasy.

We could try more restrictions on weapon sales and weapons that serve little purpose beyond killing a lot of people.

[rodheadlee]

7 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Don’t get me started 

We could try more restrictions on weapon sales and weapons that serve little purpose beyond killing a lot of people.

That is not going to work by itself. You still need hardened security at all the schools. People are not going to give up their semi-automatic rifles. You can call them assault weapons but they're just semi-automatic rifles. Tighten up security first then work on the law.

[The Nehor]

16 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

There is a question about the slow response of officers in this shooting. I must remind myself that there were about 600 people in that school and if police had gone in guns blazing who knows the outcome. The headlines could have read " 26 children killed by stray bullets in shoot-out . " 

It might have caused more deaths. It might have saved more lives. I am just tired of police departments becoming bigger and bigger revenue hogs to buy ridiculous impractical equipment for policing and then when things get ugly it is shown to be useless.

Uvalde had gotten money for training and to harden the school. There were measures like locking classroom doors and a perimeter fence in play.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/us/mass-shooting-school-security.html

They didn’t work. It took almost an hour for law enforcement to move in. Families had time to arrive and plead with officers to move in.

I am sometimes glad I don’t have kids. One of my friends is worried. Her son reassured her that that they had been trained for this. We have to give our kids training for shooters now?

[The Nehor]

5 minutes ago, rodheadlee said:

That is not going to work by itself. You still need hardened security at all the schools. People are not going to give up their semi-automatic rifles. You can call them assault weapons but they're just semi-automatic rifles. Tighten up security first then work on the law.

We can do two things at once. Hell, we can do more than two. We can also massively expand mental health resources to try to prevent this from happening. We could require psychological screenings to own weapons. We could do all kinds of things. We won’t because our weapons are more sacred to us.

The other thing is WE HAVE been tightening security at schools for years. They have drills. They run scenarios. It is not helping. This school did have tightened security. Guess we have to tighten it more?

[The Nehor]

Oh look, we must have hit a time warp back into the 90s.

Are we going to talk about the dangers of Dungeons & Dragons again too?