Mass Shootings in America

[nafod]

Benny,

I asked for reputable evidence. You gave no links, so I decided to investigate your first claim:

Bram, they win the moment you give them enough credence to investigate their batshit crazy claims. They will throw an endless shitstorm of unrelated bullshit at you, in an effort to overwhelm your senses. None of it is sensible, it in no way forms a coherent narrative that can possibly explain events better than the obvious one, that angry youth with mental problems have too easy access to weapons specifically designed to be used to directly assault other troops in warzones.

[Gene]

What kind of military guy calls a semi-auto ar-15 a "gun of mass destruction"?

One who was trained to use it, deployed with it, and understands what it can do to a school full 4th graders or a concert audience in Vegas.

The US military has not issued "AR15s" since the early days of the Vietnam war and only experimentally. The M16 was typed in 1964. The M4 was typed in 1994. I have a few friends who claim that they saw rifles maked AR15 while in training in the 1970s. No forward assist assembly. That was almost fifty years ago.

Your story seems suspect, Nafod. You've been talking like you're a Navy aviator. The air force only recently issued an M4 for flight crews, the GAU-5. If the Navy had one, the Air Force would have stolen it.

I trained up, mobilized, and deployed overseas over the period of two years back in 2008-2010, which PL54 can confirm as we knew each professionally. I was no pipe hitting door kicker on the ground, but was trained on an M16A2 and took it to Bagram, Balad, Kandahar, Baghdad, and some other places, and supported directly the troops for thousands of hours. The experts trained me.

You can understand the skepticism.... so many people today false claim. I'm not going to pry on your MOS. It's just not seemly or right.

The M16A2 did not have a full auto mode. It had 2 and 3 round burst that we were taught not to use, as it wasted bullets and increased odds of jamming. It made you less deadly.

A firearm that can shoot even a two shot burst is considered an automatic weapon. This is where you and me have some disagreement - that's the law. You're free to have an opinion. You're not free to say that FFL non-SOTs are selling machineguns across the counters. That's not the case.

They're not the same item legally. I am directly quoting the US BATF&E site.

"For the purposes of the National Firearms Act the term Machinegun means:

Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger
​
The frame or receiver of any such weapon
​
Any part designed and intended solely and exclusively or combination of parts designed and intended for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, or

Any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.
"

https://www.atf.gov/firearms/firearms-g ... initions-0

(using the three shot burst) It made you less deadly.

So why not issue semi-auto only firearms? If they make you "deadlier" why risk the lives of soldiers equipping people with three shot burst?

The M4 rifle, the one that McChrystal says is "just like what I carried in Afghanistan" is full auto. The service want back to full auto.

I too was warned to avoid full auto like the plague. Two guys, both Vietnam vets. I have range time with an M16. I simply could not bear to fire more than a four shot burst.

I was at a machine gun rental place. I watched people blast $30 of ammunition in a few seconds. I was horrified.

[Gene]

This country seems determined to do nothing to make it harder for people who should not have a BB gun to get easy access to the most deadly weapons possible. Things like Buffalo, Uvalde, and Tulsa are the direct result. All, so millions of Americans can cosplay as SOF with their AR15s.

If you wanted violent 18 year olds to conduct mass shootings you would lower the age to buy, remove background checks, and reduce funding for mental health care. That is exactly what Texas did.

The Brady Law works all across the US, Nafod. If you have evidence to the contrary I'm here.

If the Brady law needs expanded then people need to make a compelling reason for it. I'm here.

I can't comment on the age to purchase firearms. As far as I know long arms have been legal to buy at eighteen since 1968. The NRA is working on handgun purchase ages. I'm indifferent to it, and think that such ages should be a state issue.

I believe that a lot of gun laws should be a State issue.

An eighteen year old can buy a car, fly a private plane, fly rotorcraft in the US Army, staff missile systems, and be a soldier in war. Is there something different about firearms, especially handguns? If the brain is not mature enough to handle a firearm why let them sign for student loans or fly a combat gunship?

Mental health funding? Was it higher or lower under Abbott? Are you talking about Trump and Obamacare?

[Gene]

Gene, doing my best here to respond to your various points.

I looked into the wikipedia entries you shared. Psychopaths are going to psychopath. The number two school massacre behind Bath is the Virginia Tech killings in 2007. That guy had a history from basically birth of mental illness. He had violent stories he would share. Anti-social behavior. He almost was prevented from buying guns, a judge said he "presented an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness." But he slipped through the cracks. If the system was just a little more robust, he couldn't have bought the guns. I actually find that encouraging! He was nearly prevented. It means perhaps our system of preventing psychopathic behavior doesn't need too much more to go.

If the Judge declared him "mentally incompetent" then he should not have been sold a firearm. If the Virginia or FBI records needed fixed then they needed fixed.

I don't know enough about the Virginia Tech shooting. I'm happy to discuss it further.

The Safe Schools Act seems to be failing to work as advertised. Uvalde showed it, Parkland showed it. Those shooters should not have been in those schools because the rule is "within 1,000 yards". Let's set aside the idea of armed teachers, that's separate. Point is that the "gun free zone" in schools is not working. Kids are being shot.

If I'm wrong so be it. I did a quick search for prosecutions of possession of a firearm near a school. I saw no prosecutions or cases for possession.

The Virginia Tech shooting was in a college with adults. I do not know if any State or the Federal act covers colleges, tech schools and so on.

You mentioned background checks. I get where you're coming from. If you don't have any ill intent, then it's an annoying hurdle. A lot of life can be like that. The majority of good actors get punished for the actions of a few.

It also appears that 1/5 guns have no background check in this country. That seems like a reasonable loophole to close...or at the very least, make smaller.

There is serious talk in Congress of such a background check. Bram, the issue many of us have with these background checks is a de jure gun registry. That's it. I could care less about background checks.

I normally buy from dealers because I fear getting a stolen firearm. I do not need a charge of possessing stolen property.

To me the issue is "When does this end?". When will these people be happy? I see no evidence of it.

For reducing drug penalties. That could shore up a lot of violent crime, perhaps the vast majority. It also could protect people who buy drugs that are often cut with poisonous additives. I'm not against it.

Drug purity issues are like the bathtub gin issue. Some bootleggers did not understand the importance of controlling distillation to keep out methanol from the product. People went blind or died. Analogously we have people putting all sorts of shit into drugs to "step on them".

I remember in the Bad Old Days figuring that "drug abusers" deserved to get poisoned or get Paraquat poisoning. Today I consider such thinking barbaric.

Prohibition of alcohol failed. We got speakeasies and gave a lot of money to the mafia. We had gang violence.

Prohibition of drugs is failing. Some drugs. I'm glad to see weed legalization. Still can't stand the stuff, but I don't care about it. Don't drive stoned, don't plead diminished capacity if you do crimes while messed up. Meth or Fentanyl. Let's see what people tolerate.

I want to see the war on drugs end to save the lives of young men. I think that it will work better than gun control.

Worse than gun control is the erosion of financial privacy and security of one's own property. Police should not be empowered to confiscate large amount of cash or property. The Courts can do it after a conviction, that's called Due Process. Same with banking rules about cash deposits.

People need to do their business. Tax agencies have other ways to find out what they need to know.

[Gene]

YYour Swedish article mentions guns and shooting, but not gun smuggling. But your main point seems to be that criminals are going to be violent, guns or not. Correct?

I thought that Swedish article mentioned smuggling of firearms from the Balkans. I'll recheck it.

We seem to see that people who do violence will do violence. We should be focusing on the violent people.

I don't consider it a violation of anyone's privacy if police keep tabs on everyone. They already do, it's just not admissible in Court. Even the NSA has been working with some Federal agencies with their data. (see https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/us/o ... piles.html )

We know that Nikolas Cruz was on law enforcement's radar. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/19/us/flori ... index.html

I am all for individual rights.

How do you find people like Ramos or Cruz? They're already showing signs. The point of Red Flag was to take guns. Red Flag should instead be used to put questionable people on Law Enforcement's radar. Not to round them up. Not to hassle them. To watch them.

Go ahead and post about your ambitions to take out school kids. Now you're a case.

Get a Brady check added to that. Now the police have a valid reason for concern. You are a person of interest. Could someone buy an unregistered or illicit firearm? Sure. Eighty percent of the time you're getting a background check.

They can call you or visit. Tote you back to the station. Lay out the information. "Don't bother deleting your posts.... they're on file.".

Your smart phone comes to a school? Now it's lockdown time. Too bad, get it sorted out in Court.

Will this work? I don't know.

Will it work better than banning 15,000,000 firearms in the hands of several million people? The compliance rates for assault weapon registries has been poor, less than twenty percent. Most of them are going to vanish.

Pull and scan in 15,000,000 Form 4473s? Good luck with that. We could snatch up all customer records for all of the legal sellers of "assault weapon" parts, 80 percent receivers and so on. That's a huge number of people.

Eventually we have to face the facts - they're out there. What are we going to do about them?

People don't hand in stuff because it's banned... Exhibit A was liquor, Exhibit B was illegal drugs.

I appreciate you being reasonable as well!

Thank you for indulging me, Bram.

[Bram]

First,

Benny, I'm sorry if I came across harsh. I like you and enjoy chatting with you here.

Conspiracy theories are something that trigger a bad reaction in me.

A) I don't like wasting my time making sure crazy shit is not true.
B) I don't like when I fail to take that time, and the crazy shit seeps into my worldview.
C) People I know that share them, often take no accountability when presented with evidence that they've been spreading lies.
D) These lies distract from looking at real causes and real solutions to real problems.

Gene,

In looking at current research -- which the NRA stifled in America between 1996 and 2018 with the Dickey amendment -- the results seem to show that a country with less guns has less gun problems. And a country with more sweeping gun laws or gun reform has less gun problems, This seems like a self-evident truth.

This is not a nail-in-the-coffin meta-analysis, but here you go:

https://watermark.silverchair.com/epire ... VKk1aCkhio

This is the paper in 1993 that got gun research severely restricted in America for 22 years. It's finding is that having a firearm in the home increases the chance of homicide in the home:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/N ... 0073291506

Australia's implementation of gun control seems to have decreased firearm homicides by 42%:

https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content ... g_2011.pdf

----

I want to be clear that I am not advocating banning guns wholesale. I am advocating making intelligent decisions towards a brighter future.

[Bram]

Bram, they win the moment you give them enough credence to investigate their batshit crazy claims. They will throw an endless shitstorm of unrelated bullshit at you, in an effort to overwhelm your senses. None of it is sensible, it in no way forms a coherent narrative that can possibly explain events better than the obvious one, that angry youth with mental problems have too easy access to weapons specifically designed to be used to directly assault other troops in warzones.

I have a friend who would hammer me with Q-Anon conspiracies, anti-vaxx rants, Ukraine is full of Nazi's and Russia is liberating them....on and on.

I looked up a few of the things and they were horrifically false. But when presented with any counter-evidence, he would do what you said, throwing "an endless shitstorm of unrelated bullshit" at me. We sat down, and I said, "I like you, but until you take accountability for what you're sharing, please don't talk to me about anything political." And oh man, it's great! I get to enjoy his good qualities, which are many, without the negatives. And he has taken some accountability too!

You might wonder, "Why be friends with someone like that?" Well, he's a martial artist, and a personal trainer, and loves to read, and is a loving dad to his kids, and he cares about the people in his life.

Nice post, Nafod :)

[Ronald RayGun]

It's over. The toothpaste is out of the tube, so I figure fuck it. Let's lean into this shit. Guns for everyone. We'll shoot our way to the answer.

[nafod]

What kind of military guy calls a semi-auto ar-15 a "gun of mass destruction"?

One who was trained to use it, deployed with it, and understands what it can do to a school full 4th graders or a concert audience in Vegas.

The US military has not issued "AR15s" since the early days of the Vietnam war and only experimentally. The M16 was typed in 1964. The M4 was typed in 1994. I have a few friends who claim that they saw rifles maked AR15 while in training in the 1970s. No forward assist assembly. That was almost fifty years ago.

Your story seems suspect, Nafod. You've been talking like you're a Navy aviator. The air force only recently issued an M4 for flight crews, the GAU-5. If the Navy had one, the Air Force would have stolen it.

I trained up, mobilized, and deployed overseas over the period of two years back in 2008-2010, which PL54 can confirm as we knew each professionally. I was no pipe hitting door kicker on the ground, but was trained on an M16A2 and took it to Bagram, Balad, Kandahar, Baghdad, and some other places, and supported directly the troops for thousands of hours. The experts trained me.

You can understand the skepticism.... so many people today false claim. I'm not going to pry on your MOS. It's just not seemly or right.

The M16A2 did not have a full auto mode. It had 2 and 3 round burst that we were taught not to use, as it wasted bullets and increased odds of jamming. It made you less deadly.

A firearm that can shoot even a two shot burst is considered an automatic weapon. This is where you and me have some disagreement - that's the law. You're free to have an opinion. You're not free to say that FFL non-SOTs are selling machineguns across the counters. That's not the case.

They're not the same item legally. I am directly quoting the US BATF&E site.

"For the purposes of the National Firearms Act the term Machinegun means:

Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger
​
The frame or receiver of any such weapon
​
Any part designed and intended solely and exclusively or combination of parts designed and intended for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, or

Any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.
"

https://www.atf.gov/firearms/firearms-g ... initions-0

(using the three shot burst) It made you less deadly.

So why not issue semi-auto only firearms? If they make you "deadlier" why risk the lives of soldiers equipping people with three shot burst?

The M4 rifle, the one that McChrystal says is "just like what I carried in Afghanistan" is full auto. The service want back to full auto.

I too was warned to avoid full auto like the plague. Two guys, both Vietnam vets. I have range time with an M16. I simply could not bear to fire more than a four shot burst.

I was at a machine gun rental place. I watched people blast $30 of ammunition in a few seconds. I was horrified.

We shot M60s and 50 cals for familiarization, you can watch taxpayer dollars going down range. It is fun.

My point is that for someone assaulting an elementary school or other crowd of innocent victims, full auto or three round burst will be less effective than just plinking the targets semi-auto. The argument that the AR-15s sold to anyone aren’t as deadly because they aren’t machine guns is false.

An eighteen year old can buy a car, fly a private plane, fly rotorcraft in the US Army, staff missile systems, and be a soldier in war. Is there something different about firearms, especially handguns? If the brain is not mature enough to handle a firearm why let them sign for student loans or fly a combat gunship?

An 18 year old can’t buy a beer. Why? Because it was tried and resulted in those 18 year olds (I was one of them) goofing it up. Same with ready access to assault rifles. A failed experiment.

Private plane…you have to have 40 hours of instruction first, and a big component of that instruction is on decision making, to include evaluating your own readiness to fly, physically and mentally. I would support similar for someone to get a license for a weapon. As a flight instructor I have to sign them off as ready to fly, along with others. They keep a logbook of their actions, and are reviewed throughout their flying, with biennial reviews required. It’d be good to do that for an AR-15 owner. Well Regulated Militia.

Quadruple the oversight and emphasis on the mental and physical for an army helo guy.

In 2021 a student pilot at U North Dakota killed himself in an airplane. It has caused deep introspection in the flying community, which already recognizes the critical component mental health plays.

https://www.flyingmag.com/mental-health-and-aviation/

The majority of deaths with guns are, I believe, suicides. I don’t think anyone in the gun industry gives a shit. Ever see an article in a gun magazine like those I linked to in flying?

[Gene]

My point is that for someone assaulting an elementary school or other crowd of innocent victims, full auto or three round burst will be less effective than just plinking the targets semi-auto. The argument that the AR-15s sold to anyone aren’t as deadly because they aren’t machine guns is false.

You've made this point several times. I counter that the militaries of the world, and many police agencies, buy selective fire weapons.

Project Salvo demonstrated that hit probability rose with burst fire, up to the point of dispersion. The Europeans, who are the world leaders in mass murder, were already fielding selective fire weapons by the 1950s.

Most of the world's military forces issue their people selective fire weapons today.

Why did the US go back to full auto with the M4?

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-arm ... auto-m4a1/

Why do many SWAT teams, not just in the US but around the world, issue selective fire weapons?

Your opinion on what is deadly isn't borne out by what these agencies purchase, train and deploy.

Nafod, you keep going back to how deadly the AR15 is in schools.... let's give credit for that to Joe Biden. He sponsored both versions of the Safe Schools act. Nobody in a school can legally have a firearm in that school.

Why is it that school shootings started to climb after the 1990s? More drugs? The knowledge that schools were packed full of helpless victims? There were AR15s in the 1960s, they got real notorious in the 1980s.

In contrast, some yahoo decided to fire into a crowd with an AR15. WV has "constitutional carry" One of them was armed and fired back. She answered your question about what happens when a person with an AR15 faces someone with a handgun.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/pol ... d-85002437

An 18 year old can’t buy a beer. Why?

....because Ronald Reagan and MADD changed US law by perverting our Federal system. States which refused to toe the MADD party line had their highway funding threatened. Reagan loved prohibition, he was a Republican.

Drinking ages vary. In Canada it's either 18 or 19. In Mexico it's 18.

In the rest of the world that minimum age varies. In places it's 25 years of age. In others it's sixteen.

A lot of countries, many with highway systems, chose eighteen.

Nafod, what is different about Canada and Mexico? Don't they care about their kids on the roads? Probably do.

Maybe Reagan was just a dick.

[Gene]

For a private plane…you have to have 40 hours of instruction first, and a big component of that instruction is on decision making, to include evaluating your own readiness to fly, physically and mentally. I would support similar for someone to get a license for a weapon. As a flight instructor I have to sign them off as ready to fly, along with others.

They keep a logbook of their actions, and are reviewed throughout their flying, with biennial reviews required. It’d be good to do that for an AR-15 owner. Well Regulated Militia.

There are countries that do that... most either ban or hassle owners.

The term "well regulated militia" meant able to shoot accurately. What it means today is still to be determined by Court cases. Most 2nd Amendment cases are denied ruling.

In case anyone cares... what is this militia business?

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?f=t ... eq=militia

The majority of deaths with guns are, I believe, suicides. I don’t think anyone in the gun industry gives a shit.

Please read... the manufacturer repeatedly asks people to be safe. Some of the messages are repeated up to three times.

While there is no explicit plea for someone to go get help if they feel suicidal it's kind of logical that there is no safe way to suicide?

https://www.smith-wesson.com/sites/defa ... 0-2015.pdf

The UN WHO says that most of the world suicides with hanging or pesticides. Among industrial nations S. Korea leads the pack at 28.6 suicides per 100,000 people. S. Korea forbids the private ownership of firearms.

The US the rate is 13.6.

Eleven US States permit people to ask for a Physician to help them suicide. Is smothering on morphine as dead as a gunshot wound?

https://compassionandchoices.org/resour ... authorized

Doesn't seem like firearms cause suicide, nor do they make it 'easy' not when people are hanging, poisoning, jumping off of tall structures or going to Dr. Kevorkian.

The government doesn't discriminate between the failed business person and the cancer patient on their last legs, does it? If a gun is used it's another gun death. Just like people who are shot by police in gun battles, who are shot by armed home owners, and so on are all "gun deaths".

[nafod]

Why did the US go back to full auto with the M4?

Because in combat, when assaulting an opposing force armed with similar weaponry (or defending against) you may need to suppress their fire. Full auto helps. That doesn’t apply to elementary schools and grocery stores.

[Bram]

Colorado man, hailed as "Good Samaritan," shoots cop killer. Then is himself mistakenly slain by cops:

https://apnews.com/article/colorado-sho ... c14afc5976

[Bram]

Analysis of 179 school shootings (1999-2018) finds:

"the presence of a school resource officer was unassociated with any reduction in school shooting severity. Importantly, the type of gun used was strongly associated with casualties and fatalities."

https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054 ... 2/fulltext

A school resource officer is a sworn law-enforcement officer with arrest powers who works, either full or part time, in a school setting. Nearly all SROs are armed (about 91 percent, according to federal data), and most carry other restraints like handcuffs as well.

[Turdacious]

Analysis of 179 school shootings (1999-2018) finds:

"the presence of a school resource officer was unassociated with any reduction in school shooting severity. Importantly, the type of gun used was strongly associated with casualties and fatalities."

https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054 ... 2/fulltext

A school resource officer is a sworn law-enforcement officer with arrest powers who works, either full or part time, in a school setting. Nearly all SROs are armed (about 91 percent, according to federal data), and most carry other restraints like handcuffs as well.

Is stopping school shootings (a rare but high risk event) the most important reason for having an SRO?

[Bram]

This is a highly politicized topic and there was a tendency towards bias in most of what I found. I looked around for a while to share something that I felt was even handed. This study seemed to do that (you can click download in the link to open a PDF of it).

https://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai21-476

Some findings:

* We find that SROs do effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents.
* We also find that SROs intensify the use of suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and arrests of students. These effects are consistently over two times larger for Black students than White students.
* Finally, we observe that SROs increase chronic absenteeism, particularly for students with disabilities.

[Gene]

Why did the US go back to full auto with the M4?

Because in combat, when assaulting an opposing force armed with similar weaponry (or defending against) you may need to suppress their fire. Full auto helps. That doesn’t apply to elementary schools and grocery stores.

Suppressive fire is one use for full auto. Another is that hit probability rises with burst fire.

One form of burst fire is the shotgun. Buckshot through a short barrel spreads real fast. In tight spaces shotguns probably work as well as "semi-automatic weapons".

In Russia school shooters prefer shotguns. Nine dead, twenty one injured in Tartarstan

https://abcnews.go.com/International/de ... d=77617468

Eight dead, 22 "seriously injured" in Perm

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/20/10388718 ... ng-updates


This does not imply that a ban on "assault weapons" won't help. We might discourage a few mass shooters. If nothing else, the gun control lobby will stop bitching about them for a while. The featureless rifles will be available at sporting goods stores. Those who like the sights and ease of shot to shot recovery will move on.

Enforcement then becomes an issue. There are 15,000,000 AR15s in private hands. What to do? House to house searches? Discounts for conversion to featureless firearms?

You suggest licensing. What kind of psychological test is required? Who will pay for that testing? What prevents that testing or training from being abused to prohibit guns for most people?

The gun lobby doesn't support licensing since Pete Shield's popped off almost fifty years ago about licensing and then confiscation. Illinois has had the FOID for years, they claim it's not a license but you need one to purchase firearms or ammunition. Most prohibited persons use straw purchasers. Half of the firearms found near Chicago were from local gun dealers that used FOIDs and straw purchasers. Falsely signing the Form 4473 has been a felony since the 1960s. So licensing doesn't work on criminals.

If a simple license had been proposed the gun control lobby might have pulled it off. Now it's going to require overcoming reaction.

[nafod]

On the licensing thing, to go back to your flying analogy, requiring initial and recurrent training, and that training should include the monkey skills of safe handling of weapons, and the skills in assessing risks and making smart decisions. Aligns with the idea of a well regulated militia.

[Gene]

Analysis of 179 school shootings (1999-2018) finds:

"the presence of a school resource officer was unassociated with any reduction in school shooting severity. Importantly, the type of gun used was strongly associated with casualties and fatalities."

https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054 ... 2/fulltext

A little caution might be called for.... they based their findings on Washington Post data.... the WP is hardly unbiased....

"To estimate the association between school/shooters/gun characteristics and school shooting severity, we used recently published data from the Washington Post (WP) [[7]]. Unlike other sources of school shooting data, the WP's database contains shootings that occurred during or immediately before or after the school day when children were at risk. Shootings were classified based on a review of news articles, police reports, and calls to schools and police departments [[7] We restricted our sample to 179 shootings intended to injure or kill others.

There may be some truth to it anyhow.......

"Handguns were used in most school shootings (81%); however, substantially, more fatalities occurred when rifles (relative risk [RR] =14.74, 95% confidence interval [CI] [5.00, 43.41]) or shotguns (RR = 8.84, 95% CI [2.20, 35.54]) were used. "

Dr. Andreas Grabinsky discusses this point. He claims that eighty percent of the time handgun injuries absent lethal wounds can be treated if you get people to the hospital before they bleed too much. "With Rifles and Shotguns there is little we can do".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXwPtP-KDNk&t=156s

"No significant differences were observed based on the presence of resource officers."

Given the performance of Sheriff Israel's SRO, Scot Petersen, at Majory Stoneman High that's not too surprising. Petersen watched Cruz, who he knew didn't belong there, approach the building with a duffle bag.

We already know that people with handguns can manage AR15 shooters. A civilian did this in West Virginia.

Police have no duty to protect anyone. That's been in US law for decades. You cannot sue them for failing to respond, so there is no contract. Most recent one was Gonzales vs Castle Rock. She had a PFA. Her ex murdered the kids then suicided by cop. She sued the PD for not protecting her due to her PFA.The progressives on the court wanted her to get another shot at a lawsuit.

[Bram]

This does not imply that a ban on "assault weapons" won't help. We might discourage a few mass shooters. If nothing else, the gun control lobby will stop bitching about them for a while. The featureless rifles will be available at sporting goods stores. Those who like the sights and ease of shot to shot recovery will move on.

Enforcement then becomes an issue. There are 15,000,000 AR15s in private hands. What to do? House to house searches? Discounts for conversion to featureless firearms?

Gene,

This is a link to the 1994 ban, "The ban applied only to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_A ... eapons_Ban

I support this type of legislation. Leave the current weapons in circulation and their owners alone, but cease making more.

As a side note, a lawyer friend of mine texted me this:

"I was intimately involved in the passing of the first assault weapons ban. That ban was in response to back-to-back mass shootings; one which was the 101 California shooting. That one involved an individual that shot 12 people at the 101 California building in San Francisco at a law firm killing eight. One of them was my old law school roommate."

[Bram]

We already know that people with handguns can manage AR15 shooters. A civilian did this in West Virginia.

I think we have to be careful with basing too much on one-off situations. I posted this above, but this links to a story about a man who stopped a cop killer...only to be mistakenly gunned down by police himself:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/colora ... 021-06-26/

----

During the "abolish the police" movement, reasonable people were calling for "police reform" instead. This links to a read on how Newark, which had an issue with their particular police force made some great changes:



I think "gun reform" might be a better way of looking at it. What can we do to reduce the ability of people inclined towards mass shooting to have gun access? Which weapons, magazines, and accessories have an outsized negative impact on the public good? What types of mental health testing would work well before gun purchasing is approved? What can we do in black communities that suffer from high gun-homicide rates to help? Is it more community programs and opportunities? Is it tougher laws? Which laws would help most?

[nafod]

Police have no duty to protect anyone.

That guy in Arizona that jumped into the lake from the police and then asked for someone to save him and the police said no…a bad look for the police, but LOL at his stupidity.

“Ok, I’m not jumping in after you”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/vid ... deo-report

[johno]

The Copycat Effect is well-accepted and explains why school/mass shootings happen in clusters. (Probably explains why many of the mass shooters fixate on AR black rifles when almost any firearm would do.)

Censor the name & details of mass shootings.
For the children.

[Gene]

The Copycat Effect is well-accepted and explains why school/mass shootings happen in clusters. (Probably explains why many of the mass shooters fixate on AR black rifles when almost any firearm would do.)

Censor the name & details of mass shootings.
For the children.

The Corporate owned Media sells advertising. They're not going to work against their own self interest.

Making anti-heroes out of mass shooters inspires other losers to get a little fame. A few are bullied - as if Prison is less bullying than highschool?

[nafod]

Making anti-heroes out of mass shooters inspires other losers to get a little fame. A few are bullied - as if Prison is less bullying than highschool?

Pretty sure the majority end up dead, but their own hand or death by cop. Prison not an issue.

A lot of them are kids that the anti-woke crowd wants to make sure they are still shunned, harassed, and bullied like the good old days. But give them a black rifle and some seal team six togs and they can be somebody, going out in a blaze of something.