Gun Control Debate #6

[EuTuCroquet?]

Thread is open again for posting.

No personalizing, bickering or snark, victim blaming, or demeaning other members for their opinion.

Thanks.

Thank you, sillybilly.

 

[human]

What we do about people like Lanza and Cruz is not let them reach a point where they will act out in the ways they did. We can also make it more difficult for them to get their hands on assault weapons.

Another part of gun reform, IMO, is to ensure people with mental illnesses or people who in crisis get the help and treatment they need. They are more likely to be victims than perpetrators but their lives shouldn't be less valuable than anyone else's.

Myth: People with mental health problems are violent and unpredictable

That is my point, People are flipped out that Cruz had all of those police calls but nothing was done. But things were done, He was seeing a therapist, He had special needs classes in schools where he hated being different. I think that is how most special needs kids feel.

His mother wanted help. Of course, she should have not allowed the guns. But really, what should have happenend with him? Lock him up? Where? How long?

And Adam Lanza. The mother took him out of places that were providing help. What should have been done? A court order to force him into some kind of treatment? Where? How long?

Lanza’s mother thought guns were bonding. She was a totally legal gun owner.

How is this mental health piece that people want going to work?

 

[EuTuCroquet?]

I do agree those that have "assault guns" will be able to keep theirs. What we need in my opinion are laws that stop the ghost guns, 3-D printing and online build your own guns. Without stopping the ways that criminals can get guns "assault guns" will still be produced. So then because no new legal "assault guns" can be purchased, but more illegal "assault guns" will be out there giving the criminal the upper hand.

Things like 3D printing and “garage-made” guns are already illegal. Doesn’t mean people won’t still make them, but there’s already law/order in place if someone breaks the law and uses one in a crime. It’s an additional crime. They can make ‘em, but they can also stack up the felonies! [emoji6]

There are far more legal owners of semiauto rifles than illegal owners, imo. It’s “America’s favorite gun,” according to some gunmakers and lobbyists.

So, legal owners can still trade/buy ones grandfathered in, yeah, like with the former gun ban?

To my logic, the market demand drops dramatically since new ones can’t be sold. So new ones won’t be as prolific as they are now, because the market demand falls.

Now, if legal gun owners also keep their property safely stored (because they’re also probably more valuable if banned, too), it’ll ALSO reduce the number of stolen semiauto military-style guns on the black market, too.

I see a net win for the good guys with guns, but I consider myself a bit of an optimist, even with my inherent cynicism.

What’s your take? Do you think new semis will still be manufactured at the rate they are now, and just funneled to illegal sales instead of legal? Might closing loopholes in existing laws curb that, if so?

 

[human]

hi my blue !!

Love our Parkland kids!

but ..........

Am surprised he has not taken off

terrific and articulate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK-keKy35c4

Wow! 12th grader! Kids! Who knew they are so amazing, They are quietly growing. I think the power has been unleashed

 

[EuTuCroquet?]

Excellent post, sneaks!

You hit a key phrase that, imo, defines where people should probably focus the mental health debate: PEOPLE WHO ARE IN CRISIS.

Ya nailed it.

The recent secret service report on mass shootings listed 100% of gunmen had a personal crisis immediately before the event — like relationship loss or illness. (Illness!)

One-hundred percent!! Every single one.

That shocked me, but maybe it shouldn’t.

Agreed that we need better health care, including mental health care. And immediate access to it, without barriers to cost or monthslong waiting lists or “prior condition” restraints.

It needs to happen immediately, but that battle might be tougher to progress than what’s happening with gun reform efforts, imo, especially at the state level.

Both are of vital importance and require immediate action, imo.

What we do about people like Lanza and Cruz is not let them reach a point where they will act out in the ways they did. We can also make it more difficult for them to get their hands on assault weapons.

Another part of gun reform, IMO, is to ensure people with mental illnesses or people who in crisis get the help and treatment they need. They are more likely to be victims than perpetrators but their lives shouldn't be less valuable than anyone else's.

Myth: People with mental health problems are violent and unpredictable

Secret Service report: Here's what people who carried out 28 mass attacks in the US have in common

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/carried-28-mass-attacks-us-common-secret-service/story?id=54099341

bbm

So, the largest/most common factors (in order of %):

100% — males age 15-66

100% — significant pre-shooting stressor, such as romantic issue or illness

82% — attacks carried out by firearm (nearly half obtained illegally)

79% — history of “concerning” or threatening behavior (33% threatened specific target)

71% — criminal charges beyond traffic violations (25% w/charges related to domestic violence)

64% — “experienced mental health symptoms sometime prior to the attacks”

50% — workplace grievance or ideology, including racism​

 

[human]

Things like 3D printing and “garage-made” guns are already illegal. Doesn’t mean people won’t still make them, but there’s already law/order in place if someone breaks the law and uses one in a crime. It’s an additional crime. They can make ‘em, but they can also stack up the felonies! [emoji6]

There are far more legal owners of semiauto rifles than illegal owners, imo. It’s “America’s favorite gun,” according to some gunmakers and lobbyists.

So, legal owners can still trade/buy ones grandfathered in, yeah, like with the former gun ban?

To my logic, the market demand drops dramatically since new ones can’t be sold. So new ones won’t be as prolific as they are now, because the market demand falls.

Now, if legal gun owners also keep their property safely stored (because they’re also probably more valuable if banned, too), it’ll ALSO reduce the number of stolen semiauto military-style guns on the black market, too.

I see a net win for the good guys with guns, but I consider myself a bit of an optimist, even with my inherent cynicism.

What’s your take? Do you think new semis will still be manufactured at the rate they are now, and just funneled to illegal sales instead of legal? Might closing loopholes in existing laws curb that, if so?

I don’t think we can stop the world until we get perfection. Let us start with banning semi automatics which means pistols, too. And the detachable clips.

The ones in existence will become super expensive. So a teen will probably not have easy access nor will the burglar because people will take more care to lock up precious items.

There are things that can be done in schools to raise more mentally healthy people. There are programs that teach dealing with trauma, emotions, and problem solving,

We have to have teachers who look at their own lives and mental health issues so that they can be healthy for their students as well.

I have been reading a lot lately, it seems, on female teachers sexually molesting students, I wonder if that is new or it happened in the past as well.

 

[Deboracc]

To longtime friend, school shooter Nikolas Cruz was lonely, volatile, ostracized

There is, however, a significant and growing body of research that there is a strong relationship between bullying and mass violence. Professors Michael Kimmel and Matthew Mahler of Stony Brook University (of the State University of New York) have found, for example, that most of the boys who have committed shootings in American high schools and middle schools were “mercilessly and routinely teased and bullied and that their violence was retaliatory against threats to their manhood.” And in his book “Ceremonial Violence,” Professor Jonathan Fast of Yeshiva University examined more than a dozen mass school shootings and found that while there is no single reason for their violent acts, the kids who committed these atrocities suffered from alienation from their peers, neglect and often abuse.

There’s obviously a strong correlation between bullying and mass shootings, but I feel like it’s only half the story though. If bullying was the driving factor, wouldn’t we expect to see representative amounts of females, people of different nationalities, gay students and transgendered students committing these shootings? Arguably, some of those groups would experience bullying at higher rates than average, so we would expect to find them over represented in the stats, but that just doesn’t seem to be happening. It’s also not reflected on a world wide scale. As an outsider looking in, I feel like gun culture in the US must play a part in these shootings.

Its so complex, there won’t be a quick fix I don’t think.

 

[everybodhi]

wHOA!

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/...d-students-poor-pathetic-liars-no-soul/219803

NUGENT: The dumbing down of America is manifested in the culture deprivation of our academia that have taught these kids the lies, media that have prodded and encouraged and provided these kids lies. I really feel sorry for them because it’s not only ignorant and dangerously stupid, but it’s soulless. To attack the good law-abiding families of America when well known predictable murderers commit these horrors is deep in the category of soulless. These poor children, I’m afraid to say this and it hurts me to say this, but the evidence is irrefutable, they have no soul.

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/02/28/nratv-spotlights-ex-sheriff-who-said-parkland-survivors-sound-hitler/219523

Asked about the student-led protests following the Parkland shooting during an interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mack said the students, politicians, and media were using “the exact same kind of language” as “some of the rhetoric from Hitler and Stalin and Lenin,” who he said claimed “that gun control will make you safer.” SPLC reported that Mack does “like the idea of teachers being armed” after the Parkland shooting, though he said it’s not the “only answer.” (There’s no evidence that arming school teachers would prevent school shootings.)

Mack received an endorsement in his campaign to represent Arizona's 8th congressional district from NRA board member Ted Nugent, who has recently come under fire for spreading a conspiracy theory about Parkland shooting survivors. Mack also has well-documented and long-standing ties to a far-right faction of the pro-gun movement.



they seem to be extremely deluded and i worry that they are considered sufficiently sane to bear arms..

I guess they think a Nazi and a geezer that molests underage girls and poops in his pants to avoid the military is a good representative of a responsible gun owner.

 

[rsd1200]

I don’t think we can stop the world until we get perfection. Let us start with banning semi automatics which means pistols, too. And the detachable clips.

The ones in existence will become super expensive. So a teen will probably not have easy access nor will the burglar because people will take more care to lock up precious items.

There are things that can be done in schools to raise more mentally healthy people. There are programs that teach dealing with trauma, emotions, and problem solving,

We have to have teachers who look at their own lives and mental health issues so that they can be healthy for their students as well.

I have been reading a lot lately, it seems, on female teachers sexually molesting students, I wonder if that is new or it happened in the past as well.

BBM
Nothing new. It went on in the past.

 

[bluesneakers]

That is my point, People are flipped out that Cruz had all of those police calls but nothing was done. But things were done, He was seeing a therapist, He had special needs classes in schools where he hated being different. I think that is how most special needs kids feel.

His mother wanted help. Of course, she should have not allowed the guns. But really, what should have happenend with him? Lock him up? Where? How long?

And Adam Lanza. The mother took him out of places that were providing help. What should have been done? A court order to force him into some kind of treatment? Where? How long?

Lanza’s mother thought guns were bonding. She was a totally legal gun owner.

How is this mental health piece that people want going to work?

It's only one piece. Intervening with people like Lanza and Cruz is about not letting them have such easy access to guns. It's about teaching them how to deal with life so they don't get to the point where they think firing an assault rife and murdering people is a way to deal with all that's gone wrong in their lives. There are other ways to be proactive, and honestly the mental health piece is more about preventing suicide.

As for mass shootings:

Mass shootings by people with serious mental illness represent less than 1% of all yearly gun-related homicides.

Suggested interventions:

Policies and laws should focus on those individuals whose behaviours identify them as having increased risk for committing gun violence, rather than on broad categories such as mental illness or psychiatric diagnoses.

Public health educational campaigns should emphasize the need for third-party reporting of intent or conceding warning behaviours to law enforcement.

Institutions and communities should develop specialized forensic threat assessment teams to evaluate third-party reports of potential dangerousness.

Resources should be increased to provide enhanced education, beginning in elementary school, with a constructive focus on coping skills for anger and conflict resolution, mental health, and mental wellness education.

Why Better Mental Health Care Won't Prevent More Mass Shootings

Revenge motivation is, by far, the most commonplace. Mass murderers often see themselves as victims—victims of injustice. They seek payback for what they perceive to be unfair treatment by targeting those they hold responsible for their misfortunes. Most often, the ones to be punished are family members (e.g., an unfaithful wife and all her children) or coworkers (e.g., an overbearing boss and all his employees).

Preventing School Shootings: It's Guns, Not Mental Health

The same argument is true for our ability to own firearms – while we have this right, we need far more restrictions. Facts are facts: When the 10-year ban on assault rifles from 1994-2005 was in effect, mass shootings fell by 37%. When it was lifted, since 2005, it rose 183%.*

 

[EuTuCroquet?]

Thank you for this link, Belle!

What I’ve also noticed is, often, kids who are bullied at school also experience dysfunction or hardship at home, whether it be abuse, neglect, poverty, chronic illness, etc. Then they come to school and become targets, too.

Generally speaking, in my experience, kids who experience these things in their own home are also more likely to become victims of further abuse. Bullies are also more likely, ime, to be victims of the same dysfunction at home.

I don’t really have a point, I guess. The correlation is interesting and this link you posted piqued my curiosity. There definitely is a whole lot our society can do to better care for and educate our children.

It’s not a matter of coddling. It’s a matter of enabling them to be self-reliant, loving and competent individuals. ... Of allowing them to become whole.

We are failing them in too many ways.

And I love the app idea, too.

Mass Murders in Schools and Bullying: What We Can Do to Help Stop the Carnage

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ross-ellis/mass-murders-in-schools-a_b_5492873.html

There is, however, a significant and growing body of research that there is a strong relationship between bullying and mass violence. Professors Michael Kimmel and Matthew Mahler of Stony Brook University (of the State University of New York) have found, for example, that most of the boys who have committed shootings in American high schools and middle schools were “mercilessly and routinely teased and bullied and that their violence was retaliatory against threats to their manhood.” And in his book “Ceremonial Violence,” Professor Jonathan Fast of Yeshiva University examined more than a dozen mass school shootings and found that while there is no single reason for their violent acts, the kids who committed these atrocities suffered from alienation from their peers, neglect and often abuse.

New app hopes to increase safety of students in Palm Beach County

PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. - The Palm Beach County School District, its police department along with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office rolled out its new safety app Wednesday, designed to make schools safer.

Just search “PBC StudentProtect” in the app store for Apple and Android. It’s for students, faculty and parents.

If a student is getting bullied, anything that’s going on in school that’s not safe, we can pull our phone out, get on the app and say something and no body knows who that is.”

https://www.wptv.com/news/region-c-...ch/new-safety-app-for-students-parents-in-pbc

 

[bluesneakers]

How To Reduce Shootings

Background Checks: 22 percent of guns are obtained without one.
*
Protection Orders: Keep men who are subject to domestic violence protection orders from having guns.
*
Ban Under-21s: A ban on people under 21 purchasing firearms (this is already the case in many states).
*
Safe Storage: These include trigger locks as well as guns and ammunition stored separately, especially when children are in the house.
*
Straw Purchases: Tighter enforcement of laws on straw purchases of weapons, and some limits on how many guns can be purchased in a month.
*
Ammunition Checks: Experimentation with a one-time background check for anybody buying ammunition.
*
End Immunity: End immunity for firearm companies. That’s a subsidy to a particular industry.

 

[bluesneakers]

How We Talk About Bullying After School Shootings Can Be Dangerous: Experts

Dave Cullen, author of the investigatory tome Columbine, told Newsweek that people are "desperate for answers" after school shootings, and sometimes lurch toward conclusions "with good intentions," but not enough meaningful information.

The situation "may have much more to it, and it may be harder to understand," said Emily Bazelon, author of Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. "But if you slap a label on something, you risk missing the more complicated, underlying reality."

These perceptions have stuck with the public. Eighty-six percent of students think “other kids picking on [other students], making fun of them or bullying them” causes teenagers to turn to lethal violence in schools, according to a National Voices for Equality, Education and Enlightenment survey.

A profile of a school shooter "does not exist," the FBI surmised in a threat assessment report. Generalized assumptions that school shooters were bullied perpetuate a false idea that school shooters all fit a mold—or that bullied students are at risk of becoming school shooters, said Peter Langman, a private practice psychologist and school shooting expert.

"Most kids in high school and middle school are teased at some point, maybe feel excluded," he said. "That does not create mass murder."

"The media need to realize that some kids who didn’t really know the perp assume [there's been bullying], because we taught them that’s the profile," he said. "We should try to get to the bottom of it and candidly convey what we can."

Looking past the phrase "bullied" and delving into the real—and sometimes dark—facets of human persona isn't always easy, Bazelon said. But it's necessary.

 

[EuTuCroquet?]

There’s obviously a strong correlation between bullying and mass shootings, but I feel like it’s only half the story though. If bullying was the driving factor, wouldn’t we expect to see representative amounts of females, people of different nationalities, gay students and transgendered students committing these shootings? Arguably, some of those groups would experience bullying at higher rates than average, so we would expect to find them over represented in the stats, but that just doesn’t seem to be happening. It’s also not reflected on a world wide scale. As an outsider looking in, I feel like gun culture in the US must play a part in these shootings.

Its so complex, there won’t be a quick fix I don’t think.

Yes! Agreed. Toxic masculinity, the belief that might equals right, American exceptionalism, southern strategy politics, extremist nationalism ... xenophobia.

It all plays into the extremist side of gun culture, imo. We have a lot of work to do. Improvement is a protracted effort, but worth every moment, and necessary.

Thank you for your post.

 

[rsd1200]

I don’t think we can stop the world until we get perfection. Let us start with banning semi automatics which means pistols, too. And the detachable clips.

The ones in existence will become super expensive. So a teen will probably not have easy access nor will the burglar because people will take more care to lock up precious items.

There are things that can be done in schools to raise more mentally healthy people. There are programs that teach dealing with trauma, emotions, and problem solving,

We have to have teachers who look at their own lives and mental health issues so that they can be healthy for their students as well.

I have been reading a lot lately, it seems, on female teachers sexually molesting students, I wonder if that is new or it happened in the past as well.

BBM

We can hope, but toddlers shot more people, than terrorists, in 2015, per Brady PSA to Prevent Gun Violence (partial satire in their PSA). Folks seem to trust that their kid won't pick up the firearm they've been told not to bother. They will. Kids are impulsive, and are not programmable.

It's like these t.v. tests, where the parent is completely convinced their kid won't get into a strange car, yet they do when the producer drives up, and asks them to walk over, or the other parents who think their kid would never fall into a Gorilla pit, yet, their kid might jerk loose and chase a pup into the street.

The majority of kids who end up with firearms get them from homes who don't have them put away. Semis are already expensive, and the fallout from not putting them in a place where the kids can't get them, or any other firearm, are both, equally tragic when you have a death as a result of carelessness. They're gonna lose a lot more than that firearm, if their kid gets it and either dies fooling with it, or kills a bunch of other people. Either way, they've lost their child. Life will not ever be the same for them either.

[FONT=&amp]Parents looking to protect their families don't have to wait until November; they can act right now. By asking if there is a gun in the home where their children play, and making sure their own firearms are locked up with ammunition stored separately.

http://www.bradycampaign.org/press-room/guns-dont-kill-people-toddlers-kill-people
[/FONT]

 

[rsd1200]

There’s obviously a strong correlation between bullying and mass shootings, but I feel like it’s only half the story though. If bullying was the driving factor, wouldn’t we expect to see representative amounts of females, people of different nationalities, gay students and transgendered students committing these shootings? Arguably, some of those groups would experience bullying at higher rates than average, so we would expect to find them over represented in the stats, but that just doesn’t seem to be happening. It’s also not reflected on a world wide scale. As an outsider looking in, I feel like gun culture in the US must play a part in these shootings.

Its so complex, there won’t be a quick fix I don’t think.

I think I posted this in one of the first threads but I thought it was a good read,so, I'll toss it out again.

"The shooter is almost always male. Of the past 129 mass shootings in the United States, all but three have been men. The shooter is socially alienated, and he can’t get laid. Every time you scratch the surface of the latest mass killing, in a movie theatre, a school, the streets of Paris or an abortion clinic, you find the weaponised loser. From Jihadi John of ISIS to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine, these men are invariably stuck in the emotional life of an adolescent. They always struggle with self-esteem – especially regarding women – and sometimes they give up entirely on the possibility of amorous fulfilment. There are different levels of tactical coordination, different ostensible grievances and different access to firearms, but the psyche beneath is invariably the same. "

https://aeon.co/essays/humiliation-and-rage-how-toxic-masculinity-fuels-mass-shootings

 

[bluesneakers]

Yes! Agreed. Toxic masculinity, the belief that might equals right, American exceptionalism, southern strategy politics, extremist nationalism ... xenophobia.

It all plays into the extremist side of gun culture, imo. We have a lot of work to do. Improvement is a protracted effort, but worth every moment, and necessary.

Thank you for your post.

BBM:
Sometimes it feels like we're up against the Hydra.

 

[kittythehare]

18 or 80, Ted's only in it for himself and his own personal gain, and what strokes his ego. He is his own special species. Going to jail is not in the picture for that man so his motor mouth is the only weapon he's gonna use.

does he own a gun?
does he pass the mental health requirements for gun ownership?

 

[EuTuCroquet?]

does he own a gun?
does he pass the mental health requirements for gun ownership?

Sure. Extreme narcissism, ridiculous hyperbole and selfishness doesn’t bar someone from owning weapons. His celebrity has allowed him some berth regarding his speech, imo. ... It’s also earned him a few visits from the feds.

https://www.cnn.com/2012/04/21/opinion/obeidallah-ted-nugent-free-speech/index.html

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...-service-nra-chop-heads-off-glenn-beck-313824

http://www.newson6.com/story/17526293/secret-service-said-to-interview-rocker-ted-nugent-in-oklahoma

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/ted-nugent-history-amendment/story?id=16173310

 

[rsd1200]

does he own a gun?
does he pass the mental health requirements for gun ownership?

Ted, along with other celebrities, both living and deceased, who have the money, and the time to fill out the paperwork, own actual "machine" guns, not semis, but Machine Guns. There's lots of folks who own firearms who aren't wrapped all that tight but they won't shoot you unless you break into their home.