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- Topics: Active | Unanswered
- Intercourse
- Rep: 212
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
As an Irish person looking in at your posts I felt great PRIDE in how the US community speaks to each other on this highly emotive issue. The truth I fear is a lot more complex than any argument I'm hearing in the media.
Fine, I understand that people feel more comfortable with guns to protect the home but I don't understand why you need one that shoots 10 bullets a second. Your house is not going to be attacked by a batallion, so why demand a cannon to kill a fly?
Video games were created for enjoyment and escapism but I could imagine that if you did nothing else for 20 hours a day, that your idea of reality would be fucked beyond belief. Throw in a healthy smatter of social isolation, bullying and nutty parents and I believe you have a recipe for disaster.
With 300 million guns in the hands of civilians in the US, if .0001% of those fall into the hands of wack jobs that's 300 guns...enough to wipe out thousands. So even the tiniest minority of murderous scum like this kid can cause mayhem. How do you manage such a tiny percentile?
It may be impossible.
Lastly, my wife and I are getting IVF this coming year as we cannot have a child otherwise. This has been an emotional road for us and the love we have waiting for a little person we have never met is deep and strong. For those of you that are parents, I cannot imagine what fear and dread horrors like this bring to your dreams.
My suggestions for schools now is that two staff members must be certified marksmen and present everyday during school term, all classroom doors must be like cockpit doors, bullet proof and locked from the inside. All corridors should be able to be locked and isolated to trap the gunman and all windows in classrooms should have an escape hatch installed.
Jesus, what a sickening state of affairs....
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
The actual purpose of the ammendment (from my understanding at least) was to allow people to protect themselves against the government, not a burgler. IF that is the intent (or was the intent), then things make a bit more sense as to why the rules are what they are. Not saying I agree with them, just saying why I believe the rules are what they are.
To me, the problem is the individual, not the gun. As indicated, bad guys will always find a way to get a gun if this is their goal (legally or more likely illegally). I've seen all sorts of posts (not here specifically) about how places that require gun ownership have less crime (not even sure such a place exists) or a bunch of other pro gun propaganda. I'm not sure how I feel about all of it, but I do know that until the real issue - the crazy individual - is addressed, there will not be an end to things like this. And I'm not sure there's a way to identify the crazy person before it happens either. A lot of people show signs of being imbalanced and it's easy in hindsight to say someone should have noticed the signs, but lets be real...there's no sign that pops up and says I'm going to kill 30 people on such and such date. I think that was a Tom Cruise movie. There's no way to know that someone's going to do something until they've done it, and we can't go around arresting everybody that we think might do something.
I've been thinking about this for days now. I don't think there's a solution. Changing gun laws won't stop it and anybody that thinks it does is simply wrong. All of the other ideas people have are simply not cost effective for the financial world we live in given the extremely low odds of something like this happening to you or someone you know or any one specific individual. Intercourse's ideas above are great, but who is going to pay for it? Schools are cutting programs and teachers already and now we're going to turn them into bases or something? What about the mall shooting...are we going to do that to malls? Movie theatres?
As sad as it sounds, I think this is just something we have to live with and hope that the odds play out the right way and it never happens to you or someone you love.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
There are not more crazy people in the USA than the rest of the world.
You can not fortify every public space against hardcore weapons.
Only answer is to minimise the ease of access to those weapons.
Exceptionally crazy types might still find a way, so it won't be 100% effective, but it would reduce the frequency of such incidents and minimise the severity of others.
People 225 years ago had never seen a computer, a car, an aeroplane, and lived in an entirely different society and global situation...maybe it's time to accept that what was a suitable idea for that community might not be in the best interests of Americans today.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
I heard on the news yesterday that all classroom doors in CT schools must be locked following this incident. And I agree with a ban on assault weapons. I see no legitimate reason for people to have access to them. At least make it more difficult to kill 30 people in a matter of minutes.
The idea about armed guards is an interesting one. The initial thought is for there to be less guns, but that would be on the opposite end of the spectrum. But a crazy person might think twice about going to shoot up a place where they knew there'd be resistance. Like one article said, lots of crazy people hate cops, but you never see them entering and opening fire at a police station. This school was in a quiet town and while it was well equipped in terms of security. It wasn't equipped to prevent a gunman from shooting his way into the building with an assault rifle. Few places are.
It's just a sad world we live in when you aren't completely safe when you head out into the world. Hell, sometimes you're not even safe in the comfort of your own home. But that's the way things are. You're never going to be able to eliminate these senseless acts altogether, but steps have to be made to lessen the frequency of them. They have become way too commonplace. Whether it's stricter gun laws, increased security, etc. Steps need to be taken. The sit back, do nothing (not enough), and hope for the best approach isn't working.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
There are not more crazy people in the USA than the rest of the world.
You can not fortify every public space against hardcore weapons.
Only answer is to minimise the ease of access to those weapons.
Exceptionally crazy types might still find a way, so it won't be 100% effective, but it would reduce the frequency of such incidents and minimise the severity of others.
People 225 years ago had never seen a computer, a car, an aeroplane, and lived in an entirely different society and global situation...maybe it's time to accept that what was a suitable idea for that community might not be in the best interests of Americans today.
Monkey...you can't even discuss this topic until you understand how many guns are in circulation in the US. No law is going to fix that even if they were banned yesterday. You have to completely forget everything you know because whether you like it or not, that's just how it is in the US. Guns are in the US and will be everywhere for the forseeable future...certainly as long as any of us are alive.
To prove my point, the war on drugs really took off in the 80s. It may have been around longer than that, but it really took hold in the 80s and has continued to this day. Drugs are everywhere - maybe even more readily available than guns are. We've been figthing that war for 30 years and drugs are and have been completely illegal for much longer than that. You have to get off the bandwagon that changing a law will change anything, because it won't. I wish it would, but it won't. If it would, I would support it; I just know better.
So unless you really understand the situation, you can't intelligently discuss the topic. I'm not saying that to be mean. It's just reality. People that do understand it don't have a solution. They don't even have a starting point. Even the President admits there are major hurdles to gun control law changes, and he's not talking about the NRA (at least not only about the NRA). Do you understand how hard it is to change the Constitution? That's what it would take to change the gun control laws to the level that it might have an impact on stopping things like this someday way down the road (again, long after all of us are gone).
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
It's just a sad world we live in when you aren't completely safe when you head out into the world. Hell, sometimes you're not even safe in the comfort of your own home. But that's the way things are. You're never going to be able to eliminate these senseless acts altogether, but steps have to be made to lessen the frequency of them. They have become way too commonplace. Whether it's stricter gun laws, increased security, etc. Steps need to be taken. The sit back, do nothing (not enough), and hope for the best approach isn't working.
I don't disagree, but even you brought up conflicting ideas (banning guns or adding security/guns) and both have pitfalls to them. You can't just do something and hope it's the right thing either. It is certainly possible that banning guns could do more harm than good (in other words the bad guys have them and other than the cops, the good guys don't). That could backfire and/or create other problems. Over securing and adding guns to the situation could backfire and/or create other problems too (friendly fire deaths, accidental shootings, overzealous part-time security dude)...
That's the problem. There is no obvious solution. There's no semi-obvious solution or people a lot smarter than any of us would have thought of it by now.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
Here's the reality of the situation (and I realize this won't be popular): life is all about risk management. You can't have knee-jerk reactions to every single incident that happens...that's how people make bad decisions.
It's completely unfortunate what happened. Horrifying. But those kids could have just as easily died in a bus accident due to a drunk driver. Would that be any more or less tragic? What if a school locks all its doors to prevent something like this and the kids die in a fire because they couldn't get out? I guess you could have fire alarms on all the doors so they could get out, but what if someone on the inside lets the shooter in one of those doors? The alarms go off and kids are taught to leave the room and exit the building...they are sitting ducks in the hallway. What if someone tramples some kids to death trying to get out because we taught the kids to get out when the alarm goes off?
My point is we can't address every single "what if" situation. We have to look at the big picture, and the big picture says that as horrific as this was, it's rare. Rare as in never happened before. Sure, similar things have happened before, but nothing quite like this. Mass shootings are so unbelievably rare in the US despite the perception out there. I don't have statistics to back this up, but I'd guess 99.9% of gun deaths are either accidental or targeted shootings (gang/drug related, home invasion/protection, carjacking type things). They are usually one on one. Occasionally an innocent bystander gets killed, but usually it's the target that is killed.
Between the batman attack, this school attack, and the mall attack there were maybe 50 or so deaths (exact number doesn't matter for the purposes of this discussion). Total gun deaths were what...1,000? 10,000? More than that? Lets use 10,000 (according to cdc it was over 11,000 gun homicides in 2009)...that makes the mass shootings .5% of all shooting deaths. We're not outraged by the other 99.5%, but that .5% is going to make us turn everything upside down? That's just not realistic.
Risk management. Is it worth it to spend money/time/resources on something? What is the upside? What is the downside? This goes back to what I was saying about securing schools...do you know how much that would cost? Who is going to pay for it initially, and who is going to pay for the continued expense when schools are cutting programs left and right to stay afloat? All of this to save a few lives?
If it's your child, of course the answer is yes...do whatever you have to do to keep them safe. That's the emotional reaction. If the money that went to saving those 30 lives could be used to save millions of lives in some other capcity (cure for breast cancer maybe)? Is the answer still save the 30 kids? It is if your kid is one of the 30. If you're being responsible, the answer is such a clear no that it isn't even worth discussing.
Maybe it's too soon to be this blunt, but this is the challenge. There isn't an infinite amount of money/resources out there. They must be used wisely to help the most people, and while this struck close to home because a lot of people have children and almost everybody has friends/family with children, we can't let that blind us to making bad decisions.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
So? What does that have to do with anything? He could have killed just as many with a few 6 shooters and an additional minute. He could have killed more with a bomb in less time. If I post the OKC bombing pic that's going around, does that make me equally witty?
Bringing irrational points to a discussion just causes you to be dismissed, not heard. The Constitution allows this whether you agree or not. See my earlier post about the challenges of changing that.
