The Second Amendment, Gun Control, and School Shootings.

[bellisarius]

Dear anti-abortionist, the solution is mental health care, on demand, without apology.

It goes far beyond that Dicker. We have to ask ourselves why so many are in need? Not just the violent. Paying for a treatment without examining the cause is just throwing good money after bad. It's like teaching a dog to be aggressive and then paying some one to calm it down.

 

[Tigersman]

What do you suggest to keep a 17 year old from bringing dad's gun in to school and firing off shots?

Have the damn gun locked up in a safe so the little bastard could not get to it. The parents of the shooters should be held responsible for their child's act.

 

[Tigersman]

Dear anti-abortionist, the solution is mental health care, on demand, without apology.

The solution is NOT mental health care or psychological evaluations before being allowed to buy a gun. Most people would appear sane and normal at the time of purchase but no one can say what or when something will set them off.

Solution: Lock the guns up in a safe so the brats can't get their hands on them.

 

[bellisarius]

Have the damn gun locked up in a safe so the little bastard could not get to it. The parents of the shooters should be held responsible for their child's act.

Again, that will work............maybe. Until he finds an alternative. The issue is, "Why did he want to take that gun to school to begin with?" We HAVE to be able to answer that question.

 

[richard_daily]

It goes far beyond that Dicker. We have to ask ourselves why so many are in need? Not just the violent. Paying for a treatment without examining the cause is just throwing good money after bad. It's like teaching a dog to be aggressive and then paying some one to calm it down.

Paying for treatment for mental health is the cost of living in a first world society.

Do you want to live in a first world society?

 

[richard_daily]

The solution is NOT mental health care or psychological evaluations before being allowed to buy a gun. Most people would appear sane and normal at the time of purchase but no one can say what or when something will set them off.

Solution: Lock the guns up in a safe so the brats can't get their hands on them.

The solution IS mental health care.

No one simply goes off the rails and decides to murder someone. There are plenty of warning signs if there are resources for people to use. Right now, there aren't for the vast majority of people.

That said, I'm all for parents locking up their guns. That's just common sense, but that's pretty sorely lacking in just about all aspects of our society.

 

[bellisarius]

Paying for treatment for mental health is the cost of living in a first world society.

Do you want to live in a first world society?

The solution IS mental health care.

No one simply goes off the rails and decides to murder someone. There are plenty of warning signs if there are resources for people to use. Right now, there aren't for the vast majority of people.

That said, I'm all for parents locking up their guns. That's just common sense, but that's pretty sorely lacking in just about all aspects of our society.

Agreed, treatment is a hell of a lot cheaper than the cost in human life.

And there are signs, some subtle, some overt.Who makes the call? And how do we deal with those calls without trampling on rights? Cruz sent up so many signs that it wasn't funny, all ignored. The most recent, beyond his fixation on a specific girl showed few signs at all.

In general I agree with you re. mental health. The issue is, and always was, who needs it and how do you make them go? What is the screening process and what initiated it? Or do we just run the general population though a screening and if so, who determines the threshold?

 

[coachdb18]

Liberals launched their theories long ago that the schools and the Uvory Tower elitists could do a better job raising the kids than their parents, and they’ve held parents at bay for years if they dared challenge that facet of intellectualism. Now we’re reaping what we’ve down, and finding that school failed kids academically as well as socially. Parents don’t know, and largely don’t want to know their own kids. It’s been like taking your dog to the dog fights and wondering why he bites. So now, parents aren’t going to suddenly become responsible, so they look to place blame, so it MUST be the guns fault...

Now, we have the rush to yet another social institution for throw-away kids, after we’ve neglected them we’ll ship them off to mental health camps because they’re screwed up.. perfect solution, just like Shawshank.. we can have them institutionalized before they have a fighting chance

 

[richard_daily]

Agreed, treatment is a hell of a lot cheaper than the cost in human life.

And there are signs, some subtle, some overt.Who makes the call? And how do we deal with those calls without trampling on rights? Cruz sent up so many signs that it wasn't funny, all ignored. The most recent, beyond his fixation on a specific girl showed few signs at all.

In general I agree with you re. mental health. The issue is, and always was, who needs it and how do you make them go? What is the screening process and what initiated it? Or do we just run the general population though a screening and if so, who determines the threshold?

I'm not talking about forced institutionalization here. I'm talking about access to mental health care.

You don't "force" people to go, you give them the resources to go and you set up a system that doesn't stigmatize mental health issues and conditions. In other words, you don't excessively pathologize.

That all said, I think it's clear that Cruz should have been involuntarily institutionalized, but the politicians will tell you that there is no money for that sort of thing. What are the lives of the kids he killed worth?

Without access to adequate mental health care, none of the rest of it matters, because we're just talking hypothetical. However, it's clear beyond any reasonable doubt that every single school murderer is mentally unstable and mentally ill.

What we do with those facts is up to us as a nation.

 

[Weird Harold]

The current problem is that retarded and mentally ill kids are getting their hands on their retarded or mentally ill parent's guns.

Unless we embrace designer babies with none of the bad shit, we will always have mentally ill and retarded kids.

We can, however, remove guns from that equation.

Access to guns has gotten more difficult over my lifetime at about the same rate as mass-shootings have increased (incl. school shootings).

Why is that the case?

(There was an unlocked gun rack in the hall between my bedroom and the bathroom. Guns in gun-racks in the parked cars and lockers at the high-school were almost universal during hunting season. Nobody was fazed by all the guns at school. In my entire schooling, there was ONE school shooting -- Thurston High School, Springfield Oregon. There was also a sniper in a clock tower in Texas, but I'm not sure if that is considered a "school shooting" or just the first in a long line of snipers in high places shooting random people.)

 

[KimGordon67]

High levels of gun onwership result in high levels of mass shootings - source.

There is a clear positive correlation between rates of gun ownership and violent crime - source.

There's no reason to believe that the US has a higher rate of mental illness than any other first world country, and yet the rates of homicides, mass shootings/murders, general carnage, etc are higher. There's a grillion studies that demonstrate this, coming at it from any direction. Even if everyone who pulls a trigger IS mentally ill, maybe creating a situation in which they didn't have easy access to guns would be kind of sensible.

Coach must have been creaming his walk shorts when the Australian family murder/suicide happened - finally he could produce some 'proof' that the Australian legislation didn't work, because of course everyone pushing for it totally argued it would be 100% effective.
In fact, stats show rates dropped by about 20% after the legislation (with the exception of the spike immediately after the legislation, obviously related to the fact that the buy-backs weren't instant). So no, the Australian legislation wasn't 100% effective. But if my kid was one of the 20% that would have been shot otherwise, I'd be pretty happy.

 

[KimGordon67]

The Second Amendment is quite clear as to what it says and what it means (although there are a few who apparently are saddled with English as a second language that are determined to debate that point. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment is an individual right (Heller v District of Columbia) not some group right. Further the court has ruled that right covers military style individual firearms (United States v Miller). The order that the Second Amendment appears in the Bill of Rights is not arbitrary. Nor is it a right given by the government. It, along with all of the amendments in the Bill of Rights are assumed to be the natural rights of man. Beyond the reach of government to grant or deny. The Second Amendment is the guarantor of all of the other rights. Taking the First Amendment as an example, look around the world. In nation after nation you find their governments placing restrictions on their freedom of speech, the religion(s) they choose to practice, and to peaceably assemble. The Second Amendment is the 'teeth' in the Constitution that acts as a brake on the governments ability to infringe on all of those other rights we take for granted.

There are those that would want to do away with the Second Amendment altogether, or severely restrict the right to exercise that right. They couch it in terms of 'Hunting', a factor that was considered by only one state when the Bill of Rights was framed (Pennsylvania), or in other equally restrictive arguments. Over the course of this nations history over one million Americans have given their lives to secure and preserve the rights in the Constitution that make the United States what it is with the liberties that we all enjoy. Those rights are NOT going to be surrendered willingly or without bloodshed no matter what fantasies you may cleave to. The "Gun Control" crowd have willfully ignored the fact that in each and everyone of these recent school shootings multiple laws were broken BEFORE the first life was taken, yet some how they are of the belief that even more laws will 'fix' the problem. The only thing that onerous laws will accomplish is the criminalizing of what are now law abiding citizens, the creation of new black markets, and the fomenting of civil insurrection. In other words they'll have worsened the problem.

The willful taking of a life is murder. The age of the victim is immaterial. A life is a life no matter how it ends and although senseless murders are seemingly the worst of all, it is only the living that are burdened with the problem of trying to make sense of that which makes no sense at all. The firearm used in these senseless murders is merely a tool, an implement. And these murderers are merely the wielder of those tools. Those that are determined to embark on indiscriminate carnage will find a way, and a tool, to do so. These acts of indiscriminate murder are symptoms of a societal problem, a problem that the mere removal of a tool is NOT going to solve..........or even address. As far as I'm concerned anyone that commits murder, and especially indiscriminate murder, is insane. Not even up for debate in my mind. But what drove them to that madness? With rare exception people are not born insane. What are the cues? How to intervene before that individual is too far gone? And when we find the answer to those questions we have to address how we're going to go about dealing with those problems without trampling on the rights of the lawful. We'll find none of those answers in the banning of a tool.

... and yet homicide rates are demonstrably lower in first world states that don't think carrying a firearm is some inalienable right handed down by god. Hmmmm.
(Also, the fact that only the US seem to think this IS a right would suggest that it's not a 'natural right of man' ... if it was 'natural' it would exist outside the US borders.)

 

[coachdb18]

Access to guns has gotten more difficult over my lifetime at about the same rate as mass-shootings have increased (incl. school shootings).

Why is that the case?

(There was an unlocked gun rack in the hall between my bedroom and the bathroom. Guns in gun-racks in the parked cars and lockers at the high-school were almost universal during hunting season. Nobody was fazed by all the guns at school. In my entire schooling, there was ONE school shooting -- Thurston High School, Springfield Oregon. There was also a sniper in a clock tower in Texas, but I'm not sure if that is considered a "school shooting" or just the first in a long line of snipers in high places shooting random people.)

When I was in school, we took our guns to school and kept them in our lockers until after school, when we went hunting on the school grounds (farm country, lots of room). Nobody even mentioned the possibility that there could be a shooting, if anybody HAD thought of it it would have been met with a few dozen of those rifles up his ass. We just didn’t have a problem with guns at school. This ‘gun free zone’ tried to fill a gap we had filled with personal responsibility for generations. It wasn’t until the schools, run amok but liberal eggheads, that we gave away what worked for letting the kids grow without adult supervision. The mental health bit now is just more clamoring for an institutional fix, when the answer always was personal responsibility, and it started with good examples from parents, a thing in very short supply in 2018.

 

[WoundedKnee]

Sad how much of this thread is a not-so-subtle blend of cartoon thinkers, illiteracy and just plain crazy.

This is one of those topics a Progressive will simply not engage in in any meaningful or thoughtful way engaging instead in what they believe to be a priori statement, ascription, ridicule and as much 'white' noise as possible.

 

[KimGordon67]

Sad how much of this thread is a not-so-subtle blend of cartoon thinkers, illiteracy and just plain crazy.

This is one of those topics a Progressive will simply not engage in in any meaningful or thoughtful way engaging instead in what they believe to be a priori statement, ascription, ridicule and as much 'white' noise as possible.

What would 'meaningful' and 'thoughtful' engagement look like (apart from just agreeing with you old men)? The GB gun lobby barely ever engage actual research or data in their arguments, just supposition, or if they do mobilise actual facts, they entirely misread them.

 

[WoundedKnee]

... and yet homicide rates are demonstrably lower in first world states that don't think carrying a firearm is some inalienable right handed down by god. Hmmmm.
(Also, the fact that only the US seem to think this IS a right would suggest that it's not a 'natural right of man' ... if it was 'natural' it would exist outside the US borders.)

Comparing small homogenous states with a shared, almost tribal culture, with a large, diverse nation rife with clashing cultures, among other problems like the violences of prohibition, is a futile and meaningless exercise analogous to pointing out how the American enjoys a living space that averages a greater square footage of the selected (cherry-picked) counterpart or noting how much bigger and numerous our cars are compared to theirs.

[This, if I were a Progressive, is one of those issues where I would be telling you to shut the fuck up since you cannot own a gun (the parallel, of course, to the abortion argument and it's fallback position when a Progressive cannot "win" the argument with a male of the species ).]

 

[KimGordon67]

Comparing small homogenous states with a shared, almost tribal culture, with a large, diverse nation rife with clashing cultures, among other problems like the violences of prohibition, is a futile and meaningless exercise analogous to pointing out how the American enjoys a living space that averages a greater square footage of the selected (cherry-picked) counterpart or noting how much bigger and numerous our cars are compared to theirs.

[This, if I were a Progressive, is one of those issues where I would be telling you to shut the fuck up since you cannot own a gun (the parallel, of course, to the abortion argument and it's fallback position when a Progressive cannot "win" the argument with a male of the species ).]

I have never in my entire life suggested that man can't have an opinion on abortion.

Actually, I totally can get a firearms licence if I choose to go through the rigmarole that's involved, and then I can own a gun.

Basically, the OP states 'guns because human rights' and you're now stating 'guns because America'. And that just goes back and forth in response to any argument anyone else poses. Guns aren't a human right. America isn't some weird fucking exception to the rest of the universe (except for the fact that y'all think guns are a human right - THAT'S unique).

You seriously think you're the only state with 'clashing cultures'? Seriously? Do you ever see what's happening beyond the mythical wall?

 

[WoundedKnee]

What would 'meaningful' and 'thoughtful' engagement look like (apart from just agreeing with you old men)? The GB gun lobby barely ever engage actual research or data in their arguments, just supposition, or if they do mobilise actual facts, they entirely misread them.

Go back and look at the first three, or four, Progressive reactions to the topic and if you cannot figure out why I said what I said, then you are part of the problem.

Hint: It started out with personal attacks and then devolved to the whole problem is retarded gun-owners, a variation on the Clinton campaign: We don't want their votes, they're deplorable. Well, she (and the Progressive Left) got what she wanted just like Progressives don't want to entertain the ideas of "old men."

[There used to be a term in the past for old men and it was called elders and they were resected for having experienced the broad range of human behavior and human action.]

There seems to be a vast difference on both sides of the argument as to what the proper "interpretation" of statistics are. Like the interpretation of yours that I just placed into the logical camp of fallacious. Most of the countries in the subset which you have pointed to as "enlightened" in their gun laws have perpetrated many of the worst and destructive wars of human annihilation one of them being less than a century ago.

Redneck translation: We are so much more peaceful than anyone else, until we set our minds to killin' each other.

 

[WoundedKnee]

I have never in my entire life suggested that man can't have an opinion on abortion.

Actually, I totally can get a firearms licence if I choose to go through the rigmarole that's involved, and then I can own a gun.

Basically, the OP states 'guns because human rights' and you're now stating 'guns because America'. And that just goes back and forth in response to any argument anyone else poses. Guns aren't a human right. America isn't some weird fucking exception to the rest of the universe (except for the fact that y'all think guns are a human right - THAT'S unique).

You seriously think you're the only state with 'clashing cultures'? Seriously? Do you ever see what's happening beyond the mythical wall?

Did I say you? Now you engage in personalization which then quickly gets to, "Why are you attacking me?" and then leads to rhetorical 'vengeance.'

The only reason I made that type of statement is because of you making the kind of contention that human rights or human behavior is different in your cherry-picked countries because of their "laws." Law is supposed to be based on human rights, but is not a human right.

 

[KimGordon67]

Go back and look at the first three, or four, Progressive reactions to the topic and if you cannot figure out why I said what I said, then you are part of the problem.

Hint: It started out with personal attacks and then devolved to the whole problem is retarded gun-owners, a variation on the Clinton campaign: We don't want their votes, they're deplorable. Well, she (and the Progressive Left) got what she wanted just like Progressives don't want to entertain the ideas of "old men."

[There used to be a term in the past for old men and it was called elders and they were resected for having experienced the broad range of human behavior and human action.]

There seems to be a vast difference on both sides of the argument as to what the proper "interpretation" of statistics are. Like the interpretation of yours that I just placed into the logical camp of fallacious. Most of the countries in the subset which you have pointed to as "enlightened" in their gun laws have perpetrated many of the worst and destructive wars of human annihilation one of them being less than a century ago.

Redneck translation: We are so much more peaceful than anyone else, until we set our minds to killin' each other.

You're conflating the effect of gun laws with other things. I'm not sure what other things, because I can't work out what countries you're referring to, nor what 'human annihilation' you're referring to ... but I'd suggest the US is hardly innocent in that respect either. Which has nothing to do with national firearms regulations and mass civilian shootings.

I don't care much for how most people on the GB argue, from either side of the border. (I'll engage in that crap myself, in one or two cases such as Coach, because he's such a supercilious arse while misinterpreting stats like it's a new sport.) But that doesn't invalidate fact-based arguments in favour reducing the widespread ownership of guns. Again, you're conflating one thing (childish GB arguments) with something else entirely (arguments based on actual evidence).

 

[KimGordon67]

Did I say you? Now you engage in personalization which then quickly gets to, "Why are you attacking me?" and then leads to rhetorical 'vengeance.'

The only reason I made that type of statement is because of you making the kind of contention that human rights or human behavior is different in your cherry-picked countries because of their "laws." Law is supposed to be based on human rights, but is not a human right.

You invoked 'me' when you suggested I STFU because I can't own a gun, and that 'progressives' do a similar thing when arguing abortion, which you know full well I've done numerous times.

I didn't say human rights or behaviour was different because of laws. I said that saying something is a 'natural right' when it only exists in one country (well, two) is just stupid.

 

[WoundedKnee]

Okay. Crazy.

Want to talk human rights?

Let's try that, just for shits and giggles.



As a basic human right, do I enjoy the right to self-defense?

 

[KimGordon67]

Okay. Crazy.

Want to talk human rights?

Let's try that, just for shits and giggles.



As a basic human right, do I enjoy the right to self-defense?

Yes. As do I. Thus I have the right to live in a context in which gun ownership is not widespread - all the evidence demonstrates I'm much safer in that context than in a situation where gun ownership IS widespread. Therefore, protecting that context is an act of self defense.
Every American has the right to fight for the cessation of widespread gun onwership as an act of self defence.

I've honestly lost track of the number of times I've made this entirely obvious argument.

 

[WoundedKnee]

Yes. As do I. Thus I have the right to live in a context in which gun ownership is not widespread - all the evidence demonstrates I'm much safer in that context than in a situation where gun ownership IS widespread. Therefore, protecting that context is an act of self defense.
Every American has the right to fight for the cessation of widespread gun onwership as an act of self defence.

I've honestly lost track of the number of times I've made this entirely obvious argument.

Okay, yes with a caveat is a no. What you say is there is a limitation on the right to self-defense. That outlook is not speaking of the individual right, but the tribal right. If tribal rights trump individual rights, then human rights are whatever the Strong Man says they are and in most all instances, the strong man insists that he (the government) has the right to self defense, but its subjects do not.

Now, which statistics do you base that on?

Because, here, where there is still an individual right to self-defense and an emphasis on local government, the areas of the worst gun violence (those instances that inflate the statistics that you tried to point to earlier) demonstrate that you are safer in a place where gun ownership is high compared to living in a place with the strictest of gun prohibitions.

Are you comparing an apple to an orange? especially in the light of my earlier carnage about the death and destruction rained down upon humanity by those government/nations enlightened enough to use the power of the Strong Man to ensure that you live in a "safe" gun-free environment?

~~~~~

This is also one of those instances, in light of your last statement, in that which I also pointed out earlier, the tendency of so many to think that their basal belief is an a priori building block of the argument that every 'intelligent' person should recognize.

 

[IG_88]

When I was in school, we took our guns to school and kept them in our lockers until after school, when we went hunting on the school grounds (farm country, lots of room).

No, that never happened.