Another mass shooting in the U.S

Wibbs wrote: »

OK but riddle me this WL; it was far easier to get guns including fully automatic weapons in America 50 years ago, even 30 years ago, yet none of these type of spree shootings were going on, yet in the last decade we've had nearly one a year. What has changed? The guns? No. Something else is going on.

Now if they restrict access to firearms they'll get votes(from some), but America will still have a lot of guns of various types in circulation. The genie is long outa the bottle, so it seems far more logical to me to look at what may have changed in the environment and look at tackling that, rather than go for the obvious and headline grabbing.

Just look at this thread. Look at the lack of knowledge on display. Even in gun totin Amerikay they have similar, especially in urban centres. So they ban "assault weapons" and people will go off happier that they're doing something and I guarantee you, I'll even lay a macabre bet that the year after that they;ll have another shooting spree and then they'll blame something else. Easy answers to complex questions are attractive, but they're rarely the right answers.

I'm not for one minute suggesting this boils down to guns and guns alone. It's a cultural and societal problem in America and sadly, as you point out , these mass-murders are becoming endemic.

Shining the focus on mental health issues is a good thing IN ANY COUNTRY. Ireland, USA, Spain , anywhere. I've posted many times on the excellent thread started by Tom (deVore) on depression. Mental health is most definitely always a worthy discussion. But every country has mental health issues - whether it's lack of funding for front-line mental health services or backlogs within the system seeking help or purely an inadequate system for addressing the issue from school age upwards - however if mental health issues alone were the only reason behind mass murders, then every country would have them on Americas scale. This is not the case.

It's clearly a multi-faceted problem. No clear single reason or factor for them occurring so regularly in America. By all means, America should sit down and look at a list of factors behind these events and try to implement change. What bothers me is that there seems little to zero acknowledgment amongst the pro-gun lobby on boards (i.e. Sparks, Manic Moran, Killer Wench, Bluewolf, MadsL, Long Range Shooter - and as i noted tongue in cheek elsewhere that list has a Manic Killer Shooter combination in there!) that guns are ANY part of the problem ...or more importantly any part of the solution. In fact the only "logic" entertained by them is MORE guns, in the hands of teachers. Brilliant.

So to answer your question , there is a deep rooted, fundamental problem in the American psyche and way of life that leads to these repeated tragedies. And easy access to weapons is a factor in all this. Just as mental health awareness/treatment is, just as inadequate background checks are, just as letting kids train/shoot with guns is. It's a gun culture country yet the best response from the pro-guns usually falls back to "people kill people, guns do not".

InTheTrees wrote: »

Except plainly you've never spent much time in the US.

There's shootings ALL the time. Having a shotgun at home for defense is the norm. Its out of control. Even at the height of the Troubles there were more people killed in Los Angeles per year for gods sake.

(I'm Irish and I've lived almost equal time in Ireland, UK and now USA.)

And yes, they all know about guns. They've all learned to shoot as kids. They've been brought up to expect a violent attack at almost any moment. Did you ever watch the film "Bowling for Colombine"? There's a paranoia certainly.

So instead of prattling on about sh*t you dont really seem to understand (tanks??) why not try and come up with a practical workable solution?

I've lived in Santee (small town in San Diego, California) for a year, Washington D.C. for 3 months and i've been to a lot of places up and down the west/east coast (places like Arizona, Nevada, Washington State).

It's a valid point. At what extreme does it stop? If personal safety is paramount, at what point is enough? If a handgun is not enough, you get an assault rifle...if that's not enough where do you go from there? It might sound an outlandish point to you, but it's a valid question - why not buy a tank? With the right permits it's possible to own a tank in a lot of States. At what point do you feel secure with an assault rifle? If people have a better weapon , you will always want to upgrade to a better one for self-defence. It's a nonsense escalation of potential violence and the more high powered weapons in circulation the easier it becomes for mass-murderers to commit mass-murder.

Sparks wrote: »

There are reports that he tried to buy a rifle days before the shooting but wouldn't submit to the background check (possibly because he knew he wouldn't pass if the reports of his mental health are accurate, possibly for other reasons).

If those reports are correct, this was planned. And that puts this tragedy into the realm of events where the responsible person actively chose to ignore law and ethics and morality, and that's an area where simple solutions are even less effective.

This shows why the easy access to high powered weapons is a problem. He tried to get his own rifle was refused, so had the really difficult task of taking his mothers one. Umm yeah not so difficult. If she didn't have one, or a gun, it may only have delayed his killing spree (if it were indeed planned) but we'll never know.

The harder it is for people to access these weapons, the harder it is for them to commit mass murder. I've said repeatedly, where there is a will there is a way - they will still do it, if that's whats in their heads - but at least try make it more difficult.

smurgen wrote: »

how about if you were one of the teachers?

By every account i've read - the first 2 people to tackle the gunman were both women, the Principal and the school Psychologist. The Principal was described by friends and family as a "pitbull". Looking at the photographs of the perpetrator, i highly doubt he would have been hard to take down. This was not Vladimir Klitschko here , this was a slim, scrawny teenager type.

You won't find much acknowledgement amongst the pro-gun types as it invalidates their position - but you are very much right, if the weapon was not a rifle, virtually every other weapon gave people a fighting chance and a much higher hope of survival. Made more evident by the fact he had to break into the school itself as they employed a doorbell system.

Sparks wrote: »

If we're being honest?
Same difference. Hell, with the firearm you might do better if you weren't amongst the first few victims, you'd hear the shooting and might have a chance to run or hide. Maybe.

So you are saying if he broke the window and threw a pipebomb into reception, the rest of the school was less likely to hear an explosion and run and hide?

You don't give up really do you, never wrong. Ever. Have you ever admitted to being wrong on a matter in your life?