School shootings and US Gun Control

[Notorious]

@Iniquitous - Okay sure, but if "that's the point" then how could anyone who opposes guns ever make the claim that "I'm not for a total gun ban. I just want reasonable regulations." and say it with a straight face? Putting up more and more and more barriers until it's completely impossible and too expensive to own a firearm IS a gun ban, and yet politicians and political commentators frame things falsely as though it isn't exactly that. A ban.

The word "Banned" is alarming for people to see. It makes people start paying attention. It helps them to understand that maybe things are changing and they need to be more alert with the goings-on of the world. If you can just pile the layers high enough, though, then you don't need to ban a thing. You can just frustrate people's efforts to purchase a firearm for so long that it never happens. The underbelly of society would still have their guns, though, because the black market functions all its own without government oversight and never sleeps. So yeah, I dunno. All signs, at least as I see them, seem to point to things getting worse for the average American family because they don't have personal bodyguards or a security team and then the government took their gun.

But hey, I figure we'll eventually try the gunless society thing eventually anyway. Might as well be sooner rather than later I guess.

Also I agreed that our teachers shouldn't be expected to carry firearms and train to use them, so I don't really understand that passion here in your response, but I understand that you care and I appreciate that. All I said was that I think they'd have plenty of money for it, which they would because it would be a state funded program and not county level and it would have to be supported by the current administration anyway or it would never happen to begin with. So yeah, it'll never happen anyway, even though in practice it probably wouldn't be a very good idea to begin with. I'd still be interested in seeing it tested in some way, though. If they could do so in some kind of safe way. Like placebo effect or something and just tell a few schools that some teachers will be carrying firearms now, but never actually make those arrangements. Then see how people respond to that in the years to come. Maybe there would be less bomb threats and gun scares and stuff.

I think I'd homeschool too if I had kids, but that isn't an endeavor that I've undertaken yet.

[Oniya]

Telling people that teachers are carrying without actually following through will simply make the teachers the shooter's first targets.  The person that wants to wreak the most havoc is going to go for any perceived opposition first.

[Iniquitous]

@ Notorioius -

First, let me say this.  I work for a county government.  I can tell you firsthand that there would never, and I mean NEVER, be money in the budget to purchase firearms, ammo, or training for teachers. My chair broke at work 6 months after I started there. They still have not bought a new one to replace it 3 years later. They keep telling me there is no money in the budget for it and to find another one in the building and use it (I do, then someone breaks that one, rinse & repeat) or I can buy my own (see the part about coworkers breaking the chairs to understand why I have not taken my extra computer chair into work).  The printer in booking broke last month.  They don't have the money in the budget to get a new one for them so they took my printer/copier/scanner and put it in booking then gave me a very old printer that barely works (and doesn't make copies or scan - two functions I NEED on a daily basis) half the time and told me I was shit out of luck until the new fiscal year starts in July. If I need copies or scans I have to call someone else, have them come get what I need copied/scanned, go into administration & make the copies/scans, then bring it back to me.

So yeah. County governments do not & would not have the budget to purchase firearms and ammo for teachers plus train them to be Rambo.

Second - here's just a few examples of what happens when you arm teachers (also deals with SRO's and other school employees).

A teacher's LOADED gun falls from his waistband during a cartwheel
Teacher unintentionally firing a gun in class during a safety demonstration
A school district employee’s firearm fell out of its holster onto a school bus seat. The firearm was later found by a student.
A teacher left her gun unattended in a teacher’s workroom. The teacher served as a school guardian and was authorized to have a gun on campus.
A student found a gun and bullets inside an unattended purse on a school bus. Officers determined that the purse belonged to a school bus driver employed by the school district.
A vice principal left her gun unattended in a restroom on campus. The vice principal served as a school guardian and was authorized to have a gun on campus.
A teacher was arrested for bringing a gun to school and keeping it in her bag.
A gun was found in an unattended bag in the media center of a high school. The bag belonged to an employee of the school.
A school resource officer and retired police officer left an unloaded, holstered weapon on the counter of a bathroom.
A gun brought to a middle school by a teacher was stolen by two students.
A school security guard left a gun in the bathroom. A 5th-grade student found the gun and alerted teachers right away.
A school resource office left her duty weapon in the faculty bathroom at an elementary school.
A sixth-grade teacher accidentally discharged her gun and shot herself in the leg while using a faculty restroom inside an elementary school in Utah.

I can keep going.  This list is LONG.  The point is simple.  It is a bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD idea to arm teachers. One, it makes them a target for anyone hell-bent on massacring kids (and they do not get paid enough to become targets for bullets). Two, obviously from the list above, they can't be trusted to keep firearms safe. Three, more guns is NOT the solution.

[Humble Scribe]

The underbelly of society would still have their guns, though, because the black market functions all its own without government oversight and never sleeps.

This argument seems to be the default fallback position for US gun lobbyists; "criminals" can always get guns from the "black market", therefore gun regulation is pointless. It never takes the next step, though, to ask: where does the 'black market' source its guns from? The answer is pretty obvious: it gets them from the legal market, sold on illegally.

[As an aside, 7% of US gun crimes are actually committed with weapons found on the premises by the criminal...]

If gun regulations make owning guns more onerous and difficult, storage and handling regulation is more tightly enforced, and there are consequently fewer guns in circulation, then the black market finds it more difficult to source guns as well. That has been the experience of every country that has imposed tighter gun laws. In Australia the price of illegal firearms has skyrocketed. In the UK the black market might dig up antique weapons - granddad's old Webley revolver or the Luger uncle Harry brought back from WWII, or replica pistols converted to dangerous and unreliable Saturday Night Specials, .22 popguns and so on, but if you want a modern handgun of the sort you can buy over the counter in the US you will pay thousands of pounds. Ammunition is actually even more difficult to find.

Of course the US would also need to deal with the huge reservoir of weapons currently held in civilian hands - gun buyback schemes and amnesties for handing in illegal weapons etc. It's doable, but the political and I daresay societal will simply doesn't exist. About 50% of the population is content for children to continue to be massacred as the price of some fantasy of personal freedom.

[RedRose]

Perhaps indeed too many loons have guns in America and would hide them instead of surrendering them. As a teacher, my job isn't to get killed nor to fight with loons or die trying. Maybe I just don't get it at all. I remember when they added a metal detector in my high school, people were already in a panic, and tbh I don't know why they did it.  In my kids' school, there's no such thing... and yes hurting animals is a biggy. I HATE that some see it as kids would be kids.

[Notorious]

@Oniya - "Telling people that teachers are carrying without actually following through will simply make the teachers the shooter's first targets.  The person that wants to wreak the most havoc is going to go for any perceived opposition first.", okay but this is predicated on the assumption that most school shooters don't have targets which in a lot of cases they do and it's typically linked to bullying or can also be linked to authority figures they have an issue with, could be linked to racial hatred or maybe the resentment for social hierarchies that very much exist in schools and stuff too. Or it could just be some person who loses it and kills indiscriminately as well. If they're worried about someone stopping them or impeding their success in killing kids of varying ages at a school, though, whether or not they're carrying a firearm the teachers would still be the logical biggest targets because it would still be them who would be expected to get kids out in the quickest and most efficient ways. If you're not an idiot and you want to cause chaos you go after the elements of something that provide it sound and reliable structure. Teachers are the pillars of strength and structure in schools. They educate, guide, reinforce and lead. In a school shooter scenario they often times are praised as heroes for some of the tactics they use in successfully getting kids away from the school and to safety. So I don't see how they wouldn't already be high priority targets for an active shooter regardless of whether or not the shooter thinks they have a gun. That being said I do get your point and understand what you're saying, I just think that most school shooters already have the teachers pretty high up on their kill list to begin with.


@Iniquitous - Well yeah, I know. I totally agree with that assessment. That's why I said it wouldn't be county funded at all. If people really did vote on this and the state and federal levels signed off on it then it would be State funded, not country funded, and it would need a lot of support from the federal level I'm assuming. If people really were for it, though, I can guarantee you that some states around the country could absolutely afford this. Guns are not expensive, and the training courses that would be necessary are also very inexpensive. If something like this was initiated, though, they would definitely set up specific, much longer and much more tedious gun training courses for teachers that would definitely be of higher expense, though. I could see them scrutinizing courses and classes like these EXTREMELY hard, which they should.

But yeah, regardless of all of that I've actually been on your side on this opinion the whole time. I am in no way suggesting that we need to get teachers trained and carrying firearms, lol. In fact the thought of guns being needed at school at all is enough to put me in a bad mood, and that includes armed security guards. If I try to imagine what schools would be like if we decided to remove all of the security guards and metal detectors, though, and then I get an image in my head that just seems so much worse. So my real question is "Where in all of this is there an actual balance that you would actually agree works and is reliable for the safety of our kids?" - Often times I feel like conversations specifically examining school shootings or some other modern problem we're trying to solve just end up devolving into "Guns keep us safe from all the bad people out there and there should be one in every back pocket, glovebox and under every bed!" and then you get "Guns are bad and so are the idiots who think there should be one in every home when there are already too many to begin with!" stuff and that leads to an absolute, base level ZERO progress made. I'm somewhere in the middle trying to parse out all of the information and understand where the good, safe, fair middle ground is because that's what I want for everyone. Fair and safe.

"Two, obviously from the list above, they can't be trusted to keep firearms safe." - Seems like an extremely broad assumption to make, honestly, because I know people who are extremely respectful and fearful of guns, which is why they NEVER come out of their purses or cars to begin with and they are constantly keeping up with their own safety mechanisms and processes to make certain that they don't have an accident. Can't say stuff like this and expect it to be an absolute fact with all teachers across the country in mind.

"Three, more guns is NOT the solution." - I'm inclined to agree with this statement, but it's not an argument or anything. It's just your personal opinion on the whole gun debate and about half of the country disagrees with that opinion. I respect that you have examples of guns and teachers not particularly meshing well together, and that's why I agree that there should be no push to have teachers start carrying guns at school, but it doesn't mean that evidence doesn't exist that runs counter to the stories you provided either. It doesn't mean that teachers haven't successfully defended their students from an active shooter with a firearm before. It's just one side of a coin.

[Oniya]

I'm going to leave this here before I get into the meat of my post:  https://www.thetrace.org/2019/04/guns-armed-guards-school-shootings/

There are, of course, many factors that lead to school shootings.  Many of these can be addressed without adding more guns to the situation, and without impacting the majority of gun owners.  More social interventions to address bullying issues.  More mental health support to address depression.  More safety nets to keep people out of the mindset where they think they need to blow someone's head off.

I'm going to even go out there and say that - if someone is a responsible gun owner (is trained and knows how to prevent others from using their weapon without permission) - I don't care if their basement looks like Reba McIntire's in Tremors.

What is being proposed gun-wise are measures to keep weapons out of the hands of individuals with poor impulse control (raising the age) and a willingness and desire to kill their neighbors. family members, and complete strangers (red flag laws). 

[Iniquitous]

@Iniquitous - Well yeah, I know. I totally agree with that assessment. That's why I said it wouldn't be county funded at all. If people really did vote on this and the state and federal levels signed off on it then it would be State funded, not country funded, and it would need a lot of support from the federal level I'm assuming. If people really were for it, though, I can guarantee you that some states around the country could absolutely afford this. Guns are not expensive, and the training courses that would be necessary are also very inexpensive. If something like this was initiated, though, they would definitely set up specific, much longer and much more tedious gun training courses for teachers that would definitely be of higher expense, though. I could see them scrutinizing courses and classes like these EXTREMELY hard, which they should.

Bold part by me. Please tell me again how the state government would set up specific, MUCH LONGER and MUCH MORE TEDIOUS gun training courses for teachers cause Ohio republicans just passed a law allowing teachers to be armed after TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF TRAINING. So long, so tedious. /sarcasm.  TWENTY FOUR HOURS

Next question. How many more guns do we need in this country? Cause there are already more guns than people in the US. Obviously, having this many guns in this country is not working since we just had another mass shooting in Tulsa, Ok YESTERDAY.  Clearly, we need to start arming our doctors and nurses now too. Right?

The answer is a gun buyback program (It worked in the 90's). Regulate the ever-loving fuck out of guns, make it hard as hell to purchase a gun and ammo. Restrict the amount of guns and ammo a person can have.  Require guns to be stored at an armory.  No private gun sales. Insurance for every gun owned.  Title and tag every gun purchased. Mandatory yearly training courses and range shooting.

The US is the ONLY country on this planet with this problem.  If every other country can figure out how to deal with it, we can to. It's just a matter of accepting that we do NOT have the right to own arsenals. 2A says a WELL REGULATED militia.  There is NO regulation right now.  And stop selling weapons that are just about military grade.  You don't hunt a damn deer with a semi-automatic.

[Notorious]

This argument seems to be the default fallback position for US gun lobbyists; "criminals" can always get guns from the "black market", therefore gun regulation is pointless. It never takes the next step, though, to ask: where does the 'black market' source its guns from? The answer is pretty obvious: it gets them from the legal market, sold on illegally.

[As an aside, 7% of US gun crimes are actually committed with weapons found on the premises by the criminal...]

If gun regulations make owning guns more onerous and difficult, storage and handling regulation is more tightly enforced, and there are consequently fewer guns in circulation, then the black market finds it more difficult to source guns as well. That has been the experience of every country that has imposed tighter gun laws. In Australia the price of illegal firearms has skyrocketed. In the UK the black market might dig up antique weapons - granddad's old Webley revolver or the Luger uncle Harry brought back from WWII, or replica pistols converted to dangerous and unreliable Saturday Night Specials, .22 popguns and so on, but if you want a modern handgun of the sort you can buy over the counter in the US you will pay thousands of pounds. Ammunition is actually even more difficult to find.

Of course the US would also need to deal with the huge reservoir of weapons currently held in civilian hands - gun buyback schemes and amnesties for handing in illegal weapons etc. It's doable, but the political and I daresay societal will simply doesn't exist. About 50% of the population is content for children to continue to be massacred as the price of some fantasy of personal freedom.

This doesn't account for rural people who like I said before can't rely on their local police for much. Police response times in some rural towns near me is like 20-30 minutes on a good day and past like 8PM it could end up being beyond an hour. We can't just say sweeping statements like "About 50% of the population is content for children to continue to be massacred as the price of some fantasy of personal freedom.", because you're right, most people in the big city, heavily populated areas of the country don't need firearms to be protected as long as their police force is well honed and staffed, but people in rural areas absolutely have good reasons to have their guns. I realize that most people choose to believe that rural life is really not so very different from city life at all, but people who think that have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

Rural life is a completely different world from what most Democrats and left leaning types know of. Not that there aren't rural living Liberals, of course, but there should be no argument that there aren't many left leaning people maintaining ranches, crops and so on. Such different life realities and daily routines calls for different tools, processes and offer a different experience to us depending one what our circumstances are. I feel like it's too often that people don't consider that and just make sweeping declaration that "no one needs firearms so no one should have them."

As for big cities specifically, though, I'd love to see these places go Gun Free, and you could do something like this FAR quicker than the time it would take to try and get every state in America on board for a completely gunless American society. Why don't we just start No Guns standards in the big cities first and see how good that goes and then expand from the big cities to the rest of the country after we've had success with that?

[Notorious]

I'm going to leave this here before I get into the meat of my post:  https://www.thetrace.org/2019/04/guns-armed-guards-school-shootings/

There are, of course, many factors that lead to school shootings.  Many of these can be addressed without adding more guns to the situation, and without impacting the majority of gun owners.  More social interventions to address bullying issues.  More mental health support to address depression.  More safety nets to keep people out of the mindset where they think they need to blow someone's head off.

I'm going to even go out there and say that - if someone is a responsible gun owner (is trained and knows how to prevent others from using their weapon without permission) - I don't care if their basement looks like Reba McIntire's in Tremors.

What is being proposed gun-wise are measures to keep weapons out of the hands of individuals with poor impulse control (raising the age) and a willingness and desire to kill their neighbors. family members, and complete strangers (red flag laws).

Social intervention to address bullying sounds good. Mental health support(School Counselors and maybe Therapists) sounds great. And I'm totally in support of the age for purchase is 21 or older. In fact that's the current age for purchase in Texas too. I don't think that's true for private sales, though. Not sure.

Red Flag laws are dangerous I think, though, because anyone who knows you can just make up stuff and say "my friend has a number of guns and he's been acting a little odd lately. I'm worried about his well being.", and whether or not that's true his guns are gone the next morning repossessed by the police. Stuff like that can be used to take more and more from the other side little by little whether or not the circumstances of Red Flag laws are crippling the the second amendment. I feel like people could abuse Red Flag laws, but honestly I don't know. I'd have to see it in action, but I think the more that RF laws are pressed the more tense things would get and the world's got enough stress as it is. We can't have a civil war pop off or some crazy crap. >_<

[Notorious]

Bold part by me. Please tell me again how the state government would set up specific, MUCH LONGER and MUCH MORE TEDIOUS gun training courses for teachers cause Ohio republicans just passed a law allowing teachers to be armed after TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF TRAINING. So long, so tedious. /sarcasm.  TWENTY FOUR HOURS

Next question. How many more guns do we need in this country? Cause there are already more guns than people in the US. Obviously, having this many guns in this country is not working since we just had another mass shooting in Tulsa, Ok YESTERDAY.  Clearly, we need to start arming our doctors and nurses now too. Right?

The answer is a gun buyback program (It worked in the 90's). Regulate the ever-loving fuck out of guns, make it hard as hell to purchase a gun and ammo. Restrict the amount of guns and ammo a person can have.  Require guns to be stored at an armory.  No private gun sales. Insurance for every gun owned.  Title and tag every gun purchased. Mandatory yearly training courses and range shooting.

The US is the ONLY country on this planet with this problem.  If every other country can figure out how to deal with it, we can to. It's just a matter of accepting that we do NOT have the right to own arsenals. 2A says a WELL REGULATED militia.  There is NO regulation right now.  And stop selling weapons that are just about military grade.  You don't hunt a damn deer with a semi-automatic.

Look I totally understand the concern, but I was just trying to make some thoughtful comments and ask some questions. Maybe help to share the perspective of the more suburb/rural citizen to help the city life types maybe understand the differences a little bit. That the lives they lead compared to many others in the country are nothing alike.

"The answer is a gun buyback program (It worked in the 90's). Regulate the ever-loving fuck out of guns, make it hard as hell to purchase a gun and ammo. Restrict the amount of guns and ammo a person can have.  Require guns to be stored at an armory.  No private gun sales. Insurance for every gun owned.  Title and tag every gun purchased. Mandatory yearly training courses and range shooting." - Okay, but this illustrates my earlier point that when you do the Japan thing and place barrier after barrier after barrier between an owner and the gun they wish to own then you effectively ARE placing a ban on guns, but you're doing it in a way that seems well intentioned and gives the illusion that you actually can still own firearms when that's not really true. In fact it's the exact opposite of well intentioned. It's deceptive.

For instance, no one's going to pay to take a class on how to properly handle firearms every single year just to own a gun. People also aren't going to pay to take a driving test every year for the rest of their lives to own and operate a car and I highly doubt that you would ever suggest that they should. That, however, doesn't change the fact that "​The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released its 2020 annual traffic crash data, showing that 38,824 lives were lost in traffic crashes nationwide."

Gun deaths excluding suicide are around 25,000 people a year or something like that I think? And about 60% of those are incidents that occurred with pistols and not rifles from what I just read. It just seems as though rifles get a whole lot of the nation's hatred and vitriol even though they only account for about 10,000 deaths every year, most of which is still related to gang violence and criminal activity related situations. And to be clear I would actually be in support of more regulations right now than we currently have. I just don't want to put up a towering wall of regulations and then call it "fair and reasonable" when in fact it's just a total gun ban. If we're going to be taking deliberate steps to keep firearms too expensive, too inconvenient, too much trouble and too much stress for people to own then at least call it what it is. Otherwise we're just making things worse and making both sides of the political spectrum hate and resent one another even more, which we certainly don't need. Not only that, but when these regulations go into effect the actual criminals of society are going to roll their eyes, hide their guns and tell cops to fuck off if they come around looking for guns to collect regardless.

"And stop selling weapons that are just about military grade. You don't hunt a damn deer with a semi-automatic." - If you have the right optics on a reliable rifle it can be pretty close to military grade depending on what sort of op will be using it and what their needs in the field will be, as long as the caliber is sufficient for combat. And there are quite a lot of hunting rifles made as semi-automatic(that would also be considered military grade equipment) but are expressly made for hunting. They just tend to function and be sold with 5 to 10 round clips typically, assuming they even take a clip. I think the amount of ammo that can possibly be loaded into the weapon at any one time is the bigger gripe that most people have, because semi-automatic isn't quite as big a deal as many people believe it is. Most pistols these days are semi-automatic too. Also, while we're on the topic, I would think that the caliber of the gun is a more important question than whether or not a gun is semi-automatic.

[Oniya]

Just as a point of clarification, since it comes up just about every time this topic is addressed:

Semi-automatic: Every time you pull the trigger, the recoil action loads the next round.  This is pretty much standard operating procedure for anything that has a magazine.  Historical weapons that you have to cock (see 'every spaghetti Western ever') or shotguns are notable exceptions.

Full-automatic: Hold the trigger down and it keeps firing.  Only useful when you want a high body count.  Useless for hunting, since it destroys the meat.  (Fairly sure it's only legal for military use.)

Burst-fire:  One pull shoots several (usually three or so) cartridges before another pull is required.

[greenknight]

Semi-automatic: standard operating principle in modern firearms, revolvers and a majority of shotguns notwithstanding.
Fully automatic and burst fire: Machine guns. Only legal (in US) for civilian ownership via the NFA and if made before 1986; heightened background checks, recurring scrutiny, and annual ownership tax.

[Beorning]

Alright, quick question: if modern hanguns are semi-automatic and AR-15 are semi-automatic, then what's the difference between an AR-15 and a typical handgun? There must be, otherwise AR-15 wouldn't exist...

[Oniya]

https://globalnews.ca/news/4043345/ar-15-handgun-bullet-wounds-difference/

The article goes into more detail, but it comes down to how much damage the rifle causes, over the handgun.

A handgun is typically firing a relatively heavy bullet that moves more slowly,” explained Somerset, who said the speed of a handgun’s bullet is “less than the speed of sound.”

“Rifle bullets are typically travelling faster than 2,000 feet per second. They’re supersonic,” he added.

[greenknight]

One is a rifle. Rifles are generally more capable firearms, with the ability to fire cartridges with larger propellant charges that allows the bullets fried to make effective use of the longer barrels for longer range accuracy. It's why you generally don't hunt with a pistol. Pistols exist for the purpose of being a defensive weapon that is easy enough to carry that it will rarely not be carried (when societal norms allow, natch.)

[Thufir Hawat]

Alright, quick question: if modern hanguns are semi-automatic and AR-15 are semi-automatic, then what's the difference between an AR-15 and a typical handgun? There must be, otherwise AR-15 wouldn't exist...

1. Cultural. It looks like an M-16 which is a military symbol in the USA the same way that AK-47/74 is in other places: their military uses it.
2. It's a fucking rifle, which handguns, by default, aren't.

Now, it's a semi-automatic rifle with 30 bullets magazine and 5.56mm caliber, same as the M-16. About the only part that's a problem is the high magazine capacity IMO. Other than that, it's low-caliber (compare with 7,62mm and that's still medium caliber...or compare with the 5,45mm of AK-74, but those rounds have a propensity to start tumbling around after getting inside the body ).

Also, to correct your earlier statement that more armed people/guards wouldn't stop an active shooter because those people aren't thinking clearly: it would, because those people are thinking clearly enough to be trying to maximize their chances of causing maximum death and destruction. If they thought they'd be the sole victim, they wouldn't try, that would get them quickly forgotten by most. And from all we know about their mental processes, it looks quite likely that they are trying to get remembered.
For example, see what the second-to-last (at the moment) US mass shooter did before dying: he tagged a girl in a photo of his guns, told her she'd be resharing that picture, and told her he's going to do something.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10851821/Im-Chilling-message-Texas-school-shooter-sent-LA-girl-didnt-know-Instagram.html

You can safely say he wanted to be remembered, right? And I can guarantee you, nobody wants to be remembered by "he got himself offed in a failed attack against a school/medical center, but there were no innocent victims, so good riddance, I guess" .

The only problem with this is...you can't make every single place in the USA a hard target. (I mean, you probably could, but that's called militarizing society and is very much a case of "cure worse than the disease").
So if you protect schools, medical centres are going to be next on the list. If you protect those, too, shopping malls, McDonalds/Burger Kings, movie theaters, city halls, bars, concerts, etc.
The point is, wherever you get a high number of people and low numbers of guards is safe to attack from the POV of a shooter. There's no  way you can protect everyone in all public places, both formal and informal ones.

So the real question is, why are there so many people in the USA who want to kill others?

[Psi]

This doesn't account for rural people who like I said before can't rely on their local police for much. Police response times in some rural towns near me is like 20-30 minutes on a good day and past like 8PM it could end up being beyond an hour. We can't just say sweeping statements like "About 50% of the population is content for children to continue to be massacred as the price of some fantasy of personal freedom.", because you're right, most people in the big city, heavily populated areas of the country don't need firearms to be protected as long as their police force is well honed and staffed, but people in rural areas absolutely have good reasons to have their guns. I realize that most people choose to believe that rural life is really not so very different from city life at all, but people who think that have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

Rural life is a completely different world from what most Democrats and left leaning types know of. Not that there aren't rural living Liberals, of course, but there should be no argument that there aren't many left leaning people maintaining ranches, crops and so on. Such different life realities and daily routines calls for different tools, processes and offer a different experience to us depending one what our circumstances are. I feel like it's too often that people don't consider that and just make sweeping declaration that "no one needs firearms so no one should have them."

As for big cities specifically, though, I'd love to see these places go Gun Free, and you could do something like this FAR quicker than the time it would take to try and get every state in America on board for a completely gunless American society. Why don't we just start No Guns standards in the big cities first and see how good that goes and then expand from the big cities to the rest of the country after we've had success with that?

So how does every other population in the world with rural populations handle low policing volumes?

From down under here in AU - it’s easier for someone in rural to get a gun for pest control - someone in the city doesn’t have that argument.

The defence issue doesn’t really come into it.  The rural people here are more concerned about groceries being in the store, about the pub having beer.  Reduce the total level of guns in the population overall and it’s proportionate.   Buying more guns just adds to the problem.  Generally overall those in rural areas are more trusting and relaxed with their neighbours.   And you can’t say AU doesn’t have a wide rural area.

I agree with the plague of firearms in the us it’s not going to be an instant answer but the first thing it’s going to take is enough people with the balls to tell the republicans to listen to the ppl - rather than listen to a few paid senators.

Start small.   Increase the age, restrict to those who commit to training in a militia ( and actually fulfil the obligation part of the second amendment ) rather than I’m 18 I want a gun so I can say my dick is big.   That small change will start reducing the number of children killed without impinging on the written word of the 2nd amendment.    In rural areas it could be more relaxed.

And just based on previous comments.    For pest control you don’t need rapid fire.    I consider a high capacity as more that 4-5 shots.   Not the “small mag” companions we see here on tv.

[Psi]

https://globalnews.ca/news/4043345/ar-15-handgun-bullet-wounds-difference/

The article goes into more detail, but it comes down to how much damage the rifle causes, over the handgun.

In regards then the difference in rounds.

I am sure it’s “a great comfort” to parents that the bullet that killed their child came “from a handgun” as opposed to a rifle.

Just so it’s clear, I am a sarcastic, cynical son of a bitch.   And that statement is dripping with sarcasm.

[Twisted Crow]

I know I'm likely going to lose popularity points with the Democrat clique of Elliquiy here, but your main problem on guns isn't the Republican voters. At least, not nearly as much as people are told to think that they are. It's not quite as direct as people believe due to a repeated case of 'loud minority, silent majority' whenever these mass shootings happen.

Contrary to what many believe, the majority of 2nd Amendment supporters actually feel that we need more viable methods of keeping track of who can get their hands on a firearm. Last I read that was surveyed at something like 88% or so? But I'll look for the sources on where I found that. Gonna be a lot of juggling between family, work and study for me today, so I'll try to find some time to grab what I found (assuming another fellow, friendly Ellier doesn't beat me to that punch). Anyway, your main obstacle to getting anything done on controlling or even accurately monitoring/recording gun purchases in our system?

The NRA. And when it comes to keeping loopholes and strangleholds on shifting policies on this issue? These motherfuckers lobby hard to keep the status quo.

Realistically speaking, we can talk policy ideas until the moon turns purple. But none of this will change if the NRA continues to have as much influence on policy as they have.   

[Psi]

I’ll add to the above the latest figure I saw in the media was 80% + Democrat support and around 25% republican.
It’s what hits the news here

The question is just who the NRA can influence more, and with the current US constitution it doesn’t matter what the population votes for, it matters what a small number of paid of senators vote for.

A few weeks ago amongst my friends we were talking about how some in the US we’re watching the AU election and how the preferential voting system ( as opposed to the electoral lodges I believe) and how it meant the population could actually make their vote count more.   That said it’s compulsory to vote here too.

[Twisted Crow]

That is important to add, yes. And it's one part of my ongoing 'battle front' when talking to Republican supporters (some in my family, in fact) on how I feel that the NRA is playing them for saps and even blocking them from some of what they want changed in our government that cannot specifically because of the NRA. I mean, it's not a coincidence at all that only after every mass shooting, the NRA steps up to move the goalposts with some half-assed misdirection (ex. "Women are getting killed by guns in domestic violence? The answer is clear... ARM ALL WOMEN!").

And right-wing media fear-mongering doesn't exactly help at all in that regard, either.

[Azuresun]

So the real question is, why are there so many people in the USA who want to kill others?

I wouldn't say there's a huge number of would-be murderers in the US over other countries. It's more that there's a deep-rooted culture of "guns solve problems", that overlaps with someone's problem being "I hate my school". So when that would-be murderer boils over, the path to "pile of dead children" is both well-mapped, and very easy to pursue.

I did read an article ages ago about how a lot of modern gun culture can be traced back to Samuel Colt's original advertising campaign, where he heavily identified guns with taming the frontier (killing those pesky bears and Natives), and masculinity.

[Iniquitous]

I would say the answer to "why are there so many people in the USA who want to kill others?" is because the US does not have as much of the community environment (anymore) that other countries seem to have.  It's easier to murder the other people in your school/hospital/church/movie theater/grocery store/bowling alley/etc when you do not know them or their families.

The US is not a homogenous society. Rather, we are a heterogeneous society & more and more we are pushed to distrust, be afraid of, and hate anything and everything that is not like us. (Us meaning whatever to each person that hears the message)

Add in easily accessible weapons to a constantly simmering stew of hate & vitriol coming from every direction and you get death.

And yet another shooting, this time in Iowa outside of a church. 

[Iniquitous]

And just an addendum...

“The Gun Lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of The Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.”

- Warren Burger

- Supreme Court Chief Justice