A cliché more worthless than ‘thoughts and prayers’
Nineteen children, little innocents ages 7 to 10 — many still believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy — gunned down 05-24-22 in Uvalde, Texas. And two adults. Dammit to hell!
UPDATE: The shooter targeted a fourth grade classroom.
The President says something must be done. We agree. But what? The right to bear arms is as much a right as the First Amendment that guarantees free speech. But crying fire in a crowded theater is not protected, nor is libel or lying on a FISA application (we think). Guns are regulated in the United States. Even in Texas. The question is to what degree.
Most of the school shooters are young
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- The Uvalde shooter bought an AR-15 style firearm on or just after his 18th birthday.
- Earlier this May 2022, a 17-year-old killed 10 in a Houston TX area high school.
- The shooter at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas H.S. in Florida was 20 when he killed 14 students and three school staff.
- The Sandy Hook elementary school shooter was 19 when he killed 20 first graders and 6 educators in December 2012 in Connecticut.
- Columbine high school in April 1999 was the grandaddy of school shootings. The two shooters were aged 17 and 18.
Where and how, for that matter, did Khari Sanford — at age 18 — get the gun he used to kill Dr. Beth Potter and her husband Robin Carre, execution-style? That’s never been explored but how would you prevent it? The perp had no criminal record, was not adjudged mentally ill. Hell, he even served an internship with Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway.
Wisconsin already outlaws firearms on school grounds as a Class I felony. Must be 21 year old to carry a concealed firearm. But open carry is legal at age 18. Certainly, that could be increased to age 21. But does anyone really think those laws will stop the next school shooter?
Go ahead: require fingerprints, a background check (as is required by Wisconsin for concealed carry), hours of training, a written exam, a shooting proficiency test. Restore the five-day waiting period. (The Uvalde shooter waited until he was 18.) Throw in a mental health exam. Require liability insurance. (If only we could get automobile drivers to do the same!) To date, 76 people have been killed by gunfire in Milwaukee, alone. Six of them children. Anyone think the murderers would obey more gun laws?
Red flag laws might help but they require extensive court proceedings that put the burden of proof on the petitioner.
Cowards choose soft targets
Think the shooters don’t recognize that schools represent soft targets? Where most of the occupants, being children, are defenseless. Places where guns are banned. Does America suffer a plague of shootings at police stations? Gun shows? Cabela and Bass Pro shops?
The teen years are when mental health issues seem to manifest; perhaps we can do more. But the National Association of Mental Illness says, “Less than 10% of shootings nationwide involve people with mental illness.”
UPDATE: Robb elementary school had a school resource officer on site, thanks to state funding. That official “encountered” the killer, causing him to drop a bag of ammo. UPDATE #2: CNN Reports Nobody confronted the shooter from the time he left his grandmother’s house to the time he entered the school. The shooter, [authorities] said, “walked in unobstructed, initially.”
Yes, harden school buildings against unauthorized individuals. Much of that has already been done here in Madison. Restore school resource police officers to Madison’s high schools; add them to our middle schools, even if on a part-time basis. We repeat this bold proposal (Texas already does it):
Allow licensed school staff proving special competence
to carry weapons in all our schools.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: We do believe a good man with a gun is the surest protection against a bad man with a gun. That is how the shooting at Uvalde stopped — but not until those good guys arrived at the scene.
89 responses to “Sure, ‘Something must be done!’ But what?”
When my kids were in school, all entrances were locked.
You had to press an intercom buzzer and identify yourself before you were “buzzed in”
Then you had to check in at the front desk and sign a log.
It seems that Seinfeld’s apartment was harder to get into than this Texas school . . . .
MURPHY, WARREN, PRESSLEY, OMAR INTRODUCE LEGISLATION TO GET POLICE OUT OF SCHOOLS
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-warren-pressley-omar-introduce-legislation-to-get-police-out-of-schools
July 29, 2020
A single secure entry at all schools would fix this problem, however local school boards refuse to even consider such a simple solution, these simple tunnel type entries provide security to many factories, and work peculiarity well in prisons and other government buildings and require only one employee…
From what I have read so far is in part, the following:
1. This guy was raised by a drug addicted mother
2. He had no father in his life.
3. He was a transvestite or cross dresser.
4. He was bullied in school.
5. He, himself, was a bully and also hated women.
6. He got into a fight with his grandmother and shot her right before he went into the school.
7. The students he shot were in one classroom.
8. Most of the students he shot had parents who were border patrol agents or police officers.
9. The guns used in the shooting were purchased legally.
10. Many of the kids he shot were Christians and by the posts I have read by their parents, they believe their children who died in the shooting, are in Heaven right now.
As a conservative Catholic Christian I do not believe that any more gun control laws will prevent this type of shooting. I believe this issue goes far, far deeper than gun control. I believe this is an issue of his character being warped by the environment he was raised in as well as what I think is a lack of any faith in God.
I believe that the issue here is that this person had no faith in God and did not fear Gods judgement of him when he died.
Then, as I have also stated before, this culture has glorified the taking of innocent life in the womb. The taking of the lives of the most innocent among us is without a doubt in my mind, opens the floodgates to those who have warped and twisted minds to take other innocent lives as they do not believe in a judgement by God.
If this were true, other countries with legal abortion and low rates of religious sentiment would also have mass shooting epidemics. They don’t.
Rollie,
Facts backed up by sources would be greatly appreciated. At this point, your opinion is just herasay.
Everything you posted are rightwing LIES. Now find a priest and do a confession.
Lies, really, do you have any proof of your accusations?
Bill, don’t waste your precious time engaging the Blogge Idiot, for whom crushing imbecility is the default setting.
The
Everything you posted are rightwing LIES. Now find a priest and do a confession
What they will not say is “We must do something effective.” Because they know that what they want to do will absolutely not be effective, nor even consequential. But it will piss off the 2nd amendment supporters, and that will be good enough for the liberals. And if they were able to do something like ban assault rifles, it would only prove to be “not enough,” which would then justify further restrictions that would be impossible to implement. They may as well say,
“Let us do something ineffective. That will make us feel better about ourselves.”
Didn’t know, Dave, that Salvador Ramos was a member of a well-regulated militia.
You belittle the skinny legal underpinnings of Roe. Well Roe’s reasoning is a model of Socrates and Plato compared to Heller’s utter gibberish (and BTW if Roe used the 14th )and 9th) Amendment, it would have been on terra firma).
Very best.
peter
BTW do you happen to know if Bonnie Roe’s running for Nikki’s seat next year?
Peter Anderson wrote, “Well Roe’s reasoning is a model of Socrates and Plato…”
Are you kidding? If you’re serious, please explain in some detail how you’ve come to that conclusion.
Peter Anderson wrote, “BTW if Roe used the 14th )and 9th) Amendment, it would have been on terra firma”
Is that an honest open admission that Roe really isn’t on terra firma? If it is, it’s heresy in the eyes of pro-choice activists.
Increased security (many possible forms that could take) is only viable short term solution. Abolishing physical schools would do it too but I don’t consider that viable.
Eventually Elon Musk’s AI powered robo cops will make it next to impossible for this to happen.
One eye wrote, “Increased security (many possible forms that could take) is only viable short term solution.”
Not the only viable short term solution but it’s certainly a big piece of the pie.
One eye wrote, “Abolishing physical schools would do it too but I don’t consider that viable.”
That’s socially and culturally a really, really bad idea. Humans really do need face-to-face interaction without it culture and liberty will collapse.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Benjamin Franklin
Funniest thing, after it became painfully clear that the shooter’s surname didn’t support Lefty’s narrative, they explicably began making sure everyone knew he was from North Dakota.
What the heck; has the laughably contrived White Hispanic reference been mothballed?
Anywho, fewer than 1% of all shooting deaths are the result of mass shootings
Subtract suicides; anyone who can fog a mirror can easily identify a…um…demographic which is responsible for OVER 50% of the murderers and OVER 50% of the victims.
Yet despicable Lefty hypes the everLUVin’ $#!t out of the former and ignores the latter like it’s a syphilitic leper, leaving us the benighted to ponder why….
Root Causes…anyone…Bueller…?
The Gotch
At least most murders have rational motives and arise out of obvious interpersonal situations that we can attempt to avoid. These insane mass murders with no motive are what scares me.
“At least most murders have rational motives and arise out of obvious interpersonal situations that we can attempt to avoid.” (bolds/italics mine)
Source?
“These insane mass murders with no motive are what scares me.”
Most humans, especially younger ones, are very poor judges/assessors of risk; i.e. my Dear Brother and his ex took separate plane flights (FOR_THE_CHILDREN!) when it was statistically “safer” to take separate cars to the airport.
Howse about you Rollie; you old enough to know but too young to find out…?
The Gotch
I’m the only one around here required to cite my sources? Hilarious.
So by your rationale the issue is poor risk assessment. Thus somehow, for an unknown reason, there is a far greater degree of this problem in the US compared to the rest of the world as evidenced by our much higher rate of mass murder.
“I’m the only one around here required to cite my sources?”
Not by any stretch, but consider seeing someone about that suffocating Persecution Complex…
“there is a far greater degree of this problem in the US compared to the rest of the world as evidenced by our much higher rate of mass murder.”
Heh! Scroll down, or CLICK HERE; after you’ve realized the laughable folly of your hilariously clueless ways, skulk back and issue an appropriately contrite and groveling apology for your unconscionable breach of a fact-based Reality.
The Gotch
The precision police are on the case! You know, if there is anything that defines the modern American Right, it’s a respect for and deference to academic research.
If I’m to take Mr. Lott’s research for gospel it does paint me in a corner to amend my statement to “among the worst” rather tram “the worst”. But if we’re going down the road of referencing academic research… 🙂 if I didn’t have a job or family I’d be pulling up other studies that come to other conclusions. Then we’d take a look over all the methodology sections, check all the funding sources, and debate which one most accurately describes reality.
But none of that ever happens because the American Right doesn’t give a hoot about research unless it happens to align with whatever idea they have at the moment. I actually am open to changing my perspective when I discover new facts, but Mr. Lott didn’t convince me that mass shootings are actually not a problem in the US. It may shift my perspective on our outlier status, but I’d need more time to read it.
It’s like saying that Bill had “the worst grade on the test”, but then Bill responds “No, I got a 30% but John got a 28%!” If I were Bill’s father he’d get extra punishment for that.
That reply is very much like you saying that facts don’t matter when they disprove your arguments…
https://st2.depositphotos.com/3489481/5426/i/950/depositphotos_54260445-stock-photo-angry-pissed-off-boy-plugs.jpg
Rollie gets caught with his Hempen Homespun knickers down…then promptly blames his belt?
Priceless!
“Mr. Lott didn’t convince me that mass shootings are actually not a problem in the US.”
Not his intent, a fact which effortlessly eludes those with permanently affixed Weapons-Grade-Thickened-Industrial-Strength-Hardened reality obscuring Ideological Blinders.
“…take a look over all the methodology sections, check all the funding sources, and debate which one most accurately describes reality.”
Heh! Now do Global Warming…
The Gotch
Husband and father in a quiet St. Louis suburb gets randomly assaulted and shot dead in his own backyard just a few days ago. Tell me what the rational motive there was. Tell me what it was in Waukesha or the Deer District. Or on the New York subway.
No wonder people are arming themselves.
I mostly just know my community of Milwaukee. There’s a series of annual analysis of homicides that break down motives. Most of them are interpersonal and not random.
Yes, most violent incidents are interpersonal and not random. But there has been an undeniable uptick in random acts of violence and crime against peaceful people in general over the last several years. And that’s what rattles your average gun owner, especially as crime waves creep closer to their doorstep. That’s why the majority of them are saying “Yeah, keep guns out of the hands of unstable people, but leave me alone.”
With more than 20,000 gun laws on the books already that aren’t being enforced what magical new one will make a difference? Universal background checks? The only difference that one would make is forcing people in rural areas to drive 100+ miles to move a gun from one farm to another..
This is an argument against laws all-together. Good question you pose – is there any point to any law, since all laws can be broken? You sound like an Anarchist 🙂
1. Do not let people into school buildings unless they belong there.
2. Check everyone entering a school building for weapons.
3. Most of these school crimes are committed by loners in a cowardly fashion. If the schools were “hardened” and SROs were known to be in place, trained, and armed, this type of “shooter” would seek an easier target, such as a mall.
4. Red Flag laws make some sense and may be of use. Probably worth trying with a sunset provision, coupled with studying the effects.
5. It’s time to reform the mental health industry, and spend a lot of taxpayer money on buildings to house those who are mentally ill, and possibly dangerous, whether or not they want to be housed. When we closed all of the asylums, the promised follow-up steps were never taken, leading to the mess we have now.
Blaska wrote, “Cowards choose soft targets Think the shooters don’t recognize that schools represent soft targets? Where most of the occupants, being children, are defenseless. Places where guns are banned.”
Great point!
Blaska wrote, “We do believe a good man with a gun is the surest protection against a bad man with a gun.”
That’s the self-evident truth that anti-firearms fanatics choose to completely ignore.
A good guy with a gun was at the grocery store in Buffalo. Lots of people still died. It’s not a preventative deterrent.
Rollie wrote, “A good guy with a gun was at the grocery store in Buffalo. Lots of people still died. It’s not a preventative deterrent.”
It’s interesting that your bias told you that that was a cogent argument, it’s not a cogent argument, it’s an ignorant and foolish argument but it is the kind of clap-trap that we’ve come to expect from you sometimes.
Despicably detestable Lefty (forgive the redundancy) and fake Latinx/ethnicity thief Robert O’Rourke has created the unforced error from which, hopefully, his political career will never recover:
Mere feet away from TX Governor Greg Abbott in Uvalde, O’Rourke: “You are doing nothing […] You said this was not predictable, this was totally predictable, and you choose not to do anything.”
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin to O’Rourke: “sir you are out of line. Please leave this auditorium.
“You’re out of line […] I can’t believe you’re a sick son of a bitch who would come to a deal like this to make a political issue.” (bolds/italics mine)
¡Beto se ha ido para siempre!
The Gotch
It takes a special breed of scumbag to try and score political points off a massacre before the victims are even in the ground. Gun-grabber Beto likely just torpedoed his political career with that stunt. The average Texan is going think exactly what that mayor rightfully said.
“It takes a special breed of scumbag to try and score political points off a massacre before the victims are even in the ground.”
Lefty generally, and the despicably detestable faux Latinx specifically, meet-n-exceed those requirements without breaking a sweat.
“Gun-grabber Beto likely just torpedoed his political career with that stunt.”
He was already getting pummeled in his laughable gubernatorial bid…he chose…POORLY!
“The average Texan is going think exactly what that mayor rightfully said.”
Don’t mess with Texas!
The Gotch
First, enforce the laws already on the books. The background check system is riddled with flaws. Local police, the military, federal and state courts, hospitals, and treatment providers regularly fail to send criminal or mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System when they are supposed to. In theory, nobody who has been convicted of a crime, committed to a mental institution, gotten a dishonorable discharge or has a record of drug addiction should be able to buy a gun with ease. These failures mean background checks fail to stop someone who should be caught by the existing system. Additionally, we do nothing about the people who lie on background checks. There were 112,000 “lie-and-try” crimes in 2017. 12 of them were prosecuted. There is practically no chance tgat lying on a background check will cause you a problem, let alone prevent you from obtaining a gun.
No accountability among government employees, no need to do their job because they can’t be fired…
Some off-the-wall thoughts around here. Just admit you like automatic weapons enough that no amount of mass murder will change your mind. Be real with yourselves and quit the “reasonings” that don’t hold water. Go ahead and just have a plain old opinion.
These weapons don’t stop tyranny, they aren’t “our right”, and more of them will not prevent mass murders. There’s obviously something unique about the US, because these mass murders happen all the time here but they’re rare elsewhere. If you’re ok with that just say so and stop making up fake “solutions”. The solutions already exist – just copy what virtually any other country does.
Agree. What’s “unique” about us is we have a bunch of gutless politicians who keep the lights on day and night to take money from every lobbyist, the NRA and every bible thumper in the country. Cruz got 300k from the NRA just last year and he’s only one guy in one year.
Give me the name of one person you know who owns an automatic weapon. Almost no civilians can legally own one and no one here is arguing for changing that.
Whether guns stop tyranny is debatable. Whether they stop criminals intent on terrorizing people is not.
Sorry, precision police strike again. Forgive me for not being well versed in weapons jargon. Strike the word “automatic” from the record please 🙂
Precision makes all the difference when trying to solve complex problems, Rollie. I’ve been amazed at the lack of the most basic understanding of gun functions by those arguing against them. Showing an effort to understand what you’re talking about shouldn’t be too much to ask, for anyone.
I can’t help but think most, if not all, of these shooters are heavily dosed on anti-depressants. This is a big part of the story that no one talks about. Big pharma makes a fortune off these drugs and doesn’t want this sort of discussion – but it needs to happen.
Dan B.
North Side
Again, is anti-depressant use really different here than in, for example, Canada? I’m open to this theory, but it’s a bit hard to believe.