Gail Collins sketches the worst of the mass shootings just this year:
…a gunman takes out kindergartners in a bucolic Connecticut suburb, three days after a gunman shot up a mall in Oregon, in the same year as fatal mass shootings in Minneapolis, in Tulsa, in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, in a theater in Colorado, a coffee bar in Seattle and a college in California.
Meanwhile, across America, as the Children’s Defense Fund reports, nearly 3,000 children and teens are killed by gun violence annually.
I wonder, what would a real, sustained public health campaign (tied to real legislative action) against gun violence look like? I’m inspired by Illinois’ move to post on electronic highway signs the current number of state residents killed in road accidents (we’re now in the last month of the year and the number has ticked well past 800). Driving under that sign and seeing the number a couple deaths higher since just the day before makes a powerful impression.
What if, like highway accidents or hostage updates (remember the nightly news way back when?), we posted daily across America, for a year, the numbers of under-18s killed by gun violence, updated daily?
Or, thinking about a piece by Mark Oppenheimer in today’s TNR, “Don’t Tell the Kids a Damn Thing About Newtown,” would such a public campaign simply further terrorize children and a nation already besieged by reports about cancer, terrorism, hunger, and more?
Maybe we need to do less and do it more calmly, rather than do more, frantically.
Thoughts?
Categories: Childhood
I’m sharing a link to Rachel’s Day
http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Ministry/Women-of-the-ELCA/Engage-in-action-and-support-one-another-in-our-callings/Advocacy/Rachels-Day.aspx
Rachel’s Day is usually held the first Sunday in May and began in the westside congregation I served as student pastor in Chicago. Rachel was the daughter of Ms. Glorias (love that name) who was killed in a drive-by shooting on our street. In the 80′s Ms. Glorias bought an abandoned lot around the block of the church and began Rachel’s Garden. Every year, on the first Sunday in May (the perfect time to be planting) she would invite families in the our congregation and neighborhood to come and we would plant flowers in memory of a child who had been killed by violent means. By the time I came in the 90′s, on that Sunday the whole church processed to Rachel’s Garden singing songs of lament. Families walked to the lot from far and wide and a long line often formed. As a family came forward to get a plant in memory of their child, they we would name the child and they could share stories or prayers. In a blighted west-side neighborhood, Rachel’s Garden is one of the most lush and beautiful places–the one place I wish were barren.
Bear with me. Gun violence is still an abstraction for most people. The competition of metal and human tissue to occupy the same place at the same time is often of less importance than the psychological damage. My partner and I were equally affected by my shooting. Our 30 year relationship died in advance of his demise. Parents and children both need psychiatric support now. The insidious thing about PTSD is that, by the time it is diagnosed, treatment is much less effective.
What will it take? How about a whole lot less guns in the hands of our citizenry? A gun in the home is infinitely more likely to kill innocent people (usually a family member) than to thwart a criminal. In this case, a collector did not employ trigger locks. She is a victim of her own poor judgment. Unfortunately, so are 27 other people – including her son.
Other failures have been catastrophic. The VA Tech shooter was a prohibited purchaser. I’m working with local media in Florida to pressure the Department of Health to get our database complete. The current estimate is that we have about 30% completion against about 700,000 gun check annually. Yeah, we have enough firepower in Dade County alone to invade and occupy France.
Oh, and most of the red states have laws requiring the destruction of all paperwork associated with a gun purchase. We have no accountability. That’s how a .45 made its way from South Carolina (we think) to New York where it nearly killed me. We need a complete record of every sale and transfer of every handgun sold in this country.
I’ve been seeing comments that when this happened in Scotland, they passed laws limiting access to guns. They haven’t had more of these incidents.
Education on using guns wisely would be good, but limiting how much ammunition people can have would be better. Also limiting access to weapons for people with mental health issues.
David Cary Hart, my goodness I did not know this part of your story. Im sorry if you’ve written about it here before and I missed it. Do you write elsewhere on this topic?
David, I am sorry to learn that you have lost someone to gun violence. I was on jury duty last year. I was called up as part of a panel from which a jury to decide a murder case was to be chosen. One of the questions the defense attorney asked the potential jurors was “Have you known anyone who has been murdered.” I was startled that most of the potential jurors responded yes. In my own case, I had to say that two of my friends had been murdered. (The case of one of them–a beautiful woman who was slain many years ago–is fairly regularly featured on “Forensic Files” and other such television shows about true crime. For years, her slaying was a mystery, but eventually it was solved when her murderer was arrested for another murder and it became clear that he was a serial killer and Margaret was one of his victims).
These days gun violence is all too concrete for many people. More murders take place in this country than any other advanced society. Yet politicians are so afraid of the NRA that nothing is likely to be done about it. Our political system is broken.
I forgot got to add that the murderer of my other friend has never been brought to justice.
Billy:
I was shot. My partner died of natural causes. The people who hired the gunman were never brought to justice.
Elizabeth:
Today I can actually smell cordite. Every now and then I write about gun politics at Slowly Boiled Frog. The use of my middle name is not a pretension; It’s a way of saying “I’m still here.” I am currently working with a Florida weekly on getting our prohibited purchasers database current. That should be published in a week or two.
Getting back to the topic, I hope that those affected get immediate care. Even beta blockers, in some situations, can prevent PTSD or diminish the symptoms. It is incredibly debilitating. I was responsible for a 200 employee, five location operation. Today, I couldn’t run a 7-11 because I did not get treatment for several years.
We had a higher rate of firearms ownership in the past.
We didn’t have this many mass shootings.
Something else changed.
Here’s some more thoughts:
A. More coverage for mental health issues. Often, even people who have insurance have trouble getting mental healthy therapy, and most coverage only pays enough to cover the issuance of psychotropic drugs.
B. Don’t popularize such things in the media as some of the killers do this stuff for attention. That doesn’t mean don’t report it, but it would be nice if news organizations informally decided to report only official statements for the first 5 days after an attack (to allow initial investigations to complete) and voluntarily agreed to publish no books nor do any tv special reports for six months after an attack.
Of course getting the news media to be this responsible would be a hard battle.
C. Someone at any large gathering SHOULD be armed. It might be a security guard or a principal, but the someone should be trained and have access to some sort of protective gun or weapon.
Oh, did I forget the biggest and most effective way to reduce fatalities, esp. firearms fatalities?
End or at least significantly reform our “War on Drugs”. Most firearms deaths in this country are between criminals killing each other over sex, drugs, or money.
The ironic thing is this kind of propagandist piece doesn’t really solve anything, with its historically illiterate attacks on “gun culture” (actually gun ownership rates were higher in the past and we didn’t have this stuff. Heck, when I was a teen we had a shooting club in my High School) and demonization of gun owners. I’ll take my own state , Maryland, as an example as I’m well aware of crime statistics here. The conservative counties tend to have much higher gun ownership rates than the suburban counties or the city, yet they have a fraction of the murder rate. Baltimore city (where I live and not in a “yuppie” neighborhood) has some of the strictest firearms regulations in the country yet accounts for most of my states firearms deaths due to illegal guns and the drug trade. Meanwhile, in this crime-ridden city I can’t :
A. Buy a bullet proof vest. Yes, somehow passive protection is outlawed.
B. Buy pepper spray
C. Buy a taser
And I’m well aware that the cops not only have no legal duty (meaning they can’t be sued for refusing or screwing up) to protect me but they don’t have the manpower to do so even if they wanted to.
I’m not afraid of guns. I am afraid of hysterical over-reactions. After all, I was reading the same kinds of reactions as expressed on this thread over 25 years ago. The gun laws that were passed in the intervening years (with, in my opinion the federal registration excepted) arguably didn’t make the US a safer place, and what’s more they were never enough. It was always more, more , more. It must make a few people angry that the SCOTUS has explicitly taken some of the preferred policy options of some of you off the table.
I look foward to an actual dialogue. I do not look forward to any preaching.
Clarence:
The last thing we need is more guns. Trained police officers have a 25% to 30% hit rate. You want to arm amateurs? They will only end up killing more people.
What we need is some serious control of handguns (which are responsible for a great deal of the carnage). Our gun violence rate is about 15 times that of the UK due to gun control.
Gun ownership may have been higher in the past, but now we have people with guns that fire too much too fast. That isn’t needed for normal self-defense.
Rural areas have fewer people, so you would expect them to have less violence than cities or suburbs.
As for always having someone armed around, I don’t want to live in a police state where every time I go to the movies or send my children to school we need some kind of armed guard.
David Cary Hart:
Way to avoid most of what I said.
You aren’t GETTING more control of handguns because not only do I know we gunowners and pro-gun rights people have you beat in the polls, but the SCOTUS has taken some of your favorite toys away from you.
Why not simply engage my policy option ideas rather than throw in stats from countries with far different histories and legal regimes into the argument. You also ignored the fact that MORE americans had handguns and rifles in the past and yet we didn’t have as many spree shootings.
It would be nice if you could admit there’s a cultural component to this, and probably a huge part of it is the problems the USA is having with treating mentally ill people as well.
Rural and suburban areas both have far lower crime rates and far higher levels of legal gun ownership than the cities, Diane M. Yet they don’t have the murder rates with those guns.
Anyway, I’ll go for a few hours and see what kind of responses I get. I don’t want to antagonize people.
This. Plus, it’s worth remembering that getting a clear shot at a more-armed, more prepared assailant in a crowded place is not going to be feasible. All that nonsense about the teachers not being armed? Bah. Those teachers were more concerned about getting those children to a safe place—and having a sidearm like police officers wouldn’t have changed that prime directive.
How about a conversation on domestic violence (which yes, includes shooting one’s mother to death)? How about a conversation on a USian culture that encourages young men to deal with pain and anger via violence, and that violence “makes a man” out of a boy. How about a conversation that gun violence is seen as superior, and more masculine, than other (less lethal) forms of violence?
And while we’re at it, how about a conversation on how when it comes down to it….there are millions of parents who send their children out into the world on a daily basis hoping their kids won’t get gunned down. And I’m not talking about the Third World, I’m talking about right here in the U.S. We live in a society that looks aside at violence; pretending it is something that happens to “those other people, over there”—whether that’s in neighborhoods filled with street gangs or people escaping from a domestic violence situation (whose parents cross their fingers, send their kids to school, and hope the ex won’t make good on that threat every day).
Well, I notice LaLabu has decided that his mother couldn’t have been abusing the young man…
Domestic violence… evil males… all that
Oh? And I suppose those twenty kindergarteners and six teachers were abusing him too.
LaLubu:
The more reasonable explanation besides your hatred is that he was mentally ill.
His mother abusing him, however, might have excarbated it.
But unlike you, I freely admit I don’t know what drove this young man to do what he did except that it is and will come out he was nuts. Why he was nuts is the question.
But keep up your hatred. I’m sure all the kids were girls too, right?
Seems like random (non politically motivated) gun violence is a spefically American problem- or am I just not hearing about the other cases in other countries?
What about our society is leading to this?
You know what. I don’t even feel sorry for you people any more. You reap what you sew. Maybe when these spree killings start happening daily instead of just two or three times a month you’ll do something. But I doubt it. Since 1980 you have pursued a series of disastrous policies in health care, finance, education and the military that has left your country in tatters and you’re not abandoning any of them. In fact on most of them you’re doubling down.
All this hand wringing and shedding crocodile tears is not going to stop this. If you want cut funding for treating mental illness and make sure everybody that wants to kill 26 people in 5 minutes can be easily equipped to do so stop whining about the result. Every developed country on the planet has solved this problem better than you. Buy a clue or STFU.
I doubt Clarence’s statistics, or at least the meaning he attaches to them. I don’t know whether there was “higher gun ownership” in the past. I don’t know what that means. Does it mean that when we were an agricultural society, people had more rifles. I suspect it does not mean that more people owned assault weapons.
“According to a PowerPoint presentation released by Smith & Wesson, gun sales hit an all-time high in November with the most background checks in recorded history, according to data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
“The Smith & Wesson presentation also cites Black Friday as the largest gun sales day in recorded history.”
It is also telling that the NRA gives millions of dollars to politicians, primarily Republicans, who have ugly records on all sorts of issues as well. Among the principal recipients of their largesse in 2012 were Mitt Romney and Michelle Bachmann.
Billy:
I’ll try to get something with a more “historical” bent as to rates of gun ownership as it was that question that caused trouble for Michael Bellesiles and his book “Arming America” where he tried to falsify records concerning armaments in colonial America to show they were rather rare. This got him in quite a bit of trouble as one can easily find out with a little research.
Here’s my source as to the decline of gun ownership in the US:
http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/07/21/the-declining-culture-of-guns-and-violence-in-the-united-states/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm
And of course the vast majority of Americans do not own-semi automatic rifles (not to be farther confused with machine guns) but instead handguns (aka ‘pistols’ in popular parlance) shotguns, or regular rifles.
Clarence, violence isn’t a feature of mental illness. More to the point, abuse survivors who kill their abusers do not then go forth to murder random masses of people, much less random masses of children. I stand by my original assertion: Adam Lanza was filled with rage and entitlement, and killing people was his solution. I also stand by my original assertion that this expression of violence is deeply connected to the way young men are socialized in USian culture—there are plenty of women with rage and entitlement issues as well, but we aren’t opening up the paper every week to a mass shooting by angry young women.
It is reported that his own brother hasn’t spoken to him in two years. That’s one of those things that makes you go “hmmm”.
Clarence, since the vast majority of people do not own assault weapons, then I am sure that the NRA will support the reauthorization of the ban against assault weapons. Oh, they don’t? Actually, there is a big disconnect between ordinary gun owners and even members of the NRA and the POLICIES and LEADERS of the NRA, who are unbendingly opposed to any kind of gun regulation.
Eleven thousand people were killed in gun violence in this country last year. 50 Canadians were killed in gun violence. Are we so different from Canadians? Or are our laws regarding guns what is so different?
Billy:
And 90 percent or so of those eleven thousand were killed because of criminal activity usually involving drugs.
So really what is your point, other than we need to attack an object and not a policy?
It would also help if most of those pushing for bans on assault weapons KNEW what a freaking assault weapon was. The last ban was written by lawyers and seemed entirely arbitrary. Yeah, that really makes me inclined to trust anti-gunner’s good intentions, doesn’t it? Then you’d still have to grandfather in the older assault weapon if you cared about constitutionality.
I’d be ok with banning clips of more than 10 round size, but I still maintain the larger problems are the War on Drugs and the lack of affordable psychiatric care in this country, as well as a sensationalistic pop media culture that gives these people plenty of attention.
LaLubu:
It’s nice to note you backed down a bit about trying to make this attack all about misogyny. However it’s not nice to tell someone who has had two relatives who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia about how violence isn’t associated with mental illness. With some types, it very much is.
copied and pasted:
Morgan Freeman’s brilliant take on what happened yesterday :
“You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here’s why.
It’s because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed
people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he’ll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.
CNN’s article says that if the body count “holds up”, this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer’s face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer’s identity? None that I’ve seen yet. Because they don’t sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you’ve just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.
You can help by forgetting you ever read this man’s name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news.
copy and pasted:
Well worth the read – COLUMBINE STUDENT’S FATHER 12 YEARS LATER !! Guess our national leaders didn’t expect this. On Thursday, Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, was invited to address the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee. What he said to our national leaders during this special session of Congress was painfully truthful.
They were not prepared for what he was to say, nor was it received well. It needs to be heard by every parent, every teacher, every politician, every sociologist, every psychologist, and every so-called expert! These courageous words spoken by Darrell Scott are powerful, penetrating, and deeply personal. There is no doubt that God sent this man as a voice crying in the wilderness.. The following is a portion of the transcript:
“Since the dawn of creation there has been both good &evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.
“The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used.. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain’s heart.
“In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA – because I don’t believe that they are responsible for my daughter’s death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel’s murder I would be their strongest opponent
I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy — it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best.
Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You’ve stripped away our heritage,
You’ve outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question “Why?”
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!
“Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact.
What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs — politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws.
Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts.
“As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America , and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him.
To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA — I give to you a sincere challenge.. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone!
My daughter’s death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!”
- Darrell Scott
Do what the media did not – - let the nation hear this man’s speech. Please send this oout to everyone you can!
my comment was not meant to counter gun regulation but as complementary to it. I support gun regulation, however I think that is only addressing a symptom.
To me there is n o doubt that there is a copycat element to these crimes and we must think of a way to minimize it while protecting the free flow of information.
My comment was meant to address what many think is a systemic society problem.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/newtown_church_forced_to_evacuate_Kmqb19Km9jWLVwY3k4wFmI
Can you state concisely what you think the problem is? I could not get the point.
I think the first cut and paste addresses what resonates most clearly with me. I do know that labeling, pointing fingers, anger, fighting, accusing, politicising won’t get us any where. I think I’ve made it clear before that I do not think the law or bigger government is a solution to any of these big issues discussed and debated on FSB. A social revolution might be the solution but I have no idea what that takes other than GOD.
I support Mayor Bloomberg, who said “It’s time for the president to stand up and lead. This should be his No. 1 agenda. He’s president of the United States. And if he does nothing during his second term, something like 48,000 Americans will be killed with illegal guns.”
Of the President, he said: “His job is not just to be well-meaning. His job is to perform and to protect the American public.”
We had an assault weapons bill for ten years. Did anyone feel oppressed then that they could not buy assault weapons? Do they think they have a right to drive a tank on the freeway?
What are you saying Karen? Leave it all to god and humans need do nothing?
What kind of social revolution exactly? People being more spiritual? What exactly does spiritual mean? How do you account for the mentally ill?
Well, I see Billy is all about emotion and hyperbole. Tanks on the freeway? Pretty much no supporter of the Second Amendment (and certainly no major firearms rights organization) argues for that.
But here’s a nice reminder to Billy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
It’s happened before, it’s going to happen again, and while you can – IF you use your noggin- craft policies to reduce its incidence you can’t totally stop it.
Anyway, unless you want a diaper and a pacifier it’s not the Presidents job to defend you from yourself any more than its the police job (as several court cases have confirmed without exception) to be your personal bodyguard. It’s bad enough that the Bush and Obama administrations have already ripped up major parts of the Bill of Rights – I have no desire to hand them more power. But more power for policies that have not worked in the past is utter folly. You give up your rights for nothing. Sorry, I’m not interested.
Discussing reasonable gun restrictions based on actual statistics (not from pro gun or anti gun groups) is one thing, discussing this issue with people who talk about Tanks in the Streets and imagine they can totally make it so that mass murders never happen again is another…
I have no interest in debating this further.
First of all, mass killings are only a statistically insignificant but well publicized part of the problem. About 12,000 people will be murdered by guns in the US in 2013. Perhaps another 100,000 people are going to be injured by guns. In the UK, gun murders will probably be about 200.
Shooters run the gamut. In my case it was a paid assassin. Others are accidental shooters. Others are arch criminals involved in organized crime and the drug trade. Others are just angry people while some are psychopaths.
The only common denominator is the weapon. Moreover, the amount of crime foiled by armed civilians is minuscule. The correlation is actually the opposite. The obvious solution to this problem is to remove illegal guns (that do much of the damage) from our citizenry. Gun violence in Chicago exists because many Bible Belt states make purchasing weapons far too easy. We should be able to create accountability for every deadly weapon in this country. The only way to disarm criminals is to make the guns unavailable to them.
Finally, I cannot purchase propolene glycol (for my humidor) on the Internet. Yet, I can purchase all sorts of deadly weapons – delivered to my door without a background check. That has to come to an end.
Clarence, is there any actual suggestion the shooter was abused by his mother, or is this part of your larger attempt to turn this into a boys-vs-girls bickerfest?
I know it’s more exciting and easy to talk about guns. Talking about mental illness and how we use jail as a substitute for helping families is harder.
http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html?m=1
“Seems like random (non politically motivated) gun violence is a spefically American problem- or am I just not hearing about the other cases in other countries?
What about our society is leading to this?”
The availability of very dangerous weapons to anyone who wants it.
Remember the case last year when the Chinese man attacked the kids in a school? He used a knife. The kids all survived.
We all have the capability to do evil. There are people with mental illnesses everywhere. Means and opportunity matter.
@David Cary Hart – thanks for all the information and numbers. We need them.
@Karen – It may well be that what we all need to is to find God and live better lives. However, that is not a solution an American government can promote (I believe wholeheartedly in the separation of Church and State).
In this case and many like it, I think the individuals doing the shooting were too mentally disturbed to be helped simply by wanting to follow God’s will. So perhaps we all need to look into hearts to see what we as a society are not doing to prevent tragedies like this. I think what we might think of as a social sin falls into two categories:
1. Not doing enough for the mentally ill and their families.
2. Not making a few sane restrictions on deadly weapons because of fear of the other side, stubbornness, or, in the case of some Congresspeople, because we have been bought.
Anyone can access a gun non-legally if they really wanted to. Taking away ppls legal ability to own a gun to defend themselves and their family (we have guns ourselves for that reason) will not stop those with anger/hate/malice/insanity from attaining them illegally and using them for evil…
Diane M,
Thank you and I agree
@Clarence – “imagine they can totally make it so that mass murders never happen again is another…”
What about the societies that have dramatically cut down on the number of mass murders?
What about the fact that most countries look nothing like America when it comes to mass shootings? We look like Somalia during wartime or a country with a drug cartel.
What are the restrictions you consider reasonable?
The way things are today, most people walking down the street are unarmed anyway. teachers and worshippers and so forth don’t refrain from carrying guns because of the legality but because they aren’t interested.
Just read this.
http://gawker.com/5968818/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother
trained, licencensed armed security guards is not a bad idea.
That you for that link ki sarita. Mental illness of this degree is absolutely terrifying.
mythago, this isn’t Alas, and you aren’t going to get away with re-writing history here. It was Lalubu who decided to bring “domestic violence” into what looks to be the actions of a mentally ill person. At most I speculated as to what might have made him mentally ill or made his mental illness worse. If someone else speculates, I can do so as well.
As for what you say about guns, I’m in agreement. We need to stop reaching for the weapons when it comes to this kind of stuff and instead focus on healing many of our mentally ill people and stopping many of our counterproductive criminal justice practices.
Diane M:
Most of those other societies have never had large amounts of any types of weaponry among their citizens. Most of them are also cradle to grave welfare states who mostly practice therapeutic punishment. A few are exclusionary societies such as Japan that allow few foreigners to settle or become citizens, and thus have a much more unified national polity.
None of them are particularly good comparisons to America.
You might as well ask why Switzerland and Israel have such large amounts of guns available to their citizens and don’t have our rates of shootings.
They also don’t have our Drug Wars, and our lack of good health care for mentally ill people. It’s really hard to directly compare any country to America but I think its quite obvious that it’s culture more so than tool. And in the end, that is what a gun is: a tool.
You are presenting Israel as if schoolteachers come to the class room carrying guns. That’s not quite how it works. What is true is that trained security guards from semi-private licensed security companies, are pretty much at the entrance of every public place. This is different from random, unregulated use of guns by everyone and anyone. For a private citizen to have a gun application approved, they have to get medical clearance and clearance by the police department, and have to indicate a particular reason they need the gun, and the number and types of weapons are clearly limited. How does that compare to the US?
ki Sarata:
I could have sworn I saw a picture of a teacher in the occupied territories escorting a group of young children into an Israeli school just the other day. She had an “assault rifle” strapped to her back and was escorting kindergartners into her classroom. Ohhhhhhh SCARY!! Why the poor things most have been traumatized by the mere presence of the boom-boom stick.
Seriously, unless you are an Israeli, why should I trust what you say any more than my own sources? Heck, I think some people downright lie about foreign countries on this topic, unfortunately I have neither the money to visit most of them nor do I speak the languages. Wikipedia doesn’t make it sound like you are telling the truth, though of course it’s wiki and even with citations, who knows?