Open thread for the usual post shooting chaos.

pl

Comments

[Augustin L]

The stable shooter was a member of the republic of Florida. The ROF has mostly young members in north and south Florida and describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics” and seeks to create a “white ethnostate. http://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-school-shooting-suspect/story?id=53092753

[Anna]

Is it easier to buy a gun than antibiotics in the US?
--------------------------------------------------
A detour: Terrorist act in Brussels' airport and the allegedly fake news about the terract: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-brussels-terror-attacks-fake-videos-and-images-the-man-in-the-hat/5519591

[turcopolier]

raven
What is your solution? pl

[turcopolier]

bill Herschel

and? pl

[turcopolier]

bks

Have you ever owned a gun or done much shooting? Irony alesrt. I guess you nailed it. Deplorables are potential mass murderers. pl

[Fred]

Babak,

What's the immigration rate in Japan? For how many centuries were all weapons outlawed to anyone not of the Samuri class?

[Richardstevenhack]

If the government shuts down the Internet and forces me to talk to the morons around me, I'd probably start shooting people.

[Fred]

This man spent most of his life being held in contempt by society because he was not LGBTQetc. Now we hear from the usual politicians the usual call for collective punishment of law abiding gun owners.

[NancyK]

And how exactly does this effect you?

[Richardstevenhack]

For the record, I am one hundred percent a supporter of the 2nd Amendment.

With 80 million people owning 400 million firearms in the US - seventy times the number of firearms in the hands of the national police forces and the military - "gun control" is an oxymoron and physical impossibility - so go ahead and try.

Even if you succeed, you will have left guns in the hands of criminals and started a huge new black market for firearms for everyone else.

An interesting article from last year:

Mass Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mass-shootings-are-a-bad-way-to-understand-gun-violence/

[NancyK]

Where did you get your crazy misinformation? He did not murder 17 children because he was held in contempt by society for not being LGBTQ. He murdered them because he had mental problems, was a monster and it is easy to buy assault rifles.

[Fred]

Anna,

Do you really think there's a federal background check required for getting antibiotics and that convicted felons are forbidden to own antibiotics? Or do you mean I can get my insurance company to reimburse me for my monthly ammunition usage and Obamacare will let me get a replacement rifle at a discount?

[BillWade]

I put the blame on the educational/medical systems, too many drug cures for minor problems that in the past were worked out by "kids being kids". Now the Army is saying that the current crop of recruits feels "too entitled", is undisciplined, and unable to even throw a hand grenade (so, the dropped that requirement). If every kid is a "winner" then they can also all be "losers".

[Eric Newhill]

different clue,
I suspect that most, if not all, presented signs that anyone with common sense and some sense of responsibility would recognize - anyone with "common sense" and "responsibility" being the operative keys.

Adam Lanza? He should have never been anywhere near a firearm. The Colorado shooters (all of them) showed signs. The guy who shot up the church congregation last year should have never been near a weapon based on his behavior while in the service. The jihadist that shot up the night club should have been disarmed.

My son came home from Afghanistan 100% disability (officially) due to a head injury. He was talking crazy and acting crazy. At one point he purchased a civilian copy of a military sniper rifle. I took it from him. he tried to have me arrested for "stealing" the rifle. I told the sheriff (who I know) the circumstances and that the rifle was safely hidden and that he could charge me and put me in jail if he wanted to, but my son was not going to have a firearm if I could stop it. Charges were filed at my son's request and then promptly dismissed in court based on my son's VA records. The Sheriff kept the rifle. My son and I don't talk anymore (over that and some other things). But at least no one got killed on my watch. I'm no hero. Just a regular guy doing what regular guys used to do before society became the screwed-up mess that it is.

I refuse to turn in my weapons and abdicate my second amendment rights because society promotes government dependency, stupidity, laziness, cowardice and irresponsibility. In fact, those conditions make me feel the need to maximize those rights.

[Imagine]

"Guns preserve freedom and prevent autocracy":
So this ship has already sailed.

1. The U.S. Dept. Defense is the largest, wealthiest, militarily strongest entity on the planet, with 3.2M employed (vs. 2.3M PLA China Army, 2.1M Walmart) and a yearly budget of $716B.

2. The last serious US battle between a civilian militia and the U.S. Gov't was the Waco siege. Although armed with 305 guns, including automatic weapons and two .50 guns, more than 100 Wackos were flicked off with little sweat by 10 M3 Bradleys, 2 tanks, and a couple helicopters. This was before the days of combat robots and drones.

3. The most relevant modern Nazi-government-takeover scenario comes from Eastern Ukraine, in which Right Sektor orcs were given National Guard artillery and turned loose to decimate towns. From long range. Again, assault rifles could not prevent millions of refugees being rendered homeless.

4. America has had concentration camps before, with the Japanese-American Internment. Arming each Japanese-American with an assault rifle would not have prevented America's concentration camps.

5. If a SWAT team comes against someone seriously, they're going to set up a sniper from half a mile away. How can you defend against that?

6. Tianamen Square was tanks.

So assault rifles, like crossbows or kung fu, are useful in certain limited situations, but are no longer effective solutions for modern challenge situations against state-sponsored equipment. Instead, these battles are played out in the courtrooms and in the media.

Conclusion: The guns no longer work, as a balance against fascism, for the purposes intended.

However, guns are prime tools for demonic destruction. US Death by gun is about 12 per 100K people per year. Including suicide by gun US rate is 6.7 per 100K. Half of women killed are by their husbands or lovers, and half of those are killed using a gun.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/
When there is an implement of immediate death in the house, either spouse who wakes up enraged could take the other one out; this leads to paranoia and worsened quality of life, which spirals.

Guns also tend to shut down discussions, especially difficult ones. Thus, less negotiated solutions and more dictated ones.

Gun usage is cultural. People think in stories. If Americans were not bombarded with stories such as the Deadpool garbage where killing is a solution and executing surrendered opponents is glorified, teenagers with weak minds would not get the idea that this is the heroic way to live. If the Government were not bombarded with stories such as Iraq and Syria, the Government would be more trustworthy and would not turn to violence as the first and only solution. Japan has an 0.31 / 100K intentional homicide rate, compare US at 4.9, because killing people is rude and not nice.

Neither the people nor the US Government are to be trusted. But the Government has won the heavy arms war. So, yes, beef up the National Guards as a sane counterweight to the Feds. Require stricter registration for guns. Educate families how to negotiate and use their mouths instead of their bodies. And push the ACLU to fight for free speech and Constitutional rights.

America is following militarized Israel as a model for oppression, total 1984-style surveillance, and heavy weapons for police. This battle will be fought and won in the courtrooms, not in the streets.

[Walrus]

In my opinion, looking back to my time as a teenager there were times of mental stress when I contemplated taking revenge on my tormentors, be they fellow students or teachers to the point of contemplating their deaths. I believe this is normal existence for hormonally challenged pubescent teenagers who can be extremely cruel to each other.

However I was attending an absolute premiere school, I had a loving family, I had opportunities to sublimate my frustrations by playing sports and other pastimes.

Fast forward fifty years to the American experience; industrial sized sausage machine high schools; rigid campus rules backed up by force that effectively criminalizes parts of normal teenage behaviour. "one size fits all" attitudes.

"Mental health" issues? How does anyone get treatment and support in America without money?

To borrow the punchline from that wonderful story "Interview with a lemming", I'm surprised that there aren't lots more school shootings by disgruntled students.

[Lefty]

Mine too, nice action, and the carbine handles well too.

[Laura]

I think we need to look very long and hard at our society. We have definitely forgotten/ignored the "promote the general welfare" part of our Constitutional preamble. Children with mental health issues who slip through the cracks in our social welfare/public health system do so because our systems are incredibly weak. Other industrialized societies have stronger "social safety nets"...that name, by the way, refers to how strong access to health care/mental health treatment and a less disparate economic system creates a "safer society." Of course, it makes each person in that society healthier and more supported...but the goal is not to help the individual, it is to secure a safe society by promoting the general welfare.

We have forgotten those bonds at our considerable peril.

[Antoinetta III]

DJK @ #18

One of these rotten things is the obsession on the centrality of the "individual" and their "autonomy." It used to be that people that were severely mentally ill were locked up; institutionalized in an insane asylum.

Then, in the late '60s and early '70s, legislation was passed giving them a bunch of "rights" and most of the mentally ill were released to the streets.

To-day, these people constitute much of the homeless population we see on the streets of our cities. Unable to take basic care of themselves, they end up on the street. Some of them are more than unable to take care of themselves, but are outright dangerous.

From what I have read about these incidents, 50 years ago the shooters would have been locked up. I suspect that a large part of the reason you don't see this kind of stuff in other industrialized countries is that they still institutionalize the demented.

Yet suggest doing this here and the result will be bleat from "progressive" quarters of "What gives us the right to institutionalize or treat people against their will?" How can we take their autonomy away?"

They fail to realize that someone who can't take basic care of themselves or who lashes out violently doesn't have any autonomy, they either never had it or lost it some time previous to their behavior bringing them to public attention.

Antoinetta III

[Laura]

That is really troubling. As is this article I ran across that details more interference in our public discourse by bots. https://www.wired.com/story/pro-gun-russian-bots-flood-twitter-after-parkland-shooting/

[GeneO]

Why not let insurance companies make a few bucks off of premiums on guns? And I bet they would do a better job running the NICS background checks than the feds? Seems to me they would do a 1000% better job if big payoffs are at stake.

[james]

kooshy, i fully agree with you..that is another part to the number of these events.. at what point does the western world say enough to serving up so much violence in the movies and tv?

generally i don't go to movies, but, my wife and i went and saw a (hollywood) movie- 3 billboards...i thought it had way too much violence! and i don't know how they categorized it - pg, or whatever.. so much of it seemed over the top and unnecessary..

[Pete Deer]

Babak,
Of course there is! I'm pretty certain the Samurai just went to town slaughtering innocent school children with swords and muskets. I wonder what kind of psychotropic medication there were on when they decided to become mass murderers?

Be careful with those matches around that straw man you are tossing out there. He might catch fire.

Pete

[Ante]

What bothers me is that the catchphrase after these massacres is always "mental health."
Maybe some of these people were born psychopaths, but the shift in American culture described in Mark Ames's book "Going Postal" is a more acute diagnosis. Alienation from other people, combined with massively increased stress in the workplace due to productivity demands, stagnating wages, increasing cost of living, you can combine that with anything you like, violent videogames, Babak's theory that all societal ills are caused by drug users, easy access to six shooters, whatever, but I think Ames got to the core of it.

It's a book more about workplace massacres of the old post office type, but I find it still rings true.

[Lefty]

(to comment 24)
"If keeping proper track of these disconnected people takes more people than what the system now has, and if it would take more money to pay for more people ( and their supporting technologies) to keep unbroken track and touch with these people"

Those are big IFs, and not a lot of evidence that they are the case. The quality and competence of public mental health services varies hugely across the country.

In Virginia Cho was under court order for services from the local Community Services Board (CSB) but they ignored him until he showed up at Tech. It was not lack of resources, it was incompetence that bordered on malfeasance. Same with State Senator Deeds son. The local CSB made a desultory check for a mental health hospital bed, missing one at the nearby University of Virginia and others, then sent him home to attack his father and shoot himself.

In Virginia services vary profoundly by locality. For example, Fredericksburg is variable (sometimes pretty good), Hanover is horrible (it commonly kills clients), Henrico is good, and Richmond has all the problems the city government exhibits.

The school system, probably the courts, and the mental health system in Broward County all knew this kid. They knew he was troubled, cared for by a surviving parent. Yet after his mother died as the mayor put it "we didn’t find a way to connect with this kid.” Like I said above, WTF? From the follow up stories in the post the kid did everything he could to attract their attention short of putting a flashing beacon on his head. But, "we didn’t find a way to connect with this kid.”

Mental health services are hard, generally do not have enough funding, and will never serve everyone who needs them. But there is no excuse for failing to stay engaged with and to serve people with severe and public mental health issues. None.