Aren't under 21's banned from pubs and from drinking alcohol in the US? Yet some 18 year old messed up EMO teen can just go out and buy an AR-17 and shoot up an elementary school?
Multiple high profile elected officials in Texas, including the Lieutenant Governor, and Senator Ted Cruz, have seriously proposed limiting all schools to one entrance in the wake of this week's horrors.
Are these people trolling? One entrance? What happens if there's a fire? What if a shooter gets through that one entrance and everyone is trapped inside? Also, do they not realize that children gather in large numbers at a thousand other locations, too? Are we going to turn every Chuck-E-Cheese, playground, and library into high security facilities, too?
These people have turned their brains into nacho cheese trying to avoid acknowledging the real issue. Given the option, I honestly think they would prefer to give every elementary school child a gun for self-defense rather than ban the sale of AR-15s or implement background checks for gun purchases.
It works in Israel. You should research how the Israelis protect their schools and how they have nearly no school shootings.
This is not a one-thing fixes all issue, BUT regular US citizens do NOT need to possess automatic or semi-automatic RIFLES or any weapon with a modification that makes them operate as such. If you want to argue that someone with a semi-automatic pistol can do just as much damage, ok, then, I'll say we ban those too.
Things that should happen:
1) Age to purchase ALL firearms raised to age 21.
2) Background checks and a serious waiting period for ALL firearms.
3) Banning of high-capacity magazines and all automatic and semi-automatic rifles.
4) Buy back program of newly illegal weapons.
5) Serious prison time and/or fines/loss of business for anyone violating the new laws.
These things are CRAP:
1) Good guy with a gun theory. The police in this latest slaughter did nothing, and even IF there is a good guy with a guy, not only does he have to be skilled and THERE, but he doesn't even know to act until others have been shot. Just a stupid idea.
2) That US citizens need to be armed to the point that they can take on the US government. Sorry, but that ship has sailed. You will NEVER have the capacity to take on and beat the US military.
Another thing that needs to be done but is SECONDARY to getting rid of the weaponry regarding the safety of our citizens:
* Mental health care. This needs a total revamping. Benzodiazepines are prescribed too much and not with enough care about how long to take them, and anyone on an SSRI needs to be seriously monitored initially for several weeks as dark thoughts including suicide are common initially.
This is not a one-thing fixes all issue, BUT regular US citizens do NOT need to possess automatic or semi-automatic RIFLES or any weapon with a modification that makes them operate as such. If you want to argue that someone with a semi-automatic pistol can do just as much damage, ok, then, I'll say we ban those too.
Things that should happen:
1) Age to purchase ALL firearms raised to age 21.
2) Background checks and a serious waiting period for ALL firearms.
3) Banning of high-capacity magazines and all automatic and semi-automatic rifles.
4) Buy back program of newly illegal weapons.
5) Serious prison time and/or fines/loss of business for anyone violating the new laws.
These things are CRAP:
1) Good guy with a gun theory. The police in this latest slaughter did nothing, and even IF there is a good guy with a guy, not only does he have to be skilled and THERE, but he doesn't even know to act until others have been shot. Just a stupid idea.
2) That US citizens need to be armed to the point that they can take on the US government. Sorry, but that ship has sailed. You will NEVER have the capacity to take on and beat the US military.
Another thing that needs to be done but is SECONDARY to getting rid of the weaponry regarding the safety of our citizens:
* Mental health care. This needs a total revamping. Benzodiazepines are prescribed too much and not with enough care about how long to take them, and anyone on an SSRI needs to be seriously monitored initially for several weeks as dark thoughts including suicide are common initially.
This is not a one-thing fixes all issue, BUT regular US citizens do NOT need to possess automatic or semi-automatic RIFLES or any weapon with a modification that makes them operate as such. If you want to argue that someone with a semi-automatic pistol can do just as much damage, ok, then, I'll say we ban those too.
Things that should happen:
1) Age to purchase ALL firearms raised to age 21.
2) Background checks and a serious waiting period for ALL firearms.
3) Banning of high-capacity magazines and all automatic and semi-automatic rifles.
4) Buy back program of newly illegal weapons.
5) Serious prison time and/or fines/loss of business for anyone violating the new laws.
These things are CRAP:
1) Good guy with a gun theory. The police in this latest slaughter did nothing, and even IF there is a good guy with a guy, not only does he have to be skilled and THERE, but he doesn't even know to act until others have been shot. Just a stupid idea.
2) That US citizens need to be armed to the point that they can take on the US government. Sorry, but that ship has sailed. You will NEVER have the capacity to take on and beat the US military.
Another thing that needs to be done but is SECONDARY to getting rid of the weaponry regarding the safety of our citizens:
* Mental health care. This needs a total revamping. Benzodiazepines are prescribed too much and not with enough care about how long to take them, and anyone on an SSRI needs to be seriously monitored initially for several weeks as dark thoughts including suicide are common initially.
1) Age to purchase is meaningless. Most school shootings involved guns owned by the shooter’s family. Now, age to possess is a different story. The question is how do you allow for kids that hunt with their parents? Also, you would have to raise the military enlistment age to not be completely illogical. Once you’ve done that, you would have to also raise the voting age to avoid moral hazard of people who aren’t mature enough to serve in war to vote for war. A better idea would be to restrict anyone under 21 from using social media since there is a higher historical correlation between social media activity and mass shootings than gun ownership and mass shootings.
2) There are already background checks for the vast majority of gun purchases. These “universal” checks only apply to private sales/transfers. If a guy gives a gun to his son and forgets to file whatever background check paperwork is required, how much jail time are you willing to subject him to? Or if you let your neighbor borrow an old shotgun and haven’t asked for it back in 5 years, have you committed a felony? It’s been acknowledged that the universal background check wouldn’t have mattered in this last shooting and in almost every other one as well.
3) First, automatic weapons are illegal. Second, several standard hunting rifles and nearly all handguns are semiauto. Let’s say the 2nd Amendment goes away so you could ban all semi-auto weapons. That still leaves shotguns and high powered bolt action rifles, both of which could be used by a psychotic person to inflict as much, if not more, damage in a pre-planned mass shooting.
4) An economic reality is that any buyback price/risk of punishment would need to exceed the black market profit/risk of being caught. The drug war has shown us that the government is not good at estimating these risk/price variables.
5) Again, how much jail time are you giving a 45 year old Nebraska dad of 4 who gives his 18 year old a semiauto hunting rifle for his birthday but forgets to turn in the background check info? And if the age of possession is 21, how much jail time are you giving the 20 year old who took his dad’s rifle out to shoot a feral hog that has been tearing up the family farm?
Look, I’ve never owned a gun in my life and haven’t shot one since I was a kid. If all guns went away tomorrow it wouldn’t affect my day to day at all. But the reason that no gun control measures are passed after mass shootings is because none of the proposed legislation would prevent a mass shooting or reduce a mass shooter’s effectiveness by any appreciable amount.
Further, most gun homicides are either domestic disturbance or drug war related and, again, none of the proposed legislation would put a dent in those stats. The domestic murders are usually committed by legal gun owners and the type of gun is irrelevant. The drug war murders are typically committed by criminals with illegally obtained guns so further restrictions aren’t going to be a deterrence.
I will fully admit that all guns can be dangerous and that if we had a massive North Korea style confiscation of all guns, then gun violence between citizens would decrease dramatically. Of course, the repercussions of that type of policy merit an entirely different thread.
There are only two realistic policy changes that would reduce gun violence. First, end the war on drugs. Second, a return to civil commitments to mental facilities. Nearly all of the people that kill themselves or go on mass shooting sprees display signs of severe mental issues well before acting. We have a gap between paying for voluntary therapy/rehab and incarceration for criminal behavior that was once filled by people getting civilly committed to mental facilities by their families. There would obviously need to be due process safeguards, but we need a third way for people who can’t afford/refuse to go to a voluntary mental health facility but have not yet committed an actual crime.
Why do people insist that "children should be safe at school"? Why would that be the case? You're dropping your beloved children off with adults who won't defend them (Uvalde PD) and teachers who very frequently turn out to be pedophiles and predators themselves. Background checks clearly do not work. Be responsible for your own family's safety. Time to do away with the failed experiment of public schools and bring back the family unit.
This guy is hitting on something but misses the mark by quite a bit. For the sake of argument, I’m assuming that education is one of the things we, as a society, should collectively pay for at the K-12 level. However, the way most states fund and disperse public school money is insane. If all schools were private, nonprofit entities and all students were given their per student cash value via backpack funding, we would very quickly find out how important controlled access campuses and armed security are to parents because they would vote with their feet.
Also, I can’t believe people are ridiculing the idea that a more secured school could help prevent school shootings. Is a one entrance, controlled access campus a panacea for school shootings? No, but it can clearly provide an extra degree of protection that is much more tangible than any of the proposed gun regulations.
I think it is an unworkable idea but one entrance isn't the same as one exit. You can have only one entrance while having many other exits that can only be accessed from inside.
Of course these exits need to be alarmed and not allowed to be propped open. I'm in a secure facility and there is only one entrance but multiple fire and emergency exits. A loud alarm sounds while it is opened and there is no mute so you can't prop it open without loud, high pitched screeching.
The bigger question with this shooting, setting aside the gun debate that goes nowhere, is where all protocols followed. Was every door that was supposed to be locked actually locked? Was ID properly established and a buzzed door not just opened without it? Things like that. Having strict access policies are useless if they aren't strictly enforced and tested. It should be as hard for someone that doesn't belong in a school to get in as it does for them to get into a federal building.
Did you know that students go outside for recess and p.e.? Especially in elementary school?
If you have a building of 20 different classes going outside for recess and p.e. at various times a day...
Well, yeah. Listen. I know some of you mean well with your constant teacher bashing and your inane ideas about how schools should run, but if you haven't stepped in a school since you graduated, let the people that actually work in them make these decisions, okay? Your ideas are absolutely ridiculous. Truly.
Before Columbine all schools had one entrance and walls and armed guards. No violence at all. Then they got rid of all of that because people said kids shouldn’t spend their time in prisons. Around the world, every school resembles a prison and they’re completely safe! Now, look what happens, tragic and the commen sense prison approach is being swatted down by the democrats! Bring back the prison system for schools! It’s the only explanation.
Wow. You just made up an entire paragraph. Good imagination!
This is not a one-thing fixes all issue, BUT regular US citizens do NOT need to possess automatic or semi-automatic RIFLES or any weapon with a modification that makes them operate as such. If you want to argue that someone with a semi-automatic pistol can do just as much damage, ok, then, I'll say we ban those too.
Things that should happen:
1) Age to purchase ALL firearms raised to age 21.
2) Background checks and a serious waiting period for ALL firearms.
3) Banning of high-capacity magazines and all automatic and semi-automatic rifles.
4) Buy back program of newly illegal weapons.
5) Serious prison time and/or fines/loss of business for anyone violating the new laws.
These things are CRAP:
1) Good guy with a gun theory. The police in this latest slaughter did nothing, and even IF there is a good guy with a guy, not only does he have to be skilled and THERE, but he doesn't even know to act until others have been shot. Just a stupid idea.
2) That US citizens need to be armed to the point that they can take on the US government. Sorry, but that ship has sailed. You will NEVER have the capacity to take on and beat the US military.
Another thing that needs to be done but is SECONDARY to getting rid of the weaponry regarding the safety of our citizens:
* Mental health care. This needs a total revamping. Benzodiazepines are prescribed too much and not with enough care about how long to take them, and anyone on an SSRI needs to be seriously monitored initially for several weeks as dark thoughts including suicide are common initially.
1) Age to purchase is meaningless. Most school shootings involved guns owned by the shooter’s family. Now, age to possess is a different story. The question is how do you allow for kids that hunt with their parents? Also, you would have to raise the military enlistment age to not be completely illogical. Once you’ve done that, you would have to also raise the voting age to avoid moral hazard of people who aren’t mature enough to serve in war to vote for war. A better idea would be to restrict anyone under 21 from using social media since there is a higher historical correlation between social media activity and mass shootings than gun ownership and mass shootings.
2) There are already background checks for the vast majority of gun purchases. These “universal” checks only apply to private sales/transfers. If a guy gives a gun to his son and forgets to file whatever background check paperwork is required, how much jail time are you willing to subject him to? Or if you let your neighbor borrow an old shotgun and haven’t asked for it back in 5 years, have you committed a felony? It’s been acknowledged that the universal background check wouldn’t have mattered in this last shooting and in almost every other one as well.
3) First, automatic weapons are illegal. Second, several standard hunting rifles and nearly all handguns are semiauto. Let’s say the 2nd Amendment goes away so you could ban all semi-auto weapons. That still leaves shotguns and high powered bolt action rifles, both of which could be used by a psychotic person to inflict as much, if not more, damage in a pre-planned mass shooting.
4) An economic reality is that any buyback price/risk of punishment would need to exceed the black market profit/risk of being caught. The drug war has shown us that the government is not good at estimating these risk/price variables.
5) Again, how much jail time are you giving a 45 year old Nebraska dad of 4 who gives his 18 year old a semiauto hunting rifle for his birthday but forgets to turn in the background check info? And if the age of possession is 21, how much jail time are you giving the 20 year old who took his dad’s rifle out to shoot a feral hog that has been tearing up the family farm?
Look, I’ve never owned a gun in my life and haven’t shot one since I was a kid. If all guns went away tomorrow it wouldn’t affect my day to day at all. But the reason that no gun control measures are passed after mass shootings is because none of the proposed legislation would prevent a mass shooting or reduce a mass shooter’s effectiveness by any appreciable amount.
Further, most gun homicides are either domestic disturbance or drug war related and, again, none of the proposed legislation would put a dent in those stats. The domestic murders are usually committed by legal gun owners and the type of gun is irrelevant. The drug war murders are typically committed by criminals with illegally obtained guns so further restrictions aren’t going to be a deterrence.
I will fully admit that all guns can be dangerous and that if we had a massive North Korea style confiscation of all guns, then gun violence between citizens would decrease dramatically. Of course, the repercussions of that type of policy merit an entirely different thread.
There are only two realistic policy changes that would reduce gun violence. First, end the war on drugs. Second, a return to civil commitments to mental facilities. Nearly all of the people that kill themselves or go on mass shooting sprees display signs of severe mental issues well before acting. We have a gap between paying for voluntary therapy/rehab and incarceration for criminal behavior that was once filled by people getting civilly committed to mental facilities by their families. There would obviously need to be due process safeguards, but we need a third way for people who can’t afford/refuse to go to a voluntary mental health facility but have not yet committed an actual crime.
1) NOPE! Age to buy a weapon is absolutely important on MANY levels. Anything to make it harder to buy a gun keeps fewer on the street. We need to attack the gun culture in this nation and clearly state that buying a gun is at least as ADULT as buying alcohol.
2) Background checks are NOT as involved as they should be, so sorry, I don't take your BS there.
3) I don't care what ELSE a shooter could use. We should not have semi-automatic weapons or mods that make anything fully automatic in this country available to citizens. Also, the 2nd Amendment doesn't need to go away for there to be a ban on semi-automatic weapons.
4) Ok, if a buy back program isn't feasible, then the gun owners are just OUT. They should not be able to keep semi-automatic weapons just because a buy back program might not be feasible.
5) Forget, schmorget. If we make weapons illegal, then they are illegal. A farmer doesn't then get to decide that he gets to keep his because he's shooting feral hogs. So, yes, SERIOUS punishment for owning these guns is what should happen. Everyone has a reason why they want/need a semi-automatic weapon. The way it should happen is...law passed...reasonable time given to surrender banned weapons...SERIOUS punishment if that is not followed. I would even add that if someone owns an illegal weapon and then it is used (by a family member or stolen) to murder someone that the owner who didn't surrender it is charged with murder (or maybe manslaughter).
Finally, I never said anything about waning ALL guns to go away, so your comment there is a strawman. I do NOT want that. Society needs to stand up and say that certain weapons are not allowed. And NO, we do not wait to have SERIOUS gun control until illegal drugs are not an issue and until our mental health issues are over. That's ridiculous. Constant work on all three things is possible and should be done.
Multiple high profile elected officials in Texas, including the Lieutenant Governor, and Senator Ted Cruz, have seriously proposed limiting all schools to one entrance in the wake of this week's horrors.
Are these people trolling? One entrance? What happens if there's a fire? What if a shooter gets through that one entrance and everyone is trapped inside? Also, do they not realize that children gather in large numbers at a thousand other locations, too? Are we going to turn every Chuck-E-Cheese, playground, and library into high security facilities, too?
These people have turned their brains into nacho cheese trying to avoid acknowledging the real issue. Given the option, I honestly think they would prefer to give every elementary school child a gun for self-defense rather than ban the sale of AR-15s or implement background checks for gun purchases.
Obviously a single point of entry is not the same as single exit derp. You can have emergency exits someone cannot get in from the outside. And yes a single entrance with an armed guard would almost certainly have prevented the tragedy.
To me banning AR's is an absolute non starter. The greatest threat to citizens of the US is the US government, not an AR in the hands of private citizens. In an era of the US government trying to take greater control of people's lives weapons like the AR in the hands of millions of American's are essential to deter government tyranny. For those who think this is a crazy stance I'll remind those of us who are more than a year old that not so long ago the sitting US president tried to make every American who refused to get a vaccine that is experimental and brought to market faster than any vaccine in human history unemployable.
Every school should have only one entrance: a VR Headset
I know it doesn't fix the underlying issues of violence, and a lot of people can't take the word "metaverse" seriously, but it's going to revolutionize our educational system.
Are you confusing what the difference between and entrance and exit is?? You do realize they make two way doors in which you can lock it in one direction?
If its a two way door how is it locked in one direction?? Let me guess soyboy, you also think masks keep covid out LOL
I work in a school where we have 5 entrances. 4 of them are card only which means teaches can get in but no one else. The main entrance is for everyone else. If I take my class outside for something, I can let them back in a card entrance. But Joe Student walking up has to be buzzed in the main door. Additionally, if any of the doors are left open for more than a minute, the main office gets alerted. This prevents turds from propping them open.
There are only two realistic policy changes that would reduce gun violence. First, end the war on drugs. Second, a return to civil commitments to mental facilities. Nearly all of the people that kill themselves or go on mass shooting sprees display signs of severe mental issues well before acting. We have a gap between paying for voluntary therapy/rehab and incarceration for criminal behavior that was once filled by people getting civilly committed to mental facilities by their families. There would obviously need to be due process safeguards, but we need a third way for people who can’t afford/refuse to go to a voluntary mental health facility but have not yet committed an actual crime.
"At one point in the 1950s, more than half a million Americans were confined to state psychiatric institutions, many of them for life. Today, the total number of state psychiatric beds in the U.S. sits around 37,000, with most beds on short-term, acute inpatient units in general medical hospitals."
How many places remain where 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' could be set? It was written in 1962 so at that time it could be taking place down the street.