I was talking about all levels of school: elementary, middle, and high. We had the same safety precautions at all levels, including, as I said, an armed resource officer. I can even remember their names. That also doesn't excuse the fact that there wasn't someone stationed near the front entrance.
I'll give you a timeline of what happened, according to latest reports that I've read.
1) The shooter enters the building by force, shooting through a door window.
2) A loudspeaker is turned on and everyone throughout the school can hear the shots.
3) The principle and psychologist rush out to investigate and are gunned down in the hall near the first grade classrooms.
4) As this is happening, and probably before it occurs, Kaitlin Roig, a teacher, hears the shots and barricades her students in a nearby bathroom.
5) The gunman passes by Kaitlin Roig's room, whose door was closed and lights off, proceeding to the next room where he guns down 14 children and two teachers. As of yet, there are no reports that he forced entry into the room or what attempts were made to secure the children. The teacher there was substituting for the actual teacher who was out on maternity leave. This inexperience and lack of knowledge about safety and drills may have been something attributed to the terrible deaths of those children.
6) He then goes into the next classroom, where he shoots Victoria Soto, an assistant teacher, and six students. They had been trying to hide the children in the closet. After this, he shoots himself as police arrive at the scene. There are no reports of forced entry into this room either. There are also conflicting stories about this. Some say that the shooter demanded to know where the children were and that Soto tried to direct him somewhere else, when children rushed out of the closet and were shot along with Soto and the other teacher. Other reports say that the shooter was completely quiet.
All of this took place within a span of minutes.
But as I said before, there really is no solid way to completely prepare for a terrible event like this. This is all I have to say on this matter.
As I see it, it's an issue in the US and not in other countries, which means that there is something else wrong and posting guards and locked doors at schools is just treating the symptom instead of the problem. As far I know, we don't have those things in for example Denmark, with scanners at entrances and pat downs ect. And yet, we don't have school shotings all the time.
Oh yes definitely,god forbid anyone in this forum can have an adult conversation that isnt about games or 3d art, god forbid...
Agreed. We're 11 pages in and not ripping at each others throats, its a fucking christmas miracle. Maybe this tragedy has highlighted the futility of that though.
I for one am up for treating the symptom as well as the disease. To stop this, several courses of action need to be taken. We need to take away the gun-nuts excuses first. Shutting gun stores in disadvantaged areas, and imposing other restrictions on gun stores, clamp down on trafficing to prevent crims getting their hands on guns, and maybe a gun amnesty where people who genuinely just want to defend their homes can turn in their guns for tazers. Personally if it was me I would do it, I would be disguisted to even look at a gun right now; they've ripped away so many lives. I think those steps would go a long way.
Just as a note, "assault weapon" bans won't do anything to fix this problem. No one seems to remember the Virginia Tech massacre, where the perpetrator used two handguns, neither of which used high capacity magazines. This has also been the largest shooting to date in the United States. In average crime, handguns have been used in a huge majority of gun violence cases. I feel that semi-automatic rifles are just the scapegoat of gun violence. Banning them will make the public feel like something good's been done, when actually nothing has changed.
Also, hearing of people blaming video games is pretty disappointing How many households have at least one game from the Call of Duty franchise? And now people are demonizing it? I'm glad that the media hasn't caught on to games like Gears of War, Saint Row, and Bulletstorm... all of which contain and glorify graphic violence.
Gun sales always go up after horrific events like this.
These types of events lead to people feeling less safe and more powerless so they isolate themselves further to be safer and have more control. They also buy something powerful to get back some of that lost power and control.
There is a ramp up in security to help people feel safe which just reinforces that there is a threat and that the people are powerless to stop it. So everyone gets a little more paranoid and a little more isolated and feels a little more powerless.
Wash rinse repeat until the mentally fragile start fraying at the edges.
The question isn't so much about guns or more security but why do people feel powerless and isolated? How do we give them power without putting a gun in their hand and taking away their ability to articulate themselves without violence? Because those types of people will lash out any way possible if they aren't given those things. We could ban all weapons right now but that is a long term solution that only limits one particular method of violence, in the short term they would still be easy enough to find.
In the long term if guns where harder to find they would build pipe bombs or set fires or drive their cars into a crowd. People who are determined to do horrific things are hard to stop and often the measures we take create more of them and they just come up with new ways to get around whatever obstacles we put in their way... so are we actually making ourselves safer by ignoring the actual problem?
I'm not being gun advocate (although I do think that in a perfect society there could be guns in every purse and glove box and no one would have a reason to use them.) but I don't want people to get caught up discussing the method of violence instead of the actual issues of powerlessness and isolation. It would be real easy to fall into the trap that we did something about guns (a positive baby step) and somehow we have fixed the problem.
As for gun nuts crying about losing their guns, you can have them back when everyone knows how to use them responsibly. Get going you have a lot of work to do.
Personally I thing the boards creative talent would be better spent discussing ways to make schools safer instead of bitching about one method of violence.
There is a lot of creative talent here and we can't think up a handful of ideas to make schools safer?
I'll start off with two relatively practical ways...
1) Safe rooms connected to each classroom.
They could shelter the kids in natural disasters like tornadoes earthquakes or sudden storms. There was a story about a teacher that managed to wrangle her kids into closets and kept them quite, the kids lived she didn't. The only thing keeping those kids safe was a closest door and their ability to keep quite. It should have been a bank vault.
I would love to see the safe rooms connect to a tunnel system that lead to many different exits at very safe locations like hospitals or the police stations, places where the victims could meet the cops. We could look to bunker designs from WW2 for ideas. This could be how the cops get in and out of the buildings also. Making it very hard for even a group of people to assault a school.
2) On site security that is known about but rarely seen.
Cameras instead of patrols and a secure room where security can respond from. An active patrol puts all of your eyes and ears in a few people, where an active system of cameras could be accessed from the outside even if the security guards are missing.
Agreed. We're 11 pages in and not ripping at each others throats, its a fucking christmas miracle. Maybe this tragedy has highlighted the futility of that though.
I for one am up for treating the symptom as well as the disease. To stop this, several courses of action need to be taken. We need to take away the gun-nuts excuses first. Shutting gun stores in disadvantaged areas, and imposing other restrictions on gun stores, clamp down on trafficing to prevent crims getting their hands on guns, and maybe a gun amnesty where people who genuinely just want to defend their homes can turn in their guns for tazers. Personally if it was me I would do it, I would be disguisted to even look at a gun right now; they've ripped away so many lives. I think those steps would go a long way.
Shutting down legal sources for guns isn't going to fix a thing, that's not where these weapons are coming from. The majority of guns come from rich kids selling their parent's guns to gang-bangers for drugs or cash. You keep trying to come up with solutions to a problem you understand so little. Your solutions are superficial at best. You could remove the gun shops, but there will still be guns on the street.
Yeah, there might be guns on the street, but there would be less and harder to get them. And as I mentioned before, a lot of the guns on the street, is there because thieves steals them from the houses they rob (you know, normal people). If you remove those, there is less guns available. The whole excuse that "oh but you can get guns other ways" is daft, we all agree we cant remove them all, but at least we can make it harder to get them.
Yeah, there might be guns on the street, but there would be less and harder to get them. And as I mentioned before, a lot of the guns on the street, is there because thieves steals them from the houses they rob (you know, normal people). If you remove those, there is less guns available. The whole excuse that "oh but you can get guns other ways" is daft, we all agree we cant remove them all, but at least we can make it harder to get them.
So, to stop criminals, you're going to punish innocent citizens? Besides, theft isn't how they get most of their guns, that only accounts for about 10% to 15% of illegal guns. They do it through a straw purchase, similar to what I said above. ATF reports that only 8% of gun retailers sell guns that end up in crimes. The argument that closing gun shops will reduce gun crime doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Most guns used in crimes come from gun trafficking.
WSJ has an informative, non emotional article up about guns in the US and mass shootings. It's not anti gun or pro gun but more of an anti knee jerk reaction piece.
Really? Won't reduce gun crime? Guess it's okay then, lets give everyone AK-47s, because it won't make things works. :P
What did I just say? The guns don't come from the store or people's homes, they come from the black market. Close every shop in the country and you, at best, reduce 8% of guns used in gun crimes, but you also remove access to guns for every law-abiding citizen.
People that blame the guns are just a bad as people that blame video games (yes I know guns can kill, that's not the point). They look at the surface and don't bother to dig any deeper as they demand action be taken against the thing they're pissed off about. They never ask what drove that person to pick up a gun and kill in the first place. What was going on in his life? I have been hearing from TYT that the kid that did the shooting was Autism spectrum and was prone to uncontrollable fits of violence. It was his illness, combined with his mother's shitty judgement to not secure those weapons around a violent teen that lead to this tragedy, not overly lax gun laws. If our society took more responsibility in making sure people with mental illness or other social issues driving them to violent behavior were treated with care and compassion, we would see a lot less violence in the world, guns included. But I know nobody will come to their senses. They'll just bitch on and on about the symptoms and never really pay any attention to the root cause. People just want to slap a gun control law on it and delude themselves into believing they fixed the problem.
Its interesting reading this thread from a canadian perspective. We have very little handguns in canada, or guns in general, so when I go to the states and see racks and racks of hanguns in some of the stores it makes me feel strange, I mean they are cool and all but it makes me feel a little uneasy. especially knowing that people can have a concealed carry liscence and stuff.
Until people have the basic ability to not trample others in a rush for shopping on black friday, there is no way I think the average person is smart enough to tote a gun around all the time, I know i wouldnt want to, because when people get mad they turn into fuckin idiots and do stupid things that they will instantly regret.
Seriously reading some of your guy's posts makes me wonder why you guys feel so afraid all the time. it sounds as if you think that there is a 99% chance that someone will break into your houses and its only a matter of time and you are going to have to shoot them as the only option. I think that has crossed my mind (the possibility of someone breaking into my house) maybe 2x in my entire life. I dont feel scared of strangers robbing me or that I would ever find myself in a situation where having a gun would help in any way shape or form.
its pretty interesting that in most countries the deaths from handguns a year are in the 20-100 people range and in the US its 9-10k. I think a big part of that is simply because its almost impossible to find a handgun in most countries. you can make the black market argument ofcourse but I find it hard to belive even these psychos would know how the fuck to find a criminal organization or go visit "the hood" and go about buying their weapons for their killing sprees.
I think Marks idea of a panic room is also a fantastic one. One per school though, per room is a little OTT IMO.
Yea one per room could be over the top and cost prohibitive. Maybe having one panic room with 4-5 classrooms attached to it? 1:1 is ideal and the most safe. Easier to get a small number of people into, faster to lock down.
The problem with multiple doors into one central room is that with more people and more entry points there is a chance that not all the doors can be shut, or one might have to stay open longer to make sure everyone gets in.
If one pod gets attacked and the door isn't shut the other pods can be accessed through that open door, kids would go to the central room and meet the killer. Where if its one per classroom its harder for a killer to get access to a lot of individual safe rooms. You want safety to be a few feet way from each kid not down the hall where they might get shot.
Still if push came to shove I would rather have 1 in 5 instead of 0 in 500.
You would want more than one safe room per school, because that increases the odds for survival. Less kids to wrangle, faster response time to lock down and less chance that a disaster or shooter would get in while the door is open.
Its interesting reading this thread from a canadian perspective. We have very little handguns in canada, or guns in general, so when I go to the states and see racks and racks of hanguns in some of the stores it makes me feel strange, I mean they are cool and all but it makes me feel a little uneasy. especially knowing that people can have a concealed carry liscence and stuff.
Until people have the basic ability to not trample others in a rush for shopping on black friday, there is no way I think the average person is smart enough to tote a gun around all the time, I know i wouldnt want to, because when people get mad they turn into fuckin idiots and do stupid things that they will instantly regret.
Seriously reading some of your guy's posts makes me wonder why you guys feel so afraid all the time. it sounds as if you think that there is a 99% chance that someone will break into your houses and its only a matter of time and you are going to have to shoot them as the only option. I think that has crossed my mind (the possibility of someone breaking into my house) maybe 2x in my entire life. I dont feel scared of strangers robbing me or that I would ever find myself in a situation where having a gun would help in any way shape or form.
its pretty interesting that in most countries the deaths from handguns a year are in the 20-100 people range and in the US its 9-10k. I think a big part of that is simply because its almost impossible to find a handgun in most countries. you can make the black market argument ofcourse but I find it hard to belive even these psychos would know how the fuck to find a criminal organization or go visit "the hood" and go about buying their weapons for their killing sprees.
Probably not the mentally ill. The unstable minds get their guns from friends or relatives too lazy or stupid to properly secure their guns. Like Lanza's mother. She paid for her mistake.
what is with all the gun toters saying that gun control won't, help? but make things worse?
have you guys looked around the world, take a look at Australia, the UK or Japan. they all got tight gun restrictions, and very small gun related homicide rates.
@ Pixelmasher Because America Is a country that romanticizes violence, we drink and consume massive amounts of drugs that fuels our paranoia about how gun crazy and fucked up the other guy is, who we are also afraid will take our stuff.Add a crapload of religion, equal parts repressed sexuality and a conceited sense of self worth. We think we are the best, but secretly we know we are not and it drives us nuts. We can laugh at others but have no sense of self humor but to our credit we try to do the right thing, but only after all options are exhausted..
Probably not the mentally ill. The unstable minds get their guns from friends or relatives too lazy or stupid to properly secure their guns. Like Lanza's mother. She paid for her mistake.
And yet, you are saying that removing weapons from the day to day life would change nothing, because of the black market. Sure there will still be criminals getting guns on the blackmarket. But even the blackmarket will have harder times with no guns around to steal or buy from "rich kids".
What did I just say? The guns don't come from the store or people's homes, they come from the black market. Close every shop in the country and you, at best, reduce 8% of guns used in gun crimes, but you also remove access to guns for every law-abiding citizen.
People that blame the guns are just a bad as people that blame video games (yes I know guns can kill, that's not the point). They look at the surface and don't bother to dig any deeper as they demand action be taken against the thing they're pissed off about. They never ask what drove that person to pick up a gun and kill in the first place. What was going on in his life? I have been hearing from TYT that the kid that did the shooting was Autism spectrum and was prone to uncontrollable fits of violence. It was his illness, combined with his mother's shitty judgement to not secure those weapons around a violent teen that lead to this tragedy, not overly lax gun laws. If our society took more responsibility in making sure people with mental illness or other social issues driving them to violent behavior were treated with care and compassion, we would see a lot less violence in the world, guns included. But I know nobody will come to their senses. They'll just bitch on and on about the symptoms and never really pay any attention to the root cause. People just want to slap a gun control law on it and delude themselves into believing they fixed the problem.
Yeah, because in all the other countries where they have gun restriction, the normal citizens are running around in fear for their life and gets shot all the time...oh wait, no they dont! Take a look around you, outside your little fear zone, and realise that not having guns all around you, isn't bad for you.
Utterly terrified here, scandanavians are a dangerous lot......;)
Come on, our days of drinking mead with poisonios mushrooms and breaking up people chests to reassemble eagle wings, we don't do that any more...much...
Yeah, because in all the other countries where they have gun restriction, the normal citizens are running around in fear for their life and gets shot all the time...oh wait, no they dont! Take a look around you, outside your little fear zone, and realise that not having guns all around you, isn't bad for you.
Fear? I'm not afraid. I don't own a single gun and I don't feel the slightest bit afraid. I also wouldn't feel any safer with a gun. I'd feel safer if everyone else felt less violent.
America is not like other countries and it's not because of gun laws. We have a uniquely fearful, intolerant, and violent culture that other countries seem to lack.
Gun traffickers get their guns from outside of the country, rich kids selling their dad's gun is only part of it. The point is everyone is frothing at the mouth over this, screaming for token changes and completely glossing over the human issues at the core of violence in society. We ignore it and that's why we keep having one school massacre after another. Take away guns and they'll just follow Tim Mcveigh's example. Then we'll have school bombings. It will just shift from one form of violence to another and we'll play wack-a-mole while missing the underlying issue, like we always do.
Australia doesn't have the gang issues America does. They also don't have the kind of media induced fear we do. We are a nation of hysterical people fed on negativity and doubt day after day thanks to our media outlets.
Fear? I'm not afraid. I don't own a single gun and I don't feel the slightest bit afraid. I also wouldn't feel any safer with a gun. I'd feel safer if everyone else felt less violent.
America is not like other countries and it's not because of gun laws. We have a uniquely fearful, intolerant, and violent culture that other countries seem to lack.
Then why would you need a gun? If you want to shot with a gun, join a gun club where you will be required to leave the gun in the club safely.
There is issues that needs to be fixed which isn't the weapons fault, however just like when a kid beats up another kid with a bat, you don't leave the bat with kid until you have talked with the parents and solved the real reason for his behavior. You will take the bat away from him, and THEN try to fix the problem, to avoid more problems that might make it harder to solve.
Then why would you need a gun? If you want to shot with a gun, join a gun club where you will be required to leave the gun in the club safely.
There is issues that needs to be fixed which isn't the weapons fault, however just like when a kid beats up another kid with a bat, you don't leave the bat with kid until you have talked with the parents and solved the real reason for his behavior. You will take the bat away from him, and THEN try to fix the problem, to avoid more problems that might make it harder to solve.
That's all well and good, but we always take away the bat and never deal with the kid's behavior. We think taking away the bat fixes it but then the kid gets a knife and it starts all over again. That's what I'm talking about. This whole gun control thing just goes in circles and never addresses the underlying problem. I never hear that we need better social programs to help mental illness or assist the impoverished so that things don't get so bad that they turn to violence to solve their problems with a gun. I just hear how we need to punish the "evil doers" and deal punishment so we can "send a message" to those that would do harm. It all gets under my skin and I can hardly put up with it anymore.
That's all well and good, but we always take away the bat and never deal with the kid's behavior. We think taking away the bat fixes it but then the kid gets a knife and it starts all over again. That's what I'm talking about. This whole gun control thing just goes in circles and never addresses the underlying problem. I never hear that we need better social programs to help mental illness or assist the impoverished so that things don't get so bad that they turn to violence to solve their problems with a gun. I just hear how we need to punish the "evil doers" and deal punishment so we can "send a message" to those that would do harm. It all gets under my skin and I can hardly put up with it anymore.
While I think this is a great long-term solution, the best short term, realistic, lower-cost solution is strict firearm control.
That's all well and good, but we always take away the bat and never deal with the kid's behavior. We think taking away the bat fixes it but then the kid gets a knife and it starts all over again. That's what I'm talking about. This whole gun control thing just goes in circles and never addresses the underlying problem. I never hear that we need better social programs to help mental illness or assist the impoverished so that things don't get so bad that they turn to violence to solve their problems with a gun. I just hear how we need to punish the "evil doers" and deal punishment so we can "send a message" to those that would do harm. It all gets under my skin and I can hardly put up with it anymore.
exactly how many circles do you think we have gone with gun control really ?
there was an assault weapons ban only for 2 years 1994-96 and it had short term positive effects too considering such a short term ban.
i agree that gun control isnt the only solution, but we never really tried serious gun control ever to know if it works.
however, we do know it works in other countries.
so ask yourself if violence came first or guns came first in this nation. according to history, guns came first.
There's a lot on the pro gun side saying "it wont help, to have tougher laws" well yeah it will, because since the last time something as high profile as this happened, you know what changed since then? nothing, this is what happens when you don't make any changes, you just get the same situation repeating.
However small doing something is always better than nothing. The fact is, with the way things are in America right now the same thing could happen tomorrow. You cannot have civilian life if literally anyone can militarize themselves to front line standards whenever they feel like it.
Violence came first, always. Your account of history is incorrect. There were people living on this continent before there were firearms, but we're just splitting hairs now.
We go in circles because tragedy strikes and people blame guns while ignoring everything else that's to blame, as they always do. We make strong statements that are just hot air and go about our business until the next disaster strikes. Then it all starts over.
So fine, pursue your gun control laws if you must, but don't do so at the cost of ignoring the social issues that cause the cycle of violence to perpetuate itself. I already suggested we use a public lockup for guns that require a photo ID and a key to access them. Keep a record of who checks out what and how much ammo they take with them. I'm sure that would make a huge difference and the gun lovers can keep their collection of exotic weapons.
But we still have to deal with the issues that drive people to violence.
ignoring the social issues is a bad thing to do, but as was pointed out earlier... if a kid misbehaves, you take away his stuff, and then when he's learned to be responsible, you give it back at a rate he can handle.
There's a lot on the pro gun side saying "it wont help, to have tougher laws" well yeah it will, because since the last time something as high profile as this happened, you know what changed since then? nothing, this is what happens when you don't make any changes, you just get the same situation repeating.
However small doing something is always better than nothing. The fact is, with the way things are in America right now the same thing could happen tomorrow. You cannot have civilian life if literally anyone can militarize themselves to front line standards whenever they feel like it.
You're right, nothing changes. Nothing changed when Harris and Kliebold shot up Columbine. People blamed guns. People blamed music and games. Nobody blamed the social environment that created those tragic individuals. Nobody talked about the abuse those kids went through from their classmates, the lack of guidance from their parents, and they didn't take any measures to help those kids before they blew up. We bitch and complain that there are too many dangerous weapons out there when we refuse to admit that if we had done a better job taking care of each other, people wouldn't get so crazy, so desperate, so sad, so angry, or so scared that they do horrible things that shock us. The solution is really simple, but everybody wants to take the easy way out because the proper solution takes a lot of work. So instead they just want to ban guns. Let's not put effort into dealing with the cause. Let's not do anything with the source of the problem, let's go for the easy fix and ignore the issues that, if properly dealt with, would also take care of the secondary issues we keep trying to fix to no avail.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
And that's what you're asking for in gun control, temporary safety. Where do you draw the line? What are acceptable limits? How far are you going to take it just to eliminate the legal sources of guns? Once you remove legal sources, the criminal can still get their guns. Nothing changes. "Bad" people still have guns. Why don't we do something about the "bad" people instead? Why don't we try to solve the issues that drive "bad" people to violent crimes, or just crime in general? Then we don't have to worry about people getting shot. But we don't do that. It's far easier to pass a law to get hollow instant gratification than to actually work toward fighting the infection of violence in society.
You're right, nothing changes. Nothing changed when Harris and Kliebold shot up Columbine. People blamed guns. People blamed music and games. Nobody blamed the social environment that created those tragic individuals. Nobody talked about the abuse those kids went through from their classmates, the lack of guidance from their parents, and they didn't take any measures to help those kids before they blew up. We bitch and complain that there are too many dangerous weapons out there when we refuse to admit that if we had done a better job taking care of each other, people wouldn't get so crazy, so desperate, so sad, so angry, or so scared that they do horrible things that shock us. The solution is really simple, but everybody wants to take the easy way out because the proper solution takes a lot of work. So instead they just want to ban guns. Let's not put effort into dealing with the cause. Let's not do anything with the source of the problem, let's go for the easy fix and ignore the issues that, if properly dealt with, would also take care of the secondary issues we keep trying to fix to no avail.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
And that's what you're asking for in gun control, temporary safety. Where do you draw the line? What are acceptable limits? How far are you going to take it just to eliminate the legal sources of guns? Once you remove legal sources, the criminal can still get their guns. Nothing changes. "Bad" people still have guns. Why don't we do something about the "bad" people instead? Why don't we try to solve the issues that drive "bad" people to violent crimes, or just crime in general? Then we don't have to worry about people getting shot. But we don't do that. It's far easier to pass a law to get hollow instant gratification than to actually work toward fighting the infection of violence in society.
isnt it living in a fictional land when you think having liberty is being able to buy semi-automatic guns ?
after all the things this government has done like TSA, NDAA, stop and search, warrantless searches, patriot act, wire tapping etc. you still think you have liberty ?
if the government really wanted to come for you they would either way and your puny guns wont stop them.
however, it doesnt make sense for government to come after its citizens because after all we are the cash cow that keep feeding the big 3 - banks, oil companies, defense contractor and government is just their servant.
spreading guns around actually creates less liberty for the whole nation because more people end up going to jail or worse and allows the government to run good prison business and a great police state.
so this notion of more gun = more liberty is rubbish.
I got an idea for a game. It's a simulation game kinda like Pandemic 2.
You control a new agency and your goal is to cause as much deaths as possible to create more news, to get more views. You can by other news stations to increase your income, and glorifying the killers make them want to top each other. You buy influence at different levels of government, and can create more unstable people by making it harder and more expensive to get mental health care and encouraging bullying and discrimination. You also want to reduce gun control and make it easier to get for the unstable population. And you can delay outlash and public reaction by blaming the entertainment and video game industries.
"after all the things this government has done like TSA, NDAA, stop and search, warrantless searches, patriot act, wire tapping etc. you still think you have liberty ?"
I never said we live in a land of liberty, quite the opposite.
"so this notion of more gun = more liberty is rubbish."
That's your opinion. And it's not the government we have to fight to get our liberty back. It's the Money Trust. They're the people we need to deal with and they don't have the military at their disposal. The 2nd amendment will work on them just fine. The tyrants aren't in the halls of legislature, they're in the markets and the banks. They're not untouchable. When push comes to shove those are the people we need to focus on.
Regardless of who's right or wrong in this whole argument, I have a question:
Why the fuck is this thread on Polycount?
I have even a better one, why are they arguing over gun control, when as I pointed out at least one Representative wants to use it as an excuse to get GAME RESTRICTIONS!.
See previous post for those of you to set on proving your POV as right, to see we have a much bigger battle that effects us all here (and our job prospects).
Regardless of who's right or wrong in this whole argument, I have a question:
Why the fuck is this thread on Polycount?
Same reason we talk about cooking food, brewing beer and any number of strange hobbies we have. We enjoy conversing with each other. PC is my primary chat forum.
Please respect that some people want to discuss it. I would be interested in your opinions on it, if you have one. :)
I have even a better one, why are they arguing over gun control, when as I pointed out at least one Representative wants to use it as an excuse to get GAME RESTRICTIONS!.
See previous post for those of you to set on proving your POV as right, to see we have a much bigger battle that effects us all here (and our job prospects).
much bigger battle ? not unless you are shot dead the next time you go outside anywhere.
hopefully your guns will save you!
because it could be any one of us the next time something like this happens and because we are all supposedly civilized ADULTS capable of having a mature "discussion" in a discussion forum.
The issue of treating mental health is great. Free psychiatry for those in need, easy access for those who require it. Yes, that would be great, and probably the most effective thing to do.
This however, would only be a long-term solution. The cost, and time required to set something like up would take years. It's shown that in countries (exclude Switzerland, here, you can't compare a fiscal paradise, where every citizen is properly trained from the age of 16, to America) where there is tighter control, there are fewer gun-related incidents, for obvious reasons.
The problem with mental health care, is that you can't *force* anyone to take it. Psychiatry today isn't out of reach, most schools have their own psychologist. Even if you make it more accessible, there is no way to force anyone who needs it, to take it. The only way to make this possible, is having everyone take a psych exam before acquiring any firearm.
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I'll give you a timeline of what happened, according to latest reports that I've read.
1) The shooter enters the building by force, shooting through a door window.
2) A loudspeaker is turned on and everyone throughout the school can hear the shots.
3) The principle and psychologist rush out to investigate and are gunned down in the hall near the first grade classrooms.
4) As this is happening, and probably before it occurs, Kaitlin Roig, a teacher, hears the shots and barricades her students in a nearby bathroom.
5) The gunman passes by Kaitlin Roig's room, whose door was closed and lights off, proceeding to the next room where he guns down 14 children and two teachers. As of yet, there are no reports that he forced entry into the room or what attempts were made to secure the children. The teacher there was substituting for the actual teacher who was out on maternity leave. This inexperience and lack of knowledge about safety and drills may have been something attributed to the terrible deaths of those children.
6) He then goes into the next classroom, where he shoots Victoria Soto, an assistant teacher, and six students. They had been trying to hide the children in the closet. After this, he shoots himself as police arrive at the scene. There are no reports of forced entry into this room either. There are also conflicting stories about this. Some say that the shooter demanded to know where the children were and that Soto tried to direct him somewhere else, when children rushed out of the closet and were shot along with Soto and the other teacher. Other reports say that the shooter was completely quiet.
All of this took place within a span of minutes.
But as I said before, there really is no solid way to completely prepare for a terrible event like this. This is all I have to say on this matter.
this kind of sums up my entire thought on the matter
Oh yes definitely,god forbid anyone in this forum can have an adult conversation that isnt about games or 3d art, god forbid...
Agreed. We're 11 pages in and not ripping at each others throats, its a fucking christmas miracle. Maybe this tragedy has highlighted the futility of that though.
I for one am up for treating the symptom as well as the disease. To stop this, several courses of action need to be taken. We need to take away the gun-nuts excuses first. Shutting gun stores in disadvantaged areas, and imposing other restrictions on gun stores, clamp down on trafficing to prevent crims getting their hands on guns, and maybe a gun amnesty where people who genuinely just want to defend their homes can turn in their guns for tazers. Personally if it was me I would do it, I would be disguisted to even look at a gun right now; they've ripped away so many lives. I think those steps would go a long way.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-12-18-uk-tabloids-single-out-call-of-duty-dynasty-warriors-in-coverage-of-sandy-hook-school-massacre
*sigh*
Also, hearing of people blaming video games is pretty disappointing
These types of events lead to people feeling less safe and more powerless so they isolate themselves further to be safer and have more control. They also buy something powerful to get back some of that lost power and control.
There is a ramp up in security to help people feel safe which just reinforces that there is a threat and that the people are powerless to stop it. So everyone gets a little more paranoid and a little more isolated and feels a little more powerless.
Wash rinse repeat until the mentally fragile start fraying at the edges.
The question isn't so much about guns or more security but why do people feel powerless and isolated? How do we give them power without putting a gun in their hand and taking away their ability to articulate themselves without violence? Because those types of people will lash out any way possible if they aren't given those things. We could ban all weapons right now but that is a long term solution that only limits one particular method of violence, in the short term they would still be easy enough to find.
In the long term if guns where harder to find they would build pipe bombs or set fires or drive their cars into a crowd. People who are determined to do horrific things are hard to stop and often the measures we take create more of them and they just come up with new ways to get around whatever obstacles we put in their way... so are we actually making ourselves safer by ignoring the actual problem?
I'm not being gun advocate (although I do think that in a perfect society there could be guns in every purse and glove box and no one would have a reason to use them.) but I don't want people to get caught up discussing the method of violence instead of the actual issues of powerlessness and isolation. It would be real easy to fall into the trap that we did something about guns (a positive baby step) and somehow we have fixed the problem.
As for gun nuts crying about losing their guns, you can have them back when everyone knows how to use them responsibly. Get going you have a lot of work to do.
There is a lot of creative talent here and we can't think up a handful of ideas to make schools safer?
I'll start off with two relatively practical ways...
1) Safe rooms connected to each classroom.
They could shelter the kids in natural disasters like tornadoes earthquakes or sudden storms. There was a story about a teacher that managed to wrangle her kids into closets and kept them quite, the kids lived she didn't. The only thing keeping those kids safe was a closest door and their ability to keep quite. It should have been a bank vault.
I would love to see the safe rooms connect to a tunnel system that lead to many different exits at very safe locations like hospitals or the police stations, places where the victims could meet the cops. We could look to bunker designs from WW2 for ideas. This could be how the cops get in and out of the buildings also. Making it very hard for even a group of people to assault a school.
2) On site security that is known about but rarely seen.
Cameras instead of patrols and a secure room where security can respond from. An active patrol puts all of your eyes and ears in a few people, where an active system of cameras could be accessed from the outside even if the security guards are missing.
Shutting down legal sources for guns isn't going to fix a thing, that's not where these weapons are coming from. The majority of guns come from rich kids selling their parent's guns to gang-bangers for drugs or cash. You keep trying to come up with solutions to a problem you understand so little. Your solutions are superficial at best. You could remove the gun shops, but there will still be guns on the street.
Did someone in IRL genuinely just type that non-ironically 0_o ?
So, to stop criminals, you're going to punish innocent citizens? Besides, theft isn't how they get most of their guns, that only accounts for about 10% to 15% of illegal guns. They do it through a straw purchase, similar to what I said above. ATF reports that only 8% of gun retailers sell guns that end up in crimes. The argument that closing gun shops will reduce gun crime doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Most guns used in crimes come from gun trafficking.
I saw it in a tv show, yo. ;P
I think Marks idea of a panic room is also a fantastic one. One per school though, per room is a little OTT IMO.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323723104578185271857424036.html
What did I just say? The guns don't come from the store or people's homes, they come from the black market. Close every shop in the country and you, at best, reduce 8% of guns used in gun crimes, but you also remove access to guns for every law-abiding citizen.
People that blame the guns are just a bad as people that blame video games (yes I know guns can kill, that's not the point). They look at the surface and don't bother to dig any deeper as they demand action be taken against the thing they're pissed off about. They never ask what drove that person to pick up a gun and kill in the first place. What was going on in his life? I have been hearing from TYT that the kid that did the shooting was Autism spectrum and was prone to uncontrollable fits of violence. It was his illness, combined with his mother's shitty judgement to not secure those weapons around a violent teen that lead to this tragedy, not overly lax gun laws. If our society took more responsibility in making sure people with mental illness or other social issues driving them to violent behavior were treated with care and compassion, we would see a lot less violence in the world, guns included. But I know nobody will come to their senses. They'll just bitch on and on about the symptoms and never really pay any attention to the root cause. People just want to slap a gun control law on it and delude themselves into believing they fixed the problem.
Until people have the basic ability to not trample others in a rush for shopping on black friday, there is no way I think the average person is smart enough to tote a gun around all the time, I know i wouldnt want to, because when people get mad they turn into fuckin idiots and do stupid things that they will instantly regret.
Seriously reading some of your guy's posts makes me wonder why you guys feel so afraid all the time. it sounds as if you think that there is a 99% chance that someone will break into your houses and its only a matter of time and you are going to have to shoot them as the only option. I think that has crossed my mind (the possibility of someone breaking into my house) maybe 2x in my entire life. I dont feel scared of strangers robbing me or that I would ever find myself in a situation where having a gun would help in any way shape or form.
its pretty interesting that in most countries the deaths from handguns a year are in the 20-100 people range and in the US its 9-10k. I think a big part of that is simply because its almost impossible to find a handgun in most countries. you can make the black market argument ofcourse but I find it hard to belive even these psychos would know how the fuck to find a criminal organization or go visit "the hood" and go about buying their weapons for their killing sprees.
The problem with multiple doors into one central room is that with more people and more entry points there is a chance that not all the doors can be shut, or one might have to stay open longer to make sure everyone gets in.
If one pod gets attacked and the door isn't shut the other pods can be accessed through that open door, kids would go to the central room and meet the killer. Where if its one per classroom its harder for a killer to get access to a lot of individual safe rooms. You want safety to be a few feet way from each kid not down the hall where they might get shot.
Still if push came to shove I would rather have 1 in 5 instead of 0 in 500.
You would want more than one safe room per school, because that increases the odds for survival. Less kids to wrangle, faster response time to lock down and less chance that a disaster or shooter would get in while the door is open.
Probably not the mentally ill. The unstable minds get their guns from friends or relatives too lazy or stupid to properly secure their guns. Like Lanza's mother. She paid for her mistake.
have you guys looked around the world, take a look at Australia, the UK or Japan. they all got tight gun restrictions, and very small gun related homicide rates.
And yet, you are saying that removing weapons from the day to day life would change nothing, because of the black market. Sure there will still be criminals getting guns on the blackmarket. But even the blackmarket will have harder times with no guns around to steal or buy from "rich kids".
Yeah, because in all the other countries where they have gun restriction, the normal citizens are running around in fear for their life and gets shot all the time...oh wait, no they dont! Take a look around you, outside your little fear zone, and realise that not having guns all around you, isn't bad for you.
how many guys from the US have moved to europe, and are terrified for their life every day because they can no longer have a gun?
Utterly terrified here, scandanavians are a dangerous lot......;)
Come on, our days of drinking mead with poisonios mushrooms and breaking up people chests to reassemble eagle wings, we don't do that any more...much...
Fear? I'm not afraid. I don't own a single gun and I don't feel the slightest bit afraid. I also wouldn't feel any safer with a gun. I'd feel safer if everyone else felt less violent.
America is not like other countries and it's not because of gun laws. We have a uniquely fearful, intolerant, and violent culture that other countries seem to lack.
@Neox
Gun traffickers get their guns from outside of the country, rich kids selling their dad's gun is only part of it. The point is everyone is frothing at the mouth over this, screaming for token changes and completely glossing over the human issues at the core of violence in society. We ignore it and that's why we keep having one school massacre after another. Take away guns and they'll just follow Tim Mcveigh's example. Then we'll have school bombings. It will just shift from one form of violence to another and we'll play wack-a-mole while missing the underlying issue, like we always do.
@passerby
Australia doesn't have the gang issues America does. They also don't have the kind of media induced fear we do. We are a nation of hysterical people fed on negativity and doubt day after day thanks to our media outlets.
Then why would you need a gun? If you want to shot with a gun, join a gun club where you will be required to leave the gun in the club safely.
There is issues that needs to be fixed which isn't the weapons fault, however just like when a kid beats up another kid with a bat, you don't leave the bat with kid until you have talked with the parents and solved the real reason for his behavior. You will take the bat away from him, and THEN try to fix the problem, to avoid more problems that might make it harder to solve.
That's all well and good, but we always take away the bat and never deal with the kid's behavior. We think taking away the bat fixes it but then the kid gets a knife and it starts all over again. That's what I'm talking about. This whole gun control thing just goes in circles and never addresses the underlying problem. I never hear that we need better social programs to help mental illness or assist the impoverished so that things don't get so bad that they turn to violence to solve their problems with a gun. I just hear how we need to punish the "evil doers" and deal punishment so we can "send a message" to those that would do harm. It all gets under my skin and I can hardly put up with it anymore.
exactly how many circles do you think we have gone with gun control really ?
there was an assault weapons ban only for 2 years 1994-96 and it had short term positive effects too considering such a short term ban.
i agree that gun control isnt the only solution, but we never really tried serious gun control ever to know if it works.
however, we do know it works in other countries.
so ask yourself if violence came first or guns came first in this nation. according to history, guns came first.
However small doing something is always better than nothing. The fact is, with the way things are in America right now the same thing could happen tomorrow. You cannot have civilian life if literally anyone can militarize themselves to front line standards whenever they feel like it.
We go in circles because tragedy strikes and people blame guns while ignoring everything else that's to blame, as they always do. We make strong statements that are just hot air and go about our business until the next disaster strikes. Then it all starts over.
So fine, pursue your gun control laws if you must, but don't do so at the cost of ignoring the social issues that cause the cycle of violence to perpetuate itself. I already suggested we use a public lockup for guns that require a photo ID and a key to access them. Keep a record of who checks out what and how much ammo they take with them. I'm sure that would make a huge difference and the gun lovers can keep their collection of exotic weapons.
But we still have to deal with the issues that drive people to violence.
"Put guns on the table, also put video games on the table, put mental health on the table," Kingston said."
http://news.yahoo.com/congressional-backing-grows-gun-control-debate-220341844--politics.html
You're right, nothing changes. Nothing changed when Harris and Kliebold shot up Columbine. People blamed guns. People blamed music and games. Nobody blamed the social environment that created those tragic individuals. Nobody talked about the abuse those kids went through from their classmates, the lack of guidance from their parents, and they didn't take any measures to help those kids before they blew up. We bitch and complain that there are too many dangerous weapons out there when we refuse to admit that if we had done a better job taking care of each other, people wouldn't get so crazy, so desperate, so sad, so angry, or so scared that they do horrible things that shock us. The solution is really simple, but everybody wants to take the easy way out because the proper solution takes a lot of work. So instead they just want to ban guns. Let's not put effort into dealing with the cause. Let's not do anything with the source of the problem, let's go for the easy fix and ignore the issues that, if properly dealt with, would also take care of the secondary issues we keep trying to fix to no avail.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
And that's what you're asking for in gun control, temporary safety. Where do you draw the line? What are acceptable limits? How far are you going to take it just to eliminate the legal sources of guns? Once you remove legal sources, the criminal can still get their guns. Nothing changes. "Bad" people still have guns. Why don't we do something about the "bad" people instead? Why don't we try to solve the issues that drive "bad" people to violent crimes, or just crime in general? Then we don't have to worry about people getting shot. But we don't do that. It's far easier to pass a law to get hollow instant gratification than to actually work toward fighting the infection of violence in society.
isnt it living in a fictional land when you think having liberty is being able to buy semi-automatic guns ?
after all the things this government has done like TSA, NDAA, stop and search, warrantless searches, patriot act, wire tapping etc. you still think you have liberty ?
if the government really wanted to come for you they would either way and your puny guns wont stop them.
however, it doesnt make sense for government to come after its citizens because after all we are the cash cow that keep feeding the big 3 - banks, oil companies, defense contractor and government is just their servant.
spreading guns around actually creates less liberty for the whole nation because more people end up going to jail or worse and allows the government to run good prison business and a great police state.
so this notion of more gun = more liberty is rubbish.
You control a new agency and your goal is to cause as much deaths as possible to create more news, to get more views. You can by other news stations to increase your income, and glorifying the killers make them want to top each other. You buy influence at different levels of government, and can create more unstable people by making it harder and more expensive to get mental health care and encouraging bullying and discrimination. You also want to reduce gun control and make it easier to get for the unstable population. And you can delay outlash and public reaction by blaming the entertainment and video game industries.
I never said we live in a land of liberty, quite the opposite.
"so this notion of more gun = more liberty is rubbish."
That's your opinion. And it's not the government we have to fight to get our liberty back. It's the Money Trust. They're the people we need to deal with and they don't have the military at their disposal. The 2nd amendment will work on them just fine. The tyrants aren't in the halls of legislature, they're in the markets and the banks. They're not untouchable. When push comes to shove those are the people we need to focus on.
I have even a better one, why are they arguing over gun control, when as I pointed out at least one Representative wants to use it as an excuse to get GAME RESTRICTIONS!.
See previous post for those of you to set on proving your POV as right, to see we have a much bigger battle that effects us all here (and our job prospects).
Same reason we talk about cooking food, brewing beer and any number of strange hobbies we have. We enjoy conversing with each other. PC is my primary chat forum.
Please respect that some people want to discuss it. I would be interested in your opinions on it, if you have one.
much bigger battle ? not unless you are shot dead the next time you go outside anywhere.
hopefully your guns will save you!
because it could be any one of us the next time something like this happens and because we are all supposedly civilized ADULTS capable of having a mature "discussion" in a discussion forum.
This however, would only be a long-term solution. The cost, and time required to set something like up would take years. It's shown that in countries (exclude Switzerland, here, you can't compare a fiscal paradise, where every citizen is properly trained from the age of 16, to America) where there is tighter control, there are fewer gun-related incidents, for obvious reasons.
The problem with mental health care, is that you can't *force* anyone to take it. Psychiatry today isn't out of reach, most schools have their own psychologist. Even if you make it more accessible, there is no way to force anyone who needs it, to take it. The only way to make this possible, is having everyone take a psych exam before acquiring any firearm.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/18/fear-being-committed-may-have-caused-connecticut-madman-to-snap/
turns out he snapped when he found out his mom was petitioning to get him treated
WOW LOOK ALL LOGIC OUT THE WINDOW HERE, PEOPLE WITH MENTAL PROBLEMS DONT LIKE BEING TREATED, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?!
Personally I wouldn't like to be treated if I was insane, id feel like im being alienated and would feel even more different and messed up