There is in fact something stopping America from implementing any meaningful change at all, and it's the Second Amendment. Which makes the US different, in a very bad way, from every other developed nation.

Guns enable and encourage rather than cause.

I'd sort of agree it's mental health issues but I dont think you can look at it as individual mental health problems. The sickness is in usa society. Dealing with that is vital for many reasons but arming it is just a very bad idea.

Yes, we need the guns! How sad is this that kids have to contemplate this at 8 years old.

I get that, I just don't agree with the numbers being that close. CNN has like 1000 affiliated local stations. If they and the few other largest syndicated news stations chose not to run it, that would be a good step in the right direction for these stories not being plastered everywhere and just leave it for NYPost, Dailymail and other online junk tabloids to run these stories.

Likely needs to be a combined effort of: better mental illness awareness, better gun control measures, better press removal. Feel free to argue which one would be the most impactful.


Fine by me.

Did you know that the worst school shooting was one person using only handguns?

Yeah, I know... get rid of those, too.

A racist mass shooting in buffalo only a few days earlier.
Lock the guns away!



Biden denounces gun lobby at 0:38m

Mass shooting are small % of gun violence, but everytime there is one, a push for gun control follows. And then the ones who oppose gun control "just dont care about children dying". I do care, I just think your solutions dont solve the problem while violating our natural right to self preservation.

Of course more guns = more gun violence. But more guns doesn't result in more violence general. (Murder rate in the US has decreased the past 20 years while guns in circulation have increased) And removing guns from the hands of law abiding citizens wont make America safer IMO. Its also true that most gun violence (other than suicides) occurs in cities/states with the harshest gun laws in the country. Criminals will get the weapons that they need to commit the crime.

Background checks with a reasonable holding period... fine, banning accessories like bump stocks and drum mags that turns a basic semi-auto rifle into a weapon of mass murder...fine, but go much farther beyond that and we start severely restricting the rights of law abiding citizens.

less guns. more access to free universal healthcare.. it's an EASY solve. there's not even a tenable argument against, it's just feels and red dawn fan fiction.

this is all real dumb republican talking point bs. "but, muh chicago black people shooting each other..." "what about every weekend in chicago, herp derp"

also less guns in hands definitively makes america safer. that's how guns work. lol

counterpoint to More security and cops in schools is that it just ends with more minority children being harassed and targeted by said security. and has virtually no discernable impact on the amount nor the severity of school shootings.

I referred in my earlier post to the terrible statistical arguments that you might offer to support your position. I didn't expect you to respond by making those terrible statistical arguments.

Bolded, in particular, is egregiously wrong.

In 2020, which states had the highest rate of gun deaths per 100,000 residents? Was it New York and California? Nope. Not even close. Those states were near the bottom. And which states were at the top? You guessed it: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Wyoming. The next tier was Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, South Carolina, Alaska, and the District of Columbia (the one outlier).

Admittedly, these are statistics on gun deaths, not just homicides. In other words, the statistics include gun suicides. But it seems that we should want to prevent people from shooting themselves in addition to other people.

More guns are better!

There's no good argument against licensing gun ownership and operation.

One needs a license to fish.

+1

Which probably doesn't make the fish feel much better.

Biggest killer of children and teenagers in USA since 2020 is guns.

Which is ok, gun derp itt told us that homicides are down.

If anyone can easily get a gun in this country, how do we know if everyone of them is a law abiding citizen? If they're white?
This is the most asinine take I keep hearing.

The best way to prevent a kid to start a fire in the house isn’t to just get rid of easy access of all the matches in the house , it’s just to hire a fire fighter in the house to watch them more closely .

Brillant solution

Ps: tweet not showing.

Here is a germ of an idea. Details would have to be worked out.

Couple restrictive gun laws with major incentives to purchase one of these new non lethal guns made by Byrna and others, that supposedly completely stop bad guys for a period of time, but rarely cause lasting harm. Most people don't even know they exist. Many people who are paranoid about being a crime victim still are very averse to killing someone, but don't think they have an alternative. (I believe these things are actually more effective than a gun because if the projectile hits any part of their body they are done, which isn't true for bullets.)

If these things were free or practically free and all but the most obvious fruitcakes could own them with no red tape, that might swing enough voters to allowing favoring the restrictive gun laws they now oppose (obviously not the zealots or, as some call them, the gun fetishists.)

Those who owned these gizmos would of course be subjected to normal assault laws. But those laws would be a bit more lenient than typical gun laws. In other words you wouldn't have to prove that you were in fear for your life to avoid being convicted of a crime if you used it. A lesser degree of danger, or preventing major theft would suffice.

Just one example of why my idea might work involves the controversy regarding teachers being armed. The arguments against that pretty much go away if the weapon is a Byrna type gizmo, especially if I am correct that they actually might be more effective.

The insanity in a presidential hopeful basically promoting an arms race at schools, and that a lot of Americans will agree with this, is very, very sad.

I'm sure that having several people patrolling the grounds of every school would reduce school shootings dramatically. Hey, then it would just be reduced to snipers who are only able to pick off two or three kids before they scatter and take cover! Or they'll turn to other places, and next you can set up armed guards at all the malls that don't already have them, and daycare centers, and waterslides...

Sure, there's some hyperbole in there. But the idea that the solution is "more armed law enforcement" is absurd. A society in which every school has to have armed law enforcement sounds like one in which the terrorists have won.

In Canada despite the fact that, as Rococo said: "Canada has very high levels of civilian gun ownership by international standards", we're going the opposite route. I think the biggest police presence we see at most Canadian schools, are secondary schools that have some version of school liaison officers, whose prime purpose isn't to guard the school from attacks - and many schools are removing them in response to concerns about how they affect students, especially BIPOC students. As for armed law enforcement at elementary schools, I'm sure that's something that 95%+ of Canadians would find appalling. And I've never heard anyone even make such a suggestion, because there's no need for that here.

How do you know that's true? Could it simply be that we all have that issue, but in other countries it isn't so easy to act on it?

From a CNN article:



https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/sc...rnd/index.html

So just comparing US to Canada, and accounting for the US having ~9x our population, we're still left with 16x more shootings in the US. Are there really 16x more US young men (per capita) than Canadian young men "so infused with hatred toward society that they fantasize and desire to murdering as many innocents as possible"? The number might be higher there, but it seems unlikely to be that much higher.

Let's say that it is, that American young men really are that much more prone to being "so infused with hatred toward society that they fantasize and desire to murdering as many innocents as possible". Might the general culture towards guns play even a small role in that? Would it not be an improvement to American society if they were to start to take even small steps to improve this culture? Significant progress will take decades if not generations, so there's no time to waste IMO.

Improving the mental health of young people, and improving the gun culture, are not mutually exclusive. Why not both?

Have you got a Nexus Card or any of its cousin cards for easy US, Canada, elsewhere travel?

The types of checks including looking into your reputational issues (calling contacts to see if they can suss out red flags) are extensive or at least were the first time I got mine. It seems they do less upon renewal but up front you get pretty thoroughly checked out. Not sure why they could not set up something similar for guns. I guess the counter would be 'who would pay for that department' and I would reply gun manufacturers. Add in a tax to guns that pays for this.

I agree largely with the rest but do struggle on the age stuff. I think 19 should be fine (for alcohol too) as long as you can pass all the other stuff.

Bobo, as I'm sure you realize, I didn't cite Canada as an example of a country that wanted to turn schools into armed camps. And I didn't criticize Canadian gun policy. Indeed, I don't understand Canadian gun policy well enough to criticize it. I'm sure it is more sensible than U.S. policy.

Totally not my intention to imply such a thing, sorry. I was only meaning to give you credit for pointing out the information about Canadian gun ownership, but I can see how it could be perceived differently. I've edited the post to hopefully make that much more clear. I should've known that quoting that way might have been confusing.

No worries. All good.

You mean you want the US to become a civilized first world country ?

lulz

The Onion homepage is worth checking out

There are a number of Republicans on tv now talking about the solution being fortifying schools. Having yards and doors rigged and booby trapped so that gunmen can be snared and trapped. And of course, more armed security, teacher and even students.

Schools need to be more like prisons. Full of armed guards.

One guy was blaming it on parents. Saying they need to take responsibility, walk the schools and see the vulnerability and if vulnerable they need to remove their kids and put them in another school.