If only there was something we could do...

[summit]

The social contract has been voided.

What on earth are you talking about?

[Conundrum]

It's not the ownership; it's the continued buying of guns and ammo and memberships from companies and orgs that actively undermine tangible change that makes your letter writing hypocritical.

Sweet assumptions on how I spend my money and my correspondence with legislators. Dick.

[summit]

The presumptive vitriol directed personally is sad, but expected in the emotional response to this horror. Won't help anything though...

[::: :::]

this ^^^ is failure

of imagination
of effort
of policy
of caring
of public health
of ethical stomach to do the right thing

[dunfree]

Sweet assumptions on how I spend my money and my correspondence with legislators. Dick.

He’s being a dick about it, but it’s almost impossible to find a gun business that doesn’t actively support the NRA ime. And if they don’t support the nra it’s whatever weirdo group that’s further fringe

[liv2ski]

What on earth are you talking about?

Only in Murica. Social contract as in we take care of each other.

[The AD]

Better than cops that run away. I also didn't have an issue with masks. I'm also vaccinated. Any other off topic shit to talk about?

The mental health of school children is very much on topic.

[Cisco Kid]

yep

[Bobby Stainless]

The mental health of school children is very much on topic.

Keeping a kid from getting shot helps their mental health.

It seems more and more obvious that local police aren't up to the task.

It's amazing to me the shooter was able to enter the school.

[muted reborn]

this ^^^ is failure

of imagination
of effort
of policy
of caring
of public health
of ethical stomach to do the right thing

Yes, and it's not a solution but a reaction to shit policy and gun culture. It won't even stop every killer. But it's our reality now. We have a couple weeks until school is out, whose school is going to see a copycat killer in the coming weeks?

[leroy jenkins]

I don't agree with everything you say/do with guns but I don't get all the shrill libtards screaming at you here.

Leroy gets everything he deserves here though, Leroy you are a condescending POS.

Honestly I do not get how I am condescending, especially when compared with many here, I don't call names, tell people they are stupid, ridicule or use strawmen.

I ramble a bit.

My point this whole time is that you anti gun types won't get the support to turn over the second amendment and if you want the perfect to not be the enemy of the good and actually create solutions, you're going to have to start focusing on less divisive solutions that more people can support because overturning the second just isn't going to happen, and if it did, even if you supported it, it would be done as an act of tyranny like executive order and not the actual 38 states ratification for nullifying an amendment you'd need.

WTF about that is condescending? I used the phrase emotionally gratifying a few times because yes, that does seem like what is focused on by many, and venting hate for gun owners won't solve anything, but that is pretty tame for condescending around here.

Again I'd really love an actual answer as I have no idea why, other than perhaps its annoying to you if you know the above has truth and validity but would rather not think about it..

[summit]

The mental health of school children is very much on topic.

We have more than one example of school shooters specifically targeting those who mercilessly bullied them, or targeted the school at which they were bullied blaming the system, not that such murder is justified.

This 18 year old guy did not attend school for the last year, guy got kicked out of his house, lived with his grandparents, shot grandma over a phone bill, then went to a random nearby elementary school and randomly murdered an entire classroom of 4th graders and their teacher.

I guarantee you he was an amoral psychopath. You CANNOT fix that with better mental healthcare. I made a detailed post about this a few pages back and got zero response.

Don't medicalize all criminality.

That being said, mental healthcare is very important.

[Ted Striker]

For all the talk about armed guards, something to keep in mind is even a very fast 30 second response time still isn't fast enough to prevent a high death toll when the shooter has a 100-round drum magazine

This. The tired old trope that "guns don't kill people; people kill people" skirts the laws of physics. If the well regulated militia had to stop to ram their muskets, so should wannabe kid killers.

[mcphee]

The presumptive vitriol directed personally is sad, but expected in the emotional response to this horror. Won't help anything though...

Oh no. Vitriol towards historically and actively smug dickheads. Maybe if people are nicer to them, they’ll change.

[::: :::]

You CANNOT fix that with better mental healthcare.

huh?

fully understand it isn't a panacea, but it is effective in more cases than not

[leroy jenkins]

He’s being a dick about it, but it’s almost impossible to find a gun business that doesn’t actively support the NRA ime. And if they don’t support the nra it’s whatever weirdo group that’s further fringe

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership? The (LGBTQ) Pink Pistols?

[MultiVerse]

https://popular.info/p/5-facts-about-guns-in-america

Seems that a majority of citizens want less guns in circulation and made. I wonder why the lawmakers think otherwise?

Even something approaching 40% of Republicans support more gun control. It doesn't matter. In the immediate aftermath mass shootings result in a lot of hard line statements against guns from politicians that they then quickly walk back. The gun lobby uses the comments in perpetuity to rile up the anti-restriction base resulting in even fewer regulations than there were before the mass shooting occurred.

We've had people on this forum donate to the NRA, and proudly show their receipts, days after a mass shooting saying they did so because of comments in the thread even though nobody at the time called for 'grabbing' anyone's guns.

[CarlMega]

It seems more and more obvious that local police aren't up to the task.

Is there a point where we would have allowed our citizens to have access to weapons / armor / ammunition that a police force can't reasonable be expected to provide safety?

I'm not one to pardon the duty of LEOs but we're approaching combat situations here. What is a reasonable expectation regarding casualties? Do we just get into a arms race? That seems....avoidable.

[dunfree]

We have more than one example of school shooters specifically targeting those who mercilessly bullied them, or targeted the school at which they were bullied blaming the system, not that such murder is justified.

This 18 year old guy did not attend school for the last year, guy got kicked out of his house, lived with his grandparents, shot grandma over a phone bill, then went to a random nearby elementary school and randomly murdered an entire classroom of 4th graders and their teacher.

I guarantee you he was an amoral psychopath. You CANNOT fix that with better mental healthcare. I made a detailed post about this a few pages back and got zero response.

Don't medicalize all criminality.

That being said, mental healthcare is very important.

better mental health care, and better recognition of mental issues, might limit the damage though. Right now the only mental health barrier to gun purchase is manifestation of it that results in felony criminal conviction, misdemeanor domestic violence, restraining order on spouse etc., and commitment or adjudication of defective at the federal level. Various states have various red flag laws of various efficacy.

[muted reborn]

Honestly I do not get how I am condescending

I'm not wasting my time explaining why you are a condescending selfish asshole

[::: :::]

It seems more and more obvious that local police aren't up to the task.

my takeaway isn't that the police are the problem

[leroy jenkins]

I'm not wasting my time explaining why you are a condescending selfish asshole

Ok bro but you'll waste multiple posts on insults. You can't not you won't.

[summit]

huh?

fully understand it isn't a panacea, but it is effective in more cases than not

You believe that most mass shooters were mentally ill in a treatable preventable way?

I do not.

[XXX-er]

Only in Murica.

actualy its migrating north to some degree

[summit]

I am a huge mental health advocate. It is under funded in our society. Improving this priority would reduce gun deaths significantly, but mostly in terms of suicidality. Mental health is horrifically misunderstood in terms of gun crime.

I don't think that mental health is the issue in this specific circumstance, but we don't know and may never know in this specific incident.

Medicalizing criminality is a horrific mistake.

There exists diagnostic boxes into which we can put the fractional (but socially significant) percentage of humanity that will be inevitably and incorrigibly violent, but it isn't because they are ill in the same way that someone with PTSD or depression or ADD or OCD are ill (and each of these is very different).

Stigma is a problem, because though certain affective (eg schizophrenia) and mood (eg bipolar) disorders seem to make up roughly 10% of murderers when looking at older datasets (a disproportionate amount vs the general population), actually very few people who have those disorders commit murder. This particular phenomenon of statistics is hard to parse for the public/policy makers and hard to address for clinicians. To say this differently, someone who is schizophrenic might have 20x the chance of being a murderer vs average, thus explaining overrepresentation among murderers, but the chance that someone with schizophrenia commits murder in their life is <0.1%!!!

When you are talking about diagnosis that actually do present a significant risk of murder, these people don't need to pop a pill. Substance abuse disorders correlate with crime, but that is a highly complex topic and is often comorbid with other issues. Other people have certain types of personality disorders such as antisocial or borderline often only recognized only after the fact, and the mechanisms vary too. The few who are violently psychotic or impassionately enraged tend to target those personally close to them (eg DV) and act on different impulses than someone who is amoral like an Antisocial. Antisocials are basically untreatable, amoral, and though there is a distinction between that personality disorder and psychopathy, the overlap is nearly complete. These people almost always end up in the criminal justice system and usually prison, but sometimes they kill (many) before landing there. Flagging them earlier is the only intervention I can think of, and fraught. But failure to intervene despite spotting the problem is another issue (eg the Aurora theater shooter).

"Support Mental Health" and "Mental Health Awareness" tropes, whether noble or as an excuse, probably have little overlap on functional interventions here.

Reposting my mental health post