What is the solution to mass shootings in America?

We have a mass shooting in America every single day. A mass shooting is defined as the shooting of 4 or more people in a single incident.

I am personally in favor of tighter gun laws. AR bans. Tighter control of sales and a national ballistics database. I believe that gun owners should have to carry liability insurance for their weapons.

I believe that gun ownership IS indeed a right. But not an unlimited right.

 

I voted "other". I feel the solution could be to identify the psychological factors that cause Americans to commit these shootings, and eliminate these factors at the source. Or possibly eliminate problematic citizens themselves.

 

(I apologize for the "double post")

 

Well said

The reason for mass shootings is people driven mad by our modern liberal society

 

Thank you Mac-7. Though I have to admit I don't care much for conservative society either. As something of a syncretic authoritarian, I see both sides as having their faults.

 

Do we need to find a solution?

How many people die in car accidents or from colon cancer?
How many old people slip and fall in the bathtub and die?
homeless who die from exposure?

Will it ever be enough? Do we keep needing to find a solution no matter how small the death count is? I'm think all this effort and energy could be better spent trying to find a cure to some rare medical disease.

Some things in life are never going to end completely, unfortunately. Rape, murder, burglaries, those bad things happen every year with statistical predictability.

 

Its just time to pump our brakes on our gun obsession in this country. Other counties don't have this problem because they are not as obsessed. Our obsession has become a cancer on our society. I have 3 guns myself so no I'm not a gun grabber.

 

Humans are imperfect so any reasonable person might find fault with conservative aociety also

But you wont find mass shooting

 

Then add to it the right wing gun obsession and then we have a dangerous situation. Don't just point out halve of the problem lol.

 

Is there an actual solution? I think there could be things we can do as a society to help curb them but not eliminate them. But it takes SOCIETY, not restrictive gun laws that punish the law abiding.
And "banning ARs" is silly. They are no different than every other semi auto rifle, except for building materials and they look "Scary"

 

What you think about unlimited Rights is wholly wrong. That is not an opinion, that is a fact.

So, I realize, going in, you probably will not understand the solution, but it's worth a try... and the board troll will be along to support your position, but he cannot defeat the truth.

The real issue is, WHY do we have mass shooters? In order to answer that, you have to ask other pertinent questions:

* Why do Americans consume over 80 percent of the world's opioid supply?
* Why, in America, do you have TEN mentally ill people in prison for every one in a mental facility?
* Why are more Americans hooked on drugs than the people of any other nation?
* How do we address this country's mentally ill, social outcasts, and even criminals?

I'll use Nickolas Cruz as an example to show what we could do:

I have listed on this board, many times, the fourteen things that will help you identify who will, most likely be a mass shooter - and if not these people WILL commit a violent act in their life time. We can add those later if need be.

Broward County public defender, Howard Finkelstein was quoted as having said about Cruz:

“If this isn’t a person who should have gotten someone’s attention, I don’t know who is. This was a multisystem failure.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/us/nikolas-cruz-florida-shooting.html

And I agree. DFACS is alerted (according to the above article) that this kid is cutting himself and putting up stuff on the Internet that he wants to buy a gun. DFACS goes to his house, based on that report, and they do nothing. The FBI was alerted that Cruz was a gun owner and was intent on killing people. The FBI did NOTHING!

Despite the fact that Cruz was known to law enforcement due to the many disturbance calls they received, the local LEOs let Cruz skate when he hit a family member in the head with a firearm. In school, Cruz was referred to DFACS for a "threat assessment" two months after he was interviewed by DFACS over the statements he made earlier about wanting to shoot people.

See this also:

https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/27/how-authorities-failed-to-stop-school-sh

According to one article, the police had been summoned to Cruz's home 39 times over a seven year period AND, in that same article there is this: "This last claim was confirmed by Broward County Mayor Beam Furr, who told reporters that “[Cruz] had been undergoing some treatment [and] had been dealing with mental health issues.” This is code for Cruz had been taking SSRIs (psychotropic drugs KNOWN to have the side effects of homicidal and suicidal tendencies.)

https://www.thenewamerican.com/usne...now-so-far-about-florida-shooter-nikolas-cruz

I point out all of this because Cruz is NOT the exception; he is the rule. Cruz is a good example of how people supposedly "fall through the cracks." Let's fix those cracks.

Suppose, if you will, that ALL of that above information was in ONE database. The school may not be privy to Cruz's FBI encounters and DFACS might not know about Cruz's 39 police incidents; the local LEOs might not know about any of that. they only know about the routine calls they responded to.

But, suppose ONE agency is given all this information the moment a report is generated. As soon as a third report comes in, this agency springs into action. They find out what kind of home that the child lives in. Maybe the parents don't know everything that is going on. Maybe the parents ARE the problem. Maybe the child is mentally ill and needs special supervision.

But, the real deal is, if ONE agency is monitoring all of this and they allow people who are obviously not fit to be running amok in society, then you hold that agency accountable. In this instance, as with virtually EVERY mass shooting, it came as no surprise to those who knew the individual. And ALL of it is preventable IF all the information is contained in ONE PLACE and that agency springs into action: Interviewing the parents, mental health officials that might be treating the child, reviewing police reports, talking to school counselors, having two mental health assessments of the child, doing a drug test and an IQ test plus interviewing the child.

After all that is completed, the child can undergo group therapy and then one on one therapy - and whatever else those doing the assessments come up with. Additional reports after that treatment may mean more in depth treatment. But, we already have the manpower, the technology, and it won't cost much to initiate the effort. Hell, in the end, it should save money and get people the help they need BEFORE they kill others and blame gun owners because the government didn't do their job - and won't be held accountable until you put this system in place.

Questions instead of smart ass commentaries may yield a more productive response if anyone really wants to know more or don't understand what I just said.

 

Not at all

Previous generations of Americans grew up in consevative society with guns in the house but no mass shootings

The only thing thats different now is liberalism in the media and the public schools

 

There no question that indifference or incompetence at the FBI and sheriffs dept led to the shooting

And cowardice in the liberal sheriffs dept allowed cruz to kill without any resistance from law enforcement

 

AR bans havent' stopped school shootings--the trend started in the late 1990s AFTER the last AWB. Also, 2/3 of school shootings (per the Mother Jones database) were done with semi-automatic handguns, not ARs. Many of the recent mass shooters passed background checks from licensed gun dealers. Tightening control of sales would be useless. Liability insurance is for accidents, not for intentional acts. All you are trying to do is disarm the law-abiding, which will do absolutely nothing to stop criminals from getting guns or mass shooters from getting guns. (and a national ballistics database won't stop mass shooters--most are not expecting to survive). All you suggest are knee jerk reactions that will do nothing useful but harassing people like me attempting to buy guns.

 

Exactly. Growing up I didn't know of a single teenaged male who didn't have access to at least one gun. Teens using guns for violence against others wasn't a thought back then. I graduated high school only 16 years before the Columbine shooting. Something changed, and it isn't the presence of guns.

 

Complete BS, people had guns back then but no where the obsession as today. Its the gun culture man!

 

If you are a liberal surrounded by other gun-free liberals you may not know how common guns have always been in American society

The only change has been the influence of liberal culture which has obviously driven some children insane

 

Maybe some of my longer posts will clear up for you what changed. I know, TLDR, but you can't solve problems with a bumper sticker slogan for a solution.

 

We have always had liberalism and mental illness, so what has changed? The gun obsession that's what!

 

We used to be a society run on conservative values

But now liberals call the shots culturally

 

If you want mass school shootings to stop first you have to determine where to place the bottleneck and barrier to make it stop, that is, WHERE you are going to stop it.

We know the WHY, there's no argument about WHY.

When you know the WHERE, then the WHAT, WHO, and HOW is easy to determine.

The answer is a perimeter that is very difficult to penetrate, well trained guards who control the single entry-exit point, guards who have a metal detector to help them, guards who can smell trouble and search at will, guards armed to take out anyone who does not belong on school property or who belongs and brings an unauthorized weapon. And even with that, have backups packing in the school for the unlikely case in which the guards at the gate are wounded or killed.

If it's acceptable to defend national defense plants and industrial complexes in this manner it is acceptable to defend schools in this manner.

It won't ever be possible to identify all the wacko's in advance and tread on their constitutional rights.

It won't ever be possible to confiscate guns.

 

There is no political solution.

Its a mental health problem. While it would help if we stopped treating the mentally ill like criminals (and turning them into criminals in the process), this is a social/cultural problem more than it is a political one.

 

- Harden the schools
- Give faculty/staff/administration who choose to do so the capacity to effectively fight back
- Fully enforce current gun laws
- Create and apply social pressure on irresponsible parenting

 

Of course you are.
What about rifles that have the same operation as the AR?
What about existing ARs and existing rifles that have the same operation as the AR?

How will this prevent people who cannot legally guy a gun from getting one and shooting up a school?

What would this insurance cover than current homeowner's insurance does not

Indeed - it is limited in the same way as the right to free speech.

 

Of course I do.

Id think it seems fairly self evident. If it looks like an AR, acts like an AR, its an AR. Makes sense to me.

It would cover damage done to the public at large through careless use or storage of your firearm.

For example. If I leave a loaded handgun sitting in the front seat of my car, and leave the windows down. A person sees this, steals the gun, and then murders someone with it. You should be held at least partially liable due to your own carelessness.