Quote:
Originally Posted by wendyquat
You aren't going to stop "mass shooters" from getting guns. For some reason they don't care much about laws! Therefore, I'd think the best was to protect those that might be victims of mass shooters by having armed guards! Wish it weren't so but I feel it would be the only possible deterrent!
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Aren't you tired of the old argument that we don't need laws because the villains don't care about laws? It is transparently wrong. The logical conclusion would be we therefore need no laws, just perhaps suggestions and appeals to our better instincts.
Armed guards may have deterred some attacks that we don't know about because they didn't happen but there are no cases where an armed guard succeeded in stopping an attack which was happening. There was an armed guard at Columbine and a second officer who arrived at the scene before any students were slaughtered.
Please look at how Australia, a country still somewhat in its own wild west phase, handled the issue of trying to stop mass killings and as a side benefit reduced suicides and non-mass homicides as well. It worked unbelievably well.
http://tobacco.health.usyd.edu.au/as...uryPrevent.pdf
: In the 18 years before the gun law reforms, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia, and none in the 10.5 years afterwards. Declines in firearm-related deaths before the law reforms accelerated after the reforms for total firearm deaths (p = 0.04), firearm suicides (p = 0.007) and firearm omicides (p = 0.15), but not for the smallest category of unintentional firearm deaths, which increased. No evidence of substitution effect for suicides or homicides was observed. The rates per 100 000 of total firearm deaths, firearm
homicides and firearm suicides all at least doubled their existing rates of decline after the revised gun laws.
Conclusions: Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides. Total homicide rates followed the
same pattern. Removing large numbers of rapid-firing firearms from civilians may be an effective way of reducing mass shootings, firearm homicides and firearm suicides