Another mass shooting
 

19 innocent children, 2 dedicated teachers, lives lost, solution????? More guns, bigger prisons, NOT. Japan, no guns unless police and military, murder rate .3 percent per 100,000, America, 4.7 per 100,000. Mental health wake up call.

Prayers, platitudes, lots of flowers, plenty of photo ops. at the vigils, (cry please) and most of all, empty promises.
Same old faces spouting the same entrenched opinions.
Sells papers, and keeps the talking heads employed.
Nothing will change.
Here's to the next time! :ohdear:

Almost correct.

Hunters in Japan can have guns.

The low murder rate is culture driven, not gun control driven.

Maybe we should not let our children play violent video games that gives them the idea that it's ok to kill people ?

:popcorn::popcorn:

There was a study done a few years back regarding incidents such as this. I don't recall the methodology used but the conclusion was that well over HALF of such crimes are "copycat". And with the endless and exhaustive "coverage", which often tends toward the maudlin or even the hysterical, it is easy to see how it could influence some person not all that solid mentally, to try to imitate it or even do it one (or more) better.

There is another effect of such coverage, one that has been proven innumerable times. Every such incident is accompanied by an endless parade of officials calling for increased gun control. They, too, tend toward the maudlin or the hysterical. But the EFFECT is that such overdramatization is a direct cause of vastly increased gun sales. In 2021 alone, something like 43 MILLION new guns were sold to private citizens in America.

Maybe its time for a little common sense. Hysteria just doesn't seem to work all that well.

Successful lawsuits against gun manufacturers might get some changes like those the tobacco companies underwent decades ago.

Guns have been around forever, but mass shootings are up during recent years. What’s different than before, social media and violent video games that are streamed online through sites like twitch. How come every time there is a violent shooting it becomes about guns, but when some whack job mows down a crowd of people with a car it’s not about vehicles? Whack jobs will always find a way, especially when they can become immediate social media click bait.

Tobacco industry lied, added ingredients and covered up information.

Gun manufacturers have not.

:ho:

Bingo.

This country is going back to the wild west days.

I remember when the adults blamed watching violent TV shows for bad deeds done by the kids. We've moved on.

The Wild West had vigorous gun regulation in the towns and mass slaughters of civilians the likes of which we see so often did not happen.

Do you remember how horrified everyone was by Columbine in 1999. It had never happened before. In the last 22 years there have now been 13 mass school killings, defined as 3 or more deaths in a single incident.

Thoughts and prayers are not working.

Unfortunately the same lazy rhetoric of "more gun laws" reappears. How about enforcing current laws? For example, it is a criminal offense to lie on the background check form when purchasing a gun from a Federal Firearm Licensee (FFL), yet how many people fail the background check but are not arrested or tried? Note that an FFL will not legally sell a gun to someone who fails a background check. Why are people who commit violent crimes allowed out of jail with little or no bail? Perhaps there needs to be more calls for getting to the root cause of "why" the attack occurred versus implementing more laws that CRIMINALS don't care to follow anyway?

The US Secret Service conducted a threat assessment in 2021 entitled "Averting Targeted School Violence" (link). The assessment included "an analysis of 67 averted school attack plots" which also indicated that "Students who plotted school attacks shared many similarities with students who perpetrated school attacks". There is a section entitled "Key Findings and Implications" on pages 4 and 5 that talks about these characteristics.

Maybe more studies like these need to be conducted, if they don't already exist, and then a NONPARTISAN discussion about how to implement "fixes" can be had.

News
 

Bad news: 21 dead.
Good news: no need for a judge and jury.

When we were kids had pea shooters, carpet guns and cap pistols and we all carried around pocket knives even to school.

Had fish fights and noone even thought of taking out their knives.

Had all kind of cowboy and war movies and rather violent cartoons so we were also exposed to violence and we all survived.

There are over 400 million guns in this country how in the world would you get rid of them?

Have no clue how to fix this problem but defunding the police will not help.

Locking all school doors, apparently this didn't happen here.

I'll not defend guns or prisons, but just know that Japan has it own problems -- they are not shooting each other, but they have extreme mental health issues. I watched several recent documentaries on Japan's low birth rate, the lack of desire for intimacy among young adults, the extreme loner syndrome, these are just a few issues they have -- along with a large aging population.

I'll not defend or debate guns, but I would posit if you took all the guns away right this moment, there would still be rage and loneliness and hate and desperation.

Guns make hate and rage easy to manifest, profoundly. They are rarely the cause of rage, but they are, too often, the tools to express it.

I have no answers, only observations and opinions......

Even as a gun owner, I just want to live in a country where everyone loves children - more than a lot of people love guns.

How about installing metal detectors? It works for the airports.

I think we do have too many guns in America. I own guns but can be realistic about it.

The thing is, it is not the entirety of the issue.

Google acid attacks in London. Knife attacks in the UK.

If you want to hear about mass casualty, Google Bow and Arrow killer in Norway.

I would agree that guns do enable mentally ill people to commit mass casualty events more broadly and severely.

350 million guns have not been around forever. And it is growing at historic rates, just like school shootings - coincidence? Number of guns has tripled since 2000. You remember 2000? The year after the first school shooting - Columbine.

Yeah, another thing that has changed, concerning what has changed, just a week ago wasn't it that the crazy quoted Replacement theory for killing 10 people.

Whack jobs are everywhere, in every country in every society. Only the US has mass shootings in school - constantly. Only in the US. What does the US have that no other country in the world has? 350 MILLION guns in circulation.

I have NOTHING against responsible gun owners or gun ownership. I can't think of ANY way 350 million guns can be collected. It is NOT going to happen.

So, how about we all get together and figure out a way to keep responsible gun owners happy and armed, while at the same time creating fewer mourning parents. 231 school shootings in the 22 years since Columbine.

Or, would everyone like to just keep calling each other naming and spewing "facts" like guns don't kill people. Yeah guns do nothing until a person picks it up, the gun is used to kill 21 people in under 2 minutes.

I have heard someone say crazies will find a way, like using a car to drive into a crowd. Yeah, true, and when was the last time a crazy drove a car into a crowded class room and killed 19 children?

Sorry, this shooter did not lie on the background check, Texas doesn’t require one. He just turned 18 and legally purchased 2 ar15s a day later and then killed 21 people.

It’s hard to enforce laws that don’t exist.

Today is the 144th day of 2022.

The Uvalde shooting is the 212th mass shooting of 2022.

Gun violence is a public health crisis.

Could it be the direction we have been given by our social scientists , people feel the need for guns to protect themselves from those around us that the laws now cant seem to with the improvements made, have mental problems ?, cant abridge your freedoms, much like the results of defunding the police,

In other words, "hardening" the schools.

Seriously, okay, and let's replace all the school buses with armored personal transports, and we can replace PE in school with firing range practice, and issue every student a firearm for personal protection when they arrive at school.

Yeah, that sound like the country I want my grand kids to grow up in. At this point I am starting to worry about whether my grandkids will just grow up.

Guns facilitate it. All the way back to the Campus tower in Texas, he could have thrown bats and rocks at the people walking around below him, b ut guns were more effective.

I have a solution, but I am not naive enough to think it has a chance. Stop fighting and arguing and come to a compromise to protect our children (grand and great grand) at School. Something both sides can agree on. I here one side calling for bipartisan work, and I hear the other side talking about all the reasons we can't do anything - you know, god given 2nd amendment.

Well, somehow we managed to free slaves, and give women the vote and the country didn't end. Maybe we can. Find an amendment that both responsible gun owners and responsible anti-gun owners can agree on.

BTW, where is the pro-life outrage? Are these 19 children not worth protecting?

Locking the school doors requires enforcement. Our society has become one that does not do/accept enforcement very well.

Those charged with enforcement do so with selectivity....hence weakening enforcement.

Enforcement, at times generates inconvenience......which we all know will again get watered down.

And so on!! Nothing new, unfortunately.

If the "need" for change/control/etc is as great as being professed by some...... where was it before this shooting?

The deadliest murder of school children was done without guns.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/histo...ssacre-uvalde/

Criminals don't care about gun laws. An example is the cartel - crime in Mexico where gun possession carries a prison sentence. We can't even keep drugs off the street much less guns. And, now guns can be printed. Regretfully, telling people to give up their guns, so only the criminals will be armed, is not the answer..

Very few states require a State conducted background check. The federal government DOES require a check on all firearms purchased from a licensed gun dealer. The federal law applies to all states and territories of the U.S. A state cannot preempt that requirement, only add to it.

What laws weren't enforced??? The murderer and the gun dealer both complied with federal law by completing federal form 4473. Apparently the murderer passed the background check as he was able to take possession of the firearms.

We have laws against robbery, rape, assault, drug dealing, murder and a whole slew of other illegal activity. How well are they preventing crime??? We have a severe violence problem in this country yet no one wants to address that. The politicians misdirect your attention by blaming the tool used by criminals instead of working on the real problem, because that would require them to actually work on something.

I'd be interested to know what the criteria are for a "mass" shooting, upon which the numbers in the post I'm responding to are based.

Investment
 

Time to invest some more in:

Smith & Wesson Brands (NASDAQ:SWBI)
Vista Outdoor (NYSE:VSTO)
Ammo (NASDAQ:POWW)

4 is the magic number.

Mass Shootings are, for the most part an American phenomenon. While they are generally grouped together as one type of incident they are several with the foundation definition being that they have a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident

Mass Shootings in 2022 | Gun Violence Archive

Never said that this particular murderer purchased their guns illegally. My point was that there are laws that are not enforced, one of them being lying on the background check which is required by federal law. Having said that, per the Texas Department of Public Safety, "House Bill 1927 (Permitless Carry) does not repeal the License to Carry Program (LTC), established by Government Code Chapter 411, Subchapter H. The department is still required to process applications, conduct background checks, and produce a laminated license for those who qualify." (link)

When we hear that we need more gun laws, we don't hear how the additional gun laws would have prevented the tragedy to begin with. For example, a current talking point is how Universal Background Check legislation needs to be passed, yet in this specific case, the ATF reported that the murderer did in fact purchase his weapons legally.

More laws won't prevent these tragedies, I submit that committing murder is against the law, yet that law doesn't seem to stop this madness. If a perpetrator is intent on "suicide by cop" after such a heinous act, just how will more laws get them to not commit these crimes? What is the "endgame" of more laws? Is the reality that gun confiscation is the true goal?

Instead of focusing on more laws, how about understanding why current laws are not effective? Are they not being enforced? If not, why? Is the penalty for committing the crime an insufficient deterrent? Are there societal issues that may be contributing? How are we handling those suffering from mental illness? How about those who are just plain evil?

The FBI reported that they conducted over 38.8 Million Gun Background Checks in 2021 (link). The NSSF Trade Industry Association conducted a retail survey that showed an estimated 3.2 million first time gun buyers in the first half of 2021 (link). So why are there so many first time buyers? Maybe people are worried about their safety and prefer "to be judged by 12 than carried by 6".

There is no easy answer to why mass shootings are occurring, but until the focus shifts from the "how" to the "why" we will stay in an endless loop.

Was disappointed when driving around the villages and seeing so few flags at half mast. Where is the respect? Maybe we should start there, with respect for each other.

Absolutely, 100% NO. The day our military is used in our country is the day our country ends.

Funny, the police have stated the shooter LEGALLY purchased the gun in Texas. So, what law was to be enforced?

Go to the FBI website, it is all defined and explained.