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Pepe
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26 May 2022, 10:22 pm

Persephone29 wrote:
Pepe wrote:
kitesandtrainsandcats wrote:
Perhaps it is a bit of a tangent to the topic.

My attitude about the general public owning guns is affected by having family members successfully employ guns to prevent themselves from becoming crime victims.



Personally speaking, I still don't think military-style assault rifles are necessary.
Perhaps if Trump had actually made a coup and overthrew the Government, but that is highly unlikely these days.
Perhaps a compromise of handguns and non SLRs?

Here in Australia, semiautomatic rifles were made illegal.


I have never found the need for one, myself.

The vast majority of people who own them do not shoot up schools and the people who get them for that purpose are using that to their advantage. The owners of most all of these military style assault rifles feel they are preparing for the need to protect themselves and their families, in the event the government turns the military on them. You may say this sounds ridiculous, but history has shown that this is possible. Is it probable? I hope not, I don't own one. However, given the political climate on both sides, I don't blame them. Just on this site the venom is palpable among certain members, with both absolutely convinced that they are in the right.

The government could try and outlaw these guns, but ours is a gun culture. Any attempt to do that would be considered an act of civil war and so many people would die here. The far left are delusional enough to believe it would only be the gun nuts that would be targeted, they're wrong. There would be so much collateral damage.

We must look to our armed citizens who aren't nuts to help protect our children. Because while they might not be certifiable nuts, they are crazy enough to be a match for the real nuts who shoot up schools.


Mass shootings have been the precursor of changes in gun laws across the world.
I'm convinced these shootings have been black operations in disarming the citizenry in other countries.
I lived through the Port Arthur tragedy.
But it isn't working in Amuria, so far.
Personally, I think they should capitulate because this obscenity won't end.
It has nothing to do with the left or right of politics, btw.

And, yes, I do think humanity, as a species, is an obscenity capable of something like this.
Simply open the window and look at the world with your eyes wide open. 8O

I don't care if I am labelled a conspiracist.
I embrace the Truth, no matter how ugly.
I am The Oracle of Truth after all. ;)



Kraichgauer
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26 May 2022, 11:13 pm

Pepe wrote:
Persephone29 wrote:
Pepe wrote:
kitesandtrainsandcats wrote:
Perhaps it is a bit of a tangent to the topic.

My attitude about the general public owning guns is affected by having family members successfully employ guns to prevent themselves from becoming crime victims.



Personally speaking, I still don't think military-style assault rifles are necessary.
Perhaps if Trump had actually made a coup and overthrew the Government, but that is highly unlikely these days.
Perhaps a compromise of handguns and non SLRs?

Here in Australia, semiautomatic rifles were made illegal.


I have never found the need for one, myself.

The vast majority of people who own them do not shoot up schools and the people who get them for that purpose are using that to their advantage. The owners of most all of these military style assault rifles feel they are preparing for the need to protect themselves and their families, in the event the government turns the military on them. You may say this sounds ridiculous, but history has shown that this is possible. Is it probable? I hope not, I don't own one. However, given the political climate on both sides, I don't blame them. Just on this site the venom is palpable among certain members, with both absolutely convinced that they are in the right.

The government could try and outlaw these guns, but ours is a gun culture. Any attempt to do that would be considered an act of civil war and so many people would die here. The far left are delusional enough to believe it would only be the gun nuts that would be targeted, they're wrong. There would be so much collateral damage.

We must look to our armed citizens who aren't nuts to help protect our children. Because while they might not be certifiable nuts, they are crazy enough to be a match for the real nuts who shoot up schools.


Mass shootings have been the precursor of changes in gun laws across the world.
I'm convinced these shootings have been black operations in disarming the citizenry in other countries.
I lived through the Port Arthur tragedy.
But it isn't working in Amuria, so far.
Personally, I think they should capitulate because this obscenity won't end.
It has nothing to do with the left or right of politics, btw.

And, yes, I do think humanity, as a species, is an obscenity capable of something like this.
Simply open the window and look at the world with your eyes wide open. 8O

I don't care if I am labelled a conspiracist.
I embrace the Truth, no matter how ugly.
I am The Oracle of Truth after all. ;)


Then again, it might just be sensible people reacting to violently insane people, and those who enable them (NRA, GOA, GOP, etc.).


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27 May 2022, 1:55 am

Looks like the cops were too scared to intervene when they had the chance to save lives of little children
https://www.thecut.com/2022/05/what-did ... oting.html

Too much coffee and donuts and not enough courage might have saved lives...instead
Rep Joaquin Castro requests an FBI investigation into the police response in Uvalde.
https://castro.house.gov/imo/media/doc/ ... .26.22.pdf



ASPartOfMe
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27 May 2022, 2:03 am

IsabellaLinton wrote:
Where I live it's customary that all entrance doors to all schools are locked 24/7.
Admin and custodial staff have keys.
The doors are propped open for about 10 minutes in the morning, for teachers.
Teachers who are late buzz in on a camera and admin will open the door for them (by remote).

At entry time, teachers have duty supervision which includes going to the doors to hold them open.
Classes queue by teacher and are escorted in by a few teachers who are outside on supervision duties.
Then the doors lock again.

They are thick steel fire doors and they don't open again until recess or lunch, when the same process happens.

Classroom doors can be ajar, but teachers use their key to keep doorknobs in the "locked" position.
If a door is shut suddenly (e.g., during lockdown), it will automatically be locked.

Parents and community do not enter the school except for arranged meetings with teachers.
Meetings happen when students have left the building for the day.
For meetings, the teacher will meet them at the doors to escort them inside.

Many of the inner-city schools have metal detectors.

I don't know of any school shootings here, ever, except for the École in 1989.


kraftiekortie wrote:
There were relatively few mass shootings during the 60's to 80's decades. Later on in the 80's, mass shootings started to rise. After Columbine, it started to exponentially rise.

Obviously, guns were at least as available during the "lean years" as they are now.

It's not just guns, obviously-----but all the other factors, plus the availability of guns and ammunition, has led us to our situation today.


Back when I was in college during the late '70s I visited my 5th-grade teacher, in his class. I was a young man approximately the age of these mass shooters and I just walked right in and out and nobody gave it more of a thought than "nice to see you". As mentioned guns were just as ubiquitous as today with even less gun control.

There was the University of Texas tower massacre in '66. As I recall the incident that started the trend of random school shootings was the "I Don't Like Mondays" shooting 20 years before Columbine. There were plenty of armed robbery/shakedowns in inner-city schools in the 70s.


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Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 27 May 2022, 2:33 am, edited 3 times in total.

ASPartOfMe
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27 May 2022, 2:17 am

kitesandtrainsandcats wrote:
Rolling Stone
Armed Law Enforcement Was on the Scene in Uvalde. They Just Didn’t Do Anything
Ryan Bort
Thu, May 26, 2022, 8:46 AM·4 min read
https://news.yahoo.com/armed-law-enforc ... 42156.html

And the article on Rolling Stone itself,
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/cu ... t-1358818/

"
“They were just angry, especially the dads,” Derek Sotelo, who headed to the school after hearing gunfire from his tire shop nearby, told The New York Times. “We were wondering, ‘What the heck is going on? Are they going in?’ The dads were saying, ‘Give me the vest, I’ll go in there!’”
"

Also:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/26 ... l-shooting
"
May 26, 2022, 1:37 p.m. ET
Edgar Sandoval
Even as heated criticism emerged of the police response, some family members of the slain children said they don’t blame officers. “We don’t know what was happening at that moment,” said Leonard Sandoval, 54, whose grandson Xavier James Lopez, 10, perished. He said it was difficult to hear that some parents were begging the responding officers to let them in and protect their children, but that if officers charged in unprepared, “some of them could had been shot, or killed, and if they let parents in, they could have gotten hurt too.”
"

:arrow:
"
A video uploaded to TikTok shows parents screaming at cops at the Uvalde school shooting.

The video appears to show Texas law enforcement officers holding back parents in a parking lot.

It's unclear if the video was taken during or after the shooting.
"
https://www.insider.com/video-parents-s ... ing-2022-5

"
"We got guys going in to get kids," the officer says. "They're working. They're working."

A man dressed in jeans can be seen in the video pointing and shouting as law enforcement approach him. Moments later — after a person stands in front of the camera and obscures the view — the man is on the ground, with the officers standing over him.

"He's a parent!" someone screams.

"What the f**k are you doing to him? Let him go," another person shouts. As the parents shout, one officer stands with his taser drawn.

Insider was unable to independently verify the videos.
"
...
"
Law enforcement have not made clear the details of how the shooter was able to enter the building despite being confronted prior to the shooting, nor the exact timeline of the police response.

Authorities have also been unclear in explaining how the shooter stayed in the school for up to an hour.
"

This is a repeat of Parkland. This will lessen support and compliance with gun control laws as parents and teachers will come to believe they have no choice but to be vigilantes despite the obvious high risk of amateurs with heavy weaponry.


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kitesandtrainsandcats
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27 May 2022, 4:46 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
This is a repeat of Parkland. This will lessen support and compliance with gun control laws as parents and teachers will come to believe they have no choice but to be vigilantes despite the obvious high risk of amateurs with heavy weaponry.


:( Point noted. The available evidence does not appear to disprove that kind of belief.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61600914
"
Mr Escalon - a Texas Ranger and spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety - said that during the time officers were outside the school they were calling in reinforcements and "also evacuating students, teachers".

"An hour later US Border Patrol tactical teams arrive, they make entry and shoot and kill the suspect," he added.

This deviates from guidance that became standard police practice after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, which states that the first officers on the scene should do whatever they can, and as fast as they can, to stop an attack, without waiting for backup.
"

Also;

"
After crashing his truck into a ditch near the school, the gunman emerged and began firing an AR-style rifle at two people who were exiting a funeral home.

The suspect then jumped a fence and began firing "multiple, numerous rounds" at the school building, Mr Escalon said.

As he approached the entrance he "was not confronted by anybody", the ranger said.

According to Uvalde County Independent School District Officers protocol, campuses are required to have staff "who patrol door entrances, parking lots and perimeters". Teachers are told to keep doors locked at all times.

"We will find out as much as we can why it was unlocked," Mr Escalon said. "Or maybe it was locked. But right now, it appears it was unlocked."

Texas congressman Joaquin Castro has written to the director of the FBI to ask that agents investigate the law enforcement response to the attack as it was unfolding.
"


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cyberdad
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27 May 2022, 6:50 am

Oh dear it's just gotten worse.

The fully armed cops waited 1hr outside the school while parents pleaded for them to do something. Instead of saving the little children from getting killed they stayed outside like cowards. When confronted by parents they got angry and pepper sprays, body slammed and handcuffed the parents of the shooting victims.



This is really sick...after they fix gun laws the US needs to something about their cops.



Pepe
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27 May 2022, 6:55 am

cyberdad wrote:
Oh dear it's just gotten worse.

The fully armed cops waited 1hr outside the school while parents pleaded for them to do something. Instead of saving the little children from getting killed they stayed outside like cowards. When confronted by parents they got angry and pepper sprays, body slammed and handcuffed the parents of the shooting victims.



This is really sick...after they fix gun laws the US needs to something about their cops.


Didn't a security guard at another recent tragedy run away?



kitesandtrainsandcats
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27 May 2022, 8:35 am

Police change their story?
Cue the conspiracy theorists ...

Texas school shooting timeline: Police significantly alter narrative of how tragedy unfolded
By Richard Winton, Kevin Rector, Jenny Jarvie
Published May 25, 2022 Updated May 26, 2022 4:54 PM PT
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/st ... -of-terror
"
Police have made significant changes and additions to the timeline of what happened when a gunman opened fire at a Texas elementary school Tuesday, killing 21 people.

Officials now say 12 minutes passed between the time the gunman — identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos — crashed his truck near Robb Elementary School and when he entered the building. They initially suggested he went straight into the school.

New information indicates Ramos was not confronted by police before entering. Initially, officials said he was “engaged” by officers.

Police now say he shot at two funeral home workers before entering the school.

He entered through an unlocked door and barricaded himself in a classroom filled with students and teachers.

Once inside, he unleashed a barrage of gunfire, killing 19 children and two adults, all in the same room.

He was finally killed after more than an hour, after a Border Patrol special weapons team arrived.
"
...
"
Here is a new timeline of events based on the narrative from police, witness accounts and videos:
...
"


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27 May 2022, 9:01 am

When looking for "Warning Signs" of a potential mass shooter, I encountered this article:  FBI Warning Signs of Mass Shooters 

What I found particularly interesting was this bar graph:

Image


Note that "Violent Media Use" (e.g., video games) ranked 13th on the list at 19%, and that "Sexual Behavior" ranked 20th at 6%.

So all you people claiming that video games and sexuality were important factors are making invalid claims.



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27 May 2022, 9:15 am

Persephone29 wrote:
Still waiting for a viable solution when...

1. Tucker Carlson won't oblige his haters and die.
2. Guns will never be surrendered.
3. Even if they were surrendered by law abiding citizens who have decided that guns are the problem, the unregistered
guns remain in the hands of citizens who don't believe guns are the problem.
4. The NRA will never dismantle.
5. And kooks are still out there.

I am keeping up with the discussion and this is in no way meant towards the members who are simply trying to come up with solutions for a more hasty exit from a school.

This is directed towards the usual members who A. don't live in the US, B. Hate the Right, C. offer up only outrageous black and white solutions to a situation where 1/2 of the US population's non-compliance is supported by the constitution. We get it, we understand that you hate MAGA/Trump, Tucker Carlson, the NRA, guns. The fact remains that they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. So, since we must work with what we have to hand, what is a viable solution? I don't have one, I wish that the big pufferfish on this site would admit that they don't have one either and stop postulating with these futile scenarios.

I think an armed guard should be posted at every entrance. There's my contribution.

* as an aside, there are plenty of veterans and pissed off citizens that would gladly help with this so that school districts would not be overburdened with budgeting for the expense. I know they are strapped for funding already.


The question is: Should people take the simple knee-jerk reaction, and focus entirely on the end result, or should more effort be put into seeking to break the chain that leads to this?

As you noted, the "ban guns" push is almost certainly doomed to fail and, based on the data from gallup, the prevalence of firearms appears to have no correlation (or a negative correlation exists, given the decrease in households with firearms has occured while these incidents have increased) to such acts - Take guns out of the picture and such people would simply find some other manner to cause some equivalent event (vehicles, accelerants (easy to obtain), explosives (based on fireworks, or "home made"), etc.).

What needs attention is trying to discover what has changed over time in various areas such as society, community, family, education, culture, etc. that leads a small number of people to consider the possibility of such acts, as well as to carry them out.

For example, could these acts be the result of (individually, or as a combination of several):
* The "everyone gets a trophy" mentality, which would impact on young people learning to deal with disappointment\rejection\"failure".
* A culture that focusses on glorifying violence\anti-social behaviour.
* A family structure where young people are more isolated from their relatives (parents\grandparents\etc.) resulting in weaker family bonds and understanding\respect between generations
* A society where people interact less with their neighbours, leading to weaker community bonds
* A lack of "belief" in something greater than themselves (whether based around religion, or society in general) leading young people to focus on themselves (needs\desires) above all other considerations and\or lack respect for others.
* Or some other factor(s).



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27 May 2022, 9:42 am

Brictoria wrote:
What needs attention is trying to discover what has changed over time in various areas such as society, community, family, education, culture, etc. that leads a small number of people to consider the possibility of such acts, as well as to carry them out.

For example, could these acts be the result of (individually, or as a combination of several):
* The "everyone gets a trophy" mentality, which would impact on young people learning to deal with disappointment\rejection\"failure".
* A culture that focusses on glorifying violence\anti-social behaviour.
* A family structure where young people are more isolated from their relatives (parents\grandparents\etc.) resulting in weaker family bonds and understanding\respect between generations
* A society where people interact less with their neighbours, leading to weaker community bonds
* A lack of "belief" in something greater than themselves (whether based around religion, or society in general) leading young people to focus on themselves (needs\desires) above all other considerations and\or lack respect for others.
* Or some other factor(s).


The big problem with that has nothing to do with whether it is right or whether it works but that it requires more than a single soundbyte and requires more time and more depth than a simple 'one-thing law' which provides a background for dramatic photo ops and heart-tugging campaign rhetoric.


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27 May 2022, 10:09 am

kitesandtrainsandcats wrote:
The big problem with that has nothing to do with whether it is right or whether it works but that it requires more than a single soundbyte and requires more time and more depth than a simple 'one-thing law' which provides a background for dramatic photo ops and heart-tugging campaign rhetoric.
It is also fair to note that the opinions of one person far removed from both the situation and its environment count for nothing compared to the on-site experts.

[opinion=mine]

So, for what little it is worth, my opinion is that with as many as two-dozen factors (and maybe more) involved in creating a mass shooter, there can be no single law or government policy that would alleviate the threat.  For instance, taking only the four most prevalent factors in mass-shooters' backgrounds, laws or policies would have to be enacted to address each of the following aspects in every citizen:

• Mental Health: Screening for narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths, and making them "go away".
• Interpersonal Issues: Monitoring social interactions to arrest and re-educate loners and poor communicators.
• Discussing Attacks: Arresting and re-educating anyone who merely wishes someone else would die.
• Quality of Thinking: Establishment of a "Thought Police" to root out and correct negative thinking in general.

These utopian ideals could never be put into practice without a totalitarian government.


[/opinion]



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27 May 2022, 10:48 am

Fnord wrote:
Sadly, with as many as two-dozen factors (and maybe more) involved in creating a mass shooter, there can be no single law or government policy that would alleviate the threat.  For instance, taking only the four most prevalent factors in mass-shooters' backgrounds, laws or policies would have to be enacted to address each of the following aspects in every citizen:

• Mental Health: Screening for narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths, and making them "go away".
• Interpersonal Issues: Monitoring social interactions to arrest and re-educate loners and poor communicators.
• Discussing Attacks: Arresting and re-educating anyone who merely wishes someone else would die.
• Quality of Thinking: Establishment of a "Thought Police" to root out and correct negative thinking in general.

These utopian ideals could never be put into practice without a totalitarian government.



Agree.

Autists sometimes get hemmed up in these psychological tests meant to catch psychopaths or sociopaths because of a supposed lack of empathy. I believe what actually happens in the tests is that autists answer the tests honestly and others do not. But, as usual, no one asks me.

People are always looking for some kind of magic policy after things like this happen. I think it's usually a failure of too many people failing to do the right (moral/ethical) thing and instead letting cowardice take over or having a blind faith in someone else doing something heroic.



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27 May 2022, 11:14 am

Despite what happened, I fear Abbott will be re-elected in November. If the whole mess with the power grid didn't wake people up, nothing will.


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27 May 2022, 11:17 am

Tim_Tex wrote:
Despite what happened, I fear Abbott will be re-elected in November. If the whole mess with the power grid didn't wake people up, nothing will.
All he has to do to get re-elected is to wave a Bible around while screaming "Abortion Is Murder!" wherever he goes.