This gun banning stupidity... has to end. It wasn't the gun, it was the system to blame.

[Renae]

Look I get it, the FL shooting was terrible, horrible and tragic. But the reality is the system had HOW many opportunities to stop this? From people reporting him, the school not reporting him to the police (that's a side issue of National Direction on school discipline failing... ) the police not following up, the FBI dropped the ball, hell this kid was raising huge red flags and no one acted.

Imagine if this, instead of a crazed kid with a long history of violence and mental health issues, was instead a repeat drunk driver, that was never arrested, never had his licence pulled. Imagine that same drunk driver plowing into a school bus killing a bunch of kids. Would we be demanding Alcohol be banned? Would Wal-Mart pull beer from the shelves? Would the https://www.nbwa.org be getting calls for boycotts? Would the manufacture of the vehicle he drove be called out for not installing a breathalyzer standard in all it's vehicles?

Of course not, all the out-rage would be at the police for failing, at the bar he drank at and at him for driving drunk.

I get it, a shooter is a different animal, but in a way both are pre-mediated acts of carnage and tragedy.

Instead of banning guns and attacking the NRA (seriously, that's the most asinine thing I've ever seen) let's fix the system that should have, would have stopped this kid had the system not been broken.

Let's have a serious look at what went wrong, why it went wrong and fix it across the board.

While we're at it, the conversation needs to include deterring these lunatics, gun free zones are just too dangerous.

 

[Casper]

Look I get it, the FL shooting was terrible, horrible and tragic. But the reality is the system had HOW many opportunities to stop this? From people reporting him, the school not reporting him to the police (that's a side issue of National Direction on school discipline failing... ) the police not following up, the FBI dropped the ball, hell this kid was raising huge red flags and no one acted.

Imagine if this, instead of a crazed kid with a long history of violence and mental health issues, was instead a repeat drunk driver, that was never arrested, never had his licence pulled. Imagine that same drunk driver plowing into a school bus killing a bunch of kids. Would we be demanding Alcohol be banned? Would Wal-Mart pull beer from the shelves? Would the https://www.nbwa.org be getting calls for boycotts? Would the manufacture of the vehicle he drove be called out for not installing a breathalyzer standard in all it's vehicles?

Of course not, all the out-rage would be at the police for failing, at the bar he drank at and at him for driving drunk.

I get it, a shooter is a different animal, but in a way both are pre-mediated acts of carnage and tragedy.

Instead of banning guns and attacking the NRA (seriously, that's the most asinine thing I've ever seen) let's fix the system that should have, would have stopped this kid had the system not been broken.

Let's have a serious look at what went wrong, why it went wrong and fix it across the board.

While we're at it, the conversation needs to include deterring these lunatics, gun free zones are just too dangerous.

Well Done....:bravo:

 

[Proteus]

I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiment, but you haven't actually offered any solutions to "fix" the system you allege is to blame.

What could (and should) have occurred to prevent this particular incident?

 

[Renae]

I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiment, but you haven't actually offered any solutions to "fix" the system you allege is to blame.

What could (and should) have occurred to prevent this particular incident?

Let's see.
Click the link and you learn:

Florida’s Broward County, home to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, was among the leaders in this nationwide policy shift. According to Washington Post reporting, Broward County schools once recorded more in-school arrests than any other Florida district. But in 2013, the school board and the sheriff’s office agreed on a new policy to discontinue police referrals for a dozen infractions ranging from drug use to assault. The number of school-based arrests plummeted by 63 percent from 2012 to 2016. The Obama administration lauded Broward’s reforms and in 2015 invited the district’s superintendent to the White House for an event, “Rethink Discipline,” that would highlight the success of Broward and other localities in “transforming policies and school climate.”

Confessed killer Nikolas Cruz, a notorious and emotionally disturbed student, was suspended from Stoneman Douglas High. He was even expelled for bringing weapons to school. Yet he was never arrested before the shooting. In a county less devoted to undoing school disciplinary policies, perhaps Cruz would have been arrested for one of his many violent or threatening incidents. When Cruz got into a fight in September of 2016, he was referred to social workers rather than to the police. When he allegedly assaulted a student in January 2017, it triggered a school-based threat assessment — but no police involvement. The Washington Post notes that Cruz “was well-known to school and mental health authorities and was entrenched in the process for getting students help rather than referring them to law enforcement.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/florid...h-17-counts-of-premeditated-murder-1518704958

The teen left behind a trail of worrying signs that in hindsight seem to have gone unheeded. Neighbors called the police, classmates said he was obsessed with guns, and campus security considered him troubled. “Something was off with him,” said Brody Speno, 19, who went to elementary and middle school with Mr. Cruz.

Note, I said we need to do a good look at why these glaring red flags didn't trigger appropriate responses, how we can learn from this to stop future attackers, and get these people the help they need before they do horrible things.

I did spell that out in OP, but I thank you for asking for clarification.

 

[Proteus]

Note, I said we need to do a good look at why these glaring red flags didn't trigger appropriate responses, how we can learn from this to stop future attackers, and get these people the help they need before they do horrible things.

I did spell that out in OP, but I thank you for asking for clarification.

Yes there were several red flags, but on what legal basis could law enforcement have confiscated his legally owned firearms prior to the attack? I'm asking the question because I honestly don't know. Were the red flags really sufficient enough to deny him his Second Amendment right?

 

[ttwtt78640]

Look I get it, the FL shooting was terrible, horrible and tragic. But the reality is the system had HOW many opportunities to stop this? From people reporting him, the school not reporting him to the police (that's a side issue of National Direction on school discipline failing... ) the police not following up, the FBI dropped the ball, hell this kid was raising huge red flags and no one acted.

Imagine if this, instead of a crazed kid with a long history of violence and mental health issues, was instead a repeat drunk driver, that was never arrested, never had his licence pulled. Imagine that same drunk driver plowing into a school bus killing a bunch of kids. Would we be demanding Alcohol be banned? Would Wal-Mart pull beer from the shelves? Would the https://www.nbwa.org be getting calls for boycotts? Would the manufacture of the vehicle he drove be called out for not installing a breathalyzer standard in all it's vehicles?

Of course not, all the out-rage would be at the police for failing, at the bar he drank at and at him for driving drunk.

I get it, a shooter is a different animal, but in a way both are pre-mediated acts of carnage and tragedy.

Instead of banning guns and attacking the NRA (seriously, that's the most asinine thing I've ever seen) let's fix the system that should have, would have stopped this kid had the system not been broken.

Let's have a serious look at what went wrong, why it went wrong and fix it across the board.

While we're at it, the conversation needs to include deterring these lunatics, gun free zones are just too dangerous.

What went wrong was government employees being permitted not to be government workers. Why it went wrong is that, with one possible exception (Peterson's early retirement) not a single one of these public servant "heroes" has been held personally responsible.

The sad fact is that, rather than insisting on better enforcement of the laws that we have and employing folks that will actually do what they are well paid to do, we seek to rely more on the same bunch of slacking government employees, with jobs for life, that let us all down in the first place. They don't need "more resources" (more money, fancier tools or more slacking personnel) they need to be held personally accountable for doing what we paid them to do in the first place.

I am not demanding, or even expecting, perfection (because even the best efforts can sometimes fall short of success) but surely many of these folks simply did not even try to do what they should have done to recognize and respond to a danger to public safety.

 

[ttwtt78640]

I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiment, but you haven't actually offered any solutions to "fix" the system you allege is to blame.

What could (and should) have occurred to prevent this particular incident?

Hmm... maybe someone "with a long history of violence and mental health issues" could have been pursued by LEO and school "officials" hard enough to get them in front of a judge. Only a judge has the power to get a "red flag" placed into the NICS BGC database or get someone declared dangerous enough to be institutionalized to help protect society from them.

Even after the shooting had started things could have been done to limit the victim count. When seconds really mattered the armed police were busy waiting outside the school for ???

 

[bestwords76]

Look I get it, the FL shooting was terrible, horrible and tragic. But the reality is the system had HOW many opportunities to stop this? From people reporting him, the school not reporting him to the police (that's a side issue of National Direction on school discipline failing... ) the police not following up, the FBI dropped the ball, hell this kid was raising huge red flags and no one acted.

Imagine if this, instead of a crazed kid with a long history of violence and mental health issues, was instead a repeat drunk driver, that was never arrested, never had his licence pulled. Imagine that same drunk driver plowing into a school bus killing a bunch of kids. Would we be demanding Alcohol be banned? Would Wal-Mart pull beer from the shelves? Would the https://www.nbwa.org be getting calls for boycotts? Would the manufacture of the vehicle he drove be called out for not installing a breathalyzer standard in all it's vehicles?

Of course not, all the out-rage would be at the police for failing, at the bar he drank at and at him for driving drunk.

I get it, a shooter is a different animal, but in a way both are pre-mediated acts of carnage and tragedy.

Instead of banning guns and attacking the NRA (seriously, that's the most asinine thing I've ever seen) let's fix the system that should have, would have stopped this kid had the system not been broken.

Let's have a serious look at what went wrong, why it went wrong and fix it across the board.

While we're at it, the conversation needs to include deterring these lunatics, gun free zones are just too dangerous.

I agree with what you said about the system being the major problem and desperately needing to be fixed. This could in part be done by the measures you have explained. On the other hand, your example with the drunk driver does not work well in this case imo. Mass shootings have been happening contiuously since Sandy Hook, alosn this year I believe it has been 8 school schootings - and we're no more than two months into 2018.

If the drunk driver from your example had hit a school bus and killed the same number of students, this would have been an equally tragic event. However, how many comparable cases like this have you heard of? A permanent ban of alcohol would likely not be demanded nor enforced if one drunk driver had caused such a tragic event. If suddenly though, people all over the country started getting drunk and hitting school busses (deliberately, mind you, with the intention of killing people), because they cannot be trusted with alcohol due to mental problems, I'm pretty sure the debate would come up.

A problem needs to be fixed by the roots, I fully agree with that. The root is definitely that these people need to be able to get easy access to help when they're obviously mentally unstable. They need to be monitored closely if any red flags have come up. But the most important part, in my opinion, is that we need to keep these people away from guns. And if that means that no one is allowed to own a gun anymore, I'm fine with that as long as it saves even one student's life.

The US is (as far as I know) the only country which is this liberal with its gun laws. Look at all the other countries where no guns are allowed to be owned by civilians. They do not nearly have the same number of mass shootings than the US does (if any at all recently). So why is it so hard to figure out that if we want to avoid shootings to happen in the future, we need to begin by banning the things that shoot?

I doubt any person would be abe to cause the same amount of damage with a kitchen knife.

My point is, of course we need to take a look at where the system went wrong, and continues to go wrong, I'm with you on that. But I also think that stricter gun control laws are one of the solutions for this.

 

[Renae]

I agree with what you said about the system being the major problem and desperately needing to be fixed. This could in part be done by the measures you have explained. On the other hand, your example with the drunk driver does not work well in this case imo. Mass shootings have been happening contiuously since Sandy Hook, alosn this year I believe it has been 8 school schootings - and we're no more than two months into 2018.

If the drunk driver from your example had hit a school bus and killed the same number of students, this would have been an equally tragic event. However, how many comparable cases like this have you heard of? A permanent ban of alcohol would likely not be demanded nor enforced if one drunk driver had caused such a tragic event. If suddenly though, people all over the country started getting drunk and hitting school busses (deliberately, mind you, with the intention of killing people), because they cannot be trusted with alcohol due to mental problems, I'm pretty sure the debate would come up.

A problem needs to be fixed by the roots, I fully agree with that. The root is definitely that these people need to be able to get easy access to help when they're obviously mentally unstable. They need to be monitored closely if any red flags have come up. But the most important part, in my opinion, is that we need to keep these people away from guns. And if that means that no one is allowed to own a gun anymore, I'm fine with that as long as it saves even one student's life.

The US is (as far as I know) the only country which is this liberal with its gun laws. Look at all the other countries where no guns are allowed to be owned by civilians. They do not nearly have the same number of mass shootings than the US does (if any at all recently). So why is it so hard to figure out that if we want to avoid shootings to happen in the future, we need to begin by banning the things that shoot?

I doubt any person would be abe to cause the same amount of damage with a kitchen knife.

My point is, of course we need to take a look at where the system went wrong, and continues to go wrong, I'm with you on that. But I also think that stricter gun control laws are one of the solutions for this.

It's not the guns, and any attempt to blame the guns is deflecting from the reality of the situation.

 

[bestwords76]

It's not the guns, and any attempt to blame the guns is deflecting from the reality of the situation.

Okay so let's say I'm a mentally ill kid who is unstable enough to want to run into the school and kill as many people as I can. I can only do so if the system grants me easy access to a shooting weapon.

If I was the same mentally ill kid in a different country with the same desire to kill, I couldn't do so, for the simple reason of not getting my hnads on a gun.

This is basic logic and only a small part of the solution, but would you not agree that this would prevent at least a considerable number of mass shootings?

 

[MACS-24]

Okay so let's say I'm a mentally ill kid who is unstable enough to want to run into the school and kill as many people as I can. I can only do so if the system grants me easy access to a shooting weapon.

If I was the same mentally ill kid in a different country with the same desire to kill, I couldn't do so, for the simple reason of not getting my hnads on a gun.

This is basic logic and only a small part of the solution, but would you not agree that this would prevent at least a considerable number of mass shootings?

Absolutely untrue, it would actually be easier to fire bomb a school, among many other ways.

 

[Renae]

Okay so let's say I'm a mentally ill kid who is unstable enough to want to run into the school and kill as many people as I can. I can only do so if the system grants me easy access to a shooting weapon.

If I was the same mentally ill kid in a different country with the same desire to kill, I couldn't do so, for the simple reason of not getting my hnads on a gun.

This is basic logic and only a small part of the solution, but would you not agree that this would prevent at least a considerable number of mass shootings?

And if you didn't have that gun, you just had dad's pick up truck and you plowed into the kids leaving school....

See how your attempt to make this about this gun is missing the real problem? It's not the chosen weapon, it's the fact we're not recognizing and acting on the problem.

 

[bestwords76]

Absolutely untrue, it would actually be easier to fire bomb a school, among many other ways.

In which way would banning guns make it any easier to fire bomb a school? It would not be any easier to access chamicals or dynamite or whatever than it is now.

Plus, I did mention, banning guns would only be a start to tackling the problem. If the system did keep a closer eye on mentally ill kids and provided enough help for them and did more in the regard of preventing any kind of violence resulting from that, than that would be the wholesome solution.

Gun abuse is happening nowhere as much as it is in the US, the country which happens to be the only one where guns are freely allowed in civilian hands.

 

[Renae]

In which way would banning guns make it any easier to fire bomb a school? It would not be any easier to access chamicals or dynamite or whatever than it is now.

Plus, I did mention, banning guns would only be a start to tackling the problem. If the system did keep a closer eye on mentally ill kids and provided enough help for them and did more in the regard of preventing any kind of violence resulting from that, than that would be the wholesome solution.

Gun abuse is happening nowhere as much as it is in the US, the country which happens to be the only one where guns are freely allowed in civilian hands.

They chose guns for two reasons, it gives a sense of power, and an easy out.

 

[bestwords76]

And if you didn't have that gun, you just had dad's pick up truck and you plowed into the kids leaving school....

See how your attempt to make this about this gun is missing the real problem? It's not the chosen weapon, it's the fact we're not recognizing and acting on the problem.

I fully agree that we need to act on the problem too. But there is no denying that mentally ill kids exist in other countries as well and they do not have the same problem we do with these kinds of shootings or other attacks. I have spoken to friends and family who live around Europe and no one could confirm a significantly high number of kids plowing into others with trucks or fire bombing schools or anythin in their country. And these countries do still have trucks. THey just don't have guns.

I'd say it's worth a shot. Pardon the pun.

 

[bestwords76]

They chose guns for two reasons, it gives a sense of power, and an easy out.

Exactly. And does a normal person, even a perfectly sane and responsible one, really need this much power to own any kind of weapon? Maybe a little less power and responsiblity in this regard would be the wiser choice.

 

[MACS-24]

In which way would banning guns make it any easier to fire bomb a school? It would not be any easier to access chamicals or dynamite or whatever than it is now.

If the system did keep a closer eye on mentally ill kids and provided enough help for them and did more in the regard of preventing any kind of violence resulting from that, than that would be the wholesome solution.

Gun abuse is happening nowhere as much as it is in the US, the country which happens to be the only one where guns are freely allowed in civilian hands.

It was a response to this: "to want to run into the school and kill as many people as I can. . ." You do not need a gun to do such and gasoline is much easier for a student to get than guns.

Plus, I did mention, banning guns would only be a start to tackling the problem.

That's the problem with people who want gun bans, it never stops. Just ban the next item, right? You're a perfect example of what Renae points out.

As to other places outside of USA, irrelevant.

 

[Renae]

Exactly. And does a normal person, even a perfectly sane and responsible one, really need this much power to own any kind of weapon? Maybe a little less power and responsiblity in this regard would be the wiser choice.

Query, why are you trying to remove the liberty, freedom and property of law abiding citizens?

 

[TurtleDude]

Exactly. And does a normal person, even a perfectly sane and responsible one, really need this much power to own any kind of weapon? Maybe a little less power and responsiblity in this regard would be the wiser choice.

so if you think its ok to ban one commonly owned firearm where does the line get drawn?

 

[Bucky]

so if you think its ok to ban one commonly owned firearm where does the line get drawn?

We worry about that later.

 

[TurtleDude]

We worry about that later.

you are on record wanting to ban all firearms

so you support any movement towards that complete ban

 

[roughdraft274]

Let's see.
Click the link and you learn:


https://www.wsj.com/articles/florid...h-17-counts-of-premeditated-murder-1518704958



Note, I said we need to do a good look at why these glaring red flags didn't trigger appropriate responses, how we can learn from this to stop future attackers, and get these people the help they need before they do horrible things.

I did spell that out in OP, but I thank you for asking for clarification.

So just to see if we are on the same page here...

You are of the opinion that if a kid assaults another kid and someone in social services considers them to be obviously troubled, that this should begin the process of taking away any firearms in his possession and barring him from future purchases? Or are you saying that we should arrest and throw in jail kids that get into fights at school?

 

[Bucky]

you are on record wanting to ban all firearms

so you support any movement towards that complete ban

How long do we have to wait before we start saving lives?

Or is the motto of gun zealots the same as Scott Pederson?

 

[Renae]

We worry about that later.

Generally later is too late when property, liberty and freedoms are gone. How about stopping these people before they go off the deep end instead of going after the least effective solution?

 

[TurtleDude]

How long do we have to wait before we start saving lives?

Or is the motto of gun zealots the same as Scott Pederson?

you labor under the delusion that banning honest people from owning a firearm saves lives