Parkland FL HS shooting, shooter arrested, 17 dead

[Pupik]

Honestly, I think the NRA gets to be the lightning rod for every shooting, especially those which even their mandates are at odds with. No amount of lobbying one way or another is going to stop someone from acquiring a gun from an entity who doesn't care how they're getting paid for it, or if that person has a genuine need for the object.

On the other hand, there's a stubborn in few in which the gun control conversation stops immediately. There's a selfish assumption that additional measures or restrictions are there to affect them (maybe some of them are genuinely insane). And there's an extremely tough few advocating a blanket blanket on all firearms, which is ridiculous...there are numerous people with genuine needs for self-preservation or protection.

There's a lot of protections against search and seizure, mobility and freedom, and personal/public freedoms built into our laws that transcend even gun acquisition and ownership. And overlaps and gray areas in laws, as well as layers of precedent, mean things aren't easy to change.

Fear seems to shut down a lot of these situations; it's both the greatest motivation for action and a paralyzing conundrum which breeds inaction.

All we really can do is say "no" if something's not right and be excellent to one another.

 

[Moglet]

Hospitals in the US cannot refuse emergency services. Emergency patients are placed triage...basically worst-off is first-off. Most children are covered by their parents' insurance, but even in the US, there's going to those who will have to apply for coverage through Medicaid/Medicare (I forget which is which). Still, few hospitals can deal with numerous serious or near-fatal injuries all at once...the unthinkable can occur in that timeframe.

To sum up, this is a generally affluent wedge of the country, so people will raise money to help with hospital bills and other assistance. (Sadly, there's also always a scam just around the corner in that neck of the woods.) It's physical location makes a stitch more isolated - though a little less so in the past decade or so - but still inside a major population center. It's not the stereotypical "tight-knit community", as it's an area of about 140,000 people, but folks will come together and help out.

Not sure how after-effects are handled, but I'd imagine it's going to be tough for a good bit of that student body. For a senior, you're going to get out in a few months. I can't imagine how shocking it has to be for an undergrad, going back to school day after day. I suppose many will just move on; it becomes your "new normal".

Yes, they'll be charged. As Pupik says they may get help from charities and the like but at the end of the day they'll be responsible for paying the 4-5 figure medical bills. Healthcare in the US is a business, and so injuries are an opportunity to make a profit.

Thank you for the information. I hadn't even considered the after-effects.

 

[EamerRed]

Where's your source?

If I have to...

Firearm related death rate per 100,000 per year:
10.54 United States
-------
1.01 Germany
0.93 Australia
0.23 United Kingdom
0.06 Japan

Admittedly, Wikipedia, but I'll find other sources if I have to. The evidence isn't indicative, it's overwhelming.

Basically, if it's harder to get a gun, there's going to be less deaths due to guns. I can't put it simpler.

 

[Dennisch]

You can't keep adding regulations if they aren't effective to begin with. You have to overhaul the current ones that do literally nothing.

That's why I said enforce better regulations. Start with the health checks for every single gun owner. History of violence? No gun for you! History of mental issues? No gun for you!

 

[Pupik]

It's better to fix the current systems put in place to actually function as intended, since certain shootings happened due to their incompetence and failure to report certain things. The perfect example of this was Sutherland Springs where the guy had a domestic violence charge, which should've banned him from getting guns completely.

That's why I said enforce better regulations. Start with the health checks for every single gun owner. History of violence? No gun for you! History of mental issues? No gun for you!

I know we're not mental health specialists, but how would this occur? Personally, I think it's not going to be a lie detector test and not anything that would require government clearances (maybe it's a start, but loathing of anything involving G-men is a non-starter for many folks). Gun shops would be on the hook for these expenses, the licensing takes time. All to basically prove that these are generally good citizens who aren't likely to be public troublemakers in the first place.

Yet, there's really nothing stopping someone from using someone else's gun, bypassing all those checks and balances. You could build in new technologies to weapons, but there's so many exceptions and legacy machinery that would override the point of it (it would kind of suck if your gun required a software update when needed most).

Nothing short of a complete clean up and inspection of everyone's homes and the personal effects of 310 million people - of both innocent at large and the warranted minority - would ever allow this to happen due to the Fourth Amendment. Nobody really wants that, nor do I.

I will say there's definitely still a chunk of mass media that still supports gun usage as a problem-solving/creating device in movies, novels, and games which never seems to go away, no matter what. After all, government censorship is generally unfavorable across the board (except if we don't like something). It's a bit of an unconscious guilty pleasure to enjoy that kind of action; 99.99% of us know it's just a story in the land of make-believe.

I'm a bit of a dreamer, but I feel there's something to be done about it, though.

 

[Johnnypenso]

If I have to...

Firearm related death rate per 100,000 per year:
10.54 United States
-------
1.01 Germany
0.93 Australia
0.23 United Kingdom
0.06 Japan

Admittedly, Wikipedia, but I'll find other sources if I have to. The evidence isn't indicative, it's overwhelming.

Basically, if it's harder to get a gun, there's going to be less deaths due to guns. I can't put it simpler.

Far too simple. First, you included suicides in your U.S. figures. Suicide is a mental health issue as much as anything else, and conflating it with murder isn't ideal. Suicide rates in some European countries that have very few gun deaths are actually quite a bit higher than the U.S. Finland, Hungary, Belgium, France etc. Canadians, Swedes and a few other western countries manage to commit suicide at the same rate as Americans but without all the guns. You need to start with murder rates and violent crime rates and you also have to take a look at self defense statistics along the way. And if there's a correlation between gun ownership and murder rates, can you explain why the murder rate by gun in the U.S. has halved in the last couple of decades but gun ownership is up? Is it because there are many more factors involved than just the number of guns?

It's an extremely complicated issue and boiling it down to a couple of wikipedia statistics won't do it justice.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Y'all are getting mad over the wrong weapons, since knives, hammer-like objects, or hands cause more deaths per year than rifles do.
Source: FBI Crime Statistics of 2016

Using this terrible, utter facile argument is one of the reasons why people from countries like the UK think Americans have no real interest in dealing with the problem.

 

[Dennisch]

I know we're not mental health specialists, but how would this occur? Personally, I think it's not going to be a lie detector test and not anything that would require government clearances (maybe it's a start, but loathing of anything involving G-men is a non-starter for many folks). Gun shops would be on the hook for these expenses, the licensing takes time. All to basically prove that these are generally good citizens who aren't likely to be public troublemakers in the first place.

Yet, there's really nothing stopping someone from using someone else's gun, bypassing all those checks and balances. You could build in new technologies to weapons, but there's so many exceptions and legacy machinery that would override the point of it (it would kind of suck if your gun required a software update when needed most).

Nothing short of a complete clean up and inspection of everyone's homes and the personal effects of 310 million people - of both innocent at large and the warranted minority - would ever allow this to happen due to the Fourth Amendment. Nobody really wants that, nor do I.

I will say there's definitely still a chunk of mass media that still supports gun usage as a problem-solving/creating device in movies, novels, and games which never seems to go away, no matter what. After all, government censorship is generally unfavorable across the board (except if we don't like something). It's a bit of an unconscious guilty pleasure to enjoy that kind of action; 99.99% of us know it's just a story in the land of make-believe.

I'm a bit of a dreamer, but I feel there's something to be done about it, though.

There is always someone who feels that his rights will be infringed. If changes are to be made, they will need to be quite extreme.

My opinion is is that it is already to late for change.
Person A doesn't want this, B doesn't want that, C says **** all regulations and D is sitting on his couch protesting .

 

[Johnnypenso]

There is always someone who feels that his rights will be infringed. If changes are to be made, they will need to be quite extreme.

My opinion is is that it is already to late for change.
Person A doesn't want this, B doesn't want that, C says **** all regulations and D is sitting on his couch protesting .

Someone's rights will be infringed though. It's a constitutionally protected right. Guns are used in self defense 10's of thousands of times a year. If you take the guns out of the hands of legal gun owners who have done nothing wrong, how will they defend themselves from the criminals who don't turn in their guns?

 

[EamerRed]

Far too simple. First, you included suicides in your U.S. figures. Suicide is a mental health issue as much as anything else, and conflating it with murder isn't ideal. Suicide rates in some European countries that have very few gun deaths are actually quite a bit higher than the U.S. Finland, Hungary, Belgium, France etc. Canadians, Swedes and a few other western countries manage to commit suicide at the same rate as Americans but without all the guns. You need to start with murder rates and violent crime rates and you also have to take a look at self defense statistics along the way. And if there's a correlation between gun ownership and murder rates, can you explain why the murder rate by gun in the U.S. has halved in the last couple of decades but gun ownership is up? Is it because there are many more factors involved than just the number of guns?

It's an extremely complicated issue and boiling it down to a couple of wikipedia statistics won't do it justice.

There's always an excuse isn't there. Let's take the same four countries again.

List of intentional homicides per 100,000 (ignoring weapon):
4.8 United States
------------
1.2 United Kingdom
1.0 Australia
0.8 Germany
0.4 Japan

Another source:

Don't you think there might be a link?

Is it also notable that the US has by far the highest amount of mass homicides in the western world? Particularly in schools? Could it be that this ease of access to weapons contributes to it, or is it just coincidence?

I 100% agree that it is a mental health problem as well. But please don't try and argue against it; gun control works. It is freaking overwhelmingly obvious.

 

[eran0004]

Because outright banning certain guns doesn't do anything but give criminals more leeway through black market means.

But how common are gunfights between regular citizens and criminals in the US? And if they do occur, how common is it that the regular citizen ends up winning that fight?

Y'all are getting mad over the wrong weapons, since knives, hammer-like objects, or hands cause more deaths per year than rifles do.
Source: FBI Crime Statistics of 2016

And yet these perpetrators keep choosing guns for their massacres. Why?

 

[EamerRed]

Someone's rights will be infringed though. It's a constitutionally protected right. Guns are used in self defense 10's of thousands of times a year. If you take the guns out of the hands of legal gun owners who have done nothing wrong, how will they defend themselves from the criminals who don't turn in their guns?

Australia managed it pretty damn well...

 

[Dennisch]

Someone's rights will be infringed though. It's a constitutionally protected right. Guns are used in self defense 10's of thousands of times a year. If you take the guns out of the hands of legal gun owners who have done nothing wrong, how will they defend themselves from the criminals who don't turn in their guns?

Please point to where I said that guns need to be taken away from those who have done nothing wrong.

 

[TexRex]

Please point to where I said that guns need to be taken away from those who have done nothing wrong.

That's the only logical extension of gun control to those opposed to any and all forms of it.

 

[Exorcet]

Yet, there's really nothing stopping someone from using someone else's gun, bypassing all those checks and balances. You could build in new technologies to weapons, but there's so many exceptions and legacy machinery that would override the point of it (it would kind of suck if your gun required a software update when needed most).

I guess it depends. For impulsive acts, limiting the use of the very nearest weapons could make a big difference. I really like the option of developing more advanced safeguards on the weapons themselves because if done right, they will always serve as a barrier against misuse for a given gun seeing as they would be attached to that gun. They could also be implemented without the need to pass new laws which can be long and drawn out.

Issues with malfunctions of these systems is a very valid concern, but if they were also distributed to range/sport/hunting guns, you would get a very large population of guns to test the technology on without giving up reliability in a self defense situation.

 

[Johnnypenso]

There's always an excuse isn't there. Let's take the same four countries again.

List of intentional homicides per 100,000 (ignoring weapon):
4.8 United States
------------
1.2 United Kingdom
1.0 Australia
0.8 Germany
0.4 Japan

Another source:

Don't you think there might be a link?

Is it also notable that the US has by far the highest amount of mass homicides in the western world? Particularly in schools? Could it be that this ease of access to weapons contributes to it, or is it just coincidence?

I 100% agree that it is a mental health problem as well. But please don't try and argue against it; gun control works. It is freaking overwhelmingly obvious.

I'm not arguing for or against it, I'm asking you to not simplify the argument down to a couple of graphs and wikipedia quotes. It's not that simple. You also didn't address the self defense issue and why the number of guns has risen steadily while the homicide rates have declined significantly in the last couple of decades. If it's a simple issue it should be easy for you to adequately address these issues because they directly contradict your less guns = less murder theory.

Australia managed it pretty damn well...

Managed what pretty well? They banned guns because they weren't happy with the number of people getting killed with guns. If they managed it well that would mean a significant decrease in the murder rate following the gun ban correct? Is that what happened? Should be easy enough to prove. Also, can you compare the change in murder rate in Australia since the gun ban compared to the change in the U.S. murder rate over the same period? Guns have become much more prevelant in the U.S. in that time while handguns are all but eliminated in Australia. Their total murder rates should be heading in completely opposite directions, so dramatically as to be obvious to a blind man. A much more significant decline in Australia would be a good piece of support for your cause.

 

[Obelisk]

Why is everyone blaming the weapon for the problem? It's akin to blaming a knife for cutting someone's neck - the knife didn't do it, the person wielding it did.

What we really need to address with gun control is to crack down on all of the people who're falling through the cracks in the mental health system like the shooter in this incident.

And nobody is going to stop and think about that because nobody is willing to admit that there's an underlying issue outside of the actual possession of the weapon in the first place.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Far too simple. First, you included suicides in your U.S. figures. Suicide is a mental health issue as much as anything else, and conflating it with murder isn't ideal.

Death by gun is still death by gun, doesn't really matter to me if you are shooting yourself or someone else.

 

[Danoff]

If I have to...

Firearm related death rate per 100,000 per year:
10.54 United States
-------
1.01 Germany
0.93 Australia
0.23 United Kingdom
0.06 Japan

Admittedly, Wikipedia, but I'll find other sources if I have to. The evidence isn't indicative, it's overwhelming.

Basically, if it's harder to get a gun, there's going to be less deaths due to guns. I can't put it simpler.

There's always an excuse isn't there. Let's take the same four countries again.

List of intentional homicides per 100,000 (ignoring weapon):
4.8 United States
------------
1.2 United Kingdom
1.0 Australia
0.8 Germany
0.4 Japan

Another source:

Don't you think there might be a link?

Is it also notable that the US has by far the highest amount of mass homicides in the western world? Particularly in schools? Could it be that this ease of access to weapons contributes to it, or is it just coincidence?

I 100% agree that it is a mental health problem as well. But please don't try and argue against it; gun control works. It is freaking overwhelmingly obvious.

Australia managed it pretty damn well...

No they didn't. We've been down this road thoroughly (in the last shooting thread). That very figure was posted in there, by me, to explain how the US has more homicide NOT BY GUNS than any of those countries. See that? The part where the US still has more killing than all those other nations even if you remove guns entirely? Think maybe something else is going on then? The US has a violence problem.

Death by gun is still death by gun, doesn't really matter to me if you are shooting yourself or someone else.

It makes all the difference in the world.

America doesn't want to solve this.

Yes we do, we just recognize the complexity of the problem and then get overwhelmed and can't agree on what to do.

 

[Joey D]

Why is everyone blaming the weapon for the problem? It's akin to blaming a knife for cutting someone's neck - the knife didn't do it, the person wielding it did.

What we really need to address with gun control is to crack down on all of the people who're falling through the cracks in the mental health system like the shooter in this incident.

And nobody is going to stop and think about that because nobody is willing to admit that there's an underlying issue outside of the actual possession of the weapon in the first place.

I think the problem is virtually any time something comes up about gun control it's almost immediately made into a black and white issue. It's either "everyone should have guns" or "no one should have guns", instead of saying "well maybe we should look at our current system and figure out what isn't working and then work together to find a solution."

I'm not sure what the answer is to gun control, but there has to be some sort of middle ground that'll work better than what we currently have. When I bought my handgun it was super easy and all I had to do was fill out a form, get a simple background check, and hand over my credit card. I then had to go to my local county police station and just drop off a form in a drop box.

My mental well being wasn't examined, nor were my intention. I also wasn't offered any training (whether included with the purchase or as an additional add-on cost). So basically the place I got it at said "here's your weapon, enjoy!" Granted I sought out training after the fact, but that's besides the point.

Lack of training also makes me incredibly wary of anyone with a concealed weapons permit too. I get they want to defend themselves, but I'd wager most people carrying a gun have zero idea how to handle it in a high-stress situation.

 

[CodeRedR51]

It makes all the difference in the world.

Both end in death. No difference there.

 

[Danoff]

Both end in death. No difference there.

If you can't see the difference between what someone chose for themselves and someone using violent force against another person... you need to take a step back from this conversation for a moment. Can you tell the difference between sex and rape?

 

[LennyB]

Shouldn’t we blame the person that did it?

Why on earth would you think that in this day and age.

 

[TexRex]

Trump to address the nation in half an hour.

Anyone taking bets regarding whether he says anything meaningful or alludes to meaningful action being taken to prevent similar incidents? How about whether he blames "the other side" for this one or those in the past?

 

[EamerRed]

Loving this logic. 'The US has the worst violent crime rates in the western world. I know what's a good idea! Let's let them keep the main weapons they use to do it!'. Other countries have banned guns and seen gun-related murders fall, but that's just pure coincidence. The US has had 18 school shootings this year while the rest of the WORLD has had 18 in the last 20 years, but that's just coincidence! We have a real-life example of a country which adopted gun control in the 90's and saw gun-related deaths drop like a stone, but guess what.... I'll let you finish that.

In fairness, I'm being a bit sarcastic there I admit. And someone who REALLY wants to kill someone, will kill someone with or without a gun. But looking at the overwhelming evidence, do you not think there might be just the slightest chance that America's violence problem has a cause/effect link with the amount of guns in society? The US has the highest number of guns + the highest number of homicides + the highest amount of violent crime. It's not rocket science.

 

[LennyB]

Loving this logic.

Why do people who live in other countries worry so much about the price americans pay for freedom? As I eluded to earlier in the thread more of us die each year from food poisoning than from mass shootings, it's like tenfold or so.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Why do people who live in other countries worry so much about the price americans pay for freedom?

Price we pay for freedom? Is that what this is to you?

 

[EamerRed]

Why do people who live in other countries worry so much about the price americans pay for freedom? As I eluded to earlier in the thread more of us die each year from food poisoning than from mass shootings, it's like tenfold or so.

Ah, the freedom argument. You realise that in the Human Freedom Index, you guys are ranked 20th right? Below 16 European countries, Australia, Canada and Hong Kong.

It's the price you pay for freedom, except that there are 19 countries more free than you, and they all have gun control.

EDIT: Also that's not true. Admittedly not extensive research but a quick Google suggests approx 3,000 deaths per year from food poisoning in the US, and approx 8,000 deaths due to firearms in 2014.

 

[LennyB]

Ah, the freedom argument. You realise that in the Human Freedom Index, you guys are ranked 20th right? Below 16 European countries, Australia, Canada and Hong Kong.

It's the price you pay for freedom, except that there are 19 countries more free than you, and they all have gun control.

Yeah I do know that, I live here lol. We're trying though and you think taking guns away will give us more freedom back somehow? Not likely. I'll ask another way, why does it matter so much to people living in other countries that in the U.S. 500 people die each year from mass shootings? Where is the outrage of the 5,000 people who die each year from sour food?

 

[EamerRed]

Yeah I do know that, I live here lol. We're trying though and you think taking guns away will give us more freedom back somehow? Not likely. I'll ask another way, why does it matter so much to people living in other countries that in the U.S. 500 people die each year from mass shootings? Where is the outrage of the 5,000 people who die each year from sour food?

Ermmm, a lot more than 500 people die every year from shootings. Mass shootings maybe, but why would you pin it on that?