How to deter a gunman intent on suicide?

I would suggest an armed populace. At least he will reach his intended aim faster with the fewest number of innocent casualties.

If he's intent on suicide, keeping guns from him won't stop him. Nor will it stop him from killing others before he kills himself. So grant his wish faster.

Blaming the gun owner, again, is like blaming the car owner when a drunk driver kills someone.

Way to move the goalposts.

Your question assumes that the shooter succeeds in all aspects of the crime and subsequent suicide - so technically, nothing can prevent such a thing. You don't allow for the possibility that the shooter is interrupted and stopped or killed.

And to do that, you need somebody there with the mindset and capability to intervene. Armed citizens seem like the best chance to have someone there and able to act.

No silly law - not one - will deter someone who has decided to do something like this. They've made the leap. If they can't get a gun, they'll get a knife. Or a car. Or a bomb. We can't ban everything, or lock it all down.


Edited to change "stop" to "deter," to adhere to the OP's wording.

How do we prevent such a tragedy other than by a law similar to the one proposed?

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Shoot him.

So what your example indicates is this: It's not bad enough that the parents have lost their child and have to live with that loss. Nor that their child killed other people, and the misplaced guilt they feel because of that as well. Not to mention that they must, in all probability, defend themselves from the inevitable various civil suits sure to be brought because of the actions of their child. They must also face prosecution?

Maybe, if their child has a known history of mental instability, and if they were truly negligent. Such as if their child was known to be suicidal and anti-social, and they intentionally left all the guns and ammo in an open rack easily accessible. Maybe then. Maybe. But if they had no reason to suspect that their child was going to do this hypothetical mass murder followed by suicide - no.

Forcing people to lock all guns up at all times, even in their homes, because, you know, it's for the children, is stupid. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Oh, wait, we can now add: When seconds count, it only takes a couple of minutes to unlock your guns and ammo and get ready to defend yourself and your family.

No. When someone wants to go out in a blaze of glory (in their minds only), they're gonna find a way. No amount of laws will prevent that. And preventing all people from being able to defend themselves and their families on the grand scale to attempt to prevent what cannot be prevented is wrong. Flat-out, 100% wrong.

I would suggest an armed populace.

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Absolutely.

These freaks don't want JUST to die. If they did, they'd just go home and shoot themselves without harming anyone else. Instead what they want is to attract attention to themselves by harming innocent people.

Take away their ability to slaughter the innocent at their leisure and they'll look for other targets, or other means.

Welcome to THR, Dave.

How does personal responsibility or the threat of prosecution deter a person who intends to culminate his act by killing himself?

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There may not be any effective deterent. The only potential deterent is to take away the attraction of posthumus media glorification. The 1A prevents us from controlling what the media chooses to report and how they do it, so all we can do is reduce the potential magnitude of the "event." Which leads us to...

How do we prevent such a tragedy other than by a law similar to the one proposed?

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In a free society, we cannot prevent all bad things from happening. The cost of doing so, in terms of freedom (especially in 4th and 5th Amendment terms), are too high compared to the "benefit" to be achieved. Instead, we can put another of our freedoms to use both to make us safer and to minimize the dramatic effect of an intended mass shooting/suicide by assuring that as many people as possible are not prohibited from having the tools to stop it at the earliest possible moment. Fewer victims and diminished incentive to "go out in a blaze of glory." There will continue to be nut jobs, but maybe they will begin to find arson/suicide or leaping from tall buildings or bridges to be a greater source of media attention.

Maybe, if their child has a known history of mental instability, and if they were truly negligent. Such as if their child was known to be suicidal and anti-social, and they intentionally left all the guns and ammo in an open rack easily accessible. Maybe then. Maybe.

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If so, then there are already enough non-gun-specific laws on the books to prosecute them for their acts.

You cannot prevent it. All you can do is try to limit the damage done by the gunman.

DaveBeal said:

Consider a case where a teenager takes an unsecured gun from his parents, commits mass murder and then suicide. How does personal responsibility or the threat of prosecution deter a person who intends to culminate his act by killing himself? How do we prevent such a tragedy other than by a law similar to the one proposed?

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Simple answer -- we don't.

To put it bluntly, **** happens. Life isn't perfect, and the only guarantee about life is that nobody gets out alive. In a free society, there are no guarantees that somebody won't someday do something bad. The answer is not to expend untold effort and expense in futile attempts to prevent the unpreventable, but to accept the stark reality that bad people sometimes do bad things, and that good people should be allowed the means to defend themselves against such attacks.

Time has shown that you can't prevent a martyr from making the attempt.
What you can do is cut his/her attempt severely short.

I really do believe it'd help things if the media would stop glorifying these folks as well.

See above answer. You don't get any guarantees.

If some nutjob is running people down in a car, hacking his way through a crowd with a machete, setting a fire in a crowded building, or trying to gun people down, I would suggest that you shoot him.

Good point Henry.

I didn't mention that there are already laws on the books making such negligence subject to prosecution. Therefore, more laws in that regard will not make it any more illegal.
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However, Mr. Bowman did point out a very interesting tangent to the base question.

Why does a person kill multiple (usually unknown-to-the shooter) people, then himself? Rarely because he simply hates all people in general and wants to decrease the surplus population of the planet as quickly as possible. No. The primary reason these multiple-murder/suicides keep happening is one of media attention. Now, I'm not talking about never reporting the news when something terrible happens. But it is the constant "I can tell it better than station xxx and spin it better and get better ratings" one-up-manship inherent in today's media that glorifies such horrific events.

Just as one example of the media feeding frenzy (and not even gun related): Lindsay Lohan bumped some papparazzi when he flashed a camera in her face while she was trying to drive. He was too stupid to realize that he'd taken a position where she would hit him if she didn't stop moving, and she was blinded to his presence by his own action, so didn't realize she should stop moving in the first place. Now, if that were you or me, would that make the news? No. Well, maybe. On page 14, column 6, in the "stupid is as stupid does" column. Pointing out the stupidity of the photographer. But because the driver was a "celebrity", it's all her fault and look at what a terrible and unfeeling person she is.

Same thing happens with these shootings. Report it. Then let it go. Don't glorify the perp. Or if you must report it, report the truth. Don't sugar coat the perp as a "victim". Call him (or her, but it's almost always a guy) what he is - a murdering, cowardly slimeball. If they think they want to go out in a blaze of glory, let them know that this isn't the way. They'll reap the kind of vilification they deserve, putting them in the same low level of opinion that belongs to other cowards like, well, you fill in the blank. I'm not gonna even mention the slimeballs I'm thinking of, lest that be perceived as improving or maintaining their legacies.

How do we prevent such a tragedy other than by a law similar to the one proposed?

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Naive Much?

Laws do not prevent anything if the actor is determined and/or amoral and/or is unconcerned about consequence. Laws restrain the honest.

There are three parties here: The gun owner, the shooter and the victims. Personal responsibility is irrelevant to the shooter as he intends to do something irresponsible (murder). The victim however can clearly be responsible by protecting himself and possibly others.

The gun owner is a more complicated question. First of all, in order to be responsible for an act, it must be that person’s position to be held accountable for it. They also may be responsible for an act if they have caused it or they themselves did it. In the given situation we find that the gun-owner did neither actively cause nor commit the act. However, we do find that it is the position of the gun-owner, as the people of the United States have in congress decided, do be held accountable for the actions of their minor children and dependants (I’m not sure the extent of this but it’s something to this effect) However, if the individual who does the shooting is not the dependent child of the gun-owner, that gun-owner is not responsible.

The last question, "How do we prevent such a tragedy other than by a law similar to the one proposed?" raises yet more questions. It is of no doubt that states can and should, in advance, declare those particular acts which harm the society, to be illegal and prescribe punishments for committing them. This question however, also supposes that it is the position of the state to not only pass laws against actions which harm society, but against actions which in no way harm society, but merely can allow for actions which could harm society.

However, if we apply the logic previously used to determine the responsibilities of a gun-owner in preventing harmful acts to the responsibilities of the state in preventing harmful acts, we find that it is not the responsibility of the state. The only responsibility of the state in preventing harmful acts is that it must not commit or promote such acts.

How do you PREVENT people from going on killing sprees that end in their suicides?

Nothing is guaranteed, but I'd propose this: Make those who commit such acts the objects of national derision. Starting the most recent cases, and for every case hereafter, confiscate all of their personal property, and find every public and private record relating to the killer. There should be a special agency in charge of reconstructing their lives for the purpose of highlighting everything that would make them the object of scorn, loathing and laughter.

Interview classmates as far back as grade school for anecdotes which paint the killer as mean and antisocial. Compile stories from ex-lovers which reveal the killer's sexual inadequacies and kinky proclivities. Publish pictures of the killer's naked body in tabloid magazines. Their possessions should be cataloged, and anything potentially embarassing should be displayed. Notes from therapy sessions or psychiatric treatment should be revealed (with anything related to other people redacted, of course.)

The sorts of people who commit these types of crimes frequently demonstrate a need for attention--to have their names known by everyone, and their faces on TVs everywhere. But if this were the type of attention they'd receive, I'd bet we'd see these crimes come to a pretty abrupt halt.

Some states do have laws requiring that guns be kept from children and violations can be punished. In one case, a distraught father, a police officer, was informed that his seven-year old daughter had shot herself with his service revolver, then immediately arrested, charged with failing to secure the gun. I guess that made him feel a lot better.

Of course, the usual followup by the antis is that since we cannot absolutely prevent unauthorized use of a gun, we must ban all guns except for police (see above). This ban will be enforced by house-to-house searches, backed by armored vehicles and attack aircraft, using smart bombs and napalm. Millions of people will be killed but the elite gun ban gang will be able to brag that they have made the nation a "gun free zone."

Jim

How do we prevent such a tragedy other than by a law similar to the one proposed?

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Fight crime. Shoot back.

I agree that crap happens, so the only thing I want is for my ability to make sure the crap does not happen to ME is not infringed. And, if I'm able to help it not happen to someone ELSE, then great. Trying to get to a Utopian society where nothing bad happens is the biggest problem I see with anti-gunners. People need to realize that bad stuff happens, so we need to equip people with the tools to protect themselves, not remove those tools and just hope the bad stuff won't happen here.

Gun Crazy, I believe you are on to something. I love a person who thinks outside the box. I have my own theory for global warmists, but that is for another board.

Consider a case where a teenager takes an unsecured gun from his parents, commits mass murder and then suicide.

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Consider a case where a teenager takes a gallon of gas from his parents, commits mass murder:

87 dead, Happy Land Social Club, The Bronx, New York, March 25, 1990. Arson.

32 dead, Upstairs Bar, New Orleans, June 24, 1973. Arson.

25 dead, Puerto Rican Social Club, New York City, Oct. 24, 1976. Arson.

24 dead, Gulliver's Discotheque, Port Chester, N.Y., June 30, 1974. Arson fire in nearby bowling alley spread to disco.

Instrumentality is a trivial consideration if someone is determined to commit mass murder. The best way to stop someone before they commit a crime? In a free country, you can't jail them for crimes they haven't committed yet, so we're stuck with allowing citizens to protect themselves.

As a psychology major, I've had to study suicide. I hate to say it, but people who are suicidal are especially dangerous, given their tunnel-vision view of their world. Their distorted perception of reality makes it essentially impossible for them to come to the realization that there is help available.

Whether a person has access to a firearm or not doesn't change said perception, although firearms are the suicide method of choice for the obvious reason.

In response to the thread title question: you can't.

By assuring them that he will not tally a high number of kills, will not become infamous because of that, and will just end up dead shortly after starting the attacks.

If a large number of people carried firearms in most locations, then the ability to make a big statement or become infamous by killing many people would be hampered, and far fewer would choose that course of action.

When such people are reminded of other incidents like the VC killer tallying large numbers, and gun free zones, hearing from the news of several such instances no matter where in the nation they occur, it presents that as an available option to future gunmen. Individuals that might have otherwise lashed out in another way consider that option presented to them so frequently.

Murders happen all over the nation every day. Yet they are only news localy. Even double and triple homicides. Yet a killer who kills random people in a public place is given air time all over the nation, often for days.

The individual that went on the spree in Australia, leading to the knee jerk gun control there was inspired and got the idea from the guy that had previous killed several children in the U.K. and had been shown all over the news for weeks, which is where the U.K.s strict knee jerk gun control initiated from.
Many school shootings, and attempts at mass shootings happened after the Columbine incident was given such wide coverage for weeks or months afterwards.

If potential gunmen were assured of getting bullets as return fire shortly after opening fire, and were assured of no more media attention than the local gang shooting, then I am quite confident far fewer incidents would occur.

You can't and won't, stop a truly suicidal person from finding some creative way to get dead. You can, however, limit the carnage and mayhem they cause along the way.

Brad

How do we prevent such a tragedy other than by a law similar to the one proposed?

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In the case of the dangerously insane, we start locking them away in aslyums again. The great experiment of letting them run loose hasn't worked, and keeping them in prison only works until they do their time and have to be released. There are people, including a recent spree killer in my neighborhood, who can NEVER be allowed to be free or off powerful medications.

As far as what to do when they're running around trying to kill people, that's pretty obvious--kill them first.

I'm in favor of an absolute ban on the publication of the names or photos of mass killers of any sort, regardless of weapon.

Yes, this means throttling the press on this one subject, to the point of threatening to jail them if they don't comply.

We have to deny them the "glory" they're seeking. Period. They're doing this because they KNOW their name, picture and "story" (and even percieved grievances) will make the national news.

I believe a 1st Amendment violation of this sort could survive a "strict scrutiny" level of oversight by the courts.