Mass Shooting Media Events

[rskent]

There is a lot of news (or noise) lately about “mass shootings” in our country. As others have said here and other places it might be time to float a few ideas around. If we don't put some ideas out there Hillary certainly will. Not talking about suicides or gang violence here. They are a totally different problems with totally different solutions. If we lose our gun rights it will not be because someone decided to commit suicide by cop. Or because some gang banger shot some other banger. It will be because a bunch of innocent kids got shot up by a person that wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and take as many with him as he could. Most have been flogged for their ideas. And I expect to be as well. So here we go.

In seems like most mass shooting media events have some similarity’s.

Mostly they involve an angry young man, angry to the point of being delusional.

Mostly they involve guns.

Mostly they are in gun free zones.

Its like a three legged stool. Take away one leg and the stool falls. If you have a gun free zone and an angry young man and no gun (Hilary’s plan), no shooting event. So what do we do if we don’t want to be led down the garden path by Hilary? Lets look at this.

Angry young man. While its probably true that you can't always figure out who will turn out to be the angry young man you can certainly try. Where I would try is in school. It seems to me that if there was a school resource officer in every school (big schools have more, small schools one) that was trained to identify problem children early on. If we could put a system in place to work with teachers, parents, and heath professionals we might help stop an event. Even if we let an angry young man slip threw, think of all the kids we would be able to help. There doesn't seem to be any shortage of kids that could use some help.

The downside would be that it would be expensive to hire and train school resource officers. It would also take time. So not a quick, cheep fix. I think it could be worth the expense. I don’t see any downside to helping kids find ways to cope with life.

Guns. Keeping guns out of the hands if people that shouldn’t have them without infringing on the rights of the people that should have them. Gun registration, Universal background checks? No, Hell No! Not in the commonly used sense of the term. It seems to me that universal background checks could help if they were actually universal. Not about or tied to buying a gun. Think about this. When you go to renew your drivers license or id you get a background check. The front of your license looks normal, the back has information that would be useful to specific retailers, heath care, and law enforcement. Information such as medical conditions, felony convictions, citizenship, sex offender, legal to or not to possess a firearm.

Their are several downsides to this one. Especially if you are a felon of if you are undocumented. Hard to get this one past ACLU. It would be more of a pain to get a license for sure and it would cost. I think it could also help law enforcement and others do their jobs more efficiently.

Gun free zones. Or as I think of them, soft targets. The idea that we life such a utopian society that we can just say “no guns allowed” is just insane to me. The gun free zones have to go. Fortunately this one is easy and cheep. First allow concealed carry in those areas. Second, All those resource officers I went on about before, well police officers seem to always carry guns. Win Win You get protection from the bad guy and you get a positive roll model that visibly has a gun.

Just thinking out loud.

 

[hso]

What does a driver's license with static information on it that could be out of date provide that the current NICS system with updated databases doesn't? How does putting personal privacy information on the back of a card that your boss's kid waiting on you at the diner can copy with his phone help accomplish more than NICS? Since the mass murderers purchased firearms through FFLs and passed background checks how would a card information block be anything more than the NICS checks they passed?

School Resource Officers are cops, not psychologists or profilers. School counselors aren't staffed or trained as profilers either and they don't have the time to search for the signs in social media of bullying or isolation of these rare disaffected angry young men who family has sheltered and are in denial instead of seeking help for them. The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit #2 is a team of professionals focused on this, some states and individual jurisdictions have Crisis Intervention Offices and CI or Mental Health trained deputies. Crisis intervention teams might have a beneficial effect, but they're not going to be able to keep contact with these young men when they move away from HS unless there's a system in place to hand them off to another team. Paying for such a team for all the potentially disaffected and angry young men that haven't been charged with anything or committed is a challenge and then there's the invasive information search approach to public surveillance issues that come up if you want a nationwide system.

We saw in Oregon that armed citizens carrying for their personal protection don't rush to the sound of gunfire. That's not what carry is about anyway. The few minutes it takes for a school mass murderer to carry out their carnage is far too short for any effort to stop them without training and preparation to be able to identify and respond to the exact location of the murderer.

 

[Whiskey11]

I think you are on the right path but I doubt many outside these forums will follow. Mostly because it requires admitting that firearms aren't evil and partly because it makes sense. And we all know that if it makes sense, we wont do it.

Problem with SRO's, and this is coming from an LEO, is that even if an SRO identifies these kids and puts them into the system early on, the system after his involvement is so lackluster to basically be ineffectual. I can't tell you the number of times I've taken people, against their will, to mental health places only to have them say the "magic words" and be out in 3-4 days. Heck, my first Emergency Protective Custody placement put a 30-40 krag to his head and threatened to take his life. He was out in 4 days and 2 weeks later was in and got a handgun purchase permit like it was nothing.

I'm all for SRO's as a security measure but I don't foresee this being a viable long term solution absent changes to the system "after" his involvement.

At the rate at which people actually update their driver's licenses, your proposed system would be too far behind NICS to be useful. NICS is far more efficient. The problem is figuring out ways to improve NICS without also violating the myriad of other laws in place that protect patient information (HIPA mostly) or other laws regarding privacy. This is 50% the reason why UBC's will never work and the other half is that criminals wont be stopping by the local FFL anytime soon. Not that I have to tell anyone here that.

As much as law enforcement is a deterrent, we also aren't. One SRO in even a smaller school can't possibly stop or sufficiently harden the place to deter a committed person. If anything they represent target #1. This is why layers are appropriate in defense and I really feel that if there are teachers that are willing and able to CCW, they should be allowed to.

hso brings up a good point about CCW anyways. You wont see the average CCW holder going to the sound of gunfire. They will use it if they need to or are in a position to do so but wont actively go seeking the confrontation. After all, that's exactly what they are taught: First, never put yourself into harms way unnecessarily and escape if reasonable to do so. Second, understand that police arriving on scene are looking for someone with a gun and that being that person could result in your loss of life. I'd do the same thing if I wasn't in uniform and didn't have a badge on me or some other identifying marks.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

In seems like most mass shooting media events have some similarity’s.

Mostly they involve guns.

I am sorry, but I am unaware of the mass shootings that don't involve guns. Could you please elaborate about these?

We saw in Oregon that armed citizens carrying for their personal protection don't rush to the sound of gunfire.

No, Parker did not. Were there others? Mark Wilson did in Tyler, Texas, however. He died. Joe Zamudio did in Arizona. He almost shot the wrong person because of poor situational comprehension that seemed to be related to his tardiness of arrival. Dan McKown was a CHL holder caught in the middle of the Tacoma Mall shooting and did not try to engage the shooter with his gun and was shot multiple times when he yelled at the shooter. Principal Myrick did at Pearl, MS. He survived as did the shooter.

Parker, Zamudio, and McKown all made sure to be on the news and talk of their prowess to protect others with their guns. Parker stated how he was trained to run to danger, but then he didn't.

CCWs are a real mixed bag and certainly cannot be counted on to be heroes in a crisis, even when they bluster after the event about how they are trained and carry to protect others, but failed to do so.

 

[2ifbyC]

I understand your desire to study these events and to propose solutions that would solve the problem. However, it’s a fool’s errand thrust upon the law abiding gun owner as somehow guilty for the malicious deeds of others. It will arise each and every time when a shooting occurs when the type of individual, crime scene, or victims’ age befits the most outlandish outrage.

There is no answer to a suicidal maniac wanting to kill. Let’s go on the offense, not defense. Have the anti-gun establishment prove that more laws would prevent these events from occurring; an impossibility.

The solutions proposed by the gun establishment fall on deaf ears. The liberals’ only answer is more gun laws.

It amazes me how the vocal minority have transformed the fabric of America. The Constitution is nothing more than a doormat for liberals to wipe their feet. Let your views be known to your representatives; let our voice be known before you have none.