[Flipside]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20730717

Hot on the heels of a multiple stabbing in a school in China.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20723910

Now, whilst I fully expect this conversation to mention the difference in fatalities between the knife attack and the gun attack, the real concern here is that fact that schools seem to be becoming more and more a target for mentally unstable people wanting to prove a point as loudly as possible.

[Scotty]

I think the issue is greater than just schools.  There's a disturbing trend in the last few years of more shootings in general, not simply restricted to schools.  All of them are getting much better publicity than ever before, too.

I hate to put it so simply, but I think that increased publicity is exactly the problem, or at least part of it.  Anyone going in to do this kind of thing knows beforehand, that successful or not, devastating or not, their name is going to be plastered all over the nation (and even world) for days afterward.

For someone already going to off themselves, that's an incentive to make it bigger.

Now, don't mistake that as a reason for all of them, or probably even a majority of them.  I am, however, fairly sure that in at least a few cases, the guaranteed publicity from such an act was enough to "upgrade" it from a mere suicide to a mass shooting.

[General Battuta]

We need better health care for the mentally ill.

[Lorric]

Do you really want to open up this particular can of worms?

[Nuke]

We need better health care for the mentally ill.

got to agree there. ive been trying to get the government to pay my insanity bill for like 5 years now.

[redsniper]

The can of worms that many of these shooters are likely mentally ill and that the shootings and the shooters' deaths or imprisonment could likely be prevented if the poor had better access to mental healthcare and if mental illness wasn't so stigmatized in the US in general? That one? Because that actually sounds like a good one to get into instead of another GUN CONTROL RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE thread.

[Lorric]

We need better health care for the mentally ill.

got to agree there. ive been trying to get the government to pay my insanity bill for like 5 years now.

Here he goes again... 

Just shut the thread down. Nothing good can come of it.

[Flipside]

I will say that the FBI did itself no favours with its 'watchlist' that identifies a typical school shooter, but I will also say, as an outsider, that the US's apparently high usage of psychiatric drugs on younger people does concern me. A small part of me is worried that the supposed treatment may well be part of the problem.

With regards to gun laws, I will clarify that whilst it may impact casualities, it does prove that access to guns is not causal in any way to the act.

[Nuke]

The can of worms that many of these shooters are likely mentally ill and that the shootings and the shooters' deaths or imprisonment could likely be prevented if the poor had better access to mental healthcare and if mental illness wasn't so stigmatized in the US in general? That one? Because that actually sounds like a good one to get into instead of another GUN CONTROL RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE thread.

i have a right to defend myself against the sane people and ravenous bucks. yea lets not go there.

[Lorric]

*Post deleted. I'm not getting sucked in.*

[Nuke]

most of the time the shooter suicides so nobody really has a clue about what their motives are.

[Flipside]

Thing is, even if they do have a 'motive' it's often more an 'excuse', if they had not had that excuse, they would soon have found another.

[Scotty]

There is a very, very good reason that this should not turn into a gun control thread.

There was nothing to control here.  Gun control only works when the perpetrator of a gun crime expects to be able to get away with it and not be found and making it much more difficult for such to happen.  There was no such motivation here.  There was no background event to fail the check.  He was obviously patient enough for the waiting period.  This is not the kind of thing that gun control would protect against in the slightest.

[Nuke]

and look at the school stabbing in china, you apparently dont need a gun to go on a murderous rampage.

[Flipside]

Guns don't affect the cause, but they do affect the outcome.

That said, the US is far more likely to hand out bullet proof vests to schools than legislate guns, it's a safer political route.

I can understand the needs for guns in the more remote areas of the US, where there is the possibility of threat from wild animals. Often a shot into the air is enough to drive off an over-inquisitive bear, but, like all laws, it's not just about what is written down, it is about why it was written down and how relevant that is to modern US society.

In simplest terms, the Constitution is not the Bible, and the Amendments are not Commandments. To my mind, I need more of an argument than "Someone said it was OK 200 years ago.". Whilst that doesn't mean that the US Gun laws are inherently wrong, the simple fact that 'the Constitution says so' is not sufficient.

[SF-Junky]

Why is there actually never an armed patriotic american nearby to stop the amok running person before he can kill at least a dozen people?

[deathfun]

Flip's post prompted me to look up a comparison between shootings in the US, to other countries

It may be wikipedia, but it does provide some perspective regardless

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States

[Dilmah G]

I honestly cannot think of very much at all that your average Joe would need a semi-automatic weapon for, apart from Sport Shooting. Gun control over here in Australia effectively means 'no guns', which copped a lot of flak at the time that our Prime Minister Howard introduced the pieces of legislation that turned us into the firearms nanny-state, but at least we've never had a mass shooting in the 16 years since its been introduced, compared to 15 mass shootings in the 16 years leading up to it. Unfortunately you folks seem to have far more an entrenched gun culture than we ever did over here.

Whatever happens with these laws, I'm just pretty shaken that 27 people got shot today.

[headdie]

I wonder if this discussion can be relevant if you exclude gun control as it is a base aspect of the problem, I know you can use explosives, knives and any manner of weapons to do stuff like this but ultimately having legal access to a mag/clip loaded semi auto makes the act much easier.

having said that Gun control is not the (please excuse the pun) magic bullet as this is a multi faceted issue where open minded attitudes to mental health issues would help reduce the instances of these acts.

[The E]

Gun control is a peripheral issue in these things, I'm afraid. The bigger issue at play is the environment that is responsible for getting people to a point where they think that killing a lot of people is just the thing to relieve the burdens of your life.