In reply to Bob the REAL oil guy. :
In PA it's way to easy to get a carry permit for me to ever think letting people carry in schools is a good idea.
In reply to Bob the REAL oil guy. :
In PA it's way to easy to get a carry permit for me to ever think letting people carry in schools is a good idea.
It's funny to me that we have "schools are like prisons" and "arm the teachers" in the same thread.
What could make a school more like a prison?
Well Mr Burns, how about armed guards?
Excellent Smithers, excellent.
STM317 said:Increasing the age for legal ownership seems like a fine idea on the surface, but it's not going to stop anybody that's remotely determined to go through with something like this. How many of these shooters are using their own weapons? It seems like most of them use guns from their families' gun safes, or their buddy's house, etc. Sick, determined people will find a way. They'll buy guns illegally, or they'll legally purchase parts, and download free models to 3D print untraceable, unregistered guns. You'll still have kids that grow up using guns for hunting with their dads, or receiving military training long before they'd legally be able to own a firearm.
I think it's crazy that a hormonal, immature and easily influenced teen can own firearms, but I don't think that raising the age of ownership would curtail stuff like this as much as people hope. I'm not completely against trying, but I worry that it might be mostly a wasted effort that fails to address the root cause.
Two more points id like to add to my rant:
I don’t agree with raising the age of majority unless you raise the age you’re allowed to start serving in the military and/or register for the draft. If you can be called up to fight, kill, and die for your country, you’re an adult and deserve the rights and privileges and responsibilities that brings. We should also therefore tailor K-12 education to prepare for the reality that kids are legally adults at 18.
Back to gun access, I alsothink it should be a crime to not store your firearms in a secured condition. Locked in a safe, locked in a case, cable locked, whatever I don’t care but you have to make it difficult for someone who shouldn’t have access to your firearms to use them when they’re not under your immediate personal supervision.
I’ll worry about illegally 3D printed guns when someone commits crimes with them.
volvoclearinghouse said:I just learned that 11 teens die every day from texting-related accidents while driving. I'm going to add "ability to purchase and possess a smartphone" to my original list.
On a semi-serious note, anyone heard about GVROs? Interesting concept....
This is untrue and if you do the math does not add up. Comes up in my DE class every semester. 11 times 365 = 4015. That number is higher than all teens who died in one calender year from all motor vehicle crashes. Not possible.
Robbie said:It's funny to me that we have "schools are like prisons" and "arm the teachers" in the same thread.
What could make a school more like a prison?
I’ve always joked with my kids about school being “child prison” and it’s getting closer? This is only a joke - no need to panic as I compared school to prison.
Mandatory 12 year sentence, principal is the warden, teachers are the guards, people might shank you, you get let out in the yard for exercise (gym or lunch) and someday your freedom (graduation) will happen!
alfadriver said:z31maniac said:alfadriver said:z31maniac said:The_Jed said:mtn said:Obviously it is a mental health problem, but I still haven't heard a convincing argument about why machine guns (and don't tell me that these bump stops and AR-15's and whatnot are not machine guns) are legal. They sure as hell aren't good for self defense--that'd be a shotgun or a handgun.
IBTL.
I agree, in part, that it is a mental health issue. The other and much larger part is an obviously mentally disturbed individual was easily able to acquire a civilian version of a military firearm.
ARs aren't auto. The only difference is they look different than a hunting rifle that can accept a magazine.
Why is the wood one OK?What hunting rifle can shoot 30 rounds in less than a min?
AR's are very much not like a hunting rifle that can accept a magazine. Especially a hunting rifle that is set up to be used for normal hunting, not harvesting.
Again, ignoring the blunt question to try and move the goalposts.
So if I have two .223 rifles, one looks like a hunting rifle (wood stock) and one looks like something from the military (black composite stock).
How are the different? You nor pheller explained that, just "what they are associated with?"
A truck ran over how many people in Nice? Let's ban them for what they are associated with.
I'm all for more stringent gun regulation and training, but I don't hear any good ideas other than "appeals to emotion" from the other side.I'm not ignoring anything. The significant difference between a normal hunting rifle and an AR is magazine size and rate of fire. Looks don't matter.
Why is it a bad idea to reduce magazine size and fire rate? THAT is one of the key reasons there are so many deaths in mass shooting incidents.
The difference between a normal hunting rifle and an AR is pretty obvious to me.
Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse but I just got home from work. The AR-15 is literally the civilian version of the M16A2 service rifle, which can fire in semi-auto or three round burst.
The_Jed said:alfadriver said:z31maniac said:alfadriver said:z31maniac said:The_Jed said:mtn said:Obviously it is a mental health problem, but I still haven't heard a convincing argument about why machine guns (and don't tell me that these bump stops and AR-15's and whatnot are not machine guns) are legal. They sure as hell aren't good for self defense--that'd be a shotgun or a handgun.
IBTL.
I agree, in part, that it is a mental health issue. The other and much larger part is an obviously mentally disturbed individual was easily able to acquire a civilian version of a military firearm.
ARs aren't auto. The only difference is they look different than a hunting rifle that can accept a magazine.
Why is the wood one OK?What hunting rifle can shoot 30 rounds in less than a min?
AR's are very much not like a hunting rifle that can accept a magazine. Especially a hunting rifle that is set up to be used for normal hunting, not harvesting.
Again, ignoring the blunt question to try and move the goalposts.
So if I have two .223 rifles, one looks like a hunting rifle (wood stock) and one looks like something from the military (black composite stock).
How are the different? You nor pheller explained that, just "what they are associated with?"
A truck ran over how many people in Nice? Let's ban them for what they are associated with.
I'm all for more stringent gun regulation and training, but I don't hear any good ideas other than "appeals to emotion" from the other side.I'm not ignoring anything. The significant difference between a normal hunting rifle and an AR is magazine size and rate of fire. Looks don't matter.
Why is it a bad idea to reduce magazine size and fire rate? THAT is one of the key reasons there are so many deaths in mass shooting incidents.
The difference between a normal hunting rifle and an AR is pretty obvious to me.
Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse but I just got home from work. The AR-15 is literally the civilian version of the M16A2 service rifle, which can fire in semi-auto or three round burst.
But the ar cannot fire 3 round burst, right?
In reply to joey48442 :
not without committing a few felonies or letting the atf climb directly inside your shiny happy person for the rest of your life.
I'm happy to see this thread is still open, this is a good discussion to have.
In my opinion, this is a very tough problem to solve because it is such a rare problem. Despite the fact that incidents are occurring at an alarmingly increasing rate, a school shooting is a statistical anomaly. But when it happens, it's a horrific tragedy that everyone would like to prevent from happening again. The problem is that there is no one cause, despite how passionately some believe they can solve the problem. The GOOD thing is, it usually takes a lot of factors to come together to make a mass shooter. It's not as simple as access to guns, mental illness, evil people, broken homes, drug use, bullying, suicidal, intelligence, religion, media, etc. etc.. Those are are possible factors. We probably have hundreds of thousands of people that have many or most of those factors that apply to them, and 99.9% of those people will never commit a mass shooting. If you drew a Venn diagram of all of the factors, very few people would have enough that overlap and form "mass shooter" at the center.
So why are incidents occurring with more frequency, and how do we stop it?
There have been a lot of changes to our society. We've probably always had lots of people just outside the middle of that Venn diagram, with lots of factors but not enough to push them over the edge. Something has changed to so that some of them are now falling into the middle.
A big circle is guns. Can't have school shootings without guns. Remove that circle from the diagram, problem solved. But guns represent a very large circle for 99.99999% of law abiding citizens, and many would argue that even if it were possible, eliminating guns would do more harm than good. To many, that is a huge hit to liberty for a very small return in security. You could remove the schools, and that would also eliminate school shootings. As preposterous as that sounds, it's not much more preposterous that eliminating guns to many people.
We could limit the types of guns. Much smaller circle, but again a big liberty Vs. security argument, and it's also a bit of a blind stab at the problem according to many.
Mental health is a big circle. But what to do? How ill does someone have to be, and at what point do you deny their liberty? Who decides?
Violent people. Separating violent people from society (prison) can be effective. Can't shoot up a school if you are already behind bars. Our society has softened on incarceration. Do we lock up every violent person and throw away the key with the hopes of keeping a potential school shooter or two off the street?
I could go on and on with dozens of factors, but my point is it usually takes multiple factors to make a mass shooter. Broad, sweeping changes to one factor might limit mass shooters, but affect millions of others. But if small changes "caused" the increases in mass shooters, then it's reasonable that small changes could also prevent them. The tough part is identifying and implementing the small changes.
skierd said:I don’t agree with raising the age of majority unless you raise the age you’re allowed to start serving in the military and/or register for the draft. If you can be called up to fight, kill, and die for your country, you’re an adult and deserve the rights and privileges and responsibilities that brings...
I agree with you. I would also support raising the minimum age for military service as well.
News update, turns out a "good guy with a gun" was there but decided to hide outside the building:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/23/us/florida-school-shooting/index.html
IIRC something similar happened in the San Bernardino shooting?
Edit: Maybe I was thinking of the Umpqua College shooting:
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2015/10/umpqua_community_college_not_a.html
pheller said:
The OP proposed regulations on reproduction and voting age. He was trolling.
Was I? 
In reply to vwcorvette :
OK, so focus on my joke and ignore the serious proposal (GVRO). :-P
Anyway, according to THIS, 8 teens die per day in car crashes, on average. That's about 2500 per year. SUPPOSEDLY about 10% of those were caused by "distracted driving", though I'd wager the actual number is higher. Anyway, let's say 250 per year. How many students die in school shootings every year?
Type Q said:I would like for a minute go back to Volvo Clearing House's original question. I think we should consider moving the age of majority back to 21. I was certainly did not have my stuff together to function as an adult when I was 18. Fortunately on some level I understood it. I stayed in "the village" of older people of people who had guided me until then. So even though I had the right to do many things and get into all kinds trouble I managed not to.
A lot of science studying brain development indicates that most people are not fully formed yet by 18. The judgment center of the brain is still under construction through out the teenage years. Maybe we collectively need to just slow down and let kids be kids a while longer.
Well typed.
Crxpilot said:I’ll weigh in on the op’s remarks. Kids aren’t experiencing the real world as soon as they used to. My dad used to help his grandmother butcher chickens and harvest tobacco 60 years ago, as a kid. Not that diy kfc and farming are the norm, just that parents are so protective and too eager to “coddle kids to success” which cannot work.
Frankly, my kids get food and shelter, a solid mom and dad, and access to a good public school. They’re going to have to figure out a lot on their own. And fairly soon. If I baby them too much now they’ll have no competitive chance when they’re working-age. They’ll know apps and social media but not people skills and the immediate returns of hard work.
Kids that go nuclear are over-prescribed, too coddled, and unable to cope with the big real world. So they snap. “This is it. Gotta go big now or never.” How silly is that at 18? They have 70 years of life left. The result of no foundation for real life.
My wife and I were discussing this last night. I told her about he post I'd started here (and forwarded her the text, since she's not on GRM) and we discussed some things that we're doing that a lot of parents probably aren't. Our kids are going to grow up in an old house that mommy and daddy are constantly working on, with old cars that are always getting fixed, around animals that need to be fed, cared for, and die, growing our own food, and in general all sorts of very physical, manual, and real tasks. And, yes, they will learn how to use a firearm properly.
I'm reading one of the Little House on the Prarie books to my 3-year old daughter now. In the first chapter the father kills two deer, strings them up in the front yard, and butchers them. he kills a pig and butchers that- and the kids get to play with the pig's bladder (how do you think most sports balls started out?). The dad traps and hunts. The mom renders lard and helps smoke meat. Etc. If you tried to have kids in a class read that book, probably 1/4 of the parents would say it was too violent, or call PETA on you. And yet they'll happily drag their little snowflakes down to McDonalds.
We've become detached from reality in this country.
Late to the party, glad the door's still open. I commented this the other day:
"So my 71yr old mother, all 5'2" 100# and never even driven a car, is not only expected to teach kids, but she's also expected to purchase a gun, not only become proficient but also be combat proficient in a crisis situation with a probably-better armed assailant(s) and 30+ panicking kids in her room? berkeley these idiots."
Also: Utah teacher shoots herself in the leg at school, would make an excellent defender in crisis situation? " "A similar incident occurred in another state just last week, when a professor accidentally discharged his handgun and shot himself in the foot while walking on the campus of Idaho State University."
Virginia tech has a fully suited and booted police force. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
I will I’ll say that my wife and her colleagues(teachers) have said that if you arm their colleagues at work they are done teaching. I won’t let my wife teach if that happens. Having been around her colleagues for years. I don’t trust them with guns. I barely trust them to read out of a teachers edition social studies book
Fueled by Caffeine said:Having been around her colleagues for years. I don’t trust them with guns. I barely trust them to read out of a teachers edition social studies book
This is one of the biggest problems I see with arming teachers. A tiny percentage of teachers will go nuts and shoot students. A tiny percentage students will go nuts, get the teachers gun and go on a shooting rampage - no need to seethe over problems for years and buy a gun, in the heat of the moment it'll be on the teacher's body or maybe even in/on their desk. There will also be some accidental deaths from these guns. These rare incidents, repeated over a very large number of classrooms with armed teachers, could collectively outnumber the reduction in deaths from mass shootings - especially when there seems to be a trend of "good guys with guns" waiting outside the scene of the mass shooting rather than intervening.
And that's not even getting into how messed up the very concept of arming teachers is.
In reply to Jerry :
Nobody has even hinted at making teacher carry mandatory. Obviously that's a stupid idea and the sort of carrying to absurdity that both sides use to invalidate any argument.
There are however people (like myself for instance) who have experience with firearms. Have an ability and desire to be able to do more than cower in the corner. So get the laws out of the way for them.
Will accidents happen? Of course they will, people will shoot themselves in the foot. People are flawed. But "perfect" isn't an option, so getting to "better" should be the goal.
spitfirebill said:frenchyd said:I mean machine guns are illegal aren’t they?
No. Just very difficult and expensive to get... if you want to do it legally.
So if I want a machine gun I can buy one at my neighborhood gun store after I do a quick paperwork form or 2?
I remember the fun I had shooting barrels full of water with twin 50’s just before going to Vietnam. So shouldn’t everyone be able to have that same amount of fun?
OK, I'd like to toss out a couple ideas for steps that might get support from all corners (at least if Congress can resist the urge to just play politics and not give "the other side" a win). Some of these may apply more to ordinary street crime than mass shootings, but fewer murders are fewer murders.
First, at least two of the mass shooters we've seen lately should never have made it through a background check. This guy in Florida had a history of people calling the cops on him for pointing guns at people. There was also Dylan Roof - he had a court case pending that should have disqualified him. So there's definitely some room to improve the system. And while you're at it, give private citizens a good way to access the background check system if they're selling a gun - not necessarily require it, but make this possible.
Second, many criminals steal their guns rather than buying them legally. Get a law requiring that if your gun is stolen, you need to report it to the cops within a day of finding it's gone missing. Get reports of stolen guns in to the cops early, and they'll have a better shot at tracking down illegal guns and getting them off the street.
jmabarone said:Chris_V said:wjones said:You know on gun forums there going ape-E36 M3 saying that this is all a conspiracy; the kids are being used as pawns and embellishing their distress; they are being paid by the anti-gunners.
The only solution for them is to allow guns in schools.
Oh, yeah. Brenda the social studies teacher is who I want brandishing a gun in the middle of a hundred panicked kids. We can't even fund school supplies and those NRA morons want teachers to buy, train, and carry weapons?
What about the teachers that want the option to carry? My wife was a teacher (stay-at-home mom and homeschool teacher) and she mentioned numerous times how other teachers at her school would have liked to have the option.
When another country decided to arm their teachers for just this sort of thing a month later one teacher was cleaning his weapon and it went off killing a girl walking by.
Having been a teacher myself there are a few teachers I wouldn’t trust with a weapon.
A fair argument against arming teachers is that then the students could demand to be armed for protection against unreasonable teachers.
“ what do you mean I’m going to fail for not handing in my homework”
In reply to SVreX : I agree with you but it’s more pervasive than just schools. ( not that schools are trivial) it wasn’t that long ago a disgruntled employee went to work and shot up the business he worked at.
In Las Vegas they were just going to a concert.
Drive by shootings are all too common in every metro area.
Even law enforcement has their share of questionable shootings.
Yet other country’s where gun ownership is legal don’t have a fraction of the problem we do here in America. Japan averages 5 a year, England? Etc.
What are they doing that we aren’t?
frenchyd said:spitfirebill said:frenchyd said:I mean machine guns are illegal aren’t they?
No. Just very difficult and expensive to get... if you want to do it legally.
So if I want a machine gun I can buy one at my neighborhood gun store after I do a quick paperwork form or 2?
I remember the fun I had shooting barrels full of water with twin 50’s just before going to Vietnam. So shouldn’t everyone be able to have that same amount of fun?
Not sure if you're serious? If you really want to know:
There's no legal full auto anything on the market manufactured post 1986, (Fire Arms Owners Protection Act of '86). The few pre '86 full auto firearms that change hands in the firearms market are expensive, like good used car prices, $10K+, and only do so if the buyer has gone through a time consuming, i.e. months to a year+ of waiting on approval for an NFA Tax Stamp approval process from the ATF. The Stamp itself is fairly affordable $200.
You could technically build your own full auto legally, but you're average wannabe, urban commando, isn't going to have the where-with-all, knowledge skills and ability, to do so, and you've got to be a Special Occupational Tax (SOT) Class 3 firearms dealer. There are fees, and licensing involved with becoming an SOT as well, but I'm not as familiar with those details. As an SOT dealer, though, you're only able to sell your new manufactured full auto goods to military and law enforcement. If your license lapses, you don't renew, your inventory is supposed to be rendered inoperable.
Some additional info relevant to some other comments here:
As for the AR-15 variants, you can't simply "make one fully auto," it's not just drop in parts, an auto sear will not physically fit inside of an off the shelf AR lower receiver.
As to the multiple comments about the AR or any other semi auto firearms "rates of fire," they have no grater rate of fire than the speed at which you can pull the trigger with out some kind of add on device, i.e. slide/bump stock or gatling trigger mechanism.
As to the magazine capacity, it has been demonstrated by several folks, that with practice, an individual is mere seconds slower shooting 30 rounds while swapping out 3X 10 round magazines as someone with a single 30 round magazine.
The AR platform is an excellent hunting platform, especially for varmints. It's the go to for many when humanly dispatching coyotes and feral dogs harassing livestock on the farm.
Listening to 1A on NPR earlier this week, their "AR-15 expert" had me cringing a few times, would be nice if folks knew what they were talking about before going on national media as an "expert," or ya know, attempting to legislate.
bigdaddylee82 said:As for the AR-15 variants, you can't simply "make one fully auto," it's not just drop in parts, an auto sear will not physically fit inside of an off the shelf AR lower receiver.
From my understanding while it's not a "bolt-in" mod, you can machine an-off-the-shelf lower receiver to accept a "bolt-in" full auto mod or CNC your own full-auto lower receiver from scratch, correct? (although it is super illegal to do so)
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