WE: After school shooting in Connecticut, Piers Morgan blasts America’s ‘gun madness’

[ixcuincle]

I am neutral in this affair but one has got to be baffled at the approach the NRA is taking to this affair.

One approach especially is mind-boggling, the notion to arm teachers or put security at schools. This has been done before. In one instance, the armed principal / school employee took down the shooter. But in other instances, such as Columbine, there was armed security present, and nothing happened.

I remember after VT, the same notions were in play about arming students to stop these types of acts. They showed on the news the students trying to react after an event had taken place. Accuracy was affected. So I don't know if it's the right thing to do. I don't know what the solution is to what appears to be mounting gun violence in this country. It seems to me to be a mental health issue.

[PeterMP]

Actually you are pretty much wrong. Look at Australia

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html

Homicides have pretty much stayed the same. Their gun ban went into effect in 96.

You can see the rest of the statistics. The gun ban actually did very little and homicides caused by guns was already trending down.

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html

Wiki doesn't seem to think guns are banned in Australia, just certain types (now it appears to be more restrictive then our previous assualt weapons ban).

In fact, wiki says in New South Wales gun ownership is up.

The other thing that's tricky here is there was a downward trend before, but why? Is there any real reason to believe it would continue?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_pol...e_20th_century

Maybe it alleviated and the tighter restrictions kicked in? Maybe they go hand-in-hand.

In addition, it appears there haven't been any mass shootings since the ban, while this isn't significant, but since they are rare, it is going to be difficult.

Certainly, the restrictions don't seem to have increased deaths.

[DCSaints_fan]

Even a repeal of the 2nd does not remove the weapons ,care to guess how bloodless that would be?

They could exempt current owners, but say no new weapons, like they did with automatic weapons. I would go a bit further than that and say no transfer of ownership, either. I would allow guns at the range, at hunting grounds, for police and maybe private security (registered), and maybe for the ranchers that need to fend off coyotes, etc. but the idea of people being allowed to keep an arsenal in their basement/trunk of their car just for no other reason they "like to shoot ****" is ridiculous.

[PeterMP]

Interesting points, I'll have to give it more thought...

I was coming mainly from two angles - in case of Columbine, i think that social problems (and perhaps lack of mating opportunities?) played an important role. So less ostratization may have helped there.

In case of Newtown, having more people involved may have had them raising red flags and suggesting professional evaluation, as well as possibly institutionalization, rather then having mom deciding hey, maybe guns would be a great hobby for my troubled son.


Possible evolutionary value of ostracizing troubled individuals is an interesting angle. That seems to be a natural reaction. However, as you noted, at this point we have institutionalized ostratization, so maybe getting more people in position to influence the decision making process would help. This way we can maybe avoid having single moms hide their violent kids in the basement until they pop.

I don't know what red flags were or were not raised by different authorities in the process.

She pulled her son out of the school system and home schooled him because she was not happy with what they were saying/doing. Maybe they were concerned with his behavior?

In that case, having the experts involved might have actually caused the more severe isolation.

In terms Columbine, I don't think there were any percieved issues with mental illness. Clearly, the kids involved had become somewhat isolated (though I'm not sure it was nearly what you seem to be suggesting in your post), but I don't think it was because of a social stigma related to mental illnesses.

And they were at least pretty close to at least one female because the person that bought them the guns was a girl.

While, I can see benefits of schools trying to foster a larger sense of community and potentially forcing interactions between different groups of students, I could also see how those things might also cause issues (there is almost no way everybody will be (or even will want to be) accepted in the larger community (some people by nature are isolationist in nature) and that might cause more severe isolationism and inter-group mixing might cause more inter-group rejection (boy from group A gets to spend time with girl from group B because of forced interaction, decide he likes her, and ends up getting rejected by her, which he blames on group divisions).

Though, I certainly don't know about this issue or these specific cases to make any real claims that this is likely to work, not work, or actually make the situation worse.

Maybe you know more than I do.