School shooting Florida

[Border Reiver]

Considering that the school in question is in Florida, I think the school district was very negligent for not surrounding the school with an alligator-infested moat. Crossed only by a single drawbridge - raised during school hours, of course.

ETA: More realistically, the NRA's proposals for making schools safe suggests just that - no windows, except for a few near doors and those only with bulletproof glass. It would probably be cheaper to brick over windows than to replace then with bulletproof glass anyway.

When society needs to redesign schools to maximize defensibility in the event that the perimeter is breeched like a medieval fortress because that society refuses to regulate weapons and access to them, I would deem that it has moved to "what the devil is the point?" territory and should be treated like a crazy racist uncle at family dinner.

 

[Thermal]

I think that a reasonable argument could be made that you should need a license to keep your gun at home. If you don't get a license it stays at the range / hunting club / whatever.

In my beloved Garden State (NJ USA), that is essentially what we already have in place. Technically, you apply for a Firearms Purchaser ID card. In practice, you are required to carry it whenever you use a firearm. So if you have the card, you are a registered user/owner and otherwise cannot functionally use a gun, with a few exceptions. You couldn't, for instance, own a gun and store it at another location.

 

[jimbob]

When society needs to redesign schools to maximize defensibility in the event that the perimeter is breeched like a medieval fortress because that society refuses to regulate weapons and access to them, I would deem that it has moved to "what the devil is the point?" territory and should be treated like a crazy racist uncle at family dinner.

What? Praised by most of the GOP?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Oh, now I see the news. Fred Meyer stores have stopped selling guns to under 21. They are owned by Kroger who also owns Kroger stores (food).

Swoop, you need to tighten up on your reporting. Yesterday you posted false and misleading information about what Trump said (Cruz got guns from black market).

Kroger is the company, you think Fred Meyer made the choice without approval from the parent?

 

[Andy_Ross]

The first school I went to, the old St Peters School in Brotton was old victorian buildings. All the window sills were six feet off the floor and the windows narrow and too high to see out.
They let in light but there were no distractions.
Minf you, it had outside toilets as well.

 

[William Parcher]

Kroger is the company, you think Fred Meyer made the choice without approval from the parent?

I understand the forum sentiment that America is a steaming pile of dog feces. But still you don't have to confuse the ISF readers by telling them that a grocery store is selling guns.

 

[lobosrul5]

I understand the forum sentiment that America is a steaming pile of dog feces. But still you don't have to confuse the ISF readers by telling them that a grocery store is selling guns.

Walmart is by far the most popular place to shop for groceries here, Albertsons is a distant second, and they do also sell guns and ammo (yes in the same store).

 

[Nessie]

Oh, certainly - I think I have been perfectly clear in saying that I am far from believing that the UK is perfect when it comes to laws about gun ownership.

About 20 or more pages back one US poster objected to the way some UK posters here were describing UK gun laws as if they thought the UK could never again see anything like Hungerford or Dunblane. But I was amongst several UK posters who immediately said that of course we are not so naive as to think it was impossible for such things ever to happen again in the UK. It certainly could happen, but the tighter UK laws do seem to be making that much more difficult now.

The tightening of the law which has made mass shootings less likely, is the increased background checks and questioning of referees, to ensure only those properly suitable to have a gun can possess one.

The action taken to reduce the type of gun available for civilians, has not been so effective, as the Monkseaton and Cumbria shootings proved. At least those shootings did nothing to alter the type of gun that can be possessed.

 

[Thermal]

Re the highlight - the short answer is "Yes", at least in so far as I am definitely saying that as long as you allow millions of ordinary people to keep loaded guns in their homes, then you will inevitably see exactly all of the public shooting cases that we actually have seen in the US news over the past decades. IOW - afaik that is exactly what has actually happened in virtually every US shooting case (and I am thinking here particularly of the spree shootings such as the Florida School, but also most other examples of public shootings too) – in “every” case (with the caution of adding "afaik", and putting "every" in parenthesis in case there are some exceptions), what allowed to shooter to kill any of those people, was the fact that the shooter had the guns and bullets amassed in their home.

I agree in principle, but not in practice. In principle, you could also say the primary problem was private access to firearms in any way was the root problem. In practice, hundreds of millions of guns are kept safely and responsibly. The problem is that some unregulated persons are able to freely buy mass murder in a box at the local store. Dealing with this very small subset is the problem, and IMO a manageable one that does not push hard against the responsible sportsmen.

So I think we do have to address that fact. IOW, here is a statement, see if you think this is true - “As long as we continue to allow millions of private citizens in the US to stockpile guns and bullets in their own homes, then it's inevitable that every year some of those people will take their weapons onto the streets and start killing people". And no matter what other measures you introduce, such as banning automatic rifles or limiting the number of bullets, that will never significantly reduce the number of shooting incidents (unless of course you limit the number of bullets and the type of guns so dramatically that you are then very close to that same situation that I just described where loaded guns are effectively almost entirely taken out of home ownership)".

Again, respectfully disagreed. Millions of sportsmen manage to not go postal. Millions. Many of these people live in rural areas where formal ranges are financially impractical (you won't have a lot of thousand yard ranges in a poor area. They get expensive). The problem as I see it is a guy like Cruz getting his hands on modified military weapons. They have no business in the hands of a non-combatant. How much you can store at home becomes an academic problem; the black market is alive and well, as is illegal storage. The issue is clearing the weapons and ammo off the shelves and regulating the gray market. If these guns are not readily available to guys like Cruz, the threat is effectively minimized.

But, having said that, if you ask me "do I think that would be too extreme a stance to fly in the USA?" ... then of course I agree that at present (2018), neither US politicians or a large section of the US public want to make a change like that (i.e. effectively a ban on home ownership of guns). However - that certainly does not mean we should deny or ignore home ownership as the main cause of the problem. And nor should it mean that attempted solutions must always allow the same sort of free home ownership that exists now, because that would always be a deliberate recipe for allowing the killing to continue.

So what could I propose to do about home ownership in the US. Well, if we agree that home ownership is 90 to 99.9% of the problem (or whatever % anyone wants to pluck from the air), then I think the US or any other nation should introduce a program of reforms that are designed to minimise, over a period of time, the availability of any loaded guns in private homes (i.e. something similar to what has actually been done in the UK). Because if you fail to do that, then the killings will certainly continue, and probably with little or no significant reduction in the number of deaths.

I think home ownership is closer to 5% of the problem. 95% is access to weapons which have no business in civilian hands. Consider the UK (as I have been reading about). Shotguns and small caliber rifles in homes, with ammo, and no daily mass shootings. Seems awfully effective to me.

Final point – is it inevitably the case that the US could never reduce or make illegal home ownership like that? Answer – no, obviously it's not impossible for the US or any nation to do that. But it looks as if it will take a great many more deaths and many more tragic cases like the Florida School shooting before enough people in the US and enough US politicians start to call for really serious limitations on home ownership of lethal weapons, and that may take many more decades … but if that's the only real way to stop it, then I think that in the end that will have to be done.

I think we are largely in agreement, except for defining the hilited. You seem to think any gun is a lethal weapon. That's true, in the sense that a baseball bat is, too. I think that rapid fire high-capacity guns are the enemy, not a hunting shotgun that holds 1-3 shells. Adopting the NJ laws, with a little tighter regulation, seems tolerable to both sides of the debate. New Jerseans are not exactly a docile bunch, and we manage to get by. The rest of the country should be able to cope with reloading a little more often for the sake of putting the brakes on mass murderers.

 

[Thermal]

It is the fantasy in their head that is important. It isn't about lying liberal math or things like that. It is about proper feelings. So the math might say having guns around your home makes you less safe, but they feel that they are going to be attacked at any moment and it makes them feel safer. It is like refusing to wear the seatbelt so that in the case of an accident you are thrown clear and unhurt.

Yeah, the Rambos and Mad Max-ers make us all look bad.

 

[Thermal]

Can I just quietly and politely say that whilst you can't imagine a situation where you personally would ever fire guns in your own home, or where you would leave loaded guns casually on open access, the problem is that there are X-million gun owners in the US, and with numbers that large it's absolutely certain that every single day there will be many thousands of gun owners across the US doing exactly that and leaving loaded guns (or un-loaded guns next to boxes of bullets), all quite openly/easily available around the house for anyone to pick up. And that is always certain to continue as long as it remains so easy for people to keep all manner of guns and bullets in their own homes ... that's really the problem imho ... that's what's leading to almost all of the US public shooting cases.

You think? I think what leads to them are utterly untrained people buying military functioning weapons off the shelf leads to them. I don't see many sportsmen snapping and grabbing their shotguns and shooting up schools. And there are millions of them. Aroura, Sandy hook, Columbine, Parkland...military functioning hardware was a factor. Over-and-under shotguns and bolt action rifles, not so much.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

I agree in principle, but not in practice. In principle, you could also say the primary problem was private access to firearms in any way was the root problem. In practice, hundreds of millions of guns are kept safely and responsibly. The problem is that some unregulated persons are able to freely buy mass murder in a box at the local store. Dealing with this very small subset is the problem, and IMO a manageable one that does not push hard against the responsible sportsmen.



Again, respectfully disagreed. Millions of sportsmen manage to not go postal. Millions. Many of these people live in rural areas where formal ranges are financially impractical (you won't have a lot of thousand yard ranges in a poor area. They get expensive). The problem as I see it is a guy like Cruz getting his hands on modified military weapons. They have no business in the hands of a non-combatant. How much you can store at home becomes an academic problem; the black market is alive and well, as is illegal storage. The issue is clearing the weapons and ammo off the shelves and regulating the gray market. If these guns are not readily available to guys like Cruz, the threat is effectively minimized.



I think home ownership is closer to 5% of the problem. 95% is access to weapons which have no business in civilian hands. Consider the UK (as I have been reading about). Shotguns and small caliber rifles in homes, with ammo, and no daily mass shootings. Seems awfully effective to me.



I think we are largely in agreement, except for defining the hilited. You seem to think any gun is a lethal weapon. That's true, in the sense that a baseball bat is, too. I think that rapid fire high-capacity guns are the enemy, not a hunting shotgun that holds 1-3 shells. Adopting the NJ laws, with a little tighter regulation, seems tolerable to both sides of the debate. New Jerseans are not exactly a docile bunch, and we manage to get by. The rest of the country should be able to cope with reloading a little more often for the sake of putting the brakes on mass murderers.

I just want to say that imho there is a lot of sense distilled into this post.

 

[William Parcher]

Walmart is by far the most popular place to shop for groceries here, Albertsons is a distant second, and they do also sell guns and ammo (yes in the same store).

But Kroger is a grocery store.

 

[Thermal]

Was this the thread where we discussed the 'outlandish' suggestions of the NRA to 'harden' schools? One of the NRA's suggestions was to install bullet resistant glass. This was met with derision by many. Considering that the Florida school shooting suspect attempted to shootout a glass window to set-up a perch, does anybody want to reevaluate their position?

Turn schools into fortresses so that whack jobs can roam the streets with modified military weapons? Gonna go with 'no' on that proposal.

Restrict rapid fire high capacity weapons to those who pass additional licensing/background checks? Yeah, still rolling with that.

 

[Thermal]

We've got criminally insane people walking the streets and yet they still only want to talk about the guns.

Hard to identify them, and when you do, hard to do much about it. We can restrict their ability to easily acquire mass murdering tools, though.

 

[crescent]

But Kroger is a grocery store.

Kroger is both.

Kroger is a company that owns a lot things - mostly grocery stores, but lots of other things as well, gas stations, convenience stores, this that and the other thing.

Kroger is also one of the brand names used for some of the grocery stores owned by the company. Most of its grocery stores are not called Kroger, they go under other brand names such as Smiths, City Market, King Soopers and a bunch of others.

Kroger is the name of the company, that name is by no means limited to the stores that also use the name..

 

[lobosrul5]

But Kroger is a grocery store.

Yeah, they go by Smith's here. My point was there are indeed grocery stores that also sell ammo. I mean they're called "Super Centers", but you can pay for groceries, and ammo, at the same time, at the same checkout line. I take no stance as that to being good or bad, but its not 100% false to say we sell ammo at grocery stores.

 

[William Parcher]

If you see a store and the sign says "Kroger", when you walk inside you will find food but no guns.

 

[lobosrul5]

If you see a store and the sign says "Kroger", when you walk inside you will find food but no guns.

And if you re-read what I was responding to:

I understand the forum sentiment that America is a steaming pile of dog feces. But still you don't have to confuse the ISF readers by telling them that a grocery store is selling guns.

You will not find the word "Kroger" to be present. You will instead find the words "grocery store". You can indeed find stores in America that sell food and ammo/guns all over the place.

 

[William Parcher]

but its not 100% false to say we sell ammo at grocery stores.

It's misleading not to explain further. The reason for that is because a grocery store is a place for food. It's not a place for sporting goods and it's not a place for food and sporting goods.