School shooting Florida

[Pterodactyl]

Which of the following should be described as a "school shooting" ?

A non-student shoots another non-student across the street from a school.

A student shoots a non-student across the street from a school.

A non-student shoots another non-student in the school parking lot.

A non-student commits suicide in an unoccupied school.

A non-student commits suicide in an occupied school.

A non-student fires a round at an unoccupied school building during Christmas break.

 

[William Parcher]

Does it matter who they were?

A student used a gun to murder two people in a school.

It could help to understand and prevent shootings at schools if details are explained. This one happened at a dorm room which is like part of an apartment building. It isn't the same as a classroom.

Among school shootings it's highly unusual because the sophomore shot his own parents in his own bedroom. It's a domestic incident that happened to occur at a school.

 

[crescent]

These types baffle me the most. Have they not gotten a gander at the US Military in the last century? What level of delusion are they under to think that armed conflict with the most powerful armed forces the world has ever seen would be feasible?

They either think that the military will take their side, or that the military will experience mass defections or mutiny, with the defectors joining the militia. Third scenario is that the military is ordered to stand down and allow a foreign/UN military to occupy the US.

 

[Ranb]

A non-student shoots another non-student in the school parking lot.
A non-student commits suicide in an occupied school.
A non-student fires a round at an unoccupied school building during Christmas break.

These three only in my opinion.

 

[rdwight]

Phrasing, bud. When they are reduced to one per decade it would still not ever, ever, be 'acceptable'. At some point, we may have to accept that nothing more can reasonably be done and that a determined sociopath will find a way. But there will Never. Be. An. Acceptable. Number. Of. Shot. Schoolchildren.

And here I believe is where reality disagrees. I guess you won't hear anyone come out and literally repeat the phrasing, but 'acceptable' is the honest truth. You can hate that reality, but I wouldn't recommend ignoring it.

 

[Pterodactyl]

For the sake of attempting to understand and prevent situations like what recently occurred in Florida, I don't see how it is helpful to lump or conflate any of the above scenarios with what we're discussing.

 

[William Parcher]

Why It May Be Impossible to Measure the Impact of Stores Limiting Gun Sales

Both sides of the gun control debate saw this week’s decisions by Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart and Kroger to limit firearms sales as symbolically game-changing.

But whether those changes will actually have a meaningful effect on gun sales is difficult — if not impossible — to know.

In an era when the toy industry can pinpoint the overall value of all dolls sold domestically each year and the federal government tracks the number of trucks sold in any given month, data on gun sales is obscured by foggy reporting standards and loopholes. There is no nationwide registry that tracks gun ownership while firearms are available to purchase from a decentralized network of retailers, shows and individuals that operate publicly, privately, online and offline.

Many trade groups can offer granular detail on the products their members manufacture, but the gun industry is much less forthcoming. Only a handful of gunmakers are publicly owned and required to provide some sales information...

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/business/gun-sales-impact.html

 

[William Parcher]

Nothing yet has been said about the gun in today's Michigan university shooting other than that the shooter has it and is on the run.

How and why was the gun inside a dorm room? The shooter's father was a police officer in Illinois and maybe he was carrying while off-duty. It is a gun-free campus and guns certainly aren't allowed in dorms.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Does it matter who they were?

A student used a gun to murder two people in a school.

You are correct. Stricter gun controls could help prevent these things no matter the location.

 

[Aridas]

Or Ted Cruz, who just has to cash those NRA campaign contributions?

As a minor note, nice as the campaign contributions are, they're a small percentage of the total. The sway the NRA has with the voters, on the other hand, is probably more important. Also of note is the political angle. Rejecting those contributions will piss of a bunch of the members of the NRA, who are fairly certainly some of the people keeping him in office, while making people who wouldn't vote for him anyways happier. Losing millions of dollars and probably a bunch of votes is a pretty terrible deal for him on the surface.

What response do you expect the police to have and what repercussions do you think is appropriate for the kids that do this? Why is it a failure?

I think the point is that the kids thinking that doing so is in any way acceptable means that what they're learning from their parents and society is problematic. We are failing to raise them well, in short. It's not a failure of the police.

Dividing your question into two parts:

No, I have not noticed that in the wake of a shooting we "hear a lot" about a certain weapon - at least, not any more than usual. Both handguns and AR-15s in particular have been controversial for more than a decade now.

I notice it, but it's really to be expected, given that it's related to a direct piece of nasty news.

And no, we do not pass laws making that weapon harder to get or illegal; it's been a long, long, very long time, and many school shootings, since any restrictive gun laws have been passed. In fact our Congress - again, for over a decade - has pointedly refused to pass any more restrictive gun legislation; and at the state level it's nothing doing either, except for the exact opposite - taking the teeth out of existing gun legislation.

Not just taking the teeth out of existing legislation, legislating more "freedom" into the law. Stand your ground laws, concealed carry, and the like came to be at the NRA's behest relatively recently and have been gradually spreading. The very recent latest push to remove state's rights to regulate guns from other states in their own state comes to mind, too.

So is it all symbolic then, or did no one actually know how few people were involved with the discounted fares?

Symbolic, of course. Delta was "attacking" conservatives, after all, by no longer giving a specific subset of presumably conservative people special treatment.

These types baffle me the most. Have they not gotten a gander at the US Military in the last century? What level of delusion are they under to think that armed conflict with the most powerful armed forces the world has ever seen would be feasible?

Logic and facts tend to be far less influential in that crowd. If I recall correctly, in general, conservatives tend to react more strongly to fear and thus base more of their decisions on fear, and there are organizations like the NRA that are all too happy to exploit that to their advantages. It also plays well into hero/power fantasies, for that matter. Related to that, it was both mildly sad and amusing how a number of people like that reacted to standard military training maneuvers, especially during the Obama years. Obama, after all, was always preparing to take away all their guns and standard military training manuevers were very, very suspicious events.

And here I believe is where reality disagrees. I guess you won't hear anyone come out and literally repeat the phrasing, but 'acceptable' is the honest truth. You can hate that reality, but I wouldn't recommend ignoring it.

Yeah... regulations are usually considered effective when it notably decreases the frequency of the specific problem it is intended to address, sometimes in conjunction with related regulations, and when the remainder are caused by the failure to follow the regulations. Reducing from 250 to 200 is a fine start, but whether it's a good place to stop is decidedly less certain without more actually relevant information.

 

[quadraginta]

Only 13 people bought tickets with Delta's NRA discount

The point is that an elected politician is using tax to punish a private company that employs thousands of people in his state for not offering a discount to his supporters. How many were actually using it doesn't change that.

And for some additional irony, from that link;

But state Sen. Michael Williams, a rival GOP candidate for governor, said Cagle only joined the fight after Senate Republicans agreed to block Delta's tax break.

“He didn’t have the gumption to say that until the Senate as a body, at least the Republican caucus, united and told him that we weren’t going to support it," Williams told Fox and Friends on Friday. “We had to send a message that we’re not going to support crony capitalism in Georgia."

These people just don't hear themselves. Words come out of their mouths without the slightest consideration for what they mean.

 

[Aridas]

These people just don't hear themselves. Words come out of their mouths without the slightest consideration for what they mean.

Hmm? What's wrong with what they said? Other than the fact that they're openly claiming that they had been engaging in crony capitalism until Delta slighted the NRA, which would seem to spur a somewhat different response.

Also, it might be worth emphasizing a quiet point there. It wasn't just the one who openly threatened Delta in play or even leading the pack. It was the whole group of Republicans engaging in this reprehensible behavior.

 

[Andy_Ross]

For the sake of attempting to understand and prevent situations like what recently occurred in Florida, I don't see how it is helpful to lump or conflate any of the above scenarios with what we're discussing.

Why not?

They all show that there are too many guns and they are too easy to get.

 

[Darat]

As a minor note, nice as the campaign contributions are, they're a small percentage of the total. The sway the NRA has with the voters, on the other hand, is probably more important. Also of note is the political angle. Rejecting those contributions will piss of a bunch of the members of the NRA, who are fairly certainly some of the people keeping him in office, while making people who wouldn't vote for him anyways happier. Losing millions of dollars and probably a bunch of votes is a pretty terrible deal for him on the surface.

...snip....

They claim to have just 5 million members, yet they can get when they want and at very short notice a private meeting with the president of the USA. That is a real demonstration of their true political power.

 

[IanS]

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.

Careful, you are beginning to reproduce the same arguments invariably voiced by the NRA ... OK, well maybe think about this (apologies for such a big mass of stuff, below ... ) -

- whenever these shooting cases arise, the NRA and pro-gun supporters almost always say that guns are not the problem and that legal owners are responsible people etc., and that the actual problem is illegally owned guns and a failure to check the mental health of certain gun owners. OK, afaik claims like that are totally untrue. Here is an article from NBC News in 2015 after a shooting in San Bernardino -

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/s...-used-mass-shootings-obtained-legally-n474441

The article says that going back 30 years over all the past “mass shootings” (see quote below for what “mass" shooting means) 82% of the guns used were legally owned -

" Eighty-two percent of weapons involved in mass shootings over the last three decades have been bought legally, according to a database compiled by Mother Jones magazine that defines a mass shooting as taking the lives of at least four people in a public place. Using that criteria, Mother Jones found 73 mass shootings since 1982."


And as if that 82% figure were not high enough, keep in mind that is a figure only for mass/spree shootings, though every year in the US the totality of the 10,000 or more gun deaths are situations where a gun owner has lost his temper inside the family home and just picked up one of his guns ans shot one or more members of the family, or just taken the gun across the road to shoot at an annoying neighbour, or gone to his workplace to shoot a workmate etc., … and it should be obvious that almost all cases like that (which are the vast majority of US shooting, i.e. as opposed to just 30 or 40 mass/spree shootings per year) are likely to be almost certainly where the guy legally owns the guns and he's just lost his temper (or been drunk etc.) and finally shot at someone in the home or effectively very close by … that's much more likely to involve legally owned guns than the case of planned mass/spree shooting at schools & elsewhere, where the shooter has invariably been planing the massacre for many months and may be determined to obtain guns specially for that life-changing event regardless of whether he has to obtained certain weapons illegally for that … so IOW that figure of 82% legal ownership, is if anything, likely to be even higher for almost all of the other 10,000+ shooting deaths per year in the US.

On top of which - in the present case of the Florida shooting, it has been widely reported that Cruz did in fact have legal use and license for those guns.

So unless someone has got very different (and genuine figures, not NRA invented lies) then imho the idea that illegal or unlicensed guns are a significant part of the problem appears to be an overt outright lie put around by groups like the NRA.

Finally, on that point, just for reference re. the number of gun deaths in the US, here is a short clear summary from the BBC in 2016 -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34996604

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.

Unfortunately I think several UK posters here may have seriously mislead you about how many UK homes have any such guns.

Right back near the start of this thread, I explained that after living all my 50+ years of life in London (which is a very big modern city with 8 to 10 million inhabitants), I had never known even one single person who had ever kept a gun in their house. Nor had I never met anyone who even claimed ever to have kept a gun, never met anyone who had ever known anyone else who had kept a gun, and never met anyone at all who ever even mentioned for 1 second any interest in any guns etc. Nothing. Zilch. And of course for about 35-40 years now, I've been an avid reader of the mature UK broadsheet press, and listened almost every day for many hours the BBC radio news in the UK and around the world (especially politics and current affairs) … and in all that time I can tell you there are almost never reports of any ordinary people keeping guns in their homes (the only time guns are in the UK news is when in certain rough areas of inner-cities, some gangland drug dealers (almost entirely black guys of West Indian origin who try to copy the drug-related gun violence from Jamaica and parts of the US, and where they have obtained what are usually very old pistols and often re-converted versions, which the gang leaders then use to threaten or shoot rival gang leaders in drug “turf wars”).

The most notable example of that in recent years was the case of guy called Mark Duggan, and you can read about that in the link below …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Mark_Duggan


But apart from that, and apart from UK armed police now having to respond more often to acts of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism (several lethal cases last year), those are literally the only times you will ever read about or hear about or see news film of anything whatsoever about anyone in the UK owning guns or having any connection with any guns whatsoever.

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.

Well a baseball bat is very VERY far from being as lethal as a gun! That's just not a comparison at all.

Again, that's the sort of thing that we hear from the NRA and it's supporters who say “oh, well you could kill people with a kitchen knife or a brick, and we are not banning those, so equally we cannot ban guns and bullets .. case solved - we all keep our guns!”

Suppose the US bans automatic and semi-auto rifles. Do you really think that will have any noticeable reduction on the number of fatal US shooting incidents? I don't think it will. Anyone who sets out like Cruz to shoot at a school, or anyone who decides to shoot a member of the family, a neighbour, or a workmate because of some dispute, or anyone who shoots people in a drunken fit of anger or stupidity etc., can and will do that just as easily with any of many dozens of different high-power handguns or other types of rifles etc. … people like Cruz who plan for months to carry out a mass school shooting, will not give up the idea simply because they can no loner get an official license to buy an AR15 (to think that would deter them is crazy) … and people who shoot a family member, neighbour, workmate or anyone will do that just as easily and just as deadly with any sort of of loaded guns that they keep in the house (banning people from legally owning an AR15 will make not one iota of difference in the total overall figures).

 

[jimbob]

Careful, you are beginning to reproduce the same arguments invariably voiced by the NRA ... OK, well maybe think about this (apologies for such a big mass of stuff, below ... ) -

- whenever these shooting cases arise, the NRA and pro-gun supporters almost always say that guns are not the problem and that legal owners are responsible people etc., and that the actual problem is illegally owned guns and a failure to check the mental health of certain gun owners. OK, afaik claims like that are totally untrue. Here is an article from NBC News in 2015 after a shooting in San Bernardino -

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/s...-used-mass-shootings-obtained-legally-n474441

The article says that going back 30 years over all the past “mass shootings” (see quote below for what “mass" shooting means) 82% of the guns used were legally owned -

" Eighty-two percent of weapons involved in mass shootings over the last three decades have been bought legally, according to a database compiled by Mother Jones magazine that defines a mass shooting as taking the lives of at least four people in a public place. Using that criteria, Mother Jones found 73 mass shootings since 1982."


And as if that 82% figure were not high enough, keep in mind that is a figure only for mass/spree shootings, though every year in the US the totality of the 10,000 or more gun deaths are situations where a gun owner has lost his temper inside the family home and just picked up one of his guns ans shot one or more members of the family, or just taken the gun across the road to shoot at an annoying neighbour, or gone to his workplace to shoot a workmate etc., … and it should be obvious that almost all cases like that (which are the vast majority of US shooting, i.e. as opposed to just 30 or 40 mass/spree shootings per year) are likely to be almost certainly where the guy legally owns the guns and he's just lost his temper (or been drunk etc.) and finally shot at someone in the home or effectively very close by … that's much more likely to involve legally owned guns than the case of planned mass/spree shooting at schools & elsewhere, where the shooter has invariably been planing the massacre for many months and may be determined to obtain guns specially for that life-changing event regardless of whether he has to obtained certain weapons illegally for that … so IOW that figure of 82% legal ownership, is if anything, likely to be even higher for almost all of the other 10,000+ shooting deaths per year in the US.

On top of which - in the present case of the Florida shooting, it has been widely reported that Cruz did in fact have legal use and license for those guns.

So unless someone has got very different (and genuine figures, not NRA invented lies) then imho the idea that illegal or unlicensed guns are a significant part of the problem appears to be an overt outright lie put around by groups like the NRA.

Finally, on that point, just for reference re. the number of gun deaths in the US, here is a short clear summary from the BBC in 2016 -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34996604







Unfortunately I think several UK posters here may have seriously mislead you about how many UK homes have any such guns.

Right back near the start of this thread, I explained that after living all my 50+ years of life in London (which is a very big modern city with 8 to 10 million inhabitants), I had never known even one single person who had ever kept a gun in their house. Nor had I never met anyone who even claimed ever to have kept a gun, never met anyone who had ever known anyone else who had kept a gun, and never met anyone at all who ever even mentioned for 1 second any interest in any guns etc. Nothing. Zilch. And of course for about 35-40 years now, I've been an avid reader of the mature UK broadsheet press, and listened almost every day for many hours the BBC radio news in the UK and around the world (especially politics and current affairs) … and in all that time I can tell you there are almost never reports of any ordinary people keeping guns in their homes (the only time guns are in the UK news is when in certain rough areas of inner-cities, some gangland drug dealers (almost entirely black guys of West Indian origin who try to copy the drug-related gun violence from Jamaica and parts of the US, and where they have obtained what are usually very old pistols and often re-converted versions, which the gang leaders then use to threaten or shoot rival gang leaders in drug “turf wars”).

The most notable example of that in recent years was the case of guy called Mark Duggan, and you can read about that in the link below …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Mark_Duggan


But apart from that, and apart from UK armed police now having to respond more often to acts of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism (several lethal cases last year), those are literally the only times you will ever read about or hear about or see news film of anything whatsoever about anyone in the UK owning guns or having any connection with any guns whatsoever.






Well a baseball bat is very VERY far from being as lethal as a gun! That's just not a comparison at all.

Again, that's the sort of thing that we hear from the NRA and it's supporters who say “oh, well you could kill people with a kitchen knife or a brick, and we are not banning those, so equally we cannot ban guns and bullets .. case solved - we all keep our guns!”

Suppose the US bans automatic and semi-auto rifles. Do you really think that will have any noticeable reduction on the number of fatal US shooting incidents? I don't think it will. Anyone who sets out like Cruz to shoot at a school, or anyone who decides to shoot a member of the family, a neighbour, or a workmate because of some dispute, or anyone who shoots people in a drunken fit of anger or stupidity etc., can and will do that just as easily with any of many dozens of different high-power handguns or other types of rifles etc. … people like Cruz who plan for months to carry out a mass school shooting, will not give up the idea simply because they can no loner get an official license to buy an AR15 (to think that would deter them is crazy) … and people who shoot a family member, neighbour, workmate or anyone will do that just as easily and just as deadly with any sort of of loaded guns that they keep in the house (banning people from legally owning an AR15 will make not one iota of difference in the total overall figures).

Handguns are more of a problem than semiautomatic rifles in most situations. Hunting rifles, not so much - yes they are lethal and can be used for murder, but they are less suitable for mass murder.

 

[Nessie]

Which of the following should be described as a "school shooting" ?

A non-student shoots another non-student across the street from a school.

A student shoots a non-student across the street from a school.

A non-student shoots another non-student in the school parking lot.

A non-student commits suicide in an unoccupied school.

A non-student commits suicide in an occupied school.

A non-student fires a round at an unoccupied school building during Christmas break.

A shooting of others that takes place within a school, college or university premises or grounds. I do not think that whether the shooter is a pupil, former pupil or was never at the school is relevant.

 

[jimbob]

A shooting of others that takes place within a school, college or university premises or grounds. I do not think that whether the shooter is a pupil, former pupil or was never at the school is relevant.

We'll use the same criteria for other countries as well.

 

[William Parcher]

A shooting of others that takes place within a school, college or university premises or grounds. I do not think that whether the shooter is a pupil, former pupil or was never at the school is relevant.

For example...

An old homeless couple are stumbling down a sidewalk at midnight pushing their meager belongings in shopping carts. They are drunk as can be and arguing about meaningless crap. Eventually they are walking past a grade school. The old lady finally has had enough of her bum husband and pulls out a gun and blasts him. He falls dead on the sidewalk outside of the school. Nobody knows that it happened and he is discovered the next morning.

This is a school shooting and is to be classified as a school shooting. It shall appear on all lists of school shootings.

 

[jimbob]

For example...

An old homeless couple are stumbling down a sidewalk at midnight pushing their meager belongings in shopping carts. They are drunk as can be and arguing about meaningless crap. Eventually they are walking past a grade school. The old lady finally has had enough of her bum husband and pulls out a gun and blasts him. He falls dead on the sidewalk outside of the school. Nobody knows that it happened and he is discovered the next morning.

This is a school shooting and is to be classified as a school shooting. It shall appear on all lists of school shootings.

Is that within school grounds or outside? In the UK that would be outside. The local primary school has a wall (it's about 3' high) but it still is the boundary. You don't want kids running into the road from the playground.

Also do you have any idea what proportion of statistics such similar scenarios include?