Mass Shootings the last six months

[heironymouspasparagus]

It's important to remember that correlation is not causation.  Just because A preceded B does not necessarily mean that A caused B.  We all know people who insist that a current violent crime or heinous event came about "because they took prayer out of the schools."  It's equally valid to say that because nearly all criminals have eaten white bread, the bread is somehow responsible for their crimes.

Exactly!  But that is also the argument being advanced by these idiots.

[swake]

there are over 2 1/2 MILLION incidents a year where someone in this country uses a firearm to defend themselves and prevent a violent crime.

This is a false statement.
Harvard Medical School Study:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use/index.html

I'm not advocating the banning of guns for self defense anyway. But I am getting closer to wanting an outright ban on semiautomatic rifles. How many times a year is a AR15 used in home defense? I'm guessing never. But these little kids were killed with one. As were a bunch of people in that movie theater earlier this year. And a teenager in Tulsa a few months ago that was guilty of being in the wrong make and color of car.

[swake]

Exactly!  But that is also the argument being advanced by these idiots.

how about since Australia's law was passed (that did NOT ban guns outright) in 1996 the following is true:
Gun related murder is down 59% with no increase in non gun related murders
Gun related suicide is down 65%
Home invasions are not up, despite taking 20% of the guns in Australia away from the public (gun ownership for home protections apparently has little or no impact on this crime rate)

Harvard paper on the law:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/files/bulletins_australia_spring_2011.pdf

[Townsend]

Oklahoma Lt. Gov. Lamb, legislative leaders to make school security announcement

http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/oklahoma-lt-gov-lamb-legislative-leaders-to-make-school-security-announcement#ixzz2FcunnXuL

OKLAHOMA CITY - Oklahoma state leaders and legislators will be making an announcement on school security Thursday.

According to a news release from Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb's office, he and Senate President Pro Tempore Brian Bingman, House Speaker-elect T.W. Shannon, Senate Democratic Leader Sean Burrage will present for the afternoon announcement.

The meeting is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. at the State Capitol.

2NEWS reporter Sara Goldenberg is at the Capitol for the announcement.

Who knows?  Maybe it'll be something wise.

[swake]

Who knows?  Maybe it'll be something wise.

No it won't.

They are going to give guns to all those public school teachers they usually proclaim to hate. The most likely outcome will be some little pistol in some teachers purse is going to be stolen by a student and used on another student. A school invasion is very rare. What good would a fumbling teacher trying to find her pistol have been against this kid in body armor armed with an M4?

[Conan71]

Conan, don't you believe that had the Newtown killer entered a school with armed men this could have been stopped early?

Stopped early or would not have happened at all.  Disagree?


Power freaks like this guy don't want resistance they get off on slaughtering defenseless people because it's their way to get back at the rest of the world for making them feel powerless all their life.

[Townsend]

No it won't.

I know.  I'd like to be able to post something positive about our state government so I thought I'd pop off with that craziness.

[Conan71]

Actually, that puts us 28th from the WORST in the world... and in the company of third world countries... please, continue....

'Pro-Gun' States Lead the Nation in Per Capita Firearm Death Rates
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pro-gun-states-lead-the-nation-in-per-capita-firearm-death-rates-57514947.html

States with the Five HIGHEST Per Capita Gun Death Rates

Louisiana--Rank: 1; Household Gun Ownership: 45.6 percent; Gun Death Rate: 19.04 per 100,000.
Alaska--Rank: 2; Household Gun Ownership: 60.6 percent; Gun Death Rate: 17.49 per 100,000.
Montana--Rank: 3; Household Gun Ownership: 61.4 percent; Gun Death Rate: 17.22 per 100,000.
Tennessee--Rank: 4; Household Gun Ownership: 46.4 percent; Gun Death Rate: 16.39 per 100,000.
Alabama--Rank: 5; Household Gun Ownership: 57.2 percent; Gun Death Rate: 16.18 per 100,000.

States with the Five LOWEST Per Capita Gun Death Rates

Hawaii--Rank: 50; Household Gun Ownership: 9.7 percent; Gun Death Rate: 2.20 per 100,000.
Massachusetts--Rank: 49; Household Gun Ownership: 12.8 percent; Gun Death Rate: 3.48 per 100,000.
Rhode Island--Rank: 48; Household Gun Ownership: 13.3 percent; Gun Death Rate: 3.63 per 100,000.
New Jersey--Rank: 47; Household Gun Ownership: 11.3 percent; Gun Death Rate: 4.99 per 100,000.
New York--Rank: 46; Household Gun Ownership: 18.1 percent; Gun Death Rate: 5.28 per 100,000.
PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1bLMy)

Problem is, the media is conflating statistics by stating overall rates to try and show a larger problem of violent crime.  What someone does to themselves is one thing, when they bring that violence to others is a different issue.  What IS meaningful is homicide rates with firearms.  In the United States, we have about 33,000 gun deaths per year.  11,000 to 12,000 are homicides, 18,000 or so are suicides.  The remainder appear to be accidental shootings, not telling how many of those reported as accidental were a half-hearted or bungled attempt at suicide.  Not that those are not significant, but it's important to understand that as a nation, more than 1/2 of all gun deaths are from self-inflicted wounds.

[Conan71]

This is a false statement.
Harvard Medical School Study:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use/index.html

I'm not advocating the banning of guns for self defense anyway. But I am getting closer to wanting an outright ban on semiautomatic rifles. How many times a year is a AR15 used in home defense? I'm guessing never. But these little kids were killed with one. As were a bunch of people in that movie theater earlier this year. And a teenager in Tulsa a few months ago that was guilty of being in the wrong make and color of car.

Did you actually read this "study"?  Their methodology is shaky at best sloppy and lazy at worst.  Simply because it's published in the name of "Harvard" doesn't mean it's without fleas flaws.

9-10. Few criminals are shot by decent law abiding citizens

Using data from surveys of detainees in six jails from around the nation, we worked with a prison physician to determine whether criminals seek hospital medical care when they are shot. Criminals almost always go to the hospital when they are shot. To believe fully the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abiding citizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals.  But the data from emergency departments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals are afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shot went to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there.     

Six jails and a prison physician.  My how scientific!!!  Amazing what claptrap you can find on the Googles to support one's views.

I agree, owning an AR-15 with a 30 round mag is a vanity purchase for a lot of people and is not a necessity in society.  Fine, ban them and melt each and every one of them.  Meanwhile, we will still be able to enjoy, vicariously, people being blown to bits in prime time TV, in movies and video games.  Meanwhile, the media will still sensationalize acts of violence which will not abate, no matter what you do.

I want you to realize more than anything that it is impossible to legislate the evil out of people.  There will still be some sick love somewhere who will figure out a way to pull off a mass killing if that's what he's bent on doing.  He simply won't do it using an assault rifle.  Then what?

Tim McVeigh didn't use an assault rifle to kill 19 children and 149 adults.

[swake]

Did you actually read this "study"?  Their methodology is shaky at best sloppy and lazy at worst.  Simply because it's published in the name of "Harvard" doesn't mean it's without fleas flaws.

Six jails and a prison physician.  My how scientific!!!  Amazing what claptrap you can find on the Googles to support one's views.

I agree, owning an AR-15 with a 30 round mag is a vanity purchase for a lot of people and is not a necessity in society.  Fine, ban them and melt each and every one of them.  Meanwhile, we will still be able to enjoy, vicariously, people being blown to bits in prime time TV, in movies and video games.  Meanwhile, the media will still sensationalize acts of violence which will not abate, no matter what you do.

I want you to realize more than anything that it is impossible to legislate the evil out of people.  There will still be some sick love somewhere who will figure out a way to pull off a mass killing if that's what he's bent on doing.  He simply won't do it using an assault rifle.  Then what?

Tim McVeigh didn't use an assault rifle to kill 19 children and 149 adults.

No, you cannot always stop evil. But let's make evil less common. Monsters are created by mental illness and abuse. We can work to mitigate that.

When monsters are created let's do what we can to keep weapons away from them. No private sale of guns. No internet sales of guns. Gun buyers must have their identity verified and pass a background check. No guns for the dangerously mental ill, no guns for people that live with the dangerously mentally ill. No guns for felons.

Let's stop having guns whose sole purpose is to kill as many people as possible as fast as possible. These tools have value, but not in a non-military setting. Your ego is going to fine with not owning such a gun. No military style weapons, no short barrels on rifles, no short stocks. No fast change magazines. No single shot versions of military guns. I'm on the fence with semi-autos, I would generally be ok with semi-auto hunting rifles but, it's so easy to modify a stock, to change the pull on a trigger. At least ban the the sale of gun modification kits. I think we should go with safety here but I'm not hard on this point. No magazines for pistols or rifles with more than 8 rounds.

While I am against arming teachers, I am for having armed school police units at all schools. Like what Jenks has. A teacher has plenty to do than to keep up with a gun and and kids. A gun does not belong in a classroom setting. But, a trained police officers might well be able to spot and stop a threat before bad things happen. There are likely ancillary benefits to this with school gangs, drugs and overall student behavior.

I am against open carry. A cop that sees a weapon should be able to know without worry that a gun out in the open in public is a threat that has to be dealt with. No body armor, no armor piercing bullets, nothing that could stop a cop from being able to take out a threat if he or she needs to.

I think overall in this country we need to stop having our police be traffic units so much. Cops should have a beat that includes walking well populated areas and not just watching traffic or doing reports in deserted parking lots.

Mass killings will happen no matter what but we certainly should do what we can to make them as rare as we can and limit how deadly they are.

[Gaspar]

When I was a paramedic we saw GSWs almost daily.

I would say that around 90% were crime related.  Hunting season always brought a few accidents, but usually only durring the beginning of the season when everyone is in a hurry to get to the stand and adrenalin is high.

Out of the 90% that were crime related, about 90% of that was related to the purchase, sales, or use of drugs and alcohol. Most of the injurys were not life threatening and were always perpetrated by the same group of people, and FOR NO REASON.  Yes, it's amazing, but nearly every victim is attacked by the same group of people.  Ask any cop and he will back me up on this.  The following is a group of people that you should steer clear of.

When questioned as to how they were shot, the victim will offer a story related to one of the following people/groups of people:

Some Dude--Some Dude is very dangerous.  Some Dude always attacks people he does not know for no reason.  The victim has never seen Some Dude before, even though you may find photographs of Some Dude in the victim's purse or wallet. "Officer, Some Dude just shot me for no reason! No, I don't know who it was, he just shot me. I wasn't doing anything to him."

These Guys--Like the ninja warriors of old, These Guys attack without warning.  Their greatist strength is their abilty to just come out of nowhere.  "Ok, I was on my way home from Thursday night church, when all of a sudden These Guys jumped me, and I got shot.  I aint never seen them before, they just came out of nowhere and shot me."

That Crazy B!tch--TCB is obviously known by the victim, and they may be in a relationship or have several children, but she is nonetheless crazy.  The victim will have no idea what he or she did to justify being shot by TCB, because at the time the victim was just minding his or her own business.  "I was just minding my own damn business, when all of a sudden That Crazy B!tch started yelling at me, and just shot me. Why?  I don't know, B!tch is crazy!"

Sometimes there are combinations, but it's always the same folks that the cops have to deal with. 

[swake]

When I was a paramedic we saw GSWs almost daily.

I would say that around 90% were crime related.  Hunting season always brought a few accidents, but usually only durring the beginning of the season when everyone is in a hurry to get to the stand and adrenalin is high.

Out of the 90% that were crime related, about 90% of that was related to the purchase, sales, or use of drugs and alcohol. Most of the injurys were not life threatening and were always perpetrated by the same group of people, and FOR NO REASON.  Yes, it's amazing, but nearly every victim is attacked by the same group of people.  Ask any cop and he will back me up on this.  The following is a group of people that you should steer clear of.

When questioned as to how they were shot, the victim will offer a story related to one of the following people/groups of people:

Some Dude--Some Dude is very dangerous.  Some Dude always attacks people he does not know for no reason.  The victim has never seen Some Dude before, even though you may find photographs of Some Dude in the victim's purse or wallet. "Officer, Some Dude just shot me for no reason! No, I don't know who it was, he just shot me. I wasn't doing anything to him."

These Guys--Like the ninja warriors of old, These Guys attack without warning.  Their greatist strength is their abilty to just come out of nowhere.  "Ok, I was on my way home from Thursday night church, when all of a sudden These Guys jumped me, and I got shot.  I aint never seen them before, they just came out of nowhere and shot me."

That Crazy B!tch--TCB is obviously known by the victim, and they may be in a relationship or have several children, but she is nonetheless crazy.  The victim will have no idea what he or she did to justify being shot by TCB, because at the time the victim was just minding his or her own business.  "I was just minding my own damn business, when all of a sudden That Crazy B!tch started yelling at me, and just shot me. Why?  I don't know, B!tch is crazy!"

Sometimes there are combinations, but it's always the same folks that the cops have to deal with. 

Well, in 50% of gun related murders the victim knows the shooter. In 25% of deaths the two are related. domestic violence has to be somewhere in the range of 25% when you subtract out related but not married and add in girl/boyfriends. Most gun deaths are suicide (hard to miss from that range). 

This is why you double your chances of dying from a gunshot by owning a gun. But that's each person's own call to make.

[Conan71]

No, you cannot always stop evil. But let's make evil less common. Monsters are created by mental illness and abuse. We can work to mitigate that.

When monsters are created let's do what we can to keep weapons away from them. No private sale of guns. No internet sales of guns. Gun buyers must have their identity verified and pass a background check. No guns for the dangerously mental ill, no guns for people that live with the dangerously mentally ill. No guns for felons.

Let's stop having guns whose sole purpose is to kill as many people as possible as fast as possible. These tools have value, but not in a non-military setting. Your ego is going to fine with not owning such a gun. No military style weapons, no short barrels on rifles, no short stocks. No fast change magazines. No single shot versions of military guns. I'm on the fence with semi-autos, I would generally be ok with semi-auto hunting rifles but, it's so easy to modify a stock, to change the pull on a trigger. At least ban the the sale of gun modification kits. I think we should go with safety here but I'm not hard on this point. No magazines for pistols or rifles with more than 8 rounds.

While I am against arming teachers, I am for having armed school police units at all schools. Like what Jenks has. A teacher has plenty to do than to keep up with a gun and and kids. A gun does not belong in a classroom setting. But, a trained police officers might well be able to spot and stop a threat before bad things happen. There are likely ancillary benefits to this with school gangs, drugs and overall student behavior.

I am against open carry. A cop that sees a weapon should be able to know without worry that a gun out in the open in public is a threat that has to be dealt with. No body armor, no armor piercing bullets, nothing that could stop a cop from being able to take out a threat if he or she needs to.

I think overall in this country we need to stop having our police be traffic units so much. Cops should have a beat that includes walking well populated areas and not just watching traffic or doing reports in deserted parking lots.

Mass killings will happen no matter what but we certainly should do what we can to make them as rare as we can and limit how deadly they are.

You and I actually agree on more than you'd guess.  My father-in-law is the secretary of the Oklahoma Rifle Association which is affiliated with NRA.  He's a retired LEO.  He's a conceal carry advocate but thinks open carry was a very, very bad idea, as to many 2A advocates I know. 

When monsters are created let's do what we can to keep weapons away from them. No private sale of guns. No internet sales of guns. Gun buyers must have their identity verified and pass a background check. No guns for the dangerously mental ill, no guns for people that live with the dangerously mentally ill. No guns for felons.

There's no way to end person-to-person sales no matter what we do to legislate it, though you can make it legal for only FFA holders to be able to sell at gun shows and no "collectors" are allowed to sell at gun shows any more.  You will probably end up with some Constitutional challenges if the only way an individual could sell a firearm would be to a licensed FFA.  Even if that were to come to pass and survive all Constitutional challenges, it would create a black market out of necessity if private sellers refused to sell back to a dealer for far less than what they could sell to their brother-in-law or co-worker.  What happens then with inheritance and survivorship rights. 

Internet sales are really restrictive already.  You can purchase from an FFA, but the gun must be shipped to your local FFA where you will then pick it up after your background and ID check.  FFA's always verify identity and call in a quick check.  I suspect the current "quick checks" aren't very revealing and they won't reveal if someone has been under mental health care.  I'm not sure how you properly breach HPPA to protect the rest of the public, but at some point you have to decide if the rights of the individual trump those of possible hundreds of future victims.

The short barrels and short stocks really have nothing to do with how deadly a weapon is. They are easier to conceal but still harder to conceal than a handgun. What Gaspar posted about the rules under the Clinton assault weapon ban were quite correct.  The act was window dressing.  They legislated out "scary looking" weapons from the factory, but you could still buy everything you needed to modify them.  Someone on the radio this morning said the gun companies made small changes and it was pretty much business as usual.  He said it might have been simpler to paint the guns pink and put Hello Kitty stickers on them since it was more of a cosmetic change to make them less scary.  I know hyperbole, but...

It's not that it isn't possible to affect some change, it's that no matter what laws we pass, it only affects the people who live on the right side of the law in the first place.  I understand the frustration and that there always has to be a solution at hand after such a massacre.

I do realize some of the push-back on gun control is red-neckism, but there's a larger element out there which understands no matter what restrictions you pass, those who really want military style weapons will still find a way to get them.

[Townsend]

TW FB post:

OKLAHOMA CITY — Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb will lead an Oklahoma Commission on School Security with the objective of making state school campuses the safest in the nation.

[Conan71]

TW FB post:

We have a Lieutenant Governor?

Knock me over with a feather.