To do the right thing, you might have to Die

Humey said:

I love the Air Force comment. That was fantastic. Gave me quite a laugh. I think my son who is in the AF, has shot a weapon once in 4 years

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Eh...we wait until the heavy hardware is needed.

Let's see...my normal sidearm was a 20mm with a 900 round magazine...well, it could hold more but we were adhering to the laws re: extended capacity.

brewmeist said:

Raising the age to 21 would not affect me at all. I am way, way beyond that age.

But if we are going to have lawmakers determine that someone should be at least 21 to purchase a firearm, why should we trust 18 year olds to vote for that lawmaker?

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isnt that the irony? When 16-18 years olds talk about climate change, the environment, the 2nd amendment, civil rights and hate speech and such, they are beacons of hope that we must listen to and emulate. When i once said i don't care what Greta Thunberg has to say as she was 16 or 17 at the time, i was called an Agesit. However, when it comes to guns, drinking, gambling, and conservative causes, then they are children and shouldn't be trusted.

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### Retractable Accordian-style Bulletproof Ceiling mounted partitions for every classroom ###

Idea might sound crazy …

Equip every classroom with a Ceiling Mounted Bullet-stopping accordion-style partitions in the Corner (quarter circle) or at one end were the students at teacher(s) can all get behind it.

They can do practice drills on a regular basis timing themselves on how fast they get behind it and close it … just like Earthquake drills getting under desks, etc.

Definitely easier to keep the classroom doors locked.
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Dr. Strange Love said:

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### Retractable Accordian-style Bulletproof Ceiling mounted partitions for every classroom ###

Idea might sound crazy …

Equip every classroom with a Ceiling Mounted Bullet-stopping accordion-style partitions in the Corner (quarter circle) or at one end were the students at teacher(s) can all get behind it.

They can do practice drills on a regular basis timing themselves on how fast they get behind it and close it … just like Earthquake drills getting under desks, etc.

Definitely easier to keep the classroom doors locked.
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You aren't wrong to think about hardening campuses. I think the problem is multi-faceted. Our tiny rural school district recently added fencing to surround the entire campus. And a lot of excellent quality cameras. No metal detectors, and no hardened front office, so once someone gets through the office they have free reign of the campus. One security person who is not prior to law enforcement to cover 75 acres, K-12 campus (used to be my job).

You have some teachers who routinely leave doors unlocked (a specific case of a classroom that is one foot from another, and their kids go back and forth all day during class to get additional resources and one on one help).

We have all had ALICE training (no joke), and we do lockdown drills (without notice) monthly. Our kids know to be in a position to fight or flight, no more hiding under a desk, we practice barricading the doors, we have 'fire hose' sections that students immediately slide over the interior door hinge ($1.00 fix, got them from our local Fire Dept.). I am usually at the high school so the ability to find a defense object is easier, fire extinguisher, desk, computer, stapler, all things that can be thrown or used to barricade. It's no joke, and the kids are calm, they are taking it seriously, and I tell them not to live in fear but to be vigilant and be prepared. See something, say something.

PD shows up for each drill in battle rattle with weapons, we don't evacuate for fire drills until told to, the alarm goes off, and we shelter in place unless we see flame/smoke. PD is ready to go, and they are present at every drill, every alarm, and every false alarm.

With all of that, there are holes. I had nightmares about it as security, I had nightmares about it this past semester, one was a real lockdown and it wasn't a drill (long story, alarm maintenance crews should be scheduled after hours or during the summer).

We protect our money, we protect our elected officials, and we protect our athletes and stars. We spend fortunes subsidizing silly things buried in legislation. We waste money left and right. You would think we could hire someone to design a system that could be implemented and modified to make sure we had better security on sites. And more armed officers with appropriate training.

Small Team Bacsi said:

Some people are worried about the excess morbidity and mortality and some are worried about the headlines.

Some will quibble and quibble about definitions because they absolutely are not willing to see this issue of excess deaths solved.

Because reducing these deaths would be easy. Turnoff the pump that is causing these excess deaths. And that is where we in the US will draw the line.

And that is exactly why we will end up living with these deaths because they and the cause of them are a part of our culture.

Although on a side note——it always amuses me how many in the US are so in love with guns but refused to take a mos where using guns and shooting others is a normal part of the job.

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This is part of why these discussions are so frustrating. To come up with good solutions, we need good information. You claimed guns were the leading cause of death for children. This is factually incorrect. (You got bad data from the study's headline, most likely.) However, when informed your data was false because the researchers manipulated data to get the desired results, your response was to shift the goalposts and accuse your debate opponents of not caring about lives. This is a serious discussion about life and death, civil rights, and prison time. Details matter.

You can go to prison for 10 years because your rifle barrel is 15.9in vs 16.0in. Laws are very specific.

raimius said:

This is part of why these discussions are so frustrating. To come up with good solutions, we need good information. You claimed guns were the leading cause of death for children. This is factually incorrect. (You got bad data from the study's headline, most likely.) However, when informed your data was false because the researchers manipulated data to get the desired results, your response was to shift the goalposts and accuse your debate opponents of not caring about lives. This is a serious discussion about life and death, civil rights, and prison time. Details matter.

You can go to prison for 10 years because your rifle barrel is 15.9in vs 16.0in. Laws are very specific.

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You are correct I read a newspaper article not a study. And I used the wrong word—— children. I did not read the actual study. But I have no idea what you mean by the study being wrong.

And this is what you find frustrating? It’s a thread about dead children.



This is a great thread. It points out exactly why we will never see significant improvement. The shootings will continue, there will be no significant gun control and those that think the recent killings will bring many together and lead to some significant progress are wrong.

We are more likely to see 16 year olds buying AKs and swat teams at every school in the US than anything that looks like significant gun control.


It is what it is and it’s hardly worth debating anyone about it.

It is written and it’s not going to change. I accept that.

But are guns and gun deaths a significant public health problem in the US leading to excess morbidity and mortality especially among the young——you betcha.

Small Team Bacsi said:

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It is what it is and it’s hardly worth debating anyone about it.

It is written and it’s not going to change. I accept that.

But are guns and gun deaths a significant public health problem in the US leading to excess morbidity and mortality especially among the young——you betcha.

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10 … 20 … 30 years of grinding and no substantive action …. It’s agonizing.

Currently, it looks like the “Mohamed Ali Ropa-a-Dope” lobby stall tactic is hanging on the Red Flag piece of this legislation ….

I say go ahead and get the Red Flag rule out of the legislation and let’s see what the “Ali” camp’s next Ropa-a-Dope tactic is.

This agonizing painful slow rolling train has to derail some day, but I’m not feeling all that good about it right now …. The Ali rope-a-dope tactics will work once again.
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The top 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. in 2019 were ; <-- This is a link to the CDC website
#1 Heart disease: 696,962
#2 Cancer: 602,350
#3 COVID-19: 350,831
#4 Accidents (unintentional injuries): 200,955
#5 Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 160,264
#6 Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 152,657
#7 Alzheimer’s disease: 134,242
#8 Diabetes: 102,188
#9 Influenza and pneumonia: 53,544
#10 Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis (Kidney Disease): 52,547

The CDC has an interactive search that will spit out all sorts of data if you really want to know the truth.
They are still compiling data on 2020 and 2021. The 2020 data can be found HERE. (which reiterates the list for 2019 above).


Typically, the leading causes of death in children (aged birth to 17) are;
#1 Traffic Related Fatalities
#2 Cancer
#3 Accidents (other than traffic related)
#4 Suicide

Typically, the leading cause of death in "young people" (aged 18-24) are;
#1 Traffic Related Fatalities
#2 Suicide
#3 Accidental Poisoning
#4 Accidents (other than traffic related)

CDC lists Gun deaths under injuries. It’s the center for injury control and prevention that studies Gun related issues.

Gun deaths in the US about 45,000 people a year. Slightly more than those who die on our roads.

Some would see 45,000 Americans killed every year to be a significant public health problem with far to many excess deaths. Others may not.

To me 45,000 deaths in the US a year is the price we as a nation have decided to live with instead of significant gun control like most of the civilized world has.

Gun deaths would also show up under suicides where they are a major player.

Those at the top of the death list are very much associated with tobacco use. While smoking is very much down in the US the cancer and CVD numbers etc will go on for decades.

Lots more poisoning deaths than I might have guessed.

And some would say why make a big deal about 45,000 deaths year after year after years from guns when we have approx 43,000 or so deaths from traffic deaths. We did not ban cars.

And let’s face it the only people talking about banning guns are the NRA and their supporters. No rational person that wants to see gun control is talking about a ban.

True but we regulated the heck out of cars and roads. That is why car deaths are as low as they are.

Stringent manufacturing regs, mandatory seat belt use, speed limits——those worried about socialism were often those so against mandatory seat belt use, as well as child safety seats (only a socialist country would mandate how you had to put your child in a govt mandated and approved car seat) many of those freedom fighters claimed.

Many freedom lovers disapproved of that govt interference into personal rights.

Then we have a major crack down on drinking and driving and speed limits.

Talk about govt interference into our personal lives. A slippery slope indeed.

On closed forums mostly for the enlisted many claim their collection of guns is for the coming civil war.

None have ever suggested it’s to fight the Russians when we are invaded

There are always a lot of gremlins the reports like this just because it's hard to impose a taxonomy on something as varied as health outcomes. As @Small Team Bacsi pointed out, if you start playing Find The Smokers in the chart above you can find them in Heart Disease, Cancer, Chronic Respiratory, Pneumonia or even Covid. Before it was treatable AIDS used to appear as pneumonia. In the past couple years covid has picked up a bunch of the "pushed him over the edge" deaths that flu or pneumonia used to be credited with simply because it's been so aggressively tested for.
But guns aren't as malleable. It's pretty clear if a GSW was part of the condition or not, so diagnosis should be easier. And it mostly is. I found a different study that does break out gun deaths (Pew Research) that shows 2020 rates at 6.2/100K gun murders, 7.0/100k gun suicides (which amount to a split of 43% vs 54% of all the 45,222 gun deaths with another 3% of them categorized as Other.) So depending on how they were categorized above, that 13.2/100k (6.2 + 7.0) either moves a big chunk of Unintentional down or promotes a bunch of other data as a new category that would slot in around ninth place. That's pretty significant.

I tend to think of the murders and suicides as separate problems to be addressed, so lumping them together only serves as an aid to highlighting the topic more than actually guiding the solutions. But even when separated there's a very clear link between the concentration of guns (ie gun ownership rates per thousand) and the related accessibility of guns to both suicides and homicides (and domestic violence cases too.) Access to a gun increases the chances of suicide threefold, and gun suicides are concentrated in states with high gun ownership, for example. So maybe you put trigger locks on handguns to prevent non-owners from easy access. Or you introduce red flag laws allow concerned family or authorities to petition to secure the guns of dangerously mentally ill people, people making threats, or those that are depressed, or whatever else leads one to turn a weapon against themselves or others. These should be limited in duration, require clear evidence presented to a judge, and allow for review by the affected person if it can be shown the crisis has passed.

At any rate the numbers are pretty clear that gun violence is a significant issue, but the scale of the events people get most frantic about are not as numerous as the frequent and boring old story of a handgun in a moment of rage, terror or despair. Further, I think a large part of the lure of mass shootings is a suicide with the perceived coolness of going out in a blaze of firey glory like in the movies vs quiet, sad, alone in your room. If you can reduce the coolness by removing some of the huge clips and rapid fire, the appeal of reloading a revolver five times while wandering through a school might take some of the starch out of the grand fantasies an 18 year old might conjure up in his bedroom at night. Also, I'm not sure if anyone has tried breaking mass shootings into cases of loud pointless suicides (eg Uvalde) vs angry assaults intended to change something (eg Charlie Hebdo shooting in France in 2015) but I think identifying that underlying motive is a key to how you'd prevent the various types of attacks. Motivated terrorists are not going to be stopped by simple gun laws in ways that 18 year olds might; the kid in TX waited patiently for his birthday to legally purchase has weapons and chances are good he'd have waited until 21 if that was the law.

Lots to mull over around this. It's been a good discussion.

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Small Team Bacsi,
You say no one is talking about a ban, yet the President keeps calling for a new AWB. Beto O'Rourke is calling for straight up confiscation of AR-15s and AK-47s (although he probably means AK derivatives). Personally, I'd consider any confiscation by type or ban on sale, transfer, or possession to be a "ban." So, I don't see how you can claim it isn't being called for. Claiming "no one wants to take your guns" when Mr. O'Rourke specifically interrupted the Uvalde press conference to do EXACTLY that, either shows a lack of knowledge or denial of reality.

I think the poster also mentioned rational people. Hard to find some on either side in this nationwide debate.

AF6872 said:

I think the poster also mentioned rational people. Hard to find some on either side in this nationwide debate.

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Truth.

History has shown that hardening targets (in this case schools) is not highly successful - the aggressor will just pick another spot (bus, school dismissal, playground, etc). It is very hard to build a comprehensive safety plan in an open society like ours. We can make things difficult and introduce some element of variability to prevent planning accuracy but we will never make targets completely safe.

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Does the legislation that the House just recently passed, does it contain O’Rourke’s comments?

Or is this more of the Mohamed Ali Ropa-a-Dope wear you down nothing ever gets done stall tactics from the Lobby?
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Hmmm … when all of us head into our twilight years?

When all of us head into our twilight years, the right to operate an on-road motor vehicle can be taken away if we are no longer in full control of our faculties …. Family members etc. have to take these steps on our behalf all the time everywhere in this Good’ol USofA.

Why should the right to operate a weapon — when anyone of us is not quite all there — be treated any differently than taking away our on-road vehicle privileges?
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StPaulDad said:

...At any rate the numbers are pretty clear that gun violence is a significant issue...

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None of the numbers from the CDC are clear on that point. The fact is that the country is safer now than it was 30 years ago because violent crime has decreased steadily over the last 30 years. The FBI maintains statistics that prove this. The Atlantic (a monthly magazine that is about as far left as left gets) even used the term "The Great Crime Decline" to describe it. The difference is nearly instantaneous (and often woefully inaccurate) reporting of events over the Internet. We are simply made more aware of violent encounters today than we were 30 years ago, so our collective perception is that crime is increasing and it isn't.

The folks who study this stuff (the most recent "pause" in the dropping crime rate) blame it on the pandemic and say that this will pass as the pandemic passes. There were a whole lot of people who were terrified that if they ventured outside that they would walk into a cloud of Covid-19 like it was the same as Sarin gas. When you start believing that you may be dead next week no matter what you do, it can mess with your head. Because social life on the whole was so radically destabilized, it resulted in a huge surge of violence that was temporary. As the pandemic subsides, so will the violence.

Dr. Strange Love said:

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When all of us head into our twilight years, the right to operate an on-road motor vehicle can be taken away if we are no longer in full control of our faculties …. Family members etc. have to take these steps on our behalf all the time everywhere in this Good’ol USofA.

Why should the right to operate a weapon, when anyway one of us is not quite all there, be treated any differently?
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The smart aleck answer is: "Because driving isn't a right! Guns are a right! 2A!"

But this is a really rational argument. The constitution has its flaws, and that's what amendments are for.

IMO there should be an amendment to clarify and define the rights of citizens. So many people hold on so dearly to the 2A but to me its moot, and a good part of it has lost context. McDonald v. Chicago did a pretty good job of this, but there is still an ambiguity as to what it actually grants citizens the right to, such as the ability to own and operate guns lawfully outside of private property without excess permission from the owner. In simpler terms, the Supreme Court ruled that citizens did have the right to own a gun for self defense in their own home, striking down legislation to ban them in high crime areas, but they were unable to come to a conclusion on presumptively lawful usage outside the home. The notable suggestion was the reasonable ban on weapons "not typically possessed by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes."

Therefore regarding the ownership of weapons other than handguns and hunting rifles, it is reasonable and potentially lawful to ban the ownership. But now people's feelings become hurt. And thus we have arguments.