American needs to fight against terror closer to home

[josil]

And focus their energy on teenage boys who seem to be causing terror frequently by shooting us schools. Supermarkets etc etc.

What never ceases to amaze me is somehow these shooters manage to escape the stereotypes that others ethnic groups find it impossible to shake off.

RIP to those dead ok the latest massacre in the US.

The US needs to fight against terror and start with those close to home.

America, where you can have a fun day out with your children at a Bullets and Burgers theme park and the kids get to try out an Uzi. What could possibly go wrong?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Charles_Vacca

@KittenKong you may have read the same Twitter thread that I linked to earlier in this thread that stated that research has shown that 80% of mass shooters have a history of domestic violence, and yes many of them do kill a female relative/partner/ex-partner before carrying out the mass shooting.

There are a lot of factors to take into account, and gun control absolutely should be a part of it, but there are also a lot of common issues in the background of each of these perpetrators that can be used to identify those who are are at risk of committing these awful crimes.

I'll link again to a two-part podcast that is absolutely worth listening to on this topic:

How To Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic pt 1: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/how-to-stop-a-mass-shooting-epidemic-part-1/id1081244497?i=1000537711586

Pt 2 - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-stop-a-mass-shooting-epidemic-part-2/id1081244497?i=1000538477326

Forgot to post the blurb for those podcasts:

“Laura and Jim interview Professors Jillian Petersen and James Densley, co-founders and co-presidents of The Violence Project, a nonprofit, non-partisan research center best known for its mass shooter database, funded by the National Institute of Justice.
Together they have written a book called 'The Violence Project: how to stop a mass shooting epidemic.' They have interviewed perpetrators and victims and their families with the aim of preventing future mass shootings. Building on their coverage and analysis of Columbine and other mass shootings, Laura and Jim discuss their findings including making the links across violent offending behaviour, the red flags, the pathway to murder and early identification, intervention and prevention opportunities.”

The hosts, Laura and Jim, are ex-Scotland Yard and ex-FBI respectively so fully understand the background to these incidents as well as being expert criminal profilers.

That looks like good clean fun tbh

jfc 😑

I take your point, but it still remains that the vast majority of Wal Marts across the United States do not sell firearms at all, and less than half of Dicks stores sell guns any more. Unfortunately in many places it would be faster, easier and cheaper to buy a gun illegally.

I am an ex pat who grew up in the midlands and moved to downstate Illinois in the late 80's. Live in a city of about 100,000 people. With it being relatively rural, most everyone I have known the entire time has owned firearms. No personal experience with gun crime, and the only person I know is my brother in law who was carjacked at gunpoint in St. Louis. So personal experience and perspective is fascinating.

Aside from the fringes on both sides, most Americans want legal firearms with sensible restriction. This sentiment is really shown in how the entire debate is approached. Gun related accidents and suicides far out number murders and shootings, yet the debate and outrage really only flares like this when there is a mass incident like this.

With suicides, the focus is on mental health and how the person could have been helped and the gun is not even talked about.

With accidents, it is just generally accepted that accidents happen...that is unless it is a child. When it is a child, the discussion goes to responsible storage, keeping the gun out of the hands of a kid, and should the gun owner be prosecuted...not all that different than any other negligent act.

It really is a different cultural mindset than anywhere else, and unless one actually lives in it, they are going to struggle to understand it at all.

Mexican is also inclusive of indigenous people prior to colonisation. Latinos are considered unwelcome illegal immigrants by white American society. Take fof example the term, wet back.
Latino culture is distinct from white Anglo American culture.
Mexican spanish differs from European Spanish as does Spanish I South America.
I lived in Texas for 4 years and I had found active shooter drills at my daughters school a sobering event. But it was not a guarantee of survival. Imagine the panic?
Imagine hoping drills will help kids cor eyed in a room being riddled with military grade bullets from an automatic machine gun?
It's not really a deterent os it

Do the 3000 people who died in 9/11 not count? Or the Ariana Grande concert victims? Or all the American citizens who've been beheaded on video?

To fight terrorism at home you also need to tackle the root which may not be so close.

It isn’t relevant to this particular mass shooting, but the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have both determined that the greatest terrorist threat to the US is domestic terrorism by white supremacists.

www.politico.com/news/2020/09/04/white-supremacists-terror-threat-dhs-409236

@samyeagar

I'll have to take your word for it as I've only spent time working in AL. I guess working with professionals, buying illegal firearms would never be on the radar but get your point that a killer wouldn't think twice about going down an easier route.

Naturally it's an interesting topic for an Englishman working in the US and colleagues were more than happy to discuss the culture and where they fit in with it. You're probably right as even the most anti gun person didn't talk about schools but accidents, suicide etc. Although one incident at the time involved a toddler killing his mother after finding a small handgun in her purse and firing it.

It must depend on where you are but my American friends are horrified with this side of US culture and hate guns.

I’m American, have lived my whole life here. I’m just sick and tired and angry. My kindergartner had a music program today and I’m not one for dramatics but my breath caught seeing them all lying on the floor pretending to be sleeping bunnies for the song. I couldn’t help picturing an entire class lying on the floor, still like that, but not pretending.

I’m sick of EVERYONE. Mostly the Republicans and those lining their pockets with NRA money but honestly I’m tired of both sides right now. Fucking DO SOMETHING.

Both sides are using the blood of these children for their own agenda and it won’t work, it will never work, we’re just going to point fingers and fight and meanwhile it will happen again and again.

We need practical shit until our culture can shift from the insanity we’ve descended into. We need to sign Extreme Risk Protection Orders into law, we need to ban the production and importation of high capacity magazines, we need community and school teaching on identifying risk factors and effective reporting of them. And we need bulletproof doors etc. Most on the left mock the idea of them and say they don’t want to send their kids to school like that and I don’t either, but here we fucking are.

Do the job you were elected to do and FIGURE IT OUT.

Could I ask why you lay blame on both parties? I’m only old enough to remember Clinton onwards. Clinton did manage to pass some gun control legislation. Obama tried but was blocked by (mostly) Republicans and any attempts by Biden will also inevitably be sunk by mostly Republicans.

It feels like 90% of Democrat politicians want gun control legislation, but only a handful of Republicans, and the Democrats rarely have the Senate margin needed to do it themselves.

Because gun control is all the Left consider. I think it would be lovely but it also isn’t going to happen. The laws we do have are already abused in many ways and some places with tighter gun control (Chicago) have some of the worst gun crime.

We need to focus on actual solutions that can be passed right NOW instead of pointing fingers. Yes I DO lay most of the blame on the Right, for their refusal to act and the insane gun culture many of them revel in, but the Left pooh-poohing any measure like bulletproof doors and the like is also not helping.

That monster bought those guns legally. Clearly that system is fucked. But the reality is, he bought them legally. Bulletproof doors would have saved those babies.

The thing is that the guns in Chicago don't come from Chicago; they come from neighboring states with stricter gun laws. This is why it's so hard and there needs to be federal action, but then you get caught in who can regulate what. I live outside DC, which has strict laws (except the ones the Supreme Court struck down) but it's not at all difficult to go to other states to get them, I think VA is more lax.

Yes.

How are you? Everyone I know here is shellshocked and numb right now. It’s…I don’t even know what to say or do anymore.

But surely all that would happen if all schools had bullet proof doors and windows and lock down the external doors, all that will happen is that shooters will adapt their tactics (shootings in the playground or at the school gates, for example)?

Possibly. Probably. But moving targets are quite hard to hit. The worst cases are those like the most recent atrocity, where some unhinged monster with a gun can barricade themselves in a room and murder everyone in it in minutes.

And adaption takes time. Yes they will adapt. Sick fucks always find a way. But it would save some kids in the meantime. Banning guns would take much much longer and cause untold disaster in the meantime.

It would likely cost billions and billions to implement (I see one company has managed to get the cost-per-door down to $2,500, so times that by the amount of schools in the country, then the number of doors per school) and there’s no real evidence to suggest it’d be effective. That’s only the doors, of course, which would likely be a small fraction of the overall costs of fully securing a school.

Lock them down completely (yards and school
gates included) and I’m sure you’ll see a rise in shootings at movie theatres, soft play areas, youth centres and alike. Already school shootings only account for 11% of mass shootings in public places.

Either you heavily secure and militarize most/all public spaces, or introduce gun control, or carry on as is.

Just to add that I’m not saying that it’s not worth spending billions to protect children, but even if the country found that political will to do so, it just doesn’t sound like a realistic solution to me.

Yup, we’ll just die.

It’s that or gun control.

So then we’ll die. Because that won’t happen. Even if it went through, many gun owners won’t give up theirs willingly. The police won’t go take them. The army may, but it would lead to Civil War. I mean that literally.

If it’s truly the case that any meaningful restrictions on gun ownership are impossible, then a higher incidence of mass shootings is part of the reality of being American.

Maybe big societal changes like universal access to mental healthcare would reduce it a little, but ultimately country with massive gun ownership and loose restrictions thereon will inevitably have a high incidence of mass shootings.

If the negatives outweigh the positives of living there, and you are able to, you emigrate.

If you lock down schools so they are hard to get into, eventually kids will die in a fire because they can't get out easily either.

Uk schools are well fenced off to intruders. When was the last time you heard of one being on fire or another emergency which left the children trapped?