[The New Normal] Kentucky school shooting: 2 students killed, 18 injured

You want to limit school shootings?

1) stop making it popular. It's shameless popularity.
2) get parents involved in everyday life.
3) be proactive in people even if it means judgement


Most of these kids, had signs. I think they like this attention, too. Twisted folks. Usually always white guys with deep seeded hate. Time to stop promoting shameless popularity.

SIL

 

You can't stop it. Too many pissed off kids. Just from probability you will have a few bad apples. If it was harder to get gun shootings would go down.

 

I don't know. If they want to do it, they'll get the gun. Kind of like drugs, these black market commodities won't limit it much. Just make the ones that want to do it, go further.

SIL

 

We should make it harder to get drugs and make it harder for kids (heck, people) to get guns. It may only make it a bit more inconvenient for gang members and other habitual criminals to get guns, but it may significantly slow or even stop the 15 year old kid who all of a sudden wants to go to school and shoot a bunch of other students.

 

I concur. I don't know where to start.

SIL

 

Parents at the school are calling for metal detectors. To me that is an unfortunate solution... that we as a society have given up hope. As a parent of a recent high school graduate that played basketball throughout junior and senior high school we would occasionally visit schools with metal detectors. We would be reminded what kids at those schools must worry about (at least at an increased level). Of course that only ensured safety inside the walls which was important but not enough.

I'd look at some solutions that the majority of Americans already favor and seem reasonable... national database, standardized and longer waiting periods, increased education, trigger locks, gun safes all seem to protect the right to own guns but at least provide an increased level of protection. f course, the NRA and gun ownership advocates resist most of these but at some point we have to make the tough decisions to protect people, especially our kids and teachers.

 

We need more good high schoolers with guns

More training and target practice for high school kids. A good guy with a gun beats a bad guy with a gun.

 

Your solutions are weak, and I know you're just casting about for some solution other than curtailing open access to firearms. An effort to stop making it popular is not actionable because of the first amendment. MSM can choose to change how they report cases, but the information will still be available to the people who seek it out. If people have ready access to ISIL propaganda videos, they shouldn't have any problem indulging in high school shoot-up fantasies either. Parent involvement hasn't even been identified as an issue. Kid shooters may have been aloof, but a lot of teens are and it doesn't really indicate a lack of efforts from parents. Besides, how is "get parents involved" actionable? All the nation's parents just need to grab their bootstraps and parent harder in some grand social movement of spontaneous self-improvement? I'm not even sure what being proactive in people would mean, but it does sound like another permutation on parenting harder.

You want to say its a hopeless effort to stop people from getting guns, so why bother. Getting a broad-based effort from everyone in society to just be better, be more vigilant, and say all the right things without any leadership from government or anywhere else is what's hopeless. Better gun control can be led by government with real mechanisms, enforcement, controls, and metrics. It won't stop all shootings, but it's very reasonable to see that it should incrementally decrease the incidence. I am very interested to hear how this 15 year old got the murder weapon. If he couldn't get one out of his father's closet, I'm pretty skeptical he could get a black market handgun in a town of 4,000 residents 2 hours away from the nearest metropolitan area.

 

Juan, way to completely miss the point. I can't even speak about gun reform, etc..I don't know enough and am openly admitting that.

I just disagree with publicizing it so much, that's my only real point.

SIL

 

I think the number would drop, yes.

All speculating of course.

SIL

 

I have heard on more than one occasion that our kids these days are not as safe from child predators as we were back when we were kids (in the '70s and '80s). Not so. We just never heard about all the terrible stuff that happened when we were kids. We hear about it today because we're vigilant.

On shootings, I think we would see a drop in shootings if there was no coverage, and we'd think the number dropped even more than it did. But then we wouldn't be vigilant. As much as the coverage may have emboldened some shooters seeking glory, I think it has also had the effect of driving institutions like schools and churches, etc, to take the issue seriously and implement best practices on security. We may have avoided or mitigated even more violence on balance by talking it up. Now, parents, congregants, participants, voters demand security because of what they see on TV (we also carry guns -- the wisdom of that aside -- to be our own security). Similar story on sexual assault and harassment. You might have once trusted your doctor if he wanted to close the door for a routine examination of your child, but not today; we've seen what could happen on TV so we take steps to ensure security.

 

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