This week we appear to have seen more movement in the debate on gun availability than we’ve seen during the previous two decades. During a CNN town hall, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio suggested that he would support a ban on bump stocks, help end sales of semi-automatic rifles to persons under 21 years of age, and support national implementation of gun violence restraining orders, which were implemented in California following the mass shooting in Isla Vista by Elliot Roger. Those orders would help disarm persons who are at risk of becoming an active threat to themselves and those around them.
During the town hall, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch stated her position was that bump stocks should be banned, and sales on semi-automatic rifles restricted to those over 21 years old, both of which were sentiments that were echoed by Donald Trump during his “listening session” with shooting survivors and their families. That was before she complained that shooting victims wanted to “burn her”—like a witch, presumably?—so it’s a good thing for her they didn’t bring guns with them.
Unfortunately there were a few other ideas floated this week that were less than helpful and while Rubio, Loesch, and Trump also all said that they’d like to strengthen the background check system, the reality of what they’ve actually been doing with the background check system is exactly the opposite of “strengthening.”
President Donald Trump heard emotional stories Wednesday from people affected by the nation's deadliest school shootings, and it appears he had an assist in responding to some of the powerful testimony.
In a photo from the event taken by Getty Images photographer Chip Somodevilla, the President is holding a piece of White House stationery with five discussion points written in black marker.
The visible points include prompts such as "1. What would you most want me to know about your experience?" "2. What can we do to help you feel safe?" and "5. I hear you."
As noted on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Trump has actually weakened the background check system over the past year, not strengthened it.
While claiming he wants to “improve” the system, Trump has in fact cut funding for the background check program. He’s removed rules established by President Obama that would have included people who have been deemed mentally unable to handle their own finances and have been qualified for disability for mental and emotional reasons within the background check system. He’s allowed people who are fugitives from justice to be excluded from the background check unless they flee across state lines, and thrown out tens of thousands of law enforcement records from the system. In his 2019 budget, Trump cut $24 million from the Safe School Program and cut 16 percent of the funding for the background check and NICS system.
He also spoke at length during the “listening session” on the issue of having teachers and even custodians and cafeteria staff themselves armed with concealed carry permits in order to defeat and deter future school shootings. This isn’t a new idea from him; it’s one that he included in his campaign and even generated a white paper on.
Some of the brilliant suggestions in that paper were the following:
Enforce The Laws On The Books
We need to get serious about prosecuting violent criminals. The Obama administration’s record on that is abysmal. Violent crime in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and many others is out of control. Drug dealers and gang members are given a slap on the wrist and turned loose on the street.
Drug dealers and gang members are not given a “slap on the wrist” in America. That’s bullshit.
Federal legislation allows U.S. Attorneys to enhance the penalty for crimes committed by gang members. A growing number of states have passed or are considering passing similar enhanced prosecution legislation. In practice, it is challenging to prove that an offender is a member of a gang or that the crime benefits the gang; therefore, it can be difficult to bring enhancement to bear on prosecuting criminal activity.
California, which leads the nation in the trend to enhance prosecution, describes the process this way: "any person who is convicted of a felony committed for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with any criminal street gang, with the specific intent to promote, further, or assist in any criminal conduct by gang members, shall, upon conviction of that felony, in addition and consecutive to the punishment prescribed for the felony," become subject to additional terms, enumerated in the code.[1] Guidance is provided under the California code for persons convicted of misdemeanor offenses.
As a matter of fact, violent crime rates in cities like Baltimore and Chicago have been coming down due to the local efforts of police to rebuild their relationship with the local community, not by enhancing criminal penalties.
The homicide toll across the country — which reached a grim nadir in 1993 when more than 2,200 murders were counted in New York City — has declined in ebbs and flows for much of the last 20 years, noted Alfred Blumstein, a professor of urban systems and operations research at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Several U.S. cities – including Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego and Indianapolis – have experienced a decrease in the number of murders so far this year.
Another suggestion by Trump:
Fix Our Broken Mental Health System
Let’s be clear about this. Our mental health system is broken. It needs to be fixed. Too many politicians have ignored this problem for too long.
All of the tragic mass murders that occurred in the past several years have something in common – there were red flags that were ignored. We can’t allow that to continue. We need to expand treatment programs, because most people with mental health problems aren’t violent, they just need help. But for those who are violent, a danger to themselves or others, we need to get them off the street before they can terrorize our communities. This is just common sense.
This seems to be in line with a similar suggestion by Dana Loesch during the CNN town hall that the FBI or local sheriff should have been able to literally yank Nikolas Cruz off the street after 39 visits over the last seven years by deputies and state officials to his home using the Baker Act. The problem, of course, is that the Baker Act is pretty narrow and specific for good reasons.
The Baker Act allows for involuntary examination (what some call emergency or involuntary commitment). It can be initiated by judges, law enforcement officials, physicians, or mental health professionals. There must be evidence that the person:
- possibly has a mental illness (as defined in the Baker Act).
- is in danger of becoming a harm to self, harm to others, or is self neglectful (as defined in the Baker Act).
Examinations may last up to 72 hours after a person is deemed medically stable and occur in over 100 Florida Department of Children and Families-designated receiving facilities statewide.[2]
There are many possible outcomes following examination of the patient. This includes the release of the individual to the community (or other community placement), a petition for involuntary inpatient placement (what some call civil commitment), involuntary outpatient placement (what some call outpatient commitment or assisted treatment orders), or voluntary treatment (if the person is competent to consent to voluntary treatment and consents to voluntary treatment). The involuntary outpatient placement language in the Baker Act took effect as part of the Baker Act reform in 2005.
There’s also the fact that after a visit by Florida’s Child and Family services, they found Cruz “was at a low risk of harming himself or others”—so that would seem to be a pretty clear roadblock to having him involuntarily committed under Baker. The reports are that Cruz’s adoptive father had died of a heart attack recently and his adoptive mother had died in November as a result of pneumonia. He had been expelled from school due to having a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, but not for “issuing threats” against them, as Loesch claimed.
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said the 19-year-old suspect, Nikolas Cruz, had been expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for “disciplinary reasons.”
“I don’t know the specifics,” the sheriff said.
However, Victoria Olvera, a 17-year-old junior, said Cruz was expelled last school year after a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. She said Cruz had been abusive to his girlfriend.
…
Unhappy there, Nikolas Cruz asked to move in with a friend’s family in northwest Broward. The family agreed and Cruz moved in around Thanksgiving. According to the family’s lawyer, who did not identify them, they knew that Cruz owned the AR-15 but made him keep it locked up in a cabinet. He did have the key, however.
Jim Lewis said the family is devastated and didn’t see this coming. They are cooperating with authorities, he said.
Broward County Mayor Beam Furr said during an interview with CNN that the shooter was getting treatment at a mental health clinic for a while, but that he hadn’t been back to the clinic for more than a year.
He got into a fight which got him expelled, he had guns which were supposed to be kept in a gun safe, and he had been visiting a clinic but they didn't make any claim that he was a “danger to himself or anyone else.” There have been more recent reports that someone called the FBI stating that “he was likely to explode and do a shooting” which wasn’t followed up on, and that he gotten into a fight while living with a friends of his recently deceased mother, and had threatened to “get his gun” but ultimately didn’t. There are other reports of him bring ammo or knives to school, but they seem vague and unconfirmed.
Police should have looked at him more closely but this kid couldn’t possibly be subject to the Baker Act. Being depressed or upset or angry or for that matter a virulent racist asshole is not a crime. If we were to go the way Loesch and even Trump wants us to go (with his extended rant about bringing back institutions which were phased out because of the “stigma” when in fact it was because of their rampant human rights abuses), it’s not a very productive path to go down.
Despite improvements in recent years, people with mental illnesses regularly suffer infringements on their human rights, and state-instituted psychiatry is often used to oppress political dissidents in nations around the world, according to New York Law School professor Michael Perlin, an expert on mental disability law who spoke at a talk co-sponsored by the American Constitution Society, the Human Rights Program, and the Institute for Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy Feb. 22.
Perlin is the director of the Mental Disability Law Program and leads the International Mental Disability Law Reform Project at the Justice Action Center at New York Law School.
Perlin said his travels in countries including Latvia, Bulgaria, Uruguay, and Nicaragua "have really clarified to me our societal blindness to the ongoing violations of international human rights law in the context of the institutional commitment and treatment of persons with disabilities.
"I think the issues I'm discussing today matter-I think they should matter to all citizens who take human rights seriously and those who care about how we treat those who remain-in many, many nations-locked away in facilities that violate any sense of human decency," he said. "Circumstances that I have seen around the world are beyond shocking the conscience."
Are we talking here about involuntarily committing people who are suffering from depression or anxiety or who have a prescription for Prozac or Zoloft? Because if we are, that’s a whole lot of people. To be specific, it’s 13 percent of the country. We do need better solutions on mental health, like not cutting Obamacare’s essential health benefits which include care for exactly that issue. But we don’t really need to go stumbling back down the institutionalism road.
For the record, only Tuscon shooter Jared Loughner and Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Dear have been found “mentally incompetent” and unable to stand trial. Aurora theater shooter James Holmes, Oakland ACLU shooter Byron Williams, Philadelphia police killer Richard Poplowski, and Knoxville Church shooter James Adkisson (who vowed to murder liberals) were all found “mentally competent” and have been tried in court. So in reality, “mental health” in legal terms isn’t always—or even usually—the problem. And there’s this:
Neither Trump nor the guests at CNN’s town hall event on Wednesday night mentioned extensive research showing that those who have mental health conditions are more likely to become victims of violent crime than to carry out acts of violence themselves. According to the Department of Health & Human Services, only 3-5 percent of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with “a serious mental illness.” By contrast, those with mental health issues are 10 times more likely to become victims of violent crimes than the general population.
“Mental Health” is, in fact, a dodge. It’s a diversion and an essentially bigoted excuse. CNN commentator Van Jones laid it out in detail.
They have a thousand excuses. And, I have to say, whenever this thing happens, if it’s a Muslim, they want to politicize it within seconds. If it’s a Mexican — build the wall. If it’s a black person — more cops and prisons. If it’s a white person, it’s mental health.
The FBI did investigate Cruz’s post on YouTube about becoming a “professional school shooter” but they weren’t able to track that post down to a specific person. So again, no Baker Act possibilities there. They did drop the ball when it came to the tip they received about his threat to use guns. But then again, that’s actually pretty common and understandable when you realize that domestic terrorism—which was exactly what the Parkland attack was—isn’t against the law.
But according to the Justice Department and legal analysts, it's simply not possible for the government to file charges of domestic terrorism, because no such criminal law exists.
The Patriot Act does define domestic terrorism, and under this designation, the Justice Department has broad powers to investigate, said Neal Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor who served as former President Barack Obama's acting solicitor general and as the national security adviser to the Justice Department.
He said the government has three basic ways to approach the Charlottesville case.
"No. 1, this is a hate crime, under the hate crime statutes," he said. "The second is that this is a conspiracy to deprive individuals of civil rights."
"And the third is, this is an act of domestic terror, which isn't itself a crime," he noted. In short, the government can't file a criminal charge of domestic terrorism, but so defining the incident does allow it to investigate not only an individual suspect, but also any group the suspect may be affiliated with.
18 U.S. Code § 2332, which defines terrorism under federal law, only allows the statute to be applied against people who commit crimes against Americans outside the country.
(a) Homicide.—Whoever kills a national of the United States, while such national is outside the United States, shall—
- if the killing is murder (as defined in section 1111(a)), be fined under this title, punished by death or imprisonment for any term of years or for life, or both;
- if the killing is a voluntary manslaughter as defined in section 1112(a) of this title, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and
- if the killing is an involuntary manslaughter as defined in section 1112(a) of this title, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(b) Attempt or Conspiracy With Respect to Homicide.—Whoever outside the United States attempts to kill, or engages in a conspiracy to kill, a national of the United States shall—
- in the case of an attempt to commit a killing that is a murder as defined in this chapter, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both; and
- in the case of a conspiracy by two or more persons to commit a killing that is a murder as defined in section 1111(a) of this title, if one or more of such persons do any overt act to effect the object of the conspiracy, be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both so fined and so imprisoned.
So that would seem to be a problem. Perhaps if we took domestic terrorism of this type as seriously as we’ve historically taken foreign, Islamic-inspired terrorism, we might have had some different results by now. In addition to all this, we don't seem to really have a good clear picture of exactly who these mass shooters are (or for that matter, who they might be), even after the FBI issued a detailed report on mass shooters in 2013.
In this study, the FBI identified 160 active shooter incidents, noting they occurred in small and large towns, in urban and rural areas, and in 40 of 50 states and the District of Columbia.Though incidents occurred primarily in commerce and educational environments (70.0%), they also occurred on city streets, on military and other government properties, and in private residences, health care facilities, and houses of worship. The shooters victimized young and old, male and female, family members, and people of all races, cultures, and religions.
The findings establish an increasing frequency of incidents annually. During the first 7 years included in the study, an average of 6.4 incidents occurred annually. In the last 7 years ofthe study, that average increased to 16.4 incidents annually. This trend reinforces the need to remain vigilant regarding prevention efforts and for law enforcement to aggressively train to better respond to—and help communities recover from—active shooter incidents.
Unfortunately, the FBI report doesn’t have much information on the nature of the shooters themselves, or whether they happen to have some common aspects or traits which can be used to help identify and divert these individuals. I’ve recently reached out to several FBI agents and even former members of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, but have yet to get a response or see evidence that they take these cases as seriously as they do serial killers or ISIS. And this issue is no small matter. ThinkProgress notes that since 2013 there has been a rise not only in hate crimes, but also a rise in alt-right killers, beginning with the aforementioned Elliot Roger.
A report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League showed that the rate of killings tied to white supremacists surged during President Trump’s first year in office. Now, a new report out of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has tabulated just how many of those killings were from those affiliated with the so-called “alt-right” — the misogynistic milieu, steeped in online propaganda, targeting the youngest generation of white supremacists.
According to the SPLC, the number of killings and injured persons attributed to this newest generation of white nationalists has skyrocketed since the group first made itself known a few years ago. Since 2014, the report found that some 43 individuals had been killed and 67 had been injured in attacks by the so-called “alt-right.”
In just the past year alone, 17 individuals were killed and an additional 43 were injured — by far the highest annual rate of all years included in the study.
“Of the 12 alleged or convicted killers connected to [this new generation of white supremacists], the average age of perpetrators is 26 years old,” SLPC researchers write. “Only three have been older than 30 with the youngest being just 17.”
More and more of these killers are young and decidedly racist, neo-Nazi, and alt-right—just like Nikolas Cruz. Those are the facts, despite some Republicans who attempt to claim that “most mass killers are Democrats.”
“What scares me most is that a lot of these legal gun owners are going to be targeted now,” Tenney said. “In their demographic, they have the least amount of crimes of virtually any other demographic.”
“Yeah, but they tend to vote Republican, they tend to be white,” Dicker replied. “Most gun crimes are occurring in what’s euphemistically called the ‘inner cities’ involving minorities, and they’re the ones that Democrats generally going to bend over backwards to protect, so you don’t hear about mandatory prison sentences for people involved in gun crimes say in Albany, New York, or downtown Utica.”
Tenney indicated she agreed with Dicker’s sentiment.
“Yeah, well, obviously there is a lot of politics in it, and it’s interesting that so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats, but the media doesn’t talk about that either,” she said.
Yeah, the media doesn’t talk about that because that’s not a thing. Not even close.
- From January 2008 to the end of 2016, we identified 63 cases of Islamist domestic terrorism, meaning incidents motivated by a theocratic political ideology espoused by such groups as the Islamic State. The vast majority of these (76 percent) were foiled plots, meaning no attack took place.
- During the same period, we found that right-wing extremists were behind nearly twice as many incidents: 115. Just over a third of these incidents (35 percent) were foiled plots. The majority were acts of terrorist violence that involved deaths, injuries or damaged property.
- Right-wing extremist terrorism was more often deadly: Nearly a third of incidents involved fatalities, for a total of 79 deaths, while 13 percent of Islamist cases caused fatalities. (The total deaths associated with Islamist incidents were higher, however, reaching 90, largely due to the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas.)
However, despite the FBI being largely AWOL and various crazy wingnut theories, some of those solutions have been taken on by the survivors and families of previous shootings such as Sandy Hook and Columbine. We can see this with Rachel’s Challenge, which has developed a five-step program intended to prevent students from become isolated and disconnected, which can lead to their lashing out violently.
All the transformative work we’ve done with Rachel's Challenge over the years has led us to start a chain reaction of our own.
After conducting over 5,000 school programs, we developed Awaken the Learner to expand upon the Rachel's Challenge promise. School administrators and educators repeatedly asked us for their own how-to blueprint to expand upon and implement locally at their own schools. We heard that they are overwhelmed with programs that produce short-term inspiration, with no plan to maintain the mission afterwards. We listened about their need for sustainable tools to change the climate and culture of their school. We went to work and created a program that is really more of a process.
This program was brought up specifically by surviving parents, including Rachel’s father, during the White House listening session, but it seems Trump didn't much hear it.
Instead, this is what Trump has stated was his feeling on bans for certain types of guns or ammunition magazines.
GUN AND MAGAZINE BANS. Gun and magazine bans are a total failure. That’s been proven every time it’s been tried. Opponents of gun rights try to come up with scary sounding phrases like “assault weapons”, “military-style weapons” and “high capacity magazines” to confuse people. What they’re really talking about are popular semi-automatic rifles and standard magazines that are owned by tens of millions of Americans. Law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice
Despite this claim, the fact is that the U.S. violent crime rate was declining more rapidly during the time that assault weapons were banned, rather than after the ban expired.
As the Washington Post reports, while looking back over 50 years, most weapons used in mass shootings were obtained legally.
There is no universally accepted definition of a public mass shooting, and this piece defines it narrowly. It looks at the 150 shootings in which four or more people were killed by a lone shooter (two shooters in a few cases). It does not include shootings tied to gang disputes or robberies that went awry, and it does not include shootings that took place exclusively in private homes. A broader definition would yield much higher numbers.
Mass shootings are a small slice of total gun deaths
Mass shootings Gun related 21 deaths in 20181,827
Source: Gun Violence Archive, Post research
This tally begins Aug. 1, 1966, when a student sniper fired down on passersby from the observation deck of a clock tower at the University of Texas. By the time police killed him, 17 other people were dead or dying. As Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff wrote, the shooting “ushered in the notion that any group of people, anywhere — even walking around a university campus on a summer day — could be killed at random by a stranger.”
Shooters often carried more than one weapon; one was found with 24. At least 167 of mass shooters’ weapons were obtained legally and 49 were obtained illegally. It’s unclear how 76 weapons were acquired.
Despite that, here’s what Trump said about background checks during the presidential campaign.
BACKGROUND CHECKS. There has been a national background check system in place since 1998. Every time a person buys a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer – which is the overwhelming majority of all gun purchases – they go through a federal background check. Study after study has shown that very few criminals are stupid enough to try and pass a background check – they get their guns from friends/family members or by stealing them.
They get their guns from friends and family? So perhaps we should require a person-to-person background check on that. They steal them? Perhaps we should require all current weapons holders report those thefts.
And this is what Trump said about potentially arming our teachers and public to help stop mass shootings in relation to the Pulse Nightclub massacre.
If we had people, where the bullets were going the opposite direction, right smack between the eyes of this maniac… if some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here to their waist, or to their ankle, and this sonovabitch comes out and starts shooting, and one of the people in that room happens to have it and goes ‘boom’, y’know what, that would’ve been a beautiful, beautiful sight folks. A beautiful beautiful sight.
Yeah, okay. For starters, there were armed security personnel at the Pulse Nightclub who did engage in a gun battle with the suspect, as did other officers who responded—but it didn’t really help.
When we’re talking about schools, there actually was an armed security officer at Douglas High School, and there were actually two of them at Columbine High. One did manage to fire at one of the attackers. He missed.
But having armed security on-site failed to prevent the deadliest mass shooting at an American high school.
In 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 15 people and wounded 23 more at Columbine High School. The destruction occurred despite the fact that there was an armed security officer at the school and another one nearby — exactly what LaPierre argued on Friday was the answer to stopping “a bad guy with a gun.”
Deputy Neil Gardner was a 15-year veteran of the Jefferson County, Colo., Sheriff’s Office assigned as the uniformed officer at Columbine. According to an account compiled by the police department, Gardner fired on Harris but was unsuccessful in stopping him:
So there was that then. During the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College, there were former vets on campus who were concealed carrying. They chose not to go all Call of Duty at that time, because they were concerned that they might be targeted by SWAT.
Our own Meteor Blades very famously outlined the scenario of five people being armed during the Aurora theater shooting, and it wasn’t pretty.
But suppose for a moment that not one, but five people in that Aurora theater are packing concealed pistols. Suppose two of them are as skilled as Greg Block. That the other three just have average shooting skills, the kind that most gun-owners have.
No. 1 concealed carrier draws as soon as what's happening becomes obvious, prompting No. 2 to immediately draw and shoot No. 1, thinking he is in league with the killer. No. 3 concealed carrier draws and gets off a couple of shots in the chaos, one bullet glancing off the helmet of the moving gunman, who turns his gun on No. 3, killing him and wounding the three theater patrons nearest him. Meanwhile, No. 4, who has often rehearsed a scene of heroism before the full-length mirror on the door of his closet, eagerly draws his pistol and, raising it, finger on the trigger, promptly puts a round through the head of the person crouching right in front of him.
No. 5 has meanwhile maneuvered himself into a perfect place from which to shoot unobstructed. Just before he fires, a fleeing member of the audience bumps his gun and the first bullet goes wild. Re-aiming, his second shot strikes the gunman's bullet-resistant vest, knocking him down as if struck by a baseball bat. While the gunman lies stunned, No. 5 approaches him. Just then, the first police officer comes down the aisle. Amid the screaming, chaotic, gas-choked theater, she sees No. 5 and tells him to drop his weapon. Confused, No. 5 turns to say he's one of the good guys and she fires four times, two of her bullets striking him in the chest, just as the gunman recovers enough to open fire again, his first target being her.
So to wrap this up, there was an armed guard at Pulse, at Columbine, at Parkland, and at Umpqua Community College during mass shootings at all those locations. And do you want to know what happened when a school cafeteria worker with a concealed carry permit happened to encounter police recently? This happened.
Valerie Castile, the mother of Philando Castile, slammed National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre for staying silent over the death of her son after he told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
“If he really cared about the good guys out here, he would have stood up for my son,” Valerie Castile told the New York Daily News. “It’s about money. This country is run off money. Everybody wants a piece.”
“My son was one of the good guys, but him being black, obviously they didn’t see him as a good guy,” she said. “They’ve yet to say anything about my son.”
And she’s exactly right. All these rabid “gun rights” people haven’t said a god damn thing about the murder of Philando Castile.
And Philando isn’t the only one, there was also a hostage case in Wisconsin where police mistakenly shot one of the hostages who had escaped
because he was armed.
Police shot and killed a man Saturday afternoon during an armed standoff at a Wisconsin motorcycle shop — but friends say the victim was a hostage.
…
The gunman held Funk and two customers hostage while Erato stayed in contact with police from his hideout in the basement.
Police tried to enter the building at one point but were met with gunfire, and one officer was struck by a bullet in his ballistic helmet and was not injured.
A short time later, police opened fire when they saw an armed man leave the building.
Police have not said who that man was — but Erato and others say it was the 60-year-old Funk, not the hostage-taker.
“This subject did not comply with officers’ instructions to drop the firearm and was subsequently shot at by one or more officers on scene,” police said in a statement. “We do not know if he was also shot at by the subject inside the business.”
Other than the Johnnie Langendorff who showed up in Sutherland Springs with his own AR-15 and drove that shooter away after wounding him, generally speaking, the “good guy with a gun” scenario is a myth.
It’s an intuitive and appealing idea—that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun. We can imagine it. We see it in movies. At least 80 million Americans have gone into the gun store, laid money on the counter, and purchased that fantasy. And yet it rarely plays out as envisioned. Is it because there aren’t enough guns? Is it because the guns aren’t allowed where they are needed? Or is there something else wrong with our aspirations to heroism?
Speaking Friday on CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello, perennial gun rights advocate John Lott said, “My solution for these mass shootings is to look at the fact that every single time, these attacks occur where guns are banned. Every single time.”
That’s neither true in general nor true in this instance. The FBI tells us that active-shooter scenarios occur in all sorts of environments where guns are allowed—homes, businesses, outdoor spaces. (In fact, there was another mass shooting the same day as the Oregon massacre, leaving three dead and one severely wounded in a home in North Florida.) And Umpqua Community College itself wasn’t a gun-free zone. Oregon is one of seven states that allow guns on college campuses—the consequence of a 2011 court decision that overturned a longstanding ban. In 2012, the state board of education introduced several limitations on campus carry, but those were not widely enforced.
So are we all going to have to carry AR-15s over our shoulder to deter the guy who might one decide to use his to try and kill the rest of us? Wouldn’t that be a glorious wet dream for the gun manufacturing industry? And how do the Cops white hat from the black hat in a free-for-all firefight like that?
This type of thing is not what we need more of. This is not a strategy for reducing gun violence. Actually closing background check loopholes (particularly person-to-person sales, which are currently not tracked); updating HIPAA, as Rubio mentioned, so that mental health specialists have a clear requirement to report threats and signs of potential danger to law enforcement or a judge so that a temporary gun violence restraining order can be issued to protect the public and themselves (since over 60 percent of gun deaths are suicides); limiting the availability of semi-automatic rifles which can be easily converted into fully automatic with bump stocks and trigger cranks; all of those steps can help.
Arming the teachers and cafeteria workers isn’t helpful, and could be potentially disastrous.
Going beyond that and changing the culture within our schools; reaching out more to bring in students who are becoming estranged and isolated; building better connections between people— those solutions aren’t as sexy and direct as some of these other ideas. But they may in fact become the most beneficial over the long term.
The good thing is that now, finally, we have a group of survivors who have already spent nearly all of their childhood going through active shooter practice drills. They were as prepared for this as they could have been, and still it didn’t work. Let’s hope that they
find common cause with the victims of urban crime and gang shootings, as well as with Black Lives Matter. There’s no reason for them to be at odds. They’re all tired of failure, they’re tired of platitudes, they’re tired of “hopes and prayers”—they want action, they want changes, and they want to have an impact.
They won’t accept anything less, and that’s a good thing. A very good thing.
Monday, Feb 26, 2018 · 2:32:39 AM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
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