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A Uvalde school resource officer did not fire at the shooter. Uvalde Police were standing outside for almost an hour while gunshots can be heard. You will not get rid of bad guys with guns. Legislation against them will only affect the other 393,000,000 citizens who had their guns safely at home, and were planning no harm. As a Mexican-American I can say, see Mexico. They outlawed their guns (constitutionally) and now only criminals/cartels have them. They do not hide them, or fear of brandishing them, and they take what they want because nobody is there to provide resistance. Common sense laws preventing mentally unstable people from acquiring them is good sense.

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founding

Wait! “The elementary school shooting in Texas is the 212th mass shooting this year?” What is the definition of “mass shooting” here?

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There's no settled consensus definition, but this is the most commonly accepted one:

"In the United States, there are several different, but common, definitions of mass shootings. The Congressional Research Service defines mass shootings, as multiple, firearm, homicide incidents, involving 4 or more victims at one or more locations close to one another. The FBI definition is essentially the same. Often there is a distinction made between private and public mass shootings (e.g., a school, place of worship, or a business establishment). Mass shootings undertaken by foreign terrorists are not included, no matter how many people die or where the shooting occurs..."

https://crim.sas.upenn.edu/fact-check/what-mass-shooting-what-can-be-done

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This piece is riddled with factual inaccuracies about gun violence and what stems it. You blithely mis-state the relationship between rational gun licensing practices and the deterrent effect they have on gun mortality and injury. In addition, you claim there is no active shooter profile - that is also not the case.

We know what the majority of mass shooters look like and what guns they use. You know.

Shame on you - this is too important an issue to rely on hearsay and NRA myth science.

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Where is Clint Eastwood when you need him?

Hmm... when haven't we needed him...

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Make Dirty Harry the official legitimate role model for police, and the result is Death Squads.

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Yes, police are human too, and vary in their characteristics. And now that it's such an unattractive profession for most people, they can't be as choosy. But Harry need not be a model, just a possibility, which should deter the reasonable criminal.

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Honest questions. I have no particular side in this fight, but I also find gun legislation/laws, even dismantling the 2nd amendment as something that ultimately goes nowhere. the reason I say that is: pass every gun law you want and make it as stringent as you want--but now what? Is someone going to actually go get the guns or will we just do like a lot of other laws and ignore while some politician pats themselves on the back for "doing something"?

And how do you think actually going after the guns is going to go? Is it the neighbor going after neighbor either with their own gun or by calling the local cops? Do you really think legal gun holders are just going to show up and drop their guns off somewhere--look at all the fighting that they do as it is. Does one really think they'll just roll over and say: oh, gotta follow the law, now while the criminal doesn't, especially depending on the type of neighborhood one lives in? Is it anti-gun activists that get the lists of legal gun holders that now start doxing them/protesting outside their homes or outside the companies they work for to ruin them financially? Perhaps the National Guard going into neighborhoods door-to-door and everyone just duck? Has any country/city/etc in the world actually tried to just go get the guns? This is stuff that I would like to see asked and/or discussed because it requires the actual resolution--go get the guns--and there is tons of them in this country.

I don't know anyone who isn't extremely done with this nonsense. I don't live far from the Santa Fe shooting (and that young man is still having his mental illness assessed) and know people involved. As the news broke on my phone about an active shooter at a Texas elementary--I have a 5th grader at an elementary and had to keep hitting the reset button and pray my wife wasn't about to call me.

But I "honestly" don't know how we actually put gun laws into real action. Because passing laws while leaving the guns all out there on the streets--seems to me just political rhetoric for the politicians; and real pain and hurt for the rest of us with no resolution and more anger.

I just don't know the real answer to solve this and wish it wouldn't be this "right vs left" political thing. Perhaps some real discussions can be brought forward for all of us to consider. and hopefully, in this blog, it won't be like Facebook. I'm just trying to look at the end-game on this--no finger pointing.

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They, all these victims, they are all our children, parents, uncles and aunts, not just the ones who look, speak, dress, or pray as we do. integrating this fact into our values system would be a big step toward solving many problems, including our criminal refusal to enact common sense gun laws.

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Sloppy statistics are beneath you, Bari. We rely on you to do better than the mainstream media.

"The elementary school shooting in Texas is the 212th mass shooting this year. It is the 27th school shooting."

There Have Been 13 Mass School Shootings Since 1966, Not 27 This Year. Many of the 26 previous shootings involved disputes between students in parking lots, or after athletic events, and all of them resulted in one or zero deaths. (https://reason.com/2022/05/26/uvalde-texas-mass-shooting-statistics-gun-crimes-misleading/) Only 12 percent of mass shootings are mass public shootings. Most mass killings are "familicides" (murders of family members or intimate partners) and felony-related killings (robberies or gang-related "turf battles").

"As of 2020, the leading cause of death among children in America is guns."

This statistic is based off an age range of 1-19. I don't need to tell you that if it were 1-16 this would no longer be true. It is heavily influenced by gang and criminal activity in the 17-19 range which is why the researchers use these ages when they're ostensibly studying "children".

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I believe the path forward in reducing gun violence and mass shootings in our country is one not being discussed in any meaningful way. We must immediately end the war on drugs. I know this seems so disconnected from a psychopath murdering children in Uvalde but I’m certain there’s a connection. First, and not so connected to Uvalde, the majority of shootings in this country are the result of gang violence. Remove inner city gang violence from the equation and the US gun death rate wouldn’t be the outlier that it is. What are gangs fighting for? Mostly, control of territory to sell drugs. Drugs made illegal by our government’s decision to wage a war on drugs. A war on what people freely choose to put in their own bodies. A war that has resulted in countless MORE deaths, countless MORE addicts, countless MORE convicts, countless MORE prisons, and countless MORE shootings. If we legalized drugs so they could be sold and well regulated through pharmacies (imagine the end of accidental fentanyl overdoses), what would gangs fight over? Prostitution? Let’s legalize that as well (why is perfectly legal for adults to be paid for sex if it’s filmed and put on the internet but illegal if it’s… not filmed??) Ending the war on drugs would end gang violence in the US which in turn would vastly reduce gun violence in the us to the tune of hundreds of shootings each and every day. How does this connect back to school shootings? Imagine how much less resources our country would spend on policing if we ended the war on drugs and, in turn, eliminated gangs. The savings in reducing our police budgets, our prison budgets, our federal spending on agencies like the DEA, Border Patrol, and FBI, would be enormous. Literally hundreds of billions when the local, state, and federal cost savings are combined. A fraction of these resources could be redirected to mental health services so lacking in this country. A fraction of those resources would enormously expand mental healthcare which is the only reasonable way to prevent these mass shootings. Additionally, there would be a surplus of well trained men and women, former police officers or federal agents, available to work as school security officers. Imagine if each school were protected by five or six plain clothes officers who train monthly on preventing school shootings. Long story short, we need a different approach to preventing these tragedies. We should start by ending the war on drugs.

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founding

Dave, That was a thoughtful reply that I’d like to add my own thoughts to. Pardon the boring math stuff. Of the approx.. 30,000 gun deaths in the US, 20,000 are suicides; 9,700 are homicides; and 300 are considered mass shootings. Conflating the suicides with the homicides is where I believe your assertion that the US considers gun violence as normal as auto accidents is misguided. We don’t. The 20,000 suicides can’t be lumped into a much smaller (10,000) “gun” problem because they’re distinctively different issues that require different solutions. I hope we can agree on just that. Now let’s analyze the remaining 10,000 gun deaths. WARNING! Taboo wrongspeak ahead! The vast majority of these 10,000 gun deaths occur in 5-7 of America’s largest cities. America has over 10,000 cities, towns, etc.. When these 5-7 cities are removed from the tally, our homicide gun death count is one of the lowest in the entire world. So, clearly we don’t have an unusual “gun” problem in 9,993+ of our cities, but we do have an unusual culture problem in those 5-7 cities. And most reasonable adults know what the problem is, but it’s not culturally popular to discuss it without the tiny little mob (disguised as a huge mob) shrieking “RACIST!” Most studies show that black on black gun deaths represent somewhere between 65%-80% of homicides by gun in America. And if we look into this phenomenon a little deeper, it’s also the reason why so many children are dying from guns because sometimes they’re the gang banger caught in a gun fight, and sometimes they’re the sweet innocent child getting hit by stray gunfire. It’s a completely avoidable and God awful tragedy that produces so much human carnage that we continue to ignore because of a tiny little mob that might shriek “RACIST!” God help us.

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Gee... what might have happened to drive down the number of deaths by car in 2020?

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The news media should downplay these stories. Just listening to NPR, it seemed like 40% of their programming involved this story.

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I was wrong. I had assumed shooter was student at school, but the grade too low and his age to high. The real public health needs to intelligently weigh in on school shooting and other violence. My public health director emailed in 2021 after a shooting, “Gun Control is needed”. That’s fine for other people, but public health needs to wield our behavioral science expertise. What was the shooter’s problem? And why did he go to the school to kill?

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Am I allowed to defend innocents from murderers?

There is no 'but' - there are no grey areas. If you say no, then you side with the murderer.

Am I allowed to defend innocents from murderers?

If you say 'Yes, but..' you are telling me there are qualifiers to defend the innocent from murderers - thereby saying that the murderer is allowed to murder if I don't follow your rules.

Am I allowed to defend innocents from murderers?

If I seek permission first before I defend innocents from murderers, then I have no moral compass other than what I am 'allowed', making me a useless coward...

There are no qualifiers; I need no permission -

I will defend innocents from murderers, even if it means my death.

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I just heard on the news that in fact there is one place in Texas right now where guns are banned. It's the convention of the NRA of all places. That should tell everybody all they need to know about those gun violence promoting hypocrites. They preach that only guns can keep everybody safe. They want to arm teachers to keep the children safe. But they ban guns at their own convention. Why? Because GUNS ARE NOT SAFE! They are lying when they tell You the opposite, but their actions speak louder than their words!

Everybody who's brainwashed by the NRA and wants to spread their propaganda that only guns can keep everybody safe should answer one simple question:

WHY ARE GUNS BANNED AT THE NRA CONVENTION? Don't they wanna be safe too?

Let's try to make schools as safe as an NRA convention. Let's make the streets as safe as an NRA convention. Let's make every meeting as safe as an NRA convention. LET'S BAN GUNS! Because that's what the self-proclaimed experts on guns do at their own convention! If they can do it, everybody else can do it too! If it works for them it will work for everybody else too.

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founding

Uh, Bernd...they're banned because Trump will be attending it and you're not allowed to have guns around the president--past or present. Guns are not generally banned at NRA conventions. The Secret Service will be there to take care of problems, should they arise. They generally tend to b e a fairly competent group.

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Sounds more like an excuse than anything else. I'm not convinced. Could there be a better protection for Donald Trump than a hall full of armed card carrying NRA-members? According to NRA ideology and propaganda certainly not.

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founding

This is the only time they don't have guns. It's not an excuse.

The Secret Service debated this a lot before they made the decision.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything.

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It's pure hypocrisy. They claim more guns make everybody safer and when they meet amongst themselves they don't allow guns for safety reasons because the president is there. You can't have it both ways. It's either guns make You safer or they make You unsafe. Pick one and stick with it.

As far as I'm concerned it should be the other way around. Allow as many guns as they like at closed NRA meetings and bann them anywhere else. If the gun nuts choose to have guns and shoot each other, let them. This actually can make the country truly safer.

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founding

We seem to be talking past one another. The NRA didn't decide not have guns there; the Secret Service did.

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Then the NRA should have used their influence to get an exception. When it comes to not having guns banned elsewhere their power seems to be unlimited.

According to NRA ideology people need to be armed to be able to resist an overreaching government and here at their own congress they accept armed government agents to tell their members they cannot have their guns without a fight? Give me a break.

Did the NRA forget how to bribe officials to get their way all of a sudden when it comes to what is part of their core believes? That really sounds completely out of character.

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The president and the media drone on: America is full of white supremacists; racism; the deck is stacked; functional life and human interaction is valueless in the face of a virus...you're a selfish killer if you don't want to be locked down...a constant litany of terrifying, poisonous accusations and statements. Very angry young men of any race, who have a sordid past of misery, abuse, no roll models nor values, are listening. Some sleep all day, some do drugs, some steal. And some kill. In a dramatic, depraved way that reflects their rage.

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Is it a crazy idea to try organizing a “Mother’s March” everyone invited on Washington? A million mother March? Wouldn’t it send a tremendous message for changing our gun laws? I know the logistics would be very difficult. When will this stop? More guns than people in the US. Unbelievable! Always an activist sick of making donations. Time to do something!

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Jun 1, 2022·edited Jun 1, 2022

It's worse than a crazy idea; it's a pointless and offensive waste of time; performative nonsense that has no benefit whatsoever other than stroking the emotional needs of marchers.

If mothers want to help, they need to look for and respond to kids in their own communities who need love and care! Kids who are thrown aside by their loser parents to be raised by tired and bitter grandparents, kids bullied by other kids for their shitty home lives and their poverty, kids who have no meaningful connections in their lives, kids who are abused by the people who are supposed to keep them safe, kids who feel hopeless, kids who feel alone, kids who struggle in school and feel like failures, kids who can't get competent mental health care, kids who don't have anyone to tuck them in at night and help them with their homework and cook them vegetables, kids who believe they are worthless and have never had one single adult convince them otherwise, kids who aren't smart or rich or jocks so have nowhere to fit in at school, kids who turn to the mindrape of porn and video games and pot and discords full of hate to try to soothe themselves.

Unless and until you give one flying fuck about any of that -- and if you can't summon any compassion for such kids for their own sake, maybe you can consider that they become the predators you fear -- your "ooooh rich middle class women are going to fly to Washington to make sure everyone knows they DEMAND ACTION" nonsense is absolutely fucking offensive.

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