Shooter dead, two injured after shooting at Great Mills High School in Maryland

[trag3dy]

8 hours ago, theyarecomingforyou said:

We're aware of the political issues surrounding policing in the UK. The current government has slashed spending on the police: Britain's police budgets to lose £700m by 2020, amid rising crime. The drops in crime seen under the previous Labour governments are being eroded by a Tory government hellbent on austerity. Slashing funding to police will always result in crime increasing.

I disagree. You look at the overall benefit to society and weigh that against the cost. Every other developed country manages to keep its populace safe without the right to bear arms - in fact they're demonstrably safer as a result. I think we'll see a similar argument come to be made with self-driving vehicles - at some point it makes sense to deny humans the right to drive when lives can be saved through autonomous vehicles. People's rights end when they intrude upon the rights of others.

 

Nobody should live in such fear of others than only a gun can make them feel safe. Shouldn't you aspire to live in a society where you feel safe without a gun rather than support gun ownership to such a ridiculous level that everybody feels unsafe? Your actions—in supporting the liberalisation of gun laws—continue to increase your own risk.

I wonder how Uber feels about this...

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

On 3/20/2018 at 10:15 AM, DocM said:

The school School Resource Officer ended the event before it ramped up, killing the shooter.

 

Lessons:

 

School security is essential. We guard our baubles and burger joints better than we guard our schools.

Gotta agree, A well trained armed police presence is the best solution. Waaaaay better than the give the teachers guns ######. People should focus on the reasonable solutions instead of presenting their own strawmen idiot "solutions".

[FloatingFatMan]

7 hours ago, xrobwx said:

So, the BBC is like the American media?    The title of the article is: "Gun crime in London increases by 42%"

I think you're failing to understand what a percentage increase actually means.  An increase from 1% of overall crime to 2% of overall crime is a 100% increase, from 1% to 1.5% is a 50% increase...

6 hours ago, Zagadka said:

Gotta agree, A well trained armed police presence is the best solution. Waaaaay better than the give the teachers guns ######. People should focus on the reasonable solutions instead of presenting their own strawmen idiot "solutions".

Turning a school, a place of learning, into a heavily armed prison camp IS an idiot solution.  All that does is perpetuate the problem instead of actually trying to find a proper solution.

[theyarecomingforyou]

8 hours ago, trag3dy said:

I wonder how Uber feels about this...

A) Companies don't have feelings. They exist only to exploit workers and produce profits for shareholders.

B) If you're referring to the recent fatality, then that pales in comparison to the 35,000+ road deaths in the US each year. There will come a point very soon when autonomous vehicles are dramatically safer than traditional vehicles. As soon as that is the case efforts should be made to further restrict and eventually prohibit humans from driving on roads for the greater good of society.

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

1 hour ago, FloatingFatMan said:

Turning a school, a place of learning, into a heavily armed prison camp IS an idiot solution.  All that does is perpetuate the problem instead of actually trying to find a proper solution.

Who said anything about a heavily armed prison camp? One security officer is not a police state. We had one in my middle and high school, Hell, in most schools in LA, since in the 80s, given the conflicts happening.

 

We also had 13' tall fences around the campus, to keep out drug dealers etc. Ironically, that would make a school shooter scenario much more deadly, since there were only 3 gates and 2 of them were locked most of the time.

[FloatingFatMan]

6 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

Who said anything about a heavily armed prison camp? One security officer is not a police state. We had one in my middle and high school, Hell, in most schools in LA, since in the 80s, given the conflicts happening.

 

We also had 13' tall fences around the campus, to keep out drug dealers etc. Ironically, that would make a school shooter scenario much more deadly, since there were only 3 gates and 2 of them were locked most of the time.

From the words of one of your fellow Americans, @DocM

 

Quote

Another item is actually securing the schools as if they meant it; a single entry once occupied with buzz-in inner doors, bus loading/unloading in a fenced off area, police presence at the start and end of day.  Routine in many of our area schools, the rest will be getting those upgrades.

Sure as hell sounds like a prison camp to me.  A supermax one at that.

 

It's actually quite sad that you think all that, and 13' fences etc, are a great idea...

 

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

I never said it should go to that draconian. One trained police figure on campus is sufficient. Maybe two. I don't see the need for locking everyone up or strip searching or rectal exams or whatnot.

 

Having the police officer present on campus does not only deter/mitigate shootings. There are TONS of other (mostly minor) crimes that are better dealt with on campus instead of calling in the city police every day.

 

But perhaps you do not appreciate the situation in Los Angeles in the 80s and early 90s. Drugs and gangs were very real threats. There was a racial stabbing my first day. Building the fence made a lot of sense in that context. Schools even worse off closer to LA had metal detectors and such. I don't know the impact of those measures, but we did successfully curtail the overall situation and safety is far better now.

[FloatingFatMan]

Oh I understand the situation reasonably well, and am continually horrified that Americans have permitted things to get so bad that armed cops in schools are considered a good thing...

[IsItPluggedIn]

13 hours ago, theyarecomingforyou said:

For instance, ban open carry and you know that anyone walking around with a weapon is a criminal and can be treated as such. Investigations into police fatalities should be handled by an independent organisation and no benefit of the doubt should be afforded - if police kill a suspect they should have to demonstrate there was a risk to life. Ban rapid fire weapons - if weapons are used for hunting then they don't need to be rapid fire; they are also not needed for self-defence. Limit magazine / clip sizes - no more than five rounds, so that any armed attacker could be taken down when they go to reload. Require weapon owners to obtain a licence to regulate ownership and trace weapons - all weapons should be able to be traced to the registered owner.

 

So I see that nobody has responded to this, but this is the main point. The first step in all of this is not taking guns off people, its to put some sensible restrictions around guns.

 

People are not allowed to own nuclear weapons and other similar outlandish weapons. Thus it could be easily expanded.

 

I believe licensing guns and gun usage is a good way to start, make it a nominal amount to license all of your weapons and access to use them. This in itself does not really stop anything but its a start, you need to pass a test to drive on the road, why cant you have to pass a test to get a gun.

 

Maybe restrict Semiautomatic guns to people who pass a level of competency with weapons which includes maybe psychiatric exam. Or ammo for said guns cannot be taken away from gun ranges etc.(hard to do but)

 

If the status quo keeps going nothing will change it will only get worse as a precedent has now been set, I'm defiantly not saying to remove guns or take them off people, but some change is needed. Some restrictions need to be put in place to restrict the rapid availability of guns to people who are not mentally sane.

 

The second probably larger issue, is of child bulling and mental state, the reason nobody is talking about it is because it is much harder to combat, you cant make laws the ban mental issues but it is the cause of most of the issues. This is a big issue around the world and nobody has a good way to deal with childhood mental/social issues. Teen suicide is the second leading cause of death for those aged 15-24. Obviously we are not doing a good job of dealing with the mental/social issues of our young. I don't know how to fix this but this should be the main talking point, if kids weren't so ######ed up from school and society they wouldn't be doing this.

 

 

 

 

[FloatingFatMan]

Just now, IsItPluggedIn said:

I believe licensing guns and gun usage is a good way to start, make it a nominal amount to license all of your weapons and access to use them. This in itself does not really stop anything but its a start, you need to pass a test to drive on the road, why cant you have to pass a test to get a gun.

This is one thing that continues to annoy me about many Americans.  Gun control does NOT and never has meant, taking away your guns. It merely means to apply sensible controls to them.

 

In the UK, we have strict gun control, but that doesn't mean we cannot have guns. It just means we have to go through the correct process to be able to have one.

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

16 minutes ago, FloatingFatMan said:

Oh I understand the situation reasonably well, and am continually horrified that Americans have permitted things to get so bad that armed cops in schools are considered a good thing...

<shrug> That is the situation we have to deal with. Ideally? Yes, we wouldn't need to take that measure. But refusing to consider it as a measure to mitigate the current problems is not helping anyone. If you have a spate of school shootings and one side saying give guns to everyone and the other to give guns to no one, nothing is going to change, Ever, We can always go back and adjust policy as things change, but for what we have now? That is a reasonable compromise while we work on better solutions.

[FloatingFatMan]

The problem there is that no one IS working on better solutions. Every single time anyone tries to do anything, it just gets shut down as soon as the NRA owned senators get anywhere near it.

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

Yes, so while no one is making a better solution, why not try a stopgap solution? Why just sit around waiting for people who will never agree to agree? It is silly to refuse to do anything because you can't do everything.

[FloatingFatMan]

Doing the wrong thing is just as bad as doing nothing.

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

And I don't see having a police officer around as a bad thing.

[theyarecomingforyou]

1 hour ago, IsItPluggedIn said:

So I see that nobody has responded to this, but this is the main point. The first step in all of this is not taking guns off people, its to put some sensible restrictions around guns.

 

People are not allowed to own nuclear weapons and other similar outlandish weapons. Thus it could be easily expanded.

 

I believe licensing guns and gun usage is a good way to start, make it a nominal amount to license all of your weapons and access to use them. This in itself does not really stop anything but its a start, you need to pass a test to drive on the road, why cant you have to pass a test to get a gun.

 

Maybe restrict Semiautomatic guns to people who pass a level of competency with weapons which includes maybe psychiatric exam. Or ammo for said guns cannot be taken away from gun ranges etc.(hard to do but)

 

If the status quo keeps going nothing will change it will only get worse as a precedent has now been set, I'm defiantly not saying to remove guns or take them off people, but some change is needed. Some restrictions need to be put in place to restrict the rapid availability of guns to people who are not mentally sane.

 

The second probably larger issue, is of child bulling and mental state, the reason nobody is talking about it is because it is much harder to combat, you cant make laws the ban mental issues but it is the cause of most of the issues. This is a big issue around the world and nobody has a good way to deal with childhood mental/social issues. Teen suicide is the second leading cause of death for those aged 15-24. Obviously we are not doing a good job of dealing with the mental/social issues of our young. I don't know how to fix this but this should be the main talking point, if kids weren't so ######ed up from school and society they wouldn't be doing this.

Exactly. Obviously a total ban on weapons is never going to work in the US - in fact it would only enflame the situation. What's needed is a series of gradual reforms that reduce the risk to life. Instead of calling for teachers to be armed and banning gun-free zones there should be a move to track the ownership of every weapon and ensure that they are being stored safely. I'm in the UK and my family owns numerous shotguns (including semi-automatic) - in order to do so they had to apply for a firearms licence and there was a police visit to ensure that the weapons are being stored securely. The licence wasn't difficult to acquire, despite the UK's reputation for strict gun laws.

 

The issue is that not only is no progress being made but that guns-rights activists are succeeding in the liberalisation of gun laws, which only makes the situation worse.

[trag3dy]

7 hours ago, theyarecomingforyou said:

A) Companies don't have feelings. They exist only to exploit workers and produce profits for shareholders.

B) If you're referring to the recent fatality, then that pales in comparison to the 35,000+ road deaths in the US each year. There will come a point very soon when autonomous vehicles are dramatically safer than traditional vehicles. As soon as that is the case efforts should be made to further restrict and eventually prohibit humans from driving on roads for the greater good of society.

True companies don't have feelings yet the folks at Uber were concerned enough about the viability and reliability of their self driving cars that they had to scrap the entire thing. You don't do that if you think its going to be the future of transportation.

 

[trag3dy]

6 hours ago, IsItPluggedIn said:

 

So I see that nobody has responded to this, but this is the main point. The first step in all of this is not taking guns off people, its to put some sensible restrictions around guns.

 

People are not allowed to own nuclear weapons and other similar outlandish weapons. Thus it could be easily expanded.

 

I believe licensing guns and gun usage is a good way to start, make it a nominal amount to license all of your weapons and access to use them. This in itself does not really stop anything but its a start, you need to pass a test to drive on the road, why cant you have to pass a test to get a gun.

 

Maybe restrict Semiautomatic guns to people who pass a level of competency with weapons which includes maybe psychiatric exam. Or ammo for said guns cannot be taken away from gun ranges etc.(hard to do but)

 

If the status quo keeps going nothing will change it will only get worse as a precedent has now been set, I'm defiantly not saying to remove guns or take them off people, but some change is needed. Some restrictions need to be put in place to restrict the rapid availability of guns to people who are not mentally sane.

 

The second probably larger issue, is of child bulling and mental state, the reason nobody is talking about it is because it is much harder to combat, you cant make laws the ban mental issues but it is the cause of most of the issues. This is a big issue around the world and nobody has a good way to deal with childhood mental/social issues. Teen suicide is the second leading cause of death for those aged 15-24. Obviously we are not doing a good job of dealing with the mental/social issues of our young. I don't know how to fix this but this should be the main talking point, if kids weren't so ######ed up from school and society they wouldn't be doing this.

 

 

 

 

Thing is you can own outlandish things like tanks and rpgs and military grade helicopters assuming you've got the cash to afford them.

 

Also, we already have restrictions in place but as we saw in florida those restrictions were not enforced. We should maybe start there. Enforcing the laws that are already in place instead of piling even more on that apparently will just be ignored.

[Nogib]

6 hours ago, FloatingFatMan said:

The problem there is that no one IS working on better solutions. Every single time anyone tries to do anything, it just gets shut down as soon as the NRA owned senators get anywhere near it.

The NRA doesn't "own" anyone.  Baseless assertions like that don't help the conversation at all.

[FloatingFatMan]

17 minutes ago, Nogib said:

The NRA doesn't "own" anyone.  Baseless assertions like that don't help the conversation at all.

They instruct, senator's vote as per instructions.  For all intents and purposes, owned is correct.

[PGHammer]

13 minutes ago, FloatingFatMan said:

They instruct, senator's vote as per instructions.  For all intents and purposes, owned is correct.

It works on BOTH sides of the issue, Floating - it's not unique to the NRA - the implication that it is otherwise is where it is incorrect.

 

The REAL issue is that we implied a promise to the kids of schools being a safe zone - and the kids themselves are correctly calling us on it.   I'm not saying they are wrong to call us (as a society) ON that promise; however, the REAL question is, in fact, is it a promise that is keepable in the first place?  Is the promise - or even the premise - viable today - or is it like Santa Claus - no longer viable?

 

As distasteful as the idea may be, we may well have to consider that the premise is no longer viable (of schools as a "safe zone") - look at the threats that our schools face merely from within - note that the shooters (with a mere one exception) are coming from the student body itself.  And that is just ONE issue; in Washington, DC, most "school shootings" are from the outside in - the shooter is not on campus, but the victims are.  Drug problems are STILL rampant - and it's not merely the colleges or the high schools; a lot of pre-high (junior-high, middle, and even in some cases elementary schools - and not alone in the US - have drug problems;  when elementary schools have drug problems, that is REALLY a problem).

If we aren't willing to devote the resources available to fix the problem, should we, in fact, make the promise in the first place?

[FloatingFatMan]

1 minute ago, PGHammer said:

If we aren't willing to devote the resources available to fix the problem, should we, in fact, make the promise in the first place?

No, I don't think you should. Broken promises are even worse, especially when those making the promises do it knowing full well that they WILL be broken.

 

As I've said before. Nothing is going to change until America as a whole undergoes a societal shift away from guns.

[DocM]

9 hours ago, FloatingFatMan said:

I think you're failing to understand what a percentage increase actually means.  An increase from 1% of overall crime to 2% of overall crime is a 100% increase, from 1% to 1.5% is a 50% increase...

Speaking of rates. Source: Northeastern University, Boston MA.

 

 

Quote

Turning a school, a place of learning, into a heavily armed prison camp IS an idiot solution.  All that does is perpetuate the problem instead of actually trying to find a proper solution.

 

It's not standing by the door, scowling. 

 

SROs in our kids & grandkids schools, there since the early 1990s because of the peak in the graph above, have consistantly been one of the most popular staff members. Besides protection they aid in counselling, student-student conflict resolution, etc. All by community demand (elected school board, parent-teacher organization etc.)  and a part of police dept. community outreach. 

 

They also make it a point to take part in the "fun stuff." Ever see a uniformed cop wearing a tutu & dancing during a talent show? 

[theyarecomingforyou]

1 hour ago, trag3dy said:

True companies don't have feelings yet the folks at Uber were concerned enough about the viability and reliability of their self driving cars that they had to scrap the entire thing. You don't do that if you think its going to be the future of transportation

Companies care about profit and that's the basis for Uber's decision. Just because the company has cancelled current tests doesn't mean it won't be pursuing autonomous vehicles - it's simply keeping a low profile until the scandal blows over. It's also worth pointing out that Uber's autonomous tech was behind that of competing companies:

Quote

Uber’s robotic vehicle project was not living up to expectations months before a self-driving car operated by the company struck and killed a woman in Tempe, Ariz.

The cars were having trouble driving through construction zones and next to tall vehicles, like big rigs. And Uber’s human drivers had to intervene far more frequently than the drivers of competing autonomous car projects.

Source: NYTimes

 

People WILL be killed by autonomous vehicles but that doesn't make them more dangerous than human drivers. It's all about the big picture and it's only a matter of time until autonomous vehicles will be safe and reliable enough to take over from human drivers. You act as if autonomous vehicles will never be safer than human drivers when the progress of technology dictates otherwise.

[Emn1ty]

On 3/25/2018 at 2:23 AM, FloatingFatMan said:

Oh I understand the situation reasonably well, and am continually horrified that Americans have permitted things to get so bad that armed cops in schools are considered a good thing...

Why are you outright rejecting posting an on-site first responder? Why is that a bad thing? You haven't really explained that part.