Ideas on How to Stop Massacres

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You can only do so much.

Already when you consider that we have typically less than a dozen of these per decade and maybe 2 to 3 big enough to be national headliners like the recent stuff, V-Tech, or Columbine, Aurora, its such a small number of people that we're looking at an impossibly small minority.

We can do some small things to help schools better prepare such as having two-way intercom to the office that can put the school on lockdown, clear policy and procedures, and who knows - new school buildings get gravel in the cinder blocks and wire mesh in the doors for starters.

One has to remember that anything that can make a school look like a less defenseless target acts as a deterrent and those wanting a shooting gallery experience would have to think of somewhere else to go. The problem therein - its very good to save the life of children but you at the same time may very well have it happen more at malls instead; I'm not sure what I'd recommend for their security revamps just because trying to keep a mass of shoppers safe is a different animal altogether.

It amazes me that on the one hand you state it's such a "small minority of cases" and then go on to say lets make all schools look less defenseless. So your answer is not to focus on the causal effects of why such things happen and deal with them head-on but to see the problem as being the fault of the defenseless.
Not to ask what a society can do to stop such things ever getting to the point of a shoot out and ensuring the majority can live their lives without the need to fear. Instead you wish to make a society that is afraid of everything, why not suggest the next "illogical" conclusion? All children should be made to wear bullet proof vests in school, that will reduce the head count the next time...!

There are many unstable members of society and many reasons for their states of mind. Making a concerted effort to understand those who feel they are on the fringes of society may be a place to focus.

But for me there is one glaringly obvious issue, and that is GUNS. As long as any society makes it easier to obtain a gun than it is to obtain free mental health care at the point of need is not a society that will find a solution anytime soon.

The US chooses to make it a right to live by the gun, no wonder why many of their countrymen die by them too.

UK ain't that much safer though. 1.2 murders per 100,000 yearly compared to 4.8 for the US. Sure, 4 times more likely, but you have to look at the 100,000 figure there. Peaceful times, man.

Ain't it funny that the real country that lives by the gun (they give genuine assault rifles to citizens), Switzerland, is safer than the UK? 0.7 there per 100,000. If "GUNS" were the problem, as you say, Switzerland should be less safe than the UK (and closer to the US), but it's not. Why is that?

I've done the numbers. Firearms ownership and homicide rates have literally no correlation; you can do them yourself too. The numbers are there for everyone to compare.

This is a really novel read-back and I'm a bit stunned that I'm receiving it but okay, I'll try and work with this:

I'm saying we're incredibly lucky that the number is even this low. The public is having an outcry or at least was a few weeks ago to do something, with that in mind I was trying to think of what was a cheap and feasible way to at least add some level of something (ie. the prohibitively expensive would never work).


Out of the perhaps 10% of the people out there whose lives are made hell by social darwinism as well as people who are fighting severe mental illness, something like .0001% of that group goes and does things like this. How does one mark that? The only thing we can do for starters that's an immediate response is shift their sense of what's vulnerable.

That's also a really strange twist to claim that I'm blaming the shooting victims. Can you tell me how you derived that from my post?


I'm all for improving our culture and getting us to be less vile and socially Darwinistic toward each other. I also do think that such improvements would take that .0001% and perhaps make it .00005%, even more importantly that 10% whose lives are made hell could be brought down to 5% or less; the later of the two would be the greatest good of that outcome.

So the question, in a society where people are at such odds with each other on values, liberties, and even whether or not anyone can ask them to do anything - how do you make that happen?


You're really stretching this post out as if its my entire post history and identity. Read some more of my posts and you'll get your heuristics right.


I think we need to do that regardless of whether or not it reduces shootings. I didn't bring it up because I didn't know that I'd be asked to regurgitate my philosophical and political baseball stats and affiliations.


I'd agree that the mental healthcare needs to be fixed, albeit with our 17 trillion in debt I think that will have to come from us hitting enough economic hard times to stop acting like spoiled churlish brats and living to outdo our neighbors. So much of our rottenness as well comes from a culture that's divorced rights from responsibility, that's a whole other topic though.


We're foolish enough to fight one war of prohibition - ie. the war on drugs. Its incredibly doubtful that two wars of prohibition would be the charm.

Are the murderers who commit these massacres targets of sustained hatred on a daily basis themselves before they commit their awful crimes?

Also, for overall violent crime, the US had 466:100,000 and the UK had 2,034:100,000 in 2009 according to the Daily mail. If you factored out the gang members and other criminals that were murdered, our homicide rates would be similar. Homicides of law-abiding citizens aren't a major problem here.

Schools in California have seismic retrofits and older schools sometimes have fallout shelters in case of nuclear war. The nuclear war hasn't happened as of when I posted this and there have been more shootings than schools that had their seismic retrofitting pay for itself.

Waiting for the police to show up and stop a shooter is like saying we don't need fire extinguishers in schools because the fire department will come to the rescue.

I bet there's large states in the US that have a similar murder rate per 100,000 as the UK and other developed countries; a quick search shows 20+ states in the US that run from the low 1s to high 3s per 100,000 people per year (I'll say 4 and over isn't super good), which is good.

I can't say that I'd feel any less safe in the US than here in Oz, which is 1 per 100,000, as I wouldn't move to a rough area (ironically, we have a higher firearms ownership rate than the UK, but we have less murders) -- we're doing a good job considering most of us are probably descended from criminals.

This has described how many people?
But only a tiny minority actually kill.
But you can't isolate the tiny minority, because nobody knows who the next shooter will be.
'87% of school shooters reported or left evidence of being bullied.' - wikipedia

Last edited by ripped on 01 Feb 2013, 12:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Don't get me wrong, I am not proposing anything so simplistic as to suggest that we can simply isolate a mentality and solve the problem. After all, there are plenty of narcissists who go on to be nothing more than highly opinionated people. I am the last person to pin hopes to anything as simple as a psych litmus test. Shooters will slip under the radar and commit their crimes so long as we proclaim their deeds and earn them fame. Obviously, the news and politicians will never let a tragedy go to waste so the best thing we can do is deter the crime from happening.

That is interesting compared the the English right to live in fear, with only your sharpened fingernails to act as your deference. It didn't stop Dale Cregan from obtaining grenades and a full auto extended mag pistol. I suppose his victims could sue the government for failing to protect them if it wasn't for the fact that it is now impossible. Our problems are a compilation of many things including a failed drug war. The English however. have bridled the lion by treating average citizens as common felons and depriving them of real self defense , which they substitute with an illusion of security.

Last edited by Sherlock03 on 01 Feb 2013, 1:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.

While the nervous nelly-s carry one about the occasional massacre, they rarely say anything about the daily suicide bombing in the middle east or the horrendous murders that tyrants in the middle east inflict on those who oppose them. It turns out that Muslims Thugs are not to be criticized. And when violence and death do occur in the Middle East, then it is customary to blame the Israelis (who are mostly defending themselves).

ruveyn

Well yeah, and you could speak of the constant killing in non-white countries that never makes the television which lands us in a strange sort of Disneyland. For instance there's been constant genocide between two groups in the Congo that's climbed up over 6 million and people don't comment.

I also liked how someone said that a nation that lives by the gun dies by the gun. Isn't it also just as true that a nation that lives by the drug dies by the drug? Isn't it also true that a nation that lives by the bottle dies by the bottle? Isn't it true that a nation that lives by the hamburger dies by the hamburger or a nation that lives by the french fry dies by the french fry? A nation that lives by stress dies by stress? A nation that lives by the car dies by the car?

Many of these same people who thing guns are these terrible terrible things would be very mixed on the issues I just mentioned - ie. I'm sure want to legalized drugs as much as possible, likely want to criminalize tobacco and sin tax fast food, quite often believe that capitalism is the cause of stress therefor it has to be removed (you wouldn't have much freedom but hey - at least I'd be able to get high enough to forget that I've lost my liberty). They really seem to pick and choose their diseases don't they? And they can't see that its essentially what we all do - they just hate it when someone does it different from how they'd do it, let alone when they cite that they like the idea of a society enforcing its autonomy via gun ownership.

Where, if any, statistics show we live in fear? I don't. I trust the government and the police and have no problems or concerns about security. Sure I've had a couple of fights/incidents and three separate bikes re-homed while I slept; but I've also slept/went out of my house with windows/doors unlocked or open altogether and absolutely nothing has happened. Please provide these statistics that show that apparently, British people are paranoid.



What a load of baloney.

I noticed that you conveniently left out the part of my quote where I mentioned Dale Cregan. I would say the police have less faith than you.



I don't think I have to, you seem to be making the case for me. You fear weapons to such an extent that you can come up with no better reply than to chastise those who oppose your view. I have given you my belief, indeed the belief of many people, that self defense is a human right, now kindly give me your reason for why you prefer to see me shackled to the whim of probability. I don't care about trivial facts that always have a refuting factual cousin, give me a reason. A reason is after all what ( hopefully) defines your belief. So, why do I not have the right to defend myself?

A Homeric rebuttal.

Has there ever been a school massacre at a really good school? How about a university massacre at Yale or Harvard?

My guess is the quality of the education the schools provide is the problem.

The Newtown Massacre had nothing to do with the quality of the school. Likewise, it is not uncommon for smart people to do very bad things. Poor education may be a contributing factor in some cases, but I do not think it forms a strong correlation with mass murder.