Okay, murdered with a weapon that shoots 60 rounds per minute, enabling the murderer to kill more children in their classrooms.
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Okay, murdered with a weapon that shoots 60 rounds per minute, enabling the murderer to kill more children in their classrooms.
Do you have any personal experience with firearms? You keep throwing out random nonsense like "60 rounds per minute" as if you are regurgitating someone else's talking point instead of making any real effort at discussion. Repeating rifles have been a thing since the 1860s. Semi-automatic rifles have been for sale to the public since long before militaries adopted them.
After World War II, the M1 carbine was a popular surplus semi-auto. It was made with a wood stock, but it was a mag-fed semi-auto with widely-available "high-capacity" magazines. The AR15 went on sale to the public in the 1960s. Before it exploded in popularity as prices fell later on, the Ruger Mini-14 has been for sale since the early 1970s, and is also a semi-automatic in .223/5.56mm with readily-available "high-capacity" magazines.
I don't remember school shootings being a thing until Columbine (also an attempted bombing, BTW). That was during the Clinton gun ban, and long after the gun-free school zone act. This is decades after "high-capacity" semi-automatic rifles and pistols became popular in the firearm community.
People wanted to blame guns, video games, movies, and TV then. People still want something they can ban today so it looks like they are doing something. However, this is completely irrational. And the loudest cries of action are from people who don't know a damn thing about the topic at hand.
I've fired a 9mm at a firing range a couple of times and my grandfather won a ridiculous amount of awards for marksmanship with rifles... but that's my only experience. I don't own any guns and have never fired a semi-automatic rifle.
The US has a huge number of school shootings annually and large numbers of mass shootings and firearm deaths of children. This is a problem that seems to be increasing, and is a problem worth addressing.
Do you think school shootings are a problem worth addressing? If so, what are your proposed solutions?
My very first post on this blockchain was Basic Firearm Safety and I have considerable experience with firearms. Imagine if someone who never drove anywhere tried to declare how traffic laws should be written and enforced. Can't you see how absurd that might be? It's almost like the armchair quarterback certain he could lead a team to victory better than the pro athletes on the field.
I think it is a problem worth addressing, I just reject your proposals as misguided and unjust. Correlation is not causation. Again, guns have been banned on school grounds by federal law for about 33 years, and the result is an increase in school shootings. Meanwhile, firearm sales have grown and restrictions on carry have been relaxed while overall violent crime has plummeted. If you want to make a correlation/causation argument, the basic data suggests we need to just allow teachers and other school staff to arm themselves if they wish.
What if the very structure of modern schools is detrimental to mental health? We aren't just seeing more shootings. We are seeing suicides, substance abuse, gender dysphoria depression, and other widespread signals of a deeper crisis. The symptom is not the disease. And school isn't necessarily the only factor. I am just pointing out the single most influential institution in the lives of the youth should not be overlooked. We also have economic chaos, over 2 decades of war abroad, the collapse of religious institutions and the nuclear family, government de facto segregation policies, toxic social media, and a legacy media which thrives on tragedy, and innumerable other factors all spiralling into the issue.
Can't you see how "regulate guns" entirely misses the mark now?
I don't disagree that all those factors are contributing and important, extremely important, but the problem with this argument is that lots and lots of other countries have very similar issues. This deeper crisis affects both developed and developing countries all over the world... and yet the USA has dramatically more school shootings than other developed countries. Why is this?
I think there are a slew of reasons, but a major contributing factor is the ease in which someone can legally buy high-powered weapons and ammunition.
Giving a 50 year old, overworked, underpaid, overweight, stressed-out, female English teacher the option to carry a pistol in her workplace I don't think is enough to deter an 18-year old to walk into her class with a loaded semi-automatic rifle and a gym bag full of ammunition. The teacher would be the first one killed. Teachers would also start to be targeted by gangs as a means to get more weapons. It would just make schools more dangerous.
An AR15 is not at all a "high-powered weapon," it's just an intermediate-caliber semi-automatic rifle. Again, firearms fitting this general description have been on the civilian market for over 100 years, and long before the AR15 became affordable, other rifles filled that same niche. So why indeed have school shootings become prevalent? It's not the availability of rifles, no matter how much you imagine that to be the root cause.
The funny thing about firearms is that they create an equality of sorts between overweight, middle-aged women and young aggressive males. And I am not saying teachers should be required to carry, only not forbidden from carrying. This doesn't make them a guaranteed source of anything except risk to would-be wrongdoers. School shootings seem to be the domain of one or two aggressors, not gangs. And it is precisely the victim of gang violence who benefits from the higher magazine capacity and faster firearm operation which seems to scare you about semi-autos.
You present scenarios based on fear and ignorance combined with blind faith in legislative solutions handed down from on high. I argue based on the principles of self-ownership, personal responsibility, and individual rights. Again, I ask you: if I decline to obey an edict, yet harm no one else, why should I be deemed a "criminal?" Do you really advocate violence against me because I dissent and disobey?
Semantics of firearm specifics aside, the point was that someone with the reflexes of a young man with a weapon that can fire rapidly against someone who is stressed, underpaid and armed with a pistol is not going to be an equal battle... and therefore likely not a deterrent.
If the availability of the weaponry is not the root cause, then why does the US have so many more school shootings than other developed countries? Other countries have all the problems you listed previously, but the USA has so many more school shootings. If not the ease in obtaining the weaponry then what is it?
I answered your question in length already. Your question is too simplistic and doesn't take into consideration the wider societal affects. What works for one individual doesn't necessarily work for every single person within a society. You might be able to handle Fentanyl perfectly safely, but that doesn't stop it being a societal issue. That aside, the changes I'd like to see probably wouldn't affect you at all unless you have convictions for domestic violence or known mental health issues related to violence.
How many school children are you willing to witness being murdered in their classrooms before you're able to look at solutions that have been successful in other countries?
The USA is a massive outlier in school shootings. This problem has been solved in numerous other countries.
I'll take experience of age and training over unfocused youthful aggression any day. Your refusal to accept the deterrent effect of increased risk of effective resistance is irrational. It takes very little consistent training to be reasonably proficient, and it wouldn't just be the teachers. Janitors, the principal, clerical staff, the lunch ladies, librarians, everyone has the natural right to self-defense with the most effective technology they wish to use. Disarmament is trespass.
If the availability of weapons is the root cause of violence, why is it only manifesting in mass shootings at "gun-free zones" while violent crime rates overall plummeted, and most violence is associated with black market drug trade and economic segregation? Do you know what else started spiking in the 1990s? Drug prescriptions for kids. Antidepressants, ADHD medication, and other psych meds meant to help them cope with the antisocial school structure imposed upon them. You look at the guns as the root problem. I suggest we look at the schools themselves.
Your answer of government violence is too simplistic. How many people are you willing to see murdered to impose your dystopian ideal? We already see brutal police abuse against people who are making, selling, and consuming drugs in spite of prohibition. Alcohol prohibition created violent gangs in the 1920s. Government violence is not the answer, it is usually in fact the root problem of societal ills.