I didn't want to post about the school shooting

[conuly]

I mean, one mass shooting is like another. It sucks, and is miserable, and nothing ever changes, and I feel so voyeuristic for caring at all, but I can't ever care enough either.

Nevertheless, I've now accumulated an awful lot of links, so here they are.

One note: My perspective is that we could really do with some reasonable gun control in this country, and that I, personally, wouldn't weep if we had an unreasonable amount of gun control either. You're entitled to have another point of view. Just have it somewhere else. Usually I'm all up for different points of view in the comments, but not this time. Just not feeling it. (And this should go without saying, but just in case - I'm also not in the mood for arguments about whether or not I should want your argument here, whether or not I should want to argue about whether I want your arguments here, etc. Take your recursive praeter itio and go.)

Satire editor wearily hits “Repost” on mass shooting article again

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

When "see something, say something" fails (Comments are moderated and informative.)

Is There Any Way For Schools To Prevent Shootings?

Civil disobedience: Teen shooting survivors shake up Capitol

Florida shooting survivors are fighting back. Here's what they need to know about gun control

Parkland Survivor: ‘I’ve Never Been So Unimpressed By A Person’ After Trump Call

John Kelly Struggles To Maintain Believable Trump Impression During Phone Calls With Parkland Survivors

At Stoneman Douglas High School, cell phone videos take us inside a massacre

The Importance of Rudeness

America leads the world -- in this horrific way

Europeans had school shootings, too. Then they did something about it.

Trump’s Hollow Gesture on Guns

Corporate partners cut cord with NRA as gun control debate rages

Gun control debates create gun production booms, government data show

How young conservatives view #NeverAgain (They're way more circumspect than I would've been at that age. Or this age, for that matter. Mother Jones interviewed a different group of them, with less intent to be sympathetic.)

The Pro-Trump Media Has Met Its Match In The Parkland Students

What does Dana Loesch know about 'grieving black mothers in Chicago'?

What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns

The Mental Health System Can’t Stop Mass Shooters

Here's Everything That's Wrong with the GOP's "Mental Health" Excuse for Mass Shootings (I suppose, if we're defining "school shooting" as "something only a crazy person would do", then the logic is more or less sound. But we're not, and it's not, and the logic falls apart.)

Trump's language on school shooter's mental health could be harmful, experts say

Trump's solution to school shootings: arm teachers with guns

Trump's awful plan to arm teachers is straight from the NRA playbook

'Arm the good guys'? Kentucky and other states weigh adding guns to schools.

It's Hard To Imagine How Armed Teachers Might Change Schools

The Parkland conspiracy theories, explained

NRA’s Wayne LaPierre accuses Democrats of exploiting Parkland shooting in speech (Yes, we're exploiting this school shooting for the nefarious purpose of ending school shootings. Well spotted! Though the rest of your rant is, I'm sorry to say, drivel. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.)

Trump opposes 'active shooter drills,' references his own son

‘The club no one wants to join.’ Mass shooting survivors find solace in one another.

America’s Gun Sickness Goes Way Beyond Guns

The N.R.A. Lobbyist Behind Florida’s Pro-Gun Policies

Here’s the story of how America’s gun politics got so broken.

Comments are screened just in case. I've been adding people left and right lately, so....

Comments

[lilysea]

I'm an Australian.

After the Port Arthur massacre, we increased gun control.

But we still have guns available for farmers, hunters, and sports-shooters. (The guns for sports-shooters have to be stored locked up at the gun range.)

It worked, murder by gun and suicide by gun both went WAY down.

Also, not having guns means a lot less people get shot by the police, because the police aren't scared people have guns. (Death by police happens occasionally in Australia, but it is SO MUCH rarer than in the US.)

I wish for more evidence-based, sensible, rational gun control laws for the US.

[konsectatrix]

This. I also want this. Along with a complete overhaul of our diseased culture, period.

[pink_halen]

It is good to be informed about the issues. I appreciate you sharing links to articles that I would have otherwise never have seen. Thank you.

Perhaps in all this talk some good will come.

[conuly]

I can only hope.

[wpadmirer]

I think this topic is getting to me, too. I spent last night trying to save a group of people. In one particularly clear moment of the dream I had grabbed this 40-something white man and screamed in his face, "I'm trying to save your life, you dumb bastard."

[conuly]

*hugs*

[konsectatrix]

What ~Lilysea said is something I also want. I want the option of a lousy little shotgun to handle groundhogs undermining my barn and house foundations, and livestock-thieving coyotes/feral dogs. I want hunters to be able take out some of the massive deer overpopulation. And I want this whole tough guy gun aficionados raised on too many bad-ass white guy vengeance movies culture backed by corporate brainwashing to be shown the door.

I was never, and am never interested in a cold war with my own neighbors. For one thing, I can't even AFFORD the kind of hardware these boys are toting. Has anyone even gotten into the idea that this kind of mass murder is apparently an option only for the more financially comfortable of us? It's not poor people buying thousands of dollars in guns, accessories and ammo for a hobby.

I do NOT want teachers to have guns at school (Jesus, how many more of our society's burdens are we going to keep heaping on their underpaid undervalued heads? Also, we already did that too--teachers and students WERE able to come to school armed back in our frontier days, and guess what? Teachers and students got shot! Go figure.). I DNW anything we're doing right now.

And freaking hell, I am sorry, but there are only so many fucks I can give about the white boys doing this shit, as if women and minorities NEVER have a mental illnesses or very bad extremely dark days, and that we can't LEGITIMATELY trace most of our bad days and our fucked up right to the doorsteps of those responsible. I'm tired of THEIR pain being so much important and needing to take up so much more room than everyone else's, and then adding to everyone else's. And that their fathers can spend more time and money fucking trying to pass bills to post mandatory platitudes about God in schools like that's going to do something, instead of actually dealing with their shit.

[greghousesgf]

I had some teachers when I was in school who were batshit crazy. I wouldn't want them having guns.

[shadowkat]

No arguments here. I'm basically the choir. I think we should do what Japan and Australia do, heavily regulate them. It worked over there.

There's a really good video put out by Take Aim at the NRA on Facebook, where an Australian-American comedian rips apart the gun defenders arguments.

[steorra]

Here's a small step in the "reasonable gun restrictions" direction: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/02/oregon_lawmakers_pass_gun_cont.html

[sabotabby]

I have such difficulty conceptualize the American gun control debate. It's not either/or. I mean, I live in Canada; we do have gun owners, and gun ranges, and hunters, and occasional fuckups, but nowhere near the amount of mass shootings. I've even had the opportunity to fire an AR-15 for fun. You can have reasonable limits on guns that reduce the frequency and fatality of mass shootings without having no guns for anyone.

[conuly]

One would think.

[calimac]

There was despair when Sandy Hook, which was the most egregious school shooting of them all, didn't turn the tide. So it would be remarkable if Parkland did.

It looks like an extension of the Harvey Weinstein moment. There are certain forms of crap that people have decided they're just not going to take any more. Howard Beale would be proud.

[conuly]

Snowflake by snowflake, sooner or later we're bound to have an avalanche.

[wendelah1]

I say let's repeal the second amendment!

The NRA is accepting contributions from Russian oligarchs (i.e. Putin), too, so they are undermining American democracy in every which way they can.

[conuly]

I'd be happy enough if we went back to the older interpretation, the one before the NRA shat all over it, which focused on the first part of the clause.

[hamimi_fk]

When I read about Dump (that failure of a human being/prez) wanting teachers to start packing heat, I was beyond flabbergasted. Like, I legit thought I was the only one seeing this article. It even took a day before I even heard anyone talking about it! And there are apparently states that are already trying to pass legislations for it to happen!

Did anyone see the clip of Dump talking about giving the teachers gun then when the lady in charge of Education was like 'Hey, why don't we instead do more drills in case of another mass shooting?' Dump literally shook his head in disgust and replied 'No, that's disgusting. I don't like that.'

Like, what dystopian hell world have we all entered into?? sigh

Anyway, Joe Hill said it best (and pretty much mirrored what I was blabbering at my seemingly clueless family) - If you pour more guns into the system, you're going to have more shootings. It's math. A gun on campus is a gun a deranged kid can steal, or a deranged teacher can use. In a mass shooting, how does an armed teacher know who to shoot? Stop living in a movie and try the real world.

[conuly]

The dystopian hell where somebody stepped on a butterfly. When I find that person, I'm gonna cram that butterfly down their throat.

[moem]

I see no reason why the ownership of guns should not be at least as well regulated and restricted as the ownership of cars.

Here's how it is here in the Netherlands:
For cars, you need a license, and insurance. Your car needs to be tested for roadworthiness on a regular basis. Your car needs to be registered to your name so it's always possible to look up who owns a certain car. Every now and then, you need to renew your license, and when you get older, that comes with a medical exam. Certain physical and mental limitations (for example: a depression that makes you suicidal, or being on medication that makes you drowsy) will bar you from operating a car. If these conditions are permanent, you will not be allowed to own a license.

All of that, and probably more, can and should be reasonably demanded from people who own guns, too.

[fyrdrakken]

There is a piece I read once upon a time -- probably on Alternet -- discussing how the gun industry learned from the defanging of the tobacco industry and started lobbying to pre-emptively ban all the measures that could have been used to hold them to account and cut into their profits. I haven't been able to find it again. But it was a wonderful point-by-point comparison of how such-and-such was done to the tobacco industry and how in a particular year a law was passed to protect the gun industry from the equivalent measure.

[conuly]

If you ever find it again, I'll read it.

[brickhousewench]

Maybe Daily Kos? https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/8/1703852/-Not-just-NRA-money-How-the-gun-industry-avoids-regulation

Or Think Progress?
https://thinkprogress.org/the-gun-industry-has-systematically-demolished-regulators-and-avoided-the-fate-of-cigarettes-c3a763da0b16/

[conuly]

Thanks.