Stand-in photo of the Asshole:
I'm not going to get into my usual rant about how the press is effectively glorifying this turdlet by publicizing every aspect of his life.
But note one point that they've raise: This particular Asshole studied mass shootings before he undertook one.
These Assholes are psychopathic predators. While they may be insane and are certainly monsters, they are not stupid. They are doing their killing where their prey can be found in large numbers and where their prey have no effective means of defending themselves.
The answer would seem to be rather obvious and simple to implement. And after a few future Assholes die unremarked, maybe this problem might begin to go away.
21 comments:
Sheriff Hinton appears to agree with the nameless Asshole idea.
One interesting point, even though he's multiracial, the MSM are claiming he was a white supremacist... Obviously trying to shove him into a convenient box in their narrative...
Old NFO, still coul be. People aren't rational about a lot of things. He was already bugnuts-crazy enough to go shoot a punch of defenseless people.
Sheriff's name is Hanlin; sorry!
Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin, heading the Umpqua shooting investigation.
Sheriff also appears to be an Oath Keeper. This could get interesting...
" and where their prey have no effective means of defending themselves."
I've read the state made it legally impossible to declare a campus a gun-free zone and there actually were armed people on the site. It just didn't help the way the NRA claims it would. (Didn't on that military base a year or two ago either - first kill there was an armed guard IIRC).
Deadstick, don't see where the oath Keeprs crap matters here.
SO, but the olleges put put a no-guns clause into their enrollment agreements. And a single armed guard is a canary guard- you know something bad is happening because the guard is killed.
CM, the Oregon state Attorney General already ruled that the no-guns clause in the enrollment agreements was illegal and unenforceable under Oregon state law, and there were in fact multiple people on campus other than security guards who were armed with concealed weapons, at least two of whom have been interviewed by the news media. While it is true that nobody in this specific classroom was armed, that was more because students at a community college generally don't carry weapons because weapons are expensive and these students are on campus trying to learn something that'll let them get a job that will, like, let them eat, not because it was illegal for them to do so.
Unless your proposal is free distribution of concealable weapons to community college students, I'm not quite sure what you're up to here. For that matter, even if you *did* distribute free weapons to community college students, likely they'd sell them for, like, food and stuff, food that you can eat today being more important to most community college students than a big hunk of cold steel that 99.9% of the time is useless for anything practical. (The other 0.1% of the time being very important of course, but when you're hungry, you're not thinking of that 0.1%). Community college students are *poor*. Otherwise they'd be at a "real" college. And poor people are generally more concerned about food today than about the theoretical possibility of encountering a mass murdering asshole tomorrow.
If there is a certain amount of CCWs on campus, should that be publicized to deter Assholes?
Assholes will find a place to be assholes. A church, for example.
Any attempt to deter crime in certain places only drives crime elsewehere. It's wasteful.
BadTux, but as it turned out, there was nothing stopping them from prohibiting carry by students. They just couldn't prevent anyone else.
3383, no, bad idea. The idea is that the bad guys shouldn't have any idea who, or how may, have guns.
SO, are you saying that we should all lie down, give the crooks whatever they want and never fight back?
What I'm saying is that any solution that relies on armed community college students is not a solution, regardless of what the law says.
As for what to do, Jim Wright has some ideas, but they won't satisfy either the NRA *or* anti-gunners. Win win, as far as I'm concerned.
And BTW, "we" fought back just fine, via our employees, the local police. Three officers arrived within minutes, engaged in a shootout with the perp, and the perp is now dead. Solutions that require civilians with no training to react like police officers though are not solutions. Civilians don't run towards gunfire, they run *away* from gunfire. Only police officers, or those with police training, run *towards* gunfire. Even the military trained civilian with a gun on the scene didn't run *towards* the gunfire, he stayed put and waited to see if the perp was going to come in his direction.
Comrade, is your argument that guns everywhere is a better solution? The concern I have with that theory is that we basically make it necessary for the whole of society to arm itself. The problem here is that now Jill's second amendment right infringes on John's other right's.
I understand the second amendment and it's current interpretation, but what I don't understand is why the second amendment right seems "stronger" than the clearly defined first amendment right to free speech. There are very clear limits on free speech that are designed to protect everyone's rights. There seems a dearth of similar provisions with guns...although, perhaps it is more of a case that my violation of you via speech doesn't often kill or maim you, but my use of a gun will.
It also seems that being granted the right to be armed, you are also granted the right to not be armed and still be safe. We seem to be moving to a point in society where those who are not armed are blamed for electing to exercise that right because someone else attacked them. Which results in the inevitable question of how many accidents are acceptable in schools, daycares, churches and such, in order to keep unfettered access to guns?
I'm also bothered by this whole development of victim blaming. We are told that a woman walking down a dark street, in a mini-skirt, shouldn't be worried about being raped because she isn't doing anything wrong (agreed, however, she also is making a bad decision with regard to risk...but that doesn't equal she asked for it/deserves it). So why then are college students who elected not to arm themselves guilty of lying down and letting the crooks get whatever they want?
Why don't these crazies use cars to kill people? Because the best tool to kill people is a gun. As another blogger has asked, why don't we hold people responsible for their actions with guns? An "accidental" discharge is almost never and "accident", but rather the result of a violation of a fundamental rule of gun handling. A person accessing another's guns is often the result of improper storage, not an unlucky event. Doing this might move some of the problems into the unlikely category, but doesn't address the asswipe issue.
The asswipe issue is getting larger and more common. The idea of arming all society seems counter-productive, and the necessary mass of armed individuals to provide herd immunity seems likely to be very high. The idea of gun free zones was never to stop these attacks, but was to provide a means to bring a lower level of violator into the courts to try to address issues before the asswipe stage. Laws, mental health or gun control, will not stop asswipes....and neither would universal carriage (as the NYPD shows so well) without great carnage. Even trained police officers shoot the wrong people, imaging the gunfights that would occur if everyone is packing.
The obvious solution to the problem is the removal of guns, but I am certain this isn't your desire or plan. For example, DDT was destroying the environment, so we stopped using DDT (we didn't give everyone chemical warfare suits and the equipment to test their food). I'm not in favor of the confiscation of guns, but I'd like a way to solve this problem that respects everyone.
CP88, I hate to disabuse you, but of all of your Constitutional rights, "the right to be safe" is not one of them.
Let's say you could order the removal of all weapons. You do realize that the 5th Amendment will require paying at or above a fair-market value for 300 million firearms. And then you're going to have to buy back all of the ammunition, for anyone with a garage worth of tools can build a functioning firearm.
And you're right about the asswipe problem. Those who want to kill people will find a way. I can't see that depriving people of he most effective tool around to defend themselves is a solution. The asswipes have seized on the idea that gun-free zones are happy hunting grounds.
Deny them that. These clowns seen fame, for they are nothing more than losers who see being the villain in a mass shooting as their key to immortality of a sort. They go from a nothing to a person whose name is known to the President.
We can't deny them their fame for First Amendment reasons. So why not use the Second Amendment to increase their risk?
Comrade, I never suggested a "right to be safe", but rather that a right to have something also seems to imply the right not to have it, if you desire. At the same time, a persons right to exercise their right, should not trump my same, but opposite, right not to exercise that option. Surely there is some legal middle ground in this tug of war. I don't see an easy solution, but I do object to being forced to deal with the OC-NT morons walking around with open carried guns in unnecessary places and unsafe manners.
As for the removal of all guns, I simply pointed out that that was the "obvious" solution, but clearly not what you intended, so I asked for clarity. Would the magical removal of gun from the US make us all safer, in some ways, yes. In other ways, likely not. Is the current gun situation in the US rational and stable is a better question, and what is the likely result.
As for the choice of "gun free zones", it seems more true they are picking assembly places. Specifically, those with a variety of persons in discrete locations. Short of mandating at least one person in each class to carry a gun, there is no easy solution. I can also think of at least one time a gun in a college classroom might have led to a tragic error of judgement during an argument. Any odds on how long before we have some "incidents" at a NASCAR race or NFL game?
Perhaps contributing factors are social media and sensationalist journalism, but that genie is out of the bottle too. I like Jim Wright's suggestion of making the NRA's gun handling rules into laws and hold people responsible, have you any thoughts on that approach to promoting a move to more responsible ownership?
"In other ways, likely not."
The crime deterreence effect of private guns is largely a myth.
There were concerns in Australia that outback farmers would be robbed if they had no gun because police would be hours away. Guns were banned and crime in the outback didn't change.
People make up ideas about what happens as a consequence of policy changes, but those made-up ideas have no weight compared to actual empirical research about the same or equivalent policy changes in the past or elsewhere.
The public in the United States does not understand this, and this is its greatest political immaturity and the source of gazillions of nonsense policies, fearmongering and exploitations.
S O, the problem is that your statement is subject to the same lack of empirical data. The ban on government funded research on gun violence in the US reduces both sides to cherry-picking data from unrelated studies, privately funded studies with agendas and such. The problem with studies is they find out hard data, and the pro-gun crowd understands that they will either not be helpful to them or the results will actually show what you posit. This should be a red flag, but the wrapping in the flag/Constitution tends to blind people. By the same token, the confiscate all guns crowd fails to recognize and/or admit that there are genuine reasons to have firearms.
There's no lack of empirical data if you're willing to admit that 300 million people aren't the whole of earth's population.
There are like 170 or so other countries as well, with almost 7 billion people. About 500 million of these live in somewhat culturally similar and economically developed societies, spread over about two dozen countries.
S O, I'm well aware of the rest of the world, the problem is the US situation is pretty much unique with regards to gun culture, numbers and views. There is no real data to use for meaningful comparison other than if the US removed the guns from circulation it might be similar to County X or Y. But removing the guns is, as we can see above, a virtual impossibility. Therefore, we must study the existent situation.
Comparison, would you study German by taking data from Greece?
Australia was very similar actually.
Besides, in science one has empirical methods to distill the desired info out of not perfectly matching analogies.
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