Texas School shooting 19 children and 2 adults murdered

Someone said they can't control guns so America should focus preventing the things that cause people to go on rampages in the first place

Thats nuts IMHO

if I see my kid chasing someone down the road with a knife, sure, it's a big indication that there's something very wrong with my kid that I need to address, but the very first thing I need to do is take the knife off them, and then lock up all knives that they might have access to in future

It can take years to address emotional problems in a single individual, if that's even possible. Addressing them 'as a society' takes generations, especially in a place like America that has deeply rooted divisions, politically, economically, racially, theologically....

Fixing society is not an easier solution than just improving gun control.

Make assault weapons illegal, buy back all legally held weapons at a fair price. Announce that any weapons not returned by x date are now in breach of the law, and impose significant fines for every month after the deadline the weapons are not returned along with heavy fines for being found in possession of these weapons

Will the NRA go nuts? yes. Will there be protests? Yes

Will some of those protests turn violent? Probably, Domestic terrorists won't like having their guns taken from them.

But 20k gun deaths a year... thousands of school shootings?

The people of Ukraine are dying to protect their children from Russia. If America are not prepared to stand up to the terrorists inside their own borders, then they are nothing more than cowards

I'm fine with mandatory registration of firearms. It won't happen of course. Or maybe it will happen with new firearms but many people who own the 400 million plus firearms already in circulation won't register them.

I agree with the mandatory wait periods. Will it stop psychos, I'm not so sure. It might stop an odd one. They can plan their attack and do it after the mandatory waiting period expires. That said, I'm in favour of the mandatory wait period.

I also agree with the mandatory rules on securing firearms in the home. Not sure a safe will work as it's hard to get to your gun quickly when it's in a safe. If self-defence wasn't a reason, I'd be 100% behind having a safe.

What would a gun buyback achieve? I think the buyback fund would result in some sh1t guns being surrendered, and potentially that money might be used to buy new guns. I've eight guns. If there was a government buy-back scheme, I wouldn't sell any of them to the government. I don't see a buyback scheme achieving much.

Like I said, I think the US system is too lax, but it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle at this stage.

its more likely they would take your gun and shoot you with it than you successfully use it

theres no grey area, arming the teachers is beyond stupid, its not an action movie

its no less stupid than having armed guards outside, all you have to do is shoot the guard outside and in you go, they aren't superman

or what would happen is youd have the guard outside hiding too (which has happened), trying not to get killed themselves or a dead guard

Who put the idea of killing 5 year olds is an even bigger question than the gun madness, it makes no sense

Like you can sort of understand the twisted idea of revenge on your own teachers peers bullies etc, but he was 18, why the kids school

I think if you are going to advocate this though, you have to bring this right down to the nitty gritty reality of what it actually means in daily practice. Firstly, what you are saying means a teacher has to have a gun in the classroom at all times. We are talking about Miss Jones sitting there teaching a group of 7 year olds some songs, with a gun on her person or in a drawer. Now, setting aside the base level insanity of that, as I mentioned in my previous post, my girlfriend taught Elementary in the US for three years, the very thought of her having to pull out a feckin Nine or a pump shotgun and actually use it with potential lethal force is, well, if you know any other young primary school teacher in their mid twenties, it’s a fairly mad prospect.

Then there is the question of what the policy is — what responsibility does the teacher have? If the guy bursts through and the teacher has a panic attack or a moment of hesitation, them being a teacher after all and not a Navy Seal, and children get killed — is the teacher to be blamed for not taking the scumbag down? So should teachers receive arms training including how to shoot to kill?

I do take your point that in that final moment where an armed whackjob is coming through the door, a gun gives you a better chance to save people than a broomstick. But you have to think of what you are advocating here precisely in terms of how it is underpinned by policy — and the everyday policy to implement this seems a bit bonkers.

Many people would be more than happy to get a bit of a cash for a weapon, especially if they can hand it over no questions asked. A buyback is a really easy way to reduce the volume of weapons sloshing around. There are plenty of weapons just sitting around in the US, old sports relic, hand-me-downs, inheritances. One day they'll be stolen or lost and end up in the hands of criminals. Better they get sold and destroyed. "Cash in the attic" for many Americans.

Along with the rest of the measures, you wouldn't be permitted to have 8 weapons without licencing and training appropriate to that level of weapon ownership, so you might find it less trouble to sell half of them and register the rest. Or if they have sentimental value, have them deactivated and certified.

If someone uses that cash to buy a new gun that's fine, because in order to do so they will have to be properly trained, licenced and registered from day one. In fact, someone selling a crappy old weapon to the feds and then "going legit" is ideal.

Yep, it needs to change. They should be let buy alcohol at 18, like in the rest of the civilised world.

Seriously though, 18 is the normal age for being allowed to purchase of firearms. You can actually get a training licence here at 14 and licence your own firearm here at 16. How many problems has this caused here in Ireland, zero.

Think you really got to the nub of the point with the 'personally feel safe' bit.

This is mindset of many gun lovers - they 'feel' safer with guns despite statistics pointing to the opposite in most cases.

It gives them a false feeling of power and control and that they can solve the problem, when the extra person with the gun usually makes things worse by escalating things or accidentally shooting an innocent person, like a child or a cop.

Not really. All you're doing here is attempting to demean anyone who disagrees with you as being immature or unreasonable. The statistics do not back up any assertion that arming more civilians saves more lives. In fact, it points to the opposite.

In some instances, an individual with a gun may be capable of stopping a shooter. That's a truism. An individual without a gun may also be able to reason with a shooter. That is also a truism.

You're relying on the notion that you would feel safer if you had a gun. But the statistics explicitly show that you would actually be in greater danger.

This "arm the teacher" thing is a load of old bollocks. The only thing that will happen there is that the teacher will be targeted first.

The line of thinking shouldn't be "arm the teacher", it should "don't arm the psycho".

Proximity mines on the classroom doors that detonate if someone's retina scan doesn't register properly.

That'll fix it.

The solution to violence is always more violence.

It's a psychological test we are talking about. There's no psychological test involved when it comes to drive a car. There's a memory test for remembering rules of the road etc. and there's a practical test. No psychological element to the testing. And the stuff when it comes to driving is pretty black and white. Not so simple when it comes to looking inside someone's head to figure out if they are likely to flip out or not.

I can't see US psychiatrists/psychologists/doctors wanting such a system either. Would they be open to be sued if one of them signed off that Mr. BattleCorp passed his psychological tests and then he went off and shot up a school?

I agree that your system over there is too lax.

by the sounds of it, i'd just lock the door

What I would perfer is for a psychopathic teenager not to be able to purchase a small arsenal in the first place.