17 Students Killed at Florida High School

[Zoii]

Which I am not arguing against. I am saying to not use poor math and overly affective arguments. Since you and summer like research, allow me to suggest "Political Psychology" (Arceneaux, K., & Vander Wielen, R. J. 2013).

Ok thank you I'll look it up.

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

People. Dysfunctional people.

We don't blame cars for DUIs.
We don't blame the planes for the 9/11 crashes.
We don't blame forks for making people obese.
We cannot blame firearms for mass shootings.

We regulate drivers though - make them pass a driving test, conform to road rules, subject them to sobriety checks. In addition, we legislate what type of cars can be driven on public roads and subject them to a huge amount of safety tests before they can be sold.

As for planes, well anyone who has had the "fortune" of going through an airport post-9/11 knows just how much security is put in place before you're allowed to board a plane.

I'd be more than happy for guns and gun owners to be subject to the same types of restrictions

 

[Zoii]

I was actually referring to an article in a journal, and happened to mistakenly deleted part of the reference.

Arceneaux, K., & Vander Wielen, R. J. (2013). The effects of need for cognition and need for

affect on partisan evaluations. Political Psychology, 34(1), 23-42.

Ugh I couldnt get hold of the whole article just the abstract online: But this is an interesting article and I wish I could read it. If I'm reading the abstract correctly its about injecting emotion and pre-conceived political partisanship into logical arguments. It didnt show results in the abstracts but I'd guess it is showing that ones emotive and political persuasion will influence or over-ride a logical objective argument. Is that the gist Rion?Are you able to cut and paste a little of its results or conclusions?

 

[drjean]

Perhaps everyone in society should submit to an MMPI test every 5 years? Then the NWO could weed out their undesirables, keep the perverts who will be soldiers to kill whomever they are brainwashed to kill such as Christians and Jews, and lock everyone else up?

IMO all students should have mental status exams. The MMPI would be nice; it takes a slow reader a few hours to do but has stability of results built into it (anyone with a mental disorder has real difficulty cheating on it). It can be processed through computers (does not have to be hand evaluated by a professional.) BUT then we need psychologists to be assigned to schools, not counselors who visit once in a while.

Students who are unbalanced need professional help. IMO onsite professionals also understand the environment better which helps them relate to the student better and vice versa. We failed our youth when we quit offering free counseling and MSEs.

Offering free burials and counseling after the fact is a poor solution.

 

[Ada Lovelace]

People. Dysfunctional people.

We don't blame cars for DUIs.
We don't blame the planes for the 9/11 crashes.
We don't blame forks for making people obese.
We cannot blame firearms for mass shootings.

The United States of America is not unique in having cars, alcohol, planes, forks, food, and people - some of whom are dysfunctional. We are unique in that Americans own more guns per capita than any other country. When it comes to mass shootings, we are an anomaly.

- We don't blame cars for DUIs. We do require that every car be registered and insured. We do require all drivers to obtain and maintain a valid drivers license. It's a thorough process. Here in California, I spent a year with a learners permit, during which time I took five months of drivers ed classes. Then I went to the DMV and provided two forms of proof of my identity, provided proof of insurance, took a vision, driving, and written tests, had my picture taken. I had to comply with the stricter laws for teen drivers for two years.

We do suspend and revoke licenses when there are excessive violations or medical reasons that would jeopardize the safety of the driver and others on the road. We do require that drivers take additional steps to obtain a commercial drivers license in order to operate large or heavy vehicles that require more skill, and can cause significantly more harm on the roads in the event of an accident or violation. We do have strictly enforced traffic laws with punitive violations.

We do have legal drinking ages, and penalize underage drinkers as well as those who serve them. Bartenders have been held liable for over-serving visibly intoxicated people who then cause DUIs.

- After 9/11 we didn't just offer up thoughts, prayers, and platitudes. We weren't jaded because it had happened many times before, and we knew it would happen again. A tremendous amount of effort was dedicated to ensuring that it didn't happen again.

By the way, are you in favor of prohibiting those on the no-fly list from purchasing guns?

- We don't blame forks for obesity, but we have endeavored to understand why obesity is so ubiquitous in Western societies, and to reduce it. We have healthier eating initiatives designed to encourage more physical activity and better nutrition. We have information on food labels to understand what we're consuming.

- We can't blame firearms for mass shootings, but we can blame the fact that it was easier for the teen who committed the massacre we're currently discussing to legally purchase the gun when he's too young to legally purchase alcohol, and that the process was faster and simpler than getting a drivers license.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I was trying to not join in on the fear-mongering by those who tout "get the guns out of the USA". There's a charter Christian? school here locally who offered bullet proof backpack plates for $100 a pop... encouraging each family to buy them for their students.

I doubt students could even realize there's a problem. Their critical thinking skills have not been instilled. Even while the guy was shooting their first inclination was to find their phones to video! Teachers had to yell no no no forget the phones run run run!

However, this morning they are in a Lantana trailer park ... connected to this murderer? Could be another shooter, and a bomb ready to be used.

The guy was flagged to the FBI already. Guess they were too busy creating dirt on POTUS to get him and stop him.

His problems began as a child with the break up of the nucleus family unit. Socialists did that decades ago, in their plans for NWO, removed support for the 2 heterosexual parents to raise children. Even today it's found that THAT environment is still the best.

The guy was mentally ill. His school mates knew it. The administrations knew it. They wouldn't let him carry a back pack in school because once he had bullet fragments in it. Students knew he killed his dog, loved to kill frogs etc. His FB page talked of shooting. When in school he threatened other students. It was known he had firearms in the home.

His adoptive mother died last year.

The FBI failed us again.

Your attempt to blame the FBI in this is rather pathetic. There aren't enough agents to monitor every troubled kid in this nation.

I haven't read any articles on this, but it' safe to assume that he had access to firearms. That's the problem. I think it's far past time we started locking up these "parents" who make no real effort to keep their guns out of their children's hands.

 

[Gene2memE]

People. Dysfunctional people.

We don't blame cars for DUIs.

Nope, but there are a multiplicity of laws about who can be licenced to operate a car on public roads, along with how old they can be, what substances they can have in their system, physical disabilities which may prohibit them from operating a vehicle, and some states even ask about drivers mental health.

Oh and the CDC isn't barred, by act of congress, from studying and publishing results about DUI.

We don't blame the planes for the 9/11 crashes.

No, but we have massively revised aviation security procedures - at airports, onboard aircraft and in areas like MRO hangars - to limit the ability of actors with bad intent to access aircraft and cockpits. The US and EU alone spend northward of $20 billion a year on aviation security, about four times what they spent in the year 2000.

We also screen passengers to determine if they're carry weapons or things that can be easily used or mistaken for weapons - and then take those things from them if they're trying to bring them into the cabin.

We don't blame forks for making people obese.

No, but we do launch massive public heath campaigns warning of the dangers of obesity, set up guidelines for people to eat more healthily and even subsidise purchases of healthy foods.

We cannot blame firearms for mass shootings.

We cannot. But we can blame a combination of the US' incredibly lax restrictions on firearm ownership, widespread firearm access, lobbying to prevent any tightening of this, US gun culture, US mental health provisions and a range of other factors as contributing to the massive problem the US has with gun violence in general, and mass shootings in particular.

Oh, and 'Godly values' wouldn't really seem to be a solution. Otherwise drowning everyone on the planet and starting again (Genesis 6: 17), murdering all the firstborn in Egypt (Exodus 11:4–6), declaring various wars of genocide (too many to specifically mention), sending a plague to kill 70,000 people (1 Chronicles 21: 14) or having people ripped apart by bears (2 Kings 2:23-25) are viable options.

 

[rambot]

People. Dysfunctional people.

We don't blame cars for DUIs.
We don't blame the planes for the 9/11 crashes.
We don't blame forks for making people obese.
We cannot blame firearms for mass shootings.

See here is the problem: The focus on BLAME. BLAME.

As though there is one particular facet of this whole poopshow that you can just change and finally all the problems will be solved. Not only that but, when you can partition "blame", you allow ALL of the blame to be put on one thing. But you forget that sometimes, really well crafted tools, allow for more impressive results.

No, you can't blame the planes for 9/11 that killed 3000+ BUT, if those hijackers didn't have planes but tried to drive into people instead, there wouldn't have been so many deaths.

While I'd argue the veracity of the idea that you can't blame automatic weapons for MASS shootings (after all, that is, essentially, what they are designed for), I'll keep your claim at face value. Take any one of those mass shooters that have happenned in the last three years and give them knives...heck, give them swords or bow and arrows instead. Is it still a tragedy? Yes. Is it still messed up? YES! Are there as many dead and injured people? NO there are not. Do more people get to watch their children grow up? Yes they do. Wouldn't it be nice if fewer people died? And doesn't it just logically follow that you can kill MORE people in a crowded space with a rifle that shoots 20 bullets a second compared to a knife where you may be able to slash once/second? Doesn't that basic fact of physics mean anything?

Nobody will EVER argue that violence will leave America. I think what makes sense, though, is maybe you could LESSEN the impact that the mentally unwell, or terrorists, or misunderstood white fellas could have on those around them.

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

We also hear about how banning certain types of guns "doesn't work"

Well, the US bans certain models of cars from being driven on public roads or registered. Perhaps the car enthusiasts of the US can look forward to getting a Skyline GTR, Alfa Romeo 4c Spider or Fiat 500 Abarth because "car bans don't work"

And who can forget this...

 

[drjean]

Sandy Hook was really our last chance. If dead first graders doesn't soften one's heart, nothing will. At this point it's just part of American life, all for a massively perverted interpretation of "freedom." And we've experienced freedom 18 times already this year.

Did someone already dispute this "18" this year? My bad if so.
It includes non events such as a elementary school child with a POP GUN! That, along with a few others are NOT "shooting events" in school counted in that 18.

Sandy Hook, imo was not our last chance. GOD is your last chance, everyone's last chance. Something has to be done before you die, afterwards it's too late to choose.

 

[Nithavela]

Did someone already dispute this "18" this year? My bad if so.
It includes non events such as a elementary school child with a POP GUN! That, along with a few others are NOT "shooting events" in school counted in that 18.

Sandy Hook, imo was not our last chance. GOD is your last chance, everyone's last chance. Something has to be done before you die, afterwards it's too late to choose.

Some christians believe that when children die, the automatically go to heaven because of lacking accountability.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

Perhaps everyone in society should submit to an MMPI test every 5 years? Then the NWO could weed out their undesirables, keep the perverts who will be soldiers to kill whomever they are brainwashed to kill such as Christians and Jews, and lock everyone else up?

IMO all students should have mental status exams. The MMPI would be nice; it takes a slow reader a few hours to do but has stability of results built into it (anyone with a mental disorder has real difficulty cheating on it). It can be processed through computers (does not have to be hand evaluated by a professional.) BUT then we need psychologists to be assigned to schools, not counselors who visit once in a while.

Students who are unbalanced need professional help. IMO onsite professionals also understand the environment better which helps them relate to the student better and vice versa. We failed our youth when we quit offering free counseling and MSEs.

Offering free burials and counseling after the fact is a poor solution.

... You do realize the problem is not that people need to be better at mentally coping with being shot at while at school, right? That all kids in high school shouldn’t need a mental health exam to protect somebody else’s owning a gun. And what if a kid gets flagged for being at risk? Do we take his parents guns? Do we force them into mental health treatment? Do the rights of a generation become vapor to protect somebody else’s desire to own a gun? And where do we get the funding for the tests, the treatments, the screenings, the medical care? People are working overtime to dismantle ACA, cut public funding to social services, and school funding per student in the US is the lowest among every industrialized country in the world. How are we going to front this billion dollar drive to protect people’s right to own guns that can mow down concertgoers from a quarter of a mile away?

The problem is that some people have no problem say “it’s my right to own a gun and you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers” when in reality the blood being used to pay for that credo comes from the bodies of other people’s kids.

Militants storm a school in Africa and abduct the students and slaughter the teachers, people pound their fists in tables and scream about third world heck holes. Somebody murders elementary school children with a weapon that left them so mangled and maimed they couldn’t get an accurate body count for several hours, then torments the families of these children to the point where families had to move, change their names, and deal with constant stalkers and fringe groups who want to punish them for their kids dying and starting a (short lived) discussion on gun control?

Well, that’s just the price of freedom in America.

And you can say it’s some lone wolf, mentally unstable individual, that it’s not the gun, it’s the nut behind the gun and the mental health system that’s failed them... But 1,500 mass shootings in 1,800 days? That’s a lot of nutty lone wolves who seem to all like causing mayhem the same exact way. And judging by how hard a lot of people are fighting to cut funding for social services and intervention programs, it’s not like people are working to fix that problem in light of all of these massacres either.

And, to be perfectly blunt, as a parent who sat outside of a locked down elementary school after somebody shot up a hospital less than half a mile away before then turning up on the road that lead to the school, I don’t particularly feel like having somebody who wants to own a gun they don’t need using my kid as the offering of the day to gun rights. I don’t want the phone call some of the Sandy Hook Parents got... “Hi, this is the local police, there was a school shooting at your kid’s school... Are you one of the parents who is waiting for their kid to come home or looking for updates? Because we found a number of kids huddled in the embrace of their deceased teacher in your child’s classroom’s bathroom, but the remains of the teachers and students are so badly brutalized that we can’t identify the bodies or give accurate numbers of the victims... Can you come with us and look at these blood soaked clothes, this bullet-tattered backpack, this partial shoe and tell me, do they look familiar?”

And here’s guessing all the “it’s the gunman, not the gun” folks aren’t signing up for that phone call either, because nobody wants or should have to get that call and then hear people chalk it up to the price of freedom.

 

[sunshineforJesus]

I've read that the murderer was expelled for fighting with his ex's new boyfriend, so there may be a message in his choice of day.

yeah you are right.

 

[Ada Lovelace]

Before the shooting, are we looking for a Precrimes division?

The irony is that had Nikolas Cruz been condemned before he victimized others, it would have been claimed that he was being victimized by liberals because he's an ardent 2nd Rights Amendment advocate and Trump supporter (his Instagram profile pic shows off a MAGA hat) who was actively involved in (a morally reprehensible but perfectly legal) white supremacist group with the stated goal of making Florida a white ethnographic-state.

The FBI receives a multitude of warnings about the disturbing YouTube comments, school disciplinary problems, and antagonistic social media content of troubled youth, most of whom will not go on to commit violent crimes. He had a school disciplinary record serious enough to have warranted expulsion, but no arrests. Allegedly he'd broken a window during a fit of rage years ago in middle school, but I've yet to see anything that would indicate a crime serious enough for an arrest and permanent confinement behind triple barred wires. Cruz's fascination with weapons and aggressive attitude that gun laws were an unnecessary abomination are red flags in retrospect, but prior to the massacre would have been defended......vigorously. People would have claimed he was being persecuted for his ideology and not his actions. There would have been finger pointing at the equally disturbing online content from youths of different racial backgrounds, and claims he was being singled out for being white, for supporting Trump.

 

[Liza B.]

Kicking out a glass window to get out of a class room. Assault. Both of which led to his suspension, however reportable to the local LE.

I am a teacher in the public schools with over two decades' worth of experience, and I can tell you that assaults happen REGULARLY in the schools. I mean every day, from elementary on up. Do you know why they don't get reported? The vast majority of the kids assaulting have a diagnosis and so are special education, and so are protected under laws and laws and laws. I do not know this for certain, but I can all but guarantee Cruz had a myriad of diagnoses that protected him while in school.

So Cruz, a "victim", had all the rights, see. The police do not get called, nothing gets done. This is epidemic. That mass shootings do not happen MORE is really miraculous. Teachers don't want to say much because it's not very "nice" and it's not PC. Meanwhile, we are teaching in conditions where our students, and our good selves, are getting kicked, hit, beaten, having stuff thrown at us, and etc.

The guns are just a tool. The problems are much deeper. Trust me on that.

 

[Goonie]

I wonder whether there is a link between all those chemicals, such as growth hormones (that are banned elsewhere in the world) yet are used in massive quantities to produce beef, pork and chicken, and childhood development?

 

[Par5]

I just watched President Trump on the news making an announcement in the wake of the Florida shootings. He said that steps will be taken to tackle mental health issues and that everything will be done to protect America's children. No mention of guns and no mention of how he intended to carry out the measures he mentioned. The owner of the store who sold the weapon to the shooter also blamed mental health issues for such atrocities.
I accept that some people who have carried out such atrocities may have had mental health issues, but I don't accept that the blame for all these shootings can be laid at the door of mental health.
Other democracies have people with mental health problems, but they don't have mass shootings on the scale witnessed in America. Such shootings in those countries are about as rare as hen's teeth and they are rare because those countries are not saturated with weapons that can be very easily obtained.
There is also the cultural difference in that most people in those countries have no desire to own a weapon. I really don't know what it will take for America to move away from a culture of guns. If their own children being slaughtered in school can't do it, what will?

 

[Desk trauma]

By the way, are you in favor of prohibiting those on the no-fly list from purchasing guns?

Absolutely not. The no fly list has no due process nor review associated with it.

 

[Aryeh Jay]

We also hear about how banning certain types of guns "doesn't work"

Well, the US bans certain models of cars from being driven on public roads or registered. Perhaps the car enthusiasts of the US can look forward to getting a Skyline GTR, Alfa Romeo 4c Spider or Fiat 500 Abarth because "car bans don't work"

And who can forget this...

While that AR-15 carbine does have small parts that can be a choking hazard and contains “non-nutritive objects” (the reason Kinder Eggs are banned), are they marketed and sold to children?

 

[All Englands Skies]

The irony is that had Nikolas Cruz been condemned before he victimized others, it would have been claimed that he was being victimized by liberals because he's an ardent 2nd Rights Amendment advocate and Trump supporter (his Instagram profile pic shows off a MAGA hat) who was actively involved in (a morally reprehensible but perfectly legal) white supremacist group with the stated goal of making Florida a white ethnographic-state.

The FBI receives a multitude of warnings about the disturbing YouTube comments, school disciplinary problems, and antagonistic social media content of troubled youth, most of whom will not go on to commit violent crimes. He had a school disciplinary record serious enough to have warranted expulsion, but no arrests. Allegedly he'd broken a window during a fit of rage years ago in middle school, but I've yet to see anything that would indicate a crime serious enough for an arrest and permanent confinement behind triple barred wires. Cruz's fascination with weapons and aggressive attitude that gun laws were an unnecessary abomination are red flags in retrospect, but prior to the massacre would have been defended......vigorously. People would have claimed he was being persecuted for his ideology and not his actions. There would have been finger pointing at the equally disturbing online content from youths of different racial backgrounds, and claims he was being singled out for being white, for supporting Trump.

Ironically, Cruz was of Latino Descent, in one article his former Spanish teacher pointed out he was reluctant to speak in Spanish, even though he was of Latino/Hispanic descent and was fluent in spanish and was ashamed of his heritage and culture.