Nikolas Cruz 'remorseful' as police report claims he confessed to Florida school shooting massacre

[Broomstick]

Damn typo, that should have read "I would love to know whatever bullshit motive he comes up with".

"Demon Voices"

Yep, that's his "explanation" - I'm guessing they're going to try for an insanity plea.

[Solauren]

Considering it's been reported he is known to have mental problems, that's actually a reasonable plea.

[Broomstick]

It's a very difficult to successfully plea insanity. Yes, the man has mental problems, but are they severe enough that he is incapable of a distinguishing right from wrong? Plenty of mentally ill people still know right from wrong.

[loomer]

It's also unlikely to get him anything but a permanent stay in a padded cell.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah- "Not guilty by reason of insanity" does not mean "You go free" (obviously). It means you stay locked up in a hospital until the shrinks decide that you're sane enough to let out. Which may be months, or years, or never.

[TheFeniX]

While he has a history of mental illness, this could be a preemptive move to take the Death Penalty off the table.

NOTE: Based on his history, even being someone who later in life is opposed to capital punishment, I don't feel said punishment is unwarranted in this situation.

Cruz just shows that the entire US system of law enforcement, mental healthcare, and background checks is completely fucking broken.

We have all the systems in place to help combat this but no desire to put them together in the right order to make a difference. People are too scared of the drawbacks and in some areas I can't blame them. Because you give an inch, they take a mile.

For one example: What constitutes mentally unfit to own a firearm? You aren't violent? Jerk-offs said this about Cruz. Do we lean the other way and deny/take property from people with clinical depression? I'm making no real argument here either way, but if this problem needs one thing: it's money thrown at it, especially into the mental healthcare system.

But you start talking money outside some ink on "hi-cap mags are now banned" and both (D) and (R) asses start puckering up.

And do we take all threats as serious business like the Runescape player who got 15 years for saying "I'm going to shoot up my school" as a bad joke?

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm effectively absolutely anti-death penalty, so it makes no difference to me in terms of weather I feel that he should be executed. My answer to that question is the same regardless of weather he's completely rational or thinks the Devil told him to do it, or whatever. It would be the same if he'd killed one wicked man rather than upwards of a dozen innocent children. It would be the same if he was Adolph Hitler resurrected. Because my reasons for opposing the death penalty are not primarily about the relative worthiness or evilness of the person being executed, just as my view of Justice in general is primarily about what I feel benefits the overall public good, not about how much punishment someone deserves (since that's not something that can be objectively calculated, and there is a damn fine line between righteous vengeance and sadism).

At the same time, I certainly can't say that I like the idea of him ever residing outside of a small cell again, sane or not.

[Zixinus]

I am actually curious what diagnosis they would get. What is it precisely that makes someone shoot up their own school?

[The Romulan Republic]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that legal insanity is pretty narrowly defined. Basically, that they have a breach with reality that makes them unable to differentiate right from wrong. So, as already noted in this thread, one could have severe mental problems, and still not qualify for an insanity plea.

My guess is "guilty, executed", unless he really is just completely delusional (and maybe even if he is, in a conservative-leaning state with this much public outrage over his acts), which would make him a rarity among these sorts of mass shooters, wouldn't it?

[Civil War Man]

A couple thoughts on a few of the topics brought up in this thread.

1. Besides the whole funding issue, the "arming the staff" argument from gun advocates also falls flat due to the fact that requiring firearms training for teachers adds a physical fitness requirement to the job that is otherwise irrelevant to their ability to teach. And we have few enough teachers without having school districts be forced to fire teachers with poor eyesight or mobility issues which prevent them being from able to safely handle a gun.

2. Regarding Cruz's reported remorse, my suspicions regarding it can be easily summed up by a single line from Babylon 5 (from the episode The Very Long Night For Londo Mollari, for fans of the show): "You are not sorry for what you did! You're just sorry that you got caught!"

[TheFeniX]

1. Besides the whole funding issue, the "arming the staff" argument from gun advocates also falls flat due to the fact that requiring firearms training for teachers adds a physical fitness requirement to the job that is otherwise irrelevant to their ability to teach. And we have few enough teachers without having school districts be forced to fire teachers with poor eyesight or mobility issues which prevent them being from able to safely handle a gun.

"Arm the teachers" morons annoy me so much. There's almost no way you could successfully negotiate this with a teacher's union. In fact, no way. If you could, you couldn't without a substantial pay increase as they would be effectively taking on a whole other job, with all the required qualifications for it. Not to mention the costs in insurance and required training, most of it NOT about accuracy but identifying threats and, you know, not shooting other armed teachers. There's a reason law enforcement wears standard uniforms and drill to work as a team, though probably not as much as they should with how often they shoot each other in botched drug raids.

Best case here, and still not a good one, is to have armed teachers hold up in their classrooms and shoot anyone armed who comes through the door and train all the armed teacher to not move about at all.

Even in states without unions, you're still expanding the CHL program into areas it does not cover and so laws would need to be broadly expanded here and it doesn't seem feasible. My CHL does not qualify me to carry a gun as part of my job. My boss cannot arbitrarily say "bring your gun to this jobsite in case X starts problems." Outside the liability he would have to ME, the liability to the company would be extreme. Lawsuits upon lawsuits, and denials of insurance coverage would abound.

If you HAD to go this route, many schools I did work at had security. They just weren't armed. They were big doods who manhandled unrooly students. If you couldn't afford or not enough cops were available (my High School had like 3 Rosenberg cops on campus much of the time, but even for a moderate sized city, there wasn't a lot of crime): you could train, arm, and pay the guards more.

This also has the ADDED liability of more guns on school grounds. Accidents are usually rare, but wearing a concealed gun takes a toll during a long day. More for women. Unconcealed means "holy shit, Ms. FeniX is packing heat" and do we really want kids seeing that all day, even if they are kept in law enforcement approved holsters? Or where else? Purses? Desk drawers? Even locked, that's MONEY sitting in those drawers as decent handguns are not cheap. Does the State/School pickup the tab here? You gonna pay more taxes there Mr. 2nd Amendment?

It's just a dumbfuck statement by some dipshit rednecks who don't understand and don't WANT to understand how unbelievably stupid their idea is. I respond to it with "That's dumb. You're dumb. Stop being dumb."

[The Romulan Republic]

A couple thoughts on a few of the topics brought up in this thread.

1. Besides the whole funding issue, the "arming the staff" argument from gun advocates also falls flat due to the fact that requiring firearms training for teachers adds a physical fitness requirement to the job that is otherwise irrelevant to their ability to teach. And we have few enough teachers without having school districts be forced to fire teachers with poor eyesight or mobility issues which prevent them being from able to safely handle a gun.

It also, due to the Right's fetish for the "Lone vigilante with a gun" archetype, fails to address the psychological factors. How disciplined is going to be a teacher, who has never trained to be under fire, when there are bullets flying past their head and children dying in front of them? Also, most people do not find it easy to kill other human beings- even when they are under fire themselves. On the whole, this is a good instinct, for reasons that should be obvious. IIRC, there was a study somewhere that back in the day, only about one in four soldiers (who were often conscripts, which is effectively what teachers required to carry arms to deal with shooters would be) would actually aim at the enemy- the rest would just fire into the air, or in the general direction of the enemy. Soldiers go through training to overcome this. Teachers do not.

Teachers are taught to protect their students' safety? How easy will it be for the average teacher to gun down a student, even to save other students' lives?

Of course, I'm sure some people on the Right will come back with saying that teachers should go through police or military-style training, or that only ex-cops/soldiers should be hired as teachers. But that's going to make it a lot harder to find good teachers, and the job requirements for a good cop (which America has too few of as well) or soldier and a good teacher are otherwise rather different. What about shootings outside of schools? Do we expect every member of society to be a part-time soldier?

I suppose that is the end goal of much of the Right, isn't it? The gun as the first and only solution, the complete militarization of our society, all in the name of keeping the darkies in their place keeping order "protecting us".

2. Regarding Cruz's reported remorse, my suspicions regarding it can be easily summed up by a single line from Babylon 5 (from the episode The Very Long Night For Londo Mollari, for fans of the show): "You are not sorry for what you did! You're just sorry that you got caught!"

Quite likely.

[Broomstick]

There was discussion at one point of arming airline pilots in this country. The only way that could get approved would be that such pilots would need to be able to meet Air Marshall standards. Most pilots, even though who owned guns, seemed to have the notion that their job was to fly the airplane and not subduing, maybe even shooting, the bad guys. That was the air marshalls' job.

Likewise, teachers should be teachers, not cops. If your schools need security hire security professionals, don't ask teachers to do even more.

Arming teachers... fucking stupid idea... idiots...hoplophiliacs...dumbasses...

[Dominus Atheos]

Trump was right to lift a rule preventing some people with disabilities from buying guns

...

Many progressive commentators have been quick to point out Trump’s hypocrisy and have condemned the administration for signing the repeal of that rule. As a liberal disability rights activist who continues to fight Trump, these people are normally my allies. But I can’t join them in attacking Trump on this issue because Congress was right to repeal this particular regulation. It would have done nothing to prevent the Parkland shooting and would have set a dangerous precedent restricting the rights of people with disabilities without due process.

In December 2016, the Social Security Administration issued a new regulation that had the dubious distinction of bringing together pro-gun groups and advocates for civil rights and people with disabilities, including the ACLU and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

The rule required the agency to send names from its database of certain people receiving disability benefits who had a “representative payee” to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). That’s a federal database of people prohibited from purchasing a gun. Representative payees can be designated either by the beneficiary, or the agency.

More specifically, the new rule singled out people who use a representative payee and possess a mental impairment. People affected by the rule could have a range of mental disabilities, from dementia to autism to agoraphobia.

Predictably, in the run-up to the debate, gun-control groups and gun-rights groups lined up on opposite sides of the issue. But disability rights groups and civil rights organizations were also concerned that the rule lacked a solid connection to public safety and might serve to restrict the rights of people with mental disabilities in other areas.

...

During my time at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, I heard from a number of autistic adults who were concerned that their use of a representative payee would prevent them from taking part in hunting and other aspects of rural culture involving firearms.

“The rule didn’t care that I’m not a danger to myself or others,” wrote Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone, an autistic woman who would have been impacted by the regulation, “[or] that having a ‘rep payee’ manage my finances has been a boon for my mental health, one that has allowed me to decrease the impact that my anxiety has on my ability to live in my community. It just made an assumption, not based in evidence, that if I need help with my finances that I must be a danger.”

Still, the primary reason I and other disability advocates opposed the rep payee rule is less about guns than it is about the precedent the rule might set for other kinds of rights.

These concerns are rooted in discrimination that people with mental disabilities face in other areas of life, such as parenting and voting rights. People with mental disabilities often face an assumption of incapacity. Their advocates and lawyers often have to fight to overturn assumptions that a certain diagnosis, or a determination of need for support in one area, should lead to a loss of rights in an unrelated area. These advocates feared that using the representative payee database for prohibiting gun purchases might constitute a “thin end of the wedge” for loss of more important rights down the road.

Others have pointed out that many jobs require clearance through the NICS database, even for roles in security, construction, transportation or other businesses that don’t directly require the handling of a firearm. For those roles, even a temporary use of a representative payee could have barred future employment in those fields.

While some of these harms may seem minor or speculative to some, they are very real to a mental disability community that is heavily and inappropriately stigmatized by unfounded perceptions of violence.

It’s not just that no research supports the premise that those who use representative payees are more likely to be perpetrators of gun violence than members of the general population. It’s also that the statute authorizing representative payees explicitly allows people to make use of the program “regardless of the legal competency or incompetency of the qualified individual.” For many of these people, the system is a voluntary support they have chosen to access — and shouldn’t be penalized for using.

Ari Ne’eman is the CEO of MySupport.com, an online platform helping people with disabilities, seniors, and families to manage their in-home services. From 2006 to 2016 he served as president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and from 2010 to 2015 he was one of President Obama’s appointees to the National Council on Disability. @aneeman

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/2 ... ma-liberty

Being a consistent civil libertarian is lonely work, pretty much everybody will find something to be pissed off at you for.

[aerius]

We have all the systems in place to help combat this but no desire to put them together in the right order to make a difference. People are too scared of the drawbacks and in some areas I can't blame them. Because you give an inch, they take a mile.

For one example: What constitutes mentally unfit to own a firearm? You aren't violent? Jerk-offs said this about Cruz. Do we lean the other way and deny/take property from people with clinical depression? I'm making no real argument here either way, but if this problem needs one thing: it's money thrown at it, especially into the mental healthcare system.

But you start talking money outside some ink on "hi-cap mags are now banned" and both (D) and (R) asses start puckering up.

And do we take all threats as serious business like the Runescape player who got 15 years for saying "I'm going to shoot up my school" as a bad joke?

Problem is no one wants to have an honest discussion on any of the above. It instantly degenerates into "ban the fucking guns!" and "you ain't taking mah guns, I got rights!". The only thing folks can agree on is that felons shouldn't have guns, and even that one's arguable at times.

But it's a discussion we need to have if we're actually going to solve this shit. We need to acknowledge that some people aren't mentally fit to own firearms, where the line gets drawn is up for debate but we can't even have this discussion in the US without having it turn into an instant screaming match. We also need to consider that many of the drugs used to treat various mental conditions have impulsive homicidal rage as a side-effect, and it's even listed on the drug labels, maybe folks who are on these drugs shouldn't be able to buy guns. But we can't talk about that either even though dozens of these mass killing shooters were medicated on these aforementioned drugs.

I've long given up on this shit ever being solved. Bottom line is the people don't care enough and there's too much money & vested interest in keeping things the way they are. Yeah folks will get their rage on in social media & shit every time there's a shooting, but what do they do about it in real life? Oh yeah. That would be nothing. Maybe there's 0.1% that actually does something but that doesn't go very far, the powers that be can happily ignore that. Get 10-20% of the country to raise hell and now you have the power and they gotta start listening.

[TheFeniX]

Problem is no one wants to have an honest discussion on any of the above. It instantly degenerates into "ban the fucking guns!" and "you ain't taking mah guns, I got rights!". The only thing folks can agree on is that felons shouldn't have guns, and even that one's arguable at times.

And what boggles the mind is people act like they EVER HAVE. The crime waves of the 80s and 90s were a big deal. Clinton dumped money into enforcement, but on the gun control side all we got was the Brady Bill which banned some scary looking guns. Even entertainment took a cue and were making multiple "rundown America" movies like Robocop and Demolition Man.

So, even when facing what people thought was crime Armageddon, we could only ban hi-cap mags and polymer stocks. Shit, even people in the 30s had the balls to pass sweeping gun legislation when trying to fight against prohibition era crime. Now I don't think, as said, they want/care if the problem is fixed. Not when it's so easy to use the dead bodies as a makeshift soapbox.

I've long given up on this shit ever being solved. Bottom line is the people don't care enough and there's too much money & vested interest in keeping things the way they are. Yeah folks will get their rage on in social media & shit every time there's a shooting, but what do they do about it in real life? Oh yeah. That would be nothing. Maybe there's 0.1% that actually does something but that doesn't go very far, the powers that be can happily ignore that. Get 10-20% of the country to raise hell and now you have the power and they gotta start listening.

There may or may not be a shift here as millenials are buying guns, but almost purely for recreational purposes (they grew up playing CoD and Hollywood also fucking loves guns) and they don't feel a "need" for them, unlike older people. They may be enticed to deal with restrictions, but trying to remove their valuable property will cause major issues.

In short, The "cold dead hand" brigade is dieing and the "hey, that's cool and fun to shoot" brigade is growing. That said, they could easily turn into "You want to take my $2,000 toy without compensation? Fuck you." when you realise the guns likely to be targeted are the ones they've been buying up. People need to remember, the AR-15 is a wildly popular rifle among all demographics of people who purchase guns.

So, every fucking time the media/politicians portray it as this murder-machine only bought by psychos planning a murder-spree, they are really hurting themselves.

[MKSheppard]

"Arm the teachers" morons annoy me so much. There's almost no way you could successfully negotiate this with a teacher's union. In fact, no way. If you could, you couldn't without a substantial pay increase as they would be effectively taking on a whole other job, with all the required qualifications for it. Not to mention the costs in insurance and required training, most of it NOT about accuracy but identifying threats and, you know, not shooting other armed teachers. There's a reason law enforcement wears standard uniforms and drill to work as a team, though probably not as much as they should with how often they shoot each other in botched drug raids.

Best case here, and still not a good one, is to have armed teachers hold up in their classrooms and shoot anyone armed who comes through the door and train all the armed teacher to not move about at all.

I'm not seeing a problem with arming teachers.

Repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) of 1990, and basically make it known to teachers that if they want to acquire a concealed carry license; go for it. No need to make it mandatory; or add any extra training.

You don't need to arm all the teachers. Currently, only certain places have School Resource Officers (SROs), Cops assigned to a school for the day; and even when they exist, there's only one guy, who may be out on a lunch break etc.

Not every teacher is going to want to carry a gun. That's fine with me. Some people just don't like them. That's okay with me. I'm not going to force someone who feels so strongly against guns that they won't use starter pistols in swimming competitions to carry a gun.

The issue is one of numbers.

Average size of a highschool in the US is about 700 students.

At average distribution levels, that's a staff level of about:

https://www.brookings.edu/research/half ... s-so-what/

30-40+ teachers
25+ teacher's aides
10+ administrative staff
4+ health staff
9+ building services

for about 80~ staff members.

https://www.gunstocarry.com/concealed-carry-statistics/

If the US average of around 6% get permits, that's 4 extra people carrying; instead of a single SRO whose location can be easily tracked (some of them sit in their cruisers in the parking lot).

As for de-confliction, you said it yourself -- just train them to go to passive defense; grab as many students as you can, get them into a sealed room and basically shoot anyone who tries to enter the room without authorization.

Naturally, you'll have to warn them that the police when they clear the school, will prone and cuff you as a precaution until they can figure out who is who and what.

There's also another factor brought into play by repealing the GFSZA -- you now can use parents who may be in or around the school at various times (remember, average of 6% population in US has a permit) as mobile barriers.

Naturally, you'll have to figure out some standard operating procedures for parents -- no matter how much you want to; don't enter the school and try to hunt down the gunman -- deconfliction is a bitch.

The big advantage of repealing the GFSZA is that it increases the number of "triggers" for the school shooter to go from "I AM GOD BWHAHAHAHAH" mode to "John Cavil" mode:



Essentially, spree killers tend to give up or suicide once armed resistance is encountered and it fucks up their grand diabolical plan.

[Napoleon the Clown]

So what happens when an armed teacher accidentally blows away an innocent student in the crossfire? Who is liable? The teacher? The district?

[Block]

Or just snaps and kills their students?

[TheFeniX]

I'm not seeing a problem with arming teachers.

"Arming" someone is different than "removing CHL carry restrictions." I'm not talking about, nor really interested, in talking about the later. Though I can already imagine concerned parents on both sides hassling my wife if they find out she has a CHL.

Or just snaps and kills their students?

That's probably the least likely outcome of this whole ordeal. Near any time a teacher kills or attempts to kill a student, it's a very personal affair (usually sexual). The kinds of people who would jump from "John is being a little shit." to "Oh wait, I can murder him right now with my gun" are not the kinds of people who could hack it at many things, much less teaching which you already have to go through a whole bunch of bullshit to get your certificate anyway.

Your comment adds nothing to the discussion. It's like asking "Should cops be armed?" and responding with"No, they could snap and shoot people."

[Zaune]

I'd be more worried about a teacher getting jumped and having their weapon stolen, honestly. What's easier, buying a gun on the street and smuggling it past the metal-detector or hiding in the staff toilets with a lock in a sock?

[Simon_Jester]

Your comment adds nothing to the discussion. It's like asking "Should cops be armed?" and responding with"No, they could snap and shoot people."

To be fair, the US experience suggests that this is not a trivial consideration.

[TheFeniX]

Your comment adds nothing to the discussion. It's like asking "Should cops be armed?" and responding with"No, they could snap and shoot people."

To be fair, the US experience suggests that this is not a trivial consideration.

Do-ho ho! Yea, I thought about that while posting. But still, I get adding guns isn't always a good solution, but at the least I've got a better idea of the mentality and legality of a person with a CHL. While the psych test is hilariously easy to lie on, you still have to go through a lot more checks than someone just buying a gun. Local and State checks just to start, a lot of denials happen here. After that, fingerprinting which is kept on file and run against larger local and Federal databases.

There's always the chance someone could just "snap." I mean, pilots are trained and licensed and some have tried to fly their plane into the ground to kill everyone. But saying "we can't let people fly planes, they might snap and slam them into a mountain" is an "argument" that boils down to "people shouldn't be allowed to do anything."

I get that guns add a level of personal destruction to the mix. An adult could bodyslam toddlers at whim, but high school students are a bit stronger. However, if it is determined that a tool is needed for a job, I can't find a good logical reason to say "but if we give them X, they could snap and use X to kill someone." That's just kind of the cost of doing business with people. And it's generally not a very high cost. I'm much more concerned with (just saying) lockout/tagout existing not because a coworker might want to murder me with electricity but because negligence/incompetence might lead to him doing it accidentally.

Sure, the former DOES happen. But the later happens on a much more consistent basis.

[Crazedwraith]

Well there's a clear distinction between pilots piloting and Teachers having guns. One is a risk that is literally unavoidable if you want to have planes flying about. The other is not, there's no absolute requirement for teaching that teachers have a gun.

[TheFeniX]

Well there's a clear distinction between pilots piloting and Teachers having guns. One is a risk that is literally unavoidable if you want to have planes flying about. The other is not, there's no absolute requirement for teaching that teachers have a gun.

True, but I never said there was. I'm saying "a teacher could snap" is not a good argument against them carrying in schools and that I can't find much of a logical basis for it. This is even ignoring that, if you agree with it or not, a teacher with a CHL is trusted to carry a pistol in any number of situations, but somehow not when performing the job they've been hired to do. Why?

Going PAST that, I said I still don't think it's a very good idea. I'm not opposed to a teacher with a CHL carrying on school grounds in principal, but realistically I don't like the idea. Mostly due to someone like my wife (and others) feeling she NEEDS to carry or she isn't doing her job and on the flip side people haranguing her and others like her for her choices to carry or not carry a weapon.

I've gone some places with friends. Places they've taken me to. Some of my friends, not all, know I have a CHL and I've been asked:
"You packing?"
"Maybe, why?"
"This is a bad part of town."
And then I'm like "If the only way you feel safe in an area is if someone is carrying a gun, you do not need to be bringing me here. I have better shit to do."

I'm not obligated to be anyone's bodyguard. Nor should I be harangued for deciding that carrying a weapon for personal protection is a good idea. And I damn sure don't want my wife to feel like her CHL is a liability. And people CAN find out if you have a CHL or not and I bet all the money nosy parents will be filling information requests non-stop if this shit comes to pass.