Yet Another School Shooting in the United States

[Jub]

HOUSTON — One student was killed and another person was injured after someone opened fire outside of a Texas Southern University dormitory on Friday morning, prompting a lockdown at the Houston school, officials said.

The gunfire outside the University Courtyard dormitory left one student dead and another person seriously injured at 11:35 a.m. local time, according to Eva Pickens, the school’s associate vice president of communications.

One victim, identified only as a student, died less than 30 minutes after the shooting, Pickens said. A second victim was in stable condition at a Houston-area hospital, she said.

Houston Police said they had detained a “possible suspect” around noon local time. The campus remains on lockdown and classes have been canceled for the rest of the day.

The incident was the second shooting on campus in just 12 hours. A shooting left one person injured outside the same dormitory around midnight Thursday, according to a statement issued by the school.

Link to news story.

I'm not sure what else to say about these at this point...

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah one person got murdered with a gun. You know statistically that happens around twenty five times a day, every single day in the US right?

[Jub]

Yeah one person got murdered with a gun. You know statistically that happens around twenty five times a day, every single day in the US right?

Does it usually happen on school property days after another much deadlier instance of the same behavior?

[Purple]

Yeah one person got murdered with a gun. You know statistically that happens around twenty five times a day, every single day in the US right?

Does it usually happen on school property days after another much deadlier instance of the same behavior?

Apparently yes. Really there is no pattern here beyond the very obvious teens = stupid => teens + guns = very bad idea.

[Sea Skimmer]

Does it usually happen on school property days after another much deadlier instance of the same behavior?

A damn lot of shootings in US cities are very close to schools, and involve school students. Maybe not on school property, but the school property is generally just the bare building so what would you expect? But as we've seen before, the media will spike reporting of small scale school shootings after a massacre, and then it will taper away in turn until the next time. The day in day out killings sometimes won't even make the local city news channels. If they do it will generally be just a few seconds of reporting unless it was a young child.

But the media really doesn't want to report on the real scope and nature of gun murders in the US anyway, because that turns into a racial issue instantly. Because its a fact, over half off all gun murders in the US involve blacks being killed, but only 13% of the population is black. And that the huge surge in murders in the US since the Ferguson riots has been confined to the largely poor areas of cities. Whites are far more likely to commit suicide with a gun then be murdered with a gun (note this murder rate is still many times that of Sweden), and while guns don't help suicide problems places like Japan show you don't need guns to have very high suicide rates. And it's this reality that lets the white political/economic majority in the country ignore the problem.

[Simon_Jester]

To summarize, Skimmer, you are saying that the gun issue is being ignored because for whites the gun threat is in large part a suicide threat (and is dismissed) whereas for blacks it's a threat of being shot (whether by other blacks, or by whites).

Right?

[Dominus Atheos]

Actually there were 2 school shootings today:

Published OCTOBER 9, 2015, 9:46 AM EDT

One person was killed and three injured in a shooting early Friday at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/n ... an-shooter

[Executor32]

A school shooting? In the US? Must be a day ending in -y.

How many is too many before we finally, collectively say 'fuck the NRA' and do something about it?

[Solauren]

A school shooting? In the US? Must be a day ending in -y.

How many is too many before we finally, collectively say 'fuck the NRA' and do something about it?

When a popular rich celebrities kids are put at risk/injured/killed by a mass school shooting.

OR

After a mass shooting at a national NRA meeting.

[Joun_Lord]

A school shooting? In the US? Must be a day ending in -y.

How many is too many before we finally, collectively say 'fuck the NRA' and do something about it?

Because the NRA is causing school shootings?

[Tribble]

Well, guns clearly aren't just for killing anymore. Apparently they are now essential for home cooking. Machine-gun bacon anyone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=51&v=EaZGaJrd3x8

Brought to you by the beloved Ted Cruz.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

A school shooting? In the US? Must be a day ending in -y.

How many is too many before we finally, collectively say 'fuck the NRA' and do something about it?

I said it in the previous thread and I'll say it again here, because evidently it needs repeating:

The problem is that the debate has become toxic, poisoned along ideological lines, with neither side of that ideological divide offering anything helpful. The anti-gun-control side rants and raves and froths at the mouth while staging absurd displays of openly carrying assault rifles around town. The pro-gun-control side, meanwhile, blows its emotional load prematurely every time one of these shootings happens, infected with feel-good bullshit like magazine size restrictions (lol) and assault weapon bans.

Until and unless moderate voices on either "side" (though frankly there really shouldn't be sides on this, but rather "people interested in a rational solution") are allowed to become more dominant in these discussions, nothing is going to get done.

As Sea Skimmer pointed out, this thread's "story" is really a non-story in terms of the school shooting debate, but that doesn't seem to stop the pro-gun control nuts from jumping on it like vampires on a corpse that ain't even cold.

The pattern I'm noticing here is that non-gun-owning non-Americans in particular just love sticking their shit into this sandwich, then they loudly wonder why dumb Americans don't fix their country. Just the other night Trevor Noah was smugly poisoning the debate further with talk of the oh-so-useful and oh-so-practical magazine size restrictions that people who know absolutely nothing about guns love harping on about.

My advice for those who truly want to see gun violence reform in the United States is shut the fuck up if you are A) Not American and/or B) Don't know a damn thing about guns or how guns exist in American culture. Now, to people's credit, I did see a few posters in the other thread who seem to acknowledge the importance of A and B in this debate.

I think it was Lonestar who pointed out that too much of the pro-gun-control side is painfully transparent in their ulterior motives, and this sabotages the debate right from the starting line. These school shootings and other citations of gun violence in the US are jumped on as expedient pivot points to exploit people's kneejerk emotional reactions to tragic events in order to ram through ineffectual, stupid, short-sighted, and frankly objectionable infringements upon personal liberties because the people promulgating this particular variety of gun control very obviously want to create a society where guns are restricted to the point of being effectively non-existent.

If, like me, your goal isn't to eliminate guns but rather to mitigate gun violence, it seems rather obvious to me that actual, rational methods need to be taken toward the direct accomplishment of this goal, rather than playing this ridiculous song and dance of "SEE! VIOLENCE! WITH GUNS! SO LET'S GET RID OF THE GUNS (nevermind the 'violence' part of the equation)!" Now, I don't pretend to know what all of those rational methods might look like, which is why I had little to add in the other thread. But I think it was Lonestar again who linked to an experimental social program that was, at the very least, a step in the right direction. That kind of thing is a thousand times more helpful than the think-of-the-children authoritarian sewage that gets spewed by the gun-ignorant who wish to do away with that which they do not understand.

[Tribble]

Has there been an actual increase in crime in the USA over the past couple of years? Pretty much all the data I have shows that crime rates throughout pretty much the entire western world have been falling, but many of them haven't updated to 2014-2015 yet. While still high compared to other western countries the crime rate in the USA is a lot lower than it was a couple of decades ago.

If the crime rate have been increasing, is it more likely to be a temporary spike or is there the potential of it being a long term trend?

[biostem]

I am all in favor of passing laws requiring you take safety courses before being able to buy a firearm, and increasing the robustness of the background checks conducted.

I feel that a lot of what we're hearing about is due to how completely immersed we are in social media and fast information transmission across the country/world. That's not taking into account the growth of population as well.

I am concerned, however, as to how many of these crimes are conducted with weapons that are the actual legal property of the person who conducted the crime - the child of someone who has a legally acquired firearm is *not* the legal owner of said weapon, and the ones who are/were the owner should perhaps be brought up on negligence charges for not securing their firearm properly.

[Executor32]

A school shooting? In the US? Must be a day ending in -y.

How many is too many before we finally, collectively say 'fuck the NRA' and do something about it?

Because the NRA is causing school shootings?

No, but through their bought-and-paid-for friends in Congress, they have considerable clout in the American political machine, enough that all they have to do is say the word and they can effectively torpedo any attempt at meaningful regulation. I'm not talking about pointless bullshit like magazine size restrictions, either, but common-sense things like closing the gun show loophole. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry should not be able to walk into a gun show and purchase a firearm without at least a cursory background check, but even hint at trying to remedy that, and the NRA starts screeching like it's the end of the fucking world.

[Purple]

My advice for those who truly want to see gun violence reform in the United States is shut the fuck up if you are A) Not American and/or B) Don't know a damn thing about guns or how guns exist in American culture. Now, to people's credit, I did see a few posters in the other thread who seem to acknowledge the importance of A and B in this debate.

Of course it's a cultural, social and economic problem. But that's the point. That is the reason why you should not have liberal gun laws. Your society as a whole is not fit for them. So you should take the guns away, fix your society and than you can give them back.

[Grumman]

I am all in favor of passing laws requiring you take safety courses before being able to buy a firearm...

If you want to prevent accidental shootings, I would prefer to make basic firearms safety something that is taught in schools. A child may first encounter a gun years before they are old enough to own one themselves, so starting early to teach them to treat them with the appropriate respect makes sense. It also means it impossible to abuse that requirement to create a de facto gun ban by denying access to the prerequisite safety course.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I think it was Lonestar who pointed out that too much of the pro-gun-control side is painfully transparent in their ulterior motives, and this sabotages the debate right from the starting line.

The anti-gun-control side is the same way. I would argue that they are even worse. Because even the stupidest people on the pro-gun-control side at least have their hearts in the right place (wanting to reduce violence), even if they don't know the right way to go about it. But the anti-gun-control side is just as disingenuous with their constant strawmen (like the mythical "New York is taking our guns away!" argument), but their motives are rarely anything other than, "I like my guns, so fuck off."

[Dartzap]

My advice for those who truly want to see gun violence reform in the United States is shut the fuck up if you are A) Not American and/or B) Don't know a damn thing about guns or how guns exist in American culture. Now, to people's credit, I did see a few posters in the other thread who seem to acknowledge the importance of A and B in this debate.

Bit of a slippery slope that, innit? I could say that about literally any topic thats comes up about the socio-economic political omnishambles of my own country, and it would suddenly become an echo chamber between Zaune and StarGlider either murdering or shagging each other.

It's a discussion board, not having those discussions with others renders the entire thing pointless, especially with annoying bastards with suspiciously tall horses.

[Zaune]

Very droll...

[Joun_Lord]

No, but through their bought-and-paid-for friends in Congress, they have considerable clout in the American political machine, enough that all they have to do is say the word and they can effectively torpedo any attempt at meaningful regulation. I'm not talking about pointless bullshit like magazine size restrictions, either, but common-sense things like closing the gun show loophole. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry should not be able to walk into a gun show and purchase a firearm without at least a cursory background check, but even hint at trying to remedy that, and the NRA starts screeching like it's the end of the fucking world.

The NRA are a bunch of racist and homophobic shitbags who represent a small minority of gun owners and seem to enjoy causing panic buys that drive up prices and make .22 ammo worth more then gold. However to blame them for the mess that is gun control and shootings is incorrect. The NRA for all its fuck-ups does stand for gun rights (maybe too much and too little at times, also never for the gun rights of gay people and minorities who need firearms to defend themselves far more then some redneck in his trailer) against anti-gun elements who don't want common sense gun control solutions either, they want stupid sense gun bans. So of course they are going to block everything, too often the people pushing that shit are trying to use even "common sense" gun control as a foot in the door to pass even greater bullshit.

And beyond that most of the shit won't stop any shootings. Like the mentioned gun show loophole, yeah its scary and all and probably should be closed but very few shootings involve gun show guns. Other shit like being able to buy guns online without any background check which is bullshit. Shoulder things that go up, bullet button bans, super deadly barrel shrouds, .30 caliber ghost guns that can disperse 30 bullets within half a second, or scary tactical features, none are shit that is a problem when it comes to mass shootings or shootings in general.

So you can be rightfully mad about the NRA stopping shit like gun show background checks and safer guns like those RFID watch guns that were completely voluntary, but ye cannot lay mass shootings at the feet of the NRA anymore then you could at the feet of the Brady Bunch as some morons like to do. Not gun manufacturers, not Obama, not Boner, not video games, not Dungeons and Dragons, or even Elvis's hips.

You might be able to lay some blame on the motherfuckers who got the shooters to that point of killing people because of economic fuckery, destroying the nations mental health services, racism, toxic culture, or whatever other reason people have as an excuse for shootings people but even then they aren't the ones who pulled the triggers.

The assholes who actually did the shootings, who pulled the triggers, who actually made that decision to go and kill other people, now those you can blame definitely.

My advice for those who truly want to see gun violence reform in the United States is shut the fuck up if you are A) Not American and/or B) Don't know a damn thing about guns or how guns exist in American culture. Now, to people's credit, I did see a few posters in the other thread who seem to acknowledge the importance of A and B in this debate.

Even if sometimes the non-Americans with their strange foreign ideas kinda miss the mark when talking about gun violence, they shouldn't shut the fuck up. They have ideas on how to fix problems, even if they are mostly wrong, and have other viewpoints that Americans can listen to to understand their reasons for wanting gun control and how its affected their countries with their lack of testicles and menly men.

Now the dirty stinking Eurocommies could also open their ears too to understand the differences in culture between proud and noble Murica and dirty and stinky Euroland and why glorious hot boded Americans may not want to disarm.

The anti-gun-control side is the same way. I would argue that they are even worse. Because even the stupidest people on the pro-gun-control side at least have their hearts in the right place (wanting to reduce violence), even if they don't know the right way to go about it. But the anti-gun-control side is just as disingenuous with their constant strawmen (like the mythical "New York is taking our guns away!" argument), but their motives are rarely anything other than, "I like my guns, so fuck off."

[/quote]

Yeah thats completely not right, not right at all.

Anti-rights or pro-gun control advocates like racist ass Bloomberg, Rosie O'Donnell and others DON'T give a shit about reducing violence, they give a shit solely about reducing guns whether or not it would decrease violence. They don't give a damn about any other type of violence. They give a shit about controlling peons while allowing themselves to enjoy those things they don't want Joe Average to have because they certainly aren't disarming their security teams. Their hearts are so not in the right place.

And while anti-gun control advocates aren't exactly paragons of virtue themselves, there are more motives on the pro-gun side then "I like turtles......I mean guns". Protecting oneself from hostile humies and wildlife, putting food on the table either through hunting or competitive shootings, not being treated like a child or criminal, constitutional rights saying they can like guns, and of course the fact rich assholes who have no need to defend themselves because they pay other people to do so don't want them to have guns.

[Channel72]

I think it was Lonestar who pointed out that too much of the pro-gun-control side is painfully transparent in their ulterior motives, and this sabotages the debate right from the starting line.

The anti-gun-control side is the same way. I would argue that they are even worse. Because even the stupidest people on the pro-gun-control side at least have their hearts in the right place (wanting to reduce violence), even if they don't know the right way to go about it. But the anti-gun-control side is just as disingenuous with their constant strawmen (like the mythical "New York is taking our guns away!" argument), but their motives are rarely anything other than, "I like my guns, so fuck off."

Yeah, really.

I mean - what does everyone think the motives of pro-gun control people actually are? What do they gain by taking away all your precious guns? What do they want? Obviously the motive here is pretty benign: they want to eliminate gun violence. Hell, most people who live in inner cities are fucking sick of constant gun violence. Every damn day on the local news, another shooting at the intersection of X street and Y avenue, blah blah blah...

That's why hardcore pro-gun advocates often have to invent bullshit malicious motives to attribute to the anti-gun crowd. (Obama and the Democrats want to take our guns away so they can disarm us and usher in a new Communist revolution!)

The only legitimate pro-gun argument or motive is personal safety. That is, at least, understandable. But that's rarely the sort of argument put forth by the loudest gun-rights advocates. These people are usually not in any actual danger of suffering from gun violence, and they don't live in dangerous neighorhoods. They simply like guns - that's all there is to it - and they don't want the damn government telling them what to do. (Except when it comes to non-gun related things, like seatbelt laws, smoking laws, not being able to buy alcohol on Sunday mornings, traffic laws, and any other of the numerous things the government tells them to do which they happily obey.)

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

The anti-gun-control side is the same way. I would argue that they are even worse. Because even the stupidest people on the pro-gun-control side at least have their hearts in the right place (wanting to reduce violence), even if they don't know the right way to go about it. But the anti-gun-control side is just as disingenuous with their constant strawmen (like the mythical "New York is taking our guns away!" argument), but their motives are rarely anything other than, "I like my guns, so fuck off."

Yes, that's a problem too, and I'm not excusing the NRA-nuts, open carry nuts, and so on, all of whom certainly aren't helping the debate and are definitely part of the problem.

However, I would argue that the first step is getting the pro-gun-control side to cool its jets, because the anti-gun-control gets fired up into a tizzy in response to that, rather than being some spontaneous thing. Absent the stupidities of kneejerk gun control measures, the anti-gun-control types lose any legitimacy in their position. Unfortunately, as long as people continue loudly demanding magazine limits, assault weapon bans, or otherwise using school shootings (and other tragedies) to try to push irrelevant gun control measures through that have nothing to do with school shootings and everything to do with eliminating guns, the anti-gun-controllers will have some legitimate grievances buried in their otherwise stupid screeching.

It's kind of an insane problem, but such is politics I guess.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Even if sometimes the non-Americans with their strange foreign ideas kinda miss the mark when talking about gun violence, they shouldn't shut the fuck up. They have ideas on how to fix problems, even if they are mostly wrong, and have other viewpoints that Americans can listen to to understand their reasons for wanting gun control and how its affected their countries with their lack of testicles and menly men.

Now the dirty stinking Eurocommies could also open their ears too to understand the differences in culture between proud and noble Murica and dirty and stinky Euroland and why glorious hot boded Americans may not want to disarm.

That's true enough, and it's not that I want to be dismissive of non-American perspectives in most matters. In this particular case, however, it's uniquely unhelpful. I mean, as Americans we usually hear no end of it about how ignorant we are of whatever other country's internal culture and should keep our noses out of the rest of the world's business. Which is fair. But quid pro quo. I hear a lot of non-Americans interject themselves in this debate, citing how x or y country doesn't have guns and does fine, why can't you Americans figure it out? Well, there's your answer; you don't have guns like America does and are ignorant of the internal culture. What gets exported by Hollywood is not representative of how America actually functions.

Even the liberal, urbane parts of this country are, I think, sometimes pretty ignorant of the rest of this country. I'm lucky in a sense, in that my father's side of the family are all ranchers scattered around rural Colorado, and that's a very different America than urban and suburban America. Guns are not just self-defense weapons, they're also vital tools for dealing with the mountain lions and bears of America's vast wilderness that surrounds rural areas, not to mention the more mundane concern of hunting game. If you have a pet dog (nevermind livestock), and you live on a relatively isolated ranch... mountain lions occasionally get hungry, and you're going to want a gun whenever they decide your golden retriever looks like a good meal.

[TheFeniX]

Of course it's a cultural, social and economic problem. But that's the point. That is the reason why you should not have liberal gun laws. Your society as a whole is not fit for them. So you should take the guns away, fix your society and than you can give them back.

That's dumb. Actual legal guns owners commit crimes with guns at a fraction of the percentage the general population does. This is easy to understand why: people who can afford expensive guns are statistically unlikely to need to commit crimes. Texas tracks CHL convictions. They are, once again, some of the statistically least likely people to commit crimes, at even lower rates than the average gun owner. In certain years, you see less violent convictions of CHL holders that you do American LEOs.

You have a comical misunderstanding of pretty much anything about American violence.

From the article I post a bit later on:

Whether or not you buy that reasoning, and it does make sense to me, what about the notion that tougher gun laws have or would make any difference? With the toughest gun laws in the nation, Chicago saw homicides jump to 513 in 2012, a 15% hike in a single year. The city’s murder rate is 15.65 per 100,000 people, compared with 4.5 for the Midwest, and 5.6 for Illinois.

Up to 80 percent of Chicago murders and non-fatal shootings are gang- related, primarily young black and Hispanic men killed by other black and Hispanic men. Would tightening gun laws even more, or “requiring” background checks, change these conditions?

American violent crime rates are bolstered by gang violence. Most of them already can't legally own a firearm, but they get them anyways from FFLs through straw-buys and thefts (from FFLs, because they know the gun store has.... you know, guns). The average citizen doesn't factor in because they aren't being targetted and law enforcement and other politicians don't care about the violence as long as it's contained in these areas.

Like, Houston is stupidly violent. I'd have find the report again, as my last reformat nixed it, but one talked about how upwards of 80% of gun and non-gun crime was all happening in the 3rd and 5th wards: high poverty areas rife with gang violence. And you can't fix this by just sending in more cops, you have to give these people incentives to not commit crime. These are the actual social issue American's have issue with: helping people who need help. That's not true, American's are very generous, except when that generosity has evil names like "welfare" and "public health coverage."

Has there been an actual increase in crime in the USA over the past couple of years? Pretty much all the data I have shows that crime rates throughout pretty much the entire western world have been falling, but many of them haven't updated to 2014-2015 yet. While still high compared to other western countries the crime rate in the USA is a lot lower than it was a couple of decades ago.

If the crime rate have been increasing, is it more likely to be a temporary spike or is there the potential of it being a long term trend?

Gun purchases have soared while gun crime continues to drop.

You can argue all day about the volume of guns ensuring criminals can find a way to access them. But gun owners, in of themselves, are largely non-violent and responsible with their weapons. They also protect them from theft because they are expensive pieces of property. And even if they were stolen as a matter of course to fuel crime (they are not), that doesn't explain why the most popular guns used to commit crime are some of the cheapest ones out there.

The real people selling guns or having them stolen to keep enough guns on the streets for violent crime are the people and businesses licensed by the Federal government to do so. If they can't crack at illicit FFLs or force them to keep better track of their products, they can't be trusted with anything regarding gun control.