What "meaningful action" would suggest to prevent more mass shooting in the US?

[Weasels wake]

Just when the 'anti guns' crowd think they have it all figured out
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
California gun sales jump; gun injuries, deaths fall
By Phillip Reese
Last Modified: Friday, Dec. 28, 2012 - 9:13 am
 
Gun deaths and injuries have dropped sharply in California, even as the number of guns sold in the state has risen, according to new state data.
Dealers sold 600,000 guns in California last year, up from 350,000 in 2002, according to records of sale tallied by the California Attorney General's office.
During that same period, the number of California hospitalizations due to gun injuries declined from about 4,000 annually to 2,800, a roughly 25 percent drop, according to hospital records collected by the California Department of Public Health.
Firearm-related deaths fell from about 3,200 annually to about 2,800, an 11 percent drop, state health figures show.
Most of the drop in firearm-related injuries and deaths can be explained by a well-documented, nationwide drop in violent crime.
The number of California injuries and deaths attributed to accidental discharge of firearms also has fallen. The number of suicide deaths involving firearms has remained roughly constant.
Two caveats: State figures track gun sales, not ownership. They treat a family's first gun purchase the same as a collector's twelfth. Second, gun sales in California peaked in the early 1990s, as violent crime also peaked.

For the charts~

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/27/5079151/california-gun-sales-increase.html#storylink=cpy

[pdxmike]

Plenty of problems seem insurmountable due to their immensity and yet (over time and with effort) they are surmounted.  Slavery was a great example.  It won't happen without a start.

Armed Guards in schools?  Whack a mole.  Next up Chucky Cheeses, Skating rinks, Amusement parks...everything.  That ain't freedom.

That was my first thought about the armed guards in schools.  It was only a few days before the school shooting that the Clackamas Mall shooting happened here, and it was already forgotten.  What good does an armed guard in a school do to prevent a shooting in a mall or theater?  And you're right, if armed guards are the solution, then that means armed guards everywhere.

My sister's friend, who is a teacher, thinks a better answer would be to put a teacher in every gun shop.

I think some armed presence in schools makes sense, but if you're going to the level of permanent guards at every school, you have to ask if maybe there'd be more overall good by spending the money on an additional counselor at each school, or any of countless other things.

[SUPflorida]

Gun free zones are not the answer, and neither is armed guards at school or Chucky Cheese.

Concealed Carry is the answer...

It puts a level of uncertainty in the mind of the criminal...He/she has to ask themselves if right to carry is allowed then who is armed? Will I get shot by my own prey? Is it worth the risk? That's the deterrent...its not having some firefight like you see in movies...it's putting the criminals on notice that there is a very real possibility of armed resistance to their aggression.

If your afraid that someone with a concealed Carry license is dangerous with a gun because of lack of experience, and a "professional needs to be hired" ...read the following...


Source: PoliceOne.com

Tactics & Training
with Dave Grossi

"Police firearms training: How often should you be shooting?

At a recent use-of-force class I was instructing for a Public Risk Management group, the topic of firearms training frequency came up. The discussion was prompted by the fact that during the latest round of FBI suspect interviews conducted for the third book in the Officer Assaulted and Murdered trilogy ("Violent Encounters"), it was revealed that those suspects believed that police officers trained between two and three times a week with their firearms. In reality, most police departments only train about two times a year, averaging less than 15 hours annually. In contrast to our frequency of training, those same suspects revealed that they practiced on average 23 times a year (or almost twice a month) with their handguns.

During a poll taken during this class which represented about a half dozen Florida law enforcement agencies, I asked how many train more than twice a year. No hands went up. When asked how many train or qualify with their duty guns only once a year. Everyone raised their hands. Hence, the genesis for this article."

I am not trying in any way to downplay the role and sacrifice that our law enforcement officers make for ridiculously low wages. Without a doubt there are some outstanding marksmen among the ranks. The odds are however that the one who responds to your call may not have the firearm skills you think they have. Like the two NYPD officers who manage to hit 9 innocent bystanders down range of their intended target.

On the flip side to that old Jim, your next door neighbor, or Pam the girl you see at work (both which have CC licenses) might be at the range two or three times a month taking their marksmanship as serious as some of you do your SUP.

[Bean]

Nah, it's not about marksmanship...police officers are trained to respond to difficult situations.  CC licensees should not be put in a position to take on the role of police work.

SRO is the way to go

[pdxmike]

Gun free zones are not the answer, and neither is armed guards at school or Chucky Cheese.

Concealed Carry is the answer...

It puts a level of uncertainty in the mind of the criminal...He/she has to ask themselves if right to carry is allowed then who is armed? Will I get shot by my own prey? Is it worth the risk? That's the deterrent...its not having some firefight like you see in movies...it's putting the criminals on notice that there is a very real possibility of armed resistance to their aggression.

Those underlines sum up very well why I'm in favor of concealed carrying.  The deterrent factor doesn't rely on how accurately a concealed carrier can shoot, or how well they're trained--it's that they might be there--somewhere, and nobody knows who or how many they are--and they might be able to shoot back. 

And I'm not swayed at all by people asking how many concealed carriers have actually shot criminals, because that's not the point.  That's like saying the only way to judge a law is to count how many people are in jail because of that law.  The deterrent effect exists without any shooting.

In regard to training, the concealed carrier I know best is a trained gunner/sniper in the military--just got back from Afghanistan--certainly far better a shooter than just about anyone, police or not. 

For schools, I like Portland's assigning of police officers to schools.  They do much more than guard, and they are effective without being at a school full-time.  Schools should have the option to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons if trained, and certainly--just like with the general population--the percentage of teachers for whom it would be appropriate to allow to carry concealed weapons is very small. 

I don't like the idea of full-time armed guards at schools, but the combination of approaches--some armed police, some plainsclothes police, and civilians with concealed weapons is a good tool for use in schools and public places.  You don't need them all at once--the point is that they MAY be there.

[Bean]

The point that "they may be there" would seem to be the best deterrent that we have against these cowards.  But, the armed presence must be trained and qualified.  Since the perpetrators in many of the school based massacres were students, we need to be concerned about their natural inside knowledge which could be used to target or even bait an armed teacher.

At the moment, only SRO's (School Resource Officers), which are regular cops, accomplish this best.

[SUPflorida]

"
   
Re: What "meaningful action" would suggest to prevent more mass shooting in the US?
« Reply #273 on: December 29, 2012, 10:31:32 PM »   
Nah, it's not about marksmanship...police officers are trained to respond to difficult situations.  CC licensees should not be put in a position to take on the role of police work.

SRO is the way to go "

SRO is a great asset and should be a part of every school faculty. However when it hits the fan like with this mass shooting...THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS MARKSMANSHIP.

The ability to engage and stop the shooter with well placed shots between the mustach and the eyebrows or at least center mass is the only thing that matters once the murderer sets his/her plan in action. Poor marksmanship doesn't stop the carnage...a "noble attempt" that fails saves no one. I hope no one is nieve enough to think that they could have "talked him out of it" when he was in the middle of his killing spree.

[Area 10]

The ability to engage and stop the shooter with well placed shots between the mustach and the eyebrows...is the only thing that matters once the murderer sets his/her plan in action.

The problem with this argument is that potential killers would then just shave their mustache off, and then they could do as they please. And most American women I have met haven't had a mustache anyway. So what happens if the killer's name is Ma Baker?

[Admin]

And most American women I have met haven't had a mustache anyway.

You are going to the wrong bars.

[JeanG]

"Mass shootings are unlike most other kinds of violence in that there's no particular logic to their causes other than desire for notoriety and copycatism, both murky motivations. If the authorities let criminals, say, get away with carjackings, then there will be more carjackings. It's only rational. Yet, the rationality of these crimes makes deterrence more feasible. A variety of outrageous crimes -- carjacking, kidnapping, home invasion, even mugging -- have been increasingly deterred in recent decades.

But nobody ever gets away with a mass shooting.

Which means that, by definition, deterring mass shootings is difficult.

So, we need to prevent them. But the methods proposed for preventing such unusual and cloudy crimes -- putting a brave marksman cop in every school, taking away 300 million guns, locking up the weird, arming kindergarten teachers, etc. -- are not terribly confidence inspiring. Since nobody knows for sure what to do, this makes mass shootings ideal for arguing over. Everybody gets to expound on their favorite prejudice -- stomp on rednecks, hire gun lovers to sit in schools, or whatever -- without much connection to what will happen next."

[SUPflorida]

Area 10

From the US Marines
Methods of Target Engagement

Paraphrased and sanitized as the graphic language and description in the full text would be very unsettling for many.

"a.  To achieve instant incapacitation...the bullet must travel through the ocular-cranial cavity or sinuses. The ocular cranial cavity is an area easily referenced by facial features. This area covers from the bottom of the nose up to the eyebrows and from the outside corner of the eyes inward and is referred to as the "T-Box" for our purposes."

I know you were just trying to add a little humor...and I don't fault you...but for me this is a very serious subject. We are talking about situations where the violent actions of an individual dictates the need to end their life to save innocents...  it is a human life...no matter how disturbed...and that is very unsettling to put it mildly.  

Every time my wife and I go to the range and shoot we invariably leave saying to each other I pray to God we never have to use the skills we are practicing.

[PonoBill]

I don't know who Jean is quoting, but it's pretty much what I think.

My bias is towards determining the source of a problem and addressing that. Addressing peripheral elements first always seems ineffective.

Crazy/monstrously evil people killing large numbers of innocent people leads me immediately to trying to find and isolate likely perpetrators. Unfortunately most of the methods to do that are pretty ugly, but very feasible in our connected society. Building a watch list that automatically monitors suspected individuals for precursor actions is the first thing that came to mind. Not particularly hard or expensive to do, but lots of opportunity for misuse and not exactly a leap forward for the right to privacy.

All the same, it would work fairly well, especially if it's underpinnings were secret so perpetrators wouldn't know how to defeat it. And of course you'd build it to learn patterns and refine prediction from feedback structures. It could be built privately, but would need government approval and cooperation to work best.  Combine a social system for gathering the "uncomfortable feelings" that people invariably have about people capable of this and negative interactions with schools, teachers, authority figures, add monitoring of purchase and browsing patterns, facial recognition to see where they go and what they are up to, and you'd probably intercept some folks in the act of preparation.

Of course the system itself could be a greater evil.

[lucabrasi]

Facial recognition. Check.
Social system. Check.
Potential for a greater evil. Check.
Secret underpinnings. Hmmmm, somewhere.
Somehow all that makes me think of this.



Someone suggested (a friend of PDX?) more counselors in the elementary schools.
That's got potential for sure I think if utilized...correctly. Of course you would want them in the....more rambuctious schools where just....."common" troublemaking is at hand also.
 
I am just thinking of the kids growing up with my kids and watching them grow up...kind of like a crystal ball...and as they grow...you get to see it play out somewhat. There are times tho that they throw that curve ball tho.....for good or bad.

[Weasels wake]

[JeanG]

I came across this Wikipedia article. Seems relevant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok

"Amok originated from the Malay word mengamuk,[4] which roughly defined means "to make a furious and desperate charge".[5] According to Malay culture, amok was rooted in a deep spiritual belief. They believed that amok was caused by the hantu belian,[6] which was an evil tiger spirit that entered one's body and caused the heinous act. As a result of the belief, those in Malaysian culture tolerated amok and dealt with the after effects with no ill will towards the assailant.[7]

Although commonly used in a colloquial and less-violent sense, the phrase is particularly associated with a specific sociopathic culture-bound syndrome in Malaysian culture. In a typical case of running amok, a male who has shown no previous sign of anger or any inclination to violence will acquire a weapon, traditionally a sword or dagger, but presently a variety of weapons are used, and in a sudden frenzy, will attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone he encounters. Amok typically takes place in a well populated or crowded area."