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

[SUPflorida]

PonoBill


Very well stated....

[PDLSFR]

Agreed... PonoBill is absolutely correct.

[Admin]

Because we manage ourselves so well without those laws and regulations?  Wall Street and our fine banks were great proof of that.  Laws and regs work well when they make sense.  Simply casting something as a feelgood answer does not make it so.

[SUPflorida]

Admin
It was laws that caused the banking crises. The lawmakers in cahoots with the banks, hit a home run with that one...first base...they set up laws that gave money to people to buy homes that could not afford them...knowing full well they could not pay it back which bought demacrates votes for the next election(both parties are crooked)..

Second base...they decimated the stock market along with the 401k's of  the baby boomers who either just retired or were getting ready to ...

Third base... They gutted the value of real estate putting hundreds of thousands of homeowners upside down in their mortgage....

Home run...they go in and take over everything you worked and saved for over the course of a life time. And just for good measure the federal reserve on a spending spree printing and spending money like they are never going to have to pay it back.

We pay them..,the lobbyist pay them...the payola just keep rolling in...they get in front of the cameras and ring their hands telling us they are doing every thing they can...and it's true...everything they can to lord over us and seperate us from everything we worked for. The biggest transfer of wealth this country has ever seen.

A limited government is necessary to maintain order...but what we have is a far cry from the limited government "by the people for the people" that they in visioned at the birth of our republic.

There are 454 people who basically run this country...if they want something to happens it will....if they didn't want a banking crises..it would have never happened. Congress, Senate, Surpreme Court, the President...they are pulling all the strings.

[Admin]

It was laws that caused the banking crises.

All opinions are welcome here.

[TEX_SUP]

In related news Mayor Bloomberg is blaming guns for murders and Apple products for thefts.....I'm not making that up.

Meanwhile he has crazies walking his streets pushing people in front of subway trains.  Two killed so far this month. 

By his logic he should be blamed for the subway deaths since they are his trains.

Oh and the talking head who mocked the NRA for suggesting armed guards at public schools....his kids go to a private school with armed guards.  What a hypocrite.

[lucabrasi]

In related news Mayor Bloomberg is blaming guns for murders and Apple products for thefts.....I'm not making that up.

Meanwhile he has crazies walking his streets pushing people in front of subway trains.  Two killed so far this month. 

How can that possibly happen when their hands are full of soda because they must now buy two sodas instead of one?

[Beasho]

Another perspective: It all comes down to training.

The article below asks: "How many kids have been killed by school fire in all of North America in the past 50 years? Kids killed... school fire... North America... 50 years...  How many?  Zero!. . . .

If the school administrators at Columbine (or Sandy Hook for that matter) had spent a fraction of the money they'd spent preparing for fire doing lockdown drills and talking with local law enforcers about the violent dangers they face, the outcome that day may have been different."

More here:
http://www.policeone.com/active-shooter/articles/2058168-Lt-Col-Dave-Grossman-to-cops-The-enemy-is-denial/ 

[SUPerSwede]

@ PaddleAnything you make some good points but you are forgetting the big picture... the guns used in firemarm related crimes and horrific incidents such as Newton where committed with a stolen weapon by an unlicensed person.

And the fewer guns around, the harder it will be to steal one. Simple math.
Most nutjobs will probably not build a bomb but rather reach for a knife instead if they cannot find a gun.
And before you start off about that being wild speculations, I might add that I've actually worked in psychiatry before I turned to orthopaedics and trauma. I've spent hours talking to some of these guys that act out violently sometimes so I know a bit about how they function.

[SUPerSwede]

But more than anything, I still think media needs to remake the image of the perpetrators totally. No pictures, no names, and only refer to them in demeaning terms. That way, it won't be very rewarding for a madman seeking attention.

The downside? It will take one more shooting to start working :-(
But how long until all the other ideas have any effect?

[PonoBill]

Because we manage ourselves so well without those laws and regulations?  Wall Street and our fine banks were great proof of that.  Laws and regs work well when they make sense.  Simply casting something as a feelgood answer does not make it so.

Laws and regulations work when:
a. they make sense to the people being regulated by them
b. they apply to people who obey the regulations

As a prime example, mandatory sentences have tremendously increased the number of Americans incarcerated without curbing any of the criminal activities the sentences apply to. By what measure is that effective?

I can't comprehend a firearms ban in the US that would make it difficult for lunatics and criminals to get their hands on them. An assault weapons ban would be insignificant.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not against such a ban, but I think it's politically impossible. The right to bear arms is written explicitly into our constitution. Regardless of how you feel about that, the magnitude of the change required to unring that bell in a country swarming with lawyers, lobbyists and paid-for politicians and with such strongly divided opinions is unfathomable to me. Doing it in other countries without both the legal base and the traditions of the US seems relatively simple.

Absent some sweeping change that reduces the number of weapons available from something well beyond 300 million down to a far smaller number, like a few million, there will be no effect on availability of illegal guns. It's NOT just simple math. It's a saturated system. Reducing the saturation by half would have no effect on general availability. In fact the number of illegal guns would probably increase, because they would be an even more valuable commodity to steal.

[pdxmike]

But more than anything, I still think media needs to remake the image of the perpetrators totally. No pictures, no names, and only refer to them in demeaning terms. That way, it won't be very rewarding for a madman seeking attention.

The downside? It will take one more shooting to start working :-(
But how long until all the other ideas have any effect?

The more immediate downside to the idea--how would you ever accomplish that?  I do agree it'd be great if the killers got no notoriety, but the media can portray any story however it wants.  

I guess an additional downside is that there is some value for society to see who the killers are--specific names don't matter, but there's value to seeing what types of people they are.  That's a necessary step to coming up with solutions.  

On the other hand, in support of your idea, quite a bit could be accomplished towards knocking down the images of the killers if the media simply portrayed them accurately in the first place.  In almost every case, the descriptions of the killers start as much more heavily armed, heavily armored, and competent than the reality.  As the truth comes out, the weapons get more conventional, the body armor drops away, and they appear much more pathetic.  

[lucabrasi]

But more than anything, I still think media needs to remake the image of the perpetrators totally. No pictures, no names, and only refer to them in demeaning terms. That way, it won't be very rewarding for a madman seeking attention.

The downside? It will take one more shooting to start working :-(
But how long until all the other ideas have any effect?

I can agree with you on that.
We are just a bunch of rubber neckers and seem to feed it...are Americans worse? I have no clue. Probably, but maybe not.  The decisions made on how to cover such things.....it ends up going on and on...how does that get changed or undone?
Some cultures are absolutely horrid and the attrocities they commit are unthinkable acts but perhaps something can be said for swift justice in such acts. (colorado shooter? savage in Norway? maybe even sandusky? ) Being dragged through the street and ripped apart in a public display within hours or days after the act? That's utter savagery tho...Hunger Games like in this day and age..and perhaps that feeds it more in some twisted mind. The act itself is all the noteriety that someone like that seeks I imagine. I don't know.

I would say the answer to your last thought was made above by Ponobill.

[Admin]

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.

[PonoBill]

I agree, it's the wrong approach, the answer is to fix what's wrong. I'm not sure that's guns.