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School shootings aren't due to moral failings, they're due to dysfunctional or non existent gun control laws giving mentally ill people guns. 83% of Americans,

School shootings aren't due to moral failings, they're due to dysfunctional or non existent gun control laws giving mentally ill people guns. 83% of Americans, compared to 47% of Britons, said religion was very or fairly important to them [1], whereas school shootings are clearly more common there than in the UK. (I can't find a source comparing them they're so uncommon in the UK. The last one in the UK was in 1996) [1] http://news.gallup.com/poll/9016/worlds-apart-religion-canada-britain-us.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/9016/worlds-apart-religion-canad...

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
> School shootings aren't due to moral failings, they're due to dysfunctional or non existent gun control laws giving mentally ill people guns That seems unlikely. The mentally ill have been around for all of US history and firearms are more controlled now than they ever have been. Yet these sorts of things seem to be rising, not declining. I get that maybe you just want all the guns gone and don't really care whether or not there's an underlying cause for why people feel the need to self-destruct in this way, and while not having access to firearms may make these things less like and/or less deadly, I worry that people like you will mistake that for actually having solved the problem.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  They seem to be rising because reporting of the events and public awareness of them are rising. They are actually declining, according to what I have seen. To determine the rate in previous years, researchers have had to comb through hundreds of local papers, and verify with local police reports, to find past incidents of criminal use of guns in schools. Nowadays, those are more likely to make national news, and also be reported in aggregate by the state police. To reiterate, gun violence in the US has apparently been in decline for decades--just like other kinds of violence. Now that awareness of gun violence is rising, we have a real chance at driving it into the ground and keeping it there, even without mass disarmament. Between genuine enforcement of existing laws--rather than the salutary neglect of those laws promoted at the enforcement end by gun-oriented lobbyists--and suicide prevention efforts, I think we are approaching a time when an acceptable compromise is possible that would put our rates of violent crime within a reasonable distance of more disarmed societies. But as recently demonstrated in Austin, availability of guns is not the ultimate problem. The problem is that defense-in-depth is hard. A determined attacker can always cause some damage, with whatever tools he may have at his disposal. It is very difficult to recognize a threat and then stop it before it is realized.
- taborj 9y ago
  Your username must be ironic, because that was very well stated, and not something I expect from an idiot on the net.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago

> School shootings aren't due to moral failings, they're due to dysfunctional or non existent gun control laws giving mentally ill people guns That seems unlikely. The mentally ill have been around for all of US history and firearms are more controlled now than they ever have been. Yet these sorts of things seem to be rising, not declining. I get that maybe you just want all the guns gone and don't really care whether or not there's an underlying cause for why people feel the need to self-destruct in this way, and while not having access to firearms may make these things less like and/or less deadly, I worry that people like you will mistake that for actually having solved the problem.

logfromblammo 9y ago
They seem to be rising because reporting of the events and public awareness of them are rising. They are actually declining, according to what I have seen. To determine the rate in previous years, researchers have had to comb through hundreds of local papers, and verify with local police reports, to find past incidents of criminal use of guns in schools. Nowadays, those are more likely to make national news, and also be reported in aggregate by the state police. To reiterate, gun violence in the US has apparently been in decline for decades--just like other kinds of violence. Now that awareness of gun violence is rising, we have a real chance at driving it into the ground and keeping it there, even without mass disarmament. Between genuine enforcement of existing laws--rather than the salutary neglect of those laws promoted at the enforcement end by gun-oriented lobbyists--and suicide prevention efforts, I think we are approaching a time when an acceptable compromise is possible that would put our rates of violent crime within a reasonable distance of more disarmed societies. But as recently demonstrated in Austin, availability of guns is not the ultimate problem. The problem is that defense-in-depth is hard. A determined attacker can always cause some damage, with whatever tools he may have at his disposal. It is very difficult to recognize a threat and then stop it before it is realized.
taborj 9y ago
Your username must be ironic, because that was very well stated, and not something I expect from an idiot on the net.