zlacker

That doesn't mean we should start encouraging everyone to carry guns, knives, diesel fuel, whatever. "More guns" isn't the solution any more than "fewer guns" is, but I would still feel safer if I knew that getting a gun was more difficult than a stroll into the corner shop.

>>dradtk+(OP)
More people are carrying guns though, and yet overall violent crime has been falling.

It's not the gun.

Guns are tools, they aren't the problem. We need to be better at being able to detect these individuals who are likely to go on these rampages. But more than that we need to have a society that is better able to defend itself. If even 1 in 20 or fewer teachers at a school were people who were responsible and trained and carried guns for self-defense then these sorts of attacks would be far less common. Because the attacks would be ended sooner by armed citizens acting in defense. And because then schools and other places would no longer be defenseless. The reason why these crazy people go to schools to commit mayhem is because they know that they aren't going to be stopped. They know that it's just going to be unarmed teachers and defenseless children. If that stopped being the case, if there started to be more of a risk to the shooter in these situations then maybe these sorts of shootings would be less common.

We've spent the last half century in the developed world progressively making ourselves more and more defenseless and less and less empowered, on the premise that doing so also disempowers the bad guys. The rage killers, the school shooters, the terrorists, etc. But the exact opposite has come to pass. We've disempowered the individual and made ourselves defenseless and even more vulnerable to these monsters.

No, not everyone should own a gun, or be allowed to own a gun. But if we started to cultivate more of a culture of self-reliance and personal responsibility, and if we started increasingly empowering individuals to take care of their own self-defense by becoming more aware, more trained, more prepared, and to carry weapons if they so choose then maybe we'll actually end up with a safer society.

I've been shooting guns since I was 10 years old, and I've been carrying a pocket knife since middle school. I take these things vary seriously. I maintain my certifications and training in first-aid and CPR. I have well stocked first aid kits in my home, car, and backpack (when I ride the bus or bike), including things like hemostatic compounds. I also have a concealed carry permit (which means that my info and fingerprints are on file with local law enforcement) and own firearms. If you make a law which limits my capability to defend myself or others then you are not making society more safe. And almost any gun-control law is going to preferentially disempower good people like myself while having much less impact on the bad guys who don't care about living within the law.

Edit: the concentration on guns as an item which "enables violence" is no more sensible than the TSA's concentration on liquids or nail clippers. It's just another form of security theater.

>>Inclin+03
> If even 1 in 20 or fewer teachers at a school were people who were responsible and trained and carried guns for self-defense then these sorts of attacks would be far less common. Because the attacks would be ended sooner by armed citizens acting in defense. And because then schools and other places would no longer be defenseless.

I call BS on this. In such a situation there's a lot of confusion and panic about what is exactly happening. It's not like everyone knows how many shooters there are and how they look like. Someone pulling out a gun can easily mistaken to be an attacher and could be attacked himself by someone else trying to be good samaritan while himself being mistook for an attacker by the original good samaritan resulting in chaos. This is not like the movies where everyone knows who the bad and good guys are.

>>recoil+Y7
Of course, it's not easy. But it's not impossible either. A good samaritan may not always be able to help, but sometimes they can. In such a situation they'd definitely need to be careful, and in general it's inappropriate for armed civilians to try to act like police in situations like this (e.g. hunting down the attacker). But armed civilians can protect the people they are around, and they can stop the shooter from just going from room to room willy nilly (as happened at Virginia Tech) until they run out of bullets. More than that, as I mentioned, by preventing schools from becoming the havens of defenseless individuals that they are today it will have a deterrent effect against attackers. The reason why schools are such a common choice is precisely because there are lots of people there and everyone knows they are defenseless.

>>Inclin+03
I work under the assumption that there aren't any "bad guys," there are just people who wake up one day and snap. If somebody snaps, I would rather they not have a gun, even if they originally bought it for self-defense.

But yes, I agree that guns are only a tool, and that the underlying cause is psychological and/or cultural. No matter what we do with guns, it won't prevent future incidences; I just don't see how people can view a situation like this and think "oh, if the teachers had guns, everything would be all right."

>>dradtk+m9
If wishes were horses... Why stop at merely hoping that someone not have a gun when they snap? Why not hope that they are in a jail cell when they snap?

As far as arming teachers, it's not a perfect solution, nor is it going to "make everything alright". When you have people like this who end up being so bent on destruction and violence things are not going to be alright, it's a matter of degrees. However, there have been several incidents of teachers and civilians putting a stop to mass shootings, likely saving many lives. These often don't get as much news coverage precisely because the body count is lower and thus the events are less newsworthy. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_High_School_shooting

>>Inclin+fe
Honestly, I don't even care about gun control laws, I just don't want packing heat to be a cultural norm. We Americans, on the whole, have a huge obsession with guns. They're iconic, from the wild west to world war II. We romanticize righteous killing sprees (in war it's called "honor"), and all it takes is one person to think their cause is "righteous" to get shit like this happening. Giving everyone else guns is like putting a band-aid over an infection. Sure, it may help prevent it from spreading, but does nothing to target the cause.

>>dradtk+vg
Personally I think quite the opposite. I'd like to see a society where it was more the norm for individuals to be responsible enough to where they would carry guns. Not to be heroes, not to indulge in power fantasies, but simply to be responsible citizens who look after their own safety and the safety of those around them. To me that sort of behavior goes hand in hand with learning CPR, keeping jumper cables in my trunk, having an emergency supplies kit at home, and so forth. We've spent the last several decades destroying the idea that personal responsiblity and seriousness is important, largely as a response to the overly oppressive culture of the 1950s, but some of it has gone too far. I think people should be free to decide how they want to live as adults, and if that includes partying every week, playing videogames all night, or having a ball pit in their home that's fine by me. But if it means that everyone is going to act like children when it comes to matters of self-defense, emergency preperation, etc. then I think that is vastly dangerous to society. And I think the idea that guns are too dangerous for peaceful individuals to own is part and parcel of that abrogation of responsibility.