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Sadest thing I've read for a while
I don't think I can add anything meaningful at the moment. Just horrified
Sadly, no.
Ted Cruz offering thoughts and prayers, thanking first responders.
Fat lot of good any of that will do.
What about gun control legislation?
That won't happen.
Was just about to post this - horrendous.
No lessons learned from Sandy Hook. I'm not naive enough to think this will instantly change Americas gun laws, but hopefully it might be another tragic step towards that change.
Shrug
A ****ing elementary school ffs. Fourteen kids between the ages of 5ish and 11ish. And their teacher. **** the NRA.
"There have been 26 school shootings this year. There have been 118 school shootings since 2018, when Education Week began tracking such incidents. The highest number of shootings, 34, occurred last year. There were 10 shootings in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018."
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2022/01
The sickness in America is heartbreaking. But nothing will change, just like nothing changed after Sandy Hook.
There's two things here though. There's a gun, and there's a person who wants to use it to shoot kids. I don't think we can simply blame NRA for that - the problem is far worse, and I'm not even sure people are aware of it.
The whole shooter thing is mired in protocol (lockdown drills, the language of post event activities “Parents are asked to pick up students at the regular dismissal times at the child’s campus,” the district said on Facebook. “There will be no bus transportation. Officers will be on site to escort students to the parents cars. Parents please be patient as lines will be long.”)
But bollocks to tackling the root of the problem (social injustice, access to firearms). Just keep preparing for when it happens again.
Shit. Cycled through that town a few years ago. Just another town. Now another name on the USA mass killing list.
Thoughts and prayers. Clearly they didn't have enough guns.
Jesus christ, I was being sarcastic and that's like the third update down in the news feed:
23:10
Texas Attorney General suggests arming teachers
In response to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says the solution may be arming teachers.
Speaking to conservative news outlet Newsmax, Paxton said that "having potentially teachers and other administrators be armed" would help stop future attacks while authorities arrived.
"First responders typically can't get there in time to prevent a shooting. It's just not possible unless you have a police officer on every campus," he said. "I think you're going to have to do more at the school."
“I think you’re going to have to do more at the school.”
Or maybe try doing a bit more at the gun shop.
Yeah Arm the teachers! The obvious solution
It's another front in the culture war, unfortunately the price is paid with people's lives.
You have to assume their next policy is to instruct fire departments to fight fire with fire.
But yeah, **** the NRA...
"The suspect was an 18-year-old male called Salvador Ramos, Texas Governor Greg Abbott says"
That will be the same Texas Governor Greg Abbott who 4 years ago said:
"It's a well thought out program with a lot of training in advance," Abbott said. He noted some schools will post warning signs about armed staffers inside, as a deterrent against school shootings.
Because of course that's what puts school shooters off...... the possibility that they themselves might get shot and die. Yeah, "a well thought out program". FFS
Mass shootings in US year to date
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting?page=4
198 incidents in less than 5 months.
I think Sandy Hook was the breaking point tbh. After that, it was obvious that dead kids were just a totally acceptable cost for the gun owners. Who are of course, hilariously, mostly pro life, and largely the same people that said that wearing masks was unreasonable and traumatic (but who think that kids having to do regular active shooter drills is just fine)
And in the aftermath the pro gun lobby will mercilessly pursue any grieving parents or survivors who dare to speak out about guns and the NRA will chuck huge donations at anybody standing against any politician that dares to mention gun control.That place is knackered and also; F the NRA.
Horrible headlines to wake up to, but sadly it's becoming almost normal for the US. Sandy Hook changed nothing and I very much doubt this one will either.
God knows what the parents are going through right now.
Who are of course, hilariously, mostly pro life, and largely the same people that said that wearing masks was unreasonable and traumatic (but who think that kids having to do regular active shooter drills is just fine)
Republicans - people who will force the woman to give birth no matter what but then allow the child to be shot dead in a classroom.
I work every day with dyed-in-the-wool Southern State Republicans. I know one of the guys has over $100,000 worth of pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, ammunition - I've seen the photos, it's basically a small armoury. He's an old man with a small bit of land in Texas and he must think the second coming of the Alamo is right round the corner. They talk about 2nd Amendment rights and how they're victims of plots by 'leftist' traitors to destroy America, and are getting giddy about the possibilities arising from Trump's latest civil war incitements.
I wish I were joking. America is not a cool place at the moment.
I think Sandy Hook was the breaking point tbh. After that, it was obvious that dead kids were just a totally acceptable cost for the gun owners. Who are of course, hilariously, mostly pro life, and largely the same people that said that wearing masks was unreasonable and traumatic (but who think that kids having to do regular active shooter drills is just fine)
Great somethingion. They will never learn because they don't want to learn and although they will say it is a tragedy today, tomorrow they will be polishing their guns.
Biden and a few others senators are in outage while the majority stay quiet.
Mrs Beaker is a primary school teacher and we’d talked about going overseas for her to teach once our kids had left home. We initially thought America would be a great place to go but then remembered Sandy Hook. We won’t be going to the States.
There are more guns than people in the USA, you’ll never disarm the population and this will happen again.
Almost 40 years ago, I briefly attended middle school in the US while my father was lecturing at a local university on sabbatical.
It wasn’t too bad, guns weren’t that obvious, though yes there were some about.
If were hill walking you’d see places where someone had decided to use something for target practice and shops definitely sold hunting supplies.
But the generally accepted, most likely way of getting yourself shot was to go hunting with someone who didn’t know what they were doing and was a bit trigger happy.
Sadly that town, Blacksburg, and that university, Virginia Tech, got into the news a year or two ago.
I recognised all the places from the pictures, but I never imagined it would be a shooting scene.
And a colleague in the US thought it was normal to take her 9 year ago daughter to the gun range to fire a machine gun at the weekend, so no I don’t think they’ll learn.
I don’t think they think they have a problem.
I don’t think they think they have a problem.
Who's 'they'?
A great many Americans are well aware of this problem and others.
molgrips, I agree, many individuals are (my cousins included), some individual states even.
By “they” I meant the country as a whole - and yes I appreciate that is a little intangible.
It is mental, hits home a little as my 6 year old told me that they have a school lockdown alarm and practised it the other day.
This is in the uk where there is less of a risk of guns
Ted Cruz offering thoughts and prayers
Ted Cruz is a headline speaker at NRA conference this weekend, in Texas.
That will be the same Texas Governor Greg Abbott who 4 years ago said:
“It’s a well thought out program with a lot of training in advance,” Abbott said. He noted some schools will post warning signs about armed staffers inside, as a deterrent against school shootings.
Abbot is also a guest speaker at NRA conference this weekend, also in Texas.
I’ve seen the photos, it’s basically a small armoury. He’s an old man with a small bit of land in Texas
The first time I was in the US, I was staying with a family. I was - long story - over for senior prom. As naive Brits we idly asked the lad one day if he had a gun. "Hell yeah," he replied, "do you want to see my collection?" He had a trunkful of the things. This was in a leafy 'burb in Louisville KY and - do the math - he'd have been in his late teens.
shops definitely sold hunting supplies.
It's difficult to comprehend just how normalised it is. That same trip, visiting Wal-Mart. Fruit & veg... soft drinks... canned goods... assault rifles... bread... wait, back up one? It's no different from us going to ASDA for the weekly shop and coming home with a large TV.
Just the 27th school shooting this year. Yes you read that correctly. the government used to not collect official statistics on mass shooting. These people do it for them:
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
Have we had the now traditional call for teachers to be armed yet?
There are more guns than people in the USA
Yeah. Some fun stats: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41488081
Guns to population is about 1.2:1 these days, it's actually gone up since we last discussed this.
Ownership isn't around one-to-one though, people who own at least one gun tend to own multiple guns. This isn't on that BBC report, off the top of my head I think ownership is something like 50% of households?
The US owns about half of the world's guns.
The majority of people who get shot, it's with their own gun. Suicide by firearm to murder by firearm is about 2:1.
I don’t think they think they have a problem.
Who’s ‘they’?
Whoever 'they' are, attitudes to gun control broadly aren't changing (again, there's a graph for that).
I can kinda understand not wanting to give up guns. It's too deeply embedded into the National psyche, "they" have the Constitutional right to defend themselves in case they ever need to overthrow the government by force(!). What I really don't understand is a reluctance to have better control.
Like, say here they wanted to ban cars, there would be a national outcry and rightly so; but surely - surely - very few people would be in favour of scrapping the driving test, licensing, minimum age limits...
Have we had the now traditional call for teachers to be armed yet?
Yep, I quoted that last night. See above.
I don't think there is anything anyone can say or do that would change the mentality of the pro-gun people in the US. Especially when you have elected officials posting bilge like this on their social media.
https://twitter.com/FPWellman/status/1529211252995772419
I think it was Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine who made an excellent point: the first responders were carrying video cameras. If that video was released, if the public were made to see what the consequences were of a school shooting, it would be the single most powerful campaign against guns.
If people were forced to see what's left of a child's body when it's been hit by a high-powered assault weapon, if the general gun-lovin' public had to bear in mind what their precious guns actually did to people, there'd be a lot less enthusiasm for them and gun idolatry.
In practically all cultural references to guns, guns solve problems. That's the sell. You shoot something, it goes away. You shoot a person, they fall down. Shoot a thing, it vanishes. In children's TV the makers are told to replace projectile weapons with lasers or ray beams, but the message is the same: pull the trigger, solve the problem. There are never any negative consequences. You never see the massive trauma, the shredded tissues, the blood, the mess, the disfigurement, the agony.
You don't "defend" with a gun. You attack. You destroy. You just call it "defence" if you can do it first, or fastest, or most lethally.
If every cultural reference - films, TV, comics, etc. - showed what bullets actually do to bodies and families, especially what they've done time and time again to school children, it would change the culture more or less overnight. And reveal the NRA for the nakedly cynical bloodthirsty evil organisation they really are.
What I really don’t understand is a reluctance to have better control.
The popular view, which is carefully cultivated, is that 'no-one tells us what to do'. It's part of the national myth and has grown up from how the country was marketed in the 19th century. This applies in various ways to most walks of life*. You can see it in films and TV, and even in everyday conversations. This is then used by powerful people to whip up anti-government sentiment that they can then capitalise on. The gun issue is simply being used as a way to discredit and weaken governments by people who want weak governments. Sure, it's out of hand, but it's serving its purpose nicely. It's not about the actual guns, not really.
It's analogous to the British exceptionalism/those damn foreigners line that was used by the rich and powerful to promote Brexit, to enable them do do more of whatever they want.
* it's pretty ironic because whilst people fetishise this idea of freedom there are so many petty laws and regulations even down to where you can park, how long your grass can be, whether or not you can dry clothes outside etc etc that to me it feels incredibly oppressive. I can walk around armed but I cannot hang my ****ing washing on the line or cross the ****ing road when I need to.
There’s two things here though. There’s a gun, and there’s a person who wants to use it to shoot kids. I don’t think we can simply blame NRA for that – the problem is far worse, and I’m not even sure people are aware of it.
I think the real problem is access. Before the Dunblane shooting, getting a hold of even a handgun was a hoop jumping exercise, and having said handgun out in public anywhere other than a shooting range would end up in a prison sentence. After Dunblane shone a light on the background checks still not being strict enough they just jumped that altogether and went to straight out ban. But even back then, the hoops that people did have to jump through deterred most people from even bothering with firearms unless it was their hobby or a requirement for pest control.
Switch to America, where politicians routinely run on the fact that they will defend peoples second amendment rights to open carry assault style rifles in Starbucks if they want to and take xmas pictures of their family's and xmas jumpers while displaying M60's and AR15's because the link between god and guns is so obvious.
The story on this one will go the same way it always does. Where it happened and the name of the shooter will cause them to lean heavily on the "illegal immigrant" slant. While it's easier to get a gun at 18 than it is to get a beer, they'll focus on it being a failure of education and the shooters family unit. Gregg Abbott and Ted Cruz are so entrenched with the NRA's affiliation with the Republican party down there, it'll only be a matter of time before they start spouting that if the kids just hadn't got in the way of the shooters god given 2nd amendment rights to fire wildly into a classroom then maybe they'd still be alive, so instead we'll post armed guards with armored personnel vehicles at every school in the state.
And a colleague in the US thought it was normal to take her 9 year ago daughter to the gun range to fire a machine gun at the weekend, so no I don’t think they’ll learn.
I don’t think they think they have a problem.
Probably not a machine gun never mind full auto unless she has paid the ATF tax.
But that's a completely different argument, at 10 I was shooting .22 rimfire and at 14 5.56mm mag fed cadet rifles. Shooting as a sport is nothing to do with this argument. Yes, there is a Venn diagram but one does not necessarily follow the other. As Molgrips has correctly pointed out, the shootings are only the symptom of something far deeper.
the shootings are only the symptom of something far deeper.
Symptoms that a lot of countries have but when access to guns is not so easy the symptoms don't end in the same results.
Interesting one this, and I can only comment from what I know in my personal experience.
My son has been taught how to shoot a gun in his school since the age of 10 (yes a UK school)
Now at aged 12 he has chosen 'shooting' as an after school activity.
A lot of his mates go shooting at the weekends (we are in a rural part of the UK and many are farmers sons)
There are many schools up and down the country that teach shooting in UK schools, but they dont go on killing sprees.
From my sons perspective, 1. we simply do not have access to a gun. 2. I would hope his mental state would not be pushed to do such a thing.
However other kids in his school do have access to guns (shot guns) but I am guessing our laws on gun control are more stringent?
The culture of guns is definitely different. I have only been to America once, and within a day I was sat in a cafe where openly men were talking about how they would have no problem shooting any n***er who came near their house. That alone in the UK would not be tolerated, but in America using a gun just appears to be expected.
Also is the knife the UK's equivalent of the gun ? Same mental health issues, but quite frankly it takes longer, and is harder to kill 18 people with a knife than it is with a gun?
Probably not a machine gun never mind full auto unless she has paid the ATF tax.
If we lived in Texas, you or I could go out today and buy one of these in Walmart
By any metric, that is absolutely insane!
The bottom line is that unless you are presently on the front line of a war zone like Ukraine, then you don't need a semi-automatic assault rifle (which everyone knows can be quickly converted to fully automatic). The same as you don't need a rocket propelled grenade or a surface-to-air missile.
The fact that you can wander into a shop and buy an assault rifle makes no more sense than being able to wander in and buy a surface-to-air missile.
An American senator made the point this morning on Radio 4 that every country has people with mental health problems, but only one country allows them to go out and buy assault rifles
Symptoms that a lot of countries have but when access to guns is not so easy the symptoms don’t end in the same results.
And a lot of countries with widespread gun ownership don't have this problem.
Only Americans can decide if they want to get off this mad rollercoaster but after 250 years of putting the individual first, I can't see it happening.
There will be more tragedies, and my heart goes out to all caught up in them.
Squirrelking - Nebraska, she was pretty clear it was a machine gun. They used to talk about the various weaponry they had. I remember there was a degree of respect shown to the guy that went hunting with a bow, or the guy that spent most of the weekend butchering and carrying out a deer he’d shot on the Saturday (multiple trips required, son guarded the carcass to prevent it getting nicked by other bits of the wildlife).
I think the machine gun possibly belonged to the gun range in a pay-to-play format.
If people were forced to see what’s left of a child’s body when it’s been hit by a high-powered assault weapon, if the general gun-lovin’ public had to bear in mind what their precious guns actually did to people, there’d be a lot less enthusiasm for them and gun idolatry.
I hope you're right. But I rather fear that you aren't.
You don’t “defend” with a gun. You attack. You destroy. You just call it “defence” if you can do it first, or fastest, or most lethally.
This is the 'nuclear deterrent' argument, isn't it. You have to have a gun because the bad guys have guns. Because a burglar is going to think twice about entering a house which might have a gun owner in it.
Compare and contrast here, most bad guys don't carry guns because when they're up for a spot of burglarizing they're unlikely to run into Auntie Ethel with an AK-47.