Can we please just admit that maybe gun control is a good idea finally?

I think we're in agreement on limiting access to firearms. My concern was with the assumption some people make that we wouldn't need to regulate firearms if only we provided ready access to mental health care for all. That assumes that the potential killers are recognized as needing mental health care and willingly (or otherwise) avail themselves of the opportunity. I'd rather start by keeping them from getting a gun.

Cars are way the fuck more complicated than guns, though. Doesn't seem all that silly to me.

Yeah, I think we agree about that. Our understanding of mental illness is hardly sufficient to successfully treat most of the people who are obviously ill, let alone recognize or properly diagnose individuals who don't have blatant symptoms.

RE: Mental Health Services
From personal knowledge, mental health services in colleges aren't exactly top quality. I've had friends tell me that their college had a limited number of times students could have sessions for free. At the college I attended this was not the case. However, I do know that these people are not equipped to handle serious issues. I'm sure they are great for general, temporary problems. When it comes to personality disorders all they can do is recommend a doctor in the area.
Also, if people were to tell the counselors that they've thought about hurting themselves or others that could be grounds for the college to cancel their enrollment.

EDIT: Some people mentioned college health services and availability earlier in the thread. I should have quoted it, I suppose. Whoops.

RE: Gun Control
While I'm a bit more in favor for banning guns from everywhere except military/police, that's unlikely to happen any time soon. Besides, hunting is a fairly popular past time. (And, feel free to correct me, isn't it necessary to keep overpopulation down for certain species?)
It seems we are in need of more creative solutions. I like the idea of regulating the hell out of ammunition.
Also, I wonder if it might be a good idea to require permission from a mental health professional in order to acquire a gun. It could work similar to how people get prescription drugs. I could see that tying into that idea pretty well. Every time people want to get more ammunition they have to get a 'mental' (instead of physical :D ) from their counselor.

RE: Appropriate Reactions to Today's News
MrsWidget said it quite eloquently. Hearing such things on the news makes me quite sad but I'm all for the populous discussing this. Maybe the blood suckers politicians should wait until tomorrow to jump into gun control talk but I probably feel that way because I know there's going to be a lot of assholes spewing caveman opinions.
The best way to prevent this from happening again is to actually pay attention to it. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to feel worried whenever my youngest sister goes to school.

Never one to miss the opportunity, Bryan Fischer reminds us again that he is a gigantic assferret.

Man, I knew I liked Patton Oswalt. I just didn't know I could like him even more.

Not sure if you noticed, but this shooting happened at an elementary school. Not a college. Otherwise I have no idea what you are talking about.

Shooter was college-aged, my bad. I thought he was older. We still don't know if he was actually in college though, and that college-level mental health services alone are definitely not enough if we're going to address this issue from a mental health standpoint.

Only because we don't allow sufficient predator populations to control them, which is of course a whole separate contentious debate.

The shooter was college age, though.

Man, The Onion.

This is unrealistic talk I suppose, but will Obamacare maybe help with the mental health care availability, or am I being a liberal fangirl with that idea?

Not sure if you noticed, but the shooter wasn't an elementary school student. But thanks for the condescending opening.

My bad, I was operating on (incorrect) info that the shooter was 24, not 20. Carry on.

Also, via ABC:

Didn't mean to come across that way, but it wouldn't be the first time today that I've seen someone assume the shooting was at a college or high school by a student.

And, again, I was operating on wrong information about the age of the shooter. Plus, we still have no idea if he was even enrolled in college.

I don't know how to quote that quote from Alligator, but I've noticed that certain groups of people who decide to murder mass groups of people are always given this "well he had problems" cover, and it's starting to make me really angry.
The guy that killed all of those people at the movie theater? Well, he had mental problems.
This guy? Well, he had Aspergers (what does that have to do with anything) and also maybe OCD and a personality disorder.


Maybe, you know, he was just a bad guy that happened to have a gun?
No?
We're going to blame Asperger's and OCD? Alright. Sure. Why not.

Of course these shooters have mental problems. Sane people do not commit mass murder. It's kind of part of the definition of sanity.

What I mean to say is that I'm irritated these people are blaming OCD and Aspergers/autism.
Like those things make people jump up and decide "Hey, I feel like killing some kids today!"

ABC has amended their entry.

Here's what I'm following, btw.

Good thing opposition to gun control is based entirely on facts and not fear then.

thank you.
i feel a lot less angry now.

If it's in the Santorum Sanctum and is possibly condescending, I tend to think it's intended to be condescending. I really didn't think there was any way for "not sure if you noticed" to not be sarcastic.

Are there any other issues wherein the debate is between "We must do SOMETHING" and "We must do NOTHING because the 'something' might be imperfect"?

That's tautological and not very helpful. A lot of mass murderers are not insane in the sense of suffering from a diagnosable mental illness. For example, Timothy McVeigh killed a lot of people, but was not mentally ill by most accounts. "All killers are crazy" over simplifies matters considerably.

From an end user standpoint, cars aren't that complicated. Think how much of your class concentrates on "how to use a stick shift" versus "these are the rules of the road"

We mostly teach car safety, followed by a large amount of on the road repetition with an adult to verify you're obeying it. The logic is that you're using a very useful tool to move people and equipment, but it's also very heavy and moving at speeds high enough to go through a brick wall. It's fucking dangerous, as is a firearm. Firearms are functionally easy to teach someone. Firearm safety is hours and hours of time with an instructor who beats you silly every time your barrel is more than an inch away from being pointed downrange, or you have your finger on the trigger when not planning on firing in the next instant.

That latter bit is what our firearm licensing does not do. Ranges will happily kick your ass out of the club if you violate those types of basic rules, but the actual "can you have a gun, yes/no" is pretty much as intense as our driver's 25 question exams.

The DSM is a big book, I'm sure we can find him something.

Why can't we just make conflict resolution part of the public school curriculum? "Isolated" incidents that are more frequent than these mass murders (such as people shooting family members, shooting in bars, etc.) and not related to mental health so much as emotional stressors or intoxication would likely benefit more from learning techniques to keep situations from escalating so terribly.

And even if this method just is a "drop in the bucket" of preventing violent crimes like this, I still think it's a valuable thing for people to learn.

So, how do we move the needle? States' rights have to come into play here, I think. Effective gun control at the federal level is not happening. But what about more effective gun control -- specifically, stricter regulation along the lines of car licensing -- at the state level?

The big obstacle here has historically been SCOTUS. What are the chances that in the next four years we'll get a sufficiently liberal majority of judges that some (putative) strong state-level gun control laws might pass SCOTUS muster?

Then the blue states can regulate the fuck out of guns and the red states can keep running wild.

Also, on the question of why some countries have mass gun ownership but still low violence: because those countries aren't afflicted with America's pathological individualist streak. Americans are just too fucking batshit to be trusted with 300 million guns.

According to the psychiatrist that evaluated him for the defense, McVeigh suffered from depression, had obsessive-compulsive traits and, at least as was known to that specific psychiatrist, had suffered through at least one severe panic attack.

Man kills roommate over argument about how to cook porkchops.

Related: Florida to become first state to issue one MILLION conceal and carry licenses.

Seriously. Conflict resolution education, stricter gun ownership requirements and training. Hell, make conflict resolution classes part of the gun licensing requirements even.

Counter point:

Or wait no, eat shit weirdo.

Guns are used 80 times more to prevent crime than to commit crime... reminds me of a particular shooting in New York...

What a hack.

Oh god he went full Godwin even.

I own a classic functioning hunting rifle because it was part of my inheritance from grandpa that is being passed down the family tree. We know at least one forum member (don't know if Houngan came here from QT3) who owns numerous handguns as a competitive shooter, and I also know a number of people who enjoy the hell out of skeet shooting as a hobby. My aunt and uncle shoot black powder rifles at mountain-man events (they spend at least half the year on the road enjoying their semi-retirement).

You are a real piece of work* sometimes and I can't figure out why.
*toned down my original adjective

Same here, anyone in my family and friends who are NRA members pay their dues almost grudgingly.

Reasonable discourse and moderate legislation? TAKE THAT SHIT OUTSIDE, SON. We're the country who 10 years later still worships at the alter of the PATRIOT Act passed just a couple months after 9/11 because fearmongering and implemeneting 100% of every available option all the time is really the only true American reaction. You damn socialist!

Mostly I'm waiting for Bethesda to release a patch that simply doesn't allow weapons to function when pointed at children. Seems reasonable.

If he was related to one of the teachers (as is being reported), he may not have been a stranger to the security. "Hey Steve, how's it going today?" "Fine Bob, just came in to see mom real quick."

We need the fucking space.

I own a gun and this [is] awful. We need to do something.

All of the states with the highest rates of gun violence, save Nevada, have softer regulations. All of the states with the lowest rates of gun violence have tougher regulations. That's a fairly strong correlation. There are also some states with middling levels of gun violence that have tougher regulations. That makes it a little fuzzier, but I think it's worth pointing out that Texas merely being orange is pretty impressive, and tougher gun laws there may well be the only reason they didn't have to invent a new color for the chart.

shift6, what do you think should be done? I ask because all this shit is radicalizing me to the point of wanting to ban all private gun ownership in this country -- we are too collectively sick in the head. If there's something less radical that would still help in some actual meaningful way, what is it exactly?

The only good news is that the trends are in the right direction -- lower individual gun ownership and lower rates of gun violence -- even without our government having done a damn thing. But that's no excuse for continued inaction.

Unfortunately, the gun control "debate" is going to hog the spotlight on this, whereas the discussion of mental health services and the shambles they've been in since the Reagan administration gutshot them back in the '80s should be the real focus. There have been 61 mass shootings in the U.S. since 1982, and five of the 11 worst have happened since 2007. I do not think this is a coincidence. A generation is coming of age with a tremendous number of legitimately sick members who have not received the treatment they need and deserve.

De-stigmatizing mental illness and making affordable, dignified long-term help available to everyone is the key to ending the spree shooting phenomenon. It will make it easier to treat these people, identify them, and, perhaps most importantly, not sell guns to them.

Your family inheritance is a tool for killing. Mazeltov.

If your hobby is skeet shooting, it still uses a tool meant to kill things. Skeet shooting is using a tool not for its designed purpose - same as those guys throwing axes in the lumberjack olympics. Yes, guns can be used for sport. I don't consider that a valid enough reason to balance out the inherent risk in their possession by civilians. I'm perfectly okay with your aunt and uncle needing to find a new hobby.

The Onion strikes twice in one day!

Thrice!

Another ABC update: