There have been studies that news coverage of these school shootings leads to copycat attacks. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-bi...
Why doesn't Congress pass a law limiting how school shootings can be covered by news media? It might save student lives.
There is an amendment that prevents that you say? Well the first amendment talks about freedom of the press. The founders could not have imagined online news, tv and cable news or social media. Maybe we only allow stories published on actual printing presses, and ban coverage on online, tv, and social media of school shootings.
Also, even with presses, the printing presses of the 18th century were not like our automated presses of today that can print hundreds or thousands of pages per minute, no those presses were single shot presses where you had to reload after each page. Maybe they were only talking about those kind of presses when they named freedom of the press.
Secondary thought: maybe if we restrict online speech to those over 21, we could stop a lot of bullying that leads to these problems in the first place, and as an extra benefit this kind of ban could stop children from posting things online that will negatively impact them later in life.
This doesn't seem terribly likely. In the case of the second amendment in 1791, things like swivel guns were available, and at the time the second amendment was written, swivel guns were permissible. Now even an old swivel gun from those days would do measurably far more damage than the kind of semi-automatic rifles used in today's shootings. Such weaponry would only be banned far later in 1934, and probably the original authors of the 2nd amendment would not have banned it. So there is no reason to believe that the 2nd amendment was not written with semi-automatic rifles in mind. It almost definitely was: it was written so that the common man could band together into a militia and be able to take on the full might of the army and government.
Now certainly such an idea may be flawed and you are free to disagree with it. But the authors of the 2nd amendment were certainly aware of the existence as such things as guns that could kill a lot of people very quickly, and they very much covered them with the 2nd amendment.
Though it appears the first "consumer" versions of semi-automatic rifles are from the early 1900s with the M1 Garand being the point of mass adoption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-automatic_rifle#Notable_e...
> maybe if we restrict online speech to those over 21
I also can't imagine how you could stop it. There's lots of people under 21 that can code.
Sure, it's hard to totally stop people from using speech irresponsibly and hurting others, but if we aggressively prosecute unlawful speech, we could probably reduce the amount of harm done by people speaking their minds.
> aggressively prosecute unlawful speech
I used to be a proponent of free speech, gun rights, drug legalization, and all the other internet libertarian ideas about freedom. I realize now that the culture is changing rapidly around me and that those old ideas about freedom put you on a path toward isolation, public scorn, and possibly criminality.
You may need to reconsider your ideas about freedom before you get shunned in a way that hurts your family.
Watch the gun control movement, the people trying to solve "fake news" with regulation, and other social movements. They're having great success at trading in freedom for security, and it seems inevitable that the same types of controls will be applied to speech.
It's probably better to adapt early to the new normal and be on the "progressive" side than it is to side with hate mongers, gun activists, and drug addicts to promote freedom. You might think you can protect your family from societal change with critical thinking and appeals to classical liberal ideas, but I believe those ideas are the most likely to get you ostracized in our current environment.
I think your best bet for protecting your family now is to conform early and often. We're going to sacrifice freedom for perceived security anyway, so you might as well get on the correct side of it before you become an outcast. Your comment about what "history teachers hid" from a generation and your need to "protect my family" place you somewhere near "alt-right" in the current landscape. You have to ask yourself if that's really where you want to be.
Whenever the locals rub blue mud in their navels, I rub
blue mud in mine just as solemnly. --Lazurus Long, Time Enough For Love
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot
stamping on a human face — forever.
That you almost threaten my safety if I am perceived as being on the "alt-right" end of the spectrum, should fill you with terror. You should remember that many of the people who started the French Revolution ended up being marched up to "the national razor" themselves when their faction split into sub-factions and they found themselves on the outside. Also, FYI, alt-right is composed of many Ron Paul type people, who HN used to like. That such people should fear from the mob is not a sign of a healthy society.
For example, if you're teaching your kids that sitting in class instead of walking out over gun control is the right thing to do, you might think that makes sense. Why protest for something that you don't believe in? But you're probably hurting their chances at being socially accepted, and there's a good chance the other kids will think your kid is likely to be the next school shooter simply by their lack of protesting. Sitting out is now more dramatic than joining the protesting already in progress.
If you teach them that questioning the sentiment of the day is healthy, they're going to end up being identified as sexist, or racist, or a likely shooter, or whatever acceptable slur would describe the most perverse interpretation of their belief. I'm pretty sure Damore's intentions were good, but do you think his questioning of diversity initiatives was helpful to his career or his social life?
The way these movements are shaping up, you can't be neutral. If you're not part of the perceived solution, you're part of the perceived problem, and you're going to be treated as a problem. But if you fall in line with the mob, you'll have more opportunities for advancement, networking, and community support.
edit: Btw, I upvoted all of your comments. But you'll notice my suggestions for censorship are being upvoted while your cautionary tale about freedom is not... HN is illustrating my point for me.
Here's hoping that the pendulum swings towards sanity soon. Despite the walkouts in the news recently, there seems to be evidence that the youngest of us are beginning to reject the scary SJW mob mentality.
Happily, the filter bubbles on the internet, or in silicon valley, are not representative of the entire country, so there are areas the mob does not yet rule. http://brilliantmaps.com/2016-county-election-map/
> Also, even with presses, the printing presses of the 18th century were not like our automated presses of today that can print hundreds or thousands of pages per minute
This is essentially what the "fake news" argument is about: if you publish enough hate speech, you can cause a massacre even without guns. A Rwandan radio station was a major contributor to the massacre of around a million people, and the genocide was largely carried out by hand with machetes and arson.
It's a prisoners dilemma, since any corporate media outlet that does not ramp up to "National Enquirer" level hysteria, will be overshadowed by those who do. To solve such a prisoners dilemma would seem to require regulation, so that those who want to be good actors are not punished by losing viewership to bad actors.
Japan's (lack of) coverage of suicides to prevent copycat behavior can serve as a model.
The FBI not picking up the kid after being tipped off, the sheriff's department not picking up the kid after 39 visits, or the Sheriff Deputy that did not engage the shooter, but waited for backup, all point to already existing policy that failed to be followed properly.
Even the principal himself, who evacuated a school based on an unsubstantiated fire alarm (every fire control panel tells you what switch was pulled, so he could easily have called a teacher near that station for confirmation) shares some of the blame here. Also, the fact that he evacuated multiple buildings, rather than only the building where the alarm was pulled, was a confusing mistake.
There are people who are actually trying to fix a very broken system, and they are not the ones using this to advance a political agenda.
[1] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/arti...
I'd also like to point out that there are a number of issues with the current system besides what you've mentioned that could improve things. For starters, even if this person was involuntarily committed, he would fail a background check, but would still be able to purchase guns online or at a gun show without a background check. There are red flag laws, which allow people to petition the court to temporarily seize guns from someone acting in a disturbing way, which would have been ideal for this case, but these are only in some states.
Online or by-mail purchases can only be shipped to an in-state dealer, where you must complete a background check.
This has been the case for twenty years.
Neither can you do so at a gun show. The same laws apply.
You can not legally obtain a weapon from a licensed dealer without a background check. Period.
If you derive any notable income from selling weapons, then you are legally required to register as a dealer. Failure to do so is a federal felony.
This is why weapons used in crimes do not generally come from legal sources. The vast majority are either stolen, or illegally purchased by a friend of family member.
Who is doing this? Not very many, I estimate.
Even allowing your premise, they're separate issues. Gun control is about more than school shootings, and one could turn your ire back onto you for focusing only on school shootings when there are many more kinds of mass shootings out there, not to mention interpersonal fights escalating to firepower.
As somebody who personally had (and witnessed others) fights in high school parking lots with rifles in the pickup windows of the combatants (yep, I'm over 40), and never heard of anybody ever considering escalating to firepower, I have to call BS on that. I expect to be down voted, but unless you feel that people have become more evil since your father was a kid, I don't know what to tell you.
As for gang violence and other crime, I invite you to look at Mexico (or Chicago), which have strict gun control.
I'm referring to domestic violence and partner homicide.
It's a matter of 0.00013% of the population (1 in 750,000)[2] picking one of them up one day and deciding to use it for a killing spree.
Mass shootings are tragic, but it's not as if there's a good solution to them on the table waiting to be taken.
[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/20/assault_rifle_st... edit: [2] I previously used ~0.00002%, or 50 mass shootings per year, but there were 427 in 2017 including shootings with just injuries https://massshootingtracker.org/data/2017
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-Free_School_Zones_Act_of_1... 1: http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2017/feb/21/ric...