Posted on 12/20/2012 6:51:52 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The school shooting in Newtown was so horrific and heartbreaking that it is only natural to call out for whatever it takes to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. It is hard to disagree with those who are demanding stronger gun-control laws and better mental-health oversight of unstable people. But how workable are such measures — and how effective? And are we asking the right questions?
The proposed gun-control legislation sponsored by California senator Dianne Feinstein sounds reasonable. But it is not clear that it would make a difference. It would stop the sale and manufacture of some semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. But would it prevent an Adam Lanza from carrying out his deranged plan? A very large number of such devices are already in circulation. A determined killer can murder and maim dozens with an ordinary pistol or shotgun. Some will say we should implement radical gun control and prevent nearly everyone from having access to firearms. But, like it or not, law-abiding American citizens have a constitutional right to bear arms that would surely prevent mass civilian disarmament.
A more promising solution is to strengthen the nation’s mental-health services. But would counseling have been enough to stop the Columbine or Newtown killers? Sociopaths are good at beating the system. There is no known cure for their condition. In any case, Adam Lanza appears to have had some professional attention. So did one of the Columbine shooters. There have been calls to institutionalize or forcibly medicate mentally unstable people who show a propensity for violence. That can be appropriate in cases where the person poses a clear threat to himself or others. According to one news story, Lanza shot his mother because he believed she was about to place him in a psychiatric facility. How awful it is that she did not succeed. There is an urgent need to provide frightened parents with more treatment options and support. Still, forced institutionalization carries its own risks.
What about those odd, anti-social loners found in every high school? There seems to be widespread agreement that we should keep a closer watch over them. But, according to a 2002 study by the U.S. Secret Service and Department of Education, few school shooters fit that profile: “The largest group of attackers for whom this information was available appeared to socialize with mainstream students or were considered mainstream students themselves.” Nearly two-thirds of the killers had rarely, or never, been in trouble before at school. As a 1999 FBI study, “The School Shooter,” reminds us:
Reliably predicting any type of violence is extremely difficult. Predicting that an individual who has never acted out violently in the past will do so in the future is still more difficult. Seeking to predict acts that occur as rarely as school shootings is almost impossible. This is simple statistical logic: when the incidence of any form of violence is very low and a very large number of people have identifiable risk factors, there is no reliable way to pick out from that large group the very few who will actually commit the violent act. . . . At this time, there is no research that has identified traits and characteristics that can reliably distinguish school shooters from other students. Many students appear to have traits and characteristics similar to those observed in students who were involved in school shootings.
It is natural and human to demand solutions in the face of moral catastrophe. Still, we have to be careful that whatever we do, we don’t create a civil-liberties nightmare that ensnares millions of innocent people.
Why killers like the Columbine and Newtown shooters do what they do is as mysterious as the problem of evil in general. There will be no easy solution. But here are the hard questions no one has answered: Why now? Why us? Americans have always had easy access to guns. But, until fairly recently, no one thought to go to a school to slaughter first-graders. There have always been sociopaths among us. But we seem to have created a society where they feel empowered to act.
— Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Her new book, Freedom Feminism, will be published this spring by AEI Press. Follow her on Twitter: @CHSommers
For me the very title of this article is the MAIN reason behind these outrageous acts: Blah...ADAM LANZA...blah. The instant celebrity and fame that is bestowed upon these pathetic losers by the MSM.
The Mother. Period. Amen. She trained her insane son to use firearms and gave him access to them. If she was alive she should’ve been charged with manslaughter.
self ping
High quality Tranquilizer Darts!
Might not kill him or anyone else, but might knock him on his ass while help was on the way.
Just trying to buy time until responders could get to the school.
Like sky marshals. Sky marshals are not identified as marshals so the bad ones don't know who the marshall it and think doing anything over. .
Not all teachers would need to be armed.
Arm the teachers who are proficient but, like the marshals, no one would know who is armed and who isn't. But, for Heaven's sake, quit listing ANY places as gun free zones.
Bad guys come to school or anywhere and doesn't know who is armed, might think twice.
I just keep asking ...where was Dad? He’s like some shadowy figure — we don’t really hear much about him.
Guess he had better things to do than to look in on the ex-wife and kid. He sheepishly accepted that the boy had “pushed him out” of his life. How convenient.
Perhaps if Dad had been more in tune, the kid would not have been so intimately aware of the weapons.
But, alas — Dads are just “pushed out” everywhere these days. And we’re just leaving it up to these screwy women to handle it all .. .
Very good points. Couldn’t agree more.
Our passionate rely that we LOVE the children more and are only calling for such extreme measures as forced church attendance - is because WE want to protect the children - the children they don't seem to care about...
I wonder if the MSM would stand with us because of our great love for children - and our not so hidden disgust with liberals... (Gun control is a liberal dog whistle for their hatred of traditional Americans)
Christina Hoff Sommers needs to consider the possibility.
Perhaps the sign should read, “No guns permitted on premises, except OURS!”
“What could have stopped him? A $300.00 piece of bullet proof glass”
I doubt that would stop anyone. They have to keep the doors open in the morning, at recess, lunchtime, or anytime the kids go out to the sports field for gym class. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that you could just wait until one of those times, and waltz right in.
Rush said something yesterday - he does not waste his time talking to idiots. And unfortunately - again - the majority of the talking heads are idiots.
Most of the odd, anti-social loners haven't been in trouble either.
I guess the question here is whether they're profiling all school shooters or spree killers. It seems like many of them were paranoid schizophrenic (whatever that means) loners.
Yet you do have to wonder about the shooters who told other students in advance that they were thinking about shooting up the school. Were they really loners after if they had people to talk to about things like that? And why didn't anybody do anything?
I am sure you mean well, but bulletproof glass in the school is not the answer IMO.
For one thing a hostage taker who is already in the school would be protected, It would be a fort for him.For another the expense of bullet proof glass in every school window would be enormous.
A person set on getting into a school would just come in with a busload of kids when the door is open, or he would wait until someone came out or was going in and get in then.
A gun safe.
“I doubt that would stop anyone. They have to keep the doors open in the morning, at recess, lunchtime, or anytime the kids go out to the sports field for gym class. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that you could just wait until one of those times, and waltz right in.”
That isn’t what he did. He shot the glass out, turned the doorknob and walked in. And that is after the school put new security measures into place.
The glass would have stopped him. Not saying what will stop nuts from doing this again in the future. All I am saying was the single point of failure was the glass.
The goal in mitigating risk is to find those points of failure and correct them. Apparently whatever security they put in place didn’t address this.
I agree with you. I am not saying bullet proof glass is the answer. But based on this crime it was.
A lunatic can wait until a bus passes and just shoot up the bus. There are a thousand things someone who wants to commit mass murder can do. There is no single answer.
"State hospitals all shuttered"? Not true. I don't know about your state, but in my state we have several state hospitals for the insane in operation.
Locking people up doesn't necessarily prevent them from becoming violent. In fact, in some cases, locking them up might be a precipitating factor in bringing on the violent act.
That might be the case with Lanza, if Flashman's story about Lanza's mother seeking conservatorship/committment is true.
And I believe that Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, was involuntarily confined in a mental hospital shortly before he went on his rampage.
“The glass would have stopped him.”
Well, if they had installed bulletproof glass, then I don’t think his plan would have been to try to shoot through the bulletproof glass. He would have just planned a different way to get in.
I’m not of the opinion that any of these “security” measures will ever stop a determined shooter. They will never be foolproof, so there will always be another “point of failure” to examine after each shooting. Even if we managed to make the schools 100% secure, which is impossible I think, then they’d just move on to churches, or libraries, zoos, or somewhere that wasn’t secure.
I wonder how that is working out for them?
If you want the comments on Free Republic to be taken seriously, then you don’t post loony remarks that can be taken out of context and presented as typical of the site.
I wasn’t afraid of being called a name, or of FR being called a name. I just want all the good remarks on this thread to be considered fairly and not sullied by hopes of lobotomizing people.
Forced medication is now only used on patients who become violent without it. It is expensive, so it is not used as much as it should be, but it is not as expensive as mental hospitals, so it is the preferred solution in that regard.
Before Kendra’s Law, in New York State, we had the classic case of Larry Hogue, dubbed “The Wild Man of West 96th Street.” He was fine in the hospital and only became violent when released, at which time he invariably ended up taking crack again, which supposedly was the factor that changed his psychological makeup. Monitoring of his medication was essential, so it was done.
Kendra was a young woman who got pushed onto the subway tracks by a homeless mentally ill man.
I cut my political teeth on this issue, and I think Sommers has done a good job of presenting both aspects of it: the need for community safety and the dangers of overreacting and creating a civil rights nightmare, as she says.
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