Posted on 02/21/2018 6:25:59 AM PST by Kaslin
The gun control debate is complex. It pits rights against duties. It pits individualism against communitarianism. It pits gun owners against anti-gun activists, and law-abiding citizens against one another. Most of all, it pits "common sense" against evidence. The vast majority of gun control proponents keep talking about "common sense" gun control, as though Americans could simply blue-sky some ideas about curbing highly sporadic acts of violence and fix the problem immediately -- and as though Americans were suffering from lack of will, rather than disagreement about method. That's simply not the case.
But there are things we can do.
Let's begin with the easiest thing: We can insist that our law enforcement agencies actually enforce the law. The Parkland, Florida, shooting occurred because the FBI failed to do its job. Not once but twice, the FBI was warned about the shooter. And not once but twice, it ignored the warnings. That isn't rare. We know that law enforcement screwed up in the South Carolina black church massacre; we know it screwed up in the Texas church massacre; we know it screwed up in San Bernardino. We know that, as of 2013, out of 48,321 cases against straw buyers -- people who buy guns for others, including those who aren't legally allowed to buy them -- just 44 had been prosecuted. We know that as of 2013, there were nearly 20,000 people in California alone who weren't legally allowed to own guns but owned them anyway. Giving the government more legal power to confiscate weaponry or prosecute those who are dangerous means nothing if the government blows every available opportunity.
But we can do more.
David French at National Review suggests an option: gun-violence restraining orders, or GRVOs. These would allow family members to apply for an order enabling the legal authorities to temporarily remove guns from those who are deemed to be a significant danger to themselves or others. Furthermore, we should ensure more transparency in the background-check system with regard to mental health records, and we should look to ease the regulations on involuntary commitment of the dangerously mentally ill.
We should also radically increase security in schools. I attended a Jewish high school that was regularly threatened with violence. Every student who attends that school is now checked in by security; the school has barriers on every side; armed security guards attend the campus. The same measures should be available at every public school. Complaints about the so-called school-to-prison pipeline created by the presence of law enforcement at schools seem to be overblown, according to the data -- and, more importantly, it's the school's job to ensure the safety of students, not to protect students against their own criminal behavior.
These are simple measures that should be able to achieve broad agreement. But they probably won't, because it's too politically useful for the left to rail broadly about gun control. The biggest problem with the gun control debate has been its failure to boil down slogans to proposals. That problem won't be alleviated so long as the media insist on putting mourning teenagers on television with the chyron "DO SOMETHING." Something is nothing unless someone puts some actual proposals on the table.
I lived in Texas for a while in the late 70’s early 80’s EVERY pick up truck had a gun rack with gun in the window LIB’s have DESTROYED our culture!!!!!
Get to the gym and have a workout until exhausted then all that pent up emotion will get burned off then you can move on with your life.
“50 Years of godless libaralism...”
Nah.
More like one hundred years, beginning in 1913 when the Russian Revolution metastasized into a world-wide movement,
with some tumors of infamy, subversion and perfidy growing within the borders of the United States, not to mention many, many other places.
(Liberals are tyrants without absolute power, and if they take guns, they will become active, total tyrants.)
IMHO
This problem has three core underlying causes:
1. Our legal system -- unlike almost any other legal system in the world -- treats individuals as free people. This means the system is oriented toward dealing with problems after they occur, and puts up major roadblocks to legal intervention in cases where someone hasn't done anything that warrants arrest and prosecution.
2. We are also a free country in other respects -- and despite political and cultural pressure for people to engage in "politically correct" groupthink, we have no legal mechanism for punishing unpopular opinions. I suspect most people would be surprised at how many modern industrial countries don't even have this minimal level of basic legal protection for their citizens.
3. We have lost any sense of cultural and behavioral norms. We have reached the point where we can't even legally define genders anymore, and people are free to make sh!t up about their race, gender, ethnicity, or anything else about their personal lives, as they see fit.
None of these three is really a problem unto itself, but there is a fourth element to this that makes #1 through #3 a recipe for disaster:
4. We are increasingly forced to interact with people who don't mean sh!t to us. That's not an aspersion about people in general. I have no problem dealing with people, and I'm happy to oblige them whenever necessary. But as we've become more urbanized and the world has shrunk in an age of modern telecommunications, we're forced to deal with more and more people not on our own terms, but on whatever terms have the lowest common denominator. This means the classroom is geared toward the student with the lowest IQ, the private business establishment must legally accommodate any employee or customer who the Federal government considers "disabled," and the motor vehicle code means nothing because we can't even maintain minimal expectations for licensed drivers.
A public school is the absolute worst example of Item #4. You have kids compelled by law to attend school, and they are forced to attend under conditions that have no place in a free society. Every loser, misfit and mutant has a right to demand a "free" education, and our cultural expectations and standards of professionalism are so low (to the extent they even exist) that schools end up being run by people who are totally ill-equipped to deal with them.
Forget about fixing #1 through #3. If you're not willing to address #4, then you're wasting your time.
I agree: repeal all federal gun control laws. Let the states decide how to handle the homicidal maniacs. Hopefully, they will commit them before they do something, and execute those who have already done something.
Just live! These shootings don’t effect most people. Its only in your mind.
Not sure mental illness is the same as godless liberalism.
How about “Do nothing, maybe it will go away”? That worked for me once with a broken TV.
Stupid idea with no due process wide open for abuse.
“The root cause of the school shootings was the school its self.”
Please elaborate.
Bingo.
I just read about halfway down that list. Only one of them was at the security checkpoint. Heck. one was in the parking lot, one was at a RENTAL CAR parking lot, and one was an unarmed guy shot by law enforcement.
It is also international, as well as an interesting list. Thanks for posting.
“We have to do something” with “progressives”.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/trump-orders-ban-gun-bump-stock-devices-180221080205867.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/us/politics/trump-guns-background-checks.html
How many plane crashes versus unlawful shootings?
“The GRVO isn’t a bad idea. There must be protections for the person receiving the restraining order, such as a defined time to review and a probationary period after which, if certain criteria are met, full rights are restored.”
Like a comedy violence restraining order?
Good thing schools don’t have parking lots.
The simple fact is we can’t stop shootings at schools or universities or malls or nightclub or Christmas parties. We can’t.
These would allow family members to apply for an order enabling the legal authorities to temporarily remove guns from those who are deemed to be a significant danger to themselves or others.
How would that determination be made? The #MeToo movement is already leading to a lot of false/bogus accusations, and I would be concerned about something similar with this.
we should look to ease the regulations on involuntary commitment of the dangerously mentally ill.
This is the one you really need to be careful with. The old Soviet Union pioneered the use of deeming people "mentally ill" and throwing them in the gulags. Imagine the democrats controlling the people who determine who is "mentally ill." It would include anyone who owns a gun, and anyone with whom they disagree.
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