Uvalde and the American Condition

Well, that didn't age well.

That was wrong before it was ever posted.

The Border Patrol doesn't know why it was called out; doesn't know why the local police force stopped them from acting once they arrived; an official said it is unclear why local SWAT did not respond.

Consider our neighbor's approach:

Actually, the "good guys with a gun" argument was slain in the Uvalde massacre.

"Bent". We ought fear the "narrative is going to be bent".

But in the American discourse, instead of addressing the "core gun issue", we get excuses about hardening schools and more good guys with guns. Republicans in Congress are talking about using Covid funds to reduce the number of doors in schools. Part of what we need to do in order to address the "core gun issue" is clear away the excuses and distractions. The miserable, even insidious performance of law enforcers in Uvalde is actually an example of what we get from hardening the schools and relying on good guys with guns.

And, sure, "the problem is still with the 18 year old who killed all of the children", but even that tale reaches back to the "core gun issue". Out in the chatter: Gun laws frustrated an attempt to acquire a rifle last year. The shooter allegedly had a history of threatening rape and murder, but nobody did anything, not even after the livestream in which he threatened to rape and murder a girl who apparently turned him down, and the time he threatened to rape and murder the mother of another girl who turned him down got him all of a temporary ban from Yubo, where he was known as, "Yubo's school shooter".

The "core gun issue" does not exist in a vacuum; we cannot access some of the underlying attitudes of the "core gun issue" without addressing the vein of masculinity feeding the beliefs and fears driving the violence.

Neither can we get to the "core gun issue" without scraping away the distortions that obscure it. Consider political whiplash: First they complained that teachers groomed children for sex abuse; now they want to give those teachers guns.

Less dramatic but still strange is the part when a neighbor who doesn't like "cancel culture" suggests a course that people who complain about "cancel culture" call "cancel culture". Moreover, the suggested boycott defies behavioral economy, is thus observably unrealistic, and in that aspect generally unsurprising, but might also be exemplary: Consider the idea that gun buyers will boycott stores selling semiautomatic assault rifles.

Anyway, people might have the impression that the cops arrived and didn't do anything and just watched while 19 kids were shot, but cops didn't actually watch. They listened. Yesterday, we learned that police first entered the school all of two minutes after the shooter; twenty-eight minutes later, nineteen officers were in the hallway outside the classroom, deciding to do nothing for another forty-seven minutes, hearing gunshots as children inside called 911 and begged for help and died.

Yet, even after we learn this—

—people still tell us stuff like that.

When I said↑ police chose to aid and abet a mass killer, that was at the edge of what I was willing to say in the moment; it is also true I simply could not have reasonably imagined circumstances so extraordinarily stupid as the emerging facts. When chatter in my twitfeed suggested maybe law enforcement shot a child while engaging the shooter, that actually seemed like a reasonable possibility compared to the fragmented and contradictory narratives emerging. What we have, however, is a sketch well beyond anything any reasonable person ought reasonably imagine. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but some part of this ought to at least pretend to make sense despite our human frailty.

Proper consideration of the "core gun issue" involves public vivisection of American gun culture's living heart. And for those who, in other political discourse, blanche at the prospect of libertarians and conservatives feeling badly about themselves, understand there is no political correctness sufficient to assuage our gun culture save for surrendering the question at the outset, i.e., there is no "core gun issue".

The excuses we make in order to appease describe a society in crisis.

It is not merely the fact that this extraordinary mass murder has occurred; the incomprehensibility of everything else about this infliction feels exponential.

 

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I think many people think this issue is an easier fix than it is. For instance, if you live in Australia and think that we should just change the gun laws because that is what they would do…the voters involved are American and not Australian. That has to be taken into account.

Even if you are for raising the age for gun ownership, closing loopholes, and banning or severely restricting the sale of AR 15 type weapons (as I am) you still have to consider the other side of the arguments.

You have to consider that 4 or 5 people a year use these weapons to shoot up schools and yet Americans own 15 million AR 15s that aren’t used that way.

It could be argued that if a few 18 year olds purposely drive a car into a crowd each year that cars should be taken away from all 18 year olds.

You can make distinctions of course but you do have to realize that the number of people who commit these acts is very small and whatever changes to the law you make will likely have little impact. Millions of weapons are already out there, only a few commit these acts and there’s no way to predict where it will happen next time.

The problem is the act and not the gun for the most part although I agree that the gun makes the act have much greater outcomes. The status quo is not acceptable but the answer isn’t as clear-cut as some seem to think.

My point is that it’s just not a black and white distinction. Half the country lives in cities and the other half live in rural areas. Those in rural areas have more guns but commit almost none of this type of crime and they don’t tend to vote for gun reform.

 

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Someone invents a weapon which is sufficiently different from a AR15 but has the same capabilities

High Court agrees - New weapon floods the market

New extremely broad laws are drafted where a 2HB pencil could be banned in some circumstances

High Court calls such laws draconian and removes them. 2HB pencils return to Arts classes

Americans seem intent on producing as many Gordian knots as they can just because they can

No quarter given, none taken

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That brings up another point. Is an AR 15 a mass killing weapon or a modern rifle? If you ban AR 15 and don't ban other rifles...why?

All guns are designed to kill so no need to keep bringing that up. Even during the AR 15 ban the manufacturers just made weapons that didn't have the offending parts.

It gets pretty silly. You can kill a lot of people with any gun and you can carry extra magazines pretty easily and allowing one barrel length but not another just gets tedious.

As I said, the "fix" isn't simple. I think increasing the age and the paperwork and ownership requirements is about all that you can do along with "red flag" laws.

 

What are "semi-assault" weapons"? This is part of the problem, people not knowing what they are talking about. Semi-automatic weapons today, are just modern weapons whether you are talking about handguns or rifles.

"Assault" weapons are all guns (they are all designed to kill) and the term is usually used just when the gun looks scarier than some other gun in someone's mind. It has no actual meaning. "Semi-assault" definitely has no meaning and is a word that's you've just made up.

Yes, this is a problem (school shootings) that is mainly happening in the U.S. That's why were are concerned about it. It's unique, odd, is a new thing. We have always had guns and we've never had this until recently. That's why it isn't "just" about guns.

It didn't go up because the "assault weapon" ban ended (correlation without causation). It didn't happen before the gun ban either. The gun ban was also a misnomer in that the same/similar guns continued to be sold but the manufacturers just eliminated the offending parts mentioned in the legislation.

You really aren't very well informed on this matter. Rage over knowledge?

 

Right! And they are in the northern hemisphere instead of the southern hemisphere, so no solution that works for Australians will work for Americans. And of course they say "barbie" instead of "barbeque."

That's very true. And even fewer people fly aircraft into buildings every year, but the law still persecutes pilots by requiring them to get burdensome pilot's licenses and expensive, unneccessary medicals. Totally unfair.

Or - worse yet! - require them to take an intentionally difficult driver's ed course, then make them pay money to get a license, then make them register their car. If you really hated freedom you could force them to get punitively expensive car insurance and then put them in jail if they refuse to comply with these Hitler-esque dictates.

Nope. Gun homicide rates in rural and metropolitan areas are almost identical.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1047279718300425

 

I'm sure your post sounds good after a few drinks but it's usually best to not post as it doesn't age well, ya'know?

I didn't say or imply that Australians are so different that gun control can't be considered here. My point was that you have to get the votes and we don't have the votes even with all the talk of 75% of those in the U.S. being for gun control. That's not how 75% have voted and that's ignoring the commonly held attitudes in most any rural community that I've ever been to and I've been to a lot.

The rest of your diatribe was an argument again the NRA and not anything that I said. I have no issues with closing loopholes, "red flag" laws, raising ownership age, etc.

We were also talking about mass shootings in schools. Those don't seem to be happening in rural communities and homicides occur everywhere and those aren't going up. Crime has been going down for decades.

Teenagers killing elementary school kids is the subject and that's what is new and the solution IMO includes gun control regulations and figuring out why this is "suddenly" happening. Guns have always been around but not mass school shootings.

I know you don't think that they will suddenly stop if we pass whatever gun control regulations that can reasonably be passed so why are you arguing with my comments? Me, not the NRA. Usually there is some degree of nuance in your posts after the "nope".

If teenagers keep wanting to kill others at school, this will not stop based on any current proposals. We already know that homicide rates in the U.S. are higher than most other (all other) developed countries. That's unfortunate but that hasn't suddenly changed. If we could have the lack of guns seen in Australia or Western Europe I'd be for that. That's not even a possibility however. Focus.

 

New as in guns have been around in the U.S. since the beginning and school shootings weren't a thing when I was in school. Teenagers could buy guns by then. The original AR15 was made in the 1950's.

 

You said "semi-assault weapon". Yes, you made that up. I assume you meant (?) "semi-automatic weapon".

There weren't many mass school shootings before the ban was enacted (as I pointed out) so there couldn't have been "massive reductions in these events". The ban ended in 2004 and the first of the mass school shootings didn't begin until 1999 (which was while the ban was in effect).

Believe what you want.

 

My take - much stuff was not around (were a thing)
Something becomes a thing, suddenly the thing becomes a copycat thing

I'm going to express an option many will have elements of copycat

Went to tablet for local news and was greated with this, to me, bizzare headline

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Wonder how "had his reasons" will play out in court?

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It won't play out in court. It's a stupid headline and now we are discussing it.

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It's irrelevant to the topic. There is too much information but not enough that is accurate or on point.

Ted Bundy "had his reasons" and his mother loved him. Who cares?

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Speaking of Ted Bundy, he is probably more relevant to the topic of school shootings. Mass murderers frustrate us, the public, because they are so hard to catch and stop. They go on for years even though people are trying to stop them.

These school shootings are similar. They could crop up anywhere, small town in Texas, large city in New York, and we argue about whether or not a teacher unlocked a school door to go to her car to get a cell phone.

This can go on forever until it just stops (or not). Luckily the Timothy McVie bombing trend didn't continue like school shootings seem to be continuing. Ted Bundy kept killing for a long time.

What happens when someone uses a bomb on school buildings instead of a gun?

That's not to say that gun control isn't a good idea but it's just not the main solution to this particular problem. Nor is turning every school into a police station.

All the talk about an AR15 ban reducing homicides and school shootings is ridiculous. The "ban" really didn't even ban much if you check into what actually happened. It's also probably barking up the wrong tree to focus on the AR15 as that has now seemingly become the America's Sweetheart of the rifle world and many of the reasons for that are quite understandable now that I've checked into it more.

This is going to go as well as the "defund the Police" movement...

 

Put an eight-round box in it and it still exceeds its warring predecessor, M1.

The basic difference between a handgun and AR-15 is that compared to transfusing blood and sewing up the internal injuries, patients bleed out too quickly, and in the words of one surgeon after the Pulse Nightclub shooting, there is nothing to sew up.

The AR-15 was designed for the battlefield:

At a distance of approxmately 15 meters, one Ranger fired an AR-15 full automatic hitting one VC with 3 rounds with the first burst. One round in the head—took it completely off. Another in the right arm, took it completely off, too. One round hit him in the right side, causing a hole about five inches in diameter. It cannot be determined which round killed the VC but it can be assumed that any one of the three would hav caused death.

(qtd. in Biddle)​

Another field report notes five VC killed with AR-15s at thirty to a hundred meters. A back wound "caused the thoracic cavity to explode"; a stomach wound "caused the abdominal cavity to explode"; a buttock wound "destroyed all tissue of both buttocks"' a chest wound "destroyed the thoracic cavity"; and a heel wound "causing the leg to split from the foot to the hip". The report observes, "These deaths were inflicted by the AR-15 and all were instantaneous except the buttock wound. He lived approximately five minutes."

Six years ago, Sam Biddle observed↱:

In The Gun, C.J. Chivers' Pulitzer-winning history of the AK-47, he describes the AR-15 as "an American shift in rifles for killing men," and recounts the thousands of Pentagon tests with live animals and cadavers that charted just how well the rifle could blow through internal organs and turn brains into mist on the battlefield.

This is the genetic makeup of the AR-15: It's not a household tool for hunting feral pigs. Nor is it meant for defending yourself against against a home invasion, unless of course a platoon of Viet Cong is invading your home. And although the early AR-15 proved to be mechanically unreliable in Vietnam, its raw killing power, its ability to blow holes through people, is just as clear inside a gay bar in 2016 as it was in a jungle in 1962 ....

.... In mass shootings across the United States, the AR-15 has performed exactly as it was built to perform. It made lethal intent into lethal results, killing and maiming human targets with efficiency and ease. It was an instrument of war, and it turned a nightclub into a war zone. Wherever we allow the gun to go, that war will go on.​

Toward the question of regulation and why not other rifles, we might wonder which killing machines you have in mind. For instance, it would appear a pistol-grip .308 semiautomatic carbine capable of receiving long magazines is readily available. Slightly lesser muzzle velocity, but twice the kinetic energy. Compared to a nine millimeter handgun, over twice the muzzle velocity and seven times the kinetic energy.

Weapons of war are not made to bring down game or plink varmints; they are designed to kill multiple people quickly. A .22 long cartridge for a hunting rifle just doesn't pack the wallop of a 5.66 for an AR-15. The 5.66 pushes over two and a half times the muzzle velocity, and delivers in excess of ten times the kinetic energy. You can actually fire a .22 long from an AR-15, but a 5.66 is too much power for a normal hunting rifle, and fires a heavier bullet. An AR-15 is a mass-killing machine.
____________________

Notes:

Biddle, Sam. "The AR-15 Was Built for Slaughter in War Zones". Gawker. 13 June 2016. Gawker.com. 28 May 2022. https://bit.ly/3lJNzZD

 

Good! So let's consider them.

By definition, then, we have the votes. We just have a dysfunctional enough system that those votes don't matter.

??

Red Lake 2005: Shooter killed 9 schoolkids on a reservation high school near Red Lake.
Nickel Mines 2006: Shooter killed 5 schoolkids in a one-room school in an Amish town.
Grundy 2002: Shooter kills 3 students at the Appalachian School of Law. (Grundy is a town of about 800.)
Umpqua Community College 2015: Shooter kills 9.
Rancho Tehama Reserve 2017: Shooter kills 6 schoolkids.
Chardon, Ohio 2017: Student takes gun to school, kills 3.

Given your above comments - I'd advise you to prioritize research over cocktails.

Gun homicides in the US have been going up since 2014. Gun deaths are now the #1 cause of death for children from 0-18 - more than car crashes, more than cancer, more than suffocation.

Yep. And if you exclude rural areas you exclude almost exactly half the problem. This is not an inner city problem.

 

Not that it really matters but the AR15 was not designed for the battlefield. It was initially designed for the civilian market in the 1950's. It was later modified for the military market (Vietnam). It can fire the same rounds as any other rifle.

You can use the same rifle for shooting rabbits as for deer by just changing out the "upper" rather than by buying a whole new rifle. Your arguments are just generic arguments for comparing rifles vs pistols.

Most of the arguments are just those that apply to anyone who doesn't believe that there should be any handguns, shotguns or rifles. Maybe there shouldn't be any (?) but to single out the AR15 , which is currently the most popular rifle in the U.S., is a bit disingenuous.

I'd be in favor of trying a (real) ban again along with the other regulations suggested but I can certainly see why the other side views some of these moves as disingenuous (or ignorant).

The real underlying issue (I think) is that half the country doesn't really think that we should allow any (or very few) guns and the other half does. So when there is a school shooting those who don't believe in allowing any guns use that to demand that guns be banned when that's really what they wanted before the school shootings anyway and they know that that's not really the main issue behind school shootings.

We don't react this way to anything else. When people get angry and use a car to mow down a crowd of protestors no one suddenly suggests banning cars. Yet that's exactly what we do regarding guns. It's because they didn't think guns should be legal in the first place.

It would be better to have that direct and more honest debate IMO.

 

That's a strawman. Almost no one "demands that guns be banned" - certainly not half the US. A great many people - far more than half - are now demanding legislation that restricts gun ownership more than it does now. Thats not banning guns, any more than the drunk-driving laws passed in the 1970's and 1980's came from people wanting to ban cars.

Easy availability of semiautomatic weapons is indeed one of the largest issues behind school shootings. Take away that easy access and school shootings plummet. As proof, consider the rate of school shootings in basically every other country other than the US.

Well, a few do. (I know three of them.) Probably the same percentage of people who demand that we ban all guns after a shooting.

No, we don't.

During the runup of drunk driving deaths in the 1970's and 1980's a lot of new laws were passed. Laws that required bartenders to be more cognizant of serving drunk people. New BAC limits. New penalties. New laws for high risk groups (younger drivers.) Even new design requirements for cars that had the effect of making crashes more survivable for the driver, the car they hit and even the pedestrians they hit. And they worked.

And while plenty of people complained about them - one recent article claimed that "Pedestrian Safety Is Ruining Car Design" - no one tried claiming that their proponents hated cars and wanted to ban them.

And now we are seeing an increase in school shootings, child shootings and gun homicide in general. And people are demanding new laws. Laws that require more careful background checks before selling a gun. Laws requiring universal background checks. Laws restricting magazine size and weapon type and who can buy them. Laws that penalize people who do not store their weapons safely.

But for some reason the same response that was OK for drunk driving is not OK for firearms - because the right wing has been brainwashed by right wing media into thinking that the left wants to grab their guns, and if they pass ANY new laws, the gun grabbers win.

Read those two sentences together - and then let's skip the strawmen and have some direct and honest debate.

 

School shootings have gone up "recently" and the ban ended "recently". School shootings weren't up before the ban. Therefore this is a strawman. This strawman is also the degree to which there was an actual ban that resulted in a lack of similar guns. The ban stopped very little from changing.

Many people do favor more considered regulation. I'd say most but I don't want to argue that point. That's not primarily the issue behind school shootings however and it's not the primary solution IMO.