What law would have prevented the AZ shooting?

I to think there is nothing that could have stopped this. Gun control is not the answer. Normal people go off the deep end and that is a fact of life. All we can do is pray that our family is not around when it happens. Taking guns from everyone is the most lam-brain thing they can come up with. I have no doubt crime would go up if that ever happened. Sad thing to happen,but more fuel for the fire for the anti-gun people. Maybe if Media started doing stories on good gun control(but that news don't sell).
 
So some of you folks are suggesting that secrecy is a solution to some of these problems? You could probably find some good advisors from Germany or North Korea, maybe even China (a preferred trading partner). In other words, we just keep these things hushed up.

One little problem here with suggestions that criminals don't obey laws is that this fellow wasn't a criminal, as far as I know, until he started pulling the trigger. So the problem is keeping people from becoming criminals in the first place, though I have no idea what might work. All of things about background checks and so on might work but I expect everyone here would object just the same. But if he wasn't a criminal in the first place....

More security? Like metal detectors, frisking and so on? That would presumably eliminate the legally armed individual. In some places they don't let people with the wrong bumper stickers go to political rallies (which this wasn't) and in a way, I guess that works, too. Sort of benign way of eliminating the opposition.

I am sure, however, that everyone in congress is concerned, not to mention every other elected official and probably most appointed officials, like judges. Judges already have their hands full with threats from certified and convicted criminals, must less from people who just don't like them. But remember, people in office were elected. That means more of the voters wanted them in office than the other person. If someone thinks that they feel justified in making threats or worse to an elected office holder, and it happens, well, then, that bothers me.
 
Originally Posted by Jim March
Whereas this drive to "fame" is a huge part of the motivations for these violent acts,

WE INTRODUCE THE FOLLOWING BILL to deny them the fame and attention to their madness that they crave:

1) It shall be illegal for any news outlet to publish the name of anyone suspected of committing murder of multiple persons.

2) It shall be illegal for any news outlet to publish the writings of anyone suspected of committing murder of multiple persons.

3) It shall be illegal for any person to publish the name or writings of anyone suspected of committing murder of multiple persons, online or elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Good, more victoms of a mass shooting. Some are already talking of stiffling talk shows and such. The real victom seems to be the Constitution itself.

Not bad enough that the aftermath of such incidents bring on the attacks on the 2nd Amendment, now us 2nd amendment supporters want to go after the 1st Amendment.

After the 1st and 2nd, what part of the Constitution are we going after next, The 4th & 5th.
 
"Actually, if the military turned him down for a psychological reason, then that should have been reported to the NICS system."

Nope. Wrong. That is not a legal adjudication by a court, which is what the law requires. Being turned down by the military carries all of the weight -none - of an employer turning down a job applicant after giving a battery of personality tests.
 
The Long Island Train shooter was stopped by people bearing the only arms they are allowed to use -- the ones attached to their shoulders. The best that the antis could come up with was that it would have caused an "escalation of the violence" if there had been an armed passenger on the train.
 
"somewhere along the line there appears to have been some sort of failing"

It is not against the law to be weird. It is not against the law to refuse offers of treatment for what ails you. Neither one makes you a prohibited person under the law when it comes to gun ownership or possession.

It's easy to say now that being disruptive at school 5 times (that's what CNN reported) should have resulted in him being locked up and fed psychotropic medications (or resulted in the loss of his driver's license, voting rights and gun rights), but you know what they say about Monday Morning Quarterbacking being so easy.

You can't predict behavior with an real degree of accuracy. The only true predictor of future behavior is past behavior and the man under discussion doesn't appear to have had any arrests and convictions.

Predicting behavior as it relates to job goals and training goals - it's what I've been paid to do for 36 years while working with individuals with disabilities.

John
 
So some of you folks are suggesting that secrecy is a solution to some of these problems? You could probably find some good advisors from Germany or North Korea, maybe even China (a preferred trading partner). In other words, we just keep these things hushed up.
Click to expand...

+1 ...... but that should not prevent folks (and the Press) from voluntarily shunning him. The more clicking you all do on CNN, et al. the more stories about this worm there will be. You know what happened. He's done. If you speak of this event, speak not of the horror or celebrate the victimhood of the dead and wounded: that only encourages the copycats. Instead, celebrate the heroes, and condemn the goblin. Shame him. He killed a 9 year old girl: What could be lower?
 
If these people were going to have any shame from killing people, they wouldn't do it.

You can't "shame" them. What is shame to sane people is glory to these nut bags.
 
Since I study these issues professionally and just finish writing a piece on this from an upcoming encyclopedia about American gun issues - let me opine:

1. Studies have clearly, clearly shown that we do not have techniques that will predict violence without a tremendous false alarm rate.

The current law asks for adjudication - are we willing to go to a lower standard without courts involved? Do we want gulags for all those folks who have problems. Should everyone who a GP recommended an antidepressant or a sleep aid have no gun rights or have to go to court to be evaluated? Want to be reported to a government agency?

The chilling effect on those going to seek mental help would be awesomely destructive. As it is now, people need help don't get it because of fear of consequences. Police and military avoid help for PTSD because of job consequences.

One thing that has helped in preventing further school rampages is other students reporting threats. That might have stopped 43 more Columbines. But without a direct threat, weapons ownership alone is not predictive.

2. If only a CCW type was there (implying you might be the hero).

a. The CCW type probably cannot stop the initial wave. If the gun fight continues you have a chance. We should not post incorrect chest pounding. In Colorado, the shooter was not prevented from starting the rampage. One was killed and 4 wounded before he was engaged.

b. Swiss - so what - they keep their fully auto guns at home. In fact, Switzerland is in a debate for moving away from that model. It is similar to ours in a sense. They have suicides with the army gun and want to take them away. The Swiss stopped the Nazis with collaboration as well as guns.

c. Since the shooting was done by someone probably disturbed, they probably don't consider that Mr. CCW will be there. Also, many of them are suicidal - called suicide with hostile intent and related to an view of honor and a warrior's death designed to inflict pain on others. They don't care about you and your 45 ACP. There are rampages in CCW states.

3. Control the press and the media. It's a big debate. In the lab, violent portrayals, weapons presence, etc. do prime aggressive thoughts and actions. What is debated is whether such small effects are acting in the real world. That is not decided in the literature. Obviously people learn but do the media or culture just channel pathology?

It's the same for drugs and sexuality. Now, you may be ok with censoring A but not B or vice versa. Depends on your politics - but then you don't understand the BOR and only rant about your viewpoint.

There is a good point that voluntary control of the aftermath hysteria might aid in not priming future shooters. Their 'honor' view or 'warrior' view is vicariously reinforced by such imagery. Thus, the media is part. Also, the memorials are part. All the wailing and lamentations - candles and churches fed into that. So let's ban natural grieving processes and church, synagogue services.

There's evidence that the extremes of religion prime violence - ban that?

4. A law - no shooting - remove all the guns from society. That's impossible - physically and politically. Ban speech - the same.

We might tune up reporting for the ajudicated but this guy wasn't. There was a tune up after Cho with added protections.

So, the gun world can go hysterical again and so can the antigun world. If you want to watch cable A go nuts against your stuff or watch Cable C go nuts for your stuff - good for you.

A rational view says that in the current USA, there is not a blanket legislative remedy for tragedies like this.

In the UK and Australia - they had a compliant population of law abiding gun owners who did turn in weapons after massacres and they haven't had a similar one. They view guns as tools and sports also - so that was that. They still have (esp.in the UK) lots of economic gun crime - as criminals don't care.

We aren't going to confiscate all legally held guns in any forseeable political paradigm.
 
They don't have the same emotional impact as shootings...

.... but it wouldn't be too hard to come up with scenarios where cars and trucks inflicted a similar level of casualties.

Semi hit a school bus in Florida a couple years ago...

Old man lost control of his car in Chinatown...

Yet we don't see sustained yammering for enforcement on truck driver's work and rest periods, to prevent fatigue related accidents. We don't see sustained yammering for annual testing of people over a certain age for driver's license renewal.

(In fairness, we don't see recurrent testing for teenagers, either, and they are arguably more dangerous.)

If Loughner had wanted to create massive casualties at the rally, and could not have obtained a firearm, he could have just bought, borrowed or stolen a Ram 2500 duallie, and driven through the crowd at speed.

(Or he could have pulled an Oklahoma City bombing... all it takes is fertilizer and diesel fuel... are we controlling those items now? Are we all for propane tank and cell phone control? Killing large numbers of people is not a challenge. It just requires a lack of moral compass, or a degree of insanity.)
 
Anti-gun legislation does not work. Look at Chicago as a perfect example of this. By their nature, criminals and nut jobs don't care about laws. More laws will just inhibit the ability of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves.
 
Yep, it's clear from the literature that all the current laws have not affected crime rates. Thus, at the professional meetings you see:

a. Don't need more laws - they wouldn't work. The protection issue is cited. The more extreme protection claims are technically criticized but few deny that protection does occur.

b. The laws weren't strict enough. They have to be nation-wide with confiscations, etc. Protection doesn't really happen or the level is not enough to justify the level of gun crimes we have.

It's rather ideological. Many folks can't conceive of protecting themselves or worry about the victims of the guns. Most of the country is in favor of guns that allow protection but want reasonable mechanisms to stop the flow of guns to criminals and mentally deficient. Reasonable is the key word.

So if you ask should people be allowed to own guns for protection - most say Yes. Should there be gun control (unspecified) but allowing access for law abiding folks - most say Yes.
 
There was in fact many years ago in which a man blew up a school building. It just happened to occur at about the same time that Lindburgh flew the Atlantic, so the news sort of got pushed to the back pages, there being no instant news at the time. However, the explosives that were used were easily obtained at the time and the authorities quietly made them more difficult to get.
 
Not to get totally off subject, but once a kid was "stabbed" with a small Swiss Army knife at my school, nothing major, a few stitches and was good to go. In my Economics class, we were asked what we thought would have prevented it. I wholeheartedly answered:

I think they should just make it against the rules (illegal) to stab people on school property. The teacher answered "It already is". Well, and I said this, "a lot of good that did".

I think they should just make it ILLEGAL to use ANYTHING to kill ANY NONCOMBATANT PERSON.

Oh wait:/

But you already know this, but the stories and words the news agencies are using are scaring the hell out of me. Take a gun into a school and shootup everyone, it's accepted. Have a. Military man shoot up a military base, sad but overlooked. Shoot a politician.....all hell comes down on our whole community. The treading being down right now is very dark indeed.

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Oh, come on - not to be rude but this isn't reality but just getting in a tizzy.

Columbine and VT have generated tremendous impacts on all kinds of things. As did the Ft. Hood shooting. This is the day after a horrible event, so there is a lot of foaming at the mouth by every so-called expert on every side of the political spectrum.

Keep it real. We closed the last AZ thread for ranting and silliness. This is a big hint.

The question is Laws - and we want reasoned opinion!
 
Well I answered that in my post:

I believe no reasonable and constitutional laws would have prevented the shooting.

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There was in fact many years ago in which a man blew up a school building. It just happened to occur at about the same time that Lindburgh flew the Atlantic, so the news sort of got pushed to the back pages, there being no instant news at the time. However, the explosives that were used were easily obtained at the time and the authorities quietly made them more difficult to get.
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It was the Bath school disaster. It could have been much worse: A second cache of explosives under that school did not detonate. It was fairly easy to buy dynamite until the late 1970s.

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bauerle/disaster.htm

No law will deter a deranged ideologue bent on murder.
 
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I'll agree that there really is nothing you can do. Having purchased more than my fair share of firearms, it seems to me that even though this kid passed the background check to purchase his hand gun, he clearly lied on his paperwork, thus obtained the gun illegally. I know it does not count for much, but of course that will never make it into the media's account of the story.
 
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