From the article I linked, the mass killings in the US peaked in 1929. We had 42 instances in the 1990s. The last decade was down to 26. So in reality we just have faster, better news and we hear about it.

They interviewed some secret service agents that did a study of shootings, mentioned a couple things:

Shootings are very rare - I think maybe we shouldn't worry about them so much?

Usually, the shooter talks about it weeks or more ahead of time, gets weapons and practices,... so if you hear someone talking about shooting people tell the authorities

Newton was an anomaly in this regard - shooter apparently didn't talk about it ahead of time


That's what we should be doing - Secret Service (or whoever) study and recommend changes based on facts and effectiveness


Another interesting thing was early reports were wrong

It was reported early that shooter just used hand guns - he used assault weapons

Shooter was not let in - actually he broke in a window

Shooter went there to kill his mother and her class - mother wasn't a teacher, just an occasional volunteer

On the one hand, despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s. On the other hand, the same time period in the United Kingdom saw a constant and dramatic increase in violent crime to which England’s response was ever-more drastic gun control including, eventually, banning and confiscating all handguns and many types of long guns. Nevertheless, criminal violence rampantly increased so that by 2000 England surpassed the United States to become one of the developed world’s most violence-ridden nations.


A fact that should be of greater concern is that per capita murder overall is only half as frequent in the United States as in several other nations where gun murder is rarer, but murder by strangling, stabbing, or beating is much more frequent.


Israel, in the 1970s, faced a rash of terrorist attacks on their schools. Israel also heard people screaming for more gun control, as we do today. Their government analyzed the problem and decided to do the opposite and armed their teachers instead.

What happened?

School shootings ceased as schools were no longer "soft" targets full of people who could not shoot back.

Edited by livingontheroad on 12/16/2012 21:54:34 MST.

"Shooter went there to kill his mother and her class - mother wasn't a teacher, just an occasional volunteer"

Jerry, how can that be? He had already killed his mother in the home, and then he went to the school.

--B.G.--

60 Minutes said the initial reports were that the mother was a teacher and he targeted her class, neither of which is correct

The initial reporters didn't know she was killed at home before-hand?

Or maybe they thought he killed his mother and then went to kill her class?

Couple thoughts about what the facts are in my opinion regardless of your politics

First Even if we drastically change the laws tomorrow we will still have millions of guns already out there that aren't going away. In a sense the cat is out of the bag here.

Second it would help if we dispelled some Hollywood myths about "assault" weapons. Its common in movies to see the hero sweeping his gun across a room, firing rapidly and knocking over bad guys like bowling pins. That just is not realistic. Civilian assault rifles can't fire that fast because they aren't truly automatic and in any case that kind of rapid fire is very inaccurate. What makes mass shootings so bad is not the speed of the fire but the fact that the shooter is under no pressure and can slowly and methodically shoot.

Should we ban certain guns? Well maybe or maybe not but it won't change the overall picture of guns in America for a LONG time. In the meantime a more profitable discussion is what would actually help.

Here is what might actually help

1. Changing laws so families of true nut cases like Loughmiller of the AZ shooting can get them involuntarily locked up in mental hospitals.

2. Checking for a history of mental illness on firearms background checks. This was supposed to happen but its not really being enforced. No need for a new law just enforce the old one better.

3. Physical security at schools so even if nut cases get guns they don't have free reign there.

so how safe do you really feel at the airport? lamb or lion?
with all the untrained unarmed TSA agents? {not that I would want them armed} but have we really been protected? or have the people just had enough! and protected themselves! pilot subdued by passengers... shoe bomber... by passengers....
and the Virginia flight crashed rather than being used as a weapon... by passengers!

and most recently Vicky Soto who locked her kids in as she bled out!
HEROES stepping up and doing what must be done!

an empty holster scares me, more than the towel heads ever could!

3 rednecks could have stopped 911 from ever happening if not for the false security...
{black, white, green, or orange, it does not matter}

look around and be aware! don`t be "fish in a barrel!"
public school = public day care!?

OUR PRAYERS GO OUT TO THE FAMILIES OF THE VICTIMS.

Edited by mrgadget921 on 12/17/2012 12:16:36 MST.

Links are helpful to research what is said.

For example, there has only been 1 mass murder by a woman?

"In Europe, there are just as many crazy people and disaffected individuals as in the U.S. Compare the mass murder numbers. Europe doesn't sell military assault weapons over the counter and at gun shows to the general public. We do. "

Jeffrey,

Don’t be so quick to point to Europe as an example. Even without your military style weapons, a Norwegian can still kill 77 innocents – and that is with gun control.

"so how safe do you really feel at the airport? ...
3 rednecks could have stopped 911 from ever happening if not for the false security..."

Our over-reaction to 911 was far worse than 911 itself

Two wars killed more U.S. people and way, way more of other people and totally disrupted that area

All of our ridiculous "security theatre" stuff like taking shoes off and the porno scanners is just to scare us so we will go along with whatever they want to do with us

Let us not over-react to these mass shootings

I'm a high school teacher of 13 years, a department chair, and member of our school's leadership team which entails emergency planning and policy among other duties. We regularly carry out lockdown drills to simulate a shooter or other threat on campus.

People in past posts have mentioned security and a school's duty to keep its students safe.

As far as my school is concerned, and I believe my school as an accurate representation of the situation at most schools, the only reason we have not had a violent incident, from a security standpoint, is luck.

If you can jump an 6-8 foot fence, you can be on a school campus in seconds. But that isn't necessary; given the crowds, multiple entrances, etc., a random person can walk onto a campus during morning drop-off with ease. A parent or other "known" face can generally enter without question during morning drop-off.

Sound like we need more security? Talk to your local district about funds. My school has 2400 students and precisely 4 security guards, none of which are armed. We have one police SRO (special resource officer), but he rotates amongst various campuses.

Unless people want us to begin turning our schools into facilities that more resemble prisons (secure entry checkpoints, metal detectors, locked doors, etc.), we are safe by luck alone.

Think about the world we've created here.
I guess the fact that we regularly conduct drills and plan for a "shooter on campus" by locking doors, drawing blinds, and having minors crawl under desks away from windows is a direct by-product of our Freedom to have 300 million guns accessible by just about anyone that wants one, including kids.

School officials, police unions,and government just refuse to admit that there is nothing you can do to prevent and predict the overwhelmingly rare and random violent act.
They feel that they need to say or promise to do "something" to stop it from happening again no matter how hair-brained, ineffectual, and unAmenrican their plan is.
\
We should be having a national debate on mental illness, who is responsible for monitoring these people? diagnosing? How did pour education and health system fail so badly that so many sociopathic mentally ill people are out there waiting to do another copycat and get their 15 minutes again?
Seems like the government and health insurance industry doesn't want that debate, instead the police state offers more lies and the media spreads fear. the knee jerk reaction is to go to the prison wardens play book and treat good law abiding citizens like dangerous criminals and spread suspicion to our neighbors.
Every one of these incidence was perpetrated by someone who was known to be unstable and mental ill. Why did they not get help? Why were they not somewhere that they could be monitored?
Do we already know the answer and don't want to deal with our poor health services?
Are we going to allow government agencies to exploit these tragedies to gain funding and job security by keeping up in a state of fear and suspicion or are we going to fix the health service problem and ask serious questions about our culture?

When we clamp down on airport travel in the name of security, more people drive. Duh. Trips of 150-300 miles become road trips instead of flights and thereby are MUCH less safe. So a decade later we are trying to prevent a reoccurrence of 9-11 (a method of attack that didn't work later the same day when unarmed passengers refused to be compliant) and we don't know if any hijackings have been avoided. But we do know that millions of people driving instead of flying have been at greater risk and thousands have died as a result.

Easier to estimate is that since 600 million passengers are slowed another 30 minutes (my wait times vary from 10 minutes to 5-1/2 hours), then 300 million people-hours are wasted every year. That's 456 75-year lifetimes wasted every year waiting in security lines. We're coming up on 5,000 lifetimes wasted just waiting in line.

Back to schools: Calls for more security seem like a no-brainer. But there are consequences. More money for guards means less money for teachers. Kids notice their surroundings and if we raise them in a security state, I think something is lost. I'm one of the good guys - you want me in your kid's school: I do really cool science demonstrations and I'm apparently the best middle-school math coach for 1000 miles around. But it's a battle already getting into the classroom with NCLB-driven curriculums and tight schedules. Add onerous security to that and I'll stay home more and tutor my own kids instead of everyone's. Is it a bad thing that one can breeze into school without being challenged by a guard and passed through a metal detector? So my MD wife can go in and give a talk on anatomy or coach Battle-of-the-Books?

Perspective, please, perspective. These iconic events so reported so widely and, frankly, over-reacted to, that we forget that the scores (hundreds?) of children who died in a auto accident because soccer-mom was juggling a latte, cell-phone and two errands on the way to school are just as dead; but where is the conversation trying to save those lives?

My response to 9-11 would have been: "Let's all, 100% of us, wear our seat belts for the next year. That will save 5,000 normal people's lives and more than balance out 3,000 dead stockbrokers."

My response to Newtown is, "Reagan was crazy to put all the crazy people on the street to save a few bucks. The NRA needs to raise the bar and be elite, respectable and responsible instead of playing to their whacko faction. Let's not make media celebrities out of pathetic losers. How about a new law that repeals privacy rights of any post-mortem-convicted mass murderer? If you kill more than one other person ALL your dirty laundry will be aired nationwide." Freak-o-nomics did a podcast on copy-cat suicides and NOT glorifying them, digging into the nasty, messy, ugly nature of it turned around a local suicide epidemic in Europe.

I think it's time we allowed concealed carry to extend into schools. It's not a solution, but it could help. Gun free zones are in ineffective unless there are metal detectors and security guards at every entrance.

Well said David

Maybe response to 9-11 should have been to harden cockpit doors

A very thoughtful post, David. Thank you. I, too, have spent hundreds of hours on school campuses as a volunteer, and see things very much the same way that you do.

Can we provide better mental health care? Absolutely. And we should. As for some of these other posts:

NIMH estimates that over a quarter of Americans suffer from some kind of mental illness--which makes the idea of locking up people without their consent a bit problematic...

And allowing more guns into schools? Let's see--there were some 25,000 people wounded accidentally by guns last year...and we want to make sure that they are in every school? Yikes.

I've owned a shotgun. I understand hunting, and target shooting. I understand (although I don't share the need) those who want to carry a pistol for self-protection.

I do not understand why we should allow any civilian in this society to own an assault weapon designed to facilitate killing lots of people all at once. And for every fear I have of the government forcing me into white slavery, I have ten or twenty fears about some whacko with a couple of assault guns having a bad day and opening fire as I drive by on the freeway or take my family shopping.

A rifle or a pistol is plenty. Unless you want to kill more people than that...and then you shouldn't be allowed to have anything sharper than a pencil.

"As tragic as this school shooting is, we need to expand our empathy past nation states if we ever want to evolve humanity's collective consciousness." Abby Martin

"I do not understand why we should allow any civilian in this society to own an assault weapon designed to facilitate killing lots of people all at once."

"A rifle or a pistol is plenty. Unless you want to kill more people than that...and then you shouldn't be allowed to have anything sharper than a pencil."

Paul, Here is the problem with that line of thinking. The assault weapon so many are upset about is of a relatively small caliber. The Bushmaster used by the shooter is designated as .223 and is a .22 caliber round.

Common hunting rifles, the .35 Marlin, 30-30 Remington, .270 Winchester 30.06 Springfield are all 30 caliber rounds and all possess vastly more stopping power than the Bushmaster or any other .22 caliber round. The 30.06 for example is a favorite of bear and moose hunters. Most if not all of these firearms are available to and already exist among the public with semi-auto actions and high capacity mags can be found for some. There are millions more of these firearms among the population than there are assault weapons. So unless you plan on banning all of them a ban will accomplish little.

"Common hunting rifles, the .35 Marlin, 30-30 Remington, .270 Winchester 30.06 Springfield are all 30 caliber rounds and all possess vastly more stopping power than the Bushmaster or any other .22 caliber round. The 30.06 for example is a favorite of bear and moose hunters. Most if not all of these firearms are available to and already exist among the public with semi-auto actions and high capacity mags can be found for some. There are millions more of these firearms among the population than there are assault weapons. So unless you plan on banning all of them a ban will accomplish little."

You've certainly convinced me, Bruce. Let's ban them all. Do you need a high capacity magazine to kill a moose? If so, then you really aren't much of a hunter...