14 little souls and one dear teacher

[Dave Grubb]

I did, Dave...Such laws exist right now, and my oldest friend here in Montgomery County is employed by the county to serve such warrants and transport the subjects to a facility for psychiatric evaluation...This has been his duty assignment for about four years and he is very good at it...So good in fact, they he trains others for similar duty...In that time, there have been no mass killings committed by anyone he has dealt with...

Is his effectiveness in implementing the spirit and intent of the law responsible for the absence of Montgomery County mass shootings?...The argument could be made either way, but proving a negative (an impossible task) would be necessary...I'll listen to any alternative which does not involve the enactment of further useless restrictions on the lawful possession of firearms......Ben

You may have an effective law in TX but much of the rest of the nation does not, as can be seen here. I do question if the success you attribute to this one individual is indicative of the entire state.

My wife struggled for years with her limited ability to commit anyone involuntarily. In fact, over the course of her career there were many that she did a limited (duration) involuntary commitment on and were then released after a few days and went on to hurt either themselves or others. The lacks law and a disinterested judge can reverse the position of a medical professional in minutes.

Do a bit of research and find out how many of these perpetrators have been "through the system". They can't be left to simply "go through the system", they have to be held and treated.

[Mike]

I agree with Dave about the "Red Flag Laws"

.......This guy purchase of two AR15s and 350 rounds of ammo online from a dealer in Georgia for delivery/pick-up locally was completely legal under current law.

This needs to change.

Unless the law was broken he still had to take delivery from a licensed dealer the same as purchasing the weapons locally. Background check and all.

The background check is where we are failing to stop many of these people who shouldn't own weapons. It is cursory at best.

[Dave Grubb]

This guy had flags and not knowing what "red flag laws" you may have in Texas----they didn't work in this case. It seems that Ramos went through the system

As for the background checks---they are a jock, they need to be revised and strengthened.

[Honda]

I fully support the private ownership of guns. I also believe it is entirely too easy to obtain guns.

[FredK]

I going to wait for some dumb idiot TV clown claim it's all a hoax. That it just contrived by lefties to get your guns.

Not that the other 900 or so shootings matter either.

We seem to forget God has a plan for us and the clock only gives us so much time on this planet. If those children were to die in a bus crash instead of by a gun would we here fighting for safer buses. Think not.

Can and should we figure out there's more to lumping people into groups for or against issues.

The real question here is, why is there so much hate spread, when God everyone asked to love thy neighbor. He didn't say only love Dems or Reps, gun owners or not, color of skin, or the hundreds of other things we daily bitch about.

I'll offer prayers of comfort for the families knowing that it'll never take their hurt away. May someday they will have that comfort.

[Kevin]

I cannot understand why people are so quick to blame an inanimate object for the criminal acts of humans. Blaming the gun is no different than blaming the automobile for deaths caused by drunk drivers. It is the criminal act of human drunk drivers that cause the deaths yet we never hear of banning alcohol or automobiles.

The gun is part of the problem - a semi-auto that can accept an external magazine, especially since magazines exist that have the capacity for over 100 rounds. It is uniquely lethal. Yes, the gun needs to have a bad person pick it up and use it but as has been seen, it is pretty easy to do so in this country. A bad person without a gun is no where near as easily and immediately lethal as a bad person with a gun.

No other country has this problem. No other country is doing shooter drills in elementary schools. No other country is developing architectural features ASSUMING there will be an active shooter at a school. Children in other countries do not regularly practice going into a dark room and staying silent, lest the bad person with a gun come in and shoot them to death. We do.

[Kevin]

My thoughts exactly...When I see arguments that address the culprit and not the choice of tool, I may rejoin the discussion...If an actual discussion exists......Ben

That is an easy out, Ben. Other countries have bad individuals. What those people don't have is access to a gun. It is not just the bad person, it is a bad person with access to a gun.

[Kevin]

I did, Dave...Such laws exist right now, and my oldest friend here in Montgomery County is employed by the county to serve such warrants and transport the subjects to a facility for psychiatric evaluation...This has been his duty assignment for about four years and he is very good at it...So good in fact, they he trains others for similar duty...In that time, there have been no mass killings committed by anyone he has dealt with...

Is his effectiveness in implementing the spirit and intent of the law responsible for the absence of Montgomery County mass shootings?...The argument could be made either way, but proving a negative (an impossible task) would be necessary...I'll listen to any alternative which does not involve the enactment of further useless restrictions on the lawful possession of firearms......Ben

Your insistence on a solution that does not affect your personal enjoyment of firearms is the problem, Ben. You are putting your desire for a firearm above the lives of children when you make that insistence. Is your right to a firearm worth these children's lives?

[Kevin]

New York has red flag laws and they missed it regarding the Buffalo shooter.

Precisely correct. Red flag laws are tangential part of any solution. The problem is access to a LOT of firepower. That makes us unique in the world.

[Kevin]

I fully support the private ownership of guns. I also believe it is entirely too easy to obtain guns.

We finally agree on something.

[Kevin]

In this thread, social media has been identified as the culprit. As well as the news media. And movies. And video games.

This shooter did not storm the school with a Twitter account. He didn't read the news to these children. He didn't watch movies them to death and he didn't video game them to death.

He shot them. With a gun. Whatever else he might have been - bad person, sick person, whatever - it was his access to a gun that made him lethal. He shot his way past armed guards (consider THAT, for a moment. We need armed guards to protect our schools from people with guns already and Ted Cruz thinks arming teachers is the solution. Teacher training now will consist of time on the range, pumping bullets into targets.) and when confronted, barricaded himself in a room and shot these children so horrifically that DNA samples were needed to identify the bodies.

And no solution that takes the gun from his hands is acceptable if it means your own enjoyment of a firearm is modified? Really?

[Ferraridriver]

In this thread social media has not been identified as the culprit, it has been proposed as a factor in the cause of the suspect's behavior. That's all!
We all know a gun killed all those children but to say that without a gun he couldn't have done what he did is not accurate. He could have gone in there with a suicide vest, a baseball bat and bludgeoned them to death or wrecked havoc with a shovel. There are lots of ways to kill people, we've been doing it since Able.

To clearly state my position, I am not opposed to the Second Amendment, however I am strongly opposed to the easy availability of semi-automatic weapons like the one used in this case. I see no need for the average civilian to own assault type weapons.

[Dave Grubb]

A clarification regarding "red flag laws". I will speak about PA only since I do not have detailed personnel knowledge of others----but I'd wager they are similar to PA. The so called "red flag" law in Pa is toothless, it is written as to not offend anyone---least of all the potential threat to society. I fully acknowledge that individual rights must be protected but when a judge can, at will, unilaterally overwrite the opinion and recommendations of a medical professional without review---that amounts to a bad joke law.

Individual rights cannot trump societal rights in any situation of this gravity.

[Kevin]

In this thread social media has not been identified as the culprit, it has been proposed as a factor in the cause of the suspect's behavior. That's all!
We all know a gun killed all those children but to say that without a gun he couldn't have done what he did is not accurate. He could have gone in there with a suicide vest, a baseball bat and bludgeoned them to death or wrecked havoc with a shovel. There are lots of ways to kill people, we've been doing it since Able.

To clearly state my position, I am not opposed to the Second Amendment, however I am strongly opposed to the easy availability of semi-automatic weapons like the one used in this case. I see no need for the average civilian to own assault type weapons.

He didn't go in with a shovel. Had he done so, he would have been stopped pretty damned easily. A man barricaded in a room with a shovel is a LOT less lethal than a man with a semi-automatic and high capacity magazines. What made him so lethal was his gun, not a shovel or a baseball bat. Why did he choose a gun? Because he could kill faster and easier. Guns and shovels are not in the same league, so the argument about what else he could have used won't work here, FD. He chose a gun as best suited to the job he wanted to do, which was kill, not dig a hole.

He shot his grandmother in the face. He was being pursued by the Border Patrol and crashed his vehicle, then shot his way past armed guards at the school. He holed up in a room and held off police while killing his victims. Harder to do all that with a shovel.

And, if the stories today are correct, he had seven 30 round external magazines. The semi-auto that accepts a high cap round mag is a real factor here in making these shootings so lethal. Ben's revolvers are a LOT less lethal in terms of wholesale slaughter.

[Kevin]

Red flag laws are relying on human intuition to pick up the signs that a person with a gun is about to kill. If he didn't have a gun in the first place, we wouldn't be relying on a really faulty system - humans miss signal behaviors all the time. Red flag laws are a piece of the puzzle but relying on them to be "the solution" is once again an attempt to focus solely on the culprit and not the fact that a nut burger with a gun is the problem, not just the nut burger.

It is saying that a system known to fail spectacularly is preferable than any modification of your own enjoyment of a firearm. It accepts Uvalde as a cost of living in America.

And no, I'm not suggesting that you are proposing this as "the solution", Dave. Just pointing out the tradeoffs.