[LOCKED] OT - Mass Shooting leaves 14 Children and 1 Teacher dead at Texas Elementary School

Submitted by Nervous Bird on May 24th, 2022 at 7:43 PM

MOD EDIT - Before this gets too far down some divisive roads, I am going to lock it but leave the comments.

I will just say what I said last night on Twitter - when it comes to the issue of guns and access to them, if Columbine wasn't enough for you, if Sandy Hook was insufficient for you, if Parkland didn't move the needle for you, and all the ones in between and before, all the lives ended or altered and the families torn asunder, then you're simply going to need to be honest - you do not care, at least not enough that you would be willing to do something for the collective good. If you are in this category, please simply accept that about yourself. - LSA

This is the 2nd mass shooting with 10+ fatalities in ten days. I think the issue of gun rights/control transcends 'politics'. This is not about left or right, liberal or conservative, it's about people of all political persuasions demanding reasonable solutions so that our children, our elderly, can shop, go to school and church with more safety. We can protect gun rights and people simultaneously. As a start, maybe the country should outlaw and confiscate any magazine that has more than a 6 round capacity. 

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/24/1101037902/texas-elementary-school-shooting-uvalde

bronxblue

May 24th, 2022 at 9:23 PM ^

The fact you think "hey, other places also have issues with excessive gun violence" is a viable answer to "why are we mourning the deaths of 10+ innocent people for the second time in under 2 weeks" is why I don't have any faith that we'll see an end to such senseless killings.

Anyway, if you're wondering Mexico has a firearm death/100k rate of 7.64; the US at 12.21/100k.  So yeah, Mexico is still significantly safer when it comes to gun deaths as the US.

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mexwolv

May 24th, 2022 at 9:50 PM ^

Don't want to create controversy,  Mexico has severe violence issues.

The only thing I want to add is that most of violence is gang, cirme or cartel related.  We have very strict gun laws down here yet the cartels and gangs have no problem having access to them, but regular citizens like myself don't.  I do not own a gun and most of my friends don't either.  there is no way an 18 year old kid down here could purchase a firearm.

 

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RDDGoblue

May 24th, 2022 at 7:46 PM ^

I think this falls squarely under politics in the way you presented your gun law opinions. I dont think this post has any place on a Michigan sports blog.  Head over to reddit with this.

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MGlobules

May 24th, 2022 at 9:10 PM ^

How any of us feel about gun laws is beside the point when someone just killed 21 people with a gun, the 12th such mass murder this year according to one source? I'm open to arguments that this isn't the place to fight about it, but saying that gun laws are beside the point strikes me as pretty curious logic. 

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Robbie Moore

May 24th, 2022 at 9:40 PM ^

I favor much stricter gun control. But that is low hanging fruit if we have the will to actually do it.

What really scares as hell out of me is rapidly escalating societal derangement (of which gun violence and mass shootings is a symptom) caused by an inability of people and institutions to cope with the speed of events, the pace of change and the instantaneous communication of every last event or comment. There is no time to think (only react) and everyone is entitled to their own facts. Reason and understanding are crushed by anger, hatred and vindictiveness. And how does that genie get put back in the bottle??

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1974

May 24th, 2022 at 9:51 PM ^

My, what an interesting take.

How any of us feel about gun laws is beside the point when someone just killed 21 people with a gun, the 12th such mass murder this year according to one source?

No.

I'm open to arguments that this isn't the place to fight about it ...

That's the idea.

... saying that gun laws are beside the point strikes me as pretty curious logic. 

That's not what I wrote. You chose to infer as much.

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Nervous Bird

May 24th, 2022 at 7:55 PM ^

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I think some of us fine former students of the University of Michigan can have a reasonable, mature discussion about something that can and does affect every aspect of our society. Plus, I have never accessed reddit. I still work for a living. I don't have much time online discussion forums. I have a Facebook account, but I post here more than on that forum. Reddit, Twitter, etc... I'm unfamiliar with. 

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RDDGoblue

May 24th, 2022 at 7:59 PM ^

Regardless of your belief that an intelligent discourse can be had, I think that everyone here knows better.

But if you reaaaaallly want to start an intelligent discourse, please tell us all why 6 round magazines are the appropriate number.  Why not 5?  Why not 7?  Please show statistics and explain fully.  

Also, there is some arrogance in your assumption that either everyone here is a UM alum, or that those of us that are not are not intelligent enough to have a discussion.

Joined: 09/07/2008

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Nervous Bird

May 24th, 2022 at 8:10 PM ^

Hey, relax. My intentions were not to arrogantly assume that all on the site are UM alums. I was simply being casual in prodding the board into discussion. I'm fully aware that there are non UM students on this site. I didn't mean to offend. Relax.

Next, I used 6 round magazines as the limit because most revolvers are either 5 or 6 shots. The intent would be to try to limit the number of casualties in these shootings. If there are only 6 shots per magazine a person would have to stop shooting to reload. That added time may allow potential victims to escape, or detain the shooter. 

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JonnyHintz

May 24th, 2022 at 8:42 PM ^

Out of curiousity, is there a reason you chose revolvers as your baseline? Obviously revolvers still exist and are owned by many, but they’re not the most commonly owned type of handgun. Pistols tend to be more popular than revolvers and many pistols come with standard mag capacity higher than 6. 
 

To piggyback on the previous question, choosing a revolver’s bullet capacity as your baseline for all guns just seems arbitrary on the surface. 
 

As a side note, this really isn’t the place for this type of discussion. As well-intentioned as you may have been, this is a Michigan sports blog. This type of topic is only going to cause issues and arguments that turn ugly. 

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JonnyHintz

May 24th, 2022 at 9:41 PM ^

But you then run into the problem of all of these magazines already existing with higher capacity, and the ease with which to circumvent the ban with altering magazines that are purchased post-ban. 
 

The problem we’re going to run into with any law regarding bans or limits is the enforcement of these laws with the pure volume that already exists. They all sound good in theory, but the practicality of them is where we’re going to run into issues and fail to solve the problem. 

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JonnyHintz

May 24th, 2022 at 10:02 PM ^

Yeah I don’t think I said that.
 

But if we’re on the topic of making meaningful changes, we can acknowledge that bans or mag limits aren’t going to accomplish that. By no means am I saying nothing can or should be done. It’s not an easy answer. I don’t think there is any single answer to the problem. 
 

But we can assess the fact that there are 400 million guns in this country. The majority of those come with standard magazine capacity north of 6. Making mags  with more than 6 bullets illegal isn’t going to make a billion+ mags disappear. Criminals, and a majority of “good guy” gun owners aren’t going to willingly give up all of their mags. 
 

We don’t have to sit here and pretend like it’s a simple fix and making a few new laws is going to solve the problem. It’s a MUCH more complex issue and guns are so prevalent in America that it makes it a much taller task to address the issue by addressing guns specifically. 

 

 

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JonnyHintz

May 24th, 2022 at 10:21 PM ^

Once again, I don’t believe I said that. Quite the opposite actually. Something needs to be done. There’s no simple answer here. 
 

What I AM saying is that we can’t sit here and pretend that making a few new laws or bans is going to make a meaningful change here. Once a problem gets to be too big, simply creating laws isnt going to make an impact. You’re doing something just for the sake of doing something and the issue still goes unaddressed.

 

A mag limit isn’t going to erase the billion+ mags that would be in violation of the new law. A gun ban isn’t going to erase the 400 million+ guns in this country. We can acknowledge this right? If we’re looking for meaningful change, we can see this isn’t going to accomplish that. That’s my point. 

 

 

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BlueWolverine02

May 24th, 2022 at 11:59 PM ^

Gotta start somewhere.  Ban large capacity magazines and put some strict repercussions for people who get caught with them.  Possession of a magazine, 30 days in jail.  Possession of an assault rifle, 90 days in jail.  Use of an assault rifle in committing a crime, double the sentence.  Will it get all the guns off the street right away?  No of course not, but 20 years from now you might see a real difference.  20 years is too long you say?  I agree, Kip Kinkle shot up a school back in 1998, that was more than 20 years ago, should have started back then.

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UMinSF

May 25th, 2022 at 4:00 AM ^

Sadly, it goes back farther than that - and much closer to home.

I lived on the Bursley hall (6th Douglas) where 2 people (including a close friend and hallmate) were shot and killed by another hallmate. That was back in 1981.

I fucking hate guns. 

I will never understand how or why anyone feels the right of an 18 year old to have guns outweighs the right of people to not get shot. I honestly don't give a flying fuck about our bizarre, warped interpretation of a vaguely worded amendment to our Constitution. 

I've no doubt there are problems inherent in US society in addition to guns that make us so terribly more violent and murderous than all other countries - but our mad assembly of a 400 million gun private arsenal ABSOLUTELY contributes to the problem - and 18 innocent kids today, and my dear friend years ago died because of it.

For crying out loud, we have to stop this madness.

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Wendyk5

May 25th, 2022 at 9:43 AM ^

Watching people try to defend certain types of guns or magazines or whatever is madness. They use the 2nd Amendment to try to defend their right to own any kind of gun they want for any purpose. Even the Heller decision, which I found to be outrageous, says there should be limits on the kinds of guns individuals should be allowed to have, and outlines the circumstances in which individuals have a right to own guns (self-defense). So when I hear people saying the 2nd Amendment gives them the right to have an arsenal, it actually doesn't, not explicitly. It's just that our lawmakers don't have the balls to make laws that will both provide some degree of gun control and still fall under the current 2nd Amendment interpretation. 

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teldar

May 25th, 2022 at 10:17 AM ^

What's an assault rifle? Any semi-automatic rifle? AR does N O T stand for assault rifle. It was the AR Stoner company who designed them. Assault rifle is a completely misapplied term and doesn't really mean anything. You need to say what you're talking about. Semi-automatic? Detachable magazine? What about semi-automatics that will hold 15 rounds internally in a tube magazine? Is  that an "assault rifle" ? And people talk about high power rifles. An AR-15 is not a high-powered rifle, it's a moderate capacity, small caliber round. What makes an AR-15 deadly is that it's a small round without much recoil that can be fired accurately at a high rate. 

 

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XtremeUMich

May 24th, 2022 at 8:44 PM ^

As a thought experiment I would argue we should make extended magazines mandatory for both handguns and rifles. Why? Because they jam, nearly universally.

The Glock handgun used by the NY subway shooted jammed and he was stopped because of it:

https://nypost.com/2022/04/12/brooklyn-subway-shooting-suspects-gun-jammed-during-carnage-police-sources/

The Colorado theater shooter was stopped when his extended mags jammed too:

https://www.cnn.com/2012/07/22/us/colorado-shooting-investigation/index.html

Would mass shootings still happen with the extended mag ban? Yes unfortunately. We can look at the Virgina Tech shooting to see that a stand handgun with normal magazines was used to kill 30 people. And right here in Oxford two standard magazines were used to kill four students in a matter of seconds.

This isn't an argument for or against, it's a reminded that I think we universally want to "do something ", but I think that it's much harder than saying "this law" or "this ban" will make it stop.

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Wendyk5

May 24th, 2022 at 10:06 PM ^

I honestly don't think we all want to do something. There have been plenty of opportunities to do something, anything really, but our leaders haven't taken any steps to do anything. Or I should say the Senate hasn't. Even today, several Senators doubled down on not changing anything, or coming up with ways to anticipate who's going to be the next shooter (how do we do that? we can't jail people for thoughts or for something that we think they might do) rather than addressing anything with background checks or changing existing gun laws. They just don't have the will to do it. They don't care enough. If they did, something would have been done after Sandy Hook. If 20 dead 6 year old's doesn't move the country, nothing will. 

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MgoBlaze

May 25th, 2022 at 4:25 AM ^

Mass shootings are not a bug of American society, they're a feature. We've had them for decades because there's a part of American society that still hasn't accepted that they lost the civil war.

Who lobbies politicians to vote against restricting access to guns? The NRA.

Which country has been involved in operations "to influence" the NRA? Russia.

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/27/764879242/nra-was-foreign-asset-to-russia-ahead-of-2016-new-senate-report-reveals

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/01/nra-russia-investigations-gun-lobby

So mass shootings are not going to stop until the politicians that take money from the NRA for their votes are out of office. Russia has been waging a war of dezinformatsiya for decades and we're just now figuring it out. Who's involved, you might ask?

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/these-are-the-american-right-wingers-covering-for-putin-as-russia-invades-ukraine-1311965/

I'd also bet that they've had some influence on Joe Rogan giving racist goons like Gavin McInnes, Alex Jones, Milo Iannopolis, and Richard Spencer a platform for their hate, as well as sponsoring those videos. Same thing with Tucker Carlson, except the Kremlin has a long history of playing nice with Fox News. Because they're on the same team.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/technology/russia-media-fox-news.html

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/14/kremlin-memos-russian-media-tucker-carlson-fox-news-mother-jones

And that's just the NRA, not other shadowy groups like The Fellowship that are injecting dark money into American politics. Citizens United just opened the floodgates.

https://www.npr.org/2009/11/24/120746516/the-secret-political-reach-of-the-family

https://decider.com/2019/08/09/the-family-on-netflix-politicians-list-the-fellowship/

Many GOP policies only make sense when taking Russia into context. Like Rand Paul voting against arms to Ukraine or Trump wanting to withdraw from NATO.

But I'm sure we'll hear some disingenuous arguments from the terrorist sympathizer contingent in the upcoming weeks about how those elementary school kids would still be alive if they all were issued Barrett M82 .50 cal sniper rifles in kindergarten.

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turtleboy

May 24th, 2022 at 8:58 PM ^

Reasonable discussions about important topics can and should be had by reasonable intelligent people. However, this is a sports forum. We talk about sports here. Have reasonable discussions about politics, or societal reforms, or your thoughts about legislation, or the news someplace else. 

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LDNfan

May 25th, 2022 at 9:03 AM ^

Not one single person forced you or anyone else to open this thread, read the OP nor comment.

Its a national tragedy and sticking ones head in the ground because 'sports blog' is a choice that you can take whilst others are pissed off enough at the current state of affairs and the 'head in sand' approach to push up against the rules to vent a bit. 

Don't like...don't click. Simple. 

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Maizinator

May 24th, 2022 at 7:54 PM ^

We can all agree it is a terrible tragedy and the frequency of these events is alarming.  But, this isn't the place for the debate about what to do.
 

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Kilgore Trout

May 24th, 2022 at 10:06 PM ^

There's no real reason to debate what to do about it, because this country has decided not to do anything about it. If Sandy Hook didn't cause any change, nothing will. I send my two kids to elementary and middle school with the knowledge that there's a non-zero chance they'll get shot at school. It's fucked up, but that is what America has accepted. 

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Maizinator

May 24th, 2022 at 10:43 PM ^

I hear you.  Just this year my son's school had two lockdowns because of reported threats.

Collectively as parents, we all must come to the realization that we have failed in our basic duty... to protect our children... both from the violence itself and from living with the threat of it every day. 

It makes me profoundly sad.  

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blue in dc

May 24th, 2022 at 7:55 PM ^

Since over 70% of one party want stricter gun control and under 30% of the other major party don’t, I am pretty sure that your premise that the issue of gun control/rights transcends politics is false.

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