The issue of involuntary commitment is another potential avenue to reducing mass shootings specifically, but I'd be very wary. Laws vary by state, but generally people can submit forms requesting an evaluation of an individual for posing a potential threat to the community. That request can then be acted upon by some combination of judges or physicians.
Sothis wrote:In terms of mental health evaluations, surely most medical professionals will be exactly that - professional. I seriously doubt anything even remotely close to a significant percentage of them will be motivated by political agendas.
I'm not so sure myself. Many people in the West have this peculiar conviction that scientists are somehow superior to the rest of us when it comes to avoiding cognitive bias, often expressed as "scientists are logical, rational people who love to be proven wrong and discover things, so if they don't believe in X, X can't be true." This statement reflects on the sad state of skepticism in the West today, which is largely a political weapon used against the right. (Which is why groups like CSI are so angry about climate skeptics and have mounted this PR campaign to take the word away from them.)
And even if I could trust that scientists would not be motivated by political agendas, evaluation requests can be submitted in most states by any individual. Given the social-justice insanity sweeping through the political left, it is not difficult to imagine that liberals would take advantage of relaxed standards for involuntary commitment to submit requests for anyone who "triggered" them, to use the current parlance. I'm not furtive about discussing firearms in public, both because I enjoy technical discussion and because I try to promote safe practices even to people who don't own them. I find it all to easy to imagine a leftist, hopped up on their rage-fueled self righteousness, submitting such an application upon overhearing my conversations. This is part of how the left destroys free speech, which they will justify by saying "hey, your free speech isn't being taken away, you're just suffering consequences for it." Yeah, that means it's being taken away. I could use the same logic to justify any criminal activity. "Hey, your right to fuck children isn't being taken away, you're just suffering consequences for it."
Sothis wrote:What are you proposing? More guns in more places? What evidence can you provide to show this has in fact, worked?
Here is a survey of criminals that might shed some light on the matter: From the National Institute of Justice, 1985.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Photoco ... 9NCJRS.pdf
From page 30:
A criminal is not going to mess around with a victim he knows is armed with a gun
Strong Agree: 21 Agree: 31 Disagree: 35 Strong Disagree: 9
One reason burglars avoid houses when people are home is that they fear being shot
35, 39, 20, 7
Most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than running into the police
21, 36, 32, 10
A smart criminal always tried to find out if his potential victim is armed
30, 51, 15, 4
A store owner who is known to keep a gun on the premises is not going to get robbed very often
18, 40, 32, 9
Committing crime against an armed victim is an exciting challenge
10, 14, 34, 42
A clear majority of criminals prefer to avoid being shot. The answers to question 3 are particularly interesting, especially if the people are recidivist. They know there are precise rules of engagement police officers are required to observe, even if they don't always do so. That isn't the case for civilians, who are less exposed to threat situations than officers, and thus, more likely to shoot.
Of course, all of this pertains to incarcerated criminals, who are violent but not insane. Mass shooters frequently are. Many commit suicide at the scene, therefore demonstrating no sense of self-preservation. There are a number of schools that have employed School Resource Officers, which are LEOs assigned to a school. There's a lot of debate among psychologists as to the effectiveness of SROs in deterring crime in general, as in this PDF:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... 4873,d.cWw
Nota bene: this particular PDF is not talking about mass shootings, but merely general school violence. Also, it lists students 12-18, which means middle to high school. SROs are generally not a presence in elementary schools since the environment isn't conducive to intra-student violence. However, many jurisdictions have begun to employ SROs in elementary schools in direct response to things like Sandy Hook. There are valid concerns about the impact on the learning environment of protective measures, but sadly the left often strawmans the school safety argument by alleging that we're "turning schools into fortresses." No, what we are trying to do is ensure some measure of armed protection in case of another mass shooting. No one is saying it will prove 100% effective, but its part of a spectrum of strategies. There is no "silver bullet" to fixing this problem.
In looking for solutions to the problem of gun violence in general, and mass shootings in particular, we need to be cognizant of what we are likely to achieve, and that
solutions for one problem may not be applicable to the other. There are 300,000,000 firearms in circulation in this country. Confiscation is in the exceedingly unlikely pile, for reasons which you yourself admit to, i.e. the gun is enshrined in American culture in a way it just isn't elsewhere. An expanded background check is certainly possible and desirable, but the left is going to have to give up a few things to get it. There's a perception among gun owners (and I certainly share it) that the left is never satisfied with anything it achieves, and if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. I don't have an issue with eliminating private sale, I just don't want the left to segue from that into another assault weapons ban or other such thing. Banning and confiscating guns is pretty useless in a nation like the US, which makes comparisons to the UK and Australia faulty. Also, even the left doesn't believe in the efficacy of such things. Just ask them why we can't ban drugs or deport 11,000,000 illegal immigrants. You'll be treated to a scoffing lecture about logistics, costs, and black markets, which they probably won't realize is a valid objection to their gun ban, but then, reflection isn't a significant feature of leftist thought. To target the crime guns that result from theft, we should make gun safes tax deductible to incentivize their purchase, since theft is a major source of crime guns:
https://www.ncjrs.gov/app/publications/ ... x?ID=97099 I'm not sure exactly what we could do to make illegal activity more illegal that would act as a deterrent. Straw purchase, for example, is already a federal felony. Adding or increasing things like mandatory minimum sentences for illegal purchases perhaps, but that only works on sane, if criminal, people. How do you deter a mentally unbalanced individual with no regard for his own safety, let alone others', from carrying out a highly illegal act? I can see relaxing rules on involuntary commitment and strengthening defenses at possible shooting sites. The point is that the mass shooting solutions are much harder problems, and the simplistic narratives pushed by the media (of all stripes) do not inspire thoughtful discussion.
Throughout all of this we need to be aware of a realistic goal. We're never going to prevent every incident of violence, just like we're never going to prevent every single border crossing. So what, given the unique conditions that exist in the United States, constitutes an "acceptable" level of gun violence?