NFR: No Solution, just dead kids...

Discussion in 'Fly Fishing Forum' started by Go Fish, Dec 14, 2012.

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  1. Lugan Joe Streamer

    Posts: 2,372
    Beautiful View, WA
    Ratings: +755 / 2
    Salmo, there is absolutely an angle of irrationality to this. But then again, after 9/11 we created the TSA, invaded two countries, enacted the freedom-limiting Patriot Act and spent (spend) trillions on the lot. The death toll on 9/11, while dramatic and awful that day, was around 2,000. That is 1/6 the number that die of gun murders each year. And yet, we spend and we take our shoes off at the TSA checkpoint, and so on. I mean seriously, one incompetent half-wit tries to blow up his shoe on an airplane, and we are all compelled to do the TSA shoe dance ad infinitum.

    I offer that comparison just to make a point that it's not unprecedented for this country to act irrationally. I actually don't have an opinion about what to do about school security for many of the reasons you cite and more.
    slider292 and dfl like this.
  2. Jerry Daschofsky Moderator

    Posts: 7,688
    Graham, WA, USA.
    Ratings: +652 / 5
    Unfortunately, you're talking about that many deaths in one day in a couple incidences (and all planned together). Now, if all those shootings were planned and happened in one day, then it's a good comparison. Especially when you're talking terrorist attacks (and if you want, I can gladly get combat decorated soldiers on here who've fought against terrorists to give you their say on this as well, but you won't like it).

    Posts: 2,010
    Wallingford, WA
    Ratings: +1,544 / 0
    Salmo, sure if you play the stats a school shooting/attack is an unlikely occurrence, but this conclusion borders on cynical, yet dressed as weary pragmatism.

    Let's take a minute to dig a little deeper. Domestic gun massacres occur mainly in three places:

    1- Workplace (post office, cubicle farm or some position of monotony (we are excluding PhD / Mentor killings like UW, 2000, Dept of Pathology, given only 1-2 die)
    2- Restaurant (fast food typically, you are right to fear the cheeseburger...)
    3- School or university

    Let's look at some school shootings or attacks:

    Westside Middle 1998, 5 dead Arkansas
    Cleveland School , Stockton CA 1989 6 dead 30 injured
    Cal State Fullerton 1976 7 dead, 2 injured
    Oikos Univesity, 2012 Oakland CA 7 dead 3 injured
    Columbine High, CO 1999 15 dead, 24 injured
    Sandy Hook, CT 2012 28 dead
    Northern Illinois University Il 2008 6 dead, 18 injured
    University of Iowa, 1991 6 dead
    Bath School Bombing, MI 1927 45 dead
    Kent State, OH 1970 4 dead
    Thurston High, OR 1998 4 dead, 24 injured
    Amish school shooting, PA 2006 6 dead, 5 injured
    UT, TX 1966, 16 dead
    Virginia Tech, VA 33 dead, 25 injured
    Simon's rock, MA 1992 2 dead, 3 injured

    So if you work backwards and try and figure the percentage of gun massacres by location on a page like this:

    Discounting attacks like Sept 11, Racial riots, Indian Massacres, stuff from the 1800's and so on then things get interesting- you got about

    25 % of massacres occurring in schools or universities.

    So yeah, it's an outlier in absolute occurrences, but 1/4 massacres happen disproportionately in places we typically think of as super safe, where 6-25 year olds hang that's sort of interesting, right?

    And then Hopefully you wonder why would that be, why so high? Well now we're talking about hypothesis so here are some of a school or university

    1- the population is unprepared and perhaps disproportionately female and unlikely to resist or fight back
    2- there is an absence of law enforcement in those locations
    3- Members of the population are known to the assailant, they are peers...
    4- The shooter knows the geography

    Which brings us back to plans to stop this crap, particularly #3...we could start here with peer surveillance, teaching kids to recognize mental illness and advocate for help for those who have it. Those skills are important for life anyways, what do we have to lose by having kids well versed in psychology 101 by the time they leave High School?

    What then if kids and their teachers define that risky kid? Well they ask that kid to see the counselor, they run some Neuropsych tests like the MMPI, they test low on scores of empathy and insight, high on impulsivity and anger... and you bring in their parents and this kid fascinated with firearms and do you have any guns in your house? Do you know of any of your kid's friends who have guns? Then it seems like you can actually get a plan going there...

    I.e. ask those parents, for the sweet love of all that is good and true, to get rid of their guns because you have defined, based on evidence and patterns, that their kid is one that is highly likely to do something really fucking stupid and deadly...

    So please, if you buy into the statistical outlier, fine, but tucked within that outlier are plenty of clues and ways to improve what we do to prevent this....I for one would love to see kids learn the ins and outs of psychology and it's pattern recognitions and ways to help intervene, not just for kids in need, but more pragmatically so they don't fuck up and date, marry, breed with and then hate their life partner/co parent. Worst case scenario, they resent their mutual child. In essence, behaviors that might fuel another generation of angry, marginalized hotheads with daddy/mommy issues

    Those same models could then be used in the workplace, again based on peer surveillance and early psychological intervention and risk assessment.

    Not sure how to do the fast food one though...Cheeseburgers....maybe stick to drive through? Switch to Thai food?

    What's interesting also are the environments that do not appear on the list of massacres...sporting events, concerts, street fairs, parades, buses, cracker bar....
  4. Steve Bird Member

    Posts: 68
    Northport Washington
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  5. Cruik Active Member

    Posts: 459
    Seattle, WA
    Ratings: +141 / 0

    I agree completely. As callous as this sounds, policy making should be done without emotion. To formulate beneficial policies with long-lasting support requires sober calculation. However, sometimes horrific events cast forgotten issues into the spotlight to be re-examined. As others have said, there needs to be a frank, open-ended discussion about the status of mental health diagnosis and treatment as well as gun-control.

    But when it comes down to it, the prospect of "solving" the mental health problem scares me. 'Boot, I love the idea of educating children about mental health and having discussions with parents about children that might be at risk for these kind of tendencies. I think this would help a lot of children that fall through the cracks, regardless of whether they are future mass murderers. The problem I can't see around is what happens when the parents and the potentially deviant kid don't see the problem or don't want to accept it? When the carrot fails, do you bring out the stick?

    In this country, taking away a person's liberty is a last resort, and we only do so if we know that it is entirely necessary and justified. Many would say it is perfectly acceptable to let 10 guilty men walk for every innocent man convicted because because the notion of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is just that fundamental. Considering this basic paradigm, how many at-risk teenage boys would we have to institutionalize or force to take psychotropic medicine for every mass murder prevention?

    Many think that there are a lot of people on the buses, in the streets, and in our schools who shouldn't be allowed in the general population. They point the finger at the decision to slash state mental asylums when incidents like the CT massacre occur. I don't doubt there's a lot of people that will be calling for a return to something similar, but the decision to get rid of these institutions wasn't just a budgetary decision. People were appalled, and rightly so, at the complete loss of liberty and human decency that occurred. I'm not saying those finger pointers would support a mental health system a la One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest and Nurse Ratched, but I'm just not sure that preventative detention of the mentally ill is advisable at any level of funding or human compassion.
  6. Jim Ficklin Genuine Montana Fossil

    Posts: 2,256
    Columbia Basin
    Ratings: +603 / 0
    Forgot Moses Lake, Boot but you make a sound point. Schools are gun-free zones with a large population of defenseless potential victims and pose little or no initial risk to the perpetrator. If our entire populace exercised the degree of situational awareness that folks in countries such as Israel do, that would help.
    ribka likes this.
  7. Be Jofus G Banned or Parked

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  8. ribka Active Member

    Posts: 1,419
    E WA
    Ratings: +164 / 0
    That model Busmaster rifle was not even manufactured until 2008.
  9. wa_desert_rat Active Member

    Posts: 173
    Moses Lake, WA
    Ratings: +58 / 0
    Although I don't necessarily disagree with everything you've written here, this sort of statement seems to me to be "conservative cant". From my perspective the media is anything but liberal. AM radio is chock full of seemingly rabid conservative talk shows with little or no regard for facts. Newspapers are still, for the most part, run by large - and conservative - media empires and then, of course, there's Fox "News". But I guess those guys have no "agenda".

    I own guns, was once trained extensively to use guns, carried afterwards for 20 years because I felt that the training at tax-payer's expense meant that I had an obligation to act if the circumstances warrant. They never did and in my 60s I decided not to renew my permit.

    Professionally I feel that "fat grip" handguns are counterproductive and lead to "spraying" (as an incident in Florida years ago concluded). Personally, I don't think I need an assault weapon but that if you want one there should be an avenue for you to get one that conforms to the 2nd amendment and still protects the rest of us.

    Like most people I lean towards the left for some things and towards the right for others.

    But I try to realize when I've been hoodwinked into thinking one side or the other is always right.

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  10. wa_desert_rat Active Member

    Posts: 173
    Moses Lake, WA
    Ratings: +58 / 0
    Actually, just try to buy enough nitrate to fill up a truck and you might find yourself surprised by the result.

  11. SteveA Gnu to the board

    Posts: 279
    Western WA
    Ratings: +32 / 0
    Wrong thread. Deleted and transferred.
  12. wa_desert_rat Active Member

    Posts: 173
    Moses Lake, WA
    Ratings: +58 / 0
    Well, of course, school is the single common denominator for everyone isn't it? We all went to school at one time or another. And since so many of these shooters are under 30 (or even still attending school) it's hardly surprising that they choose the environment they know so well. They understand schools, after all.

    What struck me as odd about this latest situation is that the shooter chose an elementary school. But because the facts of this incident are so muddled right now it's hard to determine if he even went to this school; but if he did, it had to have been a decade or more ago. Half of his life ago. So why did he choose not only this particular school but one particular class in this particular school? Or was it simply chance? The first public building he came across that he thought he could invade?

    This, to my mind, underscores the difficulty of even analyzing these incidents. Sure, we can outline where everyone was at every moment, but the "why" will forever elude us. It's because, I think, of the very irrationality of the incidents that makes them unfathomable. Even if we are irrational ourselves, we can't be irrational in exactly the same way as the perpetrators and so we cannot really know what they were thinking.

    Except that, in almost every case, I think they thought that somehow they were the heroes not the villains. They thought that they'd change things.

    If we can ever understand that particular twisted sense of reality we might be able to predict who will do something like this in the future.

    You've done a masterful job of analyzing, statistically, the incidents. We can reliably predict at least one in 2013 and probably two; we cannot predict where, when or who.

    We can turn our schools into fortresses (as some here have suggested) but a determined person with enough resources will still gain entry somehow no matter what we do.

    Maybe the idea of requiring a certain number of teachers to carry concealed weapons, training them to know how and when to use them, and then REQUIRING them to carry them might help these specific incidents. I've always thought that anyone with a concealed-carry-permit should HAVE to carry by virtue of the permit, anyway.

    Knowing that someone might shoot me before I completed any "mission" would certainly deter me. But then I'm rational.

    I hope.

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  13. ribka Active Member

    Posts: 1,419
    E WA
    Ratings: +164 / 0

    As former military who has had explosives training I know the components. My neighbor who is a farmer has over 2 tons of nitrate fertilizer and I am very familiar with the law. Would be very easy to fill up a truck and go down and purchase 20 gal of diesel to produce anfo. And on an off side after reading your sig line I live on solar power and know first hand the requirements of solar power.

    Try living on solar power here in Washington from November to May. I spent an hour this morning cleaning 2 ft of snow from mynpanels . Now running a propane generator for power. Not so great is it?

    I invite you to try it
  14. Grayone Fishin' to the end, Oc.P

    Posts: 1,331
    boring, oregon
    Ratings: +110 / 0
    Let's have some closure..............

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  15. Ed Call Mumbling Moderator

    Posts: 17,361
    Kitsap Peninsula
    Ratings: +1,329 / 9
    Thank you.
  16. wa_desert_rat Active Member

    Posts: 173
    Moses Lake, WA
    Ratings: +58 / 0
    Yes, you can steal it. But the original point of this was that "you can still buy fertilizer" which, at least in the quantities required to produce a truck bomb, is not so true for the average person. Even you. And I'd bet your neighbor might object to you stealing his 2 tons of fertilizer; he might actually call the cops while you were doing it.

    So you're saying that solar panels don't work 100% of the time? There's a shock. We might just as well give up the whole idea then.

  17. Evan Burck Fudge Dragon

    Posts: 6,425
    Duvall, wa
    Ratings: +1,602 / 2
    I can't even run my LED driveway lights on solar here in sunny Duvall.
  18. wa_desert_rat Active Member

    Posts: 173
    Moses Lake, WA
    Ratings: +58 / 0
    I bet you could run 'em on *my* panels. :p

  19. Evan Burck Fudge Dragon

    Posts: 6,425
    Duvall, wa
    Ratings: +1,602 / 2
    Probably. I have two panels on my roof, but they do fuck all to power these lights.
  20. wa_desert_rat Active Member

    Posts: 173
    Moses Lake, WA
    Ratings: +58 / 0
    Maybe a moderator can move these to a new thread.

    So we're not talking about those little "garden walkway" lights that you can buy at Lowe's for $29 with a "solar charger", huh? Dark days can be a bitch, no doubt about it. I assume they're charging a battery bank? Try switching to MPPT controllers, check wire sizes, add or replace batteries, add a panel. But in this state we'll need to pull power from the grid - or a generator - for at least 4 months of the year.

    The whole point of "distributed" solar power is not to power your house all the time but to augment the existing power generation structure. If we can get enough people doing the augmenting that, combined with the ability of the power grid to "wheel" power to other locations, can reduce or maybe eliminate the need for new plants. Meaning no new nukes or coal or even natural gas.

    The bonus is that the grid does not have to be changed; if you can pull 10kw out of the grid you can push 10kw back into it. Where it goes from there is not your concern.

    Nice to see that so many people are now looking at this.

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