10/5/15 11:42 AM

"...I see this change in how kids are allowed to handle conflict, particularly in school:
- Zero tolerance removes the ability of educators to use common sense and provide teaching moments when bad behavior occurs.
- Long ago a playground scruff could settle a dispute and bond two people as friends or at least allow them to tolerate each others presence. Now it is a suspension or even escalated to a criminal matter.
- The victimization of bullied kids making everyone a victim but not allowing them an effective avenue to resolve the bullying problem.
- Schools inability to provide any sort of discipline that provides teaching moments. In the old days if a kid got in trouble at school he got in even more trouble once he got home. Now if a kid gets in trouble at school the parents are ready to sue the school instead of work with the school.

So instead of any sort of resolution of problems or release/relief the issues just continue to build and the maladjusted kids get to the boiling point that the go over the edge."


Good points, SteveS.

It is almost like the schools are being run a bit like the prison system, no?

The way that schools are handling the student population sure can't help, though I especially don't want to be dismissive of the great efforts by many teachers and counselors.

And I noticed a seemingly abrupt change as I was growing up where selfish, irreverent (to the point of being supremacist) behavior seemed to become revered in movies, and where revenge (so often involving guns) -themed movies also proliferated. Depravity of every type has also crept into the culture of the movie industry, the question is "why?". I don't believe that ratings and profits fully explain such trends, though ratings in themselves should essentially be viewed as just another presentation of/by the industry.

Does it occur to anybody else that the stuff that the media (including movie industry and video games) is puking out might cause problems within the institutions that process our youth? As a perhaps worsening trend, might it at some point make it impossible to educate a healthy population, ready to do well in college?

Last edited by dddd on 10/5/15 5:05 PM; edited 1 time in total

10/5/15 1:52 PM

Saw an interesting article in the NY Times today about how the Texas state legislature has enacted a law allowing concealed gun carry on campuses and into classrooms at state run institutions.

The student bodies and faculties were dead set against this, prior it had been no weapons in classrooms.

Now and as one professor put it, they are hesitant to allow a time honored tradition of having heated debate among students on various subjects, fearful that a student, now allowed to carry, will escalate a debate into a deadly confrontation.

Now granted that part of this problem is the mental stability of a student entering into any such debate. Prior though, the professors acting as moderators could reasonably assume a student, even with some issues, was probably not going to pull out a handgun. That premise has now been brought into question.

Again, food for thought about gun ownership in this country.

10/5/15 2:16 PM

That is quite a stretch. Though, often these events happen in colleges.

Most states require an extensive background check for a CWP, a proper check should find people with pre-existing mental issues but not all.

10/5/15 8:20 PM

quote:

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I know this is a more liberal forum and seems to frequented by smarter than average folk.

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10/6/15 4:52 AM

I'm really not sure what the answer is - as someone stated earlier, there are that many guns out there now that the horse has well and truly bolted and there is no way that the majority of gun owners are going to give them up with the culture now as it is. When the gun laws came in here most people could see the point and were happy to oblige. Sure there are illegal arms out there, but it really isn't that much of an issue that we see. Yes there is individual domestic violence, and the outlaw motorcycle gangs and druggies shoot each other up from time to time (and hey, the more the merrier) but at least people arent shooting up cinemas and schools etc with high capacity military style weapons.

The problem with responsible gun ownership is that they are responsible right up to the point when they aren't - nobody chooses to have a mental breakdown, people often just snap after being bullied, traumatized, sacked from work etc and then the guns are too easily accessible at home and to go and cause great carnage with. Not something that I have seen, but has anyone from the pro gun side of thing spoken directly to the families involved in the shootings and tried to justify it at all - just wondering how that would go...

I think a lot of the mass shootings we are seeing now appear to be copycat to some degree, although not sure what their end game is, publicity, suicide by police, not sure, but as mentioned, I too think a lot of the violent video games and entertainment around these days has a negative effect on kids to the point where they struggle to seperate fantasy from reality etc. I really don't know what the answer is, but I think everyone would agree that even one mass shooting is too many, what we are seeing now is just intolerable and something needs to be done.

10/6/15 5:47 AM

One thing that's been lost in all the publicity over these high-profile mass shootings is that overall gun crime in the US has dropped precipitously and is lower now than it has been in decades. While there seems to be an increase in mass shootings, more common gun crimes are way down. It's also important to point out that mass shootings have completely different causes than typical assaults, murders and robberies. They're perpetrated by a different type of person, typically societal outliers with a grudge, a mental illness and a desperate need for attention. This requires addressing the root causes, particularly mental health issues. The mindless, useless, knee-jerk reactions of the Hillary/Schumer/Bloomberg types are not going to solve anything, as they wouldn't have prevented any of these shootings. Of course, they don't care, as they're just driven by a rapid hatred of guns and they use every opportunity to advance their agenda, often to a shameful degree.

10/6/15 8:48 AM

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/194/total_number_of_gun_deaths

Seriously, I have heard this argument from several people; there is a brief dip in the number of deaths at one point, but otherwise, I don't see a significant drop in gun violence (granted, I am assuming that there is a correlation between the amount of gun violence and the number of deaths, and I'm open to challenge on that assumption).

10/6/15 9:26 AM

@Andy

That site is biased. What do researchers such a Pew have as data?

You won't see me using the NRA for info or data. In fact I disagree with them in a number of ways as I have mention already.

The Australian university linked is anti gun from what I see therefore they are suspect.

On my phone or I would dig up the pew data myself.

10/6/15 9:28 AM

I live in Canada. I don't own a gun but I want to (took the course and have had the paperwork on a dresser for 2 years now). I don't know what the answer is but I know that quickly blaming it on mental illness isn't the whole explanation.

This is an interesting article.

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302242

which begat the following:

"A number of studies suggest that laws and
policies that enable firearm access during emotionally
charged moments also seem to correlate
with gun violence more strongly than does
mental illness alone. Belying Lott’s argument
that “more guns” lead to “less crime,”
52 Miller
et al. found that homicide was more common
in areas where household firearms ownership
was higher.53 Siegel et al. found that states
with high rates of gun ownership had disproportionately
high numbers of deaths from
firearm-related homicides.54 Webster’s analysis
uncovered that the repeal of Missouri’s background
check law led to an additional 49 to
68 murders per year,55 and the rate of interpersonal
conflicts resolved by fatal shootings
jumped by 200% after Florida passed “stand
your ground” in 2005.56 Availability of guns is
also considered a more predictive factor than
is psychiatric diagnosis in many of the 19 000
US completed gun suicides each year.11,57,58"

I'm a fan of statistics and the following page has a bunch of good ones:

http://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/613/gun-prevalence-vs-homicide-rates-correlation-and-causation

It clearly shows there is NO correlation between gun ownership and murder rate, NO correlation between gun control legislation (Brady score) and murder rate, and NO correlation between gun ownership and violent crime.

Still, I want a gun.

Still, I think there should be less guns.

Some of the points in the first article contradict points in the second study so there are obviously other factors. And national averages as identified in the second article can exist outside of and not undermine the legitimacy of points made in the first article about decreased gun control leading to an increase in gun violence. Part of the difficulty is there isn't universally similar socioeconomic, education, population density, race integration factor across all contexts.

No easy answers.

10/6/15 9:42 AM

Didn't Canada just repel a number of strict gun control laws because they were found ineffective and much of the population refused to comply with them?

10/6/15 9:50 AM

(on phone)
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/chart-of-the-day-u-s-gun-and-traffic-deaths-over-time/

Some of the comments are also of interest.

10/6/15 9:56 AM

Again, on phone, but the Australian and CDC numbers look consistent, and match up with NIJ data.

10/6/15 10:10 AM

FBI data.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8#disablemobile

Though the data is only up to 2011.

10/6/15 10:41 AM

Looking at murder, you're right (The other charts almost certainly include suicides and accidental deaths--from the FBI table, it looks like only intentional homicides are included).

Homicides by firearm have dropped 15.2%, compared to all homicides (which have dropped by 15.0%) over 2007-2011. So Firearms made up a very slightly smaller proportion of homicide weapons in 2011 than they did in 2007 (67.8% versus 67.9%).

That's good. Murder is down. And because of that, gun violence is down.

Further investigation shows that the Sydney table does in fact include homicides and accidental deaths due to firearms:

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states#total_number_of_gun_deaths

10/6/15 11:13 AM

Data up to last year:

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Shows the homicide rate per 100000 people has dropped 10% in the last 5 years. (5.0 in 2009 to 4.5 in 2014)

There's lots of sub menus for stats for lots of things at the bottom of the page, showing ranks of states over time etc. It's easy to get lost in there. Non of it is specifically gun related but still interesting.

Canada: The "long gun registry" was repealed a few years ago. My understanding is that it was less about gun control and more about getting an accurate record of how many guns were out there in the population and what kinds of guns they were. It was found to be cost prohibitive for no perceivable benefit to society and so was scrapped.

The types of guns we are allowed to own is far more controlled than in the US. Magazine capacities are limited to five rounds for most semi-automatic rifles. It's comical how this is instituted, often it's a self tapping screw that stops the magazine from holding more than 5 cartridges, but if you are ever found with a magazine with that screw removed you're in big trouble, regardless of how many cartridges are loaded into it. Full auto is unheard of for the most part and hand guns are permitted but only for target shooting and work purposes (police, certain types of security guards). There's no such thing as a concealed carry permit for the general population.

2.2 firearm related deaths per 100000 in Canada vs. 10.64 in the USA. 30.8 guns per 100 people in Canada vs 112.6 guns per 100 people in the USA. The problem with guns per person stats is it doesn't say who owns them. If 1 person owns 100 guns, it's a lot different than 100 people owning 1 gun each. But Americans have 3.65 times as many guns as Canadians but 4.84 times as many deaths by guns than Canadians which suggests it's not just guns but something cultural.

10/6/15 11:58 AM

@craig

I knew about the 5rnd limit. Some states in the US have it but my state does not because enforcing it is so hard. The pro-gun spin sells the story that the people did not comply with registry as a protest.

You are correct. There is a cultural difference. I have been hunting in Canada a few times back in the 90s. Great folks, all of them. I was not paying a guide just mil to mil kindness in Cold Lake.

10/6/15 1:07 PM

Good statistics are hard to come by. And the CDC has been specifically prohibited by the federal government from collecting or studying any gun statistics. Your friendly NRA at work.

10/6/15 3:28 PM

"... And the CDC has been specifically prohibited by the federal government from collecting or studying any gun statistics. Your friendly NRA at work...."

I'm thinking this could warrant a whole discussion of it's own, and I would like to read a bit more about it.

Possibly the Govt simply doesn't want funds moving away from disease management into a field of "research" that would provide ammunition for political groups, but I know nothing about this, and of course the NRA would probably be expected to chime in and be looking at such creation of any new, fed-funded statistical study.

So would this be the best use of the CDC? Again, I don't know, but I am in general somewhat wary of the NRA political machine while also wary of on-cue gun-control drama.

10/6/15 4:14 PM

The CDC should not be doing the research. Leave it to Pew and the likes. They have a very good reputation for being unbiased.

10/6/15 4:16 PM

One would think that if the data supported their position, the NRA would fund their own studies. They certainly have the money to do so. Instead they argue hypotheticals and spew rhetoric, and I'm not even convinced they are wrong.

10/6/15 4:23 PM

Pew unbiased? It depends on the subject. Staunchly conservative on social issues. But relatively unbiased on scientific issues.

10/6/15 5:55 PM

Sample selection or because scientific subjects are more closely vetted and have peer review behind them.

10/6/15 7:57 PM

Unless we're talking about two different things, Pew focuses on public opinion studies. That's not terribly useful in this context.

10/6/15 8:16 PM

They crunch other data too. Not just opinions in fact far from being just an opinion center.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-crime/

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-violence-in-america/

10/7/15 5:34 AM

If you look at the footnotes, you can see that these are Pew's analyses and interpretations of data collected by others. Including the CDC...