Comment by blitzar

The specific breadth of that oopsie, to recall, was that multiple human reviewers recommended escalation to law enforcement, and were rebuffed. So the system _almost_ worked except for an unforced error and people died as a direct result. Oopsie, indeed.

> - Semi-automatic and automatic weapons weren't available to the public

They were fully available to the public. Automatic weapons were tax-gated, but still were (and are!) available, after 1934. Semi-automatic weapons have been freely available to any citizen pretty much since they were invented (circa 1893).

Here's from Wikipedia all the mass shootings conducted by students prior to the 1970s. They're incredibly infrequent compared to the shootings of today,

March 26, 1893 – Plain Dealing, Louisiana (Plain Dealing High School): During an evening school dance, a fight broke out. Students fired shots, killing two immediately, fatally wounding two more, and injuring a professor (total: 4 killed, 1 wounded).

December 12, 1898 – Charleston, West Virginia: Young men (including students/former students in the context of a school exhibition) disrupted an event, leading to a brawl with gunfire. At least 6 killed (including students) and 4+ wounded in the chaos.

July 21, 1903 – Jackson, Kentucky (Cave Run School): Students James Barrett and Mack Howard dueled with pistols over a card game, killing each other; a 12-year-old bystander student was wounded (total: 2 killed, 1 wounded).

November 16, 1904 – Riverside, California (Indian School): A gunfight between pupils resulted in one student killed, another fatally wounded, and one wounded (total: 2 killed, 1 wounded).

October 8, 1950 – New Orleans, Louisiana (Booker T. Washington High School): Suspected gangsters (youths tied to students) fired on each other; 6 bystanders wounded.

May 5, 1956 – Seat Pleasant, Maryland (Maryland Park Junior High School): 15-year-old student Billy Ray Prevatte returned with a rifle after a reprimand and shot staff: 1 teacher killed, 2 injured (total: 3 victims).

October 17, 1961 – Denver, Colorado (Morey Junior High School): 14-year-old Tennyson Beard argued with a classmate, shot and wounded him, then fatally shot another student (total: 1 killed, 1–2 wounded).

October 5, 1966 – Grand Rapids, Minnesota (Grand Rapids High School): 15-year-old student David Black killed a school administrator and seriously wounded another student (total: 1 killed, 1 wounded).

When I grew up in Germany, I had some pretty bad phases during my teens. I wonder if I had had easy access to guns together with lots of information and videos about shooters on the internet, maybe I would have thought about that too. I didn't have any of those so I sometimes thought about suicide but never about shooting others.

The US has a combination of SSRIs (maybe that's a factor, we don't know for sure), easy access to guns, gun culture, glorification of violence and vigilantism and over the last decades a lot of school shooters to imitate. Basically a ton of risk factors combined.

To be scrupulously fair, the SSRI thing was a conspiracy theory well before RFK Jr. came into the spotlight.

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Similar example Ohio legislature makes it illegal to drive with any THC of Cannabis products in the passenger compartment to crack down on people driving high, but there is nothing to prevent you driving with an open bottle of prescription opiates or benzos and popping those while you drive.

Bad choice of example, then. Restricting things that are uniquely and critical to planning and executing school shootings is a highly desirable outcome for regulation, in the eyes of a society that desires its youth to grow up without constant threat of murder at their mandatory educational institutions. That desire is not particularly uniform in the U.S. right now, in contrast with much of the world. Choosing murder sprees as an example supports regulations that have societal safety benefits, which is the opposite of what was intended. Perhaps a different example might have the desired effect?

Won't matter if they're not publicly traded.

Caring with no significant action in prevention doesn’t really signal caring. Sure, it sucks, headlines get printed for a couple of months, then people forget and move on.

To put it in the most disrespectful and sad way, it looks like more people have been on the streets for Knicks games than most (any?) school shootings of the past decades.

> I think you underestimate how many people actually care about mass shootings.

Less than 1% of the population, that’s for sure.

You remember the last protest about school shootings? Neither do I.

The author said nothing of the people but of the government itself. 12 years ago, elementary school children were slaughtered and even that wasn’t enough to ban guns.

Thoughts and prayers doesn't count as truly caring

People are doing something, the issue with you two's extremely poor thinking is that lack of inaction means no one cares. What it actually represents is the massive growing disparity between the political class and average Americans.

There is >70% public support universal background checks for all firearm transactions, safe storage laws, and crisis intervention. Just the same that there is also large public support for things like public jobs programs, medicare for all, universal childcare, or free university; there is a very real obstacle that the political class in this country are adamant about stopping all progress towards better lives and not strictly caring that the elites extract more wealth or corporations get more welfare.

Not all citizens have the right to freedom: "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted"

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-...

Yes you lose many of your rights when in prison.

A waste of an aged account.

If the homeowners had a shotgun it would have been over quickly. Shotguns don't miss.

The warning shot was the main mistake. It goes against all training. Only shoot to kill.

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