Elementary school shooting gun control pissing contest

[11B4V]

Why aren't the girls pulling their weight in the mass murder department anyway? I think the thing about boys being more likely to be outliers is correct. Also, damn. Maybe we're looking at the wrong things here.

Not there MO I recken

[MadImmortalMan]

Chilling article. I can't help but wonder though if her position is being filtered through the eyes of a mother. She doesn't want her son charged with a crime. but does think that if he continues on he will be a killer. Kind of sounds like she's holding out hope that her son can be "cured."

Can he be? She makes it sound pretty hopeless. But of course that's her own sense of desperation talking I think.

[Admiral Yi]

I think someone already posted that in the urine free thread.

[garbon]

Chilling article. I can't help but wonder though if her position is being filtered through the eyes of a mother. She doesn't want her son charged with a crime. but does think that if he continues on he will be a killer. Kind of sounds like she's holding out hope that her son can be "cured."

Can he be? She makes it sound pretty hopeless. But of course that's her own sense of desperation talking I think.

I don't know but she's the one who said she doesn't want him charged with a crime (/social worker suggested it). Not that I don't see her position as she's his mother but she seems to want some option of committing him against his well but that doesn't involve being charged with a crime. Though part of that latter bit is because she doesn't want him in jail.

[Malthus]

Why aren't the girls pulling their weight in the mass murder department anyway? I think the thing about boys being more likely to be outliers is correct. Also, damn. Maybe we're looking at the wrong things here.

Not there MO I recken

Historically, haven't female murderers been more into poisioning? There were a number of cases of nurses giving lots of folks a "helping hand" that way, I recall.   

Dunno if they would qualify as "mass" murders, or more of the "serial" variety though.

[11B4V]

Jennifer San Marco

San Marco had a history of mental problems and strange behaviours before she killed a former neighbour on Jan 30, 2006, and passed through a heavily guarded security station into a mail processing plant and distribution centre in Goleta, California. There, using a pistol, the 44 year old shot and killed five people on location, with a sixth dying two days later in hospital. San Marco took her own life at the scene, and left no suicide note.

Amy Bishop, The Deadly Professor

On February 12, 2010, neurobiologist Amy Bishop pulled a gun in her biology department meeting at the University o Alabama, and killed (allegedly) three people, wounded three others.

[Caliga]

Allegedly?  I thought she pled guilty.

[Zanza]

I think Germany has a good law though, that under the age of 25 you have to get a psychiatric evaluation to get a gun. Incidentally, it seems a lot of the worst gun users are under the age of 25.

Our last 17 year-old school shooter just took his father's gun out of the nightstand and went on to kill 15 people.

I don't know what Germany's privacy laws are regarding mental health issues, but I'm sure they are substantially more progressive for the sake of the greater community at large than it is here.  But that is as foreign a concept here as it the concept of the 2nd Amendment is for Germans.

I reckon you talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist and he just gives a thumbs up or down, no more. And I am sure you can get the evaluation and never have to hand it in if it comes out negative, so the person at the weapon's registry wouldn't know. I don't really see a major privacy issue with that to be honest. It's between you and the psych guy, who is by law bound to professional secrecy anyway.

[derspiess]

I know practically nothing about psychiatric evaluations, but how reliable are they?  I mean, wouldn't it be pretty easy to lie to avoid being classified as dangerously crazy?

[Barrister]

I know practically nothing about psychiatric evaluations, but how reliable are they?  I mean, wouldn't it be pretty easy to lie to avoid being classified as dangerously crazy?

It depends how thorough they are.

They have a variety of ways of determining your mental state beyond self-reported information, since obviously an individual can have incentives to lie.  It can be found out - if you have enough time.

But I can tell you a lot of our "psych evaluations" are the doc spending 15 minutes talking to the person while in cells.

[Malthus]

I think Germany has a good law though, that under the age of 25 you have to get a psychiatric evaluation to get a gun. Incidentally, it seems a lot of the worst gun users are under the age of 25.

Our last 17 year-old school shooter just took his father's gun out of the nightstand and went on to kill 15 people.

That's the problem right there - if people are owning guns for personal safety reasons, they are generally going to be accessible to everyone who lives with them.

Until and unless they have biometric trigger locks.

[derspiess]

That's the problem right there - if people are owning guns for personal safety reasons, they are generally going to be accessible to everyone who lives with them.

Until and unless they have biometric trigger locks.

Well, there are different levels of accessibility, though.  I don't think you need a biometric trigger lock to make a gun reasonably inaccessible.

[MadImmortalMan]

I have a small safe on the nightstand with a four button combo lock on it. I can get the gun out in about two seconds, but nobody else can get it at all. It's not hard to be reasonably responsible about it and make them inaccessible to the kiddies.

[derspiess]

I have a small safe on the nightstand with a four button combo lock on it. I can get the gun out in about two seconds, but nobody else can get it at all. It's not hard to be reasonably responsible about it and make them inaccessible to the kiddies.

I am familiar with that type of safe

[crazy canuck]

I have a small safe on the nightstand with a four button combo lock on it. I can get the gun out in about two seconds, but nobody else can get it at all. It's not hard to be reasonably responsible about it and make them inaccessible to the kiddies.

If everyone was voluntarily as prudent as you then there would be no problem.  But they are not - hence the requirement for laws.