The problem with guns

[Mr. Blackwell]

I am putting this conversation in this area because when it comes right down to it, God isn't very proactive in saving little children from our wickedness. So, we must do more than offer thoughts and prayers in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones from the violence sweeping across the world like wild fire during a drought. As the axiom goes, for the purpose of this conversation we assume that there is no God so we must do something ourselves.


I read something interesting today while I was researching something else. Now, I do not wish to engage in ad hom attacks about the source. I recognized immediately that it's just one persons opinion and he is trying to sell something so for the purposes of full disclosure I am aware that this "article" is tainted from the beginning. Be that as it may, he says some pretty interesting things. This was published in 2015, three years after Venezuela banned private ownership of firearms.

I just got back from Caracas, Venezuela, a city so dangerous that every time I left my hotel, the staff would warn me against even going outside. It?s an incredibly difficult reality to reconcile. People hate the fact that they may get robbed or killed just steps from their front door when they leave the house every morning and nobody wants that.

After all, everyone wants to be safe. Even wild animals seek out safety in nature. A few years ago, in response to national outcry, the government of Venezuela took steps to fix this problem.

There was too much death, too much crime. So they imposed strict gun control laws to stop the murderers and thieves. The end result? Violent crime actually increased. And Caracas is now one of the most dangerous cities in the world. But across the Andes is another city that used to be one of the most dangerous in the world? Bogota.

Years ago, Bogota led the region in murder. And they imposed their own strict gun control laws trying to clean up the streets. It worked. Bogota became safer. There was less murder. Less crime. Less violence. But how could the same policy engineer completely different results in two cities?

This disparity becomes even more vexing when we look at other countries. Honduras and Brazil both have very high homicide rates. Yet Brazil has highly restrictive gun laws, while Honduras has fairly lax gun laws. Pakistan has some of the loosest gun laws in the world. Chile?s are fairly restrictive. Yet both have low homicide rates. Bosnia has a very liberal gun laws. Belgium has very restrictive laws. Yet their homicide rates are similar.

Luxembourg has few privately-owned guns per capita, yet its murder rate is much higher than Germany?s, which has over twice as many.
Hawaii and Vermont have polar opposite gun laws yet nearly the same homicide rate. Maryland and Virginia have vastly different gun laws, yet almost identical rates of gun-related deaths.

The numbers are all over the board.

Staunch advocates for gun control tend to think that more regulations and fewer guns make us safer. Those who oppose gun control tend to think that more guns and fewer regulations make us safer.

But the data doesn?t support either assertion, meaning there must be other factors at work.


(By the way, the National Academy of Science and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention came up with the exact same conclusion? the numbers don?t support either assertion.)

But it?s impossible to even begin to analyze until we admit what the real concern is. After all, we?re not really talking about gun violence.

Gun violence has been occurring for years, predominantly in poor neighborhoods across the country. 75% of gun-related violence takes place in just 5% of US zip codes. But no one really cares about that. As long as gun violence stays localized to black people, Mexicans, and other ethnic minorities in poor neighborhoods, it?s considered ?crime? and never makes the news.

It?s not until some lunatic shoots up a predominantly white, middle class neighborhood that CNN covers it, and Hollywood celebrities air public service announcements telling us that ?we? have to do something.

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/heres-what-happened-when-venezuela-imposed-gun-control-laws-17984/

He says some other interesting things which you can read if you want but for the most part, it was this first part that got my curiosity up considering the current political climate and recent events that have been taking place.

Why don't mass shootings happen at predominately minority schools in inner cities?

Published Online: August 29, 2011
Published in Print: August 31, 2011, as Researchers Highlight Schools' Differences in Security Practices
Study Finds Metal Detectors More Common in High-Minority Schools

Eighth graders join hands with classmates during ?circle time? this month in Tracy Hauser?s homeroom class at City Springs Elementary School, a P-8 charter school in Baltimore. Circle time, during which students and their teachers discuss issues of concern, is part of a holistic approach to violence prevention the school has been using for the past two years.
?Matt Roth for Education Week

Minority students in a high-poverty neighborhood are more likely to pass through a metal detector on the way to class than their better-off and white peers are, even if the schools are equally safe, according to new research.

Researchers at the University of Delaware and the University of California, Irvine, based their findings on a studyRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader of nationally representative school data. They presented the study Aug. 20 at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, held in Las Vegas.

Security measures adopted from the criminal-justice arena?from metal detectors and surveillance cameras to full-time guards and drug-sniffing dogs?have proliferated in the past decade or so, particularly in secondary schools. Yet, even after accounting for the levels of crime on schools? campuses and in the surrounding neighborhoods, the researchers found that high-poverty schools were disproportionately likely to use such security mechanisms, and that the racial makeup of the student enrollment was a powerful predictor of whether the school would use metal detectors.

?It?s not that the more violent schools get metal detectors, or even the urban schools get metal detectors?though that?s true,? said co-author Aaron Kupchik, an associate professor in sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware. ?It?s that schools with more students of color are more likely to get metal detectors, at every level, even elementary levels.?

Ubiquitous Measures

Mr. Kupchik and Geoff K. Ward, an assistant professor of criminology, law, and society and sociology at UC Irvine, studied a representative sample of 2,720 schools from the 2005-06 federal School Survey on Crime and Safety. They found that security measures like cameras, searches and campus police have become ubiqitous in American high schools. In elementary and middle schools, the difference in types of security measures between schools with higher and lower poverty was more pronounced.

Even after controlling for student behavior, neighborhood crime, and other safety indicators, researchers found that schools with higher concentrations of poor students were more likely than their better-off counterparts to have a full-time security or policy officer, drug-sniffing dogs, locked gates in elementary schools, and metal detectors in middle school.

The percentage of minority students in a school strongly predicted whether it would use metal detectors at all grade levels.

However, all schools with highly involved parents were less likely to use metal detectors and more likely to favor a security officer on campus. Kenneth S. Trump, the president of the Cleveland-based consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services Inc., said the study doesn?t represent the ?day-to-day reality in schools.?

While Mr. Kupchik noted that only about 10 percent of schools nationwide use metal detectors, Mr. Trump argued that students have grown up with security measures, from metal detectors to cameras, and are comfortable with them.

?It?s not radical to expect to have measures like these in our schools,? Mr. Trump said. ?We?re not having these conversations about security at the mall, where these same kids are going shopping at night and on the weekends.?

Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based American Association of School Administrators, said that administrators don?t take student demographics into account when designing their security plans; they usually respond to specific violent incidents and national trends.

?Nobody is going to say we have a school and they?re all minorities and they?re poor, so we need to put more security on that building,? Mr. Domenech said.

?Every school now is much more security-minded than they?ve ever been, and most states require it,? Mr. Domenech said.

At the same time, he added, the ?intensity of the security is very much dependent upon what experiences the school has had. You?re not going to find metal detectors in a school that has not experienced any violence or any times of students? trying to bring weapons into the school.?

Mr. Kupchik said that trends toward more-intrusive security measures in schools had already begun in the 1990s before school shootings such as those at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colo., in 1999, but that ?Columbine was used to accelerate and to retroactively justify the trends.?

?I think it has to do with fear overall for kids and of kids,? he added. ?There?s a very strong belief among school administrators that these [measures] are helpful in running the school and in keeping the students safe.?

Some evidence suggests that such stiff security measures may not be as effective as administrators think, however. In February, the Journal of School Health released an analysisRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader of 15 years? worth of research on metal detectors, which found there was ?insufficient evidence? that their use decreased crime or violence in schools, but which did find evidence that their presence made students feel less safe.

A January 2011 study using data from the School Crime Supplement of the National Crime Victimization Survey found that among security measures, only one, asking adults to be present in school hallways, actually decreased the amount of peer bullying in schools.

City Springs Elementary-Middle School in Baltimore is one example of an inner-city school that is trying to take a more holistic violence-prevention approach. The P-8 charter school sits amid three housing projects, and 99 percent of its 640 students, most of whom are African-American, receive free or reduced-price lunches.

Principal Rhonda L. Richetta said that when she arrived in 2007, there were daily fights on campus, regular vandalism of the halls and restrooms, and frequent soundings of fire alarms by students looking for a quick break from class. The school?s main security system was a set of cameras that Ms. Richetta found ?weren?t hooked up to anything.?

?There were a lot of angry students and adults,? she recalled. ?I knew I needed something to change the environment. It was not conducive to learning, and I didn?t feel I could address the academic issues unless I addressed the climate first.?

Positive Relationships

The school adopted SaferSanerSchools, a schoolwide safety programRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader developed by the Bethlehem, Pa.-based International Institute for Restorative Practices, which focuses on building positive relationships among students and staff. All staff members in the school, from teachers and administrators to cafeteria and janitorial workers, went through mediation training. Each homeroom class holds a ?circle? at least once a day in which each student gets a chance to discuss concerns. Separate groups are called in response to behavior or other problems as they come up.

In the years since, City Springs? climate has changed, Ms. Richetta said. Yearly suspensions are down from 86 in 2008-09 to 10 or fewer in 2009-10 and 2010-11. Fights on campus have become ?nonexistent,? the principal said, though students often ask their own circles to mediate disputes.

Ms. Richetta did replace the broken security cameras, but she has rejected more visible security measures, such as metal detectors or wand searches.

?I think this is more effective,? she said, ?because it?s changing behavior.?

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/08/31/02security.h31.html


Changing behavior. Think about that. Sure, it takes time and patients and constant reinforcement but it's a long term solution. In the meantime...why not metal detectors and security in every school while we work out some sensible gun laws and mental health options?

F.Y.I.

Just in case anyone didn't get the hint, I put this conversation in this section specifically to not be bothered with calls to bring God and prayer into the schools. That is not a viable option for the purposes of this conversation.

[kevin]

Why don't mass shootings happen at predominately minority schools in inner cities?

that's a good question. detroit has arguably had 27 "mass shootings" since 2014.

do they not happen, or do we not hear about them?

[Mr. Blackwell]

Why don't mass shootings happen at predominately minority schools in inner cities?

that's a good question. detroit has arguably had 27 "mass shootings" since 2014.

do they not happen, or do we not hear about them?

We don't hear about them. That would be my guess.

[Inertialmass]

Be careful with Kevin.  The article from whence he derives his conspiratorial hints is all about defining terms, and only about defining terms, not about minorities and not at all about news being hidden from we the gullible and politically correct public.  It boils down to one definition having four people dead, the other definition having four people injured.  Big difference.  Why couldn't Kevin just say this up front?



http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/02/michigan_mass_shootings_childr.html
What's a 'mass shooting'? Michigan has had 1 to 43 since 2014, depending on definition

Feb 19

Wednesday's mass shooting at a Florida high school has triggered a number of debates, including what defines a mass shooting.

And depending on the definition used, Michigan has had between one to 43 mass shootings in the past four years.

The Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan federal agency, defines a
"public mass shooting" as an incident in which at least four people were killed, not including the shooter, and the victims are picked indiscriminately.

Under that definition, Michigan has had one mass shootings since 2014, according to the Gun Violence Archives, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks gun violence nationwide.

That is the Feb. 20, 2016, incident in Kalamazoo in which an Uber driver killed six people and seriously injured two others during a shooting rampage at three locations.

Meanwhile, in 2013, Congress defined "mass killing" as three or more deaths.

Under that definition, Michigan has had three mass killings in the last week alone:
?A Feb 16 triple-murder and suicide in Keego Harbor in Oakland County that killed a couple in their 40s and their two 20-something children.
?A Feb. 14 shooting in Flint in which 27-year-old on probation killed his grandmother, uncle and a third person.
?A Feb. 11 incident in Detroit,  in which a mentally ill man killed his girlfriend and two female neighbors and injured three police officers during a 14-hour standoff. The standoff ended when the man committed suicide.

The Gun Violence Archives and Mass Shooter Tracker, both crowd-sourced data websites, use a different standard: They define a "mass shooting" as one where four or more people are killed or injured, not including the shooter.

That definition has been picked up by many in the media as well as gun-control advocates, and is used by those who claim the United States averages a mass shooting every day.

Under that definition, Michigan has had 43 mass shootings since 2014, which have killed 39 people and injured 173.

Of those 43 mass shootings, 27 were in Detroit, four were in Flint, two each in Pontiac and Kalamazoo, and once each in Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Jackson, St. Joseph, Warren, Albion, Benton Harbor and Oak Park.

One was a July 2016 shooting in the Berrien County Courthouse, in which two court employees and the shooter were killed and two others injured during a courthouse disturbance.

The list also includes gang-related incidents, robberies gone wrong and domestic assaults.

Nobody was killed in 18 of the 43 shootings incidents.

No matter the definition, mass shootings comprise a very small percentage of gun deaths.

[Teaspoon Shallow]

Those stoopid Aussies and Kiwis with the oppressive gun control.  It would never work to save lives.

Their model is ridiculous and would not suit the good old US of A because our cultures are different.

Since the general public do not have handguns or automatic (or even semis) and only very selective licensed people do, that would mean it is the criminals who have the majority of these guns, school shootings must be through the roof.

Stoopid Aussies and Kiwis not packing heat to protect their children because as we can see by the facts, it has worked so well in America.

How many mass shootings happen in Australian schools again?
Must be very high per capita. 


NSFW

[Kusa]

Meme time.

[Kusa]

[Kusa]

[Kusa]

[Meat]

^Why would you need a scope? That weapon is for sprayin and prayin. So they say. 

[Mr. Blackwell]

That scope is a special scope. It's the VR2018. You can program it to make everything look like your favorite 1st person shooter video game.