19 children and two adults murdered in school shooting in Texas

Just looked at the figures Jaxjacky, and I am amazed that anyone can seriously believe that the main cause of the school massacre was a police unwillingness to go into the building.

I realist statistics can be misleading, but this is horrifying and I don’t understand how anyone can ignore it.
www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/02/mass-shootings-in-2022/

The statistic quoted by Grammaretto was discussed on 'More or Less' (R4) this week and it was verified that this statistic is accurate.

By the way, firefighters do assess how safe a burning building is before going inside it to fight the fire. Of course fires are usually extinguished from the perimeter anyway.

The issue is all about guns. Fewer guns, fewer shootings.

Have a look at this site worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country

I follow your train of thought effalump but unfortunately the situation with gun deaths in the USA has gone way beyond blaming a few police.
It is now the leading cause of death of a child and a teenager in the USA overtaking road deaths. Isn't that a shocking statistic!

I'd say, the fact that there are evil people doing these atrocities, is why the 2nd Amendment exists. What should be investigated is why Law Enforcement officers, who should run towards the danger, decided to wait. What would people say if Fire Fighters decided to wait to see if a burning building subsides? What if doctors, etc. decided to wait to see if the heart attack subsides before giving a person treatment. I know that has nothing to do with guns but it's about people who are trained (supposedly) and paid to keep U.S. citizens safe.

There were the appalling shootings last year in Plymouth which horrified everyone and before that, 11 years before in Cumbria.
They are not unheard of but thankfully few and far between.

How that disturbed young man in Plymouth was granted a gun licence in the first place is a mystery. His weapons and licence were taken away due to his disturbed behaviour but returned just before the murders.
the weapons were returned in early July 2021, a month before the killings, after he completed an anger management course

What we need to ask is how many violent attacks are there on schools in this country with guns - or knives, hammers, or anything else. The answer is very few.

If you take guns out of the equation by limiting the general public's access to them, you lower the profile of schools as targets for attack.

In the US at the moment it seems that every mentally ill disaffected youth/man, who wants to get even with - something - a school, society, life in general etc etc knows that he can go out in a blaze of glory and international notice by shooting up a school and killing as many children as possible. Schools are, as a a result number 1 target.

In this country guns are difficult to acquire - especially if you are a loner, as so most school shooters(US) and knife attackers (UK) are , and while there have been a number of knife attacks, as a general rule, victims are far fewer.

You are a brave soul MayBee. I know I am in a bubble of likeminded people and hardly dare listen to the views of the deluded gun lobby
The Americans who I know- and they are ones who travel and have been here - are as appalled as I am with the lack of gun control in the US.
And they do not have guns.

Musicgirl

*feel like it.

I agree. That’s one of the arguments I used. They said someone that wants to harm people will always find a weapon but don’t seem to understand that there’s a difference between the damage a knife can do compared to a semi automatic rifle! I just read that the NRA won’t allow potential gun purchasers to be vetted properly.

*feel like it.

@Maybee70, our knife crime statistics are not good but apparently they include all sharp incidents, while other countries, including the USA, take the literal stance of knives only. Even then, our knife crime rates are a lot lower than those of the USA. While even one murder with a lethal implement is one murder too many, at least a knife can only kill one person at a time, unlike a semi-automatic rifle. Knife crime is generally confined to gangs, too, rather than someone with psychiatric problems shooting random people, especially children in a school, just because they feel.

Yes.

Callistemon21

nanna8

We used to have an issue with guns here in Australia. One good thing that John Howard, our then PM did, was to take guns away from most people and make it much,much harder to get hold of them. The best and bravest thing he ever did. What is wrong with all these woosie American politicians that they can't stand up to these Southern fanatical deadbeats?

Was that after the Port Arthur massacre, nanna8?

It was horrendous and there was a lot of support for reform, thank goodness.

Someone who’s sister died at Dunblane pointed out when interviewed last week said when asked that very question ‘it’s all about money’. The gun lobby give vast amounts to the Republicans.

volver

Like I say, it's nothing to do with me, its your decision.

But they know your name, they know where you live and they know who your friends and family are. They don't care what your political viewpoints are, some of them may not even be real people. I'm on the pages of several singers etc but never post. And if you're not sure how you got on the Daily Express page, I'd be wanting to find out.

No more from me

Thanks for that. I have checked my page and my personal details etc are all friends only. It was a long time ago that I joined so I did need to refresh my memory about what I’d put on my profile!

nanna8

We used to have an issue with guns here in Australia. One good thing that John Howard, our then PM did, was to take guns away from most people and make it much,much harder to get hold of them. The best and bravest thing he ever did. What is wrong with all these woosie American politicians that they can't stand up to these Southern fanatical deadbeats?

Was that after the Port Arthur massacre, nanna8?

It was horrendous and there was a lot of support for reform, thank goodness.

Like I say, it's nothing to do with me, its your decision.

But they know your name, they know where you live and they know who your friends and family are. They don't care what your political viewpoints are, some of them may not even be real people. I'm on the pages of several singers etc but never post. And if you're not sure how you got on the Daily Express page, I'd be wanting to find out.

No more from me

Well it happened over the course of 12 hours and took me by surprise. Given that it was a Tom Petty page and his family was calling for tighter gun control I was surprised at the number of people (the majority of people in fact) blaming everybody and everything but the guns themselves. Much as I was tempted to block those people I felt that I wouldn’t learn anything about American attitudes towards gun culture if I did so. Also there were a few people agreeing with me. It was also interesting seeing how some Americans view us eg we’re serfs governed by a queen and don’t have the freedom that they have! It did make me think, as a self confessed royalist (something that goes against my political beliefs in general) that the people that seem to rise to the top in politics do seem to be a result of the class system which stems from having a monarchy. I used to just have a family and friends setting but then decided that I wanted to share my political beliefs with everyone whether they liked it or not. I seem to be on a Daily Express Facebook page also (not sure how that happened!) and that is a real eye opener! I think the people who post on it are the U.K. equivalent of the gun lobby lot in the States.

This is entirely off-topic and none of my business MayBee70.

But why don't you change your settings so that random people can't comment on your posts? Or block those people who have these weird ideas? There's a lot of very odd people out there.

They all vere away from the subject of children being shot in schools though, saying how many crimes are prevented because people can go round shooting criminals . To be fair a lot of them do say look at the knife crime in your country and they have a point there. But I’m shocked by the hatred aimed at me just for saying we have strict gun laws in the U.K. and we don’t have mass shootings of children. People from Australia have pointed out the same thing too.

Maybee, I fear that you are right. It's a case of "I know what I know, don't confuse me with facts". I note that I have not received data on child deaths from hot dogs from our American poster.

Having had even more comments today on Facebook telling me how gun laws don’t work I’ve realised that gun culture is so ingrained in the American culture that nothing is ever going to be done about it. They are more angry at the idea of gun control than they are of children being killed.

Children can die from illness, children can die from accidents. All very tragic. But for children to die from deliberate murder is beyond anything I can comprehend.

Torge, I will rise to your challenge and say that "more children die from choking on hot dogs than gun shots" is, in fact BS.
Unless, of course, you can offer reliable data to support this, rather than " my friend says"....

Hithere

I will try to explain it in a different way

Heavily embedded social customs - dowry in India, Pakistan, Africa, etc, forced marriages in some cultures, FMG, smoking, etc can be very hard to change as it is what those countries are used to that for centuries or decades

A law can be made to address it but it doesn't mean it won't find opposition with some parties and will take time to be adopted

Same in the US - this country was born with the principle of protecting yourself with guns, it is part of its Constitution.
Add political turmoil to the mix, economical interests, lobbyists and it is not as simple as "make a law to fix the shootings"

I believe that child marriage is still legal in some American states. And the death penalty. On a Facebook page I’ve just had 12 hours of being bombarded with reason why people need to carry guns. Seems a lot of it is to do with the war of independence. And in non American countries we aren’t capable of looking after our children or defend our homes…

I am confident the US will seek gun law reforms soon. The voice of common sense is loud and strong.
Canada has recently brought in laws to restrict firearm ownership and as you say, nanna8 so had Australia.
America is not one voice especially when that voice is Trump