There’s been another mass school shooting, this time in Texas. The question is, will politicians even bother with the usual pledge for action? Yes, if Donald Trump is any indication. But we know that real action would require radical change beginning with the repeal of the Second Amendment. Obviously that’s not going to happen. What is going to happen is more school shootings. And workplace shootings. And mall shootings. And on and on and on.
Why There Is Nothing Anyone Can Do About School Shootings
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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The only way to stop school shootings is to do what many districts have already done: Arm the Teachers.
PROBLEM: People with guns.
SOLUTION: More people with guns.
Somehow I don’t think it works that way.
@CH
It breaks my heart to think that because of people like you all teachers can do is huddle with kids in a corner.
Funny, I thought it was people like you: gun nuts.
Judging from your posts, you’re far more worried about The Gubbmint talking your guns away than you are about the safety of your charges.
@CH
I worry about safety.
And I worry about traitors who want to subvert the Constitution.
It’s to bad hanging, drawing, and quartering are no longer an option. The mighty Anglo Saxon has lost his way.
PROBLEM: high Gini coefficient correlation with gun violence
.
SOLUTION: lower the GINI coefficient, lower the gun violence
GINI is the measure of income inequality in a nation
http://www.gregpalast.com/florida-honduras-inequality-kills-want-to-end-the-american-shooting-epidemic/print/
@Glenn, yep – saw that. In direct contradiction to the NRA’s irrational fears: there is no correlation between murder rate and gun ownership.
More guns don’t prevent murder; and neither do fewer guns. The one thing the NRA does get right is that it’s a people problem.
@CH
God Bless the NRA
The only organization to represent the white man
> God Bless the NRA
Which god would that be? It’s sure as hell not Jesus. (See what I did there?)
Jehovah, maybe – he was big into killing other people. They really need to work out their family differences before proselytizing here on earth, y’know? Especially given that you can burn in hell for ever an’ ever if you get it wrong.
Oh, wait – Catholics think they’re sort-kinda the same guy only different. Oh, great, our universe is ruled by a cosmic schizophrenic. No wonder you need a gun to feel safe.
What’s the bag limit on seraphim and cherubim, anyway?
@CH
The NRA is the white man’s last line of defense. And so, God Bless Wayne LaPierre.
Incidentally, Jesus assaulted the money changers in the temple. Thank God, he didn’t have a Ruger.
> And I worry about traitors who want to subvert the Constitution.
And I worry about nutjobs who seem to think that their misinterpretation of the second half of the second amendment outweighs the preceding 4500 words.
The original constitution didn’t even *mention* arms (“Arms” not “guns”) The second amendment comprises less than 0.6% of the total.
It seems just really, really, unlikely that that the founding fathers were obsessed with something they forgot to mention in the first place.
@Glenn – seriously? You think that AT – a racist, sexist, homophobic, authoritarian with delusions of grandeur – should be allowed to carry guns among unarmed children who he openly despises?
What do you think would have happened when the deadly sandwich came flying at his head?
1) He would have shot it out of the air with a quip delivered in a British accent.
2) He would have panicked and accidentally shot the kid next to the sandwich pitcher. But at least he’d feel safe while doing so.
@CH
The founding fathers were obsessed with tyranny and preventing it.
My arsenal, if 43 weapons is enough to count as one, does not make me a nut, just an aficionado.
@CH
“Racist, sexist, homophobic…”
Thanks, pal
@AT
1) I’m not your pal.
2) You *are* a racist, sexist, homophobe – you even brag about it.
One of your articles was all about your ability to spot those who should not be allowed to own guns. Funny, I’m pretty sure I know who should not be allowed to own guns.
Obviously, if AT is who he says he is, he knows how to color within the lines.
Since more murders are committed with hands and feet than with rifles, I expect that no matter how he feels about the situation he is in, he hasn’t assaulted any of his students with his hands or feet because he is aware of the consequences, and this would be more so with a firearm.
AT now takes a lot of guff from the kids and their parents, and if he really wanted to, he doesn’t need permission to carry a gun into the school to commit a murder.
AT talks tough but he’s too controlled to blow it all in a rage.
Now cops in school is a different story.
Cops can kill people and get off pleading “qualified immunity”. Cops should be kept out of schools until there is a fire fight, because cops have been made into soldiers in all but name.
The US was founded on slave hunting and Indian killing.
That is the definition of white power and conservatism right to this day.
The whole legalized killing thing ran into trouble when non-white people were recognized as being human and became able to lawfully carry guns and shoot back at white guys.
I’ve heard on the news that more students than US troops have been killed this year.
That’s an unfair comparison. It should be between soldiers and school shooters on one side, and students and foreign civilians on the to other side.
By far, fewer school shooters and soldiers than non-combatant students and foreign non-combatant civilians have been killed this year.
The guys with the guns are thriving.
The rest of the world outside of US borders is now Indian country.
@Glenn
Thanks, Glenn
Our school cop mollycoddles kids. It’s part of the constant training they undergo. I’m not sure he could break up a fight or that he would want to get involved. He’d put his hands on the kid and get put out on leave.
@CH
Relax, buddy
@AT
Some tame people turn homicidal when they get behind the steering wheel. Some tame people are sure to turn that way if forced to carry a gun, too.
I think teachers that have guns should be allowed to carry them in schools. I don’t think that people without an aptitude for armed combat will be comfortable or effective without it.
I knew a state senator who wanted to make churches a “safe zone”.
I “agreed” with him.
I told him it would be good for an aggrieved parent to be the only person in church with a gun went he went hunting for a priestly pedophile.
@Glenn
Agreed. Only those trained and comfortable should be weaponized.
It’s too bad that the parents of Dr Nasser’s victims had to submit to a weapons search before entering the courthouse. Prison is too good for him.
Why are white men stockpiling guns? Short answer: fear. Not only do we have gun nuts carrying guns, but we’ve got *scared* racist gun nuts carrying guns to protect themselves against largely imaginary threats.
What could go wrong?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-are-white-men-stockpiling-guns/
@CH
I’ve got different holsters for different types of weapons, depending on what I need to do.
Home invasions are not an imaginary threat.
How many home invasions have you stopped … rounded to the nearest ten?
A gun in the home is ten times as likely to injure or kill a resident than an invader.
Greg Palast, who sometimes works with Ted, posted about the correlation between Gini index and gun violence.
Yes, there is a way to lessen gun violence, but the wealthiest among us will have no part in it.
http://www.gregpalast.com/florida-honduras-inequality-kills-want-to-end-the-american-shooting-epidemic/print/
On another point:
When I was into astronomy I had three different telescopes and two pairs of binoculars.
I used each for something different.
Different guns, and different holsters, have different uses. It’s not unusual for a hobbyist to have many things that can’t all be used at the same time.
My wife and I were about to be robbed when I convinced the two male muggers that I had the upper hand in the confrontation—cocked in my pocket— and they both ran off.
I don’t feel a bit safer by showing vulnerability under attack, unless I am trying to draw a specific type of attack that I am skilled at counter-attacking.
> Different guns, and different holsters, have different uses.
1) Killing people
2) Practicing Killing People
3) … ?
Full Disclosure: I am a gun owner, just not a gun *nut*.
@CH
The intruder who dares try penetrate my fortress will be unlucky indeed.
I am well-armed and well-trained
eh-HEM
“How many home invasions have you stopped … rounded to the nearest ten?”
“Different guns, and different holsters, have different uses.”
To be worn with summer weight clothes, cold weather clothes, casual dress, semi-formal dress, etc.
@Glenn
Of course, they ran off. They thought you were armed. Good for you for protecting yourself and your wife.
American Teacher
Dude, 21-foot rule ring any bells?
A holstered weapon cannot be drawn and fired within twenty-one feet before a man with a knife can cut the shit out of you.
Google up the Dan Inosanto video.
Makes me also think James Colburn would have won that knife throwing contest in Magnificent seven.
Chicago and Maryland. All have very high Black crimse stats, mainly murder.
Why focus on whitey who went through the conceal carry process instead of the street thugs copying old rap videos and slinging dope.
This cartoon is about school shootings – the majority of the shooters have been white. (And I’d like to see the stats on the anti-depressants)
I’m a white hippy biker deadhead – and I do own guns. The difference is that I don’t worship them, I don’t obsess about them, and I don’t cry myself to sleep every night worrying that the gubbmint is gonna take them away from me.
And I’d like to see the stats on the anti-depressants)
If I post too many links the post doesn’t appear. Much simpler for you to Google.
Fact: At least 36 school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence have been committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 172 wounded and 80 killed (in other school shootings, information about their drug use was never made public—neither confirming or refuting if they were under the influence of prescribed drugs). The most important fact about this list, is that these are only cases where the information about their psychiatric drug use was made public.
CCHR International’s investigation into school violence reveals that at least 36 school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence have been committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 172 wounded and 80 killed (in other school shootings, information about their drug use was never made public—neither confirming or refuting if they were under the influence of prescribed drugs or undergone other behavioral therapy.)[2] At least 27 international drug regulatory agency warnings have been issued on psychiatric drugs being linked to mania, violence, hostility, aggression, psychosis, and homicidal ideation (thoughts or fantasies of homicide that can be planned).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066537/
A total of 5787 publications were screened and 130 trials fulfilled our inclusion criteria. The trials were generally uninformative; 97 trials did not report the randomisation method, 75 trials did not report any discontinuations and 63 trials did not report any adverse events or lack thereof. Eleven of the 130 published trials and two of 29 clinical study reports we received from the regulatory agencies presented data for our meta-analysis. Treatment of adult healthy volunteers with antidepressants doubled their risk of harms related to suicidality and violence, odds ratio 1.85 (95% confidence interval 1.11 to 3.08, p = 0.02, I2 = 18%). The number needed to treat to harm one healthy person was 16 (95% confidence interval 8 to 100; Mantel-Haenszel risk difference 0.06). There can be little doubt that we underestimated the harms of antidepressants, as we only had access to the published articles for 11 of our 13 trials.
Conclusions
Antidepressants double the occurrence of events in adult healthy volunteers that can lead to suicide and violence.
Using matched data from Sweden’s prescribed drug register and its national crime register over a three-year period, they found that about 850,000 people were prescribed SSRIs and 1% of these were convicted of a violent crime.
While in most age groups the likelihood of criminal violence was not significantly different whether people were taking SSRIs or not, for 15-24 year-olds there was a very substantial increase – 43% – in their risk of committing violent crime while on the medication.
Moreover the results found a higher risk of young people being involved in violent arrests, non-violent convictions and arrests, suffering non-fatal injuries and having alcohol problems when they were taking the antidepressants – and also that those who took lower doses had a higher risk of being violent.
Not many white people nor guns listed below.
Kind of large stats for stabbing deaths though.
147 dead, Islamist gunmen killed after attack at Kenya college
China stabbings: Nine students killed in Shaanxi
A series of uncoordinated mass stabbings, hammer attacks, and cleaver attacks in the People’s Republic of China began in March 2010. The spate of attacks left at least 25 dead and some 115 injured. As most cases had no known motive, analysts have blamed mental health problems caused by rapid social change for the rise in these kinds of mass murder and murder-suicide incidents.[1]
8 Children Dead in Japanese School Stabbing
An attack by knife-wielding men at a railway station in Kunming in south-west China has left at least 29 dead, the state news agency Xinhua says.
The Osaka school massacre took place on June 8, 2001, at Ikeda Elementary School, an elite primary school affiliated with Osaka Kyoiku University in Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
At 10:15 that morning, 37-year-old former janitor Mamoru Takuma entered the school armed with a kitchen knife and began stabbing school children and teachers. He killed eight children, mostly aged seven and eight, and seriously wounded thirteen other children and two teachers
Japan knife attack: At least 19 dead
More than 600 people have been shot in Chicago this year
Baltimore’s 2018 homicide toll hits 100 with teen’s shooting
NEW ORLEANS, LA (WVUE) –
There have been more than 50 murders so far this year in New Orleans. One local criminologist says if the city continues on that pace, there could be a record number of homicides by the end of the year.
CrazyH
My Liberal Hippie brother recently purchased a gun to protect him from the coming collapse and food riots.
He is white and does live in Miami.
Voted Jill Stein.
Sorry,Brother in law.
Brother is a felon.
@CH
“Why are white men carrying guns”
It’s called privilege. And with privilege comes responsibility
Funny how I can’t carry a sword, staff, nunchaku, tonfa or knife around – but guns are just hunky dory. I don’t know of any cases of toddlers killing their sibling with chucks.
I can legally carry a switchblade in my home state.
Two white recent high school graduates were celebrating their white power on a Fourth of July evening near my home when they got cut up pretty bad by a US citizen of Asian extraction after they tried to have some punching “fun” with him and his girlfriend.
The US citizen of Asian extraction was found to be innocent in the trial that followed.
@Glenn
Defending yoursel seems to me to be a human right and, as such, should be enshrined in the U.N Charter
@ AT
Agreed.
> I can legally carry a switchblade in my home state.
I’m jealous. I rode through Arizona recently, where switchblades are legal. They’re not legal in my home state. I got a black one…
@CH
And I just got a Ruger Bolt Action Precision Rifle.
Are you jealous ,CH?
My teacher has a two-hundred-year-old katana. THAT I am jealous of. Yet another boomstick – not so much.
Unlike Mark Wahlberg who blinded an Asian grocer in Boston.
Glenn
Some people buy inexpensive knives as drop knives.
Slice until dull, wipe it down and drop it.
Never look back.
Depends on your state.
Also depends on if the cops choose to kill you for carrying such.
They have for phones and toy guns.
If you carry a knife and they need the bust it may be considered a dangerous weapon.
Learn how to use the objects around you instead.
Also keep your hands held in fron fists unclenched. Learn palm strikes. Open palm looks defensive on video closed fist looks aggressive.
Learn some monkey domainance/submissive stances. Make it seem you are intimidated same type os stance is also very protective and allows for palm strikes.
Come to Texas. You can carry all that stuff anywhere you want.
In Arkansas, the state from which the great derlehrer hails, (Hi, buddy), many schools cannot afford to hire a security guard. So they have trained the teachers. And it’s worked out.
Oh where to begin.
The majority of shooters are on antidepressants, which can and will cause violent aggressive tendencies.
Ban antidepressants.
The majority of gun owners are NOT involved in these shootings.
Why should those decent law abiding citizens suffer because of a few medicated damaged assholes.
More people die from car accidents than gun violence
Ban cars.
Personally, if someone wants to kill you either singly or en masse they will find a way.. I seem to recall a couple of mass stabbings/sword related ones in noth Europe and Japan.
Menwhile Hillary gets some bullshit gegree from harvard for some shit reason like transforming politics despite the fact her campaign conspired to deny voters the right to the candidate of their choice.
Once again Rall goes full Republican bashing.
PS
Here froggy, hopity hopity.
Fuck me Rall managed to get the same goober argument from both sides early today.
Tip, it’s all decisive bullshit to keep your minds off the real issues, like about a third of americans can’t cover monthly expenses. Or the retail collapse which tosses even more workers on the street.
Yep let’s ignore the serious economic infrastructure issues for more bullshit gun debate.
Also I think culture war, which the gun nut / gun control nut conflict is part of, has been a staple of American politics for generations, and isn’t going to stop any time soon. If politicians don’t participate they can’t get elected — it’s as if they were against baseball and motherhood.
Wait until gangs of knocked up teens start mass murdering with bats.
Then watch the pretzel logic.
CrazyH
Guess you didn’t bother with the antidepressant link to school shooters.
I gave you a good start.
Plus I added some stuff to take the onus off whitey for being so violent. And as a bonus to prove you don’t require a gun to mass murder.
Personally not a gun fan. No bullets make it a club.
I bet if you put on an orange vest and carried a clipboard one could take out entire neighborhoods just by knocking on the door and claiming to be from some utility checking for a leak or short. Walk on in let the carnage begin.
I also bet one could plant some sort of timed device at the gas line into homes and take out entire neighborhoods all with the same trigger.
Make it even better spread those neighborhoods around a city so fire fighters are thinned out.
Guns are for the stupid.
Or video games. I do love sniping in Fallout.
Dude, you really need to take a remedial math course. Here is the conclusion of the paper:
“Antidepressants double the occurrence of events in adult healthy volunteers that can lead to suicide and violence.”
Which is quite different than your assertion. Okay, you posted some stats about numbers of shootings. In order for them to be meaningful, you need to post the other numbers: the proportion who weren’t on meds.
Also to substantiate them.
OTOH, one would naturally expect a high correlation between depression and mass shootings. Happy people don’t tend to do such things.
Fannin County School District in Georgia hosted voted to arm teachers. 🤸♂️🤸♀️🤸♂️🎁🎁
Just voted
Sorry for the typos. In my delight, I hit the wrong key.