13 Dead, 20 Wounded...

[lilpixieofterror]

You mean people took something, that wasn't worth a lot of money, and used it to get something that is actually worth more money or were just trying to get rid of items they didn't want around their house anymore? Who would of thought that would have happened?

[Rational Gaze]

I was interested in a state by state breakdown of the gun ownership and murder rates of the US, and found this infographic depicting the percentage of each state who owns guns on a map of the US:
http://static3.businessinsider.com/i...-state-map.png

(It won't embed properly for some reason, so I just put the link.)

Whereas, this site lists the murder rate, etc. for each state and has individual reports for each year from '09 to '14:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murd...ally-and-state

[Sam]

Charting IMF advanced economies with populations over five million, here's the graph I get:


Image 1443880416-001.jpg

While total suicides per 100k population doesn't correlate with gun ownership among the listed nations, it appears that total homicides and firearm-related intentional deaths correlate reasonably well, in line with the more rigorous research posted above.

(Guns/100 persons is here recharted to Guns/10 persons in order to more closely group the trend lines)

Image 1443880669-001.jpg

Image 1443880682-001.jpg

[lilpixieofterror]

To interrupt the gun control debate:

The nine people killed after a gunman opened fire on an Oregon community college campus Thursday took different paths to the small rural college, ranging from teens starting college for the first time to adults who were seeking a second career. One was an assistant professor of English at the college.
http://news.yahoo.com/oregon-shootin...21518231.html#

Good article to know who the victims were.

Now back to the gun control debate...

[Cow Poke]

To interrupt the gun control debate:

The nine people killed after a gunman opened fire on an Oregon community college campus Thursday took different paths to the small rural college, ranging from teens starting college for the first time to adults who were seeking a second career. One was an assistant professor of English at the college.
http://news.yahoo.com/oregon-shootin...21518231.html#

Good article to know who the victims were.

And the shooter was a Brit!

[lilpixieofterror]

And the shooter was a Brit!

I purposely try not to remember anything about the shooters.

[Cow Poke]

I purposely try not to remember anything about the shooters.

I get that, but this shooter religiously studied other shooters.

[Irate Canadian]

Christians are still responsible for the vast majority of violent crime in the US.

[Citation needed.]

[rogue06]

I purposely try not to remember anything about the shooters.

The only thing we need to know about him is that he thought that being a murderer was a great way to attract attention to himself. He wanted to be a copycat.

Source: To name or not to name: media wrestle with naming mass shooter

In the wake of another mass shooting in the United States, US media confronted the dilemma over how much to focus on the gunman.

In the age of 24-7 media saturation, the question has become: when does reporting the facts inadvertantly play into the killer's desire for widespread notoriety - and in the process plant the seed for the next disturbed person with a gun?

After Thursday's shooting in Roseburg, Oregon, in which a 26-year-old man killed nine students at a community college before being shot dead by police, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin urged the media not to name the killer.

"I continue to believe that those media and community members who publicize his name will only glorify his horrific actions ... and eventually this will only serve to inspire future shooters," Hanlin said.

The sheriff's remarks led to a social media debate among two major television news anchors.

Responding to Hanlin's call, CNN's Don Lemon said on the air Thursday, "unfortunately we ... must identify him because that is our job."

Fox News host Megan Kelly, however, supported Hanlin via Twitter: "Good for him!" she wrote.

Kelly went on to disagree with Lemon, saying, "No. Print media can. TV gives infamy he prob desired. Don't!"

Lemon in turn wrote: "My heart agrees with you, but I believe [journalists] must name shooters. Sparingly though."

Others in the field agreed with Lemon.

Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute, a journalism school, wrote Friday that to avoid naming shooters was "a bad idea."

She argued that making the name public allows for those who may have known the shooter to come forward with important information. It is also essential to help identify trends and guard against misinformation.

"It's easy and convenient for politicians to beat the press up by accusing them of glorifying a bad person. Responsible reporting is the antidote," McBride wrote.

However there is increasing evidence that media saturation could lead to copycats.

The shooter's own social media postings suggest he tracked other mass shootings. In one post, he appeared to urge readers to watch the online footage of Vester Flanagan shooting two former colleagues live on TV in August in Virginia, writing, "A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone ... seems the more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight."

A 2015 study by Arizona State University and Northeastern Illinois University, entitled, "Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings" found "20 to 30 per cent of attacks are set off by other attacks."

In 2014 after six people were killed in Isla Vista, California, US blogger Ezra Klein wrote: "Mass murderers want glory and fame. Somehow we have to stop giving it to them."

He noted that news organizations stopped reporting suicides in large part because they had been found to be "contagious," and wondered if a similar approach might be appropriate with mass killers.

Klein cited sociologist Zeynep Tufekci who wrote in 2013 that he was "increasingly concerned that the tornado of media coverage that swirls around each such mass killing ... as well as the detailed and sensationalist reporting ... may be creating a vicious cycle of copycat effects similar to those found in teen and other suicides."

No Notoriety is an organization that calls upon the media to limit reporting on the perpetrator "for the sake of public safety."

"Recognize that the prospect of infamy could serve as a motivating factor for other individuals to kill others and could inspire copycat crimes," No Notoriety says on its website. "Keep this responsibility in mind when reporting."

And after Roseburg, it appears televised media may be taking it to heart. On Friday, during a segment with Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, a CNN anchor said the network would not name The Roseburg killer. It used the words "gunman," "shooter," "this man" or "this person" to describe him.

The digital versions of the New York Times and Washington Post however both displayed a photo of the Roseburg killer at the top of their homepages, along with his name.



Source

© Copyright Original Source

As I wrote a little over a month ago in the thread Giving killers media attention

Ever since Columbine I've been warning that all the attention given to the killers and all the public angst spent trying to "understand" them would lead to more such acts. Deranged misfits with violent inclination would see it and think that this was a legitimate way to get people to listen to them. Denying them publicity might even be just enough to keep a couple from deciding them to emulate such acts. Leave it to the psychiatrists and the like to figure out their motives and stop turning them into role models for psychopaths.

[Cow Poke]

Maybe there should be a naming scheme like we have with hurricanes, only... like... Loser2100 or Jackass444 or Scumbag3222

[Christianbookworm]

I would not want to be in loser2100's shoes come Judgement day.

[myth]

Anyone else ever wonder why, after every school shooting here in the U.S. the resulting political discussions center around gun control instead of school security? Quite frankly, I'm not much interested in the gun control debate because I don't believe enacting further gun control will actually prove effective (in other words, I haven't seen reliable data showing a nation in a similar position as the U.S. both culturally and with regard to the number of guns owned, which has been able to enact gun control and achieve effective results).

But I digress. To me, I think it's more important that we should be talking about school security -- or rather, the lack thereof. As a country, we seem far more concerned with preventing fires in schools than we do preventing the violent deaths of our children. When's the last time you heard of a child dying from a fire at school in the U.S.? Yet we spend tons of money constructing schools with all kinds of fire-retardant materials, fire alarms, sprinkler systems, and fire extinguishers.

It doesn't cost so very much to provide a least a modicum of security but we resist the thought because most people are sheep and just want to hope the wolves won't ever actually come calling at their door. School security centers around a few basic principles:

-Single point of entry
-Security screening at the entry point (there are various ways to implement this, depending on what is practical)
-Armed security of some kind at the entry point (can be School Resource Officer, private security, or any trusted person trained in the use of their firearm)
-Randomized security screenings of students/staff (ideally they'd all be searched every time they enter the premises, but that's just not very practical)

Other things that can be somewhat helpful in optimizing school security:

-Bullet resistant window films on exterior and interior windows
-Classroom doors than can be locked with a dead-bolt style lock on the inside (or something similarly easy to lock, the idea being that during a crises event teachers will loose small motors skills due to stress and thus take a longer time to find their door key, fumble with it, and finally lock the door)
-Resource kits accessible to responding law enforcement officers with maps of the premises and master keys to access the entire facility unimpeded
-Frequent active shooter drills for students and staff, just like they do fire and tornado drills
-Video surveillance systems, with the someone trained and able to monitor the situation in a safe location and provide updates to responding law enforcement (most schools, or businesses for that matter, do not have such a set up and therefore their only usefulness is to document the bad things happening. Remember, video doesn't deter someone who plans on committing suicide anyways.)

I understand that we should also focus on the reason these shootings occur and work to minimize them. But its a problem we can't solve overnight, and in the mean time we're just being irresponsible by not implementing what security measures we can. We haven't seen it much in the U.S. yet, but what happens when terrorists decide to target our young school children like the Beslan incident in Russia? Schools are a prime target because we do little to protect them and they provide the potential for maximum emotional impact. Its a shame we aren't more interested in protecting them.

[klaus54]

Interesting contrast - "Conservative" and Libtard...

oregonschoolshootinglibtard.jpg

[Psychic Missile]

Anyone else ever wonder why, after every school shooting here in the U.S. the resulting political discussions center around gun control instead of school security? Quite frankly, I'm not much interested in the gun control debate because I don't believe enacting further gun control will actually prove effective (in other words, I haven't seen reliable data showing a nation in a similar position as the U.S. both culturally and with regard to the number of guns owned, which has been able to enact gun control and achieve effective results).

But I digress. To me, I think it's more important that we should be talking about school security -- or rather, the lack thereof. As a country, we seem far more concerned with preventing fires in schools than we do preventing the violent deaths of our children. When's the last time you heard of a child dying from a fire at school in the U.S.? Yet we spend tons of money constructing schools with all kinds of fire-retardant materials, fire alarms, sprinkler systems, and fire extinguishers.

It doesn't cost so very much to provide a least a modicum of security but we resist the thought because most people are sheep and just want to hope the wolves won't ever actually come calling at their door. School security centers around a few basic principles:

-Single point of entry
-Security screening at the entry point (there are various ways to implement this, depending on what is practical)
-Armed security of some kind at the entry point (can be School Resource Officer, private security, or any trusted person trained in the use of their firearm)
-Randomized security screenings of students/staff (ideally they'd all be searched every time they enter the premises, but that's just not very practical)

Other things that can be somewhat helpful in optimizing school security:

-Bullet resistant window films on exterior and interior windows
-Classroom doors than can be locked with a dead-bolt style lock on the inside (or something similarly easy to lock, the idea being that during a crises event teachers will loose small motors skills due to stress and thus take a longer time to find their door key, fumble with it, and finally lock the door)
-Resource kits accessible to responding law enforcement officers with maps of the premises and master keys to access the entire facility unimpeded
-Frequent active shooter drills for students and staff, just like they do fire and tornado drills
-Video surveillance systems, with the someone trained and able to monitor the situation in a safe location and provide updates to responding law enforcement (most schools, or businesses for that matter, do not have such a set up and therefore their only usefulness is to document the bad things happening. Remember, video doesn't deter someone who plans on committing suicide anyways.)

I understand that we should also focus on the reason these shootings occur and work to minimize them. But its a problem we can't solve overnight, and in the mean time we're just being irresponsible by not implementing what security measures we can. We haven't seen it much in the U.S. yet, but what happens when terrorists decide to target our young school children like the Beslan incident in Russia? Schools are a prime target because we do little to protect them and they provide the potential for maximum emotional impact. Its a shame we aren't more interested in protecting them.

I think a major issue is that while school shootings have great impact, they are not very frequent. Most schools will go many if not all of their years of operation without a school shooting. Because of this, some of the solutions you offer aren't very practical, especially since school budgets are so tight.

We also have to remember the security response to 9/11. The TSA has proven to be totally ineffective, and even practical measures like reinforced cockpit doors are questionable. Before any new policy, it should be determined whether the measure will be effective and whether the measure has unintended consequences.

Taking these two points into consideration, gun control would theoretically have a further-reaching effect than school security, since it would affect other types of shootings and not put a burden on schools.

[klaus54]

I think a major issue is that while school shootings have great impact, they are not very frequent. Most schools will go many if not all of their years of operation without a school shooting. Because of this, some of the solutions you offer aren't very practical, especially since school budgets are so tight.

We also have to remember the security response to 9/11. The TSA has proven to be totally ineffective, and even practical measures like reinforced cockpit doors are questionable. Before any new policy, it should be determined whether the measure will be effective and whether the measure has unintended consequences.

Taking these two points into consideration, gun control would theoretically have a further-reaching effect than school security, since it would affect other types of shootings and not put a burden on schools.

Please define "Gun Control" and how you would address the millions of projectile weapons already out there?

How is gun control other than a liberal political club with which to bludgeon conservatives?