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Informative article about how research on gun violence was somewhat halted for organizations willing to dig deeper

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The growing momentum for tighter gun control after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., is highlighting the National Rifle Association's history of aggressively confronting challenges to what it regards as Second Amendment rights.

Federal limits on both research into gun violence and the release of data about guns used in crimes are powerful reminders of the lobbying group's advantages over gun control activists. For decades, the NRA pushed legislation that stifled the study and spread of information about the causes of gun violence.

Last month, Congress passed a spending bill that included language giving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the authority to resume gun-related studies, but some researchers are skeptical anything will change without funding. The Democrats wrote that part of the bill in order to reverse the Dickey Amendment of 1996, which many believe virtually halted all research on gun violence.

The legislation didn't explicitly ban gun research, but funding cuts reduced it by 90 percent, according to Dr. Mark Rosenberg, the former director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. The NRA was motivated to support the amendment after a landmark 1993 study that concluded that having a gun in the home was more dangerous than not having one.

"The NRA told everybody, 'You either can do research, or you can keep your guns. But if you let the research go forward, you will all lose all of your guns,' " Rosenberg tells Here & Now's Robin Young.

Instead of completely shutting down the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Rosenberg says Congress presented the Dickey Amendment as a compromise. But the center's budget was eventually cut by $2.5 million, and Rosenberg was fired in 1999.

Jay Dickey, the Republican congressman from Arkansas who spearheaded the legislation, told NPR in 2015 that he regretted his role in pushing through the provision.

"It wasn't necessary that all research stop," Dickey said. "It just couldn't be the collection of data so that they can advocate gun control. That's all we were talking about. But for some reason, it just stopped altogether."

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told a congressional hearing in February that the 1996 law only prohibits the CDC from advocating for gun control and that it does not block research altogether. He told lawmakers that the CDC should resume that work.

"We're in the science business and the evidence-generating business," Azar said, "and so I will have our agency certainly working in this field, as they do across the broad spectrum of disease control and prevention."

The NRA challenges the idea that its efforts limited the study of the effect of guns on public health.

"Anyone who thinks there's a lack of researchers studying firearms has been ignoring the headlines," Lars Dalseide, an NRA spokesman, told The Boston Globe. "The fact is, a number of studies are released every year. While most are tainted with preconceived outcomes in search of supporting data, there is plenty of funding in that arena."

Private organizations, the National Institutes of Health and the Justice Department still conduct this research, but there are far fewer studies than in the past. The National Institute of Justice, the primary Justice Department research office, funded 32 gun-related studies from 1993 to 1999, but none from 2009 to 2012, according to Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Another little-known legislative provision also impacts the study of gun-related deaths in the United States. The 2003 Tiahrt Amendment blocked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from distributing information from its national database of guns used in crime.

When local police obtain a firearm at a crime scene, the ATF traces where the gun was first sold, when it was sold and to whom. According to a 1996 analysis of ATF data, about 1 percent of gun dealers in the nation sold nearly 60 percent of guns used in crimes in the 1990s.

"The only thing that the Tiahrt Amendment did was protect the bad gun dealers," says Daniel Webster, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "It did nothing to help the good gun dealers because they didn't need help. The data suggests that, again, most comply with the laws and are quite responsible."

Advocates argue that efforts to suppress gun research have resulted in more lives lost. They say applying science to other public health issues like motor vehicle deaths and smoking saved lives without banning cars and cigarettes.

"We can do it for gun safety, and we can do it without infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners," Rosenberg says. "What this language makes clear is that it's not either-or like the NRA told us 20 years ago. We can do both."

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How The NRA Worked To Stifle Gun Violence Research

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The growing momentum for tighter gun control after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., is highlighting the National Rifle Association's history of aggressively confronting challenges to what it regards as Second Amendment rights. Federal limits on both research into gun violence and the release of data about guns used in crimes are powerful reminders of the lobbying group's advantages over gun control activists.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/03/24/us/march-for-our-lives-emma-gonzalez/index.html

values - give information from someone who was actually in the school.
limitations - was created for a specific audience

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English Period 6

This Is The Political Aftermath Of The Parkland School Shooting (HBO)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ikoc7cXBeQE

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This video offers insight into personal views or opinions.

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This video shows multiple peoples opions and also allows others to see what they are try to do to stop it

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Gun violence: More complicated than a 'mental health problem'

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Gun violence: More complicated than a 'mental health problem'

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If you ask mental health researchers, such mass shootings are much more complicated than that.

On Sunday, 26-year-old Devin Kelley sprayed bullets across the sanctuary of First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, about 30 miles east of San Antonio. The youngest killed at the church was 17 months old; the oldest was 77 years old.

"We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries, but this isn't a guns situation," Trump said during a joint news conference Monday in Tokyo.

"This is a mental health problem at the highest level," he said. "It's a very, very sad event."

Trump's response to the Texas church shooting echoed previous comments he has made on gun violence. In 2015, Trump said he was opposed to tightening gun laws in the United States but was in favor of addressing mental health to prevent shootings.

Yet various epidemiological studies over the past two decades show that the vast majority of people with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression, are no more likely to be violent than anyone else.

Rather, people with severe mental illnesses are more than 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population. And, only about 3% to 5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious mental illness, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.

But those statistics have "almost nothing to do with mass casualty shootings," said Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University who specializes in gun violence and mental illness.

So exactly how are mental health and gun violence intertwined, and what is needed to end the violence?

Gun violence and mental illness are public health problems "that intersect at the edges" but have very little overlap, Swanson told CNN last year.

There's no doubt that America's systems of care for mental health are overburdened, expensive and inaccessible for many who need them, he said. But when it comes to gun violence among this community, suicide tends to occur at higher rates than homicides, he said.

"If we back up and think about firearm-related injuries and mortality as a public health problem, it turns out there is a mental health-related story, and it's suicide," he said. "If we had better mental health care and could get people better access and break down barriers to care, then yes, we might reduce gun violence by a lot but it would be from reducing suicides."

Otherwise, mental illness is just one "highly unspecific" factor that may contribute to gun violence, along with being young, white and male, or a history of violence, Swanson said.

Instead of policies that restrict gun access based solely on mental illness diagnoses or because a person has made contact with the judicial system or health care agencies due to mental illness, the American Psychological Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and other advocacy groups have called for gun access criteria based on more subtle indicators of potentially dangerous behavior.

Those indicators -- such as having past or pending violent misdemeanor convictions or charges, domestic violence restraining orders or multiple DUI convictions -- have been largely informed by the work of Swanson and others.

Swanson supports intervention at the point of purchase through comprehensive background checks -- but to make background checks work, criteria for inclusion on the database should be based on other indicators of risk besides mental health history, such as those indicators of aggressive, impulsive or risky behavior.

"A history of violent behavior is a far better predictor of future violence than mental illness," he said.

Calling gun violence a mental health issue is to scapegoat and stigmatize people with mental illness, he said.

"It's kind of a canard, a convenient explanation that exploits the tremendous fear people have with these horrifying mass shootings," he said. "If people fear those with mental illness they're going to treat them with scorn and support public policies that restrict their liberties."

After all, mental illness affects millions of adults across the country.

In 2015, there were an estimated 43.4 million adults in the United States with some form of mental illness within the past year, which represented 17.9% of adults nationwide, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

The American Psychological Association recommends prohibiting firearms for high-risk groups, such as domestic violence offenders or persons convicted of violent misdemeanor crimes.

"Reducing the incidence of gun violence will require interventions through multiple systems, including legal, public health, public safety, community, and health. Increasing the availability of data and funding will help inform and evaluate policies designed to reduce gun violence," according to the association's website.

Swanson and his colleagues examined the proportion of people in the United States with impulsive angry behavior who own or carry guns and have a diagnosable mental illness in a paper published in the journal Behavioral Sciences & the Law in 2015.

They conducted household surveys with 9,282 people from February 2001 to April 2003, excluding people who carried guns for work, resulting in a response rate of 70.9%.

An analysis of the survey results estimated that nearly one in 10 adults has access to firearms and has a problem with anger and impulsive aggressive behavior.

These people were more likely to be male, younger and married and to live in outlying areas around metropolitan centers rather than in central cities, Swanson and his colleagues wrote in their paper.

They were significantly more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for a wide range of mental disorders, including depression, bipolar and anxiety disorders, PTSD, intermittent explosive disorder, pathological gambling, eating disorder, alcohol and illicit drug use disorders, and a range of personality disorders.

What's more, despite evidence of "considerable psychopathology" in many of these respondents, only a very small proportion, 8% to 10%, were ever hospitalized for a mental health problem.

"Because only a small proportion of persons with this risky combination have ever been involuntarily hospitalized for a mental health problem, most will not be subject to existing mental health-related legal restrictions on firearms resulting from a history of involuntary commitment," Swanson and his colleagues wrote in the paper's abstract.

As for Texas gunman Kelley, the state denied him a license to carry a gun, Gov. Greg Abbott said, citing the director of Texas' Department of Public Safety.

"So how was it that he was able to get a gun? By all the facts that we seem to know, he was not supposed to have access to a gun," Abbott told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "So how did this happen?"

On Monday, Trump said his "thoughts and prayers" were with the victims and their families but did not suggest plans to take any legislative or other policy action to address the shooting.

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gun violence: more complicated than a 'mental health problem' - cnn

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Emanuella Grinberg and Jacqueline Howard, CNN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gun violence: More complicated than a 'mental health problem'

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If you ask mental health researchers, such mass shootings are much more complicated than that. On Sunday, 26-year-old Devin Kelley sprayed bullets across the sanctuary of First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, about 30 miles east of San Antonio. The youngest killed at the church was 17 months old; the oldest was 77 years old.

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History of Gun Control Laws
Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, enslaved people, indentured servants, and Native Americans; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned.

Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. Several colonies' gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. Read more history...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

The Second Amendment is not an unlimited or individual right to own guns.

Further, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of militias to own guns, not the right of individuals to own guns. Former Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissenting opinion for District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, wrote, "the Framer's single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee 'to keep and bear arms' was on military use of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias," hence the inclusion of the phrase "well regulated militia."

Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, stated there is nothing about an individual right to bear arms in the notes about the Second Amendment when it was being drafted, discussed, or ratified; the US Supreme Court declined to rule in favor of the individual right four times between 1876 and 1939; and all law articles on the Second Amendment from 1888 to 1959 stated that an individual right was not guaranteed.
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Pro 2

More gun control laws would reduce gun deaths.

Approximately 50% of unintentional fatal shootings were self-inflicted; and most unintentional firearm deaths were caused by friends or family members.

Five women are murdered with guns every day in the United States. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 5,364 US soldiers were killed in action between Oct. 7, 2001 and Jan. 28, 2015; between 2001 and 2012 6,410 women were killed with a gun by an intimate partner in the United States.

Researchers found that a "general barrier to firearm access created through state regulation can have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide rates in the United States. Permit requirements and bans on sales to minors were the most effective of the regulations analyzed."

Gun licensing laws were associated with a 14% decrease in firearm homicides, while increases in firearm homicides were seen in places with right-to-carry and stand-your ground-laws.

More gun control leads to fewer suicides. When US gun ownership goes down, overall suicide rates drop; meanwhile, each 10 percentage-point increase in gun ownership is linked to a 26.9% increase in the youth suicide rate. In Indiana and Connecticut, after "red flag" laws to remove guns from people who may pose a threat were enacted, gun suicides decreased by 7.5% and 13.7% respectively, while suicides by other means did not decrease during the same time. A person who wants to kill him/herself is unlikely to commit suicide with poison or a knife when a gun is unavailable.

The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 31% of total accidental shooting deaths could have been prevented by installing safety devices on guns: 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks; and 23% of accidental shooting deaths by adolescents and adults per year could be prevented by loading indicators showing when a bullet was in the chamber ready to be fired.

Marjorie Sanfilippo, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Eckerd College who has researched children's behavior around guns, stated, "We put gates around swimming pools to keep children from drowning. We put safety caps on medications to keep children from poisoning themselves.... [B]ecause children are naturally curious and impulsive, and because we have shown time and again that we cannot 'gun-proof' them with education, we have a responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of children."
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Pro 3

The presence of a gun makes a conflict more likely to become violent.

The FBI found that arguments (such as romantic triangles, brawls fueled by alcohol or drugs, and arguments over money) resulted in 1,962 gun deaths (59.9% of the total).

An editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health noted, "gun-inflicted deaths [often] ensue from impromptu arguments and fights; in the US, two-thirds of the 7,900 deaths in 1981 involving arguments and brawls were caused by guns." A study published in the same journal found that "the weapons used [in altercations]... were those closest at hand." And thus, according to another study, "[r]ather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."

Common sense gun control laws can decrease the likelihood of a violent situation turning deadly. President Ronald Reagan and others did not think the AR-15 military rifle (also called M16s by the Air Force) should be owned by civilians and, when the AR-15 was included in the assault weapons ban of 1994 (which expired on Sep. 13, 2004), the NRA supported the legislation. A Mother Jones investigation found that high-capacity magazines were used in at least 50% of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012.When high-capacity magazines were used in mass shootings, the death rate rose 63% and the injury rate rose 156%.
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Pro 4

A majority of adults, including gun owners, support common sense gun control such as background checks, bans on assault weapons, and bans on high-capacity magazines.

According to a Feb. 20, 2018 Quinnipiac Poll, 97% of American voters and 97% of gun owners support universal background checks. 67% support a nationwide ban on assault weapons, and 83% support mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases.

As much as 40% of all gun sales are undocumented private party gun sales that do not require a background check (aka the "gun show loophole").

53% of all adults surveyed approve of high-capacity magazine bans. 89% of adults with a gun in the home approve of laws to prevent the purchase of guns by the mentally ill, and 82% approve of banning gun sales to people on no-fly lists.

77% of Americans support requiring a license to purchase a gun.

Don Macalady, member of Hunters against Gun Violence, stated, "As a hunter and someone who has owned guns since I was a young boy, I believe that commonsense gun legislation makes us all safer. Background checks prevent criminals and other dangerous people from getting guns."

Many would like to see the U.S. enact more laws like other countries, citing the fact that countries with restrictive gun control laws have lower gun homicide and suicide rates than the United States. Both Switzerland and Finland require gun owners to acquire licenses and pass background checks that include mental and criminal records, among other restrictions and requirements. In 2007 Switzerland ranked number 3 in international gun ownership rates with 45.7 guns per 100 people (about 3,400,000 guns total). In 2009 Switzerland had 24 gun homicides (0.31 deaths per 100,000 people) and 253 gun suicides (3.29 deaths per 100,000 people). Finland ranked fourth in international gun ownership rates with 45.3 guns per 100 people (about 2,400,000 guns total). In 2007 Finland had 23 (0.43 deaths per 100,000 people) gun homicides and 172 gun suicides (4.19 deaths per 100,000 people).
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Con 1

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects individual gun ownership.

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution reads, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Lawrence Hunter, Chairman of Revolution PAC, stated, "The Founders understood that the right to own and bear laws is as fundamental and as essential to maintaining liberty as are the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and the other protections against government encroachments on liberty delineated in the Bill of Rights."
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Con 2

Gun control laws are discriminatory and infringe on citizens' rights

Current gun control laws are frequently aimed at inner city, poor, black communities who are perceived as more dangerous than white gun owners. Charles Gallagher, Chair of Sociology at LaSalle University, stated that some gun control laws are still founded on racial fears: "Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1."

Background checks and micro-stamping are an invasion of privacy. Background checks require government databases that keep personal individual information on gun owners, including name, addresses, mental health history, criminal records, and more. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worried that Senator Harry Reid's 2013 proposed background check legislation (the bill failed 54-46) would have allowed the government to keep databases of gun purchases indefinitely, creating a "worry that you're going to see searches of the databases and an expansion for purposes that were not intended when the information was collected." Micro-stamping similarly requires a database of gun owners and the codes their personal guns would stamp on cartridge cases. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote that they would oppose any legislation that infringes "on the American people's constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance."

Gun control laws infringe upon the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety. The police cannot protect everyone all of the time. 61% of men and 56% of women surveyed by Pew Research said that stricter gun laws would "make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families." Nelson Lund, Professor at George Mason University School of Law, stated, "The right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself is a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life" and "many [gun control laws] interfere with the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals." A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, a gun control advocate, carried a concealed gun when her life was threatened and her home attacked by the New World Liberation Front in the 1970s.

Gun control laws, especially those that try to ban "assault weapons," infringe upon the right to own guns for hunting and sport. In 2011, there were 13.7 million hunters 16 years old or older in the United States, High-powered semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are used to hunt and in target shooting tournaments each year. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, "So-called 'Assault weapons' are more often than not less powerful than other hunting rifles. The term 'assault weapon' was conjured up by anti-gun legislators to scare voters into thinking these firearms are something out of a horror movie... [T]he Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, both labeled 'assault weapons,' are the rifles most used for marksmanship competitions in the United States. And their cartridges are standard hunting calibers, useful for game up to and including deer." According to a Feb. 2013 Pew Research report, 32% of gun owners owned guns for hunting and 7% owned guns for target or sport shooting.
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Con 3

Gun control laws simply do not work.

Gun control efforts have proved ineffective. According to David Lampo, Publications Director of the Cato Institute, "there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates." Banning high-capacity magazines will not necessarily deter crime because even small gun magazines can be changed in seconds.The "gun show loophole" is virtually nonexistent because commercial dealers, who sell the majority of guns at shows and elsewhere, are bound by strict federal laws. According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, most state-level gun control laws do not reduce firearm death rates, and, of 25 state laws, nine were associated with higher gun death rates.

Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people). The country has only one legal gun store (the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales), compared to at least 63,709 legal gun stores and pawn shops in the United States as of Feb. 10, 2014. Mexico's gun store is on a secure military base and customers must present a valid ID, go through a metal detector, and turn over cellphones and cameras to guards. To actually buy a gun, customers have to show proof of honest income, provide references, pass a criminal background check, prove any military duties were completed with honor, and be fingerprinted and photographed. If allowed to purchase a gun, the customer may buy only one gun (choosing from only .38 caliber pistols or lower) and one box of bullets. Between 2006 and 2010, Mexico's one gun shop sold 6,490 guns, yet as of 2012, Mexicans own about 15,000,000 guns, or about 13.5 guns per 100 people.

The main reason gun control doesn't work is because laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws. Of 62 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012, 49 of the shooters used legally obtained guns. Collectively, 143 guns were possessed by the killers with about 75% obtained legally. A Secret Service analysis found that of 24 mass shootings in 2019 at least 10 (42%) involved illegally possessed guns.

The logical conclusion is that gun control laws do not deter crime; gun ownership deters crime. A study in Applied Economics Letters found that "assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level" and "states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murders." While gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, the murder rate decreased. Journalist John Stossel explained, "Criminals don't obey the law... Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these [illegal] weapons now have a much easier job... As the saying goes, 'If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.'"

More gun control is not needed; education about guns and gun safety is needed to prevent accidental gun deaths. 95% of all US gun owners believe that children should learn about gun safety. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute, Inc (SAAMI), stated, "Whether in the field, at the range or in the home, a responsible and knowledgeable gun owner is rarely involved in a firearms accident of any kind." According to Kyle Wintersteen, Managing Editor of Guns and Ammo, studies show that "children taught about firearms and their legitimate uses by family members have much lower rates of delinquency than children in households without guns" and "children introduced to guns associate them with freedom, security, and recreation-not violence." [82] [85] [154]
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Con 4

Gun control laws give too much power to the government and may result in government tyranny and the government taking away all guns from citizens.

57% of people surveyed by Pew Research in Feb. 2013 said that gun control laws would "give too much power to the government over the people."

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre stated, "if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it [the Second Amendment] there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny."

Concurring, Alex Jones, radio host, stated, "The Second Amendment isn't there for duck hunting, it's there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs... 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!"

Marco Rubio (R-FL), US Senator, speaking about gun control laws during his 2016 presidential campaign, stated, "If God forbid, ISIS visits our life, our neighborhood, our school, any part of us, the last thing standing, the last line of defense could very well be our ability to protect ourselves."
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Did You Know?

1. A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer, and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer.

2. The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks.

3. The Centers for Disease Control listed firearms as the #12 cause of all deaths between 1999 and 2015, representing 1.3% of total deaths. They were also the #1 method of death by homicide (67.3% of all homicides) and by suicide (51.9% of all suicides).

4. Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people).

5. Carrying a concealed handgun in public has been permitted in all 50 states since 2013, when Illinois became the last state to enact concealed carry legislation.

6. Five women a day are killed by guns in America. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute.

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Proponents say the Second Amendment is not an unlimited right to own guns. Opponents say the amendment protects individual gun ownership.

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Vinny Costanzo

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"Someone is not going to go through a metal detector with an AR-15," he said at the time, adding that metal detectors do not help create a welcoming learning environment and pose a logistical challenge in a school as large as Stoneman Douglas High, which has more than 3,200 students.

Stoneman Douglas High parents, already on edge since the massacre, became alarmed Monday when the shooting suspect's brother was arrested on a charge of trespassing, after Broward County sheriff's deputies said they saw him skateboarding onto the campus after school let out. A deputy assigned to patrol the campus was found asleep by a student the same afternoon, the sheriff's office said; he was suspended without pay.

Some parents kept their children home on Tuesday, according to Sarahnell Murphy, an assistant state attorney prosecuting the trespassing case against Zachary Cruz, the brother of the shooting suspect, Nikolas Cruz.

Also on Tuesday, the sheriff's office said it had arrested three Stoneman Douglas High students, one for making threats on Snapchat and two for wielding knives. Jordan Salter, a girl accused of pulling a knife on a boy after a cafeteria confrontation, made a court appearance on Wednesday. Her father, Scott, told the court his daughter had been "terrified" of going to school.

The arrests Monday and Tuesday prompted Gov. Rick Scott to offer state assistance to Mr. Runcie and the Broward sheriff, Scott Israel, to secure Stoneman Douglas High's entryways. Sheriff Israel accepted the help; eight Florida Highway Patrol troopers will report to work at the school on Thursday, according to the governor's office.

In his letter on Wednesday, Mr. Runcie also outlined other steps the district was taking across county schools, such as evaluating "code red" active-shooter protocols and drills, and upgrading surveillance camera systems. Schools with multiple entry points would have single points of entry by the first quarter of 2019, he said.

A new Florida law passed after the shooting will set aside $8.5 million for the school district to pay for at least one armed police officer at each school starting in the fall. Broward also will receive $6 million to expand school mental health services, according to Mr. Runcie.

Reacting on Twitter to the news that only clear backpacks would be allowed at school, Kyra Parrow, a senior at Stoneman Douglas High, criticized the move as "making my school seem like jail now because legislators don't have common sense gun reform on their agendas."

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marjory stoneman douglas high school (parkland  fla)

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Florida School, on Edge Since Shooting, Requires Students to Carry Clear Backpacks

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"Someone is not going to go through a metal detector with an AR-15," he said at the time, adding that metal detectors do not help create a welcoming learning environment and pose a logistical challenge in a school as large as Stoneman Douglas High, which has more than 3,200 students.

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Vinny costanzo

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It would become perhaps the final act undertaken by the assistant coach and security guard, who suffered a gunshot wound and died after he was rushed into surgery, according to the school's football program and its spokeswoman, Denise Lehtio.

"He died the same way he lived -- he put himself second," Lehtio said. "He was a very kind soul, a very nice man. He died a hero."

Feis was among 17 people killed when a former student armed with a rifle opened fired on campus, unleashing a massacre that stands among the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history.

Colton Haab, a 17-year-old junior and football player who was close with Feis, said he heard the coach shielded three girls from gunfire.

"That's Coach Feis," Haab said, describing the educator as selfless, approachable and friendly.

"(He) made sure everyone else's needs were met before his own. He was a hard worker. He worked after school, on the weekends, mowing lawns, just helping as many people as possible," Haab said.

Haab last saw Feis Tuesday morning in a school hallway, he said. They talked "about normal stuff," like work and football.

"I'm glad he didn't suffer that much," the teenager said. "It's sad because it's not going to be the same without him at school anymore, that's for sure. Football definitely won't be the same. We're definitely going to have to band back together as brothers and mourn his loss and pick up the pieces to try to rebuild our football team."

Janitor ushers students to safety

Feis, who spent his whole career at the school after graduating from Stoneman Douglas, was among countless heroes whose stories began emerging after Wednesday's horror

Teacher Melissa Falkowski hid 19 students in a closet as the shooting erupted. Most students communicated silently on their phones, she said. Others burst into tears.

"This is the worst nightmare that could ever happen to you," she told CNN.

Meantime, as a fire alarm blared, a janitor diverted senior David Hogg and other students away from the direction of the shooting, Hogg told CNN affiliate KTRK. A teacher then opened a classroom door so they could hide.

"Without her, who knows how many of us would have died, 'cause we were easily 100 feet away from the freshman building," Hogg said, "and again, we thought this was a drill."

CNN's Chuck Johnston contributed to this story.

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football coach who shielded students from florida shooter

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A football coach who shielded students from the Florida shooter died as he lived -- by putting himself second

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It would become perhaps the final act undertaken by the assistant coach and security guard, who suffered a gunshot wound and died after he was rushed into surgery, according to the school's football program and its spokeswoman, Denise Lehtio. "He died the same way he lived -- he put himself second," Lehtio said.

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As they're wont to do, in the immediate aftermath of the brutal and calculated murders of two Virginia reporters many gun-control advocates pointed to Australia's gun ban and confiscation as a successful model America should adopt.

The idea wasn't just limited to the fringe Left, either. It was put forth in places like the The New Republic and Vox. The Gray Lady herself published a column advocating Australian-style gun confiscation less than 24 hours after the killings.

Now, the practical problems of instituting an Australian-style gun ban and mandatory buyback program have been well flushed out. But I think it's important to examine the main claim about Australia's gun control. Namely, that it worked. The argument, as Vox's headline puts it, is "Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted."

Murders and Suicides Didn't 'Plummet'

The piece, along with many gun control advocates, cites a Harvard University study whose conclusion begins with this line: "It does not appear that the Australian experience with gun buybacks is fully replicable in the United States." Not a great start for Vox's angle, but I digress.

America was more than doubling how many firearms it manufactured and seeing a nearly identical drop in gun homicides.

The study doesn't conclude that "murders and suicides plummeted" in Australia after the 1996 gun ban, as Vox claims in its headline. Instead, it focuses solely on firearm-related murders and suicides. In that category they found a marked decline (although, interestingly, it still makes up nearly 20 percent of all homicides nearly two decades after most guns were banned by the island nation).

But at the same time Australia was banning guns and experiencing a decline in gun homicides, America was more than doubling how many firearms it manufactured and seeing a nearly identical drop in gun homicides. That throws a bit of a wrench into the idea that Australia's gun ban must be the reason for its decline in gun crime.

However, what's more important is the fact that overall suicides and murder have not "plummeted" in the years after the gun ban. Yes, as with the gun-happy United States, the murder rate is down in Australia. It's dropped 31 percent from a rate of 1.6 per 100,000 people in 1994 to 1.1 per 100,000 in 2012.But it's the only serious crime that saw a consistent decline post-ban.

In fact, according to the Australian government's own statistics, a number of serious crimes peaked in the years after the ban. Manslaughter, sexual assault, kidnapping, armed robbery, and unarmed robbery all saw peaks in the years following the ban, and most remain near or above pre-ban rates. The effects of the 1996 ban on violent crime are, frankly, unimpressive at best.

Violence Declined Stateside Without A Gun Ban

It's even less impressive when again compared to America's decrease in violent crime over the same period. According to data from the U.S. Justice Department, violent crime fell nearly 72 percent between 1993 and 2011. Again, this happened as guns were being manufactured and purchased at an ever-increasing rate.

While Australians kill themselves with firearms less often, it seems they don't actually take their own lives any less often.

The Australian gun ban's effect on suicide in the country isn't any better. While Vox repeats the Harvard study's claim that firearm-related suicides are down 57 percent in the aftermath of the ban, Lifeline Australia reports that overall suicides are at a ten-year high. The Australian suicide prevention organization claims suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians 15 to 44 years old. So, while Australians kill themselves with firearms less often, it seems they don't actually take their own lives any less often than before the ban.

Whatever you think of the merits of Australia's gun ban or the practicality of using it as a model for American gun control, it most certainly has not caused suicide or murder rates to plummet. Furthermore, Australia has seen violent crimes peak in the years following its ban while the United States experienced the exact opposite phenomenon.

Australia isn't much of a model for Australia, let alone for America.

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As they're wont to do, in the immediate aftermath of the brutal and calculated murders of two Virginia reporters many gun-control advocates pointed to Australia's gun ban and confiscation as a successful model America should adopt. The idea wasn't just limited to the fringe Left, either.

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The values in this article suggest motives for public actions and opinions and is free of bias.

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At that session one Blue said she was really grateful to hear a Red acknowledge the Republican history on race. When Blues are asked about the stereotypes thrown at them, they tend to list "against religion and morality," "unpatriotic" and "against personal responsibility" among their responses. They, too, relish the chance to clear the air.

After the stereotypes are discussed, the room feels different. As one Red in Ohio told Lawson, "I think we are all pretty clear on one thing: Don't tell us who we are and what we think." Another Red was moved almost to tears by the damage categories do. "We're not just cookie-cutter people; we're individuals. Just because you don't like something, you don't have to ridicule it - you probably don't understand it," she said. "When someone's heart is full up with something, and then you demean it without even listening to them - I hate that."

The discussions reveal other sensitivities. Some Blues didn't want to enter a venue that had a "Don't Tread on Me" flag on the wall. To Reds that was a neutral flag from American history, but to Blues it carried all sorts of nasty associations. Reds were offended by the lawn signs that said, "Hate Has No Home Here." The implication: Hate has no home in my house, but it does in yours.

In another exercise, Reds and Blues ask each other honest, nonleading questions. Blues may ask Reds, "Name a safety-net program you can support." Reds may ask Blues, "How do you balance having a heart with keeping health care costs under control?"

By the end of the conversations, the atmosphere has changed. Nearly always somebody will say that the discussion was easy because only moderates were in the room, not the people who post crazy stuff on Facebook. The staff tries not to smile, knowing that some of the people were selected precisely because of the intense stuff they posted on Facebook.

"This is not a civility organization," Blankenhorn told Lawson. Better Angels is aiming to build a group of people whose personal bonds with their fellow citizens redefine how they engage in the political system.

We don't really have policy debates anymore. We have one big tribal conflict, and policy fights are just proxy battles as each side tries to establish moral superiority. But just as the tribal mentality has been turned on, it can be turned off. Then and only then can we go back to normal politics and take reasonable measures to keep our children safe.

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Opinion | Respect First, Then Gun Control

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At that session one Blue said she was really grateful to hear a Red acknowledge the Republican history on race. When Blues are asked about the stereotypes thrown at them, they tend to list "against religion and morality," "unpatriotic" and "against personal responsibility" among their responses.

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Trump Wants to Arm Teachers. These Schools Already Do. (Published 2018)

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Hundreds of school districts across the country have given staff access to guns, seeing the weaponry not as a political statement but a practical response to a potent threat.

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Is this the moment when the politics of guns shifts? Since the fatal shooting of seventeen students and staff members last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, advocates of stricter gun laws have been asking that question, with the wary hopefulness of people who, time and again, have seen such turning points lead nowhere. This moment does feel different, though, largely because the teen-age survivors of the Parkland shooting have commanded the national stage with their raw and righteous indignation.

Last week, they got a real response, though so far it has come more from businesses than from elected representatives. The nationwide sporting-goods chain Dick's announced that it would no longer carry assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines, and would not sell guns to people under the age of twenty-one, regardless of local laws. The company's C.E.O., Edward Stack, told the Times, "We love these kids and their rallying cry 'Enough is enough.' It got to us." By the end of the week, Kroger and Walmart had said that their stores, too, would no longer sell guns to customers younger than twenty-one.

Meanwhile, President Trump startled senators and representatives in a meeting at the White House last Wednesday by telling them that he wanted to revive a bill mandating universal background checks for gun buyers, chiding them for being frightened of the N.R.A., and saying that, in some situations, he was in favor of taking people's guns away first, and asking questions later. This was particularly outlandish, given his ties to the N.R.A. and his enthusiasm for arming schoolteachers, not to mention the fact that, a day later, he was back tweeting "Good (Great) meeting tonight at the Oval Office with the NRA!"

But his remarks matter, anyway. The primitive sensors by which Donald Trump divides the world into winners and losers were telling him that for now, at least, the proponents of unfettered gun rights smell like losers. According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted last week, eighty-eight per cent of Americans now support universal background checks, eighty-one per cent think that a person should be at least twenty-one in order to buy a gun, seventy per cent endorse a ban on high-capacity magazines, and sixty-eight per cent support a ban on assault-style weapons.

Still, gun-control advocates might not want to place too much hope in any single moment, even this one. They will have to play a long game, made up of many moments. That's what their opponents have done. Matthew Lacombe, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University, has been analyzing the N.R.A.'s rhetoric over the decades in editorials and letters to the editor that have appeared in its magazine, The American Rifleman. The organization's leaders and members used a remarkably consistent series of words to describe their identity: "law-abiding," "peaceable," "patriotic," "freedom-loving," and "average citizens." Their opponents were "un-American," "tyrannical," "Communist," and "élitist." Wayne LaPierre, the president of the N.R.A., echoed this language in a speech last week at the Conservative Political Action Committee, invoking a Democratic Party "infested with saboteurs who don't believe in capitalism, don't believe in the Constitution, don't believe in our freedom, and don't believe in America as we know it."

The N.R.A. has been honing its message since the nineteen-thirties, when it first became visible on the national scene, fighting federal legislation that mandated an early gun-registration and dealer-licensing system. "By the time the bill emerged from the lawmaking process," the political scientist Carol Skalnik Leff and the historian Mark Leff write, it had been "gutted-stripped of its handgun clauses and revised in line with the objections of the National Rifle Association."

The N.R.A.'s advantage isn't only its ability to donate to candidates or to pay for expensive lobbyists and ads, though that is formidable. It spent four hundred and nineteen million dollars in the 2016 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which reports that "career NRA support for some members of the 115th Congress now reaches well into the seven-figure range." It spent more than thirty million dollars supporting Trump's campaign.

But the organization also benefits from its unequivocal rejection of virtually all gun regulations, and from the way that certainty resonates. Most gun owners are not N.R.A. members, but, according to Gallup, people who want lenient gun laws are significantly more likely to be single-issue voters than those who want stricter laws. Gun owners are also more likely than non-gun owners to have contacted a public official about gun policy.

All kinds of people own guns, for all kinds of reasons. Still, some demographic features of gun ownership tend to reinforce a particular political posture. A 2017 Pew Research Center study found that forty-eight per cent of white men own a gun, compared with twenty-five per cent of white women, twenty-five per cent of non-white men, and sixteen per cent of non-white women. Gun owners are far more likely to live in rural areas. Forty-one per cent of whites with a bachelor's degree are gun owners, versus twenty-six per cent of whites with a more advanced degree. Half of all gun owners say that ownership is essential to their identity.

Fear is a factor: nearly half of male gun owners and almost a third of female owners say that they have a loaded gun "easily accessible to them at all times at home." According to the Pew study, "There is a significant link between owning a gun for protection and perceptions of whether the world broadly speaking has become more dangerous." Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist who interviewed male gun owners in Michigan, found that many of them considered firearms crucial to reclaiming a sense of purpose, especially if they were no longer breadwinners.

Security, nostalgia for an era of unchallenged privilege, a sense of beleaguered white masculinity: these are powerful forces. They helped get Donald Trump elected. Advocacy for gun-control laws may never provide the same single-minded identity that politicized gun ownership seems to exert. But this year, again thanks in part to the Parkland students, it's beginning to take a stronger hold. People who want this moment to mean something should remember that they are the majority, and that they, too, can choose, for however long it takes, to be single-issue voters. ♦

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Is this the moment when the politics of guns shifts? Since the fatal shooting of seventeen students and staff members last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, advocates of stricter gun laws have been asking that question, with the wary hopefulness of people who, time and again, have seen such turning points lead nowhere.

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the media is an accomplice in school shootings

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the media is an accomplice in school shootings

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I have watched in horror with most of America as the stories of the Chardon High School and Oikos University shootings unfolded. But my horror was twofold. The first misery came as I heard the names and numbers of victims and thought about the pain they and their families will endure for the rest of their lives. The second dose came as I held my breath, hoping and praying the media wouldn't amplify the violence.

But they did.

They did exactly what was needed to influence the next perpetrator to lock and load.
1. They named the shooter.
2. They described his characteristics.
3. They detailed the crime.
4. They numbered the victims.
5. They ranked him against other "successful" attackers.

School shootings are a contagion. And the media are consistent accomplices in most every one of them.

There's really no useful debate on the point. The consensus of social scientists since David Phillips' groundbreaking work in 1974 is that highly publicized stories of deviant and dangerous behavior influences copycat incidents. Phillips' and scores of subsequent studies showed, for example, that suicide rates spike in the week after an inappropriately publicized celebrity suicide. Contrast this trend with no increase in suicides in the week following a media strike that unintentionally suppresses such coverage.

The same is true of school massacres. On Groundhog Day, Feb 2, 1996 a 14-year-old boy walked into his Moses Lake, Washington, Junior High School algebra class and started shooting. He killed his teacher, two classmates and severely wounded another student. Subsequent media coverage obsessed over the color of his clothes, his insidious planning and the inventory of his arsenal. In addition, they practically offered a how-to guide for concealing and deploying weapons in a coat. But what got the most attention was the fact that after shooting his teacher, he delivered a line from the Stephen King novel with charismatic panache. Suddenly, the invisible adolescent was a cultural icon. Within a week, another shooting occurred that clearly echoed that of Feb 2. Then another on February 19. Another on March 11. Yet another on March 13. Along with other similarities, more than one of the apparent copycats also cited King's novel as a creative resource.

Of course, when the Rage pattern became clear, the media scurried to get King's reaction. King could have defended his right to free speech and used the "guns don't kill, people do" argument-claiming the problem was the perpetrators' mental health not his book.

But he didn't. He apologized for writing the book. In an interview he said, "I took a look at Rage and said to myself, if this book is acting as any sort of accelerant, if it's having any effect on any of these kids at all, I don't want anything to do with it." Then he insightfully added, "Even talking about it makes me nervous." King understands that attention is influence. He asked his publishers to pull Rage from publication and let it fall out of print shortly thereafter.

The media appropriately defends its right to participate fully in a marketplace of ideas. The risk of limiting free speech is clear and substantial. And yet I believe when free speech leads to verifiable harm, it's time to discuss limits. It's time we found a way to balance the right to speak freely with the responsibility to influence ethically. It's time we consider passing a law that requires the media to act with Stephen King's level of responsibility.

We need to discuss the merits and morality of a law. I don't suggest a broad one-but one that matches responsibility with influence. It's already illegal to use free speech to incite others to criminal acts-there are laws against shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theater for example. So if we know that a particular kind of speech is inciting violence, how can we appropriately limit it without creating a slippery slope that infringes on our constitutional rights?

It's time our media leaders wake up to the fact that they are not just reporting these crimes. Depending on how they report them, they are accomplices in them. It is also time our legislators consider taking up this task. We need to match responsibility with influence.

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The Media Is an Accomplice in School Shootings

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I have watched in horror with most of America as the stories of the Chardon High School and Oikos University shootings unfolded. But my horror was twofold. The first misery came as I heard the names and numbers of victims and thought about the pain they and their families will endure for the rest of their lives.

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The N.R.A. asserted that the law was a particularly egregious violation of the rights of young women, who they contended "pose a relatively slight risk of perpetrating a school shooting such as the one that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, or, for that matter, a violent crime of any kind."

Standing with a group of families who had traveled to the State Capitol from Parkland, an emotional Mr. Scott called the classmates of the slain students and their parents his inspiration, and praised them for helping persuade lawmakers to pass legislation, even if neither they nor he agreed with all of its provisions.

"You made your voices heard," he told the Stoneman Douglas High students. "You helped change your state. You made a difference. You should be proud."

Outside of Tallahassee, the law might not look that groundbreaking: It does not go as far as laws enacted by other more Democratic-leaning states after deadly shootings. Connecticut expanded a ban on assault weapons, prohibited the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines and imposed stricter background checks on gun purchases after 20 children and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012. Colorado required background checks for private gun sales and limited magazines after 12 people were killed at a movie theater in 2012.

But this is Florida, a laboratory for the N.R.A. and a state that has become recognized for its consistent efforts under legislative Republican control since 1996 to expand gun rights. For example, residents only have to comply with a simple protocol to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons. And Florida has embraced "Stand Your Ground" laws that protect the use of deadly force in public.

That such a gun-friendly state adopted any firearm restrictions represents a sea change, even more so as the restrictions were drafted and approved in a matter of three weeks, after a bipartisan vote and the signature of a Republican governor likely to be on the ballot later this year as a Senate candidate.

"If you would have had this conversation with me before session, I would've said it's just not going to happen," said Senator René García, a moderate Republican from the Miami area who has served 16 years in the Legislature. "Not only did we get this bill passed, but the fact that we had debate on these amendments on the floor was huge. I don't remember having these debates on the floor ever before."

The N.R.A. has had to contend with other states also considering action since the Parkland shooting. In Illinois, lawmakers passed a bill last week that would require gun dealers to be licensed by the state, but it was not clear whether the Republican governor would sign it into law. In Vermont, lawmakers advanced legislation that would raise the minimum age to buy a gun to 21 and allow for judges to seize guns from people deemed dangerous.

Elsewhere, legislators took steps toward expanding the legal use of firearms. In Mississippi, state senators approved a bill on Wednesday that would allow trained school employees to carry concealed weapons. And in Missouri, a House committee last week advanced a bill that would allow people with concealed-carry permits to have a weapon in so-called gun-free zones.

The law's passage came as a surprise to many in Florida, where lawmakers had failed to enact legislation after the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, which left 49 dead, and the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport that killed five people in 2017. The governor mentioned both crimes on Friday.

Lawmakers like Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, voted against the bill because it did not include a ban on assault weapons or other broad measures sought by survivors of all the shootings.

"The bill doesn't deal with the real problem at all: The problem is guns," he said.

On the other side of the debate, lawmakers from the most conservative rural districts and Republicans seeking statewide office in contested primaries opposed the new law, saying it trampled on Second Amendment rights.

"I just can't imagine that Nikolas Cruz can commit such a heinous crime and then, as a result, we tell potentially a 20-year-old single mother living alone that she cannot purchase a firearm to protect herself," Representative Jay Fant of Jacksonville, a Republican running for attorney general, said on the House floor.

Mr. Scott can afford to break with the gun lobby now because he is unlikely to face a Republican primary in his expected Senate campaign against Bill Nelson, the Democratic incumbent, in the midterms in November. In signing the bill, Mr. Scott offered a glimpse at how he might use the legislation in the coming campaign to paint Congress as ineffective.

"If you look at the federal government, nothing seems to happen there," Mr. Scott said, noting he was enacting legislation just three weeks and two days after the rampage. "That's how government should work."

Mr. Scott remains opposed to the provision in the law that the N.R.A. has been seeking for years: Allowing for certain teachers and school staff to be armed on campus. But he called the legislation a compromise and noted that the so-called guardian program is voluntary: "If counties do not want to do this, they simply can say no." The state's largest and most urban school districts are expected to do just that.

In Tallahassee, the families who joined Mr. Scott chose Tony Montalto, whose daughter, Gina, was killed in the Parkland shooting, to deliver a statement calling the legislation "an important first step to enhance the safety of our schools."

"When it comes to preventing future acts of horrific school violence, this is the beginning of the journey," Mr. Montalto said. "We have paid a terrible price for this progress."

Rebecca Schneid, 16, the editor of The Eagle Eye, the Stoneman Douglas High student newspaper, also applauded the bill, even while admitting it was "not perfect."

"I never really expected to get something done so fast," she said. "We've been calling them out, and that really scared them. And that's scaring them into making sure they actually do represent us. They know that if they don't, we're going to vote them out."

"We're going to keep sending people to Tallahassee," she went on, "because when we go away, this goes away."

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Florida Governor Signs Gun Limits Into Law, Breaking With the N.R.A.

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The N.R.A. asserted that the law was a particularly egregious violation of the rights of young women, who they contended "pose a relatively slight risk of perpetrating a school shooting such as the one that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, or, for that matter, a violent crime of any kind."

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ALBANY - An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers support new gun control measures in the state, though they oppose the idea of arming school teachers, a poll released Monday morning found.

The Siena College poll comes after last month's mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and at a time when Gov. Cuomo and Assembly and Senate Democrats have pushed a variety of new gun control measures.

Nearly 70% of New Yorkers statewide like the idea of posting officers at all New York City public and private schools, including 71% in the city.

But New Yorkers oppose, by 69% to 28%, allowing teachers to carry guns in the classroom.

"While by 11 points Republicans support allowing teachers to be armed, Democrats, independents and downstaters overwhelmingly oppose it, as do a majority of upstaters and a narrow majority of gun owners," said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg.

The poll also found that 90% of those surveyed support expanding the current maximum three-day firearm background check waiting period to 10 days, while 85% back a bill to keep guns out of the hands of all convicted domestic abusers.

More than three-quarters support outlawing the sale and possession of bump-stock devices like the one used in the Las Vegas mass shooting last year.

And about two-thirds of New Yorkers, including a small majority of Republicans, support a national ban on the sale of assault weapons.

Cuomo said he will push, as part of the budget negotiations over the next two weeks, measures to take guns away from all convicted domestic violence offenders and expand the background check waiting period to 10 days.

Both measures are supported by the Assembly. They face a more uncertain fate in the GOP-controlled Senate, which is focused more on efforts to beef up school security.
Send a Letter to the Editor

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Poll shows overwhelming support for new N.Y. gun control measures

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ALBANY - An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers support new gun control measures in the state, though they oppose the idea of arming school teachers, a poll released Monday morning found. The Siena College poll comes after last month's mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and at a time when Gov.

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http://guncontrolarticles.net/

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Written by Gun Control. Posted in Gun control article, Gun control facts

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About 3 in 4 Teachers Oppose Arming School Staff, Survey Finds

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About 3 in 4 Teachers Oppose Arming School Staff, Survey Finds

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Many teachers fear that allowing guns in schools will burden them with responsibilities that fall outside their role while needlessly exposing students and staff members to danger. Just this week, a California teacher accidentally discharged a firearm in a classroom during a public safety course. One student was struck in the neck by bullet shrapnel while two others were hit by debris.

The Gallup poll shows that not only do teachers broadly oppose being armed, but few believe it would make schools safer and even fewer would take advantage of such a policy.

Just 20 percent said that arming some staff members and teachers would make schools safer, while well over half said they would be less safe as a result.

Even if allowed to do so, only 16 percent said they were somewhat or very confident that they would apply to carry guns in schools. More than 80 percent would not apply.

While teachers and the public oppose arming school staff members, Gallup did find broad public support, even among partisans, for some policies aimed at preventing or mitigating mass shootings.

More than 90 percent of the public supports increased active shooter training for police officers and emergency medical workers, as well as background checks for all gun sales. More than 85 percent back additional security screening for people entering schools and new programs to identify and manage students who may pose a threat to their peers.

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About 3 in 4 Teachers Oppose Arming School Staff, Survey Finds

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Many teachers fear that allowing guns in schools will burden them with responsibilities that fall outside their role while needlessly exposing students and staff members to danger. Just this week, a California teacher accidentally discharged a firearm in a classroom during a public safety course.

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If you mapped out the discussion about the major causes of gun violence following every mass shooting in the United States, it would almost certainly lead you to the same destination: mental illness.

Politicians, public figures and the population at large have all perpetuated this misconception at times. Even the media plays into the narrative: Research published in 2016 found that more than a third of news stories linked mental illness with violence toward others, which does not reflect actual rates of interpersonal violence where mental illness is involved.

Sure, there are cases where mental illness might play a role in gun violence. But the reality is that an overwhelming majority do not - fewer than 5 percent of gun-related killings are committed by someone diagnosed with a mental illness, according to research.

Blanket statements that connect mental health conditions with shooting tragedies alienate the millions of people who live ― and live well ― with these issues, experts say.

The "disparaging and inaccurate remarks about mental illness serve only to perpetuate stigma and prohibit honest and open dialogue about an illness (or disorder) that affects one in five people in the nation," the American Psychiatric Association wrote in a statement following the Feb. 14 mass shooting that left 17 people dead at a Parkland, Florida, high school.

Positive and informative messaging around this topic is a good start to dismantling the falsehood that mental illness is a major factor in the majority of gun violence cases. That's why we rounded up a few educational and encouraging tweets on the subject.

Anyone can benefit from reading up, whether you're living without a mental illness and looking to expand your knowledge or you have a mental health condition and just need some support right now.

gun control, but without the mental health ableism pic.twitter.com/OgxwfpGInP
- Taylor Behnke (@ItsRadishTime) February 22, 2018

My little brother Will is the smartest and best person I know. He is an MIT-educated robot-maker. His nanotech research has been published in Nature, but this is his best work I've seen. Today he used science to break the GOP's correlation between gun violence and mental illness: pic.twitter.com/tLx3dYeDHg
- Bess Kalb (@bessbell) February 15, 2018

- Stop equating gun violence with mental illness
- Stop equating evilness with mentally ill people
- Stop trivializing the issues/concerns of mentally ill people
- Stop judging mentally ill people who manage their condition(s) with medications

Listen to us instead!
- Lara Ameen 🍒 (@trucherrygirl) February 23, 2018

#stigma can be exacerbated by the media's tendency to portray people with mental health problems as dangerous, criminal, or unable to live normal, fulfilled lives ... This is far from the truth. #TimeToChange pic.twitter.com/6463Z99y9j
- Mental Health Fdn (@mentalhealth) February 23, 2018

The reality is, EVERY country in the world has mental health issues. Using mental health as a scapegoat is just a way to divert Americans from noticing the one, true problem #BoycottNRA
- Jaclyn Corin (@JaclynCorin) February 23, 2018

BEFORE YOU GO

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12 Tweets On Gun Violence And Mental Health Everyone Should Read

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If you mapped out the discussion about the major causes of gun violence following every mass shooting in the United States, it would almost certainly lead you to the same destination: mental illness. Politicians, public figures and the population at large have all perpetuated this misconception at times.

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Students graduating high school in 2018 have never known a world where being killed in a classroom - or on a playground, or while having lunch with friends - was unthinkable.

Over the past two decades, gun-wielding attackers have levied assaults against civilians in a variety of public spaces - in churches, movie theaters, concerts and malls - but nowhere have the attacks left more of an impression than in schools.

Since two students killed 13 and wounded another 21 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a school shooting, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Most recently, a Feb. 14, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 students and teachers.

Columbine was by no means the first school shooting - others had taken place around the country, including a 1997 shooting in Bethel that killed two - but it represented a watershed in public awareness about the issue.

Since then, schools have beefed up security measures, expanded police presence, carried out regular drills and changed tactics in how they respond to an active shooter.

From 'lockdown' to 'run-hide-fight'

Along with the usual earthquake and fire drills, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District schools carry out twice-yearly active shooter drills. In 2014, the borough school district adopted ALICE protocols, which offer more proactive and fluid guidelines for dealing with active shooter situations.

"It used to be turn off the lights, hide in the corner, stay quiet, and hope that the bad guy passes," Kenai Police Lt. Ben Langham said. "Studies have shown repeatedly that that's not a good model to follow here in active shooter situations."

Created by a Texas-based company in the wake of the 1999 Columbine shooting and now used in many schools, ALICE training offers a set of response options - Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate - to empower students and teachers to use their best judgment in an active shooter situation - for example, avoiding a rallying point if it's clear they can get away from the school safely.

"The old model was literally the only way you responded was lock down, barricade," Pegge Erkeneff, communications liaison for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, said. "But what if there's an active shooter at one part of the building, and it's clear that there's one shooter and you know that's where they are? Why wouldn't you be getting kids out of the building and away from danger and away from the building?"

The ALICE model evolved out of a federal standard of run-hide-fight, said Alaska State Trooper Lt. Dane Gilmore of E Detachment, Soldotna.

"What should they do? Run away if they can. Hide if they can't. Fight if they're forced to," he said. "... The intent of an ALICE model isn't supposed to be so absolute and black-and-white like a lockdown, but be adaptive."

Homer Police Chief Mark Robl said that ALICE training isn't a cure-all.

"It's a response. It's a possibility," he said. "...There's things schools can do to make their building less vulnerable to a school shooter. The way they have things positioned in the room can make a difference - the way their doors lock, the way their day-to-day security plans work and are practiced."

A change in tactics

After Columbine, law enforcement nationwide also changed how it reacted to a shooting - from responding and setting up a perimeter, which Alaska State Troopers used before Columbine, to actively engaging the shooter or shooters, Gilmore said.

"We teach people to go in rapidly with the group they have. That may be a blended group," he said. "That may be two troopers, Homer police and a NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) officer."

Homer Police have the same response tactic, Robl said.

"It is to respond as quickly as possible with whoever we have, to make entry and try to neutralize the shooter," he said. "We're not going to wait for six other officers to get on the scene. If there are two of us working, two of us are going in."

"If there's a response and there's still gunfire in the school, the expectation is you're going to go in," Gilmore said.

Both troopers and police respond with semi-automatic AR-15 rifles and heavier armored vests more skookum than the standard police duty vest and that can withstand higher velocity rifle rounds.

Homer Police have helmets, leg guards and a ballistic shield.

"We're fully equipped. We're the SERT (special emergency response team)," Robl said. "We know the situation. There isn't anyone coming down to help us."

Robl and Gilmore said in most school shootings involving young people, very rarely do they result in a hostage situation.

"Most of the time the shooting is done by the time police officers get on the scene," Robl said.

"Historically in the U.S., if it's a student doing the bad things, when confronted by an officer, they often surrender or shoot themselves," Gilmore said.

Law enforcement also trains with emergency medical technicians to make entry and protect EMTs so they can quickly treat the wounded.

"The initial law enforcement response is to stop the killing. The second wave is to stop the dying," Gilmore said.

Cops and EMTs have been training with nurses from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services in the Tactical Emergency Casualty Care Course, a program to teach first responders how to stop bleeding from penetrating wounds like gunshots or knives. March 31 highlights that effort for National Stop the Bleed Day.

"People can bleed to death in three minutes," said Julie Rabeau, a registered nurse and the DHSS state trauma program manager who has 30 years of experience in trauma care. "It's important that those who will respond after those scenes, such as law enforcement and medical providers, utilize bleeding control tactics."

Rabeau teaches a three-day course that troopers, police and EMTs have taken. Rabeau's office has taught 20 such courses on the peninsula. Students also get trauma-response kits as part of the class. In the past two years troopers who have taken the course have saved 14 lives on the Kenai Peninsula.

"At least two of them are straight-out saves," Gilmore said. "If a trooper hadn't done that, they would have died."

There also is a four-hour course anyone can take, Rabeau said. Her program has taught bleeding control to school nurses, church groups, Boy Scout troops and others.

Police in the schools

Schools in the borough reinforce security with regular police presence on their campuses.

Kenai schools share a police liaison, as do Seward schools. Soldotna police check in with the high school regularly. School resource officers are funded by local law enforcement and not the school district, Erkeneff said.

Kenai Police Officer Dan Smith serves as the school resource officer and investigator for the Kenai schools. Smith has an active presence in local schools - from elementary to high school - and works with administrators to answer questions on school safety or law enforcement.

He's on hand to respond to school crime or safety-related issues at the schools, makes sure his vehicle is visible in the parking lot at schools, and has made himself familiar with the layout of school buildings, he said.

Beyond serving as a visual deterrent, Smith is known around schools as a safe person to report any safety issues to, Langham said.

"It's not uncommon for students, teachers and other staff to come and make disclosures to him about things that are going on," Langham, of the Kenai PD, said.

Smith is also there to offer leadership and education, such as teaching D.A.R.E. classes. On the rare occasion there's a school threat, Smith is there to make sure the threat is taken seriously.

"We investigate those very, very thoroughly," he said.

On a recent school day at Kenai Central High School, Smith gave students in a world history class a presentation about his experiences abroad. During a lunch break, he walked the hallways - casually interacting with students who stopped to say hello or wave.

While he offers a friendly presence in the hallways and classrooms, he's also armed, and would be the first line of defense if an attacker arrived on campus.

After the Parkland shooting, Smith turned up his presence at schools, particularly at the high school, and talked with students or administrators who had any questions.

He said he didn't see an uptick in threats after the Parkland shooting, but students did talk about it.

"Most of the conversations, especially since this recent shooting, have been kids more curious, more concerned about what happened," Smith said. "Or sad about what happened."

Reclaiming safety

Perhaps no recent shooting has garnered more attention - and vocal call for change from students - than the Parkland shooting one month ago.

In its aftermath, students have spoken out, lobbied lawmakers, held a series of walkouts, and Parkland survivors have become a dominating presence on social media and in the news.

On March 14, tens of thousands of students walked out of classrooms and held 17-minute vigils - one for every student killed in the shooting - demanding action from lawmakers. On March 24, a march on the U.S. Capitol is expected to draw hundreds of thousands, according to organizers.

The response locally has been more muted, but the topic has still been at the forefront of discussion for many students. About 150 Homer High School students walked out on Feb. 21 to honor the Parkland victims and advocate for safety school.

"It's easy to feel helpless up here and like there's nothing we can do, but there are things we can do ... to send a message," said Homer High junior Avram Salzmann.

The news of a school shooting can heighten tension at school and increase her personal anxiety, Kenai Central High School junior Hunter Hanson said.

Off-handed comments by her peers can make her nervous, and cause her to question whether or not she should report them to a teacher or counselor, she said.

"I feel extra sensitive to people's comments, a little bit more paranoid about those kinds of things," she said.

The 17-year-old said in the days after the attack she and about 50 of her friends from summer camp texted about the shooting on group chat.

"We talked about it for days," Hanson said.

Hanson said she'd like to see schools designed more safely. She worries about unlocked doors, multiple entrances and areas where shooters could hide on campus.

"The flow of the school is not always the most (re)assuring thing," she said.

Even so, Hanson said she wasn't emotionally devastated by the Parkland shooting in the way one might expect.

"You know there's something wrong when it doesn't hit you as hard as you know it should," Hanson said. "In a way, these shootings are becoming common."

"For them, this is just a normal thing. This is normal for them," Soldotna High School English teacher James Harris said. "In terms of their cultural awareness, this has been part of American society for a while."

Harris, the Alaska Teacher of the Year for 2017, discussed the Parkland shooting with students immediately after it happened.

"I think it's impossible not to discuss it," he said. "One of the comments I did get from a student is that when something like this happens, you just really want someone to come talk to you about it," he said. "To ignore it isn't beneficial in any way."

Although wary of taking on law enforcement duties, Harris said he appreciates the switch to an ALICE approach in emergency drills. During a recent drill, for example, his classroom decided to crawl out the windows instead of exiting through the hallways.

"All the teachers are incredibly thankful that we were not just huddling kids together, and being sitting ducks," he said.

The potential for a school attack adds an extra layer of challenges to his job educating students, particularly when it comes to proposals to arm teachers, said Harris, who has been teaching for 13 years.

"In many ways, society asks a lot of public teachers, public educators already, and adding that layer of responsibility, that is truly for law enforcement, I just don't think that I personally would benefit from having a firearm in the classroom," he said. "That would take away from my ability to meet the needs of students."

"I don't know if I can play the role of both teacher, mentor and public safety officer," he said.

Growing up under guns

Keaton Logston, 16, a junior at Kenai Central High School, has grown up doing active shooter drills - first in Anchorage and now in Kenai. The reality of what he was preparing for first hit home when he was in sixth grade and students had to do a moment of silence for "a pretty big school shooting" - the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in which a shooter killed 26 people, mostly children.

"That's when it really kicked in," he said.

While he's gotten used to active shooter drills as a part of life, Logston said he still is anxious about the possibility of a school attack, and about his sisters in elementary and middle school.

"I think about it quite a bit," Logston said. "It's pretty worrying."

Logston said he would feel safer with tighter security measures - more locks on doors, cameras and more police officers, and would be comfortable arming some teachers.

And although he doesn't talk much about school shootings with his peers, Logston would like to see adults take students more seriously, as people who want to help the community, "not just kids."

"I feel like it's a bit more dangerous that kids are being raised around this," Logston said. "All these school shootings, and all this violence, I don't think it's good for anybody."

"It's a scary thought," Raven Patrick said. "It makes you start thinking, what would happen if this would happen? Would we follow this drill? Every situation is different."

Patrick, a 16-year-old junior at Kenai Central High School, said the possibility of a school shooting also didn't occur to her until middle school, when drills became more focused on dealing with an intruder or shooter, instead of on a more general preparation for emergencies.

"It makes you look around at your peers (with) more of a scary view," Patrick said. "You can tell just that every time this pops up in the news, people are slowly losing trust in each other."

Patrick said she's glad that there's a school resource officer to patrol the school and meet any threats, but she would be concerned about arming teachers or other staff.

Although she's not opposed to having more guns in classrooms, Hanson said thinks they shouldn't be given to just anyone. Any teacher or school employee should have to go through training and become certified before bringing a gun into the school, she said.

But she also supports taking a deeper look at gun control, something she acknowledges can be controversial. She encouraged adults to listen to the voices of youth, who are the ones on the front lines of the issue.

"We kinda are told, you don't understand enough of the politics or the big picture," she said, "But we really are experiencing it in an environment that we're living."

Searching for answers

The Parkland shooting has inflamed the ongoing debate about how to prevent school shootings - with proposals ranging from tightening access to guns and enhancing mental health services to bullet-proof backpacks and arming teachers.

In Alaska, which nationally had the highest rate of gun-related deaths in 2016 - 177 deaths total, or 23.3 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - school shootings have been rare, but not unheard of. In February 1997, an attack at Bethel Regional High School killed two.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has expressed support for a multi-faceted approach to the issue.

"Senator Murkowski has said that there is no single, simple fix for these acts of violence. She is committed to targeting the root cause and on finding preventative measures," press secretary Hannah Ray wrote in an email statement.

Last week, Murkowski and Democratic Sen. Tina Smith introduced legislation to expand mental health services by allowing health care professionals from the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), to work with schools, community organizations and families, according to a March 12 press release. The NHSC is a federal program that offers loan repayment for health professionals working in underserved areas.

After the shooting in Parkland, Jenni Brighton decided to organize a public forum to discuss the issue of gun safety.

"It kind of just struck me really hard - we have all these adults having conversations about what we should be doing for our kids - we need to include our kids," she said.

"They should have a say in their lives, and, you know, in what we're deciding should be best for them," she said. "So I wanted to hold a forum to make that opportunity available for people to come and share their thoughts."

Hosted at the Soldotna library on Saturday, March 10, the forum gathered about a dozen people, who touched on a variety of topics, from ways of instilling respect in students, and drawing attention to the need for locking up guns through poster contests, to media awareness campaigns, and offering support to at-risk kids. Brighton, whose three boys attended the forum, said she supports legislative efforts to address the issue, but acknowledges those take time.

"I also know that there are kids and adults and people being hurt and killed right now, and I would like to try to do the things that will help faster," she said.

For Brighton's 17-year-old son Will, preparing for an attack has become a mundane part of daily life.

"It was kind of like 'meh, whatever,' for all the students," the Kenai Central High School senior said of the school's most recent active shooter drill.

The idea that there could be a school shooting one day, however, remains upsetting, he said.

"As a whole, I think that students are a little bit scared and a little bit mad that this is even a problem, and that this is something that we have to deal with we have to think, 'oh well, there's a chance of the school getting shot up,'" he said.

Although Will Brighton is glad there's a school resource officer on hand in case of an emergency, he would like to see things like metal detectors in schools - even if it makes the school feel a little bit more like a prison.

"The fact that we have to have this argument is kind of depressing," he said.

He said he isn't optimistic that much will be done by politicians or those in leadership positions, but hopes that a new coalition of students, parents and teachers can come together to make change.

"I think students my age and a little big younger and a little bit older are fed up with threat of guns in schools, and it sort of makes sense to step up and say, 'hey, something's got to change,' because the status quo is not okay, and it needs to change," he said.

Reach Erin Thompson at ethompson@peninsulaclarion.com and Michael Armstrong at marmstrong@homernews.com.

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After Parkland: Teachers, students, parents navigate the world of school shootings

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Students graduating high school in 2018 have never known a world where being killed in a classroom - or on a playground, or while having lunch with friends - was unthinkable.

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Advice from a survivor of the Florida school shooting: It's time to start ignoring Trump

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Advice from a survivor of the Florida school shooting: It's time to start ignoring Trump

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Could Social Media Screening Help Protect Us From Gun Violence?

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Could Social Media Screening Help Protect Us From Gun Violence?

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https://blog.socialintel.com/social-media-screening-gun-violence

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Hanover, N.H. - I am a junior in high school, and I regularly shoot guns, for target practice and hunting. Going to school can be hard because most kids don't understand how I live. It can be uncomfortable to be a gun-owning teenager right now, when high schools have become the centers of gun control protests. But there are many of us around the country.

I own firearms not only because I think they are cool, but also because they are considered a tool in my family. I have been brought up around guns all my life. Yes, I have used AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, and old Civil War rifles, too. I live on a farm where I hunt wild game and butcher animals humanely. Some kids at my school don't understand why I hunt; they think that it is cruel and that raising beef cattle and chickens is bad. Sometimes I get the feeling these kids are afraid of me because I own firearms.

There was a walkout at my school last week. It was meant to honor the students who died in the school shooting in Florida, but it was also about protesting firearms. I didn't join in. I feel horrible about the kids who were killed or hurt, but firearms aren't the problem - people are.

I think people who use guns in mass shootings are using those guns to seek help. There are other ways to get help, but the people who do these things have probably asked for help or have shown signs that they need it but were let down by the adults around them.

Many of the young people protesting guns right now seem to have very little knowledge about gun rules and regulations. Guns can be used safely. My family and I talk frequently about firearms and how they should be used. I have a younger brother, and we teach him the rights and wrongs of firearm safety - and, of course, never to use guns to hurt people.

It's hard to talk about guns, as well as about hunting and farming, at school because no one there knows much about those three topics. They've been told not to touch or talk about guns, and some of the kids think it is just absolutely wrong for people to own them. That is their opinion, and I respect it and am open to talking about it. But even if people try to be nice, they don't really want to debate it.

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Opinion | Why I Didn't Join My School's Walkout

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Hanover, N.H. - I am a junior in high school, and I regularly shoot guns, for target practice and hunting. Going to school can be hard because most kids don't understand how I live. It can be uncomfortable to be a gun-owning teenager right now, when high schools have become the centers of gun control protests.

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Students at thousands of schools across the United States walked out of class Wednesday morning to pressure Congress and state lawmakers to pass gun control laws.

More than 2,500 students had planned to join the National School Walkout out at 10 am in every time zone, according to organizers. They want Congress to expanding background checks to all gun buyers and banning assault-style weapons, such as the AR-15 used in the Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 high school students in Parkland, Florida.

But so far, the Republican Congress hasshown littleinterest in enacting such provisions. Instead, GOP lawmakers have been more focused on beefing up security at public schools and giving more money for safety training, including mass shooting drills.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the STOP School Violence Act, a bill that doesn't address guns but provides an annual $50 million grant to schools for training programs and upgraded reporting systems.

The bill would allow schools to use the money for mass shooting drills, which have become common in public schools since the Columbine school massacre. Since the Parkland shooting, a few states have also taken steps to beef up school security. Lawmakers in New York are considering a bill that would require all school emergency drills to include mass shooting scenarios. South Carolina lawmakers are considering a bill to require schools to carry out active-shooter drills every single month. Last week, Florida passed a school safety law that requires schools to conduct mass shooting drills twice a year.

The sad truth is that most public schools in the United States already do some sort of mass shooting drill. Nine out of ten public schools now drill students and teachers to respond to mass shootings, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

These mass shooting drills have become the new normal, and a generation of American students have learned to lock and barricade their classroom doors the same way they learn to drop and roll in case of a fire.

Safety training companies, such as the ALICE Institute, regularly stage fake shootings as part of their training programs for schools. Here is how they teach elementary-school children to respond to a "bad guy" who bursts into class:

These sessions are a stark reminder of how American schools have changed since the 1999 Columbine school shooting. School administrators and state lawmakers have realized that a mass shooting can happen in any community, in any school, at any time, and that they need to be prepared if it happens.

School shooting drills became the new normal after Columbine

Since Columbine, 32 states have passed laws requiring schools to conduct lockdown drills or some form of emergency drill to keep students safe from intruders. Some states went even further after 20 children died in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Now, six states require specific "active shooter" drills each year.That means the training must be specifically tailored to respond to an armed gunman out to kill.There is no consensus on what these drills should look like, but several states, including Missouri, require shooting simulations with police officers.

In the 2003-04 school year, when the National Center for Education Statistics began collecting this data, 46.5 percent of all public schools had conducted active shooter drills with students. By 2013-14, a year after Sandy Hook, that figure had climbed to 70.3 percent. In the most recent data, for 2015-16, "lockdown drills" - a broader category that NCES used for that year's survey - were being conducted in 94.6 percent of schools.

"We are working in schools every day with innocent children who see school as a safe place," Henderson Lewis, Jr., the superintendent of the Orleans Parish School Board in Louisiana, told Vox. "We must do everything we can to prepare our kids for an unfortunate scenario."

New Orleans schools have been practicing lockdown drills for years, Lewis said, but they need to do much more. He is finalizing a plan to have school safety officers participate in mass shooting drills with police in empty school buildings.

The types of shooting drills vary by state and sometimes by school district. But here's what this data really means: Each year, nearly every student at an American public school is trained to cower under a desk or run for their lives to avoid being murdered by a gunman.

The limits of lockdown drills

The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida, has brought renewed attention to gun violence in schools.

Nikolas Cruz, a troubled 19-year-old former student, has been charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder for allegedly opening fire with an AR-15on students minutes before the final bell rang.

As the shooting was taking place, tweets and video circulating on social media from inside the school showed students under lockdown, barricaded in classrooms, and hiding from the gunman.

The Broward County school district has been holding annual lockdown drills at its schools for more than 10 years.

There are basically two types of scenarios they train for. The first is the Code Yellow lockdown. This means teachers must lock doors and can continue teaching but cannot unlock the door until an "all clear" announcement has been broadcast over the intercom five times. When I worked as a crime reporter in Broward County, it was normal for a school to go into a Code Yellow lockdown when police were searching for an armed suspect in the surrounding neighborhoods.

A Code Red lockdown is for a situation like the one that happened in Parkland - where a gunman or intruder is on school grounds. In this scenario, teachers must lock doors, turn off lights, and move students away from windows. No one is allowed to talk or leave the room until the all clear is given. In both lockdown scenarios, teachers and students must ignore all other fire alarms or bells.

Yet a traditionallockdown drill doesn't teach students what to do when they come face to face to with a gunman, and that has led tosome new approaches.

Drills that teach kids to run or fight back are becoming more common

After the Sandy Hook massacre, federal law enforcement agencies decided to take a closer look at effective ways to respond to school attacks. In one study of 84 mass shootings between 2000 and 2010, about a third (34 percent) involved schools. The FBI analyzed research on mass shootings and school violence and came up with common warning signs that a person might be at risk of undertaking a deadly attack:

The person experiences a significant personal loss in the weeks or months leading up to the attack, such as a death, breakup, divorce, or job loss.

The person recently begins collecting or buying multiple weapons; begins or increases target practice and weapons training; or develops a new and "contextually inappropriate" interest in explosives and fascination with previous shootings or mass attacks.

Few offenders had previous arrests for violent crimes.

The FBI's 2013 report, published with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, also urged schools to consider that typical lockdown drills may not enough. They suggested running off school property if possible, or hiding in a locked room if necessary, but even went so far to suggestfighting "the shooter to survive and protect others from harm."

That was a new idea for schools, and many districts began to take their advice seriously.

The Ohio-based ALICE Training Institute, referenced in the video above, is one of the companies that drills school police officers, teachers, and staff to do more than just hide. They teach students to barricade their classroom doors, run, scream, and throw things at a gunman.

About 4,200 school districts and 3,500 police departments have ALICE-trained personnel, according to the company's website.

These companies even provide the option of staging elaborate shooting drills, complete with fake blood and masked men with plastic guns (in one instance, involving a different company, a traumatized teacher in Oregon sued the school district for not making clear that it was just a drill).

Shortly after the Newtown massacre, a task force created by the Ohio attorney general's office released a report encouraging school staff to be more aggressive:

If an intruder enters and begins shooting, any and all actions to stop the shooter are justified. This includes moving about the room to lessen accuracy, throwing items (books, computers, phones, book bags) to create confusion, exiting out windows, and confronting (assault, subdue, choke) to stop the intruder. Tell students to get out anyway possible and move to another location.

Not everyone has embraced these tactics. There has been concern among school psychologists about the potential negative impact on children who participate in staged shootings. In 2014, the National Association of School Psychologists issued guidelines asserting that lockdown-based drills are ideal, as research shows they can be effective in minimizing injuries. Not much research has been devoted to the "run, hide, fight" approach, they cautioned, and schools should not make active shooter drills mandatory:

While one of the primary goals of crisis preparedness is to develop a sense of empowerment and control, armed assailant drills not conducted appropriately may cause physical and psychological harm to students, staff, and the overall learning environment.

This trend is super depressing

All the different views about the best way to train students to respond to mass shootings overlook the sheer insanity that such a conversation is even happening. It's depressing that the normal policy response to these tragic events has been to stage mass shooting drills at public schools, instead of developing policies focused on making the world less violent.

"We are going through tough times," said Lewis, the schools superintendent in Louisiana. "The world is changing."

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After Parkland, a push for more school shooting drills

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Students at thousands of schools across the United States walked out of class Wednesday morning to pressure Congress and state lawmakers to pass gun control laws. More than 2,500 students had planned to join the National School Walkout out at 10 am in every time zone, according to organizers.

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Parkland Shooting Surveillance Video Shows Deputy Remained Outside

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Parkland Shooting Surveillance Video Shows Deputy Remained Outside

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Inside the building, wounded victims lay bleeding in hallways and classrooms, according to 911 calls from students and teachers that were released on Wednesday by the Coral Springs Police Department. Those calls were the second batch of recordings made public from the shooting.

"They're all bleeding," a sobbing girl whispered to an emergency operator. "They're going to die."

News organizations including The New York Times had petitioned for the release of the surveillance video footage, and Judge Jeffrey R. Levenson of Broward County Circuit Court ordered that it be made public by noon Thursday.

Sheriff Scott Israel said that the video showed the deputy doing "nothing" as the gunman killed 14 students and three educators, and wounded 17 more people. One wounded student remains in the hospital.

"He never went in," the sheriff said of Mr. Peterson in a news conference on Feb. 22. "There are no words," said Sheriff Israel, who described himself as "devastated, sick to my stomach" after watching the video. Office policy requires deputies to try to confront a gunman as quickly as possible, without waiting for backup.

Sheriff Israel later defended his "amazing leadership," despite Mr. Peterson's inaction and other questionable decisions by his command staff, which set up a perimeter around the school before it was clear that the shooting was over, instead of moving in on the gunman.

Mr. Peterson was suspended and then resigned his post. In a statement released by his lawyer, he said that he thought the gunfire originated from outside the building, and reacted accordingly by waiting for the suspect there. But a detailed timeline based on radio dispatches and surveillance footage, released last week by the sheriff's office, suggested that he came to believe the shots might be coming from inside.

In one of his first communications, he said, "Be advised we have possible, could be firecrackers, I think we have shots fired, possible shots fired by the 1200 building." Later, he said, "We also heard it's by- inside the 1200 building."

Mr. Peterson also told other law enforcement officers who raced to the school to stay outside. Coral Springs officers, the first to arrive on the scene, pushed into the building anyway. By then, the gunman had already fled.

Mr. Peterson's lawyer, Joseph A. DiRuzzo III, did not respond on Thursday to requests for comment on the video.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, a former Stoneman Douglas High student, was later arrested about two miles from the school. He has been charged with 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the shooting.

The law enforcement response to the shooting was also hampered by the failure of Broward County's police radio system. The sheriff's office was unable to connect its radio transmissions with those of the Coral Springs police, who operate on a separate system.

Coral Springs police radio recordings released on Wednesday suggest that Mr. Peterson failed to give clear information to the first arriving officers about where the shooting had taken place. Officer Tim Burton is heard to say that he had his rifle and was standing outside the building with Mr. Peterson, "getting info." But what was relayed on the radio was that the gunman might have been spotted outside in a parking lot.

"We don't know where he's at," an exasperated officer said on radio.

The radio dispatches show that the police knew quickly that they were looking for a white male wearing a burgundy Junior R.O.T.C. shirt. Officers described coming across bodies, bleeding students and bullet-pocked windows.

Coral Springs officers tried to find the gunman using the video surveillance system at the school. But they later realized they were watching the video on a 20-minute delay, according to the department. The delay had led them to believe mistakenly that the shooting was still happening. Why they were not watching live video images, when that feature was available, remains unclear.

Eventually, officers spotted Mr. Cruz on the recorded video, running out of the west side of the freshman building with other students. A Coconut Creek police officer saw him about an hour after the shooting, walking down a residential street.

"I have the suspect, Nikolas Cruz," Officer Michael Leonard said on radio. Then he yelled to Mr. Cruz, "Stand by right there. Do not move!"

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marjory stoneman douglas high school (parkland  fla)

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video recordings  downloads and streaming

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Parkland Shooting Surveillance Video Shows Deputy Remained Outside

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Inside the building, wounded victims lay bleeding in hallways and classrooms, according to 911 calls from students and teachers that were released on Wednesday by the Coral Springs Police Department. Those calls were the second batch of recordings made public from the shooting. "They're all bleeding," a sobbing girl whispered to an emergency operator.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2018/02/28/teacher-with-gun-sparks-school-lockdown/amp/

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Why didn't the officer rush into Florida's Parkland school mass shooting?

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Why didn't the officer rush into Florida's Parkland school mass shooting?

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http://education.seattlepi.com/pros-cons-metal-detectors-schools-2420.htmlhttp://education.seattlepi.com/pros-cons-metal-detectors-schools-2420.html

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Written by Maria OCadiz

Schools have increasingly implemented physical security measures such as metal detectors to ensure that students, staff and visitors do not bring weapons or other metallic objects that may be used for harm into the premises. The enhanced security measures are meant to curb the increasing levels of school violence such as stabbings, shootings and gang violence. Use of metal detectors in schools has both pros and cons.

Risk-Reduction Tool

Using metal detectors at the main entrances of schools generally serves to reduce the risk of students, staff or any other visitor entering the premises with a gun, knife, bomb or other dangerous metallic object. Metal detectors may either be handheld or stationary and people are required either to walk through them or to submit themselves to a search before being allowed to enter the school. The physical security measure works effectively when the school closes off other entrances so that there is only one way in or out. According to National School Safety and Security Services, metal detectors may be a necessary tool in school districts with a history of chronic weapons issues and related violence such as shootings.

Best Practice

Schools need to take all possible measures to ensure the safety and security of students and staff. And according to Hanover Research, installing metal detectors is a form of best practice that allows the school management to be confident that it has done all it can to discharge its duty. Installing metal detectors gives students and staff a measure of psychological assurance that the school is safe because every person has to be cleared through the entrance. Detectors also serve as a form of deterrent because visitors to the school know they will be searched and may think twice about carrying a weapon or other dangerous object into the premises.

Costly

Metal detectors are costly to purchase and install, and they require other related expenditures such as staff to conduct the searches, training and equipment maintenance, according to a National Institute of Justice Research Report. The purchase price for a metal detector may run up to tens of thousands of dollars. Detectors are also not self-operating because although the equipment produces some type of alarm signal, a trained officer is still required to investigate the source of the alert and to verify whether it is a weapon or other object. As a result, the school has to hire and train numerous officers to check students as they arrive.

Limited Utility

According to the Keep Schools Safe Initiative, metal detectors have limited utility as a physical security measure in schools. Having students pass through metal detectors as they arrive in the morning disrupts the school program because officers require time to check the students. The officers must also be trained in the proper use of the equipment or they could end up either allowing students, staff and visitors through without properly checking them or detaining them on false alarms. Stationary metal detectors cannot be used effectively in school buildings that have multiple entrances that cannot be closed or staffed by adequate security personnel.

About the Author

Maria OCadiz has been writing professionally since 1982, most recently publishing for various websites on topics like health and wellness, and education. She holds a Master of Arts in Education. She is a former university professor, curriculum facilitator and teacher.

Photo Credits

Creatas/Creatas/Getty Images

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Pros & Cons of Metal Detectors in Schools

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Schools have increasingly implemented physical security measures such as metal detectors to ensure that students, staff and visitors do not bring weapons or other metallic objects that may be used for harm into the premises. The enhanced security measures are meant to curb the increasing levels of school violence such ...

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The Big Student Walkout; DeVos On School Safety; The First Amendment On Campus

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The Big Student Walkout; DeVos On School Safety; The First Amendment On Campus

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Hello and welcome to another edition of the weekly roundup. The nation's eyes have been on students this week, so let's check in.
National student walkout
On March 14, a month after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, K-12 students all over the country walked out of class to protest gun violence. Many chose to leave for 17 minutes, one for each of those killed in the Parkland, Fla., attack. NPR also reported on the songs they sang in protest. A march on Washington is planned for next Saturday.
Teachers oppose carrying guns
Almost three out of four teachers oppose the idea of being armed at school, according to a new Gallup poll. And 58 percent say that teachers and staff carrying guns would make schools less safe.
DeVos will head school safety commission
On March 11, President Trump appointed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to a new Federal Commission on School Safety.

After appearances on 60 Minutes and the Today show, for which DeVos was criticized for seeming ill-informed, she provided more details to the National Parent Teacher Association conference on Tuesday.

DeVos advocated some measures that have also been endorsed by a large number of experts on school climate and mental health. These include two that involve the supply of weapons: strengthening background checks for gun buyers and a measure called temporary extreme risk protection orders to take away a firearm if the police perceive an imminent threat.

DeVos also included a call to back the proposed STOP School Violence Act, which provides states with money for training, technology and technical assistance, including "threat assessment" teams.

She also backed ideas that many scholars oppose, such as arming teachers and "hardening" schools through things like metal detectors. As part of the commission, the White House has called for a reconsideration of Obama-era student discipline guidance. This sets up a debate over the use of suspensions, expulsions and student arrests - and the impact of these tactics on racial equity and access to education.
College students surveyed on the First Amendment
A survey of 3,000 college students nationwide by Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (which is among NPR's financial supporters) found strong support for free speech, but also concern about the spread of hate speech and the need for diversity and inclusion.

Students' confidence in freedom of speech and the press is declining. Sixty-four percent of respondents told pollsters that freedom of speech is secure in this country, down from 73 percent in a 2016 survey on the same topic. Sixty percent, down from 81 percent, say freedom of the press is secure. This slide was concentrated among students who identify as Democrats and independents.

When it came to restrictions on free speech, while 90 percent of college students say it is never acceptable to use violence to prevent someone from speaking, 37 percent agreed it was acceptable to shout people down at least sometimes.

And 80 percent of students agreed that the Internet has been responsible for a significant increase in hate speech.
Another state takes steps toward free community college
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy campaigned last year on a promise to offer community college to all of his state's residents, for free, by 2021. Murphy, a Democrat, took office in January and this week announced a budget proposal that included what he called a "down payment" on the plan. It includes $50 million for low-income students to attend community college. Four states - Tennessee, Oregon, New York and Rhode Island - already offer students free community college. Many others have similar plans in the works.

The budget proposal also includes additional funding for pre-K through 12th grade, with an emphasis on expanding pre-K access and STEM programs in New Jersey.
School travel-time study
Anyone who commutes knows that travel time makes a huge difference. And when kids live far from their schools, long travel time can add to students' stress and significantly affect families.

A new, big study by the Urban Institute this week shed light on how students get to school and how long it takes for them to arrive.

The study examined students in Denver, Detroit, New Orleans, New York City and Washington, D.C. - all areas with many choices beyond neighborhood schools, such as charters or vouchers.

The results? Most commutes to school are shorter than 20 minutes. High school students in the study traveled slightly farther than those in middle and elementary. The researchers also found that African-American students consistently travel farther to get to school than their white or Latino peers.

"Access to a car can significantly increase the number of schools available to a family," the researchers concluded, and they suggested that transportation options like busing should be considered when drafting school choice plans.

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The Big Student Walkout; DeVos On School Safety; The First Amendment On Campus

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Hello and welcome to another edition of the weekly roundup. The nation's eyes have been on students this week, so let's check in. National student walkout On March 14, a month after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, K-12 students all over the country walked out of class to protest gun violence.

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National School Walkout: Thousands Protest Against Gun Violence Across the U.S.

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National School Walkout: Thousands Protest Against Gun Violence Across the U.S.

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National School Walkout: Thousands Protest Against Gun Violence Across the U.S. (Published 2018)

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In a coordinated action, students left their classrooms and sometimes marched in the streets a month after 17 people were killed in a Florida high school.

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Take a quiz to figure out what types of biases you have toward weapons or another topic / area of interest.

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In 2016, school officials wanted Florida mass shooter involuntarily committed

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In 2016, school officials wanted Florida mass shooter involuntarily committed

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In September 2016, two counselors and a resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School recommended that Nikolas Cruz be involuntarily committed for a mental health evaluation, per court documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Cruz, 19, stands accused of killing 17 people in a mass shooting at the Parkland, Florida, high school last month. Under Florida's Baker Act, a person can be forcibly committed for a mental health exam for at least three days, and it's not clear why no one ever followed through on the recommendation. The resource officer who proposed Cruz be committed was Scot Peterson; he resigned after the shooting when it emerged that he did not enter the building during the massacre. Had Cruz been committed, authorities told AP, it would have been a red flag during a background check, making it extremely difficult for him to get a gun legally.

The court documents state that Cruz told a classmate he wanted to purchase a gun and use it; told another student he tried drinking gasoline and was throwing up; and wrote "kill" in a notebook. He also cut his arm several times after he and a girlfriend broke up and punched a hole in a wall at his house, the documents say, but told clinicians with Henderson Behavioral Health that he was feeling better. Cruz admitted that he had a pellet gun, but said he was not capable of doing "serious harm" with it, AP reports. Catherine Garcia

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In 2016, school officials wanted Florida mass shooter involuntarily committed

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In September 2016, two counselors and a resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School recommended that Nikolas Cruz be involuntarily committed for a mental health evaluation, per court documents obtained by The Associated Press. Cruz, 19, stands accused of killing 17 people in a mass shooting at the Parkland, Florida, high school last month.

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Former NFL Player Johnathan Martin Threatens To Shoot Up School On Instagram His Caption Was “If You Were A Victim Of Bullying In The Past The Only Opitions Are Sucicide Or Revenge” While Post A Pic Of Himself With A Gun

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Jonathan Martin posts disturbing photo, taken into custody

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Please enter your email address associated with the account so we can help reset your password. Stay up-to-date with the latest news and scores from your favorite teams anywhere and get customized notifications, special offers and much more My SI Settings Favorite Teams You currently have no favorite teams. Favorite Reporters You currently have no favorite reporters.

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There is a Clear Link Between Mental Illness and Mass Shootings

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There is a Clear Link Between Mental Illness and Mass Shootings

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https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-duwe-rocque-mass-shootings-mental-illness-20180223-story.html%3foutputType=amp

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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/appi.books.9781615371099&ved=2ahUKEwjCl_aa1vjZAhWOk1kKHZwNBJoQFjABegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw3yZPDrgQqV7zPBqaJ0wS6R

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Annually, 5,000 to 6,000 black men are murdered with guns. Black men amount to only 6 percent of the population. Yet of the 30 Americans on average shot to death each day, half are black males.

It was much the same in the early 1990s when Democrats created and then banned a category of guns they called "assault weapons." America was then suffering from a spike in gun crime and it seemed like a problem threatening everyone. Gun murders each year had been climbing: 11,000, then 13,000, then 17,000.

Democrats decided to push for a ban of what seemed like the most dangerous guns in America: assault weapons, which were presented by the media as the gun of choice for drug dealers and criminals, and which many in law enforcement wanted to get off the streets.

This politically defined category of guns - a selection of rifles, shotguns and handguns with "military-style" features - only figured in about 2 percent of gun crimes nationwide before the ban.

Handguns were used in more than 80 percent of gun murders each year, but gun control advocates had failed to interest enough of the public in a handgun ban. Handguns were the weapons most likely to kill you, but they were associated by the public with self-defense. (In 2008, the Supreme Court said there was a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.)

Banning sales of military-style weapons resonated with both legislators and the public: Civilians did not need to own guns designed for use in war zones.

On Sept. 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban into law. It barred the manufacture and sale of new guns with military features and magazines holding more than 10 rounds. But the law allowed those who already owned these guns - an estimated 1.5 million of them - to keep their weapons.

The policy proved costly. Mr. Clinton blamed the ban for Democratic losses in 1994. Crime fell, but when the ban expired, a detailed study found no proof that it had contributed to the decline.

The ban did reduce the number of assault weapons recovered by local police, to 1 percent from roughly 2 percent.

"Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement," a Department of Justice-funded evaluation concluded.

Still, the majority of Americans continued to support a ban on assault weapons.

One reason: The use of these weapons may be rare over all, but they're used frequently in the gun violence that gets the most media coverage, mass shootings.

The criminologist James Alan Fox at Northeastern University estimates that there have been an average of 100 victims killed each year in mass shootings over the past three decades. That's less than 1 percent of gun homicide victims.

But these acts of violence in schools and movie theaters have come to define the problem of gun violence in America.

Most Americans do not know that gun homicides have decreased by 49 percent since 1993 as violent crime also fell, though rates of gun homicide in the United States are still much higher than those in other developed nations. A Pew survey conducted after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., found that 56 percent of Americans believed wrongly that the rate of gun crime was higher than it was 20 years ago.

Even as homicide rates have held steady or declined for most Americans over the last decade, for black men the rate has sometimes risen. But it took a handful of mass shootings in 2012 to put gun control back on Congress's agenda.

AFTER Sandy Hook, President Obama introduced an initiative to reduce gun violence. He laid out a litany of tragedies: the children of Newtown, the moviegoers of Aurora, Colo. But he did not mention gun violence among black men.

To be fair, the president's first legislative priority after Sandy Hook was universal background checks, a measure that might have shrunk the market for illegal guns used in many urban shootings. But Republicans in Congress killed that effort. The next proposal on his list was reinstating and "strengthening" bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. It also went nowhere.

"We spent a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of political capital yelling and screaming about assault weapons," Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu of New Orleans said. He called it a "zero sum political fight about a symbolic weapon."

Mr. Landrieu and Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia are founders of Cities United, a network of mayors trying to prevent the deaths of young black men. "This is not just a gun issue, this is an unemployment issue, it's a poverty issue, it's a family issue, it's a culture of violence issue," Mr. Landrieu said.

More than 20 years of research funded by the Justice Department has found that programs to target high-risk people or places, rather than targeting certain kinds of guns, can reduce gun violence.

David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, argues that the issue of gun violence can seem enormous and intractable without first addressing poverty or drugs. A closer look at the social networks of neighborhoods most afflicted, he says, often shows that only a small number of men drive most of the violence. Identify them and change their behavior, and it's possible to have an immediate impact.

Working with Professor Kennedy, and building on successes in other cities, New Orleans is now identifying the young men most at risk and intervening to help them get jobs. How well this strategy will work in the long term remains to be seen.

But it's an approach based on an honest assessment of the real numbers.

Correction: September 21, 2014

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Annually, 5,000 to 6,000 black men are murdered with guns. Black men amount to only 6 percent of the population. Yet of the 30 Americans on average shot to death each day, half are black males. It was much the same in the early 1990s when Democrats created and then banned a category of guns they called "assault weapons."

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What is really the answer to gun violence

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What is really the answer to gun violence

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Should Australia's gun laws be implemented into the United States

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Should Australia's gun laws be implemented into the United States

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"We have an opportunity in this country not to go down the American path."

Those were the words of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard before he radically changed Australia's gun laws and - many believe - rid the country of gun violence on a large scale.

Now the US is reeling from another mass shooting - its deadliest ever - in Las Vegas. A year after 49 people were shot dead in an Orlando nightclub, America continues to find itself far down that violent path.

But could it still change course the way Australia did?

In April 1996, 35 people were killed by a gunman, Martin Bryant, wielding semi-automatic weapons at a former prison colony and tourist attraction in Tasmania.

This became known as the Port Arthur massacre, and it was a turning point for Australia.

The event appalled and galvanised the nation, helping to push Australia to enact some of the most comprehensive firearm laws in the world.

Former US President Barack Obama often pointed to Australia as an example for the US to follow.

"When Australia had a mass killing - I think it was in Tasmania - about 25 years ago, it was just so shocking the entire country said: 'Well, we're going to completely change our gun laws'. And they did, and it hasn't happened since," he said in 2015.

So what exactly did Australia do, how did it work, and could it work in the US?

Drop in shootings

Less than two weeks after the Port Arthur massacre, all six Australian states agreed to enact the same sweeping gun laws banning semi-automatic rifles and shotguns - weapons that can kill many people quickly.

They also put more hurdles between prospective gun owners and their weapons.

Australia has 28-day waiting periods, thorough background checks, and a requirement to present a "justifiable reason" to own a gun.

Unlike in the US, self-protection is not accepted as a justifiable reason to own a gun.

In the 21 years since the laws were passed, about one million semi-automatic weapons - roughly one third of the country's firearms - were sold back to the government and destroyed, nearly halving the number of gun-owning households in Australia.

Although the laws were designed specifically to reduce mass shootings, the rates of homicide and suicide have also come down since 1996.

Philip Alpers, a professor at Sydney School of Public Health, has done studies showing that aside from the victims of the Port Arthur shooting, 69 gun homicides were recorded in 1996 compared with 30 in 2012.

Despite the reduction in incidence though, gun violence has not disappeared in Australia.

Many outlawed firearms have been replaced with legal ones. And nearly 26,000 unregistered guns have been handed back this year in the first national amnesty since the Port Arthur killings.

Guns per capita in Australia and US: 1996 vs now

Australia

1996: Approximately 17.5 guns per 100 people

2016 (most recent numbers available): About 13.7 guns per 100 people

United States

1996: Approximately 91 guns per 100 people

2009 (most recent numbers available): Approximately 101 guns per 100 people

Sources: AIC Australian institute of Criminology, Gun Policy, Small Arms Survey, and US Dept of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Australian firearms rights groups say that the laws go too far and restrict personal freedom.

They argue that gun violence was on a downward trajectory before the 1996 laws were passed, and reject any link between lower incidence of gun deaths and the tighter legislation.

Diana Melham, executive director of the Sporting Shooters Australia Association in New South Wales, argues the 1996 laws fuelled a sense of alienation among gun owners, which, she says "rallied the shooters".

The organisation, which is the country's largest gun lobby group, has grown rapidly since 1996 and its numbers are still on the rise.

But Tim Fischer, who was Prime Minister Howard's deputy in 1996 and instrumental in getting the National Firearms Agreement passed, argues the US should follow Australia's lead.

"Plain and simple, what we've done works," he told the BBC in 2015.

The big question

So could it work in the US?

The simple answer is - probably not.

Although Australia does have a long history of hunting and sport, there is no equivalent to America's Second Amendment right to bear arms here.

Another significant difference is the speed of government action. In 1996 John Howard managed to get all six Australian states to agree to and pass uniform sweeping gun control legislation in just 12 days.

It is hard to fathom the US government ever being able to get all 50 states to agree to something, let alone act that quickly.

But according to Prof Alpers, the bigger difference is the cultural mindset.

"I don't for a moment think it would happen in the US," he says. "Australia already had a pre-disposition to doing something about it."

He explains that although by far the deadliest, the Port Arthur shooting was not the first Australia had experienced.

He says the country had lost nearly 150 people in the years running up to 1996 in mass shootings, and the national mood was changing.

"Port Arthur was the straw that broke the camel's back. You have to go back to those years to remember how visceral that backlash was."

Mr Fischer is more optimistic. He believes meaningful change could come to the US, but only when a "silent majority" are "sprung into action".

"Of course all mass shootings are a bridge too far," he says. "But there is going to be one that really tips the balance. Watch this space."

Exact numbers of the incidence of mass shootings in the US and abroad are hard to pin down because there is no uniform standard on the definition of a mass shooting.

In the US, there is no official database for this type of information, but tallies like the one from private research group ShootingTracker.com who put the number of mass shootings in the US in 2016 at 383, have been widely cited in the US media in the wake of other mass shootings.

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"We have an opportunity in this country not to go down the American path." Those were the words of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard before he radically changed Australia's gun laws and - many believe - rid the country of gun violence on a large scale.

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And Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the chairman of the Senate education committee, introduced his own school safety measure on Wednesday. His bill would allow 100,000 public schools to use federal dollars for school counselors, alarm systems, security cameras and crisis intervention training.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos threw her weight behind what she said was the only approach that could muster broad support after a brief but contentious visit on Wednesday to Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and faculty were gunned down on Valentine's Day.

"I think there's an opportunity to take some practical steps that many, many people agree on and continue pushing forward on things that have broad support," she said.

But as the midterm election season begins, the school safety votes may only be an opening volley.

"The Republicans would like to have the public think they're doing something and have the N.R.A. think they're doing nothing," said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.

Gun control has long been one of the most divisive and contentious issues in Washington, and the rush to legislate on school safety reflects the difficulty of passing measures that have anything to do with guns. On Wednesday, students advocating gun safety legislation staged a sit-in outside the office of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, chanting "Enough is enough!" and "Not one more!" Eight were arrested, police said.

But most gun safety proposals - including expanding background checks for gun purchases, raising the minimum age for buying rifles to 21 from 18, banning assault-style weapons like the AR-15 used by the gunman in Parkland and taking guns away from people deemed mentally unfit - appear to be going nowhere on Capitol Hill. President Trump's mercurial statements have not helped. At a televised White House session, he appeared to back broad gun control legislation, only to muddy his position after an evening meeting with the N.R.A.'s chief lobbyist.

One exception is the Fix NICS Act, a modest measure that would offer incentives to states and federal agencies to improve reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, for gun purchasers. The measure, which is backed by the N.R.A., has already passed the House and has broad bipartisan support in the Senate.

But even that legislation is facing a hurdle: Mr. McConnell cannot bring it up quickly for a vote because Senate rules require unanimous consent to do so, and at least one senator, Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, has objected. And while Mr. McConnell is a co-sponsor of the Senate's version of the STOP School Violence Act, he has not said when the Senate will consider it.

The Senate's chief sponsor of the STOP School Violence Act, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, said in an interview Wednesday that his aim was to focus on "special programs and special approaches toward making these schools safer and more acceptable to the families and kids."

As for Democrats who consider the measure insufficient, Mr. Hatch said: "That's their motif every time. I mean, they know that if they can raise hell against guns and so forth, that that gives them a lot of publicity. But that doesn't necessarily help us in our educational processes."

Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and a co-sponsor of Mr. Hatch's bill, said he did not want the Senate to lose sight of more far-reaching legislation that would address gun violence head-on.

"That's a useful bill, but it doesn't have anything to do with gun laws," Mr. Murphy said. "Anybody whose only solution to the school shooting epidemic is to make our schools fortresses doesn't understand the root of this problem."

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, also welcomed efforts to increase safety measures and resources, but she said legislators and Mr. Trump had used it deflect from the larger demands of the public, including students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who had been in the forefront of gun control advocacy since the shooting.

"The kids from Stoneman Douglas said, 'Do certain common-sense, gun violence reduction measures - don't change the subject,'" Ms. Weingarten said.

While Republicans were talking about school safety, Senate Democrats on Thursday sought to keep the focus on guns. Senators Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and Bill Nelson of Florida, convened a Democrats-only afternoon hearing to take testimony from those affected by gun violence.

Among the witnesses were Mr. Guttenberg and David Hogg, a 17-year-old Stoneman Douglas senior who has become a vocal national spokesman for gun control.

In Parkland on Wednesday, Ms. DeVos was greeted less than enthusiastically by many students, who took to social media to complain that she did not have any substantive interactions with them. (Dwyane Wade, a basketball star for the Miami Heat who visited after Ms. DeVos, got a much warmer reception.)

"I thought she would at least give us her 'thoughts and prayers,' but she refused to even meet/speak with students. I don't understand the point of her being here," tweeted Carly Novell, editor of the student newspaper, The Eagle Eye, which covered the secretary's visit.

Another student, Aly Sheehy, tweeted, "Do something unexpected: answer our questions."

Do something unexpected: answer our questions. You came to our school just for publicity and avoided our questions for the 90 minutes you were actually here. How about you actually do your job? #neveragain #DoYourJob https://t.co/4Ts0INq0gR
- Aly Sheehy�� (@Aly_Sheehy) March 7, 2018

The Education Department said that Ms. DeVos visited some students and teachers and laid a wreath, and that her visit was developed with the principal's recommendations in mind to "provide minimal disruption on students' first full day back in the school." In her news conference, Ms. DeVos said she promised student journalists that she would return to meet with them.

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With Gun Control Nearing a Dead End, G.O.P. Turns to 'School Safety'

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And Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the chairman of the Senate education committee, introduced his own school safety measure on Wednesday. His bill would allow 100,000 public schools to use federal dollars for school counselors, alarm systems, security cameras and crisis intervention training.

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Evan Sandy Hook Promise Sandy Hook Promise Videos Lock Down Make Your Own Grappling Hook Sandy Hook Promise Press Conference 2 24 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting Logic 1800 Music Video

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NRA posts about why they support the Second Amendment. Read through the website to see what they're doing to protect this amendment.

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The National Rifle Association is America's longest-standing civil rights organization. Together with our more than five million members, we're proud defenders of history's patriots and diligent protectors of the Second Amendment.

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More than five years ago, on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, in the quiet Connecticut enclave of Newtown, Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy, and stole her Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle. He then traveled a few minutes over to his childhood alma mater, Sandy Hook Elementary School. Lanza used his mother's rifle to shoot through the school's glass door and subsequently murder 20 children and six adults before killing himself.

The Sandy Hook shootings unleashed a debate that, five years after the tragic mass shooting, continues about gun control in America. Since then, the country has experienced more mass shootings, now memorialized by their locales: Orlando, Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs. Gun control has bifurcated the nation's politics, torn apart families, and created a raging debate about the right to own guns guaranteed by the Constitution's Second Amendment.

But what if guns were safe? What if they came with a biometric lock that prevented a person who didn't own that gun from using it? What if Adam Lanza hadn't been able to use his mother's Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle? Would 26 innocent people still be alive?

In August 2016, Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams announced a smart gun design competition to create what he referred to as a "safer gun." Adams, who retired from the New York Police Department after serving for 22 years, told The Daily Beast that the development of a smart gun is a potential compromise between gun rights and gun control activists.

"I think that the problem is that people use [the phrase] 'gun control,' but actually, it's guns out of control," he said. "Oftentimes when we think of illegal guns, we think of a person who goes out and commits a crime. But the crime that was committed was using a gun they weren't authorized to use."

It might seem like an oxymoron to describe a gun that is technologically superior to a "normal" gun as "safer," but Adams is insistent that a smart gun might be the way to quash a significant portion of gun-related deaths, which he said are primarily from stolen guns.

"We use smartphones for everything," Adams pointed out to illustrate how easily a smart technology can be adopted. "The only thing we haven't applied technology to is handguns."

To be sure, the concept of a "smart" gun has been around for a few years and is not new. Efforts have been under way for a few years but have never really bubbled up to viability; Motherboard went so far as to call the pursuit dead last year.

Adams wasn't deterred, though. His goal in launching a smart gun design competition was to encourage innovators to think critically and creatively beyond what had already been invented in the smart gun space, which often included clunky toy gun lookalikes and biometric operations (fingerprint scanning, for example). Adams hoped that the competition would encourage a creative, unique approach that would appease gun owners looking to keep their guns safe yet quickly usable.

The team that emerged victorious in the competition-after several months of tinkering on a design that ultimately failed-was a trio of scrappy students at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering. It was surprising, given their competition: professional laboratories, defense systems researchers, and more.

But what perhaps helped the students' design to stand out from the rest was their relative lack of experience, both with shooting guns and with designing smart guns.

The students-Sy Cohen, Ashwin Raj Kumar, and Jonathan Ng-were guided by adjunct professor Anthony Clarke. Cohen originally fielded the idea as a sort of senior project, asking Clarke if he would advise his work and turning to Raj Kumar-Clarke's former teaching assistant-for advice initially, then help.

The team first went along the straightforward-seeming plan of re-engineering a gun, studying up on semiautomatic pistols-the most commonly used in American households -to see if they could somehow change the components to make it "smart."

"But we kept failing," Cohen told The Daily Beast. "Guns today are built so efficiently and mechanically tight that if you change one thing, you change everything."

Clarke added that it was important to the team to maintain the initial weight distribution of the gun, something gun owners were particular about regarding their firearm. "Anything we added to the gun would hamper that," Clarke said, which made tinkering with the components that much more difficult.

The team-who couldn't test their ideas on a real gun during this phase of the process-used computer-aided design to toy with various ideas: Maybe they could attach a biometric card in the holster, or rejigger the intestines of the gun to make room for an RFID card. But none of these ideas seemed to work, and they hit a dead end. "Nothing fit in the gun," Cohen recalled.

Frustrated, the team traveled to a shooting range in nearby New Jersey-a first for the three team members, none of whom had ever shot a gun before. But the experience of shooting-holding a gun and feeling the cold metal, the kickback from the shot, the strangely delicate structure of something so deadly-clicked something in the team members' minds.

Cohen recalled looking at Raj Kumar and feeling as if they had the exact same idea at the same time: It wasn't about re-jiggering the gun's anatomy. They had to make an accessory to the gun, something that was not permanent but could be taken off when being used, then re-attached when not.

Clarke said the genius of the system-unlike any other smart gun that has been made available thus far-is that there is a two-step hierarchy involved in unlocking the gun, ensuring that only the user can access the gun. Unlocking a gun kicks off with a fingerprint scanner. If the fingerprint scanner succeeds in identifying the fingerprint of the person, the user can access step two: checking to see if you're in range. A radio frequency identification (RFID) tag is on the user's person within a short distance, and the holster checks to see if the tag is in range. "It's similar to keyless car entry," Clarke said, explaining the RFID tag.

If the two match up-fingerprint and RFID tag-to the person, the accessory unlocks and the gun becomes usable. If, however, something doesn't work in the processing-the fingerprint is too smudgy or sweaty, the user forgets to use their RFID tag, Clarke said some backup measures were in place. A voice-activated command will disable the gun's safety features and unlock the holster but require the user to get a brand new set.

And if you're not authorized to use the smart gun voice activation backup plan? Well, you're out of luck.

That's the best, probably most valuable part of this smart gun: Not only does it attach to a gun but it also makes the gun unusable to anyone but the person who is supposed to use it.

It's what appealed the team's design to Brooklyn borough president Adams, and it's what he thinks could solve the problem of guns being stolen from officers-an incredibly common issue, he told The Daily Beast-to be used subsequently in crimes. "When I was a rookie, someone broke into my apartment [and stole my gun]," he said. "Cops lose their guns. It's hard to trace them when you're dealing with a city like New York City and you have 30,000 police officers."

To a certain extent, Adams and the team may be right: There is hope that a smart gun could help solve America's gun problem, and manufacturers are jumping on the "smart" bandwagon with enthusiasm.

Most of the time, the "smartness" of the guns comes from the fact that using the weapon requires some sort of identification that verifies the authorization of the user. iGun Technology, based in Daytona Beach, Florida, has been designing one since at least May 2016, with a firearm that embeds a chip within a ring to send a signal to a circuit board within the gun that authorizes a user. German company Armatix GmbH has created a gun that relies on a watch with an RFID to be within 10 inches of the gun for its use.

But smart guns remain a novelty, for more than a few reasons. First, making a gun "smarter" requires technological work that makes it, by definition, a more expensive purchase. Second, guns with added accessories make for a bulkier product, rendering them less desirable-an issue Cohen and his team tried to deal with in creating their smart gun, which uses embedded technology.

The problem with smart guns isn't that they are trying to be safer. Indeed, that's a noble aspect that is desperately needed in America right now, as the body count of gunshot victims rises. Preventing people from using firearms they aren't supposed to be able to use-whether that is from stealing it, or accessing a family member's gun trove for suicide or murder, intentional or accidental-will unquestionably be useful in making guns safer.

But smart guns won't solve America's sadly unique gun violence epidemic. Most American mass shooters had access to use their own firearm. And smart guns won't stop a mentally ill person from being able to use their own gun, or a person determined to use a gun to find a way to use one.

We're also not even sure if smart guns can work. Julia Wolfson, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health who has studied gun violence prevention policies, said the data simply do not exist to argue that smart guns can save lives.

"Precisely quantifying the number of lives potentially saved by smart guns is not possible at this time since smart guns have not yet been introduced to the market. The 'experiment' has yet to run," she told The Daily Beast. "However, evidence examining the circumstances of gun deaths and injuries suggests that smart guns would be helpful in preventing deaths and injuries resulting from unintentional shootings, and gun violence using stolen guns"-exactly what the NYU team is hoping for.

It's a promising start to curbing gun violence, particularly among children, who can tragically come upon guns and accidentally use them, thinking they're a toy. Wolfson also said smart guns could viably cut down on suicides, "particularly among adolescents who find a parent's or other family member's gun. If a depressed teen were to find a gun equipped with smart technology, it wouldn't fire for them.

"Given rising rates of teen depression, this could be very important in coming years."

But smart guns are still not capable of ending mass shootings. Even without research, Wolfson said smart guns were not a solution: "In the case of shooters who use guns that belong to them, no, smart guns would not stop the shooter," she noted. But "in cases where shooters are using a stolen gun, smart guns would not fire for the unauthorized user and would present one additional barrier to that person being able to carry out the act."

The team members are hoping to release their smart gun sometime this year. They've already applied for a patent; upon approval in several months, Cohen, Raj Kumar, and Ng hope to found a company that will put this technology out in the market. It's a prospect the team is excited about and thinks can bridge what might seem like a stark divide between gun rights activists and their anti-gun opponents.

"The NRA doesn't oppose the development of 'smart' guns, nor the ability of Americans to voluntarily acquire them," Clarke said. "The NRA opposes any law prohibiting Americans from acquiring or possessing firearms that don't possess 'smart' gun technology. As a gun owner, I should be able to go into a licensed dealer and purchase a smart gun. This is all about safety and providing consumers with options."

Wolfson, for her part, said smart guns are a promising first step toward slashing gun death rates in America. "Though mass shootings do receive substantial attention, it is the everyday gun violence-including suicides and unintentional injuries, particularly among children-for which smart guns are most likely to be helpful.

"Hundreds of thousands of guns are stolen every year. If those were all smart guns, they would be useless once stolen."

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Will This Smart Gun Solve America's Gun Problem?

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More than five years ago, on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, in the quiet Connecticut enclave of Newtown, Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy, and stole her Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle. He then traveled a few minutes over to his childhood alma mater, Sandy Hook Elementary School.

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Articulate, witty and digitally native, the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, are using social media to debunk conspiracy theories and amplify their voices in a way the world hasn't seen before.

With thoughtful tweets about gun control, a fearlessness for taking on politicians and sharply worded messages to shut down conspiracy theorists, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are leading a movement. And in classic teenager fashion, they're doing it their way.

"I tell my students, 'Don't ever let adults tell you what you are doing [on your smartphones] is a waste of time or it's silly or antisocial,'" said Jeremy Littau, an associate professor of journalism at Lehigh University. "When [this generation] has something to say, they now know how to use these tools in sophisticated ways. That would not have been happening if they hadn't spent last 10 years preparing themselves through these tools."

The conversation after mass shootings has followed an all-too-familiar pattern in the United States - anger, sadness, grief, calls for gun control and then, the inevitable silence until the next tragedy.

This time, it might just be different, according to social media experts.

People are listening, liking, retweeting and responding to students' messages. Twitter has been proactively verifying prominent student voices, giving them the little blue checkmark denoting authentic accounts.

Social media has also taken on a negative tone after growing harassment problems and Russia's manipulation of platforms began to drown out thoughtful dialogue and genuine interaction.

But there has been some success in using social media to spur major issue-based action. The Ice Bucket Challenge turned into a cultural phenomenon and raised more than $115 million for ALS research. More recently, the #MeToo campaign has swept social media to illustrate just how widespread sexual harassment and assault remains.

The public has seen the best and the worst of social media in the past 10 days. In the very same week in which social media has been taken to task for allowing foreign actors to hijack the conversation, the platforms have - almost - justified their existence by amplifying the national debate on gun control in the light of the massacre in Parkland.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Emma Gonzalez comforts a classmate during a CNN town hall meeting, at the BB and T Center, in Sunrise, Florida on Feb. 21, 2018. Michael Laughlin / Pool via Reuters

Emma Gonzalez, who has been a prominent voice in the eight days since the massacre, now has more than 300,000 followers on Twitter. Cameron Kasky, David Hogg and Sarah Chadwick have more than 100,000 each.

The students have spoken publicly and received plenty of TV airtime to spread their message, but it's on social media - most notably Twitter - where they're most effective in pushing back against pro-gun activists.

"The students on Twitter have been a wonderful counterpoint to what we have seen as this machine of right-wing propaganda," said Jen Golbeck, an associate professor at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies.

That includes firing back at conspiracy theorists claiming the students are paid crises actors.

"They are willing to call people out and say: 'How dare you say that. I have a platform and a right to ask these questions,'" Golbeck said.

When conspiracy theorists claimed Hogg and other students were "crisis actors" pretending to have been in the school, Parkland students whipped out their yearbooks and took video and pictures to show proof.

When the conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza commented on a photo of upset students after Florida lawmakers voted down a bill to ban assault weapons, remarking that it was the "worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs," survivor Sarah Chadwick responded:

Littau, the journalism professor, said the students were doing "what I think people who find themselves suddenly thrust into the spotlight do."

"They use the tools they have in front of them to speak out," he said. "But with this group, they are inherently wired to think about it in terms of digital communication."

Twitter has been trying to clean up its act for years amid criticism of not doing enough to stop harassment on the social network. In a statement on Wednesday, the company said it was actively working to stop the targeted harassment of Parkland students.

Conspiracy theories about the students had begun to circulate on social media in recent days, seeking to undermine their credibility.

"Such behavior goes against everything we stand for at Twitter, and we are taking action on any content that violates our terms of service," the statement said.

The public-facing platform the students have on Twitter has also caught the attention of dozens of celebrities, who have retweeted them or sent messages of support as they plan to #MarchForOurLives on March 24 and demand gun control.

There's already evidence that the students are making a difference.

The debate and discussion around gun control isn't fading like it has in the past, according to Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight.

Even after the Florida state legislature struck down the assault weapons proposal days after the shooting, the real power to create change isn't solely in a politician's vote. It also rests with the students, according to Littau. And he expects they'll keep working for change the best way they know how, by mobilizing on Twitter.

"They are able to use these tools more effectively than someone from this generation could," he said.

And people will remember that "when the time came, they didn't sulk on their iPhones - they're using them to create change."

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Parkland students have used social media to take back the internet - and the gun control debate

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Articulate, witty and digitally native, the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, are using social media to debunk conspiracy theories and amplify their voices in a way the world hasn't seen before.

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Listen to how this man creates fully-functioning guns with a 3D printer.

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Cody Wilson makes gun-making machines. Depending whom you ask, he's either one of the most dangerous people in the world, or a hero of the first amendment.

Cody's never sold a gun. He's never killed anyone. And, to his knowledge, none of the guns he's made have ever killed anyone. So, how did Cody Wilson end up on the frontline of the debate over gun control? He ended up there, not by selling guns, but by creating ways for anyone to make their own gun.

Cody's game-changing tool? 3D printers.

In the world he's made, guns don't need to move from person to person across a counter. Instead, they're hacked together using blueprints that Cody has helped distribute.

Today on the show, we follow a man who wants a world with many guns, no regulations, and a somewhat scary amount of freedom.

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Cody Wilson makes gun-making machines. Depending whom you ask, he's either one of the most dangerous people in the world, or a hero of the first amendment. Cody's never sold a gun. He's never killed anyone. And, to his knowledge, none of the guns he's made have ever killed anyone.

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Survivors of Parkland school shooting share harrowing stories

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Tammy Leitner, reporter for NBC News, talks with Rachel Maddow about the stories she has learned from survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, with students cowering in corners and texting family outside.

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How technology could prevent mass shootings

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How technology could prevent mass shootings

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According to a recent poll by the Associated Press, 60 percent of Americans worry that they or a family member might die in a mass shooting. Statistically speaking, we'd do better to fret about septicemia and car accidents, but it's not hard to find the source of the outsize concern: From 2000 to 2006, an average of six "active-shooter incidents" took place in the United States each year; in the following seven years, that number nearly tripled-with one occurring, on average, every three weeks.

One of the best ways to prevent mass shootings, experts say, is to regulate who can buy and use a gun. But Second Amendment advocates in Congress have thwarted even the most toothless gun-safety measures-and will almost certainly continue to do so under Donald Trump, who has vowed to block universal background checks, abolish restrictions on guns in schools, and oppose regulations on assault weapons.

With no political solution in sight, maybe it's worth looking for a technological one. Private companies are working on advances in firearms and other technologies that might save lives. Here's what those efforts look like.

1 | Remote-Control Guns

"If we can set it up so you can't unlock your phone unless you've got the right fingerprint, why can't we do the same thing for our guns?," President Obama asked last January after the shooting in San Bernardino, California. In fact, we can: Manufacturers have been developing smart guns-meaning guns that can be fired only by authorized users-since the 1990s. But because of low demand and fierce opposition by the National Rifle Association, none has yet made it to market.

If smart guns do end up on gun-store shelves, they might one day come equipped with technology that would allow owners to shut them down from afar. According to William Tang, an engineering professor at UC Irvine, the technologies to remotely disable a gun already exist-it's just a matter of bringing them all together.

Guns could be equipped, for instance, with the same radio transmitters found in cellphones, giving them unique ID numbers and providing time-stamped data on the number of rounds they've fired. The safety could then be controlled via an app, which would send commands to ultra-lightweight levers in the stock of the gun. If police were given a backdoor into the software, Tang says, they might be able to check cell-tower records to determine which guns have been fired in the vicinity of a shooting and then disable them.

Of course, there are enormous caveats here-chief among them the unlikelihood that a mass shooter would use a gun with such technology in the first place, or that law enforcement could go through the steps to disable one fast enough to save lives. And the prospect of giving police a backdoor into the software should give us serious pause.

2 | Schools Become Fortresses

As mass shootings become a fact of life in the United States, some buildings are getting outfitted with technologies that might at least limit the bloodshed. High-tech, high-volume body scanners and bullet-resistant, automatically locking doors are already on the market. "Gunfire detectors"-originally developed for use on battlefields and the streets of high-crime neighborhoods-are popping up in classrooms, playgrounds, and cafeterias. A company called SST ShotSpotter recently introduced SecureCampus, an auditory gunfire-detection system that maps the layout of a school and sends the precise location of a shooting to security guards and emergency responders.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, an average mass shooting lasts no more than 15 minutes. Typically, three to five minutes pass before the first calls begin streaming into 911. One tool that could cut down that delay is an app-based service called Guard911, which equips teachers at a school with a digital "panic button" that instantly blasts an alert to the phone of every police officer-on duty or off-within a certain radius of the school. To date, some 35,000 cops have downloaded the app.

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A Virginia-based company called NetTalon hopes to go much further. Its Virtual Command system automatically locks every door-reinforced with steel and bulletproof glass-within seconds of a teacher sounding the first alarm. A computer terminal at the local police department then lets law-enforcement officers take control of the school. With the help of motion detectors and cameras, dispatchers can track a gunman's whereabouts. They can also cloud his vision by releasing smoke from canisters installed at strategic points in the ceiling-and potentially push him to a location where he can more easily be apprehended. Future versions of Virtual Command will give police direct control of the PA system, for use in negotiations with a shooter.

These technologies might save lives, but critics worry that they distract from prevention efforts-and signal a societal surrender to the idea of mass shootings as normal and inevitable. There is also the potential for misuse. Privacy advocates warn that gunfire detectors could be used to eavesdrop on kids' cafeteria gossip (ShotSpotter denies this is possible), and Virtual Command gives authorities unprecedented ability to monitor and control students' movements.

3 | Rise of the Robocops

In July, after a sniper shot 12 officers in Dallas, police armed a small robot with a bomb and detonated it next to the shooter-killing him, and ending an hours-long standoff. It was the first time police in the U.S. had ever used a robot to kill a suspect. As robots and drones become more commonplace, they're likely to play an increased role in all areas of public life, including mass shootings.

So-called security robots already patrol parking lots and shopping centers in California, like dehumidifier-shaped mall cops. The Knightscope K5, for instance, uses sensors and high-definition cameras to monitor a GPS-defined area, scanning for people who don't belong there. The company behind the robot is hoping to develop gun-detection software that will let it recognize firearms and alert authorities if one is spotted. One day, such robots might even be able to stop a gunman on their own. A weapon-equipped robot might track down a shooter using visual sensors and data gathered via a ShotSpotter-like system. After locating the gunman, it could fire at him-or, perhaps, incapacitate him with nonlethal force.

Technological advances have already made it possible for computers to locate-and act upon-real-world targets on their own: The U.S. military, for instance, uses self-directed missiles to find and destroy enemy radar systems. But as Missy Cummings, the head of robotics at Duke University, points out, developing such technology for use in the close-range, crowded spaces where mass shootings typically occur-malls, cafeterias, movie theaters-presents enormous technical challenges. For one, distinguishing panicked bystanders from a gunman would require significantly more computing power than most robots currently have.

Some engineers and ethicists also worry about a slippery slope, leading to the use of lethal robots in far less clear-cut circumstances than the Dallas shooting. "I think Dallas is in danger of being the big moment" when the taboo on law enforcement's use of lethal robots broke, says Noel Sharkey, a professor emeritus of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, in the U.K., and a longtime crusader against "killer robots." "Next time it will be easier. A few times after that, it'll become commonplace."

No states have statutes governing the use of lethal robots, though a few have prohibited weaponized drones. North Dakota, however, recently passed a law allowing police to arm drones with "less than lethal" weapons such as Tasers, pepper spray, and rubber bullets. Of course, police aren't the only ones who could use robots to kill. In 2014, an engineering student in Connecticut outfitted a small drone with a handgun that he was able to fire remotely-raising the chilling prospect that the mass shooter of the future might not even have to leave his home.

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According to a recent poll by the Associated Press, 60 percent of Americans worry that they or a family member might die in a mass shooting.

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How to Buy a Gun in 16 Countries (Published 2018)

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Many Americans can buy a gun in less than an hour. In some countries, the process can take weeks or months.

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Why Not Smart Guns in This High-Tech Era?

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Why Not Smart Guns in This High-Tech Era?

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The Department of Justice has issued official guidelines for the manufacture of smart guns - weapons that, like smartphones, have technology to allow only the rightful owners to use them. The guidelines aim to "shape the future of gun safety technology," as called for under an executive order issued in January by President Obama, in the face of Congress's refusal to deal with the nation's horrendous toll of gun deaths.

Nearly 7,000 children committed suicide with guns from 1999 to 2014, and thousands of people are killed every year with misappropriated guns. How many lives might be saved if guns were equipped with fingerprint scanners, radio frequency chips or other evolving technology that blocks anyone but the owner from using them?

The National Rifle Association gun lobby was quick to sneer that the guidelines, issued on Nov. 16, were a desperate effort by Mr. Obama to claim "a 'win' during his waning days in office." Actually, the guidelines reignite the promise of smart guns - a promise cut short 16 years ago when the N.R.A. led a boycott of Smith & Wesson after the gun manufacturer pledged in a White House agreement to explore smart-gun technology.

The technology is available. In fact, Jonathan Mossberg, scion of the nation's oldest family-owned gunmaker, O.F. Mossberg & Sons, patented a shotgun in 2000 that successfully blocked firing by anyone not wearing the shooter's radio-frequency identity ring. The gun industry lacks not the high-tech know-how, but the fortitude to advance the safety of its weapons in the face of gun-lobby politics and threats. The new voluntary guidelines aim to create industry standards for reliable battery power in a smart gun, for ensuring unhindered speed in drawing the weapon and for the distance allowed between the gun and its owner's ID device.

"If a child can't open a bottle of aspirin, we should make sure that they can't pull a trigger on a gun," President Obama declared in ordering Justice and Homeland Security officials to outline a strategy for "the real-world deployment of smart-gun technology." This includes testing of new smart firearms at the Army's Aberdeen Test Center in Maryland.

The possibilities for protecting children with smart-gun barriers are clear in the gun data for 2014. There were 532 suicides by youths under 18 years of age and 74 unintentional fatal shootings. President-elect Donald Trump, the candidate of the N.R.A., might be expected to snuff out smart guns. But if he instead took on the challenge of selling the N.R.A. on this technology, imagine the lives that could be saved.

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Opinion | Why Not Smart Guns in This High-Tech Era?

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The Department of Justice has issued official guidelines for the manufacture of smart guns - weapons that, like smartphones, have technology to allow only the rightful owners to use them. The guidelines aim to "shape the future of gun safety technology," as called for under an executive order issued in January by President Obama, in the face of Congress's refusal to deal with the nation's horrendous toll of gun deaths.

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The Debate on School Shootings in the United States

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The Debate on School Shootings in the United States

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https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-debate-on-school-shootings-in-the-united-states-1ca8254535

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10 ways to put brakes on mass shootings in schools

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10 ways to put brakes on mass shootings in schools

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10 ways to put brakes on mass shootings in schools - cnn

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10 ways to put brakes on mass shootings in schools - CNN

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A shooting Friday in a Connecticut elementary school was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. What can be done now?

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Mental illness and gun laws: What you may not know about the complexities

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Mental illness and gun laws: What you may not know about the complexities

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This article is interesting because it strongly explains how these debates keep being repeated about how mental ill people shouldn't have gun but maybe no one should. Maybe someone should make a big enough change to end all of this.

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Mental illness and gun laws: What you may not know about the complexities

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When mass shootings occur, some people insist the focus should be on mental illness, not gun control. A psychiatrist explains how that view misses the mark.

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Major Shootings Led To Tougher Gun Laws, But To What End?

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Major Shootings Led To Tougher Gun Laws, But To What End?

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■ The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. It banned interstate mail orders of all firearms, interstate handgun sales and weapons with no "sporting purpose." It prohibited the sale of firearms to minors, felons, fugitives, drug addicts and those committed to a mental institution. And it required gun manufacturers and dealers to be licensed and maintain records of sales.

■ After an intense lobbying effort by gun advocates, the Firearms Owners' Protection Act of 1986 lifted some of those restrictions. The 1986 law allowed dealers to sell rifles and shotguns through the mail, and it limited federal inspections of gun dealers. It also prohibited the sale of machine guns manufactured after May 19, 1986.

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■ The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 further amended the 1968 law: It required gun purchasers not already licensed to possess a firearm to undergo background checks when buying from sellers licensed by the federal government. However, private transactions were exempted, creating the so-called gun-show loophole.

■ The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 banned the possession, transfer or domestic manufacturing of some semiautomatic assault weapons for 10 years. Known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, it expired in 2004, despite efforts by gun control advocates to extend it.

■ In 2008, Congress passed the NICS Improvement Amendments Act after a shooting at Virginia Tech a year earlier had killed 33. The law created a series of incentives and systems - but not requirements - for states to share information with the federal government about people who have been disqualified from obtaining guns.

Here's what states have done.

Eight states have enacted some kind of ban on assault weapons. Two other states regulate military-grade firearms. State gun laws are tracked, in detail, by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which lobbies for gun control.

According to the law center, states with the strictest gun control measures have the lowest rates of gun-related deaths. Those states include California, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Conversely, states that do not aggressively regulate guns - like Alabama, Alaska and Louisiana - have the highest.

Still, as Lisa Foderaro and Kristin Hussey have reported for The New York Times, "Cities like Chicago and Baltimore, with rigorous gun laws, also have two of the highest murder rates in the country. The black market for illegal guns has thrived in those cities, with gang members and criminals turning to the streets to get firearms."

Some state gun control laws have come under court review. In one prominent case, the Supreme Court limited gun control efforts in its 2009 ruling District of Columbia v. Heller.

Since then, however, the United States' highest court has opted to not consider other Second Amendment cases, including in 2016, when it declined to hear challenges to bans on assault weapons in Connecticut and New York. Those state laws were passed after 20 first graders and six adults were killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

In choosing to not hear those cases, "the justices have given at least tacit approval to broad gun control laws in states and localities that choose to enact them," wrote Adam Liptak, the legal affairs correspondent for The Times.

But to what effect?

It's difficult to directly link declines in crime or gun violence to any specific law, given the limited scope and loopholes in each one, according to experts and research.

The National Rifle Association has "successfully built in ineffectiveness" to gun control legislation, said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America."

"Part of the story is that the N.R.A. fights tooth and nail against any policy," Mr. Winkler said. "The laws that result are much less ambitious in their goals."

The gun control laws had some effect. The 1934 restrictions curbed access to machine guns; crimes with those types of fully automatic firearms have essentially dried up since the era of Al Capone. The 1968 prohibitions on who can own a weapon, and requirements for licensing dealers, are still in place.

The 1994 ban on assault weapons has become a particular and recent subject of intense debate. The N.R.A. has cited a 2004 analysis funded by the Justice Department to argue that the " ban could not be credited with any reduction in crime."

On the other hand, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, has claimed in a Twitter post that " the number of gun massacres fell by 37% " while the ban was in place.

Christopher Koper, a professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and the lead author of the study that is cited by the N.R.A., has repeatedly said that the ban had mixed effects and final results would not be immediately evident.

"My work is often cited in misleading ways that don't give the full picture," Mr. Koper said Thursday in an email. "These laws can modestly reduce shootings overall" and reduce the number and severity of mass shootings.

Ms. Feinstein's claim that the ban drastically reduced gun massacres comes from analysis by Louis Klarevas, a lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Boston. But Mr. Winkler noted that most mass shootings are committed with a handgun, not a military-grade assault weapon.

"There's no anti-mass shooting law to test," said Charles Branas, the chairman of the epidemiology department at the School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York. "In terms of all of these instances, not just mass shootings, we need the politicians to create more laws to test."

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virginia polytechnic institute and state university

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Major Shootings Led to Tougher Gun Laws, but to What End?

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■ The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. It banned interstate mail orders of all firearms, interstate handgun sales and weapons with no "sporting purpose."

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"We have an opportunity in this country not to go down the American path."

Those were the words of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard before he radically changed Australia's gun laws and - many believe - rid the country of gun violence on a large scale.

Now the US is reeling from another mass shooting - its deadliest ever - in Las Vegas. A year after 49 people were shot dead in an Orlando nightclub, America continues to find itself far down that violent path.

But could it still change course the way Australia did?

In April 1996, 35 people were killed by a gunman, Martin Bryant, wielding semi-automatic weapons at a former prison colony and tourist attraction in Tasmania.

This became known as the Port Arthur massacre, and it was a turning point for Australia.

The event appalled and galvanised the nation, helping to push Australia to enact some of the most comprehensive firearm laws in the world.

Former US President Barack Obama often pointed to Australia as an example for the US to follow.

"When Australia had a mass killing - I think it was in Tasmania - about 25 years ago, it was just so shocking the entire country said: 'Well, we're going to completely change our gun laws'. And they did, and it hasn't happened since," he said in 2015.

So what exactly did Australia do, how did it work, and could it work in the US?

Drop in shootings

Less than two weeks after the Port Arthur massacre, all six Australian states agreed to enact the same sweeping gun laws banning semi-automatic rifles and shotguns - weapons that can kill many people quickly.

They also put more hurdles between prospective gun owners and their weapons.

Australia has 28-day waiting periods, thorough background checks, and a requirement to present a "justifiable reason" to own a gun.

Unlike in the US, self-protection is not accepted as a justifiable reason to own a gun.

In the 21 years since the laws were passed, about one million semi-automatic weapons - roughly one third of the country's firearms - were sold back to the government and destroyed, nearly halving the number of gun-owning households in Australia.

Although the laws were designed specifically to reduce mass shootings, the rates of homicide and suicide have also come down since 1996.

Philip Alpers, a professor at Sydney School of Public Health, has done studies showing that aside from the victims of the Port Arthur shooting, 69 gun homicides were recorded in 1996 compared with 30 in 2012.

Despite the reduction in incidence though, gun violence has not disappeared in Australia.

Many outlawed firearms have been replaced with legal ones. And nearly 26,000 unregistered guns have been handed back this year in the first national amnesty since the Port Arthur killings.

Guns per capita in Australia and US: 1996 vs now

Australia

1996: Approximately 17.5 guns per 100 people

2016 (most recent numbers available): About 13.7 guns per 100 people

United States

1996: Approximately 91 guns per 100 people

2009 (most recent numbers available): Approximately 101 guns per 100 people

Sources: AIC Australian institute of Criminology, Gun Policy, Small Arms Survey, and US Dept of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Australian firearms rights groups say that the laws go too far and restrict personal freedom.

They argue that gun violence was on a downward trajectory before the 1996 laws were passed, and reject any link between lower incidence of gun deaths and the tighter legislation.

Diana Melham, executive director of the Sporting Shooters Australia Association in New South Wales, argues the 1996 laws fuelled a sense of alienation among gun owners, which, she says "rallied the shooters".

The organisation, which is the country's largest gun lobby group, has grown rapidly since 1996 and its numbers are still on the rise.

But Tim Fischer, who was Prime Minister Howard's deputy in 1996 and instrumental in getting the National Firearms Agreement passed, argues the US should follow Australia's lead.

"Plain and simple, what we've done works," he told the BBC in 2015.

The big question

So could it work in the US?

The simple answer is - probably not.

Although Australia does have a long history of hunting and sport, there is no equivalent to America's Second Amendment right to bear arms here.

Another significant difference is the speed of government action. In 1996 John Howard managed to get all six Australian states to agree to and pass uniform sweeping gun control legislation in just 12 days.

It is hard to fathom the US government ever being able to get all 50 states to agree to something, let alone act that quickly.

But according to Prof Alpers, the bigger difference is the cultural mindset.

"I don't for a moment think it would happen in the US," he says. "Australia already had a pre-disposition to doing something about it."

He explains that although by far the deadliest, the Port Arthur shooting was not the first Australia had experienced.

He says the country had lost nearly 150 people in the years running up to 1996 in mass shootings, and the national mood was changing.

"Port Arthur was the straw that broke the camel's back. You have to go back to those years to remember how visceral that backlash was."

Mr Fischer is more optimistic. He believes meaningful change could come to the US, but only when a "silent majority" are "sprung into action".

"Of course all mass shootings are a bridge too far," he says. "But there is going to be one that really tips the balance. Watch this space."

Exact numbers of the incidence of mass shootings in the US and abroad are hard to pin down because there is no uniform standard on the definition of a mass shooting.

In the US, there is no official database for this type of information, but tallies like the one from private research group ShootingTracker.com who put the number of mass shootings in the US in 2016 at 383, have been widely cited in the US media in the wake of other mass shootings.

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"We have an opportunity in this country not to go down the American path." Those were the words of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard before he radically changed Australia's gun laws and - many believe - rid the country of gun violence on a large scale.

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What is really the answer to gun violence ?

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What is really the answer to gun violence ?

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Why Arming Teachers with Guns is "stupid"

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Why Arming Teachers with Guns is "stupid"

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Florida school shooting survivor says arming teachers is "stupid"

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A young generation's push for change following the deadly school attack in Parkland, Florida, led to more than 3,000 schools participating in a national walkout to protest gun violence. Sharyn Alfonsi speaks with Emma Gonzalez, one of the survivors and faces of the movement, and her mother, in this preview of Sunday's "60 Minutes."

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As the United States tries to recover from the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a feeling of pessimism is setting in among liberal politicians and pundits about whether gun control legislation is possible. Many Americans who have been following politics have seen this movie before and the ending is usually bleak.

The scenes are as predictable as a third-rate Hollywood film. The crisis opens with a devastating shooting at a school in which a mentally disturbed person uses lethal weapons against children. What follows are families grieving before the television cameras, a nation watching in total shock, and a few brave souls who step up to demand that the government take action. Occasionally, Congress debates legislative proposals to address the national gun problem. Some legislators point out how effective regulations have been in other countries as well as in some states. But in the inevitable next scene, the steel-hearted NRA steps in to remind politicians to whom they have given campaign contributions that there will be hell to pay for anyone who votes yes. Rather quickly, the legislation dies. Nothing else happens. This is how it all played out after the shooting in Las Vegas, when Congress failed to act on the "bump stocks" that a gunman used to kill 58 people on the strip.

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Following the Florida shooting, with President Trump focused on mental health, and the Russia investigation, former President Barack Obama offered some leadership by calling for "common-sense" legislation, and assured a grieving nation that "we are not powerless" to do something about these tragedies.

Another voice of courage came from a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student named Emma Gonzalez, who told a rally that: "Maybe the adults have got used to saying, 'It is what it is.' But if us students have learned anything, it's that if you don't study you will fail. And in this case if you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead." In a remarkable moment, Gonzalez lit into politicians who accept money from the NRA and then say nothing can be done. "Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS!"

Gonzalez and others who hope to mobilize proponents of gun restriction into action should draw some encouragement from the fact that in 1993 and 1994, a Democratic president worked with a Democratic Congress to pass legislation imposing gun restrictions. This was a moment when the political will from our leaders to take action, fueled by grass roots pressure, outflanked the National Rifle Association (NRA) in its effort to perpetually gridlock gun control. They paid a political price for doing so, but legislation passed.

When Bill Clinton became president in January 1993, the nation was reeling after a number of high profile shootings that had taken place over the past few years. In 1989, for instance, a gunman opened fire at children playing in the Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California, killing five kids and wounding 32 others. "There was mass chaos," one teacher recalled, "There were kids running in every direction."

During his first year in office, Clinton threw his support behind legislation that had languished in Congress as a result of NRA opposition: the Brady Bill. The legislation, named after Ronald Reagan's press secretary James Brady, who had been severely injured during an assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981, would require background checks and a waiting period for the purchase of firearms. New York Representative Chuck Schumer had been pushing the legislation for several years but could not overcome gun rights advocates who said no.

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As the United States tries to recover from the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a feeling of pessimism is setting in among liberal politicians and pundits about whether gun control legislation is possible. Many Americans who have been following politics have seen this movie before and the ending is usually bleak.

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How the survivors of Parkland began the never again movement 

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How the survivors of Parkland began the never again movement 

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By Sunday, only four days after the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, the activist movement that emerged in its aftermath had a name (Never Again), a policy goal (stricter background checks for gun buyers), and a plan for a nationwide protest (a March for Our Lives, scheduled for March 24th). It also had a panel of luminary teens who were reminding America that the shooting was not a freak accident or a natural disaster but the result of actual human decisions.

The funerals continued in Parkland and surrounding cities-for the students Jaime Guttenberg and Joaquin Oliver and Alex Schachter and the geography teacher Scott Beigel-with attendance sometimes surpassing a thousand people. On a local level, at least, the activism did not overshadow the grieving. The tragedy affected this student body of more than three thousand people in different ways: some students lost their closest friends, others hallway acquaintances. And the student leaders knew, with the clarity of thought that had distinguished them from the beginning, that the headline-industrial complex granted only a very narrow window of attention. Had they waited even a week to start advocating for change, the reporters would have gone home.

Also, different people express grief in different ways. The activists are grieving, too, but it's not a coincidence that a disproportionate number of the Never Again leaders are dedicated members of the drama club. Cameron Kasky is a theatre kid. Before he went on Anderson Cooper, he was best known as a class clown. "I'm a talker," he told me. "The only thing I've had this whole time is the fact that I never shut up." Kasky started writing Facebook posts in the car after he and his brother, who has special needs, were picked up after the shooting by their dad. "I'm safe," he wrote in the first, posted two hours after the shooting. "Thank you to all the second amendment warriors who protected me." For the rest of the day, in between posts about missing students and recalling the experience of hiding in a classroom with his brother, Kasky's frustration grew: "Can't sleep. Thinking about so many things. So angry that I'm not scared or nervous anymore . . . I'm just angry," he wrote. "I just want people to understand what happened and understand that doing nothing will lead to nothing. Who'd have thought that concept was so difficult to grasp?"

The social-media posts led to an invitation from CNN to write an op-ed, which led to televised interviews in the course of the day. "People are listening and people care," Kasky wrote. "They're reporting the right things." That night, Thursday, after the candlelight vigil ended, Kasky invited a few friends over to his house to try to start a movement. "Working on a central space that isn't just my personal page for all of us to come together and change this," he posted. "Stay alert. #NeverAgain." He had thought of the name, he later told me, "while sitting on the toilet in my Ghostbuster pajamas." In early interviews Kasky had criticized the Republican Party, but he and his friends had decided since that the movement should be nonpartisan. Surely everyone-gun owner or pacifist, conservative or liberal-could agree that school massacres should be stopped. The group stayed up all night creating social-media accounts and trying to figure out what needed to be said, "because the important thing here wasn't talking about gore," Kasky said on Sunday. "It was talking about change and it was talking about remembrance." It was then that they decided to petition for more thorough background checks. As Alfonso Calderon, a co-founder of Never Again, who was there that night, told me, "Nikolas Cruz, the shooter at my school, was reported to the police thirty-nine times." He added, "We have to vote people out who have been paid for by the N.R.A. They're allowing this to happen. They're making it easier for people like Nick Cruz to acquire an AR-15."

They launched their new Facebook page just before midnight on February 15th. "Thank you to everybody who has been so supportive of our community and please remember to keep the memory of those beloved people we've lost fresh in your minds," Kasky wrote.

While Kasky, Calderon, and their other friends huddled among snack wrappers in a gated-community war room, another student was developing a different plan. Jaclyn Corin is the seventeen-year-old junior-class president at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. She woke up the morning after the attack to the confirmation that her missing friend, Joaquin Oliver, was among the dead. She cried so hard that her parents had to hold her down. She also started posting on social media. " PLEASE contact your local and state representatives, as we must have stricter gun laws IMMEDIATELY," she wrote on Instagram. It was after she went to grief counselling, and after the candlelight vigil that evening, that Corin first talked to the Democratic Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Conversations with state representatives followed, and preliminary arrangements were made to bus a hundred Douglas students and fifteen chaperones to Tallahassee to address the state legislature. Yesterday, I asked Corin if she had been politically active before the shooting. "Not even a little bit," she said. "It's so personal now. I would feel, like, horrible if I didn't do anything about it, and my coping mechanism is to distract myself with work and helping people." Corin was also prepared to advocate for gun-law reform, having worked on a fifty-page project about gun control for her A.P. composition-and-rhetoric class a couple of months before. "We have grown up with this problem," she said, when I asked how the students had been so ready to argue the issue. "We knew this stuff. It's not like a new, fresh horrible thing that's happening, it's been preëxisting even before we entered the world."

By Friday, Corin had accepted an invitation from Kasky to join forces under Never Again. By Saturday, other students who had been independently talking to the media about gun control had joined, too-names that are now becoming familiar to the American public: David Hogg, the reporter for the school paper who appeared on national news broadcasts the morning after the shooting demanding action from elected officials; Sarah Chadwick, whose profanity-laced tweet criticizing Trump went viral soon after the shooting; and Emma ("We Call B.S.") González, whose speech became the defining moment of a gun-control rally in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday. González, a senior, gave her first CNN interview on the night of the vigil. The invitation to speak at the rally had followed, and she wrote her speech the day she gave it. She had not anticipated how widely it would be shared. (Her last experience of activism, she told me, had been last year's underwhelming March for Science.) She had simply written down the thoughts she had been sharing with her friends. "This is how I'm dealing with my grief," she said. "The thing that caused me grief, the thing that had no right to cause me grief, the thing that had no right to happen in the first place, I have to do something actively to prevent it from happening to somebody else." Kasky recruited Hogg and González for Never Again at the rally, where he also spoke.

"We said, 'We are the three voices of this.' We're strong, but together we're unstoppable," Kasky said. "Because David has an amazing composure, he's incredibly politically intelligent; I have a little bit of composure; and Emma, beautifully, has no composure, because she's not trying to hide anything from anybody." "All these kids are drama kids, and I'm a dramatic kid, so it really meshes well," González added.

Following the Fort Lauderdale rally, after more media interviews, Kasky invited everyone over for a slumber party. "We were just saying, 'O.K., look, we need to have preparation and beauty sleep,' " he said. There was very little sleep.

On Sunday, having announced the March for Our Lives on the morning talk shows, the activists stood in the shade of a picnic pavilion in North Community Park, less than half a mile from the flower-bedecked fences of their cordoned-off high school. They had issued an open invitation to the media to come find them in the park later that afternoon. Until then, they fielded stray interviews, caught up on loose ends, and occasionally broke into tears. González, whose shaved head had inspired online imitators in recent days, was seated at a picnic table with her mother, looking for a profile photo for her new Twitter account. Corin spoke to a pregnant local-news anchor. I was greeted by Calderon, who wore a tomato-red shirt and a blue tie to make it easy for reporters to identify him.

At the very least, the students had prolonged the news cycle. Corin would be leading her delegation to Tallahassee to meet with state representatives on Wednesday. Hogg and Kasky would be travelling to Washington, D.C., and New York for media appearances and to begin preparations for the March for Our Lives. Chadwick would continue her relentless online criticisms, turning her attention next to Marco Rubio and Tomi Lahren. ("I'm never going to stop talking about this," she told me. "I'm not going to let people forget about the seventeen who lost their lives.")

Other students would maintain operations at home, in Parkland. A local march was being considered, and then there was the President's "listening session" with Douglas students that had been announced by the White House. The President, who has a house forty minutes away, and who had been in town over the weekend, had not yet said the words "Never Again," and had timed the meeting in Parkland to coincide with the exodus of activist students to Tallahassee. Still, many of them would be staying in Parkland, as they had funerals to attend. Corin was urging her friends to "prioritize the comfort aspect first, prioritize the funerals, prioritize the victims' families, prioritize all of that first, and then focus on the politics."

The activists are wary about what form the backlash against them will take. They have learned statistics and the names of proposed laws, but they know it might not be enough.

"Our generation just isn't allowed to screw up in any way, shape, or form," Calderon told me. "Even before this happened, we already knew all the facts. We already knew everything." But, he continued, their margin of error was so slim. I asked what he meant by screwing up. "At least in my short lifetime, I know that politicians have always screwed up," he explained. "They have always said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and they're still taken seriously, time and time again, instead of being disavowed or disqualified for even holding an office after saying ridiculous statements. Meanwhile, my generation is-for example, Emma González, she's an inspiration to us and she's working for us, but, if she were to say something that was non-factual, you know she would be highly scrutinized by literally everybody, including the President. I wouldn't be surprised if he tweeted about Emma González saying that she is a domestic terrorist. And I can tell you, Emma, because I know her personally, she's just a young girl like us, she's no different than any of us, she's just getting more media attention and that's about it. She just wants to make a difference, too. And even though we're not aiming for the highest glass ceiling out there, we have to make the first step."

Calderon told me that he once ran into Nikolas Cruz at a Walmart with a friend who knew him. This was after Cruz had been expelled from Stoneman Douglas. The two friends stood and listened as Cruz bragged about a shotgun he had just bought. The moment has been weighing on Calderon-he wishes he had told someone. As I talked to him, I wished that he didn't have to carry such regrets. Other people had expressed fear of Cruz to law enforcement in the past, and none of it had kept Cruz from his guns. The first step of the Never Again movement was believing in an idea that the rest of America had grown too cynical to imagine: that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High really could be the last school shooting in America.

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How the Survivors of Parkland Began the Never Again Movement

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By Sunday, only four days after the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, the activist movement that emerged in its aftermath had a name (Never Again), a policy goal (stricter background checks for gun buyers), and a plan for a nationwide protest (a March for Our Lives, scheduled for March 24th).

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A majority of New Yorkers support gun control

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A majority of New Yorkers support gun control

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ALBANY - An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers support new gun control measures in the state, though they oppose the idea of arming school teachers, a poll released Monday morning found.

The Siena College poll comes after last month's mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and at a time when Gov. Cuomo and Assembly and Senate Democrats have pushed a variety of new gun control measures.

Nearly 70% of New Yorkers statewide like the idea of posting officers at all New York City public and private schools, including 71% in the city.

But New Yorkers oppose, by 69% to 28%, allowing teachers to carry guns in the classroom.

"While by 11 points Republicans support allowing teachers to be armed, Democrats, independents and downstaters overwhelmingly oppose it, as do a majority of upstaters and a narrow majority of gun owners," said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg.

The poll also found that 90% of those surveyed support expanding the current maximum three-day firearm background check waiting period to 10 days, while 85% back a bill to keep guns out of the hands of all convicted domestic abusers.

More than three-quarters support outlawing the sale and possession of bump-stock devices like the one used in the Las Vegas mass shooting last year.

And about two-thirds of New Yorkers, including a small majority of Republicans, support a national ban on the sale of assault weapons.

Cuomo said he will push, as part of the budget negotiations over the next two weeks, measures to take guns away from all convicted domestic violence offenders and expand the background check waiting period to 10 days.

Both measures are supported by the Assembly. They face a more uncertain fate in the GOP-controlled Senate, which is focused more on efforts to beef up school security.
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Poll shows overwhelming support for new N.Y. gun control measures

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ALBANY - An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers support new gun control measures in the state, though they oppose the idea of arming school teachers, a poll released Monday morning found. The Siena College poll comes after last month's mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and at a time when Gov.

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Some TV Networks Are Suspending Programming During School Walkouts

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Some TV Networks Are Suspending Programming During School Walkouts

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Some TV Networks Are Suspending Programming During Today's Student Walkout

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Viacom's channels-MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central-will suspend programming on March 14 to support the student walkout.

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An armed security guard never got the chance to stop the teen gunman who murdered 17 students and staffers at a Florida high school, authorities said Thursday.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel confirmed that accused mass murderer Nikolas Cruz managed to shoot up the Parkland high school without ever encountering the school resource deputy.

"He was on campus and he was armed," Israel said. "At this point, the only thing I can tell you definitively is he never encountered Cruz."

The new revelation emerged hours after the 19-year-old Cruz, a gun fanatic who was expelled from the school, was charged with 17 counts of premediated murder.

Fla. shooting survivors slam Trump's prayers and condolences

(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Cruz is suspected of pulling a fire alarm to lure the students into his path before unleashing a hail of bullets inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Wednesday afternoon.

Some 12 people were slain inside the school. Two others died just outside, and another student was found dead down the street.

Two succumbed to their wounds at a local hospital.

A total of 16 victims were hospitalized following the massacre.

These are the victims of the Florida high school shooting

Five were suffering from life-threatening injuries, officials said.

Dr. Evan Boyar, medical director of Broward Emergency Health North, said the injured includes a victim who suffered "a penetrating wound to the chest."

The patient was intubated but was doing well and following commands, Boyar said.

Another victim was intubated and in critical condition, Boyar said.

1,619 mass shootings since Sandy Hook

And a third was receiving treatment for an extremity wound.

The Florida rampage marked the 18th school shooting in the first 45 days of 2018.

The disturbing tally is more than twice the number of school shootings this time last year.

Long before the latest shooting, Florida education officials have been begging lawmakers for more funds toward bolstering school safety.

But the pleas have fallen on deaf ears, according to USA Today.

The state's 67 school districts share a pot of money earmarked for such security needs as armed guards, bullying prevention and after-school programs.

But the cash - a total of $64.4 million - has remained the same for the past seven years, leading to reductions in school resource officers.

The money ... is nowhere near enough to do what's necessary to keep schools safe," Andy Tuck, a member of the state Board of Education, said at a July 17 meeting, according to USA Today.
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Armed guard at Florida school never encountered rampaging gunman

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An armed security guard never got the chance to stop the teen gunman who murdered 17 students and staffers at a Florida high school, authorities said Thursday. Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel confirmed that accused mass murderer Nikolas Cruz managed to shoot up the Parkland high school without ever encountering the school resource deputy.

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History of Gun Control Laws
Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, enslaved people, indentured servants, and Native Americans; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned.

Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. Several colonies' gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. Read more history...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

The Second Amendment is not an unlimited or individual right to own guns.

Further, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of militias to own guns, not the right of individuals to own guns. Former Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissenting opinion for District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, wrote, "the Framer's single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee 'to keep and bear arms' was on military use of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias," hence the inclusion of the phrase "well regulated militia."

Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, stated there is nothing about an individual right to bear arms in the notes about the Second Amendment when it was being drafted, discussed, or ratified; the US Supreme Court declined to rule in favor of the individual right four times between 1876 and 1939; and all law articles on the Second Amendment from 1888 to 1959 stated that an individual right was not guaranteed.
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Pro 2

More gun control laws would reduce gun deaths.

Approximately 50% of unintentional fatal shootings were self-inflicted; and most unintentional firearm deaths were caused by friends or family members.

Five women are murdered with guns every day in the United States. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 5,364 US soldiers were killed in action between Oct. 7, 2001 and Jan. 28, 2015; between 2001 and 2012 6,410 women were killed with a gun by an intimate partner in the United States.

Researchers found that a "general barrier to firearm access created through state regulation can have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide rates in the United States. Permit requirements and bans on sales to minors were the most effective of the regulations analyzed."

Gun licensing laws were associated with a 14% decrease in firearm homicides, while increases in firearm homicides were seen in places with right-to-carry and stand-your ground-laws.

More gun control leads to fewer suicides. When US gun ownership goes down, overall suicide rates drop; meanwhile, each 10 percentage-point increase in gun ownership is linked to a 26.9% increase in the youth suicide rate. In Indiana and Connecticut, after "red flag" laws to remove guns from people who may pose a threat were enacted, gun suicides decreased by 7.5% and 13.7% respectively, while suicides by other means did not decrease during the same time. A person who wants to kill him/herself is unlikely to commit suicide with poison or a knife when a gun is unavailable.

The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 31% of total accidental shooting deaths could have been prevented by installing safety devices on guns: 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks; and 23% of accidental shooting deaths by adolescents and adults per year could be prevented by loading indicators showing when a bullet was in the chamber ready to be fired.

Marjorie Sanfilippo, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Eckerd College who has researched children's behavior around guns, stated, "We put gates around swimming pools to keep children from drowning. We put safety caps on medications to keep children from poisoning themselves.... [B]ecause children are naturally curious and impulsive, and because we have shown time and again that we cannot 'gun-proof' them with education, we have a responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of children."
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Pro 3

The presence of a gun makes a conflict more likely to become violent.

The FBI found that arguments (such as romantic triangles, brawls fueled by alcohol or drugs, and arguments over money) resulted in 1,962 gun deaths (59.9% of the total).

An editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health noted, "gun-inflicted deaths [often] ensue from impromptu arguments and fights; in the US, two-thirds of the 7,900 deaths in 1981 involving arguments and brawls were caused by guns." A study published in the same journal found that "the weapons used [in altercations]... were those closest at hand." And thus, according to another study, "[r]ather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."

Common sense gun control laws can decrease the likelihood of a violent situation turning deadly. President Ronald Reagan and others did not think the AR-15 military rifle (also called M16s by the Air Force) should be owned by civilians and, when the AR-15 was included in the assault weapons ban of 1994 (which expired on Sep. 13, 2004), the NRA supported the legislation. A Mother Jones investigation found that high-capacity magazines were used in at least 50% of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012.When high-capacity magazines were used in mass shootings, the death rate rose 63% and the injury rate rose 156%.
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Pro 4

A majority of adults, including gun owners, support common sense gun control such as background checks, bans on assault weapons, and bans on high-capacity magazines.

According to a Feb. 20, 2018 Quinnipiac Poll, 97% of American voters and 97% of gun owners support universal background checks. 67% support a nationwide ban on assault weapons, and 83% support mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases.

As much as 40% of all gun sales are undocumented private party gun sales that do not require a background check (aka the "gun show loophole").

53% of all adults surveyed approve of high-capacity magazine bans. 89% of adults with a gun in the home approve of laws to prevent the purchase of guns by the mentally ill, and 82% approve of banning gun sales to people on no-fly lists.

77% of Americans support requiring a license to purchase a gun.

Don Macalady, member of Hunters against Gun Violence, stated, "As a hunter and someone who has owned guns since I was a young boy, I believe that commonsense gun legislation makes us all safer. Background checks prevent criminals and other dangerous people from getting guns."

Many would like to see the U.S. enact more laws like other countries, citing the fact that countries with restrictive gun control laws have lower gun homicide and suicide rates than the United States. Both Switzerland and Finland require gun owners to acquire licenses and pass background checks that include mental and criminal records, among other restrictions and requirements. In 2007 Switzerland ranked number 3 in international gun ownership rates with 45.7 guns per 100 people (about 3,400,000 guns total). In 2009 Switzerland had 24 gun homicides (0.31 deaths per 100,000 people) and 253 gun suicides (3.29 deaths per 100,000 people). Finland ranked fourth in international gun ownership rates with 45.3 guns per 100 people (about 2,400,000 guns total). In 2007 Finland had 23 (0.43 deaths per 100,000 people) gun homicides and 172 gun suicides (4.19 deaths per 100,000 people).
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Con 1

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects individual gun ownership.

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution reads, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Lawrence Hunter, Chairman of Revolution PAC, stated, "The Founders understood that the right to own and bear laws is as fundamental and as essential to maintaining liberty as are the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and the other protections against government encroachments on liberty delineated in the Bill of Rights."
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Con 2

Gun control laws are discriminatory and infringe on citizens' rights

Current gun control laws are frequently aimed at inner city, poor, black communities who are perceived as more dangerous than white gun owners. Charles Gallagher, Chair of Sociology at LaSalle University, stated that some gun control laws are still founded on racial fears: "Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1."

Background checks and micro-stamping are an invasion of privacy. Background checks require government databases that keep personal individual information on gun owners, including name, addresses, mental health history, criminal records, and more. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worried that Senator Harry Reid's 2013 proposed background check legislation (the bill failed 54-46) would have allowed the government to keep databases of gun purchases indefinitely, creating a "worry that you're going to see searches of the databases and an expansion for purposes that were not intended when the information was collected." Micro-stamping similarly requires a database of gun owners and the codes their personal guns would stamp on cartridge cases. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote that they would oppose any legislation that infringes "on the American people's constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance."

Gun control laws infringe upon the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety. The police cannot protect everyone all of the time. 61% of men and 56% of women surveyed by Pew Research said that stricter gun laws would "make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families." Nelson Lund, Professor at George Mason University School of Law, stated, "The right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself is a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life" and "many [gun control laws] interfere with the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals." A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, a gun control advocate, carried a concealed gun when her life was threatened and her home attacked by the New World Liberation Front in the 1970s.

Gun control laws, especially those that try to ban "assault weapons," infringe upon the right to own guns for hunting and sport. In 2011, there were 13.7 million hunters 16 years old or older in the United States, High-powered semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are used to hunt and in target shooting tournaments each year. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, "So-called 'Assault weapons' are more often than not less powerful than other hunting rifles. The term 'assault weapon' was conjured up by anti-gun legislators to scare voters into thinking these firearms are something out of a horror movie... [T]he Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, both labeled 'assault weapons,' are the rifles most used for marksmanship competitions in the United States. And their cartridges are standard hunting calibers, useful for game up to and including deer." According to a Feb. 2013 Pew Research report, 32% of gun owners owned guns for hunting and 7% owned guns for target or sport shooting.
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Con 3

Gun control laws simply do not work.

Gun control efforts have proved ineffective. According to David Lampo, Publications Director of the Cato Institute, "there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates." Banning high-capacity magazines will not necessarily deter crime because even small gun magazines can be changed in seconds.The "gun show loophole" is virtually nonexistent because commercial dealers, who sell the majority of guns at shows and elsewhere, are bound by strict federal laws. According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, most state-level gun control laws do not reduce firearm death rates, and, of 25 state laws, nine were associated with higher gun death rates.

Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people). The country has only one legal gun store (the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales), compared to at least 63,709 legal gun stores and pawn shops in the United States as of Feb. 10, 2014. Mexico's gun store is on a secure military base and customers must present a valid ID, go through a metal detector, and turn over cellphones and cameras to guards. To actually buy a gun, customers have to show proof of honest income, provide references, pass a criminal background check, prove any military duties were completed with honor, and be fingerprinted and photographed. If allowed to purchase a gun, the customer may buy only one gun (choosing from only .38 caliber pistols or lower) and one box of bullets. Between 2006 and 2010, Mexico's one gun shop sold 6,490 guns, yet as of 2012, Mexicans own about 15,000,000 guns, or about 13.5 guns per 100 people.

The main reason gun control doesn't work is because laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws. Of 62 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012, 49 of the shooters used legally obtained guns. Collectively, 143 guns were possessed by the killers with about 75% obtained legally. A Secret Service analysis found that of 24 mass shootings in 2019 at least 10 (42%) involved illegally possessed guns.

The logical conclusion is that gun control laws do not deter crime; gun ownership deters crime. A study in Applied Economics Letters found that "assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level" and "states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murders." While gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, the murder rate decreased. Journalist John Stossel explained, "Criminals don't obey the law... Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these [illegal] weapons now have a much easier job... As the saying goes, 'If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.'"

More gun control is not needed; education about guns and gun safety is needed to prevent accidental gun deaths. 95% of all US gun owners believe that children should learn about gun safety. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute, Inc (SAAMI), stated, "Whether in the field, at the range or in the home, a responsible and knowledgeable gun owner is rarely involved in a firearms accident of any kind." According to Kyle Wintersteen, Managing Editor of Guns and Ammo, studies show that "children taught about firearms and their legitimate uses by family members have much lower rates of delinquency than children in households without guns" and "children introduced to guns associate them with freedom, security, and recreation-not violence." [82] [85] [154]
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Con 4

Gun control laws give too much power to the government and may result in government tyranny and the government taking away all guns from citizens.

57% of people surveyed by Pew Research in Feb. 2013 said that gun control laws would "give too much power to the government over the people."

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre stated, "if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it [the Second Amendment] there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny."

Concurring, Alex Jones, radio host, stated, "The Second Amendment isn't there for duck hunting, it's there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs... 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!"

Marco Rubio (R-FL), US Senator, speaking about gun control laws during his 2016 presidential campaign, stated, "If God forbid, ISIS visits our life, our neighborhood, our school, any part of us, the last thing standing, the last line of defense could very well be our ability to protect ourselves."
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Did You Know?

1. A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer, and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer.

2. The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks.

3. The Centers for Disease Control listed firearms as the #12 cause of all deaths between 1999 and 2015, representing 1.3% of total deaths. They were also the #1 method of death by homicide (67.3% of all homicides) and by suicide (51.9% of all suicides).

4. Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people).

5. Carrying a concealed handgun in public has been permitted in all 50 states since 2013, when Illinois became the last state to enact concealed carry legislation.

6. Five women a day are killed by guns in America. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute.

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Proponents say the Second Amendment is not an unlimited right to own guns. Opponents say the amendment protects individual gun ownership.

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Social networks help explain gun violence 

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Social networks help explain gun violence 

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Social Networks Help Explain Gun Violence | Yale Institute For Network Science

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Research by the author and colleagues has recently uncovered that the gun violence is also severely concentrated within social networks. In particular, gun violence tends to concentrate within small social networks of individuals in high-crime communities and populations. For example, in a recent study of one Boston, MA community, Papachristos et al.

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A heavily armed young man is accused of killing 17 people after opening fire on terrified students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday. It was the third mass shooting in the past four months in the United States.

Nikolas Cruz, who has been linked to a history of mental illness, is believed to have used a legally obtained AR-15 in the shooting. The attack has led to widespread conversations about links between gun violence and mental illness, and how lawmakers and interest groups are debating potential policy responses. Below is a look at some facts and falsehoods uttered by Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin; Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont; and others in the wake of Wednesday's shooting.

"Mental health is often a big problem underlying these tragedies."- House Speaker Paul Ryan

There's a link, but it's more limited than widely thought.

Mr. Ryan's claim reflects a common misconception. According to various polls, roughly half of Americans either believe that failing to identify people with mental health problems is the primary cause of gun violence or that addressing mental health issues would be a major deterrent.

That conclusion is not shared by experts or widely accepted research.

In an analysis of 235 mass killings, many of which were carried out with firearms, 22 percent of the perpetrators could be considered mentally ill.

Overall, mass shootings by people with serious mental illness represent 1 percent of all gun homicides each year, according to the book "Gun Violence and Mental Illness " published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2016.

To be sure, gun violence experts contacted by New York Times reporters have said that barring sales to people who are deemed dangerous by mental health providers could help prevent mass shootings. But the experts said several more measures - including banning assault weapons and barring sales to convicted violent criminals - more effective.

And, as The Times has reported, Americans do not appear to have more mental health problems than other developed nations of a comparable size, which experience far fewer mass shootings.

Some further research:

A 2016 academic study estimated that just 4 percent of violence is associated with serious mental illness alone. "Evidence is clear that the large majority of people with mental disorders do not engage in violence against others, and that most violent behavior is due to factors other than mental illness," the study concluded.

A 2015 study found that less than 5 percent of gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were committed by people diagnosed with mental illness.

As John T. Monahan, a professor specializing in psychology and law at the University of Virginia, told The Times:

"Two things typically happen in the wake of a mass shooting. First, politicians claim that mental illness is the major cause of violence in America. Then, advocates for people with mental illness respond by denying there is any relationship whatsoever between mental illness and violence. Both groups are wrong. Research shows that the association between mental illness and violence is not strong, but it does exist."

"After 18 school shootings in America in just 43 days of 2018, the Congress might want to consider common-sense gun safety legislation and save innocent lives." - Senator Bernie Sanders

False. There have been 18 instances of weapons being discharged. It would not be fair to call them all shootings.

The figure is drawn from a list maintained by the advocacy group Every Town for Gun Safety. As the group explains on its site, the total includes "any time a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds."

As The Washington Post, The Washington Examiner and other outlets have pointed out, that includes some incidents that most people would not consider school shootings. For example, the list includes suicides, like a Florida man who shot himself in the parking lot of a school while it was closed. And it also includes accidents like a Minnesota third-grader who pulled the trigger on a police officer's holstered weapon, injuring no one.

"Israel pretty much eliminated [shootings] by placing highly trained people strategically to spot the one common thread - not the weapon, but a person with intent." - Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas

This is an interpretation that the Israelis reject.

Israeli officials and experts rejected this version of events after a similar claim was made by Wayne LaPierre, the president of the National Rifle Association, after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults were killed.

"Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing. They said, 'We're going to stop it,' and they put armed security in every school, and they have not had a problem since then," Mr. LaPierre said in December 2012 on NBC.

Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told The New York Daily News at the time that the situations in the United States and Israel were "fundamentally different" and said that the measures that Israel enacted were a response to terrorism.

"What removed the danger was not the armed guards, but an overall antiterror policy and antiterror operations, which brought street terrorism down to nearly zero over a number of years," Mr. Palmor said.

"Your very first acts as president, Mr. Trump, was to actually roll back the regulations that were designed to keep firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill."- Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

True, but the rule's scope was narrow.

After Mr. Trump focused on mental health in his national address on Thursday in response to the Parkland shooting, many journalists, activists and others, like Mr. Kimmel,noted the repeal of a rule that would have prevented "seriously mentally ill" people from purchasing guns.

Federal law already bars anyone who "has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution" from purchasing a gun. And a majority of states have laws requiring them to report mental health information to the national background check system. But gaps in the system still exist.

After the Newtown shooting, President Obama proposed adding another data source to the background check system: reports from the Social Security Administration of people who receive disability benefits through a third party because of mental impairments. According to a 2016 White House fact sheet, the rule would have affected 75,000 people.

It was opposed by the National Rifle Association, but also the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the rule violated civil rights. Some disability rights groups also argued against the rule on the basis that it perpetuated stigmas about mental illness.

Mr. Trump signed a congressional resolution that expressed disapproval of the proposed rule in February 2017, nine months before compliance would have been required.

Correction:

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: With Gun Violence And Mental Illness, Truth Isn't Simple. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Checking Facts and Falsehoods About Gun Violence and Mental Illness After Parkland Shooting

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A heavily armed young man is accused of killing 17 people after opening fire on terrified students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday. It was the third mass shooting in the past four months in the United States.

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Congress is under pressure about different views of this subject between republic and democrats.

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"I think for Republicans our challenge in the next race is going to be about appealing to the suburban vote that hasn't been so good for Republicans the last few races," said Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee, citing in particular suburban women. It is clear, he added, that "people want to see action."

The combination of political pressure from the governors and moves by President Trump to embrace certain limited measures opposed by the National Rifle Association could set up a congressional showdown with the powerful firearms lobby not seen since the gun debate that followed the deadly school shooting in 2012 in Newtown, Conn.

The sudden focus on guns is likely to complicate an already busy agenda. Congress left Washington without coming up with a replacement for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation and expires next week. A contentious debate over gun legislation could push immigration to the back burner.

While the Newtown massacre and the many that have followed have produced familiar scenes in which Democrats push for tough new gun restrictions and Republicans dig in and resist, the latest mass shooting appears to have shifted the landscape, even if just slightly, as the Parkland students have become overnight gun control advocates and media fixtures.

A smattering of congressional Republicans - including some who have been staunchly opposed to gun control legislation - now suggest that they would be willing to take at least small steps toward restricting gun rights.

After being jeered at a forum televised on CNN, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said last week that he would reconsider his opposition to limiting high-capacity magazines. Another Florida Republican, Representative Brian Mast, an Army veteran who lost both of his legs to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, called for a ban on the purchase of assault weapons.

Gun control advocates are looking toward the changing political climate in Florida, where the Republican governor, Rick Scott, and state lawmakers defied the N.R.A. in proposing to raise to 21 the minimum age to buy any firearm.

Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, is teaming up with Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, on legislation that would raise to 21 from 18 the age threshold for purchasing assault weapons like the AR-15 used to kill 17 people in Parkland.

A poll released by CNN on Sunday, which showed support for stricter gun laws at levels not seen since the early 1990s, found that 71 percent of Americans backed barring those under 21 from buying any type of firearm.

"I don't know if crossing the Rubicon is the right historical analogy, but there is a sense that this is different," Mr. Flake said, adding, "Where the public is and where some Republicans have been on some of these issues just doesn't match, and I do think we're going to have to deal with it."

Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, a longtime ally of the N.R.A., has said he would back such an age-restriction proposal. "Certainly nobody under 21 should have an AR-15," he told reporters in Kansas last week.

Mr. Flake, however, is not seeking re-election, and Mr. Roberts, 81, is unlikely to run again in 2020.

At the governors' meeting, there was agreement on the issue between Democrats and some Republicans. "We do it for alcohol; we're talking about raising the age for tobacco to 21," said Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a Republican. "I think that's worth talking about."

Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said that with such talk among Republicans, "this feels like a watershed moment."

"You're seeing some significant and meaningful cracks in the bond that traditionally holds the Republican Party together," he said. "The question is: Are those cracks enough to get something done?"

Gun rights advocates said the answer was no. "This, thus far, has shown no different a dynamic than any of a dozen fights over the past two decades," said Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America, which has fought gun control measures for decades. "People who, after a week, suggest that this is a tipping point either weren't around during previous battles or failed to learn the lesson."

Some Republicans, warning against a rush to enact new laws, appeared inclined to respect the wishes of the N.R.A., even as the group came under pressure from some corporate leaders, who were moving to cut ties with it.

"I think there's a temptation just to do a whole host of things that are not really addressing the fundamental problem but would make people feel better that they've done things," said Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who has deep ties to the N.R.A., explaining his opposition to raising the age limit.

Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Congressional Second Amendment Caucus, warned that Republicans who had run for office on a platform that included protecting gun rights would face political consequences if they changed their tune.

"I suspect that a majority of Republicans are not going to turn on their base," Mr. Massie said.

While such sentiment makes it unlikely that lawmakers will consider sweeping new gun restrictions, Congress is considering a number of more modest proposals.

In the House, 19 Republicans, led by Representative Leonard Lance of New Jersey, sent a letter on Friday to Speaker Paul D. Ryan, calling on him to schedule a vote on a measure that would require states and federal agencies to do a better job of reporting legal and mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.

But the bill, called the Fix NICS Act, which is backed by the N.R.A. and Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican, is modest. It would not expand the number of gun sales subject to background checks, and it does nothing to close loopholes that allow guns to be sold over the internet, or at gun shows, without background checks on the purchasers.

The bill has already passed the House, but it was included in a broader measure that would permit the carrying of concealed firearms virtually anywhere in the country. That provision is a nonstarter in the Senate, which is why Mr. Lance and his colleagues are pushing for a stand-alone vote in the House.

Representative Tom Reed, Republican of New York and a co-chairman of a bipartisan group of lawmakers known as the Problem Solvers Caucus, said his group planned to tackle the issue of mass shootings this week, with the hope of developing proposals that could become law.

Mr. Trump, who is a member of the N.R.A. and ran with its backing, has offered ideas of his own, spending much of last week promoting an N.R.A.-backed proposal to arm teachers.

He has also embraced "comprehensive background checks" - without stating precisely what he means - as well as the proposals to raise the minimum age for buying assault weapons to 21. In addition, he has said he supports banning "bump stocks," which convert semiautomatic guns into automatic weapons and were used last year by the gunman who mowed down concertgoers in Las Vegas.

But Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican who said in an interview that he favors banning assault weapons - a major break with his party - called the proposed ban on bump stocks a "small step," and took issue with the age limit proposal. "By raising the minimum age from 18 to 21, then you're almost officially legalizing assault weapons," he said.

If the latest push for tighter gun restrictions has any better chance of success than the ones that came before, it is in large part a result of the fierce lobbying effort by the student advocates, including those from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of this month's mass shooting.

"We have a group of articulate and smart students who are also very angry and have been activated, and so they have captured the attention of our country, including members of Congress," said Mark Kelly, a founder of Giffords, an advocacy group named for his wife, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was grievously wounded during a 2011 mass shooting in Tucson.

"Congress seems to have a hard time paying attention to important issues long enough to solve them, and they'll move on to the next thing," Mr. Kelly said. "I don't think these kids are going to move on to the next thing."

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Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Jonathan Martin and Thomas Kaplan

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Is This the Moment for Gun Control? A Gridlocked Congress Is Under Pressure

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"I think for Republicans our challenge in the next race is going to be about appealing to the suburban vote that hasn't been so good for Republicans the last few races," said Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee, citing in particular suburban women. It is clear, he added, that "people want to see action."

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A Look at Some of the Technology Used to Make Guns Safer

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Biometrics and improved gun safes are ideas being pushed to reduce gun violence amid mass shootings like the latest in San Bernardino, Calif.

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That's how some critics are describing the Florida school shooting survivors who have emerged in recent days as impassioned gun control advocates.

After a teenage gunman killed 17 people at their high school in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine's Day, much of the focus has shifted to the young survivors of the shooting. One author who has covered mass shootings for decades says, "I've never seen a phenomenon like these students." Another praised their "disdain for hypocrisy."

Yet looming in the background of this praise for the Parkland students is the National Rifle Association's chokehold on the gun control debate. After virtually every mass shooting in the US, the NRA routinely swats away any calls for more gun control.

What can these kids do to change that? Plenty, say those with experience.

"The NRA is powerful and rich, but there is nothing a strong heart can't change," says Trenton Casillas-Bakeberg, a 21-year-old activist who helped launch the One Mind Youth Movement, which took part in the Standing Rock pipeline protests and worked to reduce youth suicides among Native Americans.

"Although they are rich and powerful," he says of the NRA, "they aren't going to be powerful forever. It's going to change -- if not now, it will eventually."

Here are four reasons those who say youth can't change the gun debate may be wrong.

1: Kids lead and adults follow

Conventional wisdom says grown-ups spark social change and the kids merely follow. When people think of great activists they often picture adults: Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Not too many kids in those images.

But if you read between the lines of history books, the opposite is often true, historians say: Kids get out front on issues and it's the adults who follow.

Young people have been key actors in nearly every major social movement in modern history, says Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of civic media at MIT.

"Whenever we have had a movement with widespread mobilization through history, young people are at the forefront," says Costanza-Chock, author of a paper entitled, " You and Social Movements: Key Lessons for Allies."

A teenager, for example, struck one of the first blows in the civil rights movement.

History books say Rosa Parks kicked it off when she refused to give up her seat to a white person on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. But it was a teenager, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, who'd taken the same brave step nine months earlier in the same city, Costanza-Chock says.

Teenagers confronting water hoses and police attack dogs turned the tide in the 1963 civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama.

Young people drove the Arab Spring protests that toppled dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt.

Young people in the Occupy Wall Street movement forced millions of America to confront the issue of inequality.

A 23-year-old immigrant, Clara Lemlich, started a strike involving 15,000 factory workers in New York City in the early 20th century that helped spark the modern labor movement.

And young people taking to social media spawned Black Lives Matter.

"It's going to be an uphill battle," Costanza-Chock says of the fight for more gun control, "but if anyone can do it, it's going to be young people."

2: They have more passion because they pay the price

One of the most memorable moments in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting came when David Hogg, a high school senior, looked into a camera and said:

"We are children. You guys are the adults. Work together, come over your politics, and get something done."

The moment was so powerful because of the helplessness Hogg expressed. He was saying that his friends literally died because adults failed to act.

That sensibility -- we pay the price for adult failures -- is another reason some say youth activists can be so motivated. They have to clean up the mess adults leave behind.

Jasilyn Charger, who helped start the One Mind Youth Movement, says youth understand the urgency of now in a way that many adults don't.

"We understand that we are going to inherit this Earth and its government and its laws," she says, "so it's up to us to forge our own path in the future and be proud of it."

Youth pay the price for adult inaction in other ways. Constanza-Chock, the MIT professor, says there is a "war on youth" that pushes many of them to become impassioned activists.

Many youth of color in particular, Constanza-Chock says, are targeted by stop-and-frisk policies, police brutality and a school-to-prison pipeline that pushes kids more toward incarceration than college.

The kids who survived the Parkland shooting bring a firsthand authority to the gun debate that adults can't match.

"These students have great moral credibility because they speak as people directly affected by this issue," Constanza-Chock says. "It's going to be very hard for an NRA spokesman to dismiss the voice of the students."

3: They have one resource most adults lack

The NRA is formidable because of the money it can raise but also because of the passion it can summon in its followers, says Kathleen Marchetti, an assistant professor of political science at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

Before Parkland, most gun control advocates couldn't compete with the passion of many NRA members. After each mass shooting, people would demand more gun control. But that activism would wane as time went on and media attention drifted elsewhere. Yet NRA members never tired of reminding lawmakers they'd be voted out of office if they supported gun control..

Youth, though, are equipped to match the stamina and passion of the NRA, some say, because they have one luxury many adults lack: time.

"Young people can have an advantage over someone working full time because they have time to mobilize and to engage in sustained mobilization," Marchetti says.

That time can be spent on everything from developing strategies and pressuring lawmakers to registering voters and raising awareness, she says.

"The bulk of the power in the NRA does not rest only in their donations but with their ability to mobilize large groups of single-issue voters," she says. "Money is not typically the deciding factor in changing policy. What's really going to matter is being able to sustain that activism and keep the pressure up."

Charger, the youth activist, says movements are ultimately powered by passion, and passion is forged though shared suffering. She says she feels a kinship with the Parkland students because she knows what it's like to go against people with guns. That's what her group faced when it participated in protests at Standing Rock, where armed police also deployed tear gas and water hoses against protesters.

"Nothing is too big and powerful -- everything man-made breaks, including our laws and the government," she says. "Everything has a soft part that can be taken down. Nothing is too strong to overcome as long as you have solidarity with everybody around you."

4: They're innovators in protest tactics

No matter what happens now, the Parkland shooting survivors already have one impressive accomplishment: They've kept the issue of gun control in the media a full week after the shooting.

They've done it in part because they grew up with social media. They've created their own hashtag, #NeverAgain, gone on Facebook and Instagram, given press conferences -- all to keep the issue in the news. They've even talked about policy goals and scheduled a nationwide protest, March for Our Lives, on March 24.

"One thing that young people are absolutely great at are recognizing the importance of symbols and imagery and being able to use social media," says Marchetti of Dickinson College. "They have the upper hand in that regard."

What Parkland students are doing is following a pattern of previous youth activists: They're using the latest technology to get their message out, says Costanza-Chock.

In 2006, middle and high school students used MySpace, text messages and film screenings to orchestrate high school walkouts across the US to protest anti-immigration legislation proposed by a Republican congressman.

The next year, youth used blogs and social media to organize protests over the Jena 6 case, in which six black teens were accused of beating a white classmate in a Louisiana town.

And in 2012, they used Facebook and Twitter to demand justice for Trayvon Martin, a black youth shot to death by a neighborhood watch volunteer.

There's a shrewdness to the Parkland shooting survivors that goes even beyond technology, Costanza-Chock says.

"If you look at their press releases, they're already starting to circulate lists of elected officials who are going to be in close races in midterms and as people in particular to target," he says.

Charger, the youth activist, says that even if gun control laws don't change, the Parkland shooting survivors will.

"When something like this happens to someone, you will never be the same," she says. "The person you are after this is a completely different person. How that affects you, and the people around you, is up to you."

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four reasons the nra should fear the parkland student survivors - cnn

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Four reasons the NRA should fear the Parkland student survivors

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That's how some critics are describing the Florida school shooting survivors who have emerged in recent days as impassioned gun control advocates. After a teenage gunman killed 17 people at their high school in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine's Day, much of the focus has shifted to the young survivors of the shooting.

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Trump said mental illness leads to gun violence’s 

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Trump said mental illness leads to gun violence’s 

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Frustration is mounting in the medical community as the Trump administration again points to mental illness in response to yet another mass shooting.

"The concept that mental illness is a precursor to violent behavior is nonsense," said Dr. Louis Kraus, forensic psychiatry chief at Chicago's Rush University Medical College. "The vast majority of gun violence is not attributable to mental illness."

Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old charged with killing 17 people on Valentine's Day at his former high school in Parkland, Florida has been described by students as a loner with troubling behavior who had been kicked out of school. His mother recently died and Cruz had been staying with family friends.

"The vast majority of gun violence is not attributable to mental illness."

Since the shooting, his mental health has been the focus of President Donald Trump's comments. And on a Thursday call with reporters, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the administration is committed to addressing serious mental illness and that his agency "will be laser-focused on this issue in the days, weeks, and months to come."

Mental health professionals welcome more resources and attention, but they say the administration is ignoring the real problem - easy access to guns, particularly the kind of high-powered highly lethal assault weapons used in many of the most recent mass shootings.

"Even for those who manage to survive gun violence involving these weapons, the severity and lasting impact of their wounds, disabilities and treatment leads to devastating consequences," American Medical Association President David Barbe wrote in an online column after the shooting.

"We are not talking about Second Amendment rights or restricting your ability to own a firearm. We are talking about a public health crisis that our Congress has failed to address. This must end," Barbe wrote.

Better access to mental health care, including for those who might be prone to violence, is important, but "to blame this all just on mental illness is not sufficient," he said in an interview Friday.

The AMA has supported efforts to boost gun violence research, ban assault weapons and to restrict access to automatic weapons. Barbe wrote in his column that federally funded research is crucial to address an "urgent health crisis."

Under gun industry pressure, U.S. government research on firearm violence has been limited for decades.

Under gun industry pressure, U.S. government research on firearm violence has been limited for decades.

The American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and four other medical associations issued a joint statement Friday urging comprehensive action by Trump and Congress, including labeling gun violence a national public health epidemic.

The groups' recommendations include limits on high-powered, rapid-fire weapons designed to kill and funding gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to the CDC, there were about 38,000 U.S. gun deaths in 2016, slightly more than the number of people who died in car crashes.

"The families of the victims in Parkland and all those whose lives have been impacted by daily acts of gun violence deserve more than our thoughts and prayers. They need action from the highest levels of our government to stop this epidemic of gun violence now," the groups said in a statement.

The American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Osteopathic Association contributed to the statement.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Sunday that Trump is working with senators on a bill designed to improve criminal background checks. "While discussions are ongoing and revisions are being considered, the President is supportive of efforts to improve the Federal background check system," she said.

Florida's Republican governor, Rick Scott, a Trump ally, said he had discussed with Trump and GOP leaders how to restrict gun access to the mentally ill.

Federal and state laws already attempt to do this, in many cases with a ban on gun ownership for people who have been treated in mental institutions.

Kraus noted that a year ago Trump rolled back an Obama-era law that aimed to prevent certain mentally ill people from buying guns. But he suggested that is beside the point.

"There's a great naivete to what the president and the governor are proposing," Kraus said. A history of violent behavior, alcohol and substance use, and previous criminal behavior are all more pertinent factors to consider.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of a violence prevention research program at the University of California, Davis, said gun violence restraining order laws in California and Washington are "a much more focused approach." The laws allow courts to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose threats to themselves or others.

"Florida has no such mechanism. Could have prevented this one; there was plenty of advance notice," Wintemute said.

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Trump said mental illness leads to gun violence. Here's why doctors disagree

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Mental health professionals welcome more resources and attention, but they say the administration is ignoring the real problem - easy access to guns, particularly the kind of high-powered highly lethal assault weapons used in many of the most recent mass shootings.

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Contains verifiable statistics with the sources provided at the bottom.

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Guns in America | Facts and statistics about firearms in the USA

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in America each year?

= homicide + accident + suicide = self defense

Every year, guns are used over 80x more often to protect a life than to take one!*

270 Million

Approx. # of civilian firearms in America

200,000

Times a year women use a gun to defend against SEXUAL ABUSE

3/5

polled felons say they won't mess with an armed victim

an international perspective

"Most violent country in EU"

POSSESSION OF HANDGUNS
IS ILLEGAL

2,034 violent crimes
per 100,000 people in UK**

466 violent crimes
per 100,000 people in USA

In the decade following the Labor party's election and banning of handguns in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77% to 1.2 million in '07- or more than 2 attacks every minute!

Kitchen knives are being used in as many as half of all stabbings in the United Kingdom and has prompted a group of doctors to call for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives.

An analysis of the FBI crime statistics found that states that adopted
concealed carry laws REDUCED:

With just one exception, every public mass shooting in the USA since 1950 has taken place where citizens are banned from carrying guns. Despite strict gun regulations, Europe has had 3 of the worst 6 school shootings.

Police

14.3
avg. deaths of a shooting
rampage stopped by police

Armed Citizen

2.3
avg. deaths of a shooting
rampage stopped by a citizen

In 1982, Kennesaw, Georgia passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate subsequently dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to just 10.4% drop in Georgia as a whole.

Today, the violent crime rate in Kennesaw is still 85% lower than Georgia's or the national average.

A CAMPAIGN BY

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Guns in America | Facts and statistics about firearms in the USA

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Every year, guns are used over 80x more often to protect a life than to take one!* In the decade following the Labor party's election and banning of handguns in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77% to 1.2 million in '07- or more than 2 attacks every minute!

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Social media is playing an important role in shaping news stories in general and crisis situations in particular. Specifically, even as social media makes it easy to track an emerging crisis situation, it makes it difficult to effectively manage the crisis situation.
Social media and the news curve
All news stories develop in a similar manner, following the news curve. The news curve has four stages: breaking news, context, analysis and archival. The breaking news stage is concerned with questions like: what happened, with whom and where? In the context stage, more information is added, as background. In the analysis stage, opinions are shared and responsibility is assigned. In the archival stage, the story goes off the newspaper front page, the website homepage and the evening news on TV.

Social media is playing an important role in shaping the news curve. The news curve is becoming shorter in the "breaking news" and "context" stages, but longer in the "analysis" and "archival" stages. The news curve is also becoming more fragmented and news stories are becoming more viral. Different social media behaviors play different roles across the four stages of the news curve. News stories are now being broken on the official Twitter channels of news organizations and shared via retweets. Context is being added by sharing links on Twitter using a hashtag. Blogs and video blogs are playing an important role in shaping opinion. Finally, search is making it easier to find and share archived stories that act as context for new stories.

The 26/11 Mumbai terror attack in 2009 is a good example of how social media is shaping the news ecosystem even in emerging economies. During the 72-hour terrorist seize of India's financial capital, Twitter, Flickr and blogs became important tools for citizen journalists to share original reporting, news, and opinions. Social media, especially Twitter, played an important role in shaping the mainstream media narrative during the crisis, both in India and internationally.
Social media and the crisis curve
The four stages in the crisis curve correspond to the four stages in the news curve: flash point, spotlight, blame game and resolution. Like the news curve, the crisis curve is becoming shorter in the "flash point" and "spotlight" stages, but longer in the "blame game" and "resolution" stages. Like the news curve, the crisis curve is also becoming more fragmented and crisis stories are becoming more viral. As a result, even as social media makes it easy to track an emerging crisis situation, it makes it difficult to effectively manage the crisis situation.

The interplay between social media and mainstream media is an important aspect of the crisis curve, with online influencers linking to media stories and media quoting online influencers.
Three types of crisis situations
Based on the interplay between social media and mainstream media in the run up to the crisis flash point, crisis situations can be categorized into three types, each needing a different approach: real world crisis, slow burn crisis and flash mob crisis.

In the "real world" crisis, a real world incident (oil spill, financial scam, sex scandal) precipitates the crisis. Mainstream media puts a spotlight on the crisis while social media amplifies the crisis. For instance, during the protracted BP Gulf of Mexico crisis in 2010, the flash point was the oil spill itself, but social media played a critical role in the spotlight, blame game and resolution stages. BP's crisis response was a textbook case study in terms of its scope and scale. However, a series of failed attempts to control the oil spill over months, then-CEO Tony Hayward's "I want my life back" comment, and the online spoofs they inspired, did not help BP's cause.

In the "slow burn" crisis, social media conversations (product quality, customer support, employee discontent) build up into a crisis and are picked up by influential bloggers and even mainstream media. For instance, in 2005, influential blogger Jeff Jarvis blogged about a series of bad customer service experiences with Dell, and became the focal point of the Dell Hell crisis. Dell Hell forced Dell to recommit to creating a positive customer experience and led to several remarkable social media initiatives including the Direct2Dell blog, the Dell Ideastorm ideation community and Dell's social media command center.

In the "flash mob" crisis, a social media meme (Greenpeace campaign, anti-brand hashtag, anti-brand video) creates a flash mob, turns into a crisis, and is picked up by mainstream media. For instance, in 2010, Greenpeace created a viral video led campaign to protest against Nestle procuring palm oil from Indonesian rainforests and endangering orangutans. Protestors hijacked Nestle's Facebook page and filled it with abusive comments and Nestle Killer profile pics. Surprisingly, Nestle's strong corporate citizenship reputation for creating shared value did not help during the crisis. In the end, Nestlé announced that it would stop procuring from suppliers associated with deforestation.
Using social media to manage a crisis
Social media has a specific role to play at each stage of the crisis curve. MSLGROUP has created a crisis management toolkit that includes tools and best practices for each stage in the crisis cycle.

In the flash-point stage, we track negative social media chatter, identify early warning signals, isolate issues, and resolve them, before they turn into a crisis.

In the spotlight stage, we plot a heat map of crisis flows between social media and mainstream media, identify influencers who are acting as hubs driving these flows and focus our crisis management efforts on these hubs.

In the blame-game stage, we help clients shape the narrative by leveraging owned media channels like blog and YouTube to reframe the issue more positively and avert direct blame.

In the resolution stage, we optimize owned media content for search results, so that positive and neutral stories show up alongside negative stories on keyword searches related to the brand.

Most importantly, it's critical to map out and plan for crisis scenarios in advance, in order to respond to them effectively. We have created a toolkit for mapping out alternate crisis scenarios and planning for their best, worst and most likely cases. This toolkit include a workshop for scenario, keyword, influencer, spokesperson and message mapping, and platforms like a wiki-based war room for crisis collaboration and a CMS-based dark site for crisis response.

In the end, however, managing any crisis successfully, including a crisis on social media, is less about saying the right things and more about doing the right things. So, corporations that are rooted in purpose are likely to respond to crisis situations with authenticity, and overcompensate for mistakes, transforming potential crises into opportunities to reconnect with their stakeholders.
Gaurav Mishra is director of social media for MSLGroup's Asian operations.

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How Social Media Is Changing News And Crisis: The Crisis Curve Framework

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Social media is playing an important role in shaping news stories in general and crisis situations in particular. Specifically, even as social media makes it easy to track an emerging crisis situation, it makes it difficult to effectively manage the crisis situation.

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It's been a month since the Florida shootings. What's changed?

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It's been a month since the Florida shootings. What's changed?

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The protests were covered extensively on cable TV. At the gathering outside the Capitol building, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, spoke.

The walkout was a precursor to a series of rallies planned in the nation's capitol -- and around the country -- later this month.

It also functions as a moment to reflect on the last month in terms of what lawmakers have done and not done on guns.

The story at the state level is very different than that at the federal level.

Earlier this month, Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a measure that bans bump stocks, raises the age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 and allocates more money for arming teachers. The NRA immediately sued, alleging that raising the minimum age to buy a firearm violated individuals' constitutional right to bear arms.

In Congress, there has been no serious attempt to reform gun laws to date. President Donald Trump laid out his own basic principles on guns Sunday night, proposals that included "hardening" schools and enforcing more stringently the background check laws already on the books. Trump's plan notably did not include raising the age at which you can buy a gun, which he had suggested was something he supported following the Parkland, Florida shooting.

That pattern of action at the state level and inaction at the federal level hues closely to what happened ion the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings in late 2012. Connecticut toughened its gun control laws while proposals to make changes to national gun laws collapsed in the Senate.

The reality is that the closer you are to the actual mass casualty event, the more it will feel urgent in your own life. The longer it will stay on your local news. The more pressure your community will put on lawmakers to make changes.

No matter how your community reacts to a mass shooting -- and no matter how well spoken your high school kids are -- the national attention span simply moves on. Holding the nation's attention -- and, therefore, making it possible for Congress to feel like they HAVE to do something, is damn near impossible.

The Point: Changes in gun laws after mass shootings is almost certain to come from the state and local level first (if at all). If past is prologue, it simply will not come at the federal level -- no matter how many lives are lost or how urgent the pleas for action may be.

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it's been a month since the florida shootings. what's changed? - cnnpolitics

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Analysis By Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

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It's been a month since the Florida shootings. What's changed?

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On Wednesday, students across the country walked out of their classrooms to reflect on the killing of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School one month ago -- and to renew the call for further strictures on gun purchases.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creative-development/201207/school-shooter-the-warning-signs%3famp

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The Second Amendment to the Constitution, which concerns the right to bear arms, is always a hot-button issue, especially during election season. Gun rights and gun control groups alike have been lobbying Congress for decades to craft legislation in their respective favors. Twice in the past two years the gun issue has reached the nation's highest court.

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-school-shootings-arm-teachers-20180221-story.html

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REAL CONVERSATIONS: I'm Pro-Gun | Change My Mind

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Here are two Videos that contain dialogues between someone who is pro-guns and second amendment as well as the various guests that come to talk about why they are pro-gun control. They are very respectful and do a great job of showing the differing opinions.  

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Here are two Videos that contain dialogues between someone who is pro-guns and second amendment as well as the various guests that come to talk about why they are pro-gun control. They are very respectful and do a great job of showing the differing opinions.  

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There Is No ‘Epidemic of Mass School Shootings’

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There Is No ‘Epidemic of Mass School Shootings’

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It's been two weeks since a heavily armed psychopath turned Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School into a war zone - and the survivors of that massacre have already changed gun politics in the United States for the better.

With their acts of witness and advocacy, the teenage protesters of Parkland, Florida, shook many voters out of their complacency about pervasive gun violence. Upwards of 30,000 people lose their lives to firearms in our nation each year, a level of carnage unparalleled anywhere in the developed world. And yet, last October - just days after the worst mass shooting in American history - only 52 percent of Americans told CNN's pollsters that they supported "stricter gun laws."

Today, that figure is 70 percent - the highest it's been at any time since 1993. Recent polls from Quinnipiac University and Politico/Morning Consult have produced nearly identical results. In Florida, long a bastion of NRA support, the leftward turn in public opinion has been especially sharp.

Q-poll's FL voter survey is a PR nightmare for the NRA

56-40% oppose armed teachers
62-33 back assault weapons ban
62-34 back high volume magazine ban
78-20 back all gun buyers be 21 or older
96-3 back universal background checks
87-10 back waiting time for all gun buys
- Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) February 28, 2018

Moderate Democrats have had their "come to an assault weapons ban" moment. Moderate Republicans (such as they are) are imploring their party to move left on the gun issue. Major gun sellers are cutting ties with the NRA and imposing their own restrictions on firearm sales. Even Donald Trump has called for strengthening America's background check system.

By keeping the national spotlight on the mass murder at their high school - and calling on their peers across the country to walk out of their schools, so as to " no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings " in the United States - the theater kids of Marjory Stoneman Douglas have built the broadest public consensus for gun-safety measures that America has seen in a quarter-century.

But they've also (inadvertently) triggered a moral panic about the safety of America's schools that has little basis in empirical reality - and which is already lending momentum to policies that would increase juvenile incarceration, waste precious educational resources on security theater, and bring more guns into our nation's classrooms.

On Tuesday in Tallahassee, Republicans in Florida's state legislature advanced a law that aims to put one police officer - and ten gun-wielding teachers - into every public school in the state. The $67 million "school marshal" program would provide teachers who volunteer to be emergency gunslingers with a $500 stipend, a background check, drug test, psychological exam, and 132 hours of training. In total, the bill's school safety measures come at a price tag of $400 million. One piece of that package - an increase in funding for mental health counselors - is laudable. The rest are either unnecessary or actively dangerous. The average salary for a teacher in Florida is nearly $10,000 less than the national mean; its public school system consistently ranks among the bottom half of U.S. states. This is not a place that can afford to misallocate hundreds of millions of dollars in educational funds.

The bill moving through Florida's House of Representatives does pair that $400 million appropriation with a few gun reforms - a three-day waiting period for firearm purchases, an increase in the legal age for gun-buying from 18 to 21, and measures expanding the authority of police officers to confiscate guns from people who threaten to commit violence.

By themselves, those reforms are better than nothing. And the fact that Republican state legislators are pushing them forward - over the objections of the NRA - is a testament to the power of the Parkland protesters. But the impact of such modest regulations of the gun market, in a nation where firearms outnumber people, is likely to be marginal at best. And if the bill's gun reforms cannot be separated from its "school marshal" program and expansion of classroom cops, then Florida's young people might end up worse off than they'd be if their elected leaders had simply ignored the Parkland massacre, like so many mass shootings before it.

After the atrocity at Columbine High School in 1999, America tested the hypothesis that a massive increase in school policing would lead to lower rates of violence on campus - in 1997, 10 percent of public schools employed at least one police officer; by 2014, 30 percent did. The results of this experiment have been worse than disappointing. The best available research suggests that putting police officers in schools does not significantly deter crime - but does increase the number of students who end up incarcerated for minor youthful indiscretions (and/or, who get electrocuted with stun guns in their classrooms for the same).

Arming teachers, meanwhile, is a proposal so mind-bogglingly dumb and dangerous, even Florida's GOP governor Rick Scott rejects it. There is no evidence whatsoever that adding a not-so-well regulated militia of amateur marksmen to every school faculty will prevent mass shootings, when armed guards have consistently failed to do so - but there is good reason to believe that such a program would radically worsen our nation's preexisting crisis of racially discriminatory, teacher-on-student violence. As Patrick Blanchfield argues for the Intercept:

In 2017, researchers estimated that, in a given school year, 589 children are corporally punished (most often struck with paddles) every day. Unsurprisingly, this violent discipline is disproportionately inflicted on students of color. Black students are twice as likely as whites to be struck in Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. In Maine, black children are eight times more likely to be hit than white children are. Children with disabilities also suffer a disproportionate share of this disciplinary violence. In a representative year, school authorities pinned down, tied up, or otherwise restrained 267,000 American schoolchildren, three-quarters of whom had some kind of disability; such practices have resulted in multiple fatalities.

... America already has abundant and grim evidence about the outcomes of interactions between youth and armed authority figures. The lethality of our police has no real analog in the developed world: One-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police. Here, too, the landscape of violence betrays stark disparities, particularly when it comes to children: Black teens are 21 times more likely to be shot dead than their white peers, and people with disabilities and mental illnesses are acutely vulnerable as well ...Why would we expect different outcomes from arming teachers?

If the policy response to the Parkland shooting ends up hurting more American students than it helps, the lion's share of responsibility will lie with the Republican Party. The Parkland survivors have been as emphatic in their rejection of arming teachers as they've been in their support for gun restrictions - and they've won the general public to their side of both issues.

But some of the hyperbolic rhetoric that progressives have embraced over the past two weeks has made it easier for the right to push regressive school safety policies. Such hyperbole pervades the mission statement for the post-Parkland protest movement, March for Our Lives:

Not one more. We cannot allow one more child to be shot at school. We cannot allow one more teacher to make a choice to jump in front of a firing assault rifle to save the lives of students. We cannot allow one more family to wait for a call or text that never comes. Our schools are unsafe. Our children and teachers are dying. We must make it our top priority to save these lives.

March For Our Lives is created by, inspired by, and led by students across the country who will no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings that has become all too familiar.

... School safety is not a political issue. There cannot be two sides to doing everything in our power to ensure the lives and futures of children who are at risk of dying when they should be learning, playing, and growing ... Every kid in this country now goes to school wondering if this day might be their last. We live in fear.

American children do not "risk their lives" when they show up to school each morning - or at least, not nearly as much as they do whenever they ride in a car, swim in a pool, or put food in their mouths (an American's lifetime odds of dying in a mass shooting committed in any location is 1 in 11,125; of dying in a car accident is 1 and 491; of drowning is 1 in 1,133; and of choking on food is 1 in 3,461). Criminal victimization in American schools has collapsed in tandem with the overall crime rate, leaving U.S. classrooms safer today than at any time in recent memory.

And, perhaps most critically, there is no epidemic of mass shootings in American schools - at least, not under the conventional definitions of those terms.

In the immediate aftermath of the Parkland shooting, progressive activists and commentators (including this one) repeatedly claimed that there had been 18 school shootings since the start of this year. This proved to be a gross exaggeration. In reality, according to new research from Northeastern University, there have been a grand total of eight mass shootings (shootings that kill at least four people) at K-through-12 schools in the United States since 1996. Meanwhile, over the past 20 years, the number of fatal shootings in American schools (of any kind) has plummeted.

If mass school shootings were the only form of gun violence in the United States, the case for treating the regulation of firearms as a pressing policy issue would actually be fairly weak. For the past quarter-century, there has been an average of one mass murder (a killing of four or more people committed with any weapon, as opposed to just firearms) in an American school each year. Every one of those atrocities is a blight on humanity. But it is nearly impossible to design a policy that can bring the incidence of an already exceptionally rare crime down to zero - and given the inherently limited nature of legislative time and resources, it would make little sense to prioritize such a marginal and difficult issue over public health challenges that kill exponentially more people.

There is no "school safety" crisis in the U.S.; only a gun violence epidemic that consists primarily of suicides, accidents, and single-victim homicides committed with handguns. In the decades since Columbine, progressives have often led the public to believe otherwise. And for understandable reasons. Spectacular acts of mass murder committed against children (especially upper-middle class children in "good" public schools) attract a degree of media attention and political concern that our nation's (roughly) 20,000 annual firearm suicides - and daily acts of urban gang violence - simply do not. The most misleading piece of the Parkland survivors' message - that their experience is representative of a widespread social problem that threatens the lives of all American children - may well be its most politically effective component.

But if misrepresenting the nature of America's gun problem has political benefits, it also has policy drawbacks. After all, if the March for Our Lives mission statement were actually true - if "every kid in this country" went "to school wondering if this day might be their last" - then there would be a reasonable case for filling American schools with law enforcement agents and increasing the use of juvenile detention.

And the right is already making that case: In recent days, conservative media outlets have suggested that the Parkland shooting could have been prevented if only Broward County hadn't implemented the PROMISE program (Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Supports & Education) in 2013 - a policy that aimed to reduce juvenile arrests by promoting non-carceral approaches to correcting student misbehavior.

All of which is to say: The Parkland teenagers, and the movement they have launched, has made a vital contribution to American politics. They've stiffened the spines of Democratic gun safety advocates; unnerved Republican NRA stooges; improved the prospects of meaningful gun reform at the federal level in the medium-term; and provided a model of civic engagement to a rising generation whose political participation our country desperately needs.

But to ensure that those contributions aren't shadowed by the unintended consequences of overheated rhetoric, the March for Our Lives and its supporters must take pains to ensure that their advocacy always affirms this basic truth: Schools don't kill people, guns kill people.

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There Is No 'Epidemic of Mass School Shootings'

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It's been two weeks since a heavily armed psychopath turned Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School into a war zone - and the survivors of that massacre have already changed gun politics in the United States for the better. With their acts of witness and advocacy, the teenage protesters of Parkland, Florida, shook many voters out of their complacency about pervasive gun violence.

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These Researchers Have Been Trying To Stop School Shootings For 20 Years

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These Researchers Have Been Trying To Stop School Shootings For 20 Years

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Mary Ellen O'Toole calls the teenagers who murdered 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999 by their first names - Dylan and Eric. O'Toole did not personally know Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, but she's thought about them for decades. At the time of the Colorado shootings, O'Toole was a profiler for the FBI and had been tapped to write the bureau's report on how to prevent mass shootings in schools. What began as a research project has become a life's work - and a deep source of frustration.

O'Toole is part of a small group of academics, law-enforcement professionals and psychologists who published some of the first research on mass shootings in schools. She and other members of this group began paying attention to the phenomenon in the late 1990s. Two decades later, some of them say not much has changed. The risk factors they identified back then still apply. The recommendations they made are still valid. And, as we saw last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, students are still dying. "On the news, people are saying we should be concerned about this and that," O'Toole said, "and I thought, 'We identified that 20 years ago. Did you not read this stuff 20 years ago?' ... It's fatiguing. I just feel a sense of fatigue."

It's difficult to say definitively how many school shootings have happened in the years since Columbine - or in the years before it. It's harder still to prove how many would-be shootings were averted, or how many others could have been if additional steps had been taken. But the people who have spent the last two decades trying to understand this phenomenon are still here, and still trying to sell politicians and the public on possible solutions that are complicated, expensive and tough to sum up in a sound bite.

Any research into school shootings is made more difficult by how uncommon such shootings are. In 2016, FiveThirtyEight wrote about the more than 33,000 people killed by guns in America every year. Of those deaths, roughly one-third - about 12,000 - are homicides, but hardly any are due to mass shootings. If you define mass shootings as as an event where a lone attacker indiscriminately kills four or more people, in a public place, unrelated gang activity or robbery, then mass shootings account for a tiny portion of all gun homicides - probably a fraction of a percent.

There have been many attempts to formally quantify school shootings, but, as with mass shootings, all use different definitions. Our chart is taken from a 2016 paper that defined a school shooting as a premeditated incident of gun violence that took place in an educational setting, killed or wounded at least three victims (not counting the perpetrator), was unrelated to gang activity and was not an act of domestic violence. This data suggests that school shootings, though still extremely rare, are more common today than they were 40 years ago.

But no matter how you define a school shooting, they're still a subset of a subset - just as mass shootings account for a fraction of all gun homicides, school shootings account for a fraction of all mass shooting deaths. In 1995, when O'Toole began to study school shootings, they seemed like even more of an outlier than they are today. "I couldn't even call it a phenomenon," she said. "Prior to Columbine, there was no indication that it was going to become one of those crimes that just becomes part of the culture. It looked like it could have faded away."

These uncommon but high-profile tragedies had also drawn the attention of Marisa Randazzo. In 1999, she was the chief psychologist for the Secret Service and became a part of a joint effort between the Secret Service and Department of Education to better understand school shooters and how to prevent attacks before they happened. Randazzo had previously worked on the Exceptional Case Study Project - a Secret Service project designed to better understand people who threaten the president and other public figures. Like school shootings, assassinations are extremely rare events that have a huge impact on society. That rarity makes them hard to study - and makes it hard to tell blowhards from real threats. But their impact makes them important to understand.

Randazzo found that the project's findings echoed what she was learning about school shootings. For instance, the Secret Service had once focused its energy on threats made by people with a history of violent crime or who had a mental illness that caused them to act irrationally. But the Exceptional Case Study Project analysis showed that most people who actually carry out attacks didn't meet either of those criteria. Instead, a better way to figure out who was a really a threat was to talk to friends, family and coworkers - most attackers had discussed their plans with other people.

Randazzo and O'Toole's parallel reports came to remarkably similar conclusions.

First, these studies determined that there wasn't much point in trying to profile school shooters. Yes, most were (and remain) male and white, but those categories were so broad that they're essentially useless in identifying potential threats ahead of time, Randazzo said. What's more, she said, more detailed profiles risked stigmatizing perfectly reasonable behaviors - like wearing wearing black and listening to loud music.

Instead, the reports focused on the behavior and mental state of the young people who chose to kill. While these teens were deeply troubled, that's not quite the same thing as saying that those who commit school shootings are just irredeemably mentally ill. Nor does it mean those young people suddenly snapped, giving no warning. "School shooters typically do this out of a profound adolescent crisis," said James Garbarino, a professor of psychology at Loyola University who specializes in teen violence and began studying school shooters in the late 1990s.

Randazzo described a pattern of young people who were deeply depressed, unable to cope with their lives, who saw no other way out of a bad situation. The stressors they faced wouldn't necessarily be problems that an adult would see as especially traumatic, but these young people were unable to handle their emotions, sadness and anger, and they started acting in ways that were, essentially, suicidal.

Some of the best data on the mental state of school shooters has come from interviews with those shooters (and would-be shooters) who survived the attack. Randazzo described one such living school shooter, currently serving multiple life sentences, who told her that before the attack he spent weeks vacillating between suicide and homicide. Only after he tried and failed to kill himself did he settle on killing others in hopes that someone would kill him. Garbarino, who has interviewed dozens of people who went to prison for life as teenagers, both for school shootings and other violent crimes, heard many similar stories.

"The reason I emphasize this is that we know so much about how to help someone who is suicidal, and those same resources can be used very effectively with someone who is planning to engage in school violence," Randazzo said. So how do we spot the ones who are planning an attack at a school? The studies she and O'Toole published years ago showed that, like people planning to attack the president, would-be school shooters don't keep their plans to themselves. They tell friends or even teachers that they want to kill. They talk about their anger and their suicidality. And as more teens have attacked their schoolmates, that pattern has proved to hold true over time. It was true for Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter. It was true for the at least four potential school shootings that were averted in the weeks after Parkland - all stopped because the would-be killers spoke or wrote about their plans and someone told law enforcement.

While all the experts I spoke with said that policies that keep guns out of the hands of teenagers are an important part of preventing mass shootings, they all also said it was crucial to set up systems that spot teens who are are struggling and may become dangerous.

But those systems seem to break down over time. Randazzo told me that her team had trained numerous school districts in school shooting prevention back in the early 2000s and, as of this year, many of those districts no longer had prevention systems in place. Thanks to staff turnover and budget reprioritization, that institutional knowledge simply withered away. And ironically, that happens precisely because school shootings are so rare. "It takes time and effort for a school to create a team and get training," Randazzo said. "And, fortunately, threatening behavior doesn't happen often enough" to spur schools to action.
Read more: Mass Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence

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These Researchers Have Been Trying To Stop School Shootings For 20 Years

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Mary Ellen O'Toole calls the teenagers who murdered 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999 by their first names - Dylan and Eric. O'Toole did not personally know Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, but she's thought about them for decades.

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Teacher accidentally fires gun and injures three

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Teacher accidentally fires gun and injures three

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/us/teacher-gun-accidental-discharge.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FGun%20Control

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Woman who knew alleged Florida gunman: "I should have done something"

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Woman who knew alleged Florida gunman: "I should have done something"

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3p48VVYK3Y

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XpCfxBSaUo

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Florida school shooting survivors recall shots, wounded classmates

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Florida school shooting survivors recall shots, wounded classmates

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Florida school shooting survivors recall shots, wounded classmates | ABC News

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Florida school shooting: Details emerge in timeline, what we know about suspect | ABC News

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"Walmart and Dick's Raise Minimum Age for Gun Buyers to 21" 

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"Walmart and Dick's Raise Minimum Age for Gun Buyers to 21" 

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Earlier, President Trump met at the White House with a bipartisan group of lawmakers and called for a series of gun control measures, some of which the National Rifle Association has vigorously opposed.

Walmart and Dick's acted after a number of major companies moved last week to dissociate themselves from the N.R.A. Hertz car rental, MetLife insurance and Delta Air Lines, among others, publicly ended their relationships with the organization.

In a news release late Wednesday, Walmart noted that in 2015 it discontinued the sale of high-powered rifles, including AR-15-style weapons, in its stores in the United States. But at the time, Walmart sidestepped any controversy involving gun politics, attributing its decision to lower customer demand for the military-style rifles.

This time, Walmart directly linked its action to the shooting in Florida, saying, "In light of recent events, we've taken an opportunity to review our policy on firearm sales."

Top Walmart executives made the decision and then informed the board, a company spokesman said.

Walmart sells guns in roughly half of its nearly 4,000 supercenters, the company said, but the sheer scale of its customer base gives its decision significant heft. Every week, more than 150 million people around the country shop at Walmart.

Dick's decision was announced by Edward Stack, the 63-year-old chief executive whose father founded the store in 1948. Mr. Stack made clear that he was deliberately steering his company directly into the storm over gun reform.

"When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset," Mr. Stack said in an interview. "We love these kids and their rallying cry, 'Enough is enough.' It got to us."

He added, "We're going to take a stand and step up and tell people our view and, hopefully, bring people along into the conversation."

The decision drew immediate - and passionate - reaction on social media. By midday, the number of Twitter messages containing Dick's name had jumped 12,000 percent from the average over the previous 10 days, according to Sprout Social, a social media management, advocacy and analytics software platform.

About 79 percent of the tweets had a positive sentiment, Sprout Social said, including supportive messages from Hollywood actors and actresses.

But the company's critics posted their plans to no longer shop at the retailer, some closing their tweets with "#boycott."

Investors did not appear to worry about a backlash, as Dick's stock spent much of Wednesday trading about 1.8 percent higher before finishing up 0.69 percent.

Mr. Stack said Dick's hoped to move the conversation beyond social media and into the political realm. As part of its stance, the company is calling on elected officials to pass what it called "common sense gun reform": raising the minimum age to buy guns to 21, banning assault-type weapons and so-called bump stocks, and conducting broader background checks that include mental-health information and previous interactions with law enforcement.

This is not the first time that Dick's has made changes in response to a school massacre. In 2012, after a gunman killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Dick's removed assault-style rifles from its main stores. But a few months later, the company began carrying the firearms at its outdoor and hunting retail chain, Field & Stream.

As of Wednesday morning, the company said, AR-15-style and other semiautomatic rifles will no longer be sold in its 35 Field & Stream stores or on its websites. And this time, Mr. Stack added, the changes will be permanent.

Mr. Stack said the retailer had begun scouring its purchase records shortly after the identity of the suspected Parkland killer, Nikolas Cruz, became known. The company soon discovered that it had legally sold a gun to Mr. Cruz in November, though it was not the type used in the school shooting.

"But it came to us that we could have been a part of this story," Mr. Stack said. "We said, 'We don't want to be a part of this any longer.'"

That response raised rounds of discussions with the company's top executives and its directors, all of whom backed the decision to take a stand, Mr. Stack said.

He said Dick's remained a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment and would continue to sell a variety of sport and hunting firearms. Although he has never been a member of the N.R.A., Mr. Stack said, he is a gun owner and enjoys trapshooting.

But when it comes to selling guns to individuals under 21 or stocking assault-style rifles, Mr. Stack said, his company is done. "We don't want to be a part of a mass shooting," he said.

The company said that it had not decided what to do with its inventory of assault-style rifles but that they would not be sold in the marketplace.

Legal experts said they saw no likely challenges to Dick's decision to stop selling assault-style rifles. But the decision to stop selling weapons to anyone under 21, however, could be tested in court.

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles, said Dick's could be challenged in lawsuits claiming a violation of laws that bar age discrimination. Although federal civil rights laws do not apply, some states, including New York, prohibit businesses from denying goods and services on the basis of age.

"Don't be surprised if an aggressive attorney general of a gun-friendly state brings an age-discrimination claim against Dick's," Professor Winkler wrote in an email response to questions.

The company said that it believed its decision was in accordance with the law and that it was instituting the policy immediately.

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Walmart and Dick's Raise Minimum Age for Gun Buyers to 21

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Earlier, President Trump met at the White House with a bipartisan group of lawmakers and called for a series of gun control measures, some of which the National Rifle Association has vigorously opposed. Walmart and Dick's acted after a number of major companies moved last week to dissociate themselves from the N.R.A.

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How Army technology could help save the lives of teachers and students

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How Army technology could help save the lives of teachers and students

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http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/02/16/school-shootings-how-army-technology-could-help-save-lives-teachers-and-students.html

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There Is A Clear Link Between Mental Illness and Mass Shootings

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There Is A Clear Link Between Mental Illness and Mass Shootings

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https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-duwe-rocque-mass-shootings-mental-illness-20180223-story.html%3foutputType=amp