I think it has to start with people not jumping on the "we have to ban...." wagon and looking at things that will actually make a difference. People talking about a specific goal would be nice. Look at this thread. It's hard to determine what outcome people want. Is it to reduce the number of occurrences or is it to reduce the number killed/injured? I fall on the side of reducing the number of occurrences because if you do that, you reduce the number killed/injured. There's something causing these events and the weapon isn't the cause. We should all be looking for the cause, looking for ways to determine who is most at risk of going off the rails, and finding ways to stop people before they do these things.

In the military, my brother was trained to identify signs that a person might be suicidal. Why aren't we doing better at teaching people signs to look for that someone is at risk of committing suicide or carrying out a homicide? And when we see someone like the shooter in Dayton that had the history they did, why aren't we doing more to get them the help they clearly need? We wait until the pot boils over to turn the flame off.

I personally think ( personal opinion only) that

My last post not only can lea to a solution, but I also think it’s embedded in the root cause

Was this their way of solving a problem they perceived?

Interview with Dayton kids girlfriend. This guy should never had a gun. Fantasies about death People knew he had problems and that he had guns. He was going to mental health therapy. Even now, after the interview, she can't completely connect the dots. More at link

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/06/us/dayton-shooter-ex-girlfriend/index.html

Adelia Johnson says she bonded with Ohio gunman Connor Betts over their experiences with mental illness. But she said it's wrong to pin the massacre solely on his condition.

Betts was "fascinated" by current events and tragedies, including mass shootings, she said. At the time, she said, nothing about his interests gave her pause given their course of study.
"It was his main focus as a psychology person. He was interested in what makes terrible people do terrible things," Johnson told CNN.

On their first date, Johnson said Betts showed her video of a mass shooting and gave her a play-by-play of what happened. She felt it wasn't abnormal for a psychology student to be fascinated by the "horrors of humans," she said.

Otherwise, "he was a perfect gentleman throughout our relationship," she said in the Medium post. "Our relationship mostly consisted of us going out drinking and talking about our mental illnesses and him telling me about world tragedies and me talking about TV shows."
She said he told her that he had bipolar disorder, and she told him that she had depression, generalized anxiety and attention deficit disorder.

When he started talking about his "dark thoughts," such as wanting to hurt himself or others, Johnson said she understood them as a "symptom that we have to learn how to manage."

Most people might call such incidents "red flags," she said, but she did not see them that way.
Then, something happened in May that changed her perspective.
She said he asked her to drive past a house to leave a letter. When pressed, she said, he told her it was an ex-girlfriend's home, and the letter was threatening. When she questioned him about it, "he tried to downplay it as a joke," she wrote in Medium, "but I knew it wasn't, so I pushed further."
She said he then admitted that he sometimes had "uncontrollable urges to do things," such as burn down houses.

"That was the red flag and that's when I got out because I'm not sticking around for that," she told CNN.
She said she broke up with him via text message "because I didn't know how he'd react, so I wanted a safe distance."
She said she also texted his mother and told her what happened. She urged her "to keep an eye on him, because I cared about him and I wanted him to be safe," she told CNN.

I think it was a way for them to get the attention they craved. I could be wrong.

The girlfriend says don't pin it on his condition.

But when he made the hair on the back of her neck stand up she dropped him via text message because she wasn't sure what he would do. She TEXTED his mother who told her to keep an eye on him.

Seriously?

Where did I make a claim that he would be violent from watching them? What I said was my 9 year old doesn't need to see some of the ultra violent shows and certainly doesn't need to see things that are gratuitously violent.

Just flipped over to MSN and saw a headline "Trump wants to strengthen background checks". Every article I opened when I searched that title mentioned that Trump didn't mention that on Monday...(SMH) One has Schumer saying Trump should demand bringing a house bill that passed along party lines up for a vote in the Senate. Several complained that Trump mentioned immigration along with stronger background checks. Politics ahead of solutions.

Wanna bet on that one?

I know a ton of kids get hit with art 15, 45/45, and -1 rank for underage drinking in s. Korea. Let alone the states... That said you whip out your cac and locals don't care. They'll serve you no matter what your birthdate is.

Btw the shoppette is 21 too.

Trump blames 'mental illness' for shootings, but rolled back Obama regulation on gun sales

Christopher Wilson
Senior Writer
Yahoo News August 5, 2019

In the wake of this weekend’s mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Trump was quick to point to mental illness as a cause, echoing a Republican talking point that emerged in interviews and social media posts on Sunday.

“Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun,” said Trump in a speech Monday morning from the White House. He said the country “must make sure that those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms, and that, if they do, those firearms can be taken through rapid due process.”

But in his first full month in office, Trump signed a bill rolling back an Obama-era regulation that would have made it more difficult for people with mental illnesses to purchase firearms. The rule would have used Social Security records to add about 75,000 names to the database used in background checks of gun buyers (from licensed firearms dealers). People receiving supplemental-income support for mental disability and those found unfit to handle their own financial affairs would have been precluded from purchasing firearms. While the rule went on the books just before Trump took office in January 2017, compliance was not mandatory until December 2017.

The resolution revoking the rule passed both houses of Congress in February 2017, almost entirely along party lines, with virtually all Republicans voting in favor of it. In a departure from his usual fanfare in signing legislation, Trump did not hold a photo op or press availability when he signed H.J. Res 40 on the final day of February.

The Obama regulation was opposed both by the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union. Studies have found little to no correlation between mental health and gun violence.

“[S]urprisingly little population-level evidence supports the notion that individuals diagnosed with mental illness are more likely than anyone else to commit gun crimes,” read a 2015 study in the American Journal of Public Health, which noted that “less than 3% to 5% of U.S. crimes involve people with mental illness, and the percentages of crimes that involve guns are lower than the national average for persons not diagnosed with mental illness. Databases that track gun homicides, such as the National Center for Health Statistics, similarly show that fewer than 5% of the 120,000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.”

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney referred to the gunmen in El Paso and Dayton as “crazy people” who “should not be able to get guns.”

“Sick people who are intent on doing things like this should not be able to buy guns legally,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Mulvaney did not say how sellers could determine the mental health of customers or their intentions in buying a gun. Mental health advocacy groups have criticized the White House for trying to roll back protections for those seeking treatment.

How many 'Hobbyist Hunters' or 'Weekend Range Hobbyists' are doing this daily murdering? I'm sure the thugs in Chicago all bought legal weapons for hunting, but are frustrated by lack of deer in the city.

Good for Trump. It is a good start.

Were any of the shooters in the 75,000 SS database? I would think it would be a good thing to use but did the elimination of the law have any actual affect on the increase?

If the writer wants to make a point they should back up the statement with facts. Three (or whatever number) of the last 20 mass shooters were in the database.

Yep, Shoppette at Ft Sill is 21. And they check everybody.

The 2A was written at a time when arming the populace with muskets put them on an even playing field with the government. That no longer is the case; the government now has such vastly superior weaponry that no armed citizen stands a chance. The 2A now protects what has become a hobby. There is nothing wrong with hobbies--most of us are here because of our Porsche hobby--but pursuit of a hobby is not does not outweigh the number of murders being presently committed by some of those hobbyists.

The gun hobby has been jealously guarded by the NRA, but that is changing. Like everything run by conservatives, the NRA is riddled with corruption and self-dealing, and is facing financial ruin. Its leadership--a cast of colorful folks that has included convicted felon Oliver North-- is in open warfare. New York State is--finally--looking into its abuse of tax exempt status. The NRA reportedly funneled $30M in Russian $$ to Trump, which is under investigation. So the hobby's watchdog is about to be put down.

Revising or repealing the 2A would be a daunting task, but that is no longer necessary. With the Supreme Court's recent expansion of Executive authority, the precedent has been laid for either an executive order or a declaration of a "national gun emergency" that will lead to a gun buy-back/ban/confiscation program. When (not if) the Democrats retake the WH, look for these in short order--Liz Warren or Joe Biden will be happy to put a few F-35 purchases on hold to pay for the gun crisis.

The pendulum never swings to the center--it always swings back way to the opposite extreme. The solutions implemented by the Left will be draconian, just as ridiculous and unreasonable as those that have been foisted upon us by the gun hobby. But that's how it works when people refuse to compromise.

Ya think?

It's fine to have a discussion of inner city violence. But that's not what this thread is about.

Cons always try to inflate the task up to such a monumental size that people will give up and stop trying. It's not necessary to chase that bunny. It's a delaying tactic that gets us nowhere. Which is where the Cons want to go.

Maybe we need to repeal things that restrict the 2A already, like the NFA?

Here we are having a non political conversation.. and the usual suspects have to go an make it political. There is life outside of spectrum of politics... go and seek it out.

FWIW, this will be a controversial suggestion on a way to reduce the number of mass shootings but... profiling... it works.

Good luck with that.

That is what I was getting at in my post many pages back when I said, in a kind of/sort of joking manner, that all youthful geek males should be rounded up an evaluated for their potential for mass destruction. :)