Smacks wrote:
I did not say "legally" equivalent, now you are twisting my words.

 Smacks wrote:
Also about ~50% of Americans are in favour of gun rights being limited, I don't have the figures for people wanting to limit free speech, but I bet it's a lot lower than 50%

 Vash108 wrote:
Forgot to leave this here
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/americas-top-killing-machine/384440/

 Smacks wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
You seem under the delusion that in order for me to own a weapon, someone is going to walk into a school and shoot children. Thats just grade A bullgak from an ignorant foreigner.

You have advocated gun ownership being a human right. Which would imply that even people such as convicted fellons should have the right to own a gun (as they do the right to a fair trial).

I don't hold you personally responsible, as I think your personal contribution is probably negligible. But collectively the gun rights lobby is a significant contributing factor, in people (such as Vester Lee Flanagan or Roger Elliott) having almost unrestricted access to guns.

The White House conceded Friday that new gun regulations probably wouldn’t have prevented the gunman who murdered two television journalists in southwestern Virginia this week.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said it appears that a proposal championed by President Obama to require background checks on purchases at gun shows “would not have applied in this particular case.”

Law enforcement officials said gunman Vester Flanagan used a Glock handgun in Wednesday’s shooting, one of two that he bought last month. He legally bought two Glock model 19 handguns from a Virginia dealer.

Mr. Earnest said the White House has never suggested that one piece of gun legislation would prevent all gun violence in the U.S. But Mr. Earnest said the proposal on background checks, which failed in the Senate in 2013, would prevent other shooting deaths around the country every day.

“There are similarly shocking acts of violence that don’t get as much attention that could be prevented … if Congress weren’t scared of the NRA,” he said.

Flanagan opened fire on WDBJ reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, during a live broadcast in Virginia on Wednesday, killing both of them. He later killed himself as police closed in.

A third shooting victim, Vicki Gardner, who was being interviewed when Flanagan began shooting, was upgraded from stable to good condition Thursday in a hospital.

Flanagan was fired from WDBJ in 2013.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The legal system can punish crime, it cannot prevent it.

 whembly wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
You understand what "throwaway statements" are, right?

Kan if you want me to agree that all your arguments ITT have been throwaway statements, I will gladly do so.

Sure, that's what I'm saying.

Just keep pretending that's what I was saying, and not that the kinds of measures which could potentially reduce gun violence aren't ridiculously opposed by a lobby which pours an obscene amount of money into making people believe that without their guns, violent criminals are going to murderrape them in their sleep!

This is obscene?
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000082


For reference:
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2014&indexType=s
Chamber of Commerce spent about 37x as much as the NRA.

Comcast & Google spent 5x as much.

Regardless...

What new laws do you propose that would've stopped Flanagan from killing those reports?

 Vash108 wrote:
Forgot to leave this here
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/americas-top-killing-machine/384440/

 Smacks wrote:
Also about ~50% of Americans are in favour of gun rights being limited

 whembly wrote:
...and here we go!

White House concedes new gun laws wouldn’t have stopped Va. gunman

The White House conceded Friday that new gun regulations probably wouldn’t have prevented the gunman who murdered two television journalists in southwestern Virginia this week.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said it appears that a proposal championed by President Obama to require background checks on purchases at gun shows “would not have applied in this particular case.”

Law enforcement officials said gunman Vester Flanagan used a Glock handgun in Wednesday’s shooting, one of two that he bought last month. He legally bought two Glock model 19 handguns from a Virginia dealer.

Mr. Earnest said the White House has never suggested that one piece of gun legislation would prevent all gun violence in the U.S. But Mr. Earnest said the proposal on background checks, which failed in the Senate in 2013, would prevent other shooting deaths around the country every day.

“There are similarly shocking acts of violence that don’t get as much attention that could be prevented … if Congress weren’t scared of the NRA,” he said.

Flanagan opened fire on WDBJ reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, during a live broadcast in Virginia on Wednesday, killing both of them. He later killed himself as police closed in.

A third shooting victim, Vicki Gardner, who was being interviewed when Flanagan began shooting, was upgraded from stable to good condition Thursday in a hospital.

Flanagan was fired from WDBJ in 2013.

 Manchu wrote:
As I was trying to explain earlier today, this is the fault line. When we say people like Vester Flanagan murdered people because he was crazy, we're setting ourselves up: the criminal becomes the patient. Crime becomes a disease. And the function of criminal justice is not only to cure but prevent outbreaks of this disease.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The first part of your proposal would violate the constitution.

The second part would be impossible to achieve.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
So it seems like you've got two options:

- change the interpretation of the constitution. "The people" keeping and bearing arms to maintain a well-regulated militia does not seem to require personal gun ownership. Maybe you can keep them in militia armouries under lock and key, ready for the day that you rise up and overthrow your tyrannical government or whatever.
- change the second amendment. It's an amendment in itself, and it doesn't actually make a heck of a lot of sense, so you might as well just get rid of it.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
Buying back guns might be tough, but they're probably not going to just destroy themselves. I guess you could just seize them and destroy them without offering compensation. You do have a lot of government debt, after all. It would be hard, but it's not going to get any easier, so you might as well just get on with it.

 Manchu wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
I did not say "legally" equivalent, now you are twisting my words.

Sorry I thought we were talking about legal rights, considering we are talking about the Constitution of the United States. As for the UDHR, etc., "free speech" is a lovely phrase but it can stand for a lot of things. The American legal tradition of free speech is extremely divergent from the British tradition, for example. Just something to note as you make arguments based on monolithic assumptions.

 Smacks wrote:
Also about ~50% of Americans are in favour of gun rights being limited, I don't have the figures for people wanting to limit free speech, but I bet it's a lot lower than 50%

Keep in mind that gun ownership rights are already limited in the USA. The issue is not whether gun ownership should be totally unrestricted. I would say the number of Americans favoring some restrictions on gun ownership is far higher than 50%, probably more like 98%+. I think the same percentage are in favor of some limits on free speech. Just like restrictions on private gun ownership, limits on free speech have long been a part of the American legal and cultural landscape. Our limits on free speech, as a matter of law, however, are not nearly as as restrictive as yours.

 Vaktathi wrote:
What sort of law would have prevented Flanagan from accessing a gun? He had no previous convictions (as far as we are aware) that would have made him a prohibited person. He did not have any sort of diagnosed mental condition nor was he declared mentally unfit.

Unless we're going to get into some serious Minority Report type stuff here, or simply bar people for getting fired from jobs for being donkey-caves from getting guns, then there isn't a solution available from the legal system here. The legal system can punish crime, it cannot prevent it.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
I think it's pretty reasonable to say that moderately improved restrictions on who can own a gun won't help much. You need to make it much harder to own a gun. Just entirely outlaw gun ownership outside of specific, enumerated reasons, like rural pest control or what have you, and buy back and destroy the guns currently in circulation. Then you'll probably see a meaningful drop in gun crime.

And hey, maybe then your police will be able to do their jobs without thinking they're going to get shot at any instant by twelve year olds.

So it seems like you've got two options:

- change the interpretation of the constitution. "The people" keeping and bearing arms to maintain a well-regulated militia does not seem to require personal gun ownership.

Maybe you can keep them in militia armouries under lock and key, ready for the day that you rise up and overthrow your tyrannical government or whatever.

- change the second amendment. It's an amendment in itself, and it doesn't actually make a heck of a lot of sense, so you might as well just get rid of it.

Buying back guns might be tough, but they're probably not going to just destroy themselves. I guess you could just seize them and destroy them without offering compensation. You do have a lot of government debt, after all. It would be hard, but it's not going to get any easier, so you might as well just get on with it.

 Smacks wrote:
What is a point of disagreement, and what is always a point of disagreement is whether those laws benafit socioty, or whether they eventually do more harm than good. That isn't a legal question. It isn't even an American question. It's a social, athpological question.

 Smacks wrote:
If I were going to start a new human socioty (hypothetically) on an Earth like planet, and I were writing the constitution now. I think free speech would be a good one to have in there. But the right bear arms? I'm not convinced that it does anything positive. Grey Templar seems to disagree, and stated that it's a fundamental human right. But then he also said that he shouldn't have to justify it because it's his right. Which is good for him I suppose living in the US, but it wouldn't persude me to include it any new constitution I were writing, it's decidedly unpersusive.

Which begs the question, if it isn't worth keeping in a new constitution, then why keep it in an old one? Why not get rid of gun control in the UK?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
And if it isn't an American question why are you fascinated with discussing the Second Amendment?

You are not convinced because you have already made your mind up, and all evidence to the contrary which has been shown to you on numerous occasions has been ignored.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Or to infringe upon the rights of millions of law abiding Americans?

 Smacks wrote:
[

 Vaktathi wrote:
What sort of law would have prevented Flanagan from accessing a gun? He had no previous convictions (as far as we are aware) that would have made him a prohibited person. He did not have any sort of diagnosed mental condition nor was he declared mentally unfit.

Unless we're going to get into some serious Minority Report type stuff here, or simply bar people for getting fired from jobs for being donkey-caves from getting guns, then there isn't a solution available from the legal system here. The legal system can punish crime, it cannot prevent it.

I will agree Flanagan is a difficult case. However, inthe UK he would have found it extremely difficult to obtain a handgun.

 Smacks wrote:
When you say "infringe rights" it sounds like you're talking about something that actually matters, like the right to a fair trial, or the right to water. The right to threaten kids on your lawn with a magnum, the rest of the world seems to get on fine without that one. Which makes the language sound a bit hyperbolic, even if it is technically a "right" in the US, Infringing it a bit sounds like a good idea to me.

 Smacks wrote:
Having a gun to shoot burglars would put you on quite shaky ground legally. A review of so called "self defence" cases involving guns, found that many were actually illegal when scrutinized.

 Smacks wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
And if it isn't an American question why are you fascinated with discussing the Second Amendment?

I'm not really, apart from you always bring it up., and try to use it to block all discussion.

 Smacks wrote:
That's not true, I'm a very open minded person. I have looked extensively at the gunfacts propaganda page you are always linking in here. And there are many points a agree with you on. For example, I agree guns kill fewer people than cancer. But ultimately I think the gun rights agenda is misaligned with the truth of the situation.

 Smacks wrote:
When you say "infringe rights" it sounds like you're talking about something that actually matters, like the right to a fair trial, or the right to water. The right to threaten kids on your lawn with a magnum, the rest of the world seems to get on fine without that one. Which makes the language sound a bit hyperbolic, even if it is technically a "right" in the US, Infringing it a bit sounds like a good idea to me.

 Smacks wrote:
Having a gun to shoot burglars would put you on quite shaky ground legally. A review of so called "self defence" cases involving guns, found that many were actually illegal when scrutinized.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
So when you claimed it was outdated that was with an open mind? And gun propaganda? The best you have to offer is to poison the well? Those graphs and charts were from data from the FBI, CDC, Gallop, etc. dismissing them because you do not like the source is the very antithesis of the open minded

When can we expect to see evidence from you that guns are a net detriment to society?

 Smacks wrote:
Having a gun to shoot burglars would put you on quite shaky ground legally. A review of so called "self defence" cases involving guns, found that many were actually illegal when scrutinized.

Many? Really? How many?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

Relapse wrote:
Are we to argue for more control over alcohol and limit it in a similar fashion to guns ... ?

It's time to have a serious discussion about driving and alcohol consumption in this country. Until we have mental health screening for people who want driver's licenses or who want to purchase and consume alcohol, this terrible death toll will continue.

Biggest fallacious bunch of bullcrap that gets bandied about.

There isn't however any real comparison between the two, as Relapse and many others who bring this stupid argument up already know. Mass shootings or revenge shootings like this case are not the same thing as someone driving while impaired and plowing into a school bus.

 cincydooley wrote:
Is that the same evidence that shows the cities in the U.S. With the tightest gun control laws also have the highest gun crime rates?

Or is it the same evidence where the number of registered gun owners continues to increase while gun crime is on a continuous decline?

 Smacks wrote:
Firstly, I never claimed the bill of rights was outdated. You took that out of context. Why would I say free speech is outdated? I wouldn't, and if you try to say I would, then you are arguing dishonestly.

 Smacks wrote:
Secondly, the data is sourced from the FBI, CDC etc... but it is also cherry picked, sometimes in quite a misleading way. The entire section on firearm related deaths does nothing but try to downplay to numbers by comparing them to traffic accidents. It's really not a good source. Sorry. I'd prefer to read something a bit more impartial.

Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004)

“Overall crime rates have declined in the past decade, and violent crimes, including homicides specifically, have declined in the past 5 years,” the report notes. “Between 2005 and 2010, the percentage of firearm-related violent victimizations remained generally stable.” Meanwhile, “firearm-related death rates for youth ages 15 to 19 declined from 1994 to 2009.” Accidents are down, too: “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

“Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

 Smacks wrote:
When can we expect to see evidence from you that guns are a net detriment to society?

 Smacks wrote:
I believe that was one example of cherry picked evidence. By comparing cities with completely different socio-economic conditions, you can skew the data to make it look like gun-control = more crime. But I believe if you look at the specific cities over time, gun crime had actually dropped since tighter gun controls were introduced. So there's really not much to shout about.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
I think it's pretty reasonable to say that moderately improved restrictions on who can own a gun won't help much. You need to make it much harder to own a gun. Just entirely outlaw gun ownership outside of specific, enumerated reasons, like rural pest control or what have you, and buy back and destroy the guns currently in circulation. Then you'll probably see a meaningful drop in gun crime.

This would require a constitutional amendment to remove a protected right. This would be...impractically difficult, not to mention open up possibilities for attacks on other rights.

Even if you did accomplish it, you have very large sections of the population that would refuse to comply, and have the means to do so. Likewise, the sheer number of guns in circulation would make it impractical, it would take multiple lifetimes to collect all those guns.

 Vaktathi wrote:

And hey, maybe then your police will be able to do their jobs without thinking they're going to get shot at any instant by twelve year olds.

Or maybe we just have a problem with certain police officers acting stupidly and a system that does nothing to correct that behavior?

 Vaktathi wrote:

So it seems like you've got two options:

- change the interpretation of the constitution. "The people" keeping and bearing arms to maintain a well-regulated militia does not seem to require personal gun ownership.

It has been commonly understood that way for over two centuries, and confirmed by the supreme court as an individual right.

Likewise, if we're going to talk about re-defining "the people", then we're going to have problems with lots of things, including the right of "the people" to assemble, redress grievances, be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, etc.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Buying back guns might be tough, but they're probably not going to just destroy themselves. I guess you could just seize them and destroy them without offering compensation. You do have a lot of government debt, after all. It would be hard, but it's not going to get any easier, so you might as well just get on with it.

This is assuming that the results of such confiscation are better than the current situation. You would have massive non-compliance both of individuals and law enforcement on such a seizure order, and likely far more civil disturbance than whatever we have now.

The US has problems with violence beyond just guns. Removing guns isn't going to solve that. The socio-economic and cultural issues that drive such violence need to be addressed, and would be far better uses of the resources in terms of lived saved per dollar spent and hour worked.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
Firstly, I never claimed the bill of rights was outdated. You took that out of context. Why would I say free speech is outdated? I wouldn't, and if you try to say I would, then you are arguing dishonestly.

Last time we had this discussion you said that. There is no dishonesty on my part

Please show me some examples that show theses graphs are inaccuracte or otherwise cherry picked.

I expect you'll disregard these out of hand as you have with other pieces of evidence as you demand impossible perfection

“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

I have provided evidence above which directly undermines your claims.

That study which you did not even have the common courtesy to link to? I want to make sure we are talking about the same study, because if so taking the results of two random call surveys and amalgamating them (rather than looking at actual available data like the CDC and FBI statistics I have previously mentioned) does not strike me as scientifically sound.

ALso using data from surveys that are at least 15 years old is not an accurate reflection when I have demonstrated that many trends for firearm death and violent crime have been on the decline.

If you feel, as you previously stated. that "the gun rights agenda is misaligned with the truth of the situation" I would be interested in seeing you evidence to support this position.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
It's a really big problem, and maybe none of us will be alive to see the end of it, but you can start making inroads now.

 Smacks wrote:
What? these aren't even from gun facts?

 Smacks wrote:
Hardly, I will disregard the statistics about falling crime, as (has already been mentioned) crime is falling in Europe too, there is no demonstrable correlation between falling crime and gun ownership. If higher gun ownership really did lower crime, then the US would have the lowest crime in the world by a factor of a hundred, but it actually trails behind other similar countries.

 Smacks wrote:
The medical stats regarding self defence injuries aren't really a surprise. I don't think anyone was disputing that shooting at people from a distance is safer than hand to hand combat.

 Smacks wrote:
Well that is certainly surprising. Where is this from? I would certainly like to know how that data was accumulated?

 Smacks wrote:
Not really. You have provided evidence that crime is falling, and that shooting people might be safer than hand to hand combat. I never claimed anything different.

 Smacks wrote:
If I could find out more about the alleged 3 million self defence cases, then you might be onto something. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, but there's a overpowering smell of BS coming from that one.

 Smacks wrote:
The FBI and CDC didn't collect that kind of data. And that kind of data is actually quite important. You claim that an estimated 3 million people are using guns in self defence, but during this study which was large and covered a random cross-section, people were asked about how they were defending themselves with guns, and it transpired that most of them were claiming to be defending themselves but were actually (according to expert legal opinion) being aggressive and committing crimes. Potentially 1.51 million additional crimes.

 Smacks wrote:
Yeah, I'm sure human nature has completely changed in the last 15 years.

 Smacks wrote:
Well there is John Lott, the so called "gun rights guru". On the NRA payroll. From his own wiki page:

"John Lott claimed to have undertaken a national survey of 2,424 respondents in 1997, the results of which were the source for claims he had made beginning in 1997.[59] However, in 2000 Lott was unable to produce the data, or any records showing that the survey had been undertaken. He said the 1997 hard drive crash that had affected several projects with co-authors had destroyed his survey data set,[60] the original tally sheets had been abandoned with other personal property in his move from Chicago to Yale, and he could not recall the names of any of the students who he said had worked on it."

Sounds legit.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

You already have the possibility of "attacks" on rights, though. The Constitution isn't some magical document written by God, and it's silly to act like it is.

It's something written by humans. They can make mistakes. The second amendment has not borne out its imagined function. The militias that were imagined to be able to resist the federal government do not exist.

Not only do they not exist, but

1. they cannot exist. You cannot make a militia that can resist the federal government militarily. The value of professional soldiery (commitment, training, funding for equipment, like tanks and jets and drones) is too great.

2. the whole scenario is incoherent. There is not going to be a point where Obama declares himself supreme dictator of the United States and the military unanimously supports him and the only defense of the people is that they rise up together.

Frankly, you're already seeing immense government overreach and abuse of power and most of you don't care.

That's what it's going to look like. There isn't going to be a moment where the true enemy is revealed and it's you vs them.

All you're left with, in the end, are the same arguments everyone else has the world over, and for the most part they're not very good. People generally shouldn't have tools whose only purpose is to end the lives of other people.

It seems to me that there's probably a link between how trigger happy your police are and the ubiquity of guns there. I don't mean to say you can't make improvements to your police forces - you certainly can. But I don't think the current problem came out of nowhere, and one of the causes is probably the extreme likelihood that someone could pull a gun on them.

Actually, it seems like I was wrong here and your states should be able to do pretty much whatever they want with gun laws without changing the constitution, even setting aside the possibility that the federal government might be able to as well.

So you seem to have reasonably clear legal paths to banning guns if you have the political will to do so.

You do have lots of issues you should work on, I agree. You should just work on gun violence, too. The vast majority of people do not need a tool whose only purpose is to kill other people.

It's a really big problem, and maybe none of us will be alive to see the end of it, but you can start making inroads now.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
You claimed the stats were cherry picked. Demonstrate this or concede the point

You claimed more gun control resulted in less crime. That was demonstrated to be false.

Were they all legal experts? How many self defense claims turned out to be criminal acts (with evidence please) as your "potential" is not sourced.

Crime, society, laws, and customs do. Of course if you want to ignore recent data and scientific studies you are more than welcome to. Next time you have a headache just ask your doctor to drill a hole in your head to let the evil spirits out. If you're going to ignore recent developments you may as well do it properly

And what about Bugs Bunny? I didn't mention him either, but if you have to resort to ad hominems and attempting to bring up events from 18 years ago to discredit current studies (which I did not enter into this discussion) and an entire group of people then that shows how untenable your position is. Even if we accept your criticism how do the actions of one individual show "the gun rights agenda is misaligned with the truth of the situation"?

 angelofvengeance wrote:
USA: 38 rampage attacks in the space of 5yrs... Does that not say something to you guys?

 angelofvengeance wrote:
You fix it with strict firearms control measures..

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
For a little perspective on how other countries compare with the US for mass killings



Not even in the top 5 of more developed nations.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:
You fix it with strict firearms control measures..

Firearms control isn't going to stop people from wanting to kill other people, nor remove the means to do so.

 Henry wrote:

You're right on those two counts but that ignores how easy the act is made with guns, which is a contributing factor to how quickly violence escalates.
(although any sort of gun control in America is pissing in the wind due to the saturation of weapons)

 Smacks wrote:
That list also just happens to include the Anders Breivik incident, which was the single worst attack by a lone gunman ever. He accounts for almost half of the "rest of the world kills" on his own. And 8 of those people were actually killed when he bombed the parliament building, not during the shooting. I don't know if it's fair to conflate terrorist attacks with rampage killings.

The list also conveniently starts starts just after the Virginia Tech massacre, which was the biggest in US history. I don't know if that's on purpose, but it could be another example of selective sampling.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

You already have the possibility of "attacks" on rights, though. The Constitution isn't some magical document written by God, and it's silly to act like it is.

I'm an atheist, so I certainly don't think it's anything produced by any deity. However, It defines the fundamental structure of our government and contains many essential protections against the abuse of that system.

It's something written by humans. They can make mistakes. The second amendment has not borne out its imagined function. The militias that were imagined to be able to resist the federal government do not exist.

That aspect is only one of a number of aspects. However, yes, it was intended, and still is, that the state not have a monopoly on the means of force.

However, "militias" were also precursors to the modern US military, the nation was intended to be defended by citizen soldiers, not originally by a professional soldiery. When the US went to war in the 19th century, this was generally done by mobilizing state militias into Federal service. The US has no permanent mandate to maintain a vast standing military. The US has had vast and powerful armed forces before, only to draw them down dramatically, particularly following the US Civil War and the First World War. Will the modern massive US military establishment survive into the far future? Who knows, but the constitution is built on the assumption that this is not so.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Not only do they not exist, but

1. they cannot exist. You cannot make a militia that can resist the federal government militarily. The value of professional soldiery (commitment, training, funding for equipment, like tanks and jets and drones) is too great.

In open conventional warfare? Sure.

However, the lessons of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Afghanistan again, and Iraq, should be more than clear enough to show that even relatively minimally equipped forces can drain and eventually force the capitulation (in some form or fashion) of great powers.

I mean, the US dropped more ordnance on Vietnam than they did on Germany and Japan combined, won every conventional battle, and still was forced out. The Soviets encountered much the same problems in Afghanistan. For all the tanks, smart weapons, jets, aircraft carriers, missiles, extensive training, and funding the US military has had, it wasn't enough to sculpt Iraq into the form we wanted it. It hasn't pacified Afghanistan.

 Vaktathi wrote:
That said, the Federal government is not the only government within the US. There are State, County, Municipal, City, etc governments. It is within living memory that such institutions abused their power over their citizens, or protected those who did, in ways that resulted in physical and in some cases lethal harm to certain sections of their populations. Part of the problem gun control has such a controversial history in the US is because quite frequently it was enacted in a discriminatory manner or in response to racial tensions, from CA's Mulford Act to the revisions of the 1834 Tennessee state constitution, and dozens of others.

 Vaktathi wrote:

2. the whole scenario is incoherent. There is not going to be a point where Obama declares himself supreme dictator of the United States and the military unanimously supports him and the only defense of the people is that they rise up together.

You're barking up the wrong tree here, you won't find me amongst the crowd desperately hoping for this scenario, expecting "No-Bama" to declare himself God Emperor of the US and take his rightful place as the anti-christ in 2016 . Yes, we have crazies like that. No, that's not really the scenario we're envisioning.

 Vaktathi wrote:

All you're left with, in the end, are the same arguments everyone else has the world over, and for the most part they're not very good. People generally shouldn't have tools whose only purpose is to end the lives of other people.

Only if you're ignoring the above points, self defense, hunting, and sporting purposes.


That's how you get awkward situations like the 2012 London Olympics where UK shooting competitors could not train for their events with target pistols in England, Wales or Scotland

 Vaktathi wrote:

It seems to me that there's probably a link between how trigger happy your police are and the ubiquity of guns there. I don't mean to say you can't make improvements to your police forces - you certainly can. But I don't think the current problem came out of nowhere, and one of the causes is probably the extreme likelihood that someone could pull a gun on them.

Again, addressing the underlying socio-economic issues that generate such violence and crime, and addressing issues with police training and the justice system, will save a lot more lives for the relative investment in time and effort. Even if you start confiscating guns, the last guns that are going to get taken off the streets are, well, the guns on the streets and those unwilling to follow the law.

Gun violence (and indeed, violence in general) levels in the US tend to be concentrated heavily in certain areas, strongly tied to socio-economic factors. In most areas, violence (and gun violence) levels aren't particularly out whack with most of industrialized Europe, which should be indicative that, guns or no, the problem is with social, cultural, and economic factors, not firearms specifically.

 Smacks wrote:
I claimed that some of the data on gunfacts had been cherry picked and was misleading. Since you insist on me going there and finding an example, I have:

Here is quote from http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/guns-in-other-countries/

"Fact: Britain has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe, more so than the United States or even South Africa. They also have the second highest overall crime rate in the European Union. In 2008, Britain had a violent crime rate nearly five times higher than the United States (2034 vs. 446 per 100,000 population)"

This "fact" is misleading because the definition of "violent crime" and how crimes are recorded is different in the UK, and includes such violence as (real example) a woman who threw a biscuit at someone, and a child who brushed his sibling with a stinging nettle.

I have been to South Africa and the idea that the UK has more violent crime is just insane.

So now I have provided an example for you, which was easy to find. So I stand by my assertion that gunfacts has an obvious bias, and can't be trusted as an impartial source of information.

 Smacks wrote:
That's an oversimplification of what I claimed, and you didn't demonstrate anything.

 Smacks wrote:
I've linked it for you before. And you seem to have found it again. If you aren't going to acknowledge it then suit yourself. However, it is evidence that guns are more likely to be used aggressively to intimidate, rather than as a last resort for self defence. If true, that undermines your whole argument. I think it is true, I've seen how people drive cars, I find it hard to believe that people who are so irresponsible behind the wheel, would suddenly become responsible when behind the trigger.

We analyzed data from two national random-digit-dial surveys conducted under the auspices of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Center, we examined the extent and nature of offensive gun use. We found that firearms are used far more often to frighten and intimidate than they are used in self-defense.

Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, we investigated how and when guns are used in the home. We found that guns in the home are used more often to frighten intimates than to thwart crime

 Smacks wrote:
15 years was hardly the drill in your head era of medicine. And I'm not ignoring recent studies. That is the most recent study of it's kind, trying to examine how guns are actually being used, as opposed to how people are claiming to use them.

Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004)

“Overall crime rates have declined in the past decade, and violent crimes, including homicides specifically, have declined in the past 5 years,” the report notes. “Between 2005 and 2010, the percentage of firearm-related violent victimizations remained generally stable.” Meanwhile, “firearm-related death rates for youth ages 15 to 19 declined from 1994 to 2009.” Accidents are down, too: “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

“Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

 Smacks wrote:
I still see John Lott's more guns less crime ideas being put forward. That is still the agenda that is pushed by groups like the NRA. But again the US has the most guns, and they don't have less crime than anywhere else, so the idea is clearly not reflected by reality, thus not aligned with what is true.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
USA: 38 rampage attacks in the space of 5yrs... Does that not say something to you guys?

 angelofvengeance wrote:
You fix it with strict firearms control measures..

 Henry wrote:
Well done Dreadclaw, you win the internetz today for wilful misuse of statistics.

 Smacks wrote:
That list also just happens to include the Anders Breivik incident, which was the single worst attack by a lone gunman ever. He accounts for almost half of the "rest of the world kills" on his own. And 8 of those people were actually killed when he bombed the parliament building, not during the shooting. I don't know if it's fair to conflate terrorist attacks with rampage killings.

 Smacks wrote:
The list also conveniently starts starts just after the Virginia Tech massacre, which was the biggest in US history. I don't know if that's on purpose, but it could be another example of selective sampling.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Common violence, stuff like robberies and back alley killings, are down to probably their lowest levels in history, even in the US. The high profile killings are exactly that, high profile. They're shock events. Violence and killing as a whole is down, but shockingness (particularly as most such massacres of the past were generally criminal on criminal, such as the St Valentines Day massacre) of their nature is up.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Henry wrote:
Well done Dreadclaw, you win the internetz today for wilful misuse of statistics.

MIsleading would have been if I only gave the first column. I was honest enough to how plenty of other data also for posters here to examine

 Henry wrote:

If somebody killed four people today in Luxembourg, they would have a deaths per 1,000,000 of 7.9, putting it second on your table. It would be rediculous to suddenly start talking about the outrageous amount of mass murder being carried out in Luxembourg because a single event does not create a pattern.

What I'm saying is that at such low occurrences of mass murder being carried out in other countries, your table is meaningless for saying the US is not in the top five.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Henry wrote:

If somebody killed four people today in Luxembourg, they would have a deaths per 1,000,000 of 7.9, putting it second on your table. It would be rediculous to suddenly start talking about the outrageous amount of mass murder being carried out in Luxembourg because a single event does not create a pattern.

What I'm saying is that at such low occurrences of mass murder being carried out in other countries, your table is meaningless for saying the US is not in the top five.

It's also, in the eyes of most of us in the US, a table that shows how meaningless it is to remove millions of firearms from law abiding citizens.

 d-usa wrote:

It does show that Europe has less per capita incidents and deaths than the US.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
So to disprove the statistics that I provided you quoted sources that I did not bring up in this discussion? That is an interesting line of argument.

 Smacks wrote:
That's an oversimplification of what I claimed, and you didn't demonstrate anything.

It is what you claimed. It was wrong; http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/300/661745.page#8088905
"But I believe if you look at the specific cities over time, gun crime had actually dropped since tighter gun controls were introduced."
I specifically mentioned Chicago and District of Columbia which have strict gun control but also higher crime. You seemed content to ignore both these examples.

if you are unprepared to do so then that speaks volumes as to your intention.

You are ignoring actual statistics from the FBI, CDC, and other reputable sources in favour of phone surveys.

The fact that you use your own opinion that because people in the UK are "so irresponsible" behind the wheel then US citizens should not own guns as a serious line of argument is beyond ridicule.

Your response was to say"Secondly, the data is sourced from the FBI, CDC etc... but it is also cherry picked, sometimes in quite a misleading way." so rather than actually show this cherry picking of the stats you went to attack a source not discussed.

For your convenience here are some more recent stats again as you ignored them (as predicted);

So for the purposes of statistics we should ignore a pertinent sample? The irony of this from the poster who claimed that the FBI and CDC stats were cherry picked (with no evidence of this either) just beggers belief.

 Smacks wrote:
The list also conveniently starts starts just after the Virginia Tech massacre, which was the biggest in US history. I don't know if that's on purpose, but it could be another example of selective sampling.

I do not know the reason for this either. If you have the figures there would that have jumped the US to the top of the list?

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Common violence, stuff like robberies and back alley killings, are down to probably their lowest levels in history, even in the US. The high profile killings are exactly that, high profile. They're shock events. Violence and killing as a whole is down, but shockingness (particularly as most such massacres of the past were generally criminal on criminal, such as the St Valentines Day massacre) of their nature is up.

I remember visiting the LA area in the late 90s.... Growing up in Oregon, my parents had the nightly habit of watching local news "for the weather".

The LA local news went something like this "Good evening, I'm Tom Tucker. Tonight on Channel 5 news, in LA there were 10 robberies, 4 convenience stores held up, 7 muggings and 3 murders... Here's Joe with news on the Rams" That was in the "preamble" never to be mentioned again in a half hour news cast.


Yes, mass shootings are terrible things, and yes, guns may have made the opportunity and means worse. But the fact still remains that in a country the size of the US, with the size of it's population, the fact that school shootings are STILL national news headlines, is because they are so rare. And because they are rare, I fail to see a reason why we need to destroy the rights of millions more people, just to stop a couple nutters.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Yes, mass shootings are terrible things, and yes, guns may have made the opportunity and means worse. But the fact still remains that in a country the size of the US, with the size of it's population, the fact that school shootings are STILL national news headlines, is because they are so rare. And because they are rare, I fail to see a reason why we need to destroy the rights of millions more people, just to stop a couple nutters.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9414540/A-history-of-mass-shootings-in-the-US-since-Columbine.html wrote:
Excerpted from the above:

June 2013 - John Zawahri, an unemployed 23-year-old, kills five people in a rampage which begins at his father home and ends in Santa Monica College's library.

September 2013 - Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor and former Navy man, engages police in a running firefight in the Washington D.C. industrial complex before being shot and killed. Thirteen people were killed and three injured.

June 2015 - White supremacist, Dylann Roof, begins shooting in a historic black church in an attempt to start a race-war. He kills nine people.

August 2015 - Vester Lee Flanagan II aka Bryce Williams shoots dead two former colleagues from the WDBJ7 news team.

Wiki link above wrote:
January 10, 2013 Taft, California 0 2 A gunman entered a science classroom of Taft Union High School with a 12 gauge shotgun and opened fire. A 16-year-old male student, identified as Bowe Cleveland, was shot in the chest and critically wounded. Another student was shot at, but was not hit. The classroom teacher, Ryan Heber, convinced him to drop his weapon, and the gunman followed his order and was later arrested. Additionally, Heber suffered a minor wound from being grazed by a shotgun pellet during the ordeal. The gunman was suspected to be a 16-year-old student of the school, Bryan Oliver. Cleveland and the other student that was shot at are both believed to be intended targets of the gunman. On January 14, Oliver was charged with two counts of attempted murder and assault with a firearm.[378][379]

January 15, 2013 St. Louis, Missouri 0 2 A gunman shot an administrator in his office on the fourth floor of Stevens Institute of Business and Arts, wounding him. The suspected gunman, Sean Johnson, a part-time student, shot and wounded himself on a stairwell. Both the administrator and Johnson were hospitalized in stable conditions. Johnson was charged with three felony charges, including assault.[380]

January 15, 2013 Hazard, Kentucky 3 0 Two people were shot and killed and a third person was wounded at the parking lot of Hazard Community and Technical College. The third victim, 12-year-old Taylor Cornett, died from her wounds the next day. 21-year-old Dalton Lee Stidham was arrested and charged with three counts of murder.[381]

January 16, 2013 Chicago, Illinois 1 0 A 17-year-old boy, Tyrone Lawson, was shot to death in a parking lot of Chicago State University. The shooting happened after high school basketball games were being held on the university campus, and Lawson was a spectator at the event. Police arrested two people after the shooting and recovered a weapon.[382]

March 18, 2013 Orlando, Florida 1 0 At the University of Central Florida, 30-year-old student James Oliver Seevakumaran pulled a fire alarm went off at the Tower 1 dormitory. According to plans he had written, Seevakumaran intended to attract a large amount of people inside the building to gather and shoot them. He then pointed a handgun at his roommate and threatened to shoot him inside their dormitory room. Seevakumaran released his roommate who ran into a bathroom to call 911. Seevakumaran then fatally shot himself in the head. Authorities found an assault weapon, a couple hundred rounds of ammunition and four homemade bombs inside his backpack.[387]

April 12, 2013 Christiansburg, Virginia 0 2 Two women were wounded during a shooting at the campus of New River Community College. Neil Allen MacInnis was taken into custody.[388]

April 16, 2013 Grambling, Louisiana 0 3 Three students were shot and injured on the campus of Grambling State University.[389]

May 14, 2013 Birmingham, Alabama 0 0 Allegedly responding to a student fight, a parent brought and fired a weapon on the campus of Ossie Ware Mitchell Middle School. No one was injured.[394]

June 7, 2013 Santa Monica, California 6 4 2013 Santa Monica shooting: Six people, including the shooter died and four others were wounded at or near the campus of Santa Monica College when a lone gunman opened fire on the school campus library after shooting at several cars and a city bus at separate crime scenes. The gunman, John Zawahri, was fatally wounded by responding police officers. Among the dead were the shooter's father and brother, both of whom died inside a house that was set on fire a mile or so from the Santa Monica College campus.[395][396]

June 20, 2013 West Palm Beach, Florida 2 0 Two custodians at Alexander W. Dreyfoos School were shot and killed. The deceased were Christopher Marshall, 48, and his boss Ted Orama, 56. A third custodian was suspected in the killings and was apparently on the lam.[397]

August 20, 2013 Decatur, Georgia 0 0 A man with an AK-47 fired six shots inside the front office of Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, an elementary school. After the gunman fired the shots, he barricaded himself in the office and police at the scene returned fire. Nobody was injured. Children had to leave the building and were being guided to a corner of a field, where they were picked up by their parents. The alleged gunman is a 20-year-old male named Michael Brandon Hill. In the front office of the school, Hill talked with Antoinette Tuff, a woman who worked in the front office, who had called 9-1-1. Tuff talked him down, and helped him surrender to the police before anyone was hurt. Hill was apprehended.[398][399][400][401][402][403]

August 23, 2013 Sardis, Mississippi 1 2 A student, Roderick Bobo, 15, was shot during a football game at North Panola High School in what was termed as a gang-related shooting. Two others were injured in the shooting, and three men were charged as being responsible for the crime.[404][405]

October 21, 2013 Sparks, Nevada 2 2 12-year-old seventh-grade student Jose Reyes opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun at the basketball courts of Sparks Middle School, injuring one student in the shoulder. A teacher, Michael Landsberry, who was trying to intervene with the gunman was then shot and killed by Reyes, as he was standing on a playground. Reyes shot and wounded student who tried to come to Landsberry's assistance after he fell onto the ground. That student suffered an injury to his abdomen. Reyes then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The shooting happened before classes, and the school was evacuated and was closed for the week.[411][412][413]

November 2, 2013 Greensboro, North Carolina 0 1 A 21-year-old student was shot and wounded at North Carolina A&T State University. The victim was hospitalized for serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The university was temporarily locked down that night, and the lockdown was lifted about half an hour later. No suspects are in custody.[414][415]

November 3, 2013 Lithonia, Georgia 0 2 A Stephenson High School student and a janitor were shot in an apparent confrontation between team members and a group of teens who were not attending the school. Both were innocent bystanders in the ordeal.[416]

November 13, 2013 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 0 3 After classes ended, at least one gunman came out of the woods and opened fire on three students as they were walking to their cars at Brashear High School. One student was grazed in the head, another was struck in the neck and shoulder, and a third was hit in the leg and foot. Six people were taken into custody. The shooting is believed to be drug-related.[417]

December 13, 2013 Centennial, Colorado 2 0 18-year-old Karl Pierson shot 17-year-old student Claire Davis in the head, fatally injuring her, in a hallway in Arapahoe High School. Pierson then committed suicide by shooting himself. Pierson was armed with a shotgun, three Molotov cocktails, and a machete. He was looking for a faculty member who had disciplined him, and intended to shoot him. Claire Davis died from her injuries on December 21, 2013.[420][421][422]

December 19, 2013 Fresno, California 0 1 Four teens went into Edison High School in what was believed as a gang-initiation process. After accosting a 62-year-old woman about a mile away from school grounds, they found an athletic trainer who taught at Edison High and shot him several times in the leg and stomach.[423][424]

January 9, 2014 Jackson, Tennessee 0 1 A student was charged with bringing a gun to school at Liberty Technology Magnet High School and shooting a classmate in the thigh. The incident occurred outside the front of the school.[425][426]

January 13, 2014 New Haven, Connecticut 0 1 A 14-year-old boy was shot outside of a basketball game at the Hillhouse High School athletic facility, suffering wounds in his hand and leg.[427]

January 14, 2014 Roswell, New Mexico 0 3 Two people were shot and wounded inside the gymnasium of Berrendo Middle School, at about 8:10 am. An 11-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were airlifted to a hospital in Lubbock, Texas in critical condition. The 12-year-old suspected shooter, Mason Campbell, a seventh grade student, was apprehended at the scene after he was talked down by a staff member and dropped the shotgun. A staff member received minor injuries. Campbell is facing charges of three counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He faces a maximum sentence of confinement in a juvenile detention facility until he is 21 years old.[428][429][430]

January 17, 2014 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 0 2 A student allegedly shot two other students in the gymnasium at Delaware Valley Charter School. Both victims, a male and a female, were shot in the arm. They were taken to a nearby hospital and are in stable condition, police say. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said at a news conference that the shooter ran out of the school after the shooting but was taken into custody near his home. 17-year-old Raisheem Rochwell was arrested and charged as an adult for aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and firearms offenses.[431][432]

January 20, 2014 Chester, Pennsylvania 0 1 One person was shot and critically injured at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. The incident occurred around 10:00 pm outside the university sport’s complex and led to an 8-hour university lock-down. The suspect was not immediately found.[433]

January 21, 2014 West Lafayette, Indiana 1 0 A 21-year-old student, Andrew Boldt, was shot and killed in a classroom building on the campus of Purdue University. A suspect, 24-year-old student Cody Cousins, was arrested and charged with murder.[434]

January 24, 2014 Orangeburg, South Carolina 1 0 A 20-year-old student was shot and killed at South Carolina State University. A 19-year-old was arrested and charged with murder.[435][436]

January 25, 2014 Los Angeles, California 1 0 A man was shot and killed at Los Angeles Valley College. Two suspects were arrested in the fatal shooting.[437]

January 31, 2014 Des Moines, Iowa 0 1 After a basketball game at North High School, there was gunfire in a parking lot of the school. Six males in a black jeep had came moments before the shooting and returned at the time it happened. A 15-year-old girl was injured by a ricocheting bullet. While officers were gaining control of the area, teachers on the scene led students into the school building for safety.[442]

February 10, 2014 Lyndhurst, Ohio 0 0 Five shots were fired in the parking lot of Charles F. Brush High School, including one which hit an unoccupied police car. No one was reported to be injured, though a school basketball game was going on at the time.[444][445]

February 12, 2014 Los Angeles, California 0 1 A male victim was shot in the back in a possible gang-related drive-by shooting near the University of Southern California. The suspect fled into the University Campus. The victim was last reported in stable condition before being transported to a local hospital.[446]

April 9, 2014 Greenville, North Carolina 0 0 Just after the lunch hour, at D. H. Conley High School, a car drove past the school and witnesses said an occupant reached out of a car window and fired shots in the direction of the school. This incident occurred on Worthington and Tull Roads, directly in front of the school. No one was injured.[451]

April 11, 2014 Detroit, Michigan 1 0 After a Friday evening student awards ceremony called "Grammy Night", four men who were affiliated with a gang fired into a crowd in the parking lot of East English Village Preparatory Academy; one nineteen-year-old teen, Darryl Smith, was fatally shot in the head. Smith was not a student at the academy.[452][453]

May 4, 2014 Augusta, Georgia 0 1 Two men fired shots inside a dormitory at Paine College on Sunday, injuring one student in the head. Neither of the suspects were students at the college.[455]

May 5, 2014 Augusta, Georgia 0 1 An active shooter situation was reported at Paine College on Monday with one person reported to be shot. The suspect was apparently apprehended and in custody. It was the second shooting incident to occur at the college campus in two days.[456]

May 8, 2014 Lawrenceville, Georgia 0 1 A person was shot on a student parking lot roof at Georgia Gwinnett College, receiving an injury. The specific cause has not been identified.[457]

May 14, 2014 Richmond, California 0 1 A 14-year-old student was injured during a drive-by shooting in front of John F. Kennedy High School at 8:30 am. He was shot as he was running towards the school campus after a fight took place. The student suffered a serious but stable injury to his leg. Police are searching for a suspect.[458]

May 23, 2014 Isla Vista, California 7 13 2014 Isla Vista killings. 22-year-old Elliot Rodger went on a stabbing and shooting rampage just outside the main campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Some campus buildings were within the route of the shootings. The spree began when Rodger stabbed to death three men in his apartment. Leaving the scene in his car, he drove to a sorority house, where he shot four people outside, fatally wounding two female students. He drove to a nearby deli and shot to death a male student who was inside. He then sped through Isla Vista, shooting at bystanders and striking four people with his car. Rodger exchanged gunfire with police twice during the killing spree. The rampage ended when his car crashed into a parked vehicle and came to a stop. Rodger committed suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.[459][460]

June 5, 2014 Seattle, Washington 1 3 Three people were shot inside a hallway in Seattle Pacific University. One student died. The gunman was tackled by a student as he was reloading his shotgun, and arrested at the scene. The suspected shooter is identified as 26-year-old Aaron Ybarra.[461][462][463]

June 10, 2014 Troutdale, Oregon 2 1 At around 8:30 am, shots were fired at Reynolds High School. 14-year-old freshman Emilio Hoffman was killed,[464] a physical education teacher was injured, and the gunman, 15-year-old Jared Padgett, exchanged gunfire with police officers and then committed suicide in a restroom stall.[465][466]

September 9, 2014 Miami, Florida 0 1 Towards the end of the school day, one alternative school student in Miami was shot as a small group of students tussled. The injury was minor, requiring hospitalization, and five young adults were later questioned.[467]

September 27, 2014 Terre Haute, Indiana 0 1 A 20-year-old Indiana State University (ISU) student was shot by another ISU on Saturday inside a residence hall. The injuries were not fatal, and a full recovery was expected. The shooter was arrested on the following day.
[468]

September 30, 2014 Louisville, Kentucky 0 1 One student was shot and injured at Fern Creek Traditional High School. The incident occurred around 1pm, reportedly after student became enraged in a hallway and pulled out a gun. The student was arrested later that day.[473][474]

October 3, 2014 Fairburn, Georgia 1 0 After a homecoming football game, a fatal shooting of Kristofer Hunter, 17, occurred in the Langston Hughes High School parking lot. The assailant, Eric Dana Johnson Jr., 18, turned himself in a week later.[475][476]

October 24, 2014 Marysville, Washington 5 1 Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting. At around 10:39 a.m. PST, officials ordered a lock-down of the school due to a "emergency situation." A gunman, later identified as Jaylen Fryberg, who was a student in the school, shot five students, fatally wounding four, in the school cafeteria before committing suicide.[477]

November 20, 2014 Tallahassee, Florida 1 3 Florida State University shooting. At around 12:39 a.m. EST, a gunman opened fired in or near the Strozier Library at Florida State University. Three people suffered gunshot injuries and were taken to a local area hospital. One was in critical condition, another was in good condition, and the third was shortly released after treatment. The gunman, later identified as Myron May, an alumnus from the school, started firing towards responding police officers and was fatally shot by them on the steps of the library.[478][479][480][481]

November 20, 2014 Miami, Florida 1 1 Two teens were shot Thursday during a fight on Miami Carol City High School property. One of the boys who was shot died.[482]

December 5, 2014 Claremore, Oklahoma 1 0 38-year-old Thomas Floyd Fees, a former Tulsa police officer, fired two gunshots the campus of Rogers State University before committing suicide. He had previously been arrested the day before for entering a female student's dormitory room with observable intent to commit a sexual assault.[483]

December 12, 2014 Portland, Oregon 0 3 Rosemary Anderson High School shooting. On December 12, 2014, an unknown gunman shot three students and a man outside Rosemary Anderson High School in north Portland. A 16-year-old girl was in critical condition, while the others suffered minor injuries. An 18 year-old man was arrested in connection with the shooting.[484]

January 15, 2015 Milwaukee, Wisconsin 0 3 A 15-year-old boy, a student’s father, and a teacher were each injured at a Wisconsin Lutheran High School shooting that occurred Thursday night in the school parking lot at Wisconsin Lutheran High School. The student had unspecified injuries that were treated. The father was shot in the knee and the teacher was grazed in the toe. A 36-year-old man was charged in the shooting.[485]

January 16, 2015 Ocala, Florida 0 2 Two were injured in gunfire that occurred after a Friday night basketball game. One was injured directly by a bullet, the other by ricocheting glass.[486]

February 4, 2015 Frederick, Maryland 0 2 Two students were shot outside Frederick High School near the gymnasium of Frederick High School during a junior varsity (JV) boy's basketball game. Approximately 200 students, staff, and faculty were placed on lockdown for several hours after the shooting while police searched for the suspects. No suspects have been apprehended, although witnesses report seeing four black males dressed all in black who are considered by police to be suspects in this shooting.[487]

March 30, 2015 Universal City, Missouri 0 1 Police said one person has been arrested for a shooting at Pershing Elementary School. The shooting occurred in the parking lot, with a 34-year-old-man being shot in the buttocks.[489]

April 13, 2015 Goldsboro, North Carolina 1 0 A faculty member was shot and killed in the school library of Wayne Community College. The suspected gunman was arrested in Florida the next day, and is charged with murder.[490]

April 27, 2015 Lacey, Washington 0 0 In the North Thurston High School Shooting, a student at North Thurston High School walked into the commons area and fired two shots into the ceiling from a .357 magnum pistol. Brady Olson, a teacher at the school, was able to tackle the student before they could turn the gun on other students. No one was injured or killed.[491][492]

May 5, 2015 Conyers, Georgia 0 0 Police say a 14-year-old eighth grade boy brought his father's gun to school. The child was arrested and faces charges that include possession of a firearm by a minor.[493]

May 12, 2015 Jacksonville, Florida 0 2 Police report that a 16-year-old shot 5 bullets into a school bus and injured 2 students. Apparently, there was an argument that touched on previous events.[495]

May 24, 2015 Flint, Michigan 0 7 In the early morning hours of Memorial Day weekend, a group of people were at Southwestern Classical Academy in the parking lot. Shots rang out and 7 were injured, with two men being apprehended and charged.[495]

May 24, 2015 Macon, North Carolina 0 0 Tragedy averted. On Thursday morning, a bus driver argued with a man and woman on school property with multiple guns and an intent to commit a crime. One of them had stabbed and shot a cat on school property and apparently drug use was involved. Police arrested Adam Conley and Kathryn Jeter with the aid of a Taser, but lacking any further harm to anyone.[496]