Mass Shootings the last six months

[TeeDub]

I guess no one on this forum can make a case for the need of private ownership of ammunition clips that hold more than ten rounds.

Good. Let's ban them.

Why is ten the arbitrary number?   Why not 8?

[Conan71]

WRONG! It's what happens as a result of cutting out health services and out sourcing the issues to the Prison Industrial Complex.

How do you think public education will fare in another 20 years as a result of the voucher system?

While there have been budget cuts, there is a lot of legal wrangling intertwined in closings and trimming the size of some institutions.  It was literally the ruling of one judge which closed the Hissom Center in Sand Springs.

[dbacks fan]

WRONG! It's what happens as a result of cutting out health services and out sourcing the issues to the Prison Industrial Complex.

How do you think public education will fare in another 20 years as a result of the voucher system?

WRONG DUMB A$$! The vast lot of those institutions were closed because of the physical/sexual abuse, neglect and inhumane treatment of patients in those facilities by the workers that were employed. What started the end of Hissom was the death of a neglected patient there.

Homeward Bound vs. The Hissom Memorial Center

I. True Story

In early American society, individuals with developmental, mental/physical disabilities and elderly were cared for by the family unit. As the population of America increased and became more industrialized, society and family life became more complex because family members worked outside the home and often away from the community, so the care of individuals with disabilities became more haphazard. The numbers of homeless increased and many were abused/neglected. As a result, the need for more comprehensive program for individuals with developmental disabilities, etc. became urgent.

Informal groups were formed to care for large numbers of individuals with developmental disabilities, etc. These groups lacked sufficient funding and organization to adequately meet the needs of people with developmental disabilities. These groups were the beginning of institutions. The increased availability of institutions contributed to more incentive for families to place their family members and loved ones outside of the home.

The early history of institutions was not pretty. Individuals were chained to walls, beaten, subjected to poor hygiene and poor nutrition and were abused in ways which can hardly be imagined. The institutions were situated in the worst part of cities and in the country sides, “out of sight and out of mind.” The institution became a self-contained, self-serving and self-monitoring system. It had little or no transparency or outside oversight and many were run by directors who acted as if they owned this population. What happened in the institution stayed in the institution and outside contact/visits by families or others concerned on behalf of individuals were discouraged or not permitted at all.

The institutional model, disempowered families and local communities, which shifted the power to government entities which demanded full control or no control at all. If a family wanted to provide care for their own, they received little or no assistance; however, if they chose to give up their responsibility and place the individual in a government-run facility, the average cost to the taxpayers was $100,000 or more per year. Institutions resisting releasing individuals from their care because their own jobs depended on keeping them in the institution. Can you imagine you or your loved one being kept in an institution of any kind, i.e. hospital, etc. simply because someone’s job depended on it? (Pause)

a. Although there were many good people working in institutions, the system failed because it was self-contained, self-serving and self-monitoring, i.e., government as a provider in an institution was training their own people, providing their own psychological services, social services, physical therapy, etc. and those who were supposed to be watchdogs for the system were getting a paycheck from the system, which had little or no incentive to challenge the system which resulted in abuse, neglect, corruption and cover-up.

http://etl.org/etlhistory.shtml

It was a class action suit filed in Federal Court.

http://pilcop.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Hissom_Complaint.pdf

[RecycleMichael]

Why is ten the arbitrary number?   Why not 8?

It is just a number. It could be 8. I don't have enough knowledge of guns to know what the usual amount of rounds are in a somewhat standard sized clip is.

But why do we allow 100 round magazines? Is it because gaspar just wants them?

It seems to me that only allowing clips of ten (or eight) rounds could be a reasonable way to try to slow down the mass killings. 

[AquaMan]

It should be noted that there was and is a difference between institutions like Hissom and centers that cared for and treated the mentally ill. When we closed Hissom it freed a lot of marginally affected residents who could with some help function in the general population. Group homes, supervised living arrangements and low end jobs took them from (often abused) inmate status to more fulfilling lives and contributing individuals. That was a positive step that one judge made.

Psych wards on the other hand were defunded and put crazies on the street to fend for themselves. People who needed meds and were dangerous to themselves and others. Those are the ones in tents along the freeways and ambling from one shelter to the next. That move made the correctional institutions thrive. It also was a shot in the arm for the rehab industry and private psych operations. Other than its economic benefit to stockholders in those industries it was a negative step stemming from government cutting costs.

[Hoss]

It is just a number. It could be 8. I don't have enough knowledge of guns to know what the usual amount of rounds are in a somewhat standard sized clip is.

But why do we allow 100 round magazines? Is it because gaspar just wants them?

It seems to me that only allowing clips of ten (or eight) rounds could be a reasonable way to try to slow down the mass killings. 

Agreed

But...

Some states already restrict magazine size

If we were to use 8 or even 10, both of the magazines that shipped with my firearms would be illegal (one has 12 round, the other 13).  A good number in my opinion to use would be 20 (some competiion pistols have that much).  That's the same number Maryland uses.

[RecycleMichael]

Thanks Hoss.

I agree. No private citizen should be allowed to own a magazine that holds more than 20 rounds. That is a reasonable limit to me. If that were the law, we would be a safer country.

I am trying to have a rational discussion of reasonable limits. If any of you disagree, please explain.

[Conan71]

IIRC, California limits to 10 on AR style guns and I believe the magazine is fixed so that the gun can only be re-loaded with stripper clips which would slow down the reloading process somewhat, but if an assailant is up against un-armed resistance, that's still not a panacea in terms of saving lives.

Remember, the worst mass killings in U.S. history to date did not even involve a gun, it involved a rental truck and jet air craft.  What did we do to protect against more attacks like that?  Limited access to certain government buildings and stepped up security.

As I've said before, it won't affect my life if I can't buy 30 round mags.  However, if there's no additional security measures added to protect children and their teachers, it will be as effective as issuing school kids woobie blankets to shield themselves from stray bullets.

[Red Arrow]

I agree. No private citizen should be allowed to own a magazine that holds more than 20 rounds. That is a reasonable limit to me. If that were the law, we would be a safer country.
I am trying to have a rational discussion of reasonable limits. If any of you disagree, please explain.

It only takes seconds to change a magazine.   Unless you are able to limit the number of magazines or bullets a person can own, I don't think limiting the magazine size really solves anything.  

[AquaMan]

IIRC, California limits to 10 on AR style guns and I believe the magazine is fixed so that the gun can only be re-loaded with stripper clips which would slow down the reloading process somewhat, but if an assailant is up against un-armed resistance, that's still not a panacea in terms of saving lives.

Remember, the worst mass killings in U.S. history to date did not even involve a gun, it involved a rental truck and jet air craft.  What did we do to protect against more attacks like that?  Limited access to certain government buildings and stepped up security.

As I've said before, it won't affect my life if I can't buy 30 round mags.  However, if there's no additional security measures added to protect children and their teachers, it will be as effective as issuing school kids woobie blankets to shield themselves from stray bullets.

Conan, the response was to increase regulations on fertilizers, increase tracking of purchases of bomb making materials, increased surveillance of the population and stepped up security. In short, an increase in regulations and monitoring. The NRA and the anti-regulation crowd only want increased security. That is their woobie blanket.

[Teatownclown]

Comprehensive background checks seems to be at the top of everyone's list in DC.

That will put an end to gun shows. These events are popular to those who hate reading and filling out forms.

[nathanm]

Comprehensive background checks seems to be at the top of everyone's list in DC.

The problem with relying solely on background checks is that people often buy a gun and only later go nutso. Most nutty people don't start out that way. My good friend didn't develop schizophrenia until he was over 30. (he has a family history of it, so it's not terribly surprising he ended up with it as well) He could have amassed quite the arsenal before then. That would have been sad, since he may well have done something..inadvisable..thanks to the voices in his head. (He's on meds now, all OK as long as he remains compliant)

Moreover, the criminals we don't want to have guns generally don't come by them legally. That's a problem with volume (leading to it being incredibly easy to steal a gun), not with who owns them. Ideally we'd require that any unattended gun be locked in a gun safe secured to the foundation or other load-bearing structure of the building in which the safe is located, and that the safe be secured by a both biometric data and a minimum six digit/turn combination lock, but that's a more onerous restriction than anybody would find reasonable.

I think the problem doesn't actually have anything to do with guns at all. It has to do with ridiculous attitudes we hold in this country that take people past the breaking point and by the way we make it hard to get care for mental health issues, both in terms of social stigma and in the lack of affordable care. Easy availability of guns here is worse for the Mexicans than it is for us.

[TulsaRufnex]

Can't do that, 30 years ago bed wetters decided it was cruel to keep the mentally ill from society.

I guess that's a social experiment gone bad, eh?

You mean, bedwetters like Ronald Reagan?  Now I think I've heard everything...  

http://www.cringely.com/2012/12/24/reagan-and-newtown/

At the same time Reagan was throwing ever more people into prison he was throwing people out of mental institutions — a habit he adopted as California governor in the late 1960s. When he came into office President Reagan inherited the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, a law that passed with huge bipartisan support and was intended to improve the quality of community mental heath care. Reagan immediately killed the law by refusing to fund it, thwarting the intentions of Congress.

Reagan was offended by the entire idea of public health policy: remember Just Say No?

The Reagan administration cut funding for mental health treatment and research throughout the 1980s and it has never recovered. The Administration changed Social Security policy to disenfranchise citizens who were disabled because of mental illness, making hundreds of thousands homeless. What they called the New Federalism resulted in mental health treatment moving from the public to the private sector and becoming mainly voluntary: mentally ill people had to want to get better and then generally had to pay for their own treatment.  No wonder it didn’t work.

Jump to Newtown just over a week ago where 20 year-old Adam Lanza managed to slip virtually unnoticed through the mental health system. Anyone who knew him knew he was troubled, but his family had enough money to keep him out of the system.

[TeeDub]

It seems to me that only allowing clips of ten (or eight) rounds could be a reasonable way to try to slow down the mass killings. 

Using that logic, if we limited beers to 8oz bottles it would cut drinking and driving deaths.    I don't buy causation.

[Ed W]

The problem with relying solely on background checks is that people often buy a gun and only later go nutso....

Another problem with background checks is that in order to be effective they'll have to access medical records.  If there's a requirement to check for a prospective gun buyer's mental health history, it means various government agencies will have the ability to search all electronic medical records, and that opens the door to snooping and abuse.  New laws always bring the possibility of unintended consequences.

Still, I'm completely in favor of keeping firearms out of the hands of stupid, incompetent people, which by definition is everyone except me.  I'm sure many of you feel the same.