Many Americans think of school shootings as mass casualty events involving an adolescent with an assault-style weapon. But a new study says that most recent school shootings orchestrated by teenagers do not fit that image — and they are often related to community violence.
The study, published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, analyzed 253 school shootings carried out by 262 adolescents in the US between 1990 and 2016.
It found that these adolescents were responsible for only a handful of mass casualty shootings, defined as those involving four or more gunshot fatalities. About half of the shootings analyzed — 119 — involved at least one death. Among the events, seven killed four or more people.
A majority of the shootings analyzed also involved handguns rather than assault rifles or shotguns, and they were often the result of “interpersonal disputes,” according to the researchers from University of South Carolina and University of Florida.
Except for all the murders you just acknowledged were lower with gun control, because guns escalate arguments and crimes into homicides since there’s no better tool for quickly and reliably killing someone.
I sure hope you’re not a doctor, because treating symptoms is exactly what they do until the underlying cause is discovered and addressed. If it can’t be cured, managing symptoms is literally their entire focus.
Not in your hospital though. Turn up with a broken arm? “Sorry, pain is just a symptom so we can’t give you anything for it. We also don’t think the bone sticking out of your arm is the actual cause, so we’re not going to address it until you’ve had 6 months of chemotherapy and undergone a colectomy because cancer can cause pain too. We’re not actually going to perform those proceedures, but if someone else does, come back and see us so we can give you new excuses”.
No, it wont. It will reduce the lethality and frequency of every single one of those things instead – an improvement you oppose.
You seem to be confused again. Name every single moral, effective change you can think of to reduce violence and crime and I’ll openly support every one of them. Universal healthcare, addressing wealth inequality, improving education? No problem. You can even raise my taxes to help fund them.
Then when you’re all out of ideas, I will say “Gun control is another moral, effective way to reduce the amount and severity of crime and violence” and you’ll throw a fit about “not that one, we will kill you if you try and implement that one”.
Your views on that one issue align perfectly with both Republicans and the gun-lobby that donates $16 million each year to them – money you give them.
Yeah, and you know the underlying cause, and are still advocating for treating only a symptom. A tool doesn’t cause people to use the tool. An inanimate object can not force people to use it; it has no power to compel action . But you insist on treating it as though it does. You insist on treating symptoms as though they were causes, while ignoring the cause entirely.
I’m tired of this. You want to take rights and insist that only the state has the power to use violence. Ultimately, you want to empower fascists rather than the people as a whole.
I’m done, because there’s literally no point at which you’re going to admit that a tool can’t force it’s own use.
A tool can’t force it’s own use. I’m happy to admit it and have never claimed otherwise.
Bur you’re not arguing with me, you’re arguing with a gun control advocate that lives in your head and believes whatever the gun-lobby has told hoi they believe.