Open carry in Texas / Gun Violence

[nickagneta]

This kid I'm learning shot at people with BB guns for fun. He had cut up his face with a razor for "fun." He came from a broken hone with no father.

No one did anything. He was sick and needed help.

The guns are a symptoms, not the cause of the rot in society.

Bring back institution's.
Educate the public on warning signs of mental health
Reform involuntary confinement.
Upgrade school security and provide funding for security
Oh and hire cops who will do their job

This would go farther to help prevent these tragedies from happening. Screaming about the NRA(who isn't even the top donor lobby group in the country) solves zip.

Please explain what you envision happening by the bolded above.

[Cman]

The story of an 11 year old survivor.

Mods I quoted the entire article, but thought it all relevant as it not only described the experience but also the effects it is having on this little girl afterward. Edit as you feel you need. Sorry for this but I thought it worthy of being an exception.

An 11-year-old survivor of the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas, feared the gunman would come back for her so she smeared herself in her friend's blood and played dead.

Miah Cerrillo spoke exclusively to CNN about her horrific experience that day inside the classroom where the mass shooting took place that killed 19 of her classmates and two of her teachers.

Miah said she and her classmates were watching the movie "Lilo and Stitch" in a classroom shared by two teachers, Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia. The students were finished with their lessons when the teachers got word there was a shooter in the building, she told CNN's "New Day."

One teacher went to lock the door, but Miah says the shooter was already right there — and shot out the window in the door.

She described it all happening so fast — her teacher backed into the classroom and the gunman followed. She told CNN he made eye contact with one of the teachers, said, "Goodnight," and then shot her.
He opened fire, shooting the other teacher and many of Miah's friends. She said bullets flew by her, and fragments hit her shoulders and head. The girl was later treated at the hospital and released with fragment wounds; she described to CNN that clumps of her hair were falling out now.

Miah said after shooting students in her class, the gunman went through a door into an adjoining classroom. She heard screams, and the sound of shots in that classroom. After the shots stopped, though, she says the shooter started playing loud music -- sad music, she said.

The girl and a friend managed to get her dead teacher's phone and call 911 for help. She said she told a dispatcher, "Please come ... we're in trouble."

Miah said she was scared the gunman would return to her classroom to kill her and a few other surviving friends. So, she dipped her hands in the blood of a classmate -- who lay next to her, already dead -- and then smeared the blood all over herself to play dead.
Miah said it felt like three hours that she lay there, covered in her classmate's blood, with her friends.
She told CNN she assumed at that point the police hadn't arrived on the scene yet.

She said afterward, she overheard talk of police waiting outside the school. As she recounted this part of the story to CNN, she started crying, saying she just didn't understand why they didn't come inside and rescue them.

Miah's mother said her daughter is traumatized and can't sleep. The child's parents have started a GoFundMe specifically to pay for her therapy.
In an effort to keep herself covered, Miah sat for the interview wrapped in a blanket, despite the warm temperatures.

A cellphone alarm accidentally went off during the interview, and Miah was visibly unnerved by the noise. Her mother said that's been happening a lot, and described an earlier incident where they were at a car wash and the sound of the vacuum cleaner "completely set her off."

Miah was too scared to speak on camera, or to a man, because of what she experienced, but she told CNN she wanted to share her story so people can know what it's like to live through a school shooting. She says hopefully it can help prevent a tragedy like this from happening to other children.

Already a "miracle baby"

Miah's mother said she was born with a tumor in her abdomen and wasn't expected to live much past her birth. She underwent extensive surgery to remove the tumor at age three; her mother already called her a "miracle baby" and said that's even truer now.
Her mother also told CNN that the morning of the shooting, Miah had an earache and she took her out of school to go to the doctor. On the way back, they stopped at Starbucks for a treat and her mother offered to let Miah skip school the rest of the day since it was one of the last days of classes before summer break and they were just watching movies

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/27/us/robb-shooting-survivor-miah-cerrillo/index.html

This article shows that not every victim is shot and killed or shot and wounded. Miah Cerrillo will be damaged in some way by this for the rest of her life. So will possibly hundreds of other students from Robb Elementary. And that doesn't even include the mom's, dads, grandparents, uncle's, aunt's, cousins, friends, and neighbors that need to unnecessarily move on without their loved one or ones.

Wow. That's all I can say.

[Roy H.]

This kid I'm learning shot at people with BB guns for fun. He had cut up his face with a razor for "fun." He came from a broken hone with no father.

No one did anything. He was sick and needed help.

The guns are a symptoms, not the cause of the rot in society.

Bring back institution's.
Educate the public on warning signs of mental health
Reform involuntary confinement.
Upgrade school security and provide funding for security
Oh and hire cops who will do their job

This would go farther to help prevent these tragedies from happening. Screaming about the NRA(who isn't even the top donor lobby group in the country) solves zip.

Let's all agree that mental health funding, more state-run psychiatric hospitals, and upgraded school security are all sensible things.  And, let's ignore for a minute that "mental health" has been something that has been cried about for generations without any significant resources put towards it.  We'll pretend we have a competent Congress, and those things will be immediately passed.

Where do you stand on these proposals, none of which involve banning guns?

1.  All guns must be registered

2.  All gun owners must be licensed, subject to training, with 10 year renewals

3.  Require a standardized background check and waiting period

4.  Make it easier for police to stop and frisk people in public who have a violent criminal record

5.  Trigger locks must be installed on all new guns

6.  Any mechanism used to make a gun more automatic is illegal

7.  Close the "gun show" loophole

8.  Keep the Castle Doctrine, but revert to standard self-defense laws in public

9.  Red flag laws

10.  Increase the age of gun ownership to age 21, unless somebody is serving in the military and/or has been honorably discharged

Thoughts?  Those are very basic, without touching magazine size or severely restricting gun ownership for the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners.

[keevsnick]

This is a very old blog post from a retired US military intelligence type, although I'm just encountering it now:
https://www.stonekettle.com/2015/06/bang-bang-sanity.html

Not only are the core ideas still relevant, but I think it might be the best, most pragmatic thing I've read on the subject.

It's quite a read, so here's some excerpts:

Whenever this comes up, I always ask: what laws would have prevented this latest slaughter?

The response is usually some vague hand waving about more background checks. But background checks wouldn’t have prevented Charleston. They wouldn’t have prevented Columbine. They wouldn’t have prevented Sandy Hook. They wouldn’t have prevented Aurora.  They wouldn’t have prevented Fort Hood, twice. They wouldn’t have kept Gabby Giffords from being shot in the head. They would not have stopped Christopher Dorner. Neither would banning assault weapons. Or high capacity magazines. Or mandating smart gun technology. Or more gun-free zones.

And in this, the NRA is provably correct.

But what both the anti-gun lobby and the pro-gun lobby get wrong is this: While it’s often true laws don’t stop criminals, that is not the law’s purpose.

Laws don’t stop crime. It would be nice if they did, but laws don’t stop crime. Instead laws give society legal recourse when its members engage in antisocial behavior.

If there wasn’t a law against theft, you couldn’t prosecute somebody for stealing.

If there wasn’t a law against murder, you couldn’t imprison somebody for killing another.

Laws against theft and murder don’t stop theft and murder, they give society legal options when theft and murder occur.

Saying new gun laws won’t end gun violence is a non sequitur. Of course guns laws won’t end gun violence.

Laws don’t stop crime, however what well written laws do is to put responsibility where it belongs – on the criminal.

Well written laws are about pragmatism.

For example, we all know that laws against drinking and driving won’t stop drunk driving, but they weren’t intended to. We know it’s going to happen. People are going to drink and drive and kill themselves and each other. We know we can’t eliminate it completely. That’s the pragmatism part.

Instead, drunk driving laws were intended to do two things, 1) give us legal recourse as a society, 2) make us responsible for our antisocial behavior – which in turn leads over time to a change in culture.

And that change significantly, measurably, reduced drinking and driving and provably saved lives and made American roads a safer place for all of us.

But, and this is important so pay attention, here’s what those laws didn’t do: they didn’t keep those of us who take responsibility for our own actions from 1) drinking, or 2) driving (note the operative word here is or).

And that’s the answer.

We need gun laws that give society legal recourse by making each gun owner/user personally accountable for their own actions.

Those laws should be designed to change our gun culture over time in order to make gun violence less likely. And, of course, those laws should not keep those of us who take responsibility for our own actions from exercising our Second Amendment rights.

Now, what exactly does such a law look like?

Well, it looks like the NRA.

Look, let’s be honest.

More gun-free zones won’t do a [dang]ed thing. More background checks won’t do a [dang]ed thing – not unless we’re willing to get serious about it, unless we standardize background checks across the nation to include a complete and thorough investigation like the kind used for federal security clearances. We’re talking full national agency checks with interviews by certified investigators (what security clearance adjudicators call a NAC-I). Those cost about $100K and take four to six months. Such a system would require a complete disclosure of all financial, criminal (including juvenile records), and medical records (including mental health records), periodic updates, and a comprehensive database of all gun owners.  It’s possible, but I suspect neither affordable nor politically feasible. Anything less than that is a waste of time. Q.E.D.

Banning the future sales of assault weapons, certain types of ammo, and large capacity magazines won’t do a [dang]ed thing. That horse is out of the barn.

So what would?

Well, we make the NRA’s own rules federal law.

Always point the gun in a safe direction, that’s rule #1 of the NRA’s own guidelines.

Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot, that’s NRA rule #2.

Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use, that’s NRA rule #3.

You’re responsible for your weapon at all times. You’re responsible for proper and secure carry. You’re responsible for keeping the weapon in proper operating order. You’re responsible for engaging the safety if the weapon is so equipped or for the use of other techniques if it is not. A properly maintained and carried weapon does not discharge when dropped, if it does, it’s your responsibility. Period. No excuses.

Make it the law.

Misdemeanor for failure to point your weapon in a safe direction, for unintentional discharge, for failure to properly maintain and use safety systems if only property damage is involved. Felony negligence if somebody is injured including yourself. Felony manslaughter if somebody dies.

Seems pretty uncontroversial to me.

TBH, I'm not sure how useful any of this is. The guy seems first just blows right through what many would consider common sense gun regulations like background checks, assault weapons ban, magazine restrictions by saying they wouldn't help then lists a bunch of the NRA's rules taht we should codify into law that A) In many cases already are laws and B) Almost certainly would not help. I'm not sure I buy the initial premise, like at all. This strikes me as a just another example of a a call to personals responsibility replacing what we actually need: real gun control laws.

I don't think we're gonna find much worth using from the NRA. Once upon a time they may have been about gun safety, now they're all about unfettered gun access. If they are okay with something its likely that thing isn't nearly enough.

[nickagneta]

This kid I'm learning shot at people with BB guns for fun. He had cut up his face with a razor for "fun." He came from a broken hone with no father.

No one did anything. He was sick and needed help.

The guns are a symptoms, not the cause of the rot in society.

Bring back institution's.
Educate the public on warning signs of mental health
Reform involuntary confinement.
Upgrade school security and provide funding for security
Oh and hire cops who will do their job

This would go farther to help prevent these tragedies from happening. Screaming about the NRA(who isn't even the top donor lobby group in the country) solves zip.

Let's all agree that mental health funding, more state-run psychiatric hospitals, and upgraded school security are all sensible things.  And, let's ignore for a minute that "mental health" has been something that has been cried about for generations without any significant resources put towards it.  We'll pretend we have a competent Congress, and those things will be immediately passed.

Where do you stand on these proposals, none of which involve banning guns?

1.  All guns must be registered

2.  All gun owners must be licensed, subject to training, with 10 year renewals

3.  Require a standardized background check and waiting period

4.  Make it easier for police to stop and frisk people in public who have a violent criminal record

5.  Trigger locks must be installed on all new guns

6.  Any mechanism used to make a gun more automatic is illegal

7.  Close the "gun show" loophole

8.  Keep the Castle Doctrine, but revert to standard self-defense laws in public

9.  Red flag laws

10.  Increase the age of gun ownership to age 21, unless somebody is serving in the military and/or has been honorably discharged

Thoughts?  Those are very basic, without touching magazine size or severely restricting gun ownership for the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners.

If we are concerned about mental illness, as part of the licensing requirement how about the applicant needing to go to a psychiatric evaluation and pass it.

Also, how about a national gun registry.

And as part of the registry, a yearly inspection of all weapons owned to make sure they haven't been altered or given to someone illegally.

Also, take ballistics on every gun and keep it in the registry. Easier to solve crimes.

[keevsnick]

This kid I'm learning shot at people with BB guns for fun. He had cut up his face with a razor for "fun." He came from a broken hone with no father.

No one did anything. He was sick and needed help.

The guns are a symptoms, not the cause of the rot in society.

Bring back institution's.
Educate the public on warning signs of mental health
Reform involuntary confinement.
Upgrade school security and provide funding for security
Oh and hire cops who will do their job

This would go farther to help prevent these tragedies from happening. Screaming about the NRA(who isn't even the top donor lobby group in the country) solves zip.

Let's all agree that mental health funding, more state-run psychiatric hospitals, and upgraded school security are all sensible things.  And, let's ignore for a minute that "mental health" has been something that has been cried about for generations without any significant resources put towards it.  We'll pretend we have a competent Congress, and those things will be immediately passed.

Where do you stand on these proposals, none of which involve banning guns?

1.  All guns must be registered

2.  All gun owners must be licensed, subject to training, with 10 year renewals

3.  Require a standardized background check and waiting period

4.  Make it easier for police to stop and frisk people in public who have a violent criminal record

5.  Trigger locks must be installed on all new guns

6.  Any mechanism used to make a gun more automatic is illegal

7.  Close the "gun show" loophole

8.  Keep the Castle Doctrine, but revert to standard self-defense laws in public

9.  Red flag laws

10.  Increase the age of gun ownership to age 21, unless somebody is serving in the military and/or has been honorably discharged

Thoughts?  Those are very basic, without touching magazine size or severely restricting gun ownership for the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners.

I think all these are reasonable. #4 does seem kind of iffy in a broader right to privacy sense, I think there details on that that would need to be very fine tuned. I'm not sure how it could really be implemented in a way that would be helpful tbh.  But I'm not against it outright.

Three additional thoughts:

1) I would add get rid of open carry, and at the very least make concealed carry a lot harder and subject to more restrictions. Carrying a gun outside your home in public just seems so fraught. I don't want to wonder whether the guy walking down the street with a gun is an active shooter or not.

2) I would like to bring back the federal assault weapons' ban as well. As I understand it that ban also included a limit on magazine size which i support. We don't need these weapons' out there.

3) Need a mechanism for mental health checks of some sort, maybe that's rolled into red flag laws.

[MattyIce]

This kid I'm learning shot at people with BB guns for fun. He had cut up his face with a razor for "fun." He came from a broken hone with no father.

No one did anything. He was sick and needed help.

The guns are a symptoms, not the cause of the rot in society.

Bring back institution's.
Educate the public on warning signs of mental health
Reform involuntary confinement.
Upgrade school security and provide funding for security
Oh and hire cops who will do their job

This would go farther to help prevent these tragedies from happening. Screaming about the NRA(who isn't even the top donor lobby group in the country) solves zip.

Let's all agree that mental health funding, more state-run psychiatric hospitals, and upgraded school security are all sensible things.  And, let's ignore for a minute that "mental health" has been something that has been cried about for generations without any significant resources put towards it.  We'll pretend we have a competent Congress, and those things will be immediately passed.

Where do you stand on these proposals, none of which involve banning guns?

1.  All guns must be registered

2.  All gun owners must be licensed, subject to training, with 10 year renewals

3.  Require a standardized background check and waiting period

4.  Make it easier for police to stop and frisk people in public who have a violent criminal record

5.  Trigger locks must be installed on all new guns

6.  Any mechanism used to make a gun more automatic is illegal

7.  Close the "gun show" loophole

8.  Keep the Castle Doctrine, but revert to standard self-defense laws in public

9.  Red flag laws

10.  Increase the age of gun ownership to age 21, unless somebody is serving in the military and/or has been honorably discharged

Thoughts?  Those are very basic, without touching magazine size or severely restricting gun ownership for the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners.

I agree with all these suggestions, (although what’s a trigger lock “installed” mean?) ..gun owner for 30+ years

[Roy H.]

This kid I'm learning shot at people with BB guns for fun. He had cut up his face with a razor for "fun." He came from a broken hone with no father.

No one did anything. He was sick and needed help.

The guns are a symptoms, not the cause of the rot in society.

Bring back institution's.
Educate the public on warning signs of mental health
Reform involuntary confinement.
Upgrade school security and provide funding for security
Oh and hire cops who will do their job

This would go farther to help prevent these tragedies from happening. Screaming about the NRA(who isn't even the top donor lobby group in the country) solves zip.

Let's all agree that mental health funding, more state-run psychiatric hospitals, and upgraded school security are all sensible things.  And, let's ignore for a minute that "mental health" has been something that has been cried about for generations without any significant resources put towards it.  We'll pretend we have a competent Congress, and those things will be immediately passed.

Where do you stand on these proposals, none of which involve banning guns?

1.  All guns must be registered

2.  All gun owners must be licensed, subject to training, with 10 year renewals

3.  Require a standardized background check and waiting period

4.  Make it easier for police to stop and frisk people in public who have a violent criminal record

5.  Trigger locks must be installed on all new guns

6.  Any mechanism used to make a gun more automatic is illegal

7.  Close the "gun show" loophole

8.  Keep the Castle Doctrine, but revert to standard self-defense laws in public

9.  Red flag laws

10.  Increase the age of gun ownership to age 21, unless somebody is serving in the military and/or has been honorably discharged

Thoughts?  Those are very basic, without touching magazine size or severely restricting gun ownership for the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners.

I agree with all these suggestions, (although what’s a trigger lock “installed” mean?) ..gun owner for 30+ years

I meant trigger locks installed by the manufacturer on all new guns, preferably with fingerprint or passcode technology.

[keevsnick]

Across the street from the NRA convention:

https://twitter.com/Mike_Hixenbaugh/status/1530237750791876613?s=20&t=N4LoQHRqDVMqoGvkkDg6KA

[Roy H.]

Across the street from the NRA convention:

https://twitter.com/Mike_Hixenbaugh/status/1530237750791876613?s=20&t=N4LoQHRqDVMqoGvkkDg6KA

I generally don't like kids being used as political props.  Here, though, these children are probably pretty invested in the cause.

[Goldstar88]

Tom Winter, investigative correspondent for the NBC News Investigative Unit, breaks down the timeline of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety Director, saying that to him, this was the "Greatest failure in modern American law force history, as it pertains to an active shooter — period." 

[Amonkey]

Tom Winter, investigative correspondent for the NBC News Investigative Unit, breaks down the timeline of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety Director, saying that to him, this was the "Greatest failure in modern American law force history, as it pertains to an active shooter — period." 

There are a lot of questions about what happened. I understand in some ways being conservative about the approach to save lives, especially in a hostage situation. However, this appears that the killer showed a willingness to kill and was shooting during this period. How can the officers believe that the best approach is to sit back and not storm in?

[Roy H.]

Tom Winter, investigative correspondent for the NBC News Investigative Unit, breaks down the timeline of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety Director, saying that to him, this was the "Greatest failure in modern American law force history, as it pertains to an active shooter — period." 

If it's true that there were as many as nine or ten LEOs outside, while gunshots were still being fired inside the school -- each signifying a child potentially being executed --  how can anybody disagree?

"Steven McCraw of Texas DPS says an on-scene commander made the conscious decision to wait to breach the classroom in Uvalde, TX while people were calling 9-1-1 and whispering from inside the classroom begging for police to 9-1-1 operators."

A very slight delay to assess tactics, I guess I can understand.  40+ minutes?  Every one of those involved who did nothing should be permanently restricted from holding a badge.

300+ rounds of ammunition fired by the shooter.

[nickagneta]

Also, why did the Texas DPS origally state that the perpetrator was approach by LEOs before entering the building but then walked that back only after video and more info became available. Clearly they had to have had audio from 911 and interpolice communications that LEOs didn't approach the guy. So why did they release the false info so quick and then walk that back not just a few hours later but, what a day or two later?

Just pure incompetence across the board with this law enforcement group.

[Roy H.]

When specially equipped federal immigration agents arrived at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, the local police at the scene would not allow them to go after the gunman who had opened fire on students inside the school, according to two officials briefed on the situation.

The agents from Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived at some point between 12 and 12:10 p.m., according to the officials — far earlier than previously known. But they did not breach the adjoining classrooms of the school where the gunman had locked himself in until a little before 1 p.m. Members of the federal tactical team killed the gunman.

The officials said that members of the Uvalde Police Department kept the federal agents from going in sooner.

So, BP was ready, willing and able to go in, but some local dingleberry police chief wouldn’t let them.  I hope the locals lynch him, literally.