erwinl
Illuminator
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This sounds almost like 'well it's only....'
I know that is not what you wrote, but it is how it sounds.
And it only affirms what Dabop said in his post.
Shooting/attack on Michigan LDS Church
- Thread starter Mike!
- Start date
I know that is not what you wrote, but it is how it sounds.
And it only affirms what Dabop said in his post.
We go through this every time, and the USA attitude seems to be: can't do anything about the shooters. So they have to have drills for the kids, cat litter in case the lockdown goes on for a long time, safe rooms, bullet proof backpacks for kids, automatic locking doors, bullet proof glass, design corridors to be curved so there isn't a good line of sight and the latest, have the teachers armed. How this doesn't seem insane to USA folk is beyond me.
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dirtywick
Penultimate Amazing
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i meant to correct that he had written we had training videos about school shootings. they are workplace shootings
i didn’t mean “only” it was a pretty serious situation. the deceased girlfriends mom still works here
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Flo
Illuminator
And sometimes …
Some years ago, in a farmer market in a small French town, I met an American lady who looked both lost and shocked to see food stalls next to clothing stalls, especially the underwear stalls she was trying to hide from the eyes of her 5 years old daughter. She told me she was looking forward to return to the US in the next few months, where her two teenager boys had been left with their grandparents, and how she didn't feel safe in our socialist country where she wasn't allowed to carry guns, bla, bla bla.
I met her again some months later, and she very enthusiastically told me they were staying for two years more, her boys were in the local high school, where she had discovered there was no metal detector or armed guard at the entrance, because she had discovered that school shootings were not a thing in France, and how she felt really safe and free, and how universal healthcare was logical and convenient, and …
I got to find the interview but, one of my podcasts recently interviewed a guy that studies the highly public acts of violences. His opinion is that the reasons don't actually matter. Most of these guys are suicidal and angry with a long history of being suicidal and angry and a relatively short history of being into whatever cause they use. They mostly seem to just want to make their suicides mean something. Apparently, this seems to true of this latest batch of apparently political shootings, various Islamist attacks, and school shooters. Rings true to me but I have no idea how rigorous the evidence is.
johnny karate
... and your little dog too.
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I agree that the main thread connecting all these shooters is mental health issues, but the right wing culture that fetishizes guns and mainstreams conspiracy theories they predominantly come from cannot be ignored as a relevant factor.
Carlotta
Graduate Poster
gabeygoat
Master Poster
that, and they always say it's mental health issues but don't want to fund any mental health initiatives
Flo
Illuminator
And are willing to take as many people with them, it's scary and lonely there …
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Officially the Mormon church has a no-weapons policy for its meeting places, as do many churches. A number of Mormons have gone onto social media saying they now intend to ignore that policy in the wake of the Michigan shooting.
Hercules56
Banned
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Nothing wrong with hiring off duty cops or other armed guards.
Lukraak_Sisser
Philosopher
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I always wonder how they think that works. Sit with weapons loaded, aimed at the entrance the entire service? Shoot everyone driving quickly towards the church in the hope it's not someone late but an attacker?
How else are you going to prevent a nutcase opening fire first and still killing the same amount of people?
plague311
Great minds think...
Good guys with guns > bad guys with guns, apparently. Every once in awhile you'll hear of some armed citizen making a difference. It doesn't happen often though.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Indeed there is no shortage of options for security if you need it. The church in fact has security guards around some of its facilities here at their world headquarters (where I live) but they don't appear armed. And I've never seen any overt security guards at any of their worship spaces.
I can see why the initial policy would be that worship spaces are a no-weapons zone. Every church wants their space to be simultaneously inviting and safe. The visible presence of weapons might ruin that for some people. But the focus has shifted. Once the tragedy, the illusion of inherent safety is destroyed.
The standard American "good guy with a gun" argument is rarely well thought out. Nobody really knows how it's supposed to work because it really doesn't work out very often. If there was a foolproof way of distinguishing the good guys with guns from the nut jobs with guns, then we'd have something that worked. Other countries solve that problem by paying less attention to the good-guy / nut-job dichotomy and focusing more on the with-gun / without-gun distinction.
Here it comes down to the notion among many Americans that the 2nd Amendment makes them (not the state) principally responsible for their own safety. You are permitted to own a gun with little restrictions for your own protection, including against nut jobs. And if the nut jobs are going to start showing up to church, you should be permitted to carry your weapon there in order to extend that protection to that space.
Hercules56
Banned
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Concealed Carry is a beautiful thing.
Lukraak_Sisser
Philosopher
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Yes, I guess if you wanted to shoot up a church of people carrying in your weapon out of sight would help.
But then again, if you wanted to do that, I'd assume you'd hide the weapon till the last moment anyway?
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
The "concealed carry" argument is that if you don't know whether people are armed, you might be deterred from attacking them. The shooter in the Michigan case could show up to a Mormon church building and know with almost perfect certainty that no one there would be armed. This would be the case whether the shooter's weapon were concealed or not. But if the assailant couldn't know whether any of the congregation were concealing a weapon, he couldn't be sure whether his attack would succeed.
plague311
Great minds think...
The problem I've always had with that line of thinking is that the shooter generally doesn't really care. They, usually, intend on dying at the end of it. They don't WANT to stick around. So even if they take 1 or 2 people out, that's all good with them. Even a well-armed and trained "good guy" would need to wrap his head around the situation before taking him out. Then you run into the problem of, what if there's two good guys with a gun? Then they both shoot at each other while the bad guy is still mowing people down.
Random thoughts....
This is the usual problem that guns are attack weapons, not defense weapons. If you hit first, you win.
novaphile
Quester of Doglets
It could be that the guards were armed but it was not obvious.
For example...
I once had a lunch where I ended up sitting at a table with three female detectives.
They were all wearing 'business suits' and one was teased/criticised for not 'wearing' her firearm.
(The others were assuming that she had it concealed in a bag.)
She laughed and moved her jacket, revealing the standard police automatic.
(In a 'shoulder holster' on her left hand side.)
She then started handing out business cards for the tailor, that had tailored the jacket to hide the firearm.
The other two were quite impressed with the result.
It was a bit of an experience for me.
The three women were young, intelligent, witty, well dressed, obviously healthy and physically fit.
I've never felt safer in my life.
(Even though they made the standard 'joke' that I'd heard many times before: "If the ◊◊◊◊ does down, we're hiding behind you.")
