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<p>Or, how about the South of the Border ‘tude–women? we don’t need no stinkin’ women! Boys in Power just gotta have fun!</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.marxsite.com/Femicide%20in%20Guatemala.pdf[/url]”>http://www.marxsite.com/Femicide%20in%20Guatemala.pdf</a></p>
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<p>Where is the money for this type of security coming from?</p>
<p>71 people shot, 12 dead. </p>
<p>That’s just… unimaginable.</p>
<p>“Emilybee what should we be learning?
Not to let people in through the side door at a movie theatre?”</p>
<p>Until we, as a nation, decide things like this are no longer acceptable in our society another mass shooting, like the one last night, will happen as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow. How anyone can feign shock at what happened is truly laughable, imo.</p>
<p>“That’s just… unimaginable.”</p>
<p>Unimaginable? Hardly.</p>
<p>He has a B.S. in neuroscience from UC Riverside in 2010.</p>
<p>emily- how do you propose we do that? How exactly do we signal that these things are OK? </p>
<p>And by unimaginable I meant that I can’t imagine what those people must be going through, not that it happened. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>People that are bent on destruction will always find a way…guns, explosives, arson, chemical weapons, box cutters…</p>
<p>in America we try to balance freedom with security . It is a constant readjustment.</p>
<p>I think back to several years ago (pre-Virginia Tech), when there was a thread about George Washington University sending a student home because they felt he needed to receive care. The family sued, but GWU of course couldn’t say anything more. There was a big outcry about how GWU could take it upon itself to send a student home, and how inappropriately the university had acted.</p>
<p>I wonder if any of the posters (who were well intentioned, no question) have changed their minds.</p>
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<p>Okay, as I’m sure you know that there would be essentially zero sane people who would NOT think that “things like this are no longer acceptable in our society” (did people ever think things like this were ‘acceptable’?), what is it that you are really getting at? Why don’t you just say it? Are you talking about gun control? Mental health issues? What?</p>
<p>What a tragedy. Prayers and condolences to those affected.</p>
<p>The guy obviously put some planning into this. He showed up with four weapons, tear gas, a gas mask, and body armor. He chose to attack a crowded, dark place with a chemical agent that makes normal breathing and vision almost impossible. Even if there were armed good-guys in the room, it would have been very difficult to stop him quickly (unless they happened to be within 20-30ft without other movie goers in between them). It’s a tactical nightmare for everyone but the shooter.</p>
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<p>Is this an observation about attitudes about guns? Remember Timothy McVeigh used a bomb. If someone is determined to kill, they will —sane or insane.</p>
<p>emily- how do you propose we do that? How exactly do we signal that these things are OK? </p>
<p>Stricter gun control laws. We signal these things are acceptable in our society by doing nothing to stop them from occurring. And then people come out and feign shock and blather on about how tragic it is, blah, blah, blah. Empty and meaningless gestures. </p>
<p>We signal that any gun violence is OK by not doing anything about it. </p>
<p>Tomorrow there will be more people dead because of gun violence, and the day after that, and the day after that…</p>
<p>You can BAN guns completely. This will still happen. Promise. Where there is a will, there is a way. Think of how people make deadly weapons in prisons- you don’t get much more strict regulations than in a prison.</p>
<p>We can send all the messages in the world that this is unacceptable and it will STILL happen. There will STILL be mentally unstable people. There will STILL be people who just want to kill. </p>
<p>What there really needs to be is a better mental health care system. It seems like the parents weren’t surprised. If they knew their son was unstable, WHY did they let him go away? That is the bigger issue IMO.</p>
<p>raimius, good point. A very well trained policy officer wouldn’t have shot him because of the crowd and the darkness. Also, he appears, as you said, that he was wearing body armor. What a nightmare.</p>
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<p>And what exactly were the parents supposed to do with a 24 year old adult? Knowing a family member is unstable is a long ways from thinking they might go on a shooting spree and kill strangers. You can’t force someone to get help for mental illness- even if it is your child- once they are over 18.</p>
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<p>He was 24, that’s why. Parents can’t even get info from psychiatrists, doctors, teachers, etc without the written consent of the young adult. </p>
<p>For those of you who are either students yourselves, or whose kids are still minors, once they’re of age, it’s a whole different ballgame.</p>
<p>'Is this an observation about attitudes about guns? Remember Timothy McVeigh used a bomb. If someone is determined to kill, they will —sane or insane."</p>
<p>Which was an exceedingly rare incident. Care to give the stats on people in this country killed by a bomb versus people killed by a gun? </p>
<p>“Think of how people make deadly weapons in prisons- you don’t get much more strict regulations than in a prison.” </p>
<p>How many mass murder are committed in prison, or anywhere, for that matter, with a homemade weapon?</p>
<p>All these excuses just show that we are unwilling to do anything about it and thus have deemed this acceptable behavior in our society. Very sad.</p>
<p>It seems like the parents knew he was a danger (preliminary reports, this could change). IIRC, if you think someone is a danger… something can be done.</p>
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That’s very far from the truth. It’s illegal for people to commit ‘gun’ violence (or any violence, such as fertilizer violence as McVeigh did) and they go to jail for it. There are no signals that using a gun to commit violence is okay. Possessing and using a gun lawfully is completely different than possessing or using a gun unlawfully so just the fact that guns exist in our society isn’t a signal that using it to commit violence is ‘okay’ - any more than using fertilizer, or a plane, or a car, or a bomb is.</p>
<p>I was wondering how many posts it would take until the ‘gun control’ argument would be raised. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that this was obviously a nutcase who was bent on killing people for some reason we have no idea of and he happened to use guns as his tools but there’s nothing to say he wouldn’t just acquire guns illegally (assuming these were acquired legally), make a bomb, start a fire, drive into a crowd of people, hijack an airplane, or use any number of means. As far as I know not a single gun was used in the 9/11 attacks that killed thousands. A box cutter was the threatening device and the airplane was the powerful weapon.</p>
<p>We live in a relatively free country with a diverse population of people of all backgrounds so even if guns were banned completely there’s no evidence whatsoever that someone who wants one couldn’t get one - people seem to manage to get illegal drugs with no issues, probably even your kids, people enter the country illegally by the millions, etc.</p>
<p>Focusing on the ‘tool’, i.e. the gun in this case, is a misdirection that will have no gain. The focus should be on what drove this individual and others like him to commit this act and whether there’s a feasible way to detect the conditions that are the root case and whether there’s a feasible way to do something about it. It’s a very complex issue.</p>
<p>As another poster said - maybe it’s a miracle this type of thing doesn’t happen even more often. Studying why it happens in the first place and why it doesn’t happen more often might lead us to some interventions that could mitigate at least some of these events.</p>
<p>Currently you can have a mentally ill person forced to be evaluated by a psychiatrist if that person has threatened AND made a move towards hurting himself or others.</p>
<p>Threatening is not even enough.</p>
<p>This is the law as it stands now.</p>
<p>The NSA would be able to arrest someone if they made terroristic statements whether they had a mental illness or not.</p>