The police were warned that he was acting erratically and might be armed, the parents called the campus counseling center and told them their son might have a gun and that he was he was talking about killing himself.
Because it is a transparent attempt to score political points off a tragic event. If there is some policy that could have potentially prevented this, then I am very much in favor of discussing it. But in the absence of such it is just posturing.
Do campus cops always handcuff and search every student they question? Especially a kid who was reported as being suicidal? I guess from now on, they will. It is better to violate some crim procedure than to end up dead.
When they are told both by the parents and other students that the student may be armed they certainly they certainly should search the student!
Was that particular officer told that the student was armed? Allegedly the parents called the counseling center and told them they feared he was armed and suicidal. Do we know for a fact that the police officer in question received this exact information?
If he didn’t, the counseling center should have its head handed to it on a plate.
@Ohiodad51 , I gather that you are unable to distinguish between “political” points and a genuine desire to reduce gun violence? To me, that is what is “distasteful.”
Daniels (the student / suspect) was being arrested for drug possession and was being brought to the police station as an arrestee at the time.
From the link in reply #20:
Seems like, when arresting someone, it would be typical for police to check for weapons (especially if the call for police service mentioned a weapon). Or is it?
I think that in the circumstances as described, firstly, the officer should not have gone alone, and secondly, the young man should have been patted down, if not handcuffed. If he wasn’t armed, and not acting out, they could choose to do without handcuffing him in the interest of not traumatizing a potentially ill person who didn’t appear to be a threat. But to not do either seems foolhardy. Very, very sad.
If reports are accurate, the officer’s assumption that the student was harmless cost him his life. It is very sad indeed.
So, @Consolation, what exactly could be done to reduce gun violence again? He already owned the gun illegally. Just like he owned the drugs illegally. Murder is also illegal, btw. What other specific laws could we put in place - that are already not in place - to deter someone who is determined to do the wrong thing?
What’s “distasteful” is the idea that calls to reduce gun violence are about “political points” rather than a fervent desire to see less deaths of police officers, concert attendees, first graders, church-goers…
Etc. Etc. Etc. and the etc’s go on forever, it seems.
But each time, it’s “unseemly” to want to put some brakes on the cause of all these deaths.
@mommajes If our country were not flooded with guns, it would be more difficult to procure one illegally. If Texas didn’t allow ANYONE to carry on campus, or even HAVE a gun on campus, then no one would hesitate to report them on the chance that it was legal. If a certain segment of our population was not actively pushing the fiction that everyone needs a gun to protect themselves and their family, there wouldn’t be so many guns out there to be used, legally or illegally. If a certain segment of the population was not actively pushing the cultural construct that somehow gun ownership is actively linked with patriotism and part of being a “real” American, there wouldn’t be so many guns out there to be used, legally or illegally.
No one said here, I believe, that fixing our gun violence problem was a matter simply of passing laws. A lot more needs to be done. BTW, despite the fact that there are enough guns floating around out there to kill every single 2-5 yr old in their homes, or slaughter every single kindergartner in their classroom, or every single woman trying to leave her abusive spouse, or every single concertgoer, or every single 711 clerk or every single moviegoer, still, only about 30% of us have them.
That 30% appears to have collectively lost its mind.
Gun owners are the problem, not the rest of us. Yes, sure, there are a few people who own an actual shotgun and/or rifle for actual hunting. But they don’t need something designed as a weapon of war, and they don’t need something designed specifically for killing people rapidly, and they don’t need large capacity magazines. They don’t need cop-killer bullets. They don’t need a whole lot of stuff.
Except a reality check.
So what Ohiodad said is right - you would be fine with confiscation, I take it. Because “gun owners are the problem” and our country being flooded with guns and all. But legislatively speaking, you can’t or won’t cite for me any more laws we could enact which could prevent this.
@Ohiodad51 in this specific case I think the school and the police should review their policies, this was preventable on their part.
Ammo piercing rounds are way more common in movies than real life. On average 50-60 cops die from firearms a year. Of those, almost all are killed either because they aren’t wearing vests, or they were shot in the head, throat, or a part of the torso not covered by the vest.
I would be “fine” with voluntary surrender and even buy-backs. I would be “fine” with outright bans on large capacity magazines, and some other things along those lines. How about you?
I fail to see why you insist on harping on legislative solutions as the ONLY solution. That’s your problem, not mine. I think the issue goes beyond legislative solutions.
I suspect what @garland and @Consolation want is a ban on private ownership of handguns. That has zero chance of getting passed. Instead, the anti-gun lobby settles for trying to win on relatively minor issues, such as magazine size, which wouldn’t do much to prevent gun violence, and are completely irrelevant to the OP, but have a more realistic odds of getting passed.
@3scoutsmom, I am fine with that too. But if the larger society believes that open carry or concealed carry, whatever is best for that citizenry, I am fine with that too. Agree or not, it is a rational position to assert that an armed citizenry is safer than an unarmed one. At the end of the day, I just weary of the jump to gun control when there is no obvious solution short of an outright ban, which is obviously never gonna happen.
@Consolation, I am a hunter and like most gun owners have no problem in the abstract with things like limiting the size of magazines, or prohibiting things like bump stocks that mimic automatic fire. The issue is that things are not that simple. One, by their nature guns are easily customizable and modifiable, meaning that any legislation is at best going to be one step behind the stated goal. Two, I have no idea what “designed as a weapon of war” means, and no idea why it is important, because as we saw with the assault weapons ban legislation designed around cosmetics is virtually meaningless. The shape of a stock or a rifle’s sight has nothing to do with a weapon’s lethality. Third, at times, like with the AR-15, it is the weapon’s design as a primarily military weapon and modularity (the ability to easily rechamber it) that makes it a good “meat gun”, particularly in very rural areas. Fourth, if you are looking for a reason why there is so much push back for what you assumedly see as common sense policies, statements like “gun owners are the problem” is an excellent place to start.
@Roethslisbuger, If I wanted a ban on private ownership of handguns I WOULD HAVE SAID SO.
@consolation, what other solutions do you advocate that are not legislative solutions? I’m not getting that part of your argument.