Thread: US gets its fourth school shooting in the last week

I read in the paper before I left work tonight of a school shooting at Dekalb, Illinois, the fourth in a week. This makes me sad and angry. Why do these things happen at schools? Do other countries have similar problems? What aspects of a culture bring this about? Is there some kind of problem with our culture that we can fix to prevent this? Are school shootings something that, historically, never really happened before? Why do they happen at all?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...d_msn_illinois

Originally Posted by Demen Tolden

I read in the paper before I left work tonight of a school shooting at Dekalb, Illinois, the fourth in a week. This makes me sad and angry. Why do these things happen at schools? Do other countries have similar problems? What aspects of a culture bring this about? Is there some kind of problem with our culture that we can fix to prevent this? Are school shootings something that, historically, never really happened before? Why do they happen at all?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...d_msn_illinois

I think kids get angry and frustrated here (Australia) just as much as they do in the US but they cant get access to guns. You want to stop people getting shot, get rid of the guns. If you dont get rid of the guns, any measures you take will be like wiping the bloody nose of someone but doing nothing about the person that keeps hitting them in the nose. Not unlike a lot of policies. IMO

in some schools in the UK you get people stabbed with knives, but at least because it's not guns the number of people killed is usually far lower

Guns don't kill people, the bullets do. Make bullets very expensive and fewer shootings should happen around the US and elsewhere. (Got this from Eddy Murphy. He used to be a funny guy!)

Australia had one mass shooting in Tasmania years ago and changed all the gun laws in the country. Best move they could have made. How many will shootings will it take in the US before they change their ways? Unfortunately, i doubt they ever will as the gun lobby is a very powerful force in the US politically. Maybe if a few politicians children got shot dead at school something might be done, but i doubt it.

If I had been there...
and if I had had a gun...
I would have done my best to stop the perpetrator.

If everyone else involved had had a gun, the guy would have been stopped quite promptly in my opinion.

If this doesn't seem to make sense, imagine the perpetrator going into a police station and attempting a mass shooting.


Cheers,
william

Here in the Netherlands it is really hard to get a gun. I heard you can buy them in the supermarket in the US ? I really don't get that, that scares me, it is terrible.

there've been some incidents at schools here too. not so much, but these things did happen. the difference is that someone stabbed another kid with a knife (a kitchen knife or something) , and it was meant only for that kid. the reasons why they did was most of the time about bullying, and a few months ago it was about a stolen pen :? .
but so much massive attacks like in the US, no they don't happen here. I think one of the main reasons is the weapons. In the US it's not weird to have a gun at home. here? I would look a lot different to my neighbours if I know they have a gun in their house.

So I agree with GrowlingDog, get rid of the guns.

It's not really as big of a big problem in the U.S. as many foreigners seem to believe. On average there are something like 25 kids killed at school/year in the U.S., out of 70 million kids in school. This means an average student's odds of being shot are something like 1 in 2.8 million - definitely not something you should worry about. You are vastly more likely to die in a car accident on the way to school that to be murdered at school in the U.S.

Originally Posted by +SCIENCEgirl+

Here in the Netherlands it is really hard to get a gun. I heard you can buy them in the supermarket in the US ? I really don't get that, that scares me, it is terrible.

I have lived in the U.S. for many years, and I have never seen a gun for sale at a supermarket. As for it being scary, as I said before your odds of dying from a gun in the U.S. are much lower than your odds of dying in a car crash. And since most of the murder victims in the U.S. are criminals who are killed by other criminals, your odds of being shot drop to practically zero if you take the simple step of not being a drug dealer. So no, I don’t think it’s something that’s scary or something that any reasonable person should worry about. If you want to worry about something, worry about cancer – that kills orders of magnitude more people in the U.S. than guns.

Originally Posted by Scifor Refugee

I have lived in the U.S. for many years, and I have never seen a gun for sale at a supermarket.

http://<br /> http://www.thesciencef...ht=supermarket

well, there are a lot of things to worry about. the amount of deaths of being shot is lower than dying from cancer, that doesn't change the fact that it is not justified to sell guns in the supermarket.

Originally Posted by +SCIENCEgirl+

Originally Posted by Scifor Refugee

I have lived in the U.S. for many years, and I have never seen a gun for sale at a supermarket.

http://<br /> http://www.thesciencef...ht=supermarket

Kmart is not a supermarket.

here, in finland 7 november 2007,the Gunman was 18 year old high school student Pekka Eric Auvinen. Auvinen killed nine people: 6 student, the school principal, the school nurse and Auvinen himself. The morning of the incident, Auvinen posted a video on youtube announcing the massacre at the school.

23 September 2008, at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, a city in Western Finland. The gunman, 22-year-old culinary arts student Matti Juhani Saari, shot and fatally injured ten people with a semi-automatic pistol, before shooting himself in the head. He died a few hours later in Tampere University Hospital. Finnish police stated that Saari "very likely" knew Pekka-Eric Auvinen.

after those cases we have been many copycat threats in finland....

Today, a gunman in France injured 10 people in a nursery. 20, March 2009 German police averted a school shooting to take place on Hitler's birthday. On March 11, 2009 a school shooting in Winnenden, Germany killed 16 students. These incidents are hardly unique to the US. Be reasonable, news headlines are not an accurate depiction of every day life and dangers. Gun prohibition to me is akin to not swimming after a spate of shark attacks in the media.

Here's a headline from February, 2007: "An off-duty police officer having an early Valentine's Day dinner with his wife was credited Tuesday with helping stop a rampage in a crowded shopping mall by an 18-year-old gunman who killed five people before he was cut down." Who knows how many more the shooter would have killed if it weren't for the intervention of a citizen carrying a concealed weapon?

Even though handguns are legal in the US, gangs still purchase them illegally because they are cheaper and more difficult to track. A 9mm pistol can be found for around $100 on the street. Illegalising weapons penalises only the law abiding.

I know that my family is safer because I own, and am rigorously trained in the use of a well secured weapon. If you want to save lives, invent a better car airbag, or stop malaria.

Originally Posted by marnixR

in some schools in the UK you get people stabbed with knives, but at least because it's not guns the number of people killed is usually far lower

Especially in Scotland in the rough area's like Glasgow.

No matter how the media tells the story, there are always going to be people or in the case young adults who see these shooters as heroes. I know this sounds ridiculous, but if we could somehow reduce the media coverage of these events, it would cut down on possibly sending the wrong message to other youths. There are so many disturbed teens out there, this sort of legacy may be just the thing they are looking for.

Cars are a much bigger threat than guns can ever be to teenagers. there are thousands of teens killed every year in auto wrecks caused by inexperienced teen drivers. wanna save lives make the driving age 18. Twice as many teen drivers have been killed in the same time period of the Iraq war than soldiers.

how about Switzerland, almost every household has a weapon( really good ones I might add)