Our view on shooting sprees: Death at church, and the mall

[Woodmonkey]

Our view on shooting sprees: Death at church, and the mall

In the past nine days, shoppers at an Omaha mall and the faithful at two religious centers in Colorado came into contact with a horrifying phenomenon of modern life: A deranged killer who believes he'll somehow find fulfillment by gunning down strangers.

The incidents by separate gunmen on Dec. 5 and Dec. 9 came so close together that it felt as if some new threshold of depravity had been crossed. The truth, however, is that such indiscriminate shooting sprees now happen with depressing regularity in the USA — the seemingly inevitable byproduct of a society in which guns are readily accessible to unhinged people who slaughter innocents.

There were at least seven such incidents in 2005 and eight in 2006, and there have been seven in 2007. This year's carnage started in February with another shopping mall shooting, in Salt Lake City, where a teenage gunman killed five before being shot dead by police. It was followed in April by the worst mass shooting in the nation's history, when a student at Virginia Tech shot 47, killing 32, before killing himself. How quickly a numbed nation has moved on, and how horrific a slaughter it takes to generate national attention these days.

Spree killings are, of course, just a small percentage of the gun-violence toll in the USA. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that nearly 30,000 people were killed by firearms in 2004, of which about 39% were homicides, 57% suicides and 2% accidents. That's about eight times the number of Americans killed in the Iraq war so far.

Each shooting spree elicits demands to make the insanity stop. Sadly, there's no easy solution. The nation has a vast cultural divide about gun ownership and has settled for stalemate — outrage at the death toll but determination to protect the rights of Americans to bear arms.

Gun control laws have had a limited impact, and the pet proposal of the gun lobby — letting people carry concealed weapons — is a nonsensical answer. Even with more people packing heat, the likelihood of such a person being at the scene of a spree shooting is exceedingly low. (The woman who ended the incident at the Colorado Springs church was a congregant and former cop who volunteered as part of the church's security program.)

With more and more people carrying weapons in public, no matter how well-intentioned, the risk of accidental shootings and additional violence rises. Security on campuses, shopping malls, airports, churches and other public places is best left to professionals.

The best way forward is to keep at the imperfect but important fixes that can eventually make these shootings less murderous and more rare: Ensuring that people with a history of mental illness aren't able to buy guns; taking disturbed young people seriously and getting them counseling; and reinstating the lapsed ban on assault weapons, despite the opposition of the gun lobby.

None of these steps is foolproof, but neither does any of them trample gun rights. The lack of a perfect solution is no reason for society to throw up its hands and accept the unacceptable.

The source

This article completely tries to minimize what happens when someone is carrying and present when a spree killer shows up vs what happens when they're not (present). They also ignore the crime stats in states with right to carry laws.

[BrianK]

Not likely to happen but I'd like to know what takes place in the middle east where it seems like everyone there has some kind of weapon. I've seen countless videos of people firing off rounds into the air to protest or celebrate something. Not just a few in a crowd but many.

I don't mean the radical element I would like to know stats on the average everyday person and if the society there experiences the same kind of shootings.

Is there a differance in crime and gun use or does it parallel what happens here?

If there is a differance there on the positive use side of this issue wouldn't it make sense to look at why that is?

[leobold1]

Does the author realize how many guns are out there illegally? The sheer number of pistols with no serial number that are available for purchase?

Keeping guns out of the hands of those mentally FUBAR'd means nothing. "Hey, Jim. I got someone whose been trying to break into my house, can I borrow your gun until they stop?"