Ideas on how to curb mass shootings.

That don't involve sweeping gun control, but distinct targeted gun control. Now I'm as conservative, NRA, ex military, and Gun loving as they come. But these mass shootings have to stop. After watching the video of the Santa Barbara shooter. I noticed that this guy was completely selfish, and suffered badly from pride. It seems like every other month now, were hearing about some mentally ill, self absorbed person killing innocents.

My idea/opinion on how to possibly curb this for the generations to come is

1.Children need to be taught morals,and decency as a state mandated law in elementary, middle, and high school, just like they're taught art and science. I think the average person would be surprised to know how many children have never heard don't steal, don't kill, respect your elders, treat people like you would want to be treated,don't bully people.

2. Starting as early as 4th grade, all children need to be given a mental health screening, to include talking to their parents about the typical behaviors of their children. We need to know as a society which kids are killing small animals, wetting the bed past say Fourth grade, have an infatuation with fire, and those who are being tormented by bullies on a daily basis.

3. After these children are identified, steps need to be taken to treat them without psychotropic drugs.....at first. My brother was prescribed Ritalin in 6th grade, and imo it not only didn't help, but made him worse.

4. After these children are identified, rigorous mental health treatment should be started, and their names interred into a national "NO BUY" list like our national "NO FLY" list. The "NO BUY" list would be a form of targeted gun control for individuals who've been identified from childhood as having severe mental; and emotional problems.

I know this isn't perfect, but the status quo of guy "snaps", kills a bunch of innocents, and nothing changes, must stop. I came to these feelings primarily after The Newtown mass killing. thoughts.

 

Find a way to stop the media from doing what the killers want - glorifying them endlessly.

I'm not sure how it could be done other than media heads having an agreement not to cover all the details of the killers lives and stupid troubles.

As well, I think your "1st" idea is a pretty good one. Teaching civics, philosophy, and even shocker, a little patriotism, is probably a good idea.

The "2nd" idea though I think would be used for politics and has the slippery ol slope danger of putting the bureaucracy too far into families. We have a society that picks up children who draw pictures of guns at school, giving them sweeping powers to test children seems... bad, unless they are causing active trouble which a lot of these psychos do in the teen years.

 

we cant teach children morals...I believe that's somehow "bigoted" or something? :icon_neut

 

Who decides what is moral and decent?

I think the number of children who haven't heard those things would be in the single digits. I'd really be surprised if there was any somewhat quality source to support that one way or other.

I don't see this as a quality solution. A lot of the people who have been involved in mass shootings have been identified as having mental health issues.

On top of that, we need to identify the fringe element. The people who are just mentally healthy enough to pass by. the symptoms you describe are some of the most obvious signs of serious mental illness.

AFAIK, Ritalin isn't used to treat the type of mental illness that these spree shooters are often diagnosed with. Ritalin is for ADHD and other issues like that.

If a child is wetting the bed, killing animals, and starting fires, they need aggressive therapy from the get go. If drugs are part of that therapy I'm fore it, but again, those symptoms indicate extremely serious mental health issues.

I believe we have laws that are supposed to stop the mentally ill from purchasing guns. We just need to enforce that.

No matter what we do the best hope is to reduce the number of spree shootings, there is no way we are going to eliminate them entirely.

 

It would be construed as all kinds of stupid things by the right and left in America.

But simple civics and human decency could be done.

 

gun control had nothing to do with that guy, he killed 3 people with a knife and ran one person over with a car.

 

Honestly, stopping the "everybody gets a trophy" culture we have developed here in the US would go a long way to curbing it, imo.

 

Dad's need to be involved with their sons. Teach them morals and how to be a real man. Again, there is no government program or law that can fix the moral crisis in this country.

 

Good point.

Any ideas how?

 

I understand your reservations about number two but Dude, something radical I guess needs to be done at this point. My personal opinion is that this lone mass shooter has reached epidemic proportions. Over the past seven or so years I've noticed my self not really having "fun" when I take my family to malls, and amusement parks. I like always on yellow alert or something instead of enjoying "small world" I'm sizing people up. maybe i'm just being a lil paranoid.

 

I have no real ideas, only scathing criticisms. That's why I hang out in the warroom. In all seriousness, I think it's too late. We've already let it become too much of a part of our culture to see any sort of change in the next few decades.

 

Not bad. But i like Colion's ideas better

 

Not a bad idea to at least debate these points. I agree that mental health needs to be taken a lot more seriously in this so-called country.

 

Here's an idea: the media can forego high ratings and refuse to sensationalize mass shootings. Don't tell me that this latest douchebag didn't have it in the back of his head that his "manifesto" would be read and talked about, that he wouldn't have his 15 mins of posthumous fame.

 

With our self inflicted limit on speech and ideas, you are probably right.

But perhaps some cultural movement based on realism and led by a great personality could accomplish it. It would be much better than the hollow causes we see today.

 

Although I think the 'everybody gets a trophy" mentality is problematic, how does that relate to spree shootings?

 

You can thank liberals. That's yet another problem. We have been convinced as a society that it is somehow "mean", to treat dangerous crazy people like they're dangerous crazy people.

 

That is my opinion as well... but barring a media agreement to police itself, how? It would damage the 1st Amendment too much to do anything like that.

 

This kid in Santa Barbara killed 3 people because some girls wouldn't go on a date with him. The kid in Aurora a few years ago killed a bunch of people because he couldn't get into a Master's program. Kids aren't allowed to fail, to be disappointed, learn from it and move on. They're coddled all the way threw High School, into early adulthood, and then tossed out into the world where nobody really gives a crap about you, and have no idea how to deal with failure.

 

Make it politically incorrect for media to exploit mass shootings. Not officially making speech illegal, so no Constitutional concerns.