The Michigan State University shooting has our university officials concerned. I’ve been getting multiple emails from them telling us what to do if it happens here, which could very well occur, and that’s the first time that’s happened. This country has shootings every day, and finally, someone in the administration calls attention to our situation. We’re an openly liberal institution promoting liberal values — we’ve faced protests from outside because we support gay and trans students, for instance — and we’re imbedded deep in red state/Trump country. All it takes is one maladjusted hater to grab his gun and decide hunting season has opened on campus.
Unfortunately, the only advice I’ve seen is a link to this university page, with the advice to RUN-HIDE-FIGHT. Oh, yeah? Like I never would have thought of that. It is basically telling us the obvious, that we’re on our own and are desperately helpless.
I take that back. There are bits I wouldn’t have considered, like, when running, “Keep your hands visible.” Why? Oh, right, the other thing they tell us is that the campus police are around. We wouldn’t want to be shot by a cop while running away! Also:
How to React When Law Enforcement Arrives
Remain calm; follow officers’ instructionsKeep your hands up and out in front of you, assuring your hand are empty
Keep hands visible at all times
Avoid making quick movements towards officers such as attempting to hold on to them for safety
Avoid pointing, screaming and/or yelling
Move quickly towards the nearest exit or where directed to by police
Do not stop to ask officers for help or directions when evacuating
OBEY. DO NOT STARTLE THE POLICE. I guess that’s important advice. It’s the lengthiest section of the page.
Really, this advice is nothing but “try not to get shot by the shooter or police,” and none of it is particularly useful. When dealing with an active shooter, we should be thinking about active prevention, like with tighter gun laws. Instead of endangering the innocent, maybe the police ought to be confiscating guns from dangerous people, before the shooting starts. The Michigan State murderer had been found to have mental health issues, and had been arrested on a felony weapons charge…and the justice system had done nothing, letting him walk away armed. It’s time to end that.
I’m tired of seeing scenes like this.
At least one Michigan state representative has the right idea.
Every time this happens, I keep singing the words from OHIO.
“What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?”
I’m getting more than a bit tired of the phrase “common sense gun control”, which usually refers to very weak tweaks around the edges. Seeing this, common sense would dictate that we should treat firearms the way other industrialized democracies who don’t have this problem treat firearms.
I am heartened though that at least some politicians are starting to push the “a uniquely American problem” line. You’ll never convince the fondlers and conspiracy nuts, but if you can get the middle to understand that it isn’t this way elsewhere and it doesn’t have to be that way here, maybe we can get some real reform.
QFT.
A lot of these shooters have already had attention from the police for erratic and threatening behavior. I would also say the mental health care systems but we more or less don’t have those any more.
Which is why we have Red Flag laws in a few states.
They even work sometimes.
Where I used to live, some guy threatened to shoot up the local university. He was reported and put into a gun point of sale database.
A few days later he was arrested while trying to buy a semiautomatic AR-15.
The followup.
There isn’t any. He was never charged with anything and there was never a trial. AFAICT, he was shipped off to a secure mental health lockup and for all I know, might still be there.
Sorry, that’s “common sense gun reform”. They can’t even use the word “control” in the current climate.
There are also the lockdowns.
In children’s schools, they are supposed to lock all the doors to all the classrooms. This is so the gunman can only massacre everyone in one classroom. With our large class sizes, they won’t slaughter more than 30 people.
Our local schools have Active Shooter drills every year now.
That is what happened at Uvalde in Texas, one of the latest ones.
Remember, to have a plan for extra keys so when the police come, they don’t spend an hour trying to figure out how to…open an unlocked door.
and
Arming the teachers.
I’m not going there because that has its own set of problems, not least, what happens when a teacher decides to be a shooter.
The issue of “mental health problem” getting used to distract from cultural factors is a current obstacle I’m working on.
Simultaneously maga types treat mental illness as a scary undefined thing separate from “natural” or “normal” where many things are how we work in negative feeling contexts, and an excuse to distract from culture. Both factors matter and people have to do work to pressure the crowd to one. That work can be interfered with.
Just remember, halt any attempt at passing red flag laws!
Jesus, there isn’t enough ethanol in the local group…
Am I glad I don’t go to school anymore!
Gun brain.
Loved Puri’s letter, but one strong disagreement. The current horror of US gun policy is not the result of “years of inaction.” It is the result of decades of aggressive corruption of American politics by the firearms industry.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, like maybe 20-30 years ago, on occasion you’d see a dead fox laid out on top of a stone wall bordering a field. Only farmers had ready access to firearms, and a dead fox was a warning to all the others: “Stay away from our effin chickens!”
Then, inevitably, the country modernized, which meant that urban gangs could get hold of guns–and well, it’s nothing like the USA, but it’s not just foxes any more.
This reminds me a Brian McFadden cartoon which includes a panel with Fla Gov Ron DeSantis proclaiming,
Remove immunity for the gun manufacturers and sellers and they will lobby for more gun control because otherwise they’ll go bankrupt. Or they’ll stop selling guns and ammunition in the US which would also work.
But remember, learning about slavery will traumatise the kids.
“The Michigan State murderer… had been arrested on a felony weapons charge”
Just to be clear, he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon without a concealed carry permit. He was carrying it, apparently, for self defense, not because he intended to use it in a crime. This makes him far more like the millions of white gun nuts in this country than criminals who use weapons in a crime. He was accordingly given 18 months probation, which he completed as required. I am concerned that, because he was black, people would assume that his arrest was the result of violent criminal behavior.
There have been about 105 mass shooting deaths so far this year. He must have confused it with total gun deaths (excluding suicide). Yes, still a problem. But the only way you could think that 2,215 could represent mass shooting deaths is to really really not know what you are talking about.
This makes him far more like the millions of white gun nuts in this country than criminals who use weapons in a crime.
Yeah, he was totally unlike the criminals who use weapons in a crime, right up until he used his weapon in a crime.
@10. chrislawson :
Quoted for truth.
The NRA has blood on its hands and it’s time it was treated as a domestic enemy of the American People – which it is since it is getting them killed pretty much every day.. Of course, its members are armed and angry already & thepolitics of this are just ..ugh so .. yeah.
The Second Amendment really needs repealing but that won’t happen either.
@ Jean :
Yes! Yes absolutely.. Problem is the current SCOTUS… & the political power the gun lobby already has. Stillseems like the ebst chance of changing things here to me tho’..
The US of A looks absolutely bizarre, nonsensical and toxic to the rest of the world in this area.
The issue is that most of the traits you can easily use to profile mass shooters are extremely common in cops. I mean, the number 1 predictor of mass shooting is domestic violence, and I don’t want to say cops do the most DV, but if they are not at the top they are certainly on the leaderboard. If they put in place rules to prevent mass shooters from owning guns, they would end up disarming most of the police force, not to mention disproportionately targeting right-wing individuals and areas more generally.
It’s a problem for our society in general – if you make good rules and enforce them fairly, the outcomes will tend to push harder against the right, and so the idea of good rules and fair enforcement is treated as a biased one. It’s just particularly bad in the case of mass shootings because the enforcers basically average out to the exact profile of the criminals.
@19
…. I am sorry.. You where trying to state a problem in there some place? Because all I see is a very good case for why the F we shouldn’t be letting such people either have guns or become/remain cops. Needless to say, the implication that you present that we should keep them as the later, but then do nothing about the former, because otherwise we couldn’t keep them as cops is, to use a phrase I love from the Brits – MENTAL.
I don’t see a problem here.
” if you make good rules and enforce them fairly, the outcomes will tend to push harder against the right”
Well, reality does have a well known liberal bias.
-Colbert
ever consider that the right needs a LOT more pushback against them than they have gotten? A LOT MORE.