[RD] Florida School Shooting

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Didn't I just see where someone that threatened Trump online is taking therapy.

God, if that's all it takes, 3/4 of the country should be in therapy. :D

If I had a dollar for every time some Breitbart dingbat or Trump follower on Facebook said they were gonna "report (me) to the Secret Service" I could hire a hit man.
 
I guess the difference was this guy threatened to assassinate him. I guess you don't go that far.

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) — An Illinois man will get mental health treatment and substance abuse counseling after pleading guilty to making online threats against President Donald Trump.

Joseph Lynn Pickett of Edwardsville was also ordered to spend six months behind bars for the June threats, though he's already served the time since his arrest last year.


Pickett pleaded guilty in an agreement with prosecutors in October, after authorities said he posted several times online that he wanted to assassinate Trump.

The posts included frequent profanity and detailed death threats. Pickett also taunted federal authorities when he wasn't immediately arrested.
 
I guess the difference was this guy threatened to assassinate him. I guess you don't go that far.

I'm pretty skilled with language. This guy got hung by the "detailed death threats." Expressing a hope or describing something that you would like to see doesn't have the required implication of taking action.
 
The 'direct evidence' in question was, IIRC, a Youtube comment. The right-wing media has been portraying this as the "FBI dropping the ball", in order to pretend that the problem isn't the guns, but I have no idea to what extent this is true. I would consider evidence that the FBI's own procedures in such cases were not followed to be evidence of 'dropping the ball' but I've seen no actual explanation of this, just headlines and "trending" topics.

The warning by the You Tuber was NOT the only warning that the FBI had about this shooter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...efore-school-massacre/?utm_term=.33262ada7502

The disclosure came two days after police say Cruz gunned down 17 people, most of them teenagers, at a high school in Parkland, Fla. The FBI — already facing intense scrutiny for its handling of political matters — described a Jan. 5 tip from “a person close to Nikolas Cruz,” a tip officials acknowledge should have initiated a response. The caller reported concerns about Cruz’s “gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting,” the FBI said in a statement.

The FBI was provided (by phone tip) with warnings from someone who personally knew the shooter, named the shooter, their gun ownership and desire to kill people.

This was the 2nd warning that the FBI had on him.
And they failed to pass this warning on to the FBI Miami office (which would have had jurisdiction over this area)

I would hope that had they conducted an investigation into this 2nd tip, they would have been able to connect it with the prior tip about a "Nikolas Cruz" that the You Tuber had provided them.

The FBI admitted its failure to follow its protocols:

In a statement, the agency acknowledged that the tip should have been shared with the FBI's Miami office and investigated, but it was not. The startling admission came as the agency was already facing criticism for its treatment of a tip about a YouTube comment posted last year. The comment posted by a "Nikolas Cruz" said, "Im going to be a professional school shooter."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-fbi-florida-school-shooting-20180216-story.html
 
It's true the FBI "dropped the ball." It failed to follow its own procedures. But mark my words, this fact will be brought up in a form of whataboutism to detract attention from the gun thing.
 
Ah okay, that's good. If we can blame the FBI we can pretend there's no need to take action on guns!


Did I say that?

There are already plenty of laws out there that are not being enforced/properly implemented.

After every tragic event like this there is inevitably a call for 'more gun control'.

Some of the failures that have led to these tragedies have been because people/agencies either failed to do their jobs or simply ignored their responsbilitiies.

The Sutherland Springs church shooter was a convicted felon that never should have been able to pass a background check and legally purchase a firearm. But the US Air Force failed to report the shooter's military court felony conviction to the database that makes up the NICS background check system.

The same sort of snafu led to the Charleston Church shooter being able to legally purchase a gun:

According to FBI Director James Comey, a police report detailing Roof's admission to a narcotics offense should have prevented him from purchasing the weapon used in the shooting, but an administrative error within the National Instant Criminal Background Check System kept Roof's admission (though not the arrest itself) from appearing on his mandatory background check.[58][59]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting#Perpetrator

People with mental health issues are supposed to be disqualified from being able to legally purchase a firearm. The NICS background check system is supposed to check for this. But there is a problem with the database used to make these background checks:

The FBI's background-check system is missing millions of records of criminal convictions, mental illness diagnoses and other flags that would keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands, a gap that contributed to the shooting deaths of 26 people in a Texas church this week.

Experts who study the data say government agencies responsible for maintaining such records have long failed to forward them into federal databases used for gun background checks - systemic breakdowns that have lingered for decades as officials decided they were too costly and time-consuming to fix.


and

A federal database with the names of mentally ill people barred from buying guns still lacks millions of records it needs to be effective. A new report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns points to gaps in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

The problem is that 14 years after NICS was put in place, states still aren't submitting all the required mental health records.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...ck-system-missing-records-20171110-story.html

But the Mayors Against Illegal Guns report shows 21 other states have reported fewer than 100 records

https://www.npr.org/2012/08/16/158932528/states-arent-submitting-records-to-gun-database

So 40% of states are not properly reporting their information related to mental health, criminal convictions, etc to the NICS database. garbage in=garbage out

Shouldn't this be a cause for concern?

You can try to expand the background search process but if the data that is supposed to make it up is incomplete then expanded background checks are going to be no more effective than the existing process.

Law enforcement was called out to the shooter's home 39 times over a 7 year period.
https://nypost.com/2018/02/16/deputies-called-to-suspected-shooters-home-39-times-over-seven-years/
Shouldn't that have been a warning indicator to someone?

The FBI failed to live up to its responsibilities in this instance.

The US Air Force failed to live up to its responsibilities in the Sutherlands Springs shooting.

The FBI failed to live up to its responsibilities in Charleston.

40% of US States are not properly reporting their data to the NICS database.

Perhaps more effort should be placed into fixing the current process, making sure that those responsible for the process are doing their jobs, before you decide to add another layer to the process.
 
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You may continue ignoring the fact that the existing background check process doesn't work...

Gee, thanks. But since I'm not a Republican on the payroll of the NRA I'm not trying to ignore that. I'm actually in favor of fixing it. Unfortunately, my congressman IS a Republican and panders to the 'any regulation infringes on muh rights' crowd so he CAN stay on the NRA payroll.
 
making new laws > enforcing old ones

When the old ones don't work, and in this case even the Republican shill acknowledged that they don't, yes, making new ones is in order. The existing laws are, in practice, unenforceable. They also, by design, leave a hole that the entire production of the gun makers could fall through in a pinch. So, yeah, starting over without letting gun manufacturers and their available for purchase Republicans run the process seems to be the solution.
 
When the old ones don't work, and in this case even the Republican shill acknowledged that they don't, yes, making new ones is in order. The existing laws are, in practice, unenforceable. They also, by design, leave a hole that the entire production of the gun makers could fall through in a pinch. So, yeah, starting over without letting gun manufacturers and their available for purchase Republicans run the process seems to be the solution.

There's also the fact here that those proposing new laws are clear on the alternatives. They don't employ the tried and true Republican tactic of removing old laws/regulations and then calling it a day there.
 
If we can blame the FBI we can pretend there's no need to take action on guns!

Those speaking against gun bans (because let's face it, that's what the "gun control" crowd really wants) aren't the ones living in the land of make-believe. The ones calling gun violence an epidemic and claiming it's only getting worse while touting statistics taken completely out of context are the ones doing the pretending.

Let's take the 38,000 gun deaths a year statistic that was brought up earlier:

On it's own, that looks like an absolutely terrible amount of gun deaths. However, even if we assume that there were 38,000 individual gun owners that committed those acts, that number is statistically insignificant when compared to the total number of gun owners in the US. Roughly a third of Americans claim to be gun owners, which means there are roughly 106 million gun owners in the US. That means, at most, 0.04% of gun owners use their guns to kill another human being. 0.04% is hardly what I'd call an "epidemic".

Another claim that gets made by the gun control crowd is that gun violence is on the rise. This is a claim that is 100% false. All violent crime, including gun violence have been on a steady decline in the US since 1990 and shows no sign of stopping that decline.

When the old ones don't work,

By what criteria are you determining the current laws aren't working? Because I use crime rates to determine whether or not laws are working and, as stated above, violent crimes including gun violence, have been on a steady decline for 27 years now.

Moderator Action: Telling people what they "really" want is entirely antithetical to discussion and is especially inappropriate in an RD thread. ~ Arakhor
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
Perhaps more effort should be placed into fixing the current process, making sure that those responsible for the process are doing their jobs, before you decide to add another layer to the process.

I'm unclear how what you're describing and proposing doesn't constitute "another layer". Compliance, regulatory enforcement and auditing are all additional layers of accountability and oversight. This would absolutely be a form of slightly more effective gun control relative to the situation you depict, where law enforcement and public administration just don't care or prioritise regulating access to firearms at all.

Let's take the 38,000 gun deaths a year statistic that was brought up earlier:

That's still heaps though. It's certainly a lot more than the like 300 that happen here.

Incidentally, a lot of them happen to be suicides, and the research I'm aware of suggests there's not much of a suicide substitution effect where people use other methods instead. Even small additional impediments lead to less people doing it, and I'm kinda surprised I don't see more discussion of how even things like requiring locked storage (and enforcing the requirement) can help with suicide rates.
 
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Moderator Action: I made this thread RD when I split it off from the mass killing threads in the hopes that a reasonable discussion about the shootings might take place. Posts with snappy one-liners, as have occurred multiple times on this page alone, are not conducive to that aim. Putting more effort into your posts is not only appreciated but expected in an RD thread.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
I'm unclear how what you're describing and proposing doesn't constitute "another layer". Compliance, regulatory enforcement and auditing are all layers of accountability and oversight which would absolutely be a form of slightly more effective gun control.

Let me add/clarify so as to address your question/comment:

There are already requirements for local/state/federal agencies to report criminal convictions, mental health adjudications, etc to the federal databases that are utilized for the NICS background check system.
Yet many state (and even federal) agencies are not currently doing so. Steps should be taken to ensure that those reportings are being done--that existing requirements are being followed. If states complain that they lack the resources to do so, then increase federal funding so that they can comply with the requirements. Penalize states or federal agencies that are intentionally not complying with the process/requirements. Steps can and should be taken to improve the performance and effectiveness of the existing (as its designed) process.

If your vehicle is not running properly you can take it to a mechanic to fix/tune up that which is not working. Purchasing a new vehicle because your old one isn't running properly is not the only solution.

And yes, I believe that fixing the existing process would improve the process (so in essence make for more effective gun control).

I am saying that steps should be taken to make sure that the existing layers work (as they were designed). And I am saying that this should be done first, before new/additional requirements are added to the process.
 
Yeah, that's gonna be additional bureaucracy at a minimum and probably increased penalties to provide a stick for recalcitrant agencies to actually do the enforcement. It would be a fairly big step change towards actual regulatory oversight, and a fairly major reform of state-federal relations in this policy area.

Bureaucracy that doesn't want to change and whose local masters don't want it to change, can be very difficult to reform. I reckon it'd be a hell of a fight to be honest. Getting all the states and local governments to act as effective agents of gun regulation, potentially against the wishes of constituents? That might be a fight comparable with just changing the laws to bypass states and create a new federal licensing and registration bureaucracy.

I'd also mention things like safe storage requirements where they already exist - I bet they're terribly enforced as a rule?

In Australia, a condition of firearms licenses is that police can and do go and physically check on registered owners' storage methods from time to time ensure they meet the legal requirements. When someone gets a firearm license they sign a legally binding undertaking called a statutory declaration (I assume the US has similar) to that effect, which makes failure to properly store firearms a civil offence. Something like that is the difference between having a law on the books and actually enforcing it, and yeah as you say, it requires more resources and actual consequences.
 
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