What are resources to prevent school shootings and mass shootings?

[Night FM]

The political side of this focuses on legislation, however I'm curious what other social resources are that can prevent school shootings and mass shootings. People may suggest investing into "mental health", but I think there are other variables as well.

Some of the school shooters may have been bullied, though that doesn't excuse their actions, and may not always be the case. Perhaps better resources which teach people how to properly handle bullying so that they don't feel powerless are in order (since simply punishing bullying when it happens won't break the cycle or be able to address all of the unseen or unreported bullying which inevitably occurs).

Likewise, some shooters may invest time into toxic parts of social media where antisocial worldviews are reinforced by others (and I find social media in general is prone to toxicity, particularly when related to politics or controversial issues, but that's a separate discussion). There seems to be a trend to politicize this (e.x. such as the association of "incels" with far-right politics), though I prefer to look at the psychological side of things which aren't limited to a specific political label (e.x. there are toxic parts of social media which are apolitical or span the political spectrum).

There are other issues which I'm not sure how society can properly address, such as bad or abusive parenting practices which go on in the home and which are often unseen. Even in the event a parent is charged with child abuse or neglect, this may not stop the abuse if it is part of a continuous cycle which goes on unseen by most of society.

Edited September 16 by Night FM

[CharonY]

How about not giving anyone easy access to guns as a starting point.

[Night FM]

9 minutes ago, CharonY said:

How about not giving anyone easy access to guns as a starting point.

That's the political side of things, not the psychological.

Plus, if we hypothesize about legislation, it at best would reduce the amount of violence which occurs, but wouldn't end violence, since perpetrators would find other, possibly less effective methods to perpetuate mass violence (e.x. committing mass violence using knives or cars).

Edited September 16 by Night FM

[exchemist]

18 minutes ago, Night FM said:

That's the political side of things, not the psychological.

Plus, if we hypothesize about legislation, it at best would reduce the amount of violence which occurs, but wouldn't end violence, since perpetrators would find other, possibly less effective methods to perpetuate mass violence (e.x. committing mass violence using knives or cars).

Experience from other countries, where guns are not widely available, is that this is not the case. Mass violence against schoolkids is very hard to bring about without a gun and it almost never occurs.

Edited September 16 by exchemist

[Night FM]

11 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Experience from other countries, where guns are not widely available, is that this is not the case. Mass violence against schoolkids is very hard to bring about without a gun and it almost never occurs.

I'm convicted that car attacks may increase if gun violence becomes rarer, not necessarily at schools, but on other victims. Given that car attacks can result in high death tolls:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/07/us/brownsville-texas-car-crash-accident/index.html

Again, though, this is political. I created this topic to discuss the social and psychological side of things, rather than posting a topic in the politics section.

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, Night FM said:

I'm convicted that car attacks may increase if gun violence becomes rarer, not necessarily at schools, but on other victims. Given that car attacks can result in high death tolls:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/07/us/brownsville-texas-car-crash-accident/index.html

Again, though, this is political. I created this topic to discuss the social and psychological side of things, rather than posting a topic in the politics section.

You may get the odd one, but the fact remains it is far harder to bring off than shooting a mass of people with a gun if you feel pissed off. This is why school shootings are virtually exclusively an American phenomenon. In the UK we had the last one in Dunblane in 1996, when someone was able to get hold of....a GUN.....:https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-changed-laws-ended-school-shootings-after-1996-dunblane-massacre-2022-5?op=1

There will be just the same adolescent alienation and resentments occurring all over the world, but without easy access to guns, people don't find it is easy to act on these destructive  impulses - and the moment usually passes without serious incident.  I'm afraid I now laugh whenever yet another school shooting is reported in the USA. They will go on and on until guns are properly controlled, as they are in other civilised nations. Yet we see Americans contorting themselves and jumping through all manner of logical hoops to avoid the reason that is staring them in the face: the availability of GUNS.

 

[John Cuthber]

4 hours ago, Night FM said:

... Perhaps better resources which teach people how to properly handle bullying ...

This is called "victim blaming".

[Night FM]

39 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

This is called "victim blaming".

Not at all. Teaching someone how to install a home security system isn't "blaming them for getting burglarized" if they don't have one, or claiming that the burglar isn't responsible for their actions.

This, to me, is similar to only offering women the advice to "call the police" if they are a victim of domestic violence, when, in reality, much of it occurs when the police aren't available and the police are not able to permanently stop it if it occurs outside of what can be legally done. (This is why resources on how domestic abuse victims can remove themselves permanently from the situation exist, for example):

https://www.thehotline.org/plan-for-safety/

Edited September 16 by Night FM

[John Cuthber]

When did "burglarized" become a word for burgled?

Anyway, telling people that they didn't have an adequate coping strategy is telling them it's their fault.

[joigus]

Education.

[iNow]

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

we see Americans contorting themselves and jumping through all manner of logical hoops to avoid the reason that is staring them in the face: the availability of GUNS.

Not all americans

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Not all americans

No indeed. About half the country seems to get it. 

[zapatos]

10 hours ago, Night FM said:

Perhaps better resources which teach people how to properly handle bullying so that they don't feel powerless

So your first suggestion is telling victims to just deal with it. I have a feeling we wouldn't be friends IRL.

[iNow]

In fairness to NightFM, regardless of what we do with guns there is an opportunity to find those who feel powerless in schools and help them with better strategies for dealing with it. This can easily be a Both/And situation.

However, the shootings occur for reasons beyond "I got bullied" so any solutions need to apply beyond that, too. 

Saying "it's a mental health issue" or "bc kids bully each other" is definitely more of a red herring than an actual attempt at solving the problem of school shootings, but that doesn't mean we can't as a society do better with both mental health in youth and bullying issues in schools. 

It's just that we ALSO need to do something about the guns, and that's a pretty tough nut to crack given how pervasive and easy to obtain/create they are.

Edited September 16 by iNow

[CharonY]

9 hours ago, Night FM said:

I'm convicted that car attacks may increase if gun violence becomes rarer, not necessarily at schools, but on other victims. Given that car attacks can result in high death tolls:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/07/us/brownsville-texas-car-crash-accident/index.html

Again, though, this is political. I created this topic to discuss the social and psychological side of things, rather than posting a topic in the politics section.

Except of course that is not happening. Older statistics from 2009-2015 showed a median of less than one death from mass shootings in any European country and 18 per year in the USA. If you want to talk about psychology, it would suggest that Americans have a uniquely different psychological mindset than Europeans. One could extend that to gun violence in general.

Quote

The U.S. has the 32nd-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world: 3.96 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019. That was more than eight times as high as the rate in Canada, which had 0.47 deaths per 100,000 people — and nearly 100 times higher than in the United Kingdom, which had 0.04 deaths per 100,000.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/24/980838151/gun-violence-deaths-how-the-u-s-compares-to-the-rest-of-the-world

And looking at homicide rates, the US has a rate of 6.4/100,000. If we exclude mini-countries, the next highest Western European Country would be France with 1.56. The UK has 1.1 and Germany 0.82 (see wikipedia). In the US, the by far guns are the the murder weapon of choice (https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/). I often feel that folks in the US, especially when they talk about shithole countries or how immigrants allegedly swamp European countries with violence and crime, vastly underestimate how things are in their own neighborhood.

So no, other countries do not even come close with murders using alternative weapons. It is not necessarily the guns per se, but clearly, the cult around its use, and the convenience to kill (themselves and/or others), has created a situation that facilitates killings and, again, assuming that Americans don't have highly specific psychological issues, any discussions that tries to ignore a likely central aspect to it, is going to miss the mark.

 

3 minutes ago, iNow said:

In fairness to NightFM, regardless of what we do with guns there is an opportunity to find those who feel powerless in schools and help them with better strategies for dealing with it. This can easily be a Both/And situation.

However, the shootings occur for reasons beyond "I got bullied" so any solutions need to apply beyond that, too. 

Saying "it's a mental health issue" or "bc kids bully each other" is definitely more of a red herring than an actual attempt at solving the problem of school shootings, but that doesn't mean we can't as a society do better with both mental health in youth and bullying issues in schools. 

It's just that we ALSO need to do something about the guns, and that's a pretty tough nut to crack given how pervasive and easy to obtain/create they are.

One can ask separate questions here. One is what facilitates violence in any form (bullying is at best only one factor and I suspect that there are so many aspects that trying to find simple narrative is largely futile). The second is why it leads to deaths and/or severe injury, which, given the title, seems to be the original question. I do believe that OP was started from a uniquely American perspective, assuming that somehow mass shootings or equivalent violence is a just part of the course, not realizing that the USA is an outgroup among developed nations. 

[TheVat]

10 hours ago, Night FM said:

, if we hypothesize about legislation, it at best would reduce the amount of violence which occurs, but wouldn't end violence, since perpetrators would find other, possibly less effective methods to perpetuate mass violence (e.x. committing mass violence using knives or cars).

Hypothetical, and unsupported.  And irrelevant, since you acknowledge that mass violence would be reduced.  Guns make mass killing easy.  And that feeling of ease with a gun IS germane to the psychological aspects of the problem.  Plenty of evidence to suggest an alienated angry teenager would more likely kill classmates with the feeling of power a gun, especially an assault style rifle, confers.  Mass knifings are quite rare, even in places where no civilian legally possesses a gun.  So it is not "politicizing" to inquire how to render mass murder more daunting to someone emotionally unstable.  Even if it were, psychology and politics often intersect.  Get used to it.

[swansont]

There’s no use to trying to avoid political solutions, since everything will ultimately tie back to politics. At the very least an approach will have a cost, meaning it has to be paid for. And the willingness to pay is inherently political.

[Sensei]

14 hours ago, exchemist said:

Experience from other countries, where guns are not widely available, is that this is not the case. Mass violence against schoolkids is very hard to bring about without a gun and it almost never occurs.

From 2009 to 2018:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html

"The US has had 57 times as many school shootings as the other major industrialized nations combined"

(to have a fair comparison, we could also compare the population with the number of mass shootings).

Edited September 16 by Sensei

[iNow]

28 minutes ago, Sensei said:

From 2009 to 2018:

It’s gotten worse in the 6 years since then (with an only temporary drop due to Covid lockdowns)
 

[Sensei]

1 minute ago, iNow said:

It’s gotten worse in the 6 years since then (with an only temporary drop due to Covid lockdowns)

You just won the jackpot! What a brilliant idea. When we have online schools and unlimited access to knowledge via the Internet, the traditional school model seems outdated. In online schools they will kill just in Counter-Strike etc.

 

[swansont]

37 minutes ago, Sensei said:

You just won the jackpot! What a brilliant idea. When we have online schools and unlimited access to knowledge via the Internet, the traditional school model seems outdated. In online schools they will kill just in Counter-Strike etc.

 

This ignores the fact that the US is the outlier, by a wide margin, and that the utility of schools is greater than what you learn in class.

[Night FM]

11 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

When did "burglarized" become a word for burgled?

Anyway, telling people that they didn't have an adequate coping strategy is telling them it's their fault.

Not sure what to say. It's a person's responsibility to use adequate coping strategies, but not their fault in the sense that the other person isn't accountable for their behavior.

The latter would be like saying "it's okay to break into someone's home if they neglected to install a security system", which isn't what I'm saying.

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, Sensei said:

You just won the jackpot! What a brilliant idea. When we have online schools and unlimited access to knowledge via the Internet, the traditional school model seems outdated. In online schools they will kill just in Counter-Strike etc.

 

Well, except that the online cohort has resulted in a massive drop in abilities. IOW it just doesn't work as well as traditional teaching. First cohorts from the pandemic have arrived at universities and the results are dismal. We have been doing hybrid teaching for a little while and similar as during the emergency phase of the pandemic, remote students are consistently doing worse and it has been pretty much accepted learning loss is a worldwide phenomenon due to COVID-19.

I will note that there are not a whole lot of studies out there, and few used standardized testing for cross-comparison. In fact, some simply used student scores during the pandemic, which is problematic, as remote teaching has resulted in a massive flood of cheating. In some cases you could see your questions posted online on certain websites in real-time.

[zapatos]

25 minutes ago, Night FM said:

It's a person's responsibility to use adequate coping strategies

Can't believe you are doubling down on blaming the victim. You seem to be a step removed from real life. Not everyone has adequate coping strategies or even the ability to execute them if they do have them, yet you are saying they have the "responsibility" to cope with bullying. IOW, if they can't cope, you are saying it is their fault.

[Night FM]

15 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Can't believe you are doubling down on blaming the victim. You seem to be a step removed from real life. Not everyone has adequate coping strategies or even the ability to execute them if they do have them, yet you are saying they have the "responsibility" to cope with bullying. IOW, if they can't cope, you are saying it is their fault.

Right. If a person's home constantly gets broken into, it's their responsibility to take action such as installing a security system. Obviously, this doesn't mean it's "right" for a burglar to break into a person's home just because they didn't install a security system (and the law obviously wouldn't agree with that either). But it's more likely to happen to people who don't have one.

You're being obstinate and misusing the term "victim blaming" to avoid acknowledging simple realities.

Edited September 16 by Night FM