It seems that these shooters seek out soft targets where they are unlikely to encounter armed resistance. Not saying that we should put an armory in every school, just that these shooters aren't looking to get in a shoot out. If they were they'd go try to shoot up a police station.
Yes, per my comment above. They will go places where they won't face interference with their plans - they will choose a restaurant with a "No Guns" sign rather than a police station.
You assume there is no rationality behind the suicidal, but there is. Consider the Kamikaze.
I'd say that is wishful thinking. The number of college shooting perpetrators that expected to get away without being killed is most likely zero.
Here in Germany there are very few guns. Nonetheless, one of the typical places to go on a rampage is the court house, where you have a 100% likelyhood of armed guards.
Also: Didn't the Kamikaze try to crash into heavily armed ships?
Not even close. Official, legally registered guns? Perhaps. But memories are long. Per the Small Arms Survey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_c... you're in 15th place, tied with Iceland, in a cluster of countries at around 30 per 100 residents also including Uruguay, Sweden, Norway, France, Canada, and Austria.
For that matter, as of late Western Europe has been suffering more and worse such incidents than the US, and that includes German school shootings in Winnenden in 2009, Emsdetten in 2006, Rötz in 2005, Coburg in 2003 and Erfurt in 2002 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Europe). 3 of these incidents were small scale, but 2 resulted in 16 and 17 dead respectively, and another miraculously ended with only the shooter killing himself, but 37 injured, 4 students shot, etc.
I always find it ... amusing when Germans try to lecture Americans on this topic.
Ah, have you stopped institutionizing your seriously mentally ill like the US did starting in the early-mid '60s?
Uh huh. Do you know when I last time have seen a gun here in Germany, not carried by a police officer?
Never.
I have never seen a non-official handle a weapon, except on Television. In my life.
Oh by the way. Memories are long, sure. I recently read of a big weapons find, in the village next go mine. They found a lot of handguns and military rifles that somebody stashed in a hidden room of an official building at the end of the war. Do you know where those weapons went?
Straight to the trash. I don't even know if you can still use a weapon that has just been lying around for seventy years.
And what has the mentally ill thing to do with anything? I've been to America. Your mentally ill live in the street. How is that better?
Your first point reinforces the point of the Small Arms Survey as I recall, that most German guns are not in legal circulation. But the numerous shootings I listed, which you completely ignored, show they all aren't stashed away.
"I don't even know if you can still use a weapon that has just been lying around for seventy years."
If it was cleaned properly before putting it away, and in a moderately dry place, yes. Back then corrosive primers were common, so that was an essential and inescapable part of owning a gun (counter-examples are the round the Swiss adopted in 1911 (!) and the US M1 Carbine, a short rifle for officers and others who weren't front line infantry). For that matter WWII ammo is still generally just fine, modulo your having to much more thoroughly clean your gun afterwords.
ADDED: I have used/owned two military rifles manufactured in WWII, a Springfield 03A3 and a Garand. Basically, I'd consider myself well equipped if I had most any originally military rifle starting with the Mauser 1898. Yes, more than a century old....
And the fact that you haven't deinstitutionalized your mentally ill like we insanely (so to speak) have puts a different complexion on your crime, including "gun crime" statistics and incidents.
I'm not sure what you're arguing. I never said mass shooters expect to get away without being killed. I said they want to be successful - kill as many as they can before they're either killed or shoot themselves when they hear the sirens.
My Kamikaze example was merely demonstrating that suicidal people can be rational. In this case, their mission was to attack the battleships, not to attack an unarmed populace.
It's less silly than thinking the sort of people who would shoot up a classroom will have second thoughts if there is a school policy against having weapons, and less silly than believing the police will always arrive at a mass shooting in time to save a lot of lives.
To play devil's advocate, do people really believe that a person who has made up their mind to go on a shooting spree at their school will change their mind when they realize it is illegal to bring a gun on campus?
As noted elsewhere, these events are so rare and aberrant that it is difficult to impossible to come to firm conclusions.
BUT, we do know these suggestive things:
Of the recent, going back quite a ways shootings (I think back to 1989, but maybe post-1966), only the Arizona Congresswoman's was not in a "Gun Free"---except for the active shooter---location. (And if the people right there hadn't stopped the shooter while he was doing a magazine change an armed citizen who showed up while they were still wrestling with him would very likely have.)
The Aurora, CO movie theater shooter went significantly out of his way to go to a theater that was so hoplophobic that they required the off-duty police hired as guards to go unarmed (!). All the other local options had no such policies.
Do you really think that the sort of people who would shoot up a classroom will have second thoughts if they think someone else might have a gun?
Bullies are almost always cowards. So it seems plausible to me.
On the other hand, I think I understand where this piece of satire is coming from. I was a military wife and full-time mom and homemaker for a long time. My dad was career military and grew up on a farm. I grew up with shotguns hanging on the wall of my parent's bedroom. I have been around gun culture but I insisted my husband get rid of the handgun he had for a time because I am clear that if you are not prepared to kill someone when you pull a gun, you best not pull it because you are likely just arming your opponent and escalating the problems.
Escalating the arms race rarely leads to promoting the peace. It is unfortunate that satirical pieces of this sort so rarely follow up with commentary on how on promotes the peace after they lambast the idea of arming people to promote peace. But it seems to me that many people who recognize that more guns is not the solution do not know what would be an effective solution, so presumably they simply cannot offer anything more than criticism of the proposed solution. If you do not have an alternative solution to bring to the table, it usually isn't very helpful to shoot down (so to speak) the solution being proposed. But it happens a lot.
Utterly appalling that someone who took the nom de plume of cincinnatus would say that.
I'm someone who carries concealed every time I step outside my dwelling, unless I have to go to a "Gun Free Zone". Tell me exactly how my understanding of the world is "cartoonish". Use e.g. my past comments as a base. Other sources on request, but as a hint, my login name is the same one I've used since 1978 (sic), my initials.
You may be level headed and well adjusted by surely you've noticed the large number of people who are CCW proponents who are not? More importantly is this; when a gun is part of the equation there is now a non-zero chance someone is going to get shot.
The vast majority of the time the only gun in the vicinity is going to be that of the CCW. MOST people go through their entire lives without ever encountering a 'bad guy with a gun'. Ever.
People who CCW think they are bringing a gun to a gun fight, when maybe they are bringing a gun to a fist fight, or a stern conversation.
"You may be level headed and well adjusted by surely you've noticed the large number of people who are CCW proponents who are not?"
Nope. Name names.
"More importantly is this; when a gun is part of the equation there is now a non-zero chance someone is going to get shot."
Add your comment about a fist fight, which it is well established can be deadly. You're on the side of the criminals, while I'm obviously on the side of the law abiding civilians ... not much point in continuing this "debate".
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-s...
It seems that these shooters seek out soft targets where they are unlikely to encounter armed resistance. Not saying that we should put an armory in every school, just that these shooters aren't looking to get in a shoot out. If they were they'd go try to shoot up a police station.