Yet another school shooting in the US

In what is rapidly becoming such a normal part of everyday life in the US that you don't even hear about it on the news anymore, another school shooting has occurred.

This time it was in Marysville, Washington. A 14 year old boy shot and killed one other student, and wounded four others. One of the wounded was shot in the jaw. The shooter then killed himself.

I'm not going to do a long write up on this, because people don't seem to care too much if they actually have to read. Instead I'll throw out some statistics for you to look at.

• Since 2010, there have been 103 school shootings in the US.
• Since 2010, 105 people have been killed in school shootings in the US.
• Since 2010, 120 people have been injured in school shootings in the US.

Take a look at those numbers. That's mostly kids. Now you can take those numbers and add the hundreds of thousands of lives that are ruined and scarred by these events. The other kids and teachers who were there. The communities they happened in. The families of everyone involved.

And while the numbers are baffling, these are just the school shootings. Other public shootings are not taken into account. And it's just since 2010. That's not a lot of years. And these shootings are becoming more and more prevalent with every passing year.

I just don't understand how anyone in good conciseness can support gun carrying laws that are in place today. It's been tried for a while now. Might be time to try something different.

How is it that in the self proclaimed "greatest country in the world", parents can't send their kids to school without fear of them getting killed?

Argh, this is my home state. I deliver milk to 42 schools a week in Washington and see kids every day and think good god why would anybody? It's absolutely infuriating.

There are currently two gun laws on the ballot here in Washington. They are opposed to each other and both are too radical for both sides of the debate. One overly limits gun owner rights and the other is too lacks on gun control. As a gun owner I dislike both bills. But I fear this recent devolopment with change voters opinions and hurt gun owners.

I was severely picked on as a kid till senior year and I'd thought about kicking some ass here and there but killing multiple people never crossed mind.

I feel for the families and hope that a solution can be found to why this kill:destruct culture is occurring.

I just don't understand how anyone in good conciseness can support gun carrying laws that are in place today. It's been tried for a while now.

Well tell that to the firearms lobby and the associated politicians.

This is just sensationalism and paranoia. The idea that parents can't send their kids to school without fear of them getting shot to death because about 25 people/year in a country of well over 300 million get killed in school shootings is ridiculous. I did a quick, rough calculation, and the risk of a US child getting cancer is about 160 times higher than the risk of that same child getting shot in a school shooting. The risk of that child dying of cancer is 30 times higher. Perhaps parents should sit at home worrying that their children might get leukemia.

This is a terrible tragedy, that's all I have to say. Hopefully the wounded children recover quickly and fully and the parents of the murdered child can find peace somehow.

I've never liked the idea of being able to own firearms personally, but there's no way it can ever change. If they were to get outlawed tomorrow, the government would never be able to collect/destroy the hundreds of thousands of firearms in the country, both registered and unregistered. It's something that will likely never change due to the insane backlash that would occur and the monumental task getting rid of guns would be in the US.

I might argue that the problem with school shootings, however, is a great societal problem. Sure, guns make killing another person much too easy, but I think the reason why so many school shootings happen may be a bigger issue to worry about. Undiagnosed and untreated mental issues, lackadaisical parenting of the modern era, and the toxic nature of the ever-present online interactions are maybe things that need more consideration, in the long run.

You can't make laws to prevent cancer, though.

I say the same thing about just about everything on the news, including ISIS and Ebola. Too even for a second think any of that is a threat to your daily life is just absurd. But back to the school story, yes these things happen relatively rarely (including suicides), bullying is something that needs more attention. The way humans treat each other, especially at younger ages, is disgusting.

Apparently you live a privileged life if you think this is "becoming" a part of life.

I'm 32 years old and school shootings were rampant where and when I was in high school and even when I was younger. A lot of my friends were killed in drive by shootings and various other happenings not far from or on school campuses over 20 years ago. Nothing about this is new or "becoming" normal. It's a sad fact of life that has been ongoing for hundreds of years now. People just pretended it didn't exist until it started garnering attention on 24 hour news stations.

This also has nothing to do with gun control. The number 1 cause of all of these particular cases (which is only a tiny fraction of actual teenage related shootings throughout america) that people latch onto has been people with psychiatric issues that are being ignored. The only gun control needed here is parents need to be held accountable for how terribly they raise (don't raise) their children.

For the most part your OP is full of ignorance.

Of course if the gun laws weren't so lenient, the perpetrators probably wouldn't be involved in any shootings. It's true that there are psychological problems involved, but that doesn't excuse the method of violence associated with their cry for attention nor its destructiveness.

Cases of ebola in America: 9

Americans killed by ISIS: 2

People shot in America: 289 per day

That's a poor comparsion.

I live 5-10 minutes from that school. Unbelievable. This is a pretty small town, completely unremarkable. Crazy to imagine anything like this happening here.

@cornbredx: It's becoming a much more prevalent part of the american daily life. There's just no way around that. You can look up the statistics if you want. School shootings are happening more and more often, there's just no way around that fact. And it has everything to do with gun control. There's a reason that these attacks all happen with firearms. It's because you can't make that impact with a kitchen knife. Guns kill people. No way around that. Calling gun control ignorant is just the most typical argument for the NRA. It just baffles me beyond belief that anyone would argue that they need a tool made especially for killing in their homes. A gun is made specifically for killing. Why do you need it?

@icemael: It's not sensationalism. It's a HUGE problem. Don't you think we would do every single thing to prevent cancer if we could? Then why don't we do everything we can to prevent people from putting bullets in each other? And it shocks me that you can make a comment like the one you just did. You basically dismiss school shootings as being a problem, and make a comparison to one of the leading causes of death in the entire world, undermining the issue in the process. For shame.

Before Columbine, there was something like dozen a mass shootings with less than 5 people dead each. What has changed from the 80s on is the tech and the availability of cheap and easy to use and easy modified weapons.

So a giant "whatever" to people who think there isn't a problem with the level of gun violence in the US. If no one is willing to ask "Why did this kid have access to a handgun?" then we must accept that this stuff is going to happen with regularity.

They still happen, you just don't hear about it because people can't turn it into an internet argument.

Seems to me it is a mental health issue, not a gun carrying or gun selling laws that are the problem.

Criminals and mentally ill people don´t care about what is legal or not.

Btw, when people propose banning guns, they never talk about the police force. Should they be allowed to carry a gun in the streets? (a friendly reminder that there are few European countries out there were police officers don´t carry handguns. They do often have a gun available in their car though).

And how many were killed in the example you gave? None. I'm not dismissing this, but at least those people are alive. And take the amount of mass stabbings that occur and compare them to mass shootings. It's just so obvious that guns are a huge problem.

I'd propose restricting police from carrying firearms, yeah. There's generally more gun violence when police have access to guns.

@legion_: The problem is that many of the "anti-gun" crowd protesting in the streets don´t talk about the police force.

Am I the only who think Anita went too far with this tweet?

"We need to seriously adresse connections between violence, sexism and toxic ideas of manhood before boys and men commit mass shootings."

But it see a "gun selling law" issue. It is so easy to get access to a lot of weapons and ammo that a lot of people who really have no reason to have one can have one "just because". Forget the other details: In any environment with a lot of weapons, the rate of injuries and deaths go up. That isn't about good or righteousness or laws but statistics.

And btw, it is important to note that the kid killed himself with a handgun which is often ignored and unreported across the US. The biggest method of suicide in the US is "firearms" with the old popular method world wide of "hanging" coming only comes in at half. I'm not saying that "get rid of the guns, get rid of the problem" but rebutting the idea that the ease and availability of guns is harmless.

Basically, ease of gun ownership has had an easy to measure effect and I personally struggle to find the benefit or silver lining and a bunch of stats seem to bear that out. Its not a plague or epidemic but it is worrisome.

Dont feel like dredging up all the old arguments but i'll just say that i own around 20 firearms and from my point of view as someone living in a rural area with lots of gun owners who own multiple guns theirs just too many out there now to put the genie back in the lamp. Im all for stricter background checks and mental health screening but i dont think my rights should be infringed on because the actions of others. Most of my guns i value because the history behind them, guns are a form of art just like a book and they tell a story as much as any other antique. Sure my ar15 has none of that but my Lee Enfield and K98 sure do.

Also in my mind anyways guns are a great investment just because they dont lose a ton of there value, especially the older military guns which actually are going up in price every year as they become rarer. Guns are not the problem, if we could better educate our children and enforce the locking up of guns better a lot of this would go away, not all of it but i dont think you can ever control and police the vast amount of guns in this country.

@legion_: Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world because it is so common in adults, and especially the elderly. Cancer in children is very rare and isn't something any parent should sit around worrying about, and it's still a far bigger problem than school shootings. 'How is it that in the self proclaimed "greatest country in the world", parents can't send their kids to school without fear of them getting killed?' -- this is absolutely sensationalism and paranoia, and nothing else.

Not to mention that there's another huge difference between shootings and cancer, namely that there's no argument against more effective cancer treatments, whereas there is most definitely an argument against restrictive gun laws. There's an argument for them, too, but "about 25 people a year die in school shootings" is not it and adds nothing whatsoever of value to that discussion.

Damn, took less than a page of posts to turn into a gun control argument.

Isn't that what the intent of the topic was, though?

Maybe a slight exaggeration.

Anyway I don't want to wade into a gun control debate here, it's too emotional on both sides for me, but I don't understand the implication that certain non-specific laws would have prevented this particular tragedy, to my knowledge the shooter didn't use a firearm he legally procured.

Laws aren't preventative, they're corrective. "Here's what will happen to you if you do this thing."

Tell that to Australia.

A gun ban would guarantee that the law abiding citizen who wants a gun can't have one and maybe keep them out of the hands of some criminals. I don't see that as a safer society, just a society that can pretend like the problem is solved while more people die, we need better regulation (Better mental health, actual background checks, safety education), not a restriction of freedoms.

Would like to remind people that gun violence isn't increasing or decreasing, the media is just reporting on them more often and therefor its in the public eye more. You still are more likely to die from car accidents, eating McDonalds, the flu, suicide, ect ect. Banning guns isn't a viable solution in the US due to our culture and history, even cutting down on the larger caliber weapons would be a very difficult law to pass. Yes this is terrible and yes if something can be done, it should be, but look at some statistics before we all knee jerk react to the media broadcast tactics

We should also avoid blatant sensationalisms like this.

@dark_lord_spam: Laws actually are designed to be preventative for a number of reasons, for example by deterrence, a simple way of explaining this is do you think theft would increase if we had no law against stealing? Obviously it would but statistics back this up as well as there is a negative correlation between crimes with harsher penalties and the occurrence of those crimes.

However, while laws are meant to reduce crime they aren't meant to eliminate it. Another misunderstanding here, on the pro-gun side, is that all people who commit crimes are something akin to professional criminals.

How is that not a argument for stricter gun control? Are you serious? How about the 30 americans killed by firearms every day? Or how about the 162 americans wounded by firearms every day? Or the 53 americans that kill themselves with firearms every day?

Guns are a huge issue. Get them out of the hands of the Average Joe before it's too late. Then again, it probably is. I remember seing this guy on the news, and he said something that really stuck with me. He said that if was police were to go around knocking on doors gathering guns, they would never get them. Instead they would be shot. And you know what, I think he's right. And that's the problem with the US.

So I was sitting here and thinking about how when I hear about school shootings it is always an American school. I know that they probably do happen in other countries, so that means one of two things. Either they occur much less in other countries or they are occurring at the same rate and I just don't hear about them because it is in another country and doesn't make it into American news. I think it may be more of an American problem, though. Then someone linked me to this and it suddenly got tied into another current issue and I decided that I have to get off the internet. I am going to go play video games because I don't want to talk to people anymore.

This always angers me. People talking about their rights to own a gun. How it's about freedom to own a gun. What about the rights and freedoms of the 30 people who get shot and killed every single day in the US? Why should their right to live and their right to freedom be infringed upon because some guy wants to own a firearm?

You seriously need to look further than your own interests. Is owning a gun that important to you, that you'll sacrifice 11.000 fellow citizens every year to own it?

11.000 killed every year.

60.000 injured every year.

20.000 gun suicides every year.

How can you not see the madness?

I think that's about enough of this topic for now. It is Sunshine and Smiles Week on Giant Bomb after an extremely exhausting period dealing with all kinds of serious issues, and a heated debate about gun control is not something we want to deal with on the forums right now. Maybe some other time.