Senate Gun Control

Based on the events we know leading up to the shooting this sounds appropriate to me. Honestly, I think the high school administrators who decided to send him back to class without at least checking his backpack, knowing the threat he has just made, knowing he very likely had access to guns, need to face the same criminal charges as are levied against the parents.

 

Hindsight is 20/20.

Should someone have asked if the kid had the gun on him or checked his bag? Yes. That someone should have been one of the irresponsible parents who knew they had not locked the gun away at home.

For the school administration, from what I’ve read so far, charging them with anything would be asinine. The lawsuit… I think it will be tough to prove that the administration should be in charge of launching what is essentially an intelligence investigation into a student’s social media and personal life when the evidence was so slight. The lawsuit is doing what it’s stated purpose is, which is to draw attention to gun control and school issues, but the idea that it should be successful is ridiculous.

 

From CNN:

I don't see how that is just about social media and personal life when that was at school, apparently the day of the shooting.

 

Funny how the narrative shifted dramatically after the parents' shennanigans, isn't it?

Initial reports had the media reporting about 'black clothing' and other Columbine checkboxes - sometimes literally just speculating and admitting that they had no actual evidence it was true.

Also, let's not lean into the 'gun not being locked away' story - the gun, as the family social media accounts made clear, was a present for the kid. He didn't get ahold of "dad's gun", he was given the gun. Even if it had been 'locked up', he would've been provided access.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...rs-claim-graphic-drawing-plan-VIDEO-GAME.html

From the article:
On the morning of Tuesday's shooting, during the second meeting with guidance counselors, Crumbley claimed his graphic drawings were part of a video game design and said he wanted to pursue a career in that field, the letter said.

According to guidance counselors, Crumbley was calm and worked on homework while staff tried to reach his parents and they traveled to the school to sit in on the meeting.

Counselors questioned Crumbley on the chilling note found on his desk that featured disturbing drawings depicting a gun, a bullet, blood, a shooting victim and a laughing emoji.

The note included the words: 'Thoughts won't stop, help me'; 'my life is useless' and 'the world is dead,' according to prosecutors.

Parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were immediately summoned to the school, but failed to ask if their son had the gun they had bought him, and left the school without Ethan, prosecutors said.

The parents also did not notify counselors that they had purchased a gun for their son recently during that meeting, Thorne said.
...
'Given the fact that the child had no prior disciplinary infractions, the decision was made he would be returned to the classroom rather than sent home to an empty house,' the superintendent said.

The Crumbleys failed to ask their son about the gun or check his backpack and 'resisted the idea of their son leaving the school at that time,' prosecutors said.

Instead, the teen returned to class and the shooting subsequently occurred.

Thorne said that Oxford Community Schools will hire a third-party investigator to review school officials' actions leading up to the shooting.

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Essentially, he duped the teachers and, with the parents being absolutely irresponsible and damn near neglectful, the teachers had no reason to believe there was an imminent threat. They found him looking for ammo, his parents confirmed his story that shooting was a family hobby. Then they found the drawing, but he then says its essentially fiction and after pulling him from the classroom, they called his parents, asked them to take him home, and the entire hour or so this took, the kid asked for homework and is doing homework.

I think we're looking at this in hindsight and being like "CHECK THE BAG" like the audience in a horror movie. The thing is, in real time, all of the school's actions are relatively reasonable and understandable. Not to mention that the school is hiring a third party to investigate their professional actions, so we will see what they conclude.

 

Did you actually read the article?

Whether they should be in charge or not, they actually did undertake an investigation and ignored what they found, apparently taking no precautions whatsoever, even after warning signs repeatedly presented themselves, even at school.

 

Yes, I did. When I use the term intelligence investigation, I mean a deep dive into the family, the child, social media posts, interviews with multiple parties, etc. Like actually collecting intelligence on a potential threat. They aren't trained to do that nor did that do that. I don't think they ignored what little, and let's be clear it was little actual incriminating evidence, they discovered. They absolutely attempted to take precautions (Pulling the child from class, asking the parents to take him home, mandating that the parents get him psychologically evaluated) but the parents blocked them and their normal processes move slowly.

Look: If the parents of the other kids want to sue the school, they are well within their rights to have issues with what actions were taken, as they were victims in this crime. We, as observers to the situation, should not be so quick to take sides and agree with one side's interpretations of the events. However, we are all free to do whatever we want; I will just try to let the court processes proceed and just watch as more facts and evidence come forth.

 

I said the word "bomb" in class once and was suspended for 45 days. Multiple students spoke up and claimed it was taken out of context. Some of them were upstanding students who weren't even my friends, they didn't have anything to gain by speaking up. I never had the slightest thought of bombing anyone. It didn't matter. There was zero tolerance. My principal didn't even entertain a defense, the suspension was handed down within seconds of my butt hitting the seat in the principal's office, my mom was immediately called to take me home and was not given a choice, and I was intentionally placed under adult supervision every second until my mom arrived. The school cop was brought in to search me and my locker. This was at a time when Columbine was pretty much the only school shooting people knew about.

Now school shootings are an American pastime, this kid says disturbing **** on social media, draws pictures of shootings, and all he needs to say to dupe the school is some bs line about video game design? What did his words on social media have to do with video game design? How are spoken words also video game design? How gullible.

I was handled harshly, but Oxford High School was too tolerant in this instance, to the point of negligence. They should have erred on the side of caution, but they didn't. At the very least, they should have removed him from school until the process played out, whether the parents wanted it or not. They should not have asked he be taken home, they should have demanded he be removed from the premises until they knew it was safe for him to return. Yes, he should have been searched, it's not merely hindsight to say that, it should have been part of the school's protocol. They should have had that plan in place, it's not too much to ask for them to be prepared for these situations, seeing how common they are. It should have been part of that school's protocol to search his person, his bag, and his locker, as it was at my school more than 15 years ago, before these shootings became commonplace. I was searched many times at school after my suspension, and nothing concerning, and I mean nothing, ever turned up. They kept searching me for the rest of the year, anyway. I didn't like it, but it was done for the protection of the other students. The searches were discontinued the following year. As badly as I was handled, and as harmful and painful as it was to me personally (I can barely talk about this without getting tears in my eyes), I honestly believe this situation was handled worse. I was punished unjustly because the needs of the many outweighed my needs. This kid was apparently not punished or even removed because his needs were placed above the needs of his entire school's.

Students should all know by now that any talk or any hint of a shooting will be taken very seriously, as if they are an actual threat. They should be expected to know the climate we live in and that schools will absolutely not **** around with any signs of a shooting, so they shouldn't **** around themselves.

 

Exactly.

And we have, at the same time, 7 year olds that are handcuffed by police and forced to the ground at schools for 'acting out' - you probably don't need to guess what the deciding factor is there.
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The punishment shouldn't have been opt-in.

I'm not saying we need zero tolerance, but "just some tolerance" would be fine and still mean there's enough red flags here to look into

 

I’m not against the school sending the kid home with his parents until an evaluation was completed, and making that part mandatory.

One of the things that’s sure to come up during the investigation is what the school district policy, or the school’s personal policy, was when it comes to dealing with incidents like this. I say was because I’m sure they will not switch over to a zero tolerance policy to overcompensate in reaction to the shooting.

 

Newsom calls for bill to allow private citizens to sue gun manufacturers, distributors (kcra.com)

Hoping this is successful. It's not banning guns, just asking citizens to sue gun manufacturers, distributors or anyone trying to sell assault rifles or ghost gun kits. I don't know what the laws are in CA, these things should be illegal anyway. Not just, citizens can sue.

What I mean is this isn't nearly enough, but hey, it's something. You gotta start somewhere, thanks for the idea Texas.

 

California's legislature has been working on changing laws to address ghost guns for the last ~2 years.

Law discussion here about why the parents of the school shooter that have been arrested/charged are facing trouble, particularly mentioning that this isn't for being the parents, but for their decisions they've made in the process leading up to the shooting:

 

I’m kind of a sucker for possible landmark court cases. This has some potential.

There are some important differences between this and the Texas abortion law, however I largely think that the same attitude should apply. Texas may have figuratively shot gun owners in the foot with that law.

 

Won't work for two reasons:

1. 2A is directly in the text of the Constitution, which the conservative 6 will use to...

2...throw out any such law on exactly those grounds.

Also, SCOTUS has no problem changing the rules to allow their viewpoints to prevail, so don't expect similar laws targeting liberal priorities to pass muster with the Thomas/Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Barrett crowd. And Roberts isn't reliable enough to count on here.

 

Well we have a judicial process for a reason, right? So it depends on the law in question (which hasn’t been passed?) which law the new law is actually referring to (which hasn’t been determined; speculated by Newsome, but not actually determined) and it depends on what actual constitutional argument before the courts will be.

The 2nd Amendment isn’t a blanket protection on attaining and owning whatever gun you want. For instance, I can’t go buy a new fully automatic weapon. Like, at all. No matter how strongly I believe in the 2nd amendment. Because there is legislation that prevents that.

So… I’m not so sure to call this dead on arrival when it hasn’t arrived yet. We’ll see what happens.

 

Your faith in judicial fairness would be quixotic and even cute if it weren't so misplaced. Whatever the 'process' is, the ultimate arbiter is the Supreme Court, and it's pretty much a fait accompli how they'll rule when it comes to the Second Amendment (and many other things).

Since 2000, the Supreme Court has:

1. Changed election law to halt a recount so a Republican could win in defiance of a previous precedent in which allowing a recount did the same, then immediately switched it back (Bush v Gore).
2. Ruled that someone who could only afford to contribute $20 to an election campaign had the same-sized megaphone as someone who could contribute $20 million, and that doing so didn't produce 'corruption or the appearance of corruption' (Citizens United).
3. Claimed that corporations are people and as such, could impose their religious beliefs on non-believers in Hobby Lobby.
4. Unilaterally declared that racism in the South was dead despite a literal mountain of evidence to the contrary and subsequently gutted the Voting Rights Act by a single vote (Shelby v Holder).
5. Refused to enjoin the recent Texas SB 8 bill which deputizes private citizens to enforce an abortion ban in defiance of controlling precedent in Roe (which is likely going to be overruled but still technically remains in effect...or at least Casey does).

So you'll forgive me if I don't share your optimistic appraisal of the situation. We have a far-right, conservative activist court which is legislating from the bench, and nothing short of radical action by Congress and the President will reign them in.

 

I support background checks but boyyyyyy…

This waiting period is a nuisance.

 

In GOP Land this is literally like being shot by a vagina

This is ongoing so there are two sides. But in the end a Republican was shot and killed in a road rage incident by someone driving a Prius.

 

Yup, if the story is accurate that he was ramming someone else as part of road rage, I think that's a justified shot even if he didn't also pull a gun first. That just makes it more of a slam dunk.

 

I’ve experienced a similar road range incident. After a perceived slight, a middle aged man in a very expensive SUV followed the vehicle driven by a friend of mine. The driver then tried to ram the side of our car before attempting to hit the bonnet, and force into the central reservation. This was on a busy motorway at speed. Thankfully, (my friend is a car nut) we outmanoeuvred the attacker and exited the motorway before he had time to follow.

This was dangerous enough without firearms and I can understand why the shooter in the Kuczwanski case feared for his life. Frankly, if my pursuer had managed to halt our vehicle, I’m certain that he would have tried to inflict serious violence (if he hadn’t already injured/killed us with his vehicle). Like Kuczwanski, I’m sure this guy’s family would say he’s a quiet, decent man. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a violent criminal who tried to ram me off a motorway.

There are people who become incredibly aggressive when they get behind the wheel. This looks like a justified shooting.

 

One of the rare ones.