What is revealed by this serious article appearing in a major US newspaper?

It is very disturbing; the premise is that mass shootings have become so commonplace they are now a normal feature of life in America.

The article has a “pay wall” so I couldn’t read it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Does it include that gun owners have the right to high volume clips and bump stocks for deer hunting because you never know when a deer will fire back at you? J.K.

@Tropical_Willie I’m sorry. I didn’t know it had a pay wall. I’m able to read it, and I do not have a subscription to the Washington Post. That seems odd.

Basically, the article says that if you can’t barricade yourself in a safe room, run. Hiding and being still gives a gunman more time to shoot you. The experts recommend taking the chance of running away.

The article spends a long time talking about how to be hyper-aware of one’s surroundings at all times to know where emergency exits are. It also talks about preparing for events in advance by studying ground plans of where you might be visiting.

I was able to open it without a subscription. I often hit the pay wall with the WaPo on FB though.

The fact that this has become a normal occurrence is shocking, yet the advice given is good to know since Congress seems paralyzed to prevent them.

The link worked for me.

I’m not sure what the problem is. The video is not poorly done, and is informative, to most.

If the OP is concerned that terrorist attacks are becoming “normal,” then they are correct. Sadly, we must teach civilians how to best survive the attacks. LEO response times, in the best of circumstances, are not fast enough to prevent mass casualties, in a soft target situation, that was well planned.

“What is revealed?” The honest lack of control that the US has over it’s population. And the instability of some of our citizens. And the effects of having weapons of war in the hands of anyone who can pass the simple screening process.

If you have Amazon Prime, they give you WaPo for free (I think for a limited time. 6 months?).

Also, many paywalls can easily be hurdled if you open them in your browser’s incognito/private mode.

Anyhoo…
Yes, the article is weird. A lot of people from First World nations are going to stop visiting us for fear of being eliminated by some enthusiastic 2nd Amendment supporter.

The article is merely a reflection of an unpleasant truth. Folks on the coasts should know what to do in the event of a hurricane, and living on a fault line means you should be prepared for earthquakes. And if you reside in a land where the guns outnumber the people, no laws or regulations are going to curb the ever accelerating levels of gunplay. The whole hoopla is like saturating the country with lethal pathogens then being alarmed at the rising levels of disease.

I’m of two minds.

On the one hand, I think the information is probably useful to have, in a “back of the mind, just in case,” kind of a way.

On the other, I realize that this article was published now because there are so many mass shootings happening now. Too many people have weapons designed for mowing down crowds, and then use them for that purpose… And I can’t believe that’s a necessary or unavoidable state of the country.

Also, some of the advice in that article—like sitting in particular locations in a restaurant or other public place—that is clearly not advice that everyone can follow. There are going to be people stuck in the middle. There are going to be people stuck far away from the exit. When you have 22,000 fans at a concert and gunfire starts raining down, there is going to be congestion no matter how well prepared everyone is to react.

So I guess where I fall: preparation is probably helpful… but it’s a mistake to think that’s our only recourse. We should also be finding ways to reduce the number of mass shooting incidents, and not simply believe this is a new and acceptable normal.

These weapons have been with us in the same basic form (semi-auto with large capacity magazines and high velocity ammunition) for right at a 100 years. What has changed that makes mass shootings happen now and so not much in the past? That’s what I’m struggling with.

There was a ban on semi-automatic rifles from 1994 to 2004 when it was allowed to expire by the Republican Congress and Republican President so that their gun-lobby donators would make more money. The high-capacity magazines have the subject of intense debate. It seems the rise in terrorist-type attacks targeting large numbers of civilians has come with the lapse of the gun ban. It’s proposed that one way to limit the number of these attacks is to discontinue availability of high-capacity magazines.

That “ban” did nothing it was not on semi-autos it was on certain features that classified them as “assault weapons” old ones were grandfathered and new ones simply complied with the law (but still operated the same way) That whole fiasco was feel good political legislation.
I agree with you on magazines though. Thats the key feature. I still think we need to try to understand why people are doing this now. We have had trucks for a century also why just now are they being used to cause such harm? What is it that is causing people to go off the deep end like this? I mean we can do certain things to limit what they use to do these things but we really need to know why.

The fact that the rise in mass assaults with these weapons came after the ban expired is not a coincidence.

No it’s not. Understand what that ban did and you will clearly see that it was not in any way effective. They were just as available then as they are now. So a stock had a thumbhole and not a pistol grip or it no longer had a threaded barrel, still the same weapon. That ban was political.

I’m having a hard time trying to understand that you’re saying the ban was ineffective, but you’re agreeing that the rise in mass assaults came after the ban expired.

Apologies. This answer is for another question asked sometime in 2015.

The mass shooting rise and the ban expiring are a coincidence.

I know next to nothing about gun history so this is more of a guess/question… Even if we had automatic weapon tech for 100 years, wouldn’t our ability to manufacture the guns quicker and cheaper have improved alongside our manufacturing capabilities more generally? Meaning wouldn’t we have more automatic weapons at more accessible prices than 100 years ago? Also wouldn’t the efficiency/efficacy of the weapon itself have improved? I was under the impression, for example, that automatic weapons in WWI jammed a lot… (Like I said, just a guess/question…)

That’s part of it, at least in the early years. A Thompson machine gun cost about half as much as a car in the prohibition years. Since I have been alive a typical semi-auto has been relatively inexpensive but certainly not “cheap.” Reliable guns have been around since they were first made so have unreliable ones. That really has not changed. People want to lay all the blame on weapons and while part of the equation I think we seriously need to understand what makes someone want to do such things. When people get emotional about guns ineffective snd often nonsensical laws get passed because it’s politics. If people are rational about it then we can pass laws that make sense and function as intended.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I don’t disagree that there should be a two pronged approach but for those who say this is primarily a mental health issue, where are they allocating the funds and the programs for that? And nobody but nobody outside of arguably the military needs a semi-automatic or automatic weapon.

When a three year old is playing with a hammer, you first take away the hammer and then you figure out what they were doing with it.

Nobody is looking at why people do these things because almost nobody is yelling for it loud enough. The ones who are saying “it’s a mental health issue” are on the defensive side of the gun debate. There is no genuine investigation here. I honestly think pharmaceutical companies are going to fight real inquiry also. Could it be that people are A. more ideological because their thinking is spoon fed to them B. Are doing and mixing prescription and street drugs in crazy amounts. C. Are more isolated and depressed, separated from family and others who could help sound the alarm D. Have more spectrum type disorders for reasons we don’t understand yet. E. have less and less access to mental health and support professionals. F. Are shown step by step how to do these things by the media Every. Single. Day.

And on guns, you would be hard pressed to find people who disagree with you about full autos but pretty much every gun/sporting & hunting enthusiast will disagree about semi-auto. When the left cries “ban guns” the right go “oh my god the sky is falling” and people go and buy guns like wildfire. People who don’t even have a use for them go and buy them because of the frenzy. It’s nuts and shit it’s largely the politicians and media who are to blame for this. They’re making money, ratings and collecting votes by pulling the strings of people who buy into this bullshit. Neither the dems and repubs are innocent, nor are the news outlets that tell you what the talking points for each side are. Meanwhile more would-be shooters are slipping through the cracks. I can’t rant about it enough.

Nobody, but nobody is saying ban all guns.

A ban on semi-autos will ban most so when the leftvsay this the right goes nuts.

The Sutherland Springs shooter was a convicted felony and known for domestic abuse, does that say anything about other owners of of semi-automatic weapons.
No but what deer are you going hunting for with a semi-automatic weapons?

So if you go hunting with a semi-automatic weapon; you are right and on the right!

I’ll just make one final query because I find gun control and abortion arguments pointless.

To what do you attribute the exponentially higher rate of mass murders in the US compared to other countries? Do we really have that many more deranged people here?

He slipped through the cracks, what does that say about the system that we have to vett gun owners? I think conditions here are more ripe for creating deranged people yes.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I agree, it’s definitely not good enough.

(Face palm) As to your second point, this is why I don’t do gun control arguments.

People with mental illness are not the problem. We are 10 times more likely to be the victim of violent crime than the perpetrator.

link 1
link 2
link 3
link 4

I can link dozens more.

Does anyone here believe that if this man had been prohibited from purchasing a gun legally from a gunshop, he would have real trouble building up the same arsenal fielded in Vegas?

We have crazy people, and people who realize fully that a shooting rampage almost certainly must end in their own grisly death. I’m not prepared to believe that we have been dealt more than our fair share of lunatics. Why is it so difficult to accept that perhaps lunatics loose in a land flooded with weapons might generate exactly what now befalls us? The weaponry awash in this country is now at levels where ANYONE with a few bucks and a modicum of planning can “go for the record.” It’s only going to get worse, and will continue to ratchet up for decades even WITH the total banning of firearms. It is just plain easy to acquire the most efficient and impersonal tools for slaughtering people.

@stanleybmanly The “crazy” argument only works for NRA, read @Hawaii_Jake‘s links.
NRA is anecdotal at best.
Your argument that anyone that commits murder should plead not guilt because of insanity; is BOGUS at best.

~~Hillary is not going to take your manhood away, or your three dozen semi-automatic for DEER rifles. j.k.

I can’t tell whether you’re saying I believe all mass murderers are insane. But such a judgement is irrelevant to these discussions because most of these folks will never live to cop a plea, and for the scant few who do, this country habitually executes the mentally ill.

I am not an American, but I am in the USA often. Some American friends tell me that “The Washington Post” is strongly liberal and passionately anti-gun and anti-Trump. I keep that in mind when I read this article and see other headlines to which we can refer. Liberal media sensationalize shootings and ignore incidents in which guns were used to stop crimes. It is obvious that you are hysterical from reading such articles and thus cannot be objective and reasonable. You are more indanger from drunken drivers than from shooters.

It’s hardly possible to sensationalise an account of 17 children being shot dead at school. In the other hand crimes that do not take place are less newsworthy.

Dead kids in school is not necessary (unless you are the NRA – more guns are sold after a mass shooting)

Gunz is GOOD! New Russian Agency NRA.

Anything can be sensatrionalized, and many students are being coached to do what the liberal media wants of them. The emphasis on events that can be used to promote liberal media’s agenda while ignoring events that refute it is biased and deceptive. The NRA fights for constitutional rights that the liberals want to take away. Liberals are more Russian and Hitlerian than the NRA and ist supporters.

I’m not sure anyone needs to sensationalize the fact that someone went into a school and killed 17 children? If you don’t think that’s sensational enough, I don’t know where you’re living!