ROTC and the NRA indirectly trained the Florida school shooter.

[shadowmouse]

Or start with fixing the ability to buy 10 rifles in one week at the age of 18 or 19.

That would be a question for the gun control thread. I'll limit myself to noting that as far as I can tell he used only one firearm, so quantity is irrelevant. Accounts seem to indicate that he was known to be someone with mental problems, but he hadn't been adjudicated as such nor committed to a mental institution. I'll stick to saying that we need to do more to address mental health in general.

Gun control is a debate that is doomed to stall out. This shooting, past shootings, and the two or three shootings that will probably happen in the next month to eclipse this one as the horror of the moment -- none of those things are going to break the existing deadlock. If anything can be done using the momentum from this, let's get funding back to mental health and counseling programs. Those would be helpful for a number of problems including teen suicides, although I do consider school shooters to be basically suicide by cop.

[Macaquerie]

That would be a question for the gun control thread. I'll limit myself to noting that as far as I can tell he used only one firearm, so quantity is irrelevant. Accounts seem to indicate that he was known to be someone with mental problems, but he hadn't been adjudicated as such nor committed to a mental institution. I'll stick to saying that we need to do more to address mental health in general.

Gun control is a debate that is doomed to stall out. This shooting, past shootings, and the two or three shootings that will probably happen in the next month to eclipse this one as the horror of the moment -- none of those things are going to break the existing deadlock. If anything can be done using the momentum from this, let's get funding back to mental health and counseling programs. Those would be helpful for a number of problems including teen suicides, although I do consider school shooters to be basically suicide by cop.

Mental health reform is just as unlikely as meaningful gun control at this point because, fundamentally, people don't give a shit about the mentally ill. Most people see them as a nuisance that they don't want to deal with, and only trot out this talking point as deflection in the aftermath of another shooting.

[bladeXcrasher]

I'm pretty sure the prefix para- means similar to but not official.

You must be talking about extremist groups.

Until SWAT, national guard, and similar organizations become extremist groups...sure.

[shadowmouse]

Most people see them as a nuisance that they don't want to deal with, and only trot out this talking point as deflection in the aftermath of another shooting.

Be that as it may, mental health is something the states are probably better able to address individually and it doesn't require debate on the Constitution. It's like winning the lottery, your odds are slim, but always better if you at least buy a ticket.

[Deleted]

How the fuck do you Indirectly train someone?

That's a fucking oxymoron.

[Mormolyce]

Cruz was a violent racist obsessed with blacks, Muslims and Antifa.

Before he allegedly committed one of the worst mass shootings in US history at a Parkland, Florida, high school on Wednesday, police officials say Cruz wrote social media posts so threatening he was reported to the FBI.
He hurled slurs at blacks and Muslims, and according to the Anti-Defamation League, had ties to white supremacists. He said he would shoot people with his AR-15 and singled out police and anti-fascist protesters as deserving of his vengeance. Just five months ago, he stated his aspiration to become a "professional school shooter."

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/14/u...ect/index.html
https://www.adl.org/blog/florida-whi...r-nikolas-cruz

Reminder: a few weeks ago I posted this:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...apons-training

I think if you cite anything from Vox you should automatically get a week-long forum ban.

PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — The sound of gunfire still ringing in his ears after his mad half-mile sprint, Jack Ciaramello was standing with friends in a grocery store parking lot when a sheriff’s deputy approached. He asked the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High senior if he knew a former student named Nikolas Cruz.

Of course he did: Cruz had been one of Ciaramello’s cadets in the school’s tight-knit Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.

Ciaramello’s head reeled. He’d escaped, but his 14-year-old brother — also a cadet — was still in the school. Why was the deputy asking about Cruz?

“And then it clicked,” the 17-year-old senior said.

Officials have accused Cruz in the Wednesday shooting rampage that left 17 students and staff dead. In the days since, reports of Cruz’s violent, threatening behavior have flooded traditional and social media. Some students said they weren’t surprised, but Ciaramello was. He knew Cruz was troubled and had a thing about guns. But he’d never suspected Cruz was capable of this kind of savagery.

As Cruz’s leader in Company E — “Echo Company” — Ciaramello tried to instill discipline, pride and a sense of camaraderie in Cruz.

The 350 or so cadets at Douglas are issued uniforms and T-shirts — with the motto “WHATEVER IT TAKES” over the heart — and they’re required to show the colors as much as possible, or risk demerits. But last year, Cruz stopped wearing his JROTC gear. As leader, Ciaramello took notice.

He said Cruz always had an excuse for being out of uniform. Worried Cruz would get kicked out of the corps, Ciaramello asked what it would take to get him to wear his gear.

His request: a Snickers candy bar.

“So I went out to the store, I bought him it, and the next day, there on after, he came in with the uniform every day — T-shirt, uniform, everything,” Ciaramello said.

Ciaramello found Cruz a bit odd but didn’t consider his cadet dangerous.

“He liked hunting. He liked fishing. And me, being a guy and liking that kind of thing, you know, military, ROTC … it seemed normal,” he said. “Obviously, it wasn’t.”

When the fire alarms rang out for the second time Wednesday, Ciaramello was on the drill field behind the school when he heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. Teachers screamed at him and other kids to get back inside to the classrooms.

“Nope,” he said to himself. “I don’t want to be stuck in a classroom if there’s an armed shooter on the campus.”

As he hopped the fence and began sprinting down the road, he thought about his younger brother, James — a sergeant, the highest rank he could attain as a freshman. Ciaramello fought the urge to go back and find him.

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t do anything. So I knew I had to run.”

The family had previously lived in Newtown, Connecticut — they left about three months before a former student shot and killed 26 students and teachers there.

This time, the boys were both there, in Parkland, for the rampage.

James Ciaramello was in geography class when the alarm sounded. Then came the pops. Having fired both an AR-15 rifle and 9 mm pistol, he knew the sound.

The teacher rushed the kids back into the classroom. After 40 agonizing minutes huddled against a wall, there came a pounding on the door.

“We didn’t know if it was just a ploy to get us out of the rooms, so we could be shot,” he said. “But my teacher went over and checked and, thankfully, it was the police, and they opened the door.”

He made it out of the building – but not all his JROTC comrades did.

Cadet Carlos Gutierrez, 14, was in a study hall when police came to rescue them. On his way out of the building, he saw several bodies — including one with the blue pants and distinctive shiny shoes of a JROTC member protruding from a covering.

They’d soon learn that of the 14 students killed, three — Peter Wang, Martin Duque and Alaina Petty — were JROTC members. Witnesses told Wang’s family that the 15-year-old was last seen in his uniform, holding open a door for others to escape.

And when Cruz was arrested, he, too, wore ROTC gear: a maroon polo shirt emblazoned with the corps’ crest.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-...-1-of-his-own/

The troubled teen authorities say killed 17 people at a Florida high school excelled in an air-rifle marksmanship program supported by a grant from the National Rifle Association Foundation, part of a multimillion-dollar effort by the gun group to support youth shooting clubs and other programs.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, was wearing a maroon shirt with the logo from the Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when he was arrested Wednesday shortly after the shooting. Former JROTC cadets told The Associated Press that Cruz was a member of the small varsity marksmanship team that trained together after class and traveled to other area schools to compete.

It was a close-knit group. One of the other cadets started calling Cruz "Wolf," and the nickname stuck.

"He was a very good shot," said Aaron Diener, 20, who gave Cruz a ride to shooting competitions when they were part of the same four-member team in 2016. "He had an AR-15 he talked about, and pistols he had shot. ... He would tell us, 'Oh, it was so fun to shoot this rifle' or 'It was so fun to shoot that.' It seemed almost therapeutic to him, the way he spoke about it."

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/201...jrotc-nra.html
You're welcome.

[Deleted]

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-...-1-of-his-own/

You're welcome.

Thank you for improving your standards, this is how society progresses

[Mormolyce]

Thank you for improving your standards, this is how society progresses

Did I send you a Vox quote?

[Deleted]

Did I send you a Vox quote?

No, but Vox is trash and I thank you for providing something better anyway.

Positive reinforcement!

[Zeta333]

And yet before we started driving religion out of every aspect of our lives, there were far less of these shootings. Maybe you could say the apathy caused by Atheism is to blame for the rise in shitty behavior in society.

Do show some data to back this up while taking into account the difference in weapons back then.

[Travis B]

How the fuck do you Indirectly train someone?

That's a fucking oxymoron.

I completely disagree that the ROTC bears any responsibility for this shooting, but it sounds like you either don't know what "indirectly" means or don't know what an "oxymoron" is. I suggest looking them both up in the dictionary just to be sure.