I ran across this thread, forgot about it and then found it today. I'm late to yet another party, but I'm going to respond before I read the other responses so that I'm not influenced by extraneous matter.
I disagree that people with records should be denied the Right to keep and bear Arms. On that count, where we come up short is in the rehabilitation of people convicted of criminal activity. If you rehabilitate them and they must accomplish certain things (as opposed to being incarcerated for a specific period of time), you would be much more successful.
Currently America has more people in prison than any nation on this planet. Creating two classes of citizens after those people leave prison only strengthens the liberals that want to bury the Constitution. Furthermore, if you cannot trust that individual it is highly irresponsible to allow them to return to the streets of America. Rehabilitation.
In the case of Nicholas Cruz, his record was accumulated as a minor and those records are not available nor should they be. But, let's talk about Nicholas Cruz.
Nicholas Cruz, like virtually every mass shooter (with only a handful of exceptions), was a white male with no father figure and he was introduced to legal drugs with the known side effects of homicidal and suicidal tendencies. He had racked up a minimum of 12 interactions with the local constabularies and maybe as many as 45 interactions with the police. He had been suspended from school on numerous occasions.
We know who these mass shooters are long before they buy their first weapon. When I tell people the solution to this, the gun owners go ape shit because they cannot understand the difference between a civil intervention and the criminal process.
In Georgia (and I suspect most states are the same), the Dept. of Family and Children Services (aka CPS in some states) already has the power to investigate when a child's welfare is at stake. The immediate problem is that in every state, the Dept. of Family and Children Services, the agencies are an absolute clusterphuck. So, you have to fix those agencies. Then, when people like Nicholas Cruz need an intervention, you investigate and then get those children the appropriate help. This can be fixed without tax increases, without more bureaucracies, and without affecting anyone's Rights.
There are so many things I dispute here, I don't know where to begin. Oh well >>>
1. Few things could be more ludicrous than to disagree that people with records should be denied the Right to keep and bear Arms. Of course it depends on the type of records. In Nicolas Cruz' case (I'm not going to list all of his record) it's enough to to cite his public threats to shoot up the school. If his gun seller had known this, he correctly would have denied the sale. To go ahead with it (if that info were known), would be more than incorrect. It would be assinine, and dangerous, as we have seen.
2. Although I sympathize that minors should not be held as accountable as adults,with a record like Nicolas Cruz had compiled, it was ESSENTIAL for that full background to be included in his background investigation. Government's primary responsibility is PROTECTION of the public.
3. Cruz, with a Hispanic surname, has been defined as Hispanic.
4. No, we most certainly DO NOT know who these mass shooters are, and it is lunacies like the Promise Program, and all programs like it, what ever anybody calls them, that make us unable to know them and their backgrounds. It's evident you have not read this thread before posting. Maybe when you have more time (and a lot of it), you can go over it thoroughly, including the many links and sublinks I've posted.
Cruz might have been "Hispanic," but he grew up in a basically white culture, not a Hispanic one. But, yes, we do
KNOW who is going to commit violent acts like a mass shooting in most cases.
People look back in retrospect and say "
I'm not surprised." In Cruz's case, this is how it plays out in the news"
"
I can't say I was shocked," Mr Charo said after the shooting.
"He seemed like the kind of kid who would do something like this."
FBI was warned about Florida gunman
Let's try another. An unidentified woman who knew Adam Lanza remarked:
"
she was not shocked that he was the killer..."
Adam Lanza Threatened Sandy Hook Killings Years Earlier, Records Show
Pick your favorite five mass shooters and, unless you spend a Hell of a lot of time (like anomalies such as Stephen Paddock) virtually all of them are not committing an unforeseeable act.
YES, we can identify these people in advance. Adam Lanza, Nicholas Cruz, the Columbine shooters, etc. etc. all have the same M.O. Mass shootings are generally committed by political jihadists
OR they are committed by people who can be identified by quantifiable markers.
Lanza, Cruz, the Columbine shooters, and many others had no business being on the streets. They belonged in a mental health facility and those around them
KNEW it. You just choose not to get involved, ask questions and see why a kid is being constantly tossed out of school, knows all the police that work in his precinct on a first name basis and instill fear in their classmates at school.
Let me tell you about your links. I will check them out though I doubt they will shed any new light on the matter. My wife will tell you that when a mass shooting takes place, once I know where it happened and the conditions, I can tell you almost anything you want to know about the shooter except his name. In the eight years we've been married, she can attest to the fact I'm never wrong.
Several years working as a foster parent and having taken training with DFACS to become one of their "
assets," was worth more than all the statistics you can accumulate. Today I can work with a kid for a couple of weeks and tell you what his path in life is going to be. One truism in psychology is that past performance is the primary indicator of future performance.
When you have kids that are constantly on the radar of truant officers, school officials and racking up disciplinary actions followed up by family and neighbors calling the police on this individual, you
KNOW you have a problem. Then, when that child is put on
SSRIs (and put that into Google, then comma followed by any ten mass shooters picked at random) and that child is not supervised, you are guaranteed a violent outcome.
I have proposed legislation at the state level that, if enacted, would cut mass shootings by 90 percent. You can identify potentially dangerous people in advance, get them the help they need (or take them off the street if treatment does not work), but if you insist on not getting kids the help they need and deserve, you pay the consequences.
