[TheForge] todays shooting in school.

[Andrew Vida]

On 12/14/2012 6:30 PM, Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer wrote:
> Just to raise a little sand:
> I'd note that we , as smiths, are part of a tradition of weapons makers,
> and so part of the onus lies on our shoulders.
> Still:
> We see this hysteria saturating the news and it fills our awareness totally...but ,
> This is a news event more than anything.
> We kill more folks in traffic every single day.
> There are less than 30 dead out of a nation of millions!
> We've lost all sense of proportion.

	Very level-headed of you, Peter.	

	I am very sorry for those poor children, and it is horrible what that 
young man did.  But if people want to see even worse, then they should 
watch this for the sense of perspective of which you make mention: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAU9AJfttls

	Between 175 millions and 220 millions murdered in the twentieth century 
alone.
>
> The automatic weapons are already out there  and impossible to recall.

	Nor should they be, for reasons we do not need to go into here.

> A few gallons of gasoline is more available and could easily have made this tragedy even more horrible.

	Precisely.  A few pounds of home-made Semtex, placed strategically 
during the night and a mass murderer could even live to stand by and 
witness the carnage with his neighbors.  There is no end to the means by 
which a man may destroy his fellows and there is no way to prevent it 
through prior-restraint.  Were it so, the murder laws would be all we need.

> Adequately funding mental health and education would be a more constructive response.

	Perhaps, but this is questionable.  I suspect that cleaning up the 
psychological environment and go back to letting people be people would 
be far more effective.  When we were kids in NYC, we all played together 
- white, black, christian, jew, italian, irish, and so on.  As is the 
normal case, we had our disagreements and on occasion it lead to words 
and the steam was let off.  On rarer occasions it lead to fists.  You 
gave your licks and took them like a man and when it was over you 
apologized to each other and went back to more profitable endeavors like 
stick ball.  Today, a child opens his mouth in "unaccaptable" ways and 
is taken out in handcuffs almost as often as not.

	Couple that with this mad obsession with pilling children any time they 
act in a way that displeases some adult - doping them with eminently 
dangerous psychotropic chemicals, and these two factors alone should 
leave no doubt in one's mind why young people blow fuses and go blood 
simple.  And there are many other factors atop these that serve to shove 
children this way or that.  I suspect these ultra-realistic and super 
violent video games does NOTHING good for anyone.  I once played Doom 
for about 90 minutes back around 1994 and felt sick for about three 
days.  I felt ALTERED by it.  I am sure these things are ever to 
healthful for our children.

> ...plus a snip from smith richard ferguson...
>
> The highway death toll in the USA is about 90 people per day, the lowest it has been since 1949.
>
> The suicide rate is a little higher than the highway death toll, at 105 per day.
>
> The homicide rate in the USA is also at a historic low, around 40 per day.

	And less than half of those are committed with firearms.  Of that half, 
about 25% are directly attributable to the drug trade and war.  Another 
proportion can be indirectly attributed to same - e.g. robberies for 
drug money that go "bad" ending up with someone being murdered.

	The homicide figures also include all those killed in acts of 
self-defense, suicide, and through accident.  The official rate of 
homicide by firearm is about 2.52/100K.  Removing those related to the 
drug trade and wear, suicides, accidents, and justifiable acts reduces 
that figure to about 1.5 +/-.

	All that said, given the overall homicide rate of about 5.0 (differs 
depending on who is doing the counting, and not everyone so doing is 
honest), I would say that knives and clubs and fists should be on top of 
the list of those things called up for bans.

	At least one school district in TX has its head right.  Teachers will 
now be able to apply to carry firearms in the classroom.