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4 Calif. Students Arrested For Alleged Mass-Killing Plot
The New York Times reports that four high school students in the small California town of Tuolumne, about 120 miles east of San Francisco, have been arrested, but not yet charged, for planning an attack on their school, Summerville High School. According to the Times, three of the four were overheard discussing this plot, and a fourth conspirator was later identified. Their goal, according to Toulumne sheriff James Mele, was "to shoot and kill as many people as possible at the campus"; they had not however been able yet to obtain the weapons they wanted to carry out the attack. From NBC News' version of the story:
"Detectives located evidence verifying a plot to shoot staff and students at Summerville High School," Mele said. "The suspects' plan was very detailed in nature and included names of would-be victims, locations and the methods in which the plan was to be carried out."
I come here for geek/tech news. I read stuff like this on real news sites.
Even if they had the weapons, everyone at school would have been safe. The school was designated a gun-free zone. I'm pretty sure there's no way they could have gotten the guns past those "gun-free zone" signs.
Honestly I suspect a lot of nerds fantasized about doing things to their classmates of a violent nature. This subculture exists in-part because many of those who joined it were ostracized from others, and school as an artificial construct tends to force people that otherwise wouldn't associate to have to associate.
We'll probably never learn much about this case of any real meaning, but that the conspirators supposedly had a list, and that list as-reported contained the names of other students specifically, leads me to believe that the conspirators felt that they had been done injustice by these other students and that they felt they had no recourse beyond such a violent act. It could also be that there was never any serious intention to actually pull-off a spree killing, and that fantasizing about doing it was a way of blowing-off steam about how they felt.
My guess as to why they haven't been charged yet is that they're in that as minors without ready access to the implements needed to actually carry-out such a shooting it's difficult to know if there actually is anything to charge them with. Conspiracy generally requires an ability to carry out the ends of the conspiracy. People want to do harm to others, usually specific people and specific others, all of the time, but that doesn't mean that they're guilty of a crime because of a want.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You tried to do your blame Obama bit
No, I'm not blaming Obama for what these kids wanted to do. I'm pointing out that his speech blaming the NRA for it was completely off base.
Even as the kids are dead you still tried to turn it political
You obviously didn't watch his speech. He came right out and said he thought the issue should be made political. His words. On the same day the students were killed. Try to get your rant at least aligned with current events and Obama's own words, OK?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I think a sensible requirement for gun ownership would be that you can't live with your parents and you can't have an adolescent child living with you where you keep a gun. Because teens are idiots. If you're paying rent then you're responsible enough to have a gun, otherwise tough luck.
So you'd obviously be in favor of adults not being allowed to own cars if they have teenagers in the house, right? Because teenagers kill WAY more people with cars than they do with weapons of any kind.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Let's not forget that much of public education (or culture for that matter) has become a cesspool of incompetence, questionable agendas, and dehumanization. Even if kids lack the emotional maturity to name exactly what is being done to them, they are certainly aware the authority over them is lacking in mutual respect.
Add in a surge of hormones, and you've got a wicked circumstance.
"When inward life dries up, when feeling decreases and apathy increases, when one cannot affect or even genuinely touch another person, violence flares up as a daimonic necessity for contact, a mad drive forcing touch in the most direct way possible." -Rollo May
Do you have something wrong with your brain?
No. Do you have a problem with people pointing out logical inconsistencies, mixed premises, and hypocrisy?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
A law that criminals will probably ignore, and won't care about in the least (they will be dead or in jail for murder), but will put otherwise law-abiding people in jail, is a bad law.
That's all true. Most of the other stuff you wrote also all seems true, but it doesn't really form a cogent argument about anything. No one said if someone ignores the rule about murder they would care about firearm restrictions. I'm not sure anyone has ever said that ever, let alone in this conversation. I don't think anyone who passed the law banning guns in schools said that. That's what I don't get about gun control debates. One side can't get past this notion that it's only about this theoretical criminal in their minds, and that if it doesn't stop these villains, the law is no good.
I apologize, silly facts and historical context are about to get in the way of the ideology of the moment.
Those "signs" that are being debated here have nothing to do with stopping school shootings of the kind being discussed here. The ban on guns in schools comes from "The Gun Free Schools Act" a law first passed way back in 1990. The idea was not that signs would stop people determined to come in and shoot up a school. That was barely even a concept at the time. The idea was that if merely having a gun on you near a school would carry a harsher penalty than elsewhere it would drive gang and drug activity away from schools.
I suspect a big part of the problem is teenagers should not spend quite so much time with other teenagers. Teens certainly need some time with each other but I really think they should be spending a larger part of their day surrounded principally but adults, in a more vocational context. That isn't 30 of their peers and 1 grown up in the room, with long periods like lunch with little to no adult interaction. Put a bunch of immature people together with no one to emulate but each other and its no surprise we get really strange emergent behavior.
Adolescents need to be working with watching and learning to emulate how adults behave, and interact with one another solve problems etc. A couple hundred years ago if you were 14 you'd have been working on your fathers farm with him or in the kitchen around your mother and the other ladies. You'd spend your Sunday interacting at church etc again where there would be more adults around most of the time than other children. I think as a society we should look at teaching higher maths and reading levels sooner, it works in other parts of the world. If we could push algebra etc down to the Junior high level and wrap up primary and secondary education by 14 we could then send kids out into the workforce for awhile during their formative years. Maybe make it a normal thing to assist your parent at their job etc. When kids get to be 18, 19 etc then they go back to higher education if that is their path.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I have personally used a firearm (happily, through brandishing, not having to actually shoot) to spare my wife and I from the ongoing actions of a very large, very crazy guy beating down our back door with a metal pipe. You would prefer that we fight him hand to hand and wait the 20 minutes it took for the police to show up. Why? Because you've never dealt with such a situation, lucky you.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So the law was intended to make someone already guilty of breaking the law also guilty of breaking another law. It doesn't take a genius to see the inherently flawed logic there. If the criminal didnt particularly give a shit about the first, why would they give a shit about the second? It doesn't prevent there being crime at or near a school. It just makes the punishment for getting caught greater. Or do you mean to say you need an excuse to bust gang members who weren't actually caught doing something criminal?
In the meantime you have criminalized not only a legal act, but more importantly a Constitutionally protected right.
The law solves nothing while taking rights from people not guilty of anything.
It adds more harsh punishment to existing criminal activity, yes. But the very same people trumpeting the fact that gun free schools laws are great are also trumpeting the unfairness and racism inherent in the judicial system which puts 1000's of minority and underprivileged young people in prison at a starkly incongruous rate to others.
So which is it? Is it incumbent upon us to more harshly punish these gang members and make it more easy to imprison then and for longer? Or is the judicial system unfairly attacking and too harshly punishing them?
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi