Pants-of-dog wrote:The reaction by police finds me greatly distrustful of anything done by cops in terms of preventing or stopping mass murders.
Punitive measures against mass shooters are ineffective since most of them are doing this as a messy and headline-seeking way of committing suicide,
Indeed, but would de-escalation work?
Pants-of-dog wrote:Fortification of schools does not work, as Uvalde unfortunately shows us, since they spent a fair amount of money on doing just that before this tragedy.
No, they didn't. We know that because the school fence is merely 4 ft tall, there's no buzzing in, etc.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Taking away all the guns would help insofar as it would make potential mass murderers decide on other weapons which would often be less lethal. Having said that, there are very good reasons for wanting an armed populace.
Getting a more robust mental health system is a good idea, but not for this reason. Many people desperately need better mental health treatment, but such a vanishingly tiny percentage will ever go on to be mass murderers that it does not make sense to see this as a solution. Moreover, most mass murders do not present with mental illness symptoms before the mass murder.
As far as I can tell, the only remaining option is to place psychologists and social workers in schools and, as well as providing other needed services, look for the signs that could point to a potential problem.
Ok, I think this is reasonable for once. But what happens if someone from outside the school attacks it? Can you even de-escalate here?
The sad reality is that all these school shooting prevention measures you mention make a lot of sense if you assume the shooter is from within the school community. But this need not be the case in general.
So, while I would still go along with them, I believe extra measures going beyond mental health services are necessary. That includes not just the measures you mentioned, but also taking the necessary measures so strangers don't go into schools (seriously, what the fuck?), at least not letting the mentally ill get access to guns and this means whoever wants to buy one needs a medical clearance to that effect (no different from a medical prescription, the visit could be covered as any medical visit is), an at least temporary AR ban like the 1994 one, and police presence if the circumstances merit it.
De-escalation seems unlikely to work but I'd let police make that call in the situation. I highly doubt it would have worked in Uvalde, but I'd let cops make the call since they are in the best position to make that assessment. These police teams could and should have psychologists and mental health experts too, you know. I would not send them to an active shooter situation unprotected, that's undoubtedly unethical.
The US is a first world country and can definitely fund all of these measures too. If I have to pay more taxes to get these infrastructure investments, enforcement, monitoring and services I'm okay with it - governments are flawed in many ways, but that doesn't mean they are useless. I think plenty would agree as well.
None of these measures are infallible, be they taken in isolation or together, but they would be an improvement. They are neither extreme nor unconstitutional either and I'm sure plenty of both Democrats and Republicans would agree.