You make a lot of sense but that would only be one solution to the problem. There needs to be more done to make it more difficult for dangerous people to get guns (mental issues, domestic violence, etc) through stronger background checks. There is also no real place in society for these assault rifle type guns capable of mass killing. The deer will not revolt against you while you are hunting.

Many of your "realities" or conclusions really aren't very correct.

Please elaborate.

Gonna keep it short because I'm on mobile, but the gist of it is: - less firearms will almost guaranteed result in less serious injuries and shootings in schools. - while the worst US school massacre didn't involve a gun actually shooting people, firearms were used in pretty much all other school massacres. - guns are beyond doubt the most effective tool for killing. Restricting access to them has been shown to defuel the illegal firearms trade and will deter many (but not all, of course) people from commiting an intended crime in such a way. - gun free zones do work by reducing "in the heat of the moment" shootings and many accidents - there have been several large studies on mass shootings (including some by the FBI covering the last few decades) and none of them found any reason to believe that these mass shooters generally target an area because it was gun free - research has shown that guns don't deter crime or shootings. Especially those commited on simply inflicting damage without caring for the consequences will not be fased by the possibility of a gun owner. - arming teachers will probably not be beneficial for the educating of children, will probably not stop very many shootings and will probably come with more risks than what it would solve. You're completely right in saying that school shootings are a statistical anomaly, that working with armed guards would be incredibly expensive, and that law enforcement responders / suicide usually end these mass shootings, but a lot of your other suggestions are questionable at best and shouldn't be considered absolute truths or "realities", in my opinion.

[quote]- less firearms will almost guaranteed result in less serious injuries and shootings in schools. - while the worst US school massacre didn't involve a gun actually shooting people, firearms were used in pretty much all other school massacres. - guns are beyond doubt the most effective tool for killing. Restricting access to them has been shown to defuel the illegal firearms trade and will deter many (but not all, of course) people from commiting an intended crime in such a way.[/quote] First point is conjecture. Second is true, but will continue to be true even with more "common sense" gun control. The gun genie is out of the bottle, restricting all law abiding citizens to even draconian levels is not guaranteed to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Third point simply illustrates what I said in the prior sentence, it will deter but not stop shootings by costing every other law abiding citizen. I'm also curious what study has shown what you assert and how they could even measure that. [quote]- gun free zones do work by reducing "in the heat of the moment" shootings and many accidents - there have been several large studies on mass shootings (including some by the FBI covering the last few decades) and none of them found any reason to believe that these mass shooters generally target an area because it was gun free[/quote] Again, conjecture and I'd like to see the study. How is this known or measured? What is known, through interviews with surviving offenders, is that areas, individuals, and households have been specifically targeted because they are known to be "gun free". [quote]- research has shown that guns don't deter crime or shootings. Especially those commited on simply inflicting damage without caring for the consequences will not be fased by the possibility of a gun owner. - arming teachers will probably not be beneficial for the educating of children, will probably not stop very many shootings and will probably come with more risks than what it would solve.[/quote] Again, which studies. How do you measure crimes that don't happen because they were deterred? It's already known that crimes stopped by armed citizens are notoriously under reported by the national media. Even assuming that there was no deterring effect, having good people there ready to apply effective force to stop a shooter immediately would be bad how?

[quote]First point is conjecture. Second is true, but will continue to be true even with more "common sense" gun control. The gun genie is out of the bottle, restricting all law abiding citizens to even draconian levels is not guaranteed to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Third point simply illustrates what I said in the prior sentence, it will deter but not stop shootings by costing every other law abiding citizen. I'm also curious what study has shown what you assert and how they could even measure that.[/quote] First point might be conjecture, but it is a conclusion based on common sense and available data. Kids are considerably more likely to die or get seriously injured by a gun in an accident than they are to being shot with clear intent. A higher amount of guns in a community demonstrably results in higher rates of gun accidents, gun homicides, shootings in general and suicides. The availability of a gun often causes a situation to escalate. Schools can already be a dangerous place due to violence among children and there are several cases out there of misunderstandings ending very badly with an (armed) security guard or teacher around. Sure, there's no definitive proof because there simply can't be any. Unless we decide to arm half the schools in every US state and evaluate the outcome in a decade, we can't possibly know. However, given all of the above and the notion that mass shootings are incredibly rare and only account for a fraction of violent deaths of children, I'd say that it stands to reason that putting more guns in schools is almost guaranteed to cause more harm than good, both in terms of accidents, misunderstandings and the likelihood that more armed persons to a shooting will be unlikely to cause anything more than mere chaos. And that is just in elementary and high schools. Allowing students to carry on campus in insitutions of higher learning is arguably an even worse idea. Stricter gun control won't keep all guns out of all the wrong hands, but it helps. There is a clear (causal) link between the ease of access to legal firearms and the amount of guns that end up in the hands of criminals or are used in crimes. Especially when it comes to these mass shootings, large scale studies have found that most guns were legally owned or obtained, and that most shooters were not considered prohibited from owning a firearm. http://www.bustle.com/articles/114372-this-shocking-infographic-about-mass-shootings-shows-just-how-many-legal-guns-are-involved http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/10/how_roseburg_newtown_and_other_mass_shooters_got_their_guns.html http://everytownresearch.org/reports/mass-shootings-analysis/ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map As for my third point, here's some sources to back up the claim that disincentives work and that while substitution for homicides exists to a small degree, reduced access to guns and more hurdles to obtain one end up decreasing homicide rates and stopping people from commiting their original crime altogether or with the original lethality. http://www.armedwithreason.com/debunking-the-criminals-dont-follow-laws-myth-2-0-how-criminals-respond-to-gun-control http://home.uchicago.edu/~ludwigj/papers/CPP-EvalPolicyEval-2003.pdf http://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/gun-permit-to-purchase-permits-van-hollen-federal/ http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1661390 https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=209249 http://www.armedwithreason.com/the-hammer-theory-of-guns/ http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-79236387/guns-violent-crime-and-suicide-in-21-countries http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/data/state-data-repository/the-truth-about-guns.pdf [quote]Again, conjecture and I'd like to see the study. How is this known or measured? What is known, through interviews with surviving offenders, is that areas, individuals, and households have been specifically targeted because they are known to be "gun free".[/quote] Well, here's a few sources for that claim. If you have some to the contrary, you're welcome to share them. I'm not arguing that no people chose a household to commit a crime because they thought or knew the owners wouldn't have a gun ready. But these large scale studies done both by the FBI and several independent research institutions all found that it's convenience, familiarity, emotional ties or connections, revenge aimed at people / a place and so on that almost always decide the place of the massacre, as opposed to the idea that a gun-free zone would make it easier. http://www.thetrace.org/2015/06/gun-rights-advocates-say-that-places-that-ban-guns-attract-mass-shooters-the-data-says-theyre-wrong/ http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:JOHE.0000025326.89365.5c http://everytownresearch.org/reports/mass-shootings-analysis/ http://www.armedwithreason.com/the-gun-free-zone-myth-no-relationship-between-gun-free-zones-and-mass-shootings/ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/gun-free-zones-charleston-shooting-defensive-gun-use-myth http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/02/1198554/-More-NRA-mythbusting-gun-free-zones-as-a-lure-for-mass-shooters https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fbi-releases-study-on-active-shooter-incidents/pdfs/a-study-of-active-shooter-incidents-in-the-u.s.-between-2000-and-2013 [quote]Again, which studies. How do you measure crimes that don't happen because they were deterred? It's already known that crimes stopped by armed citizens are notoriously under reported by the national media. [/quote] I already cited some of these studies above, generally showing that more guns in a society do not stop people from commiting massacres or deterring crime. You measure them by comparison, both in state and between states. Does the prevalence of firearms reduce the amount of shootings, robberies, violent crimes and so on when compared to states with more or less gun control? After having instated stricter (or looser) gun control measures at one point, does this result in a noticeable drop or increase in shootings or violent crime afterwards? http://www.livescience.com/51446-guns-do-not-deter-crime.html http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2015/09/legal_concealed_guns_dont_dete.html http://www.armedwithreason.com/less-guns-less-crime-debunking-the-self-defense-myth/ http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_after_connecticut_shooting_could_australia_s_laws_provide_a.html [quote]Even assuming that there was no deterring effect, having good people there ready to apply effective force to stop a shooter immediately would be bad how?[/quote] It wouldn't be bad in se. It's just that it's very questionable at best that the pros will outweigh the cons. To me, it generally comes down to the following: Accidents, misunderstandings and shootings commited in the heat of an argument result in thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of serious injuries every year. The more guns are present in a community or environment, the more injury and death caused by firearm demonstrably follows. The availability of a gun has been shown to be a major factor in the outcome of a lot of disputes and misunderstandings which very often escalate and end with violence, injury or death if a party involved has access to a firearm. While analogies are generally a pretty poor argument, the "if all you have is a hammer, all your problems start looking like nails" one is not so outrageous to illustrate how the availability of a gun very quickly has people resorting to that solution rather than other choices. This, in combination with the notion that many educators think that the presence of firearms would be detrimental to a safe school environment and the educational experience, that the presence of a firearm is significantly more likely to result in an accidents, homicides and other terrible outcomes than they are to actually be used for self defense, that guns are a poor deterrent, that simulated events have shown how incapable even trained people are at dealing with these situations, that armed people not in uniform opening fire is likely to make things worse, inflict more injury and cause more chaos and that many teachers, schools and parents have voiced concerns about and opposition to armed men patrolling their children's schools, all leads me to believe that more guns at school would cause a lot more harm than good.

Well written, but when you directly reference sources like armedwithreason and everytownresearch in a gun control debate I'm not going to bother reading it. Anti gun organizations are infamous for making shit up. More so than the NRA, which I never cite in these discussions for the same reasons. I respect the amount of thought you put into your discussion, but there will be no change of opinions or stances. I think it's a difference in core beliefs, I trust myself and my fellow citizens to be armed, know that armed citizens make a difference, and in all honesty think the discussion about school violence is a bit ridiculous and only entertain it because reactionary protectionists what to use it as a basis to limit rights. There aren't many mass school shootings. They cause a statistically tiny amount of juvenile deaths, but make good press and agenda pushing fuel. If people wanted to really save kids they would go after things like hunger, abuse, and accidents.

[quote]Well written, but when you directly reference sources like armedwithreason and everytownresearch in a gun control debate I'm not going to bother reading it. Anti gun organizations are infamous for making shit up. More so than the NRA, which I never cite in these discussions for the same reasons. [/quote] I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. I can understand your beef with some of the more openly anti-gun websites, but if you look at the actual articles, you'll see that little to none of what they speak of is based on their own research. Everytown is pretty controversial and probably should not have been cited, but Armedwithreason, for example, simply compiles and evaluates other sources and studies, pretty much all of which are either conducted by governmental organizations or universities / independent researchers whose findings have been peer reviewed and are often published in esteemed journals. If they would do their own research I too would take it with a grain of salt due to bias (just as how I would if the NRA conducted its own research), but pretty much all of their sources seem to be reputable. For example, I know that The Trace is pretty outspoken against guns and I would not take their own surveys or research very seriously. But if they discuss and directly cite research done by the FBI, CDC, John Hopkins, Harvard, DoJ, Gang Violence Research Center, American Association of Criminologists / Pediatrics and so on, I don't take issue with citing them and find it hard to believe that they are somehow making shit up. It really just saves me the effort of putting it all into words and linking all of the individual (independent and governmental) research myself. I find that especially Armedwithreason does a pretty good job at staying objective with their writing rather than trashing those who disagree or taking on a condescending tone of bias. I understand the initial concern with some of the sites I linked, but I stand by most of those sources. If you were to link studies and surveys directly conducted by the NRA, I would probably dismiss or at least take them with a serious grain of salt of myself. But if you were to just link an article on a pro-gun site covering and analysing existing and independently done research by reputable institutions or persons, I would have to concede that they are decent sources. [quote]I respect the amount of thought you put into your discussion, but there will be no change of opinions or stances. I think it's a difference in core beliefs, I trust myself and my fellow citizens to be armed, know that armed citizens make a difference, and in all honesty think the discussion about school violence is a bit ridiculous and only entertain it because reactionary protectionists what to use it as a basis to limit rights. There aren't many mass school shootings. They cause a statistically tiny amount of juvenile deaths, but make good press and agenda pushing fuel. If people wanted to really save kids they would go after things like hunger, abuse, and accidents.[/quote] I agree, this does seem to be a pretty fundamental issue of beliefs. While I would trust myself with a gun, I wouldn't be able to trust others to be responsible gun owners as well. The way I see it, giving everyone the right to own a gun without restrictions might allow me to obtain one and directly protect my family and myself, but by doing so I necessarily give millions of others incredibly easy access to an absurdly lethal tool with which they can cause immense amounts of damage. I might make myself a little safer, but by doing so I also make society more dangerous for me and the people I care about. And unfortunately, I can't always protect them too. Because of that and all the research I've done on this subject (I have a Master's in Criminal Law and studied this extensively), I personally concluded that I feel we would be better off if the access to firearms was more restricted. I also agree with your final remarks. I too think that the mass school shootings issue is blown out of proportion by both sides of this debate, and I fully oppose those who use emotions and bias to achieve political goals. I have supported stricter gun control measures for years based on entirely on data and research I read and not on reactionary emotions to tragedies. Either way, I enjoyed talking about this. It's not often that I find people on here who know what they're talking about and are capable of having a decent, well reasoned and civil discussion. Props to you.