Besides being white and young, most of these shooters have in common they are part of a school or University system.

While the issue of gun regulation is tortured and lengthy, in the short term schools could make a yearly mental health evaluation mandatory.

That could be done for public universities with state legislation, and at private universities immediately.

Countdown to "he was wearing a pink shirt so therefore he's a victim of the feminization of America, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GUNS" response.

Of Course he is.

@1: you're fucking incorrect as usual. UCC shooter was a shut in. Newtown shooter was a shut in.

Just as I think parents of young men and boys who rape extremely drunk girls at parties should take a good hard look at the messages they've passed along to their sons, I think the parents of shooters (if they survive the shooting), should be made to do some self-examination about what messages regarding anger, rage, and problem-solving they've sent to their sons (sorry for the sexism here, but if the holster fits . . .). Maybe they should be held accountable as accessories, not only for providing guns and modeling the gun-lust, but also for allowing all these young men to think that shooting people you're frustrated with is an appropriate response.

#4

You seem like you could use one yourself.

Screening that is..

#5

Besides University screenings, I also suggested that we consider regulations similar to that in Poland, which requires a mental fitness exam when getting a license. It has to be redone every five years.

Excellent schemes which will never be seriously considered #173: The vast majority of gun massacres are conducted by males under the age of 27, (why? probably hormones vs the superficial expectations of the commercial public). If it were made impossible for a male 27 or younger to own any guns (with notable exceptions of military or police service), the number of gun massacres would be reduced by a very large factor, (i say more than two thirds); even allowing for stealing daddy's glock

@7, yeah Dan, please don't call these people patriots, even ironically. Thanks.

@6: except I don't want a gun.
@8: good idea for once. too bad it's politically and judicially impossible for at least a decade.

@5 if you are going after the families, you shouldn't forget going after corporate media for normalizing extreme violence 24/7.

@10++

what if it turns out he was gay and those frat boys were committing a hate crime?

@1 Screen every college aged kid. Brilliant idea. Very practical and without any pitfalls. So if a counselor decides you're at risk what happens? Think that one through. Do we punish people for seeming like they might commit a crime? Misdemeanor creepiness?

@1 Sorry I came across like an asshole in my last comment. Rough day, Still think it's an awful idea though.

I think you mean Terrorist and a gun nut - fixed it for you

@10 for the Insightful win

@7,

"Patriot" in that he loves his country but hates most of the people who live in it.

Keep abortion safe and legal. The mother of this piece of shit should be shot for not aborting it. Bitch.

An overwhelming # of people who post "'Merica" neither own guns or would be comfortable being called a Patriot.

I would advocate using terms like "self-proclaimed Patriot." It questions their actual patriotism pretty succinctly without having to go into a tortured explanation.

I have no problems with requiring that people pass a psychological evaluation before being allowed to get a license to own a gun. The problem is that our understanding of the human psyche is so limited. I know of people who would probably pass such an evaluation but shouldn't be trusted with weapons, and others who probably wouldn't pass but I think are harmless. We hear all the time about people who suddenly snapped that no one ever suspected. So while I wouldn't oppose requiring mental health evaluations, I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket, either. It helps foster the idea that we have a mental health problem (which they also aren't doing anything about), not a gun problem.

Ah, so it ain't the gun that's the problem, but a woman.

Of course.

"Patriot (n): A person who expresses the belief that burning or stepping on the flag of their nation should be a punishable offense, while simultaneously leaving sweat and grease stains on articles of clothing emblazoned with the very same flag (usually made in a foreign third-world country)."

This young man's photo has gone. He looked normal. Like anyones 18 yr old son, like mine, just with a gun.
In moments of anger, I too could have gone for a gun maybe. Lucky I've never had one close by.
After my son died, the pain got so great.. I started to visualize putting a gun to my head. Again, lucky one wasn't close by.

The code in use here:
gun nut = white guy

A person of color who commits a gun crime is never a gun nut, rather, they are "victims of poverty", "community activists", "victims of Islamophobia" or "aspiring rap artists".

@26: Oddly enough, there aren't all that many gun nuts of the paranoid survivalist variety who aren't white males. And white males are WAY overrepresented among mass shooters, while blacks are comparatively underrepresented.
White rampage shooters and inner-city black violence are two entirely different phenomena, with the sole shared characteristics of being perpetrated by men and involving people who shouldn't have guns being allowed access to them.

I think that it would be GREAT for universities to regularly screen their students for mental health, as part of an annual or semi-annual student health checkup.

Mass shootings get the press, but the biggest number of gun deaths in the US each year are gun suicides....some 20,000 a year, or a number the size of the student body of Harvard University. (Think on THAT for a bit.)

The demographic group most likely to attempt gun suicide are young men between 17-23. Because they use an especially deadly method of attempting to kill themselves, they're more likely to die than women in the same age group. Young adults between 17 and 23 are also the group where a lot of serious psychiatric illnesses begin to show up, especially bipolar disorder and the schizophrenia family.

If we can screen them and TREAT THEM APPROPRIATELY, then maybe, just maybe, we can not have such an appallingly high suicide rate. Maybe we can find the ones who are developing or have developed serious mental illnesses and get them treated so that they're more likely to have good quality of life and the right kind of community care they need to manage their illnesses.

I get so upset listening to "but we have to deal with mental illness!" following a mass shooting, especially when it's used as a handwave of why we shouldn't take other evidence-based, well-tested steps to reduce gun violence (e.g. why is the ATF barred from keeping a central database on how many guns a given buyer purchases in a year, which is a major red flag for trafficking), but once you bring up trying to keep people from using guns to kill themselves, you get crickets.

I like this idea: protest laws about concealed carry on campus with open-carry dildos: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-…

@27 whites are more accurate shooters apparently