my 2016 post<\/a>.)\u00a0 There was also a brief consensus around banning the \u201cbump stock\u201d but then, as I recall, the proposed legislation overreached with nebulous wording (by design or by carelessness) that would have banned a much wider set of guns or even, in the hands of a determined judge, nearly any gun at all. The so-called \u201cassault weapons ban\u201d being proposed in various states is, from what I\u2019ve read (sorry, no links) not something that would have an impact because, to the extent that it matches prior versions of such a ban, it would ban guns based on certain cosmetic \u201cscary-looking\u201d features which the designers will work around in new models.\u00a0 And bans on magazines of greater than a small number of bullets, or bans on detachable magazines at all, might have a small impact but could also lead to enforcement nightmares, particularly in light of 3D printing capabilities.<\/p>\nBut here\u2019s what I\u2019m thinking:\u00a0 the current conventional wisdom is that killers want fame, so the best way to fight back is by not giving them fame, and by not inspiring future killers, by curtailing the news reporting on those killers.\u00a0 I\u2019m skeptical of this; it may be true in some cases, and may be a contributing factor in others, but in the case, say, of the Parkland shooter, it appears to simply be more a matter of wanting revenge against the school and classmates he hated.\u00a0 The Charleston church shooter had visions of starting a race war.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if the Aurora theater shooter\u2019s\u00a0motivation has been established, or if mentally ill people are deemed to have no motivation other than their illness.\u00a0 And most \u201cmass shootings\u201d \u2014 as the anti-gun activists count them \u2014 occur in the inner city, where gang members shoot their rivals for revenge or to establish dominance.<\/p>\n
But it seems to be the case that, as far as the conventional \u201cmass shooter\u201d is concerned, they are either suicidal, or they aim at escaping afterwards in the midst of the panicked crowds \u2014 but the 19-year-old killer at Parkland sits in a jail cell, as does the Charleston killer.\u00a0 And I suspect that, much as plenty of young black men in the city accept prison time as a part of life, these two men do not fit into that world, and are in for a pretty rough time of it.\u00a0 No, I am not suggesting that prison abuse is a good thing, but, even absent abuse, the prospect of a lifetime in prison (since we\u2019re not Norway, after all) is, I suspect, causing them at least some degree of regret.<\/p>\n
Which means that I\u2019d like our police finding greater success at taking these killers alive, and keeping them alive (that is, without the escape of the death penalty), maybe trotting them out occasionally as evidence of the misery of living out your life in jail, as a warning to would-be mass shooters that they can\u2019t rely on plans to escape into the crowd or to kill themselves after they\u2019ve enjoyed their killing spree sufficiently.\u00a0 Hard time in prison is supposed to be a deterrent.\u00a0 As much as, for many criminals, there are increasing reports that we\u2019ve lost sight of the fact that there should be meaningful rehabilitative elements for those criminals who will someday be walking the streets again, I\u2019m all for making prison life as unpleasant as possible without crossing the line into abuse and human rights violations, for those criminals who will never see an open sky again.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Image:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3APrison_guard_tower_(2967623823).jpg; By Rennett Stowe from USA (prison guard tower) [CC BY 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don\u2019t really have much to say on the issue of mass shootings. I don\u2019t think there is a pat solution.\u00a0 The sort of gun control needed to ensure that the various killers would not have had weapons accessible to them really seems to approach the level of confiscation, which is hardly realistic.\u00a0 There are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[644,893],"class_list":["post-8489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mass-shootings","tag-prison"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n