SBM from @Kristin Esq.
Ability for an 18 yr old to buy a long gun has been in place in TX for 60 years. For a majority of these years, we didn't have any incidents like this. Anyone that shoots anyone else has a mental health challenge, period. We need to target that mental health challenge.
Psychologists and the FBI say they are getting a better understanding of the mix of factors that lead some kids to open fire on a classroom. The shooting can be an act of desperation fueled by anger.
www.npr.org
Here's an article from NPR, which discusses mental health issues for school shooters. It's from 2019, so it predates many horrid shootings occurring after this article, but why I searched for it is something I remembered about the Columbine shooters.
I recalled that both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had had mental health counseling. This article details how that went. Dylan was depressed; Eric was angry and grandiose.
Despite mental health counseling, nothing was done to prevent them from carrying out their plan at Columbine. Dylan's mother believed him when he said he would be ok, although she seems to have been a loving mother.
I do believe we need to target mental health, but a clever enough person can fool a therapist. To me it seems more effectual to change the law so that an 18-year old cannot purchase body armor and particularly cannot purchase a gun. Especially a gun with the sole purpose of causing mayhem--an assault weapon.
Yes, people will get guns illegally as they do here in NYC. Yet in states with lax gun laws, it seems all too easy to legally purchase these weapons.
Apparently SR was raring to go. On his 18th birthday, purchasing assault weapons was his first priority. I agree with at a MINIMUM, raising the age to 24.
No one in America needs to hunt for food to survive. For sport, okay, wait until 24 or so.
I enjoy going fishing although I don't need that for survival, (we always throw the fish back in the water, anyway), but if suddenly there were an epidemic of people with fishing rods casting hooks into the mouths of people on the street, I would hope the law would change regarding fishing gear sales.
Here we already have an epidemic of school shooting. The most common denominator seems to be that the perpetrator is a male.
We probably all remember those 11-year old boys who pulled the fire drill alarm at school so that everyone would be outside, and then shot their classmates. So it can be as young as that, with a troubled male. They likely got their weapons from home, so being over 24 for gun purchasing will not save everyone, but it will save some.
Jmo
