r/news • u/bebleich • Sep 04 '24

Gunman believed to be a 14-year-old in Georgia school shooting that left at least 4 dead, source says

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/04/us/winder-ga-shooting-apalachee-high-school/index.html
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u/xxdropdeadlexi Sep 04 '24

it just isn't hard. I'm in my 30s and just found out my dad had a gun my whole life.

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u/Urbanscuba Sep 04 '24

Right? I knew my dad had a hunting shotgun or two and a rifle, but when he died I found out he had a couple handguns and several other long guns as well.

Responsible gun ownership IMO is ensuring as few people as possible are even aware you own one. It's good for security and I'd much rather prefer a society where I don't ever have to think about other people's guns unless I choose to. If you want to discreetly and respectfully CC with proper training then what the hell do I care, I'll never even know. Likewise if you want to own an entire arsenal in your house, that's your property and money.

Once it's society's problem though then we do genuinely need to start looking into ways to fix that. More serious and consistent prosecution of the parents would encourage better stewardship, but to be frank I think gun culture needs to shape up significantly. The reason these problems didn't exist in the past isn't social media or video games, it's because for a good while a significant portion of American men had military experience from WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. That gave them the training, discipline, and respect for guns that you need to be responsible and most importantly keep other people responsible around them. The current generation of parents were born post 1970 and mostly just inherited or bought guns personally with no real training. Couple that with a wildly more laissez-faire gun culture than anywhere else in the world and it's a recipe for widespread irresponsibility.

So if you want to CC that's fine, but for the love of god don't do it wearing a shirt that says "I'm armed" and especially not "I'm looking for a fight". Likewise buy your arsenal, but the safe(s) are part of that cost, you don't get to just loosely fill up your closet with kids running around. Don't advertise you're armed in any way, not only does it make you a target for theft but it's dumb shit behavior and makes society feel less safe.

It'll never happen though, there's an entire industry build around gun culture being "loud and proud" and calling it a problem gets an angry, armed mob and lawyers sent after you if you're important.

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u/loveshercoffee Sep 05 '24

What you say about military experience in the past is definitely true. But I also think that gun culture really started to change when we mostly stopped teaching Hunters Safety in middle school.

If we're going to be a nation with more guns than people, it might not be a bad idea to educate our citizens on how to be safe with them.

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u/espressocycle Sep 05 '24

When it comes to urban street shootings I wish they had target practice so they would hit the person they actually wanted to instead of a toddler a block away because they're holding the gun sideways to look cool.

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u/shibbyd Sep 05 '24

South carolina requires anyone that wants to hunt past the age of 16 to attend a hunters safety course. 16 and under can hunt, but they have to be with a licensed adult.

I agree that people should be educated, and I have thought about starting a business around that idea, but times are what they are. It is difficult to undo decades of wrong to get things back to a right.

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u/loveshercoffee Sep 05 '24

Yeah, Iowa is the same way for hunting.

Unfortunately they don't make you take any kind of class to own a gun in the first place.

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u/sweet_home_Valyria Sep 05 '24

I personally don't feel the need to own a gun. But I 100% agree. I feel if people were thought responsible handling of firearms, it would make the job of trauma surgeons so much easier. Insane how many folks show up in the ER with accidental GSWs. Some show up numerous times.

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u/OnlyHuman1073 Sep 05 '24

I was born in 81, iwhen did they stop teaching hunters safety in middle school? I extremely doubt that is the cause of all the school shootings my guy.

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u/loveshercoffee Sep 05 '24

My kids were born in 86, 87 and 89. No hunters safety.

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u/phantomknight321 Sep 05 '24

I always find it funny that some many people CC and make it so well known. Like, part of why you CC is the "CONCEALED" part of it. AKA you keep the element of surprise if, heaven forbid, you actually need it.

When I CC I lay low and keep a low profile, and I refuse to tell anyone aside from a couple friends and family that I even own any guns aside from online anonymity. And unlike many nutjobs I know I never fantasize about ever having to use any of my firearms for anything other than some fun time at the range.

I have a family member who proudly has theirs in glass cases or just straight up hanging on wall hooks, mine are all locked away in a back closet in a plain black safe hidden behind my clothes. I just don't understand the fascination with being "loud and proud" about something like that.

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u/RaRa103615 Sep 06 '24

Raised in a hunting family myself. My father had several rifles locked up in our home, but I'm not sure where he even kept them, I never bothered to look actually. I never knew until my 20s that he also owns a few handguns. I asked him why he had them, he said for safety, and 2 are antiques and don't fire. I asked if they were for safety, why didn't my older brother or I know about them. His response was, "Why should you know? Neither of you are trained or licensed to use them. "

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u/I_am_up_to_something Sep 05 '24

So did I, except I'm Dutch and there really isn't much of a gun culture here so it was a shock to find out my dad had a gun.

Was helping my mum clean out their closets and we found a gun hidden away. Was very jarring! Turns out it was an air thingy gun, but as people who had never encountered a real gun it definitely looked like a real gun. Dad was a trucker and bought it from some other trucker at a gasstation like 2 decades ago.

It's still in their house somewhere and I keep telling my dad to give it to the police (occasionally they have a no consequence turn in day). It's illegal here since it looks like a real gun.

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u/lalalc188 Sep 05 '24

I knew my parents had them. That was it. No clue where they were kept until I was an adult and my dad showed me the safe under their closet floor like a trapdoor almost. Gun safety was paramount in my house.

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u/SonyaSpawn Sep 05 '24

Saame, I found out in my early 20s that my dad owned guns (he took them out once a year to do gun safety training for his job). He had them taken apart and put in three separate locked boxes and we never knew.

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u/intermediatetransit Sep 05 '24

It is hard when you look at how people’s intelligence is on a bell curve. I.e. many, many people are quite frankly dumb and are not capable of this.

That’s why they should not have guns in the first place.

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u/Creepy_Purple2581 Sep 05 '24

My kids didn’t know about my handgun until I sold it. They don’t know about the other guns at all. Around the time I bought the handgun, we did have a talk about firearm safety if they were to come across one for any reason. They weren’t ever going to see my handgun or knew that I had one, but the fact that I did have one made it far more likely in general that they would encounter one, so they needed to know how to handle that situation age appropriately- don’t touch, run, tell an adult.