Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
The school shooting in Texas is more surprising to me now that I live in Austin; the amount of people who concealed carry here is really high, and I'd assume small-town Texas would have an even higher %. I'm surprised nobody seemed to be carrying at the school!
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Juno (new face era)
@SpaceJuno
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
As a survivor, I believe you (and many others) underestimate the sheer confusion of being in the midst of a mass shooting. Is that the shooter? Or is that a cop coming to save us? WHY AM I FROZEN IN FEAR. I didn't train for this.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@SpaceJuno
I am down to accept that being able to defend yourself in a mass shooting is *way* harder than you think it is. I still imagine that I'd rather have a gun than not have a gun, and based on reading accounts there does occasionally seem to be clear moments for some.
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Juno (new face era)
@SpaceJuno
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Occasionally. I found suicide statistics to be a good model for the priors here. Most suicide attempts are unsuccessful — unless a gun is involved. Basically, people do stupid things, and guns make it easier for those stupid things to be deadly.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Decrease in suicide rates after a change of policy reducing access to firearms in adolescents: a...
The use of firearms is a common means of suicide. We examined the effect of a policy change in the Israeli Defense Forces reducing adolescents' access to firearms on rates of suicide. Following the...
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Juno (new face era)
@SpaceJuno
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Sure, that's fair. After Virginia Tech, I was on the police academy advisory board for the University of Texas System. A thing I learned is that if one trained cop goes up against a random actor, the perp has the advantage. If two trained cops, even odds. Three is where it flips.
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