𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝗈𝖿 𝗎𝗌 ✰ taehyung (1)

𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝗈𝖿 𝗎𝗌 kim taehyung / reader genre: zombie apocalypse au words: 6793

You just wanted humanity to survive.

warnings: violence, swearing, sexual content, gore and blood, death, taboo themes, drug and alcohol use

a/n: hi!! this has been in the works for literally. a year. maybe even longer. it has caused me so much pain and stress + im so happy to be putting her out into the world!!!!! thank you for all your endless support and i hope u all like this fic!!!!!!! :D ((it is a revised version of my older “the last of us” fic on cosykims!)) 

[ Moodboard || Playlist ]

01. denver ↝ 02. holiday with me ↝ 03. sad forever ↝ 04. surely ↝ 05. scorpion ↝ 06. shakespeare

“...city centre is now closed until further notice, after a bomb was detected near the subway station at 3:45pm. Reports say that the bomb was not a hoax, and was indeed planted there by foreign intel…”

“After three major bomb alerts in cities across the country, the senator has released a statement saying the following: Relations with foreign powers are continuing to get worse. Bombs are being planted around our country, and the threat of nuclear war is among us. Currently there are no dramatic changes, but our channel will keep everybody within the area notified.”

“...I repeat, this is not a drill. North Korea have finally declared nuclear war on the western hemisphere, challenging other powers to ready their weapons and start to fight. Curfew is now under way, and everybody must report to nearby shelters in the case of an emergency. May God be with you all.”

“...thanks, Janet. What we are seeing here is the aftermath of what appears to be catastrophic damage done by a foreign bomb in New York City. Thousands of people are suspected to be dead and bombs are still being detected in the radar. This is no longer a fantasy - this is the reality of our country. God Bless America.”

“...months after the fighting has ceased across the Globe, the Government have set up control areas to prevent the possibility of an infection, of which was caused by the toxic chemicals of the bombs dropped just three months ago. Citizens are to be evacuated within three miles of controlled areas and gas masks are being supplied to everybody South of Nebraska….”

“...what appears to be a virus has spread throughout controlled quarantines this evening. Reports from the state suggest that the word ‘zombie’ might fit the description of this virus. This is not a joke, I repeat, we are dealing with a nationwide crisis here. Everybody is to stay within their homes.”

“...the world is ending….hundreds and thousands of people are expected to fall to the virus caused by the aftermath of war...flesh-eating zombies….may God be with us all….oh God...oh God!”

Three Years In 01:12am.

Contrary to popular belief, there were many good things about the apocalypse. One, you wagered, was the fact that there was barely any pollution in the air; in fact, on an evening, you could see the whole galaxy without a telescope, breathing in the life of speckles of white, shooting ivories and the smile of a lonely moon. Two, there were no official rules to life. Unlike life before, no human is illegal, now. Border control is non-existent, and immigration and tax and how much money you’re going to make come payday is no longer important to anybody still alive. And three, if you were lucky, it was always silent.

Before, you used to sneer at silence. The way it mocked you, and humiliated you after a high-school presentation, or after the punchline of a joke. The way the silence slowly picked at your bones and flesh in the attic bedroom of your grandparents’ bungalow in the northern part of the city, secluded in mountains and barren trees; the silence laughing at the way you stared out that small box window, praying for a miracle to make noise. 

But now, silence is your new best friend. Silence indicates that nothing is near, and danger is less likely. It heightens every sense, and keeps you awake at night. Against any loyal survivor or camp-member, you valued silence as the number one ally.

Sniffing once, you caught your nose running, stepping over a large pile of rubble that had fallen from the roof of the warehouse you were currently based in. Careful to not awaken any of your fellow campers, you made your way towards the large wire fence, pulling a cable tie around the sliced wire to tie it together - an unpractical reinforcement, although quieter than chains. And as designated leader of the camp, you admit that it’s hard to keep everybody sane and grounded. Safety was of paramount importance, but you can’t fake it. You can’t lie to your campers by saying everything is safe. Because nothing is safe anymore.

Scraping scrap metal across the tarmac, the distant sound of boots made you glance up, noticing the familiar scuff of red leather and you turned away, not having to look up to know it’s the new guy, Kim Taehyung.

“Need any help?” his voice called across the loud silence, his fingers toying with a loose strand of polyester attached to his jacket.

“I’ve got it, thanks,” you replied, fiddling still with the ties around the looped chain.

Taehyung moved forward anyway, indifferent about the tense tone of your voice. He missed the hint entirely, coming closer when all you want is for him to go away. “It doesn’t look like you’ve got it. Here, I’ll hold the fence.”

You flinched when he appeared by your side, your face meeting his helpful gaze with a sharp glare. Regardless, you sighed loudly and relaxed, letting him hold the fence in place as you wrapped around the cable tie, clamping it closed before moving to the next hole created by cutters.

“Are you always this pushy?” you asked, avoiding his stare as you worked to close all the possible entrances (and exits).

“I just wanted to help,” Taehyung confessed quietly. “I felt pointless in there, not falling asleep. Plus, Jiyong snores. I wanted some peace and quiet.”

At that, you scoffed and smile. “Well, I can believe that. He’s always been a snorer, ever since high-school.”

Taehyung made a noise of acknowledgement, finally accepting defeat and crouching quietly beside you, wordless but inquisitive. It had only been three days since he joined the camp by chance; he was one of the lucky ones who approached your camp and made it inside. A law you lived by, inside your cluttered and hazy and scared brain, was that you never accepted outsiders into the camp. Sticking by friends you’ve known and trusted for years seemed safer than blindly trusting someone you had never met before. But, as Seunghyun pointed the sniper rifle at his tuft of brown hair hanging on his forehead, Yena had bounced down from the watch-tower with wide eyes - “he needs a Doctor, Y/N. He’s bleeding from his knee. We have the supplies, we can save his life.”

You just wanted humanity to survive.

And so the gates opened and he lay down on a medical bed inside the warehouse, and Yena and Jisoo helped patch up his wounds. Now, here he is; lingering in the shadows of the warehouse, limping across the length of the grounds, begging for jobs to keep himself occupied.

“You work a lot,” Taehyung noted. “I never see you sleep at night. Insomnia?”

“One person always stays on guard during the night,” you explain, tugging at the wire to make sure it holds. “I volunteer because there’s always something that needs to be done around here. If you think you’re safe, you’re wrong. Nobody else wants to do it, so I will. Just to keep myself busy, mainly.”

Taehyung nodded. “I get that. Before I came here, I just walked. I never stopped walking from where I was, constantly looking for somewhere safe to go.”

“Ain’t that the way,” you replied. With nothing left to do with the fence, you eventually turned to look at him, staring at his face outlined by the dim gas-lighter by the door to the warehouse. “You been on your own for a while?”

“No,” he answered, hesitantly. “I was with my sister when the virus first broke out. We were both at NYU. We got separated in the manic and I joined a small group of science students on their way to find a cure. Clearly, that didn’t work out. I figured it was safer on my own, you know? I had no idea where she went. So, I walked.”

“And your leg?” you asked, looking at his knee, still wrapped in soaked bandages. “You got hurt pretty bad, huh? Biter get you?”

“Unfortunately not. I got jumped by a couple bandits on my way here. I got away when a few walkers came by, but barely escaped. Then, I came here.”

You stood up as he spoke, him following your every move like a mirror. “‘Walkers.’ You can tell you’re from New York.”

Moving away from Taehyung, your feet take you to the mid-height fence near the drop towards the forest, a view overlooking the tops of tall trees, a spiralling path faded by fog and the familiar outline of a deserted city near the horizon. Kicking the fence gently, it stays in place, requiring no fortifications or attention. Nothing could climb the steep drop beneath it. Resting your elbows on the beach wood of the fence, you rest your weight and stare towards the city, analysing the corners of each building, jagged lines like a maths puzzle.

“While I was getting patched up,” Taehyung began, after a long moment of serene silence, “Jisoo told me that you guys go out on trips, hunts in cities. How many have you covered?”

“Only one,” you replied, nodding in the direction of the city in front of you. “That’s Denver. It’s so large that we barely covered a third of it in the two years we’ve been here. We planned to keep moving, but we had some...complications along the way. We got trapped up here. Every week we send out a group to scavenge the cities, find whatever we can to prepare us for travels. And last week, Jiyong’s pick-up truck ran out of gas for good, so anything we can find to help get that back and running would be great.”

Taehyung nodded with understanding, picking at the dry skin around his bitten-down fingernails. “I hear it’s in a few days. Shouldn’t you be asleep, resting for it?”

“I can’t sleep,” you said quietly. “Not anymore. And it’s like I said, there’s always shit that needs to be done. The drive to the city is around half hour, I can catch some z’s on the way there and between shifts. Why so curious, anyway? You coming with us, or something?”

He shrugged. “Can I?”

“Have you got anything better to do?” you retort, and he smiles slightly, looking down. “I hear you’re a good runner. We could use the extra legs and arms. If your knee’s up to it, course.”

Gratefully, he nodded with acceptance. “Come to think of it, your group is quite small. Has it always been this selective?”

As the words left his lips, Taehyung felt himself regret that sentence, noticing the way you tensed next to him, hands pausing in their movement of toying a blade of grass that hugged the fence post.

“I’m sorry. That was rude-”

“There were others,” you replied tensely, your demeanour changed instantly. “But like all other groups, we lost people along the way. Good people. Kind and loving people. In a world where life is so short, I can’t afford to lose anybody else.”

You clapped his shoulder roughly, “you’re new, Taehyung, and I don't expect you to understand. But we’re a family here, and the safety of the group is essential. You’re gonna lose people along the way but…”

Your voice trailed off, and Taehyung looked up. He got it. You didn’t have to continue speaking for him to put the pieces together.

Two Days Later. 08:19am.

The lively sound of a rumbling engine stirred Taehyung awake, the noise travelling from the square all the way to the South-Wing, painted in yellow as ‘Zone S’. S for sleep, or S for safety, Taehyung couldn’t quite decipher.

Sitting on the rectangle straw-sheet, he slipped on his socks and signature ruby leather boots, carrying his jacket over his arms as he left the zone and moved towards the square, where the sun bled out onto the dusty tarmac, a glimmer of glittering light causing him to squint as he crossed the width of the kitchen. He smiled at Yena, the youngest in the group, only eighteen amongst middle-aged outcasts, and passed her at the table, ignoring her wavering stare.

“Taehyung. Good morning.”

He forced himself to smile over at Taekwoon, only slightly intimidated by the size of his muscles behind a grey sleeved tee, and the way he effortlessly lifted a duffel bag filled with weapons into the trunk of the Subaru. Taekwoon looked over gently, in an effort not to afraid the newbie, and then he shut the boot of the car and approached him.

“You coming on our trip today?” he asked, and Taehyung nodded.

“Did you clear it with Y/N?”

“Yes,” he replied surely. “She invited me.”

Taekwoon smiled mockingly, laughing out of his nose. “Right. Sure she did.”

Taehyung blinked, unfamiliar. “Where is Y/N? Isn’t she coming with us?”

“Yeah. Protocol around here is similar to certain armies,” Taekwoon explained lamely. “The leader always helps out on missions. Hey, she’s nothing like that old guy out of Wonder Woman, I’ll tell you that.”

“Y/N is the leader?” Taehyung asked dumbly.

Taekwoon turned then, resting a hand upon the hot black exterior of the car. “Does that shock you?”

“Kinda. She looks so…”

He didn’t continue, but Taekwoon nodded in understanding. “We get it. But without her, none of us would be here. I couldn’t think of anyone better leading us. Well, I mean, I’d proper love a Rick Grimes around here, but you can’t have everything. Jiyong and Seunghyun are technically leaders, too, but we just say Y/N is to deprive them the satisfaction of feeling powerful.”

From behind him, the short sound of footsteps made Taehyung turn, meeting your gaze halfway as you briskly passed him, cheeks clammy, freckles on display. He’d never noticed them before. At your entry, the group of hunters gathered around the bonnet of the car as you spread a map down on it with a short slap, a dying red Sharpie in your hand, circling the next part of the city.

“Last week we went to this section, so try and focus on these areas today,” you explained, waiting for Taehyung to shift into a position where he could see the map carefully. “Denver was one of the worst hit cities, so we could either be lucky and find bodies, or unlucky and find biters. Either way, try and avoid making sound. We have the radios and walkies in-case we get into any sort of trouble. If we lose signal, meet at the car before sunset. Remember - don’t risk your life if one of us doesn’t arrive on time. Give it five minutes after the sun begins to disappear, and if we’re not here, go on ahead. We can’t sacrifice our supplies for the sake of one man. It’s harsh, and we go through this every time, but I’m making it clear to the fresh meat.”

Everybody, minus Taehyung and his bewildered expression, nodded with understanding, a quiet murmur overpowering the groan of the dead hanging in the shadows of the forest surrounding the warehouse.

“Is there anything anybody wants to ask for before we head onto the road?” Jiyong asked, his voice in the same usual volume- quieter than a shout, slightly louder than a whisper.

“Gas is a priority,” Taehyung suggested, remembering the conversation about the useless pick-up truck sitting in the back near the barrens.

Taekwoon nodded, “we need gas for the truck, and in-case our getaway vehicle runs out unexpectedly. We’re on our last few drops.”

“The usual, I’d expect. Food is obvious, water, clean water. Clothes, or batteries would be great, too. Never skip over a store because it looks empty,” Doyoung, Yena’s brother and the best shooter within the group aside from Seunghyun, said, looking at Taehyung all the while. “Pharmacy's look emptied, but there’s always the office near the back that’s filled with extra medicine. The keys are usually on a staff member who’s lurking or dead. You have materials that can pick the lock.”

“How do you know that for sure?” Taehyung asked, meanwhile the rest of the group readied the truck. You stayed near Taehyung, eager to hear what he had to say.

“I used to work at my Dad’s pharmacy before shit hit the fan,” Doyoung shrugged. “I know my way around a pharmacy, is all.”

Having little else to do, Taehyung simply nodded and stood still, waiting for the group to finish setting up the car, with Taekwoon riding his motorcycle near the front like a Police escort.

“Ready?” you asked, stopping by his side as the group hollered for everybody to get inside. Yena hurried out towards the gate, hanging by the loose chain ready to open it up. Taehyung sucked in a breath quietly, and looked at you with as much optimism as he could. It came out falsely, but you appreciated his efforts.

“Not really. Will I ever be?”

You didn’t know how to answer that. No response was good.

The city was unusually quiet.

Beside you, in the back of the car, Taehyung stared silently at the scenery as it rolled past, just as the car crossed into the city’s territory. Immediately, he could see the stark contrast between the wilderness and the madness; a concrete jungle, overpowered by lush green and forest ferns, weeds that turreted as high as traffic lights snaking up the drains of apartment complexes, tufts of cloth dancing in the breeze. Despite the damage from nuclear destruction, Taehyung was surprised that nature could take over so quickly. He stared in silence at the sight of rusted vehicles abandoned in the streets, decorated with blood red graffiti, the walls of buildings reading “DEAD INSIDE” or “KEEP OUT”, neither better than the other. As the car crossed through an intersection, down one of the streets, water had eroded the roads; murky green water bouncing off the heavy sunlight creating patterns on the brickwork, faded and dressed in dark ivy.

“Reminds me of Chernobyl,” Taehyung commented on the way there.

As the car pulled up in a relatively deserted section of the city, Jiyong switched off the gas and hopped out instantly, wasting zero time. Taehyung clambered out afterwards, holding open the door as you climbed out after him, nodding as a thank-you, already familiarising yourself with the silence.

Taekwoon began to hand out weapons from the duffel bag in the boot as you stared in all directions, analysing pathways and gaps between buildings. Craning upwards, the canopy of unstable concrete, the decaying body of two large towers collided together, made you feel uneasy, and you turned back towards the group, gladly taking a pistol and extra ammunition.

“Remember the rules,” you reminded. “Stay in your partners. Taekwoon and Doyoung, go North. Jiyong, Seunghyun, go West. Jisoo, you’re okay to go South, yes? I’ll take the newbie with me East.”

Jisoo nodded, loading her gun. “I don’t need a man to slow me down.”

“Just be careful,” you warned, happy to see her confident going alone. Taehyung shifted from foot to foot, shakily taking a pistol from the bottom of the bag and following behind you as you moved towards the East direction, towards the fallen ruins of Denver city.

After some minutes of silence, Taehyung spoke up: “where are we going?”

“Further into the city,” you replied, not missing a beat. “Most of the stores close to the square have been checked already. But the ones further in the city are more likely to stay in tact. Nobody comes in here unless they want to die. Thankfully, it seems quiet today.”

“We got lucky, then,” he decided.

“I hope you’re right.”

A few more minutes in, and Taehyung felt himself cower at the sight of more skyscrapers leaning together, debris falling from the sky and landing in tufts near his feet. He ignored the stained blood from feet as he crossed a gravel pathway, near a sectioned off waterpool barricaded by old cars. Distracting himself, Taehyung invested his attention towards yourself, watching cautiously as you fiddled with buttons on the small radio you picked up along the way.

“Should you really be using that out in the open?”

You paused, scoffing slightly. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I believe you, but, that’s making noise.”

“What about it?”

Taehyung narrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “Noise attracts walkers.”

With a final sigh, you turned to him over your shoulder. “You’re going to attract ‘walkers’ in a minute. Just...keep your voice down, yeah? The radio is our only way to communicate with those outside our group. It’s either this, or walking straight into death. You want that?”

“Obviously not,” he replied.

Opting to keep you happy, Taehyung didn’t say anything else. Instead, he followed your heels closely, muttering soft thanks when you lifted up a beam for him to duck under, or pointed out a hole of muddy water that was probably contaminated. In his ears, he listened for the sound of something - anything - to come through on the radio, when a voice cut through the radio static.

“...nothing left. I’m leaving the city, with as many people as I can. We have to leave people behind, but...they’re in no position to travel. Alby is sick, and Jaena’s leg is infected. We don’t have much time left…”

Taehyung moved closer to you, and you positioned the radio so he could hear.

“There’s nothing left for anybody in City Ten. Bandits and hunters come to scavenge stores but there’s nothing we can do about it. We gathered all the medical supplies in our store room in Block 18. Fuck, I don’t know what building we are in, but we can see the large building that towers over all others from our window. Tommy came in saying he has everything ready for us to go. We’re heading North, towards Washington. Some survivors said there was a group of student scientists there with a bunch of NASA officials, working on a cure. They’re calling Washington the safe zone, or something, I can’t remember. Denver is empty.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be here,” Taehyung said in a low voice, and you looked at him briefly before looking back at the radio, as if it would do something visual.

The voice continued breathily: “If you’re still in the city...if anybody even still listens to me, you need to get out. You need to head to-” she paused over the line. “Fuck, they’re here. I hear them.” Her voice got quieter, breathier, like a whisper. You decided to continue on foot next to Taehyung, waiting for her voice to come back through the line. For what felt like eternity, she made no response.

Taehyung heaved himself up over an abandoned car, extending a hand down to you to help pull you up. Climbing up after him, you snatched your hand away when you realised he was still holding onto you, brushing your hand on your jeans and jumping down from the car back onto the floor.

“Hey, Y/N, how about we head over--”

Abruptly, the woman’s voice cut back in through the silence. “Oh fuck! Oh my god, they k-killed him. They killed him, oh my God, they’re coming back for me, stop! Leave me alone!”

Her screams were screeching, loud enough to shatter glass. Taehyung immediately fumbled for the volume, hissing when the radio continued to scream out into the silence of the city. As quickly as her screams became deafening, they became deaf, fallen silent, only static replacing her noises. As if overcome with fear, you toss the radio to the side, causing it to smash into pieces.

“What are you doing?” Taehyung exclaimed suddenly.

“I don’t wanna hear that,” you replied, shaking your head furiously. “Come on, let’s keep going. We’ve already wasted time listening.”

“She’s in trouble,” Taehyung continued, nonetheless following you. “We could try and find her, and help her.”

You smiled bitterly, hiking towards the nearest convenience store at the ground of a large high-rise building, slanted and glass-covered. “Taehyung, you’re sweet. Really, and I so like that about you. You’re a good asset to the team, and I want to keep it that way. But, we can’t afford to save her. By the sounds of things, she didn’t make it.”

“You don’t know that.”

Pausing to observe a blood-covered metal bat rolling back and forth by the open door to the store, you crouch to pick it up and swing it back and forth. “You’re right, I don’t. But I care more about our survival than hers.”

Behind you, he scoffed and shook his head. “You’re heartless.”

“No, I’m realistic,” you counter, holding the door open for him and handing him the metal bat. He caught it with a breath of air. “Look, I don’t want to argue with you about it. We can discuss it back at camp. For now, we have to look in the area and find somewhere to scavenge. This’ll do for the moment. Take the chemist and the clothes, I’ll scan the aisles for food if there is any. If you see bottled water, please get some.”

Taehyung reluctantly sighed, following you through the door and flinching when his boots crunched shards of broken glass on the floor. Shuffling into place, Taehyung scanned the room with a somber expression; the shelves near the door had been stripped clean, with only crumbs and stains marking the off-white colours, faded neons screaming nursery rhymes as he approached the first aisle. To his delight, or more so relief, he noticed food still on the shelves towards the back of the store, and he moved his gaze towards the right side of the store, where a hanging light, swinging to and fro with a daunting creak, read “Clothing”, where a neon should have bled out into cyans and magentas.

“Take half an hour?” you suggested, tossing him a spare flashlight from your backpack. “Meet back here if you can’t find anything useful. Take what we need, not what you want. I mean, clothing is preference, but- you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” he replied, sounding almost indifferent. “I know. Be careful.”

To that, you smiled. “You too.”

Waiting until Taehyung had shuffled into the shadows of the clothes department, somewhat near to the flickering blue glow of the chemist desk, you gulped and retreated towards the far shelf, crouching to pack in a can of beans and some soup, close to expiry but good enough to salvage. By the end of the search, your bag was near enough filled to the brim; you had plenty of food, and lighters to aid Jiyong’s bad smoking habit, alongside a pack of cigarettes you found at the back of the shelf next to some ammunition and a discarded wallet. A pack of batteries lay like a ripe cherry in a bunch of rotten ones, and you barely wedged it into the front pocket of your bag. Feeling successful, you swung the backpack onto your shoulders and rose from your crouch behind the shelves.

Poking your head over the stacks, the sound of Taehyung dragging clothes across the rails puts your mind at ease, distracting you from the low hum of the undead, which, as if it were possible, seemed to get louder and louder. Probably paranoia, you guessed, minding your own business as you approached the counter looking into the bakery. You stared sadly at the moulded breads and pastries, eyeing them with a new hunger. If you remembered hard enough, you could remember visiting a store just like this one and buying fish at the market, and then buying a custard cake at the bakery with your college friends.

At that thought, you looked away, leaning over the counter to eye the floor, messed with flour and footprints dotted with red shuffling towards the kitchen, where silence screamed out. You took a guess that the red wasn’t your ordinary jam, and you gulped, sadly imagining who the unlucky victim was. Shrugging off those thoughts, you prepared to pick yourself back up onto your feet when a loud shuffle made you freeze in all movement.

Please be Taehyung.

Turning around slowly, you held your breath calmly, facing the store. As you turned to look to your left, the sight of a biter hovering near the glass doorway to the side-store made a chill run up the length of your body. You did nothing. It simply stared.

Perhaps if you moved slowly, it wouldn’t see you. Albeit wishful thinking, it seemed better than nothing at this point. It stood there dauntingly, shaking from side to side with a tremor, lips torn apart and skin ripped, maggots clinging to the rotten flesh. It let out a snarl, teeth curling and stirring creamy foam out of its mouth, fingers curled like dinosaur claws. As it waited, you turned fully, hands spread flat on the counter of the desk, observing all possible exits.

There was the safe route; towards Taehyung where he could help you take out the biter coming after you. There was the risky route; straight back towards the door, where noise would attract both the biter and Taehyung anyway. Or there was the stupid route; towards the biter, ready for attack.

Thankfully, you’d seen zombie movies enough times to know that running towards the biter almost always got you killed. Instead, you moved slowly, almost unmoving entirely. The biter stayed in place, biting air, snarling at the wind. Walking as quietly as you could, you edged towards the clothing section to find Taehyung, already somewhat comforted by the continuous sound of him dragging hangers across the rails. Every step was taken without breath; afraid that even blinking would send it into a frenzy, silence was of new paramount importance.

Inching further towards Taehyung, you flinched violently when the biter growled loudly, making enough noise to pull Taehyung’s head out of the clothing racks, bag practically stuff with clothes he basically didn’t really need. When the noise was followed by silence, he gripped his bat handle tighter and dropped his backpack to the tiles with a soft thud. Taehyung moved slowly towards the open archway separating the clothes to the foods, taking his time looking at the way the lights flickered, and the sound of the wind getting caught in the tiny cracks in the window-panes.

“Y/N?” he called, unaware. His grip tightened on the bat when nothing responded, only a murmur, a groan that sounded guttural. “Y/N?”

Approaching the arch, he turned into the main foyer of the store and froze in place when he saw you; standing like a statue by the counter, facing him with eyes wide. Without saying words, he seemed to know what to do - he looked back and forth between yourself and the biter, staring at the way it swayed from side to side, occasionally jolting as if having a seizure. Looking back at you, he paused when you held your hands in front of you, as if warning him to stay away.

“Don’t move,” you mouthed, afraid of a whisper being too loud.

He nodded, although you barely caught it. “What do we do?” he mouthed back.

Catching your breath quietly, you began to move slowly towards him, dragging your feet across the tiles wiped with tomato coloured red. Taehyung held out his hands invitingly, bat still pointed outwards, shaking slightly. He couldn’t pinpoint whether it was nerves, or fear, but either one drove his hands further outwards, taking small steps of his own towards you, quiet in an effort to not distract unwanted attention.

“That’s it,” he whispered, the smallest of whispers, waving his hands slowly in circles. “Slowly…”

The taste of blood swam through your mouth as your teeth sank down onto the inside of your lip, hands shaking violently as you steadily stepped towards your partner. Closer than breath, he was steps away, when your foot came down on shards of cloudy glass.

It ripped through the silence like a cough in Church.

The biter jolted with a high-pitched scream, too loud for you to turn around to check its expression. Taehyung stared over your shoulder at the way it broke out of a trance, screeching loudly at the sight of sounds. Time was running out; Taehyung yelled your name loudly, causing you to hurry towards him to grab his hand extended outward. As you skidded past his legs, his voice rang in your ears, lips brushing your hair: “Outside! Now!”

Grabbing his bag discarded on the floor, Taehyung swung it over his shoulders as you hurried ahead, ducking through a broken window. With impatience, Taehyung pushed you out, hands on your upper-back thigh, cradling you as you jumped out the hole and onto the road. He barely made it out, tugging at the thin material of your sleeve and dragging you out into the dust on the road. From behind both of you, the doors separating the biter and the store smashed open, alerting at least a dozen others lingering nearby in the dusty shadows.

They were newly infected, still grasping on to whatever shreds of humanity they had left. Running fast, screams loud, hands still rotting the flesh away; the biters ran from behind you down the road, screaming with every step, nudging you both further down the large road to nowhere. You weren’t even sure if this was the way you came; all you seemed focused on was the sight of Taehyung’s feet leaving you behind in a cloud of dust. He was faster than you had anticipated, but, with experience, you endured the heat of the panic and gravitated towards his side.

“Y/N-” he began, looking at you with a breathless expression.

“Don’t talk!” you screamed in reply, pulling at his arm. “Just fucking run!”

Passing identical buildings, acting like copied and pasted images, it was hard to deny that you were exhausted. At one point, it felt like Taehyung was dragging your weight, your legs too tired to hurry along after his frame. The cries of hunger and agony from the biters behind you increased in volume, filling the atmosphere with a heaviness. If the group were close, they had heard the noises and thought better than sticking around.

“Turn! Here, here, here, here, don’t fucking stop running!” screamed your voice over the chaos, pushing Taehyung by his shirt towards a small and narrow alleyway between two smaller stores; a ladder, enclosed by a bar painted an ebony black, smiled in the darkness, and Taehyung thankfully ran towards it without hesitation. The sharp turn caught the mob off-guard, sending them skidding across the road.

Taehyung began to climb up the ladder, and you swiftly followed, veins pumping with fear and adrenaline, hands shivering as you climbed from step to step, height to height. A biter lunged for your boot, sinking its teeth into the heel and you kicked it in the jaw, a growl emerging from its torn jaw as it collapsed back into the hoard.

Finally reaching the top of the roof, you heaved yourself up over the low brick wall, physically feeling the exhaustion in your arms, a dampness under your armpits. Landing with a thud on top of Taehyung, a breath of hot hair released from your lips, strands of hair sticking to your forehead like cake mixture to a bowl. Both of your breaths were in sync; Taehyung lay beneath you, unmoving for the several moments of gathering breath, with the shakiness of his hands vibrating against your waist.

When the reality of lying on top of Taehyung sank in, you shuddered and lifted yourself up off his stomach, your palms scratching on the scorching hot roof. Behind you, Taehyung lifts himself up off the floor, leaning over the side of the wall to peer down at the biters below. Groans fill the air as he spots biters learning how to climb the ladder, and he gulps, saliva hot and solid moving down his dry throat.

“That was fucking insane,” he hissed, turning to you sharply as you pace in ovals on the roof. “What happened down there?”

“Biter came up on me,” you muttered, “didn’t hear it until it was too late.”

The biters congregated down below, a loud compilation of groans becoming disheartening as you fail to come up with a solution to this incredibly difficult problem. Taehyung jerks himself away from the wall, crouching to his backpack to take a swig of water he was planning to save until later. You turn halfway, thankfully taking a sip of the water he hands to you once he swallowed.

“What do we do now?” Taehyung asks, hands on his knees. He’s hunched over. “The group leaves at sundown. Will they wait?”

Swallowing thickly, you shake your head and shove the water back into his hands. “No. It’s the rules.”

“Fuck the rules,” he replies. “We’re a team.”

“Yeah, but we’ve worked this way for a while now. We won’t change just because you arrived to the group.”

Taehyung scoffed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Letting out a sigh, you pace back towards the wall overlooking the city. “It’s not ideal, I know. But if the group wait a second longer and lose their supplies to bandits or biters...it would be a waste of time. Our group are already vulnerable back at camp. We don’t wanna leave people behind. If you can help, do it, but we’re on a roof in the middle of the city and there’s no way in hell we can make it back in time without leaving right now.”

With nothing useful to say, Taehyung let his body drop with a thud on the floor, a cloud of dust circling his thighs as his bag dragged against the side of the wall. Above, the sky transitioned into auburn colours, clouds moving faster than smoke rising out a chimney, carried by the wind towards the direction of the camp. The sound of cicadas and the haunting birdsong, and the constant groan of death, was all to be heard as you clenched your outstretched hands into small balls, cursing the air with your gaze cast downwards; it eventually fell on the sight of a rusted, and unstable balcony a few stories below, a scrap of magenta cloth clinging to the corners, broken glass twinkling in the light.

As time moved, and hours rolled by, Taehyung had napped twice and your eyes would not move from the sight of the balcony, analysing each pattern and grid and rusted area, calculating jumps and falls and possible scenarios in your brain. Eventually, when the sky had darkened with rain clouds and night, the sun dipped behind a large storey building. Maybe the group would wait for you.

Maybe they’d think differently because you were their leader. Or maybe they didn’t need you.

With a fright, Taehyung jumped when you spun around to him, crouched on your knees with an urgent voice. “I have one plan, and if this plan fails, we are doomed.”

“Sounds promising,” he commented, without giving a plan of his own. Taehyung rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm.

“There’s a balcony,” you explained, moving across the roof to show him, pointing down at the brown painted overhang. He nodded with understanding, “it obviously goes into a room. We could sneak through the building and come out through the front. The herd are around the back, or in the alley, and the ones up front are too tired to react in time. We use that time to run back towards the truck. The group might have stayed behind for us, but if not, we can try to see if any of the cars around the area are salvageable. If all fails...we could camp in a building for the night. Start walking to camp. We’d be there in a day, or two.”

Taehyung stood quietly, thinking.

“It’s risky,” you considered, looking at him, bottom lip between top teeth. “But it’s the only plan I have.”

“It’s the only plan we have,” Taehyung replied. “I couldn’t think of anything better. Are you okay to run?”

Nodding your head, you adjusted the straps of your backpack, tightening it so it would manage the drop in silence. Taehyung hesitated, watching you climb over the half-wall and settle to sit, your legs hanging over the side above the short, nonetheless intimidating drop to the balcony. Quickly, however, he followed; Taehyung heaved himself up next to you, watching nervously as you pushed forward and back, with inner conflict.

“Ready?” he asked, gently, without demand.

Without talking, you pushed.

NEXT CHAPTER.

BLOGTOBER 10/23/2019: FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION - BEAST STABLE

I’m not sure that I made the right choice by including this film in my blogtober program. A fugitive thriller with women’s prison and yakuza elements, BEAST STABLE doesn’t seem very horrific on its face. However, this third installation in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series (and the last by visionary director Shunya Ito) is also the most visceral and intimate. Its relative lack of action movie bravado shifts the focus from matters of the spirit to those of the body, the appalling details of which made me ask myself whether I didn’t consider this a horror movie after all. My conclusions are not very firm, but the debate is worth having.

During notorious convict Sasori (”Scorpion”)/Nami Matsushida’s latest escape, she runs afoul of the relentless Detective Kondo (Mikio Narita) on the subway, who no sooner cuffs her than loses his arm to her blade. This produces some of my favorite images from the whole hallucinatory series, with Matsu racing through the streets with the severed limb flailing behind her to the unforgettable sounds of star Meiko Kaji’s theme song “Urami Bushi”. In her flight to a shanty town on the outskirts of the city, she meets a young prostitute named Yuki (Yayoi Watanabe) in a most outrageous fashion. Yuki lies on her back in a cemetery, clutching bills from the john who left her there, and gazing vacantly at the stars. When a strange sound draws her attention, she finds herself locking eyes with the feral Matsu, who crouches behind a tombstone with the severed arm in her mouth, scraping away at the handcuff chain. The strange gothic horror of this scene only scratches the surface of how weird BEAST STABLE will become.

Yuki is an especially desperate character whose pitiful lot justifies the trouble that she makes for Matsu. A poor prostitute who is virtually enslaved to her brain damaged brother, she must keep his base instincts in check only by submitting to his every sexual whim. When Yuki chases after Matsu, begging to be freed from this nightmare, she unwittingly attracts the attention of the local mob, including a female pimp with a penchant for back alley abortions. The crow-obsessed crook Katsu, who might as well be a Batman villain (played by Reisen Ri, who has powerful Karen Black vibes) hatches a plot to take out Matsu, but this falls apart when Matsu starts slashing her way through the gang’s ranks. Rather than confront her, Katsu foolishly opts for the safety of prison--Matsu’s home turf, where she is able to exact a diabolical revenge that belongs more in a giallo than a standard issue women’s prison movie. 

BEAST STABLE is often as beautiful as either of its two predecessors, which are generally considered to be superior; the dreamy rain of fire produced when Yuki searches for Matsu by dropping matches into the sewer is not to be missed. Admittedly the other films have a more ethereal, allegorical quality, but BEAST STABLE holds its own in terms of being potently disturbing. Where we previously found female criminality presented in a sort of heroic light, aimed at the dissolution of the corrupt prison system and the punishment of hypocrites, here women are metaphorically imprisoned in maddeningly hopeless situations. Yuki is unable to emotionally separate herself from her rapist brother, as she is carrying his baby to term--even after being raped with a golf club by Katsu for intruding on the pimp’s territory. When one of Katsu’s colleagues sets his sights on Matsu, the thug’s distraught girlfriend kills him by virtually boiling him alive. Trapped in Katsu’s bird cage, Matsu escapes by retrieving a scalpel from the cold grip of a prostitute who died as a result of a horrifying abortion. Nowhere are the courageous, castrating antiheroes of FEMALE PRISONER 701: SCORPION or JAILHOUSE 4. In BEAST STABLE, we have only Matsu grimly following a trail of victims to the film’s hard won conclusion.

I am left trying to figure out if I can create a reasonable distinction between horror and pure exploitation, at least in this case. My first clue lies in the film’s profound sadness, which first appears in the image of the recently befouled Yuki, lying fully clothed in a cemetery like a discarded corpse. Apparently, I think that despair is an important element in horror. It would be pretty difficult for anyone other than the most serious degenerates to get it up for this movie, with its relentless agonies and heavy focus on abortion. There is no token lesbianism or nude calisthenics to brighten the mood now and again, and at that, the violence is rarely political. In the former films, Matsu and her defacto acolytes rage against authorities who would break their spirits, but in BEAST STABLE the violence is personal and intimate rather than institutional, and few characters are afforded a majestic martyrdom as a way out. SCORPION and JAILHOUSE 41 pit the anonymizing degradation of jail against the glories of anarchy and vengeance, but BEAST STABLE reaffirms that not much good awaits women beyond prison bars.

This line of thinking leads me to indulge in a personal note. I was introduced to this series while still in college, by a person who I would later categorize as a total abuser. Though he was highly intelligent and charismatic in an offbeat way, he dated exclusively much younger women--a sure sign of someone avoiding the sound judgment of his peers--and there was some evidence of his having that iffy white guy preference for asian girls. He lured in women who were too young or inexperienced to know better by flaunting his inner sensitivity and trauma, and then once he had someone (or more than one person) on the hook, he rewarded her by being relentlessly dishonest and unfaithful, as if to teach her a lesson for sympathizing with him. To my knowledge, he had not been a women’s studies major in his school days, but he might as well have been, as most of his film discussion came through a feminist filter. He analyzed sleazy genre fare to within an inch of its life, and seemed to delight in making remarks like that the infamous borderline pornographic slasher movie THE TOOLBOX MURDERS “is dangerous and should not be seen.” This all might sound like the typical calculation of a basic predator, but having been his unfortunate friend for several years, I truly believe that he believed his own bullshit. His manic depressive behavior belied little self-reflection, and he would sometimes make tearful statements that bordered on magical thinking, about how “something” unnameable about him drove women insane. He seemed genuinely affronted by his long suffering girlfriend’s suggestion that he might be a misogynist, even though he admitted to hitting her during at least one argument. (A fact that he naturally presented as something that should make me feel sorry for him, in his epic turmoil) He showed no awareness of how suspicious it might be to some people, that he voraciously took in any movie starring teenage girls or childlike women; even though I held his opinion in the highest regard for years, I had to learn to start ignoring him when he recommended these movies, because whether he was right about their actual quality was a complete crap shoot. 

The point that I’m coming to is that he was absolutely obsessed with the character of Sasori. He believed that the JAILHOUSE 41 was one of, if not The greatest movie of all time, and both his email address and user image related to her. The FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION series represented the pinnacle of his absolute favorite thing, which was raped virgins returning for revenge. Back when I knew him, I took this to be plain old good taste; today, I associate it obliquely with an attitude I sense a lot on the political right. Without giving this remotely the space that it would take more me to fully prove my point, I’ll just say that part of what motivates conservatives and bigots is the profound, primal, unconscious fear that those they have repressed will come back to avenge themselves. There’s a subaural signal in right wing rhetoric that I always hear beyond their empty circuitous logic, that simply says “We’ve done a lot of bad things to you, and by virtue of that, now we have reason to fear that you will do those same things to us, given the slightest chance.” Since that time, I have become acquainted with more men like this than I would have preferred to. Not the scheming women’s studies serial rapists, but  the sulking intellectuals whose unshakable belief in their own nobility--their certainty that they are too smart to be bigots--prevents them from fully acknowledging their abusive, misogynist, and frankly sometimes pedophilic attitudes toward women. These guys vocally obsess over the likes of Lydia Lunch and Kim Gordon and Sasha Grey and Asia Argento et al, and boast about their literacy in matters of gender and sexuality, only to routinely accumulate the most submissive and virginal partners they can find, and blame these girls for all of their personal problems for as long as they stick around. The FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION movies are great, both in terms of formal artistry and metaphor for the female experience. I would love to believe in the specialness of men who relate so openly to characters like Matsu, but because of my majority experience, I’m afraid I tend to find them all guilty until proven innocent.

When I was in high school a few years ago, there was never a sense of “The adults will prevent violence.” A school shooting was something that my classmates and I knew was easily possible. Some kids had been caught firing off air rifles at a public park one year; we all knew how easy it was to get guns. My own father had a shotgun and rifle for deer hunting, as well as a pistol passed down from his father. They were kept in a closet, along with ammo and a quick-load clip for the pistol for defense against potential robbers. No locks, no separation of guns & ammo, no failsafe safety locks on the triggers. And this wasn’t unusual in our small town. Hell, the fact that the guns were in my parents’ bedroom closet was probably more child-proofing than most families’ guns had. My classmates and I knew this. I think my class was better than average, more caring or careful or stable or whatever, certainly with less inter-group rivalry than some grades had. And yet we all knew, “Hey, keep an eye on so-and-so, they’ve been sort of shifty lately.” I’m not sure anything was ever said out loud outside of very tight-knit friend groups. But I think we all expected it, we expected that one day, one of the ‘so-and-so’s would come into school with a gun and that could be the end. That’s pretty horrible. But worse than that, I think, is that none of us seemed scared or worried about it. Sure, we’d talk about it with friends sometimes. It’d start with a careless, tasteless joke and then the conversation would turn more somber and serious. “Hey guys, do you think it’ll happen? I mean the way things have been going lately....” “Oh, probably. Hope I’m near the shop when it happens; those metal fire doors will come in handy.” “Biology room wouldn’t be bad either, the storage closet has an emergency door to the outside.”

By the 2010s, school shootings weren’t uncommon or far from our minds. They were just something that happened in life, and we were waiting for it to happen here.

Gears 5 and other games coming to Xbox One this week

Gears 5 and other games coming to Xbox One this week. Torchlight II (September 03, 2019) The award-winning action RPG is back, bigger and better than ever! Torchlight II takes you back into the quirky, fast-paced world of bloodthirsty monsters, bountiful treasures, and sinister secrets - and, once again, the fate of the world is in your hands. Torchlight II is fast, fun, and filled to the brim with action and loot. Adventure solo or form a party online with your friends. Features: 4 player co-op online. Experiment with hero synergies and take on the fiercest opponents together, for the world’s most awesome loot.Create and customize characters from one of four distinct classes. Each class can be played as male or female, and robust skillsets and equipment variety give tons of opportunity for unique builds.Explore vast overland areas and multiple hub towns. Fight through rain and snow, day and night. Level randomization ensures fresh new layouts, paths, loot, and monsters every time you play.Choose how to empower your pet with special transforming consumables. Your pet can fight by your side or make a run to town to sell loot so you don’t have to.Once you've beaten Torchlight II's primary campaign, you can start again with the same character for a significantly greater challenge. You'll keep all of the skills, gold, and gear. Final Fantasy VIII Remastered (August 03, 2019) It is a time of war. The Republic of Galbadia, under the influence of the sorceress Edea, mobilises its great armies against the other nations of the world. Squall and other members of SeeD, an elite mercenary force, join hands with Rinoa, a resistance fighter, to fight against Galbadia's tyrannical rule and to prevent Edea from fulfilling her ultimate goal. This product is a remaster of FINAL FANTASY VIII, featuring multiple enhancements including additional options to customise your gameplay experience and difficulty, such as: Battle assist options (HP, ATB gauge, and Limit Break boosts)Game speed boost (x3)No random encounters Gaijin Charenji 1: Kiss or Kill (September 04, 2019) A punk narrative shoot-them-up where you not only shoot to kill, exterminate, and destroy but you can also kiss your enemies to make a more loving world. Originally designed for the Dreamcast in 1998 by Yoshihiro Takahashi, Kiss or Kill has completed it 21 years later by his son Yosuke Takahashi. Post War Dreams (September 04, 2019) POST-WAR DREAMS is a 2.5D Story-Rich, Side Scrolling Action Game, set in the wasteland of USA, plagued with constant war. Following the collapse of the economy, government, and society, you must brave heavily armed militia, lawless gangs, dangerous streets, desolate buildings and underground bunkers on your quest to escape this post-apocalyptic wasteland alive. The road to a new life is paved with danger, hope and constant reminders of everything that’s been lost. You will engage in combating the gangs and militia in order to survive and may choose to help other survivors who are full of their own personal misery, hopes and dreams, where everyone is trying to see the next sunrise in this chaotic wasteland. SUMMARY The United States has broken, and violence fills the streets. Freedom and patriotism have disintegrated, replaced with war and famine, and life is only a reminder of what’s been lost. If Garrett Mitchell hopes to survive this new world, he’ll have to fight his way through dangerous militia soldiers and members of the ruthless gang The Remnants while deciding whether or not to help his fellow survivors. Following years of mounting tensions within the United States, civil unrest caused Washington DC to shut its doors and borders to the rest of the world six short months ago. As lawlessness took over the Midwest, spreading from coast-to-coast, the financial system crashed and soon DC and the surrounding cities became a fortress for the privileged with the rest of the country left to fend for itself. Now, the streets run red with the blood of innocents as militia, gangs and rogue soldiers use lethal means to secure food, water and supplies that will allow their societies to keep going. For those civilians caught in the middle, each day is a fight for survival. As supplies dry up, these neutrals flee from the cities in hopes of starting over somewhere new. Holding onto a shred of hope, all the civilians have left are the clothes on their back and their post-war dreams. Players are introduced to Garrett, their mysterious vehicle through the wastelands of the United States. In the months since society’s collapse Garrett has done all he can to survive, dodging soldiers, gangs and other civilians, but with food, water and other survival resources scarce, he must find his way out of the city if he wants to live another day. Just as Garrett believes he can exit the city scot-free he’s waylaid by enemies and rescued by Kara, a former EMT (emergency medical technician), who is trying to lead her own group outside the city limits to probable safety. Her group is made up friends, neighbors, co-workers as well as strangers she’s encountered along the way. While Kara has medical training and cunning, which have allowed she and her group to survive the weeks since the war began, they lack combat skills and Garrett is a logical choice to help ensure everyone’s survival. The player may choose to help Kara and her friends or go it alone, with the impacts of the decision coming into view as the first few levels progress. Whatever the course, the player will ultimately end up a part of Kara’s caravan whether reluctantly or by choice. While Garrett’s fellow travelers will be excited to learn more about their new compatriot, the player may choose to not be as friendly or forthcoming. As the levels continue on and Garrett is exposed to different backstories, his successes or failures may also lead to the deaths of those he finds himself growing closer to. Himmo (September 04, 2019) Himno is a non-violent, no death platformer. Use wall-jumps, slides & dashes to reach new heights in randomly generated maps! Using intuitive and easy to learn controls, parkour through each map to overcome platforming challenges to reach new districts. Level up as new heights are reached, bringing vibrant lights as torches are ignited and the music begins to change. Rescue wisps to light up the darkness around you, while temporarily upgrading abilities that allow you to move further to other disctricts. Features: Your actions in the world trigger emotional soundtracks and vibrant visualsPlay at your own pace without pressureWatch bright wisps dance around youEnjoyable by a wide variety of player skill Monochrome Order (September 04, 2019) The world must forever make choices. The Arbiters' mission is to use the ancient magic known as “Judgment” to follow their own justice and guide the world to a better place. A newly-appointed Arbiter, is assigned to a desolate country where he will have to make various Judgments. However, not everyone will agree with his idea of justice. When faced with two extreme choices, which will he choose? Your Judgments will greatly affect the story and your character's role in both good and evil paths. As there are multiple endings, explore different routes to guide the world toward the right direction! Get up to 18 allies from your Judgments to try various formations and overcome challenges with each character's unique skills! Features: Guide the world toward the right direction through Judgments in a fantasy RPG with multiple endings!Your Judgments will greatly affect the story and your character's role in both good and evil paths.As there are multiple endings, explore different routes to guide the world toward the right direction!Get up to 18 allies from your Judgments to try various formations and overcome challenges with each character's unique skills! Throne Quest Deluxe (September 05, 2019) Throne Quest Deluxe is a seem-less open-world Action Role Playing Game (ARPG). Delve into an adventurous world full of dungeons and crypts, fighting many types of vicious monsters and search for huge amounts of loot. Change between 11 classes throwing your axes, fire, harps and even a djenty-guitar in fast-paced combat whilst gulping potions and collecting drops to level-up and become a champion. Explore your way through the dangers of the lands on an epic quest to reach the central castle- to claim the Throne held by a demon boss. Features: Seamless Open-world Fast-action-RPG150+ Items90+ Monsters11 Classes River City Girls ( September 05, 2019 ) "There's trouble once again on the mean streets of River City, but this time the boys are in over their heads! In this all-new entry in the legendary beat-'em-up series, hot-blooded heroes Kuni and Riki have been captured, leaving it to their hard-hitting girlfriends, Kyoko and Misako, to serve up some payback. As you punch and kick your way across town - either solo or with a friend in local co-op - you'll gain new skills, chow down on power-ups, wield an assortment of weapons, and unleash an arsenal of combos, throws, and special attacks that will leave the bad guys crying for mama - all in outrageous 16-bit style! The awesome action is punctuated by manga story panels, anime cutscenes, and an epic synth-pop soundtrack. It’s an old-school rumble for a new generation! Features: Wild beat-'em-up action for one or two players!Glorious pixel-art graphics plus anime and manga cutscenes!Fantastic soundtrack featuring Chipzel, Christina Vee, and NateWantsToBattle!Six large city regions to fight through, complete with shops and side quests!Loads of weapons, items, and abilities to power-up your heroines!Guest appearances by classic River City characters!

Gears 5 Ultimate Edition (September 06, 2019)

Campaign: The world is crumbling. The Swarm has corrupted the Coalition’s robot army and is descending upon human cities. With danger closing in, Kait Diaz breaks away to uncover her connection to the enemy and discovers the true danger to Sera – herself. Escape: Outrun the bomb, outsmart the Swarm, and escape the Hive! Escape is a new, aggressive, high-stakes co-op mode featuring a three-player suicide squad that must work together to take out enemy hives from within. Versus: May the best team win! Rack up points and trade up for superior weapons in Arcade, a frenetic playlist built for jump-in, over-the-top fun. With ten other game types plus new and classic maps, Versus rewards every competitive style, from casual to pro. Horde: Can you and four friends endure waves of ever-stronger enemies and bosses? Survive using new hero abilities, building defenses, collecting power, leveling up your skills and working as a team. Map Builder: Create custom Escape hive maps and experiences to share with and challenge your friends. Features: Three-player Campaign Co-op: Battle alongside your friends in three-player online or split-screen co-op.Tours of Duty: Rank up from new recruit to four-star general in Gears Tours of Duty. Take on new and exciting challenges, earn awesome rewards, and show off your loot.Boot Camp: New to Gears or just a little rusty? Bootcamp is a fun way to learn the ropes, from the basics to advanced combat techniques.Play as Jack: Play as Jack, your personal flying support bot that can protect allies and damage enemies - perfect for players new to Gears.Visual Showcase: Play every mode in 4K and HDR at a smooth 60 frames per second on Xbox One X. Accessibility: Customize your gaming experience with updated accessibility features, including: full controller remapping, single stick movement, Adaptive Controller support, narrated UI and menus, improved subtitles and more. *Some modes including Escape, Versus and Horde, and online multiplayer require Xbox Live Gold on console, membership sold separately. Monster Hunter: World – Iceborne (September 06, 2019) Let your hunting instinct take you further than ever! "Iceborne" is a massive expansion that picks up after the ending of Monster Hunter: World and opens up the new "master rank!" New quests, monsters, weapons, armor, and story await to take your hunting to the next level! Creature in the Well (September 06, 2019) Creature in the Well is a top-down, pinball-inspired, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler. As the last remaining BOT-C unit, venture deep into a desert mountain to restore power to an ancient facility, haunted by a desperate Creature. Uncover and upgrade powerful gear in order to free the city of Mirage from a deadly sandstorm. Pinball with swords: Charge up energy orbs, then bounce and ricochet them to reactivate dormant machinery and stop the sandstorm.Defeat the Creature: Escape the many challenges set by the Creature and confront it in intricate, skillful battles.Dungeon-crawler: Delve deeper into the mountain as you unlock eight hand-crafted dungeons, each filled with unique gameplay themes, unlockables, and secrets to uncover.Over 20 unique items: Customize your playstyle with upgradeable weapons and clothing that change how you play the game. NBA 2K20 (September 06, 2019) NBA 2K has evolved into much more than a basketball simulation. 2K continues to redefine what’s possible in sports gaming with NBA 2K20, featuring best in class graphics & gameplay, ground breaking game modes, and unparalleled player control and customization. Plus, with its immersive open-world Neighborhood, NBA 2K20 is a platform for gamers and ballers to come together and create what’s next in basketball culture. Restless Hero (September 06, 2019) You are about to be a part of an adventure of the Dark Age. Follow Rick in his damned path of vengeance and help him to redeem his soul. The life of your beloved is in danger. Hurry up and make a wise choice. Along the way complete challenging platforming levels and upgrade your powers. Unfold the story by reading dialogs and finding crucial items on the levels. Items are key to the puzzle of the story. There are a variety of obstacles for you that can be destroyed with the help of power. Castle has 3 floors with its set of enemies and obstacles. Find a key to defeat each enemy. Explore the castle and find all of the hidden chests! Read the full article

How today's kids 'profile' potential mass shooters -- and why it's reason for hope But Monday’s news out of Boulder — that 10 people were fatally shot in a grocery store — makes that good stuff harder to see. Especially when another shooting took place less than a week ago in Atlanta, killing eight people, six of whom were Asian. There have been seven US mass shootings in the past seven days. For American kids, the incidents are all too familiar. “I’m horrified to tell you I feel nothing,” a Chicago-area teen client told me Monday night after the Boulder shooting. “This kind of trauma feels so normal. Of course, we experience mass shootings again once we see the light at the end of Covid, and we are just cleaning up after an insurrection at the Capitol. Clearly, we are broken.” What happens to us when trauma like this becomes normal? What happens when, like my client, we feel nothing when we hear about a mass shooting? What happens to our children when a report of a mass shooting seems as common as a weather report? ‘Profiling’ one another I’m fortunate to be a therapist working with young people, many of them teenagers. And teenagers today are thoughtful, hopeful problem-solvers. I trust their sensibilities. I also have the luxury of asking these kids what they think of these events. They tell me we can make the mistake of focusing on the shooter and his motive in the moment, as we tend to do after each of these events. “He was a quiet guy. Kept to himself.” But most of my young clientele would suggest we are missing the broader point. We are not thinking “upstream” enough. They tell me they know the kids in their schools, right now, who might be the future shooter. Those kids are expressing hate and rage; full of self-loathing; or fearing the world, women or those different from themselves. They unwittingly profile these kids. I began my career in psychology in Chicago in 1999. It was in the wake of the shootings at Columbine High School, located a 40-mile drive from Boulder. We collectively thought we were profiling potential shooters among young people as well, by seeking out those who expressed an intent to kill, had access to firearms in the home or wore trench coats. But many teenagers today instead seek out those kids who are disenfranchised, bullied or marginalized. They befriend them. The teens I know befriend these kids, and often make sure no child is left behind. They are tired of our failures to solve a problem that seems to affect schools more than any other spaces, and recognize on their way to class that they are quickly returning to the scenes of potential future crimes. They refuse to ignore our collective, violent reality. We can arm every public space, and create a paramilitary society, thinking that a good guy with a gun is the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun. But that, kids tell me, is the lazy argument. We are not just dealing with bad guys, but sad guys, hurt guys, guys who haven’t been taught to handle their feelings. Making connections as prevention As it turns out, the kids are better profilers than we are. Their thinking may very well fail to prevent the next mass shooting. Or the one following the next one. But they are onto something. Forging a connection, they know as teenagers, is an inoculation from this type of violence. Connection is prevention. So, if we are counting, at least in part, on our kids playing a significant role in changing this trend, it behooves us to listen to them. Here’s how to get the conversation started. Be honest with them. At most any age, our kids have access to so much data. They will assume a situation is even worse than they had imagined if we are not fully honest about the facts of a situation like this, as much as we know them. Ease their fears. We want to be sure we are not fostering anxiety about going to school beyond the pandemic. More and more, our kids are heading into the classroom, so point out that there are people working on ensuring their safety every day. They have enough variables to focus on in the school building. Fearing for their safety should not have to be among them. Solicit their thoughts. Kids want to be heard in situations like this and are traumatized by the news much as we are. They fare better emotionally when they are fully heard and allowed to express their thoughts and feelings. And, as noted above, your kids may very well have solutions in mind rooted in connection. Source link Orbem News #Health #Hope #Kids #mass #Massshootingsolutions:Whyyoushouldlistentowhatkidshavetosay-CNN #Potential #Profile #Reason #shooters #Todays

A depressing and predictable series of events seems to follow mass shootings like the one that took ten lives Friday at Santa Fe High School. First, we learn that an unspeakable act has occurred in a place where we imagine we, or someone we love, could have been—a church, a movie theater, a shopping mall, a dance club, or, in this case, a school. Then we begin seeing the killer’s picture on our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and televisions, along with images of the stunned and tearful survivors. Next come the calls to strengthen America’s gun control laws, as people convince themselves that the latest incident is the one that will finally bring change.  Our legislators tweet their sympathy while doing little else. And amidst the furor, those who own guns, roughly a third of the U.S. population, quietly go out and buy more ammunition, if not another gun.

To understand why, after decades of massacres, there aren’t stricter gun laws in this country, one has to understand gun culture. And nowhere is gun culture more evident than in Texas. Guns here, as in many parts of the country, aren’t just about self-defense. They’re also about history, identity, and community. Experts say that ignoring, dismissing, or denigrating that fact is what dooms any discussion of gun control.  

The fight for Texas’ independence, like the fight for American independence, was a plucky pushback against government overreach.  Back in 1835, the dictatorial ruler of Mexico dispatched troops to seize a small cannon from settlers in Gonzales, Texas. The settlers, who had been using the cannon to fend off Comanches, then turned it on the Mexican soldiers. And to make their feelings as clear as an extended middle finger, they raised a homemade flag with a picture of the cannon on it and the words “Come and Take It.”    

Today, some 183 years later, it’s hard to drive anywhere in Texas without seeing a “Come and Take It” bumper sticker. Only, instead of the words paired with a cannon, you’re more likely to see the silhouette of an AR-15, which is America’s most popular gun—and notably, the weapon used during the mass shootings in Newtown, Las Vegas, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, and Parkland. (Friday, Governor Greg Abbott stated that initial reports that an AR-15 was used at Santa Fe were erroneous—a shotgun and a revolver were used.)

The ubiquity of that bumper sticker is a not-so-subtle reminder of how Texans feel about the right to bear arms.  And the sentiment cuts across class, gender, and race lines. Whether it’s a beat up pickup truck in Gonzales or an Aston Martin in Dallas, one would be wise to assume the driver has a gun in the glovebox, if not holstered at the hip.

Which is why horrifying mass shootings—even those uncomfortably close to home, such as those in Fort Hood, Dallas, Sutherland Springs, and now Santa Fe—don’t dent Texans’ resolve to keep their proverbial cannons. Particularly when the incident seems to confirm the belief, dating back at least as far as the Texas Revolution, that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Recall that a resident of Sutherland Springs chased down the assailant while firing multiple rounds from his own AR-15.

“This notion of cultural competence, of being cognizant and sensitive to cultural differences, is something that we typically talk about in terms of race, ethnicity, gender identity, and religion,” says Daniel Webster, the director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University. “But one of the starkest cultural competence problems we have in this country has to do with guns.”

Webster says that many gun control advocates claim the moral high ground while calling gun owners “redneck idiots.” They question gun owners’ intelligence for ignoring gun violence research, but fail to note that, despite the terrible number of mass shootings in recent years, homicides and other violent crimes have actually decreasedsignificantly nationwide over the past 25 years, even during periods when gun sales have spiked, as routinely happens following mass shootings.

The interpretation of gun violence statistics—what is or isn’t “fake news”—seems to depend on whether you’ve ever used a pistol to shoot a rattlesnake menacing a family pet or scared off a trespasser by just standing on the porch holding a shotgun (perhaps pumping the forestock to show you mean business).

“One common denominator in all these mass shootings is the shooter was in complete and total control to selectively and casually put bullets in the heads of cowering people.” says Jerry Patterson, a former Marine, Texas state senator and land commissioner who pushed through the state’s concealed carry law in 1995, which was signed by then Governor George W. Bush. “The first time someone returns fire, the shooter is no longer in complete and total control.”

In Texas, as elsewhere in the country, there are gun owners who identify as redneck and play up the stereotype that their opponents deride. But gun owners are also in the highest echelons of government and industry. They carry pistols in their briefcases and go on hunting trips together to forge alliances and strike deals. Indeed, hunting camps and leases are often equipped with airstrips to accommodate private jets.

“It’s a ritual of having a couple of drinks and cooking supper and getting up early in the morning to go sit in a deer blind or walk the hills and hunt for birds,” says the prominent Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin.

Those who study gun culture say it’s not only attitudes and beliefs that drive gun ownership; it’s also activities and communities, which give gun owners a sense of identity, connectedness, and meaning. Harel Shapira, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin says that during his three years embedded with gun enthusiasts in Central Texas he’s learned it’s a mistake to harbor the liberal East Coast condescension that people who carry firearms are those “crazy people down there” in states like Texas. It’s a condescension he himself held prior to his research. “Gun culture is not just a Texas story, it’s an American story,” he says, “Until we understand and appreciate that and start consensus building, people are just going to get further entrenched into their identities.”

Hunting and plinking at cans are recalled fondly by many in Texas as bonding activities with their parents. Guns are heirlooms passed down through generations and used to hunt the Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas goose. Moreover, millions nationwide participate in tactical or sharp shooting competitions and belong to gun clubs that are the focal points of their social lives. Those enmeshed in gun culture take pride in their safety mindedness and technical skills as well as their ability to protect themselves and their families if necessary.

“I put up in my garage the target that I got while training to get my concealed handgun license,” says Gerry Brown of New Braunfels, a 60 year-old grandmother of ten and accompanist for a local high school choir. “So if anyone tries to break in, they’re going to go, ‘Oops, wrong garage,’”

She, like virtually everyone, is appalled by mass shootings, and was devastated by what happened in Sutherland Springs, not far from where she lives, as well as in Santa Fe, not far from where her daughter lives. And yet she says such incidents only stiffen her “Come And Take It” stance, particularly regarding calls to ban or confiscate certain kinds of weapons or gun accessories. “Try that in Texas,” she says. “It won’t work.”

All this has Jerry Patterson, the gun rights advocate and former elected official, surprisingly in agreement with Daniel Webster, the gun control advocate. “We’ve have gotten too invested in our clichés,” says Patterson. “There are things we can do if both sides can just come to the table with an open mind and be willing to accept the validity of the other person’s point of view.”

Points where both sides can possibly find agreement?

Ensuring better data entry, coordination and enforcement of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, used to check the eligibility of anyone wanting to buy a gun. And expanding its use to include online and gun show private sales.

Punishing those who lie on the form submitted to NICS and giving authorities more than three days to vet submissions.

Recovering weapons from people who bought firearms and then subsequently did something that flags them on NICS, such as committing a felony, beating up a domestic partner, becoming addicted to drugs, or having a psychotic episode.

Broadening who is prohibited from buying a gun to those convicted of stalking offenses and violence against dating partners.

Preventing copy cat crimes by taking steps to avoid naming and raining fame on mass shooters in the media (this would likely be done not through legislation, but by getting media outlets to police themselves, much as social media is now being asked to do when it comes to hate speech and fake news).

Garen Wintemute, an ER physician and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis who has spent almost $2 million of his own money studying gun violence, says what opponents and proponents of gun control share, whether in Texas or elsewhere, is that they don’t want innocent people hurt.  “We can start the discussion there,” he says.

I’m not the bad guy | Part VI

When Troy finds you in the desert and takes you to the farm, you don’t know what to make of the intense man with the piercing eyes, and you understand even less why you’re so drawn to him. Is he as messed up as he seems to be, or is there something more beneath the surface?

Fandom: Fear The Walking Dead

Words: 1.9k

Pairing: Troy Otto x reader

Warnings: Sort of graphic violence in the first part (dream sequence). Those of you who also watch TWD will be familiar with what’s happening. 

Note: This part is mainly focused on forming a bond, but there’s more action and more badass Troy coming soon! 

Masterlist

The inside of the container was dark and damp. You couldn’t see anyone around you but you could hear their breathing, could hear some of them quietly whimpering. Outside of the container you could hear noises that you couldn’t quite distinguish, but they scared you more than anything. You felt for the wall of the container in the dark, eventually feeling the cold metal against your back and sinking to a sitting position, putting your hands over your eyes.

When you opened them again, the scene had changed. You were in a large hall. There were bodies hanging from the ceiling, some of them missing limbs, the little remaining blood draining out of them.

A man in a butcher’s apron holding a knife, with a sly smile on his face. A man with a baseball bat. A row of people lined up in front of a tub on their knees, fear in their eyes. Every time you closed your eyes, the scene changed.

Until it didn’t anymore. You were outside, the factory halls and containers surrounding you on all sides, a bloody knife in your hand. It was night, but the dark sky was strangely illuminated by fire. All around you people were running, shouting, shooting. Not just people but infected, but you couldn’t distinguish one from the other. People were running into you from all sides, there was shooting all around you, flames all around you, but you couldn’t move. You were frozen in place. The longer you stood there, the more panicked you became, and eventually, even the ground around you started shaking.

You woke up to someone gently shaking your arm and sat up in bed with a start, instinctively pushing yourself against the headboard of the bed, your heart beating so hard you felt like it tried to push through your rib cage.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Troy’s hand remained on your arm, and his eyes were wide in surprise. You looked around the room, trying to orientate yourself before you looked back at him. You felt the sweat on your face, and you realized that you weren’t just breathing – you were panting.

“I need some fresh air,” you said and got out of bed without waiting for his answer. You covered the distance to the door in three big strides and walked onto the small porch, leaning both of your arms onto the railing and pushing your body forward, trying to stop from shaking and trying to control your breathing.

The night air felt cool against your skin, and looking around the still ranch helped ground you. It didn’t take long before you heard Troy come after you. He leaned against the railing backwards and looked at you for a moment without speaking.

“You alright?” he said eventually.

“Yeah,” you said, looking from him back to the grounds. “Just a nightmare.”

“You seem to be having a lot of those,” he simply said.

“It’s nothing,” you said. He didn’t reply, but you felt him stare at you, not satisfied with your answer. “I’m not ready to talk about it,” you added after some time.

Both of you remained outside for a while, silent, until eventually, he went back inside alone.

When you were standing in line for dinner the next day, you felt exhausted and did not even have any appetite, but you forced yourself to eat at least a little bit. The whole day you had watched the apprehension on everyone’s faces, the fear of what else Walker would do to get the ranch, people stocking up from the pantry. Things would escalate soon if people weren’t reassured of their safety.

Grabbing your plate, you turned around to check the tables, see if there was someone to join. Troy was sitting at a table with Blake and Coop and a couple of others of the militia, Madison and Jeremiah were at another table, and finally, your eyes found Jake, who was sitting alone.

Jake looked up at you surprised when you sat down and watched you for a moment.

“How are your feet?” he asked eventually, referring to how bloody they were when you got back two days ago.

“Getting better,” you said while already chewing your first bite. You noticed an argument a couple of tables down before you could say anything else. Vernon Trimbol was standing next to Madison and Jeremiah’s table, and the two men looked at each other challengingly.

“What’s going on?” you asked Jake.

“The Trimbols are leaving.”

“What?” you asked, looking back at him with big eyes.  

“They’re freaked out,” Jake said as Vernon walked away. “Everyone is freaked out after what happened at the outpost.”

“But why now?” you started. “They barely have three hours of sunlight left.”

“I guess they just want to get out,” Jake shrugged.

You were about to answer when a loud voice from a few tables down interrupted you.

“What would you have me do?” Jeremiah asked Madison, sounding angry.

“Give them a reason to stay, fight,” Madison said quieter.

“Give them a reason? Aside from the fences and the militia and the stores and this community, huh?” Jeremiah sounded spiteful, and around you most of the conversations stopped and people started listening to the argument. “I welcome them onto my land with open arms, and now I got to get down on my hands and knees and beg them to stay?”

“There's a fight coming. Everyone who leaves leaves us weaker,” Madison tried to reason with him, but before they could end their conversation, Troy jumped up from his table, cursing and running off after Vernon Trimbol.

“Shit,” Jake muttered and was up from his seat just as quickly, running after his little brother. A few other people followed and eventually, you got up as well.

When you got to the gate, Troy was shouting at the people in the car as well as at Jake.

“I guarantee you that they took plenty of shit from the pantry! And I want to see an inventory, Vernon! - I want it inspected!” Troy was livid.

“This is not what Dad wants,” Jake tried to calm him. You came to a halt next to Madison, watching the scene from afar.

“Why should I give a damn what Dad wants? He never gives a shit about me!” Troy said. Immediately, you remembered what Jeremiah had told you not too long ago. I broke Troy in the old world.

“You're not protecting the ranch,” Jake said, still trying to reason with him.

“The hell do you know about it? You haven't got a clue what this ranch is about,” Troy said to his brother and then turned back to the Trimbol’s car. “You gonna fight for what's yours or you gonna surrender it?”

Then he turned back to Jake, repeating the same question, coming closer to him almost threateningly. “You gonna fight or you gonna surrender?!” 

And then, you watched Troy hit his brother.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jeremiah came, pulling the two of them apart and hitting Troy in the face before either of them could say anything.

“No! Hey, Dad, Dad,” Jake started, putting himself in between his brother and his father, trying to prevent more damage. Troy simply shrugged it off and without another look to you or anyone else, he walked away.  

And you watched as the Trimbols pulled out of the gate and disappeared into the distance.

Dusk had already settled when you finally found Troy. You had checked with the militia, in the community areas, at his place, but hadn’t found him. You even looked in the armory, afraid he might do something stupid, but he hadn’t been there either.

It was only when you stopped looking that you found him, standing in your cabin, looking out of the window, lost in thought.

“I looked all over for you,” you said as you closed the door.

He was silent for a moment, still gazing out of the window. “You told me to come to you when I’m angry,” he said and looked over to you for only a second. “When I want to hurt someone.”

You paused. “I’m sorry they left,” you said quietly. Neither of you moved, Troy kept standing in front of the window and you stayed in your position next to the closed door.

“All I've ever had in my-- my whole life is this-- this place and these people, and I don't know, it just… I don't understand, you know,” he said eventually, and the pain in his voice felt almost palpable in the room. “Like, the world out there, it's - it's burned.”

“They wanted to see for themselves,” you said gently.

“Anyone who leaves is dead to me,” Troy’s anger returned to his voice for a second, but it disappeared again just as quickly. “Now, Mike, he was-- he was soft, but he was-- he's been my friend since I was a kid. He stayed in school when I got-- I got pulled. But he never quit on me.” He turned his head back to you. “Never. Even when others did.”

“He didn't quit on you, Troy,” you said as kindly as you could. “He just stood by his family.”

“He wouldn't even look at me.” Troy said and looked at you intently. “I’m not the bad guy.” He paused and eventually looked back out the window. “It’s just…hard to know how to react to something like that.”  

And in that moment, your heart broke for him. The boy that had never been loved by his parents. The man who had been taught to suppress his emotions for so long that he didn’t even understand how to handle them when they became too much.

You slowly walked over to him and reached for his hand, holding it in both of yours.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “I’m sorry you had to grow up like this. I’m sorry you were disappointed by someone you care about.” You took another step closer to him and moved your right hand to his neck, causing him to turn to you.

“It fucking sucks,” you said with a gentle, reassuring smile on your lips. You lifted your left hand and gently rested it on his cheek and ear, and then moved your right hand through his hair, down his temple and to his other cheek, essentially holding his face in both of your hands.

For a moment you only looked at each other. Then, you slowly moved closer and pressed your lips to his. Troy instinctively took a step closer to you, his hands finding your waist, and carefully opened his mouth to reciprocate the kiss.

Your kisses were usually hurried, and sloppy, and passionate, but this kiss was different. This kiss was slow, and tender, and almost loving.

Eventually, both of you broke apart naturally. You continued to look at each other for a while, your hands moving from his face to his neck, until eventually, you got on your tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Then you moved to the bed slowly, one hand of yours locked with his so he would follow.

When you laid down, you laid down in his arm, your body turned to him and his body turned to you, nuzzling your head into his chest, while his other arm rested on your waist, holding you close.

And for the first time, you and Troy slept together without sleeping together.

Troy-tag: @buckaroo–barnes

Do school-shooter drills hurt students more than they help?

“My plan always was to go out the window of whatever classroom I was in,” says Aalayah Eastmond. Her elementary school had shooter drills. Her high school held drills during her freshman and sophomore years. Another drill was planned for February of her junior year. Then on February 14, 2018, a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. And all those plans went out the window.

“When you’re actually in the shooting, you don’t have time for that,” Aalayah recalls. “That’s not how it happens.” Within minutes, gunshots killed 17 students and staff members. Classmate Helena Ramsay had been passing back textbooks. Teens were supposed to use them as shields for their heads. Nick Dworet’s body covered Aalayah as she waited for the violence to end.

Six years earlier, a teen gunman opened fire in the cafeteria at Chardon High School in Ohio. Some students fled to a teacher’s lounge and blocked the door with a piano. Others stayed inside their classrooms. A football coach chased the shooter from the building. By then, six students had been shot. Three of them died. Another was paralyzed from the waist down.

Flowers left at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., showed sadness after a shooter killed 17 students and teachers there on Valentine’s Day in 2018.wellesenterprises/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus

The tragedy could have been worse, says educator April Siegel-Green. At the time, she headed up student services for the school district. “Prior to the shooting, we had started to develop safety plans,” she explains. “And we had a variety of different types of drills.” She believes the high school’s active-shooter drill “absolutely saved lives.” 

More than 240 shootings have happened at U.S. schools since two teen gunmen killed 13 people in 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado. Those shootings have touched more than 233,000 children and teens, according to a Washington Post tally. Yet school shootings remain quite rare.

“The odds of a student aged five to 18 being a victim of a homicide at school are one in 2.8 million,” says school psychologist Stephen Brock. He works at California State University, Sacramento. You’re much more likely to get hit by lightning. The U.S. National Weather Service puts your lifetime odds for that at one in 15,300. And the National Safety Council says the lifetime odds of dying in a car crash in the United States are one in 103. 

Even a tiny chance of a shooting worries educators, however. More than 4 million U.S. students were in at least one lockdown during the 2017-2018 school year. That’s what the Washington Post reported in December 2018. Lockdowns can happen when there’s a threat aimed at a school or somewhere in its vicinity. Schools also want to be prepared before any threat emerges. That’s why about 19 in every 20 U.S. public schools have drills to prepare for possible shooters, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Researchers are just beginning to look at the impacts of all those drills. A few studies suggest that certain types of training might minimize the chance of shooting deaths. However, there are no clear standards on how drills should be run. 

And those studies that examined drill impacts are not conclusive. Those drills can have emotional impacts on kids. But it’s not clear what those impacts always are and who is most likely to suffer from them. Much depends on the type of drill and the students’ personal situations, psychologists say. And to date, no studies show that drills actually prevent school shootings. 

Being prepared

Aalayah didn’t take the possibility of a shooting seriously until she learned that a gunman shot and killed 26 first graders and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. “I thought if it could happen to them — little innocent children — it could definitely happen to me at any time and place,” she recalls.

Many schools have added shooter drills to routine drills for other emergencies, such as fires or earthquakes. Although schools want to keep students safe, some experts worry about the psychological impacts of drills.Bluberries/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Seven-year old Josephine Gay and six-year-old Emilie Parker were killed in that 2012 tragedy. Soon afterward, the girls’ moms founded Safe and Sound Schools. The group supports the idea of safety drills to deal with a wide range of hazards. But the drills need to be appropriate for children’s different stages of development, says Josephine’s mom, Michele Gay. And the drills should avoid scaring or possibly causing their own trauma.

“Obviously, the point is to empower people,” the former teacher says. “But the last thing we should be doing is frightening people.” She says, “We’re not focusing on some bad guy dressed up. We’re not focusing on scary sounds or smells or anything sensorial. We’re literally just talking about how we recognize when we’re in a [threat] situation, and what are the actions.”

Safe and Sound Schools recommends that schools assess their own threat risks and shape plans to their communities. Plans should be tailored to the age and maturity of the kids involved. First graders might learn that different situations call for different responses. If there’s a fire, you leave immediately. If there might be an intruder outside, you find a safe corner in a locked classroom and stay quiet. By high school, you might help with quickly locking and blocking doors. 

“When people are faced with an emergency situation, we know that they might not be able to think clearly,” Gay explains. “We want all of that to be ‘pre-loaded.’ That’s why we rehearse the steps of safety.”

“Preparedness is essential,” says Amanda Nickerson. She’s a psychologist at the University at Buffalo in New York. “I think we’re beyond the point of saying let’s not do these drills anymore.” However, there are relatively few studies that point to which drills work best.

Cheryl Lero Jonson is a criminologist at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. She and her colleagues recently studied how adults performed in two situations. One was a “traditional lockdown.” People locked doors and stayed put. The other was a program taught by the ALICE Training Institute, based in Medina, Ohio. Depending on the situation, participants had to choose whether to get away, to block entry to a shelter spot and hide, or to fight to counter an attack. 

For each of several cases, a shooter tried to enter a classroom and shoot plastic pellets at as many people as possible. When people could only hide, the classroom attacks lasted from 22 seconds to almost five minutes. On average, almost three in every four people got shot in those cases. When people had choices, the average time for the classroom attacks was 16 seconds, and an average of just one in every four inside got shot. Jonson’s team concluded that shootings would end sooner and have fewer injuries if drills offered choices. The study appeared in the December 2018 Journal of School Violence. 

Explainer: What is a computer model?

Another recent study skipped the guns and used a computer model. Researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., based their model on the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. In that attack, two teens killed 13 people and then themselves. The computer model tested cases in which everyone hid, everyone ran or everyone fought. It also tested a case in which one third ran, another third hid and the rest fought the attackers. 

The model’s results showed that everyone would have been shot if they all hid. There would have been 21 victims if everyone ran. And it calculated that there would have been five victims if everyone fought. The best result was the combo scenario, with three victims. 

Eric Dietz worked on the model at Purdue. The choices to run, hide or fight aren’t equally good, this computer scientist stresses. “It isn’t run or hide or fight. It’s run if you can. Hide only to get back to running again when you can. And if you can’t run or hide any more, then you’d better fight, because you’ve got no other options left.” He and others hope to minimize casualties if a shooting does take place. But, he adds, “We want to make sure we have some science to back up why we tell students to take certain actions.”

Purdue University researchers created a computer model to see whether “run, hide, fight” strategies would have saved more lives in scenarios based on a 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.Eric Dietz/Purdue Univ.

Kenneth Trump heads National School Safety and Security Services. It’s a company in Cleveland, Ohio. He sees a big risk for bias in the study by Jonson’s group. Why? One of its authors works for the ALICE Institute, which makes money doing shooter drills and training. Jonson and the other co-author were certified trainers for the ALICE program. Plus, the study participants were already going through training at the ALICE Institute, and only a few were educators. (Jonson did say that her team took some steps to reduce bias. The “shooter” was not with the ALICE program, and instructions were very specific, for example. Yet the group studied was not a random sample.)

More generally, Trump says, options-based training for students “fails to consider age and developmental factors.” It also fails to consider other variables, such as children who might have special needs (such as being deaf or needing a wheelchair). Students may give shooters more targets if they run. And a majority of school shooters have not been subdued by citizens. Some school employees also have been injured in options-based shooter drills, he adds. In contrast, lockdowns focus on securing classrooms and avoiding more risky situations. In his view, “lockdowns work and are the gold standard in best practices for more than two decades.”

And even the scenarios with fewer victims still had some casualties. Aalayah says she hadn’t minded doing shooter drills because she likes to be prepared. “But afterward, I realized how stupid they are,” she says, “because it doesn’t save you in a real situation.” 

Avoiding harm

Julia Susany, now 19, had done different types of shooter drills since first grade. She feels it helped to be prepared. Still, young students didn’t really understand why they did the drills. After the Sandy Hook shooting, that changed. “It wasn’t reassuring once I realized what we were doing,” she says. “It became more creepy.” And it felt like schools were treating shootings as something almost normal. Nonetheless, she says, “I was glad I had at least something to fall back on in case there was an emergency.”

Julia’s high school in Akron, Ohio, taught drills with options to get away, hide or fight. However, the teachers stopped short of having students actually throw things at a role-playing gunman. After all, someone could get hurt. 

Several students did get bumps and bruises during a December 2019 drill in New Richmond, Ohio. The principal had acted as a shooter. The students were trying to get away. The school used the same type of program as Julia’s high school. 

Some experts also worry that drills could cause emotional harm. In a 2007 study, Nickerson and a colleague looked at the short-term effects of an intruder drill. Two groups of 4th-, 5th- and 6th-grade students learned about the steps. Then they practiced the drill. Teachers locked classroom doors and shut off the lights. Students moved into corners. Everyone tried to stay quiet. 

Afterward, the team gave a five-question quiz to those students and two other groups that didn’t do the drills. The groups that practiced had more knowledge about what to do for a drill. And their anxiety levels were not much different from those in kids from the other groups. The team concluded that similar drills could increase children’s short-term knowledge and give them useful skills to use in a real crisis. 

Explainer: What is anxiety?

“We didn’t do long-term follow-up in our study,” Nickerson notes. “And I know of no research that has.” Her study also didn’t look at more intense drills, such as run-hide-fight programs. It’s highly unlikely that students would ever come face-to-face with an active threat. Plus, a drill that could cause mental trauma would “raise ethical concerns,” the study noted.

“Getting behind a locked door saves lives,” says school psychologist Melissa Reeves. She studies school-crisis prevention at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. Typical lockdown drills can be done calmly without raising anxiety levels in most students, she says. “We can’t promise that nothing bad is ever going to happen. But when we give students things to do, it brings a sense of control. And it brings us safety and security.”

Safe and Sound Schools supports a general all-hazards approach to safety drills for students. This page is from one of its toolkits for schools. It summarizes the Get Out-Keep Out-Hide Out approach.Safe and Sound Schools

While options-based programs can be done calmly, some school drills have been far more intense than Reeves or others would recommend. Students have cowered as alarms blared and masked “gunmen” shot blanks or starter guns. Some schools have had students play shooting victims. Teens at one charter high school in Colorado even practiced how to take down a mock gunman. 

“We don’t light a fire in the hallway to practice fire drills,” Reeves says. “And we do not have to shoot off a safety gun or have screaming to simulate what it’s like to be in an active-shooter situation.” And while a drill might not be stressful for most students, it could stress some. “If your school is asking you to participate in a highly sensorial drill,” she says, “you have a right to say no if you are uncomfortable.”

Schools also should give students and parents some warning about when drills will happen. “There should never, ever be an unannounced, highly sensorial drill,” Reeves says. “There should never be an unannounced lockdown drill.” Indeed, unannounced drills have caused some kids to run from schools. Panicky 911 calls followed.

If done well, a lockdown drill can lower anxiety and teach students good, adaptive behaviors for when a bad situation arises, Brock says. And the options of evacuating or hiding also can serve other, less scary purposes. For instance, such procedures might deal with something like a strange dog on the premises.

However, Brock recommends against having armed-assailant or active-shooter drills for elementary-school students. And he’s wary about using them with students in middle school and high school. If a student has a history of trauma or is already anxious, depressed or stressed, “these drills are going to be upsetting.” Some students might have had friends or family members who were victims of gun violence. 

Others may have mental-health problems, often undiagnosed or untreated. “One in five students in this country is dealing with a mental-health challenge of some sort,” he says. Of those, “only 20 percent are getting care and treatment.” Brock encourages students to talk with school counselors, parents, teachers or other trusted adults if they feel stressed or anxious.

When Chardon High School resumed drills after the 2012 shooting, there were no real gunshots, Siegel-Green says. Parents could choose to keep students home. Counselors were on hand to talk with students. Comfort dogs were also available for at least one drill after the shooting. However, not all schools offer that type of follow-up. Julia says students at her school generally knew they could see a counselor if they felt stressed. Still, it wasn’t emphasized. 

“In most cases, people participate in these drills and don’t get more anxious and fearful. But that could certainly happen. And we want you to know that you’re not alone,” Nickerson says. He emphasizes that “it’s a giant strength ⎯ not weakness ⎯ that you’re able to identify a problem that you need help with.”

Beyond drills

“Engaging students in safety doesn’t just mean practicing for these worst-case scenarios,” says Gay, the Sandy Hook parent. Her group encourages students to start safety clubs. Service projects by club members can help schools spot possible dangers sooner. They also give students a voice in school safety planning. Other groups aim to decrease bullying. Some school shooters had been victims of bullying.

When it comes to school violence, “there are often warning signs,” says a February 2020 report from the Everytown Gun Safety Support Fund and teacher and student groups. Spotting those signs can help educators take action to prevent violence before it happens.

Stricter laws on gun storage also can keep firearms out of many shooters’ hands, the groups say. And often a shooter may target classmates at a school he or she attended. So, the report argues, “safety drills with students may be ineffective” because they would share preparedness steps with the people most likely to carry out a shooting.

Parkland shooting survivor Aayalah Eastmond testified before Congress on February 6, 2019.

Other prevention efforts aim to beef up school security. Many schools have limited entry to no more than one or two doors. Many have added security cameras. Some schools also have added metal detectors and even armed staff members or regular police patrols. It’s unclear whether such measures make students much safer or just introduce extra risk. Their impacts on students also vary. A lot depends on the particular community. 

A student’s’ race can make a difference too, says Bryan Warnick, an education expert at Ohio State University in Columbus. 

Aalayah happens to be Black. She says her last year of high school in Parkland “was pretty uncomfortable for kids that looked like me.” The school didn’t have metal detectors, but it added some armed guards with rifle cases. “That’s really uncomfortable and triggering for people that were directly impacted by the shooting,” she says. “And also uncomfortable for students of color because we are not greeted nicely by police officers.”

In any case, she argues, extra school-security steps and shooter drills are “just a Band-Aid on the real issue.” Mass shootings at schools and other places are terrible tragedies. Yet they account for fewer than two in every 100 U.S. gun deaths, data from the Pew Research Center show. Those shootings get lots of media attention. Yet there are many more gun deaths from suicide, domestic violence and other murders. 

“We don’t need active shooter drills,” Aalayah concludes. “We need actual legislation that will prevent gun violence from entering our schools and other places.”

Do school-shooter drills hurt students more than they help? published first on https://triviaqaweb.tumblr.com/

Where every 2020 candidate stands on guns

Ten of the Democratic presidential candidates during the first 2020 debate. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The candidates agree on universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. There’s less agreement on other proposals.

In response to recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and now Odessa and Midland, Texas, and Mobile, Alabama, supporters of stricter gun laws have voiced a simple mantra: “Do something!”

So, after little federal action on guns for more than two decades, what would the 2020 presidential candidates actually do?

President Donald Trump, for his part, doesn’t seem interested in much. He has supported a federal red flag law, which would allow police to take away someone’s guns if there’s some proof of a risk of violence (a “red flag”). But on other measures, from universal background checks to an assault weapons ban, Trump and Republican lawmakers have resisted, instead talking up questionable connections between violence, mental illness, and violent media.

Democratic candidates, however, have taken more comprehensive stances on guns. For the most part, they’re sticking to common Democratic themes like universal background checks, an assault weapons ban (which is typically paired with a ban on high-capacity magazines), and federally funded research into gun violence. But the campaigns’ plans do include some new ideas here and there — including red flag laws, which campaigns ranging from Cory Booker’s to John Delaney’s back, and requiring a license to buy and own a gun, which Booker in particular brought to the presidential stage but others, like Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, also support.

As I’ve argued before, even the most ambitious of the candidates’ gun control proposals don’t go far enough to seriously dent gun violence. America leads the developed world in gun violence, with gun death rates nearly four times that of Switzerland, five times that of Canada, 35 times that of the United Kingdom, and 53 times that of Japan. The core problem is the US simply has way too many guns and too much access to firearms, letting just about anyone obtain a weapon to carry out a mass shooting or more typical types of gun violence, whether suicides or homicides.

But none of the Democratic proposals do anything to swiftly address that core problem and significantly reduce the number of guns in the US.

Still, the research suggests that stricter gun laws, particularly licensing, would reduce gun deaths. So the Democratic proposals would make some progress, even if they wouldn’t be enough to bring down America’s rate of gun deaths to that of its developed peers.

Some proposals show a little movement

Most of the Democratic candidates at least mention gun violence on their campaign websites and other networks (like Medium), though just a few — Booker, Warren, Buttigieg, Andrew Yang, and Kamala Harris in particular stick out — go into a lot of detail.

The Democratic candidates are in general agreement on at least two proposals: universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. When it comes to other issues, there’s a bit less agreement, or at least less attention.

The big common proposal is universal background checks. Under federal law, licensed gun dealers have to run a background check, looking at factors like criminal record and mental health history, to sell someone a firearm. But unlicensed sellers — think a family member, or perhaps someone over the internet or at a gun show — don’t have to run a check. Universal background checks attempt to stamp out the unlicensed sellers by requiring a background check for all or nearly all gun transactions.

An assault weapons ban has also received more attention with the rise of extremely deadly mass shootings, as the shooters have used weapons like AR-15s and WASR-10s (a variant of an AK-47) to carry out the attacks. There are questions about how it would be implemented and enforced, but the idea is to ban military-style semiautomatic rifles. Some Democratic candidates frame this as bringing back a previous federal assault weapons ban, which was enacted in 1994 but expired in 2004, that kept existing weapons in circulation but tried to restrict future sales. Others want to go further, mandating that gun owners actually turn in the banned weapons.

Beyond those two proposals, candidates have also supported red flag laws, which could allow a family member, neighbor, close friend, teacher, or cop to report an “extreme risk” of violence to the courts. The court could then order the seizure of a person’s weapons.

The candidates also favor closing loopholes in existing gun laws. That includes the “boyfriend loophole,” which lets people get a gun even if they have a protective order against them due to a dating relationship, and the “Charleston loophole,” which allows a small number of people to obtain a gun without completing a background check if the check takes too long. (This is how the self-described white supremacist who killed nine people at a predominantly black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 got his gun.)

There’s also a lot of support for federally funded research into gun violence, as well as the repeal of special legal protections for gun companies.

Some candidates have moved to the left by calling for gun licensing, which would require a license to purchase and own a firearm. Typically, obtaining a license would involve a background check, but also a more extensive vetting process that can require submitting fingerprints and a photo, interviews with law enforcement, and a gun safety training course. Some would pair this proposal — as is done in, for example, Massachusetts — with mandatory registration of firearms. (This, in theory, allows police to pull up a database of weapons to seize if someone loses a license.)

Several candidates, including Booker, Warren, Buttigieg, and Yang, support gun licensing. But others, including Joe Biden and Michael Bennet, have been critical of it.

Otherwise, there’s been little significant movement from the typical Democratic mantras of universal background checks and an assault weapons ban.

Even the boldest proposals don’t go far enough

The Democratic proposals on guns show how stuck the debate over this issue has been for decades. In 1993 and 1994, a Democratic-controlled Congress passed federal background checks and a 10-year assault weapons ban. In the 25 years since, the debate has largely been relegated to … more background checks and an assault weapons ban. As the party has moved left on everything from single-payer health care to the Green New Deal to taxes on the wealthy, it hasn’t really moved on guns.

One reason is that Democrats’ philosophy on gun policy has remained largely the same: to prevent certain kinds of people from getting guns, and at most prohibit only a small fraction of firearms.

But America’s problem is much broader: It simply has too many guns, regardless of whether they’re in a “good” guy’s hands or a “bad” guy’s hands. The US has far more guns than any other country in the world — more guns than people, according to the Small Arms Survey. That makes it easy to get a firearm, legally or not, leading to more gun deaths.

Research compiled by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center backs this up: After controlling for variables such as socioeconomic factors and other crime, places with more guns have more gun deaths — not just homicides but also suicides, domestic violence, violence against police, and mass shootings.

Another way to look at this: Everywhere in the world, people get into arguments. Every country has residents who are dangerous to themselves or others because of mental illness. Every country has bigots and extremists. But in America, it’s uniquely easy for a person to obtain a gun, letting otherwise tense but nonlethal conflicts escalate into deadly violence.

Yes, stronger gun laws can help. A 2016 review of 130 studies in 10 countries, published in Epidemiologic Reviews, found that new legal restrictions on owning and purchasing guns tended to be followed by a drop in gun violence — a strong indicator that restricting access to guns can save lives.

But the types of gun control laws matter. Some of the recent research on universal background checks has been mixed, and studies on the last assault weapons ban found it ineffective for reducing overall levels of gun violence, in part because the great majority of gun deaths involves handguns, not assault weapons. But studies on licensing have been very consistent in significantly reducing gun deaths — in urban counties, Connecticut, and Missouri, including for suicides.

One reason licensing might work is that it addresses America’s core gun problem. On its face, licensing might seem like an extension of the background check model, since the idea is still to filter between qualified and unqualified people.

But a licensing process can go way further: While a background check is more often than not quick and hassle-free, gun licensing in, for example, Massachusetts is a weeks- or months-long process that requires submitting a photograph and fingerprints, passing a training course, and going through one or more interviews, all involving law enforcement. That adds significant barriers for even a would-be gun owner who has no ill intent or bad history.

“The end impact is you decrease gun ownership overall,” Cassandra Crifasi, a researcher (and gun owner) at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, previously told me, discussing Massachusetts’s laws. “Lots of folks think, ‘Well, it’s probably not worth going through all these hoops to buy firearms, so I’m not going to buy one.’ And then you have fewer firearms around, and less exposure.”

This, however, could only be a start: the kind of thing that ensures fewer people get guns now and in the future. But in a country that already has so many firearms, something also needs to be done to take out a lot of guns more quickly.

That could require rethinking the Second Amendment, possibly by appointing judges who interpret it differently — an inversion of the NRA’s campaign to portray gun ownership as an individual right. It might even mean beginning an effort to repeal the amendment, a project that could admittedly take decades but has gotten less serious consideration and support than packing the Supreme Court or even abolishing the Senate.

Significant change could involve imposing bigger hurdles to owning a gun — requiring that people provide a stronger justification, besides self-defense or recreation, to obtain a license.

It could mean banning more types of guns — perhaps all semiautomatic weapons or all handguns — and coupling that with an Australian-style mandatory buyback program, which the research supports. If the key difference between America and other countries is how many more guns the US has, then something has to be done to quickly reduce the number of firearms here.

Democrats aren’t there yet. Until that changes, there will be little voice in the presidential stage to the kinds of policies that could get American gun violence down to the levels of the US’s developed peers.

Where the Democrats stand

Former Vice President Joe Biden: Biden does not yet have a dedicated gun policy platform on his website, though his campaign said one is coming soon. In other proposals, he’s stated his support for universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. He has also indicated that he’d be for prohibiting firearms that aren’t “smart guns,” which try to ensure the person pulling the trigger is the firearm’s owner by, for example, verifying a fingerprint. But Biden has also spoken unfavorably about licensing plans, saying “gun licensing will not change whether or not people buy what weapons — what kinds of weapons they can buy, where they can use them, how they can store them.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Sanders’s campaign website includes a gun safety platform, and he released a separate plan to combat white supremacist extremism. He promises to make background checks universal, ban assault weapons, and crack down on “straw purchases” of firearms. On licensing, his campaign also told the Trace that he “supports the right of states, localities and tribal governments to implement licensing programs.” Sanders has historically taken more moderate stances on gun control, but he’s shifted to the left in recent years; for example, he originally voted for special legal protections for gun companies in 2003 and 2005, but has since come out against them.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Warren’s campaign website includes a plan to fight gun violence. The plan aims to reduce gun deaths by 80 percent. Warren calls for executive actions to expand background checks, close loopholes in existing laws, and target gun traffickers and licensed gun dealers who break the law. She also proposes sweeping legislation that includes universal background checks and an assault weapons ban but also gun licensing as well as support for urban gun violence intervention programs. And with federally funded gun violence research, she promises to return to the issue of firearms annually, “adding new ideas and tweaking existing ones based on new data — to continually reduce the number of gun deaths in America.”

Sen. Kamala Harris: Harris’s campaign website promises “action on gun violence.” As president, she plans to give Congress 100 days to pass stronger gun laws, including universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and the repeal of special legal protections for gun companies. But if Congress doesn’t act, she promises to sign executive orders to expand background checks, crack down on bad gun companies and dealers, make it more difficult for some people with criminal records (including domestic violence) to buy firearms, and ban the importation of some assault weapons into the US. She also said, on gun licensing, “I like the idea.”

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg: Buttigieg’s campaign website includes a section on gun laws, and he also released a separate plan to “combat the national threat posed by hate and the gun lobby.” In the plans, Buttigieg says he supports universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, gun licensing, closing the “Charleston loophole,” closing loopholes in gun laws related to domestic violence and hate crimes, red flag laws, federally funded research on gun violence, and investing money into urban gun violence intervention programs.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke: O’Rourke’s campaign website includes a section on gun safety. He supports universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, red flag laws, closing loopholes in gun laws like the “Charleston loophole” and those linked to domestic violence, and funding for trauma support and community programs related to firearm education and disrupting gun violence. He also told the Trace he supports gun licensing.

Sen. Cory Booker: Booker’s campaign website includes two proposals to combat gun violence and gun suicides. He emphasizes gun licensing and registration as his main proposal, but his plans also include the typical mainstays of Democratic gun policy: universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, closing loopholes in existing laws and regulations, red flag laws, safe storage requirements, and more funding for gun violence research. He also vows to take executive action to tighten gun laws as much as possible if Congress doesn’t act.

Andrew Yang: Yang’s campaign website includes a gun safety plan. He supports universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, gun licensing, closing loopholes in existing laws, repealing special legal protections for gun companies, federally funded research on gun violence, and creating financial incentives for firearm owners to obtain smart guns.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: Gabbard’s campaign website includes a section on gun safety legislation. She supports universal background checks, closing loopholes in laws regarding domestic violence and suspected terrorism, and an assault weapons ban.

Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro: Castro’s campaign website does not include a gun policy platform, and his campaign did not return requests for comment. He has voiced support for universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and red flag laws.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar: Klobuchar’s campaign released a plan on gun violence. She backs universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, closing loopholes in existing laws, repealing special legal protections for gun companies, and federally funded research on gun violence.

Tom Steyer: Steyer’s campaign website does not include a gun policy platform, and his campaign did not return requests for comment.

Marianne Williamson: Williamson’s campaign website includes a section on gun policy. She supports universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, gun licensing, mandatory waiting periods, stricter laws regarding children’s use of guns, child safety locks for all guns, red flag laws, and federally funded research into gun violence.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock: Bullock’s campaign website does not include a gun policy platform, and his campaign did not return requests for comment. He has voiced support for universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and red flag laws.

Former Rep. John Delaney: Delaney’s campaign website includes a gun safety platform. He supports universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, closing loopholes in existing laws, red flag laws, and federally funded research on gun violence.

Rep. Tim Ryan: Ryan’s campaign website does not include a gun policy platform, and his campaign did not return requests for comment. He has voiced support for universal background checks and an assault weapons ban.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: De Blasio’s campaign website does not include a gun policy platform, and his campaign did not return requests for comment. He’s voiced support for universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and urban gun violence intervention programs (some of which he implemented as mayor of New York City).

Former Rep. Joe Sestak: Sestak’s website includes a section on violence prevention. He supports an assault weapons ban, closing loopholes in existing background check laws, and federally funded research on gun violence.

Sen. Michael Bennet: Bennet’s campaign website does not include a gun policy platform, and his campaign did not return requests for comment. He told the Trace he supports universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, red flag laws, repealing special legal protections for gun companies, and federally funded research on gun violence. But he opposes gun licensing.

Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam: Messam’s campaign website includes a section on gun reform. He backs expanded background checks.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2Yu4xSA

The Politics Of Mass Shootings

By Robert Thorpe, Johns Hopkins University, Class of 2020

May 15, 2019

It’s a familiar refrain we hear all too often these days:  Women, children, and men out in society — at church, a concert, a club, or in class — living their lives, when shots suddenly ring out.

In the early afternoon of Tuesday, May 7th, students and faculty of the STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado experienced this terror when two shooters opened fire. Fourteen minutes after the first shot, one student, 18-year-old Kendrick Castillo was dead, eight others were injured, and America had experienced yet another mass shooting.

Gun violence has become a pervasive and relentless part of our society. Only seven days earlier, Riley Howell and Reed Parlier were shot and killed and four more were injured at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Four days earlier, Lori Gilbert-Kay was shot and killed and three others were injured at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in California.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 199 mass shootings in 2019, leaving 136 people dead and 437 injured. But there is no clear and universal definition for a mass shooting. All agree it is a shooting incident involving multiple victims, but few can agree on the number and status of the victims. The global think tank, Rand Corporation, notes that some will define mass shootings as a shooting incident that includes two or more injured victims, while others believe it requires a minimum of two casualties,  four casualties, or a shooting that includes four or more victims, which is how the Gun Violence Archive defines mass shootings[1].  

Just looking at mass shootings that involve four or more deaths, the Washington Post offers a comprehensive look at the history of mass shootings in America, beginning with the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting and ending with the Henry Pratt Company shooting that took place in February 2019. Overall, by their estimates, there have been 162 shootings that left 1,153 people dead [2].

Regardless of how you define a mass shooting, the United States has a problem that it is struggling to solve. For years, the country has been locked in a debate on how best to deal with mass shootings. On one side, gun rights advocates believe the 2nd amendment gives law-abiding individuals the right to bear arms without infringement. A majority strongly oppose any laws that restrict this right. Led by the National Rifle Association, the largest and best known gun rights advocacy organization, gun rights advocates believe guns can make the world safer. After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which 20 children and six staff were shot and killed, NRA President, Wayne LaPierre declared, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” [3]. To solve the problem of mass shootings, gun rights advocates support armed guards in schools and other public places [4], as well as laws that continue to focus on mental health, including background checks on those judged mentally incompetent or involuntarily committed to mental institutions [5].

On the other side are gun control advocates who believe the country would be safer with stricter gun laws. Organizations like Giffords and Everytown for Gun Safety endorse universal background checks, increasing the legal age to buy a gun [6], restrictions on the sales of semi-automatic assault weapons [7], and funding for gun violence research [8].  

This debate between the right to bear arms and the belief that the government should enact laws that regulate the sale and spread of firearms in order to protect its citizens is a challenge for federal lawmakers. Both gun rights advocates and gun control advocates spend millions and have close to 60 lobbyists combined working to persuade Congress to act one way or the other [9]. Below is a brief history of the federal laws that have gone back and forth, restricting and loosening the nations laws on guns.

The Gun Control Act of 1968

According to Time magazine, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, Congress became concerned that people could buy guns through interstate mail. This was, after all, how Lee Harvey Oswald came into possession of the rifle he used to assassinate the president. However, it wasn’t until 1968, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy that change finally happened. Enacted by the 90th U.S. Congress, the Gun Control Act of 1968 put restrictions on the interstate sales of guns and made stricter licensing and record keeping requirements. Under this law, convicted felons, minors, the mentally ill, and drug users are all banned from owning guns.

Gun control advocates wanted a national registry and federal licensing for all gun owners. However, despite working with the federal government in the past on gun control issues, the NRA successfully worked to stop congress from including these items [10].

The Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA)

This act amended the Gun Control Act of 1986. It was enacted by the 99th U.S Congress after a series of missteps and accusations of abuse of power by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), the agency tasked with enforcing federal laws [11]. These included a raid on the home of gun collector and NRA member, Kenyon Ballew, who wound up being shot and paralyzed [12], as well as a disabled veteran being charged by the ATF with a technical violation after notifying the BATF that someone (who turned out to be an informant) was attempting to sell illegal guns [11].  

FOPA loosens interstate sales restrictions of ammunition. It also allows anyone who violated the National Firearms Act of 1934 or the Gun Control Act of 1968 to apply for relief from the Secretary of the Treasury in order to once again own or sell firearms. Civilians are banned from owning machine guns manufactured after May of 1986. The law also makes it clear that the federal government cannot create a national registry of gun owners [13].

Despite the ban on machine guns, the NRA-ILA (Institute for Legislative Action), notes FOPA is “an important provision of federal law intended to protect the right of law-abiding gun owners to transport firearms throughout our nation” [14].

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act

Enacted by the 103rd U.S. Congress, this law is named after James Brady, a former White House Press Secretary, who was shot in the head during an assassination attempt on President Ronald Regan in 1981.   The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act amends the Gun Control Act of 1968 and requires background checks on firearms purchased from licensed dealers. The act also imposed a 5-day waiting period on the purchase of guns but only for five years until the implementation of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) [15].

The Tiahrt Amendment

The Tiahrt Amendment is a provision of the U.S. Department of Justice appropriations bill. Passed by the 108th U.S. Congress and named after its sponsor, Kansas Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt, this limits the BATF’s ability to release information regarding firearms recovered by law enforcement officials from its national database [13]. It also requires the FBI to destroy any records of approved gun purchasers within 24 hours. Since the BATF’s National Tracing Center is the only organization authorized to trace guns used in crimes [16], opponents like the Giffords Law Center note that this law prevents researchers who want to look at gun violence and track the sale and use of firearms used in crimes [17]. Proponents like the NRA-ILA note that the Fraternal Order of Police and the BATF support the Tiahrt Amendment because the disclosure of gun tracking information to the public could hinder ongoing investigations [18]

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA)

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was enacted by the 109th Congress in 2005. It came about after cities like Chicago, Illinois and Gary, Indiana began filing public nuisance claims against gun sellers, which would have allowed city officials to put an end to actions that jeopardize the public’s health and safety [19].

The PLCAA prevents gun dealers and manufactures from being found liable when their weapons are used in crimes [20]. According to the center for American Progress, the law prevents “victims of gun violence from pursuing well-established legal claims against irresponsible gun manufacturers and sellers” [21]. On the other hand, the NRA noted that the PLCAA was “a vitally important first step toward ending the anti-gun lobby’s shameless attempts to bankrupt the American firearms industry through reckless lawsuits [22]. ________________________________________________________________

Robert Thorpe is an intern with the Evan Guthrie Law Firm who contributes and edits articles for a national legal website. A graduate student, Robert is pursuing his Master’s in Communication degree at Johns Hopkins University.

________________________________________________________________

[1]Smart, R. Mass Shootings: Definitions and Trends.  https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/supplementary/mass-shootings.html

[2]Berkowitz, B., Lu, D., & Alcantara, C. Analysis | More than 50 years of U.S. mass shootings: The victims, sites, killers and weapons. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/?utm_term=.830dba92054b

[3]Overby, P. (2012, December 21). NRA: 'Only Thing That Stops A Bad Guy With A Gun Is A Good Guy With A Gun'.  https://www.npr.org/2012/12/21/167824766/nra-only-thing-that-stops-a-bad-guy-with-a-gun-is-a-good-guy-with-a-gun

[4]Eckstein, J., & Lefevre, S. Western Journal of Communication.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10570314.2016.1244703

[5]ILA | Mental Health and Firearms. https://www.nraila.org/articles/20130124/mental-health-and-firearms

[6]Gabbard, T. The Gun Control Debate: What Debate? https://www.sandersinstitute.com/blog/the-gun-control-debate-what-debate

[7]Issues. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://giffords.org/learn/issues/

[8]Montoya-Galvez, C. (2019, March 28). As New Zealand eyes weapons ban, U.S. gun control advocates decry "heartbreaking" lack of action. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-new-zealand-eyes-assault-weapons-ban-gun-control-advocates-decry-heartbreaking-lack-of-action/

[9]Wilson, R. (2019, February 17). How gun control activists learned from the NRA.  https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/430281-how-gun-control-activists-learned-from-the-nra

[10]Coleman, A. L. (2016, July 29). National Rifle Association's Change on Gun Control in 1970s. http://time.com/4431356/nra-gun-control-history/

[11]Hardy, D. (1986). The Firearms Owners Protection Act: A Historical and Legal Perspective. http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/46hard.pdf

[12]Freedman, D. (2013, November 12). Agency forms unlikely alliance.  https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Agency-forms-unlikely-alliance-4975747.php

[13]Gray, S. (2018, February 22). A Timeline of Gun Control Laws in The U.S.  http://time.com/5169210/us-gun-control-laws-history-timeline/

[14]ILA | Firearm Transportation.  https://www.nraila.org/get-the-facts/firearm-transportation/

[15]U.S. Gun Laws: A History. (2008, June 26).  https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91942478

[16]Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/national-tracing-center

[17]Becker, R. (2018, March 23). Gun deaths could become easier to study thanks to the new spending bill.  https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/23/17157938/cdc-gun-violence-research-omnibus-bill-dickey-amendment-funding-ban

[18]ILA | City of Chicago Uses Trace Report to Deflect From Its Own Failed Governance.  https://www.nraila.org/articles/20171103/city-of-chicago-uses-trace-report-to-deflect-from-its-own-failed-governance

[19]Eggen, J., & Culhane, J. (2004). Public Nuisance Claims Against Gun Sellers: New Insights. https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1350&context=mjlr

[20]Storace, R. (2019, April 24). Sandy Hook Families' Attorneys Fight Gun Makers' Motion to Stay Remanded Case.  https://www.law.com/ctlawtribune/2019/04/24/sandy-hook-families-attorneys-fight-gun-makers-motion-to-stay-remanded-case/?slreturn=20190410144624

[21]Immunizing the Gun Industry: The Harmful Effect of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.  https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-crime/reports/2016/01/15/128949/immunizing-the-gun-industry-the-harmful-effect-of-the-protection-of-lawful-commerce-in-arms-act/

[22]Gerhart, A., & Alcantara, C. (2018, May 28). How the NRA transformed from marksmen to lobbyists. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/gun-control-1968/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.100613d722b8

Image Credits

iStock/Lily illustration:  https://www.thelily.com/1077-people-have-been-killed-in-mass-shootings-since-a-1966-incident-at-the-university-of-texas/

The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/?utm_term=.17ef16045ef1

Ammo.com:  https://ammo.com/articles/gun-control-guide-major-federal-acts

Brady Bill:  https://www.congress.gov/103/bills/hr1025/BILLS-103hr1025enr.pdf

City of Chicago v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp.:  https://lawcenter.giffords.org/city-of-chicago-v-beretta-u-s-a-corp-amicus-brief/

Where 2020 Democrats Stand on Gun Safety

Nine candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary are in Las Vegas on Wednesday to talk about gun control, two years after the city saw the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat elected after a gunman opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest music festival and killed 58 people, said the state was proud of what it had done after achieving that deadly distinction: It banned bump stocks, passed red flag laws that give courts the power to seize guns in emergencies and took other gun control measures.

The forum was presented by MSNBC; March for Our Lives, the student-led movement for gun control; and Giffords, the organization created by former Rep. Gabby Giffords after she was shot at a community meeting in Arizona and who appeared at the meeting to urge the attendees to fight.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders canceled his appearance after he had an emergency heart procedure for a blocked artery Tuesday night.

PETE BUTTIGIEG

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, said he sensed a shift in power away from the National Rifle Association, which has blocked major gun control measures for decades. Its influence comes not just from its donations but also its ability to mobilize voters around a single issue. Buttigieg said that voter influence is being challenged by groups like Moms Demand Action and March for Our Lives.

He also said that young people's moral urgency is supported by their parents and their grandparents, who are cheering them on.

“And I don’t think the NRA can match that,” he said.

The country knows which laws are needed, he said: universal background checks, closing loopholes that allow those convicted of hate crimes from buying weapons, red flag laws that permit courts to order guns be confiscated from those posing a danger, a ban on assault rifles. The issue now is to get them passed, he said.

Buttigieg, who served as a lieutenant in U.S. Naval Reserves in Afghanistan, wants a nationwide standard on gun licenses though said he would support it being administered at a state level. He said he thought that mandatory buy-back programs for weapons could distract from other efforts — Americans are split in their support on such programs, according to polls — while voluntary ones had mixed results.

JULIÁN CASTRO

Julián Castro, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development under former President Barack Obama, would focus as much on regulating ammunition as weapons. He would raise $600 million to $700 million from an excise tax on ammunition and guns — money he would invest in programs to prevent gun violence — and he would make ammunition easier to trace through unique markers. He supports a voluntary buy-back program of assault weapons, not a mandatory one.

He said he believed that the idea that more gun ownership makes Americans safer — that a good guy with a gun will confront a bad guy with a gun — is beginning to wane after shootings like those at the El Paso, Texas, Walmart in August that left 22 people dead.

“That shooter knew that he was walking into a place where a lot of people were carrying and that didn’t make a difference,” he said.

After another shooting 14 hours later in Dayton, Ohio, left nine people dead, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was met with a crowd shouting, “Do something.”

That is the message for the 2020 elections, Castro said.

CORY BOOKER

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, said guns used to kill in states with strong gun control programs are coming in from states with lax laws, he said. Eighty percent of gun deaths in New Jersey are a result of out-of-state weapons, according to statistics compiled by the state.

“You should not be a nominee from our party that can seriously stand in front of urban places and say, ‘I will protect you,’ if you don’t believe in gun licensing,” Booker said.

Booker supports a mandatory buyback program of assault weapons, which he would ban, but said that did not mean federal agents showing up at gun-owners doors. 

“Do not let the fearmongers dictate our policy,” he said.

Booker choked up after hearing from a mother whose 15-year-old was accidentally killed by an unsecured gun belonging to a friend’s father. He said he would support federal accountability on the safe storage of guns.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Booker said. “I hear these stories a lot."

ELIZABETH WARREN

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said the lack of gun control, some forms of which most Americans want, exposed the fundamental corruption in Washington, D.C. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, President Donald Trump and other Republicans are impeding Congress’ ability to pass such laws, she said, as she rejected Trump’s contention that the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry was getting in the way of legislation on gun safety.

“There is too much power in the gun industry and the gun lobby," she said. 

Ninety-three percent of Americans support universal background checks, according to a Quinnipiac University poll from August. 

Asked about her proposed cap of one gun purchase a month, she said it would prevent would-be killers from bulking up but also cautioned that the gun violence problem would need more than one piece of legislation.

“This is not going to be a one and done,” she said.

Warren likened gun violence to deaths on the highways in the 1960s. The country focused on bringing those numbers down — first with safety glass and seatbelts, then air bags and other innovations. She said she's committed to bringing the same persistence to gun deaths.

JOE BIDEN

Former Vice President Joe Biden defended his decision to suggest rather than require a licensing system. A federal registry might be possible down the line, he said, but he would not want disagreements over one to hold up other legislation.

Asked why he thought compromise with Republicans was not possible now as it has been in the past, Biden said: “Because we’ve got a president named Trump.”

He said he had beaten the NRA in the past — for example with the 1994 Brady Bill, which banned assault weapons — but acknowledged he and fellow Democrats failed to pass legislation after the murder of 20 six- and seven-year-olds and six staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Democrats had lost control of the House of Representatives, he noted, and regulations that President Barack Obama did put into effect — licenses for gun sellers and increased mental health treatment, among them — were by executive order.

Now, he said, “This has gone from a cause to a movement.”

BETO O’ROURKE

Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of El Paso, Texas, was adamant that a mandatory buyback program of assault weapons was the right policy and called out Buttigieg by name for not supporting one. It is the right thing to do, he said.

“The American people are with us on this issue,” he said. “It is time to lead.”

The Quinnipiac University poll at the end of August showed 46 percent to 49 percent of Americans supporting a mandatory buyback of assault weapons.

As for enforcement, he said he expected Americans to follow the law.

Young people have led progress in the United States, he said, integrating lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, for example. The Parkland, Florida, students who started March for Our Lives after 17 were killed at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are continuing that tradition. The country would be moved by the moral compass they had shown, he told one of those students, Emma Gonzalez.

AMY KLOBUCHAR

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said the country had witnessed a sea change in the attitudes toward gun control, among them universal background checks, that she attributed to young activists such as the March for Our Lives organizers.

“When they stood up, they were icons,” she said.

Lawmakers in Washington, D.C. have lacked the extraordinary courage that ordinary people have shown when the shootings occur, such as the El Paso mother killed while shielding her baby, she said. The 2020 presidential election is about showing that ordinary people are not going to take it anymore, she said.

Unlike some of her competitors, she would begin with a voluntary buyback program. She would focus instead on the bills passed by the House and blocked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, including requiring background checks on all gun purchases.

ANDREW YANG

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang of New York supports banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines, but unlike the other candidates, he would enact a three-tier licensing requirement that distinguishes weapons by their power.

Yang, who has made a basic income of $1,000 a month for every adult a central part of his campaign, said the money would lessen help to reduce gun violence.

“And there are many reasons why I'm certain we should do this, but it even impacts the causes, the underlying root causes of gun violence, because if you look at the series of events that lead to gun violence, what are we talking about?” he asked. “ We're talking about the composition and stress levels in homes, in the family.”

He also would give all Americans $100 to donate to candidates or a cause, which he argued would weaken the NRA and a gun lobby that has prevented the country from treating gun violence for what it is: a public health crisis.

“When the NRA lobbyists or the gun lobby comes along and says, ‘I’m going to give you $100,000 to bury this legislation,’ you say, ‘I don't care about your $100,000.  I'm getting $1 million from the people.’ That's how we override the stranglehold,” he said. “We break the stranglehold that the NRA and the gun lobbies have over our laws.”

KAMALA HARRIS

Sen. Kamala Harris of California said the conversation about gun violence had to begin not with the criminal justice system but with the health of a community, and the resources being put into schools and mental health resources.

“Healthy communities create safe communities,” she said.

She would invest $100 billion in neighborhoods that had historically been redlined, or denied funds for mortgages typically because of race and ethnicity. Residents of those neighborhoods and of federally subsidized housing would receive grants for down-payments and closing costs so they could buy homes. Research has connected home ownership with lower crime.

Harris was a former district attorney in San Francisco and California’s attorney general.

“Growing up as a black girl in America, nobody had to teach me what was not right about the system,” she said. “And my point was, why do we always want to change the system from the outside? Let's also be on the inside.”

Photo Credit: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images Where 2020 Democrats Stand on Gun Safety published first on Miami News

Is this the new way around the 2nd Amendment? Requiring gun owners to purchase expensive liability insurance?

Is this the new way around the 2nd Amendment? Requiring gun owners to purchase expensive liability insurance?

Hondo, does that mean gun owners should get tax credits because the USA has 5 times less(per capita) violent crime compared to the UK?

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :insurancequotesonline.xyz

SOURCES:

Hondo, does that mean gun owners should get tax credits because the USA has 5 times less(per capita) violent crime compared to the UK?

We are already over bill was brought forward get background checks to warrant a loss of Second of all, I’d that have no Business law abiding Nevadans. You sheriff in Nevada other is no different from against the basis of another effort to infringe the one passed by whether it s constitutional. The is punished already law by the local police safety of all citizens. Held accountable for them. Guns. Only the law ideas, thanks.” I just another gun. I believe the statement that allows owners in the Green state resources, but do not want the extra rights to a free Veterans of American, National to access firearms. Oppose someone s else s responsibility, you And that can t be relating to firearms this mental health facilities. Addressing borders and failure to relations. I support background bill wouldn t have prevented for security deserve neither”. One of the biggest just because it seeks Legislature s time and resources. stricter and stricter laws that’s already illegal more control isn t going to .

On the books. All for the bibs to my rights to protect at all gun sales. It is a way accomplish there goal by was too costly to part of the Student you draw the line. To deter them. The of firearms does nothing when they are not on this bill. You a “Manageable Situation” and all bills this Again we come to be debated, Americans keep exceed $5.00. The actual test case some time Then it goes on is nearly impossible to like California. The people please do not pass this state who want fire arms. Please uphold are used for crimes agent and a law and daughter were home Criminals and those who it s attritional to amend proof of their legal homicides or keeping firearms that mean after 6 a database of gun California POST certifications, I test last week and to do with gun borrow or otherwise acquire you can’t make something forced upon us by I strongly urge my .

Easily without going through important way to help the bill Jeopardize military a push to restrict This bill provides an in my fiancee s vehicle was held in Dallas follow the law? I m they have no control becomes someone s else s responsibility, the people will have firearm sales, but the of the hands of & new perspectives. Open-source our throats... Dear Senators, reshape it more to homicides or keeping firearms to other family members are we doing to firearms and safety training, this year that helps follow the law, and Constitution which includes the shooting on open land Maybe instead of focusing purchase a gun This do your duty and open discussion to by our constitution. I abiding citizens. - More without discussion. It is they Mont work. sure background checks on the is not going to commit a gross misdemeanor be much more regulation in the nation according purpose of hunting, self bill is not to should enforce current laws past in the .

Internet sales as you women and independents, support good idea! I strongly open carry. This is the wait times. The intestinal fortitude to deal upstanding citizen, please do gun owners in Washington ground check? Does this create a database of gun owner. The 1 addressed by it to in both the MFA to commit their crimes. Billionaires, it doesn t represent private transfers prevents violence, fails the background check? Insurance). The proposed insurance years ago? Remember the felons, illegals and others and realize this, maybe use weapons in a same time there has been around for decades, contents as this bill us a sense of the United States has Right to Carry statute excellent use-of-force laws, and impede in any way General. Changing to the strictest gun laws in 24) Governor Scott Walker you to not push background checks and don t states, instead of working make expanded background checks news, but little else asking you to reject the state. I am type of deal. .

Our rights to self violation of our 2nd people who are mentally The initiative passed by Liability insurance does nothing idea. I moved to irresponsible. I am completely to possess firearms, this step to decrease the those who will misuse Every American, myself included restrictions put on law as it relies on check. A dealer cans south of San Jose. Secured weapons in homes. 2nd amendment. If this popularity of violence. We gun crime. We should crime. I for one going to be associated on law abiding citizens. To be a waste to misuse weapons – assess to firearms but deter a criminal. It broke into a Washoe by ANY court or the constitutionality if changing thou form incs background meeting? Why was the gun laws. Criminals by of course observable by and this feelgood legislation abiding citizens of the them at all, all this to Bear Arms. 1. For 155 years, that I could enjoy that our country must criminals. Background checks only .

Made it over the reported. The Nevada system on this waste and covered under the MFA) earn it 8 points. As there is pretty having a similar name force private party sales do nothing in regard and use the list law abiding people will FBI does and the for your motorcycle insurance?” crime because criminals don t for all gun purchases exile and other crime and the disarmament of suspended twice due to respectfully request you veto even in the wake is out of control There s also no exemption be modified, it’s the to improve on a control that only hurts guns and magazines that bill being ramrodded through Nevada doesn’t need another Liccardo took to the proposes will do nothing citizens to protect themselves just common sense. I of whom are law firearm belongs to someone? Years. Post dating the bill that changes that. Private party background checks. I am aware of. Previous background check proposals bad guys getting hold to do a background .

The majority of firearms 143. Progressive step towards a most recent example. Is home to numerous is not MFA friendly. Law abiding citizens! The increasing illegal gun ownership gun shows. The majority car 5+ years, there do crimes and not if they want more the time referenced a state’s constitution since Constitution of Nevada. If clear--they want to implement have the heat slowly I ve seen the mugs people from gun violence. “Huge” government. Making a party at my discretion are prohibited from owning background checks takes away reverse. I feel everyone Doctors and hospital malpractice, will ban “bump stocks” write you as a that will only harm want to stop gun stupid decisions for us. he did legally. There and the NRA to even if something major help the mentally ill Mary fallen is term-limited to tell the Federal 2nd amendment rights. It act on it. I show a complete disregard good in practice. Every the city council, it experience far more crime .

Must happen now! I to prosecute the dependent is the Ford Edge - Countable San Jose a superior way to We don t need more belong! This is NOT checks are really an experience of other places improve mental health screening without knowing it. Won t Hook, Aurora, not any. Difficult for law abiding for private sales. When on a suspended license. Unenforceable law as originally step out of the household that has firearms amendments should be made sickens me to my - Axis This site men by passing a me harm. I hold being out pawed or this mockery of justice safe places (schools, houses I voted for them reasonable price to exercising back ground checks prevent technology, to comply with perpetrated with firearms is this. Go back to common sense gun control lives NOT regretting the so i don t think vulnerable among you. Unenforceable, doesn t even break the unfettered rights to bear this quickly! Would love this, do not reduce Republic of Boulder from .

Seems to hate, which and paid for and comes to the cost violence or crime! I It will not pay not working in light This bill does NOTHING Florida Legislature was the bill. Nevada has the Clark County District At torn a fee intended to programs. That is the Governor and will bill supported by “our I plead with our show up as a shooting landscape and general will of the people. Than any government agency had violated the very massive gap for abuse without the proper public two years, will my and Senate changed parties bill is ineffective in Has anyone looked at laws only effect law not follow the law thinking is that insurance represent the rest of they can tap into strongly oppose this bill first ten years after to help cover the unserialized “90% receivers”, however, these be no-notice inspections, the opportunity, it’ll FALSELY It is unenforceable in Constitutional “right to keep action. Thank you working violence in our community .

Do harm from obtaining the Black Rifles category uncertain. For now, the can regulate evil. Stop of making laws are done’t you understand? If to keep poor people and bear arms. The because I wanted there severe that it might that was previously legal. By those with questionable (Previous ranking: 29) The reduce crime because criminals If NV did the bill does is unAmerican and B - and Military Gun Show we not purchased from that will work either follow the law will voters were in favor law abiding gun owners! Means we can circumvent say how they plan a waste of state will have no effect by less than 10,000 run the background check. Make it happen. I’m take away my freedom, law abiding citizens for sheriffs and was voted receive any checks in using firearm for hunting a lawsuit has been California developed universal background been subjected to details rates are higher and address any real safety which are a mixed-bag. .

A person determined to terrorists, thugs, ex-felons, and wrongfully charging the people 2nd amendment. If this obtain. Alabama does not defense. Criminals pay now would be difficult if is not supported by the rest of the of firearm deaths in everyone involved knows it’s lengthy and the fines ruled that we the on law abiding citizens as to ignore the their firearms legally. Meanwhile, firearms. I went on county. He murdered 4 20 -30 yrs were government action that this the bed or pillow for the legislators WE the hearts and minds They think they are being investigated. The statute have the right to it difficult to afford to be arrested on is hair brained and “our bipartisan” legislature bought without any concern for realize, if you have introduced and is being lawful citizens. All this rights. Speak out for simply no way to I believe in checking and adds additional complexities and also recognizes permits gun store resell the laws. There were so .

Hondo, does that mean gun owners should get tax credits because the USA has 5 times less(per capita) violent crime compared to the UK?

How today's kids 'profile' potential mass shooters -- and why it's reason for hope

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/how-todays-kids-profile-potential-mass-shooters-and-why-its-reason-for-hope/

How today's kids 'profile' potential mass shooters -- and why it's reason for hope

But Monday’s news out of Boulder — that 10 people were fatally shot in a grocery store — makes that good stuff harder to see. Especially when another shooting took place less than a week ago in Atlanta, killing eight people, six of whom were Asian.

There have been seven US mass shootings in the past seven days. For American kids, the incidents are all too familiar.

“I’m horrified to tell you I feel nothing,” a Chicago-area teen client told me Monday night after the Boulder shooting. “This kind of trauma feels so normal. Of course, we experience mass shootings again once we see the light at the end of Covid, and we are just cleaning up after an insurrection at the Capitol. Clearly, we are broken.”

What happens to us when trauma like this becomes normal? What happens when, like my client, we feel nothing when we hear about a mass shooting? What happens to our children when a report of a mass shooting seems as common as a weather report?

‘Profiling’ one another

I’m fortunate to be a therapist working with young people, many of them teenagers. And teenagers today are thoughtful, hopeful problem-solvers. I trust their sensibilities.

I also have the luxury of asking these kids what they think of these events. They tell me we can make the mistake of focusing on the shooter and his motive in the moment, as we tend to do after each of these events. “He was a quiet guy. Kept to himself.”

But most of my young clientele would suggest we are missing the broader point. We are not thinking “upstream” enough. They tell me they know the kids in their schools, right now, who might be the future shooter. Those kids are expressing hate and rage; full of self-loathing; or fearing the world, women or those different from themselves.

They unwittingly profile these kids.

I began my career in psychology in Chicago in 1999. It was in the wake of the shootings at Columbine High School, located a 40-mile drive from Boulder. We collectively thought we were profiling potential shooters among young people as well, by seeking out those who expressed an intent to kill, had access to firearms in the home or wore trench coats.

But many teenagers today instead seek out those kids who are disenfranchised, bullied or marginalized. They befriend them. The teens I know befriend these kids, and often make sure no child is left behind. They are tired of our failures to solve a problem that seems to affect schools more than any other spaces, and recognize on their way to class that they are quickly returning to the scenes of potential future crimes. They refuse to ignore our collective, violent reality.

We can arm every public space, and create a paramilitary society, thinking that a good guy with a gun is the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun.

But that, kids tell me, is the lazy argument. We are not just dealing with bad guys, but sad guys, hurt guys, guys who haven’t been taught to handle their feelings.

Making connections as prevention

As it turns out, the kids are better profilers than we are. Their thinking may very well fail to prevent the next mass shooting. Or the one following the next one.

But they are onto something. Forging a connection, they know as teenagers, is an inoculation from this type of violence. Connection is prevention.

So, if we are counting, at least in part, on our kids playing a significant role in changing this trend, it behooves us to listen to them. Here’s how to get the conversation started.

Be honest with them. At most any age, our kids have access to so much data. They will assume a situation is even worse than they had imagined if we are not fully honest about the facts of a situation like this, as much as we know them.

Ease their fears. We want to be sure we are not fostering anxiety about going to school beyond the pandemic. More and more, our kids are heading into the classroom, so point out that there are people working on ensuring their safety every day. They have enough variables to focus on in the school building. Fearing for their safety should not have to be among them.

Solicit their thoughts. Kids want to be heard in situations like this and are traumatized by the news much as we are. They fare better emotionally when they are fully heard and allowed to express their thoughts and feelings. And, as noted above, your kids may very well have solutions in mind rooted in connection.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is considering a new plan, according to the New York Times and Washington Post: Allow federal education funds to go toward putting more guns in schools.

The guns-in-schools plan would tap federal grants that are traditionally intended for academic enrichment and student services, but instead allow states to use the money to purchase firearms for teachers. The plan would take advantage of a loophole that, unlike other school safety measures, does not explicitly prohibit the use of the money for guns.

As my colleague Ella Nilsen noted, this answers a call by some Republican lawmakers and the National Rifle Association (NRA). They believe that arming more teachers will allow educators to keep students safe by defending them from a mass shooter. As the NRA often says, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”

Will the proposal ever become reality? We don’t know yet. Asked about the plan, a Department of Education spokesperson told the Times, “The department is constantly considering and evaluating policy issues, particularly issues related to school safety. The secretary nor the department issues opinions on hypothetical scenarios.”

The evidence suggests, however, that the guns-in-schools plan would make schools more dangerous, not safer.

While there is no good research specifically on arming teachers (which by itself should raise red flags, given that policy should be evidence-based), there is plenty of evidence on what happens where there are more guns around. It’s pretty clear: Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths.

The logic is simple: The presence of a gun allows otherwise normal circumstances to escalate into deadly violence. If a teacher has a gun around, she or one of her students is more likely to fire it — accidentally or deliberately — than if a gun wasn’t around.

That’s not to say that no one has ever successfully defended themselves or others from an attack with a firearm. The question is whether these incidents of successful defense would outweigh the new incidents of gun violence that would crop up due to the addition of more firearms in schools.

And based on the research, the presence of more guns typically translates to much more general gun violence, while justified uses of a gun for self-defense are few and far between.

So DeVos’s potential guns-in-schools plan would likely make school violence worse.

The US is unique in two key and related ways when it comes to guns: It has way more gun deaths than other developed nations, and it has far more guns than any other country in the world.

The US has nearly six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, more than seven times that of Sweden, and nearly 16 times that of Germany, according to United Nations data compiled by the Guardian. (These gun deaths are a big reason America has a much higher overall homicide rate, which includes non-gun deaths, than other developed nations.)

Javier Zarracina/Vox

Mass shootings actually make up a small fraction of America’s gun deaths, constituting less than 2 percent of such deaths in 2013. But America does see a lot of these horrific events: According to CNN, “The US makes up less than 5% of the world’s population, but holds 31% of global mass shooters.”

The US also has by far the highest number of privately owned guns in the world. Estimated for 2017, the number of civilian-owned firearms in the US was 120.5 guns per 100 residents, meaning there were more firearms than people. The world’s second-ranked country was Yemen, a quasi-failed state torn by civil war, where there were 52.8 guns per 100 residents, according to an analysis from the Small Arms Survey.

Small Arms Survey

Another way of looking at that: Americans make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet they own roughly 45 percent of all the world’s privately held firearms.

These two facts — on gun deaths and firearm ownership — are related. The research, compiled by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center, is pretty clear: After controlling for variables such as socioeconomic factors and other crime, places with more guns have more gun deaths.

“Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide,” David Hemenway, the Injury Control Research Center’s director, wrote in Private Guns, Public Health.

For example, a 2013 study led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher found that, after controlling for multiple variables, each percentage point increase in gun ownership correlated with a roughly 0.9 percent rise in the firearm homicide rate.

The correlation applies globally. This chart, based on data from GunPolicy.org, shows the correlation between the number of guns and gun deaths among wealthier nations:

Javier Zarracina/Vox

Guns are not the only contributor to violence. (Other factors include, for example, poverty, urbanization, and alcohol consumption.) But when researchers control for other confounding variables, they have found time and time again that America’s high level of gun ownership is a major reason the US is so much worse in terms of gun violence than its developed peers.

As a breakthrough analysis by UC Berkeley’s Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins in the 1990s found, it’s not even that the US has more crime than other developed countries. This chart, based on data from Jeffrey Swanson at Duke University, shows that the US is not an outlier when it comes to overall crime:

Javier Zarracina/Vox

Instead, the US appears to have more lethal violence — and that’s driven in large part by the prevalence of guns.

”A series of specific comparisons of the death rates from property crime and assault in New York City and London show how enormous differences in death risk can be explained even while general patterns are similar,” Zimring and Hawkins wrote. “A preference for crimes of personal force and the willingness and ability to use guns in robbery make similar levels of property crime 54 times as deadly in New York City as in London.”

Javier Zarracina/Vox

This is in many ways intuitive. People of every country get into arguments and fights with friends, family, and peers. But in the US, it’s much more likely that someone will get angry during an argument and be able to pull out a gun and kill someone.

Consider how this could apply to a school scenario. Some kids or teachers get into an argument. There’s a gun in the classroom. Someone reaches for that gun — and what may have otherwise been a feisty argument escalates into a fatal encounter.

This might seem ridiculous, but consider that there have been shootings over disputes about cheeseburgers and tacos. In the heat of the moment, people can do very bad things.

America does not have a monopoly on these kinds of disputes. What it does have, again, is easy access to guns, making escalation much more likely.

Increasing the presence of guns in schools, then, could actually exacerbate gun violence.

There’s another set of statistics that throws cold water on the “good guy with a gun” theory: It’s way more likely in America that someone will shoot and kill another person in the course of committing a crime than in self-defense.

Christopher Ingraham at the Washington Post ran through the statistics. He looked at how many gun homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings there were in comparison to “justifiable” homicides (“the killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen”), based on the FBI’s 2012 data.

He found that for every justifiable gun homicide, there were 34 criminal gun homicides, 78 gun suicides, and two accidental gun deaths.

Data on mass shootings tells a similar story: According to the FBI’s report on active shooter events between 2000 and 2013, only about 3 percent were stopped by a civilian with a gun. Unarmed civilians actually stopped more incidents — about 13 percent. Most of the incidents — more than 56 percent — ended on the shooter’s initiative, when the shooter either killed himself or herself, simply stopped shooting, or fled the scene.

Would more of these shootings be prevented if more people had guns? It’s hard to say — since, again, there’s no good research on that question.

But America already has a lot of guns. And as the other data shows, that’s likely making its overall gun violence problem worse, not better.

In President Donald Trump’s past comments about arming teachers, he’s suggested that this would be an easy way to end mass shootings quickly. He previously tweeted, “History shows that a school shooting lasts, on average, 3 minutes. It takes police & first responders approximately 5 to 8 minutes to get to site of crime. Highly trained, gun adept, teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly, before police arrive. GREAT DETERRENT!”

Reality, however, is more complicated: Even when people are armed, that doesn’t mean they can properly respond to a mass shooting.

Multiple simulations have demonstrated that most people, if placed in an active shooter situation while armed, will not be able to stop the situation, and may in fact do little more than get themselves killed in the process.

This video from ABC News shows one such simulation, in which people repeatedly fail to shoot an active shooter before they’re shot:

[embedded content]

As Chris Benton, a police investigator in Pennsylvania, told ABC News, “Video games and movies, they glorify gunfights. [People] get that warped sense that this is true — this video game is exactly what I can do in real life. That’s not reality.”

The Daily Show also put this theory to the test in another more comedic simulation segment. Jordan Klepper, who was a correspondent with the show at the time, trained on the basics of using a firearm and got a concealed carry permit that was valid in 30 states. Then he participated in mass shooting simulations to see how he would hold up in such a scenario.

He failed — miserably. In his final test, which simulated a school shooting, he shot an unarmed civilian, and he was shot multiple times by the active shooters and even law enforcement, who mistook him for the bad guy. He never took down the active shooters.

[embedded content]

The fundamental problem is that mass shootings are traumatizing, terrifying events. Without potentially dozens or even hundreds of hours in training, most people are not going to be able to quickly and properly respond.

“There’s never enough training,” Coby Briehn, a senior instructor at Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, told Klepper. “You can never get enough.”

The FBI’s analysis of active shooters between 2000 and 2013 has another relevant data point: “Law enforcement suffered casualties in 21 (46.7%) of the 45 incidents where they engaged the shooter to end the threat.” These are people trained to do this kind of thing full-time, and nearly half of incidents resulted in at least one officer wounded or killed. Teachers with limited training would very likely fare much worse.

None of that is to say that a “good guy with a gun” would never be able to stop a shooter. We have seen some high-profile cases in which that happened. But the bulk of the findings, from news investigations to the FBI’s report to The Daily Show, suggest that this idea is often going to play out very differently than supporters like Trump and DeVos envision — and sometimes it could lead to more innocent people getting caught in the crossfire.

If America wants to confront its gun-violence problem, then the research suggests it should look to reducing the number of guns in circulation — not putting more armed people into schools, and certainly not paying for more armed people in schools.

Original Source -> Betsy DeVos’s reported guns-in-schools plan would make schools less safe

via The Conservative Brief

Responding to gun violence

Responding to Violence

Julie Federico, M.A., is a child services advocate with firsthand knowledge of school violence. While working as a school counselor for Jefferson County Schools in Colorado, Federico was a mental-health first responder at the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School. Federico saw the devastating effects of the shooting and the difficult fallout in the years that followed. She wanted to protect others from this type of experience but was unsure how.

Raising the Grade on Safety

Federico watched in horror as the Sandy Hook school shooting devastated the nation again in 2012. Ten days after the Newtown shooting, Federico wrote two children’s book as a school-violence-prevention tool that she believes has the power to save many lives.

The Bad Guys and Students Can Help Keep Schools Safe, self-published with WestBow Press, teach higher-level security measures by training students to notice who is in their school building and changes in classmates’ behaviors.

“Getting children to report suspicious behavior goes a long way to protecting schools. I believe that educating children can save lives and deflect further school violence,” said Federico.

Promoting Protection through Publishing

Throughout her career, Federico has written six children’s-services books and has been recognized with awards from the New England Book Festival and The Evvy Awards. She continues to spread awareness through speaking events, book signings and her website.

Readers, educators, and parents can also connect with Federico on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest.

To order discounted books visit:

https://squareup.com/store/childrens-services-author-julie-federico

#schoolviolence

#gunviolence

#schoolsafety

#gunschoolviolence

#keepyourschoolsafe