saugus high school shooting santa clarita
Los Angeles Sheriff Sheriff Alex Villanueva, left, at podium, introduces Santa Clarita Detective Dan Finn, middle, and School resource officer, Sheriff James Callahan, right, during a news conference at the station Santa Clarita, Calif., Friday, Nov. 15, 2019. Detective Finn and Sheriff Callahan were one of the first responders in the aftermath of a shooting at the Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
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The quote of the day is presented by Guns.com.

According to the AP, investigators haven’t found the usual note, manifesto, or online screed left by the 16-year-old who opened fire in Saugus High School on Thursday with a .45 caliber handgun. Everyone who knew the “quiet and smart kid who was a Boy Scout” expressed surprise that he did what he did.

But for the hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, there’s no mystery at all. The fault lies, as it always does, with the gun.

There will certainly be an investigation into where this weapon came from, whether an adult failed to lock it up, whether there were any hints of the violence to come, whether school security was adequate. All of that will get sorted out. But in the end, the availability of the gun remains, and that is the root of our gun violence problem.

This is the 39th mass shooting (that is, a shooting in which at least four people were wounded) in California this year, bringing the statewide total to 53 people killed and 158 injured. And this in a state with some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country. Nationwide, an additional 354 people have died, with 1,321 injured.

So how do we address this? Policy debates haven’t worked. Legislative fixes — few and far between nationwide — have been insufficient. The gun lobby and 2nd Amendment hard-liners shake their heads and say, nope, this isn’t on us. It’s mental illness. Or it’s this or it’s that but, Lord, no, it’s never the guns.

Except it’s always the guns. And the bigger and badder the firearm, the worse the carnage.

– LA Times editorial board in Santa Clarita shooting: It’s the guns. It’s always the guns

 

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75 COMMENTS

  1. Phew, I am so glad my AR is locked in a safe with 2 locks on it. That soulless devil of a rifle is just itching to be let loose and wreak havoc on society. 🙄

    • I thought the same thing when I read this article. I put down my phone and was compelled to go check on my guns. When I got to the safe I found the door was open and several guns got out. I put them back, did a head count, and discovered one was still missing. Like a good shepherd, I searched for the lost one and discovered it in my sleeping child’s bed inching it’s way towards her hand. God only knows what that gun could have done if it found its way in to her hand….. Like the editorialist said: Its always the gun.

      • My Glock has been trained to sit, stay, and be good. It’s better behaved than my dog. The most unpredictable of my collection remain in the standing safe in an extended “time out”, and the few I have around the house have trigger locks to act like collars to remind them of their manners. But my trusty G17 is great…he doesn’t growl when the doorbell rings or jump all over guests when they sit down in the living room. Doesn’t run out into the street after cars, shooting at their tires. Doesn’t disappear for the night on personal adventures, only to turn up the next morning at my doorstep. Doesn’t even require a retention lock on the hip holster, so that I can wear a standard straight-draw holster when training in the desert without worrying that it might jump out and run off.

        Nope, I trained mine well. Very well behaved.

        • I have dumb guns. I can’t teach them tricks or nothing. Most of them are Rugers, so I thought I was buying a good pedigree. I once took them all and laid them spaced out on the living room floor. Opened the front door and left them awhile alone. Came back. No attempts to escape. Nothing. Well maybe the Walther moved an inch or two towards the door, not sure. Can you really trust a German? Anyway, the rest just laid there looking stupid. I think they’re dead.

    • I have several that caused WWI and even more who are to blame for WWII locked up! Don’t want any of those to get loose, who knows what might happen!

      • “I have several that caused WWI and even more who are to blame for WWII locked up! Don’t want any of those to get loose, who knows what might happen!”

        Expert knowledge of inventory, and tight inventory control benefits us all. Good show.

    • I keep my long guns in a pen, otherwise they are always underfoot. But my handguns are free range. The 22s tend to herd together, out of fear or maybe just good grouping, I don’t know. Somewhere in the herd is the .25 and the .32, stuck with the plinkers.
      The 357 revolvers wander about without a care, confident in their power and reliability. 38spc generally yap along with them.
      The 9mms and the 380s are more loners, darting about from one concealment to another, hardly ever seen and quick, since after all they are mostly plastic.
      All is mostly peacefull till the .45 1911s come through. everyone else gives way, keeping wary attention on them, because, well, .45…since shooting something twice is just silly.
      Then comes the scary times when IT comes out. Everything scatters and hides when those booming sounds come closer.. nobody wants to face the .45-70 BFG. There is no circle of life. It ends with a 405 gr bullet, and all the littler ones know it.

  2. The problem is always the lies. The media will always promote the version of the “facts” as pushed by whatever lying leftist last spoke to them. Partly this is because “journalists” aren’t very bright, but mostly they have short attention spans and are rather lazy.

    • They often barely pass entry for a diploma in arts and social(ist) studies. No thinking needed. They just have to repeat the party line espoused by their course coordinators.

  3. I suppose “gun” is the root of “gun violence.”
    Violence in general though is a-o-k.
    Everyone knows if you take a hatchet to the head in NY or get cobbed in a field you go to heaven but if you’re shot your soul is trapped in purgatory forever.

  4. How do we know that it wasn’t a “false flag” operation? In far too many cases, there is a “law enforcement drill” going on nearby…
    Certain groups do have an agenda for civilian disarmament and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

    • Hey anarchyst, you moron.

      I live here. That school is my alma mater. I graduated from Saugus and still live in the area. This event really happened. Why don’t you come out here and help wipe the blood from the concrete? Then we can talk about your ignorance.

        • alma mater
          [ ahl-muh mah-ter, al-; al-muh mey-ter ]

          noun
          a school, college, or university at which one has studied and, usually, from which one has graduated.


          I’m surprised this even has to be explained.

      • False flag doesn’t mean it’s a hoax — just that the perpetrators and/or sponsors of said violence aren’t who we’re led to believe they are.

        That said, I’m not insinuating that this was one. (The Las Vegas Mandalay Bay shooting, yes, I’d insinuate; so much wrong with what we were told about that…) It’s hard to accept that sometimes we just don’t know why a given person did whatever horrible thing he did, and that there’s nothing else to it.

    • The strongest proof of the tight knit conspiracy is that there’s no evidence revealing it, huh?

      I’m guessing you buy aluminum foil from Costco in the industrial sized rolls–regularly–amiright or amiright?

      • You’re kidding right? Costco tracks all tinfoil purchases and reports them directly to the government. That’s why you need a membership. Duh!

        I make my own tinfoil out of Wolf ammo “brass” I discretely collect at the range. Heat it, pound it, shape it, and fold it over a wooden model of my head. I then cover it with a knitted mesh made from stolen lama hair. The lamas, of course, must be free range, and never fed any GMO grain. That would put the government into my head faster than those free NRA baseball caps that contain tracking chips and Chinese infrared brainwave disruptors. Which is also why I only buy used American-made clothing from the Goodwill. And pay only with coins minted during the Reagan presidency.

      • Well that is the thing.. the weevil msm has convinced the nutjobs that it is aluminium foil they need.. but there is a reason it is sometimes mistakenly called tin foil.. back in the day, about 1910, it was tin foil that was used to make hats and block those guvermant mind controllin rays.. tin was very effective for this.. so tin foil makers were forced out and aluminium was secretly used instead.. so now all those foil hats don’t work anymore! Aluminium doesn’t block the rays..

        • “Aluminium doesn’t block the rays.”

          It does if you put the dull side out, and the shiny side in.

  5. So we’re going with injured instead of dead now for defining mass shootings? Alrighty then.
    Also funny how gun control utopia Cali has (by the gun hating writer’s own numbers) 13% of the nation’s total mass shooting deaths with about 11.5% of the population.

    • I think that I just read that the threshold of mass killing was lowered from 4 to 3. Kind of like those that want to reduce mag capacity to 1. 8~(

    • Last I heard the definition for mass shootings was 3 or more shot. Even if you raise it to 4 as long as they were shot it is considered a mass shooting. Deaths are not necessary because not everyone is killed when shot, but that doesn’t mean it [mass shooting] didn’t happen.

      • There is no truly “official” definition. However what is generally agreed on by professionals is using the FBI’s definition of mass murder (4 killed without a “cooling off” period and in relatively close proximity) and adding the factors of it being a shooting (duh), indiscriminate, and not part of another crime (robbery, gangs, drug deals, etc).

      • The obvious solution to mass shootings is to limit magazine capacity to 3. If you can only shoot 3 people, it falls below the threshold to be a mass shooting.

        • “If you can only shoot 3 people, it falls below the threshold to be a mass shooting.”

          By Jove, I think you’ve got it.

  6. So an underage person who cannot legally buy or own a handgun shoots people in a state with more severe and restrictive gun control laws than you can count?

    Here’s some hints for California:

    1. That crazed teenager broke a shit-ton of laws already, so exactly how would another law have changed anything?

    2. Maybe, just maybe, if all those laws did not prevent this broken kid from doing illegal and deadly crime, possibly the problem was in the human person what done the crime? So maybe you should be working on the broken human thing instead?

    Please chew on those two hints for a while, California. You will be pleased to know they contain zero carbs, are certified organic, trans-fats and salt-free, not a Prop65 Cancer or Reproductive Harm listed item, will not cause foot fungus, Halitosis, male pattern baldness or Erectile Dysfunction.

  7. NEVER BLAME THE CRIMINAL/MURDERER!

    In criminal law there are three basic things that define and align responsibility of guilt. They are motive to act, opertunity to act and means to act. A firearm being part of the “means” (tool) is an inanimate object until used illegally.

  8. When has the “gun lobby” accomplished anything in California? What leaps of logic do you have to go through to even begin to blame them for California’s problems? The last time the NRA did anything of note in that state was to help Gov. Ronnie ban open carry after scary Black Panthers decided they didn’t want to be beaten by cops for the act of protesting in front of city hall.

    • A quick search supposedly shows NRA and CRPA have been working together, but details on accomplishments in CA, I’m not seeing any. Maybe I need to dig more?

  9. Correction needs to be done

    the “LA times” is no longer the LA times because the paper moved out of La downtown by MILES!

    Its called or referred to as the “El Segundo Times”

    not to mention that the ‘times” has gone fully left wing bat shit over the last 2 decades…before that it was a neutral to right leaning paper IMO ….it even published anti illegal alien stories at one time…GASP!

  10. “The fault lies, as it always does, with the gun…”

    Is it me or is there another object that’s misused and blamed like with firearms?

    • If ever those who don’t rape get blamed for raping as law abiding gun owners are blamed for shootings, what the left will want to take/remove/pickle? Look out here comes the pecker cops!

    • Not today, but it used to be the SUV. I remember many “news” stories, especially in the 90s, with headlines like “family of four killed by SUV” or “SUV runs down man at intersection”. It was quite the epidemic of murdering automobiles for a while there.

      • Well they are still there.. Urban Assault Vehicles kill millions every day. But the weevil UAV lobby keeps it all covered up…

  11. I wonder what makes a firearm “badder”. I mean, “bigger” I can understand, because that’s a descriptor related to tangible size. Badder….hmm. I’ve got nothin’.

    • It’s a racist thing, they don’t like *BLACK* guns.

      I do believe, on my AR pistol build, that it’s gonna be Cerakote gloss *white*… 😉

  12. Too bad the NRA keeps preventing us from passing Universal Background Checks. End the gun show loophole and ban scary rifles. sarc

  13. In my office there are a dozen guns on my desk.

    I keep a close eye on them to be sure they are all treated fairly and don’t fight.

    I keep watching for any signs of developing animus but they are keeping it hidden. Going forward, I think I won’t turn my back on them. One day they may revolt and take over.

    Darn things are always loaded! Who knows what they might do in thier condition.

    But I am watching.

  14. My neighbors and I own several of the “biggest and baddest” firearms known to man, MkXIX 50AE DEagles (largest legal box fed auto-loader, per BATFE), and Barrett 50BMGs (insane energy on targets).
    Not once have ANY of these “big n bad” guns caused ANY mayhem or injury (with exception of some DEagle slide bite) to ANY living thing, in all the years of ownership.
    Don’t blame the tools you political hacks and media idiots, blame the operators.
    Libtard states like Commiefornia are filled with morons who think whenever a privately owned firearm is handled, there are fatalities.
    Don’t Commiefornia my Texas.

  15. Blaming the “gun” is the same strategy they use when they blame unvaccinated people for vaccine failures in vaccinated people who catch infections they are fully vaccinated against during outbreaks which are never started by unvaccinated people.

    • Look who’s back, little pege2, spouting more his crap TTAG management told him wasn’t welcome here.

      That’s OK, he will make a fun punch-toy for as long as he sticks around…

  16. Yep, it’s never the gangs, drug pushers or nuts. I’m not using any P.C. descriptions of mental incapacitates because there is a difference between those and nuts such as Holmes in Aurora.

  17. Actually, it is always the guns. Indisputable. Question: without access to a gun, could the three students have been shot by someone holding a gun? Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Answer: No.

    Don’t cloud the issue with, “He couldda got a gun from somewhere.” Or, “He couldda use and XYZ thingy.

    Fact: guns are always involved in crimes committed by use of a gun. Indisputable. No gun, no crime through use of a gun.

    Now, what do we do about it?

    Continuing to proclaim that the gun is inanimate, a tool (just like a screwdriver), and the person would have found some other way to do the crime is simply, and wholly, preaching to the choir. That argument does nothing to convince anyone other than POTG that “guns are the problem”.

    Fact: the general public is not nuanced enough to follow sophisticated arguments. They are headline consumers. We gotta figure out how to effectively (rather than noisily) counter headlines. And we are always on the defensive there.

    The whole “it’s always the guns” meme is targeted to people who are distracted by other things, generally uninterested in working through complex problems and situations, people who just want the whole thing to go away. 2A defenders and POTG have embraced the idea that life, politics and freedom/liberty are messy thing requiring personal responsibility to navigate.

    Politicians are convinced the winning constituency is anti-gun, anti-private ownership and use of guns, pro-peace and safety at all costs. Politicians are great at counting votes (or the manipulated perception of where the votes lie). Politicians know that a vote for private gun ownership, and pinning responsibility for actions on the actor, will be presented (and accepted) as a vote for continued, uncontrolled death and destruction by guns in the hands of a public too stupid to be trusted. Which politician wants “Guns Iz Bad” representatives to say, “We went to his/her/its/whatever’s office and demanded guns be banned and confiscated. We were told, “individual rights protected by the Constitution. Now, we have leventy dozen dead people at the mall. His/Her/It/ Whatever refused to do anything to prevent this preventable horror.”?

    Now, what do we do about that?

    • “Now, what do we do about that?”

      I’m willing to authorize tax money spent to deport those who don’t like guns.

      They can be happy somewhere else, like the gun-free Mexico northern border area…

      • “I’m willing to authorize tax money spent to deport those who don’t like guns.”

        Haven’t seen that idea before. Really like the novelty of the idea.

    • The best way to counter all those headlines is to own the drones who write the headlines. Anybody has a way to get that done, I’m all ears.

      • “The best way to counter all those headlines is to own the drones who write the headlines. Anybody has a way to get that done, I’m all ears.”

        Yes, that is the Gordian Knot.

  18. Realistically people tend to do this with anything.

    Cars are not much different in the way they’re dealt with. They’re always looking for ways to make cars safer. It’s never about the people driving them.

    The root assumptions are the same. It’s not that people are being jerks or doing stupid unsafe things. It’s the car, gun, tool or whatever.

    You saw exactly this attitude towards gas cans under Obama and it put Blitz out of business.

  19. ” a shooting in which at least four people were wounded ”

    I was always under the impression that a mass shooting was when four people were killed, not just wounded. Could this be a case of the Disarmament Cartel moving the goalposts yet again to serve their statistics?

  20. One day we’re going to conclude that the real problem is reporters, and, well, what was that line from Shakespeare about lawyers?

  21. If it is the guns that are the criminals why do they lock up or put to death humans. Seems to me the target of closure and justice for the victims is being denied. And like it is done leave the innocent guns alone. If they have a verified alibi they shouldn’t be condemned. The German government tried blaming a whole race for all the woes in the world, and the world did not like that. So why blame an inanimate object like the AR15 or AK47, is it not the same thing? It isn’t of course, it’s very hard to hate something that can not feel your hate and hate you in return.

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