Arm the teachers, am I slow or is that idea completely insane

[Kulindahr]

You're not a liar. It's a shitty argumentative tactic.

No, it's called being accurate, which is part of critical thinking.

But the way the kids in recent shootings have been exploited, it's clear that critical thinking isn't valued on either side (we already know that the ad agency that runs the NRA works hard to keep people from critical thinking, since -- as the gun-control politicians know -- critical thinking doesn't stir people up to donate or vote).

 

[Kulindahr]

How could anything possibly go wrong?

Teacher in custody after Georgia police respond to report of shots fired

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...ter-georgia-police-respond-to-report-of-shots

More importantly:

"Several people have been arrested in the weeks since for making threats to schools across the country."

The media are complicit in this because they turn mass killers into celebrities. There has to be a way to make them behave responsibly, e.g. by not using pictures of the killer except under a sheet on an ambulance gurney, or from the back with "Inmate" in large letters on their shirts. A free press comes with no less responsibility than any other right, so somehow they need to be made to exercise responsibility and stop encouraging these killers.

 

[Kulindahr]

How could anything possibly go wrong?

Teacher in custody after Georgia police respond to report of shots fired

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...ter-georgia-police-respond-to-report-of-shots

Where does it report the training and licensing he received?

 

[Kulindahr]

If you think guns are like brakes and fire extinguishers, then personally I don't think you should have a gun.

So you'd prefer that the kids I was responsible for on a campout had been molested?

See, a gun in that situation was EXACTLY like brakes or a fire extinguisher: it brought to a halt something that was threatening safety.

 

[MakeDigitalLove]

So you'd prefer that the kids I was responsible for on a campout had been molested?

You talk about critical thinking but you jump to some accusation that has nothing to do with anything other than continually trying to straw-man. Way to go.

I'm glad if the situation actually happened it was stopped, but the fact that you exploit that situation for internet arguments says a lot about you.

 

[opinterph]

… there were people outside the school whose jobs it was to neutralise the shooter …

They were trained to kill.

It is my impression that peace officers and private security personnel are trained to kill.

 

[gsdx]

No, it's called being accurate, which is part of critical thinking.

But the way the kids in recent shootings have been exploited

Please explain how they've been exploited? It seems to me that they're fed up with attending funerals for their classmates and they've done it all themselves. They have a voice, but they've always been silenced by people of your thinking. Now they're being heard and you and the NRA and political figures are trying to shout them down, but they're not backing down.

And, just for your edification, students here in Canada are supporting them wholeheartedly and arranging their own protests and marches.

Face it. A movement has started and you're not going to stop it.

 

[cityboy-stl]

How could anything possibly go wrong?

Teacher in custody after Georgia police respond to report of shots fired

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...ter-georgia-police-respond-to-report-of-shots

I guess we need to arm the students huh? That'll take care of everything.

 

[Kulindahr]

You talk about critical thinking but you jump to some accusation that has nothing to do with anything other than continually trying to straw-man. Way to go.

I'm glad if the situation actually happened it was stopped, but the fact that you exploit that situation for internet arguments says a lot about you.

There's no "straw man" involved: You asserted I shouldn't have a gun because you rejected a logical comparison. But if I hadn't had a gun back at that campout, kids would have been molested. Ergo, you would rather see kids molested.

And I bring it up because people who advocate taking guns away are supporting that very thing, that kids and others should be without protection. In the case of schools, that's actually obvious, because the U.S. didn't have many school shootings at all until after Congress decided to make schools gun-free zones.

 

[Kulindahr]

It is my impression that peace officers and private security personnel are trained to kill.

"Killing isn't the objective," Geoffrey Alpert, a professor at University of South Carolina who researches high-risk police activity, told Cleveland.com after local police killed Tamir Rice, 12, for playing with a toy gun that looked real in a public park in 2015. "The objective is to remove the threat."

here

The way police are trained to shoot results in death, but that's not the objective. I've had three gun classes from instructors who mainly teach law enforcement, and they tell the officers the same thing they tell us: you never shoot to kill, you shoot to stop a threat. Yes, that puts the bullets in places likely to result in death, but death is not the object.

 

[Kulindahr]

Please explain how they've been exploited? It seems to me that they're fed up with attending funerals for their classmates and they've done it all themselves. They have a voice, but they've always been silenced by people of your thinking. Now they're being heard and you and the NRA and political figures are trying to shout them down, but they're not backing down.

And, just for your edification, students here in Canada are supporting them wholeheartedly and arranging their own protests and marches.

Face it. A movement has started and you're not going to stop it.

"Trying to shout them down"? Hardly -- we just want them to engage in critical thinking. Since in fact school employees were killed trying to defend them, the logical conclusion is that those school employees should have been armed, because that way they would have at least had a reasonable chance to stop the threat.

The goal of the NRA (not the ad agency that runs it, which just cares about money) is stopping the threat. The goal of the "gun free" proponents is engaging in actions that look good but just perpetuate the problem.

Congress needs to act on the authority the Constitution gives it, and stop the theatrics.

 

[Kulindahr]

I guess we need to arm the students huh? That'll take care of everything.

Show me where this teacher shot at any students.

 

[gsdx]

Ergo, you would rather see kids molested.

You're doing it again. You say you don't do it, but you do. You did it to me the other day and, just as you did to me, you'll deny it.

There are names for people like you.

 

[Kulindahr]

You're doing it again. You say you don't do it, but you do. You did it to me the other day and, just as you did to me, you'll deny it.

There are names for people like you.

I'm sorry that applying logic bothers you.

 

[gsdx]

^ The only logic in what you do is warped, and it is your own warped logic which you use to tell us what we feel or believe. People might be more inclined to engage you in a debate if you stopped with your high and mighty lecturing. It's bad enough that you constantly tell us your opinion, but it's worse when you tell us what OUR opinions are as well.

 

[bankside]

You're doing it again. You say you don't do it, but you do. You did it to me the other day and, just as you did to me, you'll deny it.

There are names for people like you.

The obvious answer is that you don’t want to see children molested. Somehow I was able to deduce that but check my logic:

I’m pretty sure you think that, after careful consideration, a gun operated by an amateur is not the best way to defend children from sexual interference.

Another safer more reliable method, if we had it, would be just to call the transporter room and have the child beamed up to safety. While transporter accidents are possible, it is safer for the child than firing some 20th century projectile weapons.

And this is the key part: because it’s safer for the child, it’s no longer discretionary. It becomes a moral imperative to discard the projectile weapon and whisk the child to safety with the transporter beam. To not do so is a sign of irresponsible parenting, or if you prefer the hyperbolic approach: if you would rather shoot a gun than beam the child up, you want the child to be molested.

Moreover, while we do not have a transporter beam, we have a moral imperative to consider whether there is any technology, or social arrangement, or innovation, to protect children from sexual abuse. And gsdx, contrary to the ad hominem straw man nonsense hurled back at you, I’m betting you feel there is a whole package of safeguards, social norms, institutions, laws, and even technologies that meet two criteria: they’re possible (unlike the transporter beam) and they’re effective (unlike the gun).

If that’s your position then you might agree with me that we do have a moral imperative to protect children from abuse, and it’s precisely because gun nuttery falls so far short of that duty that we have a responsibility to speak up. It’s because guns are such a poor implement at protection, such a makeshift halfarsed attempt at helping, tarnished with such a shoddy track record, that we’re compelled to oppose them.

 

[opinterph]

I've had three gun classes from instructors who mainly teach law enforcement

Yeah. One of the officers with whom I spent many a long night chatting was a trainer at a local police department of about 1,200 officers. He tried to convince me to join the force.

I too have received formal training. Mine came from 2 retired Secret Service agents who had worked together at the White House charged with protection of the First Lady. It was actually a 3-month class, with several meets at local firing ranges. We fired a variety of handguns, but qualification was with the .38 Police Special. Our targets featured a human silhouette, which was marked to indicate different zones that were weighted according to the likelihood that a shot to the zone would be fatal. If all shots fired into the target hit kill zones, we have “a perfect score.”

• results
• objective

The term was “trained to kill.”

 

[opinterph]

… the kids in recent shootings have been exploited …

Perhaps their exploitation started with the guy standing on the other side of a ballistic missile launcher. We should let “the kids” speak. Better yet – listen to what they have to say.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Perhaps their exploitation started with the guy standing on the other side of a ballistic missile launcher. We should let “the kids” speak. Better yet – listen to what they have to say.

The NRA knows all about exploitation, which is why they were deathly silent when a licensed teacher was shot dead by police. You'd think they'd be all over a story like that, right? Tax-paying, hard-working, gun-owning American murdered by police. Well, for some strange inexplicable reason they chose not to exploit Philando Castile's murder and turn it into their song and dance about gun rights. I haven't the foggiest why they didn't touch a story that was practically catered to them with a ten-foot pole.

 

[Dystopian]

The NRA wants politicians to take action, by recognizing the dignity of the human individual and stop telling them their lives aren't worth protecting. That's what "gun-free" zones do: demote everyone working in them or required to spend time in them from citizen to target.

All controllers ignore the main verb of the Second Amendment: "infringed". It means to meddle even with peripheral issues that aren't essential to the right. Since rights come from the people, no "convincing reason" is needed for the people to exercise their natural rights, rather the opposite: there should be a convincing reason why they should allow government to have weapons nore potent than they do.

Schools are already battlegrounds; designating them as "gun free" did that.

Guns are "the root cause"? Really? Inanimate objects persuade people to become violent?
That claim just shows up the total irrationality of the gun-control position.

The root causes are the things that drive people to misuse weapons -- any weapons. One is lack of discipline, another is lack of respect for others, another is certain kinds of mental illness. The gun is just a tool. Since gun control doesn't care about the actual root causes, it's nothing but feel-good activity.

Let them have their ARs of whatever number. Just follow the Swiss model, and require those weapons to be registered with the local militia and stored by the local militia. That, and requiring training, would address two of the root causes, lack of respect for others and lack of discipline -- and, following the Swiss model again, it would allow for mental health screening for people wanting such weapons.

Clearly, this debate is cycling, and both sides are running out of original arguments and it has devolved into personalities. Nikolas Cruz went to Dick's Sporting Goods to buy an AR (see, I am getting the terminology down). Dick's did everything required to determine that Mr. Cruz did not meet any of the criteria that would prevent the store from selling him what became his very own AR. Turns out Mr. Cruz is a very troubled young man. The police have had 20 complaints about his behavior through time. He's not insane. He's inappropriate. He got kicked out of high school. As we know, guns don't kill people. People kill people. Our laws permit them the tools they need to kill people. We are told this is their natural right. Mr. Cruz, 19, had the right, enshrined in our Constitution to purchase an AR to defend himself. Where things went oh so wrong, was when Mr. Cruz returned to his would-be alma mater, a gun-free zone, armed with his personal AR. The teachers were not armed. They were not prepared. By making their workplace a gun-free zone, the government had robbed them of their right to defend themselves against attack by a man or men armed with an AR. Most all workplaces in the United States are gun-free zones. I have worked in Big Pharma for some time. Three different companies. Universities and hospitals before that. They all fucked me over by not letting me bring my AR to work to defend myself. In retrospect, had we all been armed in the conference rooms or during our annual reviews, things might have been different. Banks get robbed. Employees of banks do not bring weapons to work to defend themselves, despite the obvious risk. Postal workers, the poster children for things going really bad in the workplace, do not bring guns to the counter where we buy stamps. I don't think our mail lady has a weapon even in her little mail truck. I should ask. Effectively, unless you are a state legislator in Colorado, upwards of 95+% of civilian workers in the US labor in gun-free zones. Military, police, private eyes, body guards, Brinks drivers and Colorado legislators, yes, they are packing. The rest of us, though we may have over 100 fire arms that we could use to defend our persons, our families and chattel, were we to bring a weapon into the workplace, we would be terminated. Immediately and without recourse. No state labor board or court would entertain a claim that our natural and Constitutional rights had been violated by the personnel department. To be clear, the prohibition of guns in the workplace is a societal norm. It is common sense, because employers don't want their employees shooting at each other...or them. The same applies to teachers. The absence of armed employees in the workplace has not been perceived as a cause of people being killed by mass shooters nor challenged in any way until now. The cause of people being slaughtered in mass shootings is not because they are unarmed. It's because the shooters are way too well armed. Stephen Paddock had 47 guns, including AR's. He brought 17 rifles to his LV room. He modified his AR's with bump stocks that allowed him to fire 9 rounds per second. He killed 58 and wounded over 500 people in about 10 minutes. He nor anyone should have access to weapons that can do this. There is no need, no excuse for anyone to own ARs or other weapons that can do this...not for sport nor for hunting. Not even for self-defense. Their only purpose is to kill efficiently. The risk / benefit equation does not support arming everyone, when all we have to do is prevent military grade weapons from being available to the public.