Thinking Columbine was first has people forgetting, say, that guy on the tower picking off students at a college decades earlier.
I have forgotten his name, and I am okay with that.
Thinking Columbine was first has people forgetting, say, that guy on the tower picking off students at a college decades earlier.
I have forgotten his name, and I am okay with that.
Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:If we are going to arm teachers and provide them good gun training, do we have to also do that for grocery store clerks and movie theater ushers?
I'd feel safer if that was the case. Necessary, no. These events becoming more often however...
I went to a school that had a pistol range in it. In. We had an intramural .22lr match team. We also got the first day of deer season off of school, complete with unlocked cars in our parking lot with hunting rifles in them so we could hunt when school got out. I graduated in 1988.
The police in my town growing up taught me to shoot at their indoor range.
If you and I are involved in an active shooter event, you'd want me there. I CC, so does my wife.
We live in an area that has a LEO response time of 20 minutes, it's also not the greatest of areas what with people trying my door handle to the house to get in for an unknown purpose. You want your significant other to be stuck in your house for 20 minutes with a bad guy?
Do I know how to remedy this situation? Nope. Do I think we should destroy a whole culture? No. Should we ban all Mustangs from car events? Maybe.
yupididit said:Here's my issue. I as a parent can barely walk in my kids school without going through multiple levels of authentication. How did the Uvalde shooter get into the school, especially while clearly armed? The Police response, terrible. The shooter was a walking red flag and we missed it. So many things failed those kids. Its sad.
I do like guns though. And would love to keep them. It's one of my hobbies. Would I give them up if that guaranteed no more kids would get killed by one? Certainly. But we can't promise that.
Also, I certainly do not associate with the NRA and never will for obvious reasons!
This. All of it.
In reply to yupididit :
A teacher propped a door open.
A question, because I do not know the answer. (Not one of those slimy questions-that-lead-an-opinion)
Since we seem to have had a statistically significant sample, how many of these shootings were at private schools and how many at public schools?
I AM wondering if the failure in the system stems in part from overworked overextended school staff who simply do not have the time to be there for students besides getting them to pass state exams. But I do not know the answer to the question to know if this wondering has any merit.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
I can't think of any that were private schools.
preach (dudeist priest) said:Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:If you and I are involved in an active shooter event, you'd want me there. I CC, so does my wife.
Absolutely 2000% no I would not. 'You' in a general sense who are concealed carry holders scare me just right below how much the bad guys do. I pay taxes so professionals who are trained in shoot/no shoot situations, practice regularly at the range, and are uniformed generally to protect me. They make mistakes all the time. Who is the bad guy? Who are you putting in danger when you pull your piece, cowboy? What is a CC person's training? You're right, I don't know. Could be an off Duty cop/FBI/military, or could be 'some guy' who did the paperwork and took a minimal course.
The worst mass killing in the US was a senior citizen with no criminal record. The dude lived 40 minutes from me and one of my best customers lives(d) literally next door to the guy. No background checks, psych evaluations, ammo or weapon limits would have been able to stop a psychopath from murdering dozens of innocent people. He could have done nearly as much damage with a 5 round bolt gun if he had wanted to aim vs spray varmint rounds into a crowd.
Worse still was the Bastille Day attack in Nice 2016. 86 people killed by one lunatic in a rented truck. This wasn't in America. It didn't involve guns. It was worse by nearly 50%.
Weapons don't matter. Bad folks gonna do bad things. Teenagers gonna build bombs from cooking appliances. Stabbings and poison and all the rest. Want to prevent most gun deaths in America? Ban suicide.
In reply to Teh E36 M3 :
Pretty sure we don't need name calling. I am from Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, not too many cowboys around these parts.
I have put up the credentials of being trained.
Guns scare people, so do manual transmissions. I have been trained in both.
Here's the fallacy with the idea that teachers should be trained to utilize and carry firearms.
Teachers don't get into teaching because they want to be firearms experts they get into teaching because they want to teach. You 100% have to stop the issue before it gets to the school otherwise you have failed and you are pushing responsibility off on others that don't want it to be part of their responsibility. If you have to give up some levels of freedom because you're not willing to accept that responsibility congratulations that's part of being a functional society. If you're not willing to no congratulations as you're part of the problem and why theories of been put out on ways to limit or reduce exposure to these events have been proposed but none have really actually been done. Nothing has really changed or been put into action as there's been no meaningful change thus no results. You can say that things have been tried and I will point out and ask what things. You can say that urban areas with tighter firearms restrictions have just as many guns and homicides and shootings as other areas and you'd be correct, but we're specifically talking about mass shootings and they do not have a higher level of mass shootings. So a false narrative is being utilized in those arguments which are in flawed. Such arguments lack logic and make those who propose them's platform stand on shaky ground at best.
Yet they continue to reiterate the same thing and suggest that they don't know the answer and are at a loss as to why these things happen.
In the first response in the thread I suggested something that I think would make a meaningful difference. Would it stop every mass shooting, No it certainly would not. Would it potentially stop the majority of them, as the majority of them are perpetrated by males under the age of 25, yes. (I know that they would still be able to gain access to the weapons through friends or family, but there's a simple legal solution to that, if you lawfully own your weapon you should keep it lawfully secured and if your security measures aren't proficient enough and a friend or family member under the age of 25 is able to access those weapons and utilize them in a mass shooting, congratulations you face the same charges that they do). $400 for a good safe should be the cost of entry into the hobby as it is anyway. Would it keep firearms out of law abiding citizen's hands, No it would not. Would it prevent those citizens from being able to engage potential shooters, No it would not. And it would not delay people interested in the hobby from gaining experience with lower level capability firearms. They would be able to learn how to handle them, clean them, fix them safely before using something with close to military capabilities (with regards to rate of fire).
And if we really want to talk about protecting the innocent and saving the most lives possible, let ask why as a society we tolerate drugs and alcohol. And I'm not talking about drunk drivers. I'm talking about ruined families, shortened lives, imprisonment, sex traffic, and all the rest. Want to talk about evil money in lobbyists and government and corporate greed? There are way worse offenders than the NRA.
Im not trying to downplay these tragedies in the slightest. But if we want to do the most good for the most people, guns should be even be part of the conversation until we've fried much bigger fish.
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
You are deflecting from the topic at hand though. This thread isn't about any of those aspects if you want to start another one about them absolutely go for it. It's equivalent to a thread being about air pollution and you talking about plastics in waterways and in the oceans. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand and it's deflection in its purest form. We're talking about one societal issue and you're bringing up another one almost as if to suggest there's bigger fish to fry so we shouldn't put focus or concern upon this issue. (And you're not the only one doing it It was just the most recent response and a very clear case of it. And I certainly agree that there are other significant societal issues but those aren't to be discussed or debated on how to handle them in this thread. I would love for there to be a thread about the opioid crisis and epidemic, as that may be the worst handled thing by our society by all sides and parties over the last hundred years. But this is not the place to discuss that as this is not a thread that is related to that in any way shape or form.
In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :
That is excellent work by all involved. There is a bit of not quite irony in the fact that this thread was started as a result of a post I made in the meme thread, And when I made the post I immediately sent a text to the creator of this thread suggesting that feathers would be ruffled and that I may get a warning for making such a post but the idea and goal was to get people to think, damn, memes like this shouldn't have to exist or shouldn't exist.
The parallel being if the young man who made the threat in Florida that was intercepted and interviewed was doing so as a joke, He's a twisted individual who's been too desensitized and has some things not quite right with him that even if not dangerous now the young man needs a talking to, and a pivot and direction and possibly much more. Because until you have that conversation and conduct that interview you don't know if it's a call for attention and inappropriate humor or if there's a looming tragedy.
I got called out for the post by other members on here, Great job on their part It was them taking notice of what I posted not knowing why I'd posted it to stoke the coals that something needs to be done, But they spoke up and said that's wrong. That identification and recognition and engagement is important and it's paramount to the solution.
In reply to Teh E36 M3 :
The people who attended this graduation party last week would disagree....
Once again, the police are under no obligation to save you. Many will, but that is not their job, despite what it says on the door of the police car. The last couple school shootings should have made that clear.
In reply to Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) :
That is fair. I'm not trying to derail this conversation. More, that was meant for those here essentially saying "we should try anything if it has a chance to help."
The use of a firearm by a civilian to solve a situation is just crazy. If I walk into a store with a concealed firearm and someone comes in to rob the store, the last thing I'm doing is pulling out a weapon. I'm not trained, I have zero authority, and I will likely make the situation worse by adding to the adrenaline and threat level. I run the risk of getting multiple people killed, including myself. It's not my place, I don't have the skills, and (not to mention) it's highly illegal for me to assume that I am suddenly a trained law enforcement officer and commit a summary execution of a human being. I wouldn't pull a weapon any sooner than I would jump in a helicopter and think I could fly it better than a 20-year pilot.
Why on earth has being a vigilante suddenly become glorified and celebrated?
You want to give a teacher a bit of training and a gun, then ask them to pull the trigger? WHAT? There is a reason some people choose to be a teacher and not a cop. That's like issuing a knife to vegetarians and saying "you have to butcher this lamb." You're saying that we as a society have failed you teachers so miserably that you have to violate your ethics and do the dirty work yourself by pulling the trigger on the very students you have fostered, nurtured, and cared about for 12 years. Do your own dirty work because we can't.
Issuing guns to teachers is not a real solution. If you told teachers they had to carry weapons, good luck on replacing the vast majority of them who would quit the next day. I own guns. I work in the education sector. I have a concealed carry permit. If you told me I have to carry a gun and shoot a threat.... berkeley no. Never. I would rather die than take a life for any reason. Even if it was a totally justified death, I would be berkeleyed up for the rest of my life. Even veteran cops sometimes get berkeleyed up when they perform a perfectly textbook shooting. You can't ask a random part of the population to suddenly have the type of personality to pull a trigger.
Which points out one of the main reasons we have so many mass shootings. Some people have no empathy and they don't value life. What you're asking teachers to do is to set aside their empathy and become the exact kind of killer we are trying to prevent.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
I think our problem here in the states is fear. I'm going to make extremely broad generalizations that are not fact checked or have any basis in reality, they're just how my brain thinks it might be happening.
Since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of thousands of editorial, biased, BS "news" organizations, we have been on a steady decline of way too much information that may or may not be real. We have all absorbed information, processed it through our confirmation bias, and drawn our own conclusions. I have friends who are still on the chemtrail conspiracy and others who think that vaccines cause rabies or alien invasions. Just the other day, a lady I briefly dated posted on social media a picture of a plane and it's cloud trail. The plane was likely 40,000 feet in the air and 200 miles away, but minutes later she had an asthma attack and correlated them citing them as proof that it's a government plot to make us all sick. It is my belief that these opinions have been given fertile soil in which to bloom as a result of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the rampant information train dumping non-factual crap. This is all too evident when we read every Tom, Dick, and Sherry's FB posts claiming facts as if they are suddenly experts. I want to see numbers.. specifically, how many non-factual memes, stories, and posts per capita on social media come from the US versus how many come from other countries. My guess is that it's heavily skewed.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, because it sounds like you hang out in some very odd circles. But you are describing the far exceptions to the rule that don't apply to the vast majority of Americans, at least not in the way that you think it does. The far left and the far right have way more in common with each other than they do with the majority of Americans. What EXACTLY are you talking about when you say fairness doctrine? Because it wouldn't apply to the nut job corners of the internet that you are describing. It applied to BROADCAST media only. I've listened to or watched just about every broadcast media outlet and show over many years, and can recall ZERO discussions of chemtrails or microchips or magnets or any other conspiracy bullE36 M3. I've listened to hosts purposely because of the the "common knowledge" of how biased and nutty they are, and found- nothing. Just people sharing their opinions and point of view. I don't think it's appropriate here to go much farther down this tangent, so I'll leave it at that. I do think the media plays a significant role in the increases in mass shootings, but not in a way at all related to what you described above.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
I don't carry for the same reasons you mentioned. But I take issue with your last sentence. Stopping a bad guy in his tracks is a wholly different thing than being the bad guy in the first place. There is a necessity for empathy in society. I also do not think the answer is to arm teachers. But putting down a rabid dog is not the same as biting kids.
Why on earth has being a vigilante suddenly become glorified and celebrated?
First, if you are in that situation, you're either a vigilante or a victim.
Second, it is not suddenly becoming glorified and celebrated. It is the American way. John Wayne did it in movies for decades and novels as old as the printing press celebrate vigilantism - Dumas wrote Monte Cristo in 1844.
Teh E36 M3 said:preach (dudeist priest) said:Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:If you and I are involved in an active shooter event, you'd want me there. I CC, so does my wife.
Absolutely 2000% no I would not. 'You' in a general sense who are concealed carry holders scare me just right below how much the bad guys do. I pay taxes so professionals who are trained in shoot/no shoot situations, practice regularly at the range, and are uniformed generally to protect me. They make mistakes all the time. Who is the bad guy? Who are you putting in danger when you pull your piece, cowboy? What is a CC person's training? You're right, I don't know. Could be an off Duty cop/FBI/military, or could be 'some guy' who did the paperwork and took a minimal course.
Uvalde had their own SWAT and they stood outside because they didn't want to get shot. They're supposed to have a lot more training than a CC holder.
I used to teach. I own guns.
I would not want to be asked to carry a gun in a classroom. I would quit.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
During one of the meetings at work it was pointed out where a firearm was kept in case of emergencies.
I asked if it was a revolver or pistol, and then pointed out that if there was a situation and other people were not in danger, I would skedaddle rather than pretend I was some hero.
Johnboyjjb said:Second, it is not suddenly becoming glorified and celebrated. It is the American way.
Maybe this is the problem.
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