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The best way to prev-...well, mitigate tragedy is to rely on the unceasing vigilance and lightning reflexes and astute crisis-situation judgment of the population at large.
The trick is, see to it the population at large has more guns and the same process which currently fails to weed out dangerous lunatics will certainly not fail to weed out even more dangerous lunatics, as well as increasing the number of dangerous sane people whose judgment in a split second crisis scenario may not be up to trained police officer on duty snuff.
Best possible plan. God save the Second Amendment.
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Capax, I feel your ideas have merit, but lack two major areas of concern: proving safe handling and safe storage.
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I don't think that the comments are at all random. And I don't for a minute think that the NRA is "stupid". I think that they are quite smart. We just have antithetical goals.
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My point is there is no one here representing or defending the NRA, so all these complaints are utterly irrelevant to this thread.
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Are you really complaining that people are talking about the NRA, the most powerful gun lobby, and their statements relevant to the event which precipitated this thread, in a thread about gun rights.
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Particularly where the recent conversation was 'the NRA didn't actually say that' and 'well, in fact, they did in their recent press conference'.
Dan-'mandate'? No, though they did say that if we love our children as much as we love sports and money, that is in effect what we should do.
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Capaxinfiniti,
First off, I think your standards are unreasonable in some respects. Laws governing the licensing of drivers can be considered a huge bureacratic mess, but that isn't reason to scrap the entire thing. Some bureaucratic mess is unavoidable. Second, on the one hand you offer 'if it proves unreasonably burdensome to lawful gun owners'-a very flexible, nebulous standard; on the other, you desire that unless a new law proves effective within a matter of years...see where I'm going with this?
As for background checks, why wouldn't they need to apply to gifts or inheritance? If the concern over public safety lies with gun ownership, as you appear to agree with, why should there be such a wide open door?
Firearms have a purpose: killing or permitting readiness to do lethal violence to things. Plain and simple. They can of course be crafted to be aesthetically beautiful, and people may use them not to kill things-such as target practice-but we don't say 'you can't say a hammer has a purpose' if someone uses a hammer as a paperweight and not to drive nails into our pull out of wood.
As for handguns, yes, they are most critical for self defense. For the same reason, they're also most used for crime. Proposals which cede the issue entirely to one side or the other on the most important handguns seem to be strange, but perhaps you mean this to be a delay rather than permanent tabling.
As for psych evaluations or even background checks on psychiatric grounds-do you have a proposal, then, for *attempting* to limit the access of guns for the mentally ill? This actually isn't just a concern for mass shootings, but rather also because suicides are the most common form of gun deaths in our country.
How would you feel about measures mandating that if you have living in your home or on your property someone you know to have a criminally violent history (say, a brother who murdered his grandmother and did nearly 20 years for it), and you owned any sort of firearms, you would then be stepped up into a higher degree of regulation?
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Dan: Nope. But then you did convey two contradictory messages: they certainly didn't suggest merely that we make use of existing permits. It went much much further than that.
Rakeesh, that's fine, but I was specifically responding to this:
quote:Originally posted by Godric 2.0: Yeah, I see an inherent contradiction among many "hard right" lobbyists in this argument: arm teachers (teachers are state employees). Also, police state = evil. Of course, my own opinions (see above post) tend to get a lot of flack from fellow Christians especially.
In that context, I clarified that I think this is an unfair characterization of "hard-right" lobbyists.
My original response is here:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Many (Most? All?) calls to "arm teachers" are not "let's force teachers to carry guns/let's make teachers into cops."
They're saying "allow teachers who have concealed carry permits to carry in schools if they so choose." Some states already have this policy, by the way.
Whether or not teachers are federal employees, calls to allow them to concealed carry are based on their status as individual, private citizens.
If the call was to literally "arm teachers," i.e. let's force all teachers to start carrying sidearms, then I think there would actually be the cognitive dissonance Godric perceived.
To my knowledge, the NRA hasn't made that claim. Am I wrong?
Oh, I see you posted on this again....
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Particularly where the recent conversation was 'the NRA didn't actually say that' and 'well, in fact, they did in their recent press conference'.
Dan-'mandate'? No, though they did say that if we love our children as much as we love sports and money, that is in effect what we should do.
What does "in effect" mean, here? Did they say they'd like to require teachers go armed, or not?
I thought they advocated adding armed guards or something.
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If the NRA expects armed teachers to be a solution to the problem, they must expect that teachers will act as armed body guards.
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They were a bit all over the place, Dan. If you read the release again though, I think even you (by that I mean, even you with your different perspective on the matter rather than 'even you' with a sneer) will see they were advocating for more than just the use of existing school officials with permits.
But even if they were *only* suggesting what you say, there would still be an enormous dissonance because, after all, one of the chief gun rights complaints is how difficult, onerous, and unreliable it is to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and lunatics...which *necessarily* means they are advocating that the best solution is to throw an unknown number of both, armed, directly into our schools with the hopes that whatever whiz-bang training they will offer to the other teachers, janitors, cafeteria workers, and administrators will be enough.
Except there is *no reason* to suppose it will be enough. It is an absurd, offensive, stupid suggestion. They talk of banks. I wonder if the one or two armed guards in a given bank is the deterrent, or if maybe just maybe the deterrent is the certainty of a rapid and overwhelming police response tied to carefully limited (in terms of the whole bank) amounts of cash? They talk of mass shootings. How many of these end up as mass-murder/suicides? They *go into* these scenarios expecting, hoping to die. Is the possibility of death at the hands of a fellow employee (who will in no way be killed first, of course) supposed to be a deterrent?
So on and so forth. There's every reason to react to the NRA's proposal (essentially, bring it on) with scorn and rejection.
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I find the NRA to be as frustratingly, mind numbingly one sided as the Braidy anti-gun folk. Neither side is willing to compromise or discuss in good faith, and as far as I am concerned, both extremes are equally corrosive to actually getting positive change initiated.
So when discussions here just repetitive bad mouthing the NRA, I find it frustrating...it's like slamming cannibals or Michael Vick...yea, we know.
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the NRA was definitely advocating armed teachers as part of the nra solution
of course they were also advocating a volunteer system for armed school protection by just basically having people who am good at shooting sign up as school watchdogs
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: If the NRA expects armed teachers to be a solution to the problem, they must expect that teachers will act as armed body guards.
There's a difference between expecting teachers to act as armed body guards and expecting that many teachers will want to defend the children in their class.
For one thing, Kate, your assertion that any person who might choose to risk their life to save innocents is equivalent to an "armed body guard" is pretty grotesque. I think it cheapens their good motives.
Unless you think "armed body guard" is a positive appellation, and I've misread you. In which case I apologize.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: the NRA was definitely advocating armed teachers as part of the nra solution
of course they were also advocating a volunteer system for armed school protection by just basically having people who am good at shooting sign up as school watchdogs
Not only that, but as a group that has much, much power than any gun control lobbying group, their dangerous, toxic rhetoric and policy suggestions are much likelier to be listened to than the nearly no one anywhere in American politics as far from the center in the other direction as the NRA.
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"Definitely advocating armed teachers" doesn't answer my question, does it?
I get that they advocated armed teachers. What were the specifics? Did they say teachers should be required to go armed? Or that they should be allowed to?
Big difference there, in my opinion. Maybe you don't think that difference matters?
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I find the NRA to be as frustratingly, mind numbingly one sided as the Braidy anti-gun folk. Neither side is willing to compromise or discuss in good faith, and as far as I am concerned, both extremes are equally corrosive to actually getting positive change initiated.
So when discussions here just repetitive bad mouthing the NRA, I find it frustrating...it's like slamming cannibals or Michael Vick...yea, we know.
Just as long as you always make sure, when trashing ANYONE for any sort of behavior, no matter how bad, THE OTHER SIDE IS JUST AS BAD. There is not such thing as a worse side. That is clearly out of the question. Let us not consider it.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: "Definitely advocating armed teachers" doesn't answer my question, does it?
I get that they advocated armed teachers. What were the specifics? Did they say teachers should be required to go armed? Or that they should be allowed to?
Big difference there, in my opinion. Maybe you don't think that difference matters?
You're assuming "arm teachers," has a meaning beyond the knee-jerk pro-gun lobby reaction to almost anything. Teacher got shot? Arm teachers. Librarian shot? Arm librarians. The idea is not really to present a plan, per se, but to react forcefully with the idea that the solution to gun violence is a greater ubiquity of guns.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: If the NRA expects armed teachers to be a solution to the problem, they must expect that teachers will act as armed body guards.
There's a difference between expecting teachers to act as armed body guards and expecting that many teachers will want to defend the children in their class.
For one thing, Kate, your assertion that any person who might choose to risk their life to save innocents is equivalent to an "armed body guard" is pretty grotesque. I think it cheapens their good motives.
Unless you think "armed body guard" is a positive appellation, and I've misread you. In which case I apologize.
I think that being an armed guard is a perfectly honorable thing to be if you are qualified to do the job, if that is what you signed up for, and are being paid to do.Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: If the NRA expects armed teachers to be a solution to the problem, they must expect that teachers will act as armed body guards.
There's a difference between expecting teachers to act as armed body guards and expecting that many teachers will want to defend the children in their class.
For one thing, Kate, your assertion that any person who might choose to risk their life to save innocents is equivalent to an "armed body guard" is pretty grotesque. I think it cheapens their good motives.
Unless you think "armed body guard" is a positive appellation, and I've misread you. In which case I apologize.
I think that being an armed guard is a perfectly honorable thing to be if you are qualified to do the job, if that is what you signed up for, and are being paid to do.
Right. So a private citizen risking their life to defend innocent people around them is acting like an armed guard without proper training, right? So that's bad, in your book. Right?
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Yes! It can be, that's the point. Or why do we bother with all of this expensive training for soldiers and police officers if what is needed is just a private citizen willing to risk their life?
And of course once you've got the private citizen in the school with a gun (well, more than one, actually), there are only two possibilities to be considered: nothing happens in which case the gun is never needed and thus never used, or it is needed in which case it is used in a way that saves lives.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Yes! It can be, that's the point. Or why do we bother with all of this expensive training for soldiers and police officers if what is needed is just a private citizen willing to risk their life?
I didn't say that "what is needed is just a private citizen willing to risk their life"... but private citizens are there while police are still minutes away. Sometimes that can make a difference.
Especially in the case of deranged shooters, who almost always cave in and kill themselves the moment they encounter any significant threatening resistance (usually in the form of police arriving)
I think that the idea of "No, that's not your responsibility, you shouldn't do anything, leave it for the police to handle," is a totally messed up and prevalent attitude in our society. It's a way of evading responsibility.
We tend to scorn people who take this attitude when it comes to someone having a heart attack or choking to death. Or, god forbid, just having a flat tire.
But it's somehow thought to be okay when people take this attitude around shootings. Not just okay. Encouraged!
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: If the NRA expects armed teachers to be a solution to the problem, they must expect that teachers will act as armed body guards.
There's a difference between expecting teachers to act as armed body guards and expecting that many teachers will want to defend the children in their class.
For one thing, Kate, your assertion that any person who might choose to risk their life to save innocents is equivalent to an "armed body guard" is pretty grotesque. I think it cheapens their good motives.
Unless you think "armed body guard" is a positive appellation, and I've misread you. In which case I apologize.
I think that being an armed guard is a perfectly honorable thing to be if you are qualified to do the job, if that is what you signed up for, and are being paid to do.
Right. So a private citizen risking their life to defend innocent people around them is acting like an armed guard without proper training, right? So that's bad, in your book. Right?
I seem to remember a case recently involving a young unarmed teenage boy, and a man who thought he was a security guard, but had no proper training or authorization. Things ended badly.
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quote:I didn't say that "what is needed is just a private citizen willing to risk their life"... but private citizens are there while police are still minutes away. Sometimes that can make a difference.
There's that word again: 'sometimes'. Of course it's perfectly accurate if you don't qualify 'make a difference'.
quote:Especially in the case of deranged shooters, who almost always cave in and kill themselves the moment they encounter any significant threatening resistance (usually in the form of police arriving)
Would a single individual citizen be sufficient to trigger the suicide? Well, maybe. Of course, perhaps not in which case it's then a gunfight in a crowded area, which may or may not be worse than what the lunatic would've been able to manage on their own. Maybe it will give the guy a spine, having successfully murdered a gun wielding teacher, to continue fighting longer. Who knows? I sure don't.
How on Earth do you?
quote:I think that the idea of "No, that's not your responsibility, you shouldn't do anything, leave it for the police to handle," is a totally messed up and prevalent attitude in our society. It's a way of evading responsibility.
Absolutely. I'll keep this in mind when I see someone sick, and they need a complex medical procedure. My CPR classes will certainly be enough, and I know won't make things worse because responsibility.
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quote:I think that the idea of "No, that's not your responsibility, you shouldn't do anything, leave it for the police to handle," is a totally messed up and prevalent attitude in our society. It's a way of evading responsibility.
Absolutely. I'll keep this in mind when I see someone sick, and they need a complex medical procedure. My CPR classes will certainly be enough, and I know won't make things worse because responsibility.
Is there any point in conversing with you when you act like this?
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Yeah, mega snarky. But Dan, I am *certain* you are able to imagine the ways in which 'armed private citizen on the scene' might be a very good thing, or might be a very bad thing.
Except instead of having *that* conversation, the one about how do we decide if this would actually be a good thing (really the first conversation that ought to be had, or high on the list) there is a brief piety about responsibility and some limited talk about making a difference.
All of that, incidentally, is *still* before we have the conversation about what's to be done with all of the dangerous criminals, lunatics, and/or negligent gun owners this idea would unleash because we are already told *now* it is too difficult to attempt to prevent them from having guns. So now they won't even have to assault a school checkpoint (a goddamned school checkpoint), they'll be able to open fire right in the cafeteria line or library reading pit or auditorium or stadium.
Maybe one of the other gun owners will be close enough and capable enough and lucky enough. *Maybe.* But it's not open and shut!
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Right. So a private citizen risking their life to defend innocent people around them is acting like an armed guard without proper training, right? So that's bad, in your book. Right?
People who are packing heat in a school with the express purpose of being that school's vanguard against violent invaders had better damned well be officers of the law. No exceptions. None of this garbage proposed by the NRA to collect enthusiastic volunteers. None of this implicit obligation on teachers to keep guns in classrooms.
Even then, officers in schools (greatly depending on the ethical environment and culture of the district) have often ended up being more trouble than they are worth, terrorizing students and acting like goons. Districts will have to weigh the risk of lack of qualification when they consider the noble NRA proposal to have a series of geriatric NRA volunteers play home arsenal hall cowboy, as well as the absolute apocalyptic hell they will catch if an accidental gun discharge or an overzealous confrontation by a geriatric hall cowboy or whoever picked up their neglectfully unsecured gun results in anyone being injured or killed. Or what happens if a heroic armed teacher's gun gets discovered by a student and this results in a serious event, as is infinitely more likely than said gun actually successfully being used to prevent an armed intruder from killing students.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Yeah, mega snarky. But Dan, I am *certain* you are able to imagine the ways in which 'armed private citizen on the scene' might be a very good thing, or might be a very bad thing.
Thanks for acknowledging it. I can definitely imagine such scenarios.
But I do think a single, random, crazed armed person is more akin to a guy who could use some basic first aid, CPR, etc. A situation where, yes, a layperson could fail to improve the situation, but nevertheless the right move is for them to try. Because if they do nothing, things will surely keep getting worse and worse.
The analogy for someone with a complex medical problem where any inexperienced intervention could cause disaster is more like a terrorist hostage situation, or something similar. Where they aren't already killing indiscriminately, so there's a strong incentive for a careful, thoughtful, precise response.
I don't see massacre shootings like that. I'm inclined to think any action is worth taking. Because taking no action will just lead to an ever increasing body count, won't it?
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: All of that, incidentally, is *still* before we have the conversation about what's to be done with all of the dangerous criminals, lunatics, and/or negligent gun owners this idea would unleash because we are already told *now* it is too difficult to attempt to prevent them from having guns. . .
Isn't the issue more that it's hard to keep guns out of their hands because, e.g. they can take them from their friends and family?
I mean, yes, also some crazies can get past background checks. Okay. But there are way more non-crazies than there are crazies, right? So if lots of people in a school were armed, it's unreasonable to think that only crazies would be the ones armed. Isn't it?
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quote:I think that the idea of "No, that's not your responsibility, you shouldn't do anything, leave it for the police to handle," is a totally messed up and prevalent attitude in our society. It's a way of evading responsibility.
We tend to scorn people who take this attitude when it comes to someone having a heart attack or choking to death. Or, god forbid, just having a flat tire.
But it's somehow thought to be okay when people take this attitude around shootings. Not just okay. Encouraged!
Do you really honestly think that the issue about 'taking responsibility' against armed gunmen in schools is even roughly equivalent to fixing your own flat tire? Like, genuine question. Do you think the concerns about someone performing the Heimlich maneuver on a person choking on food are in any way equivalent to the concerns about what happens when a person whips out a gun in the chaos of some sort of attack? In trying to dislodge food from someone's throat or tending to someone who is presumably having a heart attack, the AED is not going to potentially blow some bystanders' head off if it is used incorrectly as an emergency response in the panic of the moment.
and if it did, there would be no public AED units and the only people allowed to use them would be qualified and tested paramedics.Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Also, a choking person isn't going to start choking another person every few seconds. They're analogies. The operative, relevant factor is whether or not it is worth it to do something or to wait passively for experts to arrive and fix everything.
Can you explain how, in the case of a massacre situation, it's actually better to do nothing? How an armed bystander fighting back is actually going to make things worse? Let's say they shoot two innocent people by accident. Okay. Did they actually make that situation worse?Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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If you make the school impenetrable the would-be shooter goes somewhere else. And there's a point in that having a wealth of guns could lead to a bad level of accessibility. You relocate one tragedy and you risk creating another; having a police officer makes more sense.
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Yes, they're analogies -- the issue being that they're so detached from being relevant comparisons that it brings up questions that they are even brought up at all.
quote:Let's say they shoot two innocent people by accident. Okay. Did they actually make that situation worse?
Yes. They shot two innocent people by accident.
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That said, there are armed security present on every Junior College campus I've ever been to, and I've never seen anyone of them terrorize students or act like goons but I'm not sure what that would look like.
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Yeah, it really depended on where your school was and what your precinct was like. We had police officers on duty every day at my high school and they were great. Combine anecdote from all around the nation, though, and people's school patrol police experiences are filled with reliably terrible stories.
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Well then I advocate the outsourcing of all of these posts, to the law officers of my great home, the profound intellectual paradise of Orange County. We have are shit together.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Can you explain how, in the case of a massacre situation, it's actually better to do nothing? How an armed bystander fighting back is actually going to make things worse? Let's say they shoot two innocent people by accident. Okay. Did they actually make that situation worse?
I feel like you're not really trying. I mean seriously?
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quote:Originally posted by umberhulk: That said, there are armed security present on every Junior College campus I've ever been to, and I've never seen anyone of them terrorize students or act like goons but I'm not sure what that would look like.
Junior College != public high school, elementary school, etc.
There are entire police departments on some college campuses. They are dealing with a population of adults.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Can you explain how, in the case of a massacre situation, it's actually better to do nothing? How an armed bystander fighting back is actually going to make things worse? Let's say they shoot two innocent people by accident. Okay. Did they actually make that situation worse?
I feel like you're not really trying. I mean seriously?
"Trying?" I'm being sincere, if that's what you mean.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Let's say they shoot two innocent people by accident. Okay. Did they actually make that situation worse?
Yes. They shot two innocent people by accident.
Did that make things worse? First of all, what if in so doing they also stop the shooter and save X number of further victims?
What if, during the time it took the shooter to engage and kill this person, he would have otherwise killed 4 other victims? Then they saved 2 people.
We can play games like that all day, and in countless scenarios the numbers work one way, or the other. Approaching the scenario from a perspective of numbers is fundamentally flawed for that reason.
Trying to stop the shooter creates more opportunities to stop the violence, though. It's an attempt at a solution. It has the potential to save many lives. If a particular implementation is done imperfectly, and causes collateral damage, that doesn't mean that the idea is flawed.
Hell, what's the substantive moral difference between such a bystander trying to stop a shooter and a cop trying to stop a shooter? Likelihood of success, maybe. But is that a moral difference?
Is it wrong for a fat and out of shape cop to try and stop a shooter, because he's less skilled than a young cop in top fighting trim?
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Can you explain how, in the case of a massacre situation, it's actually better to do nothing? How an armed bystander fighting back is actually going to make things worse? Let's say they shoot two innocent people by accident. Okay. Did they actually make that situation worse?
I feel like you're not really trying. I mean seriously?
"Trying?" I'm being sincere, if that's what you mean.
You're not putting forth much an effort from where I'm sitting. If you can't acknowledge the rich shades of grey between a massacre situation and the average tuesday, and then think long and hard about what having guns in people's pockets or around their ankles, in a school, day after day, for years, everywhere, means in practical terms, then you aren't giving this your full attention.
Because a question like that, one in which you define all the terms, for the specific purpose of impeaching an argument against allowing guns in school, *still* reeks of shoddy thinking. Could a bystander with a gun make a massacre situation worse? Yes. They could.
But here's the part where even asking such a dumb question isn't trying very hard: Could a bystander with a gun make the average tuesday worse? Also yes. They could.
Now, what do we know about the statistical likelihood of the latter over the former? Conveniently we are aware that the latter is overwhelmingly more likely. I am aware that is not a fact that the NRA nor you find convenient to your thinking. But it remains so.
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quote:Is it wrong for a fat and out of shape cop to try and stop a shooter, because he's less skilled than a young cop in top fighting trim?
No, but that's not really the question at all.
quote:We can play games like that all day, and in countless scenarios the numbers work one way, or the other. Approaching the scenario from a perspective of numbers is fundamentally flawed for that reason.
Then why play games and ask questions like that? You're denouncing your own game after you play it.
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I think we call that an appeal to incredulity based on appeals to anecdote. Basically he's saying the argument is null because the way *he* approaches the argument is flawed. That's very interesting.
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Sam, by saying that he made the situation worse because his attempt to stop it cost lives, you are playing that game. That's my point.
Or is it also wrong if a bystander tries to stop a shooter and succeeds without killing anyone else?
The reason you said the one scenario is wrong is because you're thinking about the situation the wrong way. That's what I was illustrating above.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I think we call that an appeal to incredulity based on appeals to anecdote. Basically he's saying the argument is null because the way *he* approaches the argument is flawed. That's very interesting.
You made ridiculous assertions about me a page ago, and when it was spelled out that you were wrong, you vanished. Now you come back just in time to continue the same tactic. Sigh. Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Hmm? Oh, no. You got all huffy about having used an incorrectly formatted source as the basis of an interpretation, which was wrong anyway. And then you expected everyone else to look at your source when addressing what you said, to explain why it was wrong. What am I going to do? Make you see how stupid you looked? I thought you didn't want to dwell on it, but I guess you did.
By the way, nice ad hom -you don't want to talk about why your arguments are stupid, so you need to talk about why the person telling you they're stupid is a mean person. I am a mean person, but your arguments would be just as stupid if I weren't the one saying so. Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Hmm? Oh, no. You got all huffy about having used an incorrectly formatted source as the basis of an interpretation, which was wrong anyway. And then you expected everyone else to look at your source when addressing what you said, to explain why it was wrong. What am I going to do? Make you see how stupid you looked? I thought you didn't want to dwell on it, but I guess you did.
No, the source was formatted perfectly fine. You still haven't cared enough about the conversation you're participating in to look at readily available facts. You're intellectually lazy.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: By the way, nice ad hom -you don't want to talk about why your arguments are stupid, so you need to talk about why the person telling you they're stupid is a mean person. I am a mean person, but your arguments would be just as stupid if I weren't the one saying so.
Was there something substantive that I didn't respond to?
In my response to Sam I already explained that I wasn't saying what you claimed I was saying. What more response did you want?
It was a meta comment, not ad hominem.
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Dan...you keep tangling with the most sarcastic, caustic, right fighters the 'rack has to offer and seem to be surprised when they play dirty pool.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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You're right that this is playing games. What you don't appear to recognize, or perhaps rather recognize intermittently, is that just as the objections you're hearing are founded in what-ifs, so too is the initial suggestion of armed teachers, cafeteria workers, administrators, and so on. It's far from a proven point that even if we are *only* to consider mass shootings, and completely ignore the much deadlier and more common ordinary sorts of crime, that having all of these armed people in a situation is likely, overall, to serve as an improvement. It's a faith-based argument on your part, but you're objecting to faith -based rebuttals as 'games'.
I'm not sure why you think this double-standard should pass without remark, since the reasons you explain for why it should are profoundly strange. Responsibility? Flat tires? What the heck? How can one possibly look at gun violence in this country, so much absurdly higher than anywhere else in the developed world, and think that the insights it gives us into American character is that we don't show enough responsibility by trying to intervene in mass shootings? Responsibility? The best, most effective responsibility is proactive and preventative, but in this country it is a bitter political fight that requires dozens of bodies on the ground to even *begin* to *contemplate* more of a preventative approach. Responsibility, indeed.
quote:Trying to stop the shooter creates more opportunities to stop the violence, though. It's an attempt at a solution. It has the potential to save many lives. If a particular implementation is done imperfectly, and causes collateral damage, that doesn't mean that the idea is flawed.
You're speaking as though 'trying to stop the shooter' has only one general outcome: an opportunity to stop the shooter, whether successful or not. There are all sorts of 'games' that can be played with this outlook, but to pivot in a different direction: again, why are the only two courses you're entertaining here 'wait passively and do nothing' or 'attack the shooter'? Why isn't, say, 'break a window and start tossing kids out of it' a possibility? Or 'hide kids in cabinets and make a huge racket in a different direction'? Or 'attempt to use delaying talk'? Or something like that? I'm not suggesting these as ideal, I'm only highlighting just how much you're skipping over that might also, in fact, save lives...without having the dubious virtue of heroically taking down the shooter in one badass swoop. The choices you've put out there, whether you intended them to be inclusive or not, are literally 'apathetic cowering' or 'aggressive self-defense'.
Another thing to note: actual professionals don't generally seem too thrilled at the notion of civilians trying to intervene with violence in armed confrontations. Mass shootings are unique in many ways, but it's something to remember.
All of that aside, you *still* seem to be sidestepping almost entirely-though the conversation is moving fast now, and if I missed it please point me appropriately-the problem of what we're going to do about the higher likelihood of violence all of these extra lethal tools of violence will offer. Or the very real problem of what it means if murderous lunatics have a way to legally carry firearms where they couldn't before, to say nothing of negligence or even tragic accidents that happen in spite of proper diligence.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by umberhulk: That said, there are armed security present on every Junior College campus I've ever been to, and I've never seen anyone of them terrorize students or act like goons but I'm not sure what that would look like.
Junior College != public high school, elementary school, etc.
There are entire police departments on some college campuses. They are dealing with a population of adults.
Don't think that would make a substantial difference, as to whether or not they 'terrorize students'. But that might depend on your interpretation of that term, so...
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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