Seems somebody at the Miami Herald wants you dead
 

...And his name is Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Leonard Pitts

He seems to think it would not be a good idea, in the case of schools coming under attack by crazy murderers as in Columbine or the Amish schoolhouse, to do anything at all to give the school a chance to defend itself until the heavy artillery of SWAT can come up.

It is a sorrowful thing to contemplate arming teachers and staff against assailants and multiple murderers, true. But how much sadder is it to be in a schoolroom -- supposed to be a place of safety, of personal growth -- and obliged to submit to murder to suit the whims of an editorial writer -- who isn't in the same room with you, getting murdered?

Shouldn't we have more options, aimed at actually saving innocent lives, than this?

How often do people come to school armed, wave a gun around, and not end up shooting people?

Or: How often does someone confront unarmed innocents with a gun and it end peacefully?

How do the peaceful ends compare with the violent ones, in terms of frequency?

How many of those would still end peacefully, if it became a standoff or a hostile confrontation?

There should be options, yes; but is escalation the only one?

School shootings are predominately a phenomenon of contemporary America -- they existed previously, and they exist elsewhere, but we have more. Shouldn't we address the root causes (what makes people want to shoot up our schools), rather than the symptoms (them, armed, in a school)?

When an armed crazy shows up, there is no time to consider "escalation." He's done all the escalation there can be, as it's now life and death. There is only time to consider his neutralization. He does not have to survive the neutralization process, period. Dead perp = instant deescalation. Surrendered perp, likewise. And that is what we want.

Address the root causes? There is but one: mental illness. You can't pass a law against insanity; our entire legal theory militates against that.

What's the solution? Arm all teachers? More guns? Only in the US and A...

Armed guards in some of the schools couldn't stop the school killers, they were first to die.

Like Skunks said; root the cause, not the symptoms. More guns will only increase the problems.

This thread title is highly suggestive, Rush Limbaugh, Micheal Moore and Al Gore could learn from UG...

I highly doubt he knows me, let alone has enough against me to want me dead.

I dont buy it. He's stupid, but that doesnt mean he wants me dead. Youre stupid and you dont want me dead, right?

I'm just going down the list of my elementary school teachers imagining each of them packin' heat and bustin' a cap in some perp's ass.

:)

:biggrin:

:lol:
:biglaugha

:lol2:

Yeah, UG, that's a bright idea. Let's trade intermittant school shootings for (IMHO) what will turn out to be much more common teachers shooting students, parents, or other teachers. Instead of "go to the office" it'll be "bang, you're dead". :shotgun:

I was at my field experience elementary school this morning (yes I'm going to school to be a special ed. teacher) thinking about this very issue.. I saw Frank on the news a couple weeks ago. I don't get why we don't have more passive defenses against armed in truders. Not just one entrance thats away from all the classrooms, but having reinforced doors on all the classrooms that swing out into the hall (so you can't kick them in), and replace the glass in the doors' windows with bulletproof glass. So in the event of an armed intruder, the teachers can gather as many kids as they can into their classrooms, and lock the doors creating an instant saferoom for those 30+ kids. If all the chickens are safe inside a cage, the fox can't kill any.

I know its not a solution that will solve all the possible school shooting scenarios, but I think it is a simple way to greatly protect our students against an armed intruder. Having guns in the school will only create an amatuer hour shootout with bullets flying everywhere.

M16's, grenades and tactical nukes in every American classroom! No half measures! After all, its for the children.

I havent seen you around a whole lot lately, where ya been Elspode?

Next on CBS...The Afterschool (38) Special

It IS pretty funny when you imagine your former teachers pulling out a colt and shooting some perp right between the eyes. In third grade, I had an elderly teacher nearing retirement. I don't think her hands would have had the strength to pull the trigger. She would probably have revoked the guy's library privileges - her favorite punishment for us kids.

In 9th grade I had a Latin teacher who was rather plump and nearing 60. I can't imagine her whipping out a Colt, either. The intruder would probably have been given an extra ten pages of Cicero to translate.

Armed teachers are just NOT the answer.

Bullit's idea make more sense.

Going from what I've seen firsthand at my old high school, giving teachers guns is just about the worst thing you can do in this case. People've pulled guns at football games and stuff there before, and more than once some 'gangstaz' have tried to jump the school cop for his gun. They end up hurt and in jail, but a cop's a cop and a teacher's a teacher.

At the school, there was always one and at most two guns at the school, both in possesion of cops, and not little cops either, we're talking serious toughs here. But if the teachers had guns, that's be a scores of guns. And the more guns there are, the more chances for a thug or asshole to get his hands on one. And sooner or later, one will.

Why sneak a gun in when the teachers already have 'em for ya?

Silliest damn thing. I found out I had a life. Whoda thunk it? :D

Just been busy at work and at home. I should be working right now, but I'm horribly unmotivated. Also, it is 82 degrees in my office, but only 45 degrees outside, and I find that wearying.

Hey, look at what UG's saying. When an ARMED CRAZY shows up, trouble. Fine. I buy that.

And his second point: Mental illness as the root cause. I buy that too.

Now, let's check his math. Since he's right that we can't legislatively prohibit crazyness, making a law against being crazy will not help here. I buy that too. I mean, let's face it. We're all capable of being crazy, acting crazy, driven crazy, agreed? So how can we prevent this combustible combination from endangering our children in school? We all carry within us latent crazy, but we are not all armed.

You might go crazy at any minute of the day, but you have to CHOOSE to bring a gun to school. Yes, people, the only controllable factor is the choice to arm yourself at school. You don't want trouble from armed crazies? Don't arm them. Don't do anything to diminish the distance between the arming and and the crazy. Like having many guns in the school. I bet UG really, really does believe this is a good idea. That's why I can't talk to him. There is NO middle ground. No common language. No shared understanding of how the world works to permit communication. Our universes are disjoint. They're not even parallel, since they don't point in the same direction; they're skew. He would say I'm skewed, I say he's skewed, the point is open to discussion. But by arming the teachers, it is our kids who will be skrewed.

My schools are Weapons-Free Zones. It will stay that way.

You must be kidding. Nothing will even be considered along those lines until somebody finally walks into CONGRESS and starts blazing away. There should be no shortage of volunteers for this honor. THEN we will see more "investigations" and legislation then we've had in the last 50 years :rolleyes:

Tonchi-

Yes, but I suspect more than a couple would include suggestions to permit senators and representatives to carry concealed weapons. ;)

UG-

I have had no training in the handling of firearms, or in how to behave around people who are armed, or in how to know when to use a firearm that you do have. But here is my thought: If someone in the room with you is armed and crazy, and you pull out your gun, that provides an immediate threat against them. It changes the armed crazy into an armed, threatened crazy. Which I rate as an individual with a higher chance of acting violently. They have an imminent need to act; that is, to shoot you. Escalation.

"Mental illness" is not, by any definition, singular. It is a broad concept.

And no, you cannot legislate against 'it'. But you can mitigate it, prevent it, treat it, study it, understand it.


I support that.

Sign me up!

(That was a Joke to anyone from Homeland Security who is reading this :worried: )

You can try but that's exactly the reason these wackos are drawn to schools...... gun free, safe environment to act out their fantasies.

Arm Willie the Janitor so he doesn't have to rely on his bagpipes. ;)

With this logic, EVERYBODY should have a gun?

I remember Saddam gave thousands AK47's away in Iraq just before the invasion. See the carnage that's happening now.

Obviouly the guns caused it, since there were no problems in Iraq before then.

Not "EVERYBODY" should have a gun...criminals should be excluded. And people who aren't willing or able to handle their weapons responsibly. Beyond that it should be a matter of personal choice.

Russell Eugene Weston Jr tried on July 24, 1998

What do you think it caused? Smoking waterpipes? 300-600.000 people died in Iraq the last 3 years, of which 70% due to internal violence. This is much more than during Saddam times.

The US has the highest gun related deaths. Do you really think distributing more guns will lower that figure?

As I mentioned before Canada has about the same gun possession, yet much lower gun related death. Something to think about.

Oh, come on. After spending billions of dollars on a failed gun registry they have "about the same gun posession"? Spare me.

The current violence in Iraq has zero to do with Saddam passing out AKs to the civilans and everything to do with decades of Baathist tyrrany and oppression. It's mostly Sunnis trying to get back the dominance they had and Shiites trying to make sure that doesn't happen. And both of them feel religiously justified because the "other guys" are kufar.

If you think it wouldn't be happening if Saddam hadn't passed out small arms you're deluding yourself. Weapons don't cause violence any more than matches cause arson; that's an animistic superstition. People with violent intent commit violence.

If you disagree with my opinion....schools, being gun free zones, are a safe place to raise hell.....tell me why these wackos rarely chose police stations or military bases for their terrorizing?
Please note I did not say give everyone a gun or that schools should not be gun free zones.......except for arming Willie the janitor. ;)

# For 1987-96, on average, 65% of homicides in the U.S. involved firearms, compared to 32% for Canada
# For 1987-96, the average firearm homicide rate was 5.7 per 100,000 in the U.S., compared to 0.7 per 100,000 for Canada.
# For 1989-95, the average handgun homicide rate was 4.8 per 100,000 in the U.S., compared to 0.3 per 100,000 for Canada. Handguns were involved in more than half (52%) of the homicides in the U.S., compared to 14% in Canada.

I ask you again: do you think distributing more guns will decrease gun related deaths?

So, what do YOU think happened with the thousands AK47 that Saddam passed out? They use it only on New Years Eve? Read this:
Yeah, there are plenty of these platitudes. I guess you use the infamous Ted Kennedy quote the next post, or how about this one: "Guns only have two enemies: rust and totalitarians", or "Know guns...know peace, know safety", you're free to use them.

Post offices are not gun free zones, are they? ;)

The theory is that if you're pulling out your gun, you are also half a second away from pulling the trigger on the armed crazy. The armed crazy might take hostages or just wave the gun around, but the law-abiding gun owner doesn't pull it out unless it's time to shoot right now.

Yes, they are. At least that's the theory, according to one postal regulation. There's another that appears to create a conflict in the case of "for a lawful purpose", which is the case with most school victim disarmament zone laws too.

Kinda funny...when my dad was postal worker in the 1930's-1940's, he was issued a revolver sidearm. That was before he became a clergyman...

Which as you point out is pretty stupid -- he's not thinking things through.

Not quite right: I'm smart and don't want you dead. For a small instance, I spell don't better than you do, consistently. My writing is thus that much clearer than yours -- you've got this little problem -- a solecism, yes -- with contractions. You ought to know better, so see to it, and no bellyachin'.

A child might think he ought to call me stupid when he can't write so hot -- but kid: I crossed puberty, mmm... 37 years ago.

And let's not forget the Puerto Rican separatists who shot up Congress during the Truman Administration.

(Having a normal memory rules! (But antigunners call a normal memory "paranoia" -- I've heard it done.))

Oh, riiiiight, Spexx: go and find for me the overwhelming slaughters that occurred every week and twice on Sundays during the decades before "gun control" laws started making things safer for bandits and murderous madmen!

I'm waaaaiiiitinnnnng......


...tap tap tap...

...you're a rager against self defense, you know...

... tap tap tap...

Couldn't find any proof of that fantasy, could you now?

Antigunners tend to have fantasies of this kind, and have them a lot.* Gunners don't. Seems antigunners have murder crawling around in their hearts -- however passivated. They're shifting the killing in these fantasies onto some "other."

Everyone's got an opinion -- but please, is an informed opinion (one Spexx manifestly does not have) too much to ask?

*Raging Against Self Defense lays out an explanation of the underlying motivations of the anti-self-defense claque. Fearfulness and a frantic rage, revenge fantasies and a desire to kill that the fantasizer cannot accept as coming from himself come into the explanation a lot. The antigunners suppress only with difficulty this boiling urge to kill. Gun people, by contrast, don't have these nightmares.

Yeah, sure, V.

And submitting to murder is a good idea. That is at bottom what you're telling me.

If that's true in your universe, you should trade it in on a better model.

So wait, because I'm too lazy to put in an apostrophe in words that as far as I'm concerned dont need it, it A.) invalidates my entire post and B.) proves that youre smart?

What?

Smart enough to have a decent respect for the forms of my mother tongue AND a more informed opinion about what words need it, yes. The loudly antigrammarian -- well, it's the empty pot that sounds the loudest, isn't it?

And its laziness in/less-than rigorous idea formation that would invalidate an entire post.

Maturity in part consists of knowing when something is a lost cause, and whether that's the hill you want to die on. There's also this continuing effort to shift the issue from the topic to the issue being me. Invalid.

I raised a very valid and very TRUE point, that you ignored. I'll post it again.

Anywayz, spelling nazis are usually trolls and hardly ever mature...

Is MaggieL trying to avoid my question: "I ask you again: do you think distributing more guns will decrease gun related deaths?"

I think more armed citizens reduces violent crime of all kinds.

I refuse to conflate being armed with being violent, because I know they're not the same thing...no matter how much those already disarmed by their state (or looking to have the state disarm others) try to muddy that water.

I also don't accept the proposition that all "gun-related deaths" (whatever that vagueness actually means) are ipso facto bad things. If all "gun related deaths" were bad, then all police should be immediately disarmed. Total nonsense.

If some violent criminals are killed as a result of more responsible citizens being armed, I call that a win. I suspect it would result in fewer shooting deaths overall, because a criminal violent enough to cause one innocent death will probably be responsible for more than one if left at large.

Therefore every spectator in an NFL stadium must be required to carry a concealed weapon as you do. Anyone who does not have a gun will be provided one. Then no crimes would occur. Therefore no deaths would occur. Therefore no players on the field need fear for their life. That is what MaggieL and Urbane Guerrilla both claim. Who believes this and who has real serious doubts?

In your logic the US and A should be the country with the least gun related deaths in the world. Please explain why it isn't the fact.
Most regions in the world did advanced socially after the Wild West and French Revolution. Obviously you're born in a wrong era.
Your expectation proves wrong, time and again...

There's a lot going on in my universe. What's NOT going on in it is this: Unarmed teachers in schools is submitting to murder.:crazy:

Do you read your own posts? Can you hear what you're saying? Do you seriously contend that failing to arm teachers is submitting to murder? That can not be true. I am not impressed, much less intimidated by your hysterics. You're ridiculous. You're a clown. You say something dumb and then try to frighten, insult and harass people to try to defend it. Your tools are bombast, paranoia, obfuscation and oversimplification. You'd be better off if you'd just admit your mistake and we'll all move on. Until that happens, I'll remain annoyed and amused by your buffoonery.

:notworthy

Oh, riiiiight, Urb: go and find for me the kind of student behavior currently going on in schools that occurred every week and twice on Sundays during the decades before "gun control" laws started making things safer for bandits and murderous madmen!

I'm waaaaiiiitinnnnng......

... tap tap tap...

Couldn't find any proof of that fantasy, could you now?

Times have changed, old man. I think you're on the "m" of Alzheimer's. Get informed.

Which is it, Maggie? Does more guns reduce violent crime? Or does it mean there is only "good", alleged violent criminals getting killed?

Now you're coming across as a "arm yourself, but don't shoot" supporter.

You keep trying to conflate "gun related deaths" with violent crime against innocents.

How many of your "gun related deaths" are two drug dealers shooting at each other over money or territory? Who won't be deterred because "guns are illegal" any more than they are by "drugs are illegal"?

Not everyone at an NFL game is legally eligible to posess a firearm.

How about you, tw? Don't dodge this question again: are you eligible to posess a firearm, or do you just want to disarm everybody else?

Remeber involuntary mental committments or felony records make you ineligible.

Depends on how many people are slack and bad parents and leave out a loaded gun. No different than leaving ammonia or drain-o out where a kid can drink it... should we outlaw that too?
With guns there is NEVER just this once or I'll just get this call... NEVER.

Total bullshit story...which has already changed several times. The victim's nine-year-old brother was in the room; you'll have trouble convincing me he wasn't the triggerman.

Bad parents? In Philly? I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Does that change the point? Your fantasyland where only good, sensible, law-abiding, pacifist, dead-eye, safety conscious, folks with perfect judgement will have guns is a farce. Criminals will have guns and kill innocents. Children will get hold of guns and kill innocents. Legal gun owners will have accidents, and use poor judgement, and become criminal and kill innocents. Insane people will get guns and kill innocents. All this so that You can have your gun - but not use it unless.....well.... you won't say. Others have said that they would be able to accurately judge when a situation becomes life-threatening, and use their gun successfully to save their lives and/or the lives of their family. But they wouldn't shoot too soon, and kill an innocent. Sorry. That is BULLSHIT! Either you are prudent, and the aggressor gets the drop on you, or you're going to kill somebody that means you no harm. You can't be perfect all the time.

The only way to stop all this weapon related killing would be to remove handguns from the environment. When you say that some killing is good and cite drug dealer vs drug dealer, I maintain that this type of killing would probably continue. It seems to me that these folks would not blanch at stabbing or bludgeoning their victim.

Yeah, you (and I mean only you) would think that this doesn't happen in Gladwyn, huh?

What about the pot full of nitroglycerin? I mean, assuming that you have to rap the pot sharply to get it to produce any sound at all, wouldn't the resulting explosion be rather louder than the mere ring of an empty pot? I mean, I'm just askin'...

So... what do you do with people with pools?

They wouldn't be allowed to have kids, or have any company over, or go in their own backyard?

LOL... no shit. Should we cane them?

Exactly why I want to keep my guns, despite your warm-fuzzy do-gooder rant...because their victims aren't always other addicts; sometimes they're comitting robbery, rape, or burglary.

OK...how many three-year-olds shot themselves in Gladwyne this year?

I let my son use his trike with no helmet...
Rob = eeeebbbilllll!

You're overlooking the fact that the pot is in the process of emptying itself. By the time you heard the noise, it's empty.

Besides, the original catchphrase involves kettles, as I recall. :-)