…But…but he’s got an anecdote!
There’s a number of good points made in that article, but IMO the best one comes at the end of this passage (helpfully bolded):
No, I don’t think the students got anything they wanted, or will at any point in the foreseeable future.
The other day I went to a shooting range to practice pistol marksmanship. I had never been there before. This was in a diverse, metropolitan area, by the way, not out in Hicksville. Upon walking in I was astonished by two things:
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The place was insanely professional looking. It was like a high-end golf pro shop, for guns. AR and AK type rifles lined the walls, along with every accessory imaginable, all presented, again, like a pro shop or some kind of high-end music store.
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There were numerous minorities and women there, including (I think) the owner, who was black. There were also numerous white conservative-veteran looking types. Everyone was carrying on in a friendly spirit of companionship, which I was not expecting at all. Nobody was side-eying the black guy with an AR-15 over his shoulder. Everyone was dressed well and I didn’t even see any MAGA hats.
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The place was packed.
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I bought a membership there immediately. All I’m interested in doing is the same rifle and pistol marksman shooting I’ve always done, not any “tacticool” shit, although they do seem to offer classes in self defense or tactical shooting. (Sadly they don’t have a shotgun range for clays.)
If this is the state of firearms ownership where I live, I can only imagine how it is in the Bible Belt, the South, Texas, etc. These weapons and the right to own them is simply too firmly embedded into America’s culture, and the people who oppose it have only a tiny fraction of the will to fight for changing it as its proponents do of the right to keep it. This is life in America today and I suggest that the Democrats, of which I am a registered voter, just leave it the fuck alone and focus on the economy if they want to ever be elected.
An aside: a good place for stats regarding police fatalities is nleomf.org, the National Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial Fund website. Specifically:
Officer deaths by year
Causes of officer deaths over the past decade
Current year preliminary statistics
The numbers for specific causes of LEO deaths bounce around from year to year like a major-league knuckleball. Even with deaths from all causes combined, it’s best to look at a five-year moving average than to draw conclusions based on a single year.
That said, being a police officer is an occupation that’s been gradually getting safer for a long time. In 2013-2017, 716 police officers were killed on the job. In 1961-1965, 713 were.
One problem at Parkland is that some of the students have become celebrities off this which can have its downsides.
Downsides? You mean like having people that listen to you when you speak or read stuff that you wrote because they are interested in your opinion on this one topic?
One downside is that idiots on the Internet will poke fun at you for not getting into UCLA despite a 4.2 GPA. Of course, for that to be a real downside, you’d have to care.
Well what about the other kids who were also in the line of fire who dont have speaking contracts now?
Yeah, I think on the whole the Parkland survivors would prefer to have their friends still alive.
So no downsides then? You were just talking out of your ass in that other post?
What about them? Not everyone who has been involved in a horrific event wants to become a public figure. Respect their choices and privacy.
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Thanks for your “concern”; read here about “the other kids who were also in the line of fire who dont have speaking contracts now”.
If they really wanted to preserve each others’ lives they’d advocate raising the driving age to 21. But that’s just how most people think: MY liberty is worth dying for, YOURS is not. That’s what lesson the clear backpacks teach: they’ve lost a rather small amount of privacy in the interests of keeping them safer and many of them think it’s too much. So now they’ve learned something about liberty vs. security.
Or perhaps they’ve learned that security theater is feel-good nonsense that doesn’t address any actual issues of security.
Love the implication that they don’t “really” want to “preserve each others’ lives” BTW. Classy.
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Pretty much, right? Meanwhile we’ve had ANOTHER school shooting.
Can you explain how clear backpacks would have prevented either the parkland shooting, or the more recent one in texas?
If not, can you explain how having clear backpacks is supposed to be any sort of response to the student’s polite request that they be protected from being gunned down in their schools?
Do they want to give up their driving privileges? Didn’t think so. Of course they want to preserve each others’ lives, just not at any liberty cost to themselves.
The proposed gun control measures wouldn’t have stopped any school shootings either. But clear backpacks do solve another serious problem at schools: not mass shooters, but everyday thugs bringing guns and knives to school. So it does make them safer.
how does it stop kids from bringing guns to school?
Proposed gun control measures are to raise the age of buying a gun to 21. That would have prevented the shooting. Proposed gun control measure is to be allowed to take guns away from people that haven’t been convicted of a crime, but are demonstrated to be lets say, mentally imbalanced. That would have prevented the shooting.
Some less accepted proposed measures of requiring certification and a license to own these types of guns would have prevented the shooting.
Other more extreme proposed measures like completely banning the sale of these style guns, or even of all guns would have prevented the shooting.
Now, you are correct in that the actual measures proposed by lawmakers with the power to implement them wouldn’t have prevented the shooting, but insulting the students because lawmakers can’t do their job isn’t really what they were asking for either.