Thank you for restating clearly what I’ve been trying to get across from the beginning.
Airman Doors: Rest assured I’m not a wild-eyed, paranoid, wacko. 
I’m just someone who believes very strongly that people should be armed.
I assume (but might be wrong) that SWAT teams approach a hostage situation differently when the attacker is armed with a hammer, compared to an attacker with a gun?
I would have thought that - given the choice - a law enforcement professional would prefer to deal with a hammer-wielding nutter, instead of a gun-wielding nutter?
Plus you can kill more children more quickly with guns vs hammers.
Dunblane - 16 dead (gun)
St. Lukes - 7 injured (machete)
Both attackers intended to kill, only one succeeded.
Then Tomcat was arguing your point.
So, in that context, am I to blame for assuming you meant all teachers?
Still, please cite?
I think that it is not a good idea to have armed teachers. I think it would lead to problems with the teacher’s gun being taken and also suggest to kids that a gun is the answer to their problems.
It’s clear from this thread (and many previous) that there is a massive cultural difference between the US and the UK. We have almost complete gun bans and unarmed beat police. Our reaction to school violence is to ban weapons, not arm teachers.
I can’t help wondering if the constant sight of guns on US TV etc makes troubled teenagers think they need a gun to be a man. And if reports of school shootings give them the idea to do it themselves.
Why are guns ‘damn handy’?
As for your other points, I agree it would be a nightmare task to get rid of millions of guns. However the Constitution has been amended before.
Shouldn’t reasonable, moral human beings consider the possibility that school shooting will continue whilst guns are legal?
.
Here’s an unarmed English heroine:
‘Lisa Potts, GM is a former nursery teacher who was injured in 1996 while protecting children in her St Luke’s Primary School class in Wolverhampton, West Midlands from a machete attack by a paranoid schizophrenic. Her arm was almost severed in the attack and four children were injured. She was awarded the George Medal and her attacker, Horrett Campbell, was subsequently jailed for life.’
I’d rather have her teaching than Crafter_Man’s armed ideal.
I didn’t make the joke in the first place, so spare me. And you obviously don’t understand the basic difference between “literal” and “figurative” if you’re still harping on it. Jesus, are you retarded or are you just so blindly partisan on this issue that you can’t even discuss it like an adult?
Or are you just upset because you like to have the same cowboy fantasy as Crafter_Man and you don’t like being reminded that it’s not real?
Your point is well-taken, but what do you intend to do? Solve the problem of human violence once and for all? Some people do violent acts. Some of them were horribly abused as children. Some of them have chemical problems in their brains that make them unable to control violent impulses. And some people, in my frank opinion, are just born bad. The root causes of violence are important, and obviously that’s something all human societies need to examine - if there’s anything we can do to prevent people from becoming so broken, we should do it.
But that’s not sufficient. We can’t fix every broken person. We don’t know how. There have always been violent criminals, and they will remain for the foreseeable future. Figuring this out would basically solve every human problem - if we can figure out why people do things like this and fix them so they don’t want to, there’s nothing we won’t be able to accomplish. But I’m not content to just sit back and wait for the most fundamental problems of human existence to be solved. We may one day figure out why people become violent, or criminal, or sociopathic - but that’s a long way off, and meanwhile, we have to live in the real world.
It’s funny how, when this issue comes up, the right wing suddenly wants to start talking about what society does to create criminals. Don’t you guys normally claim that’s for bleeding-heart liberals?
Me? I intend to be in a funk all day. Maybe tomorrow too.
There are a myriad of reasons, most of which involve some sort of personal defense, others involving sporting purposes.
I totally agree. Now, if you would acknowledge that the same possibility exists when guns are illegal we can reach some sort of mutual understanding on that point and get past it because it’s essentially meaningless.
The gun genie is out of the bottle. We will never be able to put the genie back in as long as we value competent machinists and chemists and people have the desire to have a weapon, legal or not. Gun rights people have said this numerous times and for some reason there is this steadfast refusal to admit what is self-evident. Until everybody can agree that the ideal is both good and meaningless we’ll continue to talk past each other.
You’re right. If guns have to be made one at a time in secret basement shops, it’s undeniable that criminals will have just as many of them, while the rest of us will be left completely helpless.
Or wait, no, actually, it’s just still more gun rhetoric based on ridiculous fantasies!
Isn’t it possible that the prevalence of guns is not really the cause of school violence, but that both are actually a symptom of the same problem?
What you do with guns, or lack thereof in your own country is of little concern to me (well, a little, my parents spend a lot of time in the US and I have some relatives there). The idea of all teachers made to carry guns (well the idea came from the The Lone Ranger) is, IMHO, absolutely stupid.
I reject out of hand your willful inability to address my point, and I note that even as you scold me for being “retarded” and/or “blindly partisan” on the basis of being sick of hearing a joke you attack me with the same joke on two separate occasions.
Do you actually have anything to say on the matter, or are you just here to hurl insults and make ad hominem attacks?
The whole situation is just horrible, no question about it. Sometimes shit happens and there isn’t a one sentence solution.
Because it doesn’t happen that often, really all you can do is lock the doors and hope for the best. This guy was insane, had emotional problems, was batshit crazy. Take your pick of what word you want to use. There have always been people like this and there always will be. It can’t be solved with guns/ no guns.
If someone want to kill kids they could have set fire to the school, used dynamite or done it in a hundred other ways that didn’t involve a gun, and couldn’t be prevented by having a gun.
Sometimes there just isn’t a solution. You could do more with mental health care, make it harder to get guns, or arm teachers and stuff like this will still happen.
We know that guns aren’t going anywhere and you’ll never get most teachers to carry guns. Short of giving everyone in the country a psych exam you can’t weed out the crazies. The only thing you can do is make schools a little more secure and even that isn’t that effective.
Are you accusing me again of having referred to “wank fantasies”? Because I still haven’t done so. (If not, you need to find a writing tutor, because you are having a difficult time writing comprehensibly here.)
I will quite cheerfully agree that gun owners do not masturbate while holding a gun in their other hand and moaning, “I’m a big man! I’m a big man!” over and over again. At least in general. Your having freaked out about the figurative use of the phrase “wank fantasy” suggests you probably do feel a bit more invested in the issue than normal people.
The word “fantasy” or some variation thereof appeared twice in reference to me since you castigated me. If you would kindly stop using that word since I do not suffer from any such “fantasies” it would be greatly appreciated.
Imagine that. A gun owner looking out for the rights of other gun owners, and trying to have a reasonable discussion without ludicrous assertions and ridiculous insults. The nerve of me!
You still have not answered my question.
Are they? Have Great Britain and Australia always held that the people should have a Constitutionally protected right to bear arms?
Actually I have pointed out that as a matter of absolute fact, the number of firearms in the United States has steadily increased while the incidence of firearms fatalities has steadily decreased. That does, absolutely, contradict the notion that more guns will lead to more gun violence.
I’d rather have the capacity to attempt to do something than no capacity to attempt to do anything. Look, I know that having a gun is not a magical tool of invincibility as much as you do. It merely increases my odds a bit, and that’s what I’m looking for.
What’s wrong with wanting to have the best possible tools at my disposal to do everything I can to protect myself and others?
Eh, we have a weirdos + guns problem. If you take the guns out of the equation, you still have the weirdos. I’d rather we focus on taking the weirdos out of the equation. And I don’t own a gun, don’t like them, but I can shoot one pretty well.
I’m still looking for partners for my weirdo candling/bug zapper venture.
Actually, I think having some kind of device that detects mental agitation would be pretty nice. You walk through it like a metal detector, and if there are too many synapses firing off in the crazy/angry sectors of the brain, you can’t pass.
Sorry to interrupt the entire gun control hijack, but I just heard a news reporter say the killer had molested young relatives when he was around 12 and he still wanted to molest young girls and hated himself for it plus he was angry at god for the death of a premature daughter. What the fuck? He was the molester, did he think all little girls were enticing him and had to die?! Little Amish girls?! Why not just kill yourself you sick, sick bastard?
This guy was just looking for any excuse to kill. If he hadn’t had guns he’d have used knives, if he didn’t have knives he’d have found something else. He was messed up and apparently hid it well from those who knew him so no one could have foreseen this or got him help before his mental problems reached this point. I think he probably did get the idea to attack a school from recent school shootings and he just tried to come up with a reasons to “justify” it to himself.
Well, as I said, I’m pretty sure that sort of thing could be dealt with on a procedural level. Licensed and trained teachers… and not all of them, maybe one or two a school. It doesn’t have to be broadcast who is the teacher with the marshal training, either, except on the administrative level. Biometric gun safe should deal with theft issues, too.
Eh. Yep, there’s a massive difference. Doubt the ‘gun to be a man’ thing. No real evidence behind it. School shootings giving people ideas? Yep, probably. Some people are sick.
Well, you’re not an American, so let’s just say that the chance of changing that specific amendment is only slightly greater than us rejoining England as loyal subjects of the Queen. It’s not a going idea. It won’t run. Wouldn’t fly if you put 40,000 volts through it. And so… when discussing things that you want to have a reasonable chance of happening, straight out.
Guns are damn handy, because we still get wild animals around. And I’m not talking about people. Rabid raccoons, for example, are a fairly common thing in my neck of the woods… which happens to be one of the older areas of the USA. Ever hear of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, or Benedict Arnold and Major Andre? Right there. (And yes, the bridge and the old church still stand, and the real place he was captured was behind the school, not where they put the statue.) We get bears in the middle of the city of White Plains, too, which goes back a ways. And I’m not even going to think about the Jersey bear problem.
Far as school shootings continuing when guns are legal… well, they’ll continue if they’re not. Frankly, guns are the least of my concerns in a school, we used to get bomb threats every couple months, and some were real, in high school. There’s a case from '27 that matches pretty well what happened the other day… only worse.
And I could make a zip-gun in high school. It’s not hard. From complete scratch, pipes and raw chemicals. I could probably have made a revolver if I worked at it.
People are occasionally pretty messed up in the head. And I tell you, when they want to kill someone, they will.
Me too. And I’d like to think I’d have the same courage she did. In the scenario yesterday, if I were a TA there, in that one room schoolhouse, I’d like to think I’d have been able to get his gun arm down, and that someone else would have been able to take him the rest of the way down. I don’t know for sure… but I’ll tell you one thing.
After 9/11, which is when I started thinking about this sort of thing, I came to the conclusion that we as a people, as a nation, and as a society can only win by standing together and making the determination that we will fight these tactics in person, with whatever we have to hand. I make no distinction between yesterday and those people who took over the airplane, it is the same sickness that posseses them all.
And I will not stand for it.
Nothing. That’s however is different, than having the sheer arrogance to believe that your mere presence with a gun would be enough to guarantee a different outcome…that’s what I call bullshit on.
Being armed and maybe having a chance to help if you could, is one thing; claiming that if you were there with a gun, you would’ve been able to save those kids, 'cause you’re [insert brave soldier, cowboy, rouge secret agent, mutant from the future] is something else and the stuff of sticky sheets.
If you can’t see the difference between those statements, then I don’t know what to tell you.
The kind that teaches we can solve our problems by shooting it, or by invading it, or that diplomacy and level-headed negotiation are outdated concepts and anyone who thinks otherwise are “appeasers”? (Hey, a gun-control hijack wasn’t enough, let’s have a political hijack as well! ;))
Seriously, though, the more I hear about the case the more I agree with the folks who say this is a “weirdo problem,” not a “gun problem.” That’s why I continue to take the view that there should be a middle ground between “ban all guns” and “give guns to everyone” – the ideal should be to only allow sane, responsible folks to carry guns, so the nuts are left trying to commit massacres with butter knives…