If someone wanted to kill you, and pressing Ctrl-Alt-E on the keyboard would do it, what do you think your life expectancy would be?
In between that and strangling you with bare hands is every other method of homicide. Guns are way, way, at the Ctrl-Alt-E end, and that ease, extreme power with minimal skill and both physical and emotional distance make guns a part of the problem. Primly declaring that homicidal feelings are the entire problem is gun-humping nonsense.
Americans are idiots.
It’s not an exclusive club.
It is on this issue.
HAve y’all considered the possibility that you both are right? The desire to kill each other is a raging fire in this country-guns are just an extremely effective accelerant.
Outside of combat or the range soldiers are always unarmed. Well often they have weapons but never ammo. And since the terrorist that shot them was in the Army he knew that very well.
Yeah, I’d just like to confirm that Ctrl-Alt-E doesn’t actually work. Dammit.
Did you specify a target? Lot of people dropped dead today, so maybe its your fault!
The attack on the reeking-of-estrogen Fort Hood has already been mentioned, but I’d like to add that there was an armed guard at Columbine too. Didn’t seem to prevent a bunch of kids from being shot.
I think arming everyone might stop the occasional shooter, but there are very few precedents. On the whole I doubt it would solve doodly-squat.
It might put a dent in the unemployment problem-give them guns and and put them in the schools to protect the children.
I dunno. I am not going to say never put a guard in a school. OTOH I really hate the NRA’s proposal. Put a guard in every school, with the help of NRA volunteers. Um, no thanks, I don’t want Unka Bubba with his gun sitting in his pickup with the confederate flag bumper sticker spitting chaw and watching the high school girls all day. Doesn’t sound very bright to me.
I’ve been in the security biz off and on for 30 years…and I wouldn’t trust more than 20% of the security guards out there to safeguard our schools. The U.S. took a profession honored for centuries and turned into a joke, with companies hiring the lowest common denominator for minimum wage and little to no benefits to do just enough to keep insurance premiums down.
There are obstetricians without arms out there? That must be awkward - talk about getting a lot of face time with your doctor.
The security guard in my son’s school is nice, but I would not want him packing heat. There’s a reason we nicknamed him Barney Fife.
It’s disingenuous to say/imply/insinuate/nudge someone into thinking that’s your position/etc. that having a Public Safety Department in which all officers are trained as both police officers and firefighters is clearly not the same thing as arming firefighters. In the former case, the officers are deployed either as firefighters or as police officers for the duration of their shift and rotate to the other function at the scheduled date/time. In the latter case, a firefighter is given a weapon to use. Hopefully one can see why that’s not a good idea.
Because he’s such a badass that if you tangle with him, they may bury you?
“…where this four alarm fire has been blazing for hours, as firefighters have used an estimated 15,000 rounds of ammunition to no effect. Back to you at the Action Desk, Kimberly…”
Even if the armed security guards in the schools were competent and well-trained, I don’t think it would necessarily help. Again, there was an armed guard at Columbine and it didn’t help. The kind of crazies we are dealing with usually shoot themselves before anyone can stop them. If someone gets a gun into a school and whips it out in some crowded area he could unload 100 rounds, plus one into his own brain, before the guard could even get to the scene.
Not that I know what to do about crazy gun violence. A police state doesn’t seem too attractive. Taking everyone’s guns away a la Britain or Australia doesn’t seem practical or even possible IMHO. You could ban assault weapons and big magazines, but that still leaves a lot of ability to blow people away in the hands of maniacs. Now they’re shooting firefighters… wonderful :rolleyes: Stricter background check policies covering All gun sales might mitigate the situation to some degree, but that’s all I really got.
Right. And if you have one armed guard at a school, all the nutter has to do is shoot the guard first and then the school no longer has an armed guard.
DRAT! I meant to say: