# The tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of school children

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-tree-of-liberty-needs-to-be-watered-with-the-blood-of-school-children/808854>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [February 15, 2018, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-tree-of-liberty-needs-to-be-watered-with-the-blood-of-school-children/808854 "2018-02-15T02:32:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 278

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**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2018, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-tree-of-liberty-needs-to-be-watered-with-the-blood-of-school-children/808854/278 "2018-02-18T02:48:46Z")

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> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> Lots of things are more deadly than knives. But the problem is society, not guns.
> 
> As I said, guns were everywhere in 1960 but this stuff wasn’t going on then.

And as I responded in the other thread:

> [@Another School Shooting \[Stoneman Douglas\] (2/14/2018)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/247):
>
> You know _why_ they didn’t happen? Because while there were handguns and hunting rifles back then, high-capacity semi-autos like AK-47s and AR-15s were pretty much unknown in civilian life.
> 
> Shootings could and did happen, but mass shootings almost never happened because of the great difficulty in committing one. Take the [University of Texas tower shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting) back in 1966. The shooter had been a Marine sharpshooter, and he was picking people off from a vantage point 230 feet above the ground. Over the course of 90 minutes, he killed 14 people.
> 
> How long did it take the Newtown shooter to mow down 20 kids and 6 adults 46 years later? It was [less than five minutes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting#Mass_shooting_begins) between the time he used his Bushmaster to blow out a window next to the school’s locked entrance, and the time he killed himself. And he hardly needed any special skillz to slaughter a couple dozen people in just a few minutes.
> 
> _There’s_ what’s rotten with the culture: _that we allow the presence of weapons in civilian life whose only use is to kill a shitload of people in a hurry._ It’s a moral sickness, and it’s [overwhelmingly a Republican sickness](https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=1&vote=00101).

I’m sure you had a great response to this, but got distracted by this thread and never posted it. I’m looking forward to reading it.

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