Here’s a rebuttal for her: Ryan can pray just as well inside or outside of government. The point of government is to solve public problems by worldly means, however much faith one also has in one’s deity, so maybe Ryan and like-minded folks should step aside and let those of us who might try such worldly solutions give it a try, since prayer doesn’t seem to be working worth a damn in solving the gun massacre problem.
Also too, maybe Ryan should drop out of government and treat taxes as a ‘heart problem.’
Nitpick: of course repealing the Second Amendment would really hurt—in fact, annihilate—the right to own a gun. That would be the point.
But I agree with you that it wouldn’t really impact most Americans’ ability to own a gun, in practical terms. Nor would I want it to.
I think the problem is that this whole attitude and culture surrounding guns is centered on this fundamental delusional ideal of gun ownership as an extremely important basic right and crucial to the preservation of our freedom as a people.
As long as gun-ideologues keep drinking that Kool-Aid, they are never going to be accessible to ideas of reasonable gun ownership. Ultimately, the only solution will be to throw the Kool-Aid away.
Oh fuck off with this little schtick of your’s. If you don’t like swearing, don’t post in the Pit. Otherwise, fucking deal with it and quit fucking whining. It’s incredibly annoying and makes you look like a butthurt little twerp.
were shots fired at 18 different school properties since January 1?
ETA: I am of the opinion that some don’t count - like the cases where a gun was fired by accident, or when a suicidal adult kills himself in a school parking lot - but you can’t simply dismiss them using the language that there were not 18 "school shootings. "
Depends how you define the term. The gun-control advocacy organization that tracks those statistics apparently defines it as follows: “any time a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds, as documented by the press and, when necessary, confirmed through further inquiries with law enforcement or school officials”.
I agree that not every such incident involves a mass killing or even a deliberate attempt to hurt someone. But most of them apparently do involve some kind of intentional firearm violence. From your own link:
ISTM that all of those except 4, 15 and possibly 17 and/or 18 were either definitely or likely deliberate forms of firearms violence, whether they caused death/injury or not. #1 and #5 were apparently suicides, but AFAICT that still qualifies as a form of firearms violence.
Note also that even shootings that fortunately didn’t hurt anybody, and may have been intended to scare rather than to injure, still place a heavy drain on schools’ time and resources when they have to lock the place down for hours to make sure they’re not underestimating a genuine threat.
I edited for clarity. Technically speaking, shots were fired at 18 different locations in a school setting. I dont think cases where an adult man commits suicide in a school parking lot “count,” but technically speaking - shots were fired.
While watching cnn coverage of the Parkland tragedy, someone said “depending on how you parse the numbers, it’s now between (not sure, here, maybe) 14 and 18 school shootings this year” and I was driven to look it up. I am reluctant, personally, to call it a “school shooting” if it was an accidental discharge, or an unrelated random person who chose a school for his final moments. That’s because “school shooting” implies deliberate violence, and at least injury. A LOT of the cases being bandied about as an official number are not at all that same situation.
But it is still too many fucking guns being discharged, whether deliberately or accidentally, around schoolchildren. 18 cases of armed people being violent, self destructive, or careless around kids.
Well, you’ve not included #3 which was a pellet gun, or the suicides. Nor have you addressed the media reporting which considers each of these incidents equivalent to the horrendous massacre in south florida. The reality is terrible enough. We don’t need to prop it up with misinformation and lies.
Look, I agree (who wouldn’t) that gun violence is terrible and shouldn’t happen in schools (or anywhere). The problem is that this sort of argument leads to unnecessary bickering about well, the one time it was a pellet gun, or ther one guy killed himself on school property when no kids were there…but then equals every 60 hours in the US there is a school shooting. It panics people, polarizes politics and ultimates leads to nothing really happening.
Did you not read my reference to the suicides in the excerpt from my post that you yourself just quoted?
If you point me to an instance of media reporting which falsely claims that each of these incidents is equivalent to the horrendous massacre yesterday, I will happily condemn it as inaccurate and dishonest.
But I don’t think the mere act of referring to incidents where one or more shots were fired on school property as “school shootings” warrants condemnation.
If you (and Clothahump) consider it “unnecessary bickering” to discuss what kinds of firearm violence have recently taken place in schools and what such incidents should be called, then maybe you shouldn’t have brought the subject up in the first place?
Sounds like you just want to foster the idea that “oh, the media is exaggerating gun violence in schools” while hoping that people don’t start examining or discussing the specifics of how much gun violence actually is occurring in schools.
I’m not going to line by line quote you, and I think it is interesting that you equate me to a known hard core right leaning individual. You are off the mark, friend. I just think that it is irresponsible journalism to overinflate the “school massacres” to include such things as a pellet gun and a well after school hours suicide. If we can’t be honest about the reality of the problem we can’t begin to solve it.
Like I said, if you’ve got a specific instance of actual false reporting on that issue that you want condemned—as opposed to the mere use of the term “school shooting” to include certain types of shootings on school property that you don’t think are particularly important—then point me to it and I’ll be happy to condemn it.
But I think complaining that it’s “irresponsible” for the media to refer to certain types of shootings that occur at schools as “school shootings” is not a very sensible choice of a hill to die on, so to speak.
Really? Are we really quibbling over whether there were eighteen school shootings since the beginning of the year or only as few as one or two a week? Isn’t one school shooting in a month or one in a year too much? Shouldn’t we have done something long ago?
Did the media report that there were 18 “school massacres” this year? No, they reported that here were 18 (reported) gun related incidents on or involving school property, shortened as “school shootings”. You then falsely equivelated the word “shooting” to “massacre” in order to try to discredit that.
The media is not over inflating “school massacres”. You are the one that is claiming that the media is referring to these shootings as massacres.
To be fair, I suppose a large segment of consumers of prepackaged news are likely to take “school shooting” to mean active-shooter-on-premises incidents, as those are the ones that make the national headlines. But even FoxNews quotes the “18” figure.
And no, heck no, no armed “volunteers” at the school. Raise some tax (on gun sales?) and spend the cash to put in a professional specifically trained for the environment.
Did you not read my reference to the suicides in the excerpt from my post that you yourself just quoted?