After exchanging 100+ comments with pro-gun folks on G2A and Facebook, they seem to be obsessed with this one issue... How do we keep kids safe in the schools from the time they enter to the time they leave? Some of the recommendations make sense:
- Armed Guards
- Armed Teachers
- Secured access points
- Other?
Now I am fine with all of these, however I think they will be expensive, burdensome and somewhat useless. Please remember that schools are:
- Large soft targets with distributed staff / targets
- Many of their doors are glass
- The active shooter has access to really dangerous weapons and body armor
- Video 1 Video 2 Video 3
- The active shooter is angry and likely suicidal
Not to mention that it does pretty much nothing to help protect the kids the other ~17 hours per day. Or when they are outside for gym, field trips, etc. Attending school sporting events... Etc.
Okay Jerry and Richard, Take it away...
- Why is this issue so important to you and the other pro-gun folks?
- How do you see this helping in any significant way?
- Are you willing to pay to harden all of our schools and pay for the armed guards?
- If the active shooter comes in wearing body armor and bump firing an assault rifle, do you think a few armed people in a big school can "take him out" before kids are killed?
- If not, how many dead kids / year are an acceptable trade off for allowing people to continue having easy access to body armor and these types of weapons?
- Other?
30 comments:
Unrelated links that I don't want to lose:
Gun Violence in 18 Charts
MinnPost Guns does not equal Freedom
MinnPost MN Gun Control Progress
MiinPost 2nd amendment hot mess
I don't think arming psychopaths helps keep kids safe. The fact is, this is a deal we have made. We are willing to accept a certain amount of slaughter in order to maintain access to semi automatic weapons. It's time for America to move on.
--Hiram
I suggest that, if such a rare event as you describe is imminent, we simply set your straw man on fire and scare him off.
That may save as many lives as arming Teachers. :-)
But I think you can do better.
I can buy a sign for $1/school that says "this property protected by Smith and Wesson." Should work, true or not.
Somebody recently asked why we don't put up signs at schools that say, "Nobody here has any gun of any kind. Feel free to shoot as many of us as you like." Because that is effectively what we are doing now.
Look, it's a matter of misplaced priorities. Gun deaths due to "assault rifles" used in mass school shootings are less than 1/1000 of the total.
And if we wanted to "do better" we would prohibit the "free speech" of publicizing ad nauseum the name, picture and life story of these wacko fame-seekers.
Sign: will not work...
Since most shooters die or kill themselves, I think we provide a limit. The sheriffs not storming the school immediately was a failure by them.
Which gun deaths would you prefer to focus on first? Or is the number of "school / public event" random deaths acceptable to you? At what number of children killed per year should we take action?
I know you think these folks are fame seekers... I think most of them are just really angry/hurting and don't know what to do about it... So they just finally explode and take it out on innocent people.
For your convenience, here are the questions again:
1. Why is "keeping kids safe 6 hrs per weekday" so important to you and the other pro-gun folks?
2. How do you see this helping in any significant way?
3. Are you willing to pay to harden all of our schools and pay for the armed guards?
4. If the active shooter comes in wearing body armor and bump firing an assault rifle, do you think a few armed people in a big school can "take him out" before kids are killed?
5. If not, how many dead kids / year are an acceptable trade off for allowing people to continue having easy access to body armor and these types of weapons?
It is well known that these shooters are fame-seekers. A few news outlets have actually said they will NOT give them the satisfaction, but of course it needs to be far more widely accepted practice. As evidence, look at the number of "copycats" that pop up in the wake of every well-publicized event.
I don't even recognize your questions. I would like to keep those 34 kids in Chicago who died of gunshots last month as safe as those 17 kids in Florida, who died inside their "gun free zone."
These "Liberal" Folks Agree with You Regarding Reporting
As for avoiding giving answers to very clearly written questions. That is your prerogative.
As for the kids in Chicago, my recommendations help with that also...
- Limiting clip sizes to ~15 or fewer bullets
- Banning weapons that are bump fire-able.
- Mandatory back ground checks for every gun purchase or transfer. Eliminate gun show / internet sales loop hole
- Mandatory confiscation of guns from people with anger issues / restraining orders
- A national database to track who has loss their right to own a gun (ie felony, mental illness, restraining order, etc) Improve State and Agency reporting.
- Mandatory Gun Registration (especially for hand guns and semi-automatic rifles)
- Severe penalties for ANYONE holding a gun that is NOT registered, that should be.
- Allow law suits against people who allow their guns to be stolen, especially if they have not reported the theft.
Now the question is... How much do you truly want to save those kids in Chicago? Enough to stop then from attaining weapons that started out legally?
WAPO Where Chicago Guns Come From
Urban Where Do Criminals Get Guns
PBS How Criminals Get Guns
VOX NY Guns
A. I reject the entire premise of your questions, so there is no answer.
B. Exactly NONE of your supposed solutions stopped the Florida shooter, and in fact, none of them would have stopped ANY school shooting of which I'm aware. Can you ever admit that evil people do evil things?
C. I think you are proving my point. None of those deaths in Chicago were caused by a legal gun. They were caused by illegal guns, used illegally. You can stop crime by decriminalizing it (e.g. marijuana) but you cannot stop crime by making it a crime.
A. Your choice. They seem pretty simple to me.
B. Of course my solutions did not work. Most of them are not in place.
C. Actually I think they said 25% of the deaths are from legal guns. And please remember that almost all the guns started out "legal". Unfortunately their irresponsible or criminal legal owners did not secure them adequately or they transferred them into the black market for a profit. Now those are some things we could fix to save the lives of kids and other innocent bystanders.
Just imagine a USA where every gun owner was held responsible for the guns we allow them to buy!!!
For your convenience, here are the questions again:
1. Why is "keeping kids safe 6 hrs per weekday" so important to you and the other pro-gun folks?
2. How do you see this helping in any significant way?
3. Are you willing to pay to harden all of our schools and pay for the armed guards?
4. If the active shooter comes in wearing body armor and bump firing an assault rifle, do you think a few armed people in a big school can "take him out" before kids are killed?
5. If not, how many dead kids / year are an acceptable trade off for allowing people to continue having easy access to body armor and these types of weapons?
1. Why do you ask? Do you NOT want to Keep kids safe six hours per week day? Are you content to let them die the other 18 hours as well?
2. That is the part of the day they are most vulnerable, partly because they are in gun-free zones. Of course, if you choose to consider mass school shootings as a not significant portion of all shootings, then you are right, it isn't significant.
3. If the stupid politicians want to waste their money doing it that way, fine, but it would be far cheaper and more effective to simply allow teachers to be trained and armed, and perhaps receive a small stipend to cover their training.
4. First of all, 90% of the shooters, knowing that they will face armed resistance, are not going to enter the school at all. Second, the tiniest fraction of school shooters are going to be this strawman you have invented. That occurrence is so unlikely that the chances of an armed teacher "taking them out" Is statistically equivalent. Oh, and Pres. Trump just made bump stocks illegal, so you can get off that hobbyhorse.
5. I deny the premise of your question. You present a false choice.
1. It seems the only improvement that pro-gun folks want to offer up.
2. Exactly. So why do pro-gun folks think this will help save innocent victims?
3. You will be paying for their training, certification testing, and may be a compensation increase. If you leave it to random chance, some schools may have no gun carriers. So nothing will change and kids will die.
4. These shooters are not sane and rational... They are fine with dying, usually they shoot themselves after spending their intense anger. Thinks about suicide bombers, they infiltrate even the most guarded locations and wreak havoc.
4. Again, bump stocks are not required to bump fire an AR15. And no Trump has not made them illegal. And as far as I know, no one is talking about body armor.
5. Let's say a bump firing shooter fires into a crowd of kids from behind a car as they are leaving school en masse. How many kids will die before one of these armed unprepared Teachers gets there and gets into a position to kill the shooter? How many/few deaths do you deem acceptable?
5. Or are you thinking about placing locked and loaded snipers over the door of every school?
1. It responds to the only solution the anti-gun folks will support-- unnecessary, ineffective, unworkable and counterproductive gun control.
2. Because nothing the anti-gun people have suggested will work, or HAS worked, at all.
3. If we leave it to random chance, some kids will die anyway, just as they did in FL. Your argument is that because some schools will be protected, no school should be protected?
4. Bump firing was not used in FL. Let's keep our boogeymen straight.
5. Let's say the police intercept the "bump firing shooter" before he even gets to the school? How many kids do you find "saving" acceptable?
5. I am thinking about having trained police officers doing the job of preventing or at least minimizing violence of all kinds. And backed by the legal right to self-defense with a gun, rather than leaving defenseless victims to the whims of a madman.
1 & 2: Then pro-gun folks should stop acting like it "an improvement"... And please remember that I am fine with arming Teachers.
3. So are you okay raising taxes to fund these recommendations?
4. How do you know? He did not have a "bump stock"... But I do not how rapidly he fired.
5. And how do you intend to work this magic without the knowledge of who owns what guns, and without giving the authorities the authority to confiscate the weapons from high risk individuals? Please remember that my recommendations address these concerns.
For our convenience
- Limiting clip sizes to ~15 or fewer bullets
- Banning weapons that are bump fire-able.
- Mandatory back ground checks for every gun purchase or transfer. Eliminate gun show / internet sales loop hole
- Mandatory confiscation of guns from people with anger issues / restraining orders
- A national database to track who has loss their right to own a gun (ie felony, mental illness, restraining order, etc) Improve State and Agency reporting.
- Mandatory Gun Registration (especially for hand guns and semi-automatic rifles)
- Severe penalties for ANYONE holding a gun that is NOT registered, that should be.
- Allow law suits against people who allow their guns to be stolen, especially if they have not reported the theft.
For your convenience, tell me which CHANGES to current law, in this list, would have prevented the FL shooting? Of those, which, if any, would be practically -- not theoretically-- effective against the NEXT very rare shooting?
My latest goal statement:
1. Ensure that trained, responsible people can keep and carry their hunting and self defense weapons.
2. Ensure these weapons are removed from the homes of scary angry, insane and generally irresponsible people.
3. Minimize the death, injury and/or trauma to the innocent citizens of the USA when the system fails and a scary angry, insane and generally irresponsible person does not have their weapons confiscated.
In this case... This little law may have worked wonders.
Mandatory confiscation of guns from people with anger issues / restraining orders
A lot of people knew he was disturbed. There was just little they could do about it.
If that is not a law, there should be some reasonable phrasing of one that insures due process and prevents government from simply declaring all gun owners "crazy," which is not as far-fetched as one might think given the current move to brand the NRA a "terrorist organization" or ANYONE objecting to "common sense gun control" as beyond the pale.
I have to believe that there is some current law that would have permitted the Sheriff and FBI, after between 35 and 65 calls, to do something, and they didn't. In fact, it was more likely the kid would have been locked up on a charge like "making terroristic threats," separating him from the guns and from the world he hated. Guns he could replace.
NPR Indiana's Red Flag Law
MJ Red Flag Laws
"Right now, only five states—Connecticut, Washington, Indiana, California, and Oregon—have red flag laws, most of them put into place after tragedy struck even though law enforcement and family members knew the individual was a threat. "
When I agree with the ACLU, something is wrong with the proposed "solution." It's not impractical, and I'm sure it is not often needed or enforced, but giving government the power to label people "crazy" just makes me very uneasy.
I much prefer the notion of involuntary committment-- I know, it has the same potential for government abuse-- or of arrest for "making threats." Both would separate them from their guns and from their targets, while getting them listed on the no-buy list.
I'm just not comfortable with the idea that a woman who screams threats at her husband in an argument might be disarmed when he decides to retaliate.
That's funny since 90+ percent of the time it is the man with the restraining order against them and the gun in hand.
Florida Gun Laws are a good start
And you are willing to assume that government has infinite reason and discretion? If so, why did 35 calls about a "dangerous" person not result in any preventive action?
If Gov. Scott signs the bill, it DOES look like "a good start." The question is which direction it is starting towards. The criteria for seizing guns and prohibiting purchase seem reasonable, but one wonders if they can be abused to disarm the law-abiding and sane? Also, suppose a man calls his ex and says "I'm coming over to kill you." Should she have to wait three days to get a firearm to defend herself? I point out most shooters plan for weeks/months/years.
An interesting piece. You will like it. Of course if the police had been harassing him and taken his guns before the murder you would likely have been complaining about government trouncing on his rights. :-)
I think she should get a restraining and get his guns taken away...
I would only have been concerned it the gun seizure was without due process. we can't just have the government declaring people "crazy" and locking them up, just because they disagree with government.
And having an angry domestic partner be the reason why the man's (usually) rights are taken away, without evidence and due process, is not acceptable, either. And sometimes that's unfortunate. It makes me think, though, should that woman be offered a gun and training? You know, sort of like we propose for teachers?
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