There’s also the inherent problem of solving the problems of guns in schools by intentionally putting more guns in the schools. Basically the same thing as with homes: we know that having a gun in your home makes your family less safe, is that also true for schools?
considering the size of the campus, normal noise levels, communication, etc.
um, gun fire (unless you are using a silencer and I haven’t heard the nut was) is very, VERY LOUD. It would easily rise above normal noise level. I realize kids are loud, but kids being kids is not the same sound as gunfire and screaming.
No, but it does prevent you from hearing reports over the walkie-talkie WHERE the echoing gunfire is actually coming from.
I am talking about having enough police so that at least one would heard the gunfire with his own two ears, not through a walkie-talkie. Even with echos, I don’t think it would take too long for trained police officers that are sufficiently spread throughout the school(in sufficient numbers for the size school) to find where the repeated gunfire and screams are coming from.
AFAIK there was one guard. Tracking the source of gunfire in a semi-enclosed concrete echo chamber is a tough enough problem that we build and distribute these to law enforcement. You can’t necessarily follow the screams because people who have fled the scene continue to scream, people at the scene may in fact be to afraid to scream. It’s really not as easy as you think. A walkie-talkie confirmed location and status would be very helpful to any responder.
considering the size of the campus, normal noise levels, communication, etc.
um, gun fire (unless you are using a silencer and I haven’t heard the nut was) is very, VERY LOUD. It would easily rise above normal noise level. I realize kids are loud, but kids being kids is not the same sound as gunfire and screaming.
No, but it does prevent you from hearing reports over the walkie-talkie WHERE the echoing gunfire is actually coming from, how many shooters there are, etc.
Well, if we are not going to get rid of the guns, our schools need protection. Maybe not armed teachers, but armed trained police/security guards.
Schools already have police officers in the building. It isn’t working.
Yeah, the “we need armed security guards” argument has been coming up since Columbine. Except Columbine had armed security guards. So did Parkland. Schools are sprawling, public-access facilities. Effectively locking them down against armed attackers would require redesigning the entire facility to operate more like a prison.
And they won’t even fix a leaking roof, so even that unattractive option is unrealistic.
I don’t think it would require redesigning the schools. Just have armed police officers man various positions throughout the school building. Look any attempt to ban guns is getting stopped over and over again by the NRA and conservatives. Having armed police in schools is something that might pass. I don’t see the NRA or conservatives objecting to it. It is not the optimal solution, but maybe one that can pass. Maybe one that can save lives.
Even assuming you manage to avoid incidents like this, you’re talking probably 8 FTE’s per school to adequately cover all the positions in a school, let’s say 100,000 public schools in the nation (are we only talking public? and what about daycares and colleges?), so maybe in the neighborhood of 800,000 FTE’s, each FTE costing maybe an average of 50K. That’s 40 billion dollars for the base model. I can see lots of people objecting.
Well, if we are not going to get rid of the guns, our schools need protection. Maybe not armed teachers, but armed trained police/security guards.
Schools already have police officers in the building. It isn’t working.
if the school in Florida had armed police officers already in the building, I’d like to know what the heck they were doing while the nut was shooting about 31 people(I have heard 17 dead and 14 hurt, which equals 31 shot).
Compare a sixty-second response time vs. how many times you can fire an AR-15 in sixty seconds. And I’m not saying the guard responded in sixty seconds, which would have been phenomenally fast, considering the size of the campus, normal noise levels, communication, etc.
Well, if we are not going to get rid of the guns, our schools need protection. Maybe not armed teachers, but armed trained police/security guards.
Schools already have police officers in the building. It isn’t working.
Yeah, the “we need armed security guards” argument has been coming up since Columbine. Except Columbine had armed security guards. So did Parkland. Schools are sprawling, public-access facilities. Effectively locking them down against armed attackers would require redesigning the entire facility to operate more like a prison.
And they won’t even fix a leaking roof, so even that unattractive option is unrealistic.
This might be my last post in this thread since I don’t think I contribute to it at all:
While I do understand why some people would want to have a handgun in their drawer just in case, I fail to see any logic whatsoever behind people arguing that we shouldn’t take automatic rifles or any sort of military-grade weapon out of the marked.
Hey, stick around. We like you. Even if we think your avatar from a distance looks like a green robot head.
There’s all kinds of angles to this issue. The “having a handgun in a drawer” statement is itself subject to a thousand questions. Is the drawer locked, or does the gun have a trigger lock? Is the gun loaded? Is ammunition stored in the same drawer as the gun? Has the gun been sitting, unmaintained, in that same drawer for several decades? Does anyone else know that gun is there? Does having a gun in your home make your family more safe or less safe? (okay, we actually know the answer to this one: less safe)
Like all controversial issues, people try to work on “edge cases” first. Mass shootings, automatic weapons, semiautomatics, bump stocks, background checks, etc. Now, all of these are “gimme” options: lots of public support, no downsides. Except they can’t even pass most of these restrictions because of the NRA. The problem is they really only deal with edge cases. But if you want to cause a meaningful change, IMO you’re going to have to start talking about restricting handguns as well. And I’m fine with that.
I’d like to know how the hell someone the FBI thought was suspicious and whom had mental issues was allowed to legally buy guns.
BECAUSE OUR GUN LAWS ARE A FUCKING JOKE AND EVERY TIME THIS SHIT HAPPENS AND ANY SORT OF SANE REGULATIONS ARE PROPOSED PEOPLE WHINE “BUT NO MUH FREEDUMZ” AND NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS AND EVERYONE IS SHOCKED WHEN IT INEVITABLY FUCKING HAPPENS AGAIN A WEEK LATER.
I say this as a gun owner, but holy shit it should not have been as easy as it was for me to legally get one without any sort of training or proof that I actually know how to use one.
Fuck our country’s gun laws.
I thought there were all sorts of barriers in place and background checks and such for getting a license as well as purchasing the weapon itself. Perhaps I’m not remembering correctly.
In Florida, you don’t need a permit, license, or registration, and Florida still has the gun show loophole, so as far as I can tell, the only obstacle to getting a gun in Florida is having enough money.
EDIT: Oh, and gun sellers don’t have to be licensed either. Who the hell is running this state?
Russia has announced their official position on the Parkland shooting, as if there’s any surprise.
I’d like to know how the hell someone the FBI thought was suspicious and whom had mental issues was allowed to legally buy guns.
This is how.
But it helps if you completely disregard the whole “well-regulated” clause which implies some sort of… well, regulation. With that part carefully excised, what you’ve got remaining is the current Supreme Court interpretation.
They should get this guy to query Bannon.
Q: What… is your name?
A: Steve Bannon.
Q: What… is your quest?
A: To stay out of prison.
Q: What… is your favorite color?
A: Red. No… White! aaaaaaargh
So Steve Bannon came before the House Intelligence Committee for the first time since he refused to answer any questions the first time, and… he presented the committee with a list of 25 questions he would answer, but only if they were asked verbatim exactly as written. The answer to all of these pre-approved questions was a simple one-word answer: No. He refused to answer any other questions, including follow-ups on the 25, or variations on the 25 with slightly different wording. (i.e. if the answer to “did you meet with X” was No, the answer to “did you talk with X” was invoking Executive Privilege). And of course, as before, the claim of Executive Privilege was invoked for events for which there was no Executive Privilege to invoke.
Usually I admire chutzpah, but I don’t really think it qualifies as chutzpah when you know the committee chair has your back.
Two words: time capsule.
Australia’s homicide rate was already so low (see chart above) it would have been difficult to pull a statistically significant reduction out of any policy, due to small sample size alone. However, their suicide rate, while ALSO miles better than ours, was a big enough sample size to analyze. Yes, I realize mass shootings and other rare events* trigger such laws, but suicide & domestic violence are the most affected by them, simply because the numbers are higher. (And I support most of the restrictions I’ve seen suggested, and some I haven’t seen suggested).
* “Rare” is relative. In the US, there’s currently one shooting at or near a school every 60 hours. Sometimes rare in a statistical sense is still not rare enough.
Yep. It’s an American problem.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts
I think it’s wrong to generalize such a huge country with very varying local legistlation and people. Would be nice to see a state by state comparison.
Last major state-by-state analysis (Household Gun Ownership Gun Death Rate Per 100,000) gives these top five and bottom five states (first number is gun ownership percent, second is death rate, they are ranked by the latter):
1 Louisiana 45.6 percent 18.91
2 Mississippi 54.3 percent 17.80
3 Alaska 60.6 percent 17.41
4 Wyoming 62.8 percent 16.92
5 Montana 61.4 percent 16.74
50 Rhode Island 13.3 percent 3.14
49 Hawaii 9.7 percent 3.56
48 Massachusetts 12.8 percent 3.84
47 New York 18.1 percent 5.11
46 New Jersey 11.3 percent 5.46
The problem with doing per-state analysis in the US is that while each state sets its own laws, all states have open borders with each other. So gun availability in California is directly affected by laws in Nevada, etc. Not to mention city ordinances, where the restrictions are so localized that there can’t be any significant effect. Alaska and Hawaii may be the only two states without this issue clouding the stats. But then all of these statistics include suicides (which I think is appropriate, but you have to be aware of this), and Alaska and Wyoming have rather obscene suicide rates (27 and 28 per 100,000, while the national average is 12.6).
EDIT: Finland, with the highest suicide rate of all those listed countries, sits at 14.2, Sweden is at 12.7, and the rest have lower suicide rates than the US. The US is really not so great in the suicide department.
Many of these cops even when found not guilty can never return to their jobs
You can lose your job over acts that, while not illegal, violate rules of professional conduct or reflect badly on the employer – and that’s the employer’s prerogative. I guess I should tier that. Courts matter most. Employers matter secondary. Public opinion could make you have to live with unflattering memes for the rest of your life, so that matters a little less.
well it is the truth. Whenever these things happen, the cops are automatically presumed to be in the wrong.
That’s why they are all in jail, gotcha.
I should have said “with the exception of the courts”.
“Except where it matters” would have worked fine as well.
Okay, so this is turning very weird very fast (Yay Ohio! Stay weird!). What with Rep. Issa’s history of multiple car thefts, arson, and weapons-related crimes, it’s refreshing to finally see some signs of completely legal behavior on his part.
I don’t think anyone is that desperate to win a reality show. Morgan hates Star Wars, so nuts to him anyway. 😛
I thought reality shows are based on shameless desperation.
It would be nice if reality shows were actually based on reality.
Those are known as “documentaries.”
Marlin Perkins allegedly had a foot in both worlds.
How about no one until we have proof?
You’ve missed the point.
which is?
It’s like the two doors puzzle, where one door always tells the truth, and the other door always tells lies. Except both doors always tell lies.
He’s leaving himself open for campaign donations. I believe it was Willie Brown who said “If you can’t take people’s money and then turn around a screw them, you’ve got no business being in this business.”
He actually said “Competitive Elections Are Bad for America”?
He didn’t just say it, he wrote a book with that title. He’s pro-gerrymandering, thinks there should be more of it and courts should get out of the way and let the parties go crazy on the maps, drawing themselves into safe districts so that they always win regardless of how the overall vote goes. Because one-person-one-vote is socialism or something. So, he was at the top of Trump’s list to run the US freaking Census, given that he was the worst imaginable candidate for the job.
Good News: Thomas “Competitive Elections Are Bad for America” Brunell is no longer being considered to head the 2020 Census.
The bad news: there are plenty of other nuts on that tree, the 2020 Census is already underfunded and behind schedule, and will feature questions that will skew data by discouraging minority participation.
There are precedents for this. Lebanon essentially stopped doing a census after 1932, as any new even vaguely credible census data would overturn the political order there. Allocations are still done today using that 1932 data.
Polish collaborated in the holocaust, but how many collaborated in the actual conquering of Poland itself?
A decent percentage of the population of Szczuczyn, for example. Jews were Polish citizens just as much as non-Jewish Poles. So Poles who killed their fellow Polish citizens not at the urging of the Nazis, but because they wanted to achieve the same political aims as the Nazis, very much assisted in the invasion. The Nazis could focus their military energy elsewhere because of the ample assistance provided by some Poles, although it should be noted that the small number of Nazis still present in the town during the massacre actually stepped in to put an end to it, before following the lead of the Poles and murdering the rest of the Jews a few months later.
If a group of Americans went around killing a few hundred thousand independence-minded Americans during the Revolutionary War, it would be safe to say they were helping the British. As with the Poles who killed Polish Jews when the Germans invaded.
the Germans let Hitler come to power
…except for those who fought him.
the Polish people were conquered
…except for those who collaborated.
And yet it’s not illegal to own up to their complicity in Germany, while it is in Poland.
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