School Violence

hollowdweller said:
I agree. The trend seems to be to make sure NO weapons are brought into schools, but I'd personally rather have a fighting chance in such an instance.
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The more we seek to ban weapons the softer and more attractive schools become as a target. We don't need to arm teachers; but, we need to lift the barriers and add enough doubt, to alter the calculation. To put it another way; if you don't thrust these people to tote a gun around your kids, then you shouldn't entrust them with your kids in the first place.

n2s
 
This certainly doesn't point up violence in America -- the rest of the world has an equal share. In fundamentalist Islam, violence against women is institutionalized. In peaceful Belgium, a major criminal pedophile case dragged on for years, with recriminations of official collusion.

I think the suggestion here that these people are trying to go out with the greatest notoriety possible is a common link among them. Otherwise they would only need one gun, and no one else around ...

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Arming the teachers may be putting too much responsibility on people who aren't oriented towards it, but any teacher who is willing and able to carry, should. It does harden the target just that little bit more, just by making it a possibility.

Security is based on mindset. Evidently the Colorado school learned from Columbine, and did have procedures in place to minimize the damage and alert the police. The police were more willing to go in fast this time.

Recoqnizing the threat is the key, realizing it CAN happen anywhere, and it is more likely to happen now, with the media selling a bad example.
 
Well I seem to look at it like this, They arm men and women to protect our money, But nobody is allowed to be armed to protect our children!!!!
 
Security is based on mindset. Evidently the Colorado school learned from Columbine, and did have procedures in place to minimize the damage and alert the police. The police were more willing to go in fast this time.
Quote.

During the recent tragedy in Montreal the police moved in very quickly . It at least changes the priorities of the assailant/s .
 
I don't think these assailants are highly trained and motivated, like military or paramilitary forces. They are obsessed and focused and they have their one and only goal, however they present that goal to us or to themselves.

Anything that distracts them is a positive achievement. Anything that conforms to their plan -- the only plan they've got -- will help them achieve their goal.
 
DannyinJapan said:
nay.
America is a place where we do not hold someone responsible for other people's crimes. That's one of our really basic values and it's not likely to change..
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Sadly this should continue throughout the spectrum. There is likely to be a stronger gun & knife control. They will be punishing citizens for legitimately owing firearms and knives, following the line that happened in UK and Canada.

As for professional journalism, sensationalism is too often dangerous. Freedom of press is essential to a healthy society. An irresponsible spin, whilst legal, can have devastating consequenses. The early stages of the Aids pandemic labeled it as a Gay/Black disease. The Gays and Blacks went on the offensive and the white straight comunities took the moral high ground. With most comunities in denial we have a high level of HIV and only partly breaking through the prejudice that arose during the early days.

'Ban guns' stories detract from the overall tragedy of the Amish and the root causes. This was one really sick guy who still had the presence of mind to plan such an evil agenda. Someday I would like to see the headlines "Amish forgive", wow that was really meaningful, but doesn't sell papers.
 
IMO, this is not about arming teachers but rather how can a nutjob like this guy have easy access to kids and weapons.

Solve that and you will end all such tragedies.
 
Nordic Viking said:
IMO, this is not about arming teachers but rather how can a nutjob like this guy have easy access to kids and weapons.

Solve that and you will end all such tragedies.
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You don't need weapons to harm a six year girl - you can do that with your bare hands; you need weapons to protect that six year old from a raging nut case. This isn't about some nutcase's access to weapons and kids; it is about for how long we will tollerate the pack of idiots who proscribe defensive weapons from the very gaudians entrusted with our kid's lives.

n2s
 
not2sharp said:
You don't need weapons to harm a six year girl - you can do that with your bare hands; you need weapons to protect that six year old from a raging nut case. This isn't about some nutcase's access to weapons and kids; it is about for how long we will tollerate the pack of idiots who proscribe defensive weapons from the vary gaudians entrusted with our kid's lives.

n2s
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IMO, If every teacher was armed, the rate of teacher / pupil murders would be higher than that of nutjob / pupil murders.
 
Nordic Viking,

concealed carry States have crime stats in direct opposition to your theory that arming teachers would create more murder. That is exactly what anti gunners said would happen in the shall issue concealed carry States. It not only did not happen, but violent crime went down.

We are making the logical case that those few individuals in each school who can pass certain background checks and are willing to undergo training should be armed. I say certain individuals because there are always going to be issues of insurance and liability.

As one astute poster noted- we arm clods who guard our money, but not the people guarding and sheparding our children!!?? Does that make any sense?

The alternative- to somehow screen 'nutjobs' from gaining access to weapons or harming our children would either impose a Police state on the rest of us, or bring about a crushing financial burdon to society, even assuming it could be done, which it most decidedly could not.

IN Japan some of the attackers use knives- I remember one incident with multiple fatalities. In our zero tolerance schools, who could stand against a knife weilding attacker? Yeah, the Green Beret English teacher maybe.

Arm the Teachers the way we armed Pilots. Both have an obligation to protect their environment.

munk
 
munk said:
Nordic Viking,

concealed carry States have crime stats in direct opposition to your theory that arming teachers would create more murder. That is exactly what anti gunners said would happen in the shall issue concealed carry States. It not only did not happen, but violent crime went down.
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I have also read that the reason CCW states were giving out CCW's was because crime was so rampant in the first place and the decrease in crime cannot be directly attributed to CCW but instead the normal trend in violent crimes.

We are making the logical case that those few individuals in each school who can pass certain background checks and are willing to undergo training should be armed.
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I must have missed that part. What I read was a blanket issuance of weapons to teachers, hence my theory. Selected individuals with specialised fire-arms training would be an excellent solution.
 
Followup to Munk.

I don't often do this, but a point came up on the local radio station. We had an incident were a house was broken into while the occupants were asleep. The proverbial older man called in and said that if his house was broken into he would shoot the guy to wound, and that his old .45 would knock down any man. Of course the gentleman could do so because he was trained in the military.

I called to point out that he was asking for trouble. In Kentucky you are supposed to shoot only if you are in fear of your life, not to prevent someone from stealing your stuff. I also pointed out shooting someone to wound was a stupid idea, and that depending on a pistol as your only line of defense shows a certain lack of understanding. And that a "old .45 would knock down any man" showed a certain lack of knowledge of physics. Not to mention a lack of responsibility on the part of the show's host.

Obviously the screener didn't put me on. I didn't even get to the part of how training to shoot a pistol 15 years ago probably wasn't the freshest skill in his catalog.

Here in the US, and I assume the world, we are so funny about weapons. We imbue them with magical powers to affect and take control of the users mind. It seems that owning a weapon turns the average mild manner Milquetoast into a character worthy of James Fenimore Cooper. The presence of a weapon during any arguement changes a civil (semi-civil) problem into a certain bloodbath. Just those magical effects aren't enough, why it's no wonder than merely carrying that gun concealed changes men into Avengers who attack at the merest slight real or imagined! They affect children and those underaged even worse, why you let a child hold a gun and it's certain that scores will die in a school takeover!

I was fairly active in a grassroots campaign to get concealed carry here in Kentucky, at the time I was taking some classes at the local community college. I thought that it was funny then when the government teacher was talking about the increased death toll that having concealed carry in Kentucky would cause. I kinda wish I could go into that classroom today, and have those same people in there to see what she'd say now. A real blood bath.

I'd rather take the chance that my daughter (3) would be safer everyday with an armed teacher, than the one in 1 million chance that she would OK with a nut job breaking into her school one day and them being completely defenseless because a liberal shrinking (shrieking?) violet thought that the very presence of a gun would bring evil into the school.
 
Tim-Gabz said:
Sadly this should continue throughout the spectrum. There is likely to be a stronger gun & knife control.
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More Gun & knife control will undoubtedly be proposed, because it is at least a pretense of a solution. IHMO this nation-wide school violence is symptomatic of larger problems that nobody dares to address.

When I was a member of Public Middle School demographic, my juvenile peers and I were better armed and equipped than most right-wing militias are currently. In spite of that, we never got into the slightest bit of trouble with any of that stuff.

However, none of us had ever set foot in a "Daycare Center." None of our Moms had jobs outside the home. Every single one of us showed up at Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts with his biological Dad, and every one of us occupied a residence with both our biological Dad and biological Mom. Nobody even knew anyone whose folks were divorced.

People keep having kids, but the kids are not the priority they once were. Other things take prescedence over them, and as long as these divergent agendas remain out of control, there will be no benefit in attempting to bring guns under control.
 
Allow me to respectfully disagree on an assumption. I don't think we really have any sort of nation-wide epidemic of school violence. We've had a recent cluster of nutcases, plus some intense media coverage. Here's an interesting link:
http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/violence-in-schools/school-shootings.html

According to that site, homocides in school are not at all likely, AND the rates have actually been falling.

According to the DOT, about 500 kids got killed by cars while walking or biking in 2004. An average of 23 kids a year get killed in school bus related accidents. That's higher than the in-school homocide rate.

If a kid gets shot in school, it'll make national news. If a kid gets run over by a school bus, it probably won't. I have trouble believing this is any sort of conscious anti-gun conspiracy. I think it's more that crime and evil are interesting and exciting while traffic safety is boring. Movies about the mafia and the FBI are often big hits. When's the last movie you saw about Ralph Nader?
 
cliff355 said:
More Gun & knife control will undoubtedly be proposed, because it is at least a pretense of a solution. IHMO this nation-wide school violence is symptomatic of larger problems that nobody dares to address.

When I was a member of Public Middle School demographic, my juvenile peers and I were better armed and equipped than most right-wing militias are currently. In spite of that, we never got into the slightest bit of trouble with any of that stuff.

However, none of us had ever set foot in a "Daycare Center." None of our Moms had jobs outside the home. Every single one of us showed up at Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts with his biological Dad, and every one of us occupied a residence with both our biological Dad and biological Mom. Nobody even knew anyone whose folks were divorced.

People keep having kids, but the kids are not the priority they once were. Other things take prescedence over them, and as long as these divergent agendas remain out of control, there will be no benefit in attempting to bring guns under control.
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This goes back to the whole erosion of community thing I was talking about earlier.
 
A funny, (kind of) story my dad told me.

When he was a boy the neighbor and his wife fought all the time. He had a bad drinking problem at the time. (Later straightened up and turned out to be a nice guy)

One day he was fighting his wife and had a shotgun pulled on her in the yard.

My Grandfather Thurman Violis Kirk(sorry but such a wild name) went over to try to intervene. As my grandfather was trying to talk some sense to him he turned the gun on my grandfather and pulled the trigger. Click. Nothing.

Turned out my grandfather had talked to his wife on the sly a few weeks earlier and she had let him remove all the firing pins out of his guns!
 
It will come and go in cycles, i think. Thanks to the intaweb, we have near instant news feeds that we did not have 10 years ago. This is a good thing for obvious reasons. We can be in the know at light speed when something happens. It's bad because it is a booster shot for both the sensational media and a public outlet for a nutball to get his 15 mins of fame after he kills some kids and then eats one of his own bullets.
There seemed to be a string of shootings about 7 years ago. Kentucky, Colorado, a few copy cats, etc and the media just ate it up. This is probably more of the same. Ever notice how after one shark attack it seems like everybody and their brother is getting chewed on by Jaws?:rolleyes: It couldn't be the media, could it?:confused: I mean, they have experts on and everything thing to talk about the Rash of Attacks:rolleyes: ;)
I don't know if arming the teachers is a viable answer. It's not that I'm against it. It's just that a lot of these things are planned out in detail. A school won't arm more than a very, very few teachers. Furthermore, news of the teacher "packing" will become common knowledge among the students. Think you can keep it a secret from the gossip of the highschool halls?;) I think that an armed teacher might catch SOME of these rare shootings...if they are sloppy. If they are planned, then all Johnny Krazystudent is going to have to do is add another step to his plan....Find Mr. Strapped fand shoot him first. We also have to keep in mind that most teachers are just that...teachers. They have invested time and effort into becoming a tool to better our next generation. Very noble, indeed. However, how many of them are REALLY ready to put their life on the line for these kids? I mean, they signed on to grade papers, score presentations, and MAYBE hand out some detention.
This really is an interesting discussion though:) Thanks guys.

Jake
 
In one of those shootings some years ago, a teacher was able to retrieve a gun from his car and was able to stop the kid shooting up the place (without firing, btw). That was a good thing.

Jake, I'm with you on concern about arming teachers. I know a retired teacher and am sure that her instinct if faced with an armed intruder would be to stand up tall and sternly tell him to go back to his classroom and sit down. And no running. "Did you bring enough guns for everyone? No? Well then hand it over."
 
Fallingknife, your solution would not have worked for the Amish as they are deeply pacifist. That may well be why that SOB had singled that school out.
 
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