If only those school children had also been armed

[amirite]

the killer would have been stopped in his tracks.

[ssmynkint]

Yeah, cheap snipe at a time of tragedy.
I can't imagine the horror of the parents and community.

ASIDE from the gun control issue, the REAL crisis is in our culture's mentality. As the occurrence of violence is daily, and NOT just limited to some who are diagnostically whacked, the questions are:

What is wrong with us as a society that we have such a culture of violence? How can THAT be addressed?
What does it say about us as family/community/society that those with demonstrable mental health impairments go un/under treated?

It's facile to debate gun issues (I support ownership and registration) and guns DO kill people, but only in the hands of other people.

[JC]

Why the poke?

Maybe if those t there (teachers, principle and/or other staff) were allowed to be armed, the killer would have been stopped after slaughtering a handful of children instead of 26.

But instead of that, people have decided to let the police handle things because teachers with guns is scary. That works out real well, doesn't it?
takes the police an hour to gather, suit up and enter a building with an active shooter.
The only thing the police can do in a situation like that is clean up the bodies and take reports.
Not a dig on officers here. That just the facts from the history of mass-murders/suicide. The police can not prevent or stop an active shooter.

Dec 15, 2012 9:43:19 GMT -5 ssmynkint said:

ASIDE from the gun control issue, the REAL crisis is in our culture's mentality. As the occurrence of violence is daily, and NOT just limited to some who are diagnostically whacked, the questions are:

What is wrong with us as a that we have such a culture of violence? How can THAT be addressed?
What does it say about us as family/community/society that those with demonstrable mental health impairments go un/under treated?

It is not our society. It's humans in general.
The US looks really, really bad simply because we have the best, the most and quickest news reporting in the world.

In actuality, we are far safer than most of the rest of world.
We do have quite a few mass-shootings but no more than other countries. We are safer because we are not plagued with terrorist bombings, religious massacres, civilian wars (drugs, territory conflicts, religious or race conflicts, etc) and other such violent crimes.

Our civilian gun ownership has no bearing on any of these mass-murders. Shit happens everywhere.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html


On Friday, a man in China attacked 23 children with a knife.
www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-attacks-22-kids-knife-china-school-article-1.1220230

[ssmynkint]

Sorry, J.C.; it IS our society. THIS is where it happened. Rationalization thru international comparison is meaningless.
And sadly, civilian gun ownership IS correlated .

But you avoid my questions/points.
Or do you advocate ignoring the issue(s) because "it's human nature"?

[JC]

Fact: Mass-murders have been happening since day one. Says so in the bible(for those that believe in that book). These mass-murders are not culturally secluded. They have happened on every stretch of populated land.
The only thing that has changed is the weapons used.
Guns (and knives where guns are banned - see above linky) are used today instead of swords, arson, arrows or poisons.

I am not saying the issue should be ignored because it's what humans have always done. I'm simply saying that it is not our society explicitly and it is not driven by our civilian gun ownership.
The exact same mass-murders happen even in countries that bans civilian firearms completely.

Our solutions for these tragic events are based on knee-jerk emotional reactions that simply do nothing except sooth fears. They do not stop or prevent anything.
Disarming citizens has never worked anywhere.
Restricting or banning weapons has never worked anywhere.
Training officers and/or creating specialized response teams has never worked anywhere.

What has worked to prevent and stop school shootings?
Putting armed SROs in schools. This is proven.
Problem is, as soon as people forget about the latest tragic school shooting, people decide they like their tax dollars more than their childrens' safety, and SROs are defunded.

If we're not willing to pay armed officers to protect our schools, then we should at least have the common sense to allow staff to be armed while they are there. This will equally protect the children and will not cost taxpayers anything.

It would not even be that costly to give specialized training to teachers and put in small gun safes within schools.

[ssmynkint]

YOU insist on making this a gun issue. Do you have any solutions, approaches that do not entail MORE weapons, or is that all you've got?

[JC]

First two posts were about guns. One was your post in part.

No, there are no solutions other than the two mentioned.
You can not prevent or fight active shooters with love, signs, hiding under desks and after-death police responses.

You must fight force with force. This has been effective and proven since day one.
If we ever want to stop these tragedies then we must be willing to put the fear where the fear belongs.
The fear belongs in the people - not the weapons.
Right now, we fear the weapons - not the people, and look at the results we have.

[JC]

An armed citizen stopped an active shooter and mass-murder Tuesday.
www.nwcn.com/news/oregon/183609901.html

The shooter wasn't stopped by prevention, gun free signs, innocence cowering behind cover, unarmed security or SWAT teams w/active shooter training.

[ssmynkint]

First two posts were about guns. One was your post in part.

Quite a distortion, J.C., as I explicitly was attempting to avoid the type of discussion you have gravitated toward.
And your figures for UK are misleading and are also off point as the obvious focus of the thread had initially been the shooting deaths.
Figures from 2008, homiced rates:

USA 5.2
UK 1.6
Canada 1.7
Norway 0.6
Sweden 0.9
Finland 2.5
France 1.35
Danemark 1.4
Italy 1.6
Spain 0.9
CHINA 1.2
Japan 0.45

Our rate is more in keeping w 2nd world countries. It IS a societal cultural issue.

[RuneDeer]

It will remain a "gun issue" until we start making it a "mental health" issue. Every one of the most recent perps (this guy, Loughner, the Colorado joker, the Va. Tech guy) were described as having mental health issues long before they grabbed the gun. Yesterday I read a blog post by a woman whose 13-year-old son has wildly divergent moods. He's brilliant, often calm, but descends into violent periods, blatantly threatening his mother and anyone else he can think of. She sometimes has to call police and paramedics, get him bundled into a straitjacket, hospitalized and medicated. But all of this is at her expense; she gets help only when things get really scary. She has been told, straight out by the professionals: You have to WAIT UNTIL HE KILLS SOMEONE and only then will he get intensive treatment. Only then, they say, will he have a paper trail that has some effectiveness. You can't tell me with ALL THE MFing drugs we have floating around the planet that there can't be a better system for diagnosing, treating and controlling potentially dangerous people. Yes, civil liberties are an issue. We don't want people warehoused and forgotten -- and yet, what's happened is that shortly after so many very mentally ill people were "liberated" from asylums, the prison system had to replace it because we CAN'T let people like that out loose and unsupervised. We have to find a way to TREAT people. They may never be curable, never safe to be let out on their own, but it is possible to let them live in dignity to whatever extent possible. So why don't we care enough to do that?

[Warkitty]

I wouldn't recommend relying on drugs.

[JC]

Dec 16, 2012 9:34:18 GMT -5 ssmynkint said:

First two posts were about guns. One was your post in part.

Quite a distortion, J.C., as I explicitly was attempting to avoid the type of discussion you have gravitated toward.
And your figures for UK are misleading and are also off point as the obvious focus of the thread had initially been the shooting deaths.
Figures from 2008, homiced rates:

USA 5.2
UK 1.6
Canada 1.7
Norway 0.6
Sweden 0.9
Finland 2.5
France 1.35
Danemark 1.4
Italy 1.6
Spain 0.9
CHINA 1.2
Japan 0.45

Our rate is more in keeping w 2nd world countries. It IS a societal cultural issue.

The point being made is that we are far safer than most of the world and mass-murders isn't exclusive to our society or related to gun ownership.

You are basing your opinion of this on what you see on the news.
I am watching it rain right now on the Weather Channel. Just because I see it rain more here doesn't mean that it doesn't rain more in Washington.


Homicide rates include all death attributed to another person. That includes murder, accidental and justified/excusable homicides. We have more vehicles, guns and other such things that people die accidentally from. Of course we're going to have a higher percentage than a lot of other places.
Not exactly equal to violence in general.

[ssmynkint]

You are basing your opinion of this on what you see on the news

Wrong again. A poorly execute argumentum ad hominem and false, as well as fallacious.


Do you dispute the fact that the US has a significantly higher murder rate then any other Western European Industrialized nation, including Canada (figures provided above), and irrespective of gun laws?
How do you explain that fact if not an artifact of our society/culture?

[JC]

You did not prove the US has a higher number of murders. You posted some homicide percentages without providing the context or source.
I am assuming your source is Wiki? Looks like most of the numbers match Wiki's chart.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
You are wrong on the US percentage. It is 4.2 - not 5.2.
And wiki's numbers for the US are wrong. It states 12,996 (apparently the data is from the UN report which I will link below. It is not from that report). The CDC says it's 16,799.
www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

If you'll notice, those numbers on Wiki are not complete. Countries tally and report numbers differently. as already mentioned, the US includes all death attributed to another person in it's homicide statistics (see CDC link).
Other countries may or may not include the same things that we do.
Do those other countries include justified homicides, accidents and/or self defense? Or are they only including actual murder?
Even the UN report says that the rankings and data are inconclusive because of the variance in data collection, reporting and the discrepancies with what is considered "homicide".

The CDC states that "75.1% of homicides are attributed to four major mechanisms". Those are, and I quote directly from them:
"poisoning, motor-vehicle traffic, firearm, and fall— accounted for 75.1% of all injury deaths".

According to your Wiki chart, the UAE only reported 39 homicides in 2011. Afgan only 712.
Would you consider those accurate or comparable to the way the US calculates and reports homicides?




You can see the UN report linked below.
www.businessinsider.com/1homicidal-countries-2011-11?op=1

(PDF of actual report) www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime/Homicide_statistics2012.xls

[Justin Thyme]

How do you explain that fact if not an artifact of our society/culture?

Maybe drugs? When 11% of population that is over 12 years of age are on drugs that list violent behavior as a possible side effect I think we have found at least evidence of something we need to be looking into.

[ssmynkint]

Facile response, but it begs the question: isn't drug use a cultural artifact?

No, the gross disregard for human life, an extreme form of the disdain and disparagement heaped on those with whom we differ, can not be attributed to drug use.

Rune Deer re raises the mental health issue. Sadly, although we might all agree that a murderer has mental health problems, most would not be amenable to pharmacological intervention. Schizophrenics, a minute portion of the perps, typically will refuse voluntary medication. The majority of perps most likely suffer from poor self-regulation/impulse control, for which there is little medication that is effective. A significant number of perps likely have a diagnosable personality disorder, which are not, excluding Borderline Personality, responsive to medication.
Rather then the chimera of 11% drug users-a rate that has not just exploded in the last generation, I submit that our culture is in shambles, perhaps most especially in terms of how we raise our children and the role models we provide them.

BTW, JC, your straw man arguments are hollow. I did not use Wiki (another of your ad hominem) nor did I set out to show the US had "more" murders. Sorry you are so easily confused.

[JC]

BTW, JC, your straw man arguments are hollow. I did not use Wiki (another of your ad hominem) nor did I set out to show the US had "more" murders. Sorry you are so easily confused.

I am not the confused one. Maybe you forgot what you wrote?
Your last post:

Do you dispute the fact that the US has a significantly higher murder rate then

What straw man?

If you did not pull your wrong info from Wiki, then from where? My info is correct and was quoted directly from the CDC and the UN, with links included.

Why are you calling my question about your sources "ad hominem"?

[goomba]

This is an email that I recived from Tom Givens of Rangemaster in Memphis, TN
.
.
.
In the wake of the tragic, horrific slaughter of innocent school children in Connecticut, there has been a renewed cry for more gun control laws. This stems from the natural need to "do something" when a tragedy of this proportion occurs. I agree we need to do something, but the "something" I want is a bit different.

The "Gun Free Schools Act of 1994" made it a federal crime to possess a firearm on any school property. Many states enacted similar legislation at the state level, as the federal act required them to do so or lose certain federal funding. Thus, it has been a crime to go onto school property anywhere in the US while in possession of a gun for the past 28 years. Has that helped?

Well, I did some research and I cannot find a single mass school shooting in the US prior to 1994, when this bill was passed. For the purposes of this discussion, I will define a "mass school shooting" as one in which three or more people were killed. I have found 14 such incidents in the United States between 1997 and the Newtown, CT, incident of yesterday. That is an average of one incident every two years. ALL OF THESE OCCURRED AFTER THE ENACTMENT OF THE GUN FREE SCHOOLS ACT OF 1994! Let me emphasize that—every mass school shooting in the US occurred AFTER it became illegal to possess a gun on school grounds. Why?

The answer should be obvious. By making schools a "gun free zone", you automatically disarm all law abiding citizens at those locations. This is tantamount to placing a sign on the front of the building inviting criminals and mentally deranged persons to come shoot up the place. "Come on in. We're all unarmed, by law. We won't interfere with your mayhem." Disgusting…..

I, for instance, have a state issued handgun carry permit. I am certified by the NRA as a Law Enforcement Firearms Instructor and I have been certified by the FBI as a police firearms instructor. I am certified by two states to train and certify new firearms instructors for those states. I have held a law enforcement officer commission. I travel all over the US teaching defensive firearms use. Yet, by law, I would commit a felony by stepping onto school grounds while wearing my sidearm. Despite this, someone who, for whatever reason, wants to shoot up a school can walk right in. If he is willing to murder six year olds in cold blood, he certainly won't be deterred by a law against bringing a gun onto the campus. Duh….. To think otherwise is so naïve as to be a form of mental illness.

I think it is truly ironic that in the first mass school shooting I could find, occurring in 1997, the mayhem was stopped when the Assistant Principal got a handgun from his car and confronted the gunman, who surrendered to him. Thank God the Assistant Principal had an ILLEGAL gun that day.

A couple of weeks ago, there was an attempted mass shooting at a mall in Oregon. The demented shooter had a high capacity semiautomatic rifle, but he only managed to kill two people and wound one other before killing himself. Why was the body count so low, given that this was obviously a copy-cat version of the Aurora, CO, shootings? The answer is simple. Because Nick Meli, age 22, was at the mall there with his wife and child. Nick has a concealed carry permit and was wearing a handgun concealed on his person. When the suspect began shooting, Nick drew his gun and verbally challenged the gunman. Meli held his fire because of innocent people in the background (excellent judgment under stress), but his actions caused the gunman to break off the attack, run into a nearby service corridor and kill himself, ending the spree. Of course, the lamestream media will not tell you about Nick. They would prefer a higher body count rather than tell you a legally armed citizen saved the day. Here are a few other instances that two minutes of internet research brought to light. In each case, a legally armed private citizen saved lives by being there and by being armed.

1. In Pearl, Mississippi in 1997, 16-year-old Luke Woodham stabbed and bludgeoned to death his mother at home, then killed two students and injured seven at his high school. As he was on his way to another school building , he was stopped by Assistant Principal Joel Myrick, who had gone out to get a handgun from his car. Having that gun was illegal, but it saved lives.

2. In Edinboro, Pennsylvania in 1996, 14-year-old Andrew Wurst shot and killed a teacher at a school dance, and shot and injured several other students. He had just left the dance hall, carrying his gun when he was confronted by the dance hall owner James Strand, who lived next door and kept a shotgun at home.

3. In Winnemucca, Nevada in 2008, Ernesto Villagomez killed two people and wounded two others in a bar filled with three hundred people. He was then shot and killed by a patron who was carrying a gun (and had a concealed carry license).

4. In Colorado Springs in 2007, Matthew Murray killed four people at a church. He was then shot several times by Jeanne Assam, a church member, volunteer security guard, and former police officer (she had been dismissed by a police department 10 years before, and to my knowledge hadn't worked as a police officer since).

So, I do want some legislative action. I want "gun free zones" abolished, at least for legally armed citizens with government issued licenses to carry. This is real "common sense" gun legislation.

[goomba]

..............
We have a tendencey to think of things only in the present when in fact our history (indeed that of the whole world) has been filled with violence.
It doesn't make any of it easier to digest, but people are basically scumbags. The sooner we understand that, the better we can deal with them---- Pat Rogers USMC ret, NYPD ret
..........
This was not the most tragic murder of schoolchildren in the US.

That was the Bath School Bombings (three in all) 18May 1927 in Bath MI

The Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, on May 18, 1927, which killed 38 elementary school children, two teachers, four other adults and the bomber himself; at least 58 people were injured. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–11 years of age [1]) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest mass murder in a school in U.S. history and the fourth-deadliest massacre in U.S. history, behind the Oklahoma City bombing, the Mountain Meadows massacre and 9/11.

The bomber was school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe, 55 who died in a car bomb he set off after he drove up to the school as the crowd gathered to rescue survivors from the burning school.

On the morning of May 18, Kehoe murdered his wife by beating her to death, then set his farm buildings afire. As fire fighters arrived at the farm, an explosion devastated the north wing of the school building, killing many schoolchildren. He used a detonator to ignite dynamite and hundreds of pounds of pyrotol which he had secretly planted inside the school over the course of many months. As rescuers started gathering at the school, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and detonated a bomb inside his fragmentation-filled vehicle with his Winchester rifle, killing himself and the school superintendent, and killing and injuring several others. During rescue efforts searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds (230 kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol planted throughout the basement of the school's south wing. Kehoe apparently had intended to blow up and destroy the whole school.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

[Half-Tard]

If we only would allow Gawd back in school this would never ever happen again. So when did Gawd leave schools? When did anyone say you can't pray?. When did you need a teacher to lead a prayer? Does it not it count unless the teacher leads it. Hasn't the worship of religions led to more death's in wars then we can care to count? So why do you want gawd at school? I say get that trouble maker away from kids...

[BlackFox]

I'm quite sure God was called upon plenty of times that morning. Apparently He chose not to help.

As far as arming teachers, which do you think has the better chance of occurring first: a teacher uses their gun to protect innocents or school children overpowering a teacher and using their gun to kill innocents?

[JC]

Dec 18, 2012 10:53:55 GMT -5 BlackFox said:

Iyou think has the better chance of occurring first: a teacher uses their gun to protect innocents or school children overpowering a teacher and using their gun to kill innocents?

Are they children from the corn?

[JC]

Looks like TN is going to require all schools to have armed staff.

________________________

State Sen. Frank Niceley (R) told TPM on Tuesday he believes it's time for that to change. He plans to introduce legislation in the next session, which begins Jan. 8, that will require all schools to have an armed staff member of some kind. The current language of the bill -- which is in its early form -- would allow for either a so-called "resource officer" (essentially an armed police officer, the kind which most Tennessee high schools have already) or an armed member of the faculty or staff in every school in the state. The choice would allow schools that can't afford a resource officer to fulfill the requirement without having to pay for anything beyond the cost of the training and, presumably, the weapon. But Niceley said schools should use the wiggle room to train and keep on hand armed staff not in uniform.

That's the best way to protect students, he said.

news.yahoo.com/tennessee-considers-training-arming-schoolteachers-protect-against-shootings-192556978--politics.html?_esi=1

[Half-Tard]

The state doesn't want to pay the wages for them to teach, now they want them to be cops too? Amazing. Don't forget they need to be pastors too so they can lead a prayer since we took Gawd out of school.

Help Wanted: Need a person to teach children, also must have a handgun training, pastoral skills as well. Starting pay $10. an hour..summers off though...

[professorx]

Dec 15, 2012 9:43:19 GMT -5 ssmynkint said:

Yeah, cheap snipe at a time of tragedy.
I can't imagine the horror of the parents and community.

ASIDE from the gun control issue, the REAL crisis is in our culture's mentality. As the occurrence of violence is daily, and NOT just limited to some who are diagnostically whacked, the questions are:

What is wrong with us as a society that we have such a culture of violence? How can THAT be addressed?
What does it say about us as family/community/society that those with demonstrable mental health impairments go un/under treated?

It's facile to debate gun issues (I support ownership and registration) and guns DO kill people, but only in the hands of other people.

Wow, I agree.

I will add a controversial element. Can the people who want to use these horrific events for their own political gain at least wait a little while to exploit the events?

When the people were shot in Tucson, the police chief was railing about right wing nuts before the last person was loaded into the ambulance.

The people killed in CT were not even buried when the cries were literally "Let Politicize this to our advantage".

news.yahoo.com/why-we-should-politicize-the-newtown-school-shooting--starting-right-now-182303106.html

This is a complex problem, there are no simple solutions. To cite only one portion (guns, crazy people, movies, video games, drugs, etc) does us all no good.

Anyway, I agree with your sentiment.

[ssmynkint]

Thanks.

[LimitedRecourse]

The nuts on both sides need to chill.

[Conservator]

Dec 18, 2012 10:53:55 GMT -5 BlackFox said:

I'm quite sure God was called upon plenty of times that morning. Apparently He chose not to help.

As far as arming teachers, which do you think has the better chance of occurring first: a teacher uses their gun to protect innocents or school children overpowering a teacher and using their gun to kill innocents?

Agree and disagree... I think it's a great idea to have a few teachers/staff to be trained and for there to be a gun safe in a secure faculty room on in a principal's office. Somewhere no children see or are aware of. That's not 'the' solution, but it's part of a plan. But yeah, allowing the typical old lady librarian to have her old man's revolver in her purse may not be the best idea. Retired police officers/security guards is obviously the best route.

And honstly, who's to say God didn't intervene or 'save' anyone that day? I heard an entire class was in a closet and spared as the teacher was shot after telling him her class was in the gym for recess. (possibly one of the many fictitious hero stories that arise after these sorts of events - have not confirmed)...

[mikeydokey]

Dec 16, 2012 19:56:33 GMT -5 Justin Thyme said:

How do you explain that fact if not an artifact of our society/culture?

Maybe drugs? When 11% of population that is over 12 years of age are on drugs that list violent behavior as a possible side effect I think we have found at least evidence of something we need to be looking into.

Don't expect the Media, the Congress, nor the President to look to and to point fingers at Big Pharma. Big Pharma's spends multi-billions in ad revenues every year, and is among the highest paying lobbyists in Washington DC if not the highest paying. Much much higher paying than the lowly NRA and other pro gun supporting groups. Almost every mass shooting since Columbine has been perpetrated by the mentally ill with history of psychotropic drug use, and yes, most all do list suicidal and violent
tendencies as their side effects

[Half-Tard]

Quit Blaming Big Pharma for Bush always being fucked up