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In reply to the discussion: NRA: If only a teacher had had a gun ... Well, asswipes, one of the teachers had SEVERAL guns ... [View all]caseymoz
(5,763 posts)Gun-free zones are more adapted to preventing a certain type of shooting in certain places. That is, the most common one where an argument escalates, ones that can take place between two or more otherwise law-abiding people having a bad moment together. So, they were conceived without the idea of preventing this problem. In fact, they were mostly enacted before anybody knew the spree killing was going to be so much of a problem, before our 2nd Amendment rights were so secure.
Now, speaking from my experience, if I have an encounter with the police once in three years, it's unusual. It's been three years now. I've never been searched in my life. I've never been stopped at a school or other gun-free place. I know a lot of it is luck, but I'm well into middle-age and have had no reason to anticipate police would search me if I walked into a school. If you're law-abiding, why would you anticipate a search? Just saying, why is your perspective more legitimate than mine?
I know a few pro-gunners who aren't as law-abiding, or fearful. They're the sorts of people who carry defaced guns, shoot the bad guy who gives them trouble, and drop the untraceable weapon at the scene. One of them has a 2nd Amendment website and everything. He complains about regulations he flouts.
Your position is to arm teachers and administrators. Tell me, if it's implemented, what would you accept as disproof of this position? Would you be willing to accept the risk that students get a hold of those guns, and use them because teachers and administrators do not properly secure them, or lose them, or have them taken away by students because the pupils will know they are carrying them? While you're accepting that risk, would you accept the risk that it might not stop any incident like this, or might cause collateral damage as people get caught in the crossfire?
What makes you think teachers and administrators will appreciate this responsibility? I'm stereotyping a little, but teachers and administrators do not strike me as people who take to gun training easily. At the very least, you're dictating to them that they do something that's not in their job description, and shouldn't be. You're not asking them about it. These might not be the best people to entrust with that responsibility. And if you make it voluntary, and you seem to imply it would be, what if nobody takes it up?
Many of these incidents have taken place outside gun free zones. Nobody stopped the Aurora shooter, and there were hundreds of people in that theater. Nobody stopped Jared Loughner, and that was in a state practically know for gun-slinging. There were hundreds of people there, one of them bound to be armed, and it wasn't a gun free zone.
Moreover, you're saying that children have to be kept under armed guard because you have to have a gun, an implement that doesn't protect you. Statistically speaking, it doesn't. Owning a handgun makes it five more times as likely that you'll die of a gunshot wound. That's truth about a gun's effectiveness in protecting you.
Since Seung-Hui Cho, Jared Loughner, James Holmes and now this guy all had severe mental illnesses, there appears to be a strong pattern. These are mostly not hateful discontents committing these acts. These are people with classic mental illness symptoms. Therefore, if you can have better mental health care and intervention-- and make sure these people aren't in an environment that makes it easy to get a hold of guns and ammunition when they're delusional-- that should reduce the incidence of these a lot. Don't say it fails because it doesn't get rid of spree shootings completely.
Believe me, though if the pro-gun people don't think of some solution, they are set to lose, and lose big. Attempts to defend gun rights by using the old stupid arguments, or coming up with dumber ones like the schools had it coming for being godless is just going to sink them further.
And to say nothing will work isn't going to help them either.
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