A firearm question for you LeftiesFollow

That horse was asking for it.

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Still a coward.

My opposition to the idea that armed security in schools is a good answer to mass shootings at school has nothing to do with how many or how few other people happen to promote it.



Again. Irrelevant to what I said. While you may agree or disagree with something based on how many other people hold said position, I don't. Part of being a free thinker, I guess.



Still wrong.



Uh huh. Not seeing where the backpedaling on my part supposedly comes from.



No. You leaped ahead of the issue, made an assumption about how I would react, and then proceeded as though your assumption was true. You then interpreted everything I said after that point as though your assumption was true, even after I repeatedly told you it was not. If the NRA actually believes that putting armed security guards in schools is the only and best way to reduce the number of mass shootings, I disagree with them. Just as I disagree with pundits on the radio and TV who repeat just that one proposal as the one thing we should do. Happy?

The difference which you are conveniently skipping over is that the NRA did *not* propose this as the sole course of action. You are correct that I had not read (or even really been aware) of the NRA response, yet I was still more on target (haha!) than you. The first portion of their response:



Huh. That's exactly what I was saying. A week before the NRA said it. Sure, they also talk about putting armed security in schools (and I'm not saying that's not a good idea for other reasons, just not "this is how to stop mass shootings"). And they also talk about violent video games and films too. I think that's the wrong direction as well. Point is that they talked about a lot of different aspect of the issue, but you choose to zero in on the one that I mentioned as though somehow because the NRA said it, I must change my position or something. If you recall, my response was that this wasn't the only thing they proposed. And when I said that, I had not yet read the transcript of their statement.

Amazing how I managed to correctly guess that this was the case. The point I was making, which you appear to have missed entirely in your haste to find some silly "gotcha" response, was that what made those conservative pundits idiots wasn't that they suggest putting armed guards in schools. As I've said several times, I have no problem with that since there are a number of good reasons for doing this. My statement was that it's idiotic when presented as the correct and only solution to the problem of mass shootings. As several people have pointed out (including myself, which is ironic given how many people have tried to use this as an argument against me), the mere presence of armed security at a school doesn't seem to affect the decision or outcome of a mass shooting much at all. Columbine had an armed security guard. They just choose to start shooting at a time/place where he wasn't.


My argument all through this thread (and the previous one) has been very consistent: The best way to prevent a potential mass shooting from becoming a mass shooting is if there are non-uniformed people in the area who are armed. Since it's not obvious to a potential shooter that they're armed (or capable of arming themselves quickly), he can't choose to avoid them prior to making his presence known. Thus, they will always have the best chance to stop a shooting in the very early stages. Certainly far far faster than any armed/uniformed response can occur. The only variable is the odds that there is such a person in the vicinity when the shooting starts. So I believe we should be looking at legal changes which maximize the odds of a non-uniformed person being armed and in the immediate vicinity of the start of a shooting. But what our current laws do is minimize those odds instead.

That's where our focus should be. Removing the gun-free zone restrictions around schools would be a great start. The degree to which someone argues for armed security guards in school in preference to this (or instead of this), I will absolutely label as "idiotic". And I've heard a number of conservative pundits doing just that. IMO, that just serves to distract the issue from what really needs to be done to a meaningless placebo. I get why they propose this (it's easier to argue for, and less likely to be opposed), but I don't think it'll actually solve the problem. Hence my disagreement with it.


BTW. I *also* think people who argue for increased gun control, including restrictions on cosmetic features of guns and magazine sizes, are idiotic. But I'll note that you didn't make any attempt to compare this to the NRA and make some broad conclusion about my motivations in that case. Bit selective, don't you think?

Edited, Jan 14th 2013 5:15pm by gbaji

Gbaji backpedaling while insisting with great walls of text that he's not backpedaling? Shocker!

I heard on the radio this evening that gun sales of the particular gun that the asshole used to kill all of those people in Newtown are booming. I admit that the shooting didn't exactly reduce me to tears or anything, but that's just sick.

You never know when twenty first-graders might try to break into your home and you'll need to kill them all.

I'm setting out M18s this year.

Dissing cognizance

My father in law called us last night, asking us to look up prices for that particular gun and its related ammo. He was disappointed that not only was the ammo not cheaper online, the ammo was also back ordered and unavailable at the websites we searched. And you can't buy guns online.

Edited, Jan 15th 2013 12:14pm by catwho

We should just have guns chained to the walls in malls, theaters, schools, hospitals, churches, etc. Like fire extinguishers. Then no one would shoot anyone anywhere because anyone could just grab the nearest Safety Gun and shoot him down.

Except perhaps that the shooter is now roaming the halls looking for armed faculty members instead of shooting at students trapped in classrooms with no way to escape. You're right! I can't see at all how that could reduce the number of children killed in such shootings.

And? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.



Except you stated that the response a shooter would have to the potential of armed faculty in the area would be to shoot at the adults first. Which is it? He's either going to have to take out all the adults in the area and continually watch out for more who might show up to stop him *or* he's going to ignore them and just try to kill as many students as he can until someone does show up and shoots him. In either scenario, the total number of students he can kill will be fewer in direct proportion to the proximity and number of any armed faculty members. He's either tied up in a shootout with the armed folks showing up to stop him *or* he's easy to take out by those same armed folks showing up.

In either case, the total number of fatalities will be less than if we're relying on uniformed police to show up or even uniformed security because unless we've got them posted in every corner of the school, he'll start his shooting where they aren't (or start out by shooting them since he knows who they are). Any location of a school with students will also have faculty nearby. Therefore, there will always be the potential that said faculty members could arrive very quickly on the scene with a firearm and stop the shooting. Everything else being the same, this will result in fewer fatalities.



Why? I'm not wrong. The absolute truth is that had even one faculty member at Sandyhook had a firearm available to them on campus, there would have been fewer dead kids, possibly even no dead kids. Instead, the faculty were helpless to prevent the deaths of those children. You can't possibly tell me that every single one of those teachers who died trying to shield their students with their bodies would not have been better able to protect them if they'd been armed. And you can't possibly tell me that teachers willing to put their bodies between a shooter and their students would not also have been willing to engage said shooter with a firearm. If only they had any ability to have one in the first place. And you can't possibly tell me that all the rest of the faculty at the school didn't feel helpless because they could not stop the shooter, despite presumably wanting to do so. If only one of them had had a gun in an office or locker in the school, how much quicker could the shooter have been stopped?

This is not a matter of absolutes. I can't say for sure what would have happened. But I can say that the number of deaths in a shooting like that is directly related to how long it takes an armed person to confront the shooter. Period. The statistics overwhelmingly show that once an armed person confronts a shooter, the deaths stop. The objective should be to get an armed person to confront the shooter as quickly as possible. I can't think of any better way to do that than to allow faculty to bring firearms to work "just in case". Let the schools figure out how to do this safely, but let them do it. Don't just outright bar them from this course of action by legislative fiat based on knee-jerk fear of guns. I'm not saying require them to do this either. Just remove the restrictions which prevent them from even having the option to.


I don't see how that's so much to ask.

Edited, Jan 15th 2013 8:10pm by gbaji

The best way to keep crazy people away from other people's guns is for other people to take some damn responsibility and store the guns properly.