<p>
</p>
<p>I agree. But you are going to have to get the media (movies, TV, videos, music) on board with the idea, and they have not, and may not acknowledge any responsibility for cultivating violence in our society.</p>
<p>I think both sides of this argument can find examples of a particular strategy not always working. The first thing the country has to discard is the notion that nothing can be done, and then we need to agree that we have a problem. Shooting groups of people is a problem. Killing children is a problem. We have a problem, one that other countries don’t seem to have. Those ought to be areas to start from.
I’m discouraged by the guy who sees this as a veiled attempt to take all his guns. How do we reason with someone who equates gun control with the Stalin regime? I don’t see how more guns – anywhere – will help. Mark Kelly relates the story of the Arizona shooting, where a citizen with a legal handgun nearly shot a first responder, thinking in error he was the shooter. Or the case in NYC, where officers wounded many bystanders in an attempt to bring down a shooter. Imagine that scenario, but with another dozen citizens pulling guns in order to “help”.
I gave money to the Kelly/Giffords new PAC, I’ve never done that. Jon Stewart, of all people, cheered me up with his Daily Show piece, but honestly, I worry the NRA will win again.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[Could</a> armed janitors be Ohio school district’s first line of defense? | Dallas-Fort Worth Local Breaking News - News for Dallas, Texas - The Dallas Morning News](<a href=“http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20130111-could-armed-janitors-be-ohio-school-district-s-first-line-of-defense.ece]Could”>http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20130111-could-armed-janitors-be-ohio-school-district-s-first-line-of-defense.ece)</p>
<p>That would seem to address the issue of a “snapping teacher.” </p>
<p>I think that as this catches on, colleges or vocational training school could add courses in conjunction with the police and retired/former special forces. This could be one of those new fields that develops. </p>
<p>The article goes on to say:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m assuming we all agree that this is an area of state’s rights so that voting is the way to decide this? If it becomes a reality at a school those who disagree can “vote with their feet.” That seems to be win-win and the American way.</p>
<p>As it says in Alice’s Restaurant this is an anti-massacre movement.</p>
<p>I actually like the idea of janitors or support staff being trained rather than teachers. Let the teachers do their jobs. I also hope the Newtown tragedy brings back some of the respect people seem to have lost for teachers. It got very, very ugly in my state two years ago with ridiculous accusations of teachers being “lazy” and not caring about the kids during the collective bargaining debate.</p>
<p>[Boys</a>, 14 and 15, killed in separate shootings Friday - chicagotribune.com](<a href=“http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-boy-14-killed-on-west-side-20130112,0,570152.story]Boys”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-boy-14-killed-on-west-side-20130112,0,570152.story)</p>
<p>"The high school freshman had been talking on a cellphone in front of his home just moments before shots rang out, his stepmother said.</p>
<p>The shooting may have been gang-related, police sources said. Family and friends on the scene, however, said the victim avoided gangs and spent his free time listening to music and riding his bicycle.</p>
<p>He’d thrown himself into a school program offering experience in a local bike shop – a program designed, his mother said, to keep kids away from the type of violence that ended his life."</p>
<p>On arming janitors and other staff: I would say that is is still much more likely that any given janitor would use his/her new gun to kill an estranged spouse or co-worker/former co-worker that stop a school shooting in action. The training and ability to carry and shoot a firearm does not guarantee the judgement about when and how to use it, and based on recent accidental discharges does not guarantee immunity from safety issues around storage and handling in non-emergency situations. Will all the janitors be drug tested routinely and will they be disqualified from their job if they have had any issues with arrest, DUI, spousal abuse etc? Those are things that would not disqualify someone from being a janitor but should disqualify them from carrying a weapon in a school.</p>
<p>The district might also be introducing new liability if the guns belong to the district. I can’t imagine allowing guns of unknown origin, quality, caliber into the schools as an official policy - one would think there must be some standardization just like a police office can own their own personal guns but on the job they have a sevice revolver. Would the staff check out their gun when they come in to work? Does this mean that a school would have an armory? If they take their gun home is the district then liable for any discharges - accidental or intentional - outside of the working day? How about theft?</p>
<p>The logical thing to do is to look at all the industrialized countries that have much lower homicide rates than ours, especially mass killings, and figure out what we’re doing differently that makes our country so susceptible. Not to just fling more guns at the problem.</p>
<p>I don’t think putting guns in the classroom makes it safer. If you put a gun on every teacher or an armed guard in every classroom, what is to stop a suicidal teenager from just wresting away the gun and using it to shoot up his classmates? Plus just the specter of gun accidents. So many accidental shooting deaths occur in the home, why would this be any different when you transplant the gun from a home to a school? And what’s to prevent a gunman from simply going around the back of a school building, breaking a window, and shooting kids through the window with an assault rifle? Or are we going to start building concrete schools without windows, surrounded by barbed wire?</p>
<p>But let’s say, theoretically, that putting an armed guard in classrooms DID end mass school shootings? How do you stop a suicidal gunman from strolling down to a park or a beach or a Black Friday shopping event and letting loose there? Putting schools into permanent lockdown mode is not a solution unless you’re prepared to put the entire country in lockdown mode. </p>
<p>I realize that people want to feel safe, and shoving armed guards into schools may make them feel safe. But it’s not a logical response. It’s an emotional one. And it’s simplistic.</p>
<p>Just for the sake of argument, do you, then, believe that it is an emotional and not a logical response to have armed police in the inner city schools? Or do you believe the kids in the inner city schools should have a different school experience by the accident of birth and so that just doesn’t trouble you? </p>
<p>Do you believe, then, that it is an emotional and not a logical response to have armed guards at monuments and museums?</p>
<p>I mean, personally, I believe it is a logical response to first acknowledge we have a problem with this and then to do something near term to make our children safer, even as we work towards a more long term solution regarding the gun issue. However, I do not believe it is an emotional and not a logical response to lock the cockpit doors and increase security on airplanes and in airports.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why this is “special circumstances” of emotional response where the others are logical. The fact is that the world is much more violent than we would like. And this includes many of the other industrialized countries which are still embroiled in bizarre religious wars. Or, do you not consider the middle east to be industrialized?</p>
<p>You are comparing areas beset by civil war with a history of decades of First and Second World arms dealing and meddling, to the situation of the United States? Really?</p>
<p>Slight correction, I meant to say “developed countries” rather than industrialized countries, but the term was slipping my mind. Industrial has more to do with GNP while developed is more about quality of life. And no, I do not consider most of the Middle East to be developed except the United Arab Emirates.</p>
<p>If there is actual gang violence on the street everyday outside a school (or in a school) and it’s statistically likely to effect the school, then some security measures make sense. I am still dubious about armed guards. A lot of security guards are not in great physical shape and, as I said, I think a lot of teenagers could wrest the weapon away pretty easily if they took the guard by surprise. I still wouldn’t want guns in the classroom, as I think this would make a lot of innocent kids feel like they’re prisoners who can’t be trusted and have to have a gun trained on them all the time.</p>
<p>Armed guards in schools is a sign of societal breakdown. My wife worked in such places. Inner city Detroit. Teachers were escorted to and from their cars by people with rifles. The Detroit high schools had armed guards and metal detectors - and those were needed. In one early job, I could walk into Western Command’s reporting room and see the list of that day’s assaults around schools. I sat with police in the courts and talked with them about police cruisers whose windows were shot out in front of Kettering and Pershing. Why? D-R-U-G-S. Money with drugs.</p>
<p>All other societies with armed guards everywhere are not the free places but those where violence bubbles right at the surface. All over Latin America. I remember having to pass through bulletproof revolving doors that required a buzzer to get into banks in Italy. The police carried Uzi’s. It took substantial effort to get the violence in Italy under control - and I’m not talking about Mafia or Camorra, etc. </p>
<p>As for rebellion against tyranny, the Federal government under G. Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. Thousands of armed men participated. Many more than any of today’s so-called militia. One protest had 7,000 men. They considered secession. So-called “Liberty Poles” were erected in many places. </p>
<p>The tyranny of taxation, of the imposition of laws considered unjust was met by our first President by the raising of an army which he personally reviewed. He then handed command to Henry (“Light-horse Harry”) Lee, who ironically was R.E. Lee’s father. The army marched out and people were charged with treason. </p>
<p>So the argument made by the extremist nutcases is utterly wrong. They are the ones touching on treason, not the government. The Founders would, with the possible exception of Jefferson, have taken up arms against them and would have tried them for treason.</p>
<p>But then signs of irrationality are common in this area. When a person says “if the slaves were armed, there wouldn’t have been slavery”, that beggars the imagination. How would that work? It also ignores the fact that slaves were typically taken by force in Africa, brought here using force, and kept in bondage using force. So how exactly would they have been armed? When a person says Hitler took away the Jews’ guns, that is just stupid and, as is typical, a complete distortion of the reality. (Which is, btw, that Weimar laws highly restricted all gun ownership and Hitler’s 1938 laws expanded them for all non-Jewish Germans. They made it easier for Christian Germans to own weapons. But what can you expect from people who point to the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto without seeming to understand that Warsaw is in Poland, not Germany?)</p>
<p>"Armed guards in schools is a sign of societal breakdown. "</p>
<p>What about airports, bus stations, train stations, public meeting places and so on? DHS has taken over most of those areas.</p>
<p>Sidwell Friends school employs 11 armed security guards. This is not counting secret service for the President’s daughters.</p>
<p>“What about airports, bus stations, train stations, public meeting places and so on? DHS has taken over most of those areas.”</p>
<p>It’s a sign that the terrorists won. :(</p>
<p>"Sidwell Friends school employs 11 armed security guards. This is not counting secret service for the President’s daughters. "</p>
<p>Haven’t we established that only some kids need the protection? :p</p>
<p>For my taxes, I wish the Government were going after gangs in Chicago as opposed to trying to figure out which guns to take away. It would save a lot more innocent lives on an annual basis.</p>
<p>The problem in Chicago is a problem of unemployment, Tex. The unemployment numbers for these kids is staggering. The violence is a matter of desperation. We saw this in Detroit when it began to die, as well. And no new companies are coming to illinois any time soon, either. It’s unfortunate. Not all gun issues are actually gun issues.</p>
<p>And, yes, Emily, I too would love to live in a world without terrorists, without crazy people and without despots and religious crazies. But we don’t. We live in this world. and, right now, these are the realities. Do I wish they’d had more guts in 2004 and made the assault weapon ban real, but even the democrats weren’t willing to do so. </p>
<p>But, I do not agree with anyone who believes it is an irrational, emotional response to protect our children from harm while we try to puzzle out a thorny issue which could take years.</p>
<p>poetgrl - These gangs are mostly high school gangs though. They are going around killing people for initiation to prove themselves. Are they impacted by parental unemployment?</p>
<p>There are 200 million guns in the this country. We are awash with them. Yet, somehow there are people who believe if we had only had more guns and more people carrying around guns we’d have less violence and be safer. I feel like I’m living in bizarro world.</p>
<p>You have to look at the big picture. Look at when the gang wars started and the increase in the shootings. It’s a drug war.</p>
<p>Hopefully, none of these people being provided gun and ammos don’t have someone close to them that can get to their guns and go on a rampage. </p>
<p>I also believe that if there were an armed guard at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the chances are quite good that the death toll would have been one more.</p>
<p>“You have to look at the big picture. Look at when the gang wars started and the increase in the shootings. It’s a drug war.”</p>
<p>"From 1986 to 1996, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sponsored high-quality, peer-reviewed research into the underlying causes of gun violence. People who kept guns in their homes did not — despite their hopes — gain protection, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Instead, residents in homes with a gun faced a 2.7-fold greater risk of homicide and a 4.8-fold greater risk of suicide. The National Rifle Association moved to suppress the dissemination of these results and to block funding of future government research into the causes of firearm injuries.</p>
<p>One of us served as the NRA’s point person in Congress and submitted an amendment to an appropriations bill that removed $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget, the amount the agency’s injury center had spent on firearms-related research the previous year. This amendment, together with a stipulation that “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control,” sent a chilling message.</p>
<p>Since the legislation passed in 1996, the United States has spent about $240 million a year on traffic safety research, but there has been almost no publicly funded research on firearm."</p>
<p>[We</a> won?t know the cause of gun violence until we look for it - Washington Post](<a href=“http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-07-27/opinions/35486709_1_gun-violence-traffic-fatalities-firearm-deaths]We”>http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-07-27/opinions/35486709_1_gun-violence-traffic-fatalities-firearm-deaths)</p>
<p>“Gun bans can have an impact. In 1991, 15 years after Washington, D.C. banned handguns, researchers from the University of Maryland conducted a study to assess the impact of the ban. They tracked homicides and suicides in the district from 1968 to 1987 and found that homicides by firearm fell by 25 percent and suicides committed with firearms dropped by 23 percent. Murders and suicides committed by other means neither rose nor fell—in other words, people didn’t use other methods to commit an act they already wanted to commit. And there was no similar reduction found in the adjacent metropolitan areas in Maryland and Virginia. The D.C. gun restriction was repealed in 2008 after the U.S. Supreme Court found such ordinances unconstitutional.”</p>
<p>[Gun</a> Violence: The Public Health Issue Politicians Want to Ignore - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/robwaters/2012/07/24/gun-violence-the-public-health-issue-politicians-want-to-ignore/]Gun”>Gun Violence: The Public Health Issue Politicians Want to Ignore)</p>