<p>LOL on online fun sales ;)</p>
<p>There was a story about that in the new Vanity Fair.</p>
<p>emily bee, I know you are going to wish you hadn’t made that post in the exact way you just made it, and I’m going to suggest that you think of a way to say what it is you are trying to say in a new way, because all sorts of people are being killed in the streets of chicago these days and they aren’t all common criminals, either.</p>
<p>You really think the people trusted to educate kids aren’t competent to handle a gun if they so chose? Which is not to say they should ever have to, but my belief is that most teachers are smart, competent and responsible.</p>
<p>The consequences of gang violence shouldn’t be an afterthought. The double standard is striking.</p>
<p>"There is a difference between gang members killing each other on street corners and school shootings like Columbine and Newtown. "</p>
<p>Why - most of them are students too. There are kids getting killed standing around in front of their homes. They just happen to be in a poor neighborhood.</p>
<p>Only the private school kids need protection and so we need to ban guns?</p>
<p>AND how are these gang members getting their guns? I heard there is a gun ban.</p>
<p>Saint fan, sorry! New keyboard that is not working for me.</p>
<p>The precipitating event for this discussion wasn’t gang violence but the deranged mass shooter paradigm. And no, I do not trust teachers or any other group across the board to carry guns in schools.</p>
<p>When I say that I mean private citizens not law enforcement professionals.</p>
<p>Okay, saintfan, I’ll bite. What do you think the best solution is? Not in a perfect world, but in the world that currently exists.</p>
<p>I still fail to see why some lives seem to be worth LESS because they are gang members. </p>
<p>I also fail to see why everyone in Chicago has guns despite a ban. I thought the ban is the cure.</p>
<p>
There are many arguments, and I find this the least persuasive. People make the same point with the District. </p>
<p>You can get from those places to places where guns are legal by car, by metro, or even by walking. They don’t exactly have walls around the cities.</p>
<p>No one said across the board. Everyone said trained.</p>
<p>Why the double standard? It’s more likely that a child will be killed due to gang violence than a whack job in a school. The rare whack job will always find a way. When I first started working, there was a maniac with a sword attacking people on the Staten Island ferry. Talk about a captive audience. The alternative was to jump off. There will always be monsters. No way to legislate against them.</p>
<p>Gang members can buy stolen guns on the black market and/or take advantage of gun show loopholes.</p>
<p>Hayden, we don’t have a wall at the southern border either and thousands of lives have been lost by guns walking across.</p>
<p>The thing about gangs is that they are fine with collateral damage. Not every victim is a righteous kill.</p>
<p>Saintfan, exactly. So what good would a ban be with all those guns already out there?</p>
<p>"You can get from those places to places where guns are legal by car, by metro, or even by walking. They don’t exactly have walls around the cities. "</p>
<p>Same can happen with a ban in the country. It is like saying people stopped drinking during prohibition. I heard no one knew who kennedys were before prohibition but they did get quite rich during but I digress.</p>
<p>The question still is that everyone seems to know there is a gun ban in Chicago but people are killing each other in large numbers. Do the police not know who has guns and where they are kept or are some lives worth just less?</p>
<p>But, what is the near term solution? If not putting trained professionals in schools? what is the solution?</p>
<p>I have also heard it is illegal to possess drugs in US.</p>
<p>What is lost in the discussion is most of the mass murderers seem to acquire their weapons illegally despite all of the legal methods. Several of them seem to have previously identified mental health issues and many of them have been prevented from acquiring weapons legally.</p>
<p>emily bee, I know you are going to wish you hadn’t made that post in the exact way you just made it, and I’m going to suggest that you think of a way to say what it is you are trying to say in a new way, because all sorts of people are being killed in the streets of chicago these days and they aren’t all common criminals, either. </p>
<p>Yes, I know there are innocents who get shot and killed in Chicago and other cities every day but, imo, that issue has nothing to do with the discussion of arming teachers in schools to prevent mass shootings by deranged nutcases.</p>
<p>Banning all hand guns would go a long way to solving the murder epidemic in cities like Chicago, but I’m more likely to be crowned Queen of the World then that happening.</p>
<p>We should prosecute anyone who owns a gun used in a crime if they either intentionally or negligently allowed it to get to the killer. We should make sure that the mentally ill can’t get guns. We should consider security plans for individual schools based on their needs.</p>
<p>But we must accept that we simply can’t stop every atrocity that man can conceive. School shootings are as bad as it gets and we should all be horrified, but the fact is that they probably can’t be prevented, only stopped.</p>
<p>How would banning handguns do anything about the murder rate in Chicago?</p>
<p>The guns of drug dealers can kill a lot of people in a school, too. I guess in the matter of security in schools, those that deal with the reality of violence and close campuses, have police presence, or use metal detectors do a better job of preventing shootings,</p>
<p>Putting aside that you’re equating a tiny area to a huge area without any differentiation. By the same logic should we do away with laws against drugs? The fact that laws do not work perfectly is not always a reason to have no laws. </p>
<p>As I said before there are many other valid arguments pro and con, and I don’t find this line of argument very strong.</p>