Advice to parents on school options

Palomar7 · 2018-02-24 09:05:16

From a childless person.

This is only the 2nd time in my adult life that I've dared to give advice to parents (obviously I'm not qualified). I do care about your children.

The recent school shooting in Florida, all the tragic facts around it (shooter's well-documented long history of violence and trouble), and now there's news that 4 Broward County deputies were HIDING behind their cars while the shooter was inside and actively killing ( https://nypost.com/2018/02/23/four-sher … -shooting/ )

Get your kids in private schools or do home schooling if you're able.

I would. I'd be working extra hours and cutting corners like mad to keep my kids out of today's public schools.

clark · 2018-02-24 10:41:18

demand change.

RobertDyck · 2018-02-24 12:23:24

No tall mass shootings in the US are in schools. Los Vegas for example. But something is going on.
Wikipedia: Mass shootings in the United States

Wikipedia: List of massacres in Canada

Canada is not immune. This list looks pretty bad as well, until you realize they go back to 1689, and that everything up to 1885 is part of a war. Only those from 1967 to today are what we would call "mass killings". The one in 1985 was a "war" between biker gangs. The one in 1984 was at the "Quebec National Assembly", which is what that province calls their provincial legislature. In 1984 the political party elected to be the provincial government wanted to secede from Canada. Obviously they didn't, but the shooting was one guy over that political reason. Of the modern mass killings, only École Polytechnique (in Quebec, "école" is the french word for school) had double-digit deaths. The incident in Scarborough in 2016, victims were the killer's mother and 2 brothers, a 3rd brother was wounded. That one was with a crossbow; gun proponents would claim this shows you don't need a gun to kill, but realize how few people died. That's the point. Crazy people will still do crazy things, but a gun enables them to do much more damage.

GW Johnson · 2018-02-24 13:40:06

There is something definitely going on causing more and more violence. The guns are already "out there", so outlawing them wouldn't help. It is actually easier and faster to obtain illegal guns on the street than to buy them in a store or from a gun show. All it takes is cash. Making it harder to buy them legally does absolutely nothing to stop that illegal route, and never will.

Plus, for the US, guns in the hands of citizens were intended to make the threat of armed revolution credible, so that government would behave. (Whether that has worked is another issue). But that is why there was a Second Amendment before the framers themselves would sign the Constitution.

What we know is that prohibitions-in-general do not work. Examples: booze, drugs, etc. There is one exception that has worked fairly well until recently: the prohibition on US civilian machine guns from 1934 onward. What is causing this to be less effective in the last year or so (such as Las Vegas) is the spread of bump stocks and trigger cranks, legal on a technicality, but in clear violation of the intent of the 1934 law.

I suggest that it makes far more sense to do something data driven that would seem to confer a very real possible benefit, and not the "usual" knee-jerk things that in one form or another have been tried before and found almost completely ineffective. I looked at the data (see it for yourself at Motherjones.com), analyzed a representative subset of it for myself, and two things jumped off the page at me:

(1) Way too many people with known mental issues are getting guns quite legally, and then going off the deep end with their guns, usually at schools or other similar venues, and

(2) These venues were all sitting-duck targets: meaning undefended (or inadequately defended) gun free zones; there are perfectly good reasons to have such gun-free zones, but the 19th century lesson that you must adequately defend them seems to have been forgotten today.

Fix those two issues and we'll see a big reduction in such incidents. Nothing is perfect, but some things are way more effective than others. It might give some meaning to the lives already lost if we the people could force our politicians to do something that actually made sense for once, instead of the politically-expedient / how-do-I-get-more-campaign-money things.

Don't get me wrong, I think the suggestion of arming teachers to use as school guards is quite insane, and for a variety of very good reasons. Not the least of which is that no such teacher's handgun is adequate against a shooter armed with long guns, even if only bolt-action. You need a real guard, properly trained as a peace officer, adequately armed to take on a shooter armed with a semi-automatic long gun, and able to respond within about 60 seconds or less. Fail to do that job properly, and people in these gun free zones will continue to die.

As for the obvious and pathetically-large leak in the background check process that lets crazies legally possess guns, no online records search will ever be adequate to prevent that. None of these shooters for some years now was ever judged insane by a court. Thus there was no online record to see, even discounting how the records of the Texas church shooter failed to be put into the database.

To stop crazies like that takes real face-to-face interviews of family, friends, and contacts by real law enforcement people. In no practical way could we ever do that for everybody. But if we were to respond to the warning signs for those few among us who have such problems, we could afford to check such backgrounds in that way. Done correctly (and fairly), there is great potential to reduce that leak greatly.

So why not try something that might actually work for a change? Make those children's lives meaningful?

GW

PS -- calling a semi-automatic weapon an "assault weapon" merely displays ignorance. The last semi-automatic weapons used in battle were the AR-15 and the M-14 (a modernized M-1 Garand), found utterly wanting in Vietnam. The last times that semi-automatic weapons were adequate as "assault weapons" was in WW2, and to some extent Korea. It takes fully-automatic machine guns like the M-16 to ever take on the enemy's machine guns (the AK-47) in real battle.

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-02-24 13:49:18)

Palomar7 · 2018-02-24 15:17:27

GW Johnson wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I think the suggestion of arming teachers to use as school guards is quite insane, and for a variety of very good reasons...

heavy heart...I really have no right to opine, not being a parent

I think - at this point - it is a better option than waiting for emergency personnel to arrive (5 to 8 minutes on average). Especially if "we" are now faced with cowardly cops/deputies hiding behind their cars during.

RobertDyck · 2018-02-24 17:55:03

Well, I don't have any children, but always wanted a child, did have a common-law step-daughter one year. And I do have 2 nieces, but they're in their mid-20s now. I keep thinking what it was like being a child. My elementary school was quite bad in many ways, some of those teachers were excellent, but others certainly weren't. I would not want the bad teachers to have access to weapons of any sort.

Gary, I understand your point, and I think we are both adults. We can have a discussion without it getting emotional. I agree that politicians certainly are way out of control. The "Great Experiment", that is a major country run by democracy instead of monarchy; that "Great Experiment" is failing. American is failing. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. You could argue the collapse started earlier, but whatever, it doesn't exist any more. For a long time the US appears to be falling apart. Not the same way the Soviet Union did, but more closely matching the fall of the ancient Roman Empire. I'm not the first to say that, far from it. There's a book titled "The Rise and Fall of the American Empire"; even the titled is modelled on a history book titled "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire".

Symptoms:

an ivy league university (I forget which one) published a study. They plotted the chance a bill passes through Congress to the number of voters in a Congressional District who contract their Congressman/woman about it. For or against, from zero individuals to absolutely every registered voter. It didn't make a difference; the chance of a bill passing was not influenced at all. Then they did it again, but this time restricted to those who donated $1 million or more to that Congress-person's election campaign. They found a perfect direct correlation. Congress is controlled by the rich. Average individuals no longer have any say. That means America is not longer a democracy, it's an oligarchy.
Citizens United This started when Congress passed a law restricting how much money individuals can contribute to a Congressional election campaign, and how much third party's can spend on election campaigning. Excellent idea. A group of rich individuals took this to court. They wanted the right to spend money on TV ads for one issue, in one district, for one election. It was appealed directly to the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court asked the plaintiff to change his case, to make it much more general. The plaintiff did exactly as the Chief Justice asked. The result was "super packs". This isn't an isolated case; in 1886 the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons. You could argue the 1886 ruling was based on an 1818 ruling. In 1976 the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech. In 2010 the case, they rules that corporations can spend any amount they want.
American citizens have been self-sorting into Red and Blue states
Presidential elections are corrupt. In Florida year 2000, "hanging chads". There were a remarkable number of "dead" individuals who voted that year. Yes, individuals who registered multiple times, taking names off grave stones. In 2004 one electoral district that usually votes Democrat, all voting machines were set to "test", so all ballots were lost. Also 2004, one electoral district in a different state, there were more votes for the winning candidate alone than the number of registered voters. America doesn't have a federal election authority to administer federal elections. In some states, the state government has authority, in other places the electoral district is on its own. That means tampering with federal elections is not a felony. It must be. Elections will get worse until they are.
Presidential Primary process is corrupt. The way it's supposed to work: party members elect delegates. Those delegates go to convention to vote for their party's nominee. I'm not sure but I believe it's supposed to work that after each ballot at the convention, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. This continues until one candidate has over 50% of the votes, or only one candidate is left. The problem is media demands Presidential candidates spend literally billions of dollars in advertisements and media endorsements, and pressures candidates to drop out so that only one candidate remains going into the convention. That's corrupt. It gives media control, party members have limited control. The only way Donald Trump was able to win the Republican nomination was using Social Media to circumvent traditional media. This is corrupt. Solution: elect delegates in absolutely every state, and electoral district on the same day. This is the way Canada used to do it. Ironically, Canadian political parties have been moving to one-member/one-vote for the last decade. So I'm saying the solution this part of American's problem is something that's already obsolete in Canada. Can you progress what Canada had a decade ago?

There are more, but these come to mind now.

I have to disagree with you, Gary. An AR-15 is an assault weapon. It may be obsolete today, but it's still a weapon of war. There is no use for it other than killing people. It's not used for law enforcement. It has no use other than assault weapon. It should be restricted.

Hold government to account with weapons sounds good, it may make you feel good, but not effective. When Bill Clinton was president, some "citizens militias" formed. They armed themselves and trained themselves in combat in the woods. The result was Ruby Ridge. That was one citizens militia. The only accusation against they was a textbook case of entrapment. They had no real charges. But the FBI and ATF under direction by Janet Reno went in, killed everyone. This was about a year after Waco. The accusation there was possession of illegal weapons. After they sifted through the ashes, they did find weapons but absolutely every one was perfectly legal under Texas law. Again, FBI and ATF under Janet Reno. Several FBI officers after the fact pointed out that if they really believed their leader David Koresh possessed illegal weapons, he jogged every morning on a public sidewalk. Professional police work would be to park an unmarked car beside the road, wait for him to jog by, then quietly arrest him. If they did that, the court would have found he did nothing wrong. Instead they went in with an assault force, killed everyone. Congressional hearings after the fact pointed out Janet Reno used a tank. That's a weapon of war. There's a US federal law prohibiting any police agency from using weapons of war against US citizens on US soil. Janet Reno's only response was she considered the tank to be a rental car. She was in blatant violation, but president Clinton had given a pre-emptive presidential pardon. You want to use weapons to hold government to account? That's the result.

Again, it's fun to talk about direct action against government. I believe your quote from your grandfather was tools of good government are guns, ammunition, tar, and feathers. That may sound fun, but you can't do that now. Reality was demonstrated by Bill Clinton a couple decades ago. The only thing that actually works is elections. Those are corrupt, for a long time completely controlled by the rich and powerful, but Donald Trump has demonstrated that with persistence and a lot of money an outsider can still get elected.

I've said every US President since Nixon was worse than the one before. Obama made a lot of great promises, but failed to fulfill them. And he failed to bring in Osama bin Laden. The blatant execution by special forces ordered by Obama, and Obama's claim "That's him", makes me suspect that wasn't him. Was an actor set up and killed for political purposes? Now there's Donald Trump.

Many people don't like Donald Trump. But if those who don't like him continue to ignore the reasons he was elected, then America is doomed to an next president that's worse. Yes, worse than Trump. Donald Trump promised to do a lot of things that American really needs. Badly. My concern is that he never had any intention of doing them, and even if he did, doesn't have competency to make it happen. But every other politician doesn't even intend to address the issues. At least Trump promised to.

This got way off topic real quick. Cindy posted her advice to take children out of public school. That vast majority of parents cannot afford to do that. So that just isn't an option. Gary and I started debating guns in general. Trump's current idea of arming teachers is extremely stupid. If something like this happens, call police. But as others pointed out, police just hide until there are no more children to shoot. Cowards. But arming teachers is certainly not a solution.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2018-02-24 22:59:51)

elderflower · 2018-02-24 18:15:48

Did you mean " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Robert?
When the amendment to the constitution allowing citizens to keep and bear arms was agreed, "arms" did not include rifles with magazines, never mind automatics. Americans should revert to single shot weapons at least.
And incidentally, how do headcases running amok, with no formal training but equipped with automatic weapons, fit with the American concept of a "well regulated militia"?

Last edited by elderflower (2018-02-24 18:33:19)

GW Johnson · 2018-02-24 20:56:49

Most of the cops that I know here in Texas would have gone straight in to take on the shooter, poorly armed or not. Most of the ex-military veterans I know are even surer bets to take on a school shooter no matter what.

My specific suggestion for protecting schools: hire as your school guards retired cops with a record of bravery, or vets and give them peace officer training, or both. Equip them with an AR-15. Hire as many as needed, and position them on campus such that no location is more than 60 seconds away at a dogtrot. This will not prevent every death, but it will prevent most of them. The 60 sec rule worked very, very well in the 19th century frontier towns.

As for corrupt politics and elections, the place to start is to tell the state and feds no more unfunded mandates for all the bureaucratic bullshit foisted on our schools. That money could go to teachers and real guards, with far better outcomes. That's where it starts: retake local control of schools.

Rob: my grandfather's actual quote was "tar, feathers, guns, and ropes". And he was right. The guns and ropes are for only those so incredibly dense that the tar and feathers didn't get the message across. (Your comment about oligarchies is entirely correct.)

As for my qualifications to hold such opinions, well, I am a parent, and I have taught in the public schools, as well as colleges and universities. That was after 20 years in aerospace defense work doing new product R&D development work, from concept design all the way through to qualification test. Most (but not all of it) was rocket and ramjet propulsion for missiles.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-02-24 21:11:16)

SpaceNut · 2018-02-24 21:05:49

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s … ted_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … ssacres%29

Since 2013, there have been nearly 300 school shootings in America — an average of about one a week with 18 so far this year.

Then again Schools do have stabbings that have going on with a recent killing of 2 and harming of many more during the last month or so in PA.

The level of violence is way up all around so I am glad that all of my children are out of school....

Use the data to solve the problem...we sure have enough to make use of....

SpaceNut · 2018-02-24 21:13:22

The schools here do have limited entrances for access to which they lock all others during the day and do security lock some with camera's to allow entering of those wanting to go in. Pass keys are another for the older students with locking barriers as other obsticles to deter the would be attacker once school is in session.

RobertDyck · 2018-02-24 22:28:40

From Facebook...
27868109_1933595746733470_7390824646499739116_n.jpg?oh=7d88907b01d56c6a84d43d65476b98de&oe=5B01A4AD
My response was...

You know, during World War 1 when automatic weapons were new, there was a treaty to ban their use. Automatic weapons were considered "inhumane". Of course that didn't last very long; war is hell, you have to use whatever means necessary to win. But considering at the time automatic weapons were invented, even military wanted to ban them. So why should civilians have them? Yea, the AR-15 is semi-automatic. But realize it's modified from an M-16 military assault rifle. There are modifications to make it fully automatic. Automatic rate is 500 to 900 rounds per minute, depending which source you believe. Several sources say at high fire rate, it jams. But even without modification, semi-automatic it can fire up to 90 rounds per minute with practice. Why would a civilian need one of these?

One reason for my bias: In 2006, a co-worker was a gun collector. He argued that semi-automatic rifles were invented for hunting, not military use. Because prey could be wounded but still get away. Getting off a second or third shot quickly would allow finishing it off. But members of political party in Quebec were adamant to ban guns of the style used at École Polytechnique. The shooter there was 25-years-old, used a Ruger Mini-14. Canada had strict gun control before 1993 that would have required a Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC). Prime Minister Kim Campbell was a Conservative, she was only PM for 3 months plus the election period, she lost the election...badly. One thing she did was make it easier to get guns. A thorough background check would have prevented that shooter from buying that gun, but after Kim Campbell loosened the rules, he could get it without a background check. That event was the worst mass shooting in Canadian history. My proposed compromise to the party was to allow semi-automatic hunting rifles, but at minimum require an FAC for assault style rifles. The Quebec arm of the party demanded firm action, no compromise. Of course policy at a party convention is not the same as passing a law through Parliament.

A video demonstrating what a guy going Postal in an office would look like with muzzleloader Longrifle...

Last edited by RobertDyck (2018-02-24 22:49:05)

Terraformer · 2018-02-25 07:22:03

What did the US military have when the 2nd amendment was written, Robert? Should't they be restricted to them? Or, since the US didn't originally have a standing army, it could just be abolished. Replace it with the Swiss policy of armed neutrality.

Having armed officers at schools only helps if they actually do their job. Which was the problem in Florida. How many lives would have been saved if the deputy had actually gone in?

GW Johnson · 2018-02-25 11:45:35

Everybody lies about rate-of-fire. A semi-automatic (unaltered) can have its trigger pulled 3 or 4 times a second by a human finger, if the shots are not aimed. You would do that shooting into a dense crowd, if you were a killer. That's 180-240 rounds per minute. If you actually aim your shots, a practiced individual might get off 1 round per second (60 per minute), an amateur more like 1 round every 2 or 3 seconds (20-30 per minute). That's for trying to hit individual targets.

In comparison, about 10 rounds per second is a minimal-type machine gun (600 rounds per minute), and a bump stock on a semi approaches a rate like that. Many machine guns have even higher rates of fire. Spraying un-aimed shots in the direction of an enemy target is a way of suppressing his fire. That's the utility of a machine gun small enough for an individual soldier to carry. This became known for the first time when the mafia gangs used that tactic on each other, with the "Thompson submachine gun", or "Tommy gun", in the 1920's and early 1930's.

Spraying un-aimed shots with a machine gun does a lot of collateral damage and hits many unintended bystanders. This was dangerous enough to restrict the Tommy gun's use to the Army, resulting in the outlawing of machine guns in civilian hands, 1934. That was one of the relatively few prohibitions that has actually worked out rather effective. Until the recent spread of bump stocks and trigger cranks, while strictly legal, that violate the intent of the 1934 law.

I have a 22 caliber semi-automatic sport rifle. It has exactly the same rate of fire and an almost identical bullet diameter as an AR-15, just not the muzzle velocity, so its stopping power is less. By the rate of fire arguments above, that is an "assault weapon", which is otherwise so obviously bullshit in any practical terms. Same goes for my 22 cal semi-automatic handgun, which has exactly the same rate of fire, as set by my well-trained and experienced finger.

I no longer use those guns very much, because too many folks have moved out here adjacent to my farm over the decades I have lived here. I am too concerned about where stray shots go to use anything but a shotgun anymore. But to that end, I have a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun that I keep loaded with buckshot. I use it for defending livestock and pets from marauding varmints, usually feral dogs running in packs, killing anything they run into.

It has the same potential rate of fire as all putative semi-automatic "assault weapons": 3-4 rounds per second, although it only holds 5 rounds with its plug removed. It's a longer barrel with a full choke, and I usually open up on a running target at 70 yards while I am also running, with a second round killing as I run by heading for the next running target.

That's not an inside-the-home defense weapon: its pattern is too narrow to engage close targets. For inside the house defense, I prefer a short-barrel 12 gauge (buckshot) pump model. The sound the pump makes is enough to make most home invaders freeze in their tracks. If that fails, the pattern is wide enough to make sure the buckshot finds its mark even in a relatively-un-aimed shot in the dark. It also holds 5 rounds with the plug removed. I never load either 12-gauge shotgun with birdshot anymore, so there's no question about the legality of removing the plugs.

I use a sawed-off 20 gauge single-shot breakdown shotgun for killing invading rattlesnakes. Cannot abide those anywhere near the house, and sometimes we do get them here. Before I cleared the prickly pear cactus out for 500+ feet away from the house, we had a lot of rattlesnake problems. I used to need that little gun a lot around the house. Not so much any more. I still take it with me on the tractor out in the field, though. And a whole bandolier of ammo.

I have some other guns, too, but I no longer use them out here, because of the neighbors I didn't have decades ago. Those bullets come down well over a mile away. They're bolt action, the "assault weapon" technology of WW1.

Aren't you glad I'm not crazy, seeing as how I have all these "assault weapons" and I know so much about how to use them?

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-02-25 11:54:57)

SpaceNut · 2018-02-25 11:50:30

So does reducing available ammo clips, magazines to only a 5 or 4 shot count change the game all that much for the automated weapon?

How would we remove or reduce the black market weapon sales?

Have not been hunting in several decades but did as a teen to adult using many types of guns ranging from single shot mosberg 410's, 22's, 20 guage pump shotguns ect did go through the NRA classes to learn proper handling, boy scout camp courses before even using them.

GW Johnson · 2018-02-25 12:00:03

Spacenut:

Changing ammunition magazines takes only a second, or at most 2 seconds, for someone practiced. That really doesn't much affect the average rate of fire of aimed shots, although it does affect the average rate of fire for spraying un-aimed shots into a crowd. The usual magazine holds 8 to a dozen or so rounds. "Big" magazines are usually considered to be 30 plus.

As for black market weapons, there's just not much of any practicality and effectiveness that can be done about that. If there was, it would have already been done. That's been a problem since the mafia gang wars starting in the 1920's.

GW

RobertDyck · 2018-02-25 13:37:42

Gary, I respect you. And when I was a child, before I was a teen, my father taught me to shoot. My grandmother insisted the grandchildren hunt gophers in the wheat field. That was our "chore". Giving a young boy a gun and telling him he has to shoot stuff? It was fun. I used a .22 calibre bold-action rifle with steel sights. One term for that is "squirrel gun". What we called "gopher" is technically a Richardson ground squirrel. We used .22 short ammunition, plenty to hunt gophers. My younger brother insisted on using .22 long mushroom head ammunition for "plinking". That means target shooting an empty pop can hung on a barbwire fence. At that time pop cans were steel, .22 long has more propellant, so greater muzzle velocity. In the early 1970s all ammunition was lead, "mushroom head" meant a hole drilled in the top so when it impacted the lead would spread out like a mushroom. When shooting a can, entry hole was the same size as a bullet, exit hole was almost 2" diameter. It shredded the can after just 5 shots. This is the difference between .223 ammunition vs .22 calibre long rifle. There's a massive difference!

And this is .22 short vs .22 long rifle.

GW Johnson · 2018-02-25 16:06:51

Rob:

Why are you jumping on me about 0.220 inch diameter being almost but not quite the same as 0.223 inch diameter? That's what "caliber" means!

I never, ever said the ammunition was the same, now did I? Look closely at what I actually wrote before you decide!

All I really said was that it was about the same diameter, and about the same potential firing rates for semi-automatic guns.

I also said the 22 had far less muzzle velocity and stopping power, now didn't I? Which is a backwards way of saying they are indeed quite different ammunition. And there is a version of the 22 short with a reduced powder load, so its muzzle velocity is subsonic. Very quiet way to shoot rats in the city, where they don't want you shooting anything at all.

I set you up, to a small extent, by not emphasizing the differences, which are quite dramatic, as you so correctly pointed out. I did that to make a very important point. I let your preconceived ideas swamp what was actually written on the page in front of you.

And THAT effect is about 90% of the vast political divide between the pro- and anti-gun groups, not anything "real". The other 10% is mostly ignorance (sometimes quite egregious) on the part of some of the anti-gun folks. The real argument is only about what we might do about the problems we are seeing.

Myself, I prefer data-driven solutions with indicated potential for high effectiveness. The usual suggestions (smaller magazines, tighter restrictions, bans on cosmetic appearance (the "assault" rifle ban), etc), do not show any such effectiveness in the data. We already tried most of them. A gun is a gun. They are all killing machines. But they are not all equally lethal, that is true.

Personally, I think demonstrated adequate gun handling and gun safety skills should be required in order to graduate at all from high school. Probably as a requirement to graduate from middle school and primary school, too. That would end most of the accidental gun deaths, even when kids get hold of one without parental permission.

So also should be required-to-graduate high school the skill to change a flat tire. So also should be required the skill to balance a checkbook. So also should be required the skill to count change without a calculator. I could go on and on.

All of those are far more important than passing a low-ball standardized test. ANY teacher knows that one test does not take a measure, especially one that tests only min skills. Tying the funding to that unrepresentative test outcome puts huge pressure on everyone to teach only to the tests, which again is a bottom-bar level of subject skills, and to offer only those subjects covered by the tests.

All administrators deny that they do that (for it really is at least slightly illegal), but they nearly all do it anyway. That has been going on for over 30 years now, and it is really starting to show, too. One of the things known since I was a child was that teaching music skills builds math skills. Yet that is widely ignored. Where have the arts programs gone? They helped make properly-educated humans instead of just trained apes.

I utterly despise the politicians that did this to our people. I only need the tar and feathers. The rest I got.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-02-25 16:17:54)

SpaceNut · 2018-02-25 17:14:21

Rob's 223 to 22 comparison by single shot does not show the issue but when you take them up to the 100 shot rate thats a whole new ball game as while the 22 is not as leathal it is just as damaging depending on the shell type.

As for the education with gun handling thats not all that far off from the drug education (DARE) that middle already gets so why not add that into the plan to teach respect for there use. It sure will not hurt....

RobertDyck · 2018-02-25 17:34:10

Ah, you think you set me up. But I did realize that. I gave a simplified response. Look, you don't need a .223 rifle to hunt vermin (gopher, etc). The US has a gun problem. I read statistics that the number of people killed by police in the US in the first 45 days of this year is greater than the number of people killed by police in Canada in the last 10 years. And greater than the number of people killed by police in the UK since the invention of modern policing. That phrase tripped me up; turns out the UK reorganized their police in the 1960s. That's what that phrase means.

There are states where carrying a concealed firearm is legal. Carrying a concealed weapon of any sort in Canada is illegal, you certainly can't carry a concealed firearm. The very idea of someone carrying a concealed weapon scares the hell out of me. Criminals and more importantly idiots who don't know what they're doing are a threat.

I find this ironic. I just argued the other side over an issue in Canada. Some people made a huge deal over a guy who got shot in northern Saskatchewan. They claim it's a race thing, the deceased was native. But this was on a farm, a car with 3 individuals was on the farm property: 3 young men, 2 young women. What were they doing on private property? The farm wife was in the yard pushing a wheelbarrow, the 2 young women got out and beat up the farm wife. The farmer fired a warning shot in the air. The trespassers didn't leave. Then the farmer shot one of the young men in the back of the head. The farmer claimed he wasn't trying to kill the trespasser, just scare him off. The court verdict found the accused not guilty of murder. Many aboriginal people are claiming this is a race issue. One magazine article argued to let the criminals take whatever they want. I argued strongly against that. A local federal politician who is a Facebook friend must have read what I wrote. He repeated my words in a statement to the media. This politician is also aboriginal, and said he grew up in that community. Ok, somebody listens. Those claiming this was a race issue criticized him. But I had to point out there are many rural communities that are an hour drive away at highway speed from the nearest police station. I got that from an individual who lives in a rural community, her home is an hour drive away. Others have pointed out some communities are even farther away. People need the right to defend their property. And what the hell were these people doing on the farm? Yes, everyone suspects them of attempted theft.

In Canada, you're not allowed to use lethal force. You are allowed to use force to defend your property, but are supposed to use minimum force. lethal force is right out. I gave a couple examples. One 30-something man lived with his senior parents. He had an overnight job, slept during the day. One day he heard something downstairs, got up to see what it was. Discovered 2 teenage boys ransacking the house. He ordered them to stop, one boy attacked the man. He whacked that boy in the head with a baseball bat. Knocked him out with one blow. The other teenager seeing this, sat down, did as he was told. The man called the police, ensured the teenagers didn't leave before the police arrived. Another example: a friend was a security guard. He went to his car to go to work. A young man tried to car-jack him with a knife. I don't know if he didn't realize his intended victim was a security guard. My friend slammed him to the ground several times, disarmed him. The criminal pulled another knife. My friend slammed him to the ground again, disarmed him again. He pulled another knife, and another, and another. My friend's way of fighting was to slam the guy to the ground; this was a paved parking lot, so that meant slamming him into the pavement. He managed to stop the guy, call the police. When the police arrived, they found 7 knives on the ground. These are examples of what individuals can and should do.

I'm a technology guy. When I was young I wished for an electric stun gun. Now Taser is invented. This is a non-lethal way to defend yourself. I thought this would be great. If someone panics and attacks the wrong person, no one gets killed. Criminals can be brought to trial. But in my city, Tasers are illegal. I haven't been able to find any federal law against them, just city. Frustrating.

RobertDyck · 2018-02-25 17:43:00

SpaceNut: In Canada it was common in rural communities for parents to teach their children. Purchasing a hunting rifle requires completing a hunter safety course. A number of years ago my high school taught the required hunter safety course; not as part of regular curriculum, but as an evening course. In 1993, I applied for a Firearm Acquisition Certificate. This would allow me to purchase a handgun. Another form is require every time you purchase a gun, but the first step was to get an FAC. The application form was extensive, I had to get 3 "certified" individuals vouch for me, and RCMP (Canadian federal police) followed up with every reference. I took the course, but it turned out the company gave me the wrong course. I was so angry! Five years later I got a call from the RCMP reminding me that my FAC expired, asked if I owned any guns that required it. I said "What!?" I thought my FAC wasn't valid because I was given the wrong training course. Turned out they issued my FAC just weeks before the training course was required. I had a valid FAC for 5 years without knowing it.

Mandatory course in school? Hmm. Certainly not in Canadian cities, we don't need it. But the US has a major problem. Might be a good idea.

kbd512 · 2018-02-25 18:49:49

All,

I have two young children in elementary school and I would like them to live through their adolescence. Rather than this "gun free zone" stupidity that liberal politicians have given us, which is obviously not "gun free" the second any criminal decides to violate the law, I would like armed Police and Vets protecting our schools. I, along with countless other gun owners, leave my firearms at home when I drop my kids off at school. I do that because I actually follow the laws regarding where guns may be carried. I would prefer that someone our community trusts protects our children with their guns if they don't trust me.

I have no qualms about giving up my own life to protect my children, or anyone else's children for that matter, from the evil little cretins who happen to have guns or other weapons. Freedom has a real price tag attached to it, that price is blood, and it must be paid. I consider it a fair trade, even if others don't. I don't consider rotting in prison for merely having a firearm in a particular "unapproved" place to be a fair trade. There's also this little thing that law abiding citizens do that's known as "following the law". Whether anyone else thinks weapons are necessary or not is irrelevant to reality. Every government on the planet uses them to protect their people. The only problem is that the government can't have their people everywhere at all times to protect everyone. This would be why "there's never a good guy with a gun when you need him". The "good guys" are following evil laws written by evil politicians, so they're unarmed.

Open Questions for Liberals to Answer:
Should the "good guys" quit following the law when the law is immoral and simply use correct moral behavior as their guide?

Will liberals use correct moral behavior, which may be illegal according to the letter of the law, as "proof" that everyone who owns a firearm is a criminal or will they recognize that what you do with your weapons is far more important than where you happen to be?

Do liberals recognize the fact that criminals and mentally ill people are going to show up with firearms or other weapons at places where weapons are prohibited anyway, simply because they can?

GW,

I agree with most of your observations about this phenomenon. The dreaded semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms have been around for about a century now. There are literally tens of millions of them in civilian hands, most of whom will never commit any crimes beyond speeding and parking tickets. There's also a tiny but always present percentage of our population who are mentally ill and shouldn't have access to weapons of any kind. Virtually no progress has been made on treating mentally ill people and denying them access to things they could use to hurt themselves or other people. Instead, we have people who suggest that tens of millions of people who aren't mentally ill modify their behavior and hand over things they legally obtained and used to accommodate the behavior of a few thousand violent mentally ill people. There are no calls for me to give up my car because drunks run red lights and kill school children in the process, so the notion that I should give up my AR-15 for the same reason is facially absurd.

The ammo thing that Rob points out is a little silly since legal deer hunting rifle cartridges in Texas, or most other states for that matter, are substantially more powerful than .223 Remington / 5.56mm NATO. The commonly used .308 and .30-06 hunting rifle cartridges have more than double the muzzle energy of .223 / 5.56mm. The actual muzzle energy of common .223 ammunition (M193 or M855) is equal to a hot loaded .44 Magnum cartridge fired from a longer barreled hunting revolver. If people think .223 is too lethal, then they've obviously never seen what a hunting rifle cartridge will do to a human or animal.

The actual rate of accurate aimed fire any given shooter is capable of varies dramatically. I have more training and practice than most people, so I can fire up to 5 rounds per second from my AR-15 at close range (25 yards on in) at a single target. As the range opens up or number of targets in different locations increases, the length of time required for accurate aimed fire goes up and the rate of fire necessarily goes down. I use optics to achieve faster first round hits.

SpaceNut,

We can reduce black market sales of firearms by building that border wall that you're so opposed to and enforcing immigration laws. The gangs and drug cartels use the open borders to illegally transfer firearms that are then used in crimes.

We can also mandate proper storage of semi-automatic firearms by the general public, firearms dealers, and firearms manufacturers to reduce the incidence of theft. Gun safes or vaults that meet government specifications should be mandatory for semi-automatic firearms storage. No such specifications exist, except for storage of military owned firearms. If you have enough money to purchase semi-automatic firearms, then you also have enough money for proper storage. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have too much money invested in my tools to have them stolen.

Contrary to popular belief, actual testing done by the military, federal law enforcement agencies, and rednecks with too much time on their hands has repeatedly shown the ballistic superiority of common AR-15 ammo over other common pistol cartridges and shotgun shells for home defense, especially when using common and inexpensive M193 ammunition. The M193 ammo is basically frangible because it has a very thin jacket and the bullet starts to tumble almost immediately after striking something solid. The bullets fired from common 16 inch or shorter barrels give up more energy if they miss the intended target and strike common building materials than things like 9mm JHP or FMJ or 12 gauge slugs or buckshot.

The price of Federal M193, which is quite good for defense use, is around $315 per 1,000 cartridges. The price of Federal 9mm ranges from $200 for FMJ all the way up to $650 for defense use JHP's per 1,000 cartridges. If you want to train and practice with your defense use ammo, as our military and law enforcement do, then the prices for defense use handgun cartridges have become as expensive or substantially more expensive than more effective carbine / rifle cartridges.

I used low capacity Colt M1911-A1 pistols and Colt SAA revolvers and .308 or .30-06 caliber rifles for years until the US EPA mandated closure of Doe Run's primary lead smelting facility in Missouri. Ammo prices for .45 ACP and .308 doubled as a result because those cartridges require a lot more lead than 9mm and .223 / 5.56mm, which is now mined overseas and imported into the US or recycled in the US. I purchased 9mm Glocks and Colt AR-15's with double the ammo capacity of the previous firearms I used because bullets with half the lead content are half the price. That's the law of unintended consequences. Liberal environmentalists decided to have their way and lots of Americans involved in shooting sports, this American included, decided to have theirs. The common themes I find when I ask people purchasing these modern high-capacity and smaller caliber but higher velocity weapons is that the weapons work reliably, they are easier to use effectively, and they can afford to shoot them.

SpaceNut · 2018-02-25 21:12:47

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-def … 71639.html

kbd512 you seem to think that America doesn’t have a gun problem, but it sure has a heck of a gang problem. The gangs were there long before imigration border jumping was. I refer back to a movie when I was a teen called the Warriors....

Yes America has a higher concentration of gang members, and they are vastly more violent than elsewhere. We also know from various government reports that gang violence is by-and-large a big city issue (you know, those same big cities where the mayors do nothing to control gangs but advocate gun control).

Typically firearms are acquired through illegal purchases; straw purchases via surrogates or middle-men, and thefts from individuals, vehicles, residences and commercial establishments.

Gang members also target military and law enforcement officials, facilities, and vehicles to obtain weapons, ammunition, body armor, police gear, badges, uniforms, and official identification.

The purchases from authorized dealers account for only about 60 percent of gun purchases, and the gun runners — so-called straw purchasers — are responsible for only a fraction of these. We can no longer ignore the 40 percent of guns obtained on the secondary market, which includes gun brokers, gangs and other informal traders. A Justice Department study found in 2001 that 40 percent of all criminals acquired their guns on the street, but another 40 percent obtained their guns from friends or family members.

Sounds to me like border enforcement is still not doing the job and niether are the agencies in charge of firearms nor are local police doing enough to get them off the streets when they are stolen from them.

RobertDyck · 2018-02-26 04:03:00

Some of you may be interested... YouTube video: How To Buy a Gun In Canada

Palomar7 · 2018-02-26 08:37:00

Terraformer wrote:

How many lives would have been saved if the deputy had actually gone in?

4 deputies.

FOUR didn't go in. They hid behind their cars.

Which is why we might need to start arming teachers (voluntary and with training and certification).

Last edited by Palomar7 (2018-02-26 08:38:16)

Palomar7 · 2018-02-26 14:15:50

@RealJamesWoods

It will be a real catastrophe if evidence emerges that the four #Broward deputies were told not to engage the killer. There was either a training problem, a communication problem, or a command problem. It’s too easy to call men “cowards.” Something is rotten in this whole deal.

To which @Skippykite replied:

It seems highly improbable that all 4 would be cowards... one yes.... maybe two but not 4 deputies. This smacks of a stand down order. They should have disobeyed it but clearly there is something more than what we are hearing.

---

:-(

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