Advice to parents on school options

kbd512 · 2018-02-26 18:09:45

SpaceNut,

According to violent crime data compiled by the FBI, in 2017 a little more than three times as many Americans were murdered with sharp objects (knives, scissors, screw drivers, etc) as rifles and shotguns of any description, which includes semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. If we have a "gun" problem because of AR-15's or other semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, then our "knife" problem is three times worse. The problem with people murdering each other with handguns is more than twenty times worse than rifles and shotguns of any description. More succinctly, Americans have a proclivity for using violence to resolve personal and/or interpersonal problems.

Here's some interesting data compiled by NIJ on firearms use in homicides:

Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008; Annual Rates for 2009 and 2010; Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith, BJS Statisticians

The FBI's UCR provides a reasonably good breakdown of the types of weapons used to commit crimes, when known. Firearms claim a disproportionate number of victims and nearly all of the victims were murdered with handguns or sharp or blunt objects. A disproportionate number of victims and offenders are black. In the mid 90's, 1 in 500 young black men wouldn't live to see his 25th birthday and they represent 12% to 13% of the US population. The homicide rate was slightly more than ten times lower for young white men in the mid 90's. If you want to know what the "difference" was between white and black boys, most of the white boys had fathers in their lives, even if their fathers weren't the nicest people in the world. That's why I said that the welfare system that has created systemic poverty and violence amongst black people is racist and evil. It separates children from their fathers in order to get money from the government. If it's not, then I don't know what qualifies. Mothers exist to provide unconditional love for their children. Fathers exist to provide guidance, set behavioral standards, and enforce discipline.

As to the question of arming teachers, I'm not entirely convinced, but someone must be there to do the job of protecting the students and staff. It's not something you can become proficient at in a day, a week, a month, or even a year. I have over two decades of martial arts training and firearms use and I learn something new that I hadn't considered before at least once a week. It's not a job. It's a way of life. It what I choose to focus my training and practice time on and what tools I choose to use. The tools are only incidental to the job that must be done.

Here's an example:

If you walked into your house and found two family members who were shot by an intruder, has anyone here thought about which one of their family members they'd choose to provide first aid to after being shot and who they'd let bleed out and die because if they tried to treat both family members then they'd lose both patients? Is Mom severely wounded but possible to save, whereas your son has most likely seen his last day because his wounds are too severe, what choice will you make?

It's not fun to think about, let alone train to do. It's upsetting to anyone who isn't a sociopath. If you can't make decisions like that, then you're not mature enough to carry and use firearms. The macho men of this world may say that they'd take a bullet for their children. For some of them, that may even be true. If you ask them which of their family members they're willing to watch die because they can only save one, you'll figure who has the maturity and critical thinking skills required to make the kinds of decisions that this job requires. That's the sort of screening that I would need to see the results of to determine which teachers I would choose to entrust with the responsibilities that come with carrying a firearm.

When I was given power of attorney because my wife was incapacitated, the doctors gave me a choice between aborting our son to save mom or attempting a very risky brain surgery that could've ended both of their lives. The only reason she made it to that point was that I may have suggested that her ObGyn wasn't a very good doctor if she didn't grant the MRI that I requested. She thought my wife's memory problems and headaches were related to her pregnancy, but it turned out to be a 39mm by 82mm meningioma in the dura mater that was producing a midline shift. I had no way of knowing what the problem was. It was just a wild guess that something more than normal pregnancy problems were at play based on what I knew of past behavior and the comment from her ObGyn that she had an iron deficiency. We'd already given this some thought ahead of time and my wife determined that she wanted our son to live more than she cared about whether or not she lived. He was a viable baby at that point and the doctors had their instructions about who to attempt to save if things went wrong during my wife's surgery. The surgery was only the beginning of her problems.

I'll never forget the time they brought me back in the ER when my pregnant wife was having a grand mal seizure on the table a couple of days after her brain surgery. There's typically only one reason they do that. They thought she was dying. The doctor and nurses in the room were looking at her as if they were all stunned. I don't blame them. Most of them looked younger than I was at the time, probably fresh out of med school or still in school. They'd most likely never seen a pregnant woman who had just had brain surgery who was having a seizure because of a brain aneurysm. I asked the doctor if he'd given her anything, to which he replied that the nurse had administered Ativan. I rolled her onto her side and pulled her tongue out of her mouth and held her jaw open so she could breathe. I could hear her gasping for air, her O2 levels was far lower than it should've been, and for whatever reason, they'd not intubated her yet. I told him that when someone is seizing, the staff needed to make sure the patient had a clear airway. I learned that from the problems my younger brother has with seizures. After the hospital's more experienced doctors and nurses arrived, the young doctor asked me how I managed to stay so calm, to which I answered his question with another question; "Would it have helped if I was more upset?" He didn't answer, but I think he understood.

The bottom line is that human life is very fragile. Live each day like it's your last, because there's no way of knowing when that day will come.

SpaceNut · 2018-02-26 18:48:34

I had thought that the Warriors was older than 1979 but story centers on a New York City gang who must make an urban journey of 30 miles (48 km), from the north end of The Bronx to their home turf in southern Brooklyn, after they are framed for the murder of a respected gang leader. Warrior Movie images

1986, Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping immigration reform bill into law. But the bill also made any immigrant who'd entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty — a word not usually associated with the father of modern conservatism. The law granted amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants, yet was largely considered unsuccessful because the strict sanctions on employers were stripped out of the bill for passage. 2016 it is said that the total undocumented immigrant population of 10.9 million is the lowest since 2003, says the report from the Center for Migration Studies.

https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Surv … g-Problems
Maybe other can find a link to information but this is not old enough

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_population

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_g … ted_States

The 6 Most Gang Infested Cities in America A massive decline in industry leading to unemployment and poverty… all perfect breeding grounds for gang culture.

It is estimated that over 1.5 million people are members of the roughly 35,000 different gangs operating in the United States. Among those gangs are street gangs, both on the national and local level, outlaw motorcycle gangs, prison gangs, gangs affiliated with organized crime, and gangs made up solely based on ethnicity.

Edit: you are correct in the murder assumption by the disportionate color but also it comes back to the economics of the people, neighborhoods that they can live in and a lack of others correcting the conditions to which they live in.

Ya my wife is stable at the moment but she does have sleep apnea, stops breathing and I have had to intervene to wake and get her breathing. Short of CPR to which I have been trained to do.
The family question on whom you go to is volcalization, are they hearing you ect.. but it comes down to assessment vitals: is the person breathing, concious level, is there a heartbeat ect.. then its move to the next when you are a single person confronted by the situation. Continuing to call for help and yelling for help....

I do work where guns are present due to security of the site. So seeing and knowing that a gun is around does not bother me. We do have active shooter drills and online education that is part of the training requirement.

As Kbd512 said its not an overnight thing to be able to react when the time comes, to have the courage to fire the weapon at the attacker but to also protect others that do not have that same ability while keeping that cool head on your shoulders.

RobertDyck · 2018-02-26 21:57:29

I see no one viewed the video I linked. A Canadian reporter goes through the process. Turns out you can buy an AR-15 in Canada. It's highly regulated, but you can get one. Extensive background checks required are part of the point. The reporter even joins the NRA and attends an American gun show.

Terraformer · 2018-02-27 05:30:42

So what if gun homicides are higher? If I'm killed with a knife, I'm still as dead as I will be if I'm killed with a gun.

Yes, I'm aware the US has a higher homicide rate than other western countries, and that this is true even if the sample is restricted to Americans of European descent. On the other hand, Britain's homicide rate hasn't changed much over the last century, despite going from quite laissez-faire gun laws to very restrictive ones in that time. At least in this country, gun restrictions haven't worked to stop murders. Why should they work in America?

kbd512 · 2018-02-27 14:23:17

Terraformer,

The US has a higher homicide rate specifically because of the availability of handguns. Handguns are used in the majority of homicides. Personal weapons (hands, feet, knees, etc), sharp objects, and blunt objects are all more frequently used than machine guns, rifles, or shotguns of any description. Bump fire stocks or trigger cranks are not machine guns, but they are mechanical devices that enable a semi-automatic firearm to fire near or at the weapon's cyclic rate as if it was a fully automatic weapon, aka a "machine gun", in a somewhat controllable manner. I've never owned one so I don't know how well they work. It seems more like an expensive gimmick than a legitimate tool for self defense, but that's must my opinion.

Terraformer · 2018-02-27 15:12:32

That's not been true in the UK, though. The homicide rate actually *increased* after the handgun ban was brought in.

SpaceNut · 2018-02-27 20:34:19

It is my understanding that a command structure to go in with vested protected officers usually waiting until the 4 or so arrive in a manner to go into the attack situation as common police force actions. That means, those that serve in the schools need to be ready with vests on and not in a low observational mode unprepared for any attacks that might happen without warning.
As far as teachers being armed, trained, conditioned for the reaction to an intruder to give additional support to police officers on scene this must be done via coordinated excercises and drills to practice the efforts to protect. There is no room for error or friendly fire....

kbd512 · 2018-03-01 15:06:26

PowerPost Analysis The Daily 202: Trump’s rejection of due process for gun owners points to his disdain for the rule of law

Unless my eyes deceived me, WaPo wrote a piece today wherein they criticized President Trump for making statements about denying due process to people who may be mentally ill by taking away their firearms first and then getting a court order approved or rejected. Since liberal media personalities are some of the most vocal critics of President Trump's stance on civilian ownership of firearms, the fact that some of them are now concerned about the due process rights of firearms owners means we're officially living in bizarro world. There's not a chance in hell of ever getting a logically consistent, or just plain consistent, viewpoint from the media on civilian ownership of firearms.

If there's ever a chance to criticize President Trump, even when it supports the viewpoint of firearms owners like myself who believe that every further piece of "do nothing" legislation regarding our firearms privileges is a stepping stone to eventual confiscation, the media seems obligated to criticize. George Carlin often spoke of this "relinquishing privileges for safety" stupidity. He wasn't enamored with the idea, nor am I.

This would be like being having your firearms confiscated after being arrested and jailed if suspected of a crime. The court, a judge and jury, still determine guilt or innocence. They take your firearms and cell phone away from you while you're in jail, since all communications are monitored and weapons are not allowed, but you get them back when you leave, if acquitted. Maybe liberals are concerned about having their firearms taken away since they're suffering so severely from TDS. A naive liberal child pretending to be an adult might believe that Republicans or conservatives are the only ones who own firearms. We just don't try to hide our firearms ownership the way liberals do. So maybe now they're concerned that their 2A privileges will be taken away. Just ask any Americans of Japanese ancestry who were living in the US in WWII what kind of "rights" they had.

Palomar7 · 2018-03-02 09:39:28

I am glad to see that Dick's Sporting Goods (and husband says Walmart too?) are no longer selling firearms (just assault rifles or any sort?) to people under age 21. I think that is incredibly wise. By age 21 you're (average) 3 years away from high school (enemies, frustrations, angst). Might be happier in college or the excitement of a "real job", etc. It's about time Corporate America is willing to sacrifice some profits. <_<

Last edited by Palomar7 (2018-03-02 09:44:21)

SpaceNut · 2018-03-02 18:08:21

A small piece of the puzzle of gun control but there is a need for other actions to which this order was not the correct one. Report: Deputies ordered to form a perimeter instead of confronting Florida gunman

kbd512 · 2018-03-02 20:50:38

SpaceNut,

These shootings nearly always involve one person. Columbine was an aberration. If we have that many uniformed officers on scene, they need to immediately hunt down the shooter, rather than give the shooter more time to continue doing whatever he's doing.

SpaceNut · 2018-03-02 21:09:11

Command structure, protocol, scene assesment, ect.. charging in is a fools err unprepared to take down the perpetator.....

Problem 1 is the officers respond with no jackets or gear to protect themselves as they are ready for taking on fire fight.

kbd512 · 2018-03-03 00:41:16

SpaceNut,

If dozens of officers are not prepared to handle a kid with a gun, then we have a much bigger training problem to address. If everyone is standing outside behind their squad cars and nobody is making entry, then that's another problem. Their Police said they rehearsed this scenario before. Maybe I'm the only one, but I'd try to figure out where the gunfire is coming from. There's only one way to do that.

SpaceNut · 2018-03-12 20:21:28

Sixth-grader writes will 'in case' there's a shooting at school

Davies decided to write the letter after his middle school received a recent threat. "It was just in case something happened to one of us because some kids get rowdy up and might end up getting somebody shot or something," Davies says.
At the end of the letter, Davies included a special message for his family, writing, "You gave me the clothes on my back and you stuck with me all the time. Love, Javon."

So why do we get to this situation in the first place? Indiana college newspaper blames Florida school shooting on 'toxic masculinity'

history of mass shootings in America since Columbine in 1999, concluded there is one thing they all have in common: gender. “When such a pattern emerges from decades of data, it’s time to have a conversation about masculinity and male violence,” the students argue. “We need to make comprehensive efforts to avoid reproducing the same masculinity in the next generation of boys that increases the likelihood of these atrocities.”
The oped concludes these mass shootings are especially linked to “gender violence,” using data collected by the anti-gun group, Everytown for Gun Safety.
“There is some evidence for biological factors playing a role, such as a slight association between testosterone an inclination toward violence,” the op-ed states.

Gun laws for Florida were recently passed raising the age on gun purchases, universal background checks and taking guns from those identified as a security threat without consideration of due process with the NRA suit over the out come.

Former substitute teacher developing gunshot alarm for schools that would work similarly to a fire alarm inside a school building alerting teachers, students and first responders to an active shooter.

Sensors are placed throughout the building that constantly scan for the sound of gunfire, Jax explained. Once a sensor detects a gunshot, the system’s computer can differentiate and confirm that the sound is gunfire and not a different loud noise that is common in a school, like a locker slamming. If a gunshot is confirmed, the system sounds a building-wide alarm that allows teachers what may be valuable seconds to barricade their classrooms or evacuate their students. At the same time, it calls police, providing them with specific information about where in the building the shots were fired, according to Trinity’s website.

Sound data base sampling will be critical to allow for the detection to work...

Of course you still will want a multi-prong attack defense involving more armed security personnel on school grounds, metal detectors, bag checks and better training for teachers on how to effectively barricade their classrooms or evacuate their students.

With some wanting guns on the teacher with training as the first line of defense...

SpaceNut · 2018-03-14 14:35:08

Guns in Teachers trained hands a question of is it the right thing or totally wrong to arm them.

A teacher with police training accidentally fired his weapon in a classroom during a lesson on gun safety, injuring 3 students

The incident is one of several mishaps in recent weeks that involved guns in schools after the Trump administration began advocating that certain teachers carry firearms.
Critics of the proposal have highlighted the incidents as proof that arming teachers could result in deadly accidents.

Opponents argue that, even people with the most extensive firearms training could make a mistake that turns fatal.

California teacher accidentally fires gun and injures student

"I think a lot of questions on parents' minds are, why a teacher would be pointing a loaded firearm at the ceiling in front of students,"

407-10, a bipartisan measure House Passes School Safety Bill But Unlikely to Take More Action on Guns now onto the senate .... provide grants for schools to implement safety protocols and training is likely the last action GOP leaders will take this Congress in response to a recent spate of mass shootings.

The bill would authorize $50 million in grant funding for schools to conduct training to prevent student violence, set up anonymous reporting systems for threats and implement other safety protocols. Republicans’ touted the school safety grants and background check reporting measures as a sign of their party’s interest in stopping gun violence on the same day that students from across the country organized a walk-out to call attention to the topic.
Local students gathered on the West Front of the Capitol with Democratic lawmakers to demand Congress do more to prevent gun violence, like passing a more comprehensive background checks measure that would ensure people purchasing firearms online or at gun shows are subject to the same review as those purchasing in stores.

kbd512 · 2018-03-14 20:12:08

SpaceNut,

The individual in the first article you linked to was, in point of fact, a Police Officer. These would be the people you're relying on to come protect you from violent criminals. Whether you're aware of this fact or not, they're not universally well-trained. As someone who has personally instructed Police Officers in hand-to-hand combat, I can relay that what you will find are a spectrum of capabilities, ranging from practically non-existent to every bit as good as some of the SF people I've trained with. Every individual is different, much like the rest of life.

I can usually tell who is mature and thoughtful enough to receive instruction and who is not by how they behave and speak when they think nobody is watching. That behavioral rule is not universally true, but it seems to be generally true.

The alternative is no effective protection whatsoever, which is exactly what we have now. You'll keep witnessing mass murders in these "mass murder zones" that liberals lovingly refer to as "gun free zones" until such time as we enforce accountability amongst the politicians who have created these "safe spaces" for violent criminals. Reconstituting our otherwise ineffective mental health care system to provide effective care is of equal importance. With respect to the liberal nonsense about "toxic masculinity", you'll find that most of these mass murderers have no good role models to teach them how to act like adults. In most cases there's no male role model present at all, so there's no masculinity, let alone "toxic masculinity" to be had. It's women who provide little to no effective supervision and mass media that's all too happy to feed the public's morbid fascination with obscene violence. We can't show a woman's breasts on TV, but we can show brutality that eclipses what most soldiers will encounter in a shooting war. To pretend that such programming does not desensitize would-be mass murderers into seeing people as objects instead of fellow humans is absurd.

All of the constant negativity towards the teachers aside, if you don't trust teachers to be around your children then my suggestion is that you move them to a school with teachers you do trust. In any event, a fear of weapons as a sign of immaturity and most trust issues seem to also be fear or ignorance based.

What's a "multi-prong attack defense"?

SpaceNut · 2018-05-18 19:13:52

People react outside the unification center at the Alamo Gym, following a shooting at Santa Fe High School Friday, in Santa Fe, Texas 10 dead, 10 wounded in school shooting.
The suspected shooter is in custody and identified as 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis. He allegedly used his father's shotgun and revolver in the rampage.

SpaceNut · 2018-05-19 09:09:43

The victims of Friday's shooting at a Texas high school were in a place where they should always feel safe but this is now a Generation lockdown: There have been 16 school shootings in 2018 alone

kbd512 · 2018-05-19 17:51:21

SpaceNut,

Safety is a feeling or emotion. It's a human brain conceptualization or ideation of something that doesn't actually exist. Safety isn't something that can be thrown into a bucket because it's not real. The fact that your brain interpreted something in a particular way no more means the physical world, aka "the real world", operates the way you think it should than you can sprout wings and fly if you decide to jump off a bridge. What makes one person "feel safe" will make another person "feel unsafe". Such an ideation obviously isn't universally believed, either.

Guns make liberals "feel scared" when they believe they don't "control" the guns (control being another ridiculous non-existent human brain construct) or the people with the guns, whereas guns make most conservatives "feel safe". Maybe I'm not a "good conservative" because I've never felt anything one way or the other, with or without a firearm in hand. That said, I also know that I can use a gun, a knife, a rock, or nearly any other implement to protect my family and that's the extent of what I "feel" about guns. I also know that a gun trumps a knife, a rock, or greater physical speed and strength in most, but not all, circumstances. That's why I have one. There's always someone else who is stronger, faster, or a group of people who may possess those attributes, but I've never seen or heard of anyone out-running or out-muscling a bullet. Rather than "survival of the fittest", which is what liberals seem to prefer, I view tools like firearms as "survival of the smartest".

Do you think criminals will be more merciful if you deliberately put yourself at a disadvantage in your ability to protect yourself when they come to prey upon you?

My question isn't rhetorical. Liberals need to think about how this would actually work and then test out their ideas to determine how it does work. Anyone who can read can pick up a history book to see how combat between opponents of dissimilar physical speed, strength, skill, and/or numbers worked before we had guns. If you've never been in a situation where you were the only one there to defend your right to live, then great. Good for you. I can assure you that your experiences are not universal.

According to reports, this kid murdered his classmates with a shotgun and a revolver, not an AR-15. He also planted a number of explosive devices around his school. It was already illegal for him to possess firearms or explosives, in accordance with the law, because he was a 17 year old minor. Unfortunately, that didn't stop him from possessing or using things he wasn't legally permitted to possess or use. The "no guns allowed" signs at the school entrances didn't stop him from shooting anyone, either. Posting signage won't stop anyone who doesn't obey the law (someone who is a criminal, by dictionary definition) from doing anything whatsoever, at all or ever, anywhere on the planet, at any time.

It's not necessary to have an AR-15 type weapon to mass murder people. All that is required for mass murder to happen is to disarm the people who aren't criminals, put them in a confined area where escape is not fast and easy, and then bring in a criminal or group of criminals who are armed or possess dissimilar speed, strength, skill, and/or numbers.

Want to see an end to these mass murders in our schools?

Put veterans like myself in schools with our AR-15's (the rifles that all of us learned to use in the military) and these troubled youngsters may kill one or two people before we end them. After we start doing that, these kids will either move on to softer targets or become footnotes on the evening news. I'm willing to put myself in the line of fire if someone with a pair of working neurons doesn't arrest and jail us for protecting our own children. I'm not willing to go to prison for merely showing up to do the job that our all-powerful government routinely fails to do.

I'm not going there to play soldier, unlike the Police. My own children are at the school I would go to, so I'm not waiting for anyone or anything if I hear gunfire. I just need a lightweight AR-15 with a white light and optic, one magazine, and a medical kit. I already have all of those things and know how to use them, so this costs the tax payer nothing. Anything beyond that is over the top for the job that must be done. A pistol or revolver won't work for engaging threats 50+ yards away and that's why we need carbines.

All I know is that pretending that this problem will go away by passing another law is the absolute pinnacle of absurdity. We have always had laws against rape, robbery, and murder, yet those laws have never stopped those crimes from occurring. Disarming ourselves to make ourselves helpless victims for mass murderers is mass stupidity from liberal politicians who don't care about our children, never did, and never will. Once you recognize that the state doesn't care about you, what you should demand of your representation becomes obvious.

clark · 2018-05-20 01:09:01

Well, if i buy into the premise of a school crossing guard, why not this? Disarming isn't the solution; making it hard to obtain the guns is.

but whatever.

kbd512 · 2018-05-20 03:18:23

Clark,

Alternatively, we could just let kids wander around in the streets without any adult supervision while the bigger kids driving those cars around are blissfully unaware of what they're doing while they're on their cell phones taking selfies of themselves running kids over.

How do you propose to make guns more difficult for people who don't follow the law to obtain weapons?

Let me guess, you'd ban them by repealing the Second Amendment.

Prohibition of alcohol worked so well that we gave up on that ingenious idea after just 13 years.

How's that "War on Drugs" going?

Excerpt from "Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 157: Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure"

Not only did the number of serious crimes increase, but crime became organized. Criminal groups organize around the steady source of income provided by laws against victimless crimes such as consuming alcohol or drugs, gambling, and prostitution. In the process of providing goods and services, those criminal organizations resort to real crimes in defense of sales territories, brand names, and labor contracts. That is true of extensive crime syndicates (the Mafia) as well as street gangs, a criminal element that first surfaced during Prohibition.

The most telling sign of the relationship between serious crime and Prohibition was the dramatic reversal in the rates for robbery, burglary, murder, and assault when Prohibition was repealed in 1933. That dramatic reversal has Marxist and business-cycle crime theorists puzzled to this day. For example, sociologist John Pandiani noted that "a major wave of crime appears to have begun as early as the mid 1920s [and] increased continually until 1933 . . . when it mysteriously reversed itself." Theodore Ferdinand also found a "mysterious" decline that began in 1933 and lasted throughout the 1930s. How could they miss the significance of the fact that the crime rate dropped in 1933?

Conclusion: Lessons for Today

Prohibition, which failed to improve health and virtue in America, can afford some invaluable lessons. First, it can provide some perspective on the current crisis in drug prohibition--a 75-year effort that is increasingly viewed as a failure.

Repeal of Prohibition dramatically reduced crime, including organized crime, and corruption. Jobs were created, and new voluntary efforts, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, which was begun in 1934, succeeded in helping alcoholics. Those lessons can be applied to the current crisis in drug prohibition and the problems of drug abuse. Second, the lessons of Prohibition should be used to curb the urge to prohibit. Neoprohibition of alcohol and prohibition of tobacco would result in more crime, corruption, and dangerous products and increased government control over the average citizen's life. Finally, Prohibition provides a general lesson that society can no more be successfully engineered in the United States than in the Soviet Union.

Prohibition was supposed to be an economic and moral bonanza. Prisons and poorhouses were to be emptied, taxes cut, and social problems eliminated. Productivity was to skyrocket and absenteeism disappear. The economy was to enter a never-ending boom. That utopian outlook was shattered by the stock market crash of 1929. Prohibition did not improve productivity or reduce absenteeism. In contrast, private regulation of employees' drinking improved productivity, reduced absenteeism, and reduced industrial accidents wherever it was tried before, during, and after Prohibition.

In summary, Prohibition did not achieve its goals. Instead, it added to the problems it was intended to solve and supplanted other ways of addressing problems. The only beneficiaries of Prohibition were bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government. Carroll Wooddy concluded that the "Eighteenth Amendment . . . contributed substantially to the growth of government and of government costs in this period [1915-32]."

In the aftermath of Prohibition, economist Ludwig von Mises wrote, "Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments." The repeal of all prohibition of voluntary exchange is as important to the restoration of liberty now as its enactment was to the cause of big government in the Progressive Era.

Maybe we should make motor vehicles harder to obtain while we're at it since the number of people killed by motor vehicles was over 40,000 in 2017, likely surpassing both homicides and suicides with guns.

If we include both suicides and homicides, no matter what instrument was used to commit the act (knife, gun, baseball bat, bare hands, poison, whatever), we can just surpass the number of children aged 0 to 14 killed in traffic accidents by 8 people. For teens and young adults, aged 15 to 24, there's no contest between suicides or homicides (no matter what instrument was used) and traffic accidents, and motor vehicle deaths win that category handily. Further, the number of poisonings that were not suicides or homicides is nearly double that of homicides with firearms within that age group.

SpaceNut · 2018-05-20 08:11:43

Doctor heal thine self as its feelings that are at issue with those that do murder to terrorism. Such as the Texas shooting :
The mother of one of the victims says her daughter had earlier rejected the romantic advances of the killer, as just one of the possible motive for the violent tragedy. We need to teach the how to deal with emotions....An emotional weapon of any choice is still a weapon when used wrongly without the correct reason to be using them.

GW Johnson · 2018-05-20 09:35:06

Look, just about every single mass shooting for the last several years has been some public venue that was a sitting-duck target. Both the crazies and the terrorists are inevitably drawn to sitting-duck targets. They are sitting-duck targets because they were undefended, or at best inadequately-defended gun-free zones.

The guns are already out there in the society. It is far, far too late to try banning guns, which would require major changes to the Constitution. But if you did, all you would accomplish is making the entire country a sitting-duck target. The guns already out there fall into the hands of criminals and terrorists, and get sold black-market to crazies. Nothing changes except the rate of shootings vastly increases.

Them's the hard facts, which the gun-control extremists cannot face. Their way is the wrong way, precisely because the guns are already out there, and have been since the original colonies were settled starting 300+ years ago. That ain't gonna change.

Now, what's forgotten here is a lesson from the 19th century frontier towns that actually worked. There are actually very good reasons to have gun-free zones in a variety of venues. But, what is TOTALLY forgotten today, is that once you declare one, you are obligated to defend it, to prevent the sitting-duck target effect.

This last one in the Texas school, wasn't even an "assault weapon" thing. He had a shotgun and a revolver. The school had one (and only one) campus cop who was armed, mostly likely only with a revolver. The shooter got him before he could take out the shooter. Which is proof of my thesis: in this case the defense was inadequate. One cop, if taken out, leaves no defense. The 19th century town sheriffs and marshals always had a number of deputies, and all went together to quell problems.

You simply need more guards than shooters, and your guards simply need to outgun the shooters. The 19th century rule-of-thumb was 60 seconds max to the scene of the problem. The other facet of the 19th century solution was using real peace officers actually accountable to the people, not just hiring some outlaw gunman.

The hardest part of that today is the 60 second rule-of-thumb to limit casualties. Most places no longer resemble small frontier towns only 2 to 4 city blocks in size. Adapting to the 21st century, it means if your venue is large, you need more than one guardhouse. That costs more than it did in the 19th century, but here is where my acid test for ethics comes to the fore: what do you value more? Money? Or lives? Your choice, but you will eventually answer to God for your choices.

The mistake often made today is the concept of arming teachers, and counting on them to be your defense. That teachers already have too much to do is beside the point here. They will only have some sort of handgun. They will not generally outgun the shooters. Doesn't work. Just gets more people killed.

Do it right. Multiple well-armed guards, trained to be the peace officers that they will serve as. Located in enough places so that two can respond anywhere within a minute.

Why does everyone make this so hard, when it is really so stinking easy? LEARN FROM HISTORY!!! Don't politicize this, just do it!

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-05-20 09:43:18)

kbd512 · 2018-05-20 11:07:07

SpaceNut,

Everyone has feelings. The difference is that more than 99.9% of us don't go out and start murdering people we barely know because our poor little feelings were hurt. That kind of behavior is something that would've been as alien a concept to the kids I grew up with as little green men from planet Zort landing in a flying saucer in our backyard. Something must have changed since then because the kids I went to high school with had shotguns and rifles in their pickup trucks and I never once saw any of them point a gun at anyone else, never mind kill twenty people they barely knew. That sort of thing simply didn't happen every week when I was a kid.

It's painfully obvious that bad stuff is happening, but from my perspective the solution doesn't involve taking things from people who have never harmed anyone else. There's no limit to that sort of thinking as the UK has clearly demonstrated. They're debating about why someone would ever need a knife over 2 inches long because some culinary school said "most tasks" in a kitchen could be accomplished with a smaller knife. That may very well be true, but I prefer slicing my chicken, turkey, pork, or beef with a big knife that takes care of the entire task in one stroke. If some random street thug stabs or someone who belongs in a nut house stabs someone with a kitchen knife, I don't believe that means everyone else has to give up their cooking utensils.

How many thousands of laws are required before we start blaming criminals for their behavior instead of blaming people who had nothing to do with those crimes?

SpaceNut · 2018-05-20 12:15:09

Nikolas Cruz move into their Parkland home for the 2 1/2 months felt sorry for their son's 19-year-old friend after he was left orphaned, James and Kimberly Snead opened their home to a grieving young man after his mother died.
The lawsuits filed against the Sneads allege they should have known Cruz was mentally ill and posed a threat to others. Family that took in Nikolas Cruz hit with lawsuits and criticism

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