Sick people in this world...

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Umm, that would actually make you against Snook.

You need to pay more attention to the extremist gun-lobby nutjobs so prevalent in the US (I'm not saying that any of those lobbyists are SP'ers). Thank goodness for more reasonable people like T2Bruno.

[ October 05, 2006, 04:37: Message edited by: Splunge ]

 

First of all, yes I was being slightly sarcastic. There is no way they should arm everyone, however I see no problem with people who are familar with guns having them for their own protection and the protection of their fellow teachers and students.

I also resent the opinion that gun lobby people are nutjobs. They are just like everyone else. They just happen to believe that relying on others for their own protection is foolishness. If someone is in danger, expecting the authorities to bail them out is never going to happen. I completely understand how people feel the need to protect themselves, and I respect them for it.

I hate to say it, but schools are a natural target for people who want to commit violence. They are full of children who pose little or no threat to an adult and the adults in the school tend to be female (in my son's elementary school the only two males were a janitor and one teacher).

For the record I do not own a gun, have never owned a gun, and never plan to own a gun. That being said I am a firm believer that the second amendment was a wise choice by the founding fathers. A people who are unwilling to protect themselves are a people who are willing to be controlled. If you look at the history of massacres and genocide, the first step is always to disarm the people you want to kill. I'm not saying that our government wants to kill us (if they did they would have come for the liberals, who are unarmed, a long time ago ), but it is a very important safeguard.

 

well i don't see them removing the right to have guns doing any good in the short term at least. It is far too easy to get guns right now, and how would the get all the guns that people already own? and hunting would be difficult too.

With the amount of people in this country that have guns, licsenced or not, it would be damn near impossible to effectively enforce that.

The only thing I could see them doing is cracking down on unliscensed guns and then make the people who get guns go through a stricter liscensing process.

i.e any mental problems=no gun.

@ nuns yes auto's are fairly easy to obtain. I can honestly say that if i really wanted one i could get it in probably 30 minutes if i had the money.

 

I can accept that the USA treats its constitutional rights very preciously and is unlikely to change its gun worship policies in any way.

Bottom line is that I am very happy that I live in a country where people seem to be completely unfazed by not having an undeniable right to have a gun.

But, given that the American situation is what it is, I am sure that arming teachers is not the answer. If schools are seen as being such an insecure place then maybe having reliable armed guards might be the preferred option.

 

Armed guards who are professional security personell are far better than giving teachers guns and most probably some half-arsed firearms useage training.

Better to have specialists with guns than educators with guns. But even then all one has to do is kill the guards and a person determined to go on a killing spree won't hesitate to remove the obstacles in his path.

 

The answer to this is properly trained and equipped security and the equipment to keep this in line. Make it a criminal offence for anyone other than police and security to have a firearm on school property. Have checkpoints with metal detectors at every entrance. If they aren't students, then find out why they are there. I'd even go one further and have drug dogs there to catch drug dealers too. It's about protecting our children and giving them a chance to learn...

 

Why would you need police on school property? I thought the metal detectors were OTT.

Here is something that disturbed me. Why do some Americans (civillians) want automatic weapons? If you really want to use such weapons, then join the military!

In the US, do you need a background check before you can purchase arms? In N.Ireland we need permission from our local police before we can even think about purchasing weapons.

 

In theory I'm all for everyone having the right to bear arms - however, America is insane.
I'm inclined to think that in the right cultural climate everyone being able to have a gun could be very useful - a way of defending oneself in the probably quite rare occasion that such would be needed. America doesn't have this though. The solution to your problems in America seems to be 'I'll shoot it!'.

I'm thinking especially of something that happened ... a week ago now? Some kid murdered his principal because of something-or-other. Going to school and shooting people seems to be a part of American culture now...

 

This is revolting.

If it's between the right to bear arms and the shooting of children at school, what are they waiting for? IMO there is no excuse. Democracy can function without weapons. It's not because it's a deep-rooted element of the American mentality that it is right.

As for all the metal detectors and dogs and police at school, how sad a scenario is that?

 

Clearly, the way to deal with this is to make the carrying of firearms (note the plural) to schools mandatory for all students and teachers alike.

What could go wrong?

 

At least nerds wouldn't get beat up for their lunch money anymore...

In my opinion, the only way forward is tighter control on the sale and ownership of guns.

 

the only reason to have a gun for self protection is if other people have guns....and guns dont kill people, people kill people. sure but they use the gun, again take away the gun and its much harder to kill a lot of people. somehow i wonder how this can be hard for some to grasp.

 

I think perhaps I didn’t word my comment very well. I didn’t mean to suggest that all gun lobbyists are nutjobs, but there are fringe elements (“extremists”) that are. I can, however, see how my comment could have been misinterpreted.

If anyone outside of the U.S. wants to get an idea of how entrenched guns (and weaponry in general) are in American society, all you have to do is walk into a typical U.S. sporting goods store. In Canada, if a sporting goods store even has a gun section, it’s probably just a five foot long counter tucked away at the back of the store. In the U.S., the weapons section can take up to ¼ of the total floor space of the whole store (and no, I’m not exaggerating here). It doesn’t matter how big there store is. Imagine a 20,000 square foot store with up to 5,000 square feet dedicated to rifles, shotguns, handguns, bows, knives, bazookas (well OK, maybe not that last one) – it’s really astonishing if you’ve never witnessed that before.

 

You would be surprised to find out how many times the "extremists" are used to define a people. I'm as guilty as anyone.

 

The real problem here isn't the guns, or the accessibility to guns, it is the culture America has developed. Fifty years ago, kids still got beaten up for their lunch money and teased every day, and plenty of their parents had guns that the kids could access, but there weren't rashes of school shootings at the time. The random psycho (and I mean actually mentally unhinged) that wants to kill a lot of people will always have a tool, though some may be more effective than others, but when kids take guns to school because they get bullied or teased (and I'm not even talking about the kids that end up shooting people) we have a problem, and it's a problem with society, not the guns. I would be just as concerned over our society were these hunting knives, or kitchen knives, or bats with long nails in them.

When did it become cool to kill people? When did it become an acceptable solution to any problem? What happened to parental responsability? To teacher responsability? I'll tell you. Parental responsability went out when the teachers started raising the kids, so the parents forgot how. Teacher responsability went out when the few parents that knew how to raise their kids wanted to, or maybe when parents that didn't know how to raise their kids wanted to, but either way, teachers aren't allowed to raise our kids anymore (no complaints on that one here), but now most of the parents have forgotten how, because they never needed to know before, because they were raised by teachers more than parents themselves. That's where the problem came from, and that's why America is in such a mess now.

 

I think that's the only time I've ever seen my name associated with 'reasonable people'....

 

In my country we are starting to see similar events. One of the reasons of this is neither teachers nor parents know how to raise kids anymore here too. Children are given an infinite freedom. Their parents do everything they want. When they grow up they expect other people to obey them too. When others don't obey them they shoot others.