San Marcos to hire armed civilians for elementary schools

[Bookman 4639]

This will never work. They will figure out who the "marshalls" are quickly and just go shoot up a classroom with no marshalls.

We need walls around our schools and at least three fully armed soldiers in every classroom. It's the only way to be sure.

[GoPokes83 2240]

I’ve got no real issue with this idea. Can’t be worse than the trained Uvalde response. If it’s common knowledge there’s a vetted and trained person or two who’s willing to wander the halls continuously during the day it may well keep one of these cowards from showing up. I’d volunteer at my kid’s elementary school if they’d consider an old who’s been out of the military for like 35 years. I’d rather see this than arming a bunch of teachers that have no interest in firearms.

[CooterBrown 18012]

I’d volunteer at my kid’s elementary school if they’d consider an old who’s been out of the military for like 35 years.

[YGIFS 19450]

12 minutes ago, GoPokes83 said:

I’ve got no real issue with this idea. Can’t be worse than the trained Uvalde response. If it’s common knowledge there’s a vetted and trained person or two who’s willing to wander the halls continuously during the day it may well keep one of these cowards from showing up. I’d volunteer at my kid’s elementary school if they’d consider an old who’s been out of the military for like 35 years. I’d rather see this than arming a bunch of teachers that have no interest in firearms.

I appreciate your service and willingness to keep service your community.  

It does appear, prima facia, that most school shooters never really gave/give much thought to security with whom to overtake.  Many, if not most, school shootings take place on campuses where there are district police/safety officers.  At the minimum, most of these campuses are just minutes away from a police station/sub-station.  The possibility of there being an armed person (teacher, staffer, marshal, et. al.) is not the deterrent you or I would make it out to be.  In all the manifestos, campus maps, floorplans, ammo plans, ingress/egress priorities, in all the shit they find in these sickies' homes or computers or trucks..........there's never been an indication of "And if you run into old man Johnson in Corridor 2, just run back home."  You or I would plan that if we encountered armed resistance, to fall back to position A, wait for this or that, move to here or there.  Neither their physical materials and very little of filmed footage suggests they give fuck one about armed resistance.  In many instances, they fully expected it-------hence the superior firepower.  And in a few instances, they even welcomed it.  Because it meant their swift end.  These aren't bank robberies, they're not trying to find and neutralize the guards/marshals first, then keep more cops from showing up with alarm tricks, rob the joint, and then get away.  An armed Marshal at the school is just another 1000+ point bonus to their high score in many cases.  For 25 years we've known the typical rules of engagement do not apply in mass shootings, particularly at schools.  What works at banks, airplanes, and sporting events does not work at theaters, schools, or churches.  Because of the two grim realities----------logistics and the fact that if you don't care what happens once your heavily armed ass is inside.........all bets are off.  But how in the world could we possibly legislate that attitude?  I mean, what's the point of laws/?

[Bookman 4639]

27 minutes ago, GoPokes83 said:

If it’s common knowledge there’s a vetted and trained person or two who’s willing to wander the halls continuously during the day it may well keep one of these cowards from showing up.

I'm not sure how many school shooters think they're going to get away with it.

[Willfully Horn 8017]

The ease with which guns are obtained in this country is the sole reason we deal with the scourge of school shootings. Anyone who believes differently is lying to themselves and others. 
 

Here’s Michael Ventura’s take on our culture and school shootings, written in the weeks after Columbine. Show me where he is wrong.

 

Quote

And Thy Right Hand Shall Teach Thee

Originally published May 28, 1999

Littleton won't go away, not because politicians and commentators are still yapping about it but because no one can forget it; and because Littleton has taught some deeply disturbed young people (all affluent, all white) how to make an impact on an America that wants nothing from them but their capacity to consume. In Michigan, California, and Texas, Littleton copycat plots have been foiled; in a suburban Atlanta high school that U.S. News & World Reportrated as one of the top 13 in the state, a regular church-goer and Boy Scout wounded six and then broke down in tears, saying, "Oh my God, I'm so scared, I'm so scared." So are we all. Many are saying that guns aren't the problem; they blame MTV, Hollywood, and the lack of prayer and Bible study in our schools. Well, maybe some Bible study is in order. Turn to the Book of Deuteronomy, 21:18-21:

illustration by Jason Stout

"If any of you has a disobedient and rebellious son, who does not respond to the instructions of his father or mother, you are first to discipline him. If he still does not heed you, you are to bring him to the elders at the gate of the city. You are to say to the elders of the city, 'This son of ours is disobedient and rebellious. He won't obey us. He is a glutton and a drunk.' The men of the city are then to stone him to death. In this way you will rid yourselves of this evil, and everybody else will hear about it and be afraid."

That passage is thought to be between 2,500 and 3,000 years old. So "disobedient and rebellious" sons were a serious problem centuries before Hollywood and hip-hop – even in homogenous cities (none much bigger than Littleton) where every activity was structured around religion and where children were constantly with their families. The problem was consistent and important enough not only to be written into sacred law but to merit public execution. Which tells us something else: that no one knew what to do. A sentence of death, requested and demanded by the parents themselves, is a clear and strident signal that no one in that society could come up with a constructive solution for extreme disobedience and rebellion in the young. The problem was both too strong to overcome and too threatening to tolerate. In a time when children were crucial to the economic survival of the family, both the parents and the community were reduced to the epitome of defeat: killing their kids. And the stated purpose of this public execution was to scare other kids into behaving. No society sets such an example unless they feel it's needed, i.e., unless the children are restless ... very restless.

Which is to say: Twentieth Century America didn't invent teen angst or parental powerlessness. Nor did we invent substance abuse: Gluttony and drunkenness were the charges against Deuteronomy's children. In fact, the Bible, the book that many conservatives want taught in school as the word of God, is rife with children running amok and killing each other, sons warring against their fathers, brothers raping sisters, boys squandering inheritances, siblings throwing each other down wells, and scantily clad girls dancing wildly and then calling for the severed heads of prophets (at Mommy's instigation – talk about family dysfunction!). The Bible also has its share of violently irrational parents: Noah's son entered his father's tent and saw him naked; the young man had no way of knowing his father would be naked, but Noah had him executed nevertheless. (Fathers often don't like to be seen for who they really are.) Children are fair game in the Bible, especially if they're your enemy's. As Psalm 137 has it, "O daughter of Babylon ... happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" (I continue to be amazed that Christians, Moslems, and Jews still regard this praise of atrocity as "holy writ.") The ultimate biblical act of faith is supposed to be Abraham's willingness to murder his child Isaac – although today "God told me to do it" is not accepted as a legal defense, even by most fundamentalists. My somewhat obvious point is that nowhere in the Bible does it say these people watched too much television.

During the siege of Jerusalem (66-70 A.D.), Jews who sneaked from the city to forage for food were captured and crucified by the Romans (i.e., Italians) at the rate of 500 a day. The Roman soldiers quickly became bored with crucifying them in the usual way, so they nailed their victims in all sorts of pretzel-like postures and then watched the crows peck out their living eyes. These soldiers hadn't OD'd on violent video games.

The Catholic torturers of the Inquisition ... the Europeans and Americans who, for hundreds of years, burned and hanged uppity women whom they called "witches" ... the upright Christians who let hundreds of thousands of Africans die in the stinking holds of slave ships, and defended slavery as an institution until their Confederate armies were beaten beyond hope ... the Anglo cavalrymen who massacred Native American women and children and often cut the genitals from the dead women and wore them as skull-caps as they rode off in victory ... the Nazis who ran the death-camps ... the young airmen who incinerated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ... the rural boys who slaughtered nearly half the population of Cambodia ... the rural boys who, this year, cut off the hands and arms of hundreds of enemy tribespeople in Africa ... none of these people watched too many explosion-punctuated Hollywood movies, sang hip-hop, glommed shoot-'em-ups on TV, or played Mortal Kombat and Doom.

I am the last one to let the blood-drenched shallowness and venality of contemporary media off the hook; "Hollywood," to use that word as a catch-all for the whole sick stew, seduces the young into pissing away their precious time on insular fantasies instead of learning how to face life with courage, behave with integrity, and contribute what only their unique souls can give to us, to each other, and to the history we are making. Hollywood has become our abdication: the abdication of the elders, the abdication of our sacred duty that we share our souls with the young. For it as the Greek poet George Seferis has written: "the soul/ If it is to know itself/ It is into a soul/ That it must look."

That is the fundamental demand of parenting, of education, and of culture; as a nation and as individuals most of us have failed it utterly. The young don't accept our excuses, and I thank God that they don't. I believe their only chance is in their rejection of our evasions.

Nevertheless, to blame Hollywood, with all its ramifications, for the violence in our young and throughout our society, is to ignore the record of human history. Which is the record of the human psyche. Which is who and what we are. We have not needed the media to instruct us in atrocity. We seem to have been born with that gruesome capacity. As it says in Psalm 45: "And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things."

Not your movies, not your Doom, not your hip-hop, not your porn, but your right hand.

We are violent creatures subject to spasms of intense irrationality – and we always have been. How do we solve the problem? It's the wrong question. The human psyche is not a problem to be solved but a paradox to be lived. The paradox is how much love and gentleness and compassion we violent creatures are capable of; and how much violence we loving creatures are capable of. For we are both, at the same time, every day and every hour of the day. The human task is to choose between those elements in oneself every day. The failure both of Hollywood and of the moralistic stance that "this is right and this is wrong," is that they make the choice look easy, and it is never is.

The New York Times' statistics quoted here several weeks ago are worth repeating: "In 1996, handguns were used to murder 2 people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, 213 in Germany, and 9,390 in the United States." As Hollywood director Rob Reiner said to Times columnist Maureen Dowd: "Every country gets our movies, but they don't kill anybody afterward." This fact cannot be overemphasized. The difference between those other countries and the United States is not the movies, nor is it consumerism – they watch what we watch, they are as venal as we, and their histories prove they are equally prone to atrocity; the difference is that, to quote the commonly accepted stats, our population of 260 million owns roughly 300 million guns. We are an armed camp. It is difficult to obtain a handgun in any other civilized nation on Earth, but our children seem able to procure them for the asking.

When an American right hand seeks to teach a terrible thing, it can reach for a gun.

That's the difference, and that's the only difference.

It is cowardly not to admit it. More cowardly still not to do something about it.

 

[GoPokes83 2240]

The ease with which guns are obtained in this country is the sole reason we deal with the scourge of school shootings. Anyone who believes differently is lying to themselves and others. 
 
Here’s Michael Ventura’s take on our culture and school shootings, written in the weeks after Columbine. Show me where he is wrong.
 

And Thy Right Hand Shall Teach Thee

Originally published May 28, 1999

Littleton won't go away, not because politicians and commentators are still yapping about it but because no one can forget it; and because Littleton has taught some deeply disturbed young people (all affluent, all white) how to make an impact on an America that wants nothing from them but their capacity to consume. In Michigan, California, and Texas, Littleton copycat plots have been foiled; in a suburban Atlanta high school that U.S. News & World Reportrated as one of the top 13 in the state, a regular church-goer and Boy Scout wounded six and then broke down in tears, saying, "Oh my God, I'm so scared, I'm so scared." So are we all. Many are saying that guns aren't the problem; they blame MTV, Hollywood, and the lack of prayer and Bible study in our schools. Well, maybe some Bible study is in order. Turn to the Book of Deuteronomy, 21:18-21:

illustration by Jason Stout

"If any of you has a disobedient and rebellious son, who does not respond to the instructions of his father or mother, you are first to discipline him. If he still does not heed you, you are to bring him to the elders at the gate of the city. You are to say to the elders of the city, 'This son of ours is disobedient and rebellious. He won't obey us. He is a glutton and a drunk.' The men of the city are then to stone him to death. In this way you will rid yourselves of this evil, and everybody else will hear about it and be afraid."

That passage is thought to be between 2,500 and 3,000 years old. So "disobedient and rebellious" sons were a serious problem centuries before Hollywood and hip-hop – even in homogenous cities (none much bigger than Littleton) where every activity was structured around religion and where children were constantly with their families. The problem was consistent and important enough not only to be written into sacred law but to merit public execution. Which tells us something else: that no one knew what to do. A sentence of death, requested and demanded by the parents themselves, is a clear and strident signal that no one in that society could come up with a constructive solution for extreme disobedience and rebellion in the young. The problem was both too strong to overcome and too threatening to tolerate. In a time when children were crucial to the economic survival of the family, both the parents and the community were reduced to the epitome of defeat: killing their kids. And the stated purpose of this public execution was to scare other kids into behaving. No society sets such an example unless they feel it's needed, i.e., unless the children are restless ... very restless.

Which is to say: Twentieth Century America didn't invent teen angst or parental powerlessness. Nor did we invent substance abuse: Gluttony and drunkenness were the charges against Deuteronomy's children. In fact, the Bible, the book that many conservatives want taught in school as the word of God, is rife with children running amok and killing each other, sons warring against their fathers, brothers raping sisters, boys squandering inheritances, siblings throwing each other down wells, and scantily clad girls dancing wildly and then calling for the severed heads of prophets (at Mommy's instigation – talk about family dysfunction!). The Bible also has its share of violently irrational parents: Noah's son entered his father's tent and saw him naked; the young man had no way of knowing his father would be naked, but Noah had him executed nevertheless. (Fathers often don't like to be seen for who they really are.) Children are fair game in the Bible, especially if they're your enemy's. As Psalm 137 has it, "O daughter of Babylon ... happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" (I continue to be amazed that Christians, Moslems, and Jews still regard this praise of atrocity as "holy writ.") The ultimate biblical act of faith is supposed to be Abraham's willingness to murder his child Isaac – although today "God told me to do it" is not accepted as a legal defense, even by most fundamentalists. My somewhat obvious point is that nowhere in the Bible does it say these people watched too much television.

During the siege of Jerusalem (66-70 A.D.), Jews who sneaked from the city to forage for food were captured and crucified by the Romans (i.e., Italians) at the rate of 500 a day. The Roman soldiers quickly became bored with crucifying them in the usual way, so they nailed their victims in all sorts of pretzel-like postures and then watched the crows peck out their living eyes. These soldiers hadn't OD'd on violent video games.

The Catholic torturers of the Inquisition ... the Europeans and Americans who, for hundreds of years, burned and hanged uppity women whom they called "witches" ... the upright Christians who let hundreds of thousands of Africans die in the stinking holds of slave ships, and defended slavery as an institution until their Confederate armies were beaten beyond hope ... the Anglo cavalrymen who massacred Native American women and children and often cut the genitals from the dead women and wore them as skull-caps as they rode off in victory ... the Nazis who ran the death-camps ... the young airmen who incinerated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ... the rural boys who slaughtered nearly half the population of Cambodia ... the rural boys who, this year, cut off the hands and arms of hundreds of enemy tribespeople in Africa ... none of these people watched too many explosion-punctuated Hollywood movies, sang hip-hop, glommed shoot-'em-ups on TV, or played Mortal Kombat and Doom.

I am the last one to let the blood-drenched shallowness and venality of contemporary media off the hook; "Hollywood," to use that word as a catch-all for the whole sick stew, seduces the young into pissing away their precious time on insular fantasies instead of learning how to face life with courage, behave with integrity, and contribute what only their unique souls can give to us, to each other, and to the history we are making. Hollywood has become our abdication: the abdication of the elders, the abdication of our sacred duty that we share our souls with the young. For it as the Greek poet George Seferis has written: "the soul/ If it is to know itself/ It is into a soul/ That it must look."

That is the fundamental demand of parenting, of education, and of culture; as a nation and as individuals most of us have failed it utterly. The young don't accept our excuses, and I thank God that they don't. I believe their only chance is in their rejection of our evasions.

Nevertheless, to blame Hollywood, with all its ramifications, for the violence in our young and throughout our society, is to ignore the record of human history. Which is the record of the human psyche. Which is who and what we are. We have not needed the media to instruct us in atrocity. We seem to have been born with that gruesome capacity. As it says in Psalm 45: "And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things."

Not your movies, not your Doom, not your hip-hop, not your porn, but your right hand.

We are violent creatures subject to spasms of intense irrationality – and we always have been. How do we solve the problem? It's the wrong question. The human psyche is not a problem to be solved but a paradox to be lived. The paradox is how much love and gentleness and compassion we violent creatures are capable of; and how much violence we loving creatures are capable of. For we are both, at the same time, every day and every hour of the day. The human task is to choose between those elements in oneself every day. The failure both of Hollywood and of the moralistic stance that "this is right and this is wrong," is that they make the choice look easy, and it is never is.

The New York Times' statistics quoted here several weeks ago are worth repeating: "In 1996, handguns were used to murder 2 people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, 213 in Germany, and 9,390 in the United States." As Hollywood director Rob Reiner said to Times columnist Maureen Dowd: "Every country gets our movies, but they don't kill anybody afterward." This fact cannot be overemphasized. The difference between those other countries and the United States is not the movies, nor is it consumerism – they watch what we watch, they are as venal as we, and their histories prove they are equally prone to atrocity; the difference is that, to quote the commonly accepted stats, our population of 260 million owns roughly 300 million guns. We are an armed camp. It is difficult to obtain a handgun in any other civilized nation on Earth, but our children seem able to procure them for the asking.

When an American right hand seeks to teach a terrible thing, it can reach for a gun.

That's the difference, and that's the only difference.

It is cowardly not to admit it. More cowardly still not to do something about it.

 

I tried, but my eyeglass prescription expired twice while trying to read all that! Seriously… it’s some good points, but there are last I read 475 million guns that have been manufactured for sale in the US. There’s no way they’re going away, at least not in any significant number to make any difference to the psychopathic offal who want to commit crimes, either by selling illegal weapons or using them for crimes. For the next century or so if we wanna stop crime someone’s gonna have to stay strapped.

[YGIFS 19450]

Tell me again about all those crimes stopped by strapped good guys.  Yes, there’s anecdotal evidence but less than 5%, closer to 1% is halted.  Nothing compared the price our children pay for walking around with mass shooting knowledge in their heads.  

[GoPokes83 2240]

I appreciate your service and willingness to keep service your community.  
It does appear, prima facia, that most school shooters never really gave/give much thought to security with whom to overtake.  Many, if not most, school shootings take place on campuses where there are district police/safety officers.  At the minimum, most of these campuses are just minutes away from a police station/sub-station.  The possibility of there being an armed person (teacher, staffer, marshal, et. al.) is not the deterrent you or I would make it out to be.  In all the manifestos, campus maps, floorplans, ammo plans, ingress/egress priorities, in all the shit they find in these sickies' homes or computers or trucks..........there's never been an indication of "And if you run into old man Johnson in Corridor 2, just run back home."  You or I would plan that if we encountered armed resistance, to fall back to position A, wait for this or that, move to here or there.  Neither their physical materials and very little of filmed footage suggests they give fuck one about armed resistance.  In many instances, they fully expected it-------hence the superior firepower.  And in a few instances, they even welcomed it.  Because it meant their swift end.  These aren't bank robberies, they're not trying to find and neutralize the guards/marshals first, then keep more cops from showing up with alarm tricks, rob the joint, and then get away.  An armed Marshal at the school is just another 1000+ point bonus to their high score in many cases.  For 25 years we've known the typical rules of engagement do not apply in mass shootings, particularly at schools.  What works at banks, airplanes, and sporting events does not work at theaters, schools, or churches.  Because of the two grim realities----------logistics and the fact that if you don't care what happens once your heavily armed ass is inside.........all bets are off.  But how in the world could we possibly legislate that attitude?  I mean, what's the point of laws/?

Maybe they wouldn’t be scared, but they may catch a bullet that wouldn’t be there if the dads weren’t around . LOL I kinda appreciate the “thanks for your service” but it was a long, long time ago. Joined the Marines right out of HS, tried to re-up after college but was told it would take 6 months so I joined the Army. Just something to do during relative peacetime. Did duke it out with some Cubans in Grenada, (They were shooting real bullets, but Mario Van Peebles and Clint Eastwood were nowhere to be found) and later jumped into Panama when I was with the 82nd which was a different kind of thing.

[CooterBrown 18012]

Tell me again about all those crimes stopped by strapped good guys.  Yes, there’s anecdotal evidence but less than 5%, closer to 1% is halted.  Nothing compared the price our children pay for walking around with mass shooting knowledge in their heads.  

It’s probably closer to 0.01% than 1%. It happens so rarely, it makes the national news while the average mass shooting doesn’t get past the local news.

[Hermanator 7050]

It would be a massive undertaking and take years but with something like this you don't even think about the end result at the beginning. You don't think about going from 10s of thousands of shooting deaths to something like 15. You take it in steps and look for improvement. 

Australia's system implementation in the late 90s is a good place to start. Deem certain firearms illegal to own without licenses and break them into classes with stipulations on who can legally obtain a license for which class of gun. Things like AR15s go into "professional shooter only" class where you have to prove a certain amount of your income is derived from professional shooting competitions to be approved for this license. 

Institute a buy back program for those who cannot obtain the license for their firearm to be compensated at a fraction of value. Give time for applications for licenses to be processed and granted or rejected.

It would reduce the number of guns over time while, since this is America, will also be abused by law enforcement to plant unlicensed guns on blacks and Latinos. 

It's where we are as a country. Bound strictly to system of government created by smart men who had no way to know the industrial revolution was on the horizon and modern America would ever result. They did the best they could with the technology and knowledge of their day. 

We're the idiots still living by the literal wording of it 250 years later. But what you expect from a country founded by religious Quaker nuts who bound themselves to the literal word of books conceived thousands of years ago by primitive man. 

[GoPokes83 2240]

It would be a massive undertaking and take years but with something like this you don't even think about the end result at the beginning. You don't think about going from 10s of thousands of shooting deaths to something like 15. You take it in steps and look for improvement. 
Australia's system implementation in the late 90s is a good place to start. Deem certain firearms illegal to own without licenses and break them into classes with stipulations on who can legally obtain a license for which class of gun. Things like AR15s go into "professional shooter only" class where you have to prove a certain amount of your income is derived from professional shooting competitions to be approved for this license. 
Institute a buy back program for those who cannot obtain the license for their firearm to be compensated at a fraction of value. Give time for applications for licenses to be processed and granted or rejected.
It would reduce the number of guns over time while, since this is America, will also be abused by law enforcement to plant unlicensed guns on blacks and Latinos. 
It's where we are as a country. Bound strictly to system of government created by smart men who had no way to know the industrial revolution was on the horizon and modern America would ever result. They did the best they could with the technology and knowledge of their day. 
We're the idiots still living by the literal wording of it 250 years later. But what you expect from a country founded by religious Quaker nuts who bound themselves to the literal word of books conceived thousands of years ago by primitive man. 

Dammit man, you’ve managed to disparage cops, the founding fathers, and the Bible all in one post! It sounds great, but FWIW criminals in Australia still have easy access to guns, while the average citizen doesn’t.

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/101306628

[Hermanator 7050]

11 minutes ago, GoPokes83 said:

Dammit man, you’ve managed to disparage cops, the founding fathers, and the Bible all in one post! It sounds great, but FWIW criminals in Australia still have easy access to guns, while the average citizen doesn’t.

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/101306628

1) i didn't disparage the founding fathers. They did well with what they knew for their time and situation. The American idiots of today are the ones still wanting to strictly live by the word of technologically primitive people who had no idea what electricity was much less computers, internet, and social media. 

2) i don't know who squiggly line news is and I don't know if it's reliable. It looks sketchy. 

3) Even if the article is legitimate it states the "data" was based solely on 75 interviews with prisoners. That's it. They talked to (I'm presuming) 75 different prisoners and asked them how easy it is to get guns. 75 criminals who are incarcerated, bored out of their minds, and would love the opportunity to bullshit some people. That's not data that can be used in any scientific analysis. That's not even questionable data. It's pure garbage that can't be used to draw any conclusion about anything. Show the scientific hard numbers data about Australian gun deaths. 

4) even if a small percentage of organized crime figures can get access to guns they aren't the ones shooting up schools. Shooting up Walmarts and Wendy's and post prom parties. They're involved in organized criminal profit seeking activity that is best handled by the police and not average citizens. That's a lot better situation for the citizen than what we have today in America. 

[Foosters 17856]

9 hours ago, GoPokes83 said:

Dammit man, you’ve managed to disparage cops, the founding fathers, and the Bible all in one post! It sounds great, but FWIW criminals in Australia still have easy access to guns, while the average citizen doesn’t.

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/101306628

Id take a look at the statistics before using Australia as an example. I'm not sure that's the country you want to use to argue firearm regulations don't work.

[YGIFS 19450]

What's the Jim Jeffries bit about the underground arms market in Australia?

"Here, a criminal can buy at a gun show-an unmodified, basic AR-15 in the U.S. for about $700.  In Australia, that same gun will cost him $36,000.  Now, if you have $36,000...you don't have to be a criminal.  You're a good, little saver.  Keep going."  

Doesn't Australia only have about 200 gun deaths per year in a country of over 25mm+ people.  About the size of Florida, which has about 3,000 gun deaths per year.  Yes, people in Australia are still illegally obtaining firearms, but once they have them-they don't appear to be shooting a lot of places up.....that's our jam.

Edited April 24, 2023 by YGIFS

[NeverMarryAStripper 21907]

11 hours ago, GoPokes83 said:

Dammit man, you’ve managed to disparage cops, the founding fathers, and the Bible all in one post! It sounds great, but FWIW criminals in Australia still have easy access to guns, while the average citizen doesn’t.

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/101306628

That may be, but mass shootings aren't carried out by criminals trying to rob a bank or 7-11.

[YGIFS 19450]

Maybe when the Melbourne Mob had a sit down with the Sydney Syndicate, they wanna come heavy so they buy off-market.  
 

But as stated above, robbers don’t tend to stick around the joint once they’ve gotten their loot, just to rack up a body count.  The badass scene in Heat notwithstanding 

[Beau Vine 54228]

19 hours ago, GoPokes83 said:

I’d rather see this than arming a bunch of teachers that have no interest in firearms.

huh?

[TexasEd 8067]

My instinct tells me there is a grift angle.  Someone has created a security company to hire and train these school Marshalls and will be winning a sole source contract from SMISD. 

[Armybrat 40844]

More than half the 1,000+ districts in Texas have authorized armed staffed member programs for their schools. 

Why is there any angst about this?

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article267499478.html

[Beau Vine 54228]

5 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

More than half the 1,000+ districts in Texas have authorized armed staffed member programs for their schools. 

Why is there any angst about this?

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article267499478.html

Quote

The School Marshal Program allows marshals designated by a district to be armed. Since 2013, Texas law has permitted school districts to appoint one or more specially trained and licensed employees as school marshals. Those school marshals can carry a handgun on the school premises after 80 hours of training. School marshals are restricted from carrying concealed firearms if they’re in regular contact with the students. In that case, the marshal can have a gun in a safe at the school. Schools can appoint one marshal per 100 students in average daily attendance, or for a private school, one marshal per 100 students enrolled.

Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article267499478.html#storylink=cpy

interesting.  

[YGIFS 19450]

Yeah, not a day goes by I don't pass an AISD patrol car somewhere in Austin during my commute/errands.  I got no issue with it.  Our own small district outside of Austin is contemplating hiring no less than 2 overall, and perhaps 1 per campus (so 10 overall-9 campuses and 1 for general district properties) security/armed officers.  I got no issue with shit like that.  I just think plain-clothes, embedded Marshals are just a cavalcade of unintended consequences.  Armed teachers are not the solution.  

We have 250 years of evidence that arming regular day-to-day employees of vulnerable and secure targets alike is not a good idea.  

According to some outstanding logic here in Texas, every bank teller and jeweler should be strapped to the teeth.  But they're not?  Why is that?  

[Armybrat 40844]

21 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

interesting.  

Guess that means the lunch ladies in the back cafeteria kitchen can carry?

[Armybrat 40844]

20 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Yeah, not a day goes by I don't pass an AISD patrol car somewhere in Austin during my commute/errands.  I got no issue with it.  Our own small district outside of Austin is contemplating hiring no less than 2 overall, and perhaps 1 per campus (so 10 overall-9 campuses and 1 for general district properties) security/armed officers.  I got no issue with shit like that.  I just think plain-clothes, embedded Marshals are just a cavalcade of unintended consequences.  Armed teachers are not the solution.  

We have 250 years of evidence that arming regular day-to-day employees of vulnerable and secure targets alike is not a good idea.  

According to some outstanding logic here in Texas, every bank teller and jeweler should be strapped to the teeth.  But they're not?  Why is that?  

Because: Lawyers?

[Eskimohorn 5635]

We have seen countless examples of armed police cowering in the face of a suicidal shooter with an AR-15.

And, guess what? That would be most people’s response when being fired upon by a hand-cannon.

As one Colorado teacher (who was able to prevent a school shooting) described, it was her combat training and experience that allowed her to properly function.

The truth is that civilians have no business playing military unless they are properly trained for combat or “well-regulated” - to put it in 18th century terms.

[Nivek 16930]

its is security theater for morons.  don't give it any more attention than that.

[RPM 26321]

I work unarmed in a secure room. I'm trained in active shooter to run, hide, fight. If it actually happened and guests were in danger I'm reordering that list and kissing my license good bye. Our 9-1-1 response time is under 5 minutes.

But untrained good ol' boys in cosplay? This will not end well.

Edited January 11 by RPM

[Pam Cummings 9641]

16 hours ago, Eskimohorn said:

We have seen countless examples of armed police cowering in the face of a suicidal shooter with an AR-15.

And, guess what? That would be most people’s response when being fired upon by a hand-cannon.

As one Colorado teacher (who was able to prevent a school shooting) described, it was her combat training and experience that allowed her to properly function.

The truth is that civilians have no business playing military unless they are properly trained for combat or “well-regulated” - to put it in 18th century terms.

I remember watching a video about a guy who owned a jewelry store in LA and he kept being robbed at gunpoint. Got sick of it and went and bought a bunch of guns and hid them in various places(behind his counter) so that they would be within reach if he got robbed again. But the very important detail that he harped on was that he did military style combat training as well. He practiced the situation again and again until he knew it would just be reflex.

 

He ended up shooting and killing/maiming a bunch of people that tried to rob him after that and became notorious as the jewelry store guy that shouldn't be fucked with. But he said the guns and everything would be useless if he didn't train hard for the situation. He was adamant that nobody should try doing what he did unless they did proper training.

Edited January 11 by Pam Cummings

[YGIFS 19450]

Governor Abbott has officially announced that during the presidential debate this fall, he will not allow Texans, especially those in San Marcos to carry weapons to the debate, because “that would make the situation too dangerous”