Associated Press via NBC reports:
A suburban Denver school district is arming its security staff with military-style semiautomatic rifles in case of a school shooting or other violent attack, a move that appears unprecedented even as more schools arm employees in response to mass violence elsewhere.
The guards, who are not law enforcement officers, already carry handguns.
Douglas County School District security director Richard Payne said he decided to spend more than $12,000 on the Bushmaster brand rifles for the district's eight armed officers to give them the same tools as law enforcement, including the sheriff's deputies they train with. Payne said the rifles will be kept locked in patrol cars, not in the schools.
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Colorado School District Arms Security Guards With Rifles
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(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @01:50PM
Troublemaker students manipulate the guards into shooting each other, and school finally becomes just like Doom.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:05PM
You willingly raise you children in that nation?
Americans should be the refugees.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:14PM
We are north american scum
We're from north america
And all the kids all the kids that want to make the scene
Here in north america
When our young kids get to read it in your magazines
We don't have those
So where's the love where's the love where's the love where's the love where's the love tonight?
But there's no love man there's no love and the kids are uptight
So throw a party till the cops come in and bust it up
Let's go north americans
Oh you were planning it I didn't mean to interrupt
Sorry
I did it once and my parents got pretty upset
Freaked out in north america
But then I said the more I do it the better it gets
Let's rock north america
We are north american scum
We're from north america
We are north american scum
We are north american
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bobs on Sunday April 24 2016, @01:55PM
Because the lack of rifles in security guard's cars is what caused all the other school shootings, and the presence of rifles in security guard's cars would have prevented or stopped any of them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Francis on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:34PM
This is security theater. Most of the school shootings have been over rather quickly. Yes, this probably would have sped things up a bit with Columbine, but probably not by much. With active shooters the main part is just figuring out where they've gone to. A typical high school will have many dozens of rooms that might need to be cleared. Even my elementary school had probably 3 dozen of them and 6 hallways. A typical high school is likely to be triple that size.
I don't think it makes any sense to have security armed like that if they aren't going to be regularly training and practicing for this sort of situation. And I don't think it makes much sense to train them for that when these sorts of events are relatively few and far between. Just let the SWAT guys train for it as they'll be dealing with it on or off school property anyways. Yes, there's a bit of a delay, but that's more or less unavoidable.
If they want to actually do something about it, the best thing would be to just make sure that the doors are in a state where they can be properly secured and the windows can be easily covered with some way of contacting authorities from each room. That's going to be much more effective than arming guards who probably aren't receiving proper training and practice.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:29PM
They aren't training and practicing regularly for their imagined shooting scenarios either.
In almost all cases, a security guard is already better trained, and better prepared, than potential shooters. He doesn't have to be smart, or especially proficient, he's already armed, he's already faced the possibility of getting into an armed confrontation - he's PAID for this.
There really is such a thing as over specialization. Run-of-the-mill security guards are generally "good enough" to deal with some random asshole with a gun.
Hey, "good enough" works well enough in every other industry, including operating systems, programming, the web.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:53PM
You are kidding, right?
"deal with some random asshole with a gun."
And now there are more random assholes with guns and no training running around thinking they're rambo while pissing their pants in a high stress situation with kids running around screaming.
What could possibly go wrong??
You have to be high to think this is a good idea.
NB: Was in the military and trained for this...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 24 2016, @08:10PM
You could be right - in some cases. There ARE some ill-trained, poorly paid fools who work as security guards, because they can't find anything better.
But, I'd rather have someone on hand who might deal with the situation, than to wait for an hour while a SWAT team assembles and then drives to the scene of the shooting.
What is it that you're afraid of, anyway? You're afraid that this might actually work as intended? Some idiot kid who thinks it would be cool to shoot a bunch of his classmates can't know in advance that the security guard is incompetetn. The mere presence of a guard is a deterrent in and of itself. The fact that the guard is armed is that much more of a deterrent.
What could possibly go wrong? Well a lot of things could go wrong. No battle plan has ever survived contact with the enemy, after all. (You can google that if you like.) But, what could possibly go right? I mean, hell man, there is already an active crazed shooter firing away at the student body. Really, how could an armed guard make things any worse?
Have you ever wondered how many security guards and/or police are also former military? There's a reasonable chance that the armed guard at your local school is also ex-military.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Sunday April 24 2016, @10:10PM
I love the romantic hypotheticals people throw around trying to justify this sort of thing.
Might be, could be, imagine if...
"There's a reasonable chance that the armed guard at your local school is also ex-military."
Sure, but there is also a FAR BETTER chance he is a authoritarian moron who got the job because he dreamed of wearing a real uniform but couldn't cut it.
Reality: Low paid security guards with automatic rifles, a hero complex and the delusion they know what they are doing in a volatile situation.
"Really, how could an armed guard make things any worse?"
Seriously?
- By shooting innocent kids.
- Killing a kid who is armed but has not killed anyone yet.
- Getting shot themselves when swat arrives and sees them faffing about with a rifle.
- Firearms being stolen from their cars and being used to kill someone.
- Shooting each other by mistake.
But most likely the rifles will gather dust in the trunks because the chances of there being a reason to bring them out is close to 0.
(Score: 1) by OrugTor on Monday April 25 2016, @04:31PM
You are viewing the scenario as akin to a bank robbery. Armed security guards at a bank might well be a deterrent to armed robbers. The Columbine shooters were more like suicide terrorists. There's no deterrent works for a terrorist; indeed, the possibility of shooting an armed authority figure might be icing on the cake for some deranged children. You ask, how can an armed guard make things worse when a shooter is on the loose? In that situation, the armed guard has already failed, both as deterrent and counter-measure.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @07:51PM
You've got a point - but even so, an armed man on the scene, prepared for trouble, may very well put an end to the carnage before the body count gets high enough to qualify as a "mass murder".
Besides, even suicide bombers have been "talked down", sometimes by men with guns, sometimes by a clergy, sometimes by caring passerby.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:16AM
Sorry, but in the USA, the solution to any problem with guns is always more guns.
We need to make sure each teacher has a gun handy, and then start working on some kind of 'trusted student' program where they can also walk around with a gun "just in case there's a problem".
Then maybe work on some kind of automated gun turret system that can automatically identify shooters and shoot them first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:33PM
The Los Angeles Unified School District Police got surplus DoD equipment, attained gratis under the federal 1033 program: a tank, 60 assault rifles, and 3 grenade launchers. [counterpunch.org]
It was only after Obama said that all school cops (what a perverse notion) must give back their weapons of war that the Los Angeles Unified School District Police gave that notion any thought.
(The cops and the LAUSD board of directors dragged their feet a long time.)
Due to organized citizen pressure, the cops have now returned those weapons of war to DoD.
After the cops claimed that those ridiculous weapons had been returned, citizen activists demanded an *exact accounting* of what had been accepted and what had been returned.
The activist movement Fight for the Souls of the Cities is still demanding an apology from LAPD [voicesfromthefrontlines.com] for accepting that inappropriate stuff in the first place.
(If a kid stole a candy bar but returned it, a cop would still bust him.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @08:21PM
Hey, you're right!
You know what, they must also return all fists (commonly used in war), teeth (a little less common, but notably used), boots (very common), feet (about as common as boots), anything resembling a knife, or other stabbing implement, or anything that could be used as an augmentation to a fist or hand, and any chemical supplies including but not limited to irritants.
In war, anything and everything convenient becomes a weapon. If you think they should have truncheons, bad news because truncheons are WEAPONS OF WAR. If you think they should have gloves, more bad news because gloves are WEAPONS OF WAR.
When you find some weapons of peace, please let us all know, and identify those for use in schools.
(Score: 4, Informative) by jIyajbe on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:52PM
Some weapons of peace:
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @12:11AM
Excellent. We'll supply all those security guards with music programs. That will stop those school shooters in their tracks, yessirreebob!
In case anyone reading this didn't quite manage to interpret the foregoing, the GP's obvious point is that referring to a thing that might be put to use in stopping a school shooter as a "weapon of war" as opposed to a weapon in general is to create an artificial and irrelevant distinction, whereas the real complaint about grenade launchers in the hands of civilian authorities is that there is no plausible civilian use case for them (unless they are those that can also serve to throw smoke or tear gas grenades in the interests of quelling riots).
When people want to make weapons sound scary rather than discuss the ins and outs of civilian policing and levels of force, you should probably start asking what their agenda is.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jIyajbe on Monday April 25 2016, @01:13AM
And you, in turn, missed my point, which was that if we arm the *kids* with the things on my list, the guards are a lot less likely to need the things on the previous poster's list.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @02:12AM
Oh no, I didn't miss that. It's just irrelevant to the consideration of, once things have gone bad, what your security guards/police officers/guardian angels are supposed to do, and what they're supposed to do it with.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday April 25 2016, @02:16PM
Name one of these mass shootings where people didn't know ahead of time that the shooter was off the rails. People don't just wake up one day and decide they want to want to obtain a weapon and shoot up the school. These are typically the result of months and even years of problems that get ignored.
For example, the Columbine shooters posted for a very long time about their feelings about other people. Granted you can't reasonably know who's going to commit an act of mass murder versus somebody that's just badly in need of help, but if you provide help in both cases chances are good that the violence never comes.
It's astonishing to me that people like you act like the violence is inevitable. It's not inevitable, it's just that we spend money on weapons rather than on prevention.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @03:30PM
Not the idea at all.
People like me ... wow, othering much?
Well, anyway, people like me are all there for prevention. Catch it early, sort it out. Cheaper, better for everyone, yay prevention!
OK, now we have that out of the way ...
Just in the (wild and crazy, surely never in this universe!) event that all your preventive plans with your handy-dandy Weapons of Peace don't dissuade all school shooters, you still come up with the situation of:
... some nut shooting up a school.
Pop quiz, kids! Do we: wail that this should never have happened, and need more money for more Weapons of Peace? Have the security people already in place go in and put a (probably bloody) stop to it? Dust off and nuke the site from orbit?
People like me (but I thought I was a unique, special snowflake!) think that having good schooling environment is not mutually exclusive with arming a force for addressing the basic system's violent failures. Now, it may well be possible that we should just give it up, and let the occasional violent nut wipe people out at their leisure, but I'm not entirely sure that I'm OK with that. Much more investigation needed.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday April 25 2016, @08:34PM
A situation where providing social services to those in need where that fails and the person runs amok killing countless people is rather unlikely. It would probably make more sense to deal with the problem of cougar attacks or tornadoes.
You're never going to get 100% safety from mass murder, but taking reasonable precautions can reduce it to something that's more or less indistinguishable from it. Australia has only had one mass murder in the years since they enacted strict firearms control and that was relatively minor by comparison to the sorts of mass murder that happen in the US every year.
There's a combination of factors that need to be addressed and the more of those factors that get addressed the less strict any of those individual factors need to be handled.
But, adding firearms into the mix is unlikely to be a part of the solution. Especially if those firearms are locked away in the trunk of the car.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:37AM
There actually are plans in place for tornadoes where those are a semi-regular occurrence. Cougar attacks on people are rare, and more so in heavily populated areas like school grounds - to the point that I can't ever remember hearing of one. It's generally lone hikers whom cougars attack.
Providing social services in american schools is actually surprisingly common - more so, even, than in many other, less violent countries' school systems. In a rare moment of lucidity, Michael Moore pointed out that the NRA has it half right: guns don't kill people; americans kill people. More to the point, a narrow swathe of americans kill their peers, while most of the country's about as risky as Canada.
In point of fact, Australia hasn't been as violent, in terms of the general population, as the USA for a very long time, if ever. In terms of national character (regardless of its source) the USA is, per capita, vastly more violent and so the comparison of figures is just not a reasonable one. The USA also has a much larger population, so the incidence doesn't translate directly into a net rate. I might similarly point out that China has occasional mass stabbings in and around schools (not even including disputed facts around Uighur separatists) and that is still not necessarily comparable, because of population and distribution issues. At best, the trend in China appears to be one of kids under huge amounts of pressure snapping - strangely similar to the typical school shooter here.
Sure. Every factor added reduces the strain on the others. Agreed.
This doesn't follow from the foregoing. In fact, rather the reverse, since the gunfire of a school shooter will be an immediate signal to any security forces in the area to tool up, while everyone else is frantically calling 911. In under a minute any security personnel on the scene will be armed and under way. But to somehow fantasise that having armed, trained, dedicated people on hand to stop armed, insane people is a bad thing just because you have reading programmes and theatre clubs and social services doesn't make sense. At most I could see an opportunity cost argument around whether or not it's the most efficient response - and I don't know whether it is - but given that they already have these guards, they do train with the local police, and that the point of giving them these rifles was to have them share equipment with the police in the interests of efficiency, it's not obviously insane.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:19PM
This is a load of crap. Most of these kinds of shootings are over in a couple minutes even without police intervention. These events seem longer than they are because the police have to go through the entire area and verify that there isn't another active shooter.
Hence why it makes more sense to just ensure there are adequate places to shelter in place. Having an armed security officer on premises is not going to help, all it means is another firearm that can be stolen or accidentally discharged. It's highly unlikely to be the difference in any of those shootings because the Columbine type of shooting where the shooters are hell bent on terrorizing and killing as many as possible are a rarity. Most of the mass-murderers aren't so determined that they're going to break down doors trying to find more people to murder. They'll shoot the people they intend to shoot and then possibly people that they randomly encounter before either turning the gun on themselves or being shot by law enforcement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:57PM
You aren't actually addressing any of the reasons given. You're just declaring it crap. Turn the school into a partitioned bunker, and whoever's locked in with the shooter(s) is ... well, we'll put carnations on the grave?
You also say, without support, that an armed security officer won't help. A flat statement, unsupported. Why won't/can't/mightn't it help? Ever?
As for theft and unintended discharges, if the thing is locked into a vehicle, in a locked rack, those are vanishingly low probabilities.
Please try again, and provide real analysis explaining your points.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:53PM
That was the school district that succeeded in trolling.
http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/cockli-cockmail-email-server-los-angeles-new-york-schools-threat-hoax-message-madbomber-8chan-anonymous-suspect-subpoena-meme-troll-credible-lausd/ [heavy.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @03:42AM
We discussed that here a bit before you opened your account.
Public Schools in Los Angeles Closed over Threatening Message [soylentnews.org]
Opinions ran from *Some folks are spooked by rustling leaves* to *Don't be cavalier with the lives of others*.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday April 25 2016, @07:19AM
I had meant to write: "That was the school district that <madbomber@cock.li> succeeded in trolling."
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday April 25 2016, @04:58PM
There's another piece of the argument for why this is security theater: Even factoring in the (extremely rare) mass school shootings, school is statistically speaking the #1 safest place for a child to be. Yes, safer than at home, which sounds counter-intuitive until you think about the domestic abuse that is much more common than many would care to admit. There's an understandable but irrational reaction, similar to the biases that make people think driving is safer than riding an airplane, that make parents think that their kid is safer around the parent than around anybody else.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:44PM
Just what I was thinking. Sounds like they want to set up a scene from a TV series with mediocre scripting.
*gunshots* *screaming* *gunfire* 5 students dead.
Run to the squad cars before 5 more students die!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @01:56PM
Everything else aside - they aren't even keeping them under the active supervision of the guards (I.e., on their person)?!
Kids aren't stupid. Seems like this move would look like adding a minimum security armory to the school grounds. Burgle a few cars and you've got more with less trouble than you could have gotten elsewhere.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @01:57PM
A suburban Denver school district is arming its security staff with military-style semiautomatic rifles
Arg this crap again? Military style guns? Gun shaped weapons? Pencil shaped knife! Car shaped dildo?
The color and shape of the gun don't mater. If it was pink, had happy faces, and played Phish it'd still go bang and kill people. Placing the word military in the description is just the technique of putting words that the intended audience does not like next to other things so they are disliked too.
Arming a school is a questionable thing to do - no need to drag the military into it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:17PM
Are there any semiautomatic rifles that are not designed for military use?
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Sunday April 24 2016, @03:27PM
Many.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:05PM
So then spelling out that these weapons are military style is not just superfluous fear mongering as the OP claims but rather an legitimate distinction.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:36PM
Yes it is fear mongering, it's totally useless info. It absolutely doesn't matter one bit what style they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:53PM
So is it your contention that a "plinking" rifle is equally as effective as a military grade rifle?
Does the same also apply to the accurate modifier "semi-automatic?"
What about "rifle" in general?
Perhaps the story itself should not have been written because it's just fear mongering?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @06:15PM
Effective at what? Knocking over empty cans? Sure.
If you're talking about killing opponents, there's a fair argument to be made that some .223 rifles are not going to be as effective as the good ol' .308, or .45-70 government, just like Custer's boys used. Of course, those were both military rounds as well, but with common, long-standing civilian use too.
If you want to tear up some disgruntled high school students, a lever-action guide gun in .45-70 loaded with hollowpoints will do that on a massive level, but it won't be a scary "military-style" rifle because it probably won't be black and covered in rails.
So the objection to the article's wording stands.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:37PM
Depending on the use you are going to put it to, and the skill level of the shooter, yes, a "plinking rifle" can be much more effective than a "military style" or "military grade" firearm.
Even today, when I'm an old, half worn out, old man, there are many scenarios in which I would be willing to take on a bunch of punks with AR-15's - and I don't even WANT and AR-15. A Remington BDL in .270 is all I want.
You WILL note that I haven't claimed to be able to take those punks on in ANY scenario. Given the opportunity, the punks will swarm me. That pretty much rules out the city warfare that our army has trapped itself into - I want no part of that. But, bring the punks out here into the counrty side, and I'll own their asses with just that .270. A plinking rifle. A .243 is a decent alternative to the .270, but you lose some of the advantage.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 25 2016, @09:35AM
As you point out, context is everything. In a high school shooting, you typically have the following situation:
- A lone shooter.
- Lots of panicked innocent bystanders / hostages all over the place.
- Lots of rooms / buildings for the assailant to hide in, meaning close quarters combat and the potential for surprise around every corner.
It seems to me that in those circumstances you'd want a weapon and combat style that minimises the risks of collateral damage. In other words fire less shots, and make those shots count. "Spray and pray" might work in some situations, but not in this one. Therefore, you'd be wanting highly trained, extremely accurate professionals who can pick off a target in a single shot, and who aren't going to jump out of their skins and shoot the wrong person when they walk into a room and are surprised by a panicked kid hiding behind a desk. I don't know much about weapons or tactics, but "SWAT team with handguns / sniper rifles" sounds better to me than "security guard with biggest Rambo-cannon the school could lay their hands on."
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @09:53AM
So, due to our fear of a gunman who might be slightly less trained, we discount his familiarity with both students and faculty, not to mention the school grounds and building. Got it.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 25 2016, @11:19AM
The security guard's familiarity with the grounds and people could be helpful, I'll grant you that. One could also argue that it might be detrimental - the guard might be less likely to pull the trigger when s/he needs to because s/he knows the person in their sights, or on the other hand might jump to dangerously wrong conclusions based on experiences / preconceptions of the kids. (What? Somebody's shooting up the cafeteria? I bet it's Jimmy Hoffman, that creepy, gothy little brat. I always knew he was no good...)
However, your point about the guard being more trained than the shooter doesn't address the question of collateral damage. In your view, what combination of weapons and tactics is least likely to result in innocent bystanders getting shot by the authorities' bullets?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @08:08PM
Well - let me put it this way. We're talking different languages. You've heard, "Shoot the hostage"? My attitude toward an active shooter and/or hostage situation is akin to the Israeli attitude. All lives are forfeit already, we can't worry about "saving" them. We deal with the problem, which is the shooter, THEN we see what we have left to salvage. It is a combat situation, and sometimes, people die of freindly fire. That's life. It happens to the best trained troops.
I promise, if I were the guy in that situation, and I KNEW that I had caused some kid's death by missing the shooter, it would eat at me forever. But, even so, I believe in "Do something, right or wrong!"
But, weapons? Colt .45 and a Remington 700 BDL in .270. I disagree with the police, and almost everyone else, who insist that those AR-15's are the best tool for the job. You put those weapons in the hands of a marksman - preferably a marksman with combat experience. Remember the lady cop (can't remember her name) who brought down Major Hassan at Fort Hood? She didn't have a submachine gun. No combat assault rifle. As calmly as is humanly possible, she closed on the shooter, took a stance, and fired off a couple rounds. She was hit in return, she fell, and she again fired. THIS is the kind of person who needs to be teaching tactics. Calm, cool, collected, go toward the danger, and act on it.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Sunday April 24 2016, @09:17PM
It absolutely doesn't matter one bit what style they are.
I would argue that it does matter, a lot. Yes, yes, "military style" semi-autos are not any more dangerous than other semi-auto long guns, especially those chambering the wimpy 5.56mm (that is.22 caliber, for those who are metric impaired), except for the fact that magazine capacities are usually much larger on assault weapons than on any civilian use long-gun. But his is the real reason it matters, "military style" weapons attract kooks and idiots at up to 23.7 times the rate that hunting rifles do. It is the "look" of these weapons that fuel the fantasies of unhinged minds. Heck, some of these wackos purchase BB guns that are make to look like serious assault weapons. Why? Well, they are crazy, and uncertain of their own manhood (even some women are like this, in Nevada, at any rate), paranoid and quivering with fear, suffering from low-T and anger control issues. This is why we need to ban the "look" of certain weapons, and they did so in Australia. That way, if we see someone who is not military carrying a military style weapon, we will know that he is an illegal homicidal gun fetishist, and will be able to put him down immediately.
Jim Jefferies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Chrontius on Monday April 25 2016, @01:05AM
Please, explain.
So far, we’re on the same page.
Not anymore.
72% of statistics on the internet are made up on the spot. You may be right, and you’re probably in the ballpark, but I’d prefer a reference from an authoritative source.
Last I looked, that’s all Wal-Mart carries with a scope mount. Last time I went to buy a BB gun, you couldn’t get one with a 3/8” dovetail mount any more - it was either stamped metal Red Ryders with no real sights, or it was blacktical as fuck with eight kinds of quad rails, half of which are unsuitable for purpose due to design flaws.
Ad-hominem much? I’m going to be charitable and assume you’re talking about the dangerous minority you’re implying, and not the average gun owner. In the future, please consider being more specific so people won’t have to wonder if they’re being insulted and jump to conclusions. It spoils comment threads.
Okay, wow - here’s the deep end. I mean, if painting it pink and slapping Hello Kitty all over it would bypass the need for a background check and whatever waiting periods and local licensing requirements worked, I’d be all for it, but most of what many liberals define as “military style” are ergonomic enhancements. Remember the wire-handled can openers and kitchen equipment of the 1970s? Know the stuff they make now with the big oversized grips? For the same reason, we now prefer pistol grips on rifles. Easier to hold, less repetitive stress, harder to drop. Adjustable stocks? Because most of us can’t afford $30,000 and a ten year waitlist for a master gunsmith to build a rifle tailored to our personal height, arm length, and neck length. This is the age of mass customization, where one size really does fit all, and it looks like picatinny rails.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @05:18AM
I think we've found the gun fetishist.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 25 2016, @05:57AM
You just marked yourself as a rank amateur.
72% of statistics on the internet are made up on the spot. You may be right, and you’re probably in the ballpark, but I’d prefer a reference from an authoritative source.
If you are going to make up statistics on the spot, do try to go at least one decimal point. Two can be even better, but starts to look suspicious. But just "72%"? Give me a break, no one if going to believe that is an actual number!
Ad-hominem much? I’m going to be charitable and assume you’re talking about the dangerous minority you’re implying, and not the average gun owner.
One: it is not an ad hominem if it is true and relevant.
Two: I no longer believe there are any average gun owners in America. I used to know plenty, but now all I see are these scared "patriots" with imitation military arms. And yes, you are being insulted, you are just too stupid to tell. Not that this would be a barrier to owning a gun in America.
Okay, wow - here’s the deep end. I mean, if painting it pink and slapping Hello Kitty all over it would bypass the need for a background check and whatever waiting periods and local licensing requirements worked, I’d be all for it,
Deep end? Massacre at an elementry school with exactly the weapon we are talking about arming rent-a-cops with at schools? It is only the deep end if you are in the shallow end of the pool. And by the way, an assault rifle with pink and Hello Kitty, or at the Mauheur Refuge, Fluffy Unicorns, is an even greater sign of displaced childhood fixations. These ones are to be put down without warning.
ergonomic enhancements.
You made me laugh! Ha, ha!! The last thing we want is that our mass-murdering "military-style" weapon bearers should have a repetitive strain injury from stock too long to reach the trigger without stress! Or having to hold a non-pistol grip rifle when you are mowing down your innocent victims? Oh, the agony!! Sorry, I am all for making weapons of mass destruction harder to use, more difficult to get, and impossible to possess without people mocking you for the size of your johnson.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:52PM
Actually, it's crap.
The modern military doesn't use a lot of semi-automatics (unless you count pistols, which aren't under discussion here anyway). The primary issue weapons are select-fire (including your M16 rifles, your M4 carbines, and a few other weird cases like M14 derivatives that you can still find) or fully automatic (light machineguns and up). This isn't to say that semi-automatic rifles don't exist in the modern military, but that they are rare and there for special purposes only. To call something military-style in this context is to blind yourself with superficialities.
The fact is that a semi-automatic rifle is internally pretty much the same (some discussion about details of the action notwithstanding) regardless of whether you put on a telescoping or folding stock, regardless of whether or not you put weaver rails on the front, and regardless of whether or not you put a compensator on it. These things might make it military-style in superficial appearance, but it's no more or less military in its function than if Bubba did a Krylon job on it in neon yellow and black tiger stripes.
Given that semi-automatic weapons are generally the weapon of choice for civilian police forces, it would be more accurate to call it a police-style semi-automatic rifle, which is closer to the role for these guards anyway.
Now there's an entirely separate discussion to be had about the arming of the police, and I would probably find agreement with you about how we do that, but none of that has to do with how black or scary these guns are styled to be. If they are what I believe them to be, in terms of chambering, your grandaddy's 30-30 lever action packs a bigger punch anyway. Would we be safer issuing lever action rifles with wooden stocks and forearms?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:58PM
The modern military
Let the splitting of hairs commence!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @06:11PM
Oh yes, you're right.
By all means, let's discuss the wars of our fathers' days. Korea. WWII.
Hey, we can do better! Our grandparents' days! Or further back! Anything that involves black powder is a scary military-style weapon!
But sure, since you're such a splitter of hairs, what was posted above applies to pretty much anything as of the late sixties. So, the past 50 years. Long enough for you?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 24 2016, @09:08PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:00PM
But they don't look military!
(Score: 5, Informative) by KilroySmith on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:03PM
My Ruger 10/22 plinking rifle is certainly a semiautomatic, and certainly isn't designed for military use.
Look, "semi-automatic" is a label applied by ignorant news people to rile up the ignorant populace against something they don't like. Heck, every CO2 powered BB gun in the world is "semi-automatic".
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday April 25 2016, @03:12PM
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:56PM
That *may* have just been clarifying the type. A Ruger 10/22, for example, is a semiautomatic rifle, but it's hardly a "military-style" one, and that has much more to do with the caliber (.22LR) than the shape (similar to the actually-military-used M1 Carbine).
(Score: 5, Informative) by Squidious on Sunday April 24 2016, @03:09PM
The Ruger Mini-30 is the same gun but in the same caliber as an AK-47. Nearly identical capability to an AK-47 but with a wood stock it looks more like gun you might carry in the back of your pickup while you check the fences on your ranch. It kinda makes this term "military-style assault guns" silly.
The terrorists have won, game, set, match. They've scared the people into electing authoritarian regimes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:04PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @02:16AM
Original AK-47, true. However, in subsequent years, to save cost (among other reasons) a move was made away from wooden stocks, and on the AK-74 it's rare.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @03:22PM
Placing the word military in the description is just the technique of putting words that the intended audience does not like next to other things so they are disliked too.
That sounds dubious. How many people who dislike the military also like guns? Seems to me that the group of people who dislike the military already have a pretty strong aversion to guns so putting those words together is mostly a no-op. Now if the article had said "baby-killing semiautomatic rifles" then you would have a strong case because gun nuts hate abortions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:30PM
Speak for yourself. No problem with guns here (have and use several myself), but also no problem with abortions. Know many folks with the same position on both, concurrently.
Of course, the sensible answer in either case is if you don't want babies being shot, you shouldn't aim at babies, but obviously this story is aimed at the people who think that an absence of wooden furniture makes guns somehow worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:08PM
> obviously this story is aimed at the people who think that an absence of wooden furniture makes guns somehow worse.
Huh? WTF does furniture have to do with this?
You and I must have very different definitions of the word "obviously."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:56PM
"Furniture" in the context of firearms refers to the parts such as the stock and the forearm, which provide the user's grip on the firearm.
You might thus read about a "handsome hunting rifle with figured walnut furniture in a medium gloss finish".
Hope that helps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @06:12PM
I'm not sure if you're missing the point because you're not familiar with the term "furniture", or because you're not familiar with its relevance to gun politics in the US.
In the context of guns, "furniture" refers to any and all of stock/fore-end/pistol grip/etc.; the general term is useful because we don't have to specify which pieces a particular gun has (e.g. most shotguns have a fore-end and a buttstock, but bolt-action rifles usually have a one-piece stock, and guns which have a folding or collapsing stock generally have a pistol grip, while fixed-stock designs usually have the pistol grip integrated into the stock).
Since we've been building guns since well before the invention of thermoplastics, the traditional material for their furniture is of course wood, with plastic as a relative newcomer; since plastic furniture was adopted on military arms before it became popular on sporting arms (notably when the AR-15 rifle was adopted by the US military as the M-16), there's a common association of plastic (especially in black) with military.
See, there's a certain segment of gun politics in the US which is concerned with the idea of restricting weapons based on their similarity to military weapons, and since we've had decades of very strong restrictions on weapons functionally similar to military weapons, specifically full-auto, this ends up being largely about cosmetic similarity. (I say "largely", but there are still some function-related criteria up for grabs, particularly restrictions on magazine capacity.) And it doesn't help that it's easy to point out visual similarities, while any discussion of functional similarities has to start with an understanding of function. So while the furniture material is not the only cosmetic distinction used in this mess, it's by far the most prominent, and GP was using it to stand in for the whole mess.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:45PM
A lot of words have niche use meanings. On a gun, a wooden stock is furniture. Ever been up in the high country, and seen truck drivers putting tire chains on? They're putting on their "jewelry". Maybe we should start a thread, asking for other words that mean one thing to the general public, but something else entirely within some given niche.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @09:01PM
Well, to be fair, these are probably surplus weapons from some Federal program, like most of the SWAT equipment in the US. Those do tend to be military hand-downs (also involved in the militarization of the police).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bobs on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:06PM
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."
- H. L. Mencken
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:07PM
And the reason for all this is... come on everybody, lets all parrot it in unison:
"Because you can't be too safe" (drool drool drool duuuh).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:31PM
Queue "kid shot by security with rifle for not complying with request to stop skipping in the hallway... 'the rule clearly says No running in the hallways', the security guard defended his actions..."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bitstream on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:08PM
Quote "many classes shot by security with a secret history of unstable mood before the police could get to the scene, the security guard was shoot dead by police so now everything is fine again."
Murphys law?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:12PM
kid shot by security with rifle for not complying with request to stop skipping in the hallway...
Yeah that faggot got what he deserved.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:16PM
I am acutely reminded that the police have no legal obligation to protect citizens, only enforce laws and prevent damage to public property - which, of course, in a public school, means everything from pencils to the grass on the front lawn.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:41PM
Might as well let them kids bring guns, what the hell.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @03:30PM
Im not understand United State. Why are you always fight each other. No need for gun to shoot blacks. Peace be unto you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @03:37PM
The logic is, you gotta shoot them before they shoot you. Got it? Yeah.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SacredSalt on Sunday April 24 2016, @02:58PM
If I'm going into battle I want a rifle and not a handgun. Handgun is only for fighting your way back to your rifle. I do find it mildly disturbing that this place feels the need to ramp up to that though. Its a school, and not a combat zone; its unlikely to become one. The biggest thing is that the whole thing, including the security, seems like a waste of money to me.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Sunday April 24 2016, @03:15PM
As someone who's worked in secondary schools and sixth form colleges, including some under "Special Measures" for pupil behaviour, I can confidently say that the US is really fucking up if this is a) necessary, b) they think it's necessary or c) they don't see what's wrong with this solution.
I'm also someone who's never seen a live firearm in my life outside of airport police (who I do not approach and talk to).
I've certainly never seen "security" at a school beyond some guy who stands at the front desk and throws out the pupil he was asked to throw out yesterday (P. S. I've worked in places like Hackney, etc. which are hardly nice areas)
I also live in a country whose last "school shooting" was back in the 90's, involved a legal handgun and an adult nutter gunning down 5-year-olds. We brought in laws after that and made it much more difficult to follow his suit.
I honestly DO NOT GET any culture calling itself advanced of civilised while THESE things are the best thing you can come up with, tolerate, or even allow in the first place.
It's just baffling.
But, no, you lot argue over the semantics of the weapon type and/or the accessibility of the storage location.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @03:59PM
Depends on the neighborhood. If it's mostly white, you fear "school shootings" from autistic or emotionally disturbed white kids, although they almost never happen. If it's mostly black and urban, you ignore gang shootings when (not if) they happen. The former makes it to the national news, the latter maybe gets a brief mention on the local news, and so despite the differences in frequency, people are scared of the former.
This story is about reaction to that fear. The school system is buying guns against an event that is unlikely to happen. Meanwhile, Phily and Baltimore and Detroit and above all Chicago are not arming their security this way, but they actually have the shootings to justify it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:11PM
Sure, why bother arm the security in those schools? In the case of a would-be mass-shooter situation there's already plenty of armed students on-site ready to take them down. /smartass
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:06PM
Ive sadly seen armed police at Euston, and down Whitehall and near parliament square. I've seen live ones at Bisley on a hostile environment course too. London is a sad place to be.
However there is a massive cultural difference between the us and uk when it comes to guns. For us they're something in films. For them it's something everyone has. You can't just ban them and solve the problem, even if you ignore the commercial interests.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:51PM
I find your post to be somewhat ironic. You're from London. If not your parents, then your grandparents, can remember when London was being targeted by rockets, bombers, and maybe fighter planes strafing. An armed man was someone to be respected. People actually hoped that there were some armed men around.
Today? Listen to you.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Sunday April 24 2016, @08:04PM
I am also from London, and I remember a couple of years back, there was a lot of rioting because gangsters have more credibility than the armed police.
I am not saying we don't need armed police, although I am not convinced we need more*, I am saying we need a hell of a lot more convictions than we
are getting when the police misbehave.
And I am still waiting for a credible explanation for how someone was shot with a sawn off shotgun in the cells of Stoke Newington Police Station.
--
* We have far more armed police than there are guns in the hands of criminals in England.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday April 25 2016, @04:21AM
Hunting accident?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by zoefff on Sunday April 24 2016, @08:23PM
Then, an armed man was part of the military or trained civilian to defend against a full sized invasion from the mainland. Not against some fucked up, targetting a school. It has nothing to do with respect or not. It's how you choose to organise society. For a long time, a bob didn't have a gun at all. If there is an escalation, they talk as a first approach, not shoot. De-escalate.
Seriously, there is this huge culture gap between eu and us regarding the role weapons should play in society.
(Score: 4, Touché) by isostatic on Sunday April 24 2016, @08:49PM
Nope, I'm from Warrington, live in Manchester now. My family is from the Midlands. I do remember a time when american funded terrorists blew up my home town, and when they blew up Manchester. I don't recall any way an armed police would help. Nor would an armed policeman help against rockets, bombers and fighter planes.
My granddad worked in a factory building planes during the second world war and did air raid duty off hours. What was of more use - a gun, or a bucket of sand? His brother fired guns in the back of a Lancaster, eventually went down over Holland.
I'm still struggling to see how an armed police force or armed public helped win the battle of britain
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 24 2016, @10:45PM
Armed men won the battle of Britain. I don't see a disconnect bewtween "soldiers" and "citizens". Trained, you say? Just how much "training" did British soldiers get before going on active duty? In today's world, with leisure to spend on training, a US soldier gets about 13 weeks of basic training, I guess another 9 weeks of Advanced Infantry Training, and maybe 4 to 12 weeks of professional training, depending on his MOS. In the midst of war? How much real training did your soldiers get?
And, I'll remind you that British soldiers may or may not have kept some weapons after the war. That all happened decades before your Home Office set out on a campaign to brainwash you and your countrymen - http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmhaff/95/95ap25.htm [parliament.uk]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday April 25 2016, @09:06AM
Armed men won the battle of Britain
People armed with spitfires and hurricanes. Not pistols or rifles. People's lives were saved on the ground because of buckets of sand and water, because of people pulling people out of rubble, because of people armed with binoculars and radar spotting the planes and sounding the air raids.
On the other hand, Germany invaded Poland, France and Benelux because of Panzers, and an armed police force or population didn't really help that. Later, when the French resistance were fighting back, they relied on weapons and ammo dropped by Britain, not on what was personally owned.
Trained, you say?
No, I haven't mentioned the word "trained" once.
And, I'll remind you that British soldiers may or may not have kept some weapons after the war
Fortunately as ammo isn't exactly easy to come by, these were mostly harmess, squirrelled away in people's lofts and probably not even working.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @09:43AM
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/04/dean-weingarten/english-gun-law-a-colonial-import/ [thetruthaboutguns.com]
Gun control — restrictions on gun ownership — was not a common or popular phenomena in Europe until after the First World War. One of the most influential gun control laws was instituted in England and Wales in 1920. It has been the basis for a great deal of restrictions on the private ownership of firearms around the world, both in the Commonwealth countries and in Europe. These restrictions were not designed to protect the public from criminals. Rather, they were designed to protect the ruling class from revolution . . .
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday April 25 2016, @10:59AM
Right, and how would not having gun control in England have helped over the years?
How would it help now should the British public fancy a revolution?
If the army is on the side of the people, guns aren't needed. If they aren't on side, there's no contest.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @08:10PM
Well - if every Brit owned a weapon, and a lot of Brits carried their weapons, I know of a couple ragheads who would have been blown away while they were hacking on a young soldier in the street.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:06PM
I find your post to be somewhat ironic. . . . . People actually hoped that there were some armed men around.
A vision just appeared to me. It was Runaway1956, standing in a London street during the Blitz, which did seem not quite right, chronologically. But there he was with a .270 (not even a Roberts .270) shooting down blockbusters and V2 like nobody's business. Yep, the only thing that can stop high explosive in the grip of gravity is a man with a Mauser.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday April 25 2016, @06:02AM
My Dad often talked about growing up in London during the war. High lights included getting bombed out, phosphorous bomb landing in the school yard, lots of time spent in the subway, the silent death that a V2 could bring, hunting rabbits to have some meat , with club or snare and so on. Never once mentioned anything about men with guns, as they were probably non-existent.
He also had a lot more respect for cops then I ever had, partially because the cops weren't armed and were actually helpful.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @07:16AM
You're sure that cops didn't have weapons during WW2? https://www.loc.gov/law/help/firearms-control/greatbritain.php#History [loc.gov]
History of Firearms Law
Early Regulation
Early acts regulating the ownership of firearms were fairly limited. The Gun Licenses Act 1870 and the Pistols Act 1903 served primarily as Acts to generate revenue and required owners to hold a license from the post office. The system was described as generally ineffective.[4] In 1920, the Firearms Act[5] was passed, to stop firearms from being used by criminals and “other evilly disposed or irresponsible persons.”[6] While one aim of the restriction was to curb violent crime, it was believed that other reasons included concerns over uprisings in Russia spilling over into Britain, particularly with the end of World War I and the return of thousands of troops trained in the use of firearms and an increase in the number of such weapons in circulation.[7] This Act set out the basis for the licensing system of firearms that is still in operation today, providing the chief officer of police in the district the applicant lives with the authority to issue licenses. When enacting this legislation, the right to bear arms by citizens was considered; however, “this was countered by the argument that such redress was adequately obtainable through the ballot box and by access to Parliament and the courts.”[8] Further controls were introduced in 1937 to allow conditions to be attached to certificates and to place more stringent restrictions on particularly dangerous weapons such as machine guns.[9]
The laws were consolidated and amended in 1968 with the enactment of the Firearms Act, which is the legislation still used today.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmhaff/95/95ap25.htm [parliament.uk]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday April 25 2016, @03:57PM
Better question is were the police armed during WW2. According to wiki, while the police did receive 3500 Ross rifles which were dispersed to the various police stations and had various other arms available (handguns but no holsters), the only police that were actually armed were the ones guarding 10 Downing St and the Royal family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom#Great_Britain [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @07:53PM
Cool - I didn't use the right search terms to find that info. Thank you, Sir.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheReaperD on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:13PM
Part of the problem that causes repeats of the shootings is how they're spread on the news media. You take someone who is in a really bad mental state, feeling alone and bullied with, in their mind, no way out and they know that they can end it all, take their bullies with them and have a "glorious" death that will be pasted on every news station in the country for days if not weeks. The news is not the cause of this but, they add fuel to the fire. Now, with this, all the kid has to do is break into a security car the day they want to go out and steal the weapon and ammo they need. It's about equivalent of solving a potential forest fire by spraying areas with lighter fluid and kerosene; it won't start the fire but, it will make it much worse if it is. What is needed to address the issue is teaching staff and having specialists to deal with student mental health issues to stop them from getting to this point. Most of the shooters have not been bad people overall but, got into such a bad mental state that going on a shooting rampage actually sounded like a good solution. Now, some were just bad people and that's really hard to prevent but, rifles in cars will do nothing against them either.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:30PM
Do you really think the problem of bullying can be solved in a selfish culture where social media is all the rage, unfriending makes shunning easier than ever before, and narcissism is encouraged.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:00PM
Create a school with certain standards on how to behave?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday April 24 2016, @10:25PM
This won't help. What they need is education, not schools and much less standards for schools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:07PM
This won't help. What they need is education, not schools and much less standards for schools.
Sounds similar to what I was thinking, the only way to end school shootings might be to close the schools, and support home schooling or very small neighborhood co-op schooling instead. Anywhere you have a concentration of people you have an obvious target.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Monday April 25 2016, @12:38AM
No the point is to create a positive learning environment with learning methods that actually work and remove destructive elements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @06:04PM
Well, you got one thing right anyhow:
It's quite clear that you do not get it. In fact, as a casual observer, I would have said that your not getting it was the salient point.
Now, speaking as an educator myself, rather than expressing your current baffled outrage (or is that outrageous bafflement) you would be better off if you tried to find some way to, as you put it, get it. Try to piece together the complex network of historic, social, environmental and other factors that have shaped the attitudes of the US and the UK in terms of firearms. Examine, while you're at it, the extreme geographic imbalance of per capita violence in the US, and explain how most of the US is roughly as dangerous as Canada, while a few hot spots distort the overall statistics massively. Dig beneath the surface of distaste, and examine what logistical and natural world factors adjust the calculus vis-a-vis firearms and their accessibility. Work out what the desirability of regular practice with firearms is, if one is inclined to keep them around.
You can hand me your 2,000 word essay on the morning of Tuesday week.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:55PM
Ledow doesn't even know 2000 words!
(Score: 2) by https on Sunday April 24 2016, @08:08PM
You could admit that there's nothing to get, but hey, pride.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:03PM
There's nothing to get? So things are the way they are for absolutely no reason? A good example of anti-intellectualism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:49PM
I'd use a different verb tense: USA is really fucked up.
With the USAian Capitalists[1] having exported most of the manufacturing jobs, one of the few industries remaining is making weapons.
Creating markets for those is one of the few things keeping the USA's economy afloat.
[1] ...with those residents of the USA feeling absolutely no loyalty to USA; their only loyalty is to money.
THESE things are the best thing you can come up with
An important thing to note is that the Western Hemisphere was stolen from its previous inhabitants at gunpoint.
All real estate that is now "owned" in the USA was taken by force.
Using weapons to get what they want is in the genes of USAians.
...and the deeper their roots (e.g. "My people came over on the Mayflower"), the more true this is.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by tftp on Sunday April 24 2016, @10:02PM
I'm also someone who's never seen a live firearm in my life outside of airport police (who I do not approach and talk to).
I understand your position, and you are fully entitled to it, no matter how wise or how foolish *I* may consider it to be.
However it appears that you believe that there is only one way to live in this whole Universe, and that would be the way you live. If someone threatens you or your family, you outsource help. You hope that someone else, someone more familiar with guns, comes and saves your $behind. Someone who volunteers to taint his soul with the gun oil just so that you can remain pure. If - let's imagine - your country is invaded, you are not going to take the gun and man the defenses, because you are not familiar with guns, and you will be more dangerous to your fellow soldiers than to the enemy. What role would you then play if the events of 1939-1945 were to reoccur? They cannot, you say? Well, that depends not only on the opinion of Europe. Europe is rich, and that in itself makes it a lucrative target.
The USA is founded around a somewhat different principle - and that is, defense of the country is the moral duty of everyone who physically can carry a weapon. Most able (17-45) men of the United States belong to the reserve militia. People own guns and train with them not because they want to go out and murder someone, but - in part - because they want to be certain that they can defend themselves and their familiy. There is a reason for such an approach, it lies in history and geography of the country. The USA is a bit larger than UK, and if you call the sheriff's office, they may come to your ranch at some point within an hour or two, unless they have a helicopter in the air - which is not very common at rural departments. Rural people also own guns for defense and clearing of wild animals, who are plentiful. It's not like the good old UK where you can see a rabbit only in a zoo :-)
You can ask why such a thing is even necessary, why the level of violence in the USA is so high. Well, knife crime in UK (for example) is not exactly insignificant either. However there are also social reasons for a relatively high crime in the country. Many gigabytes are spent on describing those. If you want, we can exile all the criminals to Europe - what would you say then? Will you then clamor for the right to carry, or you just accept that you can be gutted by a group of thugs anywhere in the street, and nobody will be able to save you?
Disappearance of criminals from the country is definitely the most efficient way to combat crime. They are here because of historical reasons and political mistakes and many other causes. We are stuck with them. Their numbers are nearly tracking the growth of the population - but, actually, over time the crime level drops. It is becoming safer with every year. Still, there are many. What do you want us to do with them? They are violent young men who commit a bunch of small crimes, but do not yet deserve to be executed. They are in the streets. They entertain themselves with misdemeanors and felonies. Their children study in public schools because the law says they must. Their children are learning from their fathers (if known who they are,) or from gang leaders in the street. They take those habits into the school. Sometimes they take weapons with them. Sometimes they kill with them. Sometimes they [attempt to] kill even with their bare hands - and they are quite capable of that.
However there is yet another group of active shooters in school, and those are crazy people. People, who are either formally insane, or who just made an insane decision - for any reason; not all teenagers are known to be geniuses in logic. Then you can argue that availability of guns leads to school shooting. You can say that if those crazy people cannot get the gun, they'd have to steal a truck and drive it into the crowd. No, scratch that. They'd have to make a couple of Molotov cocktails and throw them at their enemies. No, scratch that. They'd have to buy a bag of rat poison and throw it into the water. No, that's not good either, they have to make a few pipe bombs... you see, removal of weapon A only switches the criminal to weapon B. The B may be less efficient, but that is minor. The most dangerous weapon in this system is the sick mind of the killer. Your attempts to attenuate harm are not going to be *very* effective. They may be somewhat effective, but they come at cost of removal of a significant freedom from the vast majority of the population. Let me think of an example... say, most pedophiles are men (don't know if this is true or not, it's just an example.) Would you support the law that prohibits any man from coming closer than 100 yards to any child under 18 years? It would certainly "help", just as as much as the law that prohibits crazies to own a gun. Would you accept that you can never hold your kids?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:07PM
The USA is founded around a somewhat different principle - and that is, defense of the country is the moral duty of everyone who physically can carry a weapon. Most able (17-45) men of the United States belong to the reserve militia.
Any country that would ever allow the government to force people into indentured servitude and send them out to die in a war they do not wish to participate in cannot call itself truly free, much less "the land of the free and the home of the brave". It's no surprise that the US government conducts mass surveillance on the populace, has thugs molest people at airports, and in general ignores the constitution with impunity; it still considers conscription a valid concept, after all.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:45PM
Any country that would ever allow the government to force people into indentured servitude and send them out to die in a war they do not wish to participate in cannot call itself truly free, much less "the land of the free and the home of the brave".
What is a country, to begin with? Isn't it a more or less voluntary union of independent people? You can leave one country and move to another if you think that the other country is more to your liking. I have done that myself.
Countries are governed by elected representatives, aside from a few corner cases. We can say that those representatives are not always following the desires of the people. However in all cases the government rules by consent of the governed. As a President, you cannot do much if nobody talks to you. As a government, you cannot do anything if people refuse to show up for work. The consent is currently present. When it is not, revolutions happen.
We have now established that the [mandatory] military service comes from the consent of voters. The USA currently does not have "an intentured servitude" where kids are grabbed off the street and sent to faraway lands to die for questionable causes. It used to be so, but not anymore - in part, because it is not efficient (not because we are short of questionable causes.) But let's imagine that the country is under a massive attack - say, from Mars. (I don't think there are forces on Earth that are capable of such feat.) Who is going to defend your country? You had an army, 0.5% of the population. The army is defeated, and the soldiers are either wounded or killed; either way, they are not able to fight anymore. What you, as the country, are planning to do now? The draft in modern countries remains for such very unusual circumstances. It's not likely to ever be needed, I hope. But as a theory, it is on the books.
I can also understand that you might be unwilling, as many here were in times past, to board a ship and go fight in hot and humid Vietnam, just so a geopolitician could move a figure on his world-sized chess board. Militia is not intended for that purpose, and it cannot be drafted. Militia is made of volunteers, and militiamen fight only for what they consider more important than their own life. If the government one day proves beyond any doubt that it is not up to the task, then it will be the militia, along with every other group of citizenry, who will step in and correct the situation. Does a typical, "civilized" european country have such a plan? Or they seem to be intent to suffer under any despot who makes his way to the throne? Note: you cannot negotiate with despots. What will you do then? Or this is yet another "it can't happen here" example? Things that can't happen are, unfortunately, happening all the time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @04:26AM
We have now established that the [mandatory] military service comes from the consent of voters.
Even if that were true (and I don't buy it one bit, because not every voter votes for the same candidates, and having a skewed two party system like ours causes people to vote for candidates they hate), it wouldn't make conscription ethical. I don't want a direct democracy where the majority hold absolute power, and I believe that we should amend the constitution and completely strip the government of its power to conscript people.
Who is going to defend your country?
Anyone who is willing. If no one is willing, then the country will fall, and that's that. It's better for the country to fall than for government thugs to force people into indentured servitude, because then we'd be our own enemies. Our enemies can destroy us, but they can't make us violate our own principles, which is a much worse outcome.
The draft is never acceptable.
Also, I live in the US. I am utterly baffled when people pretend it's a free country, because the government is staunchly opposed to freedom. Being better than some other countries doesn't make us overall good.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday April 25 2016, @05:35AM
I don't want a direct democracy where the majority hold absolute power, and I believe that we should amend the constitution
Democratically? Not going to happen. The people are not going to *officially* give the reins to a new aristocracy.
Undemocratically? Some people - those, who professionally lack the sense of humor - would like to know what exactly you are proposing ;-)
and completely strip the government of its power to conscript people.
I wonder if there are other countries on this planet that have the same policy. I am aware of some Indian tribes who were dedicated pacifists. They are not around anymore - do you know why? Europe has very small armed forces... but what then the US troops are doing there? As people say, "if you aren't willing to feed your own army, you will be feeding someone else's."
But outside of that, is it feasible that some society, perhaps a sufficiently advanced one, does not require draft anymore? Sure, it is feasible. I believe that the USA is well on the way there. Modern warfare is too technologically intensive to be trusted to a conscript. Can he maintain or fly a UAV? Can he calculate targeting data for a missile? Can he launch that missile? Conscripts are needed in a low-tech war, when generals used large masses of people with primitive guns. This concept is on the way out. Still boots on the ground are essential... but they are morphing into soldiers inside Imperial Walkers. Few of them, but very well protected, and commanding extreme firepower. The draft is hanging around primarily because nobody sees any political advantage in getting rid of it. The draft itself is largely harmless, and there is no pressure on lawmakers to end it.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday April 25 2016, @02:01PM
Any country that would ever allow the government to force people into indentured servitude and send them out to die in a war they do not wish to participate in
I was under the impression the U.S. hasn't drafted since Vietnam.
From this graph of countries which have conscription [chartsbin.com], I take it you're a European? Looks like the globe is split about 50/50 on the issue.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bitstream on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:23PM
Standby armed guards in school is a symptom of something seriously wrong and a problem that has been allowed to escalate into a unstable state. Where there's armed guards you almost can be certain there's some element around that causes that need and that some guard will misidentify a situation. A good time to leave the premises permanently. Almost a fail-fail situation.
I suspect how the school system treats students and blindness for how students treat each others is the basic cause of this problem. Most likely too many irrational and mentally blocked people are allowed to influence the situation. This goes both for decision makers and screaming high people.
When you are a fighter, everything looks like a problem in the need of a fighting solution.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Sunday April 24 2016, @04:38PM
Why assault rifles? Is it for the range, suppression or larger mags?
Won't the extra penetration and automatic fire just increase the risk of friendly casualties?
How are they planning to pay for all the extra CQB training and personal upkeep? It takes a lot of time to learn how to overcome the recoil while dealing fire from either shoulder immediately and accurately from crouch and standing positions. And then it takes daily practice to maintain this skill-set... You can't just go up the range once or twice a week.
Are those patrol cars? Aren't they first responders? They're not police. They have no use for patrol cars. When they hear gun shots, they're supposed to radio in with their handhelds and immediately breach. They're not supposed to go back to their cars for a rifle or wait for reinforcements. That's what the police is for.
This worse then useless, this is counterproductive. Having patrol cars alone defeats the whole purpose of first responders. An active patrol is one less guy patrolling the schools corridors and getting in the way of the police. Alternatively, a patrol car parking next to the school for the guard to use is one more reason for the guard to run away from the gunshots to grab his rifle, and then decide to wait for backup before heading back in.
If you insist on playing security theater, give the guards armored vests and helmets. At least this way they'll look the part and feel safer running in.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:03PM
hey bill! there's no such thing as an assault rifle! also, the rifles bought by these dumbasses are semi-auto.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:38PM
It is not an assault rifle, it's semi-automatic.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday April 24 2016, @10:52PM
That's the legal distinction as used in the US civilian arms market. There are other definitions: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assault%20rifle [merriam-webster.com] . Either definition is as useful as the definition for super computer.
Practically speaking, any weapon with a NATO defined 100-150m effective range that an 8-12 men squad can leapfrog with is an assault rifle. Seeing as each 5.56 intermediate round suppresses a 1m radius, a 4 men team firing at semi-auto cyclic rate in effective range can suppress an entrenched position such as a window or a hill top. Since automatic fire drastically shortens effective range while dramatically increasing the risk for friendly fire due to AR recoil and line of sight issues, most NATO manuals specifically caution against auto mode, or even burst mode. In real life, squad automatic weapon with bipods do what most people think ARs do in NATO armies.
Off topic, In WARSAW, 7.62's suppresses a bit larger radius and is otherwise similarly effective in the same real world ranges. More importantly, it makes so much noise for the shooters that they're less deterred from 5.56 flying all around them. This is why you always hear American soldiers tell tales of enemies charging forwards mindlessly... :D
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:25PM
These are semi-autos, so no worries about that.
As for overpenetration, when you contemplate that any kid can order a ballistic vest online, there's room to argue all day about pistol vs. intermediate cartridges, especially once you get into all the special rounds designed to enhance a pistol's penetration, or stop a rifle's overpenetration. But really, there is no magic bullet that reliably penetrates armor but disintegrates on contact with drywall -- any choice you make is some sort of compromise. I'd lean towards pistol-caliber carbines myself, but I don't think it's a real big deal one way or the other.
Much more important to me is the issue of long guns vs. handguns. It's true that it takes a lot of training to become and remain an expert rifleman, but it also takes a lot of training to be an expert with the pistol. What's more important is that, given the same hours of training (from zero up) on either weapon, the rifle will always let you hit your target more often, and innocent bystanders less often. So I'd get some of the lightest (i.e. carryable) pistol-caliber carbines you can find, and have them carry those instead of handguns.
I wish we could arm not just these school guards, but all policemen and security guards, with long guns of some sort. Once, it was impractical for a cop to walk a beat with a heavy and clumsy rifle, so the handgun made sense. But today, we can make a short-barreled pistol-caliber carbine, with collapsing stock, weighing little if any more than classic police revolvers, and capable of being holstered on the belt rather than slung on a shoulder. But this is made all but impossible by laws (pistols with shoulder stocks and short-barreled rifles are subject to tight restrictions) and culture (the US sees a pistol as a cop's natural weapon, much like the English Bobbie's stick, and sees the same scary "escalation" in a beat cop with a rifle as the Brits see in the few police armed with handguns), so we're stuck with weapons that are both less effective and more dangerous to bystanders.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:59PM
Once again - you don't need, probably don't even want, SWAT teams marauding through the school. And shooter situations are seldom made up of a trained squad or six. A single, moderately well trained security guard is sufficient to deal with one or two punks with guns. The most important part of the equation is that the guard become aware of the shooters before he is ambushed. Given that the shooters and the guard are aware of each other's presence, the guard generally has the advantage. You don't HAVE to advertise for Rambo to get the job done.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday April 24 2016, @10:59PM
You assume the first person shot isn't the guard. Of course, the solution would be to just sell all those cars and rifles and hire another guard...
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 24 2016, @11:11PM
In a previous post, I did mention the possibility that the guard is ambushed first. I've assumed nothing - except that having a person on school grounds who is presumably prepared for emergency action, and able to act quickly, is better than placing a call to a SWAT team miles away.
But, this whole conversation centers around one issue: hoplophobes are shaken up by the idea that a weapon might be found on campus. Yet, all those hoplophobes are quite happy to see POLICE arrive on campus to deal with emergencies. And, what arrives with every cop? A gun, of course. Most of the arguments agains guns are simply hoplophobic, without any real merit. Those arguements against guns that cite the possibility of those guns being stolen are the best arguments that the hoplophobes have.
Personally, I'm willing to remove the guards, the cops, AND the guns - but if people insist that a guard and/or a cop is necessary, then I insist that the guard and/or the cop should be armed.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday April 25 2016, @12:59AM
Most of the arguments agains guns are simply hoplophobic, without any real merit.
Guns are akin to many other US problems in that they're a quick-fix, feel-good solutions that don't actually work. Poverty? Crime? School-violence? No reason to actually try to address the root causes of those social ills, when we can debate gun control instead.
It doesn't matter that these problems are almost exclusive to the US and are all completely fixable. All that matter is that when I buy a gun, I feel safe. That the very act of carrying a firearm is provingly effective deterrence. That it's far better to have one and not need it, then need it but not have it. Sure, statistically speaking I'm far more likely to have my gun stolen, shoot myself or have my kid shoot himself. But that only happens to stupid, irresponsible and bad people who don't lock their guns while it's not on them or is being fired at the range...
Now, we're stuck at debating a point without metrics for determining whose right. It's impossible to leave things like that and get back to the real issues. We have to say that our kid has gun safety training so it's not a problem. That gun owners are crazy right wing loons. That gun haters are cowards... And there's no end in sight since it's just empty baseless words. We defend ourselves, attack the opposition, each raising the same run-down points with our unique and clever twists. At the best of times, we make decent arguments that would win us many nods of approval from our side. At the worst of times, we generalize and ad hominem whole groups of people, taking in some sway voters that are just out for some blood.
All the while, we lose sight of the misdirection. Forget how this whole thing started. We let the media control the debate. The politicians set the agenda. We know those people on the other side of the debate are fools and sheep for following empty arguments and emotional pleas, not noticing we already took the bait, hook, line and sinker.
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(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday April 25 2016, @04:25AM
My guess is range and accuracy. Pistols are crap.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:11PM
> military-style
> the same tools as law enforcement
Chose one.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday April 25 2016, @12:17PM
> military-style
> the same tools as law enforcement
Chose one.
That IS one (just put a comma between the two lines).
Note that "selective fire" is not a necessary part of "military rifle".
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Sunday April 24 2016, @05:20PM
Which are in the parking lot, unattended I presume.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 24 2016, @08:02PM
Ever seen a cop go to his car to get a shotgun, or rifle? It's not just lying there, ready to take. He first unlocks the trunk or the car door. He then gets out another key, to unlock the rack holding the firearm. THEN, as often as not, he has to get yet another key to remove the trigger lock.
I don't read very many stories about guns being stolen from a police officer's car. We may see that happening on campuses, but it's won't be an every-day occurrence.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24 2016, @06:25PM
10 Sandy Hook families sue Bushmaster [cnn.com]
battle tested brand. way to go colorado schools!
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday April 24 2016, @07:56PM
Can't we all just think of the bullets! Every bullet that is fired in anger means another NRA pamphlet gets its' wings!
*cough
Aherm, the answer to all this is simple: Americans have the right to bear arms. Just make it illegal to create, use, own, possess, sell bullets/projectile weapons (yes, pea shooters from my high school days... i'm looking at you too).
That way, everyone has to resort to clubbing each other with the rifles, etc. Won't matter if its a 'plinker', semi-automatic, etc. In fact, it will mean owning a tank killing bazooka will put you at a disadvantage, swinging wise.
Everyone will go back to the GOOD OLD DAYS (tm) of using swords/epees, etc, and duelling scars will become fashionable again! Who needs a tatoo: i have a cool eye slashing duelling scar!
Let's see ISIS invade America then, eh? Swinging their swords around like they own everything, hacking away at the White House like they were planes instead of swords....
.... oooooooooh, Gilligans Island is on... HA, Gilligans got the coconut car going..... mmmmm, Mary Ann..........
....Wait....umm............
What? Where are my pants....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 24 2016, @08:04PM
I'm just waiting for the first case of a school security guard going amok …
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.