United States & Gun Control discussion.
I want to start by apologizing for bring up political issues in the recent school shooting in CT thread. It was disrespectful on my part and I truly did not mean to offend anyone if I did. . .
I personally against any and all gun control measures for several reasons, but the primary reason is the United States Constitution. We are a free people, free to defend ourselves and our property and I view gun control measures as limiting the lawful citizen from being able to be free in protection of themselves and property. We obviously have some crazy people in the world, and nobody wants these crazy people carrying guns and killing innocent people. However, the issue really breaks down to either having someone else protect you and your property or taking on the responsibility for providing that protection for yourself. It's even simpler for me. I--and many of our members--took an oath (some of us did this several times) to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. The 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. Done deal. I think it is pretty clear that historically gun control has not stopped unlawful use of guns to commit violent acts. However, it has also shown that it limits the lawful gun owner from being able to protect his/her self and I think that is enough reason alone to take an out of the box view on how to curve the violence in the United States. Absolutely correct. Gun control only works as a prelude--prepping the battlefield, so to speak--to tyranny. It does nothing for honest citizens but make them more easily victimized. Using this recent shooting as an example, 26 people (20 of whom were children) lost their lives due to one crazy person armed with several guns. A good amount of people believe this to be the guns fault, that a crazy person armed with a gun caused this incident. They are correct that it was a crazy person armed with a gun caused the event, but I think the real question to be asked here is why did it take so long for him to be stopped, how could a crazy person armed with guns make it into a school, in a state know for strict gun control and murder 26 people?The answer is because no one shot him dead, but you obviously know that. My outside of the box view is that the teachers and school officials did not have the proper means to stop this crazy person. That a false since of security exists in most of our community’s that the POLICE will be there to stop these individuals and that removing guns from the schools, making restrictions on gun ownership and possession makes everyone safer. I believe this to be incredibly false. The only person who can truly protect you, is in fact you. It becomes very hard in the school setting, we obviously can’t allow young children to carry guns and take on the responsibility of self protection. But we can force schools, teachers, security, etc to provide a better blanket of security for our children. I believe that comes from arming our teachers, having more armed security/police in these schools and requiring these schools to provide better protection from outside and internal threats. Will it stop all school shootings? No. Nothing, to include new gun control legislation will stop school shootings from happening. However, we can learn to deal with this threat better, to minimize the effects of these types of attacks and more over, reduce the amount of life lost. It's well-established that the police owe no one a duty of protection. Anyone who believes that the police will save you is living in fantasyland, because unless we happen along at exactly the right time, you're on your own. And you better be prepared. With regard to schools, I think arming teachers is problematic on many fronts, but as long as it's voluntary and there is sufficient initial and sustainment training I'm ok with it. Of course, the training aspects will likely make this a non-starter. There are also legal issues to consider that are beyond the scope of this post. Ideally, the taxpayers fund a sufficient amount of full-time commissioned police officers who can be assigned to school resource officer duties. This puts a trained professional in the school who can intervene in many circumstances, and can also provide variety of ancillary services. However, that doesn't mean an attack won't happen. It just reduces response time (although that is also a function of school size, location of the attack, etc. ). Nonetheless, putting a cop in every school is a great idea, but it will never happen for financial reasons. The fact that finances will play a dominant role in a discussion about school safety tells us a lot about society. I'm leaving aside for now the opposition many liberal groups--including the ACLU--have to putting armed police (are there any other kind :wall: ) in schools. The primary point is that we have implemented many programs to respond to active shooters within schools, training for the school staff, local LE and the students. But clearly these steps have not worked and something better need to be implemented. I believe that comes in training and arming teachers and other school officials, having more (a lot more) trained and well armed security/LE personnel at these schools and changing our response from a lock down, wait for the cops, to a take action and stop the attack model of protection. Students and teachers need to be taught that it is OK, and even expected, for them to fight back. With younger kiddos it's harder, of course, but as the kids get bigger the force they can bring to bear against even an armed attacker is both impressive and surprising.