And now it's the repeats

[Phoebe]

Truth! He should be writing books of it.

[DMDarcs]

[mimekiller]

Yea everyone is saying if you had a firearm in the classroom you would kill a POC! But I think better of you than that!

[Phoebe]

Nope, only Mike is saying that, clearly! I'm saying that the students are all mouthy brats inclined to shoot the teacher whom they may assume is packing, and therefore pro-paddling laws should be expanded. Bill is saying that nihilistic despair is at the heart of every decision to engage in the labor market, where it lingers to strangle us with poison. Bone is saying that if guns work for the FBI, then everyone should have two, one to carry on your back and one for under the bed. Keep up!

[Bonefish]

The fuck? I didn't say nothing like that. I pointed out that the FBI developed doctrine for engaging active shooters as rapidly as possible, rather than "setting up a perimeter" and waiting for back up, as this reduces the rate of casualties in an active shooter situation. The cop in Maryland did the right thing, while the FOUR DEPUTIES in florida did the worst, wrongest thing. Don't twist my words or position into some farcical strawman.

Now, I'll point out some facts: The Maryland school shooter didn't use an assault weapon(as the majority of school shooters and shooters in general don't), he wasn't legally allowed to own the pistol he used, and none of Maryland's strict gun control laws in anyway stopped or hindered him. What did stop him was effective, rapid and armed response. And the FBI's findings regarding active shooters is that unarmed civilian response is roughly as effective as armed police response in terms of stopping shooters.

I've also been meaning to address this whole "If we give teachers guns, they'll just shoot black kids" fallacy. The first thing to address is that POLICE ARE NOT HELD TO THE SAME STANDARDS OF THE LAW IN REGARD TO LETHAL FORCE. Almost universally, Police shootings are judged based on the "Facts as they appeared to the officer at the time of the shooting", which is why a Police officer who shoots a Tyrone for reaching for his wallet doesn't get charged with murder or manslaughter. Civilians have to prove that they were responding to a lethal threat, cops don't. Even in cases like Zimmerman and Martin, the problem there was a lack of witnesses and evidence to show that Trayvon didn't pose a threat to Zimmerman. In a class room of 32 kids, there's a lot of witnesses to say "DeShawn was unarmed, and Teacher Man murdered him". This also doesn't address the fact that I haven't heard of a SINGLE FUCKING CASE where a teacher shot an unarmed black or minority student for no reason, even though a THIRD OF THE STATES IN THE UNION ALLOW TEACHERS TO CARRY. if this was such an inevitable and likely thing to happen... Like, how come we haven't heard about it?

This shit is literally the left's version of "we can't allow transgenders to use bathrooms because of THE CHILDREN!". It's hyped up bullshit. Stop this. And I'm not even a proponent of arming teachers. I don't particularly like the idea, but it's not because I'm worried about the cost, or Teachers shooting black kids, or, schools turning into wild west shoot outs. I don't like the idea because it's a dramatic reaction to what is a STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT PROBLEM. School kids are not in more danger than they were in the 80s or 90s. This is not an epidemic.

And the proposals to "fix" this epidemic can be shown, time and time again, to be ineffective at their supposed goal: they don't stop it. I'm not going to support laws that restrict my rights, because you THINK they might help stop a problem that isn't even a fucking blip on the radar. Ain't gonna do it. I ain't gonna support laws that restrict anyone's rights, just because someone is scared of something that is about as likely as a lightning strike. Oh, wait, 1 in 700 people get struck by lightning, but only 1 in 2.5 million school children are shot and killed at school. Sorry, even LESS LIKELY THAN GETTING STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. I want you to think about that: Your child is more likely to be killed by a lightning bolt out of the sky than to be murdered in their classroom.

You wanna stop gun violence, then you gotta make actual attempts to do so. This means looking at the different types of gun violence and deciding what we do to combat them. Inner City poor black kids are a different problem set than wife beaters, which are in turn a different set of problems from middle age, middle class white guys who eat their own .45s in their garage. There is not a one-size-fits-all solution to these problems, and any attempt to describe them as simple problems is a goddamned lie.

[Mike]

She gave a stereotyped/distorted view of what each of us has expressed. She intentionally misrepresented everyone to make a point.

[bralbovsky]

Hey, except for the knee jerk defensiveness...(I know, irony is tough in writing when context and timing are so important), I believe many of us absolutely agree with everything you just said. The issue isn't you, even with the cops, my point was outsized, clearly panicked response, rather than the kind of thing that happened in MD.

A better overall analogy might be shark attack, also wildly remote, and, with continents surrounded by shoreline (everyone loves waterfront property) likely inevitable. They differ from lightning in that they can be reacted to, and thereby reduced in severity or incidence. How much has been spent on trying to prevent them? Is this justified? I'd say yes, because many can be prevented, and because they're particularly shocking, despite them being part of the circle of life. That is, I think, closer to what we all think about regulation in general. There should be lifeguards, and flag systems, and times when you're not allowed in the water, despite the fact that they're expensive (and people from Denver are helping to pay even if they've zero risk), and they do pull people on expensive vacations out of water they might see as their just desserts.

One caveat: given their rarity, "good guy with gun" examples are cited as a reliable solution by many who throw around the low stats on fatalities as a reason we shouldn't react. If we agree that incidents of one type are rare, then incidents that are similarly rare shouldn't be given more logical weight. It's a phenomenon I see and hear often.

[Bonefish]

"Good Guy with a gun" is a weird thing. There are defensive gun uses in this country, but it's hard to determine just how many. Not all defensive uses of a gun involve discharging the firearm, or even HAVING one("I have a gun!" can stop people from doing shit they shouldn't do, surprisingly effectively) for that matter. If they are not reported, then what?

One of my friends, Jake, had an opportunity to be a good guy with a gun. He was driving home one night when he witnessed a man and a woman having some sort of argument. He pulled his car over, and asked what the problem was. The woman said she wanted to get away from her boyfriend, and the man(her "boyfriend") said it was more or less non of Jake's business, and he could get his ass beat too if he wanted to get involved. Jake calmly drew his pistol, and explained that he didn't feel that violence was an acceptable way to resolve this, and if the woman wanted to get in his car he would take her wherever she felt safe. The man didn't press the issue, the woman got in the car, and everyone lived. I don't think Jake reported this.

Sometimes "good guy with a gun" looks like an Air Force veteran with a pistol, in a barricaded classroom as a shooter stalks the campus, shooting people. He didn't go out looking for the shooter. He protected the class room he was in, and waited until the cops showed up. That's smart. Of course, he got lambasted all around as a coward or ineffectual response. *shrugs*

What most people tend to think of with "good guy with a gun" is either some sort of hollywood fantasy, or something like the Sutherland Springs shooting where a man with an AR15 traded gunshots with the shooter and won. It does happen, but rarely.

[Phoebe]

Just making fancy straw men. Like, silken pampas grass men.

[Phoebe]

Can't say I'm sorry at how badly the NRA and their supporters are bungling the current PR wars. But I also don't think anything will happen because the DNCC or whatever it's called is a bunch of idiots and can't manage to figure out how to support good candidates for Congress.