US Politics: Let's Arm All the Teachers! 30 Pieces of Silver to Shoot a Student!

[Ice Queen]

14 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I'll be damned but I'm starting to wonder if, just as it took Nixon to recognize China and Reagan to end the Cold War, it wouldn't be up to the Republicans to finally move forward on gun control.
Not that I'm necessarily expecting it to happen now, but I do wonder...

These kids might be young, but they will be old enough to vote soon...and now they have adults behind them. They did what we lacked the will to do. They made it okay for people to come out and call the NRA and the politicians for what they are.

As Sheriff Israel said, vote them out if they don't do what we want. What they need to do is sustain the momentum. Rubio was right about one thing: our attention spans are very short, so they need to keep hammering the point home day after day after day. 

[Mexal]

If you haven't seen this impressive high school senior, I'd recommend a listen. She's awesome.

 

[LongRider]

8 minutes ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Rubio was right about one thing: our attention spans are very short, so they need to keep hammering the point home day after day after day. 

Attentions spans may be short, but how short the time until another mass shooting occurs?  Not a long enough span of time, never long enough.

[Morpheus]

Orange shitpile is on TV fully embracing the more guns in school “solution”. The fuckwit is genuinely incapable of making a good decision.

[Fez]

Civil rights groups are considering challenging the new PA maps on the grounds that it violates the Voting Rights Act by reducing the number of minority-majority congressional districts from 2 to 1. 

Nevermind that there were only 2 in the first place because Republicans had packed as much of Philly as they could into as few districts as they could; and that these civil rights groups will have their issues better represented in Congress by the extra Democrats the new map will likely cause to get elected.

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Mexal]

8 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

Orange shitpile is on TV fully embracing the more guns in school “solution”. The fuckwit is genuinely incapable of making a good decision.

He is using the exact same language that Wayne LaPierre used this morning at CPAC. We "must harden our schools". I really hate America sometimes.

[Gertrude]

I don’t know that I’ve seen him sell an idea so hard in his entire presidency. It’s not a high bar - he has no real convictions other than the messages he discovered worked for him on the campaign trail.

I don’t understand the world the NRA envisions where all the good guys are toting guns thus no crime and evything is sunshine and bullet casings. I genuinely don’t understand it. I watched La Pierre’s speech and I am now dumber for having done so. Such a pile of absolute shit.

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, Fez said:

Civil rights groups are considering challenging the new PA maps on the grounds that it violates the Voting Rights Act by reducing the number of minority-majority congressional districts from 2 to 1. 

Nevermind that there were only 2 in the first place because Republicans had packed as much of Philly as they could into as few districts as they could; and that these civil rights groups will have their issues better represented in Congress by the extra Democrats the new map will likely cause to get elected.

This is why we can't have nice things.

For fuck's sake. This is why Democrats will never win.

[Zorral]

44 minutes ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

These kids might be young, but they will be old enough to vote soon...and now they have adults behind them. They did what we lacked the will to do. They made it okay for people to come out and call the NRA and the politicians for what they are.

 

Um, some of us have been calling out these people for frackin' decades, OK?  And were called conspiracy heads, paranoids, silly billies, etc. for it -- until bushwa 2 arrived and suddenly a whole bunch of people looked around and started to tell us who had been calling their attention to everything from attacks on women's reproductive rights to incarceration to well you name it all along.  Now they are telling us YOU NEED TO VOTE -- when they didn't bother for many elections.

[Zorral]

8 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

I don’t know that I’ve seen him sell an idea so hard in his entire presidency. It’s not a high bar - he has no real convictions other than the messages he discovered worked for him on the campaign trail.

I don’t understand the world the NRA envisions where all the good guys are toting guns thus no crime and evything is sunshine and bullet casings. I genuinely don’t understand it. I watched La Pierre’s speech and I am now dumber for having done so. Such a pile of absolute shit.

When will it enter sane people's awareness that NONE of this is about logic, rationality or anything except power and money and to get it all -- and to do that they believe they need to destroy the United States and its government that hold them back.  It is ALL ABOUT creating chaos as much as possible behind which they get everything and do everything they want.

[Martell Spy]

39 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Attentions spans may be short, but how short the time until another mass shooting occurs?  Not a long enough span of time, never long enough.

Rubio may be a crisis actor, he has set back the guns cause so much singlehandedly.

[Martell Spy]

15 minutes ago, Mexal said:

He is using the exact same language that Wayne LaPierre used this morning at CPAC. We "must harden our schools". I really hate America sometimes.

We do need " out of the box solutions" though, once Wayne tells us what they are. Maybe he will explain how to pay for armed guards on budgets slashed by Republicans.

[LongRider]

3 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

We do need " out of the box solutions" though, once Wayne tells us what they are. Maybe he will explain how to pay for armed guards on budgets slashed by Republicans.

Armed guards for every school, or just the schools for the suburban white kids?

[Mexal]

7 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

We do need " out of the box solutions" though, once Wayne tells us what they are. Maybe he will explain how to pay for armed guards on budgets slashed by Republicans.

He doesn't want armed guards. Those already exist. They did at Parkland. The guard didn't want to engage because he had a hand gun and the killer had full body armor and an AR-15. Those guards don't get paid enough to die in a flurry of bullets. 

What Trump does want is more guns in the schools which means more teachers/coaches which means more guns sold. And this is also a way to bypass gun laws in states. And like the situation in Parkland, it'll do nothing because determined mass murderers will wear easily obtainable body armor.

[Fragile Bird]

I fon’t know about you guys, but I went through grade school, high school, university and law school. I had some great teachers in those years, quite a few ok teachers, some shitty teachers, and a couple of nut cases. Friends of mine had teachers they out and out called sociopaths.

When I was young we traded stories about the strange and cruel ways teachers punished young children. When I was in university we traded stories about the fucking asshole things professors did to students.

Now, imagine those teachers with guns.

 

[TrueMetis]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

They should arm the pupils as well.

Arm the Children

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Civil rights groups are considering challenging the new PA maps on the grounds that it violates the Voting Rights Act by reducing the number of minority-majority congressional districts from 2 to 1. 

Nevermind that there were only 2 in the first place because Republicans had packed as much of Philly as they could into as few districts as they could; and that these civil rights groups will have their issues better represented in Congress by the extra Democrats the new map will likely cause to get elected.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I've always wondered if the creation of Majority-minority districts prior to the 1994 election is what, in part, led to Gingrich's "Republican Revolution" in the House of Representatives in 1994?

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/13/us/the-1994-election-voters-did-racial-redistricting-undermine-democrats.html

 

[Mindwalker]

1 hour ago, Morpheus said:

Orange shitpile is on TV fully embracing the more guns in school “solution”. The fuckwit is genuinely incapable of making a good decision.

I know, I saw it on the news and it was even more disturbing than reading about this horrible suggestion...

[The Wedge]

This really says a lot about highly-trained and hyper-aware good guys with guns being able to stop a bad guy with at gun.

 

 

[S John]

39 minutes ago, Mexal said:

He doesn't want armed guards. Those already exist. They did at Parkland. The guard didn't want to engage because he had a hand gun and the killer had full body armor and an AR-15. Those guards don't get paid enough to die in a flurry of bullets. 

What Trump does want is more guns in the schools which means more teachers/coaches which means more guns sold. And this is also a way to bypass gun laws in states. And like the situation in Parkland, it'll do nothing because determined mass murderers will wear easily obtainable body armor.

I find the suggestion of arming teachers extremely frustrating because while it *might* lower some of the death tolls in these incidents it does nothing to address the mental health problem or the gun problem.  

This Cruz kid is somewhat unique in that he wasn't killed (by himself or by police) in the event.  Most of these folks are entirely prepared to die, and many places that have been shot up DO have armed security, so armed teachers aren't really a deterrent so much as they are one possible avenue towards reducing casualties.  In an ambush style attack, it doesn't matter how well armed or trained someone is, the perpetrator is going to get off a number of rounds before someone appropriately armed can react.  And that's if you're lucky.  Nobody, not even highly trained people, can maintain that kind of awareness all the time.  Even highly trained and well armed cops and military sometimes freeze or react poorly in a life or death situation and it is unfair to ask this of school teachers.  Intensive repetitive training is the best bet for overcoming those perfectly normal human reactions to fear and stress. 

Teachers are already underpaid and underappreciated, and now on top of their regular responsibilities they are asked to act as security guards so that Republicans can keep that sweet, sweet NRA money rolling in.  It's a really sad state of affairs that this is the solution R's and the NRA have come up with after 20 years of regular mass shootings.  Shifting the responsibility for school kids not being massacred by assault rifles at school onto the shoulders of their teachers.  Nobody should have to bear that responsibility and that is the entire point wanting sensible gun control.

Again, maybe I'm misreading the situation but I feel like this suggestion of turning our schools into fortresses with armed guards isn't playing well.  It's too obviously comfortable for R's and the NRA to be worth a damn.  I think the public is ready for them to give some ground on this by banning some shit, we'll see if they can tap dance their way out of it, but I can see this hurting them at the polls.