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20 children, 6 Adults dead in Connecticut elementary school shooting

Twilight Sky

» s t r a w b e r r y fields ♪
273
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11
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  • Seen Aug 7, 2013
Though I'd put my two cents here.

Arming teachers and putting security guards in the classroom does absolutely nothing. Let's put it this way: There's absolutely no positive way to be 100% safe, plain and simple, since anything can happen on just about any time whatsoever. I'm on the side that it could potentially be psychologically scarring to kids to see a big, scary, military man standing in the classroom all day, preparing to shoot my own teacher, should she get out of hand with her own weapon which she shouldn't be having in the first place.

You want to make school, in the end, a positive and yet safe environment for kids to learn. You can't have one thing without taking out the other. Strengthening security albeit being "safer", would make schools feel more like a prison than a place for actual academic and social growth, like it's supposed to be.

I cannot say anything as far as gun laws are concerned, I'm just expressing my views psychologically. Personally, I'd feel uncomfortable if I was in a classroom knowing that there was a gun in the vicinity. All it takes is one bad day(everyone has them), and all that training goes out the window.
 

Khawill

<3
1,567
Posts
11
Years
No offense but I'd rather be shot by a gun then burned by a homemade moltave or stabbed by a knife, or hit by a car. At least guns are lethal and the death is quicker. I can't justify murder, but we have the choice between making it less lethal, but more painful, or more lethal and more deaths. It is an easy choice for you to make, but there is a reason weapons are made more and more lethal, favoring instant kills over maiming.
 

twocows

The not-so-black cat of ill omen
4,307
Posts
15
Years
Though I'd put my two cents here.

Arming teachers and putting security guards in the classroom does absolutely nothing.
Except protect everyone, but that doesn't really matter, you're right.
Let's put it this way: There's absolutely no positive way to be 100% safe, plain and simple, since anything can happen on just about any time whatsoever.
The point is to minimize incidents like that, not prevent them altogether, which is obviously impossible.
I'm on the side that it could potentially be psychologically scarring to kids to see a big, scary, military man standing in the classroom all day,
Have you ever been to a mall? Security guards aren't usually "big, scary military men." They're fat old guys with a baton. I'm saying, give them a low-impact gun or a tazer or something. And you don't have them stand in the classroom all day, you have one watching a set of cameras and one patrolling the hallways.
preparing to shoot my own teacher, should she get out of hand with her own weapon which she shouldn't be having in the first place.
What? Obviously you'd have one or the other, and I already conceded that security guards would be a better system.

You want to make school, in the end, a positive and yet safe environment for kids to learn. You can't have one thing without taking out the other. Strengthening security albeit being "safer", would make schools feel more like a prison than a place for actual academic and social growth, like it's supposed to be.
We had a cop who would patrol our school when I was in high school and it didn't make it feel like a prison. He wasn't there all the time, but he was there often, and it didn't make it "feel like a prison" at all.

I cannot say anything as far as gun laws are concerned, I'm just expressing my views psychologically. Personally, I'd feel uncomfortable if I was in a classroom knowing that there was a gun in the vicinity. All it takes is one bad day(everyone has them), and all that training goes out the window.
Yeah, all those cops that go on killing sprees. Clearly, proper training is useless in the face of a bad day.
 

Twilight Sky

» s t r a w b e r r y fields ♪
273
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11
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  • Seen Aug 7, 2013
Except protect everyone, but that doesn't really matter, you're right.

So they're supposed to take on superhero-like duties, now?

Have you ever been to a mall? Security guards aren't usually "big, scary military men." They're fat old guys with a baton. I'm saying, give them a low-impact gun or a tazer or something. And you don't have them stand in the classroom all day, you have one watching a set of cameras and one patrolling the hallways.

You aren't a child, so you don't know if they think that heavily armed guy isn't a "big, scary, military man". Other than that, you raise valid points as far as tazers and whatnot are concerned, just keep the guards away from the classrooms to minimize psychological scarring.

What? Obviously you'd have one or the other, and I already conceded that security guards would be a better system.

Ah, I see. Forgive me for that, then.

We had a cop who would patrol our school when I was in high school and it didn't make it feel like a prison. He wasn't there all the time, but he was there often, and it didn't make it "feel like a prison" at all.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is it depends on what direction you really take as far as strengthening security. And remember that you're talking about a cop here. I don't know whether you were talking about actual school security guards, or SROs(School Resource Officers). You want to have more SROs? Fine, so be it, have them patrol around school grounds. No one really notices them much anyway.

Arming school security guards? That's an issue that I'm iffy about. You're trading safety with exposing children to lethal weapons 24/7. Which leads me to my next point:


Yeah, all those cops that go on killing sprees. Clearly, proper training is useless in the face of a bad day.

And you know this, how? The pure definition of "training someone"(to me, at least, correct me if I'm wrong here) is to prepare them for the everyday demands and tasks and responsibilities that they're going to be faced with day-to-day. You can include "this is what you should do in an event that you have a bad day", but does that mean that they're actually going to follow that procedure, if, say, they actually do?

For example, at my old high school, you have your standard SRO in the front office. They weren't the first thing you saw when you walked in the school, but they were present nonetheless. And sometimes there were several on at the same time, depending on the day. Their duty consisted of dealing with things such as fighting between students, disturbances, and the like. That, I have no issues with, and such lies within the duties of an SRO.

School security guards, though? They aren't cops by any means, they're just security. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe I'm just speaking too much out of personal experience, when SROs can do their jobs just fine, why fix something that technically isn't broken(in this case, anyway)? The school security guards do nothing more than apprehend students that cause trouble and take them to the SRO to deal with, and make sure that students have gone to class, nobody is roaming the hallways too much, etc etc. Why do they need a lethal weapon here? And as much as police "brutality" occurs(which is a separate topic in itself), how would you know that the school security guards won't misuse their given weapons in any way, shape or form? I'm sorry, but I'd personally be uncomfortable with that.

Leave the weapons to the people who are supposed to have them, and know how to use them best. You really don't know what goes on through a person's mind when they're having a really particularly stressful day. Security guards are human just like anyone else, and they are just about prone to everyday stresses like anyone else. Having a gun in their vicinity doesn't make things any easier, better, or safer for that matter. Especially when these people are around students every single second, minute, and hour of the day. SROs aren't around students, and really don't interact with students often, which is the difference here.


I apologize if some of what I said doesn't make sense, I'll be happy to clarify more if you'd like.
 

Mr. X

It's... kinda effective?
2,391
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17
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Lets point out some irony.

Republicans say more police and easier access to mental health care will help to prevent this from ever happening, again. I guess that explains why this massacre happened, as Republicans have been cutting and trying to cut funding that funds or would have funded more police and mental health care.

Arming teachers is, in theory, a good idea. However, all it will do is change some headlines to "Teacher beats student, caught on tape!" to "Teacher shoots student, caught on tape!" Sure, arm teachers. But lets get rid of the overly agressive teachers, the ones who like to beat on their students, first otherwise this will backfire badly.
 
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10,769
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14
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I didn't bring up the China incident. I did bring up a different example which you failed to even acknowledge. But the point is that plenty of ordinary things can be lethal, and on a large scale, too. Banning guns just takes protection away from innocent citizens and does little to stop the flow of illegal weaponry (banning things rarely seems to stop the trade of them; just look at prohibition and marijuana as two examples). You're just castrating people who go through the proper channels, nothing more.
As much as I'd like to see a ban on guns, I didn't suggest that. I just said different things are lethal to different degrees.

You didn't bring up the China issue, but I did because you were talking about how someone could kill without a gun and I was offering a counterexample of someone who failed to kill anyone because he had no gun. But okay, you mentioned chemicals as one thing that can kill. Yes, okay, do you mean by poisoning someone? That would require someone to have access to food or drinks or something like that. Couldn't just barge into a school like someone with a gun could. And if you mean some kind of chemical bomb then you'd have to know how to make that. Even terrorist suicide bombers screw up making explosives so I'd expect a crazy person would have mixed results. As for cars, potentially lethal, but you have to first have a license to own one, money to buy one, and even if you could steal one it's not exactly a concealable weapon. You can't bring one into a movie theatre, and people can at least try to run away from one if they see someone driving crazy.

Then require them. That's perfectly reasonable; I have no problems with such a law. If you think there's a loophole, bring it up, talk about it. I'm opposed to making it harder to get guns through the proper channels or especially banning them outright. If you think there's some oversight, have a dialogue about that before anything else.
Pro-gun-control people have been suggesting this be fixed. It's been on the lips of everyone asking for more gun control, but not so much on anti-gun-control folks, such as one of the NRA leaders who spoke yesterday (even if, as I think I've read, most NRA members are okay with closing loopholes).
 

twocows

The not-so-black cat of ill omen
4,307
Posts
15
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As much as I'd like to see a ban on guns, I didn't suggest that. I just said different things are lethal to different degrees.

You didn't bring up the China issue, but I did because you were talking about how someone could kill without a gun and I was offering a counterexample of someone who failed to kill anyone because he had no gun. But okay, you mentioned chemicals as one thing that can kill. Yes, okay, do you mean by poisoning someone? That would require someone to have access to food or drinks or something like that. Couldn't just barge into a school like someone with a gun could. And if you mean some kind of chemical bomb then you'd have to know how to make that. Even terrorist suicide bombers screw up making explosives so I'd expect a crazy person would have mixed results. As for cars, potentially lethal, but you have to first have a license to own one, money to buy one, and even if you could steal one it's not exactly a concealable weapon. You can't bring one into a movie theatre, and people can at least try to run away from one if they see someone driving crazy.
Terrorist suicide bombers screw up making a very specific explosive designed to be undetectable. It's a lot easier to make household chemical weapons without that requirement, I'd imagine, and crazy people aren't always stupid, just crazy. That said, I don't know exactly how hard it would be, I'm not versed enough on the subject. As for a car, the easiest way would be to steal one or "borrow" one if they didn't have one.

If you're not suggesting a ban or making it unreasonably hard for someone like me to get a gun for personal protection, then I don't really have a problem. I just don't want to be denied access to something that could potentially save not only my life, but possibly others', as well.

Pro-gun-control people have been suggesting this be fixed. It's been on the lips of everyone asking for more gun control, but not so much on anti-gun-control folks, such as one of the NRA leaders who spoke yesterday (even if, as I think I've read, most NRA members are okay with closing loopholes).
I wouldn't know much about that, but like I said, I'm all for closing loopholes.
 

Ivysaur

Grass dinosaur extraordinaire
21,082
Posts
17
Years
I think guns shouldn't be outright banned but that anybody who wants to get one should go through the same examinations required to drive a car: being taught how to use them, passing a test to prove you can use them, passing a medical examination to ensure your eyesight and all is okay, and going throught a mental assessment to make sure you aren't crazy. Like driving licences, they should be renewed every other year (5, 10). And, of course, no assault rifles anywhere. A 10-shot gun should be good enough to defend yourself from any boogeyman, let the professional stuff for professionals (police, army, and all those people who use weapons for a living).

And again, it's a matter of education. Here in Europe we aren't told to carry a gun in all cases to defend ourselves. As a result, I have only seen one gun in my entire life (a policeman's), nobody wants to get any (other than professionals), it's absurdly hard to get your hands on one, and the amount of shootings here is anecdotal, with no yearly carnages or anything remotely similar. And we feel safe, not because we have a weapon to defend ourselves, but because we assume that nobody will use one to hurt us in the first place
 

Bluerang1

pin pin
2,543
Posts
14
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Lets point out some irony.

Republicans say more police and easier access to mental health care will help to prevent this from ever happening, again. I guess that explains why this massacre happened, as Republicans have been cutting and trying to cut funding that funds or would have funded more police and mental health care.

Arming teachers is, in theory, a good idea. However, all it will do is change some headlines to "Teacher beats student, caught on tape!" to "Teacher shoots student, caught on tape!" Sure, arm teachers. But lets get rid of the overly agressive teachers, the ones who like to beat on their students, first otherwise this will backfire badly.

Or "Student steals teacher's gun and massacres class"
 

Mr. X

It's... kinda effective?
2,391
Posts
17
Years
I find it funny that a lot of people who own guns for their 'defense', also consider themselves religious.

Strange. Aren't religious people supposed to put their faith and trust in God, for all things? If they are religious then shouldn't they place their faith and trust in God for their protection, instead of putting their faith and trust in a man-made object?

Anyway, since I feel like playing both sides of the gun control arguement, here are the top 30 reasons to oppose gun control.

http://guninformation.org/reasons.html
 
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twocows

The not-so-black cat of ill omen
4,307
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15
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For the record, there are plenty of liberals that oppose stricter gun controls. Like myself, for instance. I would appreciate it if people would stop painting us all with a single brush.
 

Hannah

beep bop boop
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Why the lump do people even sell guns, knives or whatever?

This is heartbreaking. I'm at a loss for words. I don't understand why a person can do this kind of thing -- and I don't think he even is a person. Taking a life of seventeen angels. It's horrifying to think about. My prayers to the families who won't be able to enjoy this Christmas.
 

Utzipher

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  • Seen Feb 4, 2014
About what's being said on gun control, I just wanted to throw in that they outlawed cocaine and other harmful substances here in the States. How's that working out?

I blame stupidity for what happened - the mother knew her son was mentally unstable and did not properly secure her guns. I do believe in restrictions though when it comes to the number of guns you can own, there is no reason to have as many as she did. Not sure if that's been mentioned yet.
 

twocows

The not-so-black cat of ill omen
4,307
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Why the lump do people even sell guns, knives or whatever?
Guns: protection, sport (hunting), hobbyists (collectors mostly)
Knives: protection, cutting things (food, rope, packaging, anything else that might potentially need cutting)
Whatever: I didn't know there was a large market for "whatever"
 
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