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I can't believe Trump said this!


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I'm watching the news and Trump is saying - it took the police eight minutes to get to the school when the shooting started, if the teachers carried guns...

Is he really saying that school teachers should carry guns so they can shoot the children? THAT'S INSANE!

Maybe I got it wrong, but it came across like that?

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Sure, that's a really fantastic idea! Give them a Glock. 9mm is great!! Then the teacher, one of four or five in each school who is going to have all of that wonderful special training out the school district's massive budget because school security money has been stripped out of the Trump budget but hey, school districts are rich, and the teachers aren't going to be upset that learning to shoot and be ready to shoot and all that will be without any additional compensation because they are going to want to volunteer to protect the kids, and the teacher is going to hear the AR-15 being fired nearby or maybe not so nearby but the teacher was taught how to put on his bullet-proof vest and unlock the Glock from the locked steel cabinet where it's stored to keep a deranged kid from getting his (or her) hands on it, then load his Glock and fill his pockets with bullets and run to where it sounds like the shooter is located and when he sees the shooter point his Glock at the shooter, the one who has the AR-15 or AK-47 or whatever similar automatic combat weapon, and kill him with one shot or two or three — bang, bang, bang — while dodging the bullets coming out of the automatic AR-15 or whatever, bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang in the same amount of time as the teacher's Glock is going bang bang bang. The teacher shouldn't worry about how much larger and how much faster the bullets are from an AK-47 or AR15 compared to the Glock. What a great idea! The fact that 76% of all school teachers are women shouldn't make us worried. Sign 'em up! It's such a great idea!!! We should all tweet Trump and tell him what a f***ing fantasy of an idea that is going to be. Wow! Just WOW!! Let's all get our local teachers to sign up now. Right?

Colin  :icon_geek:

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     I can just see Colin's scenario playing out.  Pretty straightforward: See the kid with the gun, the armed teacher shoots and kills the kid with the gun.

     Then it comes out the kid with the gun wasn't the shooter.  He'd actually just talked the kid with the gun into giving it up; he'd just taken it away from the real shooter.  He was a hero, having risked his life to save who knows how many other kids' lives.  He's now a dead hero.  Oh, and so are three bystanders who got hit because all that training she had with a handgun didn't calm her nerves when it came to shooting at a student, and in a crowded hallway it wasn't the easy to hit only her target.  Yeah, that would go down great.

     Plus, there's always going to be a bad day or two for any teacher.  How about a really bad day and one goes round the bend just a little and he happens to be armed?  Armed and demented, in a school.  Man, would a newspaper have  field day with that!

     Yeah, wonderful suggestion.  Almost makes you wonder how much of that NRA blood money got into Trump's hands.

C

 

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Just noted on the news that security officers in Broward County schools will now be carrying rifles officially making schools an armed camp. Not to worry, most of those officers are already deputies in the sheriff's department, and probably not the ones accused of drug dealing and rape we see in the weekly news. Wonder how many parents are considering home schooling? 

Does it matter that many of these shooters were bullied and learned to hate the school when administrators failed to help them? What about that group of adolescents over there who laughed at the oddball student when he was bullied, probably just glad it wasn't their issue.

I am amazed in the aftermath of last week's shooting spree just how many students have come forward to say they knew this guy was going to do it. One girl said she told her teachers a dozen times that the boy was flipping out and bragging about his guns and knives. Yeah, let's  give those teachers guns to protect....who? I imagine an armed teacher would be high on the target list for any shooter...try explaining that to the husband and two small kids she has at home when she is dead. 

Tough love: no cell phones allowed in school, make them listen to teachers instead of texting. Metal detectors at every door, bring a finger nail file to school and you are so outta there. Violent students will be expelled, period. Sounds like some of the places I have worked where security was valued over social interaction. The kids better get used to it now before Trump takes away the rest of our rights and freedoms.

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I live in a rural county. There's a school about 2 miles from my home and they had a community pot luck 2 weeks ago with students, parents and neighbors all invited. The classes all performed goofy songs and skits, and a generally great time was had by all. The school itself has 3 classes - K-2, 3-5, 6-8. Then they're off to high school 15 miles down the road. So you get a feel for it, the 6-8 class has 7 kids total. (Including one forlorn but plucky solo 6th grader as the solo boy.) The two younger classes have 10 kids each.

The local sheriff substation is about a mile from the high school, so 15 miles away. And, of course, the single duty officer at any given moment might be at the other end of the district, so 30 miles away.

What's your plan? Somebody walks in to our school with an AR-15 with a 30-round clip, she won't even have to reload. No cell phones? Perfect - one snip and the landline is down for the count. The perp could be two counties over before anybody knows a thing. Full-time security guard? No problem if your first shot is good.

Meanwhile, back in California at my old 2000-student high school, kids will have to show up an hour before school just to make it through security. (So the bandies will have to be showing up about 0630. AC Transit doesn't even run buses that early!) And of course there are the added costs of all this security. Don't forget replacing windows with bulletproof glass. And air conditioning systems with tamper-resistant seals. And...and...and...

And the inevitable result is ever more cleverer murderers out there.

Yes, Trump is anything but the solution. (I can already hear his disparaging "I knew it wouldn't work!") But hearing just naysayers doesn't do any good either. What CAN we do?

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I guess one thing that would have helped, that CAN help now, is for the adults to listen to the kids.  The kids knew this shooter was trouble, and did tell people.  No one listened.

Another suggestion: there could be a national hotline set up for kids to communicate concerns.  Each school could have something like that, but the attention the listener paid to the info received would vary all over the map.  If there was a national source, then what was done with the info developed could be monitored, giving the individual schools more motivations to do something.

And another: there could be more attention paid to mental illness at the schools.  It would cost money to put a trained observer in each school, but what price are we paying now with all the shootings?  The federal government could absorb the cost, and it would fit Trump's plan to increase employment.  How many thousand schools do we have, anyway?

And another: each school could form a committee of students whose purpose would be to see which kids were the disenfranchised ones.  Teachers should be doing that now, but aren't.  Kids know other kids better that the teachers do, anyway.  They could meet regularly and discuss who might need help and pass that along to someone in administration who was in charge of working with possibly dangerous students.

No doubt there'd be reasons given why none of this is feasible.  We're much better as a society at saying no than yes.

C

 

 

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2 hours ago, Cole Parker said:

No doubt there'd be reasons given why none of this is feasible.  We're much better as a society at saying no than yes.

Putting on my cynics cap and gown - I sometime wonder, viewed from here across the pond, if you qualify as a society at all. 

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Still attired as before -

Divided to the ‘n’th degree, Be it religious, ethnic,  socio-economic or any other ways and combinations you can think of.  A set of tribes occupying the same physical territory but having little in the way of positive relations with each other. Where ‘n’ is likely to be significant in comparison to the total population.

Stand it may, but at what cost in blood and treasure that leaves festering sores. Think 1861-5 or  this side of the pond:  1690 Battle of the Boyne

 Before anyone else says it - I know I should  ‘first cast the beam out of mine own eye ‘.

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I'm pretty sure, Pedro, that we are more along the lines of a so-so-ciety. 

For the record, I'm researching some of the items we discussed earlier. The US, for example, has some 90,000 elementary schools (students ~5-14 yrs old), and 26500 public and 10500 private secondary schools (students 15-18 yrs old). It does NOT look good for mental health evaluations out there. With only about 32,000 total school psychologists and 60% of those looking to change professions, it doesn't seem to be a promising field of endeavor.

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When I was in the 10th grade (in 2004) I took Contemporary Issues and Public Policy as my elective Social Studies class. We discussed the Columbine shooting that happened on April 20, 1999. George W. Bush was president. The subject of having a staff of guards with guns at every high school had been suggested and rejected as too expensive. Then the idea of arming teachers was suggested and rejected by everyone in my class and the teacher as ridiculous. In my opinion it still is. 

Colin  :icon_geek:

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The school resource officer, Scot Peterson, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was dismissed (he "resigned") because when he heard the shooting he never entered the building.

For god's sake, he heard an assault weapon almost constantly firing — an experienced shooter could fire as many as 45 rounds in one minute. He had a pistol. WTF was he supposed to do? Run into a three-story building and run up and down the stairs, not knowing exactly where the shooter was, who he was or what he looked like, and end up being the eighteenth casualty at MSD High? What were his chances of shooting the shooter? And don't say he was better trained! The shooter, Nikolas Cruz, owned multiple rifles and assault weapons and automatic pistols, at least ten in all, and regularly practiced using them. He had multiple high-capacity rounds for his AR-15 as he rampaged through the three floors of Building 12.

I'm pissed that Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is dumping on Scot Peterson. He's being used as a sacrificial lamb. It lets the Sheriff divert attention from the failures of his department to respond to multiple warnings they received about Nikolas Cruz.

So, now the Sheriff has said that when students return to the school, there will be officers who are armed – with semi-automatic weapons. So when the students return to school it's going to look like an armed camp. Great. And what's he going to do for the 34 other high schools in his jurisdiction? What about the 41 middle schools in his jurisdiction? The 137 elementary schools in his jurisdiction? Who's going to pay for this? It's sure not in the Sheriff's budget. Federal funds for school security have been cut drastically by Trump, so no help from that avenue.

So what's the solution? Make assault weapons illegal. That's a start. At least it'll let the school resource officers be more evenly armed as the shooters in the future.

Colin  :icon_geek:

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To do something to effectively counter the present situation you need first to look at a few simple statistics, then consider the measures needed.

Statistic number one: the more guns people own the greater the number of mass shootings. This applies equally to different countries as well as to different US states. Those countries and states with less guns per head of population have less homicides - it's not rocket science.

Statistic number two: countries were mass shootings have taken place (it isn't restricted to America) have taken immediate action to curb gun ownership, tighten controls significantly. The result in all those countries has been to reduce or eliminate mass shootings. This is in contrast to the action taken by the Trump administration which made owning guns easier.

Here is the link to those statistics: https://qz.com/1212809/compare-us-mass-shootings-and-gun-control-to-germany-china-russia-switzerland-and-australia/

What to do in America: restrict gun ownership, introduce very strict gun control. The ONLY effective measures are those which address the issue at source (eliminate the guns), not those which propose counter measures (arm the teachers and blockade the schools).

The majority of Americans realise they have a problem with the gun situation. Now they need to get rid of those guns. If other countries can pass laws to curb gun ownership, it is reasonable to expect that America can do the same. Of course, you may need to change the government first (something that would be welcomed around the world!).

 

 

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There is another problem: there are no centralized statistics about how many assault rifles there are in the United States. Banning new sales is a start, but it doesn't solve anything until we can restrict ownership and eliminate the sale of bullets for those types of guns to the public.

Colin  :icon_geek:

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We the people have had enough.  But William's right: we need a change in government to change the gun ownership laws.  So what's needed are activists to start a pledge drive, or something of that ilk, wherein anyone running for Congress signs off on curbing gun sales and gun ownership.  The ones who won't sign such a promise should be part of a campaign where their names are widely broadcast.  Then we the people can vote against the gun nuts and for safety in our schools.  We need to make this a major issue.  We need to take back our government.

C

 

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Some school administrators don't see this as a teachable moment, and for them I am sorry that their students won't learn a valuable lesson. Perhaps a few school administrators will get fired this fall when elections roll around...I sure hope so. How can any school teach government and politics without addressing free speech? I guess some can, and that makes them idiots and worse, they are bullies.

 https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/schools-suspending-kids-joining-gun-control-walkouts-183124731.html

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How do you propose to change the government to get your legislation passed? Neither Demo or Repub administrations, with or without congressional majorities, have succeeded in doing so since 2007, and that's assuming either side has really even tried. (That one was to stiffen - slightly - the background check process. Nothing else.) Even Obama fell short, issuing toothless Executive Actions vice serious Executive Orders.

As for the idiot principals denying young people the right to actively participate in democracy, they should be docked 2 days' pay for each day of a student's suspension. (Somebody smarter than me will have to make sure our junior geniuses don't game the system!) Maybe if all the government class teachers declared a field trip day for the protest? Or brought in a good lawyer (pro bono, of course) for the students?

What was it the police chief said in Young Frankenstein?

          "A riot is an ugly thingk... und I think it is just about time that ve had von!"

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A major problem of any two-party system is that it can be effectively blocked from taking necessary action by the presence of a minority interest group that has a presence within both political parties. Neither party will act due to fear of losing part of its support base. Only when a third political force comes into action can be deadlock be broken. It looks as if you need a third effective political party over there in the States, I know we need one here in the UK.

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4 hours ago, Nigel Gordon said:

 It looks as if you need a third effective political party over there in the States, I know we need one here in the UK.

If we could get ONE effective party over here I'd be satisfied.

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We've always been a country with disparate views.  But the ascendance of Trump has upped the ante.  The rancor, I think, began with Bill Clinton.  He was followed by the questionable people's choice of Bush.  Then came Obama and the hardliners who hated the ground he walked on, and he's been followed by the most contentious one of all.  We desperately need a middle-of-the-road, charismatic leader installed to try to bring the majority of the country back together again and do away with all this divisiveness. 

C

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I'd prefer a younger president once more. Joe is already 75 and would turn 78 just weeks after his election -- before his inauguration even. He'd make a helluva great advisor, but that's as far as I'm willing to go. It seems that we're in the process of skipping a generation and I believe it's their turn to lead. Or give it a try.

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