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Ohio School Janitors To Carry Handguns


Camy

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A rural Ohio school district will arm its janitors with handguns to protect students in the wake of last month's shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.

The school board has voted unanimously to have the four custodians at the district's nursery and main school begin carrying handguns, the Toledo Blade reports.

In a message to parents on the district's website, Superintendent Jamison Grime said the school board decided to arm staff in order to "substantially enhance and strengthen our security efforts."

Yep, more guns. The world edges further towards utter insanity.

http://news.sky.com/...-carry-handguns

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EleC, when you disarm them, does it cross your mind that they're carrying them for the trip to and from school, not for use therein? I guess it doesn't make any difference, you have to take them away, but if they get attacked outside school and are defenseless, it would be terrible.

I can't imagine living in that environment. The kids must be in survival mode all the time, rather than worrying about silly things like multiplying fractions and parsing sentencies.

And then they evaluate teachers on test scores and fire the good ones.

C

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I think that the key word here is rural.

I have learned that there is a significant difference in culture between the cities and the country.

In the country, we are raised around guns. We grow up hunting. A great many of us are veterans. Guns aren't an object of fear. They are simply another tool.

Locally there are two serious nuisance pests: wild hogs (wildpiginfo.msstate.edu) and nutria rat (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coypu). Wild hogs are dangerous and cause huge amounts of crop damage and kill and eat everything in the woods. Nutria rats are serious pests that aren't native to our local ecosystem. They cause a great deal of damage in our sensitive wetlands.

Wild pigs are no joke. They grow tusks and are quite aggressive in the wild. The haven't killed many people lately- we know to look out for them. They "cut" people and kill domestic animals all the time. Their meat is no good because they pick up deadly parasites in the wild. I've got a wicked scar from a wild pig I might show you sometime. :blush:

Neither of these rather serious pests have natural predators. It takes a powerful rifle round to kill them. The much vilified AR-15 rifle and its little brother, the Mini-14 are the rifle of choice to kill these beasts. I've fired both.

I want to introduce you to some family history:

plr_zps0c4fb36c.jpg

The first is a Pennsylvania long rifle. In the late 1700s, one of my ancestors carried one from New York to my state when it was only a territory. It fought in the War of 1812. It is a treasure and it belongs to MY family. It was appraised at being worth $120,000 but it will stay in the family.

Winchester_1894_zpsd966424f.jpg

The Second is a Winchester 1894. It belonged to my great grandfather. It fed the family through hard winters and bad economy.

M1Rifle_zps4f97e3cf.jpg

The last is a M1 Garand carried by my father in Korea. With it, he won a Silver Star and two Bronze Stars (in addition to two more Bronze Stars he won in WWII).

This isn't just my heritage. This is my family, our culture, history and where we came from.

I am completely unwilling to give it up because there are gang-bangers and crazy people and the country is too squeamish to deal with the people that are the real problem.

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I completely support James in the point he is making. I grew up 'rural' and the guns we owned were the tools we used to rid the henhouse of foxes and the barns of rats, and to harvest much-appreciated protein for the winter months.

Now that I have become 'citified' I perceive the distinction he is making every day, both in the headlines and by the sirens I hear outside my windows. If it were not impossible to achieve, I would urge us to go back to the Middle Ages for the solution: build walls around every city, stop everyone who enters at the gates and confiscate their weapons, and enforce a 'no deadly weapons' code within the walls with draconian measures.

Merkin

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Gun control and how to keep our kids safe aren't easily corrected problems. The case of the shooting in Bakersfield this week is a perfect case in point.

All gun control arugments for and against that I've heard seem to say we should ban or rigorously control handguns and automatic rifles, but leave hunting guns like shotguns alone. All safe-school arguments seem to say if we'd lock doors and have armed police inside, we'd stop in-school shootings.

Yet, this week, a kid came into a school that had an armed policemen assigened to it and used a to-be-allowed gun, a shotgun, to avenge the bullying that had been perpetrated against him. So much for thinking banning hanguns and automatic rifles, and/or for having armed policemen in the schools, will stop such tragedies.

The thing is, we generally know why these shootings happen. The two main causes are we don't get help, sufficient help, for people we've identified as mentally ill, and we don't have zero tolerance for bullies in some of our schools. In this instant case, people knew the kid was being bullied. I don't know if the school principal knew, but since a lot of the students knew, he absolutely should have known. All cases of bullying need to be reported to school authorities, not just by the bullied but by anyone witnessing them. That should be the policy, and if the principal didn't have that in place, then this happened on his watch.

I personally don't like all the guns in our society, but once they're threre, they're pretty hard to control. I think it's easier to correct or mitigate societal anomalies than it is take all the guns away.

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I think I could agree with you more fervently, Cole, if you were to include help for the bullies. We cannot overlook the sad fact that bullies are made, not born. Remediation for the wrongdoer is not an impossible aim. At an earlier point in this country's civic life the teaching of community-based ideals was part of our public education.

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Sounds fine to me, James. We need to bullying by identifying the bullies. If we then can correct their behavior, it's a win - win.

As you say, they're made. So correcting the attitudes of the parents is probably involved. Adults aren't quite as malleable as teens. But it's certainly worth the effort.

C

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One of my teachers in high school was a WWII veteran. He was a Marine that had lost his left leg from the knee down on Okinawa. He was the gruffest teacher in our school by a large margin but always a favorite of the students. Mr. Porter taught civics and Mississippi history.

I wouldn't have a problem with people like Mr. Porter packing.

What we don't want or need are wanna-be Rambos running around with a bigger caliber weapon than their IQ.

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EleC, when you disarm them, does it cross your mind that they're carrying them for the trip to and from school, not for use therein? I guess it doesn't make any difference, you have to take them away, but if they get attacked outside school and are defenseless, it would be terrible.

If I disarm a kid, that's not the end of the conversation - that's the beginning. I always ask them why they felt it necessary to carry a weapon in the first place. Nine times out of ten, it's a knucklehead trying to show off. There have been cases where kids have told me that they were carrying because they thought they were going to get jumped on the way home. In these cases, I call their parents/guardians to have them picked up, and if they're not available, I'll drive them home myself. We also make a report to the police, of course, not that it helps. It doesn't solve the problem, but it's all I can do.

I can't imagine living in that environment. The kids must be in survival mode all the time, rather than worrying about silly things like multiplying fractions and parsing sentences.

And then they evaluate teachers on test scores and fire the good ones.

Took the words out of my mouth, Cole. If you're interested in the subject, here's some good books on teaching kids in poverty:

"How Children Succeed": http://www.amazon.com/dp/0547564651

"A Framework for Understanding Poverty": http://www.amazon.com/Framework-Understanding-Poverty-Ruby-Payne/dp/1929229488

"Whatever It Takes": http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Takes-Geoffrey-Canadas-America/dp/0547247966

I am completely unwilling to give it up because there are gang-bangers and crazy people and the country is too squeamish to deal with the people that are the real problem.

This may surprise some people, but I'm with you, James. I may be a lefty, but I'm not on the gun banning bandwagon. I just don't think it would make any difference. It wouldn't stop the gangs from carrying guns - they're already carrying illegal weapons. I think we've learned from alcohol prohibition and the drug war that banning something that people want will only create a violent underground economy. And sadly, people want murder weapons. If the question is "How do we stop murder?", I don't think we'll ever have a good answer. As long as there have been humans, there have been murderers.

And even though I'm in the city, I understand the necessity of hunting. I'm in an area with a lot of deer. We've killed and driven off all the wolves, so there aren't any natural predators. If we don't cull the herd, they'll overpopulate, possibly to dangerous levels.

Personally, I don't own a gun. I don't want to own a gun. But if someone else wants to own a gun, or five guns, or a giant gun that shoots smaller guns that shoot knives (patent pending), that's their right, and I'll stand up for it. I won't let murderers dictate the rights of the law-abiding.

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I agree with Elecivil I don't own a gun or want to get a gun but I don't think we shouldn't ban guns, and im left, but mostly centered left. im surprised with wilde pigs etc, shot guns don't work well?

If I had lived in a rural area and had lots of bears around etc, I would probably take a safety course and learn how to shoot etc, and would probably own a shotgun.

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The arguement seems to be that there are already too many guns out there and there is nothing that can be done. The mindset of the pro-gun people is that there should be no limits on guns. Then I suppose the only limit we can set is on the people that buy them.

Laws already exist to keep felons from owning guns, but we all know how well that works when guns can be purchased without a background check at gun shows. People with mental issues need to be banned from gun purchase. The ultimate result will be that violent crimes will all be elevated to the level of a felony to prevent gun owenership. Then if some felon is caught with a gun they need to be locked up big time as a threat to society.

But all these recent crimes were by young people who had access to guns through someone else. Gun theft is a felony, so you know what I would recommend. But just as someone can be charged as an accessory to a crime if they have some involvement I would suggest that those who own the stolen gun are guilty of being an accessory. Not securing a weapon is just plain stupid when there are kids around. As the Neo-Nazi father whose 10 year old son shot and killed him with his own gun found out the hard way. (personally, I don't blame the abused kid)

Unlock your guns, go to jail. The 2nd Ammendment only speaks to ownership. The NRA would have us believe that Americans should be able to own any kind of weapon. What's next, personal nuclear cannons? Those who framed the Constitution were unable to see the future, and today's politicians aren't any better. They might react when the guns are turned on them, we'll see.

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You have a good point, Chris. The Constitution was written when America was still a wilderness, law enforcement in the wilds was usually days away, and wild animals and uncivilized people roamed unchecked. Having a gun for private protection just made sense. The Second Amendment focused on gun ownership for self-protection, and this has been supported by the Supreme Court, which says gun ownership is permitted for this and other traditionally legal purposes.

Yet times have changed, and there's not much reason for most of us to own guns now. I can certainly see a parallel with the Bible. The Bible was written long ago when life was much different. The prohibitions listed in the Bible may have made sense then. Many of them don't now. Only a small number of people totally support those Bible prohibitions now. The same way the majority of Americans do not support totally open ownership and use of guns.

I think common sense should prevail, both religiously and constitutionally.

C

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The roots of 2nd amendment go back to the middle ages and European feudalism.

In Europe during those times, only the nobility (the rich and politically powerful) were allowed to have weapons and private armies. Serfs (commoners) were not allowed to own or carry weapons of any kind and were at the mercy of the nobility and their soldiers. The common man were effectively slaves and the ability to carry and own weapons was a class distinction of free men.

Colonial America was a vast wilderness and European powers like England, France and Spain did not have the ability to tightly control those areas. Weapons were a necessity of life on the frontier. One of the big advantages of leaving Europe to go to the colonies was the ability to live as free men which meant the ability to own property (which in Europe was held by the crown or noble houses and out of the reach of commoners) and own and carry weapons. Common people were able to live with a degree of freedom that was previously unknown.

As colonial America grew in population and wealth, the European powers attempted to assert more power and control over those areas. Severe taxes were imposed. Noblemen were given or purchased huge land grants by the crown in the colonies and the people that had developed those lands were just out of luck. Soldiers began the same policy of seizing and destroying citizens weapons to disastrous effect- many people simply starved because those they relied on those weapons to feed them. People that had known generations of living as free men were being treated like serfs again. This was one of the root causes of the American revolution.

During the American Revolution, one of the first things that British soldiers or the mercenaries that they employed did was to seize and/or destroy the colonists weapons whether or not they were a party to the conflict. They would take the colonists long rifles and wrap the barrels around trees rendering them useless. This one action caused more Tories (colonists loyal to England) to change sides than any other.

After the American revolution when the new government was formed, the right to bear arms was recognized as a fundamental right of free men and was second only to freedom of expression (the first amendment) in the Bill of Rights. It was the intention of the framers of the Constitution that free men should have the same firepower available to them as the soldier because no ones rights are safe without the ability to protect those rights by force.

We can fool ourselves into thinking that the character of men have changed. They have not. In many ways the modern world has changed mans character for the worse. Not many years ago we were decrying the encroachment on constitutional liberties by an administration waging a war. We were outraged by extraordinary rendition, torture, imprisonment without trial and the killing and American citizens and others without due process. Every day we see more and more flagrant violations of constitutional principles and legal precedents.

Is now the time to surrender a fundamental freedom? Answer this question carefully with the knowledge that the same drones that patrol Afghanistan and Pakistan will soon be patrolling OUR skies.

Only free men have the ability to say NO.

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It is a persuasive argument, James: we must be able to exercise our freedoms. At the same time we must be able to live together in a community governed by social order. That is to say, we cannot exercise our freedoms in the form of driving down the wrong side of the street or enforcing our disagreements with our neighbor with a rifle. We have learned at great expense that there is no "common sense approach" and we must seek social control through the rule of law. The exquisite dilemma is how to provide that rule of law to ensure the safety of everyone without impairing our constitutional freedoms.

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