Time to revisit the 2nd Amendment?

[StrangeSox]

Jesus christ I can't believe anyone is seriously considering "Arm the Teachers!" as a real, viable, good policy. What is wrong with this country.

[bmags]

Jesus christ I can't believe anyone is seriously considering "Arm the Teachers!" as a real, viable, good policy. What is wrong with this country.

 

What's the countdown on a child stealing a gun and committing suicide? 1 year? 2 years?

[Jake]

And had the guy with the nearest gun pulled the trigger, he would have shot the wrong person (by his own statement).

 

I'm missing the reference, this happened with the Giffords shooting?

[Soxbadger]

Im thinking its more likely that kid gets gun and shoots teacher or other students.

[StrangeSox]

Or stealing a gun and shooting a teacher. Or another student. Or a teacher using the gun as an intimidation tool to keep students inline.

 

I'm going to repost this comment again:

 

So I’m a teacher. According to conservative orthodoxy, I’m a parasite on the public’s dime who is only interested in indoctrinating the precious children of America into communism or atheism or whatever. I can’t be trusted to have any control over the curriculum I teach. I can’t be trusted to fairly and impartially evaluate my students, let alone my colleagues. I can’t be trusted to have collective bargaining rights. I can’t be trusted to have an objective view of governmental policy when it comes to my own profession.

 

But they’ll trust me to keep a gun in a room filled with children.

 

Even the cynicism-producing neurons of my prefrontal cortex can’t wrap themselves around this kind of stupid bulls***.

 

And also note that teachers are already under-resourced, under-paid and over-taxed when it comes to their job duties, and now we're going to have them as trained armed responders as well?

 

I am literally having difficulty processing that anyone is proposing this as a serious solution.

 

[Y2HH]

...and thread has move into shark jumping the fonz territory now...

 

This is about to break down into bad hypothetical and extreme situations from both sides.

 

...and yes, i realize fonzie jumped the shark, i'm switching it.

[Steve9347]

[Balta1701]

I'm missing the reference, this happened with the Giffords shooting?

Yes, here's his story. There was a guy carrying a concealed pistol across the street. He ran towards the shots, got there after the other people around had disarmed the shooter, pointed his gun at the guy now holding the gun and nearly shot. If he'd fired, he'd have shot one of the people who disarmed Loughner.

[Y2HH]

 

...wait for it.

[Soxbadger]

...wait for it.

 

Woah woah woah

 

I thought we were talking about men buying guns, I assume we can all agree women should have no right whatsoever to a weapon that could possibly damage my penis. I thought we changed these laws after Lorena Bobbit.

[StrangeSox]

I already said I'm willing to concede Israel's hyper-militarized school gun policy if we get the rest of their gun policies as well

[Y2HH]

Woah woah woah

 

I thought we were talking about men buying guns, I assume we can all agree women should have no right whatsoever to a weapon that could possibly damage my penis. I thought we changed these laws after Lorena Bobbit.

 

[StrangeSox]

 

they're not even subtle about the "compensating" angle

Edited December 18, 2012 by StrangeSox

[greg775]

Tennessee and Oklahoma are coming forwards today with plans to arm teachers and provide training. There's a guy in Tennessee being quoted who is saying he's surprised/disappointed it hasn't happened already.

 

The governor of Michigan received a bill, passed on Friday I believe (lame duck session rushing through Republican bills) that would have allowed guns in schools in that state, but today he has pledged to veto it because of that portion.

 

We're assuming there are no nutjob teachers out there. There are nuts in all walks of life. One teacher snapping and that tragedy in the making would be as bad as this one.

[StrangeSox]

they're making a lot of dumb assumptions but that is one of them.

[DukeNukeEm]

I already said I'm willing to concede Israel's hyper-militarized school gun policy if we get the rest of their gun policies as well

Im willing to give up my 2nd Amendment right as long as the government gets rid of all theirs guns.

 

I'm not holding my breath.

[StrangeSox]

'Order at Universal Gunpoint'

The other day I tried to nail down what, specifically, bothered me about the "more guns" solution to American violence. Over at The American Conservative, Alan Jacobs makes the point with which I was struggling:

 

But what troubles me most about this suggestion -- and the general More Guns approach to social ills -- is the absolute abandonment of civil society it represents. It gives up on the rule of law in favor of a Hobbesian "war of every man against every man" in which we no longer have genuine neighbors, only potential enemies. You may trust your neighbor for now -- but you have high-powered recourse if he ever acts wrongly.

 

Whatever lack of open violence may be procured by this method is not peace or civil order, but rather a standoff, a Cold War maintained by the threat of mutually assured destruction. Moreover, the person who wishes to live this way, to maintain order at universal gunpoint, has an absolute trust in his own ability to use weapons wisely and well: he never for a moment asks whether he can be trusted with a gun. Of course he can! (But in literature we call this hubris.)

 

Is this really the best we can do? It might be if we lived in, say, the world described by Cormac McCarthy in The Road. But we don't. Our social order is flawed, but by no means bankrupt. Most of us live in peace and safety without the use of guns. It makes more sense to try to make that social order safer and safer, more and more genuinely peaceful, rather than descend voluntarily into a world governed by paranoia, in which one can only feel safe -- or, really, "safe" -- with cold steel strapped to one's ribcage.

 

I've talked a lot about the presumption of goodness in our society. For instance, there needs to be some sense that the mere act of arming oneself might invest you with a particular hubris, that there will be side-effects from arming educators, that placing weaponry in our elementary schools affects our broader conception of ourselves as a society.

 

One of the points of a democratic society is to put brakes on our most animal impulses--impulses which are universal across humankind. I think much of our recent firearm legislation -Stand Your Ground for instance--runs in the exact opposite direction. I wonder if Michael Dunn would have said one word to those kids had he not been armed.

 

It assumes, as Jacobs puts it, an "absolute trust" in ourselves. Jacobs cautions against making law out of white elephant events, and I think that's generally correct. But I can not escape the fact that Nancy Lanza was, as far as we know, a responsible gun owner. She was following the theory of "more guns." Those guns were then used to kill her.

[Steve9347]

Im willing to give up my 2nd Amendment right as long as the government gets rid of all theirs guns.

 

I'm not holding my breath.

That's just crazy.

[Soxbadger]

I really thought the "I need a gun to protect me against the govt" argument went the way of the Dodo bird. A gun isnt a deterrent against a tank, helicopter, nuclear weapon.

[pettie4sox]

Don't bring a gun to a fight.

[Steve9347]

I really thought the "I need a gun to protect me against the govt" argument went the way of the Dodo bird. A gun isnt a deterrent against a tank, helicopter, nuclear weapon.

I posted it yesterday. They have drones, it's over.

[pettie4sox]

One more thing, why in the world would you want the government to give up their guns when those guns are used to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic?

[Steve9347]

One more thing, why in the world would you want the government to give up their guns when those guns are used to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic?

It's just the same old tired argument those defending their guns and their freedoms and liberty and all that jazz go to every time this conversation happens.

[Jenksismyhero]

'Order at Universal Gunpoint'

 

 

I've talked a lot about the presumption of goodness in our society. For instance, there needs to be some sense that the mere act of arming oneself might invest you with a particular hubris, that there will be side-effects from arming educators, that placing weaponry in our elementary schools affects our broader conception of ourselves as a society.

 

One of the points of a democratic society is to put brakes on our most animal impulses--impulses which are universal across humankind. I think much of our recent firearm legislation -Stand Your Ground for instance--runs in the exact opposite direction. I wonder if Michael Dunn would have said one word to those kids had he not been armed.

 

It assumes, as Jacobs puts it, an "absolute trust" in ourselves. Jacobs cautions against making law out of white elephant events, and I think that's generally correct. But I can not escape the fact that Nancy Lanza was, as far as we know, a responsible gun owner. She was following the theory of "more guns." Those guns were then used to kill her.

 

I think it's more from the angle that if push comes to shove, yes, you'd much rather rely on your own judgment, flawed or not, to save your life, not be at the mercy of someone else shooting at you or your family with the intent to kill. There's an argument to be made about gun control and all that; but this basic premise of survival, i'm just not sure why people don't understand that. (and yes, I know this is an incredibly rare instance, but again, with life or death on the line, why wouldn't you rather be safe than sorry?)

 

Are you really telling me that if you're Alpha from his story yesterday, that you'd PREFER not having a gun in that situation? You'd PREFER to be in your house with no protection whatsoever except a phone to call the police that may or may not take too long to arrive?

 

Edit: and i'm sure the response is that by having the gun you're statistically inviting a slightly higher risk of something violent happening - but so what? Why would you want to rely on chance in that situation? If you make a mistake, you live with it because you live. If you die, well, you died fighting believing that your life was truly on the line.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Jenksismybitch

[Balta1701]

I think it's more from the angle that if push comes to shove, yes, you'd much rather rely on your own judgment, flawed or not, to save your life, not be at the mercy of someone else shooting at you or your family with the intent to kill. There's an argument to be made about gun control and all that; but this basic premise of survival, i'm just not sure why people don't understand that. (and yes, I know this is an incredibly rare instance, but again, with life or death on the line, why wouldn't you rather be safe than sorry?)

 

Are you really telling me that if you're Alpha from his story yesterday, that you'd PREFER not having a gun in that situation? You'd PREFER to be in your house with no protection whatsoever except a phone to call the police that may or may not take too long to arrive?

 

Edit: and i'm sure the response is that by having the gun you're statistically inviting a slightly higher risk of something violent happening - but so what? Why would you want to rely on chance in that situation? If you make a mistake, you live with it because you live. If you die, well, you died fighting believing that your life was truly on the line.

The key thing here...even if every element of data pushes you the other way, you would make the emotional choice. It's right there. Even if I could show you that having a gun makes you 5, or 10, or 100, or 1000 times more likely to be hurt/killed in that case...you'd rather take the hero/vigilante way out. Nothing can overpower the emotion, the dream of using the gun in a certain circumstance.

 

That's why I keep calling it the vigilante fantasy.