NRA Plan for School Security

October 12, 2015 5:00pm by

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  1. Whammer commented on Oct 12

    Because Freedom!

    My second trip out of the U.S. was on a school-related trip to Mexico in the ’70’s. It was shocking to me at that time to see soldiers and police on the streets with automatic weapons.

    One of the big things our Spanish teacher emphasized to us was that a big difference between the U.S. and Mexico was that the U.S. had a thriving and large middle class, while Mexico didn’t. We could see that to be true.

    And somehow, today, the fundamentalists and the Tea Partiers and the ammosexuals want to morph the U.S. into a similar “banana republic” vision, and they have succeeded in many ways. Sad.

    • whatdoiknow commented on Oct 13

      You forgot climate-deniers, Fox watchers, Republicans, veterans, right-to-lifers, Masons, Mormons, Military, and… Majority.

  2. Milo Minderbinder commented on Oct 12

    Well, it’s almost as silly as those-in-authority declaring “gun-free” zones (a/k/a “shooting galleries”) and subsequently failing to take steps to ensure those zones remain gun-free. Perhaps the plaintiffs bar has another future target, i.e., in addition to gun manufacturers and retailers. One can hardly imagine any group more negligent than a local liberal-dominated school board who loudly announces the establishment of unguarded “gun-free” school zones….

    Anyone who has applied for a position with the federal government recently noticed that the applicant must disclose all internet sites ever visited, all IP addresses for the applicant’s devices and all internet IDs and passwords. We’re not even into service medical records, which also must be disclosed. Had that same level of scrutiny been applied to background checks for gun purchasers, the fact that the Roseburg Madman had attempted suicide while a military recruit and shouted his intentions to the internet’s rooftops would have announced his arrival long before he waltzed into UCC. The technology and the law are current; one just needs to surrender a bit of privacy….

    • DeDude commented on Oct 13

      Classic militaristic thinking. No you don’t need barbed wired fences and airport security gates around the school in order for the “gun-free” zones to work. Every day guns are detected in schools and the students who brought them in are punished. That has a deterrent effect on other students who consider bringing guns to protect themselves in school and help save lives. Many of those students instead find alternative actions that will not destroy their own and other students lives.

      The militaristic solutions (fences and guns) are not very effective to prevent the type of mass student killings we see in the news. In those cases the shooter has all the advantages of being able to plan and choose the time, place and targets. So for example, that big fence with only two secure entrances also provides the perfect set up and target – when all the students come rolling out of those two pinpoint exits when school ends. It makes it a heck of a lot easier to kill 100 students than by going from locked classroom door to locked classroom door.

    • Iamthe50percent commented on Oct 13

      How recently are you talking about? No one asked me for those in 2004. Of course that was a position that didn’t require a security clearance. But even when I got a security clearance in 1967, the FBI didn’t ask ME any questions, they did their own six month investigation. They did ask my neighbors questions.

      I’d be hard pressed to give a list of all web sites that I’ve visited and most of the time I don’t know my IP address. I only know the local net IP address. My ISP assigns the internet ip address and changes it periodically.

      I don’t really believe you.

    • RW commented on Oct 13

      The notion that a so-called ‘gun-free’ zone is some kind of magnet for mass murders isn’t nearly as plausible as it initially sounds and it certainly doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

      Mass shooters are angry people and they go to where their anger is focused. The issue of whether that place represents an easy target or not may become a tactical consideration but it probably has little or nothing to do with the first choice and it is not likely to alter the outcome regardless; e.g., Oregon law allows concealed carry and there were armed students on the UCC campus the day of the shooting but that changed nothing; This account by one of them helps explain why.

      Closer scrutiny and discussion of the stats here: The Gun-Free Zone Myth: No relationship between Gun-Free Zones and Mass Shootings
      This post challenges the belief that ‘gun-free zones’, areas such as schools and work place institutions, are breeding grounds for a mass shooting. The commonly held belief that mass shooters are attracted to gun-free, vulnerable areas is shown to lack evidentiary substantiation. The idea that schools have been made safer by armed guards is also challenged.

      The bigger picture is we absolutely need more research on gun violence and, thus far, the NRA lobby and those legislators they influence have managed to kill all the funding for it. That shit has got to stop.

    • VennData commented on Oct 13

      The clown says, “Anyone who has applied for a position with the federal government recently noticed that the applicant must disclose all internet sites ever visited, all IP addresses for the applicant’s devices and all internet IDs and passwords.”

      Without any supporting evidence, like most Repiblicans who stuff up.

  3. DeDude commented on Oct 13

    No collateral damage left behind.

  4. Denis Drew commented on Oct 13

    How to protect schools — and other public places — from active shooters: available pepper spray cans could be emptied into the hallways; then, doors closed and windows opened. That could make it impossibly uncomfortable for the shooter to move about the building.

    Back in the early 70s, I stayed for a while in a “pre-detention center” down the block from Washington Square Park, formerly known as the Village Plaza Hotel, 79 Washington Place. Every so often we would do a “Mace party” — spray a brief shot of pepper spray up into the lobby air and all run outside until we could breath again inside. One time a couple of “dope fiends” came downstairs for the Coke machine — we yelled at them to come out in the street but at that point in their day you could have removed their appendixes.

    In grade and high schools the teachers could carry. Elsewhere managements could carry. Could definitely work at least sometimes.

  5. constantnormal commented on Oct 13

    Another way to protect us from nutjob shootists is to utilize the surveillance capabilities of the NSA and Homeland Security. While it is a practical impossibility to track guns (due to gun fairs and black market sales, as well as stolen weapons), it IS possible to track ammo purchases, and a lot of related items that have no other practical use for unarmed citizens.

    How many average joes purchase body armor? What would it take to investigate each and every purchase of body armor, bullets, and anything related to guns? How about building a database of purchasers of such items, as well as a database of internet hate speakers, run the intersection of those two on a regular basis, and keep such individuals under constant detailed surveillance, to the extent of bugging their phones and computers, tracking their movements, etc.

    Trust me, these people already believe this is happening, it will impose no additional hardship to make their paranoid fantasies come true.

    Of course, if we actually WERE doing this kind of monitoring, the Boston Marathon bomber never would have made the headlines, as well as a great many of the mass killings.

    If the above cartoon represents “freedom” it is not a kind of freedom that I want anything to do with. Give me bloodless tyranny over blood-soaked individual liberty any day. The NRA and their ilk have made a mockery of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” by transforming America into Bananamerica, where the liberty of lunatics trumps life and the pursuit of happiness.

    Liberty is not absolute — it really means “liberty to conduct one’s life in one own way, SO LONG AS THAT DOES NOT PREVENT OTHERS FROM DOING SO”. When that breaks down, we have the courts to decide, and the law enforcement agencies to carry out the dictates of the courts. No private citizen should have impunity to arm themselves as a soldier, as such an action indicates an intent to overthrow the government to get one’s own way, and should be regarded as insurrection in the making, with the perps having abandoned the protections of society. Society is not a toothless adversary, challenge a society at one’s own risk.

    A Good Start would be to make gun owners and gun sellers responsible for crimes committed with guns registered to them, and having the weapon stolen or otherwise lost does not remove their responsibility. If one’s relative, or a complete stranger steals a gun owner’s weapon of death and uses it to kill someone, there are two parties responsible — the one who pulled the trigger, and the one who is responsible for the gun. Punish both equally. Most legit gun shops would close overnight, and most of the rest would immediately take strong actions to prevent a customer’s actions from impacting their lives.

    But even this would not bring things fully under control, as 3-D printers can now produce guns of limited capabilities — no large-caliber or automatic weapons, as 3-D printing would not (yet) create structures capable of containing the propulsive explosions … but in the future, there will be 3-D printers and weapons designs that fire small rockets that propel themselves all the way to their targets, so this is not a static battle, it is a never-ending war between those who value their own “liberty” over the liberty of society, and the rest of use who comprise society. 

    It may be, as we hurdle along the path of accelerating change toward the Singularity, that we will need to police technologies in order to prevent a lot of nutjobs from becoming mass murderers.

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