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Thread: Another school shooting, multiple fatalities

  1. #91
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    The top five teachers in my school (none of them me) might step in front of a gun for their students, but I am completely sure none of them would put a bullet in another person. Add a skill, reduce your selection pool. We already don’t have enough decent teachers (and I chose “decent”, not “good” deliberately)

    i am going to have to step out of this conversation. I’m sorry if it seems like I am being rude and trying to have the last word, but I am realizing it is bad for me right now.

  2. #92
    Senior Member JaneV2.0's Avatar
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    So add crossfire to the equation if you want even more carnage. Unless you post trained sharpshooters at every door, this isn't a good idea. Apparently, many in the crowd in Las Vegas were armed, for all the good it did. This isn't the Wild West.

  3. #93
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Having an arms race between teachers and students in public schools just seems so wrong. All teachers ARE sheepdogs--they shepherd their students to knowledge, wisdom, prudence, civil behavior. Being gun-toting shepherds of self-defense is not what I see as part of their job description.
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  4. #94
    Simpleton Alan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JaneV2.0 View Post
    So add crossfire to the equation if you want even more carnage. Unless you post trained sharpshooters at every door, this isn't a good idea. Apparently, many in the crowd in Las Vegas were armed, for all the good it did. This isn't the Wild West.
    If you look at mass shootings, especially in schools, there is one fact that stands out above all others, passive defense measures result in higher body counts than active defense measures. At Virginia Tech there were 6 classrooms targeted, 3 employed active countermeasures and 3 did not. There were 2 fatalities in the active rooms and 28 in the passive rooms as the shooter was able to walk through the rooms casually shooting cowering victims, the harder target in the active rooms saved many lives. Hardening any target works.
    "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein

  5. #95
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    I will say that Alan is right about our need for “sheepdogs” in our country. We do have a gun culture and unfortunately it has been changed from respect to bravado. So a person with the right training and the right mindset is a valuable asset when he is armed in a society like ours when just about anywhere you go you can expect someone is carrying a gun...legally or not and not all of them are mentally qualified to be doing so. We now have more guns in this country than we have people. If you stopped manufacturing guns today....that’s the scenario.

    So I don’t see why we should even consider asking a teacher to arm him or herself even if they want to. I’m not of the mind that there should be absolutely no gun free zones. I just think that’s what they really should be if they are advertised as such. We should have people with guns outside the gun free zone making it so. God knows we have plenty of guns to do the job.

    And in a wider view, I think the country ought to examine itself in this regard. Why do we feel it’s okay to drop a bomb on a school in the Middle East and kill children but get outraged when a terrorist shoots up a public school here at home? Are we really okay with the kind of money we pour into distributing guns and violence throughout the world? Even if you can justify it by saying, “Well, we kill them over there so we don’t have to kill them here!” Can we justify the kind of debt we have just for the pleasure of calling ourselves the worlds firewall against tyranny and an exporter of freedom. While at home, we ignore the needs we have here.

    I went off on on a tangent but my point is....violence begets violence. Guns are fine but like anything too much of a good thing is a bad thing. We handle guns in this country like they are candy bars for children. And since my generation hasn’t the will to try solutions, we have our children and grandchildren stepping up to the plate. It’s damn embarrassing.

  6. #96
    Senior Member gimmethesimplelife's Avatar
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    I know someone who's at their wits end with this citizenship - it's not me by the way. This is a man in his 40's who lived in a higher income zip than mine and who once held a very high paying job in hospitality management - a good deal higher on the totem pole than my job. Got cleaned out by an ex-wife in a brutal divorce - lost his kids, his house, almost all of his money due to the court directing it to his ex plus due to legal expenses. Lives in the 85006 now. He was held up downtown (a gun was part of this) pushing him over the edge into a nervous breakdown - it was like the last straw. Now he is so frustrated and has centered much of his anger around guns in the US - this seems to be his outlet though I do very much agree with his take on guns in America.

    Getting to the point, he debates going to Washington DC and going from foreign embassy to foreign embassy and seeing if any country will take him due to the risk all Americans face due to guns in America.....and this is a highly educated and once successful person that wants out permanently. He's got issues other than guns going on but it's refreshing to me to see someone else who just wants out and who can see the risk to human life that guns in America represent on a brutally clear basis with no excuses or apologies and just wants out for good. I can totally understand this - to me this man has a great deal of common sense and even more, a high level of class. I hope he can get out. He's going to thrift shops these days to find things to sell online at a profit and it's not going all that well but he is slowly putting some money together to run.

    I will say once again though that there are issues in play other than guns here - the phony allegations his ex wife threw around in court to see to it that he could have no contact with his kids have something to do with his wanting out of this country permanently, too and I don't blame him one bit for this but he insists it's mostly gun related. Very insightful and interesting man too - were he gay I would have found him an attractive man were I in the market - not so much for looks and certainly not due to his financial situation but due to his common sense. Common sense to me is nothing short of intoxicating.

    I hope he's able to get out of America but I don't know that his chances are that good in a world with so many legitimate refugees. Think of the Rohingya - over 600,000 of them having fled from Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh - to me these folks should take priority though I could not agree more with my friend here. The world really can break your heart when you get right down to it, no? Rob
    Last edited by gimmethesimplelife; 2-20-18 at 11:55am.

  7. #97
    Simpleton Alan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gimmethesimplelife View Post
    I know someone who's at their wits end with this citizenship - it's not me by the way. This is a man in his 40's who lived in a higher income zip than mine and who once held a very high paying job in hospitality management - a good deal higher on the totem pole than my job. Got cleaned out by an ex-wife in a brutal divorce - lost his kids, his house, almost all of his money due to the court directing it to his ex plus due to legal expenses. Lives in the 85006 now.
    Did the court take away his job too or were there other factors leading to everything else described?
    "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein

  8. #98
    Senior Member gimmethesimplelife's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chicken lady View Post
    The top five teachers in my school (none of them me) might step in front of a gun for their students, but I am completely sure none of them would put a bullet in another person. Add a skill, reduce your selection pool. We already don’t have enough decent teachers (and I chose “decent”, not “good” deliberately)

    i am going to have to step out of this conversation. I’m sorry if it seems like I am being rude and trying to have the last word, but I am realizing it is bad for me right now.
    I've never thought of this issue from a teacher's perspective until now. The job of teaching in a public school suddenly looks a lot more risky and more than that, underpaid for the level of BS directed towards teachers and due to this new risk due to what US society has become and due to the easy availability of guns in the US......I wonder if this continues if there is going to be a harder time getting people to step up to the plate and become teachers in the future.....I would not be surprised if young people in college are rethinking teaching and giving it up as a potential career due to the risk involved of loss of life through no fault of their own.

    All kinds of domino effects due to the easy availability of guns in America, no? Rob

  9. #99
    Senior Member gimmethesimplelife's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alan View Post
    Did the court take away his job too or were there other factors leading to everything else described?
    Basically this man has been pushed too damned far through no real fault of his own and there is even less for him in America than there is for me......it's only common sense he'd want out at this point. Kind of like how visiting Hungary in 1987 ruined US citizenship for men(Hungary was still a Communist country at that time)
    as I saw firsthand that Hungarians were housed and fed and not doing all that bad,what ruined things for this man I believe was the court believing his ex wife's lies with no questions whatsoever - his ex was able to lie in court and fix things so that this man could have no access to his kids.

    I believe that being held up downtown pushed him over the edge into nervous breakdown territory and he's got a lot of understandable and justifiable anger......guns seem to be his outlet for directing the anger to but on the other hand, I could not agree more with his taken on guns. I have told him that he'd have a better chance getting into a developing country - think a higher end such country such as Chile or Uruguay - a country that would look down on the easy availability of guns and the effects of such on society, and one that does not take in many refugees and which is not on a typical refugees list. Rob

    PS Came back to address your question about this man's job - he is no longer able to work such a stressful job with such long hours - the nervous breakdown ended that, I don't know for how long. He does pick up banquet shifts - this is how I met him before running into him from time to time in the 85006. Realistically, he's got a long climb ahead of him if he were he to remain in the US - my take is that he is indeed better off leaving under these conditions. A better country with more basic rights might energize him......I've been able to direct him to where he was able to get meds for his depression and he tells me he's looking into signing up for Medicaid (which would keep him on the anti depressant meds without the need to go to Mexico for them)....but he just wants out as he can't see any real reason to bother with life in America. I still believe the crux of this is losing his kids due to his ex's lies - but the gun thing? Indeed a valid reason to permanently leave America. America (or any other country for that matter) is not worth this risk. Just common sense from the 86006. Rob

  10. #100
    Simpleton Alan's Avatar
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    Be careful in your interactions with this guy Rob, anyone with a grudge that big resting on their shoulders could easily snap. We don't want to be reading about you in the newspapers.
    "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein

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