Actually I think the way you summed up the last sentence makes my point, if I can explain it...
First, I agree with the end part that teachers (or whoever) should not be forced to arm themselves. For one glaring reason, maybe, like me, they don't believe that approach is constructive, but destructive.
Back to the top of your post -- I sense that you're nudging toward the "guns don't kill people" mantra, concentrating on the gun itself. I have to admit I've never understood the meaning of that argument on semantics. We all understand how gunshots work; nobody's suggesting that guns get up and fire themselves. When I write "the counter to guns" that's a shorthand for "the counter to a bad guy with a gun" -- in other words the only situation where a gun is a threat. We already agree that a gun by itself without a shooter operating it is not in itself a threat. I put in that shorthand so that I can keep the snarky sentence short: "the counter to guns is ... more guns!"
What's supposed to be the obvious greater point there is not about guns; it's about violence.
That was not where I was going with that at all. I was answering the idea that you don’t counter a bad gunman with a good gunman. You have missed the entire point by going off on a tangent of ‘escalation.’ I understand and agree with the societal issues here but you are completely ignoring the NOW. If you can’t fix society in a day (and we know you can’t) then we need to address the points with the limitations that we have today. That is where a good guy needs to be there to take care of the bad guy.
What I'm getting at is (again sarcastically put)- "the answer to violence is ... more violence!" If the folly of that satirical statement is not immediately apparent, then we have much work to do. Answering violence with more violence, whatever form it takes (guns or otherwise) only reinforces the message that "you had the right approach, you were just outgunned-- bring more firepower next time". It validates the idea of violence before the violence even starts. It encourages the violence to start, much as Prohibition encouraged bootlegging.
We would but that statement is as false as the last. You counter violence by putting an end to that violence. Standing there getting gunned down does not put an end to violence. We know that. Sandy Hook shows us that. Stopping the bad guy (aka. Killing him) does in fact stop the violence.
I just don't believe psychologically that humans are deterred by an opposing force. If anything it makes some more determined to resist that force. I've already postulated that these mass shooters when they snap are compensating for some personal loss of power by rendering their victims helpless -- now, knowing that maybe some school official is armed, it just becomes that much more of a challenge: "if I can take out the guard and then start strafing people I'll be the most powerful ************ in the room!!"
Well, no, not at all OR the perp would have went to a place with guards. He had that option. These shooters do not want to overpower guards, they just want the power period and that is why he chose a target that had no chance of defending themselves. That is fairly obvious. If what you are postulating is true, then you would be seeing these shooters in places that were NOT gun free zones and where there were actual guards or some obstacle that they would have to overcome. Instead, they are attracted to venues where opposition is zero and the people are utterly helpless.
Further, you should have noted that there was nothing in my statements about deterrent. In fact, I do NOT want to deter these people specifically because when you deter one target you just get a target somewhere else. I stated that specifically and it is one reason that I find the idea of guards a bad one. The perp would simply shoot up the bus or the bus stop before the bus comes or the playground after school or a thousand other venues where the guard would not be. Guards are a deterrent for standard criminals that have not mad the decision that they are going to kill a bunch of children. Those people are not going to be deterred by anything. I advocate for removing the barriers to CC holders in places like schools specifically because that is not a guard or a deterrent. It is simply an end. He pulls his gun and starts randomly killing children; the ‘good guy’ with the gun simply stops him. Done.
So what I'm getting at here is the concept of escalation. Basically I'm trying to boil it down to, you don't counter a negative with more of the same negative. This gets back to the whole false dichotomy of "good and evil" I guess. I simply don't believe that either "good" or "evil" can ever prevail by force. Either one will be resisted; not because it's the force of evil or good, but simply because it's a force. Here's where I reference your last line, the one that assumes "bad guys" and "good guys". Not only is that hopelessly simplistic, but everybody with a gun is the good guy in his own mind. If he didn't believe in what he was doing, whether that's offense or defense, then he wouldn't be doing it. Human nature is just not that simple.
I'm getting way down to my Taoist philosophical roots I guess but I just don't believe anyone is deterred simply by knowing that what they're about to do will be resisted. That's like the cheap door lock that keeps the honest people out. If anything a determined person is instead motivated by it. Just as we keep noting a gunner determined to get an AR-15 will find a way whether it's legal to do so or not.
It should be obvious that you don't extinguish a fire by dousing it with gasoline. Put a couple of CC holders in the theater in Aurora shooting back at Holmes, and you have not only a shooter more determined, since he's now engaged in self-defense, but you also have a room full of innocent victims caught in the crossfire as well. That's escalation. And that's what the NRA proposed this week-- to escalate school violence pre-emptively. Completely wrongheaded.
As far as the NRA, yeah I can't help noticing that what they offer of late involves adding even more guns that the absurd number we already have (as a nation), and putting them into the hands of people who may (a) not believe in the concept and/or (b) see it as counterproductive and even dangerous for exactly the reasons I just laid out -- we haven't even mentioned the scenario where the school firearms get stolen or commandeered by an instantaneous maniac, who now has firearms he didn't come to school with (what could possibly go wrong there?).
So whether the NRA propose what they do because it makes more money for their underwriters or not, it's still a solution that bites the big one, as it only exacerbates the underlying atmosphere of "gun culture". It rubs salt into the wound. That may be the corruption of their funding sources, or it may be their own myopia, but either way the NRA is doing absolutely zero to address the underlying gun culture.
So ultimately this point goes right back to the culture and value system, and the idea that violence is the way to impose a moral society by force. I believe that value system is entirely bogus, doesn't work, never has worked, and will never work.
As another poster on this board put it, "I don't want my son going to school in a war zone". We've gone to great lengths to supposedly live in a country of peace. It boggles the mind that having achieved that, we then want to throw that concept away, as this latest NRA wet dream would have us do.
We should have a society that lives in peace because it desires peace -- and not because "if I disturb the peace I'll get shot". That's not peace; that's a silent war.
And you have gone off the point I was making with this imagined idea of ‘escalatoion’ like we are talking about the wild west and the O.K. Corral. That is not what we are talking about. There are not going to be a bunch of shootouts. We are not answering violence with a bunch more violence.
These one line ‘simplifications’ are a bad way to try and drive your point home – particularly when you are calling my statement of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys overly simplistic. Time and time again we have incidents where people that are armed pull out their weapon and shoot a person attempting to kill others dead. That is what I am talking about. There is no ‘escalation’ at all. There is nothing to escalate. There is no outgunned. Mostly because the very idea of outgunned is terribly flawed. These people are being stopped with handguns weather or not they are carrying ‘bigger’ weapons and there is no advantage in brining something bigger to the fight. One bullet from anything is all it takes to stop the ‘bad’ guy.
Really, what are you advocating then? You have to answer that one question before you go blasting the NRA for putting up bad solutions that are calling for more ‘violence.’ A change in underlying culture is a LONG term change. Something that you cannot expect to happen in this generation. If that is the long term goal, what is your short term goal? Do nothing? That is a possibility. I am actually good with that. That is admitting though that you have no short term goal at all though and makes the attacks against other proposals less strong.
As I said, I think that your argument about escalation and the idea of armed people playing into the violent culture is deeply flawed. It assumes far too much and paints pictures of shootouts and violence. That is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about ending that violence. I donÂ’t know what you think is going to stop a shooter. It certainly is NOT going to be peace and love. Rainbows are not going to pop up with blossoming flowers to stop crazy people murdering innocents. In that line, getting rid of gun free zones and other places where targets are guaranteed to congregate is not a bad idea. Having that one person there that is responsible and able to STOP the violence is extremely important.
Morning F2. OK I admit that was a longwinded treatise all on the same point, and attendant tangents. Possibly off your point, but your point was off mine.
Yeah I know I get longwinded, guilty as charged. Perhaps the special editing-caffeine hadn't kicked in at the time
Basically yes I am thinking long-term and of the global effects on tomorrow driven by what we do today. I'm concerned that all the NRA's thinking in this case serves to do is escalate the culture of "firearms everywhere" -- not escalation of a particular situation but of the culture itself. When I went to school there was no such thing as a guard, armed or unarmed; the idea would have been bizarre. Now we're proposing to put elementary schools on a level with courtrooms and prisons. We lose something valuable in our psyche when we get to that point. Now I don't believe the NRA by itself created the atmosphere that has changed in these schools, but I do believe they're proposing to make it worse, by as I said pouring gasoline on a fire. Sending the message that "this is a war zone". So yes it very much is a concern about the Wild West mentality.
Let's just bring down a point at a time from yours:
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Standing there getting gunned down does not put an end to violence. We know that. Sandy Hook shows us that. Stopping the bad guy (aka. Killing him) does in fact stop the violence. <<
Can't argue with that - that's in the moment. Desperate times call for desperate measures. But that's really not my point; again I was trying to address not what happens in a moment of crisis, but the idea of creating fertile ground for
more of those moments.
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Well, no, not at all OR the perp would have went to a place with guards. He had that option. These shooters do not want to overpower guards, they just want the power period and that is why he chose a target that had no chance of defending themselves. That is fairly obvious. If what you are postulating is true, then you would be seeing these shooters in places that were NOT gun free zones and where there were actual guards or some obstacle that they would have to overcome. Instead, they are attracted to venues where opposition is zero and the people are utterly helpless. <<
Actually I think you're postulating. We don't know they go about their planning that way (if there is any planning rather than it being spontaneous). There's always some obstacle or challenge to be met before the shooting starts-- Lanza had to break into the school door; Muhammad had to hide his boy shooter in the trunk; some of them wear bulletproof vests. Seems to me guard in the way would just be another challenge that happens to be in the way.
Schools usually don't have these guards, true, but I strongly suspect that we see so many shootings in schools because of the nature of schools, not the fact that there are no guards there. Sandy Hook was a place that was intimately familiar to Lanza. Same with Columbine and most other school shootings. The only exception I can think of that would fit your theory is Carl Roberts with the Amish girls, Roberts being an outsider. Lanza I have to consider still an insider; he didn't choose Sandy Hook at random, but because he knew the place well, and because of whatever personal association was in his twisted head, born of that experience. I don't think it had anything to do with the knowledge that there's no guard to get past, and I don't think that would have influenced his action. For all we know he was prepared to take a guard down if there was one.
{tangent warning - I just went, in development of this point, to see if Lanza was wearing protective armor-- apparently he was not but I came across this:
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Investigators are aware that frequent reloading is common in violent video games because an experienced player knows never to enter a new building or room without a full magazine so as not to risk running out of bullets. This has led them to speculate privately that this might be a reason that he replaced magazines frequently. << (
here-- just food for thought) /close tangent}
I do believe school shootings by insiders have a lot to do with some psychological connection to the school and its population, together with knowing the physical territory. And if a guard were in place, he would simply become part of that territory. The psychology of what's specifically going on in schools, or in the school system as a whole, to spark these incidents from their own population, that's a whole 'nother worthy question.
(James vonBrunn stormed into the Holocaust Museum and started his shooting with the guard who opened the door (and killed him). Spengler set a fire to lure firefighters and police-- not only were they not a deterrent, he lured them in. If anything the psychological presence of a guard may be interpreted by them as Target Number One, after which you move to "Level Two".)
Ultimately what I'm getting at here is, the NRA moving guns into schools would just create an atmosphere of continual fear, and fear fuels violence. That's the psychic gasoline poured on the fire. So again when I say "escalation", I mean of the everyday atmosphere. I know I got off to a tangent on the Aurora scenario; that's a microcosmic corollary of the same idea but probably out of place where I wrote it.
And anyway this point was all about the NRA's school guard proposal, not about what to do in immediate moments of a live situation. If I misplayed your point, it was because that point misplayed what my original was.
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These one line ‘simplifications’ are a bad way to try and drive your point home – particularly when you are calling my statement of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys overly simplistic. <<
That's not meant to be personal at all; I'm riffing there, again expanding philosophically beyond the scope of the original point. I speak of "us" as a collective; our collective thinking. And I do think that collective thinking is fatally flawed in seeing the world in black and white, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, good guys and bad guys. When we accept a dichotomy like that we put fences around our own intellect and deny ourselves the capacity for actually
creative solutions. What the NRA is proposing, that just ain't creative. And even if one does accept it as a school solution, it does nothing to address the culture of violence by firearm that pervades the society inside and outside schools.
OK, I'm riffing again, I'll break here. Thanks for reading.
(b) what I remember is as relevant or irrelevant as your ipse dixit; (3) now you're just trolling; declaring yourself the winner of your own strawman debate is rhetorical onanism. It hasn't been my issue since before I came to this board. It wasn't my issue yesterday, it isn't my issue today, and it won't be my issue tomorrow. Like it or lump it.
