patrick.net

We need lots of armed guards AND lots more PRAYING at schools ... that way if the guards fail at least the dead kids will end up in heaven.

CaptainShuddup says

If the NRA cared about the 2nd Amendment they would have put assault rifles into the hands of EVERY black man in America

I think a lot of you missed this point about the NRA.

The NRA did support gun control: Considerable credit for that, surprisingly, belongs to the Black Panther Party. In the late 1960s, civil rights radicals took up arms as part of the "by any means necessary" philosophy. In an often forgotten incident, 30 armed Panthers invaded the California state capital building to protest enactment of new gun laws.

As long as gun control meant keeping guns out of the hands of minorities it seemed like a good idea.

However the Founding father also saw a need to restrict gun ownership: The founders barred large portions of the population from possessing guns, including slaves and free blacks, who might revolt if armed.

Last, but not least the militia did have requirements: Men over the age of 18 were expected to serve in the citizen militia, armed and ready to defend the nation. They would be forced to appear, with guns in hand, at public musters where they and their guns would be inspected. The founders had an early form of gun registration: States conducted door-to-door surveys to identify where the guns were in case the government had need of them.

The founders even had their own version of an "individual mandate." In 1792, Congress required all free men of age to outfit themselves with a military-style firearm.

So I seriously think the NRA had a reaction that was made for publicity, rather than bring anything new to the gun control debate.

Here is a link to stats compiled...dramatic drop
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/14/did-the-federal-ban-on-assault-weapons-matter/

On the contrary, where are your stats that show that armed guards prevented massacres? Didn't work at Columbine.

The right isn't explicitly written. Show me where. "a well regulated militia". 1) militia is not individual citizens. The people is militia. 2) doesn't say right to bear assault weapons. Arms at that time were muskets. Where do you stop? Right to bear RPGs?

boldej says

We need lots of armed guards AND lots more PRAYING at schools ... that way if the guards fail at least the dead kids will end up in heaven.

Yes, praying is what is missing because it works so well in shootings at churches.

Waitingtobuy says

On the contrary, where are your stats that show that armed guards prevented massacres? Didn't work at Columbine.

Not true, that was not an armed guard for the sole purpose of preventing a mass shooting. It is intellectually dishonest to suggest otherwise. That "guard" was more of a "monitor" than anything else. Monitoring the "smoker's pit." This type of monitoring is not what anyone is suggesting.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/columbine.cd/Pages/DEPUTIES_TEXT.htm

Call it Crazy says

The guard at Columbine was OUTSIDE the building, not inside...

We need guards inside and outside. But we can't stop at schools. Once schools are protected, the bad guys will go to public playgrounds or sports fields. Those will need armed guards too. For example, umpires at little league games could have semi-automatic handguns under their chest protectors. "You're out!"

Of course, kids and adults go to lots of places where we don't have armed guards. Restaurants, clothing stores, bicycle shops, supermarkets, pet stores, pharmacy's, cafes, buses, farmers markets, small concerts, ice cream parlors, bakeries, shoe stores, book stores, beaches, public pools, lakes, water parks, wireless phone stores....

I guess we are going to need a lot more guns! Well played, NRA. If only the tobacco lobby could have figured out a way to convince Americans that the best way to fight lung cancer was to buy more cigarettes.

Call it Crazy says

Can you point me to where that was said on Friday?

I call on Congress today, to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation.

To put armed police officers in every single school would require the hiring of more police officers. To be armed, they would require guns.

Why not respond to what I wrote - how does the NRA propose that we protect ourselves from nuts with guns in the myriad of places where people congregate but where there are no armed guards?

What will the NRA response be if there is a mass shooting at a birthday party in someones backyard who doesn't own a gun? I know: "They should've bought a gun".

The NRA believes the only way to stop gun violence is more guns. $$$

rooemoore says

The NRA believes the only way to stop gun violence is more guns.

The reality is there are millions of guns in this country, and you won't get all of them. The second thing is that guns are a multi billion dollar industry. The United States exports guns around the world.

Lots of countries have guns, and people who walk around heavily armed every day, but we here, in the United States we have these nut case shootings.

You can blame the American mentality, many people do, but the fact is Americans are armed, well armed.

I'm going to go back to this argument about having armed militia in high crime neighborhoods. There is a time in most gang bangers lives when they get old, or dead. When gangsters get old some think about the kids, the neighborhood, and community.

I say we give them militia colors, and let them patrol.

As far as schools, there are thousands of parents, teachers, administrators who can handle a gun. Like in Texas, we should allow these people to be armed.

Call it Crazy says

Is it possible that we might need to look at the "nuts"??

I hate to interject this, but that is a health care issue, and mental health should be a real study for the United States.

It seems to me that mental health has gotten to be a pill factory industry.

We should have more dialog about mental health, and it should be much more available, and a practice that is more elevated than anger management, drug, or alcohol addiction.

Call it Crazy says

rooemoore says

To put armed police officers in every single school would require the hiring of more police officers. To be armed, they would require guns.

Is it possible that police officers already own their own guns?

To put an armed police officer in every single school and still keep police strapped communities safe, you will need a lot more police officers. That will require more guns, yes.

But if the answer is that the only way to stop "a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun", you are going to need to either hire a lot more police officers to patrol EVERYWHERE people go, or you are going to need to relax gun restrictions to allow citizens to carry guns EVERYWHERE people go.

Call it Crazy says

Is it possible that we might need to look at the "nuts"??

Nuts is a broad term here. Many people, if they had a gun at the "wrong time" might use it in a moment of rage. Few people, if they had a gun at the "right time" would use it correctly.

I will admit that if every law abiding citizen carried a gun that these mass shooting wouldn't be so lethal. Of course the price would be that gun deaths would skyrocket.

rooemoore says

To put armed police officers in every single school would require the hiring of more police officers. To be armed, they would require guns.

An unlikely assumption. A great many would be rent-a-cops, not on-duty or off-duty trained officers. Either way, it's unlikely to be widely implemented in these budget-strapped times. Guns are cheap, adding 125,000+ employees to the public school systems is not. They'll be even less effective than TSA and pretty soon you'd hear complaints about 'em.

Vicente says

it's unlikely to be widely implemented in these budget-strapped times.

Did the NRA really suggest the answer to one of the biggest conservative issues of our time is bigger government?

Did the NRA ask our government to fix another problem?

Check out conservative pundit David Frum's twitter feed on all the places we need federal agents with guns: https://mobile.twitter.com/davidfrum/tweets

Waitingtobuy says

https://mobile.twitter.com/davidfrum/tweets

link doesn't work

It is very ironic that the California State Teachers' Retirement System invested a half billion dollars into a fund that Cerberus used to bankroll Freedom Group. That is an almost 7% stake in the company that manufactured the gun used in Newtown.

Call it Crazy says

Based on the above data, it looks like that idea works....

If the above data wasn't an NRA fantasy, you may be right. Of course even then you'd have to factor in all the accidental or "fits of rage" deaths these law-abiding gun owners committed vs the amount of murders they prevented by scaring away intruders with a gun.

You do realize that the great majority of intruders do not want any encounter with armed or disarmed victims.

David Losh says

Did the NRA ask our government to fix another problem?

Fox News and Teabaggers are blind to inconsistency. Astounding.

Call it Crazy says

rooemoore says

You do realize that the great majority of intruders do not want any encounter with armed or disarmed victims.

Exactly why the reason these mentally deranged killers go after soft targets and "gun-free" zones.

When was the last time you heard of a mass murder at a police station, a gun show, a gun range, gun store in this country?

Why do these "nut cases" pick schools, theaters, malls, etc.??

Cops are shot all the time. Are they soft targets?

And then there were two firefighters shot and killed today. Now they have to carry guns, too?

Using your logic, the only way to keep the country safe is to make the whole world a gun show, police station or shooting range. Swell.

Call it Crazy says

When was the last time you heard of a mass murder at a police station,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/12/police-station-shooting-southfield-michigan-shootout_n_2116162.html

Oh right, not a MASS murder.

Vicente says

Call it Crazy says

When was the last time you heard of a mass murder at a police station,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/12/police-station-shooting-southfield-michigan-shootout_n_2116162.html

Oh right, not a MASS murder.

And then there is this kind of "Mass shooting":

June 10, 2002 - Conception, Missouri - Benedictine
monastery - 2 killed + shooter - Lloyd Robert Jeffress shot
four monks in the monastery killing two and wounding two,
before killing himself.

March 12, 2002 - Lynbrook, New York - Our Lady of Peace
Catholic Church - 2 killed - Peter Troy, a former mental
patient, opens fire during Mass, killing the priest and a
parishioner. He later receives a life sentence.

Liberals are stupid, the once who concentrate on a weapon and not the criminal or mentally ill maniac. And their solution to the problem (ban firearms) will be just as stupid and ineffective as they are.

In my view this horrendous crime (Newtown) was a fluke.

Killing young children ?

It's not all that unlikely that we could do nothing about changing gun laws or beefing up security in schools, and not see something like this again for 50 years or longer.

But, in the long long term, having sensible gun laws regarding assault weapons will change what guns are out there in the distant future.

I heard the NRA guy, Pierre or whatever his name is, on the Sunday morning talk shows saying "we are for what works" as if to suggest that if you don't see an instant impact from a policy that it's worthless.

FortWayne says

Liberals are stupid, the once who concentrate on a weapon and not the criminal or mentally ill maniac.

Yeah, liberals are always boiling things down to a simple sound bite, because they know the other liberals are so stupid that it's all they can understand.

Where as the republicans always frame issues in all of their complexity and nuance, understanding all sides of the argument, and never thinking in terms of one simple rule. (eg Economics: no increases in taxes, gun violence: we can consider anything except gun laws - that's off the table).

Call it Crazy says

[POLICE STATION SHOOTOUT] Not a MASS murder, just a one on one. More information from that story you linked:

.....""Based on the behavior of this individual, my opinion and the opinion of the investigating officers, is that this person was struggling with some very serious internal issues," Hawkins said."

Yes, crazy person with a gun, your point?

Solution: Turn every place we inhabit, into a police station.

I have an idea how to accomplish that. We'll hire all the returning vets from the sandbox to guard schools, malls, libraries, really everywhere. Paying for this will be left as an exercise for the reader. I favor cutting military by 90%. Simple way to pension off existing soldiers.

By the way, for the record, even a majority of NRA members are for reasonable guns laws on such issues as background checks, and limiting the number of bullets in a clip, or drum etc.

The NRA leaders don't even represent their own membership on these issues. It's sort of like COngress. In the fiscal cliff negotiations they don't even represent the typical conservative point of view, which is that taxes on the part of income that's over 250K should be raised.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/24/gun-owners-frank-luntz_n_1699140.html

But then you have geniuses like FW trying to create an argument where there isn't one, saying that the views of the typical republican are actually the ideas of stupid liberals.

FortWayne says

Liberals are stupid, the once who concentrate on a weapon and not the criminal or mentally ill maniac. And their solution to the problem (ban firearms) will be just as stupid and ineffective as they are.

Yes, stupid like all the other developed countries that have effective gun laws that result in the dramatically lower number of gun deaths. Real morons, those folks.

Call it Crazy says

Gee, that sounds like the perfect, upstanding, mentally sane, responsible firearm owner to me...

Who knows about their mental state. We do know they had a gun.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/CLjNJI54GMM

Apparently FW, LaPierre and other on the dimbulb right hope that some people will believe that its one or the other.

Either tighten gun laws, or take a good look at what can be done on the mental health aspect of this. You can only do one or the other.

Obviously the gun laws are easy compared to dealing with privacy issues, and the fact that many low income people with emotional problems are not even receiving treatment.

But yeah, let's take the easy thing off the table, and focus on the expensive, complicated nearly impossible task of strengthening big brother's ability to watch everyone who ever seeks professional help from psychologists and psychiatrists.

Call it Crazy says

Some of the details about this shooter already have come out. I'll let you do your own research to see what type of upstanding law abiding citizen he was!! It's all about following the laws you know.

Imagine the mayhem he would have caused with a knife...

Call it Crazy says

You think there is only one single solution... Why can't both be done?

No, I was being facetious.

Call it Crazy says

Killings will decrease dramatically, right??

Did you even comprehend the quoted text of mine that you quoted right before saying this ?

What part of "distant future" don't you understand.

And I am not suggesting that there is a panacea, so why respond as if I did.

Call it Crazy says

All the anti-gun folks will be happy with this, right??

Actually a lot of pro gun people will be happy with it too. Again, not a panacea.

FortWayne says

their solution to the problem (ban firearms) will be just as stupid and ineffective as they are.

There was an article today about Israel's gun policies. Israel has gun registration that is good for three years, and you need a medical check up. You also lose your right to privacy so your registration can be cross checked every three months. You also need to show a need to have a gun, because the bulk of the patrols are anti-terrorist. So there is a very strong police, and military presense. Every one is required to do military duty, with training, but that doesn't qualify you to be a gun owner in private life.

The NRA was stupid for ever comparing the proposals they had to Israel. One of the comments made was that Israel didn't have school shooting since they put armed guards in schools.

Israel is on patrol for terrorist activity, and in that process many rights of the individual get sidelined.

I'm just going to say again the NRA should have emphasized the militia aspects of the 2nd Amendment that would call for some common sense dialog about promoting gun safety, and education.

Nothing ensures mastery of subject matter like a teacher with a gun . . .

Next nra speech……………
Arm each fire truck………….
50 MM grenade launcher should do the trick...........
Idiots

Fire trucks are supposed to put out fires, not open fire.

They do need protection though, so maybe police should go with if they're going to bad neighborhoods.

Call it Crazy says

Great idea, return them all home to our soil... guess what, they are already being paid and already have the necessary firearms, which equals zero additional cost.

Then push for that, best of luck.

Aussie Nerd says

Next nra speech……………
Arm each fire truck………….

If you read the story, what gets me is that this guy was a danger. He was released for murder of his grand mother. In October his mother died, who he loved so much, leaving him alone with a sister he hated. She lived in the same house, she had her side of the house, he had the other.

This is the second part of the NRA's nutty reponse. This guy could have been on a National Watch List of the Mentally Ill, but so what? That would have done nothing to stop him.

We need people to be a community. When we see a situation spinning out of control there should be some mechanism to address it.

I've seen in in my own neighborhood where a Viet Nam vet became more, and more out of control. When I went to talk with him his wife was grateful because she didn't know what to do. We got him to the VA, where after about a year of counseling he opened up.

I'm saying that the NRA is asking the government to solve a problem the NRA should be providing solutions for.

The NRA needs to step up to being leaders of good gun ownership.

We need a solution to gun violence, both immediate, and long term.

Biff Baxter says

will this article be moved out of the real estate section

This is posted in the politics forum.