02-23-2018, 07:51 PM
(02-23-2018, 03:17 PM)David Horn Wrote: I know this sounds like values lock to you, but I know from some limited experience that chaos and mayhem are pretty well coordinated. When I attended the Special Forces Training Center in Okinawa, one of the NCOs made damn sure we were aware that a trainee had been shot by accident just a week or two earlier. We got the full lecture about training with live ammo, which we did the next day. Even in a training environment, surprises happened that could have been deadly. I saw accidental discharges up close and personal when I was in Vietnam, so there's that too. None of that belongs in school.
Even seasoned soldiers in combat shoot one another occasionally. If this is the way to avoid addressing the gun problem directly, it's a piss poor alternative. How would you like to be the teacher who shot a student by accident? How would you like to be the student?
So let me call you on your own values lock. If you've never been there, how do you know?
Yes, it does involve values lock. Values locked people tend to remember and make of great importance episodic incidents that confirm their values. Thus, such incidents are nigh on useless in resolving the question. A red values person might remember how many well equipped, trained sane folk overcome the lone nut. Indeed, one of the people who had been in Iraq, who ran towards the explosions at the Boston Marathon incident, came quite to the opposite conclusion to yours. People have to be trained, equipped and motivated for the good to triumph. Those who avoid responsibility and being ready for the unthinkable will become helpless victims.
There are relatively few who will listen to either extreme argument, making the good guys ready while putting the bad guys at risk. I do not doubt you are sincere or intelligent, but there are sincere and intelligent people who have also been there and done that who quite disagree with your selective truth.
In this case, I have no real life experience, but I am inclined to listen to and respect both sides.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.