02-24-2018, 11:28 AM
(02-24-2018, 09:27 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(02-24-2018, 01:43 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I imagine there will be more armed guards on school campuses. If they are visible, they might deter a nutcase or two. But there were guards, drills, everything imaginable at the Parkland school, and mistakes were still made. Making schools into guarded armed camps is only a consequence of our Second Amendment gun culture, and our outsized presence of guns. The USA has created gun violence mayhem with its policies, and its youth are now crying out for change in those policies. I hope they are ready to reckon with the extreme right-wing values lock in this country, which is 10 times more locked and 10 times more wrong than any left wing values lock is.
But you have to correct based on the mistakes made.
One mistake was that the future shooter was identified but the officials did not take action. The correction? Take action more often, with more sensitivity to the facts.
A second mistake was in hiring guards who did not believe in doing their job. This was a job that has much inaction, but you have to be ready to act with little warning. Who do you hire?
Neither mistake was related to the red gun culture, but was more apt to be the lack of responsibility, the lack of action. There was a surplus, in this case, of blue. This doesn't mean it is impossible to go the other way.
A third not-a-mistake would be to blame the shooters choice to become a shooter on the gun culture. I would blame it also on social media technology combined with a human tendency to shun the outsider. Millennial folk seem to be developing more of a habit of shooting other Millennials. Why? What can be done about it? Ban certain TV shows and movies? Don't glorify violence as much in the news? Step on what parts of the culture that glorify violence? What did the shooter see that led him to do what he did? Can we eliminate it?
There is more to it than prohibition. One should look at all solutions, not follow your values lock into pushing for things that haven't worked.
David's answers were correct, of course. Also, no gun advocates say that guns and gun culture are the only reason for mass shootings; just the main one. My points above still stand too. And there's no way to know if a hired guard will do his duty. The only reason we need guards at schools is because of the prevalence of guns, and the opposition of the NRA and the GOP to age limits on purchasing weapons. How dumb can a culture get to permit that? Even FL Gov. Rick Scott, who has an A+ NRA rating, is feeling the heat and now proposing these age limits. He wants to be elected senator, so he's growing a brain.
Glorifying violence in the USA is not new to millennials. This has been a perennial American and human problem, but other cultures have developed beyond it. A principle reason the USA has not, is because of our gun culture and our Second Amendment, which is outdated and wrongly interpreted in Heller. Millennials have just been given more-deadly weapons.
Gun control works. Your values lock is the only reason you persist in making statements about "things that haven't worked." Clearly, in this case having an armed guard on campus didn't work.