A firearm question for you LeftiesFollow

Change two words, and you have the exact same thing that was said about the Aurora shooting.

Would the students look like this?

Nexa

When thousands of kids are paying hundreds of dollars every time they walk into the school, then we can talk about the practicality of having that level of security in our public schools. Forgive me for restricting my assumptions to the reasonable ones. We can't provide that level of security at schools. It would cost too much. We can, however, just by removing the existing gun-free zone restrictions in schools, essentially get some level of security "free".



Sure. But you seem to be under the impression that we either stop the shooter cold right at the door before he fires a shot, or we can't stop him at all until the police arrive. The reality is that stopping every shooter at the door is a near impossibility, if for no other reason than most (all?) schools have multiple points of entry, and in order to ensure we could stop said shooter right there would require multiple guards at each of them. It's simply not practical.

Let's restrict our options to ones that we can actually do, ok?



If he's stopped sooner, then fewer people are killed. Which is the whole point of this. I'm not precluding other means to attempt to deter or prevent folks from attempting school shootings in the first place. I'm simply suggesting an incredibly simple and cheap solution which would mitigate the harm done during such shootings in the future when/if they occur. Your argument is like insisting there's no reason for seat belts or airbags in cars because the best way to prevent accident fatalities is to avoid ever getting into an accident. Well, in the real world, accidents will happen no matter how much we try to prevent them. Similarly, shootings will happen despite our best efforts. So let's have an extra line of defense aside from just hoping that our background checks, and gun restrictions all work.



Sure. But the 30 something former Marine now teaching math at the local middle school, who is an avid target shooter and has a concealed license *will* be able to do quite a bit. Let's not pretend that all teachers must be elderly and helpless.



Which goes for the shooter as well, right? Can you at least acknowledge that anyone in the area who attempts to stop the shooter will have a better chance if they are armed than if they aren't? So what's the problem?



Given that we don't currently have any effective means of ensuring we can prevent shootings from occurring, I think my solution is incredibly relevant. Certainly, there's no reason not to pursue it while we work on that magical means of prevention you want to have.



No. I'm saying that everything else staying the same, any attempt by someone to attack the shooter will have a higher chance of success if the person attempting it is armed compared to if they are not. So if we assume that the ratio of people in the area who will try to stop the shooter remains constant, then the rate of success increases with the rate at which those people are armed. Again, this is not rocket science here.



I'm not arguing that this will prevent the shooting. I'm arguing that it will decrease the average number of fatalities that result from shootings. And that's better than *not* reducing that number. Again, I'm not precluding some other plans to prevent shootings. I just don't see any reason why we can't take steps to reduce the number of fatalities from such shootings while we wait for that perfect solution to arrive.


Edited, Jan 17th 2013 4:50pm by gbaji

You trust the faculty of your school with your child's well being every single day Joph. We're not talking about random strangers here. In the grand scheme of things, your child is going to be vastly more affected over the course of his life by a million other actions and decisions his teachers make than whether some of them keep a firearm in a locker in the faculty lounge. Which, hopefully, he'll never even know anyway.

It's a irrational fear.

There a lot of Marines in Chicago Joph? So not one guy who hunts on the weekends, or target shoots? Are you sure? I think you'd be surprised.



Why? How is it irrational to fear something that happens? The Newtown shooting happened. The Colorado Theater shooting happened. The Virginia Tech shooting happened. It's not irrational to fear that these sorts of things have happened and thus will happen again, and thus perhaps we should do something to mitigate the harm when they happen.

An irrational fear is being so afraid of private ownership of guns that you're unwilling to allow the people you already trust with your child's wellbeing to have a tool available which might just one day save their lives. That's absolutely insane. There's no rationale for it other than "guns are scary".

Edited, Jan 17th 2013 5:18pm by gbaji

Don't be absurd. The gun is just going to appear magically in the hand of the teacher closest to the incident.

So in your hypothetical situation, there is an armed shooter roaming the halls, and the teacher with his gun in the teachers lounge is able to sprint to the lounge, get into his/her locker, and get back to the shooter all without bein shot him/herself? I mean, come on. This only works if the teachers classroom and the lounge are close to each other but nowhere near the shoote, and the shooter doesn't know that there is a weapon in the lounge. Under your hypothetical, the odds of the shooter knowing about the weapon in the lounge is pretty great, since one of your legs of your argument is that if the shooter know there is an armed person in the school, he's less likely to show up.

Not that I am in any way advocating this, but your scenario works much better if the teacher has his/her weapon in the classroom with him/her. Which, lets face it, is just an assinine idea.

Do you hate children so much that instead of trying to think of a real solution you'd much rather just gamble with their lives? I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of other people's kids either, but risking their lives just because you're playing party politics? Shame, really. For one, your link on the statistics of armed civilians vs unarmed? It doesn't take into account that those armed ones were luckily there in the first place, so for "your" solution to work would require a Greg Jenko in every class room, not just one at some random place of a large facility. Something you keep ignoring, by the way. So in reality, the chances are just as good that by the time the designated Morton Schmidt found out about the gunner, ran to where the weapon was stored, got it out of the locked room, prepped it, and ran back there could be the same amount of dead kids.

That doesn't even take into account that now he's possibly out of breath and on an adrenaline high or the lack of training to deal with the situation properly, but there's already enough variables to blow up your hole-laden Death Star of a hypothetical without tossing in some ewoks.

As fun as it might be to try and convince you that the tubby 20-something chick teaching Honors English isn't a retired Mossad sniper or something, I think I'll pass and just trust that I know better than you on this one.


No, I said it's irrational to suggest that a solution is "free security" via more guns floating around the school. I mean, I thought I was pretty clear about that when I said "No, having a bunch of guns around the school for "free security" is an irrational solution" but I guess you needed the strawman at that point. Hope you didn't shoot him

When we can get to the point where our troops, after years of intensive training and drills, kill fewer of our allies with friendly fire than our mutual enemies manage to kill, I'll consider the possibility that an armed teacher/guard might not increase the body count.

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

If he's stopped sooner, then fewer people are killed. Which is the whole point of this. I'm not precluding other means to attempt to deter or prevent folks from attempting school shootings in the first place. I'm simply suggesting an incredibly simple and cheap solution which would mitigate the harm done during such shootings in the future when/if they occur.Your argument is like insisting there's no reason for seat belts or airbags in cars because the best way to prevent accident fatalities is to avoid ever getting into an accident. Well, in the real world, accidents will happen no matter how much we try to prevent them. Similarly, shootings will happen despite our best efforts. So let's have an extra line of defense aside from just hoping that our background checks, and gun restrictions all work.

......

Which goes for the shooter as well, right? Can you at least acknowledge that anyone in the area who attempts to stop the shooter will have a better chance if they are armed than if they aren't? So what's the problem?

.......

No. I'm saying that everything else staying the same, any attempt by someone to attack the shooter will have a higher chance of success if the person attempting it is armed compared to if they are not. So if we assume that the ratio of people in the area who will try to stop the shooter remains constant, then the rate of success increases with the rate at which those people are armed. Again, this is not rocket science here.

......

I'm not arguing that this will prevent the shooting. I'm arguing that it will decrease the average number of fatalities that result from shootings. And that's better than *not* reducing that number. Again, I'm not precluding some other plans to prevent shootings. I just don't see any reason why we can't take steps to reduce the number of fatalities from such shootings while we wait for that perfect solution to arrive.

Then once again, we're talking about two completely different scenarios as I already pointed out. I already admitted several times that your solution would mitigate the kills, but that's not the topic. The topic is to mitigate the mass shootings, hence the weapon bans. "Don't worry parents, with our new measures, only 10 kids are likely to be killed during a mass shooting. That's less than half from Sandyhook!"


Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

When thousands of kids are paying hundreds of dollars every time they walk into the school, then we can talk about the practicality of having that level of security in our public schools. Forgive me for restricting my assumptions to the reasonable ones. We can't provide that level of security at schools. It would cost too much. We can, however, just by removing the existing gun-free zone restrictions in schools, essentially get some level of security "free".

....

Sure. But you seem to be under the impression that we either stop the shooter cold right at the door before he fires a shot, or we can't stop him at all until the police arrive. The reality is that stopping every shooter at the door is a near impossibility, if for no other reason than most (all?) schools have multiple points of entry, and in order to ensure we could stop said shooter right there would require multiple guards at each of them. It's simply not practical.

Let's restrict our options to ones that we can actually do, ok?

I do recall stating that the shooter could just shoot the guard at the door, hence why people are against guns in the first place. I said a security checkpoint, a concept ubiquitously used. There's a middle school outside of Ft. Sil, Oklahoma that I visited as part of an assignment from lolphoenix. There's a one-way entrance/exit with a metal detector and a guard. It can be that simple.




That's the point. We're trying to create an effective measure to ensure that we can prevent shootings, (i.e. the weapon bans) and you're giving suggestions that do not get us any closer to the desired solution. So, while your solution gives results, it isn't relevant to this discussion, which is how to reduce mass shootings, not the number in mass shootings.



I'm not. I'm just living in the reality that teachers aren't the most suited for shoot-outs. So, unless you believe otherwise, then you agree.