Journal damn_registrars's Journal: More Questions than Answers from the NRA 21
The 225-page report presented on Tuesday includes eight recommendations, most notably a fuller articulation of the NRAâ(TM)s proposal following the Newtown shooting to place armed security in every school in the country.
The report outlines a model training program for school resource officers and school personnel that, along with proposed changes to various state laws, would enable designated school personnel to carry firearms after having undergone training.
Yet of course it does not offer a plan to pay for any of this. They also don't seem to have a grasp on the actual numbers (of guards and guns) required to fulfill this plan. Consider a few things:
- How many doors were at the schools you attended as a child? I can't think of a single school I went to that had only one door. The high school I went to likely had at least 7 different entrances which even a really fast runner would need over a minute to get between; my middle school probably had at least 4 and my elementary I would guess had at least three. Do you put a guard at each entrance?
- How do you prepare the guards for armed attacks? We have heard recently that the Newtown shooter was wearing a bullet-proof vest; the Batman shooter was wearing armor as well.
- What do you do if the teachers and staff don't want to carry weapons on campus? Don't they have the right to refuse?
- What if the community is opposed to guns in the school? Do you force them to fire teachers to hire armed guards anyways?
- Does it really make sense to arm most teachers? The same tenure system that conservatives seldom pass at the opportunity to bash means that many of our teachers are older; do you want to rely on someone in their 50s or 60s who took a few evening gun classes to defend our children?
In other words, the NRA plan is epically short-sighted (and that is being kind). They want to solve the violence problem by bringing in more lethal force. They seem to live in a world very different from the country I reside in. They apparently are so afraid of violence that they feel firing teachers to hire security guards is somehow a good move.
I've never followed the logic (Score:2)
Then again, I view the 1st & 2nd Amendments, the whole Bill of Rights, really, as vaguely prophetic about our Orwellian age. ManBearPig's pseudo-religious pablum on the topic of anthropogenic global climate non-constant warming variability [nytimes.com]
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Repeat after me: There is no salvation in legislation.
How does one achieve the NRA's goals of armed guards in every school without legislation? Schools in general in this country are broke, they don't have money to hire armed guards (particularly since most schools would need several in order to even guard only the most commonly used doors). There are already too many kids in the classrooms, so firing teachers to hire security guards won't be popular, either.
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Can we pull this thread? Can we point out that the economic pump has been cavitating for some time? Not to say you're lacking a point here, but if local government has been so thoroughly taxed to death that it can't afford security, then maybe a broader analysis is necessary before zooming back in to the specific question of school security.
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Not to say you're lacking a point here, but if local government has been so thoroughly taxed to death that it can't afford security, then maybe a broader analysis is necessary before zooming back in to the specific question of school security.
I don't know how school district taxes work where you live, but where I have lived so far generally each district has to raise the bulk of its funds by taxing the people who live there. Furthermore in most places where I have lived, any time that the school district has tried to put a budget referendum up to a vote, it has been rejected by the voters. Hence the districts are generally not inclined to ask for more money from their residents, even to deal with problems like asbestos in buildings or buses f
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I'll tell you: the economy runs backward. And, like a car driven in reverse, you can get sluggish motion.
So long as the Federal Reserve
- causes money to appear to inflate the stock market,
- props up the pension plans,
- throws money at universities for student loans
, - jawbones banks into giving lousy mortgage & car loans, and
- generally supports vote buying schemes for the can't-balance-a-budget Cong
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Sure is a good thing no one asks questions when making an alteration to the funding profile for the local school is seemingly impossible. Curiosity is hurtful.
OK, lets put the ball in your hands. You're saying that people are afraid to ask questions or try new things. Lets imagine a situation where you are the superintendent of a typical suburban school district with a few dozen total schools and several thousand students. For the sake of argument we'll say that the board is stacked with your close personal friends who agree with you on everything and will vote 100% to approve whatever you want, hence you can make any change you desire.
How would you pay to
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Referendum to the voters? Training for teachers in exchange for tax credits? Neighborhood watch-style volunteers? Haircut across all other sacred cow programs? I mean, you can allow/disallow all the creative endpoint solutions you like, but the fundamental problem is that the people outside the Beltway have too little power, and the people inside the Beltway too much.
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Where will you get the money from, since your area voters won't give you any more funds?
Referendum to the voters?
This would be off the table for the reason stated above - the voters won't approve anything that raises their property taxes.
Training for teachers in exchange for tax credits?
Teachers with guns is not the same thing as professional armed guards at the doors. For one, some teachers simply won't want to have guns. Another, they are supposed to teach, not patrol; law enforcement is not part of their
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Not direct influence, but to say that the utterly jacked up Department of Education lacks influence, or to ignore the econ
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Where I have lived so far, the influence from Washington DC upon local schools has not been that great. Sure, there are federal standards saying that students should know certain things to finish high school, but the schools have had a fair deal of flexibility beyond that. Is there a specific act from DC that you see as impeding schools from pursuing whatever security measures they want?
Not direct influence, but to say that the utterly jacked up Department of Education lacks influence, or to ignore the economic reality of what DC has done/is doing to this country is to miss some crucial data in this discussion.
I would not try to make a claim that the ED doesn't have any influence in the matter at all, however to the best of my knowledge their influence has more to do with curriculum than with budgetary matters. Every school district I attended as a child managed their own budgets with very little influence coming from outside their geographic area.
We're hamstrung at all levels because idiotic, bi-partisan, anti-capitalist policies have thoroughly sodomized everything.
My first question on this statement is whether you are still talking specifically about DC influence on local school districts, or are you talking about school distr
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I'm suggesting that, instead of a situation where citizens are passive, and expect that they cry in the small child fashion, and resources just appear, more citizens get actively involved. Maybe the security is required. Maybe it is not. But people absolutely have to:
- engage
- accept that absolutely no amount of rights-stripping, regulation, and Orwellian rectal sunshine is going to preclude
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Maybe the security is required. Maybe it is not.
My point is that the NRA has dictated that armed security IS absolutely required. And the NRA gets what they want.
- accept that absolutely no amount of rights-stripping, regulation, and Orwellian rectal sunshine is going to preclude tragedies
Some people would say that adding armed guards to a school is a stripping of rights. Many people would prefer their children learn in a non-prison environment.
I, for one, am viewing public schooling as an idea whose time has passed, and plan to do alternate things for my offspring.
You do have the right to see your children educated in whichever way you wish. It is possible that the developed world as we know it, with its overwhelming support of public schooling, has it all wrong.
Now, if you are advocating f
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Just because you have a weapon on your person doesn't mean you will be adequately prepared for a potential attacker.
Yep [king5.com]...
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The NRA's goal, AFAICT, is to ensure that "shall not be infringed" remains as true as possible. Despite the 24/7/365 efforts of the worldwide anti-liberty movement to render a formerly free people as docile and fearful as possible. In a way, the entire economy is being destroyed by Progressive, Keynesian economics anyway, and the NRA is mostly a rearguard action as it is.
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The NRA's goal, AFAICT, is to ensure that "shall not be infringed" remains as true as possible.
From my perspective it seems that the NRA is most concerned with selling guns, gun accessories, and the gun culture. If those went away, then their membership would likely deteriorate rather quickly.
the 24/7/365 efforts of the worldwide anti-liberty movement to render a formerly free people as docile and fearful as possible
It seems to me that the NRA profits mightily off of fear. They want to encourage people to take up arms on their own in preparation for any of a number of threats - some real and some imagined.
In a way, the entire economy is being destroyed by Progressive, Keynesian economics anyway, and the NRA is mostly a rearguard action as it is.
The economy and the entire political system in this country has only marched continually further to the right over
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Constitution? History? You are aware that totalitarian regimes seek to disarm people as readily as they control the media? If neither of those matter, what about Gun Owners of America? [gunowners.org]. The NRA by no means has a lock on all pro-liberty Americans.
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You are aware that totalitarian regimes seek to disarm people as readily as they control the media?
And if we had a totalitarian regime I might be concerned. There is no evidence whatsoever that the current presidential administration seeks to disarm people.
The NRA by no means has a lock on all pro-liberty Americans.
You're 100% correct on that, in part as not all pro-liberty Americans want to see more guns.
The unrepentant, rampant idiocy of the gungrabbers
Please elaborate on who you see as "gungrabbers". In particular, if you place me or the current POTUS in this group, please provide rationale and references. Just because people on conservative web sites repeat mantras and conspiracy theories doesn't mean
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You are aware that totalitarian regimes seek to disarm people as readily as they control the media?
And if we had a totalitarian regime I might be concerned. There is no evidence whatsoever that the current presidential administration seeks to disarm people.
You're quite correct. The precise quote is "President Barack Obama is vowing to use "whatever power this office holds" to safeguard the nation's children [timesdispatch.com]". This is due to the magical nature of the phrase "safeguard the nation's children". It's not that I think the man a liar. Rather, I think his Olympian view so far above truth mere mortal concerns such as the Constitution and unintended consequences remain beneath the man.
The NRA by no means has a lock on all pro-liberty Americans.
You're 100% correct on that, in part as not all pro-liberty Americans want to see mor
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And, I botched the double-quoting. Sorry.
I've made the same mistake before myself. It does, however, make your post slightly more difficult to read, so I'll try to get back to it later.
It would be nice if slashdot comments had a "grace period" - say maybe 5 minutes or so - to make edits to fix things like that. I know, that is what the preview button is for, but sometimes we get a little too certain of our tags to use it.
I see some joker is down-moderating my comments here, too. Some people never learn, I guess.
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