quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

I tell this story sometimes, when the gun discussion gets heated. This seems like the place.

Back in the late 90's, a punk kid with a stolen gun robbed a liquor store, and killed the clerk in the process. He ran off, climbing over the fence of the commercial street he was on, and through the backyards of the residential area behind. He wound up hiding in my "Grandma's," garage a few blocks from the scene (she was horrible about keeping the door closed, even after this).

She heard a noise in the garage, thought it was a dog going after her cats, and went into the garage shouting and cursing, and carrying a broom. The killer, still armed with the murder weapon, thought he was facing a shotgun, and dashed right out in front of a police car searching for him.

The little blurb in the paper, and probably a few pro-gun newsletters headlined it as, "armed resident flushes killer," and such. But it wasn't a responsible gun owner defending her home. It was a nutty old lady with a broom. The gun was only in his panicked mind.

That's the power of the 2nd Amendment.

quote:

ORIGINAL: SadistDave

Here's the long and short of it:

- 20 children 6 adults were murdered
- At least 2 of those adults died by trying to confront the shooter with no weapon of their own. Maybe the others did too, but I haven't seen those news stories.
- Children died AFTER the unarmed teachers attacked the shooter because the odds drastically favored the armed attacker and the teachers lost.

The question is simply this: Would those teachers have had a better chance of stopping the attacker if they had been armed?

Obviously the idiotic notion that not being able to carry a gun didn't turn out so well for the teachers who might have had a chance OR the children that were systematically murdered after hopelessly outmatched teachers made their ineffectual attempts to stop the murderer. If... IF you really gave 2 shits about the safety of our children and IF you honestly believed that they are a precious commodity that we should protect at all costs, then this should be a wake-up call for you that unarmed people cannot be expected defend themselves against armed attackers.

The reality is that guns exist, and they are abundant. IF we want to truly protect our children then we need to find better ways to protect them. Crazy people and bad people are always going to exist, and the truth of the matter is that they always manage to find ways to do as much damage as possible when they set their minds to it. In your pie-in-the-sky world where guns don't exist, there would still be knives , clubs, swords, acid, and all sorts of mean nasty things that bad people would use to do very bad things to innocent people.A simple 2x4 is an effective weapon to club someone to death when those people are unable to defend themselves. Other countries have experienced this and we should learn from their mistakes. It would be infinitely more beneficial to train teachers in self-defense and survival techniques than banning weapons on school campuses has proven to be.

Principle Dawn Hochsprung was the Principal of the Connecticut school. She confronted the shooter unarmed, and lost her life. The shooter then continued on his killing spree. IF Principal Hochsprung had been trained in unarmed disarming techniques, or IF she had had a gun of her own to confront the attacker things may not have turned out any differently than they did. However, we know the results of not having such training and not having a firearm of her own. Training or having a weapon would have dramatically improved the chances that she and many of the children would be alive today.

Something you libs don't ever seem to understand is that negatives do not accomplish goals. If we truly want to protect our children and random adults, then banning the weapon is ineffectual. All that does is create a vacuum which will be filled by other atrocities committed with other weapons. Other weapons will continue to be used every time another ridiculous ban is enacted. One thing that remains a constant though is that people without training will continue to have little chance to defend themselves or their charges.

A much more effective approach to this would be to have an armed officer and at least 1 armed teacher per hallway in every school, and to train all teachers in some form of martial arts. You know.... it may not always help, but it's a much more effective solution than pretending the world would be better off if we pretended to live in Disneyland.

-SD-

quote:

ORIGINAL: slvemike4u
I have,and always will be very vocal about how I feel about guns,and the pervasive "gun culture" in this country.
Well now we have little children to bury in Newton Conn. and I have had it.
In my opinion anyone who has ever argued a pro gun position,anyone who has ever taken a stance against reasonable gun control legislation,anyone who has ever used the bullshit "slippery slope" argument has blood on their hands.
The blood of children.
Now many of you are going to blast me for this ,I just might lose some "friends" here for posting this.
I don't fucking care,we in this country have for far too long embraced the mayhem,we have suffered the tragedy's and we have buried the dead
All at the alter of a few words written 200 years ago.
It's time for the madness to stop,actually way past time.
These were legally held guns in Newton.
A teacher,an elderly woman thought she needed to own three weapons one of them a semi-automatic assault rifle?
Is she who the NRA is referring to when they talk about "responsible gun owners"?
Is she the poster child for the right to bear arms ?
Well she is dead today and we can't ask her why she needed such weapons.....she is dead as a result of owning such weapons...and 20 little children are dead because she owned,legally,such weapons.
Now all of you pro gun folks can come here and blast the shit out of me...I don't fucking care !
I'm going out today for a long walk,Monday I will be on the net seeking out whatever groups here in my area who are trying to do something about guns,I will find them and I will ask how I can help...because bitching about it on a lap top just doesn't cut it anymore,I figure there is blood on my hands too,cause I never did nothing more than bitch.
20 children are dead today.....how long before the next tragedy ?

quote:

ORIGINAL: LaTigresse

quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961



Tazzy most of those guns are stolen, obtained from black market sources, and the ATF intercepts a number of illegal gun shipments into the US, or obtained through straw purchases.

Come up with a workable solution and you will save thousands of children a year.

If 'most of those guns' are stolen, where are they stolen from? What responsible (cough) gun owner that originally purchased them legally, allowed them to be stolen?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Aylee

quote:

ORIGINAL: LaTigresse

quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961



Tazzy most of those guns are stolen, obtained from black market sources, and the ATF intercepts a number of illegal gun shipments into the US, or obtained through straw purchases.

Come up with a workable solution and you will save thousands of children a year.

If 'most of those guns' are stolen, where are they stolen from? What responsible (cough) gun owner that originally purchased them legally, allowed them to be stolen?

Well, in the Connecticut case, he killed her and then stole her guns.  Kinda hard to be a responsible gun owner after your son kills you. 

quote:

ORIGINAL: thezeppo

quote:

ORIGINAL: SadistDave

Here's the long and short of it:

- 20 children 6 adults were murdered
- At least 2 of those adults died by trying to confront the shooter with no weapon of their own. Maybe the others did too, but I haven't seen those news stories.
- Children died AFTER the unarmed teachers attacked the shooter because the odds drastically favored the armed attacker and the teachers lost.

The question is simply this: Would those teachers have had a better chance of stopping the attacker if they had been armed?

Obviously the idiotic notion that not being able to carry a gun didn't turn out so well for the teachers who might have had a chance OR the children that were systematically murdered after hopelessly outmatched teachers made their ineffectual attempts to stop the murderer. If... IF you really gave 2 shits about the safety of our children and IF you honestly believed that they are a precious commodity that we should protect at all costs, then this should be a wake-up call for you that unarmed people cannot be expected defend themselves against armed attackers.

The reality is that guns exist, and they are abundant. IF we want to truly protect our children then we need to find better ways to protect them. Crazy people and bad people are always going to exist, and the truth of the matter is that they always manage to find ways to do as much damage as possible when they set their minds to it. In your pie-in-the-sky world where guns don't exist, there would still be knives , clubs, swords, acid, and all sorts of mean nasty things that bad people would use to do very bad things to innocent people.A simple 2x4 is an effective weapon to club someone to death when those people are unable to defend themselves. Other countries have experienced this and we should learn from their mistakes. It would be infinitely more beneficial to train teachers in self-defense and survival techniques than banning weapons on school campuses has proven to be.

Principle Dawn Hochsprung was the Principal of the Connecticut school. She confronted the shooter unarmed, and lost her life. The shooter then continued on his killing spree. IF Principal Hochsprung had been trained in unarmed disarming techniques, or IF she had had a gun of her own to confront the attacker things may not have turned out any differently than they did. However, we know the results of not having such training and not having a firearm of her own. Training or having a weapon would have dramatically improved the chances that she and many of the children would be alive today.

Something you libs don't ever seem to understand is that negatives do not accomplish goals. If we truly want to protect our children and random adults, then banning the weapon is ineffectual. All that does is create a vacuum which will be filled by other atrocities committed with other weapons. Other weapons will continue to be used every time another ridiculous ban is enacted. One thing that remains a constant though is that people without training will continue to have little chance to defend themselves or their charges.

A much more effective approach to this would be to have an armed officer and at least 1 armed teacher per hallway in every school, and to train all teachers in some form of martial arts. You know.... it may not always help, but it's a much more effective solution than pretending the world would be better off if we pretended to live in Disneyland.

-SD-

Yeah man, great logic! So this all happened because a gun was too easily available. Why don't we put like 5 more guns there, that way the students wont even have to go home first when they want to steal one! Even better, lets cut out the middleman and give the guns straight to kids. If armed teachers make it safer for kids, then armed kids must make it doubly safe, right?

Some people just think backwards. If what comes out of this is that teachers are given guns then I give it a week before the next tragedy. This freedom to bear arms you all like to boast about seems to be very quickly becoming a necessity.

quote:

ORIGINAL: SadistDave

quote:

ORIGINAL: thezeppo

quote:

ORIGINAL: SadistDave

Here's the long and short of it:

- 20 children 6 adults were murdered
- At least 2 of those adults died by trying to confront the shooter with no weapon of their own. Maybe the others did too, but I haven't seen those news stories.
- Children died AFTER the unarmed teachers attacked the shooter because the odds drastically favored the armed attacker and the teachers lost.

The question is simply this: Would those teachers have had a better chance of stopping the attacker if they had been armed?

Obviously the idiotic notion that not being able to carry a gun didn't turn out so well for the teachers who might have had a chance OR the children that were systematically murdered after hopelessly outmatched teachers made their ineffectual attempts to stop the murderer. If... IF you really gave 2 shits about the safety of our children and IF you honestly believed that they are a precious commodity that we should protect at all costs, then this should be a wake-up call for you that unarmed people cannot be expected defend themselves against armed attackers.

The reality is that guns exist, and they are abundant. IF we want to truly protect our children then we need to find better ways to protect them. Crazy people and bad people are always going to exist, and the truth of the matter is that they always manage to find ways to do as much damage as possible when they set their minds to it. In your pie-in-the-sky world where guns don't exist, there would still be knives , clubs, swords, acid, and all sorts of mean nasty things that bad people would use to do very bad things to innocent people.A simple 2x4 is an effective weapon to club someone to death when those people are unable to defend themselves. Other countries have experienced this and we should learn from their mistakes. It would be infinitely more beneficial to train teachers in self-defense and survival techniques than banning weapons on school campuses has proven to be.

Principle Dawn Hochsprung was the Principal of the Connecticut school. She confronted the shooter unarmed, and lost her life. The shooter then continued on his killing spree. IF Principal Hochsprung had been trained in unarmed disarming techniques, or IF she had had a gun of her own to confront the attacker things may not have turned out any differently than they did. However, we know the results of not having such training and not having a firearm of her own. Training or having a weapon would have dramatically improved the chances that she and many of the children would be alive today.

Something you libs don't ever seem to understand is that negatives do not accomplish goals. If we truly want to protect our children and random adults, then banning the weapon is ineffectual. All that does is create a vacuum which will be filled by other atrocities committed with other weapons. Other weapons will continue to be used every time another ridiculous ban is enacted. One thing that remains a constant though is that people without training will continue to have little chance to defend themselves or their charges.

A much more effective approach to this would be to have an armed officer and at least 1 armed teacher per hallway in every school, and to train all teachers in some form of martial arts. You know.... it may not always help, but it's a much more effective solution than pretending the world would be better off if we pretended to live in Disneyland.

-SD-

Yeah man, great logic! So this all happened because a gun was too easily available. Why don't we put like 5 more guns there, that way the students wont even have to go home first when they want to steal one! Even better, lets cut out the middleman and give the guns straight to kids. If armed teachers make it safer for kids, then armed kids must make it doubly safe, right?

Some people just think backwards. If what comes out of this is that teachers are given guns then I give it a week before the next tragedy. This freedom to bear arms you all like to boast about seems to be very quickly becoming a necessity.

Actually, no. This may have started because a gun was easily available, but the vast majority of it happened because 6 adults, whom we are supposed to believe it is safe to leave our children with, were unprepared, untrained, and unarmed. As I pointed out before, at least 2 unarmed teachers confronted an armed attacker.

The teachers who tried to stop the shooter died in pretty short order and more children were killed afterwards because they did not have the training or the tools to do what they needed to do to protect those kids. Which part of that do you utterly fail to understand?

"Like" 5 more guns in there may not have done a damned thing, but 6 teachers died because they had no gun, no knife, no weapon of any kind. Being from the UK, I'd think you'd be smart enough to figure out that when you take away guns, the only thing you do is force people to use other weapons. Isn't the murder weapon of choice in the UK knives because it's so difficult to buy a gun? How about we call for a unilateral knife ban in the UK for anything larger than 3" and see how fast you folks are clubbing each other to death with tire irons?

Banning things is not the solution. Teaching people how to cope in the environments they live in IS effective. Giving people the tools to defend themselves IS effective. Providing real solutions instead of feel-good solutions IS effective. Hopefully it won't take a knife wielding attacker to maim or kill a bunch of British children before you figure that out.

-SD-

quote:

ORIGINAL: ServosCor

It's a sad day when we have to even consider arming the educator's of our most precious children to keep them out of harm's way.  However, that being said, there are numerous instances of  responsible, permitted gun carrying citizen's saving the day when the evil inside of one is unleashed.  And, these instances are happening more often in America.  It's hard to know what is the right decision.
 
                                     God bless the innocent ones & their families involved in yesterday's shooting.
 
            servos cor

quote:

ORIGINAL: tj444

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

I tell this story sometimes, when the gun discussion gets heated. This seems like the place.

Back in the late 90's, a punk kid with a stolen gun robbed a liquor store, and killed the clerk in the process. He ran off, climbing over the fence of the commercial street he was on, and through the backyards of the residential area behind. He wound up hiding in my "Grandma's," garage a few blocks from the scene (she was horrible about keeping the door closed, even after this).

She heard a noise in the garage, thought it was a dog going after her cats, and went into the garage shouting and cursing, and carrying a broom. The killer, still armed with the murder weapon, thought he was facing a shotgun, and dashed right out in front of a police car searching for him.

The little blurb in the paper, and probably a few pro-gun newsletters headlined it as, "armed resident flushes killer," and such. But it wasn't a responsible gun owner defending her home. It was a nutty old lady with a broom. The gun was only in his panicked mind.

That's the power of the 2nd Amendment.

what if he just shot her instead?

quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyPact

quote:

ORIGINAL: slvemike4u
I have,and always will be very vocal about how I feel about guns,and the pervasive "gun culture" in this country.
Well now we have little children to bury in Newton Conn. and I have had it.
In my opinion anyone who has ever argued a pro gun position,anyone who has ever taken a stance against reasonable gun control legislation,anyone who has ever used the bullshit "slippery slope" argument has blood on their hands.
The blood of children.
Now many of you are going to blast me for this ,I just might lose some "friends" here for posting this.
I don't fucking care,we in this country have for far too long embraced the mayhem,we have suffered the tragedy's and we have buried the dead
All at the alter of a few words written 200 years ago.
It's time for the madness to stop,actually way past time.
These were legally held guns in Newton.
A teacher,an elderly woman thought she needed to own three weapons one of them a semi-automatic assault rifle?
Is she who the NRA is referring to when they talk about "responsible gun owners"?
Is she the poster child for the right to bear arms ?
Well she is dead today and we can't ask her why she needed such weapons.....she is dead as a result of owning such weapons...and 20 little children are dead because she owned,legally,such weapons.
Now all of you pro gun folks can come here and blast the shit out of me...I don't fucking care !
I'm going out today for a long walk,Monday I will be on the net seeking out whatever groups here in my area who are trying to do something about guns,I will find them and I will ask how I can help...because bitching about it on a lap top just doesn't cut it anymore,I figure there is blood on my hands too,cause I never did nothing more than bitch.
20 children are dead today.....how long before the next tragedy ?

I'm not going to blast you. If you feel passionately about it, isn't working toward your goal what people do when they want to invoke change? I'm not going to get into how many people think it's right or how many people think that it's wrong. I'm sure each side of the abortion debate think they are right when they are being active on the issue. Whichever side they are on, they believe in what they are doing.

I have argued for what you could call "pro gun" in the past. I grew up in an area where hunting was really big and there is still a significant number of people who use that meat to feed their families. Even there, it wasn't nearly relied on as much as it is here. The other part of that is that the wildlife isn't exactly docile. Good luck telling people out here that they don't need a gun to take down a bear. There are other methods to kill a bear. I just don't want to be the one who has to be close enough to see if I'd be successful.

Even with hunter's safety courses, responsible storage, and every other measure you can put in place, nobody could ever guarantee that there wouldn't be accidents or that the weapons wouldn't get into the hands of the wrong people. Even if we never had another maniac go on a shooting spree, deaths by guns will never be zero.

Not two weeks ago, I was in Home Depot, looking at a gun safe similar (but not quite as high end) as the one that Jeff was talking about. Combination and key lock but I couldn't tell you how thick. I even mentioned at the time how I wish more gun owners had one. I have to wonder if the owner of those weapons would have had one, is it possible it would have prevented what happened?

quote:

ORIGINAL: thezeppo



I'm probably about to betray my idiocy here, but I would like to ask a question. Is the black and whiteness of the debate due to the inflexibility of the American constitution? Can the second amendment be revised or is it simply a case of everyone has a right to bear arms, or no one does? That is a genuine question. I realise I maybe am not seeing every intricacy of the debate here, but there is obviously some gun control in America, even if only in the form of waiting lists. Why can that not simply be extended to make sure everyone who has a gun is being responsible.

Are gun-owners in America personally responsible for how the gun, and any ammunition, they have bought is used? i.e. would I face a criminal charge if I owned a gun that was stolen and used to commit a crime, or a tragedy such as this? If so, what is the charge I would face and what would be my maximum sentence? If not, why not?

quote:

I'm probably about to betray my idiocy here, but I would like to ask a question. Is the black and whiteness of the debate due to the inflexibility of the American constitution? Can the second amendment be revised or is it simply a case of everyone has a right to bear arms, or no one does? That is a genuine question. I realise I maybe am not seeing every intricacy of the debate here, but there is obviously some gun control in America, even if only in the form of waiting lists. Why can that not simply be extended to make sure everyone who has a gun is being responsible.

Are gun-owners in America personally responsible for how the gun, and any ammunition, they have bought is used? i.e. would I face a criminal charge if I owned a gun that was stolen and used to commit a crime, or a tragedy such as this? If so, what is the charge I would face and what would be my maximum sentence? If not, why not?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

seems we have a mr gommert dribbler in here ...oh yay

A Republican Congressman suggested that had the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary been armed with assault rifles, they could have prevented Friday’s massacre and saved lives.
Appearing on a special Fox News Sunday dedicated to the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said that an armed teacher or principal could have taken the killer’s “head off before he can kill those precious kids”:

GOHMERT: Having been a judge and reviewed photographs of these horrific scenes and knowing that children have these defensive wounds, gun shots through their arms and hands as they try to protect themselves, and, hearing the heroic stories of the principal, lunging, trying to protect, Chris, I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids. [...]


Pressed by host Chris Wallace on why ordinary citizens need semi automatic weapons that shoot 5 bullets per second, Gohmert said that any restrictions on fire arms could lead to the slippery slope of full prohibition and said that American amass weapons to protect themselves from the government.

“For the reason George Washington said a free people should be an armed people,” Gohmert explained. “It ensures against the tyranny of the government, if they know the biggest army is the American people, then you don’t have the tyranny that came from king george. that is why it was put in there and that’s why once you start drawing the line, where do you stop?”

quote:

ORIGINAL: cordeliasub


But you cannot tell me one man or woman needs 50 guns in their basement. You cannot tell me that a regular citizen needs to have an assault weapon. Somewhere in the midst of "all guns are inherently evil and anyone who has held one helped kill these children" and "don't be takin' my arsenal and git off my land" there HAS to be some sort of solution. I wish I knew what.

The things that troubles me the most, however, is how many things I am hearing about guns, no guns, metal detectors, mental illness, autism....in the news and everywhere else....and very little about the FACT that the one who is most responsible for this tragedy is...the boy/man who shot these people. HE made the choice to kill. WHY on earth is that fact getting so lost in the ranting? I saw this on facebook, and all I could say was AMEN:

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
The story seems to have gone WAY over your head, TJ, even though you quoted it. Try reading it again, possibly with some of your filters turned off.

If he had shot the nutty old lady with the broom, then he would have murdered two people in 10 minutes, and would have to wait longer for parole. He believed he was outgunned, when he saw her coming with something long and black in her hands. The knowledge that the people have guns was part of his reality.