I’ve already said my piece about gun control and school shootings.
I’m uninterested in Billy Graham and American Protestantism in general. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.
I’m still content to let the Mueller investigation run its course. I won’t attempt to prejudge its findings.
I think the situation in Syria is terrible and I think it will continue to be terrible for a long time. I don’t think we should be aiding Al Qaeda or DAESH or any other Islamists for that matter.
I find Donald Trump unpleasant. I wish he weren’t president but he is and probably will be for until January 2021. At least. I wish he were managing the federal government better. The major news media other than Fox and the Wall Street Journal are against him to the point of obsession.
I don’t much care about the Olympics.
I don’t care about the mayor of Nashville or the governor of Missouri. I don’t see why anyone other than Nashvilleans or Missourians should.
So, what’s new?
Same here.
I was thinking about the guns last night. I don’t see any practical solution, however, if we do decide to pay people to protect people at school, this seems to me to be part of the cost of having guns freely available in our society. I think that cost should be borne by gun owners and/or manufacturers. (To be clear, I am a gun owner.) Seems like an externality whose costs should be apportioned to those who benefit.
Steve
As I wisecracked in a comment on a gun control post at OTB, if my teachers had been armed, I wouldn’t be here.
School shootings with three or more victims are still rare events in the U. S. They don’t seem to be a great deal more common relative to our population than in other developed countries, many of them with stricter gun control laws than ours.
There are already “school resource officers” in Chicago public schools. There have been for some time. In the case of the Florida shooting it’s emerging that the law enforcement officer on the scene did very little. Force protection is not a sufficient mission for LEOs. I’m not sure what good more of them would do.
The scumbag at the Parkland, Florida school was a coward. As I have said in the past, law enforcement officers are more scared than Girl Scouts. You really want people who are eager to run into danger, but they are not usually the ‘by the book’ types. (This does not mean that LEOs should be able to do whatever they want.)
In the old days, there were spankings, no cell phones, and outdoors playtime. (We were sent outside, and the door was locked. I am sure that many of the oldsters had a similar upbringing.)
Reportedly, he’s on the autism spectrum. No detail on where on the spectrum but, judging by his actions, he’s not able to relate socially. I doubt that he’s able to form either courage or cowardice.
He seems perfect for today’s law enforcement standards.
Anybody with an ounce of sense does not intentionally put him/herself in danger. Courage is pushing down the fear and acting accordingly. Cowardice is allowing the fear to overwhelm, but it is only applicable to people who have agreed to do what other people have enough sense not to do.
A fireman who refuses to enter a burning building would be a coward, but a regular person would not.
Yesterday, my eldest child’s high school was under heightened security because of a vague social media threat about a gun threat directed to a school abbreviated as “SHS.” It appears that hundreds/thousands of SHS schools from here to Guam took precautions like checking bags and waiving metal detecting wands across the students at the door. (My wife darkly observed that they lined up along the building into the parking lot like ducks in a shooting gallery) Google turns up similar types of issues at other schools for unrelated reasons.
Seems like a difficult issue because the threats are very likely not credible, but the schools have to evaluate them and make a judgment call. If the threats are circulating on social media, they have to consider that parents / students might be making their own decisions or need to hear something that shows the school is taking reasonable precautions.
But that was just one threat; there have been about four prank bomb threats this year at this one school (other schools have had them as well). The typical response has been to evacuate the students to a practice field nearby for a few hours while the police check the lockers.
If this is the new norm, then its going to justify expenses to permit the schools to function.
To be clear, I am not advocating armed guards. The obvious solution is to arm the kids, especially the kindergartners. Those small targets walking erratically will be very hard to target. 20-30 of those kids running towards a shooter armed with the handgun of their choice will be incredibly effective.
Steve
Yeah, I think the entire idea is pretty dumb, too.