One isn't allowed to call a spade a spade...

Careful. Racist dog whistle.

 

Timothy McVay was a terrorist, and he was not Muslim. He was killing for a cause though, a common thread.

 

p.s. 993 school shootings in the US since nov 2012. Any suggestions to plausable explanations

287 million people in a country is bound to have a few bad people. If you want a perfect society, kill all the humans, every last one of them.

 

p.s. 993 school shootings in the US since nov 2012. Any suggestions to plausable explanations?

Why so many school shootings? Because every school is a mini France.

You have two main demographics that shoot up schools; the unstable damaged student and the radical terrorist. Schools are their target of choice because it's a buffet of unarmed vulnerables.

We have two main problems;
#1 - we have too many crazies (or maybe not; with a population this high, the shoot-em-up crazies per capita might not even be statistically significant).
#2 - Out of fear, we have deluded ourselves into thinking that making a "gun free zone" is equivalent to making a "safe zone." Understandably (to the uninitiated), guns cause fear. People don't like fear. So they feel safer when guns aren't around. But feeling safer and being safer are two totally different things. It's like covering your head with a blanket in an earthquake; if you could see what was going on, maybe you could evade the falling rafters.

I for one, would feel much safer if I knew my daughter's 4th grade teacher had handgun training and an ISD-issued gun in a fingerprint-locked safe on her desk.

 

#2 - Out of fear, we have deluded ourselves into thinking that making a "gun free zone" is equivalent to making a "safe zone." Understandably (to the uninitiated), guns cause fear. People don't like fear. So they feel safer when guns aren't around. But feeling safer and being safer are two totally different things. It's like covering your head with a blanket in an earthquake; if you could see what was going on, maybe you could evade the falling rafters.

My daughter's 2nd grade teacher in a private school, who was also the school principle, was a former cop. He changed careers due to injury -- and became an excellent teacher/adminstrator.

At our first meeting (along with the other parents), I took him aside and quietly asked if he was going to (please!) carry a weapon in the school. He quietly responded that it was an option he, and the other teachers, were considering.

Unfortunately, one of the other moms -- a card-carrying granola -- overheard the conversation and exploded. I mean she was irate enough at the suggestion that, if she were packing, she probably would have shot us both.

We tried to calm her down, but she was insistent: "No way am I going to let a gun be around my child!" I tried to explain that she really didn't have a choice in the matter. A perp hellbent on destruction is not going to ask permission to bring a gun to the school. The best you could hope for is an equally armed good guy (and former, trained, law enforcement officer!) willing to use any necessary means to protect the kids.

Unfortunately, she made a big enough stink that the final policy implemented to protect our kids was this: all guests on the property must wear an ID badge. Oh, and the property will be surrounded with a 4 ft. (!) chain link fence that will be locked when the kids are in school.

My snarky reply was this: "Are the badges at least going to be bullet proof?"

 

#2 - Out of fear, we have deluded ourselves into thinking that making a "gun free zone" is equivalent to making a "safe zone."

People are incredibly polarized and irrational when it comes to guns. Guns aren't the problem; it's the people using them. If you create a gun free zone, then only the criminals will be armed. That's exactly what they want. Groups of unarmed, defenseless, innocent people to victimize.

I was flipping through the channels and caught a story on a talk show where someone was attempting to rob a store at gun point and one of the customers had a concealed carry permit and was carrying. He shot and killed the robber. It was later determined that the robber was using a toy gun. AFAIK, the police declined to press charges against the citizen; and I believe rightly so. He was in fear of his life and the robber made it appear as if he was ready to kill.

 

We have two main problems;
#1 - we have too many crazies (or maybe not; with a population this high, the shoot-em-up crazies per capita might not even be statistically significant).
#2 - Out of fear, we have deluded ourselves into thinking that making a "gun free zone" is equivalent to making a "safe zone."

Completely agree on #2. People with the unbridled hubris and arrogance to declare a "gun free zone" should be held personally liable for any act of armed violence in that zone. And I mean they should be treated as co-conspirators that go to the execution chamber just the same as the guy who pulled the trigger. A drunk on the highway is treated harshly by the law because he puts the rest of us at risk. The douchebag that declares a "gun free zone" also puts us at risk. That is a demonstrable fact. Why are these idiots held harmless? They're criminals and need to be treated as such.

I also pretty much agree with #1 but I just wanted to add that every shooting of this nature doesn't just involve a "crazy", it involves a crazy on medication. You don't hear a lot about this aspect, but I believe it is nearly 100%. ( I admit I haven't researched this fully.) There's a toxic combination of perceived anonymity, lack of family and social structure, political correctness (that prevents preemptive action against potential crazies), and finally the American tendency to medicate and hope for the best.

And BTW to JoeJester, the U.S. population is closer to 330 million these days.

 

People with the unbridled hubris and arrogance to declare a "gun free zone" should be held personally liable for any act of armed violence in that zone.

I'd be satisfied if those who impose gun free zones were required to place a "Gun Free Zone" sign on their front lawn. Hey, if it's good for the goose...

 

Weren't some efforts to publicly disclose gun ownership records ultimately stopped by the folks without the guns? They realized that advertising yourself as unarmed might not be such a good idea after all.

 

Weren't some efforts to publicly disclose gun ownership records ultimately stopped by the folks without the guns? They realized that advertising yourself as unarmed might not be such a good idea after all.

In Florida, the CCF law is written in such a way as to proscribe where one cannot carry a gun. This is as good as advertising where the helpless victims are.

Happily, those are also places where you will not find me -- unless absolutely necessary (i.e. court house, gov't buildings).

Edit: one good thing about our law, though, is it preempts all other authority. A private citizen, business, corporation, or local government cannot require you to disarm contrary to the state law. Even if they post signs on the premises (i.e. Gun Free Zone, no weapons allowed), the best they can do is ask you to leave (which you must do -- otherwise, trespassing) if they discover you are carrying.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

There is a temptation to rehearse this observation—that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise—and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.

The most-articulate spokesmen for that position are the Islamic State’s officials and supporters themselves. They refer derisively to “moderns.” In conversation, they insist that they will not—cannot—waver from governing precepts that were embedded in Islam by the Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers. They often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early Islam.

 

NSA - Excellent article

"But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combated, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal."

 

"...We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal."

Or we could just give them jobs.

 

http://www.breitbart.com/london/201...europe/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social



I just came across this reference. What do you all think about it?

 

All this talk about Paris has made most of us ignore the tragedy in Beirut. There are still some heroes out there.

 

"An armed society is a polite society."
It might sound right but...
Well most conflicts that last more than few hours show on the contrary. Disarming them has proven to end conflicts much faster than this over-repeated hymn.

 

"An armed society is a polite society."
It might sound right but...
Well most conflicts that last more than few hours show on the contrary. Disarming them has proven to end conflicts much faster than this over-repeated hymn.

The UN asking terrorists to disarm has been very effective at ending conflicts. The Kurds are well armed and plan to stay that way.
http://www.un.org/press/en/2014/sc11520.doc.htm

Through the resolution, the Council demanded that ISIL, Al-Nusra Front and all other entities associated with Al-Qaida cease all violence and terrorist acts, and immediately disarm and disband. Recalling that their attacks against civilians on the basis of ethnic or religious identity might constitute crimes against humanity, it stressed the need to bring those perpetrators, including foreign fighters, to justice.

 

I never said that asking them to disarm was in anyway effective. But really thinking that if everybody was armed would make our life more polite/peaceful that is a stretch.

Kill of their flow of weapons and money. Do you really want every pawn of theirs to become a queen

 

Oh and just so there is no misunderstanding here. I'm not asking a single country to do so. There is a team effort needed how unrealistic it sounds. Besides someone is selling/supplying them with weapons.

 

I never said that asking them to disarm was in anyway effective. But really thinking that if everybody was armed would make our life more polite/peaceful that is a stretch.

Every person I have ever met has a kitchen full of knives. Some quite large and sharp. Some are even fully automatic -- and have been used to assault poor, defenseless turkeys.

Yet not one of them has been involved in a kitchen knife fight. How could this be?