All of the Democrat ads that I've seen around the country mention taking on the NRA. It's their excuse for not having any valid ideas.Quote:
Originally Posted by eddiememphis
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All of the Democrat ads that I've seen around the country mention taking on the NRA. It's their excuse for not having any valid ideas.Quote:
Originally Posted by eddiememphis
I just read this article this morning, which pulls an excerpt from a Malcolm Gladwell book. I think Gladwell has solid reasoning on issues that he researches and his take on mass school shootings did in with what you're trying to say. Check it out.Quote:
Originally Posted by foxtrot
https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...t-explanation/
Quote:
Originally Posted by foxtrot
Considering there were 1/2 doz family members who were in, but made it out of, the towers. I'll say Yes
Throw in we as a country gave the Saud's a pass. Oh hell yeah
Post #21Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
Well, clearly I can't be bothered to read other people's links...
Why don't they
- put armed vets to work running security?
- once the morning bell rings, all doors go on electronic lockdown and can't be opened by anyone except authorized personnel from inside the building. You can exit (for emergency purposes) but can't enter.
- all access after the bell goes through a checkpoint room which is bulletproof and has steel doors. This is the only point of entry.
- Visitors are screened by the vets for weapons. Must show valid id and have a valid purpose AND must be escorted to their destination and escorted out from the destination out of the building. Vets standby while the visitor conducts their business.
- no more trenchcoats or longcoats allowed.
- no heavy coats out of season.
- all textbooks are now issued as digital .pdf's. (Not only is it better for the environment, saves trees, waste, etc, you can't lose them, and if it gets deleted you login into your school acct and re-download it.)
- no more backpacks and bags are needed or allowed. You carry a notebook or 3 ring binder with notebook paper in it, 2 pens and pencils and your smartphone, laptop, tablet or kindle for your pdf classbooks and nothing else is allowed. If you can't carry it, you don't need it.
-Everything else is supplied by the school/teachers for in class projects.
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You don't have children right?Quote:
Originally Posted by CoGirl303
Why vets?
Locking the doors won't help most of these shootings that are committed by students.
many are unemployed and need jobs. Not saying the mentally ill ones. But the ones of sound mind and body who are struggling to find a decent job.Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
If they arent able to bring guns in, then a shooting can't happen inside the school. Obviously (didnt think I needed to state this but apparently I do) there would be a screening of the students.
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Or... do away with public schools, save a bunch of tax money, and let private schools flourish or die based on their merit. :D
This. For a long list of reasons that has nothing to do with the Black Swan of school shootings.Quote:
Originally Posted by CavSct1983
Separation of School and State is just as necessary as Separation of Church and State.
LikeQuote:
Originally Posted by CavSct1983
Quote:
Originally Posted by CoGirl303
Like TSA! That would be awesome to have kids searched by more government employees. Great conditioning for their future roles as drones of the state. [Sarcasm2]
Government School districts should be required to provide a million dollar settlement to any student injured in a school. I'm thinking this would bring some small measure of accountability to taking their responsibility seriously. I would imagine some superintendents might actually lose their six figure jobs after a school shooting.
Sounds like a prison to me. And I know several vets who I consider complete douchebags. Vets come in all shapes and sizes. You seem to think they're magical in some way.Quote:
Originally Posted by CoGirl303
Vets, like the military they came from, are a microcosm of society, from which they originally came before they went into the military. Some suck, some are average, and some are the tip of the spear no matter what they do. She seems to be trying to solve some fictitious unemployed-vet problem that I would wager is made up from thin air, or otherwise imagined. I don't know anyone I served with who has a problem with employment, especially if they weren't a moron and actually used their educational benefits. Some have gone into IT, one into the oil fields, some have gone on to grad school (and thus aren't currently working due to school), some are in jobs that require being armed and pursued that line of work on purpose (PMC SDM and State Dept. security type of work). All with whom I've kept up are employed as they want to be. Most vets I've known who have consistent employment problems are not the type you want guarding a school. They're either shitbags or have some things with which they need to deal.
The entire point of veteran benefits is to reintegrate a person into society such that they can take the skills they learned and apply them as civilians. It's not meant to be an appetizer to handouts and woe-is-you-poor-vet special treatment.
Special treatment should be reserved for folks who for one reason or another have a hard go of things beyond the norm, not merely the reality of life itself being hard. In general, such folks are unsuitable for such work. Make no mistake: there's a reason they have had a bad go, be it a mental/emotional issue, drugs, alcohol, or some combo. Between educational bennies and various agencies/departments suffering for bodies, I cannot imagine that anyone suitable for such a security position, desiring of such a position, and capable of meeting standards has any issue finding such work.
I wouldn't want some SPC who was a water purification doofus to have such a job. I'd want Infantry, MPs, Scouts, Forward Observers, etc. Guys who have a background suitable to such work. In my experience, such people already have such jobs or no longer want to work in that field. I'd surmise the remaining viable talent pool is quite low.
Here is an interesting interview with a former School Resource Officer talking about what they do to your kids while they are being "educated" in a government school. Yup, sounds much more like a jail than an educational institution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLHNU-hnIV8
Seems like guarding a school is like being a politician. Those who want to do it are probably the last person I'd want around my kids; and for those who'd be great at it, it's probably the last thing they'd ever want to do.
You're WAY too attached to this Cluster-B thing, like liberals are way too attached to guns. Yes they exist, yes they have problems, but they are not the only cause of societies ills. Just like heavy metal and video games aren't. I think you're fooling yourself when you assume that non Cluster B people won't also commit tragedies. Most of the Nazis weren't Cluster-B.
Seeking attention is a thing that most kids do growing up to one extent or another; didn't mean they are a psychopath.
I have no problem with this, but you and I both know the govt isnt going to get out the education business. Too much money involved and they get to brainwash the little chilluns and program them the way they want.Quote:
Originally Posted by CavSct1983
I was just pondering earlier why none of these parents whose kids died in a mass shooting had ever filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a school or school district?Quote:
Originally Posted by cstone
These kids are "mandated by government" to attend school (public, private or homeschooled)...then the govt should be required to provide adequate security for the children.
None of these damn superintendents deserves a 6 figure salary.
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I agree with the SS having a higher percentage of mentally ill people, and there are plenty of reports of behavior that point to so. My point about attention seeking was that you used an example of a kid seeking attention as a clear indication of Cluster-B. I'm having a bit of trouble rectifying how people who don't care about people, care about how people feel about them though. If you're incapable of having feelings of love or adoration, how can you seek those feelings from others?
*Note: I'm not writing off your example because you were there, and I know things are more clear in person. We've all encountered people with..."issues" that you can clearly pick-up on, but may have difficulty in explaining to another that wasn't there. To me there is a line between seeking attention, and seeking attention by faking an injury and making people beg for some reaction.
Why aren't there more mass shootings at offices? All the same conditions and cliques of high school exist in corporate settings as well. What is the difference?
No youthful hormones, and most people that can hold down an office job are capable of at least some self restraint.Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
We're not taking about most people. I think there is an aspect of not being a youth, but if we're going to talk about how defective Cluster-B people are, let's be thorough.
Even Cluster B sociopaths are capable of restraint by adulthood, as long as it suits their plans. Narcissism and lack of empathy to not necessarily imply a lack of impulse control. Sociopaths are capable of long term planning, particularly when it comes to manipulating others.Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
Agreed. Perhaps once adults they realize goals beyond infamy.
Maybe that's the result of "everybody is a winner" that people have been pushing the last decade or two? We used to learn early on that not everyone wins.. when you are told that you are special and everyone is equal your entire childhood that first bombshell that you've been lied to your entire life has got to sting quite a bit.Quote:
Originally Posted by foxtrot
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I understand the science but I also study history and I am not willing to let any knowledgeable people execute justice on whatever scientific evidence they maybe relying on today. This was the way of eugenics.
Each person deserves to be tried and judged on their own actions, not a blood test or the results of a psychiatric examination.
Does this mean that innocent people may suffer and die? Yes, but that only motivates me and others who choose to protect the innocent to up our game. Government in the hands of those who believe they are smart enough to pre-judge others based on any criteria is a recipe for mass murder.
I saw that point brought up on Fox News Sunday this morning. Gabrielle Gifford's anti-gun astronaut husband was going after Oliver North for pointing out that the schools needed a solution. Mike Wallace defended the statement since these occurrences are happening at schools, not workplaces.Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
The slope you're on is beyond slippery.
As someone who grew up with a cluster-b sociopath in the household, I can pretty much confirm everything Foxtrot has said. The damage they can do without ever getting held accountable is enormous. I'm not so sure about his solutions, but the issue is not going away, and there is no way to "fix" a sociopath. In my case, the person in question was by far the smartest person in our family, and was easily smart enough to convince several psychiatrists and therapists that WE, not she, were the cause of the problems. All of the signs were readily apparent by age 12(I was 4).
The canister, the film, projector and screen for a movie are inanimate just as the disk, net connection, computer, and monitor are for a video game. However, the movie/TV show/game itself at NOT inanimate objects, they are intentionally immersive experiences. It's actually quite easy to see how more realistic "action" in movie or game desensitizes viewers or players to brutal physical violence and lots of it. Even those who won't act on their feelings will frequently exit the theater or end the game more "charged up" -- hell, I saw that coming out of theaters playing "Rocky" or "First Blood" or Bruce Lee movies. In Hawaii, you could see it right after "Kikaida" or "Kamen Rider V-3" episodes aired.
Most of us won't go much beyond pantomiming movements or having a quick daydream about the idiot who cut you off in traffic or who shamed you in front of the entire company but it only takes one or two with lower barriers to make things difficult for the rest of us. There are over 300 million people in the US. Assume just a quarter of those have access to firearms or other weaponry. Assume 1 in 10 million would do anything more than fantasize about their response to a "trigger event" in their lives in any given year. That's still more than 7 events per year -- 7 events which are one thing if it's just a barroom brawl and a whole other thing if the person thinks about "the Chicago Way" or telling his/her presumed adversary to "say hello to my leetle frien' ".
These thresholds are being lowered now, more frequently and with more graphic depictions of wanton violence (as opposed to the targeted violence in the past) with a growing population of people whose self-control leaves something to be desired. Is it really any wonder that we see the occasional result of a trigger event? I just heard this morning that the shooter had been pursuing a girl at school and she got so fed up with it that she publicly embarrassed him last week. I would venture most of us here would have just curled up and died after being publicly humiliated but it's not surprising a self-described duster who liked kamikazes, Iron Crosses, and hammers-and-sickles went a bit further.
How do you fix this? The same way we've had to traditionally: taking responsibility for our culture -- and I'm not talking about a gun culture.
https://www.themaven.net/bluelivesma...EqFfaC_d28Muw/
Quote:
USA Today Praises School Shooter's Use Of 'Less Lethal Weapons' To Kill 10
Santa Fe, TX – USA Today has published an article that claimed the Santa Fe High School shooter’s deadly rampage could have been much worse, and credited the gunman’s “use of less-lethal weapons” as the likely reason more people weren’t killed.
"Less lethal" is a term used to describe weapons which are unlikely to be lethal, but may result in death in rare occasions.
Examples of less-lethal weapons include Tasers and rubber bullets. They do not include firearms with live ammunition.
Santa Fe High School student Dimitrios Pagourtzis murdered 10 people – and injured 10 more – when he opened fire inside the school on Friday morning.
Police entered the school just eight minutes after the first 911 call of shots fired was placed, according to KHOU.
Pagourtzis, 17, was armed with a shotgun and a .38 revolver, both of which he had taken from his father, The Mercury News reported.
USA Today expressed relief that Pagourtzis used such “less-lethal weapons” to murder his peers and faculty, and claimed that the firearms “may have slowed down the gunman’s deadly rampage because they have a slower firing rate.”
The periodical compared the weapons Pagourtzis used to an AR-15, which it claimed “can be fired more than twice as fast as most handguns.” This statement is entirely inaccurate.
The AR-15’s larger magazine would also allow “a shooter to continue firing interrupted for longer, making the weapon more lethal than other firearms,” USA Today asserted.
“In Friday's attack, it's likely the weapons may have kept the death toll from rising,” the news outlet concluded.
According to USA Today, “less lethal weapons” were also used in the “deadly attack at Virginia Tech” in 2007, when student Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 people with two handguns.
In actuality, an AR-15 – a semiautomatic rifle – cannot be fired any more rapidly than the weapons Pagourtzis used, with regards to trigger pull.
Depending on the type of ammunition, a shotgun has the ability to send multiple projectiles downrange with each shot, as opposed to the single bullet fired by an AR-15.
It's unclear why the publication would claim evidenced by the 10 individuals he ruthlessly killed.
Pagourtzis’ weapons also would not have been affected by any new gun control legislation, which has banned “assault weapons,” and “high capacity magazines” in some areas.
Police first received a 911 call of shots fired at Santa Fe High School at 7:32 a.m., KHOU reported.
Retired Houston Police Officer John Barnes, who went on to work as an officer at Santa Fe ISD PD, was the first one to engage Pagourtzis.
Officer Barnes, 49, sustained a gunshot wound to the upper arm, which caused a severe injury to a major blood vessel, and shattered bones in his elbow.
The officer lost a significant amount of blood at the scene, and was transported to the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) by air ambulance in critical condition.
Medical personnel said that Officer Barnes was “bleeding out,” when he arrived, and that his “blood pressure was very low.”
The officer was rushed into surgery at 9:20 a.m., and his vital signs have since stabilized.
He was still in surgery to address shattered bones in his elbow as of Friday afternoon.
Two other victims were also being treated at the same hospital, while multiple other patients had been taken to Clear Lake Regional Hospital, WLS reported.
According to KHOU, Pagourtzis surrendered himself to police at 10:06 a.m., but said his intention had been to commit suicide.
An 18-year-old individual was also detained with Pagourtzis, the news outlet reported.
Investigators have confirmed the presence of explosive devices at the school – including pressure cookers and Molotov cocktails – and were working to ascertain whether or not additional explosive devices were planted in other locations, to include the gunman’s home.
Students said they saw Pagourtzis wearing a trench coat, army boots, and a t-shirt with the words “Born to Kill,” on the morning of the attack, KIAH reported.
Many said he was quiet, and tended to stay to himself.
Some believed he had been bullied.
According to Heavy, Pagourtzis posted a photo of a handgun and a knife on his Instagram page. In the bio section of his profile, he simply wrote, “Numb.”
His Facebook page allegedly included a photograph of a long coat covered with Nazi symbols, and he listed the significance of the symbols in the photo caption.
Pagourtzis’ social media accounts have since been deleted.
There's a lot of people on both sides that seem to believe there is some sort of way to "detect, predict and prevent" these shooters. But this kind of utopian BS leads to tyranny (andmay actually cause more monsters than it prevents).
The only solutions are to:
1) harden the schools (make sure that any would-be shooter is killed before he gets very far into his spree)
2) stop making anti-heroes out of the shooters (which is exactly what the media does when they post their photos, names, kill counts, and clips from their social media)
3) parade the dead bodies of failed shooters in front of the cameras and mock them as pathetic losers.
Enough publicized failures (and no fame for the successful) and the allure of becoming a school shooter will go out the window and these jackasses will go back to offing themselves in their mom's basements like they have done for generations.
But this idea that you're going to use "science" to "detect, predict and prevent" these shootings will at best only make society more tyrannical and at worst cause more shootings/killings.
I look at this latest kid, and I look back to myself in Highschool and I don't see a whole lot of difference (except that I wasn't pro-nazi, antifa, communist or any way on the left, and of course I never killed anyone). I was a bit of a loaner that sat in the corner reading Tolkien, Heinlein and Lovecraft ... listening to obscure Metal and prog-rock, playing D&D with the few friends I had and generally being somewhere between asocial and antisocial but I would NEVER have considered harming innocent people in some sort of homicidal/suicidal tantrum (and hell, most of my senior year there was a shotgun in the trunk of my car). I've always had a dark and wicked sense of humor so yeah, I'd probably even have joked about things like school shootings (which weren't really a thing when I was in school ... this was pre-columbine) and I even wrote violent fiction that today would probably have had me whisked off to a shrink if it were discovered.
You start "rounding up the weird kids" and subjecting them to testing and questioning and you'll push many of them over that line that they otherwise would never have approached. And if nothing else will exacerbate the crushing of individuality and creativity that government/union run forced education is already doing way too much of. But then again, maybe that's the entire point.
Can you explain where you are drawing these distinctions from in a metaphysical aspect?Quote:
Originally Posted by foxtrot
I'm disturbed by your claim that there is a category of persons "born without souls", since this is a rank violation of Aristotelian metaphysics.
The soul (anima) is the animating principle of life and the form of the body (matter) -- in other words, everything living has a soul as broken into one of the three following categories:
vegetative - plants; mortal
animal - non-human animal; mortal
rational - humans; immortal.
Now we know by the fact that a being in a living status, and having the material form of human, has a rational soul. This is demonstrated by not only the claim (which would be tautological if it stopped there), but also by the demonstration of rational acts (capability of abstraction from immaterial forms).
Within this ancient, accepted and demonstrable framework, you define against it with your mention of those intelligent ones capable of sweet talking (abstraction) and thus end up denying the major (there are persons born without souls). Also, a person must necessarily be a soul, not have one, in order to be a person. Hence, post death, we speak of the corpse of a person rather than that person. For we recognize, at least implicitly: that their soul is what makes them, them.
As rational souls, they have a dignity due to them as persons from whence we gain the concept of rights (always conditional, for absolute rights are always inviolable and would negate the ability of any law to bind a man).
Once one denies the soul, they enter into a terrifying abyss of "anything goes", for that which is subjective usurps the character of objective via relativism.
Once you've done that, all. bets. are. off. We can easily see this in extreme animal rights groups, environmental rights groups, etc., that shift the rights (and responsibilities/duties of the higher being of man) to lower spheres which do not ipso facto have these rights.
For example, a man has a right to slaughter his cow for meat. But he also, as a higher being, has a duty to not abuse the cow for his own sick gratification -- not due to the cow's "rights", but because it demeans him as a higher being. Animal rights groups shift the duty of man into a positive right of animals.
But worse, the stripping of the metaphysical framework to allow for exceptions as one subjectively wishes, rationalized via relativistic means, takes away the ability to stop the problem once it shifts into overdrive on the downward slope. History demands recognition that anyone can then be killed for any perceived infraction, or simply the infraction of not belonging to the correct domain -- regardless of whether or not they have objectively violated any legitimate social more. That is utterly terrifying in its implications.
For example, I affirm the conditional right to self-defense. And, since I affirm that right, I also affirm the means for an individual to affect it. Hence, I am against gun control because if a higher sphere of authority within the context of subsidiarity were to assume that right for itself, it must be able to reasonably affect that means in the same immediate manner as would the lower. Since the city, county, state, federal levels cannot reasonably defend me RIGHT NOW, I reject any and all forms of gun control.
But in your model, the state could merely redefine a person as lacking a soul, relegating them to an animal status, and do with them what they please -- Nazi Germany, Mao's China, Stalin's Russia, Khmer Rouge, etc. ring a bell?
The only way I can see out of this for you is if you are defining the soul as the moral conscience (distinct from mere conscientiousness, and certainly distinct from conciousness), but this presents other problems, since it then begs the question of objective morality -- which you seem to reject in lieu of a relativistic framework.
Now, to cleanse my tongue of the taste of fancy concepts, a sweet song about those who were seen as animals and whose oppressors sought to take away their guns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaS3vaNUYgs
Well, there was a time when individuals that were a threat to their society just...disappeared. We're more 'civilized' these days, but there doesn't seem to be an acceptable answer as to what to do with these 2-legged predators.
Just from my unprofessional spectator view, there have always been "bullies", so that's nothing new. In the past, those that may have been bullied didn't shoot up their schools. Hell, I don't even recall knives being an issue. Disagreements were often settled on the playground with our fists. Medicating kids from their youth for ADHD, or some other symptom of 'being a kid', isn't something that was done in times where these incidents didn't happen, but I'm not a doctor. Social media wasn't even a 'thing' back then, so I'm not surprised that kids are having more issues since they're artificially interacting with others via truly anti-social means. I rarely see the Internet bring out the best in people, although this forum is on the plus side IMHO.
"People" are complicated, but they seem to want easy answers. I think this is why so many just target "guns", because dealing with the violent human problem is hard. (The idea that the centuries old firearm genie can be put back in the bottle is also incredibly naive. You can also try to think of where banning anything has ever worked...and I can't think of a single case (alcohol, drugs, etc.) where it has.)