I think this might have tipped the balance towards dropping out at age 16 for me. My middle school and high school teachers were by and large hopeless assholes who let favorite students bully the less favored into submission. Add guns to Coach Keith Jerome? No fucking thank you.
So no law change to require the police to do their job, no changes to provide any gun control. Just start fire fights in schools.
All so some compensating assholes can play weekend warriors and pretend that they’re Rambo. I bet something as minimal as tying gun ownership to signing up to be enlisted in the event of war would get rid of a bunch.
No, I’m saying that if you put a bunch of people in a confined area who aren’t trained to be shot at with automatic weaponry, I hardly expect it to be a one-shot-one-kill scenario.
Agreed (except the "automatic" weapon part), but the article has some assuring facts:
> Armed teachers would be required to undergo criminal background checks and receive eight hours of additional training each subsequent year.
I would be in favor of even more training, frankly. Owning a gun is already a serious responsibility; using it in defense of others is an existential concern.
Yeah, schools - especially in these states that are promoting armed teachers - are already under funded, so I assume that these pro-guns-in-school states will be requiring teachers to buy their own guns, pay for their own training, etc.
There have already been numerous cases of teachers and "school resource"/police officers beating kids, I'm sure adding a gun won't go wrong.
Now for your repeat of the facetious claims that an AR-15 is not "automatic". An "consumer" AR-15 is ArmaLite's realization that by making a semi-automatic trigger pull killing weapon - an AR-15 is not a self defence weapon - they could make a huge profit from wannabe Rambos. But it's still automatic. I've used plenty of non-automatic weapons on many occasions (if you need to be able to shoot lots of time when hunting, you need to learn to shoot), and there is no way that I could ever get any of those rifles to anywhere in the vicinity of 45/minute.
I don't care if a weapon is fully- or semi- automatic, it's automatic.
The purpose of an AR-15 is to kill people. The "Semi" automatic mode fires at 45 rounds a minute, which is more than needed for self defense or hunting (unless you suck at it). That's ignoring bump stocks, which pro-school shooting folk are still trying to make legal again.
Only if you call the National Guard a militia. There is little or no organization or record-keeping related to gun ownership in the US as I recall. If you want to be a strict constitutionist (sp?), creating a registry of what-you-have, where-you-are and how-you-re-trained would be in consonance with a well-regulated militia. Folks would scream bloody murder if anybody tried that.
Unless either of one has a tardis, we don’t know the intent of that phrase. Inferences can be made, but it’s hardly “good working order” without knowing who is available and where. There were no significant weapons differences then but they certainly are now. “Who’sgot the horse” comes to mind as the additional info needed to run a militia.
> Unless either of one has a tardis, we don’t know the intent of that phrase.
We don't need a time machine, we can read other letters and correspondence from the time to make such inferences.
> Inferences can be made, but it’s hardly “good working order” without knowing who is available and where.
According to whom? You? Are you a constitutional scholar, or something?
> There were no significant weapons differences then but they certainly are now. “Who’sgot the horse” comes to mind as the additional info needed to run a militia.
Same meaningless argument could be made about free speech and the 1st Amendment. Certainly we didn't have social media and Twitter back then, so we should heavily regulate them, maybe even outright ban them, right?
It is easy to imagine a future where schools in the US are armoured fortresses guarded by heavily armed soldiers, and kids being driven to school in military style personal carriers. I am exaggerating of course. Or am I?
Given the overwhelming majority of these horrible, tragic events happen in so called "gun-free" zones, allowing individuals to defend themselves with proportional means is a rational decision.
Arm the students if you care so much about ensuring individuals can defend themselves. But then you might see real-world re-enactments of a little British movie called If....
I wonder if Stephen King still thinks pulling Rage from publication is a good idea. It doesn't seem to have helped. (Incidentally, reading that novel helped me understand that as tempting a fantasy as it is to bring a gun to school and take my class hostage, it wouldn't get me what I wanted.)
24 hours of training is going to be woefully inadequate. It doesn't stand to reason that a teacher can secure their weapon, keep it a secret from their students, and effectively wield it in a school hallway that has almost no cover.
Armed teachers are going to get more students killed than the murderous assholes they're supposed to combat.
Also, if I was a student in Ohio and I wanted to shoot up my school, I would start by trying to steal the teachers' guns and ammunition. It saves me the trouble of buying my own, makes background checks irrelevant, and makes it harder for the teachers to oppose me by returning fire.
tl;dr: Ohio legislators didn't think this shit through, and kids are going to die for their foolishness.
CBC is not really a credible source. I don't know anything about this story but would look for a slightly less partisan source (like the New York Times or slate.com or The Atlantic) before reacting.
It's also state funded by an extremely liberal government who itself tried to push extremely restrictive gun laws.
What people are quick to forget is that the difference between a shooting and a mass shooting is a quick and prompt armed response. Basically a good guy with a gun. Ironically, Canadians themselves proved that 15 years ago [0].
Prevent no. Reduce shootings sure, not mass murders however. Almost as if people with criminal intent or mental issues would find a way and not follow the law.
More recently in Canada, and in response to an mass shooting that the police were not equipped to handle (the one in Moncton), the RCMP were issued "carbines" which as I understand are machine guns and better suited to mounting an armed response against an active shooter.
Err, they're increasing the restrictions on gun ownership and the kinds of guns that can be owned (such as long guns)... This strikes me as endeavouring to address the problems rather than sending thoughtsandprayers.
What problem are they addressing? They are jumping on American current events to make some laws that are not relevant for canada or Canadian current events, in order to score political points. Canada has lots of real problems that government could focus on, but instead they love token gestures like this.
More guns than people down south. Open border, basically, with US, leading increased smuggling. Trying to keep the ability to shoot-to-kill down in agreement with the rest of the G-7. There's enough issues with the cultural exports of the US, so it makes sense to head off some of the less desirable features.
Ideally, they'll couple the reduction of gun availability with an increase in mental health treatment, but the different approach to health care helps a little.
So how does further restricting legal gun ownership in Canada impact the smuggling of illegal weapons?
The mass shooting in Nova Scotia where 23 people were killed - those were illegal guns, the RCMP had been told about the guy, and yet nothing was done.
The texas and Oklahoma shootings were done with legally-purchased guns that were almost immediately used as designed. As a news article said, it's easier to purchase AR-15's than sudafeds. So, reducing the availability of legal weaponry will have some positive impact on the scale of casualties. It might also reduce the number of accidental or suicide deaths as it's harder with lower-lethality weaponry.
It would not impact the 2nd amendment rights to limit the high-end/military style weaponry to some degree. But nothing will be done until there is a sufficient societal change to even consider such restrictions. Won't see that in my lifetime. Hell, some kind of waiting period or red flag law would help.
I was discussing us alternatives, but go ahead and play word games. I’ve lived in both countries and have a handle on the respective governmental structures. I know it’s impossible to have some limit where people will change their behaviour re guns in the us. People will just have to live (or not live) with it.
