Should the 2nd amendment (Right to Bear Arms) be Abolished?

[Valerie]

Obama's had nutters threaten him since before he got elected, and now it seems like his kids are targets and you have an issue with them being protected because there's nutters with guns?

Not at all. In fact, I said quite the opposite. They need that protection due to their line of work. As a taxpayer and voter and therefore their employer, I need to and am happy to help provide that for them. What I take issue with is the idea of people whose armed protection I help pay for interfering with my ability to choose how to protect myself and my own children.

[Slam_Bradley]

You, know, I'm a supporter of the second amendment in general, but the poor quality of arguments being made by the NRA and by like-minded people - indluding some here at CBR - makes it really hard to maintain that support.

Dingdingding. This is absolutely the problem. And then you throw in the meme-centered, factually incorrect, ill-thought out, hokum that gets thrown around on social media and it just becomes almost too damn much to take.

[Valerie]

I don't think the people who created the NRA ad were talking about resource officers when they compared the protection the first family receives to the protection they believe all schools deserve as many schools already have resource officers in place. If they already have them in place, and if they are truly a good deterrent to school crimes then why make a big deal about the protection of the President's children?

Because too many schools either have insufficient police protection or no resource officers at all. Columbine High School only had one resource officer, and the criminals responsible began the shooting when he was getting lunch. Sandy Hook Elementary had no resource officers. And we're dealing with an obnoxious crowd that doesn't want any school resource officers because they think children will be frightened by seeing an openly carrying cop at school.

Really, the logical thing from a law enforcement and emergency management position is to beef up protection of areas that prove vulnerable, like, in this case, schools.

[Puma]

Dingdingding. This is absolutely the problem. And then you throw in the meme-centered, factually incorrect, ill-thought out, hokum that gets thrown around on social media and it just becomes almost too damn much to take.

I finally 'hid' a friend because of this; the last one was a link to an article with a hypothetical scenario of a young couple driving and being harassed by some yokels. The good man, in the passenger seat, pulls out his 'high powered semi automatic' handgun and brandishes it at the yokels (who up to this point are barely guilt of an infraction by yelling obscenities at the couple and 'scaring' them with their van). The yokels flee in terror and the man has saved his wife's life without firing a shot.

Between that and the praising of law enforcement officials who are now going on record about which laws they will and will not enforce I had to shut the friend down.

[Slam_Bradley]

I finally 'hid' a friend because of this; the last one was a link to an article with a hypothetical scenario of a young couple driving and being harassed by some yokels. The good man, in the passenger seat, pulls out his 'high powered semi automatic' handgun and brandishes it at the yokels (who up to this point are barely guilt of an infraction by yelling obscenities at the couple and 'scaring' them with their van). The yokels flee in terror and the man has saved his wife's life without firing a shot.

Between that and the praising of law enforcement officials who are now going on record about which laws they will and will not enforce I had to shut the friend down.

I also love the state laws that are going to nullify the Federal laws. Because that possibility hasn't been decided long ago.

[Valerie]

When I was in school it often felt like I was in prison. I can only imagine going to school with armed officers walking the halls.

My daughter goes to a school with armed resource officers. She thinks they're cool. I went to a small high school that was patrolled by a resource officer. Everybody liked him, even the troublemakers. And the possibility of immediate response if there's any kind of emergency has its appeal.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Because too many schools either have insufficient police protection or no resource officers at all. Columbine High School only had one resource officer, and the criminals responsible began the shooting when he was getting lunch. Sandy Hook Elementary had no resource officers. And we're dealing with an obnoxious crowd that doesn't want any school resource officers because they think children will be frightened by seeing an openly carrying cop at school.

Really, the logical thing from a law enforcement and emergency management position is to beef up protection of areas that prove vulnerable, like, in this case, schools.

You have a very strange concept of logic.

The fact is, the vast majority of kids manage to get through school just fine without being shot to death in the classroom or having such things happen in their school.

Statistically, a child is vastly more likely - I believe in the order of 4000 times more likely - to be murdered by a family member of friend of the family in or near that child's home than he or she is to be murdered by a school shooter. So, by your logic, we should be posting cops or "resource officers" in everyone's home, not in schools.

I hope you can see how stupid that is.

I find it astounding that people who are complaining about government spending are suggesting "solutions" to a practically nonexistent problem, with said solutions costing a huge amount of money, rather than considering that maybe it's okay to make it a little harder for people to get guns, and maybe they don't need 30-round clips or easy access to weapons designed for military endeavors.

Ask the same people to fully support the nation's community mental health system and see how far that goes. Point in fact: federal block grants to communities. These are a major funder of community mental health, and they've been targeted again and again by Republicans for elimination in order to cut the budget.

I can guarantee you that it will cost a lot more to have an armed guard in every school in the country than it would cost to fund community mental health at a subsistence level. Then there's the fact that police forces have a really hard time finding enough qualified people to serve as officers. To have an armed person in every school, you will indeed end up hiring and giving firearms to some very questionable people, and then putting them - with the guns - around kids.

That is pretty much a recipe for disaster.

Anyone who thinks this is a good idea - includine the president of the NRA - has at best a tenuous grasp on reality.

[finfangfool]

Yeah, armed guys are so damned cool. Makes me feel all warm and gooey inside.

[Slam_Bradley]

I've never seen an elementary school with a resource officer. So saying that Sandy Hook didn't have one is like saying water is wet.

Resource officers are almost always assigned to high schools and middle schools. And most of them are assigned to multiple high schools and/or middle schools.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Yeah, armed guys are so damned cool. Makes me feel all warm and gooey inside.

Well, social conservatives do tend to fetishize weapons, uniforms and other authoritarian paraphenelia. So, some of them probably do get warm and gooey reactions. Or boners.

[Iangould]

"What could possibly go wrong?"

A prosecutor in Lapeer, Michigan says, “No harm, no foul,” after a charter school took the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) advice and hired a armed security guard who promptly left his handgun unattended in a student bathroom.

Chatfield School co-directors Matt Young and Bill Kraly announced last week that they had hired retired Lapeer County Sheriff’s Dept. firearms instructor Clark Arnold as a security guard in response to the December mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

“It’s a tremendous asset to the safety of our students,” Young told WNEM in a report that aired on Tuesday.

But by Wednesday, the school had admitted to The Flint Journal that the retired firearms instructor had made a “made a breach in security protocol” and left his unloaded handgun unattended in the school restroom “for a few moments.”

Raw Story (http://s.tt/1yDxq)

[thwhtGuardian]

Because too many schools either have insufficient police protection or no resource officers at all. Columbine High School only had one resource officer, and the criminals responsible began the shooting when he was getting lunch. Sandy Hook Elementary had no resource officers. And we're dealing with an obnoxious crowd that doesn't want any school resource officers because they think children will be frightened by seeing an openly carrying cop at school.

Really, the logical thing from a law enforcement and emergency management position is to beef up protection of areas that prove vulnerable, like, in this case, schools.

Resource officers do provide a number of valuable services, for instance they are often responsible for lower levels of truancy in the schools they serve and drug use on school property is often seen to decrease as well. But providing a deterrent to school shootings? Nope, no evidence of that. The kids at Columbine weren't afraid of the resource officer, the fact that he was out to lunch bears little in that situation either as they did not know he would be out of the building when they started their raid. Would two officers have made a difference? Three? Four?

How many are needed to sufficiently protect a school? How much will that cost?

I can tell you, as a teacher, I know having one officer in our school is a large cost and that's after receiving both state and federal governmental grants so I can't imagine many schools and police departments being able to find the room in their budgets or the necessary man power to provide the service you believe is needed, even if those grants were increased.

Police officers don't come cheap, and needing to have several of them pull full time duty in schools means you have several less officers on the streets which means you in turn have to hire more officers. Your proposition then becomes more expensive as you then have to spend money on recruiting, training and then outfitting and paying those new officers. And forces are having a hard enough time maintaining the numbers they have now so recruiting is going to take some considerable time and time is, as we all know, money. And all of that is going to occur during a time when more and more states and towns are decreasing their law enforcement budgets.

Stricter gun legislature is far cheaper and ultimately would provide many of the same benefits.

[the4thpip]

"What could possibly go wrong?"





Raw Story (http://s.tt/1yDxq)

More humans with guns = more human errors with dangerous results.

[Vibranium]

More humans with guns = more human errors with dangerous results.

even Rambo has to pee

[mikekerrIII]

And where is the money coming from to do so? And is it an effective use of said money?

Promotingcops in schools is one of the list of things what Obama just came out with.