I know I am over two years late with this story but I am doing research for a grad school paper and came across this and have no idea what this...
“Would you stick a sign at a school that says, ‘No guns on this property’? Why wouldn’t you? It invites nasty people to come,” he said. “That’s what you’ve done to every public school in the nation. That’s why there were no shootings until Columbine. It’s turned into a dad-gum shoot fest.”
...even means. Keep in mind I am born and raised in Texas, and although I think of myself as moderate most of you guys would think of me as screaming flaming far right, but...wow. Just: Wow.
As I read it, it means that making schools gun-free areas puts a huge target on them that says "aim here" in much the same way that announcing your vacation on Facebook says, "rob me, my house is empty."
The guy seriously spent nearly $1,000 per student on a security system, though. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to have experts come to the school to identify and counsel kids with issues (if there are any)? Or hire a couple of security guards?
I mean, hooray there were no shootings after school faculty were allowed to carry weapons, but at a 110 student school, were there problems before that?
Last edited by Maj on Tue Aug 23, 2011 2:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
What the quote means, as far as I can tell, is that putting a sign up saying "no guns allowed" sends the intended message to law-abiding citizens, but says "easy prey inside" to armed criminals, something which would be particular true for crazed gunmen looking to shoot people for giggles. And that by not allowing guns into schools, they were having the same effect. To me, it seems that if you believe Joe Q. Public can be trusted to carry a concealed weapon with which to defend himself, you shouldn't really have a problem with Joe Q. Teacher carrying one to defend his students. The power imbalance in a high school encourages all kinds of bullying of the students by the teachers, but I'm fairly certain the background checks are there specifically to weed out people who will seriously threaten to shoot their students on a bad day.
EDIT:
I mean, hooray there were no shootings after school faculty were allowed to carry weapons, but at a 110 student school, were there problems before that?
The school's in Texas. There was probably a shooting every Tuesday.
Last edited by Chamomile on Tue Aug 23, 2011 2:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
Count is right. Just looking at that data, it looks like school shootings really picked up sometime around 2006, seven years after Columbine and a year before Virginia Tech. I don't know what to make of that.
I still remember walking past my school on a saturday, on the way to the range, with the state-loaned assault rifle on my back for my young rifleman's training, and meeting three of my teachers coming out
For a country where almost anyone 16 or older who wants to can get an assault rifle to keep at home over summer for pre-military shooting training, we have remarkably few incidents at schools.
Last edited by Fuchs on Tue Aug 23, 2011 6:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
Perhaps I am naive but I would assume that the sign “No guns on property” would apply to the students and visitors entering the property; not the security guards. I can’t see why anyone would want to arm the janitors. I can’t even see why anyone would want to arm the teachers, because most teachers lack the training and one can argue that the people entrusted with guns should take a more “hands off” approach in general.
I do know of a case where a kid brought a gun to class and the teacher managed to disarm that child with minimal endangerment to everyone. When asked he explained that he got that training as a part of his military deployment to Vietnam. They were shocked at this because apparently his status as a Vietnam Vet never came up when he applied for the teaching position (and in truth a lot of Vietnam Vets would rather forget their experience) as though they probably not have hired him had they known he had been a veteran. This is the topsy turvy world of modern education.
The big increase in "notable" school shootings in recent years is merely the increased notability of shootings in general. Teen shootings have been dropping since the mid nineties:
Anyone who says that school shootings started with Columbine is factually wrong. They are either tragically misinformed or deliberately lying to people. Columbine represents the tipping point: not when violence spiraled out of control, but when children shooting people to death finally became rare enough that it was a "Man Bites Dog" story that did not get displaced from the media cycle by a similar event for a long time.
The story is not that Columbine happened. It's that crime fell so much that Columbine was atypical when it happened.
The giant rise in youth homicides starting in the mid-80s and continuing until the early 90s is commonly attributed to crack. And perhaps more specifically to the rise of the militant armed gangs that were around crack.
The two year 20% increase of youth homicides during the economic downturn of the late 70s is harder to place. It doesn't correspond super well with any particular events I can place. It's not related to organized crime events, and it is actually surrounded on both sides by recessions that didn't accompany corresponding murder spikes. It's 1979 to 1982, so it's tempting to blame that on cocaine as well:
I remember hearing that Boston did something with mandatory sentencing for adults caught dealing around then, and that next week, all the corner dealers were replaced by their younger brothers (who would not fall under mandatory sentencing). I don't actually know anything first hand, but I heard that story as a weird thing that someone lived through, and it seems plausible to connect those events.
Cynic wrote:WHat was the reason for the giant spike in the late '70s and the mid '90s for the 14-25 age range?
Disco. Then grunge.
For those of us that lived through both, it's purely a miracle that we're still alive.
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fectin wrote:I remember hearing that Boston did something with mandatory sentencing for adults caught dealing around then, and that next week, all the corner dealers were replaced by their younger brothers (who would not fall under mandatory sentencing). I don't actually know anything first hand, but I heard that story as a weird thing that someone lived through, and it seems plausible to connect those events.
hey -- no matter what you do, sellers of goods will find a way to get their products to their most valued customers. No.Matter.What.
*WARNING*: I say "fuck" a lot.
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