Found out that one of my former work colleagues in Connecticut who is from Iowa....her niece was a teacher in the school.....she is safe but they need to stop this madness over here
Found out that one of my former work colleagues in Connecticut who is from Iowa....her niece was a teacher in the school.....she is safe but they need to stop this madness over here
If you’re rich, well educated and American then life is pretty good. As soon as you start to come down the money and education ladder it gets progressively worse and you don’t need to be near the bottom rung before life is very difficult. A wonderful but deeply flawed country and culture.
Yes, very well observed.
I'll try and find some time later to post about how a perceived uptick in shoplifting is leading to absolute martial law being imposed. It's no coincidence when a pregnant woman then gets shot.
Although he's been misquoted there, Trump argued that the long history of deadly school shootings in the US is “not a gun problem”. He instead blamed the issue on Democrats, mental health issues, marijuana and the transgender community.
"School officials sent him back to class without checking his backpack, which contained a gun."
So if the parents are being charged, why aren't the school officials?
They are, or at least were at one point I believe. The issue is what specifically they can be legally charged with I think - common sense says the school should have checked but that doesn't automatically mean they were legally obligated to (I think.)
And probably weren't aware he even owned a gun, let alone would bring it to school.
I read yesterday that they knew he had a gun and it wasn't registered.
The school did? I know the parents knew because they bought it for him.
If so, other than reporting it to the police not sure what else they could do. You can't just check everyone's backpack every single day 'just in case'.
And probably weren't aware he even owned a gun, let alone would bring it to school.
I read yesterday that they knew he had a gun and it wasn't registered.
The school did? I know the parents knew because they bought it for him.
If so, other than reporting it to the police not sure what else they could do. You can't just check everyone's backpack every single day 'just in case'.
When you live in a country with out of control Gun violence, Why The Hell Not?
seems a lot of deaths were avoided by the school have an active shooter procedure, with door locks etc. Imagine even having to need one of these. I can't get my head round that.
And probably weren't aware he even owned a gun, let alone would bring it to school.
I read yesterday that they knew he had a gun and it wasn't registered.
The school did? I know the parents knew because they bought it for him.
If so, other than reporting it to the police not sure what else they could do. You can't just check everyone's backpack every single day 'just in case'.
They (the school) didn't know he had a gun but they definitely did know he was not in a good place mentally and had a fixation on guns.
You don't have to check every backpack every day but you probably should be checking the backpack of someone with plenty of warning signs.
When you have a country where a madman can be president from behind bars, advocating that guns are not the problem but the person holding it,..then the country is lost...
And probably weren't aware he even owned a gun, let alone would bring it to school.
I read yesterday that they knew he had a gun and it wasn't registered.
The school did? I know the parents knew because they bought it for him.
If so, other than reporting it to the police not sure what else they could do. You can't just check everyone's backpack every single day 'just in case'.
They (the school) didn't know he had a gun but they definitely did know he was not in a good place mentally and had a fixation on guns.
You don't have to check every backpack every day but you probably should be checking the backpack of someone with plenty of warning signs.
I would suggest forced privacy invasion of children with mental health concerns would just lead to escalation.
If they were already checking his backpack every day before entering school, he would've just walked in with the gun and shot them on entry.
And probably weren't aware he even owned a gun, let alone would bring it to school.
I read yesterday that they knew he had a gun and it wasn't registered.
The school did? I know the parents knew because they bought it for him.
If so, other than reporting it to the police not sure what else they could do. You can't just check everyone's backpack every single day 'just in case'.
They (the school) didn't know he had a gun but they definitely did know he was not in a good place mentally and had a fixation on guns.
You don't have to check every backpack every day but you probably should be checking the backpack of someone with plenty of warning signs.
I would suggest forced privacy invasion of children with mental health concerns would just lead to escalation.
If they were already checking his backpack every day before entering school, he would've just walked in with the gun and shot them on entry.
I'm not saying that he should be checked every day necessarily. But if the school had enough evidence/concerns that they specifically called the parents in (which is what did happen) but then just sent him on his way it seems a bit negligent to me.
Not that the parents don't have MORE culpability as the ones who provided the gun but the school apparently having very strong fears of an incident then doing nothing to prevent it is not a good look.
I respect people's desire for minimal government and think it's one of the right's strong principles, but some regulation in society is needed. A free market for guns is obviously absurd.
I was in San Antonio a few weeks ago and was chatting to a very friendly but odd fella about hunting at a local watering hole. The more he drank the more volatile he got, and I did make a point of avoiding him out of fear of upsetting him. I knew he had a truck outside and would almost certainly have a gun. It's not outside the phantoms of possibility that he could have just shot me. Hundreds of people get shot every week out there. Crazy but that's Texas.
Anyone promoting ‘minimal government’ is really promoting low taxes, and low taxes mainly benefit the better off and lead to poor services (health & education in particular) and decaying infrastructure.
It’s another discredited policy, like ‘trickle down economics’. People are beginning to see through both.
Reduce taxes for the rich and they mainly squirrel the extra money away so the tax man can’t get it. (This is why debt increased by $7.8 trillion after Trump’s tax cut bonanza).
Give tax cuts to the less well off (or increase tax thresholds and/or benefits) and that money will immediately circulate through the economy, as people will buy things they actually need, or want but couldn’t afford.
The reason the Tories are obsessed by the culture wars is that they know their economic policies over the last 14 years have largely failed (and national debt increased from £1 trillion to £2.6 trillion since 2010 despite austerity), so they need to change the subject to immigration, LGBT rights, trans issues and attacks on ‘the woke’.
Although Liz Truss is still banging on about tax cuts and the wokerati to be fair. It’s all thoroughly entertaining.
I respect people's desire for minimal government and think it's one of the right's strong principles, but some regulation in society is needed. A free market for guns is obviously absurd.
I was in San Antonio a few weeks ago and was chatting to a very friendly but odd fella about hunting at a local watering hole. The more he drank the more volatile he got, and I did make a point of avoiding him out of fear of upsetting him. I knew he had a truck outside and would almost certainly have a gun. It's not outside the phantoms of possibility that he could have just shot me. Hundreds of people get shot every week out there. Crazy but that's Texas.
Anyone promoting ‘minimal government’ is really promoting low taxes, and low taxes mainly benefit the better off and lead to poor services (health & education in particular) and decaying infrastructure.
It’s another discredited policy, like ‘trickle down economics’. People are beginning to see through both.
Reduce taxes for the rich and they mainly squirrel the extra money away so the tax man can’t get it. (This is why debt increased by $7.8 trillion after Trump’s tax cut bonanza).
Give tax cuts to the less well off (or increase tax thresholds and/or benefits) and that money will immediately circulate through the economy, as people will buy things they actually need, or want but couldn’t afford.
The reason the Tories are obsessed by the culture wars is that they know their economic policies over the last 14 years have largely failed (and national debt increased from £1 trillion to £2.6 trillion since 2010 despite austerity), so they need to change the subject to immigration, LGBT rights, trans issues and attacks on ‘the woke’.
Although Liz Truss is still banging on about tax cuts and the wokerati to be fair. It’s all thoroughly entertaining.
Let’s be entertained by it when we’ve kicked their sorry arses out of Downing Street..
This thread has managed to exist for nearly ten years without much issue. Let’s not get another thread closed by bringing the U.K. govt into it please.
seems a lot of deaths were avoided by the school have an active shooter procedure, with door locks etc. Imagine even having to need one of these. I can't get my head round that.
Old Man SD Addick story incoming
I started school the year after Columbine. Some of the high schools in my area had metal detectors that every student had to walk through, both because of Columbine but also because there had been shooting amongst students around the schools. My school chose not to do that (it was a state school buffeted by a very, very wealthy area which gave it advantages other schools didn't have). But just writing it now, it feels like a world away.
My girlfriend works in higher ed and what they screen for and drill for now is terrifying. I think I mentioned her school was locked down at one point last year and I had not been that scared since (things ended well). Because I don't have kids and all my friends' kids are very little, I just wasn't familiar with...I don't know, how prevalent this is? That sounds silly, I know that these things happen all the time, but it was still absolutely terrifying.
This is something that has become so commonplace in this country that I could go through life knowing this is awful and being completely numb to it. Because of the way this country is set up, a political solution to this is not possible. Any sort of gun reform that moves the needle will not happen. That genie is out of the bottle and there's no going back. The NRA being bankrupt, whatever, doesn't matter. This isn't about lobbying money anymore, this is a pure culture war issue and one that has metastasized so deeply for so many decades that not only will things not get better, they have, and will continue, to get worse.
Probably the biggest deflection tactic used for years to avoid "gun control" as a political and public safety issue was "it's not a gun issue, it's a mental health issue." And whilst those saying that were doing so wholly disingenuously (oftentimes saying that while actively working to reduce Americans' access to healthcare), this is also a mental health issue. And that brings up to another other societal issue this country is wholly incapable of dealing with: and that's healthcare in general, and mental healthcare even more starkly.
What we tend to see in the fallout from these shootings is that there were often warning signs, sometimes really flagrant ones. Cases like the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, where we still have no idea why he did what he did are incredibly rare. There is not always cause and effect, but a lot of times there are. And the issue with that is: what do you do? Do you search a kid's backpack every. single. day? Is that fixing this at any sort of root level? No, it's damage mitigation at best.
We basically ask a lot of schools in this country to be social welfare programs, meals on wheels, healthcare facilities, and also "fortified fortresses." They're social safety nets basically. And if you can get the kids to read and do algebra too, great. But it's completely untenable. And kids die. And honestly, a lot of people, particularly those in power, are just okay with that.
It's a cliche at this point, but if Sandy Hook didn't do anything, if Vegas didn't do anything, nothing will. It's so bad that we have cliches about how we're just going to keep letting people die from guns. That's how engrained it is in our society. Huge respect to all of the gun control groups, but what do you do with that? What do you do when large swaths of your society are fine with kids dying?
I respect people's desire for minimal government and think it's one of the right's strong principles, but some regulation in society is needed. A free market for guns is obviously absurd.
I was in San Antonio a few weeks ago and was chatting to a very friendly but odd fella about hunting at a local watering hole. The more he drank the more volatile he got, and I did make a point of avoiding him out of fear of upsetting him. I knew he had a truck outside and would almost certainly have a gun. It's not outside the phantoms of possibility that he could have just shot me. Hundreds of people get shot every week out there. Crazy but that's Texas.
Anyone promoting ‘minimal government’ is really promoting low taxes, and low taxes mainly benefit the better off and lead to poor services (health & education in particular) and decaying infrastructure.
It’s another discredited policy, like ‘trickle down economics’. People are beginning to see through both.
Reduce taxes for the rich and they mainly squirrel the extra money away so the tax man can’t get it. (This is why debt increased by $7.8 trillion after Trump’s tax cut bonanza).
Give tax cuts to the less well off (or increase tax thresholds and/or benefits) and that money will immediately circulate through the economy, as people will buy things they actually need, or want but couldn’t afford.
The reason the Tories are obsessed by the culture wars is that they know their economic policies over the last 14 years have largely failed (and national debt increased from £1 trillion to £2.6 trillion since 2010 despite austerity), so they need to change the subject to immigration, LGBT rights, trans issues and attacks on ‘the woke’.
Although Liz Truss is still banging on about tax cuts and the wokerati to be fair. It’s all thoroughly entertaining.
I want to bring up something that I think is noteworthy. Unlike in the UK, in the US, "Conservative" does not strictly mean "small Government, no taxes, no regulation, Government stays out of your life." It means that for certain things. So for example, the funding of the Military is very popular amongst Conservatives here, but they want small Government to apply to things like social safety net programs (including schools).
I don't want to turn this into a HoC thread. If you ever saw me post there you can imagine what I think about this. But I wanted to bring up that here things aren't quite as ideologically...pure? consistent? I don't know the word, as they are in other places.
Comments
Trumpie says "Get over it".
I'll try and find some time later to post about how a perceived uptick in shoplifting is leading to absolute martial law being imposed. It's no coincidence when a pregnant woman then gets shot.
'I wish he had killed us instead.'
So if the parents are being charged, why aren't the school officials?
If so, other than reporting it to the police not sure what else they could do. You can't just check everyone's backpack every single day 'just in case'.
You don't have to check every backpack every day but you probably should be checking the backpack of someone with plenty of warning signs.
If they were already checking his backpack every day before entering school, he would've just walked in with the gun and shot them on entry.
Not that the parents don't have MORE culpability as the ones who provided the gun but the school apparently having very strong fears of an incident then doing nothing to prevent it is not a good look.
I started school the year after Columbine. Some of the high schools in my area had metal detectors that every student had to walk through, both because of Columbine but also because there had been shooting amongst students around the schools. My school chose not to do that (it was a state school buffeted by a very, very wealthy area which gave it advantages other schools didn't have). But just writing it now, it feels like a world away.
My girlfriend works in higher ed and what they screen for and drill for now is terrifying. I think I mentioned her school was locked down at one point last year and I had not been that scared since (things ended well). Because I don't have kids and all my friends' kids are very little, I just wasn't familiar with...I don't know, how prevalent this is? That sounds silly, I know that these things happen all the time, but it was still absolutely terrifying.
This is something that has become so commonplace in this country that I could go through life knowing this is awful and being completely numb to it. Because of the way this country is set up, a political solution to this is not possible. Any sort of gun reform that moves the needle will not happen. That genie is out of the bottle and there's no going back. The NRA being bankrupt, whatever, doesn't matter. This isn't about lobbying money anymore, this is a pure culture war issue and one that has metastasized so deeply for so many decades that not only will things not get better, they have, and will continue, to get worse.
Probably the biggest deflection tactic used for years to avoid "gun control" as a political and public safety issue was "it's not a gun issue, it's a mental health issue." And whilst those saying that were doing so wholly disingenuously (oftentimes saying that while actively working to reduce Americans' access to healthcare), this is also a mental health issue. And that brings up to another other societal issue this country is wholly incapable of dealing with: and that's healthcare in general, and mental healthcare even more starkly.
What we tend to see in the fallout from these shootings is that there were often warning signs, sometimes really flagrant ones. Cases like the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, where we still have no idea why he did what he did are incredibly rare. There is not always cause and effect, but a lot of times there are. And the issue with that is: what do you do? Do you search a kid's backpack every. single. day? Is that fixing this at any sort of root level? No, it's damage mitigation at best.
We basically ask a lot of schools in this country to be social welfare programs, meals on wheels, healthcare facilities, and also "fortified fortresses." They're social safety nets basically. And if you can get the kids to read and do algebra too, great. But it's completely untenable. And kids die. And honestly, a lot of people, particularly those in power, are just okay with that.
It's a cliche at this point, but if Sandy Hook didn't do anything, if Vegas didn't do anything, nothing will. It's so bad that we have cliches about how we're just going to keep letting people die from guns. That's how engrained it is in our society. Huge respect to all of the gun control groups, but what do you do with that? What do you do when large swaths of your society are fine with kids dying?
I don't want to turn this into a HoC thread. If you ever saw me post there you can imagine what I think about this. But I wanted to bring up that here things aren't quite as ideologically...pure? consistent? I don't know the word, as they are in other places.