WE: After school shooting in Connecticut, Piers Morgan blasts America’s ‘gun madness’

[Bang]

I play COD / BF3 / Halo with my son. He's almost 6. He has no grasp of reality yet, but I'd never thought about it before. I'm going to rethink this with my wife - as we've never really discussed it. I don't know that anyone is capable of making sure he knows the difference between getting shot and respawning -vs- getting shot and thats it. In my defense, I don't let him play horror games or games with other adult themed content - just didn't think about the violence part. I'm prior service, and am as desensitized as they come. Honestly, I have never given a thought to the long term effects of it until reading in here. Again, with prayer and consulting the wife - I will delve into this deeper.

Well, if i may offer some advice.. I'm a dad who's kid has been playing many of these games for a long time. (I was a singIe dad.. it's tough to be on top of everything,, and the fact is, something that will sit him there quietly while i cook dinner is a blessing. BUT, I always ALWAYS have been in touch with him on these topics.. the way to stem desensitization is the explain that it IS only a game, and why these things in real life would be bad,.. Granted, i would not let him play GTA or other highly violent games when he was younger, but a great many games have aspects of them that could confuse a young mind.
Communication is absolutely key. Always explain WHY to your kid. explain it again and again. I use so many things during the day as a 'teaching moment"... all the time. On many topics.
My son is 16 now, and I still do that. Constantly talking with him, constantly advising... and not so much leaning on him.
I've been lucky,, in doing this i've also trusted him to make the right decisions. I'm not naive and know he'll do things he won't tell dad, but typically, the things he knows are important,, he heeds.

knock wood.

~Bang

---------- Post added December-20th-2012 at 06:41 PM ----------

Every school in Henrico County (Richmond, VA) has a "School Resource Officer" (policeman) full-time assigned to it. They're armed and not just there for show. Not sure of the cost.

"The School Resource Officer, or SRO, is employed by the Henrico Division of Police and is assigned to the school to deter crime, conduct investigations, and enforce the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia."

http://www.henrico.k12.va.us/SafetyS...Personnel.html

I totally agree with it. My son's high school has a cop. He's great.. the school is relatively violence free,, drugs are not a major problem, it's an active, happy campus.
I think having police in the school also develops a good trusting relationship with the children of the community (who in turn become adults of the community with likely a better appreciation for the community as a whole).. so the police have a name, a face,, and a good personality.. so when these outside influences that target police or music that complains about cops or glorifies violence comes along, they associate with the good person in the school.
Helps keep things in perspective.

Most police departments do outreach programs with schools, but it's one things to meet the nice policeman in an assembly once or twice a year, it's entirely different to see the same officer every day in the school, friendly, helpful and personal.
Not only would it help protect schools from attacks like this, but I think over time it would REALLY help with the underlying problems so many people seem to have that cause these things.


I'm known as an atheist, but I believe that the lack of church has been as cause for our problem. Not because of God, but because of commnities. everyone got dressed and went to church. they knew their neighbors, knew their town.
It's much harder to be so anti-social when you know your town as people.
The same token applies here. The police interacting personally in a positive way on a daily basis with the community always results in a better community.

~Bang

---------- Post added December-20th-2012 at 06:43 PM ----------

There are 100,000 public schools nationwide.

There are about 800,000 police officers. I don't think the math quite works out, because you could not simply shift 1/8 of the police force to a new role.

The main problem I have with this "solution" is it only focusses on one form of gun violence. You are basically proposing spending half a billion dollars a year to stop 3 to 4 mass school shootings. (Actually, this would make them less deadly conceivably. It wouldn't actually stop them). It also wouldn't address mass killings in businesses, malls, churches, etc.

It does nothing to deal with the 15,000 gun deaths that have nothing to do with rampage killers.

Well, i'm thinking more that if there's 100,000 schools, hire 100,000 new cops. (employment!)
Pay their average salary at their grade, and split the cost out on a national tax.. it would be such a small amount.. we pay so much more for so much less elsewhere.

~Bang

[Wrong Direction]

I like the idea of a police officer because they're trained not just to handle guns, but also tense and dangerous situations. They're trained to handle quick changing situations under fire... . an armed teacher, i don't think so. They could have been a cop, and chose to be a teacher.
I'm a proponent of people doing what they do best.
Teachers are trained to teach, cops to protect and serve.

~Bang

I'm actually a proponent of both, for what it's worth. If I ever snapped but knew enough to be able to plan something crazy, I'd just make sure I took out the guard first, likely while they weren't suspecting anything.

I do think that's a significant deterrent though, and I do think that's the best way to stop the action (a trained guard with a weapon).

At my wife's school, they rely on the guard for a lot of things. That's only needed because they have some pretty bad kids in that school. In a Newtown elementary school, the guard could be there twiddling his thumbs for 50 years. I can't imagine cash-strapped school districts supporting that to the tune of $75k or more per year per school, all that long. I don't know, but I suspect the resource issue is huge in consideration, particularly for smaller towns with only 10ish teachers in a building.

[Bang]

I'm actually a proponent of both, for what it's worth. If I ever snapped but knew enough to be able to plan something crazy, I'd just make sure I took out the guard first, likely while they weren't suspecting anything.

I do think that's a significant deterrent though, and I do think that's the best way to stop the action (a trained guard with a weapon).

At my wife's school, they rely on the guard for a lot of things. That's only needed because they have some pretty bad kids in that school. In a Newtown elementary school, the guard could be there twiddling his thumbs for 50 years. I can't imagine cash-strapped school districts supporting that to the tune of $75k or more per year per school, all that long. I don't know, but I suspect the resource issue is huge in consideration, particularly for smaller towns with only 10ish teachers in a building.

Good points,, i also believe that simplistic solutions don't account for everything, and my idea is simplistic. It would definitely need to have additions to account for things like small population areas, etc.
If the cops were only there to protect, you're right, probably 99.8% of them would never have to draw a weapon in their career.

~Bang

[Wrong Direction]

Good points,, i also believe that simplistic solutions don't account for everything, and my idea is simplistic. It would definitely need to have additions to account for things like small population areas, etc.
If the cops were only there to protect, you're right, probably 99.8% of them would never have to draw a weapon in their career.

~Bang

OTOH, there are frequently fights, low grade weapons (knives) and drugs in middle and high schools, so there is a case that they could be used for many purposes in those settings. It's the elementary setting in which they'd become inactive vegetables.

[alexey]

...I'm known as an atheist, but I believe that the lack of church has been as cause for our problem. Not because of God, but because of commnities. everyone got dressed and went to church. they knew their neighbors, knew their town.
It's much harder to be so anti-social when you know your town as people.
...

Just another example where the old model already failed but the new approach did not yet emerge.

[Dan T.]

A letter of goodbye to 6 year old shooting victim Jack Pinto

[alexey]

Sucks

[Bang]

OTOH, there are frequently fights, low grade weapons (knives) and drugs in middle and high schools, so there is a case that they could be used for many purposes in those settings. It's the elementary setting in which they'd become inactive vegetables.

I don't know that they'd be vegetables.. what is the old saying.. an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?
They may not spend much time on actual threats, but I think the good presence they can present to kids would go a long way to promoting a better overall kid.

~Bang

[TD_washingtonredskins]

Well, that picture made me tear up at work. So sad.

[Popeman38]

A letter of goodbye to 6 year old shooting victim Jack Pinto

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/eKK...jack_pinto.jpg

No words.....

[The Robert Griffin Experience]

The violent video games argument falls apart when you realize that Japan, Europe and Australia have access to as much as if not more violence than we do.

It's the guns, stupid. Anything else is a red herring at BEST, and a cynical ploy at worst.

[GoSkins561]

The violent video games argument falls apart when you realize that Japan, Europe and Australia have access to as much as if not more violence than we do.

It's the guns, stupid. Anything else is a red herring at BEST, and a cynical ploy at worst.

Or it's just one of the common denominators in almost all of the most recent mass shootings.......

These types of games were designed by the military to de-sensitize troops so they could actually shoot people.

The military went from simple round paper targets, to targets on silhouettes of humans, to "real life simulators" because our soldiers were having troubles squeezing the trigger on an actual human. It might not be the cause, but I can see how it would make it easier to mow down a bunch of humans.

I'm a hunter and feel bad after shooting a deer, the more deer you shoot the easier it gets to squeeze the trigger. I will never forget the first time I saw a deer and put the cross hairs....errrr tried to put the cross hairs where they needed to be....I couldn't take the shot. One of my buddies said I caught "buck fever" lol, the next time I went out, I pulled the trigger.

I think the same applies to these video games/movies and these mentally ill shooters.

[Koolblue13]

Oh well, it's just the way things are in America. Sometimes strange white dudes will shoot up schools and kill children. I agree we all enjoyed it more when it was just random post office employees, but don't fret, we'll get use to this too.

Taking all the guns away from a society that is comfortable and friendly with violence may be the only choice, because we sure ain't gonna change.

I wonder what will be next, when schools become the joke post offices are.

[Koala]

Just as a very late add-in to this thread, I would like to make 2 points.

1) the essential problem here that nobody really wants to talk about is $$$$. Weaponry is just about one of the last manufacturing sectors where America remains truly dominant. America is rivaled only by Russia as the international heavyweights of arms production. The handgun industry in America alone grosses something like $10 billion dollars a year. Lets not even get into the military-level arms productions, where America' arm manufacturers grosses more than 400 billion dollars A YEAR . Selling violence, and making a profit from it, is the American Way. For Americans, we quite literally live by the gun -- at least our economy largely does. And so we will die by the gun too. A weapons ban in America would take away the small arm's industry's largest, wealthiest, and most important customer. Thats not gonna happen. Just forget about it, its not gonna happen. Simply too much money involved.

2) Those who favor an assault weapons ban may really be running counter to the original intent of the 2nd amendment. The argument goes that only the military should have such powerful weaponry. But for the framer's of the constiution, the 2nd amendment wasnt so much about personal protection as it was about the formation of militia's whose very purpose was to be powerful enough to rival the government's. This seems like an anachronistic and archaic idea, even flat out stupid - why would you want to give citizens that kind of power? And the counter to that is simply, go look at Syria.

[Bang]

2) Those who favor an assault weapons ban may really be running counter to the original intent of the 2nd amendment. The argument goes that only the military should have such powerful weaponry. But for the framer's of the constiution, the 2nd amendment wasnt so much about personal protection as it was about the formation of militia's whose very purpose was to be powerful enough to rival the government's. This seems like an anachronistic and archaic idea, even flat out stupid - why would you want to give citizens that kind of power? And the counter to that is simply, go look at Syria.

I can't WAIt for Christmas. I asked for three hunter drones, a tomahawk missile (De-LUXE tactical nuke package!), and an Abrams tank.

I hope i get 'em!

~Bang.