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

[TD_washingtonredskins]

WARNING!!! THIS IS NOT A REAL SUGGESTION, MORE OF A TONGUE IN CHEEK UTOPIAN SOCIETY, "WOULDN'T IT BE AWESOME" SUGGESTION:

Parenting license. BOOM!

I like it. I wonder if I'd have attained that license to raise my two kids?

[alexey]

We, even the adults, should not want or desire to have and play such realistically violent and destructive games.

We don't want porn everywhere, we are able to limit that, maybe even to a fault, but we don't have 10 yo kids watching it on pocket game systems in restaurants, why is violence and death so quickly available.

We are not able to prevent any money making things which appeal to our primal senses or interests. Porn is not everywhere but sexualization is rampant.

[SKINS@THEGOALLINE]

This idea has several things going for it:

1. It gives people in schools (students and teachers) a chance to defend themselves if crazies continue these actions.
2. It's much cheaper than providing an armed security guard at every school.
3. It could be a solid deterrent. Any perpetrator would be aware that they could be tased, bro.
4. It's safer than guns, so any kid, attacker or good samaratan that gets ahold of it would only be so dangerous, and the wacko pro-gun/anti-gun people stay out of this discussion.
5. It's hard wired to police and illegal use would result in jail time, so glass encasings and video monitoring/ink sprays would likely deter almost all misuse.

Good luck finding someone who will face down a crazy with an assualt weapon when you're armed only with a stun gun.

[Corcaigh]

Is it "recommended" that kids can't play games that are too mature for them or is it illegal for them to do so?

It's recommendation, I think

It's legal for parents to bring their kid of any age to see an R-rated movie. And many do.

[Bang]

Stun guns in schools

I don't know.. the day that a teacher uses it to get a kid in line we have a whole new kettle of fish.
And one will, I'd bet.
Or another kid grabs it and uses it in a fight..
Too many things can go wrong with this.. i still like the idea of a policeman.

2. It's much cheaper than providing an armed security guard at every school.
.

And this isn't directed to you or this idea in particular.. but I can't believe folks would wring their hands over cost to find a solution here. so long as it's reasonable, I can't think of a better reason to use some of my taxes.. or even assign me another nickel on sales tax to help pay for it.

How many public shools nationwide? i have no idea.. but one cop per should be an easy number to figure out, times their salary, divided by taxpayers.. the cost when split out among us all would be negligible.. certainly not enough to quibble over.

~Bang

[TD_washingtonredskins]

It's recommendation, I think

It's legal for parents to bring their kid of any age to see an R-rated movie. And many do.

Thanks...I hope that's something that can become illegal if connections between these things and bad behavior are documented.

[Corcaigh]

WARNING!!! THIS IS NOT A REAL SUGGESTION, MORE OF A TONGUE IN CHEEK UTOPIAN SOCIETY, "WOULDN'T IT BE AWESOME" SUGGESTION:

Parenting license. BOOM!

Not the worst idea that's been suggested, but good luck defining the criteria.

Some parents would want to totally eliminate any contact sports, and youth football coaches would be locked up as a menace to society.

[CTskins]

I think the 17 year old age limit is an issue. Why 17? Why not 21? A large part of the reason they raised the drinking age to 21 was to keep very young kids from getting their hands on alcohol. A 14 year old will probably know an 18 year old who can get them beer, but much less likely to know a 21 year old.

So why not do the same for mature games?

Also who can buy and sell mature games needs to be way more regulated. You can't buy bottles of liquor underrage over the internet but you can buy any game you want over the internet so long as you have a paypal account or a debit card or can make a money order.

Plus a lot of places just don't ID you when you play games.

And you drink a beer and it's gone. A game sticks around forever. You need to restrict access to the games after they are bought so the kid isn't playing his older brother's or cousin's or dad's game. You can do that with an online game like CoD. Remove the anonymity from user accounts on X Box live and PSN and put age restrictions on playing mature games. Have users report accounts being used by young kids. Smart kids will still find ways to hide and not use mics and such but you can eliminate a ton of kids from playing.

I like that the conversation is being had, especially now that I am a father (He's 4 1/2 months old, but I see everything completely different now than I did in July). There is going to be huge push back on this because of the percieved shallowness of the problem.

I think the 17 year old age limit coincides with the Motion Picture Association of America. More importantly, they are a legal adult at 18 in most states. Yes, the drinking age is 21, but it is so for reasons more direct to drinking and driving and the like, A person of college age should know the difference between Call of Duty and the real world. If not, there are other matters that the parents should be aware of and they probably have bigger fish to fry.

Also you make a great point regarding Internet sales. Not only will the game manufacturers fight it, so will Amazon, and eBay, Buy.com, etc. There are literally 10s of 1,000s of games for sale. An unintended conciquense = thievery.

At the end of the day, regarding games, It comes down to parental supervison.

[Wrong Direction]

You must not work with kids

They still pull the fire alarms despite the punishments associated. The opportunity to pull one of them off and use it, especially if they're in a fight or might be is VERY high. Giving them access to that is very irresponsible.

I think you're overstating this risk, but either way I do think the risk could be mitigated. Maybe you don't line the hallways with these taser guns, but placing them in cases in classrooms is one option. At a minimum, providing to administrative staff out of general sight of children is another option.

Good luck finding someone who will face down a crazy with an assualt weapon when you're armed only with a stun gun.

At VT, at least one man (holocaust survivor, IIRC) tried to attack the killer unarmed. At Newtown, some teachers had time to hide their children, one of them was killed. At least if they had access, they'd have a chance. Plus, many buildings would likely have people who run to the problem, not away from it. (For clarity, I'm not making judgement here.)

I don't know.. the day that a teacher uses it to get a kid in line we have a whole new kettle of fish.
And one will, I'd bet.
Or another kid grabs it and uses it in a fight..
Too many things can go wrong with this.. i still like the idea of a policeman.

This is a better argument against guns. Tasers would almost never kill someone, and teachers would be fired and placed in jail for inappropriate use.

I genuinely don't mean offense to any of you, but the instant reaction against this, as opposed to adding thoughts for how teachers could better protect themselves and deter bad guys, is part of the problem. I think we should be brainstorming ways to help good, helpless, people better protect themselves.

[Edit: Bang's support of armed officers in schools is noted.]

[DaGoonie55]

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.

[Bang]

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

[CTskins]

Thanks...I hope that's something that can become illegal if connections between these things and bad behavior are documented.

It's very difficult to make that connection because movies with R ratings are so for a variety of reasons, including mere language. Most 16 year olds use worse language and more often.

At the end of the day, its about parental supervison. Once they turn 18, they are more or less in the hands of the authorities.

[twa]

knockout gas in the hallways,sure the russian version killed 15% of the victims,but We can certainly formulate a better version.

Dagoonie, take him hunting and dispel any illusions

Bang....why not a screened combat veteran with urban combat training instead?

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I don't know.. the day that a teacher uses it to get a kid in line we have a whole new kettle of fish.
And one will, I'd bet.
Or another kid grabs it and uses it in a fight..
Too many things can go wrong with this.. i still like the idea of a policeman.


And this isn't directed to you or this idea in particular.. but I can't believe folks would wring their hands over cost to find a solution here. so long as it's reasonable, I can't think of a better reason to use some of my taxes.. or even assign me another nickel on sales tax to help pay for it.

How many public shools nationwide? i have no idea.. but one cop per should be an easy number to figure out, times their salary, divided by taxpayers.. the cost when split out among us all would be negligible.. certainly not enough to quibble over.

~Bang

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.

[GoSkins0721]

I don't know.. the day that a teacher uses it to get a kid in line we have a whole new kettle of fish.
And one will, I'd bet.
Or another kid grabs it and uses it in a fight..
Too many things can go wrong with this.. i still like the idea of a policeman.


And this isn't directed to you or this idea in particular.. but I can't believe folks would wring their hands over cost to find a solution here. so long as it's reasonable, I can't think of a better reason to use some of my taxes.. or even assign me another nickel on sales tax to help pay for it.

How many public shools nationwide? i have no idea.. but one cop per should be an easy number to figure out, times their salary, divided by taxpayers.. the cost when split out among us all would be negligible.. certainly not enough to quibble over.

~Bang

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