Columbine survivor introduces bill to expand concealed-carry in schools
129 replies, posted
[quote]DENVER — Some students are calling for tougher gun-control laws after escaping last week’s horrific massacre in Parkland, Florida, but another school-shooting survivor is going in a different direction.
Colorado House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, who attended Columbine High School at the time of the 1999 mass shooting, has again introduced legislation to remove limitations on concealed carry in K-12 schools.
Under state law, concealed-carry permit holders may bring firearms onto school property, but must keep them locked inside their vehicles.
Mr. Neville, who has introduced the bill annually since he was elected in 2014, said the current law “creates a so-called gun free zone in every K-12 public school.”
“This act would allow every law-abiding citizens who holds a concealed carry permit, issued from their chief law-enforcement officer, the right to carry concealed in order to defend themselves and most importantly our children from the worst-case scenarios,” Mr. Neville said in a statement.
The Republican lawmaker has argued that more of his classmates would have survived the attack if some faculty had been armed. Twelve students and one teacher were killed by two teen gunmen at the high school in Littleton, Colorado.
“As a former Columbine student who was a sophomore during the shootings on April 20, 1999, I will do everything in my power to prevent Colorado families from enduring the hardships my classmates and I faced that day,” Mr. Neville said. “Time and time again we point to the one common theme with mass shootings, they occur in gun-free zones.”
A hearing on the bill, which stands little chance of passage in the Democrat-controlled House, is slated for Tuesday.
Some Parkland survivors are helping lead the March for Our Lives in D.C., a March 24 national protest aimed at pushing for stricter gun-control laws in order to “end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today.”
Meanwhile, the Women’s March is urging students and teachers to walk out of their schools on March 14.[/quote]
[url]https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/19/columbine-survivor-bill-concealed-carry-schools/[/url]
this is a half solution that puts security in the hands of the teachers when they should be focusing on education.
but I guess if they already own guns whatever
Being a Columbine survivor doesn't make this any less fucking idiotic.
This will help about as much as stricter gun control laws will: Fuck all in a big ship.
Here's a novel idea: LEt's go after the reasons people commit these atrocities instead of the tool they use. That might have a better effect, wouldn't you say~?
Oh how I'd love to live in a country where it was hard for people to get guns; criminals and non. Like Japan, the UK, most of the EU, Korea etc. Americans who move to these countries say they feel much safer walking around at night than in the US.
[QUOTE=proboardslol;53144996]Oh how I'd love to live in a country where it was hard for people to get guns; criminals and non. Like Japan, the UK, most of the EU, Korea etc. Americans who move to these countries say they feel much safer walking around at night than in the US.[/QUOTE]
Anecdotally, I have known two Brits and a Russian who say they feel safer here than in their home countries. Not sure we want to go down the route of "my brothers friends grandma said..."
It's all pretty meaningless compared to hard stats, and the stats don't lie: across most of the US, you are as safe as in any other first world country.
[QUOTE=Grenadiac;53145011]Anecdotally, I have known two Brits and a Russian who say they feel safer here than in their home countries. Not sure we want to go down the route of "my brothers friends grandma said..."
It's all pretty meaningless compared to hard stats, and the stats don't lie: across most of the US, you are as safe as in any other first world country.[/QUOTE]
Violent crime has actually been on the decline for a while now, IIRC. You wouldn't really know it from the way Trump shitposts about violent immigrants every other week.
Being the survivor of a massacre doesn't automatically make your policy proposals smart...
i've never understood the logic of having armed teachers making the school safer.
it would just make the situation more chaotic if more people have guns, it's not going to deter people from shooting schools up, the teachers could end up getting shot before they have time to ready their pistol.
[editline]20th February 2018[/editline]
and i mean as safe as concealed carry is, if you let the teachers take guns on campus theres always the chance of that going poorly.
[QUOTE=Grenadiac;53145011]It's all pretty meaningless compared to hard stats, and the stats don't lie: across most of the US, you are as safe as in any other first world country.[/QUOTE]
Just sad that middle-school classrooms are excluded from this 'most of the US'.
Also, I'd say that safety due to M.A.D. on a micro-scale is worse than the same level of safety being there simply because you can rest assured no one is going to shoot you.
[QUOTE=Riller;53145184]Just sad that middle-school classrooms are excluded from this 'most of the US'.
Also, I'd say that safety due to M.A.D. on a micro-scale is worse than the same level of safety being there simply because you can rest assured no one is going to shoot you.[/QUOTE]
I'm not really sure what you're saying. Are you implying that the statistical likelihood of being involved in a school shooting is higher than the baseline? It isn't.
As long as they take a CCL course and are vetted by the state or district every year I don't see a problem with this, assuming its voluntary and not a mandate. Initially I thought it could lead to accidents but as far as I can tell that hasn't happened in any schools that have already allowed teachers to carry. People who go for CCL licenses on their own tend to be far safer and vigilant with their firearms than the general public or [URL="https://www.gunstocarry.com/concealed-carry-statistics/"]even the police[/URL].
It's not a perfect measure, but instituting this as a way to keep schools from being vulnerable until we come up with a longterm bipartisan solution seems like a no-brainer to me.
[QUOTE=phygon;53145190]I'm not really sure what you're saying. Are you implying that the statistical likelihood of being involved in a school shooting is higher than the baseline? It isn't.[/QUOTE]
If baseline is middle-schools in any European country, then yes. It's infinitely higher.
Not saying you're more likely to be shot in schools than in streets in the US. Saying you're more likely to be shot in US schools than EU schools. Just like Grenadiac compared the US to the rest of the west.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;53145192]As long as they take a CCL course and are vetted by the state or district every year I don't see a problem with this, assuming its voluntary and not a mandate. Initially I thought it could lead to accidents but as far as I can tell that hasn't happened in any schools that have already allowed teachers to carry. People who go for CCL licenses on their own tend to be far safer and vigilant with their firearms than the general public or [URL="https://www.gunstocarry.com/concealed-carry-statistics/"]even the police[/URL].
It's not a perfect measure, but instituting this as a way to keep schools from being vulnerable until we come up with a longterm bipartisan solution seems like a no-brainer to me.[/QUOTE]
lol you mean like the solution people have been proposing since this started happening? but nah lets just put even more guns out there.
[QUOTE=Riller;53145199]If baseline is middle-schools in any European country, then yes. It's infinitely higher.
Not saying you're more likely to be shot in schools than in streets in the US. Saying you're more likely to be shot in US schools than EU schools. Just like Grenadiac compared the US to the rest of the west.[/QUOTE]
Why would the baseline for "most of the US" be schools in the EU?
I'm not exactly inclined to agree with the guy but that comparison doesn't make sense.
[QUOTE=Scot;53145212]lol you mean like the solution people have been proposing since this started happening? but nah lets just put even more guns out there.[/QUOTE]
What solution?
[QUOTE=Pat.Lithium;53145140]i've never understood the logic of having armed teachers making the school safer.
it would just make the situation more chaotic if more people have guns, it's not going to deter people from shooting schools up, the teachers could end up getting shot before they have time to ready their pistol.
[editline]20th February 2018[/editline]
and i mean as safe as concealed carry is, if you let the teachers take guns on campus theres always the chance of that going poorly.[/QUOTE]
It is something like one death a minute on average for a school shooting scenario.
It is why when law enforcement responds, the priority is to grab long guns and breach immediately with whatever officers are on scene. No perimeter or waiting for SWAT. It is also why if law enforcement finds the doors chained shut, they will drive a cruiser through a wall.
It is absolutely critical to have friendly guns on scene as soon as is humanly possible.
Ultimately it is all stupid though.
"Teachers shouldn't be forced to defend themselves with guns"
"Teachers should have the right to defend the class"
blah blah blah, pointless drivel.
It is just a building and concealed carry holders are law abiding citizens. There is no reason to prohibit them from taking a firearm in. It doesn't have to be about reducing school shootings or some other crap. It can just be a realization that gun free zones serve zero purpose without on site armed security/police.
[quote]The Republican lawmaker has argued that more of his classmates would have survived the attack if some faculty had been armed.[/quote]
So Republican politicians are finally admitting they don't care about preventing shootings in the first place, just minimising casualties when they do?
[QUOTE=phygon;53145214]Why would the baseline for "most of the US" be schools in the EU?
I'm not exactly inclined to agree with the guy but that comparison doesn't make sense.[/QUOTE]
"across most of the US, you are as safe as in any other first world country"
This statement, made by Grenadiac, is generally true. However, the term 'most of the US' obviously implies that in [I]some[/I] of the US, you are not as safe as an equivalent area in the EU. These are places include places like Detroit, certain LA neighbourhoods, from what I hear Chicargo, and middle-school classrooms.
How is this so hard to understand? It's what I quoted. I responded to the thing I quoted. The comparison I responded to wasn't between 'Place A in US and place B in US', it was 'Place A in US and equivalent place B in other first world country".
[QUOTE=Grenadiac;53145011]Anecdotally, I have known two Brits and a Russian who say they feel safer here than in their home countries. Not sure we want to go down the route of "my brothers friends grandma said..."[/QUOTE]
Personally, as a Brit, I feel safer here because I know the worst someone might realistically pull on me is a knife or a cosh if someone ever picked a fight. If a fight started in the US I'd be terrified that pretty much everyone around me might have a gat.
[QUOTE=GunFox;53145238]It is something like one death a minute on average for a school shooting scenario.
It is why when law enforcement responds, the priority is to grab long guns and breach immediately with whatever officers are on scene. No perimeter or waiting for SWAT. It is also why if law enforcement finds the doors chained shut, they will drive a cruiser through a wall.
It is absolutely critical to have friendly guns on scene as soon as is humanly possible.
Ultimately it is all stupid though.
"Teachers shouldn't be forced to defend themselves with guns"
"Teachers should have the right to defend the class"
blah blah blah, pointless drivel.
It is just a building and concealed carry holders are law abiding citizens. There is no reason to prohibit them from taking a firearm in. It doesn't have to be about reducing school shootings or some other crap. It can just be a realization that gun free zones serve zero purpose without on site armed security/police.[/QUOTE]
Can you provide compelling evidence that such concealed weapons actually help these situations? [URL="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/right-to-carry-gun-violence/531297/"]All the articles that I have been able to find have suggested otherwise.[/URL] This is an honest question. I am personally extremely uncomfortable with the concept of concealed weapons being carried inside schools, as I have seen nothing that suggests that it would improve the situation statistically, [URL="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/opinion/concealed-carrys-body-count.html"]seeing mostly things that suggest the opposite[/URL]. For every school shooting scenario, there are much less dire emergencies, threats, fights, etc- I think that adding more guns into the mix would have a higher chance of undue escalation more than anything.
[editline]20th February 2018[/editline]
[QUOTE=Riller;53145247]"across most of the US, you are as safe as in any other first world country"
This statement, made by Grenadiac, is generally true. However, the term 'most of the US' obviously implies that in [I]some[/I] of the US, you are not as safe as an equivalent area in the EU. These are places include places like Detroit, certain LA neighbourhoods, from what I hear Chicargo, and middle-school classrooms.
How is this so hard to understand? It's what I quoted. I responded to the thing I quoted. The comparison I responded to wasn't between 'Place A in US and place B in US', it was 'Place A in US and equivalent place B in other first world country".[/QUOTE]
Because middle school classrooms do not have an equivalent of gun violence to detroit, so it's a complete false equivalence.
[QUOTE=phygon;53145259]
Because middle school classrooms do not have an equivalent of gun violence to detroit, so it's a complete false equivalence.[/QUOTE]
Are you being intentionally obtuse here or what? My comparison is going something along the lines of this:
Certain neighbourhoods of LA -> Certain neighbourhoods of Bruxelles
Detroit -> Malmö
Middleschool classrooms in US -> middleschool classrooms in EU
[I]I am not comparing middelschool classrooms to Detroit, I am comparing them to middleschool classrooms[/I]. In the EU, the risk of getting shot in a middle-school classroom is so far absolute 0. In the US, it is not 0. Close to 0, but still infinitely higher than in the EU. How fucking hard is this to understand? Do you not know how comparative methods work? How statistics work?
"former cancer patient introduces bill to ban radon detectors"
I don't like this form of reasoning, what you need is a school & mental health reform - not more guns to further divide the population on the issue.
[QUOTE=Chris Morris;53145255]If a fight started in the US I'd be terrified that pretty much everyone around me might have a gat.[/QUOTE]
That's the point.
As for the proposition of arming teachers itself:
It's fucking dumb. It's not gonna save anyone, and it's adding a new dangerous variable to the situation, opening up for the following scenarios off the top of my head:
What if a student gets a hold of the gun?
What if a teacher decides to misuse it?
What if a teacher misidentifies the shooter in a situation?
What if a teacher takes a shot that isn't clean and hits an innocent student?
Furthermore, the general modus operandi of school shooters tend to be to not start in classrooms, but instead in hallways or other areas not actively overlooked by a teacher, and certainly not one with access to a firearm (unless we're going to actually have the teachers carry, which is a whole new bag of worms to mess with). This would mean that any teacher would generally be at a disadvantage in a gunfight. A gunfight you don't want to have in a school in the first place, having to find and identify a single target while for the shooter, literally everything is a target.
And last, but certainly not least: [I]Being well-armed does not prevent mass shootings[/I]. I'm not even saying that armed civilians don't prevent mas-shooters. I'm saying that nothing prevents them in the act. Think, for a moment, of the Fort Hood shooters. On a military base, with armed guards and combat-trained personnel, the first one still managed to shoot 45 people and the second shot 15. Afghan policemen and army recruits going rouge still account for dozens of coalition deaths every year in Afghanistan. These are spree-shootings against well-armed, well-trained soldiers who, at least in the case of the Afghanistan-incidents, are aware of a constant threat against them, and that still does not prevent the killings taking place. Now if you think a 42-year old divorced mother of two teaching maths to 13-year-olds can do better than the US military in a surprise attack against a probably more well-armed shooter, you must be god damn delusional.
[QUOTE=Shirt.;53145298]That's the point.[/QUOTE]
That's not a good thing. All it would do is, if I were armed with a gat, encourage me to shoot anyone who might draw on me first.
[QUOTE=Grenadiac;53145011]Anecdotally, I have known two Brits and a Russian who say they feel safer here than in their home countries. Not sure we want to go down the route of "my brothers friends grandma said..."
It's all pretty meaningless compared to hard stats, and the stats don't lie: across most of the US, you are as safe as in any other first world country.[/QUOTE]
Here in the UK we still have violent crime, generally inflicted with knives, blunt force weapons or illegal firearms.
Also it's not hard to get a gun here really, most constabularies will give out shotgun licences willy-nilly (2 shot 1 reserve shotguns) for "pest control" or target shooting and what not. Firearms licences for rifles are a little harder to get and can just be denied though.
But still it's not just about gun control, it's the underlying issues that cause people to use guns (which are simply an easy to use effective tool) to kill people in their homes, workplaces, schools, etc.
Generally people who bring guns into a public area are exactly the kind of people I wouldn't trust with a gun in a public area.
[QUOTE=GunFox;53145238]
It is just a building and concealed carry holders are law abiding citizens. [B]There is no reason to prohibit them from taking a firearm in.[/B] It doesn't have to be about reducing school shootings or some other crap. It can just be a realization that gun free zones serve zero purpose without on site armed security/police.[/QUOTE]
How many shootings-by-minors are made possible by the minor getting hold of a law-abiding adult's gun?
[QUOTE=EcksDee;53145073]Being the survivor of a massacre doesn't automatically make your policy proposals smart...[/QUOTE]
You are 100% correct.
[QUOTE]Young survivors of Wednesday's school shooting in Florida have announced a national march on Washington to demand political action on gun control.[/QUOTE]
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