School shooting Florida

[sadhatter]

Wouldn't one trained man have a better than average chance against some punk though? Not to be overly crude, but I can't picture a trained, armed guy just sitting back saying '**** those kids, I'm not going in there'. Why have an armed guard at all if he won't engage till additional backup arrives? Who is going to face the public and say 'yeah, we tell the armed guards to let the kids get shot up rather than put themselves at any risk'. Tough justification.

Keep in mind I'm not saying this to be a prick. I just want to outline this as boldly as possible.

Go and read your post again. You just described an action movie.

I'm sure you are a smart person likely more than myself. But your most realistic scenario is literally the plot of an action film. And I don't mean to centre you out as this is quite common as an opinion.

We need to realize that on some subjects we know so close to nothing that our opinion is meaningless. But accepting this basic fact has became taboo. Everyone should have their opinion taken seriously.

No, not at all. Not with a grain of salt, and I don't care about varying mileage,full stop. One needs to educate themselves or accept this is not a subject they can debate.

And this doesn't say anything bad about the person. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of topics I'd say fit this description for myself. As just one example, anyone who would want to take my opinion on cars seriously is likely going to wind up with a piece of ****. I know nothing and likely what I think I know is wrong.

But it's like once the topic becomes something important (I'very never gown a debate on the cars statement) suddenly people take offense and feel their opinion being disregarded is a slight.

 

[sadhatter]

Personally, what gets my hackles up are the men who give the impression that "men are naturally violent." They need to stop it.

I've said it before: if the defense of a group consists of "not all of them are like that" then that group has a problem. You can claim that "it's just bad individuals" but there are far too many "bad individuals."

I have no problem with a claim that "men are naturally violent." My response is not "not me!", it's, damn it, guys, stop doing that! Stop the violence!

You can say the same thing about bad cops. Of course there are plenty of good cops, but they need to stand up to the bad ones, too. In fact, I would think that the good cops would be at the front lines of getting rid of the bad ones. The bad cops are making the good cops look bad, too. Why do they put up with that?

Black people.

Muslims.

Jews.

Seems your theory fails apart if the people in question are not a popular target of criticism.

And in reply to your counter point, anyone claiming the groups mentioned have negative traits will also flood me with statistics interpreted in the way they want.

When your social revelation seems to only apply to current popular targets ,that's a pretty good indication you are following a trend, not logic.

 

[Thermal]

Keep in mind I'm not saying this to be a prick. I just want to outline this as boldly as possible.

I hear you, no worries.

Go and read your post again. You just described an action movie.

No, I don't think a guard should charge in like John Wayne and said so in other posts. A suicide blitz just means one more victim and possibly another loaded weapon for the shooter. Advance with a retreat plan in place is the move as far as I can see, if for no other reason than to radio to others what the situation is so they can prepare.

I don't expect guards or LEOs to go full-tilt cowboy. No one does. But Deputy Peterson did nothing at all. Surely, even not being professionals, reasonable people can be outraged that doing nothing at all was the move? He has subsequently resigned, too. Might he be thinking that he did not do what he thought he should have? Speculation, of course.

I'm sure you are a smart person likely more than myself. But your most realistic scenario is literally the plot of an action film. And I don't mean to centre you out as this is quite common as an opinion.

We need to realize that on some subjects we know so close to nothing that our opinion is meaningless. But accepting this basic fact has became taboo. Everyone should have their opinion taken seriously.

No, not at all. Not with a grain of salt, and I don't care about varying mileage,full stop. One needs to educate themselves or accept this is not a subject they can debate.

I think it can and should be discussed. LEOs can weigh in to give valuable perspective, which is all part of the education process. I would like to hear how Peterson's in/actions are justified, as it makes no sense on the surface, so much so that discussion becomes very beneficial. If the justification amounts to 'we value the safety of officers more than the lives of children', that is a matter for much discussion. It may be that LEOs have found that a single responder is overwhelmingly gunned down immediately in a scenario like this, I don't know. It's all part of the learning process for us to discuss and debate.

And this doesn't say anything bad about the person. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of topics I'd say fit this description for myself. As just one example, anyone who would want to take my opinion on cars seriously is likely going to wind up with a piece of ****. I know nothing and likely what I think I know is wrong.

But it's like once the topic becomes something important (I'very never gown a debate on the cars statement) suddenly people take offense and feel their opinion being disregarded is a slight.

I would hope that honest discussion and debate should be healthy. A few pages back, a poster responded to me by concluding that 'Americans have a disdain for human life'. That's just hateful and unproductive. Discussion itself, even heated debate, should benefit all.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I would hope that honest discussion and debate should be healthy. A few pages back, a poster responded to me by concluding that 'Americans have a disdain for human life'. That's just hateful and unproductive.

If you think that, then I think you misunderstand where that statement's coming from. A lot of the rest of the world simply cannot fathom how the US declines to make any effective response to mass murders of school children because of the pretext that this would require greater control of guns by the government. In most other countries a single instance of this sort would be, and in mine very specifically was, met by an immediate set of measures designed to be effective in making sure that the preconditions for the attack succeeding would no longer exist. In the US, it appears that nothing effective was done as a result of Columbine or Sandy Hook, and will not be as a result of Parkland, because the political clout of the gun lobby will ensure that any proposed action is blocked. I think we could be forgiven for, at the very least, noting that the cost/benefit equation between maintaining access to firearms and maintaining the safety of children is, in the USA, very much more biased on the side of firearms than elsewhere, and feeling as a result that respect for life is significantly less in the US than in other countries.

Dave

 

[Checkmite]

Go and read your post again. You just described an action movie.

What he described is a police officer's actual, literal job when an armed person is attacking people.

Bear in mind that unarmed students and teachers inside the school, having complete knowledge of the threat and of their inability to counter it, willingly interceded with their bodies to give other students a better chance of survival.

 

[erlando]

I think that when you put on a badge and carry a gun, then yes, you have accepted that you will be putting yourself at some extreme lethal risk. Standing down and watching till you are confident that you will personally be safe while others are being shot is not a reasonable position to take. I consider carrying a gun to entail a very serious commitment.

No no no no. According to multiple threads on this very forum a LEO is apparently not expected to accept considerable danger to his or her life thus "I thought he had a gun and feared for my life" is a perfectly acceptable excuse for a cop for killing unarmed people.

If that's true it follows that we should not expect this officer to put himself in danger confronting an active shooter.

 

[Kestrel]

My recollection is that the policy prior to Columbine was to wait for backup.

After Columbine it became confront immediately.

Law enforcement at Columbine had not planned for an active shooter situation. So those in charge of the SWAT team treated it as a hostage situation.

This really was a failure of leadership. Those in charge were not able or willing to improvise a response for an unexpected situation.

 

[Civet]

State legislators in Florida advance Bill HB 839 which would require every public school in Florida to display "in a conspicuous place" the state motto, "In God We Trust."

The bill's sponsor in the House, Rep. Kimberly Daniels, a Democrat from Jacksonville said "It is not a secret that we have some gun issues that need to be addressed, but the real thing that needs to be addressed are issues of the heart,"

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...hare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social


So that's all right then.

She has a website for her real job. One look at it would make me run directly toward voting for whatever happened to be running against her:
https://kimberlydaniels.net/

 

[crescent]

I think there is a middle ground between Anything Goes when it comes to guns, and a total ban on private gun ownership.
Which is the problem. The extremists at both sides tend to dominate the debate.
Practically, a UK style firearms ban would never go over in the US. Now limitations on certain types of guns is another factor.
I also get annoyed with how some rabid anti gun people lump all firearms together. In their sight, a bold action hunting rifle with a five round magazine is just as heinous as a assault rifle....

Finding any cite anywhere about anything isn't actually going to change a straw-man argument into a non straw-man one. This is one of the more bizarre accusations of fallacious reasoning I've seen.

dudalb makes an assertion about people's opinions that I don't believe is true because I don't think anyone believes what he alleges. The strawman is not based in dubious reasoning but in an assertion of unsupported and dubious fact. The fact in dispute is whether or not "rabid anti-gun people" believe what he says they believe.

From wikipedia's definition of Straw Man

A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".

If he can find a cite of "rabid anti-gun people" expressing that opinion, he can prove me wrong. He can show that some of his opponents actually do present that argument - if he can find a cite to document it. If he can find that cite he can prove that his assertion is not a strawman. The way he wrote it he defined his opponents as "extremists at both sides" and "some rabid anti gun people". He did not define me or anyone else in this forum as his opponent.

 

[Thermal]

If you think that, then I think you misunderstand where that statement's coming from. A lot of the rest of the world simply cannot fathom how the US declines to make any effective response to mass murders of school children because of the pretext that this would require greater control of guns by the government. In most other countries a single instance of this sort would be, and in mine very specifically was, met by an immediate set of measures designed to be effective in making sure that the preconditions for the attack succeeding would no longer exist. In the US, it appears that nothing effective was done as a result of Columbine or Sandy Hook, and will not be as a result of Parkland, because the political clout of the gun lobby will ensure that any proposed action is blocked. I think we could be forgiven for, at the very least, noting that the cost/benefit equation between maintaining access to firearms and maintaining the safety of children is, in the USA, very much more biased on the side of firearms than elsewhere, and feeling as a result that respect for life is significantly less in the US than in other countries.

Dave

And that is exactly what I was referring to. I find that most Americans have no disdain at all for human life, and I likely am exposed to more than that poster is. What we have is a small but immensely influential gun lobby, and their conservative rabble base who IMO have not thought their position through. What I am wondering is how exactly people disassociate themselves from the mass shootings, and if it might be due to a miserable sense of belonging to a larger community (I see this frequently). To characterize Americans, whether all, most, or however many, as having a disdain for human life is an unwarranted conclusion. The dissociation from the event is where I think the problem lies.

 

[Trebuchet]

Unless, of course, you are a True Skeptic™, in which case, having climbed the hill. you defend it to the death.

I'm reminded of the train wreck thread, from a couple of months ago.

 

[crescent]

If the armed officer is not going to intervene against an intruder with a gun, then why is he there?

He either doesn't need to be there, or he doesn't need to be armed if the policy is not to confront an armed suspect.

I think a lot of the basis for armed resource officers is to act as a deterrent to prevent fights or gang activity. There may be value in that (debatable) while still recognizing that there is not much they can do to prevent mass shooters without backup.

Law enforcement at Columbine had not planned for an active shooter situation. So those in charge of the SWAT team treated it as a hostage situation.

That's what I recall. They were prepared for a hostage situation so they put together a full SWAT team before entering, with the intention of finding which room the hostages were in and making contact with the hostage takers.

I think, based on the reasoning of the time, this was not a wholly unreasonable assumption. Mass shootings in schools were very, very rare prior to that. Hostage takings had occurred, though.

One can compare it to the initial response to the 9-11 hijackings. Nobody had ever hijacked a passenger jet with the sole intention of using it in a suicide attack. We changed our response to hijacking after that, because that very attack changed the scope of what we knew hijackers might try to do.

 

[Dave Rogers]

What we have is a small but immensely influential gun lobby, and their conservative rabble base who IMO have not thought their position through.

But you live in a democracy. How can a small minority dictate if there's a genuine will to over-rule them? It seems that the inactivity of the majority is as much a factor as the activism of the minority. It comes across as not caring enough, maybe, rather than not caring at all; but blaming everything on a small but vocal minority seems to miss an important point.

Dave

 

[crescent]

But you live in a democracy.

We are less Democratic than ever. There are multiple threads on the impact of gerrymandering, voter suppression, voting "irregularities", and illegal activity by hostile foreign powers that are aided and abetted by party operatives.

A strong majority of the American public favors tighter regulation of firearms, but they can't get through the gerrymandering, voter suppression, closed caucuses and other methods of maintaining minority rule.


ETA: Okay, "less democratic than ever" is hyperbole. We are less Democratic than any point since women and black people were granted the functional right to vote, roughly 1968.

 

[Thermal]

But you live in a democracy. How can a small minority dictate if there's a genuine will to over-rule them? It seems that the inactivity of the majority is as much a factor as the activism of the minority. It comes across as not caring enough, maybe, rather than not caring at all; but blaming everything on a small but vocal minority seems to miss an important point.

Dave

I don't mean to blame them. They have power, money, and influence, and that makes them players who seek to further their financial agenda. By leaning on the abstract Constitutional Right rationale, they persuade their rabble base to not think about the piles of body bags and focus on wrapping themselves in the flag.

The majority of Americans, if memory serves, are against the death penalty, in favor of increased gun regulation, and are generous in donating to victims of disaster. I wouldn't think these are traits of a people with a disdain for human life. The lobby, however, pushes enough cash to reframe the problem nationally. How they are successful to that end is what has me thinking that dissociation, rather than disdain, is the root cause of coming together as a community. Many are intensely vocal about gun regulation. I live in one of the most strictly regulated states, and have contacted my representatives to voice that we need yet more. Americans do not need to be painted with such a wide brush.

eta: I get what you mean about not caring enough, rather than not at all (disdain is another level however). Not caring enough is where I attribute the dissociation that makes it all happen for the lobby.

 

[Aber]

Thanks for that link. I think I threw up a little in my mouth.

Here's something worse:

House Bill 2535, introduced by Representative Kevin Payne (R-21), would protect the right to self-defense while in the premises of a foster home. Foster parents are like any other parents who simply want to care for their children, including exercising their Second Amendment rights in order to protect their families.

Under current Department of Child Safety rules, foster parents are required to store their firearms in locked storage container, with a trigger locking device, and with the ammunition stored separately in a locked device.

This intrusive policy invades people’s homes and forces them to render their firearm useless in a self-defense situation by locking them up.

Arizona’s foster parents should not be forced to choose between their Second Amendment rights or their children.

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20180219/arizona-anti-gun-bill-defeated-in-committee-pro-gun-legislation-advances

 

[Lurch]

Didn't I hear Wayne LaPierre claim that gun ownership was a God given right?

If so, we mere mortals *must* permit *all* to own guns. No ifs, ands or buts.

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All the prattle and blather about this school's wall construction astonishes me. Talk about a side show.

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I knew Trump's seeming "listening" during that session at the WH would harden right afterward. Just as happened for that televised meeting some weeks back concerning immigration/DACA. The two-faced, indecisive, no-policy, bends-with-the-wind, heeds-last-spoken-to failure of a leader cannot be counted upon.

 

[William Parcher]

Deputy who didn’t stop Florida shooting thinks he ‘did a good job’

The sheriff’s deputy who failed to engage the shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School “believed he did a good job” because he called in the location of the massacre and gave a description of the shooter, a top union official said Thursday.

School resource officer Scot Peterson, who resigned in disgrace from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, was “distraught” about the shooting that killed 17 people — but believed he did his duty, according to the president of the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association.

“He believed he did a good job calling in the location, setting up the perimeter and calling in the description (of Cruz),” said the union official, Jim Bell...

https://nypost.com/2018/02/22/deputy-who-didnt-stop-florida-shooting-thinks-he-did-a-good-job

 

[GnaGnaMan]

But you live in a democracy. How can a small minority dictate if there's a genuine will to over-rule them? It seems that the inactivity of the majority is as much a factor as the activism of the minority. It comes across as not caring enough, maybe, rather than not caring at all; but blaming everything on a small but vocal minority seems to miss an important point.

Dave

This paper made a bit of a splash a few years ago:
Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page

[...]Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

 

[crescent]

Dana Loesch is lying about the NRA’s stance on “red flag” laws

"I don’t believe that this insane monster should have ever been able to obtain a firearm," she said of Nikolas Cruz, who murdered 17 people at his former high school with a legally obtained AR-15. "And I, nor the millions of people that I represent as a part of this organization that I’m here speaking for, none of us support people who are crazy, who are a danger to themselves, who are a danger to others getting their hands on a firearm."

"This is the eighth tragedy, the eighth tragedy, where we have seen numerous tips that have been reported and red flags," she added.

In fact, the NRA has fought these "red flag" laws every step of the way. When California passed its law in the months after the Isla Vista shooting, Charles Cunningham of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) declared it was "one of the most egregious violations of civil liberties ever introduced in the California Legislature," When Washington introduced similar legislation, the NRA-ILA declared that it meant "a person's rights disappear merely on the say-so of someone else," (This is false. A court has to hear evidence and make a ruling.) They fought a similar bill in Oregon, but failed to defeat it.

“The only major criticism we’ve gotten has been from the New York affiliate of the NRA, which is called the Rifle and Pistol Association," Kavanagh said. The NRA has resisted red flag bills in Vermont, Missouri and Massachusetts as well.

The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association claims that Kavanagh's bill is redundant to others like the SAFE Act, which instituted universal background checks. This posture is insincere, however. For one thing, the group is also trying to repeal the SAFE Act. For another, the red flag bill is meant to cover people like the Parkland shooter, who may pass a background check despite their erratic behavior because they don't have a criminal record or mental-health diagnosis that would stop them.