The response to the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut continues to get more and more bizarre. In Arizona, a controversial sheriff will have a volunteer “posse” at schools armed to the teeth. The NRA president wants armed guards at every school. Now, in Montpelier, Ohio, the school district wants to arm custodial staff who will now have push brooms, plungers, and semi-automatic weapons.
Montpelier Exempted Village School District superintendent Dr. Jamison Grime believes that such a move makes schools safer even though such attacks are exceptionally rare and custodial positions are viewed as requiring the lowest levels of qualifications in the school system. Grime however insists that they will be put through training and presumably will not use their weapons to shoot out burned bulbs or loosen stumps in the schoolyard.
The school board approved the proposal unanimously for four armed janitors.
How intense will the training be, you ask?
Two days.
Below is one such custodian going into battle in an elementary school:
Source: Toledo Blade
Well at least their arming the most intelligent people in the school. talk about idiots, not the janitors the school district.
Mickey, it is true that handguns, not semi-assault rifles, are the cause of most gun deaths in the United States, even with suicide removed from the tally. But I think you need to determine the focus of the current situation…is it to stop all gun violence or prevent massacres? I’d submit the goal is to prevent massacres and, the unfortunate truth in that scenario, is that the weapon of choice for those slayings are assault weapons. Makes sense, the purpose of an assault weapon is to kill large numbers of people quickly.
And the charts you hyperlinked are grossly misleading. For example, The UK homicide chart goes back to the late 1960’s in order to show a variation because the number has only risen by two (according to the chart) since the latest weapons law. When you only have a few gun related homicides a year, an increase of a few murders makes a huge difference. But raw numbers say nothing. How many of those were gang on gang? How many massacres? How many innocents were gunned down in a movie theater or a mall? How many politicians shot while giving a speech? How many students were shot at secondary schools or a university?
Let’s see those charts and then compare.
As for the worst chart, DC, you see something interesting. First, the early 1990’s was the onset of the crack epidemic in DC and increased homicides resulted.. After urban renewal projects pushed crack out of the neighborhoods, the murder rate steadily declined. But that’s not as important as what the chart represents. The chart shows the weakness of relying solely on state laws to regulate guns. In several reports by the ATF, the guns used in most of the DC murders were purchased in neighboring states that had less stringent gun laws.
So that DC chart is not an argument for less gun control, rather for a federal law that makes gun availability consistent from state to state. A person will buy the gun that is easy to get…that is why you don’t see that many machine guns on the street. The process to acquire one is insanely long and requires having to register with the ATF, FBI, etc. What that shows, to me, is that if a gun is too difficult to obtain, people won’t purchase it. Where I live, gun laws are strict but those folks who want assault rifles just need to cross a bridge and get one.
And don’t be fooled, I’m pro gun. But there is no reason for the NRA or gun enthusiasts to defend the need to own an assault rifle. You can’t use them for self defense. You can’t use them to hunt. I’d be fine with them only being used and stored at gun ranges, but to have them in circulation is ridiculous. The slippery slope argument is absurd…when limits were placed on speech we did not lose our right to free speech. Placing limits on guns will not remove our right to own a gun, it’s about time people got the hint and realized that.
Armed guards haven’t stopped school shootings in the past why do we expect them to do so in the future. Americans are easily freightened and easily manipulated. More guns more gun violence and more gun accidents. The NRA doesn’t care about kids, people
As to the armed janitors, I tentatively think this is a good idea. Utah has allowed concealed handgun licensees to conceal carry at school for quite a number of years now, without any problems. I think we need better statistics on crime and accidents involving concealed handgun licensees and more experience with other jurisdictions allowed concealed carry in schools, but from the stats I’ve seen, there’s little reason to believe there’d be large numbers of accidents or any educational disruption, and good reason to think armed school employees would deter or minimize deaths resulting from mass school shooters.
Personally, I tend to favor strict nationwide gun control. But, that’s neither legally (2nd amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court) or politically possible. Thus, given the current state of affairs, armed good guys seems like the least bad option.
“A recent WaPo-ABC poll shows 55% of Americans support having trained armed guards in schools, not janitors however. Please don’t attack the messenger. ”
IIRC, that question was ambiguously worded. There are plenty of schools in the US right now that have problems with gang violence and currently have armed police in the school. That’s probably a good idea for those schools. However, that doesn’t mean I support the NRA proposal of having armed guards at every school. That seems like a hugely unnecessary, ineffective, expensive, and harmful idea.
“Please stop the fear mongering with the gratuitous unnecessary colorful use of the scare-term “semi automatic.” ”
What? “Semi-automatic” is the correct, non-pejorative name for semi-automatic weapons. How are you supposed to talk about semi-automatic firearms without using the term “semi-automatic?”
Colbert Talks Guns As Civil Rights Victims (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/colbert-talks-guns-as-civil-rights-victims_n_2479368.html
It still amazes me that anyone would think that having more guns at the school makes the kids safer. Control the crazy, yes, semi-automatic guns and high capacity magazines and close the gun show loophole and require all gun owners in every state to go through a background check, including mental health background. I would be in favor of trained police checking the school grounds on a regular basis.
By the way, requiring insurance to own a gun is also a good idea. It seems that in Ohio, they now want to hire janitors and turn them into a posse, all in two days! They may want to check the background of their janitors first.
What Philip S. Zivnuska said.
(Thanks for the links and info, Blouise.)
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
stop acting ftom emotions and get the truth
http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Tartaro1.htm
That is hunter with a t.
Well, I would not arm the math teachers. Nor the Principal. If the custodian has been a huner his whole life and knows guns in and out then why not make the custodian a guardian? In my neck of the woods growing up in rural Missouri every janitor in every school had a rifle handy on the gun rack over the front seat of his truck out on the parking lot and probably a pistol under the seat. What is your problem with having one inside where it might be handy if some jim dandy named Aaron came around trying to kill kids?
That would be located in Ohio Congressional District 5 — Rep. Robert Latta [R]
Montpelier is in Williams County which went big for Romney during the General Election and the Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted (Mr. Voter Suppression) was raised there.
Check out The Buckeye Firearms Association and the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy
What can I say?
A recent WaPo-ABC poll shows 55% of Americans support having trained armed guards in schools, not janitors however. Please don’t attack the messenger. I don’t want armed guards in schools and I would venture ~95% of commenters here don’t either. But, there is another reality outside this insular forum. I don’t have contempt for that 55%. It’s based on fear more than anything else. Righteous politicians don’t motivate by fear or anger. I currently see both sides doing so and it’s disturbing.
You expect it out of Arizona….
ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and lawmakers agreed on Monday to a broad package of changes to gun laws that would expand the state’s ban on assault weapons and would include new measures to keep guns away from the mentally ill.
The state Senate, controlled by a coalition of Republicans and a handful of Democrats, approved the legislative package just after 11 p.m. by a lopsided vote of 43 to 18. The Assembly, where Democrats who have been strongly supportive of gun control have an overwhelming majority, planned to vote on the measure Tuesday.
Approval of the legislation would make New York the first state to act in response to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., last month.
Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, had pressed lawmakers to move quickly in response to Newtown, saying, “the people of this state are crying out for help.” And the Legislature proceeded with unusual haste: Monday was the first full day of this year’s legislative session.
“We don’t need another tragedy to point out the problems in the system,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference. NYT A better solution in New York
Good grief…. What happened to having a street cop in every school? Funding get cut? This is ludicrous.
Stupid idea…yeah probably. But then again I don’t live in this village so it really is not my issue nor yours or anyone else from the outside. They are capable of making their own decisions with respect to their local schools despite the vast majority of people probably disagreeing with that decision.
Please stop the fear mongering with the gratuitous unnecessary colorful use of the scare-term “semi automatic.” Enough people are completely misinformed about the meaning of that term without the subtle implication that it is a scary bad thing – “and probably means machine gun, right?” – from legal scholars. The pundits and lobbyists will throw it around enough, and irrationally scare people enough, without your help.
Americans are easily frightened and then manipulated into acting against their own interests. This, however, is 10x crazy even for America.