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Sign of Our Times: The New Normal?

union_grove_sign_ketk.1368241232This is a sign from Union Grove, Texas where licensed and trained teachers and administrators now carry a firearm. Is this sign supposed to convince killers to move down the road to the less defended school?


As we recently saw, other schools are conducting unannounced practice raids by hooded police pretending to be homicidal killers.

The question is how is this new environment going to affect how our children view the world and their government. What impact do such signs have on children in accepting a greater role for authority and police presence?

Source: KNBC

86 thoughts on “Sign of Our Times: The New Normal?”

  1. P Smith,

    Thanks for the link. (I’m reposting it — it should be dot com, rather than dot cow. 🙂 ) These shootings aren’t surprising at all, as you rightly said.

    Saw the following Community College link…

    Here’s one from your reference:

    Wednesday, April 10, 2013

    “Security guard unintentionally fires gun, injures student on other side of wall”

    “A security guard at an apartment complex for Butler Community College students in El Dorado, Kansas, was in an office area of the apartments handling his gun when he unintentionally discharged the weapon.
    According to police, the bullet went through furniture, a computer and a wall into a room where 18-year-old Tyler Berry, a Butler student, was working. The bullet grazed Berry’s lower back. Fortunately, the injury was minor.

    The Dean of Student life said, “It was an accident. It’s very unfortunate. These are my kids. So I was shaken.”

    The security guard was been relieved of his duties.”

    ======

    Here’s “P Smith’s” link, again:

    http://ohhshoot.blogspot.com/

  2. AP –

    Right after I said it, two “accidental shootings” happened, not shootings of criminals or threats. Colour me unsurprised.

    And the blogs you posted aren’t the only ones about shootings like those.

    http://ohhshoot.blogspot.cow/

    .

  4. raff,

    As said, she may have been unwise, but you cannot legislate wisdom. Just so, you cannot legislate denial either. Was she negligent? Possibly. However, there is no evidence of such as of yet and it’s a moot point besides with her being his first victim.

    **********

    nick,

    In re your auto example. Excellent use of reductio ad absurdum. Most people screw that form up but your choice of analogy was perfect.

  5. Thank you for your friendly response that is godly. I do not adhere to any 6000 year old theory about the age of the earth. God is ageless. The NRA are the ones who are religious. Religious people rationalize why death is good even as religious people rationalized why the arresting, ridiculing, scoring, spiting on and mocking of Jesus was good. How then can Jesus be in religion. I tell you truly Jesus is in you disliking the same things I dislike.

  7. rafflaws theory should then be applied to auto ownership. A mother who is a responsible driver has a son who is an incorrigible alcoholic w/ numerous DUI’s. She keeps the car keys under her control, but one night he finds them, drives drunk and kills people. I can tell you THIS DOES HAPPEN, and more often than Newtown. No vehicles for parents w/ alcoholic kids…that’s the solution.

  8. Raff,

    Just what do you/we/anyone “know” about the mental state of Adam Lanza prior to his killing of his mother? Did he have a history of violence? Threats? What exactly was he “like”? What exactly did his mother “know”? What was she supposed to “know”?

    As has been pointed out above, people can change suddenly.

    Do you seriously think that Nancy Lanza perceived her son as potentially crazed killer, who would start with her, but still made weapons readily available? If she had that perception, don’t you think that she would have acted differently?

    You are just blaming one of the the victims because there were more victims.

    Precisely what is a “serious mental health issue”? Is Asperger’s or autism a per se indicium of dangerousness? (I am not a mental health professional, but I have read that it is a misconception that persons with Aspergers’ or autism are dangerous.) OS may be able to comment on this.

  10. Jonathan Hughes,

    You wrote,
    “People that call a gun their god will end up being killed by the god they serve that has no soul nether any love within it.”

    For possibly the first time, I agree with you.

    The state religion of the U.S.A. is gun-worship.
    Gun-worship is based on emotion (fear and lust for power), and does not respond to fact.
    I’m not going to argue that gun-control would improve our society, any more than I’m going to argue that the earth is older than 6,000 years.

    The use of “logic” concepts to defend gun-worship is absurd, like use of logic to prove the existence of a deity.

    Porkchop,
    Robert Heinlein wrote fantasy novels. “An armed society is a polite society” is exactly that.

    Now I’m done arguing with NRA-talking-points religion.

    1. Thank you for your friendly res ponce that is godly. I do not adhere to any 6000 year old theory about the age of the earth. God is ageless. The NRA are the ones who are religious. Religious people rationalize why death is good even as religious people rationalized why the arresting, ridiculing, scoring, spiting on and mocking of Jesus was good. How then can Jesus be in religion. I tell you truly Jesus is in you disliking the same things I dislike.

  11. Gene,
    I stated that no legislation would be perfect, but doing nothing is as far from perfect as we can go. If a person has responsibility for someone who has been diagnosed with serious mental health issues, she may have to take precautions and be subject to constraints that you and I don’t have to deal with. I agree with the HIPPA blind universal background check and so do most Americans by substantial numbers, yet the measure failed due to lobbying by the NRA and other gun industry backed groups.
    You don’t think that the mother was negligent in having guns in the house knowing what her son was like? She was either stupidly blind or in denial. I think she was the poster child for negligence.
    I do not want dragnets that curtail most people’s rights, but owning these weapons is a responsibility that is not being met by the owners and sellers of these weapons. As I said during one of my earlier rants, that has to change soon or we will not have a society anymore.

  14. ap,

    In 2007, the population of America was ~302,200,000 people. If we take the maximum number in your range (19,000) and divide it by the total population and adjust the decimal place, the result is 0.06287% or you have approximately 6/100ths of a percent of being accidentally shot. I think that qualifies as very rare.

  15. Gun safety/people safety/whatever will require a multi-pronged approach. Yes, background checks will stop some from obtaining a gun. And adding the names of the dangerously mentally ill to a “can not buy” list will help some. And gun safety education will help some as will limiting the number of rounds that can be purchased by a person over a period of time. Arming teachers won’t help. Why? How many teachers have accurately fired a weapon when bullets are “incoming”? Same for “security guards.”

    1. Arming the teachers is militarizing the schools. People in areas where is a military people are oppressed by people mistakenly thinking they are making people free. That misconception make a lot of white crosses sprout up.

  16. “Are Gun Accidents ‘Very Rare’?”

    by David Frum Feb 20, 2013 7:09 AM EST

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/20/why-does-the-gun-lobby-fear-science-and-safety.html

    “Claim 1: There isn’t much of a safety problem with guns. Or, in Robert’s words: “The fact is that gun accidents are statistically very rare — and even this information isn’t all that helpful without an estimate of armed self-defense to compare it with.”

    How rare is “very rare”? In 2007, the United States suffered some 15,000-19,000 accidental shootings. More than 600 of these shootings proved fatal. Is that “very rare”?”

  17. in regard to the mother, she was a nut. You dont teach a child with psychological issues to shoot. Go fishing with them.

    The mother was irresponsible and in denial. Probably why the husband left and why the other child lives with him.

  18. Darren,
    Somebody is not teaching them muzzle awareness. Our local sheriff is a former ATF agent. He is a stickler for training, and if somebody shot a hole in the locker room wall, I am sure that (suspended) officer would be an involuntary client in my office within a day or two; that is, if he did not fire the officer outright.

    As for the fellow who accidentally shot the student in the leg while moving his sidearm, he needs a refresher training course in both muzzle awareness and how to secure the thing if he is going to keep his permit at all.

    Anyone who has been around military fighter aircraft while they are being armed will tell you what happens about awareness. The pilot MUST keep both hands on the cockpit coaming in full view while the gun plumbers do their thing prepping the weapons for flight. Watch what happens if the pilot removes his or her hand from the cockpit coaming, even if it just to reach down and scratch an itch. The ground crew will scatter like a covey of quail.

    I don’t really anticipate any major problems with specially trained teachers carrying firearms. Everyone is around armed citizens every day and just don’t know it. That’s why they called them “concealed.” As I wrote above, I actually researched the training protocol for armed teachers. It is a tougher training curriculum than most law enforcement agencies require, except perhaps the FBI and Secret Service.

    Can an accident happen? Yes. The likelihood of an accidental discharge? Very low. Can a teacher go berserk? Of course. That’s why I believe any armed teacher certification process should include a POST* examination that includes both a physical and psychological examination.
    ______________________
    *Peace Officer Standards and Training
    Most states have a POST Commission charged with enforcing the standards, much like a professional licensing board.

  20. Aurora Police: Rangeview High School employee accidentally shoots student

    10:17 PM, May 13, 2013

    http://www.9news.com/news/article/336014/339/School-employee-accidentally-shoots-student?odyssey=tab|topnews|bc|large

    AURORA – Aurora Police are investigating an accidental shooting that occurred in the parking lot of Rangeview High School Monday afternoon.

    Police say an employee of the school accidently shot a Rangeview student in the leg. The employee is not a teacher at the school.

    It happened close to an hour after school had been dismissed for the day. Police say the two individuals know one another.

    Police say the school employee works a second job as an armed security officer. He was giving the student a ride home and was moving his gun to the glove box of the vehicle. While he was attempting to do this, the gun accidently went off and struck the student. He then drove the student to the hospital.

    Police say the student suffered significant injury to his leg but is expected to survive.

    It’s unclear what charges, if any, the security officer faces.

    (KUSA-TV © 2013 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)

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