Guns don't kill people ....

[ZenGum]

As the NRA are fond of saying, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun ... is a good guy with a gun ... or a teacher with skills at human interaction (and cahones the size of watermelons)...

A teacher at a high school in California has been praised by police for averting a serious shooting incident.

The teacher and a campus supervisor talked a gunman into putting down his weapon after he had shot and injured one pupil at Taft Union High School.

Police said the gunman had enough ammunition to kill many people.

The injured student was taken to hospital in an air ambulance and is in a critical condition.

The drama started after 09:00 local time (17:00 GMT) when the gunman, also a student, arrived late, armed with a shotgun, at the school in the small town in California's central valley.

Students and staff telephoned police, but before officers could arrive, the suspect had shot at two people in a class in the science block. One shot missed its target.

The teacher, who had been grazed by a pellet, then intervened. He is reported by US media to have warned the suspect that there would be no shooting in his class, at which point the gunman put down his weapon and police officers arrested him.

[Clodfobble]

From the article:

"They talked him into putting that shotgun down. He in fact told the teacher, 'I don't want to shoot you,' and named the person that he wanted to shoot," Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.

How much you want to bet the person he wanted to shoot was a bully? How much you want to bet every teacher in the building knows that kid is a bully, and has done nothing about it?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

How much you want to bet the person he wanted to shoot was a bully?

Nothing has changed. Except that we all now have access to big guns. So what was once solved by a fist or a thrown egg is now solved by assault weapons and large clips.

People do kill people - when armed with weapons whose only purpose is to kill lots of people.

Bullying is being addressed in most locations. Long ago when bullying was ignored, people were not dying. And kids were not armed with high powered weapons. We need those weapons to defend ourselves - even from bullies. Big guns have solved bully problems.

Give everyone a gun and bullying will end. More guns mean more safety. Anyone who can read a soundbyte knows that is true.

[tw]

So how do fringe extremists respond?

Originally Posted by henry quirk

"check your meds"
Go fuck yourself.

A perfect example of someone who most needs guns to defend himself. Otherwise he would have nothing but insult and profanity to defend his ego. "He dissed me and I fixed him." Clearly that makes him a man.

Heaven forbid should someone with a pre-frontal cortex challenge his politically correct profanity. Thank god for big guns to defend his right to disparage others.

[IamSam]

I haven't followed this entire thread, but I don't understand Clod's comment. I assume she means that if an adult at the school had been on the ball, the situation could have been defused before it reached the point where someone decided to bring a gun to school. Children don't like tattle-tales and many don't want to be a tattle tale, either. Most bullies are smart enough to act one way around adults and a whole different way when only their peers are present. Teachers aren't mind readers.

[glatt]

Teachers have a pretty good idea who the bullies are, but if it doesn't happen in front of them, or if someone doesn't narc on the bullies, then there is little the teachers can do.

[footfootfoot]

All the bullies in my school experience from grade school through high school were pretty much out in the open with their activities and well known to the teachers, including the bully teachers.

And I went to good schools.

School was a huge FAIL when I was a kid.

[henry quirk]

'nuff said

[Spexxvet]

A question for all the anti-gun control folks.

How do you propose we minimize gun related crime, especially mass shootings?

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

All the bullies in my school experience from grade school through high school were pretty much out in the open with their activities and well known to the teachers, including the bully teachers.

And I went to good schools.

School was a huge FAIL when I was a kid.

I went to schools on Army bases until the 8th grade. The teachers there were pretty strict and the bullies confined themselves to bullying after school. A couple of "big kids" (third graders) terrorized me a time or two when I was a first grader walking home from school. It never occurred to me to tell a teacher, but I did tell my Mom.

The next day she was waiting for me outside the school grounds and she put the fear of dog into those two little monsters - name, rank, and serial number and just one more time and your father's commanding officer will be hearing about this! You go, Mom!

Needless to say, those two never bothered me again.

Adult intervention can make a big difference if the adults know what's going on, but kids can be pretty crafty.

[Clodfobble]

Kids can be crafty, but that's not the kind of bully that wears a kid down enough to make them bring a gun--that only happens over years of abuse. My bully once raised her leg up and kicked the shit out of my ribs, in class, right in front of the teacher, and the teacher did nothing.

If I had only known I could fight back, things would have been different. Adult intervention is critical, and that includes teaching kids that they don't have to put up with being bullied, a message that was lacking when I was a kid. I'm glad your mom stood up for you. If she hadn't, what would you have done?

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Kids can be crafty, but that's not the kind of bully that wears a kid down enough to make them bring a gun--that only happens over years of abuse. My bully once raised her leg up and kicked the shit out of my ribs, in class, right in front of the teacher, and the teacher did nothing.

If I had only known I could fight back, things would have been different. Adult intervention is critical, and that includes teaching kids that they don't have to put up with being bullied, a message that was lacking when I was a kid. I'm glad your mom stood up for you. If she hadn't, what would you have done?

That sucks Clod. And I'm glad teachers and kids have become more aware of the problem and how to deal with it than everyone was back in the day when we were in school.

My parents were mistrustful of regular schools after sending me to schools on army bases for grades K thru 7. When we bought a house off base and I would have had to attend a regular public school, they baulked at the idea and sent me to a private school run by the Luthern Church instead.

I'd have been better off with the gang bangers my parents imagined infesting civilian schools. The culture shock was awful. I went from attending class with a group of my fellow vagabonds to being in a classroom with a group of kids who'd gone to school together since the first grade. And if being the new kid wasn't bad enough, I'd hadn't been raised Luthern. As a matter of fact, I was already an agnostic by the ripe old age of 13.

That pack of 8th grade fundamentalists made my life miserable in every way they could think of. I used to cry myself to sleep. The teachers not only knew about it and didn't intervene, they actually joined in. One time another kid asked me if I was "saved" during lunch-break in the school cafeteria. I hated that little bitch who asked and I had no trouble telling her the truth which was "Hell, no!"

Naturally word spread like wild-fire among the shocked faithful and I was called into the office of the pastor who treated us 8th graders to an hour's worth of fundamentalist brain washing each day. That man told me that I was going to hell. He damned me to eternal flames at age 13. I was pretty stunned for a few days. Then I decided that if the Lutherns were right, a bunch of unbaptized babies were going to hell with me and SOMEONE needed to take care of those poor children since god wouldn't.

This thought bouyed me up considerably and when my Dad came home after a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam, I convinced him to let me go to the local public high school where I found a group of fellow nerds to hang out with and was spared further bullying. I can easily imagine a teenage boy being pushed over the edge and doing bad to those kids at my old junior high.

[zippyt]

In the news paper today ,

Hunting buddy by zippyt, on Flickr

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Adak

And do you sir, have ANY evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, showing that unarmed, defenseless people, are safe from violence?

snip

Me.

I'm unarmed. I'm "defenseless" (by your tortured definition). I'm safe from violence. I'm not invisible, I'm not in hiding or in an undisclosed location. I'm not a sheep or a sheeple. This is FACTUAL, anecdotal, empirical, verifiable, first person evidence.

Will this turn your ridiculous argument? I believe it won't. Perhaps you are thinking of how to be safe from some hypothetical threat of violence. Well, in that* case, no, I'm not safe. But hey, I'm thinking of a different hypothetical threat of violence. Yeah, I'm safe from that one.

* There is ALWAYS some hypothetical threat that can be conjured up in your imagination or mine that could be prevented by having a firearm. It is equally likely that a different imaginary situation can be thought up where no firearm is needed. Just as it's equally possible to think up some situation where the firearm is present but inadequate. What. The. Hell. Ever. A far better, more rational, helpful, useful exercise of our intelligence is to think about where firearms *are* a good idea (protip, the answer is NOT everywhere at all times).

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by Adak

There's no need to shoot a drunk who is causing no one any serious harm.

He's drunk, and he's trying to get inside a hotel where he'd like a room, or help to find his room - he's not trying to rape or kill or kidnap anyone.

There's no need to fire a gun unless the threat is very immediate, and very serious.

Real People are armed. Sheeple People rely on their invisibility cloaks to avoid being a victim.

The guy wasn't just drunk, he was high on dog knows what. The doors leading into motel rooms were pretty obvious - even to a drunk. He was attempting to break into the laundry room located down a short hallway from the front desk and all that cash. And he was very mean and very big.

Under circumstances like that I figure the guy could be capable of doing anything. He was certainly doing a number on that door, and I might have been next on his list. The threat was very immediate when we stood there face to face and very serious as far as I was concerned. If I'd shot him with a gun instead of pepper spray, I would have been justified, and my local cop friends would have backed me up. Thanks to my handy pepper spray, I was spared all the complications of the aftermath of shooting someone with a gun.

Real people try to find the least violent way of dealing with a situation