All this armed teacher stuff is kooky talk. Let's reign it in and be serious for once people. Rational.
Dem Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: No, To Arming Teachers – Yes, To Retractable Steel Walls!…
KPFT 90.1 FM: Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat, Houston, is speaking out about tighter gun laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy. This audio interview excerpt is from the KPFT 90.1 FM Local News at 4pm broadcast for Monday, December 17, 2012.
@WZ - YouTube
Retractable...steel...walls.
Ah, panic rooms in schools. Yeah that makes so much more sense than imposing some kind of limitation on fire arms possession.
That's a real sticky issue Goob's.
It is a sticky issue but it's one that needs to be talked about more. When it's not just your life that you're risking, it becomes about more than just the patient. If we had a dangerous communicable disease, society has no compunctions about restricting someone to quarantine to protect the public. Now I'm not advocating that we lock up everyone that has a mental illness, the goal should be release and integration,
for most, but it's not unreasonable to want to look at the broader picture.
Why is it that we get pissed off when crazy people elsewhere murder the innocents, but become defensive when it is one of our own. Colpy, the argument regarding the constitution and the right to bear arms somehow trumps the rights of innocent people being murdered at the hands of lunatics who are in possession of weapons lawfully (yet not necessarily) owned. This is of course conjecture, but I would ask you to weigh how important it is for a civilian to own a semi automatic weapon that is not intended for hunting? Is it more important than the lives of those 20 kids who were mercilessly killed only weeks before Christmas. Is it really man?
I'm not talking about an all out gun ban, but the United States Gun Lobby has become a caricature of a zealot religious nut. There is no plausible argument to arm civilians with semi automatic weapons. None. I think of these kids gunned down, the kids at Colombine, the Children who died at Waco (not by the gun, but the loon sure had a lot) and the scores of others who were not a big enough statistic to make it onto CNN or Fox. How many of these kids lives are worth the sacrifice to you as a gun owner.
I am not an American, but this is a huge problem in America. Twenty six people lost their lives and by proxy another 50 or 80 close family members have been scarred for the rest of their lives as a result. How can anyone with an inkling of conscience stand up and say that that this young man who murdered his Mother, 20 elementary school kids, and five school officials, any that any future massacre or murder is irrelevant to a discussion about limiting firearms.
I agree with you completely. As someone who does not own a gun, has never fired a gun, never even held one nor do I have any desire to, this is my thought on the subject, for what it's worth. I think we get carried away, on both sides of the debate, talking about banning, banning, banning. It's quite ridiculous as far as I'm concerned. There has to be some middle ground here, there just has to be. But this issue, like so many controversial issues, gets bogged down in the rhetoric of the extremists.
An all out ban is never going to work. Criminals aren't really known for giving a crap about laws anyway. So that makes no sense, especially when you're not dealing with the real heart of the issue (mental health or whatever the underlying issue is), a 'ban' in those circumstances is like the ultimate band-aid solution only. What isn't unreasonable though is putting limitations on types of weapons that can be owned, for the general public at least, and stringent requirements, focused on safety, that need to be met in order for the general public to legally own a weapon. No we can't prevent someone from obtaining whatever gun they want on the black market but we can have enough safeguards in place so that we can be as reasonably assured as possible that those legally sanctioned weapons purchases are not going to be used in this type of event.
It'll never be perfect but we can definitely strive to do a hell of a lot better. People need to look inward and really assess their priorities.
I like fun machinery. The hell with pissant popguns like M16s and Steyr AUGs.
