“READERS FORUM” MARCH 3, 2018

1. Today, please ignore:

   1. That 30 Trump White House personnel all had their security clearances revoked by Chief of Staff Kelly this week.
   2. Trump’s last campaign staff member, a model, was forced out by Kelly too
   3. Pornstar Stormy Daniels went public that Trump paid her $130,000 for sex, at his golf course with his wife, First Lady Melania on the course, Trump drove the pornstar around the 18 holes of the course in his Escalade and then had sex.
   4. The number of Trump campaign staff who have agreed to cooperate with Mueller against Trump grew to 5, and more are coming.

   Ignore that and distract with talk of arming Teachers with guns!!

   Cause we do not want to talk about the crumbling, rats are leaving the ship, Trump White House.

   By the way, a friend of mine is a Detective with the EPD. He laughs at the posts in here trying to say it’s not only a good idea to put AR-15’s on Teachers and Janitor’s! It won’t cost us anything!!!

   I quote:
   “That guy who says that. He’s trying to put lipstick on a pig with that. Worse, he’s trying to pretend you can arm schools with volunteers, teachers and janitors with guns, for the cost of the pig’s lipstick.”

   Sums up that insanity perfectly.

2. Here’s a proposal for those who constantly call for more gun control laws even there are hundreds already on the books. Limit AR-15 sales to NRA members only.
   https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/03/nra_member_stopped_massacre_with_ar15.html

   • One knuckle-dragging Texan since Columbine in 1999 does not mean jack crap

     Try again

3. Should teachers be armed? Yes: Staff can keep students safe
   ……………………..
   “Third, the most cost-effective and easy option to manage is to allow school staff to volunteer to be trained to carry concealed firearms while working. To be clear, no one is talking about forcing teachers to be armed. What is being suggested is to allow faculty who are already-proficient gun owners to carry a concealed firearm after they undergo specialized training. These individuals are not intended to replace law enforcement, but to provide protection while waiting for law enforcement to arrive.”

   http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-oe-guns-schools-teachers-20180228-story.html

   • The ignorance behind those that want to arm teachers is beyond astounding. It is just an effort to distract people from the idiotic talking points the NRA has shoved at people and the blood money they have spent for decades to buy politicians. The undue influence of the NRA has corrupted the impetus of our legislatures, and the people and the kids are who have truly suffered the legislative consequences and physical effects of errantly designed fiscally based national policy on weapons

     Teachers and lunch ladies inside the building preparing for class cannot possibly protect students even if they were well trained. It is ludicrous to assert that discharging firearms in an active weapons fire within our schools is the best means of achieving security. The NRA and Trump are turning our schools into combat zones so that they and the arms industry can profiteer off of the unregulated and unrestricted sale of arms and the murder of our citizens and children in their classrooms.

     And why are we even debating different ways to win the gunfights in our schools versus removing guns and preventing gunfights from occurring in our schools AND society in general? Because our politicians are bought and paid for by the NRA. Why ban AR-15’s when arms dealers can sell a more and more to untrained civilians, people who should never own a weapon?

     There are a whole lot of really crazy people (and corporations) in the United States that are armed to the teeth, mentally unstable, and are willing to sell weapons to a kindergartner if it would improve their bottom line. They love to use scare tactics. They talk about evil vile people and “Mexican rapists.” Then when you are scared they claim we all need guns and great big wall to keep us all safe.

     The efforts behind arming teachers are along the same thought pathways who argue that “more gun laws are not the answer because criminals do not follow the law” nonsense. That backward commentary would extend to “why have any laws at all if people are just gonna break the law” that has been proven to be incorrect

     The statement that “criminals do not follow laws” is true for the same reason it’s COMPLETELY irrelevant to a substantive discussion on gun reform because it’s a tautology. It says exactly nothing about the proper course of action a society should take to improve social outcomes.

     Yes, criminals don’t follow laws. This is no more meaningful statement about social realities than the observation that dogs bark or cats meow, so it is baffling that gun proponents view this as an acceptable rejoinder in political debate.

     Erroneous thinking and lack of willingness to help fellow citizens like many on here spout this nonsense as it has become increasingly popular among those who oppose gun reform to argue that such legislation only hurts law-abiding citizens, making it more difficult for innocent civilians to get the guns they need to defend themselves.

     When gun fanatics with no sense say that they are being “hurt” by gun control, let’s be clear what the actual implication of this statement is: my right to not be bothered in the least by regulation outweighs the right to life for thousands of innocents who die in the absence of said regulation. Not only can such gun reforms reduce the number of homicides, but there is very little controversy about the tremendous effect they would have at reducing suicides. So, the belief that laws aimed at saving lives “hurt law-abiding citizens” is completely incompatible with any sane definition of right and wrong.

     In actuality what would really make us all a lot safer would be enacting legislation that would take guns out the hands of these currently legal and paranoid arms syndicates. They are propagating and exacerbating the Cartel Wars south of our border.

     A recent FBI study about active shooter situations between 2000 and 2013 (13 years) showed police officers who engaged the shooter were wounded or killed in almost 50% of the incidents. We’re talking about individuals who are specifically trained to respond to these situations and not teachers trained over the weekend or during summer break.

     Other long-term studies have shown more permissive concealed-carry laws contribute to gun violence. Many teachers are already overwhelmed due to heavy workloads and overcrowded classrooms, and asking them to be law enforcement is not in the interest of students.

     Rather than arming teachers, schools should train teams of educators to assess threats. The calls by Trump and others for guns in schools have taken the focus off things that are more effective. We need to do things that work, not that feel good. More guns on campus can lead to more accidental shootings, including two earlier this month in Minnesota and Florida, and it’s unreasonable to expect even armed staff on large campuses to be able to stop a mass shooter. We need to train our teachers how to identify these people who are a danger.

     The potential collateral damage is not worth it. There are just too many possible negative outcomes and risks that so severely outweigh the small chance that they stop an active shooter threat, where most of the death and destruction is carried out in the first few minutes. If you don’t believe me, watch here to see what can happen in this exact situation.

     These comments are not meant as a knock against teachers, nor am I by any means questioning their bravery in these situations. God knows our country has seen example after example of teachers and students shielding others from gunfire. Heroic doesn’t begin to fully explain the bravery of the teachers who have put themselves in harms way. I’m completely certain there are teachers willing to volunteer for this role and almost positive that some have already secretly brought a firearm into school. I don’t question a teacher’s commitment toward protecting their students.

     However, my thought here is to bring the reality of the situation to the forefront. Politicians who are blasé about the complexity and rigorous training required for these types of engagements and who underestimate the physical, physiological and psychological toll a combat environment brings to those involved, should be forced to place themselves in these types of simulations.

     Ultimately, I’m saddened by the fact that we’ve reached a point where people in this country want teachers to arm themselves as moonlight deputies. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m confident that arming teachers isn’t the answer, now or ever.

   • We all noticed you only posted ONE side of this editorial commentary. How about the other person who wrote NO to arming teachers?

     From the NO editorial:

     “We are not talking about ex-military personnel who are now security guards or off-duty police officers. We are talking about teachers. Most are civilians who have no formal training with firearms. Having a loaded firearm is dangerous. Accidents happen.

     The mere presence of the firearm dramatically increases the risk of gun injury. It also advertises where a gun is located. Is the teacher carrying it? Maybe a child with bad intentions steals it. Maybe a depressed student wants to find the gun to harm him or herself. What if a teacher shot a child by mistake? There are far too many scenarios that result in accidental death rather than self-defense with a firearm.

     But not at schools. Guns don’t belong in classrooms. Usually adults raised around firearms for hunting are extremely serious about gun safety. And let’s be honest, handguns are for killing people. That is the only design. The very weapon that causes carnage at schools should not be brought into classrooms.

     Facts are facts. Owning a gun or having a gun present dramatically increases the chance of gun injury and death. According to a comprehensive review of scientific literature by researchers at UC San Francisco, having a gun doubles the risk of homicide and triples the risk of suicide. These findings are based on statistics, not “feelings,” impassioned pleas or perception.

     For us parents and our children, we have a duty to stand up and do what is right. Stop the indifference around you. If you see something wrong, say something. We need to communicate with our youth. We need to reach out and heal them before they become so depressed or enraged they feel that taking lives, whether their own or someone else’s, becomes the solution to the problem. We have to stop teaching hate”

     http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-oe-teachers-guns-shootings-20180228-story.html

4. I would like to offer the following observations after having studied the Douglas Kemp shooting video numerous times now.

   The whole time Officer Sidaris is shining his flashlight in the passenger side of the vehicle, he never mentions to Officer Montank that he sees a gun under Kemp’s leg, only a knife on the floorboard, and no camera angle captures Kemp actually going for the toy gun, and Kemps feet never touch the ground before he is shot. From the time Sidoris yells ‘drop the gun’ to the time he starts shooting, only one second passes.

   I think that it is quite possible that Kemp was drunk enough to make stupid, vaguely threatening remarks in an attempt to avoid going to jail, and when he turned his body on top of the toy gun, he instinctively reached to remove it and just as he started he was shot. Given his drunken stupor, I am not sure he had a real chance to remove it.

   Regardless of all the court decisions allowing policeman to kill in this situation, I believe that shooting someone because of what you think they have, or what you think they will do in this situation is an act of cowardice and extreme hubris. Don’t think the police would not shoot a small child, medical student, etc. in a similar situation, or in a school.

   I think Jason Cullum’s remark that ‘we do not investigate officers for wrong doing, we make sure they followed police policy’ is a meaningless statement for the press. I think he should be taking further steps to make sure that his officer’s body cameras stay adjusted to capture the most important, key specific footage of such altercations, and too many times in the past it has not.

   I hope Douglas Kemp was truly the fiendish child molester that was convicted for touching his genitals to the genitals of his girl friend’s 9 year old daughter for the first time in his life at age 52. Obviously a sick thing to do if he was guilty, but a weird way to describe intercourse ? His other convictions were mostly misdemeanors.

   However, I’m sorry, but I just cannot get on board with the notion of so many people who have, and will continue to, die in the name of so-called ‘office safety’. To me they are dying in the name of ‘officer cowardice’, and I pray the police, and all the members of the justice system responsible for creating this situation answer to god for it.

   Having said that, I guess Prosecutor Herman will now attempt to indict me for intimidation, because I made the police feel afraid, which is something I have heard he has done to others.

   For me, I am far more afraid of the police and current state of the justice system than I am the criminals, and generally speaking, do not see the police as the heroes they are promoted as being.

5. “We’re going to protect our kids at any cost,” said U.S. history teacher Sharon Romero, a gun owner who did not volunteer to be armed at school, but is glad co-workers did. …Staff who volunteer to be armed must have their concealed handgun license and pass psychological screening, according to Argyle Schools Police Chief Paul Cairney. Staff who are approved carry handguns, either their own or those provided by the district, which Cairney also screens to ensure they work. Volunteers attend three to five days of training initially, and annual retraining, including active-shooter simulations….

   Thweatt said he spends less than $1,000 on training and arming teachers, and that bigger districts might pay more but have comparably larger budgets. “It’s very cost-effective,” he said.

   https://www.mrt.com/news/article/Argyle-teachers-volunteer-to-be-armed-12707946.php

   • let me guess. you’re the lipstick joe guy.

6. School shootings solution is fixed with security , not gun bans. The price of our freedoms and liberty is we have to deal radicals. They have the same freedoms until they are stripped of them for breaking the law. The short of it is: everyone gets one go at us. Sad but true

   • Ps: 17 people felt the pain of our freedoms. One person with one gun may have been able to make that number ZERO. instead they fought back with tables and chairs and a locked closet. When your lived ones are slaughterd you,ll feel differently about personal protection for teachers

     • Zero? Impossible. If a teacher shot Cruz before he fired his weapon? That teacher would be guilty of murder. Someone has to be shot first before you can defend yourself. Then, and only then can you fire back in defense. Someone HAS to take the first bullet. Could that be YOUR child? Or maybe the teacher is the first target any school shooter aims at now that you’ve armed teachers. The element of surprise will always win out. You can’t be combat ready every second of the day AND teach math. Get real.

     • What about when we spend billions arming teachers and re-enforced doors and bullet proof windows and alarm and visual security systems Mack?

       And then an AR/15 well regulated militia dude blows a school bus driver’s brains out at his first stop before unloading 50 kids and the terrorist walks down the isle assassinating everyone left?

       Is the answer bus drivers carrying guns? Maybe the kids Concealed Carrying? Bullet proof glass, re-enforced bus doors, only Navy Seals driving busses?

       And then at Chunk E Cheese where children congregate, armed guards? Maybe an AC – 130 gunship flying overhead would make everyone feel better?

       This BS is starting to get sickening because if we could just keep Mop Head away from his golf courses long enough, he could charge in and save ANY, and EVERY situation that arises in this great country.

       Believe him….

7. It would be nice if the children in our schools received the same level of security as the folks at the Civic Center. I think entry control is part of the solution.

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