Shop owner shot, killed over rainbow flag outside clothing store near Lake Arrowhead
The suspect was later found and shot dead by San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies, officials said.
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You seem to be letting the topic drift from "whether these two things are different" to "I think teachers should be armed". I'm not really here to discuss the latter topic. Everything you said here, whether I agree or disagree, reinforces the only point I'm trying to make - that the two scenarios are not apple-to-apple and should not be compared as such. You appear to agree with me, fully.
Tangentially, I find it interesting you think teachers should not need specialized training after you have now twice described very specific tactics you think they should employ. But as I say, I'm not really here to press my opinion on teachers being armed because I think it's a nuanced and complicated issue. Also as YOU say, it is far more important to focus on steps that keep potential shooters from choosing to walk into a school with a gun in the first place.
Just out of curiosity what part of my slightly rambling response gave you the impression that I did not think they should get specialized training? I intended to state the exact opposite so I would genuinely like to know which part of my phrasing failed to convey my intent. I was merely explaining that real world results without training are highly successful in the limited scenarios where they have been able to play out, and with that as a basis proper training can mitigate or eliminate the unique risks associated with schools.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant. I genuinely believe that gun control is 100% based in ignorance and lies, with a small group deliberately lying to the public to create ignorance and generate support for their own goals. As such, whenever I find someone genuinely willing to read and discuss it I try to do what I can to show the other side of the argument. A specific act of targeted violence is not the same as a cable news shooter in a school, but there are more similarities than you would expect at face value. Both are committed by damaged people who society allowed to go without proper support and moral guidance. Both should be prevented by proper upbringing with human kindness as a core value and both can only be stopped in the moment after tragedy strikes with equal or greater force. The right to be armed with whatever may be used against you is only the final measure rather than the ideal way to prevent it.
Just out of curiosity what part of my slightly rambling response gave you the impression that I did not think they should get specialized training?
My misreading on the second paragraph, which is 100% on me. I thought you were just pointing out airlines as needing specialized training (implying that teachers did not). I went to quote it back to you and realized the mistake was mine.
I'm genuinely not sure how I feel about that. I tend to like reduced situational volatility, and I'm not quite sure how much training (for teachers AND for responding police) would make me consider armed teachers at a school-shooting to be an asset instead of a liability. It seems like it might be more than is reasonable to give the teachers. Weeks, months? Hogan's Alley was notorious for a reason. Being able to differentiate between an innocent and an active shooter when startled at high stress is not easy. It requires enough training to change one's subconscious. And then, yes, the odds of that training ever being used are very low. But I would be more comfortable with that kind of training than with no training, for sure.
I genuinely believe that gun control is 100% based in ignorance and lies, with a small group deliberately lying to the public to create ignorance and generate support for their own goals
I genuinely believe that gun bans are based on ignorance and lies, but gun control generally works in most countries, virtually all countries that use it. Gun control can (and should) be about minimizing risk with the least cost of freedom, as opposed to about fear and reactionary behavior. For guns in schools, there's only a couple countries that actually allow armed teachers. In fact, the only other one I could find is Israel, which is debunked in a fact check. To me, that is a risk because, as much as you accused me of ignorance on the topic, I would dare suggest EVERYONE is ignorant on the topic since we don't have enough background to quantify it.
Risk mitigation would be to have dedicated armed and trained security, like many public buildings have. But many schools already have that, anyway.
Properly executed defensive carry does not add much volatility. Having in place defenders also results in situations being ended almost immediately which reduces the actual volatility. Most cable news shootings only last a few minutes and end the moment the asshole doing it is challenged. Once the shooting stops the situation is much easier to work through with a calm and collected demeanor as first responders secure the area and assist the wounded. As I said earlier, defending is far easier than assaulting. Making the primary response an assault team that needs to enter and clear the building adds complexity and volatility. Having multiple faculty in defensive positions waiting for the shooter to enter their zone is a much safer tactical solution. While clearing the building is still a tactical challenge, if there is no threat that presents itself it can be done in a much safer manner with each room being cleared one by one based on pre-established protocols that are already in place nationwide as part of the existing lockdown planning.
Gun control always results in a ban. The US thankfully has it built into the Constitution as the fundamental right that it is. The issue is that "reasonable" gun control is rarely reasonable and even bans aren't effective so no matter what concessions are made, when the results don't match the aspirations it progresses. The other part of this is that it doesn't generally work in most countries and correlation does not equal causation. The US is a far more heterogenous society than any of its peers and as such has an exponentially higher degree of societal tension. It is an unfortunate by product of the diversity that makes us as strong as we are. While you say that gun control works everywhere else it has been enacted, that is simply false. What actually exists is countries that have always had lower crime than the US, that at some point in the past enacted gun control and saw little to no effect. In order to support the hypothesis that it was successful, you would need to show examples of places where it was enacted and led to a reduction in crime following implementation. The only two near peer examples in a modern time frame would be the UK and Australia who both enacted draconian restrictions in the 90s. It just so happens that the 90s also coincided with a worldwide reduction in violent crime (normally attributed to the removal of lead from gasoline). Virtually every single developed country saw the exact same reduction, except for two. The UK and Australia bucked international trends during the decade and saw spikes. Immediately following the UK's strict gun control, their murder rate nearly doubled. While the US's rate was nearly 10x the UK's at the beginning of the 90s, during the next 20 years the US's was cut in half while the UK's doubled and eventually stabilized at its pre-gun control rate. Australia saw similar results while the rest of Europe saw declines similar, but not as pronounced as the US. During these years the US expanded access to guns with the number in circulation consistently rising despite the extreme reduction in violent crime and murder. Also, using fact checks alone really don't tell the full picture, they are wildly biased and when it comes to politically charged topics they go out of their way to get the result they want regardless of the truth. When it comes to guns they often straight up lie. Israel does have a lot of good lessons to be learned about effective self defense but it is nowhere near a 1:1 example. There really isn't anywhere close enough to the US to compare us to. There are plenty of schools in the US within states that allow armed teachers and so far none of them have been a target of an incident so there is no data. It's a catch 22 where they are already extremely rare and if an event doesn't occur or is prevented it doesn't count as an event so there is no data for it. Armed teachers won't do anything for gang shoot outs in the street across from frat row or people in their 30s committing suicide at 2AM on a Sunday in a parking lot of a building that used to be a school, so things like the school shooting tracker won't show any appreciable difference based on its enactment (the second scenario was literally one of the first events loaded into it when reddit started the tracker). There is plenty of actual information out there, but normal primary sources are deliberately hiding it from the masses because both the media and tech giants have a strong bias against it and are forcing the ignorance.
Dedicated armed and trained security is great to take over the police's clearing duties, but from a tactical point of view, allowing teachers to be armed is still a superior option. Being embedded and able to self protect is a far stronger advantage, even over a response time of essentially zero. Just like counter-insurgency vs guerilla tactics, not knowing which door is defended is a far better deterrent than just specifying which expected opposing force you will be encountering. Either way, addressing the causes of cable news shootings is by far the best approach versus trying to restrict a single means of accomplishing one or debating the best way to stop one that has occurred.
I've got a few disagreements on this. I really swore I wouldn't get into a 2A argument here.
Properly executed defensive carry does not add much volatility
Allegedly. We just don't have enough school examples to know if that's really the case.
Making the primary response an assault team that needs to enter and clear the building adds complexity and volatility
Except that (in non-dystopian situations) those assault teams will have dramatically more training. You are correct that breaching is more dangerous. That's why I pitched a security team stationed inside schools. I don't agree that, from a tactical point of view, you want that many disparate defenders who are not even part-time trained for that role.
Gun control always results in a ban
There are hundreds of countries that prove this wrong. A supermajority of countries in the world have gun control, and a near unanimity of those countries do not have absolute gun bans. I'm sure you can find a definition for the term "gun ban" where that's the case (say, if any weapon is banned for any reason, you call it a gun ban), but there seems to be no evidence of a real slippery slope between gun control and gun bans.
The US thankfully has it built into the Constitution as the fundamental right that it is
This is also strictly incorrect, or at least incredibly nuanced. The 2nd Amendment does not add it as a fundamental right at all (Barron v. Baltimore, or merely the laws passed/defended by the very same people who penned and signed the Constitution). The 14th Amendment does add it as a fundamental right based around the Equal Rights clause (specifically, regarding Southern States banning guns from Black Americans and not White Americans). Despite SCOTUS being extremely creative (good and bad) with the 14th Amendment the last 40-50 years in general, there are still teeth to some gun control laws for that very reason. Prejudicial gun control is unconstitutional, but (on strict interpretation, not on how a future SCOTUS would rule) gun control with a defensible reason is not. Non-gun weapons
Fair enough, I'll let you get on with your night. It was just refreshing to have someone genuinely willing to read and have a civil discourse. More than anything I just hope I was able to give you more perspective. It's rare to change someone's opinion outright but I have had surprising success many times with just the right nudge that started the thinking down a different path. Have a nice day.
Also fair enough. I acknowledge that the gun question is an incredibly complicated and nuanced one, and I think both extreme sides of it tend to oversimplify it in their own way. I'm definitely with you on that part.
