Do LEOs have any negative repreccusions from not acting when they are supposed to? Like if we implemented the “station a vet at every school” approach and some guy did the whole “hide behind a car in the parking lot” thing what would happen?
I’m on board with the armed personnel at schools thing, just curious how it’d be practically applied.
The deputy that didn’t act in Parkland was suspended without pay I believe. I’m guessing every jurisdiction would have their own policy here.
I think that’s one of the many things we’d need to figure out before doing it.
I do think it’s important to have and maintain training if that’s the route we go (having armed personnel in public schools - whether it be teachers or some other person)
Absolutely. If it’s not LEOs doing it then there should be, at a minimum, an initial pass/fail training course and annual re-cert.
If I recall, he actually resigned. The officers who got suspended were ones who DID go in. They were from a neighboring jurisdiction doing training nearby. When they heard what was going on, they took it upon themselves to help.
And this is why we can’t have nice things
Saw this on FB. Did not verify:
I was in Washington DC and saw the moving demonstration of 7000 pairs of shoes on the Capitol Lawn that represent all of the children killed by gun violence since Sandy Hook. It was disturbing and compelling to see this in person.
But let me give you a couple of things to think about from a person who likes data and data driven decisions.
Since Sandy Hook, guns have only killed about 570 children aged 0-12, not 7000. The larger number comes from including teenagers up to 19 who are dying in gang and drug related deaths in cities like Baltimore and Chicago, almost exclusively employing stolen handguns.
570 children killed by guns is still far too many, though.
But consider this point also. In that same time period, another 2312 children aged 0-12 were murdered without guns. Almost five times as many were killed without a gun. Most of these were children under 5. In fact, more infants (children under 1) were murdered by being beaten to death in that time period than were children under 13 killed by guns.
Beaten to death!
Most were beaten just with fists, others with blunt objects, many were strangled, and some were stabbed. But most were just beaten to death with fists.
We have a violence problem in America, not an access to guns problem. Can you imagine why a parent would beat a child to death with their hands or a blunt object? What would lead a person to such unspeakable hate and anger. A gun almost seems merciful in context.
Let’s try to not present data out of context or misportray it to make political points. These shoes were meant to encourage a ban on assault weapons, but since Sandy Hook only about 10 kids under 12 were killed with the weapons that would be banned. Meanwhile, that many children each year are strangled by a parent and twenty times that many each year are beaten to death. (That’s each year!)
Let’s spend some time talking about the real issues and stop making cheap political points. Let’s address what would cause a mother to beat her child to death. We may learn something profound. Then let’s address the epidemic of drug- and gang-related violence that accounts for the rest of violence portrayed by these shoes.
(Clarification: stats are from FBI website)
So kids over 12 and who may have been killed because of gang violence somehow don’t count? They aren’t as dead?
Furthermore, the ones above 19 DEFINITELY don’t count. After all, gun reform people don’t really care about adult lives, they’re just lookin out kids.
No offense to you intended, as I know you didn’t write this, but this “look at comparative data” dodge is getting old. First of all, the non-gun murders cited are tragic and awful - but what evidence suggests we aren’t talking about that kind of violence enough or trying to do anything about it?
And if this kind of “data driven” decision-making should be followed, then by the same rationale we should spend lots more money and resources trying to prevent auto accidents than counterterrorism efforts - since, after all, car wrecks kill far more people than terrorists. But that’s nonsense.
The biggest problem with the writer’s approach is that it suggests a false choice - truth is, we don’t have to “discuss the underlying issues” of violence, etc. or try and prevent maniacs from getting their hands on weapons built to kill lots of people all at once. We can do both. At the same time.
Yeah, let’s ignore the Orlando night club, Aurora, CO, or Vegas.
And as someone who doesn’t believe in a gun ban, I find his argument of we don’t have a gun problem but a violence problem, to not help. I mean, if we have a violence problem then we shouldn’t have guns.
Odd tangent but somewhat related- Many millions of dollars (possibly billions?) are being spent on autonomous vehicles, which would remove human error.
I’ve heard that stuff about texting and driving and how we should blahblahblah… from people that don’t realize that something Is in fact being done to remove the possibility of careless operation/operator error.
People think its a high end feature which obscures the safety elements of this technological development.
Ok, back to the topic.
Agreed. I’m not particularly fond of the “anti AR” pushes as I don’t think they’re worth the political bandwidth, but it doesn’t make the logic any less flawed.
Well let’s not get carried away. We’re probably closer (tech wise) to rolling out widespread finger print sensors on guns than we are on self driving cars becoming anywhere near common.
We’ve got what will most likely be ~10-20 years of legislation/testing/manufacturing/training/consumer education to go through before we’re going to see anywhere near mainstream adoption.
(Self driving cars seem awesome btw. It’s just the AI that scares the shit out of me.)
Its just a tangential point of fact to the false equivalency between mass shootings and car accidents.
There is actually quite a lot being done. Unfortunately, like CNC machining and other automated mechanical systems, some dumb bastard is going to try to clear the birds nest with their finger or light a smoke off of the plasma torch.
Agreed. Given how the GOP suddenly became fond of being terrified of immigrants from the ME, it’s seems to be weird ground to say “guns don’t kill as many people as cars. you ain’t legislating that.”
I think a lot of it is going to revolve around the movements in the AI community, not necessarily the self driving car division specifically.
But then again, AI scares the shit out of me.
It should! j/k
I don’t know anything about that. I took some tests as part of a human learning thing a long time ago down at CMU for their AI program, and worked a little with automation and robotics, but don’t know how any of it would be applied. Thats for guys with multiple post-docs in subjects that I don’t even know the names of.
Self-driving cars aren’t the scary AI, but there is AI that people are developing that is scary. If you aren’t scared by it you either don’t know what’s coming or are EXTREMELY optimistic.
The part that scares me, not just about self driving AI but AI in general is the tech industry’s habit of pushing stuff out the door that isn’t ready. It’s one thing to let consumers beta test a smart phone, it’s something else entirely when we’re talking about a 4000 pound piece of metal that moves at high speed.
All hail the free market
(Famous last words before skynet nukes our defensive locations and dominates the planet)
Do you guys just enjoying ignoring the point of the posts or what?
Of course those deaths matter. He didn’t say or imply otherwise.
Good grief.