quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
It astonishes me how quickly these students can arrange for busses, lists of travelers, printed t-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, etc. it almost seems preplanned.

Yeah...Isn't that interesting that students who can't get to school on time, or complete a homework assignment by a deadline, can somehow organize all of this movement complete with transportation and accommodations. Kinda makes ya go, hmmmmmmmmmm...

Agreed, I coach H.S. Varsity hockey and it is a miracle that these guys make it to a game without leaving a critical piece of gear at home. They forget to bring the pucks out, fill the water bottles. There is no WAY students arranged a rally that fast. No WAY.

I also noted that a FL congressional aid was fired for claiming some of the school survivors were actors. That does make you pause, I wonder if he recognized faces.

quote:

Originally posted by Echtermetzger:
I finally got sick of seeing my extended family members post the same anti-gun, anti-NRA, etc., memes....



Stolen...

consider it a gift and give freely

That old expression, "winning of hearts and minds" has some truth in it.

And there's a reason why hearts comes before minds. In politics, emotions trump logic. People want to be soothed, they want quick solutions to complicated problems and are willing to sacrifice money, freedoms, whatever to 'feel' better, so politicians offer up simplistic, rash options to curry favor with them, whether it is right or wrong.

My apologies if this had been posted before:

quote:

Sorry, Despite Gun-Control Advocates' Claims, U.S. Isn't The Worst Country For Mass Shootings
6:35 PM ET

Gun Deaths: It's become commonplace to hear after a U.S. shooting tragedy that, when it comes to guns, America is just more violent than other countries, especially those in Europe, where many countries have stiff gun-control laws. It's a progressive shibboleth, but even some conservatives agree. The only problem is, it's not true.


Yes, America does have a lot of gun violence. But more than other countries, especially in Europe?

To listen to America's politicians, you'd think that was the case.

President Obama talked about it a lot, including in June of 2015, after a gunman shot nine people in a Charleston, North Carolina church: "Let's be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries," Obama said.

Days later, Sen. Harry Reid echoed his comments. "The United States is the only advanced country where this kind of mass violence occurs," he said.

More recently, the tragic, preventable slaying of 17 students by accused gunman Nikolas Cruz elicited similar sentiments from Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, speaking in the Senate just last Thursday: "This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America."

Powerful remarks, and no doubt heartfelt. But a study of global mass-shooting incidents from 2009 to 2015 by the Crime Prevention Research Center, headed by economist John Lott, shows the U.S. doesn't lead the world in mass shootings. In fact, it doesn't even make the top 10, when measured by death rate per million population from mass public shootings.

So who's tops? Surprisingly, Norway is, with an outlier mass shooting death rate of 1.888 per million (high no doubt because of the rifle assault by political extremist Anders Brevik that claimed 77 lives in 2011). No. 2 is Serbia, at just 0.381, followed by France at 0.347, Macedonia at 0.337, and Albania at 0.206. Slovakia, Finland, Belgium, and Czech Republic all follow. Then comes the U.S., at No. 11, with a death rate of 0.089.

That's not all. There were also 27% more casualties from 2009 to 2015 per mass shooting incident in the European Union than in the U.S.

"There were 16 cases where at least 15 people were killed," the study said. "Out of those cases, four were in the United States, two in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom."

"But the U.S. has a population four times greater than Germany's and five times the U.K.'s, so on a per-capita basis the U.S. ranks low in comparison — actually, those two countries would have had a frequency of attacks 1.96 (Germany) and 2.46 (UK) times higher."

Yes, the U.S. rate is still high, and nothing to be proud of. But it's not the highest in the developed world. Not by a long shot.

Yet, some today propose banning rifles, in particular AR-15s, because they've been used in a number of mass killings. It's important to note however that, according to FBI crime data cited this week by the Daily Caller, deaths by knives in the U.S. outnumber deaths by rifles by five to 1: In 2016, 1,604 people were killed by knives and other cutting instruments, while 374 were killed by rifles.

So is it not fair to ask: If we're banning rifles, why not knives, too?

The point is, guns aren't the problem; deranged killers that grow up in broken families often without positive male role models in their lives are the problem. So are political and religious extremists, in particular Islamists. If these people didn't have guns, they would find some other means to do the job.

Bombs are illegal in both the U.S. and Europe. Yet Europe loses far more people to bombings than the U.S. Doesn't that make them more violent?

In the most recent mass killing here in the U.S., what's upsetting is that Nikolas Cruz, as is usually the case, showed all the signs of a potential killer. He had been expelled from school. He made repeated violent threats. Deputies had made no fewer than 39 visits to his home. He left comments on a web video saying "I'm going to be a professional school shooter." After being notified about the disturbing message, the FBI looked into it, but did nothing.

In this, Cruz is typical. As columnist SE Cupp notes, "the stunning commonality in all these mass shootings ... is that the men who perpetrate them are sick — Las Vegas, Pulse nightclub, Newtown, Columbine, Charleston, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora — on and on, these killers were mentally ill and in almost every case, someone knew it."

Sweeping gun control laws may sound good, but they won't keep handguns and rifles out of the hands of criminals. They will make it even harder for honest Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights, however.

Rather than politicizing the deaths of 17 people, Democrats and others should instead be pushing for better school security, and for our law enforcement agencies to respond more aggressively to clear threats. Those who are severely mentally ill or psychotic or potentially violent need help. And those that kill for political or religious reasons often show clear signs of being violent. No amount of gun control can stop that.

Investors.com

"The data below looks at the period of time from the beginning of the Obama administration in January 2009 until the end of 2015. Mass public shootings – defined as four or more people killed in a public place, and not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty. The focus on excluding shootings that do not involve other crimes (e.g., gang fights or robberies) has been used from the original research by Lott and Landes to more recently the FBI."

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by 1967Goat:

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
Just out of curiosity, are Florida schools Gun Free Zones? Isn't that supposed to be the magic law that prevents school shootings?

Yes, I believe schools are one of the areas prohibited for concealed carry in Florida.

Not sure about other states, but in Colorado you can carry a gun onto school property, just not inside the school. Some of our State Reps are working to change that, but with a Dem House and Governor it fails every year.

In Utah, I can carry into any school without issue, from grade school to the university of Utah. Teachers are also armed if they care to be.

That used to be the case in CA until SB 707 took effect (1/1/2016 as I recall). No longer sadly.

The first day, of a two day special on Dr. Phil just aired.

He spewed the 17 school shootings since the first of the year BS. One every 3 days.

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
It astonishes me how quickly these students can arrange for busses, lists of travelers, printed t-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, etc. it almost seems preplanned.

Yeah...Isn't that interesting that students who can't get to school on time, or complete a homework assignment by a deadline, can somehow organize all of this movement complete with transportation and accommodations. Kinda makes ya go, hmmmmmmmmmm...

Agreed, I coach H.S. Varsity hockey and it is a miracle that these guys make it to a game without leaving a critical piece of gear at home. They forget to bring the pucks out, fill the water bottles. There is no WAY students arranged a rally that fast. No WAY.

I also noted that a FL congressional aid was fired for claiming some of the school survivors were actors. That does make you pause, I wonder if he recognized faces.

Glad to read this. I thought I was one of the few people that were thinking the same thing.

quote:

Originally posted by Excam_Man:
The first day, of a two day special on Dr. Phil just aired.

He spewed the 17 school shootings since the first of the year BS. One every 3 days.

Hey, if somebody shoots a hole through a window at night, while the school is completely empty, the school still got shot, so it's a school shooting, right?

Going back at least 14 years, we had a school shooting at night. Seems an F-16 missed the target and hit the school. Only the night janitor was on duty and heard it but at the time didn't know what it was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..._Intermediate_School

On November 4, 2004, at around 9pm, an F-16 Fighting Falcon jet from the 113th Wing of the District of Columbia Air National Guard, based at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on a training mission at the Warren Grove Bombing Range was climbing upward at 8,000 feet. The lead pilot was on a training ride in pursuit of an upgrade to instructor pilot. A recent software change in the F-16 allowed the externally mounted targeting pod to stabilize on a spot on the earth when the avionics were in Air to Ground Mode, Strafe Sub-Mode. The pilot intended to fire a laser at a strafe target located on the range. The laser and gun share the same trigger. The pilot pulled the trigger, firing not only the laser but also the internal M61 Vulcan cannon, discharging 27 rounds of 20mm ammunition which then fell to the ground, with eight striking the school's roof and the rest hitting the parking lot and the side of the building.
A janitor, who saw holes in the ceiling and had heard something on the roof, contacted the police.

By the way, in case anyone has an interest in tuning in, NRA's Dana Loesch will be on CNN's Town Hall tonight at 9pm to hopefully talk some sanity to the insane. I won't have a chance to watch myself but wanted to pass that on anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
By the way, in case anyone has an interest in tuning in, NRA's Dana Loesch will be on CNN's Town Hall tonight at 9pm to hopefully talk some sanity to the insane. I won't have a chance to watch myself but wanted to pass that on anyway.

Talk about going into the Lion's den. I wish her luck.

Gun control would create a ‘nation of sheep’: Judge Napolitano - Spot on judge!


http://www.foxbusiness.com/pol...eep-judge-napolitano

Sheriff Clarke says that the FL shooting has "Soros fingerprints all over it."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-...ush-has-george-soros

No wonder the swamp was certain Hillary would win. They bullshit and manipulate big sectors of the public all the time-- now, in Florida. They must think people are so stupid. And they are right in many cases.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
It astonishes me how quickly these students can arrange for busses, lists of travelers, printed t-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, etc. it almost seems preplanned.

I'll just leave this here.

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:
Sheriff Clarke says that the FL shooting has "Soros fingerprints all over it."

Don't misquote him.
He's not talking about the shooting itself, but the well ORGANIZED effort by Florida school students demanding gun control:

Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. insinuated Wednesday that student survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting were being manipulated by Democratic billionaire George Soros to organize for gun control.

quote:

The well ORGANIZED effort by Florida school students demanding gun control has GEORGE SOROS’ FINGERPRINTS all over it. It is similar to how he hijacked and exploited black people’s emotion regarding police use of force incidents into the COP HATING Black Lives Matter movement.

No question that the leftists are organizing the traumatized kids in Florida. I suspect it will be this way from now on. The lefties must honestly believe they can bully, cajole, and scam the population into disarming.

^^^

Yep.
And.

One does not squeeze a few drops of blood into the waters to placate the shark, thinkning it will keep it slightly satisfied while the swimmer seeks shore.

It does not work out the way one might think.

Do, not give them anything, in hopes that they will let the rest get away.

quote:

Don't misquote him.
He's not talking about the shooting itself, but the well ORGANIZED effort by Florida school students demanding gun control

That's actually what I meant-- sloppy wording. Thanks.

(Posting tired-- almost as bad as posting drunk.)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: justjoe,

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
My sons school has an armed SRO, and I was very glad to see it when we moved here. This isn't a bad area, I live in a nice school district, but I like having him there. Not only is he protection, but the kids all love him and he knows them all by name, showing them that police are not the enemy, they are a trusted authority figure. And he wears full uniform, green "tactical" overalls I guess you would call them, has a Glock on his hip, Sheriff jacket on.

He knows damn near every kid in that school by name, and talks to them, gives them advice, etc...

Our high school (my daughter graduated 10 years ago) has had a full time SRO ever since I can remember. However, the students STILL don't feel safe and displayed their, er...wisdom today by staging a walk out.

http://qctimes.com/news/local/...-2be5ccc04ec5.html#1

Not to be outdone, students across the river in IL also staged a walkout:

http://qconline.com/news/local...ource=home-top-story

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:

Agreed, I coach H.S. Varsity hockey and it is a miracle that these guys make it to a game without leaving a critical piece of gear at home. They forget to bring the pucks out, fill the water bottles. There is no WAY students arranged a rally that fast. No WAY...

Even the WashPost is admitting students are getting help:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.ec9c9ccb06e7

Students take charge of gun-safety movement with some help from existing groups

By David Weigel and Wesley Lowery
February 21 at 6:10 PM Email the author

A half-dozen students from Iowa City High School began planning their first-ever protest for gun safety Sunday evening, logging into a group chat and saying they wanted to do something in solidarity with the students in Parkland, Fla., who had survived the mass shooting there that left 17 people dead.

“We need concrete actions, not just walking out cuz we’re angry and then go back to school the next day like nothing happened,” Esti Brady, 16, wrote in the chat. More than 250 students braved cold rain the next morning and marched 1½ miles, giving speeches using a megaphone borrowed from Women’s March organizers.

Students also walked out of high schools in Illinois, and they participated in a “die-in” at the White House. In Tallahassee on Wednesday, survivors of the Parkland massacre rallied at the state capitol for stronger gun control and implored the nation’s adults to do something.

Such displays have given gun-safety advocates fresh hope that the Parkland shooting — and the widespread response to it among youths — could create new momentum across the country to enact firearms restrictions. And the grass-roots campaigns that have sprung up in high school hallways among angry and tearful teenagers are now attracting attention from national groups demoralized after a string of shootings prompted no political response.

The students have attracted political attacks from advocates for gun rights, who have accused them of being shills for anti-gun, left-wing lobbyists. And while the students have claimed little to no involvement from national advocates, the gun-control groups are entering the fray behind the scenes, aware of how quickly such a moment can fade but also wanting to avoid tainting what they describe as an organic, youth-driven movement.

Anti-gun groups are going out of their way to claim distance from the student activists while praising their efforts. Everytown for Gun Safety, the group founded by Michael Bloomberg in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting in 2012, connected some of the Parkland students with its “survivor network.” The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is starting to talk to students about rallies planned for March and expects to set aside money to help students who can’t afford to travel to the events. Giffords, formerly known as Americans for Responsible Solutions, shared “some context on gun violence protection” with students who requested it, according to Peter Ambler, the group’s executive director.

“It’s important to recognize that in every single way possible this is an authentically grass-roots, student-led movement,” Ambler said. “Of course we’re reaching out and trying to lift them up, and give them the resources we can muster to make them successful. But we have been sort of at arm’s length, in the background doing whatever we can to support them.”

Major donors already have stepped up to bolster the marches, from George and Amal Clooney, who have pledged $500,000. Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg vowed matches.

In Florida, student organizers have been coordinating with the leadership of the Women’s March — which is helping them plan a march on Washington that, like their own back in 2017, will be accompanied by other rallies across the nation. They also have met several times with parents of the children killed in Newtown as well as several students who survived that shooting.

“The amazing thing about this specific movement is that it’s run by the students, and the students are at the forefront of it all,” said Dylan Baierlein, 18, who graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas last spring and has been working with Never Again MSD. “And the people and groups who have reached out to help understand that, they’ve given us advice and support without taking over. And I think that’s invaluable.”

The students in Iowa City said they put together their rally with no outside help, no funding and promotion only from a student newspaper. The organized student efforts in Parkland began the day after the shooting, when several groups of friends from the school’s drama and journalism programs met up at a vigil and vowed that something had to be done.

Students have been organizing at the same rapid clip across the country. Lane Murdock, a 15-year-old at Ridgefield High School in Connecticut, started the National School Walkout campaign last week with a Change.org petition. When the questions started to come in, she teamed up with Paul Kim, the 17-year-old student-body president, and created a joint email account to help organize what, by Tuesday, was more than 78,000 students pledging a walkout on April 20.

“I hadn’t told my parents when I started it,” Murdock said. “My mom came home that night and was like, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ My dad was at a restaurant where he overheard people talking about the walkout, and he said, ‘Hey, that’s my daughter!’ ”

[He won’t return to school until gun laws change.]

The worry that students could come under political attack was well-founded. On some fringe conservative news sites, the highest-profile students from Parkland were probed for evidence that they were being coached. David Hogg, a Douglas senior and student journalist who did several bracing interviews, was attacked by the far-right site Gateway Pundit as “the child of an FBI agent” willing to be “used as a pawn for anti-Trump rhetoric and anti-gun legislation.”

“This kid is a shill,” tweeted Republican strategist and commentator Bradley Blakeman.

Jack Kingston, a former Republican congressman and current CNN commentator, said the students’ rapid organizing raised questions about whether they had been “hijacked by left-wing groups that have an agenda.”

“Do we really think 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a nationwide rally?” Kingston asked. “Organized groups that are out there like George Soros are always ready to take up the charge, and it’s kind of like instant rally, instant protest, and those groups are ready to take it to the streets.”

Soros, who has donated to the Brady Campaign in the past, fully supports the Florida students’ cause but has not provided them any funding, Laura Silber, the communications director for Soros’s Open Society Foundation, said in a statement Wednesday.

And this week, the aide of a state lawmaker from Florida accused two Parkland students who were interviewed on television of being actors who travel the ­country.

Such attacks do not — yet — appear to be gaining steam. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) quickly retorted this on Twitter: “Claiming some of the students on tv after #Parkland are actors is the work of a disgusting group of idiots with no sense of decency.”

Even the aide’s boss, Republican state Rep. Shawn Harrison, felt compelled to issue a statement rebuking his staffer — and he later fired him.

Several of the activist students said the group has yet to discuss fully how they’ll handle it if their members come under sustained political attack. But they insist they’ll be able to lean on one another as a support system.

“We know that we don’t have to take anything from anybody. We are survivors,” said Diego Pfeiffer, 18, a senior at Douglas who helped organize Never Again MSD. “We understand that there are trolls and there are people who are going to work against our goals.”

Several students have gone viral after giving interviews in which they called for new gun-control measures or sent tweets ridiculing the responses of pro-gun politicians. They attacked the president by name and accused Rubio of callousness. On television, they were given a platform nearly equal to that of the political class, and they used it.

“We needed to capture the faces of the movement,” said Alex Wind, 17, a junior who was one of the first three members of Never Again MSD, which has quickly ballooned to several dozen ­members.

Among those faces were Cameron Kasky, a 17-year-old junior and Wind’s best friend, and Hogg, whose interviews on CNN on Thursday and Friday were shared widely. On Saturday, the world met Emma González, an 18-year-old junior whose infuriated address at a gun-control rally quickly became Twitter’s top trending topic and perhaps the most widely shared moment from the shooting’s aftermath.

“I was trending number one on Twitter and I didn’t have a Twitter account,” said González, who has since started an account that has amassed 272,000 followers — and counting. “Now I’ve got this platform that just whipped itself up out of ­nowhere.”

And student organizers say members of their group have decamped to New York and Los Angeles to hold meetings with other activists and organizations who have offered support, although they have declined to say with whom they are meeting.

“These kids know they are plugging into a political movement that is growing in power, and they are laying bare the gun industry mythology that you can’t talk about changing the laws after a mass shooting,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “It used to be that Republicans would respond to mass death and destruction by stubbornly insisting that there was no possible legislative route that could save lives. But things have started to change.”

Read more at PowerPost

Columbine happened during the 1994 ban. Another won't stop anything. The end.