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Saturday, May 19, 2018

Enough!


Enough!

A cranky opinion for

CRANKY OPINION SATURDAY

The following is the opinion of a cranky old man with little knowledge on the topic opined.  Opposing opinions are wrong.  Suggestions outlined may not be sufficient to solve the problem, they are a start.  Get some smart people on the case with better ideas and fix this crap, but enough is enough. It can be stopped.

Getting on an airplane today is a pain in the butt.  You have to clear your luggage and carry-on, you have to go through an x-ray machine, you have to take off your shoes, belt and whatever; it sucks.  It was a much nicer experience years ago. Today we have been inconvenienced, it is costing us more money, and we have lost some privacy to just fly on a plane.

On the flip side, we have not had hijackings, no planes have been intentionally flown into buildings since 09-11-01.

In addition to the inconvenient checking before boarding a plane, the pilots cabin is more secure, and there may or may not be an air marshal on board who is armed and trained to take down bad people.

It is a pain, it is expensive, but that is what it has come to in order to fly safely.

It is time to do the same in our schools, and probably other soft targets.  You can not go to a concert without at least having your bags checked and often go through personal screening, the same with most sporting events and even Disney theme parks.

Time to stop school shootings.  How?  It will be a pain, it will be expensive, it has to be done.

  1. All students and teachers must have identification to enter school grounds.
  2. All bags must be given at least a cursory check and a few if not all randomly x-rayed.  We must do whatever it takes to make sure bad people can not enter school  with a gun.
  3. Every class room should be equipped with some form deterrent such as mace or pepper spray or even a gun.
  4. In addition to trained security present, especially at opening of the day, there should be unidentified trained armed personnel or, much like air marshals program, the expectation that a school may have such personnel.
  5. Students and teachers must go through periodic, random psychological testing.

Additionally, gun regulations throughout the country must be more stringent than today.  A gun or ammo should not be available for legal purchase to anyone who does not have a license that certifies that a person has proven gun proficiency, knows basic gun safety, and has psychological clearance.  The penalty for selling a gun or ammo to anyone without such a license should be severe enough to discourage such activity.

That’s it!  Enough is enough, we should take whatever steps reasonable to finally end this violence.

Please don’t bother telling me about how we need guns to keep our government honest, number one that is stupid, number two, no one is suggesting taking away your guns.  Never mind, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people!”  That is stupid on steroids!  Guns clearly make people killing people really fucking efficient.  You do not see any mass murders using knives.

Will these types of regulations and security steps stop the insanity? 

Nothing can assure soft targets are always absolutely safe, but we can sure as hell make it a lot more difficult for whack-a-doodles to heap their destruction on innocent children.

Enough!

The preceding was the opinion of a cranky old man and not necessarily that of management, though I’m pretty sure Mrs. Cranky agrees.  

17 comments:

  1. I enthusiastically agree with both of you!!

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  2. I agree with everything you say. Here in the UK it's knives, stabbings, and murders. I dread to think what it would be like if we allowed guns.

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  3. Something has to be done. While i’m not smart enough to say what, i will agree some arrangement of the type you mention needs to be made.

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  4. Agreed.. one cursory look at countries with more stringent gun laws, and it's obvious that there are exceedingly fewer deaths of this sort. It's so disheartening to see so many who value their gun rights over their kids' lives.

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  5. I agree this extreme violence needs an extreme reaction. I generally agree with what you're proposing, but here are a few things to consider: The idea of a gun "license" might be ruled by the courts to be onerous as people who qualify (are not convicted felons, been adjudicated mentally ill, etc) are Constitutionally allowed to own a gun. A background check before buying a gun, however, has passed judicial muster and could be made universal by closing existing loopholes. And as you mentioned, the cost. School districts are already hard pressed to just pay teachers a decent salary and keep their school building from crumbling. This would be enormously expensive. The #$%^& Tea Party will fight tooth and nail to prevent any tax increase, even for this. To them their precious $$$ is more important than kids lives. Finally, while I'm getting more comfortable with the idea of teachers/administrators carry guns in schools, I can see some huge liability issues I doubt many schools districts will want to face. But clearly, more "something" needs to be done.

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    1. All valid points Scott.

      My point it that when this country wants to get something done, they Got Damn just gitter done. We put a man on the moon despite all the reasons why that was impossible. NYC was a shit-hole before Giuliani was Mayor. There were a million and one reasons why it could not be cleaned up and it a matter of months Rudy turned the shit-hole into the place to live and a major tourist attraction. When I worked on Wall Street we used to joke that the way to get something done that was impossible was to "Mandate" it. People always found a way. We can stop having children kill children in schools and that needs to just friggin be mandated.

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    2. You're right, it "can" be done. It's just going to be a matter of having the political "will" to get it done.

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  6. Totally agree. I would like to add one more step. Metal detectors at the entrances to schools and all who enter must be scanned. If metal is detected, the doors won't open and an alarm goes off. Would not eliminate shooters who could pull fire alarms then wait outside but would keep them from gaining entrance to the buildings. I plan to use my vote as a tool also.

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  7. Not sure if having weapons in classes will solve any problems or cause some more problems...maybe if these kids didn't have such easy access to weapons and ammunition in their own homes it would help. Maybe a program teaching parents how to store this stuff in a way that their kids can not access them? Maybe a program of checking homes with fire arms to ensure they ARE stored in a way kids can't get at them? Perhaps a system whereby people are checked for a record of mental health issures before they are issued /refused a firearm? Perhaps more stringent control in the home where children are accessing computers to find out how to build bombs? According to the news your country is averaging a school shooting a week.

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  8. It is sad that we have gotten to this point in our lives where we are scared to send our kids to school, but you are 100% right, something has to be done and we need to do it now!...

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  9. I've always read that all that airport security is to make us feel better and that it doesn't really do much.

    The gun thing......WHY the hell arent the gun owners held responsible? Once again, a kid takes a gun from his own damn house and kills people. And the parents seem bewildered. Damn idiots.

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    1. Agreed Gun owners I know lock up their guns.

      Re airport security, i'm pretty sure nothing is foolproof, but in the airports I've traveled through it would be very difficult to get on with a gun or most other weapons. We got stopped for carrying suspicious cheese. My opinion is anyone who would claim airport security is only to make us feel better is a borderline idiot.

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    2. Google TSA fails security tests. My husband was behind someone boarding a plane who managed to hide a dog under her coat going through security. Doesn't make me feel all that safe, TBH.

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    3. Don't have to Google TSA fails security test, my experience tells me in the airports I travel that is would be difficult to sneak on a weapon, especially cheese that looks like it could be a bomb.

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  10. As a human and an Aussie I wholeheartedly agree.

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  11. Adding my amen to your opinion...amen and amen.

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  12. If one more person gives me the argument, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" I will ask them why they are trying so hard to keep nuclear weapons out of Kim Jong Un's hands then.

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