THE DANGER OF GUN-FREE SCHOOL ZONES

Dartagnan wrote:

It's funny how whenever someone opens fire on innocent people, it somehow becomes an argument for MORE guns in the community.

What is funny about it?

The primary cause of crime is unarmed victims.

Mame wrote:

There have been cases of children killing other children because they were gun-toting. What you are suggesting is insane. Children are not rational or mature enough to handle weapons, and weaponry is not the answer to most situations.

While I agree that the children should not be the ones with the guns at school, weaponry is the answer in a situation when a deranged killer is slaughtering people.

What is wrong with carrying a gun at the grocery store?!?!

Intrepid wrote:

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Has anyone noticed
that when the police
are studying in THEIR classes,
that no one bursts in on them,
shooting up the classroom,
nor taking any hostages of the police ??


Have u ever wondered Y
criminals choose to attack UNARMED students
rather than armed police, when thay are studying ??

David

You are kidding, right? You've got to be kidding.
You can't be serious. However, You probably are.

OK, Canadian:
I challenge u to EXPLAIN
the reason that I 've got to be " kidding "
and that I " can t be serious "; go ahead.

Make some sense out of that argument
instead of just mindlessly emoting about it.
David

The primary cause of crime is unarmed victims.

oralloy wrote:

Mame wrote:

There have been cases of children killing other children because they were gun-toting. What you are suggesting is insane. Children are not rational or mature enough to handle weapons, and weaponry is not the answer to most situations.

While I agree that the children should not be the ones with the guns at school, weaponry is the answer in a situation when a deranged killer is slaughtering people.

Excuse me but if some nut has an Ak-47 or whatever passes for an automatic machine gun these days, how are kiddies' guns going to help? They'd be dead before they got them out of their lunch kits.

Oralloy, you are just as bad as OmSigDavid. Guns do not belong anywhere near children, much less innocent people. If you want to shoot someone specifically, why should anyone else be 'fall out'?

Guns are NOT the answer and the United States should listen to that.

One of the saddest things I've ever heard was a young boy calling 911 because he'd shot his 8 yr old sister - he'd pointed a gun (unknowingly loaded) at her through a glass door and pulled the trigger. She dropped dead immediately. He was hysterical and blaming himself. He was 9. How sad was that?

It is a tragic truth that the killer of the Amish girls had no criminal record and was described by his wife as a good husband and father, so on the face of it there would have been no bar to him buying his shotgun, semi-automatic pistol, rifle and ammunition. It is doubtless also true that most US gun owners are respectable, law-abiding citizens. But it is hard to see the sense of opposing at least criminal background checks on every gun purchase and limits on the number of firearms an individual can purchase at any one time or in a given period. The ban on handguns introduced after Dunblane in 1996 has not ended all gun crime in Britain but it has helped keep it mostly in the underworld.

Amazingly to many non-Americans, gun control remains a taboo in US politics. Gun ownership and hunting are the norm in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. The Brady law, requiring background checks, though not for unlicensed dealers, was resisted tooth and nail. Bill Clinton tried but failed to ban the sale of all automatic weapons. Opponents of control are even against statutes banning guns on school premises, and expressed concern yesterday that "emotion would now carry the day". But after this latest terrible atrocity, emotion might be a very good basis on which to proceed.

The answer to gun violence? More guns. Why is anyone taking this nut case seriously?

Pah, Dlowan. You and ehBeth, with whom I mostly agree, keep up with 'americans' slamming. Can you not see we in the US are not all of a piece?

Blindness? I can't read? Oh, thanks.

I am surely among the most weapon phobic on this website. But I get to be slammed routinely as I read about americans.

I'll admit I might have missed some holding back somewhere on some post, but 'generally' I see a 'general' condemnation thing going on.

Can't you work it into your text to say 'some americans'?

Why are there schools, if you can't go there without guns?

No one else feels so small and insignificant and ignored as omsig.

If only those schoolchildren had guns, why it might not have happened.

Cycloptichorn

BY CHELSEA J. CARTER
Associated Press

ATLANTA -- The United States has by far the highest rate of gun deaths -- murders, suicides and accidents -- among the world's 36 richest nations, a government study found.
The U.S. rate for gun deaths in 1994 was 14.24 per 100,000 people. Japan had the lowest rate, at .05 per 100,000.

The study, done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the first comprehensive international look at gun-related deaths. It was published Thursday in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
The CDC would not speculate why the death rates varied, but other researchers said easy access to guns and society's acceptance of violence are part of the problem in the United States.
``If you have a country saturated with guns -- available to people when they are intoxicated, angry or depressed -- it's not unusual guns will be used more often,'' said Rebecca Peters, a Johns Hopkins University fellow specializing in gun violence. ``This has to be treated as a public health emergency.''

Cycloptichorn wrote:

If only those schoolchildren had guns, why it might not have happened.

I'd suggest that school principals be required to keep an M-16 in their office, and that they be required to be fully trained in how to use it.

CCW for teachers would help as well.