Except it’s debatable what if anything he’s done to increase anybody’s liberty. Every time he pops up lately, he comes across like a mix of “(mostly) harmless coot” and “Internet wannabe.”
Well he’s not exactly Thoreau. I’ll take your word for it. Never heard of him until now.
RichVR
2789
You know that part in, I think it was Platoon? Where they are smoking weed through a rifle? All I could think was, man you are going to have to clean that fucker really good. (/tangent)
olaf
2790
I’d like to hear about it, potheads.
Sarkus
2791
Even the people on the gun sites I visit don’t support him.
Hey! It’s been a while since this thread has come up. I guess it’s about time.
Senator that advocates arming teachers, accidentally shoots a teacher during a training exercise with a rubber bullet.
You’d think it was an Onion article, but it’s not.
Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Benton, is interested in exploring whether state law allows school districts to make decisions on school safety. If a legal avenue does not exist, he hopes the Legislature will change the law.
After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Hutchinson became interested in arming school personnel, he said. [B]He was invited to attend an “active shooter” training and - using a rubber bullet-loaded pistol - he mistakenly shot a teacher who was confronting a “bad guy.”
[/B]The experience gave Hutchinson some pause, but he still supports giving schools the authority to decide how best to secure their campuses.
Both video games and paintball taught me that it’s really easy to shoot friendlies when you’re under pressure and surprised, particularly if they aren’t wearing uniforms.
olaf
2794
More bullshit. Murder rate at an all time low and its time to end the CMP! Just because. How many M1 Garands were used in murders in the US last year? My guess is zero.
I wondered about that and briefly stopped by the gun forums to check the implications. For a couple technical reasons, they don’t think it will kill the CMP. We’ll have to wait for an official word.
And theoretically the next president could revoke the order.
Houngan
2796
What’s the point? That a mistake was made during a training exercise? That’s kinda why they call it “training.” Or are you implying the Senator had no idea it was possible to shoot the wrong person? Also, the “gave pause” seems to be entirely the fabrication of the author, as the Senator said nothing of the sort.
olaf
2797
Fair enough. But assuming the President put some thought into this…what is the intent behind the order?
You know the joke about the drunk who’s looking for his keys under the lamppost because “that’s where the light is”? Obama can’t regulate the guns that are used in crime / accidental deaths / suicides, so he’s trying to regulate the guns he can. Whether it’ll do any good, I have no idea.
RichVR
2799
Finger outside of the guard at all times. Until you’re aiming at a target. Repeat and repeat. But you know that.
Martinez
2800
So funny. Man, with all the stories of the guys I know on the local police force accidently shooting friendly targets and blue on blue in simunition training… it’s a wonder they are issued guns at all. I totally agree with you. The people we supposedly trust in protecting us with guns are the ones most likely to shoot us in a fire fight. Ban guns from police… totally with you there. high fives
milo
2801
The point, which I thought was pretty obvious, is that if police and armed services personnel need extensive training to learn how not to shoot friendlies, then what are the odds that armed but untrained and unpracticed school teachers will be able to make those snap judgements successfully in a very confused real life situation?
Probably pretty close to zero.
ShivaX
2802
The average “gun person” is a better shot and more careful with their weapons than 95% of police officers. Most cops barely shoot at all and get too casual with their weapons. Add in that they almost exclusively use guns with massive trigger pulls and no safeties. Cops aren’t really all that special when it comes to weapon handling really.
Setting aside where you get your numbers from, are the armed teachers all somehow going to be the “average gun person”? You’ve casual implied that professionals trained and paid to use weapons are going to be worse than professionals that are (hopefully) primarily trained to teach kids. Even if you assume that the LEO training doesn’t significantly improve gun-handling ability, one would suspect that the distribution of gun enthusiast in the LEO population is at least as good as the general population, if not better. Yet, somehow the teacher population will be dramatically better in terms of density of “average gun persons”?
maxle
2804
Being a good shot isn’t the hard part. To quote a Marine who used to post here,
I’ve done a fair number of free fire exercises as well as real world building clearing, with infantry marines. It’s really difficult, and especially in simulated scenarios with hostages, no ID neutrals, and friendlies outside of your immediate communication circle, you basically stack up what amounts to a statistical certainty that the wrong person is going to get shot at. 9/10 of the battle is designing your flow so that you simply remove people from the geometries of fire of other people altogether, and even then that last tenth requires unusual self-control and a bit of luck to do properly. As a point of reference, in both work-ups most platoons gave up several men after this training cycle who (despite passing every other training threshold to be infantry marines) could not handle that tier of training and were sent to “camp guard” (in the rear with the gear).
This is a long way of saying that there is almost no conceivable scenario where minimally trained civilians with no communication protocols in place and a near-infinite set of no ID neutrals/children acting unpredictably is going to end without exactly that sort of thing happening
ShivaX
2805
Oh, I don’t think teachers will be better, most would probably be significantly worse, but in a scenario where you have some nutjob shooting children usually all you need is anyone there to confront them and they’ll off themselves.
I guess friendly fire isn’t really a big concern in my book when you already have someone firing at children indiscriminately - they’re already fucked. Plus shooting at the adult with a gun over the kids on the floor is a fairly easy situation compared to most.
You’re making the assumption that these armed teachers magically have perfect intellegience and know it’s a Sandy Hook situation and when it’s not. False alarms, mistaken reads of less than lethal situations, backed by the lethality of a mistake using a firearm are the real friendly fire risks.
Friendly fire issues aren’t just going to be a necessary cost of stopping a true school shooting. You’re going to get them in non-threat scenarios, as well.
