Talk-Polywell.org

No problem with having a few trained, armed people at the school. That is different from arming the teachers.
That "liberal society" with very few people armed works quite well in central and northern Europe, which is much safer than the US. Having everyone run around arresting other people without protocol and oversight will soon result in rival factions going after each other trying to "protect" their turf. Remember that the mafia started out as a kind of private police replacement.

central and northern Europe, which is much safer than the US

Really?

I dunno. I think in context I am way more nervous walking around the off main drag streets in Paris or Rome than I am in Boston.

There is plenty of violence in Europe. You just choose to ignore it.

Look at the Paris residential riot zones over the last few years as an example.

The point is that folks don't go around looking to arrest each other.
Although, if someone commits a crime in fornt of others, I would hope they intervene and seek to hold the perps until they can turn them over to the system for processing.

If citizens do not take personal responsibility for the society they live in it is doomed to fail.
Just as much as if they abrogate all responsibility to the "governing".

Socities of the people, by the people, and for the people are the only ones that will last and be just.

When you weaken or remove any leg of that triangle, the system will fail.

As for having armed folks in the school. I am all for it. I have not problem with a teacher, secretary or janitor being armed as long as they have shown and continue to show they are responsible enough and skilled enough to provide use of force services in protection of there place of work. If they want to do it, then I am all for it. I encourage them.

School shootings will have no chance of stopping as long as idiots think that the schools are undefended. And the public school system does not have enough money as is to support education, so asking for them to buy and service more staff (and the career that goes with it) is silly. Leverage the resources in place at much smaller cost.

You are making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Ask for volunteers. Protect their identities. Screen them. Train & Cert them, advertise they exist, and let them do the job.
What do you think the odds are that a school that does this and posts signs and spread the word that they have is going to be attacked? Pretty much ZERO I think. And if they are attacked, it is not going to be in a killing spree format. It will be a one off, and probably a sucker kill by an angry disturbed person who then offs themselves.

As far as Active Shooter response goes, it is very straight forward doctrine to follow.

I. Get out.
2. If you can't get out, then shelter in place.
3. If you can't wait it out in shelter (ie nutjob coming in your space), then be prepared to try and take him/her down. Ambush them with whatever/whoever you can immediately upon entry.

It is proven that once attacked, the shooters quickly go to failure mode. Even if they succeed in defeating the initial attack by victims. Being counter-attacked completely changes their pyschological perception of the situation and event, and leads them rapidly to an event ending. Usually where they cap themselves in corner somewhere. This phenomena is driven by the fact that they transition from thinking they are in control to not. The normative driver for a shooter is a seeking of control. Once they see that it is in doubt, the entire facade crumbles. That is also why they avoid conciously or unconciously protected persons or areas.

Police are not responding to rescue at the outset. They are actively seeking the shooter(s). They will not stop and assist victims until they have jammed up the shooter(s), and can free up assets to start evacs. I am also sure that the police are not "locking them in". They are more than likely telling them to shelter as the situation is still in flux, and an evac lane is not established.

I have been on both sides of this equation professionally. It really is common sense and straight forward with no silly conspiracy kookiness about "conditioning the population".

Get real.

ladajo wrote:

central and northern Europe, which is much safer than the US

Really?

I dunno. I think in context I am way more nervous walking around the off main drag streets in Paris or Rome than I am in Boston.

There is plenty of violence in Europe. You just choose to ignore it.

Look at the Paris residential riot zones over the last few years as an example.

Homicide rate of the US is more than 4 times that of France and almost 8 times that of Austria. Even Bulgaria and Romania which are among the most dangerous countries in Europe have less than half the murder rate of the US (and I would be scared there).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... icide_rate

Just saying.

Let's talk context.

How many major cities does Austria have compared to the US?

How many comparable major cities does the EU have compared to the US?

Does this ratio skew your interpretaion of "murder rates"?

Skipjack wrote: Homicide rate of the US is more than 4 times that of France and almost 8 times that of Austria. Even Bulgaria and Romania which are among the most dangerous countries in Europe have less than half the murder rate of the US (and I would be scared there).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... icide_rate
Just saying.

Let's see..the point of the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution is to enshrine the right of the people to keep and bear arms as an ultimate buttress against tyranny, be it internal (a tyrannical US gov) or external, (being conquered). Most of disarmed Europe (including the countries you cited) was conquered; some places more than once in the 20th Century. Most of Europe would still be conquered if it were not for armed Americans. If the price we pay for having the right to bear arms and therefore remaining free is a higher homicide rate (a position I don't necessarily agree with, since some of the places with the strictest gun control have the highest homicide rate--Chicago, Washington DC, etc.), then so be it. We Americans and Europe should appreciate the wisdom of the founders of this country.

However, when looking only at the rate of people assaulted or mugged, the United States had a lower rate than any country except Canada and Japan, according to the same OECD index.
and again I am bringing up my pet theory that murder rate follows city size and percentage of poverty level.
There is only 130 city's in Europe with populations above 250000.
over 140 just for the USA
so after normalizing the data the USA is only slightly higher risk of homicide but a less risk of violent crime.
But France and Austria for some reason is a statistical anomaly compared to the rest of Europe with very low murder / violent crimes
I find that very interesting why crime is so low in those two areas compared to the rest of the EU. They stand out by being 75% less likely to be injured in crime than the rest of the USA/EU. This puts them as a very safe place to be but the surrounding country are not.
Maybe we should be looking at how they are doing business.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... icide_rate

williatw wrote:

Skipjack wrote: Look at the Paris residential riot zones over the last few years as an example.
Homicide rate of the US is more than 4 times that of France and almost 8 times that of Austria. Even Bulgaria and Romania which are among the most dangerous countries in Europe have less than half the murder rate of the US (and I would be scared there).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... icide_rate
Just saying.

Let's see..the point of the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution is to enshrine the right of the people to keep and bear arms as an ultimate buttress against tyranny, be it internal (a tyrannical US gov) or external, (being conquered). Most of disarmed Europe (including the countries you cited) was conquered; some places more than once in the 20th Century. Most of Europe would still be conquered if it were not for armed Americans. If the price we pay for having the right to bear arms and therefore remaining free is a higher homicide rate (a position I don't necessarily agree with, since some of the places with the strictest gun control have the highest homicide rate--Chicago, Washington DC, etc.), then so be it. We Americans and Europe should appreciate the wisdom of the founders of this country.

Fix your quotes! The riot zones are exceptions to the rule, much like Flint and Oakland are exceptionally dangerous places in the US. So lets stay with comparing apples to apples.
The countries are still all armed. All of them have a military with tanks and automatic weapons. Individuals that have a hunting license or can provide a reason why they need to protect themselves (e.g. dangerous job) can get the right to carry a handgun. An increase in personal arms would make no difference in an armed conflict with another country. You would not get very far fighting an army with a handgun. So that argument is pointless.

paperburn wrote:However, when looking only at the rate of people assaulted or mugged, the United States had a lower rate than any country except Canada and Japan, according to the same OECD index.

Link? Also from what I understand, assault statistics are hard to compare since countries employ different standards of reporting there.
10 for cities more or less above 250k inhabitants should have very little influence on the murder rate. It certainly does not cut the numbers in half!
Also Austria and France are not outstanding in any way. Not sure what you are talking about. The murder rate is the same or marginally higher in many other EU countries.

link was at the bottom of my post and it did show France and Austria way below the USA and most of Europe.
Scroll down and you can sort by country ,
By the way it also agrees with your original assertion that France and Austria are safer.

again I am bringing up my pet theory that murder rate follows city size and percentage of poverty level.

YES! And, this is not a linear effect.

Also, one must consider any anomaly in reported data could be due to collection and binning regimes.
For example, Paris murder rates may not be all of Paris, as the subdivisions may be reported distinctly.

US rates are hard to pin down for this, and generally must be accounted for by county or parish. However even that can be problematic given county/parish borders in certain metro areas.

I personally do not see a great differnce in the aggregate globally. There are certain cultural outlayers, but in the first world free countries things tend to track in similar manners.

And France is certainly not a 'non-violent' place to live. It has plenty of violent crime.

Interstingly in the US violent crime is on a long term down trend that conicides with increases in private gun sales due to two fears. One is that the state is trying to take away the right to arm. The other is that the state has no interest in providing protection services for its citizens (unlike the left has been promising and dictating for quite a while).

Police can not be everywhere at once. If that were so it would be a police state.

paperburn1 wrote:link was at the bottom of my post and it did show France and Austria way below the USA and most of Europe.
Scroll down and you can sort by country ,
By the way it also agrees with your original assertion that France and Austria are safer.

The link was the link I had provided originally with the numbers were for homicide. Maybe you copied the wrong link?

Skipjack wrote: An increase in personal arms would make no difference in an armed conflict with another country. You would not get very far fighting an army with a handgun. So that argument is pointless.

It remains to be seen I will concede whether 90 million armed Americans vs. the US military would be a waste of time....and many citizens have considerably more than mere handguns. In any case look at the insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, they were armed with little more than small arms and IED. They have fought the US military in Afghanistan for more than a decade, causing the US commander to scream for reinforcements back in 2009, saying that we were on the verge of losing the whole thing without them. In any case my point was that disarmed and subsequently conquered, more than once, is hardly an argument in favor of being disarmed; even if you can't prove it would have made a difference in the conquering (and the even more important occupation afterwards).

Skipjack wrote:Homicide rate of the US is more than 4 times that of France and almost 8 times that of Austria. Even Bulgaria and Romania which are among the most dangerous countries in Europe have less than half the murder rate of the US (and I would be scared there).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... icide_rate

The homicide rate is because of the drugs and the drugs are because of the affluence of America.

The vast majority of homicides in the US are drug related, and primarily inner city shooters killing over drug territories, gang rivalries and such. It's very possible there are more homicides in Oakland or Detroit than there is in all of Austria.

The drugs are drawn by the money. Americana have more disposable cash than anyone else. Even people in relative poverty have cash to spend on illegal drugs. So if you really want to argue for fewer homicides, being poorer is a solution, not getting rid of the guns. When you separate out the demographic such that inner city is apart from rural communities (who have a much higher gun per capita), you find there are almost no homicides amongst the higher gun population.

williatw wrote:

Skipjack wrote: An increase in personal arms would make no difference in an armed conflict with another country. You would not get very far fighting an army with a handgun. So that argument is pointless.

I remains to be seen I will concede whether 90 million armed Americans vs. the US military would be a waste of time....and many citizens have considerably more than mere handguns. In any case look at the insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, they were armed with little more than small arms and IED. They have fought the US military in Afghanistan for more than a decade, causing the US commander to scream for reinforcements back in 2009, saying that we were on the verge of losing the whole thing without them. In any case my point was that disarmed and subsequently conquered, more than once, is hardly an argument in favor of being disarmed; even if you can't prove it would have made a difference in the conquering (and the even more important occupation afterwards).

At this juncture, an American resistance would make Iraq and Falluja look like a kindergarten party.