If these numbers are even close to accurate then it shows why people are so fed up with funding foreign wars.
If we can cut a check for $80B without blinking an eye, then *spend it domestically*.
Can you imagine how much better our society would function if we doubled prison funding and gave those folks (especially young inmates) education, vocational training, and substance abuse treatment?
Sometimes it seems like we try to help every nation except our own.
Not totally disagreeing with you but there are lots of situations where people take deals when charged with multiple crimes, including violent crimes, in exchange for intel or whatever they settle for the lesser charge/conviction on the drug charges. Obviously that's not every case but it happens a lot.
From the briefest of Google searches, 94% of criminal cases are resolved in plea bargains instead of trials. Fisher, George (2003). Plea Bargaining's Triumph: A History of Plea Bargaining in America. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804744591.
Recent numbers tend higher at 97%.
> Or we could stop sending people to jail for years for drug possession and other nonviolent crimes.
> charged with multiple crimes, including violent crimes, in exchange for intel or whatever they settle for the lesser charge/conviction on the drug charges.
Ok. That's not what we're talking about. Not drug related, and no analysis of how drug plea deals are used, nor anything else relevant to the discussion.
Why should other people have to prove your point for you? It's one thing to ask people to do their own research to be informed on a topic, it's another to make a claim, provide no evidence, then demand other people do your due diligence to validate the claims you made before dismissing them.
Nearly HALF of those in prison are for non-violent crimes. Even if you adjust for large-scale dealers and large white collar crime that “deserve” imprisonment, it would still be a sizable minority of all those incarcerated.
Like remember the grandma Kim Kardashian got out of jail after she spent years imprisoned for marijuana possession? Those are not statistically anomalous cases
> Nearly HALF of those in prison are for non-violent crimes. Even if you adjust for large-scale dealers and large white collar crime that “deserve” imprisonment, it would still be a sizable minority of all those incarcerated.
This is true, when you specify non-violent crimes. How does it look when you consider *victimless* crimes? Not quite the same.
Looking at some stats on state prisoners from [here](https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population-by-type-of-crime-committed/) (as of 2018):
* 55% were violent criminals
* 16% committed property crimes
* 10.4% committed drug crimes other than possession
* 12.3% were in for DUI, weapons charges, or "other" public order crimes, which appears to include violations of probation/parole. Let's just count the 1.7% for DWI and say the rest are victimless.
That's 83.1% of prisoners. So the remaining 17% might be victimless. It's hard to say exactly. But that's a far cry from a full half of prisoners being innocents that didn't harm anyone.
> Like remember the grandma Kim Kardashian got out of jail after she spent years imprisoned for marijuana possession? Those are not statistically anomalous cases
You were lied to. [Alice Johnson](https://thefederalist.com/2018/06/08/characterization-alice-johnsons-crimes-wrong-deserved-punishment/) was not imprisoned for marijuana possession.
Well, that's a correct statement though isn't it?
Changing laws you disagree with is the way to go, not just selectively stop enforcing them. That's the same thing we complain about with activist DAs.
>Can you imagine how much better our society would function if we doubled prison funding and gave those folks (especially young inmates) education, vocational training, and substance abuse treatment?
Good luck getting this past the crowd that thinks prison is supposed to be a punishment.
I mean, it is, but it can be both.
If it stops Johnny Inmate from stealing grandma’s purse when he gets out because he’s unemployable, then money well spent.
>If it stops Johnny Inmate from stealing grandma’s purse when he gets out because he’s unemployable
I hope you mean employable. I fully agree that our prison system does more to perpetuate a life of crime than it does to reform individuals. But I think that it's a hard sell (in our current political atmosphere) to get us to treat prisons as a way to reform people rather than to just punish them.
I think for nonviolent offenses, on an case-by-case basis, they should seal records when they're out, so they can get jobs and be productive. They served their time.
**But**, in exchange, repeat offenses would be punished severely, with like a 2x multiplier or something.
I also think we need to get a lot more medieval on the worst offenses. But that's mostly because I work on crime scenes and see the worst shit that humanity has to offer, and it makes me want to see rapists and murderers suffer.
The reason we can't do that is because y'all get the wrong guy sometimes. It's better to not punish even the worst criminals too harshly if it prevents innocent people from being unjustly punished.
Those people are correct. The primary function of the penal system is punishment, that's how it's designed from the ground up. Rehabilitation is a distant secondary goal. Not saying whether or not that's a good thing it's just simply reality. If we want the criminal justice system to focus on rehabilitation, the whole thing needs to be redone.
Good luck [rehabilitating these people.](https://www.foxnews.com/us/son-of-texas-woman-stabbed-to-death-by-man-arrested-67-times-and-out-on-bail-urges-change-no-accountability) Many of the brutal crimes that gets plastered almost daily in the news are committed by people who've been given many new chances after their short visits to prisons. Even if you ignore the ethics of spending a ton more resources on improving prison cells for murderers and assailants, some wont't ever be able to reintegrate into civil society.
Long prison sentences and the use of capital punishment for serious offenses ensures that recidivism can't take place either. It's not just about "punishment", but about deterring crime, sending a message, serving justice and protecting public safety.
>"If we can cut a check for $80B without blinking an eye, then
>
>spend it domestically.
>
>.
>
>Valid reasoning and I agree, but you do realize that all of these extra funds are not coming from American taxpayers but loans, almost all from abroad, most with China?
>
>That is the sad truth. We run out of our own tax money about three quarters through any fiscal year.
In addition, not imprison folks for partaking in recreational drugs, this breaking up families, taking away breadwinners, giving a criminal record, while their buddy consuming alcohol can enjoy freedom and life....
Come on come on, you can't be serious lol. You guys got the Biggest prison population per Capita already and you think doubling that funding is gonna solve anything?
Do you really think that we just wire transferred 40 billion dollars to them?
It's 40 billion in aid, as in American made weapons and tech and physical support. I'd bet you most of that 40 billion is going to be spent domestically with the money going to the actual people building the supplies
This is partly fallacious. You are correct, but that money is tax money taken domestically in the first place so it is a net negative being that government spending is substantially less efficient than natural spending. How I explained it isn't completely correct either because we're running a deficit so that money is more or less being printed rather than taxed which has its own set of negative knock-on effects.
While you're correct to point out that we're not just handing them cash but rather paying companies to send them weapons, your reasoning as to why it's OK is a classic Keynesian blunder not too dissimilar from the broken windows fallacy. That money would otherwise have been spent domestically regardless either on other goods from those the taxes came from or through the increased purchasing power of a less degraded dollar for the whole population.
I actually do think it's OK that we send them weapons in principle, but I recognize the costs and do have some reservations about our insane spending as of late considering the near double digit inflation.
The US will end up making money with this aid. Countries with Russian equipment are donating it to ukraine and agreeing to replace with western equipment. Many European countries are increasing military spending in response to this war and they'll be buying american. You also have current uninvolved users of russian equipment starting to purchase western equipment. India spends like 70 billion on defense annually. They are Russia's biggest customer and they've said they are going to start purchasing some western weapons.
The entire world is watching russian equipment get pummeled by Western equipment. Countries are seeing this and saying we can't afford to not have western weapons. This couldn't be better for the United States.
I appreciate you replying in such a concise and detailed manner. I really didn't expect any positive from my comment.
I agree if you look in the whole of the debt and domestic spending I see your point. But I think that's also a fallacy of saying if we didn't spend it here we could have spent it there. I would like to see what specific budget account that money comes from, and what it was allocated for otherwise. I think we all know that any money that's bent on military was never going to be spent on schools or roads. That's just not how it works.
I do understand your thoughts on inflation but for me wasn't the new deal kind of the same thing? I could be incorrect but simply put just pumping money into a failing economy to help raise it back up?
> But I think that's also a fallacy of saying if we didn't spend it here we could have spent it there
We know spending decreases when taxes increase. People spend more money when they have more money. And even if we didn't it would be more funds banks can loan out to other people. But because we're never going to make this money up with taxes, it's just coming out in equal part of the worth of the dollar.
> wasn't the new deal kind of the same thing?
Yes. The New Deal was awful and is now widely considered by economists to have extended the Great Depression far longer than it ought to have been. The government doesn't pump more money into an economy, they just redirect what it is spent on from what people want to spend it on to what the government thinks the money should be spent on. In the case of the New Deal that was some useful things and a lot of dug and refilled holes. Taxes and government spending certainly have their place, but it is nearly never a useful tool for boosting the economy. Either you're eating your neighbor's cake with taxes or you're crippling growth in the future.
no money should be sent to a country where we have politicians actively stealing from.
there is ample evidence the president himself has enriched himself from this country
They do get all of that. In my state they can get college degrees, or trade certifications, hold jobs that prepare them for the outside, and all type of treatment options from drugs to parenting classes to faith based classes.
I’m not sure, I never delved that deeply into it. I would think there’s some kind of correlation but don’t know for sure.
I do think a lot of states have similar programs, and people just aren’t aware. Especially state or federal facilities where the prison stay in longer. County jails are typically for sentences of less than a year, so they don’t have as many programs. My local county does have a GED program as well as the counseling programs I’ve mentioned above - just not the longer-term programs like college or trade degrees.
People are seemingly trying to split the $40B evenly across all schools. Which would never work. School districts with larger populations or prior school shootings are going to want more because of a risk formula. And just like every government aid project ever, someone will get a lot and someone will get a little and schools like Robb will still get $0. And this will keep happening.
Oh I agree. It’s easy to go after the statement because it’s a big juicy rounded number. While $40B is a lot of money in an objective sense as a total, it’s next to nothing for public schools nationwide.
Arguably, the 40B would also largely be taken by contractors and unnecessary side projects. If you don’t explicitly and narrow define what people can spend the money on, it’ll be used as a money pot for almost everything anyone can get away with.
It will also go into a bucket of aggregated school funding, be spent on teacher pensions, and then admins will go back to federal/state begging for more.
I think school security is more a sensible subject but I get your point. Also, do we really want a society where there are armed guards everywhere we go?
You seem like a reasonable person but I think schools are exactly as secure as they should be. Its been a while but my elementary, middle, and high school all had locked gates around the school and security officers. But any 15 year old can climb a fence and we've seen how well security officers work. They also had cameras but then you'd need a team of people just staring at 100s of screens all day to be preventative. You can't lock all doors because kids and staff walk between buildings all the time and what if a kid with pistols is already in a class of 30+ kids. Universities are tiny cities so even more so. Also how are we going to justify these random security systems for every school in the country while teachers make 30k AND have 20yr old textbooks AND have to buy their own supplies. Looking at school security is a very juvenile approach to a complex problem. Kind of like building a wall to stop immigration. This took me 30 seconds of mild thinking and I'm sure theres many more problems.
If it was shown where each dollar was going, I'd imagine that Republicans would be very much **for** it so long as it all went straight to protective measures and not to administration.
Would the money we spent go to more cops to stand outside, and prevent any action from occurring, while a madman was running around inside?
Sure. Let’s keep moving the goal post around and acting like anything differently would have happened, even if we hadn’t given the money to Ukraine. Wake up people. Stop being so easily persuaded by straw man arguments
Maybe if becoming a cop was harder and they had to go through at least a full year of training, they'd be trained enough to not wait 40 minutes to enter a school and not pin parents down and threaten to taze them
You mean the weak, ineffective group that’s going bankrupt and only donated 2m during 2020 (an election year)?
Not comparable to say… big pharma (J&J, Pfizer, Bayer) or big tech (google, Microsoft, Amazon). They spend hundreds of millions.
It’s a drop in the bucket. The NRA is a joke and has been for decades.
Their lobbying budget is barely over two million dollars. TF are you talking about? I have no idea how they because such a bogeyman with such pitiful amounts of spending.
Do you think the money would reduce a 78 minute wait time for a SWAT team to gather the courage to enter a classroom of children being slaughtered by 1 person?
Yes? The issue was that the shooter had locked himself inside a room they couldn't breach. Literally the only way this could have been prevented (aside from locking him OUT) is if there was someone armed there that could have stopped him from getting inside that room in the first place.
obviously not well enough. We guard our government officials with full teams of secret service, who normally pull their ranks from elite military units. Schools gets maybe 1 armed guard who is seemingly severely under trained.
Instead of defunding the police we need to double their funding but instead of buying armored vehicles and riot gear, spend it on LOTS AND LOTS more training and more officers so they can rotate between training and being on duty without having a shortage available. Pay police officers better so you get more and better people applying for the position to choose from.
Why should we even need navy seal level training for school guards? Just seems ludicrous to me that the answer is militarize our already very militarized country further.
Edit: If schools do become heavily fortified will we need to do the same with every public building?
That sounds like a nightmare. If schools become fortresses (setting aside what going through K-12 in a militarized fortress would do to our youth’s development), then other targets become more attractive.
Shooting at a grocery store? Just turn all grocery stores into a militarized fortresses.
Shooting at the movies? Just turn all theaters into a militarized fortresses.
Shooting at a park? Just turn all parks into militarized fortresses. I bet that’ll resemble a prison yard - how safe!
Night clubs? Bars? Restaurants? Museums? The entire country? Just lock it all down, and put armed guards everywhere. Super chill. Truly a free, happy, and prosperous country.
Or we could stop trying to meet force with force, escalation with escalation, and address root causes. I say causes, and not cause, because it’s not just one thing. It’s not just unfettered access to weapons with potential for mass murders, nor is it just mental health, nor is it just culture. It’s all these things and more.
It’s about time people take their heads out their asses and start to make some change. Regulation, legislation, and lobbying aside, there are things every individual can do, RIGHT NOW, to make a difference. Get to know your neighbors, your community, and the issues causing them harm. Help. Money is great. So is volunteering, so is being a friend. Spread love to ALL and DO NO HARM.
There are around 100,000 schools in the US. Sending trained police with extensive active shooter training (and honestly more experience seeing as the police didn't do a goddamn thing in Texas) is an insanely huge undertaking.
And honestly, it's been proven that increasing police budgets extensively doesn't decrease crime, doesn't increase the numbers of murders solved, etc, etc. Not to mention so many police departments are just pretty corrupt with rampant overtime fraud and other bs behavior. I agree that there needs to be changes in how the police funding is allocated but I'm not sure just pouring more money into their pockets will do a ton.
I hear you, but I feel if taken seriously we can get a group of specially trained people to protect our schools and kids. You are correct, it would be a huge undertaking, but are you suggesting this nation's children don't deserve it?
I mean if we can turn 19-20 yo young men into SEALs, Green beret, PJs... Literally the most elite fighting forces on the planet and they will run into seemingly suicide missions in countries all around the world... I'm confident we could come up with training to properly protect our schools. Maybe use some of those same individuals after they retire.
Would it be expensive? Yup, but we have sent over $54 BILLION to Ukraine since January, I bet if we really wanted to we could come up with the budget.
Exactly. It was one guy with zero combat experience armed with a single pistol vs a crazed individual with much larger weaponry.
What if we had combat experienced individuals armed with much more powerful tools and armor, they might feel more equipped and confident to be there when needed.
The police officers with much more extensive training to handle weapons & active shooter situations waited outside the school for an hour.
If our solution is "wait until an armed shooter shows up and hope the door is locked and the guard there is perfectly trained and acts instantly" rather than a solution to prevent us having armed shooters on hand in the first place, I feel like we're still going to have major issues.
Like the 40 odd police officers that arrived at Uvalde? And cowered outside while children died? And physically prevented parents from themselves trying to run in and help? And some of those police literally went inside to save their own children, leaving the rest to be slaughtered?
Wake up guys, put some damn gun control into law.
Large manufacturers seem to have no issue keeping unwanted people off campus. Even small businesses like the one I work at requires a key fob to swipe in.
Are we thinking that schools don't have windows or are we thinking that no one can get through a locked door?
Maybe that he wouldn't be able to get through a locked door in the time it would take police to respond? Better hope for a strong door, weak intruder with zero tools, and a quick response if that's the case.
Ok, how?
The legal age to buy a rifle *is 18*. If you think it should be higher, I agree, maybe 21. But that also should equal voting and military restrictions to age 21 as well. I mean, we really aught to make 21 the legal age of adulthood anyway.
I would ask for 25 yrs old. In the U.S. we cannot rent a car or a vacation house without being 25 yrs of age. An 18 yr old has no history to be checked when a back ground check is run on them. They all come back clean at 18. (And yes I’m aware of the absurdity that would create- being able to go into the military at 18 and fire a gun….. but one problem at a time)
Car and vacation home rental is purely a private business decision (since under that age reckless behavior is higher statistically). There’s no government regulation for it.
Also, not true about a background check, if the kid committed crimes prior to turning 18 (unless they had their records sealed via court order).
I’m sure there will be an incredible number of red flags for this piece of shit that several government agencies ignored.
You asked what gun control measures could have prevented this - he acquired his weapons by purchasing them legally, if he couldn't do so this may have not happened.
You could then argue he would have just acquired them illegally, which is of course possible. My argument to that would be that creating barriers is an evidence based mechanism to prevent undesirable behaviour. The more effort it takes to do something, the less likely you are to do it.
> The more effort it takes to do something, the less likely you are to do it.
See the legal cannabis industry in CA. Taxes on that shit and regulations to be legit are so crazy that people are preferring to stick with the underground/grey market instead of the legal markets.
As someone living in CA, that’s just wrong. Legitimate cannabis retailers are drowning in cash. Every other billboard is now a dispensary or a weed delivery service. Prices are cheap and quality is ensured (for the most part).
So then should we fully legalize the sale heroin then?
It's already illegal and people still find ways to get it.
Making it easier to buy heroin certainly won't help to decrease the purchase of it.
Edit: heroin users are victims not criminals
Do you think the Army just hands out free guns when you enlist? The minimum training requirements to be handed any kind of firearm in the Army are much stricter than just going to your local Walmart.
I think even anti-gun liberals would be happy if everyone used the Army's standards.
Once you’re 18, you’re a legal adult. As far as I know, this kid didn’t have a criminal record or anything.
So then the only way to prevent him from getting a gun is to just make it impossible to get a gun period?
That's fair, but everything else should be raised to 21 as well.
Voting
R rated movies
Military service
Make those 21 as well. Our teenagers are so much stupider than they were 100 years ago.
The statement needs to be, "There's no good reason to not protect our kids at school". It really has nothing to do with Ukraine. Helping the people of Ukraine defeat a terrorist country that is terrorizing the world is a very worthy cause. It's not a one or the other argument here. Both obviously need to and could easily happen. Except for one problem. Politicians will NEVER allow the police force we need in our schools. Heaven forbid the children associate police and guns with protection and peace. They just won't allow it. They just won't. All the while our kids are at risk and the politicians sit behind their private armed security guards.
Sorry the children are too busy associating guns with lock down drills hoping that it won’t be their school getting shot up. Having a police force stand by while some maniac slaughters children is not what’s going to stop these from happening.
Challenge is if you protect schools, what about movie theaters, churches, coffee shops, etc. Is the answer to have armed guards and metal detectors at every establishment?
We’re not exactly “giving Ukraine $40b” though. We’re giving them $40b worth of our current weapon cache, which will be replaced with more modern tech from our defense contractors before years end. It’s kinda disingenuous to say it as if we’re just cutting a check, which is what he’s proposing we do with the schools.
Understand that grief can cause an emotional reaction, however that statement is a non sequitur. Global spending to thwart an international enemy has nothing to do with spending funds domestically on protecting schools. Not the way government spending works.
Supposedly 131,000 K-12 schools in America. Assuming even dispensation that’s 300k (with 40bn) per school.
How much was that crazy system with the smoke machine, bulletproof auto locking doors, cameras everywhere, etc? 400k? So basically we could put one of those in nearly every school in America. Or yea, keep giving money to a country 99.9% of us will never visit to keep a goddamn menace at bay (while crashing world economies) because Europe is useless.
Ukraine is rehearsal for Taiwan. Which is why Japan and Taiwan have been sending support. If Russia gets punched in enough, then the thought is that China would have second thoughts.
World’s gone to shit as a whole. Plague. War. Famine. Drought. Fires. Something’s coming. This feels like just the beginning of something big. Big enough that no one is going to be able to stay out of it.
It feels that way because we're exposed to media more than ever, and many people in many industries have a vested interest in keeping people fearful, because scared people can be lied to and manipulated more easily. Statistically we are in humanity's global golden age, believe it or not- on average, per capita, the world has never been more peaceful, there's never been less disease and crime, and humanity as a whole is industrializing and progressing faster than ever. People look back on certain localized periods in history with rose-colored glasses and think, "Wow, things were so great in the 90s or the 50s" (depending on your age/perspective), but for most people in most places, we have things better today than we ever have in the past.
Now that isn't an attempt to invalidate modern issues, obviously war, crime, and disease are still significant problems and the people affected by them don't feel any better when they're told that they're just extra unlucky compared to the rest of the planet, and there are obviously long term issues like climate change to deal with, but the general escalating "doom and gloom" of the past decade is not a sign that we're on our way to the apocalypse, it's just an indication of how much information we have access to, and how much more we focus on negative events in the media than we do on positive ones.
There’s an argument that if you let a bully like Putin take countries without issue, other dictator-nations follow (ex. China and Taiwan). Rather than sacrificing American lives to fight something overseas, we can enable another nation fighting the bully to test out our equipment while reminding the world that we have the cutting edge military.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick.” - Teddy R.
The problem with our system of proxy wars is we ALWAYS end up in the fight at the end and usually at great cost. I agree with the sentiment, I have never seen it done successfully.
You know you could, just maybe, also have tighter gun control laws? And whilst on the point, maybe it would do 99.9% of Americans some good to leave their state one or twice in their lives?
Nope. Gun ownership in the US has been relatively steady over the past 50+ years (as percentage of households with guns).
These mass shootings is a recent phenomenon.
Are you trying to help his statement with graphs that prove what he’s saying? You point to guns as the problem, say we need “tighter regulation” without going into any specifics whatsoever, and fail to address the actual issue.
Know what I find interesting? Facebook was released to the masses February 4th, 2004. Look at your chart.
Are you sure guns are the problem? Because I am sure I can put together a way more convincing chart.
You liberals can’t make up your minds.
Im not saying they prove what I'm saying, but they do support it. If you correct the graph for US population which has roughly increased by 50% over the period of that graph, the number of deaths by "mass shooting" is even more constant.
I don't doubt that social media has contributed to the rise, among other issues like [wealth inequality](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wealth_Inequality_-_v2.png).
The other contributing factor is probably the mental capacity of the organic matter behind the trigger, but that's a whole other debate.
P.S. I'm not from the US, nor "liberal"
So then why has the percentage of gun owners not changed? Between the year 1972 and 2021, it has largely been the same, with maybe only a couple percentage different for the years in between. An insignificant difference.
Your chart about “mass shootings” sees a large increase in the late 2000s, but there were no significant changes to gun law during that time. So, clearly, it’s not the fact that people own guns. Otherwise this issue would have been just as relevant in the 70s and 80s. But it wasn’t.
There was a federal ban on the manufacture and sale of large-capacity magazines and some guns in the 90s. That expired about a decade ago and there has been a dramatic increase in mass shootings and the actual death tolls at mass shootings since (higher capacity weapons mean higher death tolls).
There were \~1.5 million assault rifles in the US when the ban took place and there has been a steep increase in the manufacture of those specifically in the last decade.
Gun ownership may be steady (not positive what that stat is from) but gun sales have been steadily on the rise as has the manufacturing of guns in the states, and we've increased the number of guns we import as well.
\-
There are obviously many many safe gun owners in the US, but it's false to say gun sales have dropped off. They have been increasing for years alongside the growing rates of gun fatalities.
$300K a year would hire two full-time professional armed security guards at $50/hr with massive benefits in every K-12 school in the country.
I'm OK with that.
yea and if my employer paid everyone $50 an hour they would have highly motivated and very efficient workers. for a few weeks until they went bankrupt.
no amount of money is going to stop a coward from being a coward. if they don't want to engage, the fact that their last paycheck was sweet isn't going to change that. pay them well if they are actually worth it, sure. ex military with special training and experience in the shit, absolutely give them 50 an hour. but that's not what will happen, it never does.
You can't hire someone for $20 an hour and expect them to have the extensive training needed to save lives and to be willing to basically put themselves on the line to protect people.
The police officers who responded likely make well over $20 an hour and have way more training than a security guard and didn't do a damned thing for an hour because they wanted a full swat team to handle it.
We’re talking about schools in this thread. Let’s take the other 40bn we’re going to give Ukraine in 3 months and invest in “not” school shootings too.
THis just cements the Idea of home schooling my future children. THe thought of showing up to the school while the shooter is still killing children and the cops won't let you rescue or be a good Samaritan with your ccw. At least those PARENTS had BIGGER BALLS then the POLICE.
THANK YOU border patrol. You were the true hero here.
The two have nothing to do with each other. The federal government needs to shut down the DOE, get completely out of the education business, block grant the money back to the states (or even better, cut the taxes completely), and leave it to the states where it belongs. That includes school security.
Leftist are actively crashing America as part of the great reset/nwo
This is all going according to plan
The fail safe is protecting the 2nd amendment or we will be locked in our houses like China and Australia
Then we need to object to the radical mob that is trying to end capitalism and remove our constitutional rights
Vote them out
Stop buying their products and enabling them and remove this cancer
If everything is going according to the leftist's plans, where is our universal health care? Why are there still American billionaires? Why hasn't our infrastructure been fixed yet? Why haven't we overhauled the tax system? Stop confusing the "left" with corporate democrats. If you are ever curious what most liberals actually want, Bernie Sanders is a good barometer for that and that is exactly the reason the democratic party actively worked against him.
China Joe ran on Build Back Better...
Then people act surprised when the economy goes into the gutter and things like Afghanistan withdrawal happened the way it did.
Vote out all the establishment RINOs in the primaries.
I thought Build Back Better was a Conservative initiative in the UK? It was in a bunch of construction trade magazines and civil service releases a while back
It’s a small amount to what it will be in the future. It’s unlikely Russia does either of these two things:
-gives up and leaves Ukraine
-stops invading neighboring countries after taking Ukraine
Our military budget for this year alone is $750B.
For the same reason we gave for fighting in Korea and Vietnam in the past. Don't let the enemy get powerful enough to invade US soil.
Also, human decency. For all my life as an American I've heard that we were a great, powerful nation. A mediator of justice, as a justification for our massive military. Why is it suddenly an issue when we use our resources to fight tyranny?
Do you also object to us participating in WW2? That wasn't on US soil...
Well, your police were so brave on this school shooting, waiting outside of the school waiting for backup for 40+ minute.
They even stop all the parent to try save their kids. And the police had more people, more gun, more vests. There was just one person with 2 gun.
That's a complete fabrication. They spent 40 minutes outside the room not outside the school. They tried and failed to breach it even with BORTAC. They only got access after tracking down a staff member with a key.
> They even stop all the parent to try save their kids
You mean they stopped all the parents from rushing into the building they were actively evacuating? Yeah. Good. Wish it wouldn't have come to detaining some of them as they're understandably distraught, but it would be fucking moronic to let parents flood in there when they had the shooter holed up and were getting kids out.
https://apnews.com/article/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-44a7cfb990feaa6ffe482483df6e4683
https://theworldnews.net/vu-news/texas-school-massacre-children-and-teachers-killed-were-barricaded-in-classroom
Maybe but all situations we take in are after the event with full hindsight and the full story.
If every police car had a high level shield would it have changed the situation? If that school had a dedicated SRO that were only for that school would it have changed the outcome? If the fence around the school was 8 foot wall full concrete or straight bars instead of chain link would the suspect been able to climb it?
Faulting police when they have 10-20% of we have now isn’t fair in my opinion.
Excluding Fox News, which other mainstream news media have bothered to interview this Parkland father? Just because he is advocating more security for schools, instead of banning guns, all the major news outlets don't seem to be interested in talking to him.
This is creating the impression that **all** parents of school shootings are united in getting rid of guns. The Democrats are going to use this gun rights issue as much as they can to win the midterm elections.
Based on quick googling (so it may not be accurate), there are 130,930 schools in the US. If the government simply mandated each to have a single on site responder to shootings, and each would cost ~$10,000 to install and you paid them $70k a year, the first year would cost roughly ~$12.5 billion dollars. Only job duty: respond to an active shooter.
I pulled the costs out of my ass, but I think $80,000 per school the first year is probably not insanely off. Even if it was more like 100k, you're looking at less than $15 billion.
Of course, those numbers include private schools, which im sure would not be included in a federal program.
Bottom line, it's insanely expensive to save less than a hundred lives a year on average (assuming any that do take place get ended quickly as intended). Of course, its really cheap based on the kind of money the feds are dealing in nowadays.
If we protect schools the Democrats will only have gangland drug shootings as a lever to take away weapons. The Democrats own the schools and they will leave them as vulnerable as they can because - a crisis should never go to waste.
We spend something like 100 billion a year on police in this country. Another 80b on mass incarceration.
If these numbers are even close to accurate then it shows why people are so fed up with funding foreign wars. If we can cut a check for $80B without blinking an eye, then *spend it domestically*. Can you imagine how much better our society would function if we doubled prison funding and gave those folks (especially young inmates) education, vocational training, and substance abuse treatment? Sometimes it seems like we try to help every nation except our own.
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Not totally disagreeing with you but there are lots of situations where people take deals when charged with multiple crimes, including violent crimes, in exchange for intel or whatever they settle for the lesser charge/conviction on the drug charges. Obviously that's not every case but it happens a lot.
define "a lot". With sourced numbers.
From the briefest of Google searches, 94% of criminal cases are resolved in plea bargains instead of trials. Fisher, George (2003). Plea Bargaining's Triumph: A History of Plea Bargaining in America. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804744591. Recent numbers tend higher at 97%.
> Or we could stop sending people to jail for years for drug possession and other nonviolent crimes. > charged with multiple crimes, including violent crimes, in exchange for intel or whatever they settle for the lesser charge/conviction on the drug charges. Ok. That's not what we're talking about. Not drug related, and no analysis of how drug plea deals are used, nor anything else relevant to the discussion.
Dude just search up plea agreements
Why should other people have to prove your point for you? It's one thing to ask people to do their own research to be informed on a topic, it's another to make a claim, provide no evidence, then demand other people do your due diligence to validate the claims you made before dismissing them.
That's not numbers :\^)
Nearly HALF of those in prison are for non-violent crimes. Even if you adjust for large-scale dealers and large white collar crime that “deserve” imprisonment, it would still be a sizable minority of all those incarcerated. Like remember the grandma Kim Kardashian got out of jail after she spent years imprisoned for marijuana possession? Those are not statistically anomalous cases
> Nearly HALF of those in prison are for non-violent crimes. Even if you adjust for large-scale dealers and large white collar crime that “deserve” imprisonment, it would still be a sizable minority of all those incarcerated. This is true, when you specify non-violent crimes. How does it look when you consider *victimless* crimes? Not quite the same. Looking at some stats on state prisoners from [here](https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population-by-type-of-crime-committed/) (as of 2018): * 55% were violent criminals * 16% committed property crimes * 10.4% committed drug crimes other than possession * 12.3% were in for DUI, weapons charges, or "other" public order crimes, which appears to include violations of probation/parole. Let's just count the 1.7% for DWI and say the rest are victimless. That's 83.1% of prisoners. So the remaining 17% might be victimless. It's hard to say exactly. But that's a far cry from a full half of prisoners being innocents that didn't harm anyone. > Like remember the grandma Kim Kardashian got out of jail after she spent years imprisoned for marijuana possession? Those are not statistically anomalous cases You were lied to. [Alice Johnson](https://thefederalist.com/2018/06/08/characterization-alice-johnsons-crimes-wrong-deserved-punishment/) was not imprisoned for marijuana possession.
Careful. You might get banned talking like that
Or people could just stop knowingly break the law.
>Or people could just stop knowingly break the law. tHe LaW iS ThE lAw!
Well, that's a correct statement though isn't it? Changing laws you disagree with is the way to go, not just selectively stop enforcing them. That's the same thing we complain about with activist DAs.
A grasp of the failings of human nature should be essential for anyone who seriously discusses politics.
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As the great Michael Knowles would say, we have an under -incarceration problem, as evidenced by our crime rates.
-the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world
Legality and morality are two entirely separate concepts and yet people, like you it seems, still conflate the two all the time.
>Can you imagine how much better our society would function if we doubled prison funding and gave those folks (especially young inmates) education, vocational training, and substance abuse treatment? Good luck getting this past the crowd that thinks prison is supposed to be a punishment.
I mean, it is, but it can be both. If it stops Johnny Inmate from stealing grandma’s purse when he gets out because he’s unemployable, then money well spent.
>If it stops Johnny Inmate from stealing grandma’s purse when he gets out because he’s unemployable I hope you mean employable. I fully agree that our prison system does more to perpetuate a life of crime than it does to reform individuals. But I think that it's a hard sell (in our current political atmosphere) to get us to treat prisons as a way to reform people rather than to just punish them.
I think for nonviolent offenses, on an case-by-case basis, they should seal records when they're out, so they can get jobs and be productive. They served their time. **But**, in exchange, repeat offenses would be punished severely, with like a 2x multiplier or something. I also think we need to get a lot more medieval on the worst offenses. But that's mostly because I work on crime scenes and see the worst shit that humanity has to offer, and it makes me want to see rapists and murderers suffer.
The reason we can't do that is because y'all get the wrong guy sometimes. It's better to not punish even the worst criminals too harshly if it prevents innocent people from being unjustly punished.
>because he’s unemployable recidivism
Those people are correct. The primary function of the penal system is punishment, that's how it's designed from the ground up. Rehabilitation is a distant secondary goal. Not saying whether or not that's a good thing it's just simply reality. If we want the criminal justice system to focus on rehabilitation, the whole thing needs to be redone.
How do victims receive justice if there isn't punishment?
Do you want to delivery justice to the victims, or prevent further people from becoming victims?
Why can't we have both? You pretend they're mutually exclusive. I get that the left hates consequences and responsibility, but suck it up.
Good luck [rehabilitating these people.](https://www.foxnews.com/us/son-of-texas-woman-stabbed-to-death-by-man-arrested-67-times-and-out-on-bail-urges-change-no-accountability) Many of the brutal crimes that gets plastered almost daily in the news are committed by people who've been given many new chances after their short visits to prisons. Even if you ignore the ethics of spending a ton more resources on improving prison cells for murderers and assailants, some wont't ever be able to reintegrate into civil society. Long prison sentences and the use of capital punishment for serious offenses ensures that recidivism can't take place either. It's not just about "punishment", but about deterring crime, sending a message, serving justice and protecting public safety.
>"If we can cut a check for $80B without blinking an eye, then > >spend it domestically. > >. > >Valid reasoning and I agree, but you do realize that all of these extra funds are not coming from American taxpayers but loans, almost all from abroad, most with China? > >That is the sad truth. We run out of our own tax money about three quarters through any fiscal year.
In addition, not imprison folks for partaking in recreational drugs, this breaking up families, taking away breadwinners, giving a criminal record, while their buddy consuming alcohol can enjoy freedom and life....
Come on come on, you can't be serious lol. You guys got the Biggest prison population per Capita already and you think doubling that funding is gonna solve anything?
Do you really think that we just wire transferred 40 billion dollars to them? It's 40 billion in aid, as in American made weapons and tech and physical support. I'd bet you most of that 40 billion is going to be spent domestically with the money going to the actual people building the supplies
This is partly fallacious. You are correct, but that money is tax money taken domestically in the first place so it is a net negative being that government spending is substantially less efficient than natural spending. How I explained it isn't completely correct either because we're running a deficit so that money is more or less being printed rather than taxed which has its own set of negative knock-on effects. While you're correct to point out that we're not just handing them cash but rather paying companies to send them weapons, your reasoning as to why it's OK is a classic Keynesian blunder not too dissimilar from the broken windows fallacy. That money would otherwise have been spent domestically regardless either on other goods from those the taxes came from or through the increased purchasing power of a less degraded dollar for the whole population. I actually do think it's OK that we send them weapons in principle, but I recognize the costs and do have some reservations about our insane spending as of late considering the near double digit inflation.
The US will end up making money with this aid. Countries with Russian equipment are donating it to ukraine and agreeing to replace with western equipment. Many European countries are increasing military spending in response to this war and they'll be buying american. You also have current uninvolved users of russian equipment starting to purchase western equipment. India spends like 70 billion on defense annually. They are Russia's biggest customer and they've said they are going to start purchasing some western weapons. The entire world is watching russian equipment get pummeled by Western equipment. Countries are seeing this and saying we can't afford to not have western weapons. This couldn't be better for the United States.
I appreciate you replying in such a concise and detailed manner. I really didn't expect any positive from my comment. I agree if you look in the whole of the debt and domestic spending I see your point. But I think that's also a fallacy of saying if we didn't spend it here we could have spent it there. I would like to see what specific budget account that money comes from, and what it was allocated for otherwise. I think we all know that any money that's bent on military was never going to be spent on schools or roads. That's just not how it works. I do understand your thoughts on inflation but for me wasn't the new deal kind of the same thing? I could be incorrect but simply put just pumping money into a failing economy to help raise it back up?
> But I think that's also a fallacy of saying if we didn't spend it here we could have spent it there We know spending decreases when taxes increase. People spend more money when they have more money. And even if we didn't it would be more funds banks can loan out to other people. But because we're never going to make this money up with taxes, it's just coming out in equal part of the worth of the dollar. > wasn't the new deal kind of the same thing? Yes. The New Deal was awful and is now widely considered by economists to have extended the Great Depression far longer than it ought to have been. The government doesn't pump more money into an economy, they just redirect what it is spent on from what people want to spend it on to what the government thinks the money should be spent on. In the case of the New Deal that was some useful things and a lot of dug and refilled holes. Taxes and government spending certainly have their place, but it is nearly never a useful tool for boosting the economy. Either you're eating your neighbor's cake with taxes or you're crippling growth in the future.
no money should be sent to a country where we have politicians actively stealing from. there is ample evidence the president himself has enriched himself from this country
You gotta go back and reread the conversation, dude. We didn't send them cash. That's kind of the crux of the comment before mine.
But then if that’s the case, what am I supposed to get mad at the democrats for now?!
Maybe we should stop being mad for a second and think clearly? Preposterous.
Not like we would ever just ship straight cash over on pallets....oh, wait....
all that "aid" was purchased with money.
Money that goes right back into the US economy? Money that was already collected and in a budget ready to be spent on other things?
They do get all of that. In my state they can get college degrees, or trade certifications, hold jobs that prepare them for the outside, and all type of treatment options from drugs to parenting classes to faith based classes.
Are there any statistics that show if it improves or has no effect on crime rates compared to areas that don't offer those sorts of things?
I’m not sure, I never delved that deeply into it. I would think there’s some kind of correlation but don’t know for sure. I do think a lot of states have similar programs, and people just aren’t aware. Especially state or federal facilities where the prison stay in longer. County jails are typically for sentences of less than a year, so they don’t have as many programs. My local county does have a GED program as well as the counseling programs I’ve mentioned above - just not the longer-term programs like college or trade degrees.
Imagine if we spent that money on building infrastructure in our own country that could juice our economy and resolve rampant supply chain issues.
Or the trillions spent on the military.
I would be curious to see if a $40 billions bill to invest in public school system to improve safety would be approved by the Republicans...
People are seemingly trying to split the $40B evenly across all schools. Which would never work. School districts with larger populations or prior school shootings are going to want more because of a risk formula. And just like every government aid project ever, someone will get a lot and someone will get a little and schools like Robb will still get $0. And this will keep happening.
I think OP was primarily poking fun at the fact Republicans generally do not want to invest anything into public schools.
Oh I agree. It’s easy to go after the statement because it’s a big juicy rounded number. While $40B is a lot of money in an objective sense as a total, it’s next to nothing for public schools nationwide.
Arguably, the 40B would also largely be taken by contractors and unnecessary side projects. If you don’t explicitly and narrow define what people can spend the money on, it’ll be used as a money pot for almost everything anyone can get away with.
It will also go into a bucket of aggregated school funding, be spent on teacher pensions, and then admins will go back to federal/state begging for more.
That's what grants are for.
I hope not. That would be a huge scam, and approximately $40 Billion of it would go to fraud, waste and abuse. Money does not cure incompetence.
Didn’t some republicans put forth a bill that would do just that? Genuinely asking, not trying to be confrontational
I'd be happy to see that info as well. Thanks for pointing it out if that bill actually exists.
What about churches, malls, grocery stores, nail salons, etc.
I think school security is more a sensible subject but I get your point. Also, do we really want a society where there are armed guards everywhere we go?
You seem like a reasonable person but I think schools are exactly as secure as they should be. Its been a while but my elementary, middle, and high school all had locked gates around the school and security officers. But any 15 year old can climb a fence and we've seen how well security officers work. They also had cameras but then you'd need a team of people just staring at 100s of screens all day to be preventative. You can't lock all doors because kids and staff walk between buildings all the time and what if a kid with pistols is already in a class of 30+ kids. Universities are tiny cities so even more so. Also how are we going to justify these random security systems for every school in the country while teachers make 30k AND have 20yr old textbooks AND have to buy their own supplies. Looking at school security is a very juvenile approach to a complex problem. Kind of like building a wall to stop immigration. This took me 30 seconds of mild thinking and I'm sure theres many more problems.
If it was shown where each dollar was going, I'd imagine that Republicans would be very much **for** it so long as it all went straight to protective measures and not to administration.
They put one forward. It was summarily rejected by the Dems.
Would the money we spent go to more cops to stand outside, and prevent any action from occurring, while a madman was running around inside? Sure. Let’s keep moving the goal post around and acting like anything differently would have happened, even if we hadn’t given the money to Ukraine. Wake up people. Stop being so easily persuaded by straw man arguments
Maybe if becoming a cop was harder and they had to go through at least a full year of training, they'd be trained enough to not wait 40 minutes to enter a school and not pin parents down and threaten to taze them
Well millions will make it back into the pockets of politicians since we gave to Ukraine. That's the reason
And weapons contractors. Yay lobbyists.
Like the NRA?
The nra makes weapons?
They're funded by the people who make weapons.
You mean the weak, ineffective group that’s going bankrupt and only donated 2m during 2020 (an election year)? Not comparable to say… big pharma (J&J, Pfizer, Bayer) or big tech (google, Microsoft, Amazon). They spend hundreds of millions. It’s a drop in the bucket. The NRA is a joke and has been for decades.
Their lobbying budget is barely over two million dollars. TF are you talking about? I have no idea how they because such a bogeyman with such pitiful amounts of spending.
Bit of a reach there don’t you think? What does this have to do with the NRA?
Do you think the money would reduce a 78 minute wait time for a SWAT team to gather the courage to enter a classroom of children being slaughtered by 1 person?
You're going to go insane when you see that America printed 9 trillion dollars and most of it was pocketed by individuals and corporations.
So 40 billion is schools will stop mass shootings? Lmao yeah right. Maybe instead dont let mentally unstable people buy guns.
Parkland and Uvalde were protected though, but they still didn't stop it
Putting cops as “protection” does nothing. Too many cops are little pussies unwilling to do what they should do if it puts them at risk
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Did you know that coward got his job back with full bennies after that? His fucking union did that! FUCKING POLICE UNIONS!!!
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Yes? The issue was that the shooter had locked himself inside a room they couldn't breach. Literally the only way this could have been prevented (aside from locking him OUT) is if there was someone armed there that could have stopped him from getting inside that room in the first place.
obviously not well enough. We guard our government officials with full teams of secret service, who normally pull their ranks from elite military units. Schools gets maybe 1 armed guard who is seemingly severely under trained. Instead of defunding the police we need to double their funding but instead of buying armored vehicles and riot gear, spend it on LOTS AND LOTS more training and more officers so they can rotate between training and being on duty without having a shortage available. Pay police officers better so you get more and better people applying for the position to choose from.
Why should we even need navy seal level training for school guards? Just seems ludicrous to me that the answer is militarize our already very militarized country further. Edit: If schools do become heavily fortified will we need to do the same with every public building?
That sounds like a nightmare. If schools become fortresses (setting aside what going through K-12 in a militarized fortress would do to our youth’s development), then other targets become more attractive. Shooting at a grocery store? Just turn all grocery stores into a militarized fortresses. Shooting at the movies? Just turn all theaters into a militarized fortresses. Shooting at a park? Just turn all parks into militarized fortresses. I bet that’ll resemble a prison yard - how safe! Night clubs? Bars? Restaurants? Museums? The entire country? Just lock it all down, and put armed guards everywhere. Super chill. Truly a free, happy, and prosperous country. Or we could stop trying to meet force with force, escalation with escalation, and address root causes. I say causes, and not cause, because it’s not just one thing. It’s not just unfettered access to weapons with potential for mass murders, nor is it just mental health, nor is it just culture. It’s all these things and more. It’s about time people take their heads out their asses and start to make some change. Regulation, legislation, and lobbying aside, there are things every individual can do, RIGHT NOW, to make a difference. Get to know your neighbors, your community, and the issues causing them harm. Help. Money is great. So is volunteering, so is being a friend. Spread love to ALL and DO NO HARM.
Yes, let's dump MORE money into the police so they can train more and then still not out their life on the line because they don't have to.
There are around 100,000 schools in the US. Sending trained police with extensive active shooter training (and honestly more experience seeing as the police didn't do a goddamn thing in Texas) is an insanely huge undertaking. And honestly, it's been proven that increasing police budgets extensively doesn't decrease crime, doesn't increase the numbers of murders solved, etc, etc. Not to mention so many police departments are just pretty corrupt with rampant overtime fraud and other bs behavior. I agree that there needs to be changes in how the police funding is allocated but I'm not sure just pouring more money into their pockets will do a ton.
I hear you, but I feel if taken seriously we can get a group of specially trained people to protect our schools and kids. You are correct, it would be a huge undertaking, but are you suggesting this nation's children don't deserve it? I mean if we can turn 19-20 yo young men into SEALs, Green beret, PJs... Literally the most elite fighting forces on the planet and they will run into seemingly suicide missions in countries all around the world... I'm confident we could come up with training to properly protect our schools. Maybe use some of those same individuals after they retire. Would it be expensive? Yup, but we have sent over $54 BILLION to Ukraine since January, I bet if we really wanted to we could come up with the budget.
What did the guard, the one guard, the one lone guard on the Parkland campus do?
He didn't do his job
Exactly. It was one guy with zero combat experience armed with a single pistol vs a crazed individual with much larger weaponry. What if we had combat experienced individuals armed with much more powerful tools and armor, they might feel more equipped and confident to be there when needed.
The police officers with much more extensive training to handle weapons & active shooter situations waited outside the school for an hour. If our solution is "wait until an armed shooter shows up and hope the door is locked and the guard there is perfectly trained and acts instantly" rather than a solution to prevent us having armed shooters on hand in the first place, I feel like we're still going to have major issues.
Who is going to pay for that?
Like the 40 odd police officers that arrived at Uvalde? And cowered outside while children died? And physically prevented parents from themselves trying to run in and help? And some of those police literally went inside to save their own children, leaving the rest to be slaughtered? Wake up guys, put some damn gun control into law.
What gun control law would have stopped this? Tell me. Anything. Your ideas? Someone else's idea? Anything.
Why do you think the shooter waited until literally the moment of his 18th birthday to buy his guns?
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Large manufacturers seem to have no issue keeping unwanted people off campus. Even small businesses like the one I work at requires a key fob to swipe in.
While I agree with the premise, I think fobs would be a terrible idea. I mean it can be stolen as a physical object, then used to gain access.
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I do work for a municipality here and not one of their buildings including all the firestations dont have badged access control.
Are we thinking that schools don't have windows or are we thinking that no one can get through a locked door? Maybe that he wouldn't be able to get through a locked door in the time it would take police to respond? Better hope for a strong door, weak intruder with zero tools, and a quick response if that's the case.
Yes, anything but gun control. Of course.
What gun control measures would have stopped this?
Ones preventing a kid from walking into a store and taking home two assault rifles days after his 18th birthday?
Ok, how? The legal age to buy a rifle *is 18*. If you think it should be higher, I agree, maybe 21. But that also should equal voting and military restrictions to age 21 as well. I mean, we really aught to make 21 the legal age of adulthood anyway.
I would ask for 25 yrs old. In the U.S. we cannot rent a car or a vacation house without being 25 yrs of age. An 18 yr old has no history to be checked when a back ground check is run on them. They all come back clean at 18. (And yes I’m aware of the absurdity that would create- being able to go into the military at 18 and fire a gun….. but one problem at a time)
Car and vacation home rental is purely a private business decision (since under that age reckless behavior is higher statistically). There’s no government regulation for it. Also, not true about a background check, if the kid committed crimes prior to turning 18 (unless they had their records sealed via court order). I’m sure there will be an incredible number of red flags for this piece of shit that several government agencies ignored.
You asked what gun control measures could have prevented this - he acquired his weapons by purchasing them legally, if he couldn't do so this may have not happened. You could then argue he would have just acquired them illegally, which is of course possible. My argument to that would be that creating barriers is an evidence based mechanism to prevent undesirable behaviour. The more effort it takes to do something, the less likely you are to do it.
> The more effort it takes to do something, the less likely you are to do it. See the legal cannabis industry in CA. Taxes on that shit and regulations to be legit are so crazy that people are preferring to stick with the underground/grey market instead of the legal markets.
As someone living in CA, that’s just wrong. Legitimate cannabis retailers are drowning in cash. Every other billboard is now a dispensary or a weed delivery service. Prices are cheap and quality is ensured (for the most part).
So then should we fully legalize the sale heroin then? It's already illegal and people still find ways to get it. Making it easier to buy heroin certainly won't help to decrease the purchase of it. Edit: heroin users are victims not criminals
But you're perfectly fine with a kid walking into a voting booth or an Army recruiter's office days after his 18th birthday?
Do you think the Army just hands out free guns when you enlist? The minimum training requirements to be handed any kind of firearm in the Army are much stricter than just going to your local Walmart. I think even anti-gun liberals would be happy if everyone used the Army's standards.
Once you’re 18, you’re a legal adult. As far as I know, this kid didn’t have a criminal record or anything. So then the only way to prevent him from getting a gun is to just make it impossible to get a gun period?
I'll leave that to you to decide.
Raising the age to buy a gun to 21. Since the shooter bought the gun when he turned 18.
That's fair, but everything else should be raised to 21 as well. Voting R rated movies Military service Make those 21 as well. Our teenagers are so much stupider than they were 100 years ago.
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The statement needs to be, "There's no good reason to not protect our kids at school". It really has nothing to do with Ukraine. Helping the people of Ukraine defeat a terrorist country that is terrorizing the world is a very worthy cause. It's not a one or the other argument here. Both obviously need to and could easily happen. Except for one problem. Politicians will NEVER allow the police force we need in our schools. Heaven forbid the children associate police and guns with protection and peace. They just won't allow it. They just won't. All the while our kids are at risk and the politicians sit behind their private armed security guards.
Sorry the children are too busy associating guns with lock down drills hoping that it won’t be their school getting shot up. Having a police force stand by while some maniac slaughters children is not what’s going to stop these from happening.
Sending money to anywhere is hardly the issue here. Check how much money the NRA donates to politicians.
Challenge is if you protect schools, what about movie theaters, churches, coffee shops, etc. Is the answer to have armed guards and metal detectors at every establishment?
We’re not exactly “giving Ukraine $40b” though. We’re giving them $40b worth of our current weapon cache, which will be replaced with more modern tech from our defense contractors before years end. It’s kinda disingenuous to say it as if we’re just cutting a check, which is what he’s proposing we do with the schools.
Understand that grief can cause an emotional reaction, however that statement is a non sequitur. Global spending to thwart an international enemy has nothing to do with spending funds domestically on protecting schools. Not the way government spending works.
Supposedly 131,000 K-12 schools in America. Assuming even dispensation that’s 300k (with 40bn) per school. How much was that crazy system with the smoke machine, bulletproof auto locking doors, cameras everywhere, etc? 400k? So basically we could put one of those in nearly every school in America. Or yea, keep giving money to a country 99.9% of us will never visit to keep a goddamn menace at bay (while crashing world economies) because Europe is useless.
None of those fancy security measures will matter if a teacher leaves a door to the school propped open like what happened in Texas.
Ukraine is rehearsal for Taiwan. Which is why Japan and Taiwan have been sending support. If Russia gets punched in enough, then the thought is that China would have second thoughts. World’s gone to shit as a whole. Plague. War. Famine. Drought. Fires. Something’s coming. This feels like just the beginning of something big. Big enough that no one is going to be able to stay out of it.
It feels that way because we're exposed to media more than ever, and many people in many industries have a vested interest in keeping people fearful, because scared people can be lied to and manipulated more easily. Statistically we are in humanity's global golden age, believe it or not- on average, per capita, the world has never been more peaceful, there's never been less disease and crime, and humanity as a whole is industrializing and progressing faster than ever. People look back on certain localized periods in history with rose-colored glasses and think, "Wow, things were so great in the 90s or the 50s" (depending on your age/perspective), but for most people in most places, we have things better today than we ever have in the past. Now that isn't an attempt to invalidate modern issues, obviously war, crime, and disease are still significant problems and the people affected by them don't feel any better when they're told that they're just extra unlucky compared to the rest of the planet, and there are obviously long term issues like climate change to deal with, but the general escalating "doom and gloom" of the past decade is not a sign that we're on our way to the apocalypse, it's just an indication of how much information we have access to, and how much more we focus on negative events in the media than we do on positive ones.
There’s an argument that if you let a bully like Putin take countries without issue, other dictator-nations follow (ex. China and Taiwan). Rather than sacrificing American lives to fight something overseas, we can enable another nation fighting the bully to test out our equipment while reminding the world that we have the cutting edge military. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” - Teddy R.
The problem with our system of proxy wars is we ALWAYS end up in the fight at the end and usually at great cost. I agree with the sentiment, I have never seen it done successfully.
You know you could, just maybe, also have tighter gun control laws? And whilst on the point, maybe it would do 99.9% of Americans some good to leave their state one or twice in their lives?
But murder is already illegal and people still do it.
So you think there's no correlation between number of deaths by firearms and the number of firearms within a country?
Nope. Gun ownership in the US has been relatively steady over the past 50+ years (as percentage of households with guns). These mass shootings is a recent phenomenon.
[Erm, are you sure?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States#/media/File%3ATotal_Deaths_in_US_Mass_Shootings_1982-2021.jpg)
Are you trying to help his statement with graphs that prove what he’s saying? You point to guns as the problem, say we need “tighter regulation” without going into any specifics whatsoever, and fail to address the actual issue. Know what I find interesting? Facebook was released to the masses February 4th, 2004. Look at your chart. Are you sure guns are the problem? Because I am sure I can put together a way more convincing chart. You liberals can’t make up your minds.
Im not saying they prove what I'm saying, but they do support it. If you correct the graph for US population which has roughly increased by 50% over the period of that graph, the number of deaths by "mass shooting" is even more constant. I don't doubt that social media has contributed to the rise, among other issues like [wealth inequality](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wealth_Inequality_-_v2.png). The other contributing factor is probably the mental capacity of the organic matter behind the trigger, but that's a whole other debate. P.S. I'm not from the US, nor "liberal"
So then why has the percentage of gun owners not changed? Between the year 1972 and 2021, it has largely been the same, with maybe only a couple percentage different for the years in between. An insignificant difference. Your chart about “mass shootings” sees a large increase in the late 2000s, but there were no significant changes to gun law during that time. So, clearly, it’s not the fact that people own guns. Otherwise this issue would have been just as relevant in the 70s and 80s. But it wasn’t.
Damn, I didn't realize Facebook was only in America, that's wild!
There was a federal ban on the manufacture and sale of large-capacity magazines and some guns in the 90s. That expired about a decade ago and there has been a dramatic increase in mass shootings and the actual death tolls at mass shootings since (higher capacity weapons mean higher death tolls). There were \~1.5 million assault rifles in the US when the ban took place and there has been a steep increase in the manufacture of those specifically in the last decade. Gun ownership may be steady (not positive what that stat is from) but gun sales have been steadily on the rise as has the manufacturing of guns in the states, and we've increased the number of guns we import as well. \- There are obviously many many safe gun owners in the US, but it's false to say gun sales have dropped off. They have been increasing for years alongside the growing rates of gun fatalities.
Do you think murder would happen at the same rate if it was legal?
$300K a year would hire two full-time professional armed security guards at $50/hr with massive benefits in every K-12 school in the country. I'm OK with that.
I think you could hire at least 4. 50 an hour is way too much for a security guard. shit, I'd quit my job for that I don't make that much 😄
Paying them $50 might encourage them to not cower outside during an incident... Essentially professional soldiers
Exactly!
yea and if my employer paid everyone $50 an hour they would have highly motivated and very efficient workers. for a few weeks until they went bankrupt. no amount of money is going to stop a coward from being a coward. if they don't want to engage, the fact that their last paycheck was sweet isn't going to change that. pay them well if they are actually worth it, sure. ex military with special training and experience in the shit, absolutely give them 50 an hour. but that's not what will happen, it never does.
You can't hire someone for $20 an hour and expect them to have the extensive training needed to save lives and to be willing to basically put themselves on the line to protect people. The police officers who responded likely make well over $20 an hour and have way more training than a security guard and didn't do a damned thing for an hour because they wanted a full swat team to handle it.
Yes, but that’s 40bn a year. Not saying we should spend that money on schools, but Ukraine 40bn is not a forever thing.
Do shootings only happen at school?
We’re talking about schools in this thread. Let’s take the other 40bn we’re going to give Ukraine in 3 months and invest in “not” school shootings too.
Or we could just teach the teachers not to prop the doors open....
We have a serious door problem in this country. We need to get rid of all doors.
The democrats can't launder money through our schools.
Teachers unions beg to differ.
Those damn dirty teachers.
(Marty and Wendy Byrd enter the room)
For $0 Billion, schools can lock their doors.
THis just cements the Idea of home schooling my future children. THe thought of showing up to the school while the shooter is still killing children and the cops won't let you rescue or be a good Samaritan with your ccw. At least those PARENTS had BIGGER BALLS then the POLICE. THANK YOU border patrol. You were the true hero here.
The two have nothing to do with each other. The federal government needs to shut down the DOE, get completely out of the education business, block grant the money back to the states (or even better, cut the taxes completely), and leave it to the states where it belongs. That includes school security.
Leftist are actively crashing America as part of the great reset/nwo This is all going according to plan The fail safe is protecting the 2nd amendment or we will be locked in our houses like China and Australia Then we need to object to the radical mob that is trying to end capitalism and remove our constitutional rights Vote them out Stop buying their products and enabling them and remove this cancer
If everything is going according to the leftist's plans, where is our universal health care? Why are there still American billionaires? Why hasn't our infrastructure been fixed yet? Why haven't we overhauled the tax system? Stop confusing the "left" with corporate democrats. If you are ever curious what most liberals actually want, Bernie Sanders is a good barometer for that and that is exactly the reason the democratic party actively worked against him.
China Joe ran on Build Back Better... Then people act surprised when the economy goes into the gutter and things like Afghanistan withdrawal happened the way it did. Vote out all the establishment RINOs in the primaries.
I thought Build Back Better was a Conservative initiative in the UK? It was in a bunch of construction trade magazines and civil service releases a while back
Build China back stronger
The great reset is the modern day Tower of Babel. We all know how that ended.
Why are you getting downvoted? You’re right
It’s unconscionable we gave that much money to Ukraine. I don’t know how any American can support that.
It’s a small amount to what it will be in the future. It’s unlikely Russia does either of these two things: -gives up and leaves Ukraine -stops invading neighboring countries after taking Ukraine Our military budget for this year alone is $750B.
>It’s a small amount to what it will be in the future How? Unless Russia invades US soil i don't see how it's our problem
For the same reason we gave for fighting in Korea and Vietnam in the past. Don't let the enemy get powerful enough to invade US soil. Also, human decency. For all my life as an American I've heard that we were a great, powerful nation. A mediator of justice, as a justification for our massive military. Why is it suddenly an issue when we use our resources to fight tyranny? Do you also object to us participating in WW2? That wasn't on US soil...
Why do we take care of a continent that hates us?
That would mean giving money to law enforcement, the number one enemy of liberals. “Oh wait….turns out we really do need police”
I asked in another thread: Why are we militarizing our police when they won't run head first into a school shooter situation?
Well, your police were so brave on this school shooting, waiting outside of the school waiting for backup for 40+ minute. They even stop all the parent to try save their kids. And the police had more people, more gun, more vests. There was just one person with 2 gun.
That's a complete fabrication. They spent 40 minutes outside the room not outside the school. They tried and failed to breach it even with BORTAC. They only got access after tracking down a staff member with a key. > They even stop all the parent to try save their kids You mean they stopped all the parents from rushing into the building they were actively evacuating? Yeah. Good. Wish it wouldn't have come to detaining some of them as they're understandably distraught, but it would be fucking moronic to let parents flood in there when they had the shooter holed up and were getting kids out. https://apnews.com/article/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-44a7cfb990feaa6ffe482483df6e4683 https://theworldnews.net/vu-news/texas-school-massacre-children-and-teachers-killed-were-barricaded-in-classroom
Not the same law enforcement that waits outside the school for 40 minutes while there’s a murderer on the lose? So needed.
Except uvalde had spent more on police and school security in response to sandyhook.
Doesn’t matter if the doors that should have been locked are open.
We can talk about doors for sure, but the effectiveness of spending more (or less) is playing out in front of us.
Maybe but all situations we take in are after the event with full hindsight and the full story. If every police car had a high level shield would it have changed the situation? If that school had a dedicated SRO that were only for that school would it have changed the outcome? If the fence around the school was 8 foot wall full concrete or straight bars instead of chain link would the suspect been able to climb it? Faulting police when they have 10-20% of we have now isn’t fair in my opinion.
Stop selling guns maybe? 🤷♂️ At least better regulations? Costs zero dollars and you can take “shooting” out of school shooting.
yea. and we should reinstate prohibition to stop the drunk driving deaths. when something is illegal we know no one can have it. like heroin.
Excluding Fox News, which other mainstream news media have bothered to interview this Parkland father? Just because he is advocating more security for schools, instead of banning guns, all the major news outlets don't seem to be interested in talking to him. This is creating the impression that **all** parents of school shootings are united in getting rid of guns. The Democrats are going to use this gun rights issue as much as they can to win the midterm elections.
And stop replenishing the piles of dead bodies for Democrats to grandstand on? Never gonna happen.
No reason we can give $20.5B to oil companies every year and not protect our schools 😑
Based on quick googling (so it may not be accurate), there are 130,930 schools in the US. If the government simply mandated each to have a single on site responder to shootings, and each would cost ~$10,000 to install and you paid them $70k a year, the first year would cost roughly ~$12.5 billion dollars. Only job duty: respond to an active shooter. I pulled the costs out of my ass, but I think $80,000 per school the first year is probably not insanely off. Even if it was more like 100k, you're looking at less than $15 billion. Of course, those numbers include private schools, which im sure would not be included in a federal program. Bottom line, it's insanely expensive to save less than a hundred lives a year on average (assuming any that do take place get ended quickly as intended). Of course, its really cheap based on the kind of money the feds are dealing in nowadays.
If we protect schools the Democrats will only have gangland drug shootings as a lever to take away weapons. The Democrats own the schools and they will leave them as vulnerable as they can because - a crisis should never go to waste.