Current Events > Columbine survivor introduces bill to expand concealed-carry in schools

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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/19/columbine-survivor-bill-concealed-carry-schools/

DENVER Some students are calling for tougher gun-control laws after escaping last weeks horrific massacre in Parkland, Florida, but another school-shooting survivor is going in a different direction.

Colorado House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, who attended Columbine High School at the time of the 1999 mass shooting, has again introduced legislation to remove limitations on concealed carry in K-12 schools.

Under state law, concealed-carry permit holders may bring firearms onto school property, but must keep them locked inside their vehicles.

Mr. Neville, who has introduced the bill annually since he was elected in 2014, said the current law creates a so-called gun free zone in every K-12 public school.

This act would allow every law-abiding citizens who holds a concealed carry permit, issued from their chief law-enforcement officer, the right to carry concealed in order to defend themselves and most importantly our children from the worst-case scenarios, Mr. Neville said in a statement.

The Republican lawmaker has argued that more of his classmates would have survived the attack if some faculty had been armed. Twelve students and one teacher were killed by two teen gunmen at the high school in Littleton, Colorado.

As a former Columbine student who was a sophomore during the shootings on April 20, 1999, I will do everything in my power to prevent Colorado families from enduring the hardships my classmates and I faced that day, Mr. Neville said. Time and time again we point to the one common theme with mass shootings, they occur in gun-free zones.

A hearing on the bill, which stands little chance of passage in the Democrat-controlled House, is slated for Tuesday.

Of course democrats will fight this tooth and nail because all they care about is disarming citizens.
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So the bill is give everyone guns?
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The US needs less guns, not more guns. Only an idiot would think otherwise.
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Good.
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Republicans way of supporting schools and teachers is to cut funding and allow guns on the school premises.
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We should just ship more guns to Mexico and the Middle East to get rid of them.
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GregShmedley posted...

Chicken posted...

The US needs less guns, not more guns. Only an idiot would think otherwise.

This right here is part of why there can't be a proper conversation about gun rights.

"Think like me or you're an idiot!!!"

I'm not saying more guns is the solution, but less guns isn't one either.

But it clearly is. You dont see mass shootings like this anywhere in the world because no where else in the world has that many guns.
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iPhone_7 posted...

Republicans way of supporting schools and teachers is to cut funding and allow guns on the school premises.

Because making schools gun free has been so beneficial
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Time and time again we point to the one common theme with mass shootings, they occur in gun-free zones.

I can think of at least two other common themes with mass shootings. Hint: they're both in the name.
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Why can't responsible K-12 kids conceal carry at school? Let's enforce that next.
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When someone was involved in or related to someone involved in a mass shooting mentions increased gun control, reform, or "common sense gun laws", the right dismisses it and argues it's in poor taste, that they're just politicizing a tragedy and are speaking from emotion.

When one happens to feel the other way, they're immediately given a soap box and it becomes "see, even someone who was at Columbine agrees we need more good guys with guns! It's common sense laws!"
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Instead of buying new printers and paper, we should buy kelvar vests and helmets for everyone!!!11!1!1

Might as well play real life pubg
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The good guy with a gun is simply a hero's fantasy. This is a bad solution to a gun problem because wanting untrained civs to engage the situation instead of relying on the people's whose job is to handle this situation is dumb and will cause more harm.
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Chicken posted...

You dont see mass shootings like this anywhere in the world

It does happen in other places in the world first of all. That aside, instead you see machete wielding maniacs, suicide bombers, traditional bombings, acid attacks, and people ramming crowds with vehicles all on a normal basis. Guess what, no matter the location, sick fucks will always find ways to be sick fucks.
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This guy needed to talk about his proposal while crying. Then Democrats would have supported him.
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Chicken posted...

The US needs less guns, not more guns. Only an idiot would think otherwise.

Theres 36 million guns in the us. Lets think of solutions based on reality. Because the lets focus on how many guns or banning them is a waste of time and keeps getting people killed. We protect politicians, prisoners, money, etc with guns but dont want to protect children with guns? Fuck off, grow up and contribute to saving lives. Dont listen to high schoolers who dont know shit regurgitating leftist propaganda and blame the NRA. typical use of the ignorant and uniformed to push an agenda on the backs of slain children.
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voldothegr8 posted...

Chicken posted...

You dont see mass shootings like this anywhere in the world

It does happen in other places in the world first of all. That aside, instead you see machete wielding maniacs, suicide bombers, traditional bombings, acid attacks, and people ramming crowds with vehicles all on a normal basis. Guess what, no matter the location, sick fucks will always find ways to be sick fucks.

Machetes don't kill nearly as easily as guns, most of the components for bombs are regulated, acid doesn't usually kill it permanently scars and maims if treated right away and oh it's not exactly easy to acquire, vehicles are heavily regulated.

You can't say "they will find another way" if those other ways have preventions, regulations or aren't as effective. Guns in the US don't even have their ownership tracked, nor can they be in some states.

GregShmedley posted...

Gamer99z posted...

When someone was involved in or related to someone involved in a mass shooting mentions increased gun control, reform, or "common sense gun laws", the right dismisses it and argues it's in poor taste, that they're just politicizing a tragedy and are speaking from emotion.

When one happens to feel the other way, they're immediately given a soap box and it becomes "see, even someone who was at Columbine agrees we need more good guys with guns! It's common sense laws!"

This could be flipped around for the other side as well, you know.

There's a reason I put "common sense" in quotes for the other side too. Both act like it's a black and white issue when it isn't, both act like being a victim of something or being involved in something suddenly makes you an expert on the subject and how it should be legislated. But with the rise of the right bitching about the left's hypocrisy and more often then not the victims and their families usually making some kind of pro gun reform statement after the event it makes it even funnier in this specific instance that they don't see their own hypocrisy.
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GregShmedley posted...

This right here is part of why there can't be a proper conversation about gun rights.

"Think like me or you're an idiot!!!"

I'm not saying more guns is the solution, but less guns isn't one either.

Yet less guns works in Australia ,Japan , fuck even Russia.
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So the solution to stop school shootings is to have guns locked inside your car?
Please wait Mr. Shooter, I will just have to run out to my car, fiddle with my keys while trying to unlock it, grab my gun, run back here and stop you from killing anybody, mmmkay?
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Foppe posted...

So the solution to stop school shootings is to have guns locked inside your car?

no. the article (in the OP) states that this is how things currently work and is the exact root of the problem, according to the author.
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i would prefer to eliminate guns from schools via metal detectors instead of adding more.

i understand that the idea is that armed teachers could subdue an attacker faster than law enforcement. true, that could happen. another possible outcome is that the teacher(s) and the gunman/gunmen get into a firefight and even more bullets are fired causing additional loss of life.

i don't see such an obvious downside to metal detectors.
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Asherlee10 posted...

Spooking posted...

Guns have been around for decades and we haven't had this level of mass shootings before. It was a rarity back in the day. What changed? The culture did.

I tend to agree that we had a culture shift and it is playing a role in this. I also believe that poor mental health + lack of mental health options + social stigmas + poor parenting is a formula for this, but this is just a layman observation.

If mental health was actually the problem. The US would have significantly more mental issues than other countries which it doesn't.

The US has decided to move away from safe gun ownership to please gun manufacturers who want to sell more guns.
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Asherlee10 posted...

Spooking posted...

Guns have been around for decades and we haven't had this level of mass shootings before. It was a rarity back in the day. What changed? The culture did.

I tend to agree that we had a culture shift and it is playing a role in this. I also believe that poor mental health + lack of mental health options + social stigmas + poor parenting is a formula for this, but this is just a layman observation.

Don't forget drug whoring, this has become a drug whoring nation and way too many people are on anti-depressants and other shit when they shouldn't be.
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voldothegr8 posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

Spooking posted...

Guns have been around for decades and we haven't had this level of mass shootings before. It was a rarity back in the day. What changed? The culture did.

I tend to agree that we had a culture shift and it is playing a role in this. I also believe that poor mental health + lack of mental health options + social stigmas + poor parenting is a formula for this, but this is just a layman observation.

Don't forget drug whoring, this has become a drug whoring nation and way too many people are on anti-depressants and other shit when they shouldn't be.

without derailing the topic too much ... how would you propose we correct this? the current state of affairs is a direct result of the free market. drug companies push drugs on doctors who over prescribe them to patients, all in the name of making money.

so outside of government rules / regulations to tighten control over such prescriptions, how would you propose fixing that?
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Is it true that a person with slight mental health issues can become completely derailed as a side effect of the medication intended to help them?
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Giant_Aspirin posted...

without derailing the topic too much ... how would you propose we correct this? the current state of affairs is a direct result of the free market. drug companies push drugs on doctors who over prescribe them to patients, all in the name of making money.

so outside of government rules / regulations to tighten control over such prescriptions, how would you propose fixing that?

Stop advertising on TV would be a huge step in the right direction. We are one of the few if not the only country that's allowed to advertise drugs on TV.
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Asherlee10 posted...

Spooking posted...

Guns have been around for decades and we haven't had this level of mass shootings before. It was a rarity back in the day. What changed? The culture did.

I tend to agree that we had a culture shift and it is playing a role in this. I also believe that poor mental health + lack of mental health options + social stigmas + poor parenting is a formula for this, but this is just a layman observation.

Very few of these mass shootings have been carried out by anyone with a mental illness and when they had one, it was usually depression and most people with depression will only be violent towards themselves.

The issue is in fact cultural, as noted by several factors.

1) compared to his peers at the time, Ronald Reagan was still way crueler towards minorities by miles. This was followed by an increase in virulent views and stigmas against minorities over the next several decades and to the present. The views of the republican party nowadays is far, far, far to the right of where Reagan was.

2) decades of raising boys telling them not to cry and showing that the only acceptable emotion a man can act upon is anger. This has led to generations of men who can't cry or reveal any vulnerabilities, not even to their partners. This is also tied heavily to the fact that violence is glorified in our media, but mostly it's men who are being violent and towards those who have been perceived to have slighted them, regardless of how minor a slight it may have been. I am specifying men because they have committed all but 3-4 mass shootings. There's also a strong pattern among shooters of violence against others, particularly domestic violence against women (partners, parents, siblings).

3) echo chambers. Back in the 90s fox news won a court case that indicated they as a news network had no obligation to try and actually report on the truth, which was followed by that transformation where suddenly they and other networks like them have those "let's have 5 people sit around discussing the news but get off track to insult people" shows. Then there's the internet becoming widespread. And that has dark recesses and other, less hidden ones like 4chan. People can get exposed to ideas that send them searching for things that they end up accepting and they act on that anger, then end up deeper and deeper until they end up in areas that will radicalize them and make them completely unwilling to even acknowledge the same basic facts of reality as normal.

That all said, america in particular has a history of violence problems. The slave trade. Killing people who might be witches. Hanging of black people. Internment camps for Japanese citizens.

Tmaster148 posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

Spooking posted...

Guns have been around for decades and we haven't had this level of mass shootings before. It was a rarity back in the day. What changed? The culture did.

I tend to agree that we had a culture shift and it is playing a role in this. I also believe that poor mental health + lack of mental health options + social stigmas + poor parenting is a formula for this, but this is just a layman observation.

If mental health was actually the problem. The US would have significantly more mental issues than other countries which it doesn't.

The US has decided to move away from safe gun ownership to please gun manufacturers who want to sell more guns.

Ding. It isn't that mental health issues are going untreated either that's the source, or else we would have had mass shootings at similar or higher rates for decades prior.

I think a good stance to take here is that the solution may not come from less guns, as that's almost impossible to enforce without impeding on someone's civil liberties, but the solution definitely does not reside in more guns.
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Asherlee10 posted...

Spooking posted...

Guns have been around for decades and we haven't had this level of mass shootings before. It was a rarity back in the day. What changed? The culture did.

I tend to agree that we had a culture shift and it is playing a role in this. I also believe that poor mental health + lack of mental health options + social stigmas + poor parenting is a formula for this, but this is just a layman observation.

I'd agree with this as well. With the addition of directly calling out the media. Weren't the Columbine shooters on the cover of Time? One of the Boston bombers on the cover of Rolling Stone? With the 24 hour news cycle becoming a thing, then the internet becoming a thing, and the ability for local acts to immediately spread to global infamy is a bad thing for these kinds of trouble people who feel like they can perform these grand gestures and become infamous for it. Like look at Columbine, that shooting pretty much put that town on the map. The population is nothing compared to major cities. It should just be just another town in the middle of nowhere that most people don't have a clue about. But then they shoot up their school, their on time magazine, and the entire town is known by everyone for that reason alone. I guarantee nobody could actually give some other notable fact about Columbine, like who founded the town, it's history, what it's industries are, or anything about it other than those kids shooting up a school there...

This isn't inherently a new thing. Humanity has a natural interest in these things, in death, in murderers. We're biologically designed to fear death, and live predictably and safely. Someone like a serial killer or random school shooter inherently triggers something on us because it's something that is unpredictable, that can be unavoidable if it was happening to you. And obviously knowing how other people die is something that interests us as we biologically try to learn from that and not have the same happen to us.
Of course there were always stories that were spread in history about certain people, but it was extremely hard to do something and have it be known by all that many people. Which for people with certain issues, that might be something they want.

To touch onto another subject I've mentioned in other topics. Our suburbanization and industrialization is outpacing our biology adapting to it. Think about how long it takes for changes in our biology like that to occur and think about how relatively short it's been since we were in tribes, small villages, etc.
We're still biologically designed around that, to develop a "me and mine" and "us vs them" mentality. We're only able to truly know and care about a relatively small number of people on a personal level. Obviously sympathy and empathy expand on that but you can still only truly personally care about a small amount of people relative to how many people there are. You'd be driven to insanity if you cared about everyone as much as you cared about your own inner circle of loved ones. I think it leads to issues of isolationism and emotional disconnects from others in certain individuals how rapidly we've grown, how the scope of the world is available to you, how you can realize how insignificant you are. The internet further contributing to showing that scope and adding to that feeling for some. Which makes some people think about doing things like this for notoriety, to make a statement, to feel significant, etc. and for some of those to actually go through with that.

Which is why I believe our abysmal mental health system needs major improvements and is more important than ever. And personally I say they don't show the faces of or reveal the names of these people on public media. Don't give them a platform.

I'll stop rambling my layman thoughts.
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Smashingpmkns posted...

I think a good stance to take here is that the solution may not come from less guns, as that's almost impossible to enforce without impeding on someone's civil liberties, but the solution definitely does not reside in more guns.

Is it impeding? Or is it stating that like other rights, there are limitations to what extent they may be acted upon? After all, the first amendment does not protect sacrificial rituals, even if they are limited to animals sacrifices. That's not impeding upon liberties, it is a ruling that arose so as to protect others from it who do not or can not consent to such a thing. The first amendment also has restrictions like libel, slander and no protections when intentionally using speech to incite violence.

asagi_mode_gone posted...

Smashingpmkns posted...

I think a good stance to take here is that the solution may not come from less guns, as that's almost impossible to enforce without impeding on someone's civil liberties, but the solution definitely does not reside in more guns.

Is it impeding? Or is it stating that like other rights, there are limitations to what extent they may be acted upon? After all, the first amendment does not protect sacrificial rituals, even if they are limited to animals sacrifices. That's not impeding upon liberties, it is a ruling that arose so as to protect others from it who do not or can not consent to such a thing. The first amendment also has restrictions like libel, slander and no protections when intentionally using speech to incite violence.

Restricting further advancement of guns to the public, restricting sales to mentally ill or deficient, restricting certain purchases of certain types of goods, or things of that nature wouldn't be impeding imo. But actually physically taking away people's guns would. I'm not saying any rational agent is even putting forth that idea, but the pro gun rights activists sure as hell act like they are. Just wanted to get that out of the way in that post.
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As a teacher this is horrifying and scary.
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Arm the teachers' unions
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Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

As a teacher this is horrifying and scary.

How so? I'm guessing you've never had firearm training or even shot a round off to have that mentality. My wife was once deathly afraid of guns too and said I could never have them under the same roof as her. We took a class together, she got to fire off some rounds, and now I own guns.
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voldothegr8 posted...

Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

As a teacher this is horrifying and scary.

How so? I'm guessing you've never had firearm training or even shot a round off to have that mentality. My wife was once deathly afraid of guns too and said I could never have them under the same roof as her. We took a class together, she got to fire off some rounds, and now I own guns.

I assume because many teachers don't feel comfortable or want the responsibility involved. Which, obviously this bill wouldn't make it mandatory for teachers to be armed but it's reasonable to imagine why many teachers wouldn't be in favor of this. Not to mention you couldn't make it mandatory because it'd be a logistical nightmare and waste thousands of dollars across the country to locations that simply couldn't afford them.

The thing with allowing teachers to be armed on school grounds on their own basis is that it would require mass oversight to adhere guidelines are being properly followed and the risks don't outweigh the potential consequences. As nice as it would be to believe every teacher who did comply would be stringent about having the weapon securely on them at all moments, all it would take is one absent minded teacher to potentially cause a horrific incident. Not to mention things like there would have to be a complete code of silence on which teachers are armed, as to not call attention to and entice any potential danger. Especially in schools where crime and gangs are serious issues. Then there is the issue of this being implemented on a local, state, or federal level and how that would work with teachers. I just don't know how an effective policy could be to allow this.
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Tmaster148 posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

Spooking posted...

Guns have been around for decades and we haven't had this level of mass shootings before. It was a rarity back in the day. What changed? The culture did.

I tend to agree that we had a culture shift and it is playing a role in this. I also believe that poor mental health + lack of mental health options + social stigmas + poor parenting is a formula for this, but this is just a layman observation.

If mental health was actually the problem. The US would have significantly more mental issues than other countries which it doesn't.

The US has decided to move away from safe gun ownership to please gun manufacturers who want to sell more guns.

It does thanks to big pharm. in the us the solution is to dope up kids. It fucks them up. Not as big in other countries.
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