This is reality. This is in your face. This is how it is.
Everywhere there is a “Gun Free Zone” sign, take it down, remove it NOW! You are encouraging evil to enter a “soft target” and start mayhem by killing students, teachers, support people and administrators.
If you don’t take the sign down, you are complicit if anything happens while it hangs there providing no protection whatsoever. School superintendents, this means you! These signs are stupid. Words mean things, and “Gun Free Zone” signs encourage nutjobs to enter knowing there will be no opposition.
If an evil person with a firearm(s) enters a school, nothing will stop them except a good person with a firearm. A “bad” guy with a firearm is not the type to be a member of the NRA, where firearm safety, respect for law and order, and defender of the 2nd Amendment is taught and encouraged within the organization and their publications. They provide firearms safety and train instructors to help teach others. They support both Democrats and Republicans in contributing to their campaigns for office if they are friendly to the Second Amendment, which is their agenda and main purpose for existing.
The “good” person with a gun could be a police officer, an armed safety officer(s) employed by the school, and I would encourage any teachers wishing to be defenders of freedom and the innocent, not cowering victims under a desk hiding before being shot by a deranged intruder, to get trained and possess a concealed weapons permit.
Train regularly so you are proficient with your weapon of choice, and understand the responsibility and ramifications of using a weapon to defend yourself and others. Encourage your administration to allow responsible people working within the schools to carry. If they refuse, whatever happens from that time on is on their heads, you’ve tried to protect the innocent.
If you discharge a weapon to defend yourself or others against an intruder you will be arrested until they find out the facts. They will confiscate your weapon and keep it for ballistics check and evidence in case a criminal/civil suit is enacted. I’ve been asked many times if I could kill another person – I could if they gave me no choice and I would probably empty the magazine before I quit or he/she were dead and not moving. I wouldn’t want to, but not have any choice. And I would defend others if I had the chance.
I’d rather be tried by 12 than carried by 6. Why do I possess a concealed weapon permit – because an officer is too heavy to carry.
And to the protests and walk-outs by students:
You are blessed to live in a country where you are free and have a 2nd Amendment to possess a weapon(s) for hunting, home defense, and defense against a tyrannical government. Many people have died in the past 230 years while on the frontier, fighting in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and fighting Islamic Extremists for your freedom and way of life we enjoy. You have the right to protest any way you want because those before you have made the ultimate sacrifice. You might want to read history if you do not understand since they probably don’t teach the U.S. Constitution much any more and the history surrounding its creation.
The killings in Florida sparked misguided youth to attack the weapon, the NRA, and anyone supporting gun rights, not the person who was responsible. If your anger about the deaths of your classmates and teachers were truly aimed at the problem, you would storm the jail, remove the little creep and hang him in the public square.
A trial for a scumbag like him would be a waste of time – that’s how I feel; but I know he must be given a fair trial, then after 20 or so years of living in prison and exhausting his appeals, have a needle shoved in his arm, shot by a firing squad, or placed in an electric chair for his final judgment. After millions spent keeping him alive and paying his lawyer fees, he will be properly buried (at the state’s expense, of course).
And the adults encouraging these walkouts and protests – you are part of the problem. Get some courage and instruct your children not all things in life are fair and violence may happen when least expected. Of course, the haters of freedom and liberty are at the main root of these protests. Liberal and radical groups encouraging these young people to blame an inanimate object when there is a cause for the tragedy – a mentally sick young man with anger problems. You are despicable for encouraging these young people to protest.
For those who disagree with my viewpoint, such is your right. But how do you reason with a person standing before you with a weapon aimed at you? All your liberal thinking and reasoning will mean nothing to that person. And just before the nutjob pulls the trigger, you will wonder “why me” – because you are there and he’s angry at the world.
What do you do with a goring bull – you put it down. There is no reasoning with these people, no use trying to make sense of the situation, it’s you or him. And without a weapon, you don’t have a chance. So much for liberal thinking.
These attacks won’t stop. They will happen again somewhere. It is now open season for the nutjobs to act on the innocent. Are you going to be a sheep cowering in the corner when the wolf shows up or be the sheepdog and defend your flock? It’s up to YOU!
The rotting of America from within continues…
Just one comment for a clarification that our editor might be able to research for us.
When I served on the Wayland Board of Education (1990-95) we enacted the posting of “Drug Free School Zones” signs. It was a commonplace misunderstanding that the signs meant and guaranteed no drugs within the zone. In fact, by posting those signs the board of ed was enacting a provision that allowed law enforcement and the judicial system to impose greater fines and penalties upon those violating the existing laws for drug possession and use within the zone.
It might also be true that “Gun Free Zones” do not mean a guarantee that no guns will be there. If the same pattern applies, the signs may simply indicate that fines and penalties will be doubled, tripled, or whatever increase applies, to those who violate existing gun laws within the zone.
Mr. Young, would you be willing to investigate and put any misconception to rest?
My understanding is very similar to yours, but I have found designated “drug-free” and “gun-free” zones are well intentioned, but ineffective. I take Rick’s argument about zones seriously. I want to see something implemented that really works. We would do well to pay attention to what other nations around the world have done.
Greetings Ranger Rick,
I’m interested to read your talking points and the logic that a “evil person with a firearm(s) enters a school, nothing will stop them except a good person with a firearm. “Simply put, more guns in school is not an answer. It only creates a problem and a liability for the school(s). The teacher who barricaded himself in a classroom in Texas is a great example. Teachers should be focused on teaching kids, not using a gun to ward off a shooter. I’m in favor of the partnership that AAESA and Allegan County Sheriff have to increase patrols.
You’re right to say I’m blessed to live in a country like the United States. It’s too bad State Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker thinks we don’t have a First Amendment right to protest or speak up.
We are informed on our rights and our scarred history as a country. If we feel passionate about an issue, such as school safety, shouldn’t we speak up?
Misguided youth? Am I reading that correctly? Students who were attacked by someone who shouldn’t had a weapon in the first place have ALL the right to speak on this issue. A public hanging solves nothing, common sense laws — like those after 9/11 — will.
The adults, who we coordinated our demonstrations through, commended our responsibility and civility. I think you’d agree, it’s their job as educators to encourage positive citizenship.
We’ve narrowed it down to three points:
1) Common sense gun laws
2) School safety measures
3) A change in school culture,
That shooter shouldn’t have had a gun and the fact that I can go to the local gun shop today and buy the same weapon is downright appalling.
The same talking points from Fox News and the NRA ain’t cutting it any more.
The passionate movement within America continues…
America will rot if we find ourselves led by folks who share the mindset of the author because we won’t have enough of the population willing to risk their lives to collect the bodies.
Keep raving about the inherent evils of young people who found themselves in a shooting gallery made possible by adult legislators who, following the suggestions of the post-1977 NRA leadership, have passed gun laws and some cases have fought changes in gun laws that made it possible for the 18-year-old to buy a gun.
We are finally seeing some of those politicians getting the courage to quit depending on the current NRA for support in election years and realize with an 18-year-old voting age their seats are at risk.
As you probably have guessed, arming people in schools to scare assassins/attackers isn’t a solution that’s acceptable for a majority of people in Allegan County, Michigan or the country.
I’m not a gun owner who lives in fear of “the government” taking my guns. Nor do I live with the fear of needing any of my guns to “protect” my family, home and belongings. I don’t have an issue with gun registration like we register our trucks, cars, boats, quads and snowmobiles.
What I do have issues with is a county, state and country where we take the mindset to arm as many people as many people 18 or older who want to carry a weapon into schools, churches, stadiums or even limiting it to arming teachers, guidance counselors, janitors and administrators in our schools.
I’m in favor of placing law enforcement in schools. Those officers would be trained specifically for working in the high school environment, have SWAT training and undergo psychological testing to try to identify that they will go into action when required like the officer in Maryland, as opposed to what was seen in Florida.
Of course that costs money, presumably tax dollars. There are about 24,000 public secondary/high schools in the US, around 1370 public high schools in MI and nine in Allegan County. Do we put that cost on the individual district, make it an ISD issue, ask for state funding, or ask the federal government for help.
That’s a lot more than making every school and public place resemble a street scene from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and dealing with lawsuits that would arise from unqualified or underqualified armed individuals roaming our schools.
All this hot air with no one calling for an amendment to the Constitution. If you want to ban weapons change the Constitution. It has been done before, so do you want gun control or not? If you do and not an issue for elections change the Constitution. The government taking weapons and munitions will only cost some $130,000,000,000. unless you remove the “taking clause” along with the second amendment. And please stop using slogans that mean nothing like “Common sense gun control” what in the hell is that? Who’s common sense, mine, yours?
COMMON SENSE GUN CONTROL (my version of common sense; short top-of-the-head version )
No bump stocks
No suppressors (silencers) legal in some states
Close gun show loophole
No Teflon coated rounds
Magazine restriction I could live with a ten rd. mag. restriction, but my friends that hunt tell me for waterfowl hunting there is a three round limit on shells; couldn’t we afford the same safeguards for people as we provide to ducks?
Mr. Basura,
No argument on bump stocks, be careful on “suppressors” some refer to flash suppressors as silencers which are illegal at the federal level without a separate license. The “gun show loophole” needs to be defined, you may be surprised to find out it is designed to stop all private sales or transfers to even adult children receiving a family, air loom Grandparent to Grandchild type thing. A payment to a firearms license holder would be required to hand down a legal weapon inside a family, from $40. to $200.
Be nice if the rest of the anti-gun folks stated what you did but I will wager a dinner most anti-gun folks would not want to stop with your listing and call you a gun nut of the first degree, I would disagree.