56 thoughts on “Potential Massacre Mitigation”

  1. “..state Rep. Joan Bauer, D-Lansing, said the bill went too far. There are just some areas where guns should not be allowed,” she said.”

    You can’t fix stupid.

    1. Would anyone object to schools having the freedom (not duty) to hire armed guards, or to allow teachers to carry arms?

  2. I think the standard should be that the government can disarm any location it wants to, but if it does so, it must 100% screen all people entering that area and provide an armed guard. IE if the people can’t be responsible for themselves, then the government has to tack direct local responsibility.

  3. “But they still have the option of banning it themselves. Still, it’s a big step forward.”

    I’m not sure I understand this part. If it is a private establishment, like a private day care center, then as a private establishment I would think the private owner would be within his rights to ban guns on his own property.

    It sounds like you want guns allowed even if the property owner doesn’t want it on his own property. I can’t say I agree with that, if it is the intent. Of course, I apologize if I misunderstand the point of the above statement.

    Or are we talking about only government buildings?

    1. Yes, I was talking about government schools. If a private owner (movie theater, mall) wants to ban guns on their property under the new law, they can certainly do that, but then they face the prospect of lawsuits by later unarmed victims.

        1. It’s not illegality, Someguy — it’s injury. If I’m in a private establishment — let’s say, a Luby’s Cafeteria — and I’m wounded or my wife killed because no one in the place had a gun except the murderer, I’d sue for that.

          1. I only asked because I have never heard of a restaurant being sued because someone walked in and started shooting up the place.

            And I would say if you feel vulnerable there, you are free to not eat there. If it was my restaurant, I would welcome you to be armed. I would view you as an asset.

            I only have a disagreement that you get to say on what terms you enter someone else’s property, because that seems to violate my freedom to run my property under my rules.

          2. I only asked because I have never heard of a restaurant being sued because someone walked in and started shooting up the place.

            So because you’ve never heard of something, it couldn’t happen?

            Is that what logic looks like on your planet?

          3. Here, now go forth and be ignorant no longer. Well, perhaps you should also look up how many establishments have been sued for insufficient lighting in parking lots which lead to various crimes from break ins to abduction. Those Mall Cops weren’t all ways there.

          4. Someguy:

            “I only asked because I have never heard of a restaurant being sued because someone walked in and started shooting up the place.”

            I think the way these things happen go like this:

            Some law abiding citizen carrys concealed into a restaurant. The Resto owner rousts the carrier out of the place because they choose to not have no filthy crazy armed citizens eating their fine cuisine.

            Week later some nut comes in and starts shooting the place up like a Cowboy saloon and someone gets hurt.

            NOW you will have the suit.

            And of course the media and lefty syncophant morons, will start screaming that the problem is the gun.

            What I’d love to see is for every shootup like this, the media also published a case where a concealed carrier civilian stops a crime.

            Well one can dream.

          5. “So because you’ve never heard of something, it couldn’t happen?”

            What? How does that follow?

            I never said that nor intended to imply it.

          7. OK, fine, forget all of that about me hearing or not hearing about a specific case of a business getting sued because it gets robbed. It’s not really what I am trying to discuss anyways.

            My main topic of discussion is that on my property, you accept my rules for entering, and by extension that you are accepting the risk those rules come with.

            If you don’t like them, you are free to not enter.

            Agree or disagree?

        2. You don’t think that depriving someone of their most basic right (self defense), when you invite people on your property to purchase your goods and services, would be grounds for a lawsuit if you were injured or your relative was killed thereby because you had inadequate security?

          And why are you afraid to use your real name, unless you realize what a moronic question this is?

        3. If you take away my ability to protect myself, you’re assuming the duty to protect me. If you fail in that duty, I have recouse against you. There’ve been a bunch of “No Carry” signs in NC taken down over the years because the owner’s lawyers pointed out the legal liability.

      2. I am a CWP holder and I carry a handgun, but when I see a private business with a “no weapons allowed” sign posted it is my decision to either leave my weapon in the car and enter that business anyway or go elsewhere. So I don’t see a case for a lawsuit against a private business that doesn’t allow weapons.

        1. Replying to myself since I can’t edit my previous post.

          My previous reply was made before reading all of the other postings. I cannot believe the vitriol being expended upon “someguy” for his defending personal property rights!

          The first amendment guarantees freedom of speech, but it doesn’t guarantee you the right to express your opinion freely in MY living room. So I have the right to make you leave if I don’t like what you say.

          Likewise the second amendment guarantees your right to keep and bear arms, but if I don’t want you armed on my property I have the right to insist you disarm or leave.

          Personal rights only extend to the point that they infringe upon someone else’ personal rights. My right to bear arms doesn’t preempt another persons personal property rights.

          1. I think the vitriol is directed at his inability to make his point coherently before pressing the enter key

          2. Replying to myself again since the software doesn’t allow me to reply to Jiminator.

            Please tell me how the point is not coherently made in the below quotes from “someguy”:

            “…as a private establishment I would think the private owner would be within his rights to ban guns on his own property.”

            “What is illegal about banning guns on someone’s own property?”

            “I only have a disagreement that you get to say on what terms you enter someone else’s property, because that seems to violate my freedom to run my property under my rules.”

            “..on my property, you accept my rules for entering, and by extension that you are accepting the risk those rules come with. If you don’t like them, you are free to not enter.”

            Perfectly coherent and 100% correct in my opinion. And again, I say that as a CWP holder. If a property owner wants to prevent me from entering his establishment unarmed it is up to ME to decide whether to agree to those terms or not. If I do agree to those terms by my entering unarmed then I should have no legal recourse should some incident then happen.

          3. Cecil, his comment “I only asked because I have never heard of a restaurant being sued because someone walked in and started shooting up the place” is amazing given the ease of searching the internet for information for that type of event. If someone or some business is going to ban weapons on their premises and create the illusion of security, they are going to be sued by folks injured there when someone else violates that ban. Just because his statement was grammatically correct doesn’t mean he made a coherent point.

          4. Jiminator, I withdraw the comment about not hearing about something and whatever that implies. It wasn’t my main focus, so please accept my withdrawal of that particularly statement.

            I made the main point I am trying to discuss in a different comment, but I will put it here too: by accepting my rule about entering my property unarmed, you are also implicitly accepting the risk. If you don’t like the rule and the associated risk with being unarmed, then do not enter. Accepting the rule and associated risk means you have no legal recourse against me.

            You seem to disagree, and that is fine, but the point about property rights is what I would like to discuss.

            Personally, I would welcome you onto my property armed. I probably would want to discuss your choice of firearm and why you bought the particular model you did. Maybe I would like to buy the same one.

          5. Understood. I recommend an umbrella insurance policy for everyone. Our society is litigious to the extreme, and our governments at all levels appear to foster an increasing sense of victimhood over personal responsibility and self reliance. There is very little sense of accepting even reasonable “associated risks” these days.

        2. Cecil is correct about property rights. But choices have consequences. If I’m harmed on your property and a reasonable argument can be made that it was because you prevented me from defending myself, you certainly could be sued for that.

          1. You have a choice as to whether or not you enter the other persons property once they have told you that you must disarm.

            If you accept their terms and enter their property unarmed and then suffer harm as a result of a third parties actions the “blame” lies with YOU because you accepted that risk by accepting the terms.

          2. Replying to Cecil:
            You wouldn’t believe how wrong you are.
            This falls under the same heading as “slip-and-fall” suits: a guest suffered an injury that the proprietor could’ve reasonably prevented. If I come onto your “No CCW”-posted property/business/et cetera and Willie the Crack Hound carves me with a box opener, guess who’s gonna lose his house for not protecting his guests from Willie after insuring they couldn’t protect themselves? That’s right: You.
            Like I said: GRNC got a LOT of no-CCW signs pulled down with just that line of law.

          3. To DaveP.

            Slip and fall hazards are an entirely different thing. The owner of a place of business/home etc. is responsible for making sure that those things under his control within his business/home are safe, IE no wet floors, loose boards, fire hazards etc. It is not, IMO, the property owners responsibility to insure that you will be protected from the unpredictable actions of a third party.

            A situation where you may need a weapon to protect your life is very unlikely to happen. But both you and the business own know that it can happen. He has made the decision that he will not allow anyone to legally carry a weapon on his property and it is up to you to make a decision as to proceed without it or not.

            I think a perfectly legitimate defense to make for a business owner sued under these circumstances would be to state that a CWP holder who left his weapon in his car and entered into his business unarmed did so of his own free will and had thus accepted the conditions he had set forth for entry into his property and therefore he had no legal grounds on which to hold him at fault for any injuries suffered as a result of him accepting those conditions.

          4. Sorry, Cecil. What I told you is an issue of fact, not theory. There’s been suits settled out of court and “No CCW” signs pulled down, over and over again.

          5. What effect do out of court settlements have on law? I’ve not found an example of a single successful suit of a business over not allowing CWP.

            I do not understand what is is so difficult about the concept of accepting responsibility for ones own actions. When a CWP holder leaves his gun in the car and enters a non CWP place of business he has accepted the risk.

          6. There is a useful distinction to be made between “private property” (your home) and “private property” a place in which you do business and invite the public in. There is long precedent, right or wrong, in the law between these two things. A homeowner has rights in this regard that a business owner does not. A business owner is expected to provide a safe environment for the customers, and is subject to a lawsuit if he does not. If he insists that his customers be disarmed, but does not provide adequate security to protect them, he is totally sueable.

          7. Cecil, be serious now: Do you really think that, if your legal theory had a leg to stand on, there would have BEEN those out-of-court settlements? That those signs would have come down? Evidently the lawyers for the property owner agreed with me more than you.
            And if you don’t want to take responsibiltiy for customers on your property… maybe you shouldn’t have any.

          8. I suppose it is cheaper for a business owner to pay up and remove the signs than to go to trial. Or maybe the courts do agree with you. Even if they do, that doesn’t make them right (SCOTUS on ACA ring a bell?).

            I don’t care how many out of court settlements are made or how many in court cases are won that prove you technically right I will stand by my position because my belief in private propery rights is as strong as my belief in the Second Amendment.

  4. I think you missed the key point in an ideal situation the only way to have a disarmed area is to screen 100% of those that enter AND have an armed guard.

    Just putting a placard up saying no guns is not likely to stop someone bent on murder…. and if properly done you have no way to know who is carrying and who is not…

    1. There’s a school nearby that has a “school area: crime free zone” sign. I think that gives three possibilities: (1) Criminals feel shamed because of the sign and abstain from committing crimes in the vicinity, (2) public school officials have no contact with reality whatsoever, or (3) all criminal laws have been suspended in the area and nothing one might do would be considered unlawful.

  5. Hold on, settle down. I want expanded gun rights, or let’s say actually respecting the second amendment. I don’t want gun control, and I hate that the media is pouncing on this like they always do.

    I only had a specific point that my property is mine. You are free to accept my terms to come on my property or not. I won’t keep you there if you feel I am depriving you of any rights. Just don’t take away my right to govern my own property.

    In reality, on my property I would feel perfectly comfortable with you being armed, and would welcome it. But to me it seems that making me accept you onto my property on your terms is a violation of what it means to be private property.

    And I am trying to engage you respectfully on substantive points. Whether I use my real name or not I don’t think is relevant. Wodun and others use pseudonyms as well,

    1. IMO everyone should use a fake name on the internet as a first line of defense from.the crazies. My life has been threatened soooo many times by people on the internet why make it easier for some nutjob to actually do something?

      Your reputation rises and falls from what you say and how well you say it and you can’t rely on meatspace achievements to give you credibility and I like that.

  6. Wouldn’t it be libertarian to allow people to ban guns from their property? Certainly at a house and sometimes a business. One could get all lawyerly about what type of business that could ban guns. People can sue over anything.

    There is also the possibility that if a mass shooting took place somewhere that did not ban guns from the premises that the property owner could be sued.

    I personally like CC and OC and for those rights to function properly those people need to carry in public spaces but because this is America, it is a given that those rights will face some restrictions. It is also a given that people will argue about what restrictions are appropriate.

  8. Actually the best mitigation is to accelerate the move beyond the 20th Century model of schools as “factories” of learning to home schooling using 21st Century tools like Kahn Academy.

    As for the supposed social interaction skills schools teach, those could probably be better thought via non-school related activities like Scouting, community arts and music groups, Church groups, Little League, Pop Warner Football, etc. Meanwhile online the students would be learning the 21st Century telecommuting and telebotic skills needed by a modern workforce.

    1. I’d be interested to know how this would work.

      I see on the Kahn Academy Web page that they have courses you can buy. In the Arithmetic and Pre-Algebra web page they have things like:

      Addition and Subtraction.
      Multiplication and division.

      So ok the information is there. But you have to have the kid watch the video, and be able to ask questions.

      Who tests the kid on a weekly monthly quarterly, yearly basis?

      People wanting to home school is fine. *IF* their life style supports it, that’s ok with me. But it requires that an adult be present.

      In today’s economy this quite often isn’t possible – both parents have to work. Hiring an adult for school classes for your kid is more expensive than paying the taxes to have a school. As I say I don’t mind homeschooling, but I’m not convinced it scales up.

      So I’m not sure I see how this would work. But I would not be against the idea if it were practical.

      1. Gregg,

        Currently there are about 1.5 million kids being home schooled and its expanding slowly with the virtual workforce. Testing is accomplished by a variety of means, online and offline, and most states require the same annual tests given to kids in classrooms.

        As for watching the kids, I have seen estimates that as much as 50% of jobs in the U.S. could be adapted to working from home. Many home schooled kids already have one or more parents working from home. Driving the trend to work from home is increased productivity and reduced costs to firms, as well as greater flexibility in the workforce.

        Keep in mind that the current school system is an artifact of the industrial revolution which resulted in work as well as childhood learning being separated from home. The information revolution has reversed that trend with both tasks starting to return to the home.

        1. “Driving the trend to work from home is increased productivity and reduced costs to firms, as well as greater flexibility in the workforce. ”

          I don’t see how this can be given that the job population is, by far, working in the service organizations.

    2. Internet-based learning would also reduce the value (and the risks) of school buildings and school transportation as virtual classrooms became the dominant style of education. How might this affect the choice of class curriculae? It also would be interesting to consider how virtual classrooms would affect extracurricular activities such as sports, choirs and bands, lab work for the sciences, etc.

      Conversely, how would the government sustain their assistance programs such as meals for children from poorer families, how would this impact educational unions?

      Of course I am focusing on the K-12 systems with this thread…how this would turn the university system on its head would be another fascinating topic!

      1. Jimanator,

        It already is turning the university system on its head and has been for several years.

        http://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=2024704

        At the four year community college where I work 80% of business students are now online taking courses not only around the state but even from firebases in Afghanistan (two of my students finished their Bachelors while deployed with the Nevada National Guard).

        And that doesn’t even take into count the new trend towards MOOC’s that schools are exploring.

        In terms of K-12 Nevada already has a virtual high school.

        http://ccsdde.net/

        So yes, it is turning the higher education system on its head.

  9. Ok so yesterday we were treated to a (fake) teary eyed emotional Obama lamenting the tragedy and saying, and I quote: “As a country we have been through this too many times. ”
    But did the MSM bother to mention this?

    And for those of us who cover their eyes, cover their ears, and shout LALALLALALA at the top of their voices just to not hear any counter-evidence to their lefty fantasies, I’ll provide a small excerpt – but you should read the whole thing:

    “Beneath the expressions of grief, sorrow and disbelief over the Connecticut school massacre lies an uneasy truth in Washington: over the last few years the Obama administration and Congress quietly let federal funding for several key school security programs lapse in the name of budget savings.
    ……………..
    two Justice Department programs that had provided more than $200 million to schools for training, security equipment and police resources over the last decade weren’t renewed in 2011 and 2012, and that a separate program that provided $800 million to put police officers inside the schools was ended a few years earlier.

    Meanwhile, the administration eliminated funding in 2011-12 for a separate Education Department program that gave money to schools to prepare for mass tragedies, the officials said.

    A nationally recognized school security expert said those funds had been critical for years in helping schools continue to enhance protections against growing threats of violence. But they simply dried up with little notice..
    ……………….
    But last year, his administration took a less muted tone as it submitted its 2012 Education Department budget to Congress that eliminated the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) funding, which for years provided between $20 million and $30 million in annual grants to help schools create emergency and crisis preparation and prevention plans for tragedies just like the one that unfolded Friday.”

  11. Oh and just in case the lefty-radical-bow-tied bespeckled bumkissers think the Guardian is making it up, here is an excerpt from the Department of Education 2012 Budget request:

    On page G-26 they describe REMS.

    On page G37 they say:

    “Beginning with the 2009 cohort of grants, the Department discontinued all three of the above
    measures [one of which is REMS] and replaced them with the following new measure, for which baseline data will
    become available beginning in 2012: the average number of National Incident Management
    System (NIMS) course completions by key personnel at the start of the grant compared to the
    average number of NIMS course completions by key personnel at the end of the grant.
    Emergency Management for Higher Education (EMHE)
    Note: EMHE corresponds to the IHE grants activity under ―School and Campus Emergency
    Preparedness‖ in the program output measures.
    Goal: To help develop and implement comprehensive emergency management and
    violence prevention processes for institutions of higher education.
    Objective: EMHE grantees will demonstrate substantial progress in improving emergency
    mitigation/prevention, preparedness, response and recovery efforts on their campuses.”

    Higher Ed.

    Think about that next time you see Obama wipe away a fake tear…

    Clearly as far as the Obama administration is concerned the young kids might as well just die.

    1. I know they did when I was in elementary school in a suburb of Buffalo, New York in the ’80s. I know they did in the rural Southern high school my lady attended in the same time frame. So you have that as an endpoint, and I’ll bet that the tradition of going straight from the deer trail to the schoolhouse ran from then all the way back to flintlocks.

  13. “and I’ll bet that the tradition of going straight from the deer trail to the schoolhouse ran from then all the way back to flintlocks.”

    And I’ll bet some days they never made it to the schoolhouse (having too much fun) 😉

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