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I've never been so scared in my life

I have been thinking about this a bit today, and the reaction that we have now vs the reaction that we had 20 years ago.

When I was in 7th grade (20 years ago) I got on the bus one morning, and it was super quiet on the bus, even though it was completely full. I asked my friend that I sat next to what was going on, and his response was "Mathias is strapped." I had no idea what that meant, so he told me that he had a gun. The kid with the gun was a ninth grader who was already affiliated with gangs, and we all knew there was a rival gang member at the school waiting for him. The fight had been brewing for weeks.

We arrived at the school, and we saw this kid Don Manusina, a HUGE polynesian kid, waiting kind of close to the bus stop. It was like 7;45 AM, and we all gathered to watch was about to go down. Don had a bat, Mathias had a gun, but Don didn't know about the gun. I saw the handgun as we were getting off the bus. Somehow with all these kids, all we could think about was watching a fight. I don't even think anyone notified a teacher. It got to the point of these two wrestling and rolling around on the ground, and Mathias ending up with the baseball bat, and beating Don's head in. I remember blood running out of his ear. I don't know why the gun was not used, as the scene was plenty brutal, and was frankly pretty damn terrifying. There were at least a couple hundred kids around that morning.

I remember the teachers and the school police officer yelling at us to get to class, while they picked up the gun and the bat, and restrained the boys. I don't remember hearing anything on the news, or having my parents notified, and we certainly didn't miss out on school that day, in fact we probably were not even late for class because it all happened so fast.

The situation from today is not exactly the same, but the reaction was so different.
 
bigb said:
After we got home and spent some time together, my daughter was doing okay (relatively) and I had something I really needed to take care of at work. I asked her if she was okay and she told me to go back to work (she knows how busy I've been the last couple weeks). Work had always been very therapeutic for me. It allows me to clear my head and think through things. So, I've had a chance to think through these comments and my feelings. The conclusion I came to is the same it's been. I firmly believe that if guns (with the necessary training, etc.) were more available/accessible to faculty and such at schools, these ******** scenarios wouldn't play out to the extent they do. Imagine how many fewer lives could have been lost at Columbine or Sandy Hook if a handful of teachers/staff were carrying weapons? I'm pretty sure we can all agree that if someone with bad intentions wants a gun, they will find it. If there are more "good guys" with the ability/tools to protect us, it will help. I go back to the responsibility of the gun owner.
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2. Problems with this.

1. There is no such thing as a good guy. Thats movie stuff. A teacher could have been a good guy for years and years. Then their kid gets cancer and dies which causes marital problems so their spouse leaves them. Now we have a teacher at school with a gun who is depressed and mad and finally snaps one day. I don't like that scenario.

2. Now kids (many with no training or knowledge of guns) are in closer proximity to guns way more often and adults can make mistakes too and allow a child access to their gun even if accidentally.
 
More and more violence in schools. I went to school one year in HS at Mountain View in Orem.
I heard there was a stabbing there a few weeks back.
 
fishonjazz said:
2. Problems with this.

1. There is no such thing as a good guy. Thats movie stuff. A teacher could have been a good guy for years and years. Then their kid gets cancer and dies which causes marital problems so their spouse leaves them. Now we have a teacher at school with a gun who is depressed and mad and finally snaps one day. I don't like that scenario.

2. Now kids (many with no training or knowledge of guns) are in closer proximity to guns way more often and adults can make mistakes too and allow a child access to their gun even if accidentally.
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I disagree with your premise that there are no good guys. There are always good guys. I can't imagine living in a world where I didn't believe there are good guys.
Your other point is valid. But is it any different than our current situation? Anybody who wants to do harm with a gun has access to them almost immediately. Other than said teacher just absolutely snapping, pulling out the weapon, and finding targets (a very very rare scenario), nothing changes. Maybe the teacher has to provide a locked safe in the classroom to keep the weapon in during school hours or something like that? If I were a teacher, I would agree to that.
 
bigb said:
I disagree with your premise that there are no good guys. There are always good guys. I can't imagine living in a world where I didn't believe there are good guys.
Your other point is valid. But is it any different than our current situation? Anybody who wants to do harm with a gun has access to them almost immediately. Other than said teacher just absolutely snapping, pulling out the weapon, and finding targets (a very very rare scenario), nothing changes. Maybe the teacher has to provide a locked safe in the classroom to keep the weapon in during school hours or something like that? If I were a teacher, I would agree to that.
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My point was that good guys don't always stay good guys. And we don't have a way of telling who the good guys are. Someone can act like a good guy (on the outside) and be bad guys on the inside. Then we encourage them to bring a gun to their workplace with children all around.

I'm certain that there are murderers, psychopaths, serial killers, rapists, etc who at some point had many people who thought they were good people.

I never really got into that show Dexter but from what I could gather he was a serial killer who was a perfectly functioning member of society who many people thought was a "good guy" (I could be wrong about that since I only saw like one episode and just heard my father in law talking about the show)

And I realize that I'm talking about a fictional tv show so disregard that part of my post if you want but take the rest of my post into consideration.
 
fishonjazz said:
My point was that good guys don't always stay good guys. And we don't have a way of telling who the good guys are. Someone can act like a good guy (on the outside) and be bad guys on the inside. Then we encourage them to bring a gun to their workplace with children all around.

I'm certain that there are murderers, psychopaths, serial killers, rapists, etc who at some point had many people who thought they were good people.

I never really got into that show Dexter but from what I could gather he was a serial killer who was a perfectly functioning member of society who many people thought was a "good guy" (I could be wrong about that since I only saw like one episode and just heard my father in law talking about the show)

And I realize that I'm talking about a fictional tv show so disregard that part of my post if you want but take the rest of my post into consideration.
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How is that any different than any other person/profession? A mall Santa could be a bad guy. A day care worker.
 
bigb said:
How is that any different than any other person/profession? A mall Santa could be a bad guy. A day care worker.
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Exactly. I don't want mall santas and day care workers having guns on them when they are with my daughter.
 
bigb said:
That's fair. I can't fault you for that.
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Maybe if there were extremely stringent background checks and psychological testing done to the teachers followed by a bunch of security/safety/crisis control types of training for the teachers then I could get behind it.

Most average people (like a teacher) don't have the proper training and are not prepared for a situation in which they have to shoot a kid with a gun and there is a chance that an untrained and unprepared teacher with a gun could make things worse and escalate/increase the damage done.

Take what happened at your daughters school for example. iirc no one got shot. Maybe if the teachers had guns then maybe a teacher shoots the kid with the gun. Or maybe the teacher shoots at the kid with the gun but misses and hits a different kid and kid with the gun realizes they are being shot at and starts shooting at other people now. Then kids are running and screaming everywhere after hearing the gunshots and the other teachers grabbing their guns to come save the day but there are a bunch of kids running at them from all angles and the teachers scared and don't know who the shooter is or where the shooter is.

Now you have a bunch of underpaid, highly stressed, unprepared, untrained, scared teachers with loaded weapons in an extremely chaotic situation around a bunch of children. Not always a good thing.

Add in the fact that there is a lot of turnover in the teaching field so you have lots of new teachers quite often. (I read an article the other day that due to low pay, and high stress of teaching that the average teacher only lasts 7 years)

I'm sure there would be times when teachers carrying guns would save lives and prevent some tragedies. Hell, maybe they would even prevent more than they would cause or escalate and maybe it's a good idea. I have no clue.

But it has the potential to make things worse.
 
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