Politics (formerly Election 2012)

[Klaudandus]

*snort*

[Klaudandus]

Remember when I said that Education across the country sucks mostly because Texas gets to decide what kids learn in school?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magaz ... ed=1&_r=2&

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/ ... -make-over

[Klaudandus]

http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/01/fox-an ... ssing-day/

[Klaudandus]

Paging Gerry Mander....
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013 ... ration.php

[Klaudandus]

Another day, another shooting...

[Koatanga]

Another day, another shooting...

Maybe if there are enough of them, they'll be too commonplace to bother reporting, and people won't have to worry about it anymore.

[Koatanga]

I know guns don't kill people and that alcohol doesn't make people become alcoholics, but it's getting near time someone stages an intervention and gets the US to sober up with regard to its gun usage.

Persons are safe and responsible. People are idiotic and careless. A person can handle owning a gun, but can people? I have my doubts.

[Amirya]

Do you mean this one, Klaud?

[Klaudandus]

Do you mean this one, Klaud?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/us/sh ... .html?_r=0

[Koatanga]

Do you mean this one, Klaud?

Ridiculous on the surface, but schools generally don't act without a complaint and don't suspend for talk of playing with toys.

We're talking about 5-year-olds here, so it's entirely possible one little girl who heard about the recent shootings could have thought that a Hello Kittle Bubble Gun could have killed her. Absurd to you and I, but I have a 7-year-old daughter, and around 5 years old she had serious concerns that absurd things would kill her.

This is to the extent that she would cry about them until we explained how silly she was being. She's not weird or anything, just a normal well-adjusted, imaginative, bright kid. She heard about a meteor wiping out the dinosaurs, so talk of a meteor shower meant imminent death to her.

So now imagine some 5-year-old girl going home to mom and dad, upset that another girl was going to shoot her with a gun and kill her like the kids in Sandy Hook. The parents would flip out and contact the school at once, and the school would have to take every precaution to assure they didn't have a Sandy Hook incident, because if they ignored it and an incident happened, they would be liable.

So this whole things looks absurd to us, but if that's the way the scenario went down, I can easily see it happening as reported.

[KysenMurrin]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/us/shooting-reported-at-college-in-houston.html?_r=0

Thing about this one is people don't get to say "well they were mentally disturbed and we just need to make sure people like that don't get guns". This wasn't a mentally ill individual deliberately attacking innocents, it was (having read several news stories so far, this article itself doesn't say it) an out and out gunfight between two armed people in a public place...

[Klaudandus]

Do you mean this one, Klaud?

Ridiculous on the surface, but schools generally don't act without a complaint and don't suspend for talk of playing with toys.

The problem is that some schools practice no common sense
see http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08 ... d-him?lite

The kid's name is Hunter. Depending on whether its SEE or ASL, the signs for Hunter varies.


The other one is actually making the "gun" with both hands, then point them and move them forward. Like if you're shooting someone. This one is the most common as this one is the ASL version.

[Fivelives]

Do you mean this one, Klaud?

Ridiculous on the surface, but schools generally don't act without a complaint and don't suspend for talk of playing with toys.

It sounds like parental/school overreaction to me. Instead of sitting the kid who complained down and explaining that playing with toys is different than what happened at Sandy Hook, like a rational person would, they immediately jumped to "OMG THREAT!!!" What pushes it over the line to straight up absurd is the suspension for a "terroristic threat". That's lolworthy.

I used to play cowboys & indians during recess in grade school. I can only imagine how that would fly today.

[Koatanga]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/us/shooting-reported-at-college-in-houston.html?_r=0

Thing about this one is people don't get to say "well they were mentally disturbed and we just need to make sure people like that don't get guns". This wasn't a mentally ill individual deliberately attacking innocents, it was (having read several news stories so far, this article itself doesn't say it) an out and out gunfight between two armed people in a public place...

Maybe one of them was going to start a shooting spree and the other person was shooting at him to make him stop. Texas is a state with high gun ownership, and people do carry guns to prevent crime, so this could have been a shooting-prevention shooting.

Or it could just be a couple of under-endowed hotheads proving how manly they are.

It sounds like parental/school overreaction to me. Instead of sitting the kid who complained down and explaining that playing with toys is different than what happened at Sandy Hook, like a rational person would, they immediately jumped to "OMG THREAT!!!" What pushes it over the line to straight up absurd is the suspension for a "terroristic threat". That's lolworthy.

I used to play cowboys & indians during recess in grade school. I can only imagine how that would fly today.

It pretty much all hinges on what the complaining kid told his/her parents. Crying kids are practically unintelligible anyway, so if all the parents got was "Becky" (or whoever) and "gun" and "shoot us" and "don't want to die", then in the wake of Sandy Hook parents could have a freak-out. Depends on the kid, what she told them, and the parents and how paranoid they are.

Look, it's ridiculous to me that the US spent so much on Security Theater in the wake of 9/11 when a few beagles could have done a batter and less intrusive job, so my estimation of the rationality of people in the wake of horrific acts is not overly high.

[Klaudandus]

Or it could just be a couple of under-endowed hotheads proving how manly they are.

The problem is that america, as a society, seems not to be mature enough to solve conflict without either people going to therapy over it, or losing their shit and shoot people