Vantage Point: Our Hearts Go Out to Texas
Our hearts go out to those in the small Texas town after a crazy person attacked their school. This makes all of us wonder what goes wrong in the mind of the attacker. A young man goes to a school to kill children and their teachers. Defenseless children and their short-term caretakers. What a coward, 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old kids against an armed assassin.
Yes, the school had a basic plan to secure the school, unfortunately, it was very basic and, in some cases, casually followed. Fences are so basic and easily defeated. Only one entrance is also very basic but with the right additional equipment can be very controlling. Unfortunately, this obviously was not followed as the bad guy walked in an unlocked side door. With only one entrance, a man could be trapped inside which would allow one door to enter and then locked behind and if safe, the second door is remotely unlocked. Result – Bad guy – stuck in the middle.
Armed guards can be somewhat effective but a killer will try to kill them first and some guards will just call for help as was the case in a Florida school. A deterrent they are and sometimes will cause the shooter to go down the street to a school less protected. So, what does work? Volunteer guards might work for those that have had military service and want to protect kids. Screening would be tough and a few mistakes would be costly. If it was a father or mother of kids in school it could work as a neighborhood watch.
But truly nothing is fail-safe because a determined killer will find someone to kill. There may be some way to detect them ahead of time but we have not perfected a sure-fire method yet. We may have stopped some, but it is hard to tell. Today the story is that this killer, killed his grandmother first, this shows how hard this path is to follow. Wall-off schools like prisons are effective but from the outside world, it probably would be unacceptable to the American people.
Unfortunately, police are too far away and take time to respond. They can just clean up the damage by the time they arrive. As the President said, take away guns. That might work, but at great cost to our freedoms. First only the good people would comply with the law and not even all of them would give up their guns. So, you only get part of the guns and they have been taken by the people who are most trustworthy and should if anybody be armed.
That is the problem, The bad guys and gals would have guns and we would have disarmed the best of our people. The bad guys would find little resistance and could pretty much do what they want. How about allowing the teachers to be armed? Of course, they would be trained and post a big sign “Be warned Teachers and staff are armed.” That would cause a lot of deterrence to the cowards that perpetrate this kind of violence. However, there would be no requirement that anyone is armed. Thinking about it, what is a workable solution, Teachers and staff that want to be defenders of their young charges could be trained. Those that were not conformable with firearms would not be required to carry. Although there are some non-lethal devices that they could carry if they wished to. School Boards that do not support protecting their schools should be replaced with more solution-orientated people.
P.S. in another life, I was in charge of more than 100 security people and know something
about the business.
Mike Young has been writing opinion articles for most of his life, having been published in multiple periodicals. He is the author of numerous articles and a book on Public Speaking. A member of President Bush’s task force on infrastructure protection for water and power systems, he is presently on the Board of Trustees for Overton Power District #5 as the Secretary/Treasurer. He currently resides in Mesquite, NV.
Do you really want to live in a country that requires teachers to be armed to the teeth? When you and I went to school, there were no locked doors on schools nor were there police officers at the doors. People owned hunting rifles and shotguns and maybe a hand gun. We had few if any mass shootings. What has happened over the years to get to today? The NRA! They have used scare tactics to encourage the sale of more guns. Not just any guns but military grade weapons that are only meant to kill many people in a short time.
The NRA, with the help of the GOP, has made it easier to buy military grade weapons than buying booze. The Uvalde shooter purchased his military grade weapons after turning 18. No background check, no waiting period, no training, no nothing. These horrible murders will get worse as there are too many military grade weapons in the country and many more young men with a grudge to settle. No other country in the world has as many mass murders. Mental health is a problem world wide. The big difference is that we have way too many mass murderer weapons in the hands of the mentally ill. Will Mesquite be next?
When I was a young teenager, I was able to walk the streets of Switzerland’s biggest city, after dark, without any concern for my safety. Since then, their laws have changed. Here is something to study and think about:
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/florida-school-shooting_what-can-the-swiss-teach-the-us-about-guns-/43923350
Guns are not the responsible party, people are the ones we need to think about and if possible, restrain them. With 350 million guns in circulation, it is much too late to try and ban them. Also, with 350 million people it is hard to fine the few who might do these things. Gun registration does nothing to stop killers, but it does provide, an address for gun confiscation which the Democratic party wants. Guns are included in our constitution for two main reasons, Self-protection which we need now, as we needed it 250 years ago and protection from an overbearing government.
Maybe having those under 21 have to take a safety class where the instructor signs off on being able to purchase a semi-automatic might I.D. some, but sadly not all. Hardening the targets will help but nothing is fool proof. A good idea might be changing the law, use a gun and it’s life (With a gun you could take a life, so you forfeit yours). A felon possesses a gun, life. Get the bad guys off the streets. It may not discourage a school shooter, but it will make criminals understand using a gun is the wrong way to go and lets the public know it too.
We protect our children in our homes, airports, banks and most government buildings yet they aren’t safe at schools. Why and what to do? Seems simple to me. Since the church shootings occurred our church talked with the police, and we found a solution. All doors are locked except the front door. We have trained men from our church who have conceal and carry weapons that watch that door and those that enter. Once our church service starts that front door is locked. No one can enter unless the security team lets you in. We also have cameras outside to watch the surrounding parking area. If something suspicious seems to be going on the security guard investigates the situation. These men have walkie talkies that can inform someone inside if there is a problem. This would be so easy for every school to do.
Times are so very different from when I grew up and you could walk to and from school without any worries. Think of all the differences in our country today? The laws have changed, and they have taken God out of schools. Violent games are the norm, single mothers are common. What has happened to the family structure?
What has happened to this country? I don’t recognize it any longer.
What a load of crap. What has changed since the 1950’s is the NRA’s chokehold on the GOP. We have too many guns! That is the problem. Too many guns equals too many murders of spouses, children and relatives. Too many suicides and murder suicides. Too many road rage shootings. No other developed country has the number of mass murders as we do. We are a shithole country because of the idiots who buy guns and vote for the GOP. Single moms, single dads, two dads, two mothers, they all have nothing to do with our sickness. That sickness is our ridiculous obsession with guns. I do not want to live in a country with armed guards at church. We are better than that.
David, how sad you must be seeing sickness all around you. What has changed since the 1950s has been our society; from God and country to a lack of values, from supporting our neighbors to me, me, me. Maybe we gave our kids too much and did not let them earn enough. NRA has been around 150 years. They did not have anything to do with the change. The biggest Democratic-controlled cities are the root of most crimes in this country. If you remove their numbers, the USA drops to one of the safest countries in the world. The cities all have very strict gun rules, yet they are the worst for crime. Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, etc. If we restrict the rest of the country, people will not be able to protect themself or their families. Loosen the gun rules and watch the crime drop and the bad guys get shot by locals protecting their families. Love to have a going away party for you, so let me know when you will be leaving.
Ever heard of the Children Holocaust? I was one of its first victims and came within hours of death. You can verify the reality of that Kiddies Holocaust on page 56 of this book by Devra Davis:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235200/
That book also talks about 100,000’s deaths/year, which could have been very easily prevented if….it had not been for greed.
This is one of her latest projects:
https://ehtrust.org/about/dr-devra-davis/
Glimpse of my history:
You know about the leather pants that boys and men have been wearing for hundred(s) years in parts of Europe. Those pants have (had) narrow side pocket specifically designed for holding blades of hunting knives and keeping their grips exposed.
Teachers kept a willow stick at their desks for pointing at big roll-up maps.
And for whipping mis-behaving pupils, exclusively boys, for not paying attention and to humble them. I was in a class when a teacher damaged his stick while whipping his desktop in a threatening(?) manner. That broke the stick. He asked if any boy happened to have a knife with him, but none of them had one. The teacher said: “What kind of boys are you?”
“Punishment” was immediate and sometimes more severe than befitting misbehavior.
No one ever thought of threatening or harming anyone, except boys having fist fights that were soon forgotten and forgiven.
You do remember the meaning of the word “punishment?”
Crimes rates were historically much, much lower than today.
How can an inanimate, lifeless, object commit crimes? So, what is the purpose of the word “gun crime” when referring to “criminals” killing people? Does that seem like taking away some of the guilt of criminals?
Should we bring guns, knives, fingernail clippers, etc., to trial when used in crimes? If found guilty lock them up in jails.
Having doubts? Consider this:https://www.google.com/search?q=bible+gateway+spare+the+rod+spoil+the+child&ei=YxySYvykBISN0PEPvO2WuA0&ved=0ahUKEwi84prNn4L4AhWEBjQIHby2BdcQ4dUDCA0&oq=bible+gateway+spare+the+rod+spoil+the+child&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQDDIGCAAQHhAIMgUIABCGAzIFCAAQhgMyBQgAEIYDMgUIABCGAzIFCAAQhgM6BwgAEEcQsANKBAhBGABKBAhGGABQ8AlY8AlgpyBoAXABeACAAbQBiAG0AZIBAzAuMZgBAKABAcgBCMABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
Why do most people think that many situations are either being black or white issues, with little gray area in between.
Worse yet, massive national problems are being regorged unendingly to blame one single person, as if such a person had divine power to do so?
There can be only one overarching cause for that.
As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
This seems like common sense. Yet the guy with five decades of political experience can’t seem to apply such a simple lesson to tackling inflation.
Think about it– inflation has been raging for more than a year. Yet they’ve changed almost nothing.
Most notably there’s the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, under whose leadership the United States has experienced its worst inflation in 40 years.
His approach so far has been nothing short of extraordinary. It started in February last year when he denied inflation was even a problem, insisting that “inflation is just very, very low”.
A few weeks later he started singing the ‘inflation is transitory’ chorus. By June 2021 he doubled down, saying that higher inflation would soon wane. That’s also when he projected a 2021 inflation rate of just 3.4%.
By December, his 3.4% inflation projection proved hilariously wrong; 2021 inflation came in at 7%. And yet the Fed still hadn’t yet lifted a finger to stop it.
He even gave a press conference late in the year saying, “I don’t think that we’re behind the curve. . . I do think it’s premature to raise rates today. I don’t think that’s controversial, certainly, I don’t know anyone arguing for that today.”
Seriously? Out of hundreds of millions of people across the country suffering higher prices, he literally didn’t know a single person who thought the Fed should be doing more to fight inflation? What a joke.
But this comedy of errors gets better.
Home prices across the US had surged 20% by December 2021. And yet, the Fed was still printing tens of BILLIONS of dollars per month to ‘support the housing market’. This is more ridiculous than Kanye West receiving millions of dollars in PPP loans (which really happened).
Apparently the Fed didn’t think that a 20% surge in home prices was reason to change anything about their approach.
This is the larger point– everything was broken. Powell’s Fed printed trillions of dollars and helped engineer inflation. Yet they failed to predict it. They rejected it. They downplayed it. They continued fueling it. And they did absolutely nothing to stop it.
In any rational organization this person would have been fired long ago. And yet, two weeks ago, he was sworn in for his second, five-year term as Fed Chairman.
It’s the same story with Janet Yellen– Powell’s predecessor as Fed Chair who is now the US Treasury Secretary.
Similarly, Yellen failed to see how keeping interest rates near zero for years and years could possibly lead to inflation. She also failed to see how trillions of dollars in government spending could possibly lead to inflation. And she has failed to do anything about it.
Yellen at least had the stones to admit she made a mistake; last week she told reporters that she was wrong when she called inflation “small and manageable” back in 2021.
Like Jerome Powell, though, she’s still in her job.
The list goes on and on. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman also recently acknowledged that he “called inflation wrong last year” when he insisted that government spending would not cause inflation.
(Krugman is the same guy who went on CNN years ago suggesting the government should lie about a phony alien invasion as an excuse to spend more money.)
It’s extraordinary how some of the most prominent ‘experts’ have been so wrong. And yet they’re all still in their same positions.
I’m not trying to be cruel; we’re all human, and we all make mistakes. But it’s silly to pretend that these experts are flawless and infallible.
They’re not flawless. They’re not infallible. Nothing is.
The police response to the terrible, horrific shooting in Uvalde proves this in spades; the institution that people trusted to keep their kids safe made “the wrong decision” to not go inside and save the kids.
The people in power expect you to have unshakable confidence in their institutions and experts, and to depend on them for nearly everything, including your safety, health, information, and prosperity.
But sometimes the experts are tragically wrong. And that’s reason enough to have a Plan B.
To your freedom,