Armed Guards at Schools Comments from a friend

*Happiest of New Years to any unfortunate who stumbles upon. I am going to try to write regularly this year. 2011 was such a miserable disaster, this HAS to be gooder! Lots of plans for this year! Hoping I am up to following thru. Planning a trip -journey really- this summer on my motorcycle. Fingers crossed, pooper puckered! Baby steps!* Boy, did I ever pork the pooch here! I wrote this about a year ago and quite frankly I could rewritten it almost word for word and use it over. Of course today is the day after Christmas 2012, and I have yet to visit this page. I'm here to comment on the aftermath of the tragic events at "Sandy Hook". Yet another rabid dog went berserk and murdered children in a school. As usual, the hand ringers and morons immediately start beating the drum for more gun control. I see their point. When you are ill-informed ignorant or just plain stupid, the only thing you can do is jerk the old knee. The following is an e-mail I received from a friend of mine. Armed Guards at Schools Comments from a friend Connecticut (where the Sandy Hook shootings took place) has very strict rules for gun ownership. Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country - and one of the highest murder rates in the country. Criminals and crazies don't care about laws - so increasing gun control laws won't help. It will only decrease the availability of protection to moral, law abiding citizens. Armed guards in every school will be expensive (but how much is your child worth) and will not eliminate the possibility of an attack. Those who oppose the armed guard scenario often point to Columbine which had an armed guard and to Fort Hood ( the middle of an Army base for God's sake). No matter what we do, the crazies won't care and the criminals will always be able to obtain any weapon of their choosing - regardless of laws. I would like to point out that, at least in the Fort Hood shootings, it required armed bystanders (both military and non-military) to finally stop him. The trivialization of violence in the movies, in video games, in the news and with each other has become so commonplace, that it is now considered "normal". It is not "normal", even though it has always existed. We have merely shifted our current version of morality. Things that would have shocked our parents, things that would have absolutely devastated our grandparents, barely raise an eyebrow today. We need a significant change in the way we perceive and teach what is "moral" to our children. Otherwise we all continue to devolve into what is nothing more than animal survival. We need to address and change what has become of mental health care. Simply trying to "understand them" and cutting them loose in society and telling them to take their pills is not enough. I don't have an answer for this either. But obviously, putting them all in a sanitarium as we did in years past, or cutting them all loose as we did a few decades ago is not working. We need to do something else. Finally, anyone convicted of premeditated murder (and maybe a few others) should not get life in prison where they get 3 square meals a day, free housing, free medical care and free education - they should be hung publically to reduce the tax burden on society and eliminate any chance of them killing anyone else. Anyone in prison for abusing themselves with drugs should be let free to eliminate themselves at their own cost. The govt could even front the cost of rehabilitation - as long as they pay us back. Bob Meanwhile... here's what some have already done - in spite of what you've seen on the news. Hmmmm... D.C. School Posts Job Opening for Police Officer by AWR Hawkins 23 Dec 2012 Before the horrific crime at Sandy Hook Elementary even took place, some schools in our nation were already putting armed security and police officers on their campuses. As a matter of fact, one such school—Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC—posted a job opening for a night shift police officer on Nov. 28, so they could have protection around the clock. According to the posting, the position "is the overnight/midnight shift," and they made it clear that candidates would have to provide copies of their training credentials, SPO license, and professional references. Gov. Christie's comments to the contrary, just think how much safer the children at Sidwell are going to be because of such an officer's presence. For the record, this is something that is done in many parts of Texas: even in public schools. Instead of wearing a uniform, patrol officers will be put in street clothes and assigned a particular school for a time. And they are in that school to be sure the kind of thing that happened at Sandy Hook doesn't happen there. To be clear, this is not new in Texas. It's something Gov. Perry has been doing for some time. My point is simply that some people—Gov. Perry and Sidwell Friends School, in this particular instance—are taking logical and necessary steps to keep children safe. School Obama's Daughters Attend Has 11 Armed Guards by AWR Hawkins 24 Dec 2012 Some interesting news has broken in the wake of the latest push for gun control by President Obama and Senate Democrats: Obama sends his kids to a school where armed guards are used as a matter of fact. The school, Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers and is seeking to hire a new police officer as we speak. If you dismiss this by saying, "Of course they have armed guards -- they get Secret Service protection," then you've missed the larger point. The larger point is that this is standard operating procedure for the school, period. And this is the reason people like NBC's news journalist David Gregory send their kids to Sidwell, they know their kids will be protected from the carnage that befell kids at a school where armed guards weren't used (and weren't even allowed). Shame on President Obama for seeking more gun control and for trying to prevent the parents of other school children from doing what he has clearly done for his own. His children sit under the protection guns afford, while the children of regular Americans are sacrificed.

Clean Sheet...

Happiest of New Years to any unfortunate who stumbles upon. I am going to try to write regularly this year. 2011 was such a miserable disaster, this HAS to be gooder!
Lots of plans for this year! Hoping I am up to following thru. Planning a trip -journey really- this summer on my motorcycle. Fingers crossed, pooper puckered!
Baby steps!