On December 21, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, (D-NY), said, "The NRA's response to the Newtown massacre is both ludicrous and insulting, and they are fundamentally out of step with the American people on the issue of gun violence." Nadler continued, "... like enhanced, universal background checks, which the vast majority of its members support ...." There goes Nadler again, spouting off his opinion, but offering no substantiation of his remarks. Nadler is wont to do that. Then Nadler talks out of both sides of his mouth. He first complains about the cost of armed school guards, then says what is needed is a buyback program. Gee, does Nadler think buyback programs have no costs associated with them?
That is, sadly, the environment presented by Democrats/liberals/progressives (DLP) and a vast majority of the MSM. So, with that in mind, let's examine what is actually happening vis-a-vis armed school guards.
President Barack Hussein Obama sends his children, Sasha and Malia, to Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC. The school has, besides the Secret Service guard, eleven security officers of its own. Those security guards are (wait for it ...) armed. And, in late November 2012, Sidwell Friends school sought to hire a new police officer.
But when National Rifle Association (NRA) president Wayne LaPierre (pictured right) publicly advocated that there be armed security at every school, DLP and the liberal MSM said that he was a, "raving lunatic who is just as dangerous as Adam Lanza."
Further, NBC's David Gregory, another known gun control advocate, also sends his children to Sidwell Friends School. Gregory recently attacked the NRA on Meet the Press about the NRA suggestion to place armed guards at all schools. While interviewing (mocking?) LaPierre, Gregory said,
"You proposed armed guards in school. We'll talk about that in some detail in a moment. You confronted the news media. You blamed Hollywood and the gaming industry. But never once did you concede that guns could actually be part of the problem. Is that a meaningful contribution, Mr. LaPierre, or a dodge?"
I personally think that Gregory's bias is rather clear, as illustrated by his use of the word concede. But that's my opinion.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Glenn Contrarian
Lemme get this straight - you think we should all have guns in school because the president's kids have guards and Secret Service men at their school?
Tell you what, Warren - when we're ALL president and have our fingers on the nuclear button, and we're ALL getting an average of 30 death threats every single day, THEN we should all demand our kids have the same level of protection that the president's does.
2 - Jet Gardner
Short and sweet-A guard with a side arm is NOT going to take out a maniac with a semi-automatic rifle who doesn't care if he lives or dies in the crossfire.
Defending the NRA... so typical.
3 - Glenn Contrarian
Hey Warren -
Tell you what - go arm yourself with all the weapons you could possibly want...and you know what? One idiot with a .22 cal. Saturday Night Special will still kill you. Know how? All he needs is to get the drop on you, and you're done for.
Columbine had an armed guard...and look at all the good it did them. Virginia Tech had its own police department...and how many died?
The key, sir, is to keep the guns out of the hands of crazies, because it does NOT matter how many guns the good guys have, when idiots get hold of guns, innocent people die.
And one more thing - if you still think that carrying firearms will keep you alive, how about asking the families of the armed cops that are killed almost every week of the year....
4 - Clavos
The key, sir, is to keep the guns out of the hands of crazies
No. The key is to reopen the asylums and lock up the crazies.
5 - Glenn Contrarian
No. The key is to reopen the asylums and lock up the crazies.
Quoted for truth!
6 - troll
@ #4...identification becomes a problem
so a young man who shows up at a clinic complaining of symptoms of the 'postmodern disease' - depression and suicidal ideation - should expect incarceration in the name of preventing mass murders?
your Rx is surprisingly impractical - though we could use those fema camps I guess
7 - troll
...or maybe we can identify a certain sequence in the human genome associated with violent behavior and institutionalize kids at birth
there's the ticket
8 - Not the liberal actor
Re: comment #1 and # 3, Glenn, (and comment # 2 by Jet as well) as usual, you try to muddy the waters, to obfuscate by offering rants that are completely off-topic. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy. And what about David Gregory's children?
9 - Glenn Contrarian
As usual, Warren refuses to directly address the arguments presented...and never realizes how that reflects on him.
10 - Igor
@4-clav: the problem is that YOU don't know who the crazies are.
11 - Igor
If we post guards at schools (at a cost of billions every year) inevitably a guard will kill an innocent student, whether in a crossfire or some mania of his own.
More billions will be required. All to support a goofy misinterpretation of the 2nd amendment, which is clearly designed to arm an emergency militia for use against foreign invaders, or perhaps, a marauding grizzly.
Eventually EVERY resource in America will be required to support this goofy idea and the increasing demands of it's manic adherents.
12 - Cindy
hmmm, who will be left outside to take care of us, once ALL the crazy people are locked up?
maybe we can get one of those hunter gatherer tribal peoples to do it...wonder if they mind flying.
13 - clavos
@4-clav: the problem is that YOU don't know who the crazies are.
Of course not; but I don't have to. That I don't doesn't mean that nobody does.
What a dumb remark, Igor.
14 - Igor
YOU have no way to find all the crazies, even if you delegate it. Furthermore, YOU are unwilling to pay for the army of public servants required to find the crazies and then the facilities to imprison them. Because you're CHEAP!
15 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Igor's a bit inflammatory there, but he's got a point: if you want to lock up the crazies, you've got to be willing to pay the taxes that will allow us to do that, including identification, treatment, support, supervision, and, yes, what is essentially lifelong incarceration. Trying to save money on all that was why Reagan slashed the social programs and asylums back in the 1980's. So...if that's what you believe is what needs to happen (and I agree that it is very necessary), then you have to be willing to cough up some more tax money in order to pay for it.
16 - Zingzing
So clavos wants asylums to imprison people who have committed no crime. Who is running these things? Who is regulating them? Who decides who's crazy? Who's paying for them?
That's a crazy idea, clavos, and presents an interesting break from your normal "philosophy" of small government. I guess small government means something different from what I think it means. All very, very interesting... Yes, yes...
17 - Glenn Contrarian
zing -
What we're referring to are identifying and getting treatment and support for those who have mental problems that cause them to present a danger to the public. You already know that Reagan's slashing of funding for such places directly led to so many more people being homeless, and you also know that a lot of people that are on the streets are looney-tunes. It's safer for these people and for the general public if they are provided a safe, warm place to sleep, instead of them living out their lives on the streets where they are in danger, and where they also present dangers to the general public.
That, and it also helps businesses that are hurt by homeless camping out nearby (and often on their very doorsteps).
We don't want to become even more of a police state (for we are certainly such now), but it's better for all concerned if we can identify those who need help or who present a danger to the public and get them off the streets.
18 - Dr Dreadful
Just because David Gregory (what's his middle name, by the way?) sends his children to a school that employs armed guards, it doesn't follow that he approves of the guards being there.
I'm sure - in fact I know - that there are lots of things about the US of A that you don't like, Warren; yet you continue to live there. Why is that?
19 - El Bicho
Just followed Warren's link to the claim of a police officer being sought at Sidwell. The not-so-Brietbart article links to training courses being offered but no job at the school. Whoops
20 - Glenn Contrarian
He's afraid of the different, of losing his place on top of the social heap.
I think that's why I couldn't remain a conservative - I began to see that there was nothing wrong with adapting to changes in society, in the world. I came to see that the 'good old days' really weren't that good, that life is better now for humanity as a whole than it ever has been.
But there's a big part of Warren that looks back wistfully to those good old days. He knows he can't go back to them again, but he wants to keep hold of what's left of those 'good old days', because he knows that farther from America he lives (not 'visits', but lives), the farther he is from everything that he knows...
...and that scares the hell out of him.
But that's just my not-so-psychologically-educated opinion.
21 - Zingzing
Glenn, help for the mentally ill may be what you're talking about, but clavos said "asylums," which is a bit different. Two of my mother's aunts spent time in asylums, one died there, the other got out, but promptly walked herself into a lake.
22 - Baritone
This is all such a specious argument. Of course anywhere a president's children attend school will have at least one, probably more, Secret Service agents. That this particular school has several of its own on the payroll is a choice the school administration has made. It is likely that a good many children of politicians and perhaps other high level government functionaries attend the school as well.
The notion of having armed guards at all schools is ridiculous. In a # of the recent mass shootings, there were in fact one or more security guards of some kind on the premises and they were often among the first ones shot. So, would anyone suggest that all of our schools employ several armed guards? Whoops. What happened to small government?
Who is going to pay for that? School budgets pretty much everywhere across the country are strapped beyond their limits. Would the DC Tea Baggers sign on for new taxes to help defray the costs involved? Hmmm. Maybe not. If such a spending bill couldn't get through Congress - and let's face it, there is virtually NO bill that can make it through Congress - then how are local governments to cover the costs of security guards. Fire more teachers? Dramatically increase class sizes? Do away with more "non-essential" programs and administrators? Consolidate more schools creating more mega-schools?
What will be the vetting process? Who will do it? How much more bureaucracy will be necessary to implement this doofus idea?
And yes. What happens when the first security guard "goes postal?"
Hey! How about if the NRA carries that burden on behalf of the people? Let them and their membership pay the freight on that one. Have the gun manufacturers add to the pot - after all this arming of America will only benefit them.
This is such a bad idea, and the argument about Obama and his kids is so off the mark as to be just stupid.
Just as a side note, many urban schools do already employ various kinds and numbers of security forces, but their "mission" is to control the kids - mainly high school aged kids - who can get seriously out of hand from time to time. I worked for a few months at an inner city high school several years ago here in Indy. I occasionally had lunch with one of the guards with whom I had struck up a conversational relationship. He said that the worst part of the job was the shear boredom. Just as with other such jobs, the day to day happenings were few and far between. Most of the time there was really nothing for them to do but sit or stand around. The same can be said of bank security guards and the like. Guards in such positions might go for months or even years without incident, when suddenly all hell breaks loose. The guard or guards would likely be caught "off-guard" just as much as the bank customers & employees, students, teachers and administrators. The time to react can often be no more than a second or two. Who is ready for that? Damn few.
23 - Jet Gardner
The solution is simple Baritone-hire security guards to protect the security guards!
24 - Jet Gardner
Intelligent suggestion-in the past the KKK was sued when Blacks and Jews were murdered to the point that they nearly went bankrupt out of existance.
So... Every time a school gets shot up or a police officer/fireman is shot with an assault rifle, the families of the victims should sue the NRA for not only promoting the misguided right to own such weapons, but for also owning the politicians that won't bring this craziness to an end.
The bullshit that the NRA and gun manufacturers want you to believe is that Obama wants to outlaw huntin' 'n coon guns or personal protection sidearms-WHICH IS AN OUT-AND-OUT LIE. What he wants banned are military-style assault rifles and 30 bullet gun clips.
How many shots does it take to bring a man down - and/or how many deer wear bullet-proof vests?
25 - Glenn Contrarian
What really gets me is that these pro-gun nuts don't realize that all the guns in the world won't help them if a man really, truly wants to kill them. The successful use of a gun in self-defense is far and away the rare exception to the rule.
I think we had this discussion before - and I remember digging out the stats and finding that for every successful use of a gun in self-defense, there were eighty or so innocents killed by guns. Not only that, but the very fact that police - armed and trained with firearms, and almost always alert to the threat - die almost every week somewhere in America. That last fact by itself destroys the NRA's 'essential for self-defense' argument.
All guns do is to make it a lot easier to kill a lot more people.