The make up of the republican-gerrymandered House of Not-So-Representatives?

(remind me again which party had more votes for the House? ;))

And how was the GOP in position to draw some favorable districts? Gosh, I do believe that might have something to do with their elected legislatures.

But like I said, at this point, by any means necessary afaic.

Fine. You go any means necessary, and then the D's will go any means necessary (51 in the Senate?)

Texas lawmaker: Ping-pong is deadlier than guns | The Ticket - Yahoo! News

And you know what else is deadlier than guns? Hitler.

Which was a result when the Germans repealed the 1st amendment...

And it all went down hill from there. So what better? Ping-Pong control or gun control? :D

I'm not really thrilled with Plan B either, I simply have not found an acceptable justification for increasing taxes on the people that are already (over)taxed at the highest rates. It took years to create this mess, it may simply be one that has no solution that is both acceptable & capable of being implemented.

We need to go after the roots of violence in general, not guns.

Prosecutor: Teens beat homeless man to death | abc11.com

The Republican caucus can bring nothing to the table, so they will get nothing.

Boehner's Plan B fiscal cliff bill pulled amid dissension in GOP caucus - CNN.com

No negotiating with the crazies on the right wing, apparently

Edit: I'm saying that's what the D's and Obama should tell them "That was a one-time offer. All of it is now off the table. Get back to us when you can control your caucus and we'll start fresh"

You beat me to it. All that bluster and positioning (and wasted time) for nothing. I'm beginning to dislike Boehner.

Yes, I agree. Definitely no easy or quick fix, but, well worth the effort in my opinion.

Interested in knowing your thoughts on the "roots of violence".

I kindof feel for him, as much as one can for a politician. He's in such an untenable position right now: he has a clearly losing hand right now to Obama due to the structure of the tax cuts and he's trying to make the best deal he can. However, they're not letting him make a deal because there are just too many who are are starting to believe their own rhetoric rather than remembering it's all for show and all part of the game.

I think this defeat has a decent chance of ending his tenure as Speaker. If Cantor takes over, he's just a younger, slimier, less orange Boehner. But if the GOP tries to get a "real conservative", this is going to be a really long couple of years.

SI

IMO this is the likely scenario. We go over the cliff and then fix it. Question is how long to fix it.

'Plan B' Vote Postponed In House

Let's try Cantor.

Will Boehner’s speakership survive until Plan C?

Cantor as "more moderate?"

LOL

You know what would help with the violence. Men. Men that are fathers. Not boys who have kids. But men who have children and actually raise them, and teach them, and discipline them.
I see a lot about the 2nd amendment people saying how they were taught by their fathers how to be responsible with their guns. Yep. Fathers that are men.

Unfortunately, in our throw away society, we see less and less of men that are fathers. Huge issue for our country.

At least he dropped my favorite line:

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

I think it usually ends with the bad guy shooting himself after he finishes killing those around him.

So it takes the NRA a week to come up with that...

And then they need 72 more hours to be able to answer a single question...

Wow. Somebody should let them know that this issue is not going away this time as it has in the past so delay tactics will not work.

It would have been funny if wasn't so sad. I did enjoy the protestors. :)

The idea that we want to create an arms race inside of schools in this country is idiotic.

Nor is anything they say going to change any minds.

The only thing that matters is whether gun owners are betrayed by their representatives.

Seriously. Then you'll just have worse carnage.

Eh. Armed security doesn't bother me. The idea we should arm teachers and administrators is beyond ridiculous. I do find it sad that we can't even provide adequate resources for actual education, and now we are going to blow more money on armed security. But then as a father, I do believe having police officers at the door of my children school would provide me "quicker" peace of mine than any gun control law would. I just don't think it should be an either/or situation.

Straight up answer me this: Would closing the gun-show loophole to prevent 40% of all guns sales being absent of background checks be a "betrayal of all gun owners?"

They're not going to start arming teachers and lunch ladies. State legislators propose a lot of stuff. We're full-on into the policy game now. Somebody proposes something that's not going to happen, and it becomes a huge news story as a way for the other side to make a point - "See how CRAZY they are?!" Picking and choosing the most extreme views to respond to so their own view can seem the most correct - like those fluff pieces passionately explaining why we need to have gun control laws - as if we don't yet. It's just run-of-the-mill stuff now. Putting down others and feeling correct will soon, if it hasn't already, be way more important than protecting children.

That's just it - I don't know for sure. But I think we need to have a discussion on the entire topic, not just "ban assault weapons and move on" like will probably happen, or we'll be right back here scratching our collective heads once again. We may help reduce these 20-30 dead massacres, but do little to stop the far more frequent 2-5 dead shootings that don't require an AR-15 to pull off (and we've had shootings like that in schools, including elementary schools, before). Let's keep in mind that in the Kentucky school shooting, the kids broke into their grandfather's safe to get the guns, and the Colombine shooters bought their guns illegally. A few years back we had an incident where an angry young man drove his SUV into a lunchtime crowd at UNC. And not a single gun was used in the violent crimes mentioned in the article above. Gun control alone will have very little impact on the incidents folks think it will.

We need to discuss our mental health system, which has swung to the far side of the pendulum from the medieval system we used to have. Now we treat it like the common cold, with some drugs and some monitoring. There is very little recourse for caregivers who have someone they can't really handle until that person actually hurts someone, for example. We need to work on a middle ground that protects EVERYONE's rights, not defund mental health hospitals and dump their occupants in the streets.

We need to discuss and fund anti-gang measures, and the roots of the problems that lead to kids getting in to gangs. The broken family unit is one aspect, let's dig in and find more, while funding police efforts to break up the gangs.

We need to have a discussion on entertainment. I don't think it will get very far (the only folks truly affected by it are those with issues to begin with), but it needs to be part of the discussion. Maybe it can help find the problem people earlier.

We need to continue the gun control discussion to reach reasonable conclusions and measures that have a shot at working. I'm all for background checks, and eliminating the exceptions for gun shows (either we need instant background checks, or pre-approved ones for private sales). I'm all for training classes, and penalties for those who don't properly secure their guns. But gun control alone won't eliminate the problems people think they want to address with it.

I'm sure we can come up with other topics to discuss, but let's discuss all of them, not take the easy-but-ineffective gun control approach that will make its advocates feel good but do very little in curbing the violence everyone is actually concerned about.

All one armed guard is going to do is make people have a team to do things and not do these things as individuals.

Which makes it harder. That is a bad thing? Slowing it down is not at least a beginning?

Doesn't even necessarily mean there will be a team. Just means the armed guard is going to get shot first.

Ok, so you put a cop in every school. That may stop this stuff from happening at schools.

What about malls?
What about office buildings?
What about hospitals?
What about stadiums?
What about museums?
What about amusement parks?
What about the subway?
What about the library?
What about the grocery store?
What about health clubs?

The problem isn't being looked at in the right way.

Who is going to pay for this? Guess we are going to raise taxes after all.

Or the kid could just go to the next school over that doesn't have a guard.

And the guard isn't just there to protect against the rare chance of a random school shooter. My old middle school had a few fights where knives were involved. It probably would have been better for an armed (and more importantly, trained) officer to break that up than the chubby middle-aged geometry teacher.

Every school doesn't need this, but it makes sense at some.

That's more of an intrusion on an even more basic principle ... that of individuals to sell their (legal) private property without government interference.

Newton school probably wouldn't have fit the profile to assign a cop but I don't have the answers yet. I do like an upswell of public opinion and grassroots campaign (e.g. like MADD) to educate everyone as a start.

This.

Let's just play suppose, shall we? The Connecticut shooter comes up to the school. The doors are locked, and he has to shoot his way in. The school police officer is sitting in the office next to the door then has warning, and is able to bring him down as he enters the building. The school shooting ends at the entrance at the building.

Seriously, people seem to act like there is no one solution to help stop/slow this stuff down, so we should just do nothing. Or, people think that only one thing can be done. Nothing should be either/or. Not one thing alone is going to make a difference. We need multiple solutions, not just one.

I'd imagine the cost of armed guards at every school would be astronomical.

True, and if a crazy kid is just looking for a body count, he's just skipping the school with the armed guard entirely.

And it's really true that there's no "solution" here. Armed guards isn't a solution any more than making it slightly more difficult for some people to legally purchase certain types of weapons. It's pretty easy to poke holes into any ideas, it just depends on what political inclination you bring to the table.

An exceptionally rare scenario in my understanding of the routine of "resource officers". They're typically on the move around the school, the odds of him being in that spot at that moment seem incredibly slim.

(Strictly for the sake of the argument) Arming every teacher/administrator greatly enhances the chances of taking the shooter down before he ever gets near the students.

I have no problem arming people in the schools that have legitimate tactical/crisis training and are range certified. But not too keen on regular type citizens brandishing a piece.

Strictly for the sake of argument each teacher/administrator armed increased the chance of a teacher/administrator losing the plot and shooting someone .... just saying ;)

Past events bear this out. In nearly every single instance where a public shooter was taken out, it was an off-duty LEO who resolved the situation, not a CHL bearing citizen.

Perhaps that training becomes part & parcel of teacher qualification. I mean, if we're going to put everything on the table & all.

Problem with that is individuals who go into that field are looking to teach. They are not looking to become a marksmen.

Just like those who go into the field to work as police officers are not looking to be around 20-30 kids for 8 hours a day teaching them the alphabet, etc.

I can't begin to imagine how a teacher especially one in an elementary school is supposed to teach 20-30 kids while trying to keep a weapon concealed for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 10 months out of the year.

And yes, my wife teaches a 1st grade class.

The idea of putting a gun in every teacher's hand and training them for this is ludicrous.

And Sandy Hook was not a very big building. At the least, it would have been most likely that an armed presence would have stunted the shooting sooner than it was. I don't have faith in an armed teacher stopping anything quicker than a trained police officer.

And what if the teacher can't or won't use a gun? Are we going to fire and turn down good teachers who have poor eyesight or a physical disability? Our education system is shitty enough without taking time away from teachers to actually teach.

Instead of the teachers, let's add a gun class.

When you kid goes of to Kindergarten, they get trained in how to use a very basic gun and they get to carry that gun. Then, as they get older, they get trained in how to use more advanced guns. By the time they're in the 12th grade, they'll all be carrying AK-47s and no one will fuck with them then.

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