There are many cases where armed cops ended mass shootings. - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 23/12/2012 01:29:08 AM
cost would be the main one. I don't know how many schools there are in the US, but having at least one armed police officer at every one? You're talking billions at the very least.
and we have to pay them something on the order of $40k per year or else it will be hard to find someone to do the job. and probably give them benefits.... etc etc. billions is probably about right.
How much would it cost to implement a national program to screen, train and certify all gun owners? How much would it cost to confiscate all guns? There is nearly a 1:1 ratio of guns to people in America; controlling access to all of them will be expensive HOWEVER we do it. That does not deter gun control supporters from advocating other expensive approaches, so why is it suddenly so objectionable?
I am sorry, but gun control advocates raising cost objections to a reasonable NRA proposal that would significantly increase public safety is no more credible than the NRA raising cost objections to screening, training and certification requirements. Neither them objects to doing it because they do not wish to pay for it: They object to paying for it because they do not wish to do it. Meanwhile, innocent people continue being shot because one side wants to ban all guns, the other wants all guns available on demand, and 90% of the country rightly refuses to support either irrational policy.
there is no case at all of any mass shooting where an armed guard either prevented the shooting or reduced the number of casualties. the cost problem comes in because we are talking about a lot of school districts who would rather hire two more teachers but instead they have to hire armed guards and make sure they get their proper training, and then HOPE that if they are needed that they don't make things worse for everyone. if we're going to spend tax dollars on curbing gun violence, i would rather tax dollars go towards training and registration rather than a non-sensical idea which has not been proven to be effective.
All the way back to the UT Tower shootings. Typically, mass shooters get shot when armed cops arrive, either by the cops or by themselves. Armed cops routinely end all kinds of gun violence; that, after all, is why they have guns, and there is nothing non-sensical about that. A federal program (which is what I understood to be on the table) would not financially burden school districts, and even local programs would place the financial burden on the local law enforcement agencies guarding the schools, not the school districts. You think our old high school pays the cops who cruise the parking lot in squad cars at lunch?
You would rather fund training and certification, which the NRA says is ineffective and too expensive; they would rather fund police guarding schools, which you say is ineffective and too expensive. Those both sound less like rebuttals than excuses. I am truly sick and tired of the irrational fringes on both sides shouting each other down with strawmen and canards while the vast majority of America desperately seeks a rational effective policy amid those shrill hyperbolic distractions.
Lemme simplify this: The SOLE reason ANYONE listens to the gun lobbys alarmist hyperbolic claims about confiscation is because radical fringe gun control advocates make them credible. Likewise, the SOLE reason ANYONE listens to the other sides alarmist hyperbolic claims about all the people trying to turn their backyards into Ft. Dix is because radical fringe gun rights advocates make them credible. They are not rebutting each other, they are VALIDATING each other. And getting in the way of the vast majority who categorically disagrees with both as we try to draft effective reasonable national gun policy. Anyone who wants people to dismiss the pro/anti-gun lobby as delusional should stop making its fears so plausible to everyone else.