Sunday, January 6, 2013

What Happens When the Armed Teachers Are Crazy?

Wonkette

So here is one of those stories where the initial impression — “Maybe-crazy teacher was toting around an AR-15 just like the one used in the Newtown massacre!” — sounds like perfect Wonketfodder, and then you start looking at it more and finally you kind of throw your hands up in the air and wish you’d gone back to re-reading Scud: The Disposable Assassin, where it’s clear who the bad guys are. In keeping with Wonkette Policy, we will not be making fun of possibly-mentally-ill high school teacher Steven Davis, “a beloved science and math teacher at Mount Anthony Union High School” in Bennington, Vermont. Davis surrendered a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to police and was hospitalized for observation last week after neighbors spotted him carrying the weapon to his car; he also had posted several rambling, maybe-threatening videos to YouTube and his wife had taken their children from their home and gotten a protection order against him. Judges don’t grant those on a whim.

 So yes, scary guy, but also probably not in his right mind, at least at the time he was posting those videos (which have since been removed by YouTube). But also “beloved teacher” who was apparently well-liked and functional before whatever breakdown sent him around the bend, so Wayne LaPierre’s awesome idea for a national registry of mentally ill people would have done absolutely nothing when Davis bought that gun in 2009. (One of the few brightly lit zones of moral clarity here: Wayne LaPierre sucks ass.)

12 comments:

  1. Guns cause mental illness. When you buy a gun, it makes you think different. This guy bought the gun, and it produced disordered thinking. Many lunatics buy guns, and this causes them to become homicidal.

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    1. Then I need to send mine back to the manufacturers for replacements or refunds. Mine haven't done any of that to me.

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    2. My tinfoil beanie keeps out the evil brainwaves from the gun along with the ones from the CIA.

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  2. Mikeb, you find one story, and that convinces you that all teachers are unreliable. Why do you judge the whole of a population on the basis of a few outliers?

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    1. Where did I say all teachers are unreliable? You're beginning to piss me off again, Greg.

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    2. Mikeb, do you understand the concept of an implication? You imply a lot and then weasel around about how you never said anything. Take responsibility for what you imply.

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    3. Greg, I don't fucking imply anything. I say straight out that SOME of you lawful gun owners are unfit. Not ALL, just SOME. Same goes for teachers. The ones who would carry guns if they could would result in the same problem we have now with the rest of you.

      You're the one who said this:

      "you find one story, and that convinces you that all teachers are unreliable"

      You're being dishonest and then trying to turn it around on me. You know very well I never said or implied that "all teachers are unreliable." Keep it up and I swear I'll ban you from the blog and it won't be because your arguments are too intelligent for me it'll be because you can't follow simple rules of decency. Last warning.

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    4. Calm down, Mikeb. You don't want teachers to be armed--is that correct? Your reason is that some of them may be crazy, correct? The implication is that enough are to make arming teachers a dangerous idea.

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  3. Mike,

    Your licensing, registration, and full background checks wouldn't stop this either. Also, folks on your side say that cops are ok in schools, but not teachers. What keeps a cop from wigging out like this?

    In the comments on the Ann Coulter post, I made some suggestions on the guns and teachers thing, and I don't want to repeat the whole thing here, duplicating it in such close proximity, but as I said in that post, shooting sprees are typically pre-meditated (that's perhaps what this guy was up to before he got help. Unless the person is fortuitously caught like this, there's nothing in our system or your proposal that stops or can stop them from taking a gun or other weapon and using it now, so if the dangers are headed off with proper rules for carry by teachers who want to carry, the risk stays the same but the potential for stopping a shooter goes up.

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    1. Teachers go through background checks to be allowed to teach. They get years of education. They pass state licensing exams. They're hired by the school and accepted by the district. They have to get hours of instruction every year to maintain their licenses.

      The fact that Mikeb is afraid of allowing teachers to be armed shows his attitude about good citizens.

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    2. When I think of all the teachers I've know in my life, the thought of most of them armed is enough to give me the willies.

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    3. But leaving children in their care every weekday for ten months doesn't? If you trust teachers with the lives and minds of children, why not trust those teachers to defend their lives?

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