*sniff* hmm something stinks round here...oh that's right, its the pile of fud above this.

Yeah, we need more schoolboys learning how to handle guns. If the bad kids are bringing guns to schools, isn't the answer to arm the good kids? After all, who's gonna fuck wit ya if you might be carrying at school?

'zactly Nic. I'm glad you're not damning yourself to hell and supporting genocide by suggesting that kids don't have the right to carry military hardware in school ;)

I'm no fan of the imperialist TR but you guys may not realize how common it was for American kids to bring rifles to school up through the sixties. Rifle teams were very common, yet shootings were not. A couple years ago a girl from our neighboring school district was the national target shooting champion for her age group. Like kids in other activities she wanted to appear in her yearbook doing her thing. There was a shitstorm between the victim disarmament crowd and the right wing nuts,...not pretty. I don't think its a good idea to carry at school anymore but thats more about Americas public school culture than firearms.

"The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace inthe world... The first step -- in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come -- is to teach MEN to shoot!"

President Theodore Roosevelt's last message to Congress

If your going to use a quote to support your point of veiw, use it right. Read that last line, now read it again, now one last time to prove my point. Teach MEN (Im sure if TR was live he would also include Women) how to shoot. He isnt talking about kiddies with a chip on their shoulder who havent been taught how to handel their anger OR how to handel properlly a firearm. Personally I believe the U.S. needs to speak softly and carry a big stick at times like now.

Well, I read it again and he was clearly advocating teaching MEN to shoot when they are SCHOOLBOYS.

But Theodore Roosevelt hasn't seen what we've seen. Times change. For many people, Colombine and the other high school massacres changed everything.

Some things, like philosophical and moral principles, are timeless. In these cases, quotes from dead men are appropriate. Technology, though, is not timeless. Why not pull up quotes from Charles Babbage to defend the quality of Mac OS X?

I'm not advocating one position or the other, though. I honestly haven't made up my mind.

Columbine and other massacres certainly made up <b>my</b> mind.

If the rest of those students were carrying, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris wouldn't have stood a chance.

I hereby endorse dh for President! :)

Nah. Somehow I think it would have only made Dylan and Eric revise their initial destructive plan into a more covert strategy, bigger, and explosive perhaps...when you want to kill, you rise to the challenge presented, eh?

The <b>students</b>? How about a just teacher or two? It's not legal for high school kids to carry most places in the US. But almost all schools and many universities are currently victim disarmament zones.

When Nigerian student Peter Odighizuwa killed the dean of the Appalachian School of Law (which he'd just flunked out of), along with another professor and a student, Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges had to go fetch their handguns from their cars before they could apprehend him.

Of 280 news stories found in a Nexus-Lexis search, exactly <b>four</b> mentioned the role of legal firearms in stopping Odighizuwa.

http://www.i-depth.com/P/r/rq00484.f...ct.msg/11.html

Why, Mr. Toad...vive la difference!
Oh, dear...in retrospect not a very clever thing to have done.
Now <i>that's</i> an insightful response. What's the matter, Jag, got a paper due or something?

Your theory was that an M-16 was too expensive to give to a child without proper training...I pointed out that the picture made clear that the kid had no training (worthy of the name) in safe firearems handling, and that it was almost certain that the M-16 wasn't purchased by the Palestinians. If *I* wanted an M-16, I'd have to plunk down something in excess of a kilobuck for one, properly neutered for civilian use. But the mini-martyr in the picture apparently got his because I helped pay for it, in the hopes of fostering Middle-East peace through Palestinian empowerment.

How nice.

The photos also made clear that his training consisted mostly of indoctrination. The picture from "a-human-right" that you've been waving around as evidence of sick American culture <b>advocated</b> firearms training. You'd <b>just</b> finished spreading your <i>own</i> brand of FUD proclaiming your fear that if the people around you were armed, that they probably <i>wouldn't</i> have proper training.

Don't you get dizzy chasing your tail like that? Maybe <i>that's</i> where that smell is coming from, you're crossing your own wake turbulance.

I don't give a fuck whether they're trained or not! I"m nto going to trust them much more if they are. I'm not inclined to trust people full stop and certainly not people brandishing firearms. Whether they know how to peoprly handle it and accurately shoot things with it is utterly irrelavent to that. Care to attempt to twist any more of my words?

Lines like

and
Do not warrant my time and i've got a feeling the rest of this thread won't either.

As for kids carrying guns, or even some teachers for that matter. Spend a day in an average high school then think about it for a bit. Schooyard fights are all in fun till someone has a 15cm wide hole in their chest.

OK. B'bye. Come back if you calm down. I see you're still having trouble with the difference between "carrying" and "brandishing". Interesting that one of those sentences that "isn't worth your time" you've now quoted twice, without actually saying anything substantive about it.

As I pointed out, I don't advocate "arming schoolchildren"; they're not old enough to carry legally, or even posess except under adult supervision.

Adult teachers is another matter entirely.

High school students are old enough to learn the fundamentals of firearms safety, which used to be taught routinely in many schools as an elective, back in the days when Driver Ed was an elective too. My college had a range and a rifle team; I think the prohibitionists have managed to get it shut down by now.

And schoolyard fights are *not* "all in fun". I spent three years in an American inner-city high school during the late 1960's. The idea that fights among schoolkids can be dismissed and trivialized is one of the attitudes that <i>fosters</i> sudden outbreaks of violence.

I was making a parody of the line 'its all fun and games till someone loses an eye' Clearly we are currantly flying at 30,000 feet above Maggies head. Some things, like the what you just pointed out, i take as the blindly obvious, clearly others don't.

I'm in a deabte, of course i'm going to use emotive language, geez neextill be pulled up for supporting my own point. It doesn't warrant anything substancial, its unsupported, hyperbolic bullshit designed to incite, what do you expect? Its a perfect example of FUD, silly FUD at that, oof course i'm going to quote it.

Because of legalities of because its mindnumbingly stupid? I woudl have thought since you're so worked up about schoolyard fights in the 60's you see why it was not such a wise idea.