WDRacing wrote:
What are the 2 main problems? To me they are...
1, How do we help the mentally ill? Is it even possible?
2, How do we make our children safer?
For me personally, I don't see an answer to problem #1. It relies heavily on individual accountability, something our country sucks at these days. It all starts on the home front, something I can't control. However, I can control my ability to defend myself against such heinous acts by preparing myself as much as I can.
Making my children safer is also simple imho. Armed security at schools. Arguing against that is foolish, why? Because it's THE ONLY possible solution. Nothing else will work. Whether you agree with it or not, that doesn't change the facts.
I don't blame Liberals, but it just happens to be Liberals that want to take away my guns. So yeah...kinda hard not to have animosity towards them.
The fiscal cliff is also a Liberal problem. If you can't stop spending, you can't balance the budget. Why would my side ever agree to raise taxes only to have an irresponsible Gov just blow the revenue? They shouldn't. Obama and his team can all rejoice in their utter failure. Or success I suppose, depending on what side of the aisle you're on and if you're goals are to turn America into Europe.
There's a lot here. I'll touch on a few of the issues.
Armed guards are not necessarily a bad idea, especially at schools with a history of violence, (which is being done now), though the thought of a bunch of armed George Zimmermans being paid to look for trouble concerns me a bit. The glaring issue that is being ignored is that it is impractical. How do you pay for it? If you look around, many school districts, towns, states ain't exactly swimming in money, and eager to add more taxes to cover cost to implement such a plan. If towns are laying off teachers and cutting programs due to a lack of funds, how to you expect them to afford armed security? Also, many schools are big with many entrances, so one armed guard per school is not enough, and we're talking about well over 132,000 schools. Plus, Columbine showed that having an armed guard by themselves is not a deterrent.
As far as mnaking our schools safer, IMHO there is no one security solution to fit every school. A wiser approach would be for each district to work together with their local police to determine what combination of measures would be most effective and affordable in their budgets. I'm sure in some cases, armed guards are appropriate, but it's impractical to think they are the best cure for the problem.
Concerning the fiscal cliff being a liberal issue. Congress is made up of both liberals and conservatives. Both sides share blame for this mess, and it goes back my earlier point that both sides of the aisle prefer now to posture instead of work together. Heck, Boehner could not even get a consensus from his own party on their own fiscal cliff plan idea. That's hardly the liberals' fault. face it, Our elected representation are bums and we voters also share some of that blame because we voted to re-elect most of them expecting them to suddenly do something different.
As far as mental health, I agree with you that it's impossible to stop crazies if they're determined enough. But there are some things that could be done, like restoring federal funding for mental institutions for example. Better to have some of these crazies in institutions on meds than on the street off them. There are plenty of other ideas to discuss, the hard part is to get people from both sides to stop blaming each other, and start discussing them.
