Guns and Schools - What Changed?

High Fidelity

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When is the last time you saw the ten commandments posted anywhere in a school? Regardless of your faith those guidelines where helpful in the development of values.

It doesn't matter if they're helpful or not; posting them is advocacy and promotion of the religion that espouses them, especially when they're posted in isolation with no other religious passages quoted.

Pretty much every religion has passages that would be helpful to most people. Would you be happy if Islamic teachings were posted around schools? What about Jewish teachings? Hindu? Daoist?

The list goes on and Christianity is only one of many on it.
 
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disciple Clint

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It doesn't matter if they're helpful or not; posting them is advocacy and promotion of the religion that espouses them, especially when they're posted in isolation with no other religious passages quoted.

Pretty much every religion has passages that would be helpful to most people. Would you be happy if Islamic teachings were posted around schools? What about Jewish teachings? Hindu? Daoist?

The list goes on and Christianity is only one of many on it.
and all that has what to do with the thread? Are we debating the issue of what should or should not be posted in schools or are we answering the question of why moral values or conditions seem to have changed over the years to the point that it results in school shootings.
 
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Nithavela

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Then you should not make gratuitous derogatory comments that you are reluctant to justify or defend.
The fact that the only part of my post that piques your interest is the one where I say that the US army isn't 100% heroic beautifully underscores my original point. Thank you.
 
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variant

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When is the last time you saw the ten commandments posted anywhere in a school? Regardless of your faith those guidelines where helpful in the development of values.

More secular European countries don't have our problem with school shooting. It is a rather uniquely American phenomena.

And, contrary to your belief, I think religious fundamentalism in our country ties in with the pro gun culture that ensures everyone who wants a gun can get one no matter how moral, responsible or sane they are.
 
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FenderTL5

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imo, school shootings had always been present but kept in the background. With Columbine, a 24 hour news cycle with little else to talk about made celebrity, anti-heroes out of the shooters.
 
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GoldenBoy89

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What changed is people changed. Society has changed. Our values have changed and the ways in which we interact with each other have changed. The world is an almost entirely different place today than it was even just a few years ago and do the rules of the past don’t exactly fit the world and society of today.
 
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GOD Shines Forth!

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I think American's whole attitude to guns is a joke. You worship these things just because some old men scribbled some words on some paper once.

Gun love is universal. Setting America aside for a moment, the mass-murdering governments of the 20th century sure loved theirs.
 
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DerSchweik

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averaging it out over 180 years fails to represent the increase of gun-related deaths/injuries over the years and looks like you're manipulating the data to make it look better and agenda driven. I get the response was to a facetious remark about it being a pastime which may warrant this ridiculous average but I see no benefit in clouding the details and it isn't being responsible to the issue.
How is adding the data up or calculating the average "manipulating the data?" :doh:Methinks that phrase doesn't mean what you think it means.

If you read my last comment to that poster though, I politely pointed out his comment had nothing to do with the point of the thread - and neither does yours.

That said, let's see why and look at your point. Adding up all the deaths since 2000, we find the number of deaths has increased substantially. 302 in just over 20 years. THAT average is right at 15 deaths per year - in a period of time ONE EIGHTH that of the previous (20 yrs vs. 160), we see a TENFOLD INCREASE in gun violence.

My question, and the question of the OP is, considering the circumstances... why?

First, did you bother to read the article? In it you'd find the relative prevalence of guns, gun toting, gun wielding in schools radically different than it has been the past 30 or 40 years. Indeed, guns in this last period are not even allowed in schools. No more rifle clubs, no more shooting ranges in schools, no more carrying one's shotgun proudly down the halls as a member of the school's shooting team.

In fact, we see precisely the opposite - "Gun Safe Zones," an ironic choice of words, btw, since the inception of these zones, safety has become anything but in our schools.

So I ask again... what changed?
 
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DerSchweik

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What changed is people changed. Society has changed. Our values have changed and the ways in which we interact with each other have changed. The world is an almost entirely different place today than it was even just a few years ago and do the rules of the past don’t exactly fit the world and society of today.
Well, I totally agree but, how has all this changed; or more to the point, why?
 
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GreekOrthodox

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2013 Article in the National Review

Guns in schools used to be accepted, common, safe. Kids used to bring their guns to schoool, walk the halls with them, fire them in basement firing ranges inside the schools.

Not so anymore.

What changed?

I would say as a society as we transformed from a rural population to principally an urban and suburban population. Probably not a primary factory but a substantial one. I had a BB gun at the age of 10 by 1978, and my dad had a .22 bolt action rifle when he was a teenager (early 1950s) since he spent his summers on family farms in Wisconsin and Iowa. I remember growing up that having a gun was considered a responsibility rather than a right. Guns were considered everyday serious tools and although you had war movies, generally, entertainment still respected this.

Overall, I think as guns became less of the every day tool for hunting or farm pest control (my dad's Remington was listed as a varmint rifle), they became more regarded as playthings for yuppie patriots and Red Dawn became the movie of choice for the "new" NRA. I'm placing this in my era of the 1980s.

In Scouts, if you screwed up on the rifle range, you werent allowed to shoot for a period of time and if it was deliberate, you weren't allowed on the rest of the time in camp. "The troop is going to the range but you have to stay in camp and clean."

When I was running a range in 1989, I dreaded Mom and Me weekends with Cub Scouts because the moms were either chatting away or my favorite, tsk-tsking me for promoting gun violence while little Georgie... oh dear Lord this kid was a nightmare, ran around with a BB gun. I finally kicked the little $*7$#*&($&*(#*& off and the mother complained that I was being hateful. In today's terms, "KAREN, I AM NOT THE MANAGER BUT GOD OF THIS RIFLE RANGE NOW GET OFF BEFORE I HAVE YOU THROWN OUT OF CAMP". However, I was told that I couldnt kick them out of camp... sigh.
 
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DerSchweik

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violence in schools has change, violence, in general, has changed. I'm sure you already know this.
I don't disagree, but why?

One of the key points of the article was that [generally] before the call for removing guns from schools (and everywhere else, frankly), the issue of gun violence in schools was, for all intents and purposes, practically nil.

However, since schools became "gun safe zones" the prevalence of gun violence in schools has risen at least ten-fold (see my post above), over a very short period of time.

So what has changed that we're now more violent? Guns, by every measure, are demonstrably NOT the reason. What is?
 
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DerSchweik

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I would say as a society as we transformed from a rural population to principally an urban and suburban population. Probably not a primary factory but a substantial one. I had a BB gun at the age of 10 by 1978, and my dad had a .22 bolt action rifle when he was a teenager (early 1950s) since he spent his summers on family farms in Wisconsin and Iowa. I remember growing up that having a gun was considered a responsibility rather than a right. Guns were considered everyday serious tools and although you had war movies, generally, entertainment still respected this.

< snip >
I think this could be one potential contributing factor for the change - the [growing] urbanization of our country.

As to gun ownership morphing from "a responsibility to a right" - meh, I suspect the [growing] call for gun "rights" is more a response to the [growing] call to take that right away than it is a move away from gun responsibility - per se.
 
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civilwarbuff

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2013 Article in the National Review

Guns in schools used to be accepted, common, safe. Kids used to bring their guns to schoool, walk the halls with them, fire them in basement firing ranges inside the schools.

Not so anymore.

What changed?
When I was 12yo I lived in Virginia MN and took a hunters safety course in order to get a hunting license. We practiced our shooting in the basement of Horace Mann Elementary School using .22 single shot rifles. This would have been 1966-67. The 'death' of activities like this has certainly contributed to the fear people have of firearms today.....IMO.
 
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DamianWarS

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I don't disagree, but why?

One of the key points of the article was that [generally] before the call for removing guns from schools (and everywhere else, frankly), the issue of gun violence in schools was, for all intents and purposes, practically nil.

However, since schools became "gun safe zones" the prevalence of gun violence in schools has risen at least ten-fold (see my post above), over a very short period of time.

So what has changed that we're now more violent? Guns, by every measure, are demonstrably NOT the reason. What is?
you've answered your question about guns which is the increase of violence. you're new question is why the increase of violence? so this is not a "gun" thing it is a "violence" thing now. but more specifically violence is a product of conflict so violence is just a symptom of either increased conflict or increased inability to deal with conflict. but it's not conflict in a traditional sense it's fragmented value systems and identities that are lost and without purpose and a general collapse of community.

there was a day that the east and west, north and south were your only polarised ends but now it's your neighbor or the guy you work with. increased diversity has removed community identities and without a grasp on who you belong to fragments your own expression of who you are and your own personal identity. I'm not talking about race either and there are many ways diversity can play out. Western society seeks a voice for all but in doing so it fragments existing groups.

people don't generally try and kill or harm "their own" and there was a day where a greater sense of family and connection to community was far larger but now it has shrunk significantly and has isolated a lot of people in doing so. This increases stress but without the community, those signs go unnoticed and there is no support system so people become more and more isolated. The expression "it takes a village to raise a child" has deep community values in it, where today that village is lost.

so this is why there is increased violence from a collapse of community and with that accountability if it escalates then obviously the weapon of choice escalates. it's not a gun problem per se, it's a negative shift of values in society at large but because guns are avaiable they end up being the expression of choice for some.
 
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DerSchweik

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When I was 12yo I lived in Virginia MN and took a hunters safety course in order to get a hunting license. We practiced our shooting in the basement of Horace Mann Elementary School using .22 single shot rifles. This would have been 1966-67. The 'death' of activities like this has certainly contributed to the fear people have of firearms today.....IMO.
Totally agree - and thank you for sharing that. :thumbsup:
 
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Darkhorse

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It doesn't matter if they're helpful or not; posting them is advocacy and promotion of the religion that espouses them, especially when they're posted in isolation with no other religious passages quoted.

Pretty much every religion has passages that would be helpful to most people. Would you be happy if Islamic teachings were posted around schools? What about Jewish teachings? Hindu? Daoist?

The list goes on and Christianity is only one of many on it.

The Ten Commandments are a Jewish teaching.

The converse is also a Confucian teaching:
"Do not do to others what you would not want done to you"
 
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Semper-Fi

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  • Revelation 12:12 (KJV)
    Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them.

  • Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come downunto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
 
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jgarden

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“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good friend with a yacht?”

- Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that resulted in the deaths of 20 first graders and 6 educators, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre has routinely retreated to the safety of a 108 foot luxury yacht after "mass shootings" - to guarantee his personal safety!

America's school children have been patiently waiting since 2012 for LaPierre to extend an open invitation from them to accompany him on the yacht - as their to refuge from gun violence!
 
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DerSchweik

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The NRA's Wayne LaPierre routinely retreats to the safety of 108 foot luxury yacht after "mass shootings" - apparently America's school children are patiently awaiting his invitation to accompany him to this refuge from gun violence!
I appreciate the fact that you have opinions, and that you are obviously eager to share them - might you have an opinion pertaining to the topic of this thread?
 
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