TheAgitator.com
Morning Links
Thursday, February 28th, 2008I’m traveling today, so light bloggage. To keep you occupied…
- Looking for work?
- Here’s a particular strong entry in this year’s “really stupid ideas” competition.
- Price discrimination for suckers. I’m pretty sure this happened to me in Buenos Aires last year, though I’d hope not under such obvious circumstances.
- And here’s one from the department of “good idea, but just a wee bit late.”
- Zero tolerance strikes again.
- Slate has a fun piece on Alan Abel, America’s greatest living hoaxter.
- Speaking of Slate, Tim Noah has one of the more interesting remembrances of William F. Buckley I’ve read today. It touches on some of the same themes I wrote about, including how Buckley’s influence came to be eclipsed by the neocons, even at the magazine he founded. But it also delves into Buckley’s wrong-headedness on race issues at a point in U.S. history when it was important to be right (I’m talking more about that infamous editorial comparing the races than about his opposition to the Civil Rights Act).
Zero tolerance strikes again.
This one could have been titled “Javert lives!”
Really stupid ideas.
I think I would carry onto campus in violation of a no-carry policy. In my opinion, it’s better to do 18 months on a weapons charge as a result of saving my life than being shot dead and leaving a wife and two kids. University administration officials who allow these idiotic drills should anticipate that there are people who may see things this way.
If that cop had been killed by a heroic student, what then? Isn’t the lack of armed/heroic students really what’s wrong here? Was he just confirming their sheepishness and vulnerability?
Comments overheard afterwards:
“yep, they’d all be dead, good drill” and “hey next time hide behind the trees until you hear the gunman has shot himself, you know, for realism”
Netflix has ‘Able Raises Cain’ listed. Not released yet but you can save it.
I bet they’d have felt real stupid if their hoaxing gunman had burst into the classroom and gotten drilled with a bullet.
—-
As for the zero tolerance thing, I think I find both sides annoying. Sure, the school went way too far, but as for the people saying the school shouldn’t have done anything at all, what the hell? Maybe they should have made him up a little self-esteem award, instead?
If you don’t punish thieves for small thefts, you get more thieves, and bigger thefts.
Come on fella’s!
If the play acting cop had been shot by an armed student, that student would simply be charged with killing a cop. We all know that the over-reacting student should have realized that the intruder was a cop! After all, normal good people can always tell the difference between a cop and a crazed intruder, can’t we?
“If you don’t punish thieves for small thefts, you get more thieves, and bigger thefts.”
True, but you don’t punish people who say, man that’s a cool car, I would like to take it from that guy. It’s a pretty significant difference.
Uhh. I think some of you are not up on your self-defence laws. It is comments like these that give ammunition to the anti-conceled carry arguement. Someone carrying legally can’t just pull out their weapon and start blasting away. Self-defence justification is based on levels of threat. If the gunman had come into the classroom shooting then you would be within your rights to blow him away. If he wasn’t shooting, the only thing that you could legally do would be to pull your weapon and give him the chance to surrender or flee, anything else and you would be the one going to jail.
“Someone carrying legally can’t just pull out their weapon and start blasting away.”
Right, but that doesn’t mean that it is not something that might happen.
Um, I’m pretty damn certain that if a crazed intruder/disguised-cop walks into a room and a responsible citizen takes personal responsibility for the group’s safety, ie pulls a gun, that cop is going to go predictibly apeshit and the severe irresponsibility of his hoax will be compounded quickly.
I vote we institute a zero tolerance policy toward school system stupidity. In the interest of fairness, we could begin with moderate punishments and work up to crucifixion gradually.
If an institution is going to pull this sort of stunt, they’d better notify everybody they can get their hands on with great big signed-in-triplicate-forms and readable-from-the-nosebleed-seats placards in every classroom, because someday, somebody other than the ‘crazed gunman’ IS going to be armed.
Better yet, play it like other disaster scenarios are played, with a smaller group of people in a controlled environment who’ve been given the same script. They do this with Terrorist Takeover and Richter Scale 9.0, why not Armed to the Teeth Crazy Person as well?
Self-justification is based on what a reasonable person would conclude is a major threat that can only be overcome with lethal force. Let’s recap…all of the campus shootings within my recent memory have involved people who clearly needed to be under a psychiatrist’s care. They walked into areas that were deemed off-limits for firearms while loaded for bear and killed whoever had the misfortune to cross their path; there was no chance of reasoning with them and very little chance they would have listened even if the opportunity presented itself. Now we have a scenario where someone is not coming across as the most lucid of individuals. He’s holding a class hostage, a teacher at gunpoint, and he’s talking about shooting whoever has the lowest g.p.a. Who knows where the police are, if they even know what’s going on, what they’re going to do or when they’re going to do it or if they’re going to do anything in time. At this point the argument can be made that a reasonable person would think this a credible, imminent threat that can only be solved by the use of lethal force.
You said it Liberty. Zeb you have a point. That’s one of the reasons that I believe in training before someone is issued a conceled carry permit. All most people know about firearms is what they see on television and hear in the news and we know the accuracy of that information. One problem that I have noticed is the lack of good self defence training availible. This is caused by a lack of consistancy in the self-defence laws, that leave their interpretation up to the local DA.
Your reporting on the Virginia pot raid gone bad is really great.
I was watching an old Buckley interview in which he made the point that allthough he was for decriminalizing drugs, he was adament that legal or not, drugs are bad and should not be used. I agree with him on both points. Drugs should not be illegal, and they should be avoided.
Training is required, but that is beside the point. As O’Rourke mentioned, the rel life scenarios have featured crazy people intent on killing and loaded for bear. A reasonable person (with training, without training, makes no difference) taking personal responsibility (as used to be the American ideal) would recognize this pattern (crazed killer taking advantage of a gun-free zone) and and draw prepared to eliminate the threat. If such threat is a cop, cop can be expected to forget the drill and take all kinds of lethal action. They’re sort of animals that way. Do dumb stuff, when people react rationally then overreact, kill them, attend ceremony to receive badge.
Point is this idiocy should be condemned because if the classroom contained one responsible citizen this would have turned out ugly.
Correction, cop pattern is “Do dumb stuff, when people react rationally then overreact, kill them, attend ceremony to receive
badgemedal.Huh? So if someone is pointing a gun at someone you have to wait until they actually shoot the person before you can shoot them? Or worse if someone pointed a gun at me, I’d havfe to let them shoot (at) me before I could shoot them? I’m no gun law expert, but that sounds pretty fishy to me.
The anti-concealed carry crowd will take any statement about someone getting shot, real or not, legel or not, and attempt to use it to prove their points.
If you think losing a buck on oranges is bad, try comparing the cost of spices at an ethnic store versus in a supermarket. The differential can be well in excess of ten-to-one.
School theft: That kid is Ragnar Danneskjold, because it is the school that is the thief (via taxes); he’s merely liberating the sandwich from crooks!