Won’t somebody put a stop to this sort of thing?
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A Well Regulated Militia . . .
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About time.
Though removing LaPierre and bankrupting the current organisation is not going to make the political and economic forces that have fueled their ascendancy disappear.
The full complaint can be read at the link
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckra...-massive-fraudLast edited by ursus arctos; 06-08-2020, 15:52.
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The second season of the podcast ‘Gangster Capitalism’ has lots of the basic details of how LaPierre has controlled the NRA and used the payroll to do so. It’s basically the same was the mob used to control the Teamsters. Or how the Clintonites controlled the Democrats.
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Probably not, but somebody got paid for all those filmstrips.
Perhaps schools could have electronic locks that shut everything down with one button.
My understanding is that the biggest threat to kids in a school - other than bullies and assorted accidents - is a parent trying to take one of their kids away from an estranged partner and that sort of thing.
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Class Action Park, that new doc that I mentioned on the “Current Watching” thread reminded me how we were taught to worry about all the wrong things in the 80s.
Things we were actively told to fear:
Strange kidnappers in vans
Pot
Satanists
Dungeons and Dragons
Homosexuals
Communists
Litter
Swimming too soon after eating
Eating pop rocks and drinking Coke
Catching ones death by not wearing a hat in the winter
Heating/air conditioning the outdoors by leaving the door open
Things nobody seemed too concerned about:
Head injuries while riding a bike/sledding/skiing
Drowning
Flying through the windshield at 70 mph during a car accident because you were too cool to wear a seatbelt
Police brutality
Sexual harassment
Intimate partner/domestic violence
Growing socioeconomic inequality
Second hand smoke
Climate change
Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 05-09-2020, 17:35.
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Well, the simplest measure in other countries is to ban most handguns, eliminating the problem at source. I know it's not that simple in the USA, but it still seems crazy to me that there's this whole industry around redesigning schools, or training security guards, or training children how to respond to an active shooter, instead of the route that the UK took after Dunblane, or Australia took after Port Arthur.
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Well, the school design thing is more about the aforementioned parental abduction situation. And, occasionally, there are stalking situations and assorted other security issues that any workplace or office might have to deal with in any country.
The guns are an enormous problem, but gun violence in school is actually very rare. Schools are generally much safer than one might think based on the news and the fears ginned-up by security consultants.
Columbine et al. are examples of the gun problem, but they aren’t really typical examples. Teenagers shooting each other over a perceived slight or a drug deal in West Philadelphia or a dude shooting his ex-wife and then himself appear to be more typical examples. Those only get mentioned in local papers.Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 05-09-2020, 18:05.
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Because of the possibility of abduction, most schools in the UK (or at least most schools I've come across, and my mother used to be a primary school teacher, working supply across multiple schools) have only one main reception door that non-teachers can enter through, and it's like an airlock, someone from the reception has to buzz you through to the actual main part of the school. The children enter through classroom doors at the start of the day, and leave via there at the end of the day, but at other times those doors remain locked and can only be opened from the inside. Any side school gates are also locked throughout the day, with only the main entrance open to visitors.
Does that sound very different from average school design in the USA?
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Also, whenever my children have started at a school, we've had to provide a list of adults who are allowed to collect the children, complete with photographs.
It's not a perfect system. When teachers are tired at the end of the day, if someone turns up to collect a child and the child shouts "hey, it's daddy / mummy / whoever" the teacher might not always remember if that person is on the list or not, but I'm not sure what else could be done really.
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Yes, that list thing is critical. I think that is now standard here. In fact, that may have been the rule even when I was in school.
I don’t know how common the “airlock” thing is here, but the one and only time I visited my nephew at his school in Iowa about 10 years ago, they had that. It’s probably more common in elementary schools than in high schools. But visitors are not allowed to just show up and move about the place without a pass.
Almost all of the schools in my town have been renovated or rebuilt in recent years and that was a consideration in the design.
It was not a consideration when they were built in the 50s and 60s.Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 05-09-2020, 18:40.
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My daughter's elementary school has one entrance during the day that passes through the reception area. At drop off time and pick up time they open two other entrances, but I don't think that there's a list of people allowed to pick up the kids, and they certainly don't check it past the first week of kindergarten - the kid is supposed to signal the teacher that someone is there to pick them up, but I think even this gets put aside pretty quickly. They are much stricter in the after-school program, where I have to leave a list of who's allowed to pick them up and they check ids of people they aren't familiar with, and also I need to tell them in advance that this person is going to be picking them up on a particular day.
My son's middle school is similar for entrances - one during the day that opens next to reception, but in this case you aren't forced to go through reception and can skip it entirely. At pick up and drop off time there are two entrances, and here definitely no checking at all. The after school program in theory is also the same, but in practice they don't check at all and I can call in from the road and have them send him out. If I allowed it he could even sign himself out, but that's a blanket thing that applies to the whole school year. Maybe when he's a bit older.
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostThat is a good question,.and the answer may well be that Bill Barr controls the Department of Justice
(OTOH there have been civil rights prosecutions of historical crimes in Mississippi and Alabama by Klan members but I'm not sure if they were prompted by the FBI being belatedly shamed after Hoover's death, as in the examples in Taylor Branch's MLK trilogy).Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 05-09-2020, 20:38.
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- Mar 2008
- 20916
- The House with the Golden Windows
- Fast falling out of love for football.
- WasPlain Hobnobs
And another shooting in Rochester, New York State
Two fatalities
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54217286
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