Does the NRA have a stupid pill problem?

it's clear that reasonable regulation of weapons would be constitutionally permitted.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

They truly are determined to control people to the point where they can't (their theory goes) do anything bad, ever, simply because their freedoms and permitted choices are so limited.

This logic ultimately runs to this: Since no human being needs to do anything besides work and eat, we might as well mandate that people take a powerful narcotic sleeping pill immediately after their evening meal, so they simply slumber until the next work shift.

That way, you're pretty sure no one can really do much of anything at all in their non-working hours. And then at last we will have Paradise on Earth.

(Reuters) – Kasey Hansen, a special educationteacher from Salt Lake City, Utah, says she would take a bullet for any of her students, but if faced with a gunman threatening her class, she would rather be able to shoot back.

On Thursday, she was one of 200 Utah teachers who flocked to an indoor sports arena for free instruction in the handling of firearms by gun activists who say armed educators might have a chance at thwarting deadly shooting rampages in their schools.

The event was organized by the Utah Shooting Sports Council in response to the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, this month that killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The council said it has typically attracted about 16 teachers each year to its concealed carry training courses. But Thursday’s event near Salt Lake City, organized especially for educators in the aftermath of Newtown, drew interest from hundreds, and the class was capped at 200 for space limitations.

“I feel like I would take a bullet for any student in the school district,” Hansen, a special education teacher in a Salt Lake City school district, told Reuters after the training session.

“If we should ever face a shooter like the one in Connecticut, I’m fully prepared to respond with my firearm,” she said, adding that she planned to buy a weapon soon and take it to work.

PHOENIX — Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday that he plans to deploy his armed volunteer posse to protect Valley schools from the kind of violence that happened in the Connecticut shooting tragedy. Arpaio believes having armed law officers around schools will deter would-be criminals from trying anything violent and, possibly, stop them if they do.

“I have the authority to mobilize private citizens and fight crime in this county,” Arpaio said.

Arpaio first started using his posse to protect malls during the holiday shopping season in 1993 in response to violent incidents in prior years. Since then he said malls where his posse members are on patrol have had zero violent re-occurrences and patrols by his all-volunteer squad during the 2012 shopping season netted a record 31 arrests.

Arpaio said since the program has worked so well in malls he believes it will work just as well protecting schools.

“We’re not talking about placing the posse in the schools right now but in the outlying — the perimeters of the school — to detect any criminal activity.”

A new Gallup poll shows that the National Rifle Association, the target of a wave of intensely negative news coverage after the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings, still has a favorable rating of 54 percent. While down from the organization’s 60 percent favorable rating in 2005, that is still about a point higher than President Obama’s personal favorable rating.

and watching them either change the subject, or scurry away

Ron, I'm sorry are you talking about present day Utah or is that old confederacy ?.... I'm afraid I can't tell the difference, not by your description anyway.

Shouldn't the focus be what if any laws and policies would be constitutionally acceptable, reasonably likely to be enacted, and reasonably likely to reduce incidents of mass murder?

[Norton:]WHO is talking about "taking away" guns from people who legally own them?
[Dr.F:]No one
It's just typical slippery slope right wing paranoia
[Norton:]
that's what I thought too


down the slippery slope we go

as soon as anyone mentions the possibility of some vague kind of legislation to mitigate mass slaughter in some small way, out jumps the "they are gonna take all my guns away tomorrow" fear crapola

Shouldn't the focus be what if any laws and policies would be constitutionally acceptable, reasonably likely to be enacted, and reasonably likely to reduce incidents of mass murder?