Friends, back before 9/11, when I was dopey kid, I bought a plastic shiv at a gun show with my Dad. Why? Because back in the 1980s there was less fluoride in the water and kids generally didn’t bring guns to school. I don’t know. Apparently giving a 13-year-old a shiv back then was OK.
Anyway, this shiv was designed to get past metal detectors, just like these ridiculous looking Lexan knuckle-dusters. While the average person would say “Huh, that’s stupid,” Cleaveland reporter Douchey McUpinarms feels they are the dirty bomb of the West Market, making cole slaw of heads from here to Akron.
Kids and the criminal-minded will use anything to beat your head in. They’ll jab you with a pencil or beat you with a bottle. Just because it’s plastic and it looks like a weapon and you somehow ban it doesn’t make you any safer. Some kid will buy a plastic shiv and stick you and then you’ve got another issue to contend with… and another and another. Education not alarm, people. Education not alarm.
I’m sorry but you’ve taken a very stupid ass stance. You’re saying that we shouldn’t be alarmed that kids can bring weapons to school like that because kids will bring weapons to school anyway? You good sir are a moron. If we stopped fighting terrorists because there will always be more terrorists that will blow people up would THAT be a good idea? I think not. And I suggest you think more thoroughly on your stance as it is underdeveloped and quite irrational.
I’m saying that “danger” comes in many forms, not just in the form of a gun. If care is taken to talk to kids and help them understand what they’re doing, I think we’ll be better off. My dad didn’t give me a pocket knife until I was 13 and supervised me when I shot a BB gun, taking care to teach me not to shoot at birds or anything alive and how to handle a gun properly. I understood that weapons were dangerous.
Now, it’s stuff like this – akin to the old “razorblades in the apples” thing that happens every year at halloween – that makes parents react irrationally to things that are dangerous. Violence in games? Ban it. Cellphone porn for kids? Ban it. Predators on the streets of Anytown? Keep the kids inside.
My argument isn’t that we shouldn’t be upset that bad things exist – we should. They debase us and show us how close to animals we really are. But this weapon is just like any other. It is impossible to find and ban them all so instead of showing us how cool these things are by busting up fruit why not educate kids that punching people in the face is bad.
I was raised in Columbus, Ohio. It wasn’t rural, but I had a nice yard and my dad let me futz around the chemistry sets, bombs (i could never pack them) and eventually guns. I will work with my son the same way – not to make him violent but to show him what these things are and do. We probably won’t go plinking in Brooklyn, but I’ll do my best to teach him.
Re: terrorists. You’re extending my logic where it doesn’t belong. Terrorism is an entirely different animal, carried about by kids not much older than the kids in the video above but political and financial in nature. Like burglary and muggings, terrorism has an injury angle and a financial gain angle. I’ve always posited that terrorist organizations are more like gangs rather than the religious nutjobs we make them out the be. They wrap themselves in religion to gain followers and respect but they are all gangsters and, like all gangsters, learn best when their own die. They want territory and money, not salvation.
School shootings and the like don’t have a political side. They are caused by madness, something that is hard to control and legislate. Working with kids to understand where those fault lines lie is a parent’s prerogative and a teacher’s duty. I’m all for gun control, but until we have a ban on all guns, I am disgusted by these ham-handed attempts to “ban” weapons that any intelligent person could make in their back yard in the interest of showing that “Fox 5 cares.”
You’ve been a good and constant commentor, dwalk, and I trust that we can argue this intelligently.
You’re the moron! He is saying that we need to educate the youth and teach them that it is wrong and immoral to bring weapons to school because children will always figure out ways to use weapons. For example, A child stabs another child with a pencil. Do we ban pencils? Or do we teach the child that stabbing is wrong and their are consequences?
John, I get what you’re trying to say about education vs alarm (at least I think I do), but in instances such as these I don’t think education is enough.
As a nearly new father, of two years, I plan on raising my son the same way you wrote you’re planning on raising you son. However, I’m not really worried about how I raise my son, nor am I worried about how you raise yours. Rather, I’m worried about how that guy over there raises his son.
Actually, I’m worried about how he doesn’t raise his son. I’m very concerned that he won’t raise his son to realize that, “punching people in the face is bad .”
I realize that banning things isn’t going to be the answer to everything, but I’ll take all the help I can to keep my kid safe. As I was being raised, the bounds of acceptable behavior were made very clear to me and I never came close to crossing them. I had my share of school-yard fights in middle school and testoterone clashes with other male teenagers in my high school years, but me and my adversaries never came anywhere near killing each other.
Nevermind, I’m getting the urge to drone on. Medicated kids and absentee parents make this a different world, John. All my efforts and all your efforts can come to an end in the blink of an eye. That shit terrifies me.
Agreed. But my hope – prayer, perhaps – is that the next guy is at least smart enough to teach his children the difference between right and wrong. I know this is pie in the sky optimism, but we’re letting our young ones loose into this world and we need to educate and hope for the best. You and I both knew knuckledusters existed. This is like warning people about the remote possibility of fire by screaming “Fire” even when there isn’t one. The reaction the newscaster was trying to invoke was fear, not discourse. This is the same treatment they give to games.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/04/18/why-video-games-dont-cause-violence/
It’s demeaning and wrong-headed.
Put simply, – the important thing is not what you do it with a weapon, it’s why you’re doing it…
If someone rerally wants to hurt someone else, they probably will. Banning everything that even slightly resembles a weapon, does absolutely no good at all…
The tenuous but instant jump to a terrorism analogy by a (presumably) grown adult is far more scary to me than any kid with a plastic knuckle-duster.
the comment from dwalk51 is a round-up of all the government preaching and arsing about i’ve ever heard.
It’s fantastic to see that there are people on earth who actually share my views on the violent idiots behind attacks nowadays, and that i’m not alone =]