My morning paper brings me two letters taking opposite sides in the gun debate.
Dan Oliver of Aberdeen calls teachers complainers, perverts, and sissies but still thinks we should carry guns in school:
I realize the arming of teachers is a hard sell. Daily stories about teachers who can’t keep their pants on around students raise questions of trust. Hesitance toward arming a group of people that constantly complain of low pay is also understandable.
Mainstream media loves to interview male teachers that lead one to believe they’d be standing on a chair shrieking were there a mouse in the classroom. They shudder at the suggestion of armed teachers, state that that’s not their job description and that they’re not paid to be police or well enough overall [Dan Oliver, letter to the editor, Aberdeen American News, 2018.03.22].
On the same page, my well-armed Meade County neighbor Marvin Kammerer calls the NRA criminal fascists and our Congressional delegation “wet noodle-backed leaders”:
As an owner of rifles and a couple of pistols, the National Rifle Association doesn’t speak for me. I’ve never been a member and would never join an organization that doesn’t respect the lives of our young…
…Our congressional crowd mostly have been bribed by the NRA and that to my mind is a criminal matter. Our youth are asking to be listened to and deserve our respect. Remember they are the future voters who can damned sure send you wet noodle-backed leaders home.
The NRA is a fascist organization whose money has bought our government’s principals. This country needs more than armchair patriots. The NRA needs to grow up, the politics of fear has no place in the organization [Marvin Kammerer, letter to the editor, Aberdeen American News, 2018.03.22].
“Wet noodle-backed”—I like that.
Young people are marching in Aberdeen, Sioux Falls, Vermillion, and nationwide Saturday to protest gun violence and the refusal of Congress to act against it.
Marvin is on the winning side! Marvin knows that having guns is not the problem, military grade weapons of war are the problem. Mentally unstable people should not own guns, period. Marvin and I agree with Citibank on this.
“Daily stories. . . “?
Jim Wright (Stonekettle Station) has an excellent post on the subject of arming teachers.
It’s long and may have some NSFW words, but it’s worth a read.
PS — I agree with what he has to say.
http://www.stonekettle.com/2018/03/bang-bang-crazy-part-13-stand-and-teach.html
Bucko Bear, that is absolutely the most authoritative and well-stated work on the subject I’ve encountered, particularly when you see the writer’s qualifications laid out in the first addendum. Yes it’s long, but it’s a must-read. Thank you for putting it up.
Have any of you actually ever met Marvin? The guy has a loose screw or two. . .
Dan’s letter just sounds like he wants to sound tough. I think it would be stupid and dangerous to put a gun in the hands of any unwilling party and ask them to play cop or sentry or soldier.
There are many reasons teachers would not want to carry guns, just like any other person being asked to do what people like Dan are trying to ask of teachers.
Teachers are expected to teach, counsel, psychoanalyze, wipe snotty noses and babysit and now police?
Arm teachers who aren’t allowed to discipline unruly students? What is to stop a student from wresting a gun away from teacher and go on a killing spree? To stop that you’d have to have more armed adults than students in each class.
As for whining about low pay, sounds like you be talking the clowns in the lege.
https://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2018/03/our-generations-failed-new-generation.html
Study from 1998 shows that for every time a gun is used in home self defense, there are 22 incidents of accidental shootings. homicides criminal assaults and attempted/completed suicides.
and Dan Oliver doesn’t have a screw loose Old Sarge?
Once again, unable to argue, OldSarg goes for the baseless personal attack.
I’ve met Marvin and spoken with him many times. I’ve noticed no loose screws in his moral make-up.
Marvin also doesn’t hide behind a fake name to shield himself from personal attacks like “OldSarg” lodges here.
Owen, I like to think of Dakota Free Press as South Dakota’s political screwdriver, available to tighten all the loose screws in the public’s thinking.
I’ve meet Marvin as well. I spoke with him regarding his stance against the Iraq war. Marvin has been proven right about the devastation of that war and why it never should have happened, Marvin has been also correct about his support of the Occupy movement and damned if he is not correct in his calling out of the NRA. We need more voices like Marvin’s to speak the truth to power.
Cory, I’m sure you get along with Marv just fine.
Still no substantive response from OldSarg, just the cheap shots. Marvin is winning.
Cory,
Please explain to me how the NRA is fascist?
I bet you can’t?
Get over yourself Cory. If you’ve met him you know he’s not right. There is not point in attacking me. I don’t care. Marvin is off the proverbial “rocker” and you know it. yOU need to leave the old man alone.
Again, the personal attacks. OS seems to say, “Get over yourself” and “and you know it” a lot… certainly more frequently than he offers any evidence or reasoned opinion. That’s more evidence that OS isn’t really here to discuss, learn, or intelligently defend any particular position; he’s just here to throw punches and make people mad. That’s the definition of Internet troll, isn’t it?
Marvin’s point about the NRA holding our cowardly Congressional delegation hostage remains unrefuted.
Oh, Jason.
Marvin’s use of the term “fascist” to describe the NRA fits with the sort of violent brownshirt culture the NRA promotes. It’s arguably more of a corporate fascism: they collaborate with the government to keep the country dangerous and promote more gun sales. They want to co-opt the classroom to promote their gun culture. They use the government to suppress research on gun violence.
And when they face a real political challenge, they adopt Hitlerian tactics of belittling their enemies personally and weak, unpatriotic sissies instead of addressing the actual policy issues raised.
Smells fascist to me.
marvin replying,the dictator of italy described fascism as when your government has been compromised by the money powers who have bought {bribed} your government to their way of thinking.it is not only dangerous but assaults our republic.not very american!there is a thinking out there that money buys respect, strange to christian principles as i understand them.didn’t judas get paid to turn jesus over to the government? i think we damn sure ought to give the edge to our young who are the targets of most of these shootings.its time for you wannabe’s to grow up.most of you have never heard the buzz of angry bullets. if you must get your jollies off,go to a weapon range,rent an automatic rifle with a big magazine & go home feeling like a man.