Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Apples vs. Passion Fruit
Let's talk about comparisons.
You know, the ol' "apples vs. apples" thing that becomes "apples vs. oranges" when someone tries to compare two wholly unlike objects as if they were like. For example, one can compare a station wagon to an SUV and remain in the apple::apple camp, whereas comparing a station wagon to, say, an aircraft carrier (hey, they're both vehicles, right?) puts one into the apple::orange domain.
But let's talk about something a little more extreme: comparing apples to passion fruit. Yes, they're both fruit, but the similarity pretty much ends there.
Not unlike, say, comparing armed agents of the U.S. Secret Service guarding the children of the U.S. President when they're out & about to putting one or two guys with pistols into a public school and saying "all these kids are safe now that they're protected by armed guards."
To use the vernacular... Oh, puh-leeze.
The U.S. First Family (as they're often called) are very public figures who are essentially walking around with concentric red & white rings painted all over them, regardless of age, race, religion, or party affiliation. They are the lightning rod for all who oppose actions (or even the very existence) of the U.S. government, a juicy target for anyone who wants to hurt / shame / damage the reputation of / take action against the USA, a potential source of incredibly strong leverage (if captured or put in danger) for anyone seeking to force the government to take certain action. The President, the First Spouse, and the First Kid(s) are protected by a large, heavily armed organization because the President's job makes them Targets with a capital T every moment of their lives.
The American schoolkid is someone's son or daughter, just one of millions of everyday people who happens to be under (or just reaching) legal age of majority while spending several hours a day for a large chunk of the year in buildings the purpose of which is to provide them with knowledge they can use to grow, to develop, to be constructive and productive members of society. There is nothing about them, or schools in general, that makes them a target for anyone except seriously disturbed individuals whose only aim is to rack up a body count, or terrorists who want to use their blood to make a point.
Those wonderful examples of modern American society over at the NRA have, however, decided that it is unfair and hypocritical to protect the First Family unless we also provide armed guards for all public school children. They have chosen to ignore all the glaring differences between the two types of protectee in an effort to make their own political point and in doing so have compared apples to passion fruit... or perhaps even compared apples to bricks, trees to horses, houses to bulletin boards, or any other number of ridiculously inappropriate combinations.
Unfortunately, a large number of people seem to have been quite thoroughly duped by the comparison, ignoring the differences between the two potential types of protectee and taking up the rallying cry of, "my kids are just as important as the President's kids!" Well, believe it or not, I completely and totally agree with that statement: a child is a child, and they are all important.
The problem is, the President's children (and spouse, and other members of the immediate family) can provide leverage to outside parties that the son or daughter of Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Public cannot. The First Family, regardless of whether or not any individual American citizen voted for a particular president, are representatives of all American citizens, living symbols of the nation, and a possible gap in the U.S. President's armor that could allow outsiders to (at least believe they can) control the President's actions. On a person-by-person basis, that doesn't make them more important, but it does make it more important to protect them because their role, their purpose in and influence on national & international politics, has to be protected.
Still not seeing it? Okay, let's put that aside for a moment and take a look at another facet of the problem. The First Family of the United States is not simply protected by armed guards; they are protected by a massive organization of professionals with expertise ranging from marksmanship to driving to threat analysis to detective work to any number of hundreds of other fields. The public sees the teams of men & women in dark glasses surrounding the First Family, periodically talking into the cuffs of their shirts while swiveling scanning crowds. What the public usually does not see is the many teams of hidden guards, sharpshooters, snipers and observers; the many teams of agents following down leads related to known threats; the many teams of agents following down leads to what may be unanticipated threats; the many teams of agents handling the insanely complex logistics of safely transporting the President & First Family to and from events; and the many teams of agents and their even larger teams of support staff who are dealing with literally dozens of other kinds of assignments that are related to keeping the First Family alive and well, uncompromised, and out of harm's way.
Now... how do we do that for public schools? Little one-room schoolhouses have essentially gone the way of the Tyranosaur and the Dodo; schools are large buildings with long hallways and many rooms, presenting nooks and crannies and shadowy corners galore for assailants to hide in, waiting to ambush any one or two individuals who come looking for them. There are no small groups of individuals who can be isolated from everyone around them; the entire student body scattered throughout the school building needs to be protected. How many armed guards will be needed to truly protect the students & staff in a school housing, say, 100 people? 300 people? 1000 people?
If you think those numbers are out of line, I graduated from a generic public high school, just one of dozens in the county that included only grades 10, 11 and 12; my class included a total of just under 700 students. Add in the almost equally large 10th & 11th grade classes, the teachers, the various support staffs (Office/Clerical, Janitorial, Maintenance, Dietary) and on any given day that single school building would house well over two thousand people, no exaggeration or rounding up of numbers needed. How could even a handful (never mind just one or two) armed individuals protect a group that large, especially when it was spread throughout a large multi-story building with hundreds of rooms & closets? What about all those gym classes that could have up to 350-400 students scattered across the athletic fields outside the school, fields surrounded by literally thousands of potential hiding places for someone with a gun looking to score a few kills? Now multiply that by the tens of thousands of schools across the country.
You'd need a literal army of armed guards, probably over 100,000 strong. And you could still lose students & staff to even single armed assailants due simply to the delay in any guard(s) determining where the shooter was and taking action -- assuming the guards themselves weren't the first ones killed or wounded too badly to be effective.
Many (if not most) of the individuals who say they support the NRA's idea of putting armed guards in schools also say they find that preferable to any limit, control, or reduction of the freedoms provided by the Second Amendment and the associated increase in the government's (perceived) ability to police & control the citizens it is supposed to represent. And yet no one worries about creating a large armed paramilitary force and essentially handing it control over all the nation's children?
The lack of intelligent thought in the NRA's stance is annoying... and getting more so by the minute.
You know, the ol' "apples vs. apples" thing that becomes "apples vs. oranges" when someone tries to compare two wholly unlike objects as if they were like. For example, one can compare a station wagon to an SUV and remain in the apple::apple camp, whereas comparing a station wagon to, say, an aircraft carrier (hey, they're both vehicles, right?) puts one into the apple::orange domain.
But let's talk about something a little more extreme: comparing apples to passion fruit. Yes, they're both fruit, but the similarity pretty much ends there.
Not unlike, say, comparing armed agents of the U.S. Secret Service guarding the children of the U.S. President when they're out & about to putting one or two guys with pistols into a public school and saying "all these kids are safe now that they're protected by armed guards."
To use the vernacular... Oh, puh-leeze.
The U.S. First Family (as they're often called) are very public figures who are essentially walking around with concentric red & white rings painted all over them, regardless of age, race, religion, or party affiliation. They are the lightning rod for all who oppose actions (or even the very existence) of the U.S. government, a juicy target for anyone who wants to hurt / shame / damage the reputation of / take action against the USA, a potential source of incredibly strong leverage (if captured or put in danger) for anyone seeking to force the government to take certain action. The President, the First Spouse, and the First Kid(s) are protected by a large, heavily armed organization because the President's job makes them Targets with a capital T every moment of their lives.
The American schoolkid is someone's son or daughter, just one of millions of everyday people who happens to be under (or just reaching) legal age of majority while spending several hours a day for a large chunk of the year in buildings the purpose of which is to provide them with knowledge they can use to grow, to develop, to be constructive and productive members of society. There is nothing about them, or schools in general, that makes them a target for anyone except seriously disturbed individuals whose only aim is to rack up a body count, or terrorists who want to use their blood to make a point.
Those wonderful examples of modern American society over at the NRA have, however, decided that it is unfair and hypocritical to protect the First Family unless we also provide armed guards for all public school children. They have chosen to ignore all the glaring differences between the two types of protectee in an effort to make their own political point and in doing so have compared apples to passion fruit... or perhaps even compared apples to bricks, trees to horses, houses to bulletin boards, or any other number of ridiculously inappropriate combinations.
Unfortunately, a large number of people seem to have been quite thoroughly duped by the comparison, ignoring the differences between the two potential types of protectee and taking up the rallying cry of, "my kids are just as important as the President's kids!" Well, believe it or not, I completely and totally agree with that statement: a child is a child, and they are all important.
The problem is, the President's children (and spouse, and other members of the immediate family) can provide leverage to outside parties that the son or daughter of Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Public cannot. The First Family, regardless of whether or not any individual American citizen voted for a particular president, are representatives of all American citizens, living symbols of the nation, and a possible gap in the U.S. President's armor that could allow outsiders to (at least believe they can) control the President's actions. On a person-by-person basis, that doesn't make them more important, but it does make it more important to protect them because their role, their purpose in and influence on national & international politics, has to be protected.
Still not seeing it? Okay, let's put that aside for a moment and take a look at another facet of the problem. The First Family of the United States is not simply protected by armed guards; they are protected by a massive organization of professionals with expertise ranging from marksmanship to driving to threat analysis to detective work to any number of hundreds of other fields. The public sees the teams of men & women in dark glasses surrounding the First Family, periodically talking into the cuffs of their shirts while swiveling scanning crowds. What the public usually does not see is the many teams of hidden guards, sharpshooters, snipers and observers; the many teams of agents following down leads related to known threats; the many teams of agents following down leads to what may be unanticipated threats; the many teams of agents handling the insanely complex logistics of safely transporting the President & First Family to and from events; and the many teams of agents and their even larger teams of support staff who are dealing with literally dozens of other kinds of assignments that are related to keeping the First Family alive and well, uncompromised, and out of harm's way.
Now... how do we do that for public schools? Little one-room schoolhouses have essentially gone the way of the Tyranosaur and the Dodo; schools are large buildings with long hallways and many rooms, presenting nooks and crannies and shadowy corners galore for assailants to hide in, waiting to ambush any one or two individuals who come looking for them. There are no small groups of individuals who can be isolated from everyone around them; the entire student body scattered throughout the school building needs to be protected. How many armed guards will be needed to truly protect the students & staff in a school housing, say, 100 people? 300 people? 1000 people?
If you think those numbers are out of line, I graduated from a generic public high school, just one of dozens in the county that included only grades 10, 11 and 12; my class included a total of just under 700 students. Add in the almost equally large 10th & 11th grade classes, the teachers, the various support staffs (Office/Clerical, Janitorial, Maintenance, Dietary) and on any given day that single school building would house well over two thousand people, no exaggeration or rounding up of numbers needed. How could even a handful (never mind just one or two) armed individuals protect a group that large, especially when it was spread throughout a large multi-story building with hundreds of rooms & closets? What about all those gym classes that could have up to 350-400 students scattered across the athletic fields outside the school, fields surrounded by literally thousands of potential hiding places for someone with a gun looking to score a few kills? Now multiply that by the tens of thousands of schools across the country.
You'd need a literal army of armed guards, probably over 100,000 strong. And you could still lose students & staff to even single armed assailants due simply to the delay in any guard(s) determining where the shooter was and taking action -- assuming the guards themselves weren't the first ones killed or wounded too badly to be effective.
Many (if not most) of the individuals who say they support the NRA's idea of putting armed guards in schools also say they find that preferable to any limit, control, or reduction of the freedoms provided by the Second Amendment and the associated increase in the government's (perceived) ability to police & control the citizens it is supposed to represent. And yet no one worries about creating a large armed paramilitary force and essentially handing it control over all the nation's children?
The lack of intelligent thought in the NRA's stance is annoying... and getting more so by the minute.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
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