People like this don't want anything done! Trump wants to do something - his predecessors did nothing. But Trumps something is worse than Obama and Bush's nothing, according to the chatterati.

Message for posters and all Australians: mind your own freaking business. You are always yabbering about multiculturalism; well, Americans have a different culture; let them sort their own problems out and be thankful we are not them.

Simply put, Trump is in an invidious position, Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't! Given he owes much of his electoral support to the powerful gun lobby and that's not going to change unless he apes howard and tries to ban certain classes of weapons.

The latest shooting saw an armed law enforcement officer cooling his heels outside while an armed lunatic was going ballistic inside the school!

Could some teachers carrying concealed weapons, stopped this reign of terror inside a school community?

One cannot presume that given it is just not easy to as much as draw a gun and then pull the trigger on another human being. Especially one you can look into the eyes of. Unless say wounded and without a shadow of doubt, knowing your only chance of survival is kill or be killed.

During WW11 there were quite a few teachers carrying guns with some leading other armed men, many of who fired high so as to avoid taking human life!

But that all changed for most when they liberated the Nazi death camps and saw the horror other alleged humans had been able to inflict on other and from that day on, saw the enemy as vermin that had to be wiped from the face of the earth.

So also armed thugs invading schools and murdering enmasse innocent school kids, who like mad dogs, need a little lead pill right between the eyes the minute they step uninvited and not part of security, onto school grounds with an assault rifle or semi auto handgun!

And the only sure preventative course and VERMIN CONTROL in a land with more guns than people and where (peacetime) school shootings have vastly exceeded, the rest of the entire world's!

Nobody no matter how powerful is going to disarm America anytime soon!
Alan B.

I like this author a lot. He puts together a brilliant essay.

His view of “ Mountain Monster Donald”, or could he actually be the illusive “Yahoo of Nicholas County”, is convincing, but not always believable.

I often wonder what connection Trump has with the Appalachian Mountains at times.

The article starts off wrong and doesn't get better.

If you had of actually watched the listening event rather then repeating what the left wing news reports, you would find that the ideal to arm teachers actually come from one of the people present Trump has run with the idea.

The other thing to remember is there was an armed policeman on site at the time of shooting. The man proved to be a coward.

How many teachers will be mistaken for the shooter and be taken out by mistake?
Would YOU dare waving a gun around in a mass shooting situation?
If everyone has a gun then how do you even tell the bad guy from the good guys? It will end in everyone shooting everyone.

Stupidist suggestion I have heard yet....Until i heard about kids being given "bulletproof blankets" to take to school along with their books and sandwiches.
Bizarre doesnt come close!

Cobber's “coward” (there was a C&W song called 'The Coward of the County) was a Broward County sheriff's deputy who was suspended and later resigned. Three other deputies who later 'attended' stayed crouch behind their car. So, what's the point of a police force or other 'good guys' with guns? Sheriff Israel, himself, blamed the FBI and the NRA – everybody but himself and his useless, or cowardly, officers. All the know-alls are going to have to come up with something better, and not just blame Trump.

My guess is that nothing can be done - because of the culture. I have a weakness for Western movies. I watched one last night where a man's women and child were murdered, and off he went, killing about 400 people and a couple of horses in revenge. Nothing much has changed from the Wild West days in America when it comes to guns.

Having handled firearms as a professional for most of my adult life, there is very little prospect of an armed and professionally train marksman from taking out a teacher by mistake, but rather the stranger with a gun with no reason to be on the campus.

And truly bizarre and irrational that anyone would think so, even the most rabid of the anti gun lobby.

Simply put guns don't kill, the finger pulling the trigger and the eyes aiming it do! Just eliminating the diseased/sick brains from ever getting their hands on firearms!

Solves most of this even if that allows an increase in voluntary and generally approved but messy, firearm assisted euthanasia!

And where guns are banned/unavailable, intending killers resort to knives, cars, trucks, bricks, broken bottles and bombs! with often even more horrific consequences; like a dead nurse killed because she ran toward the victims and the knife welding danger in an effort to save lives.

The idiotic suggestion of bulletproof blankets as prescribed apparel show just how bizarre and irrational some of the arguments put by the anti gun lobby can get!

Incidentally, a blanket hanging on a clothesline, have been shown to stop a number of high calibre bullets in their tracks!

Something to think about, fear mongering Mikk, the next time you're ambushed by a madman with a gun in a schoolroom?

Anything you can drape a loose blanket, towel or coat over etc., will suffice.
Alan B.

The mythology associated with guns and wholesale violence is of course as American as Apple Pie. The situation is summed up in the new essay by Chris Hedges titled Guns and Liberty (Are you Next!)

Al.

How do you kill a dead nurse?

*...like a dead nurse killed because...*

It seems to me that the attitude to guns and acts of violence both in the USA (itself) and overseas by USA right-wingers including (and especially) "conservative" christians has been demonstrated by their white-washed eulogies of the life of Billy Graham.
It seems to me that a much more truthful account of the dark side of Graham's applied politics is given in the well researched book by Cecil Bothwell titled The Prince of War. It is introduced via an essay titled Billy Graham & the Gospel of Fear on the Counterpunch website

While she's still alive dropkick.

I'd have thought the world wide respect for this selfless heroine would have prevented that incoherent question; and the very obvious lack of anything remotely resembling respect inherent in the question; and just to score a very cheap tactless point! A bit above your usual standard, DD.
Alan B.

I was a school cadet, a cadet Under officer in fact. We had a couple of teachers who ran the cadet core. The History master, a pathfinder pilot flying Mosquitos, with 30 raids over Germany, & the English master, who was one of the "Rats of Tobruk". Not all teachers are whimps.

Perhaps the feminisation of the teaching profession has given us many who would hide under a table, rather than defend their charges, but I'm not too sure of that. I've known quite a few of the fairer sex who are damn good shots, & there is more than a little truth in the saying that the female of the species is the most dangerous, especially if her brood is threatened.

Personally I'd rather take my chances with a gun in my hand than be cowering under a table with my fingers crossed. If most of todays teachers would rather cower than defend themselves & their students, we have just found what is wrong with education today. We may need to change our selection criteria.

Yep Al, I get the picture, but this seems to be the day for it.

Just now noticed Ozz Lotteries summoned me to " buy your deaf lottery ticket here" by EMail.

Since when did lottery tickets ever have hearing?

Not sure I like your idea of hiding behind a blanket to avoid being shot.

I've found by experience, the best way to dodge a bullet is to take cover behind something really solid, like a rock.

Alan B...place a blanket over you to stop damage by projectile weapon. Hmm the humble .22 LR will cleanly penetrate a 1" (25mm) pine board at 100m. This is what the anti gunners must be meaning when they suggest a "Blanket Ban" on guns...?

The best use for a blanket in a shooting is to hold the soggy mass of your corpse while the ambos/coroner attend to you. Likewise hiding behind a school desk (usually made from about 19mm of chipboard.)

When studying Law in 2003, I approached the Tasmanian DPP to subpoena
their forensic & ballistic evidence files on the Port Arthur Massacre. I was flatly denied any access to documents relating to the event. I have since found out that several detectives had "mementos" in the form of fired bullets removed from the Broad Arrow Cafe walls and fittings from the time. The "shots to kill ratio" in the PAM exceeded the best of most special forces snipers/exponents of the day. It certainly wasn't the handiwork of someone whom the judge described in his judgment of Martin Bryant as: "...unable to exhibit the fine motor skills necessary to aim a rifle effectively..."

I'd like to ask why the 2 shooters actually involved in the PAM were later killed off in the Blackhawk Disaster a few months later. Could it be that after all the previous gun related "massacres" e.g Hoddle Street, Strathfeild etc that massacres could be staged by the government(s) involved? Why then is no one allowed to visit Martin Bryant ? He is today for all intents and purposes a state medicated vegetable, the ultimate state 'patsy'.

What we see perpetuated and promulgated via the governments of USA, Australia, UK & EU is the current mantra : (from their propaganda and perception management arm), of the MSM at the behest of 3rd Wave, Authoritarian Feminists, Rainbow Flag Wavers and the Land Rights for Aboriginal, Left Handed, Gay & LBTI Harp Seals mobs.

No objectivity, no real facts, just anti heterosexual male bashing to the nth degree. No wonder that an armed sheriff became a cowering wimp.

I support the arming of suitable teachers, after all, they are also the ones being murdered and are on the spot to do something.

So far, some 18 of the US States have legislated to allow teachers to be armed.

One wonders what the various Australian Governments have done to prevent/stop similar attacks in Australian public schools; some private schools have beefed up security and have guards.

The author of this piece is either ignorant of firearms or should proof read more carefully:

"He also promised firmer background checks, and the banning of bump stocks, which turn a single shot weapon into a rapid-fire one."

A bump stock on a single shot firearm turns it into, a single shot firearm.