Irrational fears
ADDED: Here’s the scary photo;
One of our fans on Facebook sent us this message about an irrational over-reaction to the school shootings in the news;
As a registered gun owner in NJ I’ve been ranting and raving about the nonsense the Democrats are trying to pull with gun control/takeover. Today, I had my 17 year old daughter call me from school in tears because she’d been in the office for over an hour with 2 vice principles and the school policeman interrogating her over a picture she posted on Instagram of her hand holding my husband’s new Glock. “Someone” reported the picture, and that it made them feel nervous and intimidated.
Then the police showed up at our home to “see” my husbands gun and encourage him to come get a trigger lock even though it isn’t a law here to have one. I went to the school to get my daughter, they made her remove the picture from her Instagram and told her she wasn’t allowed to talk about the incident. They had 3 police in the school search her locker and gym locker. The reporting person is allowed to stay anonymous.
My daughter can’t defend herself in any way and has to remove a private picture from her Instagram account. They were probably pissed that while trying to intimidate her by telling her how irresponsible it was that her finger was touching the trigger, she responded by telling them her step-dad had cleared the gun prior to handing it to her and that you can clearly see in the picture there wasn’t even a magazine in the gun.
They were surprised that I had approved the picture before it was put up and that I still see nothing wrong with it. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about any of it but wanted to share the insanity.
She didn’t tell us the name of the school or the town, I’m guessing because she doesn’t want it to splash back on her children. We’ve read stories about kids getting suspended for pointing their index finger and drawing pictures of guns and this is just as ridiculous. It doesn’t sound like the teenager threatened anyone, but a picture is somehow threatening all by itself. It’s no wonder that politicians feel pressured to pass anything to appear as if they’re doing something.
Category: Schools
@Twist – Battlestar Galactica fan?
But but bu–but guns are _scary_!
I’m going to start reporting Instagram pictures of screwdrivers and hammers.
I didn’t know that school cops wore Jack Boots.
What you do outside of school is your business. They can’t make her remove a picture from her private account on any social site all because someone reported something and the police can’t even do that. They may THINK they can but in reality, if you’re not on school-grounds, they can suck a boulder.
My friend and I were talking about carry laws on the way back from last weekend’s gun show. We both have concealed carry permits but our state allows open carry for the most part. We were talking about how even though it is legal you probably would get harassed or detained for open carry in someplace like Walmart because some namby-pamby would feel “nervous and intimidated” and you may end up charged with inciting panic or face a civil suit for “mental anguish”…that is exactly what the parents in the story should be hitting the school with.
@AGEFMB, I don’t believe I have ever seen an episode, unless I seen one as a child and don’t remember. Why?
Twist–“frack” is from the “new” BSG, not the old one with Lorne Greene.
The latter was a far darker, and IMO, better one.
Sparky, frack or frak (your choice, I’ve seen it spelled both ways) was used in both versions of BSG. In the first version, it gave the guys a chance to use cuss words on censored 1970s TV and get away with it. Dirk Benedict said it a lot.
I use it a lot myself. The writers for ST Next Gen never came up with any cuss words, which was a pity, so at ST Cons and parties, people would make up cussing vocabulary in Klingon, Romulan and other alien languages.
Just wondering….as NHSparky and Ex-PH2 noted, it is a term used freguently in Battlestar Galactica.
You learn something every day.
@55. It is just proper etiquette to cover. I personally don’t like it when I see an exposed piece and have been known to say a word or two to the carrier.
@61 – OK, AirCav, what if you’re in back country where timber rattlers are prevalent and not dormant, and like to surprise people?
Despite my professed non-wish to have a gun, I would in this case certainly want to have one with me, preferably where I can get to it quickly and I do not mean stuffed into my belt. I mean in a tied-down holster.
They should contact FIRE.org. They love to go after stuff like this.
They should contact FIRE.org. They love to go after stuff like this.
Oops…they don’t take cases from high school students. Sorry.
@62. I’m not talking about those areas where it’s ordinary for people to open carry, and I am certainly not talking about being out in the woods or on the prairie. I was referring to the populated areas where few (very few) like to show their hardware because they legally can. This goes for rookie, off duty police too. The rest of the world knows that cover is just the nice and right thing to do.
You guys and girls eat, sleep and breathe guns. I think you underestimate the visceral reaction the sight of an actual gun creates in people who are not used to them. They really do create a fear response in a lot of people. You may not understand it, but you should accept it.
Ex-PH2 #37 – Big Ayn Rand fan, huh.
Joe–actually, a lot (most) of us don’t. Only when some dipshit comes along and thinks we’re not entitled to them anymore do we get a little pissed off and discuss said Great Gun Grab of 2013, but the mentality of the “freedom for me, but not for thee!” crowd such as yourself.
Consider that the Constitution is there for a reason, and when you take away any rights, all (including the ones you like) are at risk. Of course, I’m guessing you haven’t thought that far ahead yet, have you Joey?
And why the fuck haven’t you unplugged your meter yet, dammit!
And I don’t know that I’d call a person’s fear of an implement, the only purpose of which is to kill human beings, “irrational fear” as the title of this post would suggest.
@Joe, you understand neither Ayn Rand nor moi.
@68. The only purpose of some shovels is to dig graves, Joe. Do you freak when you see a shovel?
What you call “freedom” (the 2nd) people in many other (? most other?) countries would call a dangerous aberration.
“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.” -Freud
And that which you label a “dangerous abberation” is generated by people who have had no problem licking the boots of their masters for centuries. It’s ingrained in their culture. Ours, OTOH, not so much.
Freedom a dangerous aberration? How do you justify saying something so absolutely asinine? The 2nd Amendment does not make ownership of weapons a requirement. It is a choice, a right and not a privilege. It eliminates elitism as is only valid if we are to live in a free society.
No one is forcing you or anyone else to own or even touch a weapon, but you have no respect for anyone who has the desire to do so. Who the hell gave you the right to decide what is right for other people? Who died and made you God?
And Joe, before you jump on PH2, consider that she has on MANY occasions said she does not nor does she care to own a gun.
Your move. Preferably to some Third World shithole that bans guns and scary shit like that.
I’ll chip in for the ticket. You game?
No, what the 2nd does is give any spoiled brat who, when he loses a board game, upends the board and storms off, the chace to do the samething in real life.
Jesus Joe, project much there? So someone has a bad day and is gonna go shooting up the place over it?
Try again.
What I described Sparky was Adam Lanza.
@77 — You are SUCH an asshole.
Adam Lanza was hardly a spoiled brat. His own mother knew that he was dangerous and was trying to find a way to get him into confinement, not just for his own sake but for the sake of other people. She knew exactly what he was like and warned people about him. He tried to buy a gun at a gun shop and was unwilling to wait for the background search to be completed. He went home, broke into his mother’s gun safe, and shot her four times in the head, before he went on his killing spree.
He was HARDLY a spoiled brat, you dumb, stump-sucking billiard pocket.
“dumb, stump-sucking billiard pocket”. Don’t hold back, Ex, tell our rock-climbing socialist hero what you really think of his stupidity.
You do know that you’ve pointed out inconvenient facts to Boy Joey? He’s all butt-hurt already. Now, he’ll be crying in his soy latte double mocha frappe all day.
Joe, no you did not describe Adam Lanza. What you described is what you wish would have happened. Please seek help.
Adam Lanza was the kind of emotionally stunted guy who when things weren’t going his way, upended the game board and had a major tantrum, like major. There are a lot of emotionally stunted people out there with access to a lot of guns. And please don’t tell me that we can psychologically screen them out. Most of them are flying well below the radar like, well, Adam Lanza. Did the local police even know he existed?
“I don’t know that I’d call a person’s fear of an implement, the only purpose of which is to kill human beings, ‘irrational fear’ .”
Joey boy – you really need to work on your use of fact and logic. If you have the intellectual capacity, that is. I’m beginning to wonder about that.
A gun’s “only purpose” is to kill human beings? Really? Ever heard of hunting or target shooting? So much for your baseline assumption as to why guns should be feared.
Now, moving on the the “might kill human beings” part: are you morbidly afraid of photos of swords? Not real swords – photos of them? How about ropes, real or in photographs? Or maybe spears? How about automobiles? Hammers? Fists?
Oh, and Joey? Lanza had Asperger’s syndrome, plus other serious mental issues. He wasn’t playing “board games” with anyone. Rateher, he was a deeply disturbed and dangerous young man. And libidiots like yourself made it impossible for him to be involuntarily committed for society’s (and his own) safety. At the time Lanza snapped, his own mother was trying to have him committed – and couldn’t, courtesy of laws you and your ilk passed to “protect Lanza’s rights”. That attempt ended up costing Lanza’s mother her life.
You want to see who’s responsible for Sandy Hook, Joey-boy? Look in the mirror, then look at your ideological compadres. You and your ilk are the ones with those children’s blood on your hands.
Where’d you get your talking points for today, Joey? DU? KOS? Puffington Ho’s? MSNBC? Your points are false, you have no more idea what Adam Lanza was than you know what the Constitution means.
There are a lot of emotionally stunted people people out there with access to cars/knives/poison/fertilizer/fuel oil. Do you ever crawl out from under your bed, or does mommy put the keyboard on the floor for you?
All of the above CAN kill people, but they were not designed specifically to kill.
Joe: are you a bloody idiot? What in the hell do you think swords and spears were designed to do – freaking tickle?
Geez. Calling you a moron is an insult to morons!
So, what’s your point? Other than the one on your head?
Can’t address the points that Hondo made about Lanza, and the complicity of you and people like you in the shootings in Newtown?
Don’t interrupt Comrade Joseph, UpNorth. He’s busy trying to figure out how to (1) change the subject, (2) put up a smokescreen, (3) bring up a non sequitur/red herring, (4) appeal to emotion, (5) make something up (MSU) that’s false but sounds plausible, or (6) some combination of the above.
He’s already started (1) by changing his position from “only purpose is to kill kill people” to “designed to kill”. Sorry, Joey-boy – too transparent, you’re busted. Try again.
He won’t try to argue the merits. He’s got no factual basis from which to argue.
CAN kill people? Oh, hell, my cooking can probably kill people, too, but it ain’t because it’s bad cooking.
Hondo, you left cast iron skillets off that list.
Ex-PH2: true. I was concentrating on a quick list of items that had either (1) traditionally been used to kill people, or (2) are known to annually kill more people than those “scary” assault weapons. Swords, spears, and ropes (hanging) are in the former category; automobiles, hammers/other blunt objects, and hands/feet are in the latter. Probably should have said “blunt objects” and “hands/feet” instead of hammers and fists.
“you dumb, stump-sucking billiard pocket”
Ex-PH2, I do love your way with words. Brava!
Adam Lanza was the kind of emotionally stunted guy
Speaking from personal experience, Joey? I mean, you would be the most obvious person to recognize that in another person and all.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not perfect Sparky.
@90 – My thanks.
@84: Not true. Guns are used to save lives as well. I know you have a hard time understanding that, but no matter how you want to twist it, it doesn’t change the facts.
@71, we live in the United States where our rights are dictated by the Constitution not by what someone in some foreign country thinks of us… seems to me that is how we began down the road to become the United States.
P.S. a woman forced into an attic space with her children used one of those evil guns to save her life and the lives of her children. Happens daily. The Crime Statistics compiled by the FBI show in the homicides by gun category “justifiable cases” by both police and civilians who have killed felons engaged in a felony. Though it only showed the fatal incidents, I would imagine the numbers are much larger. It was somewhere around 500 cases of justifiable shootings that resulted in the death of a felon… for one year.
I will admit I’m one of those people that carry a gun. I don’t hunt. I shoot targets often and I pick the places I go to eat shop ect based on their carry policy. I don’t dream of saving the day in a Hollywood gun battle, I carry a gun because its a dangerous world we live in. I carry a gun because its a tool, I. Have learned in my life to use the right tool for the task. I would rather never need a gun and have one than need one and not have one. Our current crop of politicians are having a knee jerk response to a truly tragic event. Adam Lanza killed those children, the gun was his tool of choice. We have effective laws on the books that would have stopped him had they been obeyed. His mother failed to properly secure her guns. She paid a high price for that mistake, she knew that her son needed more help than she could give him at home, yet she did not make it a priority to get him that help. At the same time she choose to store her weapons in a way that he our anyone else could access them. The fault lies with her and her son. Not with the millions of responsible gun owners who will have to pay the price for a her bad parental skills. Joe, the second amendmant is one of the corner stones of our way if life. It was not put in place to let people hunt or collect firearms, it was put in place to give the people a last resort of change of government should it be needed. We have slowly let the government take away piece after piece of that right. We let them ban Guns based on how they look, we let them tax ownership of other types to the point where the average law abiding American has no hope of ownership. We have states that put the burden of proof of innocence on the gun owner and not the criminal. Yet… Read more »
@96.
Well said.
I did a quick perual of archery equipment and prices yesterday. In my state, I do not have to have a permit to hunt with a crossbow, because I am over 62. I still have to have a huntng license just to hunt, and I looked up the hunting season dates for fall and spring. The geese are returning already.
It’s nice to know that I can hunt my pheasant and eat it, too.