The issue is the Second Amendment.
Agree.
I see this petition as an avenue of resistance to the efforts of the left.
But the petition offers no resistance. It will get no more coverage than an op-ed to a local paper, and it capitulates to the idea of Gun Free Zones by calling for the "elite" to live by them, rather than calling for the abolishing of Gun Free Zones.
... then you are expressing a continued willingness to maintain the republican leadership reactive strategy which as far as I can tell is helping to bury our side.
I don't agree that finding the petition approach useless means I think the leadership approach is useful. There are more than two choices.
You write The worst part of the petition is that it is calling for something that nobody here actually supports. I ask you to clarify that.
Certainly. The petition calls for secret service protection to be removed from the President and other government officials, and from Sidwell Friends school. I quote:
Eliminate armed guards for the President, Vice-President, and their families, and establish Gun Free Zones around them.My assertion is that you and others supporting the petition do NOT want the result to be the removal of armed guards, but rather the elimination of Gun-Free zones. so the petition calls for something nobody here supports.
Your following observation, Anyway, as a practical matter, Sidwell Friends should absolutely have more guards than a normal school. Every kid in Sidwell Friends is at increased risk of harm because there are high-value targets attending the school. seems to suggest that [class distinctions] is what you believe
I could have been clearer - the "high-value targets" are the children of the President, and they are "high-value" because our enemies would seek to use the children of the President to send a message. And I most certainly support Secret Service protection for that school, as I would for a public school if they attended such a school. It isn't about class, it is about keeping our enemies from using members of our government or their families to attack our government.
I support Secret Service protection for any member of our government who is at risk of attack because of their service to our country. That is the purpose of the Secret Service, and it has nothing to do with "class distinctions".
If you wanted to make the point about class distinctions, it should be directed at how rich people can afford to send their kids to schools that have armed guards. Although perversely, that is a bad attack because as conservatives we argue that money itself not evil, and people deserve to use their money as they see fit; again the issue isn't that rich people spend their money protecting their kids, the issue is that the government puts the public school children in "Gun Free Zones" that don't protect them.
That you appear to accept the occasional mass shooting in schools that "are about the safest place kids can be, on average" probably wouldn't be a comfort to parents of any future children who may be killed or maimed in a Gun Free Zone.
No doubt. Just as no parent who actually suffers the loss of a child for ANY reason would be comforted by knowing what the probability was of that child being lost for that reason. It is an emotional argument that cannot be answered, except to keep the objective argument for those who haven't been directly impacted. The left knows this, and that's why they try to bring the victims front and center. It's why we sent money to starving kids in Africa but not South America, and why Haiti Relief spends money advertising pictures of Haiti suffering to make us feel bad and give them money.
Even without the occasional drug addled shooter, schools are no way the safest place kids can be for many reasons. Keeping them in government mandated Gun Free Zones, which the author of the petition is saying, for those of you in Dearborn, does not make them safer.
By any measure, children are safer during the hours they are in public schools than the hours they are not. That doesn't mean schools can't be safer, or that Gun Free Zones have made them safer. It is just that, for the most part, schools are run in a manner that keeps kids from getting into accidents, and most criminals do seem to draw the line at shooting up schools, in no small part I'm sure because there is no money in it.
Getting rid of Gun Free Zone designations, by allowing armed teachers and administrators, might make schools safer -- but certainly not "safe". The chances of an armed teacher being able to stop a gunman before they even start are low. In Sandy Hook, if half the teachers had guns, and the Principal had a gun, it still would have been quite possible that the principal would have been shot before knowing there was a clear threat, and the gunman would have a 50/50 chance of getting into a room without a teacher, meaning one class of kids killed behind a locked door.
Which from a macro point of view would be better than two, but certainly, as you put it, not a comfort to the parents of the kids in the first room.
Anyway, I oppose Gun Free Zones, and nothing I said was to argue otherwise. I'm saying that schools are already safe, and the left is using a highly abnormal occurrence to argue otherwise to push their agenda. Schools were safe before gun-free-zones, and they are safe now, because there are just so few people who decide to shoot up a school that it is unlikely their decisions can be averaged into any pattern.
In your summary you project that Obama will do nothing. That is not the point.
That was my point, and it was the point raised in the article posted, suggesting that Obama would have to address it if they got enough signatures.
Getting Americans to do something is what I celebrate.
I argue that getting them to do something worthless is nothing to celebrate. It is a waste, like getting kids to do useless "clean-up projects" to make them feel good about the environment -- the kids, and the Americans, will figure out that they were given busy-work and will tune out.
The chain of fear that inhibits any American from speaking out may be cloaked in your argument that it's a waste of time but it's still a chain of fear of some kind of reprisal by the government.
Those who fear reprisal aren't signing the petition. But the petition is a waste of time because it is a waste of time. As I said, you could make the petition "Get rid of gun free zones", include the same supporting text, and the petition at least would be slightly less of a waste of time.
When you write on Free Republic that this kind of action is a waste of time you are discouraging people to voice their discontent. That too is unAmerican. Why would you want to dissuade people from adding their voice to an increasing number of people who do not agree with you that it is a waste of time?
15,000 people signed. It appears that most people think it is a waste of time. I am not MAKING it a waste of time, just pointing out the fact. And yes, I am discouraging people from wasting their time on a lousy vehicle for voicing their discontent. I'd rather they focus on something useful, like writing their members of congress, speaking at their local school board, writing op-eds, commenting on articles in the paper, and sending money to groups that actually are working on the problem.
I think arming teachers is the most sensible route to take. The leftist elite will never let that happen without a fight. I see this petition as an opening jab in that fight. Are opening jabs a waste of time for a fighter?
I agree that arming teachers, or at least allowing them to arm themselves, is a good thing. I don't think it will particularly help. If we had 100 shootings in schools each year, I would then argue that arming teachers would lead to a real reduction. But there are so few shootings that statistics just don't matter. If only ONE person does something, you have no way of knowing if any particular thing you do to discourage it will help or not.
I don't think "opening jabs" are a waste of time. However, to use that analogy, if after the opening bell the fighter knocks out the referee, and then goes to a corner and starts beating on the corner post, I would say that they are wasting their time. You have to actually HIT the opponent for it to be helpful, and this petition does not do that.
If I had to raise one objection, and one only, it would be this: If the petition got 25,000 signatures, and Obama actually took it up, and decided to do exactly what the petition called on him to do -- we would actually be WORSE OFF than we are now.
But the petition offers no resistance. It will get no more coverage than an op-ed to a local paper, and it capitulates to the idea of Gun Free Zones by calling for the "elite" to live by them, rather than calling for the abolishing of Gun Free Zones.
The petition, as I see it, is an avenue of resistance. Those who sign it are offering the resistance. I doubt any signer expects the leftist elite to bend to our wishes on the basis of this petition anymore than we would expect them to respond to a petition to abolish Gun Free Zones. It is one more way to tell them to back off. Surely you can see the value in that. If you don't think they are tracking the numbers and the steady manner the numbers are accumulating you are fooling yourself.
My assertion is that our calling for an end to armed protection for them, not in the same deceptive way the leftist elite is calling for our disarmament, has more Constituional footing than they'll ever have as established by the Bill of Rights.
Encouraging Americans to address authority is hardly like encouraging kids to do mindless tasks to appreciate the environment. I have friends who have been involved in various political issues who had a do not cross line because they feared being on a list. We were not meant to live like that. Our Constitution stipulates the power belongs to the people, not to those who slither into political office and corrupt the American Way until we're graduating socialists from elementary school and Middle America rubs their eyes one day, looks around and suddenly feels like strangers in a very strange land.
You keep saying this petition is a waste of time. You suggest instead "...they focus on something useful, like writing their members of congress, speaking at their local school board, writing op-eds, commenting on articles in the paper, and sending money to groups that actually are working on the problem." as if people who would sign this petition aren't doing such things.
But what makes you think such activities are not also a waste of time? Do you have the same advice for those who do indulge in such pastimes? Aren't those methods merely avenues of resistance also?
And to respond to your BTW post, I did look into the subjects of previous petitions and did notice the various leftist demands and I never thought I'd be signing one of these petitions.
This one caught my fancy. Someone pointed out the alinski-ness of it's nature and for that alone, I would value it. But having a direct means of communication available where thousands can express their unique American nature to those who are trying to kill it is, like the credit card company says, priceless.