Michigan passes bill allowing concealed weapons in schools, day care centers, stadiums, churches

[EX_Bert_Worshipper]

I think it's more than just about changing the laws and restricting access to firearms. There also needs to be so much done about changing the mentality/culture that has built up in the US around guns and violence. I remember talking a few years back with a lovely couple who was camping next to us. Around the campfire, they were mentioning how they got their teenage daughter a gun to protect herself because they had a lot of foreingers working at their property. He said it so matter of fact, that I nearly feel off my chair. It's that kind of mentality that fuels the notion that more guns are needed. It seems like such a cycle of "must get more guns to protect us from threat (real or not)" and "there's more threat because it's easier to get more guns".

I honestly think that things are so far gone in the US that no amount of gun laws/control or trying to remove guns from the public is going to do anything. The weapon culture is so deeply embedded that people will fight it and work around it and without seious campaigning to change that mentality, it's all going to stay the same or maybe even get worse.

[Pouria]

State House passes bill allowing concealed weapons in schools, day care centers, stadiums, churches

By Kathleen Gray

Detroit Free Press Staff

http://www.freep.com...ay-care-centers

Changes to the concealed weapons law passed the state House on Thursday evening, allowing highly trained gun owners to carry their concealed weapons in formerly verboten places, such as schools, day care centers, stadiums and churches.

Schools, however, and privately owned facilities could opt out of the new law if they don't want people carrying guns in their buildings.

The gun bill also requires the Michigan State Police, rather than local law enforcement, to maintain gun permitting records. Police said it was crucial to have at least one agency hold on to records, citing the I-96 shooter case last month, which was solved in part, by going back through gun records.

State Rep. Joel Johnson, R-Clare, called the bill a “pro-public safety bill because it allowed gun owners to be an “asset” to public safety in volatile situations.

But opponents, including state Rep. Joan Bauer, D-Lansing, said the bill went too far.

“There are just some areas where guns should not be allowed,” she said.

The bill still needs to go back to the state Senate for concurrence.

[Wetcoaster]

I don't believe at any point I said it wasn't related.

You seem to have read something I didn't say and then ignore everything I did say. All you did was reiterate that it's over simplistic to says guns are the problem. I get it but it doesn't change that guns are a problem. Again I ask if people kill people and mental illness plays a role (huge or otherwise) why put so many guns out there for those people. If you had somebody living in your house that had a mental illness which brought out violent tendencies would you lock up your knives or pick up a few more to show how bad ass you are?

[Pouria]

How would you realistically go about doing that? To give an idea of how large that number is, consider that there are only roughly 15 million people serving in the world's armed forces...

Also consider that before smartphones, before the internet, before T.V. and radio, before the powered lawn mower, before the automobile etc etc, there were effective gun designs, meaning that firearms represent an old, old, easy to manufacture technology that anyone can pull off.

Especially in this era of cheap automated CNC mills and 3D printers, try successfully banning that.

[Electro Rock]

So we should not try to do anything because its "hard" to get rid of it. Why is there a war on drugs but nothing is done about guns? They should just get rid of the second amendment and put in a real gun law. Have a law that says anyone caught with a gun will receive an automatic jail sentence of 1-5 years and anyone selling guns will receive an automatic jail sentence of 5-10 years. Maybe that will slow down the madness that is going on with gun violence in US right now. All these mass casualties were committed by your average joe, not a drug dealer or a gangster. Eliminating easy access to guns might reduce the number of psychos who posses guns in the first place don't you think?

[Newsflash]

Yes, give the teachers guns. Then a teacher goes on a killing spree, and the gun nuts either say, "Why are the teachers even allowed to have guns?" or much more likely, "Why aren't the students allowed to have guns?"

[Scott Hartnell's Mane]

It's not a matter of simply being "hard", but beyond any reasonable means save perhaps the slow incremental route of creeping bans on one hand, and cynically using the school system, media and many other institutions to impose a stigma and legal liabilities on guns on the other, which they're already doing.

Trying to go all police state on gun owners and supporters of the Constituion, will end badly.

The vast majority of shootings in the U.S. are thug-on-thug or people who know each other rather than public rampages.

What yould I do?

For one thing, end the war on drugs and use some of the resources to protect schools and other public building much better.

Even in the absence of active shooters it just makes sense to restrict access to a school, because of things like perverts and drug dealers etc being able to gain access like I've seen in some schools.

Then of course there's mental health, as in its a lot easier and cheaper to treat the mentally as to treat their victims in the aftermath if they snap.

[Jai604]

Well...there are 2 sides to this story.

Those against it, those for it.

Just want to toss this out there, imagine if teachers carried a concealed weapon, today's tragedy may have had less fatalities if some adult working in the school took out the shooter before they took out innocent lives.

[Mr. Ambien]

Yes, give the teachers guns. Then a teacher goes on a killing spree, and the gun nuts either say, "Why are the teachers even allowed to have guns?" or much more likely, "Why aren't the students allowed to have guns?"

[EmployeeoftheMonth]

There's nothing to stop a teacher right now from going on a killing spree.

As the case with the Connecticut shooter's mother, she was a registered gun owner of several powerful guns and could have gone postal on students at a whim. Yet, she didn't. There are plenty of other gun owning teachers where this analogy applies.

So why would teachers being allowed to carry in a classroom compel them to commit a crime they already can commit? Being allowed to carry would suddenly, magically make them serial killers?

This is ridiculous.

[Mr. Ambien]

You need both motivation and opportunity. Why make the opportunity so easy? I've asked you this about half a dozen times but you haven't answered once. Funny that.

[EmployeeoftheMonth]

Absolutely correct.

You can be mentally disordered (even a seriously) and kill people but that does not mean that you are excused from criminal responsibility because the test is much more than just being mentally disordered.

Clearly Clifford Robert Olson, Paul Bernardo, Robert "Willie" Pickton, Colonel Russell Williams, etc. were seriously dusturbed individual with severe mental disorders but they were legally responsible for their crimes. Also recall that Anders Breivik who killed 8 with a bomb and 69 by way of shooting was found mentally competent and legally sane.

If gun control laws make it difficult for a mentally ill person to obtain and possess a firearm that is all to the good. The problem firstly is identifying such people and further as we saw here in BC with the Angus David Mitchell case even where police arrest and detain a person under the Mental health Act (and seize his weapon only to later return it), in practise even the laws we have may not always work.

[250Integra]

I'm highly trained!!

I've played COD, Battlefield, and Counter-Strike!

[Mr. Ambien]

I'm highly trained!!

I've played COD, Battlefield, and Counter-Strike!

[EmployeeoftheMonth]

Already been over this, you're just ignoring it out of convenience -- there are other uses for guns that aren't for massacring groups of children.

Those other uses are constitutionally protected, and legal. This is not. The gun did not present this person with the opportunity, it did not sit there convincing this killer to take it from his mother and use it. A gun existing and being anywhere within the realm of reachable is not at fault for someone taking it upon themselves to use it for murder. This is awful logic.

[Mr. Ambien]

Nothing will always work though and I'm fine with that.(in a manner of speaking) In a perfect world we wouldn't have any of these problems but we do and no matter what happens they'll never go away completely. Making "opportunity" harder though will decrease these sort of things; sadly though never eradicate them completely.

[Electro Rock]

You had me at this part. The failed "war on drugs" which was nothing more than a very thinly veiled attack on the hippie subculture, is costing incredible amounts of money to continue waging. I have great hopes that with legalization measures in Colorado and Washington passing that it will set off a domino effect backed by the voices of those whose lives have been alleviated by the use of medical cannabis. The war on drugs is responsible for prison and jail overcrowding here in the US as well...and if they were to stop this ridiculous "war" and let everybody make their own decisions on what to put into their bodies, they could use the revenue, brought as the result of legalizing and taxing cannabis like alcohol and also unlocking the energy benefits of hemp for inclusion in the creation of biodiesel, thereby eliminating much of the dependency on foreign oil....just think of what a dent that would make in the deficit.

But they would never consider this, because it actually makes fiscal sense.

[EmployeeoftheMonth]

"Making opportunity" more difficult means nothing when acquiring a gun, legally or otherwise, is easy as hell. A person who is motivated enough to kill people will do so regardless of the law, and guns are ridiculously easy to obtain on the street.

[Mr. Ambien]

Of course their are and people should be able to have guns for them. Hell people should be able to have guns for protection. You're right though...the gun is never at fault; I agree whole heartedly...you're thinking is still off though.

You're being silly and probably on purpose. I get that you've gotten yourself kind of caught here but you seem to be going deeper into this downward spiral. I'm trying to help pull you out but you just keep going on about things that haven't been said and using them as the basis for this lame excuse of an argument.

Guns don't kill people...I got it, I posted it earlier and I agree with it. Yet...here we are and here you are making arguments as if I've said otherwise. We're probably not as far apart as it seems in our feelings towards firearms.

[EmployeeoftheMonth]

You got "caught" making stupid arguments back at me about things I hadn't said or implied. Then you just kept doing it for some unfathomable reason because it was a waste of time and gave nothing to your argument.

US government doesn't have the resources, nor the competency, to eliminate guns from the wrong hands. Education and more extensive testing is a far better proposal, albeit the effectiveness of that is also quite limited.