Swiss Miss switzerland Rifles on Bikes
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The Swiss are heavily armed. But mass shootings are rare here – “But”? Don’t they mean “and”? . . .  In Switzerland, the government also banned immigrants from eight countries, including Algeria, Sri Lanka, Turkey and nations of ex-Yugoslavia from owning firearms. This rule stems from political conflicts and hostilities that simmer within these groups, posing “a serious threat” to the safety of our population . . .

Oversight and legal restrictions only go so far. What also keeps gun violence under control is the sense of responsibility deeply engrained in this safety-conscious society.

“The Swiss use their guns for target practice or hunting. Unlike Americans, they don’t arm themselves to protect their families or commit crime,” Martin Killias, criminology expert at Lausanne University told Geneva’s daily newspaper, Le Temps.

Ohio school's hidden handgun (courtesy foxnews.com)

Ohio school districts train teachers to handle guns: ‘They are our safety’ – Lots of training for a few teachers or the right to keep and bear arms on school property for all teachers? And administrators. Staff. And parents.

Two school districts near Dayton, Ohio have trained a confidential team of teachers and staff to fire back at an active shooter.

“Our staff members are trained to go to the threat and address the threat. Not to run away,” said Mad River Schools Superintendent Chad Wyen.

The Sidney and Mad River school districts have guns hidden in safes throughout its schools which can be opened only by staff on the armed response team. Each member of the team is vetted, selected by the district, and must have a license to carry. The team goes through “rigorous” monthly training.

“These teachers are trained and trained as well in the use of firearms as the average police officer,” said Sidney Middle School armed guard and veteran tactical officer, Rick Cron. “I made sure that that would happen. I didn’t want someone who wasn’t trained to come to my aid. I wanted people who understood tactics.”

Teacher Cathy Kuhns (courtesy bostonglobe.com)

‘The day they ask me to carry a gun in the classroom is the last day I teach’ – Who’s asking? . . .

“That is not what we do as educators,” she said. “Our expertise, our job, our skill set is around teaching and instruction and supporting students and motivating them and inspiring them. It should not be part of our job description to learn how to shoot a gun. That’s what you do in the military, and that’s what you do as a police officer.”

Tommy Chang, superintendent of Boston Public Schools, also condemned the idea.

“The mere thought that teachers should be armed in order to ward off violence is utterly illogical and will only result in making our students and teachers less safe,” he said. “The real issue at hand continues to be access to guns.” . . .

Stone also said arming teachers would “impact the relationship between an educator and their students,” particularly in urban schools where students have experienced gun violence.

“The appropriate bar to set is to negate and eliminate these situations entirely,” by helping teachers address their students’ social and emotional needs and “supporting our lawmakers to create gun laws that will allow us to avoid school shootings,” Stone said.

AR15s (courtesy theatlantic.com)

What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns – ER radiologist tells it like it is re: damage caused by AR15 bullets. Why that should “change the debate on guns” is less credible . . .

Banning the AR-15 should not be a partisan issue. While there may be no consensus on many questions of gun control, there seems to be broad support for removing high-velocity, lethal weaponry and high-capacity magazines from the market, which would drastically reduce the incidence of mass murders. Every constitutionally guaranteed right that we are blessed to enjoy comes with responsibilities. Even our right to free speech is not limitless. Second Amendment gun rights must respect the same boundaries. . . .

As a radiologist, I have now seen high velocity AR-15 gunshot wounds firsthand, an experience that most radiologists in our country will never have. I pray that these are the last such wounds I have to see, and that AR-15-style weapons and high-capacity magazines are banned for use by civilians in the United States, once and for all.

New Ruger precision rifle

Sturm, Ruger & Company Inc. (RGR) CEO Chris Killoy Q4 2017 Results – Earnings Call Transcript – A stock price bounce over the last week (for obvious reasons) but ruh-roh! Ruger experienced 27 percent drop in revenue for the December quarter. The company’s slashed capital expenditures for 2018 by more than half. Even so, Ruger’s CEO says the company will new product its way out of the doldrums.

The decrease in estimated sell-through of the company’s products from the independent distributors to retailers is attributable to one, decreased overall consumer demand in 2017 due to stronger than normal demand during most of 2016, likely bolstered by the political campaigns for the November 2016 election; Two, reduced purchasing by retailers in an effect to reduce their inventories and generate cash; three, aggressive price discounting and lucrative consumer rebates offered by many of our competitors; and four, increased industry manufacturing capacity, which exacerbated the above factors.

New product developments. We believe that the new products are the key driver of demand. New products represented $137.8 million or 27% of firearm sales in 2017, compared to $192.6 million or 29% of firearm sales in 2016.

In 2017, new products included the Precision Rifle, the Mark IV pistols, the LCP II pistol, and the American Pistol. In December 2017, the company introduced the pistol-caliber carbine, the Security-9 Pistol, the EC9s Pistol and the Rimfire Precision rifle.

Republicans Plotting their Own Defeat via More Gun Control Knock them out of their sox sir, Mr. Knox sir.

Most mass-murderers passed “background checks” to obtain their weapons, most because they had no disqualifying record, and a couple because the system is faulty, and those that did not, generally stole them, not infrequently after killing the legal owner.

Mass-murderers almost always plan their attacks for months or years, picking their targets, analyzing potential obstacles, acquiring weapons, and exploring alternative means of wreaking destruction.

Republicans need to put this issue back into the laps of the Democrats. Rather than try to avoid a debate on gun control and mass-murder, Republicans should embrace that debate, and force the Democrats to justify their calls for restricting the rights of innocent Americans.

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80 COMMENTS

  1. The team goes through “rigorous” monthly training.

    “These teachers are trained and trained as well in the use of firearms as the average police officer,”

    If they train monthly they’re probably leaps and bounds ahead of the average police officer.

    • I played hockey with a kid from Sidney back in the day. It’s a small town in southwest Ohio, so no doubt that everyone there is right-leaning and has a buddy with a farm field to shoot in.
      Mad River School District is the district for Riverside, right next to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It’s kind of a shady, scummy part of town, but everyone probably knows where to go shooting around there also. It’s not a nice place to live, so you probably have to learn how to shoot a gun sometime in life if you live on that side of the tracks.

    • Yep. Unless a cop is on a swat team, most only shoot their guns when they requalify once or twice a year.

      So if these teachers are training monthly in tactical fire and movenent drills, they are head and shoulders above the vast majority of your average street cop in their shooting abilities.

      • If the training is as good as police training not only will the defense be credible, but the average crazy who wants to kill kids in a school is not trained and even the presence of concealed weapons may stop these attacks. A TV news spot talked about a school that spent $300,000 to provide protections like bullet resistant doors, surveillance systems and smoke. This is CHEAP. Fairfax VA schools spend more then that on the ball fields and lights.

  2. This radiologist would shit a brick if he saw a wound from a normal “hunting rifle” in 30-06.

    Also I like that these teachers are declaring they’ll quit if school carry becomes a reality. Get these leftist turds out of the classroom and then we’ll see some real change we can believe in.

    • If the wounds from an AR15 are so devastating, how are they different from a Ruger Mini14, or Savage 10 varmint rifle?

      It reminds me of when Rolling Stone showed a body with an entry wound in front and a large exit wound in the back as an example of “the power of a 7.62 semi-automatic rifle” (back when SKS rifles were the weapons of choice among spee killers). No mention specifically the caliber, type and weight of bullet, and the distance it was fired.

    • Nobody tell him what a Garand can do with it’s en bloc clips; a literal weapon of war. And the government sells them to its citizens (shudder)

  3. What a lot of these teachers don’t seem to understand is what John Lovell once said in an interview with Dave Grossman: (rough quote) “Killing could be a very /loving/ action.”

    Educating is great. So is protecting.

    • They would probably have a complete mental breakdown if they read The Life-Giving Sword by Yagyū Munenori. Which, by the by, is a book everyone should read.

      • To be fair, you do have to consider the source… This guy worked for Tokugawa Ieyasu. You remember Ieyasu… the guy who established a military dictatorship that ruled Japan for several centuries…

      • As long as it isn’t as boring as the last book I checked out based on a TTAG recommendation. Negroes and the Gun, repetitive and tedious.

        • Depends on how you look at it. This book is more about philosophy and readying one’s self for battle both mentally and spiritually. It’s also pretty short. I think my copy is about 80 pages. The kind of thing you can read through the first time while lying on the couch on a lazy weekend afternoon. Like The Art of War you’ll want to revisit this book repeatedly to really adsorb it.

          It does have some instruction on how to fight with a sword but that’s not the “thrust” of the book.

          You can Google the book and then read a brief description in google books. TTAG won’t let me post the link.

        • Points for the pun. Since I’m sure the book is out of copyright, do you know if there is a free copy out there on the interwebs?

      • Some should be banned from having books. OR at least a waiting period. They just don’t get it or placing knowledge in the wrong hands is just too dangerous.

        “The pen is mightier than the sword” said someone.

  4. I’ve known many reservists who were teachers. There’s nothing inherently contradictory between a teacher’s skill set and fighting. You can learn both. Many people have.

    • They’re liberal, union teachers in big cities. They are afraid of firearms because they might loose it and shoot one of their students.

      There is typically high security at points of entry, metal detectors, and police officers inside the schools full time.

      These teachers work in very hostile environments and are frequently physically assaulted and aren’t allowed to fight back or use force.

      The police are of little help in the classroom.

        • You know what would be truly *sweet*?

          We get concealed carry in schools, and one of the little assholes decides to lay out a carrier and the carrier blows the punk away.

          And the carrier *walks*.

          Bonus points if it’s in a ‘SYG’ jurisdiction…

          *snicker* 😉

      • Thus required EVERY school employee to complete the local/state requirements to Conceal Carry including firing 50rounds and hitting a standard target. Feds fund the ammo. NRA to provide the training.

        Some % of the progtard teachers will discover the LIKE guns/shooting and we have a new convert.

    • I’m a former teacher in Georgia. Here, a carry permit allows the teacher to possess their firearm in their personal vehicle, so long as it’s in a “locked compartment”. Yes, the passenger compartment counts. Libs had a field day when the “guns everywhere” legislation (their words, not mine) passed that permitted school districts to decide on whether or not teachers with carry permits could concealed carry (concealed only) on campus. Most decided against it, largely because of the negative publicity.

      What these libs fail to realize is that there’s a difference between ALLOWING someone to do something and FORCING people to do something. Don’t like guns? Don’t buy one. Don’t want to carry a gun in your classroom? Don’t. But they should not project their weak-minded, submissive, irrational fears onto the entire profession. Nor should they pretend to be the mouthpiece thereof. The BBC was interviewing an American teacher for his perspective yesterday, and it made my blood boil. Why? Because they picked the teacher union leader from Newtown, Connecticut who said no teacher in the US wants to carry a gun in their classroom. There were times I wanted one when I was in one of my classrooms, and that was with 6th graders who were collectively better armed than I was on any given day.

  5. “and that AR-15-style weapons and high-capacity magazines are banned for use by civilians in the United States, once and for all.”

    Because there is no way a single gun man could go to a school (Virginia Tech) with a Walther .22 pistol and Glock 19 Pistol and only 10 and 15 round magazines and kill 32 and wound 17.

    Oh wait, that’s exactly what happened. Maybe the doc should look at the wounds from the shotgun rounds at the DC navy yard shooting or aurora movie theater, etc. There are plenty of shotgun mass shootings and they just as devastating.

    • Columbine. 1999- middle of the assault weapons ban. They used shotguns, pistols, knives, & pipe bombs. Almost 20 years ago & yet we’ve done nothing to address the true problem.

  6. Schools in America are filled with Leftists. It doesn’t surprise me a teacher would announce in public they would quit rather than KILL not murder but KILL to defend their students.

    They are cowards. And a security risk. They would be the ones to “out” the ccw teachers in the school.

    • “The mere thought that teachers should be armed in order to ward off violence is utterly illogical and will only result in making our students and teachers less safe,” he said.

      “illogical”……..You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

  7. Our ‘experiment in government has as its basis the idea that ALL are equal before the law and we do ideally discriminate or have classes with more freedom than others. Once this happens we no longer have the republic as envisions by the founding fathers. The 2nd amendment is ALL ABOUT a check on our Government. Those that say that we would never need to revolt do not read history. Look at Germany in the 1930s. Other examples exist. We also have a responsibility to use our freedoms within the law. Not sure why we have in the last generation mentally ill people who think that the fame of being a mass killer is a good thing. I’ve been an avid shooter, competitor, collector and NRA instructor for over 35 years. It’s not the firearm or it’s lethality that we should fear, but those of us who need mental help. As for schools. There was a video on one of the TV channels showing a school where they spent $300,000 to provide security. That’s a lot cheaper then lights for the football field. Lets do that before we treat our citizens as if they cannot be responsible with the tools of our freedom.

  8. The Swiss don’t have Libertarians Liberals and the Left, who support letting mass murders into their society. They control their national borders.

    The three L’s get comfort to knowing an America committed the last massacre. It makes it easier for them to support the immigration of the San Bernardino murderers, or the Ohio State or New York City immigrant murderers, who just ran over people.

    • You need to stop lying about Libertarians. You’re far and away much, much more likely to let scumbags into this country than they are, and by a very long country mile at that.

      • Mr. Excedrin I’m glad I give you a headache along with other Libertarians.

        Gary Johnson and William weld are two very large lead weights around your neck or your ankles depending on how you want to look at it. The Libertarians and their Oracle, Reason Magazine, have always been an open borders policy group.

        I take the position that folks outside the United States have every right to hang their leaders from lamp posts if they choose, and then start fresh probably taking between 400 and 500 years, to create their own version of the United States of America.

        It took us at least that long to get where we are today.

        • I left the LP because they ran Weld, who was “Obama but wants to legalize drugs”. The libertarian party candidates I’ve called for local races understood instantly when I told them I had to make sure they were actually libertarian after Weld, so I don’t think disdain for that choice is uncommon.

        • Without their potheads/druggies the “Libertarians” would have ANY candidates for office. Because they are libertarians and hate gov’t.

      • Chris is often very wrong about what a libertarian is. Mostly because the Libertarian party is often very wrong about what a libertarian is. But here, he is correct. Libertarians don’t believe in borders.

        • I guess it depends on which libertarian you talk to.

          I am one but I treat the border like my house, I don’t want random strangers on my property ergo I don’t want them in my country either especially people who come from societies who think government is the solution to all of their problems and want more of it.

        • I get it. If it wasn’t for the fact that most libertarians were closer to anarchists than the founders, I would call myself a libertarian.

  9. And this right here is what is wrong with progressives.

    “The mere thought that teachers should be armed in order to ward off violence is utterly illogical and will only result in making our students and teachers less safe,” he said. “The real issue at hand continues to be access to guns.” 

  10. Every right comes with resposabilities- I love that. Maybe some should telll CNN, MSNBC, Jake Tapper, and Don Lemon!
    They seem to be ignorant of the first amendment responsibilities

  11. ‘The day they ask me to carry a gun in the classroom is the last day I teach’

    *Applause*

    It’s really a cruel thing to do to get my hopes up like that… 🙂

    • Why does this … teacher … think anyone WANTS them doing that?

      I hate hate hate that we can’t get past these stupid straw man arguments.

      We just want to let that already enabled to be enabled at their place of work.

  12. Guys, not to sound like a completely heartless @$$hole, but is their something I missed? Why was this last spree killing any more heinous than the last dozen? I mean, after Sandy Hook, children who were little more than toddlers where murdered by a psychopath and not a single piece of gun control legislation passed under a very left-leaning president, yet fifty something people are killed by a madman from a Vegas hotel widow and there isn’t sh!t passed, yet 17 teenagers are killed and now we get talks of gun control from the Great Orange C%cksucker wants feel good bullsh!t? I just don’t get it.

  13. A .223 bullet causes a nasty wound cavity and shatters bones….. so……ban ARs and “high capacity” magazines.

    Somebody’s reading from the Garen Wintemute script….

  14. “The mere thought that teachers should be armed in order to ward off violence is utterly illogical…”

    That’s beautiful demonstration of irony.

  15. I wholeheartedly support any teacher who has a CHP and is willing to carry concealed in the school. I base this on my child’s experience at a public high school which had a wealthy neighborhood on one side and the “hood” on the other. The hood had non-stop shootings and drug raids, which always resulted in school lockdowns, of which we parents were not made aware. We heard first from the kids and only later from the school as the cover-up continued unabated. Numerous fights broke out among various varieties of hoodlums in and near the school grounds. On the other hand, due to the magnet programs, the smartest kids in the community also went there. While there was one SRO in the building at all times, there were also a good number of former military and LEO teaching or coaching at the school. I would have trusted any of them to have carried in the school and would have felt much better if they did. I am sure that most of the kids (just not the hoodlums and any would-be mentals) would also have felt safer and been safer if these teachers were able to GFZ’s were repealed, parents who worked shifts and had CHP’s would volunteer to be on guard duty at opening and closing of the schools, to prevent just such acts as happened in Florida. This crap would end and would hardly cost the schools a dime.

  16. I have plenty of non-AR-15 firearms in calibers that will create a significantly more horrendous wound than any 223/5.56 round. Apparently this Doctor has not been exposed to a lot of gunshot wounds prior to the Parkland incident. I really despise people who talk out of their a$$, because their mouths know better.

    As for the teacher(s) who will quit if they make teachers carry guns……Bonus! Just that many less liberal brainwashers to deal with in our schools.

    Oh, and if you’re looking for a State with good safe school systems to send your kids….Ohio is looking much better than Massachusetts….by a country mile!

  17. Good on the Swiss…limit lowlife gunownership-and you thought the Japanese were racist. I hope more leftards quit “teaching”. Anyone catch WGN “news”?” A February sweeps “expose” on GHOST GUNS. It seems the doofus reporter thinks an 80% lower is a complete firearm. Complete with an ATF apparatchik…😧😩😖

  18. The orange orangutan savior is selling us out right now, it seems that our culture has assured us that we will continue to have school shootings unfortunately,,. If we are forced to give a little here and there for each atrocity, we won’t have anything left by the end of the trump presidency.

    The NRA knows better than to engage in a debate right after an atrocity, why did we engage this time, let the hysteria die down, don’t feed it by attending town halls with a grieving town, you will lose every time

  19. I had friends in college from Sri Lanka and Serbia. Hell, the one guy’s dad was an exiled Tamil Tiger. He was a nice kid though. He was very conscientious about drinking tea that came from his home country because he boycotted all their products. The Tamil Tigers did pioneer suicide bombing and other well-known terrorist tactics, though, and Bosniaks, Kosovars, and Albanians are some of the worst jihadi scum, and Croatians are literal Nazis and racial and religious sellouts. There was this also smarmy Albanian guy I also went to college with, and I went to high school with a pair Bosniak thots. Those people are insufferable trash.

  20. Simple, practical solutions are far too challenging for politicians to comprehend.

    This is basic….

    1). Install appropriately armed security with appropriate training and a mandate for immediate response.

    2). As backup, train and arm Teachers and school staff to immediately and correctly respond to armed attacks.

  21. i have previously commented and do so again, re: that some-thing must needs be done to prevent these shooting “incidents” from being exploited and abused by the media and the gun control crowd;
    maybe there needs to be some special legislation enacted, accompanied by substantial penalties, for using these dubious “incidents” as a pretext to attack Constitutional rights;
    it seems to me that this is, indeed, a matter of some urgency and should be placed before the auspices of both PotUS Trump and the federal Attorney-General ASAP
    thanks!

  22. “It should not be part of our job description to learn how to shoot a gun.” But it is a duty as an able bodied adult; that’s what the militia is all about. Like jury duty or voting. I’d prefer this kind of person not do her duty.

    “”The appropriate bar to set is to negate and eliminate these situations entirely,’ by helping teachers address their students’ social and emotional needs.” – Well, they’re doing a bang up job their.

  23. Has anyone else noticed that the Stupid Quotient at The Atlantic has spiked noticeably since they took out their comment section?

  24. “The Swiss are heavily armed. But mass shootings are rare here”

    Well, mass shootings are like a virus. Often they are instigated by sick people who see others do them. They spread and propagate.

    As for the Swiss comment, I could say, Montanans are heavily armed, but mass shootings are rare there. Switzerland is a small country. The odds of them having one are smaller. But when they do, their per capita rate will skyrocket.

    On the other hand, France is smaller than the US and their mass shooting was larger than anything that the US experienced. And, the Norway mass shooter probably has the highest count of any individual doing such a thing.

  25. A GREAT “litmus” test for teachers is if they can responsibly carry a firearm. If not, then they are not responsible enough to trust with the minds/bodies of our children.

    If they don’t WANT to that’s ok.

  26. Because of the current social justice environment we will see gun manufactures come under financial pressure. First National Bank of Omaha has via pressure from left leaning groups with deep financial pockets have dropped the NRA Visa. Enterprise as cut ties with the NRA.

    While none of those things may be of any big deal it is the momentum that we will see toward all things guns.

    As it was before as it is now we are fighting a culture war and even Fox News and several large GOP donors are on the band wagon to ban something.

    No matter how much you want to scream and shout in the comments I foresee some stupid level of gun legislation happening at the State Level if not the Federal Level.

    The gun culture with its poor outreach to the younger generation and minority groups is loosing. Circling the wagons and shouting into the echo chamber may make you feel better but it will not change the trend.

    A great many Millenniums are brain washed. We live an environment where emotions trump logic and many in the younger generation are taught to think with their feelings and ignore facts because facts do not matter as long as your feelings are met.

    For everyone who thought that Trump would be the gun savior, it is not going to happen. The GOP will fold, Trump is a liberal in disguise and gun rights are on a rope.

    Alan Gottlieb has said in the past that the gun right groups have to lead in the change otherwise others would change things for us in ways we would not like, there is a good chance that time is coming soon. Digging in the heals has not worked and now forces outside of the gun rights groups will dictate the change.

    The “common sense” that is coming is not going to be the “common sense” we want and we can all look in the mirror and blame ourselves for not being more part of the conversation and action BEFORE all the recent shootings.

  27. The Swiss couldn’t defend themselves from a wet fart, if not for the laissez-faire attitude the rest of Europe treats them to. (D)bags lecturing US on how some countries better can go F themselves with something sharp and heavy.

    Yes, (R) and rinos better beware of sucking gun-control cack.

  28. —That’s what you do in the military, and that’s what you do as a police officer.”—

    So far gone are the days of the “citizen soldier militia” our forefathers envisioned. Now it’s somebody come save me. Self-reliance is a dying art.

    But, once again, Heinlein said it best: “What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?”
    “The difference,” I answered carefully, “lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.””

    — Where we fail here? Taking the OATH doesn’t make the Soldier. Accepting responsibility and acting does.

  29. “What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns – ER radiologist”

    Hey, numbnuts, your hospital has killed more people than my AR. And they didn’t die pretty.

    • “The Swiss are heavily armed. But mass shootings are rare here.” And, as you point out, mass shootings and the death rate from mass shootings are less in America. Therefore, mass shootings and deaths from mass shootings are exceedingly rare in America.

  30. We have seen disarmed teachers intentionally putting themselves in the line of fire and taking bullets to protect their students. I personally know several teachers who shoot, play instruments, golf, or engage in other types of activities, as well as teaching. I bet you do too. That kind of puts the lie to the stupid arguments that assume all teachers are cowards and “one trick ponies” don’t you think?

  31. “…AR15 gunshot wounds…”

    There’s no such damned thing you fool!!!

    The AR15 is a caliber non-specific platform, not a type of ammunition. What an idiot.

    Many other rifles can shoot the same calibers of ammunition as an AR15. Are they going to ban those too? …You betcha! Just give them time. It’s death by a thousand cuts, and just because you don’t care for the AR15 doesn’t mean your guns are safe, because they’ll be next on the ban list.

  32. the shootings are rare, but the communist media hype up the coverage so they can get more stupid people to believe them ( Trump got it right- fake news, now let us just hope he does not cave in to them). this is how communist countries get started. they bend the truth and lie.

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