Tasers, Airplanes and Health Insurance

[Undertow]

Just a question - and I believe one most appropriate for this crowd of all others because we're so vintage oriented. As a note, this isn't a space to voice political differences, so let's leave that at the door, please and thank you.

Who on here would willingly, even preferably, board an airplane where no one was scanned? Where smoking was allowed? Where a meal was served? Even if it cost a little extra and you signed a waiver?

Who of us would prefer to send their child to a school knowing there were no off-duty police armed with pistols? Who here would allow their child to attend an after-school function knowing there were no guards with tasers? Who would prefer their child forego metal detectors at the doors?

Who of us would prefer to pay a lower premium for less health care coverage? Who would be willing to skip paying health insurance all together, and instead save their money for future calamaties?

At one time, each of these was taken for granted in the Golden Era. In fact, I can't imagine folks would have put up with what we endure today. Now I realize each of these is subject to certain regional factors - if you live in Chernobyl, you'll probably want to keep that insurance; if you're flying back and forth between Israel and Pakistan, you may as well board the "scanned" airplane; and if there's a shooting at your kids' school every Monday, they may as well pass through the detectors.

Let's try to be civil and discuss these issues that are relatively pertinent in our society. I know I don't need to tell you this is the world we're living in today. So honestly - who of you would forego a sense of security for ease of function? Any thoughts?

 

[Feraud]

Who of us would prefer to send their child to a school knowing there were no off-duty police armed with pistols? Who here would allow their child to attend an after-school function knowing there were no guards with tasers? Who would prefer their child forego metal detectors at the doors?

My son is currently attending high school where there are no armed guards, metal detectors, or armed security for after school functions.
I'd feel creeped about if there were armed guards on the premises. These are young adults who shouldn't attend school and after school events in an atmosphere of fear.
As you may have guess he doesn't attend a public school.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't believe we have any of that stuff here, or we didn't the last time I attended any kind of function at the school. The kids carry picture ID cards, and they get their lockers checked at random, but that's about it. The last time our high school was in the news was when three members of the football team pulled a car off a kid who'd gotten run over in the driveway. Tasers aren't part of our culture.

As for me, I went to grammar school in a building that barely had a lock on the front door, the only armed guard was a first-grade teacher with a ruler in her hand, and we ate our lunches in the cellar. Other than the occasional bit of coal dust in the milk, and the occasional crack across the knuckles when I got out of line, it was entirely bearable. And if I had kids, it wouldn't bother me a lick if they had the same experience.

 

[Pompidou]

I'm of the opinion that any student dead set on a massacre is going to get one - especially if it's a massacre with some intention of a blaze of glory death. So, I'm not for making schools resemble prisons. I agree with Feraud there. Treat our kids like kids, with some presumption of innocence. I think the mental baggage that comes with being taught in a supermax level 5 elementary school is worse than the danger it prevents.

In regards to airplanes. I am in favor of "reasonable" scanning and preventative measures. I like how it used to be. A metal detector is fair. I tolerated taking my shoes off. I'm NOT in favor of the new system where you either pose for a nude photo or get your crotch groped by what amounts to a mall cop on a power trip - what kind of choice is that?

As far as insurance - I don't like paying 300 a month any more than anyone else. In fact, I don't like paying bills at all. But, with the price of medical procedures, I think it's something everyone should be obligated to do. Actually, what I believe is that all minors should be required legally to have health insurance. No parent should have the right to risk their child's life medically. There was a story in the news some years ago, about a mother that wanted to treat her son's cancer with prayer. I believe both should be illegal. Once a person is 18, then the person can choose to risk his or her own life as s/he sees fit.

 

[JimWagner]

I remember a student bringing a gun to my high school in 1965. In fact it was several guns. Loaded. And he shot them. With the school's blessing.

Demonstrating a ballistics tank he built to catch bullets for comparison was his science fair project. At that time no one thought too much about it. Today that would be a federal offense and his life would be ruined.

Draw your own conclusions.

 

[Pompidou]

I remember a student bringing a gun to my high school in 1965. In fact it was several guns. Loaded. And he shot them. With the school's blessing.

Demonstrating a ballistics tank he built to catch bullets for comparison was his science fair project. At that time no one thought too much about it. Today that would be a federal offense and his life would be ruined.

Draw your own conclusions.

My dad tells me similar stories. He'd bring a gun to school - a hunting rifle. The teacher just said, "Just check that it's not loaded" and he was able to put it in a locker to go shooting after school. It was out in California, and one of those small rural areas with ridiculously small classes. It was a totally different world back then.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Boy Scouts used to sponsor regular gun-safety classes in our high school gym, and nobody cared. We also had archery as part of phys ed, shooting arrows with actual points. And I personally carried a Girl Scout knife to school in my bag every day from the fourth grade on. And nobody cared.

As far as flying goes, the day a nearsighted middle-aged woman hijacks a plane, I'll agree I need to be frisked.

 

[noonblueapples]

My son goes to a school where a cop roams the halls, there are cameras everywhere, and they have had events where no one is alowed to leave a classroom for hours at a time while every locker is ransacked. This is rural Maine, I can't imagine what it is like in urban areas now.

I would certainly get on a plane without security screening, it doesn't make me feel safer.

I have lived without health insurance before, it is no fun.

 

[JimWagner]

The Boy Scouts used to sponsor regular gun-safety classes in our high school gym, and nobody cared. We also had archery as part of phys ed, shooting arrows with actual points. And I personally carried a Girl Scout knife to school in my bag every day from the fourth grade on. And nobody cared.

As far as flying goes, the day a nearsighted middle-aged woman hijacks a plane, I'll agree I need to be frisked.

Yes, we wouldn't want to profile and maybe have a better chance of actually catching a terrorist, would we?

On the other subject, my grandfather believed every boy should have a pocket knife, a dog and a harmonica. My mother wouldn't have a dog around, but I had the pocket knife and harmonica. I've carried a pocket knife every day since I was about 12. But my harmonica was a much deadlier weapon.

 

[sheeplady]

When I went to high school (I graduated in the late 1990s), it was a very rural centralized public school and most families were very poor. My school couldn't afford textbooks (our science books were 30+ years old and we had to share- they were our newer books). I don't think we could have afforded security or metal detectors. We had drugs, guns, knives, and fights. Lots of kids brought their guns to campus and left them in their car, because they went hunting after school (many families needed the meat, so this was "overlooked"). We all survived and I would send my child there. My grandmother took a knife off a student in the early 1930s (he intended to stab and kill another teacher); our public schools have always had issues. Just now we hear about them because of national (and international) media.

As far as airport security, I think it is much ado about nothing, it is just trying to look like they will stop someone. I went through the scanners last time I flew and apparently they could not see through my waist band on my very thin and cheap jeans- only two layers of thin fabric. I'd much rather see the security force, time, and effort go into my city's streets, where we just had a toddler purposely shot in his car seat, because of his father's gang affliation. (I no longer feel safe changing buses downtown in my city because of several violent acts that have occured at the transfer point).

I feel much safer flying than I feel using public transportation in my city, and I think that is sad state. The only thing that seems to save my city from violence is the snow, which thankfully has come early and deep this year.

 

[Undertow]

I would have no problem signing a waiver and boarding a plane with no frisking. Or at the very least, as Pompidou stated, I'd accept metal detectors only. And health insurance? Well, that's a loaded question on my end, but I can say with certainty that some insurance companies are changing their methodologies to reduce the rising cost of care (basically, flat rates for major procedures which include everything).

Local schools in my area (Des Moines, IA) have metal detectors and guards with tasers. I'm not sure that I think it's a good thing to electrocute children, but what do I know.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My son goes to a school where a cop roams the halls, there are cameras everywhere, and they have had events where no one is alowed to leave a classroom for hours at a time while every locker is ransacked. This is rural Maine, I can't imagine what it is like in urban areas now.

The town where I grew up is like that now, and when I see all the money they're spending on this stuff I have to wonder who, exactly, they think they're protecting the kids against. A random, wandering moose wielding a spork?

 

[scottyrocks]

The biggest problem within the schools, why all this security has been deemed necessary, is because of a relatively small percentage of the students, themselves.

Gangs, and wannabes, in general, have been reeking havoc in the city schools. And the schools' completely ineffectual methods of (not) dealing with them in the present, and not having dealt with them in the past, when they were reeking havoc in middle and elementary schools, so as not to offend or upset their parents who have/had no clue about bringing up children; parents who run to the school board or the chancellor or the mayor yelling that their little (now big) terror is being persecuted and treated unfairly.

You wonder why the schools are in the situation theyre in? It was inevitable with such a well-concerted group effort from parents, teachers and administrators.

As far as the current airport security situation, this has been deemed 'necessary' these days because years ago, hardly anyone had the combination of technology, know-how, and cahonies to pull it off. Thats all changed in the last 20 years, resulting in what we are faced with today. Would I sign a waiver? A waiver to do what? Not sue anyone if Im the one to blow up a plane? Sorry if I missed the meaning of this but I dont get it. If security was actually done in some sort of intelligent way, I might be able to even think about getting behind it and backing it.

 

[Tomasso]

Back in the day, many of the high schools that had ROTC programs would have shooting ranges on campus. They would also field teams to compete intescholastically. Those were the days, my friend..............

 

[4spurs]

I'd have no problem skipping health insurance if I could pay my doc with two chickens, and a hospital bill wasn't $1,000 a day; but since that's not the world we live in any longer health insurance is pretty much mandatory; and if my government can do something to make it affordable that is what it should do. If that requires a mandatory enlargment of the insurance pool so be it.

 

[Wire9Vintage]

I'm well aware that schools out there have major security these days. But I must say, we live in a semi-urban community, just minutes outside a major city, with IH 35 going right through the middle of town, and our schools do not have metal detectors or armed guards (and because there are no lockers, there aren't even locker checks!). So I guess I always wonder what exactly makes a school district make the choice to go so maximum security.

As for airport security, as far as I understand from the news accounts of recent problems, it hasn't necessarily been officials to thwart possible attacks, it has been alert fellow passengers to point out weird behaviour and/or flying tackle the wackos. So what's the point in all this so-called security, that rarely really works well, anyway?

Health insurance. Ugh. I hope that a small trend happening now continues to grown. Doctors who are so fed up with the stacks of paperwork that they have to deal with are opting out of the system. There is one is a nearby town who sees patients, does not bill them, and has a box in the office where they can leave whatever money they can afford for care. No big fancy office, no big fancy equipment in order to do procedures that may or may not be necessary but insurance "covers," and not even a receptionist. His overhead is small, he helps many people, he works when he wants to, and he makes enough living to get by, which are all his goals are. Just like doctors used to have.

Off my soapbox now... Next?

 

[JimWagner]

I don't think safety can actually be bought at the price of freedom. The fear of terrorism has certainly affected more people than actual terrorist acts. Clearly many more planes have gone down every year from other causes than from terrorist acts. Safety is an illusion.

I "felt" much safer in the past before all these extraordinary precautions were put in place.

As for health insurance, that's another case of unintended consequences. Once enough people developed an entitlement mentality towards free medical treatment and quit being concerned directly with how much that cost (because, after all the insurance covered it) costs skyrocketed. How could it do otherwise? There used to be a time, not all that long ago, when most people didn't have medical insurance kiddies. Unless you worked for the largest companies who basically provided it to attract employees. But the genie is out of that bottle and we aren't likely to put it back.

Guess I'll go shopping for some rubber fingernail clippers now since actual metal ones have been declared weapons by the TSA.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Fear is actually the factor in the school panic as well. There is no rational reason for a small town in Maine, for example, to be taking Supermax precautions to protect kids from "gang violence." How many gangs operate in towns with a population of 2500? It's fear with a total disconnect from reality.

I was still working as a reporter covering local education when the first wave of the whole "zero tolerance" movement started in the 90s, and from what I remember it had nothing to do with protecting kids from actual threats. It had to do with protecting the school district from liability, coupled with the shrill handwringing of parents who moved here from away and were shocked that we didn't take "the threat of violence" as seriously as was done wherever it was that they had come from. That was twenty years ago, but I expect the same forces are still at work, to the point where an entire generation of kids have grown up thinking this is *normal.*

Eventually all children will be educated in hermetically-sealed pods, floating in a viscous sterile fluid, and breathing only triple-filtered air. Brave new world indeed.

 

[Wire9Vintage]

Yes, the "fear" is supposed to work on the kids, not the rest of us (remember all the legends about the principal's paddle? Of course, now I realize there's no way he was paddling kids with a three-foot length of wood with tacks in it, but hey... the very IDEA kept me on the straight and narrow!).

Our local school has two women in charge and no detectors or tasers in sight. Of course, one is ex Army and the other is ex Marines. They're trained--and the kids know it--to take care of WAY more than a teenager with an attitude!

Yep, keep fear alive (as Mr. Colbert would say), just direct it in the right places! I'm a champion hand-wringing parent, yet I have no worries about our local schools (and we DO have gangs).

 

[Icthruu74]

Personally I think that if we re-armed teachers with rulers and slapped some knuckles our children would be a lot safer. And perhaps if the teachers used them on the parents as well.

I was in high school in the late 80's in a small rural community, and those of us lucky enough to have a vehicle to drive to school often had a firearm in it during the hunting seasons. This was accepted. I have carried a pocket knife since I was 10 (including nearly every day at school) and yet I never caused anyone harm (except myself when I was careless and cut myself).