Obviously, providing for own safety is only one facet of independent living. Being able and willing to work, having interpersonal skills to navigate the social environment are other necessary components. Those skills, more than material inheritance, are what caring parents should impart to their kids. These are skills that are taught only slightly or not at all in public schools.
In fact, public schools are trying to eradicate not just the ability for self-defense but the mere thought of it. Brainwashing in the form of capricious, random enforcement of completely crazy, fetishistic rules against any kind of effective defensive tool, technique or even a mention of the Constitutional right to bear arms isn’t applied for the benefit of the students. It’s designed, consciously or not, to foster learned helplessness and dependency on authorities. Psychiatric treatment is then forced onto the kids who are merely reacting to a very unreasonable environment.
Of course, some inherited capital helps because it allows much quicker transition to full independence. This is exactly why the inheritance tax is one of the many ploys to foster dependency on government handouts. Instead of parents being able to help their kids, they lose funds to taxation and the government then doles out a small portion back — which always comes with string attached.
As an aside, I’d rather have this home-schooled teenager on my team than any number of adults. Riflecraft is just one of her many skills.
Bull’s Eye! Bingo! Home Run! Royal Flush, and all manner of gaming and sports references. Except that this isn’t a game. It is our lives we’re discussing, to say nothing of the future of The Republic.
So, when is the first freedom-loving State going to step up to the plate (baseball reference), give Appleseed a slice of the pie (apple pie reference), and mandate/subsidize family-oriented rifle training (mom reference).
There, I did it!
Hot dog, that is a good idea!
Those who pay the fiddlers can pick the tune. I’d just as soon keep the state out of this.
Rivrdog; you know that such is exactly the reason why the NRA was founded, right? We tend to think of them as a civil rights advocacy group, but their original charter is all about firearms training and shooting matches. That’s their dog fight, their dog and pony show, their horse race, their ball game…It’s originally their whole deal, lock, stock and barrel, the whole shootin’ match.
It wasn’t until the second amendment came under fire from the Marxists that the NRA was forced into political advocacy, and so for those who complain about their considerable political clout; Fuck you. It’s your fault. You anti libertarians started it. We didn’t ask for this shit. As soon as you quit it, and quit it for sure and for good, the NRA can get out of politics and go back to being purely a training and shooting match sponsoring organization.
From my observations this kind of liberalism is only inflicted upon white children. From there I can deduce from demographic trends that such nonsense has a short shelf life. Then white children will follow the cool kids and totally forget the idiot white liberals (who are deathly afraid of being called racist by the “new majority”)
So we have a window on becoming the moral authority (yes I know a hard concept for a modern conservative to fathom).
I am teaching physics and econ as a long-term sub during the spring semester just after Newtown. We are sitting in a staff meeting when the Superintendent comes in to deliver the safety protocol. He explains to us how we are to tape a piece of cardboard bent at 90 degrees to our door to create a blind spot that we can hide in. I then said, “Dan, the windows are only 18 inches off the ground and big enough for a 300 pound man to climb through. A quick left right left recon of the sidewalk and we are literally 30 feet from cover in the parking lot and the two hundred acres of woods beyond it. The lot drops downhill so we will have good dirt for cover all the way to the treeline. Why would we want to hide in a room the shooter likely knows is occupied?”
“Well, you’ll be hidden behind concrete blocks,” was his response. When I told him that open-celled concrete blocks would not stop bullets and that I could prove it I was told, “The state police have assured me that this is our best possible option. If we attempt to evacuate the building it will confuse first responders.” I asked if we could have a dialogue on the subject and was told, “Its not up for discussion.”
Personally i think the school would be better defended if my 4-Hers could take their .22s to school.
I keep hearing this “confuse the first responders” BS.
1. When you see someone killing unarmed people, take out your gun and shoot them until they stop.
2. Don’t shoot anyone else.
Problem solved.
The estate tax is a problem for very rich people, seems to me.
Anything under $5 million inherited from one person is extempt.
You could leave your children enough real-estate or capital to have a very-good income from renting it yet not pay any inheritance tax. And there are no doubt ways of avoiding it.
Surely a pressing problem.
I’d say the zero-tolerance bullshit is mostly due to lawyers and the insane judicial system you have – that also means warnings against putting pets into microwaves and such.
Aren’t all such zero-tolerance policies designed to CYA school administration’s asses in case of lawyer attack?
I don’t think those exist because of some long-ranged political agenda..
I disagree. Abusing little kids because they bite some pieces off a muffin and what’s left looks like a gun in what passes for the mind of some mentally defective “educator” is several orders of magnitude beyond what even the most outrageous lawyerly CYA policies would do. The only possible explanation is that it is a deliberate policy of brainwashing children. And that fits — it is the stated goal of such criminal scum as Mr. Holder. (You can find him saying it, explicitly, in a Youtube video made some years ago.)
The only solution is to abolish public schools, to deprive these politicians of victims they can brainwash.
Huh.
What about private schools? Faith-based brainwashing is kind of too common in the US.
You Americans are so screwed. A hundred million fanatics convinced the world is about to end, a run-away police state, a corporate sector busy looting the public, a corrupt and unreformable political system…
If you remember that the main purposes of a school district is to process paperwork and avoid risks (specifically, lawsuit risk to the district), it makes sense. They can be sued for any child getting hurt, or if something happens and they were “negligent” in not having “a policy” to deal with said event. Most districts now have a “head of risk management,” usually a lawyer, and his job is to find ways districts have been sued and constantly come up with official policies that boil down to “don’t do that.” In our district, it includes things like “no swings on the playgrounds (kids might get hurt)” and no guns / gun images / gun references / gun ANYTHING, because someone might get scared, or might have had a bad experience and get confused. They are not outright demonized only because they are generally considered a “forbidden topic.” It’s insane, but it is what it is. And, as I’m a teacher trying to get a job, I can’t exactly CALL it stupid, even though I have kids in the district (can’t afford private school, yet, here’s hoping my book does REALLY well).
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A little off topic but related — there was an article in today’s Wall St. Journal talking about S&W and the performance of its stock. It mentioned that a lot of “institutional investors” don’t want that stock because of “ethical concerns”. They call it “vice shares” akin to stock in tobacco companies or the like.
Amazing, even if you take into account the fact that most of these people hang out in Manhattan.
I’m so glad that I live where I do.
When my daughter was in 6th grade, the teacher asked them what they liked to do and what they had done the past summer.
My daughter replied, “I like to shoot guns. I shot a machine gun while in Tennessee at a machine gun shoot he was invited to.” (My daughter still talks about shooting your rifle, Oleg.)
Heh.
Later that year, her teachers asked me for advice on picking a handgun and finding a good place to shoot.
I love Virginia.