"Gunner" wrote in message
...

They were not cops. They were students. When they went on duty, they
were cops. I have oodles more training than 95% of most cops..and Im
not a cop. Im just a citizen.

Well, then, let's get more cops, and more Gunner-like former cops, out there
with guns. If you've been a cop and if you'd had 95% more training than most
cops, I doubt if many would object to the idea of you being armed and handy
when a cop or a cop stand-in is needed.

On the other hand, if you argue that armed, ordinary college students, who
HAVEN'T had your training, are what we need more of, you're going to get a
hell of a lot of objection. Which is why Lott's editorial was worth
publishing -- it made this very provocative argument, that armed college
students saved the day. Of all the people I heard from while that discussion
was going on, and for months afterward, you're the only one I can recall who
just doesn't get it.

Let me spell it out slowly, one last time. If you (or John Lott/Mary Rosh)
had said that the situation at that law school shows that it's good to have
some armed cops around, or former cops -- anyone who was trained as a cop,
who passed muster to become a cop, and who has both the knowledge that cops
have about handling armed criminals and guns and the experience of having
thought like a cop, served as a cop, and qualified as a cop -- hardly a peep
of objection would have been heard. Whether they were on duty or off,
serving actively or on leave to study law, retired, resigned, or whatever,
they had the background that makes the difference to much of the public. You
don't hear many people saying that they don't want armed cops around, and
those that *do* say it tend to be the people we want the cops to protect us
from.

You seem not to recognize this point. Lott probably *does* recognize it,
which is why he said nothing about it. If he had written an editorial about
the value of having armed cops/former cops/whatever cops in a situation like
that, it would have been so unremarkable, and so uncontroversial, that the
NY Post would have had no reason in this world to publish the editorial.
Lott knew it, the Post knew it, and almost every sentient being in the
country who read the story knew it. Except you, of course. g

If you want to argue that having armed college students running around
campus is a good thing, go ahead and argue it. That isn't the point here,
and I won't get involved with it because it's purely speculative, unless you
want to count the carefully selected anecdotes you probably could dredge up
from the NRA or whatever -- and I don't count anecdotes, because they're
often misleading, especially when they're selected by fervent advocates on
one side of an issue.

The issue was never whether ordinary college students should be armed. The
point was that Lott selected bits from the larger story and glossed over
some very telling ones when he told it. That's one form of propaganda:
selecting bits of truth and weaving them into an argument that draws a
misleading conclusion. From the actual evidence, there's nothing that can be
said about what would have happened if those armed "students" had just been
ordinary college kids with guns, and not college students who happened to be
trained as cops, and who happened to have served as cops.

If you don't recognize this, ask yourself why, if the point isn't "germane,"
as you said in your last post, you would get excited about the fact that it
came up in this discussion. If it isn't germane, you have no reason to
remark about it. I never said ANYTHING about it being bad, or wrong, for
college students to be armed (although I would if you had asked -- I
remember college students and their qualities of judgment and maturity very
well, because I was one g). What you're getting excited about is the fact
that I researched it and found out that they were cops, and then pointed it
out. If it's not germane, then what's your beef?

Ed Huntress