Well, we can sure tell the school season has started again.....Update, page 8 # 143

[NotUrsula]

I just want to make a comment about this. In Ireland , our Constitution was enacted by the People 1st July, 1937 and has been in operation as from 29th December, 1937.

The 1930's in Ireland were a very different time. The Constitution was written to reflect the culture and society of the time. Divorce, abortion, and homosexuality were all illegal and banned by The Constitution. Single women in Government jobs, teachers, nurses and those who worked in civil service had to resign from their job when they married and married women were banned from being employed in these jobs.

Over the years the people of Ireland have voted in various referendums to change The Irish Constitution.

The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution Act 1995 is an amendment of the Constitution of Ireland which removed the constitutional prohibition on divorce, and allowed for the dissolution of a marriage provided specified conditions were satisfied. It was approved by referendum on 24 November 1995 and signed into law on 17 June 1996.

The Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland is an amendment to the Constitution of Ireland which permits the Oireachtas to legislate for abortion. The constitution had previously prohibited abortion, unless there was a serious risk to the life of the mother. It was approved by referendum on 25 May 2018 and was signed into law on 18 September 2018.

Constitutions can be changed by referendums and updated to reflect how the culture and society of the country has changed since the founding of the country.

You're absolutely correct that constitutions can be amended, but unfortunately in the US it's not done by popular referendum.

Passing an amendment to the US Constitution requires a 2/3 Congressional majority vote to pass; it cannot be done by simple 51% majority. You have to first get the US Congress to draft the proposed amendment and pass it with that margin, whereupon you then have to get a minimum of 38 state legislatures to ratify it, again, by a 2/3 margin from each. Alternatively, it can be done by calling a Constitutional Convention, but to do that requires the legislatures of at least 38 states to pass a resolution (again, by 2/3 majority in each) to petition Congress to convene a Convention. As the process is spelled out in Art. 5 of the Constitution, changing the process would ALSO require passing a separate Constitutional Amendment. (For a more comprehensive explanation of the process, see https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution)

The fight over the proposed Equal Rights Amendment is still not over; a version of the ERA was originally put forth in 1923, but the issue repeatedly failed to make it out of Congress until the current version was proposed in 1972, passed, and was sent to the states with a 7 year ratification deadline (later extended to 10 yrs.) By the time the 10 years was up, only 35 states had ratified it, but through various legal challenges it was allowed to remain open to ratification. Finally, in Jan 2020, Virginia ratified it as the 38th state to do so, but unfortunately, between 1982 and 2020, five other states (NE, TN, ID, KY, SD) had voted to rescind their previous ratifications, ostensibly rendering the Virginia vote merely symbolic. (The Constitution actually doesn't have a rule about rescinding a state ratification, and various court cases have come down on both sides, so that issue is still in legal contention, as is the question of whether or not Congress has the authority to waive a ratification deadline.)

The last time a really controversial Constitutional Amendment was passed was the 19th, which gave women the right to vote in August 1920. I *highly* recommend reading The Woman's Hour : The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss, which goes into great detail about the legal fights and extralegal chicanery that surrounded the 70-year long effort to put forth and ratify women's suffrage.

Oddly, the 18th Amendment (Prohibition of alcohol sales, transport and mfr.) was not really controversial; the idea of it as a cure for petty crime and domestic violence was equally popular with both parties in Congress, and ratifying it took only 18 months or so. Of course, it was SUCH a spectacular failure in terms of unintended consequences that repealing it was a slam-dunk, and only took 9 months from proposal to ratification.

 

[PollyannaMom]

(partial post - hit button accidentally - full post is further down)

 

[Pink Partridge]

This whole fantasy also tends to have a racial component; these young white men (and it's nearly always a young white male) buy into the political narrative that white men are being driven down and unfairly being disadvantaged by women and by minority men, and that belief fuels their anger and frustration with their lot in life...

I agreed with mostly what you said until this. I don't think a 14 year old outcast, lonely mental case is thinking about politics.

I don't think they killed because they felt disadvantaged by women or minorities. I respect your opinion, but I just don't buy that ideology.

Salvador Ramos killed 21 people in Uvalde. He was obsessed with violence, even researching in depth the Buffalo, NY supermarket shooting. He also enjoyed beheading videos.

Adam Lanza killed 26 children at Sandy Hook and was a defective human from the get go. He showed self hate at a very young age. Nothing to do with politics or being driven down as a white man. Just garbage somehow being born to this world in the form of a human being.

Audrey Hale was a mentally ill person who wanted to "make the Columbine shooters proud." Hale killed six at The Covenant School.

Seung-Hui Cho killed 33 at Virginia Tech. He showed signs of mental illness from a young age.

Parkland shooter Nickolas Cruz had behavioral issues since preschool. As a child, he was transferred between schools six times in three years. He had been threatening children for years. He killed 17 people.

I don't think any of these shooters had anger fueled by political narratives during their toddler years (when most were already showing signs of violence).

 

[Kestryl]

I was just reading the the school was notified that there was going to be a shooting today at five schools and Apalachee was first on the list and the school did nothing to prevent it. IF this is true then everyone involved in that decision should be fired, arrested and prosecuted. No excuse in these times to ignore a warning like that.

Now that said this is another senseless tragedy but one that possibly could have been prevented. I'm a gun owner and own several pistols for target shooting and protection and several rifles for hunting and I believe firmly in the Second Amendment. However, I have always said I see no reason for anyone to own any weapon like an AR-15. All the gun clubs in my area don't even allow them on the premises for target shooting.

I’m sure there are more specifics that will come out about this threat, but schools getting threats is ridiculously common. One data point: my husband is a high school math teacher, and his school gets at least one threat a week- more as tests pop up and finals approach, because kids are trying to cause a scene to get the school to close so they don’t have to take a test. Sometimes it’s a shooting threat, sometimes it’s a bomb threat, sometimes it’s just a general “don’t open today or you’ll be sorry!”

This isn’t even new. We had a string of bomb threats when I was in high school. At some point, they stopped evacuating us. And yep, they eventually found out it was a student who just didn’t want to go to class.

So I really don’t know what the answer to that is. Schools can’t close for every threat- students will absolutely take advantage of it. But how do you pick up the real threats from the noise?

 

[bdrex28]

You're absolutely correct that constitutions can be amended, but unfortunately in the US it's not done by popular referendum.

Passing an amendment to the US Constitution requires a 2/3 Congressional majority vote to pass; it cannot be done by simple 51% majority. You have to first get the US Congress to draft the proposed amendment and pass it with that margin, whereupon you then have to get a minimum of 38 state legislatures to ratify it, again, by a 2/3 margin from each. Alternatively, it can be done by calling a Constitutional Convention, but to do that requires the legislatures of at least 38 states to pass a resolution (again, by 2/3 majority in each) to petition Congress to convene a Convention. As the process is spelled out in Art. 5 of the Constitution, changing the process would ALSO require passing a separate Constitutional Amendment. (For a more comprehensive explanation of the process, see https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution)

The fight over the proposed Equal Rights Amendment is still not over; a version of the ERA was originally put forth in 1923, but the issue repeatedly failed to make it out of Congress until the current version was proposed in 1972, passed, and was sent to the states with a 7 year ratification deadline (later extended to 10 yrs.) By the time the 10 years was up, only 35 states had ratified it, but through various legal challenges it was allowed to remain open to ratification. Finally, in Jan 2020, Virginia ratified it as the 38th state to do so, but unfortunately, between 1982 and 2020, five other states (NE, TN, ID, KY, SD) had voted to rescind their previous ratifications, ostensibly rendering the Virginia vote merely symbolic. (The Constitution actually doesn't have a rule about rescinding a state ratification, and various court cases have come down on both sides, so that issue is still in legal contention, as is the question of whether or not Congress has the authority to waive a ratification deadline.)

The last time a really controversial Constitutional Amendment was passed was the 19th, which gave women the right to vote in August 1920. I *highly* recommend reading The Woman's Hour : The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss, which goes into great detail about the legal fights and extralegal chicanery that surrounded the 70-year long effort to put forth and ratify women's suffrage.

Oddly, the 18th Amendment (Prohibition of alcohol sales, transport and mfr.) was not really controversial; the idea of it as a cure for petty crime and domestic violence was equally popular with both parties in Congress, and ratifying it took only 18 months or so. Of course, it was SUCH a spectacular failure in terms of unintended consequences that repealing it was a slam-dunk, and only took 9 months from proposal to ratification.

One thing I'd LOVE to see the states take to convention would be term limits on congress. I mean damn near everyone would agree to that, but to get those who want to be in congress do it is another story.

 

[Kestryl]

View attachment 892029
The works of the framers of the Constitution.
View attachment 892031
Especially the guy that wrote the Second Amendment.
Citizens already own tanks, full auto firearms and bombs. My position, which I understand is outside the norm, is that if it's in the government arsenal, it should be available to ordinary citizen. Don't want the citizens to have bombs or full auto firearms, don't have any yourself.

Yeah, no, I don’t want citizens owning nuclear weapons, so there’s definitely gotta be a line somewhere. (And the geopolitical landscape is… complicated. I can’t see the US giving up whatever weapons they have just because their citizens can’t or shouldn’t own them.)

 

[Kestryl]

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I think it’s time to figure out what a well regulated Militia means.

 

[bdrex28]

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I think it’s time to figure out what a well regulated Militia means.

Therein lies the issue and the debate.

The argument typically hinges on; two statements or one?

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..."

and then

"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Is it written as with the intent as two statements or is the second statement a follow on description/clarification of statement 1 thus being a single statement.

Been argued about for a very long time.

 

[PollyannaMom]

It’s the guns.

It’s not cell phones. It’s not movies. It’s not video games.

It’s the gun culture.

I think it's all of those things, and more.

The biggest thing is obviously the easy access to guns, but the movies and video games also glorify and normalize those guns.

The cell phones isolate as much as they connect, and they leave no break from the bullying that used to be confined to the schoolyard. And tech in general has gotten us all so used to having what we want when we want it that it's no wonder people have trouble handling things when that's not the case.

The mental health issues are worse nowadays because of the hugely fast rate of change and the stress of so much to absorb and process, all the time. (Add in the fact that most people don't get enough sleep, and the crappy American diet, and it just gets even worse.)

Family connections are looser, but "interest connections" (positive ones like the DIS, but sadly negative ones too) are quicker and easier to access than in the past. A troubled kid isn't necessarily going to go to his parents or grandparents, but to strangers on the internet who might not have his best interests at heart.

And I agree that in trying to correct bad things in the past (like abusive discipline) trends have gone too far the other way and not given kids enough boundaries, so they don't feel secure.

I'm sure I'm missing things as well. But my point is that we need to do lots of different things to fix this problem, not decide which "one" reason is the only one and solve that.

 

[EACarlson]

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I think it’s time to figure out what a well regulated Militia means.

'The Body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country' -- James Madison, 1789
In the words of the man that wrote the Second Amendment, the militia consists of all citizens.

 

[CdnCarrie]

'The Body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country' -- James Madison, 1789
In the words of the man that wrote the Second Amendment, the militia consists of all citizens.

Maybe he was wrong.

 

[NotUrsula]

I agreed with mostly what you said until this. I don't think a 14 year old outcast, lonely mental case is thinking about politics.

I don't think they killed because they felt disadvantaged by women or minorities. I respect your opinion, but I just don't buy that ideology.

Salvador Ramos killed 21 people in Uvalde. He was obsessed with violence, even researching in depth the Buffalo, NY supermarket shooting. He also enjoyed beheading videos.

Adam Lanza killed 26 children at Sandy Hook and was a defective human from the get go. He showed self hate at a very young age. Nothing to do with politics or being driven down as a white man. Just garbage somehow being born to this world in the form of a human being.

Audrey Hale was a mentally ill person who wanted to "make the Columbine shooters proud." Hale killed six at The Covenant School.

Seung-Hui Cho killed 33 at Virginia Tech. He showed signs of mental illness from a young age.

Parkland shooter Nickolas Cruz had behavioral issues since preschool. As a child, he was transferred between schools six times in three years. He had been threatening children for years. He killed 17 people.

I don't think any of these shooters had anger fueled by political narratives during their toddler years (when most were already showing signs of violence).

You are correct in all those cases, and I didn't mean to imply that youth shootings were actually politically motivated. However, I do think that the chatter around the suppression of the "white male" creates channels by which these kids learn to navigate the path to gun ownership (obviously, I'm excepting those who access guns already owned by a relative).

Many of the online sources that tell you the easiest ways to buy guns/ammunition and how to get around background checks come out of this culture, and someone creating an elaborate plan for a mass shooting will almost always look for that information. It's not the reason that they do it, but it helps them figure out how.

 

[AppleDumpling]

Maybe he was wrong.

And maybe what worked for a country over 230 years ago is no longer appropriate in the present day, in a much larger country and much more complex society.

 

[Kestryl]

'The Body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country' -- James Madison, 1789
In the words of the man that wrote the Second Amendment, the militia consists of all citizens.

“Trained to arms” seems pretty important. It’s not just “given arms” or “with the right to bear arms.” Specifically “trained to arms.”

 

[PolymerSkywalker]

And maybe what worked for a country over 230 years ago is no longer appropriate in the present day, in a much larger country and much more complex society.

And maybe people that would prefer Canada’s firearm regulations should investigate moving to Canada?

 

[Pink Partridge]

You are correct in all those cases, and I didn't mean to imply that youth shootings were actually politically motivated. However, I do think that the chatter around the suppression of the "white male" creates channels by which these kids learn to navigate the path to gun ownership (obviously, I'm excepting those who access guns already owned by a relative).

Many of the online sources that tell you the easiest ways to buy guns/ammunition and how to get around background checks come out of this culture, and someone creating an elaborate plan for a mass shooting will almost always look for that information. It's not the reason that they do it, but it helps them figure out how.

I still feel this is a stretch.

Underage children have easy access to their lax and foolish (and sometimes criminal) parents' legal guns. They don't have to go online for tricks and tips.

I think it is just that easy to buy/access a gun for any race. I feel if you attempted suicide many times (starting at age 11, like James Holmes) there should be restrictions on your ability to buy a gun. Before murdering 12 people in a movie theater, Homes passed several background checks and was able to buy 3 guns legally. That shouldn't be. He is just one example. There are many more.

And if you go back to @mi*vida*loca and my posts about the guns we experienced in school a few decades ago, perhaps kids weren't as mentally ill back then.

What changed?

 

[Dan Murphy]

One thing I'm not seeing called out at all, the reason the casualty count was so low

Personally EA, I would not call 13 victims a low casualty count. I'd call it sadly horrendous. At least by my standards, as a dad, a granddad, a human being.

Spelling​

 

[Moliphino]

Maybe he was wrong.

He did own slaves, not sure we should follow his stance on everything.

 

[CdnCarrie]

He did own slaves, not sure we should follow his stance on everything.

Hmm you mean things can EVOLVE. Interesting...

 

[ChrisFL]

And maybe people that would prefer Canada’s firearm regulations should investigate moving to Canada?

So just to be clear, you're good with this: