My Aunt has a child in early middle school - years 6 through 9 or so, for people outside the US. Not only does the poor kid have a school-issued laptop with heavy monitoring tools installed on it, but they are also required to bring a smartphone to school! My Aunt had made them tape over the laptop's webcam and explained that everything the kid typed could probably be seen by the school, but she was still concerned a…
The constant use of smartphones has become a pretty central part of US culture. Shouldn't school reflect the environment the student is being taught to live in?
Unpopular opinion: make private gun ownership illegal instead of forcing kids to be monitored to make sure they're not carrying
First of all, making something illegal does not make it disappear, and you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence (as are the people calling for clear backpacks) of school shootings. The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens.
Consider that the news cycle and FUD have created a terrible availability bias in our country that increasingly leads to draconian actions like those mentioned in the article.
Which bit of this are you upset with specifically? Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. The clear backpacks are silly I'll admit, and also pointless. I agree that kids getting conditioned to be okay with surveillance is bad, but this is all coming from the private sector right now. In China, you now have to submit your face to be scanned…
> Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. What country are you talking about? Honest question, just curious. I am in the US, but even today many small and medium sized companies do not monitor internet (block parts, sure, but not monitor) and 10 years ago even large companies did not do it.
I know for a fact BofA was doing it 10 years ago, because a family member tried to show me a YouTube video on their work laptop and it was blocked by the BofA firewall, even though they were at home. I doubt that there was a reprimand or anything, but I bet it was logged somewhere “just in case”.
ummm, please explain? Surely the US has by far the highest gun murder rate in schools among developed countries. EDIT: The down votes are interesting - are you down voting because what I said is not true, or because you just don't like that it is true?
Look up how many kids are killed by cars. Then go see how many are killed by guns outside school. Then check how many are killed by guns in school.
It is an interesting aspect of human psychology that more people are afraid of a mass shooting in a school, though far more students will graduate knowing someone who died in a car crash than someone who died in a mass shooting.
... but it is how human psychology works, so the school must account for it.
> The right to bear arms was paid for in blood and not just once. And worse, gun restrictions only benefit criminals. There's plenty of people who legally own firearms and protect their homes and their property legally. They also avoid plenty of crime since criminals tend to run when a gun is pulled on them especially in stand your ground states. They've tried banning everything in England and criminals will still ki…
> And worse, gun restrictions only benefit criminals. There's plenty of people who legally own firearms and protect their homes and their property legally. The real question is why are the US ranking so high in violent crime and murder rates compared to other developed countries. You shouldn't feel the need to "protect" your home in the #1 power in the world.
>The real question is why are the US ranking so high in violent crime and murder rates compared to other developed countries
This question has been asked time and again and the gist of the answer is that the people who make their living moving around illicit substances drag up the average. For people who don't associate with drug trafficking the US is basically on par with Europe.
ummm, please explain? Surely the US has by far the highest gun murder rate in schools among developed countries. EDIT: The down votes are interesting - are you down voting because what I said is not true, or because you just don't like that it is true?
Look up how many kids are killed by cars. Then go see how many are killed by guns outside school. Then check how many are killed by guns in school.
Your argument is very, very weak whataboutism. Just because people die of other things more frequently does not mean that you are not supposed to prevent deaths. Your argument suggests that we should not be bothering with a justice system at all, because far more people die of cancer and heart disease than are murdered or crippled, therefore it would be dumb to put any money down for preventing and prosecuting murders.
Unpopular opinion: make private gun ownership illegal instead of forcing kids to be monitored to make sure they're not carrying
Or just fix the underlaying issue. Switzerland has 2 million guns on 8 million citizens. Yet no school shootings. Why don't they have school shootings and can we apply the Swiss system to the United States?
There are still 6 times more guns per person in the US than in Switzerland. Looking at the numbers also shows that Switzerland is far from being an outlier in any way, so I'm not sure why the Swiss system is more interesting than the Austrian system or Swedish system in that regard.
There are just way too many guns in the US (i.e. "it's just way too easy to get a gun in the US").
Unpopular opinion: make private gun ownership illegal instead of forcing kids to be monitored to make sure they're not carrying
"Restrict more, different rights to make us safer^tm"
Most laws restrict some right to make us safer, and most laws succeed at that. For all the vehicular homicides in the US, there'd be more if we didn't require driving on the right-hand-side of the road and not driving on the sidewalk.
The question is always where the tradeoff point should be, not whether there's any tradeoff.
Unpopular opinion: make private gun ownership illegal instead of forcing kids to be monitored to make sure they're not carrying
I'd rather just shut down the schools than give up any more rights. If you haven't noticed, our Federal government is totally out of control and has gone rogue and I don't think it's a very good idea to cede any further power or individual rights to that monster. The right to bear arms was paid for in blood and not just once. Good men laid down their lives so we could have these rights. That a few kooks will shoot up…
How do other countries get along so well without the right to bear arms, and have they paid any less blood than the US for the society they formed?