Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "" video.

  1. That's consistent with how we generally spend money. Back when Obamacare was being formulated it was going to cost roughly $100bn to provide a public option, which was too much, but we had a similar amount to hand to the DoD. Part of why we don't properly fund education is because if people could get free, or even affordable, college without military service, practically nobody would enlist, and the draft was horribly unpopular. The draft is also part of why there was so much opposition to our participation in the Vietnam conflict. Even though 2/3 of the service personnel were enlistees, that still leaves the remaining 1/3 as conscripts that have their buts on the line despite some level of opposition to participating in the first place.
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  2. That's not surprising, law enforcement and security personnel are generally trained to maintain a distance between themselves and the people they're protecting. That's part of why there should be a separate track for becoming an SRO, or at least significant training to overcome that. Ideally, if they're deadset on having an armed SRO, it should be somebody that's hasn't had a long career in law enforcement so that such habits aren't as much of an issue.
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  3. I personally went to a really tough middle school with a significant discipline issue due to ineffective teachers and administration. I legit forget how many fights I was in and at a certain point it got so bad that people would just get the hell out of my way as I walked down because there was this perception, admittedly I didn't discourage it, that I was the top dog in the school of about 1200. I didn't start any of the fights, but there wasn't exactly any adult supervision to mediate any of the disputs. I honestly would have been arrested and likely done time if we had had an SRO. We had a security officer, who seemed cool enough, but he was security and he had no legal authority to arrest anybody. He happened to be black, but I think that wasn't anywhere near as much of a factor as that he was the only security we had and had no authority to make arrests. If somebody legitimately needed to be arrested, they had to call the cops. The only scenario I can think of where having an armed SRO might make sense is for a rural school that can't get a police response in a reasonable period of time. And even then, I do think that the weapon probably should be locked up somewhere. Just handing a weapon risks accidental discharge if you're not careful.
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