Drawings of Weapons Led To New Jersey Student's Arrest 630
First time accepted submitter gannebraemorr writes with this news, snipped from a CBS News report out of New Jersey:"'The Superintendent of the Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District said around 2 pm Tuesday, a 16 year old student demonstrated behavior that caused concern. A teacher noticed drawings of what appeared to be weapons in his notebook. School officials made the decision to contact authorities. Police removed the 16-year-old boy from Cedar Creek High School in Galloway Township Tuesday afternoon after school officials became concerned about his behavior. The student was taken to the Galloway Township Police Department. Police then searched the boy's home on the 300 block of East Spencer Lane and found several electronic parts and several types of chemicals that when mixed together, could cause an explosion, police say. The unidentified teen was charged with possession of a weapon an [sic] explosive device and the juvenile was placed in Harbor Fields.' If 'chemicals that when mixed together, could cause an explosion' is a crime, I'm pretty sure everyone's cleaning cabinets are evidence just waiting to be found. Bottle of Coke and Mentos... BRB, someone knocking at the door."
Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
A more workable plan would be to divide the country in half and pay one half to watch the other half. We would kill unemployment and crime overnight.
Re: (Score:3)
A more workable plan would be to divide the country in half and pay one half to watch the other half. We would kill unemployment and crime overnight.
An even better plan is to pay both halves to watch the other.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am so glad that I moved out of your cesspool country and renounced the US citizenship I once shamefully carried. I recommend others do the same before it's too late and you are no longer allowed to leave.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
This post pisses me off. Not because it's wrong - but because it's so right. The terrorists have made weepy-whiny pussies of us. FFS, what went wrong in the last fifty years? Less than ten percent of the population has a pair all of a sudden. "Ohhhh - some Arab might want to hurt me. I know! We'll start groping and offending everyone who flies into or out of our nation, that will prevent anyone hurting me!
Re:Great! (Score:5, Informative)
Though, in the 1980s, we had a librarian in grade school who would punish you for drawing even the most crude weapon (especially a gun), the fact is that every little boy spends almost his entire childhood drawing guns, bombs, explosions, tanks, and massive battle scenes, and other gory and violent depictions. It's called being a boy. And last I checked, nobody has ever been physically harmed by a drawing or a painting.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say about a quarter of the kids I knew in school drew pictures of guns or tanks or other violent things.
Adam Lanza was also an honer student. While about 25% of kids draw weapons, only about 10% of kids are honor students. For higher specificity on their correlational targeting, they should arrest honor students.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
We also had an art project due this past week. You had to list 20 likes and 10 dislikes and then draw half of them on a silhouette of yourself. He had two guns on there and told me, "I don't think it's appropriate to draw the AR-15 and 9mm after last week." It's just sad that everyone jumps to conclusions when anyone talks about weapons or draws them in a notebook.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
Preach it, brother. When my youngest was in kindergarten his teacher wrote me a note one day that said "Joby seems to be obsessed with guns and always draws them." I wrote back "Yes, he is what's known as a "boy", and they do those things. Please contact me if you see him becoming obsessed with Barbie dolls." She never wrote back. This was a lady who's "top students" each year tended to be girls, go figure.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
The harm done is to the Constitution, which is the only thing (not our safety) that public servants/government employees are actually SWORN to protect.
yep. (Score:4, Insightful)
People are scared stupid, and are punishing children for doing things that are completely normal for children. Also, seeing bombs where they are not.
Stupidity is more dangerous than malice.
Re:yep. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, people are stupid to begin with. The sensationalism of freak-events that are unlikely to ever even remotely impact them only serves to take advantage of that stupidity.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
You didn't think that once they started going after the Second Amendment because of school shootings, they'd leave the other amendments alone, did you? Thow one out, throw all of them out.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Funny)
"When they took the 2nd amendment, I was silent because I didn’t own guns. When they took the 4th amendment, I was silent because I didn’t deal drugs. When they took the 5th amendment, I was silent because I was innocent. Now they've taken the 1st and I can't say anything about it."
Re:No harm done (Score:4, Insightful)
When they took the 5th amendment, I was silent because I was innocent.
Sorry. Once they take the fifth amendment away, you're no longer allowed to stay silent.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think so. If this never gets to court or if he's acquitted, the constitution is fine.
The constitution that allows such an arrest is not by any definition "fine".
You can walk into any house in America and find what they allegedly found. Gasoline, cleaning fluids, flour (yes flour), steel wool scouring pads, and matches, wires for the lamps, cell phones, the list of things that police can designate as bomb making materials is endless.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
If he wasn't going to do anything with these chemicals, then fine, no big deal, no harm done.
No harm other than the kid being removed from school, arrested, charged with possession of a weapon, and then sent to juvenile hall.
yeah.. no harm at all.
Its people like you that are wrong with this country.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we had better close down all the schools in farming districts where people have large amounts of potassium chlorate and also have sugar in their kitchen...
Re:No harm done (Score:4, Interesting)
These worries come in waves. A school I went to in the 1970s had a relatively large stock of sodium and the word came down from on high that it had to be disposed of due to potential danger. The principal crumbled it up and poured it all over an anthill full of fairly nasty biting ants, then the next day after they had dragged it underground he turned on the sprinkler. It was interesting to watch even from a long distance, even though it didn't all go up at once. Someone doing that today would probably lose their job even if all precautions were taken (the principal not only knew a bit of chemistry but had spent some time in the military and had respect for things that go bang).
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
Better lock up all the farmers, they might have dangerous fertilisers that really can blow things up. Just as well they don't also have access to diesel fuel, or they really would have a bomb.
So, as a non-american, explain to me the logic of locking up children who doodle a gun, as we all did, but allow everyone slightly older to have assault weapons. Are you sure you are sane?
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
Already enacted "zero tolerance" policy + "OMG! Kids were shot! Do something!" == "well, we have run out of sensibled things to do to increase security a long time ago, so...."
Essentially, we have locked down schools that are essentially jails for children, coupled with officious authoritarianism as the established policy, being told to "do something! Kids aren't safe! OMG!"
Re:No harm done (Score:4, Insightful)
"run out of sensible things"
Even before the NRA came out with their little statement, I was already saying that we need MORE weapons in schools.
That principal who lunged at the shooter? That was brave. It was admirable. The lady knew she was going down, but she refused to go down peacefully, or silently. She lunged at the shooter. No one has said how close she came to getting her hands on him.
Imagine - if she had a .357, or even a .38 at hand, she wouldn't have had to lunge. Pull that sucker out of her desk drawer, or handbag, take aim, and squeeze.
Likely, she would have been hit by the semi-auto fire, but she could have died a real heroine, having put down the dog that threatened her students.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This.
An armed society is a polite society.
For ever nutter that want's to go on a rampage there are several hundred that just want to live long enough go home after work.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
Now imagine some six-year-old kid pulling that sucker out of her desk drawer, thinking that it's a toy, and killing somebody. Even in the best case, more guns in the hands of teachers would just replace a handful of occasional massacres with a much larger number of accidental shootings. The body count doesn't decrease; only the concentration does.
Now if you had said an armed guard, I might agree—someone trained to use weapons, carrying that weapon on his or her person at all times. As soon as it is in the hands of someone who isn't physically in contact with the weapon at all times, however, it becomes a far greater threat to the children's safety than the threat it is trying to prevent, statistically speaking. Far, far greater.
There's no better proof of that than what happened last week. The very first victim was heavily armed. That didn't help her any; in fact, that's probably why she got killed in the first place. Weapons are only useful for defensive purposes if you have them out, in your hand, ready to use, and you're awake and not distracted. Locked away in a closet or cabinet somewhere, they're useless.
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Now imagine some six-year-old kid pulling that sucker out of her desk drawer, thinking that it's a toy, and killing somebody. Even in the best case, more guns in the hands of teachers would just replace a handful of occasional massacres with a much larger number of accidental shootings. The body count doesn't decrease; only the concentration does.
When I saw this the first thought through my mind was that the teachers should have the weapon in a proper holster on their body. Then you went on with this:
Now if you had said an armed guard, I might agreeâ"someone trained to use weapons, carrying that weapon on his or her person at all times. As soon as it is in the hands of someone who isn't physically in contact with the weapon at all times, however, it becomes a far greater threat to the children's safety than the threat it is trying to prevent, statistically speaking. Far, far greater.
There is no reason that any teacher or other adult at the school could not serve the role as an armed guard along with their usual duties. The training required to safely handle a handgun is simple. The training required to hit a target with that weapon is just slightly less trivial. The hard part is maintaining that skill over time. This takes pra
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that something as simple as soap flakes in your powdered laundry soap can be used to make explosives.
If you arrested everyone that had explosive chemicals in the house, then you would have to arrest everyone that cleans anything.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Funny)
... you would have to arrest everyone that cleans anything.
Whew. I'm safe.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Funny)
What they need to ban is knowledge of how to commit violent crimes. They need to remove the words used to describe violence from our language so people can't talk about it and teach each other how to be violent.
Anyone with a bit of education knows that knowledge is power so we need to control knowledge. It's for the children.
Re:No harm done (Score:4, Funny)
But somebody needs to have the knowledge, in order to know what is too dangerous for people to know!
And if it is too dangerous for people to know, then we can't allow them to know it, so we can protect the children...
But they need to know it in order to know what is too dangerous to know....
(Head asplode!)
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no! They found out that I have a bag of flour in the pantry and some old party baloons and a book of matches in the junk drawer! OH noes! They found the funnel!
(Clicky)
Oh noez! I hope they don't find the bottle of dilute battery acid (sulfuric) in the automotive supplies cabinet in the shed! Why, they might think I intended to concentrate it and mix it with sugar! Certainly not to top up my wet cell automotive batteries in the summer at all! (Like it says on the bottle.)
(Clicky!) [youtube.com]
Oh NO! Not the 9v battery and the steel wool! Oh shit, they found some wire too!
(Clicky) [youtube.com]
No, they found the scott's brand nitrate grass fertilizer! They are asking me all kinds of questions about being a terrorist, with all this stuff in my house!
Seriously, WTF.
Re: (Score:3)
If you arrested everyone that had explosive chemicals in the house, then you would have to arrest everyone that cleans anything.
So most slashdotters have nothing to be afraid of!
Re:No harm done (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
I used to make explosives when I was a kid and this does not remind me of anything that I got up to unless that is sugar and he has put the potassium chlorate in liquid type containers. I did not grow up to become a terrorist even though I enjoyed blowing things up. I agree that it is a dangerous hobby and he should be questioned etc, but enough of the witch hunt already.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Informative)
Photo is a stock photo of a Palestinian bomb making operation: http://www.apimages.com/OneUp.aspx?st=k&kw=NOEL%20JABBOUR&showact=results&sort=relevance&intv=None&sh=10&kwstyle=or&adte=1356199851&pagez=60&cfasstyle=AND&rids=54170f7043e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb&dbm=PY2000&page=1&xslt=1&mediatype=Photo
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Informative)
N.Y. Daily News (Score:4, Funny)
For fact-checking you'll need to refer to The Daily Mail [dailymail.co.uk] or The Sun [thesun.co.uk].
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
I know almost nothing about the NY Daily News, but if they have a news story about weapons followed immediately by an active plea to fill out a petition to ban weapons, I'd have to say their motives for printing not only the story itself but the uncited photograph fall very short of journalistic neutral positioning... so I gotta see that uncited photo for what it is: unrelated unless otherwise specified.
"Here's a photo of some explosives in a basement. I'm not saying it is from this kid's basement, but I'm not NOT saying that either, and we're leading with the photo, anyway. You figure it out."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Informative)
Confirmed: that photo has NOTHING to do with this story. It's an Associated Press photo from the 1998 discovery of a bomb factory in the West Bank:
http://www.apimages.com/OneUp.aspx?st=k&kw=98011301827 [apimages.com]
"Plastic containers holding explosives and the chemicals used to manufacture them, are stored in a room in the town of Nablus in what is described as the biggest bomb factory ever discovered in the West Bank, Tuesday Jan. 13 1998. Police said that three quarters of a ton of explosives were seized and four activists from the Muslim militant Hamas group were arrested."
That's truly disgustingly shameful photo selection by the NY Daily Times to try to stoke fear.
Re:No harm done (Score:4, Informative)
Irritating. Even the mother didn't seem to clarify what was found, or the newspaper purposely stripped the info. I've read at least 30 stories on this and the are all very list on info including the mothers response below.
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/20385390/fi [myfoxphilly.com]
Hell, I could have been that kid.
I have serious doubts about the picture sorce myself since it is not cited and there is a link about a weapons ban found below the story. If so, that's pretty dispicale.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Informative)
No, actually, that counts as the entire problem - Not warranted.
Even if this kid planned to blow up something big, the entire chain of events that led to police finding whatever they found make it all the fruit of the poisonous tree [wikipedia.org].
IANAL, but drawing pictures of guns just doesn't count as sufficient evidence to get a warrant in any sane world.
Fuck, what the hell has this country come to? I used to keep a goddamned "kill list" in junior high - And somehow, I made it through our country's socialized babysitting prisons without going on a murderous rampage. "Wishful thinking" doesn't equal "homicidal intent". Funny, that.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Informative)
The picture I see is a bunch of yellow containers and a pan filled with a white powder. Photo credit is "NOEL JABBOUR/AP". A search for Noel Jabbour reveals a Palestinian photographer "based in Berlin and Nazareth". Unless this is some OTHER "Noel Jabbour", I'm guessing the picture has nothing to do with the story.
A search for "Noel Jabbour" on apimages.com turns up a very similar picture, labeled "mideast palestinian bomb factory". The Daily News image is a crop from that image. In other words, the NY Daily News is sensationalizing the story. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Re: (Score:3)
Nope, it's just NY Daily News being assholes, see this pic: http://www.apimages.com/OneUp.aspx?st=k&kw=NOEL%20JABBOUR&showact=results&sort=relevance&intv=None&sh=10&kwstyle=or&adte=1356199851&pagez=60&cfasstyle=AND&rids=54170f7043e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb&dbm=PY2000&page=1&xslt=1&mediatype=Photo [apimages.com]
Because of them many people now think the kid is guilty.
Re:No harm done (Score:5, Insightful)
You sir are an idiot - of course there was harm done. An innocent, intent, driven student was arrested for no good reason other than sheer lunacy by faculty with delusions of grandeur.
I used to draw weapons, space weapons, combat aircraft, tanks, spaceships - all in combat - blowing shit up, etc...
I built model rockets (missiles), had high explosives (rocket engines) in my possession lots of times, hell,I even made some with explosive warheads and fired them for fun. Note I said fired, not launched. I had rocket tubes on my dirt-bike. I could fire these horizontally at whatever my bike was aimed at. They made very cool explosions on impact (old tree stumps, falling over barns, etc). Good thing I had teachers that were happy to have students that learned and experimented (in safe ways). They encouraged learning about anything and everything.
I read up on chemistry in old encyclopedias. By the time I was 13 I could have made nitro-glycerin in my kitchen.
Knowledge and materials are not crimes. Using said would have been.
Without people that know how and what can be used, we can no longer prevent others from doing the same.
This school's administrators should be cuffed and stuffed for harming a youth's ambition and drive to learn.
Today's government wants to lock up *dangerous* knowledge. They want to make everyone a specialist and end generalist behaviors.
If no one is a generalist, they cannot see the big picture for what it is.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, without question!
Producing PETN from formaldehyde is much safer. (And the result is much less touchy, but far more explodie too.)
Of course, its so hard to get good, clean formaldehyde these days.
Re:No harm done (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree: everyone who passed high-school chemistry should know how!
They better arrest me then. (Score:4, Funny)
For drawing giant killer robots, ninja's, tanks, spaceships with tentacles & housing of poor construction quality when i was 8.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was 8 I was planning tunnel boring machines to covertly plant nuclear bombs under cities.
So now kids can't even draw a comic with a weapon in it. No wonder the nut jobs use well known gun free locations as their killing grounds.
Loved a recent interview with a Texas school principal where all the school staff that qualified were carrying concealed, had electronic locks on the doors, and plenty of security cameras. Even bullying was down.
Re:They better arrest me then. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
It's his parents' house. (Score:5, Funny)
I have got fuel and amonium nitrate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I have got fuel and amonium nitrate (Score:5, Insightful)
At a shed , one being for the tractor the other for the plant. Having two chemical substance which when mixed can cause explosion and a few electronic part means *nothing* without a context. The question is : do the authority exagerate the context to make a case, or was it a real plan from a disturbed teenager, or was it a disturbed teenager which would never have gone further but now whatever MAY happen will be forever marked as that "insane guy which wanted to explode a school" ? Wihout further info none of us are able to say. But I am willing to bet there will be a media circus.
My hypothesis:
School calls the cops, school sounds like they're shitting their pants out of far. Cops roll heavily on the school, arrest the kid. Soon realize that the school over reacted like crazy. Rather than admit they were wrong and lose face, they apply creative interpretations of innocuous objects and come out of it looking like heroes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
*Sounds* like what happened is that the police realized that they just raided the home of an innocent kid based on nothing much. That makes the police be/look bad. In those situations the police are very motivated to find something, anything, that will justify their actions. They don't want headlines like "Minor traumatized at police station. 10-man police raid trample kid's home with assault rifles, tear off head of long-loved teddy bear. Find nothing", even if that's exactly what happened. The police cert
Re: (Score:3)
well, of course toothpaste and shampoo are explosive - just ask the TSA
Score: 5 Reasonable Thought (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you very much for being the voice of reason. Your post is, of course, the most sensible here.
I wager that, despite Slashdot's sensationalism, the authorities began their actions out of due caution. That they are indeed cable of reason and did take context into consideration. I'm 80% sure that this was not about soap in the cabinet, but that this kid was indeed attempting to manufacture explosives. I'll take it a step further and say that, just because he may have been trying to make explosives doesn't
I would not jump to conclusions.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I would not jump to conclusions.... (Score:5, Informative)
it never goes into any detail about the student's behavior
Yes it does. It says he was drawing weapons. Thats it. Thats the behavior. You are reading more into it because it violates the senses that drawing weapons in a notebook is a "behavior."
... they are doing it all.
I've read 4 or 5 news articles on this now.
More extensive articles go into some of the background here. This is a school district that is "counseling students following last Friday’s shooting in Connecticut"
Let me lay down what else they are doing (also from news articles:)
1) cameras inside and outside each school;
2) one armed school resource officer in each building;
3) a lobby guard that runs the identification of each visitor to each school;
4) proximity card readers for staff members, who must swipe their cards before gaining access to the building; and
5) security officers at each school 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
They are obviously hyper-reacting. Way over the top. 24/7/365 security, armed guards, "papers please"
Re:I would not jump to conclusions.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The shooter claims one more victim (Score:5, Insightful)
That treatment will certainly help him become a well-balanced member of society.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
New Idea for a Slashdot Poll (Score:5, Interesting)
In which of the following ways would you have been arrested if your child-self had gone to school today:
1) possession of a chemistry set;
2) possession of a pocket knife;
3) terroristic threatening ("Man, I'm gonna kill you at Mortal Kombat tonight.");
4) all of the above
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
repeat after me: "I am free."
Keep repeating until you believe it.
Re:New Idea for a Slashdot Poll (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Whoopie cushion.
Oh my lord (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I glad I don't go to school in this modern age!
Back in MY day you could bring your (real) Katana to highschool (and leave it in the office) for martial arts practice afterwards.
I used to draw fighter jets and machine guns and all sorts of stuff when the teachers were being boring, but that was probably in grade school.
Now if you DRAW A PICTURE OF what "appears to be" a weapon and have an interest in electronics and chemistry you get charged.
I guess that liking science before college is going to be outlawed soon...
Arrested for drawings and household chemicals? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure glad they weren't this paranoid when I was a kid. I remember sketching various nuclear weapon designs and discussing them with my physics teacher after class. I suppose it was OK because I didn't have a supply of fissionable material.
Re: (Score:3)
The level of paranoia as alluded to in the summary struck me as ridiculous. Does that mean the girl who spends the day writing a boy's name on her notebook is a stalker?
I realize there has been a mass shooting and people are worried now. I suppose being completely paranoid that 'everyone else is out to get you' is the price we pay for the freedom to keep military grade weapons for recreation?
Re:Arrested for drawings and household chemicals? (Score:5, Insightful)
The level of paranoia as alluded to in the summary struck me as ridiculous.
Welcome to America. Land of the fearful, home of buttheads.
Where a school decided that they should strip-search a 13-year old girl because another girl with a grudge said she had ibuprofen. [npr.org] This had to go all the way ot the supreme court before the school figured out they were acting ridiculously.
other drawings (Score:5, Funny)
In related news, half the school was arrested on suspicion of rape, after evidence of drawing penises was found.
Re:other drawings (Score:5, Funny)
In related news, half the school was arrested on suspicion of rape, after evidence of drawing penises was found.
It's far worse than that - half the school was is possession of penises! They were armed and ready.
Well this is going to be great (Score:5, Insightful)
We're going to spend the next 10 years as a nation obsessing over guns in schools. We're going to talk non-stop about arming teachers, arming janitors, putting cops with assault rifles in the halls, defining exactly what assault rifles actually are, glorifying the idea that those with guns stop crimes, making movies and TV shows about the topic, design special gun models for school protection, and perhaps even speculate that students themselves should be allowed to carry guns for their own protection.
But on the other hand, the first time any student mentions the word "gun" in class, they're pulled from class, suspended for weeks, arrested, put in psychiatric care and scarred for life. Seriously, this is like one level down from the brainwashing scene in A Clockwork Orange.
Phew... (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine what they'd have found in my room back in the '80s... Chemicals of all sorts, the more boom the more fun after all... electronic components disassembled from old broken unrepairable stuff and sorted into categories, ready to be assembled in new things. This including 'scary' stuff like CTV line transformers etc. Half-repaired electronics. A charged tractor battery under the bed with some carbon rods (from old batteries) to be used in carbon arc light experiments. A functional pulse jet engine, scarily-looking, cobbled together with moped parts to be auto-starting. An air gun. An electric guitar made from more moped parts and some pay phone speakers for pick-ups. Need I go on?
And to think that I've never even had so much as a speeding ticket...
Of course I lived in the Netherlands, and it was 30 years ago...
Re: (Score:3)
You should write a book on all these projects - 20 electronics experiments for a rainy day. Especially the guitar made from moped parts.
DRAWINGS ARE NOT 'BEHAVIOR'. PERIOD. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless there's a boatload of details absent from that account, it really is time for me to find another country to call home... while I can still emigrate without being renditioned for being a traitor/terrorist.
Re:DRAWINGS ARE NOT 'BEHAVIOR'. PERIOD. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm 62, and the direction this country is going makes me absolutely sick to my stomach, but if you were to leave for another country, where would it be? As bad as America is getting, its still FAR better than 99.99% of the rest of the world. Take Australia for example.. I visited there twice back in the 70s, once on US Army RnR from Vietnam and once on temporary duty with my Army unit, for a total of just over 2 weeks. I was so taken with the people, the VAST open spaces, and the opportunity, I came very close to emigrating there. When I was there I read the papers (Sydney) and saw virtually no violent crime during both visits. But now, I read that violent crime is WAY up, since the Australian people have, essentially, been disarmed, like Britain. Not to mention, all of the Orwellian stuff that the current Australian (and UK) governments are constantly trying to shove down the peoples throat... TL;DR; I have NO idea where you could go that's any better than the USA..
Re: (Score:3)
I think you're narrowing your view a bit too much. I agree that UK is going down the same insanity route as the US (dunno about Australia, haven't followed that too much), but there are hundreds of other countries on the planet. For example, I liked Amsterdam very much when I visited it this year, although this city might be a huge culture shock for typical US citizens.
Re: (Score:3)
There are lots of places to go actually. It sounds like you haven't traveled enough (recently) to know that. Would it make you feel a little better to know that much of the rest of the world is not paranoid and afraid like we are here in the US?
No strip searches or sexual violations to get on airplanes. No one arrested for drawing something or saying something. No roadblocks on the roads. I'm not sure I could 'prove' that most of the other countries I have traveled in and lived in really are freer, but they
When I was a kid (Score:3)
I remember drawing pictures and B-52s and mushroom clouds. These days I'd be in Gitmo being waterboarded.
Thought Crime. (Score:5, Insightful)
"If 'chemicals that when mixed together, could cause an explosion' is a crime, I'm pretty sure everyone's cleaning cabinets are evidence just waiting to be found."
This is the reality of how the BATFE interprets the laws surrounding guns and explosives; the regulation of both is derived from some of the same laws. Having the parts to make something constitutes intention to make it, and is punished the same as if you had made it.
The state of BATFE's regulatory interpretations of the law allow for farmers, or even just gardeners, to be prosecuted for having ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel because they could be assembled into a bomb, regardless of whether they had a detonator, or knowledge of how to do it, or intent, or a motive. It gets even more confusing and nonsensical when it comes to their published regulation of gun parts. If you own a pistol, and a means by which to attach a butt-stock to it, then you're in possession of an unregistered short barreled rifle, regardless of whether you've ever assembled them.
Thought crime is alive and well in the BATFE, and has been for decades.
"best" part (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cedar Creek opened in September 2010 as a magnet school with programs focusing on engineering and environmental sciences and specializing in hands-on learning."
Re:"best" part (Score:5, Informative)
"Ciccariello said that the student was not in conflict with anyone"
"Police Chief Pat Moran stressed Tuesday night no threats were made by the student and there was no indication there was any danger posed to anyone or property at the school"
"There was no indication he was making a bomb, or using a bomb or detonating a bomb"
but still "arrested ... on charges of having chemicals at his home that could be made into a bomb"
The new post-columbine hysteria has started... (Score:3)
the new post columbine hysteria has started. They are going to ruin far more kids lives than kids who died in the last shooting, or shootings in general.
We need to put our foot down, and stop this cycle of scape-goat finding based on stereotypes being passed off as valid research and response NOW.
If you outlaw pictures of weapons ... (Score:4, Funny)
oh. wait.. it did not come out right.
Every classroom should be secured by a policeman armed with a picture of a weapon. How about that!
Why don't we sentence that student to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Why don't we sentence that student to a picture of a prison.
Finally, a rational response.
What a Crock of Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was in high school, I had sketchbooks that I filled to the brim with detailed drawings of planes, battlemechs, rockets, Warhammer dudes, and yes, lots and lots of weapons. Many of them attached to planes or in the form of swords and axes being held by fantasy roleplaying types, but also plain-old modern day guns. I think I turned out pretty well, and in my entire life I've never even so much murdered anybody. I was even still in school when the Columbine shootings went down, and even after that fact with all the paranoia swirling around, nobody cared about me or my notebook. Do you know why? Because it didn't fucking matter. It's what boys of that age tend to do, and back then people still managed to understand this.
This is knee-jerk paranoid reactionist ego-stroking BULLSHIT of the highest caliber. This poor kid's harassment and arrest is in no way, shape, or form designed to keep anyone safe or protect anybody from anything, but to intentionally scare people and stoke a bunch of "it could happen here" sensationalistic paranoia for the sake of inflating some school administrator's ego. The real intent of this, which is going to have real-world consequences of ruining this kids future -- Which, I hasten to point out, this superintendent and his cronies in no way care about or will show responsibility for -- is propaganda. To create the appearance that the school administration is "doing something!" and being "proactive and tough on violence!" to direct attention away from the fact that, back here in reality, this kid's school is undoubtedly zero percent safer today than it was last Friday.
This is why we are constantly blindsided by headline grabbing violence int his country: We are SO paranoid about not letting the imaginary "bad guy" in the front door that we're diverting all our attention to chasing shadows and tilting at these goddamned windmills. Meanwhile, the real enemy is free to sneak in the back door whenever he feels like it.
(Obligatory "that's what she said," by the way.)
The people who did this to that kid are the ones who need to be arrested -- every last one of them. Stripped of their ranks, stripped of their certifications, their badges taken away, and relegated to flipping burgers at McDonald's for the rest of their pathetic little lives, because people who straight-facedly make such poor decisions as these have NO BUSINESS BEING IN POSITIONS OF AUTHORITY, period.
America (Score:5, Insightful)
I find America a very baffling place, sometimes. In one news story, a child whose parents belonged to the militia movement who were stockpiling weapons goes on a killing spree in a school, and one of the most vocal responses is "it wouldn't happen if only there were more guns in school- armed teachers, armed kids, armed minimum wage guards on the door!". And anyone suggesting that gun possession might be a bad thing is shouted down for trampling on our freedoms. Then in the next news story, it's a criminal offence to be a teenager who draws weapons and has common household chemicals in their house. Also, we should ban (in no particular order)- violent video games, nudity in films, rap music, and skirts that end too far above the knee.
Very odd place.
Now (Score:5, Insightful)
Yikes! No guns. He drew a picture of a glove. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/20385390/fi [myfoxphilly.com]
He drew a glove with flames on it.
From what I've read elsewhere, he was an honors student, a scout and he played on a Christian basketball team.
What profile does that fit?
Re:It is like the TSA coming into our personal liv (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the kind of environment that the gun-control nuts want to create for the rest of us ?
I hear the NRA thinks we should be investigating video games and movie. Last I heard there were such things as movie and game ratings, but the NRA hates gun control... ANY gun control. That's what the NRA wants: No bounds on any weaponry but Tom and Jerry can be blamed for the violence in the country.
Re:It is like the TSA coming into our personal liv (Score:5, Insightful)
And a police-state presence in every school. And a registry tracking all people treated for mental disorders. But not a registry on guns.
Re: (Score:3)
LaPierre attacked video games and movies, but did not call for an investigation of them. I'm more concerned about his calls for a "national database" of the mentally ill, which sounds rather authoritarian.
Step 1: National database of mentally ill.
Step 2: No rights for anyone who is on the list.
Step 3: Everyone gets put on the list.
Re: (Score:3)
Assault rifles are pretty much illegal to own, and have been since before WW2. Scary-looking rifles that resemble military weapons, but are functionally identical to some hunting rifles are legal (and both the subject of the modern debate, and what was used to shoot up that school) are legal.
Note that I own three ACTUAL military rifles today. All three are bolt-action....
Re:Not enough information (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I suspect there are good reasons to arrest this guy because, usually, the police have good reasons when they arrest someone.
Where there is smoke there is fire, huh? Guilty until proven innocent. I just hope you're never on a jury.
Re: (Score:3)
I did that plus I had a pretty elaborate chemistry setup in my basement. I used to make a variety of explosives in small quantities for backyard fun.
I had a copy of the anarchist's cookbook and some rockets too.
I also had a few electronic devices for a model railroad too.
What happened to being a healthy boy?