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Drawings of Weapons Led To New Jersey Student's Arrest
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."
Think of how safe everyone will be when EVERYONE is locked up!
For drawing giant killer robots, ninja's, tanks, spaceships with tentacles & housing of poor construction quality when i was 8.
If he rats them out maybe he can cut a deal.
The closer you are to the code, the happier you are. - Ancient Geek Proverb
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.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Although the story seems disturbing, it never goes into any detail about the student's behavior which prompted the search nor does it say what exactly was found in the student's home. Without more details the story, left this vague, is borderline sensationalism. The student could have been exhibiting some extreme behavior which the school could have been subsequently been lambasted for not following through with.
That treatment will certainly help him become a well-balanced member of society.
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
The pendulum of concern for "the children" has swung all the way to the extreme again. The tyranny of schools and authorities to quell anything other than "the norm" is still stuck on "status quo" (fortunately for all of us /s).
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...
This is the kind of environment that the gun-control nuts want to create for the rest of us. Imagine having to justify every substance in your home under presumption of guilt.
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.
Either this is a travesty of justice, or there is not enough information in the article. I suspect that there are good reasons to arrest this guy, but I, also, think the reporters think that what they wrote about what the guy did is sufficient cause for him to be arrested. The article should read, "Student acts in manner that arouses suspicion of teacher. Police investigate and arrest student." The rest of the information appears to tell us something without actually doing so.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Going from one extreme to the other. US seems to continue not being able at being proactive, and think long term when it comes to internal affairs. That said, they're always perfectly proactive when it comes to corporate driven external policies (Not that it's bad, it's just the way it is)
In related news, half the school was arrested on suspicion of rape, after evidence of drawing penises was found.
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.
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.
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...
--frank[at]unternet.org
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.
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.
"His name was James Damore."
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.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
I remember drawing pictures and B-52s and mushroom clouds. These days I'd be in Gitmo being waterboarded.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Fuck Yes!
Second Amendment FTW!
Every Dead American Is A Good American. (TM)
"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.
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.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
"Cedar Creek opened in September 2010 as a magnet school with programs focusing on engineering and environmental sciences and specializing in hands-on learning."
Powdered aluminum (Etch-a-Sketch) + Rusted iron (Woolp Pad) = omg Thermite
I am so trying this.
Arrest every game designer that ever had a gun in it. That's every game designer from games like Sam and Max and all the way to Halo, Space Games etc.
Then arrest almost all of the movie and TV industry (producers, actors, cinema staff) for any show that has ever had a gun in it.
Then arrest any author (and the publishers, printers, book store staff) that has ever described or even just included a gun in a story.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
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.
You can create an explosion with nothing more than flour. So add anyone baking his own bread or cake to the list.
Oh, and what if your garage is integrated in your house? Your car contains a tank full of an explosive chemical.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
... you would have to arrest everyone that cleans anything.
Whew. I'm safe.
That will be available in about any household. Remember how to make a Molotov cocktail?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If the government keeps that bullshit up there will be more terrorists than they can handle.
Allow assault rifles to be sold over the counter, but lock up everyone who so much as thinks of drawing one on paper. Your rights to own lethal weapons trumps the right of children not to be shot in the head, but the notebook doodles of frigging sixteen-year-olds are grounds for arrest.
Fuck the NRA.
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 mean that he was planning any harm whatsoever.
I recall my own middle school years. I had an intense fascination with explosives and weapons. Fire crackers were awesome and I went to great lengths to increase their yield. What happens when you take the powder from 4 M80s and build a single large 'M320'? What if you sink it in a pond before it goes off? (Awesome!!!! ...Then the fish float up. Run!)
I fondly recall the fit my mother threw when she found me drying my own home made black powder in her oven. 'Relax! I know what I'm doing. What could possibly go wrong? It's just a little black powder. Sheesh.' She didn't know about me taking my half pound of home made "explosives" to the school bus stop the next morning where me and my friends enjoyed blowing up anthills and lighting long lines of my concoction(epically smokey). Mean while my friends wielded "flame throwers" made of cans of deodorant and Bic lighters.
Despite all that, no harm was ever meant to anyone but ants. No one was hurt(save for minor burned fingers), No one became a terrorist, arsonist, or anything else. The next year, girls redirected our attention and life continued as normal.
Where does this sound familiar from?
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.
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!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why don't we sentence that student to a picture of a prison.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
The acts of jackassery that result from fear are amazing. Fear throws out rational thinking.
And a police-state presence in every school. And a registry tracking all people treated for mental disorders. But not a registry on guns.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As that same picture isn't part of the original story I choose to believe that's a bit of creative editing by the NY Daily News. Nothing makes an article like this even scarier than adding in a nice picture of lots of unlabeled containers in a basement next to something odd that is cooking away. It doesn't help that the picture is labeled with the generic title of explosives.jpg http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1223534.1355938579!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/explosives.jpg
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
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.
Which was why I noted that the picture wasn't cited. There is actually very little info about this on the net as of yet.
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..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Don't delude yourself. In all likelyhood, you would have not made nitroglycerine but burnt or killed yourself. Safe production of nitroglycerine requires a well-equipped lab.
It's not that the recipe is wrong -- I dont know how you would have done it -- but if the recipe was correct, the 19th century way is dangerous.
We who have grown up in the United States have always had war images shown to us as kids, from the forties up to present day. So of course young men will gravitate towards drawing guns, after all, they are 'cool'. He'll also make drawings of cars and motorcycles and (gasp!) naked women. So what?
My biggest thing with this is not that they found a drawing disturbing, but that somehow a drawing is probable cause for a completely separate building to be searched? I don't see how his family lawyer isn't going to have a field day with this.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Kneejerk reactions are to be expected after a tragedy. Every school is going to be gone over with a fine tooth comb for a while, taking drastic actions over the smallest of incidents. I haven't read the article, so I don't know if there is more to this story than "kid draws pictures of guns and gets punished for it." If there is, then there's little to discuss. If there isn't, then it's, of course, an extreme overreaction.
In light of recent events, schools seem to be adopting zero tolerance policies. My old high school (I attended in 2002-2006) had such a policy against the word "kill." If you said that heinous word, even in jest, you'd get punished. Of course, students didn't take such a threat seriously, and I can't recall any incidents where action was taken (my graduating class was
The student in this case didn't exactly make the best of decisions: With tensions high, it would probably be better to not be drawing guns or give any potential "danger indicators" to school officials, etc. I don't know if the kid's school announced either changes in policy or the like, but I'm not sure they'd necessarily have to.
Going on the assumption that all the kid did was draw the guns, is this wrong? Of course. Will it be ironed out over the next week or two? Probably. Is this the Sign of Things to Come (as I'm reading in some comments here)? Doubtful. If this sort of draconian enforcement takes place six months from now, maybe I'll consider starting to worry, but for now, it's nothing but kneejerk reactions and trigger-happy (pardon the pun) folk.
Look up suck my nuts, I'm not in buttfuckistan and the US government aint got no drones over me
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."
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!)
Oh NO! Not the 9v battery and the steel wool! Oh shit, they found some wire too!
(Clicky)
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.
The kid should have drawn drones that shoot rockets at brown people. Make sure they're labeled "US Army", litter some flags around, and I bet you there will be no questions asked, other than maybe what title you had in mind, and should we put this up in the hall.
I'm noticing lately that authorities are displaying traits of fascism. We need to blow up all the police stations and the offices of educators who are attempting to train a new generation of bad guys.
Nip it in the bud, I say. In the bud.
worst than China.
Probably that whole "shall not be infringed" thing - sort of the way the ACLU spends all its time working against people who mess with the First Amendment (and, oddly enough, any other Amendments except the Second and Tenth)...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I drew weapons, war, combat, death machines, space lasers, tanks, missiles, bombers, apocalypses... all throughout school.
At no point was I ever angry at anyone or ever interested, even slightly, in actual violence.
What the fuck, humanity? What the actual fuck?
Have they checked the schools MSDS sheets for chemicals that if spilled or combined with others could be hazardous. Let's see if they have any chlorine and ammonia on hand, or maybe some sodium hydroxide in the bathroom cleaning closet. If they do, they better call the police to haul the school staff off.
Passionately Indifferent
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.
I see several unmarked plastic jugs lined up neatly, and an unidentified white powder in a rubber animal dish.
Could it be explosive? Maybe-- many nitrate based explosives look like that.... could it also be powdered talc or baking soda? Possibly.
Could the bottles be empty? Sure they could.
Is this evidence he was making bombs? Is there explosive residues in the bottles? Is the powder a fully developed high explosve in a makeshift watchglass? Did they test it?
Or did they just see a suspicious looking substance, and violate a kid's rights?
If being in posession of chemicals, that when mixed together can cause an explosion, gets you arrested then I am in trouble. I walk around with a deadly concoction in my bowles everyday.
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.
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!)
Way up?
Ok...
Well yes as you parrots keep parroting, only outlaws have guns here, well not here, in melbourne but whatever.
But it wouldn't really matter if I was in melbourne, carrying a concealed weapon.
One, they just keep taking out rival criminals... yawn who cares.
Two they are actively harrassed by the cops constantly, think Al Capone, they'll get 'em sooner or later.
Three my pop-pop- pistol ain't worth pulling out against a streetsweeper shottie.
Even in the insane US, no one is carrying firepower to deal with a heavily armed gang except gun shows and SWAT
Epoxy coated magnetic stirer placed in the bottom of a 1 liter wide mouth beaker, placed inside a large glass bowl filled with dry ice and alcohol.
A weighted portion of glycerol is poured into the beaker, and then placed into the chilling bath. The icebath is placed on top of a magnetic stirring machine, which is then turned on at the lowest possible setting.
A glass laboratory thermometer is used to monitor the temperature of the glycerol. When it reaches 0C, a buret containing a calibrated and measured solution of dilute nitric acid is slowly dispensed through the valve in 1mL increments, every 10 to 20 seconds.
If the temperature of the glycerol exceeds 2C at any time, tittration should be halted until it has returned to 0C.
Continue titration until all of the calibrated nitric acid solution has been dispensed.
Chill for 24 to 48 hours.
Did you even read the post you are replying too? None of those things were mentioned in the story. The photo might be fake. If the police weren't willing to mention those things then why would they be willing to release a photo? I suspect that photo has nothing to do with this case.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I'va always argued that charging extra for "hate" crimes is a slippery slope, leading logically to actual application of thoughtcrime. This seems to validate my thoughts on that... even without specific threats of imminent harm, it's possible now to be charged with something merely for "having intent", which can't be proven without a confession. (It's early, that probably doesn't make as much sense as it does in my head... If you have a notebook filled with specific threats, then you have evidence of a threat... simply having components that might be assembled into a dangerous item is not a specific threat, and the fallback of the police is then to determine and charge for "intent", which can never be known without something like that notebook or a confession.)
I teach my children to avoid contact with the police at all costs. It's not worth the trouble to deal with a cop if they happen to be in a bad mood, even if you've done nothing wrong, and I have to just assume they're always in a bad mood.
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...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Folks, this is just about power grab nothing more. It's in human nature to oppress one another and it's been done by tribes and governments throughout history. This government is not absolute, and when the government gets even more worse than this, the people will not take it anymore and will eventually have to overthrow it.
I used to draw guns in my notebook when I was a kid and I don't own any guns in real life. The kid and his parents not only need to sue but file charges against the state and federal government for kidnapping and the act of terror. We the people, really need to start evaluating this government that we have now and see if its worth keeping it or just form a new one, but, this time with real checks and balances not the bullshit we have now.
"If he wasn't going to do anything with these chemicals, then fine, ..."
People can make bombs with what is under your kitchen sink. No need to go to the garage for the rest.
That doesn't mean that you would or even know how.
You think they shouldn't arrest someone for having that LOOKS like a scary gun, right? My friend, that's basically the definition of "assault weapon" from the law - a gun that looks scary. An "assault weapon" is functionally equivalent to any other rifle. So if you yhink puerile shouldn't to prison based on something looking scary, you agree with the NRA. You just didn't know enough about guns to realize that.
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
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.
Actually I did.
I was pointing out that even if that indeed was a picture of the kids's basement, (which I find doubtful), a picture is not evidence.
Scary bottles and mystery white powder are not bombs.
You actually have to identify that the bottles were used to make explosives, and that the mystery white powder is in fact explosive.
Fun fact, crushed up aspirin with some baking soda in a tiny ziplock bag looks a lot like an ounce of crack!
Does that mean being caught posessing one should get you arrested for posessing crack, when in fact, no crack at all is in the bag?
So the 20% doubt would be enough for you to acquit? In my case there was no evidence. It was the word of one or more cops against mine. Period. I was able to poke a few holes in the cop's original story, but by the next court date they had altered their story (again) so that it was a bit less absurd. I figure the prosecutor must have pointed out a few of the logical contradictions that the idiot cop missed. I think most people would go with the 80% assumption. Especially because believing that would make them feel safer and better about the world. People don't like believing that cops will lie in court and falsely accuse people of stuff and are just bad/evil in general. So they don't believe it.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Sounds like someone was having a case of the Mondays on a Tuesday.
I agree he was arrested without good cause, but how do you know he is innocent? There simply isn't enough information given in the article for anyone to make that call.. What were these chemicals, and what were the quantities? i.e. 50 kilos of ammonium nitrate or a large vat of nitric acid is a little different then finding a 12oz jar of saltpetre and a bag of charcoal.
Don't immediately assume fauit with the authorities (except maybe for the initial arrest, which was unjustified based solely on a drawing and odd behavior), when it may just as well be bad writing.
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.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
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?
Potassium nitrate works too. :D
You can get it at agricultural supply stores in BB sized prills, for use as a stump remover.
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!"
It's reasonably safe to assume that if he was arrested for "chemicals that could be used to make an explosive" it was more than Coke and mentos. But thanks for the hyperbole.
More illegal to draw a gun than own one.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
At 18 years old I was charged with "carrying concealed explosive material" after one halloween night when we were pulled over with dry ice in the trunk and a couple 20 oz pop bottles in the front of the car. Try getting a job with that on your record.
depends, 80% in a criminal trial, no way. In a civil trial 80% sounds like a preponderance of evidence.
Disclaimer: I've only been called for jury duty once, and was going to college out of state at the time, so was unable to go.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Indeed. Youtube is a playground of fun and dangerous chemistry that can go really, terribly wrong.
oh, cool. I have no worries (don't clean at all). typical nerd geek slob. Who needs to clean his mamma's basement, anyways? Oops, was I doing a stereotype?
and what is this soap thing? is it like soup?
wake up and hold your nose
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 certainly feel that way living there day to day.
I've lived in various countries in Asia and Latin America (don't want to name them out of paranoia), including a couple of communist ones and with the exception of one communist country I felt freer and less afraid of the police and government than I feel living here in the US. Living in the US can feel a lot like living inside of a large prison, but there are many places in the world that do not feel that way. Even in that one communist country where I certainly did not feel free, the police at least were not angry or violent and not typically thuggish like the police are here in the US. Police in most other countries are just normal guys doing a job. They don't hate you or see you as their enemy. They aren't out to prove how they are bad motherfuckers by kicking your ass for looking at them the wrong way. In countries that I've lived in outside the US it seemed like the government for the most part left you alone. At least that's how it felt. Knowing this, I actually do want to leave the US forever. Unfortunately I was born here and don't have citizenship anywhere else. It takes more effort living as an expat on a tourist visa. It gets tiring after a while. Although there is nowhere that is perfect I have found a few places where I could long term non-tourist visas. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to make a break for the exit while I still can.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
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.
Crap like this has been going on for at least ten years. There have been stories nearly every month about some kid getting in trouble for drawing guns, bringing a toy soldier holding a toy gun to school, pointing a gun-shaped chicken nugget at a fellow classmate, having an ax in the trunk of a car, having a butter knife under the seat of a car, pointing a finger and saying 'bang', and having an accidental explosion in chem lab.
Educators, unfortunately, are not the brightest among us. Add to that the fact that schools have insane zero-tolerance policies because of teachers' and administrators' inability to use common sense, and it's no wonder stupid stuff goes on all the time.
The kid in this story may very well be guilty. There's not enough information available to tell. But if he's innocent, he and his family should sue anybody involved. Yes, you can sue individual law enforcement officers if they violate your civil rights.
Look again. Those aren't gas cans. Those are radiator fluid cans, with the labels peeled off. Looks like Prestone yellow packaging to me.
You'll find similar in many vehicle enthusiast's garages filled with old motor oil. Often in similar quantities.
Might even find the black rubber pet dish in there too. They work GREAT for washing parts in.
If this article from a local rag is indeed showing a picture of what they found, this may have been warranted.
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.
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.
I don't have any kids, but if I did, the last thing I would be worried about each day is them going to school and being the victim of one of these freak-occurrence events where some nutjob stomps into a school and unloads a couple guns on the students and teachers. Statistically, I'd be far more worried about teachers, coaches, scout leaders, and religious authorities sexually molesting them.
About 300 people (not just students) have been killed in school shootings in the last thirty years, in this country. Something like one per million or one per three million odds of being killed in a school shooting (source: http://www.teenviolencestatistics.com/content/school-shootings.html ).
About 4 to 10 percent of all children have been molested or sexually abused in some way by teachers.
(source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/02/is_sexual_abuse_in_schools_very_common_.html )
What video games, weapons, television shows, movies, books, or society influences are to blame for these teachers sexually molesting children on such a mass scale? Where's the investigation into that? Where's the rational concern and moral outrage over that compared to the irrational concern that your child might be the freak statistic that is killed in a shooting? How the lizard-brain might initially fear the school shooting far more, how does it reach the point of discussion and legislation on a society-wide level without the common sense acknowledgement that 1:10 or 1:20 is far fucking greater than 1:1000000 to 1:3000000?
*must be showing my age...
Those look like really OLD prestone bottles, made for large shops.
We don't know what has been found. At least in Holland around this time of year the police arrest lots of people for explosives, illegal fireworks and even worse, those that make their own. Just a few weeks ago a guy blew up his roof, with his kids sleeping nearby. Luckily he only put himself in hospital but it can't be denied that there are always some idiots playing with stuff they shouldn't.
And no liberatarians, this is NOT bottle rocket style experimentation, you don't blow up your roof and get 3rd degree burns with bottle rockets. Not even the slightly bigger amateur rockets and ANY sensible rocket amateur KNOWS not to do the bigger stuff inside your house just as any real racer knows not to do it on the public roads and any real hunter doesn't go after deer with an assault rifle.
So what did they find? House hold chemicals or a kid who didn't know the difference between experimenting and going insane. His lawyer will pretend he only kept a ton of explosives for fun and the prosecution will claim a firecracker is a gateway explosive to terrorism.
So far the reactions are full of what people want to believe and empty of any actual facts.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The Daily News cannot be described as a newspaper anymore, it's a 'tabloid', trying to stay alive by printing sensationalist stories. It used to be a reliable newspaper, then the internet happened along...
For fact-checking you'll need to refer to The Daily Mail or The Sun.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I did the same sorts of things when I was 5-14. Stores used to sell rolls of what we called "caps" for cap guns. Most boys had such things. I liked to create an explosive device from the caps and put it in a pipe. I was thrilled at the loud boom, and of course at the beauty of the explosion. It was educational, exciting, and it kept me out of my parent's hair. There were also pellets that looked like little stones. I would put them in a paint can with drops of water. I would hurry and slam the paint can lid on because a gas was quickly released by the stones and water. I would put my foot on the can and light a match to the pinhole in the back of the can. It is still the loudest boom I have ever heard. I cannot remember what the pellets were.
Um, in case those school officials are reading this, that was over 30 years ago. Please do not send the police.
But not a registry on guns.
For the purposes of a well regulated militia, you have to have a list of all the militia members and the guns they own.
In the Wild West, the heyday of six shooters and freedom, most towns had laws against carrying a weapon around, as they had to be deposited for storage upon your arrival.
The famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral would never have happened if everyone had been following the law.
It's easy to defend gun rights when you pick and choose your history.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Now all we need is some sulfur.
And isopropyl alcohol is a precursor of sarin. Granted, the *other* precursor is rather hard to get.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
People are living truly sheltered fucking lives when they see a bunch of greasy hand totes and become terrified. A friend of mine makes biodiesel. He has shit that looks like that lying around. It could be for making soap. Maybe the guy presses his own olive oil. Why the hell knows. Maybe the cops know something, but you sure as hell don't.
The Mooninites in Boston. The police absolutely wigged out about those little LED displays. It was funny.
But she understands authorities' concern in the wake of the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.
"I think they did what they had to do, they were trained and you can't be too careful," she added.
Wow. Betrayed by his own mother. She seems to agree that this sort of thing is acceptable. She would just prefer that it not be done to her son. Because "He's kind, he's loving, he's brilliant." But if it were someone else's son who was being charged for ridiculous crimes he didn't committ that would be just fine because you "can't be too careful". And of course she would believe that where there is smoke there is fire and police would never arrest an innocent person.
"He drew a glove with flames coming out of it," his mother said.
Yikes. Well that changes everything. He's obviously a terrorist. Throw him in Gitmo and waterboard him until he talks about these flaming gloves of mass destruction. Get a signed confession from him and then execute this terrorist before he can kill anyone.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
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.
"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.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's a documented reality: http://www.thewaronkids.com/
"The War on Kids is a documentary on Public Education in America. While several documentaries on schools have come out since The War on Kids, these films tend to be either propaganda for charter schools or look at symptoms without any appreciation or understanding of underlying issues. To be a great documentary, it is essential to do the necessary work and dig deeper to uncover the heart of the problems observed. The numerous failures and pathologies associated with school are predominantly due to it autocratic structure. Because no one wants to voluntarily relinquish power, this fundamental problem is never addressed or even recognized."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It's funny that you picked one of the few good things about this country. One of the few freedoms we have left in our fascist dystopia. Freedom has a price. It does makes it easier for nutters to do more damage. So what? Some people actually like freedom. Real freedom. The kind where you are allowed to do whatever you want so long as you are not hurting anyone else. That kind of freedom. The US doesn't represent that kind of freedom anymore. Not since the late 19th to early 20th century. The freedom to own firearms is one of the few freedoms we have left. At least in some states.
The Soviet Union had very low crime. Repressive dictatorships with police/enforcers on every corner tend to have low crime. You might prefer to live in such places, but I don't. This story is a perfect example of what is wrong with this country. Not the freedom to own guns (which you don't even have in some states), but the freedom of the government to persecute innocent people and cause an environment of pervasive fear. Not only fear of terrorists, but fear of being arrested and imprisoned for doing something you never realized was a crime. Joining the 3.1% of Americans living in prison.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
https://www.xkcd.com/5/
doubleplusgood!
Good-bye
Boy I'll say -- they kept popping up a little news window that had a headline about a 57 year old woman who only looks 27. I didn't go to that article but it seems that paper was very credulous to even have such a news story.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
When i was young my father did have bottles of sulfuric acid and an opened 50kg bag of ammonium nitrate in the garage. We also have a lot of cleaning product that can be mixed together to make some nice explosive or colored fires in the storage room. We did have a room full of electronics component where we build models (cars, planes) with radio commands. The sulfuric acid was for the car batteries, the ammonium nitrate for killing the grass/plants mostly in the alley... I even used the ammonium nitrate with sugar against the moles making big holes in the garden on the same occasion. I did event come into possession of cyanide or made some high explosive (picric acid) with a biochemist friend. If these cops have been in my home, the whole family would have been locked up :/
Yeah I did it already. It's the only hit. The only thing that came up is pictures of pumpkins in related pictures.
I've got 20 ten pound bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in my shed, I also have about 20 gallons of nitromethane usually used for my son's gokart racing.
The blasting caps added to that and I could bring down a federal building like Timothy McVeigh, but it'd be too expensive to waste atm since by themself it's fertilizer and engine fuel.
I also have DMSO, and anything you mix into DMSO after dried is absorbed into the skin, they sell DMSO online and is used in veterinary medicine for horses and such to deliver medicine via skin. You could cause a panic mailing DMSO laced letters :) but DMSO by itself is harmless and has many uses.
Want to ban sugar? Sugar+Salt Peter mixed 50/50 in 1 soda can, can fill a city block with thick white smoke.
just seems they want to ban knowledge more and more.
Next thing you'll hear is you will have to be government licensed and have a permit from the state to take chemistry classes in school.
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
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
"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.
I'm reminded of the Man-Kzin War saga and the ARM.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
"People don't like believing that cops will lie in court and falsely accuse people of stuff and are just bad/evil in general. So they don't believe it."
A book about that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_Were_Made_(But_Not_by_Me)
"Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) is a non-fiction book by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, first published in 2007. It deals with cognitive dissonance, self-serving bias and other cognitive biases, using these psychological theories to illustrate how the perpetrators of hurtful acts justify and rationalize their behavior. It describes a positive feedback loop of action and self-deception by which slight differences between people's attitudes become polarised."
There is a whole chapter on how good cops go bad one small step at a time.
That said, I'd expect a solid majority of police officers are trying to do the best job they can under difficult circumstances. The police are on the front lines of the fact that the USA is a very broken and disintegrating society in many ways, very much in need of a good dose of self-renewal.
As I comment here about John Gardner's 1971 book "Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society": ... Only the blind and complacent could fail to recognize the great tasks of renewal facing us -- in government, in education, ..."
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
===
From John Gardner's 1971 book:
"As I was browsing in a university bookstore recently, I heard an apple-cheeked girl say to her companion, "The truth is that our society and everything in it is in a state of decay." I studied her carefully and I must report that she did not seem even slightly decayed. But what of the society as a whole? Decay is hardly the word for what is happening to us. We are witnessing changes so profound and far-reaching that the mind can hardly grasp all the implications.
John Gardner goes on to say that every generation faces the problem of renewing itself to meet new challenges emerging from the very success of the old ways of doing things. And he suggests that social values are not some drying up old reservoir, but rather a reservoir of variable capacity that must be recharged anew in every generation. Democracy -- use it or lose it. Free speech on the internet -- use it or lose it. Social capital -- use it or lose it?
===
Some of Gardner's book:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Self_Renewal.html?id=U5hXpnwUmW4C
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The same day as the Newton tragedy, in China, a psycopath killed 20 children with a knife.
Wrong example to choose, since all the children survived the attack, at least initially.
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.
I'm safe, then.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'm 17, there are pictures of guns in my notebooks, and i have a bunch of explosive chemicals at my house. I AM NOT A PSYCHOPATH! Game maker: yes (guns = concept art), like playing with rockets/gunpowder: yes, but not a killer. All i can say is thank goodness i live far away from America...
"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."
But in the United States, if your accused of terrorism, school shootings, communism, nazism, or making a career out of disliking authority, such silly little things like precendence, law, good taste, common sense, etc.....
simply do not apply to your defence. In fact everyone who shows you one ounce of remorse or does the slightest bit to humanize you, just might be put on a "list" or some sort.
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.
Probably lye (e.g. "crystal Drano").
In China, at the same day that the USA incident occurred, a guy has killed 0 kids with a knife and they are not thinking to forbid the knife.
FTFY.
Mod parent up! nydailynews should be punished for the misleading picture.
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
Because of them many people now think the kid is guilty.
Not to mention that " "He drew a glove with flames coming out of it," his mother said." is not the same as drawing a gun. He could have been trying to come up with a new character to sell to Marvel.
And so far the only behavior anyone has actually specified is that the kid drew something.
Either they left out most of the story, or there's not really a story.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
but how do you know he is innocent?
He hasn't been convicted yet.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Fun fact, crushed up aspirin with some baking soda in a tiny ziplock bag looks a lot like an ounce of crack!
Does that mean being caught posessing one should get you arrested for posessing crack, when in fact, no crack at all is in the bag?
I know it's besides the point, but you *can* be convicted in some states for buying or selling a "lookalike substance"... if the substance is clearly dressed up to look like an illegal drug. Crushed aspirin and baking soda in a tiny ziplock bag would qualify. No idea what the penalties are, though.
That picture could be restaurant sized containers of fryer oil and a batch of instant mashed potatoes.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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.
Fortunately I can pick and choose and be for what the NRA wants for guns, but against what they want (if restrictions are indeed what they want) for speech. And since the NRA spends the lions share of its lobbying money on gun-related stuff and not speech-related stuff, that's still a big plus for the NRA.
I am pretty sure possession of a weapon is not a crime. Otherwise they'd better haul me off to jail. . . me and everyone else.
No need for that, just institute the obvious solution.
Outlaw basements.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...was not drawing himself a permit too!
thats all i need to say
FWIW tineye and google image search don't find that picture anywhere but the linked article. Could be unrelated, but it's not a stock image that's been all over the place.
Looks like quite a bit of diesel fuel, precursor to the simplest of bombs. By itself makes you wonder...but then the rest of my brain goes 'well do they have a generator and frequent power outages, is that spare fuel for their oil burner because they live in an area that doesn't get plowed, are they empty cans or gotten on the cheap and used for something entirely different'
There's making 'explosives' as a kid and there's making large, dangerous bombs. Several people have pointed out how common household chemicals can make bombs. BFD. Now if you had the same chemicals in 55 gal drums with the start of a delivery system...you're on another playing field.
I do still think it's terrible that based on some teenage drawings in a private notebook they can raid a kids house.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Yes, obviously. Next stupid question.
http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ATF-shoestring-machine-gun-2004.jpg
All of those items are valid in most countries around the world. Your option:
6) I didn't go to skule
Useless fact unless you're Norwegian: "Skule" is actually the word for "school" in the Norwegian dialect nynorsk (ISO 639-1 "nn").
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
It's "lighten up, Francis", do not misquote Sgt. Hulka
Good-bye
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!
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
First off, it's Asperger Syndrome. Second, as an aspie and a functional member of society with a leadership position at a successful and somewhat well known in the Bay Area company, I sincerely hope you were being sarcastic.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Oh, I'd also like to add that I used to draw guns, swastikas, and even violent shooting scenes all over *everything* in high school. I also wrote a short story about a school shooting; my principal absolutely loved it. Oh, and I never shot anyone, either.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Hydrogen Peroxide and steel wool. Check.
Ammonia cleaners and HCl-based cleaners. Check.
Diesel fuel and ammonia-based fertilizer. Check.
Batteries and steel wool. Check.
Two cell phones (one is a timer, one to call with). Check.
Supply of natural gas and microwave oven with a kitchen-timer mode. Check.
Diet Coke and Mentos. Sorry, only regular Coke in stock today.
Baked beans. Chec... oh wait, that's a different kind of explosion.
OK, I don't have all of these right now but the point is I could get enough of any of these to make in-the-sink-sized explosions and maybe start a small fire if I wasn't careful.
*waits patiently for knock on the door*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I suggest you reread 'Huckleberry Finn' from beginning to end.
Isn't that the logic behind curse words? It is beholden to the idea that words have magical powers which, if spoken, can curse or otherwise do harm to others. That's paramount to superstitious belief on the side of belief in satanism--for God might have said not to take his own name in vain, he certainly isn't like some sort of border collie who follows orders on command so the very idea basically demands that some supernatural being other than God be ordered around to the will of man. Besides, if there was ever anything wrong wrong with saying "damn you to hell" or "go to hell", it's the sentiment and not the actual words. There's nothing particularly nicer about "be sent to the lake of fire" or "go spend all eternity in the lake of fire".
Now, on the other hand, if people were being reprimanded for using "shit" when they should have used "fuck"...at least they'd be properly teaching grammar, and that could be of some worth.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Probably that whole "shall not be infringed" thing
as the AC said you forgot the whole "Well Regulated" part.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
"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."
Tineye says no go, it can't be found. Not with an URL search and not with an upload search. I too am VERY skeptical but this photo isn't being found by the tools I know to use and I also note it has no EXIF.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Perhaps he was an aspiring video game designer? As a child I drew all sorts of weaponry, from mohawk sporting bazooka mounted tank-treaded VW bugs, to interstellar death rays. I even drew them on index cards with stats on the back about how much damage they could take and deal, sometimes I even drew out scenarios across tens of sheets of taped together notebook paper telling of immense galactic battles of good vs they-only-think-we're-evil. Why, that death-ray harvested the power of suns, destroying whole solar systems just as fuel, and had more "fire power" than ten thousand SDF-1s!
Hell, they didn't even need to look for chemicals that MIGHT blow things up, Gramps and I used real dynamite to remove stumps from the fields! It was fun, but I'd have rather been writing my little scripts involving the end of time, the obliteration of all life in the futile struggle for energy resources near The Heat Death of the Universe!
Makes sense if you think about it: If violent video-games are the problem, then just nab the game creators before they poison the minds of others with their entertainment. With advances in neurological research we're already able to decode some thoughts into words with brain scans. We could simply screen people during home-room classes, Have them sit in a FMRI and analyze what they're thinking! We could end crimes while they're still just thoughts! Oh, wait: Who will then make the graphics for all the violent crime TV shows and Movies? Aha! Another perfectly good application for outsourcing!
Never keeping pop rocks and soda at home at the same time again
But somebody needs to have the knowledge, in order to know what is too dangerous for people to know!
They just need a few super-secret agents to maintain the dangerous information just like when they abolished the term gulplac*** CARRIER LOST ***
I didn't say the selection would be broad nor easy. Costa Rica? Could be ugly as the globe warms up. Maybe Canada or Scandinavia, and wait for the thaw? Netherlands? I unhappily agree about Australia... unhappily because at one time I had a notion of emigrating there. John "Mini-Me-Bush" Howard and many other things have changed my mind. The one AWESOME thing they're doing that makes me proud is how they're buying back the Internet infrastructure for public ownership as they build out their own next-gen network, but that's not compensation enough for all the other stupidity. You'd think they'd have been learning from the American examples-not-to-follow, but instead they've been largely mimicking all our stupidities.
(Apologies to the Aussie rank and file. None of it's your doing directly, even though it's still your responsibility and you elected/appointed/promoted the twits whose direct doing it is.)
Are you saying she didn't die a 'real heroine' trying to take on the guy unarmed? are you fucking retarded?
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Their answers are as farcical as the tax cut fundamentalists whose solution to every economic problem is more tax cuts. Their answer to gun violence is always more guns.
A comment on that article claims "That image is from a Palestinian bomb factory" and includes an image link, but that seems broken at the moment. Using TinEye I found no hits on the image.
Ah, found it: http://www.apimages.com/Search.aspx?st=k&remem=x&entity=&kw=palestinian+bomb+factory&intv=None&shgroup=-10&sh=10
First two images on the list, different angles.
Damn you MacGyver, look what you've done to our society! :-)
I drew and painted (in art classes) a lot of ants in schools. Good thing I get in trouble for having them. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
That may true and understood to you, or to me, but it is unlikely to be understood by the hysterical teacher that started this mess.
Your or I would educate ourselves.
The professional educator would not bother.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
I prefer to avoid discussions about guns (pro or con) these days because it is such an emotional issue. But I can point out that your statement is a truism. Clanton and the McLaury brothers were rustlers. They had a habit of not following the law and that's why the Earps were pursuing them. It is true that had Clanton and the McLaurys been following the law, the gunfight would not have happened. But, then, if they'd been following the law, they would not have been pursued. (Of course, the Earps were deputy U.S. Marshals and thus one should expect them to bear arms.)
One may as well say that (P1) if people followed all laws, and (P2) there are laws against carrying guns, then (C) murders with guns would not occur. It is a truism. If premise one is in fact the case then it implies the conclusion, since murder is also illegal. The second premise is immaterial. If everyone followed laws, then they wouldn't commit murder.
It is not easy to defend or to attack gun rights if you at all take the matter seriously and address it honestly. Since the first premise above (P1) is simply untrue, it becomes a genuine political, legislative, and even moral problem. When we recognize that simply legislating against something (like murder, or smoking marijuana, or anything else good, bad, or indifferent) does not make it stop, we take only the first step closer to understanding the problem. We have to follow this recognition with a series of questions before we can even begin to craft policy to address the problem. Any further gun restrictions should consider these questions: do we place undue burden on those who follow the law?; do we have a means of ensuring that those who follow the law are protected?; how will the law address the quantity of guns already present?; will enforcement of this law require the infringement of other rights or liberties? (e.g. an outright ban and confiscation of guns, something almost no gun contract advocates are calling for, would require an absolute police state to enforce with any effect at all; even so, the question is equally necessary for any new law); will enforcement of this law create other harms greater than that which it seeks to mitigate (cf. marijuana laws)?
Most of the same questions can (and should) be applied to the kinds of gun law liberalization (in the old sense of the word) efforts advocated by the likes of the NRA. One must also weigh such suggestions as the arming of teachers or placing armed guards in schools against other potential harms this could cause (e.g. greater risk of accident or making children--who should be raised as free men and women--accustomed to living and working in fortress-like-institutions under armed guard).
Anyone who tells you that the answer to this problem is easy is either deluded or lying. In either case, that one will certainly not craft wise policy. For the liar, on the one hand, has his own agenda and cares little for the concerns of others (whether they be for safety or liberty). But the deluded, on the other hand, if both more common and worse. Whether he wishes to take all the guns away from those who are obeying laws or to put armed guards in schools and ban violent movies, he fails to recognize this constant fact of human experience: people will continue to break the laws and to do evil things to one another. In one case, it will be that no one who keeps the laws has a gun, but the one who breaks them kills the defenseless. In the other, it will be that a man with a badge in a school does something terrible, or maybe just negligent, and innocents will still die. Anyone who says that the answer to this is problem is easy is wrong.
Wow! I'm surprised at least half of my male classmates back in the 80s didn't get hauled away for the horrible things we put those poor sports saps on those PeeChee portfolios through. Everyone got a stick of dynamite up the ass. The relay racers' batons were converted to dynamite sticks, the batter's bat either had a battle axe blade added to it, a lit fuse stuck on top, or both. Then there was that poor basketball player. Oh the horror with his wrists tied together and forced to hold that basketball which was turned into a bomb...and to add insult to injury, or even more injury to injury, his opponent was always hammering an iron spike into his chest.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Water mixed with lye (sodium hydroxide) doesn't produce any gas. However, Crystal Drano has bits of aluminum mixed in, and water + sodium hydroxide + aluminum does make hydrogen gas. That said, the description of the pellets looking like little stones makes it sound like calcium carbide to me. Calcium carbide + water = acetylene gas.
Where instead of witches we have shooters, and bombers.
Where shall we erect the gallows?
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 practice. With the general lack of shooting ranges in many urban areas in this federation of ours this can be a problem.
I also dispute your claim that firearms in schools somehow pose some sort of statistically greater risk to students. If kids are picking up firearms and playing with them like toys then kids need to be trained. This seems like a good idea to me even if we don't arm the teachers since in this modern world we live in there are going to be firearms around.
I believe it is much easier to gun proof the kid than to kid proof the gun. Train the kids on firearm safety, whatever is appropriate for their age. In most states children of 12 years and older are allowed to hunt with a firearm. That tells me that the states have already decided on an appropriate age to teach children how to safely handle a firearm. Under that age they need to be told to not touch.
Locked away in a closet or cabinet somewhere, they're useless.
Agreed. Any school teacher that wishes to be armed in the classroom should be able to do so. I believe the school should set policies on the training and the holsters used in the school but that should be left to the school to decide. Leave the federal government out of local issues.
There is a fallacy that the federal government disallows firearms on school property. The law allows anyone to have a firearm so long as they first obtain permission to do so from the school. Now we have the President giving his VP the task of coming up with more gun laws to "protect" the schools. The problem is that the federal government has criminalized the act of self defense in our schools. We need to repeal some laws, not make new ones. I doubt this will happen since the tyrants in our government can not "let a good crisis go to waste".
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
" A *Well Regulated* Militia"
The meaning of that phase has changed over the last two centuries. It doesn't mean what you think it means. Let's not forget the context either.
"Well Regulated" meant "functional" two centuries ago. Also there's the context, you can have a "well regulated" disfunctional militia and the free state will still fall. As has been proven by history numerous times. A functional "unregulated" militia can still protect a free state. You know, the unregulated militia we had during the revolutionary war among others. "A well regulated militia, necessary for a free state" is stating an example of why this prohibition is needed. The key statement is "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed." Which is a blanket statement of what government cannot do making all gun control law illegal. Believe or not individual people in the 1700s and 1800s could manufacture and own cannons and other heavy weapons of the times.
In my opinion any future amendments contesting previous amendments without repeal of former amendments renders the document invalid. It's probably long since time for a constitutional convention or another civil war.
Has completely lost its mind.
When is the next train out?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No crime; false arrest, mental anguish... Free scholarship!
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
In Australia isopropyl alcohol is relatively difficult to obtain (and expensive at those few outlets) because it can be used in drug manufacture.
They just tell you what's nasty and what's nice.
The odd thing is the second thing I did on the net was to use gopher to get a materials safety datasheet for picric acid (an organic acid used in weld testing of titanium alloy joints, but more often as an explosive). The first thing was FTP to get a book of home brew beer recipies.
Taking a pistol to an automatic rifle fight isn't going to even the odds by much if anything. Action movies are there for entertainment and don't have a lot to do with real life.
You're kidding, right? Every gun used was owned by the first victim. You'd have to have been living under a rock to not know that.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If you're not hysterically paranoid, you're not sane.
I know what they are, I just don't see how they pertain, since the chemicals were found in his home, common household chemicals.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The worst I saw of that was on 9/11 with CNN showing a whole lot of "Palestinians" partying when they heard the towers fell. It was outdoors but the lighting was wrong for the time (full night in the stock footage but it should have been around noon to late afternoon if it was really in the mid-east that day) and most of them were wearing t-shirts with the Brazilian flag on them. It was stock footage of fans taken after Brazil won a match in the 1998 Soccer World Cup.
Gun cotton is far easier. Getting the concentrated acids to do it typically requires far too much annoying paperwork though.
An armed society is a polite society.
Well, if I was prime minister in Britain, this is how I would change gun and weapons laws: Everyone is allowed to carry weapons. But when you carry a weapon, you have to be polite. Someone unarmed can call you a motherf***er with very little consequence; if someone armed with a weapon does the same thing, they go straight to jail. If you are not happy with the way things are going in a shop and shout at the sales person, that's Ok if you are unarmed. Shouting at a sales person while carrying a weapon = automatic jail sentence. Complaining about bad service in a restaurant? Don't do it while carrying a weapon. Doing anything that could be seen as threatening another person while carrying a weapon = automatic jail sentence.
Yes, I think that would be a very polite society. Except for those not carrying weapons, they could be as rude and impolite as they want.
kind of did it.
"You are only young once, but you can be immature forever." -www.animemusicvideos.org
The Soviet Union had very low crime. Repressive dictatorships with police/enforcers on every corner tend to have low crime.
I wouldn't be so sure. It's obviously easy for a dictatorship to have a _reported_ crime rate that is exactly as high or as low as the dictator wishes; but changing the actual crime rate is a lot harder.
You think that in a moment like that the average school employee could shoot some one? Aside from having a loaded gun waiting in a drawer or purse in your scenario (a serious potential for it getting into the wrong hands), how many of armed staff would regularly go out to the range and practice? How many could make the shot and disable or kill a shooter? How many could shoot a kid? You become a teacher because you think you have it in you to kill a kid, even if they are threatening you or the kids around you.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/20385390/fi
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?
I think the poster above is suggesting that just reading those materials safety datasheets will show what nasty stuff is in the school.
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).
I think you are reading stuff written by the gun lobby. If you look up real reports, you'll see that rates of violent crime were gradually rising from 1996 to 2006, but have been falling since. (I think the gun ban was put in force in 1996; I couldn't find earlier statistics).
Definitions of crimes vary, but assault in Australia at a rate of about 8 per thousand corresponds more or less to simple and aggravated assault in the US, which is at a rate of about 22 simple and 5 aggravated per thousand. Homicide in Australia is at a rate of 1.2 per 100 thousand; in the US, it is about 4.8 per 100 thousand.
For their own reasons, the gun advocates have been making up lots of reports about how crime rates in other countries are higher than in the US. They mostly just aren't true.
the entire chain of events that led to police finding whatever they found make it all the fruit of the poisonous tree. IANAL, but drawing pictures of guns just doesn't count as sufficient evidence to get a warrant in any sane world.
IAANAL, but the cops could have come to the judge with a Grimm fairytale, and if the warrant is issued by the judge, the search is still valid, no?
There's a post in the comments on the bottom, says it's from a "Palestinian bomb factory". Way to go Daily News!
where have you been the last thirty years or so?
Thirty?
Try a bit over two hundred. Attacks on our liberty started with the whiskey rebellion.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...Pull that sucker out of her desk drawer, or handbag...
Because we just can't imagine how keeping loaded handguns in desk drawers and purses in a First Grade class could ever be a source of other problems....
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Chemicals and Electronic parts that when mixed together can create an explosion? Gee... lets see, 90% of geeks have an Arduino and some Vinegar and baking soda in their homes. Hell, the police could call a light bulb and electronic part. Or what about your cell-phone? A knee-jerk reaction to a kid drawing pictures of what appeared to be a gun? I'd hate to see what happens to the kid who draws a picture of the latest Halo video game.
What AC has already stated. She made a heroic effort, but she didn't make the heroic preparations.
Our heros who die on the battlefields spend weeks and months in preparation, so that they know HOW, and are EQUIPPED to die as heros.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The first victim was unarmed, and murdered in her sleep. She was not armed. Despite the fact that I own a number of weapons, if I travel to New York by way of an aircraft next week, I will be unarmed while traveling, and while in New York.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"Armed guards" are authority figures. Children are already indoctrinated to see uniformed armed men as authority figures. This is not a good thing. Children SHOULD be conditioned to see teachers and principals as authority figures. They should not be conditioned to accept any damned fool in a uniform and carrying a weapon as an authority.
I invite you to meet some security people, and get to know them. Get acquainted with the people at a security service company.
I've met many over the years. Security personnel are very underpaid. Very, very, very underpaid. Sanitation workers are better paid. Your auto mechanic is better paid (unless you go to a shade tree mechanic with no real training at all). In this underpaid line of work, you find uneducated people, lazy people, dumb people, even stupid people. You can find, with little effort, people with delusions of grandeur, people who are borderline psychotic.
While there ARE a percentage of security guards who are bright, hard working, and stable, there is no guarantee that those are the people who will be working in a school. It's far more likely that those stable guards will be sitting in their home office, filling out rosters, taking phone calls, making field trips to assess new assignments, and things like that.
Have you looked at the TSA? There are a lot of examples of idiots put into positions of authority, who never should have been.
Teachers, on the other hand, are far more likely to be dedicated, hard working, intelligent, and caring. Note that I don't make that claim for all teachers. I merely point out that they are far more likely to be so.
Arm the teachers. I trust most teachers more than I trust most security guards.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
.. add that to a little sulfur and some ground charcoal briquettes and you also get something that can go BOOM
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
As a kid toilet cleaner and aluminum foil in a bottle was an instant hit after a certain MacGyver episode.
The brief article doesn't say if a warrant was issues. Did the police just bully the mom into opening up the door and letting them search?
I know almost nothing about the NY Daily News [...]
This New Yorker comic depicts the general tone of New York's big three papers.
The News is left-leaning, and Post is a News Corp/Murdoch property—both are shrill, sensationalist tabloids.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Dangit, now we need to go arrest everyone with a head!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So making pastrami is illegal now?! NOOOOOO!!!!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I disagree: everyone who passed high-school chemistry should know how!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It all depends on circumstances not stated in TFA. The police went in on what amounted to a tip that a juvenile might be planning a crime or might have already committed one. They appear to have had probable cause. Now whether that probable cause was based on a teacher jumping to conclusions we don't know. We haven't seen the "sketches of weapons" which for all we know might have been pictures of knives or guns -- which wouldn't be cause for any kind of suspicion. Or they could have included sketches or design notes for a bomb or a detonator.
When they went in, they might have found only the innocent stuff you have in your house that you could make explosives out of if you were enterprising, all in its proper places. Or they could have found it on a workbench all ready to make homemade explosives. The article doesn't say that either. But it does suggest that there was more than what they would have expected to find in anybody's house.
Once the cops have arrested and locked up every kid with an interest in guns or other weaponry, the military isn't going to have anyone to sign up... Actually, neither will the police!
I wouldn't be surprised if 95% of today's police didn't become cops because they wanted to play with and use guns in some way. As kids themselves, they probably drew pictures of them, collected them, played with toy guns, etc. Just a bunch of hypocrites.
I read an ancient piece of sci-fi that has a future society where every adult is armed and expected to be able to fight. Duels are common. For those that are abject cowards, or those that are deemed incapable of fighting or are restricted from it for some reason (pregnant women, the physically disabled, the sick, etc.) wear a special item that clearly identifies their status, they are not allowed to carry a weapon, and must always defer to the fighting capable. If they pick up a weapon though, they become fare game and subject to harsh penalties from the law, assuming they survive. As a side note, it's considered honorable and just to defend those incapable of fighting from unjust treatment, though there's a huge difference between what's considered appropriate for a pregnant woman vs a complete coward.
Sorry I can't remember the name, but like I said, it was really old. (Now that's going to bug me for weeks until I dig up that name.)
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
Why is this modded as "funny"? It should be "Informative".
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The US is one of the most armed societies among developed nations. As far as I can tell from watching American politics, talk shows, and reading/listening to people talk about their pet peeves, it ranks very low on politeness compared to other societies. In fact I think you can pretty well point to modern US society as a clear counter-example of Heinlein's claim.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Safer from people maybe, but homicide figures don't count the spiders, snakes, drop bears, crocodiles, and sharks. Also you have to eat vegemite or we kick you out again.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
I think you're thinking of Robert Heinlein's Beyond this Horizon. I thought there were interesting parts in that book. For example it was one of my first exposures to the ethics of controls in experimentation (I was in my mid teens when I read it). There was the idea that you could apply the scientific method to investigate life after death. But the "armed society is a polite society"? Look at US politics, the Tea Party, road rage shootings, Trayvon Martin, and countless other situations, and tell me that the USA isn't a counter-example to Heinlein's assertion.
Too many people get a feeling of power from wielding a gun, and let it get to their heads. As an armed society, the US is a trigger happy society. First competent person to escalate and draw wins ("You're dissing me man!" over a small disagreement). When people in the US are polite, it's more likely a question of golden-rule upbringing and self-discipline than a respect of possible weapons at disposal.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
You can make nitric acid out of air and water.
I was really hoping that this had finally broken the NRA, and that they were going to disband or at least accept some gun controls. That it wasn't all trolling and that they weren't going to come out guns blazing and crazier than ever.
I was hoping for way, way too much.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmtAQlp9HI
And also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8RulhBVzbk
So, if there is an answer to your question, it is because the school kid was already in a form of prison, and then he broke the written or unwritten prison rules, and he is now being further punished. What was the original crime that landed him in a day-prison called "school" though? Just being young? For alternatives, see: http://www.educationrevolution.org/
As New York State Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto wrote: ...
http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.
Schools got the way they were at the start of the twentieth century as part of a vast, intensely engineered social revolution in which all major institutions were overhauled to work together in harmonious managerial efficiency.
That said, I liked your insightful and ironic point. As another poster replied, you made probably the best comment here.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"The student in this case didn't exactly make the best of decisions: With tensions high, it would probably be better to not be drawing guns or give any potential "danger indicators" to school officials, etc."
For adults, your point might make sense. but kids may process information like the tragedy in CT by role-playing through it. That is described in a book called "The War Play Dilemma" by by Diane E. Levin and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, which I review here: ..."
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html
"The "dilemma" is about a fundamental conflict parents face when dealing with war play. On the one hand, most parents want children to grow and develop by working through developmental issues (like learning to deal with conflict, learning self-control, and learning respect for themselves and others through play, including play involving conflicts as hands-on-learning). On the other hand, most parents want to convey social values related to their beliefs about violence and war as ways to solve social conflicts. The authors clearly do not say all war play is bad, and they also point out that even a cracker can be turned into a gun with one bite. The authors say there are no easy general answers to this dilemma in all situations, but provide a range of options.
People who draw may often draw what is on their mind. With 24X7 news coverage of the tragedy, how could guns not be on the minds of a lot of kids?
Beyond all the other insightful comments people have made here, this NJ situation shows the fundamental lack of understanding that is so prevalent in so many schools about how children really learn and grow.
Better information on how kids learn:
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0fg73WnLWQ
http://www.holtgws.com/howchildrenlearn.html
http://www.alfiekohn.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This is a crime? He had weapons in his house, and this is something worthy of charging him with something? You better arrest every gun owner and pawn shop owner and knife owner (that is just about everyone - how many of us have a buitcher knife in the kitchen) or every single lead pipe owner or every single wrench owner in the US! All of those items could be potentially dangerous, and could be used as a weapon! Let's charge everyone in the US with posession of a weapon!
What s stupid charge! If you want to charge him with something, at least charge him with something that has a chance of standing up. The case should be thrown out for the absurdity of the charge.
While I may not know the whole story, I find it concerning that "posession of a weapon" is a reasonable charge.
From: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1d.htm ...
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Now come back to the present while I demonstrate that the identical trust placed in ordinary people two hundred years ago still survives where it suits managers of our economy to allow it. Consider the art of driving, which I learned at the age of eleven. Without everybody behind the wheel, our sort of economy would be impossible, so everybody is there, IQ notwithstanding. With less than thirty hours of combined training and experience, a hundred million people are allowed access to vehicular weapons more lethal than pistols or rifles. Turned loose without a teacher, so to speak. Why does our government make such presumptions of competence, placing nearly unqualified trust in drivers, while it maintains such a tight grip on near-monopoly state schooling?
An analogy will illustrate just how radical this trust really is. What if I proposed that we hand three sticks of dynamite and a detonator to anyone who asked for them. All an applicant would need is money to pay for the explosives. You'd have to be an idiot to agree with my plan -- at least based on the assumptions you picked up in school about human nature and human competence.
And yet gasoline, a spectacularly mischievous explosive, dangerously unstable and with the intriguing characteristic as an assault weapon that it can flow under locked doors and saturate bulletproof clothing, is available to anyone with a container. Five gallons of gasoline have the destructive power of a stick of dynamite.3 The average tank holds fifteen gallons, yet no background check is necessary for dispenser or dispensee. As long as gasoline is freely available, gun control is beside the point. Push on. Why do we allow access to a portable substance capable of incinerating houses, torching crowded theaters, or even turning skyscrapers into infernos? We haven't even considered the battering ram aspect of cars -- why are novice operators allowed to command a ton of metal capable of hurtling through school crossings at up to two miles a minute? Why do we give the power of life and death this way to everyone?
It should strike you at once that our unstated official assumptions about human nature are dead wrong. Nearly all people are competent and responsible; universal motoring proves that. The efficiency of motor vehicles as terrorist instruments would have written a tragic record long ago if people were inclined to terrorism. But almost all auto mishaps are accidents, and while there are seemingly a lot of those, the actual fraction of mishaps, when held up against the stupendous number of possibilities for mishap, is quite small. I know it's difficult to accept this because the spectre of global terrorism is a favorite cover story of governments, but the truth is substantially different from the tale the public is sold.
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More on the kid and what he was found with:
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/20385390/fi .. "
""He really cares about people," she said. "He's kind, he's loving, he's brilliant...I think this is fear because of what just happened in Connecticut." The mother of the high school junior asked us not to identify her or her son. He may be sitting in a juvenile detention center, but she says he's a fine young man who volunteers to help senior citizens and was once a Boy Scout. She says his passion for collecting old stuff, taking it apart and rebuilding things lead to this arrest.
http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?2,1482541,1482565
"The evening news reported that what was taken from the home included cleaning fluids and flour, steel wool and a cell phone."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"Oh, look, he was also interested in electronics, we could a) teach him to become and engineer, helping to ensure our future prosperity and competitiveness in the world, or b) lock him in prison!"
AC, your point is another application of the idea in my sig which I have not thought about before. Thanks for pointing it out so clearly. From one assumption of human nature, this kid has the potential to be a productive member of our society on an upward spiral. With another assumption about human nature, this kid is set on the course of becoming a drain on our society in a downward spiral.
And the further we all go down the downward spiral, the harder it gets to find the resources to help children grow well into productive members of society (whether good public libraries, or healthy nutrition, or good chemistry sets). So then, as our society decays further, the more and more likely we are to assume the worst, and then we get the worst.
Echoing another of your points, when I was in High School, I found out the Junior Engineering and Technical Society (JETS) club had been disbanded a couple years earlier because the students had been working towards purchasing enough materials to build a big rocket (because it could in theory have hit an airplane). So, it became a "Computer Club" probably because that seemed "safer". So, I got support to learn about computers but not about how to make rockets. About a decade ago, I talked with someone at NASA who said they had a very difficult time hiring anyone these days to be an actual "rocket scientist" because kids have not experience anymore with rocketry and explosives. Is it any surprise NASA has a hard time "getting it up" these days and could not design a good successor to the Space Shuttle despite so much time and money? So, because of that 1970s fear, probably duplicated across the USA, we all remain imprisoned on planet Earth rather than being able to move into the "High Frontier" and reach for the stars. Meanwhile, we have to worry about "The Singularity" and Terminator-like military AIs getting out of control. And we also have to worry about robots taking most of the jobs (without an adequate economic policy like a basic income to distribute what robots can produce, see Marshall Brain's book "Manna") in part because we are still locked in a scarcity-assuming economics from lack of access to space resources like solar energy and asteroidal ore.
Around the globe, the USA is unfortunately busy creating terrorists like by killing women and children as "collateral damage" against suspected militants (intentionally or not). In the same way, out of the same emotion of fear, it looks like the USA is certainly working hard to take a potential engineer as this student was and turn him against society.
Some people might strongly disagree with going much further with that analogy though:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100195201/comparing-obamas-drone-attacks-in-pakistan-to-the-shooting-at-sandy-hook-is-the-most-infantile-kind-of-anti-imperialism/
US president Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." I might not go that far, but it is a good thing to think about. Related: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html?_r=0
"But the satire was rooted in a statistical fact: in the ranks of captured and confessed terrorists, engineers and engineering students are significantly overrepresented."
With about two million US citizens in prison (10X what if probably should be) and several times that on probation, with about half for non-violent drug offenses and/or for being a minority, it would be easy to argue this self-fulfilling prophecy has been operating for decades. It is just now expanding further and
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Slashdot has some very bright and intelligent readers who make some very interesting and insightful comments.....
And some real idiots....
It's simple. We need a giant computer programmed with the Three Laws that can run everything!
I would expect to find fixens for homemade firecrackers in the average teenage boys control. That's nowhere near evidence he was going to hurt anyone. If he was building pipe-bombs then he was trying to hurt someone.
I, for one, turned the local baseball field pitchers mound into a pitchers crater every 4th of July for a good 5 years. It was really stupid to establish a pattern like that, the last year we go lucky and didn't have to run. We saw the slow fuse light the fast fuse right as a cop car prowled by. Casual but fast walk waiting for the boom that never happened. Waited a half hour then reset and detonated. It was good to be a kid.
I had both stick figure flip porn and stick figure flip murder on the edges of my school books. Just what I did to the cover of 'Julius Caesar' would have got me committed if I did them today. Get stabbed that many times and you would have guts hanging out and a dangling eyeball. I was a gifted young artist.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Of course, this depends on the judicial actually doing its job with no bias. Unfortunately, SCOTUS seems to be more pro-business than ever.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Darn, some kids had all the fun.
They would have to eliminate all chemistry classes to start and purge the labs. When I was a kid virtually every chemistry set included things necessary to make some pretty powerful ...er...reactions.
and banning one gun because it looks like another that is something quite different is ludicrous
Hence the rest of the very paragraph you replied to the first part of, where I pointed out that you can have all the weapons in the world, and it won't do you any good if they aren't with you or you aren't conscious.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
What about that "unreasonable search and seizure" thing?
All this sensational report indicates is that the people of Egg Head Harbor are stupid and frightened. Big deal, there are plenty of towns like that in the USA. If they were smart they would have chosen a better name.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
Not to mention have gas in your car's gas tank. And electronics that could be used to create and explosion? Do you have a cell phone at home? Or a clock radio? Then you have enough at home to make an explosive device.
Of course, I don't have the know-how to connect the two, but that seems to be a minor compared to having "things that could be used to create explosives."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This is a LASER rainbow.
When cops act like assholes.
Whatever happened to the one overt act or probable cause? I would be more worried about a kid that didnt draw stuff in their school notebooks that could be taken out of context.
Oh Ohw, that guy looks at me funny. I must call the cops and have him arrested.
Oh Ohw, that mother looks like she is holding a bomb. I must call the cops and have them tackle her down perhaps evn shoot her to be on the safe side. Do not want her to activate the bomb.
and so on...
"Americans the most power country on the planet"
Bullshit! It's filled with useless pussies!
That teacher just destroyed a persons life.
I wonder what would happen if the teacher saw a student drawing a sex pose.
That teacher is a good example of what is wrong with america. Over-sensitive morons.
They even get offended when you try to educate them. They get offended by everything and decides to destroy it for everyone else.
For example get offended by a tradition that can look racial, make them remove it and in the process destroys it for the children which it was made for.
Children do not care what skin color or clothes they have. They just want to have fun.
Somebody should send that teacher an example of a real threat but instead of an explosive bomb it should be a smoke and smell bomb. Of course record it and upload it.
What about that "unreasonable search and seizure" thing?
TFA doesn't say whether they obtained a warrant and had probable cause. If you prejudge the case based on press reports, you may miss a lot of real facts.
I see a disconnect here. With regard to the boy who made the drawings, you are applying a presumption of innocence and that is fine. With regard to the police you are applying a presumption of guilt and incompetence and that is not fine. Where are your facts that back up your implied claim that the police did not follow proper procedure and get a warrant based on evidence? I don't know whether they did or didn't. Do you?
You are also making an assumption that if one police force steps out of line that everyone's rights are hopelessly compromised, even if the courts eventually throw out the evidence and slap them down, which has happened in many cases in the past.
But the "armed society is a polite society"? Look at US politics, the Tea Party, road rage shootings, Trayvon Martin, and countless other situations, and tell me that the USA isn't a counter-example to Heinlein's assertion.
Too many people get a feeling of power from wielding a gun, and let it get to their heads.
You're missing a very important point here: the vast majority of Americans AREN'T armed. I won't disagree that being armed gives one a sense of power, but I suggest that the reason it goes to peoples heads is that they can reasonably be 99% certain that the other person is NOT armed.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Nope. America is not an armed society in the sense Heinlein meant. Yes, Americans own a lot of guns, but those guns are generally locked up in a safe in their closet. The armed society Heinlein referred to is one where the majority of people have a weapon on them at all times, and that is definitely not how it is in the US.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
The more I think about it, the more I realize the problem is that this stuff is sensationalized. And there's a real consequence. Not because it's stirred everyone up. Not because the press is simply trying to make a story out of nothing. But instead...this kids life is going to be screwed up. Think about it. If the school / cops did this & didn't tell the press, and the kid didn't tell the press...no fuss no muss. So...if the kid was really dangerous...they would have caught him before a horrific event. Now the story is reported. The cops have to trump something up. And the kid, who's name I guess will be reported before long, will be a googleable one for all his remaining days.
Yes, lets just assume she's stupid enough to leave a gun in her desk drawer, loaded, and unsecured.
That argument is just as specious as the one that goes "what if the teacher has a bad day".
Because all gun owners are lazy irresponsible heathers who leave guns out for kids to play with.
And all gun owners will, whenhaving a bad day, pull out their gun and start shooting kids.
There are millions of gun owners. And believe it or not, nearly all of them manage to not leave them out for kids who dont know better to play with them like toys, and they manage to have emotions, nagative ones, without causing massacres. Your argument is compeltely specious and irrelevent.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Hell, you dont even need all that stuff.
Two 9V batteries shorted together like legos is enough to cause a small fire.
for extra fun, use 4 9V's stacked together.
Hell, a cigarette tucked in a match book makes for a simple "delayed timer incendiary device".
Thank you Stalag 17 for that piece of education...guess it's time to ban old classic movies now, too?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Car battery (sulfuric acid) + sugar -- exothermic reaction, potentially self ignites, produced a "charcoal" that ignites easily
Balloon + fine milled flour + flame -- dust explosion
Electrolysis of water + containment (to catch the escaping gas) + flame -- hydrogen explosion
sodium hydroxide + potash + sulfur -- one (of many) basic gunpowder recipes
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
An armed guard is a good idea, but it may be cost prohibitive. The guards themselves would also be another potential point of failure.
Most shootings happen at close distances, so it would fallow that non-lethal weaponry such as tazers (with projectiles) could be effective in many scenarios. The issuance of non-lethal weaponry to staff with a breif, possibly one-time training session would have a real shot at lowering classroom shooting fatalities.
It may still seem to be cost prohibitive, but how would it compare to the proposed $200M gun buyback program? Another issue could be that like with guns, the weapon could be used against the employee. However, trading potential deaths for potential injuries sounds like a win to me.
See any ghetto overrun with gang activity for a counter example. You have a heavily armed society in which people are not polite.
Just because a sci-fi author says something doesn't mean it is true. Are L. Ron Hubbard's one liners also gospel?