I'll offer that I have, and I use the word carefully, "desperately" tried to have respectful, considerate discussions on a couple of social media sites over the past few days. I went far out of my way to be respectful, to never post anything that even vaguely looked confrontational and was a dismal failure at getting such a conversation going. The premise of one of the treads was adapting the Argyle ISD armed teacher program elsewhere. I admit that these are my summations of the responses that I got.TheFriscoKid wrote: This forum would benefit - we would benefit - from having more liberals and democrats and anti-gun people come in and have respectful considerate discussions not with the expectation that either side will change the others mind but from the benefit of understanding the other side and then being able to create strategies and compromises that allow us to keep our guns and allow the majority of Americans to feel safe again.
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1. Those who resisted arming teachers mentally deny the existence of LTCs.
2. They will not feel safe ever with guns around them. I drew a parallel to snakes and they bought into it. Most would kill any snake that they see, never acknowledging that snakes are a part of nature, put here for a reason and fulfill their purpose. It wasn't hard to understand that they feel the same way about guns. There were a few in the conversation who admitted to owning guns, which I found odd.
3. No teacher ever could receive enough training to be trusted around children with a gun. Trying to make that point that some teachers have LTCs and could easily meet their students in Wal-Mart while armed got no discussion started. They ignored it. I finally got one of the Liberal posters to admit that a teacher trained in the same school shooting/active shooter modules that are included in the DPS trooper training could be considered. In a separate thread on this forum, I asked about LEO training on those topics and was showed a curriculum for basic officer training that included no modules like that. I didn't get to go back to bring that point up.
I'm pretty sure that an article on the American Thinker about the Liberal mindset was included on another thread on this forum. I read that article and it was pretty clear that my experience in honestly and forthrightly trying to start a conversation mirrored that article's analysis. I'm also an education activist and found the article points to be true when trying to start a rational conversation on education topics. I hold a permanent teaching certificate and have experience teaching in the public schools. As soon as I broached a view point the was contrary to the Liberal educators, I was dismissed as though I had taken up plumbing. My lack of recent educational experience disqualified me from being a part of their discussion. Actually, it was my asking questions about some of their cherished points that go me dismissed and they used recent classroom experience as the excuse.
I don't know the answer. I have a number of Liberal thinking friends and acquaintances. The ones whose relationships I've been able to continue and I have tacitly agreed not to discuss hot button topics. I doubt that, even under duress to do so, we could find common ground in those areas. Many of these people I've known for years and I've even worked with some. I'll submit that if gun topics cannot be discussed where a relationship exists to talk about other things, the chances of a stranger with a Liberal mindset existing on this forum for very long a very slim. Heck, sometimes we even eat our own.
