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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn case you haven't been told by every conservative you know -- Obama's daughters have armed guards
11 armed guards to be exact (at least that's the number thrown out there)-- I've seen this like a dozen times. The argument is that if we had 11 armed guards at every school, then tragedies like Oregon and Sandy Hook would be avoided. So my question is this: since conservatives won't pay taxes for anything else education related, who is paying for this army of guards they want to deploy? I'd have thought protecting the President's wife and children would be a high priority, given how generally paranoid they are about terrorism.
I've also seen graphics decrying the fact that the President has his own armed protection, but wants to limit gun ownership by others. I would point out that -- as a job title -- the Presidency is fairly classified as hazardous. Almost 12% (5) of the previous 43 Presidents were shot -- and only one of those (Reagan) survived. I'm not counting TR getting shot on the campaign trail in '12 (survived), nor am I counting the armed duel between would-be Presidents Hamilton & Burr. I'd venture that if 12% of any job's occupants had been shot, they'd have guards and bullet-proof vests.
E.T.A.-- so you don't have to look it up, the five shot Presidents were: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy, and Reagan.
Ford was shot at twice, but was unhurt.
marym625
(17,997 posts)busterbrown
(8,515 posts)Just like the olden days..
marym625
(17,997 posts)I'm not even sure an AK-47 is the name of a gun.
marym625
(17,997 posts)He wasn't President but was well on his way.
Algernon Moncrieff
(5,795 posts)whose '72 campaign was derailed, and he was left paralyzed.
marym625
(17,997 posts)Algernon Moncrieff
(5,795 posts)...and Wallace fascinates me because he is one of the few segregationists that "saw the light" later in life.
marym625
(17,997 posts)Senator Robert Byrd immediately comes to mind. Sam Ervin is another.
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)apparently because he hadn't been a rabid enough racist -- and decided political power mattered enough for him to become a really foul supporter of Jim Crow
I certainly have never thought he was on the side of goodness and light, but he may have thought he was
I remembering reading some SNCC insider's memoirs about and finding a story about a black SNCC organizer who went back home to Alabama to visit and was horrified to learn his mother planned to vote for Wallace: the reason given was that, behind the scenes, he was providing more resources (like roads and schools) to black communities than anyone else ever had -- I have no idea whether the story is accurate; and I'd think Wallace was certainly doing enough damage in public, fanning the crazy flames, to more than undo any good he might have quietly done
There was a very strange event later, where he got on stage with several black folk, apologized, and asked if they understood why he had done it: they all said yes
GreenEyedLefty
(2,073 posts)So there goes that argument.
Edited to add... highly trained armed guards, at that.
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)Algernon Moncrieff
(5,795 posts)IphengeniaBlumgarten
(328 posts)In 1950 a couple of Puerto Ricans tried to storm the Blair House where the Trumans were living while the White house was being repaired/renovated. There was a shootout with police and Puerto Ricans and a least one policeman were killed. Truman was unharmed.
Algernon Moncrieff
(5,795 posts)My wife's great uncle was one of the WH cops.
Good book on that called American Gunfight
The deceased WH policeman was Leslie Coffelt. Thanks for bringing it up.
Half-Century Man
(5,279 posts)who is constantly being portrayed to a heavily armed increasingly desperate portion of the population with a lot of latent if not overt racist tendencies; that he is the root cause of their ever increasing poverty, loss of some perceived hereditary place in society, unfulfilled promises made by politicians, and feelings of helplessness.
By the very politicians who have broken, or never intended to keep, those promises. By people with a huge vested interest in keeping that heavily armed and increasingly desperate base suppressed and angry. By people who will squeeze that base even harder to make any sort of profit.
The presence of armed guards is as surprising as dawn in the east.