Gun initiative hasn’t turned up a single lead

[friendly_iconoclast]

Gun initiative hasn’t turned up a single lead
By Jessica Van Sack

Boston’s much-ballyhooed “safe homes” initiative hasn’t received a single call to search a home for guns in the nearly four weeks since the program was launched.

Program advocates had hoped parents of at-risk youths who suspect their children of stashing guns would be among the callers to the hotline, 1-888-GUNTIPS.

Under the program, aimed at taking the battle against gun violence into teens’ bedrooms, anyone can request a voluntary search of homes where guns are thought to be hidden.

Homeowners or parents sign a waiver allowing a search team of clergy and plainclothes Boston police assigned to the public schools to conduct the search. In exchange, cops promise not to arrest the offenders for illegal possession, saying the goal is to take as many weapons off the street as possible.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1088995&srvc=rss

Turns out I was correct in my prediction:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x164452

[madeline_con]

1. "... parents of at-risk youths..."

typo

is not a demographic that typically calls the cops on their kids.

DUH :crazy:

[bossy22]

2. i'm sorry

you are not much of a parent if you are unable to confront your child about something like this- let alone search your own goddamn house..

this plan is just another long line of getting big brother into the home

Its not the job of the police to be the parents- when it does come down to that i fear our society will no longer be what it once used to be

[Longtooth]

3. The two previous posts are spot on right.

[jody]

4. Thanks for posting. If families and their community do not want to get involved, violent crime will

continue.

It's not the job of police to protect citizens, self-defense is a personal problem and that includes turning in criminals and testifying as a witness if that is necessary.

Apparently that is not happening in some communities as gangs run roughshod over law-abiding citizens who cower in fear in their homes.

Of course gun-grabbers shout hysterically, call 911 but reality is calling the cops is a futile gesture.

[bossy22]

5. i think more importantly

in this situation the police arent supposed to be parents. Its the parents responsibility to raise there kids and to make sure nothing illegal is being kept/done in their home.

Its very sad when the government needs to get involved.

[iverglas]

6. I dunno

I'm seeing serious signs of decline here. Just more and more incoherent and bizarre.

But the I'm all right Jack and fuck the rest of you ... and the other really obvious subtexts ... still manage to come through loud and clear.

I'll be blamed if I've ever managed to figure out what values jody shares with the Democratic Party.

[apocalypsehow]

7. Just don't make the mistake of asking him who he's voting for in our November elections.

You'll just get some incoherent babble about dogs painted yellow. Push for a wee bit more specificity - as in, say, a straight-forward "can you tell us whether it will be McCain or the Democratic nominee?" - and you'll get a prim "Good day and Goodbye."

Which is kinda an answer in and of itself, I reckon.

[bossy22]

9. or maybe he will hold his nose

and vote for democrat....who knows

i am not fortune teller

[apocalypsehow]

10. I love an optimist. n/t.

[bossy22]

8. Jody's values may give way to truth

"I'll be blamed if I've ever managed to figure out what values jody shares with the Democratic Party."

You can believe all you want that a government should have the duty to protect individual citizens but when it legally does not, you cannot keep living in a fantasy world believing that it does. The truth is you are responsible for your own safety- whether its right or wrong is a different story and it really doesnt matter because it is the way it is. You can either whine and scream about it or accept it and do something about it.

Do i believe government should have a duty to protects an individual citizen- no....if it did everytime a crime happened you could sue- and just think of how high the taxes would go and all the clogging of the courts. IT would be impossible for any government agency to protect all its citizens- even with the most invasive tactics.

it may be different in canada, i dont know, but this is the way it is south of the border

[jody]

11. "values jody shares with the Democratic Party"? I support every statement in the Dem Party platform,

See http://www.democrats.org/pdfs/2004platform.pdf

I've voted straight Dem ticket beginning with my first vote cast for Adlai Stevenson II.

[iverglas]

15. gee, jody, if you're going to start answering my posts

-- convoluted though your method of doing so may be -- maybe you could actually answer them.

If I'd wanted to know what you've told me, I would have asked.

What I asked about was VALUES, not electioneering.



You know ... stuff like



In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want--which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress, January 6, 1941



Or maybe ... and maybe more to my point ...

I have a dream ...

which you can read some of the good bits of here, should memory be fading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream

[iverglas]

12. what on earth are you babbling about?

I'll be blamed if I've ever managed to figure out what values jody shares with the Democratic Party.

Pretty straightforward statement, that.

And nothing at all to do with anything you posted in "reply".

This tangentiality is beginning to worry me too.

The mere fact that something someone says causes something else to come into your head doesn't actually mean that the two are related in any way.

Discussion is not the same as word association, you know?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

14. He not only answered your post in a straight forward manner he gave you a link.

Are you a democrat Iverglas? Oh yeah you are a Canadian. For the life of me I can't figure out what a Canadian is doing on an American progressive message board.

David

[iverglas]

16. don't give up

Someday, somewhere, you may figure something out. I mean, the odds are it's gotta happen sometime, right? Stopped clocks and all that.


For the life of me I can't figure out what a Canadian is doing on an American progressive message board.

Gosh! I have similar head-scratchers myself now and then.

I match one of those two characteristics, and others match another of those two characteristics. I guess we kinda cancel each other out, eh?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

17. Clearly you didn't understand the subtext.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

13. Thanks for translating the subtext.

You usually start whining like mad when people do that to you. It's ok when you do it I guess.


David