If the Parkland deputy would have had this guys balls

Fenderbender123 said:

2001400ex said:

Right. Those investments into seat belts, air bags, and other worthless stuff should just never have happened. Freedom baby. I should be able to roll down the road in my pickup, no seat belt, keg in the back with 4 kids chillen in the bed.

You're comparing car safety equipment features that have long since been proven to be a demand of the consumers who voluntarily purchase vehicles with their own money to forcing every tax payer to annually fund improvements to school safety. People know that seatbelts and air bags save lives, and that is the reason why, even in the absence of safety regulations, people would gladly pay extra for vehicles with that safety equipment. Every car model sold in the U.S. exceeds the minimum regulatory standards for safety equipment....by far.

And what exactly are you arguing against? I said that if we are going to look at ways we can improve safety through government, we should desire a stronger return on our investment. Your odds of dying or being critically injured in a car crash due to lack of seatbelts is *WAY* more statistically significant than anybody's odds of being shot, and even more so than a child's odds of being shot at school. A quick Google search reveals NHTA's estimate of 15,000 lives being saved per year because people are wearing seatbelts. Right now, the topic at hand is whether or not we should make a similarly costly investment to save 12 lives per year.

14 million vehicles sold per year in the US x $1,000 per vehicle cost to install seatbelts = 14 billion dollars.

Estimated cost to have armed guards and other safety equipment in schools = roughly 14 billion dollars.

Do you get what I'm saying? Return on investment. It's like we've gotten to the point where we have become so politically correct that it's taboo to even talk about how much we're spending to save each life. "How dare you question the price of a human life! Life is priceless! Just spend, spend, spend...do whatever it takes!"....until you tell people to put their money where their mouth is. But that's the problem with using tax dollars. People think it's just magic money that appears out of nowhere and doesn't affect them.

So think of it this way...If I went around selling a service to parents that guaranteed to reduce their child's odds of being shot at school from .0000002% per year to .0000001%, and said "hey, it'll only cost you $1,000 a year", I'll bet only a very small % of them would be stupid enough to think that's a good value for their dollar. Hell, I'd probably get arrested and put in jail for being a snake oil salesman. But when government funds it through tax dollars, suddenly people think it's a good value. But it's not...and people aren't going to know that until we start having serious discussions about it.

And come on, you're throwing in drinking and driving and negligent parental behavior to prove what, exactly? That freedom is bad? What the hell are we even talking about? Real talk, bro...your posts being all over the place like that is one thing you should work on. It's one thing to be blatantly partisan...hell, we're all guilty of that to some degree. But if you want my advice, people will take you more seriously if your posts were less of a blanket of general distaste for libertarian/conservative values, and more of you making a point in the discussion at hand. Take the time to explore your feelings and make a well thought out post. "I feel that this is a good use of tax dollars because _______________" would have been an infinitely better premise for a post.

I know it sucks when somebody criticizes the stuff you write. I've been there. I'm seriously just trying to give you what I think is helpful advice. You post a lot here. And you obviously have strong opinions. So why not take the time to do a better job or writing them out? It's not a race to see how fast you can disagree with somebody. Just my 2 cents.