Think of it. The biggest retail store in the US and maybe the world sells the weapon of choice for mass murderers, the Bushmaster AR-15. This was the weapon used to kill a dozen people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. It was the weapon used to murder 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut. And it is easy to buy one at your local Walmart.
Walmart may be the biggest gun shop in the nation.
All that money gets funneled into a family and a foundation that is devoted to privatizing public education. Last year, the Walton Family Foundation gave out $159 million to education groups. Almost all were promoting or providing vouchers and/or charters. In 2011, Walton gave $49,5 million to Teach for America, which staffs privately managed charters and produces leaders like Michelle Rhee, John White, and Kevin Huffman, all of whom advocate for vouchers, charters, and for-profit schools. Members of the Walton family underwrote charter legislation in Georgia and Washington State last fall. Georgia already had charters, so it was necessary to add a constitutional amendment allowing the governor to appoint a commission to authorize charters when the local school board rejected them.
Give this to the Waltons. They are consistent. They don’t believe in regulations or government supervision. They don’t believe in local control. With their vast resources, they know what’s best for everyone: a free market where everyone is armed and everyone goes to any school, any time, any place, no certified teachers, no unions, low-wage employees, no state oversight. It works for Walmart.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m no fan of Wal-Mart, but it is my understanding that they are discontinuing sales of this weapon. It’s something, I guess.
Unfortunately it appears they are pulling another fast one on us. They removed the listing of the gun from their website, but haven’t pulled it from shelves yet.
Off-topic, but somewhat related, Eric Zorn has a blog item about how President Obama’s gun proposals are polling. 55% of respondents apparently favor putting armed guards in every school. I’m appalled.
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2013/01/the-people-are-speaking.html#comments
Time to shop elsewhere.
About nine months ago, I reached a point where I could no longer shop at WalMart. I knew too much about their abuse of their own workers, of bribes abroad and purchasing legislation at home. My conscience had had enough.
I would not be surprised to see John Mackey of Whole Foods go down the same path as the Waltons.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/whole-foods-fascism_n_2496603.html
That list of companies to boycott is getting longer every day.
I can’t boycott Whole Paycheck because I can’t afford them in the first place.
That’s why it is called Whole Paycheck. I will boycott Walmart for the rest of my life.
Go there to eat all their samples and don’t buy anything!
A little off-topic but something from today’s Cincinnati Enquirer: The sheriff of Butler County, Ohio wants to turn retired police officers into substitute teachers. That way, schools would have trained, armed guards in the classroom and not pay a penny more than they would have anyway. After all, anybody could teach, right? (snark off)
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130117/NEWS/301180046/Sheriff-Place-armed-ex-cops-schools
Hopefully this dreadful idea will go nowhere.
And belated congrats on finishing the book!
On the other hand, after reading Dienne’s comment upthread, maybe this idea could spark interest. Sigh…
Does no one remember that Columbine High School had a guard and that Va Tech had its own police force?
Please tell me how it is going to all be different this time?
“They provided year round jobs.”
Yes, for people who still had to apply for food stamps just to get by. But apparently that doesn’t bother you.
“…though it seems its the nearly all white ones that produce the best output….”
Gee, I can’t imagine why people think you’re racist….
Did WalMart break any laws?
CT has some of most restrictive gun laws in nation. What will more gun laws accomplish?
If you wouldn’t shoot Bambi with a Bushmaster then you don’t need one.
Gun enthusiasts like them because of their modular construction. Amateur gunsmiths enjoy building them from scratch and mixing/matching parts to their satisfaction. Vets like having weapons similar to those they trained on and carried during their tours.
I’m not defending AR ownership (I don’t want one), just explaining the appeal to gun hobbyists (as opposed to those harboring apocalyptic or insurrectionfantasies).
Pointless to get upset about it. You can build an AR-15 from parts even if they ban it. If you boycott every company you have a philosophical disagreement with you will be hard pressed to buy anything as they are increasingly multinational and have no real CSR obligation to you. The ban will fail as the last one did, Barry’s executive orders will fail, so will the NY law and any others. It is a mental health issue that goes back to Reagan and the ACLU,
thank them.
And AR-15 component prices have tripled and more in the past month due to wild panic buying. It is ironic that discussion of gun control has caused a massive run on guns and ammo.
If you insist on referring to the President of the United States as “Barry,” then I have no choice but to give your comments all the consideration that they deserve–to be exact, none. Want to try again?
I promise I won’t call the Obomber Barry, OK!
Thank you, Diane, for this link to the very informative article in THE NATION, the unofficial socialist magazine of the country for over 50 years. I was wondering where to get enough ammunition to make the purchase of an AR 15 worthwhile. Guns are bad. Walmart (used to) sell guns. Ergo Walmart is bad. Walmart supports privatization. Privatization is bad. I guess that follows logically. If the original premise is correct. But what if the right to bear arms is good? To adapt William Carlos Williams, “So much depends on a little red premise.”
Why to the Waltons’ ilk keep talking about a free market economy when they do their best to buy it? There is nothing free about it. I know I’m twisting definitions, but it really is a perversion to talk about a economic oligarchy as free.
I’m tired of having to explain the 2nd amendment yet again to the unprotected and the uniformed. When government becomes over bearing, like now, it is our right and obligation to put down such government. (probably don’t have the quote right) The right to bear arms has to do with protection from government. Nothing about hunting or sport. The government has all the arms while the “people” have single shot ancient weapons. Not a fair fight. When they come for you, perhaps you’ll understand why you should have had a shot gun to protect yourself.
I no long wish to read your anti-gun rhetoric and have unsubscribed.
Bye
Screen door + your behind = Don’t let the former hit the latter on your way out.
Here’s your hat. What’s your hurry?
Thank you for unsubscribing
Good for you Noah. Perhaps this blog of educators is less educated than I thought. The Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment are meant for individuals to protect themselves for others and the government. George Washington even mentioned we have more to fear from an elite group of egomanics (Gee…maybe our elected officials) than our neighbors. Further, those that say you don’t need an assault weapon usually know nothing about weapons in general…or the Second Amendment. We need to protect ourselves with weapons that are common to today. Protect yourselver in stead of becoming a victum.
This blog needs a colonoscopy!
Should every home have a Bushmaster? Should every teacher have a Bushmaster? How about if the security guard carries a Bazooka? What beats a Bushmaster? Two Bushmasters?
Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind?
I am more concerned with a bunch of yahoos running around with assault weapons fearing the “guvmint” than I am of tyranny. King George is dead. Can we please move on? And, folks, our military is the strongest in the world. Do you seriously think you owning an assault weapon is going to deter them from taking your property if it ever came to that?
“…the Bushmaster AR-15. This was the weapon used to kill a dozen people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. It was the weapon used to murder 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut.”
Lanza did not use a rifle to kill the children. He used handguns. He left the rifle in the car. How do I know this? Because the MSM tells us so. And we all know the MSM is always right. The medical examiner first said that all the kids were shot with rifle rounds. Now they (the authorities) are saying that the children were shot with the handguns. Once the FBI stepped in, that was that. No more information, no nothing.
You can’t blame Wal-Mart for selling guns. They’re in the business to make money. If that involves selling guns and cheap crap made in China, then that’s what they’re going to do. They have as much of a right to make a profit just as well as the next guy down the street.
NY, IL, CT, and DC have some of the most restrictive gun laws on the record. Their crime rates haven’t gone down. In 2012, over 500 people were killed in IL and DC is the deadliest place to live, unless you live in Flint, MI or Detroit, then I think it would be a toss-up.
Everybody wants to blame Wal-Mart, everybody wants to blame the sportsmen, the recreational shooters. What about blaming or investigating Big Pharma. You know, the people who make Proazac, Wellbutrin, Librium, thorazine, Abilify, Klonopin, and hundreds of other chemical soups that they use to drug our children. To make active kids become zombies in school? Perhaps some day we’ll find out what drugs Lanza was one, we’ll find out what drugs the Aurora, CO shooter used, and on and on.
“NY, IL, CT, and DC have some of the most restrictive gun laws on the record. Their crime rates haven’t gone down.”
Which is exactly why we need a national policy on gun control.
What sense does that make? Don’t you get it…gun laws won’t cure the mental health disease. Gun laws only make all of us victums. Gun laws don’t prevent the criminals from doing what they do best. Protect yourself and your families.
MI Patriot,
I have heard that the AR15 wasn’t used in the shootings at the school (but perhaps used to kill his mother), that it was found in his vehicle. And to a degree it makes sense as walking in from a parking lot with a rifle would be a tad conspicuous.
Do have have a source for this information?
Thanks,
Duane
Sorry for the multiple replies, I was having trouble getting the posting to post.
Duane, my postings have disappeared. I was having trouble with the site and ended up having the same posting show up 3 times. They had the links and some of the sources you wanted.
Maybe I hit a nerve and Diane took them down? I don’t know, but they were up 3 times and now they’re all gone except my one apologizing to you for multiple postings. I will try posting again tomorrow. We’ll see if I’m right or not.
Oh, and the 3 postings all had “comment awaiting moderation” on them and this one doesn’t. Strange.
Check your facts on snopes.com.
I don’t post obscene conspiracy theory trash.
Diane, and you need to grow a thicker skin and get your head out of the ground. He asked for sources, I gave him sources, I also put a disclaimer in there stating that some of these sites were tin-foil sites and that he could make up his own mind. I guess not only do you NOT believe in the 2nd amendment, you don’t really believe in the 1st amendment unless it suits YOUR idea of free speech.
And by the by…Snopes.com is run by a husband and wife team that have ties to George Soros, so maybe YOU had better check YOUR facts.
You have one of the most closed minds I have ever encountered.
Read the first post tomorrow morning. And watch your language.
I am deeply saddened that educators are not supporting the Second Amendment to our Constitution (as well as state Constitutions). This mommie of 7 and grandmother of 8 packs and owns an AK. Our forefathers and mothers thought it was important enough to enumerate it as a power reserved to We The People. It is your right to not own weapons, but you have no Constitutional right to take arms away from the people.
I would have thought better if you had posted the FBI Violent Crime Statistics or President Carter’s “Under the Gun” research. The Carter Administration “handed out a major gun-control research grant to University of Massachusetts sociology professor James D. Wright and his colleagues Peter Rossi and Kathleen Daly. They spent four years and lots of tax dollars to produce what would be the most comprehensive, critical study of gun control ever undertaken. In 1981, they published the results of their research – an exhaustive, three-volume work titled “Under the Gun.”
There was only one problem. Their findings, summarized starkly by co-author Wright, were that “Gun control laws do not reduce crime.”
“When Wright, Rossi and Daly produced their report for the National Institute of Justice, they delivered a document quite different from the one they had expected to write,” explained David Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute and co-author of the law school textbook, “Firearms Law and the Second Amendment.” “Carefully reviewing all existing research to date, the three scholars found no persuasive scholarly evidence that America’s 20,000 gun-control laws had reduced criminal violence.””
I am so disappointed–I expected more from this group and author.
Here is a predicament. Who should be armed in the school? The custodian? The teachers? The students? The parents? What weapons should they carry? Bushmasters? Assault weapons? Bazookas?
Our High School already has an armed officer called the School Resource Officer. He carries his gun in a fanny pack. The school is 1/4 of a mile long so 1 guy against an issue like Columbine is untenable. I think the gun free zones have to go. In PA, we get a concealed permit from the Sheriff’s office. In my humble opinion, those school personnel who feel comfortable carrying should be allowed to carry and parents should also be allowed to conceal carry on school property. Students? They are not of legal age so that is moot; though they can legally hunt.
I like what Sheriff Arpaio is doing deputizing citizens to patrol school zones. Are you being facetious with the weapons selection comment? I can’t quite tell. I would look at the logistics of the school and encourage personnel to have it “covered”–guess this is my Criminal Justice background/degree coming out.
I would think teachers would have a vested interest in safety: Teachers in Ohio, Texas flock to free gun training classes following Sandy Hook massacre http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ohio-texas-teachers-flock-free-gun-training-classes-article-1.1235633
Pennsylvania is a Commonwealth and our Constitution is even stronger: Right to Bear Arms Section 21. “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.” That should be the end of this debate.
I thank you for your response and admire most of your work on Education. I have quoted you often in my exposes, along with Iserbyt. I seem to be a lone voice in regards to what is happening to our PA School System and found some of your research to be a breath of fresh air. I am happy to continue educating the public about Constitutional rights and responsibilites as they appear. I had hoped educators would do the same. Hence, my disappointment. Blessings.
It is not a “predicament” Diane, except for those who make it one. Your use of reductio ad absurdum rhetorical questions is, in my mere judgement, quite beneath your level of sophistication. SRO’s, sworn police officers, clearly are an addition to a school’s safety. If the school can’t afford that, teachers can be encouraged to get training and earn concealed carry permits. It seems, Diane, that you are NOT thinking for yourself here, that you are parroting a purely political Obamaist position, which reduces your credibility (at least with me) as a critic of high stakes testing and privatization. If you make no sense on guns, perhaps you make no sense on the other matters as well, though as I have followed the blog you have come close to persuading me on privatization. (I already agreed with you on NCLB and RTTT).
“Reduces your credibility with me”….that’s like getting an F from the Rheeject!
Be proud and C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S, Diane!
Right on Dona…I agree. For a blog of educators we have alot of dumb people.
Well our Ducks Unlimited chapter will be raffling off an AR15 (evidently the best one whichever that is, I don’t know as I have to rely on some of the committee members knowledge of guns as they are “gun nuts”-responsible hunters and aficionados who like to shoot guns both for hunting and sport shooting).
We had a meeting in December just after the Sandy Hook atrocity and discussed whether we should or shouldn’t withdraw the gun from the raffle (we will raffle off 6-7 guns that night). The other committee members were wanting my input since I’m the only teacher on our committee. We discussed it for about 15 minutes and came to some conclusions.
First that we would still raffle it off as we’ll probably make a fair amount more money off of it due to the current scarcity (our gun had been purchased months before for the specific purpose of raffling it off). At that time members reported being in Cabelas or Bass Pro and the lines at the gun counters were huge as people were buying up any and all weapons and ammunition that they could.
Second, one of the members brought up the “fact” (I haven’t been able to verify whether true or false) that the AR15 wasn’t used at the school (see MI patriots quoting the same above).
Third, that for the most part in these situations most Americans have the memory of a flea and that by the time we have our dinner it will have been forgotten about it. Well we were wrong on that one as it still is very much in the media-which is the only reason American’s will not have forgotten it.
Fourth, since we raffle off a number of guns, and the people attending are hunters and sportsmen who would be disappointed, perhaps not coming back, if we didn’t raffle off the guns it made sense to us to continue as planned.
Originally, we were going to advertise the AR15 hoping to draw in a few more folks. We decided to not do so.