Reader Carolmalaysia writes:
”Generally, I’m against teachers packing heat. I’ll make an exception in the case for young Trump’s 2nd grade music teacher. If she had overreacted our country wouldn’t have an IDIOT for president. That, however, is the only time a teacher should have had a gun.
“Here’s what Donald Trump wrote in his 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal“:
“Even in elementary school, I was a very assertive, aggressive kid. In the second grade I actually gave a teacher a black eye. I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled. I’m not proud of that, but it’s clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a forceful way.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think early on it was a sign that he was a sociopath.
Bingo.
How do you elevate disdain for one individual higher (I’m talking about Trump) than it already is? You read what he did to a 2nd-grade music teacher and how he bragged about it.
That teacher probably told Trump he should find another career outside of music for his future. That Trump probably wasn’t material to become a rock star.
If that’s what the teacher did, then he was right. Trump went on to find a career outside of music as a fraud, a failed businessman, a conman, a serial liar, and a serial women molester.
Your reader refers to the music teacher as “she” while the Trump quote says “he”. For what it’s worth.
Charles: I realized that after i’d sent it. Not a big problem.
This happened in a private school. If Trump’s father had not been so powerful, wealthy and connected, they probably would have tossed him out. Private schools get rid of the problem kids, unless the parents are super wealthy. Trump was an entitled vicious bully, even as a second grader.
If he wrote about this incident many years later, he was proud that he gave his teacher a black eye. Now he is giving the entire nation one.
Trump is giving the United States more than a black eye. He’s blinding the country, cutting out its tongue and smashing its arms and legs with a 100-pound sledgehammer.
He’s a bully and Idiot-in-Chief. He belongs nowhere near humanity of any kind. He should be behind bars.
The fact that that dump is proud of this shows how reprehensible he is. Sending him to a military boarding school only fueled his hostility towards anything living and especially if there is value and I don’t mean money.
I agree with Lloyd. I hope EVERYONE will just finally IGNORE him and let him have his hissy fits all alone in that big wh, which will have to be exorcized when he leaves. Dump is worse than anything I have ever come across. Problem is: He’s proud of being the WORST. Being the WORST is all he has. Sickening.
The media makes it sound like the schools across the nation are all Leave It To Beaver tranquil utopias. Unfortunately, many inner city schools are modified war zones.
I taught at Hillcrest HS in Jamaica, Queens from 1974 to 1994, and the school was out of control. The stairways were unsafe to walk in with tons of kids hanging out and drug deals taking place regularly. There were constant riots in the cafeteria, where we often assigned to patrol to fulfill our building assignments. There were several shootouts in the cafe while I was there. (The school had no metal detectors.) During many periods chairs would start flying into the air for no apparent reason.One teacher colleague of mine was once picked up bodily by several students and thrown down a flight of stairs. He was in the hospital for months.
A students was shot and killed in front of the school in 1991, when a drug deal went bad.
I would have felt safer if we had armed professionals with guns patrolling the school.
I have know a lot of assertive 2nd graders, children and grandkids. If you are basing the actions of a 7-8 year old on becoming a sociopath go right ahead. Perhaps we can go even younger…a kick or bite? Your logic is ridiculous.
“Ferguson (2010) conducted a meta-analysis and found that 56% of the variance in Antisocial Personality Disorder, the formal disorder of sociopathy, can be explained through genetic influences. …
“Given the major role biology appears to play in creating or planting the seed of sociGiven the major role biology appears to play in creating or planting the seed of sociopathy, are sociopaths deserving of some empathy? If, as the research suggests, sociopaths are born with a predisposition to sociopathy, it means that they don’t have total control over their behavior.”
Most of the other 44% is from the home, the parents. What kind of dad was Trump’s father?
“Fred Trump was a fiercely ambitious man who worked seven days a week and devoted few waking hours to his role as a parent. … His way of paying attention to his children was to let them watch him at work. As Donald Trump told me in an interview for the biography I was writing about him, he was expected to learn things “by osmosis.” One such lesson came when Donald was seven years old, and his father was brought before a U.S. Senate committee investigating abuses in a housing program for war veterans and middle class families. President Eisenhower had been outraged to learn of the bribes that developers paid to bureaucrats and of the alleged profiteering practiced by Trump and others. Ike called them “sons of bitches.” … Like his father, Donald J. Trump seems to be a patriotic American, but like his father he’s also someone who never misses a chance to bend the rules. …
“Trump’s basic philosophy of living, instilled by his fiercely ambitious, workaholic father, enforced by the tough-as-nails coach at his military high school and honed over a lifetime of ruthless deal-making, is fairly simple and severe: Life is mainly combat; the law of the jungle rules; pretty much all that matters is winning or losing and rules are made to be broken.”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/2016-donald-trump-brutal-worldview-father-coach-213750
So, April, when Trump was 7 or 8, he was already a malignant narcissist, a psychopath or sociopath. That “logic” you criticised was not ridiculous.
Do you think a malignant narcissist, psychopath and/or sociopath like Donald Trump suddenly becomes one on their 18th birthday when they are legally an adult?
First, they are born with the DNA that predisposes them to become one and then with the wrong parent, they become one slowly, a day at a time starting before birth and continuing through their entire life.
I have a real problem with this kind of stuff and it seems especially concerning when it comes from high-minded people dedicated to rightfully explaining just how the Trump administration is wrong and dangerous. Trump’s presidency represents a new low in a long line of lows. Yet this is the kind of stuff that was coming from white racists about Obama — “Not my president”, all that. The disloyalty to the institutions is dangerous and risky. In Latin America and Spain, coups were in some cases endorsed not only by fascist oligarchs but by well-meaning people in the middle, who sought help froom the military to make things right. In this sense, it’s also a new low for the country right now that liberals joke this way and that they feel ever so cozy with the FBI and CIA when it suits their needs. You really put up a post suggesting even facetiously that it would have been a good thing that a teacher whack a student, even a privileged little snot like Trump?
Thank you, ChuckW, for your comment. The comment made by carolmalaysia is in the same vein as extreme and inappropriate comments made regarding President Obama. If this had been said about him Ms. Ravitch and most of the readers here would be answering with racist, bigot and more. carolmalaysia, the proper use of firearms for self defense dictates that deadly force is used only when confronted with the same. Who taught me that? That’s right, the NRA. The same organization who also taught me to use, carry, and store my firearm safely.
Yes, exactly, extreme and inappropriate comments made regarding President Obama by Donald Trump, a host of Republicans and by the hate mongers on right wing talk radio and Fox News. All these wonderful folks at the right wing conference who are still screaming, “LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP!!”
someluckydog: I’m sure you are aware that Cruz, the teenage killer in Florida, took the NRA course to learn how to fire guns. It was a great course and it resulted in 17 people being killed. Don’t justify the NRA’s classes and don’t justify how much money they pour into the coffers of Congress and Trump to get their undying loyalty. My Senator Todd Young [R-IN] received $2,896,732 from the NRA. Trump received $30 million. Why is this payout necessary?
The NRA obviously is doing some underhanded [CORRUPT] measures to be extra sure Congress never votes incorrectly to give us any meaningful lifesaving gun control.
I read that the teacher was tracked down and asked about the incident and does not recall it occurring. Difficult to know if it did and teacher forgot, or was paid off by parents or school to never admit, didn’t want the drama so disclaimed or it it actually never happened and trump made it all up. Whether or not it ever did occur…..it’s a wild thing to put in your autobiography. I think he likes brutish behavior and made it up to impress himself. He is always one upping and I think he has competitions with his inner personas Larry, Curly, and Moe to see which part of him can outbrute the other.
Further evidence that he is definitely on the spectrum!
I STRENOUSLY disagree. The vast majority of people on the spectrum are NOT the kind of narcissitic, self-important, intellectually inept people that Trump is.
Your comments are incredibly disrespectful to those on the spectrum.
Arming teachers and other school employees to protect students (“practically for free”) against an active shooter, as proposed by the NRA and endorsed by the President, doesn’t work. As an attorney for eleven and a half years at a federal agency, I was responsible for conducting annual “use of deadly force” training for our armed law enforcement officers (LEOs.) This training is mandatory for every armed LEO in every federal law enforcement agency, and each year reinforces the training they received at their academy. But more important, every LEO must also re-qualify at a shooting range—some every quarter, and some semi-annually, depending on the requirements of their agency. So being able to carry a deadly weapon as part of their job requires not only the proficiency to shoot accurately, but also the training, judgement and experience to know when to use that weapon. Initial training can take months, and recurrent training continues for the rest of their career. The thought that a teacher, who surely did not become an educator in order to carry a deadly weapon to school, could be trained to shoot accurately and also have the experience and training to know when to use that weapon, truly boggles the mind. And to ask them to do all that for a ‘bit of bonus,’ is equally absurd. To start with, in most school districts, teachers are not well paid, so giving them a few extra dollars to undergo the training to carry a weapon and then bear the burden of protecting students against active shooters armed with automatic weapons would likely not seem very appealing to most educators. Finally, sidearms (hand guns) are no match for a determined shooter with an automatic weapon, and arming teachers with anything short of fully automatic weapons–a scary thought–will not make any difference, and probably just result in many more deaths. Even the armed LEO assigned to the Parkland school did not respond toward the danger—as he was trained and paid to do. He ran in the other direction, leaving those children and their teachers to fend for themselves. Carrying a lethal weapon and responding to danger is a responsibility that LEOs, not teachers, are trained and take an oath to do.
Quote:
A Maplewood police officer’s gun was fired by a child Monday afternoon at the Harmony Learning Center, according to police.
No one was injured in the incident, which occurred about 1:44 p.m. in the center’s gym at 1961 E. County Road C. “Obviously it’s concerning anytime there’s some sort of a weapon discharged,” said Maplewood Police Chief Scott Nadeau. “We want to make sure that we do our due diligence in terms of breaking down exactly what happened.”
According to Nadeau and a news release by Maplewood police: School liaison officer Lonn Bakke was in the gym with third- and fourth-graders “interacting with them and building relationships.” The officer was seated on a bench with students.
A third-grader sitting next to the officer “reached over and placed his finger into the officer’s gun holster and pressed the trigger.” The gun fired through the bottom of the holster and the round struck the floor.
“The officer was unaware of the child touching his gun until the weapon discharged,” the news release said. “The holster was a department-approved level 3 security holster, with trigger guard, that typically cannot be touched or fired in the holster, but the child’s small finger was able to reach inside.”
The officer was wearing the holster on his hip at the time.
“I think the child had no intention of firing a gun,” Nadeau said. “My impression was that it was a curiosity thing.” End quote
More guns around kids, what could possibly go wrong.
The link to the above article:
http://www.startribune.com/child-fires-maplewood-officer-s-gun-no-one-injured/472812903/
A teacher in Utah shot herself in the leg accidentally while in the bathroom.
A teacher in Pennsylvania forgot her gun in the bathroom, where it was found by elementary students.
A chemistry professor in Idaho shot himself in the foot. There were 19 kids in his classroom.
Yep! And there have been several school attacks (thankfully, no deaths) in Utah. NONE of them were stopped by anyone with a gun.
I think it’s interesting that everyone everywhere is debating whether or not arming teachers is a “good idea”. Does anyone else believe that the real motive for this idea is simply selling more firearms? We have 3.1 million teachers in this country.
Annat: I already figured that out. The NRA looks for ways to get more $$ for gun manufacturers. Schools are already contributing to tech companies so why not now make more money for the NRA? When do the needs of teachers ever come into the picture?
Yes, that’s it exactly. It was also NRA’a response after Sandy Hook.
Yes! NEVER waste a good crisis to create opportunities for yourself. How vile is the NRA!
I thought that the real motive was to sell firearms because the private sector firearms industry’s sales are way down now there is no (fake conspiracy theory generating) fear that Obama or the Democrats are going to limit or take away the right to legally buy a firearm like an AR-15.
Remington, for instance, has filed bankruptcy because its sales of firearms have dropped 70-percent since 2016. In fact, the Washington Times calls it the “Trump slump”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/13/trump-slump-remington-files-for-bankruptcy-amid-declining-gun-sales/?utm_term=.78abe091f6b8
How much do you want to bet that now that the fake conspiracy theory generating machine is up and running again about the threat of gun control legislation, that weapons sales are up again?
The article is also in The Guardian. WaPo is only accessible to those who subscribe. I agree with you. The NRA is going to keep sales up. That is their job.
………………………..
The Trump slump’: Remington files for bankruptcy as gun sales tumble
With Trump in the White House, America’s gun manufacturers are in trouble after a golden era under Barack Obama
…The move does not mean the end. Remington is using the US’s chapter 11 bankruptcy law to offload $700m of its $950m in debt, and to restructure the company. But it does underscore the level of distress in the industry.
In December, American Outdoor Brands, the owner of Smith & Wesson, reported that its profits had fallen 90% year over year, from $32m to just $3.2m. Sales fell 36%. Last October, Sturm Ruger, the US’s largest firearm manufacturer, announced its quarterly revenues had fallen 35%. Both companies will report their latest results shortly but neither is expected to announce a dramatic increase in sales…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/13/remington-bankruptcy-guns-trump-slump-sales?CMP=share_btn_link
#1 I haven’t seen a single proposal that would require any teacher to have a firearm in the classroom. Everything I’ve read or heard makes it purely voluntary.
#2 I haven’t seen a single proposal that would allow a firearm to be out in the open or carried on the person (teacher or staff). What I’ve seen would allow for a firearm to be locked somewhere in the classroom and be accessible by a teacher. No proposal expects a teacher or staff member to grab a weapon and go charging toward a shooter. Their first job is to protect their students in any way they can and the teachers I know are going to do that by getting their kids out of the school or if that’s not safely possible to lock and barricade the door and shelter them however they can. It’s only when an active shooter gets into the school that a firearm would be removed from storage. If your son or daughter is in that room where the teacher has done their best to shelter the students which would you rather have? The shooter enters the room, starts shooting, and the teacher surprises him/her by shooting back. Most likely the shooter is going to leave the room, maybe the school once they know they are going to face returned fire. Yes, some children have been hit, but many of them are okay. Or the shooter enters the room, starts shooting, and executes everyone inside.
someluckydog: ” If your son or daughter is in that room where the teacher has done their best to shelter the students which would you rather have? The shooter enters the room, starts shooting, and the teacher surprises him/her by shooting back.”
Arming teachers who don’t know what they’re doing is a recipe for disaster. After they get fired for killing kids they could enlist to be SWAT team members. What could go wrong? Two guns could kill more than one gun. One earlier writer posted the comment that in the chaos and stress a teacher wouldn’t be able to hit the broadside of a barn. Also, does a teacher get paid enough to be the first one shot?
Guns are banned from being brought into the WH, Mar-a-Lago, the Senate and House chambers and often, town hall meetings. These GOP hypocrites are recognizing that guns do kill. [I thought the NRA said “Guns don’t kill people.”! What exactly is the reason for banning guns in these holy places?]