It is easy to forget that there are a multitude of threats to school kids other than mass shootings. Guns are not for gun battles.
It’s not like a “hardened” school is going to be any kind of deterrent. The vast majority of school shooters have a connection to the institution; they were students or had family that worked there. Moreover most of them don’t expect to survive. Maybe in a best case scenario you can save a few lives by arming more people but it’s pretty obvious that you save the most lives by keeping guns out of the hands of perpetrators.
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When all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
Are you worried about bear or coyote attack? Clay pigeon investations?
Just what problem at a school can a gun solve?
I’ve forgotten, please illuminate me as to the nature of these “multitudes”.
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I’m glad that so many people are exercising their FIRST amendment rights, and showing us all that these are just not the kind of people we want armed, among us.
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We should arm teachers… with flame throwers, and RPG’s. The only way to keep our children safe is to win the public schools arm race!
More and bigger weapons as a deterrent is the only solution. Assassination drone strikes should be on the table. We can label any students killed by accident as enemy combatants.
Furthermore security contractors with attack dogs roaming the halls at all times.
TSA agents with porno scanners at every entrance.
Build a wall!
You know what is more absurd the my stupid ranting here? Reality.
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Uppity POC?
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From what was posted earlier, the security guard was a cop? And what was he doing outside behind a car? Did he actually run FROM the building?
I’m not buying it. I wonder if an armed parent just happened to be there and their child was inside, if they would cower behind their vehicle and wait while listening to what was happening… pop pop pop? Or would they have tried?
The hiding isn’t training, it’s self preservation.
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Where was Bruce Willis, when we needed him, anyway?
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Given the layout of the school, lots of small rooms, the longer range of the AR-15 would not have been so much of a factor. Add in the fact that the shooter would have been focused on finding and killing his targets, and would not have been expecting to become a target himself, and I think the odds would have favored the cops; especially if they went in together and worked as a team. If they were not prepared to risk their own lives to protect civilians, they should not have chosen to be police officers.
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My high school and my middle school, at least. Not sure about my elementary school. But like I said, 100 yards would be vastly overstating his accurate range.
And even if this school was a twisty maze of passages, everything about that situation favors the guy with the military assault weapon.
I’m not absolving him. I’m just saying the availability of such weapons means that we can either ask our police officers to go on suicide missions, or we can ask them to wait for the SWAT team, as in “special weapons and tactics,” which is precisely what you need to have a reasonable chance of surviving an encounter with the people who arm themselves this way.
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If only I could.
I was 17 years old the first time someone I knew personally died from being shot (by the police, no less.)
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To be fair, some people already DO see them as a threat to individual liberty.
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Except that people who don’t smoke also get lung cancer - it’s true that people who do smoke have a higher risk, but non-smokers do get lung cancer.
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Yes, it is. At this point we don’t know exactly what motivated them to wait, and by all accounts the circumstances were very confusing as tends to be the case when bullets are flying. It could very well be that he was acting in good faith the whole time.
But as to the question of a sworn public defender absconding that duty because they aren’t equipped with tactically competitive equipment? That is the very definition of cowardice.
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That and the “you have to be ready” attitude that gives some such tunnel vision that they think carrying a weapon ready to fire in an instant is a really good idea.
He makes the case that people should be carrying a gun ready to go, with a round in the chamber or the hammer cocked, because violence can happen in an instant and you have to be ready.
My rebuttal is that, yes, violence can happen in an instant, but so can a vast number of other situations that look like it at first glance, but will turn out to be something else, and will not be improved by putting a bullet in it.
A considered response with situational awareness can’t happen in an instant, and it’s a dangerous fantasy to be focused on that one situation where an instant shot has a good outcome and ignore all the many bad outcomes.
That shadowy figure that stepped around the side of the house at night might turn out to be the neighbor looking for their cat. Draw, fire! Ooops, too late.
As if teachers didn’t have enough problems with stress already, simply “being ready” at all times, even if nothing happens, will burn them out at high speed.
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Might as well leave the safety off at that rate.
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Glocks don’t have a safety. If there’s a round chambered, “your finger is the safety”.
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Or your kid’s finger, or your dog’s paw, or any number of things.
The fact that he purports to run a “training” center is upsetting. These are the kind of people reasonable gun owners need to distance themselves from. This is why people need to quit the NRA.
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