Sandy Hook Elementary School
credit: hartfordcourant
This article, which first ran on March 07, 2012, is the first in a series building a case for concealed carry of handguns by school staff. The murder of 20 elementary school children and seven adults in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012 renewed the usual calls for completely ineffective, feel-good measures–particularly gun control–that only inflame passions and contribute nothing to saving lives. President Obama’s emotional push for stereotypically progressive “common sense gun safety” legislation, such as requiring federal government approval of sales between relatives and friends, spectacularly failed as Congress clearly heard the American people who know better than to fall for hysterical measures that accomplish nothing.
Mr. Obama, however, has not learned. On Friday, October 1, 2015, a lone shooter killed eight students and one teacher, ranging in age from 18 to 67 at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. The shooter, who would want his name and photo displayed here, killed himself before he could be engaged by the police. Mr. Obama immediately spoke, admitting that he knew nothing about the incident, but demanding unspecified “common sense gun safety” legislation, and praised himself for politicizing the attack. I addressed the issue here.
As an educator, I know well the thinking of my fellow educators, many of who recoil in horror at the mere thought of a firearm on school property. As a former police officer, I know that many citizens share that reflexive response. Unfortunately, such responses spring not from reason and a sincere desire for effective action, but from emotion, ill-considered philosophy, and a potentially earnest desire to “do something.” The police officer in me–always just below the surface–wants to tell those people to wake up and do what works. The educator realizes that providing an engaging opportunity to learn may be the only effective way of changing minds, and of saving lives.
I’ll continue posting the updated articles in this series, for the coming weeks. I hope hope you’ll take the time to consider them all and to comment.
February, 27, 2012, Chardon High School, Chardon, Ohio: A 17 year old student of nearby Lake Academy–who would surely like his name to be mentioned here—fired ten rounds from a .22 caliber pistol in the cafeteria of Chardon High School, killing three students and wounding two. His handgun apparently empty, he was chased from the school by Frank Hall, a football coach and study hall teacher. The shooter was known to the students of Chardon High School, and the police arrested him a short time later. A New York Daily News headline speaks eloquently:
F- all of you!’ Ohio teen psycho ******* give the finger and smirks as he is sentenced to life for shooting rampage that left three Chardon High School Students dead.
Given a chance to address the court, the killer said:
This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. F- all of you.
The police had no role in stopping the shooting, which in this case ended when the shooter exhausted his ammunition and was chased from the building. In 2014, he escaped from prison, but was captured six hours later and transferred to a maximum security prison where he remains.
There is some indication that the motive for the shooting was as common as teenage jealousy. Students who knew one of the victims—Russell King Jr.—and the shooter have suggested that King may have been targeted because he was dating the shooter’s ex-girlfriend, but this remains unconfirmed, and does not explain the shooting of the other four students who happened to be sitting nearby. The shooter’s actual motives remain unclear.
credit: huffingtonpost.com
Since that shooting, various “experts” have been pedaling their “solutions” to school attacks. Mary Grabar at PJ Media reports on one such “expert,” Jodee Blanco, who shortly after the shooting, appeared on CBS prompting her trademarked anti-bullying program “It’s NOT Just Joking Around!” For between $4000 and $5500, Blanco, whose self-advertised expertise is that she was once the victim of bullying–or maybe “shunning”–provides a 90-minute program:
I relive painful episodes from my past in front of the students so that they can witness firsthand what I endured at the hands of my peers. … My primary message to students is three fold: bullying is not just joking around, it damages you for life; bullying just isn’t the mean things you do, it’s all the nice things you never do; and if you’re being bullied or shunned, there’s nothing wrong with you. … In addition to the re-enactment of my school days, during which that tri-teared (sic) message is continually reinforced, I also give students specific advice on how to handle what I call “elite tormentors,” the mean members of the cool crowd. I conclude the presentation with an empathy exercise for students that brings my anti-bullying message home on a visceral and deeply personal level.
Grabar’s article should be read in its entirety. It may also be worthwhile to read my education article on bullying titled “To Anti-Bully Or Not To Anti-Bully,” which is equally skeptical of the value of programs such as Blanco’s.
Schools are deluged with offers from people like Blanco, offers they might be tempted to accept because of the common need to be seen to be “doing something” after traumatic events, and because the second question commonly asked after school shootings—after “why?”—is: “how can this be prevented?” If school shootings are caused by bullying, there is a certain logic in trying to prevent bullying. As soon as the news of a public school shooting breaks, someone begins blaming bullying. It seems a reflex these days, a foolish, potentially tragic reflex.
If we accept bullying as the proximate cause of school shootings, how do we explain the fact that the overwhelming majority of kids who have, at one time or another, been “bullied,” do not shoot up schools, harm themselves or others? I know of no specific statistics on this issue, but considering that more than 50 million kids are currently enrolled in school in America (I’ve seen statistics indicating between 50 and 55 million) the number of kids bullied who commit such crimes is surely a tiny fraction of a single percent of all kids. How can we justify spending huge sums of money on anti-bullying programs of questionable worth? As Grabar wisely put it:
The only ones benefiting are those reaping large consulting fees.
Dealing with bullying is straightforward and inexpensive. Each and every school should:
(1) Demand and enforce personal responsibility. Circumstances such as difficult home lives, acne, bad hair days, breaking up with boy/girlfriends, etc. are matters to be considered—if at all–when it’s time to decide on proper consequences, not as matters that prevent proper discipline.
(2) Prosecute all significant violations of the law in concert with school sanctions. Failing to return a pencil would obviously not apply, but assault or extortion surely would. This will immediately put a crimp in every significant bullying behavior.
(3) Don’t allow any student to behave stupidly or rudely. This will handle every other bullying behavior that is not an explicit crime.
(4) Consequences for 2 & 3 must be immediate, sure and uniform. This will prevent most bullying and dramatically improve the overall school climate.
(5) Do not punish kids forced to engage in legitimate self-defense. This requires more effort and professionalism from teachers and particularly, principals, but zero-tolerance polices are essentially zero-thinking and discretion policies, and most of us would like to think those we hire to teach our children are capable of exercising common sense. Common sense would include being able to tell the difference between an assault and a mutually agreed duel with fists.
Many schools don’t do some or all of these things. That would explain many things about many schools, wouldn’t it? Fortunately, there is some evidence that the zero-tolerance fad may be in the early stages of fading from the educational scene.
The third question to be asked is: what should be done when a shooting occurs? The single most effective and essentially free solution to this problem is one that is virtually always dismissed out of hand, and usually not discussed at all: allowing willing teachers and staff to carry concealed weapons, and broadly publicizing that fact. “Solutions” that range from farce to laughably ineffective to somewhat effective are those implemented across the nation instead. They are commonly costly and provide no deterrent effect while having the added “benefit” of providing the illusion of doing something worthwhile. They’re the “hope and change” of school shooting response.
An article by Larry Banaszak, the Chief of Police at Otterbein University, appearing on FoxNews.com the day after the Chardon shooting, is an example of this mindset. Banaszak, who specializes in providing training for schools and others in such matters, writes:
The survival concepts we teach at Otterbein University where I serve as chief of police are very simple but dynamic.
There are three basic survival responses to a shooter on campus: run, hide and barricade. Then, as a last resort, attack the shooter.
Banaszak’s first three responses are commonly taught in programs supposedly addressing school shooters, but many self-proclaimed experts in this field and many educators would be utterly horrified by the idea that teachers and students(?!) should take an active role in protecting their lives. He adds:
We emphasize that students should run to safety and get away from the danger. If the situation is so dangerous that it’s deemed unsafe to run, then hide and barricade yourself in a room and work your plan.
Then Banaszak—to the way of thinking of many educators and legislators—goes berserk:
The third survival tactic is the most difficult but none-the-less necessary. A shooter enters the classroom and starts shooting at people. Remember, there is nowhere to run or hide.
The strategy begins with the first person who notices the shooter and yells “GUN!” Everyone in the room then throws whatever is available, as hard as they can, at the shooter’s face causing him to flinch, and preventing him from taking aim. Then what’s known as the “throw and go” tactic is implemented.
Upon throwing items at the shooter, the occupants rush to and swarm the shooter. The first few people are taught to attack and move the shooter’s gun hand and gun toward the ground.
At the same time or shortly after, the other swarmer’s attack and take the shooter to the ground. Students, faculty and staff are taught to strategically lay on the shooter’s extremities as well as their core area to maximize the amount of weight on the shooter.
In addition, they are taught to place ready-at-hand objects such as belts, T-shirts, etc., onto the shooter’s throat, nose and eyes to disrupt breathing and sight.
Once it is determined the shooter is no longer a threat, people are instructed to release pressure to allow breathing but maintain control on top of the shooter until the police arrive.
Critics of this survival tactic argue that you can’t teach people to attack a shooter. But when they are questioned about other options, they become silent.
Banaszak goes on to hope that when a school shooter finds a barricaded room, with a locked door and the lights out, he will ignore it and seek easier targets in the hope of running up his body count. Perhaps. But more likely he’ll notice that virtually every classroom with a locked door is dark and simply begin breaking them in, which in many schools will take mere seconds. And if instead of a single shooter, multiple shooters are involved, the effectiveness of locked doors, extinguished lights and hiding behind particle board desktops will be quickly revealed as wishful non-thinking rather than safety.
Banaszak’s article should also be read in its entirety, for in many ways, he’s absolutely correct. There is nothing wrong with taking cover (putting things capable of stopping bullets between you and a shooter), or if that’s not possible, seeking concealment (hiding). And when faced with deadly, imminent danger and safe retreat isn’t possible, a mass attack carried out as forcefully and aggressively as possible is certainly better—practically and morally—than depending upon the mercy of a madman or patiently waiting your turn to be killed. However, anyone assaulting an armed killer empty-handed must expect to be shot in the process.
Modern School Killer Repellent
credit: http://www.drpulse.com
Some suggestions for responding to armed school attackers have degenerated to farce, such as the Alabama middle school principal that advocated stockpiling canned food in classrooms to be issued to students, who would throw the canned fruit and vegetables at an armed maniac.
However, Banaszak, virtually every other “consultant” on such matters, and most educators and legislators are, by omission, dooming some number of students and teachers to death or serious injury in any school shooting. They are, for reasons of fear, political correctness, lack of knowledge, or victim politics, condemning to death people who otherwise might live.
By default they tacitly accept some level of injured and dead.
A serious charge? Indeed. But before I explain, let’s examine the potential threat. How significant is the contemporary threat of school shootings in America?
A partial list of school shootings from around the world—in timeline format–is available at Infoplease.com. It’s worth visiting, particularly for those who have not been following the issue, if for no other reason then to illustrate that the problem is not confined to supposedly primitive, gun-crazy and uniquely violent America. In fact the school shootings with by far the largest body counts have not occurred on American soil.
Perhaps most potentially accurate is information provided by the University of Virginia (specifically its school of education) in a brief but informative article. Their conclusions mirror what I’ve been able to find in a great many sources as well as my personal experience in nearly 20 years in law enforcement. Their primary findings:
(1) In 2004 there were only 10 in-school homicides in American schools, but 2261 homicides of school-age kids outside of school. In the same year, for children 5-19, 9491 died in accidents, 1983 died of suicide, 1750 died of cancer, 631 died of heart disease, and 140 died of flu and pneumonia. In other words, the risk of death at the hands of a school shooter is, for most kids, very small indeed.
I do take issue with the methodology here in that they are including kids as old as 19. People of that age have usually already graduated from high school, so the wisdom of including them in school statistics is suspect. Also, a great many children do not enter kindergarten until the age of 6. I’m not sure what effect this has on these statistics, but I suspect the general proportions would remain relatively constant.
(2) While in school, kids are exposed to an elevated level of non-violent crimes and less dangerous incidents such as simple assault, but are more likely to encounter serious crimes of all kinds outside of school.
The University of Virginia also provides an informative article on school violence myths. Its general findings:
(1) Juvenile violence, like violent crime in general, has been decreasing for years. The reasons for this happy downward trend remain unclear.
(2) As a result, school violence—in general—has also been decreasing.
credit: universityofvirginia
(3) As one might expect, school homicides have also been decreasing. The most dangerous recent years were: 1993 and 1994 (42 deaths) and 1998 (35 deaths). In 2008, there was only one, and two in each of 2009 and 2010.
Final Thoughts:
Mark Twain said: “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” What can be reasonably taken from available statistics is that kids are–statistically–quite safe in schools. This is unsurprising.
Schools generally take pains to ensure the safety of the children entrusted to them. They are, for the most part, continually and closely supervised by people who care not only about their intellectual growth, but their physical safety. However, there is nothing stopping armed killers from attacking virtually any school in America.
The community college in Roseburg, OR was “protected” by a single security officer, who was, by school policy, unarmed. Ironically, there had been some recent discussion about arming that security officer, but nothing came of it.
There is an ancient Chinese curse: “may you live in interesting times.” We live in interesting times indeed. Domestic killers have always been with us as the residents of Chardon, Ohio and Newtown, Connecticut now know as fact rather than remote possibility. The undeniable fact that, statistically speaking, school children may be as likely to be hit by a meteorite as shot in a school attack is surely of no comfort to the kids shot at Chardon High School and their families or the children and teachers killed in Newtown and their families and the students and teacher killed in Roseburg and their families.
Our times are more interesting by far because Islamic terrorists around the world would love to attack soft targets—such as schools—on American soil, and attacking schools is a very old tactic in their infernal bag of barbaric tricks (go here for a fictionalized, but entirely plausible scenario). There is every reason to believe that sleeper cells of such terrorists are salted throughout the nation and that more are regularly infiltrating our porous national borders. President Obama is welcoming hundreds of thousands of “refugees” from the Middle East, and his administration has admitted that many of them could be terrorists.
Only a tiny fraction of a single percent of school children will ever be injured or killed by a tornado while at school, yet we take reasonable precautions because we know that while rare, tornados are always possible. The same is true of school shootings, yet we don’t take every reasonable precaution we could and should take and a growing number of consultants are making a very good living handing out less than optimum–and in some cases dangerous–advice.
We do need security-conscious principals and teachers. We need schools designed with security in mind. We need plans, not only for tornadoes and fires, but for school shootings. Those plans should include using school facilities to make things as difficult as possible for shooters, including, as Larry Banaszak wrote, attacking shooters when all else has failed.
Where we have failed, where we constantly, knowingly continue to fail, is in refusing to implement a policy that will not only deter school shooters, but will provide the only real and practical possibility of immediately stopping school shooters, potentially stopping them before anyone is hurt.
Why plan to require slight female teachers and school children to, unarmed, attack armed killers with classroom implements or canned goods when it is possible to ensure they never have to make such a desperate play for their very lives?
At the least, what I suggest would make it possible that no child would ever have to rush an armed killer with nothing more deadly than a ruler in their shaking hand. It’s a policy that will cost schools little or nothing, and will actually enhance overall public safety, yet it is reflexively, and often violently, resisted.
In recently discussing potential research paper topics, arming teachers against attackers came up. My 15-year old students had no doubt that they’d want their teacher armed. In that certainty, they are wiser than a great many educated adults.
I hope to see you all back for the next four Mondays.
Stately McDaniel Manor 
Having worked in and around Australian schools since returning from Vietnam in 1970, as a teacher, principal and a consultant, I have never had to be bothered with any of the above in reference to security.
The concept “school shooter” is unknown on this side of the Pacific.
It may have something to do with the fact that we have sane gun laws in this country.
That’s interesting. How do you explain about a fifteen year old shooting a cop in the back of the head at the very moment Obama was pontificating about this last school shooting? Aren’t your sane gun laws supposed to prevent that?
Another example of what your media does with the truth.
1. The person killed was not a “cop”.
He was an accountant – a civilian – employed in police headquarters in Parramatta,
2. Our gun laws (like our traffic laws) can’t prevent every death.
What they do (and have done since 1996) is to keep our gun fatality rate to about one eleventh of yours, and provide a much safer community.
Using your logic, we should abandon them.
As an experiment, try removing all your traffic laws that restrict behaviour behind the wheel. Ban speed limits, allow people to choose what side of the road they use, and do away with the offence of driving drunk.
That would make about as much sense as your current gun regulation.
And of course, your road deaths and injuries would escalate.
It’s fortunate that there’s not a second amendment reference to automobiles.
Automobiles weren’t invented in 1791.
But wait, nor were self-loading rifles………….
Just curious: are Australians killed by knife, arson, acid, and blunt instruments any less dead, or are their killers morally superior, because firearms weren’t involved in their murder?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia
I’m wondering what that list has to do with the current situation.
The first incident listed occurred in 1628, before white settlement and before Australia existed.
But, to assuage your curiosity, the answer is ‘no’.
Following your bizarre line of reasoning, you would assert that because inoculation doesn’t prevent cancer, we should abandon it as a means of disease control.
In this country, we would call anyone advocating that notion a ‘galah’.
What would you call them stateside?
The NRA perhaps?
I suppose you missed the entries that happened after Australia enacted Draconian gun control?
So, Australia’s Draconian gun control didn’t stop mass killings? And those deaths are just as atrocious as deaths caused by firearms?
So what good did it do to disarm the law-abiding?
Using your analogy, the solution to disease control is to deal with criminals (i.e. inoculation), not to destroy the body’s ability to produce white blood cells (disarming the law-abiding, leaving them defenseless against criminals).
“I suppose you missed the entries that happened after Australia enacted Draconian gun control?”
You mean the entire seven people shot in Australia in situations involving more than one shooting fatality in one incident since 1996?
Since 1996, your country has seen the following (Note that unlike your list, it doesn’t include massacres caused by factors other than firearm use) –
April 1999 – Two teenage schoolboys shot and killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.
July 1999 – A stock exchange trader in Atlanta, Georgia, killed 12 people including his wife and two children before taking his own life.
September 1999 – A gunman opened fire at a prayer service in Fort Worth, Texas, killing six people before committing suicide.
October 2002 – A series of sniper-style shootings occurred in Washington DC, leaving 10 dead.
August 2003 – In Chicago, a laid-off worker shot and killed six of his former workmates.
November 2004 – In Birchwood, Wisconsin, a hunter killed six other hunters and wounded two others after an argument with them.
March 2005 – A man opened fire at a church service in Brookfield, Wisconsin, killing seven people.
October 2006 – A truck driver killed five schoolgirls and seriously wounded six others in a school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania before taking his own life.
April 2007 – Student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 15 others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, before shooting himself, making it the deadliest mass shooting in the United States after 2000.
August 2007 – Three Delaware State University students were shot and killed in “execution style” by a 28-year-old and two 15-year-old boys. A fourth student was shot and stabbed.
December 2007 – A 20-year-old man killed nine people and injured five others in a shopping centre in Omaha, Nebraska.
December 2007 – A woman and her boyfriend shot dead six members of her family on Christmas Eve in Carnation, Washington.
February 2008 – A shooter who is still at large tied up and shot six women at a suburban clothing store in Chicago, leaving five of them dead and the remaining one injured.
February 2008 – A man opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, killing five students and wounding 16 others before laying down his weapon and surrendering.
July 2008 – A former student shot three people in a computer lab at South Mountain Community College, Phoenix, Arizona.
September 2008 – a mentally ill man who was released from jail one month earlier shot eight people in Alger, Washington, leaving six of them dead and the rest two wounded.
October 2008 – Several men in a car drove up to a dormitory at the University of Central Arkansas and opened fire, killing two students and injuring a third person.
December 2008 – A man dressed in a Santa Claus suit opened fire at a family Christmas party in Covina, California, then set fire on the house and killed himself. Police later found nine people dead in the debris of the house.
March 2009 – A 28-year-old laid-off worker opened fire while driving a car through several towns in Alabama, killing 10 people.
March 2009 – A heavily-armed gunman shot dead eight people, many of them elderly and sick people, in a private-owned nursing home in North Carolina.
March 2009 – Six people were shot dead in a high-grade apartment building in Santa Clara, California.
April 2009 – An 18-year-old former student followed a pizza deliveryman into his old dormitory, and shot the deliveryman, a dorm monitor, and himself at Hampton University, Virginia.
April 2009 – A man shot dead 13 people at a civic center in Binghamton, New York.
July 2009 – Six people, including one student, were shot in a drive-by shooting at a community rally on the campus of Texas Southern University, Houston.
November 2009 – US army psychologist Major Nidal Hasan opened fire at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, leaving 13 dead and 42 others wounded.
February 2010 – A professor opened fire 50 minutes into at a Biological Sciences Department faculty meeting at the University of Alabama, killing three colleagues and wounding three others
January 2011 – a gunman opened fire at a public gathering outside a grocery in Tuscon, Arizona, killing six people including a nine-year-old girl and wounding at least 12 others. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was severely injured with a gunshot to the head.
July 2012 – Masked gunman James Holmes opens fire at midnight cinema screen of new Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 and injuring 58.
August 2012 – Gunman kills six people at SIkh temple in Wisconsin before being shot dead by police. Suspect is named as white supremacists Wade Michael Page.
December 2012 – Adam Lanza, 20, forces his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He kills 20 first-graders and six adults. Before arriving at the school, he had killed his mother at their home.
June 2013 – John Zawahri, an unemployed 23-year-old, kills five people in a rampage which begins at his father home and ends in Santa Monica College’s library.
September 2013 – Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor and former Navy man, engages police in a running firefight in the Washington D.C. industrial complex before being shot and killed. Thirteen people were killed and three injured.
May 2014 – Elliot Rodger opens fire in the campus town of Isla Vista, California from inside a black BMW, killing seven people. Rodgers acted alone and written and video evidence suggest the attack is premeditated.
June 2015 – White supremacist, Dylann Roof, begins shooting in a historic black church in an attempt to start a race-war. He kills nine people.
August 2015 – Vester Lee Flanagan II aka Bryce Williams shoots dead two former colleagues from the WDBJ7 news team.
You’d need a calculator to determine the total. I’ll leave that to you. QED.
Our controls aren’t “draconian”, by the way. That’s Fox News propaganda.
If I wanted a long arm (for example to go feral pig shooting – as many of my acquaintances in this rural area do), I’d could get a licence and after criminal and mental health checks, buy a rifle. I would not be able to buy a semi-auto, but then, why would you need a semi-auto to kill pigs? They’re designed to kill people.
“So what good did it do to disarm the law-abiding?”
The “law-abiding” are not disarmed. See above.
“Using your analogy, the solution to disease control is to deal with criminals”.
Right – works well in your country, doesn’t it? Time to try something else.
No, I mean the 8 massacres since Port Arthur, in which 12 people were killed by acid (Snowtown), 15 people were killed by arson (Childers Palace Backpackers), 2 people were killed with firearms (Monash University), 10 people were killed by arson (Churchill), 5 people were killed with a blunt instrument (Lin family), 11 people were killed by arson (Quakers Hill Nursing Home), 5 people were killed with firearms (Hunt family), and 8 people were stabbed to death (Cairns).
Why does the means of killing matter? Remember: you already admitted that people killed by means other than firearms are still just as dead, and their killers still as morally culpable.
Clearly, your chains rest lightly upon you.
Wait: you assert that a semi-auto is “designed to kill people”, but a bolt-action isn’t? And you expect me to take you seriously?
That has to rank up there among the most ignorant things I’ve ever read in a comment posted here at the Manor.
So, you can go about your daily affairs, carrying a firearm? If so, that’s news to me.
That’s the problem: we’re not doing that, by and large, in the US. We have a catch-and-release system that continually subjects the law-abiding to the same, violent criminals, who keep committing the same, violent crimes.
Instead, we disarm their potential victims.
“No, I mean the 8 massacres since Port Arthur, in which 12 people were killed by acid (Snowtown), 15 people were killed by arson (Childers Palace Backpackers), 2 people were killed with firearms (Monash University), 10 people were killed by arson (Churchill), 5 people were killed with a blunt instrument (Lin family), 11 people were killed by arson (Quakers Hill Nursing Home), 5 people were killed with firearms (Hunt family), and 8 people were stabbed to death (Cairns).”
So you’re claiming that because gun control doesn’t prevent massacres using other means, it shouldn’t be considered, even if, in your country, death by firearm is by far the major cause of fatalities in healthy individuals. You’re content to live with a situation where the primary cause of violent death is considered unimportant. That, to say the least, is a bizarre point of view.
“Wait: you assert that a semi-auto is “designed to kill people”, but a bolt-action isn’t? And you expect me to take you seriously?
That has to rank up there among the most ignorant things I’ve ever read in a comment posted here at the Manor.”
I’ve used both bolt action weapons (.303 Lee-Enfield) and self loading weapons (SLR, M-16 and a captured AK-47) and I know that you can kill a lot more people more quickly with the last three. To go further along that continuum, I’ve also used the M-60, the M-79 and the M-72 in Vietnam, and they were good for killing a lot of people at once if they were stupid enough to be bunched up. If you really can’t appreciate that degree of progression, you obviously have a poor understanding of lethality when it comes to small arms.
Apart from anything else, anyone carrying a semi-auto to go pigging would be considered a useless bugger who can’t shoot in the company I keep.
“So, you can go about your daily affairs, carrying a firearm? If so, that’s news to me.”
The only time I had to carry a firearm going about my daily affairs was on active service in Vietnam in 1970. Are you telling me that you feel so insecure in your country that you believe you need to behave in the same way as you would in a war zone? That is a sad dystopian view of what you claim is a great society – a society which is apparently completely unsafe.
“That’s the problem: we’re not doing that, by and large, in the US. We have a catch-and-release system that continually subjects the law-abiding to the same, violent criminals, who keep committing the same, violent crimes.
Instead, we disarm their potential victims”.
If locking criminals up, and throwing away the key, is the solution to violence, then explain why the USA, with one of the highest incarceration rates in the free world, (698 per 100000) and nearly five times Australia’s, (151 per 100000) also has five times the rate of homicides (from all causes) compared with Australia.
Wrong. Not even remotely close. “Death by firearm” isn’t even in the top 10. (It is a subset of #10 – intentional self-harm (suicide) – but suicide rates are unaffected by access to firearms, and are not a firearms-related issue.)
That leaves homicide by firearm, and accidental death by firearm. Accidental death by firearm is so low as to be barely a statistical blip. Homicide by firearm is barely half of the number of deaths caused by alcoholic liver disease.
Click to access nvsr64_10.pdf
Oh, I see what you’re doing: just moving the goalposts. “Healthy individuals” – i.e. accidents and murders – deaths by non-natural causes. How convenient of you to select that subset. “Violent” death – as if non-violent death is somehow better/acceptable.
No. It is a point of view that respects the rights and freedoms of the law-abiding, whose exercise of their right to keep and bear arms does not cause death.
“Semi-automatic” != “Automatic”. I’m not sure why you’re conflating the two.
More automatic/selective-fire rifles, which are by definition not “semi-automatic”. I’m still not sure why you’re conflating the two.
Actually: yes, I am. You’re being intentionally misleading, because a 10/22 or an AR15 don’t cause quite the same appeal to emotion.
Good for you.
Because carrying, concealed either with an IWB holster, or an OWB holster with an over shirt, my everyday-carry Ruger SR9c is the equivalent to being appropriately armed for a war zone.
And it is not a matter of feeling insecure or unsafe; rather, it is a matter of understanding that true liberty requires one to take responsibility for one’s own life and safety, and the freedom to do so in the manner that he sees fit. Because I’m not a subject, I don’t have to ask permission from the government in order to hunt feral pigs – nor do I have to rely solely on the government to provide for my well-being and safety.
And in the US, in the places where more law-abiding people carry, there is less crime. Criminals fear armed citizens far more than they fear even the police.
Over the past 20 years, firearm ownership (and CCW licensing) has skyrocketed, while murder and violent crime have nose-dived. Arming law-abiding citizens reduces crime.
Consider who gets – and stays – locked up. Our sentencing system is completely screwed up. Violent felons get far too many chances to return to the streets.
Disarming the law-abiding will do nothing to solve that problem.
Reblogged this on Brittius.
You might want to look at Robert Farago’s view on that approach to see what’s wrong with it. I can add, your premise would only be sound if “the shooter” was driven by narcissistic motives and was not, say, acting for a cause (I won’t name him partly out of respect for your site but mainly to avoid being censored – but you should name him for the very reasons Robert Farago gives, to allow understanding; if you don’t, your premise will remain unexamined and unfalsifiable, and so you will never find out what else might apply, which will matter very much as, when and if that happens in this or other cases).
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