27 dead (20 children, 6 adults and shooter) in an elem school in CT

[1fast5gp]

Taken from Facebook but so much truth to it.

 

TURN OFF THE NEWS.......

 

Morgan Freeman's brilliant take on what happened yesterday :

 

"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.

 

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed

people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

 

CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

 

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."

[1fast5gp]

A family member also mentioned that he had some form of autism. Color me surprised. The true problem is the lack of mental health resources in this country. Granted, you can't catch them all, but you can't ignore them all either. There is some serious underfunding for mental health. Unfortunately, there is a serious underfunding for everything.

 

I read that the fucker had a rare condition where he couldn't feel pain and had a ton of mental problems.

[RedRocket1647545505]

Autism is not associated with violent behavior, so if you're suggesting that autistic people need to be committed, or undergo serious psychiatric therepy, your wrong.

 

I am not saying that at all. But autism is a mental condition, which is a seriously underfunded sector of the health field.

 

And while I am sure it is rare, autistic people can get violent.

[LJ]

Autism is not associated with violent behavior, so if you're suggesting that autistic people need to be committed, or undergo serious psychiatric therepy, your wrong.

 

Actually violent behavior in older individuals with Autism is much more common than you think.

 

http://www.thespeciallife.com/autism-and-violence.html

[nurkvinny]

From another forum.

 

Recent events in Connecticut have prompted a flow of emotion on US soil that hasn’t been felt since 9/11. The mere thought of an act that reaches the level of evil that was seen in that elementary school is one that can bring the most stalwart of us to tears and something like that is bound to provoke strong emotions and strong reactions afterwards.

 

I first want to give my sincerest condolences to the families of those who have lost so much recently. There is nothing that will make their pain any less or to make the violence make any more sense. All we can do is help each other to get through this traumatic event. It has no doubt changed the lives of hundreds of people forever. I really don’t want this to sound like the obligatory “sorry for your loss first” statement before I broach another subject, but I’m afraid that’s how it will come off because I am personally motivated to express my thoughts on our future after this event. Regardless of what I say after this and regardless of my opinions, I just want to reiterate that my first concern and my first thoughts have always been with the families and the souls that have been irreparably damaged by this event. God Bless every one of you.

 

The first instinct after an event like this has settled a bit is to figure out how to prevent it from happening again. This is where this conversation has started to turn and it is where it is going to stay for quite some time. I agree with this. We should do everything possible to prevent something like this from happening again, as these types of events have been happening more often and at an ever increasing pace. What differs between people today is how to best combat this type of behavior.

 

The solution to this problem, I believe, lies in two separate areas. The first is the behavior. What causes someone to behave like this? What motivates them? What pushes them to do this? The second is the tools. In this case, it was firearms. Is there anything we can do to limit the carnage that someone such as this could do? Let me take this one area at a time, if you will indulge me.

 

A person’s behavior is something that typically follows a path that can be predicted. Sometimes this is an emotional path and sometimes it is a logical path. This is how most of us live our lives. Our actions make sense to those around us. For a select few however, this isn’t true. Their brains make connections and leaps that most of us cannot even fathom. These people are the outliers; the statistical oddities that you cannot always predict. The truth is this is a statistical fact. Throughout 200,000 years of human experience there have always been these outliers that will take actions that most cannot think of. It’s a simple fact of living life with genetic randomization. A select few people will come out flawed.

 

I think the effort in this area needs to be directed at prediction. In all cases, even this one, there will be signs that were apparent before the event that either no one picked up on or were ignored. Most of us realize these signs as obvious after the fact but for whatever reason didn’t pick up on them ahead of time. I think this is because of our belief that people don’t do things like this. Even if we see the signs we will deny the possibility that this person that we’ve known so long could be capable of an act so evil. So, we push it aside. We may keep a closer eye on them but no more. We don’t want to ruin their lives over something that may or may not happen. The outliers will always exist so we need to be better prepared to identify them before they decide to break the moral fabric of our lives. I don’t necessarily think that legislation will fix this problem. The last thing I would want to do is limit people’s freedom. That would violate what this country is about. I think this is an education matter for the general public as well as a task for the mental health professionals in this country. Before I finish this part I want to thank all of the mental health professionals and vigilant people out there because I am sure that at least a few tragedies like this have been prevented by their actions. We just don’t see it because it goes largely unnoticed. Thank you.

 

Now, for what has become the largest part of this discussion; the tools. I’m not going to blame the weapons because they did not commit the acts. This is not an act of “gun violence” as so many gun control advocates like to spout. This was an act of total evil, regardless of how it was carried out. Would it be any less tragic if it was carried out with a bomb or a car? On the opposite side of the coin, are the guns that US Navy Seals used to kill Osama Bin Laden evil? Just as with any tool, a gun can be used for good or evil. I would like to talk about the main points in this discussion and provide my own views on each of them to hopefully shed some clarity on these issues.

 

The first is the emotional gut reaction. After something like this everyone wants something to blame and that’s normal. The shooter is dead by his own hands so we cannot have the gratification of enforced justice. That leaves us with either the vague idea of mental illness or the tools that he used. Guns are easy to blame because of this. They become easy prey because it gives people something to blame and something to do to make themselves feel better. I understand this viewpoint but would just like to point out that this puts your focus in the wrong direction. This would be akin to trying to ban planes after 9/11 or restrict people’s use of cars after a horrible drunk driving pileup. The reason we don’t jump to those conclusions is because we depend too much on those tools. Planes are not viewed as disposable and neither are cars. Guns are, however, to many Americans. You would be hard pressed to find an American that at some point doesn’t depend on a car or a plane. There are a significant number of Americans though who don’t depend on a firearm every day. This makes them appear as disposable. The truth is that they aren’t. Not only are they necessary as our founding fathers thought, they cannot be un-invented. They will always exist. You can’t magically get rid of them. For those who have this view due to an emotional need to blame something, please try to stop for a minute and think about what I have to say. It just may change your mind.

 

Second is access to guns. There are other countries that have laws requiring firearms to be locked in safes, stored at gun clubs, or even disassembled if they are to be kept at all. While this makes is marginally more difficult for a criminal to gain access to a firearm it doesn’t solve the problem. A person who has decided to commit evil isn’t going to stop just because they have to open a safe or assemble the gun first. What laws like this do accomplish is they make quick access to them in a personal self defense scenario impossible. What do you do if someone breaks into your home and your handgun is locked in a safe and unloaded? You do nothing is what you do. Just because some Americans decide to not have ready access to a firearm for personal protection does not mean that those of us who do should be penalized.

 

Third would be types of weapons that are available. This is probably the subject that aggravates me the most because no one that wants gun control seems to be knowledgeable themselves on how they work. The term “automatic weapon” is thrown around a lot and it makes people immediately jump to military grade weapons that can shoot multiple rounds by holding the trigger. No mass shooting in recent history has been done with one of these weapons. These types of weapons are already highly restricted and those that legally own them do what every responsible gun owner does and that is keep control of them. The weapons that are used in these shootings are aesthetically similar to military weapons but in function they are much different. These handguns and rifles are “semi-automatic” which means you have to squeeze the trigger every time you want to fire a bullet. This isn’t new technology that is making it easier to kill. Just because an AR-15 rifle looks like a military M-16 doesn’t mean it does the same thing. Semi-automatic weapons have been around since the early 1900’s. The way these weapons operate hasn’t changed in over 100 years. Their look has. The difference is what people are deciding to use them for. Even the Assault Weapon Ban in 1994 didn’t ban AR-15 rifles. It banned features on them such as a sliding stock for length adjustment. It changed their look, not how they functioned. These weapons are not “assault rifles.” They are modern sporting rifles. By military definition a weapon has to be capable of fully automatic fire to be an assault rifle. These are not. Actual assault rifles haven’t been used in any mass shooting. Restricting the types of guns we own will not fix the problem. It’s a tool that’s been around in roughly the same format for over a century…

 

The fourth issue is the 2nd Amendment. In my opinion this is the only argument that is needed. The 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with hunting or personal protection from an everyday assault. No one in their right mind during the founding of this country would have ever thought you would need to enumerate a right just to hunt. The second amendment is specifically designed to give The People the ability to defend themselves from any force including a foreign invasion or a tyrannical government. Regardless of the opinions on how likely that scenario is it is a fact of the founding of this country. If at some point the government becomes too oppressive and too overpowering then The People need the resources to combat that in order to remain free. With that argument in mind, we need arms that are equal to that of our own military. This was the designed purpose of the 2nd Amendment. We cannot defend ourselves against a fully armed military force with bolt action rifles and muskets. Placing restrictions or bans on AR-15’s, AK-47’s, or any other military style rifle is a direct violation of the 2nd Amendment and an affront to the founders of our country.

 

The fifth and final issue is freedom versus safety. As a broad generalization this is what most gun control debates boil down to. There are people who are willing to give up some freedom in exchange for safety. There is an inherent flaw in this argument though. The freedom that gun control advocates are willing to give up is a freedom that they do not themselves exercise so they are essentially giving up nothing and trying to speak for those who would be giving up the most. To make matters worse the safety that is exchanged is a false sense of security. People who are societal outliers and are committed to performing acts of evil will not follow the law. All of the regulations and rules in the world will not stop them. The sense of safety is an emotional feeling that creates false hope. Guns were banned from the school in Connecticut and the school had a lockdown procedure in effect. That didn’t stop what happened, nor will it ever. We are not talking about law abiding citizens, nor are we talking about everyday criminals who commit random assaults and robberies. Even they have some sense of morality. We are talking about outliers whose actions cannot be predicted and whose motives make no logical sense. These people will steal what they need in order to fulfill their mission. Due to the small number of people like this we are talking about a 1 in 50 million occurrence that will always be a 1 in 50 million occurrence. Laws and regulations will not stop these outliers from committing unspeakable acts.

 

So, if the safety provided by laws is an illusion and statistically there will always be people like this willing to commit evil acts then what do you do about it? That becomes the $64,000 question. The solution is simple. You fight it with freedom. You fight back. You are talking about an enemy to our safety that cannot be predicted and will be completely random. You be prepared to stop them. Keep a rifle in the main office of schools, allow the teachers who have valid concealed carry licenses to carry in class, allow parents coming to pick up their children to be armed, and make every public place as undesirable of a target as possible. Start sponsoring gun safety and marksmanship classes in schools again. The mentality of active shooters in these scenarios points to them being cowards. Any time any resistance is given they usually take their own life. They want to end it on their terms. It’s about them exerting control over a life they feel they’ve had none over.

 

Think about one question now, knowing what I’ve said here. If these weapon systems have been around for over a century and deranged people willing to commit evil acts have always existed… then why only recently have school shootings become so common? The answer is really simple. Over the course of the late 1980’s and 1990’s schools have gone from allowing people to have guns nearby to having zero tolerance policies on armed people on school grounds. In the 1970’s many high schools had marksmanship classes and clubs, kids would bring guns in for show and tell in elementary school, and kids would keep hunting guns in the trunks of their cars if they were going hunting after school. What we have inadvertently done is make schools a prime target for deranged people where they weren’t before. We have actually drawn these people to our children, because as disturbed as they are none of them are stupid. They are intelligent and they think ahead. They go where they will face the least resistance and where is the one place that restrictions on guns are the strongest? Ours schools.

 

There are things we can do to help prevent these acts in the future, but we have to take our time and look at the big picture. We cannot knee-jerk to a reaction based on emotion and blame. We need to go back to our roots and ensure that we not limit our freedom as a people, so that our children can enjoy the ability to live their lives without fear and restriction. We have to protect them; not by hiding the truth from them or shielding them from the weapons of combat, but by being there as guardians for them and to stand against the evils of the world that will always be there.

[RedRocket1647545505]

The fourth issue is the 2nd Amendment. In my opinion this is the only argument that is needed. The 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with hunting or personal protection from an everyday assault. No one in their right mind during the founding of this country would have ever thought you would need to enumerate a right just to hunt. The second amendment is specifically designed to giveThePeople the ability to defend themselves from any force including a foreign invasion or a tyrannical government. Regardless of the opinions on how likelythatscenarioisitisa fact of the founding of this country. If at some point the government becomes too oppressive and too overpowering then The Peopleneedtheresourcesto combat thatin order to remain free. With that argument in mind, we need arms that are equal to that of our own military. Thiswas the designed purposeof the2nd Amendment. We cannot defend ourselves against a fully armed military force with bolt action rifles and muskets. Placing restrictions or bans on AR-15’s, AK-47’s, or any other military style rifleis a direct violation of the 2nd Amendment and an affront to the founders of our country.

 

Hmmm. Where have I heard that before?

[Tractor]

In my job I go into many types of places all over Central Ohio and there is no where in my region including military installations that can say a guy or two won't be able to get inside and shoot up the place.

 

I don't have any answer and removing the 2nd amendment isn't going to solve it either.

[nurkvinny]

Concealed carry in MI made legal in schools less than 24hrs before CT shooting.

 

http://www.freep.com/article/20121214/NEWS06/121214074/In-Michigan-supporters-say-new-gun-law-could-help-stop-tragedies-like-Conn-massacre

[nurkvinny]

Teachers armed in Texas (at least in one school)

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/us/29texas.html?pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&_r=0

[Buck531]

I am not saying that at all. But autism is a mental condition, which is a seriously underfunded sector of the health field.

 

And while I am sure it is rare, autistic people can get violent.

 

Not that rare.

 

An estimated 1 out of 54 boys and 1 in 252 girls are diagnosed with autism in the United States.

[nurkvinny]

Not that rare.

 

He's saying a violent autistic child is rare, not that autism is rare, FYI

[Buck531]

He's saying a violent autistic child is rare, not that autism is rare, FYI

 

 

Yep.. you're right. I misread that.

[smokin5s]

I'm sure this was a "gun free zone" as well.

By law all schools are gun free zones.... see it works well, law abiding people don't carry which makes it open game for the crazies!

[V8 Beast]

Remember the phrase "going postal"? People have been walking into places and shooting people for a long time. Its a big reason why employers are hesitant to allow guns on their property. What this is doing is making people weigh the pros and cons... Am I more likely to get shot by my employee or a random crazy person??? Im all for a police officer in schools, but I dont like the idea of teachers carrying guns, Think about this..

 

If you have 7000 armed teachers in schools across the USA whats more likely to happen:

A) They stop a crazy murderer

B) A mistake occurs due to negligence

C) They shoot a kid that made them feel threatened

[V8 Beast]

From the The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice: “A 2010 report on school safety found that during the school year 2008/2009 there were 38 school-associated violent deaths — in a population of about 55.6 million students in grades prekindergarten through 12.”

 

86% of schools didnt report any murders, rapes, burglaries, or sexual assaults. It may not seem like it now but schools are still ranked high on the safest places to be list. Most murder suicides happen at home.

[Ryan218]

Many of you know that I along with some friends do the toy drive here in Newark called Cruise for Tots. Well, Cruise for Tots and Tuners and Bikes of Ohio are teaming up to collect as many Teddy Bears as possible to donate to the surviving victims of today's tragedy. We will be making the trip to Connecticut to deliver them in the coming days. If you are unable to donate a bear we will accept cash donations to purchase and help us deliver them with. We will accept used bears that are in good shape. Anyone who donates will recieve a Cruise for Tots sticker for free in exchange.

 

Just wanted to throw this out there. Nick from Tuners and Bikes of Ohio lives in the Columbus area and is willing to meet up with folks there, I can meet people in the licking country area.

 

Where can I bring you a bear? Pm me and I'll give you my number.

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

Hey Ryan, I have a buddy in Columbus that is making the trip with us. He is able to meet up with any/all folks in the Columbus area. I will handle the other areas. We have seriously gathered over 500 bears already from the Newark community. Yesterday while I was out collecting a couple from a lady off Facebook, she informed me that there was a group downtown collecting bears for us. It was the first I had heard of this, so I headed down there to check it out. Low and behold there was adults and kids down there with homemade signs collecting stuffed animals for us.

 

I stopped and introduced myself and was welcomed by all of them. I won't even lie, I had a tear in my eye as I saw just how wonderful the world can be in light of a tragedy such as this. It is unfortunate that an event like this has to happen in order for good to come from people. The local paper sent a photographer down since they apparently had caught wind of what was going on. The guy behind the lens wanted me to take a picture with all the bears, I told him I had no problem with that as long as everyone who was down there was in the picture with me.

 

Last night I got a phone call from the local paper and did an over the phone interview with them which got printed in todays edition. Today I got word from 10tv that they want me to do an on air interview. I am sort of conflicted by this, I do not like to take credit for things even if I do them solely by myself. I made sure to give credit to everyone who stood out in the cold and didn't really have to. On the flipside if it means more people find a way to get their bears to Connecticut via us then I am all for it.

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

Also we are gonig to leave some sort of sign with the bears. Something to the effect of "From Ohio With Love", if someone wants to donate a Columbus Racing sticker I will make sure it gets on the sign. I am putting a Daddy Built Racing, Ohio G Club and Tuners and Bikes of Ohio sticker on it as well. This is an open invite to any/all car club that may be reading this

[BigOxley]

long but good

 

“How many kids have been killed by school fire in all of North America in the past 50 years? Kids killed... school fire... North America... 50 years... How many? Zero. That’s right. Not one single kid has been killed by school fire anywhere in North America in the past half a century. Now, how many kids have been killed by school violence?”

 

So began an extraordinary daylong seminar presented by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a Pulitzer Prize nominated author, West Point psychology professor, and without a doubt the world’s foremost expert on human aggression and violence. The event, hosted by the California Peace Officers Association, was held in the auditorium of a very large community church about 30 miles from San Francisco, and was attended by more than 250 police officers from around the region.

 

Grossman’s talk spanned myriad topics of vital importance to law enforcement, such as the use of autogenic breathing, surviving gunshot wounds, dealing with survivor guilt following a gun battle, and others. In coming months, I will present a series of articles addressing many of these subjects, but violence among and against children was how the day began, and so it is in this area I will begin my coverage...

 

 

“In 1998,” Grossman said, “school violence claimed what at the time was an all time record number of kids’ lives. In that year there were 35 dead and a quarter of a million serious injuries due to violence in the school. How many killed by fire that year? Zero. But we hear people say, ‘That’s the year Columbine happened, that’s an anomaly.’ Well, in 2004 we had a new all time record — 48 dead in the schools from violence. How many killed by fire that year? Zero. Let’s assign some grades. Put your teacher hat on and give out some grades. What kind of grade do you give the firefighter for keeping kids safe? An ‘A,’ right? Reluctantly, reluctantly, the cops give the firefighters an ‘A,’ right? Danged firefighters, they sleep ‘till they’re hungry and eat ‘till they’re tired. What grade do we get for keeping the kids safe from violence? Come on, what’s our grade? Needs improvement, right?”

 

Johnny Firefighter, A+ Student

“Why can’t we be like little Johnny Firefighter?” Grossman asked as he prowled the stage. “He’s our A+ student!”

 

He paused, briefly, and answered with a voice that blew through the hall like thunder, “Denial, denial, denial!”

 

Grossman commanded, “Look up at the ceiling! See all those sprinklers up there? They’re hard to spot — they’re painted black — but they’re there. While you’re looking, look at the material the ceiling is made of. You know that that stuff was selected because it’s fire-retardant. Hooah? Now look over there above the door — you see that fire exit sign? That’s not just any fire exit sign — that’s a ‘battery-backup-when-the-world-ends-it-will-still-be-lit’ fire exit sign. Hooah?”

 

Walking from the stage toward a nearby fire exit and exterior wall, Grossman slammed the palm of his hand against the wall and exclaimed, “Look at these wall boards! They were chosen because they’re what?! Fireproof or fire retardant, hooah? There is not one stinking thing in this room that will burn!”

 

Pointing around the room as he spoke, Grossman continued, “But you’ve still got those fire sprinklers, those fire exit signs, fire hydrants outside, and fire trucks nearby! Are these fire guys crazy? Are these fire guys paranoid? NO! This fire guy is our A+ student! Because this fire guy has redundant, overlapping layers of protection, not a single kid has been killed by school fire in the last 50 years!

 

“But you try to prepare for violence — the thing much more likely to kill our kids in schools, the thing hundreds of times more likely to kill our kids in schools — and people think you’re paranoid. They think you’re crazy. ...They’re in denial.”

 

Teaching the Teachers

The challenge for law enforcement agencies and officers, then, is to overcome not only the attacks taking place in schools, but to first overcome the denial in the minds of mayors, city councils, school administrators, and parents. Grossman said that agencies and officers, although facing an uphill slog against the denial of the general public, must diligently work toward increasing understanding among the sheep that the wolves are coming for their children. Police officers must train and drill with teachers, not only so responding officers are intimately familiar with the facilities, but so that teachers know what they can do in the event of an attack.

 

“Come with me to the library at Columbine High School,” Grossman said. “The teacher in the library at Columbine High School spent her professional lifetime preparing for a fire, and we can all agree if there had been a fire in that library, that teacher would have instinctively, reflexively known what to do. But the thing most likely to kill her kids — the thing hundreds of times more likely to kill her kids, the teacher didn’t have a clue what to do. She should have put those kids in the librarian’s office but she didn’t know that. So she did the worst thing possible — she tried to secure her kids in an un-securable location. She told the kids to hide in the library — a library that has plate glass windows for walls. It’s an aquarium, it’s a fish bowl. She told the kids to hide in a fishbowl. What did those killers see? They saw targets. They saw fish in a fish bowl.”

 

Grossman said that if the school administrators at Columbine had spent a fraction of the money they’d spent preparing for fire — if the teachers there had spent a fraction of the time they spent preparing for fire — doing lockdown drills and talking with local law enforcers about the violent dangers they face, the outcome that day may have been different.

 

Rhetorically he asked the assembled cops, “If somebody had spent five minutes telling that teacher what to do, do you think lives would have been saved at Columbine?”

 

Arming Campus Cops is Elementary

Nearly two years ago, I wrote an article called Arming campus cops is elementary. Not surprisingly, Grossman agrees with that hypothesis.

 

“Never call an unarmed man ‘security’,” Grossman said.

 

“Call him ‘run-like-hell-when-the-man-with-the-gun-shows-up’ but never call an unarmed man security. Imagine if someone said, ‘I want a trained fire professional on site. I want a fire hat, I want a fire uniform, I want a fire badge. But! No fire extinguishers in this building. No fire hoses. The hat, the badge, the uniform — that will keep us safe — but we have no need for fire extinguishers.’ Well, that would be insane. It is equally insane, delusional, legally liable, to say, ‘I want a trained security professional on site. I want a security hat, I want a security uniform, and I want a security badge, but I don’t want a gun.’ It’s not the hat, the uniform, or the badge. It’s the tools in the hands of a trained professional that keeps us safe.

 

“Our problem is not money,” said Grossman. “It is denial.”

 

Grossman said (and most cops agree) that many of the most important things we can do to protect our kids would cost us nothing or next-to-nothing.

 

Grossman’s Five D’s

 

1. Denial — Denial is the enemy and it has no survival value, said Grossman.

 

2. Deter — Put police officers in schools, because with just one officer assigned to a school, the probability of a mass murder in that school drops to almost zero

 

3. Detect — We’re talking about plain old fashioned police work here. The ultimate achievement for law enforcement is the crime that didn’t happen, so giving teachers and administrators regular access to cops is paramount.

 

4. Delay — Various simple mechanisms can be used by teachers and cops to put time and distance between the killers and the kids.

 

a. Ensure that the school/classroom have just a single point of entry. Simply locking the back door helps create a hard target.

b. Conduct your active shooter drills within (and in partnership with) the schools in your city so teachers know how to respond, and know what it looks like when you do your response.

 

5. Destroy — Police officers and agencies should consider the following:

 

a. Carry off duty. No one would tell a firefighter who has a fire extinguisher in his trunk that he’s crazy or paranoid.

b. Equip every cop in America with a patrol rifle. One chief of police, upon getting rifles for all his officers once said, “If an active killer strikes in my town, the response time will be measured in feet per second.”

c. Put smoke grenades in the trunk of every cop car in America. Any infantryman who needs to attack across open terrain or perform a rescue under fire deploys a smoke grenade. A fire extinguisher will do a decent job in some cases, but a smoke grenade is designed to perform the function.

d. Have a “go-to-war bag” filled with lots of loaded magazines and supplies for tactical combat casualty care.

e. Use helicopters. Somewhere in your county you probably have one or more of the following: medivac, media, private, national guard, coast guard rotors.

f. Employ the crew-served, continuous-feed, weapon you already have available to you (a firehouse) by integrating the fire service into your active shooter training. It is virtually impossible for a killer to put well-placed shots on target while also being blasted with water at 300 pounds per square inch.

g. Armed citizens can help. Think United 93. Whatever your personal take on gun control, it is all but certain that a killer set on killing is more likely to attack a target where the citizens are unarmed, rather than one where they are likely to encounter an armed citizen response.

 

Coming Soon: External Threats

Today we must not only prepare for juvenile mass murder, something that had never happened in human history until only recently, but we also must prepare for the external threat. Islamist fanatics have slaughtered children in their own religion — they have killed wantonly, mercilessly, and without regard for repercussion or regret of any kind. What do you think they’d think of killing our kids?

 

“Eight years ago they came and killed 3,000 of our citizens. Do we know what they’re going to do next? No! But one thing they’ve done in every country they’ve messed with is killing kids in schools.”

 

The latest al Qaeda charter states that “children are noble targets” and Osama bin Laden himself has said that “Russia is a preview for what we will do to America.”

 

What happened in Russia that we need to be concerned with in this context? In the town of Beslan on September 1, 2004 — the very day on which children across that country merrily make their return to school after the long summer break — radical Islamist terrorists from Chechnya took more than 1,000 teachers, mothers, and children hostage. When the three-day siege was over, more than 300 hostages had been killed, more than half of whom were children.

 

“If I could tackle every American and make them read one book to help them understand the terrorist’s plan, it would be Terror at Beslan by John Giduck. Beslan was just a dress rehearsal for what they’re planning to do to the United States.”

 

A future feature will focus solely on the issue of the terror threats against American schools, but for the time being consider this: There are almost a half a million school busses in America — it would require every enlisted person and every officer in the entire Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps combined to put just one armed guard on every school bus in the country.

 

As a country and as a culture, the level of protection Americans afford our kids against violence is nothing near what we do to protect them from fire. Grossman is correct: Denial is the enemy. We must prepare for violence like the firefighter prepares for fire. And we must do that today.

 

Hooah, Colonel!

[Putty]

Really sad watching "CBS this morning", this morning. RIP

[wagner]

I have not watched any news coverage on this, just totally to much. The focus is not correct, the lack of facts in reporting is scary, and it is really just to depressing (and I don't even have kids)

[Drewhop]

I have not watched any news coverage on this, just totally to much. The focus is not correct, the lack of facts in reporting is scary, and it is really just to depressing (and I don't even have kids)

 

This. I flipped thru channels and I saw the headline.

 

"BREAKING NEWS, FAMILIES MOURN THE LOSS OF CHILDREN"

Are you fucking kidding me. This is what is spammed across the tv.

[Putty]

I have not watched any news coverage on this, just totally to much. The focus is not correct, the lack of facts in reporting is scary

 

They actually know quite a bit now. Will never know a motive in such an incident, but a picture of the life the killer lead is displayed.

[SpaceGhost]

I blame my parents generation, they started this shit with Charles Manson, now anyone that does this gets just as famous. Sickening. I found it funny you have to really search to learn a CCW holder took down the fucker in the mall this month. They don't report that shit at all.

[Mojoe]

Sickening. I found it funny you have to really search to learn a CCW holder took down the fucker in the mall this month. They don't report that shit at all.

 

Between this, and what Wagner posted, I don't even watch tv. Nothing will ever make main stream news of a CCW holder being the one to help. That's sad.