People's reaction to this atrocity enrage me:
- The Atlanta Falcons will have a minute of silence before their game on Monday. This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future. It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive. Hey Atlanta Falcons, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future. Just STFU.
- ESPN has told their employees not to tweet anything until Monday. This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future. It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive. Hey ESPN, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future. Just STFU.
- The Usual Suspects - I'm looking at you, Piers Morgan - are blathering idiocy about too many guns and the typical hand wringing. This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future. It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive. Hey Piers Morgan, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future. Just STFU.
- Politicians, School Boards, and Principals are intimidated by powerful lobbying interests, afraid to take common sense steps that would actually be effective in stopping this sort of thing in the future. This infuriates me because these people take our coin, and are too scared to actually do what everyone knows needs to be done. Our children are literally dieing because these people are too timid to do what needs doing.
We need armed teachers.
Right now, the only person with a gun in a school is an evil, criminal nut case. Everyone is disarmed, by deliberate intent. The nutcase will have maybe a half hour to work his evil before going out in a blaze of CNN. Given the utter failure of the UK's almost complete ban on guns, this wouldn't change if we did the same here.
It would change completely if we had armed teachers.
#2 Son goes to a High School with 1,800 kids. It has a lot more than 100 teachers. If even 10% were armed, it would be simply impossible for an evil nut case to kill many kids before being dropped by the righteous return fire from a teacher.
And I am absolutely infuriated by all the people who are horrified by this suggestion, who instead cling to proven ineffective proposals like more gun control. Infuriated, because these people either know better, or should know better, and instead choose to let our children bleed. People who choose not to protect them. People who refuse to trust our children's teachers, who rather take refuge in public displays of how sensitive they are. People who flinch from confronting evil, even to protect children.
People who choose to enable evil, rather than confront it. They dance in children's blood, to show how nice they are. To show that they're better than we are.
It enrages me - makes me rage until my floor turns to lava.
UPDATE 14 December 2012 21:23: Omnia vincit amor. A calmer post that's worth your while.
And a prayer. Amen.
UPDATE 16 December 2012 21:34: An outbreak of sanity:
A tiny Texas school district may be the first in the nation to pass a law specifically allowing teachers and staff to pack heat when classes begin later this month.Of course sanity breaks out in Texas first.
Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District approved a district policy change last October so employees can carry concealed firearms to deter and protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting teachers follow certain requirements.
Ted, most teachers are liberal women, totally disinclined to have anything to do with guns, and most of them in fact supporting strict gun controls. It's vain to think that they'd be amenable to owning and carrying guns in the schoolroom.
ReplyDeleteWe have history on our side, that when armed teachers responded, school shootings were less deadly. A couple of examples in John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime".
ReplyDeleteUnless you have "Minority Report" seers who look into the future, it's not possible to prevent things like this before the nut job starts things. The lesson of history is that armed teachers get rid of the nut jobs with fewer innocents being hurt or killed.
I would love to see the no gun zones go away. even if no teacher carried the nut would never know that. The nut would not know if anyone in the school or visiting the school would be armed. That not knowing would be a great defense vs the knowing that no one can stop you . . . .
ReplyDeleteBob, most are like you describe. But not all. #2 Son's JROTC teachers are former Army, and while the Major probably doesn't know much about guns, the SGT had to work for a living.
ReplyDeleteThere are teachers almost everywhere who would get CCW licenses and carry. And even if there were some schools that didn't have any, JD is right - the uncertainty would go a long way to stop the evil jerks.
Totally and completely, 100%, agree. I do, however, know at least one teacher personally who was finally convinced to go to the range....and has been hooked. She is looking into getting her CHL here soon. So while a good portion of teachers may be as Bob said....but not all. There is hope!
ReplyDeleteYep, a bunch of things that have zero hope of making a bit of difference. If we are really outraged about the death of our children then by god lets protect them.
ReplyDeleteWho was protecting those kids? They need us, they deserve us do actual real things that will keep them safe. Those precious babies who died they are innocent victims as are the children who survived. What must their night be like?
Spot on.
ReplyDeleteWe're all outraged.
ReplyDeleteYou just say it better than most of us.....
Even if teachers don't want to arm up, there are other people working in the schools who may. Janitors and maintenance people, office staff, and cafeteria workers all have a stake in this because their lives are on the line too.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're right you're right.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately the left wouldn't know right it if jumped up out of the ground and bit them on the arse.
Anon, the left should be ashamed. This was my attempt to do precisely that.
ReplyDelete[a different Anon...]
ReplyDelete...Anon, the left should be ashamed. This was my attempt to do precisely that.
But I'm sorry to say you wrote in vain. They are perpetually unable to feel real shame. (They can pretend when it makes a show useful for their purposes, as you note in your "preamble.")
They embody righteousness and thus are absolved from the consequences of all that they believe and act upon. If anything goes wrong, it's not their fault for their hearts are pure and intentions for the best.
That is the core of the leftist/progressive/Democrat/liberal credo.
Forgive the anger, but this was personal for me.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.yankeegunnuts.com/2012/12/14/sandy-hook-massacre/
Why was this mental patient allowed to roam free?
Primordial Slack agrees with ya it appears.
ReplyDeleteEric Holder's smile made my skin crawl. How inappropriate.
ReplyDeleteOur mass murderer skirted all the disarmament laws by stealing his weapons and ignoring the ban and weapons and murder at the school.
My gf wants metal detectors as standard equipment. Honestly, what if the killer starts shooting when he realizes he's about to be caught?
Unfortunately "gun control" is going to be the answer because it's an easy out for the lazy and timid. Responsibility, vigilance and mitigation are hard work and dangerous.
My personal quote-of-the-day for any "Gun Free Zone" shooting, presented without further comment:
ReplyDelete"There's nothing more scary than knowing that the only one in the room with a gun is there to kill you." -- Steve Moss (survivor, Panama City School Board shooting)
OK, I lied. Here's my further comments:
ReplyDeleteAgree 100% about arming the willing-and-able school staff. If there are 100 teachers, there will be about 100 more staffers in the form of janitors, office workers, administrators, librarians, lunch ladies, etc. SOMEONE will be willing to carry to protect the children.
Also agree about being too timid to confront the issue. School shootings are an uncomfortable reality. So are school fires. But we force schools to run evacuation drills for one of them. Discomfort with the issue is NO EXCUSE for not having SOME kind of rehearsed plan.
The long and short is that mass shootings are overwhelmingly stopped by one thing, and one thing only: intervention by people with guns. Whether that's the police, the asst. principal who parked off-campus because there was a gun in the car, an armed visiting parent, students who tackle the gunman and hold him by his own weapons, or the gunman himself deciding that's enough and committing suicide. Guns in good hands are the only thing that reliably ends the threat of guns in evil hands. Period. Full stop. What we really need is the good guys' guns to be able to respond quicker, and the quickest response will ALWAYS come from people who are already there.
I'd get down off my soapbox, but I'm afraid my raging has given my floor a distinctly lava-ish appearance as well. Need to go cool down....
Exactly correct BP. If the left was really serious about the safety of our children they'd at least be open to a discussion of armed teachers. Since they're not we are left to the obvious conclusion. This is what they want.
ReplyDeleteAn old one, but still......
ReplyDelete"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis
Well I'm pissed been spending a few hours hours defending the second amendment with bloody lefties in the UK press trying to exploit this for political gain.
ReplyDeleteI am still numb from what happened and it is absolutely horrifying and I've not had time to absorb it all.
Yet the first thing they did was try to exploit it. They make you sick.
Well my thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims families.
Gun control (another name for gun bans) is the first thing that so-called 'liberals' call for when something like the Newtown shooting occurs. I have not heard one single reaction to another incident which is startlingly similar.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20723910
"A man with a knife has wounded 22 children - at least two of them seriously - and an adult at a primary school in central China."
Knife bans, anyone?
The problem lies with the person, NOT the weapon
ReplyDeleteSpot on.Back in '99 I wrote a piece about the uselessness of this feel good tripe after recieving numerous "lights on for safety" emails. The government mandated day runners for safety, and now we have idiots driving the road at night, with headlights, but no tail lights. Just remember, in
ReplyDeletemodern society, "feeling" carries greater value than action.
Well said, BP. Sadly it won't change anything, but it needed to be said an no one could have said it better than did you.
ReplyDelete"Of course sanity breaks out in Texas first."
ReplyDelete...the same Texas where I can't Open Carry.
But I know plenty of teachers (yes, even the hand-wringing liberal women teachers) who are in favor of at least leaving it as an unknown ... "none of us would ever carry, because we're educated and intellectual and guns should never be near children and wewewewewewe..."
But they know that the bad guys wouldn't know for sure.